"Did you never wonder if there might be other options for you? Other work worthy of you?"
Dvan said slowly, "No. How do you mean?"
"Did it never strike you that things might be ordered differently? That as a child you might have decided, I shall be such a thing as I desire, and been allowed to act that decision?"
"It did not. I do not know how things might be among the Gi'Suei, but things are different among the Tbad."
"They are not!" shouted Sedon. He stood quivering, glaring through the gloom at Dvan. His voice dropped to a sudden fierce whisper. "Among my people are Tbad and Suei and Genta and Kersi and Alven, even a Mai or three; ask them. It is the same everywhere across the World. As a Dancer, you would have come to know this; we travel, we Dancers, Temple to Temple, we see more of the World than the Keepers, far more than Shield; more than anyone including those Dancers and Keepers and Shield who have ascended into the Aneda." His voice dropped slightly, and he said persuasively, "It is the same everywhere, Dvan. No matter where you go, the same lack of choice, the same craven toadying to the will of the Aneda, as though they were not themselves merely Dancers and Shield and Keepers wearing Zaradin white."
The sound of his voice, suddenly gentle and intimate, touched a warning within Dvan. It was not a Speaking, Sedon knew better; but even without that tool Sedon was, when he put himself to it, capable of a deadly seductiveness.
That the thought skirted heresy could not stop it; Dvan wondered, and not for the first time, if it would not have been better to have put breeders, however poorly trained, in charge of the eight heretics. Dvan did not think any of the Dancers could have brought themselves to speak to one. Even if one of the Dancers--Sedon was the only one Dvan thought likely--had managed to speak to a woman, he could hardly have managed any convincing attempt at goodwill, to say nothing of seduction.
The very thought of a Dancer with a woman in his arms brought the touch of a smile to Dvan's lips.
The smile must have touched off one of Sedon's notorious rages; he took a step toward Dvan, stopped cold with his toes nearly touching the inked barrier of the pentagram, and knelt until his face hovered less than an arm's length away from Dvan's. "Smile," he whispered harshly, "smile then, Shield whose life and honor are the property of his owners. Slave to the Keepers, slave to the Aneda, slave to the Flame itself. Inside this prison I am more free than you, and when we reach our destination, I will be the freest thing you have ever seen, or ever will."
"The freedom of prison?" Dvan let his smile widen. "It does not impress me. And service to the Flame is an honor I have willingly assumed."
A glare of light exploded around them. Sedon took a single step back, wild blue and white light flickering over the surface of his nude form in such a fashion that he seemed a work of art come alive. He pointed a finger at Dvan, and the cold Flame leapt forward, splashed in midair against the invisible barrier of the pentagram. Sedon spoke out of the center of the Flame in a loud and terrible voice: "Be its servant, then, its slave. And I shall be its master; and we will see who will end better."
Dvan said calmly, "We have already seen that. When you were exiled from the World, your life, and the lives of your followers, ended. The place to which we take you--" Dvan shrugged, as the Flame surrounding Sedon faded into nothingness. "The life you make there is no life that concerns me. You will be staying. I will not."
Sedon turned away without further word, threw himself down to the softened surface of the deck, and lay motionless, with his back to Dvan, for the rest of Dvan's duty.
Neither of them was a hundred years old yet.
After duty, as was his custom, Dvan walked down to Fourth Deck, to the Temple, and went inside to pray.
From the outside the altar did not look like much. It was made of ten panels, each one taller than Dvan himself, arranged in a rough circle. The temple's ceiling reached up over twice Dvan's height. Aboard ship, even so large a one as this, it was a waste of space that would have been tolerated for nothing except the Temple. (And was tolerated with grudging even for that. Not everyone was as pious as Dvan, and chief among the pragmatics were the ship's officers, charged with the task of protecting the ship from hostile vacuum, the even more hostile corridors of the spacelace tunnels, and the usually lethal hostility of the sleem. Prayer could not hurt, but the engineers and crew knew that all the piousness in the Continuing Time would not repair a breached hull, or turn the course of a sleem missile.)
At the center of the temple ten gleaming black panels, each one somewhat taller and wider than Dvan, faced inward. The inward-facing surface of each panel was bordered in gold and held the image of one of the ten Great Gods. Dvan made the familiar circle of the altar, beginning with Rho Haristi. Haristi's image was that of a Zaradin; a nude, upright reptilian biped with deep brown scales except for the shimmering blue scales on its stomach, and a long, thin, segmented tail that wound round and round its double-jointed legs. Dvan touched each panel as he went, whispering the words of celebration; the panels glowed briefly as he touched them, the images seemingly come alive for a brief moment. The panels after the Lord of Light held the images of three non-Zaradin aliens; the Great God Eldone Ra, a delicate, shimmering insectile creature, with thin purple wings that did not look as though they could bear any weight; Lesu Orodan, a squat hill-shaped being, dull gray and blue in color, at whose size Dvan could not even guess; Siva Elherrod, a blue-furred, six-limbed, huge-eyed creature whom most of the Flame People found in some measure beautiful--
--and then Kayell'no.
Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan sank to one knee and bent his head.
Kayell'no was human, God of Lies, Named Storyteller. The image was of a brown-skinned man, with hair and beard of a deeper brown. His eyes were the dark umber brown of emeralds. They lacked pupils or any other internal structure. He smiled at the Continuing Time, a grin that was at once both mocking and seemed to invite the person being mocked to join in the joke. Only Kayell'no's face was visible; the rest of him was covered in white clothing unusual to one of the Flame People; leggings all of a piece, a tunic that covered him from his gloved hands to his throat. He wore a shadow cloak not unlike that of a Shield, except that it was as white as the dress of a Lord of Aneda, and the cloak hung down to obscure most of his form. A pattern on his chest was partially hidden by the cloak.
He stood with feet braced as though for battle, with a slim tube that had always looked like a weapon to Dvan clenched in his right fist.
Because he had no wish to give offense, Dvan prayed quietly and quickly before moving on. Lies and stories had little to do with his needs.
He was halfway through the circuit; the next image was that of the Zaradin Ran Rikhall, dressed in the white robes the Aneda so slavishly imitated, who faced Rho Haristi; followed by Erisha Sum, who faced Eldone Ra; the Zaradin Bri Erathrin, who faced Lesu Orodan; and then the humanoid Nik Shibukai, Named Anarchist, who faced Siva Elherrod. Shibukai's image had always struck Dvan as very near a work of art; a bat-winged creature with scarlet skin and needle-sharp shiny black teeth, exposed to the Continuing Time in a brilliant grin.
Dvan stopped before the tenth and last image, the image of the God who faced Kayell'no across the circle of the altar.
The tenth figure, the form of the God of Players, was surely human; it could well have been the inverse, mirrored image of the Name Storyteller. Black gloves covered hands that possessed four fingers and an opposed thumb; the figure was of human height and generally of human dimension as well. It was, by Shield standards, short for a man, but it was unquestionably male; it lacked breasts and was muscled in ways that were improbable for a human woman.
The God stood against a pale, mist-filled background. Where his face should have been were only shadows; in the palm of his left hand danced a golden flame, and on his right stood a black flame that sucked light from its surroundings. Upon his chest the God bore an insignia like that of the Name Storyteller's; but where the pattern on Kayell'no's breast was obscured b
y the swirling white cloak, on the God of Players the insignia was visible: nine circles enclosing a starburst. Touching the third circle out from the starburst were a pair of small, solidly colored spheres, one blue and one white.
High on the figure's left shoulder was an inscription in some tongue even the Zaradin had been unable to read.
Forty-nine thousand years before the birth of Christ, Gi'Tbad'Eovad'Dvan crossed his arms across his chest, each hand grasping the opposite shoulder, and sank to his knees. The long folds of his shadow cloak pooled around him, warped light away from him. Before he bowed his head to begin praying, his eyes rested briefly upon the unknown words, inscribed in a tongue that would one day be called Tierra:
* * *
28.
Denice lay unconscious for three days.
During that time Robert did not allow Chandler to see her, did not allow Dvan to see her; allowed Jimmy to see her briefly, then sent the young man away when he grew restless.
Aside from the insertion of an I.V., to keep up her blood sugar, he did not even consider allowing one of Chandler's medbots at her, as he was certain that the medbots would have no more idea how to deal with what had happened to her than he did.
She awoke on Thursday morning.
Her voice touched him, faint and weak. "Robert?"
He had been dozing in the chair facing her. His eyes opened instantly. "Denice?"
"I'm very hungry."
"I'll feed you." He ordered for two, joined her on the bed, sat next to her and helped her sit up; took the tray away from the waitbot when it rolled in. Warm wheat toast with blueberry jam, strawberries, carrot slices, freshly pulped orange juice. At first she was unable to eat anything; he had her drink her juice, and then his. Denice vomited it up less than a minute later; he cleaned it up patiently, gave her a glass of water, ordered apple juice for her and fed her that. The toast grew cold; he ate her portion and his while waiting. After she had kept the juice down for five minutes, he fed her the strawberries, one at a time, until they were all gone. Her eyes drooped, and he sat holding her up with one arm, waiting patiently as, with increasing drowsiness, she worked her way through the raw carrots. Before she finished them her eyes closed, and Robert laid her down gently, cleared up the dishes, and gave them back to the waitbot.
He sat and watched her for a while. Her breathing had grown more regular, and her pulse; with each passing day she had moaned and talked in her sleep a little less.
If he had not known better, he would have thought this nothing but normal sleep. After a few minutes he extricated himself from her sleepy grasp, went back to his chair and returned to waiting.
Just after 10 p.m. on Thursday, June 11, Robert awoke to find her sitting up in bed, watching him with an odd expression.
"Where's Dvan?"
Robert blinked, sat up slightly. "Probably sitting outside the door. He's been."
"Get him."
Robert nodded. "How are you?"
"All right. Hungry and sore, but otherwise all right." She was silent for a moment. "There are--pieces left. Fragments. I've managed to forget most of it." She shook her head. "I think that saved my life."
Robert did not ask what she meant.
He spoke at great length; and the silence stretched, palpable and alive, when Dvan was done.
Robert sat in the lone chair; Denice sat up in bed, features still slightly pale, and Dvan stood like a soldier at attention, as during the long hours he had spent talking.
Robert said finally, "United Earth Intelligence."
Dvan said flatly, "Those were the words."
"I remember it," said Denice in a quiet voice. "I don't remember much but I remember that, the shape of the words against the man's chest."
Robert simply looked back and forth between them. Dvan glanced at Robert. "They were written in a tongue similar to English, night face, an Arabic script bearing clearly English words."
Robert said mildly, "But there is no such thing as United Earth Intelligence. I am sure I would have heard of it."
"Night face, as a child, younger in time than the lady Castanaveras is today, cynical as only the very young can be, I once considered the Time Wars a legend, and a dubious one at that. A piece of religious apocrypha, to which the Shield copies of In Time of Legend did not even make reference. No," Dvan said with a certain heavy contempt, "there is no such thing as United Earth Intelligence."
Denice said, "Yet."
* * *
29.
At the center of the Temple, on a small raised dais of gray stone, sat a bound volume--a book--titled In Time of Legend.
Dvan had never read it, had never so much as held it in his hands; the Shield had its own copies, censored for them by the Aneda. At times, before Dancing, the Dancers read from the unexpurgated book, briefly or at length. In his short life Dvan had heard, he guessed, less than one hundredth of the stories contained within In Time of Legend.
Dvan knelt there with his back to the dais, to the bound copy of In Time of Legend, head bent toward the image of the God of Players, and prayed.
It was not prayer such as a Christian of Denice Castanaveras' time would have recognized. The concept of asking one of the Gods to intercede on his behalf in some matter would have struck Dvan as both ludicrous, and rank heresy; had such a thing been proposed to him he would likely have replied that the Great Gods had better things to do with their time. Prayer, as it had been taught to Dvan, was a thing designed to improve the nature of the person praying, to give one time to reflect, to open oneself to the voice of Deity, if Deity chose to speak.
Dvan knelt and prayed to the God of Players. In his life he had only once received a response, and that a brief one. While still a child he had prayed to the Nameless God of Players, had asked the God to guide him in his desire to become a Dancer. For an instant the form of the God had come alive, and a voice, so clear and sharp he had never doubted it, had whispered to him, No. That is not your path.
Where the shadow cloak touched him, he was warm. The skin of his face grew cold under the chill breezes from the ship's airpush. Dvan was little aware of the passage of time, of the condition of his body; after an indeterminate time, he simply knew that he was done.
The matter of Sedon had not resolved itself within him; he was not surprised.
Dvan rose, inclined his head to the God of Players--no greater an inclination than he would have given Marah, or the Aneda; a sign of respect--said aloud, "At your service, sir," and left.
Another Shield stood outside the Temple as he left; Dvan had the immediate impression that Gi'Alven'Mutara'Kladdi had been waiting for him. Kladdi's words confirmed it; as Dvan passed him Kladdi spoke softly, voice pitched low to carry no further than Dvan's ears, this despite the fact that they were alone together in the corridor: "The Keeper would see you."
There was no need for Dvan to ask who was meant; there was only one Keeper aboard ship.
Aside from guarding the heretics, protecting the Keeper was the most important shipboard task the Shield had. They were in many ways the same task. It was a matter of particular pride to Dvan that the Keeper chosen to inscribe the first and last layers of lines of each of the eight pentagrams in which the Dancers had been imprisoned was quite nearly one of his own, the lady Saliya of the Ea'Tbad, she who had Kept the Temple at Deshego. Other Keepers had laid the lines between first and last, but those Keepers were not aboard, and only Saliya's presence and will kept the pentagrams at full force. If some misadventure were to cause Her death, the pentagrams imprisoning the Dancers would not long survive Her. To prevent the Dancers from taking over the ship, the Shield would need to kill the Dancers while the pentagrams still held--
--Dvan thought he could do it; but he was certain that most of his mates, excepting the Sentinel Marah, would not even if they could.
Saliya's quarters were on Fourth Deck, as was the Temple, but it was as far away from the Temple as the sphere of the ship allowed it to be. Her quarters were those normally given
the ship captain, if a civilian craft; or the Shield Sentinel, if military. Adjustments had been made to the quarters, to suit Her needs; all the walls removed, to give Her as much open space as possible, and the quarters around Hers emptied of occupants, to help in preserving the silence She craved.
Shield guarded the entrance to Saliya's quarters, over a dozen of them spaced along the length of the corridor leading toward Her cabin. The Shield did not look at Dvan as he strode down the length of the corridor toward the Keeper's quarters, but kept their eyes fixed forward.
Two Shield stood at the entrance to Her quarters. Dvan touched the clasp at his neck, handed his cloak to the Shield at his left, and entered.
He stepped into a place of shifting shadows. Her quarters had been divided into smaller, more private areas, with cloth hangings; some of them simple cloth, others with scenery inscribed upon them.
Saliya came forward to greet him, stepping through a long hanging that held an image of the Restoration, and into the light. She wore a dark, unadorned dress of some thin material that flowed around Her in a way Dvan found distracting. Four gold-red bracelets, at each wrist and ankle, set off skin that was pale to a degree Dvan thought unattractive in most women and all men, the color of blood, pink and blue beneath the skin.
On Her it was glorious.
Their Keeper was the oldest human being Dvan had ever met.
Dvan had heard it rumored that She remembered the days before the Zaradin left; if true, it would make Her some twelve thousand years old.
Her voice was the instrument of a Keeper or Dancer, trained to the art of Speaking; now low, and soothing. "Dvan. Be welcome."
Dvan did not know he was in love, and would not have believed it if told so. Love had nothing to do with the act of sex, and certainly nothing to do with a Keeper.
He stopped two paces before Her, inclined his head, and said, "My lady. I am at your service."
The Last Dancer Page 30