Year's Best Science Fiction 02 # 1985

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “What did you expect?”

  “A stuffy man. Superior. A little of that ‘I’ve-seen-it-all’ weariness that all Terran bureaucrats seem to have.”

  “I try not to believe anything that comes to me secondhand.” Goodson popped another Soar under his nose. “You’re right about Brenda, however. She looks a little green in this light; perhaps she’s ill. I’d better go back; won’t you join us? I’d like to hear more about your dancing, Leila. Will you perform for us?”

  “I’m afraid not—my contract. But there’s no reason why we couldn’t try some free-floating in the pod.”

  “I’d like that.” Goodson slipped an arm around her waist. “Coming, Jake?”

  “No.”

  “A Friend is always on duty,” Goodson murmured as he guided Leila away.

  After the mixer I retired to my rooms to program dinner and arrange seating. I put the obvious choices at my own table: Goodson between Brenda and Leila, Simon Bortl next to Ori. I knew Ori’s bodyguard would be hovering over us the entire meal, testing her food, but there was no way around him. I checked to see how many had signed up for my free-fall dance class after dinner. I tried to handicap Goodman’s chances of seducing Leila. In my bedroom, I lay down to rest before what promised to be a busy evening.

  Because space is at a premium on a starcrosser, the normal sleepers are not much bigger than a groundside closet, about two and a half meters cubed. As the Corbu’s Friend, I had the luxury of three rooms and a bath with water instead of ultrasonics. I felt comfortable there, and with exception of my bedroom, rarely allowed passengers to invade my private domain.

  I was nearly asleep when Leila called and asked if she could stop in. I made an exception for her.

  As a practicum before my training as a Friend, I served as a counselor in the free clinic at Chasson University on Brown. Leila was a wreck when she came to the clinic. She was an apprentice with Motessier, the youngest dancer ever to earn that privilege. She was a small-town teenager lost in the city; her nightmares were of crowds and incessant noise. She was having an affair with a callow young dancer whose abilities just barely kept him in the company. Nobody really wanted Leila to be a dancer but Leila; even her lover was full of carping, “constructive” criticism. She was an uneasy combination of egotism and self-doubt. The first time I saw her in the clinic’s drab waiting room, all I saw was a nervous girl on the brink of exhaustion. I had no intention of falling in love with her.

  A Friend is taught to reserve his feelings—but I was not then a Friend. As a member of the psychology department at Chasson, I was permitted to have human failings. I failed with a vengeance. Perhaps it was that I suffered from some of the same problems as Leila: an excess of talent and a deficiency of self-image. Our first counseling session was intense, and it was only a short step from that intensity to passion. To my credit, I did not forget my responsibilities as a counselor. Our affair made it easier for Leila to end her relationship with the dancer, and the confidence she gained from my support carried over to her work with the Motessier Company. Helping her helped me to decide to become a Friend. When my appointment to the academy came I saw that the best thing for us was to part.

  I had followed her career from a distance, but seeing her again in person troubled me. I was not prepared for the strength of the attraction I still felt for her. And I was actually upset by Goodson’s interest in Leila.

  My musings were interrupted by the door chime. “Thanks for seeing me, Jake.” Leila smiled.

  “My pleasure.” I brought her into my tiny lounge. “What’s the problem?”

  “No problem, really,” Leila said. “I just thought, as an old friend, you might give me your opinion on something. You always were good with advice.”

  “Certainly. Would you like something to drink? A trank?”

  She looked at me queerly. “No, thank you, Jake. I’m wondering what I should do about my dancing.”

  I relaxed in my good chair and tried a trank myself. “You looked fine to me on Blue.”

  “I did, didn’t I? That’s what I’m coming to realize more and more. I feel better than I’ve ever felt. Sometimes it’s absolutely effortless, yet I know I’m pushing my body as hard as I can; it’s like magic when it feels that way. I’m wasting myself in the Motessier. Aren’t I?”

  “If you feel that way there must be something to it. I’ve never seen anyone dance better.”

  “You’re an amateur. Still, I think I need to go to Earth. If I’m ever going to make it any bigger than here, I’m going to have to do it soon. I can’t dance this well forever.”

  I could tell what she was leading up to. “Costs credits to get to Earth.”

  “That’s why I came to you. You know IPT. Do you know of any way I can arrange a passage?”

  “I would think you could get a sponsor in the system who would put up the money for a second-class passage. And aren’t there school and government sponsors on Earth?”

  “They’re more interested in technical candidates right now. And I don’t want to take the chance of being frozen.” She looked worried, depressed. “Nothing you could do, Jake?”

  I touched her hand. “You really need this so badly?”

  She looked me in the eyes for a second. “I’m stuck, huh?”

  I had had this same conversation so many times before. “I can’t think of anything. It’s a question a Friend runs into, and I haven’t heard a good answer yet. If you think of a way, I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “You think I ought forget about Earth and stay with the company?”

  “It’s an excellent company. Goodson even says so. I think you should achieve whatever it’s in your power to achieve. That’s the way I’ve always felt about your dancing. And about you.”

  We both stood. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed my cheek.

  “Thanks, Jake,” she said.

  After she left, I sat fingering the chain at my collar. The whole visit was too simpleminded. She wanted something and she hadn’t gotten it yet. But at least I had kept my own feelings under control, despite the youthful openness she still had about her.

  After dinner there was free-fall dancing in the pod. Of course, this was not the art of a professional dancer, but a simpler recreation well within the abilities of most starcrossers. Leila might disparage it with the slang, “free-floating,” but for most, the experience of weightlessness within the crystal walls of the pod is an ecstatic one. Free-fall dancing has been called the purest of the arts of human motion. It is possibly the most expressive act the body is capable of. To know motion as effortless as thought, to streak through a universe swirling with stars—it is no wonder that even the inexperienced dancer soon becomes addicted.

  On the starcrossing, free-fall dancing helps to reduce the claustrophobic anxiety common to passengers. And it is a relatively cheap form of recreation, since a dancepod is required anyway for all IPT long-haul crews according to union contract. But the dance is not an unmixed blessing for the Friend. Midair collisions are common and serious accidents can occur to test his negotiating talents. Once I had to send the Proxian ambassador to the freezer for attacking a clumsy dancer who had accidentally kicked his teeth in. Luckily, the thaw was perfect.

  I didn’t get to dance at all that night. I spent my evening teaching the handful of beginners their basic skills. When it came to the starcrossing, I would need to vist the pod often, but at that point I didn’t miss the opportunity much.

  Goodson also spent his evening quietly, entertaining his stable of hangers-on. It was obvious now that Brenda and Leila were competing for his attention. I began to worry more and more about Leila’s visit to me; it was clear that somewhere in the back of her mind she had the idea of hitchhiking. She didn’t seem the type to collect celebrity blowoffs just for the sexual thrill.

  Leila danced only once that night; she and Goodson did a popular pattern called the soul-search. Each partner free-forms while keeping eyes locked on the other’s face.
Well done, it is an attractive exercise. But although technically the two of them danced well, the combination of their styles was jarring. People reveal themselves by their choice and execution of pattern just as surely as they are revealed by their gene maps, their voiceprints, their sexual preferences. It looked like a poor match to me.

  After a few hours the party began to break up. I didn’t realize that Leila and Goodson had left until I saw Brenda talking to Rudi Limin. It was quite late, and despite the wide-spectrum anti-hi I’d taken, I was feeling the effects of the party. I sat down heavily next to them. Limin was practically stupefied with drugs; he had the face of a statue. Brenda was in only slightly better shape.

  “Nice party,” she said.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. Limin put his head down on his arms.

  Brenda patted him on the head. “That’s the way I feel, too.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “Things like this happen to me all the time.”

  “Things like what?”

  “You know, to him she’s dirt. She’s off at Brown, you know. Sure, he can have her now, but will he care when she’s gone? I ask you.”

  I shrugged and smiled. I was inclined to agree with her, and saw that part of my job on the insystem hop was going to be keeping Brenda happy. Goodson was proving to be as great a challenge as I’d expected.

  Brenda shook her head sadly. “It’ll be two months of hell.”

  I made a quick decision. I put my hand over hers, comfortingly. “Doesn’t have to be,” I said. “But what you need now is sleep, Brenda. I’m going to close this party soon, anyway.”

  She was crying now. Tears did not become her.

  “Rotten party. Will you come?”

  I could join Brenda later, if I decided she needed it. Though a Friend should be impersonal, there were provisions for his fraternization with passengers if it could be justified as therapeutic. Anything in the line of duty. “Brenda—” I hesitated. “Not tonight.”

  Brenda pushed Limin away from her and got up. “Good night, then,” she said curtly.

  Limin roused himself from the depths long enough to mumble, “Don’t understand, you know. I just don’t understand women very well. Otherwise, I’m all right.”

  I closed the party and headed them all back to their sleepers. Then I took another anti-hi and went to Surveillance to see that they stayed there. First I checked the freezer to see if any of the stiffs were going bad. They were all right that night.

  Then I made the rounds through the monitors to see that every sleeper was occupied. They were: our sexual lottery was off to fine start.

  I finished my day watching Leila and Goodson blow each other off. I don’t remember feeling good or bad about it. It seemed just another part of the job.

  Two weeks into the insystem hop the Quills started a civil war. Helen Quill was ejected from her sleeper by the other members of her marriage for riding in the same elevator as Bortl, the billionaire. For reasons that the Cereans are unable or unwilling to explain, this was a serious breach of morals, although Helen was standing in the back of the car and Bortl walked on just as the doors closed. Helen demanded, in her turn, to be off-loaded on Brown to await a starcrossing with more congenial company. This the other Quills forbade. They had carried their argument and a small gallery of spectators to the lounge by the time I heard about it. This was the kind of problem I loved to handle: the issues may not be clear but the antagonists are, and the Friend must call upon his abilities as a quick study of character, a levelheaded thinker, and a mercurial negotiator. I had to threaten to send them all down to the freezer before they would settle down. I told Helen she could make the crossing in the guest sleeper, designed for just such a situation, and persuaded them all to defer any other decisions until we reached Brown. About a week later Helen became lonely, the others relented, and there was a very satisfactory reconciliation.

  In the meantime, I had dealt with Brenda’s spiteful reaction to the pairing of Goodson and Leila by paying her conspicious attention in public and visiting her on two separate occasions in her sleeper, making sure that the other passengers were aware of this. As I had expected, Brenda was not so much interested in me as in saving face, and a brief affair with the Friend offered her an acceptable means. I watched for Leila’s and Goodson’s reactions, but neither seemed to care. As the crossing progressed I was buried under a landslide of opinion, gossip, and pure fabrication about the two of them. The community of crossers is small, and boredom is its greatest enemy.

  I was waiting in the lounge before my lunch shift, sprawled in the conversation pit with Ginny Morgan. Ginny was one of the soloists with Leila’s company. She was playing the ingenue, dropping unsubtle hints that she was interested in me, since Brenda had apparently proved that I was fair game. I was not above teasing her. She asked me whether the captain would ever call me to account for my crimes.

  “The captain is a woman named Alma Fothered,” I told her. “Very dour. She wants nothing to do with us. She and the crew stay in the command module. For all they care, you’re a sack of grain. There’s nothing for them down here but the dancepod.”

  “Then what do you do?”

  “I make sure that everybody has a good time.”

  “Can’t people have a good time by themselves?”

  “No.”

  She leaned over to whisper to me. “Jake, is it true that crossings drive some people crazy?”

  I winced in infinite pain. She giggled. “The crossings have nothing to do with it. People drive people crazy, and unless you hold up your end of this conversation, you’ll be responsible when I go over the edge. You’ve got me teetering on the brink.”

  “Ha. Maybe I’ll push you,” she said impatiently, all of sixteen years old. “Don’t change the subject. All my friends who’ve traveled, they all say the real strain doesn’t start until you go FTL, in the actual crossing.”

  “Believe me, Ginny, the actual crossing isn’t any different than this, only longer. You dancers will be off-loaded long before you have a chance to go any crazier than you already are.”

  “Well, some of us will, anyway.”

  “O.K., I’ll bite. What are you talking about?”

  “You haven’t heard? I thought that Friends were supposed to keep up with all the crossers’ gossip.”

  I could see what was coming and I didn’t like it. But I would not let Ginny know what I was thinking. “Let’s have a teasing contest, Ginny, just you and me. I think I’ll win.”

  She gave up without a fight. “Goodson has offered to pay Leila’s way to Earth and personally introduce her to Gustav.”

  “And who started this rumor?”

  “I heard it from Leila. I thought IPT didn’t allow hitchhiking.”

  “We don’t. When did Leila tell you this?”

  “Uhh … she didn’t exactly tell me. I overheard her telling Ottin, the dance master. It’s all right with me if she wants to screw her way across the galaxy. As soon as she goes, I’ll get a shot at prime.”

  I smiled at her precious ego. “Tell you what, Ginny. Tonight you sit at my table.” I took some pleasure at the momentary look of disappointment that crossed her face.

  “I’m more interested in your bed.”

  She really had no aptitude for polite conversation.

  After lunch I went to Surveillance and found Leila in her room. I called her; she did not look guilty. I didn’t want to see her in my rooms, so we agreed to meet in the guest sleeper.

  Long before IPT monopolized the starcrossing industry, it was the first carrier to ban hitchhiking. The premium on space aboard the ships made it impossible to protect wealthy crossers from insystem hoppers, a small but steady percentage of whom were hitchhikers looking to beg a starcrossing. Hitchhikers have their reasons—some of them quite touching—and they seem to have a knack of picking those crossers most susceptible to their wiles. So IPT banned hitchhiking, mostly to cut down on lawsuits and
grab more of the profitable starcrossing market. Other carriers called this elitist. Then the media got into it and everyone knew about hitchhiking. Someone named Bob 46 was the first crazy hitchhiker to blow himself and several bystanding crossers into cold space. Soon another crosser evened things a bit by poisoning an overeager hitchhiker. He was acquitted; the Friend was cashiered. Then came hostage-taking, and then a group of five disgruntled hitchhikers tried to hijack a ship. After that, hitchhiking became a crime almost everywhere; there was a harsh Vagrant Solicitation regulation in IPT’s charter.

  And still it was a problem.

  “You’ve heard, haven’t you?” Leila was full of energy; she almost bounced into the tiny room.

  “I’ve heard a rumor that Goodson has offered to pay your way to Earth.”

  “Isn’t that wonderful, Jake?”

  I sat on the all-gravity bed that folded down from the wall. She sat next to me. “Do you seriously think he will do it?” I asked her.

  She became more serious. “I’m not a child anymore. I think I can tell when somebody is telling me the truth.”

  “You realize that even if he does pay your way he’s leaving you open to a charge of hitchhiking?” It was difficult for me to be so blunt; it was not my job to be her friend, yet I could not let her walk into such a situation without giving her the benefit of my knowledge of Goodson. “Once he gets what he wants from you, he could simply turn around and report a violation of the regulation, and you’d be out on your ear at Brown. Subject to civil charges as well.”

  She was very close; I had not been so close to her in a long time.

  “Dear Jake, I know you only want to look out for me. I’ll always appreciate what you’ve done. But I just don’t read him that way. He’s an IPT exec; he doesn’t have to worry about the rules. If he doesn’t report me, who would? Ottin says he would make no trouble about my Motessier contract. The other dancers—the women anyway—would only see it as an opportunity for themselves.” She paused, and I felt her hand on my back. “Would you report it?”