The Last Dancer | Page 9

feminist; I agree with them much of the time, but
we part company when they wish to define me as a woman before all
else, when I am a person before all else." Denice grinned suddenly.
"The man who tried to kill me, McGee; I asked him once what he
thought of women, and he said he found them useful for sex, and for
making babies."
Robert lifted a single eloquent eyebrow.
"It made me angry. I asked him if he was joking, and he said no; that he
found people fascinating, but that when I phrased things in terms of
men and women, what else could I be talking about? The point stuck. It
made it impossible for me to become a feminist the way--the way the
people I was with wanted me to. To define myself as a woman, and
then as a Wiccan, accept the worship of the Goddess, and call myself a
witch and mean it sincerely; I'm a person first, and I couldn't do it. The
things those words represent have little to do with who I am. I
learned...that I disliked labels, or perhaps that the labels that exist are
insufficient. If there's a word for what I am, I have not learned it."
Robert smiled; the smooth skin relaxed into laugh wrinkles. "If they
made a word for it, you would become something else, and still the
word would not fit. I am Robert, who does such and such a thing, or I

am Denice, who does such and such a thing. This is closer, and even it
is not accurate."
Denice said softly, "I missed you."
He nodded seriously. "Naturally."
"I've been feeling the need to talk to you recently."
The laugh wrinkles around his eyes deepened slightly. "Yes."
"It's just that I've been having a bad year."
He shrugged. "It happens. Stand up."
Denice unfolded out of lotus, came to her full height, and stood looking
down at the small man.
"Turn in a full circle."
She did so, and he watched her move inside the yellow sundress; the
smile broke across his face again. He came to his feet in a single fluid
movement. "You've been practicing."
"I have."
"You're in even better condition than you were."
"I am."
"Want a job?"
"I need one."
"I'll fire the morning instructor, I've never liked him anyway."
Denice shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's not what I've had in mind."
The last letter from Trent was a year old. Denice knew it by heart, had

felt the impatience in it as though Trent had been there in the room with
her.
So join me. Or stay on Earth if you won't join me. I know things aren't
good downside, and I know it's getting worse, and it's probably going
to keep getting worse before it gets any better.
But if you don't do anything, you have no right to be angry.
Damn it, make the effort.
Make the commitment to make a difference.
And grow up.
Robert looked at her quizzically. "What would you like to do?"
Denice Castanaveras said quietly, firmly, "I would like to work in
politics."
Robert snorted. "Well, it's your soul."
She slept in Robert's spare room.
The building was near two centuries old; built not long after the
American Centennial. It was mostly what webdancers called dead
space; most of the rooms in the building lacked access to the Net. Late
that night, when Ralf the Wise and Powerful came to visit her, he did
so through the limited radio packet bandwidth available on her
handheld.
Denice did not need much sleep, four to five hours usually, and she got
by with less. At 2 a.m. on Sunday morning, as she lay in bed reading
one of Robert's prized paper books, the laser on her handheld lit, and a
holoform appeared at the foot of her bed. The voice of the AI who had
once been the Image of Trent the Uncatchable issued from the speaker
in the handheld. "Hello, Denice."
Denice put the book down on the small table at the bedside and sat up

in bed, drawing the covers up around her shoulders to keep herself
warm against the slight chill. "Hello, Ralf. What have you found?"
Denice did not need much light to audit black text on white paper; she
had dimmed the ceiling glowpaint considerably. Ralf's image
illuminated its surroundings indistinctly, competing with the gentle
glowpaint. He wavered at the edges, in the seeming of a man of
indeterminate age, wearing dark, flowing robes. His slightly ascetic
features were vaguely reminiscent of Trent's, of the man who had
written the code that had become Ralf. Denice did not know, and had
never seen reason to ask, if the image Ralf presented to the world was
in