Gateway To Xanadu (15 page)

“Of course it will work.” He grinned. “Now it’s your turn. Let’s hear what we do first.”

“First we check out the Station,” I said with a sigh, stretching out flat on .my back on the bed so I didn’t have to look at him. “As soon as we knew for- sure that Radman has left for the planet, we take ourselves after him.”

“You think he might still be on the Station?” Val asked, surprised. “The possibility hadn’t occurred to me. How do we find out if he is or not? And what do we do if he is?”

“The general computer registration will tell us if he’s still on the Station,” I answered, muffling a yawn.

“Most people keep their Station accommodations if they won’t be on the planet very long, and the computer lists them as non-resident when they take a shuttle. If it turns out he’s still on the Station, I take care of him and you talk real fast to keep Station security from shooting me down.”

“You think they’ll catch you?” he asked, and this time he sounded bothered. A second later his face was above mine, his eyes staring down at me. “I thought you were good enough to get it done without anyone knowing who it was.”

“On the planet, sure,” I said, finding nodding difficult while lying flat on my back with him hanging over me. “I might even have managed it here on the Station-if I hadn’t been declared a minor. I wasn’t kidding about the kind of surveillance I’ll be under, and I don’t think I’ll be able to lure Madman to one of the Station’s null areas. If he’s still here, I’ll just have to wipe him and hope the security people stop to ask a few questions before burning me down. They sure as hell won’t use stunners on someone caught in the act, of ‘cold-blooded murder.’ ”

“I don’t like the sound of that.” Val frowned, the look in his eyes showing that he was contemplating possibilities. “If he’s here on the Station, we’ll have to think of something else. I’m all for getting rid of Radman, but not if you have to go with him.”

“That’s one of the risks I get paid to take,” I said, briefly wondering why he was looking angry. “And don’t even think about making any personnel substitutions in the executing of that warrant. Down on Xanadu you’re as likely to get away with it as I am, but Stations are Federation territory and you’re not authorized to execute a death warrant here. Even if the security force didn’t shoot you down, the Federation would take care of it for them. They don’t like having people issuing and executing their own death warrants.”

“We’ll have to worry about that if the question comes up,” he said, looking vexed. “We’ll check those computer files first thing tomorrow, after we have a decent dinner and a good night’s sleep. It’ he’s gone the way I hope he is, we’ll follow as soon as we can get a shuttle reservation.”

“I prefer checking the files now,” I said, starting to sit up on the bed. “We’ve wasted enough time . . . . ‘

“That a little more won’t matter,” he said, pushing me back down with one hand. “Right now I think you can use a nap, so you won’t be. yawning and falling asleep over dinner. This ‘day’ is going to be a lot longer than standard before it’s finally over. I say you’ll take a nap and then dress for dinner. What do you say?”

“You claim you don’t like that kind of language,” I countered moving against the slight pressure of his hand. “Let me up. ”

“I asked what you say, Jenny,” he repeated, his voice softer than mine had been, his eyes staring down into mine. I was being forced to do things his way, and the look in his eyes said I didn’t get mine until he got his. I really did want to give him his, but I still had that damned assignment to consider. I stirred under his hand again, hating the way he was looking at me, then turned my eyes away from his.

“Yes, uncle Val,” I got out, nearly choking on the words, so furious I could have killed with a big smile on my face. “Whatever you say, uncle Val. Anything you like.”

“Anything I like’?” he repeated in a very satisfied murmur, his hand coming to my face, his own face moving closer. “I think I like the sound of that.”

“Don’t like it too much,” I said, turning my eyes back to him, but making no effort to free myself. “It I have to be seventeen, that’s much too young to get involved with a man your age. Just be glad you have your own bedroom-you’ll be needing it.”

He stared down at me in silence for a minute, the look in his eyes pushing at me to see how determined I was to stick with what I’d said. If I hadn’t been so furious he probably would have been able to make me back down the way he’d done much too often in the recent past, but strong anger- has always been able to overcome the more delicate emotions in me. I met his gaze with a look of my own, the sort of look people had been known to grow very uncomfortable under, but all it did for him was recall his grin as he shook his head.

“I can’t have it both ways, can I?” he asked, not me but himself. “If you didn’t need to learn a little restraint so badly I would not consider depriving myself, but since you do need to learn the lesson I’ll just have to wait. It’s a good thing you stayed with Bellna’s appearance; I’ve always found brown hair and eyes the hardest to resist. Have a good nap.”

His hand moved from my face to gently brush aside some of my hair, and then he was gone from the bed and heading for the door out of the room. I twisted around to watch him go, waited until he’d closed the door behind him, then took a strand of my hair to chew on. After two months of living with him, it bothered the hell out of me that I still didn’t know where he was coming from. Another man in his position would have pressed his advantage and forced me to do anything he was in the mood for, but not Val. If he had forced himself on me, I would have been a hell of a lot happier; I could have filed him away in the proper niche then, and once the assignment was taken care of could have happily broken him up into small pieces. But he hadn’t forced himself on me, hadn’t even tried to talk me out of the decision I’d made, and suddenly, stupidly, I was regretting that decision. For the first time in many years I felt bewildered and somehow vulnerable, as though everything I had learned to protect myself with was suddenly negated. I put my fingers to my eyes and rubbed hard, then got up to get out of my jumpsuit and retrieve the pillow I’d thrown. Maybe .the idea of a nap wasn’t so stupid after all; if I were asleep, at least the thoughts would stop rampaging around in my head. I took the pillow, lay down with my arms wrapped around it, then determinedly closed my eyes.

The idea of a nap turned out to be terrible. My dreams were filled with unending arguments with people who insisted on believing I was a tiny child, and the fact that everyone towered over me only helped to convince them they were right. I woke up just as the maddening frustration was about to make me strike out blindly in all directions, then sat for a few minutes with my head in my hands, forcing myself to separate dream happenings from real ones. Even after I knew which way was up the depression hung on with claws and fangs, setting me growling as I climbed out of bed and headed for the shower. If nothing else, I had to get rid of that growl; in that mood, I would have been unreasonably dangerous to those around me even if I’d been surrounded by nothing but the spirits of Faraway.

A hot shower and leisurely air-drying took care of the growl, but stopping in front of the bathroom’s mirrored wall reinforced the depression almost to the point of tears. Sure. the face I had gotten from Bellna was devastatingly beautiful, and sure that face and the long red hair matched well with my body; that didn’t change the fact that that face was a young girl’s face, and that body registered just as young on a biodetector. And what had Val meant, saying it was a good thing I didn’t still have brown hair and eyes’? All he could see was the Bellna overlay; why wasn’t he thinking about that alone? Everything about that simple assignment was starting to twist out of its track, up to and including my thinking. It was up to a certain reflected redhead to set it all straight, but I watched the pretty young girl in the mirror chewing an end of her hair, and realized she hadn’t the faintest idea of where to start.

I sat down on the blue bathroom carpeting for a while, facing away from the mirror wall, and slowly, slowly, fought my way back to a proper perspective. The idea of being declared a minor had thrown me, and Val’s messing around hadn’t helped; but I was starting to come back from the shock to my normal way of thinking. Since the minority nonsense had to be put up with until the assignment was finished, all I had to do was finish it quick and then I’d be in the clear. After all, it wasn’t as if I really was seventeen, so what was the big deal if everyone did get the wrong idea? That was what I’d been counting on their’

doing, back when I first thought about whether or not to keep the face, wasn’t it? I leaned my right shoulder harder against the black and pale-blue-tiled wall, suddenly understanding that I would have begun coping with the problem a lot sooner if Val hadn’t been there to take advantage of the situation. It almost seemed as if he were deliberately trying to push me off balance, as if he had more in mind than simply getting even. What else he could be after I couldn’t imagine, but a shrug dismissed the thought as I climbed to my feet. Val was determined not to get to work until the new Station day started, but he was determined about a lot of things. By the time he realized that going to the dinner dining room could also be called casing the joint, it would already be done.

Putting on makeup or trying to-almost brought back the depression; the Bellna-face was so young and innocent that nothing but the gentlest highlighting was possible. Anything more would have looked ridiculously out of place, like a three-year-old girl wearing her mother’s high-heeled shoes. I didn’t realize how much the incident annoyed me until I went to my luggage for something to wear, and found myself digging around for one particular outfit. It was something Kate Newman, another agent, had talked me into buying, and when I finally found it I understood what my subconscious was up to. The thing was a pale, shimmering electric blue body suit, slit in front from the tight, high collar down to the navel, and so close-fitting that it would look painted on. It was also long-sleeved, with very thin, almost invisible ties at two points across the long front diamond to keep it from gaping awkwardly open when I sat. It was not an outfit a child would wear, and would be a statement of my position that my inner self seemed to require. I stared at it in silence for a minute, trying to decide how wise my inner self was being, then said to hell with it and reached for the silver high-heeled sandals and small bag that went with the outfit.

Once I was dressed I added a silver pendant and earrings, brushed my hair, then examined the total effect in the mirror wall. If the suit had been even a shade deeper in color it would have gone badly with my hair, but as it was the bright, cascading red added to the overall picture. I turned a little in front of the mirror, the cynical side of my nature sounding cat-calls in ridicule, the rest of me just short of grinning evilly. I’d had to be talked into buying that outfit because I don’t believe in waving candy under the noses of babies and then refusing to let them have it, but right then I was more interested in soul-satisfaction than in fair play. I looked at myself over one shoulder as I tugged gently at a sleeve cuff, ran a smoothing hand down a shimmering hip, then turned away from the mirror and sauntered toward the door to the sitting room.

When I walked out of my bedroom, Val was standing behind one of the white couches of the sitting room and in front of the bar, carefully examining what he was pouring into his glass. He didn’t look around at the sound of my door opening, but he proved he knew I was there.

“You certainly took long enough getting ready,” he said in a distracted voice, watching the level of the liquid in his glass rise no more than an inch despite the fact that he continued to pour from the bottle he held. “What in the name of the Mother of All Life is this stuff?”

“That’s called ambrosia,” I supplied, amused at his reaction of incredulity. “It’s a graduated intoxicant, set for the one-inch level of a glass like that. If you pour the first inch you find it light and only faintly intoxicating, something you could drink ail night and barely feel. The next inch makes it more potent and the following inches even more so, until you reach the point where one sip is enough to keep you drunk for a week. I don’t know how long you’ve been pouring, but if that bottle was full when you started, you’d better pour some over into another glass before tasting it.”

“It was full,” he muttered, righting the bottle and then putting it aside for the second glass I’d suggested.

He poured over the first inch, snorted with delight as the second inch began darkening the pale rose of the first, then put aside the initial overpouring so that he could sip carefully at the couple of inches in the second glass. At that point I could see he was wearing a formal comp-suit of gray and black, no indication of discomfort about him at the full ruffles at wrists, throat and shirt front. He sipped at the ambrosia, his brows rising in surprised approval, and then he began to turn more fully toward me.

“This is really good,” he approved, looking at the rose-colored fire-water that cost more than some people earned in a standard month. “I thought it was just a silly toy, but it’s really-‘

His words stopped so abruptly I thought he might have suddenly died, but there was nothing dead about the look in the eyes that had just come to me. That look burned into me where I stood, a raging black fire that actually sent him forward a step or two until the couch back woke him up by slamming into his legs.

He stopped then, not too happy about having to do it, continued to stare briefly, then finished off the ambrosia in one swallow.

“I can see there are some things worth waiting for,” he said at last, back in control of himself despite the still-smoldering black fire he hadn’t been entirely able to put out. “I can’t complain because you did warn me, but you’re still not being very fair. I wasn’t expecting to be hit below the belt, so to speak.”

His grin was faint but still definitely there, something I didn’t understand any more than I understood what he was talking about.