All My Sins Remembered (13 page)

“Call me Ramos,” he said, going to the desk. Standing up and walking produced a sensation not unlike that of having someone probe his temple with an ice pick. Ramos touched the side of his head and closed his eyes for a second, tried to ignore the pain, and failed.

He took the pill and touched his lip gingerly. “I suppose I should thank you. Do you render this service often?”

“Not for cosmetic purposes.” He stood up. “Thought you might like to go a couple of rounds. These are practice swords, épées.” He tossed one to Ramos, who caught it by the handle without effort.

“You feel up to it?”

“I suppose.” Actually, Ramos/Otto felt a thousand per cent better, even with the new lumps, than he had in Dr. Ellis’s office on Earth. The personality overlay people had had to overdo the damage to his body to allow for healing during the four weeks’ transit. He wasn’t up to normal pitch for either Guajana or McGavin, but he had some measure of strength and swiftness back.

“Frankly,” the big man said while Ramos tested the balance and temper of the weapon, “I’m skeptical. I don’t see how they can teach you in a few weeks what it took Guajana most of his life to master.”

Ramos shrugged. “It’s only temporary.” He sized up the other man. He moved with a grace that seemed almost effeminate for a man of his size. He had all of the physiological advantages for fencing: taller than Ramos by a head and a half, long arms and legs. But Ramos knew that people with a long reach and a long lunge tended to get overconfident with a small opponent. It would be fun, setting him up for the kill.

Ramos adjusted the helmet, a cool porous plastic shield that protected his face and ears and throat.

“I’ll take it easy at first,” the other man said.

“No need.” They took up
garde
positions in the center of the room. Ramos noted that his opponent’s blade was canted out of line to the right by more than two centimeters, exposing a little too much shoulder and forearm. His opponent either had bad form or had set up a trap, not a terribly subtle one. Without thinking about it, Ramos executed an attack that would take care of either alternative—in one motion feinting to the exposed forearm, slipping under the expected parry, then double-disengage (bell guard high for this line against the possibility of stop thrust or out-of-time remise),
lunge
, and the blunted point thumped to rest precisely between the third and fourth ribs.

“Tocar
,” the big man acknowledged, fingering thoughtfully the spot where he had been touched. “I’ll have to be more careful.”

He
was
more careful, and very good by anybody’s standards, but in five engagements Ramos scored five touches. None of the clashes lasted more than a few seconds; the longest was attack-parry-riposte-parry-remise-parry-rere-mise-touch.

“Very strange.” The man took off his mask. “Colonel, uh, Ramos, I mean… you say they taught you how to fence like Guajana?”

“That’s right.”

“But I’ve fenced with Guajana—hundreds of times!—and…”

“And you’re still alive?”

“No, no, not dueling. He was my coach five, six years ago. That’s why—anyhow, you don’t really fence much like him… a casual opponent wouldn’t see it, but I know where his weaknesses are; I’ve even beaten him a few times. You don’t have those weaknesses, not those particular ones.”

“Ah.” Ramos’s brow furrowed, searching his memory of the mission profile. “Well, it’s understandable. I had to get it secondhand, since the real Guajana was stuck here. They got the best fencing masters they could find—Italy, Hungary, France—”

“All the way from France!”

“No, not the planet; those are countries on Earth. They got these masters and had them study tapes of Guajana at work. Then the masters taught me in tandem, simultaneously, all of us under hypnosis. So I got imprinted with a kind of average impression of Guajana’s style.”

“Complicated,” the man said. “But easy, compared to learning the real way. I’m glad it doesn’t last.”

“I wish it could last a little longer. I’ve got to wrap up this project before the imprinting starts to fade. Two months at the very most.”

“Anything I can do to help, of course—”

“No. Don’t even say it. You don’t want to help; you don’t even want to
know
anything more about this than you do now. Same goes for that bitch—”

“Rachel?” He looked hurt. “But… she’s the TBII liaison.”

“Something this backwoods planet shouldn’t even
have!
I never feel safe on an assignment where somebody else knows my true identity. People have a nasty way of being compelled to talk. So far, two of you know who I am. How many others—the whole embassy staff?”

“No, we’re the only two.”

“Then the best thing you could do for me, both of you, would be to get offplanet. Right now.”

“Mr. Guajana,” came a thin voice, Rachel’s, from the cube, “try to remember that we are the officially appointed representatives of the Confederación on this planet. You are only a tool, a specialist sent to aid
us
in the resolution of this problem. It’s still our respons—”

‘“You know, I don’t give a flying—” Ramos stopped, continued in a lower voice: “Deep down inside, I don’t really
care
whether Selva builds a thousand warships and blasts Grünwelt back to the Stone Age. I would never even have
heard
of Selva if your Alvarez hadn’t come down with an Attila complex.” Normally, Guajana remembered vaguely, he was very polite and suave with ladies.

“Then I wouldn’t say that you were ideally motivated for your job,” she said scornfully. “Don’t you have even a little sympathy for—”

“Sympathy, motivation,
mierde
.” He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “Sympathies can change and motivation is a simple word for something nobody understands. I do a good job, the best job I can, because I’ve been conditioned down to the last brain cell and stringy nerve to complete my mission. I am totally reliable because nobody but the TBI I has the knowledge and equipment to break my conditioning.”

“You are a thoroughly despicable person.”

“Because I pinched your butt, big deal. Big f—”

“Please!” The big man was patting the air with both hands, conciliatory. “Rachel, nobody questions your motivation and Colonel, nobody questions your conditioning. Why don’t we just
drop
all this and get down to the problem at hand?”

“One little matter first,” Ramos said, still fuming. “I know who Rachel Eshkol is; she was identified in my orders—but who the hell are you?”

“Octavio de Sanchez. I work for the embassy.”

“Well, I’m glad she didn’t just pick you off the street. What do you do at the embassy when you’re not dabbling in espionage?”

“Well, ah, I’m a data analyst for the Vital Statistics section.”

“And how does this qualify you to be in on our little secret?”

“I needed somebody,” Rachel began.

“You didn’t even need your
self
!”

“I needed somebody of unimpeachable loyalty who knew Guajana well. To check your disguise, your acting.”

“Who’s acting?
What disguise? I…
am…
Ramos… Guajana.”

“He talks just like him,” Octavio said.

“See?” Ramos threw up his hands. “For this you doubled my risk of exposure.”

“Senor de Sanchez is absolutely trustworthy.” Her image in the cube was leaning forward, flushed with anger.

“Oh, you want to get into
that
orbit… Octavio, old sport, if I offered you a million P’s to go over to Alvarez’s side—”

“No. He is too unutterably—”

“Two million? Five? Ten? Your life? To keep your children from being tortured to death? Your mother?”

“Yes, I see. Of course. If the price was dear enough, any man would—”

“Any man or woman on this planet—except me.”

Silence for a few seconds. “Then why don’t you just get rid of us… mere mortals,” Rachel said.

“I considered it,” Ramos snapped. “And I
didn’t
reject it just because I thought you might be of some use to me later on. You won’t be.”

“Then why not just kill us?”

“Or try,” Octavio added, flexing the practice sword.

“For one thing, it would draw unnecessary attention to the operation. For another, even Ramos, the real Ramos, isn’t totally amoral. Certainly not impractical—he doesn’t go around killing people for sport, or just because their existence inconveniences him.”

“He’s killed sixteen people,” Octavio said grimly.

“Seventeen. But always for what he would consider good reason, or at least sufficient profit.”
I’ve killed more than that
, Otto thought,
just to keep the Confederación running smoothly
. “Granted, he might require less reason than you would.”

Octavio nodded. “Look, we’re still getting nowhere. Hadn’t we best go over the plan, coordinate our—”

“The plan is unworkable and is rejected as of
now
. Kidnapping Ramos and sneaking me into his cell, then having me escape… that’s the kind of Goddamn comic opera thing Planning always dreams up.”

“But we have orders—” Rachel said firmly.

“Look at the rank of the man who signed those orders and then consider my rank. The TBII may not be terribly efficient, but in some ways they aren’t stupid… the only reason I have any military rank at all is to keep people like you from hamstringing me.”

“What’s
your
plan, then?” she said. “How is it any better?”

“The less you know, the better for both of us. You may do two things for me and then, Octavio, you can go back to your statistics and Señorita Eshkol can go back to… whatever she j does for fun.”

“That suits me fine,” she said with heat. “The sooner you get out of my life, the happier I’ll be.”

“What would you like us to do, Colonel?”

Ramos smiled at the cube for a second and turned back to Octavio. “First, get me reliable, inconspicuous transportation to Clan Alvarez. I suppose that would be a horse.”
They make noises about interplanetary war and still use draft animals to get around on
. “Then, when I’m ready to leave get rid of the real Ramos.”

“Kill him?”

“That would be safest. Use your own judgment.”

“You are forgetting that Señor Sanchez and I are not casual murderers. We’ll kidnap him as planned before and lock him up in the room you’re in now.”

“All right. I advise you to take out the swords first.”

When Octavio left, Ramos flopped down on the bed with a sigh of relief. It was hard work, trying to think like Otto and be Ramos at the same time.

Starting tomorrow, he would have to move fast. A pity: he would’ve liked to supervise the abduction. Perhaps the prisoner would be killed, trying to escape.

Thinking more like Ramos now, that’s good
.

4.

To get to Clan Alvarez, Ramos had to go over two hundred kilometers, through Clans Tueme and Amarillo. It took him two full days, riding the spavined nag Octavio had supplied him with. The second time he stopped for rest (and recreation), at an inn just across the Amarillo-Alvarez border, the prostitute he hired turned out to have known Ramos for years. She remarked about how gentle he’d suddenly become, but seemed relieved rather than suspicious.

What other important aspects of Guajana’s life did the PO section know absolutely nothing about? Ramos hoped his amnesia story would cover him.

He had called the Vista Hermosa before crossing the Tueme border, and Octavio had told him that the abduction had gone smoothly, according to plan. No violence; just a certain amount of money passed around, some personnel suddenly transferred. Guajana was safely locked away in the hotel. There was a reward out for his recapture, but the physical description on the notice was inaccurate. The ruse would work for two days (until a new poster, with picture, could be issued), which gave him plenty of time to get safely into Clan Alvarez.

It was a tiring way to travel. Except in some of the larger towns, which had stone or macadam streets, most of the roads were crushed gravel. Every time a nonequine transport passed, it would pepper Ramos with a shower of pebbles and raise a cloud of stringent dust that would take several minutes to settle in the hot still air. The big ground-effect trucks, which passed about every half hour, were especially diverting, giving Ramos a nice familiarity with the jungle. He learned from one painful experience that horse and rider had to get behind a couple of meters of bush when one of the huge vehicles lumbered by; that or die a slow death by flaying in one day’s journey.

By the time he reached Castile Alvarez, Ramos was covered with a half centimeter of crusted dust, aching with scratches from thorns and flung pebbles, and nearly paralyzed with saddle sores. He left his horse at a public stable, soaked for an hour in a hot tub, had his larger wounds treated, bought a rough massage and a new suit of clothes, and walked slightly bowlegged to the castle.

The castle was an airy fantasy of glass and polished steelite—obviously rather new, although more than a century out of date by the architectural standards of more civilized planets. Guarding the front gate were two pairs of men with crossed pikes, trying not to look uncomfortable in their foppish, archaic uniforms. Their armament was more ornamental than functional, but it was backed up by two megawatt-class lasers in shiny steelite bunkers flanking the road. A sign directed visitors to a small dome beside one of the bunkers. The laser’s large green eye tracked Otto as he passed in front of it.