Starmind

by Spider Robinson

  "Jesus, Ling—you want war back? Even I'm not that nostalgic."

  "I feel in my heart that in the old days, when we were a brawling, clawing, struggling world, we were more human. Now we grow fat and soft on the riches flung down to us from on high—and because our short-term wealth has temporarily overtaken population growth, we have stopped fearing population growth. One day we will reach a point where no input of new wealth can help us . . . and then civilization will fall, and millions, billions, will die. Conceivably all. All humans. But not the Stardancers. They may never die." He heard emotion creeping into his voice and caught himself. "You understand, I do not discuss these matters publicly. Stardancers are much beloved. In this age, no man can hold real wealth or power save he treat with them. Humanity is drunk, today, happily drunk, and in no mood for grim warnings. But how can the Neanderthal not hate the Cro-Magnon, Eva?"

  She nodded. Time to change the subject. "Well, I can't say I share your feelings, but at least I think I understand them now. Thanks for explaining. I'll remember not to buy you the new Drummonds holo for your birthday."

  "Oh, no," he said. "Please do, if you like. One may admire the exquisite gyrations of cancer cells in the microscope. The choreography of the Stardancers themselves I find very interesting; it's only their existence that offends me."

  That made her smile. "It's a shame your country gave up emperors, Ling. You'd have been one of the great ones."

  "One hates to be a merely good emperor," he agreed, and finished his drink.

  She followed suit. "Are you sleepy?"

  "No."

  "Shall we go to bed?"

  He bowed and took her hand. "All my life I have wondered why other men prize young women."

  "Perhaps," she suggested, "they do not feel they deserve the best."

  He smiled, and came closer.

  18

  Washington, D.C.

  28 January 2065

  The assistant director of the United States Internal Revenue Service knew that her office was as snoop-proof as human ingenuity could make it. Nonetheless she got up from her desk and personally made sure her office door was locked. Then she told her AI to cancel all appointments for the day and hold all calls, and opened a "Most Secure" phone circuit to Brussels.

  Her global counterpart, the Right Honorable Undersecretary of Revenue for the United Nations, and Assistant Chairman of the Committee on Fiscal Anomalies, answered promptly. "Hello, LaToya. This is early in the day for you to call. What is it, 8 AM in Washington?" He looked closer. "My God—are you ill?"

  "I've been up all night, George."

  The Undersecretary sighed. "Something serious, then. All right, which hat shall I wear?"

  "Both of them, I think. And hold on to both. You may have to invent a third hat: I don't think there's any precedent for this."

  A sigh. "Go ahead."

  "George, I've run the integrations through again and again. I used three methods, different machines, I even had the software triplechecked."

  "And—"

  "You'll be receiving more than you're expecting from us this year."

  The Undersecretary lifted an eyebrow. "How much more?"

  "On the order of ten percent."

  The other eyebrow rose to join the first. "You are telling me the gross national product of the United States has taken a ten percent jump. Up."

  "That is part of what I'm telling you. I talked with Jacques and Rogelio last night . . . and they report nearly identical bulges. Jacques puts his at nine percent; Rogelio is running behind, but says Mexico will probably run eleven and a half."

  The Undersecretary was frowning. "So someone is pumping serious money into North America. Is it real, or just pixels?"

  "As far as I can learn, it's genuine money."

  "Where is it coming from?"

  "It falleth as the gentle rain from heaven. Drop by drop—all over."

  A grunt. "Stonewalled, eh? Very well—where is it going? Who's paying taxes on it? What categories?"

  "Take a tranquilizer."

  The Undersecretary frowned, then did as he was bid. At once the frown smoothed over. "Go ahead."

  "One category: self-employed income."

  "Self-employed?" That was the last sector in which he would have expected such a surge in earnings. "Any breakdowns as to subcategories yet?"

  The assistant director nodded. "Again, one. Self-employed artists."

  The Undersecretary stared. After a full ten seconds of silence, he said, "What kind of artists?"

  "All kinds of artists. Live theater, dance, film, music, literature, sculpture, painting . . . what it comes down to is, in every genre and subgenre there is, from grand opera to street theater, roughly ten percent of the working professionals have had a very good year."

  "And all from the same source?"

  "No. Maybe. I don't know. I suspect it, because it all seems to be coming in the same way: anonymous donations, rather than grants or box office. One donation per artist or arts group. Substantial ones."

  "But then it's simple!" the Undersecretary said. "Who's declaring the increased donations on their taxes?"

  "That's the problem. Nobody. Not in North America anyway. But why the hell would someone overseas want to take such a huge flyer in North American art?"

  "Confusing," the Undersecretary agreed.

  "Confusing, hell. It worries me, George. Good news on this scale is ominous. I smell a swindle of some kind."

  "I don't suppose there's any chance these benefactors are North Americans who elected for some reason not to claim . . ." He trailed off.

  She politely pretended she hadn't heard him. "Will you look into it, George? Quietly?"

  "I'll get back to you," he said, and broke the connection.

  For the rest of the day work devoured her attention, but she fretted most of the night. The next morning at the office she flinched when her AI said, "The Undersecretary of Revenue."

  "Accept!" she said at once.

  "He is not on the phone, ma'am. He is in your outer office."

  "Jesus." She took a deep breath, and rose to her feet. "Admit him."

  Two bodyguards entered first, scanned the room carefully, and nodded through the door. The Undersecretary came in, and dismissed them with some unseen signal. She started to come around her desk to greet him, but he waved her off. They sat together; he came to the point without formalities. "This room is secure?"

  The assistant director checked a telltale. "Yes."

  "It's happening all over the globe. And in space. High Orbit, Luna City, everywhere. Has been for over six months now."

  "Everywhere? The same way?"

  "Not everywhere. Just the places where people make art for money. But all of those."

  She looked surprised. "All? You don't have up-to-date data from all, do you? I thought there were several nations still refusing to switch over to a December 31 tax deadline."

  "True; there are nonconforming nations. But almost all nations require self-employed artists to report quarterly. I can't prove there are no exceptions, yet, but I'd bet money. The pattern is clear."

  She powered her chair back away from her desk until it hit the wall. "Isn't this the damndest thing?"

  "Have you anything new to report?"

  It took her a few moments to respond. "Null results, mostly. I tried to do further breakdowns and correlations, to see if I could get a clue regarding motive. Which artists are getting money? Why them? How much? That sort of thing."

  "And?"

  "Nothing helpful. Some of them are starving-in-a-garret types, but some are major stars or companies, and some are in between. No geographical, financial, political, religious or even aesthetic connections I can find. Competing schools of theory, some of them. The one steady correlation I've identified tells me nothing useful."

  "And that is—?"

  "The amount. Apparently, each lucky beneficiary—from the poorest poet to the richest director, from barbershop quartet to symphony orch
estra—had his or her or its annual budget approximately quadrupled. In a few cases, that comes to megabucks."

  The Undersecretary nodded grimly. "That accords with what I've been able to learn."

  The assistant director paled. "Good God, George—there are less than a half dozen fiscal entities on or off Terra who are in a position to disburse that kind of money—"

  "I know."

  She got a grip on herself. "So you went to the Secretary."

  "I deemed it necessary, yes. This is too big for a bureaucrat like me; I needed a statesman."

  "And he said—?"

  "He said that an anonymous donation is an anonymous donation, regardless of size. He said no law requires a philanthropist to take a tax deduction. He said support for the arts is not a crime. He said it is the policy of the United Nations to respect the right of privacy. He said, with emphasis, that anyone who violates privacy with respect to support for the arts will be broken back to a G-7 clerk."

  She was staring at him in growing disbelief. "He said to forget it. That's what you're telling me."

  "He said nothing of the sort. Forget what?"

  She opened her mouth. Thirty seconds later, words came out. In the interval, she examined her life, for the first time in decades. "I forget," she said at last.

  He nodded. "Elephants never look happy."

  She powered her chair back to her desk, looked at it, drummed her fingers on it. "The story will come out," she said finally. "Artists always talk to cronkites. Sooner or later one will listen, and realize he has actual news on his hands. The data are public information."

  "They will be when we release them," the Undersecretary agreed carefully.

  She did mental arithmetic, checking a few figures with her desk. "George, this is scary. Whoever is doing this, they're spending themselves broke. At the present rate of outlay, any conceivable candidate donor will be bankrupt in about five years."

  George nodded. "That's the figure I arrived at. But there are signs that the rate is increasing."

  "My God! George, you know better than I: a fluctuation of this magnitude in the global economy simply has to translate into suffering and misery, sooner or later. Doesn't the Secretary see—?"

  "I'll tell you what I wish," he said.

  "What?"

  His voice was wistful. "I wish I had kept up the guitar."

  PART SEVEN

  19

  Provincetown, Massachusetts

  24 February 2065

  Rhea opened the front door wide. "Goodnight, Tommy," she said politely, and hurled him through the door and clear off the front porch. Tom Cunha landed well, and turned back to her with a baffled expression. She tossed the plastic bag of fresh codfish he had brought her after him, scoring a direct hit on his head. "Not tonight," she said. "I have a haddock." She cackled with laughter and slammed the door on him.

  The laugh didn't last long; she was too angry. And then the anger too failed her, and she was back to sad. Her shoulders slumped; she turned and headed wearily for the kitchen.

  Two weeks to the day since Rand had gone back up to the Shimizu—for good, he said, and she believed him. Fourteen days since her marriage had officially ended. Half a moon of loneliness and celibacy. Provincetown was a small town, its jungle drums especially efficient in winter; the unaffiliated were already beginning to sniff around. P-town being P-town, no more than half of them were male, Rhea's own preference. But God dammit, couldn't one of the oafs approach the business with any class? She wasn't asking for love, or even strong affection. Given the least salve for her pride, she might have relished a chance to lose herself in simple sweaty exercise. Instead she got fresh codfish and jovial offers to "take her off the hook."

  Soon the global literary grapevine would catch up . . . and then the offers would be even more offensive.

  A whole planet of men to choose from, and she didn't know one she'd swap for another night with Rand.

  Or Duncan, for that matter. As she passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen, her eye fell on Driftglass, tumbling slowly end over end beside the bay window, balanced on an air-jet at head height. She had placed the vacuum sculpture there, defiantly, the day after Rand had gone back to orbit—right beside the spot where the family-portrait holo of the three of them stood. She stopped and contemplated it now. It seemed to belong there, next to the bay view, among all the old photos and mementos of Paixao history, looked to be a true part of Provincetown.

  And all at once that irritated her. It was not of Provincetown. It was of space. It did not belong in that living room. The symbolism was wrong, it clashed. Things in Provincetown did not turn end over end in mid-air, defying gravity. Nothing in Provincetown was formed by vacuum except the town government. Space had not only taken her husband and her marriage, it had sent a tentacle down into her very own living room here on Earth. And made her like it. It had seduced her the same way it had Rand . . . with beauty. She could never, would never, go back . . . but she would never again fully leave space behind. A piece of her heart was caught there.

  All right: if even her childhood home wasn't safe, there was always the shore. There was nothing of space there. She reversed direction and headed for the door. No sense going to the kitchen anyway; she hadn't been able to choke down a bite in days.

  She paused on the porch, to make sure both that Tommy was gone and that she had smart clothes on, and then summoned the car. The bayside beach was less than a block away by foot . . . but the ocean beach on the north side of town would be windier, and thus less populated now that the sunset was long over.

  As the seat harness enfolded her, she noticed that the passenger seat beside her was still set to Rand's dimensions. With a sharp gesture, she randomized it again. On second thought, she adjusted it to Colly's shape, and randomized the back seat. Time for the kid to start sitting up front. "Herring Cove, public lot, via Commercial Street," she said, and the car moved forward at the local maximum of 20 KPH.

  The four days of Rand's visit had been agony. The first day was Colly's birthday, and both parents were invincibly cheerful, maintaining the truce even when Colly wasn't around for fear of shattering it. That was bad, but it was worse when they began talking on the second day. It took them two more days, progressively worse through exhaustion, before both were willing to concede that there was nothing to say, nothing to be done. Rand was staying in space; she was staying on Terra; no compromise existed. Once they had admitted that, they'd made love one last time, ceremonially. Rhea had never made love in despair before. She did not quite regret it in retrospect . . . but she wished she could stop remembering it for a while.

  Perhaps oddly, Duncan's name had not come up even once. She would always remember him fondly, had interceded with the Shimizu to save his job—but she and Rand both knew he had only been a symptom, an excuse, a way out of a dilemma she had not been consciously willing to resolve. And in any case, that relationship was over: Duncan was, by birth, just as committed to space as Rand intended to become.

  She phoned Tia Marguerite on her way to the ocean, and was told that Colly was fine, Tia Marion was just giving her a bath, don't you worry about a thing, dear. She cut the connection, and worried.

  It had been two weeks. She could not stall forever. Sooner or later she was going to have to have a long talk with Colly, and try to explain the change that had come into both of their lives. Colly knew that she and Mommy were going to be living on Earth again for a while—but had not been explicitly told why, or for how long. She did not yet know that Daddy's visit earthside had been his last. The longer Rhea waited, the harder it would be. But the wordsmith had not yet found the words she needed. Or perhaps it was courage that eluded her.

  Commercial Street was a single one-way lane along the waterfront, not much wider than her car. Her progress was sporadic: in compliance with local statute, her car braked for all pedestrians and pets. On either side of her as she drove were a parade of temptations, bar after lounge after club after bi
stro, each as inviting as human ingenuity could make it, overflowing with the light and warmth and sounds of convivial merriment. She shuddered at the thought of entering one. She began to regret choosing this route—but it did keep her within smelling distance of the shore the whole way, and that was worth the aggravation of being surrounded by people and their damned gaiety. She was glad when she passed the rotary and breakwater by the Provincetown Inn, and left town behind. The car speeded up, and soon her headlights showed only dunes and marshgrass and rosehip and blueberry bushes.

  She switched on her clothes, and by the time the car parked itself at Herring Cove they had warmed up. She set out at once into the teeth of the wind, leaving her face unlit to indicate that she did not welcome company. She walked along the shore, feeling her way in almost total darkness, until she found a private semicircle of dune, and crept deep into its pool of shadow. It was too overcast to really see the ocean, but the sound of the surf overpowered and calmed her thoughts, and the shore-smell sank into her bones. She lay on her back in the sand, and dialed down her clothes until she could feel some of its coolness.

  She was very near to something like peace when, an hour later, the overcast blew away—and the stars came out.

  Even here, half of the entire world was space. The only difference between the view here and that from any window in the upper hemisphere of the Shimizu was that here she was under one gravity of acceleration—and here there was not even a layer of glassite between her and all that emptiness. . . .

  No, there was another difference. Rhea had always loved the stars. And this beach had always been one of her favorite places from which to view them. Now, as the wind whipped over her, she was forced to admit that they were prettier without atmosphere in the way. In space the stars did not twinkle or shimmer, just burned steadily down forever. There was a better perception of depth, of scale, there. And the distinctions astronomers made—blue star, yellow star, red giant—in space you could actually see them.