Scouts (28 page)

“How can I work for an organization that does that to someone?”

She moved in front of me and looked me in the eye. “Challers, you haven’t got any choice. If you don’t, you’ll wind up like him.”

I crossed my arms. “They’ve got a secret they’ll kill to protect. I’m going to find out what it is. This isn’t just about Masters anymore.”

“And Valka?”

“It’s not Valka you’re worried about, is it? It’s Robert. If you go rushing off with me on this, it’s him you would never see again.”

“Challers . . .”

I narrowed my eyes and gave her the glare her cowardice had earned. “Don’t worry. I won’t involve you any more in any of this. Just keep yourself out of it, and I won’t drag you in again.”

I stepped around her and continued down the path.

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

By the time we got back to the promenade, the light shift was over.

“You go on back,” I told Shirley. “I have some things to take care of.”

“You’re not going to do anything rash, are you?”

“Just go on to bed; I’ll be along.”

“Be careful, Challers. For both our sakes.”

I climbed up into the hideout to find Valka already hard at work.

She glanced over, gave me a quick smile, and returned her attention to the screens. “Any luck with Joco?”

“None at all. He’s dead. The Scouts killed him.”

“What?”

I told her what had happened, leaving out the sexual encounter with Kal. The closer I got to the moment when Joco was killed, the angrier and more grief-stricken I became. I was nearly sobbing by the time I got to the end.

“The whole time it was happening, all I could see was Bendel—like it was happening all over again.”

Valka sprung from her chair and wrapped her arms around me. She was the only person who could understand, the only person who could comfort me. I let the tears flow. I had thought my grieving for Bendel was over, but the wound ripped wide open again with Joco’s murder.

When I was only an infant, my parents took in a young man who had lost his mother and father in an accident. He watched my sister and me, and cleaned up around our quarters, in exchange for sleeping space in the corner and a share of the food. It wasn’t much, but it gave my mother more time to work and that was good for all of us. Bendel had a girlfriend, a pretty young woman named Teltie, who was at our quarters often enough that I thought of her like a big sister.

Bendel died because he had tried to keep the Merchants from taking Teltie away. He stood in their way, shouting threats, and finally picked up a chair and started beating them with it. They shoved him away and Teltie disappeared into the Merchant ship. A few days later, a Fleet frigate arrived. Three Marines walked straight from the airlock to our quarters, dragged Bendel out into the main passageway, and shot him while I watched.

The hatch clanked open.

“Oh! You’re here.” Zun climbed through the opening and pulled it shut.

I tried to regain my composure. “Sorry, I didn’t see you coming.”

“Is something wrong?” His glance darted back and forth between Valka and me.

A few deep breaths got me straightened out enough to talk. “Zun, this is Valka. We’re . . . um . . . we were recruited together.”

Zun smiled and nodded. “Pleased to meet you.”

Valka nodded back. “Do you know anything about the man who set all this up?” She waved her hand through the holographic displays hovering over the tablet.

“No, no, it was all here when I found out about the place.”

Valka raised an eyebrow and gave him the look I knew well, the look of being caught in a lie. “Are you sure?”

Zun looked at me again, then took a deep breath. “I can’t tell you.”

Frowning, Valka touched the side of the tablet. “This ID chip belongs to Joco Gata. Does that name sound familiar?”

This was getting nowhere

“Zun, he’s dead,” I said.

His hand went to his mouth. “No. No, I don’t believe it.”

“Some Scouts found him, shot him out in the fields. I saw it happen.”

Zun went pale and staggered. I caught him and got him settled in a chair. “Oh, poor Joco!”

While Valka made sure Zun didn’t pass out completely, I went over to the drying racks and packed a pipe. I hadn’t taken any smoke in a while, but this seemed like an excellent time to get back in the habit. I returned to the center of the hideout and drew on the pipe to get it lit.

“Zun, I need to know if Joco ever said anything about someone named
Cassandra
. Anything at all.”

He shook his head, stunned, staring. I offered him the pipe and he took a desultory puff.

Valka took his hand between hers. “Zun.”

Zun spoke softly. “No. But Joco was always closer to Suna than to me. She might know something.”

“Where do we find her?” I asked.

“Sector four. Ovor maternity school. She left a few days ago.” Zun took a longer draw on the pipe and let it out slowly. “She won’t be back for twenty days or so.”

I nodded. “Thank you, Zun. I want you to go home. I wouldn’t want you to get into any trouble with the Scouts over this. Don’t come back until things blow over.”

He nodded and rose to his feet. The smoke had calmed him down some and, with a little help, he managed to get to the ground safely, and then off towards his community. Valka and I stood under the robot and watched him disappear into the darkness.

“I’m going to have to go find Suna,” I said.

“How are you going to get there? It’s way out in sector four. You can’t just go for a walk.”

“I’ll figure something out. I can’t make another ‘field trip,’ and not just because it would be suspicious to take two of them close together like that. Maternity school is strictly for Ovors. They wouldn’t let me in.”

“You could wait for her to come back.”

“And what if the Scouts know about her affiliation with Joco? At the very least, I have to warn her.”

“I could send her a message through the system. It wouldn’t be traceable back to us.”

“Yes, but if it were intercepted, it would tell them that she’s involved. The act of warning her might put her in danger.”

“Sounds like there’s only one way to do it. You’re going to need to become an Ovor.”

I tried to remember, standing in front of the gentank, exactly why I was going on this crazy mission. I could just wait until Suna was done with maternity school, couldn’t I?

No, she was in danger, and she had to know. If we were lucky, the Scouts had no interest in her. If not, they’d kill her to keep whatever she knew about Cassandra secret. Security had waited until Joco was alone to kill him, so I hoped we could get to her at the school before they did anything.

This was necessary.

Valka opened a panel in the side of the gentank and yanked out a connector.

“What are you doing?”

“This unit has a bad communications module. It’s only on the network intermittently. If I disconnect it, it’s not going to raise any alarms, because it’s already on the list to be repaired. But since it’s not in a place where it’s needed right now, no one will be out to fix it anytime soon. It won’t be able to report that we used it, or what we did. When we’re done, we can wipe its memory and no one will ever know.”

“We have all the supplies we need?”

“For the last time, yes, everything checks out. Now get in, I’ll keep an eye out while you are inside and distract anyone that might come along. What are you afraid of? Everything’s all set. Just get in.”

Trying hard to keep from shaking, I pulled off my uniform, unclipped the air mask from the side of the cabinet, and strapped it over my head. I took a deep breath and settled my body in the pale blue gel. It was warmer than I expected, and thicker. I smelled something in the air, and had just enough time to decide that it was the anesthetic before I was unconscious.

I woke up slowly, the interference gradually clearing in my head. Gentle hands took my shoulders and pulled me up out of the gel and cleared it from my eyes.

Valka smiled. “How do you feel?”

“A little weak, and a little sore, but . . . oh . . .” My voice had changed. It still sounded like me, in a way I couldn’t put my finger on, but it was higher. I looked down to see four full, round breasts. “I’m female.”

“Of course you are, silly. They don’t let men into maternity school, do they?”

Valka helped me out of the tank and over into a nearby shower to rinse off the gel.

Somehow I thought I would be made into a
male
Ovor. When Valka found the necessary template to load into the gentank, she hadn’t been very specific about what, exactly, it would do. There was nothing to do about it now. There was no time to get a new template, no time to get back into the gentank. I would just have to deal with it and focus on the task before us.

Valka’s hands felt wonderful on my body. It wasn’t overtly sexual, but there was a sensuality to it that made me feel comfortable and warm. She worked her way down, encouraging the sticky stuff to let go under the warm water.

She stopped before my mind had cleared completely. She put me into the warm air vent to dry off and I felt the abrupt loss of her touch like oxygen stolen from my lungs. It took me a minute to catch my breath. When I was dry, she handed me shorts and a shirt of bright colored fabric that we had fabricated for our trip.

While I dressed, Valka stripped off her uniform. I was glad to feel a little tingle from watching her disrobe, because it meant I was still attracted to her in spite of the change. I put the mask over her face, helped her to climb in, and ran the commands to engage the template we had loaded. With the lid closed and the cycle locked in, I went out to the front room.

The maintenance robot we had brought with us lay partially disassembled in the middle of the floor. I knelt and started tinkering with it, using a set of tools left from when Valka had been there. This was how we spent the hour waiting for the gentank to do its work. If anyone came to investigate, I had an excuse for being there. On the headquarters station, just like at home, people doing repair work were invisible, especially if what they were working on was as humble as a maintenance robot. We had seen folks doing this kind of work many times and none of them wore Scout white or black. Still, I had never seen an Ovor working this kind of job, and I feared that if someone were to find me, the novelty of it would be enough to attract attention.

I could feel a kind of warm heaviness coming over me, but it wasn’t drowsiness. It didn’t distract me much and I was able to keep watch without much difficulty, so I passed it off as an Ovor thing and just kept poking around. Even with a prepared cover story, I worried that someone would come by and ask what was going on. If someone went in the back and saw the gentank running, everything would be ruined.

My fears turned out to be unfounded, and after a tense hour, the gentank beeped that its cycle was complete. I hurried over to it and helped Valka out. Like I had been, she was weak and sore, and needed help to get into the shower. As I rinsed the gel off, I could feel the warm feeling growing throughout my body. My breathing was getting quick and I felt like I wasn’t getting enough air.

“I think the steam is getting to me. I’m going to go sit down; I don’t feel well.”

Valka stepped in front of me and gave me a lopsided grin. “You’re not sick, Challers.”

“No, I’m serious. I think something might have gone wrong with the gentank.”

“Nothing went wrong.” She put her hand on one of my breasts and leaned in close to kiss me. “You’re not sick. You’re aroused.”

“This is how it feels?”

She nodded. “Yes. This is how it feels.” She pulled my shirt up over my head and threw it out of the shower. “Your nipples are hard. Your face is flushed. I know the signs.”

I didn’t understand. I knew what arousal felt like, or at least I thought I did. Maybe it did feel different for a woman. I nodded weakly, too stunned by the possibilities to speak.

“I don’t think we should waste this opportunity. Don’t you agree?” She pulled off my shorts and gently pushed me against the wall. “We’ve got a few minutes. Let me show you what you can feel.”