After a while Kirra came in, humming softly to herself. “Hello, lovey. How’d it go?”
I collapsed the holo. “How’d it go with you? Ben show you any good moves?” She’d gone to his place to learn 3-D chess.
She came and docked with my sleepsack. Her grin was about to split her face. “Benjamin showed me his very best moves,” she said in a dreamy singsong voice.
My eyes widened. “You’re kidding!”
She shook her head, beaming. We squealed together and burst into giggles. “Tell me everything!” I demanded.
“Well, you know, I’d always wondered,” she said, settling into a hug, “what’d it be like? I mean, what’d keep you squished together if not the weight?”
I’d always wondered too. “Right. So?”
“So it turns out it’s as natural as breathin’. You hug with four arms is all, and then you…well, you dance. Nowhere near as hard as the stuff we do in class.” She closed her eyes in reminiscence. “It was lots gentler than it is on Earth. And nicer. He didn’t need to hold himself up, so he could keep on usin’ his hands all the way through.” She squealed and opened her eyes again. “Oh, it was awful nice! Benjamin says we’ll get even better with time.”
I nodded. “Wait’ll you see how good he is in two days’ time,” I said, and made her laugh from deep inside.
She was my friend; I shared her joy. But a part of me was envious. I tried hard to hide it, to make the right noises as she chattered happily on, and thought I succeeded.
Maybe she smelled it. “So how’d you make out with your dancing, love?” she asked finally.
I found myself pouring out my frustrations to her. “And I can’t even start to figure out where I stand with him until I know whether or not I can dance in free fall,” I finished, “and I can’t even guess how long it’s going to be before I know.”
She looked thoughtful. “Tell me something.”
“Sure.”
“How’s your back feel?”
“Why, not too—oh!”
“How ’bout those knees, then?”
My back did not hurt. My knees did not hurt.
“You worked out more in the last two days than you did in the last year, tell me I’m wrong,” she said. “Have your legs buckled? Got crook back?”
No and no, by God. I was tired and ached in a dozen places, but they were no worse than one should expect when getting back into shape after a long layoff.
“You can do this. Matter of time, that’s all.”
I was thunderstruck. She was absolutely right. My instrument was working again. Hell, I had managed to transition from ballet to modern dance once: I could learn this. There was nothing stopping me! Nothing but time and courage. The sense of relief was overwhelming. I felt a surge of elation, and at the same time a delicious tiredness. Moments before I’d been suffering from fatigue; now I was just sleepy.
“Kirra, you’re an angel,” I cried, and hugged her harder, and kissed her. Then we smiled at each other, and she jaunted to her own bed and dimmed the lights. She undressed quickly and slid into the sack. “Night, lovey,” she called softly.
“G’night, Kirra,” I murmured. “I’m happy for you. Ben’s sweet.”
My last thought was I’m going to sleep sounder tonight than I have in years, and then almost at once I was deep under—
—and then I was wide awake, saying, “What the hell was that?” aloud, and Kirra said it too and we both listened and heard nothing but silence, total silence, and at last I thought Silence? In a space dwelling?
The air circulation system in Top Step is whisper quiet—but boy, do you miss that whisper when it stops!
Then a robot was speaking with Teena’s voice, loudly, in my left ear.
In only the one ear, and very slowly, unmistakably Teena’s voice but without any inflections of tone or pitch: she must have been talking to or with nearly every resident of Top Step at once, time-sharing like mad, no bytes to spare for vocal personality or stereo effect. “Attention! Attention! There has been a major system malfunction. There is no immediate cause for alarm, repeat, no cause for alarm. The circulation system is temporarily down. It is being repaired. All personnel are advised to remain in constant motion until further notice. Do not let yourself remain motionless for more than a few moments. If you can reach p-suit or other personal pressure, please do so, calmly.” Not wanting to drain her resources any further, we asked no questions.
A moment later, her voice was superseded by that of Dorothy Gerstenfeld. She explained the nature of the problem, assured us it would be fixed long before it became serious, entreated us all not worry, and sounded so serene and confident herself that I did stop worrying. Her explanation was too technical for me to follow, but her tone of voice said I should be reassured by it, so I was.
The circulation system was only down for half an hour. Nothing to be afraid of: Top Step was immense and a lot of it was pressurized; there was more than enough air on hand to last us all much longer than half an hour in a pinch. The worst of it was nuisance: when the air stops flowing in a space habitat, you must not be motionless. If you are, exhaled CO2 forms an invisible sphere around your head and slowly smothers you. There are many jobs aboard Top Step for which constant head motion is contraindicated, tracking a large-mass docking, for instance; such people had to find someone to fan their heads, or stop work for the duration. And everyone else had to keep moving. You can’t imagine how annoying that can be until it’s forced upon you. Not that being in motion takes any hard work, in zero gee—it’s just that your natural tendency and subconscious desire is to stop moving as much as possible, to stimulate the terrestrial environment you remember as natural, and overcoming that impulse gets wearing very quickly. Especially if you were tired to begin with.
But it was over soon enough. Kirra and I experimented with fanning each other’s faces, and told each other campfire stories, and at last we heard the soft sound of the pumps coming back up to speed. Because I was alert for it, I became consciously aware for the first time of the movement of air on my skin as soon as it resumed.
“The emergency is over,” Teena said, still in robot mode. “Repeat, the emergency is over. There have been zero casualties. Resume normal operations. Thank you.”
“Thank you all for not panicking,” Dorothy’s voice added. “We have everything under control now. Resume your duties. Those of you on sleep shift, try to get back to sleep; you’ve a long day ahead.”
I had surprisingly little difficulty feeling sleepy again, and Kirra was snoring—musically—before I was. As I was fading out again I had a thought. “Teena?” I whispered.
“Yes, Morgan?” Her reply was also whispered, but I could tell this was the old, fully human-sounding Teena again, so it was all right to bother her now.
“What caused the circulation system to go down?”
She almost seemed to hesitate. Silly, of course; computers don’t hesitate. “A component was improperly installed through carelessness. It has been replaced.”
“Oh. Glad it wasn’t anything serious. A meteor or something. That reminds me: how is Mr. Henderson, the Chief Steward on my flight up here?”
“I’m sorry to say he died about four hours ago, without regaining consciousness.”
“Oh.” No one had needed to fan his head while the air was down.
“Good night. Morgan.”