The Nebula Waltz

The gallery had been open exactly eleven months and two weeks when I decided to humiliate myself in public.

That's not fair. I decided to post an ad. The humiliation was a possible side effect.

"This is a bad idea," Jenn said, reading over my shoulder. She's thirty-five, my assistant, and my friend, which means she's contractually obligated to tell me when I'm being an idiot.

"It's not a bad idea. It's a bold idea."

"Lisa. You're going to post a hologram of yourself asking strangers to waltz with you."

"I'm going to post a hologram asking strangers to help me save the Nebula Waltz. There's a difference. The difference is dignity, and I've already agreed to sacrifice it."

She leaned against my desk and looked out through the gallery's front glass at the plaza. It was early evening, which in Verdant Rise means the bioluminescent vines along the arcade were waking up, all blue and violet, and about forty people were standing around staring at their wrist displays instead of each other.

"Look at that," I said, waving at the window. "We live on the prettiest planet in two systems. Ring-shaped world, twin suns, glowing plants everywhere. And everyone's watching a screen the size of a playing card."

"Both suns are down. It's dark. Cut them some slack."

"The plants glow, Jenn. It's literally never dark here."

She conceded that with a shrug. Thirty-five years old, married at twenty-nine to a lovely woman from the co-op, and still she has no romance in her soul whatsoever. I, on the other hand, am twenty-eight and had my heart lightly bruised at twenty-three by a man from Halcyon Station I never actually met in person, so I'm clearly the authority on romance.

The anniversary gala was in twelve days. One year since the colony's first art gallery opened its doors, and I wanted to mark it with something people would remember. And the thing people used to remember, back when the first settlers built the glass-domed dance hall in the center of the plaza, was the Nebula Waltz. Three-fourths time, partners turning under the dome light, the whole floor drifting like stars.

Nobody dances it anymore. The last person who taught it publicly was Rufus Larson, who is sixty-two and mostly teaches it to people who don't show up.

The problem, of course, was that I couldn't dance it either.

Hence the ad. I scripted it three times, deleted it twice, and finally recorded it standing in the gallery atrium at midnight with Jenn holding the projector and laughing at me.

"Say the line again," she said.

"Which line."

"The one about the partner."

I took a breath. "Hi. I'm Lisa Steele, curator of the Verdant Rise Gallery. In two weeks we're hosting our first anniversary gala, and I'd like to open it with the Nebula Waltz. The problem is I don't have a partner and, frankly, I only know the first eight counts. If you know the waltz, or want to learn it with me, come by the gallery. Evenings. I'll trade lessons for company."

"Cut," Jenn said. "You'll trade lessons for company? You sound like you're selling a timeshare."

"It's honest."

"It's sad. Say 'I'm looking for a dance partner' like a normal person."

We did six takes. In the final one I managed to look reasonably confident and only tripped over the word atrium once. She projected it on the public board in the plaza that night, a flickering blue Lisa about a meter tall, asking the colony to come dance with her.

Two days went by. I got four responses. One was Rufus, who sent a very polite message saying his knees were sixty-two years old and I should ask someone younger. One was a bot. One was a woman asking if the gala served alcohol, which, fair. And one was from a man named Dawson Bartholomew, age thirty, cargo pilot, who wrote eleven words: "I know the steps. I don't know how I know them."

I looked up his flight record out of basic curiosity. The man flies freight between Verdant Rise and the outer mining platforms. Weeks of solitude at a time, apparently. That explained the email. Long-haul pilots develop the writing habits of hermits.

He showed up on Thursday evening, an hour early, which told me something about his nerves.

* * *

I heard the door chime while I was stacking chairs in the atrium. He came in the way people come into galleries when they're afraid of touching something, hands half raised, eyes everywhere.

"Lisa Steele?" he said.

"That's me. You must be Dawson."

"Dawson Bartholomew, yes. Hi. Sorry, I'm early. I was in the area."

"Where's the area, exactly? The plaza is residential."

He went a little red. "I flew in at four. The freight dock. And then I, uh, walked around for a while."

Two hours of walking around. I decided right then I liked him.

He was thirty, tall, with the build of a man who lifts cargo containers for a living, and he was wearing what I can only describe as his best attempt at formal, which was a clean shirt with a collar and pants that had clearly been folded in a storage locker for a month. Pilots. I'd dated enough of the colony's flying population at a distance to know the look.

"Can I get you something to drink? I have tea. I also have water. My hospitality range is narrow."

"Water's great," he said, and then stood holding it like it might detonate.

"So. Eleven words, Mr. Bartholomew. You know the steps but you don't know how."

"Yeah, that came out wrong. I mean." He set the water down, picked it up again. "I fly long haul. Six weeks out to the platforms and back, mostly alone in the cockpit. I got bored. I found these old recordings in the ship's archive, colony stuff, pre-founding. Dance instruction broadcasts. Full courses."

"Wait." I put down my own cup. "The instructional recordings? The ones from the first settlement years? Everyone says those were lost when the original server flooded."

"Not all of them. I found about forty hours of it. One whole course was the Nebula Waltz. Some old instructor, great guy, very patient, kept saying 'frame, frame, frame' like it was a religion." He smiled for the first time, and it changed his whole face. "I practiced in the cargo bay. There's nothing to do in null-grav freight time, so I'd strap weights to my feet and go through the footwork for hours. Six weeks out, six weeks back, for about a year."

"You learned to waltz alone in a cargo bay."

"Alone, yes. With taped footprints on the deck plates. Which is why I answered your ad, because here's my problem." He spread his hands. "I have never once danced it with another person. I don't know how to hold someone. I don't know how to lead. I've been both dancers and neither dancer for a year and I'm apparently capable of having a full argument with myself about tempo."

I laughed. I couldn't help it, and I saw him wilt a little, so I held up a hand.

"No, no, I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing because we're perfect. I know the first eight counts because Rufus Larson showed me at a harvest festival three years ago and I've practiced them in my apartment like a lunatic. Alone. With taped footprints. Tell me you used tape."

"Painter's tape. Blue."

"I used masking tape. We're practically the same person."

He grinned again, and this time he didn't wilt.

"Okay," I said. "Here's the offer. The gala is in twelve days. I need to be able to dance three full turns of the Nebula Waltz in front of the entire colony without disgracing my gallery. You need to learn, in your words, how to hold someone. We have this atrium, which has excellent acoustics and a floor that was absolutely designed for this and has been wasted on exhibitions. Evenings, you and me. I'll teach you what Rufus taught me, you teach me what the dead instructor taught you, and we'll meet in the middle."

"That's a real offer? You're not just being polite?"

"Dawson, I posted a hologram of myself begging the colony for a dance partner. Politeness has left my life entirely."

He stuck out his hand, very formally, like we were closing a freight contract. I shook it. His palm was enormous and calloused and he was very careful with it, which I noted and then declined to think about further.

"One condition," I said.

"Name it."

"You have to tell that instructor of yours, when you finally meet him, that a cargo pilot learned the entire Nebula Waltz from a flooded server. He'll either weep or fall over."

"He'd probably ask about my frame first."

"He sounds like my kind of man." I pulled the chairs into a stack and cleared the center of the floor. "Come on, then. Show me the eight counts. I want to see what a year of solitude and blue painter's tape gets a man."

He put the water down, squared his shoulders, and started to move. And I'll tell you what I told Jenn later, when she demanded a report: the man's footwork was flawless, his frame was a mystery, and he counted under his breath like the numbers were a prayer.

We had twelve days. It was going to be either a gala or a disaster.

I was, honestly, hoping for one and braced for the other.

The first real lesson was two nights later, and I learned something about the atrium I'd never known in a year of working here. When the suns went down and the bioluminescent beds along the walls did their evening brightening, the whole floor turned the color of a shallow lagoon. Dawson walked in and stopped dead just inside the door.

"Okay," he said. "Nobody mentioned this."

"It's the moss. It photosynthesizes all day and then it glows to dump the extra charge. The architect designed the floor for dancing but he also put in the moss, so I think he knew exactly what he was doing."

"You could have led with the glowing floor. I'd have answered the ad for the floor alone."

I'd moved the tape that afternoon. Two lines of masking tape, six feet apart, a rough rectangle in the middle of the atrium where the acoustics were best. Dawson looked at my tape, then looked at the door, then went out to his skimmer and came back with a roll of blue painter's tape and a slightly defiant expression.

"We're not competing," I said.

"I'm just saying, if we're marking a floor, there's a correct product for it."

So we had a green floor, a blue rectangle, a gray rectangle, and two adults who were about to find out how awkward this could get. I'll spare you the first ten minutes. They were bad. Not his fault, not really mine either, just two people who had each danced beautifully with an empty space trying to negotiate the existence of the other one.

"Okay, stop. Stop!" I stepped back and rubbed my hands on my hips. "We're doing this wrong. Frame first. Your instructor would agree with me, I can feel it."

"Frame, frame, frame," he said, solemn as a deacon.

"Right hand here." I took his right hand and put it on my waist, at the waistband of my skirt, flat palm, and I felt him go rigid all down his arm. "And that's the whole thing, that's the contact. Left hand takes mine. Elbows up. You're holding a barrel."

"This is a strange barrel."

"It's a traditional barrel. Now, the basic turn. I step back, you step forward, and we rotate on the second count. Watch my feet first, ignore everything else."

He watched. To his credit, he shut up and watched, and when I ran the eight counts alone, slow, his eyes tracked my feet and then, briefly, my hips, and then snapped back to my feet with the guilt of a man caught reading ahead in a book. I pretended not to see it. Not out of kindness. Out of strategy.

"Your turn. With me."

He stepped in. His right hand settled on my waist again, and this time it was trembling. Not a lot. Enough that I could feel it through the fabric.

"Dawson."

"I know. Sorry. It's just, there's a person attached to this. The tape never trembled."

"The tape also never stepped on you, so consider the trade-offs. Breathe. You fly cargo through debris fields for a living. I've seen your landing footage, Jenn shows everyone the one where you set down on the platform in a crosswind and it's smoother than most people park."

"That was a good day," he admitted. "All right. Breathing."

And then it clicked, the way it does, all at once. His frame came up, his hand stopped shaking, and we did the eight counts, and on the turn I felt him adjust to me instead of fighting me, which is the entire secret of the dance and which Rufus Larson had failed to convey to me in three years of occasional festivals. The dead instructor had conveyed it in forty hours of flooded-server video. Go figure.

"That," I said, when we stopped, "was the waltz."

"That was eight counts."

"That was the waltz, Dawson. The rest is vocabulary."

* * *

The second lesson, three nights later, we got ambitious, and ambition is where the laughing started.

The thing about the Nebula Waltz, the thing Rufus always says when he's had two glasses of the blackberry wine, is that it was designed for low gravity. The original settlers choreographed it on the ship during the crossing, when the spin was only a third standard, so the lifts and the long spiral turns aren't decoration. They're physics. In our gravity you can do a gentler version. In our gravity, if you're foolish, you can also try the faster tempo, which is what we foolishly did.

"One-two-three and lift," I counted, and on the lift Dawson turned me and I came down out of rhythm, off his mark, and my heel caught the tape line, and he caught me, mostly. Mostly is doing a lot of work in that sentence. He caught me around the waist and we went down together in a controlled-ish collapse onto the atrium floor, me across his legs, both of us winded, staring up at the dome lights.

And then he laughed. Not a polite chuckle. A real one, from the belly, the kind that takes over your whole ribcage, and I started, and for a good two minutes neither of us could speak.

"Okay," he gasped finally. "Okay. In my defense, the instructor did that lift with a mannequin. A mannequin, Lisa. On a rig."

"A rig."

"There were cables. I may have failed to mention the cables."

"You learned the lifts on cables and you didn't think to mention this before throwing me into the air."

"I want it noted that I caught you."