Metaphase. Part 38

"J.D.," Nemo said, "it is time to come and witness my metamorphosis."

"I'll get my colleagues," J.D. replied. "We'll be there in-"

"Come in your s.h.i.+p alone," Nemo said, "Alone?"

She did not think of danger, but of disappointment. Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ and Stephen Thomas-how could she tell them they could not come? And Zev-?

He stood beside her, watching her expectantly, made aware by her physical reaction that something was happening, "Nemo, please-they'll be so sad.

"You are frightened."

"No!"

"I will transmit instead. You need not come."

She was sure she heard regret in Nerno's voice, and she knew she had to go. By herself. How could she let Nemo change and die, all alone?

"I will," J.D. replied. "I'll be there soon."274 Stephen Thomas fell into an exhausted sleep. Maybe the sleep did him some good. Near dawn he woke, moved cautiously, stretched, and discovered that he no longer itched and ached. Tentatively, he slid his hand between his legs.

He bolted up, s.n.a.t.c.hing away the bedclothes and dragging down his shorts.

His genitals had pulled themselves nearly inside him.

Though he knew what to expect, he still felt shocked and scared and sick.

He tried to control the new muscles, the changed muscles, to extend or retract. Nothing happened. He was stuck three quarters of the way between ordinary human and diver. Stephen Thomas s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. He felt no pain, only a tense discomfort. But he sure looked weird.

What the h.e.l.l am I going to do, Stephen Thomas thought, if I can't learn the control?

The skin of his p.e.n.i.s was soft and new and very sensitive, so sensitive that touching it brought back the threat of pain.

"f.u.c.k it," he muttered. "Or don't." He lay down and flung himself over, twisting himself in the blankets.

When Arachne signaled an urgent message, he wanted to ignore it, he wanted to refuse it. Instead, he struggled up again and accepted it.

"What?"

J.D.'s image appeared in his room.

"Victoria, Satos.h.i.+, Stephen Thomas," she said. Was it only his imagination, or had she hesitated before saying his name?

As she spoke, holograms of Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ appeared nearby. Arachne oriented their images as if they were all in the observers' circle. Stephen Thomas could project his image and join them. He remained invisible.

"Nerno's called me."

"We'll be right there!" Victoria said, excited.

"There's something else," J.D. said.

"What is it?" Satos.h.i.+ asked. 275."Nemo asked me ... to come alone. Alone on the Chi, I mean."

Stephen Thomas flopped back on the bed in disbelief.

,,I'm sorry," J.D. said. "I tried to . . . I'm sorry."

Zev's image appeared, too, in his usual place to J.D.'s left.

"I can't go, either," he said sadly. "Nerno won't let me.,, "How can it stop us?" Stephen Thomas asked angrily.

J.D. glanced toward the place Stephen Thomas would be if he were sending his image. From her point of view, his voice would emanate from an empty spot in the air. From his point of view, she looked straight at him.

"I don't know," she said mildly. "But I also don't know that I want to find out."

Victoria, too, glanced toward Stephen Thomas's invisible presence.

"It isn't something we're going to test," she said. "It would be . . . bad manners."

"What the h.e.l.l difference does it make?" Stephen Thomas said. "No matter what we do, we don't measure up to what Civilization expects of us. We might as well behave badly and get some benefit out of their s.h.i.+tty opinion."

"No." Victoria turned away from him. "And if you insist on being invisible, you can be invisible." She spoke to J.D. "Get ready. We'll be over to see you off. To help if we can."

"Oh, Victoria," J.D. said. "Why come all that way in this weather?"

"Nonsense. We'll see you in a few minutes."

"All right." J.D. smiled, gratefully. "Thanks."

Her image faded out, and so did Victoria's.

What weather? Stephen Thomas wondered. A storm, like wild side's, on campus? Was I sleeping so hard I didn't even hear it? What the h.e.l.l is going on?

Stephen Thomas went to the balcony door and276 cupped his hands around his face to look outside. The night was bright with a layer of s.h.i.+ning snow, and flakes drifted from the sky. He cracked the door open. Cold air washed over him. It felt alive, it felt like the bubbles in champagne. The snowflakes landed with a faint, musical, crinkling sound.

"Stephen Thomas?"

Stephen Thomas turned quickly. Satos.h.i.+'s image remained in the middle of the room. Satos.h.i.+ gazed into thin air like a blind man.

"Are you still there? Are you all right? Where are you?"

"I'm all right."

"Will you project, dammit?"

"I don't have any clothes on."

Satos.h.i.+ hesitated. "I don't care. I want to see you."

"What are you so mad about?" Stephen Thomas asked.

"Mad? Why should I be mad? You withdraw, you disappear-"

"You can find me if you want me!"

"I started to. But you acted like you wanted time alone. I can't read your mind, I-"

He stopped, upset and confused.

"I can't read yours, either, Satos.h.i.+," Stephen Thomas said quietly.

"No," Satos.h.i.+ said. "I know you can't. Look, I'm sorry about- We have to talk. I'm afraid you-" He glanced away, to reply to Victoria, outside the area of his image. "Be right there," he said over his shoulder. "Will you meet us at the dock?" he asked Stephen Thomas.

Stephen Thomas had no idea how he would react when he saw J.D. again. One temper tantrum was plenty for any twenty-four hour stretch.

It's not her fault, he told himself. None of this is her fault. Or Victoria's,~ or Satos.h.i.+'s.

"Come on," Satos.h.i.+ said, his tone uncharacteristically edgy. "The weather's not that bad." 277."Okay," Stephen Thomas said quickly. "I'm on my way."

J.D. asked Arachne to notify the rest of the faculty and staff of Nemo's message, but she put no emergency flag on her communication. There was no point to rousing people out of their warm beds, just to sit around waiting till she reached the planetoid. In an hour or two they would wake up, admire the snow, drink their morning coffee, and watch whatever she was able to send back.

J.D. waded through the drifts. Zev leaped along beside her. She smiled.

She loved to watch him. He scooped up a loose handful of snow and threw it, the way he had flung the oranges. It scattered into J.D.'s hair. She decided not to show him how to make a s...o...b..ll. She was sure he would figure it out for himself soon enough.

"It snowed once when I was a kid," he said. "But not very much."

He was wearing his suit and his shoes. Divers enjoyed cold water, but Zev was neither acclimated nor adapted to arctic conditions. The snow caught in the cuffs of his pants, forming icy pellets.

J.D. looked up, hoping for a break in the clouds, a glimpse of the other side of Starfarer. All she could see was snow falling from the luminous grayness of the night sky.

Arachne guided J.D. to an access hatch. Knee-deep snow covered it, pressing it down so it could not open automatically. J.D. kicked the snow away. The hatch buzzed and groaned, trying to rise.

"Help me, Zev." She groped for the emergency handle, grasped it, and pulled. Zev hunkered down, grabbed the edge, and pushed.

The hatch popped open. Wet clumps of snow avalanched into the entrance.

J.D. and Zev climbed into the warm service tunnels of the stars.h.i.+p, the veins in its skin that led to its underground organs, and all the way to the outside. More snow fell in with them and around278 them and on top of them. J.D. brushed it from her shoulders and hair, and did the same for Zev. She stamped her feet, leaving a patch of slush on the rockfoam floor.

J.D. continued toward the docking end of campus. She squelched along in snow-soaked shoes that grew wetter, but no less cold, as the snow melted.

She hurried, anxious to reach Nemo before the squidmoth emerged from the chrysalis.

We should have stayed, she thought. If we'd stayed, the whole alien contact department would be there. Not just me.

She and Zcv met no one. Hardly anyone ever had the need to come down here. Infinity did, J.D. knew, and Kolya, when they went out on the skin.

Even if people did often use the access tunnels, anyone with any sense would be asleep. She hoped everyone would wake up in time to see the snow, because it was beautiful. She also hoped it would be melted by the time she returned.

"You can tell me what Starfarer looks like," she said to Zev, "when the clouds have snowed themselves out, but before the snow melts. It will be pretty, with everything covered in white."

"I'd rather come with you."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"Squids never do what you tell them," Zev said.

"They don't?"

"No. They make terrible pets." He considered for a moment. "I guess it's because they're always afraid you'll eat them."

When J.D. and Zev floated into the waiting room at the Chi's dock, Victoria and Satos.h.i.+ had already arrived. There was no sign of Stephen Thomas. J.D. wondered if he was still trying to avoid her.

Victoria kicked off from the handhold, brushed against J.D., and hugged her. As they spun slowly across the waiting room, J.D. held Victoria, bending to rest her head on her shoulder. When she finally drew back from 279.their embrace, she kissed Victoria's cheek, her lips. Victoria laid her hand along the side of JDA face and looked into her eyes.

"Good luck," she said. "I hope . . . I don't know. Just good luck."

"I want you all with me," J.D. said. "I don't understand . . ."

"I wouldn't want a lot of people hanging around staring at me if I were changing my shape," Satos.h.i.+ said, just as Stephen Thomas arrowed in through the doorway.

"I don't know," Stephen Thomas said, his tone careful, brittle, and offhand, his sapphire eyes shocking and intense against the new bronze of his skin. "As a life experience, it's got its points."

"I didn't mean-" Satos.h.i.+ said, fl.u.s.tered. "I was talking about Nemo."

Stephen Thomas shrugged and touched the far wall, bringing himself to a stop. His thin damp clothes clung to his body. He ran his hands along the sides of his head, slicking the curling tendrils of his wet hair. Heseparated two thick strands from the temples and twisted them at the nape of his neck to hold back the rest of his hair.

"You must be freezing!" Victoria said.

Stephen Thomas glanced at Satos.h.i.+. "What do you mean, the weather isn't that bad? How bad does it have to get?"

"If you dressed in something more than underwear-"

"You used to like my clothes."

"J.D.," Nemo said in JDA mind.

Nerno's voice slid smoothly along JDA enhanced link, following the surface of a four-dimensional melody onto a fifth dimension.

"It is time."

"I have to go." Still caught in Nerno's melody, J.D. could barely whisper.

"I'm sorry . . . ...

"How long will you be gone?" Victoria asked.

"I have no idea."280 "We're going into transition in a few hours! You've got to come back before then."

"But . . ." Her voice trailed off. She glanced around, from Victoria, to Satos.h.i.+, to Stephen Thomas and quickly away, finally to Zev. "I have to . . .".