Matadora

by Steve Perry

  A green spear lanced at the car, but missed. Starboard tried to zig-zag, but the aircar was not designed for wheeled response. The second beam splashed against the car, on the passenger side. The flitter slowed, and spun. Starboard leaped out, hit the ground, and started rolling. A third ray ate into the flitter, and the car exploded, showering plastic and metal shrapnel against the lodge. A smoking bit of plastic fell a meter in front of Dirisha. She couldn't see Starboard for the smoke. That same smoke would obscure the approach to Beel's flitter. Dirisha rose to a crouch, and started to wave Rajeem and Beel to follow her.

  She stopped. It felt wrong. Whoever was wielding the ceepee was no amateur. Even if it were only a single woman, she was too good to start blasting at something as big as the lodge, hoping to hit her target. No, Dirisha didn't buy it. She turned toward Beel. "Do you have a remote for your flitter? A prewarm starter?"

  "Y-yes," Beel said, her voice high. "I-in my personal bag. In the bedroom. Why?"

  "I'll tell you later. Look, I want you two to stay right here. I'll be back in a minute."

  "Dirisha-?" Rajeem began.

  "It's all right. Just sit tight." She managed a grin, to reassure them.

  She went back into the lodge, and opened the door of the bedroom. Black smoke poured in, and Dirisha dropped to the floor. The air was hot and smoky, but breathable. She crawled into the main bedroom and, after scrabbling around a minute, found Bed's bag. She didn't try to find the remote, but went quickly back the way she'd come.

  When she returned, Rajeem and Beel looked at Dirisha with questions in their faces. Dirisha found the remote. She peeped around the corner, then pulled her head back and touched the control to start the filter's engine.

  A bright flash lit the rain, followed by a boom that pounded on their ears.

  She dropped the control and looked around the comer once again.

  Where Beel's rental flitter had been, there was a smoldering crater in the ground.

  Dirisha nodded to herself. "That's what I figured," she said softly. "Stick here," she said. "It's time to end this."

  She circled the lodge quickly. She was in time to see a single figure holding a bulky ceepee projector walk carefully through the rain toward the front of the lodge. Dirisha waited until she was sure the assassin was alone, then followed quickly. Dirisha saw Starboard, lying unmoving in the rain.

  The woman with the particle weapon moved toward the pit where the flitter had been. Dirisha scooted up behind her, until she was only ten meters away. The woman wore shiftsuit gear, but no armor. The shiftsuit tried to mimic the rain hitting it, but it had not been designed for such, and only looked a puddly-gray.

  Dirisha raised her left spetsdod slowly. She fixed her gaze on the back of the woman's neck, where a centimeter-wide strip of bare flesh was exposed between her hood and jacket. "That's it for you, Sister," Dirisha whispered.

  And shot.

  The woman crumpled, stiffening as she fell. Shock-tox wasn't pleasant, but at least she would be alive, more than she'd intended for her victims.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  "How's GRANDLE?" RAJEEM asked.

  For a second, Dirisha couldn't place the name; then she remembered. Starboard. She'd been calling the two men by their nicknames, and hadn't thought of them any other way. "Fine. He's got a couple of broken ribs and a liver contusion, and a lump on his head. The medics say he'll be fit in a few days."

  They were back at the Antag Union's headquarters, in Rajeem's office. Beel now had her own guard-Port's brother, as it happened-and was busy speaking to some corporate financial seminar. The incident at the country estate had shaken, but hadn't slowed her.

  "What about the woman?"

  "The medics are still... treating her." That was true enough, only there wasn't anything physically wrong with the would-be assassin. She was being "debriefed", a euphemistic term for mind-laundry. She would be turned over to the impatient Confed authorities shortly, but not until Dirisha was satisfied with her. Someone who pointed a deadly weapon at a client was considered to have lost considerable civil rights. Let the Confed stew; the woman was going to be squeezed like a sponge before they got her.

  "I was just going to go see how she was doing," Dirisha said.

  "Urn. I should get back to work," Rajeem said. "Take care, Rish."

  The Antag Union's chief psychomed was a tall, muscular man of about forty. He had a lot of smile lines, and his ki was strong as he spoke. Dirisha leaned against the wall of his spare office, and listened.

  "-surface reactions, of course, and there's no doubt that she killed the boy and tried to kill Pr. Carles. But unless you're willing to see her as a brain-scrambled turnip, we won't get anything deeper. She's blocked against a scan, psychochem doesn't work, and electropophy deep-probe comes up with nursery rhymes."

  Dirisha scratched at her forehead with the barrel of her left spetsdod. "I don't think it'll be necessary to melt her mind. She's Confed."

  The medic looked surprised, but nodded in agreement. "My thought, exactly. Nobody goes to that much trouble to hide something unless it's important. She was carrying neuro-toxin, did you know? Under her nails, in a cervical pellet, and behind one ear. If we hadn't been thorough before she came out of the shock-tox, she could have killed herself inside of ten seconds."

  "Not many freelance assassins could afford all that," Dirisha said, "nor would they need to bother. Damn."

  As she left the medical center, Dirisha was worried. Not being able to break into the assassin's mind gave her almost as much information as if they had been able to do so. A Confed agent meant trouble; Rajeem Carlos had become an official target. The next time, they might field a better agent.

  Protecting a client meant more than stopping a series of attempts. You could win a hundred times, and if you failed on the next, the game was over.

  Unless the Antag Union was looking for a martyr, it was time to take Rajeem to a low-profile status-invisible, if possible. Something had changed in the Confed's assessment of her client, and he was in danger, without a doubt.

  And, if she kept protecting Rajeem, she would find herself in direct confrontation with the Confed. Such an act would be treason, only one among all the other treasons the Confed named to protect itself. Was she willing to do that? Was it time to walk? Maybe to find Geneva and head for the outplanets while the Galactic Confederation went nova?

  It was something to think about.

  Port said, "There was a call for you. From Renault. Somebody named Sleel. Must have been important, it was direkconnek White video."

  Dirisha checked to make sure Rajeem was all right, then went to her external com. If Sleel was willing to spend his stads on that kind of connection, she could do the same. She initiated the code.

  The image was augmented color-even White hadn't come up with subspace color transmission, so it was up to the computer to enhance the color codes sent with the picture-and Sleel looked slightly unreal.

  "Hello, Sleel."

  He looked nervous. "Dirisha. Pen told me to contact you. I'm calling all the matadors. Troubles being born."

  Dirisha didn't speak, but waited.

  Sleel continued. "In the last two weeks, nineteen of our clients have been attacked. Seventeen assassination attempts were successfully prevented without serious client or matador injury; one was stopped, but the matador went final chill, with the assassin; one got through. Implosion device, on Greaves. We lost Penderson and Malori."

  Dirisha winced. Penderson had been a short, bearded man who was always making jokes; Malori a pale-skinned woman who tended to cry when upset. Shit.

  "Does that count the attack on my client?"

  "Affirmative. Pen thinks we've got a conspiracy. All our people are protecting anti-Confed sympathizers. Pen thinks the Confed is out to make us look bad."

  "Sounds as if they blew it."

  "So far," Sleel said. "But Pen doesn't think it's over. They're getting worried, Dirisha. We've had inquiries from local politico
s, even those on our payroll.

  They're checking everything from our building codes to our financial records. We've had people all over the place, poking around."

  Dirisha considered that for a moment. Then, "Is Massey still training?"

  "Massey? Sure. Why?"

  "Nothing important, just curious." If Pen allowed the Confed spy to stay at the school, he must have his reasons. His thinking made a bonsai look like a straight-edge laser. "So what's the scat?"

  "Pen wants everybody to know things are heating up. The Confed is going to make some kind of drastic move. Pen thinks everybody should bury their clients in a hole somewhere. The assassins will likely try again."

  Dirisha agreed with that. Sleet's message only made it that much more urgent. "Anything else?"

  "That's enough, isn't it? If anything else comes up, I'll get back to you. Discom, Dirisha."

  "So long, Sleel."

  Dirisha stared at the blank air. Now what? At the very least, she had to get Rajeem somewhere safer than he was.

  The Confed was powerful, but it wasn't omnipotent. There were places to hide from it.

  She had to find one of those places and put Rajeem and his family in it, and fast.

  "Impossible," Rajeem said. "I can't serve any purpose hidden under a rock somewhere like some pale grub."

  Dirisha looked at Beel, whose face wore a worried expression. The three of them were in the main room of their house-both Beel and Rajeem had insisted the place was now hers, too-but nobody was sitting on the comfortable form-chairs. Rajeem stood facing Dirisha, three meters away, his hands on his hips; Beel twisted at her belt, forming the third point of an unequal triangle.

  "Rajeem-" Beel began.

  "No! I won't slither off to hide!"

  "You're being stupid!" Dirisha said, angry.

  He looked surprised at her outburst.

  "What you want here is not the important thing, is it? I thought you were dedicated to the fall of the Confed."

  "Of course I am-"

  "That's not how I see it, Rajeem. You ought to be thinking of the day after tomorrow, not right now. If you're dead, a lot of hopes go with you. When the Confed falls, you need to be around to help pick up the pieces. You can be one of the movers, one of the people who point us in the right direction, afterward."

  "I intend to be-"

  "No, you don't, not if you won't run when you need to run! I can't protect you against the full weight of the Confederation dinosaur if it falls on you. I'm good, but I'm not a god. Even Khadaji knew when to shoot and when to footprint."

  "Dirisha, I-"

  "You like the center stage, Rajeem, I can see that. No dishonor there. But what you want isn't as important as what you represent right now. If somebody shoots, you duck, anything else is stupid! And selfish."

  He turned away from Dirisha, looking at Beel.

  "She's right, Rajeem. You like the game, but you have to look a few moves ahead. If you get taken out before the final round, it'll all be a waste."

  Rajeem turned to stare at the wall. He took a deep breath, blew it out harshly, and shivered. He turned back to look at the two women. "I guess you're right. I'm sorry. I was thinking of myself, my ego, how it would look.

  "What do you want me to do?"

  Dirisha nodded. "I know a place where nobody will ask or care who you are, as long as you pay your expenses."

  Leaving one world for another was supposed to be a strict procedure, insofar as identification was concerned. In theory, it was impossible for a person to travel by Bender under a false identity. As in many things, the theory was a far hop from actual practice. Dirisha, Beel, Rajeem and the children left the planet Wu, the system Haradali and travelled nearly eighty light years distant, to the Ndama System, to the world for which Dirisha had been named. And they did so in disguise and with new names, by a route which would be difficult, if not impossible to trace.-To a place Dirisha hoped she'd never see again: home.

  She was prepared to see change in Sawa Mji, after fifteen T.S. years, but she was surprised in that.

  The place looked almost exactly the same. Oh, there were a few new buildings; some of the old ones had been color rebonded or altered slightly, but for the most part, Flat Town seemed little different than when she'd left it.

  As the boxcar glided down, Dirisha felt a tightness in her gut. She hated this place, had always hated it, and she could remember almost no good times to stack against the bad. But it was the perfect setting for a man like Rajeem Carlos to hide. Spacers passed through, but only losers came to stay.

  The dregs settled in Flat Town, and turned even more sour as they aged. The Confed was inclined to let the place rot and die on its own-the military outpost was a token, no more, and only incompetent soldiers wound up there. Even if Rajeem stood up and announced who he was, the local drugged Lojtnant-in-Charge would have trouble understanding, or know what to do about it. It was a dank pit, her birthplace, and perfect for this one thing.

  Although she felt little for her relatives, were they still living, Dirisha knew she had to see if they still lived there. They might recognize her, and they might be curious; therefore, it would be good tactics to survey them.

  Even as the boxcar bounced to a rubbery landing, Dirisha had enough self-knowledge to know her rationalization was just that. She was curious, and despite herself, she cared. Her mother and sister and brother were products of the society into which they had been born; Dirisha knew just how hard it was to escape their fate. She was well-off now; maybe she could help, somehow. If it wasn't too late.

  Port and Starboard had arrived before them, also incognito, and they were waiting when the boxcar unloaded. Dirisha felt the wave of heat wash over her as she stepped into the afternoon, and the stink that she'd grown too used to to notice as a child hit her nostrils almost like a physical blow. Chang, how could people stand it?

  Port and Starboard had arranged quarters, ostensibly for a wealthy mining engineer, his sister and her children. Dirisha and the other two guards would pretend to be nothing else, looking out for their patron because he was forced to wait in this scumpit to close a lucrative business deal. The background story was well-fleshed, and local spies would find confirmation, if any bothered to check.

  After they were settled, Dirisha went looking for her family.

  It was as if they had never been.

  In the run-down brothel, the owner's cur was surly, at first. "Don' know nuthin', bend off, Sister, you're wastin' my-t" He shut up when Dirisha jabbed the barrel of her spetsdod into his muscular, but quivering belly.

  Dirisha knew what language worked here. The madam's cur looked out for her second, himself first. "I'm not some lacy offworlder, Deuce. You can talk or you can squirm on the floor. And if you reach for the panic tab, you get kicked after you fall."

  The cur recognized power. "No-nobody named Zuri working here. There used to be a girl, but she's gone. Had a kiddo, but she went, too."

  "Where?"

  "I dunno-"

  "Guess."

  He licked dry lips. "Might try Belvo's."

  Dirisha turned and started for the door. She took two steps, then spun and fired both spetsdods, getting off six darts. None of her shots hit the cur, but his face went dough-white. He'd been reaching for a shotpistol, and Dirisha gave him enough time to clear the counter with it before she blasted the weapon out of his hand. He put his hands on his head, fingers interlaced, and she turned away again.

  Belvo's was, if it were possible, worse than the crib she'd just left. And it was a waste of time. Her sister, if it had been her, was gone, along with her daughter. Or somebody else's daughter, maybe. Of her mother, there was no trace at all.

  On her way back to her quarters, Dirisha felt a depression like none she'd had since leaving this world a decade and a half before. What had she expected? That she would sweep in and free her sister from her bondage?

  Lay a thick wad of standards into her palm and tell her to go to a place where she could
live like a human instead of a poorly-treated copulatory work beast? Yeah, that was part of her fairy story, to be the sister who escaped, and who finally came back. It was a delusion, she knew. She was bright enough to see the bitter humor of it, the last vestiges of the girl she had been wanting to show them! It wouldn't have been for Zawadi, it would have been for herself. Learning to love didn't cure everything that had haunted her. There were still ghosts which had to be laid to rest someday. But not today.

  There was a surprise waiting for her when Dirisha got back to her room. A message from Sleel. Starboard said it sounded urgent.

  Dirisha called. Sleel's image came to off-colored life over her communicator.

  "The shit tube has blown," Sleel said. "The school is closed, and everybody is supposed to head for a hiding place. Matador training has been declared Treason Against the Confed, Dirisha. I'm calling from a sub rosa station Pen set up, halfway around the planet from Simplex-by-the-Sea. There are arrest files out for all of us, you included."

  "Is everybody okay, Sleel?"

  "Last I heard. We had six hours warning. Bork and Mayli stayed to close the Villa down with Pen, but they got clear before the Confed troopers rolled over the school."

  Dirisha felt relieved. Thank all the gods!

  "Everybody who hasn't already hit the road running is likely to be pulled into a Confed net. Most of the people with clients have taken off." He paused, and his face seemed to grow red. "It was Massey, Dirisha. He was a fucking spy! And you knew it, didn't you?" -

  Dirisha sighed. "I knew it. But so did Pen."

  That seemed to stun Sleel. "He did? Then why did he let it happen this way?"

  "I don't know, Sleel. Pen has crooked eyes, he sees things I can't."

  "Yeah. Shit. Look, Dirisha, I'm leaving, stat. But I've passed the word to everybody that they can use the quintdrop for messages. Pen says the Confed'll take years to run it down, even if they catch somebody who puts 'em on to it. Call if something happens."