I didn’t see how we could do it.
McGillicuddy had assured us that it would take Shara at least a month simply to learn to handle herself competently in zero gee, much less dance. Her familiarity with one-sixth gee would, he predicted, be a liability rather than an asset. Then figure three weeks of choreography and rehearsal, a week of taping and just maybe we could broadcast one dance before Shara had to return to Earth. Not good enough. She and I had calculated that we would need three successive shows, each well received, to make a big enough dent in the dance world for Shara to squeeze into it. A year was far too big a spacing to be effective—and who knew how soon Carrington might tire of her? SoI hollered at Panzella.
“Mister Armstead,” he said hotly, “I am specifically contractually forbidden to allow this young lady to commit suicide.” He grimaced sourly. “I’m told it’s terrible public relations.”
“Charlie, it’s okay,” Shara insisted. “I can fit in three dances. We may lose some sleep, but we can do it.”
“I once told a man nothing was impossible. He asked me if I could ski through a revolving door. You haven’t got...”
My brain slammed into hyperdrive, thought about things, kicked itself in the ass a few times, and returned to realtime in time to hear my mouth finish without a break: “... much choice, though. Okay Tom, have that damned Ring Two Lounge cleaned out, I want it naked and spotless and have somebody paint over that damned video wall, the same shade as the other three and I mean the same. Shara, get out of those clothes and into your leotard. Doctor, we’ll be seeing you in twelve hours; quit gaping and move, Tom—we’ll be going over there at once; where the hell are my cameras?”
McGillicuddy spluttered.
“Get me a torch crew—I’ll want holes cut through the walls, cameras behind them, one-way glass, six locations, a room adjacent to the Lounge for a mixer console the size of a jetliner cockpit, and bolt a Norelco coffee machine next to the chair. I’ll need another room for editing, complete privacy and total darkness, size of any efficiency kitchen, another Norelco.”
McGillicuddy finally drowned me out. “Mister Armstead, this is the Main Ring of the Skyfac One complex, the administrative offices of one of the wealthiest corporations in existence. If you think this whole Ring is going to stand on its head for you....”
So we brought the problem to Carrington. He told McGillicuddy that henceforth Ring Two was ours, as well as any assistance whatsoever that we requested. He looked rather distracted. McGillicuddy started to tell him by how many weeks all this would put off the opening of the Skyfac Two complex. Carrington replied very quietly that he could add and subtract quite well, thank you, and McGillicuddy got white and quiet.
I’ll give Carrington that much. He gave us a free hand.
Panzella ferried over to Skyfac Two with us. We were chauffeured by lean-jawed astronaut types, on vehicles looking for all the world like pregnant broomsticks. It was as well that we had the doctor with us—Shara fainted on the way over. I nearly did myself, and I’m sure that broomstick has my thigh-prints on it yet. Falling through space is a scary experience the first time. Some people never get used to it. Most people. Shara responded splendidly once we had her inboard again, and fortunately her dropsickness did not return. Nausea can be a nuisance in free fall, a disaster in a p-suit. By the time my cameras and mixer had arrived, she was on her feet and sheepish. And while I browbeat a sweating crew of borrowed techs into installing them faster than was humanly possible, Shara began learning how to move in zero gee.
We were ready for the first taping in three weeks.
III
Living quarters and minimal life support were rigged for us in Ring Two so that we could work around the clock if we chose, but we spent nearly half of our nominal “off-hours” in Skyfac One. Shara was required to spend half of three days a week there with Carrington, and spent a sizable portion of her remaining nominal sack time out in space, in a p-suit. At first it was a conscious attempt to overcome her gut-level fear of all that emptiness. Soon it became her meditation, her retreat, her artistic reverie--an attempt to gain from contemplation of cold black depths enough insight into the meaning of extraterrestrial existence to dance of it.
I spent my own time arguing with engineers and electricians and technicians and a damn fool union legate who insisted that the second lounge, finished or not, belonged to the hypothetical future crew and administrative personnel. Securing his permission to work there wore the lining off my throat and the insulation off my nerves. Far too many nights I spent slugging instead of sleeping. Minor example: Every interior wall in the whole damned second Ring was painted the identical shade of turquoise—and they couldn’t duplicate it to cover that godforsaken video wall in the Lounge. It was McGillicuddy who saved me from gibbering apoplexy—at his suggestion I washed off the third latex job, unshipped the outboard camera that fed the wall-screen, brought the camera inboard and fixed it to scan an interior wall in an adjoining room. That made us friends again.
It was all like that: jury-rig, improvise, file to fit and paint to cover. If a camera broke down, I spent sleep time talking with off-shift engineers, finding out what parts in stock could be adapted. It was simply too expensive to have anything shipped up from Earth’s immense gravity well, and Luna didn’t have what I needed.
At that, Shara worked harder than I did. A body must totally recoordinate itself to function in the absence of weight—she literally had to forget everything she had ever known or learned about dance and acquire a whole new set of skills. This turned out to be even harder than we had expected. McGillicuddy had been right: what Shara had learned in her year of one-sixth gee was an exaggerated attempt to retain terrestrial patterns of coordination. Rejecting them altogether was actually easier for me.
But I couldn’t keep up with her—I had to abandon any thought of handheld camera work and base my plans solely on the six fixed cameras. Fortunately GLX-s000s have a ball-and-socket mount: even behind that damned one-way glass I had about forty degrees of traverse on each one. Learning to coordinate all six simultaneously on the Hamilton Board did a truly extraordinary thing to me: It lifted me that one last step to unity with my art. I found that I could learn to be aware of all six monitors with my mind’s eye, to perceive almost spherically, to—not share my attention among the six—to encompass them all, seeing like a six-eyed creature from many angles at once. My mind’s eye became holographic, my awareness multilayered. I began to really understand, for the first time, three-dimensionality.
It was that fourth dimension that was the kicker. It took Shara two days to decide that she could not possibly become proficient enough in free-fall maneuvering to sustain a half-hour piece in the time required. So she rethought her work plan too, adapting her choreography to the demands of her situation. She put in six hard days under normal Earth weight.
And for her, too, the effort was that one last step toward apotheosis.
On Monday of the fourth week we began taping Liberation.
Establishing shot:
A great turquoise box, seen from within. Dimensions unknown, but the color somehow lends an impression of immensity, of vast distances. Against the far wall a swinging pendulum attests that this is a standard-gravity environment; but the pendulum swings so slowly and is so featureless in construction that it is impossible to estimate its size and so extrapolate that of the room.