Earth fell away before them. Clouds spilled in the atmosphere like oil blooming over ocean and land; where the planet once filled the vista, it now shrank rapidly. Night spooled over the planet before them, day an oval sphere like cats eyes, a marble in the spotlight. The heliosurfers, spectators, and support crew watched in the solarium as the skyliner jetted for the Sun.

A tall man dressed in late twentieth century Alexander McQueen was saying, “Just imagine the beginning of the space age when spaceships didn’t have inertial dampeners. The gravitational forces of this acceleration would crush us. Yet we’re standing here like it’s nothing.” He looked down at the woman standing next to him.

“What, so they were subject to the forces of gravity?” Her coppery eyes twinkled. “It really is amazing to see how far humanity has come.”

“Yes, the early astronauts had to survive accelerations of only 2‑3g to escape Earth’s gravitational field, can you believe it?” He laughed. “Any more gravities than that and the body goes unconscious because all the blood rushes to the extremity opposite to the direction of acceleration.”

“And how fast do these skyliners go?” she asked. A naïve expression was on her face, but he wasn’t fooled.

“What is this? Am I your tour guide? Everyone learns this in school. Starships accelerate at several thousands times gravity at sublight speeds. We’d be a fine paste if the inertial dampeners were to fail. These same dampeners give us a semblance of gravity instead of the microgravity we’d usually experience. Where’re you from that you don’t know this, anyway? Are you a sundancer? What’s your name?”

“My name’s Khushi. I’m from the Himalayan taiga. My ancestors swam naked with the whales in the Arctic, my people are descended from the Vedrus, we’re the children of the ringing cedars. The world is our school, not this book-learning science. What’s your name?”

“People call me Moksha. You make light of science, yet it’s this science that you’re using to fall into stars.”

“I know! The image doesn’t quite fit. I believe you’d call it irony. I don’t have to know how it works to know that it works and how to make it work. It’s all about being one with creation.”

“One of those, are you? I was just checking to make sure you were paying attention. I don’t want any amateur to flare up in the sun.”

“None of us are amateurs here. To dive into the sun, it’s not enough to wear suits that dampen inertia, or to hold the sails with your mind. You have to control your passions so they’re calm and steady like the sea on a windless day.”

Moksha laughed. “You’re a poet, aren’t you?”

Huia was late to the function. She walked into the ballroom and stood just inside the door. She scanned the crowd, a mix of dignitaries, retired sundancers, sundancers, crew and spectators. Across the room she saw a beautiful woman speaking into Moksha’s ear, talking softly to make him lean over her to hear her better. She saw them just as Moksha laughed, easily. He looked so relaxed and comfortable. Huia felt a twinge of jealousy shoot through her as if she’d touched a hot wire. She shrugged away the feeling and walked up to them just as Khushi caught a heel in the tiles and fell into Moksha. He caught her easily and she nestled her head in his chest. Squares of light turned over them and Khushi looked up into Moksha’s eyes. A spark went between them. Huia slipped between a waiter holding high a tray of empty champagne flutes and two men in antiquated dinner suits. The band stopped playing as she reached Moksha and Khushi. The room was silent. Huia looked at Moksha, and felt emotion rise within her and, before she knew what she was doing, she snarked, “Moksha, will you introduce me to your new friend?”

“Huia, this isn’t what it looks like.” Moksha straightened up Khushi. “Huia, meet Khushi. She’s from the Himalayas.”

“I am Khushi Chenrezig, from Shambhala.” Khushi said. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Huia Pürerehua. I am privileged to be racing with you tomorrow.”

“We haven’t met before, have we?”

“No, we have not. This is my first sun dive. Do you have any advice?”

“You don’t need my advice. Be your self. And why are you still holding on to my man?”

 “Oh! I’m sorry!” Khushi stepped away from Moksha. “I’ll go.” She walked away towards the bar.

Huia turned to see Moksha watching Khushi walk away. She was not too pleased. “Moksha. Do you really want to test our bond, today of all days? You know I need to be focused for tomorrow.”

“Darling, you’re overreacting. You’ll be amazing tomorrow.” Moksha said, soothingly. He observed Khushi ordering a drink and the bartender bent and took mint from a clearseal bag and began crushing it into a mojito. “There’s something about Khushi. I can’t put my finger on it. She’s…”

Her lips met his words and silenced him. No matter how many times she’d kissed him before, each time managed to feel new all over again. Her lips molded to his like starships docking, a graceful ballet in free fall. He nibbled her lip. She leaned into him and they watched sprites dancing in a creamy swirl above the Americas.

A side door near them opened. The concierge nodded to Moksha. “We’ll catch up after the ceremony.” Moksha said, and he followed the concierge out of the ballroom.

Huia crossed the room to a cluster of fellow sundancers who were standing in an informal circle as the master of ceremonies started his presentation. The group fell silent as she approached. But as she joined the group, she was accused.

“Showing off, were you?”

“Rubbing our faces in it?”

“You think you’re better than us?”

“You’ve got a man, Huia. And yet you can still fall into stars? You must be absolutely heartless. How can you give love, and yet remain in balance? Everyone else finds lovers pull them off center. How do you do it? You flaunt your man in front of us.”

Huia had no response. Truly, she was unusual among heliosurfers in maintaining a relationship during competition. Most stardivers could not maintain their equilibrium in the face of the fury of the coronosphere. They were almost monastics, but like monastics, still had their humanity, their desires, their idiosyncrasies. This was the risk they ran. To rein in passions while maintaining the serenity of their composure.

Khushi took Huia aside and asked, “What’s it really like? To have a lover who doesn’t pull you off center, who strengthens you? Do you fight?”

Gracious as ever, Huia swallowed the niggling tinges of jealousy that she felt. “He’s amazing. He doesn’t pull me away from my heart, he strengthens it! It’s like we are one being in two bodies.”

“We are all one being in infinite bodies” Khushi nodded. “I see. You’re absolutely blessed.”

“Sometimes I wonder if it’s cheating, because he’s there when I feel for him, so I’m never alone. It’s like a tactical advantage because he helps me when others falter. It’s like he’s a recharger. He fills me up with prana.”

Moksha returned just then. He walked up to Huia and Khushi. Huia did not miss his admiring glance at Khushi. “Darling, we must go.” Moksha said to Huia. “It’s time to recharge.” He winked at Khushi.

“Moksha! Are you serious?” Huia took his hand. “You’re coming with me now.” She cut through the crowd and Moksha followed as if bound to her by a long invisible leash.

In their room high in the fluted wing of the hotel, Huia looked at Moksha half-heartedly. “You’re still thinking about her!”

“I can’t help it. There’s just something about her. It’s not how she looks or what she says. It’s more than that. I knew her from somewhere.”

“You’re tired of me? Is that it?”

“Never! I could never be exhausted of you. Ever since I saw you make a perfect sphere dharnurasana, I knew we were meant to be. Why deny my feelings? You’ve always known them to be true.”

Huia silenced Moksha with a kiss and she pulled him to the bed. She kicked off her heels, aiming one at the antigravity switch. Everything not tied down began floating in the room.

“Don’t think that this is over, just because we’re about to fuck.” Huia warned Moksha.

The sun was hot on her face. A thin pane of transparent metal was all that kept the wind from bleaching her eyes blind. Huia hung in space. The magnetized hull kept her from the deep before her. In the reflected brilliance, she could see the others, similarly fastened by their sailsuits, visible through the shifting matrix of the polymelt colors that coated their sails. Three, two, one! And they fell. They were hot metal slivers caught in the fury of the coronosphere. Arms locked to her side, face pointed forwards, she arrowed down, down. Like shooting stars, they fell.

A memory. Sunlit sweat glittering in the air as they made love in null gravity. Her legs tugged Moksha into her, urgently needing to be filled, to have his smooth length engulf the nervousness she felt. The glowing drops whorled in the air about their movements, a galaxy generated by their love, and they flipped in the air and she could see the sun before her, his face thrown into shadow. His eyes glowed and his teeth flashed a smile. Oh! She pulled him closer, always in closer, as the nullgee pulled them softly apart. Oh! He’d twisted his hips and moved up, the bone of his cock swirling and kneading her inner walls, oh! And his leg kicked, and the motes of moisture about them slanted and swirled in the same way as …

… the flare rising up from beneath her! She snapped her wings loose. Long spindles sprang from her back and for barely a minute, she looked like a quicksilver spider preparing to leap, but with too many arms pulled back like scorpion tails. Grinning, she waited, still falling, but now controlling the fall with her arms. Her thought narrowed and she was her suit, and her suit was her skin, and her soul was all around her.

Up on the spectator craft lining the course, Moksha watched her on the window, shining spikeballs piercing the image as they fell beneath him. In his heart, he felt Huia gather her mana about her like the kahu huruhuru of old. Onscreen, he saw brilliant phosphorescence burn from the tips of her sailspines as they reached hungrily for the sun. He closed his eyes and sent a thought, “our tipuna walk with you, aroha,” and Huia laughed in his heart as she leaped and plunged through a snowy mountain field blanketed by the morning sun.

Huia, silently falling, a meteor! Within a space of love she floated serene as a dandelion seed on an alpine breeze, and Moksha, oh! He poured molten gold into her heart, into her limbs, and time slowed. The geyser beneath her was moving at 450 km/hr but in the slowtime of crystalline awareness, it was barely moving. She looked at the others, all now arrayed along the magnetic loop that the flare was following. She couldn’t do it yet; she had to plunge ever deeper into the coronosphere to beat the others. She narrowed her arms and became a wedge, trying to present as little surface area for the wind to blow her back; it wasn’t yet time! Moksha was with her in spirit, and his thoughts cupped her, as though his arms were around her waist and his cheek on her back, listening to her heartbeat and she felt his beat step in time.

Now! It had to be now or never, and Huia wasn’t about to be another name written across the stars, no, she would live, and her sails unfurled and snapped away from the spindles and the net caught the wind. Still falling, she dropped an arm and angled the plane of her sails so that the pocket of antigravity would suck her along the surface of the boiling sea of gas beneath her. Laughing, she kicked with her legs and flipped around so that the dark shadow of her sails winked, a magnesium flare quenched instantly.

Moksha delighted with her. Pride welled up in him and he felt an arm around his shoulders. His friend whispered into his ear. “Look at her go! If there ever was a bat out of hell there she goes!”

“Brother,” Moksha laughed. “Huia is the light in the night that the bat flees. Look! Look how she flies!”

Solsailers knew the many dangers of sundancing. Surfing the stellar wind was only for these who knew themselves. That knowledge was hard earned, but the Reality within each diamond heart is pristine, how could it not be? That pristine potential earned the sundiver the right to fall and race in the stunning spectacle adored by the known worlds. Not only do the sundivers risk being caught by a closing loop of magnetic flux, they also risked their bodies in the hard radiation seething out of the sun, charged ions passing between the atoms of their bodies, even protected by the sailsuits. If their meditative thoughts were to lapse for but a second, their atomic structure would go nova.

Huia felt a strangled cry emerge from her throat as she punched through the supernovae clouds of two other sundivers whose attention had wavered. Steeling her will, she pulled the sail tighter and pushed for the leader, the only person now in front of her.

How she pulled! Muscles bunched in her arms and legs, and her thoughts tightened, the sail trembling with tension. The radiobright coronae on the wingtips of her sail whispered to her. The pitch of her lifesong rose, and she was past the leader! He pumped his sail, trying to catch up to her, but Huia was now dropping a windshadow on him and he continued to drop behind. Huia did not look back. She pressed her lead and as she was allowing herself to relax into the sail, she saw the sun bulge several thousand kilometers ahead. They would be upon it in minutes. Huia mapped algorithms and calculated that she’d pass it safely, but the others! They would surely perish or be flung out into the inner system, certainly the shock would disrupt their concentration and it would be as if they never were. Huia pressed grimly on as the bubble of hot gases rose before her.

The remaining sailors pursued her like butterfly darts dashing along a choppy electromagnetic riverbed. If they saw the danger, they didn’t care and just as hotly chased their passion for victory. As Huia passed over the bubble, her sails were caught by a popping blister and she was thrown high and forward of the building coronal mass ejection. It was about to blow! Huia considered: was victory worth the loss of life? Again, she felt Moksha’s molten love pulse with golden warmth through her heart and felt the truth of his feelings. No! All life is more precious! She snapped her sails to their full kilometer extension and braked. From above, the coronal mass was burnt bronze overlaid with flickering calculations shifting in real time as the screens computed its vector, and all held their breath and waited.

Flame erupted and Huia saw two heliosurfers evaporate and the last, higher sailor’s sails shred into mercury ribbons in the violent plasma, but miraculously, she still lived! Huia could sense Khushi’s mind radiating calming feelings and extruding what was left of her sails together to try and catch the wind back out of the coronosphere. But her wings were so torn she had no hope. Huia felt the sailor calmly resign herself to her fate.

Huia narrowed her sails and plunged for Khushi. As Huia sliced into the wind, she calculated the load burden of two on one sail. It wasn’t good. The tattered butterfly sails would barely add to Huia’s own lift ratio. Nevertheless, Huia reached out with her thoughts and fed hope into her Khushi’s heart as she closed the gap. Khushi cried, “Go! Save yourself! You’ll only die with me!”

“Never!” Huia cried out. “Never will you leave me!”

Huia reached Khushi and, embracing her, flung her sails wide. They soared. It wasn’t enough. Huia and Khushi began to descend. Khushi and Huia were face to face in their embrace. All each could see was their own helmet endlessly reflected in the other’s mirrored visor against the nimbus of light whispering in the sails. Khushi shook her head. Huia held tighter.

“No!” She thought. “You cannot fall!”

Khushi shook her head again and pushed against Huia. Huia heard her voice within. “It is time,” Khushi said. “I must go. But I promise I will never leave you. I promise.”

And with that, she kicked away and broke Huia’s grip. Freed, Huia’s sails took over and she ascended, up, and up. A candle guttered, recovered, and then died.

Huia, weeping inside her suit, felt a spark ignite in her womb, and in wonder, she heard Khushi’s voice, “You see? I will never leave you.”

And waiting aloft, Moksha felt life quicken within Huia and his heart skipped a beat as he felt the stirring of their co-creation. 

-

Peter Fogarty (c) Sunday, June 26, 2011

Williamson Ave, Grey Lynn