His eyes held her, his voice enveloped her and held her, stirred deeply held memories; gossamer sheets of image, of emotion, rose up and faded away as he spoke.
"The harmonious expression of life, sometimes vigorous, sometimes gentle, is the surface of dance. We are a celebration and an affirmation. In every movement we describe ourselves to the world, with every glance, every step, every gesture, we betray ourselves to all those with eyes to see. We must be aware of all that we do, all of the time; and why. Movement cannot be done with only part of your attention, because everything depends on how a movement is made. The quality of a motion is directly related to this ability to be aware; to be completely alive in the moment of motion.
"The human body is designed and made to dance. All creatures dance, for movement comes before speech, before thought; the first communication any creature learns is the communication of movement.
"Before your people spoke, they danced.
"A dance cannot lie. It is what it is. Only words can lie, can represent that which is not. A dance is. It can only represent that which is.
"Language is a lie. It is what it is not.
"Dance is.
"Dance is honest. It is an understanding of gravity, and an understanding of balance. An understanding of center, of posture and of gesture. An understanding of rhythm, and harmony.
"An understanding of breath.
"An understanding, Denice Castanaveras, of motion. But these are merely tools, and all of them, together, do not make dance."
They sat together in silence.
"Life is movement; and the expression of life is the surface of dance; and those who are most alive are those who dance well. Those who are most honest are those who dance well.
"You, Denice, have not understood this. In your youth, you have wondered if dancing matters. If it is not 'just dancing.' And yet the finest thing you can do is dance. The greatest expression of yourself is dance. Everything else--everything you have ever been exposed to--is another art. Art of passion, art of pain, art of joy and art of faith.
"Art of death.
"But there is only one art of life. And that art is the Dance. And you, Denice Castanaveras, have it in you to Dance."
Denice found herself unable to keep looking at the man. "How can you know this?"
Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon said simply, "I do not know what you are. Your people are strange to me, and you are strange among your own people. But I know where you are, for I have been there. In your life you have had those who would teach you, and you have learned from them, sometimes well; but their wisdom has not touched you, and their art has not filled you; and inside you hunger."
"You must have spent a long time interrogating me."
His lips quirked in the barest of smiles. "An hour, perhaps. You are aware of your problem, and it was not difficult to extract it from you."
"What are you?"
Surprisingly, he shook his head. "I do not know, Denice. I was once a Dancer. Today I am merely a thing struggling to survive. I do not Dance, and have not for so long the years would have no meaning for you." He paused, said, "What are you?"
Denice whispered, "I am empty."
Sedon nodded. "That is a place to start." He raised his voice slightly, said, "Command, holo on."
The wall to Denice's left speckled with stars.
The clip that flashed up was instantly familiar to Denice, and yet so unexpected that it took her a long moment to identify it.
It was the video taken by the Tau Ceti probe, lasercast back to Earth.
The probe had been launched in the early '20s, following the end of the Unification War. In the summer of 2057 the probe had reached Tau Ceti; twelve years later, in the summer of 2069, the probe's laser had returned the images of aliens to Sol System.
Two Earthlike planets circled Tau Ceti at distances of approximately one hundred fifty and one hundred eighty million kilometers. The probe found, orbiting the inner planet, a solid oval mass nearly two hundred fifty kilometers in diameter. There was less than half an hour of video from the probe before the image had abruptly ceased.
The swell of the huge oval artifact grew in the video.
"I've seen this before," Denice said after a moment.
"Indeed," said Sedon absently. "I suppose most of you have. But you do not know yet what you have seen. Watch."
The image of the orbiting oval swelled in size as their apparent viewpoint approached it, losing resolution at the same time. At the very edge of the oval, partially eclipsed by it, were three small wedges.
It was as though Sedon had read her mind. "They are small only by comparison to the outpost they guard, or by comparison to some of the other craft that the sleem build. Today your Unification is building the greatest warcraft in its history, the Unity. It is seven kilometers long." Sedon turned to her. "Those three tiny wedges are, each one, at least eighteen kilometers long. They are sleem warships of the line. Any one of those craft could conquer Sol System. By itself, without danger to itself. Your Unity, when complete, would be destroyed in minutes by the least of the sleem empire's fighter craft. Command, holo off."
The room descended into darkness once again, darkness but for the scattered lights of the distant floodlamps on the beach.
Sedon studied Denice. "And they are only twelve light years away. If we disturbed them, they could be here--tomorrow, if they know the route through the spacelace tunnels; within a year if they had to search for one. Within a mere fifteen years across real space."
"What does this have to do with me?"
"My dear, the sleem make fine masters. They will enclose us in this solar system, place an outpost like the one at Tau Ceti to ensure that we never attempt to leave Sol System. And aside from that they will leave us alone. They are based upon silicon in a fluoro-silicon atmosphere, and they have no interest in the planets that once belonged to the Zaradin." Sedon's voice grew very quiet, an almost inaudible whisper, insinuating itself into a space somewhere in the back of Denice's skull. "But my child, Dancers were not made to have masters, but to be. Life is too precious a thing to be wasted in subjugation to anyone. It may be that there is no need of a hand to hold the whip, a voice to call the roll; most of the great advances your people have made have come about since the rights of property and governments have been found not to be unlimited. But--" His voice cracked, sharp and hard-edged. "If there must be a hand to hold the whip, that hand is ours. If there must be a voice to call the roll of life and death, that voice is ours. We who are most alive are most suited to determine matters of life and death, for we most deeply grasp life's value.
"This is what we are made for. It is what you are made for."
Denice's heart pounded in her chest. "I don't want to be like you."
Sedon seemed mildly amused. "But Denice, you have no choice. You are like me. When those around you fail, do you feel their pain?"
The muscles in her jaw twitched. "When I Touch them."
Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon had not known, until that very instant, whether he could Speak to a woman; whether he could empathize deeply enough to even make the attempt. He knew now that he could, knew the Speaking he wished to attempt.
He used her father's voice: "Remember that you're tougher than they are. Better."
Time crawled to a stop around Denice Castanaveras. Her hands, resting loosely on her knees, went numb. She was abruptly there, nine years old again, in the moment that it had happened, with her father and her brother, Carl's thoughts touching her own, burning into her with the depth of his rage. Kill the fuckers.
And they had; she remembered it clearly now, for the first time in fourteen years. Coming out of the elevator, one Peaceforcer; and then the one sitting motionless in the corner of the hotel lobby; later a man who had tried to stop them, neither she nor David ever knew what for, out on the street. And then--a tumble of confusion, the huge press of the crowd taking to the streets in the following day's riots. A shattered fragment of something in an alley, a dozen teen
agers kicking her half to death; abruptly David was gone. Someone fed her; then a long blur of nothingness. The crushing weight of an adult body pressing down onto hers, the ripping pain as he pushed himself into her. And again, perhaps him, perhaps someone else; she remembered a different shape. A bright sharp moment in the midst of the confusion; afterward, it was still and quiet throughout the abandoned building the man shared with his wife and brother and two children of his own. The maser was so old she had been afraid it was going to short out in her hand. It hadn't. Once at close range into the back of the big man's head; his wife had awakened in time to get the next shot in the throat.
Out of the building, moving quietly, the rain from Weather Control's storm still falling outside; only three or four days had passed since the destruction of everything she had ever known.
The Ministry of Population Control workers, most of them imported from other states to help with the catastrophe, found her sometime in the following week, curled up in the doorway of an abandoned building, clutching the maser like a doll while she slept. She awoke in a barracks, with dozens of other children, some younger than her, some older--
Awoke.
Sedon watched her with something that might have been compassion.
Vibrating with the fury; her hands shook. Denice had never meant anything more in her life. "If you ever try that again I'll kill you." She saw the flicker of rage pass across his features, and whispered to him, like a lover, "Would you like to try matching rages with me? I was taught by a master."
Sedon looked away from her, down to the floor.
For the very briefest moment a smile touched his lips.
He looked back up again. "If you were a boy, I think I would love you, Denice Castanaveras. I was once much like you. Listen now. You are responsible, child, to yourself. Not them, not the ones who hurt you, or the ones who helped you; you have no obligation to them you do not choose to assume. There is no contract between you. Today your life is endangered--" He paused. "Our lives. Our ability to determine our lives is endangered." The rage flared up again within Sedon, and this time he let it show. "The petty squabbles your people have indulged in, the primitive desire for power over those around you, when the wolf sits crouched outside your door, snarling and hungry; at times I think you deserve this fate." He gentled his voice, said softly, "But to see the descendants of the Flame People, no matter how changed, beneath the rule of the sleem, is not in me. If I admit no responsibility for those less powerful than myself, also I do not lust for power over them. When I was released from the tulu adrhe, the slowtime bubble, I sought only to survive. And survival is not difficult in this time, for one with my skills; I might have found some quiet, out-of-the-way spot, and survived nicely in any of a dozen fashions." He sat silent, brooding. "And one day I should have looked up into the night sky, and seen sleem warships dwarfing Halfway. This is why I have done what I have done. On all this planet, there are only two people competent to deal with the threat of the sleem." Sedon smiled abruptly, a dazzling smile that lit his face like neon laser. "And I am going to kill the other one as slowly as I can."
"Dvan."
"Yes. The world is full of surprises. Do you know, I had not dreamed any of the Flame People save myself might have survived. Only a few months ago my intelligence told me I was being researched by a newsdancer named William Devane. They showed me a holo of him; astonishing. He had not changed to speak of, not in all that time. I have had some time to think of what I would do when I had him at last. And finally I hit upon the same tool your brother has employed to keep himself happy; the juice."
Denice said slowly, "David is on electric ecstasy?"
"Yes."
"And you wired Dvan's pleasure center?"
"Well," said Sedon mildly, "the human brain also has a pain center."
Denice looked away from him. "When can I see my brother?"
"You cannot. I have not drugged him as I drugged you, and though he makes a fine tool--the juice makes him pliable, and I have Spoken to him at length--he nonetheless frightens me."
"Can I see my teacher?"
"The Japanese man?"
"Yes."
"You cannot. I see some corrupted fragment of the Dance in him; and he frightens me."
"You're a very frightened man."
"I have lived a very long time. I have learned to be."
Denice stood, clasped her hands together and bowed once in a very real gesture of respect. She straightened without haste and said, "I will never dance for you."
* * *
67.
On July 10, 2076, on a bright clear day that made him want to go to the beach and surf a bit, Lan Sierran stood before the ramps leading up into the carriers that would evacuate the rebel forces south; some to make a stand at Riverside, the balance going all the way south to San Diego.
They stood on a high hill in East Los Angeles, just south of modern downtown, overlooking the path of what had once been the 10 Freeway. Seventy years ago it had been widened, and then widened again; and then hovercars had been invented and traffic started getting stacked higher instead of wider. It had been at least fifty years since anybody had bothered to maintain the asphalt; grass grew up all through it, and stretches where the black of ancient asphalt ran clean and smooth were few and far between.
A monorail ran down the center of the huge empty space; the rebels had blown the rail down in so many places the PKF would not even bother attempting to repair it. They would come in Armored AeroSmiths, in jet aircraft and semiballistics.
Rebels had booby-trapped the approach to the extent possible. It did not seem to be slowing the PKF much. The rebels were short on mines; mostly they had settled for stringing fineline. Small lengths of fineline, at ankle level, to take an approaching soldier's foot off; larger lengths, at waist level, were intended to slice through tanks and low-flying hovercraft.
The ankle-high traps were working well. The others the PKF were knocking out with the simple expedient of waving lasers in front of them as they advanced.
Standing for cover beneath the ramps leading up into the carrier, Lan listened to the reports coming in. "Two hundred seventy-two dead, one hundred eighteen wounded. Five hundred and twelve aboard the carriers, all accounted for." Lan switched off his earphone, leaned out from under the ramp, and said, "We're ready to lift."
Callia sat on the carrier's ramp, imaging binoculars up to her eyes, for all the world as though she were in the front row at a play put on for her private viewing, watching the Peaceforcers Elite advance like a knife through butter, slicing through the scattered opposition of the uncoordinated guerillas the rebels were leaving behind them. Twice while she watched, missiles shot forward toward them; twice lasers reached out from behind her, knocked them down. The Peaceforcer troops were a good three klicks distant; but moving fast. The front line was Elite, covering territory with the unreal speed that only Elite could make. Watching Elite troops approach, as she was now, had become a regular feature of Callia Sierran's nightmares.
She lowered the binoculars slowly. "We shouldn't be doing this."
Lan said quietly, "The pilot says if we don't evac now, we're going to lose our cover."
"We should stay and fight."
"If we do we'll die." Callia turned to look at Lan, and Lan continued, "They have Los Angeles, Callia. Let's go." He offered her his hand; she took it, and he pulled her to her feet.
She walked up the ramp without hurry, without looking back.
The voice Spoke to him in darkness. "You stole everything from me."
The pain crescendoed, worked its way up to a brilliant white peak of agony, held there for a long moment. Dvan screamed at the top of his lungs.
It was a quiet sound. His vocal cords were nearly gone.
"You stole my childhood."
The pain faded. Nothing. Complete lack of sensation.
Shield were made to kill themselves rather than endure the Speaking of a Dancer. But Dvan could not get his hands free.
<
br /> The itching started at the base of his scalp, crept downward.
"You killed Indo. You killed my lovers. You killed my comrades."
The restraints at his wrists and ankles were alive with red ants, chewing away at his skin. Blisters bubbled up on his chest.
"You stole my past. You chased me into the tulu adrhe and stole my future."
His eyes burst and his tongue swelled until he could not breathe. Rivulets of acid ran down the length of his body; his testicles were ripped from him, the edge of a dull axe crashed down on his shins, and a spike of barbed metal thrust upward through his anus, into his intestines, and turned.
"Fifty thousand years, Dvan. You denied me my chance to fight the sleem, to build a civilization as I wished, to find any measure of happiness in the world."
The agony blended and came together, into the familiar sharp white spike of perfect pain.
Dvan screamed at the top of his lungs--and the pain ceased.
Dvan shuddered and hung limply in his restraints.
He had the lights dimmed almost to black, and sat in a chair in the corner of the cell; if, impossible as it seemed, the Shield managed to break his bonds, Sedon wanted time to do something about it, and room to move. He would have another advantage; he'd had Dvan's eyelids taped open, and bright lights shone into his eyes, much as he'd done to Tommy Boone, in a time that seemed already half a lifetime distant. Dvan might not be permanently blind, but there was no chance he could see in this light.
Sedon had not been offended at being called a very frightened man; it was true enough. And at the top of the list of those things that frightened him was Dvan.
Dvan's voice was rough--from the screaming, Sedon supposed. He spoke in shiata: "You again."
Sedon chuckled quietly. "Who else?"
"What now?"
"I need advice, Dvan."
Dvan said in English, "Go shove your head up a constipated camel's ass."
Sedon laughed. "After fifty millennia you think you are still Dvan of the Gi'Tbad? Still one of the Flame People? One of our people would not even understand why that comment was insulting, much less take pleasure in the delivery of it. You've changed, my friend. You're far more one of them than one of the Flame People." He paused, and when Dvan said nothing, continued. "But then, perhaps you always were. Here you are at last among a people who consider your sexual proclivities, and your emotional deficiencies, normal. I wonder how much of that was your influence on them, down the course of the millennia. Millennia upon millennia of interbreeding, of children whom you raised to share your prejudices and your failings; it must have marked them."
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