The Agent Gambit

by Sharon Lee

  "It shall be as you have said." He turned without further formality and left the control room.

  A minute later, Miri heard the hatch slide up, then down. She looked at Val Con, who was swaying where he stood, his eyes on the blue disk.

  "Boss, are you nuts? I don't need Edger's protection. You gave us even odds, remember?"

  "Miri . . . ." His voice faded off; he did not look at her.

  She went to the nearest bench and sat. "Shut up," she finished for him. "Yes, sir."

  A portion of the board lit and Val Con raised his hand, laid it over the blue disk, and pushed.

  In the navigation tank, the stars went away.

  "Already?" Miri demanded incredulously. "Maybe he meant three hours."

  COSTELLO ROLLED OUT of the DownTunnel and moved along F Level, not running, but pushing the walk.

  Turtles, for Panth's sake! As if he hadn't had enough trouble trying to talk to mercenaries, now he had to go and try to talk to turtles. Ah, well, he got paid by the hour and it was overtime tonight, for sure. Maybe even hazardous duty pay.

  A largish green person was exiting the tunnel to Number 327. Costello quickened his pace. The green person did things to the door controls and pressed the summons stud. Costello started to run.

  "Hey, you!"

  The turtle did not turn around. Rather, it laid its head against the tunnel door and stood very, very still, as might someone who breathes free air again after a time in captivity.

  Costello arrived panting, and laid his hand on Watcher's arm. "Hey."

  Watcher opened his eyes. When he saw the horrid, misshapen hand resting upon his arm, he jerked back and whirled to face the perpetrator of that outrage.

  Costello held his hands out, fingers spread placatingly. "Hey, I'm sorry. No harm meant. It's just that I'm looking for some friends of mine. Thought you might have seen them." He paused, but the turtle only stared at his hands.

  "Two kids," Costello said, picking up the thread of his story. "Boy about-oh, twenty, twenty-five; dark brown hair, green eyes, thin. Girl-pretty little girl-eighteen, or maybe twenty; red hair, gray eyes. Thought you might've seen them," he repeated.

  Watcher made no reply.

  Costello decided to play it tough. "Look, you," he snarled, moving closer and jabbing with his finger. "I know you're hiding something. It ain't gonna do you no good to play dumb, see? 'Cause there's ways of making guys like you talk. So you just tell me where them kids-"

  Enough! Enough of outrage and sickness and terror and too many fingers on hands too small! Enough and too much!

  Watcher struck.

  And Costello screamed, pulling back a hand from which two fingers had been cleanly bitten away.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WALLS, MIRI THOUGHT, should be stable things. They should not, for instance, be fuzzy one minute and translucent the next. Nor should they be shot, from time to random time, with sudden neon-bright color.

  Her hands shouldn't seem to go into the wall when she touched it, and her feet shouldn't look foggy. In fact, things in general shouldn't be that-indefinite. And why did she feel so good? She wasn't drunk!

  Miri sighed, which felt very good.

  The good news, as far as she could tell, was that they wouldn't be on the ship very long-not the way they'd been able to slip away from Prime without a head start, clearing Jump or anything.

  Yeah, that was pretty good, just sliding-

  She couldn't concentrate on the thought. The wall she'd been staring at ghosted momentarily, becoming largely green fog, and she thought she saw a diamond the size of a dozen landcars on the other side.

  Absently, she ran a hand down her arm. She did it again. How soft her shirt was! She stroked her arm a third time, eyes slitted in pleasure.

  Putting her hands on her thighs, she immediately discovered the tactile delight of supple old leather, well-kept and clean-and snapped to her feet, holding her hands away from her body. There was a pattern in the floor she hadn't noticed before: layers and layers of large prints-the prints of Clutch feet-one on top another, pressed into the hard rock floor.

  She half-laughed, then frowned as the idea struck her. She was assuming the semipsychedelics were drive-effects. What if instead there was something wrong with-her? What if she was sick? Or crazy?

  Well, crazy'll be company for Tough Guy, she thought philosophically. Worse fates could befall.

  Still, her fear needed to be checked out. On impulse, she unwound her braid and pulled the length of hair over her shoulder where she could see it.

  It was as she had feared. Her hair was foggy, each strand a little brighter and a little less definite than normal.

  Flipping the braid behind her shoulder, she turned and strode out of the bookroom, heading for the control area and her partner. When an entire wall went bright gold as she passed by, she stuck her tongue out at it.

  VAL CON GOT UP when the control board began to shift.

  Well, not shift so much as-fade? There was a rainbow iridescence at the edge of things that made him acutely uncomfortable; he tried hard to determine where one of his fingernails actually ended.

  That experiment was interesting. He could touch edge of thumbnail to edge of thumbnail and feel it, except he'd swear he could feel it before they touched and after they were parted. Even more unsettling was that his thumbs and the fine hair that grew on the backs of his hands appeared to have a certain lack of substance.

  Tired. He was very, very tired. He needed to rest.

  But he hadn't been able to rest-and the so-called Survival Loop kept popping up, over and over, unbidden, each time giving him figures which seemed not to concern him, but still initiating bursts of energy as it insisted to that this time he might not get home.

  Home? He closed his eyes, trying to picture the place, but the weird effects disrupted the efficiency of his memory's eye.

  Shan? he thought, in something like desperation. Nova?

  But the faces of his kin did not arise.

  Edger? There was no difficulty recalling that person, down to the bone-rattling boom of his voice; and with it this memory brought attendant memories, of life with the Middle River Clan. . . .

  Go home, he thought. Rest. Go home and be musician for the Clan . . . .

  But there had been those equations when he'd played the 'chora-the Loop, showing him that the longer he played, the less chance he had of ultimate survival. And now these fadings and flashings, when things had been feeling so-unreal-in general . . . .

  Seated at the map table, he took quick inventory. The effects observed were not akin to any poison he had been trained to recognize: they seemed to be nearly psychedelic, yet actual-which argued against an airborne spore or something of that nature.

  It had to be an artifact of the drive-he hoped.

  He massaged his wrist gently, astonished at the intense pleasure the action gave him, and closed his eyes.

  CMS: .2.

  Not so unusual. Except that he hadn't given the Loop a mission to calculate.

  Music. Edger had said there were instruments on board. Gods, I could use a 'chora now! he thought.

  The display in his head dropped the CMS to .1 instantly.

  There was no sense to that, was there?

  Was there?

  Why should music endanger him? He needed to relax; he needed sleep, rest, a chance to let stretched reflexes loosen. He'd used the 'chora for that quite successfully in the past.

  If there was space-and there had to be space on a ship this size-he might begin a session of L'apeleka.

  He shook his head. Composure was needed to practice that Clutch discipline. He had taken time, between missions, to enter as far as the Fifth Door without a partner, and had never failed to feel more-alive.

  I have to go home, he thought.

  But no, that wasn't getting him anywhere. The flashes behind his eyes showed a new reading on the CPS, a figure he didn't want to admit to consciousness.

  His thirty-day chance of p
ersonal survival was down to .09.

  "The mind must be composed for proper utilization of the Survival Loops," he recalled.

  If only he could relax! He was certain the figures would be higher.

  One wall flashed brilliant gold, went to streaked yellow with orange specks, then turned red as the floor flowed green; and his hand looked even less distinct.

  It was good that Miri was not there, he reflected.

  He would find it impossible to deal patiently with her questions, her demands for attention-yet he was glad that had gotten her out of Juntavas territory, that she'd have a chance to get on with her life when they raised Volmer. Glad that he'd gone back for her.

  And why had he? What was she but a deadly danger, growing more deadly all the time? The things she knew-the things that he, himself, had told her! The things she had seen-and she saw much, he was sure. She was a threat and a danger, to himself and to his mission-

  "What mission, dammit!"

  He was on his feet, glaring around at the chaotic walls. Deliberately, he took a breath and combed his fingers through his hair.

  Relax, he told himself gently. Stop thinking so hard. This was Edger's ship; likely it would take a Battlewagon a week to break in, if there were trouble. He had security, safety-for the moment. For the next week or two. He was secure. He could relax.

  Carefully, refusing to look at the flowing floor, he crossed to the opposite wall and sat on the wide upholstered shelf. He lay down after a moment and began to review the plans he'd had for helping Miri, wondering if that were the mission the Loop was figuring.

  No, he reminded himself, you're at low energy. Training tells you to be at your best before attempting long-range planning. Relax.

  Closing his eyes, he reached for the simple relaxation drill he'd learned as a Scout cadet, so long ago: Recall the colors of the rainbow, one-by-one, and assign each a special property. Relax the body somewhat, then the mind; relax the body more and the relaxed mind would relax still further. Using that as a beginning, one could go to sleep, set goals, or enter special states for study, review, or reflex-reaction control.

  Relax. He began the ritual, lying quietly, hands loose at his sides. Visualize the color red. Red is the color of physical relaxation . . . .

  It took concentration, with the other colors flashing in his head. Red. He held it before his mind's eye, using it to relax tight chest muscles; he felt the warmth of his blood, flowing; he eased tense neck muscles, then leg muscles-and moved on with the technique. He saw through the colors flickering behind his eyes, seeing only the color he desired as he went through the layers, relaxing physically, mentally, physically, mentally.

  He felt as if he were floating, barely conscious of the comforting pressure of cloth and leather against his skin. Mentally, he approached the switch level, the depth of mind where he might assign his concentration to a project or merely go to sleep, if he chose that path.

  His thought was focused on the color violet-the end of the rainbow. Behind the color another image began to form unbidden, undesired. He tried to suppress it, but it grew more vivid. He recognized the sequence; one of the training-review programs from The Lectures, the series of tortures and teachings that had graduated him from Scout to spy. Too late, he thought to break the rainbow's spell; found himself locked in, forced to watch: There. Before him: People dying. His targets. His victims.

  That program rated the efficiency of kills; it was not supposed to impose itself after training.

  But it was rating his last fight.

  The man shot in the eye: That was rated highly efficient; the shoulders of a crawling man protect the heart and lungs, and a spine shot is unlikely.

  The woman who had half-crouched: That was efficient, slightly off-center to the left in the chest. Even if not a death-shot, she would be out of action for the duration of the incident.

  Now he was swept fully into the review: five, six, seven, ten, twelve-every shot he'd taken to save Miri, to save himself, all those people, dead yet recalled so vividly. Not many poor-risk shots, not many misses. Dead people. Blood on the floor, on the wall. The knife throw at the hidden assassin was rated circumstantially excellent: that man and the woman should have been shot.

  No! That was Miri!

  Relentlessly, the training-review went on, driving Val Con further and further into the dead past.

  The walk to the control room convinced Miri of several things. One was that her shirt felt indecently delicious against her: soft and comfortable and erotic all at once.

  Another was that the sheer size of Edger's ship hadn't really hit her before. So far she'd passed a room that was half swimming pool and half lawn, and another room that was a gigantic sleeping compartment.

  The third thing she'd become convinced of was that the strange effects-the colors and the shifting fuzziness of things-were real. They were nothing like the hallucinogens she'd taken years ago, nor did they bear any resemblance to the truly weird stuff that had happened in her head that time she'd been poison-speared in the leg.

  Comfortable in her certainty, she stepped into the control room-and stopped.

  Val Con was not at the board.

  She tried to ignore the strange colors of the floors and walls, the odd rainbows snowing out of the crystal in the center of the . . . it was hard to define things with all this change going on. She scanned the room again.

  There! He was lying on one of the long slab seats, but he hardly looked restful. In fact, he looked poisoned, somehow, transfixed-muscles all in stark relief, mouth grimacing, eyes screwed shut.

  Miri approached slowly and stood frowning over him. His fists were clenched, she noted. He was breathing.

  "Hey, Tough Guy!"

  There was no response.

  "Pay attention to me!" she tried, raising her voice.

  Nothing.

  She put her hand on his shoulder. "C'mon, Tough Guy, this is important!" She shook the shoulder, lightly at first, then hard.

  "Tough Guy! Let's go!" The command voice didn't work-and that was bad.

  He was sweating, the renegade lock of hair plastered tight across his forehead, his face a muddy beige color.

  Miri bit her lip and felt for the pulse in his wrist. It was strong and steady, but fast. That was all right for now, but it wouldn't stay that way if he didn't come out of it soon.

  She yanked on his arm, pulling him into a sitting position, hoping to see a reaction. Any reaction.

  Nothing.

  "Val Con!" she cried, using her voice as a whip, making his name a command to return. "Val Con!"

  He did not respond.

  She swore, softly and with feeling, recognizing battle shock, otherwise known as hysterical paralysis. She'd seen enough of it to know the symptoms-and the cure.

  Some people could be pulled out easily, by a familiar voice calling their name. Other people required more drastic measures. Pain, physical and immediate, worked best.

  She hurled herself forward, shouting in his face. "Val Con!"

  Nothing. Not so much as a stutter in the rapid rhythm of his breathing.

  She stepped back, surveying the logistical problems. Several approaches seemed to guarantee certain death, assuming that this patient recovered with the quick completeness of the patients she'd treated in the past.

  Probably he'd recover much, much faster.

  In the end she decided for a kick to the shoulder, hoping the spin would have her out of range before he snapped out of it.

  She tried calling his name and shaking him again, just in case the gods had had a change of heart, then took a deep breath and kicked out, spinning as she connected, moving to the left-

  The impact hit her with the force of an enhanced bullwhip, smacking her and rocking her; her left arm was a dead thing, hanging useless in the socket. He was coming and she dodged; she knew he would grab her and as he threw her she began to roll, going with it, eating momentum with each revolution, trying to stay tucked with the arm that was dead-and sla
mmed against the far wall, breath exploding out of her in a cry.

  Far away, she heard a sound that might have been her name.

  Tired, she thought carefully. He was tired. That was why she was still alive.

  "Miri!"

  She pried her eyes open and rolled awkwardly to sit against the wall, arm still numb. He was kneeling at her side, close enough to touch, and the muddy agony was gone from his face.

  "I'm okay," she said, willing it to be so.

  The horror eased from his face, but a tightness around the eyes remained. "Forgive me. . . ." He let his voice fade away, shaking his head.

  She tried a grin, to which he responded not at all.

  "Hey, everybody makes mistakes," she said. She eased herself against the wall, gritting her teeth as sensation began to return to her arm, and laid her good hand on his sleeve. "How 'bout getting me a drink of water, friend?"

  He rose and moved away. She leaned back and closed her eyes, trying to gauge from the quality of the pain whether or not her arm was broken.

  Some obscure sense nudged her and she opened her eyes to find him kneeling beside her again, wordlessly offering a mug.

  The water was cold, which felt luxuriously good on a raw throat. She set the empty mug on the floor at her side, and the grin she offered him this time was nearly real. "Thanks."

  He did not reply; the horror was a shadow lurking far back in his eyes. "Miri, how can you be my friend?"

  "Well," she allowed, shifting her shoulders, "it is more of a challenge some days than others."

  But he was having no part of humor. She sighed and moved her arm, flexing the fingers. Not broken, then.

  "You should have taken the ship without me," he told her.

  "I don't waste my friends," she snapped. "And you were standing there, risking bloody mayhem because you figured me at less than a Standard and you had less-and didn't care!" She shook her head. "Tell me why you did that-why you saved my life this past three or thirteen times. No reason for you to be my friend!

  "And I lied to you," she added, after a moment. "Tried to run out and leave you to die."