At their first stop, a tiny roadside town of only a few hundred people, about a half hour out of Vegas, a thin, white-haired woman of indeterminate age got on the bus, wrapped in a long black shawl against the cold. Denice glanced at her without expression as the woman made her way back down the bus; the seat next to hers was one of the very few empty ones, and she did not particularly want company.
The woman seated herself next to Denice, put her huge thatch purse on the floor at her feet. "Hello, dear."
Denice nodded, turned her head slightly away, and closed her eyes as though trying to sleep.
She awoke some time later, to darkness. The bus moved along the road quietly and without any real hurry, only occasional traffic speeding by above them, or off to one side of the road. She yawned, stretching.
The woman in the seat next to her smiled at her as she stretched. "Did you have a good nap?"
"Yes."
"Good. I set a spell so that you would."
Denice looked at the woman with interest for the first time. A thin, dark skinned woman, with white hair and white eyebrows; tiny little crow's feet clustered around the edges of her eyes. A single clear crystal on a white cord hung down over her black shawl. One of her several rings had the shape of an ankh; something in her gave Denice the impression of great age. "You're a witch."
The woman's cheeks twitched just a bit. "Aren't you?"
Denice found herself smiling back at the woman, almost against her own will. "Maybe. I lived at Goddess Home for a couple of years; have you ever been there?"
"Oh, I've visited, now and again. Doubtless I'll visit again some day." The old woman looked off in the darkness ahead. "There's no hurry, is there?"
"I guess not." The bus ground to a halt, and a pair of PKF, rifles slung across their backs, boarded it. They moved backward through the bus, and started checking ID's in the rear row, moving forward. Denice and the older woman gave their handhelds over when requested; the PKF handed them back in a few minutes. It took most of twenty minutes before they were through, and let the bus move on.
Against the background of grumbling, Denice said softly, "I could get really tired of this."
The woman shrugged. "Oh, this will pass. You learn that, when you get old enough. All the politics--" She made a dismissive gesture, chuckled warmly. "Best leave it to those who enjoy it."
"This doesn't bother you?"
The woman looked at Denice with what Denice thought was true curiosity. "Should it? There are things in my world I have concern for. Raising my children, for one. Aiding my friends. Helping the crops grow. Magick, and fulfilling the responsibilities that the power confers. Teaching and learning; enjoying my life. What is it to me if some men want to stop a bus and board it and ask me silly questions?" She shook her head. "The corn doesn't care. It still wants water. My children don't care; they still need to be held when they hurt themselves, and praised when they do well, and loved all the time."
Denice grinned. "No offense intended, but you sound just like all the female witches I've known. And most of the men."
"Men can't be witches," the woman said dismissively. She appeared to consider what Denice had said. "'No offense intended.' By that, I suppose you mean that it's a criticism anyway?"
"I've never felt particularly close to women who didn't want to concern themselves with anything but--well, women's concerns."
"I see," said the witch. "Do you know what your problem is, my dear? You were raised by a man, and you were never close to your mother."
Denice looked at her. "That's true." The woman who had born her, Jany McConnell, had been busy helping to raise two hundred and forty other children of Denice's age, and she had never had much more time for her than for the others. "My father made time for me. My mother wouldn't, or couldn't. So I felt closer to him." She shook her head. "How do you know that?"
"You hold yourself like a man. You gesture like a man. I would imagine that the people in your life who have deeply mattered to you have been men."
"And you can tell this just by looking at me?"
"And talking to you. What's your name, dear?"
Denice paused. For some reason she didn't want to lie; but she was traveling under the name. "Erika," she said finally.
Amusement touched the woman's eyes. "Very well. Once, Erika, you would not have known who your father was. The first family the human race ever saw was that of mother and child. We didn't know who the father was because we didn't know that sex caused children. Children were believed a thing that we women brought forth of ourselves; because we were the source of life."
"You talk like you were there."
"The only family and only parent was the mother. It's in the deepest part of us to need a mother. That you did not have one is your great loss. It kept you from learning how to be a woman." The bus came to a slow, sighing stop, and touched down. "This is my stop." The woman fumbled with her bag, got it up off the floor, and came to her feet. "I know you understand what power is, Denice. But I'm not sure you understand what it's not." The woman leaned over and kissed Denice on the forehead. "Have a good trip."
Denice said softly, "Who the hell are you?"
"I won't insult your good sense. Some day, the Goddess willing, we'll meet again. Good-bye, dear."
Twenty minutes later Denice got out of her seat, went up to where the conductor sat smoking a cigarette and watching the road. "Excuse me?"
The conductor, a girl of about sixteen, said, "Yeah?"
"Back there, where you let that woman off. What's there?"
"Not a damn thing. Not for ten klicks in either direction."
"I see."
The conductor shrugged. "Hope she doesn't freeze to death. It's a cold night out."
The woman who had instituted the worship of the Goddess in pre-Hellenic Greece, who was to her knowledge the last surviving exile of the Old Human Race, stood at the edge of the road and watched the bus disappear into the darkness.
Her name was Mai'Riga'Say, and she had wondered, since hearing of it, about the woman who claimed to have killed Mister Obodi, the Dancer Sedon whom Say had, in another existence, followed into exile.
Having met her now, Say could almost credit it; she had not seen a Dancer in--she did not know how many thousands of years, but not since her last encounter with Indo, and that was back before the new humans had rediscovered writing--but if Say had ever seen a Dancer in her life, then this Denice Daimara was one.
The world was becoming a very interesting place of late.
Say gathered her shawl about herself, stepped from the road, and walked alone into the frozen dark desert.
The medbot examined the wall again. The cold was very bad for the patients inside, and the old adobe was cracked in far too many places. It did not provide anything like the insulation the medbot's research had indicated was possible with adobe. Fortunately, the ferrocrete mixture the medbot had ordered should fill the cracks nicely.
The medbot kept one eye on the small patient, who was working on a car in the backyard, while it troweled ferrocrete into the cracks.
At 10:12:32 a.m. a human entered the medbot's field of vision. An adult female, in a black coat and black jeans--how very interesting; it recognized her. This was one of its patients, and nobody had ever told it that the relationship had ceased. The medbot put down its trowel and walked forward to greet the patient, as the patient came through the gate and walked up the long path to the house. It noted that its instructions to apply skepticism to everything she said were still in force, decided not to believe anything she said to it, and said cheerfully, "Mademoiselle Daimara, how are you? How is your radiation poisoning? Have you fully recovered from it? Are you perhaps suffering from frostbite from your walk in the cold?"
Callia fed her vegetable stir-fry and coffee with cinnamon. After the long cold walk from the bus depot--Callia's house was eight klicks outside of town--it was exactly what Denice wanted.
The huge window to the south looked out on a back y
ard the size of Texas, with half a dozen wrecked vehicles scattered around it. The girl, working on the least wrecked-looking of them, was about twelve years old, a slim black-haired child; Denice thought she herself must have looked like that once.
"Have you spoken to 'Selle Lovely?"
Callia shook her head. "No. I think if I was to hear from her, it would be a laser in the night. Domino says she blames me for a lot of how things happened." She looked at Denice. "And I wouldn't walk down any dark alleys if I were you, either. Even Domino thinks you sold us out, even after I told them about the nukes and said I'd have done the same thing."
"Have you talked to her much?"
"Just the once. They're both just barely keeping one step ahead of the PKF. They stopped at a Temple in Ft. Lauderdale where I had asked the Reverend to call me. He called the number I'd given him, and I called back and got Domino." Her smile was sad. "She kept me talking for most of ten minutes. Ralf said they had a Player trying to trace the call."
"That must hurt."
Callia nodded. "Some. Domino was all the mother Lan had after the PKF executed ours. It's almost made me glad he didn't live to see her do this; it would have hurt him a lot."
"And you?"
"At one point I trusted Domino with my life, and Lan's. But the line of work I've been in, you learn that everyone has limits. After a while you stop trusting so completely. That's why none of them know about this place." After a moment she added, "I was seventeen when my mother died. Lan was only ten. I'd had my mother; as a child, almost as an adult. When they executed her they took away my friend; but they couldn't take away my mother."
"Apparently not. You gave her the same name?"
Callia glanced out at the girl, only her legs visible beneath the car. "Why not? My mother was a happy woman. The child has the same genes, exactly. I've given her most of the things my mother had, down to the cars my mother grew up working on."
"Make a little Speedfreak out of her."
Callia smiled. "My mother's adopted sister lives two klicks further up the road; even after the Speedfreak Rebellion in '63, the PKF never connected her with my mother, never questioned her. I figured if the PKF didn't find her then, no one else would now. So we moved Angel here for the summer, tucked her away before everything went up." She could not hide the pride in her voice. "During the TriCentennial summer she sewed herself a jacket with Faster Than The Wind on it. She was wearing it when I got back. So yes, I'm raising her the way my mother was raised. It seems to be working; Angel is a happy child."
"Angel de Luz."
"You pronounce that well." Callia paused. "It means Angel of Light."
"I know. What are you going to do now?"
Callia said simply, "Raise my daughter."
Denice knew the answer before she started, but made the offer anyway; things change. "I could use you. I'll pay for your biosculpture, get new legs cloned for you, have a new identity established."
"I'm staying with my daughter." Callia stood, carefully--the braces on both of her legs made walking difficult--and started clearing the dishes away from the table; Denice got up to help her. "I'm staying where I'm needed."
Denice spent the night there. In the hour before dawn, Ralf the Wise and Powerful awoke her. "He's in Cabo San Lucas."
* * *
79.
Cabo San Lucas sits at the tip of Baja California Sur, fifteen hundred kilometers south of the Occupied American border.
Denice came in via SB, to a downport located, for some eccentric reason, sixty klicks outside of town. The day before Christmas it blazed with heat, the sun beating down like fire on the southern tip of California. The ride into town was interesting; she paid three Credits to sit in bus that rode on wheels, all the way into town. The road ran alongside the ocean most of the way, and the water was a shade of brilliant blue that Denice had never seen before in her life, completely different from the blue of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. She did not think it was her imagination; her genie eyes were sensitive. The quality of light was different, and all the colors were truly brighter and more vibrant. The woman behind her mentioned the same thing, and the man she was with explained that it was because the sun had less atmosphere to travel through.
You have no poetry in your soul, Denice thought of the man.
When they were still half an hour outside of town she found herself growing absurdly cheerful. She clamped her teeth shut, deepened her breathing, and did her very best to meditate through the waves of her brother's happiness. The world was a fine, fine place, with colors like something out of the most gorgeously holographed sensable. The people on the bus around her were the nicest and handsomest and smartest group she'd ever had the opportunity to meet, and it occurred to her that with the kind of Credit she had now she could treat all of them as they deserved to be treated. When they got to town she would see what sort of entertainment they could round up. Dancing, certainly, she'd show them dancing like they'd never dreamed of--
As they entered the outskirts of Cabo San Lucas, her happiness vanished like a switch being thrown.
The smile faded from her features.
He was staying in a room at the Hotel Hacienda, the oldest hotel in Cabo San Lucas, built in the prior century. Her bus took her directly to the hotel, deposited her in a little automobile courtyard of red brick, with a fountain at the center of it, just outside the hotel. A porter appeared in a white uniform, margarita in hand, and attempted to hand it to her, asking in heavily accented English if she had any bags for him to carry.
She said quietly, I'm not here, and walked by him.
The lobby was covered by a roof, but otherwise was open to the air. She did not need to ask where David was, did not know what name he was using anyway. She could feel his presence off in the northern wing of the hotel, the slow turn of his thoughts. People passed by her but she did not see them. The walkway led through a tangle of flowers and hanging tropical plants with gorgeous scarlet leaves. She did not notice them.
At room B-6 David opened the door and said quietly, "Come in."
Gloom sat upon the room like a shroud; curtains drawn, lights extinguished. Denice moved forward, following David. Enough light to make out red ceramic tile, rugs, a blue-tiled kitchen; hanging lamps, prints on the walls of scenes from a bullfight.
Small and gorgeous and empty of any personal touch.
The main room was bare except for the rug and a pair of couches. David gestured to one, dropped into the other, put his feet up on it, and leaned back, hands clasped behind his head. He sat waiting, patiently, hopelessly, and eventually she spoke.
"What happened?"
He did not pretend to misunderstand her. "I made a mistake." His laughter sounded almost real; cool, amused. "When I was fifteen. I Touched a juice junkie's mind while he was on the wire." David's voice trailed off, and his features grew distant.
"What's it like?"
"You want me to turn mine on? I don't think you could avoid understanding then."
Denice said softly, "Tell me."
"It's like--like moving in sunlight--you know the way the sun feels on your muscles, when you're using them the way they're supposed to be used. It was like the best steak I'd ever had and the first beer after a day of hard physical work, and it reminded me of the taste and smell of the first girl I ever made love to." His stare touched Denice, hot and fierce. "It's better than being in love. I've been in love. It's so much better than that. Being in love hurts sometimes because the people you love change and turn into someone else. But the wire never changes." His voice was tinged with harshness and his stare did not waver: "It's always perfect."
"Have you ever tried to quit?"
"Oh, God. Yes. I've tried. In the early days I could go two, three weeks without it. Mostly by not sleeping. If I went to sleep I'd wake up happy. In my sleep I'd get up and put it in and turn it on. So I didn't sleep. I threw the plug away. A dozen times. But it was too easy to get another one--"
The thoug
ht touched Denice. She stared. "You sold wire."
His manner was mocking. "I've done worse than that, Denice. I've killed thirty-odd people. Just business; I never killed anyone where it was personal, because I wanted to or I was offended or anything silly like that. So anyway, tell me about yourself. What's been going on with you?"
With the full strength of her Gift, Denice Touched her brother.
When they were done, it was dark outside. The hanging lights had come up automatically.
They sat together on the couch, holding hands.
As children they had done that.
You're tired of the wire.
To death.
You'll never give it up.
I can't.
Do you remember the last thing Carl said to us?
Remember that you're tougher than they are. Better. David laughed. Kill the fuckers. You know, I've almost killed myself a half dozen times because he said that to us. I've been so scared, so tired. I haven't felt better than anyone.
I can leave you here, and let you go on. Or I can take it away from you.
I would very much like to see you dance.
She let go of his hand, stood slowly. She could hear the deep pounding of her heart as though it were the only sound in creation.
David Castanaveras whispered, "Dance for me."
The back of her throat was tight. "Turn the lights off, David."
The room plunged into darkness.
Denice moved slowly through the space, learning it in the darkness. Here is the rug and here are the walls and the curtains and here is the open place. There are the couches and there is David, standing motionless in the darkness, watching the heat of my body.
Touch me.
She felt his thoughts touch hers, engage, become more deeply her own, and she was he and she watched herself as she closed her eyes, and rolled her head, back and forth and around, loosening the muscles, and then stretched, slowly, like a cat, feeling the kinks shake out, rotated her wrists, lifted her hands above her head, threw her head back and stared up toward the blackness of the ceiling. Muscles stretching. Her right knee came up, toward her chest, and she leaned further backward, arms spreading out behind her like the wings of a great bird, hands curved and fingers almost touching, and bent further, hands coming down to touch the floor behind her--
The Last Dancer Page 64