The Last Dancer

THE LAST DANCER
A Tale of the Continuing Time
DANIEL KEYS MORAN

This is a work of fiction. None of the characters in it are real people and any resemblance to anybody, living or dead, is a coincidence.
It is the author's intention that this work should be freely downloadable, copyable, and shareable in electronic format. It may not be reproduced, shared, or transmitted for a fee by any party to whom the author has not contractually granted permission. The author retains all other rights.?
Copyright (c) 1993 by Daniel Keys Moran

Dedication:
For Holly. I love you.
And Goodbye To....
My friend Richard Sommers, who died as this edition of the book was being typeset. I knew him fifteen years, and have never known a more optimistic, nor perhaps better, man. Just being in his presence made me feel better about myself and about the world around me. I keep expecting to hear the phone ring and hear that gruff voice on the other end of the line, saying "Hello, groovy" -- which was what he called almost everyone, because in his heart he knew everyone was. I miss him.
"What the head makes cloudy, the heart makes very clear."
-- Don Henley, The Heart of the Matter

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 an 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.
He ended in a crevice beneath an overhanging, ice-scoured boulder. The Dancer lay on the cold hard ground, fighting the unconsciousness that crept in on 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