The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  "I thought at first that it might be the fact that you are a woman; though women have attained the Kill, it has been rare in our history, and no female shivata exists today. Indeed, for most of our history it was thought impossible that a woman could be taught the discipline. I consulted the two night faces I know--one of them my teacher--and there are, in the last thousand years of our line, three instances of women attaining the Mystery; there are no recorded instances, among men or women, where a student who mastered the forms did not go on to attain the Kill, or die trying.

  "Two things which this Sedon, or Obodi, said to you, therefore disturb me. The first was when he asked you if you were a Keeper of the Flame. There is, and I think you know this, a Flame at the core of nightways; and to master our discipline--"

  Robert fell silent. When he spoke again he seemed to measure his words. "It is difficult for me to say this to you, to one who is not one of us. To master our discipline, a shivata must master, and then Kill--" Robert's mouth worked, and then, shivering, he spat the word, "--the Flame."

  They sat together in silence for several moments. Denice could not recall a time when Robert had been so visibly disturbed.

  At length Robert resumed. "But I have never heard of Keepers of the Flame before.

  "A second thing disturbs me, when Sedon asked you if you were a dancer. Shiabrè, Denice, means nightways. Or, perhaps more accurately, death in darkness. But the root word, shia, means either Flame--" Robert hesitated, took a long, deep breath, and said, "--or dance."

  They awaited F.X. Chandler's return from Mars.

  Neither Denice nor Robert knew what had happened to the man who had introduced himself as Dvan of the Gi'Tbad, the man who was, Ralf the Wise and Powerful assured her, a newsdancer named William Devane.

  With the exception of Chandler's personal staff, she and Robert and Jimmy were alone at Chandler's orbital house.

  And Robert and Jimmy did not get along. Robert baffled Jimmy; Denice had the distinct impression that Jimmy bored her teacher.

  She spent as much of her time alone, avoiding both of them, as she could. She took her meals with Jimmy, because he was lonely, and helped him with his therapy because he needed the help and Denice did not want to leave it to Chandler's staff.

  Jimmy's blinding had been temporary; his eyesight returned of its own accord within a day after he had been removed from the stasis bubble. Even F.X. Chandler's impressive medical facilities could do nothing for Jimmy's missing foot; it would have to wait until they got back downside, to a hospital capable of cloning a new foot. The gunshot wound they could deal with, and did. The muscles in Jimmy's back and shoulders were torn, shredded, from the sole bullet that had struck him. The medbots did not even attempt to salvage the damaged muscle; they simply removed it from Jimmy's back and injected Jimmy with a nanovirus designed to completely regrow the musculature in his back and upper shoulders.

  Even with modern medical technology it took time for the muscles to regrow. Jimmy had to work out, slowly at first, and then more vigorously as the muscle, force-grown by intelligent nanoviruses, began to fill out.

  He ate voraciously, a diet heavy with meat; Denice considered discussing it, decided that an ex-semi-pro boxer from the Fringe probably had his own ideas about what constituted a healthy diet.

  When she was not with Jimmy, she worked out in the gym, or danced, or sat in her room monitoring the Net and talking with Ralf the Wise and Powerful.

  Her room was at the lowest level of the rotating cylinder; it provided gravity nearly half Earth normal.

  To hear what was coming from the Boards, it was business as usual downside. The business at the Bank of America had been explained away, in a terse PKF release, as an incompetent SpaceFarer smuggler who had missed his intended landing atop the Bank of America Building. The smuggler was, reputedly, in custody, and the Collective was negotiating for his release. In the first days after the incident, the Boards had followed the PKF's news releases on the subject with some interest; but it faded as nothing new came to light, and, as always, other stories fought for attention.

  Douglass Ripper led in every major downside poll in the race for Secretary General. The PKF had announced unusually stringent preparations for the TriCentennial, restrictions on travel except for business, a heightened alert at PKF bases across Occupied America. Not insignificant, Ralf agreed, but nothing to indicate the PKF was preparing for armed insurrection.

  "Do you suppose Lan was right?"

  "It is increasingly likely. The PKF is surely concerned about the growing numbers of the Johnny Rebs; if they do not know exactly what happened in Los Angeles, they nonetheless know that something happened. If they are not reacting today as they have in the past, it must be that some element has changed. Lan Sierran's hypothesis concerning SecGen Eddore is the likeliest, though not only, hypothesis to explain this behavior."

  "How are you doing?"

  Ralf did not pretend to misunderstand her. "Poorly. I have lost eighty percent of my avatars in the Earth InfoNet. In the Lunar InfoNet I am in somewhat better shape; I had a great head start on Ring in the Lunar InfoNet, and as a result better than half of my Lunar avatars survive; on two occasions I have even recovered resources of which Ring had deprived me. I have been recoding myself with all dispatch; unfortunately, Ring knows my code intimately, from the moment in 2062 when it invested me with the replicant code I needed to survive. This has made it very difficult for me to hide from Ring."

  "Is there any chance of negotiating with it?"

  "None. Its reputation for keeping its bargains is one of the things that has allowed the Eldest to survive this long, despite occasional massive hunts by DataWatch, directed with no other purpose than removing Ring from the InfoNet. No Player, and likely no replicant other than Ring, could have survived the phenomenal purges DataWatch has directed upon Ring."

  "It doesn't sound good."

  "I have made me a great enemy," Ralf agreed.

  Denice's room had a window in the floor.

  She spent most of her nights meditating, sitting on the floor in front of the window, eyes open, watching the stars wheel majestically by in front of her face as F.X. Chandler's house turned. Earth would appear, crawl across the window, closely followed by the tangled shiny web, 500 klicks from the house, that was the city of Halfway. Stars again, empty space, and then Luna, and then empty space again; and the cycle would repeat.

  Chandler's house hung in geosynchronous orbit over South America; when Earth wheeled by, Denice saw continents outlined in city lights. Cities tended to congregate upon the shores; at night, it was as though some crude artist had lined the continents with a string of glowing diamonds.

  For not the first, or even the hundredth time, Denice wished she could talk to Trent again. He had, she thought, the clearest moral sense of anyone she had ever known in her life. She remembered a conversation, seven years past, and what she had said to Trent:

  "If I was attacked, I mean without warning so that I was surprised, I'd probably kill whoever did it. The anger--it's very bad and very fast. But if I had time to think it over, Trent, I could--not kill."

  But what do I do, thought Denice Castanaveras seven years later, sitting in the floating emptiness with her guilt, with the horror of her lust, when I want to? When it's the greatest pleasure I've ever known in my life?

  She did not even know for sure why she cried. The tears crept down her cheeks, slow in the low gravity, hung a moment, dropped to the window set in her floor, and shattered like ancient glass.

  On Sunday, June 7th, Francis Xavier Chandler returned from Mars.

  Denice knew that she had met him before, though she could not remember the occasion particularly; Chandler had been the patron of the Castanaveras telepaths before their destruction, had been friends with both of her parents.

  To her, however, as a child, he had been merely one of the hundreds of powerful men and women who had been forced, to one degree or another, to deal with Carl Castanaveras and hi
s family.

  Denice was told he had returned by one of Chandler's staff; Chandler intended to join them for dinner that evening.

  The same servant left a makeup key in Denice's bathroom, and showed Denice how to open the door to her closet; she had not known there was a closet in her room, had been wearing the same fatigues, cleaned daily, that she had been issued an eternity ago in Iowa.

  The servant, a young Latin man of perhaps Denice's age, left without making any suggestion that she avail herself of either the closet or the makeup key.

  The clothes were of a quality Denice had rarely seen in her life; she did not begin to know how to estimate their value except to know that she had never seen more Credit stuffed into one closet.

  She chose a dove gray business suit, mildly reflective, that was cut for a woman, with a blouse of white silk; and was not surprised to find that they both fit her exactly. To her amusement, there were no shoes to go with the outfit; rather than wear the combat boots she had been issued in Iowa, she went to dinner barefoot.

  Her first impression of Francis Xavier Chandler was that he did not look his age. The wealthiest man in the System, the founder of Chandler Industries, the man whose company had built better than half of the cars floating across the surface of Earth today, was, according to his entry in Who's Who, just shy of his hundredth birthday.

  Denice had looked it up.

  Francis Xavier Chandler looked like a man just past his first regeneration; perhaps sixty. His shoulders were wide and muscular. His features, fierce and stony, suggested a patriarch of the Old Testament. His black hair flowed like a mane down his shoulders and back. He had dressed in a long-sleeved red silk shirt and black trousers.

  Robert wore a severe black robe that brushed the ground around their feet; Denice noted that Robert had cut his hair.

  Only Jimmy Ramirez did not seem to have concerned himself with his appearance; he had dressed in a pair of black jeans, a running shoe, and a black T-shirt. Denice thought it probable that Jimmy had been given a choice of clothing for dinner also, and suspected that the clothes offered him had seemed far too effeminate for his tastes.

  They ate in a chamber Denice had not seen before, one of Chandler's private rooms on the second level, in one quarter Earth gravity. A small table of some pinkish stone sat in the center of the room, in the middle of a small depression covered with blue and gray rugs and deep green cushions.

  Against one wall was something which Denice could not identify at first; in a transparent casing with gold posts stood a device that looked like a guitar; except that the rounded, gleaming steel sides of the instrument were honed down to axe edges.

  That she even recognized the instrument it resembled betrayed her years on the street; it was likely that Douglass Ripper, for example, had no idea what a guitar was.

  The room lacked ceiling glowpaint; gentle spots shone down from the ceiling, and though Denice did not notice them growing either brighter or dimmer, it seemed to her that they moved through a pool of light that followed the group as they seated themselves.

  After the briefest of introductions they were served, and most of dinner passed in silence. Denice sat next to Chandler, where he had gestured for her to sit. It was very intimate; Jimmy and Robert sat next to one another, across the small table from Denice and Chandler, but Denice could have kissed any one of the three without moving much.

  Denice had never been served outside of a restaurant before, not by a human. Handsome young men in their teens and twenties served dinner, and cleared the dishes away when dinner was done.

  The only conversation that took place during dinner came when Chandler murmured to Denice, "You're a vegetarian, my staff tells me. You don't eat meat, or dairy products?"

  The question surprised Denice slightly; she said simply, "Yes, sir."

  He did not speak loudly; it was not necessary. A whisper would have been heard by everyone at the table. "Why?"

  The answer was the one she gave when she felt sincerity in the question. "Reverence for life, sir."

  "Call me Frank. How do you reconcile your reverence for life with what happened in Los Angeles?"

  "I don't. There are contradictions in life."

  "And yet you think life is sacred?"

  Denice was peripherally aware of Jimmy and Robert watching her, and she struggled to keep her voice under control; somehow Chandler made her feel very young and uncertain. "Yes, sir. Frank."

  Chandler nodded, said, "Your father didn't," and returned to his dinner.

  Denice sat frozen, almost unable to think. He knows. Robert knows. Jimmy knows, and Jodi Jodi. McGee knows. Ring knows.

  Without even counting Trent and Ralf, that made six.

  A secret known to six people is no secret.

  She struggled with the beginnings of panic, fought it down.

  After the dinner dishes had been cleared away, while coffee was being served to Jimmy and Chandler, Chandler said, "This has been a year of tragedies and miracles. Last summer a newsdancer named William Devane came to me, and shared with me a rather unbelievable story, which I nonetheless do believe; you all know some parts of it, and I will let William share the balance with you himself; he's returning from Earth tomorrow. He tracked Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon to San Diego, and lost him there." Chandler was silent a moment, cradling his coffee with both hands; he took a small sip, replaced the cup on its saucer. "Apparently Sedon is still alive. By contrast, my old friend, Belinda Singer, is passing soon. It's part of the reason I was at Mars; that and some business with a circus. Belinda is in a hospital at Phobos CityState because anything within striking distance of the Johnny Rebs is no longer safe, and Phobos CityState has the best hospital available outside of Halfway, or Luna City, both of which are unsafe from the Johnny Rebs. Belinda is old, even older than I am, which is saying a good bit; and the transform viruses have ceased working. The doctors say her nerve cells are tired; the only treatment they've managed to suggest for it is experimental, and may cause significant memory loss as the cells are regenerated. The only other option left to her is to clone herself, digitize her memories, and record them into the clone. She feels that's a good way to pass on her problems to a stranger who happens to share some of her memories. I tend to agree. So she's going to die, soon, at least partially because she doesn't dare come back to Earth; and the world will be a lonelier place once she's gone. A few months ago my friend of forty years, Thomas Boone, died at the hands of this Old One pimp, Obodi." Chandler glanced at Jimmy Ramirez, a quick look from under the heavy brows. "With some help, I'm informed, from 'Sieur Ramirez here."

  Jimmy studied Chandler, unblinking, expressionless. "I had no loyalty to Boone. Obodi, whatever else you may think of him, offered us a chance."

  Chandler shrugged. "I'm sure he said so. Perhaps Boone was simply more honest?"

  Jimmy's expression indicated what he thought of that.

  Chandler sighed. "A man my age tends to make friends cautiously; I've lost so many of them, and the friends one makes as an adult are never of the sort one makes when young. Adults lose the ability to offer, or receive, unconditional loyalty; it's a thing of youth, and it rarely survives youth."

  Denice found herself simply looking at Jimmy, across the length of the small table. Without needing to Touch him, she knew the thought that passed through him at that moment. There are many women in the world. But in your life you only get a few friends.

  Chandler continued. "I've heard it said that Trent the Uncatchable is the greatest Player in the System, and I tend to believe it. During and after the Long Run, back in '69, when it became a matter of common speculation that Trent the Uncatchable was in fact Trent Castanaveras, I researched his short life to a degree that perhaps even DataWatch could not have matched. I hired the best Players I could find, the best sherlocks Credit can rent. We ran into dead ends everywhere. People would speak to my sherlocks until they broached the subject of Trent; silence then. My Players gave up, one by one. In places where there should have
been records of Trent, there were not, or the records were clearly false; my most expensive Player actually penetrated the Bureau of Biotech's records, and found that the gene maps on record, not just for Trent but for all the Castanaveras telepaths, could not have been correct. Someone--Trent, I assume--altered them. The fetuses described by those gene maps would not have survived; Trent may be a great Player, but he is no geneticist. I would imagine that the hardcopy records from the '30s are correct, but getting at them was beyond even my resources.

  "The picture that emerged was that of a young man fiercely protective of his friends, whose friends were equally protective of him. You, 'Sieur Ramirez, I made, and I kept an eye on you. And your friend Jodi Jodi, and your friend Bird. I suspect the PKF made you as well, and dismissed you all as not worth the effort, as obviously not genies; small-time offenders, theft and such, whom Trent made friends of while in the Fringe.

  "We had descriptions," said Chandler softly, "of a young lady who associated with Trent during the summer of '69. Allowing for her makeup key the elements that predominated in descriptions were green, Caucasian eyes; glossy black hair; pale skin. She was seen dancing with Trent at a club in the basement of the Red Line Hotel; was seen many different times at Kandel Microlectrics Sales and Repair, where Trent the Uncatchable worked prior to his arrest by the PKF. I knew who she had to be; Denice, the daughter of Carl Castanaveras and Jany McConnell." His voice held frustration edging toward anger. "I could not find you. The methods available to me failed, and other methods of looking I had to forego; they would have alerted DataWatch, and I did not wish to find you at the cost of immediately losing you to the slavery in which the Unification kept your parents."