by Spider
She nodded judiciously. “No smokestacks in space.”
“No garbage dumps.”
“No sewage.”
“No cow farts.”
“How did she die, Charlie?”
Oof. “Magnificently.”
“I read the papers. I know that’s bullshit, and…and you were there.”
“Yeah.” I had told the story over a hundred times in the last three weeks—but I had never told a friend, and I discovered I needed to. And Norrey certainly deserved to know of her sister’s dying.
And so I told her of the aliens’ coming, of Shara’s intuitive understanding that the beings communicated by dance, and her instant decision to reply to them. I told her of Shara’s slow realization that the aliens were hostile, territorially aggressive, determined to have our planet for a spawning ground. And I told her, as best I could, of the Stardance.
“She danced them right out of the solar system, Norrey. She danced everything she had in her—and she had all of us in her. She danced what we are, what she was, and she scared them silly. They weren’t afraid of military lasers, but she scared ’em right the hell back to deep space. Oh, they’ll be back some day—I don’t know why, but I feel it in my bones. But it might not be in our lifetime. She told them what it is to be human. She gave them the Stardance.”
Norrey was silent a long time, and then she nodded. “Uh huh.” Her face twisted suddenly. “But why did she have to die, Charlie?”
“She was done, honey,” I said and took her hand. “She was acclimated all the way to free fall by then, and it’s a one-way street. She could never have returned to Earth, not even to the one-sixth gee in Skyfac. Oh, she could have lived in free fall. But Carrington owns everything in free fall except military hardware—and she didn’t have any more reason to take anything from him. She’d danced her Stardance, and I’d taped it, and she was done.”
“Carrington,” she said, and her fingers gripped my hand fiercely. “Where is he now?”
“I just found out myself this morning. He tried to grab all the tapes and all the money for Skyfac Incorporated, i.e., him. But he’d neglected to have Shara sign an actual contract, and Tom McGillicuddy found an airtight holograph will in her effects. It leaves everything fifty-fifty to you and me. So Carrington tried to buy a probate judge, and he picked the wrong judge. It would have hit the news this afternoon. The thought of even a short sentence in one gee was more than he could take. I think at the last he convinced himself that he had actually loved her, because he tried to copy her exit. He bungled it. He didn’t know anything about leaving a rotating Ring, and he let go too late. It’s the most common beginner’s error.”
Norrey looked puzzled.
“Instead of becoming a meteorite like her, he was last seen heading in the general direction of Betelgeuse. I imagine it’s on the news by now.” I glanced at my watch. “In fact, I would estimate that he’s just running out of air about now—if he had the guts to wait.”
Norrey smiled, and her fingers relaxed. “Let’s hold that thought,” she purred.
If captured—don’t let them give you to the women.
The salad arrived then. Thousand Islands for Norrey and French for me, just as we would have ordered if we’d thought of it. The portions were unequal, and each was precisely as much as the recipient felt like eating. I don’t know how Fat Humphrey does it. At what point does that kind of empathy become telepathy?
There was further sporadic conversation as we ate, but nothing significant. Fat Humphrey’s cuisine demanded respectful attention. The meal itself arrived as we were finishing the salad, and when we had eaten our fill, both plates were empty and the coffee was cool enough to drink. Slices of Fat’s fresh apricot pie were produced warm from the oven, and reverently dealt with. More coffee was poured. I took some pseudoephedrine for my nose. The conversation reawoke groggily, and there was only one question left for her to ask now so I asked her first.
“So what’s happening with you, Norrey?”
She made a face. “Nothing much.”
Lovely answer. Push.
“Norrey, on the day there is nothing much happening in your life, there’ll be honest government in Ottawa. I hear you stood still, once, for over an hour—but the guy that said it was a famous liar. Come on, you know I’ve been out of touch.”
She frowned, and that was it for me, that was the trigger. I had been thinking furiously ever since I came off standby in Norrey’s arms back at the studio, and I had already figured out a lot of things. But the sight of that frown completed the process; all at once the jumble in my subconscious fell into shape with an almost audible click. They can come that way, you know. Flashes of insight. In the middle of a sentence, in a microsecond, you make a quantum jump in understanding. You look back on twenty years of blind stupidity without wincing, and perceive the immediate future in detail. Later you will marvel—at that instant you only accept and nod. The Sicilians have a thing like it, that they call the thunder-bolt. It is said to bring deep calm and great gravity. It made me break up.
“What’s so funny?”
“Don’t know if I can explain it, hon. I guess I just figured out how Fat Humphrey does it.”
“Huh?”
“Tell you later. You were saying…”
The frown returned. “Mostly I wasn’t saying. What’s happening with me, in twenty-five words or less? I haven’t asked myself in quite a while. Maybe too long.” She sipped coffee. “Okay. You know that John Koerner album, the last commercial one he made? Running Jumping Standing Still? That’s what I’ve been doing, I think. I’ve been putting out a lot of energy, doing satisfying things, and I’m not satisfied. I’m…I’m almost bored.”
She floundered, so I decided to play devil’s advocate. “But you’re right where you’ve always wanted to be,” I said, and began rolling a joint.
She grimaced. “Maybe that’s the trouble. Maybe a life’s ambition shouldn’t be something that can be achieved—because what do you do then? You remember Koerner’s movie?”
“Yeah. The Sound of Sleep. Nutball flick, nice cherries on top.”
“Remember what he said the meaning of life was?”
“Sure. ‘Do the next thing.’” I suited action to the word, licked it, sealed it and twisted the ends, then lit it. “Always thought it was terrific advice. It got me through some tough spots.”
She toked, held it and exhaled before replying. “I’m ready to do the next thing—but I’m not sure what that is. I’ve toured with the company, I’ve soloed in New York, I’ve choreographed, I’ve directed the whole damn school and now I’m an artistic director. I’ve got full autonomy now; I can even teach a class again if I feel like it. Every year from now until Hell freezes TDT’s repertoire will include one of my pieces, and I’ll always have superb bodies to work with. I’ve been working on childhood dreams all my life, Charlie, and I hadn’t thought ahead any farther than this when I was a kid. I don’t know what ‘the next thing’ is. I need a new dream.”
She toked again, passed it to me. I stared at the glowing tip conspiratorially, and it winked at me. “Any clues? Directions at least?”
She exhaled carefully, spoke to her hands. “I thought I might like to try working one of those commune-companies, where everybody choreographs every piece. I’d like to try working with a group-head. But there’s really no one here I could start one with, and the only existing group-head that suits me is New Pilobolus—and for that I’d have to live in America.”
“Forget that.”
“Hell, yes. I…Charlie, I don’t know, I’ve even thought of chucking it all and going out to PEI to farm. I always meant to, and never really did. Shara left the place in good shape, I could…oh, that’s crazy. I don’t really want to farm. I just want something new. Something different. Unmapped territory, something that—Charlie Armstead, what the hell are you grinning about?”
“Sometimes it’s purely magical.”
“What?”
�
��Listen. Can you hear them up there?”
“Hear who?”
“I oughta tell Humphrey. There’s gonna be reindeer shit all over his roof.”
“Charlie!”
“Go ahead, little girl, tug on the whiskers all you want—they’re real. Sit right here on my lap and place your order. Ho ho ho. Pick a number from one to two.”
She was giggling now; she didn’t know why but she was giggling. “Charlie…”
“Pick a number from one to two.”
“Two.”
“That’s a very good number. A very good number. You have just won one perfectly good factory-fresh dream, with all accessories and no warranty at all. This offer is not available through the stores. A very good number. How soon can you leave town?”
“Leave town! Charlie…” She was beginning to get a glimmer. “You can’t mean—”
“How would you like a half interest in a lot of vacuum, baby? I got plenty o’ nuttin’, or at least the use of it, and you’re welcome to all you want. Talk about being on top of the world!”
The giggle was gone. “Charlie, you can’t mean what I think you—”
“I’m offering you a simple partnership in a commune company—a real commune company. I mean, we’ll all have to live together for the first season at least. Lots of real estate, but a bit of a housing shortage at first. We’ll spring for expenses, and it’s a free fall.”
She leaned across the table, put one elbow in her coffee and the other in her apricot pie, grabbed my turtleneck and shook me. “Stop babbling and tell me straight, dammit.”
“I am, honey, I am. I’m proposing a company of choreographers, a true commune. It’ll have to be. Company members will live together, share equally in the profits, and I’ll put up all the expenses just for the hell of it. Oh yeah, we’re rich, did I tell you? About to be, anyway.”
“Charlie—”
“I’m straight, I tell you. I’m starting a company. And a school. I’m offering you a half interest and a full-time, year-round job, dead serious, and I’ll need you to start right away. Norrey, I want you to come dance in free fall.”
Her face went blank. “How?”
“I want to build a studio in orbit and form a company. We’ll alternate performing with school like so: three months of classes dirtside—essentially auditions—and the graduates get to come study for three months in orbit. Any that are any good, we work into the next three months of performance taping. By then we’ve been in low or no gee for a long time, our bodies are starting to adapt, so we take three months vacation on Earth and then start the process over again. We can use the vacations to hunt out likely talent and recruit ’em—go concert-hopping, in other words. It’ll be fun, Norrey. We’ll make history and money both.”
“How, Charlie? How are you going to get the backing for all this? Carrington’s dead, and I won’t work for his associates. Who else but Skyfac and the Space Command have space capacity?”
“Us.”
“?”
“You and me. We own the Stardance tape, Norrey. I’ll show it to you later, I have a dub in my pouch. At this point maybe a hundred people on Earth and a few dozen in space have seen that tape in its entirety. One of them was the president of Sony. He offered me a blank check.”
“A blank—”
“Literally. Norrey, the Stardance may be the single most magnificent artistic utterance of man—irrespective of its historical importance and news value. I would estimate that within five years every sighted person in the solar system will know it. And we own the only tape. And, I own the only existing footage of Shara dancing on Earth, commercial value incalculable. Rich? Hell, we’re powerful! Skyfac Incorporated is so anxious to come out of this looking good that if I phone up to Ring One and ask Tokugawa for the time, he’ll take the next elevator down and give me his watch.”
Her hands dropped from my sweater. I wiped apricot from one limp elbow, dried the other.
“I don’t feel squeamish about profiting from Shara’s death. We made the Stardance, together, she and I; I earned my half and she left you hers. The only thing wrong with that is that it leaves me filthy rich, and I don’t want to be rich—not on this planet. The only way I can think of to piss away that kind of money in a way Shara would have approved is to start a company and a school. We’ll specialize in misfits, the ones who for one reason or another don’t fit into the mold here on Earth. Like Shara. The less than classically perfect dancer’s bodies. That stuff is just irrelevant in space. More important is the ability to open yourself, to learn a whole new kind of dance, to…I don’t know if this will make any sense…to encompass three hundred and sixty degrees. We’ll be making the rules as we go along—and we’ll employ a lot of dancers that aren’t working now. I figure our investment capital is good for about five years. By that time the performing company should be making enough to cover the nut, underwrite the school, and still show a profit. All the company members share equally. Are you in?”
She blinked, sat back, and took a deep breath. “In what? What have you got?”
“Not a damn thing,” I said cheerily. “But I know what I need. It’ll take us a couple of years to get started at the very least. We’ll need a business manager, a stage manager, three or four other dancers who can teach. A construction crew to get started, of course, and an elevator operator, but they’re just employees. My cameras run themselves, by Christ, and I’ll be my own gaffer. I can do it, Norrey—if you’ll help me. Come on—join my company and see the world—from a decent perspective.”
“Charlie, I…I don’t even know if I can imagine free fall dance, I mean, I’ve seen both of Shara’s shows several times of course, and I liked them a lot—but I still don’t know where you could go from there. I can’t picture it.”
“Of course not! You’re still hobbled with ‘up’ and ‘down,’ warped by a lifetime in a gravity well. But you’ll catch on as soon as you can get up there, believe me.” (A year from now my blithe confidence would haunt me.) “You can learn to think spherically, I know you can, the rest is just recoordination, like getting sea legs. Hell, if I can do it at my age, anybody can. You’ll make a good dancing partner.”
She had missed it the first time. Now her eyes enlarged.
“A good what?”
Norrey and I go back a long time, and I’d have to tell you about most of it to explain how I felt just then. Remember when Alistair Sim, as Scrooge, has just awakened from his nightmare and vowed to make amends? And the more nice things he does, and the more people gape at him in bafflement, the more he giggles? And finally he slaps himself in the face and says, “I don’t deserve to be this happy,” and tries to get properly chastened? And then he giggles again and says, “but I just can’t help myself,” and breaks up all over again? That’s how I felt. When a hangup of yours has been a burden to a friend for so many years, and all at once you not only realize that, but know that the burden is lifted, for both of you, there is an exquisite joy in sharing the news.
Remember how Scrooge sprung it on Bob Cratchit, by surprise? “…leaving me no alternative—but to raise your salary!” In the same childish way I had saved this, my real surprise Santa Claus announcement, for last. I intended to savor the moment.
But then I saw her eyes and I just said it flat out.
“The leg is functional in free fall, Norrey. I’ve been working out, hard, every day since I got back dirtside. It’s a little stiff, and I’ll—we’ll—always have to choreograph around it to some extent. But it does everything a weightless dancer needs it to. I can dance again.”
She closed her eyes, and the lids quivered. “Oh my God.” Then she opened them and laughed and cried at once, “Oh my God, Charlie, oh my God, oh my God,” and she reached across the table and grabbed my neck and pulled me close and I got apricot and coffee on my own elbows, and oh her tears were hot on my neck.
The place had gotten busy while we talked; no one seemed to notice us. I held her head in the hollow of my throat, an
d marveled. The only true measure of pain is relief—only in that moment, as layers of scar tissue sloughed off my heart, did I perceive their true weight for the first time.
Finally we were both cried out, and I pulled back and sought her eyes. “I can dance again, Norrey. It was Shara who showed me, I was too damn dumb to notice, too blocked to see it. It was about the last thing she ever did. I can’t throw that away now; I’ve got to dance again, you see? I’m going to go back to space and dance, on my own property and on my own terms and fucking dance again.
“And I want to dance with you, Norrey. I want you to be my partner. I want you to come dance with me. Will you come?”
She sat up straight and looked me in the eye. “Do you know what you are asking me?”
Hang on—here we go! I took a deep breath. “Yes. I’m asking for a full partnership.”
She sat back in her chair and got a faraway look. “How many years have we known each other, Charlie?”
I had to think. “I make it twenty-four years, off and on.”
She smiled. “Yeah. Off and on.” She retrieved the forgotten joint and relit it, took a long hit. “How much of that time do you estimate we’ve spent living together?”
More arithmetic; I toked while I computed. “Call it six or seven years.” Exhale. “Maybe eight.”
She nodded reflectively and took the joint back. “Some pretty crumby times.”
“Norrey—”
“Shut up, Charlie. You waited twenty-four years to propose to me, you can shut up and wait while I give you my answer. How many times would you estimate I came down to the drunk tank and bailed you out?”
I didn’t flinch. “Too many.”
She shook her head. “One less than too many. I’ve taken you in when you needed it and thrown you out when you needed it and never once said the word ‘love,’ because I knew it would scare you away. You were so damned afraid that anyone might love you, because then they’d have to pity you for being a cripple. So I’ve sat by and watched you give your heart only to people who wouldn’t take it—and then picked up the pieces every time.”