—The Board of Directors of the Starseed Foundation announced that Top Step would suspend operations while replacements were sought for its key personnel. The current three classes 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 Titan of the largest mass of fresh Symbiote ever shipped, a truly stupendous tonnage intended to meet the next fifty years of anticipated 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 went home and mourned—but the following Saturday 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 protegée 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 of Tenshin Reb Hawkins and briefly lit the heavens. Some attempted to surrender to the UN Space 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 space 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 choreographed 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 title, 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 butterfly 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 massive 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 accumulated nonlethal errors in transcription. One of the Directors of the HGP argued passionately 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 space. Admiral William Cox suffered a transient ischemic attack while overseeing the cleanup in space; 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 participate). 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 orgasm 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 spacer. 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 nobody 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 choreography. 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.