Starmind. Part 4

"And you wonder why people are happy?"

"Yes!Two axioms I cling to are that change is painful and that humans react poorly to pain. Change that radical and fundamentalhas to hurt, to confuse, to anger. For the first seventy years of my life, I watched my species grow ever more neurotic, more sullen, more despairing, more bitter. You know what I'm talking about."

"Well, I've read about it, seen records, old flatscreens and so forth-" "They don't convey it. Believe what I'm about to tell you: when I was forty-five years old, ninety-five percent of the intelligent, thoughtful university-educated people I knew believed as an article of faith that technology and change were dooming the planet, and that some of us would live to see the Last Days.

Just about every one of them had a different candidate for what specifically was going to get us. Nuclear Winter was the big one until the Soviet Union went broke. Within about fifteen minutes, fifty other Ends Of Everything had moved in to replace it: global warming, ice age, the ozone layer, overpopulation, deforestation, dwindling resources, pollution, energy shortage-I can't even remember them all anymore.

Pestilence, famine and plague were evergreen favorites, and you could always find someone who was putting his money on a runaway comet. If you had a taste for the exotic, you could be terrified of flying saucers and empires of alien cattle-mutilators. But just about every adult I knew clutchedsome form of Ultimate Paranoia to his or her breast. Almost without exception they chose to believe that the End of All Meaning was just over the horizon. If you didn't knowthat, you were too stupid or naive to be worth talking to.

"I'm overstating it slightly, because the sample I'm talking about consisted almost exclusively of affluent North Americans. But only slightly. In 1991 a major poll asked average Americans if they would like to live five hundred years, a.s.suming that could be accomplished cheaply and comfortably.Only half of them said yes. Fully half of that society was looking forward to dying."

Jay frowned and took a drink of his whiskey, forgetting to savour it. "How weird it must have been. To live in an age when the best and brightest wors.h.i.+pped Henny Penny. When the crew of Stars.h.i.+p Earth, wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestors, were on the verge of mutinous panic . . ."

She nodded. "And then right at the turn of the millennium, just as the worst thing possible happened and the wildest of all those paranoid fantasiescame true . . . just as actual aliens appeared in the sky, changed our destiny for us in great and incomprehensible ways, and vanished again before we could ask them any questions . . . everybody calmed down. The Curve kept on rising faster than ever, and somehow everybody on Earth seemed to heave a great sigh, and kick back, andrelax. Not right away, no, not all at once-but the d.a.m.n planet has been getting slowly and steadilysaner for over sixty years now. And it's driving me crazy!"

He swirled whiskey around in his bulb, stared through and past the oscillating golden liquid to the planet they both had left forever. "It doesn't seem all that sane to me," he said.

"No, I'm sure it doesn't, to someone your age," she agreed. "Itisn't all that sane. But it's sane-er. Do you know that at one time the United States had ten percent of its population imprisoned? Justly? As the best solution they could devise to problems they didn't begin to understand? Every year the papers told you the crime rate was rising. It's been falling for over twenty years, now . . . and somehow that never makes the headlines. The media just aren't geared up to report good news. You have to dig that out for yourself."

"I think it has to do with the Curve you were talking about," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"The latest spike in the Curve. The Nanotechnological Revolution. Molecular-scale machines and computers. It's qualitatively different from the Industrial Revolution or the Silicon Revolution or any of those. For once we got a new technology that cleans up its own wastes, doesn't despoil anything we cherish, and produces so much new wealth n.o.body could steal it all. Our firsthealing revolution. Take the revolution you grew up with, Eva: nuclear fission. They told everyone it would produce power too cheap to meter. Then it turned out the plants were big kludges, and n.o.body's power bill seemed to G.o.down a dollar. No wonder they stopped trusting people in lab coats. But this generation got a technology that delivered on its promises." He sipped his drink again, appreciating it this time. "And come to think of it, that was mostly thanks to the Stardancers. Without them and their Safe Lab, we'd still be skirting the edges of nanotechnology, too scared of someone getting a monopoly on it, or scared of the wrong little nanoa.s.sembler getting loose and turning all the iron to peanut b.u.t.ter or something."

"Or we might have destroyed the planet in a war for possession of the new technology," she agreed.

"Instead we've got a UN that means something-and a repaired ozone layer and a healthy ecosystem and nonpolluting industry and a world so fat and rich it hasn't had even a serious local war for thirty years."

"The Stardancers kept us honest," he said. "Thanks to the Fireflies, we had a precious resource: people we could trust to be above human greed and avarice, people with nothing to gain, people who could not be bribed or coerced."

"Bodhisattvas," she said.

"If you like," he said. "Fair witnesses, anyway."

"No wonder there used to be terrorists trying to kill them. A fair witness can be infuriating."

"Yeah, maybe-but the last serious attempt was about the time I was born. Even a fanatic reactionary can see they're just too valuable to the race now: they can live full time in s.p.a.ce with no life support, and s.p.a.ce is the only safe place to develop little artificial viruses, the only sensible place to collect solar power. Humanity got lucky. We got just what we needed, just when we needed it."

"Luck, h.e.l.l," she snarled. He recoiled at her force. "You just said it yourself. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was those d.a.m.ned Fireflies: they saved our bacon for us, brought us the moon-full of Symbiote that makes a human a Stardancer, andgave it to us, for free. I could kill them for that!"

She could see that she had shocked him. She waited, to see how he would handle it. "This is what you really wanted to talk about," he said finally.

She smiled. "Pour for us, please, Jeeves."

When the AI had refreshed their bulbs, she turned to face him directly. He copied her, and they joined a hand to steady themselves in the new att.i.tude. She held on.

"Jay," she said, "I'm old. I was old enough to vote when the first tourist littered the moon. I was spending a fortune on cosmetic camouflage the year the Fireflies showed up and Shara Drummond danced the Stardance for them. I've had a five-cent Coca Cola, and watched the first television set on my block.

Flatscreen, monochrome. I've owned 78 RPM phonograph records and a hand-cranked Victrola. I've buried three husbands, three children and two grandchildren. One of my great-grandchildren in Canada is dying, and I have to keep asking Jeeves her name. Jeeves, what is my dying great-grandchild's name?"

"Charlotte, madam," Jeeves murmured from somewhere nearby.

"I have been a success in three professions," she went on, "and a failure in two. It's not that most of my life is behind me.All of my life is behind me, receding. I always said I was going to check out when and if my clock showed three figures . . . and I came here to the s.h.i.+mizu for that purpose. I stopped controlling my cosmetic age the day I moved into this suite, as a sign that I was withdrawing from human affairs. I'vebeen saying goodbye for the last sixteen years. You know most of this."

He nodded and sipped the Irish whiskey, still holding her hand.

"Haven't you ever wondered what's taking me so long?"

He shook his head. "Not once. I figure saying goodbye to life could take me, oh,seventeen years, easy."

"You'll find out," she said. "Old age is not for sissies. I had all my goodbyes said years ago."

"All right," he said agreeably. "I'll play Mr. Interlocutor. Whyare you still using up air, Ms. Hoffman?"

"Sheer annoyance," she said. "I'd always expected to live to see the world end. I planned to watch humanity die of its own stupidity and meanness, and chortle at the irony of it all. I expected to enjoy it immensely."

"I can understand that," he said slowly.

"Long before I came up here, I'd admitted to myself that it just isn't going to happen any time soon.

Okay: I didn't insist on doom . . . as so many of my contemporaries had. I would have settled for watching us come through in the clutch, reach deep inside ourselves and pull out the best of us andsolve our d.a.m.ned problems." She glanced down at her bulb, found too much whiskey there and corrected the problem. "What I wasn't prepared for was to have big red Fireflies drop in and fix thingsfor us . . . and then scamper off to wherever the h.e.l.l they came from without telling uswhy !"

She looked into his eyes for understanding, and did not find it. He was too young for questions like this to be troubling in anything but an abstract sense. And he had grown up in a world where telepathic Stardancers-and the mysterious alien Fireflies who had appeared out of nowhere, created the Stardancers and their collective Starmind, and then vanished back into deep s.p.a.ce-were prosaic history, something that had happened sixteen years before he was born. She saw him try to understand, and fail.

She broke eye contact and sculled around to face the window and the world again. "Anyway, it's come to me in the last few days that what I've been doing . . . what I've been waiting for . . . has been for the d.a.m.ned Fireflies to come back from wherever they went and tell us what's going on. Or for me to cleverly deduce it for myself. The most important philosophical question the human race has faced since the aliens dropped in and out again is, 'What the h.e.l.l wasthat ?'In sixty-four years we haven't made a dent in it.

"Realizing that has forced me to face the fact that I'm wasting my time. If n.o.body else can figure it out, I probably can't either. Available evidence indicates the Fireflies drop by once every couple of thousand years at best. I can't wait that long. And this steady diet of unearned good news lately has just got me baffled."

"Are you sure it's unearned?" he said. "Stardancers start as human beings, however different they may become after Symbiosis. The scientific name for them ish.o.m.o caelestis. Humanity birthed them: the Fireflies were just midwives."

"Stardancers do not suffer from fear or hunger or poverty or l.u.s.t or loneliness," Eva said. "Thanks to their Symbiote, they're immortal, effectively invulnerable, and perpetually loved. As far as I'm concerned, that means they're not human anymore. And if things keep going the way they are, it's conceivable thatone day n.o.body on Earth may be hungry or cold or oppressed. If that day comes, by my lights there won'tbe any human beings anymore."

"So you want to leave while things are still miserable," he said.

She frowned at her drink.

"No," she said. "That's my point. Everybody's happy now. I personally think that in time the hangover will arrive, and people will find out that even nanotechnology has hidden costs. No matter how many miracles we come up with, I believe there arealways limits to growth. I have a friend named Ling who says he can prove it-I can't follow his math, but it sounds convincing. But meanwhile there is peace on the world . . . maybe it's only temporary, but n.o.body can know that yet. So maybe this is agood time to leave, and I should stop dragging my feet."

He kept his face expressionless. "How do you plan to do it?"

His very neutrality cued her that he was angry. It startled her. She precessed to face him again. "Is that relevant?"

"It's closer than anything that's been said since I jaunted in here," he said. "Let's cut through all the bulls.h.i.+t about Stardancers and Fireflies and how happy the world is today. You have obviously decided to check out. For some reason you think I need to know that in advance. That means you have some role in mind for me. I'm curious to know what it is. Do you want me to stand by with the ceremonial sword in case you lose your nerve? Am I supposed to talk you out of it? Or just be your witness and hold your hand? Angel's advocate, enabler, or audience-I can go any way you like, Eva. I'm your friend and I'll try to give you whatever you need of me, but you've got to tell me the steps."

She let go of her drink and reached toward him with her withered hands. He abandoned his own drink and took them in his own.

"In a month," she said, "Reb Hawkins will be coming to the s.h.i.+mizu. I want to talk with him one more time. Immediately after that I plan to go out the airlock." She gestured toward the window with her chin.

"Out there. When I'm ready, my p-suit will kill me, painlessly and not abruptly. I want to die in s.p.a.ce. As I die, I would like to watch you dance . . . if you're willing."

He was speechless. He tried to free his hands, and she would not let him. He tried to tear his gaze from hers, and she would not allow that either. "Why me?" he said finally.

"Dance is the only thing humans do that'sonly beautiful," she said. "It's the only thing we do that speaks even to Fireflies, as far as we can tell. I want to die watching a human being dance. A human, not a Stardancer. You're the best dancer I know. And you're my friend. I thought about not putting this on you until the last minute . . . but I thought you might want some time to ch.o.r.eograph your dance. I know how busy you'll be once your brother arrives."

Globules of salt water began to grow from his eyes. Despite sixteen years in free-fall, she still found the sight of zero-gee tears simultaneously hilarious and moving. And contagious. He shook his head, and the droplets flew away. She blinked back her own, and waited.

At last, with difficulty, he smiled. "I am honored, Eva," he said. He released her hands, plucked his bulb out of the air, and raised his arm in a toast. She reclaimed her own, and they emptied them together. She did not hesitate, spun and threw her bulb as hard as she could, directly at that absurdly expensivewindow. The bulb shattered musically.

She had startled him. A cannon couldn't have broken that window-but still, what a gesture! He was game, though: his own bulb burst only a second or two after hers. When they had recovered from their throws, he bowed to her, a Buddhistga.s.sho she suspected he must have learned from his grandmother.

She returned it gravely. "Thank you," she said.

There was nothing left to say. Or too much. After they had watched the tugbots chase and disa.s.semble gla.s.s shards for a few moments, he cleared his throat and said, "I've got to see Ev Martin before dinner."

She grinned. "Another argument for suicide. You're right, you wouldn't want to talk to him on a full stomach."

"Not even on a stomach full of hundred-year-old whiskey," he agreed. "But it'll help. Thanks for it."

She made a mental note to leave him the balance of the bottle in her will.

He paused at the door. "Eva?"

"Yes," she said, without turning.

"Is it all right if I spend the next month trying to get you to change your mind?"

"Yes," she said. "But don't be attached to succeeding, Jay. I've been thinking about this a long time."

After a while she heard the door close and seal.

6.

Toronto, Ontario 4 December 2064.

There is no such thing as a slight flaw in a dance floor.

And all floors have flaws. Anyone but a dancer would probably call them slight: certainly the manufacturers do. Nonetheless, each floor has its own invisible peculiarities, lurking in wait for dancers'

feet. Even the floor of Toronto's famous Drummond Theatre. The company had gone through two complete rehearsals, undress and dress, without a hitch; it was in the final onstage warm-up cla.s.s, a scant hour before curtain, that John DeMarco, who had been dreaming of and working toward this night for allhis professional life, found the flaw with his name on it. It broke his ankle.

At any other time it would have been a nuisance. The actual repair could be accomplished in less than ten minutes at the nearest hospital, after two hours of datawork and waiting in the emergency room. And once fixed, you'd be hopping around good as new . . . in a matter of mere hours. . . .

The ugly sound had riveted the attention of all. It took only minutes to establish that the nearest hospital was half an hour away in the best of times, and that everyone in the company seemed to have run out of painblock at once. So had John, of course. Dancers started to drift away to call hospitals and search dressing rooms and find the driver; the AD, watching her company scattering to the four winds an hour before curtain, bellowed them into stasis and bent over John's rec.u.mbent form. "Is there any hope at all?"

she asked.

It was clearly a break, not just a sprain. John shook his head, and started to apologize.

She waved it away. "Then you'll have to live with it for a while. I can't spare anyone here: I have to recast the whole performance in forty-five minutes, and everyone I can see Ineed. We'll put you in dressing room two. Jacques! Harry!"

The pain was exquisite, almost nauseating. "No! Wait! Put me in the audience. If I can't be in it, I'm gonna see the run-through."

She nodded to Harry and Jacques. "Do it."

Harry, the stage manager, gave him a jacket to put over his warm-up clothes, promised to try and find him some painblock and a ride as soon as possible, and left him front-row center. Not an ideal seat, but convenient. One of the dancers who could be spared momentarily brought him an improvised pack of ice from the concession in the lobby. He concentrated on the frenzied activity onstage to distract himself from his pain.

Shortly after he decided Anna was f.u.c.king the whole thing up, he noticed that the pain was gone.

Utterly.

He yelped, in astonishment and something like fright. Anna glared at him from the stage. "Harry, take him back-stage-"

"No," he said. "Sorry. I'm fine; won't happen again."

She went back to her work. He bent and looked at his ankle. No question, that was a broken ankle, all right. The swelling was already so advanced that he knew it was badly broken. Now why in h.e.l.l didn't it hurt?

The swelling began to visibly reduce.

He yelped again. Anna turned and came to the edge of the stage. "John, I'm sorry, but-"

"Look at my foot!"

She blinked.

"G.o.d dammit, come down here and look at my f.u.c.king foot!" The dancers followed her. They gathered around and watched his ankle heal itself. After a few murmurs and gasps, no one said a word. In minutes, the ankle looked just like its mate. John flexed it slowly, listening for grating sounds, and then extended it with the same care. Then he circled it, one way and then the other, and started to laugh. Soon everyone was laughing, even Anna. He got to his feet, took a few cautious steps-then took a running start and sprang up on stage. He did a combination on his way to his place for the first piece. "Come on, boss," he said, still laughing. " 'Time's a-wastin'!" It was one of her catch-phrases; the company dissolved into hysterics.

Anna let that go on for a good five seconds. From then on they were so busy that it wasn't until midway through the triumphant fourth curtain call that John had time to wonder about it all.

He never did figure it out. He had to be told. But he didn't mind.

PART THREE.

7.