Metaphase. Part 8

"Yes. For us, and for most of the higher animals and plants on Earth. To reproduce, we need a male and a female. How does it work for you?"

"We exchange genetic material, then save it for our reproductive phase."

Male first, and then female, J.D. thought. Or hermaphroditic- Then: You're doing it again, she thought. Trying to fit Nemo into familiar terms. Just because you think you've pinned something down, just because you've named it, doesn't mean it fits in the box you've made of the name.

"How often do you reproduce?" J.D. asked.

"One time."

"Do you have children, then? Young ones, offspring?" Nemo was a being of great age; J.D.'s impression was that Nemo was an elder of the squidmoths.

"I have no offspring yet."

"How do you decide when to have them?"

59."I decide when the juvenile phase of my life is finished."

J.D. started to say something, then stopped, for she had been about to interpret Nerno's comment without double-checking her a.s.sumptions.

"Do you mean that you decide when to become an adult-when to become s.e.xually mature?"

"I decide when to enter my reproductive phase."

"Is that when you become an adult?"

"Yes.,, "Are you still a juvenile?"

"I'm still a juvenile."

"I thought you were old," Zev said. "Older than Europa, even."

"I am older than Europa," Nemo said.

"And still a juvenile!" J.D. said, amazed.

Maybe that's why Nemo's willing to talk to us, J.D. thought. Jusi a crazy kid.

"Nemo, how long is your lifespan?"

Nemo hesitated.

I wonder, J.D. thought, if Nemo is afraid I'll say, "Take me to your mother"?

"I'm nearly a million subjective years old," Nemo said.

Some juvenile! J.D. thought. If Nemo's a juvenile, how old and wise the adults must be!

"Did Civilization increase your lifespan, too, like Europa's?" J.D. asked.

"Or do you naturally live a long time?"

Again, Nemo paused before replying. Would the squidmoth start behaving like Europa and Androgeos, withholding information because it was valuable, and human beings had so little to trade for it? She could not bear to think that after all, Nemo would send the humans away.

If everyone in Civilization is four thousand years old, a million years old, J.D. thought, no wonder they think of us as immature. But . . . do they have kids of their own? Europa gave me the idea there were a lot of different people out here. Where do they put their popula-60 tion? She wondered, feeling depressed, if the people of Civilization crammed themselves together, like human beings in some of Earth's cities, andcomforted themselves by calculating how many people could be packed into a given area, and still have a spot of ground to stand on.

"Civilization helped my people naturally live this long," Nemo said.

"Do you build in a long life-span? Instead of prolonging it with outside treatments?"

"More or less," Nemo said.

"Who decides who gets to make those changes?"

"With enough knowledge, you can change yourselves."

J.D. sighed. "We'll have to discover the knowledge on our own, I'm afraid,"

she said.

"When you come back, Civilization will give you another opportunity to ask for it," Nemo said.

"We don't want gifts!" J.D. said. "Not now, not in five hundred years! We want partners.h.i.+p. We want friends.h.i.+p and communication." She stood up, too agitated to remain lounging on the soft silk floor. "I know it isn't very long-sighted to care that I'll be dead when we get another chance. But I do care! I want to see the interstellar Civilization for myself. Can't anybody out here understand that?"

"I understand."

Europa had referred to the squidmoths with contempt. J.D. thought Europa's a.s.sessment of Nerno's people was wrong. J.D. thought Nemo might know more about the inner workings of Civilization than Europa did, more about the power structure, more about the cosmic string.

On the other hand, J.D. could not imagine Europa living anywhere for four thousand years-for one yearand not scoping out the power structure.

"And . . . I'm selfish," J.D. said. "Now that I've met you, how can I go home and know I'll never get to talk to you again?"

"I'll be sorry when our talks end, too," Nemo said. 61."They shouldn't have to, though, that's the point," J.D. said. "The nuclear missile was a mistake. Bad luck, and misunderstanding, and error. It wouldn't happen again in a hundred years. In five hundred! Especially if people back on Earth knew about Civilization."

"The nuclear missile was bad luck," Nemo said.

J.D. chose to interpret the expressionless comment as agreement, rather than as a question, or as skepticism.

"I have to find the other people, Nemo. The ones who came before. I have to explain what happened, so they'll stop withdrawing the cosmic string."

"There are no other ones anymore, J.D."

J.D. sank down. Androgeos had said the same thing, but J.D. had stopped believing Androgeos when he tried to steal Victoria's transition algorithm.

Hearing Nerno say the same thing shocked her. She trusted and believed Nemo.

"How do you know? How can you know the other ones are gone?"

"There haven't been any in a million years."

"Maybe you Just never met any," J.D. said. "The galaxy's a big place."

"Have you been everywhere?" Zev asked. Several of Ncmo's attendants had gathered at Zev's feet, snuffling at his toes, at his semiretractile claws.

He petted them like kittens, like the baby octopuses the divers liked to keep around.

"I haven't been everywhere," Nemo said.

"So there might be some you don't know about." J.D. smiled sadly, but she felt hopeful again.

"I don't think so."

"We've got to keep looking. Maybe I'm too arrogant, but I think our people would be an a.s.set to Civilization. And maybe I'm not arrogant enough, but I don't think our nuclear missiles are a threat to any of you. Even our military thinks interstellar war would be stupid and unwageable."

"Stupid isn't equivalent to lacking destructive power," Nemo said.62 J.D. slumped, her hands lying limp on her knees. It was essential to her, even if selfish and simple-minded, to return to Earth with a successful expedition. She was terrified at what would happen-not only to her and her renegade colleagues, but to their whole planet-if they returned a failure.

The rush of Nerno's insubstantial food had vanished, leaving her drained and shaky. She was too tired to think, too tired to talk. She could not remember the last time she had rested. She goosed her metabolic enhancer, but it too had exhausted itself.

"Where do you come from?" Zev asked.

Nemo did not reply.

"Bad question?" Zev asked.

Nerno's long tentacles writhed and coiled slowly around the half-formed bag; their sound was of waves caressing dry sand.

"No question is bad," Nemo replied."But you didn't answer."

"I come from here," Nemo said.

"From Sirius, you mean?"

"Yes."

"It's lonely here," Zev said. "No other people. No life on the planets."

"My people didn't evolve here," Nemo said.

"Then where?"

Nerno's tentacles twined, quivered, relaxed.

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"I don't know how."

J.D. saw in her mind the glimmer of a star map. Zev brought it from the Chi's...o...b..ard computer and sent it through his link. The sun was a point of light in the center; its near neighbors spread out around it. J.D.

closed her eyes and looked at the map in her mind.

"Can you see this all right?" Zev asked.

"Make it bigger."

The scale changed. The dark s.p.a.ce containing a few sparks changed into a crowded field of stars.

"How's that?" 63."Make it bigger."

Zev scaled it all the way up to the Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, bright multicolored spirals and ellipses, dark dusty clouds.

"Big enough?"

"Not that big," Nemo said.

"Can you travel between galaxies?" J.D. asked.

"We are not so advanced."

Zev showed Nemo a representation of the Milky Way.

"On the other side," Nemo said.

The galaxy rotated. But its other side was dark and empty, for no human being knew what lay beyond the crowded stars and dust clouds of the galaxy's center.

"We don't have that information," J.D. said.

"I could show you. . . " Nemo said, then, "No, I cannot, because of your link."

Zev let the map fade. J.D. sighed, and opened her eyes, more determined to enhance her link as soon as she could.

"You've come a long way," Zev said.

"My people have."

A lifeliner scuttled into the chamber, trailing silk. Right behind it, Victoria swung around the edge of the curtain. Ecstatic, she strode toward Nemo.

"Nemo, your center-I want to know all about it! Is it neutronium? How did you build it? How does it make you move?" She switched from using her link to speaking aloud. "J.D., are you okay?" She dropped to her knees next to J.D. and put her arm around J.D.'s shoulders. J.D. leaned against her gratefully.

"Just tired," she said.

"My center's difficult to explain," Nemo said.

"Try me.11 J.D. could hear the dryness in Victoria's tone; she wondered if Nemo could.

"I mean difficult physically."

"How so?"