The Last Dancer | Page 3

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 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