Matadora (5 page)

You couldn't learn to punch from a tape, you had to do it—The pop of compressed gas startled Dirisha from her memories. In this case, the viral learning could be useful. She was a new student, there was a lot she needed to know, if she were to mesh with the classes already in progress. It wouldn't help her shoot straighter or walk the pattern, but it could fill in the academic gaps.

The medic looked at his thumbnail chronometer. "See you in a few minutes," he said.

Dirisha leaned back and the form-chair extruded itself to accomodate her, the machinery whirring so smoothly she could feel, but not hear it. This organization had money. Viral-inject was expensive, and a layout like this took more than a few stads. And, what was the ultimate purpose of all this?

Not just high-tech bodyguards, surely—

Abruptly, Dirisha found herself sitting at a desk, surrounded by other people at identical desks, watching an empty lectern. After a moment, the shrouded figure of Pen appeared at the entrance to the room, and glided as though on wheels to the lectern. Dirisha grinned. Whoever had programed the ed virus had a sense of humor.

"Welcome to the Matador program," Pen said. "This session and the ones to follow are designed to introduce you to the scope and purpose of the training; you'll learn how and why we came to be, and basic information which will allow you to enter the mainstream classes at current levels." Pen paused a moment, then waved his hand. The room faded—

Dirisha sucked in a quick breath. The Jade Flower! The illusion seemed perfect: it was the same rec-chem pub she'd worked in three years past, as a bouncer. The soldiers sat around the octagonal room, drinking or smoking or just smiling around the edges of whatever chem they were stoned on; there was Butch, the head tender; there was Anjue, the doormaster; there was Khadaji himself, smiling and moving through the throng; and there—there she was!

A pang of nostalgia hit her. It was as if she were actually in the pub; she could feel the body heat of the troopers, smell the cooked-cashew odor of flickstick smoke, see the smallest detail.

Khadaji laughed at something a soldier said, then moved to the center of the room. He seemed to grow a bit larger, and the room around him seemed to fade as her former boss stood there smiling. The background murmur of the place died, and Dirisha heard Pen's voice.

"Emile Antoon Khadaji," Pen said, "former Jump-trooper, former pubtender, former smuggler. At this point in his life, he is rich, adept at many things, and filled with a sense of purpose. Nearly a decade and a half earlier, Khadaji had a moment of cosmic realization, at which time he saw the fall of the Confederation and what part he must play in it. Here, operating from a small pub on Greaves, Khadaji has just begun his one-man resistance to the Confed."

The interior of the Jade Flower vanished; a moment later, the image of Khadaji, standing alone against a backdrop of trees and shrubs, appeared. He wore a set of plain tan or-thoskins and a pair of spetsdods. He spun, to face the woods, as four troopers emerged. Each of the troopers was armed with an explosive-slug carbine. The rattle of automatic fire tore the quiet air; Khadaji snapped off two rounds, dived, rolled, and came up firing again. The four soldiers fell, knotted into balls as their muscles clenched involuntarily.

Spasm-poisoning, Dirisha remembered. The hospitals on Greaves had been full of such wounded troopers. Six months, it took for the stuff to wear off.

Muscle relaxants didn't work, it was CNS viral and self-replicating. No antidote.

Khadaji raised from his fighting crouch and turned to face his unseen audience. He smiled.

"Emile Antoon Khadaji," Pen said again. "One man who took on an army.

When those troops he disabled began to recover and he knew he would be identified, Khadaji walked boldly into the office of the planet's military commander and paralyzed him, a final gesture.

"Shortly afterward, Khadaji allowed himself to be imploded, rather than taken alive."

Dirisha remembered. Sleel had been working and she had been off, but she had arrived in time to see the attack on the armored drug room of the Jade Flower. The super-condensed ball which had been an entire room and its contents had crashed through the pub's foundations and sank into the ground.

Pen's voice-over continued. "An inventory on Khadaji's ammunition supply revealed a perfect match with the number of troopers wounded during his resistance to the Confed. In six months of operation, Khadaji took out two thousand three hundred and eighty-eight of the Confed's finest soldiers. He never killed, he did it alone, and he never missed. Not once."

It was a propaganda piece, Dirisha knew, but even so, she felt a chill touch her. It was amazing, no matter how you looked at it. Total dedication.

The scene faded, like a holoproj deprived of power, and once again, Dirisha was in the classroom, watching the gray figure of Pen.

"Emile Khadaji was a rich man, when he undertook his mission against the Confed," Pen said. "He could have stayed within the system, wanting for nothing, respected and elite. He did not, for Khadaji knew the great dinosaur of the Confederation was dying. He sought to hasten its death, by being an example to free men and women—by showing them that resistance need not be thought of as futile.

If one man, alone, can do so much, what might a hundred dedicated people do?

"Ah, but there are other ways to fight. The power of education, the pen rather than the sword, is one. Change a tyrant's philosophy and you might avoid shooting him.

"Khadaji is our icon, but our methods are different. Those of you who have been selected to become matadors—the word is from an ancient language, it means 'killer'—shall serve not by killing the flesh, but by slaying those twisted ideas held by the Confed. The man or woman whose life is in your care will learn to trust you. You can whisper into important ears, pass on beliefs, perhaps change a pivotal mind. A seed planted may grow; from the dying body of the Confederation will eventually spring new powers.

Perhaps, just perhaps, one of those powers may embody the ideas Khadaji knew to be truth: that mankind should be free; that initiation of deadly violence against another man or mue is wrong. This is why Khadaji chose the spetsdod for his weapon; so, too, will you master the non-lethal ways of self-defense. That is our purpose."

Pen paused. He waved his hand again, and Dirisha floated in deep space, watching a giant, wheel-shaped ship sail by. An antique, the thing was, and it looked familiar, somehow. It was obviously pre-Bender in design, not stuck in the gravity well of a planet or star—wait, she recognized it now, it was—

"Heaven Star," Pen said. "The first extra-system ship built by humans, on its way to an epic voyage. Those of us who are matadors consider ourselves to be like this ship. Pioneers, of a sort, willing to risk everything for our cause. As a new student, you would not be here, did you not have certain talents or skills or similar dedication."

Pen stopped talking, and moved from behind the lectern. He walked down a short aisleway toward Dirisha. When he stood a few meters away, staring at her, he spoke again.

"You can leave at any time, if what we want is not what you want. Your memory will be left intact—we are not the Confed—and you may speak to us as you will. What we do here is not illegal, by the standards of this world or those of the Confederation. As long as we do not actively resist or counsel active resistance, the Confed allows some dissent, if only a small token."

Dirisha regarded the real-unreal Pen before her. She had never been political; her only desire, from the time she had left her mother, was to achieve martial enlightenment. The Confed could hang, for all Dirisha cared.

But she was tired: tired of playing against the Musashi flexors; tired of drifting from world to world, searching for the next Art. This sumito Pen offered, the Ninety-Seven Steps, was something special, she could sense that.

And there were people here who intrigued her: Pen, Red, Geneva, Bork. And more, they wanted her, enough to have kept tabs on her, to have her watched. Besides, augmenting her bodyguard skills would do her no harm. It was still as good a place as any.

"I'll stick around for awhile," she said.

Pen nodded.

The classroom swirled and vanished, to be replaced by a smaller room, with only a few students. Again, Pen stood in front of them.

"Once," he began, "I watched a class being taught to a group of small children. The subject was aikido, an ancient martial art which utilizes much inner energy, or ki. The instructor used an analogy to show internal versus external strength. 'Ki,' he said, 'is much like an iceberg. There is the tip, which is visible, much as external strength which uses muscles; then, there is the internal strength, which is at once much greater and yet hidden.'

"At this point, the instructor drew a diagram of an iceberg, showing that nine-tenths of its mass was beneath a curly line, which stood for the surface of a sea. He went back over his analogy again, altering it slightly, gesturing as he spoke. The man was full of energy and enthusiasm, most eloquent, and I was quite impressed with his presentation of the concept of ki. When he had completed his explanation the second time, he said, 'Are there any questions?'

"A small boy, of perhaps four or five years T.S., raised his hand. The instructor smiled. 'Yes, Cos?'

'"What's an iceberg?'"

Some of the students around Dirisha laughed. She smiled, as Pen turned to look at her. "Do you understand the point of my long-winded story, then?"

Dirisha said, "I think so. One should not take anything for granted.

"Precisely," Pen said. "For the next few weeks, you will be exposed to very basic knowledge in politics, philosophy, psychology and history, among other less general subjects. Much of it may be a repetition of that which you already know; still, before we can proceed with your education, we must know that you know what an iceberg is."

The next weeks consisted of intensive class instruction in all the subjects Pen had mentioned. Some of it, Dirisha knew already—one could hardly travel around the civilized galaxy without learning first-hand basic politics, history and stellar-geography—but much of what she learned was new. The material was presented well, and Dirisha felt a sense of accomplishment as she assimilated the teachings.

She learned about the first L-5 colony, established around 2000 A.D.; more about Heaven Star, the first interstellar ship, sent out seventy years later; and, how, in 2193, the Bender Drive opened up the stars. When the dust of colonization settled, there were fifty-six inhabited planets and eighty-seven wheel worlds, and the Galactic Confederation had become the Law to which all must bow. Earth ruled all its children.

The material flowed, and Dirisha soaked it up. There was so much to learn, so much—

She opened her eyes, to see the tech smiling at her.

"Fifteen minutes," the tech said. "Any of it take?"

Dirisha blinked, to orient herself. It had not been like a dream, the viral learning; her memories seemed as real as if she had truly lived them. She nodded. "Yes. It took."

"Good. If you'll follow me, we need to get a routine physical. We have a Healy Diagnoster next cube over, it won't take a minute."

Actually, the exam took about forty-five seconds, and showed Dirisha to be in excellent health. As she dressed in the orthoskins she'd been given, Dirisha saw the tech's right index finger straighten slightly. She had seen enough people at the school to know that a curled forefinger was habitual, to keep from accidentally firing the spetsdods everyone wore. It was enough warning for Dirisha to snap her hand through the sleeve of the orthoskins and point her own weapon at the tech's belly.

The tech grinned. "Just checking, to see if you were awake."

Dirisha returned the grin. "Awake enough so I think I can get you before you can twitch. I lost a point last night and I am tempted to make it up."

The tech's smile shrank a little.

"But I don't want you to have a bad morning. So what saw we part without exchanging stings?"

The tech's smile grew again. "Sounds good to me."

Dirisha walked down the long hall, feeling good. Her first real-time class was to be the pattern dance, the Ninety-Seven Steps. She had been thinking about it, and she thought she had an idea of how to manage the ninth step, the one she had failed to negotiate before. She would have to shift her center of gravity carefully, the stepping foot would have to be relaxed, and not tensed. She had watched Pen closely, and Geneva after him, and she was sure she could manage the ninth move, and perhaps the tenth. She didn't know where that would place her, among all the students who had much more practice, but she was used to being a beginner. Some of what she knew could be transferred to a new Art, but there was no shame in ignorance. If others had learned it, she could learn it: that had always been Dirisha's operational mode.

Geneva led a class of four students—two men and two women—through a series of stretching exercises on the outdoor rockfoam. The morning sun was bright, and it was already warm enough to cause the students to sweat heavily.

Geneva smiled at the black woman, and waved her over.

"This is the advanced class," Geneva said. "You'll be working out with them."

Dirisha shook her head. "I'm just a beginner."

Geneva laughed, as did the four students.

"Something funny?"

Geneva nodded. "You managed eight steps on your first try; the average is three, a good score is five, and Khadaji himself only did six his first time.

Aside from Pen, only two of us can walk the Ninety-Seven to the end. Red can't, Bork can't. Nobody ever got to eight on her first try before, at least not here. It took me a week to get to eight, and before you, I was the fastest."

"You must be joking."

"Not me, sister Dirisha. You are good."

"I still think Pen took a big risk, letting me pick somebody else to walk the pattern, only two chances out of all the students—"

"Only one, actually," Geneva said, still grinning. "Mayli Wu wasn't there."