Vonda McIntyre - Metaphase

J.D. lost count of the dimensions, the sensations. She needed more senses than a human being possessed. She disappeared into the maze of the squidmoth's communication.

She disappeared, but she did not feel lost. ne

mazes of Europa and Androgeos had confused her. In Nemo's maze, she found herself. the place that represented her in Nemo's universe. She found Nemo. She found the bright new edges-she wondered if a shape of infinite dimension had edges-that represented Nerno's highest art form, the extension of knowledge and understanding.

As it had appeared, the communication faded with inexorable serenity. Her sight and sound returned; her body came back to her.

Nemo lay before J.D., trembling wings bound in a cocoon of dappled silk.

A few attendants fell in a scatter around the motionless body, their gill-legs contracted against their undersides, each trailing a loose silk thread.

"Nerno-T'

She received no answer. She reached out, carefully, tentatively-the world disappeared again-through her link and through her memory of Nerno's communication, but the squidmoth remained silent, draped in the new cocoon.

J.D. felt as if her brain had been taken out through her ears, whirled around her head a few times, and reinserted. She waited for the dizziness to subside. As it faded, she expected her new ability to think multidimensionally to fade as well.

To her astonishment, the memories remained clear.

"I wish to give you a gift," Nemo said.

"A gift-!"

She almost demurred; she almost told Nemo that the gift of knowledge exceeded any physical gift the squidmoth might offer.

And then she thought, J.D., are you nuts?

She stroked Nemo's long tentacle. The wings' quivering eased.

"I'll accept your gift with great pleasure," she said.

"You aren't curious about the nature of my gift."

"I'm extremely curious."

"You aren't afraid of the nature of my gift."

"No. I'm not afraid. I trust you."

"You're not concerned that my gift will change you." She hesitated. She wanted to say that if she were afraid of change, she would never have come to space. But . . . if she were not afraid, she would have accepted the divers' offer regardless of the other consequences. She still wished she had accepted.

I won't make the same mistake twice, she said to herself.

"I'm not so frightened that I'll turn it down."

"I give you myself," Nemo said.

"I . . . I don't understand." Then, with joy, she said, "Do you mean you're going to live-? Nemo, that's wonderful!"

"No, I'll die."

"Then . . . I really don't understand."

"I give you the inorganic parts of myself that I leave behind."

What Nemo was trying to tell her came clear.

"The part of you that I called your ship," she said softly.

"I give you my ship," Nemo replied.

She tried to speak, but she was too stunned. She could hardly breathe. Nerno's ship-!

The tentacle writhed weakly from her limp hands, touched its way up her body, and brushed her face, her hand, with its furred tip. It left a trace of iridescent dust.

"You say nothing."

"Because I'm speechless," J.D. said. "It's a response humans have to being this surprised."

"You accept my gift."

"Yes, Nemo. Oh, yes, I accept. Thank you." Her hands were trembling. "But-how will I fly it? Do I have time to learn before . . . before "Before I die."

"Yes," she whispered.

"My life has been long and full, and I don't regret its passing," Nemo said.

"But I'll grieve for you," J.D. said. "I'll wish I'd had more time to know you."

"My offspring will know all that I know." "They'll be just like you?"

"Each will develop separately, and each will possess my knowledge and the juvenile parent's knowledge."

"But they won't be you."

"Each will be unique," Nemo said.

"I'll look forward to meeting your children," J.D. said. "But I'll still miss you." She hardly had time to consider the idea that Nerno's children would be born with all the knowledge a squidmoth could collect in a long, dedicated life. Nemo would have been born already steeped in ancestral knowledge . . . for how many millennia, how many generations?

"Is there anything you don't know?" J.D. asked softly, in awe.

"The shape of my knowledge is so incomplete," Nemo said, "that my children and their children will never finish it."

She let Nerno's communication shape appear in her mind. The squidmoth was right. Now that she looked, now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see where it ought to extend a great distance in many dimensions. She could see where it fell short. How strange: the first time she looked at it, entered it, she had perceived it as infinite.

"If I only knew the details of the surface

"You will extend my knowledge, as my offspring will."

J.D. managed to smile. "Does that make me your daughter?"

"I like that idea," Nemo said.

Nerno's tentacle caressed her again: her cheek, her hair. It quivered and collapsed, sliding down her arm to coil unevenly on the floor.

The wings shed more of their iridescent scales. Small creatures like ants crossed with periwinkles, like minuscule hermit crabs, carried the scales away. Their paths formed lines of iridescent, unreadable hieroglyphics. J.D. shivered suddenly. If the new generation of attendants was going to dismember Nemo . . . she could

not watch it. Yet she could not leave Nemo to die alone, either.

"Nemo, what's going to happen?" she asked again. "How will I learn to fly your ship? What about your real children? Shouldn't you leave it to one of them?"

"My children can't make use of what I'll leave behind."

"How will I make use of it? I should have asked Esther to come over and help, but there's no time now."

The tentacle crept up, slowly, painfully, and grasped her wrist. She fell silent.

"You have the means to learn."

Nemo led her into the internal reality.

J.D. cried out.

She was the ship. She was Nemo. She felt the weakness in Nemo's organic body, and the unlimited strength and power of the inorganic body that would remain. Nemo led her to the proper set of intersecting surfaces. To move from place to place was as easy as walking, as easy as thought. She could see the path into transition, the long, looping route through it.

"We need to go 1here, " she said, pointing.

She could even see a different direction toward transition, toward 61 Cygni, but she was cut off from it by a depthless chasm. She could get no closer. It might be the direction Starfarer would take. Though its shapes and curves echoed Victoria's transition algorithm, she could not quite fit the shapes together.

Nerno's path into transition was intricate, convoluted, beautiful.

It was a maze, but Nemo showed her the route that allowed her to pass.

They returned to the real world.

"It's a long distance," Nemo said, "and I fear you will be lonely."

"I've never minded being lonely," J.D. said. "Not too much, anyway. But I will mind this time. I'll miss you." She opened her eyes, but shut them quickly. In her mind, Nemo was an ethereal presence. The crumpled, spent body that lay before her, its long eyelid completely closed, its battered wings shrouded, only reminded her how little time they had left. She squeezed her burning eyes shut; her throat ached with the effort of holding back her tears.

Stephen Thomas tried to ignore the discomfort of the changes. As long as he stayed still, he could imagine nothing was wrong. But every motion reminded him of what was happening to his body.

Starfarer neared transition point. J.D. had checked in once, then fallen silent again. Victoria and Satoshi had tasks to perform during the next few hours, but Stephen Thomas had no official responsibilities.

During Starfarer's first entry into transition, he had been unconscious in the ruined genetics department. As the second transition point approached, he had helped track Arachne's crashes to the neural node of Chancellor Blades.