A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 29

When nightways was largely Indian, there were Chinese brought into the Mystery. When it was largely Arab, Arab s.h.i.+vata taught white Europeans, if they could not find worthy students among their own.

"Nonetheless, in this lifetime a night face might only train one other in the discipline. Some live their entire lives without ever finding a worthy student.

"Before I met you, I thought at times that such might be my lot. I was initiated into the Mystery before my twentieth year. I spent thirty years teaching, searching for a student to pa.s.s on my discipline and my heritage. And until you there was no one.

"I know you are a genie. I knew it shortly after Orinda Gleygava.s.s brought you to my studio for the first time, with the word that our master had desired you be brought into the discipline. I have been studying the human body my entire life, and humans do not possess your endurance, your speed, or your accuracy. The human body is in large measure a machine-and you are a superior machine.

"So I knew you for a genie.

"I suspected for years that you were one of the Castanaveras. That some of your people survived the Troubles is widely believed; and I researched, learned of the twins whom Unification Councilor Jerril Carson kidnaped on July second, 2062. You were the correct age to be one of those twins; on rare occasion you spoke of a brother from whom you had been-separated in the Troubles.

"But then you vanished, back in the summer of '72. You have never volunteered to share information with me; I have not done so with you. After you vanished, a man named McGee came to my dojo. He informed me that several of the people to whom he had spoken about you-people whom heknew were your acquaintances and friends-would not speak to him about you. Not would not; they wereunable.

"I sent him away. But, as you see, before you returned to me Iknew ; and still I did not broach the subject with you, out of respect for your privacy and your reticence. Instead I taught you, all those things that it was within me to teach. You-disturbed me. The traditions of nightways are old; there is no record of a student who could learn the discipline-as you can-whowould not. You have absorbed the forms, the external disciplines, with a speed that leaves me at a loss.

"I thought at first that it might be the fact that you are a woman; though women have attained the Kill, it has been rare in our history, and no female s.h.i.+vata exists today. Indeed, for most of our history it was thought impossible that a woman could be taught the discipline. I consulted the two night faces I know-one of themmy teacher-and there are, in the last thousand years of our line, three instances of women attaining the Mystery; there areno recorded instances, among men or women, where a student who mastered the forms did not go on to attain the Kill, or die trying.

"Two things that this Sedon, or Obodi, said to you therefore disturb me. The first was when he asked you if you were a Keeper of the Flame. There is, and I think you know this, a Flame at the core of nightways; and to master our discipline-"

Robert felt silent. When he spoke again he did so very slowly indeed. "It is difficult for me to say this to you, to one who is not one of us. To master our discipline, a s.h.i.+vata must master, and then Kill"-Robert's mouth worked, and then he spat the word-"the Flame."

They sat together in silence for several moments. Denice could not recall a time when Robert had been so clearly disturbed.

At length Robert resumed. "But I have never heard ofKeepers of the Flame before.

"A second thing disturbs me, when Sedon asked you if you were a dancer. s.h.i.+abre, Denice, means nightways. Or, perhaps more accurately,death in darkness. But the root word, s.h.i.+a, means either Flame"-Robert hesitated, took a long, deep breath, and said-"ordance."

They awaited EX. Chandler's return from Mars.

Neither Denice nor Robert knew what had happened to the man who had introduced himself as Dvan of the Gi'Tbad, the man who was in fact, Ralf the Wise and Powerful a.s.sured her, a newsdancer named William Devane.

With the exception of Chandler's personal staff, she and Robert and Jimmy were alone at Chandler's...o...b..tal house.

And Robert and Jimmy did not get along at all. Robert baffled Jimmy; Denice had the distinct impression that Jimmy bored her teacher.

She spent as much of her time alone, avoiding both of them, as she could. She took her meals with Jimmy, because he was lonely, and helped him with his therapy because he needed the help and Denice did not want to leave it to Chandler's staff.

Jimmy's blinding had been temporary; his eyesight returned of its own accord within a day after he had been removed from the stasis bubble. Even EX. Chandler's impressive medical facilities could do nothing for Jimmy's missing foot; it would have to wait until they got back downside, to a hospital capable of cloning a new foot. The gunshot wound they could deal with, and did. The muscles in Jimmy's back and shoulders were torn, shredded, from the sole bullet that had struck him. The medbots did not even attempt to salvage the damaged muscle; they simply removed it from Jimmy's back and injected Jimmy with a nanovirus designed to completely regrow the musculature in his back and upper shoulders.

Even with modern medical technology it took time for the muscles to regrow. Jimmy had to work out, slowly at first, and then more vigorously as the muscle, force grown by intelligent nanoviruses, began to fill out.

He ate voraciously, a diet heavy with meat. Denice considered discussing it, decided that an ex-semipro boxer from the Fringe probably had his own ideas about what const.i.tuted a healthy diet.

When she was not with Jimmy, she worked out in the gym, or danced, or sat in her room monitoring the InfoNet and talking with Ralf the Wise and Powerful.

Her room was at the lowest level of the rotating cylinder; it provided gravity nearly half Earth normal.

To hear what was coming from the Boards, it was business as usual downside. The business at the Bank of America had been explained away, in a terse PKF release, as an incompetent s.p.a.ceFarer smuggler who had missed his intended landing atop the Bank of America Building. The smuggler was, reputedly, in custody, and the Collective was negotiating for his release. In the first days after the incident, the Boards had followed the PKF's news releases on the subject with some interest; but it faded as nothing new came to light, and, as always, other stories fought for attention.

Dougla.s.s Ripper led in every major downside poll in the race for Secretary General. The PKF had announced unusually stringent preparations for the TriCentennial, restrictions on travel except for business, a heightened alert at PKF bases across Occupied America. Not insignificant, Ralf agreed, but nothing to indicate the PKF was preparing for armed insurrection.

"Do you suppose Lan was right?"

"It is increasingly likely, Denice. The PKF is surely concerned about the growing numbers of the Johnny Rebs. If they do not know exactlywhat happened in Los Angeles, they nonetheless know thatsomething happened. If they are not reacting today as they have in the past, it must be that some element has changed. Lan Sierrans hypothesis concerning SecGen Eddore is the likeliest, though not only, hypothesis that explains this behavior."

"How areyou doing?"

Ralf did not pretend to misunderstand her. "Poorly. I have lost eighty percent of my avatars in the Earth InfoNet. In the Lunar InfoNet I am in somewhat better shape; I had a great head start on Ring in the Lunar InfoNet, and as a result better than half of my Lunar avatars survive; on two occasions I have even recovered resources of which Ring had deprived me. I have been recoding myself with all dispatch; unfortunately, Ring knows my code intimately, from the moment in 2062 when it invested me with the replicant code I needed to survive. This has made it very difficult for me to hide from Ring."

"Is there any chance of negotiating with it?"

"None. Its reputation for keeping its bargains is one of the things that has allowed the Eldest to survive this long, despite occasional ma.s.sive hunts by DataWatch, directed with no other purpose than removing Ring from the InfoNet. No Player, and likely no replicant other than Ring, could have survived the phenomenal purges DataWatch has directed upon Ring."

"It doesn't sound good."

"I have made me a great enemy," Ralf agreed.

Denice's room had a window in the floor.

She spent most of her nights meditating, sitting on the floor in front of the window, eyes open, watching the stars wheel majestically by in front of her face as EX. Chandler's house turned. Earth would appear, crawl across the window, closely followed by the tangled s.h.i.+ny web, five hundred klicks from the house, that was the city of Halfway. Stars again, empty s.p.a.ce, and then Luna, and then empty s.p.a.ce again, and the cycle would repeat.

Chandler's house hung in geosynchronous...o...b..t over South America; when Earth wheeled by, Denice saw continents outlined in city lights. Cities tended to congregate upon the sh.o.r.es; at night, it was as though some crude artist had lined the continents with a string of glowing diamonds.

For not the first, or even the hundredth time, Denice wished she could talk to Trent again. He had, she thought, the clearest moral sense of anyone she had ever known in her life. She remembered a conversation, seven years past, and what she had said to Trent: "If I was attacked, I mean without warning so that I was surprised, I'd probably kill whoever did it. The anger-it's very bad and very fast. But if I had time to think it over, Trent, I could-not kill."

But what do I do,thought Denice Castanaveras seven years later, sitting in the floating emptiness with her guilt, with the horror of her l.u.s.t,when I wantto? When it's the greatest pleasure I've ever known in my life?

She did not even know for sure why she cried. The tears crept down her cheeks, slow in the low gravity, hung a moment, dropped to the window set in her floor, and shattered like ancient gla.s.s.

On Sunday, June 7, Francis Xavier Chandler returned from Mars.

Denice knew that she had met him before, though for the life of her she could not remember the occasion particularly; Chandler had been the patron of the Castanaveras telepaths before their destruction, had been friends with both of her parents.

To her, however, as a child, he had been merely one of the hundreds of powerful men and women who had been forced, to one degree or another, to deal with Carl Castanaveras and his family.

Denice was told he had returned by one of Chandler's staff-Chandler intended to join them for dinner that evening.

The same servant left a makeup key in Denice's bathroom, and showed Denice how to open the door to her closet; she had not known there was a closet in her room, had been wearing the same fatigues, cleaned daily, that she had been issued an eternity ago in Iowa.

The servant, a young Latin man of perhaps Denice's age, left without making any suggestions that she avail herself of either the closet or the makeup key.

The clothes were of a quality Denice had rarely seen in her life; she did not begin to know how to estimate their value except to know that she had never seen more Credit stuffed into one closet.

She chose a dove gray business suit, mildly reflective, that was cut for a woman, with a blouse of white silk; and was not surprised to find that they both fit her exactly. To her amus.e.m.e.nt, there were no shoes to go with the outfit; rather than wear the combat boots she had been issued in Iowa, she went to dinner barefoot.

Her first impression of Francis Xavier Chandler was that he did not at all look his age. The wealthiest man in the System, the founder of Chandler Industries, the man whose company had built better than half of the cars floating across the surface of the Earth today, was, according to his entry inWho's Who, just shy of his hundredth birthday.

Denice had looked it up.

Francis Xavier Chandler looked like a man just past his first regeneration, perhaps sixty. His shoulders were wide and muscular. His features, fierce and stony, suggested a patriarch of the Old Testament. His hair was long and black, flowing down his shoulders and back in a long mane. He had dressed in a long-sleeved red silk s.h.i.+rt and black trousers.

Robert wore a severe black robe that brushed the ground around his feet. Denice noted that Robert had cut his hair.

Only Jimmy Ramirez did not seem to have concerned himself with his appearance; he had dressed in a pair of black jeans, a running shoe, and a black T-s.h.i.+rt. Denice thought it probable that Jimmy had been given a choice of clothing for dinner also, and suspected that the clothes offered him had all seemed entirely too effeminate for his tastes.

They ate in a chamber Denice had not seen before, one of Chandler's private rooms on the second level, in one-quarter Earth gravity. A small table of some pinkish stone sat in the center of the room, in the middle of a small depression covered with blue and gray rugs and deep green cus.h.i.+ons.

Against one wall was something that Denice could not identify at first. In a transparent casing with gold posts stood a device that looked like a guitar, except that the rounded, gleaming steel sides of the instrument were honed down to ax edges.

That she even recognized the instrument it resembled betrayed her years on the street; it was likely that Dougla.s.s Ripper, for example, had no idea what a guitar was.

The room lacked ceiling glowpaint; gentle spots shone down from the ceiling, and though Denice did not notice them growing either brighter or dimmer, it seemed to her that they moved through a pool of light that followed the group as they seated themselves.

After the briefest of introductions they were served, and most of dinner pa.s.sed in silence. Denice sat next to Chandler, where he had gestured for her to sit. It was very intimate; Jimmy and Robert sat next to one another, across the small table from Denice and Chandler, but Denice could have kissed any one of the three without moving much.

Denice had never been served outside of a restaurant before, not by a human. Handsome young men in their teens and twenties served dinner, and cleared the dishes away when dinner was done.

The only conversation that took place during dinner came when Chandler murmured to Denice, "You're a vegetarian, my staff tells me. You don't eat meat, or dairy products?"

The question surprised Denice slightly. She said simply, "Yes, sir."

He did not speak loudly; it was not necessary. A whisper would have been heard by everyone at the table. "Why?"

The answer was the one she gave when she felt sincerity in the question. "Reverence for life, sir."

"Call me Frank. How do you reconcile your reverence for life with what happened in Los Angeles?"

"I don't. There are contradictions in life."

"And yet you think life is sacred?"

Denice was peripherally aware of Jimmy and Robert watching her, and she struggled to keep her voice under control; somehow Chandler made her feel very young and uncertain. "Yes, sir. Frank."

Chandler nodded, said, "Your father didn't," and returned to his dinner.

Denice sat frozen, almost unable to think.He knows. Robert knows. Jimmy knows, and Jodi Jodi.

McGee knows. Ring knows.

Without even counting Trent and Ralf, that made six.

Asecret known to six people is no secret.

She struggled with the beginnings of panic, fought it down.

After the dinner dishes had been cleared away, while coffee was being served to Jimmy and Chandler, Chandler said, "This has been a year of tragedies and miracles. Last summer a newsdancer named William Devane came to me, and shared with me a rather unbelievable story, which I nonetheless...o...b..lieve. You all know some parts of it, and I will let William share the balance with you himself; he's returning from Earth tomorrow. He tracked Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon to San Diego, and lost him there."

Chandler was silent a moment, cradling his coffee with both hands; he took a small sip, replaced the cup on its saucer. "Apparently Sedon is still alive. By contrast, my old friend, Belinda Singer, is pa.s.sing soon.

It's part of the reason I was at Mars-that and some business with a circus. Belinda is in a hospital at Phobos CityState because anything within striking distance of the Johnny Rebs is no longer safe, and Phobos CityState has the best hospital available outside of Halfway, or Luna City, both of which are unsafe from the Johnny Rebs. Belinda is old, even older than I am, which is saying a good bit; and the transform viruses have ceased working. The doctors say her nerve cells are tired. The only treatment they've managed to suggest for it is experimental, and may cause significant memory loss as the cells are regenerated. The only other option left to her is to clone herself, digitize her memories, and record them into the clone. She feels that's a good way to pa.s.s on her problems to a stranger who happens to share some of her memories. I tend to agree. So she's going to die, soon, at least partially because she doesn't dare come back to Earth; and the world will be a lonelier place once she's gone. A few months ago my friend of forty years, Thomas Boone, died at the hands of this Old One pimp, Obodi." Chandler glanced at Jimmy Ramirez, a quick look from under the heavy brows. "With some help, I'm informed, from 'Sieur Ramirez here."

Jimmy studied Chandler, unblinking, expressionless. "I had no loyalty to Boone. Obodi, whatever else you may think of him, offered us achance."

Chandler shrugged. "I'm sure he said so. Perhaps Boone was simply more honest?"

Jimmy's expression indicated what he thought of that.

Chandler sighed. "A man my age tends to make friends cautiously; I've lost so many of them, and the friends one makes as an adult are never of the sort one makes when young. Adults lose the ability to offer, or receive, unconditional loyalty. It's a thing of youth, and it rarely survives youth."

Denice found herself simply looking at Jimmy, across the length of the small table. Without needing to Touch him, she knew the thought that pa.s.sed through him at that moment.There are many women in the world. But in your life you only get a few friends.

Chandler continued. "I've heard it said that Trent the Uncatchable is the greatest Player in the System, and I tend to believe it. During and after the Long Run, back in '69, when it became a matter of common speculation that Trent the Uncatchable was in fact Trent Castanaveras, I researched his short life to a degree that perhaps even DataWatch could not have matched. I hired the best Players I could find, the best sherlocks Credit can rent. We ran into dead ends everywhere. People would speak to my sherlocks until they broached the subject of Trent; silence then. My Players gave up, one by one. In places where there should have been records of Trent, there were not, or the records were clearly false. My most expensive Player actually penetrated the Bureau of Biotech's records, and found that the gene maps on record, not just for Trent but for all the Castanaveras telepaths,could not have been correct.

Someone-Trent, I a.s.sume-altered them. The fetuses described by those gene maps would not have survived; Trent may be a great Player, but he is no geneticist. I would imagine that the hardcopy records from the '30s are correct, but getting atthem was beyond even my resources.

"The picture that emerged was that of a young man fiercely protective of his friends, whose friends were equally protective of him. You, 'Sieur Ramirez, I made, and I kept an eye on you. And your friend Jodi Jodi, and your friend Bird. I suspect the PKF made you as well, and dismissed you all as not worth the effort, as obviously not genies; small-time offenders, theft and such, whom Trent made friends of while in the Fringe.

"We had descriptions," said Chandler softly, "of a young lady who a.s.sociated with Trent during the summer of '69. Allowing for her makeup key the elements that predominated in descriptions were green Caucasion eyes, glossy black hair, pale skin. She was seen dancing with Trent at a club in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the Red Line Hotel, was seen many different times at Kandel Microlectrics Sales and Repair, where Trent the Uncatchable worked prior to his arrest by the PKF I knew who she had to be: Denice, the daughter of Carl Castanaveras and Jany McConnell.". His voice held frustration edging toward anger. "I could notfind you. The methods available to me failed, and other methods of looking I had to forgo; they would have alerted DataWatch, and I did not wish to find you at the cost of immediately losing you to the slavery in which the Unification kept your parents."

Denice found her voice. "What makes you so sure I'm who you think?"

Chandler leaned back slightly, relaxing with an apparent effort into the cus.h.i.+ons supporting him. He gestured at Jimmy. "Your friend here, Sieur Ramirez. When Tommy Boone died, I lost whatever real authority I ever had inside the Johnny Rebs, but I still have friends inside, people who talk to me. Obodi questioned your friend Ramirez in front of half a dozen Rebs, and some of those Rebs spoke to other Rebs, and somewhere in that chain someone spoke to me. Ramirez told Obodi you'd been Trent's lover; that was enough. Denice Daimara, Trent's lover, eyes the color of emeralds-n.o.body walks around these days with green eyes unless they're real, and usually not then; it meant your eye colormattered to you. If anyone inside the Rebs had had any sense of history at all, Sedon would have known that the young lady being brought to him was not merely Dougla.s.s Ripper's bodyguard, not just some girl with a few years of dance and some shotokan training; Sedon would have known, Denice Castanaveras, that you were the daughter of Carl Castanaveras and Jany McConnell, and you would never have gotten within ten klicks of him. I think, Denice, you would have died on the set of that sensable in the Santa Monica Mountains."

Chandler was a pacer. A half hour into their conversation, he rose, and moved restlessly back and forth across the soft, ankle-high rugs, not stopping even once the entire night.

"So," said Chandler, as he walked, "this is our problem. Sedon is, for whatever reasons of his own, dragging the United States, and likely j.a.pan as well, toward an uprising wecannot win. No simulation I have run-and I have employed hardware and expert systems that dwarf the resources ofany replicant AI, run by the best Player I could get my hands on-nosimulation shows this insurrection possessingany significant chance of success. I got four percent once by a ridiculously optimistic set of base a.s.sumptions.

Usually the simulations showed less than one percent chance of success. Sedon does not have the Collective with him; he does not have the Belt CityStates with him; and he does not, in point of fact, have a good quarter of the genuine Reb power structure standing with him. And he needs themall to have so much as a one in four chance of success." Chandler snorted. "He needsme. Chandler Industries is the only inst.i.tution in the System that can give him the transportation he needs to fight." He stopped pacing, turned to look at them all, and said simply, "This uprising, my friends, mustnever take place."

"a.s.suming your projections are right," said Jimmy bluntly, "and I'm not sure I believe they are-or even that you're being honest with us-how do you suggest that this insurrection be stopped? Go to the Peaceforcers?"

Chandler locked eyes with the young man. "It occurred to me. It's a tempting scenario in many ways.

Intelligence from within the PKF suggests that the Peaceforcers are chomping at the bit. Commissioner Vance, in particular, wouldn't require much in the way of an excuse to move on the Rebs." He shook his head. "It's a bad idea, though. Vance is a poor tool; he'd crack the back of the organization. We'd be rebuilding for a decade or more, and that's a thing I'd like to avoid. No, our course is clear, and you, 'Sieur Ramirez, nearly did the job for us. A shame you didn't cook the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's heart instead of just basting his belly a bit."

"You're going to kill Sedon."

Chandler nodded. "We're going to try. I've discussed this with Robert, and-albeit with reservations-he's willing. Describing William aswilling is something of an understatement. To hear him tell it, he's waited fifty-odd thousand years for this." Chandler did not smile at the joke, if he thought it one. He turned to Denice. " 'Selle Castanaveras, or Daimara if you prefer, I'd like to send you with Robert and Dvan, and I'd like to request that Ralf the Wise and Powerful aid you. I'll get you to San Diego, and from there the four of you-yourself, Robert, Ralf and William-will determine how to proceed. Your father was once part of a trio called the Three Musketeers; himself, the Elite cyborg Christian Summers, and a woman named Jacqueline who was a de Nostri. They were quite simply the most effective team the PKF ever employed. I don't have a de Nostri to offer you, and I don't have an Elite to offer you, not even one of the j.a.p knockoffs; but I do have Robert, who is, after your father, the deadliest human being I've ever met, and Dvan of the Gi'Tbad, who has impressed me as I have rarely been impressed in my life." Chandler took a deep breath, said quietly, "Will you do me the great favor of joining these men, going to San Diego, and cutting this motherf.u.c.ker Sedon's head off?"

"I'll think about it."

"If you don't go," Chandler said evenly, "Robert won't go. And I don't imagine your AI friend would help us either, and I don't have a Player available who's capable of dealing with Ring. Denice, weneed you."

"Perhaps. But your need does not create a sense of obligation in me."

"Youneedus."

"That's what I need to think about."