The Last Dancer | Page 2

frozen ground, waiting. The kitjan screamed once, twice, while he waited there. The first shot came nowhere near him; the Shield had not seem him clearly when he fell. The next shot came closer, sent another wash of wracking pain through the Dancer; 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 man's 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 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 pass 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 passed.

Summer: 2075
They had themselves a party
To wash away their cares
They busted up the furniture
Said they would take back what was theirs
Said they would take back what was theirs
--Mahliya Kutura, Independence Day

1.
"Jasmine."
The voice echoed through the cool empty gym like God calling from a cheap pay phone.
The woman who called herself Jasmine Martinez slowly exhaled the breath she had been holding, released her toes, and sat up. She had been doing stretches for the muscles in the backs of her thighs, sitting with her legs straight in front of her, grasping the instep of each foot with her hands, and leaning forward until she was completely doubled over. The walls of the huge gym were mirrored and out of the corner of her eye she watched her image in the mirror: a black-haired woman of average height, wearing nothing but a pair