Dancing with Eternity

by John Patrick Lowrie

  We crossed the field and entered the hangar on the far side. The cavernous interior was lit by electric lights focused on something that looked like the fossilized rib of some impossibly huge creature. A man was suspended beside it in a bosun’s chair hung from a crane. His face was obscured by an elaborate headset. Several different pairs of lenses protruded from it, one of them lowered over his eyes. He was being moved along the surface of the thing, peering closely at it. Occasionally he would switch lenses and go back over an area he had just examined.

  “Yuri!” Marcus yelled. The man looked up, then flipped up the monocular he had been using. He seemed to recognize Marcus; then he flipped another set of lenses down over his eyes and turned back to his work.

  “What do you want?” he said.

  “Why haven’t you been picking up?” Marcus asked, reasonably, I thought.

  “Do you want me to finish this or gossip with you?” Yuri replied testily.

  “Steel just wanted to know how things were going.”

  Yuri didn’t look up from what he was doing. “Humanity could have spread throughout the entire galaxy by now, and been well into the Megellanic Clouds, if it hadn’t had to stop and furnish progress reports.”

  I liked Yuri already. Marcus seemed to be used to this sort of exchange. He said, “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  Yuri stopped the chair and brought his face down so the lenses he was wearing actually touched the surface of the thing. “You can get me a cup of coffee. There’s an urn on that bench over there.” He pointed vaguely over his shoulder.

  Marcus shook his head and looked at me. “You mind getting that for him?” he said.

  “Not at all,” I replied and started to look around the place for the particular bench he was referring to.

  “This thing is amazing,” Marcus said. “What do you call it?” If he was trying to butter Yuri up, it didn’t work. Yuri replied:

  “I call it a desperately slapped together realization of a hastily conceived solution to an absurd and utterly self-imposed situation. What do you want to call it?”

  Marcus tried again. “I call it a triumph of will over adversity.”

  “It’s not a triumph of anything over anything, yet. It’s just a great big lump of carbon and glue that may or may not withstand the forces it will be subjected to.” He ripped off the headset and rubbed his eyes. “Shiva, there’s no freaking way I’ll be able to do even the sketchiest statistical structural analysis. The thing’s just too freaking big.”

  “Don’t they have a—”

  Yuri cut him off, “I’d love to give you a long list of the things they don’t have, but I just haven’t got the time.”

  “How can we help you?” Marcus asked again.

  “What do you know about materials science?” Yuri fired back.

  “I’m just a pilot, Yuri.”

  I’d finally found the coffee. “I used to be an architect,” I said as I poured a cup.

  Yuri looked at me with a perfect balance of hope and cynicism. “Oh, yeah? What’d you build?”

  “Oh, this and that,” I replied as I handed him the mug.

  “This and that what?” he said.

  “You want my portfolio? I don’t think I have it on me,” I responded.

  “It might help,” he took a sip. “Ever use any double-carbon?”

  Okay, so I’m an egotist. I said, “My wife and I designed and built Marineris.” It was a slip, I admit it.

  “Marineris?” His expression changed to incredulity. “On Mars?”

  In for a DCU, in for a kilo. “Yep. North rim of the Valles.”

  “Jesus, how freaking old are you?” Like I said, it was a slip. “Sorry, rude question. Don’t answer. Let’s pretend I never said it.” He dismounted from the bosun’s chair. “Hell, if you were working in this stuff that long ago you might even get along with this equipment. I think it was designed sometime before the first Crusade. I’m surprised it’s not nuclear powered.”

  “I’ll do my best.” I looked at the headset as he handed it to me. “Looking for structural flaws?”

  “Anything. Hairline cracks, bubbles, misaligned fibers, structural resonance. Their fabricators here are well maintained; they’re just outmoded. On the ship I could have whipped this up in eight hours. Here it’s like swimming through paste.” He pointed to the various eyepieces. “These are polarizer filters, this is U.V., here’s your magnetic resonance imager, over here is graviton echo, X-ray is up here—”

  “They use different lenses for each?” I said, trying to keep the dismay out of my voice.

  “Quaint, huh?” He started walking across the room to a console array in one corner. “You just keep those images coming, and I’ll collate them over here. We’ll at least eliminate one step. I don’t know why I didn’t just carve it with a stone axe.”

  I climbed into the bosun’s chair and put on the headgear. No wonder Yuri was so irritable; it must have weighed three kilos.

  Marcus said, “Well, I’m glad Mohandas can give you a hand, anyway.”

  Yuri’s mood must have slightly improved; I know mine would have just taking that stupid helmet off. He replied, “Yeah, whaddya know? Steel actually managed to hire someone useful.”

  I couldn’t see what anyone was doing. I was trying to figure out the antique optics, but I heard Marcus say, “There’s got to be something Jemal and I can do to help speed up the process.”

  I must have pushed the right button. The vids came to life. They were old. It was like watching TV at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.

  “You know, there is something you can do,” Yuri’s voice again, “Go back in the office and get Yanis to show you where the winches and cable and all the rest of that stuff is. There should be some heavy-duty spikes and carabiners and a bunch of stuff. It should all be in one pile. You can take them outside so we can load them when Archie gets down from the pass.”

  Marcus: “Archie’s coming down?”

  Yuri: “Yeah, haven’t you talked to Alice?”

  Marcus: “Not in the last half-hour.”

  Yuri: “Oh. Well, she’s relieving Archie so Archie can get some rest. I guess it’s pretty intense up there with Drake.”

  Marcus: “I see. I don’t think the Captain is going to like that, but that’s not my problem. How do I recognize this Yanis?”

  Yuri: “Oh, I guess you didn’t meet him. He’s the guy in the office.”

  The surface came into focus. I could magnify up to ten thousand times, good enough for what we were looking for.

  Marcus: “Of course.”

  I could focus down into the interior using M.R.I. or grav echo. X-rays didn’t show too much in a carbon-carbon matrix.

  Yuri called after Marcus, “And don’t let him sell them to you! I already paid for them!”

  Marcus called back, “I understand.” Then an afterthought, “Wait a minute. You pick up for Alice but not for me?”

  “Alice is a lot prettier than you.”

  I could almost see Marcus shaking his head as he walked off.

  Chapter 7

  For the next endless time Yuri and I checked out the “handle” as well as we could. All the values were critical because it had to be light enough for the dirigible to lift and strong enough to take the acceleration of the skyhook, which was about sixty meters per second squared, over six standard gees. With no Musadhi Discontinuity to keep us comfy and cozy at whatever gravity we wanted, it was going to be quite a ride.

  At one point Archie came in. I didn’t get to meet her because I was under the helmet, but she, Marcus and Jemal loaded the stuff into the gondola and left for Matessa’s party. Marcus must have bulleted Steel to wake her up, but I didn’t hear him. I was lost in a world of microscopic carbon fibers.

  After several hours of this Yuri came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get it any better than we had. In the final analysis it was either going to work or it wasn’t. Steel wanted to be ready to go just after
dawn, we didn’t have time to fabricate another one, and we couldn’t have checked it any better than this one if we had. There was nothing else to do, so Yuri shut down the work station and we headed back to the village.

  Yuri knew how to get to Teng’s place, which was good; I still had afterimages of log-like carbon fibers superimposed on everything I looked at. There was never any thought of going back to the inn and, perhaps, getting some sleep, or something equally pedestrian and pragmatic. I’d had about an hour in the last who-knows-how long, but by that point I was going on pure adrenaline, and Yuri told me he only slept when there wasn’t something more interesting to do.

  The party was in full flower when we got there. It looked like everyone in Kindu was there; we couldn’t even see Steel and the rest of the crew. Teng’s place was right on the river, a blaze of torchlight danced in the reflecting water. Upstream of the docks and around the next bend, it occupied a rocky point of land that thrust out into the current. The river surrounded it on three sides, then ceased to be navigable, climbing an orchestra of cascades that sparkled in firelight and blurred into moonlight. But the real orchestra was inside, ‘inside’ being a relative term in tropical architecture.

  Teng’s place was laid out like a lotus blossom. Small, irregularly shaped platforms at various levels were cantilevered out over the water, some thatched gazebos, others open to the sky. They radiated from a larger area that was being used as an improvised stage and bandstand. An enormous array of musical instruments was being played by anyone who felt like it: gamelans, marimbas, harps, tablas, gongs, wood flutes, sitars, lutes, sarangis, oboes, an endless variety of percussion, guitars, stone chimes, natural horns … half of them I didn’t even recognize. The main group of musicians was in the central area, but people everywhere were pulsing along with the music on anything they could hit, slap, or stomp on. In front of the orchestra a woman was half-singing, half-chanting a long story. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but at the end of each riff the audience would cheer her on. As soon as we entered, a man slapped me on the back, shoved a maraca in my hand and pointed us to the bar.

  “The natives seem to be friendly,” Yuri yelled at me as we wormed our way through the pulsing mass. By the time we got to the bar we were dancing, too; you couldn’t help it. People would bump up against you in time to the music and after awhile it was a lot easier to move with the beat than against it. The rhythms were infectious. Sevens and fives floated above a raga that sounded like it was in a complex triple meter. Long, sad triads wailed under triumphant, ecstatic bursts of melody that the soloists redefined each time they conversed with it.

  And the food! I’d been living on nutrient packets and ’Burbs’ brew for way too long. A huge luau was spread out beside the bar, luscious sprays of pineapples, mangos, bananas and limes alternated with trays of wonderful things that had been dipped in this and marinated in that and sautéed with some of these and spiced and grilled and were just incredible. They never seemed to run out of anything. My only frustration was having to put down my glass of incredibly rich, frothy, caramel-hued ale to eat something, while I added the voice of my maraca to the chorus with my other hand.

  I saw Matessa, or rather, I saw two fans of iridescent blue and green eyes radiating from sturdy shoulders, down toward the center of the main floor. She was literally bathed in people. There must have been eight or ten holding her hands, clasping her waist, her shoulders, rubbing her back, her neck, her head, her feet. She was looking up at the night sky and cheering on the singer louder than anyone.

  I leaned over to Yuri. “This is incredible,” I yelled. “They must really love her.”

  “They’re saying good-bye to her for a long time,” Yuri yelled back. “Yanis was telling me about it. They do this for everyone. You can’t make enough out here in the bush to pay for your medical, so they all have to indenture to get re-booted. This is Matessa’s third time.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  A man dancing in front of me turned around to face me, without breaking rhythm. A butterfly’s body was tattooed on the bridge of his nose. Wings with real iridescent scales glistened on cheeks and forehead. “She keeps coming back, man!” he yelled. “Who wouldn’t? This is the most beautiful place in the universe!”

  I couldn’t disagree with him. The setting was spectacular, and the town itself seemed to be an ongoing expression of artistic joy and balance. But to go into the trades ... I thought about the two SyndicEnts in ’Burbs’ place, hard-wired off their nut in their off-hours just to escape that which could not be escaped. Then I looked at Matessa. What would she look like in three months? Whatever Planetary Tectonics needed her to look like. Her peacocks would be gone, that was certain. Her personality algorithms would be stored, but disabled. She would still be her, but she wouldn’t be able to ask for raises or go on strikes or disobey a direct order from a superior or anything else that was inconvenient to the suits.

  On the other hand, Planetary Tectonics wasn’t going to re-boot her just once, but twice. Once at the beginning of her sixty-year stint and once at the end. And on the second ’boot she could get her peacocks back and her personality and her looks, and her physical condition would be that of a healthy twenty-year old, free of whatever disease must be killing her now. Free to go where she wanted and do what she wanted, her whole life ahead of her.

  And if she didn’t want to remember what it was like to be trapped in her own body, working endlessly for people who thought of her as a machine, she didn’t have to. She could have the entire sixty years wiped, like she’d never left Kindu. But she would have to live that sixty years, one day at a time, one hour at a time, enduring, hunkering down, waiting for release. She must really love this place, I thought, to come back here again and again, knowing what she was going to have to do to pay for it.

  I looked around at the party. These people seemed to be almost one living entity, they were so entwined. Someone had given Yuri an a-go-go, which was cruel, I thought. He had to hold it in one hand and beat it with a stick held in the other, which left no hands for ale and food. Ah, but he’d found a friend. A woman beside him was feeding him while he danced.

  “There’s Steel,” Yuri yelled between mouthfuls of something that looked vaguely like hummus, and may have been. I looked where he was pointing and saw her, too. In the midst of the gaudy bouquet of undulating body art her silver fur was an elegant understatement. I tried to ignore the hand that squeezed my chest when I looked at her, but I didn’t succeed. She was swaying with the music, talking to some townie that I had never seen before and was suddenly intensely jealous of. I’d been off the net too long, alone too long, unemployed too long. I drained my glass in one long, surly draught and set it on the bar to be refilled.

  I yelled at Yuri, “You want to go over there?” hoping he’d have some better idea.

  “Sure, why not?” he yelled back. “It’s a nice night. Let’s dance over!” He put his arm around the waist of the woman that had been feeding him and put the a-go-go in her hand, continuing to play it with the beater in his. He picked up his glass, took a nice long draw, put the rim to the woman’s lips and let her drink as much as she wanted. Then they both pulsed off in Steel’s general direction, instrument and player—which was which yet to be determined. I picked up my refueled tumbler off the bar and followed them, shaking my maraca like I meant it.

  Making our way through the crowd was no mean feat. As we got closer to the band the organism grew denser and more rhythmic. Just as I was about to break through the thickest grove, I got caught in a vortex and started to resonate with the hips of a woman dancing next to me. She was from somewhere in the Pleiades, too. The tattooed beak of a tropical bird made a widow’s peak that just touched the chakhra between her flashing eyes. A crest of scarlet feathers blended to dark blue-green, almost black, as the long neck traveled down her back, swelling to a body and wings that embraced her pelvis above a fountain of multi-colored plumes that sprouted from the base of
her spine and almost brushed the floor.

  She smiled at me, took the glass from my hand, drank from it and passed it to the next dancer. Then she gave me the cabasa she was shaking, took my maraca and began to dance with me in earnest. I looked around for Yuri, but he’d been swept away in the current. All right, I thought, take a break. No more Steel, no more burning blimps, no more Drake’s ‘condition,’ no more mystery or tension for a while. Time to let the spirit replenish. I inhaled the party and joined it.

  The woman who had been singing, or chanting, evidently was finished; she walked over to where Matessa was being held, hugged and kissed her, and rejoined the throb of the dancers as they applauded her. Then, through some arcane process or perhaps no process at all, they chose another singer from their midst and encouraged him to take the stage. He’d had his body art for a long time, or else was emulating an archaic style. The thirty-fifth century, if I remembered correctly. His features were the usual Draconian blend, a sort of Afro-Eurasio-Austral-Amerind mix that ended up looking vaguely Polynesian; but his skin was midnight black, with pinpoints of white in the configuration of the constellations as seen from the planet where he’d had the work done. I couldn’t tell which planet it was, he was too far away and dancing around too much, and there were too many planets anyway.

  “How many verses?” someone in the crowd asked him.

  “Seven!” he responded, and the crowd cheered and urged him on. The music diminished to an expectant murmur and he began to sing: