The Last Dancer

by The Last Dancer (new ed) (mobi)

  The woman cut him off. "Three-quarters of the armed spacecraft in the Solar System belong to Space Force. The PKF has twelve million men in uniform across the surface of this planet; has nearly three thousand Elite cyborgs. The cyborgs we have created with what we have learned from 'Sieur Summers, though in their own way impressive, are not technologically a match for any but the earliest of the Unification's Elite; and there are only two hundred of them. You have a million PKF in O.A.; we have only thirty thousand in all of Japan. It seems to us that our interests are not served by contesting the Unification, but rather by working from within it."

  "Do you not thirst for revenge, for the damage done you, the deaths rained down upon you from the sky?"

  The three facing him were silent for a long while. It was at last the eldest of their number, Ryotaro Matsuda, who spoke. He spoke in a whisper of English. "I was born, 'Sieur Obodi, in black rain, as the earth blasted into the sky by American bombs was washed back to the ground; born to devastation so utter a lesser people would not have recovered from it. My elder sister died of radiation poisoning shortly after I was born; both of my parents died of cancers from the bombs. But we are a great people, and we rebuilt; became pre-eminent in the world. And then in 2018 the Unification bombed us again, fourteen warheads exploded in airbursts over Japanese territory; and I lost two of my three children to the fire, and the third to radiation sickness. And again we rebuilt, and today enjoy prosperity that is the envy of the world. We maintain our own society, we do not flaunt our wealth; we ask for nothing of the gaijin but that they leave us be. We have aided you more than is perhaps wise already, and what you now ask of us, madman, is that we risk ourselves and our children, once again, for no better reason than that it is convenient for you."

  Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon said bluntly, "You have thermonuclear warheads. I need them."

  Silence descended.

  Akira Hasegawa said cautiously, "You have been misinformed."

  "You have twenty-five of them," said Sedon. "I will leave you three for self-protection. I must have the rest."

  The woman facing Sedon said simply, "We will not give them to you."

  Sedon employed a technique that would not have worked on any of the Flame People, it was so obvious, but which he had found, to his amazement, often worked on the people of this time. As sincerely as he could, he asked, "Is there anything I can do to change your mind?"

  It did not work this time; she shook her head, said firmly, "No."

  Sedon nodded. "David?"

  The boy's voice was calm, disinterested. "Yes?"

  "As we discussed."

  When Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon left to return to Occupied America, the following morning, he took with him two things: a group of forty of the almost-Elite cyborgs, young, immensely polite Japanese men; and, stacked neatly in the SB's hold, twenty-two fusion warheads.

  He left behind him a group of Japanese leaders who would do exactly as David Castanaveras had instructed them.

  * * *

  53.

  Late on the afternoon of June the 30th, 2076, Secretary General Eddore's Chief of Staff, Hand Alexander Moreau, stepped into the SecGen's office. "Sir?"

  Eddore looked up from the holofield he was auditing. "Yes, Alex?"

  "Councilor Ripper wants to speak to you."

  Eddore nodded, felt a flicker of warm anticipation. "Have him wait a minute or two, then put him through."

  "He's here." At Eddore's look of incomprehension, Moreau added, "in the waiting room."

  A slow smile crossed Charles Eddore's features. "Really? Without an appointment. How charming. Bring him in."

  Moreau turned back to the door; Ripper brushed by him on his way in.

  Eddore said calmly, "Douglass."

  "Are you blind?"

  Eddore smiled. "I don't think so. Have a seat, Douglass."

  "What are you doing, Charles?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I called Commissioner Vance."

  "Ah." Eddore needed no more than that; Vance, chafing at the bit, would have been blunt about his displeasure at being held back on the Johnny Rebs; and Ripper, as the Chair of the Oversight Committee, was an appropriate place for Vance to express his displeasure. "And if you hadn't called Vance," Eddore murmured, "doubtless he'd have called you?"

  "Probably. He's not a happy man, Charles." Ripper paused. "You've lied to the Council."

  "Oh? About?"

  "This investigation your office claimed the PKF was undertaking. I called Christine Mirabeau, and asked her to forward the documents on the investigation. She told me that they were investigating the Rebs, were about to move forward on it, and promised that the documents would be sent over promptly."

  Eddore nodded. "Yes, I know. She called and told me of your request. I told her not to send them."

  "So for a couple of weeks now I've been unable to get hold of her. Today when I called Vance--imagine my surprise--I found that Vance claims to know nothing about any ongoing investigation into the Rebs. And he says he would know."

  Ripper had not accepted Eddore's offer to sit down; now the Secretary General was just as pleased. He sighed. "Douglass, I'm sorry it's come to this. For reasons that I do not particularly feel compelled to explain to you, Elite Commander Mirabeau has engaged in certain private research, research Commissioner Vance did not need to know about. And does not."

  "You're not going to explain this, are you?"

  "No. I'm not."

  Douglass Ripper said simply, "You're fucking up, Charles."

  To Alexander Moreau, hovering nervously by the door, the Secretary General said, "Show Douglass out, Alex."

  Ripper snorted, "I know the way," and brushed by Moreau once again on his way out.

  After he was gone, Eddore said aloud, possibly to Hand Moreau, "I do hate bad losers."

  Ripper awoke to darkness, alone in bed, in his suite at Capitol City.

  He had almost gotten used to sleeping alone again; but it was still his first thought on awakening, to notice that Denice was not with him.

  After a moment he realized what had awakened him, the chiming of the phone. "Command," he said groggily, sitting up in bed, "no video. Accept."

  It was Ichabod, speaking so fast that Ripper could not make out the man's words. "Wait, wait," he snapped. "Slow down."

  "Emergency meeting of the Council, Councilor. Starts whenever a quorum shows up."

  "What time is it?"

  "Two a.m."

  "What the hell is it?"

  There was the briefest of pauses. "Two things, Councilor. The orbital laser cannon have apparently been knocked out--"

  "God damn it," yelled Douglass Ripper, standing up in bed. "God fucking damn it! I told them, I told them--God damn," he yelled again. "Have they heard from the fucking Rebs yet? Demands, anything?"

  Another quick pause. "No. There haven't been any demands. Councilor, there's some real question whether the Rebs or Claw have done this."

  Blackness surrounded him. "Who else? The Collective? They think--"

  "Councilor, Japan has declared independence."

  Douglass Ripper stared blindly into the darkness for perhaps five seconds. Finally he spoke with preternatural calm. "I'll be at the Council Chambers in ten minutes."

  * * *

  54.

  They gathered together in the dining lounge, watching the Boards.

  NewsBoard had the first reports out of Japan; Denice watched, with Robert at her side, as Shuji Kurokawa, the Unification Councilor for Japan, declared that, as was the right of any sovereign state, Japan had decided that it no longer found membership in the Unification favorable to its interests; and that therefore, in deference to the opinion of the world, they were taking this opportunity to explain their grievances against the Unification.

  Dvan sat with them, watching; his wrist was nearly mended.

  At 10:15 a.m., in the middle of a report detailing how a group of Japanese guerillas had taken all but two of the orbital laser cannon, De
nice rose and walked over to the garage to bid Jimmy Ramirez goodbye.

  A yacht and a pair of SB's were parked in the garage. Jimmy, standing in front of the yacht, squirming in to his pressure suit, glanced up as she entered. He greeted her with the words, "I wasn't sure you would come see me off."

  Chandler had already boarded the small yacht; Denice bit her lip before replying. "I'm sorry."

  "You can still come with me."

  "I'm going back to Earth, Jimmy. With Robert, and Devane. And we're going to try to kill Sedon, and rescue my brother."

  Jimmy nodded, sealed the p-suit up to his collar. He said something that only a few weeks ago would have been very difficult for him. "I'm afraid for you, Denice."

  "I'm afraid too, Jimmy. But maybe the Belt CityStates are the proper place for you. Trent's out there, somewhere. But there's nothing there for me, not right now."

  "Some day, Denice, we're going to return and take the bastards down. You know that's true."

  She nodded. "But it doesn't change what I have to do today. I won't ask you to come with me; you couldn't even if you wanted to."

  Jimmy said slowly, "All right. I'm going to miss you."

  "I love you, Jimmy." She took a single step forward, moved into his embrace, put her chin on his shoulder and held on tight until the speaker set in the side of the yacht came alive.

  Chandler's voice: "Sorry to interrupt, but time is tight. We've got a Space Force battalion passing by right now; radar shows another moving in from Almundsen at L-4. If we're going to make Halfway without turning into Space Force target practice, we have to be out of here in a little under two minutes."

  Jimmy released Denice, took a step back, and without further word turned away from her.

  Denice said, "Wait!"

  Jimmy turned back; an absurd flicker of hope crossed his features, was gone. "What?"

  "I need to talk to Chandler." She cycled through with Jimmy, into the yacht, and moved back to the passenger compartment. Chandler looked up as she entered.

  "What is it, dear?"

  "Who knows about me? About my brother?"

  The old man did not misunderstand her. Displeasure touched the fierce features. "Aside from myself, no one. Not in my organization."

  Denice took a deep breath, reached forward, and laid her hand against the side of his head. Brief surprise crossed his features.

  My name is Denice Daimara. I'm the student of Robert Dazai Yo. The telepaths are gone from the world, and you think them dead. Except when you are alone, you will never think otherwise. When you are alone, you may remember me, and my brother; but you will not act upon it, and you will never speak of it.

  Jimmy seated himself, strapping into his acceleration chair. He said quietly, "What are you doing?"

  "Protecting myself."

  Chandler sat with his eyes closed, and then, after a long moment, opened them and said irritably, "Fine. Look, Daimara, we're deadly short on time. Are you quite done?"

  Jimmy looked at her without expression. "What about me?"

  Denice looked straight at him. "Some risks are worth taking." She turned away and left them together in the cabin, cycled back out into the garage, and walked back up to the lounge. She felt the gentle shudder as the yacht disengaged from the house, moved out into the vacuum.

  After she was gone, Jimmy Ramirez sat with a silly grin on his face, a grin not entirely due to the fierce acceleration of the yacht, in their high-gee sprint to Halfway.

  * * *

  55.

  I cancelled everything.

  For most of a day I sat in my office and, with a growing coldness in the pit of my stomach, monitoring the Net. Electronic Times, NewsBoard, CNN, The London Times; virtually every one of the major news Boards was arrayed in a semi-circle of holos against the wall of my office.

  Bad. Very, very bad. Riots in St. Louis, and Albuquerque; something very close to an armed insurrection in Miami.

  It was worse in Japan. The Japanese had, without so much as a shot being fired, taken most of the Unification officials in the country hostage, aside from those few who, like Shuji Kurokawa, had simply gone over.

  Hostages: better than a dozen Unification Councilors, two of Secretary General Eddore's webdancers, over thirty thousand members of the various civil services; the Japanese rebels had already executed a pair of babychasers from the Ministry of Population Control. Not surprising, that; nobody likes the Ministry, but the Asian nations--including China, which was one of the founding Unification countries--have a particular rage for the babychasers. They feel, with some justification, that the Ministry was created by Westerners because of the Asian nations, with their historically high birth rates. It's certainly true that most non-Asians don't even know someone who was subjected to forcible sterilization; in the Asian countries, about forty percent of all women have undergone the operation.

  While I was watching, they announced that another pair of MPC employees had been lynched in Kyoto.

  Displays off to my left showed the Unity, sitting smack in the middle of Halfway; Space Force had brought the ship's cannon emplacements up for use. Lights glowed across the huge surface of the ship, clustered around the cannon. Typical of Space Force; the damn thing had no airplant, no computers to speak of, the rockets didn't work--but the weapons did, all of them.

  The door behind me curled open without my say-so, which meant that it was Jay, or Vasily, or Marc. "Neil."

  Jay's voice; I said, without looking away, "Yes?"

  "The circus is in town."

  I turned in my chair and stared at him. "You're kidding. They came?"

  Jay shrugged. "The Collective ship Lew Alton, carrying the Cirque du Mars. Just docked."

  I didn't even have to think about it. "Send them back."

  "Can't, Neil. Their airplant died and their 'ponics are in bad shape; they're tight on both air and water. It's why they came on ahead after we warned them off. They'd probably make Luna, but they can't get back to Mars. I had them tie up with our computers and we ran diagnostics to double check theirs, and it's legit. They're breathing their socks."

  "Great." I worked my way through it. "All right. Let them dock, cable them up for air services, but keep them on board their ship."

  "Um, they already docked."

  I sat rubbing my temples. "I don't suppose there's any chance they're still on board the damn ship?"

  "Haven't been down there myself; I'm told that eight of them came down off the ship together before I was notified. They're being detained in the debarking area outside Lock Ten; a woman in a white coat and tails, a couple of roustabouts, and, um--" His cheeks twitched, but he kept it under control. "--five clowns. They want to talk to you."

  "Five clowns." I nodded grimly. "Who let them in?"

  Jay paused, glanced down at his handheld; a holofield sprang into existence. "McCarthy and Lopez," he said after a moment. I recognized the names; rookies, both of them. The two of them had come to my attention recently for something else--but the memory wouldn't come, and I had more important things to worry about. "They want to talk to you," Jay repeated.

  "They're not going to enjoy it," I said grimly. "Get ten Security carrying needlers, in case our clowns don't feel like being sent home. I'll meet you there in five minutes."

  I worked myself up into a cold rage on my way down to Lock Ten.

  Jay stood waiting outside the Lock Ten debarking area when I got there, two Security squads with holstered needlers standing behind him. I nodded to them, palmed open the door to the waiting area, and swept in, moving fast, with the lot of them at my back.

  They sat in the small plastic chairs that are all the amenities the debarking areas offer, and they came to their feet as I entered. The Master of Ceremonies was a tall, painfully thin woman, Loonie sized, with a makeup job that made her look as though her skin were covered by fine feathers; wearing, as Jay had said, a white tuxedo.

  The clowns, naturally enough, caught my immediate attention; there were five of
them, as I'd been told, in full costume--clown suits, striped and polka-dotted, with either big smiles or frowns painted on their faces. One of them, a young dark-skinned fellow with a huge smile and a single white rose painted on each cheek, stepped forward at my approach. At the back of my mind I noticed that, unlike all the other clowns, he wore a pair of those big floppy clown shoes. A red glove with big yellow buttons covered his left hand; his right hand was bare.

  I'd intended to grab the Master of Ceremonies, possibly push her off her feet, shake her up a bit. Basic Gestapo tactics, you use them because they work. But when I saw what she was I couldn't. Getting physical with women is something I have a problem with; I do it because the job demands it, but there's always a moment of hesitation I don't have with men. But the Master of Ceremonies looked like any rough handling would break her in two.

  So I changed the approach. I kept my eyes fixed on the Master of Ceremony, and backhanded the clown with the roses on his cheeks. Lock Ten is under a tenth gee; the clown lifted off his feet and went down. I snapped, "I'm Chief Corona and I've got Space Force and PKF to deal with and no time for you. What are you idiots doing here and what do you need from us to get the hell gone?"

  The black clown got back to his feet. He was my size, or a bit taller, with Earth-grown muscles. Tall for a downsider. One of the floppy clown feet had come off, and he frowned down at the bare black foot. He took a step back toward me, said, "No hitting, okay? Can I talk?"

  I used my very best psycho cop voice. "Make it fast."

  He nodded. "I left Earth seven years ago. In that time, do you know the most interesting thing I've learned about downsiders?"

  It was so completely out of line with anything I'd been expecting to hear from him that it threw me completely out of position. I stared at him, unsnapped the guard on my holster--heard the sound of holsters popping all around me--and said finally, very gently, "No. What is the most interesting thing about downsiders?"

  "Downsiders," said the clown, "never look up."

  Tytan Security, I think I've mentioned this, is mostly downsiders. It's the nature of the beast.