The Stardance Trilogy (25 page)

“So it won’t be heart trouble that gets us,” Tom stipulated, “assuming that lowering the work load drastically turns out to be good for a heart. But that’s one organ out of many.”

“Think it through, Tom. Space is a sterile environment. With reasonable care it always will be. Your immune system becomes almost as superfluous as your semicircular canals—and do you have any idea how much energy fighting off thousands of wandering infections drains from your life system? That might have been used for maintenance and repair? Or don’t you notice your energy level drop when you go dirtside?”

“Well sure,” he said, “but that’s just…”

“—the gravity, you were gonna say? See what I mean? We’re healthier, physically and mentally, than we ever were on Earth. When did you ever have a cold in space? For that matter, when was the last time you got deeply depressed, morose? How come we hardly ever, any of us, have dog days, black depressions and sulks and the like? Hell, the
word
depression is tied to gravity. You can’t depress something in space, you can only move it. And the very word gravity has come to be a synonym for humorlessness. If there’s two things that’ll kill you early it’s depression and a lack of a sense of humor.”

In a vivid rush came the memory of what it had felt like to live with a defective leg under one gravity. Depression, and an atrophying sense of humor. It seemed so long ago, so very far away. Had I ever really been that despairing?

“Anyway,” I went on, “Panzella says that people who spend a lot of time in free fall—and even the people in Luna who stay in one-sixth gee, those exiled miners—show a lower incidence of heart and lung trouble, naturally. But he also says they show a much lower incidence of cancers of all kinds than the statistical norm.”

“Even with the higher radiation levels?” Tom asked skeptically. Whenever there’s a solar flare, we all see green polliwogs for a while, as the extra radiation impacts our eyeballs—and it doesn’t make any difference whether we’re indoors or out.

“Yep,” I assured him. “Coming out from under the atmosphere blanket was the main health hazard we all gambled on in living in space—but it seems to’ve paid off. It
seemed
there should have been a
higher
risk of cancer, but it just doesn’t seem to be turning out that way. Go ask why. And the lower lung trouble is obvious—we breath real air, better filtered than the Prime Minister’s, dust free and zero pollen count. Hell, if you had all the money on Earth, you couldn’t have a healthier environment tailor-made. How about old Mrs. Murphy on Skyfac? What is she, sixty-five?”

“Sixty-six,” Raoul said. “And free-fall handball champ. She whipped my ass, three games running.”

“It’s almost as though we were
designed
to live in space,” Linda said wonderingly.

“All right,” Tom cried in exasperation. “All right, I give up. I’m sold. We’re all going to live to be a hundred and twenty. Assuming that the aliens don’t decide we’re delicious. But I still say that this ‘new species’ nonsense is muddy thinking, delusions of grandeur. For one thing, there’s no guarantee we’ll breed true—or, as Charlie pointed out, at all. But more important,
Homo novis
is a ‘species’ without a natural habitat!
We’re not self-sustaining
, friends! We’re utterly dependent on
Homo sapiens
, unless and until we learn how to make our own air, water, food, metals, plastics, tools, cameras—”

“What are you so pissed off about?” Harry asked.

“I’m not pissed off!” Tom yelled.

We all broke up, then, and Tom was honest enough to join us after a while.

“All right,” he said. “I am angry. I’m honestly not sure why. Linda, do you have any handles on it?”

“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “‘anger’ and ‘fear’ are damned close to synonyms…”

Tom started.

Raoul spoke up, his voice strained. “If it will help any, I will be glad to confess that our pending appointment with these super-fireflies has me, for one, scared shitless. And
I
haven’t met ’em personally like you and Charlie, Tom. I mean, this little caper could cost us a lot more than just Earth.”

That was such an odd sentence that we just let it sit there a while.

“I know what you mean,” Norrey said slowly. “Our job is to establish telepathic rapport with what seems to be a group-mind. I’m almost…almost afraid I might succeed.”

“Afraid you might get lost, darling?” I said. “Forget it—I wouldn’t let go of you long enough. I didn’t wait twenty years to be a widower.” She squeezed my hand.

“That’s the point,” Linda said. “The worst we’re facing is death, in one form or another. And we always have been under sentence of death, all of us, for being human. That’s the ticket price for this show. Norrey, you and Charlie looked death right in the eye a week ago. Sure as hell you will again some day. It might turn out to be a year from now, at Saturn: so what?”

“That’s the trouble,” Tom said, shaking his head. “Fear doesn’t go away just because it’s illogical.”

“No,” Linda agreed, “but there
are
methods for dealing with it—and repressing it until it comes out as anger is
not
one of them. Now that we’re down to the root, though, I can teach you techniques of self-discipline that’ll at least help a lot.”

“Teach me too,” Raoul said, almost inaudibly.

Harry reached out and took his hand. “We’ll learn together,” he said.

“We’ll all learn together,” I said. “Maybe we are other than human, but we’re not
that
different. But I would like to say that you are about the bravest folks I know, all of you. If anybody—wups! There goes the alarm again. Let’s get some real dancing done, so we come home sweaty. We’ll do this again in a couple of days. Harry, take that heavy-breathing tape out of circuit and we’ll boost our signal strength together at three, two, one,
mark
.”

I repeat the above conversation in its entirety partly because it is one of the few events in this chronicle of which I possess a complete audio recording. But also partly because it contains most of the significant information you need to know about that one-year trip to Saturn. There is no point in describing the interior of
Siegfried
, or the day-to-day schedules or the month-by-month objectives or the interpersonal frictions that filled up one of the most busy, boring years of my life.

As is common and perhaps inevitable on expeditions of this kind, crew, diplomats, and dancers formed three reasonably tight cliques outside working hours, and maintained an uneasy peace during them. Each group had its own interests and amusements—the diplomats, for instance, spent much of their free time (and a substantial percentage of their working time) fencing, politely and otherwise. DeLaTorre’s patience soon earned the respect of every person aboard. Read any decent book on life in a submarine, then throw in free fall, and you’ve got that year. Raoul’s music helped keep us all sane, though; he became the only other universally respected passenger.

The six of us somehow never discussed the “new species” line of thought again together, although I know Norrey and I kicked it around hood-to-hood a few times, and Linda and I spoke of it occasionally. And of course we never mentioned it at
all
anywhere aboard
Siegfried
—spaceships are
supposed
to be thoroughly bugged. The notion that we six dancers were somehow other-than-human was not one that even DeLaTorre would have cared for—and he was about the only one who treated us as anything but hired hands, “mere interpreters” (Silverman’s expression). Dmirov and Li knew better, I believe, but they couldn’t help it; as experienced diplomats they were not conditioned to accept interpreters as social equals. Silverman thought dance was that stuff they did on variety shows, and why
couldn’t
we translate the concept of Manifest Destiny into a dance?

I will say one thing about that year. The man I had been when I first came to space could not have survived it. He would have blown out his brains, or drunk himself to death.

Instead I went out for lots of walks. And made lots of love with Norrey. With music on, for privacy.

Other than that the only event of note was when Linda announced that she was pregnant, about two months out of Saturn. We were committed to solving zero-gee childbirth without an obstetrician. Or, for that matter, a GP.

Things got livelier as we neared Saturn.

We had not succeeded in persuading any of the diplomats to join us in EVA of any kind. Three refused for the predictable reason. EVA is measurably more dangerous than staying safely indoors (as I had been forcibly reminded on the day I had gotten into this), and duty forbade them from taking
any
avoidable risk on their way to what was literally the biggest and most important conference in history. We dancers were considered more expendable, but pressure was put on us to avoid having all four dancers outboard at the same time. I stuck to my guns, maintaining that a group dance must be planned, choreographed, and rehearsed
ensemble
—that what Stardancers, Inc.
was,
was a creative collective. Besides, the more buddies you have, the safer you are.

The fourth diplomat, Silverman, had been specifically ordered not to expose himself to space. So early on he asked us to take him out for a walk. Sort of a “they can’t tell a fearless SOB like me not to take risks” thing: the order impugned his masculinity. He changed his mind when p-suit plumbing was explained to him, and never brought the subject up again.

But a few weeks before we were to begin deceleration, Linda came to my room and said, “Chen Ten Li wants to come out for a walk with us.”

I winced, and did my Silverman imitation. “It would kill you, first to sit me down and say, ‘I have bad news for you’? Like that you tell me?”

“Like that
he
told
me
.”

What would DeLaTorre think? Or Bill? Or the others? Or old Wertheimer, who had told me with his eyes that he believed I could be trusted not to fuck up? And as important, why did Chen now want to earn his wings? Not for scenery—he had first-class video, the best Terra could provide, which is
good
. Not for jackass reasons like Silverman.

“What does he
want
, Linda? To see a rehearsal live? To drift and meditate? What?”

“Ask him.”

I had never seen the inside of Chen’s room before. He was playing 3-D chess with the computer. I can barely follow the game, but it was clear that he was losing badly—which surprised me.

“Dr. Chen, I understand you want to come outside with us.”

He was dressed in tastefully lavish pajamas, which he had expertly taken in for free fall and velcro’d (Dmirov and DeLaTorre had been forced to ask Raoul for help, and Silverman’s clothes looked as though he had backed into a sewing machine). He inclined his shaven head, and replied gravely, “As soon as possible.” His voice was like an old cornet, a little feathery.

“That puts me in a difficult position, sir,” I said as gravely. “You are under orders not to endanger yourself. DeLaTorre and all the others know it. And if I did bring you outside, and you had a suit malf, or even a nausea attack, the people’s Republic of China would ask me some pointed questions. Followed by the Dominion of Canada and the United Nations, not to mention your aged mother.”

He smiled politely, with lots of wrinkles. “Is that outcome probable?”

“Do you know Murphy’s Law, Dr. Chen? And its corollary?”

His smile widened. “I wish to risk it. You are experienced at introducing neophytes to space.”

“I lost two out of seventeen students!”

“How many did you lose in their first three hours, Mr. Armstead? Could I not remain in the Die, wearing a pressure suit for redundancy?”

The Die wasn’t cast; it was spot-welded. It was essentially an alloy-framed cube of transparent plastic, outfitted for minimal life support, first aid, and self-locomotion through free space. The crew and all the diplomats except Chen called it the Field Support Module. This disgusted Harry, who had designed and built it. The idea was that one of us Stardancers might blow a gasket in midconference, or want to sit out a piece, or conserve air, or for some other reason need a pressurized cubic with a 360° view. It was currently braced tight against the hull of the big shuttlecraft we called the Limousine, mounted for use, but it could easily be unshipped. And Chen’s pressure suit was regulation Space Command armor, as good as or better than even our customized Japanese-made suits. Certainly stronger; better air supply…

“Doctor, I have to know
why
.”

His smile began to slo-o-owly fade, and when I hadn’t blanched or retracted by half past, he let it remain there. About a quarter to frowning. “I concede your right to ask the question. I am not certain I can satisfy you at this time.” He reflected, and I waited. “I am not accustomed to using an interpreter. I have facility with languages. But there is at least one language I will never acquire. I was once informed that no one could learn to think in Navajo who was not raised a Navajo. Consequently I went to great lengths to accomplish this, and I failed. I can make myself understood to a Navajo, haltingly. I cannot ever learn to think in that language—it is founded on basically different assumptions about reality that my mind cannot enfold.

“I have studied your dance, the ‘language’ you will speak for us shortly. I have discussed it with Ms. Parsons at great length, exhausted the ship’s computer on the subject. I cannot learn to think in that language.

“I wish to try one more time. I theorize that confrontation with naked space, in person, may assist me.” He paused, and grinned again. “Ingesting buds of peyote assisted me somewhat in my efforts with Navajo—as my tutor had promised me. I must expose myself to
your
assumptions about reality. I hope they taste better.”

It was by far the longest speech I had gotten out of the epigrammatic Chen since the day we met. I looked at him with new respect, and some astonishment. And a growing pleasure: here was a friend I had almost missed making.
My God, suppose old Chen is
Homo novis?