Metaphase. Part 4

"Europa and Androgeos knew of other beings." 31."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 G.o.ds and demiG.o.ds and fantasy creatures. That doesn't count as knowing about s.p.a.cefaring 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.

"I'll tell them, but they won't believe me. They'll say we faked the records. They'll say it's all a monstrous hoax."

"You wouldn't fake information."

J.D. thought she heard shock in Nemo's voice.

"But they'd say we did. So we could claim we succeeded. So we could claim they shouldn't put us in jail because we were right all along. They'll want proof that we're right."

She waited, but instead of replying, Nemo lifted the delicate pouch and placed its fluted edge against a silkdraped wall, where it stuck.

"You could prove we were right, Nemo," J.D. said.

"If they saw me, they'd believe you'd met alien people.

"They sure would."

"If they saw me, they wouldn't put us in jail."

J.D. laughed. "They wouldn't put you in jail, that's32 for sure." She stretched out her hands to Nemo. "It's a lot to ask, I know, but five hundred years isn't long to people like you and Europa.

Wouldn't you at least think of visiting the solar system? You could learn everything there is to know about human beings."

"Your invitation's tempting," Nerno said.

"You'll do it?" J.D. exclaimed, astonished.

"I'm sorry, I have another commitment."

"I understand." The thrill J.D. had felt dropped abruptly into disappointment, with sad amus.e.m.e.nt that people gave the same excuses everywhere. "Five hundred years is too long."

"This time it is, I am sorry."

J.D. rose and stretched.

"I've been here for hours," she said. "I have to go back to the Chi for a while."

"You are leaving."

"I have to rest, and eat-" She shrugged. "Things that are easier back on the Chi."

"I can offer you food," Nemo said.

Nemo snaked out one long tentacle to the far side of the chamber. The curtain there was a ma.s.s of iridescent bubbles of silk. Nemo's tentacle quivered across the surface.

It moved. The bubbles fluttered and bobbed and separated, the whole ma.s.s expanding, opening like a flower.

Each sphere was a living creature, depending from the curtain by three long slender limbs. The creatures had no heads, no other appendages, only a circular ring of spots.

Eyespots, J.D. thought, knowing she was making another a.s.sumption without much evidence.

Nemo chose one at the edge of the ma.s.s and stroked it. It released its hold on the silk and wrapped its legs around Nerno's tentacle.

Nemo extended the creature toward her.

"A decorative food," Nemo said.

J.D.'s helmet radio emitted a noise, not Nerno's voice, but Victoria's, a quick sound of protest more 33.quickly cut off. J.D.'s friends worried when they thought she was in danger, but they were beginning to understand that facing the danger was her responsibility. They were beginning to understand that they had to let her do her job. Stephen Thomas had once offered to take her place, but he had only offered once: her reaction a.s.sured that. The other members of alien contact thought of her as mild-tempered, even meek, and she was. But when Stephen Thomas suggested that he go out instead of her, she lost her temper.

"The food will not hurt you."

J.D. accepted Nemo's offer.

It touched her lips. The jointed legs fluttered against her tongue; the abdomen disappeared like sea foam or cotton candy, bursting with a flood of strange flavor: sweet and gingery, spicy-hot enough to make her draw a startled breath. The air pa.s.sing over her tongue dissolved the spicy taste into a cool musky flavor like perfume. She crunched the delicate legs, but when she swallowed even the legs had evanesced.

The evanescence dissolved straight into J.D.'s blood, straight to her brain.

J.D. broke out into a sweat, she flushed from collarbone to forehead, and her heart began to pound. As J.D. gasped for breath-and coughed violently in reaction to the air-Victoria's voice rumbled from J.D.'s suit helmet, rising in pitch. A spot of heat appeared in the back of JDA mind, a signal from Victoria. J.D. let it in.

"J.D., I'm coming after you!" Victoria said directly into her mind.

"Nemo, what's happening?" J.D. said.

Trying not to sound panicked, she sent a message back to Victoria and the Chi. "No, don't, not yet. I'm all right. . . . I think I'm all right."

"It's the effect of decorative food," Nemo said.

Nemo's long tentacle manipulated another creature from the wall and carried it beneath Nemo's mustache of shorter tentacles. The creature disappeared, with a faint crunch.

Veins in the gauzy fins over Nemo's legs darkened,34 and the fins rippled rapidly. The long tentacles twined around each other, leaving the silk-spinners to their own direction. The tips of Nerno's legs pattered erratically against the floor. Nemo's eyelid opened completely, then closed, then opened again in J.D.'s direction.

J.D.'s flush pa.s.sed, and her heartbeat steadied. Only a quiver of s.e.xual excitement remained, pleasurable and comforting and startling.

"Some effect," J.D. said.

"That's the decoration." Nerno's fins returned to their normal color, and settled back into their usual gentle wave. Instead of replacing the spinners on the rim of the silken pouch, Nemo let them wander in patterns across the surface.

"Did you know how I'd react to it?" J.D. asked.

"Tell me how it felt."

"Like ninety-proof champagne. Like excitement."

"Yes," Nemo said.

"How did you know?"

"Human biochemistry."

"Is that how it feels to you?"

"If excitement feels the same to me as it does to you.,, "Is this what you live on all the time?"

"No one can live on decorative food," Nemo said.

"What do you live on?"

"Starlight," Nemo said. "Radiation."

"Photosynthesis-?"

The theory had always been that the metabolism of animals was too high to be sustained by sunlight alone, that fictional creations like giant, walking, talking plants could not exist-or at least that they could not walk very far, very fast, or think very much.

"The light.of Sirius helps sustain me.9'

That would explain the other crater-nests, the ones filled with smooth silver silk in parabolic shapes: solar collectors, focusing the starlight, converting it, and funneling it to its users.

Nemo touched the silk-spinners and guided them to 35.the rim of the pouch. They had created a pattern of scarlet and indigo.

J.D. wiped her forehead. Her hair was damp with sweat. The first effects of the decorative food had pa.s.sed, but her hands were shaking. She wondered if the food acted with a wave effect, or if it was about to give her a flashback.

I'm hungry, she thought. I'm hungry and I'm exhausted and I have a bad case of sensory overload. And like Nemo said . . . n.o.body can live on decorative food.

"Nemo, I must go back to the Chi for a while. I have a lot to think about, and I'm tired-aren't you?"

"No, I don't tire."

"You're fortunate. Would you like to visit with someone else while I'm gone?"

"I will think, until you return."

She took that as a polite refusal.

As she put on her s.p.a.cesuit, she wondered how to persuade the alien being to let her colleagues come into its nest. They would be horribly disappointed if they could not.

Several of Nemo's attendants whispered past her on tiny invisible feet, and cl.u.s.tered around the gossamer thread that had led her in. When they pa.s.sed over it, it parted. They hunkered down over the pieces, drawing in the threads.

"May I have a piece of your silk?" J.D. asked Nemo, gesturing to one of the threads.

"Tell me what you'd do with it."

"I'd give it to one of my colleagues to a.n.a.lyze. He studies genetics."

"You may have it."

J.D. pulled the sampling kit from the thigh pocket of her s.p.a.cesuit and used the sterile tongs to pick up a thread. One of the attendants lunged, arching upward to snap with s.h.i.+ny jaws. Startled, J.D. s.n.a.t.c.hed the sam- ple away.

"It doesn't want me to take it," she said to Nemo.

"It doesn't have much tolerance for change."36 The attendant flopped back to the floor, forgot about J.D., and headed for another loose bit of silk.

J.D. put her prize in a sample bag and sealed it.

"Thank you, Nemo," she said. "I'll come back as soon as I can."

"I will wait."

"Shall I leave my lifeline here? Then I could follow it in when I come back."

"One of my attendants will spin you to me," Nemo said.

"But that's so much trouble for you, when I could just follow the line."

"The line is essential to you," Nemo said.

"No, not really. It's for safety, for backup."

"J.D.," Nemo said, and J.D. thought she heard a hesitation in the squidmoth's voice, "the line is uncomfortable."

"It-what?"

She thought about the line, snaking back and forth through Nemo's body, pressing against, even cutting into, Nerno's tissues and organs.

"I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed. "Nemo, why didn't you say something before?" She blushed, mortified at having thoughtlessly caused Nemo pain.

"I want you to feel welcome," Nemo said.

J.D. grasped the end of Nerno's tentacle gently. "I'm so sorry," she said again. "I won't bring the line when I come back."

"Thank you," Nemo said.

As she left the bright sphere of light in the center of Nerno's nest, the long tentacles slithered after her, touching her heels. She paused at the opening between two inner curtains, glanced back, and waved. Nerno's mustache vibrated.