Metaphase. Part 35

Stephen Thomas replied belligerently. "But?"

"But nothing. He loved you. He'd trust you to handle his work."

Stephen Thomas glared at her, inexplicably. He was angry and yet his eyes were full of tears.

He threw down the cleaning tools, left the AS half enervated, and stalked out of the bas.e.m.e.nt without another word to anyone.

It would be pointless to follow him; obviously he did not want to talk to her. And if she begged him not to embarra.s.s her in public, that would be even worse. So what if everybody knew she thought he was the most beautiful human being she had ever met? She had a lot of company in that thought, and she had avoided making a fool of herself to him directly.

I would have thought he'd just laugh, she thought. Say to himself, Oh, f.u.c.k, another one. Or even say to me, J.D., what the h.e.l.l made you think I'd even be interested? And maybe I'd say, I didn't think you'd be inter- ested, that's why I never said anything to you. If you were a gentleman, you never would have said anything to me.

She stamped her foot angrily at herself, pushing away her anxiety.

She hoped Stephen Thomas would cool off; she hoped he would eventually be able to be friends with her again. She hoped he was not so irritated that this would damage her friendship with his whole family, with Victoria.252 Stephen Thomas ran home through the hot afternoon. He entered the garden, soaked with sweat, reeking of rotten AS brains. He went straight to the bathroom, stripped, and flung his clothes into the sink. While the sink filled with warm water and soap, he grabbed a clean towel off the shelf and wrapped it around his hips.

Ordinarily he would not bother, but he could not stand to look at himself. When the change was over, delicate thin skin would cover his p.e.n.i.s. Not quite a mucous membrane, but skin at least as sensitive as his lips. So far, though, the skin still peeled like sunburn, and his p.e.n.i.s and s.c.r.o.t.u.m had begun to withdraw into his body. He felt squeezed.

He did not yet have voluntary control of his genitals. As Zev said, he would have to learn. They were new muscles, or muscles he never knew he had. They ached with tension.

The soft cotton towel rubbed the fine gold hair on his hip, pushing it upward. He pulled off the towel and smoothed his pelt. He slid the towel downward before wrapping it again, so his fur would stay sleek. Now he understood why Zev wore as few clothes as possible.

He washed his T-shirt, swished it around in the sink, squeezed out the water, and held it up.

The stains from the AS bioelectronic guts marred the turquoise silk.

"G.o.d dammit!" he shouted. The shirt was ruined. He flung it across the bathroom. It slapped against the gla.s.s tiles and lay in a puddle.

It was his favorite shirt. Victoria had brought it back with her on her last trip to Earth. He should have packed it away with his other silk shirts, to save for special occasions. But he could not bear to give it up so soon.

"Dammit, dammit, dammit," he muttered.

He s.n.a.t.c.hed the shirt from the floor, wrung soap and water out of his shorts, and slapped both pieces of clothing over a towel rack to dry. By the time Starfarer 253.got back to Earth-if Starfarer got back to Earth-he would probably be grateful for anything to wear. Whether it was stained and ruined or not.

He dropped his towel on the floor and got into the shower.

Admit it, he said to himself as water streamed down his body. You aren't mad about the shirt. Yes, I am, said another part of himself. All right.

But what you're really mad about is that J.D. got to sleep with Feral and you didn't.

It was so obvious. When J.D. heard that Feral had recorded their conversations, she had blushed from the curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s to the roots of her hair. Though she was unusually shy about discussing personal subjects, she was transparent, emotionally and physically.

Stephen Thomas felt completely opaque, even to himself. What difference did it make? Why shouldn't they get together? They had spent the whole trip from Earth to Starfarer on the same transport. Feral was alone and J.D. had thought she might never see Zev again. They had spent a lot of time together, tracking down the system crash. If they had found some pleasure in each othcr, he could only be happy for them both.

Would you regret Feral's death any more, he asked himself, if you and he had made love? Would you regret it less?

He answered himself, in his weird monologous dialogue: If I regretted Feral's death any more, I think I'd go nuts. It doesn't make sense to be mad at J.D., to be jealous of her.

As he had when Feral died, when Merry died, he pulled himself away from his anger and his grief. Both were pointless, and he could not afford to let himself fall apart.

Kolya was miserable. Coffee did nothing to ease nicotine withdrawal; neither did beer. Both made him need to pee more often. So now he was sweating an ill-smelling sweat and having to pee all the time. He had drunk254 enough beer to disorient himself, to make his balance chancy. He had drunk enough coffee to make him jumpy. He had thrown away the usual easy relaxation and cheer of Gerald Hemminge's best English stout.

He lay folded up in the window seat, the curtains pulled aside, a chill breeze blowing through the open windows. He sought the cold so he would have a sensation to concentrate on besides the need to smoke a cigarette.

Someone knocked on his door. He frowned. He had not heard anyone approach.

He was not that drunk. . . .

Another knock. Kolya stayed silent, stayed still. Soon they would go away.

The door opened a crack. Kolya tensed.

This wits ridiculous. There were no spies for the Mideast Sweep on board Starfarer. If there were, they would have sought him out months ago. Either he would be dead, a victim of the Sweep's death sentence, or he would have killed them in self-defense.

And it would be doubly ridiculous to be stalked by the Sweep during the only time he had been really drunk in the last twenty years.

"Kolya?"

Kolya's body sagged with relief, his reaction magnified by intoxication.

Then, angry, he pushed himself to his feet and jerked the door open.

Griffith started. For an instant he looked as dangerous as he was.

"I might have known," Kolya said.

Griffith was the only person on campus foolish enough and self-confident enough to enter Kolya's house, or rude enough to enter anyone's house, uninvited.

"What is it?" Kolya snarled.

Taken aback, Griffith hesitated.

"Do you want something?"

"I can't figure you out," Griffith said.

"That suits me well," Kolya said.

"One time I see you, you're friendly. The next time 255.you threaten to kill me. Then you apologize. Then you bite my head off."

"And you suppose," Kolya said irritably, "that your actions have nothing to do with my reactions?"

"I was worried about you. You look like s.h.i.t, since you ran out of cigarettes."

"Thank you, Marion. I'm grateful for your opinion."

Griffith glowered at him, as he always did when Kolya used his given name. Kolya sometimes could not resist, though he knew he should have more self-discipline. Today, though, getting a rise out of Griffith gave him no satisfaction.

Kolya sighed and stepped back from the door.

"You may as well come in." He did not particularly want to talk to Griffith. But he had neither the energy to make him leave nor the strength to remain standing.

He folded himself back into the window seat. He had never gotten around to getting a chair, for he seldom had visitors. Griffith sat crosslegged on the floor without comment or complaint.

Griffith had changed his clothes. When he came on board he wore the attire of a General Accounting Office middle manager, slacks and shirt and jacket. Now that he had given up pretending to be a GAO accountant, he wore Starfarer regulation pants, cotton canvas in a rather military green with an Earths.p.a.ce logo on the thigh, and a similar sweatshirt. Ifhe was trying to fit in, he had, for once, guessed wrong. No one on campus wore regulation clothes without altering them.

The strangest thing about Griffith's clothes was that they were grubby.

Griffith looked rumpled, not his usual neat and unnoticeable self. Kolya tried to recall seeing him unkempt before, even after an hour in a survival pouch.

"Where have you been?"

"Camping," Griffith said. "in the wild cylinder. I needed . . . to get away for a while. To survive on my own.,, An overnight on the wild side, which-as far as Kolya knew-hosted no large predators and few pests,256 did not sound very challenging. But, then, Griffith came from the city.

Kolya's lips twitched up in an involuntary smile that Griffith saw before Kolya could repress it.

"What's so funny?"

"Marion Griffith, guerrilla accountant."

Kolya thought he had gone too far, as he often did with Griffith.

Sometimes he went too far deliberately; this time, he had spoken without thinking because he was past rational thought. He shivered, and wished again for a cigarette.

Griffith opened his mouth to retort, then stopped. He shrugged, and his lips quirked in a smile.

"More or less accurate," he said.

He always had maintained that he really was an accountant. But he usually did not admit that he was anything more.

"Do you want a cup of tea or something?" Griffith said. "When's the last time you ate?"

"Who knows? It isn't tea I want. It's nicotine." He shivered, imagining one long drag on a cigarette. Then he could not stop shivering.

Griffith went to the kitchen nook, heated water, made two cups of strong tea, brought them back, and insisted that Kolya drink some. It did help.

He still felt dreadful, but his shivering stopped.

"What is your father's name?" Kolya asked.

"Peter," Griffith replied. Then his usual suspicion kicked in. "Why?"

"Your patronymic is Petrovich. The same as mine."

"I guess. So?"

"Your given name doesn't form a diminutive that you'd like any better than you like Marion. Masha, perhaps."

"You're right. I don't like it any better."

"It's a custom for friends to call each other by their patronymics. I'm going to call you Petrovich."

"What should I call you?"

"Petrovich."

"Uh . . . okay." 257.No one had called Kolya "Petrovich" in many years. In decades. He had persuaded his colleagues on Starfarer to call him Kolya, or Nikolai Petrovich, instead of General Cherenkov. But he had never before developed a relationship of the right sort, respect and friendship combined, to ask anyone to call him simply Petrovich.

"And I am all right, Petrovich," Kolya said. "Thank you for your worry.

Every minute, I think, I cannot survive this, and every other minute I remind myself I have no choice."

"What if you did?"

"But I don't! It's pointless to speculate."

"But what if?"

Kolya slid down in the window seat till he was lying flat on his back, with his feet up against the wall. His thigh muscles twitched and trembled. He flung one arm over his face. The unpleasant cold sweat soaked into his sleeve.

"I would probably kill for a bit of tobacco."

"You don't have to. Here."

Kolya looked out from beneath his arm. Griffith held a fistful of large crumpled green-brown leaves.

"What-! "

"If I remember right, and if Arachne's refs are right, that's what this is."

Kolya scrambled to his feet. He grabbed the leaves, rudely, crushed them under his nose, breathed deeply. They smelled like tobacco. Green, wet tobacco. The smell of it made his whole body thrill.

"Alzena said there was no such thing."

"Maybe Alzena wasn't the most reliable witness in the world. Or maybe," he said quickly, "somebody else planted it. Or maybe I'm wrong and Arachne's wrong and it isn't-"

"It is."

Now that Kolya had it, he had no idea what to do with it. He peeled off a shred of the leaf, put it in his mouth, and chewed. The green tobacco released the worst taste he had ever experienced, sour, bitter, potent.258 Saliva spurted froin every salivary gland, as if he were about to vomit.

His mouth filled with revolting liquid. He gagged. He pushed past Griffith, hurried out onto his porch, and spat violently over the rail.

The green blob of chewed tobacco plopped in the dirt.

He hung over the porch rail, panting and sweating. His mouth tasted vile.

"G.o.d, I'm sorry," Griffith said.

"Don't be," Kolya said.