The 97th Step (21 page)

Pen rubbed the smoothness of the cloth over his chest, fascinated by the feel of it. "I've never even heard of it. Where do you buy it?"

"We don't. It was created by a team of our biotechs more than twenty years ago."

"You could make a fortune marketing it."

"No doubt. But
kawa
is used exclusively for the shrouds."

Pen continued stroking the silky material.

"What you are wearing is the First Layer. For Second Layer, you add a short-sleeved shirt and shorts; Third Layer is a long sleeved shirt and pants. After that, you start the Outer Layers. But that's not something you need concern yourself with for a time. It takes awhile to reach that level."

"How long?"

She smiled—he was sure of it—and said, "Depends on you. The average is three years. Some take longer, some less. Attitude and work blend together. We work on the micro/macrocosmic principle, the

'As above, so below' dictum. Theoretically, you could master all we teach in a few months."

"But practically?" he said.

"Practically, the average is three years."

"How long did it take you to get fully dressed?"

"Two years to the First Outer Layer, two more years to Full Shroud."

Four years. A long time, he thought. But only two years for her to do what averaged three. Interesting.

Then again, what
was
she, exactly? And what would he be at the end, assuming he stuck around? He realized he didn't know anything about this order, save they could kick heads with unequaled efficiency when they so desired.

Well. He was about to find out, wasn't he?

The compound that comprised the quarters of the Siblings of the Shroud was extensive. Moon took him on a tour of the grounds. Within the confines of the high electric fence lay something just under seventy hectares. There were woods, meadows, carefully tended gardens; an auditorium and gymnasium combined was the largest building, more or less centered in the compound. From the gym, which included a full medical facility, one could take marble walkways to the other buildings. Northward lay the barracks, two buildings, one for students, the other for instructors. Private rooms.

"We have forty students at various levels," Moon said.

"How many instructors?"

"Forty. Each palliate starts with a personal teacher. You will learn from others, of course, but you are paired with a primary Brother or Sister at the beginning, and you stay with them until you are done with your training."

"And you are my teacher?"

"I am."

That pleased him as much as anything had for months. He felt honored that Moon, obviously a woman of skill and talent, had chosen him to be her student. "Why" was a good question, but he was afraid to ask.

And he wondered why he was afraid.

To the east of the gym was the power station. It broadcast energy for the complex, as well as for certain exterior operations run by the order. Nearby were the stores and mech shop buildings.

South of the central gym lay the swimming pool, a large rectangular in-ground unit, complete with diving boards and platforms. East of the pool were the dining hall and Admin; north of them, the biotech labs, central courtyard and gardens, and a bit farther, the meditation dome. There were three gates in the fence, always guarded. Pen and Moon had entered by the main gate, set in the southwest corner of the fence; other, smaller entrances stood at the northeast and southeast corners.

Quite the small town, Pen noted. Self-contained, laid out efficiently, and very private.

As they walked along. Pen noticed recurring patterns of footsteps, painted or stained on the marble outwalks or floors of buildings. In the gym, there were no less than a dozen such patterns laid side by side on the rockfoam flooring. He counted the steps, and was not surprised to find that each pattern held the same number: ninety-seven.

He saw people walking or trying to walk the forms. Some seemed to move flawlessly, as he had seen Moon move; others could only manage a portion of the dance before losing their balance, stumbling or falling, then returning to the start to begin again.

Moon led him to his room. His bags were there ahead of him.

"I'll give you a few minutes to shower and settle in," she said. "Then we'll begin."

After she left, Pen looked around. It was a smallish room, but not too small. Aside from the bed, there was a closet and built-in set of drawers; a chair was parked next to a table with a comp terminal and holoproj screen on it. A lamp stood over the table, another next to the bed. There was a fair-sized window with an exchange strip under it. He dialed the opaque thincris to clarity, and found he was looking north, through a stand of thinly spaced trees at the fence, maybe fifty meters away. He darkened the window, and moved to a heavy plastic door on the wall at right angles to the window. He slid it aside and discovered a fresher with a mirror, sink, bidet and shower stall. A small window of frosted glass opened out to the same view as the main window.

Well. He had lived in a lot worse places. The room wouldn't win any awards for opulence but it was clean and comfortable.

Pen removed the mask. Odd how quickly he had gotten adjusted to it. The eye slit was generous, extended to the ears, and did not block central or peripheral vision in any way. He skinned the bodysuit off, noting that it felt clean and dry, and went to shower.

By the time Moon returned, he had redressed, still feeling almost naked under the whisper-thin cloth. The sensation caused him some discomfort. And arousal. He had been with more than a few people sexually, mostly women, and nudity did not particularly bother him. Then again, he had no idea what Moon even looked like under her shroud, and any stirring of sexual interest on his part would be only too obvious.

He did not want to be at that disadvantage.

Naturally, the more he determined to avoid it, the faster his penis swelled and hardened. Great, just fucking great. Why did this happen? Moon was as visually stimulating as a pile of blankets! Down, boy!

If Moon noticed, she did not speak of it, and when she was looking away, he shifted his cursed erection within the bodysuit as best he could. It did not peek one-eyed down his leg from the tight crotch of the sensual material as it had threatened, but it did make an unsightly lump running up toward his navel.

Dammit.

His hormones faded soon, though. Beneath the shade of a thick-boled tree between the barracks and meditation dome was a sheet of outdoor rockfoam. Upon the springy material were sets of footprints, with maybe a dozen students trying to walk them. Ferret—no, Pen—was about to get his first experience as a student of sumito.

"Walk the pattern," Moon said.

He felt a sudden surge of panic. "Just like that? No instruction?" He looked around, but none of the other teachers or students seemed to be paying any attention to him and Moon.

" 'The pattern is the teacher,' " she said, and her voice had the sound of ritual in it. "The pattern is fixed, but you are not. How can I tell you how to move? I am not you."

Pen looked at the line of footsteps on the rockfoam surface. "Yeah. Right." Well, the first four or five moves didn't look too hard. After that, the angles got tricky. He tried to picture in his mind how to go at it, and realized he couldn't. Until you got there, you wouldn't know what your balance would be, which muscles would be taking the load. The last few weeks with Dindabe had given him some of his old strength and centering back, but he was nowhere near top shape. Then again, he had seen Moon dance this dance, as well as a few others since he'd arrived. The trick was to keep moving—some of the steps had to be done with the help of fast inertia, because a slow move wouldn't allow enough stretch.

Pen took a deep breath, and put his feet on the first two steps. He bent his knees slightly, shifted his weight, and moved. Third step, okay, twist a little, pivot on the back foot, fourth step, lean right and shift, fifth step. Six and seven took a kind of hop, and then he was moving fast enough to hit eight, off a half centimeter, but not bad, it felt good, he had the flow of it, now—nine, ten, use your arms and hands for balance! crouch and bounce, eleven, twelve is short, got to slow down and pull up, but thirteen, watch it, watch it! oh, Jesu, no way—!

He tangled his right instep behind his left ankle and his dance became a fall. He managed to twist and get one arm out, and finished the tumble in a half-assed roll. He hit hard on his right shoulder. The rockfoam was forgiving, however. He came up, and shook his head.

Moon stood impassively, her arms crossed, none of her visible except the swath of her eyes. What did she think? Was she disappointed in him? He wanted to impress her, wanted her to think well of him, and he had fallen an eighth of the way through. Pretty bad.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'll try it again."

"No. That's enough for today."

He tried to think of some excuse. "I'm a little off, from—from the trip and all. I'm sure I can do better, Moon." It sounded lame, it sounded whiney, and he regretted saying it as it left his mouth.
That's the
way to impress her, fool! Fuck up and then make excuses
!

"Tomorrow. It's almost time for supper. You don't want to be late."

"I don't want to be late? Don't you eat?"

"I am dining more privately tonight."

Instant suspicion flared in him. Privately. With Von, he didn't doubt. There
was
something going on there.

"I'll see you in the morning," she said. "Get some rest after supper. Tomorrow will be a long day."

There were about sixty-five people in the dining hall when Pen arrived. About half of them were in full shroud, the others in various degrees of dress. A couple wore the same kind of outfit he wore. Robot dins stood behind a line of dispense trays. The smells of the cooked food wafted to Pen, and he found he was very hungry.

He moved down the line, taking portions from the dins. Vegetables, soypro cutlets, fruits, cheese, iced tea. They set a nice table here.

There were a number of vacant spots at the tables. Pen chose one next to a muscular man dressed in mask and short shirt and pants—Second Layer, he recalled—with darkly tanned bare arms and legs, indicating that the man had been here long enough to get some sun.

As he sat, the other man spoke. "Ah, you'd be the new palliate. I'm Spiral. Welcome to the order."

"They call me Pen."

"Good name. You must be something special."

"Not so's you could tell," Pen said. "Why do you say that?"

"You'll get it in history. They don't give out Pens easy. Last one wound up running a planet somewhere.

Big achievers, the Pens. The original was there with Diamond when the order was established. Diamond gets the official credit for a whole shitload of things, but the story is that Pen was the one who actually came up with the Ninety-seven Steps."

Pen took a bite of the orange vegetable. Delicious. "Yeah, well, I didn't inherit his talent. I fell all over myself trying to walk the pattern today."

Spiral laughed around a mouthful of cutlet. "Hey,
everybody
falls, brother. Right up to Full Shrouds, they fall. That's one of the Final Layer tests, to walk the pattern consistently without falling. How far'd you get?"

"Not very. Twelve steps."

Spiral choked on something. He coughed, spat a lump of soypro out, and coughed some more.

"You okay?"

Spiral caught his breath and nodded. He sipped at his tea, then looked at Pen. "Twelve steps, you said?"

"Yeah, I feel kind of stupid. I'm glad Moon didn't laugh at me."

"Moon? You got
Moon
as a Sister?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Holy fuck! Twelve steps and Moon. You ought not to be sitting next to
me
, brother.
You
are somebody!"

"What in the hell are you talking about?"

"Well, first, Moon is gearing up to be Elder Sister, when Von leaves. She's the best there is. The Elder doesn't have to teach, he or she doesn't want to, and for somebody about to take over to pick up a new student is a big deal. You
got
something, pal."

"Right, I'm an ex-thief and drunk, I got null."

"Listen, my first day here I made six steps on the pattern before I fell. I got black pins in two arts, I can do a full split without a warm-up, and my resting pulse is forty-two. That's not brag, it's just so you know.

I'm in shape, I trained hard before I ever got to this world. Six steps is pretty damn good; three or four is average. Nobody since I've been here has done more than seven on the first day. Moon is the best there is, they say she did nine on her initial try. And
you
did twelve, without a warm-up. Almost all the way to Twisted Star. Shitso, pal, there are people who've been here six months before they made twelve!"

Pen stared at his plate. He felt a cold chill touch his neck under the pullover mask. Something was frightening about hearing this from Spiral. He wasn't anything special. He was a thief, a man who had drifted through his life so far doing nothing, wasting his allotted time, destroying those close to him.

Something was wrong about this. He didn't feel special.

He didn't
want
to feel special!

And Moon, Moon had never indicated a thing. If what Spiral said was true—and he would check it out before he believed it—then why hadn't Moon reacted? It was as if she expected him to do better than he had. and he had disappointed her.

What was going on here? What did it all mean?

He was afraid to find out. And yet, he wanted to find out more than anything.

Twenty-One

HE COULD NOT sleep. The impact of it all finally hit him like a falling tower of rigidcast blocks, knocking away any chance at rest and filling him with dread.

What was he doing here?

Since he had fired the explosive bullet that killed Gworn, he had been floating in a kind of nonthinking sea of limbo, allowing himself to be swept along with whatever current chose to take him. Not only had he not fought against it, he had tried to numb himself and sink into oblivion. As with most of his life, he had failed. He had obeyed Dindabe mindlessly, and now he was light-years away on the motherworld, as docile as a trained pet, following directions again. Why? To what end?