Metaphase. Part 13

"No, I told you I'm a juvenile."

"But when you said you'd lived for a million yearsI thought you were just at the beginning of your life!"

"You asked my life span."

J.D. grasped Nemo's tentacle suddenly. She sank down beside the squidmoth and stroked the soft, brilliant skin. She had asked Nemo's life span.

Nemo had lived a million years.

"How long do you live, after you become an adult?"

"Until I reproduce."

"In a hundred years?" She was afraid to hear the answer. She made up one she hoped to hear. "Five hundred?"

"In a few hours."

"Oh, no-!"

I keep making a.s.sumptions! she shouted, angrily, to herself. a.s.sumptions!

"You're protesting my decision," Nemo said.

"Not your decision, just the timing. I just met you! I like you, I don't want to lose you!"

"If I'd known you were coming, I'd have waited to change."

"Can't you wait now?"

"No, I've been preparing for too long."

"You can't go back?"

One of the attendants that cleaned Nerno's skin scuttled across the floor.

Nemo's tentacle snapped out of J.D.'s hand and caught the creature. It struggled as Nemo placed it in the gray silk pouch. Holding the pouch with all three tentacles, trembling, Nemo sealed its edge to the curtain. 93."All my attendants are parceled out." Nemo touched the bulging pouches.

"Parceled out? Why? What are those things?"

"They are egg sacs for my children."

"Can't you change your mind?"

"Do you wish me to change my mind?"

J.D. wanted to say, Yes! Don't change, don't die.

"What would happen if you stayed a juvenile?" she asked.

"My attendants would die."

"And your children?"

"They'd never be born."

"What about you?"

"I would leave nothing behind me."

"Tell me your life cycle," J.D. said.

"I awoke, I remembered my parents, to thank them, and I listened and I learned and I grew into my body."

J.D. clutched at a hope. "You listened to your parents? You learned from them? They were there to teach you?"

"They weren't there, but I remembered what they left for me, and I added to what they had learned."

"Were they dead?"

"My juvenile parent might still be alive, but my adult parent died, of course."

"When you exchange genetic material with others of your people-that's being a juvenile parent?"

"Yes, we're the juvenile parents of each other's children."

"But you don't bear the children until after you metamorphose into an adult," J.D. said, beginning to understand.

"That's right."

"And then you'll die."

"I'll die."

"And you can't delay the change."

Nemo touched the sacs again, handling them delicately so as not to damage the hibernating attendants and groomers, spinners and honey ants and silk-eaters. Nerno's legacy, parceled out into each offspring's cradle.94 "I could stop the change."

"Then what would happen?"

"I'd never change at all."

"Never? You'd be immortal?"

"Until I got bored."

"That could be a long time, Nemo."

"But I'd have no offspring, and then no one would remember me."

Nerno's tentacles withdrew from the silken sacs. The long tentacles twined together, apart, and circled JDA body, quivering, brus.h.i.+ng her body with quick, delicate touches.

"I'd remember you," J.D. said sadly.

"You aren't immortal."

"No," J.D. said.

"It's important for my children to remember me."

"Will your children be identical to you, with identical memories-" She stopped. "No, of course not, they have another parent. A juvenile parent."

"They'll know all I know, but they won't be identical to me."

"I understand." She let Nerno's tentacle curl and cuddle in her hands, like a warm, furry snake. "I wish we'd met sooner. I would have liked more time to know you." She tried to smile. "About a hundred years."

"Maybe you'll know my children."

"I hope so."

The silk-spinners continued to crawl around and over Nemo, guided and encouraged, now and again, by one of the long tentacles.

"What will happen now?" J.D. asked.

"Soon I'll sleep, and you'll return home, and when I awaken I'll be changed."

"What will you change to?"

"You can see, if you want."

"I'd like that. Thank you. How will I know? When will it be?"

"It's different for everyone."

"I'll wait." 95."No, go home, I'll call you to return."

"All right," J.D. said reluctantly.

J.D. watched the silk-weavers flow back and forth and around Nemo's body.

We could have kept Feral's body alive, she thought. We could have regenerated his burst arteries and damaged brain, but he wouldn't've been Feral anymore. He would've been a child in an adult's body, with part of his life already spent.

Trying to persuade Nemo to stop changing would have been the same as reviving Feral's body after Feral himself was gone. J.D. thought about the rhythms of life. Nerno's rhythms differed from the rhythms of a human lifespan, but they were no less demanding. For all her disappointment, J.D.

respected the decision Nemo had made.

Nerno's eyelid closed completely, nearly vanis.h.i.+ng against the s.h.i.+mmering peac.o.c.k pattern.

"Nemo!" J.D. said, startled, afraid the squidmoth had gone to sleep without saying goodbye. "Nerno?" She sent the message softly through her link, an electronic whisper.

The eyelid quirked open.

"I'm sorry-I was afraid you'd gone already."

"I'm curious about sleep." After that, Nemo said no more.

J.D. sat beside Nemo for a long time, until the spinners finished the dappled chrysalis. The LTMs watched the scene. They would record everything, even changes that happened too quickly, too slowly, too subtly for a person to notice. J.D. put them on the floor and turned them all away from herself so she had a semblance of privacy.

The silk covered Nemo, except for the bright furred tip of one tentacle.

"J.D.?".

"I'm here, Victoria."

"Shall we go home?"

J.D. s.h.i.+vered. The web cooled as the light dimmed,96 as if the fibers of Nemo's construction were metamorphosing along with their creator. J.D. replied reluctantly. "Sure. I'm coming."

The Chi's outer hatch closed. Nemo's tunnel loosened its seal, dropped away, and withdrew. J.D. watched it, wondering if it meant Nemo was still aware of events and surroundings.

She tried to send Nemo one last message. She received no reply.

The Chi returned to Starfarer. At first the stars.h.i.+p was a tiny dark blot against the huge silver expanse of its distant stellar sail. It resolved, gradually, into the two enormous rotating cylinders that formed the stars.h.i.+p's body. The Chi oriented itself to the hub of the campus cylin- der, then approached the dock.

Slowly, perfectly, it connected.

J.D. took a deep breath and let it out, returned the rea.s.suring pressure when Zev squeezed her hand, and kicked off gently from the Chi's access hatch into Starfarer's waiting room. Her overnight bag b.u.mped against her leg; she wished she had a backpack like Satos.h.i.+'s. They had called for an artificial to take their gear back into Starfarer, but none answered.

Victoria had a small neat shoulder bag. Stephen Thomas carried a sample case on a strap, and his quilt, folded up and tucked under his arm. He no longer looked at all awkward in zero g, as he had when she first met him.

J.D. floated in amidst a crowd of people: Starfarer's faculty and staff.

Professor Thanthavong. Senator Orazio, whom J.D. had expected to see, and Senator Derjaguin, whom she had not. Gerald Hemminge, trying to shush the racket so he could moderate the discussion. The sailmaster, lphigenie Dupre, who had for once come down out of the sailhouse. Awaiyar Prakesh, 97.whose work dovetailed with Victoria's at the point where astronomy and physics intersected. Crimson Ng, the sculptor, and Chandra, the sensory recorder, both from the art department. Nikolai Petrovich Cherenkov, the cosmonaut, hero of his homeland, refugee from his homeland. Griffith, who claimed to be an accountant from the General Accounting Office, even though no one believed him, as usual tagging along after Kolya. Infinity Mendez, whose actions after Feral's death had probably kept more people from dying.

Esther Klein, the transport pilot. Floris Brown, the first member of Grandparents in s.p.a.ce. A gaggle of graduate students: J.D. recognized Lehua and Mitch and Fox. J.D. had no grad students of her own. Job prospects for alien contact specialists were rather low.

They all floated in the barely perceptible microgravity of the waiting room at the hub of the cylinder, surrounding the members of the alien contact department. The noise rose to a painful level as everyone burst out talking at once, asking more questions, making more comments.

"I'm sorry," J.D. said. "I can't hear you all."

Chandra, the sensory artist, pushed herself in front of everyone else and ignored Gerald's efforts to organize. She turned her strange opaque gray eyes on J.D. She looked blind, but her vision was more acute than any ordinary person's, and she could store and recall any image she perceived.

"Weren't you scared?" Chandra asked, "Now and then," J.D. said. "But Nemo seems very gentle to me."

"Gentle! Did you see what happened to Stephen Thomas?"

"Nothing happened to Stephen Thomas," Stephen Thomas said, drifting between Florrie Brown and Fox. "I don't know what was happening to those critters, but nothing happened to me."

"It could have. We don't know what Nemo wants. Maybe when it reproduces it needs a nice warm body to lay its eggs in."98 "I don't think so," J.D. said.