Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  And now the first haloes formed, glowing arcs and rings around the brighter stars and especially around the sun itself, light scattered by air full of tiny ice prisms. There were more gasps from the crowd.

  On this ice moon, cold was art’s raw material.

  And now it began. One by one the Dancers leapt from their platforms. They were allowed no aids; they followed simple low-gravity parabolas that arched between one floating platform and the next. But the art was in the selection of that parabola among the shifting, shivering ice haloes—which were, of course, invisible to the Dancers—and in the way you spun, turned, starfished and swam against that background.

  As one Dancer after another passed over the dome, ripples of applause broke out around the amphitheatre. Glowing numerals and Virtual bar graphs littered the air in the central arena; the voting had already begun. But the sheer beauty of the spectacle silenced many, as the tiny human figures, naked and lithe, danced defiantly against the stars.

  Luru, though, was watching Faya.

  "Tell me why you gave up the Dance. Your performances weren’t declining, were they? You felt you could have kept going forever. Isn’t that true? But something worried you."

  Faya wasn’t sure how to respond. She looked away, disturbed.

  Here, at last, was Lieta herself, ready for the few seconds of flight for which she had rehearsed for four years. Faya remembered how it used to feel, the nervousness as her body tried to soar—and then the exhilaration when she succeeded, one more time.

  Lieta’s launch was good, Faya saw, her track well chosen. But her movements were … stiff. They lacked the liquid grace of her competitors. Lieta, her little sister, was already thirty years old, and one of the oldest in the field.

  At the centre of the arena a display of Lieta’s marks coalesced. A perfect score would have showed as bright green, but Lieta’s bars were flecked with yellow. A Virtual of Lieta’s upper body and head appeared; she was smiling bravely.

  "There is grey in her hair," murmured Luru. "Look at the lines around her eyes, her mouth. You have aged better than your ten-years-younger sister. You have aged less, in fact. There is no grey in your hair."

  Faya turned on her in irritation. "Look, I don’t know what you want—"

  "It’s a shock when you see them grow old around you. I remember it happening to me, the first time—long ago, of course." She grinned coldly.

  "You’re frightening me." Faya said it loud enough to make people stare.

  Luru stood. "I’m like you, Faya Parz. The same blood. You know what I’m talking about. When you want to see me, I’ll find you."

  Faya waited in her seat until the Dance was over, and the audience had filed away. She didn’t even try to find Lieta, as they’d arranged.

  Instead she made her own way up into the dome.

  She stood on the lip of the highest platform. The amphitheatre was a pit, far below, but she had no fear of heights. The star-filled sky beyond the dome was huge, inhuman. And, through the subtle glimmer of the dome walls, she could see the tightly curving horizon of this little world of ice.

  She closed her eyes, visualising the pattern of haloes, just as it had been when Lieta had launched herself into space. And then she jumped.

  She had the automated systems assess her. She found the bars glowing an unbroken green. She had recorded a perfect mark. If she had taken part in the competition, against these kids half her age, she would have won.

  She had known what Luru was had been talking about. Of course she had. Where others aged, even her own sister, she stayed young. It was as simple as that. The trouble was, it was starting to show.

  And it was illegal.

  ~~~~~

  Home was a palace of metal and ice she shared with her extended family. This place, one of the most select on Port Sol, had been purchased with the riches Faya had made from her Dancing.

  Her mother was here. Spina Parz was over sixty; her grey, straying hair was tied back in a stern bun.

  And, waiting for Faya, there was a Commissary, a representative of the Commission for Historical Truth, the police force of the Coalition. He wore his head shaved, and a simple ground-length robe. Somehow she wasn’t surprised to see him; evidently today was the day everything unravelled.

  The Commissary stood up and faced her. "My name is Ank Sool."

  "I’m not ageing, am I?"

  "I can cure you. Don’t be afraid."

  Spina said wistfully, "I knew you were special even when you were very small. You were an immortal baby, born among mortals. You were wonderful."

  "Why didn’t you tell me?"

  Spina looked tired. "Because I wanted you to figure it out for yourself. On the other hand I never thought it would take you until you were forty." She smiled. "You never were the brightest crystal in the snowflake, were you, dear?"

  Faya’s anger melted. She hugged her mother. "The great family secret …"

  "I saw the truth, working its way through you. You always had trouble with relationships, with men. They kept becoming too old for you, didn’t they? When you’re young even a subtle change is enough to spoil things. And—"

  "And I haven’t had children."

  "You kept putting it off. Your body knew, love. And now your head knows too."

  Sool said earnestly, "You must understand the situation."

  "I understand I’m in trouble. Immortality is illegal."

  He shook his head. "You are the victim of a crime—a crime committed centuries ago."

  It was all the fault of the Qax, as so many things were. During their Occupation of Earth the Qax had rewarded those who had collaborated with them with an anti-ageing treatment. The Qax, masters of nanotechnological transformations, had rewired human genomes.

  "After the fall of the Qax the surviving collaborators and their children were treated, given the gift of mortality, permitted to rejoin the great adventure of mankind."

  "But you evidently didn’t get us all," Faya said.

  Sool said, "The genome cleansing was not perfect. After centuries of Occupation we didn’t have the technology. In every generation there are throwbacks."

  Faya felt numb. It was as if he was talking about somebody else. "My sister—"

  Her mother said, "Lieta is as mortal as I am, as your poor father was."

  "I could stay young," Faya said slowly. She turned to Sool. "Once I was famous for my Dancing. They even knew my name on Earth." She waved a hand. "Look around. I made a fortune. I was the best. Grown men of twenty-five—your age, yes?—would follow me. You can’t know what that was like; you never saw their eyes." She stood straight. "I could have it all again. I could have it forever, couldn’t I?"

  Sool said stiffly, "The Coalition frowns on celebrity. The species, not the individual, should be at the centre of our thoughts."

  Her mother was shaking her head. "Faya, it can’t be like that. You’re still young; you haven’t thought it through. Once I hoped you would be able to—hide. To survive. But it would be impossible."

  "Your mother is right. You would spend your life tinting your hair, masking your face. Abandoning your home every few years. Otherwise they would kill you." He said this with a flat certainty, and she realised that he was speaking from experience.

  "I need time," she said abruptly, and forced a smile. "Ironic, yes? As I’ve just been given all the time anybody could ask for."

  Spina sighed. "Time for what?"

  "To talk to Luru Parz." And she left before they had time to react.

  ~~~~~

  "I am nearly two hundred years old. I was born in the era of the Occupation. I grew up knowing nothing else. And I took the gift of immortality from the Qax. I have already lived to see the liberation of mankind."

  They were in a two-person flitter. Faya had briskly piloted them into a slow orbit around Port Sol; beneath them the landscape stretched to its close-crowding horizon. Here, in this cramped cabin, they were safely alone.

  Port Sol was a Kuiper object: like
a huge comet nucleus, circling the sun beyond the orbit of Pluto. The little ice moon was gouged by hundreds of artificial craters. Faya could see the remnants of domes, pylons and arches, spectacular microgravity architecture which must have been absurdly expensive to maintain. But even after decades of reoccupation, most of the buildings were closed, darkened, and thin frost coated their surfaces; the pylons and graceful domes were collapsed, with bits of glass and metal jutting like snapped bones.

  Luru said, "Do you know what I see, when I look down at this landscape? I see layers of history. The great engineer My-kal Puhl himself founded this place. He built a great system of wormholes, rapid-transit pathways from the worlds of the inner system. Here, at the outermost terminus, Puhl’s disciples used great mountains of ice to fuel interstellar vessels. It was the start of mankind’s First Expansion. But then humans acquired a hyperdrive." She smiled wistfully. "Economic logic. The hyper-ships could fly right out of the crowded heart of the solar system, straight to the stars. Nobody needed Puhl’s huge wormhole tunnels, or his mighty ice mine."

  "But now Port Sol has revived."

  "Long before you were born, yes. Because now we have a new generation of starships, great living ships thirsty for Port Sol’s water. Layers of history."

  "I don’t know what to do."

  "There is an evolutionary logic here." Luru clutched a fist over her heart. "Listen to me. Once we were animals, less than human. And we died after the end of our fertile years, like animals. But then, as we evolved, we changed. We lived on, long after fertility ended. Do you know why? So that grandmothers could help their daughters raise the next generation. And that is how we overcame the other animals, and came to own the Earth—through longevity."

  "I don’t want to hide."

  "You don’t have a choice. The Coalition are planning a new future for mankind, a final Expansion that will sweep on, forever. There will be no place for the old. But of course that’s just the latest rationalisation. People have always burned witches."

  Faya didn’t know what a witch was.

  And then a Virtual of Faya’s mother’s face congealed in the air before her, the bearer of bad news.

  ~~~~~

  Faya and Spina held each other, sitting side by side. For now they were done with weeping, and they had readmitted Ank Sool.

  "I don’t understand," Faya said. "Why Lieta? Why now?" It was the brevity that was impossible to bear—a handful of Dances, a flash of beauty and joy, and then dust.

  Sool said, "Blame the Qax. The collaborators never bred true. Many of their offspring died young, or their development stopped at an unsuitable age, so that immortality remained in the gift of the Qax. The Qax were always in control, you see."

  But, Faya thought, why should my sister die so suddenly now, why is her life cut short just as the prospect of eternity is opened up for me?

  She said carefully, "Commissary, I think I will always suspect, in a corner of my heart, that you allowed this death to happen, in order to bring me under control."

  His eyes were blank. "I have no need of such devices."

  Spina grasped her daughter’s hands. "Take the treatment, dear. It’s painless. Get it over, and you will be safe."

  "You could have sent me to the Commission as a child. I could have been cured then. I need never have even known."

  Sool said dryly, "You would blame your mother rather than the Qax. How—human."

  Spina’s face crumpled. "Oh, love, how could I take such a gift away from you—even to protect you?"

  "It’s your decision," said Sool.

  ~~~~~

  Again they swept into orbit, seeking privacy.

  This is how it will be for me from now on, she thought: I will be one of a handful of immortal companions, like crabbed, folded-over Luru here, standing like unchanging rocks in a landscape of evanescent flowers.

  "I can’t stand the thought of seeing them all growing old and dying around me. Forever."

  Luru nodded. "I know. But you aren’t thinking big enough, child. On a long enough timescale, everything is as transient as one of your Halo Dances. Why, perhaps we will even live to see the stars themselves sputter to life, fade and die." She smiled. "Stars are like people. Even stars come and go, you see. They die all in a blaze, or fade like the last light of the sun—but you’ve never seen a sunset, have you? The glory is always brief—but it is worth having, even so. And you will remember the glory, and make it live on. It’s your purpose, Faya."

  "My burden," she said bleakly.

  "We have great projects, long ambitions, beyond the imagination of these others. Come with me."

  Tentatively Faya reached out her hand. Luru took it. Her flesh was cold.

  "I will have to say farewell—"

  "Not farewell. Goodbye. Get used to it."

  Before they left she visited the amphitheatre, one last time. And—though she knew she could never let anybody watch her, ever again—she Danced and Danced, as the waiting stars blazed.

  (Back to TOC)

  Old Photographs

  Susan Casper

  Close the light, still the flame

  Candles light the empty frame

  A photograph will never be

  the song you are to me

  ~ from Photographs by Janis Ian

  It was usually pretty cold right after Thanksgiving, when the Christmas windows were unveiled in the local department stores and the lights and wreaths went up on Market St. Every year my mother would dress me up in my holiday best and take me downtown to look in those windows and get my picture taken with Santa Claus.

  Being Jewish, we didn’t celebrate the birth of Christ, about which I knew only what I learned from TV and the annual bible reading in school, but Christmas was everywhere, enchanting and unavoidable. For us it was a secular holiday full of colored lights and bright, shiny ornaments, egg nog, candy canes, and, of course, presents. I suppose it was with great reluctance that my mother gave in to the pressure of television and our Christian friends and took my sister and myself, to see the great bearded one every year. We would sit on his lap and tell him what gifts we wanted, posing nicely, or sometimes not so nicely, for a photograph, and in exchange we’d get a mesh stocking of toys and candy that probably wasn’t even worth the cost of the subway ride downtown.

  Santa was her one concession to the holiday. We weren’t allowed a tree. Nor was there a chimney. We never had a formal discussion about how the Christmas Elf obtained admission to the house, but I always assumed him to be an excellent second-story man, capable of slipping in the windows without making a sound. However he entered, once inside he arranged to leave the presents under a large, stand-up radio that sat in our living room. More decoration than sound system, it was a blond wood item, taller than I was, with beige fabric splitting the front in two and a wide yellow dial underlined by buttons, much like the ones in our ancient black Chevy. When it wasn’t doing double duty as a Christmas tree, it would be turned on, sometimes, for ballgames and boxing matches that weren’t carried on our brand-new 10-inch television.

  This was the last year we celebrated Christmas. Once I was old enough to know the truth about Santa the holiday went away completely and we were back to dreidels and menorahs and occasional sips of very bad wine. But I remember this last Christmas in Mom and Dad’s row home very well. It was the year I got my poseable ballerina doll with the long, beautiful auburn hair. She had articulated ankles so that she could even point her toes. For weeks I lusted after her in the store window, but I didn’t know I had gotten her until I saw the long green box with "For Sandy, From Santa" written across the top. Oh, and how beautiful she was! I immediately named her Sharon Elizabeth, my two favorite names of the period. There’s a picture of her somewhere, being held in my arms. I was neither a beautiful nor a graceful child, but this was the first picture Mom took with her brand new Instaluxe 500 Camera. Surely you remember them, since they were all the rage for about a year until someone discovered that’s about how long it
took for the photos to fade. But for that one year the ads for them were all over the TV, with that stupid little cartoon elf hopping around and tapping everything with his wand, turning them all into photos, and that bouncy little "Snap, snap, snap, it’s magic" theme song. They advertised on several of the big shows, Sid Caesar, maybe, or it could have been Ed Sullivan or Lucy. We could see the way Mom’s eyes lit up whenever the ads came on, had heard her grumble enough at having to borrow her brother’s Polaroid. It certainly wasn’t the kind of thing our Dad would buy. Besides, Chanukah was over and my parent’s didn’t exchange presents at Christmas, so Linda and I bought it for her with our very own money. We saved from long months of allowance and chores. It took instant pictures, but claimed they were nothing like the curled and streaky images you got from a Polaroid. And the best part of all, at least so the package claimed, was that it came with a "lifetime" supply of film. Even at the age of 6 or so, I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but it certainly did come with a huge box full of the paper strips used in the camera. Each one was individually wrapped in a waxed paper wrapper, silver for black and white and bright red for color shots. There was even a small supply of gold wrappers marked only, "For those specials photographs that you want to live on in your memory."

  We watched with excitement as Mom took a waxed paper packet from the box and slid one silvery end into the machine. With a soft whhhhr the tip was snipped off and ejected out the side. Slowly, the paper shrank and bunched into a ball as the inner card flowed into the slot. A light on the back blinked green and Mom carefully fitted a large, blue bulb into the flash attachment. Click, the light went off, blinding us momentarily. Before we could even regain our sight another whhhhr alerted us that the process was done. A stiff and shiny photograph slid out of the bottom of the device. She took another one, Linda, Dad and me, in glorious black and white, standing in front of our Christmas radio.

  I don’t remember spending much time looking at the pictures again for many years, until after Dad and Mom had to be moved to the assisted living facility. I’m sure that, just as I did, Linda felt very guilty about this. Weren’t they supposed to come live with us? Somehow I felt that it was our job to look after them, but nobody seemed to do that any more. And where would we put them? My husband and I both had full-time jobs, and Linda had been a single mother ever since the divorce. Now she watched her grandchildren during the day. We simply couldn’t take care of them. Neither of us had the room, and besides, we were just too busy—"busy" was the word I said, but "selfish" was the one that always came to mind when I thought about it—to give them the special care they were beginning to need. There was something else they needed that I no longer had, though I hated admitting this even more. It was patience. So, while Linny took care of the finances, the medications, and the doctor visits, it became my job to prepare their house for sale. This wasn’t as easy as boxing everything up and removing it for garage sales and the Salvation Army. Mom, who hadn’t really wanted to go, made us promise, even though we both knew that neither of them was coming back, that we would keep all their stuff for them until they were ready. That meant, most likely, storing everything in our garage. Someday, Linny and I would go through it and decide what we would want to keep when the time came to get rid of it all. For me, that mostly meant the box.