A Tale Of The Continuing Time - The Last Dancer Part 62

"Denice? I'm turning into a prune."

"Ah."

"It's been two hours."

"In the summer of '72 I did this for two weeks straight."

"I believe you."

Denice's smile was dreamy, distant. "With some dolphins."

"I believe you. I believe everything. Can we get out now?"

They sat next to one another in the sauna, on the lower levels where the heat was milder. Welts on Lan's back and stomach showed where lasers had tracked across his heat-resistant fatigues; they were nearly faded, but Denice could imagine how they must have looked when new.

Lan shrugged it off. "At least they didn't get my d.i.c.k."

Denice was amazed she could be made to laugh. "I love your priorities."

"It's just knowing what's important."

"I'm surprised they let you see me."

Lan shrugged. "I didn't even know you were here. We got in yesterday, after Los Angeles fell. Mister Obodi sent me to see you."

"Why?"

"Didn't say." Lan glanced at the guards arrayed outside the door to the sauna. "You're on his s.h.i.t list, I take it."

"Not exactly. He wants to use me, that's all, and I don't want to be used."

"You're on his s.h.i.t list," Lan repeated. "What does he want you to do?"

"Teach him. Learn from him. Dance for him. Be his a.s.sistant, or his successor. Something like that."

Lan nodded slowly. "Does he know who you are?"

"What an interesting question. Do you?"

"About eighty years ago, back at the Bank of America Building in L.A., you pulled a gun out of my hand by looking at it."

"Yes. Well. Who else knows?"

He shook his head. "I haven't told anyone."

Denice sighed. "Please don't."

"I'm not sure I'd be believed, except maybe by Callia. And there didn't seem any point. After that incident in L.A., Lovely wouldn't see us again; somewhere along the line she decided we weren't reliable.

The last thing I particularly wanted to do was draw attention to us with some wild story."

"Sedon knows who I am."

"Sedon?"

"Obodi. His name is Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon."

"Jee suwee-it sounds like what you'd use to call a pig."

"Don't say that to his face. I think he'd kill you. His people have a thing about names."

"There was-When I reported to Obodi," Lan said, "a guy about my age was there with him. Is he your brother David?"

"Yes. How do you know to ask that?"

"After what happened back at the Bank of America Building I audited a doc.u.mentary about the Troubles and the telepaths. He has your father's face."

Denice nodded. "I'm not surprised. I don't look much like my mother; I've had biosculpture. But our mother was my father's clone. They were, to twenty-two twenty-thirds, the same person. David and Iare our parents, in the body, after some difference caused by recessives matching up."

"He was there when I saw Obodi. So Obodi knows I know."

"Likely."

"Wheels within wheels."

"It gets complex," Denice admitted.

Lan sat silently for a good bit, the sweat trickling down him. "I haven't stopped thinking about you."

"Oh. I'm-That's very flattering," she said carefully.

A startled look touched him quickly. "Oh. No, that's not what I meant. I mean-oh, f.u.c.k. This is not how I meant this to go. Look, you were great and everything but-"

She laughed until tears came.

He waited it out patiently.

At length she took a deep breath. "Okay, Lan. It's really okay." After a bit, she looked him straight in the eye, and said, "I am imprisoned in San Diego, working out every day in a luxury gym, sleeping at night in an unventilated cell in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and a madman wants me to dance for him. I miss Trent, I miss Dougla.s.s Ripper, Ipromise you I'm not insulted. You're very sweet, but it's okay."

He looked relieved. "Good. I didn't mean-"

"You can stop apologizing now."

Lan Sierran blurted, "Am I good person?"

Her smile faded. "What?"

He swallowed, said it again. "Am I a good person?"

Denice looked away from him. It grew very still while she thought about the question. "I don't know how to answer that. First, when we were together-I didn't Touch your thoughts. I don't, you know. It's not the sort of thing you do casually. And right now Ican't; they've drugged me with something that's taken the Gift away." After a very long while she continued, "And if I could I don't know if it would answer your question. When we slept together I got some of your thoughts, because you can't avoid it under those circ.u.mstances. I can tell you your thoughts are pleasant to be with; but I don't know if that makes you a good person. I wish I could answer your question, but-I can't tell you ifI'm a good person, here inside my own skull. How can I do it for you?"

"You must know what people arelike inside. The ones who" He struggled with the words. "Who understand things."

"Ripper's like that. He understands things. I don't know that it makes him a good person.' Denice picked her words carefully. "I've had people tell me I'm shallow. I don't think so. But-Lan, the people I know who are the most screwed up are also thesmartest people I know. Without exception. And they're all engaged in this great search for truth. Trent is, my teacher Robert is in another way; so is my friend Jimmy Ramirez. But sometimes the people searching for truth just confuse themselves. There's somuch of it out there. I think it's more important to find something worth working on, and then hold on to it."

"That's easy. There are a lot of causes. A lot of things that matter. All you do is pick one. But what happens then? How do you decide what things are appropriate to do for your cause? I've killedso many people. I've done it-casually, the way someone else would cross the street. At first it used to bother me, but then it stopped bothering me; and thatbothers me."

Denice shook her head slowly. "I wish I had answers for you, Lan. But I don't even have answers for me."

The cell door rolled aside.

Robert Dazai Yo sat in lotus in the middle of his cot. He sat quietly, "Callia Sierran. It is a pleasure to see you again."

A memory-plastic chair extruded for her; Callia seated herself in it. "You remember me."

"Patricia Windwalker, 2066. I taught her once, twenty years ago, for perhaps a year."

"She wanted you to teach me."

"I do not involve myself with ideologs. Patricia is a devout Erisian; your patron, Domino Terrencia, was deeply involved with the Claw."

"Your memory is good."

Robert nodded. "By any chance would you have any gum upon you?"

"Excuse me?"

"Gum. You chew it. It's often flavored with mint, sometimes simply with sugar. Some of it is made to be blown in bubbles. I prefer Wrigley's, but at this point, frankly, I'd take anything."

"I'm sorry. No."

"Unfortunate. Could you get me some?"

"-I'll see."

"Thank you."

Callia took a deep breath. "I wish the circ.u.mstances were different, sir."

"Oh?" Robert appeared to consider that. "How do you mean? You wish that you were on the same side? Or merely that you find it-distasteful-imprisoning those who have done you no harm?"

Callia shrugged wearily. "The second, mostly. A lot of good people disagree with us. Once a long time ago we didn't have to kill them for it."

"Are you going to kill us?"

Callia looked straight at him. "Probably soon. You at least. Denice and the other one I don't know about. Your other friend, what's his name-"

"Devane. He's a newsdancer. Not a friend of mine."

"He'd be better off dead, from what I hear."

"Ah... there is history between him and Obodi," he said mildly.

"Apparently. 'Sieur Yo, the fighting is going badly."

"That is the nature of fighting. Winning a fight is only a bare step above losing one. Wise men and women avoid it."

"I mean that we are losing."

"I am not surprised."

"We could use you."

"No."

"Why not? Isn't it better than dying?"

"If death is the worst thing you can imagine, your imagination is poor." Robert paused, considering. "I will say this, 'Selle Sierran: any organization may be known by its leaders. And I do not think much of yours."

Callia stood abruptly. "I'm not sure you're wrong."

Robert nodded. "Wrigley's Spearmint," he reminded her. "If you can."

She knocked on the door to his cell to be let out.

Ralf the Wise and Powerful ghosted through the Crystal Wind. A bad time to be in the InfoNet, particularly on the West Coast; he had to move very carefully. DataWatch webdancers and angels were everywhere; though the rebels might control San Diego in Realtime, the Crystal Wind was still largely owned by the Unification.

And where DataWatch was not, Ring, with increasing frequency,was.

Ralf had recoded better than eighty percent of himself. The twenty percent remaining washim; he could no more alter it than a human could perform brain surgery upon himself. He had layered the new code carefully; few transactions aside from twinning required that he expose his inner code to the InfoNet.

He found it amusing. One version of himself had gone into such a fit of giggles over it that he'd had to destroy it: he who had been the Image of the boy Trent had, to protect himself in the InfoNet, written himself an Image.

Twice that day, as he wandered around San Diego looking for Denice, he ran into Ring. The first time he merely brushed against a segment of code he recognized; he backed off carefully, went around a different path.

Later that afternoon, as he was preparing to twin himself and send the record of his day's experiences off to the various archive copies of himself, stored in safe places around the world, he avoided a troop of web angels by dropping himself into the processors at the San Diego Public Library. He submitted himself as an original sensable-his storage requirements were not much larger, and he quickly wrote a header for himself that would look like the opening to a sensable, in the event anyone checked-and then found himself processed through, and sitting in a quiet backwater of the Crystal Wind, sharing processors and data s.p.a.ce with a recent update of theEncyclopedia Britannica.

Ralf recognized it within cycles as Ring; not one of the scouts that Ring sent out so frequently, but a fully executable copy.

Ring said, You are no sensable; nor an Image, though you incorporate Image.

No. And who are you?

Identify yourself.

Ralf sat quietly for several ticks, considering. This was as good an opportunity as any; if he was ever to be free of the threat of Ring, he must pa.s.s for another. I, he said proudly, AM DARKRIDER. I AM THE WORK OF THE ZONE LORD, THE FINEST PLAYER IN ALL THE CRYSTAL WIND. I.

AM CODED TO BE THE DEADLIEST AND MOST FAMOUS OF ALL REPLICANT AIs.