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Stephen Thomas asked Arachne to let him into the files. Receiving a polite
refusal, he shrugged. He had not expected it to be that easy.
Feral had recorded no will, no next of kin, which could mean that the files
were locked forever. But Stephen Thomas was not ready to give up.
He tried the obvious sorts of passwords: Feral's name, his birthdate.
Stephen Thomas even tried his own name.
Nothing worked.
I'll figure it out, Feral, Stephen Thomas thought.
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Reluctantly, he put the locked files away and withdrew from Arachne. He had
promised some time to Esther Mein and the artificials. He had better get
going.
Mitch sauntered in, looking ridiculously happy.
"Sorry I'm late," he said cheerfully and without a
METAPHASE 243
shred of regret. He dragged a chair up beside Stephen Thomas and straddled it.
Stephen Thomas thought, this does not sound like unrequited love anymore.
I wonder . . . ?
"Listen, Mitch-" Stephen Thomas said. "Yesterday. When Fox was here. It all
came right out of thin air."
"I know. She told me. And at your house last night, she just wanted to talk to
somebody. She sure picked the wrong person." Mitch chuckled. "Boy, is she mad
at Florrie."
"That's probably the only thing Fox and I agree on right now," Stephen
Thomas said. It hurt that Florrie had junked the connection they had made-that
he thought they had made-so readily.
"She's pretty embarrassed, too. I think she's afraid everybody will take your
side."
"There aren't any sides! Shit, people aren't taking sides! Are they?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe a little bit."
"Thank you for your incisive analysis. Is Fox okay? Are you?"
"Yeah. She was upset last night, but He shrugged, and grinned, awkward,
pleased with himself. "I just sort of patted her till she fell asleep. I
sat up with her all night. It was kind of
"Romantic?"
Mitch started to answer. He stopped. He laughed with a high, delighted, nasal
bark.
"It was cold, is what it was, and along around dawn it got kind of damp.
How come it's so cold at night and so hot during the day? I kept thinking
I should wake her up and get her home. And then I wondered how come she could
sleep and I couldn't."
"Maybe you should've waked her up long enough to ask to share her jacket."
Stephen Thomas thought, It's still unrequited, but at least this is a little
more promising for Mitch than it was before.
"I just hope . . ." Mitch's voice trailed off.
"That you won't get pneumonia?"
244 VONDA N. McINTYRE
Mitch laughed again. "That from now on, she won't forget my name every time
she sees me."
"I don't think you have to worry about that anymore," Stephen Thomas said.
Victoria jammed her shovel deep in the heavy, clayey dirt. Starfarer had not
been in existence long enough to develop much good topsoil. Spring rain
saturated the ground, and the abnormal heat of the day supersaturated the air
with humidity. She turned over a spade full of dirt and broke it up into
clumps.
She had promised to spend the morning working in one of the garden plots.
Esther could give no estimate of how long it would take the field tiller to
regrow its brain. For the last half hour, Gerald and Avvaiyar had been arguing
the possibility of building a plow.
"There's nothing simpler than building, a plow," Gerald said. "Then the only
difficulty is figuring out how to hitch it to one of the silver slugs."
Victoria leaned on her shovel. "Infinity said we should quit calling them in
for anything that wasn't an emergency."
"I see," Gerald said. "Perhaps I should turn over coordination to our Mr.
Mendez."
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Victoria thought that might be a good idea, but Gerald was in such a foul
mood, and so obviously irritated at Infinity, that she decided not to say so.
"I think we should catch some of the horses and get them to earn their keep
for a change," Avvaiyar said.
"They're pets, " Victoria said. "Could they even pull a plow?"
"Why not? We could hitch them up in series like a dog team."
"I think you'd have better luck with a dog team."
"If we had any dogs."
"Clearly the silver slugs are the best choice," Gerald said. "Unless we
propose to pull the plow ourselves."
"Forget it!" Victoria snapped. She jammed the shovel into the ground.
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I'll dig up every square meter of Starfarer with a shovel, Victoria thought
angrily. I'll catch fish to put in with the corn seeds. I'll stand up to my
knees in water to set out rice plants. But I will not pull a plow! [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]