The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  The sky to the east lightened swiftly, and the blackness around Trent and the young Belinda Singer began to resolve itself into a park, high on a hill, wreathed in mist and early morning fog.

  "We are an insignificant life form in a small solar system at the edge of an unimportant galaxy. A bubble of order and reason floating in the midst of a vast Chaos. A tiny aberration that has been allowed to continue only because those powerful enough to destroy us have had other and greater concerns.

  "This is the thing," said Belinda Singer, "that Camber Tremodian told me, on that day in 1999: that there is no order to the universe, and no reason, and no cause. We are alone and outnumbered--"

  Her eyes met his. In the first light of morning, in an imaginary world sixty-nine years before his birth and instants before her death, Belinda Singer said to Trent the Uncatchable, "--and the universe is a far more dangerous place than anyone has ever told you."

  Fade to white.

  Trent's eyes were shut for just an instant.

  When he opened them again, Belinda Singer was dead.

  * * *

  25.

  Denice rose early, dressed in a pair of shorts and a soft cotton shirt.

  She took the bounce tube down to the gym.

  The gym was still set up. She and Robert had been using it often enough that they had ceased stowing the gym when done with it; the hour's wait before the gym was available, while it spun up to one gee, was inconvenient.

  She worked in silence.

  The gym lacked a sound system, an oversight that had surprised Denice at first, until Robert pointed out that the gym had been designed for Chandler's use, and that Chandler, who had seventy years prior been a professional musician, did not dance, and did not consider music background noise for his exercise.

  Meditation first.

  The image flickered into her consciousness, and out again; a Flame, on an empty black plain. It was gone before she was certain she had seen it; time vanished as she struggled to recover the image of the Flame, and failed. More time passed as she accepted the failure, worked toward quiet and calm.

  Stretching exercises.

  Work upward: feet, ankles, calves and thighs. Buttocks, waist, the groin muscles. Hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders. Neck muscles.

  Again, in reverse.

  Tai Chi Chuan. Traditionally, one began the form facing north; Denice picked a direction, closed her eyes, and began moving through the form in slow motion. Rising hands, step forward left foot, shoulder strike left shoulder, right, right foot forward to seven star--

  The movement vanished into nothingness. She moved without knowing it, as slowly as her body would allow her, through the ancient patterns. Muscles did the work they had been taught, the slow contractions and releases. She was not aware of the world, of her place within it, of herself or her body; she knew nothing except the progression of the form.

  When she finished her pulse had elevated to nearly fifty beats a minute.

  She moved out of the form and into dance.

  Without music, she made her own. The rhythm of her heart set the beat, and she started slowly, eyes still closed, allowing herself now to feel the smooth flow of her muscles, the leashed power of the machine as it rose to the demands she placed on it.

  She flowed into the dance, let her body move as it wished, as fast as it wished, and found herself spinning and turning faster across the length of the mat, and even the man watching her was pleasant, not sexual but sensual, the feel of him as he watched her move, watched her dance--

  She moved in an extended spin, moving in the silence to the rhythm with which no other dancer she had ever met could have kept time, the silent sound filling her awareness, and then, she did not know why, made the mistake of opening her eyes.

  Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan stood motionless at the edge of the mat, only a step away from the bounce tube, and his wordless, soundless cry struck her square between the eyes.

  She lost control of her body instantly, and spun down to the mat in a blur of uncontrolled movement. She felt her left forearm snap as she struck at a speed no human could have attained, bounced once off the mat and came down again sharply on her right knee. A pain occurred in her hip and then she found herself lying face down, bleeding from a cut on her lip onto the pristine white mat.

  Fade to white.

  When she awoke again she was lying on the bed in her room, staring up at the ceiling.

  A medbot was busy inspecting her knee; her left arm was already set and splinted.

  Robert sat in the chair facing her bed, elbows on the chair's armrests, fingers steepled together, index fingers moving restlessly against one another.

  She sat up and had trouble focusing. "Robert?"

  "I'm here."

  "What happened?"

  "Dvan returned."

  "I--" She winced as the medbot grasped her kneecap, cried out as the dislocated knee was forcibly re-inserted into its socket. Denice waited through the wash of pain, until it had subsided enough for her to speak. "I need to talk to him."

  "He's waiting outside. Shall I bring him in now?"

  "Yes." Denice winced again as the medbot began wrapping her knee. "Please."

  Robert did not get out of his chair; he said mildly, "Command, unlock."

  The door curled open.

  Dvan had been standing immediately outside.

  Waiting.

  He entered slowly, waited while the door uncurled behind him, and stood there with the door to his back. It struck Denice in that moment how huge the man was, two hundred and fifteen, perhaps two hundred and twenty centimeters tall, with a build to match. Denice thought a shiver touched the massive form; he stood before Denice and looked at her with honest wonder. "What you have done--I thought I should never see it again, though I lived forever. If you had Danced so in the Temples at Kulien, my lady, I think you would have brought a Flame to equal the best of any man I ever saw."

  Denice stared at him. "I don't even know what you just said and I still think I've been insulted."

  "My lady, I will serve you if you will let me."

  Robert said dryly, "Well, there's an offer you don't get every day."

  Dvan cut him off with the vast authority of ancient age, in a voice as hard as rock. "Silence." The night face tilted his head ever so slightly to the side, in what might have been surprise. Dvan said to Denice Castanaveras, "My lady, you cannot know what you have done. I have been lost without the Dance, lost longer than you can believe. I will serve you all your life if you will only let me." He took another step toward her, said softly, "My lady Dancer."

  Denice licked her lips. "You're not like Obodi. I feel you here."

  "My lady?"

  "I didn't feel Sedon, it was like he wasn't there. I feel you."

  "My lady, he was once a Dancer of the Flame, no matter how debased he may be today. I am merely a Shield." Dvan paused, said in a very different voice, with a far more pronounced Irish accent, "And a newsdancer too, to be sure. With a modest reputation for getting my facts right."

  Denice reached for him--

  Touched

  --and for an instant she floated among his thoughts, joined herself to them, to the peculiar duality of the newsdancer William Devane, and the stronger, deeper memories of Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan, and the memories tugged at her. It was the deepest use of the Castanaveras Gift, so often vastly painful that she avoided it whenever possible; in that moment of contact she became him.

  It was as though mountains floated around her, vast blocks of memory so dense she had never encountered their like--

  She reached for them.

  She knew instantly she had made a mistake. Lacking the tools taught to the children of the Flame People, she had no means to deal with the information that deluged her. An avalanche of imagery fell upon her, swamped her, and she felt herself suddenly drowning, losing herself, the link to her own identity; somewhere in the storm was the information she needed to survive, the training the Flame People gave their c
hildren, to manage the information acquired across the millennia--

  She did not have enough time, and the memories she needed were buried too deeply among those that assaulted her.

  Denice felt herself fragmenting, coming apart in the assault upon her of fifty millennia of memory.

  She cried out once and disappeared within the rush of the maelstrom.

  And was no more.

  * * *

  Back to the Beginning:

  Dvan's Story

  Hold me now

  Oh hold me now

  Til this hour has gone around

  And I'm gone on the rising tide

  For to face Van Diemen's land

  It's a bitter pill I swallow here

  To be rent from one so dear

  We fought for justice

  And not for gain

  But the magistrate sent me away

  --a ballad of the 19th century

  Australian exiles

  * * *

  26.

  I am the Name Storyteller.

  In those moments when Denice Castanaveras touched the mind of Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan, they passed into the cusp.

  For this moment, and for years to come, I have vanquished my enemy, have brought about a meeting he sought desperately to prevent.

  I have paid dearly for the privilege: I will tell you now the story of Dvan, offspring of the Old Human Race, a Shield of the Gi'Tbad.

  It is a story unique in the history of our people, Old Human or New.

  It begins here, as a boy

  fidgeted in the sun.

  Dvan was sixteen when the Suei Dancers came to Kulien.

  He had never seen a Suei before, a Dancer nor any lesser person; Dvan's people, the Tbad, lived half the World away from the Suei, at the far Southern pole. Any visitor from the north side of the Equatorial Desert was exciting enough; but Dancers of the Suei, known for their flirtation with heresy--sometimes to the point of Demolition--and for their lack of respect for tradition, promised to be especially so.

  So his attention wandered.

  Instruction that day was held at the old amphitheater, the small one near the center of town, not too far from the Temple itself. Their instructor was new to them; Marah, a Shield of the Mai, who had journeyed from the Shield camp at Prufac to meet the boys of Kulien. There was nothing particularly odd in that; the Mai, most ancient of the Flame People, were neighbors to the Gi'Tbad, and there was not a boy Dvan had grown up with who did not have Mai blood somewhere in his Sixteen. Dvan had it himself in the Fourth, from the father of the breeder who had carried him.

  Marah himself was odd enough; well outside the realm of Dvan's experience, or that of his mates. A short man; Dvan was taller than Marah already, and many of his mates were near Marah's height. But ropy muscle corded his form, thickened it until the man seemed near as broad as he was high. In hand to hand he had been immovable; there was not a throw any of them had been taught that would take the man from his feet.

  It was to be expected, Dvan supposed; the man was a Sentinel, after all, and there was no higher rank among the Shield.

  Dvan's friend Tamtai, sitting on the stone bench next to Dvan, nudged him and whispered low, "If he takes much longer we'll miss the Opening Dance."

  Dvan did not even nod; Marah was busy down in the pit with three other boys, but he had already demonstrated he had eyes in the back of his head. He demonstrated it again a moment later, tumbling his opponents to the ground, "killing" two quickly while they were off their feet, and then dispatching the third with a blow to the throat; Marah waited while the boys straightened themselves to face him, tapped his shoulders politely, and called out, "Tamtai and Dvan!"

  Dvan did not allow himself the sigh he felt; he rose and unclasped his tunic, dropped it to the ancient white stone he had been sitting upon, and went down with Tamtai to the ring of black sand. The red sun hung low on the horizon, giving indifferent help in warming the collection of bruises Marah had already inflicted on Dvan. This was Dvan's third time today in the pit; he did not even waste time resenting it, when some of his mates had only been in once. His lineage and his size made some things in life certain, and this was one of them, that he would be treated more harshly than the others in field exercises.

  He felt a momentary flicker of pity for Tamtai--but this time, at least, it was his friend's fault. He could have kept his mouth shut. Tamtai was of no more than average size or speed, and did not heal quickly; Dvan suspected Tamtai would never make a Shield, and it sorrowed him.

  Marah slapped his shoulders perfunctorily; Dvan and Tamtai returned the gesture. Sweat trickled down Marah's nude form, but he did not seem winded by a full day's hard work. His voice was neither particularly deep nor particularly gruff, but it had the manner of a man who was not often questioned. "Choice of weapons?"

  Dvan did not need to glance at the rack of weapons; he said, "Rods."

  Marah nodded. "Describe the virtues, Dvan."

  "They're common, Marah." On the field they were Shield together, even students who, like Tamtai, had no real likelihood of ever receiving the cloak. Dvan spoke directly, as though to an equal. "Easy to fashion from common materials. Four striking surfaces; each end may jab or swing. A wide variety of grips allows for a choice between range, force, and control. Gripped two-handed near the center they are ideal for close fighting; near the ends, one-handed or two, for clearing space and gaining time."

  "Describe the failings, Tamtai."

  "It is difficult to severely injure a man with rods, Marah. They are not edged. Even gripped one-handed by the end, they lack the range of long staffs. Except in tight quarters they are useless against energy or projectile weapons."

  "They are obsolete," Marah agreed. "Why do we train with them?"

  Dvan waited a beat; when Tamtai did not answer, he said, "It may be that modern weapons will not be available to us."

  Marah shook his head. "It's unlikely, Dvan. The Flame People have not fought among themselves since the Splinter War, and we could hardly fight the sleem with rods, be they made of wood or metal. Why else?"

  "A weapon," said Dvan slowly, "is a tool for the application of force to an objective. Perhaps it is wise that we be familiar with a wide variety of such tools, even those we are not likely to need against the sleem."

  Marah said slowly, "That's a good answer. Not wholly accurate, but not wrong. No combat. Dvan, stay behind." Dvan caught the flash of relief on Tamtai's face; Marah raised his voice. "Dismissed! Prayer before you go see the Dance; the parable of the Ax. If any one of you skips and I learn of it, you'll be punished in group."

  Dvan blinked his surprise. Tamtai said hesitantly, "Marah--"

  Marah shook his head. "Just Dvan. He'll join you at the Temple."

  They stored the practice weapons together, carrying the racks one at each end, and then came back out to the pit and sat together, cross-legged on the sand. A faint breeze rose, quickly dried what sweat remained on Dvan's body.

  The old Sentinel said, "You'll make Shield. And perhaps you only, from this generation of Kulien."

  An answer did not seem to be required; Dvan simply nodded.

  "How do you feel about that?"

  Dvan said in surprise, "Honored. How else?"

  "Tamtai won't make it," Marah said bluntly. "You could be engineers together, or healers, or farmers."

  The boy said slowly, "I love him well enough, Marah. But I mean to wear the cloak."

  "Ah." The man's gaze was intent. "The Tbad Dancers, they tested you for the Dance?"

  Marah knew they had; Dvan said stiffly, "Aye."

  "And?"

  Dvan simply shook his head.

  The Sentinel actually smiled. "You're less than forthcoming, Dvan. You'd have me think they did not ask you to join them." After a beat, with no response from Dvan, Marah shrugged. "Well, no matter. You chose the Shield."

  Dvan said firmly, "Aye."

  "You're known for your piety, lad. The others pray when they're told to; it's
said you never miss a day."

  A flicker of uncertainty touched Dvan; how many different things was the man going to want to talk about? "Aye," he said finally.

  "Why?"

  The flat question threw Dvan; he struggled not to let it show. "Marah?" The Sentinel waited patiently. Dvan said at last, "I suppose I find it helpful. It clarifies my thoughts. I find it...calming."

  "You visit with the Temple Followers frequently, and have since rather a young age. Is this among the subjects you pray on?"

  Dvan did sigh this time. "Aye. One of them. There's no harm in it, Sentinel."

  "Marah, lad. In private, we are Shield to Shield."

  Dvan nodded.

  "You've never been bred," Marah continued, patiently, unhurried, "and you've never taken one of the breeders for a ride. Only the Followers. Why?"

  Dvan could feel the flush climbing his cheeks. "They're--well, I suppose, they're..." He stumbled to a halt, cheeks red, and saw Marah's manner harden.

  Marah could not keep it from his tone. "Do you love one of them?"

  Dvan's stomach muscles clenched; he shook his head swiftly, eyes fixed on the sand between them. "No! Sir, it's just--sometimes afterward we talk." He looked up at Marah, painfully aware of the redness of his features. "They're easier to talk to than the Keeper, or the Keeper's Daughters. And they've been taught some of the same lore, sir, and--"

  Marah relaxed visibly. He made a dismissive gesture. "Well, if that's the worst of it...well, an excess of love for the Gods is no bad thing, I suppose. Listen, Dvan--" He held the boy's eyes. "I think you'll make a Shield such as the World rarely sees. But be aware of how things look, eh? A word to the wise. We're men together, and the needs of the body are nothing to be fretted over, it's what the breeders are there for. But go gently with the Followers. Because they're taught some measure of lore, have some small responsibilities in caring for the Zaradin Temple...well, it's hardly the same as being a man, is it?"

  Dvan's voice was very soft. "No, Sentinel. Marah."

  The Sentinel smiled at the boy. "Perhaps I've belabored a point I did not need to. But I would hate to see a Shield of your potential lost to Demolition."