A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 17

Sometime later Robert said, "You look like something out of a Fringe back alley."

"I feel like h.e.l.l."

"Ah."

"I love Dougla.s.s."

"I know."

"I hate my job."

"I know."

Shadows crawled across the floor of the dojo.

"What are you doing tonight?"

"I have no plans." Denice paused. "My friend Tarin Schuyler is dancing in an off-Broadway play. She asked me to stop by and see it. But I can do that anytime; it'll run a couple of weeks at least."

Robert opened his eyes for the first time. The flat Asian features struck Denice as oddly grave. "You are the best student I have ever had, the only one I have ever thought to teach s.h.i.+abre. I have never seen anyone move as you do; until recently I never doubted that what I had to teach, you could learn."

"But-I thought Ihad been learning what you had to teach. Everything you've shown me I've picked up-"

"-astonis.h.i.+ngly fast." Robert nodded. "I have never seen anyone learn so fast. But the movement, the motion, is not the discipline of s.h.i.+abre, any more than the form of Tai Chi is the point of Tai Chi. Have you never wondered what I mean by s.h.i.+abre?"

"You know I have."

"What did you think?"

"I thought it a discipline you had created yourself," Denice said simply. "It is similar to other martial arts I'm familiar with."

Robert nodded. "The movement is not the discipline, but the movement can be imitated, and has.

s.h.i.+abre came first. Before karate, before judo, before aiki-jutsu, before the first kenjutsu school ever opened in j.a.pan; before all this, was s.h.i.+abre. It is more than an art, more than a martial discipline; it is a direct connection with Deity."

"You sound like a Wiccan."

"Perhaps in its darkest aspects Wicca has some relation to s.h.i.+abre; I have not studied Wicca except casually, to know that it, like many religions and disciplines, contains echoes of s.h.i.+abre. I do not know Wicca; I know s.h.i.+abre, and the discipline, Denice, is very old and very real. When I speak of a direct connection to Deity, I do not do so metaphorically. s.h.i.+abre, Denice, is the discipline that is called, in English, nightways. And there is a core to it." Robert paused; his gaze was steady. "A Kill."

"I see."

"I do not think you do. Have you ever killed anyone?"

A memory flickered through the back of her mind; she buried it without knowing she had done so. "I don't think so. The boy in Portugal survived."

"I know. When you shot him-did you feel a joy? A soaring?"

"No. I was just scared." Denice did not know what made her say it: "I shot at some Peaceforcers once.

And another man died while he was chasing me. But I didn't enjoy it either time."

Robert simply nodded. He did not seem surprised. "I think accidental death would not be the same. If it ever comes to you, the chance to take a life with your own hands, I shall be interested to learn of your response."

Denice Castanaveras said softly, "Killing is wrong."

Robert Dazai Yo smiled at her. "Many people think so," he agreed. "And for most people it is. They don't do it right. If you Kill, I do not doubt you will do so in a most exquisite fas.h.i.+on. A proper Kill, child, is art of the highest order. Someday you will appreciate this." He rose slowly, stood in his white gi facing the sun. "I'm going to bed. Come see me this evening."

"Do you mind if I stay here today?"

Robert walked off the mat. "Feel free. The guest room is empty."

"It's just that Ripper is keyed for my apartment."

Robert shrugged, did not look back. "He paid for it."

Denice said quietly, "Yes. I guess he did."

Robert taught no cla.s.ses on Sat.u.r.days, the one day of the week he had reserved for himself.

Denice spent the day dancing, varying the tempo of the music; cla.s.sic jazz and roots rock, slower pieces written for the ballet. Fusion music from the turn of the century, and then atonal synth from the '50s; and then Brazilian jazz from the '60s. She moved through the sound like a ghost, lost track of herself in the rhythm of her heart, wrapped herself into the dream of a blue turtle and then pumped up the volume with a screaming rendition of Chuck Renkha's cla.s.sic '20s scorcher, "Heat and Love"; moving until her body would no longer move as she wished it to.

Toward lunch she took a break, went upstairs to Robert's bathroom and ran a bath as hot as she could stand it.

Ten months in Ripper's employ had taken its toll; the edge was gone. Perhaps no one else could see it; perhaps even Robert could not see it.

Ten months ago she could have danced all day and not been tired. Today her muscles were tired and the buildup of fatigue toxins in her system was excessive even considering the feet that she'd been up all night.

She soaked in the bathtub for almost an hour. When the water got cool she ran it again; after the bath she took a nap.

At 4:00 em. she got up. Robert was awake, puttering around in the kitchen, examining the contents of the slowtime field. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes. What should I eat?"

Robert paused. "Trust your body. What do youwant?"

"Something alive."

He nodded. "Apples on the roof."

She took the stairs to the roof, plucked and ate two apples. When she had finished both of them, including the cores, she waited ten minutes, decided she wanted a third, and took it.

Robert was done eating when she went back downstairs again; the kitchen had been straightened up and the kitchen's slowtime field turned back on. She went to the guest room, pulled one of the black gis Robert kept there for her, and donned it. She went downstairs barefoot, found Robert setting up at the edge of the mat.

He laid a flat slab of long, uncured wood atop a pair of bricks, to raise the wood slightly off the floor.

Upon the wood he placed certain items, in a certain pattern. He did not look at Denice as he worked. He laid the items out slowly, one by one, as though engaged in ritual. When he was done Robert Dazai Yo said softly, "Do you recognize these items?"

"They look like the tools on a Wiccan altar."

"They would. They are not." Without moving he gestured to Denice to join him on the other side of the board. "Center with me."

Denice sank into lotus, met Robert's eyes, and began breathing in rhythm with him. Her breathing and heartbeat dropped into rhythm together; she was aware of the moment when the cycle of her breathing matched Robert's. With one hand he reached forward, took one of the b.u.t.ton mushrooms he had laid on the surface of the wood, and ate it.

Denice did not question; she did the same.

The mushroom was dry and chalky, and otherwise without taste.

"Give me your hands."

Denice reached forward and placed her hands in Robert's.

His eyes held steady on hers.

"Speak with me.Rho! Etra s.h.i.+vat -"

"Rho! Etra s.h.i.+vat-"

"-elor ko'obay k's.h.i.+a-"

"-elor ko'obay k's.h.i.+a-"

"-vata elor ko'obay s.h.i.+ebran."

"-vata,"said Denice Castanaveras,"elor ko'obay s.h.i.+ebran."

Robert's hands tightened around hers."Ens.h.i.+a, ensitra." Swiftly: "Do not repeat these words."

Denice stopped with her mouth open. "Why not?"

"Later. How do you feel?"

"Light. Floating. From the dancing earlier, I think. Otherwise nothing." Denice paused. She did not know what made her add, "Not yet."

"Close your eyes and continue holding my hands. We will wait for darkness together."

I am the Name Storyteller.

I sit at the edge of reality and watch my past, watch Denice Castanaveras, my ancestor, the grandmother of the man who did and will found the House of November.

Earth turns slowly away from Sol; the shadow of the planet falls across New York City, across a small dojo in Greenwich Village.

In that room, a Master of the oldest discipline on Earth, the creature of my Enemy in this time, prepares to test the finest student he has ever seen, or ever will.

When there is no light in the room, no light from any source except the distant street lamps, barely visible through the dojo's high windows, Robert Dazai Yo, one of the six living night faces in all the Continuing Time-not counting time travelers, which I suppose I should not-releases Denice Castanaveras's hands.

From a matchbook that says Jack's Happy Time Bar he takes a match, and lights the single red candle in the center of the altar, and then the pile of orange incense. The smell of orange blossoms rises from the altar's surface.

Robert ascends from lotus in a single smooth motion. "Are you ready?"

"Yes."

"Stand." She does so, and Robert says again, "How do you feel?"

Her eyes, the eyes of a lord of the House of November, are open, brilliant green even in the dim light from the flickering candle. "As though something is going to happen. Not nervous-just ready. The light is so beautiful."

"Silence."He speaks in s.h.i.+ata, though the accent is corrupted by the long separation from the mother tongue. Denice stands motionless in the darkened dojo."Silence and darkness: these are nightways."

Denice stares at him.

Robert says in English, "Begin."

She takes several steps backward, raises herself onto her toes, and brings her right knee up to her chest with immense grace. She pivots without haste, bringing her center of gravity closer to the floor. Her right foot extends in a slow kick directly up to the ceiling, and she holds the position, toes of her right foot pointing toward the sky, for three breaths.

Then she Moves, like the Dancer she is.

A controlled explosion, right knee back down to her chest, pulling her arms in from an extension of twenty centimeters, turns the angular momentum from the inpulled arms into a tight spin, and kicks with her right foot, three times, one hundred and twenty degrees apart on the circle of the spin. Her right foot comes down, touches briefly, adds momentum to the spin and she moves back toward him, with a series of kicks and punches that no human of her time, not Yo, not the Dancer Sedon, no one, could have matched for grace, for speed, for accuracy.

She ceases moving with almost shocking abruptness, all at once, an engine coming to rest, and stands in front of her teacher. She is not breathing quickly, she is not perspiring.

After a moment she says, "Well?"

Robert does not look away from her. The red candle continues to burn; neither the white nor black candles have come alight. "How do you feel?"

"Like something is going to happen."

"Joy? Anger?"

"No." Denice pauses. "I feel very peaceful."

Robert Dazai Yo does not look away from her. He speaks with the deliberate gravity of a man who is considering every word. "There is in what you do... a correctness of movement I have never seen before; not in students, not in myself... not inmy teacher. And yet it is wrong." He is silent for a long while. "I have not often discussed the words I use with you, which are not French or English or j.a.panese.

They are the tongue that is called s.h.i.+ata, or, in English, nightways." Robert's shoulders move slightly beneath the black cloth of his gi. "There has been no point to teaching you of our history, such as I know of it, while I have been uncertain that the discipline itself would take. You were-brought to me, Denice.

By Orinda Gleygava.s.s, who was the servant of my master. And I was instructed to teach you; that you would be the student some s.h.i.+vata never see, the one who would learn that which I teach."

Denice Castanaveras waits motionlessly.

"There is a legend, a part of our teachings," says Robert, "that before there was s.h.i.+abre, the discipline of life bent into death, there was s.h.i.+a, the dance of life itself. I see, in what you do, that dance." He turns away from her, kneels, and snuffs the light of the bloodred candle, spreads the burning orange incense across the wood until it is extinguished. He does not look at her again. "I do not see nightways." He begins to remove the tools from the altar's surface, carefully reversing the order in which they were laid there. "I think perhaps there is only s.h.i.+a in you."

Dateline:Shawmac on 58-1022 So the Unification Council wants to make it illegal for AIs to own property. Thisisa small bill; not important; expected to pa.s.s without fuss, hopefully without notice. Unification Councilor Vena of Puerto Rico introduced it, which should tell you something to start with; Vena is about as bought-and-paid-for a politician as can be found in Capitol City, which is saying something mildly impressive.

Bill 58-1022 goes by the name of "A Regulatory Procedure for Confiscating Property Owned by Artificial Intelligences." Basically what it is, is a way the Unification (specifically, the sc.u.m-sucking and relentless PKF) can confiscateany piece of property it wants,without due process, without going through the courts; the Peaceforcers file a notice with the new regulatory body created by this bill, stating -without any evidentiary requirements-that some item or real property is believed owned by an Artificial Intelligence. As the statute is written, this creates a "reb.u.t.tal presumption" of guilt on the part of the persons whose property has been confiscated.

And this presumption may be d.a.m.n difficult to overcome. Any of you out there want to give it a shot? The Tax Board has prevailed on similar cases-built upon "reb.u.t.table presumption" rather than "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

So the reb.u.t.tal presumption of guilt has been inflicted upon the victim's property-which the PKF DataWatch then proceeds to confiscate.

That's it.