The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  --from beneath them.

  Jimmy was trying to turn himself over, failing.

  Denice looked over the edge of the roof as the cold night wind whipped at her. Thirty floors below them, the semiballistic moved slowly up the black-faced side of the building, windows exploding from the heat of the rockets as the semiballistic passed by. Denice turned back to Jimmy, pulled his arm over her shoulder and, bearing most of his weight herself, hauled him up to stand on his remaining foot.

  Jimmy's back screamed at him; he screamed with it. When he had control of his voice again, he said harshly, "What's happening?"

  "Our ride is here."

  A hatch opened in the side of the semiballistic, on the upper surface of the craft. Sunpaint glowed like daylight in the hatch's opening; a man's figure appeared inside the hatch.

  "What's happening? I can't see anything."

  The semiballistic came to a halt with the upper hatch hovering twenty meters below them. The man in the hatch shouted something up at them, could barely even make his voice heard above the awesome thunder of the rockets; Denice had not the faintest idea what he was shouting.

  It came to her.

  "Oh, no."

  "What? What's wrong?"

  "He wants us to jump. The semiballistic is hovering beneath us and they want us to jump to it."

  "Jump?"

  "Jump."

  She heard the terror in Jimmy's voice. "No. No, I can't. Have them bring the semiballistic closer."

  "If they do we'll fry like bacon."

  "Denice, we don't even know who they are."

  "We'll find out. If we stay up here we're going to die."

  "If we jump we're going to die!"

  "At least it'll be fast. On three."

  Jimmy's mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. "Have I ever mentioned I'm afraid of heights?"

  Denice's grip on him tightened. "Me too." She looked down at the semiballistic's open hatch. "We'll go together."

  He shivered convulsively. "On three?"

  "One, two--"

  Jimmy never heard her speak the word three. The sky wheeled around them as they fell toward the waiting semiballistic.

  Sixty seconds later Robert Yo, sitting in a mobile chair with supports for his head and arms, had placed an IV in Jimmy Ramirez's arm, a tourniquet around the stump of Jimmy's right calf, and was dressing the stump. Denice stood next to them, shoulders bent beneath the force of four gravity's acceleration, watching Jimmy's pale, unconscious features.

  A tall, hugely muscled man who Denice did not know, the man who had plucked them out of the sky and pulled them into the hatch after they had nearly missed it, lay on the acceleration couch next to Jimmy's.

  She had so many questions she did not bother asking any of them, except one. "Is he going to make it?"

  Robert did not look at her. "Almost certainly. We have a stasis field built into the chair; we'll turn it on as soon as he's stabilized."

  Denice moved very carefully to the empty acceleration couch across the aisle from Jimmy's; she had heard the SpaceFarers' Collective horror stories, knew that under four gees even tripping could be fatal. She got herself into the acceleration couch, moving with infinite slowness, before she tried to speak again. "What is our destination?"

  The man across the way from her spoke with a distinct Irish lilt.

  "Halfway first. We'll change craft there; the PKF will be all over this SB within an hour after we dock, and the head of Security at Halfway, fellow named Corona, will be on us well before that. We'll need to be away quickly."

  "To where?"

  "Boyo name of F.X. Chandler wants to meet you. He's coming back from Mars to do it."

  "I've heard of him."

  The black eyes simply looked at her.

  "Who are you?"

  "You can call me William. The name of my Name is Dvan; I am a Shield of the Gi'Tbad. At your service, Miss."

  Denice did not know what made her so certain: "You're one of Sedon's people."

  The huge man said simply, "I am that."

  Robert finished with Jimmy, said, "Stabilized," and moved his chair back from Jimmy. A silver oblong slowtime bubble glittered for an instant and then formed solid around Jimmy Ramirez's prone form; Denice found herself looking at her own distorted reflection. Robert's chair rocked back, turned itself into one of the couches Denice and Dvan lay in. "I'm ready."

  Dvan said, "We must beat our pursuit to Halfway by a good bit if we're to have any hope of freedom. We'll be at eight gravities the rest of the way."

  Robert Dazai Yo said without looking at Denice, "I'm pleased to see you again."

  Denice said, "I--"

  An impact field muffled her voice, and then a giant fist balled itself up and hit her in the face.

  * * *

  23.

  They sat alone together, lights dimmed, inside the gym that whirled around and around Francis Xavier Chandler's home. Denice had never actually thought about what it must mean to be the wealthiest human being in the System; Chandler's orbital house brought it home to her with a vengeance.

  The house was larger than some of the Belt CityStates.

  The main house was a huge, slowly rotating cylinder; three levels of increasing gravity, some eight hundred chambers divided into dining rooms, living quarters, office space, medical facilities, a theater and a sensable parlor. At the center of the house was a free fall swimming pool and zero gee racquetball court.

  The gym, when deployed, hung at the end of eight long monocrystal cables. Using it required an act of faith with which Denice had, at first, had great difficulty. Normally the gym was attached to the house; when one wanted to use it, the gym and a counterweight were detached from the house, and pushed out with gentle blasts of air until the gym and its counterweight hung straight out from the cylinder of the house, one hundred and eighty degrees apart. The monocrystal cables grew stiff and an engine started turning, slowly at first and then with greater speed; the gym and counterweight began revolving around their common center, faster and faster and faster until the gym reached the 980 centimeters per second squared acceleration that imitated one Earth gravity.

  A bounce tube connecting the gym and the house, wide enough for one person at a time, became operational at that point; it would not allow access until the gym had stabilized and the sensors on the cables reported virtually identical levels of stress on each of the eight cables.

  The process took nearly an hour.

  The basic principle was not in the least incomprehensible to Denice; it was the sheer size of the implementation that was so daunting. The gym was every bit as large as Robert's dojo on Earth; Denice kept having images of the cables snapping under the immense strain, of the gym spinning off into space. There were no windows; except for the very slight Coriolis effect, Denice could have easily believed she sat with Robert in a gym somewhere on Earth itself.

  The gravity was perfect.

  They sat in lotus, on a pristine white mat that had clearly not seen much use. As usual, Denice had no success at reading Robert's impassive features. He had been completely silent as she described Los Angeles, described what had happened there. "I think Sedon was dead soon after we left."

  "Frank--F.X. Chandler, that is--informed me when he called today that the PKF were inside the building within eight minutes after our semiballistic took off." Robert shook his head. "All that were left were dead rebels. Obodi--excuse me, Sedon--was not there, nor were any of the four whom you left unconscious."

  "You're on a first name basis with Chandler?"

  Robert said gently, "I have been teaching at the edge of Capitol City for thirty years. I have trained every bodyguard F.X. Chandler has employed in the last fifteen years. I have met Christine Mirabeau, Mohammed Vance, the Secretary General, most of the Unification Councilors--if I wished to speak to the Secretary General himself, I think I could arrange it in an hour."

  "And training his bodyguards, that's how you ended up with the use of one of Chandler'
s semiballistics?"

  Robert shrugged as though the point were so obvious it hardly bore elaborating.

  "This Dvan, who is he? How do you know him?"

  Robert shook his head. "I don't. Your AI friend Ralf came to me yesterday and told me you were in danger, that he had just learned you had been summoned to rebel headquarters in Los Angeles, and that he was doubtful you would leave there alive. He knew I had trained Chandler's people--he knew a frightening amount about me--"

  "AIs tend to have lots of time on their hands."

  The laugh lines around Robert's eyes crinkled slightly. "Apparently. Your friend Ralf is the first I've ever met. At any rate, at Ralf's suggestion, I called Frank, found he'd gone to Mars on business, and arranged with his head of staff--a woman I trained--for the loan of the semiballistic; it was the fastest way either of us could think of to get me to L.A. Dvan was aboard the sub-orbital when it arrived at Unification Spaceport; apparently he's been working with Chandler for the last several months." A pensive look crossed Robert's features; given his normal lack of expressiveness, Denice assumed it meant he was deeply disturbed. "We spoke together briefly; though he is no night face, he spoke shiata. I could hardly follow him. The vocabulary I know covers some six thousand words, dedicated primarily to matters of combat and spirit. In attempting to speak to me, he used words I had not encountered before, in an accent wildly different from my own--as though a Roman soldier of Caesar's time were attempting to speak to a modern scholar using Church Latin. More than once he corrected my usage and pronunciation--and not very politely; he holds some grudge against me already, I don't know why. We ended up using English; I think he spoke to me in shiata as an experiment, to see if it could be done." He shrugged again. "There is little left to tell you. We were out of atmosphere when Ralf contacted us again, told us that you were under engagement at the Bank of America Building. We took ourselves off TransCon, changed course, and found you trapped atop the building. It was Dvan's suggestion that we have you jump. At Halfway, when we changed vehicles, Dvan headed back to Earth." Robert's eyes were very steady on Denice. "You were helping load Ramirez's stasis box aboard the sled when he said this; he told me that he was returning to Los Angeles to kill 'the dancer'."

  "He called Sedon a dancer?"

  "Yes. An interesting word."

  Denice said slowly, "I doubt he'll have the opportunity to kill Sedon; the man's intestines were cooked, Robert."

  Robert shrugged. "If they got him to a surgical medbot within four or five minutes, he might well have survived. You would have, with the same injury; I might have myself. You should have made sure."

  "I wasn't thinking very clearly. It seemed--I had no interest--in killing someone so badly injured. As though it would not have been--" Denice paused, searching for the correct word "--proper. No, that's not a good word--seemly is better--" She broke off, regarded Robert for a long moment, then said in a rush, "It would have been bad art."

  "An interesting reaction. How many did you kill yesterday?"

  Denice thought back. "Two, six--between nine and twelve. Only the first eight where I was close enough to see them die, only three without weapons."

  "And how did it make you feel?"

  "It was different when I used my hands. Beyond that I'm not going to talk to you about it, not now, maybe not ever. I'm not proud of it." Robert inclined his head slightly, accepting it, and Denice went on. "You've heard about Sedon's story, this thing he tells his people about being an exile on Earth?"

  Robert nodded. "It was very nearly the entirety of my conversation with Dvan aboard the semiballistic. From what little I gathered, Dvan shares much the same delusion, if delusion it is. He was most remarkably convincing; at the very least Dvan knows details concerning the history of my discipline I would not have dreamed possible for one who is no shivata." There was a long silence then, as Robert sat quietly, hands on his knees, eyes closed. Finally, without opening his eyes, he said quietly, "Describe 'Sieur Sedon for me."

  "In some ways," said Denice, "he reminded me of you." She let her eyes drop closed, brought the scene back and held it before her. "For whatever it's worth--a hundred and ninety...five, hundred ninety-five centimeters. Excellent conditioning, like the very best professional dancers. Like you. Eyes--blue, I think. The quality of the light was not good, glowpaint fighting against orange sunlight, and then the glow of Jimmy's laser. Ageless face. Not young, but--I couldn't say how old. He doesn't look past forty, and I'm sure he's never had geriatric treatments. Biosculpture, maybe. Roman nose, thin lips, no facial hair. Blond hair, and he wears it in a tail." She paused. "A lot of pros--dancers, I mean--do that if they have very long hair, to keep it out of their eyes. The way he moves..." She replayed the scene in her mind, watching the way he had flowed up from the table, the pure, effortless poise with which he held himself. "I wish I'd had the chance to see him really move. He didn't move fast, but he could. Maybe as fast as me." She grinned suddenly. "Not as fast as light."

  "Could he be a dancer?"

  Denice opened her eyes, saw him watching her. "A pro, you mean? Not likely, not with that face for sure. I'd know him, or at least of him."

  "I can think of no one I know well," said Robert, "in the martial disciplines, who corresponds to your description. A trivial point, of course, with biosculp so cheap." He paused and said very softly, "I am disturbed by this. His questions to you--the question of you."

  Her wariness was reflexive. "How do you mean?"

  "Your business is your own, Denice. Or has been, until this matter, when I have had to make momentous decisions on insufficient information, to expose myself to dangers I do not understand, to take risks whose consequences I cannot factor. It is an axiom of nightways that there are only necessary actions and mistakes; I am not certain that what I have done in this matter was necessary."

  Denice said softly, "If you hadn't listened to Ralf, I would have died on that roof."

  Robert faced her and spoke from the depths of a discipline whose severity most humans could not have comprehended. "It might have been better so. But I have known and loved you eight years now, and the loss was one I chose not to bear." He was silent a moment, contemplating. "Eight years is in some measures a very long time; enough time, one would think, for honesty. I think it is time for honesty between us." The broad Asian features were very gentle. "Denice Castanaveras, I am a shivata."

  "What did you call me?"

  "Denice Castanaveras," said Robert Dazai Yo, "I am a night face."

  She stared at him in silence, all attempts at controlling her adrenalin abandoned; sat quivering, ready to move--

  --waiting.

  He took his time before continuing, watching her with eyes that held something at once deadly and mildly curious. "I share this with you. You have respected my privacy as I have respected yours, and it has, I think, saved your life. There is within me a thing that, had you touched it even with your thoughts, with that which the media used to call the Castanaveras Gift, I think it would have consumed you alive.

  "What I share with you is not a thing you could have taken from me; it is not a thing you will ever discuss with another, who is not your student as you have been mine."

  Denice's voice shook slightly. "I can't make that kind of a promise."

  Robert nodded. "I have not asked you to." He sighed, a very faint exhalation. "We are," he said at length, "an old discipline, so old our earliest teachings are lost, our beginnings merest legend. When Rome was young, we were already old. The followers of the Nameless One were there in Egypt, there in Rome; the oldest records of our people come from the Indus Valley of the land now called India. We left India and traversed Earth; there are records of our people in Arabia, in China and Japan, sharing the martial discipline, teaching those who could not ascend into the Mystery of the Kill; jealously hoarding the Mystery itself. That we have lasted into modern times is a tribute to our caution; our imitators, lacking the core, the Kill, vanished with the passage of time. Where they f
ailed, we survived.

  "There have rarely been more than a few shivata at once; the discipline is difficult to learn, and difficult to teach.

  "It is another element in the survival of our line; we have always been a discipline first, a people second. When nightways was largely Indian, there were Chinese brought into the Mystery; when it was largely Arab, Arab shivata taught white Europeans, if they could not find worthy students among their own.

  "Nonetheless, in his lifetime a night face might only train one other in the discipline. Some live their lives without finding a worthy student.

  "Before I met you, I thought at times that such might be my lot. I was initiated into the Mystery before my twentieth year; I spent thirty years teaching, searching for a student to pass on my discipline and my heritage. And until you there was no one.

  "I know you are a genie. I knew it shortly after Orinda Gleygavass brought you to my studio the first time, with the word that our master had desired you be brought into the discipline. I have been studying the human body since I was a boy, and humans do not possess your endurance, your speed, or your accuracy. The human body is in large measure a machine--and you are a superior machine.

  "So I knew you for a genie.

  "I suspected for years that you were one of the Castanaveras. That some of your people survived the Troubles is widely believed; and I researched, learned of the twins whom Unification Councilor Jerril Carson kidnapped on July second, 2062. You were the correct age to be one of those twins; on rare occasion you spoke of a brother, from whom you had been separated in the Troubles.

  "But then you vanished, back in the summer of '72. You have never volunteered to share information with me; I have not done so with you. After you vanished, a man named McGee came to my dojo. He informed me that several of the people to whom he had spoken about you--people whom he knew were your acquaintances and friends--could not speak to him about you. Not would not; they were unable.

  "I sent him away. But, as you see, before you returned to me I knew; and still I did not broach the subject with you, out of respect for your privacy and your reticence. Instead I taught you, all those things which it was within me to teach. You--disturbed me. The traditions of nightways are old, the history ancient; and there is no record of a student who could learn the discipline--as you can--who would not. You have absorbed the forms, the external disciplines, with a speed which leaves me at a loss.