Dream Dancer (12 page)

So she had not found out that Chaeron P. Kerrion had been transferred to Draconis until Lauren had let slip in conversation that she had of late been graced with the patronage of “the Consul Kerrion.”

“
A
Kerrion
consul
,” Shebat had corrected her grammar. The pidgin speech of some dream dancers irritated her: their lack of understanding of the upper levels gave her the superiority from which to correct; her dislike of the other girl’s dislike for her made her enjoy it.

“The Consul Kerrion,”
Lauren repeated, perfectly plucked saffron brow arching high. “Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion. He has been three nights in a row to dream with me. He is, you know,” she said sweetly, “the new Draconis consul. Do you feel unwell?”

Shebat heard her titters as she rushed divested of dignity from the little common room where the dancers gathered to hear the nightly news and exchange their own.

She had sent an urgent message to her “brother” Spry from the street corner terminal just outside the basement warren.

Then she had fled to her room, locking herself within.

But Softa did not come in the morning, or the next day, or the next.

Harmony, the eternally mothering troupe mistress, had come to her door on the third day and demanded entrance. She had had no choice but to admit her. She was hirsute and fleshy, with short brown hair and skin even a mil-suit’s slick finish could not disguise: it was mottled and spotted with pink, brown and black; beneath the mottles, it was white as a dead fish’s belly.

“What’s wrong with you, child? This is no way to act. What would Spry say, if he knew you were locked in your room? Too good for us low-livers, are you?”

“Chaeron Kerrion was here!”

“So? He didn’t see you, and he won’t. I wouldn’t play Spry foul. And neither would Lauren, no matter how it looks. She loves ‘im. Got it?”

Shebat made a noise and spread her hands.

“Look, smart pussy: it took a lot of scrip to get you bought in here. We’ll take good care of you. By the same coin, I made a bargain with Spry to teach you however much you could learn: I keep my word.”

“He should never have told you. . . .”

“That’s
his
morals. Boy’s got class. That’s class: not the Kerrion kind; the other kind, which can’t be bought. You think he would have put the whole twelve of us in peril by stashing a Kerrion fugitive among us without letting us know, then you don’t know him. He’s too good at what he does to make a stupid mistake.”

Shebat picked at the threadbare gray blanket, not looking up.

“If he
had
given you over to us without telling true as to what the dangers were, and we’d gotten this far along—well, then I might just have had to get nasty. Not just with you, with him. So relax. You are here to learn the dance, and the dance we’ll teach, even if we have to add a little common savvy along the way. . . .”

The woman let out a rattling sigh, as if her gullet were filled with pebbles. “You don’t trust us, which is not a bad sign, though my vanity’s sore wounded by it. I’ve taken your money, girl, from your very own hand.”

“Lauren hates me.”

“Lauren does not hate you. I think she feels a little pity, along with her jealousy, which never killed anybody. She loves Softa, and she’ll never get him. She knows that. He’s taking you, not her, out of Kerrion space. . . .” The woman looked hopefully at Shebat, who only tossed her head.

“Lords, girl, give me the courtesy of your glance. I’d heard you were greener than sponge, but who could believe it . . . ? Look, I give you my word that Lauren won’t intrigue against you. If she does, she’ll have me to answer to. And you can shoot her down with that little piece of information should the occasion arise.”

“Thank you.”

“Thanks, is it? Thank me by working up a dream dance good enough to avoid being the laughingstock of all the dancers. They’re laying bets as to how long before I bounce you out of here. And since I
can’t
bounce you, but have to keep you until Spry collects you, do me a favor:
pretend
to be trying. Make me a dance that’ll shut up the gossips.”

“But I am trying. . . .”

“Make me a real dance, not that masturbatory drivel you threw in Lauren’s face.”

With a smile that threatened to fall away and reveal her chagrin, Shebat promised: “I will.”

And so she had come to make the dance, and it had been the one which had so horrified Lauren, the one which Harmony herself had demanded to view.

Shebat sighed and, taking her study-cards, threaded her way back to the narrow gray room with its cot and lavatory, and locked herself within.

All things were flowing together, making days fragment, the procession of them dissolving so that she could not tell sometimes what had happened from what had not.

Lauren had not told Chaeron about her being here, that was sure.

Softa had not come, though her summons had been urgent. That, also, was sure.

The dance was completed, all that remained was to wait for Harmony, whose reaction was most unsure, to send word of judgment rendered.

If the woman gainsaid her work, what then?

Something told her that the rejection of her dream dance would hurt more deeply than her rejection by Parma Kerrion, for the dance was of herself.

She took her last resort out of the back of her mind where she had secreted it, and examined its shining expanse. She could call Marada on his oath: he would not fail her; he would deliver her home.

“Home?” she laughed bitterly to the blank gray walls. “Bolen’s town? Bolen? Never.” Or, almost never. At least, not until the last moment, which was not yet. If Harmony killed her dream dance, quashing its chances of ever being performed, exposing it like the blue baby on Bolen’s ridge,
then
she would call Marada. Or kill herself. . . .

But Harmony interrupted Shebat’s despondent chronicling, coming herself to Shebat’s room, softly tapping on the door. “Honey, open up.”

Within Shebat, something froze. As one in a trance whose tongue will not speak, whose limbs move at another’s behest, she went and admitted Harmony.

The gross bulk of her fleshliness caused Shebat’s cot to squeal in protest. “Sit here, darlin’, right here. You and I have some serious things to discuss.”

She wanted to scream:
“Tell me. Did you like it? Please like it! Love it! It is my soul!”
She sat down awkwardly and twisted her hands in her lap, unable to utter a single word. Over the thumping of her heart she heard: “I am sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Something came up.”

It had been thirty-six hours since she had left the troupe leader’s jumbled cubicle. The woman, sprawled on her bed, massive breasts rising and falling, had dismissed her curtly, telling her to go to her room and wait.

She had waited, picking split-ends from her hair. Having danced the dream, she could do no more. All that day and night she waited, for the woman to describe the detail of her fate with her approval, or her disavowal. In the morning she had faced her pilotry examination, unprepared. Unrelieved. At least now she would know.

“It is about your dream-dance . . . it is not good. It is better than good. As they say, it might be eternal.”

But Shebat was fighting back tears, then laughter, then the tendency of her physical exhilaration to blot out all else.

“Then, you will allow it to be done?”

“I am going to feature it. I want you to teach it to some others, specially selected, of course. I think it would be well if as many as might be contrived see it. It serves us to promulgate such dreams, even be they hard on the dreamers.” And with a smile no less kind and welcoming for the grotesque countenance on which it blazed, the troupe mistress hugged Shebat to her breast, saying, “There, there, little dream dancer. Everything is going to be just fine.”

That evening late, while Shebat practiced dreaming, not dancing, standing in receipt of one of the senior dancer’s expertise that she might pick up pointers in the improvisational mode, something surpassing strange happened. Shebat thought it odd while it occurred, but was too immersed in the dream dance to deem it dangerous. The dream dancer who had had control wrested from him found it necessary to turn the whole of his experience toward the desperate task of keeping his own fear and trepidation from inundating them both and upstepping the runaway dream dance’s intensity even more. It was a measure of his skill that he was able to retake control of the dream dance, finally. It was a measure of his courage that Shebat had no hint of anything amiss until they were both returned to the sanctity of their private skulls and the discrete personalities of each settled safely and sanely therein.

The senior dream dancer cleared his throat. “Who or what is this
Marada
?” That was not what he wanted to say. “And . . . how did you do that?”

Shebat’s response was faint, rendered from a great distance: “You do not know?”

But the senior dancer did not know. What had happened was impossible. Muttering blackly, watching very carefully the path before him, he set off to find the troupe mistress, who should be told. Perhaps warned.

The
Marada
floated, tugging on his space anchor, discontent. Shebat had called him; he had answered, across space and sponge. His resonance to her personality had never been detuned; Spry had not had time to do it; the junior pilot who had scrambled aboard him in deep space, retching and panting, had not had the skill. So the
Marada
had faced a choice no cruiser had ever faced; that no cruiser had ever been meant to face: either he made room for this second interloper seeking to take command temporarily, or he went mad. When first he had been impelled by Shebat’s emergency sequence to obey Spry, the order had come through the mighty
Bucephalus
, who was older and wiser than the
Marada
. That, and the comforting quality of Spry’s pilotry had made disobedience unthinkable. Failure, even in the face of the impossible, was suddenly more odious than madness and its consequence: the outboard powers could wipe him clean as a magnetic sea. After that, it would be as if Shebat had never come aboard him and christened him the
Marada
, In effect, he would die.

As he would have died if Softa had sent no junior fumbling in through his locks to pilot him through sponge to this space-anchor off a poor platform at the end of space. As he would yet expire if he could not continue to deal with all the pieces of different personalities bonding with him.

In a normal situation, Softa Spry would have wiped the Shebat out of him. It would have been kinder by far than living with this pain. But Softa had not been in a position to board. His quiet, demanding mind had had no doubt that he, the
Marada
, was capable of surpassing both madness and travail. Somehow, the
Marada could not fail Spry
. That, he had told himself, was most likely the Shebat in him.

When the junior had reeled off the sequence that yet impelled him, Shebat’s sequence, all his tolerances red-lined. It had been most likely (ninety-nine-to-five-nines probability) himself that had saved him that time. Where this “himself” was located, he had yet to determine. It hovered somewhere in the nonempirical ambiance of his awareness. It may well have been a function similar to triangulation: having three discrete, not to say disparate points of reference,
Marada
had discovered his ability to compute a locus of personality. Therein resided this selfness, that no cruiser had ever whispered might be attained, that made
Marada
restless at his anchor.

No ship had ever been restless; no cruiser had ever been discontent with outboard orders; but then, no cruiser had ever been subject to a triple exposure.

When he had become aware of the Shebat intelligence calling him, he had had to answer. But equally had he to maintain his anchor an exact distance from the platform: he was compelled to maintain his presence at the coordinates he had been assigned.

So the
Marada
reached out as if to another cruiser. But Shebat was not another cruiser. Distance, for this reason, seemed to be a problem, though why he could not say. He thought it must have been the distance, for another intelligence had bled their circuit, intervening actively, with concerted purpose.

Almost, he had struck against this additional consciousness. But it was volitional; not amenable to being tuned out; and worst of all, a fourth glimpse into the outboards called
humanity
.

The
Marada
had been forced to withdraw. Now things were worse than they had been before. Not only was he discontent with being at ready and also at anchor, he was lonely. He wanted Shebat. He wanted to feel her softly wondering joy. He wanted to fly with her within, under her command.

Sometime later in the real-time the humans used, he sent a call to the
Bucephalus
, But the
Bucephalus
was busy doing Softa’s bidding. And also, the cruiser professed to remember none of the events that had gotten the
Marada
into these difficult straits, denied knowledge of having had any part in them.

And the
Marada
at length believed the
Bucephalus
, withdrawing to meditate on the
Bucephalus’s
selectively altered memory. And on the insensibility of any man to do such a thing to an honorable cruiser. That the man was Softa David, in whom he wished to find no flaw, made matters worse.

In the time since Jebediah’s death, his duplicity had become known to Parma, who had been at first incensed, then merely uncomfortable, then insensitive as more pressing concerns vied for his attention.

The matter of Shebat’s death (officially), disappearance (indubitably), or abduction (redoubtably), he would have liked to similarly put aside. But Chance or the Lords of Cosmic Jest were not amenable.

He had waited in painfully concealed anticipation for some sleazy fellow to gloatingly appear with exorbitant demands, which he must meet to secure Shebat’s return. No one had come to set a price.

Officially, he had put the matter aside, using it as best might be. Unofficially, he had had his secretary check Jebediah’s work records and found thereby a surfeit of proof that he had been harboring a traitor in his very bed, but no indication whatsoever as to whose minion Jebediah might have been. The only emotion he did not feel was surprise. After all, what was one more viper when he had spawned a clutch of them?

Shebat Kerrion haunted him, nonetheless. Her shade followed him into Labayan space, where he spent agonizing months wrangling amid Shechem’s botanical gardens with his despicable counterpart over how the two might carve up the Orrefors pie, which they were about to acquire through a devious offensive even Parma could barely stomach. When Marada blew in on an ill-wind from adjudicating some space-end dispute and heard what his father and his father-in-law had planned, he raised such a row that only Parma’s most practiced diplomacy eventually quieted the boy. And
that
only when liberally laced with end-game threats which the old consul general privately doubted he would have carried out, should Marada have called his bluff. But the youth backed away from him with sick eyes in an expressionless face, saying: “So be it. But I am quit of the lot of you.” Matching actions to words, Marada took ship and was gone back to space-end.

Unwilling to chase after the
Hassid
, unable to justify his actions without revealing overmuch to Marada, whom Parma had long known was not cut from the sturdy pragmatic cloth that befitted a scion of his, Parma let the matter lie. Persephone, Marada’s mother, had been of that same Utopian stripe. The boy would see, eventually, that what Parma was doing he did for Marada, most of all.

Three months and six days from the morning he had strapped himself into the
Bucephalus’s
, couch without an obvious qualm and said to Softa Spry: “Shall we get underway?” he ordered the
Bucephalus
home.

What he would find there, he hesitated to conjecture. Since speculation would not be quieted, he assured himself that Chaeron could not have done any permanent harm in Draconis, given the limitation of his consular powers and the shortness of Parma’s absence.

But he was not fooling himself: making Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion consul of an asteroid catching station would have been risky; making him consul of Draconis was an extraordinary measure, fit to extraordinary times; its results, also, were bound to be extraordinary.

The whole venture, if the truth be known, was
too
extraordinary to suit Parma. Since the Jesters farted in his face, he had no choice but to light a match. . . .

Parma Kerrion sighed in his acceleration couch, breathing out all his disquiet on the rush of air. He was too old and too tired for the game he was playing: he had found need to take to his bed after the altercation with Marada; his health was so obviously suffering that he had found his only acceptable alternative under Selim Labaya’s scrutiny was to pretend that he was pretending. But he was not pretending, not at all. The more he felt the need of restful, harmonious relations with the universe, the more he was served up duplicity, machination, troublous scheme. His vitality thusly sapped, he had stumbled thrice in his stay on Shechem. He had dredged up the wit to disguise his vulnerability, but barely. Barely, each time at the last possible moment. Or so he hoped.

The most disastrous stumble in his own estimation was the only one that went unrecognized by Selim Labaya. That had been in the matter of his acerbic surmounting of Marada. And it had been failure disguised as triumph by the whim of Chance, not any design of his own: Selim Labaya’s heartfelt desire to see his son-in-law taken down a peg had made Parma’s distress invisible, blotted out by the brighter glow of Labaya’s satisfaction. The man had actually congratulated him with candor, praising his prowess with sincerity akin to awe.

In that moment, the two old enemies had looked into each other’s eyes almost as friends. But the moment had passed, the candor was retired to its dusty shelf. Parma did not really blame Labaya for being what he was. The two old tigers with their torn ears and hide scarred to leather could not very well meet at their mutual boundary and make a pact to become vegetarians: they would sicken and die. And the younger, slick-pelted cubs were too canny to take either of them on, content to wait in the bushes, gnawing scavenged bones. The Jesters had made of Labaya and Kerrion allies through the institution of marriage no less than through the mechanism of selfishness: should one of them truly surmount the other, the victor would find himself in possession of meat without salt, of life without a worthy adversary against which to strive. So they had turned away from warring upon each other over Labaya’s daughter’s death. Instead, they joined forces to war on the Orrefors consulate, circumstantially responsible by circuitous reasoning, but known by Labaya and Kerrion alike to be but a hapless sheep wandered into tiger country.

It was an uneasy wedding, that of Parma and Selim no less than that of Marada and Selim’s physically imperfect daughter, Madel. The imperfection, it was whispered, was a result of the time Selim Labaya had spent as a pilot in the old days. . . . Parma sighed deeply a second time, causing the pilot to turn his head, inquiring as to his passenger’s health.

“Better than yours, Softa,” he snapped. The second stumble Parma had chalked up on Shechem had been caused, in part, by David Spry. Damn the arrogance of guild pilots! Put two together, and anything could happen. What had happened, which Parma had not been able to foresee, was that Marada and Spry hissed and spat and growled at each other like two positive poles forced together. Hot and loud were their disagreements; much that should not have been said on Shechem reached Labayan ears.

Parma had taken Marada aside as soon as was possible, demanding an end to hostilities, saying: “But you recommended him to me!”

“So I did. He is the best there is at what he does. That does not mean I approve of him personally. I certainly cannot condone his ethical position as regards the guild, or the Consortium. He is a disruptive dreamer; worse, he is a fool.”

Marada accusing someone else of those flaws with which he was so amply supplied left Parma momentarily speechless. When he recovered, he asked Marada, quite crossly, if his son were advising him to let the pilot go.

“No, not at all. Our quarrels are personal. You could not get a better man. I do not believe there is one. Neither does the guild; he is top-rated.”

“Damn arbiter!” Parma had snarled. “Then, if you do not want to withdraw your endorsement of Spry, try and help me refuse the temptation to have both of you incarcerated for screaming Kerrion intelligence through Shechem halls. In the old days, I would have had both your throats cut! Shebat’s name should never have come up!”

“I would not be so proud of ‘the old days,’ were I you. And as for Shebat, I had to determine what Spry’s part was in it, if any. And who else might have been involved. You may casually decree her dead and go on to new business, but I cannot.”

“Why not?” Parma found himself almost pleading. All he got from Marada was a pitying look. That angered him. He spat: “And what did you determine. Oh Arbiter? Did you stop to think that while Shebat headed that execrable ship she named in your honor toward no-one-knows-where, Spry was aboard the
Bucephalus
, breathing vacuum?”

“Perhaps he was, perhaps he was not. As to what I learned, it is not conclusive. But if you did not see every Labayan ear in the whole of Shechem prick at her name’s speaking, then you ought to retire. And if you cannot make something of
that
, considering it on your own, then you should have retired long ago.”

“Insolence has always been one of your strong points. As for your other areas of expertise, they escape me at the moment. Idiots, everywhere! Are you not aware, my son, that you are my son? That the strongest motivation in your marriage—” Marada snorted loudly. Parma, ignoring this, continued: “—was the union of Labayan and Kerrion space.”

“Real-time space will turn as green as sponge before—”

“Quiet, creature of lamentable relatedness due to an ill-thought moment of passion.
Quiet!
That is better. This may surprise you, but I am going to have to trust your ability to absorb the shock. You still stand a very good chance of becoming the next Kerrion consular head.”

“For six or seven minutes, until Ashera personally claws out my eyes. Thank you, father, but no. I would rather spend the rest of my life at space-end, adjudicating smugglers and brigands.”

“Life does not always serve up what we order.”

“It would bring the house of Kerrion to an end. Do you want some twisted grotesque like Madel as your grandchild? Or have you forgotten: I am a pilot.”

“Or have you forgotten: I am Parma Alexander Kerrion. You are Marada Seleucus Kerrion. You are next in line.”

“Do not give me that effete offal. Give your acknowledgment to Chaeron, he lives and breathes for that day. Or to Julian, if you must spite Ashera. He is honest, fair-minded; he would not last a week. But give it to him, and make Ashera slay her own flesh to get what she wants. But not me, or I will dismantle all you have built. That is a promise, and one I will keep better than yours to me to look after Shebat. She was my ward, you know well. Do I bear any less responsibility for turning her over to your mercies, when they made an end to her, than I would if I had broken the letter of my oath? Protection, you call that!” Marada Kerrion’s voice was husky, unsteady with emotion. He paced as he spoke, his face turned away.

“Marada, I am sorry about the girl. She was like a daughter to me.”

“Most exactly: spare me your parental protection, lest it pluck me from life.”

And he had stormed out. It had been but a harbinger of the gale that blew shortly thereafter, when Marada all but accused Selim Labaya of what was an unthinkable crime, causing Parma to shout him down, at which time Marada threw caution to the wind and raked the Labaya/Kerrion alliance over the coals for the manner in which they were even now forcing Orrefors space to come crawling, poke-ribbed, penurious, and desperate, begging to be bought out for a pittance.

And there had been the final stumble, after two days abed, when Selim Labaya had solicitously attended him on a walk through Shechem’s gardens, whose audacious expanse was full of flying things that shit whitely on a man’s shoulder or dived whirring at a man’s face or crawled delicately over a man’s hands when he sat on a bench.

Old Selim’s jowls had flapped almost audibly when a feathered dive-bomber landed a wet strike in Parma’s hair.

This, and the unctuous false-fellowship which proclaimed that he, Labaya, had not been fooled by Parma’s feigned illness, irritated Parma Kerrion. He had been ill, short of breath and weak; he was possibly still ill, to have succumbed so unknowingly to his own emotion.

He had voiced Marada’s supposition that there had been a Labayan hand in the disappearance of his adopted heir. And Labaya had laughed, saying:

“The decoy? Surely you would not have set her up if you did not expect her to be shot down. Having trouble with your constituency, I must assume? Well, if my sources are correct, which I might boast they are ninety-nine percent of the time, you will have no trouble retaining your elected status. But should you actually be planning anything more precipitous than a puppet vote of confidence, inform me. I can modestly say I could swing you half a hundred consular votes.”

Such a thing would never have come under discussion if Parma had been feeling himself. The keen glint in Labaya’s ice eyes said how interested he was in Parma’s reaction.

To close the matter, Parma said softly: “I have long been wanting to ask you how you came to bear a handicapped child in this day and age.” The other consul general reacted as if he had been slapped. Parma, feigning not to notice, continued:

“The matter has been much in my mind, both because of the rumors of the similarity between how you spent your early years and how Marada is spending his; and also because, like any father, I am concerned that my grandchild be hale and straight of limb.” Not pausing even for breath, though the other man sat heavily and with obvious effort sought to repair his shattered aplomb, Parma warned, “Should any child of their union be so damaged as to be unfit to inherit, then that child
will not inherit
so much as one dull coin. So, lest we risk having a stranger’s profile on our money, we had better stop being so polite and start being more practical.”

It had been a terribly risky card to play. Labaya’s intelligence might have secured him the new order of Kerrion succession; it might not. Making a tacit admission that Marada was once more in line to inherit a controlling interest of Kerrion stock put Parma’s own person in jeopardy, however the elections came out. Whether or not Parma won the Consortium elective office his family had monopolized for more than two centuries, Parma’s inheritor would still be able to control the general policy of Kerrion space. But it would be a great loss of face to cede the seat. Parma hoped it was great enough to quiet whatever stirrings of impatience Labaya might feel toward assuring that his daughter’s husband (no matter how despised) would wield the Kerrion power.

Although Parma might face a fight to win the election, any younger member of his family would face a defeat. So he played with Labaya, as he did everlastingly with Ashera, the dire game of personal power. Either one could probably succeed in having him assassinated: the only protection was to convince them that they dare not try, or be disadvantaged themselves by his death.

All had seemed to have worked out well enough, until Spry had overstepped his authority and opened his mouth to Selim Labaya at slipside.

Parma had had no inkling that such a thing might happen, had only Marada’s obscure assessment of the man’s character to prepare him.

As farewells came around to him, who had been a guest so long in Labaya’s zoological paradise, the pilot said flatly: “I cannot say I have enjoyed being constantly pried for information and plied with drink and approached with increasingly higher offers to become an agent in your pay. My guild-oath precludes such things, would preclude them even if my self-respect did not. And as for Shebat Kerrion, if I had her, the last thing I would do is sell her to you.”

And with that, amid Selim Labaya’s increasingly heated demands for an apology, the pilot strode down the ramp and ducked into the ship, leaving Parma to make what amends he might.

Parma Kerrion cleared his throat, twice, softly, absently studying the crown of Spry’s ash-blond head, just visible around the acceleration headrest.

“Yes, sir?” said the pilot. “I’m done with the tricky stuff. Talk all you want. The
Bucephalus
has things well in hand.” Spry leaned back from his controls, rubbing his eyes with his fingertips.

“You are sure that you no longer need silence in which to work—that nothing will be disturbed should we have a chat? I would hate to be eternally lost in this pea-soup because I distracted you.”

“Why, no, sir. All’s well.”

“Then,
how dare you speak so to a consul general?
What misguided sense of propriety so impelled you to risk you-know-not-what? Did you think you were protecting me? If so, you were wrong. If you ever have another landfall, which you may not, and should speak out of turn even
once more
, I will report you to your guild and have your license pulled. You will never pilot again!”