Vonda McIntyre: Metaphase

If they could signal through transition, at the very least they could let their friends and relatives know they had survived the missile attack.

"I am mobile," Nemo said, "like all my people."

"Oh," J.D. said, as suddenly disappointed as she had been elated. "Then you can't signal through transition?"

"No.,,

"Can anyone?"

"No one I know of."

"You go visiting."

"I go visiting," Nemo agreed.

J.D. sighed. It had been a long shot. Cosmic string theory allowed only large masses to enter transition. No one-no one human-had figured how to chitchat across the transition threshold. Apparently no one nonhuman had made such a discovery, either.

Talking about cosmic string reminded her of something she had put off discussing for too long.

"I understand your wanting to get used to meeting people," she said to Nemo. "But if you want to meet any other human beings, you have to do it soon. Starfarer has to move out of the star system before the cosmic string withdraws. If it does withdraw-you'll have to move, too, or you'll get stranded."

"I will not allow myself to be stranded," Nemo said.

"Good . . . I was afraid . . ." She shrugged. She was ambivalent about bringing up the subject. "I'm surprised you'll talk to us. Aren't you afraid of being contaminated by us? You've talked to me more than Europa and Androgeos did altogether, I think."

"They were disappointed that you failed the test." "But it was a mistake! We weren't armed with nuclear weapons. Or with anything else, for that matter. Nemo, we were attacked in our own system. We dragged the missile through transition because it hit us."

"That is a shame," Nemo said.

"And the only thing that will keep us from being attacked again, if we go home, is proof that Civilization exists."

"Your own people would kill you because you failed," Nemo said.

Another silk-spinner crept out of a fold in the wall and joined the silk worm in the new circle of fabric. The second spinner scrambled across the disk, leaving a radial trail of thread that secured the delicate, tight spiral.

"They wouldn't kill us, but they'd put us in jail." Nemo's attention to the handwork exasperated her.

Is there any way to get Civilization to listen to us9 she thought.

"Maybe you should neither go on, nor go home, but allow yourself to be stranded," Nemo said.

"We've thought about it," J,D. said. The ecosystem could support far more people than the ship carried; it could support them indefinitely. "We could turn Starfarer into a generation ship, and form our own little isolated world. . . ." The whole idea depressed her. It meant abandoning Earth. She could not imagine anything more selfish. "I'd rather go back and get put in jail!" she cried aloud, and her voice broke. She struggled to calm herself.

"I did not understand that," Nemo said.

J.D. repeated herself. Her electronic voice sounded so calm, so rational. "Imprisonment is preferable to freedom." Nemo's eyelid opened all the way around, and the tentacles extended to J.D. and touched her forehead, her shoulder. The silk-spinners, deprived of guidance, wandered across the fabric and trailed threads that left flaws in its surface.

Nerno's tentacles drew away from J.D. and returned to the spinners.

"No! But ... we didn't come out here to found a colony. That's against everything we agreed on, everything we dreamed of! We came out here hoping to join an interstellar community. We came out here to meet you! And now you tell us we have to go back, or abandon Earth, because of a mistake-!" "Five hundred years isn't so long," Nemo said.

"Not to you! You and Europa and Androgeos will still be here when five hundred years have passed. But I'll be dead. Everyone on board Starfarer will be dead. And if we go back to Earth with nothing but the news that we've failed . . . I'm afraid human beings won't survive at all."

"Many civilizations have destroyed themselves."

J.D. looked away from Nerno's brilliant, colorful form, with two long tentacles shepherding the spinners, the third waving delicately in the air. "I'd hoped . . ." She started to take a deep breath, felt the tickle of acrid gases in the back of her throat, and instead blew her breath out in frustration. "I hoped you might tell me that no civilizations are ever lost. That somehow we always manage to pull ourselves out of destruction." "Civilizations are lost all the time, J.D."

"I meant . . . a whole world's civilization." The culture she lived in had reached out for the stars, and had attained them, however temporarily. Why should that be proof against extinction?

Nerno's tentacle brushed her toe, her shoulder.

"So did L" the squidmoth said.

CHAPTER 2

J.D. SAT CROSSLEGGFD BESIDE NEMO, THE SILK beneath her warm and soft. She could happily stay here for a week, just talking. She shifted her position, resting her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand, looking at Nemo, amazed and enthralled by the being. She watched, in silence, as Nemo guided the silk-spinners. The disk had become an iridescent pouch, like several others lying at the edge of the chamber.

"Tell me about Civilization," J.D. said.

"Beings exchange their knowledge," Nemo replied.

The two spinners, one wormlike, one

resembling a starfish crossed with a lace handkerchief, met nose to nose. "But there's more than that!" J.D. said. "How many worlds are there? How many people? How many kinds of people? What are they like? What kind of governments do they have? I want to know everything, Nemo, about Civilization and how it works, about the movements of the cosmic string-!"

The worm reared up, the starfish twisted. They touched. Each extruded a spurt of silk.

"The people of Civilization will want to describe themselves to you." "What do they do when they meet? How do they reconcile their differences?"

The bursts of thread caught together and tangled. As the creature.s danced, Nemo urged them easily around the pouch. Their motions formed the silk into a fluted rim.

"They make peace, or the cosmic string withdraws."

"That's simple," J.D. said dryly. "A little Draconian, but simple."

When the silk worm and the starfish returned to their starting point,

Nemo flicked them both off the edge and into the pouch.

"Tell me what you're looking for," Nemo said.

"We're looking for answers," J.D. said. "Answers . . . and more questions."

"Tell me what answers you're looking for."

"We already found one-a big one. You. We built Slarfarer to find out whether other civilizations exist. Or whether we were alone. Now we know that answer."

"The answer to your question is self-evident," Nemo said.

"Not to everyone. At least not to a lot of human beings. Their philosophy depends on their being alone in the universe."

"Earth has passed through a decline," Nemo said.

"I-what do you mean?"

"Europa and Androgeos knew of other beings."

"After they were rescued, after they left Earth and joined Civilization-" "When they lived on Earth, they spoke to others."

"They had myths. They believed in gods and demigods and fantasy creatures. That doesn't count as knowing about spacefaring beings."

"Yet their myths were more accurate than Earth's current myths of solitude."

"There are lots of different myths on Earth right now. But . . . you're right. Europa and Androgeos came from a sophisticated culture. That's probably why they fit in so well with Civilization."

Nerno's feet drummed softly on the floor, a complicated rhythm. Seven against five? J.D. could not quite tell.

"If we do go back to Earth-I'm not saying we'll accept the exile, but if we do-there are lots of people who won't believe we've met alien beings." "You'll tell them you met alien beings," Nemo said.

Several attendants scuttled and swooped nearer. Nemo rounded them up and herded them into the pouch.