by Sharon
He nodded. "Tea, please, though."
"Coffee ain't good enough for you?" she demanded, switching pots and juggling cups.
"I don't really like coffee," he said, taking the chair with the best view of the door. He accepted his cup with a smile.
"You, my man, are a maniac." She sank into the chair opposite, sighing deeply. "How much did we drink?"
He regarded his tea doubtfully, judged it too hot to drink, and set the cup on the table. "Three bottles between us."
"Three! No wonder I'm acting like a lackwit know-nothing. Oh, my aching head tomorrow—or is it tomorrow, now?"
"In a few minutes." He sharpened his gaze upon her face, picking out the tight muscles around her eyes, the smile held in place by will, not pleasure . . . .
As if she felt the intensity of his study, she moved her head sharply, tossing her hair behind a bare shoulder. "You and me gotta talk."
"All right," he said amiably. "You start."
The full mouth flickered into a grin, then straightened. "I ain't going to Liad, Tough Guy. Straight dope. No lies. I like who I am. I like how I look. I don't want to be somebody else." She took a sip of coffee, made a face as she burned her tongue, and set the cup on the table.
"I know that probably sounds crazy to somebody's got three or four identities going at once—but, hell, I'm just a dumb hired gun. And that's what I want to stay. So thanks, but no thanks, for the generous offer. I appreciate it, but I can't approve it."
He sat at ease, eyes on her face, hands loosely draped over the arms of the chair, ankles crossed before him.
After a time, she leaned forward. "Ain't you gonna take your turn?" she asked softly.
He lifted a brow. "I was waiting for the rest of it."
"You were," she said, without any particular inflection. She sighed. "Okay, then, the rest of it is this: I'm grateful for your help—which has been substantial and timely. I know I would've been a deader if you hadn't come along. I owe you a life, and I can't pay except to give you yours by splitting. Now.
"So, tomorrow I'll get my cash from Murph and then I'll walk out, easy and slow, with nobody the wiser. I don't need a car, so you can let poor Handler off the hook. And I sure don't need a spaceship, so Edger can relax." She picked up her cup, took a less scalding swallow, and continued.
"I think that—with your help—the Juntavas is off the trail for the time being. I should be able to get off-world before they know I'm missing. I can handle it from here, okay? I've played singles odds my whole life long and I've managed to make it this far . . . ."
In the chair across from her, he had closed his eyes. As she let her voice drift to silence his lashes flicked up and he sighed.
"Miri, if you follow your plan as outlined, your chance of getting off-world is less than two percent. One chance in fifty. Your chance of being alive this time tomorrow is perhaps point three: thirty percent—three chances in ten. Your chance of being alive the day after falls by a factor of ten."
"So you say!" she started, anger rising.
"So I say!" he overrode with a snap. "And I say because I know! Did I tell you I was highly trained? Specially trained? One of the benefits is the ability to calculate—to render odds, if you will—based on known factors and subconsciously and unconsciously noted details, extrapolating on an immense amount of data I have noted. If I say you will likely be dead tomorrow evening if you leave without my aid, believe it, for it is so."
"Why the hell should I?"
He closed his eyes and took a very deep breath. "You should believe it," he said, and each word was distinct, as if he were following a ritual, "because I have said it and it is true. Since you seem to demand it, I will swear it." His eyes snapped open, captured and held hers. "On the Honor of Clan Korval, I, Second Speaker, Attest This Truth."
That was a stopper. Liadens rarely mentioned the honor of their Clan: it was a sacred thing. To swear on the honor of the Clan said they meant business, down-and-dirty, one-hundred-percent-business, no matter what.
And the eyes that held hers—they were angry, even bitter; they were bright with frustration, but they told no lie. She flinched, the weight of his meaning falling onto her all at once. He truly believes you're gonna be dead tomorrow if you leave this menagerie, Robertson.
"Okay, you said it, and you believe it," she said, making a bid for some thinking time. "You'll understand if I find it a little hard to believe. I never met anyone who could foresee the future." It was scarcely an apology, nor did it appease him.
"I do not foresee the future. I merely take available data and calculate percentages." His voice was steel-edged and cold. "You are not a 'dumb hired gun,' I think, and I am puzzled by your insistence on behaving like one."
The crack of laughter escaped before she could stop it.
"Count score for Tough Guy," she directed some invisible umpire, then grew serious again. "You mind if I play with your odds-maker for a couple minutes? Just to satisfy myself? I might not be dumb, but I sure am stubborn."
He picked up his cup and settled back in the chair. "Very well. You may."
"What are the chances of Edger turning us in?"
"None whatsoever," he said immediately. "To be as exact as the calculations go, it is more likely that I would turn us in than Edger would—the answer closely approximates zero."
"Yeah?" she said, brows rising. "That's good to know. Edger's easy to be fond of, the big ox." After a short pause, she asked, "What were the chances I could've killed you, the first time we were together?"
He sipped tea, watching the numbers appear on the scoreboard behind his eyes, then tried to relay the data dispassionately.
"If you had tried while I was unconscious, on the order of point ninety-nine: approaching surety. After I regained consciousness, before you returned my gun, and assuming that your own survival was a goal: perhaps point one five—fifteen chances in one hundred. Assuming your own survival was not a prime consideration, the odds would have approached point three—nearly one third chance of success."
He paused, sipped more tea, looked at the figures his head developed for him, and continued the analysis.
"Once you returned my weapon to me, your chance of success dropped to something close to point zero three, if you wished me dead, no matter what. Three percent, by the way, is a significantly higher chance than most soldiers would have against me, but you have speed, as well as excellent sense of location and hearing. Also, I do not believe that you would underestimate me because of my size, as other opponents have done."
He might have gone on—the figures did interest him. He found that her chance of surviving the first Juntavas attack had been as high as twenty percent, had he not shown up. The chance of her living through the second wave was much lower.
"Wait," she said, interrupting these discoveries. "That means you let me hold you. Why?"
"I did not wish to kill you. You were not a threat to my mission, nor to myself, nor to any of the projects I have been trained—"
"I'm obliged," she said, cutting him off. She poured coffee and settled back carefully, cup cradled in her fingers, her gray eyes on his face. "What odds that Charlie guy could have killed me down on the dance floor?"
He sighed, closed his eyes, and added several conscious variables to the equations.
"Discounting Edger and his kin, who are more aware than many people credit, and recalling that the weapon is new to you, but that you are a skilled soldier and he a mere policeman or security guard ... During the time I was not in the room there was a point four chance of him wounding you, a point three chance of your being severely wounded or incapacitated, and a point two—or twenty percent—chance that an attack would have succeeded. All of these are first attacks with a handgun. With the Clutch present, he would have had no opportunity to follow up."
He opened his eyes, drank tea, and closed his eyes again, concentrating. It had been a long time since he'd done full odds this way.
"Once I re-entered the room his chance of woun
ding you dropped to about one chance in twenty—perhaps four point nine percent."
"Think a lot of yourself, doncha?" She frowned and leaned forward a bit in the chair. "But, Tough Guy, what're the odds he would have?"
He moved his shoulders, unaccountably irritated. "Insufficient data. I don't know who he is or why he asked you to dance. He was armed with a hidden weapon, and although he is not a young man he is in good shape, has quick reflexes, and excellent eye use: a trained guard of some kind. That does not make him a murderer, it is true. But, in your precarious position, adding anything to the odds for the other side is very foolish."
"But," she insisted, "he could have asked me to dance because he thought I was cute and he wanted to dance."
Val Con nodded and poured himself some tea.
"You don't think so," she said. "Why not?"
"Something ... a hunch, you'd call it."
"I see. And a hunch is different than that damn in-skull computer?"
He nodded again, pushing at his hair. "Hunches saved me a lot of times—perhaps my life—when I was a Scout: guesses, made with minimal information, or just feelings. The Loop is different—it takes a definite course of action or concern to trigger it. A hunch might simply make me uneasy of a certain cave, or wary of thin ice ... It's not something I can see behind my eyes, plain and certain."
"Sure," she murmured. "It's obvious." She threw back the rest of her coffee as if it were kynak and sat the cup down on the table with a tiny click.
"Well, then," she began again. "Do you remember when we started our souls on the way to damnation by burning up that imported brandy?"
He nodded, smiling.
"How safe were we? The TP was all around, waiting for you . . . ." She was watching him very closely, Val Con saw; he was puzzled.
"Once we reached the lobby, there was virtually no chance that we would be recognized. Pete didn't know who he was looking for—a faceless voice on the comm? The last time we'd met in person I'd had a blond head, blue eyes, and glasses on my face. You and I could have walked across the lobby without danger, I believe. No one would have stopped us. In fact, they would have been happy to have us out so quickly."
"But you knew Edger and his gang were going to be there."
He laughed. "I had no idea that Edger was within light-years! That was coincidence, neither deducted nor felt. It is also why the Loop is not one-hundred-percent accurate: I could trip on a piece of plastic trash and break my neck."
"Well, that's a relief," she said, and he could see her relax. "I was starting to think you were superhuman, instead of just souped-up." Her mouth twisted. "Tough Guy?"
And what was this, he wondered, when things had been easing between them? "Yes."
"What are my chances—now—of killing, maiming, or just plain putting you out of commission on any average day? Do you have enough information to run that one?"
He did, of course: The equation hung, shining, behind his eyes. He willed it away.
"You have no reason to do any of those things. I have helped you and desire to continue helping you."
"I'm curious. If I had to," she persisted, eyes on his face. "Indulge me."
The equation would not be banished. It hung, glowing with a life of its own, in his inner eye. He combed the hair back from his face. "I do not wish to kill you, Miri."
"I appreciate the sentiment, but that ain't an answer."
He said nothing, but leaned over to place his cup gently upon the table, keeping his eyes away from hers.
"I want those numbers, spacer!" Her voice crackled with command.
He lifted an eyebrow, eyes flicking to her face, and began to tell her the facts that she needed to know before the figures were named, or acted upon.
"The data is very complex. You have much less chance now than before, I believe: I am too familiar with your balance, your walk, your eye movement, your inflections, and your strength for you to surprise me by very much. The fact that you have asked this question reduces your chances significantly. That you have seen me in action, know of the Loop, and are esteemed by me increases your chances—but not, I think, as much as they have been reduced." He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, and continued, keeping his voice emotionless.
"So, the answer is that you would have, in a confrontational situation, approximately two chances in one hundred of killing me; three chances in one hundred of injuring me seriously. In a nonconfrontational situation your chances are much higher than before: I trust you and might err.
"On the other hand, your chance of surviving an attack on me by more than five minutes is significantly lower now than before—it would be a somewhat emotional event for both of us—and if it occurred anywhere within the ken of the Clutch it is likely that you would die over a period of days, were you to survive the immediate assault."
She sat very still, hunched forward in the chair. Her eyes dropped away from his to study the pattern of the carpet, and she took a deep, deep breath.
He sat frozen, also, until he was certain of the emotion he had seen in her eyes. It was not something he had seen in her before, and that it should be there now sent a cold thrust of something unnamable through his chest and belly.
Moving with quick silence he came out of the chair and went to one knee before her, slanting his eyes upward to her face, extending a hand, yet not touching her.
"And now, you are afraid."
She winced at the remorse in his voice, shook her head, and sat up straighter.
"I asked for it, didn't I?" She looked at him for a long moment, noting the wrinkle of concern around his eyes and the grim line of his mouth.
He doesn't know, she thought suddenly. He doesn't understand what he's been saying . . . .
On impulse, she reached out and brushed the errant lock of hair from his eyes. "But," she said carefully, "I ain't afraid of you."
She stood, then, suddenly aware of her finery, the ring on her hand, the gifts, the confusion, and her early-evening plan of waking with him in the morning.
She rounded the chair, heading for her room.
Val Con rose to his feet, watching her go.
At the door, she turned, then paused as she saw the expression on his face. She waited an extra heartbeat as she thought she perceived the veriest start of a move in her direction, a flicker of—but that quickly it was gone. His eyes were green and formal.
"Good-night, Val Con."
He bowed the bow between equals. "Good-night, Miri."
The door sighed shut behind her. A moment later, he heard the lock hum to life.
Chapter Ten
IT WAS COLD and she shivered in the depths of the old wool shirt. It was a good shirt, with hardly any holes in it, a gift from her father in a rare moment of concern for his only child—brought on, indeed, by an even rarer moment of actually noticing her. She was so little, so frail-looking. Hence the shirt, which she wore constantly, inside and out, over her other clothes, sleeves rolled up to her wrists, untucked tail flapping around her knees.
It was damp, too, along with the cold—typical for Surebleak's winter. It was, in fact, rather too cold for a twelve-year-old girl to be out and walking, no matter how fine a shirt she possessed.
The wind yanked her hair and she pulled the shirt's collar up, tucking her pigtails inside. She unrolled the sleeves a little bit and pulled her hands inside. The wind blew some more and she laughed, pretending to be warm.
It was a good day, she thought, turning down Tyson Alley. She'd spent it running errands for Old Man Wilkins and had an entire quarter-bit in her pocket for wages. Her mother had the cough again, and the money would buy tea to soothe her throat.
The hand fell onto her shoulder out of nowhere, spinning her to the right. The blow to the side of her face sent her reeling into a splintering wall, dazed.
"Well, now, here's a nice tidbit, Daphne, ain't it? The buyers'll give us a sum for this one, won't they?" It was a man's voice, thick with dreamsmoke.
Miri shook he
r head, trying to clear it. Two figures wove before her sight—the man towering over her, his hand completely encircling the arm he held her by. His beard had once been yellow, but long neglect and an addiction to the 'smoke had turned it blackish and matted. He was grinning emptily. A gun hung on the right side of his worn belt.
"Scrawny as it is?" The woman stepped beside her mate, dressed like him in greasy leathers, but with a ragged blanket around her shoulders, serving as a cloak. "Besides, the buyers want 'em ready to use now, not in five Standards." She turned away. "Give it a couple slaps to scramble its memory and let's get out of this damn wind."
"Want to use 'em now? We can use this one now, Daphne. Yes, yes, we can—Look!"
He moved his other hand to pull at her fine shirt, tearing buttons and cloth. He yanked it down over her arms and flung it into the frozen mud against the wall. "Look, Daphne," he repeated, reaching out to tear at her second shirt.
Miri dove, grabbing for the gun in the shabby holster. His hand swooped for her neck, but missed, grabbing a pigtail instead. She screamed, twisting around like a snake, burying her teeth in the filthy leather behind his knee.
He yelled in shock and loosed his grip on her hair. She dove for the gun again, pulling it free with one hand as he swung in a swipe that bowled her sideways, bruising her ribs against the wall. He roared, and she saw the foot coming toward her; she swung with the butt of the gun and rolled, fumbling with the safety.
She heard another roar somewhere above her as she came to her knees and raised the gun, both hands locked around the grip.
"You goddamn brat! I'll brain—"
Miri pulled the trigger.
He staggered, eyes widening. She fired again, and the left side of his face was mush. He began to topple, and she scrambled out of the way, coming to her feet to spin, bringing the gun up and pointing it at Daphne, who was standing at the far wall, gaping, hands spread before her.
"Take it easy, kid," the woman started. Her voice was not steady.
Miri pulled the trigger. Again. And again.
The woman jerked with the first shot. The second slammed her against the wall. She was already sliding down with the third, and Miri thought she might have missed her mark.
