Firedance

by Steven Barnes

  Neck twisted at an unnatural angle, the assassin’s own weight snapped his spine at the seventh cervical vertebra the instant before he crashed to the ground.

  Aubry stood. The world spun around him as he sobbed for air. He took a halting step away from the dead thing splayed on the floor.

  Then it groaned. Aubry’s head snapped around, fingers spread.

  The assassin wasn’t dead. Not quite. He shuddered there on the ground, eyes wide, as if transfixed by the sight of his own impending death. His arms beat arrhythmically like the wings of a half-squashed insect.

  His fingers dug into the floor, and he began to crawl toward Aubry.

  Aubry watched, fascinated, unable to move, or speak, or think. The scarred and tattooed man humped across the floor like a snake with a broken back.

  The great muscles of lat and deltoid coiled and bulged as he gripped at the ground, hauled, stopped. His bladder released, and a stinking puddle spread from his waist. As he dragged himself, his knees spread the stain in twin tracks.

  Aubry could barely breathe. Name of God, what did the man want? To attack? To beg for his life? What?

  The assassin worked his fingers under his own chin, and somehow managed to lift his head enough to lay it upon Aubry’s foot, like a large, untidy dog. He made a whining sound deep in his throat. It sounded like “She.” Aubry’s eye focused upon his enemy’s face for the first time.

  The world came apart, as if it existed only in a mirror suddenly twisted and fragmented into nightmare.

  With enormous effort he pulled the pieces back together, and found his center.

  It was him. His own face. The face was fatter … no, not fat. The face and neck were thick with muscles, grotesque with them. But it was him. Aubry saw his own death in those brown eyes, watched the life drain out of them, watched himself take a final, shuddering breath.

  And then watched himself fall into eternal stillness.

  Aubry fled from the room.

  15

  They were connected in virtspace, a realm of electronic reality, existing only in the screaming mesh of wires and fiber optics that encircled the globe. One at a time, they winked into existence. Though separated by thousands of miles, they were connected more intimately than most human beings could even imagine. Their images hovered against an electric blue background. One, two, three, they winked into being. A pause. And then one more. Three were male. African. Skin color identical to the dead man’s. Physical characteristics very, very close. One was female, of the same stock.

  “My brothers. What do we see?”

  “We see a man afraid of his own death.”

  “He is not one of us, Roku. He is not a brother.”

  “No, Ni. He is as we are. He is worthy. He killed Shi.”

  “Shi was but a beast, but I agree. I will kill him. He will have a good death.”

  “You cannot kill him as easily as you killed the woman, San. He will not die asleep, as did the policemen, Roku. He will kill you both, and then I will kill him.”

  “You have such pretensions. Go. You and your armor. After I kill him, we will match. I would see your blood.”

  “You are dreaming,” Go said. “You will see. With your death, I will earn a name.”

  “What name?” Ni asked.

  “I do not know. But to think of it, I rather like the name Aubry. He did not earn it. He will not miss it. He will be dead.”

  16

  JULY 22. NORTHERN OREGON. 3:00 a.m.

  The Chevy’s headlight splashed across the green wall of forest surrounding Ephesus, weaving a shadowed tapestry of soaring pines and firs. The metallic oval bobbed on air currents, danced for Promise and then settled into its familiar path, snaking above the river. Her hands were light and sure at the controls: flying was one of the things that she loved, one of the few times when she could shed her cocoon of financial and political responsibility and be completely, exuberantly alive.

  Ordinarily, Aubry enjoyed watching as her long, powerful fingers danced across the controls. Her joy was infectious.

  But there was no exuberance now, not in this moment.

  This early morning they carried both love and dread in human form, family and madness cloaked in human flesh. Behind them, in the Chevy’s cargo hold, lay the remains of two human beings. The ashes of Mira Warrick, and something that could have been Aubry. It vibrated in the muffled roar of the turbos, limp and broken-necked, rolled in plastic and sealed in an aluminum coffin. It was still soiled with its own wastes.

  He couldn’t make himself turn around, to gaze back into the hold. More than quiet, decomposing flesh waited in those shadows. What lay in the hold was Aubry’s destiny.

  A broken neck. A final burst of light, a savage, certain knowing. And then the endless night.

  His hand pressed against the tinted translucence of the skimmer’s Plexiglas window. The plastic flexed slightly as his shoulder muscles bulged. The other had possessed shocking strength. Aubry wondered if his own adversaries experienced the same gut-wrenching shock when closing to grappling range with him.

  Was that what terrified him, to look into the face of something more animal than human, and see himself?

  He buried his hands in his coat pockets and stared straight ahead.

  As they slipped through the trees, the wind whispered challenge and their muted fans growled greeting in return. The trees parted somberly for them. Promise drove the skimmer on and on, toward Ephesus. Toward home.

  17

  Promise touched them down tenderly, as if afraid to waken the golem in the Chevy’s cargo bay. She spun out of her chair, then paused, looking down at Aubry. He sat unmoving, seeming not to breathe, or even realize that they had landed. “Come on,” she said. There was no reply.

  The skimmer door sighed open.

  The first woman across the threshold had Promise’s height and bone structure, but was more slender through the hips. Her breasts were flatter and harder. Her natural skin tones were lighter, but tanned deeply enough to affect the same general shade. Her eyes were tilted by the same Asian caste. Whereas Promise had carefully, deliberately cultivated her sensuality as a weapon, refined it to the degree that it was no longer possible to turn it completely off, this woman seemed to have diverted the same sensual appetite, the same physical grace, into lethality. She was Promise’s sister Jenna, combat mistress of Ephesus.

  They embraced warmly. Jenna’s gaze flickered to Aubry. “Is he all right?”

  “He will be. I’ve seen this before.”

  There was motion and sound in the hold behind them, as workers struggled to move the coffin out. Six of them groaned beneath its weight, bending in respect to the flesh if not the spirit. Promise solemnly removed Mira’s rectangular brass urn.

  Jenna clambered in and sat quietly next to Aubry. He was still motionless in the copilot’s seat. For a while neither spoke; then she laid her hand upon his.

  “Aubry?”

  He nodded. His fingers traced a circle against the window. He stared off to the east, across a deeply shadowed stand of trees. Soon, the sun would be rising. He ached to see it.

  “It’s good to have you back.” She paused. “Leslie is fine.”

  This, finally, brought a smile to his lips. Aubry heaved himself up from the chair. “Leslie. I need to see Leslie.”

  He looked down at Jenna. Her nails and auburn hair were cut short. No makeup, no artifice, nothing in her face but concern and integrity. Nothing but love for him and for her half-sister, Promise. A ray of light brushed Aubry’s heart for a second. Then the clouds closed, and darkness returned.

  He tried to brush past her, to hurry from a suddenly confining cockpit, but she moved against him. As lightly as feathers her arms settled on his shoulders, and she pressed her cheek against his chest.

  Through the windows of the skimmer he could see the buildings beyond the landing pad. Two steel-frame three-storied medical facilities, the cubical brick structure of the library, the wood and glass arch of the r
esearch and conference facility. All were set in a U-shaped clearing framed by hundreds of thousands of towering trees. All about him was the scent of life and love, and Aubry should have felt at home.

  But what was home? Was it the towers and spires, the metal and concrete forest that civilized man had rooted in the earth, and then raised to heaven? Or was home the calm center within him, found only in confrontations with death?

  Or perhaps home was here, this place nestled in the Oregonian woods, where he was surrounded by people who loved him, who had nurtured him, and who accepted him fangs and all?

  Or was home somewhere else…?

  Jenna leaned back from him, and looked up, smiling impishly. Her nose was pugged, slightly askew, as if it had been broken once too often. He found it endearing. She kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were soft, her breath scented cinnamon.

  She pulled back, winked, and then linked her arm in his. She walked him back through the cargo hold, to the door. “Leslie tells me that you’ve been trying the Ludovico gambit.”

  “What?”

  “King’s pawn variations, favoring queen’s knight.”

  “Oh.” He was momentarily confused, torn. His moroseness struggled against Jenna’s bright, questioning presence. And lost.

  Tricky little twit. “I’m just trying to get through the damned middle game without that brat stripping away my pawn cover.”

  She laughed. “You’re too aggressive. You don’t leave enough defense. You have to refine your defensive structures, and stop trusting your damned invulnerability to protect you.”

  He rolled his shoulders. “I’m not feeling so damned invulnerable these days.” He laughed lamely. “Father Time …”

  “Is absurdly fond of you.”

  Promise handed Mira’s urn to a burial crew, then joined Aubry and Jenna. She managed a wan smile. “All right. Where is she?”

  “He,” Aubry said automatically.

  Jenna giggled. “That would be telling.”

  Aubry scanned the trees and the rocks as they left the skimmer. Within the next few minutes there would be an ambush. He was determined not to be caught off guard.

  Without warning, the earth to his right rippled and cracked. Aubry barely had time to recognize the rectangle of tarp, comprehend the eruption of dirt, before Leslie’s wiry body sprang from the ground. Five feet of half-naked, grinning child pounced onto Aubry’s chest knees-first.

  “Whoof!” Aubry staggered back, flailing at air. Leslie scrambled around him like a cat spiraling up a tree.

  Leslie stood atop Aubry’s shoulders, balancing there effortlessly, tiny fists clenched and raised to the clouds. The clouds, ever diplomatic, declined to comment.

  “Taa-daah!” Leslie rode his thighs around Aubry’s neck and hugged him, smearing dirt, giving his father a big, wet, dusty kiss.

  The workers applauded and laughed.

  “Gotcha!” Leslie chortled.

  “Yeah …” Aubry pulled him around into a cradle position, gazing into Leslie’s huge, beautiful eyes. How close had he come to losing this wonderful creature? Something inside him chilled at the thought.

  “Daddy.” Leslie laid his head contentedly against Aubry’s massive chest.

  Aubry crushed him in his arms and kept walking, not saying anything, afraid to say anything. For just that instant his heart went cold, certain that if he spoke the bubble would burst and he would awaken from a dream. And in awakening, he would find himself kneeling on a hydraulic stage in Los Angeles, shrouded with blood and brains and viscera, by the hearts and minds of the only family he had ever known.

  18

  “Any other words?” Promise asked.

  Aubry shook his head. He had nothing to say to the bronze box of Mura’s ashes. She was Warrick’s sister. He had provided for her. In the end he had failed her.

  Leslie set the box into its hole at the foot of a towering fir tree, and brushed dirt atop it. He stood, holding a pair of blue steel knitting needles to his chest. “Goodbye, Aunt Mira. I loved you.”

  He took his mother’s hand. The four of them walked back toward the road, and the jeep perched there.

  “The government men will be here tomorrow,” Jenna said. “You were right. They jumped up and scrambled around like little monkeys.”

  Promise’s smile was a small, tired thing. She kissed her sister’s cheek, and sighed. “Thank you for arranging that. Is there any business that I need to take care of?”

  “Not just this moment.”

  “Then I’d like some time to myself.”

  She approached Aubry, her smile tentative. “Want some company?”

  He nodded, and she swung into the jeep next to him. Leslie bounced into the backseat, without bothering to ask. He threw his arms around Promise’s neck and pressed his brown cheek against hers. Aubry started the jeep and piloted it up the narrow fire trail into lumber country.

  The road wound bumpily past the science center’s ribbed dome. Four years ago, a terrible fire had destroyed it, and much of the surrounding area. It had taken Ephesus’s characteristic stubbornness and dedication, combined with the emerging financial power of the Scavengers, to rebuild so quickly.

  There was much to be proud of—the Scavenger/Ephesus/NewMan empire stretched from New Mexico to Seattle to Denver.

  His rough hands gripped the wheel, fighting the arrhythmic shocks as the tires slammed against the fire trail’s packed dirt and uneven rock.

  “Going to your special place?”

  He nodded. The clouds enveloping him were still dark, but the first rays of light were silvering the edges.

  The jeep’s headlights splashed against the trees. Oilskin-covered saws and winches and other rigs were stowed neatly at the sides of the road, awaiting the day’s labor. Mazetown was beginning to slip away from him, fading to insubstantiality, shambling back to the ghost closet. Sweet green life was returning to Ephesus, a life that smelled and sounded and tasted realer than the life teeming in Mazetown. There, life milled, and churned, and endured.

  Here, it grew.

  It would be impossible to count the hours he had slaved in this country, the fires fought, brush hauled, stumps pulled, trees felled, children rescued.

  Or, more darkly, men killed.

  It was living that concerned him now. And at the moment, life seemed uncomfortably tentative.

  An assassin who is me—but a slower, stronger, dumber version of me. An incomparable physique gilded in keloid scars and bizarre tattoos.

  What in the hell is going on?

  The fire trail wove up the side of a mountain, terminating first in ragged brush, and then in a dead end. If you knew the exact piece of brush to drag aside, a new and narrower road opened up. He felt mildly absurd, knowing that this bit of subterfuge was nine parts self-indulgence to one part security, but it brought him peace of mind.

  While Aubry moved the branches, Promise slid over in the seat and drove the jeep up the continuation road. She paused long enough for him to jump in, and then rumbled up a narrow dirt path, up and up the mountain ridge, as dawn’s first powdery blush began to rouge the horizon.

  Aubry swung out of the car, creaking the shock absorbers. Leslie bounced out, following him.

  A white wooden gazebo sat at the very top of the mountain. Aubry took Leslie’s small hand in his, and together they climbed up the path. Promise hung back, smiling almost dreamily. Somehow, the image of her man and her child, sharing this moment as they had shared so many others over the past three years, was absurdly comforting.

  Aubry pulled a heavy, olive-drab weather tarp back from the gazebo floor, revealing polished hardwood. Promise saw his shoulders slump, tension fleeing his body, as if he had been clasped by an old friend. To one side lay a thick-walled wooden box, and from it Leslie removed a heavy woolen mat. Aubry and Leslie spread it out on the gazebo floor, then stood shoulder to hip, hands at their sides, facing the east.

  As the sun rose, Aubry began the exercise learned in childhood, and r
eawakened under Kevin Warrick’s severe tutelage. In time Aubry had not only reconstituted the exercise, but taught it to Leslie.

  Promise watched them, her dancer’s eye evaluating.

  In some ways the movement pattern resembled a kata, the prearranged formal fighting exercises of Japan, Korea, and China. In other ways it seemed a dance. In still other aspects, it was similar to Hatha Yoga’s sun salutation, the Surya Namaskar, though infinitely more taxing. It combined the long slow limb extension of t’ai chi, the balance and flexibility of gymnastics, and the explosively dynamic tensions of karate. The limbs moved in arcs which, while not blows or kicks, were still frighteningly combative in their implication. In some way that she couldn’t quite comprehend, each motion seemed the embryonic form of a punch or a kick, the essence rather than the reality.

  She had tried the exercise for a month and a half. Oddly, its practice troubled her emotionally, as if the physical motions were shaping her perceptions of the world. She remembered completing her last and most intense session, walking about in a daze for the following hour. The first person she encountered was Kregger, who wouldn’t quite seem to come into focus. There was something blurry about her visual field. When she concentrated, for a moment she had the ghastly thought that the crew chief wasn’t a human being: he was an image painted on a sheet of glass, with groin and knees and kidneys marked in splashes of red ink.

  She had never performed the exercises again.

  Aubry called it the Rubber Band. Why? When pressed, he said only that Rubber Band was what he had always called it.

  Aubry and Leslie worked it together, their limbs spiraling through complex changes, twisting and folding and lifting. Now they bore their full weight on the palm of a single extended arm; now the body projected to the side like a gymnast on the long horse. Now each arced through a spine-wrenching slow-motion backward somersault. Once the sequence began it never ended. Now fast, now slow, now soft, now hard, with a strange, sighing breath hissing in the backs of their throats, Aubry and Leslie seemed two animals engaged in a primal ritual of awakening, purging themselves of spiritual toxins, father and child together, welcoming the morning sun.