"This is what we are made for. It is whatyou are made for."

Denice's heart pounded in her chest. "I don't want to be like you."

Sedon seemed mildly amused. "But Denice, you have no choice. Youare like me. When those around you fail, do you feel their pain?"

The muscles in her jaw twitched. "When I Touch them."

Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon had not known, until that very instant, whether he could Speak to a woman; whether he could empathize deeply enough to even make the attempt. He knew now that he could, knew the Speaking he wished to attempt.

He used her father's voice:"Remember that you're tougher than they are. Better."

Time crawled to a stop around Denice Castanaveras. Her hands, resting loosely on her knees, went numb. She was abruptlythere, nine years old again, in the moment that it had happened, with her father and her brother, Carl's thoughts touching her own, burning into her with the depth of his rage.Kill the f.u.c.kers.

And they had; she remembered it clearly now, for the first time in fourteen years. Coming out of the elevator, one Peaceforcer; and then the one sitting motionless in the corner of the hotel lobby; later a man who had tried to stop them, neither she nor David ever knew what for, out on the street. And then-a tumble of confusion, the huge press of the crowd taking to the streets in the following day's riots. A shattered fragment of something in an alley, a dozen teenagers kicking her half to death; abruptly David was gone. Someone fed her; then a long blur of nothingness. The crushing weight of an adult body pressing down onto hers, the ripping pain as he pushed himself into her. And again, perhaps him, perhaps someone else; she remembered a different shape. A bright sharp moment in the midst of the confusion; afterward, it was still and quiet throughout the abandoned building the man shared with his wife and brother and two children of his own. The maser was so old she had been afraid it was going to short out in her hand. It hadn't. Once at close range into the back of the big man's head; his wife had awakened in time to get the next shot in the throat.

Out of the building, moving quietly, the rain from Weather Control's storm still falling outside; only three or four days had pa.s.sed since the destruction of everything she had ever known.

The Ministry of Population Control workers, most of them imported from other states to help with the catastrophe, found her sometime in the following week, curled up in the doorway of an abandoned building, clutching the maser like a doll while she slept. She awoke in a barracks, with dozens of other children, some younger than her, some older- Awoke.

Sedon watched her with something that might have been compa.s.sion.

Vibrating with the fury; her hands shook. Denice had never meant anything more in her life. "If you ever try that again I'll kill you." She saw the flicker of rage pa.s.s across his features, and whispered to him, like a lover, "Would you like to try matching rages with me? I was taught by amaster."

Sedon looked away from her, down to the floor.

For the very briefest moment a smile touched his lips.

He looked back up again. "If you were a boy, I think I would love you, Denice Castanaveras. I was once much like you. Listen now. You are responsible, child, to yourself. Notthem, not the ones who hurt you, or the ones who helped you; you have no obligation to them you do not choose to a.s.sume. There is nocontract between you. Today our life is endangered-" He paused. "Our lives. Our ability to determine our lives is endangered." The rage flared up again within Sedon, and this time he let it show.

"The petty squabbles your people have indulged in, the primitive desire for power over those around you, when the wolf sits crouched outside your door, snarling and hungry; at times I think you deserve this fate." He gentled his voice, said softly, "But to see the descendants of the Flame People, no matter how changed, beneath the rule of the sleem is not in me. If I admit no responsibility for those less powerful than myself, also I do not l.u.s.t for power over them. When I was released from thetulu adrhe, the slowtime bubble, I sought only to survive. And survival is not difficult in this time, for one with my skills; I might have found some quiet, out-of-the-way spot, and survived nicely in any of a dozen fashions." He sat silent, brooding. "And one day I should have looked up into the night sky, and seen sleem war-ships dwarfing Halfway. This is why I have done what I have done. On all this planet, there are only two people competent to deal with the threat of the sleem." Sedon smiled abruptly, a dazzling smile that lit his face like neon laser. "And I am going to kill the other one as slowly as I can."

"Dvan."

"Yes. The world is full of surprises. Do you know, I had not dreamed any of the Flame People save myself might have survived. Only a few months ago my intelligence told me I was being researched by a newsdancer named William Devane. They showed me a holo of him; astonishing. He had not changed to speak of, not in all that time. I have had some time to think of what I would do when I had him at last.

And finally I hit upon the same tool your brother has employed to keep himself happy: the juice."

Denice said slowly, "David is on electric ecstasy?" Yes.

"And you wired Dvan's pleasure center?"

"Well," said Sedon mildly, "the human brain also has a pain center."

Denice looked away from him. "When can I see my brother?"

"You cannot. I have not drugged him as I drugged you, and though he makes a fine tool-the juice makes him pliable, and I have Spoken to him at length-he nonetheless frightens me."

"Can I see my teacher?"

"The j.a.panese man?"

"Yes."

"You cannot. I see some corrupted fragment of the Dance in him, and he frightens me."

"You're a very frightened man."

"'I have lived a very long time. I have learned to be."

Denice stood, clasped her hands together and bowed once in a very real gesture of respect. She straightened without haste and said, "I will never dance for you."

- 22 -.

On July 10, 2076, on a bright clear day that made him want to go to the beach and surf a bit, Lan Sierran stood before the ramps leading up into the carriers that would evacuate the rebel forces south; some to make a stand at Riverside, the balance going all the way south to San Diego.

They stood on a high hill in East Los Angeles, just south of modern downtown, overlooking the path of what had once been the 10 Freeway. Seventy years ago it had been widened, and then widened again; and then hovercars had been invented and traffic started getting stacked higher instead of wider. It had been at least fifty years since anybody had bothered to maintain the asphalt; gra.s.s grew up all through it, and stretches where the black of ancient asphalt ran clean and smooth were few and far between.

A monorail ran down the center of the huge empty s.p.a.ce; the rebels had blown the rail down in so many places the PKF would not even bother attempting to repair it. They would come in Armored AeroSmiths, in jet aircraft and semiballistics.

Rebels had b.o.o.by-trapped the approach to the extent possible. It did not seem to be slowing the PKF much. The rebels were short on mines; mostly they had settled for stringing fineline. Small lengths of fineline, at ankle level, to take an approaching soldier's foot off; large lengths, at waist level, were intended to slice through tanks and low-flying hovercraft.

The ankle-high traps were working well. The others the PKF were knocking out with the simple expedient of waving lasers in front of them as they advanced.

Standing for cover beneath the ramps leading up into the carrier, Lan listened to the reports coming in.

"Two hundred seventy-two dead, one hundred eighteen wounded. Five hundred and twelve aboard the carriers, all accounted for." Lan switched off his earphone, leaned out from under the ramp, and said, "We're ready to lift."

Callia sat on the carrier's ramp, imaging binoculars up to her eyes, for all the world as though she were in the front row at a play put on for her private viewing, watching the Peaceforcers Elite advance like a knife through b.u.t.ter, slicing through the scattered opposition of the uncoordinated guerillas the rebels were leaving behind them. Twice while she watched, missiles shot forward toward them; twice lasers reached out from behind her, knocked them down. The Peaceforcer troops were a good three klicks distant; but moving fast. The front line was Elite, covering territory with the unreal speed that only Elite could make. Watching Elite troops approach, as she was now, had become a regular feature of Callia Sierran's nightmares.

She lowered the binoculars slowly. "We shouldn't be doing this."

Lan said quietly, "The pilot says if we don't evac now, we're going to lose our cover."

"We should stay and fight."

"If we do we'll die." Callia turned to look at Lan, and Lan continued, "They have Los Angeles, Callia.

Let's go." He offered her his hand; she took it, and he pulled her to her feet.

She walked up the ramp without hurry, without looking back.

The voice Spoke to him in darkness."You stole everything from me."

The pain crescendoed, worked its way up to a brilliant white peak of agony, held there for a long moment. Dvan screamed at the top of his lungs.

It was a quiet sound. His vocal cords were nearly gone.

"You stole my childhood."

The pain faded. Nothing. Complete lack of sensation.

Shield were made to kill themselves rather than endure the Speaking of a Dancer. But Dvan could not get his hands free.

The itching started at the base of his scalp, crept downward.

"You killed Indo. You killed my lovers. You killed my comrades."

The restraints at his wrists and ankles were alive with red ants, chewing away at his skin. Blisters bubbled up on his chest.

"You stole my past. You chased me into the tulu adrhe and stole my future."

His eyes burst and his tongue swelled until he could not breathe. Rivulets of acid ran down the length of his body; his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es were ripped from him, the edge of a dull ax crashed down on his shins, and a spike of barbed metal thrust upward through his a.n.u.s, into his intestines, and turned.

"Fifty thousand years, Dvan. You denied me my chance to fight the sleem, to build a civilization as I wished, to find any measure of happiness in the world."

The agony blended and came" together, into the familiar sharp white spike of perfect pain.

Dvan screamed at the top of his lungs-and the pain ceased.

Dvan shuddered and hung limply in his restraints.

He had the lights dimmed almost to black, and sat in a chair in the corner of the cell; if, impossible as it seemed, the Shield managed to break his bonds, Sedon wanted time to do something about it, and room to move. He would have another advantage; he'd had Dvan's eyelids taped open, and bright lights shone into his eyes, much as he'd done to Tommy Boone, in a time that seemed already half a lifetime distant.

Dvan might not be permanently blind, but there was no chance he could see in this light.

Sedon had not been offended at being called a very frightened man; it was true enough. And at the top of the list of those things that frightened him was Dvan.

Dvan's voice was rough-from the screaming, Sedon supposed. He spoke in shiata: "You again."

Sedon chuckled quietly. "Who else?"

"What now?"

"I need advice, Dvan."

Dvan said in English, "Go shove your head up a constipated camel's a.s.s."

Sedon laughed. "After fifty millennia you think you are still Dvan of the Gi'Tbad? Still one of the Flame People? One of our people would not evenunderstand why that comment was insulting, much less take pleasure in the delivery of it. You've changed, my friend. You're far more one ofthem than one of the Flame People." He paused, and when Dvan said nothing, continued. "But then, perhaps you always were. Here you are at last among a people who consider your s.e.xual proclivities, and your emotional deficiencies, normal. I wonder how much of that wasyour influence on them, down the course of the millennia. Millennia upon millennia of interbreeding, of children whom you raised to share your prejudices and your failings; it must have marked them."

Sedon heard the sound of breathing from Dvan. No more.

He said conversationally, "I interrogated the girl. Denice." The pattern of breathing changed, quickened, and Sedon smiled, there in the darkness. "When I saw her the first time, I wondered if she were perhaps a man, for I saw some piece of the Dance in her. But then we took you and your companions from orbit, and there in the j.a.panese man was a similar thing, some broken fragment of the Dance. Denice's teacher.

I'm going to kill him soon, and you"-No response-"and likely her as well."

The man's breathing quickened again.

Sedon said softly, "I can make a Dancer of her, Dvan."

"Go suck a diseased donkey."

"There is only one problem; she does not seem to trust me. You've lived with these people, Dvan. You were more like them, even before you lived among them, than I could ever be; and I need your advice."

"I know somevery good insults, if you'd like to hear them."

"If I can't use her, I'll kill her, Dvan."

"I've seen more people die," the huge man said, "than you could dream of. Kill her and be done."

Sedon sighed, and rose to leave.

Hanging there on the wall, Dvan said in a ragged voice, "You used to be better at this."

Sedon turned back. "What?"

It must have been an immense effort; Dvan lifted his head from where it hung down upon his chest, stared blindly through the gloom at Sedon. "You thinkI've changed?" He snorted. "I've studied you since you got out of that d.a.m.n bubble. People accepted exile from you once, or Demolition. Who would die for you today? Nameone person."

Sedon stood utterly still, poised staring at Dvan. "I see."

Dvan's head slumped back onto his chest.

"Dvan? Thank you." The door curled open behind Sedon, and he turned and left as an invisible knife plunged into Dvan's abdomen.

Dvan whispered, "Ouch."

And then they upped the current.

- 23 -.

Floating in the quiet warm water, in the center of the huge swimming pool.

A distant door whispered open, then closed. What a very strange sensation. She heard the footsteps.

Whoever was approaching wore pants; she could hear the material rustle with every step. Barefoot; the sound was flesh against tile.

But shefelt nothing; it might have been a robot approaching. The sound of clothing being removed, and then a disturbance in the water as the person entered the pool. The water around her grew more disturbed as she was approached, and then the cool touch of fingers against her cheek. The hand stroked across her forehead, ran across the soft wet fuzz of hair on her skull. A hesitation, and then lips touched her, lightly, brushing against hers.

Denice opened her eyes. "Hi, Lan."

His wet brown hair trailed down past his shoulders, spread out in the water around him. "Hi. What happened to your hair?"

"It fell out. I was sick."

"I'm sorry."

"I feel much better now. Will you float with me for a while?"

"Sure."