The Rainbow Cadenza: A Novel in Vistata Form

by J. Neil Schulman

  "That would be I," Jaeger said. "But if I sign for you, I am your legal guardian and you have to obey any decision I make for you."

  "Can they make me accept a guardian?" Joan asked.

  "No one," the agent said, "can be prevented from signing the Lease on her own behalf, so long as she is legally competent - which you proved by reading the Lease--or unless she has an outstanding debt against her name which she refuses to honor."

  "It doesn't matter how long I stay?"

  The agent shook her head.

  "I can sign and be treated like an adult?"

  The agent nodded.

  "I can see why we Astrans don't think much of tourists," Joan said, as she reached for a light pen to sign the Lease.

  Chapter 15

  THE DRYER SCHOOL OF LASEGRAPHY had its campus on Lakeview Boulevard at the eastern end of Valle de Sol, just west of Auberon Avenue, where Wolgang Jaeger had his condominium. From the campus it was just a ten-minute walk to 14010 Captain's Row, a Garrison Colonial house owned by Michael and Rita Rubinstein.

  Both were native Astrans in their early fifties, married to each other for twenty-six years; they'd met and married while at graduate school in Kibbutz. Dr. Michael Rubinstein headed the Department of Chairistic Heuronomy at the University of Ad Astra at Nova Paulus; Dr. Rita Rubinstein was principal of the Gunter Grass Kindergarten.

  The Rubinsteins had three children, all girls--Shoshana, Astrid, and Debbie. Shoshana was twenty, married, and studying in Tsiolkovskiigrad, Lenin, to be an ecological engineer; Astrid was thirteen, already bat mitzvah-ed, and a student at Dryer; Debbie was nine and a building free-fall Olympic champion.

  Astrid had moved into Shoshana's old room two years before, Debbie had moved up to Astrid's room, so Joan moved into what used to be Debbie's room. It was a third the size of the room she'd had at Helix Vista, but somehow--maybe it was the lower gravity--it seemed almost as large.

  Astrid and Joan hit it off right away, and remained friends even when Astrid learned that Joan, though a year younger, was leap years ahead of her in lasegraphic accomplishment--and treated so by Jaeger. It didn't matter. Living at Helix Vista had isolated Joan from her fellow students at the Malcolm Institute, her singular interest had isolated her from the other girls at the Blair Academy, so she was delighted to have, for the first time, a girlfriend who shared her primary interest--even if Joan did have to talk more than listen on the topic. It balanced out: Astrid was more sophisticated than Joan in other areas--in what holovision performer was the current explosion (they called it HV here, not the holy); in what design of shorty- short jumpsuits "just everyone" was wearing this spring; and in what boys at Dryer Astrid thought were really boosty.

  After setting Joan up with a practice dome on campus, and with a new instrument--one without any infrared wolves lurking about -- Jaeger simply told Joan to keep her fingers nimble, then gave her six weeks to acclimate to her new home. The Rubinsteins - aware that the quiet spells to which Joan were subject reflected longings for her mother--drew her into their family life as much as possible. The first Sunday they took Joan with them on a cruise through the Finger Lakes, the next on a picnic halfway up El Capitan, on Saturday night they went on a Family Pub Crawl, and on Friday nights she went with them to synagogue.

  The only place Joan didn't go with them was to an exhibition of free-fall acrobatics that Debbie was performing in. Joan hung back that Tuesday night, even though she knew it was only a matter of weeks before she would have to go.

  In the habitats, lasegraphic performances took place in free fall.

  Joan found the religious aspect of the Rubinstein's family life confusing, inasmuch as the Blair Academy had been Orthodox Wiccen and not at all inclined to give equal time to other faiths. The Friday night after the service for a particularly high holiday, Joan pulled Astrid aside and conducted a mini- seminar on comparative religion. "Let me see if I've got this right," Joan said. "You say that the Jewish religion doesn't say whether God is male or female, right?"

  "That's right."

  "Then how come Jesus Christ is always referred to as male?"

  Astrid shook her head. "You're getting it all confused with Christianity. Jews don't believe Jesus is God."

  "Then how come whenever your father wants to swear, he always says, 'Jesus Christ!' or 'Christ Almighty!'?"

  Astrid suppressed a smile. "I guess it's easier to swear with a name you don't really believe in."

  "But you said your family doesn't really believe in God?"

  "Well, not literally."

  "Then what difference does it make whom he swears by?"

  "I guess it's an emotional difference."

  "Well, then, why is it important to refer to God as 'Him' or 'the Lord,' and why did the rabbi correct me when I referred to God as 'Her' and 'the Lady'?"

  "It's a way of keeping our people separate from other religions, because we've been persecuted so much. It isn't any different with witches, is it?"

  "We don't have a holiday celebrating Salem every year," Joan said. "Which leads to my real question. You said that just before I arrived you celebrated Passover, which is in memory of God's not killing the firstborn sons of Israel while He went after the firstborn of Egypt."

  "Right so far."

  "Then why, tonight, did you also celebrate Never Again, which seems to call God to account for standing by and not doing anything while the Nazis killed millions more Jews than He saved from Pharoah?"

  "You ask harder questions than the Mah Nishtanah." Astrid considered her answer for a few moments. "I think," she said, finally, "that is doesn't really matter whether what we remember is good or bad, just so long as Jews don't forget we're the Chosen People."

  "Chosen for what?" Joan asked.

  "Don't ask," Astrid said. "We haven't figured that out in six thousand years, and by now, a lot of us are afraid to find out."

  Joan's trouble with free fall came to a head, as it had to, within the week she started lessons with Jaeger. "I think it's time we let you try out the Cathedral," he said.

  Joan stood absolutely still and didn't say anything.

  "You don't seem particularly thrilled by the prospect," Jaeger said.

  "I'm scared to death, Wolfgang."

  "I know," he said gently. "But there are drugs to take care of that."

  "I can't drug myself for the rest of my life."

  "You wouldn't have to," Jaeger said. "The drugs merely suppress your 'fight-or-flight' syndrome long enough for your body to accustom itself to whatever you're phobic about. When your body has learned the desired response, you don't need the drugs anymore."

  "Can the drugs tell the difference between something you're supposed to be afraid of and something you're not?"

  "No," Jaeger said, "but you can."

  "Then I shouldn't need a drug to do it," Joan replied. "Let's get this the rape over with."

  The tram climbed the monorail up El Capitan slowly, with Joan clutching Jaeger's arm so tightly she was leaving red marks in his flesh. By the time the tram reached the axis, Joan was sweating profusely into her orange jumpsuit. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she said.

  "Take a deep breath," Jaeger said, "and think about something else. Try running a vistata through your mind--mmm, make it my Eighteenth."

  Joan closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and swallowed hard. But it was too late. Jaeger barely got the sick bag to her in time to catch her vomit.

  When Joan had finished, Jaeger handed her a peppermint and told her to suck on it. "You won't throw out twice," he said. "Now just hold on tightly to my belt--or the guideline--and follow me. The Cathedral is right nearby."

  Joan held on to both belt and guideline, which slowed them down considerably. They passed through a minor tube into the La Paz Artery, where people floated quickly past in both directions -- past several brothels, past a storefront bubble with a salesman demonstrated zero-G cookware, past the Ricardo Aviary--and an endless ten minutes later, Joan followed Jaeger through
the irised entrance-way to Garmire Cathedral. It was pitch-black until Jaeger raised the glowing.

  When he raised it, Joan was inside a perfect globe, about half the size of the pyradome but accommodating as many viewers. The lasegrapher performed not from a Tiger Pit but in the Avocado Pit at the globe's geometric core, with the audience facing both "upper" and "lower" hemispheres. By a system of image-splitting, whatever the lasegrapher projected onto the dome above was repeated exactly onto the demimonde below.

  After Jaeger pulled Joan along the guideline to the Avocado Pit, he showed her how to belt herself into the performer's frame so she could use her feet to oppose the console's pedals.

  Finally, he cycled the laser up and dimmed the glowing. "Play something happy," he said.

  "I think I'm gonna throw out again!"

  "No, you won't! Tell me, what are you afraid of?"

  "Falling, I'm falling!"

  "What frightens you about falling?"

  "I don't know!" Joan wailed.

  "Yes, you do!"

  Tears began forming at the corners of Joan's eyes, then began breaking away and floating off as globules. "Have you ever seen anyone icked?"

  "What?" he said.

  "I did, when I was five."

  Jaeger started, and had to pull himself back to the Avocado Pit with the guideline.

  "Listen, Joan," Jaeger began. "Nobody in Ad Astra has ever--" Suddenly, Jaeger made the connection. "Is that what your vistata was about?"

  Joan shut her eyes tightly and could only nod.

  "My God," Jaeger said, "my God. Listen closely, now. No one has ever been icarated in Ad Astra. We're civilized here, we don't do that to people."

  "Tell that to my stomach," Joan said shakily.

  "Listen to me. Two-thirds of the audiences you'll ever play for will be in free-fall cathedrals such as this one, and the worst thing you'll have to worry about is a bad review--which, I admit, is bad enough. Now, on the count of three, I want you to open your eyes and begin playing my Eighteenth Vistata. I guarantee in five minutes you'll forget all about your nausea."

  But Joan already had. Jaeger watched an arc of yellow liquid jetting out of Joan's shorts and continuing past the frame.

  "I'm wetting myself!" Joan said, nearly hysterically.

  "Never mind that, now," Jaeger said. "Play, damn it!"

  And a few seconds later, Joan opened her eyes and began playing Jaeger's Vistata No. 18 in Fourth.

  Two days later, to celebrate Joan's baptism in the cathedral - simultaneously of fire, air, and water, he realized--Jaeger took Joan and Astrid out to a holodrama imported from Earth.

  The Guest Host was a second-rate thriller about an Earthwoman who wants to bear a clone of herself, but is medically unable. Therefore, she and her husband hire a Touchable woman to be host-mother of the cloned daughter. In the early stages of her pregnancy, the Touchable woman becomes the mistress of the genetic mother's husband--who has a fetish for pregnant women - and when the genetic mother finds out what the Touchable and her husband are up to, she threatens to throw them out.

  The Touchable and the husband murder the wife--the genetic mother of the child the Touchable is carrying.

  After the murder, the Touchable, with the husband's help, moves to another city and takes over the murdered wife's identity by wearing her brainprint in a fake transponder, and has the murdered mother's daughter as her own child.

  The clone-daughter grows up with a dislike for the woman she thinks is her own mother, but actually is only her host mother and the murderer of her genetic mother.

  When the daughter grows up, she learns about the murder by stumbling across the fact that her own brainprint is identical to the one her supposed mother is giving out, and since they don't look at all alike, she can't be her clone or parthenogenic daughter, and therefore, her real mother's brainprint must have been stolen ... as it was, from her genetic mother.

  The daughter turns the Touchable in to the authorities, and the murderess and the husband are brought to justice.

  Normally, an insipid plot such as this would have made no impression on Joan, who informed Astrid and Wolfgang that the scenarists had cheated: a clone wouldn't have his or her parent's brainprint. Joan knew because Vera had Eleanor's genetic pattern but still had a brainprint of her own, and it worked the same with a clone. But, as it happened, Joan would remember The Guest Host for the rest of her life.

  When she returned home with Astrid after the show, a picturegram from Joan's father was waiting for her.

  Stanton hemmed and hawed his way through the message--using such phrases as "We've thought this over very carefully" and "Neither Vera nor I can stomach the thought of cerebral abortion" --but what the picturegram added up to was that Stanton and Vera had decided not to grow a new body for Eleanor. Eleanor was to remain, indefinitely, in cryonic suspension at the Forest Hills Vivarium.

  The message chopped off.

  For the second time in her life, Joan Seymour Darris made a promise to herself. This time, she vowed that someday she would return to Earth, win custody of her mother, and impregnate herself with Eleanor's new body, giving her mother life once again.

  IV.

  5000Å to 5500Å

  Chapter 16

  AT THE SUMMIT of Mt. Capistrano, a woman floated, naked and relaxed, gazing into the brilliant celestial night that no one had ever seen from Earth. She often came to this sanctum when she needed to think. This afternoon, she needed to make a decision.

  Even at repose, she was a woman of striking presence, tall and slender, with the lithe power that poets always attributed to the lioness but that was more properly human. Enhancing her physical aura, encircling her face like a corona around one of the stars she was watching, she wore a reddish mane that could have crowned a male lion.

  Judging by nonessentials, astrologers made the same mistake about her that poets made when comparing humans and lions. By their rules she was not a lion but a ram. But she had no desire to live among sheep--even as their ruler--and had broken from the herd while a lamb.

  In the age of two-dimensional photography, she might have been a model. She was large-eyed, sharp-featured, and small-breasted enough to be. In the age of three-dimensional holography, she never would have found a day's work in front of cameras that would have searched in vain for soft cushioning and found only unyielding angles.

  It didn't matter. She never would have enshrined her outward appearance any more than she would have enshrined her internal arrangement. Just so long as both did what they were called on to do, she gave them required maintenance and otherwise left them to fend for themselves.

  An alarm sounded, signifying that the time she had paid for in the sanctum was up. But she had already reached her decision. Taking a deep breath, she stretched, let out her breath with an exuberant squeal, then performed a somersault to align herself with the corridor to the changing room.

  A few minutes later, once again possessing minimal weight, she climbed into her jumpsuit and ran a comb through her hair. Then she realized she'd better get home if she wanted time to get ready before her celebration. Today, April 15, was her birthday. Joan Darris was seventeen today.

  She caught the first tube express back to El Capitan, took the tram back down the mountain on that end, and twenty minutes later was walking through campus, bypassing Auberon, Booth, and Clementine Avenues. Just past campus she turned onto Davis Avenue, and two blocks farther on entered the fifty-story building where she now lived.

  It was a small, one-bedroom apartment with a clear view of Lake Goddard; a number of Dryer students lived here, along with students from the nearby Business annex of UAANP. Joan had lived in this apartment a little over a year and a half, and though compared with Helix Vista it was still puny, it was positively expansive after one small room at the Rubinsteins'. Besides, after three and a half years of kosher food, she was happy to be able to heat up a simple quiche Lorraine, without checking the package to make sure its cheese had originated in
a soybean and its bacon had come from a pig genetically engineered to chew cud as well as walk with a cloven hoof. Life was complicated enough without having to worry about the nature of pigs' digestions. Still, since her birthday dinner was at the Rubinsteins', she didn't mind putting up with their foreign customs once again.

  Since early in January, when she had completed the quadrivium at Dryer and been awarded her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, Joan had been taking postgraduate master classes with Jaeger and supplementing her allowance from her father by playing roga on weekends at The Sure Thing, a mocha house up El Capitan. She remembered her first lesson with Jaeger after another of his students had told him she was playing there, two months ago. "Don't go back there," Jaeger had ordered her.

  "I fully intend to," she'd answered. "It teaches me a style I can't learn from you."

  "I don't intend to waste my time on a student who'll throw away her talent playing garbage."

  "Then I suppose there's no lesson today?"

  "If you're going back to that dive next weekend, no."

  Joan had got up to leave.

  Jaeger had called to her. "Do you really think you can reach your true potential without me?"

  "Do you really think I can reach my true potential by letting anybody--even you--decide for me what I can and can't play?"

  "If you know so much, why have you bothered studying with me at all?"

  "If my artistic impulses are so unreliable, why have you bothered teaching me for close to five years?"

  "You always get right to the point, don't you?"

  Joan rarely scored off her teacher, and had smiled slightly. "Just like a laser, Wolfgang."

  Jaeger had just groaned

  "We're wasting time," he'd said, then had started her lesson.

  Neither of them brought up the subject again.