From: cffitzge@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F Fitzgerald)
Subject:  dancer, part 4
Reply-To: cffitzge@IASTATE.EDU (Charles F Fitzgerald)
Organization: Iowa State University
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 1992 05:30:26 GMT

Well, gang, this is it.  The last installment of my first
story since High School.  Hope you have enjoyed it.

---

The local scream had the recent marriage of simstar Sheri Glass
to the billionaire CEO of Execudyne spread liberally across its
front page.  She finally found the article hidden in the bottom
half of page six.              

	MAN MURDERED IN LOCAL CLUB

	Last night the patrons of the Nu-Americana
	dance club were surprised to find a dead 
	man in the midst of their nightly revels.
	The man, identified by police as Arthur
	Lemortinov, was apparently alive when he
	entered the establishment...

"Arthur Lemortinov.  How apt."

---

"I done paid you back once, honey," he leaned his chair back against 
wall. "Remember ol' Arty.  Yesterday weren't so long ago that you
could have forgot already."  A wide, ugly grin disfigured his flat 
face.  "I think this time you'll have to pay for a favor."

"I do not think you would enjoy my payment."

"How do you know?  I'm into some pretty weird shit.  Whips, chains,
you name it."  His smile widened almost to the two sockets attached
to his temples.  "So how about?  Wanna take a fling with your worst
Nightmare?"

She sighed.  "Must we always repeat this?"

"Hey, babe, only doing what comes natural.  I look at you and just
can't help myself."  He shook his head and smirked, "Mm, mm, good."

"What would Jessica say?"

"Hey, she's cool.  The way she is, she'd prob'ly say, 'If I was a guy
I'd do it too.'"

"I tend to doubt that."

"You do?  Well maybe not, but she ought to," he set his chair down on
the floor.  "So what's it this time."  She handed him the slip of paper
with the ten numbers on it.  "Phone number.  Come on, Dance, you really
didn't need me to tell you that."

"I had surmised that it is a telephone number.  I wish to know whose
number it is."

"Oh, well" he said, drawing out his words.  "I suppose you came to the
right place then," he said with a big grin.

"Nightmare!"

"Oh, alright," he said, chuckling.  "Let's see what we got here," he
said as he started jacking the cables into the small, black box, hidden
beneath the papers on the formica covered desk.

"I will pay you as soon as I can.  It should take no more than a month to
secure an ample amount."

"Now lissen," he said, trying to suppress his natural smile.  "There ain't
no call for you to go start talking about actu'lly payin' for anything.
The way I figure, if it weren't for you I'd be filled with enough lead 
to sink the Titanic, and then where would lil' Jes be?  Crying her pretty
lil' eyes out, that's where."  He paused a moment and seemed to drift
for a second.  "Ah...Bingo."

---

"Well look who we got here," Ratz said with a big smile.  "Long time
no see, Dancer."  The pink prothesis swabbed a potion of the bar in
front of her stool.  "The usual?"

"Please."

---

She looked at the little girl huddled against the white expanse of the
refrigerator.  She stepped over the broken table.

"Now, you will tell me all you know of your friend Arthur, correct?"

The girl nodded her head vigorously.  The girl's eyes were bloodshot and
had the dazed look that she remembered often seeing in Jason's eyes
early in their relationship.

---

She dialed the number and waited for the strong, dark voice on the other
end to respond.

"Microtech, Security Division.  Walters speaking."

"I have the chip.  Come to the warehouse at East Sixth and Grand at 2100
hours.  Come alone."

"Who are..." the man began, and stopped short when he heard the buzzing
start.

---

He grabbed the bottle by its neck and adroitly swung it over the wide
bottomed glass, until the correct amount of dark orange liquid filled
the bowl.  "There you go," he said setting the glass down and scooping
the money up.  He crossed his arms on the bar, and leaned down, his face
even with hers.  "So where you been?  Dancing at that new place, the
other side of the river?"

---

It took her a month to understand.  Jason had taken her to Nu-Am
for her birthday and to celebrate his staying clean a month.  It was 
a wonderful evening.  They danced together until Jason was falling down, 
and then he sat down and watched as she danced until close, the crowd
clearing to give her plenty of room.  The evening ended, as it always
did, with a dance of a different nature--a wild, carnal dance to the
beat of two hearts--in the privacy of her small apartment.

But it was not the first time she had gone dancing with Jason, and 
awakened the next morning to the smell of bacon and coffee, exhausted 
and euphoric.  They had been to dozens of clubs throughout the city, 
from dives with barely enough room to breathe, to spacious palaces, 
all crystal and silver.  None of them affected her the way Nu-Am did.  

They were all flat somehow, stale.

Then she knew.  It was not the music--loud, brash sounds of disjointed
unity that she could not understand as a child and did not appreciate
as an adult--nor the building--an old warehouse-turned-nightclub, with
lots of room, smoke, and dirt;

it was the lights.

Many places had lasers positioned about the dance floor, synchronised
to the music and the dancers' motions, but at the Nu-Amercana, they
had something more.  She never knew, never questioned, exactly what it
was--the operator, the system--that made the Nu-Am special--she just
gloried in it.  Alone, on the dance floor, surrounded by music and
gyrating bodies, the lights entered hers eyes, and through them, they
touched her very soul.  The soul that the cyber-surgeons ripped out
and replaced wth plastic and wires.

---

"What did you tell the police?"

The girl was now sitting, shaking on one of the yellow, straight-backed
chairs, trying to take small sips of the coffee she held in her quivering
hands.  "I didn't say shit to them pigs," the girl said defiantly.  

"Nothing?"

The girl seemed to be sobering after her fright and with the help of 
the coffee.  "Only that Wart said how he was gonna make a load off
his new deal, and we was gonna move outta this dump, and maybe outta the
whole city if we was lucky."  The small woman's eyes began to fill.  "You 
really gonna off the bastard." 

"That is what I intend."

"Good."  The girl sniffed, wiped her nose with her sleave, and took a
big gulp of the black fluid.  "If that's the case, I got sumfin' for
ya."  She watched as the small frame weaved its way unsteadily out of
the small kitchen and came back holding a large bag.

The girl fell into her chair again and emptied the bag unto the dirty 
linoleum.  She looked at the jumble of hair brushes, make-up kits, and
various knick-knacks as her companion sorted through the various slips
of paper.

"Ah ha." The girl looked half-crazed waving the small slip of paper
in the air.  "Found it."  She took the proffered note from the
outstretched arm.                                  

3-7-29-58-7

"What does it mean?"

"I danow," the girl answered, honestly.  "Warty just said that it was
really importint, and I shouldn't never let no one have it, ever.  So,
I figure it must have somefin' to do with what got him killed...and maybe
it can lead you to the son of a bitch that done it." 

---

"I have been there several times, but I do not think I will be returning."

"Oh? not returning?" Ratz asked questioningly.

"No."

---

Jason had not felt like dancing that night.  Two years since the war
ended and her life began again, and she could not stay cooped up in
her tiny apartment.  She went to club alone.

The music wrapped around her like a cloak as she entered, her heart
thumping to the beat of the drum.  She moved rythmically through the
crowd to the dance floor, led like a snake by a charmer's recorder to
the rapidly pulsating lights around the stage, where a group of 
young boys screamed lyrics to a song older than they were.  She began.

The band segued into their next piece, and she slid with them, the
lights telling her how to move, when to move, where to move.  Around
her, the other patrons moved to the edges of the mirrored plexiglass
surface and watched in mingled admiration and envy.

The band changed songs again, but she did not notice.  She followed
the lights--as they changed, she changed.  As the lights moved, she
moved.  That is why she noticed it before anyone else.

She stopped in mid-step and gazed up at the upper balcony.  She saw
the hole, the neat, clean, perfect hole, just before the head crashed
on to the table in front of him.  She turned to where the errant, red
beam had begun its trip across her consciousness and saw the big man
rise hurridly, turning the lapel of his hand-tailored trench up and
pulling his dark hat down in order to conceal his identity.

The band stopped playing, sensing something was wrong.  A scream echoed
across the crowded room, and she reached the stair to the upper 
level as the stream of people rushed downward.

When she had managed to clear the pressing throng of frantic people,
she knew she was too late.  He had escaped in the confusion.

"Now, the search begins."

---

the dancer, Copyright 1992, Charles F. FitzGerald.  First appearance
on the newsgroup alt.cyberpunk.chatsubo.  All characters, especially
Dancer, Nightmare, and the Greek, used only by permission of the
author or under penalty of death from above.  

This story dedicated to to Andrew Thompson.  "You are my Commanding
Officer.  You are also my friend.  I am, and ever shall be, yours."
Spock, _Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan_

----
Charles F. Fitzgerald | '....Life's but a walking shadow,
Iowa State University | a poor player that struts, and frets, 
cffitzge@iastate.edu  | his hour upon the stage,
                      | and then is heard from no more.'
                      | _MacBeth_, by W. Shakespeare.