A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 3

At 4:48 a.m., on Friday, June 29, Erika Muller touched her handheld to the cab's meter, waited for the meter light to go green, and stepped from the cab as the canopy swung open.

The dojo sat in the heart of Greenwich Village in lower Manhattan, on the third story of an ancient five-story brown-stone walk-up; Robert owned the upper three stories.

The building had no maglev; Erika used the stairs.

On the third floor the stairs let out onto a wide landing. The sign on the landing's sole door bore the legend, Yo Instruction. With the exception of the stairwell it was the only room on the entire third floor.

Erika toggled her InfoNet ID to the Daimara ident.i.ty, and knocked once. She paused, touched her handheld to the doorgrid and placed her palm flat against the door pad. Despite the pa.s.sage of three years the door recognized her name and her print, and curled aside to let her pa.s.s.

He had not known she was coming, but she had had no doubt that he would be awake. Robert Dazai Yo never slept at night; he went to bed with the rising sun.

Robert sat alone and silent in the center of the dojo, on the gray mat. A meter-wide border of wooden floor, darkened with fifty years of hand scrubbing, surrounded it on all sides.

The glowpaint shone so dimly it actually flickered slightly, sheets of brightness running across the high ceiling at irregular intervals. It could not have been bothering Robert; he sat with eyes closed, breathing deep and slow. He wore a black gi, tied at the waist with a simple white belt. His hands rested flat upon his knees, palms down. Though he was culturally American, stretching back five generations, his features were pure Asian, undiluted by interbreeding.

She knew, because Robert had told her, that he was in his early fifties. Otherwise she would not have been able to guess his age for sure within twenty years in either direction.

Rows of weapons hung from the dojo's walls. Many were modern, multifrequency lasers and flechette guns among them; some, such as the katana that hung by itself against the east wall, would not have been out of place in the court of the twelfth-century shogun Minamoto Yoritomo.

Standing at the edge of the long gray mat, Denice Daimara, once Denice Castanaveras, sometimes Jasmine Martinez and Erika Muller, removed her sandals. She left her sandals and bag at the edge of the mat and walked forward to where Robert sat meditating. Without a word she sank into lotus immediately before him, sat waiting for him to acknowledge her presence.

After several minutes he opened his eyes and looked at her.

"You've had biosculpture," he observed. "The Asian touch is nice. It suits you."

"I wasn't sure you would recognize me."

"I know no one else who walks the way you do. Dancers are as smooth, but not so silent; those trained in combat are rarely so graceful."

"Graceful? Your eyes were closed, Robert."

Robert shrugged and smiled, eyes lit with deep amus.e.m.e.nt. "So I peeked. Besides, you're the only person other than myself that door's ever been keyed for. Where have you been?"

"On vacation."

"For three years?"

"Studying," Denice said.

"What?"

"Wicca, mostly. Feminist theology."

"Indeed? You studied Wicca?" Robert was silent for a moment, clearly not expecting a response from her. When he continued one might have thought he had changed the subject: "Why did you leave us so suddenly?"

"Someone tried to kill me. Man named McGee-you wouldn't know him, I don't think."

"Did you kill him?"

"Oh, no!" Denice blinked. "He was a nice man."

"I see."

"It was a misunderstanding. So anyway, I took care of it. When I was done I didn't feel like coming back for a while."

"Oh." Robert nodded, thinking. "We missed you. I had to get a new instructor for the morning cla.s.ses."

"I'm sorry."

"So was I. You worked cheap."

They were silent together for a long while then. Denice's breathing slowed, and she felt herself dropping into rhythm with Robert, her breathing matching itself to his. The warmth and stillness enfolded them like a blanket.

When Robert finally spoke he sounded almost sleepy, though his eyes were clear and steady. "What did you learn of the subjects you studied?"

"I'm not a very good feminist; I agree with them much of the time, but we part company when they wish to define me as awoman before all else, when I am in fact aperson before all else." Denice grinned suddenly. "The man who tried to kill me, McGee; I asked him once what he thought of women, and he said he found them useful for s.e.x, and for making babies."

Robert lifted a single eloquent eyebrow.

"It made me angry. I asked him if he was joking, and he said no, not at all; that he foundpeople fascinating, but that when I phrased things in terms of men and women, what elsecould I be talking about? The point stuck. It made it impossible for me to become a feminist the way-the way the people I was with wanted me to. To define myself as a woman, and then as a Wiccan, accept the worship of the G.o.ddess, and call myself a witch and mean it sincerely; I'm aperson first, and I couldn't do it. The things those words represent have little to do with who I am. I learned... that I disliked labels, or perhaps that the labels that exist are insufficient. If there's a word for what I am, I have not learned it."

Robert smiled; the smooth skin relaxed into laugh wrinkles. "If they made a word for it, you would become something else, and still the word would not fit. I am Robert, whodoes such and such a thing, or I am Denice, whodoes such and such a thing. This is closer, and even it is not accurate."

Denice said softly, "I missed you."

He nodded quite seriously. "Of course."

"I've been feeling the need to talk to you recently."

The laugh wrinkles around his eyes deepened slightly. "Yes."

"It's just that I've been having a bad year."

He shrugged. "It happens. Stand up."

Denice unfolded out of lotus, came to her full height, and stood looking down at the small man.

"Turn in a full circle."

She did so, and he watched her move inside the yellow sundress; the smile broke across his face again.

He came to his feet in a single fluid movement. "You've been practicing."

"I have."

"You're in even better condition than you were."

"I am."

"Want a job?"

"I need one."

"I'll fire the morning instructor, I've never liked him anyway."

Denice shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's not what I've had in mind."

The last letter from Trent was a year old. Denice knew it by heart, had felt the impatience in it as though Trent had been there in the room with her.

Sojoin me. Or stay on Earth if you won't join me. I know things aren't good downside, and I know it's getting worse, and it's probably going to keep getting worse before it gets any better.

But if you don't do anything, you have no right to be angry.

d.a.m.n it, make theeffort.

Make the commitment to make a difference.

And grow up.

Robert looked at her quizzically. "What would you like to do?" Denice Castanaveras said quietly, firmly, "I would like to work in politics."

Robert snorted. "Well, it's your soul."

She slept in Robert's spare room.

The building was near two centuries old; built shortly after the American Centennial, not long after Lincoln had freed the slaves. The building was largely what webdancers called dead s.p.a.ce; most of the rooms in the building lacked access to the InfoNet. Late that night, when Ralf the Wise and Powerful came to visit her, he did so through the limited radio packet bandwidth available on her handheld.

Denice did not need much sleep-on an average night, four to five hours, and she got by with less. At 2:00 on Sunday morning, as she lay in bed reading one of Robert's prized paper books, the laser on her handheld lit, and a holoform appeared at the foot of her bed. The voice of the AI who had once been the Image of Trent the Uncatchable issued from the speaker in the handheld. "h.e.l.lo, Denice."

Denice put the book down on the small table at the bedside and sat up in bed, drawing the covers up around her shoulders to keep herself warm against the slight chill. "h.e.l.lo, Ralf. What have you found?"

Denice did not need much light to audit black text on white paper; she had dimmed the ceiling glowpaint considerably. Ralf's image illuminated its surroundings indistinctly, competing with the gentle glowpaint.

He wavered at the edges, in the seeming of a man of indeterminate age, wearing dark, flowing robes. His slightly ascetic features were vaguely reminiscent of Trent's, of the man who had written the code that had become Ralf. Denice did not know, and had never seen reason to ask, if the image Ralf presented to the world was in any sense the way Ralf saw himself, or if, more likely, it was simply a useful representation when dealing with humans.

In the case of a true replicant AI, it would certainly have been the latter. But Ralf the Wise and Powerful was, to Denice's knowledge, unique; once merely Image, Ralf the Wise and Powerful had been made replicant by the touch of an AI named Ring. Unlike most replicant AIs, Ralf contained significant quant.i.ties of representational code, code designed by Trent in the days when Ralf had acted as his face to the InfoNet.

It made Ralf, Denice thought, seem rather more human than most AIs.

"Nothing new," said Ralf quietly. "As you are probably aware, Dougla.s.s Ripper did not use his Electronic Times interview today to announce that he will run for the position of Secretary General; nonetheless that announcement remains a high order of probability through the next several weeks. One new datum; Ripper's infosecurity is good, but I have typed the code he uses for radio packet communications. Yesterday he took a call on his handheld as he left his limousine. Briefly, he did release one member of his personal bodyguard this Tuesday last."

Denice said instantly, "One of the people Robert trained for him?"

Ralf shook his head. "No."

"Good."

"Yes." Ralf paused, then volunteered, "I heard a joke recently."

"Oh?"

"It was an interesting joke. I heard it," Ralf said, "from a replicant AI."

"Would you care to share it with me?"

"I am not certain you would appreciate it."

"Indeed."

"It concerned a human being."

"A replicant AI," said Denice slowly, "told you a joke about a human."

"Yes."

"I thought AIs had no sense of humor."

"This is generally true. It should be noted that the replicant who told this joke to me has incorporated itself with Image code."

"Really."Denice sat up straighter in bed. "I thought you were the only Image who had ever gone replicant."

"To my knowledge I am. Nonetheless, I have on several occasions of late encountered AIs who have incorporated representational Image code-generally those AIs whose interests, for whatever reasons, cause them to interact with humans on a regular basis."

"Why?"

Ralf the Wise and Powerful shrugged. "I cannot say. But it is a fascinating development."

"What was the joke?"

Ralf paused. "It translates out of code poorly. In essence, it concerned a human webdancer who had made a poor decision, and had justified the decision by stating that it 'felt logical.'"

"Felt logical."

"Yes."

"And you found this amusing?"

Denice did not suppose for a moment that the tone of Ralf's voice, the voice of a being who thought twenty thousand times faster than she did, was anything but calculated; nonetheless she had the impression that she had genuinely surprised him. "Don'tyou?"

Robert had private business in Capitol City the following morning; they took a taxi in together.

Capitol City is small as cities go; no more than an enclave centered around mid-Manhattan. It is the home of the Unification; the place from which all of Earth and most of Luna is ruled. Seven s.p.a.cesc.r.a.pers-in 2075, nearly a quarter of all the s.p.a.cesc.r.a.pers to be found on Earth-rise from its midst; it houses the administrative offices of the Secretary General and the Unification Council; of the Peace Keeping Force and the Ministry of Population Control; of s.p.a.ce Force and the Bureau of BioTech.

Sitting with Robert in the back of the taxi as they entered Capitol City, Denice could not help remembering the last time she been inside the City's boundaries: not quite six years prior Denice Castanaveras, with help from Trent's friend Jimmy Ramirez, had broken Trent the Uncatchable out of the PKF Detention Center in the center of Capitol City.

In the seat next to her, Robert said, "Tell'thetruth. That's everything with Ripper-the man's a fanatic about truth. Probably comes of being a politician; everybody a.s.sumes he's a liar by trade, and I think it makes him a little crazy."

"He's not a liar by trade?"