We were at Top Step’s very skin, gazing at naked space, at vacuum and stars. At the place where all of us hoped to live, one day soon…
From this close up, it did not look like terribly attractive real estate. Completely unfurnished. Drafty. No amenities. Ambiguous property lines, unclear title. Big. Scary…
How weird, that I was getting my first naked-eye view of space after more than twenty-four hours in space. Those stars were bright, sharp, merciless, horribly far away. It was hard to get my breath.
I wished Earth were in frame; it would have been less scary. This cubic seemed to be on the far side of Top Step. I wondered if there were a similar cubic on the other side, for folks who liked to look at the Old Home. Or did all of Top Step turn its collective back to Terra?
The last of us entered the room behind me and found a space to float in. We all gaped out the huge window together in silence.
Something drifted slowly into view, about ten meters beyond the window. A sculpture of a man, made of cherry Jell-O, waving a baton…
A Stardancer!
A real, live, breathing Stardancer. (No, unbreathing, of course…Stardancers must have some internal process analogous to breathing, but they do not need to work their lungs.) A Homo caelestis, a former human being in Titanian Symbiosis: covered, within and without, by the Symbiote, the crimson life-form that grows in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan and is the perfect complement to the human metabolism. A native inhabitant of interplanetary space.
Except for the four-centimeter-thick coating of red Symbiote, he was naked. He would never need clothes again. Or, for that matter, air or food or water or a bathroom or shelter. Just sunshine and occasional trace elements. He was at home in space.
Of course we’d seen Stardancers before; we’d all come here to become Stardancers. We’d seen them hundreds of times…on film, on video, on holo. But none of us had ever actually been this close to one before. Stardancer and Symbiote mate for life, and the Symbiote cannot survive normal terrestrial atmosphere, pressure, moisture or gravity. Stardancers sometimes lived on Luna for short periods, and it was said that one had once survived on Mars for a matter of days…but no Stardancer would ever walk the Earth.
The Symbiote obscured details like eyes and expression, but it was clear that, back when he’d been a human being, he’d been a big, powerful man, heavily muscled…and very well hung, I couldn’t help but notice. He was cartwheeling in slow motion as he came into view, but when he reached the center of the vast window, he made a brief, complex gesture with his magic wand and came to a halt relative to us. From my perspective he was upside down; I tried to ignore it.
With a small thrill, I recognized him, even under all that red Jell-O. I’d seen his picture often enough, his and all the other members of The Six. He was Harry Stein!
The Harry Stein—designer/engineer of the first free fall dance studio—less than five meters away from me. Others began to recognize him too: a susurrant murmur of, “SteinHarrySteinthat’sHarryStein,” went round the room.
Reb spoke at normal volume, startling us all. “Hello, Harry.”
What happened then startled me even more. I suppose I should have been expecting it: I knew that Teena could project audio directly to my ear, like an invisible earphone—and a voice on two earphones sounds like it’s coming from inside your head. Nonetheless I twitched involuntarily when Harry Stein’s voice said, “Hi, Reb. Hi, everybody. My name is Harry,” right in my skull.
What made it even stranger was that I happened to have been looking at his face when he spoke, and even under that faintly shimmering symbiote I was sure his lips had not moved. His suit radio was linked directly to the speech-center of his brain: the speech impulses were intercepted on their way to his useless vocal cords and sent directly. I’d studied all this in Space Camp, but it was something else again to experience it directly.
“Hi, Harry,” several voices chorused raggedly.
“Can’t stay long,” he said. “Got a big job in progress over to spinward. Just wanted to say hi. And so did I.” With that last sentence, there was an odd, inexpressible change in his voice. Not in pitch or tone or timbre—it was still Harry Stein’s voice—but it was not him speaking it. “Hello, everybody, this is Charlie Armstead speaking now.” Armstead himself! “I’m sorry I can’t be there to meet you all personally—as a matter of fact, I’m a few light-hours away as you hear this—but Harry’s letting me use his brain to greet you. I will be meeting you all when you graduate, of course—but so will the rest of the gang, all of us at once, and I couldn’t resist jumping the gun. Neither could I—Hi, everyone, Norrey Armstead, here.” Jesus! “I’m out here with Charlie, I guess you’re all a little confused right about now…but don’t let it worry you, okay? Just take your time and listen to what Reb tells you, and everything will be fine. Now I’ll hand you over to Raoul Brindle for a minute. Oh, before I go, I want to say a quick hello to Morgan McLeod—”
I gulped and must have turned almost as red as Harry Stein.
“—I’ve been a fan of yours for years. I loved your work with Monnaie Dance Group in Brussels, especially your solo in the premiere of Morris’s Dance for Changing Parts. I hope we can work together some day.”
“Thank you,” I said automatically—but my voice came out a squeak. People were staring. Robert, Kirra and Ben were smiling.
“Here’s Raoul, now. Howdy, gang! I’m on my way home from Titan with the Harvest Crew, riding herd on about a zillion tons of fresh Symbiote—but I wanted to pass on a personal greeting of my own, to Jacques LeClaire and to Kirra from Queensland; hi, guys! I hope you’ll both make some music for me one day; I’ve heard tapes of your work, and I’d love to jam with both of you when I get back. Or maybe you’ll graduate before then and come meet me halfway. I’ll hand you back to Harry now. So long…”
I don’t think an Aboriginal can blush; Kirra must have been expressing her own embarrassment with body language. Fluently. And it was easy to pick out Jacques LeClaire in the crowd, too.
“Well, like I said,” Harry went on, sounding like himself now—and don’t ask me to explain that. “Work to do. Deadline’s coming. I hope you’ll all be in my family soon. See you later.” He waved his thruster-baton negligently, and began drifting out of our field of view.
Not a word was spoken until he was gone. Then someone tried for irony. “What, Shara Drummond was too busy to say hello?” Some of us giggled.
“Yes,” Harry’s voice said, and the giggle trailed off. “Oh,” the joker said, chastened.
There was another long silence. Then Kirra said softly, “Spirituality without religion—”
There was a subdued murmur of agreement.
“Lemme see if I’ve got this straight, Reb,” she said. “If I needed to talk to one of that mob—”
“Just call them on the phone, like you would anyone else in space,” Reb agreed. “If you really need an instantaneous response, you can ask for a telepathic relay through some other Stardancer whose brain happens to be near Top Step—but bear in mind that you will almost certainly be distracting their attention from something else. Don’t do so frivolously. But if you don’t mind waiting for both ends of the conversation to crawl at lightspeed, by radio, you can chat any time with any Stardancer who’ll answer, anytime. Yes, Kirra.”