The Stainless Steel Rat eBook Collection (105 page)

She didn’t fight me or attempt to push back. But her lips were lifeless under mine and her eyes open, looking at me with a sterile emptiness. She did nothing until I had dropped my arms and stepped away, then she seated herself stiffly in the chair again.

“What’s wrong?” I asked not trusting myself
to say more.

“A pretty face—is that all you think of?” she asked, and the words seemed pulled from her in sobs. Expressing real emotions didn’t come easily with her. “Are you men all alike—all the same—?”

“Nonsense!” I shouted, angered in spite of myself. “You wanted me to kiss you—don’t deny it! What changed your mind?”

“Would you want to kiss
her
?” Angelina screamed, torn by emotions I couldn’t
understand. She pulled at a thin chain around her neck. It snapped and she half threw it at me. There was a tiny locket on the chain, still warm from her body. It had an image-enlarger in it, and when held at the right angle the picture inside could be seen clearly. I had the chance for only a single glimpse at the girl in the photograph, then Angelina changed her mind and pulled it away, pushing
me towards the door at the same time. It slammed behind me and I heard the heavy safety bolts thud home.

Ignoring the guard’s raised eyebrows I stamped down the hall to my own room. My emotions had triumphed nicely over my powers of reason, and apparently Angelina’s had too—for just an instant. Yet I couldn’t understand her cold withdrawal or the significance of the picture. Why did she wear
it?

I had only had a single glimpse of the contents but that was enough. It was the photo of a young girl, a sister perhaps? A tragic thing, one of those horrible proofs of the law of chance that an almost infinite number of combinations are possible. This girl was cursed with
ugliness, that is the only way to describe it. It was no single factor of a bent back, adenoidal jaw or protruding nose.
Instead it was the damning combination of traits that combined to form a single, repellent whole. I didn’t like it. But what did it matter ….

I sat down suddenly with the clear realization that I was being incredibly stupid. Angelina had given me a simple brief glimpse into the dark motivations that had made her, shaped her life.

Of course. The girl in the picture was Angelina herself.

With
this realization so many other things became clear. Many times when looking at her I had wondered why that deadly mind should be housed in such an attractive package. The answer was clearly that I wasn’t looking at the original package that had shaped the mind. To be a man and to be ugly is bad enough. What must it feel like to be a woman? How do you live when mirrors are your enemies and people
turn away rather than look at you? How do you bear life when at the same time you are blessed—or cursed—with a keen and intelligent mind that sees and is aware of everything, makes the inescapable conclusions and misses not the slightest hint of repulsion?

Some girls might commit suicide, but not Angelina. I could guess what she had done. Hating herself, loathing and detesting her world and the
people on it, she would have had no compunction about committing a crime to gain the money she wanted. Money for an operation to correct one of those imperfections. Then more money for more operations. Then someone who dared to stop her in this task, and the ease and perhaps pleasure with which she killed him. The slow upward climb through crime and murder—to beauty. And during the climb the wonderful
brain that had been housed in the ill-formed flesh had been warped and changed.

Poor Angelina. I could be sorry for her without forgetting the ones she had killed. Poor, tragic, alone girl who in winning half the battle had lost the other half. Purchased skill had shaped the body into a
lovely—truthfully an angelic—form. Yet in succeeding, the strength of the mind that had accomplished all this
had been deformed until it had been made as ugly as the body had been in the beginning.

Yet if you could change a body—couldn’t you change a mind? Could something be done for her?

The very pressure and magnitude of my thoughts drove me out of the small room and into the air. It was nearing midnight and the guards would be stationed below and all the doors locked. Rather than face the explanations
and simple mechanical difficulties. I climbed upwards instead. There would be no one in the roof gardens and walkways this time of night; I could be alone.

Freibur has no moon, but it was a clear night and the stars cast enough light to see by. The roof guard saluted when I went by, and I could see the red spark of a cigarette in his hand. I should have said something about it, but my mind was
too occupied. Passing on I turned a corner and stood leaning on the parapet, looking out unseeingly at the black bulk of the mountains.

Something kept gnawing for attention and after a few minutes I recognized what it was. The guard. He was there for a purpose, and smoking on duty wasn’t considered the best behavior for a sentry. Perhaps I was being finicky, but it is a failing of mine. Take
care of all the small factors and the big ones take care of themselves. In any case, simply thinking about it was bothering me, so I might as well go around and say a word to him.

He wasn’t at his usual post, which was optimistic; at least he was making the rounds and keeping an eye on things. I started to walk back when I noticed the broken flowers hanging from the edge of the garden. This was
most unusual because the roofgardens were the Count’s special pleasure and were practically manicured daily. Then I saw the dark patch in among the flowers and had the first intimation that something was very, very wrong.

It was the guard, and he was either dead or deeply unconscious. I didn’t bother to find out which. There was
only one reason I could think of for someone to be here at night
like this. Angelina. Her room was on the top floor, almost below this spot. Silently I ran to the decorative railing and looked over. Five meters below was the white patch of the balcony outside her window. Something black and formless was crouched there.

My gun was in my room. For one of the few times in my life I had been so disturbed that my normal precautions were forgotten. My concern over
Angelina was going to cost her her life.

All of this I realized in a fraction of a second as my fingers ran along the balustrade. A shiny blob was fixed there, anchoring a strand so thin that it was invisible, yet I knew was as strong as a cable. The assassin had lowered himself with a web-spinner, a tiny device that spun a thin strand like a spider. Only the strand’s substance was formed of
a single long-chain molecule that could support a man’s weight. It would slice my hands like the sharpest blade if I tried to slide down it.

There was only one way I could reach that balcony, a tiny square above the two kilometer drop into the valley below. I made the decision even as I was leaping up onto the rail. It had a wide flat top and I sat for an instant to catch my balance. Below me
the window swung open noiselessly and I dropped, my heels extended, aiming for the man below.

I turned in the air and instead of hitting him squarely I caromed off his shoulder and we both sprawled onto the balcony. It shivered under the impact, but the ancient stone held. The fall had half-stunned me, and with pain-blurred reasoning I hoped that his shoulder felt as bad as my leg. For a few
moments I could do nothing but gasp for breath and try to scramble towards him. A long, thin-bladed knife had been knocked from his hand by the impact and I could see it glittering where he reached for it His fingers clutched it just as I attacked. He grunted and made a vicious stab at me that brushed my sleeve. Before
he could draw back I had his knife wrist in my hand and clamped on.

It was
a silent, nightmare battle. Both of us were half-dazed from my drop, yet we knew it was life we were battling for. I couldn’t stand because of my bruised leg and he was instantly on top of me, heavier and stronger. He couldn’t use the arm I had landed on, but it took all the strength of both my arms to hold away the menacing blade. There was no sound other than our hoarse panting.

This assassin
was going to win as weight and remorseless strength brought the knife down. Sweat almost blinded me, but I could still see well enough to notice the twisted way his other arm hung. I had broken a bone when I hit—yet he had never made a sound.

There is no such thing as fair fighting when you are struggling for your life. I squirmed my leg out from under him and managed to bend it enough to dig
the knee into his broken arm. His whole body shuddered. I did it again. Harder. He twisted, trying to pull away from the pain. I heaved sideways, throwing him off balance. His elbow bent as he tried to save himself from falling and I put all my strength in both hands turning that sinewy wrist and driving the hand backwards.

It almost worked, but he was still stronger than I was and the point
of the blade merely scratched his chest. Even as I was fighting to turn the hand again he shuddered and died.

A ruse would not have tricked me—but this was no ruse. I felt every muscle in his body tighten rock-hard in a spasm as he fell sideways. My grip on his wrist didn’t lessen until the light came on in the room behind me. Only then did I see the ugly yellow stain halfway up the blade of
the knife. A quick-acting nerve poison, silent and deadly. There, on the sleeve of my shirt, was a thin yellow mark where the blade had brushed me. I knew these poisons didn’t need a puncture, they could work just as well on the naked skin.

With infinite caution, struggling against the fatigue that
wanted my hands to shake, I peeled my shirt slowly off. Only when it had been hurled on top of
the corpse did I let myself drop backwards, gasping for air.

My leg could work now, though it hurt hideously. It must have been bruised but not broken since it supported my weight. Turning, I stumbled to the high window and threw it open. Light streamed out on the body behind me. Angelina was sitting up in bed, her face smooth and her hands folded on the covers in front of her. Only her eyes
showing any awareness of what had happened.

“Dead,” I said with a dry throat, and spat to clear it. “Killed by his own poison.” I stumped into the room, testing my leg.

“I was sleeping, I didn’t hear him open the window,” she said. “Thank you.”

Actress, liar, cheat, murderess. She had played a hundred roles in countless voices. Yet when she said those final words there was a ring of unforged
feeling to them. This murder attempt had come too soon after the earlier traumatic scene. Her defenses were still down, her real emotions showing.

Her hair hung to her shoulders, brushing the single ribbons of her nightgown which was made of some thin and soft fabric; intimate. This sight, on top of the events of the evening, removed any reserve I might have had. I was kneeling by the bed, holding
her shoulders and staring deep into her eyes, trying to reach what lay behind them. The locket with the broken chain lay on the bedside table. I grabbed it in my fist.

“Don’t you realize this girl doesn’t exist except in your own memory.” I said, and Angelina didn’t move. “It’s past like everything else. You were a baby—now you’re a woman. You were a little girl—now you’re a woman. You may have
been this girl—but you are not anymore!”

With a convulsive movement I turned and hurled the thing out of the window into the darkness.

“You’re none of those things of the past, Angelina!” I
said with an intensity louder than a shout. “You are yourself … just yourself!”

I kissed her then and there was no trace of the pushing away or rejection there had been before. As I needed her, she needed
me.

Dawn was just touching the sky when I brought the assassin’s body in to the Count. I was deprived of the pleasure of waking him since the sergeant of the guard had already done this when the roof sentry had been discovered. The guard was dead too, from a tiny puncture of the same poison-tipped blade. The guardsmen and the Count were all gathered around the body on the floor of
the Count’s sitting room and chattering away about this mystery, the inexplicable death of the sentry. They didn’t see me until I dropped my corpse down by the other one, and they all jumped back.

“Here’s the killer,” I told them, not without a certain amount of pride. Count Cassitor must have recognized the thug because he gave a shuddering start and popped his eyes. No doubt an ex-relative,
brother-in-law or something. I imagined he hadn’t believed that the Radebrechen family would really go through with their threats of revenge.

A certain uneasiness about the guard sergeant gave me my first cue that I was imagining wrong. The sergeant glanced back and forth from the corpse to the Count and I wondered what thoughts were going through his shaven and thick-skulled military head. There
were wheels within wheels here and I would like to have known what was going on. I made a mental note to have a buddy-to-buddy talk with sarge at the first opportunity. The Count chewed his cheek and cracked his knuckles over the bodies, and finally ordered them dragged out.

“Stay here, Bent,” he said as I started to leave with the others. I dropped into a chair while he locked the rest out.
Then he made a rush for the bar and choked down about a water glass full of the local spirits. Only when he was
working on his second glass did he remember to offer me some of his potable aqua regia. I wasn’t saying no, and while I sipped at it I wondered what he was so upset about.

First the Count checked the locks on all the doors and sealed the single window. His ring key unlocked the bottom
drawer of his desk and he took out a small electronic device with controls and an extendible aerial on top.

“Well look at that!” I said when he pulled out the aerial. He didn’t answer me, just shot a long look at me from under his eyebrows, and went back to adjusting the thing. Only when it was turned on and the green light glowed on the top did he relax a bit.

“You know what this is?” he asked,
pointing at the gadget.

“Of course,” I said. “But not from seeing them on Freibur. They aren’t that common.”