Finally, I said, “Put that thing away so we can leave here without making a spectacle of ourselves.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Reb’s taught me how to control my metabolism: I’ll just wish it away.”
“Right,” I agreed, and struck the most erotic pose I could.
Fifteen seconds later he conceded defeat by tickling me.
“Why leave?” he said. “It’s private in here.”
“True. But we’d jiggle it so much we might as well do it out in plain sight—and people are trying to eat. Besides, I want more room than this.”
“Good thinking.” He eased away from me and glanced down. “Well, if we wait for this to go away, we’ll be here come Graduation. Let’s brazen it out.”
So we did. If anyone noticed, they kept it to themselves. Fat Humphrey waved as we left, clearly overjoyed at our happiness.
We ran into Glenn along the way, headed in the same direction we were. She didn’t notice Robert’s condition. She had left Le Puis just before us, and was a little squiffed. We said hello, and then regretted it, for she wanted to talk.
No, worse. If she’d just wanted to talk, we could have politely brushed her off when we reached our door. But she needed to talk. She was still trying to come to terms with all she’d seen outside that morning.
She had always been polite, taciturn, reticent to intrude on anyone’s privacy with personal conversation; if she needed to unload now I felt an obligation to help. So when we reached my place I queried Robert with my eyes, got the answer I’d hoped for, and invited Glenn in.
“You know what it was?” she told us. “I was doing just fine for the first while, I really was. And then I started thinking of the only other times I’d ever felt…I don’t know, felt that close to God. Once when I birthed my daughter…and just about every time I ever walked in a forest. I started thinking that I could birth kids again for the next couple of centuries, if I go through with this—but that if I go through with this, I’ll never go for a walk in the woods again. And I started to panic.”
“Reb says once you’re Symbiotic, you can reexperience any moment of your life, so vividly it’s like living it again,” I said. “Or anybody else’s life who’s in the Starmind.”
“I know,” she said. “But it won’t be the same as being there. Even if it’s close enough to fool me, it won’t be the same.”
“How real do you need reality to be?” Robert asked reasonably. “If it passes the Turing Test—if you can’t tell it from a real experience—then what’s the difference?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “but there’s a difference. Look, you’ve walked in woods, haven’t you?”
“Not in years,” he admitted. “Woods are kind of hard to come by where I lived.”
“But you know what I mean. When you walk in the woods, there are so many things going on at once, nobody could notice and remember them all. Leaves fluttering, birds chirping, wind in the branches, a hundred different smells of things growing and rotting—I could list things there are to notice in the woods for the next two hours and there’d still be a thousand things I left out, things I don’t even consciously notice. So how am I going to remember them all clearly enough to recreate them in my mind? It just doesn’t seem possible.”
Robert frowned. “I don’t know how to answer you.”
I had an inspiration. “I know somebody who does. Teena—who’s the nearest Stardancer who’s got time to talk?”
“Greetings, Morgan McLeod,” a feminine voice said. “I am Jinsei Kagami. May I do you a service?”
I was taken a little aback. I hadn’t expected such snappy service; I’d been planning on time for second thoughts. It was like praying…and getting an answer! I was a little awed to find myself talking to a real live Stardancer.
Well, I told myself, if you didn’t want the djinn, you shouldn’t have rubbed the lamp. At least don’t waste her time…
“My friends Glenn Christie and Robert Chen are here with me. Glenn would like to talk to you, if you’re not too busy.”
“There is time. Greetings, Glenn and Robert.”
Robert said hello and made a low gassho bow to empty air. Glenn said, “Hello, Jinsei; Glenn here. I’m sorry to bother you.”
Voices can smile. I know because hers did. “You do not, cousin. How may I help you?”
“Well, I…” Glenn frowned and gathered her thoughts. “I guess I’m having trouble believing that I won’t miss Earth after Symbiosis. I’ve been trying to say goodbye to it since I got here—and today I went EVA for the first time, and all I could think of was the places on Earth that I have loved. Jinsei-sama, don’t you ever miss…your old home?”
“Do you ever miss your mother’s womb?” Jinsei asked.
Glenn blinked, and did not reply.
“Of course you do,” Jinsei went on, “especially when you are very tired. And a fine sweet pain it is. I did too, when I was human. But I do not miss my mother’s womb anymore. I can be there, whenever I want. I have access to all my memories, back to the moment my brain formed in the fifth month of my gestation. You cannot remember the events of one second ago as vividly as I remember every instant I have lived—I and all my brother and sister Stardancers. I can be anywhere any of us has ever been, do anything any of us has ever done. For the memories of fetal life alone, I would trade a dozen Earths.”
Somehow even after meeting Harry Stein I had subconsciously expected that a Stardancer in conversation would be sort of dreamy and…well, spacey, like someone massively stoned. She sounded as alert and mindful as Reb.
“ ‘Every instant…’ Even the painful ones?” Glenn asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“Don’t they hurt?”
“Oh, yes. Beautifully.”
Glenn looked confused.
“I think what you are asking,” Jinsei said gently, “is whether a Stardancer ever regrets Symbiosis.”
“Uh…yes. Yes, that’s just what I’m asking.”
“No, Glenn. Not one. Not so far.”
That extraordinary assertion hung there in the air for a moment. A life without regret? No, these Stardancers were not human.
Glenn was frowning. “What about the catatonics?” she asked.
“They’re not Stardancers,” Robert pointed out.
“They have not enough awareness to regret,” Jinsei said. “When they are healed, they no longer regret…or perhaps it is the other way around. And the fraction who die renounce regret forever, along with all other possible experiences.”
There was a short silence. Finally Glenn nodded slowly. “I think I see. Thank you, Jinsei. You have comforted me.”
“I am glad, Glenn.”
“Jinsei-sama?” Robert said.
“Yes, Robert?”
“Can a Stardancer lie?”
I thought the question rude, opened my mouth to say so…and found that I wanted to hear the answer. It was a question that had never occurred to me before.
Jinsei found it amusing. “Can you think of any answer I could make that would be meaningful?”
Robert blinked in surprise, and then chuckled ruefully. “No, I guess not. I don’t even now why I asked that. I know the answer, or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Thank you,” she said, and he looked relieved. “Forgive me: I find that I am needed; is there anything else I can do for you three?”