Starlings

by Jo Walton

  “What are you saying?” Jay asked. Everyone had got to their feet and was drifting towards the back of the room, where we were going to be last in line.

  “I don’t think we should condemn our children to this,” I said, quoting President Murphy’s speech forbidding US embarcation in Speranza, the reason Anglos are still a minority on Speranza today.

  Jay snorted.

  “We can’t lose Ballette,” I said. “It’s too important. We just can’t.”

  “It’s inevitable,” Midge said.

  “We’ll see about that,” I said.

  I thought about it while I was eating. It was all tangled up with the fact that I wanted a future. I always had. I wanted children. And I wanted my children, and my grandchildren, and their children, to be able to watch Ballette, to be able to dance if they wanted to. I wasn’t planning to be one of those awful Ballette parents, pushing their kids harder than they wanted to be pushed. Marie, my best friend in Ballette school, had had a father like that, a father who lived for his daughter’s triumphs and wept at her setbacks. Marie gave up Ballette and opted Vietnamese, she went into navigation training and got married and had a baby when she was twenty-four. He’s the cutest thing. She lives up by Nav, which is hell to get to so I don’t see her very often. Her father tried to latch onto me when Marie dropped out, and I had to tell him in no uncertain terms to kagg off. I wouldn’t be like him. I wouldn’t force my children into Ballette, or anything else. It wasn’t that I wanted Ballette for them as much as I wanted it to be there for the kids like me, whoever they were, whoever their parents were. I didn’t want to live in a world without Ballette, and I didn’t want anyone to live in a world where that door was closed to them. I was really sure about that, as sure as I’d been about anything, ever.

  Naturally, I turned to Jay. Two more courses had gone by—the carbonara and a spicy soup. On stage, Pulchinella was singing while some of the men clowned behind her. Teatro del Sale shook slightly as each lift went up the spur, and they were shuddering exaggeratedly every time and making it part of the act. “How could I make it so Ballette went on forever?”

  “Well, Speranza would have to go on forever,” Jay said.

  “Okay, how do I get that?” I asked.

  “No, Fedra, it really is impossible,” Midge said. She had the faintest Chinese accent in English, it only showed when she was stressed. “We’ll reach—all right, our descendants will reach—the New World and that will be the end of the voyage.”

  “What if we kept on going?” Jay asked.

  “That would be crazy!” Mei Ju said. “What would be the point of that? Just going on and on forever?”

  “We’d also run out of trace minerals and chemicals,” Midge said.

  “Oh come on, we could get those from comets the same as we do extra water. We do that already,” Genly said. “Not that I’m necessarily endorsing this idea. But there’s no scientific reason we’d have to stop.”

  “The scientists and the engineers want to get to the New World!” Midge said.

  “They’re not going to,” Jay said. “And to answer Mei Ju’s very pertinent question, what’s the point of anything? We didn’t volunteer to be here, we’re here because our ancestors made certain decisions. We could change those decisions for ourselves, and for our descendants.”

  “We could get to the New World and let some people off and have other people go back to Earth,” Genly said. “Then some people could get off at Earth and others could embark and turn around and go to the New World, and keep doing that. Over and over, like a lift going up a spur. That way Midge and Fedra would both get what they wanted.”

  “Brilliant,” I said, and kissed Genly, who blushed. His skin is quite pale, so it really shows.

  “It won’t work though,” Jay said. “Well, it might once it got going, but it won’t work the first time.”

  “Why not? I see no technical problem.”

  “No, technically it would work. It wouldn’t work for people reasons. All the scientists would get off, right? They’d be mad keen to explore the New World and get data.”

  “Of course they would,” Midge said. “And so would lots of other people.”

  “Exactly,” Jay said. “If it was us, now, getting there next year, you’d get off, and who else?”

  Mei Ju raised her hand, and Genly held his out flat. “I’d have to think about it,” he said.

  “I’d stay on,” I said.

  “I’d stay on too, but just as the planet won’t need Ballette dancers and artists, the ship will need other people too. The engineers would stay on, probably, lots of them—their vocation is making Speranza go. But too many people would get off for us to be able to maintain a high civilization. We wouldn’t have enough audience for Ballette, or enough kids wanting to train for it. We’d be down to one lunch club.”

  “This one,” I said, and simultaneously Genly said “Kam Fung,” which was the dim sum hall where we ate the other half of the time.

  As if on cue, Il Magnifico bellowed that there were deep-fried zucchini flowers, and we all rushed to get them.

  “There is another problem,” Genly said, as we were all back in our seats and munching away. “I hadn’t remembered about the fusion drive.”

  “What about it?” Jay asked. “Isn’t it good pretty much forever?”

  “Not forever, but for thousands of years,” Genly said, in his precise way. “But the plan is that when we arrive at the New World it will be disassembled and taken down to provide power for the first years of the colony. If the ship were to return, that couldn’t happen.”

  “Couldn’t we build another one?” I asked.

  “I . . . don’t know,” Genly said. “It would certainly be a technical challenge. And it would be much easier to go with the plan and take down the one we have—it was designed for disassembly. That’s why I know about this, the design is an engineering classic. Combined with the human issue Jay saw, I think people would have a number of plausible objections.”

  Midge had finished her zucchini blossoms and was looking at me very strangely. “Are you really serious about this?”

  “Yes,” I said, emphatically.

  Mei Ju sketched the sign for calm. “There’s nothing we can do about it. It will be up to our descendants to make up their own minds what to do.”

  “We can make it harder or easier for them,” Genly said. “If we needed to make another fusion drive, for instance, it would be better to think about that in advance.”

  “We can do something,” Jay said. He had his burning look, I don’t know how better to describe it. Jay has been my best friend since I was eleven and sometimes I don’t understand him at all. “Turnover,” he said. “We’re going to do it in a few months, right? The halfway point, the point where we stop accelerating away from Earth and start decelerating towards the New World.” Everyone was nodding, wondering where he was going. “We don’t have to do it. We’re not compelled to. We could just omit Turnover and keep on going.”

  “But that would be—” Midge began.

  “Condemning our children to this?” Jay asked. “We already did that one.”

  Up to that moment I had mostly thought about Turnover in terms of the great arts festival that was being planned to celebrate it. I was playing the lead in Jin Cullian and the teacher in Flowers for Algernon, which has two wonderful but terribly difficult pas de deux. We were already in rehearsal.

  “You mean we could persuade people to just keep going?” I asked.

  “It would mean politics,” Genly said.

  Despite what the idiotic American refusniks had thought, we had everything on Speranza, including politics. My Auntie Vashti had started off as a community organizer in the Ditch and was now one of the assistant mayors. She’d help me. And I had Jay, my secret weapon. Jay could find anything.

  “You’re not serious?” Midge said. “This is ridiculous. We have to make Turnover.”

  “I don’t think there’s time before Turnover to
decide properly,” Mei Ju said. “We’d be deciding for our descendants.”

  “We are anyway,” Jay said.

  “But there are more choices when we get to the New World,” Mei Ju said. “Not turning over, just going on, would be closing off choices for them. They’d never be able to stop.”

  Genly was sketching on his phone and ignoring us. After a moment he looked at Jay. “Can you find me the rejected designs for the fusion plant?”

  Jay turned his wrist and typed for a moment, then Genly nodded and sank back into ignoring us. He even ignored dessert being announced. The rest of us went up to get it. My brother Luke deigned to introduce me to his date as we were in line, so we made small talk for a few minutes, which Jay hates, of course. Dessert was chocolate and hard sweet hollow cookies. I brought back extra chocolate for Genly, and a jug of water for all of us.

  Genly glanced up from his phone when I put the chocolate and water down next to him. “I think I have it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “If we could replicate the fusion plant, which is a challenge some of my colleagues would be delighted to have, then our descendants would have three choices. They could go down to the New World, as planned. They could stay on Speranza and turn it around to go back to Earth, which would have the problems Jay pointed out. Or they could keep Speranza in orbit as a city. They could use the rockets to go up and down. Those who want to colonize can colonize, they can come up every few months to see Ballette. They would be farmers, but they’d still have a metropolis to visit, and those who wanted metropolitan life could stay. And of course there are scientific uses to having a manned space station.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said, seeing it at once. “That’ll actually work.”

  “It might be easier to make the new fusion plant on the planet rather than copy the exact design.” He took some of the chocolate and smiled amiably.

  “That’s just a plumbing detail,” Midge said.

  “Plumbing beats politics every time,” Jay said.

  “And of course, we can’t say what our descendants will want, any more than our ancestors knew what we want,” Mei Ju said. “They might all want to go down. Or they might all decide to turn back. Or somebody might invent something that changes everything.”

  “That could always happen, at any moment,” Genly said. “What I want is to keep everyone’s options as open as possible, so that people can make their own choices when it’s the right time.”

  “We’re okay here,” I said, thinking of the crow. “We’re okay here—and did I tell you that I’m dancing the lead in Jin Cullian in the Turnover Festival?”

  AT THE BOTTOM

  OF THE GARDEN

  KATIE MAE was sitting cross-legged on the lawn carefully pulling the wings off a fairy. The wings were lilac and gold and slightly iridescent. She had one wing almost completely detached. The fairy was still struggling feebly, squeezed in Katie Mae’s firm grip. Katie Mae gave the task all her attention. One of her golden plaits was coming slightly undone, and there was mud and a little ichor on the bodice of her pink cotton dress.

  “What you got?” Brian’s dirty face appeared over the wall that separated their gardens. “Fairy,” said Katie Mae casually, and showed him, keeping a tight grip on it.

  “Cool. Where’d you get it?” Brian’s hands joined his face, and shortly the rest of his body followed as he squirmed over the red bricks to land on the grass beside Katie Mae.

  “Here.” Katie Mae resumed her tugging.

  “How’d you catch it?” Brian peered interestedly at the fairy. It appeared to be a little man, about six inches long, with butterfly wings. Brian flung himself down full length beside Katie Mae, a position the grass stains on his T-shirt marked as habitual.

  “It was sitting on a flower,” said Katie Mae, in a tone of disgust. “I just crept up and grabbed it. It tried to bite me, but I stopped that.”

  “What you going to do with it?” Brian sat up again and prodded it tentatively. It squirmed as much as it could, which was not very much.

  “Get the wings off so it can’t fly away.” Katie Mae sighed at the idiocy of boys who required the obvious explained. Just then the wing came off, with another leaking of ichor. The fairy made a little whimpering noise.

  “I can see that,” said Brian. He picked up the detached wing and folded and unfolded it a few times. “Pretty,” he said, generously. “But what are you going to do with it then?”

  “Well I was going to put it in my Barbie house and dress it up in Ken’s clothes, though it’s a little bit too small I think. But I think it’s going to die,” said Katie Mae.

  “I think so too,” said Brian. “Oh well. We could have a funeral.”

  “We had a funeral for the hedgehog,” Katie Mae reminded him. “I’m bored with funerals.” The other wing started to peel away, and she bent her concentration on it. “They’re fixed on really tough below,” she said. “The top part’s easy. But I think I’m getting the hang of it, it won’t take so long next time. There it comes.” The other wing came off. The fairy leaked more ichor, but did not cry this time. His eyes were closed and his face screwed up. “What did you come round for, anyway?” Katie Mae asked, realising now that her task was done that Brian was more than just an appreciative audience.

  “Oh, I forgot,” Brian said. “My mum said we could go swimming, and we could take you if your mum will let you, and she’s gone round the front to ask your mum.”

  “Yowsa!” said Katie Mae, dropping the fairy and stamping on it hard. Then she pelted at top speed up the garden towards the house, Brian close at her heels.

  “It’s so sweet the way they play together,” Katie Mae’s mother said to Brian’s mother as the children hurtled towards the kitchen door.

  Meanwhile, at the bottom of the garden, next door’s cat was eating the remains of the fairy.

  OUT OF IT

  (FOR NANCY LEBOVITZ)

  IT WAS the glorious halcyon summer of 2001. The world had come through the calendar millennium unscathed, and the weather was beautiful, even in Rome, where August can often be unbearably warm. A gentle breeze was blowing as he arrived, the vintages of wine all seemed to be exquisite, even the traffic seemed to have calmed since his last visit.

  He caught up with them first on the Palatine Hill, an older American couple, gawking at the ruins like all the others. She drew the eye first. Despite her silver hair she was still beautiful, in well-tailored clothes and with the cheekbones and profile of a queen. Her husband looked much more ordinary, bald, liver-spotted, sweating, wearing shorts no European his age would have ventured. Behind them, as they came to Augustus’s house, walked a creature neither clearly male nor female but poised delicately between—hair a shade too long, jaw a shade too strong, jeans and jacket carefully ambiguous. Not a hair out of place, and as for age, anyone might have guessed late twenties. Yet it was neither the woman nor the younger companion who was the focus of his attention, only the old man.

  He found them again in Florence, a few days later, in the crowds around Michelangelo’s Holy Family in the Uffizi. “All those naked men,” the young person was saying, the voice too was ambiguously pitched. “Whatever are they doing there?” The old couple laughed, and he, beside them, smiled.

  “Michelangelo was fond of adding naked men to the scenery,” he interjected. “Think of the Sistine ceiling. Sixteen naked men for every biblical scene.”

  They smiled politely at him, then the younger one started, and he realised he had been recognised, and it would not be easy after all.

  “Are you American?” the woman asked, and her accent was neither English nor American, Greek perhaps lurked under those vowels.

  He started to speak, but their companion was already drawing them away from him warily. He let them go. There was still time.

  In Venice, he could never get near them for a moment. He passed them in a gondola, but that was the closest he came.

  He caught up on Lake Como. They were eating di
nner in their hotel, and their companion was leaning against the bar. He took a step towards them, and the young companion raised a hand to stop him.

  “They value their privacy.” Again the voice was an ambiguous tenor.

  “I’m sure,” he said. “Such a famous man.”

  “Yes, the only person to win three Nobel Prizes.”

  “The peace prize of course, and physics and . . .” He let his voice trail off.

  “It hasn’t been announced yet, but he has also won this year in literature,” the smooth voice answered.

  “Lovely.”

  “And sixty years of power and influence, why, he’s one of the most celebrated men in the world.”

  “Yes.” He paused, then went on firmly. “I need to speak to him. I have the authority. You can’t stop me.”

  “He’s eighty-three years old, and he’s finishing up a perfect dinner with his wife.” Out of the hotel window the sun was setting, making the lake a sheet of silken gold, and the mountains black silhouettes. “Do you really want to interrupt him now?”

  “Yes,” he said, confident. He saw that the couple were looking away from the sunset now, sipping their wine, speaking to each other. The woman glanced over to the bar. “And you can’t stop me.”

  “I could, but I won’t.”

  He let the brag pass unchallenged and walked over to the table. The waitress made a motion to stop him, but the creature at the bar must have signalled, for she retreated. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table.

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” he said.

  “We’ve just finished our dessert,” the woman said.

  “Have a glass of wine,” the man said, pouring him one. He took it and sipped. It was complex and delicious, and he savoured it.

  “We were wondering if you were a relation,” the woman said, gesturing to their companion at the bar.

  “We are akin in a way,” he said, reluctantly.

  “Your height, your hair, your—”