Blue Champagne

by John Varley

  "You're wrong. I sensed a difference."

  She raised an eyebrow and seemed about to say something, but changed her mind. She rubbed her forehead, then took a deep, decisive breath.

  "I'm almost sorry to hear that. But I'm afraid it's too late to start over. I'm moving out." And she began packing.

  Cooper tried to argue with her but it did no good. She assured him she wasn't leaving because she was jealous; she even seemed amused that he thought that might be the reason. And she also claimed she was not going to move in with Yuri Feldman. She intended to live her last month in the Bubble alone.

  "I'm going back to Luna to do what I planned to do all along," she said, tying the drawstring of her duffel bag. "I'm going to the police academy. I've saved enough now to put me through."

  "Police?" Cooper could not have been more astonished if she had said she intended to fly to Mars by flapping her arms.

  "You had no inkling, right? Well, why should you? You don't notice other people much unless you're screwing them. I'm not saying that's your fault; you've been trained to be that way. Haven't you ever wondered what I was doing here? It isn't the working conditions that drew me. I despise this place and all the people who come to visit. I don't even like water very much, and I hate that monstrous obscenity they call the Bubble."

  Cooper was beyond shock. He had never imagined anyone could exist who would not be drawn by the magic of the Bubble.

  "Then why? Why work here, and why do you hate it?"

  "I hate it because people are starving in Pennsylvania," she said, mystifying him completely. "And I work here, God help me, because the pay is good, which you may not have noticed since you grew up comfortable. I would have said rich, but by now I know what real rich is. I grew up poor, Q.M.

  Another little detail you never bothered to learn. I've worked hard for everything, including the chance to come here to this disgusting pimp-city to provide a safety service for rich degenerates, because BCE pays in good, hard GWA Dollars. You probably never noticed, but Luna is having serious economic troubles because it's caught between a couple of your corporation-states... ah, forget it. Why worry your cute little head with things like that?"

  She went to the door, opened it, then turned to look at him.

  "Honestly, Q.M., I don't dislike you. I think I feel sorry for you. Sorry enough that I'm going to say once more you'd better watch out for Galloway. If you mess around with her right now, you're going to get hurt."

  "I still don't understand how."

  She sighed, and turned away.

  "Then there's nothing more I can say. I'll see you around."

  Megan Galloway had the Mississippi Suite, the best in the hotel. She didn't come to the door when Cooper knocked, but just buzzed him in.

  She was sitting tailor-fashion on the bed, wearing a loose nightgown and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and looking at a small box in front of her. The bed resembled a sternwheeler, with smoke and sparks shooting from the bedposts, and was larger than his entire room and bath. She put her glasses at the end of her nose and peered over them.

  "Something I can do for you?"

  He came around until he could see the box, which had a picture flickering dimly on one side of it.

  "What's that?"

  "Old-timey television," she said. "Honey West, circa 1965, American Broadcasting Company.

  Starring Anne Francis, John Ericson, and Irene Hervey, Friday nights at 2100. Spin-off from Burke's Law, died 1966. What's up?"

  "What's wrong with the depth?"

  "They didn't have it." She removed her glasses and began to chew absently on one rubber tip. "How are you doing?"

  "I'm surprised to see you wear glasses."

  "When you've had as many operations as I have, you skip the ones you think you can do without.

  Why is it I sense you're having a hard time saying whatever it is you came here to say?"

  "Would you like to go for a swim?"

  "Pool's closed. Weekly filtering, or something like that."

  "I know. Best possible time to go for a swim."

  She frowned. "But I was told no one is admitted during the filtering."

  "Yeah. It's illegal. Isn't everything that's fun?"

  The Bubble was closed one hour in every twenty-four for accelerated filtering. At one time the place had been open all day, with filtration constantly operating, but then a client got past the three safety systems, where he was aerated, churned, irradiated, centrifuged, and eventually forced through a series of very fine screens. Most of him was still in the water in one form or another, and his legend had produced the station's first ghost.

  But long before the Filtered Phantom first sloshed down the corridors the system had been changed.

  The filters never shut down completely, but while people were in the pool they were operated at slow speed. Once a day they were turned to full power.

  It still wasn't enough. So every ten days BCE closed the pool for a longer period and gave the water an intensive treatment.

  "I can't believe no one even watches it," Megan whispered.

  "It's a mistake. Security is done by computer. There's twenty cameras in here but somebody forgot to tell the computer to squeal if it sees anybody enter during filtration. I got that from the computer itself, which thinks the whole fuck-up is very funny."

  The hordes of swimmers had been gone for over two hours, and the clean-up crew had left thirty minutes before. Megan Galloway had probably thought she knew the Bubble pretty well, on the basis of her two visits. She was finding out now, as Cooper had done long ago, that she knew nothing. The difference between a resort beach on a holiday weekend and on a day in mid-winter was nothing compared to what she saw now.

  It was perfectly still, totally clear: a crystal ball as big as the world.

  "Oh, Cooper." He felt her hand tighten on his arm.

  "Look. Down there. No, to the left." She followed his pointing finger and saw a school of the Bubble goldfish far below the surface, moving like lazy submarines, big and fat as watermelons and tame as park squirrels.

  "Can I touch it, daddy?" she whispered, with the hint of a giggle. He pretended to consider it, then nodded. "I almost don't want to, you know?" she said. "Like a huge field covered in new snow, before anybody tracks across it."

  "Yeah, I know." He sighed. "But it might as well be us. Hurry, before somebody beats you to it." He grinned at her, and pushed off slowly from his weightless perch on the sundeck tier that circled the rim of the champagne glass.

  She pushed off harder and passed him before he was halfway there, as he had expected her to. The waves made by her entry spread out in perfect circles, then he broke the surface right behind her.

  It was a different world.

  When the Bubble had first been proposed, many years before, it had been suggested that it be a solid sphere of water, and that nothing but weightlessness and surface tension be employed to maintain it.

  Both forces came free of charge, which was a considerable factor in their favor.

  But in the end, the builders had opted for TDF fields. This was because, while any volume of water would assume a spherical shape in free-fall, surface tension was not strong enough to keep it that way if it was disturbed. Such a structure would work fine so long as no swimmers entered to upset the delicate balance.

  The TDF's provided the necessary unobtrusive force to keep things from getting messy. Tuned to attract or repel water, they also acted to force foreign matter toward either the inner or outer surfaces; in effect, making things that were not water float. A bar of lead floated better than a human body. Air bubbles also were pushed out. The fields were deliberately tuned to a low intensity. As a result, humans did not bob out of the water like corks but drifted toward a surface slowly, where they floated quite high in the water. As a further result, when the pool was open it was always churned by a billion bubbles.

  When Cooper and Galloway entered the water the bubbles left behind by the happy throngs ha
d long since merged with one of the larger volumes of air. The Bubble had become a magic lens, a piece of water with infinite curvature. It was nearly transparent with an aquamarine tint. Light was bent by it in enchanting ways, to the point that one could fancy the possibility of seeing all the way around it.

  It distorted the world outside itself. The lifeguard station, cabanas, bar, and tanning chairs in the center were twisted almost beyond recognition, as if vanishing down the event horizon of a black hole. The rim of the glass, the deep violet field-dome that arched over it, and the circle of tanning chairs where patrons could brown themselves under genuine sunlight bent and flowed like a surrealist landscape. And everything, inside and outside the Bubble, oozed from one configuration to another as one changed position in the water. Nothing remained constant.

  There was one exception to that rule. Objects in the water were not distorted. Galloway's body existed in a different plane, moved against the flowing, twisting background as an almost jarring intrusion of reality: pink flesh and golden metal, curly yellow hair, churning arms and legs. The stream of air ejected from her mouthpiece cascaded down the front of her body. It caressed her intimately, a thousand shimmering droplets of mercury, before it was thrashed to foam by her feet.

  She moved like a sleek aerial machine, streamlined, leaving a contrail behind her.

  He customarily left his mouthpiece and collar-tank behind when he swam alone, but he was wearing it now, mostly so Galloway would not insist on removing hers, too. He felt the only decent way to swim was totally nude. He conceded the breathers were necessary for the crustaceans and plankton who did not understand the physical laws of the Bubble and who would never take the time to learn them. It was possible to get hopelessly lost, to become disoriented, unable to tell which was the shortest distance to air. Though bodies would float to a surface eventually, one could easily drown on the way out. The Bubble had no ends, deep or shallow. Thus the mouthpieces were required for all swimmers. They consisted of two semi-circular tanks that closed around the neck, a tube, a sensor that clipped to the ear, and the mouthpiece itself. Each contained fifteen minutes of oxygen, supplied on demand or when blood color changed enough to indicate it was needed. The devices automatically notified both the user and the lifeguard station when they were nearly empty.

  It was a point of honor among the lifeguards to turn them in as full as they had been issued.

  There were things one could do in the Bubble that were simply impossible in flat water. Cooper showed her some of the tricks, soon had her doing them herself. They burst from the water together, described long, lazy parabolas through the air, trailing comet tails of water. The TDF fields acted on the water in their bodies at all times, but it was such a lackadaisical force that it was possible to remain in the air for several minutes before surrendering to the inexorable center-directed impulse.

  They laced the water with their trails of foam, be-spattered the air with fine mist. They raced through the water, cutting across along a radial line, building up speed until they emerged on the inner surface to barrel across the width of the Bubble and re-enter, swam some more, and came up outside in the sunlight. If they went fast enough their momentum would carry them to the dark sun-field, which was solid enough to stand on.

  He had had grave misgivings about asking her to come here with him. In fact, it had surprised him when he heard himself asking. For hours he had hesitated, coming to her door, going away, never knocking. Once inside it hadn't seemed possible to talk to her, particularly since he was far from sure he knew what he wanted to say. So he had brought her here, where talking was unnecessary. And the biggest surprise was that he was glad. It was fun to share this with someone. He wondered why he had never done it before. He wondered why he had never brought Anna-Louise, remembered the revelation of her real opinions of the place, and then turned away from thoughts of her.

  It was strenuous play. He was in pretty good shape but was getting tired. He wondered if Galloway ever got tired. If she did, she seemed sustained by the heady joy of being there. She summed it up to him in a brief rest period at the outer rim.

  "Cooper, you're a genius. We've just hijacked a swimming pool!"

  The big clock at the lifeguard station told him it was time to quit, not so much because he needed the rest as because there was something he wanted her to see, something she would not expect. So he swam up to her and took her hand, motioned toward the rim of the glass, and saw her nod. He followed her as she built up speed.

  He got her to the rim just in time. He pointed toward the sun, shielding his eyes, just as the light began to change. He squinted, and there it was. The Earth had appeared as a black disc, beginning to swallow the sun.

  It ate more and more of it. The atmosphere created a light show that had no equal. Arms of amber encircled the black hole in the sky, changing colors quickly through the entire spectrum: pure, luminous colors against the deepest black imaginable. The sun became a brilliant point, seemed to flare sharply, and was gone. What was left was one side of the corona, the halo of Earth's air, and stars.

  Millions of stars. If tourists ever complained about anything at the Bubble, it was usually that. There were no stars. The reason was simple: space was flooded with radiation. There was enough of it to fry an unprotected human. Any protection that could shut out that radiation would have to shut out the faint light of the stars as well. But now, with the sun in eclipse, the sensors in the field turned it clear as glass. It was still opaque to many frequencies, but that did not matter to the human eye. It simply vanished, and they were naked in space.

  Cooper could not imagine a better time or place to make love, and that is exactly what they did.

  "Enjoyed that a little more, did you?" she said.

  "Uh." He was still trying to catch his breath. She rested her head against his chest and sighed in contentment.

  "I can still hear your heart going crazy."

  "My heart has seldom had such a workout."

  "Nor a certain quarter of a meter, from the look of things."

  He laughed. "So you figured that out. It's exaggerated."

  "But a fifth of a meter would be an understatement, wouldn't you say?"

  "I suppose so."

  "So what's between? Nine fortieths? Who the hell needs a nickname like 'Nine-fortieths-of-a-meter Cooper'? That is about right, isn't it?"

  "Close enough for rock and roll."

  She thought about that for a time, then kissed him. "I'll bet you know, exactly. To the goddamn tenth of a millimeter.

  You'd have to, with a nickname like that." She laughed again, and moved in his arms. He opened his eyes and she was looking into them.

  "This time I rock, and you roll," she suggested.

  "I guess I'm getting older," he admitted, at last.

  "You'd be a pretty odd fellow if you weren't."

  He had to smile at that, and he kissed her again. "I only regret that we didn't get to see the sun come out."

  "Well, I regret a little more than that." She studied his face closely, and seemed puzzled by what she found. "Damn. I never would have expected it, but I don't think you're really upset. For some reason, I don't feel the need to soothe your wounded ego."

  He shrugged. "I guess not."

  "What's your secret?"

  "Just that I'm a realist, I guess. I never claimed to be superman. And I had a fairly busy night." He shut his eyes, not wanting to remember it. But the truth was that something was bothering him, and something else was warning him not to ask about it. He did, anyway.

  "Not only did I have a rather full night," he said, "but I think I sensed a certain... well, you were less than totally enthusiastic, the second time. I think that put me off slightly."

  "Did it, now?"

  He looked at her face, but she did not seem angry, only amused.

  "Was I right?"

  "Certainly."

  "What was wrong?"

  "Not much. Only that I have absolutely no sensation from my toe
s to... right about here." She was holding her arm over her chest, just below her shoulders.

  It was too much for him to take in all at once. When he began to understand what she was saying, he felt a terror beside which fear of impotence would have been a very minor annoyance.

  "You can't mean... nothing I did had... you were faking it? Faking everything, the whole time? You felt—"

  "That first night, yes, I was. Totally. Not very well, I presume, from your reaction."

  "...but just now..."

  "Just now, it was something different. I really don't know if I could explain it to you."

  "Please try." It was very important that she try, because he felt despair such as he had never imagined. "Can you... is it all going through the motions? Is that it? You can't have sex, really?"

  "I have a full and satisfying sex life," she assured him. "It's different than yours, and it's different from other women's. There are a lot of adaptations, a lot of new techniques my lovers must learn."

  "Will you—" Cooper was interrupted by high-pitched, chittering squeals from the water. He glanced behind him, saw Charlie the Dolphin had been allowed to re-enter the Bubble, signaling the end of their privacy. Charlie knew about Cooper, was in on the joke, and always warned him when people were coming.

  "We have to go now. Can we go back to your room, and... and will you teach me how?"

  "I don't know if it's a good idea, friend. Listen, I enjoyed it, I loved it. Why don't we leave it that way?"

  "Because I'm very ashamed. It never occurred to me."

  She studied him, all trace of levity gone from her face. At last, she nodded. He wished she looked more pleased about it.

  But when they returned to her room she had changed her mind. She did not seem angry. She would not even talk about it. She just kept putting him off each time he tried to start something, not unkindly, but firmly, until he finally stopped pursuing the matter. She asked him then if he wanted to leave. He said no, and he thought her smile grew a little warmer at that.