Instinctively he thrust his feet away from him so that he and his chair flew backwards away from me. He brought up his gun and gaped at me, thunderstruck.
I danced for him.
It was a true dance, a thing of art, a statement in movement. I knew he could sense that, even though he could not slow down his time-sense enough to grasp the statement. He stared, fascinated as a rabbit by a cobra, for nearly ten seconds.
But he was no rabbit. He realized what my dance implied, and exactly when I had known he would, he shook off his shock and awe and pulled the trigger.
The first of the three remaining rocket-darts came floating toward me as slowly as a docking freighter in free fall. I could see the dot of wetness at its tip.
I made it part of the dance, teasing it as a matador teases a bull, eluded it with ludicrous ease.
The harsh flat sound of laser-rifle fire came from outside the room. Someone in the distance screamed. There was a chuff sound just outside the door. He sprang from the chair to a point where he could see both me and the door, the gun waving back and forth. I was waiting for that: I went into a spin, standing in one spot and whirling like a top, tempting him. Just after he passed out of my field of vision for the eighth time, he fired; the needle was halfway to me by the time I could see it. I had all the time in the world. It was heading for my heart; the easiest thing to do would have been to simply squat and let it pass overhead. Instead I jumped, impossibly high, and it passed under my feet. When I landed I broke out of the spin and resumed my dance, completing the second movement in two or three seconds. I reprised the final phrase, then did it again, and again, giving him a predictable pattern to extrapolate.
He had one rocket left, and just then something outside struck the door heavily. But he must have decided that whatever lay outside that door, it could only be human. Clearly I was not. Without any real hope—what could he know of real hope?—he sobbed and fired his last round at me.
The instant he did so his fight was over, one way or another. I could see him grasp that, and devote his last second to trying to comprehend the meaning of my dance.
I ran toward the dart, reached it halfway to him, before it had had a chance to build up to full speed, snatched it out of the air, let the force of it put me into a turn and then fling me at him again, and closed on him before he could lift a hand to defend himself.
And with an overhand looping right, I rammed his death dart down his throat.
As I was yanking my hand clear, he bit off the tip of my index finger in death-spasm. My ankle gave way beneath me at last and we went down together, side by side, facing in opposite directions. He kicked me sharply in the ribs, and died.
The door shattered. A man sprang into the room and landed in a crouch, beautifully. He wore black shirt and trousers, and was barefoot. His face and skull were clean-shaven. His expression was serene. There was a fresh laser burn through one of his outflung hands, but it didn’t appear to bother him. He took in the scene in a glance and straightened up from his combat stance. Then he made deep gassho.
“I am Tenshin Norman Hunter,” he said, with the mild voice of a teacher. “I am the Abbot of Tassajara, a Zen monastery in the mountains east of here.”
I sat up, cupping my injured hand. I had already stopped the bleeding and sterilized the wound, was already beginning to regrow the missing fingertip, but it still hurt, and I could indulge things like that now. “I’ve heard of it,” I said. “And I felt you coming. I am Rain M’Cloud, of Top Step. Thank you for coming.”
“Reb called, when you were captured in San Francisco,” he said. “I answered. It takes some time to come up over the mountain.”
Thank you, Reb, for watching over me.
You’re welcome, Rain.
I glanced at Robert’s body. Whatever else he had done, he had died for love of me. I bade him goodbye, and looked away, forever. “Are there any hostiles left out there?”
The abbot shook his head. “All the guards sleep. The gas grenades we used are good for at least an hour. Three other monks are here: Katherine, and Yama, and Dôjô Sensei, who is badly wounded.”
I got to my knees. “Anmari-kuyokuyo-suru-na, kare-ga kitto umaku-yaru-sa,” I rattled off.
He looked slightly discomfited. “I’m sorry, I don’t really speak Japanese.”
I smiled at him. “I don’t either. Never mind, I just said ‘don’t worry, he’ll make it.’ ”
“I think so. But it would be good to leave here quickly.”
I managed to get my good leg under me and stand. The adrenalin was wearing off, and while I was cushioning it as much as I could, a crash was somewhere on my horizon. I had just used up about three days’ worth of energy in less than a minute. “Let’s go.”
Tenshin Hunter had a large and rugged four-wheel drive ATV waiting. As soon as I was strapped into a seat, I relaxed a block in my brain, and human emotions returned to me for the first time since I’d blacked out in the restaurant. They didn’t overwhelm me, didn’t bring me back from my state of satori. I knew they were illusory, impermanent, transient. But I experienced them to the fullest. I had been storing up a backlog for a long ghastly time.
I cried and cried for the whole two hours it took us to crawl up over a mountain and crawl down to Tassajara, rocking with sobs, bawling like a child, while Katherine held my head to her shoulder and stroked my hair. I cried for Robert, and for Kirra and Ben, and Glenn, and Yumiko, and poor angry Sulke; for Grandmother and my parents; for my ex-husband David and the Chief Steward of my first shuttle flight to orbit; and for Morgan McLeod, who had suffered so bitterly for all her stubborn attachments.
When we finally reached Tassajara in the cool dark of evening, I was done with crying, done with a lifetime of suppressed crying. I never cried again, and I don’t think I ever will.
Five days later I was in Top Step again, and eight hours after that—just long enough to conceive a child with Reb—I entered Symbiosis fully. Twelve hours ago, I came out of the Rapture of First Awakening. I have taken the time to tell this story, impressing it directly into the memory of Teena at the highest baud rate she can accept, because it is the consensus of the Starmind that the world must know what happened, and what nearly happened, and I am in the best position to tell it.
Now I am done, and now I will spread my blood-red wings and sail the photon currents beyond the orbit of Pluto, where something truly wonderful is happening. There I will physically touch, for the first time, Shara and Norrey Drummond and Charlie Armstead and Linda Parsons and Tom McGillicuddy, and a thousand more of my brothers and sisters. We will dance together.
We will always dance.
I am Rain M’Cloud, and my message to you is: the stars are at hand.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to thank master roboticist Guy Immega for technical assistance in matters scientific, and Zoketsu Norman Fischer for technical assistance in matters of Zen. (Any mistakes, however, are ours, not theirs.) We also thank Dr. Oliver Robinow, Anya Coveney-Hughes, Herb Varley, David Myers, Evelyn Beheshti, Don H. DeBrandt, Greg McKinnon, Lynn Katay, all the members of Jeanne’s women’s group, and of course our patient and long-suffering agent, Eleanor Wood of the Spectrum Agency, for various kinds of aid and comfort without which we might never have finished this book. And we thank our editors, Susan Allison and Peter Heck.