Metaphase. Part 19

Getting the metabolic enhancer was so easy, she thought. After a couple of days, a couple of biocontrol sessions, I could already call on more energy. I thought enhancing the link would be the same.

She s.h.i.+fted her position in the window seat.

Her head spun. The light felt too bright. The light was too bright, but it had not bothered her so much before.

A faint breeze drifted through the open windows. It felt good. The weather was too hot.

Zev crossed the yard, coming from the river, a fish in one hand and J.D.'s string bag in the other. He saw her, grinned, and waved the fish.

J.D. waved in return.

He took the steps to the porch in one stride.

"Are you hungry?"

"I am," she said. That was a difference from being drunk. If she were drunk, she would not be interested in food.

He came into the living room and sat down at the other side of the window seat. He offered her the fish.

"Zev . . . I'd like to cook it, if you don't mind."

She tried to get up. She nearly ran into the LTM display.

Whoops, she thought, bad manners!

She giggled, blinked the display out of her way and reappeared it at arm's length.

Her knees shook. A wave of heat pa.s.sed up her face. She began to sweat.

She sat back down.

Zev watched her with alarm.

"Maybe I won't cook it," she said.

"I'll cook it," Zev said.

"You'll cook it?"

"Sure. We do, sometimes."

"You never did when I was with the divers."140 "It was summer."

"Oh." I guess that explains it, J.D. thought, wis.h.i.+ng her head would clear.

Zev handed her an orange from the bag.

"Eat that while I cook. There's not very much growing that's ripe yet, it's too early. But there's lots of oranges."

"You didn't have to forage," J.D. said. "I'm sure the central cafeteria has plenty of supplies."

"I guess," Zev said doubtfully. "But I went by, and n.o.body's there to ask. It was easiest to go fis.h.i.+ng."

He took the fish into the kitchen nook. J.D. lay back in the window seat, enjoying the unusual occasion of having someone make lunch for her.

"That smells terrific, Zev."

She peeled the orange and ate a section. She pressed the spicules against the roof of her mouth; they burst, and the sweet, tart juice flowed over her tongue.

To her relief, her head stopped spinning. She did not much like the sensation of being drunk, of having the world whirl around while she stayed still.

She suddenly groaned.

"Did I really say that to Stephen Thomas?" she said in distress.

"Say what to Stephen Thomas?"

"That his hair was down."

"You did say that." Zev joined her, carrying two plates of broiled trout.

"Oh, no."

"His hair was down, what's wrong with telling him? You ought to tell him to cut it."

J.D. touched Zev's pale hair fondly. It was short enough to stay out of his eyes when he swam, long enough to fan out around his head when he was in the water.

"I think he likes it long," she said.

Zev rested his head against her hand, then quickly kissed her palm.

"I think you like him," Zev said. He handed her one of the plates. J.D.

gave him part of the orange. 141."Of course I like him. I like Victoria and Satos.h.i.+, too."

She thought she had mastered her reaction to Stephen Thomas. She did not want to talk about it. In her present state, she would say more than she meant to.

She could say it all to Zev. He would find it perfectly comprehensible and natural. Except for her reluctance to admit how she felt. He would find it so natural that he would probably tell Stephen Thomas. J.D. could see nothing coming from that but embarra.s.sment all around.

She took a bite of the fish. It was perfectly cooked; the flakes evaporated in her mouth.

"This is wonderful," she said to Zev. "What did I ever do without you?"

He grinned. "You were an ordinary human being before you met me," he said.

"And I was an ordinary diver."

Infinity showed Professor Thanthavong what he had found in the administration building. She called the a.s.sistant chancellor.

Gerald Hernminge arrived a few minutes later. He hesitated halfway down the stairs, then strode purposefully the rest of the way to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Infinity explained what had happened. As Gerald listened, he s.h.i.+fted his weight from one foot to the other.

"How can we remedy this?" Thanthavong asked, her voice sharp. "How could the chancellor do something so stupid, so petty-"

"Please don't yell at me, professor," Gerald Hemminge said. He looked as unhappy as she did. He glanced across the dark bas.e.m.e.nt, over the heads of the artificials, toward the shadowed corners. "I didn't know Chancellor Blades had done this. I would have stopped him if I could."

"We may have to get along without them," Thanthavong said. "Regrowing the brains . . . that may take142 resources we can't spare. We'll have to do their work ourselves."

Gerald made a sound of satisfaction, and a wry grin cut through his distress.

"It will amuse me to see Stephen Thomas Gregory beating his s.h.i.+rts against a rock in a stream."

"You and Stephen Thomas should put aside your differences," Thanthavong said. "The expedition can't afford them."

"I would if he would. It won't hurt him to do his own laundry. He has too high an opinion of himself, and his provocative manner-"

11 He has a right to his high opinion," Thanthavong said. "He's a talented young man. My observation is that you provoke each other."

"It isn't just the laundry," Infinity said, feeling provoked himself.

Thanthavong and Gerald stopped their back and forth needling. They both looked at Infinity. Gerald had a habit of c.o.c.king his head and listening with an expectant, faintly skeptical expression, as if he already knew everything anyone could say to him, as if he were merely waiting to dismiss it.

"The ASes clean up, sure," Infinity said. "But that's just part of keeping everything working. They repair things. They plant the gardens and weed the vegetables and harvest them and cook them-when's the last time you had a hot meal?"

"I've been eating crackers and cheese," Gerald said. "On the run. I haven't used the central cafeteria-are you saying nothing can be cooked?"

"I'm saying we'll have to do a lot more work than you think if we can't fix the ASes."

Thanthavong rubbed her chin thoughtfully with one knuckle.

"Somebody's got to grow the food," Infinity said.

"Dig in the dirt?" Gerald said.

"If you want to stay out here longer than the preserved stuff lasts."

"And how long is that?" 143."I don't know. Arachne doesn't even know exactly what we came away with and what we left behind-"

"For heaven's sake-"

"Don't blame Infinity," Thanthavong said sharply to Gerald. "I told you Arachne lost backup information in the crashes. Some of this data the web may never even have had. We'll have to take inventory. We'll have to . .

." Her voice trailed off as she considered, then she brought herself back abruptly. "We're lucky someone is looking past the boundaries of their responsibilities," she said to Infinity.

"I suppose so." Gerald stared at the dead artificials again, but the dark corners drew his gaze. He caught his breath, but covered the reaction with a cough. "Can you repair the artificials? Or must we turn Starfarer into a primitive hunting tribe?" He glanced at Infinity. "No offense."

"What?" Infinity kept himself from laughing. What could he say? That his mother's people had been agriculturalists for thousands of years? That the hunting tribes had been a lot of things, none of them "primitive"? That he would truly like to see Gerald in the wild cylinder, trying to play pukka sahib with the shy, rare deer?

They would all be much better off gathering than hunting. A large proportion of the plants growing within Starfarer were edible. He wondered if Gerald had noticed that.

Infinity settled for a shrug. "I'd prefer hunting and gathering to cultivating rice by hand," he said.

The other half of Infinity's heritage was legally Brazilian and ethnically j.a.panese, but Gerald obviously had no idea what Infinity was talking about.He gave Infinity a blank look.

"Can you repair the artificials?" he said again to Thanthavong. He was sweating.

He doesn't like it down here, Infinity thought. He doesn't like it down here at all.

"Theoretically, of course I know how to regrow the brains," Thanthavong said. "But the technical as-144 pects . . . Obviously, Infinity is correct. We shall have to free resources to repair these creatures. If Arachne's memories of their training are whole, the problem may not be too difficult. If the architecture has to be redesigned from scratch . . ." She lifted her hands, palms up, in a gesture of resignation.

Once more, Gerald glanced around the dark bas.e.m.e.nt. The shadowy artificials surrounded them like a ghostly band of supplicants. Gerald hunched his shoulders.

"I shall have to research the best way to go about the repair," Gerald said. "If you'll excuse me." He hurried up the stairs and disappeared.

"We'd be in a pretty mess," Thanthavong said to Infinity, "if you hadn't noticed this."

"Somebody would have."

"I wonder. We're so wrapped up in what J.D. experienced. . . . Would we all of a sudden look around and see it was too late?"

What she had said to him she had meant as a compliment. But she made him wonder if he had badly overstepped his bounds, and she made him wonder if she thought he was uninterested in Nemo and the alien s.h.i.+p-nest.

He wondered if aristocrats always had that kind of effect. . . .

"Your mother is j.a.panese?" she said.

"My father."

"How did you come to be named Mendez?"

"My whole name's Infinity Kenjiro Yanagihara y Mendoza. But Mendez is easier for people to remember, and it's the original spelling. From before my mother emigrated."

"Why do you use your mother's name?"

He shrugged. "It's less confusing. I don't look very j.a.panese. In Brazil it didn't matter, there are a lot of us mongrels around. Most folks knew me as Kenny Yanagihara."

"Did your father grow rice?"

"No, ma'am," Infinity said. "He's . . . he's a lot of 145.things, but not a farmer. Ronin is more like it. He doesn't grow rice. His family probably never grew rice."

"My father did," Thanthavong said. "In Cambodia. A hundred years ago. With a water buffalo."

She brushed her fingertips across the carapace of the artificial, a touch of sorrow or farewell, and walked toward the stairs.

Infinity followed her out, nonplused by her comment. A hundred years ago?

With a water buffalo?