The Stardance Trilogy

by Spider

  There was a short silence while they all drank. Rand broke it. “We screwed up,” he said hollowly—and Jay felt himself nodding in agreement.

  “On the contrary!” Cox said. “You walked among the lions today, son, and all your blood is still on the right side of your skin. Are you sure none of you has had military training?” All three shook their heads. “If you were my cadets, I’d be sewing stripes on all three of you right now.”

  “But we don’t know shit,” Rand insisted.

  “We know a lot more than we would if you three had gotten yourselves dead trying to take her cowboy-style! I’d be sitting here right now, listening to Kate Tokugawa tell me the emergency was over and thanks, but they didn’t need any assistance. Who knows how long it would have taken for someone at Top Step to try and call Humphrey, and get a no-such-guest-in-house? Now we’ve got everything you learned, days before they thought we would—and five low-level thugs we were able to take alive, we can sweat them—”

  “—and it all adds up to doodah,” Jay said. “If the Security goons know anything useful, they’ll be allergic to interrogation. And what we know just doesn’t make any goddam sense.”

  “Not by itself, no. But it may tie in with other things…tell me, would you gentlemen consent to hypnointerrogation? You may know things you don’t know you know.”

  “On one condition,” Rand said.

  “State it.”

  “Admiral, this is high-level stuff. I’m a civilian. I want your personal word that when you put this all together, you’ll share it with me. I’ll take any kind of secrecy oath you want—trigger me up like a courier if you want, so I can’t talk—but I have to know. Not what the cronkites get told, but the truth.”

  “The same goes for me,” Jay said.

  “Me too, Admiral,” Duncan said.

  Cox did not answer right away, and they did not hurry him. He met each of their eyes in turn. Finally he said, “I agree to that, whether you consent to hypno or not. You’ve earned it. For a start, I will tell you that yours wasn’t the only kidnapping. Data are still coming in, but there have been at least two others in space, and more than a dozen dirtside—beautifully coordinated, assorted methods but one hundred percent success rate. I am not aware of any other military engagement in modern history accomplished with such elegance and efficiency. Billions were spent. Well spent.”

  “What kind of people were taken?” Jay asked.

  “Saints.”

  “What?”

  “Holy men and women. Spiritually enlightened people. Like Reb and Meiya—and Fat Humphrey too, in his way. Several different faiths, and two whose religion has no brand name at all, but they’re all what Reb would call bodhisattvas. Mother Theresas, if you’re old enough to get the reference. You know: saints.”

  “You mean like the Pope?” Duncan asked.

  “I didn’t say religious leaders. I said spiritually enlightened people. One of them seems to be an Aboriginal witch woman. Another is a Pakistani musician who only plays hospitals.”

  “Of course,” Rand said, slapping his forehead. “What’s wrong with me? You want to overthrow the UN, naturally you kidnap saints, musicians and fat maître-d’s.”

  “It just keeps getting worse,” Duncan said. “More than a dozen perfect military operations, carried out by wealthy morons.”

  “Admiral, is there anything the captives have in common besides…well, besides holiness?” Jay asked.

  Cox lifted one bald eyebrow respectfully. “You do keep surprising me, Sasaki-sama. Yes. One and only one overt connection between them. They are all known to be on especially intimate terms with the Starmind.”

  Rand’s eyes showed a gleam of excitement. “Some sort of hostage deal—” he began.

  “I’ve asked the Starmind for their evaluation of the known data,” Cox said. “It can take a week to get an answer from them on a simple question, sometimes, but they’ve promised me at least a preliminary answer by 12:00 Greenwich, about…” He winked briefly; his own watch was inside his eyelid. “…twelve hours from now. You’ll have slept off the hypno by then. Meet me here at noon and you’ll hear anything I do.”

  As far as Jay was concerned, he woke up with a click, totally refreshed and restored and in a comfortable bunk, one second later. He never managed to remember anything of leaving the command center, let alone the hypnointerrogation process itself. It did not trouble him, then or ever; he simply slid out of his sleepsack, confirmed that he had time to keep his appointment, stuck his head out the door and had the Marine stationed there cause breakfast to be fetched.

  He did find himself wondering, as he ate, whether any alterations might have been made in his memories or motivations while he slept. But he reasoned, correctly, that the ability to form the question was a reassuring clue, and dismissed the matter. His generation had been the first in a century to grow up trusting its government. Instead he tried to imagine how possession of holy people gave anyone leverage over the Starmind and/or the UN. No rational answer suggested itself.

  He reached the command center early, and was admitted by the Marines guarding it; Rand and Duncan arrived shortly thereafter. At noon exactly Admiral Cox jaunted in, looking exhausted. It was obvious he had not slept. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I hope this won’t prove to be—”

  “BILL.”

  The voice came from everywhere. Jay found it hauntingly familiar, but couldn’t pin it down. Then he grasped what it had said, and was suddenly dizzy, a most unfamiliar sensation for a zero-gee dancer.

  Cox was a common name. But this was Admiral William Cox. The William Cox—former commander of the Siegfried! Jay had assumed he was dead. He was used to the company of vips and uips—but he had been drinking coffee and chatting with a legend: the first human being to have set eyes on a Firefly…

  “Yes, Charlie, I’m here,” Admiral Cox said quietly.

  Jay gasped aloud in shock. This could be no other than Charlie Armstead himself. Shara Drummond’s video man, the man who had personally taped the Stardance; co-founder of the first zero-gee dance company in history; the second Stardancer who ever lived and the spiritual father of Jay’s artform. He felt his dizziness turn to nausea.

  But he felt infinitely worse when he heard Armstead say, “I’M SORRY OLD FRIEND. I HAVE VERY SAD NEWS…”

  23

  Somewhere North of the Ecliptic

  26 February 2065

  EVA WOKE HARD, feeling every one of her hundred and sixteen years, tasting each one somewhere on her tongue. Her first coherent thought was that Jeeves must have been nipping at the cooking sherry. He had mutated into a Chinese gorilla and put on a white p-suit. But he still had that quality of shimmering self-effacement. “Good morning, gracious Lady,” he said, and bowed. Even the bow was different.

  “The hell it is,” she replied—and realized they were conversing in Cantonese, a language she had not spoken in forty years. “Speak English.”

  “This one regrets that he cannot, Lady.” There was something wrong with his p-suit speaker; it gave his voice too much treble.

  She took several deep breaths, and felt the mists begin to recede. That wasn’t Jeeves—or any AI. It was a human being…sort of…and too dumb to be a servant. And why was he in a p-suit when there was plenty of air in here? Something was badly wrong.

  She played back memory. The last thing she could recall was asking Fat Humphrey what he wanted from Room Service. She looked around. This was not part of Fat’s suite—or anywhere in the Shimizu. It looked more like a construction barracks, unpainted metal and visible joins. She and this Cantonese thug were alone here. There didn’t appear to be even any potential furniture—not so much as a sleepsack. No wonder her neck ached so badly: she had been nodding in time with her breathing for…God knew how long. Hours, at least. Her chest hurt too. In fact, her everything hurt.

  Well, some phrases she knew in over a dozen languages. “Where am I? Where are my friends?”

  “Lady, this one is
too ignorant to be questioned. His instructions are to offer you nourishment, and then convey you to his master.”

  “Who is your master? You can’t be that ignorant.”

  “That is not for this one to say, gracious Lady.”

  She decided asking him his name would be a waste of time. A tagline from an ancient comedy series flitted through her mind: He’s from Barcelona, you know. “Skip the nourishment. Can you show me to the washroom?”

  That turned out to be something he could handle, thank God. It was down a short corridor from what she was getting through her head was her cell. The Cantonese minder never took his eyes from her, and though he wore no visible weapons something about his bearing said he didn’t really need any. She understood now that he wore a p-suit so that he could use sleepy gas on her if he felt he needed to.

  As soon as the door sealed behind her, she tried to empty her mind of everything but the question, Reb, are you alive? Are you here?

  Nothing came back. She thought she might have detected something like a carrier wave, a power hum, but there was no signal. And it might have been wishful thinking. Reb had only been tutoring her in this empathic sensitivity stuff for a couple of months, and her progress had been frustratingly slow. She tried “tuning in on” Meiya and then Humphrey, but was unsurprised to achieve no better results. She was on her own.

  Well, she had a century and more of practice.

  Bladder empty and face washed, she looked about the horrid little cubical for a useful weapon. The facecloth seemed to exhaust the possibilities. She gave up and left. Her self-effacing jailer was a discreet distance down the passageway, and quite alert.

  “All right, Marmaduke: take me to your leader.” She spoke in English, but he seemed to take her meaning. He led the way—but jaunted backwards, so that his eyes rarely left her.

  She memorized the route, and kept her eyes open along the way. This pressure felt bigger than a ship, somehow. Indefinable subconscious clues told her it was something more like the Shimizu or Top Step: a massive habitat. More like Top Step in the old days: thrown together, rough carpentry, baldly functional. She also got the impression he was taking her by the back way. They passed few people, and once when they did, he and the others had bristled at each other like challenging cats in passing. She filed the observation away.

  The room he led her to reminded her a little of her own suite in the Shimizu. Spartan simplicity—but expensive simplicity. She grew a chair and shaped it to suit her. “You may leave me,” she said.

  He grimaced. “This one regrets that he cannot, Lady. But he will cease to intrude.” With that, he…became a piece of furniture. It was like a robot powering down; suddenly he wasn’t there anymore, except in potential. She tried to catch him breathing, but to her wry amusement she found she could not keep her eyes on him for more than a few seconds; they slid off. She gave up, studied the right arm of her chair, and ordered strong black tea.

  She was intrigued to notice that it appeared to arrive under its own power, herded not by microbots but by invisible nanobots. Rough carpentry, yes…but state of the art technology.

  As she took the first sip, the door sighed open and Chen Ling Ho entered. The Cantonese powered back up and came to attention.

  “You could have just asked,” she said. “Two of my marriages were elopements.”

  Chen smiled. It struck her that that was his only response. Almost any other man she had ever known would have felt obliged to make a clever comeback. He made some signal she didn’t quite catch, and the guard left, in a wide, fuel-wasting arc to avoid passing between them.

  When the door had slid shut behind him, Chen spoke in Mandarin. “Sun Tzu—privacy!”

  “Yes, Highness,” his AI replied in the same language.

  “There,” Chen continued in English. “We now have total privacy. But very little time.” A chair came to him and enfolded him, and a globe of water found his hand. “I am sorry you were caught up in this, Eva. I would have had it otherwise.”

  “Where are Reb and the others? For that matter, where the hell are we?”

  “Tenshin Hawkins and his friends are sleeping presently.” He sipped his water delicately, and pursed his lips in approval. “Your second question has many answers. We are in an elongated polar orbit, high above the ecliptic, in a region of space where neither the United Nations nor the Starmind could find us, even if they were looking. This pressure itself is many things. Fortress. Laboratory. School. Flagship. My home away from home.”

  “Is ‘prison’ in there somewhere?” she asked. “Or can I go home now?”

  He failed to hear the question. “Specifically, we are in my quarters, which I invite you to share.”

  “Damned rude invitation. I hurt all over. Don’t you know any better than to subject spacers to high gees?”

  “There was a regrettable need for speed and stealth,” he said. “All possible care was taken: military antiacceleration technology was employed. Happily, you all survived.”

  “But in what condition? The others should have woken before me; they’re all younger.”

  “But they left Terra behind much longer ago. Their journey was actually more arduous than yours. But do not worry: I am told that their health is excellent.”

  “Then when will they wake up?”

  He sighed. “I do not envision that occurring, I’m afraid.”

  She set her jaw. “Ling, quit dancing and spit it out. What’s going on?”

  “You will recall the economic summit conference in the Shimizu last month?”

  “Let me see…the one we almost got killed during, or am I thinking of some other one?”

  He ignored the sarcasm. “We five have managed to repair our relationship…for the time being, at least…and are now about to destroy the Starmind and overthrow the United Nations.”

  Eva Hoffman had known more than a few power-mad men and women in her lifetime, including some who were quite successful at it. Had any of them made such a statement, she would have laughed, or at least wanted to. From the lips of Chen Ling Ho the words were blood-curdling. No flip response was thinkable. “My God…,” she whispered, horror-struck.

  “We hope to create the first rational planetary government,” Chen went on conversationally. “Rather along lines K’ung Fu-Tzu might have approved of, I think. But it scarcely matters. The point is that once the Starmind is annihilated, any mistakes humanity makes will be its own.”

  REB! For God’s sake, WAKE UP!

  Just the barest hint of response, like a man turning restlessly in a deep sleep.

  “Ling, for the love of Christ, humanity can’t make it without the Starmind, not anymore, you know that!”

  “Precisely why the Starmind must die. The riches it showers on us are like welfare checks: they demean, and degrade, and diminish us. Stardancer benevolence has already devolved us from wolves to sheep, from roaring killer apes to chattering monkeys, in three generations. This trend must be reversed, before the inevitable day comes when the Fireflies return. The transition will be painful—but we will make it by our own efforts, as free human beings, or die trying.”

  “You really think you can kill every Stardancer in the Solar System? How?”

  He frowned, and chose his words carefully. “Before I can answer that, Eva, I must ascertain your status. I have stated my intentions. Three options are open to you: you can be friend, foe or neutral.”

  “Nice of you to offer the third choice,” she said.

  “Yes, it is. But if you choose it, I cannot answer your question, or any other of a strategic or tactical nature. In that event I will sequester you here, in reasonable comfort but complete ignorance, and release you in your own custody when events have resolved. On the order of three months from now.”

  She noticed that he did not say, “…on the close order of…” and grimaced. “I assume foes don’t get briefed either.”

  “On the contrary,” he said. “If you tell me that you oppose me, I will answer an
y questions you have. You have been an intimate companion to me, Eva: I would wish your death to be as agreeable as possible.”

  Reb, wake UP! Rise and shine! Dammit, you’re gonna wet the bed!

  “I see. And if I claim friendship?”

  “You get it,” he said simply. “After this is over, you can have the Shimizu for a gift if you like. It lies within my fief.”

  “And you’ll take my word.”

  “Eva, I know when you are lying.”

  “How long do I have to think it over?”

  “As long as you wish. But in ten minutes I must leave here to begin the attack, and I will be unable to return for at least twenty-four hours. If you wish to witness history as it is happening, at my side, you must choose to be my friend before I leave this room.” He swiveled his chair away from her and began scanning a readout of figures in no alphabet she knew, politely giving her space to think it through.

  The trouble was, she thought, the canny little son of a bitch probably would know if she lied. That was bad, very bad, for she had to oppose him—had to—and dared not even hint why. After a hundred and sixteen weary years and countless flirtations, death had come for her at last, was a matter of minutes away. She was shocked by how much that realization hurt—but even a newfound fear of extinction was of less importance than the awful responsibility she must now discharge before she died.

  Why me? she thought—and smothered the thought savagely. That was exactly the kind of self-indulgence she could no longer afford. Instead she made her limbs relax, took control of her breathing, and forced herself to remember the words Reb had once told her.

  “It’s state of mind more than anything else, Eva. Telepathic sensitivity is largely a matter of sweeping the trash out of the communications room. Try and remember what it was like when one of your babies cried in the night and woke you. There is no ‘you’ at such a moment, no ego, no identity, no fear, no viewpoint…only the need, and the feeling of it, and the will to serve it, to soothe the pain at all costs.”