Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Parz.’
    Faya did a double-take. ’I thought I knew all the Parz on Port
Sol.’
    ’We’re relatives even so. I’m - a great-aunt, dear. Think of me
that way.’
    ’Do you live here?’
    ’No, no. Just a transient, as we all are. Everything passes, you
know; everything changes.’ She waved her hand, indicating the
amphitheatre. Her gestures were small, economical in their use of
time and space. ’Take this place. Do you know its history?’
    Faya shrugged. ’I never thought about it. Is it natural, a
crater?’
    Luru shook her head. ’No. A starship was born here, right where
we’re sitting, its fuel dug out of the ice. It was the greatest of
them all, called Great Northern.’
    ’You know a lot of history,’ said Faya, a little edgy. The
Coalition, focusing on mankind’s future, frowned on any obsession
with lost heroic days.
    Luru would only shrug. ’Some of us have long memories.’
    A crackling, ripping sound washed down over the audience, and a
pale blue mist erupted over the domed sky. And now the first haloes
formed, glowing arcs and rings around the brighter stars and
especially around the sun itself, light scattered by air full of tiny
ice prisms. There were more gasps from the crowd.
    ’What a beautiful effect,’ said Luru.
    ’But it’s just water,’ Faya said.
    So it was. The dome’s upper layers of air were allowed to become
extremely cold, far below freezing. At such temperatures you could
just throw water into the air and it would spontaneously freeze. A
water droplet froze quickly from the outside in - but ice was less
dense than water, and when the central region froze it would expand
and shatter the outer shell. So the air was suddenly filled with tiny
bombs.
    On this ice moon, cold was art’s raw material.
    The main event began. One by one the Dancers leapt from their
platforms. They were allowed no aids; they followed simple
low-gravity parabolas that arched between one floating platform and
the next. But the art was in the selection of that parabola among the
shifting, shivering ice haloes - which were, of course, invisible to
the Dancers - and in the way you spun, turned, starfished and swam
against that background.
    As one Dancer after another passed over the dome, ripples of
applause broke out around the amphitheatre. Glowing numerals and
Virtual bar graphs littered the air in the central arena; the voting
had already begun. But the sheer beauty of the Dance silenced many of
the spectators, as the tiny human figures, naked and lithe, spun
defiantly against the stars.
    Here, at last, was Lieta herself, ready for the few seconds of
flight for which she had rehearsed for four years. Faya remembered
how it used to feel, the nervousness as her body tried to soar - and
then the exhilaration when she succeeded, one more time.
    Lieta’s launch was good, Faya saw, her track well chosen. But her
movements were stiff, lacking the liquid grace of her competitors.
Lieta, her little sister, was already thirty years old, and one of
the oldest in the field; and suddenly it showed.
    At the centre of the arena a display of Lieta’s marks coalesced. A
perfect score would have showed as bright green, but Lieta’s bars
were flecked with yellow. A Virtual of Lieta’s upper body and head
appeared; she was smiling bravely in reaction to the scores.
    ’There is grey in her hair,’ murmured Luru. ’Look at the lines
around her eyes, her mouth. You have aged better than your
ten-years-younger sister. You have aged less, in fact. There is no
grey in your hair.’
    Faya wasn’t sure how to respond. She looked away, disturbed.
    ’Tell me why you gave up the Dance. Your performances weren’t
declining, were they? You felt you could have kept going for ever.
Isn’t that true? But something worried you.’
    Faya turned on her in irritation. ’Look, I don’t know what you
want - ’
    ’It’s a shock when you see them grow old around you. I remember it
happening to me, the first time - long ago, of course.’ She grinned
coldly.
    ’You’re frightening me.’ Faya said it loud enough to make people
stare.
    Luru stood. ’I’m like you, Faya Parz. The same blood. You know
what I’m talking about. When you need to see me, you’ll be able to
find me.’
     
    Faya waited in her seat until the Dance was over, and the audience
had filed away. She didn’t even try to find Lieta, as they’d
arranged. Instead she made her own way up into the dome.
    She stood on the lip of the highest platform.