She managed to get a little work done after supper, while Colly was off playing with a friend. She didn't understand where the story was going, but it wouldn't let her alone; its disturbing central image-adrift, running out of air, no direction home-had been recurring in her thoughts for weeks now. The question was, of course,who was adrift, and why? She had no clear idea as yet, but she knew if she kept playing with the situation it would come out of her eventually. As she was putting Colly to bed that night, she said, "So-was it fun playing with Jason, honey?"

"He's okay, I guess," Colly said. "For a boy, anyway. At least he's gonna be here a whole two weeks."

For Colly, the biggest flaw in the Shimizu's accommodations was its criminally inadequate and excessively fluctuating supply of eight-year-olds. Children of transient guests rarely remained aboard more than a few days; permanent guests tended not to have small children, and by evil luck all the s.p.a.cer children of hotel staff were either over ten or under six-less use than a grown-up. Colly still had all of her phone friends, of course, and her Provincetown chums were all phone friends too, now . . . but she was chronically short of playmates she could smell and touch.

"Oh, that'll be fun," Rhea said.

"I guess." Suddenly Colly looked stricken. "Hey, Mom?"

"Yes, dear?"

"I just thought of something. My birthday comes in two and a half weeks, right?"

Rhea did mental arithmetic. "That's right, honey. Why?"

Colly sat up on one elbow."How am I gonna have a party?"

Rhea started to answer, and stopped.

"You can't have a birthday party on thephone," Colly said. "And all my friends are back on Earth! I'm not gonna get to have a real party, am I?" Her voice was rising in alarm.

"Uh . . . sure you will, honey. There'll be kids aboard then, I'm sure there will. One or two, anyw-"

"But I won'tknow them," Colly insisted. "What good is a party with people you don't even know?" She started to snuffle.

Rhea was tempted to join her. Instead she took Colly in her arms and rocked her. "Don't cry, baby. It won't be so bad. All your friends can be there on the phone-no, you know what? I'll tell you what: we'll get Daddy to merge all the phone signals into his shaping stuff, and your friends can be here almost like real, holographically, walking around and everything." As she spoke, Rhea was estimating the cost of such an event: a.s.suming Rand had time for this, and valuing his time at zero, it came to roughly the price of two luxury automobiles back on Terra. They could afford it, now-but still . . .

Colly considered the offer for a moment, then resumed snuffling, softer than before. "That'd be better . . .

but you can't tickle a holo, Mom. You can't throw pieces of birthday cake at a holo."

"Sure you can-only it's even better, because n.o.body really gets messy. You wait and see: it'll be fun."

Colly was dubious, but after ten minutes of rocking and cuddling and soothing she allowed herself to be mollified, and went to sleep. Rhea left her bedroom exhausted and heartsick. Colly was right: a birthday party aboard the Shimizu probably wasn't going to be much fun.

Less than a minute later, Rand arrived home, shiny-eyed and eager to make love.

Since adolescence Rhea had known that a contract with a man to have s.e.x at an appointed timemust behonored, if at all possible. Feeling martyred, she pasted a smile on her face and cooperated. But she made a mental note to discuss Colly's birthday party with him as soon as they were done; she was not a hundred percent sure the consolation prize she had promised her daughter was technically feasible.

It was just as he was entering her that it dawned on her that the question might be moot: their child's birthday cameafter the date on which she was to give Rand her final decision. . . .

It was not a terribly erotic train of thought. The act was technically successful for both of them, for they had been married for a long time-but for the same reason, Rand asked, "Want to talk about it?" when their breathing had slowed.

She burst into tears. "I don't even want tothink about it."

He held her close, but said nothing. He knew, in general, what was on her mind-and knew that she knew he knew. What was there for either of them to say?

What could Donny Handsome have said to Patty?

She untucked her chin from his neck and pushed at him with her hands; he rose far enough on his elbows so that she could see his face. She looked at it a long time . . . not just the eyes or the mouth, but the whole face. He waited. "You're staying?" she said finally.

His face went blank. He was silent an equal time. She waited.

"Yes."

She nodded, and pulled him back down to her. They lay there together in silence, breathing in the same rhythm and thinking the same thought.

What did that nod mean?

Twice, she felt him start to ask her. Each time he changed his mind. She couldn't blame him-but part of her wished he had asked. If he had, perhaps an answer would have come to her.

She forgot to ask him about Colly's birthday party that night.

Rhea knew that a real window like the one in her suite was supposed to be much better than a fake one-she knew, to the yen, how much more the former cost. But she was a shaper's wife: to her Duncan's fake window was just as good. Better, for she could shift to a view in any direction at all simply by touching a control. Somehow it felt more correct to talk with a Stardancerwithout Earth in the background, overshadowing everything.

And Buchi Tenmo did not appear to mind talking to a camera rather than a person in a window. She did not need to see Rhea; she already had. She must be used to talking with Duncan this way too.

Insofar as she was used to talking at all. So far Rhea had found it always took the first few minutes of the conversation for Buchi to become even partly comprehensible. That did not surprise Rhea. To temporarily "place on hold" an ongoing conversation with millions of others, and funnel consciousness down to only one or two nontelepathic minds must be a disorienting experience-especially for as.p.a.ceborn Stardancer, who had never been such a limited being herself. The wonder was that the trick was possible.

And already Buchi was winding down, only minutes in. She had progressed from incomprehensible polyglot babble to a lock on English-of a sort. Any minute now it would start conveying information.

"-as the world whirls around peg in a square holy cowhide it from yourself-esteem cleaning up your action figures it would be that's entertainment to tell you but I forgot is a concept by which we measure painting the town read all of your books now, Rhea, and they're very beautiful . . . the gostak distims the doshes . . . eftsoons, and right speedily . . . don't blame him for not being careful in the beginning . . . a straight hook basically seeks fish who turn away from life . . . there: subject, object, predicate . . . am I getting there, Rhea? Duncan? Can I hear you, now? Are we having fun yet?"

"You're getting there," Rhea agreed. Things always improved dramatically, she had found, once Buchi reinvented the sentence. She found herself asking the question she had suppressed during her previous encounters with the Stardancer. "Buchi? Does it hurt? Doing this, I mean, talking with us-is it hard?"

"It's fun!"For that moment Buchi sounded remarkably like Colly."Is it hard to talk with me?"

"A little," Rhea admitted. "But you're right, it's fun. But then, I'm only doing what I do all the time: talking, in my own language. You're doing all the work."

"By 'work' I understand you in this context to mean 'energy expenditure regretted or begrudged.'

By that definition I have never worked in my life. Although I'm always busy."

"I wish I could say the same." A light dawned somewhere in the back of Rhea's head. "But you've put your finger on something, Buchi. I've been thinking about our conversations, and why they haven't satisfied me, and I think you just gave me a handle on my problem."

"Problems are better with handles on them?"

"For me they are. Looking back over it, everything I've been asking you has been about . . . has had to do with things that a human supposes would be disadvantages of being a Stardancer. The bad parts. I've been asking you about the bad parts-and for each one I come up with, you explain how it's not a bad part. Some of the explanations I just flat don't understand-"

"I always have trouble conveying the idea of self generated reality,"Buchi agreed."To a human it seems a flat contradiction in terms."

Rhea had asked in her first conversation whether Buchi ever missed being able to "really" walk the surface of a planet, as opposed to "merely" reexperiencing it through the memories of those Stardancers who had lived on Earth before joining the Starmind. Communication had broken down when Buchi insisted that she could, really, walk on Terra any time she wanted-that she could "really" experience things she had never personally experienced-knowing the difference, but unbothered by it. Rhea, who had never confused even the best virtual-reality environments with real-reality, was baffled by this. She had spent most of her own professional life battering at the interface between almost-real and real, trying to make words on a screen sound and smell. She had to tiptoe around the thought that anyone for whom reality and imagination were interchangeable was someone who was not quite sane.

"-but that's not the problem," she went on, but Duncan interrupted her. "It's like this window, Rhea," he said, touching her wrist and pointing.

"Huh?"

"You know that to most of the people in this hotel, this window we're looking out right now isn't as good as the one you have back in your suite. G.o.d knows it costs a lot less. But we've talked about it, so I know you agree with me that this one is actually better. It may not be 'real'-but it can look in any direction you want, or show you anything you want to see, flatscreen anyway. I know yours can do even better, the way Rand has it tricked out now . . . but most people who pay a premium for one of those windows do it so they can tell themselves that what they're looking at is 'real.' They care a lot about 'real.' You and I care a little less. Buchi cares not at all. Think of it as a spectrum rather than a discontinuity."

Rhea looked at him, surprised and a little impressed by his insight. "I think I see what you mean," she said.

He flushed and went on. "With total control of her brain and body, reality can mean whatever she wants it to mean. She canexperience the touch of someone half a light year away, feel it on her skin. Or feel the touch of someone long dead . . . as long as someone in the Starmind holds the memory of how it feels to be touched by that person. Not one coffee molecule has ever pa.s.sed her lips her whole life long, but she's probably tasted better coffee than you or I ever will."

"I'm doing it now! 'Bean around the Solar System . . .'"Buchi let the song parody trail off after a few more hummed bars.

"But with reality that slippery . . ." Rhea began.

Duncan interrupted. " . . . how do they make sure they don't lose track of the one you and I believe in?

What do they do for a reality check, you mean?"

"Yeah, I guess that's what I mean."

"We are many,"Buchi said."And we are one. E pluribus unum.Alone/All-one. Consensus reality is very important to us. If we ever lost it, we would come apart. It is the same with your own neurons. We put about as much effort into it as they do. And about as often, we fire randomly-we make things up, we vacation in realities of our own fashioning, singly or in groups.

The universe is always there when we return. It is not a problem."

"Nowthere ," Rhea said triumphantly, "ismy problem. As I started to say before, I can live with the fact that I have trouble grasping your explanations of why a.s.sorted aspects of being a Stardancer aren't problems for you. What's driving me crazy is that you just . . . don't seem tohave any problems!

"None of the ones I envisioned. None of them has even triggered mention of any problem you do have.

I'm a writer: to me a characteris his or her problems; if they don't have any, they're no use to me, I've got nothing to work with, no way to motivate them. I guess what I'm asking is, don't you people-you Stardancers-have any problems? I know you never get hungry or thirsty or cold or lonely or lost or have to go to the bathroom at an inappropriate time. But Jesus, Buchi-isn't thereanything you fear? Or miss? Or yearn for? Or regret? Is there anything you l.u.s.t after? Or mourn?"

"Must your characters always be driven by the lash?" Rhea thought about it. "Pretty much, yes. That's what the audience wants to see. How someone like itself reacts under the lash. Because it helps the reader guess and deal with how she would react under the same pressure. The rule of thumb is, the sharper the lash-the tougher the antinomy-the better the story. For us humans, life is suffering, just as the Buddhists say. Is that really not true for you?"

The answer was almost a full minute in coming. It was the first time Rhea could remember Buchi hesitating even slightly in responding. Two or three times she began to speak, but each time decided to wait for an answer.

"The Starmind suffers,"Buchi said at last,"as sharply, as deeply, as keenly, as you yourself. But in different ways . . . for different reasons . . . and I cannot explain them to you. No terrestrial language contains words that will convey the necessary concepts: you do not have the concepts.

Every human language contains the implicit a.s.sumption that individual minds have bone walls around them. It would be mucheasier for me to convey color to a blind man."

Rhea was frustrated . . . but if there was anything her work had prepared her to believe, it was that some things simply could not be put into words. "What are you alldoing ?"

"What are you asking?"

"What is the Starmind doing? Are you doinganything ? Did those Fireflies have anypurpose in creating your kind? Are you all working toward something together . . . or just floating around like the red blobs in a lava lamp, marveling at the Solar System and uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the inscrutable?"

"You know hundreds of things we do. I can download a summary list to yourAIif you wish. It runs about a terabyte."

"Then I've seen most of it. Well, scanned it." Even that was an absurd claim. "All right, I've scanned the superindex, tiptoed through some of the subindices, and jumped in at random here and there a few hundred places. And one thing I noticed."

"Yes?"

"Most of the things you do come down, in the long run, to helpingus. Helping humans. Helping Terra.

Some of it benefits us directly, like nanotechnology, and some it just seems to happen to work out to our benefit way down the line, like that Belt-map hobby of yours that kept us from getting clobbered by Lucifer's Hammer in '32. Even the 'pure-science' researches you're engaged in always seem to benefit us more than they benefit you, when the dust settles."

"Can we ignore suffering at our own heart, at our roots? We may not beofhumanity . . . but we are fromhumanity."

"I'm not complaining. I'm just asking: is that what you Stardancers do for problems? Borrow ours?" She had an image of the human race as endearingly dopey pets, who could be relied upon to produce fascinating but trivial problems, supply life's necessary irritant. "If some cosmic disaster wiped us all out . .

. would the Starmind go crazy from boredom? Or would you still have things todo?"

Another pause. This one was only ten seconds or so."We would still have a nearly infinite number of things to do. And again, I despair of finding words that will successfully hint at their nature."

Another five seconds."One subset may perhaps be intelligibly outlined, at least. You are aware, areyou not, that the Starmind is not alone in the Universe?"

"Huh? Sure. So what?" It was a cla.s.sic insoluble problem. Within a few years of its initial formation, the Starmind had reported to humanity that it was receiving telepathic broadcasts from numberless other Starminds throughout the Galaxy and Magellanic Clouds-a potential source of inconceivable wealth in any terms. But it came inall at once , at the same "volume," from all quarters-and none of it appeared to be in any known or decipherable language or concept-system. The Starmind did not even know how to say, "Quiet, please-one at a time!" The best it had managed, according to all reports, was to learn to ignore the useless infinity of treasure, as a geiger counter suppresses its "awareness" of normal background radiation. "What good does that do you if you can'tcommunicate with anybody?" Rhea asked. "You can't, right?" She knew the answer-but from books and media accounts, and knew how much that was worth.

"No, we cannot,"Buchi agreed."But that may not always be so."

"You think the problem might actually be solvable?" Duncan said excitedly.

"Our seed has been awake for less than seven decades,"Buchi said."There are yet far fewer of us Stardancers than there are neurons in even the most limited brain. Yet our numbers grow-and the Starmind grows wiser every nanosecond. It is certain that we live longer than you, and we do not waste a third of our lives in stupor and another third working at life-support. We have time.

Time has us. We use tools you cannot understand to build tools you cannot conceive to solve problems we ourselves cannot name. It is not a thing to trouble yourself over."

"Do you know anything at all about where it's all going?" Rhea asked. "That you can explain?"

"Yes.Wonderfulthings are going to happen."

Rhea blinked. "Butwhat ?"

The silence went on until she realized no answer would be forthcoming. "When?" she tried then.

That answer came at once, startling her.

"Soon."

"Howsoon?" she blurted.

Again, silent seconds ticked by.

"Within my lifetime?" she tried.

"I cannot be certain, but I believe so."

"Will you be able to explain these things to us humans when they happen?"

"When they happen, you will know."

"And you can't give me any idea what it will be like?"

More silence. "Why doesn't anybody else know about this?" Rhea said irritably. "I've read-scanned-everything I could get my hands on about you Stardancers. This is the first hint I've heard that the galactic signal-to-noise problem might be susceptible of solution. Is it a secret, or what?"