Vonda McIntyre: Metaphase

J.D. brought herself abruptly back to herself. She might see them someday in the future. She was not Nemo. She was not preparing to die.

J.D. reached out to Nerno to offer her congratulations.

She encountered emptiness.

She reached desperately toward the squidmoth's mind. She found a small dim spark in blackness. It flared, welcoming her, and Nerno's soft tentacle twitched feebly in her hand.

Everything grew still around her.

The spark moved. It expanded, spreading itself over the surface of the shape of Nerno's knowledge. But as it expanded, it faded, too. The tenuous light vanished so gradually that J.D. could not be certain of the moment of its disappearance.

"Oh, Nerno . . . Goodbye."

The knowledge surface changed. It grew cold, and solidified. As Nerno's personality dissolved, the surface lost an uncountable number of its infinite dimensions. J.D. reached out as if to stop it, and then drew back, knowing she could have no effect.

Nemo was gone.

J.D. felt more alone than she had ever felt before, in a largely solitary life. She was alone, more alone than any human being ever had been. Nerno's children, for all their potential, were no more than a few cells each, zygotes clinging to great yolk sacs of knowledge, not even embryos. J.D. was the only sentient creature in the star system.

She shivered.

All around her, the tattered silk came alive with scavengers. The sound of destruction filled the chamber with a soft, inescapable vibration of rending threads. A new sound added itself to the tapestry: the viscous slide of dissolving support cables. Beneath her, the floor sagged.

Nerno's tentacle twitched. J.D. flinched in surprise, in a brief flash of joy as quickly wiped out by shock. She dropped Nemo's tentacle.

Two of the symbionts struggled with each other, vying for possession of Nerno's tentacle by lashing at each

other with the clusters of scorpion-tails that projected from their armored shells.

The leftover egg case, the one that remained unfertilized, writhed against the floor. Unseen creatures moved within it. The silk tore, with a long, ripping scream: claws on prehensile limbs thrust out, snapping. The fate of Nemo's organic body was the same as what would happen to her own body when she died and was buried in the earth or allowed to sink into the sea. It was all perfectly natural.

But she could not watch it.

J.D. stroked her hand once across Nemo's long eyelid, pressing the squidmoth's eyes closed. She rose to her feet. Shaky and stiff, she fled Nemo's ruined web.

J.D. CLIMBED FAST, NO LONGER CAREFUL

about damage. The nest was coming apart around her. Panic chased her. She had to get back to the Chi. How stupid to leave her space suit behind, how complacent-!

The web tunnels shivered as J.D. ascended. More unfamiliar creatures, symbionts and attendants and scavengers, worked and worried at the silk and at each other. Optical fibers hung loose along the walls, some broken and dimmed, some still glowing, their ends bright as white flame.

No longer would Nemo convert the light of Sirius to useful energy, process

rock and extract nutrients, and create the webbing that nurtured the ecosystem. The symbionts would deplete the webbing, the attendants would feed on the symbionts, and the scavengers would feed on the leftovers, till nothing remained of the squidmoth but inorganic matter, dust, a few desiccated bacteria.

Nerno's body was dying.

The tunnel to the Chi billowed down against J.D.'s face. The weight of the heavy sides counteracted the air pressure, collapsing the tube.

The air escaped, osmosing silently through failing walls. Panting for breath, J.D. fought her way past the folds of the silken shroud, making slow progress toward the explorer. If the tube's mouth fell away from the airlock . . .

Remember those stories where somebody had to cross ten or twenty meters of hard vacuum without a suit . . . ? she thought. Maybe you'll find out if it's possible. . . .

Not an experiment she wanted to try.

Blinded by the collapsing tunnel, she ran into the side of the Chi and bumped her knee and her nose. She yelped in pain and flung the silk upward, trying to get beneath it to reach the tunnel's opening.

Several of Nerno's creatures hugged the seam between the tunnel and the Chi. They extruded a gluey, fibrous substance that stuck the organic fabric to the inorganic hull. But the creatures had exhausted themselves. Escaping air hissed around a broken seal.

J.D. held her breath and plunged into the airlock.

"Seal!" She spoke through her link, conserving her air.

The Chi obeyed. The hatch slid, but caught on a swath of silk that tangled around J.D.'s foot. She grabbed the fabric, ripped it, freed the opening. The webbing parted in her hands like old cobwebs.

The hatch closed in silence, its motion barely vibrating the deck. The air was too thin to carry sound. As the hatch seated, J.D. thought she saw a patch of black space and bright stars, unshielded by silk or air or glass.

A heavy warm draft from the Chi poured in around her. Tired in every way a person could be tired, J.D. lay on the floor. She breathed long and slow and deep. Once more she thanked good fortune and habit that she had not allowed her metabolic enhancer to atrophy.

The inner hatch slid open. J.D. stayed where she was, resting, gathering her energy.

She had no vital tasks. Nemo's shell was headed for Europa's transition point. J.D. could control the shell, but she feared interfering with Nerno's navigation till she had caught up to Starfarer. She wondered how long that would take.

Claws scuttled on metal.

J.D. bolted upright.

Several of Nemo's symbionts scuttled across the floor, scrabbling at the hatch with clawed, feathery legs.

J.D. gazed at them fondly.

Rising to her knees, she gathered up the creatures in the scrap of soft frail webbing.

Flecks of iridescence covered J.D.'s hands. The tiny scales from Nemo's wings gilded her, and when she rose, a scatter of the glitter shimmered to the floor.

Transition surrounded Starfarer.

Arachne continued, strong and steady, indifferent to the border Starfarer had crossed, leaving normal space behind. Victoria let out her breath and unclenched her teeth.

"The web's intact," she said.

Jenny stared out into transition. Tears pooled in her eyes, collected at her upper and lower eyelids, and drifted into the air in droplets when she blinked.

"It's over," she said softly. "It's finally done. We're safe."

"I hope so," Victoria said.

And then they smiled at each other, and Jenny laughed, her laughter warring with her tears. She sniffled and coughed and pulled a handkerchief out of her

pocket and waved it over the floating teardrops to catch them, and blew her nose.

"Safe!" Jenny said. "Halfway through transition and going where we've been told not to. For all we know they'll blast us out of the sky when we get there."

"That's not allowed," Victoria said. "Their only weapon is coercion." "Unless they get desperate enough to break the rules to stop us. I think Civilization works by peer pressure."

"You don't mean that as a compliment, do you?"

"I do not. There's nothing more brutal. People will do anything to get other people to do what they think is allowed. Or right. Or holy. Especially holy. The end always justifies the means."

Victoria said nothing. She did not want to think about ends justifying the means; the charge hit too close to her own doubts and fears.

This wits the third time Starfarer had crossed into transition, the first time Arachne had been able to record, and the first time Victoria had been able to watch. On the journey from Earth to Tau Ceti, she had been helping Satoshi drag Stephen Thomas out of the genetics building. On the journey from Tau Ceti to Sirius, she had been trying, and failing, to save Feral's life.