The Stardance Trilogy (93 page)

“It certainly is. Listen, I just wanted to tell you I’m not going to be around for the next couple of days. I have to shuttle over to the Shimizu.”

“Really? What’s up?”

“A party, of sorts. You’re invited if you want, actually—if you don’t mind taking a couple of days off from
EVA
classes, you could hop over and back with me. It should be a memorable event.”

“What’s the occasion?”

“You know Fat Humphrey?”

“Who doesn’t?” The round restaurateur had been famous ever since the release of Armstead’s Starseed Transmission at the turn of the century; it was said that his Le Puis rivalled the Hall of Lucullus as a gourmet’s and gourmand’s paradise. Armstead claimed you never had to tell Humphrey what you wanted to eat, how you wanted it done, or how much you felt like eating. Over the past week, Rand had found that to be literal truth.

“Well, he just turned one hundred…and he’s retiring to the Shimizu to enjoy his golden years.”

“Wow. That’s going to disappoint a lot of folks.”

“Yes, it will. He’s been swearing for decades that he was going to retire the day his odometer showed three figures, and it seems he meant it. Last night after dinner he took off his tux and spaced the thing. The chefs are all people he trained, of course—but it just won’t be the same without him sizing up the customers and serving the orders. Fat sweetens the air where he is. Anyway, he won’t let us have a farewell party for him here, prefers to just leave like a cat—so Meiya and I are bringing him over to the Shimizu tonight in a special shuttle. There’s room for you if you want to come along.”

“Sounds good,” he said. “I’d like a chance to get to know Fat half as well as he knows me. Every time he pulls that magic act of his, I can’t help wondering what
he
likes to eat.”

Reb’s answer was a moment in coming. “Do you know…in almost fifty years, I don’t believe I’ve ever
seen
Fat eat?”

“He must do it some time,” Rand said dryly. Fat Humphrey massed well over a hundred and forty kilos; in repose he resembled a Jell-O model of the Shimizu.

“True enough. Well, maybe we’ll get to see him in action when we get him to the hotel.”

“I’ll take him to Lucullus’s tomorrow,” Rand said. “It would be an honor to buy Fat Humphrey a meal. And you and Meiya.”

“Done,” Reb said. “Meet us at the dock at 17:00.” He broke the connection. Reb never seemed to be in a hurry—but he never wasted time or words either.

The last of the students had returned inboard; Rand turned his radio back on in time to hear Thecla dismiss the class. He left the Solarium and with Salieri’s help found his way through the maze of tunnels that honeycombed Top Step to the room he’d been assigned. There he took off his airtanks and thrusters and set both to recharging, and packed a small overnight bag. He was not yet ready to return to the Shimizu full time, but a day or two couldn’t hurt. It might be instructive to test the strength of the scab Top Step had begun to form over the deep wound in his heart.

And he could check in with Jay, see how the new piece was going. He hadn’t produced a note of music yet, hadn’t even viewed the working tapes Jay sent every day…but Jay would understand. Rand had left him a perfectly good shaping to use—the New Mexico desert setting he’d already had in the can—and Jay knew his brother was perfectly capable of showing up a week or two before curtain and producing an acceptable score for whatever choreography he came up with. This retreat had been Jay’s idea as much as anybody’s.

A thought struck him as he packed. “Salieri—can you determine relative locations for Colly and Rhea?”

“Maxwell indicates they are approximately fifty meters apart, Rand.”

“Good. Get me Colly on a hush-circuit.”

“Hi, Daddy! What’s up?” Colly’s cheerful voice asked a few seconds later.

“Hi, princess. I just wanted to let you know I’m going back to the Shimizu for a couple of days. I know we were scheduled for a long chat tonight, but it looks like I’m going to be too busy. Can we reschedule for Thursday?”

“Sure. I guess…”

“Problem?”

The answer was a while in coming. “Dad?”

“Yes?”

“I…uh…Mom and I had a talk this morning.”

“Oh.” The first sensation he was conscious of was of a large weight leaving his shoulders. He had not relished the prospect of explaining things to Colly—but it hadn’t looked as if Rhea was ever going to get off the dime. He was enormously relieved to learn that she had.

Then he realized that only half the weight was gone. “Are you…okay with that?”

Again the answer was agonizingly slow in arriving. “Can I ask you something? I asked Mom, but she said she didn’t know, and I should ask you.”

He took a deep breath, and held it. “Go ahead, honey.”

“What’s the most time I can spend up there with you?”

He exhaled noisily. There was a sound in his ears like bad reception on a suit radio, a sort of vast echoing hum. “Without adapting, you mean.”

“No, I found that out from the White Rabbit,” she said. “I mean, without being a pain in the butt.”

His heart turned over in his chest. “The max, baby. The max. And if that isn’t enough to suit us both, I’ll come down there and see you sometimes. Until I adapt, anyway.”

“That’s good,” she said firmly. “Uh…can I ask you one more thing?”

“Sure.”

“Are you still mad at Duncan, Daddy?”

The question was like a surprise punch in the stomach. He took it, and shook his head, and answered honestly. “No, Colly. I’m not mad at Duncan.”

“I’m glad. Tell him I said hi. Bye, Daddy—I love you!”

“What an extraordinary coincidence:
I love you
.”

“What are the odds of that, huh?” She hung up smiling.

Rand finished packing. Then, with time to kill before he was due at the dock, he played some of Jay’s tapes, and tinkered with ideas for musical accompaniment. Hell, maybe he should stay at the Shimizu when he got there, and get back to work. Maybe it was time to resume his life. He could play around with
EVA
another time, when there wasn’t so much to do. He thought of calling Jay, to tell him he was coming. But the timing was bad: Jay would be in the studio now. He decided to call when he got in.

The trip to the Shimizu was thoroughly enjoyable, despite the spartan furnishings aboard the small shuttle. Fat Humphrey in a p-suit was an unforgettable sight, for one thing. And as a traveling companion, he was the original barrel of monkeys; while they were all unstrapped between acceleration and deceleration he even managed to produce a recognizable parody of
Kinergy
that reduced Rand and everyone else aboard to tears of laughter.

Rand was honored to be included in the merriment. It was apparent to him that this trip was a sentimental journey for Reb—and for Meiya, Reb’s successor as Head Teacher at Top Step. While they had been training and graduating a quarter of a million Stardancers together over the past half century, Fat Humphrey had been one of the very few constants in their lives. Meiya, a quiet, solemn woman, wore an expression that reminded Rand of old pictures he had seen of mothers sending their sons off to war.

As he watched Fat Humphrey mock the moves of a Stardancer, he suddenly wondered why Fat had not accepted Symbiosis on retirement. But he knew he would not ask, not today anyway. The question was in an area of privacy you learned not to violate if you spent any time at Top Step: he didn’t know Fat well enough yet.

And the man read his mind. The moment the laughter for his performance had died away, he looked at Rand and said, “You wonderin’ how come I didn’t eat the red Jell-O for my dessert, huh?”

“Well…yes, Fat, I was, as a matter of fact.”

Fat Humphrey grinned. “You ever hear about the time them assholes blew up about a cubic kilometer of Sym?”

“Sure.” Almost a decade before Rand’s birth, a fanatic antiStardancer terrorist group, headed by Chen Ling Ho’s father, had somehow managed to destroy a large mass of Symbiote on its way from its source in the upper atmosphere of Titan to Earth orbit, where it was supposed to serve the needs of the next generation of Top Step graduates. Several Stardancers riding herd on the load had been killed.

“Well, most o’ that was suppose’ be for me. They been tryin’ to catch up ever since, but it’s gonna be another twenty year or so before they ready to handle me again.” Rand cracked up; so did Reb and Meiya. “I figure in the meantime I watch a little TV, go for a swim, catch a show. You get me a good seat?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Fat,” he said thoughtfully, “in terms of sightlines and vectors, maybe what we should do is mount a special show just for you.”

“How you mean?”

“Put you in the center of the theater, and work around you.”

Fat roared with glee and slapped him on the back; fortunately his seat belt held. “You’re all right, kid.”

They reached the Shimizu by 19:30. The deceleration was as mild as the acceleration had been, no more than half a gee, and for only a few minutes. Rand could have taken more easily, but the others were all spacers, intolerant of gees.

Fat Humphrey had specifically requested that there be no reception on his arrival. Of course Evelyn Martin had double-crossed him, and was waiting at dockside to drag him off to a press conference. But Rand had halfway expected that: he debarked first, took Martin aside, and threatened to take him by the testicles and fling him through the nearest bulkhead into hard vacuum if he didn’t change orbits, now. Grumbling and muttering, the little
PR
man complied. It is difficult to slink in free-fall, but he managed it. “Don’t bother with check-in,” he snarled over his shoulder as he went. “It’s covered. Just take him right to P-427.”

Rand rapped on the hatch to signal that it was safe, and the others emerged. As nanobots scurried away with luggage, he tried to show Fat Humphrey where to insert the wafer that would install his AI in the Shimizu’s data crystals…and was startled and a little nonplussed to learn that Fat did not have one.

“How about you, Meiya?” he tried.

But she shook her head too. “I won’t be inboard long enough to bother. We’ll all use Reb’s to get around.”

“Well, okay,” he said. “But stick close to him. This place can be a rabbit warren if you don’t have an AI.”

“There are public terminals all over, left over from the old days,” she pointed out. “If I get lost, I can just ask for you.”

“Sure. I’m not listed, but my
AI
is: Antonio Salieri. How about if I go get my brother and meet you all at Fat’s new suite in about an hour? I’d like to grab a shower too; I’ve been in this p-suit all day.”

“Good with me,” Fat Humphrey said.

“We’ll meet you there in an hour,” Reb said, and installed his own AI. “Rild—direct us to Suite Prime 427, please.”

One of several exits began to blink softly. “This way,
Tenshin
.”

Rand jaunted to his own room, checked the time, and decided to phone Jay before showering. He would have just finished dinner by now.

“Hey, bro, what’s shapin’? When are you coming back?”

“About five minutes ago. Want to meet the happiest fat man in human space?”

Jay blinked. “‘…the happiest fat man…’ Hey, you mean Fat Humphrey? Is
he
here?”

“To stay. He’s just retired; it’s his centennial. I came along for the ride; I’m going back with Reb tomorrow. Little gathering at his new digs in about an hour: just him, you, me, Reb and Meiya, as far as I know. You know Meiya, right?”

“Sure. Hey, this is great! I’ve always wanted a chance to kick back and talk with Fat for a few hours. Where’s he at?”

“Prime 427. Meet me at the nearest corner at 20:25 and we’ll go in together.”

“See you there.”

Fifty minutes later he was waiting at the appointed spot. Almost at once, Jay arrived from another direction, grinning. They hugged, and pounded each other’s shoulder blades.

“How are you, bro?”

“Fine,” Rand said. “I’ve gotten a
little
work done—I’ll show you later.”

“The hell with that—how
are
you?”

“Okay,” he said. “Not well, yet, but I can see daylight, you know?”

“That’s good. I told you that place’d be good for you. Hey, Eva’s gonna be here too: Reb called her. Probably in the suite already, in fact; I spoke with her half an hour ago and she said she was leaving right away. I get the idea she and Fat are old friends.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the—”

The lights went out.

“What the
fuck
—” Jay said. “Diaghilev!”

No answer.

“Diaghilev, God dammit!”

“Salieri?” Rand tried.

Silence.

There was a public terminal nearby, but it was unlit, presumed dead. “Jesus,” Jay said softly, clearly controlling his voice with an obvious effort. “I think the whole fucking system is down. That’s never happened. I’d have bet a billion dollars it couldn’t possibly happen.”

They heard a scream somewhere in the far distance; no telling even the direction. The Shimizu corridors had some funny acoustics.

Rand’s heart hammered. “Oh my God…” If they had no lights, no
AI
s, no phones—how long before they had no
air
? He fought for calm in the claustrophobic darkness. “All right, what’s our move?”

Just then lights came on. Small red emergency lights, every hundred meters along the corridor, with larger blinking ones marking intersections. Rand found them an immense relief, a sign of recovery, but he saw Jay frowning. “They should have kicked on a
lot
sooner, even if this is a total system collapse,” Jay said. “Something really weird is going on.”

“Have we got air?”

Jay spotted the nearest grille, jaunted to it, and put his face near it. “Yeah. Reduced flow, but it’s air.”

“What do you think: is this just local, or is the whole damn hotel really dark right now?”

“Beats me. They’re supposed to be equally impossible. I pray to God it’s local.”

A suite door opened not far from them, and someone stuck his head out. “Hey, mate,” he called in an Aussie accent, “any idea what the bloody hell is goin’ on?”