Engaging the Enemy

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Control enthusiasts, aren’t they?” MacRobert said. “Helen says they’re bucking about a cloned prosthesis instead of bioelectronic?”

  “They think the clone won’t take, or it’s not cost-effective or something.”

  “How long does it take?”

  “To grow an arm? Minimum of eight months. Four for the initial stage, then implantation, then another four to eight of boosted growth and a lot of physical therapy.”

  “Mmm.”

  “And I resent every day of it. I knew there was more than one; I knew there might be more than two. But I had to go get Shar…”

  “Of course you did,” MacRobert said. “The bioelectronic prosthesis is faster, though, isn’t it?”

  “Supposedly, yes,” Grace said. “Hook up the nerves, attach the prosthesis, and then it’s forty to sixty days of training. But it wouldn’t be my arm.”

  “They could make it look—”

  “I don’t care about looks!” That came out more angrily than she meant to sound with MacRobert. “I care about function,” she said more quietly. “It’s easier to interfere with the signaling in a non-cloned prosthesis. It’s less reliable. I can’t afford to worry about who might be programming my arm.”

  “Oh.” He looked taken aback.

  “Bad enough I’m out of action when Helen needs me. A shorter time out would seem better except…I don’t know when, or who, or how many.”

  “Perhaps you could recuperate back at the manor while making that decision,” MacRobert suggested.

  “Get out of here? Everyone seems convinced I need to be here.”

  “Until you were out of danger, yes. But now? Don’t you have some recovery time before they can start either approach to a prosthesis?”

  “I…think so, yes.”

  “You would be as safe, from a security standpoint, at the house as here. The level of medical support you need is much less…the last time I stopped by, you had tubes and wires everywhere.” He grinned.

  “I don’t remember.” She did not remember a visit from him at all. How long had she been unconscious?

  “Blood loss and shock,” he said. “You’ve made a remarkable recovery.” He did not add for a woman your age, which the attendants kept mentioning. She felt absurdly grateful.

  “I intend to make a full recovery,” she said. “I have things to do.” One of the most frustrating things about being locked up here was having to leave the guilty at peace.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said. “But if you feel up to roughing it in the country, we can both put pressure on the staff.”

  “Just a moment,” Grace said. She felt around on the keypad under her right hand. There. That was the bed control. A motor whined faintly and the head of the bed came up. “It’s hard to argue effectively while flat on your back.”

  His grin broadened. “Indeed. Shall I barricade the door so the attendants can’t get in, or—”

  She didn’t feel at all dizzy. “No, you’re going to help me get out of bed and into the bathroom.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. Here—give me your arm—” He held out his bent arm; she grabbed it and pulled herself upright. Now she was dizzy for a moment, but it passed. Sitting upright on the side of the bed felt much better than lying in it. Her bare feet, hanging over the side of the bed, looked pale and oddly unnatural.

  “I’m going to stand,” she said. “I’ll have to lug this damned IV pole with me—”

  “You’re sure? Never mind, you’re always sure.” He positioned himself to make it easy for her to slide off the bed, his other arm ready to steady her if she needed it. She felt lopsided without her left arm, but not unsteady. He put a firm hand on her back as she reached out to the IV pole, and together they started a very slow walk across the room.

  They were halfway to the bathroom when an attendant came bustling in. “Now, now, dear, mustn’t play with the bed control—what do you think you’re doing? You—whoever you are—get away from her—”

  “No,” Grace said. “I need his help. I’m going to the bathroom.”

  “You can’t!”

  “I most certainly can, and I most certainly am.” She glared at the attendant. “It’s a shame that this gentleman is more use to me than you are, but it can’t be helped. I certainly wasn’t going to use a bedpan in front of him.”

  “You should have rung!”

  “You should quit treating me like an idiot,” Grace said, feeling better with every step. “If you want to help, unhook me from this blasted pole. Or help bring it along.”

  “I’ll have to call the doctor,” the attendant said.

  “And I have to use the toilet,” Grace said. “Are you going to help, or not?” The longer she stood up, the more she wondered if this had been a good idea, and she really did need to get to the bathroom. The attendant, muttering, finally reached for the pole. Grace transferred her grip to MacRobert’s arm and took another step. Better.

  The attendant didn’t want to leave her alone in the bathroom, but MacRobert drew him away and shut the door. Grace sat, feeling limper than she liked, but also triumphant. She imagined pacifying pharmaceuticals rushing away, and when she was through, she stood up by herself—with a good grip on the IV pole. That brought her face-to-face with the mirror. The person staring back at her was only partially familiar. It wasn’t the missing arm that bothered her but the stooped posture and slack, puffy face with the hazed eyes. She dismissed the ridiculous hospital gown as an irrelevant accident.

  She forced herself upright. Better. Glared at the puffy face. Better again. Made faces at herself in the mirror until the attendant knocked on the door.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Grace said. “I’m coming out.”

  On her way back to the bed—which seemed much farther away than it had been on the way to the toilet—she said, “I’m going home tomorrow.”

  “You can’t!” the attendant said.

  “In law, I certainly can,” Grace said. “I am a competent adult, and thus allowed to discharge myself from a medical facility at any time, whether or not it imperils my life.” She sat down on the bed, trembling with exhaustion. “And since I am a competent adult, this won’t. I will have medical assistance at home.”

  “But—”

  “You really do not want a legal battle with me,” Grace said.

  “She’s right,” MacRobert said. The attendant looked at him, then back at Grace, and let out a huge sigh.

  “I’ll have to talk to the doctor,” the attendant said, and left in a hurry.

  “Idiot,” Grace said. She was perched on the edge of her bed and had no idea how to lie down again without hitting her stump. It hurt enough already; she did not want to bang it on anything.

  “Here,” MacRobert said. He put one arm behind her and presented the other for her to hold with her good hand. She would have glared at him except that he was doing the obvious best thing without fuss. She let him ease her back to the bed, but managed to get her legs up onto it before he reached for them. He laid the cover over her lightly. “You really are one to take an idea and run with it, aren’t you?” he said. “When I suggested recuperating back at the manor, I wasn’t thinking of tomorrow.”

  “I’ll rest better,” Grace said. “And I’ll be there if—”

  “If nothing. I’m there. You’re not in action right now.” He cocked his head. “You’re a very determined woman.”

  _______

  Grace arrived back at the manor in a medical transport, clearly marked as such. This obvious signal to the other side that she was helpless infuriated her, but the medical staff had insisted that she could not travel safely without attendance, and Helen backed them up. She was tense all the way, feeling like an obvious target, but the trip went without incident. Perhaps MacRobert had arranged protection; she felt inclined to believe that he had.

  She let herself be moved through the house in a hoverchair, vowing silently that she would be on her
feet as soon as she got rid of the worriers. She wanted to see the children above all, but Helen was worried that they’d upset her.

  “Auntie Grace?” That was the younger, Shar. She turned her head.

  “Yes, Shar.”

  “Gramma said it’s a bad word but sometimes it’s all right for grown-ups to say bad words.”

  “Excuse me? What, Shar?”

  “That word you said when you fell down and there was all that blood. I told Gramma you said it and then your arm fell off and there was all that blood. I thought it made your arm fall off to say the bad word, but Gramma said no.”

  The pure absurdity of that brought tears to her eyes and a snort of laughter at the same moment. Shar looked at her with concern. Grace blinked the tears away. “Shar, I’m sorry. I’m fine, but that just hit me funny.”

  “You cry when something’s funny?”

  “Sometimes.” How to explain to a five-year-old…she wouldn’t even try. “Shar, you did very well that day.”

  Her lower lip trembled. “It was scary. Buttercup bucked me off twice, and Justin was laying there and Gramma was screaming and you—”

  “Yes, it was scary,” Grace said. “But you did very well. You didn’t scream. You did what I told you.”

  “I wanted to—”

  “But you didn’t. Do you still need to scream?”

  Shar looked down. “Sometimes. But it’s bad—it upsets Gramma.”

  “Not at the right times. When something’s been really scary and you couldn’t scream then, sometimes you need to scream or cry later.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh yes,” Grace said. “Sometimes I scream.” Shar smiled through tears, and then left. Grace wondered when MacRobert would show up. Soon, she hoped.

  Her next visitor, however, was Helen, who shut the door behind her and stood by it. “I haven’t thanked you yet for saving the children.” Her voice was tight, as if she spoke around a block of ice.

  “Helen…say what you mean.”

  “It’s—I can’t—” Helen, always so remote and cool, collapsed on the chair suddenly, shoulders shaking. Grace cursed her own weakness. “Stav and Jo and the children almost—”

  “But they didn’t get the children,” Grace said.

  “But they almost did. If you hadn’t been there—”

  “If I hadn’t overslept, I’d have known they were there before the children went out,” Grace said. “How’s Justin?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. A bump on the head, that’s all. He’s upset about Rosy, of course.” Helen sniffed. “I’ve got to stop this…all this crying.”

  “You have a lot to cry about,” Grace said. “So do the children.”

  “You aren’t crying,” Helen said. “And you’re the one who lost an arm.”

  “But not a husband and children,” Grace said. “Can we stop this comparison of grief? I certainly don’t think less of you for grieving.”

  “Oh. Yes.” Helen blew her nose, wiped her face, and took a deep breath. “It just hits me at the oddest moments. And I did want to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Now—what happened to the assassins?”

  “I don’t know. The police kept telling me to take care of the children and not worry when I asked. They took your weapon away, I do know that.”

  “Just the one I had with me?”

  “You have others?” Helen’s brows went up. “Here?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Grace said. “Not that I’m in shape to use them, but I’d hate to lose them. Any more trouble?”

  “No, nothing. The police have been here, of course, and that fisherman who knew you—MacRobert.”

  “You meet the nicest people on the river,” Grace said. “Quite the gentleman he is.”

  “You did know he’s in Spaceforce?” Helen asked.

  “Is he?” Grace said, closing her eyes.

  “Grace. Don’t do that. I know you knew; you know everything about everyone five minutes before you meet them.”

  Grace opened her eyes. “Do I? All right, I knew MacRobert was in Spaceforce. I did check out who was renting cabins on the river when we leased this place. That was an obvious way for someone to gain access. But when we met on the river, he was all right. I watched for a few days to see; he’s a wet-fly fisherman, and he was fishing like any other.”

  It was hours later, while she was napping, that MacRobert came. He knocked on the door; she woke, mumbled something, and he came in.

  “You have a nice system here,” he said, looking around the room in a way that indicated the locations of system elements.

  “Thank you,” Grace said. “Now why were you so anxious to get me out of that hospital?”

  “Events. Would you like to check your system and see that it’s functioning?”

  “Yes.” Grace accessed her implant’s security subroutines, linked into the house system. All well so far. “If you’ll hand me the controller in the drawer of the bedside table…” It looked like the remote for a vidscreen; MacRobert handed it to her. She ran through the diagnostics, something the implant could not do without a direct physical access. All correct. The system was on at the highest level, as it should be. “Clear,” she said.

  “Good.” MacRobert sat down in the chair near the bed. “You had obtained information on the actions of officials in high office; you had transmitted that information to certain persons—am I right?”

  “Yes,” Grace said.

  “I would like to see that information. We are concerned that those persons are not the ideal agents in this instance.”

  “We?”

  He gave her a steady look. “We have a common cause. We have a common enemy.”

  “Do we?”

  “Yes.” No wiggle room in that statement. “Whoever attacked Vatta did so not alone to destroy Vatta, but to terrify the government. And my best guess is, not this government alone. It would not surprise me to find that other ansibles than ours are out of commission, and that atrocities have been committed in other systems, all to cause governments to weaken or fall. Here, in the one system where we can obtain hard data, we know that the highest level of the government is involved.”

  “Who are we?” Grace asked. What she really wanted to ask was Who are you? but the answer to the other might make that clear enough.

  “Spaceforce is tasked with external security issues,” MacRobert said. “That’s public knowledge. We were deliberately misled and kept from knowing things that then allowed the transfer of weaponry from a nonallied space fleet to this planet, and activation of that weaponry by at least one such ship. The attack on Corleigh Island’s Vatta offices and household was made using high-level weaponry controlled from space. By the time we could ascertain that, the ship involved was beyond our borders, and we were ordered not to pursue it. Then the ansibles went out, and we were ordered to contract our perimeter to two light-minutes.” He paused; Grace nodded her understanding and he went on. “This caused us some concern. Us being that part of Spaceforce tasked with security analysis.”

  “I see.”

  “Not completely, you don’t, and I’m not authorized to share all our sources with you. Though I believe we share some sources of which we are not aware. At any rate, though my nominal position is senior NCO in the cadet barracks at Spaceforce Academy, my actual job is, as you’ve surmised, in the security sector. It’s just that I could learn things fairly easily from homesick cadets that other operatives had to dig for.”

  “So what is it you want from me?” Grace asked.

  “I want you to share what you’ve learned with me, and let us use that information to take down the President,” he said. “You’ve set the wrong kind of hounds on his trail. Kill him your way, and he’ll be a martyr.”

  “I want him dead,” Grace said.

  “Quite so.” His tone was level; Grace noted that he showed no shock or disapproval. That surprised her; he was developing a habit of surprising her, and she surprised herself by not resenting it. “And we
want him discredited,” MacRobert went on. “If you didn’t want that, too, why collect the chain of evidence you’ve spent so much time on? We can accomplish both, if we work together.”

  “I would have to trust you,” Grace said. To his credit, he didn’t use I saved your life to persuade her, but just sat there, waiting. She closed her eyes. He said nothing. She wanted to trust him. She wanted nothing more than she wanted the President both dead and dishonored. But could even Spaceforce accomplish that? More important, would they?

  She opened her eyes. “Do I have your word, MacRobert-whatever-your-rank-really-is, that you will not let that weasel escape?”

  “Yes. And I can have a high-ranking officer come here and speak with you, if that will help.”

  Grace hoped her expression carried sufficient disgust with that appeal. “Admirals and generals are featherweights, MacRobert. You, I choose to trust. All right. I’ll need to get downstairs to the library, and onto my secure line. What time is it? Damn. Better get me downstairs now.”

  She was sweating with pain, her hand and feet cold, by the time he had her installed in the chair and helped her hook up the external communications she’d established. With exquisite courtesy, he withdrew to the library proper while she sent out the coded message that meant “stop, cease, await next orders.” Confirmation took hours, hours during which she passed from merely tired to utterly exhausted, fighting off the pain and weakness to stay upright in her seat, acknowledging each reply within the appropriate time frame, each having its own unique reply code.

  At last it was done. MacRobert got her back upstairs and into bed.

  “You had better get it done,” Grace said, with the last of her strength. “Or I’ll come after you.”

  “I believe it,” he said. “But I promise, we’ll get it done.”

  _______

  The President yawned as he sat behind his polished desk. Though he had slept better the past dozen nights, he still could not stop yawning. On his desk was the Order of Rescission that would invalidate all Slotter Key letters of marque and order all its privateers to cease operations. It seemed futile, since they had no functional system ansible, and thus could not recall the privateers now in operation, but he hoped it would placate the pirate horde. At least, with that old woman out of commission, he had only one enemy to fear.