The results were still ambiguous.
So Lashi turned his attention to his mother. When did you first become aware that something was wrong?
When I screamed.
But how long before that could something have gone wrong? When was the last time you had monitored Father?
She thought about it. Yesterday, I think. And everything was fine then.
And we know what has changed in the last twenty-four hours. So we know where the danger lies.
Lashi’s father said, But why are they any more dangerous to me today than they were yesterday?
I don’t care, she wanted to say. Can’t you get out of there? But she could not ask that, because she already knew the answer.
I don’t know, she said instead. But dammit, you be careful!
You know I will, Rain, he replied.
PART FOUR
10
The Shimizu Hotel
7 January 2064
By the time Jay and his brother had finished a room-service dinner and separated for the night, it was 21:45. Jay tried to call Eva, but her phone was not even accepting messages. He and Rand had accomplished so much work that he decided to celebrate. He jaunted to Jake’s, in the Deluxe Tier, one of the livelier of the Shimizu’s twenty-one taverns—and one of only three in which off-duty employees were welcome. There he found some friends, and settled down to matching orbits with them.
He liked Jake’s; he had become a semiregular there since Ethan left him for an earthworm. The management frowned on spilled blood or broken bones, but was tolerant of merriment short of that point. It was a great place to hear extravagant lies. One red-faced old man, for instance, a wildcat asteroid miner named Wang Bin who had come to the Shimizu to drink up a lucky strike, insisted on telling the whole room about a “white Stardancer” he claimed to have seen on his last trip out. “Damn near ran into him, no beacon or anything, spotted him by eyeball. Just like any other Stardancer, but white as a slug. Didn’t even have the manners to acknowledge my hail.” And a groundhog dancer from Terra who had joined Jay’s table told them all a whopper about a broken ankle that had healed itself just in time for a curtain.
The dancer was attractive, close enough to his age and well built—but as Jay thought about making an approach, he realized he still wasn’t ready. The memory of Ethan was still too clear. A few abortive experiments had reconfirmed for him that casual sex is best with oneself—certainly simpler.
A sense of duty made Jay leave sooner than he wanted to. As soon as he got back to his room, he tried Eva again. Considering the late hour, he did not expect to reach her; he hoped to leave a message requesting an appointment for a chat tomorrow. But the face that appeared onscreen was not Jeeves. Instead he saw a bald and beardless man who had done nothing to disguise the fact that he was well over ninety years old, dressed in black loose-fitting tunic and trousers.
“Hi, Reb,” Jay said after a moment of surprise. “I heard you were coming over. How are things in Top Step?”
Reb Hawkins bent forward in the Buddhist gassho bow, then smiled warmly. “Hello, Jay. It’s good to see you again. Things are well in Top Step, I’m happy to say. How is it with you these days?”
It had been a long day; Jay was too tired for tact. “To be honest, Reb, I’m consumed with curiosity. Is Eva still up?”
“She’s gone to bed, but she told me to expect your call. Why don’t you come over for a cup? We haven’t talked in a while. Or are you too tired? I know you’ve been working hard on the new piece.”
Jay was torn. His brain hurt. But he did want to know why his old friend had decided not to die after all, and it was not the sort of question that could be dealt with over the phone. “I’m on my way.”
Hawkins-roshi was something of a legend in space. He was a Zen Buddhist monk, and the oldest continuous resident of Top Step, the Earth-orbiting asteroid where human beings came to enter Symbiosis. For over forty years, until his retirement, he had helped hundreds of thousands of postulants make that profound transition, from Homo sapiens to Homo caelestis, with minimal psychological and spiritual trauma. A cronkite had once referred to him as the Modest Midwife to the Starmind. During those four decades, he had also made regular visits to most of the other human habitations in High Earth Orbit, including the Shimizu, dispensing spiritual sustenance and friendship to Buddhists and nonBuddhists alike. He and Eva were old and close friends, had known each other since they’d been groundhogs. Jay had met Reb through her.
Almost the moment Eva’s door had dilated behind Jay, he was glad he had come. He had forgotten how soothing Reb’s presence could be. It was not merely his obvious years; Jay was pretty sure Reb had had the same effect on people when he was a teenager. He simply had an almost tangible aura around him, projected a zone of serenity, of clarity, of acceptance. There is a quality dancers call “presence,” and Jay was very good at achieving it onstage. Therefore he knew how amazing it was for Reb to have it all the time, every day. Presumably Hawkins-roshi had an automatic pilot, like everybody else… but he never seemed to use it. He would surely have long since been abbot of his own monastery somewhere down on Earth by now, if he had not found a career more important to him in space; helping human beings become something more.
“How long are you here for?” Jay asked him. “Can that big rock get along without you?”
Reb smiled. “Top Step can get along just fine without me. I’m retired, remember? It’s Meiya’s headache these days. I’ll be here for a week, or until Eva throws me out, whichever comes first. I can use the vacation.”
“I’m glad. I’d like to have a long talk with you sometime.”
Reb nodded. “But not tonight. You’re exhausted. You don’t want any tea, do you? I’ll make this as quick as I can. You want to know why Eva has changed her mind.”
Jay nodded gratefully. “She told you she’d confided in me, then.”
Reb nodded. “We talked for a long time. About suffering, and what it is for. About friendship, and what that is for. About what she has done since she came here to space, and what she might do yet. About samsara. In the end I was able to persuade her that to end one’s life when one is not in mortal pain or fear is a kind of arrogance.”
Jay stared. He had said much the same thing to Eva, in one form or another, at least a dozen times in the last month. “But Eva is arrogant,” he blurted out.
Reb said nothing.
It came to Jay that perhaps Reb was just better than he was at teaching people about arrogance. Come to think of it, he was doing it now…
“Well,” Jay said lamely, “that’s great, then. I’m glad you managed to get through to her. But I still don’t see how you—”
“How do you feel about Eva’s new decision?” Reb interrupted quietly. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
One of the problems with talking with holy men was their uncanny habit of putting a finger—gently, nonthreateningly—right on your sore spots. Another was the difficulty of successfully bullshitting them. “Ambivalent,” he admitted.