by Spider
“Cut!” Reb told Teena calmly, and the illusion vanished at once.
We were back in our familiar classroom. The transition was just as wrenching as it had been in the other direction; we seemed to have been instantaneously teleported into the heart of Top Step. We floundered about like new chums, and gaped at each other. Reb flashed to Nicole’s side and held her until she stopped screaming and began to cry softly against his chest. He summoned her roommate with his eyes, and had Nicole conducted from the room, sobbing feebly.
I found that Robert was by my side, and that I was glad he was there, and indeed was clutching tightly to his strong arm. Somehow he mentally integrated up our separate masses and vectors and used his wrist and ankle thrusters to bring us to a dead stop together, in a spot where no one else was on a collision course.
“Wow!” he said hoarsely.
“It still gets to you?” I asked.
“What do you mean, ‘still’? I’ve been in space many times, yes—but that was my first time EVA. In simulation that good, I mean.”
It surprised me a little, I’d sort of assumed a space architect would have to go outdoors to check on details of a job in progress. But it warmed me toward Robert to find him as moved and shaken as I was by the experience.
He was kind and sensitive and patient and attentive, and very attractive, and he wanted me. What was I waiting for? I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. I just knew I wasn’t ready.
“Are you ready?” Reb called, making me jump involuntarily. “All right, let’s get back to the simulation.”
Class went on.
Nicole showed up at lunch, looking wan and pale. But she wasn’t at supper that night. She never came to classes again, and within two days she was back Earthside.
I visited her and said goodbye before she left. It was awkward.
We had EVA simulation in Sulke’s class too for the rest of that week—only her simulations included holographic “objects” we had to match vectors with, and for the last two days she installed a real set of monkey bars which we learned to use like zero-gee monkeys. (Part of our training consisted of watching holos of real monkeys bred in free fall. God, they’re fast! They make lousy pets, though: so far only cats and some dogs have ever learned to use a zero-gee litterbox reliably.)
Three more people had dropped out by the end of the week. Their egos were simply not strong enough to handle being dwarfed into insignificance by the sheer size of the Universe.
I asked Reb about that in class one day. “It just seems paradoxical. You need a strong ego to endure raw space—and we’re all here to lose our egos in the Starmind.”
“You are not here to lose your ego,” he corrected firmly. “You’re here to lose your irrational fear of other egos.”
“Irrational?” Glenn said.
“On Earth it is perfectly rational,” Reb agreed. “On Earth, there are finite resources, and so underneath everything is competition for food and breeding rights. All humans have occasional flashes of higher consciousness, in which they see that cooperation is preferable to competition—but as long as the game is zero sum, competition is the rational choice for the long run every time. Read Hofstadter’s Metamagical Themas, the chapter on the Prisoner’s Dilemma game.
“But what the Symbiote has done is to change the rules, utterly. A human in Symbiosis has nothing to compete for. Cooperation becomes more than rational and pleasant: it’s inevitable.”
“How long does it take to unlearn a lifetime’s habit of competition?” Glenn asked.
“An average of about three-tenths of a second,” Reb said. “It’s what your heart has always yearned for: to stop fighting and love your neighbor. Once you become telepathic you know, in your bones, without question, that it’s safe to do that now.”
Robert spoke up—unusually; he seldom drew attention to himself in Reb’s class. “Isn’t competition good for a species? What pressure is there on Stardancers to evolve? Or have they evolved as far as they can already?”
“Oh, no,” Reb said. “Charlie Armstead said once, ‘We are infants, and we hunger for maturity.’ Animals improve through natural selection only—the fit survive. Humans improve through natural selection, and because they want to. We did not evolve the science of medicine, we built it, painfully, over thousands of years, to preserve those natural selection would have culled. Stardancers improve because they want to, only. Their brave hope is that intelligence may just be able to do as well at evolution as random chance.”
Robert nodded. “I think I see. It took millions of years for chance to produce human sentience…and then it took that sentience thousands of years to produce civilization. Telepathic sentience, that didn’t have to fight for its living, might do comparable things in a lifetime.”
I signaled for the floor. “I have trouble imagining how a telepathic society evolves.”
Reb smiled. “So does the Starmind. Does it comfort you to know that our current knowledge suggests you’ll have at least two hundred years to think about it?”
I grinned back. “It helps.”
Robert signaled for attention again. “Reb, I’ve heard that a couple of Stardancers have died.”
“Accidental deaths, yes. A total of four, actually.”
“Well…how can a Stardancer die? I mean, each one’s consciousness is spread through more than forty-thousand different minds. So for a Stardancer, isn’t death really no more than having your childhood home burn down? Your self persists, doesn’t it, even if it can’t ever go home again?”
Reb looked sad. “I’m afraid not. It isn’t consciousness that diffuses through the Starmind, but the products of consciousness: thoughts and feelings. Consciousness itself is rooted in the brain, and when a brain is destroyed, that consciousness ends. Telepathy does not transcend death—the Starmind knows no more about what lies beyond death than any human does.”
Robert frowned. “But all the thoughts that brain ever had, remain on record, in the Starmind—and you’ve told us the Starmind’s memory is perfect. Wouldn’t it be possible, given every single thought a person’s mind ever had, to reconstruct it, and maintain it by time-sharing among forty-some thousand other brains?”
“It has been tried. Twice. It is the consensus of the Starmind that it never will be tried again.”
“Why not?”
“What results is something like a very good artificial intelligence package. It has a personality, mannerisms, quirks…but no core. It doesn’t produce new thoughts, or feel new feelings. Both such constructs asked to be terminated, and were.”
“Oh.”
“On the other hand, no Stardancer has yet died of so-called natural causes, and individuals as old as a hundred and ten are as active and vigorous as you are. So I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.”
“I won’t,” Robert agreed. “I just wondered.”
That Sunday there was a small celebration in the Café du Ciel, acknowledging our transition from Postulant to Novice. Phillipe Mgabi attended, the first time most of us had seen him since our arrival, but it was mostly Dorothy’s show. There were no speeches, scant ceremony. Mostly it was tea and conversation and good feelings. Some of us came forward and told of things we had thought or felt since our arrival, difficulties we had overcome. A new marriage was announced, and cheered. To my surprise, no gripes were aired. I think that had a lot to do with Phillipe Mgabi having been too busy to show his face for the past four weeks. I’d never seen such a smoothly running, well-organized anything before, and I knew how much hard work that kind of organization requires.
Under the influence of all this good fellowship, Robert and I reached a new plateau in our relationship, to wit, publicly holding hands and necking. Nothing more serious than friendly cuddling; I think each of us was waiting for the other to make the first move. Well, I don’t really know what he was waiting for.
Come to think of it, I don’t know what I was waiting for either.
And then came the day we’d anticipated for s
o long. I think it’s safe to say we all woke up with a kids-on-Christmas-morning feeling. Today we would be allowed to leave the house!
Everyone showed up for breakfast, for once, and almost nothing was eaten. The buzz of conversation had its pitch and speed controls advanced one notch apiece past normal. A lot of teeth were showing. Then in the middle of the meal there was a subtle change. The feeling went from kids on Christmas morning to teenagers on the morning of the Chem Final. The laughter came more often, and more shrilly. A restless room in zero gravity is really restless; people bob around like corks in a high sea rather than undulating like seaweed. Smiles became fixed. A bulb of coffee got loose and people flinched away from it.
Kirra began to hum.
Under her breath at first, with a low buzzing tone to it. By the time I was aware of it, I found that I was humming along with her, and recognized the tune we were humming. The Song of Top Step. Ben joined softly in an octave below us. Kirra started to gently tap out the rhythm on the table. Someone two tables over picked up the melody, and that gave all of us the courage to increase our volume. Soon people were chiming in all over the cafeteria, even people from classes before or after ours. Not all of us knew the Song well enough to sing it, but most of us knew at least parts of it, and could join in for those. Those who couldn’t carry a tune kept the rhythm with utensils. Those few who didn’t know the Song at all stopped talking to listen. Even the spacers on the cafeteria staff stopped what they were doing.
We went through it three times together. The third was the best; by then almost everyone had it down. It was the kind of tune that’s easy to learn quickly; even to ears raised on different musical convenience, it was hummable. Kirra held the final note, then let her voice tumble slowly down to the bottom of her range and die out. There was no applause. There was not a sound. Not a cough. Still bodies.
“Let’s do it, then,” Kirra said, and the stasis was ended. We went off to school together calmly, joyfully, quietly, as one.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Assuming Ascension, Assumption, Assent
All of our nonsense is finally non-sent—
With honorable mention for whatever we meant
You are my content, and I am content.
—Teodor Vysotsky
REB AND SULKE were both waiting for us in Solarium Two. (For the rest of this week they would be teaching us together, twice a day; after that they’d teach separately again.) Although they knew us all by name and by sight, they marked us off on an actual checklist as we came through the open airlock chamber, and sealed both hatches carefully when we were all mustered. Reb was especially saintly, radiating calm and compassion, and Sulke was especially sour, nervous as a cat.
“If you haven’t checked your air, do so now,” she called. “We’ve got fresh tanks if you need them.” We were all in our p-suits, and I would have bet all of us had been smart enough to check our air supply. I certainly had—six times. But little Yumiko had to come forward, shamefaced, to accept a pair of tanks and a withering glare from Sulke. “Check your thruster charges too. You’re not gonna get much use out of them today, but start the habit of keeping them topped up.” Three people had to disgrace themselves this time, coming forward to have their wristlets or anklets recharged. Ben was one of them.
“You’ve heard it a million times,” Sulke told us in parade-ground voice. “I’ll tell you one more time. Space does not forgive. If you take your mind off it for five seconds, it will kill you.”
She took a breath to say more, and Reb gently cut her off. “Be mindful, as we have learned together, and all will be well.”
She exhaled, and nodded slowly. “That’s right. Okay, earthworms—” She caught herself again. “Sorry, I can’t call you that anymore, you’ve graduated.” She grinned. “Okay, spaceworms, attach your umbilicals. Make damn sure they’re hooked tight.”
The term was outdated: they weren’t real umbilicals like the pioneers used, carrying air from the mothership; they were only simple tethers. But they did fasten at the navel so that imagery was apt. Each of us found a ring to anchor ours to on the wall behind us. I checked carefully to make sure the snaplock had latched snugly shut. The umbilical was about the same diameter as spaghetti, guaranteed unbreakable, and was a phosphorescent white so it would not be lost in the darkness.
“Radios on Channel Four,” Sulke said. “Seal your hood and hold on to your anchor. Is there anyone whose hood is not sealed? Okay, here we go.”
There was a dysharmonic whining sound as high-volume pumps went into operation, draining the air from the Solarium. As the air left, the noise diminished. The cubic was large, it took awhile. We spent the time staring out the vast window.
Two was the only true solarium, the one that always faced the Sun. Its window worked like modern sunglasses: you could stare directly at the Sun, without everything else out there turning dark as well. The p-suit hood added another layer of polarization. The Sun looked like an old 60-watt bulb head-on, but by its light you could see Top Step’s own mirror farm a few miles away, a miniature model of the three immense ones that circle the globe, beaming down gigawatts for the groundhogs to squabble over. It looked like God’s chandelier. I could also just make out two distant Stardancers, their Symbiotes spun out into crimson discs, a little One-ish of the mirror farm. (That’s the side away from Earth in Top Step parlance.) They looked like they were just basking in the sun, rippling slightly like jellyfish, but for all I knew they could have been directing construction out in the Asteroid Belt. Who knows what a Stardancer is thinking? All other Stardancers, that’s who, and nobody else. There were no p-suited Third-Monthers visible at the moment, though there were surely some out there, too far to see or in other quadrants of space.
The sound of the pumps was gone now. The outside world is miked in a p-suit, but the mike only functions in atmosphere. There was no longer any air to support sound outside our suits, so we heard none.
“Hard vacuum,” Sulke announced in my ear. “Maintain radio silence unless you have an emergency. And don’t have an emergency. Here we go.”
A crack appeared at the bottom of the great window. In eerie utter silence, it slid upward until it was gone. A great gaping hole opened out on empty space. Radio silence or no, there was a soft susurrant murmur. For a moment my mind tried to tell me that the Sun and empty space were below me, that the huge opening was a bomb bay and I was about to fall out. But I suppressed the fear easily. Reb had trained me well.
“All right,” Sulke said, “starting over at this end, one at a time, move out when I tell you. Don’t move until the person before you has reached the end of their leash, I don’t want any tangles today. Try to fan out, so we end up making a big shaving brush. Rostropovitch, you’re first.”
Reb arranged himself like a skydiver, feet toward us, and gave a short blast on his ankle thrusters. “Follow me, Dmitri,” he said softly, and jaunted slowly out into emptiness. Dmitri followed him, and then Yumiko, and the exodus began. When my turn came I was ready. A one-second blast, and I was in motion. As I passed through the open window there was a sensation as if I had pierced some invisible membrane…and then I was in free space, tether unreeling slightly behind me, concentrating on my aim.
The umbilical placed enough drag on me that I had to blast again halfway out. I did it for a hair too long, and reached the end of my rope with a jerk that put me into a slow-motion tumble. I stabilized it easily, and could have come to a stop—Sulke had trained me well, too—but I didn’t. Like someone standing on a mountaintop and turning in circles, I rotated slowly. Now that I was no longer busy, I let myself take it all in.
And like my mates, I was dumbstruck.
It’s like the psychedelic experience. It cannot be described, and only a fool will try. I know that even my clearest memories of the event are pale shadows.
In free space you seem to see better, in more detail than usual. Everything has an uncanny “realer than real” look, because there is no air to scatter the
light that reaches your eyes. You see about 20 percent more stars than can be seen on the clearest night on Earth, just a little brighter and clearer than even the best simulation, and none of them twinkle. Venus, Mars and Jupiter are all visible, and visibly different from the other celestial objects.
For the first time I gained some real sense of the size of Top Step. It looked like a mountain that had decided to fly, a mountain the size of Mount Baker back where I came from. (Already I had stopped thinking, “back home.”) Even though at that point in history something over a quarter of it had been tunneled out and put to assorted uses, the only externally prominent sign of human occupancy was the mammoth docking complex at the tip—and it had the relative dimensions of the hole in the tip of a fat cigar.
And at the same time all of Top Step was less than a dust mote. So vast is space that mighty Earth itself, off Three-ish, was a pebble, and the Sun was a coal floating in an eternal sea of ink. That made me some kind of subatomic particle. A pun awful enough to be worthy of Ben came to me: it had been too long since I’d been lepton. That made me think of Robert, and I recalled vaguely that the force that keeps leptons together is called the Weak Force. I was rummaging through my forebrain, looking for wordgames to anchor me to reality, cerebral pacifiers.
I looked around for Robert, spotted his turquoise p-suit coming into my field of vision perhaps twenty meters away—why, we were practically rubbing elbows. As in the classroom simulation holo, half of him was in darkness…but here in real space, there was enough backscatter of light from Top Step to make his dark side just barely visible. Other students floated beyond him; I picked out Kirra and Ben, holding hands. Jaunting as a couple is trickier than jaunting solo, but they had learned the knack.
Reb and Sulke let us all just be there in silence for a measureless time.
