The Stardance Trilogy (83 page)

But almost as he finished the thought, he realized that his feet were actually
cold,
colder than they should have been even if the boots’ heating systems had both failed completely. He glanced down, and discovered that he was standing ankle deep in crystal clear water. It rose as he watched, climbing his shins.

He looked to the north, and saw the Kali Gandaki river returning, after five centuries, dividing around his feet. Now his ear could distinguish between the sound of its passage and the similar sound of the wind. For no reason at all he remembered the damned travel agent saying that the Tiji festival was also known as the Festival of Impermanence.

From above him, in the temple, came the continuous
BBBRRRRRAATTTTTTTT!
of a mountain horn, cutting cleanly through the wind and water noise to alert the village below, and this horn sounded to Gunter more like a brontosaur laughing…

The Shimizu Hotel
18 January 2065
 
 

R
HEA WAS DRIFTING HELPLESSLY IN DEEP SPACE
, her air supply almost gone, her thrusters dry, gasping for air that wasn’t there, when windchimes sounded in the distance. She sighed, came back to reality, saved her changes, folded the typewriter and tucked it in her pocket, and went to answer the door.

It was Duncan, of course—the only person besides Rand, Colly and Jay for whom the doorbell would function while she was working. “Is Colly ready?” he asked.

His eyes seemed to ask several other things, and Rhea sighed again.
I wonder what my eyes are answering,
came the sudden thought. “Come in,” she said, and looked away. “Max, please tell Colly Duncan is here.”

“Beg pardon?” the AI said.

“Sorry. Tell Colly
that
Duncan is here.” Rhea hated making syntax errors; it was professionally embarrassing.

After a pause, her
AI
said, “Colly says to tell you she’s changing clothes and will be with you in two seconds.”

They looked at each other. “Five minutes,” they chorused together, and shared a grin.

Almost at once something about that trivial event bothered Rhea. It was a domestic little moment, something she and Rand might have shared, a small intimacy. Rand had in fact been doing his best to generate such moments, lately—probably because the deadline for her Big Decision was approaching. That underlying awareness had been making the return grins she gave her husband slightly forced. The grin she had just given Duncan was quite genuine. She realized she was drifting just perceptibly toward him, and overcorrected. “Come on in,” she said to cover it. “You know where everything is.”

“Are you working?” he asked, entering the suite.

She hesitated. The question meant, do you want to be left alone? Duncan was very understanding of a writer’s problems; if she said yes, she would cease to exist for him. “No,” she decided. “Can I get you anything? There’s time for coffee.”

“No, thanks,” he said. “How’s the work coming?”

“Not bad, thanks to you. I really struck ice with Buchi Tenmo.”

He grinned again at the spacer expression. Spacers didn’t give a damn for gold or diamonds or oil: for them a new source of potable water was real wealth. She had picked up the idiom from him—and it seemed to please him that she had. “Yeah, she’s pretty amazing…when you can tell what the hell she’s talking about.”

“Yes, there is that. It’s like talking to an angel on psychedelics sometimes. Would you mind sitting in on the conversation once or twice? You’ve been talking with Stardancers a lot longer than I have.”

“Sure—but don’t expect that to help much. Buchi’s just
different
. Even for a Stardancer. The ones born that way, who’ve never breathed, are the weirdest…but the most interesting too, I think.”

A week ago, Rhea had asked Duncan how one got to know a Stardancer. She knew it could be done simply and easily, even from the surface of Terra—but how did one scrape up an acquaintance? It turned out Duncan was friendly with several Stardancers. Most spacers were. And one of his personal friends among
Homo caelestis
happened to be physically located near enough to the Shimizu to allow for something very like a face-to-face meeting…through Rhea’s own window. Duncan had made the introduction a few days earlier, then politely left them alone. “When would be good for you in the next few days?”

“Any time; when’s good for you?”

She thought about it—and suddenly realized that the search criterion with which she was examining her calendar was “times when Rand and Colly won’t be around.” That made perfect sense: the conversation would be confusing enough without distraction. Nonetheless it struck her all at once that she was making a date to be alone—or almost alone—with a handsome young man. One who, if she wasn’t misreading signals, was interested in her.

It’s for
work
, for heaven’s sake!

Yes…but is it prudent?

Oh, shut up.
“How about tomorrow night, after twenty?”

He nodded. “Program loaded.”

There was a brief silence. Rhea felt compelled to break it. “So how are things with you?”

“Pretty good, actually. I made another piece last night, and it turned out well.”

Duncan’s hobby was vacuum-sculpture. To Rhea the artform seemed to consist of assembling ingredients in various combinations, exposing them suddenly to vacuum, and then taking credit for the weird and beautiful shapes chemistry caused to occur. But vacuum-sculpture could be very beautiful—and she had to admit that Duncan seemed to produce aesthetically pleasing results more often than chance could account for. Didn’t photographers throw out twenty prints and take credit for the perfect twenty-first? Come to think of it, wasn’t her own storage cluttered with drafts that hadn’t quite gelled?

“I’d like to see it,” she said politely.

“No problem. We’ll talk to Buchi from my place, then.”

She opened her mouth…and then closed it firmly. He was pointedly not looking in her direction.

“I thought I’d take Colly to the pool again,” he went on.

Rhea laughed. “You think you have a choice, huh?” The laugh sounded too loud in her ears. “She’s a born water baby. You couldn’t keep her out of the surf, back ho—…back in Provincetown. You know, I’ve always thought it’s ironic. As far back as history goes, the Paixaos have made their living on and from the sea—and my mother was the first one in the family that ever learned to swim. How could you spend all that time on the water and not know how to swim? Weren’t they scared?”

Duncan shrugged. “I’ve lived all my life in space—and I don’t know how to breathe vacuum.”

“But that’s not possible—and it is possible to learn to swim, and it doesn’t even take much time.”

“Look at it from your greatest grandfather Henry’s perspective,” he said. “Suppose you’re off the Grand Banks and the ship sinks. How much good does it do you to know how to swim?”

It occurred to Rhea that Duncan knew a lot more about her family than she knew about his. She was not normally so forthcoming; had he been making an effort to draw her out? She reviewed memory tape, and could not decide. “I guess. It still seems odd. Maybe we should ask Buchi to teach you how to breathe vacuum.”

And now I’ve drawn the conversation back to our rendez-vous…

Colly appeared just then. How she could have spent five minutes dressing was something of a mystery, for she was dressed for the pool, in the ubiquitous guest robe and nothing else. Since so many nationalities and cultures mingled in the Shimizu, all guests conformed to a minimal nudity taboo in politeness to the less civilized nations; one did not jaunt down public corridors naked. But a guest robe was sufficient, and even those could be dispensed with once one reached the pool—or any other nonpublic location. “Hi, Duncan! Come on, let’s go!”

“Sorry to hold you up,” he said sarcastically, and made way so Colly could hug her mother goodbye.

As Rhea handed the child off to Duncan, their hands brushed briefly. Rhea had gotten used to casual touching in space, even from strangers; free-fall made it necessary in close quarters. But this touch she felt from her scalp to the soles of her feet. It seemed to her that he made it linger.

She was glad then for Colly’s eagerness to be in the water; the two headed for the door before the blush reached her cheeks.

I should have said yes when he asked if I was working.

In fact, she
should
be working. She took her keyboard from her pocket and unfolded it. Work would be a wonderful distraction from the trend her thoughts were taking.

Almost at once she found another distraction. The virtual screen that sprang into existence over the keyboard was preset to display her calendar as its boot document, so she wouldn’t start sinking into the warm fog if there was some imminent obligation scheduled. It showed the next thirty days, and the box for
5
February was highlighted—it leaped out of the screen at her, as it had been doing ever since she had highlighted it.

I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay here,
was what she had thought when she first started work that morning. Now, perhaps because of what had just transpired, it came out,
I have two more weeks to make up my mind whether I’m going to stay married to Rand.

She entered her date with Duncan into the calendar, put the typewriter away again, and went to the window. She watched the majestically turning Earth for a measureless time, trying to put names on her feelings, and failing. They would not hold still long enough.

Finally she looked around her, as if to make sure she was alone…and checked her watch to make sure Rand was not due home…and spoke to her
AI
. “Maxwell: window program ‘Home.’”

“Yes, Rhea.”

Terra went away, and was replaced by Provincetown.

She was back in her own writing room in her own home, looking out of the turret through her favorite window, hearing the sounds of the street below, hearing the gulls and the distant surf, seeing Mrs. Vasques, her neighbor, haranguing yet another motorist who had clipped her fence in trying to negotiate the insanely narrow street. The illusion was nearly perfect—except for the same flaw it had had weeks ago, when Rand had first sprung it on her. This time, she was able to identify the flaw.
This Provincetown didn’t smell.
There was no salt tang in the air—none of that rich aroma that the landsman calls the smell of the sea and the sailor calls the smell of the land, the shore smell of decaying vegetation and sea creatures at the border between two incompossible worlds.

Maybe I could get a steward to bring me some fish leftovers,
she thought, and began to cry. Fetal position is hard to achieve in free-fall, but she managed it.

She never did get back to work that afternoon. But she did manage to stop crying an hour before Duncan was due to bring Colly home for supper, so that her eyes wouldn’t be red when they arrived.

Rand showed up just as they did. He had been making a major effort to eat most meals with his family these days. For some reason, his arrival relieved her. Duncan declined an invitation to join them for dinner, and that relieved her too. During the meal she found herself paying more attention than usual to her husband, asking questions about his work and listening attentively to the answers, making little excuses to touch him. Before she knew it they had made a nonverbal contract, entirely by eye contact, to make love when he got home again that night. He went off to Jay’s place whistling.

She managed to get a little work done after supper, while Colly was off playing with a friend. She didn’t understand where the story was going, but it wouldn’t let her alone; its disturbing central image—adrift, running out of air, no direction home—had been recurring in her thoughts for weeks now. The question was, of course,
who
was adrift, and why? She had no clear idea as yet, but she knew if she kept playing with the situation it would come out of her eventually.

As she was putting Colly to bed that night, she said, “So—was it fun playing with Jason, honey?”

“He’s okay, I guess,” Colly said. “For a boy, anyway. At least he’s gonna be here a whole two weeks.” For Colly, the biggest flaw in the Shimizu’s accommodations was its criminally inadequate and excessively fluctuating supply of eight-year-olds. Children of transient guests rarely remained aboard more than a few days; permanent guests tended not to have small children, and by evil luck all the spacer children of hotel staff were either over ten or under six—less use than a grown-up. Colly still had all of her phone friends, of course, and her Provincetown chums were all phone friends too, now…but she was chronically short of playmates she could smell and touch.

“Oh, that’ll be fun,” Rhea said.

“I guess.” Suddenly Colly looked stricken. “Hey, Mom?”

“Yes, dear?”

“I just thought of something. My birthday comes in two and a half weeks, right?”

Rhea did mental arithmetic. “That’s right, honey. Why?”

Colly sat up on one elbow.
“How am I gonna have a party?”

Rhea started to answer, and stopped.

“You can’t have a birthday party on the
phone
,” Colly said. “And all my friends are back on Earth! I’m not gonna get to have a real party, am I?” Her voice was rising in alarm.

“Uh…sure you will, honey. There’ll be kids aboard then, I’m sure there will. One or two, anyw—”

“But I won’t
know
them,” Colly insisted. “What good is a party with people you don’t even know?” She started to snuffle.

Rhea was tempted to join her. Instead she took Colly in her arms and rocked her. “Don’t cry, baby. It won’t be so bad. All your friends can be there on the phone—no, you know what? I’ll tell you what: we’ll get Daddy to merge all the phone signals into his shaping stuff, and your friends can be here almost like real, holographically, walking around and everything.” As she spoke, Rhea was estimating the cost of such an event: assuming Rand had time for this, and valuing his time at zero, it came to roughly the price of two luxury automobiles back on Terra. They could afford it, now—but still…