Shara is transformed.
She comes to rest at last at vertical center in the forefront of the cube, arms-legs-fingers-toes-face straining outward, her body turning gently end over end. All four cameras that bear on her join in a four-way splitscreen, the orchestra resolves into its final E major, and—fade out.
I had neither the time nor the equipment to create the special effects that Shara wanted. So I found ways to warp reality to my need. The first candle segment was a twinned shot of a candle being blown out from above—in ultraslow motion, and in reverse. The second segment was a simple recording of linear reality. I had lit the candle, started taping—and had the Ring’s spin killed. A candle behaves oddly in zero gee. The low-density combustion gases do not rise up from the flame, allowing air to reach it from beneath. The flame does not go out: it becomes dormant. Restore gravity within a minute or so, and it blooms back to life again. All I did was monkey with speeds a bit to match in with the music and Shara’s dance. I got the idea from Harry Stein, Skyfac’s construction foreman, who was helping me design things Shara would need for the next dance.
I piped it to the video wall in the Ring One Lounge, and everyone in Skyfac who could cut work crowded in for the broadcast. They saw exactly what was being sent out over worldwide satellite hookup—(Carrington had arranged twenty-five minutes without commercial interruption)—almost a full half second before the world did.
I spent the broadcast in the Communications Room, chewing my fingernails. But it went without a hitch, and I slapped my board dead and made it to the Lounge in time to see the last half of the standing ovation. Shara stood before the screen, Carrington sitting beside her, and I found the difference in their expressions instructive. Her face showed no embarrassment or modesty. She had had faith in herself throughout, had approved this tape for broadcast—she was aware, with that incredible detachment of which so few artists are capable, that the wild applause was only what she deserved. But her face showed that she was deeply surprised—and deeply grateful—to be given what she deserved.
Carrington, on the other hand, registered a triumph strangely admixed with relief. He too had had faith in Shara, and had backed it with a large investment—but his faith was that of a businessman in a gamble he believes will pay off, and as I watched his eyes and the glisten of sweat on his forehead, I realized that no businessman ever takes an expensive gamble without worrying that it may be the fiasco that will begin the loss of his only essential commodity: face.
Seeing his kind of triumph next to hers spoiled the moment for me, and instead of thrilling for Shara. I found myself almost hating her. She spotted me, and waved me to join her before the cheering crowd, but I turned and literally flung myself from the room. I borrowed a bottle from Harry Stein and got stinking.
The next morning my head felt like a fifteen-amp fuse on a forty-amp circuit, and I seemed to be held together only by surface tension. Sudden movements frightened me. It’s a long fall off that wagon, even at one-sixth gee.
The phone chimed—I hadn’t had time to rewire it—and a young man I didn’t know politely announced that Mr. Carrington wished to see me in his office. At once. I spoke of a barbed-wire suppository, and what Mr. Carrington might do with it, at once. Without changing expression he repeated his message and disconnected.
So I crawled into my clothes, decided to grow a beard, and left. Along the way I wondered what I had traded my independence for, and why?
Carrington’s office was oppressively tasteful, but at least the lighting was subdued. Best of all, its filter system would handle smoke—the sweet musk of pot lay on the air. I accepted a macrojoint of “Maoi-Zowie” from Carrington with something approaching gratitude, and began melting my hangover.
Shara sat next to his desk, wearing a leotard and a layer of sweat. She had obviously spent the morning rehearsing for the next dance. I felt ashamed, and consequently snappish, avoiding her eyes and her hello. Panzella and McGillicuddy came in on my heels, chattering about the latest sighting of the mysterious object from deep space, which had appeared this time in the Asteroid Belt. They were arguing over whether or not it displayed signs of sentience, and I wished they’d shut up.
Carrington waited until we had all seated ourselves and lit up, then rested a hip on his desk and smiled. “Well, Tom?”
McGillicuddy beamed. “Better than we expected, sir. All the ratings agree we had about 74 per cent of the world audience....”
“The hell with the nielsens,” I snapped. “What did the critics say?”
McGillicuddy blinked. “Well, the general reaction so far is that Shara was a smash. The Times....”
I cut him off again. “What was the less-than-general reaction?”
“Well, nothing is ever unanimous.”
“Specifics. The dance press? Liz Zimmer? Migdalski?”
“Uh. Not as good. Praise, yes—only a blind man could’ve panned that show. But guarded praise. Uh, Zimmer called it a magnificent dance spoiled by a gimmicky ending.”
“And Migdalski?” I insisted.
“He headed his review, ‘But What Do You Do For An Encore?’ ” McGillicuddy admitted. “His basic thesis was that it was a charming one-shot. But the Times....”
“Thank you, Tom,” Carrington said quietly. “About what we expected, isn’t it, my dear? A big splash, but no one’s willing to call it a tidal wave yet.”
She nodded. “But they will, Bryce. The next two dances will sew it up.”
Panzella spoke up. “Ms. Drummond, may I ask you why you played it the way you did? Using the null-gee interlude only as a brief adjunct to conventional dance—surely you must have expected the critics to call it gimmickry.”
Shara smiled and answered. “To be honest, Doctor, I had no choice. I’m learning to use my body in free fall, but it’s still a conscious effort, almost a pantomime. I need another few weeks to make it second nature, and it has to be if I’m to sustain a whole piece in it. So I dug a conventional dance out of the trunk, tacked on a five-minute ending that used every zero-gee move I knew, and found to my extreme relief that they made thematic sense together. I told Charlie my notion, and he made it work visually and dramatically—the whole business of the candles was his, and it underlined what I was trying to say better than any set we could have built.”
“So you have not yet completed what you came here to do?” Panzella asked her.
“Oh, no. Not by any means. The next dance will show the world that dance is more than controlled falling. And the third… the third will be what this has all been for.” Her face lit, became animated. “The third dance will be the one I have wanted to dance all my life. I can’t entirely picture it, yet—but I know that when I become capable of dancing it, I will create it, and it will be my greatest dance.”
Panzella cleared his throat. “How long will it take you?”
“Not long,” she said. “I’ll be ready to tape the next dance in two weeks, and I can start on the last one almost at once. With luck, I’ll have it in the can before my month is up.”
“Ms. Drummond,” Panzella said gravely, “I’m afraid you don’t have another month.”
Shara went white as snow, and I half rose from my seat. Carrington looked intrigued.
“How much time?” Shara asked.
“Your latest tests have not been encouraging. I had assumed that the sustained exercise of rehearsal and practice would tend to slow your system’s adaptation. But most of your work has been in total weightlessness, and I failed to realize the extent to which your body is accustomed to sustained exertion—in a terrestrial environment. There are already signs of Davis’s Syndrome in—”