Nancy Kress
Author: Dancing on Air
Date: 2012-05-20 17:04:19+02:00

Dancing on Air (v1.1) Nancy Kress, 1993

“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

1.

Sometimes 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 Biomod 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.

2.

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 print-outs; 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 anointed 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, shoe-box 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.”

Some nanomachines carried programming that searched out deviations in the body and repaired them to match surrounding tissue. This speeded the healing of some injuries some of the time, or only erratically, or not at all, depending on whom you believed. Jennifer Lang had been receiving these treatments, trying desperately to lessen the injury rate that went hand-in-hand with ballet. The nanomachines were highly experimental, and nobody was sure what long-term effect they might have, reproducing themselves in the human body, interacting with human DNA.

Bone builders were both simpler and more dangerous. They were altered viruses, reprogrammed to change the shape or density of bones. Most of the experimental work had been done on old women with advanced osteoporosis. Some grew denser bones after treatment. The rest didn’t. In ballet, the legs are required to rotate 180 degrees in the hip sockets — the famous “turn out” that had destroyed so many dancers’ hips and knees. If bones could be altered to swivel 180 degrees naturally in their sockets, turn out would cause far less strain and disintegration. Extension could also be higher, making easier the spectacular arabesques and grand battement kicks.

If the bones of the foot were reshaped, foot injuries could be lessened in the unnatural act of dancing on toe.

Bioenhanced leg muscles could be stronger, for higher jumps, greater speed, more stamina.

Anything that helped metabolic efficiency or lung capacity could help a dancer sustain movements. They could also help her keep down her weight without anorexia, the secret vice of the ballet world.

Dancers in Europe began to experiment with bioenhancement. First cautiously, clandestinely. Then scandalously. Now openly, as a mark of pride. A dancer with the Royal Ballet or the Bolshoi or the Nederlands Dans Theater who didn’t have his or her body enhanced was considered undevoted to movement. A dancer at the New York City Ballet who did have his or her body enhanced was considered undevoted to art.

Privitera swept into his office without apology for being late. “Ah, there you are. What can I do for you?” His accent was very light, but still the musical tones of his native Tuscany were there. It gave his words a deceptive intimacy.

“I’ve come about my daughter, Deborah Anders. She’s in the D level at SAB. She’s the one who — ”

“Yes, yes, yes, I know who she is. I know all my dancers, even the very young ones. Of course. But shouldn’t you be talking with Madame Alois? She is the director of our School.”

“But you make all the important decisions,” I say, trying to smile winningly.

Privitera sat on a wing chair. He must have been in his seventies, yet he moved like a young man: straight strong back, light movements. The famous bright blue eyes met mine shrewdly. His vitality and physical presence on stage had made him a legendary dancer; now he was simply a legend. Whatever he decided the New York City Ballet should be, it became. I didn’t like him. That absolute power bothered me — even though it was merely power over an art form seen by only a fraction of the people who watched soccer or football.

“I have three questions about Deborah, Mr. Privitera. First — and I’m sure you hear this all the time — can you give me some idea of her chances as a professional dancer? She’ll have to apply to college this fall, if she’s going to go, and although what she really wants is to dance professionally, if that’s not going to happen then we need to think about other — ”

“Yes, yes,” Privitera said, swatting away this question like the irrelevancy he considered it to be. “But dance is never a second choice, Ms. Anders.”

“Matthews,” I said. “Susan Matthews. Anders is Deborah’s name.”

“If Deborah has it in her to be a dancer, that’s what she will be. If not — ” He shrugged. People who were not dancers ceased to exist for Anton Privitera.

“That’s what I want to know. Does she have it in her to be a professional dancer? Her teachers say she has good musicality and rhythm, but … ”

My hands gripped together so tightly the skin was gray.

“Perhaps. Perhaps. You must leave it to me to judge when the time comes.”

“But that’s what I’m saying,” I said, as agreeably as I could. “The time has come. College — ”

“You cannot hurry art. If Deborah is meant to be a dancer, she will become one. Leave it to me, dear.”

Dear. It was what he called all his dancers. I saw that it had just slipped out. Leave it to me, dear. I know best. How often did he say that in class, in rehearsal, during a choreography session, before a performance?

The muted strains of Coppelia drifted through the walls. I said, “Then let me ask my second question. As a parent, I’m naturally concerned about Deborah’s safety since these awful murders. What steps has City Ballet taken to ensure the safety of the students and dancers?”

The intense eyes contracted to blue shards. But I could see the moment he decided the question was within a parent’s right to ask. “The police do not think there is danger to the students. This … madman, this bestia, apparently attacks only full-fledged dancers, soloists and principals who have tried to reach art through medicine and not through dancing. No dancer in my company or my school is bioenhanced. My dancers believe as I do: You can achieve art only through talent and work, through opening yourself to the dance, not through mechanical aids. What they do at the ABT — that is not art! Besides,” he added, with an abrupt descent to the practical, “students cannot afford bioenhancing operations.”

Idealism enforced by realism — I saw the combination that kept the City Ballet a success, despite the technically superior performances of bioenhanced dancers. I could almost hear dancers and patrons alike: ‘The only real ballet.’ ‘Dance that preserves the necessary illusion that the performers’ bodies and the audience’s are fundamentally the same.’ ‘My dear, he’s simply the most wonderful man, saving the precious traditions that made dance great in the first place. We’ve pledged $20,000 — ’

I decided to push. “But Jennifer Lang apparently found a way to afford illegal bioenhancements that — ”

“That has nothing to do with your Deborah,” Privitera said, standing in one fluid movement. His blue eyes were arctic. “Now if you will excuse me, many things call me.”

“But you haven’t said what you are doing for the students’ safety,” I said, not rising from my chair, trying to sound as if my only interest were parental. “Please, I need to know. Deborah … ”

He barely repressed a sigh. “We have increased security, Ms. Anders. Electronic surveillance both at SAB and Lincoln Center has been added to, with specifics that I cannot discuss. We have hired additional escorts for those students performing small professional roles who must leave Lincoln Center after ten at night. We have created new emphasis on teaching our young dancers the importance, the complete necessity, of training their bodies for dance, not relying on drugs and operations that can only offer tawdry imitations of the genuine experience of art.”

I doubted City Ballet had actually done all that: it had only been three days since Jennifer Lang’s murder. But Privitera’s rhetoric helped me ask my last questions.

“Have any other parents withdrawn their sons and daughters from SAB? For that matter, have any of your dancers altered their performance schedules? How has the company as a whole been affected?”

Privitera looked at me with utter scorn. “If a dancer — even a student dancer — leaves me because some bestia is killing performers who do what I have insisted my dancers not do — such a so-called dancer should leave. There is no place for such a dancer in my school or my company. Don’t you understand, Ms. Anders — this is the New York City Ballet.”

He left. Through the open door the music was clear: still the Spanish dance from Coppelia. The girl who turned herself into a beautiful doll.

Michael was right. I was definitely too given to metaphors.

As I walked down the hall, it occurred to me that Privitera hadn’t mentioned increased bioscanning. Surely that would make the most sense — discover which dancers were attaining their high jumps and strong developpes through bioenhancement, and then eliminate those dancers from the purity of the company? Before some bestia did it first.

Deborah, I knew, was taking an extra class in Studio 3. I shouldn’t go. If I went, we would only fight again. I pushed open the door to Studio 3.

I sat on a hard small chair with the ballet mothers waiting for the class to end. I knew better than to talk to any of them. They all wanted their daughters to succeed in ballet.

Barre warm-ups were over. The warm air smelled of rosin on wood. Dancers worked in the center of the floor, sweat dripping off their twirling and leaping bodies. Bourees, pirouettes, entrechats. “Non, non!” the teacher called, a retired French dancer whom I had never seen smile. “When you jump, your arms must help. They must pull you through from left to right. Like this.”

Deborah did the step wrong. “Non, non!” the teacher called. “Like this!”

Deborah still did it wrong. She grimaced. I felt my stomach tighten.

Deborah tried again. It was still wrong. The teacher gestured toward the back of the room. Deborah walked to the barre and practiced the step alone while the rest of the class went on leaping. Plie, releve, then … I didn’t know the names of the rest of these steps. Whatever they were, she was still doing them wrong. Deborah tried over and over again, her face clenched. I couldn’t watch.

When Deborah was fourteen, she ran away from home in St. Louis to her father’s hovel in New York, the same father she had not seen since she was three. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera, she said. I demanded that Pers, whom I had divorced for desertion, send her back. He refused. Deborah moved into his rat-trap on West 110th, way outside Manhattan’s patrolled zone. The lack of police protection didn’t deter her, the filthy toilet down the hall didn’t deter her, the nine-year-old who was shot dealing sunshine on the stoop next door didn’t deter her. When I flew to New York, she cried but refused to go home. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera.

You can’t physically wrestle a fourteen-year-old onto a plane. You can argue, and scream, and threaten, and plead, and cry, but you cannot physically move her. Not without a court order. I filed for breach of custody.

Pers did the most effective thing you can do in the New York judicial system: nothing. Since Pers was an indigent periodically on public assistance, the court appointed a public defender for him. The public defender had 154 cases. He asked for three continuances in a row. The judge had a docket full six months ahead. In less than a year and a half Deborah would be sixteen, legally entitled to leave home. She auditioned for Privitera, and the School of American Ballet accepted her.

Another kid was shot, this one on the subway just before Pers’s stop. She was twelve. A boy was knifed, a young mother was raped, houses were torched. Pers’s lawyer resigned. Another was appointed, who immediately filed for a continuance.

I quit my job with St. Louis On-Line and moved to New York. I left behind a new promotion, a house I loved, and a man I had just started to care about. I found work on Michael’s magazine, for half the prestige and two-thirds the salary, in a city twice as expensive and three times as dangerous. I took a two-room apartment on West Seventy-fifth, shabby but decent, just inside the patrolled zone. From my living room window I could see the shimmer of the electronic fence marking the zone. The shimmer bent to exclude all of Central Park south of Seventieth. I bought a gun.

After a few tense weeks, Deborah moved in with me. We lived with piles of toe shoes and surgical tape, with leotards and tights drying on a line strung across the living room, with Dance magazine in tattered third-hand copies that would go on to be somebody else’s fourth-hand copies, with bunions and inflamed tendons and pulled ligaments. We lived with Deborah’s guilt and my anger. At night I lay awake on the pull-out sofa, staring at the ceiling, remembering the day Deborah had started kindergarten and I had opened a college fund for her. She refused now to consider college. She wanted to dance for Anton Privitera.

Privitera had not yet invited her to join the company. She had just turned seventeen. This was her last year with the School. If she weren’t invited into the corps de ballet this year, she could forget about dancing for the New York City Ballet.

I sat with the ballet mothers and watched. Deborah’s extension was not as high as some of the other girls’, her strength not always enough to sustain a slow, difficult move.

So glamorous! the ballet mothers screeched. So beautiful! So wonderful for a girl to know so young what she wants to do with her life! The ballet mothers apparently never saw the constant injuries, the fatigue, the competition that made every friend a deadly rival, the narrowing down of a young world until there is only one definition of success: Do I get to dance for Privitera? Everything else is failure. Life and death, determined at seventeen. “I don’t know what I’ll do if Jeannie isn’t asked to join the company,” Jeannie’s mother told me. “It would be like we both died. Maybe we would.”

“You’re so unfair, Mom!” Deborah shouted at me periodically in the tiny, jammed apartment. “You never see the good side of dancing! You’re so against me!”

Is it so unfair to hope that your child will be forced out of a life that can only break her body and her heart? A life whose future will belong only to those willing to become human test tubes for inhuman biological experiments?

Nicole Heyer, the dead ABT dancer, had apparently come to the United States from Germany because she could not compete with the dazzlingly bioenhanced dancers in her own country. Jennifer Lang, an ordinary girl from an ordinary Houston family, had lacked the money for major experimentation. To finance her bioenhancements in European labs, she had rented herself out as a glamorous and expensive call girl. Fuck a ballerina! That was how her killer had gotten into her apartment.

In her corner of Studio 3, Deborah finally got the sequence of steps straight, although I could see she was wobbly. She rejoined the class. The room had become as steamy as a Turkish bath. Students ran and leapt the whole length of the hall, corner to corner, in groups of six. “Grand jete in third arabesque,” Madame called. “Non, non, more extension, Lisa. Victoria, more quick — vite! vite!. One, two … next group.”

Deborah ran, jumped, and crashed to the ground.

I stood. Jeannie’s mother put a hand on my arm. “You can’t go to her,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’ll interfere with her discipline.”

Madame ran gnarled hands over Deborah’s ankle. “Lisa, help her to the side. Ninette, go tell the office to send the doctor. Alors, next group, grand jete in third arabesque … ”

I shook off Jeannie’s mother’s hand and walked slowly to where Deborah sat, her face twisted in pain.

“It’s nothing, Mom.”

“Don’t move it until the doctor gets here.”

“I said it’s nothing!”

It was a sprain. The doctor taped it and said Deborah shouldn’t dance for a week.

At home she limped to her room. An hour later I found her at the barre.

“Deborah! You heard what the doctor said!”

Her eyes were luminous with tears: Odette as the dying swan, Giselle in the mad scene. “I have to, Mom! You don’t understand! They’re casting Nutcracker in two weeks! I have to be there, dancing!”

“Deborah — ”

“I can dance through the injury! Leave me alone!”

Deborah had never yet been cast in Privitera’s Nutcracker. I watched her transfer her weight gingerly to the injured ankle, wince, and plie. She wouldn’t meet my eyes in the mirror.

Slowly I closed the door.

That night we had tickets to see Coppelia. Caroline Olson skimmed across the stage, barely seeming to touch ground. Her grand jetes brought gasps from the sophisticated New York ballet audience. In the final act, when Swanilda danced a tender pas de deux with her lover Franz, I could see heads motionless all over the theater, lips slightly parted, barely breathing. Franz turned her slowly in a liquid arabesque, her leg impossibly high, followed by pirouettes. Swanilda melted from one pose to another, her long silken legs forming a perfect line with her body, flesh made light and strong and elegant as the music itself.

Beside me, I felt Deborah’s despair.

3.

Caroline jumps. She jumps with her hind legs out straight, one in front and one in back. She runs in circles and jumps again. Dmitri catches her.

“No, no,” Mr. Privitera says. “Not like that. Promenade en couronne, attitude, arabesque efface. Now the lift. Dimitri, you are handling her like a sack of grain. Like this.”

Mr. Privitera picks up Caroline. My ears raise. But Mr. Privitera is safe. Mr. Privitera can touch Caroline. Dmitri can touch Caroline. Carlos can touch Caroline.

Dmitri says, “It’s the damn dog. How am I supposed to learn the part with him staring at me, ready to tear me from limb to limb? How the hell am I supposed to concentrate?”

John Cole sits next to me. John says, “Dmitri, there’s no chance Angel will attack you. His biochip is state-of-the-art programming. I told you. If you’re in his ‘safe’ directory, you’d have to actually attack Caroline yourself before Angel would act, unless Caroline told you otherwise. There’s no real danger to break your concentration.”

Dmitri says, “And what if I drop her accidentally? How do I know that won’t look like an attack to that dog?”

Caroline sits down. She looks at John. She looks at Dmitri. She does not look at me. She smiles.

John says, “A drop is not an attack. Unless Caroline screams — and we all know she never does, no matter what the injury — there’s no danger. Believe me.”

“I don’t,” Dmitri says.

Everybody stands quiet.

Mr. Privitera says, “Caroline, dear, let me drop you. Stand up. Ready — lift.”

Caroline smells surprised. She stands. Mr. Privitera picks up Caroline. She jumps a little. He picks her up over his head. She falls down hard. My ears raise. Caroline does not scream. She is not hurt. Mr. Privitera is safe. Caroline said Mr. Privitera is safe.

“See?” Mr. Privitera says. He breathes hard. “No danger. Positions, please. Promenade en couronne, attitude, arabesque efface, lift.”

Dmitri picks up Caroline. The music gets loud. John says in my ear, “Angel — did Caroline go away from her house last night?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Where did Caroline go?”

“Left four blocks, right one block. Caroline gave money.”

“The bakery,” John says. “Did she go away to any more places, or did she go home?”

“Caroline goes home last night.”

“Did anyone come to Caroline’s house last night?”

“No people come to Caroline’s house last night.”

“Thank you,” John says. He pats me. I feel happy.

Caroline looks at us. A woman ties a long cloth on Caroline’s waist. The woman gives Caroline a piece of wood. Yesterday I ask John what the wood is. Yesterday John says it is a fan. The music starts, faster. Caroline does not jump. Yesterday Caroline jumps with the fan.

“Caroline?” Mr. Privitera says. “Start here, dear.”

Caroline jumps. She still looks at John. He looks at me.

Some woman here smells of yogurt and a bitch collie in heat.

Caroline opens the bedroom door. She comes out. She wears jeans on her hind legs. She wears a hat on her head. It covers all her fur. She walks to the door. She says to me, “Stay, you old fleabag. You hear me? Stay!”

I walk to the door.

“Christ.” Caroline opens the door a little way. She pushes her body through the door. She closes the door. I push through the door hard with her.

“I said stay!” Caroline opens the door again. She pushes me. I do not go inside. Caroline goes inside. I follow Caroline.

“Take two,” Caroline says. She opens the door. She walks away. She goes back. She closes the door. She opens the door. She closes the door. She turns around. She goes through the door and closes it hard. She is very fast. I am inside alone.

“Gotcha, Fido!” Caroline says through the door.

I howl. I throw me against the door. I bark and howl. The light goes on in my head. I howl and howl.

Soon Caroline comes through the door. A man holds her arm. He smells of iron. He talks to a box.

“Subject elected to return to her apartment, sir, rather than have me accompany her to her destination. We’re in here now.”

Caroline grabs the box. “John, you shit, how dare you! You had the dog bio-wired! That’s an invasion of privacy, I’ll sue your ass off, I’ll quit the company, I’ll — ”

“Caroline,” John’s voice said. I look. There is no John smell. John is not here. Only John’s voice is here. “You have no legal grounds. This man is allowed to accompany you, according to the protection contract you signed. You signed it, my dear. As for quitting the City Ballet … That’s up to you. But while you dance for us, Angel goes where you do. If he gets too excited over not seeing you, the biosignal triggers. Just where were you going that you didn’t want Angel with you?”

“To turn tricks on street corners!” Caroline yells. “And I bet he has a homing device embedded in him, too, doesn’t he?”

She smells very angry. She is angry at me. I lie on the floor. I put my paws on my head. It is not happy here.

The man says, “Departing the apartment now, sir.” He leaves. He takes the small box.

Caroline sits on the floor. Her back is against the door. She looks at me. My paws are on my head. Caroline smells angry.

Nothing happens.

A little later Caroline says, “I guess it’s you and me, then. They set it up that way. I’m stuck with you.”

I do not move my paws. She still smells angry.

“All right, let’s try another approach. Disarm the enemy from within. Psychological sabotage. You don’t have any idea what I’m talking about, do you? What did they give you, a five-year-old’s IQ? Angel … ”

I look at Caroline. She says my right name.

“ … tell me about Sam’s cat.”

“What?”

“Sam’s cat. You said that first day you came home with me that you smelled a cat on Sam, the day doorman. Do you still smell it? Can you tell what kind of cat it is?”

I am confused. Caroline says nice words. Caroline smells angry. Her back is too straight. Her fur is wrong.

“Is it a male cat or a female cat? Can you tell that?”

“A female cat,” I say. I remember the cat smell. My muscles itch.

“Did you want to chase it?”

“I must never chase cats. I must protect Caroline.”

Caroline’s smell changes. She leans close to my ear.

“But did you want to chase it, Angel? Did you want to get to behave like a dog?”

“I want to protect Caroline.”

“Hoo boy. They did a job on you, didn’t they, boy?”

The words are too hard. Caroline still smells a little angry. I do not understand.

“It’s nothing compared to what they’re doing in South America and Europe,” she says. Her body shakes.

“Are you hurt?” I say.

Caroline puts a hand on my back. The hand is very soft. She says no words.

I am happy. Caroline talks to me. She tells me about dancing. Caroline is a dancer. She jumps and runs in circles. She stands high on her hind legs. People come in cars to watch her. The people are happy when Caroline dances.

We walk outside. I protect Caroline. We go many places. Caroline gives me cake and hot dogs. There are many smells. Sometimes Caroline and I follow the smells. We see many dogs and many cats. The man with the small box comes with us sometimes. John says the man is safe.

“What if I tell Angel you’re not ‘safe’?” Caroline says to the man. He follows us on a long walk. “What if I order him to tear you limb to limb?” She smells angry again.

“You don’t have programming override capacity. The biochip augmenting his bioenhancement is very specific, Ms. Olson. I’m hardwired in.”

“I’ll bet,” Caroline says. “Did anybody ask Angel if he wants this life?”

The man smiles.

We go to Lincoln Center every day. Caroline dances there. She dances in the day. She dances at night. More people watch at night.

John asks me where Caroline and I go. Every day I tell him.

Nobody tries to touch Caroline. I protect her.

“I can’t do it,” Caroline tells a man on the street corner. The man stands very close to Caroline. I growl soft. “For God’s sake, Stan, don’t touch me. The dog. And I’m probably being watched.”

“Do they care that much?”

“I could blow the whistle on the whole unofficial charade,” Caroline says. She smells tired. “No matter what Privitera’s delusions are. But then we’d lose our chance, wouldn’t we?”

“Thanks for the time,” the man says, loud. He smiles. He walks away.

Later John says, “Who did Caroline talk to?”

“A man,” I say. “He wants the time.”

Later Caroline says, “Angel, we’re going tonight to see my mother.”

4.

Demonstrators dyed the fountain at Lincoln Center blood red.

They marched around the gruesome jets of water, shouting and resisting arrest. I sprinted across the plaza, trying to get there to see which side they were on before the police carted all of them away. Even from this distance I could tell they weren’t dancers, not with those thick bodies. The electronic placards dissolved from HOW MANY MUST DIE FROM DENYING EVOLUTION! to FREE MEDICAL RESEARCH FROM GOVERNMENT STRAIGHTJACKETS! to MY BODY BELONGS TO ME! Pro-human bioenhancement, then. A holograph projector, which a cop was shutting down, spewed out a ten-foot high holo of Jane and June Welsh, Siamese twins who had been successfully separated only after German scientists had bioenhanced their bodies to force alterations in major organs. The holo loop showed the attached twins dragging each other around, followed by the successfully separated twins waving gaily. The cop did something and Jane and June disappeared.

“They died,” I said to a demonstrator, a slim boy wearing a FREE MY BODY! button. “Ultimately, neither of their hearts could stand the stress of bioenhancement.”

He glared at me. “That was their risk to take, wasn’t it?”

“Their combined IQ didn’t equal your weight. How could they evaluate risk?”

“This is a revolution, lady. In any revolution you have casualties that — ” A cop grabbed his arm. The boy took a wild swing at him and the cop pressed his nerve gun to the boy’s neck. He dropped peacefully, smiling.

Abruptly more people gathered, some of them wilier than the boy. Demonstrators stood with their hands on their heads, singing slogans. Media robocams zoomed in from the sky; the live crews would be here in minutes. A group of counter-demonstrators formed across the plaza, in front of the Met. I backed away slowly, hands on my head, not singing — and stopped abruptly halfway across the chaotic plaza.

An old woman in a powerchair was watching the demonstration with the most intense expression I had ever seen. It was as if she were watching a horrifying execution, judging it judiciously as art. Bodyguards flanked the chair. She wore an expensive, pale blue suit and large, perfectly-matched pearls. Her wrinkled, cold face was completely familiar. This was how Caroline Olson would look in forty years, if she refused all cosmetic treatment.

She caught me watching her. Her expression didn’t change. It passed over me as if I didn’t exist.

I took the chance. “Ms. Olson?”

She didn’t deny the name. “Yes?”

“I’m a reporter with New York Now, doing an article on the New York City Ballet. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter Caroline, if that’s all right.”

“I never give interviews.”

“Yes, ma’am. Just a few informal questions — you must be so proud of Caroline. But are you worried about her safety in light of the recent so-called ballerina murders?”

She shocked me. She smiled. “No, not at all.”

“You’re not?”

She gazed at the break-up of the demonstration. “Do you know the work on dancers’ bodies they’re doing in Berlin?”

“No, I — ”

“Then you have no business interviewing anyone on the subject.” She watched the last of the demonstrators being dragged away by the cops. “The New York City ballet is finished. The future of the art lies with bioenhancement.”

I must have looked like a fish, staring at her with my mouth working. “But Caroline is the prima ballerina, she’s only twenty-six — ”

“Caroline had a good run. For a dancer.” She made a signal, an imperious movement of her hand, and one of the bodyguards turned her chair and wheeled it away.

I trotted after it. “But, Ms. Olson, are you saying you think your daughter and her whole company should be replaced by bioenhanced dancers because they can achieve higher lifts, fewer injuries, more spectacular turn out — ”

“I never give interviews,” she said, and the other bodyguard moved between us.

I gazed after her. She had spoken about Caroline as if her daughter were an obsolete Buick. It took me a moment to remember to pull out a notebook and tell it what she had said.

Someone dumped something into the fountain. Immediately the red disappeared and the water spouted clear once more. A bioenhanced dog trotted over and lapped at the water, the dog’s owner patiently holding the leash while his pink-furred, huge-eyed poodle drank its fill.

After an hour at a library terminal at New York Now, I knew that Anna Olson was a major contributor to the American Ballet Theater but not to the New York City Ballet, where her daughter had chosen to dance. Caroline’s father was dead. He had left his widow an East Side mansion, three Renoirs, and a fortune invested in Peruvian sugar, Japanese weather-control equipment, and German pharmaceuticals. According to Ballet News, mother and daughter were estranged. To find out more than that, I’d need professional help.

Michael didn’t want to do it. “There’s no money for that kind of research, Susan. Not to even mention the ethics involved.”

“Oh, come on, Michael. It’s no worse than using criminal informers for any other story.”

“This isn’t your old newspaper job, Susie. We’re a feature magazine, remember? We don’t use informants, and we don’t do investigative reporting.” He leaned against his desk, his peeled-egg face troubled.

“The magazine doesn’t have to do any investigating at all. Just give me the number. I know you know it. If I’d been doing the job I should have for the last two years instead of sulking because I hate New York, I’d know it, too. Just the number, Michael. That’s all. Neither you nor the magazine will even be mentioned.”

He ran his hand through his hair. For the first time, I noticed that it was thinning. “All right. But Susan — don’t get obsessed. For your own sake.” He looked at the picture of his daughter doing time in Rock Mountain.

I called the Robin Hood and arranged to see him. He was young — they all are — maybe as young as twenty, operating out of a dingy apartment in Tribecca. I couldn’t judge his equipment: beyong basic literacy, computers are as alien to me as dancers. Like dancers, they concentrate on one aspect of the world, dismissing the rest.

The Robin Hood furnished the usual proofs that he could tap into private databanks, that he could access government records, and that his translation programs could handle international airline d-bases. He promised a two-day turn around. The price was astronomical by my standards, although probably negligible by his. I transferred the credits from my savings account, emptying it.

I said, “You do know that the original Robin Hood transferred goods for free?”

He said, not missing a beat, “The original Robin Hood didn’t have to pay for a Seidman-Nuwer encrypter.”

I really hadn’t expected him to know who the original Robin Hood was.

When I got home, Deborah had fallen asleep across her bed, still dressed in practice clothes. The toes of her tights were bloody. A new pair of toe shoes were shoved between the bedroom door and the door jamb; she softened the stiff boxes by slamming the door on them. There were three E-mail messages for her from SAB, but I erased them all. I covered her, closed her door, and let her sleep.

I met with the Robin Hood two days later. He handed me a sheaf of hardcopy. “The City Ballet injury records show two injuries for Caroline Olson in the last four years, which is as far back as the files are kept. One shin splint, one pulled ligament. Of course, if she had other injuries and saw a private doctor, that wouldn’t show up on their records, but if she did see one it wasn’t anybody on the City Ballet Recommended Physician List. I checked that.”

“Two injuries? In four years?”

“That’s what the record shows. These here are four-year records of City Ballet bioscans. All negative. Nobody shows any bioenhancement, not even Jennifer Lang. These are the City Ballet attendance figures over ten years, broken down by subscription and single-event tickets.”

I was startled; the drop in attendance over the last two years was more dramatic than the press had ever indicated.

“This one is Mrs. Anna Olson’s tax return for last year. All that income — all of it — is from investments and interests, and none of it is tied up in trusts or entails. She controls it all, and she can waste the whole thing if she wants to. You asked about unusual liquidation of stock in the last ten years: There wasn’t any. There’s no trust fund for Caroline Olson. This is Caroline’s tax return — only her salary with City Ballet, plus guest appearance fees. Hefty, but nothing like what the old lady controls.

“This last is the air flight stuff you wanted: No flights on major commercial airlines out of the country for Caroline in the last six years, except when the City Ballet did its three international tours, and then Caroline flew pretty much with everybody else in the group. Of course if she did go to Rio or Copenhagen or Berlin, she could have gone by chartered plane or private jet. My guess is private jet. Those aren’t required to file passenger lists.”

It wasn’t what I’d hoped to find. Or rather, it was half of what I’d hoped. No dancer is injured that seldom. It just doesn’t happen. I pictured Caroline Olson’s amazing extension, her breathtaking leaps; she reached almost the height expected of male superstars. And her crippled horror of a mother had huge amounts of money. “Caroline had a good run.”

I would bet my few remaining dollars that Caroline Olson was bioenhanced, no matter what her bioscans said. Jennifer Lang’s had been negative, too. Apparently the DNA hackers were staying one step ahead of the DNA security checkers. Although it was odd that the records didn’t show a single dancer trying to get away with bioenhancement, not even once, even in the face of Privitera’s fervency. There are always some people who value their own career advancement over the received faith.

But I had assumed that Caroline would have needed to leave the country. Bioenhancement labs are large, full of sensitive and costly and nonportable equipment, and dozens of technicians. Not easy to hide. Police investigators had traced both Jennifer Lang and Nicole Heyer to Danish labs. I didn’t think one could exist illegally in New York.

Maybe I was wrong.

The Robin Hood watched me keenly. In the morning light from the window he looked no older than Deborah. He had thick brown hair, nice shoulders. I wondered if he had a life outside his lab. So many of them didn’t.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Susan — ”

“What?”

He hesitated. “I don’t know what you’re after with this data. But I’ve worked with friends of Michael’s before. If you’re thinking about trying to leverage anything to do with human bioenhancement … ”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t.” He looked intently at his console. “That’s out of both our leagues. Magazine reporters are very small against the kind of high-stakes shit those guys are into.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said. And then, on impulse, “Would you by any chance like a home-cooked meal? I have a daughter about your age, seventeen, she’s a dancer … ”

He stared at me in disbelief. He shook his head. “You’re a client, Susan. And anyway, I’m twenty-six. And I’m married.” He shook his head again. “And if you don’t know enough not to ask a Robin Hood to dinner, you really don’t know enough to mess around with bioenhancement. That stuff’s life or death.”

Life or death. Enough for a bioenhancement corporation to murder two dancers?

But I rejected that idea. It was always too easy to label the corporations the automatic bad guys. That was the stuff of cheap holovids. Most corporate types I knew just tried to keep ahead of the IRS.

I said, “Most life-and-death stuff originates at home.”

I could feel him shaking his head as I left, but I didn’t turn around.

5.

Caroline and I ride in a taxi. It is late at night. We ride across the park. Then we ride more. Caroline says words to a gate. A man opens the door to a very big house. He smells surprised. He wears pajamas. “Miss Caroline!”

“Hello, Seacomb. Is my mother in?”

“She’s asleep, of course. If there’s an emergency — ”

“No emergency. But my apartment pipes sprung a leak and I’ll be spending the night here. This is my dog, Angel. Angel, Seacomb is safe.”

“Of course, Miss,” Seacomb says. He smells very unhappy. “It’s just — ”

“Just that you have orders not to let me use this house?”

“No, Miss,” the man says. “My orders are to let you use the house as you choose. Only — ”

“Of course they are,” Caroline says. “My mother wants me to grovel back here. She’s been panting for that. Well, here I am. Only she’s taken a sleeping pill and is out cold until morning, right?”

“Yes, Miss,” the man says. He smells very unhappy. There are no cats or dogs in this place, but there are mice. The mice droppings smell interesting.

“I’ll sleep in the downstairs study. And, oh, Seacomb, I’m expecting guests. Please disable the electric gate. They’ll use the back entrance, and I’ll let them in myself. You needn’t take any trouble about it.”

“It’s no trouble to — ”

“I said I’ll let them in myself.”

“Yes, Miss,” Seacomb says. He smells very very unhappy.

He leaves. Caroline and I go down stairs. Caroline drinks. She gives me water. I smell a mouse in a cupboard. My ears raise. There are interesting things here.

“Well, Angel, here we are at my mother’s house. Do you remember your mother, boy?”

“No,” I say. I am confused. The words are a little hard.

“There are some people coming for a party. Some dancers. Kristine Meyers is coming. You remember Kristine Meyers?”

“Yes,” I say. Kristine Meyers dances with Caroline. They run in circles and jump high. Caroline jumps higher.

“We’re going to talk about dancing, Angel. This is a prettier house than mine to talk about dancing. This is a good house for a party, which is what we’re going to have. My mother lets me use her house for parties. Remember that, boy.”

Later Caroline opens the door. Some people stand there. We go into the basement. Kristine Meyers is there. She smells frightened. Some men are with her. They carry papers. They talk a long time.

“Here, Angel, have a pretzel,” a man says. “It’s a party.”

Some people dance to a radio. Kristine smells angry and confused. Her fur stands up. Caroline says words to her. The words are hard. The words are long. I have a pretzel. Nobody touches Caroline.

We are there all night. Kristine cries.

“Her boyfriend is gone,” Caroline says to me.

In early morning we go home. We go in a taxi. Somebody is sick in the taxi yesterday. It smells bad. Caroline sleeps. I sleep. Caroline does not go to class.

In the afternoon we go to Lincoln Center. Kristine is there. She sleeps on a couch in the lounge. Caroline dances with Dmitri.

John Cole bends close to my ear. “You went out with Caroline all last night.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Where did you go?”

“We go to Caroline’s mother’s house. We go to a party. Caroline’s mother lets Caroline use her house for parties.”

“Who was at this party?”

“Dancers. Kristine is at the party. Kristine is safe.”

John looks at Kristine. She still sleeps on the couch.

“Who else was at the party? What did they do?”

I remember hard. “Dancers are at the party. We eat pretzels. We talk about dancing. People dance to the radio. Nobody touches Caroline. There is music.”

John’s body relaxes. “Good,” he says. “Okay.”

“I like pretzels,” I say. But John does not give me a pretzel today.

Caroline and I walk in the park. There are many good smells. Caroline sits under a tree. The long fur on her head falls down. She pats my head. She gives me a cookie.

“It’s easy for you, isn’t it, Angel?” Caroline says.

I say, “The words are hard.”

“You like being a dog? A bioenhanced servant dog?”

“The words are hard.”

“Are you happy, Angel?”

“I am happy. I love Caroline.”

She pats my head again. The sun is warm. The smells are good. I close my eyes.

“I love to dance,” Caroline says. “And I hate that I love it.”

I open my eyes. Caroline smells unhappy.

“Goddamn it, I love it anyway. I do. Even though it wasn’t my choice. You didn’t choose what you are, either, did you, Angel? They goddamn made you what they needed you to be. Yet you love it. And for you there’s no account due.”

The words are too hard. I put my nose into Caroline’s front legs. She puts her front legs around me. She holds me tight.

“It’s not fair,” Caroline whispers into my fur.

Caroline does not hold me yesterday. She holds me today. I am happy. But Caroline smells unhappy.

Where is my happy if Caroline smells unhappy?

I do not understand.

6.

Deborah didn’t get cast in Nutcracker. An SAB teacher told her she might want to consider auditioning for one of the regional companies rather than City Ballet — a death sentence, from her point of view. She told me this quietly, without histrionics, sitting cross-legged on the floor sewing ribbons onto a pair of toe shoes. Not wanting to say the wrong thing, I said nothing, contenting myself with touching her hair, coiled at the nape of her neck into the ballerina bun. Two days later she told me she was dropping out of high school.

“I need the time to dance,” she said. “You just don’t understand, Mom.”

The worst thing I could do was let her make me into the enemy. “I do understand, honey. But there will be lots of time to dance after you finish school. And if you don’t — ”

“Finishing is a year away! I can’t afford the time. I have to take more classes, work harder, get asked into the company. This year. I’m sorry, Mom, but I just can’t waste my time on all that useless junk in school.”

I locked my hands firmly on my lap. “Well, let’s look at this reasonably. Suppose after all you do get asked to join the company — ”

“I will be asked! I’ll work so hard they’ll have to ask me!”

“All right. Then you dance with them until, say, you’re thirty-five. At thirty-five you have over half your life left. You saw what happened to Carla Cameri and Maura Jones.” Carla’s hip had disintegrated; Maura’s Achilles tendon had forced her into retirement at thirty-two. Both of them worked in a clothing store, for pitifully small salaries. Dancers didn’t get pensions unless they’d been with the same company for ten years, a rarity in the volatile world of artistic directors with absolute power, who often fired dancers because they were remaking a company into a different “look.”

I pressed my point. “What will you do at thirty or thirty-five with your body debilitated and without even a high school education?”

“I’ll teach. I’ll coach. I’ll go back to school. Oh, Mom, how do I know? That’s decades away! I have to think about what I need to do for my career now!”

No mother love is luminous enough to make a sixteen-year-old see herself at thirty-five.

I said, “No, Deborah. You can’t quit school. I’d have to sign for you, and I won’t.”

“Daddy already did.”

We looked at each other. It was too late; she’d already made me into the enemy. Because she needed one.

She said, in a sudden burst of passion, “You don’t understand! You never felt about your job the way I feel about ballet! You never loved anything enough to give up everything else for it!” She rushed to her room and slammed the door. I put my head in my hands.

After a while, I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. Never loved anything enough to give up everything else for it.

Right.

Pers wasn’t available to yell at. I phoned six times. I left messages on E-mail, even though I had no idea whether he had a terminal. I made the trip out of the protected zone to his apartment. The area was worse than I remembered: glass, broken machinery, shit, drug paraphernalia. The cab driver was clearly eager to leave, but I made him wait while I questioned a kid who came out of Pers’s building. The boy, about eight, had a long pus-encrusted cut down one cheek.

“Do you know when Pers Anders usually comes home? He lives in 2C.”

The kid stared at me, expressionless. The cab driver leaned out and said, “One more minute and I’m leaving, lady.”

I pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and held it close to me. “When does Pers Anders usually come home?”

“He moved.”

“Moved?”

“Left his stuff. He say he go someplace better than this shithole. I hear him say it. Don’t you try to prong me, lady. You give me that money.”

“Do you know the address?”

He greeted this with the scorn it deserved. I gave him the money.

Deborah left school and started spending all day and much of the night at Lincoln Center. Finally I walked over to SAB and caught her just before a partnering class. She had twisted a bright scarf around her waist, over her leotard, and her sweaty hair curled in tendrils where it had escaped her bun.

“Deborah, why didn’t you tell me your father had moved?”

She looked wary, wiping her face with a towel to gain time. “I didn’t think you’d care. You hate him.”

“As long as you still visit him, I need to know where he is.”

She considered this. Finally she gave me the address. It was a good one, in the new luxury condos where the old main library had been.

“How can Pers afford that?”

“He didn’t say. Maybe he’s got a job. Mom, I have class.”

“Pers is allergic to jobs.”

“Mom, Mr. Privitera is teaching this class himself!”

I didn’t stay to watch class. On the way out, I passed Privitera, humming to himself on his way to elate or cast down his temple virgins.

The police had released no new information on the ballerina murders.

I turned in the article on the New York City Ballet. It seemed to me neither good nor bad; everything important about the subject didn’t fit the magazine’s focus. There weren’t too many metaphors. Michael read it without comment. I worked on an article about computerized gambling, and another about holographic TV. I voted in the Presidential election. I bought Christmas presents.

But every free minute, all autumn and early winter, I spent at the magazine library terminals, reading about human bioenhancement, trying to guess what Caroline Olson was having done to herself. What might someday lie in Deborah’s future, if she were as big a fool then as she was being now.

“Don’t get obsessed,” Michael had said.

The literature was hard to interpret. I wasn’t trained in biology, and as far as I could see, the cutting-edge research was chaotic, with various discoveries being reported one month, contradicted the next. All the experiments were carried out in other countries, which meant they were reported in other languages, and I didn’t know how far to trust the biases of the translators. Most of them seemed to be other scientists in the same field. This whole field seemed to me like a canoe rushing toward the falls: nobody in charge, both oars gone, control impossible.

I read about splendid, “revolutionary” advances in biological nanotechnology that always seemed under development, or not quite practical yet, or hotly disputed by people practicing other kinds of revolutionary advances. I read about genesplicing retroviruses and setting them loose in human organs to accomplish potentially wonderful things. Elimination of disease. Perfect metabolic functioning. Immortality. The studies were always concerned with one small, esoteric facet of scientific work, but the “Conclusions” sections were often grandiose, speculating wildly.

I even picked up hints of experimental work on altering genetic makeup in vitro, instead of trying to reshape adult bodies. Some scientists seemed to think this might actually be easier to accomplish. But nowhere in the world was it legal to experiment on an embryo not destined for abortion, an embryo that would go on to become a human being stuck with the results of arbitrary and untested messing around with his basic cellular blueprints. Babies were not tinker toys — or dogs. The Copenhagen Accord, signed twenty-seven years by most technologically civilized countries, had seen to that. The articles on genetic modification in vitro were carefully speculative.

But then so was nearly everything else I read. The proof was walking around in inaccessible foreign hospitals, or living anonymously in inaccessible foreign cities — the anonymity of the experimental subjects seemed to be a given, which also made me wonder how many of them were experimental casualties. And if so, of what kind.

Michael wasn’t going to want any article built on this tentative speculation. Lawsuits would loom. But I was beyond caring what Michael wanted.

I learned that the Fifth International Conference on Human Bioenhancement was going to be held in Paris in late April. After paying the Robin Hood, I had no money left for a trip to Paris. Michael would have to pay for it. I would have to give him a reason.

One night in January I did a stupid thing. I went alone to Lincoln Center and waited by the stage door of the New York State Theater. Caroline Olson came out at 11:30, dressed in jeans and parka, accompanied only by a huge black Doberman on the most nominal of leashes. They walked south on Broadway, to an all-night restaurant. I sat myself at the next table.

For the last few months, her reviews had not been good. “A puzzling and disappointing degeneration,” said The New Yorker. “Technical sloppiness not associated with either Olson or Privitera,” said Dance Magazine. “This girl is in trouble, and Anton Privitera had better find out what kind of trouble and move to correct it,” said the Times On-Line.

Caroline ate abstractly, feeding bits to the dog, oblivious to the frowns of a fastidious waiter who was undoubtedly an out-of-work actor. Up close, the illusion of power and beauty I remembered from Coppelia evaporated. She looked like just another mildly pretty, self-absorbed, overly thin young woman. Except for the dog, the waiter/actor didn’t give her a second glance.

“We go now?” the dog said.

I choked on my sandwich. Caroline glanced at me absently. “Soon, Angel.”

She went on eating. I left, waited for her, and followed her home. She and the dog lived on Central Park South, a luxury building where the late-night electronic surveillance system greeted them both by name.

I took a cab home. Deborah had never mentioned that the City Ballet prima ballerina was protected by a bioenhanced Doberman. She knew I’d written the story about the ballerina murders. Anton Privitera hadn’t mentioned it, either, in his press conference about dancer safety. I wondered why not. While I was parceling out wonder, I devoted some to the question of City Ballet’s infrequent, superficial, and always-positive bioscans. Shouldn’t a company devoted to the religion of “natural art” be more zealous about ferreting out heretics?

Unless, of course, somebody didn’t really want to know.

Privitera? But that was hard to reconcile with his blazing, intolerant sincerity.

It occurred to me that I had never seen an admittedly bioenhanced dancer perform. Until tonight, I’d gone to finished performances rarely and only with Deborah, who of course scorned such perverts and believed that they had nothing to teach her.

She was out when I got back to our apartment. Each week, it seemed, she was gone more. I fell asleep, waiting for her to come home.

7.

Snow falls. It is cold. Caroline and I walk to Lincoln Center. A man takes Caroline’s purse. He runs. Caroline says “Shit!” Then she says, “Angel? Go stop him!” She drops my leash.

I run and jump on the man. He screams. I do not hurt him. Caroline says stop him. She does not say attack him. So I stand on the man’s chest and growl and nip at his foreleg. He brings out a knife. Then I bite him. He drops the knife and screams again. The police come.

“Holy shit,” Caroline says to me. “You really do that. You really do.”

“I protect Caroline,” I say.

Caroline talks to police. Caroline talks to reporters. I get a steak to eat.

I am happy.

The snow goes away. The snow is there many many days, but it goes away. We visit Caroline’s mother’s house for two more parties in the basement. It gets warm in the park. Ducks live in the water again. Flowers grow. Caroline says not to dig up flowers.

I lie backstage. Caroline dances on stage. John and Mr. Privitera stand beside me. They smell unhappy. John’s shoes smell of tar and food and leaves and cats and other good things. I sniff John’s shoes.

“She looks exhausted,” John says. “She’s giving it everything she’s got, but it’s just not there, Anton.”

Mr. Privitera says no words. He watches Caroline dance.

“William Scholes attacked again in the Times. He said that watching her had become painful — ‘like watching a reed grown stiff and brittle.’”

“I will talk to her again,” Mr. Privitera says.

“Scholes called the performance ‘a travesty,’” John says.

Caroline comes backstage. She limps. She wipes her face with a towel. She smells afraid.

“Dear, I’d like to see you,” Mr. Privitera says.

We go to Caroline’s dressing room. Caroline sits down. She trembles. Her body smells sick. I growl. Caroline puts a hand on my head.

Mr. Privitera says, “First of all, dear, I have good news for all of us. The police have caught that unspeakable murderer who killed Jennifer Lang and the ABT dancer.”

Caroline sits up a little straighter. Her smell changes. “They did! How?”

“They caught him breaking into the Plaza Hotel room where Marie D’Arbois is staying while she guests with ABT.”

“Is Marie — ”

“She’s fine. She wasn’t alone, she had a lover or something with her. The madman just got careless. The police are holding back the details. Marie, of course, is another of those bioenhanced dancers. I don’t know if you ever saw her dance.”

“I did,” Caroline says. “I thought she was wonderful.”

Caroline and Mr. Privitera look hard at each other. They smell ready to attack. But they do not attack. I am confused. Mr. Privitera is safe. He may touch Caroline.

Mr. Privitera says, “We must all be grateful to the police. Now there’s something else I need to discuss with you, dear.”

Caroline closes her hand on my fur. She says, “Yes?”

“I want you to take a good long rest, dear. You know your dancing has deteriorated. You tell me you’re not doing drugs or working sketchily, and I believe you. Sometimes it helps a dancer to take a rest from performing. Take class, eat right, get strong. In the fall we’ll see.”

“You’re telling me you’re cutting me from the summer season at Saratoga.”

“Yes, dear.”

Caroline is quiet. Then she says, “There’s nothing wrong with me. My timing has just been a little off, that’s all.”

“Then take the summer to work on your timing. And everything else.”

Mr. Privitera and Caroline look hard at each other again. Caroline’s hand still pulls my fur. It hurts a little. I do not move.

Mr. Privitera leans close to Caroline. “Listen, dear. Jewels was one of your best roles. But tonight … And not just Jewels. You wobbled and wavered through Starscape. Your Nikiya in the “Shades” section of La Bayadere was … embarrassing. There is no other word. You danced as if you had never learned the steps. And you couldn’t even complete the Don Quixote pas de deux at the gala.”

“I fell! Dancers get injured all the time! My injury rate compared to — ”

“You’ve miss rehearsals and even performances,” Mr. Privitera said. He stands up. “I’m sorry, dear. Take the summer. Rest. Work. In the fall, we’ll see.”

Caroline says, “What about the last two weeks of the season?”

Mr. Privitera says, “I’m sorry, dear.”

He walks to the door. He puts his hand on the door. He says, “Oh, at least you won’t have to be burdened with that dog anymore. Now that the madman’s been caught, I’ll have John notify the protection agency to come pick it up.”

Caroline raises her head. Her fur all stands up. She smells angry. Soon she runs out the door. Mr. Privitera is gone. She runs to the offices. “John! John, you bastard!”

The office hall is dark. The doors do not open. John is not here.

Caroline runs up steps to the offices. She falls. She falls down some of the steps and hits the wall. She lies on the floor. She holds her hind foot and smells hurt.

“Angel,” she says. “Go get somebody to help me.”

I go to the lounge. One dancer is there. She says, “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t know that anybody — Angel?”

“Caroline is hurt,” I say. “Come. Come fast.”

She comes. Caroline says, “Who are you? No, wait — Deborah, right? From the corps?”

“No, I’m not … I haven’t been invited to join the corps yet. I’m a student at SAB. I’m just here a lot … Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

“Help me up,” Caroline says. “Angel, Deborah is safe.”

Deborah tries to pick up Caroline. Caroline makes a little noise. She cannot stand. Deborah gets John. He picks up Caroline.

“It’s nothing,” she says. “No doctor. Just get me a cab … dammit, John, don’t fuss, it’s nothing!” She looks at John hard. “You want to take Angel away from me.”

John smells surprised. He says, “Who told you that?”

“His Majesty himself. But now you’ve decided whatever you thought I was doing so privately doesn’t matter any more, is that right?”

“It’s a mistake. Of course you can keep the dog. Anton doesn’t understand,” John says. He smells angry.

“No, I’ll just bet he doesn’t,” Caroline says. “You might have picked a kinder way to tell me I’m through at City Ballet.”

“You’re not through, Caroline,” John says. Now he smells bad. His words are not right. He smells like the man who takes Caroline’s purse.

“Right,” Caroline says. She sits in the cab.

Deborah steps back. She smells surprised.

“I’m keeping the dog,” Caroline says. “So we’re in agreement, aren’t we, John? Come on, Angel. Let’s go home.”

We go to class. Caroline cannot dance. She tries and then stops. She sits in a corner. Mr. Privitera sits in another corner. Caroline watches Deborah. The dancers raise one hind leg. They spin and jump.

Madame holds up her hand. The music stops. “Deborah, let us see that again, s’il vous plais. Alone.”

The other dancers move away. They look at each other. They smell surprised. The music starts again and Deborah raises one hind leg very high. She spins and jumps.

Mr. Privitera says, “Let me see the bolero from Coppelia. Madame says you know it.”

“Y-yes,” Deborah says. She dances alone.

“Very nice, dear,” Mr. Privitera says. “You are much improved.”

The other dancers look at each other again.

Everybody dances.

Caroline watches Deborah hard.

8.

Deborah’s face looked like every Christmas morning in the entire world. She grabbed both my hands. “They invited me to join the company!”

My suitcase lay open on the bed, surrounded by discarded clothes I wasn’t taking to the bioenhancement conference in Paris. My daughter picked up a pile of spidersilk blouses and hurled them into the air. In the soft April air from the open window the filmy, artificial material drifted and danced. “I can’t believe it! They asked me to join the company! I’m in!”

She whirled around the tiny room, rising on toe in her street shoes, laughing and exclaiming. My silence went unnoticed. Deborah did an arabesque to the bedpost, then plopped herself down on my best dress. “Don’t you want to know what happened, Mom?”

“What happened, Deborah?”

“Well, Mr. Privitera came to watch class, and Madame asked me to repeat the variation alone. God, I thought I’d die. Then Mr. Privitera — not Madame — asked me to do the bolero from Coppelia. For an awful minute I couldn’t remember a single step. Then I did, and he said it was very nice! He said I was much improved!”

Accolades from the king. But even in my numbness I could see there was something she wasn’t telling me.

“I thought you told me the company doesn’t choose any new dancers this close to the end of the season?”

She sobered immediately. “Not usually. But Caroline Olson was fired. She missed rehearsals and performances, and she wasn’t even taking the trouble to prepare her roles. Her reviews have been awful.”

“I saw them,” I said.

Deborah looked at me sharply. “Ego, I guess. Caroline’s always been sort of a bitch. So apparently they’re not letting her go to Saratoga, because Tina Patrochov and a guest artist are dividing her roles, and Mr. Privitera told Jill Kerrigan to learn Tina’s solo from Sleeping Beauty. So that left a place in the corps de ballet, and they chose me!”

I had had enough time to bring myself to say it.

“Congratulations, sweetheart.”

“When does your plane for Paris leave?”

This non-sequitur — if it was that — turned me back to my packing. “Seven tonight.”

“And you’ll be gone ten days. You’ll have a great time in Paris. Maybe the next time the company goes on tour, I’ll go with them!”

She whirled out of the room.

I sat at the end of the bed, holding onto the bedpost. When Deborah was three, she’d wanted a ride on a camel. Somehow it had become an obsession. She talked about camels in daycare, at dinnertime, at bedtime. She drew pictures of camels, misshapen things with one huge hump. Camels were in short supply in St. Louis. Ignore it, everyone said, kids forget these things, she’ll get over it. Deborah never forgot. She didn’t get over it. Pers had just left us, and I was consumed with the anxiety of a single parent. Finally I paid a friend to tie a large wad of hay under a blanket on his very old, very swaybacked horse. A Peruvian camel, I told my three-year-old. A very special kind. You can have a ride.

“That’s not a camel,” Deborah had said, with nostril-lifted disdain. “That’s a heffalunt!”

I read last week in World that the animal-biotech scientists have built a camel with the flexible trunk of an elephant. The trunk can lift up to forty-five pounds. It was expected to be a useful beast of burden in the Sahara.

I finished packing for Paris.

Paris in April was an unending gray drizzle. The book and software stalls along the Seine kept up their electronic weather shields, giving them the hazy, streaming-gutter look of abandoned outhouses. The gargoyles on Notre Dame looked insubstantial in the rain, irrelevant in the face of camels with trunks. The French, as usual, conspired to make Americans — especially Americans who speak only rudimentary French — feel crass and barbaric. My clothes were wrong. My desire for a large breakfast was wrong. The Fifth International Conference on Human Bioenhancement had lost my press credentials.

The conference was held in one of the huge new hotels in Neuilly, near the Eurodisney Gene Zoo. I couldn’t decide if this was an attempt to provide entertainment or irony. Three hundred scientists and doctors, a hundred press, and at least that many industrial representatives, plus groupies, thronged the hotel. The scientists presented papers; the industrial reps, mostly from biotech or pharmaceutical firms, presented “infoforums.” The moment I walked in, carrying provisional credentials, I felt the tension, a peculiar kind of tension instantly recognizable to reporters. Something big was going on. Big and unpleasant.

From the press talk in the bar I learned that the presentation to not miss was Thursday night by Dr. Gerard Taillebois of the Pasteur Research Institute, in conjunction with Dr. Greta Erbland of Steckel und Osterhoff. This pairing of a major research facility with a commercial biotech firm was common in Europe. Sometimes the addition of a hospital made it a triumvirate. A hand-written addendum on the program showed that the presentation had been moved from the Napoleon Room to the Grand Ballroom. I checked out the room; it was approximately the size of an airplane hangar. Hotel employees were setting up acres of chairs.

I asked a garcon to point out Dr. Taillebois to me. He was a tall, bald man in his sixties or seventies who looked like he hadn’t slept or eaten in days.

Wednesday night I went to the Paris Opera Ballet. The wet pavement in front of the Opera House gleamed like black patent leather. Patrons dripped jewels and fur. This gala was why Michael had funded my trip; my first ballet article for New York Now had proved popular, despite its vapidity. Or maybe because of it. Tonight the famous French company was dancing an eclectic program, with guest artists from the Royal Ballet and the Kirov. Michael wanted 5,000 words on the oldest ballet company in the world.

I watched bioenhanced British dancers perform the wedding pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty, with its famous fishdives; Danish soloists in twentieth-century dances by Georges Balanchine; French ballerinas in contemporary works by their brilliant choreographer Louis Dufort. All of them were breathtaking. In the new ballets, especially choreographed for these bioenhanced bodies, the dancers executed sustained movements no natural body would have been capable of making at all, at a speed that never looked machine-like. Instead the dancers were flashes of light: lasers, optic signals, nerve impulses surging and across the stage and triggering pleasure centers in the brains of the delighted audience.

I gaped at one pas de trois in which the male dancer lifted two women at once, holding them aloft in swallow lifts over his head, one on each palm, then turning them slowly for a full ninety seconds. It wasn’t a bench-pressing stunt. It was the culmination of a yearning, lyrical dance, as tender as any in the great nineteenth-century ballets. The female dancers were lowered slowly to the floor, and they both flowed through a fouette of adage as if they hadn’t any bones.

Not one dancer had been replaced in the evening’s program due to injury. I tried to remember the last time I’d seen a performance of the New York City Ballet without a last-minute substitution.

During intermission, profoundly depressed, I bought a glass of wine in the lobby. The eddying crowd receded for a moment, and I was face to face with Anna Olson, seated regally in her powerchair and flanked by her bodyguards. Holding tight to her hand was a little girl of five or six, dressed in a pink party dress and pink tights, with wide blue eyes, black hair, and a long slim neck. She might have been Caroline Olson fifteen years ago.

“Ms. Olson,” I said.

She looked at me coldly, without recognition.

“I’m Susan Matthews. We met at the private reception for Anton Privitera at Georgette Allen’s,” I lied.

“Yes?” she said, but her eyes raked me. My dress wasn’t the sort that turned up at the private fundraisers of New York billionaires. I didn’t give her a chance to cut me.

“This must be your — ” granddaughter? Caroline, an only child, had never interrupted her dancing career for pregnancy. niece? grandniece? ” — your ward.”

“Je m’appelle Marguerite,” the child said eagerly. “Nous regardons le ballet.”

“Do you study ballet, Marguerite?”

“Mais oui!” she said scornfully, but Anna Olson made a sign and the bodyguards deftly cut me off from both of them. By maneuvering around the edge of the hall, I caught a last, distant glimpse of Marguerite. She waited patiently in line to go back to her seat. Her small feet in pink ballet slippers turned out in a perfect fifth position.

Thursday afternoon I drove into Paris to rent an electronic translator for the presentation by Taillebois and Erbland. The translators furnished by the conference were long since claimed. People who had rented them for the opening talks simply hung onto them, afraid to miss anything. The Taillebois/Erbland presentation would include written hand outs in French, English, German, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, but not until the session was over. I was afraid to miss anything, either.

I couldn’t find a electronic translator with a brand name I trusted. I settled for a human named Jean-Paul, from a highly recommended commercial agency. He was about four feet ten, with sad brown eyes and a face wrinkled into fantastic crevasses. He told me he had translated for charles de Gaulle during the crisis in Algeria. I believed him. He looked older than God.

We drove back to Neuilly in the rain. I said, “Jean-Paul, do you like ballet?”

“Non,” he said immediately. “It is too slippery an art for me.”

“Slippery?”

“Nothing is real. Girls are spirits of the dead, or joyous peasants, or other silly things. Have you ever seen any real peasants, Mademoiselle? They are not joyous. And girls lighter than air land on stage with a thump!” He illustrated by smacking the dashboard with his palm. “Men die of love for those women. Nobody dies for love. They die for money, or hate, but not love. Non.”

“But isn’t all art no more than illusion?”

He shrugged. “Not all illusion is worth creating. Not silly illusions. Dancers wobbling on tippy toes … non, non.”

I said carefully, “French dancers can be openly bioenhanced. Not like in the United States. To some of us, that gives the art a whole new excitement. Technical, if not artistic.”

Jean-Paul shrugged again. “Anybody can be bioenhanced, if they have the money. Bioenhancement, by itself it does not impress me. My grandson is bioenhanced.”

“What does he do?”

Jean-Paul twisted his body toward me in the seat of the car. “He is a soccer player! One of the best in the world! If you followed the sport, you would know his name. Claude Despreaux. Soccer — now there is illusion worth creating!”

His tone was exactly Anton Privitera’s, talking about ballet.

Thursday evening, just before the presentation, I finally caught Deborah at home. Her face on the phonevid was drawn and strained. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mom. How’s Paris?”

“Wet. Deborah, you’re not telling me the truth.”

“Everything’s fine! I just … just had a complicated rehearsal today.”

The corps de ballet does not usually demand complicated rehearsals. The function of the corps is to move gracefully behind the soloists and principal dancers; it’s seldom allowed to do anything that will distract from their virtuosity. I said carefully, “Are you injured?”

“No, of course not. Look, I have to go.”

“Deborah … ”

“They’re waiting for me!” The screen went blank.

Who was waiting for her? It was 1:00 a.m. in New York.

When I called back, there was no answer.

I went to the Grand Ballroom. Jean-Paul had been holding both our seats, lousy ones, since noon. An hour later, the presentation still had not started.

The audience fidgeted, tense and muttering. Finally a woman dressed in a severe suit entered. She spoke German. Jean-Paul translated into my ear.

“Good evening. I am Katya Waggenschauser. I have an announcement before we begin. I regret to inform you that Dr. Taillebois will not appear. Dr. Taillebois … He … ” Abruptly she ran off the stage.

The muttering rose to an astonished roar.

A man walked on stage. The crowd quieted immediately. Jean-Paul translated from the French, “I am Dr. Valois of the Pasteur Institute. Shortly Dr. Erbland will begin the presentation. But I regret to inform you that Dr. Taillebois will not appear. There has been an unfortunate accident. Dr. Taillebois is dead.”

The murmuring rose, fell again. I heard reporters whispering into camphones in six languages.

“In a few moments Dr. Erbland will make her and Dr. Taillebois’s presentation. Please be patient just a few moments longer.”

Eventually someone introduced Dr. Erbland, a long and fulsome introduction, and she walked onto the stage. A thin, tall woman in her sixties, she looked shaken and pale. She opened by speaking about how various kinds of bioenhancement differed from each other in intent, procedure, and biological mechanism. Most bioenhancements were introduced into an adult body that had already finished growing. A few, usually aimed at correcting hereditary problems, were carried out on infants. Those procedures were somewhat closer to the kinds of genetic reengineering — it was not referred to merely as “bioenhancement” — that produced new strains of animals. And as with animals, science had long known that it was possible to manipulate pre-embryonic human genes in the same way, in vitro.

The audience grew completely quiet.

In vitro work, Dr. Erbland said, offered by its nature fewer guides and guarantees. There were much coded redundancies in genetic information, and that made it difficult to determine long-term happenings. The human genome map, the basis of all embryonic reengineering, had been complete for forty years, but “complete” was not the same as “understood.” The body had many genetic behaviors that researchers were only just beginning to understand. No one could have expected that when embryonic reengineering first began, as a highly experimental undertaking, that genetic identity would be so stubborn.

Stubborn? I didn’t know what she meant. Apparently, neither did anybody else in the audience. People scarcely breathed.

This experimental nature of embryonic manipulation in humans did not, of course, stop experimentation, Dr. Erbland continued. Before such experimentation was declared illegal by the Copenhagen Accord, many laboratories around the world had advanced science with the cooperation of voluntary subjects. Completely voluntary, she said. She said it three times.

I wondered how an embryo volunteered.

These voluntary subjects had been reengineered using variants of the same techniques that produced in vitro bioenhancements in other mammals. Her company, in conjunction with the Pasteur Research Institute, had been pioneers in the new techniques. For over thirty years.

Thirty years. My search of the literature had found nothing going back that far. At least not those available on the standard scientific nets. If such “reengineered” embryos had been allowed to fully gestate, and had survived, they were just barely within the cut-off date for legal existence. Were we talking about embryos or people here?

Dr. Erblans made a curious gesture: raising both arms from the elbow, then letting them fall. It looked almost like a plea. Was she making a public confession of breaking international law? Why would she do that?

Over such a long time, Dr. Erblans continued, the human genetic identity, encoded in “jumping genes” in many unsuspected redundant ways, reasserted itself. This was the subject of her and Dr. Taillebois’s work. Unfortunately, the effect on the organism — completely unanticipated by anyone — could be biologically devastating. This first graphic showed basal DNA changes in a reengineered embryo created twenty-five years ago. The subject, a male, was —

A holograph projected a complicated, three-dimensional genemap. The scientists in the audience leaned forward intently. The non-scientists looked at each other.

As the presentation progressed, anchored in graphs and formulas and genemap holos, it became clear even to me what Dr. Erbland was actually saying.

European geneticists had been experimenting on embryos as long as thirty years ago, and never stopped. They’d had allowed some of those embryos to become people. Against international law, and without knowing the long-term effects. And now the long-term effects, like old bills, were coming due, and those people’s bodies were destroying themselves at the genetic level.

We had engineered a bioenhanced cancer to replace the natural one we had conquered.

It was a few moments before I noticed that Jean-Paul had stopped translating. He sat like stone, his wrinkled face lengthened in sorrow.

The audience forgot this was a scientific conference. “How many people have been reengineered at an embryonic level?” someone shouted in English. “Total number worldwide!”

Someone else shouted, “Y todos van a morir?”

“Les lois internationales — ”

“Der sagt — ”

Dr. Erbland broke into a long, passionate speech, clearly not part of the prepared presentation. I caught the word “sagt” several times: law. I remembered that Dr. Erblans worked for a commercial biotech firm wholly owned by a pharmaceutical company.

The same company in which Anna Olson owned a fortune in stock.

Jean-Paul said quietly, “My grandson. Claude. He was one of those embryos. They told us it was safe … ”

I looked at the old man, slumped forward, and I couldn’t find any sympathy for him. That appalled me. A cherished grandson … But they had agreed, Claude’s parents, to roulette with a child’s life. In order to produce a superior soccer player. “Soccer — now there is an illusion worth creating.”

I remembered Anna Olson at the demonstration by the Lincoln Center fountain: “Caroline had a good run. For a dancer.” Caroline Olson, Deborah said, had been fired because she missed rehearsals and performances. The Times had called her last performance “a travesty.” Because her body was eating itself at a genetic level, undetectable by the City Ballet bioscans that assumed you could compare new DNA patterns to the body’s original, which no procedure completely erased. But for Caroline, the original itself had carried the hidden blueprint for destruction. For twenty-six years.

The ultimate ballet mother had made Caroline into what Anna Olson needed her to be. For as long as Caroline might last.

And then I remembered little Marguerite, standing with her perfect turn out in fifth position.

I stood and pushed my way to the exit. I had to get out of that room. Nobody else left. Dr. Erbland, rattled and afraid, tried to answer questions shouted in six languages. I shoved past a woman who was punching her neighbor. Gendarmes appeared as if conjured from the floorboards. Maybe that would be next.

The hardcopies of Dr. Taillebois’s original presentation were stacked neatly on tables in the lobby. I took one in English. As I went out the door, I heard a gendarme say clearly to somebody, “Oui, il s’a suicide, Dr. Taillebois.”

I didn’t want to stay an hour longer in Paris. I packed at the hotel and changed my ticket at Orly. On the plane home I made myself read the Taillebois/Erbland paper. Most of it was incomprehensible to me; what I understood was obscene. I kept seeing Marguerite in her pink ballet slippers, Caroline staggering on stage. If my lack of sympathy for Taillebois and Erbland was a lack in me, then so be it.

For the first time since Deborah had entered the School of American Ballet, and despite the dazzling performances at the Paris Opera, I found myself respecting Anton Privitera.

When I landed at Kennedy, at almost midnight, there was a message from the electronic gate keeper, “Call this number immediately. Urgent and crucial.” I didn’t recognize the number.

Deborah. An accident. I raced to the nearest public phone. But it wasn’t a hospital; it was an attorney’s office.

“Ms. Susan Matthews? Hold, please.”

A man’s face came on the screen. “This is James Beecher, Ms. Matthews. I’m attorney for Pers Anders. He’s being held without bail, pending trial. He left a message for you, most urgent. The message is — ”

“Trial? On what charges?” But I think I already knew. The well-cut suit on the lawyer. The move to an expensive neighborhood. Pers was working for somebody, and there weren’t very many things he knew how to do.

“The charges are dealing in narcotics. First-degree felony. The message is — ”

“Sunshine, right? No, that wouldn’t have been expensive enough for Pers,” I said bitterly. “Designer viruses? Pleasure center beanos?”

“The message is, ‘Don’t look in the caverns of the moon.’ That’s all.” The screen went blank.

I stared at it anyway. When Deborah was tiny, in the brief period a million years ago when Pers and I were still together and raising her, she had a game she loved. She’d hide a favorite toy somewhere and call out, “Don’t look in the closet! Don’t look under the bed! Don’t look in the sock drawer!” The toy was always wherever she said not to look. The caverns of the moon was what she called her bedroom, but that was much later, long after Pers had deserted us both but before she tracked him down in New York. I didn’t know that he even knew about it.

Don’t look in the caverns of the moon.

I took a helo right to the Central Park landing stage, charging it to the magazine. The last five blocks I ran, past the automated stores that never sleep and the night people who had just gotten up. Deborah wasn’t home; she didn’t expect me back from Paris until tomorrow. I tore apart her bedroom, and in an old dance bag I found it, flattened between the mattress and box spring. No practiced criminal, my Deborah.

The powder was pinkish, with no particular odor. There was a lot of it. I had no idea what it was; probably it had a unique name to go with a unique formula matched to some brain function. What kind of father would use his own daughter as a courier for this designer-gene abyss? Would the cops have already have been here if I’d come home a day later? An hour later?

I flushed it all down the toilet, including the dance bag, which I first cut into tiny pieces. Then I searched the rest of the apartment, and then I searched it again. There were no more drugs. There was no money.

She wasn’t running stuff for Pers for free. Not Deborah. She had spent the money somewhere.

“They asked me to join the company! He said it was very nice! He said I was much improved!”

I made myself sit and think. It was one o’clock in the morning. Lincoln Center would be locked and dark. She might be at a restaurant with other dancers; she might be staying the night with a friend. I called other SAB students. Each answered sleepily. Deborah wasn’t there. Ninette told me that after the evening performance Deborah had said she was going home.

“Well, yes, Ms. Matthews, she did seem a little tense,” Ninette said, stifling a yawn, her long hair tousled on the shoulders of her nightgown. “But it was only her second night in actual performance, so I thought … ” The young voice trailed off. I wasn’t going to be told whatever this girl thought. Clearly I was an interfering mother.

You bet I was.

I waited another hour. Deborah didn’t come home. I called a cab and went to Caroline Olson’s apartment on Central Park South.

It had to be Caroline. She must have known she herself was bioenhanced, and I had seen her dance before her downfall: the complete abandon to ballet, the joy. Maybe she thought that helping other dancers to illegal bioenhancement was a favor to them, a benefit. She might be making a distinction — the same one Dr. Erbland had made — between the ultimately destructive reengineering done to her in vitro and the bioenhancements done to European dancers. Or maybe she didn’t connect her own sudden deterioration with how her mother had genetically consecrated her to ballet.

Or maybe she did. Maybe she knew that her meteoric success was what was now killing her. Maybe she was so sick and so enraged that she wanted to destroy other dancers along with her. If she couldn’t dance out her full career, then neither would they.

Or maybe she thought it was worth it. A short life but a brilliant one. Anything for art. Most dancers ended up crippling their bodies anyway, although more slowly. The great Suzanne Farrell had ended up with a plastic hip, her pelvis destroyed by constant turnout. Mikhail Baryshnikov ruined his knees. Miranda Mains was unable to walk by the time she was twenty-eight. Maybe Caroline Olson thought no sacrifice was too great for ballet, even a life.

But not my Deborah’s.

I buzzed the security system of Caroline’s apartment for five solid minutes. There was no answer. Finally the system said politely, “Your party does not answer. Further buzzing may constitute legal harassment. You should leave now.”

I got back in the cab, chewing on my thumb. I felt that kind of desperation you think you can’t live through; it consumes your belly, chokes your breath. The driver waited indifferently. Where? God, in New York they could be anywhere.

Anywhere nobody would think to look for illegal medical operations. Anywhere safe, and protected, and easily accessible by dancers, without suspicion.

I gave the driver Anna Olson’s address, remembered from the tax return pirated by the Robin Hood. Then I transferred the gun from my purse to my pocket.

I think I wasn’t quite sane.

9.

Caroline and I ride in a taxi. I like taxis. I put my head out the window. The taxi has many smells. We stop at Deborah’s house. Caroline and I go get Deborah.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Deborah says. Her door is open only a little. She stands behind her door. “I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are,” Caroline says.

Deborah says, “You’re not my mother!”

Caroline changes her smell. She has a cane to walk. She leans on her cane. Her voice gets soft. “No, I’m not your mother. And I’m not going to push you like a mother. Believe me, Deborah, I know what that’s like. But as a senior dancer, I’m going to ask you to come with me. I’m willing to beg you to come. It’s that important. Not just to you, but to me.”

Deborah looks at the floor.

“Don’t be embarrassed. Just understand that I mean it. I’ll beg, I’ll grovel. But first I’m asking, as a senior member of the company.”

Deborah looks up. She smells angry. “Why do you care? It’s my life!”

“Yes. Yours and Privitera’s.” Caroline closes her eyes. “You owe him something, too. No, don’t consider that. Just come because I’m asking you.”

Deborah still smells angry. But she comes.

We ride in the taxi to Caroline’s mother’s house. I say, “Is there a party tonight?”

Deborah laughs. It sounds funny. Caroline says, “Yes, Angel. Another party. With music and dancers and talking. And you can have some pretzels.”

“I like pretzels,” I say. “Does Deborah like pretzels?”

“No,” Deborah says, and now she smells scared.

We go in the back way. Caroline has a key. People come to the basement. Someone starts music. “Not so loud!” a man says.

“No, it’s all right,” Caroline says. “My mother’s still in Europe and the staff is on vacation while she’s gone. We have the place to ourselves.”

A woman brings me a pretzel. People talk. Caroline and Deborah and two men talk in the corner. I don’t hear the words. The words at parties are very hard. I watch Caroline, and eat pretzels, and watch two people dance to the radio.

“Christ,” the man dancer says, “is this fake revelry really necessary?”

“Yes,” the woman says. She looks at me. “Caroline says yes.”

In the corner, two men show Deborah some papers. Caroline sits with them. Deborah starts to cry.

I watch Caroline. Deborah may touch Caroline. The two men may touch Caroline. But Caroline says parties are happy. No people smell happy. I do not understand.

The buzzer rings.

Nobody moves. People look at each other. Caroline says, “Is the gate still open? Let it go. It’s probably kids. There’s nobody home but us.”

The buzzer rings and rings. Then it stops. Caroline talks to Deborah. The door opens at the top of the stairs.

A man with Caroline takes a bottle from his pocket very fast. He puts the papers on the floor and pours the bottle on it. The papers disappear. “All right, everybody, this is a party,” he says.

Steps run down the stairs. A voice calls, “Wait! You can’t go down there! Young woman! You can’t go down there!” The voice is angry. It is Caroline’s mother.

I walk to Caroline. She smells surprised.

A woman comes into the basement. She holds a gun. My ears raise. I stand next to Caroline.

“Nobody move,” the woman says. Deborah says, “Mom!”

Caroline looks at the woman, then at Deborah, then at the woman. She walks with her cane to the woman.

“Stay right there,” the woman says. She smells angry and scared. I move with Caroline.

“Christ, you sound like a bad holovid,” Caroline says. “You’re Deborah’s mother? What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

From the top of the stairs Caroline’s mother calls, “Caroline! What is the meaning of this?”

The woman says very fast, “Deborah, you’re making a terrible mistake. Bioenhancement may help your dancing for a while, but it could also kill you. The conference on genetics in Paris — they presented scientific proof that one kind of bioenhancement kills, and if they’re just finding that out know about enhancements done twenty-five years ago — then who knows what kind of insane risk you’re running with these other kinds? Don’t take my word for it, it’s on-line this morning. Pers was arrested, damn him, and I found your drug stash just before the police did. That’s how you’re paying for this, isn’t it? Debbie — how could you be such a damn fool?”

“Wait a minute,” Caroline says. She leans on her cane. “You thought we brought Deborah here to bioenhance her?” Caroline starts to laugh. She puts her hand on her face. “Oh my God!”

Caroline’s mother calls from the top of the stairs, “I’m phoning the police.”

Caroline says, very fast, “Go bring her down here, James. You’ll have to lift her out of her chair and carry her. Keith, get her chair.” The two men run up the stairs.

Caroline is shaking. I stand beside her. I growl. The woman still has the gun. She points the gun at Caroline. I wait for Caroline to tell me Attack.

The woman says, “Don’t try to deny it. You’d do anything for ballet, wouldn’t you? All of you. You’re sick — but you’re not murdering my daughter!”

Caroline’s face changes. Her smell changes. I feel her hand on my head. Her hand shakes. Her body shakes. I smell anger bigger than other angers. I wait for Attack.

Deborah says, “You’re all wrong, Mom! Just like you always are! Does this look like a bioenhancement lab? Does it? These people aren’t enhancing me — they’re trying to talk me out of it! These two guys are doctors and they’re trying to ‘deprogram’ me — just like you tried to program me all my life! You never wanted me to dance, you always tried to make me into this cute little college-bound student that you needed me to be. Never what I needed!”

The men carry Caroline’s mother and Caroline’s mother’s chair down the steps. They put Caroline’s mother in the chair. Caroline’s mother also smells angry. But Caroline smells more angry than everybody.

Caroline says, “Sound familiar, Mother dear? What Deborah’s saying? What did you learn at the genetic conference? What I’ve been telling you for months, right? Your gift to dance is dying. Because you wanted a prima ballerina at any price. Even if I’m the one to pay it.”

Caroline’s mother says, “You love dance. You wanted it as much as I did. You were a star.”

“I never got to find out if I would have been one anyway! That isn’t so inconceivable, is it? And then I might have still been dancing! But instead I was … made. Molded, sewed, carpentered. Into what you needed me to be.”

Deborah’s mother lowers her gun. Her eyes are big. Caroline’s mother says, “You were a star. You had a good run. Without me, you might have been nothing. Worthless.”

A man says, very soft, “Jesus H. Christ.”

Caroline is shaking hard. I am afraid she will fall again. Her hand is on her cane. The cane shakes. Her other hand is on me.

Caroline says, “You cold, self-centered bitch — ”

A little girl runs down the stairs.

The little girl says, “Tante Anna! Tante Anna! Ou etes-vous?” She stops at the bottom of the steps. She smells afraid. “Qui sont tout ces gens?”

Caroline looks at the little girl. The little girl has no shoes. She has long black fur on her head. Her hind feet go out like Caroline’s feet when Caroline dances. The toes look strange. I don’t understand the little girl’s feet.

Caroline says again, “You cold, self-centered bitch.” Her voice is soft now. She stops shaking. “When did you have her made? Five years ago? Six? A new model with improved features? Who will decay all the sooner?”

Caroline’s mother says, “You are a hysterical fool.”

Caroline says, “Angel — attack. Now.”

I attack Caroline’s mother. I knock over the chair. I bite her foreleg. Someone screams, “Caroline! For God’s sake! Caroline!” I bite Caroline’s mother’s head. I must protect Caroline. This person hurts Caroline. I must protect Caroline.

A gun fires and I hurt and hurt and hurt —

I love Caroline.

10.

The town of Saratoga, where the American Ballet Theater is dancing its summer season, is itself a brightly-colored stage. Visitors throng the racetrack, the brand-new Electronics Museum, the historical battle sites. In 1777, right here, Benedict Arnold and his half-trained revolutionaries stopped British forces under General John Burgoyne. It was the first great victory of freedom over the old order.

Until this year, the New York City Ballet danced here every summer. But the Performing Arts Center chose not to renew the City Ballet contract. In New York, too, City Ballet attendance is half of what it was only a few years ago.

The Saratoga pavilion is open to the countryside. Ballet lovers fill the seats, spread blankets up the sloping lawn, watch dancers accompanied not only by Tchaikovsky or Chopin but also by crickets and robins. In Saratoga, the ballet smells of freshly mown grass. The classic “white ballets” — Swan Lake, Les Sylphides — are remembered green. Small girls whose first taste of dance is at Saratoga will dream, for the rest of their life, of toe shoes skimming over wildflowers.

I take my seat, in the back of the regular seating, as the small orchestra finishes tuning up. The conductor enters to the usual thunderous applause, even though nobody here knows his name and very few care. They have come to see the dancers.

Debussy floats out over the countryside. Afternoon of a Faun: slow, melting. On the nearly bare stage, furnished only with barre and mirrors, a male dancer in practice clothes wakes up, stretches, warms up his muscles in a series of low, languorous moves.

A girl appears in the mirror, which isn’t really a mirror but an empty place in the backdrop. A void. She, too, stretches, poses, plies. Both dancers watch the mirrors. They are so absorbed in their own reflections that they only gradually become aware of each other’s presence. Even then, they exist for each other only as foils, presences to dance to. In the end the girl will step back through the mirror. There is the feeling that for the boy, she may not really have existed at all, except as a dream.

It is Deborah’s first lead in a one-act ballet. Her extension is high, her turnout perfect, her movements sure and strong and sustained, filled with the joy of dancing. I can barely stand to look at her. This is her reward, her grail, for continuing her bioenhancement. She isn’t dancing for Anton Privitera, but she is dancing. A year and a half of bioenhancement, bought legally now in Copenhagen and paid for by selling her story to an eager press, has given her the physical possibilities to match her musicality, and her rhythm, and her drive.

The faun finally touches the girl, turning her slowly en attitude. Deborah smiles. This is her afternoon. She’s willing to pay whatever price the night demands, even though science has no idea yet what, for her kind of treatments, it might be.

Privitera must have known that some of his dancers were bioenhanced. The completely inadequate bioscans at City Ballet, the phenomenally low injury rate of his prima ballerina — Privitera must have known. Or maybe his staff let him remain in official ignorance, keeping from him any knowledge of heresy in the ranks. There was a rumor that Privitera’s business manager John Coles even tried to keep Caroline from “deprogramming” dancers who wanted bioenhancement. The rumor about Coles was never substantiated. But in the last year, City Ballet has been struggling to survive. Too many patrons have withdrawn their favor. The mystique of natural art, like other mystiques, didn’t last forever. It had a good run.

“If you could have chosen, and that was the only way you could have had the career, would you have chosen the embryonic engineering anyway?” was the sole thing Deborah asked Caroline in jail, through bullet-proof plastic glass and electronic speaking systems, under the hard eyes of matrons. Caroline, awaiting trial for second-degree murder, didn’t seem to mind Deborah’s brusqueness, her self-absorption. Caroline was silent a long time, her gaunt face lengthened from the girlish roundness I remembered. Then she said to Deborah, “No.”

“I would,” Deborah said.

Caroline only looked at her.

They’re here, Caroline and her dog. Somewhere up on the grass, Caroline in a powerchair, Angel hobbling on the three legs my bullet left him. Caroline was acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. They didn’t let Angel stay with her during the trial. Nor did they let him testify, which would have been abnormal but not impossible. Five-year-olds can testify under some circumstances, and Angel has the biochip-and-reengineered intelligence of a five-year-old. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so abnormal. Or maybe all of us, not just Anton Privitera, will have to change our definition of abnormal.

Five-year-olds know a lot. It was Marguerite who cried out, “Vous avez assassine ma tante Anna!” She knew whom I was aiming at, even if the police did not. But Marguerite couldn’t know how much I loathed the old woman who had made her daughter into what the mother needed her to be — just as I, out of love, had tried to do to mine.

On stage Deborah pirouettes. Maybe her types of bioenhancement will be all right, despite the growing body of doubts collected by Caroline’s doctor allies. When the first cures for cancer were developed from reengineered retroviruses, dying and desperate patients demanded they be administered without long, drawn-out FDA testing. Some of the patients died even sooner, possibly from the cures. Some lived until 90. The edge of anything is a lottery, and protection doesn’t help — not against change, or madmen, or errors of judgement. I protect Caroline, Angel kept saying after I shot him, yelping in pain between sentences. I protect Caroline.

Deborah flows into a retire, one leg bent at the knee, and rises on toe. Her face glows. Her partner lifts her above his head and turns her slowly, her feet perfectly arched in their toe shoes, dancing on air.

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