by Steve Perry
So he might as well work out. The painkillers were somato-specifics, they weren’t making his mind fuzzy, and doing a mental workout, while not as good as doing one physically, was better than nothing. He’d start with the eighteen djurus from silat, first with blades, then bare, at slow speed, then fast, which would take an hour or so. After that, he’d see what else called to him.
Sola lay on one of the bunks and looked around the cabin. It was a large room, three meters by three meters, with a walk-in fresher that held a water shower, toilet, and sink. Business class, and a lot nicer than how she usually did vac travel, in the coach dorms. In the dorms, you had a narrow bunk, and your privacy, such as it was, consisted of a curtain-oval that nearly touched the edges of the bunk when pulled shut. Flop an arm out while lying asleep and you’d likely hit the passenger snoring next to you. Need to pee in the middle of the night, and you had to wend your way among the beds to the public fresher and hope nobody was in there with a long novel they wanted to finish . . .
Mourn had told her they could have gotten first-class accommodations, but that such travel attracted too much attention. Low profile was the way to go. Authorities kept better track of people who could afford first-class galactic travel than they did the rabble. Rich people could be trouble, they knew their money gave them certain privileges and that sometimes made them demanding. The Confed had been getting altogether too self-important of late, he’d said, and the brisk military walk it had once used when spacing out to civilize the galaxy had turned into a swagger. He didn’t want them swaggering into his room in the middle of the night asking questions he’d rather not answer. He lived at the outskirts of civilization, and broke enough laws on a regular basis that he was hardly a model citizen. But even a junkyard dog knows better than to bark loud enough for the wolves to hear him.
She had liked that conversation. She’d find a place for it in her show, no question. One had to accommodate the Confed—it was everywhere, all the time.
She had already reviewed the footage she had shot of the fight between Weems and Mourn, gone over it three times, and that few seconds alone was enough to make her documentary. The top-rated player going up against the tenth-rated, and with the added drama of her own participation—real, first-person, I’m-part-of-the-story journalism? Sheeit, it was a free kick, no goalkeep, an easy score. It needed to be good, of course, it needed to be fucking great, so that when it aired, it would knock the pants off the audience and the critics alike; but it was going to air, that she didn’t doubt.
To get rich and win big awards? That would show her father, yes, indeed, it would.
She had squirted a copy of all her existing footage into the ship’s computer, paid a storage fee, and a copy of the Weems/Mourn fight was on its way, via White Radio, to the Guild Archives on the wheelworld of Alpha Sub. She wasn’t going to lose this by having some yahoo rip her cam or computer with their copies, no fucking way.
She looked at her chrono. The old lady medic would be letting Mourn out in another hour or so. There was no hurry, but she stood and headed for the fresher. A quick shower—the only kind allowed even in business class, she suspected—and she’d get dressed and go see how Mourn was doing. The man had saved her, at the least, from a beating, probably from a rape, as well. She’d never have gotten that hand wand out of her pocket without Weems—the bastard!—thumping her. She owed Mourn, in more ways than one. He had taken a hard ride for her, she had recorded it, and the footage she had gotten was the core of her project. Was that lucky, or what?
Besides, she liked the guy. He had a manner about him.
“Everything okay?” Shaw asked.
“As far as I can tell,” Dr. Tenae said. She waved her hands at the diagnoster and the holographic reader translated her gestures into rest-mode command. “You can get dressed.”
He grinned at her. “Do you have a familiar name you like?” He asked.
“Lissie.”
Sitting naked on her exam table, he felt himself stirring, and certainly that would be evident to her. He said, “Lissie. I like it. Let me ask you a question: Would you have sex with me for a million stads?”
She smiled and shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe the question.
“I’m serious.”
There was a short pause. “Yes, I would.”
“Computer, transfer one million standards from my personal account into Dr. Tenae’s personal account.”
“One million standards transferred,” the computer said.
He waved at the exam table. “Join me?”
Tenae raised an eyebrow. “Right here and now? And payment in advance?”
“No time like the present, and we’ve got this nice padded table and all. And I’m sure you will be worth it.”
“That’s true. I am,” she said.
She removed her clothes, efficiently and with only a trace of suggestiveness, enough to cause his attention to spring to full alertness. Under the clothes, she was built well, wide hips, lush breasts, thick, glossy, black pubic hair. She looked better naked than he had expected. That hadn’t really mattered. It was her mind that had attracted him, her spirit. Good looks were a bonus, but not necessary in this case.
She stepped out of her panties, moved toward him, bent, and took him into her mouth.
Ah, yes . . .
Half an hour later, after they had taken turns bringing each other to two orgasms each, they lay side by side on the exam table, looking at each other. He laughed.
“Did I miss the joke?”
“Well, yes. After you told me you thought my taking the Reflex was a stupid idea, and I put that million into a post-death account for you, I decided I was going to give it to you anyway. So you see, the money was really already yours when I offered it to you to play lingam-and-yoni. I conned you.”
She laughed, a soft and low sound.
“Pretty funny, huh?”
She gave him a bright smile. “Oh, that’s not what I’m laughing at.”
“No?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Well, you see, I would have pronged you for free.”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “You would have.”
She looked up at him. “You’re a good-looking man. Fit, smart, brave, ambitious, rich. Even a little foolish. Attraction to such alpha males is hardwired into a woman’s genes, just as a young and shapely female form calls to men—to normal heteros, anyway. So you see, you could have saved yourself a million stads and had me for free. Who conned whom?”
He laughed again, a deep, really amused one this time. “Hell, that’s worth the million right there.”
“You can get another helping, if you want. On the house.”
“I think I’ll take you up on that.” He reached for her.
12
Once she’d made her decision—to become an artist—Azul posted her request to Confed Intelligence through a secure pipe. Field-ops had a lot of latitude in such matters, but the request would have to be approved by the head of Operations. It was pretty much a dupe seal deal, but it would take a little time for the programmers to get the request and set up the background and history. And longer for some on-call artists to create her portfolio. She had been fairly specific in what she wanted: She needed to be a painter, working primarily in acrylics, and the kinds of pictures her alter ego would create would be of a certain heroic-socialist stripe. She knew that M. Shaw had many of those in his collection, even if CI did not.
Meanwhile, Azul could do a little more on her own. If she was going to be an artist, she probably ought to know the lingo.
She called up an art program and started to read.
She didn’t have an eidetic memory, but she tended to absorb and be able to recall most of what she wanted to remember. For several hours, she scanned art history and appreciation files, specific techniques for specific styles of drawing and painting.
After a few hours, she stopped. No point in exhausting herself, it wo
uld be a few days or maybe even weeks before she could move into a direct-contact situation.
Another round of education needed to be on the Flex, following the biography of her player brother. She’d let CI pick somebody and link her to him, they had such data at hand, so she didn’t have to worry about that until they got back to her.
Why she needed a brother who was a Flex player? None of their business. All they had to do was come up with him.
The hotel suite she’d rented was large and expensive—she’d need that later, and it came with a big soak tub, into which Azul was about to step. If she couldn’t get away from the job, at least she could relax a little while she was doing it . . .
The hot water enveloped her, fragrant vapors rising, and she instantly felt better. The tub’s motors stirred the water gently, enough to relax her muscles without being obtrusive. Ah.
Being a high-level Confed operative had some advantages. A woman from her background, raised poor as dirt, would have had to do a lot of work to earn the money needed to stay in places like this. Life wasn’t so bad.
Mourn and Sola walked through the biggest of the ship’s four gardens, a pocket-park that, with clever design, managed at times to make it look as if you were nowhere near civilization, much less on a giant starship. This particular park’s theme was tropical, and there was even a program that offered regularly scheduled rains, complete with lightning flashes and muted thunder. It had been but a few minutes since the last such artificial rain, and the greenery was still wet and glistening under the high overhead spotlight that pretended to be a sun. Amazing how good the illusion was, with just a little suspension of disbelief on your part.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Better.”
“You were injured more than you let on.”
“I’ve been hurt worse. You learn to deal with it.”
“I want to thank you again, for what you did on Earth.”
He shrugged. “You returned the favor and then some. Weems probably wouldn’t have killed you. He might have chilled me, he was pissed off enough.”
The recorded sounds of tropical birds played over them. A turning of the path revealed a small stream under a narrow bridge. A couple coming from the other direction waited for Mourn and Sola to cross, smiled at them—until they saw his still unfaded bruises. He had some dit da jow and balour in his travel bag; he’d have to use the liniments to help those contusions along. With all that modern medical science had achieved, the centuries-old martial arts remedies for healing bruises still worked as well as anything.
“So, where are we in regard to you helping with my project?” she asked.
He thought about it for a few seconds. Then he said, “Do you know where the Flex’s name came from?”
She said, “I know it was called that after some kind of swordplayer from ancient times on Earth. Southeast Asian tap?”
He nodded. “Yes. Let me give you the lecture. Musashi was Nipponese, Nippon being a country of small islands. He was born in the late 1500s, C.E. time scale. The family names back then were long and convoluted, but the short version was Miyamoto Musashi—the last name actually being the name of the province where he was from.”
She nodded. He saw her make sure her recorder was collecting it, said, “Go on.”
“His father was a professional soldier—they were called samurai—who was in the employ of the lord of the local castle. Apparently his wife was highly placed, maybe even the daughter of the local ruler, though that is speculation. The times and country were tumultuous and violent. The father seems to have left the picture when the boy was around seven T.S., and whether he was killed in battle or just took off is unclear. An uncle on the mother’s side of the family more or less raised him, and Musashi learned the arts of stick and sword fighting from him and other samurai.
“Supposedly, he killed his first man in a duel when he was thirteen, using a stick.”
“Thirteen. Lord.”
“As I said, the times were violent. The samurai were soldiers, and wars and personal fights were common.”
She nodded again. Made the keep-it-rolling sign at him.
He smiled. “Musashi was, according to various historians, a big, strong thug who would as soon cut a man down as look at him. He enjoyed hard drink and the company of whores, and was not fond of bathing—but he was also an accomplished artist, sculptor, poet, and a writer, all of which were considered appropriate behavior for soldiers in those times. A man who was able to lop your head off with a sword could also arrange flowers and recite haiku—a rigorous kind of poetry—as well as he could kill. Surviving examples of Musashi’s art can be found in the Imperial Museum in Tokyo, and some of it is strikingly beautiful. Wood carvings, iron sword guards, ink drawings.
“The short version of his life is that he was a wanderer, and by the time he was thirty, he had killed sixty men in single combat. If he did not create it, he certainly perfected the use of the two-sword method, using a long sword in one hand and a shorter one in the other, and moving both constantly. Toward the end of his career, he was such an adept that he would face sword fighters with only a wooden blade, to even the odds, and he was still unbeatable.
“Eventually, he retired to a cave where he wrote A Book of Five Rings, a treatise on strategy and tactics of kendo, which is what they called swordplay there in those days. For hundreds of years, this was the most respected work about the subject, and it is still germane today.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“My first visit to Earth, I went to the shrine at Reigendo, the cave where Musashi spent his final two years. He was only sixty T.S. or so when he died—but given the facts that he was a duelist and living in a time when fatal diseases were common and the average life expectancy was well under forty, that was a ripe old age.
“Any of this useful?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah, this could all show up as an animation, easy to whip out a nice-looking CGI: ‘Musashi, the greatest swordsman who ever lived . . .’ I can get a picture, the VR actor will look exactly like him.”
Mourn smiled at her enthusiasm. “Of course, he wasn’t the greatest swordsman who ever lived, though he was certainly among them—there were a couple of others even in the same historical period and the same area who fought more duels—but Musashi is the one history remembers because of the book he wrote. In reality, he lost several practice fights to other swordsmen using wooden implements, and once to a man who was an adept with a spear. Several of his wins were surprise attacks, which was considered a legitimate tactic. If a man allowed you to sneak up on him, then that was his problem. Those tales were omitted from the registers. Nobody wants their hero to have any flaws. A man who never lost is more impressive than a man who lost a few times—or stabbed several of his unwary foes in the back from ambush.”
He paused again. Ahead, a jungle primate hooted, its voice either computer-generated or recorded from some animal that was probably long dead.
“The best fighting men were often anonymous by choice—it was safer that way. When you were the man to beat, people came looking for you. If nobody knew who you were, you didn’t have to sleep with one eye open all the time. Some killers were in the game for money and not for fame, though one often generated the other.
“Musashi had good press, much of which he generated himself. There were—and still are—a lot of people willing to buy a meal or drinks or offer you a place to sleep if you are a well-known bad man. A big enough reputation can be lived upon.”
“You would know that,” she said.
“Celebrity has its uses.”
“So the patron saint of the Flexers is an appropriate one.”
“Yes. Like him, at the top levels, somebody is always watching. Being as anonymous as you can is safer. But I like you. And I expect I’ll be retiring in the not-too-distant future—it’s a younger person’s game, really. So if I am outed on galactic entcom, it won’t be all that detrimental. Maybe even to my benefit.
Famous ex-players get as much attention as some of the current ones, and your documentary will make me famous, won’t it?”
“God, I hope so.”
He smiled. Bare-naked ambition could be ugly, but on her, it looked, well, kind of cute.
“So, yes, I’ll help you.”
Her smile was radiant. “Great!”
Shaw waited a few days, to make sure he was physically recovered—it was very tiring to fly on Reflex—then tried it again. It worked the same way as it had before, so he lost no time in getting into the game. He called himself and activated his membership.
He smiled at the image of calling himself. Practically speaking, for any ranking below the Top Hundred, you could always find somebody who’d sell their identity, if you were willing to pay enough for it. There were professional placeholders, men or women who joined the Flex, worked their way into the low two hundreds, say, then sold that position to anybody looking to avoid taking the long road to get that far. A lot of the placeholders were named “Johnson,” or “Wu,” or “Muhammed,” to make it simple. But he didn’t have to do that. Years ago, when it looked as if it might be a while before he was ready to go play with the big boys, Shaw had sponsored several promising players who could work their way up the lists. He paid all living expenses, medical, and a generous allowance over that, with the stipulation that they compete under the name “Shaw,” and that one day, he might want the name. He owned five officially registered Shaws at the moment, and the highest ranked among them was at 110th place. Not as high as he would like, but still, it would only take him a score or maybe two dozen fights to get to a match with the top dog. Something he could easily manage in a few months or less, even at galactic travel speeds.
Just think. A couple months from now, he would be Primero, the best fighter in the known galaxy!
And he could do it legally, because many drugs were acceptable adjuncts to matches. Everybody had access to them, so what one could have, another could get; therefore, there was a balance. If you chose not to use steroids or endorphins, that was your pick. There were a couple that were banned, but Reflex wouldn’t be among them, because nobody would know about it but him—until it would be too late to do anything about it.
