Not Place, but People - II (a)
II
YOUR IMPERIAL MAJESTIES,
HONOURED HAUT AND HONOURABLE GHEM,
ESTEEMED PATRONS AND GUESTS.
Miles wasn’t sure how it was being done, but huge letters carved from light hung in a band in the air, in Cetagandan, Barrayaran, and galactic scripts, initially facing the royal box before slowly rotating, as if on an invisible ribbon, for all to see. A slightly snarky thought that nothing so vulgar as an MC or a programme would do for the Celestial Garden was matched by simple pleasure in the elegance and efficiency of the proffered alternative.
THE QUADDIE nation,
the citizens of graf station,
and we of the minchenko ballet
thank you for the honour you do us tonight.
we especially thank our patrons here,
haut pel navarr, planetary consort of eta ceta,
and lord auditor and Lady vorkosigan of barrayar
to whom by gracious imperial permission
our performance is dedicated.
Miles looked sideways at Fletchir to find the haut emperor giving him a ghostly grin echoed at his shoulder by Dag Benin. Miles rolled his eyes and noticed beneath the distracting display the orchestra preparing; Nicol could be seen adjusting her dulcimer with help from a male quaddie he thought was a double-violinist, but he virtuously returned attention to the words. If he’d got this right Quaddie aesthetics (a revelation to Barrayarans who thought of the four-armed spacers as malformed mutants) was about to pay Fletchir-and haut Gars!-back far more satisfactorily than anything he could say. Besides, the dedications to Pel and Ekaterin were richly deserved; his own inclusion, if predictable, was a tiresome instance of protocol overcoming merit. Next to him Ekaterin whispered that he had commissioned the principal piece, and he grinned.
we present this evening three works.
first, an epic narrative oF our people,
born into genetic slavery,
delivering ourselves with legged help to freedom,
growing into our selfhood and place.
its title is falling free,
its music and choreography by amaranth.
The composer’s single name, Miles knew, was an indication he had been among the first thousand quaddies created, before their escape from the bankrupt Terran corporation that wrought them; his epic was a founding document of Quaddie culture. Not for the first time since this balletic interlude had forcefully spun itself into being as a side-effect of Nicol’s astounding impromptu he wondered how Cetagandans would react to balletic quaddie portrayals of legged humans-‘downsiders’ in their parlance-which according to Bel tended to affectionate comedy.
SECOND, A PHYSICAL MEDITATION ON OUR SUBSTANCE,
PRIME DECAY,
MUSIC AND CHOREOGRAPHY BY LLEWELLYN THREE.
The slight buzz confirmed his belief that the Quaddie concept of a physical meditation was excellently pitched for haut and ghem alike. His confidence that something remarkable was about to happen grew.
AFTER AN INTERVAL, CROWNING THE EVENING,
WE PREMIERE LORD AUDITOR VORKOSIGAN’S COMMISSION,
CHOREOGRAPHED BY LLEWELLYN THREE
TO THE INVASION IMPROMPTU BY NICOL SEVEN,
THE HAUT PEL’S GRACE TO THE FALLEN
On Barrayar, Miles thought, they would need to add a stern injunction not to leave one’s box during any performance, as quaddie dancers might be travelling rapidly in unexpected directions and zero-g offered very limited means of braking or swerving; Cetagandans presumably didn’t need telling to behave. For the most part. He’d heard Fletchir speaking to Kareen, not before time given the way planetary governors and one or two Consorts had behaved; he didn’t think any meant his brother or sister harm, but the idea of treating outlanders as courteously as they would fellow haut was new to them, and in Mark’s case, as in his own, there was also the profound professional crogglement of committed geneticists faced with such compelling fusions of nurture and nature. He found it amusing, by and large, and Mark could, but Kareen didn’t, and while his brother could bear up Kareen was finding induction as a senior Vorkosigan more than she had bargained for. Nor was she (in Miles’s decided view) getting the help she ought. His clone-brother could make money multiply faster than Zap had kittens, but did not have the knack of making people grow.
He heard Ekaterin hum with pleasure as skin-suited quaddie dancers shot rapidly from numerous entrances around the sphere to cluster as a group in its middle, equidistant from all but initially facing the royal box in uniform ranks. Depending wholly on initial vector, their speed and precision of assembly was astounding to anyone with experience of zero-g; barely one touch to slow or reposition was needed as dancers formed themselves up and bowed or curtsied to Giaja and the unseen Empress. Players in the orchestra bowed and curtsied in unison from their place below the imperial box, and to Miles’s surprise Fletchir not only inclined his head in return but made a gracious gesture, half-acknowledgement of service, half-welcome to guests. The haut might be damnably hard to get to, but once you did, and overcame their pique at being interrupted, they were as undeniably capable of warmth as Barrayarans. In the strange Cetagandan set-up he had always thought the ghem plainly the closer equivalents of the Vor, but since Jack Chandler’s technogenius had allowed the great alliance, renewing his personal acquaintance with the high haut, he found himself wondering about that.
The first low, growling chord of Amaranth’s score sounded as the dancers divided, four males drifting up to a level two-thirds of the sphere’s height while the rest dropped an equal distance. Normally, Miles knew from Bel, the higher dancers, representing legged bioengineers, carried dangling dummy-legs but for this performance something that must use the same technology as the lettering had been contrived, and from each quaddie’s lower hands pairs of trousered and labcoated legs drawn in light simply appeared, sometimes striding about, sometimes crossed, as the dancers swung around one another to move back and forth. Below them the others unfolded one by one to begin evolutions of their own, and acquired numerical designations marking them as gene-slaves on the backs of their programmable skinsuits. Once all were in motion exchanges began, higher, ‘legged’ quaddies swinging down to pass among the lower, hologram legs flattening to trail uselessly behind them, just as quaddies taken to the higher level seemed to have to knuckle-walk, developing contrasts of Human-norm and Quaddie movement under gravity and in zero-g.
One legged figure in particular went more often to the quaddie group, returning repeatedly to the same female, and soon drew her out to begin a pas-de-deux-or prise-de-deux, belike-in the central space between the groups. This was Leo Graf, the engineer who had helped the quaddies to escape, and Silver, whom he later married. What supreme athleticism and four good grips could achieve in zero-g was remarkable, and the music was compelling, centrally featuring Nicol’s dulcimer, but eventually the prise-de-deux evolved into a narrative of crisis, escape, and flight, epic blending with romance as legged bioengineers circled franticly and the quaddie group led by Leo and Silver began to struggle diagonally across the sphere. Shifting momentum between themselves to edge forward, they were clearly helped from time to time by Leo, whose trailing legs occasionally appeared to brace and push while quaddie hands knuckled in apparent gravity to show their passage through stations as well as space; as they went, the dehumanising numbers faded from their tunics to be replaced by names. Finally, reversing themselves as they reached the very top of the sphere, free quaddies founding their homeland and honouring Leo and Silver fell in swooping curves to end the piece with a dazzling display of celebratory excitement, not that fast but increasingly majestic, an effect Miles realised was driven by the subtle grace that had come to Leo’s legs-their comic potential, so long restrained, not being loosed at all but rather reversed into elegant dignity and athletic harmony. The whole thing had taken about an hour.
As soft applause began and the final tableau broke into individual dancers arraying to take their call, Pel, clapping politely herself, spoke over him to Ekaterin.
“Have you seen that before?”
Smiling, his wife shook her head. “Only ‘vid snippets. Nicol said they had to adjust the choreography quite a bit for the size of this venue.” And for Cetagandan sensibilities. Ekaterin glided over the thin ice as if it weren’t there. “I suspect it made their great escape and star-journey more effective, and much more difficult. I have very limited skill in zero-g so I do admire their movement.”
“The movement, yes. High skill and much grace. But I confess I found the music and narrative sentimental.”
“True, though.” Miles was thoughtful. “I grant the sentimentality, and was going to say epics almost have to be so, while surprisingly accurate history commends this one. But I realise I have no idea if you care for epics at all. The haut hardly need an origin myth.” He grinned at Pel, who smiled back with a certain austerity. Hmmm. “But tales of love, however necessarily sentimental, are almost universal for good reason.” Pel looked from him to Ekaterin and back, quirking an eyebrow. “Just so. All serendipity, not planning. And in all seriousness, Pel, isn’t that frustrating truth at the heart of the haut’s puzzled fascination with Barrayarans? That we have managed despite ourselves to cohere sufficiently to command your attention?”
“You know full well it is, Miles, and that we are trying to assess our error.” Pel’s lips compressed. “If error it truly be. We do not forget the wild root of genetics, nor the profligate variation found in us when we began. But power has never been much interested in personal affections, and little history is made by love, surely.”
“It is more than anything what drives Miles, you know.” Ekaterin’s eyes glinted. “Have you ever heard Cordelia say that what Aral calls honour, she calls grace? Miles and I might call it love. And for all the poor women get sacrificed in most epics, the history wouldn’t get far without them. One of the things I like about Quaddies is that they didn’t leave anyone behind, and always honoured Leo Graf and Silver.”
“Yes.” Pel was looking thoughtful. Good. “Certainly we underestimated some of Old Terra’s thin wisdom. Would you agree that Barrayar’s Time of Isolation makes you closer than most to our common Terran roots? Our judgement has been that it had rather distanced you, as so much of your founding base was destroyed in the anarchy.”
Miles and Ekaterin exchanged a surprised glance. Various high haut had in conversation floated theorems about Barrayar but this gambit was new, and Pel’s untroubled acknowledgement of common ancestry, however self-evident, was not a fact either had heard any haut admit. Except Fletchir, every time he calls Gregor and Laisa his Cousins. He chose his words carefully.
“We were thrown back on ourselves as baseline humans. Certainly old folk-traditions and wisdoms asserted themselves in the absence of galactic technology and remain a strong part of our rural culture; yet mutation accelerated, and only changes with physical expression might be identified. If we are closer to Terran roots, Barrayar’s soil has been altogether its own.”
Ekaterin smiled at his botanical metaphor but sensibly didn’t try to take it further. “I don’t think it’s about closeness, Pel, nor Terra, save that we are all her children. Forgive me, love”-her hand rested on Miles’s-“but take Mark and Kareen. He had no reason in the Nexus to believe in love, or charity, in its true sense, but when he was offered it he knew it as a drowning man knows a rope. He calls it sincerity, and pretends to cynicism, but it was by offering immediate and unconditional love that Miles and Cordelia not only rescued him from hell but made of a shaped and sworn enemy a loving son and brother. Aral, too. And for all his scarred darkness, Mark won Kareen because he shone with that experience, while she won him because she never failed his trust as knowledge supplanted innocence.”
Miles had been startled by Ekaterin’s turn into familial revelation, and felt the usual squirm of embarrassment at her praise, but by her last sentence had only admiration for the deft combination of argument and parable. He had seen in this cultural but intrinsically political event another chance to push particular consequences of the Cetagandan-Barrayaran alliance, widening circles of personal acquaintance and so paths of communication, squeezing out lingering hostilities, and (if the ballet proved all he hoped) further goosing the haut and ghem, via their sense of aesthetics, into renewed civil engagement with the wider Nexus. Mark’s and Kareen’s complicating presence had seemed a separate problem, an old, emotive knot tied to the secret obsession of the late Baron Ryoval with his hidden Cetagandan heritage and the strained haut sense of gratitude to Mark for killing him-but in Ekaterin’s parable he saw her inspired fusion of issues. His brother’s and sister’s inevitable Beauty-and-the-Beast appearance, exaggerating in Mark’s saturnine corpulence and Kareen’s blonde, athletic height his own contrast with Ekaterin, made them also a walking metaphor for Barrayar’s encounter with the haut, one criss-crossed with fascinating reversals.
Pel too hummed approval of the stroke. “Well, there is testimony to ponder. And I am justly served, for we know well it is not place but people who determine the future.” Her eyes were unusually dark and unfathomable. “Three years ago I would have thought the idea laughable. Even eighteen months ago, Miles, at that pretty invasion we celebrate, I should have told you to beware making us grow. My grace to the fallen was only to dance lightly on their graves, after all. But Palma has made it very plain she finds qualities in your people of the Dendarii she thinks we have too much weakened in our genome, and Rian agrees.” A smile ghosted Pel’s beautiful lips. “Fletchir is an interested, necessarily neutral observer, but his little adventure last year was not without purpose. I remain unsure; perhaps you and your chosen brother and sisters persuade me, little by little.”
“Or little by large.” Miles grinned, fascinated by the implications of Pel’s comments about his last, unexpected meeting with Fletchir, and inwardly delighted, for if the Star Crèche were truly having that argument-and it would do a lot to explain just why Fletchir had wanted to see Silvy Vale for himself; though not everything, heh-then Barrayar had acquired a deeper defence than it knew to reinforce the developing grip of the treaty. “The crowd in Vorbarr Sultana calls us the Chance Brothers, you know, after some odd-couple holovid comedians. But the right attitude to enable one to seize a chance that comes is only half of it. Perhaps we should try it with ImpSec and Shunag Mei? ” He winked at Pel as she smothered a laugh. “The rest-”
For some while quaddie stagehands had been organising something in mid-sphere, and whatever other half Miles might have proposed was left dangling as he saw performers begin to arc in while the lights again dimmed. A single figure rose from the orchestra to join them, Llewellyn Three, seating himself at a midair panoply of drums as twenty-three quaddies, each also bearing a drum, arrayed themselves in a loose globe around him. Above them the title of the physical meditation appeared again briefly, Prime Decay, and as it completed its circuit and vanished Llewellyn as drum-master began a beat with one finger of his left lower hand; superb acoustics made it audible everywhere. Five beats in a finger on the right lower hand started a complementary rhythm, followed by fingers on each upper hand, then a second finger on the left lower hand, and again around and around until twenty distinct rhythms blended in impossibly complex array. Then the pattern swept out as first one and then another of the quaddies in the encircling globe picked up one rhythm on their own drums, gradually magnifying the sound until all but three collectively duplicated the intricate twenty-fold beat of the drum-master. He remained still, but each quaddie in the globe had also begun to move as they began to drum, and by the time the master-pattern was replicated all twenty-three were in steady orbits around their drum-centre-which must be generating a tightly focused grav-field of its own. The three spares were a perfect part of the movement but to maintain the rhythmic pattern must be matching one of the other circling drummers as well as one of the master-drummer’s rhythms.
They resembled, Miles realised, the old planetary model of the atom, electrons in orbit around a pulsing centre. The percussive harmony was so exact that as they orbited differing elements of the master-pattern were enforced; nor did it speed or slow at all, but the orbital movements did slowly accelerate, until after some minutes the velocity of the circling drummers was sufficiently great that as they swept toward him and swooped away again a doppler effect began to cramp the tempo and raise the pitch, or stretch and drop it, introducing a fractional wobble in their rhythms that set them slightly at odds with the master-drummer and, increasingly, one another. Given the distances and relatively low speeds involved distortion could only be minuscule, but the underlying perfection of harmony made it disturbing, almost painful to hear. The greater speed also began to stretch the exact cohesion of movement, bringing some dancers close enough together that they had to streamline themselves to avoid collision, increasing speed further. Steadily and inexorably pulsing powers of balance and imbalance built, dancers whipping through the air fast enough to have Miles and, he sensed, Ekaterin tensing in their couches; Pel too, he imagined, but could not tear his eyes away even for a second to check. He was wondering how soon he would start hyperventilating when the point of inevitable collison was reached, and fully half the whirling orb of quaddies seemed to slam together in one place-and they must, by Rian’s hair, know superbly well what they were doing, for four of them were swung around and shot like cannonballs across the diagonals of the sphere directly into exits while the others, dumping momentum into the four, slowed dramatically and caught those not involved in the collision-expulsion, being re-accelerated themselves while they braked the faster movers. In an eyeblink the whole globe of orbits was reformed at the original, stately pace, but with only nineteen drummers. As they gradually fell silent in turn, slowing, the master-drummer’s twenty-fold pattern re-emerged in its quiet, single-finger purity, and then over the final one hundred beats disassembled itself, one finger at a time stilling until a finger of the left lower hand was left to tap five solitary beats, last as it had been first. Silence and stillness returned together, as the globe of quaddies hung in the air.
Pel must have been as tense as he and Ekaterin for as he remembered to breath for what seemed the first time in a while he heard sighs of pleasure and relief on both sides of him. He wanted to look at Ekaterin, to see the flushed wonder that would be in her eyes at such beauty, but made himself look instead at Pel and was taken aback by the rapture in her face, pupils dilated and mouth slightly open as she gazed up at the quaddie globe, still hanging silent as the lights slowly returned to full brightness. An unknown time seemed to stretch, until he felt Ekaterin stir behind him; at the same moment Pel sat smoothly up, looking away from him towards Rian, who was also flushed, then across him to Fletchir. No. Giaja. As he followed her gaze he saw a fractional imperial nod, and suddenly all haut and ghem in the imperial box were rising with their Emperor; he and Ekaterin, with other Barrayarans, hastily followed suit as, alarmingly, did the whole audience, bristling inward in every direction from their boxes, pale faces turned out towards the imperial party. The quaddie dancers drew themselves into an array on either side of the master-drummer facing Giaja, some looking puzzled, as Miles himself felt, others with very still faces. Was there to be a speech? But Giaja only stepped a half-pace forward and bowed to the dancers, deeply, as did everyone, faces vanishing around the sphere. Hastily bowing himself Miles saw from the corner of his eye that the Planetary Consorts and Rian were dropping equally deep curtseys, and as he straightened, feeling the thump of his Cetagandan Order of Merit on his chest and craning his neck to see the dancers, he guessed from dropping jaws and stunned looks that the force-shield had momently faded into transparency, affording the quaddies and the startled Cetagandans beyond a glimpse very few ever enjoyed, even among the haut. And true to haut minimalism, Giaja did not say a single word, but simply seated himself again, nodded as the dancers bowed back and began to exit, and turned away from Miles towards Benin. Above the departing dancers and descending Llewellyn, returning to the orchestra-pit, lettering appeared announcing an interval before the premiere.
Turning himself to help Ekaterin sit back on her couch Miles rolled his eyes and ghosted a murmur. “Aesthetic bullseye number four, I fancy. Do they think clapping would be vulgar after that?”
She smiled, responding as quietly. “More that it would be rhythmically coarse, I think.” Heh. Belike. “But don’t ask Pel now. I suspect the haut have just had a … religious experience.”
Which perhaps they had, Miles reflected, losing surprise in admiration for his wife’s perception; certainly that reaction was long going to be on the agenda of the Barrayaran study-group on the haut that Gregor had set up and often chaired himself. Turning to Pel he found her studying him with irony back in her ageless blue eyes.
“That, Miles, was altogether remarkable. You may have to delay the Barrayaran premiere, for the troupe will receive very many invitations to perform it, you know. From each Consort and Governor. And the Satraps will be falling over themselves. Tell Nicol, please, that they needn’t go anywhere, of course, if they don’t wish, but that if they do they’d better go everywhere. To the Eight, at least, but I’d prefer the satrapies as well.”
Miles stared at her shrewdly, heart thumping. “They are become talismans, then?”
“Oh yes. Fletchir has not responded to a performance like that for more than thirty years; his standards are very high.” She grinned, then looked thoughtfully at Ekaterin. “The structure of that piece could not be better judged for us and the single prime iteration is inspired. I feared they might continue through seventeen and thirteen but Llewellyn Three knew better. Aesthetically? Or did someone do superior research?”
“Not I.” Ekaterin smiled. “Truly, Pel. You know I talked to Llewellyn in general terms about haut aesthetics, but that was for the commission.” No need to say the talk went on for weeks. “This piece is several years old, I believe, but whether they always use twenty-three and nineteen or scaled it up for this space I have no idea. Nor what sheer Newtonian math must dictate about the possibilities.” She tilted her head slightly. “Do you suppose an allusion to chromosomal pairs? Or Vanadium and Potassium?”
“Oh, both, I’m sure.” Pel grinned again. “I was pondering the degree of subtle rebuke in the lesson about size, stability, and minimalism but perhaps that’s just my guilty conscience. In any case, we have an interval to think about it. Do you need facilities?”
* * * * *