The Last Dancer Read online

  "We tried to get you to teach a class in self-defense."

  "You don't need it," said Jasmine patiently. "As I said at the time. Violence within Goddess Home is rare. Those of you who venture outside are handicapped by unfamiliarity with violence and insufficient time for training. If I were to teach the women here to defend themselves, they would still, most likely, be hurt in any encounter where they were required to defend themselves. The willingness to hurt an opponent, to damage him, is more important than simply knowing how; and that willingness is something I can't teach. And I'm not sure I wish to. Personal Protection Systems, expensive though they are, are a better investment of Goddess Home's time and Credit. You just don't go outside that often." Jasmine shrugged. "You've heard this before. The fact is that in Los Angeles, in any major city, I can make a living at both of my trades. In Goddess Home I cannot make a living at either.

  "The second reason I'm willing to share with you is simple. When I joined Goddess Home, Marta Tracing held your job. She was a quiet person, and I found her easy to get along with. Since Marta passed away, intolerance over ideological purity has grown to the point where I am no longer comfortable here. I don't think I need to be more explicit."

  Alaya nodded slowly. "You've evaded this question before, but we are alone, and you are leaving--what do you truly think of Wicca?"

  Jasmine sighed. "Why does it matter?"

  "Wicca is--" Alaya's frustration was apparent. "It's the entire point of Goddess Home. It's the reason this town exists. If you're not here because of Wicca, why are you here?" She paused. "Or, if you like, why were you here?"

  "I didn't say that I did not find Wicca attractive. It is--a life-affirming system of beliefs. Theologically it's no sillier than Christianity; it seems so at times only because it doesn't have two thousand years of ornate rationalization to fall back upon. Emotionally it's at least as healthy as any other religion I'm familiar with. The rituals are less elaborate than those of the older religions, but that, too, is part of the charm. But--Alaya, when you make the doctrine, the detail of ritual, more important than the connection to Deity that it is supposed to serve, you are in the process of turning Wicca into something very much like the patriarchal, authoritarian religions you detest. I don't believe in your Goddess, Alaya. I also don't believe in the Christian God. I believe in something, because I've felt it in my own life. When I was younger I used to think it was what everybody else called God, and for a little while I did think it might be what Wicca calls the Goddess. But today I admit I don't know what it is, that I have no words for it. And when you insist that what I feel is--or should be--what you have written down on paper, or what you speak in ritual, you lose me, Alaya. And a lot of other people, apparently."

  Alaya bit her lower lip. "Thank you for your frankness."

  "I hope it's of some help."

  "Well. So much for that." Alaya dismissed the subject with a visible effort. When she spoke again she was clearly nervous. "There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, if you have a moment. I'll make it quick."

  "Please. I have less than half an hour to make the Bullet."

  "I'm curious as to how you came to join us, three years ago."

  "I believe it's in the records."

  "Very little of it is in the records, Jasmine; Marta left us two rather terse paragraphs explaining it as a matter of personal obligation. A 'Sieur McGee did some work for us about ten years ago--the nature of that work isn't in the records either. Then three years ago he petitioned to have you admitted for residency in Goddess Home. I think you may be the only woman who has ever lived here whose petition was presented by a man."

  Jasmine nodded. "Marta said she thought I was."

  Alaya waited expectantly.

  Jasmine let the silence stretch, smiling. When twenty seconds had passed she said softly, "My father used to do this to people. Throw silence at them and wait for them to start talking. It seemed so obvious when I was nine years old, even then I was always surprised when I saw it work."

  "But it's not going to work on you, is it? And you're not going to tell me how you came to Goddess Home."

  Jasmine shook her head. "It was a private matter between myself and 'Sieur McGee and Marta. Marta is dead and I would not know how to contact 'Sieur McGee if my life depended upon it."

  Alaya nodded, hesitating, and then said abruptly, "You're real."

  Jasmine said carefully, "I beg your pardon?"

  "A lot of the women who study Wicca, who cast the spells and make the circles, they--" Alaya hesitated again. "A lot of them--almost all of them, damn it--are kidding themselves. But you're real, you have something. I have a little bit of it, enough to know when a spell has worked, when a circle closes correctly. Sometimes I get some of what people are thinking and feeling. But when you walk into the same room with me--there's a sound, except it's not a sound, like a thousand bees buzzing all around me, and I can't hear anything. People have lied to me when you were nearby and I couldn't tell."

  Jasmine nodded slowly. Not counting Alaya, there were three women she had met at Goddess Home who had some small fragment of the Gift, some touch of real ability. Most of the women at Goddess Home were no more gifted than any other human; and the three that were, Alaya again excepted, did not seem to have made much productive use of their fragmentary Gift. "I know what you mean," Jasmine said quietly. "I've felt the same in you."

  "You lie," said Alaya without anger. "I'm no more in your league than Marien Lisachild is in mine. She may be the most popular psychic at Goddess Home, but she's a fraud and we both know it. I'm not a fraud, but I'm not what you are, either." Alaya paused. "Your eyes are green."

  Jasmine was grimly certain she knew where this was going. "So?"

  "Were you born with eyes that color?"

  Jasmine sat silently a long moment, letting the question hang in the air, and then said, "I think we're done."

  "I don't think so."

  Jasmine stared bleakly at the woman. "Meaning what?"

  A less self-assured woman might have taken warning from the tone of her voice. Alaya Gyurtrag forged ahead. "Back in 2062 two genies, two of the Castanaveras, were kidnapped from the Chandler Complex in Manhattan, before the Complex was nuked by Space Force. They never found out what happened to them, to those children. And you're--"

  The images tore through Jasmine, the smell of Alaya's mother, the calm and steady warmth of her father. Her father's smile, the gentle reassurances in the face of adversity, the promise that what Alaya attempted she would be competent to do. The inconsolable ache at their loss, lessened only slightly with the passage of thirteen years, particularly the loss of the man who had taught her to read, who had praised her early attempts at painting, who had consoled her when she was twenty, after the loss of her first love--

  Jasmine pulled free of the link, mildly impressed that Alaya had managed it in the first place. "I'm sorry, Alaya. But it wasn't my fault."

  Alaya's voice shook slightly. "My parents died during the Troubles."

  "I know, and I am sorry. But so did both of mine."

  Alaya nodded, eyes not moving from Jasmine's, and her right hand dropped below the edge of her desk.

  Jasmine Martinez said simply, "Please don't do this."

  Alaya licked her lips quickly. Her expression held a very good attempt at innocence. "Don't do what?"

  Jasmine heard the desk drawer sliding open. She exhaled, let the living air flow from her lungs, closed her eyes and stepped out of her body.

  The room lit with a flat, grainy gray light.

  In the stillness between heartbeats Jasmine Martinez moved away from her body and walked through the desk.

  She did not recognize the make of the gun Alaya was taking from her desk drawer. A double-action automatic of some kind; from the size of the barrel, perhaps a 9mm. The safety was already off. She touched the magazine, ran a finger through the metal and up into the chamber; fifteen shots staggered in the magazine, one shot in the chamber, rea
dy to be fired.

  Jasmine had no idea what Alaya expected to do with the weapon, and did not intend to wait and find out. She let go of the automatic, grasped Alaya's arms just above the elbows and reached out for the glowing blue filaments of Alaya's nerve network. Here, and here, she touched, quieted the flow of neurons, and then opened her eyes to a world of color and movement.

  The gun in Alaya's hand fell noiselessly from her nerveless hands to the surface of the carpet. Jasmine stared at Alaya, eyes glittering, and with the full force of her Gift reformed the link Alaya had attempted, and, as Alaya Gyurtrag drew breath to scream, Touched her soul.

  Jasmine came back to herself slowly, distantly aware of tears dripping down her cheeks; knew as though it were something happening to someone else that she shook with the force of her sobs. She mourned for the parents Alaya had lost in the Troubles, for the slow loss of Alaya's friends. The pain of Alaya's incomprehension, that men and women alike, people she cared for, should misunderstand her advances, should interpret her love as interference, and her fear as anger. Alaya's desperate fear that she was already too old to find the love she craved, that if she had not found it yet she would never find it, and would age alone, unloved, and friendless.

  And die so.

  Alaya blinked. It took a moment for her eyes to focus. When they did she looked at Jasmine with sudden concern. "Are you all right, dear?"

  "I'm--fine," Jasmine managed to say. A lethal headache pulsed immediately behind her eyes; it happened every time she used the deepest elements of the Gift. She gathered herself and wiped away the tears, picked up her travel bag, and stood, a little uncertainly. "Thank you for talking with me. I--never mind. Thank you. I appreciated the opportunity to know you a little better."

  A look of distant incomprehension flickered across Alaya's features, was gone. Alaya said with real compassion, "I'm sorry you have to go. But it's only normal for you to grieve for the life you leave behind. If Goddess Home has not been everything you wanted, it has still been your home."

  Jasmine stood still a beat. Then she said, simply, "Thank you," and left.

  She caught the 9:15 Bullet with twenty seconds to spare.

  * * *

  2.

  At speeds surpassing those of aircraft, the Bullet sped eastward through an evacuated tunnel beneath the surface of Earth.

  Jasmine had paid for passage to Atlanta, Georgia. Fifteen minutes before the Bullet was scheduled to stop in Dallas she rose from her seat and went to the bathroom. In the bathroom she stripped off her jumpsuit and her boots. Standing naked before the mirror she flicked through the settings in her makeup key; her skin, tuned black to match the jumpsuit, changed colors rapidly, a brief storm of rainbows, and then stabilized on a dark shade of gold. Her lips and eyelids turned a pale golden green; a speckle of faint silver stars appeared immediately beneath her rather high cheekbones. Jasmine considered contact lenses for her eyes, decided against it--her makeup implant was almost ten years old, and she had never had it updated. Unlike the more recent makeup implants, her skin did not glow and the implant had not even touched her eyes. If she wanted to change the color of her eyes, contact lenses were her only option.

  She shook her hair out as it changed colors to a shade of strawberry blond, then changed the part and tied it into a long ponytail. From her bag Jasmine withdrew a pair of sandals and a yellow sundress and put them on. She tapped the ID key on her handheld twice, waited a moment, and tapped it a third time. The handheld said quietly, "Which ID do you wish?"

  There were three IDs in the handheld; Denice Daimara, Jasmine Martinez, and Erika Muller. The first was the name they had known her by in Public Labor, when she was nine years old; the last two identities had been programmed for her by Trent the Uncatchable, the last day he had ever spent on Earth, before beginning what newsdancers had called the Long Run.

  Jasmine said softly, "Erika."

  The handheld said, "Enabled."

  In Dallas the rain poured down out of the black night sky.

  At Dallas Interworld Spaceport Erika Muller stopped at the TransPlanet booth, still slightly wet from the rain outside; the Bullet debarking station was separated from Spaceport Gate A-8 by thirty meters of empty space. When she spoke her voice had picked up a slight but noticeable New York accent. "I'm here to pick up my ticket. Muller, Erika."

  The 'bot at the counter said politely, in a voice strongly reminiscent of sensable star Adam Selstrom, "Yes, 'Selle Muller. Please identify."

  Erika touched her handheld to the payment strip; it lit green. Adam Selstrom's voice said, "Thank you, 'Selle Muller. Your semiballistic leaves from Gate A-11 at 1:05 a.m.; it arrives at Unification Spaceport, New York, at 4:12 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Thank you for traveling with TransPlanet."

  Her ticket specified a window seat. Once launch boost ceased, the slim, short man who had been seated next to Erika Muller tried to start up a conversation. "What are you going to New York for, anyway? I've got a sales meeting myself--I sell high-speed molar memory products. Capitol City's no fun but the rest of New York is still good for--"

  The clouds beneath her were a pale ocean that nearly hid the Earth from view; patches of blue and brown peeked through the cotton white. The curve of Earth grew visible as she watched. Without looking at the man at her side Erika said, "I don't want to talk to you," and then turned her head away from him and looked out the window, at the sphere of the Earth, the rest of the way down to New York.

  She did not think she had been followed after leaving Goddess Home.

  At least not in Realtime--and if anyone had attempted to follow her through the Crystal Wind, Erika thought that Ralf the Wise and Powerful would surely have stopped them.

  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 brownstone 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 third floor.

  Erika toggled her ID to the Daimara identity, and knocked once. She paused, touched her handheld to the doorgrid and placed her palm flat against the door pad. Despite the passage of three years the door recognized her name and her print, and curled aside to let her pass.

  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 amusement. "So I peeked. Anyway 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 classes."

  "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 a woman before all else, when I am a person 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 sex, and for making babies."