Raoul’s stage marks pulsed gently with the color analog of the incredible piece he called Shara’s Blues. Its opening bars are entirely in deep bass register; they translated as all the shades of blue there are, a visual pun. Somehow the incredible splendor of color about us—Saturn, Ring, aliens, Titan, lasers, camera lights, Die, Limousine like a soft red flashlight, and two other moons I didn’t know—all only seemed to emphasize the intolerable blackness of the empty space that framed it, the immensity of the sea of black ink through which we all swam, planets and people alike. The literally cosmic perspective it provided was welcome, calming. What are man or firefly that Thou shouldst be mindful of them?
It was not detachment. Quite the opposite: I had never before felt so alive. For the first time in years I was aware of my p-suit clinging to my skin, aware of the breathing in my earphones, aware of the smell of my own body and of canned air, aware of the catheter and telemetry contacts and the faint sound of my hair rustling against the inside of my hood. I was perceiving totally, functioning at full capacity, exhilarated and a little scared. I was completely happy.
The music swelled suddenly. The far-flung grid pulsed with color.
We poured on full thrust, all four of us in a tight formation, so that we seemed to fall upon the alien swarm from a great height. They grew beneath our feet with breathtaking rapidity, but we were more than three klicks away when I gave the standby command. We stiffened our bodies, oriented and triggered heel thrusters together on command, opening out like a Blue Angels flower into four great loops. We let them close into circles, one of us spiraling about each of the “compass points” of the alien sphere, bracketing it with bodies. After three full circles we broke out in unison and met at the same point where we had split apart, slowing as we arrived and making a four-way acrobat’s catch. Hard jetting brought us to a halt; we whirled in space and faced the aliens; pinwheeled apart into a square fifty meters on a side and waited.
Here I am again, fireflies, Ithought. I have hatedyou for a long time. I would be done with hating you, however that may be.
Lasers turned us red, blue, yellow and aching green, and Raoul had abandoned known music for new; his spiderlike fingers wove patterns undreamed an hour before, stitching space with color and our ears with sound. Melancholy his melody, minor its wrestling two chords, with a throbbing undercurrent of dysharmonic bass like a migraine about to happen. It was as though he were pouring pain into a vessel whose cubic capacity might be inadequate.
With that for frame and all space for backdrop, we danced. The mechanical structure of that dance, the “step” and their interrelation, are forever unknowable to you, and I won’t try to describe them. It began slowly, tentatively; as Shara had, we began by defining terms. And so we ourselves gave the choreography less than half our attention.
Perhaps a third. A part of our minds was busy framing computer themes in artistic terms, but an equally large part was straining for any signs of feedback from the aliens, reaching out with eyes ears skin mind for any kind of response, sensitizing to any conceivable touch. And with as large a part of our minds, we felt for each other, strove to connect our awarenesses across meters of black vacuum, to see as the aliens saw, through many eyes at once.
And something began to happen... .
It began slowly, subtly, in imperceptible stages. After a year of study, I simply found myself understanding, and accepting the understanding without surprise or wonder. At first I thought the aliens had slowed their speed—but then I noted, again without wonder, that my pulse and everyone’s respiration had slowed an equal amount. I was on accelerated time, extracting the maximum of information from each second of life, being with the whole of my being. the aliens’ frenzy slow to a speed that anyone could encompass. I was aware that I could make time stop altogether, but I didn’t want to yet. I studied them at infinite leisure, and understanding grew. It was clear now that there was a tangible if invisible energy that held them in their tight mutual orbits, as electromagnetism holds electrons in their paths. But this energy boiled furiously at their will, and they surfed its currents like wood chips that magically never collided. They created a never-ending roller coaster before themselves. Slowly, slowly I began to realize that this energy was more than analogous to the energy that bound me to my family. What they were surfing on was their mutual awareness of each other, and of the Universe around them.
My own awareness of my family jumped a quantum level. I heard Norrey breathing, could see out her eyes, felt Tom’s sprained calf tug at me, felt Linda’s baby stir in my womb, watched us all and swore under Harry’s breath with him, raced down Raoul’s arm to his fingers and back into my own ears. I was a six-brained Snowflake, existing simultaneously in space and time and thought and music and dance and color and something I could not yet name, and all of these things strove toward harmony.
At no point was there any sensation of leaving or losing my self, my unique individual identity. It was right there in my body and brain where I had left it, could not be elsewhere, existed as before. It was as though a part of it had always existed independent of brain and body, as though my brain had always known this level but had been unable to record the information. Had we six been this close all along, all unawares, like six lonely blind men in the same volume of space? In a way I had always yearned to without knowing it, I touched my selves, and loved them.
We understood entirely that we were being shown this level by the aliens, that they had led us patiently up invisible psychic stairs to this new plane. If any energy detectable by Man had passed between them and us, Bill Cox would have been heating up his laser cannon and screaming for a report, but he was still on conference circuit with the diplomats, letting us dance without distraction.
But communication took place, on levels that even physical instruments could perceive. At first the aliens only echoed portions of our dance, to indicate an emotional or informational connotation they understood, and when they did so we knew without question that they had fully grasped whatever nuance we were trying to express.
After a time they began more complex responses, began subtly altering the patterns they returned to us, offering variations on a theme, then counterstatements, alternate suggestions. Each time they did so we came to know them better, to grasp the rudiments of their “language” and hence their nature. They agreed with our concept of sphericity, politely disagreed with our concept of mortality, strongly agreed with the notions of pain and joy. When we knew enough “words” to construct a “sentence,” we did so.
We came these billion miles to shame you, and are ashamed.
The response was at once compassionate and merry. NONSENSE, they might have said, HOW WERE YOU TO KNOW?
Surely it was obvious that you were wiser than we.
NO, ONLY THAT WE KNEW MORE. IN POINT OF FACT, WE WERE CULPABLY CLUMSY AND OVEREAGER.
Overeager? we echoed interrogatively.
OUR NEED WAS GREAT.All fifty-four aliens suddenly plummeted toward the center of their sphere at varying rates, incredibly failing to collide there even once, saying as plain as day, ONLY RANDOM CHANCE PREVENTED UTTER RUIN.
The nature of the utter ruin eluded us, and we “said” as much. Our dead sister told us you needed to spawn, on a world like ours. Is this your wish: to come and live with humans?