The Stardance Trilogy

by Spider

  The tunnel itself was laser-straight, though its walls were roughly sculpted. There were numbered hatches let into the padded rock at odd intervals, and other, smaller tunnels intersected at odd intervals and angles. The main corridor was about eight or ten meters in cross section, with rungs spiraling along its length so that you could never be far from one. These came in handy as we progressed; we were to learn that a perfect tunnel-threading jaunt is almost impossible, even for free fall veterans. Old hands boast of their low CPH, or Contact-Per-Hectometer rate. (If you’re a diehard American, a hectometer, a hundred meters, is the rest of humanity’s name for about a hundred yards.) We soon began to pick up the trick of slinging ourselves along with minimal waste effort. No matter how fast or slow we progressed, the blinking lights that we followed stayed exactly five meters ahead of the foremost one of us, like one of those follow-from-in-front tails you see cops or spies do in the movies.

  We overtook and passed a group of especially clumsy males. They were following pixies of a different colour, so there was minimal confusion between our two groups.

  “Who you roomin’ with, Morgan?” Kirra asked as we jaunted together.

  “I don’t know. The woman I planned to room with came down with the Foul Bowel three days ago—bad enough to get flown off to hospital. I guess I get pot luck.”

  “S’truth!” Kirra exclaimed. “Mine got right to the airlock this morning and decided what she really wanted to do was go back to her husband. Hey, you don’t reckon…? I mean, they sat us next to each other on the Shuttle, do you suppose that means— Hey Teena—”

  “Yes, Kirra?” Teena said.

  “Who’s my bunkie gonna be?”

  “You and Morgan will be rooming together. That is why you were seated adjacent on the Shuttle.”

  “That’s great!” Kirra said.

  I was oddly touched by the genuine enthusiasm in her voice; it had been a long time since anyone had been especially eager for my company. I found that I was pleased myself; Kirra was as likeable as a puppy. “Thanks,” I told her. “I think so too.”

  She grinned. “I ought to warn you…I sing. All the time, I mean. Puts some people off.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “Yah. But I don’t sing anything you know.”

  “I’ll risk it. I dance, myself.”

  “So I hear; like to see it. That’s settled, then. Thanks, Teena!”

  It occurred to me that Teena hadn’t answered Kirra’s question until Kirra asked it. She’d heard us discussing it, presumably, but had not volunteered the information until asked. She’d told the truth, earlier: unless we called on her, she “paid attention” only to things like pulse, respiration, and location coordinates. (If everyone in Top Step ever called her at the same moment, would her system hang? Or did she have the RAM to handle it?) I found that reassurance comforting.

  A woman who knew everything, needed nothing and was only there when you wanted her. I was willing to bet a man had written Teena. She was what my ex-husband had been looking for all his life.

  Shortly Teena said, “We’ll be pausing at that nexus ahead: the one that’s blinking now. Prepare to cancel your velocity.”

  The “nexus” was an intersection of several side tunnels, important enough to have bungee cords strung across the middle of the main tunnel to allow changes of vector. We all managed to grab one.

  “We split up here,” Teena said. “Soon Li, Yumiko, your quarters are this way—” Tinkerbell skittered off down one tunnel, then returned to hover at its entrance. “—Glenn, Nicole, Morgan and Kirra, yours are this way.” Another tunnel developed green fairies.

  We did each say leave-taking politenesses appropriate to our culture, but even Yumiko didn’t linger over it. We were all too eager to see our new home, our personal cave-within-a-cave. Have you ever approached a new dwelling for the first time…after the lease has been signed? Remember how your pulse raced as you got near the door? The schizoid cheap/lavish style of Top Step might just pinch here.

  Our wing was P7; Teena pointed out the wing bathroom and kitchenette as we jaunted past them, stopped Kirra and me at a door marked P7-23. I’m not even sure I said goodbye to Glenn as she continued on past our door toward her own room and roommate. Teena had Kirra and me show the door-lock our thumbprints, whereupon it opened for us.

  Home, sweet spherical home…

  CHAPTER THREE

  When the 10,000 things are viewed in their oneness, we return to the origin and remain where we have always been.

  —Sen T’san

  OUR NEW HOME didn’t look too weird to us because we’d seen pictures in Suit Camp. Still it was exotic; flat pictures don’t do justice to a spherical living space. We drifted around in it for a while, staring at everything, trying out the various facilities, lights and sound and video and climate control, teaching them all to recognize our voices and so on, but the room somehow kept refusing to become real for me. It was just too strange.

  There was no “upper bunk” to fight over; one half of the room was as good as the other. The hemisphere I arbitrarily chose had, as a small concession to the ancient human patterns of thought I was here to unlearn, a local vertical, a defined up and down—the Velcro desk lined up with the computer monitor and so on—but Kirra’s half had a different one, at a skewed angle to mine. Neither had any particular relationship to the axis of the corridor outside. Looking from my side of the room to Kirra’s made me slightly dizzy. My eyes wanted to ignore anything that disagreed with their personal notion of up and down. Such things did not play by the rules, were impolite, beneath notice.

  Kirra and I each adapted to our own local orientation for a moment, blinked at the items and documents attached to our desks, the monitor screens that read WELCOME TO TOP STEP, and so on. Then we turned back to look at each other. Being out-of-phase was unsatisfactory; without discussion or thought we both adapted to a compromise orientation halfway between our two differing ones. We snapped into phase with an almost audible click.

  And we broke up.

  We could not stop laughing. There was more than a bit of hysteria in it, on both sides. It was different by an order of magnitude from the giggling we had done earlier while scrambling for our new p-suits. Since breakfast I had been literally blown off the face of the Earth, nearly killed in orbit, told that I was a forty-six-year-old child, sexually—aroused? well, intrigued—for the first time in forever, molested most intimately and impersonally by Decontam devices, dumped into a weird Caveworld where falling off a log was not possible, guided through a bunch of absurdly Freudian tunnels by a woman who wasn’t there…and now I was “home,” in a place where my bed was a holster, and I could look up and see the soles of my roommate’s feet. I can’t speak for Kirra, but it wasn’t until about halfway through that laugh that I realized just how lonely and scared and disoriented I was—which only made me laugh harder.

  We laughed until the tears came, and then roared, because tears in free fall are so absurd, from both inside and outside. Kirra’s eyes exuded little elongated saline worms, that waved and broke up into tiny crystal balls. I seemed to see her through a fish-eye lens that kept changing its focal length. Every time our laughter began to slow down, one of us would gasp out something like, “Long day,” or, “Do you believe this?” and we’d dissolve again, as though something terribly funny had been said.

  Our convulsions set us caroming gently around the room, and eventually we collided glancingly and climbed up each other into a hug. We squeezed each other’s laughter into submission.

  “Thanks, love,” Kirra said finally. “I needed that bellybuster.”

  “Me too!” We sort of did a pushup on each other: pushed apart until we held each other by the biceps at arms’ length. “Whoever decided you and I would be compatible roommates was either very good at their job or very lucky. I couldn’t have laughed like that alone, or with somebody like Glenn.”

  We kept hold of each other’s upper arms in order to maintain eye
contact, to match our personal verticals. But nothing is still in free fall unless anchored. To keep our lower bodies from drifting, we had instinctively invented a way of bracing our shins against each other with ankles interlocked. I became aware of it now, and admired it. Could there be such a thing as an instinctive response to zero gravity? Or was it just that bodies are a lot more adaptable than brains?

  “All right,” Kirra said, “let’s get down to it. Who are you, Morgan? Why are you here?”

  I was more amused than offended by her forthrightness. “You sure don’t beat around the bush, do you?”

  “Hell, I was born in the bush.”

  I pinched her.

  “But I’ll go first if you want,” she continued.

  “No, that’s okay,” I said. “‘Why am I here?’ is easy. I’m…I was a dancer. I was pretty famous, but more important I was pretty good, but most important I was married to it, it’s all I ever did, and I can’t do it anymore. I don’t mean I can’t get hired. I mean I can’t dance anymore. Not on Earth, anyway. Not for a long time now. I looked around and found out there’s nothing else on Earth I care about. And my problems are lower back and knees, and zero gee is supposed to be great for both.”

  “I can see that,” Kirra agreed.

  “It’s more than just the reduced stress. It’s the calcium loss. There’s this doctor thinks it will actually help.”

  Human bones lose calcium rapidly in zero gravity—one of many reasons why people who stay in space too long are stuck there for life. The bones become too frail to return to terrestrial gravity. Many of my fellow Postulants would be taking calcium supplements, just in case they decided to change their minds and return to Earth. But it happened that overcalcification was a factor in both my back trouble and my knee problems.

  “So space is a place where one out of the three doctors says maybe I could dance again. For one chance in three of dancing again, I would skin myself with a can opener. If I have to put up with great longevity and freedom from all human suffering and telepathic union with a bunch of saints and geniuses to get that chance…well, I can live with that, I guess.” I grinned. “That sounds weird, huh?”

  “Not to me. Well, what do you think? Can you dance here?”

  “Well…I won’t know until I’ve had time alone to experiment. I won’t really know until I wake up the next morning. And I won’t be sure for at least a week or two. But it feels good, Kirra. I don’t know, it really does. I think it’s going to work, maybe. Oh shit, I’m excited!”

  She squeezed my arms and showed me every one of those perfect teeth. “That’s great, love. I’m glad for you. Good luck, eh?”

  The trite words sounded real in her mouth. “Thanks, hon. Okay, your turn now. What brings you to Top Step?”

  “Well…do you know anything about Aborigines, Morgan?” she asked. “The Dreamtime? The Songlines?”

  I admitted I did not.

  “This is gonna take a while…you sure you want to hear it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Back before the world got started was the Dreamtime, my people reckon. All the Ancestors dreamed themselves alive, then, created themselves out of clay, created themselves as people and all the kinds of animals and birds and insects there are. And the first thing they did was go walkabout, singin’—makin’ the world by singin’ it into existence. Sing up a river here, sing a mountain there. Wherever they went, they left a Songline behind ’em, and the Song made the world around there, see? So there’s Songlines criss-crossin’ the world, and everyplace is on or near a Songline, with a Song of its own that makes it what it is. That’s why we go Walkabout—to follow the Songlines and sing the Songs and keep recreating the world so’s it doesn’t melt away. Get it?”

  “I think so. All Aboriginals believe this?”

  “Most of us that’s left. Our Dreaming ain’t like whitefella religions. Our Songs were maps, trade routes, alliances, history: they held the whole country together, kept hundreds of tribes and clans living together in peace for generations. Even the whitefella couldn’t completely change that. Those of us they didn’t kill outright had trouble keepin’ our faith, but. Some of us went to the towns, tried on European ideas. Railroads were cuttin’ across Songlines. Our beliefs didn’t seem to account for the world we saw anymore, so we had to change ’em a bit. But we never got the Dreamtime out of our bones and teeth. Tribes that did…well, they’re gone, see?

  “So the last few generations, a mob of us left the reserves, left the cities and towns. We’ve gone back to the bush, gone back to bein’ nomads, followin’ the Songlines. There’s not many of us left, see. We want to touch where we came from before we go from the world.

  “If we’re gonna try to keep our beliefs alive, we got to make ’em account for the world we see. And space is part of that world now. We’ve got to weave it into our world-picture somehow. Some o’ the old stories speak of Sky-Heroes, spirit Ancestors departed into the sky. If that’s so, they left Songlines, and Aborigines can follow them to space. That’s my job: to try and find the Songlines of the Sky-Heroes.”

  I was fascinated. The bravery, the audacity of trying to make an ancient pagan religion fit the modern world was breathtaking. “Why you?”

  “It’s my Dreaming.” She saw that I did not understand, and tried again: “Like you with dancin’. It’s what I was born for. My mob, the Yirlandji, we’re reckoned the best singers. And I’m the best o’ the lot.” There was neither boasting nor false modesty in her voice.

  “Sing me something.”

  “I can sing you a tabi,” she said. “A personal song. But you’ll have to back off: I gotta slap me legs.”

  We let each other go, and drifted about a decimeter apart. She closed her eyes in thought for perhaps ten seconds, filling her lungs the whole time. Then she brought her thighs up and slapped them in slow rhythm as she sang:

  Mutjingga, kale neki

  Mingara, wija narani moroko

  Bodalla, Kalyan ungu le win

  Naguguri mina Kurria

  Jinkana kandari pirndiri

  Yirlandji, turlu palbarregu

  Her voice was indeed eerily beautiful. It had the rich tone of an old acoustic saxophone, but it was not at all like a jazz singer’s voice. It had the precision and the perfect vibrato of a MIDI-controlled synthesizer, but it was natural as riversong, human as a baby’s cry, a million years older than the bone flute. It was warm, and alive, and magical.

  The song she sang was made of nine tones that repeated, but with each repetition they changed so much in interval and intonation and delivery as to seem completely different phrases. Considering that I didn’t understand a word, I found it oddly, powerfully, astonishingly moving; whatever she was saying, it was coming directly from her heart to my ears. As I listened, I was radically reevaluating my new roommate. This cute little puppy I’d been mentally patronizing was someone special, deserving of respect. She was at least as good at her art as I had ever been at mine.

  When her song was over I said nothing for ten seconds or more. Her eyes fluttered open and found mine, and still I was silent. There was no need to flatter her. She knew how good she was, and knew that I knew it now.

  Then I was speaking quickly: “Teena! Did you hear Kirra’s song just now? I mean, do you still have it in memory?”

  “Yes, Morgan.”

  “Would you save it for me, please? And download it to my personal memory?”

  “Name this file,” Teena requested.

  “‘Kirra, Opus One.’”

  “Saved.” And that’s why I can give you the words now—though I can’t vouch for the spelling.

  “Do you mind, Kirra? If I keep a copy of that—just for myself?”

  “Shit no, mate. I sang it to you, di’n I?” she looked thoughtful. “Hoy, Teena, would you put a copy in my spare brain as well? Label it ‘Bodalla,’ and put it in a folder named ‘Tabi.’”

  “Done.”

  She returned her attention to me. “I was sin
gin’ about—”

  I interrupted her softly. “—about saying goodbye to Earth, about coming to space, something about it being scary, but such a wonderful thing to do that you just have to do it. Yes?”

  She just nodded. Maybe people always understood her when she sang. I wouldn’t be surprised.

  I’ve since asked Teena for a translation of “Bodalla.” She offered three, a literal transposition and two colloquial versions. The one I like goes:

  All-Mother, creator of us all

  Great spirit who controls the clouds, now I have come to the sky

  Farewell to the place-where-the-child-is-flung-into-the-air

  I journey now to see the Crocodile who lives in the Milky Way

  So I can send back a rope ladder

  to the Yirlandji, and to all the tribes

  “But that’s just a tabi,” Kirra said. “Just a personal song of my own, like. That’s not why I got sent here. See, what I’m special good at is feelin’ the Songlines. Been that way since I was a little girl. Whenever my mob’d move to a new place, I always knew the Song of it before anybody taught me. Yarra, the…well, a woman that taught me, this priestess, like…she used to blindfold me and drive me to strange country, some place I’d never been. And when I’d been there a while, sometimes an hour, sometimes overnight, I could sing her the Song of that place, and I always got it right. I got famous for it. Tribes that had forgotten parts of their own Songs, or had pieces cut out of ’em by whitefella doin’s, would send for me to come help ’em. So when the Men and Women of Power figured out this job here needed doing, there never was any question whose job it was.”

  “And you don’t mind?” I asked. It was sounding to me a little as though she’d been drafted, and was too patriotic to complain.

  “Mind?” she said. “Morgan, most of us do pretty good if we can get through life without screwin’ anybody else up too bad. How many get even a chance to do somethin’ important, for a whole people? I wouldn’t miss it for the world. Oh Christ, I made a pun. That’s just what I’m doin’: not missin’ it for the world.”