Dream Dancer (14 page)

“No.” His smile sat askew on his lips.

“I can dance you a dream such as has never been thought of by your kind.” Her fingers came together, templed in midair. The greenish forest light turned azure, beryl, ultramarine where her fingertips touched. The light ran down her hands and collected between her palms. He distinctly smelled ozone. Her eyes took up the sapphire glow and seemed to flash. “But you must ask me, Chaeron. Or join me.”

“I would rather not, just yet.” He pushed up on his elbows. His arch, Achaemenid profile seemed to crawl with the blue glow. Chiseled lips dropped all pretense; he frowned. His wide brow creased as the blue trails rode his flesh toward his toes. Then he turned to her and said: “How much of this will I remember?”

She looked at him from across the blue radiance that splashed her cheekbones and the gentle fall of her nose. Then she inclined her templed hands with their Saint Elmo’s fire toward him. “So, I am not unsuccessful? You remember what you will; I will not attempt to shade what you have bought. But what I give freely . . . do you want it?”

“Not without knowing more.” He was sitting up, his arms out before him, turning them, watching the blue fire climb to whichever surface was uppermost. It had begun to fill the copse, chasing the dappled green light away. His skin where it was glowing felt cool and windwashed.

“I could bind you to me with those,” she inclined her head toward the spills of light beginning to form coils. “But I will not.” She untempled her hands and the blue luminescence hovered momentarily, oscillating in midair. Then it burst, shooting apart like a clever firework.

All the blue light was gone from the grove. Only a hint of it remained in her eyes.

“I will not. But neither will I refrain from showing you what you should see.”

She snapped a finger at him; a jagged thunderbolt spat out to lick his brow. The ground under him heaved, twisted; then fell away. He was walking across the thunderheads, striding in short leaps as if he trod the uppermost rocks of a jetty half-submerged by some rising tide. “This is very nice,” he said when he felt her body grazing his right side. Far below, flickering, wavering as if seen through deep water, the planetary vista unfurled.

“Then let us look closer,” he heard. He knew that if he turned his head toward her, her hungry eyes would swallow him; he tried to look only down on the scarred hills bestarred with village and farm. But she was below him.

And then it was he who was undermost, in a dark place of straw and fear and bitter servitude: “Bolen,” a whisper in his brain and on his/her lips confided. The dreadful weight ground him/her into the needle sharp straw. The cracked, lust-bubbled lips laughed chillingly: “Want your body back?” The ground shivered in a convulsive sob burred with pain.

He/she scrubbed a rude planked floor on bruised knees, hot-necked and so fearful that the ache in his/her back was a privilege. The eyes of five ribald, drunken patrons raped his/her buttocks as he/she labored near the hearth. He/she listened numbly; escape was impossible; there was no place to run. Working toward the shadows doggedly, their shelter had not yet been reached when his/her ears heard odious Bolen’s wheeze, atremble with greed, strike a bargain for her use. “No!”

“If you insist,” he heard, on his left. They stood together in deep shadow watching a child weep beneath a tumbled statue overgrown with weeds. The joy of having his own body back fended off the hopeless, tattered wails, but only temporarily. As he felt himself being drawn into the weeping child, he turned to her beside him, taking hold of her arm, squeezing with all his strength. “No,” he said again.

“Something else, perhaps?” She inclined her head infinitesimally. They ran down a city street, dodging a groping blindman; a scatter of tumbled brick; a band of brigands chasing a shrieking quarry into an alley. “Back. Hide!” she whispered urgently. They flattened themselves against rough brick: “Clop-clop, clop-clop,” he heard, his cheek pressed to the abrasive wall, peering round the corner. As the staccato clatter neared, silence fell: even the girl in the alley stopped sobbing. A cloaked enchanter on a magnificent, blue-eyed black horse ambled past unconcernedly. He dared not breathe, he shifted from the strain of trying to keep perfectly still. A pebble shot out from under his foot to strike a piece of metal. The metal rang, hardly more than a click . . . but the enchanter pulled the highly schooled, froth-mouthed black up on its haunches. It wheeled in place. Facing them, its metal shod hooves striking sparks as it pawed the pavement, it seemed to listen. “Seek,” said the enchanter, leaning forward to stroke its neck. Dancing, snorting, its chin tucked in so that froth dribbled on its mighty chest, the blue-eyed steed headed directly toward them. “Run,” urged Shebat. Even as he ran, he knew it a hopeless defiance. . . .

The running never stopped; only the pursuers changed. They were running through the low levels of Draconis, so deep that their steps stretched unnaturally in the lessened gravity. In the distance, Kerrion minions chased them; he fled on slippery feet, treacherous inside unyielding boots, slithering in the goo from broken blisters and oozing blood and perspiration running down his legs that had collected in the leather’s confines. He had lost his identification; no, it was a forgery; he had thrown all proof away. Somehow, he knew they were not going to believe him when he told them who he really was. . . .

He found himself sitting upright, drawing hasty gulps of breath. His legs tingled from being crossed under him so long; in the crease behind his knees and down the trough of his backbone and in the hollows under his arms he could feel the sweat streaming. He shuddered, and put his hands to his head. Searching fingers met the fillet about his temples. He drew it off. Only then did he think to open his eyes.

“Your turn,” said Shebat softly, lifting the circlet from her brow. The hair fell down around her face and neck.

“How did you do that?” he said hoarsely, his glance indicating the loosed braids, but his meaning much wider.

She held the circlet out before her, peering into it. “How did you hear my sea song before the fillet ever touched your forehead?” Under the spangled black netting, her chest rose and fell. “I think you can answer your own questions, upon reflection.” He noted that her hands were none too steady, that her face was pinched. She reached out and placed her fillet carefully in its groove. As he leaned over to do the same, she suggested: “The dream-box might have an answer for you. Look inside.”

He met her calm countenance, canted slightly, his hand hovering over the dream-amplifier. He knew what he would see in the box: wireless circuitry, microminiaturized squiggles. He fitted the circlet in its housing, then took the box into his lap. In the dim light, he fumbled with catches. Then he slid them free, lifting the lid.

Inside, the meter-long box was empty, but for mountings whose guts had been torn away.

“As you see, what you have had from me is not quite the standard dream dance. I would dispense with the circlets, but it makes the clients nervous.”

Chaeron found it difficult to reclose the box without spilling the circlets out on the floor. Holding them in place carefully with one hand, he felt around further in the box with his other. Then he just stared unseeingly at his hand in the empty box for a time, waiting for it to stop twitching and his mil to disperse the new flood of moisture popping out on his skin. At length, he took a long slow breath and exhaled it, pushing all disquiet out through his nose. Then he closed the box, fixed its catches and put it by in a single movement.

Leaning back against the dusky upholstery, he stretched one arm along its top. “If I were you, I would not show that to anyone else.” He sighed. “As you said, it is my turn. I am not an intelligencer; if I were, I would have to arrest you.”

She laughed throatily. “Perhaps I should arrest you, for coming here when dream dancing is illegal, and you a Kerrion consul, very bastion of the law.”

“Shebat, this is no time for levity. You have killed a man, your own bodyguard, who meant you no harm.”

“How do you know that?” she asked stonily, her posture rigid.

“I am no stranger to intrigue, nor to the data pool. I—”

“I meant, how do you know they meant me no harm?” Her chin was high and her lower lip outthrust slightly. She reached behind her, and the eternity-walls brightened, faded out to be replaced by featureless gray.

Chaeron sighed deeply, tsk’d once and gave a little shrug. “Shebat, let us put things in perspective. Circumstances have no bearing on what has occurred: you are living here illegally with falsified papers; Kerrion or no, your full citizenship has lapsed. Whatever intrigue you are involved in has neither protected you from discovery nor from any penalties you have accrued. What were you thinking of? How can you repay my father so sordidly for his kindness?”

She laughed bitterly, drawing up her knees. “Kerrion kindness: the results of it are all around you. How did you find me? Lauren? Did she tell you?”

“Lauren? No, but she danced me Aba Cronin’s dream dance, about which so much is being said. And I knew then that you were she . . . but I would have found you; I have spent a lot of time looking. You are too valuable to our enemies to be declared dead out of hand, with no proof of it, as Parma did. I asked around; I packet-searched every data source on Draconis; I traded my virtue for information in the pilot’s guild mess hall; I defeated my own father’s security and took a look at his private data. When all that was done, I knew where to look for you: it was just a matter of time. You must have known that. And Spry must have known it, too. Aba Cronin; Sheba Spry; Shebat Kerrion . . . why would you turn against us?”

“You are wrong, Chaeron, about everything but a few facts, and those you weigh mistakenly. Parma’s use of me was done. He cast me aside, sent my own bodyguards to make an end to me. They were even dressed like low-livers. . . .”

“None of that explains the venom of Aba Cronin’s dream dance; why wish destruction upon us? What would a revolution by these scum insure except their deaths by reason of their total inadequacy to survive on their own? And if Spry told you Parma wished you harm, you were a fool to believe him. Spry sold his aid to Jebediah, not you. Jebediah paid Spry to place you with dream dancers. Then Spry used
Bucephalus
to pay Jebediah in more permanent coin. Jebediah was consorting with Labayan agents. He was last seen boarding the
Bucephalus
with a case he had earlier received from them; that case was never recovered. And the
Bucephalus
cannot, conveniently, remember—”

“I do not believe you. Not Softa,” she cried. When he only regarded her pityingly, humor tucking in the corners of his mouth, she gulped and began again in a subdued tone: “I am not sure I understand . . . more permanent coin . . . ? Is Jebediah all right?”

“He is dead. The Labayan agents are, too, but there are others. . . . Shebat, this is no place to discuss sensitive matters. Get your things and come with me.” He rose up and stood over her, holding out his hand.

“No,” she demurred, but he waited, hand outstretched, and at length she was compelled to take it.

A soft sob escaped her as she gained her feet. “This is your dream for me?”

“One I have been a long while composing,” he assured her.

“What is going to happen now?” In the brighter light, the frayed edges and threadbare plush of the upholstery, the junctures of buckling walls and flooring were not masked by the hologram sheets laminated over them. He brushed a curl from her forehead. With a finger under her chin, he lifted her face so that the stormy eyes looked into his.

“I will do the best I can for you. If you come willingly and repentently, and do as you are told, I think I can turn things aright. If not . . . I cannot read the future. But I will protect you from harm; whether you will do the same for yourself remains in question. Do you understand, Shebat?”

“No. If I come with you, ‘willingly and repentently,’ I will be hurting Softa. That I will not do; he is the only one who has lifted a finger to help me—”

“Softa? Oh, Spry, you mean.
He
is the only one who has helped you? You have a strange concept of help then, and of reciprocity.”

“I will speak no word against him,” she warned, and from the tilt of her head he knew that it was so.

“You will not have to,” he said dryly. “His deeds speak for him. It is odd that what Marada did for you, what Parma did, even What these fantasy-mongers you aspire to emulate did, is not worthy of mention; but that the man who managed a fine profit out of abandoning you in seventh-level squalor warrants your protection.”

“I do not believe you. He sent me—”
She pressed her lips together, suspicion flaring nakedly in her gaze. “I should have warded you off. Now it is too late. I will get my things.”

“Allow me to accompany you,” he said easily, helping her up the steps in a gentlemanly fashion.

“Are you taking me to Parma?”

“Not immediately. He is yet in transit.”

“May I see Spry?”

“
He
is yet in transit.”

Shebat stopped still. “Are you saying that he is free?”

“For the moment.”

Her shoulders slumped, her chin fell. “I see. No one knows of all this but you?” she posited.

“So far,” he agreed complacently, looking down at her with just a touch of a Jester’s smile.

“And what will be known, or not known is . . . ?”

“Dependent on a number of considerations, better spoken of elsewhere. Aba Cronin’s dream dance must not be danced anymore: it is too close to elections. She herself will disappear with these others who have seen you. . . .” He touched the tip of her nose. She jerked her head aside. “Now, I have troubled you. . . . I did not mean to.”

“Did you not? A number have learned that dance.” Shebat thought of Lauren, of Harmony, of the senior dancer. “You expect me to walk out of here without warning them?”

“It would be prudent. Consider it a choice: you or them.” He shoved her shoulder toward the rear door showing in the gray wall. “Let us go. Things are already set in motion.”

“I could make you forget.” She shook off his hand.

“Could you make the intelligencers who will raid and destroy this asp’s burrow at 0600 hours forget?”

“My box! The circlets . . .” she wailed, hand trailing back toward where they lay.

“You do not need them.”

Like one newly wakened from a nightmare, she stumbled sightlessly toward the rear of the cubicle.

“Were you so sure of me, to order such a thing?”

Then Chaeron laughed, sharply, briefly. “I was sure to solve the problem of you, one way or the other.”

When she reached the door, her fingers were too numb to slide the bolt; the consul reached around and did it for her. “Do not look so sad. It just may be that I can instill in you a taste for life stronger than your taste for dreaming. Life, unlike dreaming, bears no repetition. . . .” The door slid aside under his hand.

“After you,” he suggested. Shebat ducked under his arm into a narrow passage, dimly lit with one naked bulb. “I took the liberty of having all three of your intelligence codes suspended, so do not waste energy trying to warn your dancer friends. I will be very displeased if there are no fish in my net. . . .”

Shebat, in the dim passage, made a face Chaeron, behind her, could not see. In the dancers’ cubicle, all was surveillance-proof. In the hall, she should have been able to raise the house computer. Even so close, she could not. She took a silent turn, and another, and pushed on a graffiti’d wall that proclaimed:
Ban Infrared Slavery!