The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  To Denice's cold horror, she found that Jimmy Ramirez believed Obodi's story. "He's human," said Jimmy Ramirez simply. "He's as human as anyone could be. He's just not from Earth. We're not. We're the children of the exiles, of the people who were imprisoned here fifty thousand years ago."

  Denice sat through the initial rush of Jimmy's explanation; she sensed that he had been wanting, perhaps since his initial meeting with the man, to speak about Sedon with someone he trusted. She spoke quietly and carefully. "Jimmy, do you know anything about genetics?"

  It stopped him cold. "No, not really. Not as much as you, I'm sure. Why?"

  "There's only a two percent difference in the genetic code of humans and apes. Did you know that?"

  "No. And I don't see what you're getting at."

  "You know the moss that was found on Titan?"

  "Yes."

  The point was one that Ring had made for her; nonetheless it made sense to her, and she did not hesitate to present it as her own: "That moss doesn't use DNA, Jimmy. It doesn't use any of the same base of amino acids that we use, and there's no particular reason it should. There are hundreds of amino acids that would work as well as the ones that, by chance, ended up composing the DNA of plants and animals on Earth. The chance that alien genetic material would have anything in common with that of plants and animals on Earth is so unlikely it's flat plain impossible."

  "I'm sorry," said Jimmy slowly, "maybe I'm stupid. So?"

  "This Obodi, he's human, right? No question about it. Jimmy, humans evolved on Earth. Not anywhere else. Life that evolved elsewhere would be so different from us that it couldn't even eat our food without being poisoned. The chance that humans evolved elsewhere independently, and then came here--there is no chance that that happened."

  Jimmy was well educated, better educated in most ways than she was; she saw the argument sink home. Finally he shook his head, said simply, "Maybe you're right. Maybe." He grinned at her then, said, "But wait until you meet him. Read his mind and see what you think, and then you tell me. Denice, he's real."

  Denice said softly, "Okay."

  "Denice?"

  "Yes?"

  "We can use you. But that's not why I'm glad you're with us."

  Denice turned in her seat, hugged Jimmy suddenly and fiercely, and whispered into his ear, "Thank you, Jimmy. Thank you very much."

  After a bit Jimmy said, "You can let go now." He sank back in his seat and straightened his coat and tie. "I know you're stronger than I am," he said a moment later, "but you don't need to make a point of it by bruising my ribs."

  "You used to be stronger than me. You're out of shape these days."

  "I'm a lawyer, not a boxer. And even when I was stronger than you, I couldn't have taken you if my life had depended on it." Ramirez shrugged. "Muscles aren't everything."

  Denice nodded, let herself relax against him. True enough.

  She had slept less than eight hours in the prior two and a half days; not long after that she closed her eyes, relaxed into the vibration of the flying car, and went to sleep with her head on Jimmy Ramirez's shoulder.

  Some two hundred troops in gray PKF combat fatigues, mostly men, were encamped in a ragged semi-circle stretching across most of a kilometer of hillside in the Santa Monica mountains. The circle of troops faced a small collection of buildings, inside a walled enclosure, across a distance of perhaps two hundred meters.

  "Bad timing," said Jimmy as they stepped out of the car, into the gray, early morning light. Denice glanced over at Lan and Callia; they looked every bit as much at a loss as she felt. "Let's let them get their work done, and then we'll introduce you around. For now, keep your mouths shut."

  The car had landed at a rough downlot near the edge of the encampment. Mist still crawled over the campsite, slightly obscured the view of the building the troops were arrayed against.

  A table had been set up at the edge of the downlot, bearing donuts, bagels, coffee, and fruit juices. A half dozen men and women in civilian clothing stood near the table, eating, drinking and talking in quiet voices.

  A pair of PKF AeroSmiths hovered overhead.

  Jimmy gestured to a row of small folding chairs, set up near the table. "Have a seat. I'll be right back."

  Lan looked around helplessly after Jimmy had gone. "Great. Who wants orange juice?"

  Callia shrugged. "I do. Denice?"

  "Sure."

  They walked over to the refreshments table together. Callia said, "This seems very familiar to me."

  Lan nodded, pouring. "Me too."

  Denice shook her head. "Not me." She had taken one sip of the juice when the firefight began.

  Laser light stabbed downhill, toward the massed ranks of the PKF soldiers. From the PKF positions, artillery fire responded, an awesome barrage of shelling which blew down a huge section of the wall surrounding the small enclave. A wave of gray clad foot soldiers surged forward, running through the early morning mist toward the enclave's smoldering structures. Laser light reached out from the windows and doorways of the now-exposed buildings, a ragged response to the PKF shelling.

  Denice stood with a paper cup full of orange juice in one hand and watched the assault.

  The PKF troops reached the edge of the enclosure and paused to regroup. A huge, booming voice, enormously amplified, called out in a strong, vaguely Latin accent, "YOU HAVE ONE LAST OPPORTUNITY TO THROW DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER. YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS TO DECIDE."

  "That's right," said Callia to no one in particular. "They'd already fried the President, and they wanted to take the Speaker of the House alive."

  "They waited twenty seconds before they went in," said Lan.

  Denice was not counting; nonetheless she thought Lan was probably correct. About twenty seconds had passed when the PKF troops crossed over the broken stretch of wall, and into the door to door fighting that had marked the Unification's conquest of the Camden Protectorate, in the last significant battle of the Unification War.

  Perhaps sixty seconds after the final wave of the assault had begun, a hugely amplified voice boomed down out of the sky: "CUT!"

  Jimmy shrugged. "The extras are all Rebs. We've got a couple of Claw playing officers, and another couple of Claw in the production crew. The second unit director, Joe Chang, is handling all of the action scenes; he's a Reb, ex-Space Force, one of our best combat people. The building they're attacking is, by an odd coincidence, laid out in very nearly the fashion of the PKF barracks that exists, today, in Los Angeles."

  Callia said flatly, "This is the craziest thing I ever heard of."

  Denice blinked.

  Jimmy looked at Callia without expression. They were seated out in the open about forty meters away from the trailer where the second unit director sat with a full sensory traceset covering most of his skull, working through the morning's rushes. "Is it? We needed a place to train. Somewhere outside, in terrain at least something like the terrain in which we're going to be fighting. Chris Summers recommended the Santa Monica mountains, and we did a complete risk analysis before we started. We're actually shooting a sensable; Terry Shawmac wrote the script, Adam Selstrom agreed to play Jules Moreau. Shawmac knows what we're doing--he had to, to craft the script in such a way that we would get the training results we needed. Selstrom doesn't. Most of the balance of the crew are sympathizers, supporting members of the Reb, a few Claw who we don't think the PKF have ever made. The sets aren't historically accurate, but the PKF don't care about that; that we're shooting a pro-Unification sensable during the TriCentennial made them very happy. Licensing was a cakewalk; Unification officials have been so cooperative with us I barely know how to describe it. It's more than a little eerie."

  Callia shook her head. "I don't like it. This is very risky. Was Nicole consulted on this?"

  Jimmy looked at her. "'Selle Sierran, I honestly don't know. That's a matter between 'Selle Lovely and Obodi. Lovely will be in Los Angeles again in two days; most of the evacuation is going to end up here o
n this set, for training. You can ask Lovely when she gets here whether she was consulted. But if you can think of any way other than the one we chose to give our people some remarkably genuine combat experience prior to July 4, I'd love to hear it. We have Unification spysats hovering overhead right now that take pictures so sharp they can see if your makeup key is detuned. But they're not watching us; they know who we are." He shrugged. "Good Germans, making a pro-Unification sensable."

  Lan and Callia left, Denice did not know where to, at mid-morning. To her surprise, Denice found herself left more or less to her own devices for the rest of that day. Jimmy vanished on unspecified business after lunch, left in an obvious hurry after telling her to listen to anybody who wanted to talk to her, but to tell them nothing about herself. "You'll be here about two weeks, I think; we have a job in mind for you, but I think it needs to get cleared before I tell you any more about it."

  Denice raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

  They were alone, nobody else within hearing distance. Nonetheless Jimmy dropped his voice. "My job is to tell people what they need to know, when they need to know it. That's difficult with you, obviously."

  "Jimmy, I don't Touch people when I don't have to. I especially don't do it to my friends." She paused. "When do I get to meet 'Sieur Obodi?"

  "When he sends for you. Probably," said Jimmy, "very soon." He kissed her on the forehead quickly, said, "I'll be back."

  "Sixty."

  The man standing next to Denice in the cloudy sunshine, at the edge of a long bluff overlooking a deep ravine, was raw boned and moderately ugly. He had the wide shoulders of a pro football player, and the lanky frame of a pro basketball player. A cigarette holder, lit cigarette smouldering at its tip, dangled from his lips.

  A pair of incredibly dark, round granny sunglasses protected his eyes from the hazy sun.

  He wore a Beijing Bears windbreaker and a Los Angeles Lakers cap.

  Denice thought he had recognized her, but had not bothered to ask.

  "I've been having a surreal life," said Denice, "recently."

  Three empty bottles of Tytan Smoke Whiskey littered the ground around him. In his left hand he held a fourth bottle, and in his right he held a small round object with a red 49s flickering on its surface. 48s.

  A crate full of the small round objects sat on the ground at his feet.

  "Me too," said Terry Shawmac. "Forty-five."

  "I keep having this dream. Do you want to hear about it?"

  "Not particularly. I think," said Shawmac carefully, "that today I want to blow things up."

  "I'm standing in this empty black place--"

  "An editor's office? Why would you dream about standing in an editor's office?" Shawmac paused. "Fifteen."

  "--and there's this flame that comes out of nowhere and dances around me, and it's the best thing I've ever felt in my life. What's that you're holding?"

  "A hand grenade. Which goes off in--" In one smooth motion Shawmac pitched the grenade over the edge of the bluff and shrieked, "Duck!"

  Shawmac threw himself down, being careful of the bottle in his hand.

  Denice took one step backward.

  A moment later the hand grenade exploded with a muffled whump. Fragments of metal and clods of earth exploded upward, into the sky.

  From where he lay on the ground, Shawmac said, "I'm the explosives master on this sensable. For the effects."

  "Really."

  Shawmac rolled over on his back, lay staring up at the sky. He had avoided crushing the cigarette at the end of his holder, and he puffed on it before speaking. "They wanted someone else. But they wanted my script."

  "So that's why you quit your column?"

  "I didn't quit," he snarled. "I retired."

  "Quit, retired. Big difference."

  "It's an immense difference," Shawmac muttered petulantly. "When you quit you don't get your pension." Loudly, he said, "They wanted my script."

  "You said that."

  "But they wanted this other guy to do the explosives. Some deserting Space Force punk."

  "Really."

  "So we compromised. Other guy got the title, you understand. The credit. But they gave me a bunch of hand grenades to play with." Shawmac took a long drink and shrugged. Denice thought shrugging must be a difficult thing to do while lying down on the ground. "It seemed fair."

  "My life has been very surreal recently, I think I said that."

  "You did."

  "You're not helping."

  "We all have problems," Shawmac agreed. "I'm having the odd reality lapse myself today. This big ol' son of a bitch with a long white beard is sitting in the grass over there, you just walked through him, and he's got a shoebox, and in the shoebox are the dice. So he shakes the box back and forth, real fast, so the dice never quite get a chance to land, and the cover is on the shoebox anyway so you can't see inside."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Physics, dear." Terry Shawmac stared at her with his granny sunglasses. "The state of physics today. Want a drink?"

  "Not if it's going to make me see big ol' sons of bitches with shoeboxes, no."

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But you won't know til you've had a drink, will you? What do you like?"

  Denice shivered. "Anything but tequila."

  "I have eight bottles of Tytan smoke left." Shawmac paused. "Maybe seven. I drank something last night and I don't remember what it was." He squinted at the bottle in his hand. "This one is the only one I have left with me. Here, at this location. If I want more I have to go back to my trailer."

  Denice sat down next to Shawmac, refused his gestured offer of the bottle. "Since you're here, I was wondering if I could ask you some questions."

  "I charge. Want to throw a grenade?"

  "No."

  "You should try it," said Shawmac earnestly. "God, I love explosives. Sometimes when a really big one goes I can get my rocks off." He sat up suddenly, said grimly, "That's not the sort of thing a man likes to have known about him, not in public. If this gets out I'll know where to go."

  "Who would I share it with?"

  "Um, good point. Questions? What sort? If it's anything about that bitch Ichabod, don't even start."

  Denice blinked. "You do remember me."

  "We met at a dinner, I forget where. You're one of Ripper's little girlfriends with muscles. He seems to like those." Shawmac sucked back another hit of whiskey, swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing. "Denice."

  "I'm impressed. You were drunk as a Peaceforcer on payday that night."

  "I'm always drunk. Reputation, you know. It's gotten easier to handle as I've gotten older, had more practice." Shawmac whipped his sunglasses off, fixed Denice with an even, icy stare. "When I was a boy, hangovers were serious. They weren't some punk inconvenience that some little transform virus floating around in your bloodstream stomped down before you even got a headache. Oh, Brave New World. You don't recognize the reference, do you?"

  Denice said, "No."

  Shawmac whipped his sunglasses back on. "Look it up. Why should I be the only educated person left in the whole damn System?" He smiled at her then, became, with a mood switch as sudden as the touching of a pressure point, the charming lecturer she had seen on the Boards. He picked up another hand grenade suddenly, rubbed a thumb over the fuse. A bright red 60s appeared on the surface of the bulb. 59s. "What can I do for you, dear?"

  "I need advice, 'Sieur Shawmac."

  Shawmac said with instant paranoia, "You're not like the others, are you?"

  "Not really."

  "You're a real person. With a heart. And blood, and intestines. Would you like to be my friend?"

  Denice took a deep breath. "Mister Shawmac, I'm curious about something, and I know you've written on more different subjects than anyone else I've ever read. What I want to know is--is it possible that there was another civilization before ours? Or that the human race evolved on another planet?"

  Shawmac looked at her curiously, holding the bul
b of blasting plastic while the fuse counted down. 12s. "What?"

  "Is it--look, could you throw that?"

  "Huh? Oh, sure." The fuse had counted down to 5s; Shawmac seemed startled to realize he was still holding it. He tossed it backward, over his shoulder. This time it nearly reached the ground before exploding; it was nowhere near as loud as the previous grenade. "Sorry about that," said Shawmac. "Where were we?"

  "It's just I can't think clearly when you do that. It makes me nervous."

  "I'll stop." Shawmac unsealed his blazer, reached inside for his handheld. "Like Atlantis or something?"

  Denice nodded. "I've heard stories about 'Sieur Obodi that are very odd."

  "He ran the same cruel, relentless line on me. The one about how he was exiled from another planet, and got trapped in a slowtime bubble, and we're all the long-lost descendants of him and his fellow exiles. All that shit." Shawmac shrugged, flipping the handheld open. FrancoDEC, Denice noted, the same model as the crippled handhelds the rebel soldiers had been given. "I was toasted when we talked, it sounded reasonable. I agreed with him and he sent me away after a while. I don't think he knew what to make of me."

  "Do you think he could be telling the truth?"

  "Not a chance in hell. The man's a sick and demented pig, is what I think." Data scrolled up through the handheld's holofield. "Here we go. Okay, listen: Middle Paleolithic period began about 300,000 years ago and lasted until about 30,000 years ago. People of this period made flake tools by striking thin sharp flakes from large stones. Upper Paleolithic started about 30,000 years ago and lasted until about 10,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended. What do we have to work with--blade tools, stone hammers, punches, chisels, scrapers, drills. It says that they boiled things in bark or skin containers." Shawmac glanced up from the field. "Odds are that nobody was building slowtime fields back then."

  "Odds are?"

  Shawmac snorted. "That's sarcasm. Nobody was building slowtime fields, okay? Wasn't happening. If the sort of industrial infrastructure had existed back then that would have been required for something like this, there would be an extensive fossil record. You couldn't turn around without tripping over the shell of somebody's spacescraper."