Tanderon (36 page)

I sighed a little, and lay back on the bed.

“Pete knows what my job is and a good deal of what’s involved, but he only knows it intellectually, not emotionally. When he looks at me I want him to see a cute little girl, not the string of dead bodies I’ve left behind me. When I look at him I’d rather see a hint of the hard time he’s going to give me, not fear at the possibility of my coming close to him.

“The next time I show up there, if I’m still looking like this, I’ll be fresh enough to get him good and mad at me. It might mean a hard spanking, but even if it comes to that, all I’ll do is cry and complain and then call him ‘sir.’ I could kill him ten different ways before he took the first step toward me, but I won’t even think about it let alone start it. Until you’ve seen naked fear in the eyes of someone you care about, you won’t understand what I’m getting at. After that you’ll spare yourself the pain and loneliness and be glad to be nothing but a cute little girl.”

She stood staring down at the floor and didn’t answer immediately, then she looked up again.

“Isn’t there anyone I can be myself with?” she asked in a choked whisper. “Do I have to go through life pretending to be something I’m not?”

“You don’t have to do it for everyone, just the people you want for friends,” I soothed her. “And you can be yourself with other agents like you, but just the ones like you. There won’t be many, but there will be enough.”

I took a deep breath and then forced a grin. “But I haven’t yet mentioned the best part about being female. You can get away with things that no male agent would even think of trying. A few years ago another female agent - Kate Newman - and I got bored and decided to liven things up a little. We broke into the Council building on Hidemite and reprogrammed their diplomatic negotiations computer so that 40% of the diplomatic notes put together by it came out using what was considered the foulest insults on the planet getting the note.

“There was no danger of starting anything serious because all notes are checked before being sent out, but the flap it caused in the sacred Council halls was a joy to behold. Kate and I hadn’t taken any special precautions to cover our trail, so they found out pretty quickly who had done it.

“If we’d been male they would have ordered out a firing squad, but instead they stormed and raged and ended up doing nothing more than citing us for three months.

It lasted a week for me and a week and a half for Kate, because there’s too much work and not enough agents to handle it. So cheer up, sister. Life is what you make it, and I plan to make it fun until I’m ninety.”

“I think I like the way you do it,” she decided aloud while growing a grin. “And I wish I could have seen their faces.”

“Stick around,” I said, putting my hands behind my head. “A job doesn’t last forever, and when it’s over all bets are off. There’s nothing to limit you but your imagination.

“And speaking of imagination,” I changed the subject abruptly, “start to imagine us as sisters. We’ll be visiting our father’s cousin, Alfred Lammerly, in Wheatley, because we got into trouble in Valleyvale, our home town. I’ll tell you something about Valleyvale so you’ll have an idea about it, but it’s better than 3,000 miles away from Wheatley and Flowerville so you won’t find too many people questioning you about it. We’ll run away from Wheatley and go to Flowerville, and once we’re in Flowerville we’ll insist we’re from Wheatley. If anyone mentions Valleyvale, just stare blankly and tell them you don’t know what they’re talking about. If something slips and somehow it can be proven that we’re not from Wheatley, Valleyvale is our backup origin.”

“I don’t know Wheatley either,” she said, shifting her weight from one leg to the other. “How long will I have to learn it?”

“A couple of days,” I answered. “We really shouldn’t take the time, but I have some sleep to catch up on. We won’t get that vial back if I have to stop to nap in the middle.”

“Would I be prying if I asked about what’s been happening lately?” she said with obvious hesitation overlying curiosity. “You’ve been looking so distracted and far away, and I saw what went on between you and your partner. I don’t mind telling you that my hands weren’t too steady afterward… For a minute I thought you were going to kill him.”

“I almost did,” I said, not moving on the bed but holding tight to what control I had left. “And that’s the second time I almost killed him, so I’m not going to wait for third time lucky. He can team with someone else from now on, and find a girl for himself who will collapse in hysterics when she cracks, not reach for the nearest weapon.”

I wanted to turn over and bury my face in my arms, but the truth wasn’t something I could hide from. I’d tried again and again to keep from thinking about what had happened, but some part of me hadn’t cooperated. I’d suddenly found the whole situation spelled out in my mind in simple, open terms, ones which it wasn’t possible to misunderstand or misinterpret. I had to turn around and walk away from Val, even though this time I hadn’t hurt him as badly as I had the first time. There’s hurt and there’s hurt, and the expression he’d worn still haunted me in times of distraction…

“I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on his face after I came so close to killing him, and I don’t ever want to see that look again,” I said almost to myself. “And it all happened because I was stupid, as someone so kindly pointed out to me. You can be stupid with your own life, but not someone else’s.” Then I stirred and pushed all those thoughts away from me again. “Let get to these clothes so we can get out of here.”

I rose to my feet, and after a couple of minutes we found that the clothes were a pretty good fit after all so we got into them. I settled on very brief shorts and a low-cut combination vest and blouse affair that reached only half way down to my waist. Teddy chose a skirt that was hardly longer than my shorts, and a halter-like arrangement that circled her neck. Adding high-thonged sandals to it we looked like we were in the business of being on the make, but that was the effect we were looking for. I made a call to arrange for more outfits like the ones we wore and some longer and heavier stuff for the chilly evenings in Flowerville, and then we went to find Ringer.

We ran Ringer down in the doctor’s lounge on the floor my room was on. The man I worked for was busy reminiscing with Ralph and a few other doctors about the

“good old days” when he didn’t have to play nursemaid to a bunch of crazy agents.

I’d heard the story before, and could see his point, since I’d rather be one of the crazy agents myself. When we stopped in the lounge doorway, Teddy looked at the group and smiled faintly.

“I wonder how Mr. Ringer will react to these outfits,” she mused softly. “He didn’t seem too anxious to help us with the stay-tabs.”

“Don’t try him,” I advised, feeling something of amusement. “I was reminded that it isn’t backwardness that send him scurrying at the drop of a skirt. He doesn’t believe in mixing business with pleasure any more than I do, so he stays away from his women agents. But from what I hear, if you push him too hard you’ll end up very surprised.”

She glanced at me showing a flash of dismissal for what I’d said, then she assumed a neutral expression and walked into the lounge. I followed her, wondering if she would take the advice or be like me and have to learn the hard way. The group around Ringer noticed us before he did, and most of them – the male part – stared in appreciation. One of them whistled, low and sincerely, and Teddy stopped to turn completely around. That brought applause from the ones who appreciated the gesture and Ralph called, “You, too, Diana! We don’t get much chance to see anything like you two around here. Give us a break.”

I laughed and turned slowly, stopping with my back to them, then twisted around half bent over to look at them over my hip.

“Is that what you had in mind?” I asked mildly. The applause was so loud that a couple of security guards came racing in. They looked at Teddy and me, reholstered their disruptors, then went back out grinning. Teddy continued on to the group, and I straightened up and followed her.

“When do you plan on leaving?” Ringer asked me when I reached him. “I told Lammerly I’d call him again with a better
ETA
.”

“We’re going now,” I supplied, crouching down briefly to straighten the thong on my right sandal. “We’ll take a hopper to a point about twenty-five or thirty miles past Wheatley and hitchhike back. The sort of girls we are would never think of using a regular means of transportation. You can have the hopper picked up later.”

“Do you want a hopper left for you outside of Flowerville?” Ringer asked as I stood up again.

“No,” I decided after thinking about it for a minute. “After we get the vial, we’ll find our own way back. The practice will do Teddy good.”

Ringer looked at Teddy, and she smiled and started to come close and began to say something when she seemed to lose her balance. She tried to recover, couldn’t make it, and ended up squarely on Ringer’s lap. The doctors applauded again, and she blushed prettily.

“Oh, Mr. Ringer, I’m so sorry!” she said, staying right where she was. “I can’t imagine what could have happened!”

“I can,” Ringer returned dryly. He stood up and pushed at the same time, and Teddy ended up on the floor hard enough for us all to hear it. “Every time I get a new female agent I go through the same routine. Don’t you girls ever stop?”

“I don’t know about anyone else,” Teddy muttered as she got up from the floor to rub at herself, “but as far as I’m concerned I have no intention of going on. Did you have to push so hard?”

Ringer grinned but didn’t answer her. For my own part, I was happy to just stand by for once and see someone else get it. Then Ralph left his chair and came over to me.

“You’d better take some of this with you, Diana,” he said, handing me a small vial of the dye he’d used on my hand. “The compound isn’t supposed to wear off, but I’ll feel better if you have a supply of it with you.”

“I appreciate it, Ralph,” I said, putting the vial away in the middle of my cleavage.

“But I think you brought it to me just to watch where I put it.” It’s hard to believe, but he blushed at that! Which made me add, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you the same doctor who gave me a physical just about a week ago? What could you possibly be blushing about?”

He blushed a deeper shade, then a grin forced its way through.

“It’s not the same,” he said, using a gesture to show he groped for the right words.

“When I give physicals I just check the parts, not how they’re put together. It’s a lot more fun to concentrate on the assembly.”

Teddy and I laughed at that and Ringer said, “Are you taking any weapons? Those outfits tend to limit what you can carry.”

“We’re going out clean,” I responded. “If we wanted to match their firepower we’d need an atomic cannon. Besides, I know how they handle things in Flowerville, and if we run into any arguments we won’t be using conventional weapons. Any final comments or criticisms? If not, everybody wave bye-bye.”

Some of the doctors did just that but Ringer growled, “Don’t waste any more time than you have to, and make sure at least one of you gets back here with that vial.”

I blew him a kiss, and Teddy and I left to pick up our battered old luggage and get a hopper. When I’d set the course and turned on the autopilot, I lit a cigarette and leaned back to relax.

“I didn’t know you could fly a hopper,” Teddy commented as she glanced out the window at the ground far below us.

“What made you think I couldn’t?” I countered.

“Well, you always had a pilot when you came to 2 for the class,” she said, dismissing the landscape to give me her attention again. “I just assumed you couldn’t handle a hopper.”

“That was no pilot, that was my guard,” I said with a small laugh. “Pete wanted to make sure I didn’t head for the shuttleport near Valleyvale, but you’ll have to wait to get the whole story on that. But tell me, how did you like your first taste of real equality?”

She looked at me blankly. “What equality?”

“Didn’t you hear Ringer’s final comment?” I asked. “I would have thought you couldn’t miss it.”

“Oh, that,” she remembered aloud after a moment of thought. “Sure, I heard it, but he was exaggerating, wasn’t he? Sort of like ‘with your shield or on it’?”

“That was no exaggeration,” I said, watching her reaction. “It’s the best thing about Ringer. He expects all his agents to die if it means getting the job done, and in this instance being female doesn’t buy you a thing. So I repeat, how does it feel?”

“I don’t know yet,” she answered slowly, obviously never having really considered the point. “I think it takes getting used to – like this seat,” she added as she squirmed around. “And that fall I took didn’t help any. Does he always do that?”

“Not always,” I denied with amusement. “You’re just lucky you weren’t alone with him. He teaches a harder lesson in private.”

“You sound like the voice of experience,” she mused, studying me. “What would have happened in private?”

“Try it and find out for yourself,” I came back, flicking some ashes onto the floor of the hopper. “Nobody warned me either. It was a long time ago, but I have confidence in Ringer.”

“What could he possibly do?” she demanded. “I have a 5 rating in hand to hand combat.”

“I have a 9 rating, but you didn’t find me in his lap,” I pointed out. “I can hold my own with him in the gym, but when nobody’s looking he fights dirty. At that point it isn’t a game anymore, and you either fight to put him away for keeps, or you take your lumps. Personally, I’ve had enough trouble with the Council lately. Female or no, I have no intention of having to tell them they need a new Chief of Agents because of me. But they don’t know you yet. Maybe you could get away with it.”

“Some other time, maybe,” she muttered, her eyes saying she was sorry she’d asked.

“What do we do when we reach Wheatley?”

“We act as obnoxious as possible to give Lammerly an excuse for not sending the police after us when we go,” I explained, automatically checking our position at the reminder. “If we should be picked up by the Flowerville police we don’t want to be sent back, but we do want a just-in-case alibi. It’s better to be sent back and have to start all over than to have our final paychecks made out. I’ll give you that sketch of Valleyvale now, so we don’t have to worry about who might be listening.”