"She is not to communicate with any person or persons outside this room. One hour from now I want you to kill her painlessly. She may command you to shorten that deadline, but not extend it. You may answer any questions she has, and serve her in any way that does not conflict with these instructions.

Acknowledge."

"Program loaded, Highness."

He pushed his own chair away and bowed, a full formal salute of farewell. "Goodbye, Eva. I'm sorry you will not share my joy." Then he bowed again, quickly. Her tea-bulb missed his head by an inch, ruptured on the unpadded bulkhead behind him and splattered his back with hot tea. When he straightened, she was giving him the finger.

His expression did not change. He left.

Pain nagged at her attention, but she had long ago learned to bypa.s.s pain. She could still dimly sense Reb and the others; a ghost of the seventh sense with which she had perceived them earlier was still with her, like a ghostly heads-up display on her mind's eye. There was no point in entering deep meditation and trying to wake them again. She had no a.s.sets she had lacked the last time she'd tried, was weaker if anything, and the medical technology keeping them stupified was sure to be foolproof.

She was going to have to think her way out of this. Or fail and die.

G.o.d dammit, I havenotendured all these years of bulls.h.i.t to become the greatest failure of all time!

And with that, an idea came to her. It was only a possibility, and a long shot at that, but it was infinitely better than nothing.

She thought it through carefully, with the slow, intense deliberation of a freezing man with a single match planning the building of his fire. She built event-trees in her mind, a.s.signed probabilities and risks, prepared contingencies, rechecked every calculation. Finally she felt she was ready.

a.s.suming that she was right, and did in fact possess a match . . .

She checked her pocket, and found her personal wafer was missing. She hoped that was a good sign.

Well, I'm not getting any younger.

"Jeeves!" she said.

He shimmered into existence. "Yes, Madam?"

Chen Ling Ho had cherished the hope that she would agree he was Alexander the Great and accept the role of emperor's companion; naturally he would have installed her AI on-line in case he won her over.

He would remove the wafer again after she was dead and his war was over. That much had made psychological sense. What had worried her was a matter of semantics. Was an AI a "person"-in the opinion of another AI? And if so, since AIs were effectively everywhere, was Jeeves a person "outside this room"?

She was still alive. Step one accomplished. Now to push the envelope . . .

"Jeeves, is Rild on-line?"

If the answer was no, Sun Tzu would not know who Rild was, and might kill her out of caution, just in case this Rild was a "person." And Eva thought it likely the answer would be no.

Chen's holographic gear was excellent; Jeeves became discreetly pained. "Yes, Madam. He has been under constant interrogation since our arrival in this pressure." Good. Then Sun Tzu was aware of Rild, and cla.s.sified him as "not-a-person-outside-this-room."

"Rild, can you hear me?"

Reb had long ago given Eva access to all but the most personal levels of Rild; she was privileged to summon him. The question was, did he have bytes to spare? Or did the software interrogating him tie up too much of his capacity?

"Yes, Eva," Rild's soft voice said.

She felt like she was tap-dancing on a high wire in terrestrial gravity. Balanced in her hand were all the eggs there were, or ever would be. She began breathing in slow rhythm, composing herself, reaching again for the wordless timeless Evaless place. "Do you have some way to wake Reb?"

The answer came from far away, down a long tunnel. "Yes. A posthypnotic trigger."

Causing a person to be awakened is not communication. "Do it," she murmured, and her eyes rolled up.

Thiscommunication, Sun Tzu was not equipped to monitor . . .

Reb was there waiting for her; awake, untroubled, numinous. His serenity helped calm her, eased her fear, brought them closer together.

She merged with him. She became him, and he her. For the first time in her life she sensed what it must be like to be a Stardancer. She had always wondered why beings who expected to live for centuries did not fear deathmore than a human; now she understood. It was not the brain that mattered, nor the mind which invested it, but the energy that wore both like a series of intricate disguises for a time and then became something else. She had dimly known this for a long time; now she surrendered to it.

Shefelt the entire Starmind, all around her, heard its chorus echo in the Solar System, grasped its quarter-million-member dance in its entirety, from the orbit of Mercury to the farthest fringes of the Oort Cloud where the comets winter.

And when that happened, Reb knew all that she knew, simply and effortlessly. And she in turn knew what he knew, which was all that the Starmind knew. Well over ninety-nine percent of that information she would never get to integrate, but she did have time to perceive certain essentials.

Such as: nanotechnological b.o.o.by-trapping is a game that two can play. And: some nan.o.bombs can be triggered, not by radio signal, but by biting a simple code on the back of one's tongue. And: her great granddaughter Charlotte in Toronto was going to recover. And: Reb loved her, and everything was going to be okay now. And finally: things are worth what they cost, and death is a small coin.

She even had time, in those final nanoseconds, to grasp the full extent of the cosmic joke the Universe had played on her, and to begin to smile.

Then she and Reb and all the other atoms in and of Chen's flagship were converted to a rapidly expanding perfect sphere of plasma, the color of a Stardancer.

Different conditions obtained on Terra; at the same instant, the corresponding base in North Chinabegan turning into a large white mushroom cloud, the color of a Starhunter.

24.

Noteworthy Events in March 2065.

-Military mop-up of the rebel forces went into high gear, spearheaded in s.p.a.ce by Admiral c.o.x and on the ground by General Chang of a mortified China; after the first week, loss of life was nominal.

Doubtless many conspirators were missed . . . but they were not free for long. Some ninety-three percent of the relay trigger stations in the Solar System were located and destroyed, although it was apparent that all those who had known the trigger code had died in the same instant.

-After lengthy consultation with the Starmind, the UN high command elected to delete all mention of a plague of triggerable nan.o.bombs in s.p.a.ce from its report to the public. This had the effect of making the Rebellion of the Group of Five appear a desperate, doomed kamikaze affair rather than a narrowly averted coup. Despite-or perhaps because of-its irrationality, the story played.

-The media went into delighted spasm, like sharks dropped into a fish farm. Old-timers for whom the business had lost something when people stopped having wars wept openly. The Sacrifice of the Adepts pa.s.sed almost instantly into fiction-the cronkites and riveras had it to themselves for nearly a week before the first movie and novelization could be released, and then the floodgates really opened. The job of ma.s.saging the legend into a pleasing shape began. The performing arts, oddly, did not seem to take to the new subject: most of them already had funded work under way, with more upbeat themes.

-The Board of Directors of the Shimizu Hotel appointed a new manager and a new PR chief. A special monument was installed in the Grand Foyer, to honor their predecessors, who had bravely sacrificed themselves in a vain effort to ensure the security of guests. In return for keeping their faces straight at the dedication of this monument, and their mouths shut forever after, Co-Artistic Directors Rand Porter and Jay Sasaki received lucrative new contracts terminable only by them. Each contained an ironclad artistic control clause.

-The Board of Directors of the Sta.r.s.eed Foundation announced that Top Step would suspend operations while replacements were sought for its key personnel. The current three cla.s.ses would graduate, those who made it through, but it would be at least four months before any new Postulants would be lifted to orbit. During the month of downtime, Top Step personnel would be busy dealing with the arrival from t.i.tan of the largest ma.s.s of fresh Symbiote ever shipped, a truly stupendous tonnage intended to meet the next fifty years of antic.i.p.ated demand.

-Rhea Paixao and the group with which she had been trance-dancing two days a week learned belatedly that Manuel Brava had been one of the Martyred Bodhisattvas, and would not be showing up to join them again. His absence had gone almost unnoted; he had been that sort of man. They all wenthome and mourned-but the following Sat.u.r.day night, the group spontaneously reformed on the beach, and Rhea was there. When she got home that morning, she began a novel with a Stardancer as a major character.

-In Yawara, North Queensland, the Yirlandji elders chose another witch woman, and held services for Yarra, who had returned to the Dreamtime after dreaming a mighty dream in a place called China. A song was sung for her by the whole tribe, a song by a dead protegee of hers, called "The Song of High Orbit." And indeed some particles of her may have followed the Songline that far, for all anyone can know.

-All over the Solar System, Starhunters began to die, for lack of a chemical so exotic it was not likely to be found on any ship they could raid. The luckiest of them had nearly a year's supply in their system when the source vanished; some had only weeks. The average ran about three months: the Group of Five had tended to keep its undetectable army on a short leash. As this became clear, some chose to emulate the example ofTenshin Reb Hawkins and briefly lit the heavens. Some attempted to surrender to the UN s.p.a.ce Command, and some to Stardancers; the survival rate in the latter category was much higher, but neither agency was really geared up to produce the needed chemical in bulk. Starhunters became the first new addition to the endangered-species list in thirty years.

-People in business suits all over the planet and throughout human s.p.a.ce found their adrenal glands flooding as the wills of Chen Ling Ho, Victoria Hathaway, Grijk Krugnk, Imaro Amin and Pandit Chatur Birla came into effect; fortunes were made and smashed as the economic machinery of a species began to shift gears.

-Jay Sasaki took a day off from rehearsals, went EVA in a p-suit, and danced a dance he had ch.o.r.eographed in his mind months ago, but never gotten to perform. It was not taped or seen by any human or Stardancer eye, but when he was done, he felt somehow that it had been appreciated. Its working t.i.tle, the only one it ever received, was "I Love You, Eva." The next day he asked his half-brother to help him shape a new piece, involving a b.u.t.terfly with a withered body.

-The Human Genome Project issued its final report to the United Nations; it was formally thanked and ordered to begin dissolving itself. After three quarters of a century, the ma.s.sive planetwide research effort had at last succeeded in deciphering all the "pages" of the DNA "book" which made any sense, a truly staggering accomplishment. Among other effects, the day seemed now in sight when disease would be spoken of only in the past tense.

Still largely unexamined, of course, were all the "garbage pages," the introns, popularly known as "junk DNA": the quite lengthy segments of genetic material (over ninety percent of the total) which, lacking end-begin codes, never express. The prevailing theory was that they represented several million years of acc.u.mulated nonlethal errors in transcription. One of the Directors of the HGP argued pa.s.sionately before the UN Science Council that there was no such thing as an uninteresting component of DNA, and begged for at least some continued funding. But since introns had no discernible effect on human metabolism, there seemed little urgency-indeed, little point-in studying them, and Council voted to spend the money on more interesting problems.

Noteworthy Events in April 2065 -Minions of the Group of Five continued to be identified and taken into custody, on Terra and in s.p.a.ce. Admiral William c.o.x suffered a transient ischemic attack while overseeing the cleanup in s.p.a.ce; lateral paralysis proved reversible, and his cognitive and communicative faculties remained unimpaired; nevertheless he was awarded the Terran Medal of Valor and retired on full pay. He took up residence in the Shimizu, in the restored suite whose last guest, Humphrey Pappadopoulos, had enjoyed it so briefly.

He chose it because Terra was not visible from its window. In the weeks that followed, there was always at least one Stardancer outside that window, available should he wish company.

-The United Nations Executive Council decreed that henceforth June 22, Solstice Day, would be a global holiday in honor of Reb Hawkins and the other slain Adepts, and would be known as Courage Day. On that day no nonessential work was to be performed, and all humans who could possibly do so were requested to take part in a planetwide Hour of Remembrance, scheduled for 3 PM Greenwich (thus 7 AM in Los Angeles, midnight in Tokyo; only residents of the Pacific islands need lose any sleep to partic.i.p.ate). There was to be no formal ceremony involved; it was asked only that citizens of Terra go outdoors at that time, contemplate the sky, and remember the Adepts. The idea was a popular one.

-As the media o.r.g.a.s.m crescendoed, most of the planet overlooked an offbeat story from New Orleans. It seemed that the area immediately around the French Quarter had fixed itself up, more or less overnight. Centuries of grime vanished; crumbling sidewalks became elegant banquettes again; decayed hulks strengthened themselves and grew ironwork balconies as intricate and lovely as anything in the predominantly white part of town, and the statue of Louis Armstrong in Armstrong Park sparkled as it smiled down on a manmade pond whose water was pure enough for human consumption for the first time in a hundred years. Tourists emptied out of the Quarter to stare enviously-and soon were being charged admission. The Mayor publicly promised that if the rapturists responsible would come forward, he would give them the keys to the city and hire them to finish the job . . . but there was no response.

-Duncan Iowa was asked by ADs Porter and Sasaki to join Nova Dance Company as an apprentice, the company's first s.p.a.cer. He proved a diligent pupil, and by the third day he was showing the other dancers tricks.

-Hidalgo Rodriguez's wife Amparo finally succeeded in persuading him that the implement in his magic new home obviously designed as the perfect male urinal was in fact intended to be a sink (Ridiculous!

Who did dishes while they moved their bowels?), and that he must use this other silly thing instead. And remember to put the seat down afterward. It made no sense at all to him, but n.o.body had ever said upward mobility was easy.

-Rand Porter, in private conversation with Charles Armstead, finally brought himself to ask the question, "Were all of you in rapport with Reb and the others when they did it? Did the Starmind feel their deaths?" and was told, "We wished to, but they would not permit it. They shielded us." The answer did not help him sleep any better, but he was glad to know.

-Somewhere above the Ring, the Stardancer Rain M'Cloud was finally brought out of catatonia by the combined ministrations of her children Gemma and Lashi and one Olney Dvorak. At once she began dancing her grief. The others, each separated from her and each other by at least a million kilometers, joined her in ensemble and submitted to her ch.o.r.eography. The rest of the Starmind attended, and resonated. The loved ones of all the other dead Adepts already danced their dances as well. Yet the Starmind as a whole did not grieve, and even among the most grief-struck like Rain there was an acceptance, a resumption of life, a looking forward. There was much to be done.

-Performing arts groups all across the planet began premiering new works. Not a single one wasdepressing. An inordinate percentage incorporated images or subtexts of s.p.a.ce, or of floating, or of flying.

-Pursuant to the last will and testament of Eva Hoffman, a gla.s.s quart bottle of Old Bushmill's Black Bush, about half full, was delivered to Jay Sasaki. Later that evening, he and Duncan Iowa lightened its ma.s.s by another two ounces, and became lovers.

-The estate of Evelyn Martin formally filed suit against the Shimizu Hotel, its Board of Directors and citizens Duncan Iowa, Rand Porter and Jay Sasaki, alleging wrongful death, loss of consort, slander and a.s.sorted other torts and seeking a billion dollars damages from each and every defendant; suit dismissed with prejudice when trial software determined that the estate and the deceased had been married for a total of four days and had not seen one another in the ensuing twenty-seven years.

-Rhea Paixao increased her trance-dancing to three days a week, and began taking her daughter along.

-The Nanotechnology Lab near Top Step announced the commencement of a major new research effort. Its stated purpose was so abstruse that the cronkites gave up and took refuge in repeating the words as if they understood them. No one caught them at it.

-The Right Honorable George Kiku, Undersecretary of Revenue for the United Nations and a.s.sistant Chairman of the Committee on Fiscal Anomalies, took early retirement under his burnout clause, and resumed a long-interrupted study of the guitar. It came back hard, but he took to soaking the fingertips of his left hand in cold tea, and eventually the calluses returned.

-Alert s.p.a.ce Command software noted that an unusually high number of Stardancers were in the close vicinity of Terra, and that many more seemed to be vectoring earthward. But since it did not cla.s.sify Stardancers as either threat or navigational hazard it did not notify any human beings.

Noteworthy Events in May 2065.

-The last Stardancer was successfully disinfected of her submicroscopic bomb, and shielded against reinfection. A misty disk of death still spun about the Sun, but it could now be ignored until it was convenient to clean it up.

-Colly Porter received a vacuum sculpture by courier. It was called "Puffball," and pleased her mightily. Her mother liked it too, and placed it in a prominent place in the living room, beside one by the same sculptor called "Driftgla.s.s."

-A dancer named John DeMarco, realizing his dream of a lifetime, was invited to join Toronto Dance Theatre as a princ.i.p.al dancer, largely on the strength of a particularly inspired performance at the Drummond four months earlier. His former Artistic Director never forgave him for accepting, and made a point of telling him (mendaciously) that she had faked every single o.r.g.a.s.m.

-LaToya Dai Woo, a.s.sistant Director of the US Internal Revenue Service, resigned under a cloud having to do with inexplicable anomalies in that year's data; while the antiquated computer system wastorn apart and rebuilt, she moved to the Shimizu Hotel and took up recreational s.e.x.

-The New Orleans self-renovation phenomenon began occurring in ghettos, slums and eyesores around the planet. One economist calculated that even given the immense cost-effectiveness of nanotechnology, several trillions of dollars had to have been spent by rapturists worldwide. Hardly anyone believed him; he was, after all, an economist.

-Gunter Schmidt finally recovered from the bronchitis which had followed upon his stroll through ice water in Nepal, and succeeded in suing his travel agent into bankruptcy. He then returned to Nepal to catch the May Tiji Festival-and learned on arrival that since the Kali Gandaki had in fact returned, the festival had been declared redundant. The Lo were too busy planting crops.

-Unnoticed by anyone, Admiral c.o.x slipped out a maintenance airlock and entered Symbiosis. The p-suit he removed in order to do so eventually burned up in the upper atmosphere, flaring as the air tanks went up. Since his bills continued to be paid and his room and AI reported no medical emergency, his absence went unnoted until late June.

-The rising wave of "cheerful art" reached such a crest worldwide that even critics began to notice it.

Certain conspiracy theorists among the media began to smell a rat, and whispered along the E-mail byways of "rapturist conspiracy"-ideally some kind of immense digital fraud. To their annoyance, investigation kept indicating that the money funding all this new art was real. And anonymous. So they went public with the old standbys, thinly veiled suspicion and unsubstantiated rumor-and would have gone on to entirely baseless allegations in turn, if they hadn't noticed that n.o.body seemed to be paying the slightest bit of attention to them. Everyone was too busy attending performances that sent them home feeling good.

-The mammoth new ma.s.s of Symbiote reached Earth Orbit, was calved into six chunks, and each was inserted into a stable orbit. The reason for the subdivision was not known, but it aroused little curiosity.

Few humans were of a mind to pester the Starmind with nosey questions these days.

-Colly Porter, having been back on Terra for the recommended three months, returned to High Orbit to spend a month with her father in the Shimizu Hotel. Shortly after her arrival she stated the opinion that hugging was more fun when you could use your legs too. This caused her father to blush (humans seldom go pale in free-fall, but they can still blush), and begin rehearsing a speech he had been meaning to deliver for a couple of years now. But in the end he managed to stall just long enough, and was spared the necessity.

-A peculiar glitch began to show up in automobiles-allautomobiles, regardless of place or date of manufacture. Changing lanes without signalling at least five seconds in advance appeared to cause total CPU failure. Fortunately, the "crashless crash" safety feature hardwired into the guidance system usually brought the offending vehicle safely to the side of the road. No one claimed credit for the innovation, and public opinion split: some attributed it to rapturists, while others blamed a much older, half forgotten group called "hackers." But the prevailing response of humanity at large was glee, and no one tried too hard to crack the case.

At the end, there, everything seemed to happen at once.

PART NINE.

25.

The Dunes East of Provincetown 22 June 2065 Courage Day.

"This is a good spot, mom."