Firedance Read online

  FIREDANCE

  Book Three of the Aubry Knight Series

  By Steven Barnes

  A Mystique Press Production

  Mystique Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Smashwords edition published at Smashwords by Crossroad Press

  Digital Edition Copyright © 2018 Steven Barnes

  Original publication by TOR—1995

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  Steven Barnes is a New York Times bestselling, award-winning novelist and screenwriter who is the creator of the Lifewriting™ writing course, which he has taught nationwide. He recently won an NAACP Image Award as co-author of the Tennyson Hardwick mystery series with actor Blair Underwood, and his wife, Tananarive Due. For an overview of his 20-plus novels, visit Amazon.com.

  But Steve’s true love is teaching balance and enhancing human performance in all forms: emotional, professional and physical.

  In addition to being an author and writing instructor, he is also a life coach, CST coach and certified hypnotist. He has more than 30 years’ experience in the self-development arts, including hypnosis certification with Transformative Arts Institute in Marin, CA, training as a yoga and Tai Chi instructor, and fourth-degree black belt. He has counseled executives, royalty, prominent politicians and Hollywood celebrities at the Moonview Sanctuary in Santa Monica.

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

  Visit us online

  Check out our blog and

  Subscribe to our Newsletter for the latest Crossroad Press News

  Find and follow us on Facebook

  Join our group at Goodreads

  We hope you enjoy this eBook and will seek out other books published by Crossroad Press. We strive to make our eBooks as free of errors as possible, but on occasion some make it into the final product. If you spot any problems, please contact us at [email protected] and notify us of what you found. We’ll make the necessary corrections and republish the book. We’ll also ensure you get the updated version of the eBook.

  If you’d like to be notified of new Crossroad Press titles when they are published, please send an email to [email protected] and ask to be added to our mailing list.

  If you have a moment, the author would appreciate you taking the time to leave a review for this book at the retailer’s site where you purchased it.

  Thank you for your assistance and your support of the authors published by Crossroad Press.

  In all the world, in all of life, the single most important question is: “Who Am I?”

  This book is dedicated to those who never settled for the easy answers.

  We have not even to risk the adventure alone. For the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

  And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

  And where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

  —Joseph Campbell

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  1ST SONG

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  2ND SONG

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  3RD SONG

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  4TH SONG

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  5TH SONG

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  AFTERWORD

  JULY 17, 2033. LOS ANGELES.

  Naked, cloaked only in invisibility, San sat cross-legged within a circle drawn with her own blood, awaiting the target. The distortion field surrounding her shunted colors toward the blue, dissolved the external world into a swirling pastel collage. A cybernet wired into her optical nerves enabled San to pierce the chaos, allowed her mind to correctly interpret the visual input. Where another woman would have been blinded by the distortion, San barely noticed it. Reality’s edges appeared … harder to San than to ordinary humans. If the average human being’s senses were considered the norm, San was a goddess.

  But if she had been modified in a thousand ways since birth, in her heart San merely considered herself to be alive. Correct. She was as her ancestors had been, even before distortion fields, cybernets, plasma-pulse rifles and the other technological abominations of a corrupt and decadent age. She was, at her core, a living memory of the time when humans pitted spear against fang and claw upon the veldt.

  Below her, thousands of men and women clustered in the middle of a place
called Pershing Square, a square block of statuary and shrubbery in the midst of Mazetown. They hovered around a podium where, in a few minutes, the target would appear.

  San experienced a rush of visceral warmth at that thought, a sensation the average woman might have interpreted as love, or need, or lust. The target meant completion. The target meant victory. The target meant life for San, as San meant death for the target. Death which, in fact, had already been dealt. The order had come from the Master, and the Divine Blossom keiretsu. The Master was simply to be obeyed. No thought contrary to this lived in San’s mind, or had ever lived there, since her birth fourteen years before.

  Divine Blossom had trained San and her brothers. The emissaries of Divine Blossom treated the five of them with the same icy professionalism, the politely masked air of contempt, that Japanese always displayed toward those of African blood. All of the emissaries … except Tanaka Sensei. Tanaka Sensei saw beyond the black skin, beyond the disgraceful pseudobirth, to the warriors within.

  Tanaka Sensei recognized their humanity. Tanaka Sensei subjected the Five to the same blessed, merciless discipline he imposed upon himself, with which he daily transformed himself into the greatest warrior in the world.

  Tanaka was not one of the Five, could not be, but in his own way, he was the father they had never known.

  Sensei’s words lived in her mind: If intention is pure, then what lives in the heart is made manifest in the world.

  Despite the changed circumstances, San’s intention was pure. The target was already a dead man.

  There came a ripple of sound and motion in the crowd below her, and suddenly her wait was ending. Something was approaching from the east, over the jagged horizon of Mazetown. Mazetown was the heart of what had once been downtown Los Angeles, a man-made forest, a jungle of glass spires and foamed steel struts. San could admire this—she had seen pictures of Mazetown after the great quake, and knew the extent of the damage. She also knew of the target’s role in the rebirth.

  Target: Aubry Knight. Age: 39. Weight: 230. Height: 6’4”. Occupation: Leader of the organization most often referred to as the Scavengers, a nationwide network of laborers who had rebuilt a shattered metropolis.

  Knight was a mystery to most. There were whispers about him. Some conjecture, some confirmed, and some mere fantasies. Stories that he had aborted an assassination attempt upon President Harris. Stories of his role in the destruction of Gorgon, the NewMan antiterrorist task force. Tales concerning his physical capacities, said to be unsurpassed.

  All such rumors crumbled like straw before the shattering truth discovered by the Five. Such a truth changed everything.

  It changed nothing.

  I hope you have enjoyed the good life, my brother. I hope it has not made you slow, or soft.

  I hope that the rumors are true.

  I hope you are ready to die.

  1ST SONG

  EARTHDANCE

  We do not own the Earth, we

  merely hold it in trust for our

  children. Therefore, let no harm

  come to either.

  —Ibandi proverb

  1

  The Chevrolet passenger skimmer destabilized as it struck an air pocket. The pilot regained control in 1.47 seconds. Subadequate. Made a note: Manipulate Father into replacing her. Father made a short, sucking sound. Fear. Distaste. He said, “I hate these things.”

  Response mode: teasing. “Daddy, you are such a wimp.” I thrust out my tongue, waved it side to side. Approximately eighty percent probability of a state change. I returned to the raveled cuff seam. Simple cross-stitch. Oddly soothing. Mira taught me.

  “Leslie …” Father raised his right hand and swatted fast. Vision strobed. Visual faded to kino mode. Felt vector, danced to Father’s blind spot. Evaded hand.

  Question: Should I have evaded? Would causing me pain have reduced Father’s stress level? Cost/benefit analysis: Judging by air pressure, effect would have been light pain, no damage. Father/subject Aubry Knight harbors subthreshold sadistic tendencies. Control tight. Likelihood of additional stress if Father/subject believes he has injured me.

  I ducked in to kiss his cheek, making the sound they call giggling. Father’s cheek is generally stubbled by thirteen hundred hours. His testosterone level is approximately 140 percent of average. Note: Is Father XYY? Scan files. Satisfy curiosity.

  Scent strong, musk-based. His melanin content is thirty percent higher than mine. If my growth patterns follow projection, I will have his bone structure, modified for estrogen levels. Will have Mother’s Polynesian cheeks and epicanthic folds. Ideal material for seductive subversion.

  Father’s massive chest rose and then fell as he sighed. Tone: irritated. “Promise, did you have to put him in a dress for this?”

  Mother leaned back in her seat, looking over her shoulder at him. Her laugh is low, musical. Oddly pleasing. “She insisted, Aubry.”

  Father opened his mouth, then let it close. I hallucinate that he didn’t wish to renew ancient combat concerning my genderic orientation. Wise. A fight he has never won.

  My legal name is Leslie Knight. Official designation Medusa-16. I’m a bifertile hermaphrodite developed by Gorgon. Biological age: 10. Actual age: 8. Height: 4’11”. Weight: 85. Have maintained same level of physiological maturity for six years, due to nutrient bath/accelerated input during formative phase. It may take thirty years to reach full adulthood.

  Father leaned back into the seat, watching through the side window as Los Angeles passed beneath us. I never knew L.A. before the quake. It is now oddly pleasing. The colors and shapes fill the eye. Bright. Almost hypnotic. Confusion: visual input melding with preexisting emotional patterns re: parental role in rebuilding of city. Pride? Perhaps.

  For now: play gender games. Father is pleased by martial performance. Easy. Personal coordination in 99.999 … percentile. Must keep him off balance to prevent certain questions from arising.

  Easy. Play Father and Mother against each other. Mother is strange. Non-performance-oriented. Likes “girl” games. I play them. She approves. Play “boy” games. She approves. Throw tantrums. She gives affection. Disobey. She gives affection.

  I do not understand. Further research required.

  I have dreams. Death, blood, raving nightmares.

  She wipes my brow. Places cool mouth against hot cheek. She dances her plastiskin for me, triggering color and light on the left side of her body. Soothing. I tell her I hate her. I will kill her. Twice, in delirium, I have broken her hand. Once, her arm.

  She gives affection.

  I do not understand.

  I am afraid. For all of us.

  2

  From the front row of the Chevy’s passenger section, Promise Cotonou-Knight surveyed the metropolis that she and her husband had helped rebuild. Her almond-shaped, gold-brown eyes were drawn first to one wonder and then another. In eight years, the leverage of property, money, and manpower, combined with generous grants and federal tax breaks, had created an empire. The Scavengers didn’t really own many of the buildings they had built or enabled, but little moved or happened in the section called Mazetown without their blessing.

  After the great quake, banks had abandoned the inner city. In response, the Scavengers created a thriving credit union. Industry fled, and there were no jobs. The Scavengers held to a simple philosophy: Those willing to work will have food and shelter.

  Period.

  A half-crazed visionary named Kevin Warrick had created the Scavengers. Aubry and Promise kept the dream alive, and expanded it.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” When the woman seated next to Promise spoke, her silver knitting needles ceased clacking and her head wobbled slightly, as if she were a doll crafted by unsteady hands. For most of Mira Warrick’s fifty-two years she had stood strong and tall, but she had aged a decade in the last twenty-four months. Her shoulders slumped now, and her pale brown eyes seemed fixed on a horizon beyond Aubry’s range of sight. Each brittle browni
sh gray hair seemed to repel its sisters by static, leaving her in perpetual disarray.

  And yet the strong angles in her face reminded Promise of her brother Kevin, the man who had taught Aubry so many strange and wonderful things. Kevin had opened Aubry’s heart and mind in ways he hadn’t known since adolescence. If only for that reason Mira was family, an elder sister perhaps, the living link to a crucial moment of change in her husband’s past.

  Now her mood seemed restless. She had invested the last hour in knitting a red and blue cap of some kind. The design seemed almost random. Promise rested an elegant hand on Mira’s shoulder and almost unconsciously stroked it with her fingertips. “What’s the matter?”

  The older woman was too frail, too pale, and had spent too many years underground. Even though the Scavenger network stretched from Seattle to Denver, with affiliated nodes in New York and Chicago, Mira still nurtured an unhealthy tendency to shim the light. Perhaps a part of her had died with her brother in the tunnels.

  “This is a day for celebration,” Promise said quietly. Leslie bit off the thread at her father’s cuff. She climbed over into Mira’s seat, looking up at her with dazzling earnestness.

  Mira frowned, and Leslie batted her eyes. Her eyelashes were long and fine, her eyes a surprisingly soft black. Her lips pouted in a perfect Cupid’s bow. Mira smiled, and hugged Leslie. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “How can you be so deadly and so darned sweet at the same time?”

  Leslie giggled. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  Behind her, Aubry rolled his eyes. “Just lucky.”

  The pilot, a competent young woman named Cori, pointed out Pershing Square. “Mr. Knight—we’re approaching the landing pad. Three circuits, as you requested.”

  “As Promise requested.”

  Promise clucked. “Nothing wrong with pomp, under the right circumstance.”

  “Medals. This is a load of shit.”

  “Daddy!”

  “Crap. Sorry.”

  “You should be.” Leslie’s angelic countenance was alight with mischief. Her voice shifted, taking on the cultured, oleaginous tones of a virtvid announcer. “As the only person in the entire civilized world capable of spanking my adorable bottom, you have the solemn obligation to civilize me. To be, in other words, a sterling example of responsible male adulthood.”