by Steve Perry
Several students peeped from around doorways at the scene, and their voices were muted when they spoke.
"—see that? She got Red—!"
"—never saw anybody move so fast—!"
"—sweet Buddha, how can anybody shoot like that—?"
Red's hands had angry red splotches on them where half a dozen small missiles had stung them, but he was smiling as Geneva got to her feet. He walked to his daughter and put one arm around her shoulders. "Way to go, kid."
As they walked off together down the corridor, Red glanced back at Dirisha. There seemed to be tears in the man's eyes, and Dirisha was certain those tears were not from any pain he might have felt. He was one of the best, he had just been beaten by one of his students, and that might make him sad; on the other hand, it was his daughter who had taken him, and that must mean something else altogether.
"He's happy," came a voice from behind Dirisha. Pen. Even if she hadn't recognized it, nobody else could sneak up on her the way Pen always seemed to be able to do.
Dirisha looked at the shrouded figure.
"She's better than she's ever been before," Pen said. "And she was already the best."
Dirisha nodded. "I know."
"Do you know why?"
Dirisha shook her head.
Pen looked down the corridor. "Want to take a walk?"
"Sure."
She followed Pen outside. He began to lead her across the artificial plateau, toward a section of scrub wood a kilometer away from the school. It was cooler these last few days, as the tilt and orbit of Renault brought autumn to the hemisphere. The vegetation around Simplex-by-the-Sea had begun to go to the warm colors: reds, yellows, browns, all dotted the stunted trees and bushes now, amidst the green.
"Geneva has always been something special," Pen said. "But lately, she's become more than ever before."
Dirisha said nothing.
"She's going to be put in a position of real importance when she leaves here. She could be the cog that turns the big wheel at just the right moment."
The scrub trees loomed.
"In fact," Pen said, "any of the students could be that cog."
Dirisha reached the first of the trees. She touched the rough bark with the fingertips of one hand. The tree felt hot, a surprise. "Some of us are less likely to do that than others."
Pen drew next to Dirisha. He looked properly inscrutable within the gray folds of his robe. His eyes looked all-too-wise, though. "Meaning yourself?"
Dirisha picked a fleck of bark from the tree, examined it, then tossed it away. She returned her attention to Pen. She shrugged.
Pen turned to stare back at the school. "You know anything about integratics?"
"Some kind of theoretical sociobiology, isn't it?"
"More than theoretical," Pen said. "It's very practical. The Siblings of the Shroud have been working with it for some years. In a limited way, of course." He looked away from the school and back at Dirisha. "The students here, for instance, have been chosen not only for their abilities as individuals, but also for how they will mesh with the others here. We have secured in-depth psychological profiles on each student—and each instructor. If someone is going to hate someone else, we want to know it."
Dirisha carried the statement a step farther. "And if somebody is likely to... love somebody, you want to know that, too, right?"
Pen chuckled. "One of the things I like about talking with you is that there is never the need to belabor the obvious. Yes, we want to know that, too."
"So you had a pretty good idea that Geneva would find herself attracted to me."
"I am surprised it took so long."
"And the purpose of this little manipulation?"
"You already know. Since you arrived, Geneva has become more... complete. She has transcended her self— she now loves, in a way she has not loved before. Before, she only had an image, that of Khadaji, the myth. Now, she has the reality—you."
Dirisha rubbed one hand up and down against the tree. The coarse bark felt good against her palm. "I like Geneva," she said. "I feel more comfortable with her than I've felt with anybody in a long time. She's a good kid, sweet, but—"
"But you don't love her," Pen finished.
"I don't. I wish I could."
"It doesn't matter. It's enough that she loves you."
"That's what she said. I don't see it."
"You will, someday." His smile wrinkles appeared. "You might want to have a talk with Mayli Wu, when you get some time."
Dirisha felt uncomfortable about this whole conversation; as if there was some kind of threat she could not see, but could feel. She decided to change the subject. "Is it true that Sister—Mayli used to be a medic?"
"Board-certified in urology," Pen said.
"Why'd she give that up to be a prostitute?"
"She discovered what love was. Call it field work."
"That's a little flip."
"It's the truth. Ask her."
"I will."
Pen stood silently for a moment, and Dirisha began to wonder just what this hike was meant to impart. She tried to cast it into fugue-mode, but it seemed to be more twisty than she could unravel. From her dealings with Pen so far, she knew he never did anything without a reason. What was he getting ready to drop onto her?
To her surprise, Pen said, "Well. Thanks for the walk. I'll see you at the school." And he started back.
For an instant, Dirisha had an urge to point her finger at his back and blast him with her spetsdod. But even as she thought it, Pen cleared his right hand from the robe, to show his own weapon.
Damn! Was he telepathic? He knew she wanted to do it! And just what was this all about?
A small thought bounced up and down in a far corner of Dirisha's mind, trying to get her attention. When she finally noticed it, the thought suddenly grew to fill her consciousness with its simple truth: remember Heisenberg, kiddo. If you are an effect, and affecting someone like Geneva, you too are part of this integratic dance. You can see what you are doing—can you also see what is being done? To you?
Once again, Dirisha resolved to be aware. The incident on the ferry, and the love Geneva now felt for her were intended, she knew that.
What else did Pen have planned for her?
As she watched Pen, now a hundred meters away, Dirisha felt an old memory suddenly come alive. Something in this situation sparked it, some similarity. It shouldn't, that incident was nothing like this one, but there it was. She watched Pen's figure in the distance, remembering....
Dirisha watched the figure in the distance, and wondered how she'd been so stupid as to come to this place. Vul was the second moon of Kalk, in the Svare System, a barren, arid place kept alive only by the Tarp which formed a clear dome over the settlement. A big moon, to be sure, enough to give a person four-fifths of a gee—and a headache from the local sun, if that person forgot her droptac filters. It was a pit of a place, there was no reason for anybody not bom here to come and visit—and no reason for anybody to be bom here, that Dirisha could see. So why was she standing out in the ankle-deep orange dust, watching the solitary figure approach?
She grinned. The Flex sent a person to some odd places, Deuce, sure enough. Even to this pit. She'd heard from an instructor on Kalk that there was a fighter here, a woman who either had been a player who'd retired, or still was a player who was hiding out, or who ate rocks and pissed gravel just for the fun of it. The Flex was full of half-truths and rumors, and if only one in a hundred were true, then there were men who could breathe vac, defeat a hundred at a kick, or become invisible with a snap of two fingers. This much was certain: the locals knew who Dirisha was looking for, and they spoke of this player-not-player with great respect.
After five years in the game, Dirisha was not so easily impressed. She'd lost a few, but won a lot more; she had taken six to the end, and out of it; she knew she was good.
The figure drew nearer, not growing all that much. A smallish woman, though that
meant little. Dirisha's first bad loss had been to a man not much bigger than a child. She'd underestimated his skill and strength, and he'd beaten her bloody and senseless for her lapse.
She knew better, now.
The woman was centered well, despite the gravity and the dust. Dirisha had practiced moving in the lower gee for a week before she'd gone looking for the locals' champion. Anything less would have been stupid.
The woman was close enough for Dirisha to see her face. Oddly, she seemed familiar, though Dirisha couldn't place her. She knew a lot of the major players, but this woman wasn't from those memories.
Dirisha saw the woman recognize her for what she was, and she smiled, teeth bright against her dark skin.
The small woman was dressed in a dustwrap suit, sealed at the neck, ankles and wrists, and she stopped three meters away.
"What say, Sister?" Dirisha felt tight, wired, ready to spring.
The woman sighed. "I thought somebody like you might come. I was hoping to avoid having to hurt anybody here, but if you're determined, I'm ready to show you the way." A deliberate pause. "Sister."
The voice did it. The face might not have given it to her, but the voice brought it back: Dirisha remembered the woman, knew where she had seen her before. Her surprise must have overcome her control, for the woman smiled.
"What's the matter, Sister? See a ghost?"
Dirisha smiled, she couldn't help it. "Lizard!"
"I didn't copy that, Sister. Say again."
Dirisha shook her head. "You wouldn't understand the term, it's personal.
But I know you—you were on Dirisha, about ten standards ago. In Flat Town."
"So?" The woman edged forward a hair, setting her feet more firmly on the chalk-like ground under the orange dust. She turned slightly to one side, to present a smaller target.
"You took out a freight handler in Kivu's, a guy hard-timing a young woman." A child, Dirisha thought.
"I lost count of the pub-scrubs I've shaken up, Sister. A long time ago." She slid a few centimeters closer.
Automatically, Dirisha moved her own stance backward a hair. Then she stopped, and forced herself to relax. "I saw it. I was the girl. You saved my ass."
"I can't even remember it, night-face. It was nothing."
Dirisha shook her head again. "It was something. It re-focused my life."
The small woman laughed. "You became a player? Walking the fucking Flex? Shit. What were you before?"
"A trull. A good-timer."
"Not much improvement. Some, but not much." She moved in a little closer, her hands starting to come up.
"Don't," Dirisha said. "I can't fight you. You gave me a way out. I worked for years to be like you, as good as you."
"Well, now's your chance to find out if you made it, little sister. Or, maybe 'daughter' might be better, hey?"
"Look, I don't want to do this. Forget I was ever here."
"How can 1? You brought all that fucking history with you. I was one of the best when you were still a kid. I still am."
Dirisha nodded. "I'm not arguing."
"But do you believe, night-face? That I was better than you then, and I'm better than you now?"
Pride rose in Dirisha, ego-fed and fat. "You were better, then. Not now. I know how good you were, I studied your moves in memory a thousand times. But—"
"But I'm old and slow and you're young and fast, right?"
Anger flared. She was trying to give the woman a way out—why wouldn't she take it?
"Is that right, good-timer-who-thinks-she-can-play-with-the-best?"
Dirisha dropped her center, and took a deep breath. "Yes. That's right!"
The woman lunged—
Fifteen seconds later, the woman who had once saved Dirisha's life was unconscious. Not dead, not even badly injured, that's how much better Dirisha was than she.
Dirisha hadn't been able to understand the fight, then.
Dirisha Zuri—it meant "window to beauty" in her native language—stood staring at Matador Villa. The memory of the fight against her one-time benefactor still pained her whenever she recalled it. She'd understood why the woman had to try her, but only later, after she had begun to tire of the Hex. She understood other things, too. If she had only been a little wiser, she could have backed down, and given her youthful idol face, honor. She could have even fought and lost—pretended to lose—it wouldn't have cost her any more pain than some of her early sparring sessions with Instru'isto. But she hadn't been wise, she'd been young and stupid and full of herself. So she had taken the older woman, had beaten her in such a way that there could be no doubts about who was the better fighter. It had been a sin to do that, Dirisha knew that now. Hindsight, and useless, but she at least knew. Now.
What hindsight would she be viewing in a year or five years or twenty years—assuming she was still alive? Had she really gotten any wiser? Or was she just fooling herself?
Dirisha stared at the school, and leaned back against the scrub tree. She was more troubled than she could ever recall being. Damn....
CHAPTER TWELVE
TALVO SEN, SUPREME High President and Beloved Ruler for Life of the Glorious Corporate State of Mzaha, smiled nervously into the photomutable gel of the broadcast camera's eye. Many of his eight million subjects would be watching the cast, and he obviously wanted to impress them.
Dirisha was not impressed. President Sen was a man she cared not at all about, save that he was in her charge. All that mattered was that he survive the holoprojic cast—a thing ordinarily not something one would worry about, since appearing on an audiovisual net was seldom fatal, in and of itself. But somebody wanted to assassinate Sen, and Dirisha's job was to prevent such an assassination.
Dirisha stood to the President's left, wearing a set of soft gray flexweave orthoskins and her spetsdods, watching the technicians flurry around the broadcast gear as the time for the program drew near.
The room was large—President Sen could hardly occupy a less-than imposing office—a good eight meters square, and even the four technicians and all their equipment did little to shrink the space. There were no windows, and only two doors. The main entrance was ringed with detection gear—axial scanners, HO detectors and a zap field—and the emergency exit was a one-way that could only be unlocked from the inside by President Sen's right palm print. The floor and ceiling were both ferrofoam, and laced with sensors. Dirisha had inspected each tech as he or she entered, done a physical and hard-object scan, and a spec-chrome for possible contact poisons. The four techs were all clean.
When she had learned of the broadcast, Dirisha had taken a quick-course in broadcast engineering. When she checked each piece of equipment allowed into the room, she knew what it was she was checking, and what it should look like. In theory, it would be almost impossible for anybody dangerously armed to get into this room, short of an all-out attack with heavy weapons.
Dirisha had a couple of armored monitors set outside, to cover the building, so if somebody did throw heavy stuff at it, she'd get enough warning to hustle Sen into the emergency exit.
She had it covered, she figured.
One of the techs dropped a lens mount. The expensive piece of equipment thumped down on the thick carpet and bounced. They were a clumsy bunch.
That was the second time somebody had mishandled the cast gear.
Another tech said, "One minute, President Sen."
The ruler leaned over and put the palms of his hands flat on his desk, and did a son of half-push up. It was a gesture he sometimes did when nervous.
Well he should be nervous, Dirisha thought. He was not a popular man.
Three times in the past week, people had tried to send President Sen to join his ancestors. Three times, Dirisha had kept him alive. A fanatic with a hand wand had tried to get Sen from a crowd; a woman cook had tried to poison the President; a religious cabal had sent a team of assassins with bombs against the ruler of Mzaha. Dirisha had stopped them all. So far.
"Thirty seconds." The tech calling time looked into his viewer. "Cats' blood, Rimo, the posterior illuminator is in the frame. Get over there and move it, stat!"
The named tech scurried to move the offending light. Dirisha watched him circle behind the President, her spets-dod held ready to shoot if the man moved a hair toward Sen. Instead, the tech got one foot tangled in the base of the illuminator as he tried to move the light, and fell. He almost went headlong, but managed to save himself from falling by slamming into the emergency exit. Ouch. The tech shoved away from the door.
"Come on, Rimo! We're at ten seconds!"
Rimo grinned with embarrassment and tugged at the illuminator.
"Okay, okay, now move out of the frame!"
Rimo scampered back behind the holoproj camera.
Dirisha looked at the tech directing.
"Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—go!"
President Sen smiled, and as he did, one of the technicians behind the camera suddenly pulled a strip of metal away from the camera's base and screamed. "Death to dictators!" Then the woman lunged forward.
Before the would-be assassin had moved half a meter, Dirisha shot her, the cough of her spetsdod loud in the room. What a stupid attack, she never had a chance, why—?
The double cough of a second set of spetsdods reached Dirisha even as she spun to face the movement she saw peripherally. A gray figure, coming from the emergency exit! President Sen slapped at his cheek where he'd been hit.
Before she could bring her spetsdods around to return the fire, Dirisha felt the double sting of two more spetsdod slugs stitch her belly. Damn! She couldn't even take one of them with her, for the gray figure danced back into the exit before she fired! Her darts hissed through the open doorway harmlessly.
Damn, damn, damn! She and Sen were dead—!
Dirisha straightened from her crouch. President Sen lifted himself off the desk. The suicidal tech with the metal strip stood and brushed at her slightly-tangled hair.
