Matadora (15 page)

Okay. Okay.

"I think what you did with Geneva sucks vac, Pen. I think you've gotten so used to manipulating people you think you're some kind of god, it doesn't matter what you're doing it for, in the long run. I don't think you care about anybody or anything, save this serpentine game you're playing."

For a moment, she saw pain touch his eyes, and she fancied she could see through the opaque shroud he always wore in public, to a face twisted in regret. Then the moment was gone, and the unperturbable, inscrutable mask returned.

"But you'll take the job with Carlos?"

"Yeah, I'll take the goddamned job."

There was a graduation ceremony, of a sort. Dirisha had attended dozens, without ever really thinking she'd be the woman onstage someday. Early on, maybe, she'd wanted that, but later, once the school became home, that had changed. It wasn't that elaborate a set-up, no big deal.

Still, there was something about it that Dirisha found... stirring. Matadors usually graduated one at a time, people learned at different speeds, and Pen was always one for precision. You left when you and he thought you were ready.

Standing on the stage in front of the assembled students, Dirisha knew that she and Pen both knew she had been ready for a long time. She just hadn't reached the leaping off point on her own.

Pen flowed onto the stage, as smooth as usual, dressed as always. Dirisha wore a new set of gray orthoskins, newly spun dotic boots, and both spetsdods. It was Khadaji's uniform, the same kind as he had worn on Greaves, and while there was no rule against it, no graduating matador or ma-tadora ever wore anything else. The imagery was clear: when you hired a matador, you were hiring somebody cast in the same mold as Emile Antoon Khadaji, the Man Who Never Missed. Quite a selling point, from what Dirisha knew. The only difference was the shoulder patch, a hand-sized, bright red holographic splotch, shaped like a small cape. Floating over the cape was an androgynous human figure, dressed in a kind of tight-fitting coverall. A suit of lights, Pen called it, worn only by the original matadors of Old Earth.

Pen moved to stand next to Dirisha. The already-quiet room grew tangibly more so, as if no one dared even breathe.

Pen faced the audience. "You all know Dirisha," he said, "and you all know she is more than ready to graduate as a fully-operational . Her time has come to leave."

Dirisha scanned the assembly. There was Geneva. Tears ran freely down the blonde's face, but she was smiling.

"Dirisha has an important client. He is getting the best Matador Villa has to offer. She will be missed."

Pen turned toward Dirisha. From his robe, he produced a biomed popper, the size of a fingertip, and handed it to her. That was the FTS virus all graduates received.

Dirisha nodded her thanks.

Pen pulled another small item from the cloth depths of his shroud. A galactic stad cube. She was well-off when she'd come to the Villa, she was more so now. Whatever she had was joined in her account now by her first year's salary-each year was paid by the client in advance, refundable if the client should terminate a matador's services-or if the client was terminated.

Pen extended his hand, bearing the third and final item each graduate received. Two items, actually. A pair of spets-dod magazines, loaded with live ammunition. No longer the blunt-tipped darts for Dirisha; she was now immune to practice attack by students. Were she to return fire now, the shock-tox flechettes she would load wouldn't kill, but they would do much more than sting.

One at a time, she unloaded and reloaded her weapons. She half expected Pen to try a final salvo at her before she switched over-he had done it to one about-to-graduate student and kept him in-house another three months when the man couldn't return fire fast enough. But Pen made no threatening moves. In a few seconds, the practice rounds were unloaded and replaced.

She jiggled the magazines in her hand, as if weighing them, or shaking dice. The matador patch on her shoulder seemed to flash in the quiet room, the suit of lights against the red background gleaming like thousands of pinpoint precious stones. Dirisha felt a flutter within her; it was as if she suddenly felt a kinship with those ancient matadors. The ammunition, the patch, the virus, they were all tangible proof that she was no longer simply a student.

Dirisha squeezed the small bits of plastic in her hand tightly. Then, she threw the old magazines into the crowd, slinging them high into the air. The school was only a few years old, but it had its traditions. Whoever caught the magazines were supposed to be the next two to graduate. A field of hands rose as the magazines flew, and there was a break in the silence as the students yelled and laughed.

Dirisha smiled, both elated and sad. She glanced at Pen, then back at the assembly. One of the magazines was held by Barthal Jinks, a student only three months into the training. So much for tradition. When she looked to see who had the second, it took a moment. And it shook her, when she finally saw. Her smile died, and her stomach seemed to clutch itself.

Geneva, unsmiling, held the second magazine.

During the going away party, Sleel got drunk on vor-emholts and tried to throw Bork across the room, which resulted in Sleel pulling a groin muscle.

Mayli danced an erotic dance, which sent half the party in search of places to consummate the lust which resulted. Red, toked on kick-dust, staged an exhibition of point shooting, picking matches from a pile on a table top with his spetsdod, never moving a match other than the one he shot at, never scratching the clear plastic finish of the table.

It was a fine party, nearly everybody had a wonderful time.

Throughout the buzz of happy conversation and revelry, Dirisha moved, smiling and nodding at well-wishers, always aware of Geneva watching her every move. Dirisha wanted the party to last forever, for every moment thus occupied delayed the moment she dreaded: being alone with Geneva.

Bork nearly crushed her with his farewell embrace. "Uh, we'll miss you, Dirisha. It won't be the same without you."

Mayli kissed her, teacher to student, sister to sister, friend to friend. "Learn joy," she said.

Even Sleel seemed at a loss for something clever, and only managed a lame wisecrack: "You got a few minutes, Dirisha, last chance to know ecstasy before you take off." She was almost tempted, to see how he would perform with that particular set of muscles injured the way they were, but she settled for a hug and an almost-brotherly kiss.

Pen was nowhere to be seen, and as the party wound down, students drifting away, Dirisha found herself standing in front of Geneva. The blonde was dry-eyed and wore a fixed smile. Dirisha extended one hand, and Geneva took it, clutching it as a falling woman might grab at a dangling rope.

"You want to go back to the room?"

Geneva shook her head. "I-I don't think I could do that."

Dirisha tried a smile, saw the effort Geneva was expending to hold herself together, and let the expression fade. "Hon, I'm sorry. I wish there was some way I could make this easier for you. You've been closer to me than anybody in my life, a friend far beyond that of a lover. I'll miss you more than anybody else here."

Geneva drew in a deep breath, nearly a sob. "I'm leaving, too."

Dirisha blinked. Leaving?

"Pen found a client for me. Ambassador Teiki, of Hadiya. I'll be spending a lot of time on Earth, at the Confederation Embassy Compound."

"That's good," Dirisha said. In truth, she felt saddened. Knowing Geneva was here made it easier to leave. The idea of being gone forever hadn't sunk in yet. Most of them would probably go someday, she had known that, but it had never seemed real before.

The two women held hands, standing alone in the room. They didn't speak for a long time. Finally, Geneva said, "I will always love you, Dirisha. Across a thousand light years and forever, I will never stop loving you."

Dirisha gathered Geneva into her arms and hugged her tightly, inhaling the scent of the blonde where she pressed her face against the fine, golden hair. I'll miss you, too, brat, in ways I've never missed anybody or anything.

"You will always be in my heart, Geneva. Always."

As Dirisha walked toward the rail car, she looked around at the school with an intensity she had never known before. How odd to be leaving, maybe forever. It still didn't feel real.

Several students were working out in the chilly morning air, walking the patterns imprinted upon the rockfoam. They appeared to take no notice of Dirisha as she left. No one had come to see her off, which was just as well.

Her sadness didn't need more fuel. Leaving was strange enough without tearful farewells in the cold light of day.

Dirisha had all her belongings in the same bag she'd carried when she'd arrived nearly five years earlier; that hadn't changed. A lot of other things were different, though. She wasn't the same person who'd come here.

The rail car beckoned, a few meters ahead. Dirisha sighed as she approached the door to the small vehicle. Better to do this fast, get in and go, before she got caught up in the emotions which bubbled around in the back of her head. She tossed her bag through the open door, and bent to enter the car.

"Dirisha," came the voice from behind her.

She turned.

Pen stood there, wrapped in his grayness, eyes alive in the shadow of his hood. Dirisha was surprised, and surprised at herself for being so-anything Pen did should not be unexpected by this time.

"Good-bye, Dirisha, and good luck."

Dirisha shook her head. "Thanks, Pen. I think."

Then he did something else Dirisha never expected. He walked to her and hugged her. "Take care," he said. "You are a more valuable person than you know."

As the rail car pulled away from Matador Villa, Dirisha stared through the back window at the solitary figure of Pen, the wind ruffling his robes as he stood next to the track, watching her leave. The figure seemed to blur a lot sooner man it should, as though she were watching it through eyes that had somehow suddenly malfunctioned.

There must be something wrong with her droptacs, she thought, as she wiped her face. She couldn't be crying.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As THE BOXCAR flew toward the terminal in high orbit, Dirisha began to itch. All over.

The sensation wasn't new, she had felt it before during micro-term augmentation, but it was lessened none for that. The itching was caused by the presence of multiplying colonies of genetically-altered neurological bacteria. When fully circulating, such symbiotic flora would increase the neuroconductive speed of its host by as much as a factor of two. Normally, such reflex-aug biologicals were restricted to special units of Confed Military; as in most restricted things, however, a black market had developed. It cost, but it could be had.

Pen had a bandit bio-unit on retainer, and upon graduation from the school, each matador was given an injection of the bacteria-aug. There was a long chemical-biological name for the substance, but it had been dubbed FTS by some wit somewhere along the line-FTS standing for "faster than shit." The colonies were self-limited and short-lived at best, and had to be renewed once or twice a year.

So Dirisha itched, but managed to stand it, as the boxcar achieved orbit and jockeyed toward the terminal where she was to catch a Bender ship for Wu, in the Haradali System. Wu was another mainly agro world, only partially developed, and the planet where Carlos and the headquarters of the An tag Union were. Dirisha had done a viral-inject learning cap about Wu, so she knew what there was available to know about it.

Rajeem Carlos was already there by now, waiting for his new matador to arrive.

"Arriving Renault Space Terminal," came a mechanical voice over Dirisha's seat. "Docking in five minutes."

Dirisha touched a flat bar under the viewer inset into the seat in front of her. A holoproj test pattern appeared. She stroked the control through a series of channels, until a view of Renault appeared, a globe the size of a basketball floating over her lap. The planet was shrouded in lacy clouds, a blue sphere with a slash of rusty black on one side, where a chain of extinct volcanic mountains rose from a vast plain of crumbling lava. There, to the south, would be Simplex-by-the-Sea, so tiny at this distance as to be invisible, populated by microbes.

Dirisha sighed, and shut off the projection. It had been even harder to go than she'd expected. On the other hand, there was a certain anticipation, a fluttery thrill in her belly, when she thought about Carlos. And the work, of course, being able to put her skills to use in actuality, instead of mere school testing.

"Docking in two minutes," came the voice again. Dirisha put away her memories and anticipation, and gathered up her bag and a small reader. In a few hours, she would be in deep space, being bent to a world billions of kilometers away.

"We are now docking at the Renault Space Terminal. Please remain seated until linkage and pressure lock are complete. Have a nice trip, and thank you for slinging on Renault Extraplanetary Space ways."

The Bender ship was much like an ocean liner in its interior construction; externally, however, it was a disaero-dynamic squarish block, since it would never touch a planet's atmosphere. In the between space traversed by a Bender, not even wisps of interstellar hydrogen existed to produce drag, and so any vessel shape was as good as the next.

Dirisha spent most of her time in the ship's gym or shooting range, occasionally stripping, save for her spets-dods, to swim laps in the exercise pool. She turned down nine offers to copulate during the first three days of the voyage, along with six invitations to dine and one proposal of short-term marriage. As was the case in many of her past trips, she noted the large numbers of idle rich, Confederation officials and rootless travellers onboard Twice, Dirisha saw Flex players trying to surreptitiously watch her. Both times, the players declined to issue challenges. She smiled at that; her skills and new speed made her too dangerous, and they were good enough to see that, fortunately for them. She was tempted to call one of the players out, but recognized the desire as a childish one. It would be a slaughter, and there was no joy to be taken in that. Besides, she was out of it now, such minor stakes held no interest for her. That thought was a surprise when she had it, and it made her feel good. She had bigger fields to harvest, and small contentions were not a part of her world any more.