“I’m the Doan today,” Jay said. “The timekeeper. I’ll ring a bell three times when the Hour strikes, and again when it’s over, and we’ll all be silent in between, okay?”
“Are you studying Buddhism now, Jay?” Rhea asked.
“Aw, I’ve been fiddling with it for years. But yeah, I’m getting into it more lately. It’s a lot like drinking Black Bush, only cheaper.”
Rhea checked her daughter. “No, honey, like this. You don’t have to lace your fingers together in a gee field, remember? Left hand on top of right palm, thumbtips just touching.”
Colly corrected her mudra, and straightened her spine. “Are we supposed to look downward?”
“Technically, yes,” Jay said. “But for today I think looking up is okay. There’s really no wrong way to do it, if your heart’s in the right place. Just follow your breath… and remember Eva and Reb and all the Adepts.”
“Get ready,” Duncan said. “It’s almost time.”
The beach was hushed, now, save for the omnipresent whush of waves. The sky was nearly cloudless, baby blue. Rhea felt an electricity in the air. It was awesome to think that at this moment, all over the world, most of the human race was about to do just what everyone here was doing. Had humanity ever acted with anything like this kind of unanimity before? What a pity it took a tragedy to bring it about. But wasn’t that always the way? Nothing brought people together like a good disaster…
“Ting. Ting. Ting,” said the phone. Rhea composed herself, drew in a measured breath through her nose—
And the sky turned gold.
Not “gold” in any metaphorical or analogous sense, as one can be said to have “red” hair when it is not really red at all. The whole sky was literally golden, the color of burnished 14-karat gold, the color of the wedding ring Rhea had still not been able to bring herself to remove. It happened all at once, seeming to mushroom outward from several sources like a crystal forming in an instant. It was like a translucent gold roof cast suddenly over the world, shimmering and twinkling, backlit by the sun.
Everyone on the beach—very nearly everyone alive—gasped, and stared upward in wonder. Rhea found that she and Colly were clutching each other’s hands, mudra be damned. An indescribable sound began to come from the people on the shore. Rhea had once, many years ago, been caught in a riot, and would carry the memory of that indescribable, unmistakable sound to her grave. This was its opposite: a vocal sharing of awe. Perhaps the Israelites had made such a sound when the Red Sea parted.
Some of it seemed to be coming from the phone. “Can you guys see this?” she cried. “It’s unbelievable!”
“We see—” Rand began, but she did not get to hear what he saw for some time, because his voice was drowned out by another. It seemed to come from everywhere, yet did not have the echoing quality of loudspeaker broadcast; it was as though every AI on the beach had been co-opted at once.
“This is Shara Drummond, calling the human race. I need your attention.”
Rhea knew that her heart should be racing. Shara Drummond—the first Stardancer! Addressing all mankind directly, for the first time since her original Stardance, sixty-five years ago…
Yet somehow Rhea felt herself growing calmer. She met Colly’s eyes… and they resumed formal zazen posture, side by side, but continued to hold hands.
“I have taken over all data channels and AI’s in human space to talk to you, because something unprecedented is about to happen. A radical change. It may seem frightening at first, but I promise you it will be all right, if you do as I ask. The Starmind is here to help you through this… but you must do your part, and no one can do it for you. The first thing you must do is get everyone on Terra outdoors, and everyone in Luna onto the surface. I mean everyone. Essential services personnel, hospital patients, the dying, the housebound, prisoners in solitary, all human beings. If you know of someone trapped indoors, get them outside now. And hurry! There is no time to lose. I will tell you what I can—but don’t stop to listen if you know of some human who needs help getting outdoors; the information will be repeated many times.
“A turning point has come in the history of the human race—one set in motion by the Fireflies on the day they came here for the second time, the day of the Stardance. We Stardancers were created in large part to help you through it.”
Rhea thought quickly. Thank God Tia Marguerite and Tia Marion were out on Ti Louie’s boat—it was an hour’s hard walk back to the car. Everyone else she knew in town was mobile too. Suddenly she missed Rand so much her stomach hurt. “Are you guys hearing this too?” she murmured.
The phone’s LED said the circuit was still open, but there was no reply. She thrust it absently into her breast pocket.
“I’m afraid your life is about to change forever. Your old life is over; a new one is about to begin. I know that will not be welcome news for many of you. No baby wants to be born; they all come out crying. But they stop. I’m afraid you have no more choice in the matter than a baby does: the contractions are beginning, and no power in the Solar System could stop them now. All we of the Starmind can do is see that the birth takes place as smoothly and painlessly as possible. We have sacrificed much to that end… but today is not our Courage Day, but yours. I can only ask you to trust in me—and in the Fireflies, who refused to let me die in orbit so many years ago.
“On that day, my planet was like a womb whose fetus is overdue for delivery. Such a fetus grows too large for its environment, begins to pollute its ecosystem with its own waste products, begins to degrade its surroundings. In the decades that followed, you—and we, the Starmind—have cooperated to help correct most of the damage to our home planet, using nanotechnology to minimize new wastes and recycle old ones efficiently. The womb is repaired—but it is time for the fetus to leave it behind now.”
Rhea did not guess what was coming; it was only a shadowy intuition. But it was enough to make her heart sink. She stared around that perfect beach, that eerie golden sky, as if to memorize it, and clutched Colly’s hand. At an answering pressure, she met her daughter’s eyes—and found them serene, untroubled.
“It’s okay, Mom,” she said. “It’s Courage Day.”
Shara Drummond’s voice continued:
“You know that the Fireflies seeded this planet with life. You know that much of what you are is written in your DNA. Some of you may know that large segments of the information encoded there appear to be gibberish, and do not express somatically—the so-called junk DNA. These genetic ‘instructions’ are never carried out, because they lack the end-begin codes that would activate them.
“In just a few minutes, a kind of telepathic trigger signal will go out from Titan. There is no way to avoid or shield against it: it will be as unstoppable as a neutrino, and faster. Designed by the same beings who designed DNA in the first place, it will insert end-begin codes in certain introns—and switch them on. Everywhere in the Solar System, the nature of human tissue will change, permanently.
“It will become transparent to gravitons. In plain language, it will become immune to gravity.”
Rhea moaned.