Tanderon (33 page)

“It isn’t three months yet. I can’t talk to you before three months are up.”

Ringer paled even more as he came one step closer, then he stopped.

“This can’t wait three months,” he said, just as gently as before. “I need you now for a very important job. There’s no one else to do it, so you have to.”

“Yes,” Pete put in gruffly, his face more haggard than I’d ever seen it. “And you’ve completed my assignment, so you’re free to take Ringer’s.”

I moved my eyes to Pete for a moment, the slid them the rest of the way to Langley.

He was also white-faced, but confusion dominated the composition.

I knew I couldn’t just leave it like that, and the decision was already made. Flatly I said, “Permission requested to leave the room, sir!” and threw the knife with the last word.

There were screams and shouts from all over the room as the knife went into the wall less than an inch from Langley’s head, and a small red line appeared on his ear. My target stood rooted to the floor in shock, but Ringer and Pete both fought their way through the panicked cadets in a desperate effort to reach me before I did anything else. They weren’t careful about who they pushed out of their way, but they needn’t have moved that fast.

When they reached me I wasn’t doing anything but standing there watching Langley dab at his bleeding ear, feeling nothing one way or the other about how the battle had come out. I could have put that knife between Langley’s eyes or in his heart as easily as I’d put it next to his head. But I’d known that at the time of my throw and knowing it had made doing it unnecessary.

Ringer stopped in front of me, blocking my view of Langley, then he reached over to raise my left hand and look down at it. His face twisted in a way I’d rarely seen before and his head came up as he began to turn back toward Langley, but Pete’s hand reached across from my left to touch Ringer’s shoulder and stop him. Pete had been staring down at my hand too, and he was the one who turned to face Langley.

The chief proctor stood with a handkerchief pressed to his ear, his body at attention out of sheer habit, his eyes covertly on Pete. When their eyes met, Langley blanched all over again, and he took one involuntary step back.

“You’re under arrest,” Pete growled, an edge to his voice I’d never heard before.

“Do me a favor and try to run.”

Langley shivered and turned his face away, and a stir of relief went through the kids at the sides of the room. My problem with Langley had been taken care of, but if he’d been left in charge of the class theirs would have first begun.

Ringer put his hand on my arm and started to lead me out of the room, but Pete had a different idea. He looked at my face then pushed Ringer’s hand away, and a moment later he’d lifted me in his arms. I hadn’t realized how drained I felt till then, and I put my head against his shoulder because it had become impossible to hold it up any longer. As he carried me out of the room I knew it was the wrong shoulder, but I was too tired to pursue the thought.

Pete’s quarters were bachelor comfortable and a bit larger than I might have expected. He carried me all the way there, then put me down in a black leather armchair. Ringer went to the small bar and poured something, then came over with it while Pete stood near the chair and stared down at me without expression.

“Drink this,” Ringer ordered, holding out the glass. “All of it.”

I looked up at him and shook my head. “If I do I’ll throw up. I’m all right now.”

He started to push the glass at me, but a knock at the door stopped him while Pete went over to open it.

“It’s about time,” Pete growled when he saw who it was. “We almost didn’t need you except for the certification.”

“I came as soon as you called and you know it,” a brisk voice countered. “What are you feeling guilty about now?”

The owner of the brisk voice had pushed her way into the room and had come over to stand directly in front of me. I looked up at her for a minute, and then smiled faintly.

“It’s been a long time, Dr. Jo,” I said by way of greeting. “Do you know me?”

“I know you, Diana,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “You look as though you could use some sleep.”

I rubbed my forehead with my right hand and didn’t answer her. Dr. Joanne Perona was a short woman in her fifties with streaked, unruly gray hair and no waistline. She was also chief psychiatrist at Blue Skies.

“Pete,” she said without taking her eyes off me. “I want Diana to lie down in your bedroom for a while. Which way is it?”

“Right here,” Pete said, crossing the room to open a door.

I got out of the chair and walked somewhat unsteadily toward the door Pete had opened. Dr. Jo followed me into the bedroom, and when I stretched out on the bed, she dug out a pressure hypo from her shoulder bag and came over with it.

“This is just a mild sedative to help you relax,” she explained, her voice calm. “It won’t put you out.”

She knew, of course, how agents feel about being out of things, but it didn’t seem important enough to comment on. She hesitated briefly, seemingly expecting an answer, then rolled up my blouse sleeve and emptied the hypo into my arm.

It was no more than a matter of seconds before I felt it, and it was like being slowly filled with warm water. A soft, comfortable feeling spread all over my body, and my muscles finally gave up their death grip. She watched me for another moment before turning to go out, but when she closed the door behind her it didn’t catch and opened itself again an inch or so.

“All right,” Dr. Jo said in a low, bitter voice, obviously speaking to the two men in the next room. “Tell me what happened.”

I stared at the neat, light gold walls of the bedroom and listened as Ringer and Pete took turns giving a fairly accurate description of what had happened, and when they had finished Dr. Jo quietly exploded.

“You fools!” she rasped. “Why wasn’t I consulted before you tried this? And you, Colonel Rodriguez! Didn’t you have the brains to at least check on her after you’d tied her hand and foot?”

“I didn’t know about Langley and the knife she was carrying until this morning, when my idiot sergeant finally decided to tell me,” Pete growled. “Bennison’s accident left me shorthanded, but I would have taken the class myself if I’d known Langley would go after her. Why didn’t she come to me, or even break him up a little?”

“Because you gave her a job!” Dr. Jo snapped, sounding furious. “Obviously you don’t understand what that means! In her line of work you don’t go running for instructions or protection, and you don’t break a role. But the worst part about this is that it was a job without a reason! Didn’t you even wonder about what was happening when she avoided you?”

Pete was quiet a minute, then, “I thought she was avoiding me because of –

something I did to her,” he said in an embarrassed tone. “There was a little misunderstanding.”

“There was a big misunderstanding,” Dr. Jo corrected grimly. “And how could you go along with this, Ringer? You were an agent yourself once.”

“I still don’t see why it happened,” Ringer said in annoyance. “She’s taken a lot more pressure than this over the years and never folded before.”

“She still hasn’t folded!” Dr. Jo snapped. “If she had, Langley would be cold by now instead of nursing a slightly cut ear. I have the feeling there’s more involved here than we know, but the major point is enough all by itself. Don’t you see the difference between this and a regular assignment?”

“No,” Ringer denied flatly. “When I was working I had to play slave once to someone who was slated to be hit with a death warrant. It took better than four months and he did every dirty thing to me he could think of, but I held out and executed the warrant anyway. Living through that was a hell of a lot harder than what Diana just went through.”

“Is that so?” Dr. Jo said silkily, then her voice went dreamy and almost hypnotic.

“Think back to that time, Ringer, and put yourself back in that situation and feel the anger and shame you felt then. Your mind seethed with fury, but you couldn’t show it or do anything about it. All you could do was continue to take what was done to you, hating it every minute of the day and night, but still needing to take it without reacting. Do you feel it, Ringer, the closeness and confinement, the wild need to put an end to it? Are you back there? Now tell yourself that there is no death warrant, and never will be!”

There was silence for a brief time, then something hit the wall hard enough to make the pictures on my side jump.

“No need to bruise your knuckles,” Dr. Jo said dryly. “I take it you can understand now. You were able to stand up to the treatment because you knew that your job was important, and that you would eventually have the emotional release of executing the warrant. Diana had no real reason for having to put up with that inescapable torture, and no emotional release ahead of her. All she had to look forward to was more of the same, with no way to protect herself or strike back. I hope you two are proud of a good job well done.”

There was no answer to that, although I listened for one. I listened so long that in spite of the collar and tie choking me, I fell asleep.

I woke up with a feeling of absolute freedom, and for a few minutes couldn’t understand it. Then I noticed that the uniform was gone, but that was only part of it.

Langley was still faintly in my mind, but not the way he had been. I still hated him just as strongly, but the all-consuming passion of the hatred had faded to where it was manageable.

I sat up and was surprised to see Dr. Jo sprawled in an easy chair not far from the bed, sound asleep. I smiled faintly over the fact of her presence, then rummaged in the night table drawer next to the bed to find that there was a pack of cigarettes in it as I’d been hoping there would be. I took one out and lit it, then leaned back to watch Dr. Jo sleep. In no time at all her nose twitched and she frowned, then she coughed. Her eyes opened part way, and she straightened up in the chair to glare at me.

“Do you have to burn that filthy thing when I’m in the same room?” she demanded.

“Can’t you control yourself and wait until later?”

“Nope,” I answered, flicking some ashes into the ashtray. “The control disappears when I’m out of a job. Couldn’t you talk Pete into coming up with another bed?”

“I wanted to be in here in case you needed someone, and I wanted to watch you,”

she said in irritation, trying to straighten her skirt. “You ought to be grateful, as I don’t waste my valuable time on everyone.”

“Are you wasting your time?” I asked very softly, bringing one knee up and resting my arm on it. That made her look directly at me, and the irritation disappeared.

“You didn’t kill him, Diana,” she said, her voice and eyes serious. “You were able to hold out against it, and you have to remember that.”

“I do remember it, and you have no idea how close I came,” I answered bleakly, taking another drag on the cigarette. “I was so close to the edge I could see the rocks below, and could even see my name painted on a door in ward K.”

“There’s no reservation waiting for you in ward K!” she snapped. “We have enough residents there already, and your defenses are good enough to do you if you remember not to be stupid next time. If Pete ever comes up with another job for you, tell him what to do with it. If you don’t know the proper phrases, I’ll write them out for you.”

“I think I can manage on my own with that,” I said, amused in spite of myself at her high level of sarcastic outrage. “But let’s not include Ringer in on that. I’m feeling very mellow toward him right now.”

“Why?” she demanded, back to staring at me. “He’s the one who started this whole thing.”

“But he finished it too, and right now that means more to me,” I said, moving a little to get more comfortable. “Ringer is many things to many people, but to me he’s just one thing: the end of a job. I don’t always see him when I get assignments, but I always report to him in person. When I saw him in that room everything ended and the edge moved away.”

“Then what was that business of ‘I can’t talk to you’ all about?” she asked, now looking confused. “That scene will be giving Pete and Ringer nightmares for quite some time.”

“Good, because I had enough of them myself,” I said, hearing my tone go grim. “I just wanted to make sure they never even think about doing something like this to anyone else, no matter what. But I’d prefer if you didn’t tell them, otherwise they’ll both come after me.”

“I think I would myself, but there’s no denying they deserve it, ” she agreed with a headshake, then began to lever herself out of the chair. “But why don’t you get dressed now while I see what Pete has to eat around here. Ringer brought your things, and they’re right over there.”

I looked in the direction she’d gestured, and saw the luggage I’d left on Xanadu O.S.

For some reason it felt like months ago.

“Ringer’s lucky he brought them,” I said, putting out the cigarette and joining her in standing. “It annoys him when I go natural, but nothing short of knockout drops would get me back into that uniform.”

“It isn’t annoyance,” she said, pausing at the door. “I thought you knew Ringer better than that.”

Now that she mentioned it I did, so I nodded to acknowledge the point. That let her continue on out of the room, leaving me to walk over to the luggage. I pulled out a jumpsuit and boots, then began to get into them. It felt strange to handle normal clothing again, and then I noticed that I was handling it, with both hands.

I looked at my left palm and saw that it was still black and blue, but the swelling was down and only a small echo of pain was left. Either Dr. Jo still remembered something from her days in medical school, or Ralph had been there without my knowing it. It really made no difference, of course, so I finished dressing and then went looking for company.

Dr. Jo and Ringer were in the next room, and they looked around when I came out.

Ringer stood and studied me closely without saying anything, so I nodded to him.

“I could use that drink now,” I suggested, guessing that he needed to hear something