THE LAST DANCER.

Daniel Keys Moran

DEDICATION....

For Holly. I love you.

... AND THANKS TO ....

My friend Richard Sommers, who helped make it possible for me to finish this b.i.t.c.h of a book, and whose sound advice and perspective kept me from going off the deep end on at least one occasion; Angel and Jodi and Kathy, for their love; Doctor Death for allowing me the use of Nicole Eris Lovely, a character fromFalse Prophets, her second novel about the Prophet Harry; David Gerrold, for giving me the opportunity toeat his brain, the way the j.a.panese do to the monkeys; Dorothy Fontana, who fed me the second best chili in the world, and who tried, against all reasonable expectations, to improve me as a human being by exposing me to the Big Band sound at the Hollywood Bowl one night; Steve Barnes and Toni Young, for their friendship and support, and Steve and Toni and Dawn Callan forThe Warrior Within workshop; Amy Stout and Lou Aronica and Ralph the Wise and Powerful, for their astonishing patience; The Kinks, forRock and Roll Fantasy; Melissa Etheridge, who sangWill Never Be the Same for me in concert one night during the craziness; and Don Henley, forThe End of the Innocence. I am deeply grateful forThe Heart of the Matter, a song that helped keep me sane. Perhaps grat.i.tude from the audience is out of order where art is concerned; I paid him for that music with cold cash, as you presumably have paid for this book; but "what the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear." Thank you.

... AND A NOTE.

Usually in this part of the book the author says something to the effect that the experts he"s mentioned are not to be faulted in the event he screwed something up despite their invaluable help. Not this time. I did my best. If anything is wrong inThe Last Dancer it"s their fault. Particularly Amy Stout, Steve Barnes, David Gerrold, Dorothy Fontana, and Ralph Vincinanza, all of whom are professionals and should have known better.

The Last Dancer

A Tale of the Continuing Time

There are no longer "dancers," the possessed. The cleavage of men into actors and spectators is the central fact of our time. We are obsessed with heroes who live for us and whom we punish... We have metamorphised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.

-Jim Morrison

Prolog: The Dancer

In the last hour of sunlight the Dancer fled through the forest covering the base of the mountains.

The trees were tall, emaciated things of some pale wood, with dull, silver-white leaves. They spread themselves thinly but evenly, and in the shadows of approaching night the Dancer could see no more than fifteen or twenty paces ahead at any moment. The winds blew cold, growing colder, dropping down below freezing even before the sun had set. The Dancer barely noticed except to wonder, briefly, if it might in some way slow the Shield who pursued him.

If the Shield was Marah, perhaps. But the Dancer suspected Marah was dead, and if so, the Shield pursuing him was Dvan. Dvan might well notice the cold; he was no Dancer.

But he would not permit it to stop him.

The Dancer ran faster as the slope of the ground began to rise, whipcord muscles moving gracefully beneath the sheath of his skin.

One way or another it would all be over soon.

From behind him came a shrill scream, the cry of the kitjan. Closer than it had been. The Dancer"s neural system, vastly more sensitive than any normal human s, registered a twinge of pain. The kitjan was a terrifying weapon; the Dancer"s companions, four of the eight, had died in agony at its touch, and if the Shield chasing him got much closer he would be the fifth. He picked up speed, pushed his amazing body to its fullest, demanding more speed, and getting it. He wove through the shadowed trees, pushing aside the barrier of the cold night air. His breath came smoothly, drew the air, the life-giving oxygen, through his nostrils, warming it, and then deep into his lungs. The trees thinned around him as he moved higher up the mountainside, and the slope grew steeper. Now and again as he climbed he used his hands to help himself along.

Above the cover of the trees, the huge chain of mountains became visible again. He moved upward through a long ravine, the sides of the ravine rising away on either side of him. It was shadowed here, but not shadowed enough; from nearly any point outside the thickest part of the forest, the Dancer would be visible now. This was the point of greatest danger, where, for long moments, he would be in plain view.

A lucky shot; at that distance it could be nothing else. The kitjan whiplash touched the Dancer, held him for the merest instant. Nerves fired at random; every superbly trained muscle in the Dancer"s body spasmed at once. He fell in midstride and struck the ground hard, rolling limply, tumbling back down-slope in complete loss of control.

He ended up in a crevice beneath an overhanging, ice-scoured boulder. The Dancer lay on the cold hard ground, fighting the unconsciousness that crept in around him. He monitored his heart, found it had ceased beating at the kitjan"s touch. He restarted it, inspected its operation briefly to ensure that it would continue beating unattended. Spasms ripped the muscles of his abdomen, made breathing impossible.

The Dancer concentrated on the abdominal muscles, and well before he was in danger of losing consciousness from anoxia had regained control of his breath. His eyesight cleared slowly of its own accord. The Dancer lay on the frozen ground, waiting. The kitjan screamed once, twice, while he waited there. The first shot came nowhere near him; the Shield had not seen him clearly when he fell. The next shot came closer, sent another wash of wracking pain across the Dancer"s frame; more of the unlikely luck that had felled him in the first place.

It was dark now. Once, long ago, before the Dancers had learned to control the temperature of their bodies, that lack of visible light would have meant little; the Shield saw body heat as well as any Dancer.

Now that darkness might well make the difference between life and death. Lying motionless at the base of the boulders, looking down the mountain, the Dancer saw the first flicker of motion among the thinning trees, of the Shield closing in. The Dancer let his heartbeat slow, let the blood move sluggishly through his veins. He felt it first in his hands, as his body temperature dropped slowly toward freezing, toward the ambient temperature of the world around him. At last he moved, rolled carefully into a crouching position.

He could not feel his extremities well. He moved cautiously now, not certain how close the Shield might be, up through the ravine, through what little cover existed above the tree line.

To the cave.

There was little enough inside besides the cache of hardware from the ship. The cave was small, and even though the Dancer had not been there in a very long time he found the device he needed quickly: a key meant to be held in the palm of a mans hand.

In the darkness the Dancer felt for the studs on the surface of the key, and moved his thumb to cover the oval stud which would bring him safety.

Behind him, at the entrance to the cave, Gi"Tbad"Eovad"Dvan said quietly, "Good-bye, Sedon."

The kitjan found him while Dvan was still speaking. The Dancer never heard his name uttered. In the moment of his death, as the air left his lungs in a desperate, convulsive scream, the Dancer"s thumb spasmed on the stud controlling the stasis bubble.

They were up above the tree line; Gi"Tbad"Eovad"Dvan unslung the ancient laser from across his back, and with it set the side of the rock face near him to glowing. He sat outside the entrance to the cave, with the mirror-surfaced stasis bubble at his back, and waited. In the hours before morning it grew deadly cold from the arctic wind coming down off the nearby glaciers. Dvan shivered so badly that even with his glowing rock, lased regularly to a cherry red, he was not certain he would survive the night. His clothing was cured leather inlaid with fur; crude, warm enough most of the time, but perhaps not for tonight.

He did not sleep that night. He wasted no time thinking about the Dancer; Sedon was dead. The stasis bubble might postpone the moment of death, but Dvan was content that his work was done. The sort of medical technology necessary to save a Dancer touched at close range by the kitjan existed nowhere on this planet, and had not for a long, long time.

The night wore on forever. Once Dvan nearly slept, but found himself jerking awake to the conviction that blazing red eyes hovered out in the darkness beyond the glowing slab of stone, watching him-the red-furred beast that had led him to Sedon, the spirit sent by the Nameless One-but when he shook himself fully awake the eyes were gone.

When dawn finally came, the morning sun lighting the peaks of the mountains around him, Dvan looked around, fixing the place in memory, the relationships of the peaks to one another. It took some time, imprinting the image into deep memory, but at length he was satisfied; though eons might pa.s.s between visits, he would know this place again.

After a while he got up and stretched to relieve his stiffness, and headed back down the mountain.

Thirty-seven thousand years pa.s.sed.

Interlude: 2062-2069.

Gregorian

- 1 -.

On July 3, 2062, on a night of nightmares that would in years and centuries to follow become a part of human mythology, at the Eastgate Hotel in mid-Manhattan, two French Peaceforcers in black patrol fatigues held vigil, deployed at opposite ends of an otherwise empty lobby. The junior officer, Maurice Charbonneau, sat in one corner on the hotel"s carpeted floor, autoshot covering the entrance to the hotel.

Outside, on the opposite side of the street, he could see a pair of wrecked cars burning in the fierce rain.

A car came down out of the sky as he watched, blossoming into flames as it struck an apartment complex across the way. The shock wave of the explosion rattled the long gla.s.site panels that faced the street.

Maurice sat and watched Nils Logrissen walk up and down before the entrance to the hotel. Logrissen, a terrorist of the Erisian Claw, was the only man Charbonneau had ever killed. Occasionally Logrissen"s body stumbled and then jerked back up again like a marionette on strings. Logrissens bulging, dead-man"s eyes were fixed on Maurice, never left him except once; when the car struck the building across the street, Logrissen turned and watched the accident for a while.

Charbonneau was grateful for the respite. He was trying to pretend that everything that had happened in the last few hours was part of some particularly unpleasant sensable he had made the mistake of playing.

(Asensable where you"re the star, the voice whispered.Right.) It hadn"t worked yet, but perhaps that was because he wasn"t trying hard enough.

Charbonneau was deathly afraid that Logrissen was getting up his nerve to come inside, and if that happened Charbonneau was not certain what he would do.

At the other end of the lobby Charbonneau"s superior officer, Peace Keeping Force Sergeant Georges D"Argentan, paced restlessly back and forth in front of the maglev hits, chain-smoking, his multifrequency combat laser held loosely in one hand. With every few steps he left the carpet and crossed onto the tile area immediately before the maglev. It was the only sound in the echoing emptiness of the lobby: the clicking of the boots, followed by silence, followed by boots, followed by silence. The rhythm of it had grown so comforting, so predictable, that Charbonneau was startled when it ceased. He glanced over at Sergeant D"Argentan, saw the older Peaceforcer standing motionless, finger touching a point immediately below his right ear.

D"Argentan stood still while listening in on the command channel. Finally he shook himself slightly, resumed his pacing. Maurice.

Charbonneau was not certain that the voice in his head was real; his father, dead these fifteen years, had been talking to him for the last hour, ever since the Castanaveras telepaths had struck out at the world around them, at the United Nations Peace Keeping Force that was trying to destroy them. After a bit Charbonneau touched his own earphone. Sergeant? Is that you?

There was a moment"s silence before D"Argentan spoke, and Charbonneau could guess at his thoughts.

Councilor Carson had actually ordered that Maurice be sedated; D"Argentan had ignored him, and now he was rethinking the wisdom of the decision. Yes, of course it"s me. Your father is dead, Maurice. SO IS Logrissen. They have been for a long time.

Charbonneau knew better than to argue with Sergeant D"Argentan. He was sane enough, even yet, to know that he was quite mad at the moment. Charbonneau remembered burying his father, remembered killing Logrissen more clearly yet. Yes, Sergeant, I"ll try to remember that.

I"ve just been told that s.p.a.ce Force is ready. Secretary General Amnier has approved Elite Sergeant Vance"s request; Vance is going to order a thermonuclear strike on the Chandler Complex.

Charbonneau digested that. So they"re dead, then.

SO, THEY"RE DEAD, THEN. ALL THE TELEPATHS ARE TRAPPED INSIDE THE COMPLEX.

Across the length of the hotel lobby, D"Argentan nodded.

SO THEY SAY.

Charbonneau clutched his autoshot more tightly.

EXCEPT FOR THE TWO CARSON"S GOT UPSTAIRS.

JUST CHILDREN, said D"Argentan sharply. THEY DON"T HAVE THE POWER YET. ONLY THE ADULTS DO, AND THE ADULTS ARE SOON DEAD.

YES, SERGEANT.

At that moment, thirty-five floors above them, Carl Castanaveras had just finished killing the Peaceforcer guard stationed on the hotel"s roof. As Maurice Charbonneau turned back to continue his observation of Nils Logrissen, the oldest and deadliest telepath on Earth was riding down in the maglev to Unification Councilor Jerril Carson"s room, to the eighth floor, autoshot in one hand, Series II Excalibur laser rifle in the other. Coming for his children.

Denice Castanaveras had ceased crying only a few minutes ago. They were not tears of fear, but of anger. She had pa.s.sed into a place beyond fear, into a rage so vast and elemental it bore only a pa.s.sing resemblance to any emotion she had ever experienced before.

She was nine years old and she was going to kill Jerril Carson if given any opportunity at all.

She sat on the floor with her twin: two black-haired Caucasian children with pale skin and green eyes.

Both she and David had their hands snakechained behind their backs, with tape covering their mouths.

Her feet were free, as were David"s; they could have stood if allowed. A few hours prior David had made the mistake of trying. A bruise on the side of his face was slowly turning purple; Councilor Carson had knocked David back down to the floor without even looking at him.

She sat with her rage, not thinking. She did not understand how the situation she was in had come to pa.s.s; did not comprehend the details of the conflict between Carson and her father, how it had come to be that the personal animosity between Carson and her father had grown into a conflict which had, this night, pitted the Castanaveras telepaths against the entire armed might of the Unification.

Denice did not understand, and did not care.

She sat and thought about killing him.

Councilor Carson clutched an autoshot in his right hand; he hardly paid attention to the twins. Denice watched him, sitting in front of a huge holofield that showed an image of their home, of the Chandler Complex. He had turned off the audio; except for the whistling sound of the wind and the drum of the rain it was utterly silent inside the hotel room.

The image of the Chandler Complex vanished suddenly, was replaced with a split field; the Chandler Complex in one half of the field, a shot from the hotels security holocams in the other. The security holocams showed the long stretch of corridor outside, and the two Peaceforcers who guarded it. One of the Peaceforcers stood in front of a bank of elevators, covering the entrance with an autoshot; the other lay on his stomach at one end of the corridor, covering his partner with a variable laser.

After the long silence the sound of the Peaceforcer"s voice rang shockingly loud. "We"ve lost contact with the roof."

Carson stood with startling abruptness, turned and glared wildly at the twins. Denice met his eyes for a long moment and returned the glare:I"m going to kill you. The Gift had not touched her yet, and Carson was as deaf to thought as any normal human; still he froze for a second under the sheer physical impact of her rage. He shook himself visibly then and crossed the distance between them in two strides, pulled the twins to their feet and turned them to face the door. He stood behind them holding the autoshot with his right hand, holding their snaked hands behind them with his left. Where his hand gripped her Denice could feel Carson shaking.

The holofield moved with Carson, came to hover in front of them, a meter off to the right so that Carson"s view of the door was not obscured.

For a very long time nothing happened. Twenty seconds. Thirty- In the holofield, Denice watched the maglev doors curl open. The Peaceforcer with the autoshot stood in front of the door, autoshot at waist level, and began firing the instant the doors had opened sufficiently.

Denice heard the boom of the autoshot through the hotel room"s closed door. The angle of the holocams prevented their seeing the inside of the elevator; suddenly a flash of purple light came up off the elevator"s floor, and the Peaceforcer stiffened, ionization corona crackling around him; the black uniform he wore burst into flames and he fell.

Councilor Jerril Carson whispered, "s.h.i.t."

On the right side of the field, the pale, elegant image of the Chandler Complex glowed white in the rain.

An arm holding an autoshot extruded from inside the maglev, fired twice off to the right, down the hallway in the direction of Councilor Carson"s room. The Peaceforcer on the floor to the left of the holofield fired then, and Denice watched the maser"s ionization trail track across the hand and the autoshot holding it. What happened next came so quickly that Denice almost missed it; the injured man"s right hand darted out into the corridor, grabbed the autoshot and flipped it over to the left and fired twice again. Denice saw both shots strike the remaining Peaceforcer, saw his head and shoulders literally dissolve in a spray of flesh and shot. The maglev doors started to close- -her father lunged forward, into the hallway, firing again as he moved. Twice more he shot the crumpled form on the hallway floor, fifteen meters away. The Peaceforcer"s body twitched and came apart some more.

Jerril Carson said softly, "Oh G.o.d no."

Carl Castanaveras struggled to his feet, a death"s-head grin plastered across his features. His left arm, cooked by the master burst, hung dead and limp at his side. He staggered as he walked down the hallway, and stopped just before reaching the door to Carson"s room.

There was a moment"s silence.

The door exploded inward as though a giant fist had smashed into it.

At that instant a flash of bright light appeared in the holofield, lit the hotel room for an instant in unreal colors.