The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  In the North American Concord--using the precedent of minimum wage laws--a minimum-sex law was passed. All healthy, adult females were legally required to have sex at least three times a week.

  The only trouble was that only those men who were getting any in the first place got any more.

  The marauding young men were still marauding.

  An equalization-of-sex-opportunity law was passed. Women were now issued what were euphemistically called dance cards. New partners from the "sexually deprived" had to be accommodated.

  A huge black market in false dance-card signatures arose.

  The marauding young men were older, but still marauding.

  Again, science came to the rescue. A new drug was born that, when taken by a woman, reactivated Adamine-inhibited gynosperm, at the same time sterilizing male-producing androsperm. It was developed in Ad Astra--its manufacture requiring elaborate facilities for zero-gravity mixing--and was commercially marketed to Earth under the name Eveline.

  Its sole manufacturer--by exclusive license from its inventors--was a young asteroid miner who had risked venture capital on the drug's testing. The young miner was named Zachary Armstrong Darris. He returned to Earth to set up a marketing network for the new drug.

  More years passed, with the ratio of male-to-female births dropping back to the pre-Brushfire War level of only two-to-one again.

  Aside from the still serious, but now lessened, sexual imbalance, the world was enjoying one of its freest and most prosperous periods in history. Gone were oil shortages and pollution as cheap solar energy was collected by orbiting "powersats" and beamed down by laser beams to Earth-based distribution stations. Space manufacturing revolutionized industry after industry with miraculous new, and miraculously cheap, products. Laissez-faire was becoming the worldwide watchword in both economics and personal lifestyle. Even the Soviet Union found affluence easing its political grip. The problems of inflation, soaring taxation, energy shortage, unemployment, the destructive business cycle, and poverty itself began disappearing.

  New advances in gerontology lowered the deathrate to match the lowered birthrate: the average human lifespan more than doubled, with fertility and youth continuing in both sexes well past a century. Gone were cancer, tooth decay, the common cold, and venereal disease.

  Then came the War of Colonial Secession.

  Stanton Darris, like his father the asteroid miner, viewed the Colonial War as a personal attack on his family. It was a rather parochial view concerning a war that had killed five million in the colonies and thirteen million on Earth. Nevertheless, there was some truth to it. It was true that the War had cut off all trade between the colonies and Earth for two decades, to the personal gain of certain Earth-bound manufacturers who had been unable to compete with free-space factories, several of these latter being Darris-owned. It was also true that the War effectfively halted the sale of Eveline on Earth, and by the time colonial-Earth trade had resumed, sociological and political changes on Earth had shifted the balance of power so far that the new Federation succeeded in passing laws banning Eveline from the planet permanently.

  But it was ridiculous to suppose that the generals of the North American Concord had these results mapped out when they launched the preemptive first strike destroying the free-space habitat O'Neill.

  Regardless of why it had started, half a century later Stanton Darris was still dealing on a daily basis with business problems that resulted directly from the War.

  Today the problem was ferrofoam futures.

  Ferrofoam--a steel product that, in terms of industrial usefulness, was to steel as steel had been to iron--could for all practical purposes be manufactured only in the colonies. Its production required the free-fall injection of microscopic gas bubbles into molten steel, then cooling it to produce a metal that was lighter than steel but could surpass it in a number of ways.

  Both before and after the War, except for the embargo just after it, ferrofoam was one of the chief exports of the free- space colonies to Earth. One of the main causes of the colonial secessionist movement had been a difference of opinion between colonial residents and absentee owneers back on Earth with respect to profit sharing and who could do without whom when push came to shove. On this issue the colonists won.

  Ferrofoam, thought Stanton Darris. Fifty-four years postbellum and taking a futures contract on the financially volatile metal still made his stomach churn, as if the gas bubbles being pumped into the molten steel were ending up in his belly instead.

  He was seventy-seven years old, with smooth skin, a body he kept athletically trim, craggy features, and bright red hair. Of his children only four-year-old Joanie had inherited the red hair intact; all four of his sons had strawberry-blond hair that more- or-less favored his wife. He wondered whether a redhead would show up in the next three sons he and Eleanor planned as a tax shelter--the Federation levied stiff progressive taxes on second and further female babies, with progressive tax rebates for male babies. A redheaded son, however, would be something he could enjoy for his own sake--his father had been redheaded too.

  Ferrofoam, thought Stanton Darris. He sat facing a video price listing and longed for the days of his great-grandfather, when the price of structural shapes was stable enough that there was no need for a futures market at all. His office was in the penthouse of the 150 story-high Darris Tower, his father's phallic reply to the society he felt had given him the bird. The building had been sold soon after completion to pay off debts caused by the embargo, but Darris Investment Corporation still held the top dozen floors.

  Far below him, Stanton could see Harlem Lake, where a neighborhood by that name had once been. Family history said that his father's paternal grandfather had lived in that neighborhood, but the closest the man had ever come to knowing anything about structural shapes of steel was the searing pain of the stiletto that had murdered him.

  The video terminal finally displayed the information Stanton was awaiting. He spoke to it. "Offered," he said, "on one hundred kilotons of March ferrofoam, Au 2,730 grams."

  The terminal printed out the bid on its display and said, "Please confirm."

  "Confirmed. Transmit."

  TRANSMITTING appeared on the display, and "Transmitting," the terminal said aloud. Stanton turned back to the window and began tapping his fingertips together rhythmically.

  Racists might have said this sense of rhythm had come from that black man in Harlem--Neil Armstrong Darris, born July 20, 1969, dead of knife wounds received thirty-two years later while defending his pregnant wife from bread rioters during the monetary collapse. His wife, the former Mary O'Hare--a third generation Irish Bostonian--survived; seven of the rioters did not. The family name and the beginnings of a tradition were passed on.

  Their only son, a light-skinned mulatto whom she named Louis Armstrong Darris, was born forteen weeks after his father's death. Louis Darris enlisted in the Aerospace Force on his eighteenth birthday, in the ninth year of the Brushfire War, rose to shuttle pilot, and was disabled out with a back injury, sustained during reentry, in the war's twentieth year. He lived on his benefits until the war was over, got a pilot's job with Trans European Skylines, and married a blond, blue-eyed copilot named Candice Bach.

  Candice's fourth child, Zachary Armstrong Darris, shipped out to the asteroid belt at sixteen, using a false birth-record printout, after flunking out of prep school. After making his first 100,000 grams of gold, Zachary bought himself a seat on the board of trustees of that school, solely for the pleasure of bringing about the firing of a particular math teacher, who he felt had ruined him for the scientific career he'd wanted.

  He considered the firing of that teacher as the most fun he'd had out of bed, where he spent much of his spare time to the day he died, at the age of ninety-one, shot by a jealous husband.

  The life of Zachary Armstrong Darris had been one filled with fortunes made and lost, fame--or infamy, depending on whom one talked to--and three marriages in an age when most
men couldn't enter even one. Three marriages produced three offspring, two sons from his first wife--a platinum-blond nightclub singer named Kate Seymour--and a daughter from his last marriage.

  Stanton Armstrong Darris always felt he'd been a disappointment to his father. He felt he wasn't cast from the same mold as his ancestors. He just wasn't the sort to face off rioters, or fly combat missions, or blast a fortune out of worthless rock a few hundred million kilometers away from Earth. Maybe he'd inherited some of his father's business ability, but he felt he'd missed out on the ancestral guts. The only thing Stanton felt sure he'd inherited from his father was the red hair.

  The terminal spoke to Stanton again: "Bid accepted. Carlisle, St. Clive, D.H. Transaction on display."

  Stanton stood up, not bothering to look at the screen. "Just store it," he told the terminal. "Notify me if trading on March ferrofoam goes plus or minus this transaction 15 percent or greater. I'm going home."

  "I will, I will, I hear you," the computer said.

  Stanton looked across the office to a portrait of his father -- one of those damnable holographic atrocities in which the eyes followed you wherever you went in the room. As usual, the eyes were looking right through him, mocking and critical. Even thirteen years after his death, his father was still disapproving. "You bastard," Stanton told the portrait.

  He called his secretary, Larry, to say good night, and put on a jacket. Then he took his personal lift up one level to the roof of the 150-story-high Darris Tower, and after taking just a minute to prepare himself, Stanton Armstrong Darris jumped off.

  Chapter 4

  Helix Vista was lit up like a Solstice tree.

  Approaching it by air, soon after nightfall, he first saw the squatball cource, floodlighted although it was deserted this evening. Receiving approach instructions from the estate's domestic computer, he circled around the perimeter of the stables to avoid having his engine noise frighten the horses. He skimmed low over Lake Kingston, enjoying the spray caused by the airwash, watching his path alternating red and blue, red and blue under his anticollision beacons.

  Helix Vista reached to touch the sky, a staircase of seven ovals spiraling upward to heaven, each level lighted a proper color in the spectral sequence of a rainbow. Topping each level was a garden, and on the uppermost oval there was an open-air terrace from which one could oversee the entire estate.

  Few guests had arrived at a quarter to seven, so there was no one but serving robots to watch what would have made a spectacular entrance. But he could see, during his approach, that there was an open, lighted window with a small, red-haired girl waving to him, so he decided to make his descent to please her.

  Like Peter Pan flying up to Wendy's window, Stanton Darris guided his General Electric Joob flying belt to the garden on the fourth oval of Helix Vista, next to his daughter's fifth-story bedroom, then dropped into it for a landing.

  No father had ever had a more appreciative audience.

  Joan was squealing with delight as he slipped out of harness, removed the headpiece and leather jacket, then climbed in through the window. "Daddy, Daddy!" Joan shouted as she ran toward him.

  The run ended with a flying leap. Stanton caught her and accepted a sloppy, wet kiss. He returned it. "How's my little tangerine-top?" he asked her. "And how come you're not in your pajamas yet?"

  "Mr. Mac is helping Cousin 'lizabeth get into hers first. Daddy, can I stay up and come to the party?"

  "I'm sorry, honey, but it starts way past your bedtime. You wouldn't be able to keep your eyes open."

  "I would, I promise!"

  "Darling, you'd be so bored you'd fall right asleep. There won't be anyone your own age there to play with, and all the grown-ups will be too busy doing grown-up things to spend any time with you. Besides, aren't you having a party of your own next week for your birthday?"

  Joan nodded. "I'm gonna be five."

  "Well, parties for five-year-olds are lots more fun, I promise you. Now tell me what you did today."

  "Mommy took us all to the peer--peera--"

  "Pyradome."

  "Peeradome, and she got into a hole in the center with a boy and an old man and Mommy talked to everybody. Then it got all dark and the colors did a dance in the sky. Daddy, who tells the colors how to dance?"

  "Well, it's a hard word to say, honey. They're called lase- graphers."

  Joan looked crestfallen. "Can't people tell the lights?"

  "Eh? Of course they can, darling. Why do you ask?"

  "Well, if people can tell the colors how to dance, then why do they use lazy gophers?"

  Stanton received a clear image of a shiftless furry rodent in a hole, communing with the heavens. "Uh, sweetheart, it's not 'lazy gophers'. It's 'lasegraphers'--a funny word that means something else."

  "I didn't think gophers were that smart," Joan said.

  Stanton smiled. "No. Lasegraphers are people who study for a long time until they learn how to draw dancing pictures with lights, like you saw today at the pyradome. In fact, your sister Vera used to be a lasegrapher."

  Joan's eyes widened. "She was?

  "Mmm-hmm."

  "Could I draw with lights? Real lights, not pretending?"

  "Darling, if you really want to, and you're willing to spend enough time learning how to do it, I'm sure you can. Now can you get into your pajamas, like a big five-year-old?"

  "Uh-huh." Joan went to the pajamas dispenser and pulled out a plastisealed package. "Daddy, will you sing me a song, like Mr. McIntosh does?"

  "Uh, I don't know a lot of songs, sweetheart."

  "Please?"

  "Well, get into your pajamas while I try to remember one."

  Joan spent the next few minutes getting out of her play dress, throwing it away, then changing into her pajamas. Her father helped her only in breaking the plastic seal on the package. Stanton tucked Joanie into bed, then started a song his mother had recorded when she began singing professionally again, about the time his father had married the third time.

  "As I was going to St. Clive

  I met a man one-hundred-five

  Who's with his ma, one-hundred-thirty

  Who's with her pa, one-hundred-sixty

  Sixty, thirty, hundred-five--

  I hear they're living in St. Clive

  But how long can they stay alive?"

  Stanton paused, Joanie asked, "How does the rest of it go?"

  "Those are all the words, honey. It just keeps on over and over, going faster each time."

  "Will you sing it again? As fast as you can?"

  "Well, alright. But then you'll go right to sleep."

  Stanton sang the song again, this time running the words together so quickly he thought he'd surely trip over them. Amazing himself, but not his daughter, he got through it perfectly.

  When he finished, Joan asked, "Daddy, will you teach it to me?"

  "I'll tell you what, sweetheart. Grandma is staying over tonight and she taught it to me. Suppose I ask her to teach it to you tomorrow?"

  "Okay."

  "Now give me another kiss, then go to sleep."

  She kissed her father and slid back under the covers. "Good night, Daddy."

  "Sweet dreams, carrot-top."

  He dimmed the lights on his way out. Reflections from the lawn dome, still being tested, projected in through the window, flickering colors onto the bedroom wall. "Daddy?"

  "Hmm?"

  "You sing much better than Mr. McIntosh."

  "Thank you, honey."

  Stanton went out. He decided that maybe he didn't need a red- headed son after all.

  Colors in motion, thought His Gaylordship Wendell Darris; that was the essence of a ball. That, at least, was all he could discern of the swirling rooftop dancers as his official Federation limousine came into Helix Vista that night. It felt good coming home again, even if there was a slight bittersweet flavor. Stanton was the only Darris heir who lived here nowadays, and it was almost a year and a half since Wendell had visite
d his brother at home.

  His last visit, the family circle's traditional Hallowmas feast, had been during happier times, before Wendell's adoption of Marion had gone sour, before the two of them had separated. Their upcoming divorce was still a closely held secret, with Wendell's seat in the House of Gentry coming up for election this June, but for all his sexual infidelities, Marion was a Libertarian Party loyalist who had no desire to see the North American Concord's lavender seat in the Upper Manor lost to the Chauvinists. Still, Wendell wished Marion had accompanied him tonight.

  Colors in motion, Gaylord Darris thought, as he entered onto the terrace and saw the ball close up: the improvisational lasegraphy of the roga player, backed up by the hard-driving music of the Ramon Raquello Orchestra. Wendell's escort of sky marshals had discarded their flying belts and now discreetly prededed him onto the terrace, where they took up guard posts. Wendell did not see his brother and sister-in-law right off and used his few free minutes before he was recognized to look around.

  Eleanor was an expert hostess when it came to keeping the proper proportions at a party, he observed. There was just the right number of gaily plumed commen, carefully selected to try for the attentions of the equal number of invited single women. And equivalent number of andromen couples--mostly husbands and wards--were more drably attired in their lavender capotes; Wendell gave thanks that hoods were no longer required on cloaks for full dress. Just the correct number of society witches were towing their husbands around the dance floor, here to pass judgement on the newest postulant to their order. And just the suitable dash of clones were here to prove the Darrises had compassion--a few too many to be considered tokens, but not enough to create a scandal. Wendell smiled as he thought he could use Eleanor's expertise the next time he had to assemble just the right mix of gaylords, ladies, and commen in a joint- Manor conference committee.