She smiled bitterly. The chancellor's refusal to accept her credentials had worked to her benefit, if being helped to leave Starfarer was a benefit. As far as the records were concerned, she was still attached to the State Department, still an associate ambassador.
She had nothing to do now except wait, and worry. She tried to put Zev out of her mind.
She could not help but think about what Feral had said.
She wondered if she were as transparent to anyone besides
STARFARERS 2 07
the reporter. Another blush crept up her neck and face. If Victoria had noticed, or Satoshi . . . they must have thought her reaction to Stephen Thomas terribly amusing. She did not worry particularly that Stephen Thomas had noticed. Extremely beautiful people learned to blank it out when ordinary people found them attractive. J.D. supposed it was the only way they could manage.
She would have to get over his extraordinary physical beauty. He was a real person, not some entertainment star she would never have to worry about meeting.
Maybe it won't matter, she thought, downcast again, I have to go to earth. I may never make it back into space; I may never see Stephen Thomas, or Victoria, or Satoshi, again after tomorrow.
"J.D. !" Victoria said.
J.D. jumped.
"Hi, sorry, didn't mean to scare you," Victoria said. "Do you want to come to the meeting with me?''
"I thought there wasn't going to be one."
"There isn't supposed to be one. But everybody I've talked to is going anyway."
"I don't know ... are you sure—? I mean—damn!" She stopped and blew out her breath. "AH right." What else can they do to me, she thought, even if they do decide I'm a troublemaker?
"Did you find your friend?"
"No." J.D. started to tell Victoria that she was leaving in the morning, to find Zev and try to free him, but she could not bring herself to say it.
They crossed the campus. As they walked up the last small hill before the amphitheater, they heard voices welling up and tumbling past like water.
"Maybe we should outlaw meetings more often," Victoria said drily. "Usually we only take up the first few rows of seats."
J.D. followed her along a path cut around the hillside. The daylight was slowly fading.
"Couldn't you run the meeting electronically, rather than having to get everybody together, having to build a place— and what do you do if it rains?"
"If it rains, we usually postpone the meeting. If it rains 208 Vonda N. Mcintyre
tonight, I suspect we'll all sit here and put up with getting wet. Every hill had to be sculpted; we designed one as an amphitheater. Sometimes people put on plays. As for meeting electronically . . . you haven't been to a lot of electronic meetings, have you?"
J.D. remembered in time not to shake her head. They worked all right."
"A few.
"Small groups?"
"Five or six people."
"That's about the limit. Somehow it's easier to interrupt somebody's image than to interrupt them face-to-face." She gestured at the flat crown of the next hill, coming into sight as they circled the smaller rise. "Besides, if people have to put in some physical effort to attend, the ones who come are more committed. The meetings are smaller, and believe me that makes a difference."
A
A
A
A
"Not tonight, though." C
"No. Not tonight. Satoshi! Stephen Thomas'" ~
Victoria's partners, twenty meters ahead, stopped and waited for Victoria and J.D. to catch up.
The path brought them to the foot of a circular slope, grass-covered, shaped like an ancient crater. Trails led up its sides to tunnel openings, where a couple of dozen people milled around on the hillside.
"What are they doing?" J.D. asked.
"Beats me," Satoshi said. "I thought it was the custom to go inside and then mill around."
About half the people already there wore either standard-issue jumpsuits or t-shirts and reg pants. J.D. wished she had taken Thanthavong's advice and found some regulation clothing to put on, but the whole subject had vanished from her mind while she searched for Zev.
Neither Victoria nor Satoshi had changed: Victoria wore a tank top and shorts that had started out as reg pants but were no longer recognizable; Satoshi had on baggy cammies with all the pockets, and another, or the same, sleeveless black t-shirt. Stephen Thomas wore his formerly regulation clothes as an insult to the orders. Though he had turned the t-shirt right side out, he had obliterated "EarthSpace," and he had painted designs on the legs of his trousers as well.
STARFARERS 2 09
They joined the group outside the entrance to the amphitheater.
"What's the matter?" Victoria asked Crimson Ng.
"Look." The artist nodded toward the opening of the entry tunnel.
A piece of string blocked the amphitheater.
"All the entrances are like that."
Whoever had put up the stnng had chosen a symbol far
more powerful than any gate or lock, a symbol for the fragile
rule of law.
Victoria pulled down the string. One part of her tried to justify her actions, but another knew she had passed a boundary she had never wanted to cross. She felt neither anger nor triumph, only sadness.
She walked into the amphitheater. Satoshi and Stephen Thomas and the others followed.
Victoria had never been the first person inside the amphitheater. It felt bigger than usual. The sound of her sandals scraping the ramp echoed in the silence.
The amphitheater, completely circular with rising ranks of stone benches all around, contained only a small platform in its center. All the plays presented here had a limited number of cast members.
Victoria headed toward the left entrance and Stephen Thomas went to the right. Satoshi loped down the ramp, across the stage, and up the other side to the opposite entrance.
On a hillside facing the amphitheater, Griffith watched Sa-toshi Lono of the alien contact team pull the string barricade away from one of the entrances.
Griffith had decided not to attend the meeting. Though he could not listen in, in real-time, since there would be no voice link for a meeting that was not supposed to exist, he would be able to watch the recording. He would do nothing to interfere with the meeting or to alter its course. He would not inject the presence of a stranger.
Then he saw Nikolai Cherenkov climbing the hill.
Griffith bolted to his feet and stood poised between duty and desire. For one of the few times in his life, the desire won out.
210 vonda N. Mclntyre
When Griffith reached the amphitheater, he could not find Cherenkov in the crowd. Disappointed, he stood in the shadows and watched.
Victoria hurried through the far tunnel. Outside the fourth entrance, her colleagues watched as she pulled down the barrier and wrapped the string around her wrist.
"Is the prohibition off?"
"No." She went back inside.
Ordinarily she and Satoshi and Stephen Thomas remained apart at meetings, preferring to speak and act as individuals. Tonight they made an exception, sitting together as the alien contact team. She rejoined her partners and J.D. Stephen Thomas lounged on the wide seat, stretching his long legs.
"I didn't think there were this many of us left on campus," Victoria said as the seats began to fill.
People gathered in clusters to argue and talk.
"Why isn't anyone standing on the platform?" J.D. asked Victoria.
Victoria glanced down the slope. "Nobody ever stands on the platform."
"Isn't it for whoever's speaking? Whoever runs the meeting?"
"No. We don't work that way, with one person trying to direct the rest, or only one person allowed to talk at a time." She smiled. "Though you have to be willing to face disapproval if you interrupt someone who's interesting, and somebody eventually talks to anybody who interrupts a lot.''