Tanderon (7 page)

Agents in training are usually worse than medical students when it comes to wildness, and no matter what anyone said, the new “cadet” would be ridden as hard as possible. Or at least they’d try to ride the new cadet as hard as possible. Bones would be broken, blood would be spilled, but the Council said send little Diana back as a cadet, and that’s what Ringer would do. Ringer was a fool, and if I could have gotten my hands on him I would have shoved that dirty laugh right back down his throat where it came from.

While I fought to keep the rage from breaking free of my control, Ringer brought over the food, Val brought the wine, and the meal creaked to a start. I would have bet quite a lot that I wouldn’t be tasting the wine Val held, but not only did I get to taste it, I also got to be served first. Ringer distributed the food, and when everyone had full plates and glasses in front of them, the bustle died down to a chewing, swallowing silence. The wine was adequate, the food was good, but all too soon Ringer and Val were back to making snappy comments about my “delicate”

condition. They were riding me on purpose, trying to make me regret what I’d done and reluctant to do it a second time, trying to humiliate me as far as humanly possible.

I held onto my temper as long as I could, but when they began to talk about sending me to bed early and taking away my ice cream money, I’d finally had it. Just because I looked like a child didn’t mean I was one, and it rapidly became necessary to prove that.

Val was saying something about how healthy it is to spank a woman every time she needs it, and Ringer was hanging on his every word. For that reason it wasn’t difficult to scrape off some of the colorless coating from the nail of my left little finger without their noticing it. Each of my fingernails is coated with a different traceless chemical, and Radman the slaver had found out how effective one of them was just before he died.

People always see other people moving around and reaching for things, but very few realize that complete actions are rarely seen. If there’s a napkin on the table to someone’s right and their right hand moves in a direct line toward that napkin, you assume you know what’s happening. Your mind automatically completes the action before true completion is reached, and dismisses it from your attention. If someone is talking to you during and after this dismissal, you’ll probably miss the small, unobtrusive sideways extension of the hand before the napkin is finally reached.

Val’s wineglass was to my right, just beyond my napkin, Ringer’s wineglass to my left, just beyond my water glass. The chemicals I use have no smell or taste in addition to being colorless, and wine glasses were refilled twice after I’d settled back in my chair to brood.

Ringer and Val were having a great time putting me down, but once my gift to them began to do its work their great time would be over. I can pick the lock on almost anything that has a lock, but as Ringer had pointed out, the wrong lock was closest to me. The way the chain was wound around the chair I’d have to break that chair before I’d be able to reach the right lock. But the chair I sat in was a light synthetic wood that broke about as easily as the hull of the orbital station.

I’d still be sitting there, chained in place, when the effects of my chemical eased up on them, and by that time they’d no longer be rational human beings. I had no idea what they would do to me for drugging them, but whatever it was it would be worth it. I’m willing to pay the price for what I do – and everyone else around me had better be just as willing.

The drug I’d used – chosen carefully for the specific results I’d wanted – took about forty-five minutes to begin showing its presence. If my victims had swallowed it before eating it would have worked sooner, but forty-five minutes on top of a full meal was just about right. I sat curled up on my left hip, right foot folded back in the chair, completely relaxed as I inspected the wine glass in my hand. That was when Ringer pushed a short distance away from the table.

“How did it get so hot in here?” he asked Val, frowning and wiping at his forehead.

“It feels as if the temperature’s gone up twenty degrees.”

“It does feel too warm,” Val agreed, pulling at his collar as he watched Ringer fighting open his shir-tie. They had started out sitting in their chairs, but at that point they were more sprawled than sitting, finding it hard to fight the queasy lethargy rolling slowly over them. I sipped at what was left in my wineglass and watched them with solemn interest.

“Something must be wrong with the suite thermostat,” Ringer muttered, the high red color beginning to drain from his face. He was turning “green around the gills,” and Val wasn’t far behind him. Ringer moved around in his chair as though trying to find the initiative to stand up, but Val sat very still, possibly in an attempt to keep the room from revolving around him. I noted their symptoms, checked them off against my mental progression chart, and waited for the rest of it to hit them.

“The oxygen flow’s – been affected – too,” Ringer gasped, tearing at his shir-tie, his chest heaving. “Valdon, the emergency – inhalators – are behind that – red panel. Do you think – you can – reach them?”

Val didn’t even look in the direction Ringer had tried gesturing toward, but he almost shook his head.

“The room is spinning too fast,” he whispered, hands locked tight to his chair arms, voice hoarse with nausea. “Is there anything to strap down with?”

Ringer frowned through his suffering and tried to answer, but the words were beyond him. The two big heroes fought with their heaving insides in silence for another minute or two, then Ringer moaned, clapped a hand to his mouth, and bent double in the chair. Val suddenly began to slide out of his chair to his knees, his face a mask of desperation. Then the two of them, as though on cue, half staggered and half crawled toward what was now Ringer’s bedroom and the bathroom it held.

I knew they’d end up fighting to use the facilities, and wondered why at least one of them hadn’t tried for my bathroom. It would have been the smarter way of doing it, but obviously they weren’t thinking very clearly. I finished the wine in my glass, found that I could just reach the nearly empty bottle, and proceeded to pour myself some more. I had a wait ahead of me, and the wait wasn’t calculated to be a short one.

More than an hour passed before there was any sign of life from Ringer’s bedroom.

At that point there were only two cigarettes left in the table dispenser, and I was really beginning to feel bored. I’d also had to shift in the chair too many times, and so felt stiff from trying to get comfortable.

I was in the midst of putting out the last cigarette I’d lit when there was a sound at the bedroom door – something like foot-dragging – and I looked up to see the apparitions which had materialized out of nothing. Ringer leaned on the right-hand door jamb, Val on the left, and they both looked as though they’d been through shipwreck and stranding. Their clothes were wrinkled and spotted, open at throat and cuffs, and baggy at knees and shoe-tops. Also, their stance was shaky, their skin ashen, and their eyes over-bright. They stared at me in wavering silence for a short time, then Ringer’s arm lifted to point a trembling finger at me.

“There,” he croaked, obviously proving a point. “If it had been anything else, she wouldn’t be sitting there like that.”

“But how?” Val demanded weakly, running a hand over his face. His hair was dripping wet, as though he’d put his head under a faucet.

“One of her pet drugs,” Ringer growled, his hand closing more tightly on the doorjamb. “Knowing that much, I’ll also bet I know which one. I’ll kill her.”

He began to stagger out of the doorway, but Val pushed away from his side of the door and reached a hand to Ringer’s shoulder to stop him.

“No,” Val rasped, almost falling with the effort and nearly taking Ringer down with him. “First we’ll ask. If it’s true, then she’s mine.”

Ringer didn’t look as though he agreed with that, but he had too little strength left to argue. He and Val staggered their way back to the chairs they’d been using and collapsed into them with muffled grunts. Their clothes had a nasty, sour odor to them, but I just kept my eyes on the two wrecks and didn’t say a word.

“Diana, look at me,” Val got out, sitting in his chair as though his insides ached. He sat to my right, and I gave him my full attention as he’d asked. When my head was turned completely toward him, he pushed the wet hair out of his eyes with one hand.

“Diana, did you do this to us?” he asked, his voice softer than his condition accounted for. “Did you use some … hellish something to do this to us?”

His stare, much more lifeless than normal, held to me, and Ringer’s gaze was just the same. I looked from one to the other of them, then smiled faintly.

“Who am I?” I asked Val, then moved my head to include Ringer in the question.

“Who do you think I am?”

Ringer stared briefly and then frowned, probably understanding what I meant, but Val was too sick to be anything but confused.

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his breath coming more heavily from the exertion of anger. “I asked a question and I’ll damned well be answered!”

“You have been answered,” I told him, losing the smile. “Think about it for a minute, Val, and then ask yourself who you’ve been playing with. Are you stupid enough to put me in the same category as your blond playmate, or are you just letting your eyes rule your reason? Ask yourself, who am I?”

Val adopted a frown like Ringer’s, but Ringer had already given up on his. The man I worked for sat bent over in his chair, elbows on knees, head bowed to hands, exhaustion and illness clear in every line of him.

“Damn,” he whispered, almost talking to himself. “Books and covers. Damn it!”

Val had turned his head to stare at Ringer, but he still didn’t understand what was happening. Ringer had seen his mistake, but Val still needed to have it spelled out.

“I’m not a little girl,” I said, bringing Val’s gaze back to me. “And I’m not a big girl disguised as a little girl. I’m not a spoiled brat and I’m not a cuddly armful. I’m a Special Agent. Do you know what it means to treat a Special Agent the way you’ve been treating me?”

I gave Val a chance to answer, but he didn’t take it. He sat and stared at me, waiting to have the question answered for him.

“It means you’re asking for it,” I supplied, and saw a flash of memory and sudden understanding in his eyes. “It means you’ve called accounts in to be squared, it means you’re ready to make a stand. It also means you’ve decided on the way you want it.”

Ringer raised his head at that, undoubtedly remembering that the choice had been his. I’d warned him once and I’d warned Val once, and once was all the warning I usually ever gave. I wondered where his mind could have been, thinking he’d neutralized me by chaining me to a chair.

“Is that what the point to all this was?” Val suddenly croaked. “Being a Special Agent gives you the right to poison people?”

His right arm leaned on the table and his hand was a fist, underlining the outrage in his exhausted gaze. I suddenly felt just as tired, tired and out of arguments. I looked down at my free hand in my lap, and didn’t try again.

“Answer me!” Val rasped, his hand coming to wrap itself around my right arm and shake me till I looked at him. “Does being a Special Agent give you the right to poison people?”

His face and the force of his fingers showed how furious he was, but there was nothing left for me to say. He didn’t understand, and I couldn’t change that.

“She wasn’t talking about right,” Ringer’s voice came, weak still but stronger than it had been. “She was talking about ability.”

Val jerked his head around to look at Ringer, his hand still on my arm, and I looked at Ringer too – to see the stare he sent me.

“Remembering is so hard when looking at that face,” Ringer murmured, his arms on the chair arms, his body slumped in the chair. “We punished a bad little girl and then laughed at her, but we forgot what we were punishing her for. I’d still like to take the life from her for putting me through that century in hell, but there’s something you’d better understand, Valdon: she may have used Glue on us, but it could just as easily have been Eternity.”

Ringer knew my drug supply and knew quite a bit about how my mind worked, and he’d finally realized they’d gone too far. There was no friendliness for me in his eyes, but he did understand. Val frowned and turned his head to join in Ringer’s stare, and slowly, slowly, his rage eased off as he realized he could just as easily be dead. If I thought in terms of rights I could have talked myself into believing I had the right to take his life, but in terms of ability all I’d wanted to do was make a point. I had enough Eternity to decimate the population of the orbital station, but my using it had never been in question. I had the ability to use it, but not the right.

“You can’t mean you forgive her!” Val blazed at Ringer, finally letting my arm go.

“Whether or not she could have killed us has nothing to do with it! Look at yourself!

You look worse than I feel!”

“No, I don’t forgive her,” Ringer growled, sitting the least bit straighter in his chair.

“This isn’t something you forgive someone for doing to you. But I do understand why she did it – and have to admit that I’d probably have done the same myself.

Don’t know if I would have had the self-control not to use the Eternity, though…”

The last of what he said was more of a mutter, almost lost behind his hand as he wiped at his face. He’d moved his eyes back to me, the anger low but still there, and then he began to force himself out of the chair to his feet.

“I want her out of my sight,” he said, groping in a pocket until he came up with a key. “And I also think I can make further use of this chain.”

He came close to my chair before lowering himself to one knee, then the chain tightened around my ankle as he fumbled with the lock on the back chair leg.

Opening the lock took longer than closing it had, due mostly to the fact that Ringer’s hands weren’t all that steady. Val watched the proceedings in silence, but his eyes and attitude said he still hadn’t been convinced. He shared the suite with two Special Agents, but he hadn’t learned to share their way of thinking.