The Stardance Trilogy

by Spider

  The acceleration faded slowly down to nothing again. There were two or three seconds of silence…and then there was a series of authoritative but gentle thumps on the hull, fore and aft, as though men with padded hammers were surreptitiously checking the welds. The seatbacks began flashing PLEASE REMAIN SEATED.

  “We’re here,” Robert said. “A very nice docking. A little abrupt, but clean.” I thought he was being ironic but wasn’t sure.

  “Keep your seatbelts buckled,” the attendant called. “We’ll disembark after Doctor Kolchar has cleared Mr. Henderson to be moved.”

  “That’s it?” Kirra said.

  I knew what she’d meant. On TV the docking of spacecraft is always seen from a convenient adjacent camera that gives the metal mating dance a stately Olympian perspective, an elephantine grace. A trip to space—especially one’s first and last—should begin with trumpets, and end with the Blue Danube. This had been like riding a Greyhound bus through an endless tunnel…blowing a tire…riding on the rim for a while…and then running out of gas in the middle of the tunnel.

  “That’s it,” Robert agreed. “Even if they’d had the video feed running, it wouldn’t have looked like much up until the very end. To really appreciate a docking you’ve got to speak radar. But we’re here, all right.”

  “We truly have reached the Top Step,” I said wonderingly.

  “That we have,” Robert said. “Here comes the doctor.” The red light was on over the airlock up front.

  The hatch opened explosively, with a popping sound, and the airlock spat out a white-haired man in Bermuda shorts and a loud yellow Hawaiian shirt. His body orientation, fluttering hair and clothes, and the pack affixed somehow to his midsection made him look like a skydiver. The attendant caught him, began to warn him that this pressure was not secure, but he shushed her and began examining Mr. Henderson with various items taken from his belly pack. After a time I heard him say, “Okay, Shannon, let’s move him. You help me with him. We’re going to do it nice and slow.”

  “You!” the attendant called up the aisle. “The Chinese spacer in Row Six: you’re in command.” Robert blinked. “Come forward and take over, now. Breathing and digestion are permitted; limited thinking will be tolerated; everything else is forbidden, savvy?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” he called forward.

  Our eyes met briefly as he was unbuckling. For the first time I was able to see past that impassive expression, guess his thoughts. He was embarrassed, flattered…disappointed? At what?

  “To be continued in our next,” he murmured, and vaulted away.

  At the interruption of our conversation?

  “I hope so,” I heard myself call after him.

  Come to think of it, he still hadn’t said whether or not he’d give me lessons in jaunting.

  Oh God. What was I doing? What good could possibly come of this? Even for me, this was rotten timing.

  “You want to mind that top step, they say,” Kirra said softly, and when I turned to look at her she was grinning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two moves equals one fire.

  —Mark Twain

  WE DIDN’T HAVE long to wait. Less than a minute after the doctor and attendant left, the lock cycled open again and someone emerged.

  The newcomer got our instant attention.

  “Afternoon, folks,” she said. “Welcome to Top Step. I’m a Guide, and my name is Chris.”

  No one said a word.

  “Oh, excuse me.” She courteously turned herself rightside up with respect to us.

  It didn’t help much. Even upside down in that confined space, her face had been far enough from the floor to be seen from the last row. And even rightside up she was startling.

  Chris’s p-suit had no legs, and neither did Chris.

  I know I tried hard not to gape. I’m pretty sure I failed. One person actually gasped audibly. Chris ignored it and continued cheerfully, “I usually make a little speech at this point, but we want to get you out of suspect pressure as quickly as possible, so you’ve got a temporary reprieve. You are now about to do something you probably thought was impossible: leave a plane intelligently. By rows, remaining seated until it’s your turn, and then leaving at once. You have no carryons or coats to fumble with, no reason to block the aisle—and good reason not to.

  “See, if we cycle you through the airlocks a few at a time it’d take over an hour. But to keep the lock open at both ends and march you all out we have to equalize pressure between this can and Top Step—and there’s no telling if or how long that patch there will take pressure. So we’re going to do this with suits sealed, and we are not going to dawdle. I know you’re all free fall virgins; don’t worry, we’ll set up a bucket brigade and you’ll be fine. One thing: if there’s a blowout as you’re passing through the lock, get out of the doorway. It doesn’t matter which direction you pick, just don’t be in the way. Okay? All right, Ev!”

  That last was apparently directed to the Captain in the cockpit ahead. My ears began to hurt suddenly. The pressure was rising back toward Earth-normal. Like everybody, I swallowed hard, and watched that pressure patch as I sealed my hood.

  “Okay, this side first. No chatter. First person to slow up the line gets assigned to the Reclamation Module for the next two months.” A light over the lock blinked and the door opened. “First row: move!”

  Getting up the aisle to the front was easy. Once there were no seatbacks to navigate with, it got trickier. But Chris fielded me like a shortstop and lobbed me to Robert at second, who pivoted and threw me to someone at first for the double play. That must have ended the inning; others tossed me around the infield to celebrate for a while.

  I ended up turning slowly end over end in a large pale blue rectangular-box room. Several yellow ropes were strung across it from one biggest-wall to the opposite one. I caught a rope as I sailed past it.

  Because I seemed to be drifting light as a feather, I badly underestimated how hard it would be to stop drifting. If that rope hadn’t had some give to it, I might have pulled my arms out of their sockets. I had no weight, but I still had all my mass. I found the experience fascinating and mildly dismaying: in that first intentional vector change I made in space, I knew that some of the zero-gee dance moves I’d envisioned weren’t going to work.

  But I was too busy to think about kinesthetics just then. The room was half-full of my shipmates, with more coming at a steady pace. I saw that all of us were treating the biggest-walls as “floor” and “ceiling,” and lining ourselves up parallel to the ropes between them—but there seemed to be considerable silent disagreement as to which way was up. Visual cues were all ambiguous. It was a comical sight.

  Finally one side preponderated and the others gradually switched around to that “local vertical.” I was one of the latter group, and as I reached the decision that I was upside down, I realized for the first time that I felt faintly nauseous. The feeling increased as I flipped myself over, diminished a little as the room seemed to snap back into proper perspective again.

  The last of us came tumbling in, followed by the last member of the bucket brigade. The latter sealed the hatch, oriented himself upside down to us, let go of the hatch, and floated before it, hands thrust up into his pockets. He looked at us, and we craned our heads at him. A few of us cartwheeled round to his personal vertical again, and before long everyone had done so, with varying degrees of grace.

  He seemed to be in his fifties. He wore a p-suit, opaque and deep purple. Compared to the clunky suits we wore, his looked like a second skin. His complexion was coal black, the kind that doesn’t even gleam much under bright light. He was lean and fit, going bald and making no attempt to hide it, frowning and smiling at the same time. He looked relaxed and competent, avuncular. He reminded me a little of Murray, the business manager of one of the companies I’d worked with almost a decade before. Murray did the work of four men, yet always seemed perfectly relaxed, even during the week before a performance.

&nbs
p; “You folks don’t seem to know which way is up, do you?” he said pleasantly.

  There were a very few polite giggles, and one groan.

  He did something, and was suddenly upside down to us again. He was stable in the new position and had not touched anything. I didn’t quite catch the move at the time—and still can’t describe it; I’d have to show you—but I was fascinated. I wanted to ask him to do it again.

  This time we all let him stay upside down.

  “All right. My name is Phillipe Mgabi. I am your Chief Administrator for Student Affairs. On behalf of the Starseed Foundation, I’d like to welcome you all to Top Step, and wish you a fruitful stay. I’m sorry you had such an eventful journey here, and I assure you all that Top Step is considerably less vulnerable than your shuttle was. You’re as safe as any terrestrial can be in space, now.”

  No one said thanks.

  “I must remind you that you are no longer on United Nations soil, in even a figurative sense. Top Step is an autonomic pressure, like Skyfac or The Ark, recognized by the UN but not eligible for membership, and wholly owned by the Starseed Foundation. At the moment, you are technically Landed Immigrants, although we prefer the term Postulants.”

  It was weirdly disorienting to be addressed by an upside down person. It was almost impossible to decipher his facial expressions.

  “You were given the constitution and laws of Top Step back at Suit Camp, and you’ll find them in the memory banks—along with maps, schedules, master directory, and for that matter the entire Global Net. You have unrestricted and unmetered access, Net-inclusive, free of charge for as long as you’re resident here.”

  There were murmurs. Unmetered access to the Net? For everybody?

  This whole operation struck me as being run like a dance company financed by task-specific grants. In some areas they were as cheap as a cut-rate holiday (Suit Camp had featured outdoor privies, just like the ones I’d used as a little girl on Gambier Island)…but when they spent, they spent like sailors on leave. It seemed schizophrenic.

  “The point is that you are responsible. You are presumed to know your obligations and privileges as a Postulant. The Agreements you have made are all in plain language, and you are bound by them. They allow you a great deal of slack…but where they bind, there is no give at all. I recommend that you study them if you haven’t already.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the loudmouthed joker start to say something, then change his mind.

  “I hope all of you paid attention at Suit Camp. I said you were as safe as any terrestrial in space. That compares favorably with, say, New York…but not by much, and space bites in different places and unexpected ways. As you learned on your way up here.” Ouch. “To survive long enough to enter Symbiosis, you must all acquire and maintain a state of alert mindfulness—and there are few second chances. Space is not fair. Space is not merciful. I see you all nodding, and I know that at least three of you will be dead before your term is up. That is the smallest number of Postulants we have lost from a single class. I would like it very much if your class turns out to be the first exception to that rule.”

  Mgabi cocked his head, listening to something we couldn’t hear. “And now I’m going to hand you over to your Orientation Coordinator. Any and all problems, questions, requests or complaints you may have during your stay in Top Step will go to her; I’m afraid I will not be seeing you on any regular basis myself. Dorothy?”

  The hatch opened and admitted a red-haired woman in her seventies, frail and thin, dressed in Kelly green p-suit. One look at her face and I knew I was in good hands. She looked competent, compassionate and wise. She aligned herself to us rather than Mgabi.

  “Hello, children,” she said. “I’m Dorothy Gerstenfeld. I’m going to be your mother for the next two months. Daddy here—” She indicated Mgabi. “—will be away at the office most of the time, so I’ll be the one who tucks you in and makes you do your chores and so on. I’ve got a squad of Guides to help me. My door is always unlocked and my phone is always on.

  “Now I know you’ve all got a thousand questions—I know at least a few of you urgently want a refresher course in zero-gee plumbing!—but I’ve got a little set speech, and I find if I start with the questions I never get to it. So here goes:

  “I’ve used the maternal metaphor for a reason…just as Doctor Mgabi entered this room upside down to you for a reason. He was trying to show you by plain example that you have come to a place where up and down have meaning only within your own skull. I am trying to suggest to you that for the next two months you are no longer adults, whatever your calendar age.”

  Mgabi drifted nearby in a gentle crouch. It was hard to read his inverted face, and he must have heard this dozens of times, but it seemed to me he paid careful attention, though he was looking at us. He reminded me of an old black and white film I saw once of Miles Davis listening to Charlie Parker take a solo.

  “It is said,” she continued, “that space makes you childlike again. Charles Armstead himself noted that in the historic Titan Transmission. Free fall makes you want to play, to be a child again. Look at you all, trying to be still, wanting to hop around. Well you should…and shall! Look at me: I’m considerably over thirty, and I’ve been six-wall-squash champion in this pressure for over five years now.

  “Now, what are the three things a child hates the most? Aside from bedtime, I mean. Going to school, doing chores, and going to church, am I right?” People chuckled, including me. “Well, you’ve all just spent several weeks in school. It probably even felt like summer school, since all the Suit Camps are in tropical locations. And now that school’s out, you’re going to have to spend some time doing chores and being in church.” There were scattered mock-groans. “Not only that, you’re going to have to remember, every single time without fail, to wear your rubbers when you go out!” That got giggles.

  “Don’t worry,” she went on, “before long you’ll be going out a lot, all you want—and there’ll be plenty of time for play. But church—or temple or zendo or synagogue or whatever word you use for ‘place where one prays’—is sort of what Top Step is all about, what it’s for. It’s just a kind of church it’s okay to play in, that’s all. It has only one sacrament, and only you know—if you do—what it will take to become ready to receive it. We know many ways to help you.

  “If you use your time here wisely, then soon church will be done, and school will be out forever, and you will become more ideally childlike than you ever were as a child.

  “I hope every one of you makes it.”

  A facile and pious cliché, surely—but when she said it, I believed it. Your mother doesn’t lie. This one didn’t, at least.

  “Remember: if you have any practical difficulties, I’m the one you want to consult; don’t bother Administrator Mgabi or his staff without routing through me first. But few of your problems are going to turn out to be practical—and some of your practical problems will kill you before you have a chance to complain. When you do need help, it’s more likely to be spiritual help. You’ll find that Top Step has more spiritual advisers than any other kind. We have representatives of most of the major denominations inboard—you’ll find a directory in your computer—but please don’t feel compelled to stick with whatever faith you were raised in or presently practice. You’ll find that personal rapport is a lot more important than brand name. All right, enough speeches—”

  People with full bladders sighed, anticipating relief—but there was an interruption from the loudmouth. He wanted to report Shannon, our flight attendant for what he called outrageous authoritarianism and psychological instability. “The woman is dangerous,” he said. “I actually thought for a moment she was going to strike me! I want her relieved of duty and punished.”

  The rest of us made a collective growling sound. He ignored us.

  “We’ll discuss this in my office,” Dorothy said, “as soon as I’ve—”

  “Dammit, I want satisfaction, now.”
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br />   Dorothy looked sad. “Eric,” she said, “did you read your contracts with us?” It struck me, that she knew his name.

  He didn’t seem to notice. “I ran ’em past my legal software, sure. But she had no right—”

  “She had every right. I saw all that happened, from my office. If Shannon had chosen to kill you, I would have been sad—but I would not have been cross with her.”

  He snorted. “She’d have had a busy time trying!”

  Dorothy looked even sadder. “No, she wouldn’t. Eric, can’t we discuss this later, in my office?”

  “I’m afraid not, ma’am. If the setup here actually requires me to take orders from every hired hand, let’s get it straight right now so I can return to Earth at once.”

  Now she mastered her sorrow; her face smoothed over. “Very well. I’ll take you back to your shuttle now. It will be departing almost immediately.” She kicked off gently and jaunted toward him.

  At once he was waffling. “Wait a minute! You can’t just throw me out without a hearing, after all the time I’ve invested—and you certainly can’t make me go back in that crate, it’s defective. And these p-suits are substandard, I want a real one, with a proper radio, and—”

  She approached slowly, empty hands outstretched in a gesture of peace, maternal concern on her face. She killed most of her momentum on the empty rope just in front of his, setting it shivering, covered the last few meters very slowly, reached for his rope—

  —and her hands slipped past it, touched Eric behind each ear with delicate precision. His eyes rolled up and he let go of the rope, slowly began to pivot around her hands. He snored gently.

  Towing Eric, Dorothy jaunted slowly back to her original place by the hatch; it opened as she got there, and she aimed Eric out through it to someone out in the corridor. Then she turned to us.

  All the sadness was gone from her face, now, replaced by resolution. She looked as strong, as powerful, as my own grandmother. “I’m sorry you’ve all had such an inauspicious trip so far.” Small smile. “It can only get better from here. Now: Eric raised a good point. The p-suits you’re all wearing are inadequate. They’re tourist suits, designed only for emergency use by passengers in transit. They’ll be going back to Earth on the shuttle, so please remove them now. You’ll be issued your own personal suits—real suits, the best made—in just a little while.” We all began removing our suits. “From here you’ll go through Decontam, where there’ll be washrooms for those who need one—and, I’m afraid, for those who don’t think you do—and then you’ll be guided to your rooms. You’ve got three hours before dinner; I recommend you spend them either at your terminals, learning your way around Top Step, or resting. They’ll be plenty of time for physical exploring, believe me.”