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would not start a monsoon. It would start a tornado.
"Damn." She sighed. "I've been lying in bed for the last hour, I kept falling
asleep and waking up and thinking how cold it was and how nice it would be
when you got home and got in beside me."
His hands felt warm, now, nestled against her belly. He wrapped his arms
around her and held her close. His long hair, still wet, swung forward and
touched her cheek. A drop of icy water flicked from the end of one lock and
dripped on her face.
"When this is done, we can stay in bed all day."
Esther giggled.
"What?"
"I was griping this afternoon that I had to work inside." She quoted an
aphorism favored by transport pilots: "Be careful what you wish for, you might
get it."
A few minutes later, dressed in dry clothes-the
286 VONDA N. McINTYRE
warmest he had; Esther wearing one of his flannel shirts under her jacket-they
hurried out into the deepening snow. Arachne guided them to the access tunnel.
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The snow formed a curtain, as featureless and impenetrable as full darkness.
The flakes turned sharp and hard and dry.
If they froze, it might be better to risk rain and floods.
Infinity just did not know, As they passed through his garden, he wondered,
briefly, if his cactus would survive.
Infinity's message spread through Starfarer's night, asking people for help
and alerting them to the danger of the snow's beauty.
Stephen Thomas followed a medium-sized silver slug into a young apple orchard.
The trees bent beneath the snow. Infinity had recommended knocking away the
snow if the tree leaned over, if it looked like it might break.
The slug burrowed through to the ground and pushed itself forward, ploughing
the heavy wet snow to either side. Stephen Thomas walked in the cleared path,
grateful that he did not have to break trail. He was wearing his warmest
clothes, but his warmest clothes did not amount to much.
At least the snow had stopped failing.
Following the slug at a respectful distance, Stephen Thomas used its trail to
get to the saplings. If he pulled the outer branches gently, he could knock
off the snow without standing beneath an avalanche. He could not tell if the
apple blossom buds were damaged.
Being so near the silver slug made Stephen Thomas wary. He knew,
intellectually, that this one had no reason to turn on him. The one that had
pinned him down had been protecting Chancellor Blades. But if-if-the slug did
attack, Professor Thanthavong might not come along this time to release him.
In the distance, a tree branch snapped with a violent
METAPHASE 287
crack. Its covering of snow cascaded down to land with a feathery thud.
As Stephen Thomas worked in the orchard, he let his attention drift back into
Feral's files. He still avoided the notes on J.D. Stephen Thomas liked J.D.;
he did not want to spoil his affection for her by feeding his stupid jealousy.
Feral would still be alive if any one of half a dozen events had occurred only
a little differently. If he had been involved in the web more shallowly. If he
had heard JDA warning, or Victoria's. If Stephen Thomas had not so easily
restored Feral's canceled guest access to Arachne.
Feral had logged the incident in which he had been thrown from the web.
It was such an unusual thing to happen that Stephen Thomas set it aside for
later, when he could give it his full attention.
The slug crawled through the orchard and headed across a meadow. Stephen
Thomas was tempted to call it back, to get it to break a trail through the
drooping pear trees a few fields over. Surely Infinity had enough slugs to
uncover the access hatches among the orange trees?
Stephen Thomas stamped his cold feet. Infinity had recommended that no one
stay out in the snow too long. Stephen Thomas decided to go inside for a while
and get warm. When he came back out, maybe he could borrow another silver
slug.
The whole world was black and white, silver and gray, motionless. Stephen
Thomas stretched. The clouds had snowed themselves out; the sky had cleared
except for an icy cloud blanket around the sun tube.
Obliquely overhead, on the far side of Starfarer's interior, black streams
meandered through the white landscape. A pinprick of darkness appeared where
someone knocked the snowy cover from a sapling.
Zev slogged from one buried sapling to another. JDA transmission of
Nerno's planetoid followed him.
288 VONDA N. McINTYRE
Back home, when his family returned from their migration, the sea water was
cold with winter. Summer would not touch the sea for a month yet. But he had
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