The Stardance Trilogy (51 page)

And it took us that last step toward being comfortable without even an imaginary local vertical. We lost our tendency to line up with whomever we were talking to or working with, and started living three-dimensionally without having to make a mental effort.

And that started to affect us all in subtle psychological ways, broadening us, opening us up, undoing other sorts of equally rigid preconceptions about the universe. Up/down may be the first dichotomy a baby perceives (even before self/notself), the beginning of duality, or either/or, yes/no logic. Hierarchy depends on the words “high” and “low” having meaning. Floating free of gravity is just as exhilarating in space as it is in dreams, and constant exhilaration can help solve a lot of human problems. The therapeutic value of skydiving has long been known, and we never had to snap out of the reverie and pull our ripcords.

One by one, we became more pleasant people to be with than we had been back on terra firma. Glenn, for instance, lost a great deal of her dogmatism, became more flexible, started making friendships with people she had considered airheads back in Suit Camp. Eventually she even lost the frown that had seemed her natural expression.

Yes, it was our time of Leavetaking, of saying goodbye to our earthly lives, and yes, some of it was spent in solemn meditation in Solarium or
zendo
or chapel or temple. But the solemnity was balanced by an equal and opposite quantum of gaiety.

Dorothy Gerstenfeld had been right, back on that first day: zero gee tended to make us childlike again in significant ways. We were doing some of the same sort of metaprogramming that a small child does—redoing it, really, with different assumptions—and do you remember how much
fun
it was being a small child?

We had the kind of late-night bull sessions I hadn’t had with anyone since college, full of flat-out laughter and deep-down tears, like kids around an eternal campfire with all the grownups gone to bed.

There are so many games you can play in zero gee. Acrobatics; spherical handball, billiards, and tennis; monkey bars; tag…the list is endless. Even a moderately good frisbee thrower becomes a prodigy. You’d be astonished how many solid hours of entertainment you can get from a simple glass of water, coaxing it into loops and ropes and bubbles and lenses with the help of surface tension. A man named Jim Bullard devised a marvelous game involving a hollow ball within which a small quantity of mercury floated free, causing it to wobble unpredictably in flight; in gravity it would have just been a nuisance, but in zero gee it was an almost-alive antagonist. I used my Canadian background to invent one of my own: 3-D curling. The idea was to scale pucks so gently that air resistance caused them to come to rest in an imaginary sphere in the center of the room, while knocking away your opponent’s pucks. Your teammate tried to help by altering the puck’s trajectory inflight with a small compressed-air pen—with strictly limited air which had to last him the whole round. As in curling, it took forever to find out how good your shot was…and you all had to keep moving while you waited, since the room’s air-circulation had to be shut off. Robert and I teamed up at it and soon were beating all corners. Ben invented a three-dimensional version of baseball—but it was so complicated that he never managed to teach it to enough people to get a game going. With assistance from Teena, Kirra actually managed to locate a piece of genuine wood somewhere inboard (at a guess, I’d say there isn’t enough real wood in all of space to build a decent barn; even the legendary Shimizu Hotel uses a superb fake), and borrowed tools to work it from one of the construction gangs who daily burrowed ever deeper into the rock heart of Top Step. When she was done, she got permission from Chief Administrator Mgabi, and took her creation down to the Great Hall. A small crowd went along to watch. She tested the breeze, locked her feet under a handrail to steady herself, and threw the thing with considerable care and skill. That boomerang was still circling the Hall when she reached out and caught it three hours later. I wanted her to let it keep going, but she and I and the volunteers at the major tunnel mouths who kept passing pedestrians from jaunting out into the thing’s flight path all had to get to class.

One of the best games of all could be played solo in your room without working up a sweat: browsing through the Net. We all had Total Access, like the most respected and funded scholars in the Solar System, and could research to exhaustion any subject that interested us, initiate datasearches on a whim which would have bankrupted us back on Earth, download music and literature and visual art to our heart’s content. Ben in particular was heavily addicted to Netwalking, and it was a common occurrence for Kirra to have to drag him away from his terminal to go eat…whereupon he would begin babbling to her about what he’d just been doing or reading. Glenn too binged heavily, as did several others. As for myself, all I really used my access for was to watch hour after hour of Stardancer works, especially the ones that Shara Drummond and the Armsteads performed in. They were unquestionably the best dancers in space, and not just because they had been the first. By that point in history, all Stardancer dances were officially choreographed by the Starmind as a whole, in concert…and that must have been to a large extent true. But from time to time I was sure I recognized phrases or concepts that were pure Shara or pure Charlie/Norrey, even in works in which they didn’t physically appear.

On the last day of week three, Kirra sprang a surprise on us. Reb called her up beside him in class that morning, and told us that she had something special to share with all of us. Most of us knew by then about her background and reason for being here; for the benefit of those who didn’t know all the details, she briefly sketched out the history of the Dreamtime, and the Songlines, and the importance of Song in the Aboriginal universe.

“My people want to start movin’ out into space,” she finished up, “and so my job is to start sussin’ out the Songs for all this territory, so’s we can come make Walkabout here without bein’ afraid it’ll all up and turn imaginary on us.”

“How’re you doing?” someone asked.

“Well, that’s what I’m doin’ here in front of you. It’s been a lot slower goin’ than I expected…I got the Song o’ Top Step now, but. An’ I want to sing it for all you bastards.” (By now we had all learned that to an Australian, “bastard” held no negative connotations, meaning simply “person,” usually but not always male. Similarly, “tart” merely meant “female person.”)

A surprised and delighted murmur went through the room: most of us knew how much her responsibility weighed on her. I was thrilled.

“I just finished it this mornin’ before brekkie, even Ben an’ me roomie haven’t heard it yet. You all been here as long as I have, you ought to hear it. This ain’t just a tabi, a personal song, this is a proper corroboree Song, an’ it calls for an audience. Anyway I wanted you all to hear it, an’ Reb said it was all right with him if I did it here.”

There were universal sounds of approval and encouragement.

“All right, then: here goes.”

She took her boomerang from her pocket, slapped it rhythmically against her other palm for ten counts, and began to sing.

I cannot supply a translation of the words, and will not reproduce them as she sang them, because they were in Padhu-Padhu, a secret ritual language known only to Aboriginals, so secret (she explained to me later) that its very existence was unsuspected by Caucasian scholars until the late twentieth century.

And it doesn’t matter, because there were very few words in what she sang. Very little of her song’s information content was verbal. It was the melody itself that was important.

How can I describe that melody to you? I doubt that there is anything in your experience to compare it to. In fact, I doubt that there would have been much in another Aboriginal’s experience to compare it to; I’d heard a number of their Songs from Kirra and this was unlike them in ways I’m not equipped to explain even if you were equipped to understand me. It did not behave like any other melody I’d ever heard, yet somehow without thereby becoming unpleasing to the ear.

It began at the very bottom of her alto register, and arced up in a smooth steady climb that suggested the shuttle flight from Earth. It opened out into a repeated five-tone motif whose majesty and regularity seemed to represent Top Step in its great slow orbit. Then the song changed, became busier. It behaved much like a jaunting Postulant, actually, gliding lazily, then putting itself into tumbles, then straightening out, bouncing off imaginary walls, coming to a halt and then kicking off again. Like a jaunter’s progress, her melody never really stopped, for she had mastered the didgeridu player’s trick of breathing in and out at the same time so that she never had to pause for breath. I closed my eyes as I listened, and the twists and turns her voice took evoked specific places in Top Step powerfully for me. The Great Hall, Solarium Three, a merry little flurry that was unmistakably Le Puis, a slow solemn ululation that was Harry Stein at the window of Solarium One. Somewhere in the middle was a frankly sensual movement that expressed zero gravity lovemaking, explicitly and movingly. Ben’s humour was in it, and Kirra’s mischievousness, and the richness of their love for each other. At the end, the five-tone theme returned, first with little trills of embellishment and then at last in its pure form, slower and slower until she drew out its last note into a drone, and fell silent.

I don’t know how long we all drifted, silent, motionless, like so many sea lions. Reb was the first to shake off stasis and put his hands together, then Ben joined and then me and then the whole room exploded in applause and cheers that lasted for a long time. One of the loudest was Jacques LeClaire, the other musician in the room. She accepted our applause without smiling, as her due—or so I thought.

“It’s called ‘Taruru,’” she said when the noise had died down. “That means a lot o’ things, really. ‘Last glow of evening,’ and ‘dying embers,’ and ‘peace o’ mind,’ kinda rolled into one.”

“Teena,” Reb said, “save the Song Kirra just sang to her personal files as ‘Taruru.’”

“Yes, Reb.”

“Kirra,” Reb went on, “I think you should send that recording, as is, to your tribe.”

“You think? I can do it again any time, just like that: that’s the point of a Songline Song.”

“I understand. But send that copy. Please. I would be honoured.” Ben and I and others made sounds of vigorous agreement. Jacques called, “
Oui!
That is a take.”

She nodded. “Right, then. Teena, transmit ‘Taruru’ to my Earthside number, would you?”

“It’s done. Receipt has…just been acknowledged by your phone.”

“What time is it in Queensland now?”

“Five-fourteen PM.”

“Bonzer. Yarra can play it for the Yirlandji Elders tonight after supper. Teena, everybody here can have a copy if they want.”

There were more cheers. Kirra was well liked.

“You’ll void your copyright,” Glenn warned.

Kirra blinked at her. “What copyright? I didn’t
make up
the bloody thing, mate, I just sang it. It’s the Song of this place, see? It was here before I got here. You can’t copyright the wind.”

Now I understood why she’d heard our applause without smiling. She’d assumed we were applauding the Song, not here performance.

“One suggestion,” Reb said.

“Yes, Reb?”

“Transmit a copy to Raoul Brindle.”

There was a murmur. Brindle had been the most famous living composer for over thirty years.
“Oui,”
Jacques called again, and several others echoed him.
“Da!” “Sí!” “Hai!”

Kirra looked thoughtful. “Be a bloody expensive phonecall, but. He an’ the Harvest Crew aren’t more than halfway back from Titan, it’d have to go by laser.”

“If it did,” Reb said, “Top Step would pay the cost; Raoul has left specific orders that he wants to hear anything you want to send him. But a laser is not necessary. Since you are willing to release the Song to the public domain, just phone any nearby Stardancer and sing it. Raoul will hear it instantly.”

“Why, sure! I’ll never get used to this telepathy business. Hey, Teena, send that Song to the nearest Stardancer that ain’t busy, addressed to Raoul Brindle, would ya?”

“Transmission in progress,” Teena said. “Routing through Harry Stein, in realtime. Transmission ends in a little over five minutes.”

There was one more round of applause, and then Kirra joined the rest of us and Reb began regular class. But five minutes later, Reb paused in the middle of a sentence.

“Excuse me, friends. Teena has just informed me that there is a phonecall for Kirra from Raoul Brindle. Kirra?”

“Open line, Teena.”

Raoul Brindle said, “Hello, Kirra.”

“G’day, mate,” she said, as though living legends phoned her up all the time.

“I don’t want to interrupt your class. I just wanted to say that your Song has been heard by all members of the Starmind presently in circuit, from the orbit of Venus to that of Uranus. Our response condenses down to:
hurry, sister
. We await your Graduation. I’d be honoured if you’d sail on out here and meet me once you’re Symbiotic. Oh, and there’s a waiting list of one hundred and eighty-seven Stardancers who’d like to have a child with you if you’re willing. Uh, I’m one of ’em.”

Kirra blinked. “Well, if I’m gonna live forever I suppose I got to do somethin’ with my time. I’m willin’ to discuss it with the lot of you bastards—but the line forms behind me Benjamin here. I think he’s got dibs on the first half dozen or so.”

“No hurry,” Raoul agreed. “I would like to score your Song for didgeridu, mirrimba and walbarra, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh please!” she said. “And send it me, will you? I hated havin’ to leave me instruments behind. Have you really got ’em all out there with you?”

“In my head,” he said. “Once you’re Symbiotic, you’ll find that’s all you really need. But I can reprogram my simulator to make a recording you can hear now.”

“That’d be smashin’. About this comin’ out there to meet you, though…what’s the point? I mean, I’ll be just as near to you if my body’s right here, won’t I?”