It made no sense for Ben to have infected Kirra, or the other way around: they had died together.
But Robert had made love with both of them.
(And left for Earth the very next day. Without inviting me to accompany him.)
And I was the only living person who knew that…
—it can’t be, he couldn’t (he could) he wouldn’t (how the hell do you know) why would he, why would he, WHY WOULD HE DO SUCH A THING? (he’s Chinese, they hate Stardancers) He’s Chinese-American, not from China (who says so, and so what) no, I just can’t believe it (oh you can believe it, all right, you just don’t know for sure) I don’t want to believe it, I don’t want to know, it isn’t true (there’s only one good way to find out) it can’t be—
In my blind drifting, I contacted the studio wall. And screamed.
Perhaps—no, certainly—I should have gone right to Reb with what I had figured out. Or to Dorothy Gerstenfeld, or Phillipe Mgabi…or all three. I had an urgent need to share my terrible hypothesis with someone. For all I knew, I was carrying a bomb inside me.
But I did not go to Reb, or anyone else. In fact, I stayed there in my studio, fetal and moaning, until I had recovered sufficiently that I thought I could keep the sick horror out of my face—at least well enough to fool shipboard acquaintances.
Part of it might have been reticence to share a sexual secret of my friends, whose permission I could no longer seek. But I don’t think so. No sexual behaviour was scandalous in Top Step, and I did not think either Kirra or Ben would have considered it a secret.
No, what stopped me was simply that my theory was just that. A theory. I just could not make an accusation of such ghastly magnitude against a man I had loved, without the slightest shred of proof. The accusation alone would be so utterly damning—and how could a man possibly defend himself against such a charge if he were innocent? If I opened my mouth, and were wrong, and Robert were torn to pieces down on Earth by an angry mob of Stardancer-lovers…
But when I thought back, I realized that I could not recall any time Reb had expressed an opinion of Robert as a person—or of our relationship. And when we broke up, he’d said only that he was sorry I was sad. Had that hyperintuitive man sensed something about Robert that I had missed? I could not bring myself to ask him.
I had to know. For myself, for sure. And as soon as physically possible. No shilly-shallying around, like I’d been doing about Symbiosis; it was time to get off the dime and make a move, now. I might be carrying a second bomb, and who knew when it might go off?
It took me an hour or so to get my lines together and rehearse them until I could make them sound truthful. At first I wasn’t sure I could do it. But I’ve always been a trouper. When I had it right, I called Reb and told him I was quitting.
He wanted to talk about it, of course, but I cut it as short as I could. In essence I claimed that Kirra’s and Ben’s deaths had soured space for me; it was no longer a place I wanted to go. There was enough truth in it for me to sound plausible, I guess: he bought it, reluctantly. He sounded sad, but made no real effort to argue, simply making sure my mind was made up.
Half an hour later Dorothy Gerstenfeld called and told me that I had a reserved seat on the next ship to Earth, leaving in a little under twenty-four hours. I thanked her and switched off. She didn’t call back.
I spent the time wrestling with myself. What I hypothesized was grotesque, impossible. Logical, yes; theoretically and intuitively reasonable, yes, but simply not possible. Not my Robert! Inscrutable Oriental be damned, I just could not have known him so intimately and known him so little. Could I? What was the point of sabotaging my own Symbiosis, the only thing life had left to offer me, to chase down such a wild and ugly idea?
I had to, that was all.
As Robert himself had pointed out when he left, I could always come back again. I would see Robert, and question him closely, and look into his eyes as I did…and then I would apologize, and call Reb, and he would pull strings to let me come back up to Top Step and Graduate. One last quick visit to Earth, to lay two ghosts to rest, that was all.
I spent so much time convincing myself that I had to be mistaken that I gave no conscious thought at all to what I would do if it turned out that I was not mistaken.
I was surprised by how hard it was to leave my p-suit behind. I had been essentially living in it for nearly a month now, and it had become home. But it did not belong to me anymore. I rode to Earth wearing a cheap tourist suit just like the one I’d worn on the trip up, a hundred thousand years ago.
No one came to see me off. Not even Reb. I’d been half-expecting him, but was grateful to be spared the task of trying to maintain a lie before so intuitive a man. Four other students left on the same shuttle, for the same reason I had claimed, and there were a handful of other passengers, mostly staff members traveling to Earth on business.
The trip itself was utterly without incident, or at least none that forced itself into my attention. I could have had a simulated window-view on my seatback TV this time, but did not want one. Emotionally it was my trip up, run backwards. The closer I got to Earth the heavier I felt, in body and mind, the further my spirit sank, and I landed in a state of maximum confusion and upset, heart pounding wildly under the unaccustomed load.
To my great relief, the spaceplane did not land at the same spaceport from which I had left Earth. I didn’t think I could have borne seeing Queensland again, Kirra’s home, and thinking of her sweet smile blown into particles, expanding slowly to fill the universe. Instead we grounded outside Quito, Ecuador.
That was good in another way, too. Closer to San Francisco.
I felt like an elephant. Gone the dancer. My work had kept me in good shape, so I didn’t have as much trouble bearing my returned weight as some others have. But I still felt like an elephant. A pregnant elephant, pregnant with a son (they take several months longer to bake than girl elephants, I’ve read) and in my last month. Most disturbing to my dancer’s mind, my balance was no longer a matter of intuition. I had unlearned a lot of habits in two and a half months of zero gee. I had to keep reminding myself that it mattered whether I kept a perpendicular relationship to the wall called “floor” or not, and I tended to totter like an elderly drunken mammoth. Hair felt weird lying against the back of my neck and against my forehead. I kept letting go of things and then being startled when they raced away to one of the six walls. Everything had a cartoon, fun-house mirror look. The air smelled funny, and didn’t move enough; unconsciously I tended to keep moving my head around so I couldn’t smother in my exhalations. It seemed weird never to see anyone moving around below my feet or above my head, to be stuck to the surface of a planet, like a fly caught in the kind of flypaper my parents used to hang from the ceiling on Gambier Island when I was a child.
Customs was no problem, as I arrived with no possessions whatsoever, not so much as a pair of socks. Credit was only a thumbprint away. And getting outfitted with clothes and necessaries took only an hour in the spaceport Traveler’s Shop; it would have been half that but I insisted on styles that would not be out of place in San Francisco and that took more time and more money.
But going through Immigration, first Ecuadorian (horrid) and then U.S. (three times as bad) took up the next day and a half; I finally emerged into the smoggy air of San Francisco with my nerves shot and my teeth aching from long clenching. I weighed a thousand kilos and felt a million years old and the air tasted like burnt flannel. I decided to get a hotel room and sleep for a week before taking further action. The driver of the cab I hailed was fascinated by an airplane passenger from Quito with no luggage of any kind. I ignored him.