by Steve Perry
The gray figure stepped back into the room. Pen.
"I just killed your charge," Pen said, "And you along with him. How did I do it?"
Dirisha sighed. She thought back over the past few minutes. The clumsy, stumbling techs. The one-way lock.
"Sen's palm print, on the lock."
The tech called Rimo stepped forward and supinated his right hand. He peeled a thin sheet of plastic away from his right palm and held it up. Dirisha could see the whorls and lines on the material. She shook her head.
"You had clues," Pen said.
Dirisha nodded, feeling disgusted. "Sen's habit of pushing against his desk top."
"What else?"
"The clumsy techs. That gear is too expensive to let a hyperspaz play with it. It was a set-up for the lock fall."
"What else?"
"The diversionary attack. There was no way it could have succeeded—even Sen could have protected himself against that."
Pen nodded. "Cut it."
The walls of the "President's office" began to fade, as holoprojic images created by a magnetic-viral computer dimmed and allowed reality to seep back into the room. Dirisha and the others—all students or instructors—found themselves standing in the middle of a large domed structure, empty save for themselves. Dirisha knew that the other matador students would either be watching her test live, or would see the recording of it later. She sure had screwed it up.
Pen said, "Hindsight is wonderful, but it comes too late. Fortunately, this scenario was only a game. Learn from what you have seen here—no one should make the same mistake Dirisha did. Take nothing for granted." Pen paused. "I'd like to see the assassin."
A door opened and a figure entered the dome.
Dirisha smiled at the approaching woman, and shook her head ruefully. "I should have known," she said.
Geneva didn't smile. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be," Dirisha said. "It's the best thing you could have done for me. It might save my life, someday."
"I know. That's why I did it."
Pen spoke to an unseen audience. "If you want to be able to prevent your charge from such a fate as Dirisha's, you must learn to think like an assassin. If you can conceive of the attack, you can design a defense. In this job, there is no second place winner, second means you lose. Three times, Dirisha kept her charge alive, but she lost him on the fourth. Dead is dead forever. Remember that."
Pen turned and strode away, a dramatic figure in his robes. Most of the others began to follow him.
Dirisha turned to Geneva. "Why didn't you do the shooting? The plan was yours."
"Part of planning is to pick the best people for the job," Geneva said. "Pen was better equipped for that part."
Dirisha cocked her head to one side and smiled at the younger woman.
"Really? I think if it came to it, you could outshoot him. I've seen you both work."
"Against somebody else, maybe," Geneva said. She reached out to touch Dirisha's shoulder. "Not against you."
Dirisha felt that stab of feeling again, that uneasy touch of emotion she'd known since she and Geneva had become close. The woman loved her, there was no getting around it. Even though she knew Dirisha didn't feel the same way about her, she still loved her. Damn.
"Well, I'm next in the barrel," Geneva said, breaking the mood. "Probably they'll get me first time."
Geneva was wrong. Nine students tried assassinations against her charge, a portly "industrialist" from Earth. It was only when Pen and Red joined forces that Geneva finally lost; and, even then, she took Red with her, narrowly missing Pen as she went down.
Afterwards, Pen found Dirisha practicing sumito.
"Do you know why we were able to get Geneva's charge?"
"I saw the scenario, she was off-balance by the—"
"No. It was because she didn't really care for him. We do that on purpose, write the charges in as pompous or ignorant or stupid, sometimes. To see if you'll let your personal feelings for a client influence how you do your job.
Geneva didn't like him, so she was lax."
"She beat all of us nine times," Dirisha said.
Pen nodded. "Yes. But," he said softly, "if you had been her client, she'd still be beating us."
Dirisha stopped her dance. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Pen stood, as inscrutable as always. "It means that what you feel for a client makes a difference. It is difficult under the best of circumstances for a man or woman to be objective—whatever 'objective' is—about anything important. You don't like a client, then your job is just a job, 'objective', nothing more. If you like a client, you work harder for him or her, unconsciously. If you love a client and you can still maintain your professional training, that client gets everything you have. If you were Geneva's charge, she'd move planets to keep you safe. All the galaxy together would have trouble beating her—love is more powerful than fanaticism. Remember that, Dirisha. It's important."
Pen turned and left, and Dirisha stood watching him. At times, it seemed everything Pen said was ambiguous, full of hidden meanings. Dirisha felt as if she had just heard something profound, only—
She wished she knew what the hell it meant.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
DIRISHA WENT TO see Mayli Wu. She found the woman she'd first known as Sister Clamp sitting nude, legs locked in lotus and eyes closed, on a cushion in the meditation chamber.
Although Wu was naked, she wore her spetsdods, and Dirisha felt the other woman's awareness as she slipped into the room. There had been other times when she had known that kind of energy exchange, as another's ki flowed and meshed with her own. If she tried to shoot the meditating woman now, Dirisha knew she would be shot at the same instant. That sense of zanshin was part of what Flex players craved, part of what the Arts were supposed to give when enlightenment was reached. In all her years of training, Dirisha had known the feeling only a few times, and then only fleetingly. A true Master was supposed to live there.
Strange that she should feel it now.
Dirisha sat on her heels, and waited.
After ten minutes, Mayli Wu opened her eyes. She smiled. "Sister. How may I serve you?"
Dirisha said, "I need some answers."
"Of course." Wu unknotted her legs and stretched them in front of herself.
She bent at the waist and touched her toes, then straightened. She drew her feet up, knees gaping slightly, and clasped her arms around her legs. "Ask."
"Why did you give up being a medic to become a trull?"
"To learn about love."
Dirisha shook her head. "I was in that business, when I was young. What I learned about was lust, and selfishness."
"You weren't looking in the right direction."
"And you found what you wanted?"
"Yes. I have touched love more than once."
Dirisha digested that. "What is this all about?" She waved her hand, to encompass the whole of Matador Villa. "Really?"
Wu smiled. "Pen has told you."
"You'll pardon me if I say I don't trust Pen any farther than I can fly by flapping my arms. The man is an expert at manipulation, his motives are suspect."
"Everyone's motives are suspect, to you, sister. You don't trust anybody, you never have. It is your greatest strength."
Dirisha nodded. "It's kept me alive."
Wu shook her head. "Your greatest strength, but also your greatest weakness. A flaw in your perfection."
"What are you saying?"
Wu touched the edge of the plastic flesh holding the right spetsdod to the back of her hand, peeled it up, and dropped the weapon next to her hip. She repeated the process with her other spetsdod.
Dirisha's breath caught. During the time she'd been here, she'd never seen another student or instructor weaponless. She had gotten so used to seeing everyone armed, the sight of Mayli Wu without her weapons gave her a chill.
Now the woman truly looked naked; before, she had only been unclothed.
"Why d
id you do that?"
"Are you going to shoot me? I can't shoot back."
"No. But why did-?" Dirisha stopped, her gaze fixed on Wu's smile. "What makes you think I won't shoot? You do think that, don't you?"
"I know it."
Dirisha raised one hand and pointed at the center of Wu's chest. "It would only take a flick of my finger to prove you wrong."
"True," the naked woman said. "You could do it, easily. But you won't."
Dirisha let her hand fall. She was right. She wouldn't shoot. But how could Wu know?
"How do I know?" Wu said, voicing Dirisha's question. "Because I trust you. Your integrity. Your sense of fairness. Your training. I can see your essence, better than you can see it yourself, and I know. In this moment, in this place, I can trust you completely. If someone were to come in here and see me defenseless, another student, they might decide to collect a few easy points by stinging me, but that doesn't worry me, either. Do you know why?"
Dirisha felt herself being swept by emotions, a labile mix of fear, wonder and astonishment. The answer to Wu's question presented itself as though clad in microstacked stainless steel, as solid as a block of compressed lead: why couldn't anybody who happened by shoot Mayli Wu? Why, because I would protect her from it. Why would I do that? Because she trusts me to do it!
Wu said, "Ah. I see that you understand. A major step. Only one of many you must still take, but a beginning. Even the longest journey must start somewhere."
Shaken, Dirisha could not speak for a moment. Finally, she found her voice. "So Pen told the truth?"
"Certainly. He has not told you everything, but what he says about our purpose is true. You would never have been selected to come here, were you not in accord with it, on some level. The Confed is dying; when it finally collapses, there will be chaos in the ruins. For mankind to rise again at all will be difficult; for people to move in moral directions will be harder still.
We can make a difference, if we are properly trained, properly motivated and dedicated. That's what you are learning to do here. But before you can save anybody else, you must learn to save yourself."
Dirisha sat on the edge of her bed, telling the story to Geneva. The two women wore thinskin bodystockings and spetsdods, no more, and as Dirisha spoke, Geneva came to stand next to the dark-skinned woman.
"She knew I wouldn't shoot her," Dirisha said. "There was no doubt, none at all. I don't understand how she could be so sure."
Geneva reached out and began to knead at Dirisha's neck, working the tight and hard trapezius with deep pressure of her fingertips. Dirisha hadn't realized how tense she was until she felt the other woman's touch. Bad, that, losing simple muscle control unconsciously. Dirisha took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and relaxed into the massage.
After a moment, the hands stopped. Another moment, and there came the sound of Geneva's spetsdods thumping onto the bed.
Dirisha opened her eyes and looked up into Geneva's smiling face. The older woman shook her head. "Damn. I'm surrounded by 'em."
Geneva continued the massage, digging harder into the kiatsu points, relaxing the muscles even more. She said, "Is it so hard to believe somebody can trust you?"
"I don't understand the reason why. I could have shot her. I could do the same to you."
"You could. It would be all right if you did."
"You are hopeless."
Geneva's touch lightened, to a gentle stroking motion. "Why? Because I love you? And trust you?"
Dirisha said nothing. That sense of danger which rode her whenever the conversation or her thoughts turned into these channels rode heavily upon her. What was she afraid of?
Geneva slept in Dirisha's bed, exhausted from their love-making, out like a small child. Dirisha sat at her desk, glancing past the holoproj unit at the sleeping figure. She had been floating in this comfortable pond for a long time without really questioning it-one tended not to look at such a gift as this too closely-but now it was time. Along with the skill of sumito, the ability to knock dragonflies from the air with a spetsdod, Dirisha was getting more than she'd intended. She needed to know more about that. There was information stored in the viral molecular brain of Matador Villa's computer she wanted access to, and she had figured out a way to get it.
The black woman stood and went to her lockbox. Thumbing it open, she withdrew a small holoprojector. She'd bought it from one of the bandit merchants in town, no one at the school knew she had it. Neither did anyone know that Dirisha had spent considerable time in the archives, editing recording spheres which were available to open access. From the lockbox, Dirisha also took a plastic case which held half a dozen vacuum-formed steel marbles. The case was marked, "Galactic Economies in the Modern Age."
Five of the balls were, in fact, just that> dull recordings of interest only to a student of economics. The sixth sphere, however, was something else. It was a pass to information held under personal lock-if it worked. It would depend on how sophisticated the computer security system was.
For a moment, she was tempted to use the console here in the room.
Geneva was not likely to awaken for anything short of a bomb exploding, at least as long as she knew Dirisha was there. But if she did, Dirisha didn't want to have to explain what she was doing. No, better to do this in privacy.
The hour was late, and although the Villa never shut down completely, it was unlikely Dirisha would run into anybody in the sleeping quarters. She padded down the hall to the small study and entered it. Nobody else was about.
Inside the study, Dirisha locked the door and stroked the computer console into life. The air lit with the Three Rules, as it did every time a remote in-house was used. The words floated holoprojically over the small plastic desk, glowing as though composed of tiny neon tubes.
Quickly, Dirisha set up her projector. She snapped the sphere into the socket, and flicked the unit on. There was a small hum as the projector cycled up. Dirisha touched the "Play" control, and then the "Hold" tab.
The air in front of the computer console shimmered brightly, and the image of Pen appeared, looking somewhat ghostly. Dirisha adjusted a control, and Pen took on more solidity. He seemed almost real, frozen in the middle of a gesture, his mouth open. A holoprojection would not fool anyone with normal human senses this close, but it might fool a computer's remote camera.
Dirisha looked at her chronometer. She had timed the recording, and had practiced the sequence several times. She touched the "Hold" control again, counted off three seconds, then stroked the computer console into "Access" mode. She took a deep breath. The computer was designed to hold private files under several command sequences. Material could be locked under simple codes, voice patterns, visual identification, palmprints, or any combination of the four. Most students and instructors just used vocal or visual. If the computer recognized you,
it gave you what you wanted, assuming you were cleared for it. It would not give Geneva those files tagged to Dirisha's face, or vice versa. Simple, and usually pretty effective. But recordings could be made, vocally or visually, so there were back-ups.
OPERATING. The word flashed in the air.
The image of Pen spoke. "Personal Files," it said. Those two words had taken Dirisha almost nine hours to find and assemble so they sounded natural. Dirisha started counting. One, two three-INITIAL IDENTIFICATION SEQUENCE ACCEPTED. VOCAL AND VISUAL. CONFIRMATION REQUIRED.
Dirisha let her breath escape slowly. Here's where it could get tricky. She had made an assumption that Pen would secure his own files as much as possible. So far, so good- The image of Pen leaned toward the holoproj. There was a sensor at the base. As Pen stretched out his right hand, Dirisha leaned in from the side and pressed her own palm against the sensor. It was Pen's palmprint, taken from a cast she had made of it, a thin layer of plastic skin over her own.
SECONDARY IDENTIFICATION ACKNOWLEDGED, the computer flashed. AWAITING OPERATIVE CODE SEQUENCE.
The image of Pen stood unspeaking. Dirisha rea
lized her timing was a little slow. Would the computer see that as a problem? Was there a limit on how long it would wait?
"Khadaji," The image said.
Dirisha held her breath again. She reached for the "Hold" control on the projector. It was pure guesswork, using Khadaji's name. The recording had three more words it could try, in case that one didn't work. If the computer queried a wrong command, the image of Pen would say, "A mistake. Cancel that, the code is 'Matador.'"
If that didn't work, there was "Sumito" and "spetsdod" in reserve. After that, the game was over, and likely Dirisha would be in deep shit. The security program might have orders to inform Pen of unsuccessful attempts to peek at his files.
But, nothing risked, nothing gained-
ACKNOWLEDGED, the computer said.
Dirisha let her indrawn breath escape in a rush. Ha! So the inscrutable Pen wasn't omnipotent! She stabbed at the control of the projector, and sat in front of the terminal. She typed in the word "Index", and waited to see what secrets were hers for the taking.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
PEN'S PERSONAL FILES were extensive-there were hundreds of entries, detailing all kinds of fascinating things: biographies of students, names of local officials who had been bribed, a lengthy section on pubtending, even one entitled, "Love." It was interesting reading, but it did not reveal the reason behind it all. Aside from what Dirisha had been told, she could find no other, secret purpose.
Seated in front of the holoproj, working the terminal, Dirisha scanned a dozen files quickly. She read her own biograph. Some of it was written by Pen's agents, a multi-viewed accounting of her movements from the time she'd left Khadaji's employ on Greaves until she'd arrived on Renault. Other parts were evaluations by instructors at the Villa, including Pen's comments.
She was, she noted, well-thought of.
Geneva's file carried comments similar to hers. There were files on Bork, Sleel, Sister and even Khadaji. Dirisha didn't bother to read these. There was no file listed for Pen. Damn. All the effort she'd expended to break into Pen's persona] files, and there was nothing here. It was possible he had hidden something within an innocuously-named document, much as Dirisha had hidden her doctored storage sphere, in plain sight. But there was no way she could find that kind of information unless she scanned all the material, not unless she was amazingly lucky. Dirisha did not trust luck.
