The Stardance Trilogy (92 page)

Why that wasn’t creepy was that what he had said, after studying her that well, was something kind. Good return on a cheese sandwich.

As he approached, now, there was no doubt in her mind that he knew all about the recent upheaval in her life; she waited for her nugget, wishing she had a sandwich on her. God knew she could use a little insight just now.

He stopped beside her and turned so that they both faced the sea and the Trancers. They watched them together for a timeless time. Shortly she forgot that she was waiting for him to speak. Trance-dance lived up to its name: there was something elementally hypnotic about it. There was something otherworldly about it too: in some subtle way she could not pin down, the Trancers reminded her of Stardancers. Perhaps it was only the rosy glow of their illuminated faces against the black sea and sky. Their dance did not seem to require any great skill, yet it held her spellbound. For the first time she began to understand why one would want to spend so many hours doing that.

“Be ready,” Manuel said. “It’s gonna be good.”

She turned to look at him, and he was smiling. Her first reaction was to ask, what is going to be good? And when? But Manuel never explained, never amplified. So she was surprised when she heard herself ask, “Will I know when it’s coming?”

His smile broadened. “You won’t miss it.”

Two sentences was a record. She decided to go for broke, and ask him
how
to be ready—but he was already shuffling back through the sand toward the Trancers. She watched in silence until he joined in the dance. Then she turned and trudged away toward her car.

Halfway there she stopped…stood for a moment…then turned and retraced her steps. She stood at the fringe of the dance for perhaps half an hour before joining it. When she did, it welcomed her.

She returned to linear consciousness in the car, on the way home. Her watchfinger said it was a little after four in the morning. She did not feel as tired as she should have; somehow the dance had given more energy than it had taken. She felt as though if she were to unseal her seat harness, she might float up to the ceiling.

In addition, there was an odd, almost forgotten sensation deep within her. She was hungry…

She entered the house at a dead run, and ate nearly half a loaf of
massa cevada,
Portuguese sweet bread, slathered with butter, washing it down with pirate-strength black tea. When she was done, she made and kneaded a vast batch of bread dough for
malassadas.
The fried sugarcoated treats—a Portuguese version of beignets, known locally as “flippers”—were Colly’s favorite breakfast.

While the dough was rising, she went upstairs and outside onto the roof, to watch the sun rise from the widow’s walk. It was one of the few authentic widow’s walks left in Provincetown; five generations of Paixao women had paced these very boards, scanning the horizon for signs of their returning husbands. Every time they had been successful too, eventually; none of the Paixao men had been lost at sea—which probably made this the luckiest widow’s walk anywhere. Rhea was conscious that she was breaking the string of good luck, and it brought a pang—but as the colors began to take form on the horizon, she decided it was one she could endure.

Most of the boats had gone out long since, but one unfortunate captain with a cranky engine was just putting out from MacMillan Wharf, warping around the breakwater. A delivery truck was clattering down Commercial Street, and gulls were harassing the garbage collectors. From her high eyrie, Rhea could see the silhouette of a lone figure walking along the shore, beachcombing.

That trance-dance had been her first extended break from pain in many weeks. No, not from pain, but from the suffering of it. At no time had she lost a preconscious awareness of her emotionally damaged condition…but she had relaxed to it, ceased to fear it. She believed now that she was healing—even if she had no idea how long the process would take. And she knew she would be returning to the ocean shore to join more trance-dances. Perhaps Colly might enjoy it too; Rhea had seen children at daytime trance-dances, and it was something they could share…

Just as there was enough light for her to make out Tia Marguerite and Tia Marion’s house, a few blocks distant, she saw a light go on in the room where Colly would have slept. She went back downstairs and punched down the
malassada
dough. She cut it into pieces, stretched them a little, and set them aside. Then she called Colly, making sure to tell Maxwell not to wake Colly’s guardians if she failed to answer.

But she did answer, at once. “Hi, Mom!”

“Hi, honey. Are you having a good time?”

“Sure!”

The enthusiasm was plainly counterfeit; Rhea was recovered enough to hear that now. Colly loved her great aunts—but knew perfectly well that she only slept under their roof when she was being left out of something. “Well, I don’t want to spoil any big plans or anything…but if you’re not here in ten minutes, the flippers won’t be hot when you eat them.”

“
Flippers?
Homemade? Wow! Quick: open the door so I don’t break it.” She hung up—and was in the kitchen before the oil was hot. They made the
malassadas
together, giggling, and gorged themselves until they creaked.

And then they had a long, long talk.

Top Step
25 February 2064
 
 

R
AND HUNG SUSPENDED LIKE A FLY IN BLACK AMBER
at the precise center of the universe, tethered to a mountain. The only sounds were the oceanic ebb and flow of his own breath, and the persistent slow drumming of his pulse. All of creation was arrayed around him. He felt an impulse to put himself into a spin, so that he could see all of it, but knew that he would foul his umbilical if he did. Probably just as well; even half of infinity was a lot to take in at once.

He found himself thinking of a poem Salieri had retrieved for him last night. He had asked for “something with Fireflies in it,” and the AI’s search engine had yielded up a
hauta,
a species of Japanese folk song more elaborate than the more common
dodoitsu:

Kaäi, kaäi to
Naku mushi yori mo
Nakanu hotaru ga
Mi wo kogasu.
Nanno ingwa dé
Jitsu naki hito ni
Shin wo akashité—
Aa kuyashi!

(Numberless insects there are that call from dawn to evening,

Crying, “I love! I love!”—but the Firefly’s silent passion,

Making its body burn, is deeper than all their longing.

Even such is my love…yet I cannot think through what Karma

I opened my heart—alas!—to a being not sincere.)

The truly remarkable thing was that the
hauta
had been transcribed and translated into English by Lafcadio Hearn in 1927—seventy years before “Firefly” meant anything but a species of insect. Yet it seemed to fit Rand’s situation with eerie accuracy.

The Fireflies had
created
humanity, seeding Terra with life millions of years ago and moving on. The Fireflies were of space. They had returned here the instant man began making art in space. Surely, then, space was where a human artist should go—even if love called him back to Earth.

Space didn’t solve your problems…but it sure put them into a larger perspective.

“All right, people,” Thecla said in his earphones. “Time’s up. Precess.”

Rand turned with the rest of the class, until they all faced the mountain they had come from: Top Step, the place where humans came to become Stardancers. He was a little self-conscious; he knew he did not really belong here, with these Novices. They were second-month students, only another month away from renouncing their former lives forever and accepting Symbiosis. Being among them made him feel a little like a tourist on Death Row, or an infidel smuggled into Mecca. But Reb Hawkins himself had suggested that he join this class.

Rand already had his “space legs,” could handle himself in free-fall—but all his experience was indoors, inside pressurized cubics. Everyone said that to really
feel
space, it was necessary to spend a lot of hours
EVA
. The Shimizu was equipped to take guests
EVA
if they wished—but strictly as tourists, carefully shepherded and pampered, in permanently tethered suits with no thrusters at all and so much radiation shielding that mobility was severely limited, for a maximum of half an hour. Groundhogs were just too good at getting themselves killed outdoors. Spacers all laughed at anyone whose only
EVA
hours were in Hotel Suits—but more advanced training was not offered in-house.

When he’d met Reb Hawkins, he’d found himself telling Reb his problem, and the monk had invited him to visit Top Step and join a Suit Class. “But won’t your students resent an outsider?” he’d asked.

“There’ll be no reason for them to know you are one,” Reb said. “Top Step is a big place now, and we have a strong custom of privacy going back half a century. If you show up in a class one day, people will just assume you’ve transferred in for some reason, and leave you alone. Most of them will be in the middle of life-reviews of their own.”

Rand had thanked him—but still felt uneasy about the idea, and put it out of his mind.

Until his marriage had self-destructed.

When both Jay and Eva had suggested, within hours of each other, that he take Reb up on his invitation to visit Top Step, Rand had shrugged and acquiesced. He and Rhea had agreed that there was nothing a counselor could do to help them—but now that the plug had been pulled, he found that he needed to talk to
someone.
A legendary holy man who made his home in space didn’t sound like a bad choice. Rand had liked Reb at once when they’d met, and Jay and Eva vouched for him, “punched his ticket,” as Eva called it.

And now, as he rotated in space and faced Top Step—an immense stone cigar, glowing softly at the tip—he had to admit that coming here had been a good idea. Talking with Reb had helped: Reb’s end of the conversation had consisted entirely of questions, just the right questions. Taking class had helped: it was hard to sustain self-pity out in naked space. And being around Postulants and Novices and Symbiotics had helped too: all these people were in the process of saying goodbye to their lives, and their company helped reconcile Rand to living his own.

“All right,” Thecla said, “we’re going to try something new, today: you’re all going back in on your own power.”

There was a buzz of excitement, but it cut off quickly. Nobody wanted to louse this up.

“One at a time,” she added. “I don’t want you unsnapping until the person before you has made it all the way inboard. Abadhi, you’re first.”

One of the two dozen-odd p-suited figures in Rand’s field of vision tapped his umbilical join. The tether separated, and Top Step began reeling it in. He oriented himself, starfished, and waited.

“Go ahead.”

There was no visible exhaust from Abadhi’s thrusters, but slowly he began to move toward Top Step. Very slowly. The trick in
EVA
maneuvering was to go about half as fast as you thought you should—then you only arrived about twice as hard and fast as you wanted.

At such speeds, covering ten thousand meters takes some time. Porter came far down the alphabet. Rand had plenty of time to study his classmates as he waited for his turn.

He had lost a marriage: these people were surrendering
everything.
They were more committed to space than he would ever be, and they were giving up more to be there.

And in return they would gain so much that part of him envied them. Centuries of life, life free of fear or hunger or loneliness, in the bosom of the largest and closest family that had ever been, working and playing among the stars. Those of them who were artists could spend the next century or two pursuing their art, twenty-four hours a day if they chose, with no need to seek commercial or popular or critical success. Or to look for love.

Maybe someday,
he thought.
Maybe in another ten or twenty years, I’ll come back here for real.

The thought came back,
why not now?

He was not done yet, that was all. Married or not, he was still a parent, and would be for at least another decade. He had not used up his visions yet; he still had shapings to create which would not have worked in a Stardancer context. He had still not outgrown his need for applause, his need to achieve. He had fought for his present position so long and so hard that he could not abandon the cup until he had drained it dry. It had, after all, cost him a good wife.

“Porter—get ready!”

He snapped out of his reverie and ran through the procedure in his mind.
This
sequence of commands tells the tether to go home;
that
combination of taps on the palm keypads will deliver matched bursts from all five thrusters; move my chin like
this
for the heads-up targeting display…“Ready, Thecla.”

His tether wiggled away toward Top Step. He centered the target ring in his display, stiffened his limbs, and triggered the thrusters. Aside from a mild pressure at wrists and ankles, nothing seemed to happen. The thruster at the base of his spine produced no sensation at all. Could it be broken? No, his display claimed he was jaunting, just as planned. He glanced around, and saw that the others were indeed receding, just quickly enough to perceive. He waited—and after a while, Top Step suddenly began to visibly approach. He checked his position carefully, decided he needed a course correction, and made it.

His aim was good: if the vast open window of the Solarium had had a bull’s-eye, he would have hit it on his way through. His deceleration was equally perfect: he ended up motionless within arm’s reach of the handgrip he had been aiming for. He saw admiring glances from other returnees, and preened. “Very nice,” Thecla said. “Okay, Pribram: get ready!”

His
AI
, Salieri, whispered in his ear. “Phone, Rand. Reb Hawkins.”

He cut off his suit radio and took the call. “Hi, Reb.”

“Hello, Rand. Are you enjoying
EVA
?”

“A lot!” he said. “Thanks for letting me sit in. It’s
different
outside…”