Starseed

Chapter Five

Kirra and I both woke up with stiff necks. We hadn’t learned yet that if you don’t secure your head while you sleep in zero gee, you nod all night long, in time with your breathing. A terrestrial equivalent might be watching a tennis match for eight hours while lying on your side. We gave each other neck rubs before we got dressed. Kirra gave a first-rate neck rub. It’s a rare skill, and blessed in a roommate. It was the first time I’d had friendly hands on me, and the first warm flesh I’d touched with my fingers, in I couldn’t remember how many months.

I didn’t see Robert at breakfast the next morning, and was just as glad. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, how to act with him, how I felt about him. So far he had made no moves that were not ambiguous, that could not be read as simple friendliness. How would I respond if he did? Dammit, I didn’t need this distraction now. I would tell him so…if the son of a bitch would only give me a clear opportunity!

When I realized I had spent all of breakfast thinking about not thinking about him, it occurred to me that it might be simplest to just get it over with. Have a quick intense affair, end it cleanly, and get on with preparing for Symbiosis.

Right. When had I ever had a quick intense affair that ended cleanly? Symbiosis would be hard enough without going out of my way to risk ego damage just beforehand.

He was in class when I got there, on the far side of the room. I took a vacant space near the door. In what would become a daily ritual, we all sat kûkanzen together for a half an hour; then we pushed off the wall and expanded to fill the room again. There were no bungee cords today; we were all in constant slight motion, forced into frequent touching, into learning the knack of stabilizing each other without setting up chain reactions of disturbance. It was interesting. When you’re part of an unsecured group in free fall, you’re part of a group. Like a driver watching cars far ahead for possible danger, you find yourself keeping track of movements three or four people away from you, because any motion anyone else makes will sooner or later affect you. You can’t withdraw inward and ignore your fellows—because if you do, sooner or later you get an elbow in the eye.

Reb spoke that day of Leavetaking. It was his word for our primary task during our first month of Postulancy. Taking our leave, emotionally and psychologically, of all earthly things, of the kin and kindred we were leaving behind. “In effect you must do what a dying person does…with the advantages that you are not in pain or drugged or immobilized. You can take your leave with a clear mind and a clear heart. Most important, you have no need to be afraid. In your case, you know that the kind of dying you do will not mean the end of you, and your universe. In a sense, you’ll get to have your afterlife now, while you’re around to enjoy it.” There were a few chuckles. “But I apologize, sincerely and humbly, if to any of you that sounds like blasphemy. I do not mean to imply that Symbiosis is the same as the afterlife or rebirth that terrestrial religions speak of. It is not. But it carries nearly the same price tag. You have to abandon everything to get there.

“You’re a little like terminal patients with three months to live. You have one month to grieve, and one month to prepare, and then one month to decide. Don’t waste a minute of it, is my advice. Life on earth is something to lose. Get your mourning done, so you can put it aside. Because life in space is something to look forward to.”

Someone asked how you mourn your past.

“One of the best methods,” Reb said, “is something of a cliché. Let your whole life pass before your eyes. Only you don’t have to cram it into one final instant. Take a month. Remember. Re-member: become a member again. Remember your life, as much of it as you can; write your memoirs in your mind, or type them out or dictate them to Teena if it helps you. Every time you remember a good part, say goodbye to it. Every time you remember a bad part, say goodbye to that as well. If you come to a part that hurts to remember, sit kûkanzen with it until it doesn’t hurt anymore. If you have a place you just can’t get past, come to me for further help.”

The rest of class was devoted to a long lecture/demonstration on how to breathe correctly—“You ought to get it right once before you give it up for good,” he told us—but I won’t record it here. Read Shunryu Suzuki-roshi if you’re really interested, or Reb’s book Running Jumping Standing Still. Before breaking for the day, Reb announced that anyone interested in formal kûkanzen sitting, with traditional Soto Buddhist forms, was welcome to come to his zendo any evening after dinner. He was also available for dokusan, private interviews. It seemed to me that his eyes brushed mine while he said this. After class I approached him and, when I had his attention, told him that I intended to join his evening meditation group, but that I had a private project of my own to complete first. He smiled and nodded. “You need to know if you can dance,” he agreed. “Good luck.” He gave his attention to the next person who wanted it.

I tottered off to lunch, more than a little surprised. Yes, he’d known every one of us by name on the first day. But to know so much about me as an individual implied either remarkable research for a teacher…or insight approaching telepathy.

On my way to lunch I missed a transition and spent a humiliating few minutes drifting free in the center of a corridor intersection until a Second-Monther came along and bailed me out. It caused me to work through a logic chain. If I was ever going to learn to remaster my body in this weird environment, and dance again, I was going to need all the help I could get. But help from Robert came with ambiguous strings attached. Therefore I needed someone else. A Second-Monther, like the one who’d just helped me? I’d seen a few of them so far, they were billeted in a different section of Top Step, and the ones I’d passed in the corridors had all worn an air of quizzical distraction and seemed in a hurry. (I still hadn’t seen any Third-Monthers, but Kirra had; she said he’d looked “awful holy or awful high, or maybe both,” in a sort of daze.) Still, there had been helpful Second-Monthers at meals; maybe I’d ask one of them for tutoring and see what they said.

But as I entered the cafeteria I changed my mind. Sulke Drager was eating by herself; I took my food over to her table and asked if I could join her. After a few conversational politenesses, I asked her if she’d be willing to tutor me after hours.

She laughed in my face. “How much are you offering per hour?”

Since Suit Camp, I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking about money. It was part of what I was leaving behind. But what money I owned was still mine until I entered Symbiosis and thereby donated it all to the Starseed Foundation. There wasn’t much, mostly the carefully measured trickle of Grandmother’s trust fund, but what did I need it for? Symbiosis or Euthanasia were my choices, and neither required capital. “How about two hundred dollars an hour? Uh, Canadian dollars.”

She grimaced. “What do I know from dollars? How much is that in air-days or calories? Or even Deutschmarks? Never mind, you don’t know and I don’t care. Whatever it is, it isn’t enough.”

“Why not?”

She stopped eating and faced me. “I just got here from six hard sweaty hours in a p-suit over at the Mirror Farm. After I finish trying to teach you clowns here, I go put in another six hours as a glorified lab clerk over at the NanoTech Safe Lab—only six hours turns into eight because of what they put you through every time you enter and leave that place. Like what you got at Decontam, but worse. Then I can catch the shuttle home to Hooverville and catch a few hours of sleep. All this buys me just enough air and food to keep going. I haven’t got an hour to spare. And if I did, the last thing in the System I’d spend it on is more of teaching one of you freebreathers how to swim.”

“Sorry I asked.”

“Look, you’re a dancer, right? Do you enjoy teaching first position and pliés to beginners?”

I certainly couldn’t argue with that. We finished our meals without further conversation.

I watched her during that afternoon’s class. She worked hard and well with us, but she did it with a barely submerged air of resentment. I thought of her term for us. Freebreather. Analogous, no doubt, to freeloader. We did not sweat for the air we breathed. It was given to us by the Starseed Foundation. We loafed and probed our souls while Sulke scrambled to survive. She and the other hundreds of zero-gee-adapted spacers must all dislike us.

I noticed something else as I floundered with the others, trying instinctively and uselessly to swim in air. Robert’s roommate Ben had become terrific at this…literally overnight. Yesterday he’d been as clumsy as the rest of us—and today he was as graceful and controlled in his movements as Robert. He learned new moves and tactics as fast as Sulke could show them to him; he even showed her one she didn’t know. I don’t think I could describe it; it seemed to involve having eyes in the back of your head.

Sulke called both Ben and me aside after class. Kirra and Robert both drifted a polite distance away to wait for us. “You still go a lot to learn—but you got damn good damn fast,” she told him. “How?”

The trouble with asking Ben a question is, he’s liable to answer. “Well, you know that psych experiment where they tape inverting lenses over your eyes, and for a while you’re blind and then on the second day suddenly you can see again? Your brain tears down the whole visual system and rebuilds it upside down in two days; well I’ve been doing that kind of stuff for fun for almost thirty years, rewiring my brain for new paradigms; two days is what it usually takes me, I’m right on schedule. It’s amazing what you can do with your own brain when you start messing around with the circuitry—do you know about the time The Great Woz rebuilt his own memory after an accident? He said he thought his brain from the zero to the one state. Sometimes I think I know what he means—”

Sulke got a word in edgewise. “Whatever. McLeod here needs some tutoring evenings. Why don’t you help her out?”

He smiled at me sheepishly. “Gee, Morgan, I’d love to help you, but I’m kind of busy myself just now. I’ve got this little project I just started this morning; I’m working with Teena on memorizing Top Step; I want to get to the place where I can close my eyes and point to anyplace in the rock and get it right. And I want to spend more time with Kirra too. Uh, could I get back to you in two days?” While I was trying to cope with the enormity of his assumption that he could master the three-dimensional geography of this huge place in another two days, and wondering whether I could stand to study jaunting with this happy madman, he got a brainstorm. “No, you know what you should do? Robert! Hey, Robert—c’mere. You should ask Robert to help you, hey, that’s a great idea, he’s good at this stuff too, hey Robert, Morgan needs somebody to teach her jaunting and I’m booked: why don’t you help her?”

Robert and I looked at each other. We both wanted to kick Ben, and neither wanted to show it. “I’ve offered,” he said expressionlessly.

Sulke was studying us. “Well,” she said, “I have to jet.” She kicked away and left.

“Well, there you go, then,” Ben said, hugely pleased with himself.

“Ben, love,” Kirra said, “let’s you and me go get some tucker and let them talk it over, eh?” You can’t kick somebody in the shin surreptitiously in zero gee: you bounce away.

“Huh? Oh, sure. See you at supper, folks.” He and Kirra left us alone.

I wanted to join them. But I suddenly realized I couldn’t. I had carelessly let go of my handhold to let Sulke by, then failed to regain it in time. We’d all handed in our thruster units at the close of class. I was adrift; unless Robert helped me, it’d be at least a couple of minutes before I drifted near another wall. Damn!

He kept his position near the hatch and watched me. When the silence had stretched out for oh, half of forever, he said, “So what time tonight is good for you?”

“Robert,” I said slowly, “we have to talk.”

“Yes.”

I was spinning very slowly; soon I’d be facing away from him. I knew the maneuver to correct for that. But if I screwed it up I’d put myself into a tumble from which he’d more or less have to rescue me. “Look…can we skip past a lot of bullshit?”

“Yes.”

“What exactly do you want from me? I’ve been around, I know you’re interested. But interested in what? I’ve got too much on my mind for high school guessing games: I’m busy. You want a quick roll in the hay, you want to go steady, you want my autograph, you want to have my baby, what?”

There are probably a thousand wrong answers to that question. The only right one I can think of is the one he came up with. “I want to get to know you better.”

I sighed and studied his strange, beautiful face. I wanted to get to know him better. And I needed the distraction like a hole in the head.

I was having to crane my neck now to keep eye contact. So I tried to reverse my spin, and of course I bungled it and went into a slow tumble. They say you’re not supposed to get dizzy in free fall, because your semicircular canals fill up completely and your sense of balance shuts down. But I’d only been in space a few days; the room whirled, I lost all reference points, I got dizzy.

“Stiffen up,” Robert called, his voice coming closer. “Don’t try to help me.” I tensed all my limbs. He took me by the wrists, we pivoted around each other like trapeze artists and headed for the far wall together. He changed his grip and did something and we were in a loose embrace, feet toward our destination. “Ready? Landing…now.” We let our legs soak up most of our momentum, ended up headed back toward the hatch, but moving slowly. We were touching at hands and knees. His eyes were a meter from mine.

“Look,” I said, “the timing is lousy.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“See, I came here to dance. That’s all, I came here to dance. Anything else comes second. I can’t dance anymore on Earth. If I can’t dance here either, I don’t know if I’m going through with Symbiosis. And I don’t know if I can dance here or not. I thought I could, but I can’t even seem to learn the equivalent of crawling on all fours. Maybe I’m one of the ones who just can’t get it. I can’t give you any kind of an answer until I know. Does that make any sense?”

He thought about it as we reached the midpoint of the room and he led us through our turnover. “It makes me want to teach you everything I can, as fast as possible. What time is good tonight?”

“Did you hear what I—”

“We Chinese are a notoriously patient people.”

I sighed in exasperation.

“Let me help you, as a friend. No obligations. I’ve admired your work for a long time; allow me this honour.”

What the hell can you say to something like that? That evening we spent two hours working out together in “my” gym.

And it was a fiasco.

Early on we identified my major problem: an unconscious, instinctive tendency to select one of the possible local verticals and stubbornly declare it the “correct” one in my mind, so that I became disoriented when out of phase with it. It is the most common problem of a neophyte in free fall. Ten million years of evolution insist on knowing which way “down” is, just in case this weightlessness business should suddenly fail. Even a false answer is preferable to no answer.

Identifying the problem didn’t help solve it at all. Robert was indeed patient, but I must have tried his patience. Finally I thanked him, politely kicked him out, and spent another couple of hours alone, trying to dance.

It wasn’t a total disaster. But damn close. In the last ten minutes I managed to put together one eight-second sequence that didn’t stink. The first time I did it was dumb luck, an accident with serendipitous results. But I was able to reproduce it again…and again. About three times out of five. If I didn’t crash into something while I was trying. In playback, it looked good from five of the six camera angles.

But I could not connect that eight seconds up with anything. The third time I had to stop to towel away sweat from the middle of my back I said the hell with it, got in and out of the shower bag, and went back to my room. Kirra was out. I climbed into my sleepsack, dimmed the lights, and studied holograms of some of my favorite Stardancer dance pieces, trying to understand how they made what they did look so effortless. I even went back as far as the oldest zero-gee dance there is, Shara Drummond’s Liberation. She’d only been dancing in space for three weeks when Armstead recorded it. Until now, I’d never fully appreciated just how good it was.

After a while Kirra came in, humming softly to herself. “Hello, lovey. How’d it go?”

I collapsed the holo. “How’d it go with you? Ben show you any good moves?” She’d gone to his place to learn 3-D chess.

She came and docked with my sleepsack. Her grin was about to split her face. “Benjamin showed me his very best moves,” she said in a dreamy singsong voice.

My eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”

She shook her head, beaming. We squealed together and burst into giggles. “Tell me everything!” I demanded.

“Well, you know, I’d always wondered,” she said, settling into a hug, “what’d it be like? I mean, what’d keep you squished together if not the weight?”

I’d always wondered too. “Right. So?”

“So it turns out it’s as natural as breathin’. You hug with four arms is all, and then you…well, you dance. Nowhere near as hard as the stuff we do in class.” She closed her eyes in reminiscence. “It was lots gentler than it is on Earth. And nicer. He didn’t need to hold himself up, so he could keep on usin’ his hands all the way through.” She squealed and opened her eyes again. “Oh, it was awful nice! Benjamin says we’ll get even better with time.”

I nodded. “Wait’ll you see how good he is in two days’ time,” I said, and made her laugh from deep inside.

She was my friend; I shared her joy. But a part of me was envious. I tried hard to hide it, to make the right noises as she chattered happily on, and thought I succeeded.

Maybe she smelled it. “So how’d you make out with your dancing, love?” she asked finally.

I found myself pouring out my frustrations to her. “And I can’t even start to figure out where I stand with him until I know whether or not I can dance in free fall,” I finished, “and I can’t even guess how long it’s going to be before I know.”

She looked thoughtful. “Tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“How’s your back feel?”

“Why, not too—oh!”

“How ’bout those knees, then?”

My back did not hurt. My knees did not hurt.

“You worked out more in the last two days than you did in the last year, tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “Have your legs buckled? Got crook back?”

No and no, by God. I was tired and ached in a dozen places, but they were no worse than one should expect when getting back into shape after a long layoff.

“You can do this. Matter of time, that’s all.”

I was thunderstruck. She was absolutely right. My instrument was working again. Hell, I had managed to transition from ballet to modern dance once: I could learn this. There was nothing stopping me! Nothing but time and courage. The sense of relief was overwhelming. I felt a surge of elation, and at the same time a delicious tiredness. Moments before I’d been suffering from fatigue; now I was just sleepy.

“Kirra, you’re an angel,” I cried, and hugged her harder, and kissed her. Then we smiled at each other, and she jaunted to her own bed and dimmed the lights. She undressed quickly and slid into the sack. “Night, lovey,” she called softly.

“G’night, Kirra,” I murmured. “I’m happy for you. Ben’s sweet.”

My last thought was I’m going to sleep sounder tonight than I have in years, and then almost at once I was deep under—

—and then I was wide awake, saying, “What the hell was that?” aloud, and Kirra said it too and we both listened and heard nothing but silence, total silence, and at last I thought Silence? In a space dwelling?

The air circulation system in Top Step is whisper quiet—but boy, do you miss that whisper when it stops!

Then a robot was speaking with Teena’s voice, loudly, in my left ear.

In only the one ear, and very slowly, unmistakably Teena’s voice but without any inflections of tone or pitch: she must have been talking to or with nearly every resident of Top Step at once, time-sharing like mad, no bytes to spare for vocal personality or stereo effect. “Attention! Attention! There has been a major system malfunction. There is no immediate cause for alarm, repeat, no cause for alarm. The circulation system is temporarily down. It is being repaired. All personnel are advised to remain in constant motion until further notice. Do not let yourself remain motionless for more than a few moments. If you can reach p-suit or other personal pressure, please do so, calmly.” Not wanting to drain her resources any further, we asked no questions.

A moment later, her voice was superseded by that of Dorothy Gerstenfeld. She explained the nature of the problem, assured us it would be fixed long before it became serious, entreated us all not worry, and sounded so serene and confident herself that I did stop worrying. Her explanation was too technical for me to follow, but her tone of voice said I should be reassured by it, so I was.

The circulation system was only down for half an hour. Nothing to be afraid of: Top Step was immense and a lot of it was pressurized; there was more than enough air on hand to last us all much longer than half an hour in a pinch. The worst of it was nuisance: when the air stops flowing in a space habitat, you must not be motionless. If you are, exhaled CO₂ forms an invisible sphere around your head and slowly smothers you. There are many jobs aboard Top Step for which constant head motion is contraindicated, tracking a large-mass docking, for instance; such people had to find someone to fan their heads, or stop work for the duration. And everyone else had to keep moving. You can’t imagine how annoying that can be until it’s forced upon you. Not that being in motion takes any hard work, in zero gee—it’s just that your natural tendency and subconscious desire is to stop moving as much as possible, to stimulate the terrestrial environment you remember as natural, and overcoming that impulse gets wearing very quickly. Especially if you were tired to begin with.

But it was over soon enough. Kirra and I experimented with fanning each other’s faces, and told each other campfire stories, and at last we heard the soft sound of the pumps coming back up to speed. Because I was alert for it, I became consciously aware for the first time of the movement of air on my skin as soon as it resumed.

“The emergency is over,” Teena said, still in robot mode. “Repeat, the emergency is over. There have been zero casualties. Resume normal operations. Thank you.”

“Thank you all for not panicking,” Dorothy’s voice added. “We have everything under control now. Resume your duties. Those of you on sleep shift, try to get back to sleep; you’ve a long day ahead.”

I had surprisingly little difficulty feeling sleepy again, and Kirra was snoring—musically—before I was. As I was fading out again I had a thought. “Teena?” I whispered.

“Yes, Morgan?” Her reply was also whispered, but I could tell this was the old, fully human-sounding Teena again, so it was all right to bother her now.

“What caused the circulation system to go down?”

She almost seemed to hesitate. Silly, of course; computers don’t hesitate. “A component was improperly installed through carelessness. It has been replaced.”

“Oh. Glad it wasn’t anything serious. A meteor or something. That reminds me: how is Mr. Henderson, the Chief Steward on my flight up here?”

“I’m sorry to say he died about four hours ago, without regaining consciousness.”

“Oh.” No one had needed to fan his head while the air was down.

“Good night. Morgan.”

“G’night.”

My last drifting thought was something about how lucky I’d been lately. Two life-threatening emergencies in forty-eight hours, and I’d lived through them both.

There weren’t any more for weeks.