The Agent Gambit

by Sharon Lee

  Nova swallowed a sigh. She should have known better than to open such a discussion with Anthora, but Shan was gone with the Passage, and she was further robbed of Pat Rin's caustic intelligence . . .

  "If a station is in a place," Anthora asked, rubbing Merlin's ears, "must it mean that it belongs to the owners of the place?"

  Nova froze. "No. No, of course not. But-the Scouts . . ."

  "Scouts are not gods," the wooly-headed baby of the family commented. "Val Con said Scouts spend a great deal of time mucking about in the mud and running afoul of custom." She looked up. "It's a simple thing to shunt information from one terminal to another. Even simpler to hide information an honest user would have no reason to look for, then dump what's hidden, with no one the wiser. A tertiary station? Who would trouble to invade something so unimportant? Who would think to look for tampering?"

  The idea took simplicity and snarled it with a hundred knots, basing all on the honor of Liad's Scouts. It supposed an enemy more dangerous than an unrecorded organization disinclined to answer questions. Nova sat on the arm of a chair, staring at her sister with wondering violet eyes. The theory appealed, yes. It appealed mightily.

  "The Scouts," Anthora continued, "have no reason to lie. Were our brother eklykt'i-were he even dead!-these things have come to those of Korval in the past, have they not? And the Scouts sent word, just as to any other."

  "Truth." The melant'i of the Scouts was not in doubt. It was more possible to consider a new and secret enemy than to consider that the Scouts might have lied. "They say what they know. It worries me that they may not know all. It worries me more that this Department of the Interior has its eyes upon us while we are blind to them." She closed her eyes while Anthora bent to scratch Merlin under the chin, and for several minutes his purrs were the only sound heard in the room.

  Then Nova snapped to her feet, brushed past sister and cat, and leaned to the keyboard.

  "What do you, sister?"

  "Whoever they are, they must have money. Mr. dea'Gauss may- Good day, Sor Dal. Has Mr. dea'Gauss leisure to speak?"

  "I will ascertain, Eldema. One moment."

  Somewhat less than a moment later the wait-signal cleared to show the old gentleman himself. He inclined his head respectfully. "Lady Nova."

  "Mr. dea'Gauss. It's good of you to leave your work to speak to me." She followed the form with well-hidden impatience, mustering one of her thin smiles.

  "I am always at Korval's service, your ladyship. How may I assist you?"

  Gods, Nova thought. What can it portend that Mr. dea'Gauss becomes brusque? She moved a hand in acknowledgment of truth spoken and looked into the old dark eyes. "I desire information regarding the business we spoke of earlier, sir. Its funding and its expenditures. I desire this urgently."

  The old eyes did not flicker. "Your ladyship is wise to check all contingencies before committing her resources. I shall see to it."

  "My thanks to you, sir."

  "Line dea'Gauss serves Korval," he said calmly. "Now as ever. With your ladyship's permission?"

  "Of course."

  The screen went blank.

  "Mr. dea'Gauss is worried," Anthora said at her shoulder.

  Nova glanced over. "You can read over comm lines?"

  She looked surprised and thoughtful. "I don't think so . . .But I didn't need to, just now. It was obvious."

  This from one who barely noticed rain from sun! Nova hesitated over a question and, Anthora-like, the other plucked it out of air and gave answer.

  "Shannie told me to help you. Not," she added with a sniff, "that he had to. And before he left he said I must pay close attention to-things-and not be backward about speaking my thoughts. He said that there are often several ways to look at something, and I mustn't assume that because I've seen one or even two ways that you've seen the same ways. He said you need to see as much as possible, to keep Korval safe."

  "Did he? I'm in debt for his concern."

  "Don't be angry at Shannie, sister. He'll be searching, too, you know. And he has Priscilla with him. I taught her how to see Val Con." Her brow wrinkled slightly. "At least, she can't see him very clearly-and I'm not at all sure she sees him the same way I do. And it tires her, I think. But she has-a sense-of him. And of his lady. She'll be able to tell if the Passage comes near them."

  "Will she?" Nova tried to catch her mental breath. It was often thus with Anthora, who took such abilities as easily as sight and hearing, even though the very language had to be bent and twisted in order for her to speak of them. "And can you-see-Val Con with his lady now? Are they well?"

  Anthora nodded vigorously. "Val Con's more Val Con than he's been for-oh, a long time! And his lady is very bright."

  She spoke with such clear approval that Nova found herself comforted a little.

  "I'm going for a walk before Prime," Anthora said softly. "Come with me, do."

  A walk? With Val Con yet missing, even though he was "more Val Con than he'd been"-and gods alone knew what that meant! Had he been ill? What was she thinking of, that supposed lifemate, that she was so careless of him?

  "Sister . . ." Anthora slid her arms about Nova's waist in a wholly unexpected hug. "He is well. More-I believe him happy. We search; we do what we might, as well as we might. Val Con would never grudge you an hour's pleasure when there is nothing more for you to do."

  Nova hugged back, cuddling the warmth of her sister's body against her. "Truth . . ." She stood away, summoning the second smile in an hour. "Let us go for a walk, then. The day does seem fair."

  LIAD:

  Trealla Fantrol

  The house was too empty.

  Nova sighed. The information in front of her was important, or it would not be on her screen. Mr. dea'Gauss was not in the habit of bothering her with trifles. Yet the house was too empty: the children, by her own order, taken by their tutors to the Port for half a day's holiday; Anthora gone with the twins to visit Lady yo'Lanna . . . There was no one to claim her attention, no reason to make a decision immediately. The words on the screen not yet urgent enough to-

  She blinked at the carpet, which was not blue enough by half, and what was that tiny screen doing there on the desk, when only that moment she had been looking at the large, amber colored-

  "No!"

  Nova pushed back at the Memory, half-sick with the effort to separate the room she knew from that other-long gone, changed, changed again-knowing even as she thought that it was useless if the time was come. Dismay rode briefly over loathing; dismay of the power that the past generations of Korval women had over her. Edger had addressed her as "She Who Remembers;" she wondered-and then was certain-if Val Con had explained her "talent" of reliving the memories of those long dead. Loathing rose again and she pushed at the Memory, hard.

  The Memory expanded, the long-ago room taking on more and more substance, as the room now faded.

  Nova recalled her own past with guilt, wondering which of her decisions or experiences might be forced on some unsuspecting child or unwelcoming grandmother-

  Vertigo overtook her; she clutched at the table, then squared her shoulders and walked to the couch. She sat with unaccustomed heaviness, half expecting the thing to be nothing more than a Memory-phantom, substantial and actual to all but her body.

  Carefully, striving to put bitterness and loathing and dismay all aside, she took a deep breath-and another, began the relaxing sequence the Healers had given her . . .

  And it was there, as searing as her memory of the argument with Shan.

  A Liaden youth, hair clipped tight in a style dating him hundreds of years in the past, was arguing. She knew him, ached to grant him his demand, yet denied him, nonetheless.

  "Yes, Ker Lin, I did hear you. I believe you have not heard me. I am not speaking as your aunt in this. I am speaking as Delm!"

  In the part of her mind shielded by the Healer's magic, Nova recalled the name, recalled a much older face from the portrait gallery at Jelaza Kazone-Ker Lin yos'Pheliu
m, seven hundred and twelve years dead.

  His face went rigid. "I hear the Delm," he said, courtesy thinly sheathing his anger. "I request the Delm listen once again."

  What was this, after all? Ker Lin's Delm at that age must have been old Renoka yos'Phelium.

  A flash of impatience was recalled, and a flare of almost feral love, before she gave him haughty leave. "You may speak. But you must offer more or different information, boy! I grow weary of hearing your 'musts!'"

  Eyes. Gods and demons, what eyes the child had! Silver bright, shining, hypnotic-and the will!

  "I have Seen that I shall join the Scouts in the spring," he said, with some fair semblance of calm. "I shall not wed until after my third mission."

  "And I say you will do so now! I will see a yos'Phelium contract-wed into yo'-"

  "Silence!" He gestured, and her voice choked in her throat; her bones rocked with the force of the command, and her blood chilled. She stood, moving as if against strong wind, found the energy needful to shake off his will, and glared down at him, the one of all of them who would be Delm . . .ah, yes, if he lived so long!

  "Defend your actions!" she ordered, the High Tongue crackling with the force of her own will. "Defend, or be gone!"

  His face lost some of its luster, it seemed, within a moment, to grow old and to fall away almost into the face of the child he had been, with tears at the corners of his eyes; then his eyes-only silver-were sad.

  "If you will insist," he said, and she tried to tell herself it was merely halfling dignity she heard in his voice. "I have said that I have Seen what will happen, and I am taught not to foretell to others-"

  "The melant'i of the situation, Ker Lin! We are alone: If you had done this in public, I would have had to send you away at once! I shall need to know."

  Suddenly he looked defeated and small, and then, in an instant, he became a man.

  "You will see a yos'Phelium contract-wed into yo'Hala," he said very quietly. "The child shall come to yos'Phelium, and the alliance thus formed will last for many, many years. I shall join the Scouts, and after my third mission I shall lifemate. Later I will be Delm."

  Renoka bowed to that, believing all, because already she had believed half. "And in this present case, my wise? Who shall fulfill the contract with yo'Hala in your stead?"

  "You, my aunt and Delm."

  Blank astonishment was recalled, along with the beginning of a suspicion. "You know that Tan El yo'Lanna has my promise to wed him, when Zipper is next in port."

  The eyes were silver ice; she thought she saw pity and knew, but would not allow herself to know. Selfishly she made him say it.

  "Tell me, Ker Lin."

  "Let be!" Pain roughened his voice, not command; but she was pitiless in her own pain.

  "You are required!"

  He bowed, then, very, very gently. "Aunt Renoka, forgive me." He paused, then looked at her straightly. "Zipper's drive failed in the outer arm. The cargo has been orbited, and news of its location will come to me when I am Delm." He paused and sighed. "The attempt to restart the drive was catastrophic. Dan Art yos'Galan alone has survived."

  He bowed again, with all the love and care he could fit into the gesture, and left quietly.

  "Let be!" Renoka cried out to the echoing room. "Let be!"

  She called up flight schedules and requested docking information, angrily scrubbing at the tears that would neither stop nor take on urgency. The silver eyes-she sighed and cried the harder.

  Alone in the house, Renoka looked over the blue carpet, waiting. After a while someone-not Ker Lin-came to tell her that Dan Art yos'Galan was rescued. She was already dressed in mourning when they arrived.

  Nova opened her eyes and saw the proper furniture and the amber screen; she reached up and angrily scrubbed the tears from her face.

  What had she touched? What had she done that demanded that Memory?

  She glanced at the material on the screen: a list of proposed alliances and known wedding negotiations. With a clarity she mistrusted she heard Ker Lin's voice.

  "Let be!"

  She swept her hand across the controls savagely.

  "Jeeves!" she yelled into the air. "Jeeves, bring me some tea!" The robot arrived in seconds, bulky engine to a train of three cats.

  "Tea and company, I'm afraid, Miss Nova." Jeeves set the service down on the low table by the window, poured, and stepped back.

  Nova bent down to pick up the middle cat, a sorry mop of varicolored stripes named Kifer. He began to purr and knead immediately, and Nova rubbed her face in his outrageously, wonderfully soft fur.

  "Let them stay," she said to the robot. "I can use some company just now."

  LIAD:

  Envolima City

  Tyl Von sig'Alda sat in the quarters assigned him and frowned at the graph hung over the desk. Several specialists had provided the uniform opinion that the coils of the ruined ship where yos'Phelium and the female had been stranded might have been coaxed to provide one Jump, given an individual with the knowledge and the will. The computer took his opinions as fact and constructed a portrait of the Jump-sites so attainable.

  Records rendered a portrait of Val Con yos'Phelium as a man of will and wide knowledge, from a Clan that valued ships and the lore of ships above all else. It was utterly conceivable that he had demanded and received of the tired coils one last effort, that he was already on some world or other, evading debriefing or striving valiantly to win home.

  The female . . .He fingered the report recently acquired from several highly confidential sources. The female was negligible; a mere Terran mercenary, lacking education or any other discipline besides her skill at arms. True it was that she had survived the disaster of Klamath; also true was the fact that she had spent months afterward in rehabilitative therapy for the abuse of the substance Lethecronaxion-Cloud, as so many Terrans called it, kin to the drug utilized by the Department to induce its agents to complete recall.

  The function of Cloud, however, was to inhibit memory. sig'Alda experienced shadowy revulsion. The female was a brute; a killer addicted to a drug that wiped her yesterdays from experience as quickly as she lived them. How came Val Con yos'Phelium to travel with such a one?

  If she were a tool . . .He ran the odds, consciously adding pertinent factors from yos'Phelium's record and data gained during training.

  .8

  Well within the realm of possibility, then, that the female was but a convenient tool, held in check by her dependence upon the drug-and upon the supplier of the drug.

  So then: The mission on Lufkit had gone well enough of itself, but something unknowable had gone amiss between its completion and the time Val Con yos'Phelium was to rendezvous with his transport home. Sometime after the completion of his mission and before the firefight between Lufkit police and members of the local chapter of Juntavas-substantiated in several popular newspapers from Lufkit-Val Con yos'Phelium had acquired the services of Miri Robertson, retired mercenary and former bodyguard.

  Suppose that yos'Phelium had understood the situation to be worsening. Suppose further that he acknowledged sleep a physiological necessity. It would certainly be prudent, in a case where one expected disaster around every corner, to engage something to guard one's sleep. Chance had provided something well versed in guarding and competent with her weapons-and the solution had worked: Circumstances showed as much.

  Provided with a solution that had answered so admirably in one instance-and perhaps yet unsure of what might await him-yos'Phelium takes the female with him aboard the Clutch ship. She is competent in her brutish way, and even loyal-he, of course, having taken care to provide himself with a supply of Lethecronaxion beforehand.

  sig'Alda ran the odds once more.

  .8

  Well enough. The female was but a tool to yos'Phelium's hand-provided by chance, honed by necessity. He had been foolish to suspect anything else. What other use had a well-trained agent for a bitch Terran, after all?

  Reasoning rec
onstructed to satisfactory tolerance, sig'Alda pulled the keyboard toward him, beginning to plot the coordinates of the planets on the graph that hung over the desk. Several of the worlds represented there were Interdicted. However, the duties of Scouts took them to many strange orbits, including those about Interdicted Worlds. Best he consider any reports the Scouts had on files regarding those particular Forbiddens before he made further plans.

  VANDAR:

  Springbreeze Farm

  Zhena Trelu left her boarders to clear up the supper dishes and made her way down the hall, key clenched tight in her hand, second thoughts buzzing in her head. The Meltz boy would be here soon, to tune Jerry's piano, just as she had said he could. Except now she was not so sure.

  She paused at the door, looking from key to lock, telling herself hopefully that three years was a long time, telling herself that maybe the key did not work anymore, after all this time . . .

  Undecided, she fidgeted with the key; then, with a sharp head-shake, she clenched her fingers, her hand moving toward the pocket of her apron.

  Behind her she heard a noise.

  She jerked around-and there was Meri, gray eyes huge in her pointed face, one hand tentatively extended. "Zhena Trelu, please. Cory play yes."

  It was said in the mildest possible tone, but the old woman clutched at the spark of resentment the words ignited, using that warmth to chase away the cold confusion.

  "Why in wind should he?" she demanded, knowing it was unreasonable, but not caring. Hers was the loss, and how should that-that child, her husband standing healthy at her side, presume to judge . . ."You two are supposed to be working for me, not taking over my house! Telling me what to do. That's Jerry's piano! Nobody ever touched it but him. Nobody. And I should just hand it over to some-foreigner I first laid eyes on three weeks ago? Why? Like as not, the pair of you're only out to rob me-"

  No!" The girl's voice cut passionately across the stream of nonsense. "Good Cory! Patient Cory! Works hard-fixes-helps. Helps you. Helps me. Who helps Cory?" She flung her hands out, and Zhena Trelu saw the shine of tears in the gray eyes. "Zhena Trelu. Please. Cory play yes."