The Stardance Trilogy (99 page)

—Performing arts groups all across the planet began premiering new works. Not a single one was depressing. An inordinate percentage incorporated images or subtexts of space, or of floating, or of flying.

—Pursuant to the last will and testament of Eva Hoffman, a glass quart bottle of Old Bushmills Black Bush, about half full, was delivered to Jay Sasaki. Later that evening, he and Duncan Iowa lightened its mass by another two ounces, and became lovers.

—The estate of Evelyn Martin formally filed suit against the Shimizu Hotel, its Board of Directors and citizens Duncan Iowa, Rand Porter and Jay Sasaki, alleging wrongful death, loss of consort, slander and assorted other torts and seeking a billion dollars damages from each and every defendant; suit dismissed with prejudice when trial software determined that the estate and the deceased had been married for a total of four days and had not seen one another in the ensuing twenty-seven years.

—Rhea Paixao increased her trance-dancing to three days a week, and began taking her daughter along.

—The Nanotechnology Lab near Top Step announced the commencement of a major new research effort. Its stated purpose was so abstruse that the cronkites gave up and took refuge in repeating the words as if they understood them. No one caught them at it.

—The Right Honorable George Kiku, Undersecretary of Revenue for the United Nations and Assistant Chairman of the Committee on Fiscal Anomalies, took early retirement under his burnout clause, and resumed a long-interrupted study of the guitar. It came back hard, but he took to soaking the fingertips of his left hand in cold tea, and eventually the calluses returned.

—Alert Space Command software noted that an unusually high number of Stardancers were in the close vicinity of Terra, and that many more seemed to be vectoring earthward. But since it did not classify Stardancers as either threat or navigational hazard it did not notify any human beings.

Noteworthy Events in May 2065

—The last Stardancer was successfully disinfected of her submicroscopic bomb, and shielded against reinfection. A misty disk of death still spun about the Sun, but it could now be ignored until it was convenient to clean it up.

—Colly Porter received a vacuum sculpture by courier. It was called “Puffball,” and pleased her mightily. Her mother liked it too, and placed it in a prominent place in the living room, beside one by the same sculptor called “Driftglass.”

—A dancer named John DeMarco, realizing his dream of a lifetime, was invited to join Toronto Dance Theatre as a principal dancer, largely on the strength of a particularly inspired performance at the Drummond four months earlier. His former Artistic Director never forgave him for accepting, and made a point of telling him (mendaciously) that she had faked every single orgasm.

—LaToya Dai Woo, Assistant Director of the
US
Internal Revenue Service, resigned under a cloud having to do with inexplicable anomalies in that year’s data; while the antiquated computer system was torn apart and rebuilt, she moved to the Shimizu Hotel and took up recreational sex.

—The New Orleans self-renovation phenomenon began occurring in ghettos, slums and eyesores around the planet. One economist calculated that even given the immense cost-effectiveness of nanotechnology, several trillions of dollars had to have been spent by rapturists worldwide. Hardly anyone believed him; he was, after all, an economist.

—Gunter Schmidt finally recovered from the bronchitis which had followed upon his stroll through ice water in Nepal, and succeeded in suing his travel agent into bankruptcy. He then returned to Nepal to catch the May Tiji Festival—and learned on arrival that since the Kali Gandaki had in fact returned, the festival had been declared redundant. The Lo were too busy planting crops.

—Unnoticed by anyone, Admiral Cox slipped out a maintenance airlock and entered Symbiosis. The p-suit he removed in order to do so eventually burned up in the upper atmosphere, flaring as the air tanks went up. Since his bills continued to be paid and his room and AI reported no medical emergency, his absence went unnoted until late June.

—The rising wave of “cheerful art” reached such a crest worldwide that even critics began to notice it. Certain conspiracy theorists among the media began to smell a rat, and whispered along the E-mail byways of “rapturist conspiracy”—ideally some kind of immense digital fraud. To their annoyance, investigation kept indicating that the money funding all this new art was real. And anonymous. So they went public with the old standbys, thinly veiled suspicion and unsubstantiated rumor—and would have gone on to entirely baseless allegations in turn, if they hadn’t noticed that nobody seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them. Everyone was too busy attending performances that sent them home feeling good.

—The mammoth new mass of Symbiote reached Earth Orbit, was calved into six chunks, and each was inserted into a stable orbit. The reason for the subdivision was not known, but it aroused little curiosity. Few humans were of a mind to pester the Starmind with nosey questions these days.

—Colly Porter, having been back on Terra for the recommended three months, returned to High Orbit to spend a month with her father in the Shimizu Hotel. Shortly after her arrival she stated the opinion that hugging was more fun when you could use your legs too. This caused her father to blush (humans seldom go pale in free-fall, but they can still blush), and begin rehearsing a speech he had been meaning to deliver for a couple of years now. But in the end he managed to stall just long enough, and was spared the necessity.

—A peculiar glitch began to show up in automobiles—
all
automobiles, regardless of place or date of manufacture. Changing lanes without signalling at least five seconds in advance appeared to cause total
CPU
failure. Fortunately, the “crashless crash” safety feature hardwired into the guidance system usually brought the offending vehicle safely to the side of the road. No one claimed credit for the innovation, and public opinion split: some attributed it to rapturists, while others blamed a much older, half forgotten group called “hackers.” But the prevailing response of humanity at large was glee, and no one tried too hard to crack the case.

At the end, there, everything seemed to happen at once.

The Dunes East of Provincetown
22 June 2065
Courage Day
 

“T
HIS IS A GOOD SPOT
, M
OM
.”

Rhea thought so too. They were at the ocean shore east of Provincetown, just where the upthrust arm of Cape Cod curls its wrist back toward the mainland. Before them was the sea, next stop Europe; behind them to the west, between them and P-Town, lay kilometers of sand dunes. The weather was perfect, and had been since they had watched the sun rise together over the Atlantic several hours ago. It was now almost time for the Hour of Remembrance, and she and Colly were just finishing the food they had brought with them from home.

There were few others here, even on this global holiday. There were too many beaches a P-Towner could reach without having to walk several kilometers of sand, too many boats available to take them out on the water, especially since the fleet was not fishing today. Nonetheless Rhea had never seen this particular stretch of shore so heavily populated. The idea of Courage Day had caught on.

The spot did not feel crowded; there was no rowdiness; the general mood seemed to be a kind of subdued celebration. People spoke less than usual, and in softer voices; those who listened to music or news did not inflict it on their neighbors; even teenage boys were not horsing around. Rhea suspected things would get more festive later, after the Hour was past, but for the moment there was a kind of solemnity in the air that seemed to call for decorum. It had been a long long time since so many saints had been martyred at once.

“Do you feel like Trancing?” Colly asked.

Rhea looked around. There were a few individuals dancing, but no group had formed as yet. She did not see anyone she knew nearby. “Maybe later, hon. After the Hour.”

“Okay.” Colly liked trance-dancing well enough, but was not as attached to it as Rhea had become in recent months.

“I’m surprised you have the energy,” Rhea added idly. Colly had only been back on Earth for a few days after visiting her father in orbit.

“I know,” Colly said. “Me too. Yesterday I was tired as galoonies—but today I feel like Waldo. You know what I mean? Like he must feel. Like, I know I’m weak, but I don’t
feel
weak.”

It took Rhea a second to get the reference. “Oh,
Waldo
—your new friend in the Shimizu. I forgot all about him.” Come to think of it, Colly hadn’t mentioned him once since her return. “How is Waldo?”

Suddenly Colly was a textbook illustration, labeled Nonchalance. “Okay,” she said off-handedly, studying her fingernails. “His frog died, and he likes that dopey classic rock music now, and his teacher says he understands calculus.” Beat. “And he said he wants to marry me when we’re bigger.”

Rhea’s heart turned over in her chest. She didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or cry, only that she must do neither out loud.
And so it begins,
she thought. “Oh,” she said, with equal casualness. “I’m…sorry to hear about his frog.”

“Yeah. Hip was cool.”

“So, uh…what did you tell him? About the marriage thing.”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“I see. Did that satisfy him for now?”

“I guess.” Another pause. “He wanted to kiss me.”

Rhea chose her words with care. “How was it?”

Colly had run out of fingernails; she seguéd smoothly to toenails. “Okay, I guess.” Suddenly she turned and looked her mother in the eye. “But honestly, Mom, I don’t get what the big deal is.”

Rhea refused herself permission to smile. It cost her. “You will, baby,” she said solemnly. “You will.”

“Yeah, but
when
?”

“You won’t miss it,” she said. The words made her think of Manuel Brava, and she glanced at her watchfinger. “Hey, it’s almost time.”

It was about five minutes before the Hour. All up and down the beach, conversations were ending, people were sitting up straighter and facing the sea. Boats out on the water killed their engines, and their passengers came out on deck. Rhea felt a sudden pang of loneliness, the kind that a child’s presence does not assuage. Holidays are always the worst time for those with no significant other.

“Mom? We’re rich now, right?”

The non sequitur made her smile. “No, dear. But we’re richer.”

“Well…can we afford to call space for an hour?”

Automatically Rhea started to do mental arithmetic…then abandoned the equation unsolved. Her daughter had sideswiped her for the second time in less than a minute. “
Yes
, Colly! That’s a
great
idea! Oh, I hope he’s not…no, they won’t be working in orbit, either.” She was already autodialing, half-wishing the car was near so they could have visual too. Space images would have been appropriate during the Hour. Ah well…

Rand answered almost at once. “Hi, Rhea! Is Colly there? Of course she is—hi, princess!”

“Hi, Daddy!” Colly called back.

Rhea adjusted the volume for privacy. “Hi,” she said.

“Where are you guys? No, wait—let me guess. Audio only, so you’re out in the boonies somewhere. From the sound of the waves, ocean rather than bay side. The Dunes, right?”

How could someone who knew you that well be hundreds of miles away? “That’s right.”

“Is Uncle Jay around?” Colly asked.

“Right here, cutie,” Jay’s voice said.

“Hi, Uncle Jay! Hi, Duncan!”

There was the sound of laughter, then, “Hi, Colly,” from Duncan.

Rhea monitored herself to see if Duncan’s voice caused any internal fluttering. Nothing. She hoped he and Jay would make a success of it. “Where are you guys, anyway? No wait—let me guess.” It couldn’t be one of the Solariums: Rand and Jay were celebrities. Somewhere private, with a good view…got it! “You’re all in Eva’s window, aren’t you?”

“Right,” Rand said. “As a matter of fact, I think I can see you from here. Wave, Colly.”

She looked skyward and did so. “Here I am, Daddy!”

“I see you,” he assured her. “You’ve got mayonnaise on your chin.”

She checked—and burst into giggles when she found he was right.

“We’re planning to do some damage to the legacy Eva left me, as soon as the Hour is over,” Jay said. “I wish I could send you down a snort.”

“Me too!” Rhea said. “Look, I know the Hour’s almost here. We don’t have to talk or anything—but can we all stay on-line together until it’s over?”

“It’s something Terrans and spacers should share,” Duncan said.

“It was my idea,” Colly said proudly.

“And a good one,” Rand told her.

“Are you okay, Uncle Jay?” she asked. “Are you sad about Eva?”

His answer was slow in coming. “Let me put it this way, honey,” he said at last. “I’m not exactly okay yet—but I know I’m going to be. You know what I mean?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she said solemnly, and Rhea felt a brief stab of guilt. “Daddy, tell him that thing Captain Kirk said.”

“Huh?”

“You know, about leaving.”

A chuckle. “Oh. Not Captain Kirk, honey: Rahsaan Roland Kirk. An Old Millennium jazzman. He said once, ‘Nobody dies. They just leave
here
.’”

There was a pause, and then Jay’s voice said, “I think that’s true. Thank you, Colly.”

“Two minutes,” Duncan said.

“It feels like we ought to be
doing
something,” Rhea said. “Colly told you we’ve been Trancing a little, right? Maybe we should all dance or something.”

“Well,” Jay said, “I figure like this: Reb was Soto Zen. One of his favorite sayings used to be, ‘Don’t just do something—sit there!’ Do you guys know how to sit
zazen
? That’s what we were thinking of doing.”

“Sure,” Colly said with just a hint of scorn. “Duncan taught us once. Well,
kûkanzen
, not
zazen
, but they’re prac’ly the same.” She began manipulating sand into an improvised
zafu,
and Rhea followed her lead. She was cautious about exposing her child to organized religion, but Zen did not meet her definition of a religion. It had no deity, for one thing—but more important, it did not require either killing or converting unbelievers.