A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 60

She spent Tuesday swimming.

Nine lanes across, an Olympic-size pool. She took the center lane and started doing laps. One hundred laps, one fifty, two hundred; at the end of two hundred she turned on her back, absolutely exhausted, and floated while looking up at the health club's high blue ceiling. The water was heated just warm enough that after a bit Denice ceased noticing the temperature or the wetness; she floated in nothing, staring up at the sky blue ceiling.

It was very pleasant, floating there. She had spent much of the summer of '72 this way, swimming in the Pacific Ocean; floating in the gentle waves, gazing up into the infinite blue sky.

Her thoughts wandered aimlessly. Dougla.s.s and Trent and Robert and her brother David. Jimmy Ramirez and Sedon and William Devane who was Dvan of the Gi'Tbad. All of it floated with her, detached and meaningless.

Toward noon she got out of the pool and into the sauna. Denice lay down on the lowest level of wooden slats, and let the dry heat work its way into her muscles. Within instants sweat crawled down her skin, made damp spots on the wooden slats. She gentled her breathing and relaxed into it, felt the tension creep ever so slowly from her joints and muscles.

She thought she slept for a while, with the guards standing in a semicircle around the gla.s.site-doored entrance to the sauna.

When she awoke she didn't feel like moving, but did anyway. Up and out of the sauna, past the guards and the waldo, into the showers. She stood under lukewarm water, and then cold water until she was completely awake.

She found a stretch of empty mat in the track room, in the center of the track. The layout was vaguely familiar to her, and then she placed it; it was, down to the placement of the mirrors on the walls, the twin of the workout room at G.o.ddess Home.

For the first time in over a year, she thought of G.o.ddess Home without homesickness. It was like remembering the Chandler Complex of her childhood, something from another life. She had been, she thought, three people: the child before the Troubles; the girl afterward, who had lost everything of her childhood in nuclear flame; and now herself, the woman who had survived a jump from a tall black building in Los Angeles. In some ways it seemed to Denice that it did not much matter that her body had survived that jump; the person she had been had died that day.

"The body,"she could hear Robert saying,"is the temple of the soul, the mirror of your spirit. You have heard it said that G.o.d gives you the face you are born with, and that you earn the face you die with; it is more true of your body. If your body is unhealthy, your spirit is unhealthy."

"Then if the bodyishealthy," the fifteen-year-old Denice Castanaveras had said, "the spirit is healthy?"

"Don't be silly,"Robert Dazai Yo had said, unamused. "You know better."

Hatha Yoga is the yoga of the body. It is the best and healthiest of all stretching exercises. Denice went through the list of asanas in her mind, envisioning them before beginning: chest expansion, dancer's posture, abdominal lifts, scalp, lion, neck roll, posture clasp, knee and thigh clasp, shoulder stand, plow, back pushup, slow-motion firming, candle concentration-she lacked the candle for the last exercise, but she would make do.

For just a moment, a flicker of the black despair she had awakened to touched her again.Isn't there anythingmore useful I can be doing?

But she knew there was not. She pushed through the depression and went to work.

She ate with a great appet.i.te that evening. That night she slept without dreams.

Wednesday morning Denice stretched for an hour, and then ran, as fast as she could, for an equal time.

When her breathing grew raspy in her lungs and spots danced in front of her eyes she stopped, stood with her hands on her knees until her breath came back to her. Afterward she went back to the pool, and swam a hundred laps, rested, swam another hundred, rested, and then a final hundred.

She floated on her back, looking up at the blue expanse of ceiling.

She wished she had thought to ask Doctor Derek how the painkiller was being delivered to her; he might have been foolish enough to answer. A timed capsule, somewhere in her body? Her food, or her water?

Injection, while she slept?

In the shower afterward she looked for needle marks, or the scaly skin symptomatic of a hypospray, but found nothing.

They took her back to her cell.

Denice awoke to darkness.

She sat up in bed, slowly. Cold crept in around her; she pulled her covers more closely about her, but it did not help. She glanced to her left, reflexively; the 'bot's monitor lights were the only source of light during the long nights.

Nothing. The 'bot was not there.

The voice said silently,Denice.

Denice snapped around to look at the man standing at the foot of her bed. Despite the lack of light she saw him with unreal clarity; a man of average height, only a bit taller than herself, dressed all in black, to the hood that hung forward and covered his features. She tried to answer him in kind, her thoughts to his, and could not. She licked her lips and said, "How did you get in here?"

I didn't. I took youout. A grim chuckle.I doubt I could enter the room you're being held in if your life and mine depended on it. My Enemy has been thorough, and tricky. He had an avatar in place, and spoke to Trent despite me.

Denice looked around. She knew this place-the empty crystal plane, with the wavering lights at the far horizon, and her hospital bed perched in the center of all the vastness. "Who are you?"

I am the Nameless One. The G.o.d of Players.

"Really."

Yes.

"Isn't that a little arrogant?"

The figure stood motionless for a long moment.Perhaps. Denice Castanaveras, 1 am - The scream of his rage and pain filled her ears. There was a word buried deep in the scream, or a Name, an incomprehensibility so huge that the suggestion of it overwhelmed Denice, filled her with terror and then broke her, and she found herself screaming against the great roaring sound,"Stop it! Stop it!"

It ceased abruptly.

Denice stared at the figure, panting, aware of the flicker of terror dancing around the edges of her thoughts, as frightened as she had ever been, as though she had encountered some great threat to her life.

"What-oh, Jesus and Harry, whatwas that?"

My Name.He added, apologetically,You asked, and I thought you might understand. Forgive me.

Denice looked down, fighting to catch her breath, and then looked back up at him again. "What do you want?"

That was my question for you. You have very little time left to decide, if you wish to live. Perhaps you will choose the Dance. Perhaps you will choose nightways. As a Dancer you might survive; as a night face you might. Undecided you will die. There is a third path, though I doubt you will choose to follow it; it is a very hard path.Mypath. Sedon nearly chose that way; but fear took him, and he failed.

"Sir," said Denice Castanaveras very slowly, "I don't understand."

I know,said the silent, compa.s.sionate voice.But it is so simple: Who do you want to be?

Thursday she meditated most of the day. Toward afternoon she went swimming again, and then let them take her back to her cell.

Late in the evening they came and brought her the gi she had requested. She changed into it, tied the belt and put on the sandals.

Six guards and a pair of waldos took her up to see Sedon.

- 21 -.

He knelt alone, in near darkness.

Denice took off her sandals upon entering; it seemed the correct thing to do. She moved forward slowly.

Cold polished wood against her bare feet. A single window, set in the far wall to her right, gave a distant view of the beach, perhaps a klick off, thirty-five stories beneath them. Floodlamps lit the beach, and the foam of the waves crashing into the beach glowed brilliantly white.

Tanks liberated from the PKF armories, with the American flag hastily painted over the PKF and Unification insignias, sat at the edge of the beach.

Sedon's features hung half in light, half in darkness. To Denice's genie eyes the right side of his face glowed white from the floodlamps on the beach; the left side, faintly infrared with the warmth of Sedon's skin.

His voice was soft and gentle. "Seat yourself, Denice Castanaveras."

She did, sinking into a comfortable half lotus in front of him.

They stayed so, she sitting, Sedon kneeling, while Denice's eyes adjusted more fully to the darkness. His breathing was very slow and very deep, his clothing some flowing garment of bright red, more a loose gi than a robe. He watched her, nearly unblinking, while her breathing gentled and slowed to match his own.

Time pa.s.sed. Perhaps an hour, perhaps two. Her sense of time fled while she sat there, staring into his eyes.

Finally he spoke. "Movement is life. All life arises from movement; the movement of atoms and molecules and cells; when movement stops, Me stops.

"Dance is movement; movement is life; dance is life.

"As all living things breathe, all living things dance. Dance is the harmonious expression of life. It is energy expended; it is the first source of harmony in the world.

"The proper expression of life consists of moving in harmony with the world. To move in harmony with the world, with other people, with the things of the world, with ourselves; this is ultimate expression of dance. All living things wish to move well; it is built into them to wish it, for living things that move well are better fit to survive than those that do not."

His eyes held her, his voice enveloped her and held her, stirred deeply held memories; gossamer sheets of image, of emotion, rose up and faded away as he spoke.

"The harmonious expression of life, sometimes vigorous, sometimes gentle, is the surface of dance. We are a celebration and an affirmation. In every movement we describe ourselves to the world, with every glance, every step, every gesture, we betray ourselves to all those with eyes to see. We must be aware of all that we do,all of the time; and why. Movement cannot be done with only part of your attention, because everything depends onhow a movement is made. The quality of a motion is directly related to this ability to be aware, to be completely alive in the moment of motion.

"The human body is designed and made to dance. All creatures dance, for movement comes before speech, before thought; the first communication any creature learns is the communication of movement.

"Before your peoplespoke, they danced.

"A dancecannot lie. It is what it is. Only words can lie, can represent that which is not. A dance is. It can only represent that which is.

"Language is a lie. It is what it is not.

"Danceis .

"Dance ishonest. It is an understanding of gravity, and an understanding of balance. An understanding of center, of posture and of gesture. An understanding of rhythm, and harmony.

"An understanding of breath.

"An understanding, Denice Castanaveras, of motion. But these are merely tools, and all of them, together, do not make dance."

They sat together in silence.

"Life is movement; and the expression of life is the surface of dance; and those who aremost alive are those who dance well. Those who are mosthonest are those who dance well.

"You, Denice, have not understood this. In your youth, you have wondered if dancingmatters. If it is not 'just dancing.' And yet the finest thing you can do is dance. The greatest expression of yourself is dance.

Everything else-everything you have ever been exposed to-is another art. Art of pa.s.sion, art of pain, art of joy and art of faith.

"Art of death.

"But there is only one art of life. And that art is the Dance. And you, Denice Castanaveras, have it in you to Dance."

Denice found herself unable to keep looking at the man. "How can you know this?"

Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon said simply, "I do not know what you are. Your people are strange to me, and you are strange among your own people. But I knowwhere you are, for I have been there. In your life you have had those who would teach you, and you have learned from them, sometimes well; but their wisdom has not touched you, and their art has not filled you; and inside you hunger."

"You must have spent a long time interrogating me."

His lips quirked in the barest of smiles. "An hour, perhaps. You are aware of your problem, and it was not difficult to extract it from you."

"Whatare you?"

Surprisingly, he shook his head. "I do not know, Denice. I was once a Dancer. Today I am merely a thing struggling to survive. I do not Dance, and have not for so long the years would have no meaning for you." He paused, said, "What areyou?"

Denice whispered, "I am empty."

Sedon nodded. "That is a place to start." He rose his voice slightly, said,"Command, holo on."

The wall to Denice's left speckled with stars.

The clip that flashed up was instantly familiar to Denice, and yet so unexpected that it took her a long moment to identify it.

It was the video taken by the Tau Ceti probe, lasercast back to Earth.

The probe had been launched in the early '20s, following the end of the Unification War. In the summer of 2057 the probe had reached Tau Ceti; twelve years later, in the summer of 2069, the probe's laser had returned the images of aliens to Sol System.

Two Earthlike planets circled Tau Ceti at distances of approximately 150 and 180 million kilometers.

The probe found, orbiting the inner planet, a solid oval ma.s.s nearly 250 kilometers in diameter. There was less than half an hour of video from the probe before the image had abruptly ceased.

The swell of the huge oval artifact grew in the video.

"I've seen this before," Denice said after a moment.

"Indeed," said Sedon absently. "I suppose most of you have. But you do not know yet what you have seen. Watch."

The image of the orbiting oval swelled in size as their apparent viewpoint approached it, losing resolution at the same time. At the very edge of the oval, partially eclipsed by it, were three small wedges.

It was as though Sedon had read her mind. "They are small only by comparison to the outpost they guard, or by comparison to some of the other craft that the sleem build. Today your Unification is building the greatest warcraft in its history, theUnity. It is seven kilometers long." Sedon turned to her.

"Those three tiny wedges are, each one, at least eighteen kilometers long. They are sleem warships of the line. Any one of those craft could conquer Sol System. By itself, without danger to itself. YourUnity, when complete, would be destroyed in minutes by the least of the sleem empire's fighter craft.Command, holo off."

The room descended into darkness once again, darkness but for the scattered lights of the distant floodlamps on the beach.

Sedon studied Denice. "And they are only twelve light-years away. If we disturbed them, they could be here-tomorrow, if they know the route through the s.p.a.celace tunnels; within a year if they have to search for one. Within a mere fifteen years acrossreal s.p.a.ce."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"My dear, the sleem make fine masters. They will enclose us in this solar system, place an outpost like the one at Tau Ceti to ensure that we never attempt to leave Sol System. And aside from that they will leave us alone. They are based upon silicon in a fluoro-silicon atmosphere, and they have no interest in the planets that once belonged to the Zaradin." Sedon's voice grew very quiet, an almost inaudible whisper, insinuating itself into a s.p.a.ce somewhere in the back of Denice's skull. "But my child, Dancers were not made to have masters, but tobe. Life is too precious a thing to be wasted in subjugation to anyone. It may be that there is no need of a hand to hold the whip, a voice to call the roll; most of the great advances your people have made have come about since the rights of property and governments have been found not to be unlimited.But -" His voice cracked, sharp and hard edged. "If there must be a hand to hold the whip, that hand is ours. If there must be a voice to call the roll of life and death, that voice isours. We who are most alive are most suited to determine matters of life and death, for we most deeply grasp life's value.