The Last Dancer by Daniel Keys Moran

Author:Daniel Keys Moran
Format: mobi

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32.

At the door chime, Robert sat up in bed and yawned until his jaws cracked, stretching. "Command, open. Lights up."

The door to his quarters curled aside as the glowpaint scaled up. Dvan entered slowly, stood irresolutely just inside the doorway. Robert gestured at the room's two chairs. "Have a seat, William."

Dvan sank into the chair in delicate slow motion; Robert's suite was up a level from Denice's, in quarter gee. Two rooms, rather than the single in which Denice had been lodged; it was the suite he had stayed in five years prior, after accepting Chandler's invitation to participate in a two-month study on low gravity and free fall combat.

Robert rubbed his eyes, yawning again. "She's asleep?"

Dvan nodded. "Aye. Else I'd--"

"--be with her," Robert nodded. "I don't doubt it."

"I'd like to speak with you, night face."

Robert shrugged into a robe, moved barefoot into the kitchen, toggled the kitchen stasis field and pulled free the jar of mixed fruit juices he had made for himself. "No one is preventing you." He drank directly from the bottle, put it back and turned the field back on.

Dvan spoke plainly. "What is your interest in this matter?"

A smile touched Robert's lips, was gone. He sat back down on the bed, folded himself into half lotus and regarded Dvan. "Which matter? There is a System full of them, you know."

"The Dancer."

Robert said slowly, "Sedon? I hardly care if he--"

A flicker of anger touched the black eyes. "Denice Castanaveras. What is your interest in her?"

"Ah. She is my student and my friend," Robert said equably.

Dvan's features darkened perceptibly. "You taught her?"

Robert Dazai Yo said carefully, "Some things, yes. Why the anger?"

Dvan spoke in a voice low and shaky. "You are an abomination in the universe, a perversion of the Flame and of the Dance. And if you attempt to teach these things to Denice Castanaveras, I'll kill you."

Robert Yo laughed in his face. "Oh, come on. You ugly, stupid, slow moving ox, you're going to kill me for continuing to do what I've been doing for eight years?"

"Yes," said Dvan with a profound sincerity. "I will."

A smile twitched around the edge of Robert's lips. "Okay. Thanks. I mean for the warning. I appreciate it," he said with a sincerity approaching Dvan's, "and I certainly won't forget it."

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