Ichabod Martin awoke to a slight headache. He shook his head slightly. "My head hurts."
Bruce was already awake, standing at attention behind them. Ichabod looked at Bruce, looked again at the young woman sitting in front of him. "Denice? What happened to your eye?"
The woman blinked; one hand went to touch a growing bruise. "This? Um, nothing. I'll change my makeup to cover it before I go to see Councilor Ripper."
"Oh." Ichabod shrugged. "I'm sure that'll be fine. I'm looking forward to working with you, 'Selle Daimara. I've seen the vid Robert sent of you in motion. I'm really looking forward to it," he said again.
"Thank you, Ichabod."
A puzzled expression touched Ichabod again. "My head really hurts."
Denice Daimara said softly, "You wouldn't believe how mine feels."
Denice's appointment with Ripper was not scheduled until 2:15. She had nearly an hour to kill before Ripper would be available to speak with her.
She went to the women's restroom, called the lights down as low as they would go--it was a public restroom, and they would not go all the way down to darkness--went into the stall, closed and locked the door. She put the seat down on the toilet and sat down, closed her eyes, and waited for the pulsing pain to go away.
Before leaving, nearly an hour later, she stopped at the mirrors and tuned her makeup for a light blue shade that covered the bruise Ichabod had given her when he crashed into her earlier. It did not quite harmonize with the white and silver suit she wore, but aside from naked skin it was her best choice of the patterns stored in her makeup key.
She waited while her skin changed color, and then left to go meet Unification Councilor Douglass Ripper.
* * *
3.
We shall need compromises in the days ahead, to be sure. But these will be, or should be, compromises of issues, not of principles. We can compromise our political positions, but not ourselves. We can resolve the clash of interests without conceding our ideals. And even the necessity for the right kind of compromise does not eliminate the need for those idealists and reformers who keep our compromises moving ahead, who prevent all political situations from meeting the description supplied by Shaw: "smirched with compromise, rotted with opportunism, mildewed by expedience, stretched out of shape with wirepulling and putrefied with permeation."
Compromise need not mean cowardice--
--John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Unification Councilor Douglass Ripper's office covered most of the 414th floor of the Unification Council Spacescraper. The area was huge, over twenty-five hundred square meters, unobstructed by divisions. The area was empty but for the desk that sat against one wall. The desk, of some black stone, was three meters long, two wide. Approaching it across the soft gray carpet, beneath the bright sunpaint, Denice felt a flicker of annoyance; she was meant to feel dwarfed in the midst of the vastness, and it was working.
The trio of dark gray chairs placed in front of the huge black desk were the same size and model as Ripper's chair. The man sitting behind the desk, watching Denice approach, was remarkably unprepossessing. Denice found herself, oddly, disappointed. Ripper looked like a midlevel executive of any large corporation; tall, brown-eyed and dark-haired, wearing an immaculately tailored blue pinstripe suit. His features were even and regular and slightly tanned; pleasant without being particularly handsome.
Ripper rose from his desk as she approached, and came forward to greet her. "'Selle Daimara." His handshake was firm but not overbearing; his hands were soft and uncalloused, the hands of a man who had never in his life done any sort of physical labor. Ripper released her hand after a moment and gestured at the middle seat of the three.
Denice seated herself. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Councilor Ripper."
"Likewise, 'Selle Daimara. Robert speaks highly of you."
"I know."
Ripper leaned back, watching Denice unabashedly. "I watched your video; I like the way you move."
"Thank you."
"I've known Robert I think twenty years now. Generally when he recommends somebody, I'm interested. I've hired five men from him in, I don't know, maybe the last ten years." Ripper paused. "Thirteen years. I hired the first guy after I was elected Unification Councilor back in late '62. Why do you want to work for me, as opposed to, say, SecGen Eddore?"
"Eddore is a man with no morals."
Ripper sat watching her, mild, sardonic amusement hovering around the corners of his mouth. "Oh? And I'm not?"
Denice Castanaveras fixed her gaze upon the man who would be Secretary General, and spoke evenly and without emphasis. "Are you?"
"Well, that," said Ripper, "is a damned good question." He paused, said, "I've audited your résumé. It's impressive, but it doesn't tell me anything about you. Tell me about yourself. Starting when you were young."
"I've studied with Robert since I was fourteen. At first--"
"Younger."
Denice paused, editing truth out of things she could not tell him; she found, somewhat to her surprise, that she did not want to lie to Ripper. "My parents died in the Troubles. Both of them. I don't remember much from my childhood. I had a brother, but we were separated in the riots following the Troubles, and I haven't seen him in over twelve years. He's probably dead. I was--" Denice paused again. She did not have to pretend difficulty in remembering; the first few months of the Troubles were a hazy period in her life. "I didn't stay anywhere for a week or a month, something like that. I don't really know how long. Sometimes people fed me and sometimes I stole things to eat. I was raped at least once. Maybe more, I don't remember."
Ripper said softly, "After that?"
"I woke up one morning and I was in a big barracks. It was Public Labor, but I didn't know that at the time, didn't know what Public Labor was." Denice shrugged. "So I learned. I was in Public Labor for four years. When I was thirteen a woman named Orinda Gleygavass paid my Labor debt and got me out. She was a dancer and teacher. She gave me a home; she was the one who sent me to study with Robert."
"Orinda Gley--what?"
"Gleygavass."
"A total stranger paid your Public Labor debt? Why?"
"She did it for a lot of girls. She was wealthy and she wanted to do something for all the people the Troubles damaged. I had some dance background from before the Troubles, a little training. Madame Gleygavass trained me as a dancer, had Robert train my muscles. I learned that I enjoyed martial discipline more than I enjoyed dance."
"Ah. Why is that name familiar to me?"
"Orinda Gleygavass? She died a couple of years ago in an accident; before she died, she led what she liked to claim was the best dance troupe in the System. It was the best known. You're a politician; even if you don't remember the Gleygavass dance troupe, you must remember Leviathan. A group of Unification Councilors tried to shut it down because they were upset about the--"
Douglass Ripper sat up very straight, looking for the first time more than professionally interested in their conversation. "Oh, my. I know you."
"Really?"
"You danced in Leviathan."
"You saw it?"
"Twice. By Harry--you must have been what, sixteen? Back in '69?"
"And '70. Yes."
"Good Lord. You were the most--" Ripper shook himself slightly, made an irritable gesture. "I hated the play. Revisionist history of the worst sort--I met Jules Moreau once before he died, and he was nothing like the character portrayed in Leviathan. Still--that bit at the end, where your character Marina seduced him--you've had biosculpture since then," he said abruptly. "Why?"
"I didn't like the way I looked. My breasts got too big to keep dancing; I had biosculpture to slim them down, and had my eyes done at the same time because I thought it would look attractive."
"It worked. So you were in Public Labor four years. How do you feel about that?"
Denice was surprised by the intensity of the feeling that came to her; it was nothing she had planned to say
. She said fiercely, "That nobody should ever have to grow up in Public Labor again. Ever. That if there has to be a Ministry of Population Control, then we should demolish the current one and rebuild it from scratch. That the Peace Keeping Force should be kept out of the United States and out of the streets everywhere. I feel--that I need--I need to do something." She met the hard, skeptical gaze head-on, stared him down. "To make a difference."
Ripper nodded slowly. "Robert said you were good." He spoke with honest curiosity. "Why me?"
"To make a difference you have to be in the right place. And you're running for Secretary General in '76."
"Could be."
"Your standing in the polls is at least five points over your nearest rival. There's no way you're not going to run. I spent the last six months researching members of the Unification Council. You're an American. You were a Senator at the age of twenty-eight. If--"
Ripper snorted. "And when I was twelve I walked dogs for people. I got elected to the Senate as young as I did because it's a meaningless position and nobody else wanted the damn job enough to outspend me for it."
"That meaningless position got you into the Unification Council."
Ripper shrugged. "The incumbent Councilor died in the Troubles. A right-place, right-time deal. 'Selle Daimara, you're not answering my question. If you've decided to work in politics, fair enough; the desire for public service gets sneered at these days, but it's very real. Still, you're bright and talented and I suspect there are half a dozen Unification Councilors besides myself who would hire you on Robert's recommendation--I know I'm not the only one who hires people Robert has trained."
"Why you?" Denice thought through how to say it, then shrugged and decided to put it bluntly. "You're my best guess. I don't know you, and what I know of how you've voted in the Council doesn't fill me with immense confidence. But you're no worse than most of the other Councilors, and better than some; and the fact that you're an American counts with me. What the Unification has done to Occupied America is a crime."
Ripper said simply, "The rage is there. We all know it, we all live with it. We all have it, even those of us who have become a part of the Unification. Our job is to make sure the rage never explodes. There are other things we do, but that's the key. Most of what you haven't liked about my voting record--well, some of it comes out of compromising with other Councilors, trading votes on things I don't care about in return for their votes on things about which I do care. It makes my voting record look inconsistent in place, but it's part of the business. But a lot of the rest has come about as a result of that fundamental goal: to keep the lid on a country that's been ready for rebellion for twenty years. A rebellion that Occupied America cannot win. Why do you think I'm running for Secretary General?"
The analysis Denice gave him was, almost word for word, what Ralf the Wise and Powerful had said to her some two months prior:
"This is the third, final term that Eddore is able to serve as Secretary General. If he were allowed another term you wouldn't run. You're popular but he's more popular and you'd lose. Virtually anyone running against him would except, maybe, Michael Moreau. But Moreau's not running, and in the '76 elections Eddore can't run again. Recent polls give you thirty-two percent of the vote. That's over five percent higher than Zhao Pen, even with the bulk of the Chinese vote behind him. He'll get his billion-odd votes, but he won't get any more. And no Frenchman besides Moreau stands any chance, not in an honest election. The likeliest real opposition you'd face is Sanford Mtumka, down in Pan-Africa. There's a lot of ageist dissatisfaction with the current administration, and you're even younger than Eddore; you won't be considered any kind of an improvement. Mtumka's over eighty; most of the old vote will go to him, even after accounting for racial bias. But that's only nineteen percent."
Ripper laughed. "You've gamed this out for yourself. You want to work for a winner, and you think I can be one."
"I don't know, Councilor. All I know is you have a chance."
Ripper became abruptly still, poised like a hawk, and out of nowhere fixed a striking, improbably forceful gaze upon Denice; under the impact of that gaze, for the first time, Denice found it possible to believe that this was a man who might be running the Unification in another eighteen months. "Denice, if I offer you this job, you'll be traveling with me whenever I'm out of Capitol City, and during those times you'll be living with me more intimately than you've ever lived with anyone; twenty-four hours a day, from the moment we leave Capitol City to the moment we return. In the performance of your job you'll be called on to shield my life with your own, to kill if it's necessary to defend me. Can you do that?"
"You're very eloquent, Councilor Ripper."
It stopped him; Ripper looked at her for a second. "I can be, with a good speech writer."
Denice knew the answer he was waiting for. "I've never killed anyone, Councilor Ripper. But I think I could do it once. After that I don't know."
Ripper nodded. "Fair enough. I like you. See Ichabod before you leave. In addition to everything else he handles most of my personal secretarial work. He'll walk you through the paperwork and security background check." He stood, held his hand out again. "Welcome aboard."
"I haven't said yes."
Ripper stood motionless, hand held out to her, and then smiled at her. "Oh? Haven't you?"
* * *
4.
They sat in the dojo, late Monday afternoon, facing one another across the length of the mat. The westward-facing windows had been opened; sunlight streamed in, bright and warm, and they could hear the sounds of the city.
"So it went well."
"I think so. He hired me."
"He would have been foolish not to."
"You sent him video of me, he said."
Robert nodded. "Old, obviously. From the San Diego Freestyle Open, back in '71. You were eighteen and your form was--if I were not concerned about the size of your ego I might call it flawless. And you're better today."
Denice bit her lip. "Thank you."
"Truth is not a compliment. It merely exists. I've never seen anyone who moves the way you do, Denice. Not ever. You impress me, which is not easy; I'm sure you impressed him."
"He impressed me. A lot."
Robert's features held no expression. "Oh?"
"It was--at first," said Denice in a swift tumble of words, "I couldn't see it. Ripper, as Secretary General. He's so different from Eddore. He was dressed in this suit you could have seen some bank vice president wearing. And his voice is sort of flat and he doesn't use it well. And he needs to work out more."
"Most do."
"But then we talked. He explains himself well. And he talked about the desire for public service, and it was one of the only times I didn't get any sense that he was being cynical." Denice paused. "I was very impressed."
"Being impressive is his job, Denice. It's how he got elected and part of how he keeps getting elected. Don't let him impress you too much. He's a decidedly fallible man, and if you work with him long enough, some day he will fail you. As Douglass likes to say, it's part of the business."
Denice nodded, looked away from Robert for a moment, and then said, "I have missed your wisdom."
Robert smiled, said gently, "Oh, my dear. There is no such thing."
"Oh?"
Robert's smile faded, and he said with as much seriousness as she had ever seen him use on any subject, "Denice, be wary of people who have answers to your problems. Those answers I have found for myself--the things that strike you as wisdom--are not your answers, and they are only my answers today. Tomorrow I will be a different person with different needs. The world and its people are too complex for any system of beliefs to fully address their complexity. The map does not hold; it can't. When you learn something for yourself, hold to it; but do not expect it to work for others. Sometimes it will. More often it will not."
Denice grinned. "You sit there and tell me there is no such thing as wisdom, and then pour a bucket of it ov
er me. I'm glad to be back, Robert. I am glad to be home."
He nodded, then said slowly, "I thought, as the weeks became months and I did not hear from you, that I had lost you forever. I am more pleased than I can say that I have not."
After she had gone Robert waited quietly in the darkness at the far northern edge of the practice mat. He sat upon the mat itself, facing north. On the wooden floor that surrounded the mat, where the mat ceased, a polished blue stone teapot rested upon a base of the same material. Within the base flickered a small candle. One candle would keep the tea within the pot hot for most of a night.
Robert sat and sipped tea, and waited for nightfall, and his visitor.
While he waited he listened to music.
It was a strangeness of his era, that a knowledge of music, once the hallmark of civilized men and women, was now a thing of the streets. Robert was not enough of a historian to know how it had come to pass; he suspected the trend had begun back near the turn of the century; as serious a period, he thought, as the world had ever seen. Following the dawn of the new millennium men and women had faced the prospect of long decades of work to recover from the mistakes of the century just done. And, led by Sarah Almundsen, the world had risen to the challenge. The Unification War had resulted, and after the Unification--
Nearly every ecological problem that mankind had faced, and most of the social ones, were directly a result of the fact that the planet groaned beneath the weight of too many human beings. It was a fact that could not be disputed.
After the Unification had come the Ministry of Population Control.
A serious time, to deal with serious problems; problems that had in a real sense threatened the survival of the race.
But on the other side of the problems, once the very question of human survival was no longer in doubt, something had been lost, some refinement, some taste for culture and laughter. The world had grown a grimmer place. It was a thing Robert had not even known until perhaps eight years ago, after meeting Denice Daimara. She guarded herself well, and it had been most of a year before he had been certain she was a genie, and several years after that before he had known her, beyond doubt, for one of the infamous Castanaveras.
The Last Dancer Page 4