surprised hurt, pale lip trembling, like a young girl suddenly cut to her vulnerable heart . . . And she hadn’t even yet taken the season’s pills! Cade would have to come around. He would simply have to.
He didn’t. Suzanne argued. She stormed. She begged. Finally, after missing three days of wonderful parties—irreplaceable parties, a season only opened once, after all—she dressed herself in the pills and a white cotton frock, and pleaded with him tremulously, weeping delicate sweet tears. Cade only laughed affectionately, and hugged her casually, and went off to do something else off-hand and detestable. She dissolved the pills in his burgundy.
It bothered her, a little. They had always been honest with each other. And besides, it was such a scary thing for a young girl to do, her fingers shook the whole time as she broke open the capsules and a single shining crystalline tear dropped into the glass (how much salt would one tear add? Cade had a keen palate). But she did it. And, wide-eyed, she handed him the glass, her girlish bosom heaving with silent emotion. Then she excused herself and went to take a scented bath in pink bubbles and to do her hair in long drooping ringlets.
By the time she came out, Cade was waiting for her. He held a single pink rose, and his eyes met hers shyly, for just a moment, as he handed it to her. They went for a walk before dinner along a beach, and the stars came out one by one, and when he took her hand, Suzanne thought, her heart would burst. At the thought that he might kiss her, the V-R waves blurred a little, and her breath came faster. It was going to be a wonderful winter. “Suzanne,” Cade said, very low. “Sweet Suzanne . . .”
“Yes, Cade?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Yes?” Emotion thrilled through her. “I don’t like burgundy.”
“What . . . but you . . .”
“At least not that burgundy. I didn’t drink it. But I did run it through the molecular analyzer.” She pulled away from his hand. Suddenly, she was very afraid. “I’m so disappointed in you, Suzanne. I rather hoped that whatever fashion said, we at least trusted each other.”
“What . . .” she had trouble getting the words out, damn this tremulous high-pitched voice—“What are you going to do?”
“Do?” He laughed carelessly. “Why do anything? It’s not really worth making a fuss over, is it?” Relief washed over her. It was last season’s fashion. He was still wearing it, and it was keeping him casual about her betrayal. Nonchalant, off-hand. Oh, thank heavens . . .
“But I think maybe we should live apart for a bit. Till things sort themselves out. Don’t you think that would be best?”
“Oh no! No!” Girlish protest, in a high sweet girlish voice. When what she wanted was to grab him and force her body against his and convince him to change his mind by sheer brute sexuality . . . but she couldn’t. Not dressed like this. It would be ludicrous. “Cade . . .”
“Oh, don’t take it so hard, love. I mean, it’s not the end of the world, is it? You’re still you, and I’m still me. Be good, now.” And he loped off down the beach and out the apartment door. Suzanne turned off the V-R. She sat in the bare-walled apartment and cried. She loved Cade, she really did. Maybe if she agreed to go naked for a season . . . but, no. That wasn’t how she loved Cade, or how he loved her, either. They loved each other for their multiplicity of selves, their basic and true complexity, expressed outwardly and so well through the art of change. That was what kept love fresh and romantic, wasn’t it? Change. Growth. Variety.
Suzanne cried until she had no tears left, until she was completely drained. (It felt rather good, actually. Ingenues were allowed so much wild sorrow.) Then she called Sendil, at home, on a shielded frequency.
“Sendil? Suzanne.”
“Suzanne? What is it? I can’t see you, my dear.”
“The vid’s malfunctioning, I have audio only. Sendil, I’ve got some rather awful news.”
“What? Oh, are you all right?”
“I’m . . . oh, please understand! I’m so alone! I need you!” Her voice trembled. She had his complete attention.
“Anything, love. Anything at all!”
“I’m . . .” Her girlish voice dropped to a whisper drenched in shame. “I’m . . . enceinte. And Cade . . . Cade won’t marry me!”
“Suzanne!” Sendil cried. “Oh my God! What a master stroke! Are you going to keep it going all season?”
“I’m . . . I’m going away. I can’t . . . face anyone.”
“No, of course not. Oh my God, darling, this will just make your reputation!”
Suzanne said acidly, “I was under the impression it was already made,” realized her mistake, and dropped back into ingénue. It wasn’t hard, really; all she had to do was take a deep breath and give herself up to the drugs. She said gaspingly, “But I can’t . . . I can’t face it completely by myself. I’m just not strong enough. So you’re the only person I’m telling. Will you come see me in my shame?”
“Oh, Suzanne, of course I’ll stand by you.” Sendil said, boyish emotion making his voice husky. Sendil always took a dose and a half of fashion.
“I leave tomorrow,” Suzanne gasped. “I’ll write you, dear faithful Sendil, to tell you where to visit me . . .” She’d get a holo of her body looking pregnant custom-made. “Oh, he just threw me away! I feel so wretched!”
“Of course you do,” Sendil breathed. “Poor innocent! Seduced and abandoned! What can I do to cheer you up?”
“Nothing. Oh, wait . . . maybe if I know my shame won’t go on forever . . . but, oh, Sendil, I couldn’t ask you what follows this season! I know you’d never let out a peep in advance!”
“Well, not ordinarily, of course, but in this case, for you . . .”
“You’re the only one I’m going to let visit me, to hear about everything that happens. Everyone else will simply have to play along with you.”
“Ahh.” Sendil’s voice thickened with emotion. “I’d do anything to cheer you up, darling. And believe me, you’ll love the next season. After a whole season away, everyone will be panting to see how you look, every eye will be trained on you . . . and the look is going to be a return to military! You’re just made for it, darling, and it for you!”
“Military,” Suzanne breathed. Sendil was right. It was perfect. Uniforms’ and swords and guns and stern, disciplined command breaking into bawdy barracks-room physicality at night . . . Officers pulling rank in the bedroom . . . That’s an order, soldier—Yes, sir! . . . The sexual and social possibilities were tremendous. And Cade would never skip two seasons of fashion. She would come back from the winter’s exile with everyone buzzing about her, and then Cade in the uniform of, say, the old Royal Guards . . . and herself outranking him (she’d find out somehow what rank he’d chosen, bribery or something), able to command his allegiance, keeping a military bearing and so having to give away nothing of herself . . .
It was going to be a wonderful spring.
DANCING ON AIR
There is not, I have discovered, a large intersection between fans of science fiction and fans of ballet. Those who celebrate Judith Merril are unlikely to celebrate Merrill Ashley, and vice-versa. So when asked what this story is “about,” I usually answer, “Genetic engineering, the exploitation of other species, and the various traps of motherhood.” Respectable SF answers, the first two. A respectable literary answer, that last one. Answers that are, of course, true. . . but only to the reader. To the writer, this story is a chance to linger over words like grand jete and fouette of adage.
I always wanted to be a dancer. Since this is an unlikely as alchemy, instead I write stories like this, for the pleasure of those of us dwelling in the intersection.
ONE
“When a man has been guilty of a mistake, either in ordering his own affairs, or in directing those of State, or in commanding an army, do we not always say, So-and-so has made a false step in this affair? And can making a false step derive from anything but lack of skill in dancing?”
—Moliere
Some
times I understand the words. Sometimes I do not understand the words.
Eric brings me to the exercise yard. A man and a woman stand there. The man is tall. The woman is short. She has long black fur on her head. She smells angry.
Eric says, “This is Angel. Angel, this is John Cole and Caroline Olson.”
“Hello,” I say.
“I’m supposed to understand that growl?” the woman says. “Might as well be Russian!”
“Caroline,” the man says, “you promised . . .”
“I know what I promised.” She walks away. She smells very angry. I don’t understand. My word was hello. Hello is one of the easy words.
The man says, “Hello, Angel.” He smiles. I sniff his shoes and bark. He smells friendly. I smell two cats and a hot dog and street tar and a car. I feel happy. I like cars.
The woman comes back. “If we have to do this, then let’s just do it, for Chrissake. Let’s sign the papers and get out of this hole.”
John Cole says, “The lawyers are all waiting in Eric’s office.”
Eric’s office smells of many people. I go to my place beside the door. I lie down. Maybe later somebody takes me in the car.
A woman looks at many papers and talks. “A contract between Bio-mod Canine Protection Agency, herein referred to as the party of the first part, and the New York City Ballet, herein referred to as the party of the second part, in fulfillment of the requirements of Columbia Insurance Company, herein referred to as the party of the third part, as those requirements are set forth in Policy 438-69, Section 17, respecting prima ballerina Caroline Olson. The party of the first part shall furnish genetically-modified canine protection to Caroline Olson under, and not limited to, the following conditions . . .”
The words are hard.
I think words I can understand.
My name is Angel. I am a dog. I protect. Eric tells me to protect. No people can touch the one I protect except safe people. I love people I protect. I sleep now.
“Angel,” Eric says from his chair. “Wake up now. You must protect.”
I wake up. Eric walks to me. He sits next to me. He puts his voice in my ear.
“This is Caroline. You must protect Caroline. No one must hurt Caroline. No one must touch Caroline except safe people. Angel— protect Caroline.”
I smell Caroline. I am very happy. I protect Caroline.
“Jesus H. Christ,” Caroline says. She walks away.
I love Caroline.
We go in the car. We go very far. Many people. Many smells. John drives the car. John is safe. He may touch Caroline. John stops the car. We get out. There are many tall buildings and many cars.
“You sure you’re going to be okay?” John Cole says.
“You’ve protected your investment, haven’t you?” Caroline snarls. John drives away.
A man stands by the door. The man says, “Evening, Miss Olson.”
“Evening, Sam. This is my new guard dog. The company insists I have one, after . . . what’s been happening. They say the insurance company is paranoid. Yeah, sure. I need a dog like I need a knee injury.”
“Yes, ma’am. Doberman, isn’t he? He looks like a goooood ol’ dog. Hey, big fella, what’s your name?”
“Angel,” I say.
The man jumps and makes a noise. Caroline laughs.
“Bioenhanced. Great for my privacy, right? Rover, Sam is safe. Do you hear me? Sam is safe.”
I say, “My name is Angel.”
Caroline says, “Sam, you can relax. Really. He only attacks on command, or if I scream, or if he hasn’t been told a person is safe and that person touches me.”
“Yes, Ma’am.” Sam smells afraid. He looks at me hard. I bark and my tail moves.
Caroline says, “Come on, Fido. Your spy career is about to begin.” I say, “My name is Angel.”
“Right,” Caroline says.
We go in the building. We go in the elevator. I say, “Sam has a cat. I smell Sam’s cat.”
“Who the fuck cares,” Caroline says.
I am a dog.
I must love Caroline.
TWO
Two days after the second ballerina was murdered, Michael Chow, senior editor of New York Now and my boss, called me into his office. I already knew what he wanted, and I already knew I didn’t want to do it. He knew that, too. We both knew it wouldn’t make any difference.
“You’re the logical reporter, Susan,” Michael said. He sat behind his desk, always a bad sign. When he thought I’d want an assignment, he leaned casually against the front of the desk. Its top was cluttered with printouts; with disposable research cartridges, some with their screens alight; with pictures of Michael’s six children. Six. They all looked like Michael: straight black hair and a smooth face like a peeled egg. At the apex of the mess sat a hardcopy of the Times 3:00 P.M. on-line lead: autopsy DISCOVERS BIOENHANCERS IN CITY BALLET DANCER. “You have an in. Even Anton Privitera will talk to you.”
“Not about this. He already gave his press conference. Such as it was.”
“So? You can get to him as a parent and leverage from there.”
My daughter Deborah was a student in the School of American Ballet, the juvenile province of Anton Privitera’s kingdom. For thirty years he had ruled the New York City Ballet like an annointed tyrant. Sometimes it seemed he could even levy taxes and raise armies, so exalted was his reputation in the dance world, and so good was his business manager John Cole at raising funds and enlisting corporate patrons.
Dancers had flocked to the City Ballet from Europe, from Asia, from South America, from the serious ballet schools in the patrolled zones of America’s dying cities. Until biohancers, the New York City Ballet had been the undisputed grail of the international dance world.
Now, of course, that was changing.
Privitera was dynamic with the press as long as we were content with what he wished us to know. He wasn’t going to want to discuss the murder of two dancers, one of them his own.
A month ago Nicole Heyer, a principal dancer with the American Ballet Theater, had been found strangled in Central Park. Three days ago the body of Jennifer Lang had been found in her modest apartment. Heyer had been a bioenhanced dancer who had come to the ABT from the Stuttgart Ballet. Lang, a minor soloist with the City Ballet, had of course been natural. Or so everybody thought until the autopsy. The entire company had been bioscanned only three weeks ago, Artistic Director Privitera had told the press, but apparently these particular viro-enhancers were so new and so different that they hadn’t even shown up on the scan.
I wondered how to make Michael understand the depth of my dislike for all this.
“Don’t cover the usual police stuff,” Michael said, “nor the scientific stuff on bioenhancement. Concentrate on the human angle you do so well. What’s the effect of these murders on the other dancers? Has it affected their dancing? Does Privitera seemed more confirmed in his company policy now, or has this shaken him enough to consider a change? What’s he doing to protect his dancers? How do the parents feel about the youngsters in the ballet school? Are they withdrawing them until the killer is caught?”
I said, “You don’t have any sensitivity at all, do you, Michael?”
He said quietly, “Your girl’s seventeen, Susan. If you couldn’t get her to leave dancing before, you’re not going to get her to leave now. Will you do the story?”
I looked again at the scattered pictures of Michael’s children. His oldest was at Harvard Law. His second son was a happily married househusband, raising three kids. His third child, a daughter, was doing six-to-ten in Rock Mountain Maximum Security State Prison for armed robbery. There was no figuring it out. I said, “I’ll do the story.”
“Good,” he said, not looking at me. “Just hold down the metaphors, Susan. You’re still too given to metaphors.”
“New York Now could use a few metaphors. A feature magazine isn’t supposed to be a TV holo bite.”
“A feature magazine isn’t art, either,?
?? Michael retorted. “Let’s all keep that in mind.”
“You’re in luck,” I said. “As it happens, I’m not a great lover of art.” I couldn’t decide whether to tell Deborah I had agreed to write about ballet. She would hate my writing about her world under threat. Which was a reason both for and against.
September heat and long, cool shadows fought it out over the wide plaza of Lincoln Center. The fountain splashed, surrounded by tourists and students and strollers and derelicts. I thought Lincoln Center was ugly, shoebox architecture stuck around a charmless expanse of stone unredeemed by a little splashing water. Michael said I only felt that way because I hated New York. If Lincoln Center had been built in Kentucky, he said, I would have admired it.
I had remembered to get the electronic password from Deborah. Since the first murder, the New York State Theater changed it weekly. Late afternoon was heavy rehearsal time; the company was using the stage as well as the studios. I heard the Spanish bolero from the second act of Coppelia. Deborah had been trying to learn it for weeks. The role of Swanilda, the girl who pretends to be a doll, had first made the brilliant Caroline Olson a superstar.
Privitera’s office was a jumble of dance programs, costume swatches, and computers. He made me wait for him twenty minutes. I sat and thought about what I knew about bioenhanced dancers, besides the fact that there weren’t supposed to have been any at City Ballet.
There were several kinds of bioenhancement. All of them were experimental, all of them were illegal in The United States, all of them were constantly in flux as new discoveries were made and rushed onto the European, South American, and Japanese markets. It was a new science, chaotic and contradictory, like physics at the start of the last century, or cancer cures at the start of this one. No bioenhancements had been developed specifically for ballet dancers, who were an insignificant portion of the population. But European dancers submitted to experimental versions, as did American dancers who could travel to Berlin or Copenhagen or Rio for the very expensive privilege of injecting their bodies with tiny, unproven biological “machines.”