The Stardance Trilogy

by Spider

  “—it’s not the same and you know it—”

  “—no, it’s not the same, it’s better—”

  “—bullshit—”

  “—how the hell would you know? You were up there for three whole days! I’m telling you, I’ve been there for three months and it’s better—”

  “—maybe it is, but it’s different, God dammit—”

  He flinched at her vehemence. After a few seconds of silence, he slapped at his control panel, and set the universe spinning around them again. “What’s so bad about different?”

  She reached irritably past him and felt for the keyboard, found it and quit the holo program abruptly. Blink: they were in their quaint comfortable moonlit bedroom in their magnificent old home in picturesque P-Town. “What’s so bad about what we have?” she cried, gesturing around her at hardwood floor and lace curtains and quilted comforter and scrimshaw and Frank Paixao’s barometer and fading photographs of Nana Fish and Nana Spaghetti on the walls.

  He looked round, at the familiar trappings of their marriage, of their shared life. When he spoke, his voice was softer. “It’s good. You know I love it here too. But it’s not all there is.”

  “It is for me!” she said. Oh my beloved, how can you want to go where I cannot follow?

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and played his hole card. “It isn’t for me.”

  She clutched his shoulder and played her own. “You promised, Rand! Back when you first asked me to marry you, you promised…”

  There was nothing he could say to that, because it was true. She had him dead to rights. The argument was effectively over, now. She had won…

  …and cost her beloved husband the professional and personal opportunity of a lifetime, the crowning achievement of his career…

  He nodded, and rolled over on his right side, back to her. “When you’re right, you’re right,” he said very quietly, and mimed preparing to sleep. But his shoulder blades were eloquent.

  She savored her triumph for as long as she could stand it, staring at the ceiling. Then, keeping her voice as neutral as possible, she said, “Anyway…how would we deal with Colly’s education?”

  His shoulder blades shut up in midsentence.

  “Well—” he said finally, and rolled over to face her.

  2

  RAND PORTER HAD BEEN WAITING for that question, of course. Their eight-year-old would get a better education if he took the job; Rhea had known that when she asked the question. On his new salary, they could afford to enroll Colly in any school on or off Earth, with full bandwidth and as much individual attention as she wanted. Hell, they could afford to have teachers physically brought up to her if they wanted, in corporation shuttles. And Rhea could have Unlimited Net Access herself too.

  And all these things, he added, would be merely perks—over and above a salary so immense that they could easily have afforded to pay for them. Full Medical would be another such perk. Rhea’s literary reputation could only benefit from all the publicity that would accrue. Rand stressed all these points, without ever quite saying aloud a point that mattered to him almost as much as the honor or the creative challenge or the prestige or the money per se.

  If he took this job, he would be earning more money than Rhea, and would be more famous than her. For the first time in their relationship.

  He couldn’t mention that aloud. They had agreed back at the start that they would never mention it; that was how little it meant to them; therefore he couldn’t bring it up now.

  “Worse comes to worst, why couldn’t we compromise?” he suggested desperately. “Have one of those commuter marriages? I’d take the job, and you could come up for three months out of every six. Lots of people do that, when only one half of the team wants to be a spacer.”

  “Sure,” she said. “That worked out just great for your brother, didn’t it?” Jay had maintained such a relationship with a dancer in one of his two rotating companies for over five years—then about six months ago, Ethan had sent him a Dear-Jay/resignation fax from Fire Island. The scabs were just beginning to turn into scar tissue.

  “We’re more committed than Jay and Ethan were,” Rand protested. But privately he was not sure that was true—and the stats on groundhog/spacer marriages were discouraging.

  When they were exhausted enough, they agreed to sleep on it.

  At five in the morning he slipped from the bed without waking her and went down the hall to his Pit. Strains of melody were chasing each other in his head, but when he booted up his synth, he could not isolate any of the strands in his headphones. Sounded aloud, they were an inseparable jangle of discord—like his feelings.

  So he went to the kitchen, and found he was not hungry. He went to the bathroom and discovered he didn’t have to pee. He put the headphones back on and learned that he didn’t want to hear anything in his collection. He went up to Colly’s room and found that she didn’t need to be covered. As he bent to kiss her, he startled himself by dropping a tear on the pillow next to her strawberry blonde hair. He went quickly back downstairs to the living room and wept, as silently as he could. When he was done, he dried his eyes and blew his nose.

  What did he need?

  That was easy. He needed someone to tell him he wasn’t a selfish bastard.

  He had promised her. Worse, he had thought about it first. He had not specifically envisioned this situation, no—but he had made his promise without reservations. No matter what, love—

  But this offer was beyond any dreams he’d had a decade ago. How could he have known? The carrot was irresistible…

  Or was it? What was so irresistible? The money would be great—but while they had been middle-class for their whole marriage, they had never been poor, never missed a meal. There were other jobs. Indeed, this was about the only job he could possibly take that would require them to move from P-Town, that he couldn’t basically phone in. It was certainly the only job that would have required permanent exile. What was so great about the damn job?

  Two things. It was the most prestigious job in his field, one of the most prestigious there was. And it would make him the principal breadwinner in his family, for the first time.

  Not very proud reasons to break a solemn promise to your wife…

  No, dammit, there was more to it than that. The job was the richest creative opportunity he had ever had. His three-month stint just past had been the hardest work he’d ever done…and had drawn some of his very best music and shaping out of him. Collaborating with his half-brother Jay had been exhilarating; although Jay was thirteen years older than Rand’s thirty-five, their minds had meshed.

  I see: your wife will be a little sadder, but your chops will improve…

  It wasn’t just that. Part of what had made his work better in the Shimizu had been the heart-stopping grandeur of space itself, the bliss of zero gee. Space was as magical as Provincetown, in a different way; maybe more so—surely Rhea would see and respond to that, just as he had.

  You hope…

  Anyway, what was so great about P-Town? Okay, it was beautiful; sure, it was timeless; granted, it was magical. This chair he was rocking in, for instance: beautiful and timeless and magical. But it made noises like rifle fire, and leaned ever so slightly out of true, and wasn’t especially comfortable without the pillows that always slipped out of adjustment. So what if it had belonged to Rhea’s great-grandmother? So what if it had been the chair in which the infant Rhea had been breast-fed…and Colly too?

  The answer was all around him—hanging from every wall, perched on nearly every flat surface. Pictures of eight generations of Paixaos, as far back as imaging technology allowed, ranging from faded black and white daguerrotypes of Cap’n Frank and Marion to paused holoblocks of Rhea, Colly and himself. Hundreds of Paixaos and their kin, in dozens of settings…and every single image had Provincetown somewhere in the background. Beautiful. Timeless. Magical…

  On the mantle, amid the more recent Paixaos, was a holo of Rand�
��s parents, Agnes and Tom, taken just before their divorce. The background was Newark, New Jersey.

  There was no point to this: he already knew he wanted the job badly enough to take it; whether he should want it that badly or not seemed irrelevant. Nonetheless he flogged himself, as his penance, endlessly replaying the argument until it became a loop that annihilated time.

  I want to be great. Is that so terrible?

  Just as he felt that his brain might explode, thirty-five kilos of eight-year-old reality landed on his lap like a tonne of bricks, shouting, “Boo!” and his heart nearly exploded instead. Daylight and his daughter had crept up on him.

  “I scared you, Daddy!” she reported with glee. “I did, didn’t I?”

  For an instant he was tempted to use Colly as a new club to beat himself—how can you ask a child to go pioneering?—but he shifted gears instead, grabbed her in his arms and stood up. “That you did, baby,” he said, clutching her close. “That you did.”

  “Did you catch it, Daddy?”

  “Huh?”

  “Whatever made you stay up all night. Did you get it?”

  “Oh. Uh…not yet, sweetheart. I got a look at it, but it got away.”

  “Don’t matter about it,” she advised him. “You’ll get it next time.”

  Her optimism—and the boundless, unquestioning faith that underlay it—floored him. I can’t be a bastard, he thought. I’d never have fooled her. He hugged her even closer, making her squeal. “That I will,” he agreed. “Right now, let’s you and me get us some grub.”

  “I cook,” she said quickly. Her faith in him had practical limits. That was why he could trust it.

  “Deal,” he agreed.

  And she did cook a better breakfast than he could have—albeit somewhat more messily. Rhea came in while she was doing it, and stood in the doorway in her bathrobe watching and trying not to smile. Colly refused to let either of them help, or even coach. By the time they were all sitting down eating together, it seemed to have been decided that today was a happy day. Rhea’s eyes were unguarded when they met his. The Issue was still there between them, but it was on hold for the moment.

  After the meal, it was Rhea who said, “Colly, sit back down. You can be a little late for playgroup today. Your father and I need to talk about something with you.”

  “Aw, Mom—do you have to? Sarah’s gonna bring her cat in today, and she swears it has thumbs!”

  “Yes, honey, it’s important.”

  “Four of ’em! Oh, okay, go ahead.” She sat back and adjusted her nervous system to fidget mode.

  Rhea handed the ball to him. “Rand?”

  He cleared his throat. “Colly…have you ever thought about…living somewhere else?”

  “You mean I’m going to grandma’s house again? How long this time?”

  “No, honey, that’s not what I meant. I mean…all three of us moving away from here, to a new home.”

  “And not coming back?”

  “That’s right. Not ever.”

  The notion did not seem to shock Colly. “Where?” she asked practically.

  “Well, remember that time we went to visit Uncle Jay?”

  She got excited. “Go to space, you mean? And stay there? In that cool hotel? Oh, wow!”

  “You really liked it that much?” Rhea asked, surprised.

  “Da! Si! Ja! Oui!” Colly said. “I’m not little in space!”

  Both parents were startled into laughter.

  “It’s true,” she insisted. “I can reach everything there, and look grown-ups in the eye, and I’m as strong as anybody and not clumsy like everybody else. Besides, it’s fun! When do we go?”

  Even Rand was taken aback by support this enthusiastic. “But baby…you know if we stay in free-fall for long, we have to stay forever?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well…won’t you miss your friends?”

  She thought about it. “I could still call them up, right? We could holo-play. And they could come visit me realies, sometimes. And I’d make lots of new friends. I’m good at that.”

  Rand squelched a grin. “Well…yes, you are. But won’t you miss…this house, and P-Town…and everything?”

  “And the beach?” Rhea prompted. “And the ocean?”

  Colly looked around her. “I guess. But if I do, you can just make it for me, Daddy. Anyway, you can’t play six-wall here. I tried.”

  He didn’t have to look at his wife to know that she was looking faintly stricken. Her only potential ally had defected. He wanted to put an arm around her, but was not sure whether that would make it worse.

  Colly had gone from fidget to bounce mode. “Can I go tell everybody now, Daddy? How soon are we going, Mommy? I gotta go get dressed! Oooh, Kelly’s gonna be so jealous—”

  “Hold your horses, young lady. Nothing’s been decided yet. Your mother and I are still discussing the idea—”

  Colly wasn’t listening. Her eyes had gone wide. “Wait a minute—this means you got the job, didn’t you, Daddy? You get to work with Uncle Jay now! They picked you! Oh, I knew they would! I told you they would!”

  Rhea winced.

  “We are going, we are! Can I go tell Kelly now? And Sigrid? And Bobby?”

  The choices were let her go or strap her down. “Maybe you better get dressed first,” Rhea said.

  Colly looked down at her rumpled pajamas, and giggled. “Oh, okay, if you insist,” she said, and ran for the stairs. She was naked before she reached the top.

  Rand and Rhea looked at each other. Each waited for the other to speak, with voice or expression.

  “We have to laugh,” he said finally.

  “Oh yeah? Why?”

  “Because if we strangle each other, who’s going to take Colly to playgroup?”

  And so they laughed.

  “Come on, somebody,” Colly called from upstairs. “Get dressed! I’m almost ready already!”

  They laughed harder, and then got up together and sprinted up the stairs, shouting, “Yes, ma’am! Right away, Your Highness!”

  “I still don’t see why you have to live there,” Rhea said thirty minutes later. They had dropped Colly off at playgroup in the West End, and now were sitting in the car at the edge of the sea at Herring Cove, half watching a group of eight or ten Trancers in sleek thermal clothing dancing on the shore, spinning and jumping in the December breeze, falling and recovering but always springing back up at once. They made Rand think, as always, of birds trying to batter their way through an invisible ceiling. Provincetown had been a magnet for Trancers since the strange fad had begun and spread around the planet with the speed of a catchphrase. P-Town had always been a Mecca for all kinds of odd behavior.

  “It’s stupid,” Rhea went on. “It’s just stupid elitist thinking. There’s no sensible reason why you can’t phone it in, like any other job. They only have the best holo gear in human space.”

  “That’s what the Shimizu is all about,” Rand said patiently. “That’s what they’re buying. The most conspicuous consumption there is. Nothing canned, nothing piped-in—”

  “I know, I know—the celebrity artists are all on-site for the customers to press flesh with, and half the robot-work is done by human beings, just to prove they can afford to waste money. Snob logic.”

  “You can’t make art for a place without going there,” he said. “Holo isn’t enough. I can’t explain why, but it isn’t. I always go to the site if there is one, at least at first. You know all this.”

  “So you’ve been there for three months! Isn’t that enough?”

  It was a fair question. He tried to find the words to answer it. All he could come up with was, “Space is different.”

  “Different how?”

  “Look: you were there.”

  “For three days.”

  “Long enough to get a taste. Now, tell me: can you remember what it was like?”

  She started to answer, then stopped. “No,” she said finally. “I can remember what I told peopl
e about it. I can remember what I wrote about it. But no, you’re right. I can’t remember what it was like. Not really. I have a lingering feeling about it—”

  “If you had to write a poem about it, right now, could you? Or a story set there?”

  Her shoulders slumped. “I’d have to go back. For longer than a few days. And either write it there, or right after I got back down.”

  “That’s why Ngani bullied the Board into putting in writing a provision that his successors would have to live in-house. And that’s why Jay bullied them into honoring the agreement when Ngani died.”

  This was all old ground. They had had this conversation over a year ago, when he had first become a candidate for the position. He saw her momentarily as a trapped animal, doubling back on its tracks in search of a way out overlooked earlier, and felt a pang of guilt.

  She gestured at the ocean and half a world of clouds, at the crazy Trancers moving in harmony—then turned and gestured in the other direction, at P-Town. “And all of this, we’re supposed to give up, forever, so that Willem Ngani’s artistic vision isn’t violated?”

  The question was so unfair that he returned fire with some irritation. “Only if we want me to have the job.”

  She left the car and walked a short way along the beach, past the gyrating dancers. By the time she returned, he had cooled down and she looked chilly despite her thermally smart clothing. The Trancers too had finally run out of manic energy, and were dispersing, looking blissed-out.

  “How about this?” Rand said, as the car heater switched on to normalize the temperature in the vehicle. “We give it a couple of months. I’ll complete Pribhara’s season. Then if you absolutely hate it, I’ll quit.”

  “You couldn’t break your contract!”

  “Hell, Pribhara did. I’ll reserve the right. If they want me bad enough, they’ll negotiate. It’s perfectly reasonable—considering they’re wrecking my whole schedule on no notice at all. By rights they ought to be paying me a whopping bonus. If they don’t like it, let ’em give Mazursky and Choy socks full of dung, and let them fight it out.”

  She thought about it. “Huh. Two more months wouldn’t be long enough to change you into a spacer. And it’s long enough for me to form an opinion…”