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with exhaustion as Lykos.
"We cannot abandon him, J.D."
"I know it. I do know it. I can't either. I promise you "
"No more promises! I am finished with humans' prom-
' ises." Lykos cut the connection. Her image faded.
J.D. collected herself. She could not blame Lykos for her
^ reaction, but it upset her nonetheless. She glanced over at
?-' Feral. He had only been working for a few minutes. Never-
theless, J.D. wanted to ask if he had found anything yet. She knew he would
tell her when he did. If he did.
J.D. spent the afternoon running up a large debit against her account, trying
to track Zev down. She was afraid to spend too much. If she went back to
earth, she would have to pay for it herself.
After several hours' useless work, she canceled all the communications and cut
herself off from Arachne. She looked over at Feral, who had barely moved in an
hour. His eyelids flickered. He was lost in the web, lost in a fugue of com-
munication.
202 vonda N. Mdntyre
Infinity sat cross-legged under a spindly aspen sapling. The light faded
around him as the sun tubes changed from day-
time orientation to night.
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He felt discouraged. Maybe nothing would have been set-
tled at the meeting tonight, or maybe everyone would have agreed that
Starfarer should be given over to the military. But at least they would have
come to some resolution if there had been a meeting.
He smelled smoke. Burning was dangerous on the starship, so he followed the
smell- The scent was vaguely familiar, but not a grass fire.
Kolya Cherenkov sat on a boulder beneath the overhanging branch of a magnolia
tree. He held a thin burning black stick cupped in his hand. As Infinity
watched, Kolya tapped the cigarette on a projection of the boulder, adding a
few feathery flakes to a small pile of ashes. Infinity watched, fascinated, as
Kolya lifted the cigarette to his lips and drew smoke into his mouth, into his
lungs.
Infinity had found other tiny scatterings of ashes and, now and then, smelled
a wisp of smoke. But he had never actually seen anyone smoke a cigarette, not
for real, only in very old, unedited movies. Back in Brazil, when he was a
child, his adult relatives had passed around a pipe of tobacco on rare
occasion. The smoke made them act as if they were mildly drunk. He wondered if
Kolya would act drunk; he could hardly imagine it.
Kolya breathed curis of smoke from his mouth and nose.
The smell was unpleasant, much harsher and stronger than what Infinity
recalled of the pipe smoke. He wondered why people in old movies blew smoke at
each other. He would not like it if a lover blew this smell into his face.
Suddenly he sneezed.
Startled, Kolya turned. He closed his cupped fingers around the cigarette. He
let his hand hang idly down. He blushed.
"I didn't mean to scare you," Infinity said- "I just . . ."
It was all too obvious that Kolya preferred no one to know about his
cigarette.
The cosmonaut brought the cigarette back into view.
STARFARERS 203
"I suppose I had to be discovered eventually, but I hope you won't say
anything about my ... vice."
"Everybody has vices." Infinity believed in leaving people alone.
Nevertheless, he was shocked to see Kolya doing something as dangerous as
smoking. You could get cured of the damage nowadays, but the damage was
unpleasant, as was the cure. So was the cause, as far as Infinity was con-
cerned. Nobody had ever succeeded in removing all the fac-
tors that caused lung damage and still ending up with something anyone wanted
to smoke.
Kolya drew in one last lungful of smoke, then stubbed the half-smoked
cigarette out against the black lunar stone. He put the cigarette away.
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"I only have a few of these left," he said wistfully, "and then I'll have to
stop, for I won't be able to get any more.
And I'm an old man. I doubt I'll come back from our trip."
Not meaning to, not wanting to. Infinity felt a sudden anger at the cosmonaut.
Kolya never participated in campus meet-
ings, never made his preferences public, never criticized the attacks on
Starfarer. He did nol care that tonight's meeting had been canceled, that
meetings had been forbidden. He probably did not even know. He would not have
come to the meeting if it had been held.
"Maybe there won't be any trip!" Infinity exclaimed.
"What? Why?"
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"Don't you know? How can you not know they want to turn us into a warship? How
can you spend all your time with that Griffith guy and not know he's trouble?
Florrie took one look at him and knew he was after us!"
"Ah. I did wonder why he was here ... But all he seemed interested in was
plunging me into nostalgia." He rubbed his fingertips across a smooth place on
the rock; he raised his head and gazed across the cylinder, past the dimming
sun tubes. Far-overhead lakes, ruffled by a breeze, sparkled gray with the
last light.
"If you want this expedition to happen," Infinity said, "you've got to help
us. Only I don't know how you can.
Maybe it's too late."
Kolya made a low, inarticulate sound of understanding, perhaps of acceptance.
204 vonda N. Mclntyre
"Infinity," he said kindly, "you are making it most diffi-
cult for me to retire as a hermit."
Infinity said nothing.
"There is a meeting tonight?"
"There was. It's illegal, now."
"Truly? I have not done anything seriously illegal in many years. Shall we
attend this meeting?"
He rose and headed for the amphitheater. After a moment, Infinity shrugged and
followed him.
"Feral!"
J.D. shook the reporter's shoulder.
"Feral! Come out of it!"
Hooked deep into Arachne's web, he jerked upright as if awakened from a deep
sleep.
"What?"
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"You're going to have to stop."
"Why? No, J.D., I've got some good leads. A little more time "
"I'm sorry. It's impossible. This is costing too much, and it isn't doing any
good. I'm reserving a place on the next transport to earth. They won't sell me
a ticket if I've run my credit past its limit."
"But Stephen Thomas said "
"And I said I have to go!"
"Okay."
Dejected, they stared at each other.
"You like him, don't you?" Feral said suddenly.
"What? Who?" J.D. was confused by the abrupt change of subject, Feral grinned.
"Stephen Thomas. You like him."
"I like almost everybody I've met up here so far."
"That isn't what I meant."
J.D. shrugged, uncomfortable. "I think he's a very attrac-
tive man. What has that got to do with anything?''
"Are you going to do anything about it?"
"Don't be ridiculous." J.D. felt herself blushing. "What
205
206 vonda N. Mdntyre kind of a question is that? Are you a stringer for gossip
mag-
azines, too?"
Feral laughed. "No. I was just curious."
"I have more important things to think about!"
Feral grinned at her, unabashed. "I think he's beautiful, myself." He jumped
to his feet. "I'm starving! What time is it?"
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"It's almost eight. The time the meeting would have started, if we were still
having a meeting." Just in case, she checked to see if the new rule had been
reversed. It had not.
"I didn't get any lunch," Feral said. "I'm going to go find something to eat.
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