The Agent Gambit

by Sharon Lee

  Slowly she levered to her feet, moved to the board, and checked it one last time before setting the timer, sealing her jacket, and running for the exit.

  She rolled out of the emergency hatch, spinning as she landed, then pitched the ship's key into the narrowing slit and skittered away in the knee-deep snow, heading for a downhill clump of scrub.

  Ground, snow, and brush shivered; there was a grating, subaural scream, and Miri dove, twisting around to see-and the ship was already twenty feet up, heading straight into the cloud-cast sky.

  She watched until it was nothing but a glint of hidden sunlight on scarred metal; watched until it was nothing at all. Watched until her eyes ached and she came to herself because the tears had frozen and were burning her cheeks.

  She scrubbed them away with cold-reddened hands. Then, rigidly ignoring the gone feeling in her belly, she turned and marched back toward Gylles.

  Body reported cold and darkness growing beyond closed eyes. The inner sentinel assigned to monitor outer conditions allowed the body to burn more calories, to generate more heat. The dark was of no account.

  He danced: beat, breath, thought, movement, without division; only Self and the attributes of Self, thus named: Val Con yos'Phelium Scout, Artist of the Ephemeral, Slayer of the Eldest Dragon, Knife Clan of Middle River's Spring Spawn of Farmer Greentrees of the Spearmaker's Den, Tough Guy.

  He had passed through the three most elementary Doors, taken the designated rest, and approached finally the fourth Door, B'enelcaratak, the Place of Celebrating Fragments.

  He drew yet again upon his name and focused his celebration, his understanding, upon that special portion: Tough Guy.

  There was a flare of bright warmth, perceived wholly, as name brought forth celebration of she who had named. He lived the joy, tears running unremarked from behind shielding lashes, and the dance changed to exultation of so sharp a blade, so bright a flame, so unlooked-for a lifemate-so beloved a friend.

  The dance came back upon itself, joy constant, and he moved close to the Door, opened his understanding to the fragment of his name-and cried aloud, eyes opening to darkness, body shuddering, joy dissolved in an acid torrent of self-loathing.

  He gained minimal control; he pushed his body to the stove in the corner and forced his hands to pick up wood and stack it in a pattern drawn of skill belonging to a man he once had been.

  Hunching over the fire, he strove to warm his body while the coldness raging within filled his mouth with the taste of copper and his soul with despair.

  "Miri." He put his hands toward the flames and spoke to her as if she stood there, in the shadow behind the stove. "This other-it is very strong, Miri-and I am not very strong at all. I tricked you-made you lifemate to a man who does not exist. Ah, gods . . ." His voice grew ragged with horror. "Gods, the things I have done!"

  Being made over to somebody else's specs-that's dying, ain't it?

  He froze, listening to her with memory's sharp ears.

  Master program'd rather have you dead than have itself shut off again, boss.

  How many tricks had they planted to turn himself against himself? To be sure that he would keep to the Department-or die rather than break free?

  He had beaten them once-on Edger's ship. Had beaten them with one shard of certainty caught and held from the confusion of four years' divorce from his soul: They lied.

  Of his own will, he had shattered the gain of that dance upon Edger's ship, but he held still that shard of truth. It was a beginning, though not the beginning he had thought to make. Humanlike, he had flung himself headlong into L'apeleka before all proper thought had been taken. He smiled ruefully at the darkness beyond the stove.

  "The dance will be long," he said softly. "Cha'trez, do you wait for me . . ."

  THE GARBAGE RUN

  Pre-entry sounded. Shadia woke and cycled the pilot's chair to vertical, dragging the safety webbing into place with one smooth motion, eyes already sweeping the board. She registered the go-pattern, signaled pilot readiness, and brought up the screens, and the Scout ship phased gently into normal space.

  Hanging in her forward screen was a midsize planet-one of three in the system, the only one habitable. Planet I-2796-893-44-Vandar, according to the locals-Interdicted and Off-Limits to Galactic Trade and Contact by Reason of Social Underdevelopment.

  Sighing, she kicked in the log-and sighed again as the legend INITIATE DESIGNATED APPROACH scrolled across the bottom of the prime screen. More for something to do than because she doubted the ability of ship automatics, she slapped the board to manual and rolled smartly into the designated spiral.

  "As if," she grumbled in Vimdiac, the tongue in which she most commonly talked to herself, "they have anything remotely strong enough to see me. Ah well, Shadia-consider it a bit of piloting practice, though the problem's hardly knotty. Hah! Getting a trifle overwise, are we? And just how precisely can you overlay the route, my braggart?"

  For the next little while she busied herself with matching the designated approach point for point. In second aux screen, the blue of ship's approach ruthlessly overlaid the black route, while Shadia hummed in contented concentration.

  "A cantra says you'll miss the pace at orbit entry; you were ever a- What by the children of Kamchek is that?"

  It glinted in the light of the yellow sun as its orbit brought it from behind the world. Mid-orbit and holding. Shadia upped mag, directed the sensors, and very nearly snapped at the computer. The second aux screen showed ship's approach steady on the route.

  A vessel, the computer reported, as if intuition had not told her that seconds earlier. Coil-dead, the sensors added, and the computer provided an image to aux three, delineating an orbit in strong decay. Life-form readings were uncompromisingly flat-not so much as a flea was alive on that ship, though sensors indicated a functioning support system.

  Shadia punched Navcomp, remembered the board was on manual, and ran the calculation in her head, plotting the intersection of the route and the derelict. Velocity adjusted, sensors and scanners kicked to the top, the Scout ship moved in.

  Her ship hung within seconds of the empty vessel. She had pulled the files: The ship was without Liaden reference marks, and the two numbers-a seven and an eleven connected by a dash, with the homeport apparently blotted out by a dab of paint-brought nothing up on the screen.

  The damage the ship had endured was obvious: scars, scrapes, and bright metal-splashes, as if it had gone through a meteor swarm at speed with no screens. The longer she stared at it, the more she expected it to act as a ship should, to roll or orient, to acknowledge the presence of another ship.

  The good news, if there was any, was the lack of major leaks. The spectroscope showed no untoward gas cloud, no signs that the ship had been opened to vacuum.

  The bad news was the location, confirming again the need for the garbage run. Damn! The last time someone had found something around a proscribed world they had spent three years tracking everything down and filling out reports.

  For a moment she considered forgetting that she had seen the thing, knowing full well that eventually her tapes would be audited and someone would spot it.

  "Damn book!" she muttered. "Page 437, Paragraph 4: Report before boarding any suspicious or unauthorized vessel in a proscribed zone."

  Unwillingly she punched up the coords for the nearest report bounce and powered up the emergency pin-beam. She hit the switch that would broadcast her sensor readings on the side band, all the while cursing her luck.

  Some time later, she stood on the bridge of the derelict, frowning at the map on the floor. The yacht had fallen to Yxtrang-anyone with eyes could mark the signs-yet Yxtrang did not commonly take time from a raid to engage in meticulous cartography. Nor would one expect them, with an unprotected world at their feet, to delay even a heartbeat in the mapping of an expedition.

  Shadia crouched, as if closer proximity would uncover rhyme-she did not expect reason-and finger-traced the familiar symbol for rive
r.

  Certainly Yxtrang, whatever their unknowable needs, would not use Liaden symbology on their map.

  And certainly, she thought, eyeing the thing with new understanding, they would never map just so, as a Scout might map, taking time and infinite care, forcing hints of information from the yacht's pitiful scans and incorporating them into a body of fact that might be studied and known. The computer on such a vessel would never have had the capacity for the task, even assuming the ship had been undamaged at the time of mapping . . .

  "Someone gone eklykt'i." Shadia sat back on her heels. Such things happened. Scouts tended to drop out of sight, to go native on some world they may have found and failed to report-or on any world that suited them better than stuffy, stifling Liad. It was not inconceivable that someone had found Vandar just to his taste.

  She considered it, eyes on the map. The unknown Scout raises Vandar-leave for a moment the questions of why he might arrive in something as incongruous as a mere private yacht and in such ignorance of his world of choice that he must squander days in mapping and deciding. He arrives, we say, and in time descends to the planet surface, perhaps programming the yacht for an outbound course-or an inbound course, Shadia thought abruptly. Best to sink the thing in the sun and be done with it.

  The empty yacht, then, is apprehended in its course by Yxtrang, who strip it and tag it for salvage.

  "And leave it harmlessly in orbit around an inhabited world? Come now, Shadia!"

  She sighed sharply and snapped to her feet. The facts were that a derelict yacht had no business about Vandar-never mind how it had gotten there. Her duty was clear, at least. Surface scans showed no disruptions such as an invading force of Yxtrang might engender, nor was she authorized to search out one gone eklykt'i. Speculation could be put aside for a later time. It would help fill the remaining hours of the garbage run.

  She ran the hand sensors around, recording whatever details mere human eyes might miss. It was possible that she was stranding someone there-but that was their lookout, not hers. Besides, the way the orbit was canted, the ship was not good for much more than a few hundred days. Might as well finish the job properly.

  Purposefully she turned to the board, flipped toggles, and initiated overrides, brows rising briefly as the Statcomp reported several mandatory energy governors missing entirely; she cycled the magnetics until the whine hurt her ears, fed all available energy, including life support, into one critical cell, and ran for the door.

  She hit the pilot's chair and slapped toggles, not bothering with webbing, then jerked the Scout ship away in a dizzying roll, hands flashing over a board yellow-lit with warnings, building velocity at an alarming rate, blurring impossibly into Jump. Behind her, the derelict yacht exploded, raining daytime meteors onto the world below.

  VANDAR:

  Springbreeze Farm

  Dawn was three hours away when a shadow detached itself from the others clustered about the scuppin house and made its way soundlessly across the crusty snow to the base of the kitchen steps. At the top of the flight, the door swung open on newly oiled hinges, and a second shadow-shorter, more slender-leaned out, yellow light spilling from the room behind and gleaming off a wealth of copper hair.

  "Morning," she said, as if she could see him plainly, though the light did not reach nearly so far. "You coming in or not?"

  "Good morning," he murmured, drifting silently up the stairs. At the landing he paused and smiled and made his bow. "I would very much like to come in, please, Miri."

  "Good thing." She grinned and slipped back into the room. "Breakfast's almost ready. Thought I'd have to give your half to the dog."

  "Am I late?" he asked closing the door and unfastening his jacket. From the rug in the corner, Borril thumped his tail and gave a groan of welcome.

  "Not late," Miri said from the stove. "I guess you're just right on time."

  He grinned, hung his jacket on the peg between her blue one and Zhena Trelu's disreputable plaid, and bent to yank on Borril's ears. "Hello, dog. So you survived, did you? Quite the hero-the newssheets told your story most movingly."

  Borril groaned loudly and dove sideways onto his head, rolling an ecstatic yellow eye.

  Val Con laughed, reached out to grab the blunt snout, and gave a brisk shake. "Shameless creature. I've come home only to pull on your ridiculous ears, I suppose. Yes, I see the splint. Your own fault for breaking the leg in the first place. Surely you might have managed things better than that?"

  The dog answered with another soulful groan, which squeezed off into a sigh as the man rose and moved toward the stove.

  Miri glanced up and pointed a brisk finger at the cup steaming on the counter. "You walk all the way from Hakan's, boss?"

  He curved cold hands gratefully about the teacup and bent his face into the fragrant steam. "It is quite lovely tonight-very clear. It is true there are not so many stars in this system, but I think tonight one might have counted each." He sipped carefully. "I was not so patient, alas."

  "Could've stayed till morning," Miri said, doing efficient things with spatula and skillet while Val Con sniffed appreciatively. "Hakan would've brought you on his way into town."

  He raised a brow. "But, you see, I wished to speak to my wife tonight, and I am very much afraid that Hakan was abed by the time my necessity had made itself known."

  "There's the phone . . ."

  Val Con laughed. "Inadequate." He went to the dish closet and pulled out silverware and napkins. "Would you like the plates over there?"

  "Yeah . . ." she said, attention almost fully on the task at hand. Val Con divided knives, forks, spoons, and napkins-yellow for her, blue for him-carried the plates to the counter, and poured a second cup of tea. He took both cups to the table and returned to rummage in the icebox for bread and butter.

  "Breakfast," Miri announced, bringing the plates to the table. "Hope you're hungry."

  "Not quite ready to expire," he said, slipping into a chair and picking up the fork.

  Miri grinned and attacked her own meal, surprised at her sudden hunger.

  There was a sigh from her right; she glanced up to find him smiling at her. "It tastes wonderful, cha'trez; thank you. I was afraid I would have to eat my coat, you see."

  She laughed and reached to pick up her cup, then shook her head at him. "Zhena Trelu thinks you run off. Wants me to call the cops and have you brought to justice."

  "A rogue," he told his plate, with deep sorrow. "A man without honor." He glanced at her from under his lashes. "You did not believe this?"

  She blinked. "No."

  "Progress," he informed the plate, stabbing a forkful of breakfast. "Good."

  The green eyes were back on her before she could frame a fitting reply. "Has Zhena Trelu brought you more clothes, cha'trez? The shirt is very nice."

  She shook her head. "Funny thing-people from all over Bentrill have been sending us clothes, and books and-ah, hell, I don't even know what half the stuff is. Money. Lots of money, seems like. Zhena Trelu was trying to tell me how much we own right now, but I don't think I got it straight. Bunch of stuff for you piled up in the music room-" She slammed to a halt, catching the frozen look in his eyes.

  "A bounty?" he asked quietly, fork forgotten in his hand. "For the soldiers we killed?"

  Oh. Yxtrang took bounty; Liadens counted coup.

  "I don't think it's a bounty," she said carefully. "The way Kem explained it is people think we're heroes and are-grateful to us for stopping the army when we did. Would've been ugly, if they'd gotten into Gylles." She paused, biting her lip. "The stuff's for balance, I think, 'cause people feel like they owe the three of us something for doing them a favor."

  "I see," he murmured, and returned his attention to breakfast.

  She finished her own, savoring the taste, happy just to have him there, quiet and companionable. Tentatively she reached inside and touched the pattern-place in her head-and nearly dropped her fork.

  The pattern shone. It glittered. I
t scintillated. She forced her inner eye to follow the interlockings and branching-aways-and felt the wholeness and the rightness and the warmth of it like joy in her own heart.

  She drew a shaky breath, unaware that he was watching until he said her name.

  "Yo." She withdrew from the pattern-place with a little wrench.

  "What are you thinking, Miri?"

  "I-" She blinked. "Where's the genie, boss?"

  "Ah." He leaned back in his chair, eyes on her face. "Subsumed, I think you would say; his powers taken and his vision destroyed."

  "And it's not gonna happen again? You gotta fight again, you won't get stuck?" She shrugged, eyes bright. "Scariest thing I ever saw in my life, when that thing went haywire. I was looking right at it! One second, it's fine; next second, it's totally nuts."

  "I am sorry," he said, "that you were frightened. And, no; I will not get trapped again. There is nothing left to be trapped within-only Val Con, the things he knows and the abilities he possesses."

  She frowned. "The Loop?"

  "Exists," he said calmly. "It is, after all, an ability I have-to observe and to render odds." He saw the shadow cross her face and leaned forward, hand outstretched. "Miri."

  Slowly she slid her fingers into his. "Val Con?"

  "Yes," he assured her, very gently. "Who else? Are you frightened, Miri? I-"

  But she was shaking her head, eyes half closed as she touched the pattern inside her head. "Not scared. The pattern's-it's right. Not quite the same as it was-but it's okay."

  He drew a breath, but she was suddenly wide-eyed and smiling as she squeezed his fingers. "Where'd you come up with the notion of genies, anyhow? Thought that was home-grown Terran stuff."

  "So it is," he said, leaning back and releasing her hand. "But my foster mother was Terran, remember? And she told us stories. One had to do with a man who had found a bottle on a beach. He pulled out the cork and a genie emerged, bowing low and proclaiming indebtedness. He offered to perform three services, as balance for the debt."