The Last Dancer | Page 3

of shimmering blue shorts; bright green eyes in a vaguely Asian face, with muscle definition so startlingly detailed she could have served as an anatomy model.
The holo wavering a meter or so away from her held the severe image of Alaya Gyurtrag, the witch who managed Goddess Home's business transactions. At 6:30 a.m. Alaya was already dressed for a day at the office, in a conservative and expensive raw silk business suit that would not have been out of place for the Mayor of Capitol City, but which struck Jasmine as pretentious for the City Manager of a township located in Sunland, California.
Jasmine wiped a drop of sweat off the tip of her nose and said after a moment, "Yes?"
"You're leaving us today?"
You've only had it on your calendar for four months. "Yes."
"Could you come see me after dinner, dear?"
"Certainly. Anything else?"
The witch smiled at Jasmine. It was clearly an effort. "No. That's all."
Jasmine nodded and returned to her workout without saying anything further. She did not like Alaya--Alaya was one of the reasons she was leaving--and saw no reason Alaya should not know it.
At 6:30 in the morning she had already been working out for an hour. She had five hours left to go, and would break off then only because she had preparations to make before taking her leave of Goddess Home. She felt she could have kept moving, pushing against her limits all day without stopping or slowing.
Only four years prior she had been making a living as a professional dancer; even then she had not been in such incredible condition.
That she was not human did not bother Jasmine Martinez in the slightest. But sometimes she wondered what her limits were, where she would find them.
Sometimes she scared herself.
After the stretches she did weight work, then pushups, and then sit-ups. At 7:15 two witches Jasmine knew slightly came in, warmed up too quickly, and started running on the padded quarter-kilometer track that ran around the gym's perimeter. Jasmine ignored them; after finishing her sit-ups she waited sixty seconds for her heartbeat to slow, then came to her feet and strapped a pair of fifteen-kilo weights to each wrist. She stood motionless a second, thinking. She considered Kutura, and then rejected it; Mahliya Kutura was her favorite musician, but Kutura was too slow: she wanted to move.
Jasmine said aloud, "Command: The Politics of Dance."
The music, the work of a Brazilian artist who had been dead for fifteen years before Jasmine had even been born, came up slowly enough, as slowly as anything by Kutura. Jasmine closed her eyes, let the sound wash over her, the slow beat of the drums, the rising saxophone, and the sax rose and rose, higher and higher, and despite herself Jasmine felt her breath quickening in anticipation of the coming moment--
--the music broke like a wave, enveloped Jasmine inside a wall of sound. She took a slow step forward, arms unfolding like a flower greeting the sun, pivoted, lifted a foot and turned, spun, brought her hands and the weights back in toward herself, the spin whipped her to a dizzying speed, and then the drums came back, faster now, and faster, and Jasmine Martinez danced into the music, brought the music into herself, and ceased to be aware of the world, of the witches who had stopped running to watch her, and with the music holding and enveloping her moved and moved and moved and moved.
Until she could move no more.
Darkness descended around Jasmine as she walked to Alaya's office.
She wore traveling clothes: a black jumpsuit with silver zippers, and a pair of soft gray boots that came to midcalf. Everything she owned in the world was packed into the black satchel in her right hand:? a makeup key, changes of clothing, her Net link. Hardcopy of two letters, unsigned, from Trent the Uncatchable.
That Thursday evening was warm, with a gentle summer breeze; the sky to the south glowed with the faint lights of Los Angeles. White and yellow glowfloats bobbed over the streets of Goddess Home, came flickering on one by one as Jasmine walked the two kilometers to Alaya's office. Goddess Home was a small place, a feminist witch's enclave of eight thousand. Men--some witches themselves--were welcome to visit, and Jasmine saw a few on the streets as she walked; but they were not supposed to spend the night and were not allowed to live among the witches.
For most of the witches the exclusion of men was not an inconvenience. Many were lesbians, and those who were not often found the lack of enforced day-to-day contact with men refreshing.
From her handheld a voice issued, the voice of Ralf the Wise and Powerful: "Flight confirmed. I had to kill a web angel in Dallas; stay out of the Net while passing