Tanderon (34 page)

... ordinary. “Care to play bartender again?”

He smiled faintly and went to the bar just as Pete came out of another room. The sleeves of Pete’s uniform blouse were rolled up to his elbows, and he stopped to stare at me for a moment before clearing his throat.

“It isn’t fancy but it’s hot,” he said gruffly, avoiding my gaze as he made his announcement. “Anybody interested?”

His discomfort was so thickly obvious that I couldn’t stand it. He’d been caught up just as helplessly as I’d been, and what had happened because of it wasn’t truly his fault. That meant I needed something special to say to him, and it wasn’t difficult figuring out what.

“I’m feeling hungry, not suicidal,” I answered with no more than a second or two of hesitation. “If you cooked it, I think I’ll go to the mess hall.”

“Don’t get smart, or I’ll – ” he began to growl, and then he seemed to remember something. The words cut off, and he looked directly at me. “I understand I owe you an apology,” he said more quietly. “I didn’t know he was your partner.”

“Don’t let it bother you,” I returned dryly, already having refused to think about Val two or three times since I’d awakened. “You know, I think I’m getting used to it. If it happens any more often I’ll have to fit it into my permanent schedule.”

“You’re being smart again,” Pete said warningly, then he pointed toward the door he’d come out of. “Get in there and eat before you have to do it standing up. I only just got used to the idea of being your father, so I’m going to wait a while before I try to change back again. Now, march.”

“Yes, sir, Colonel,” I surrendered quickly with one palm out toward him. “You have too heavy a hand for me to argue with you. Can I get my drink first?”

Ringer stood not two feet away to my right with a glass in his hand, and when I turned to take the drink his brows were high as he said, “Not him, too?”

“What can you do when you’re popular?” I asked with a shrug, taking my drink and then sipping from it. “Maybe I ought to hire a bodyguard.”

“Don’t do it,” Ringer advised with a grin and a headshake. “You’d probably end up across his knee too.”

I made a face at him, then turned to ask Dr. Jo, “What does it mean when every man you run into tips his hat, then spanks you till you can’t walk?”

“It means it’s time for you to start investing your money in pillows,” she suggested, glancing at Pete and Ringer. “But how do they get away with it?”

“I’m still trying to figure that out,” I returned vaguely, at the same time giving Dr. Jo a bland and neutral glance. She knew well enough that it wasn’t possible to catch me that easily, and her faint smile said she was glad of it. But then she picked up her shoulder bag and headed for the door, and I actually felt an instant of panic.

“Hey, you’re not going to leave me to take my life in my hands all alone, are you?” I said at once. “I thought you were going to join me in having something to eat.”

“There are people at Blue Skies who really need me,” she said from where she’d paused near the door to check through her bag, a glance showing she knew exactly what I now felt. “Come to see me the next time you’re not working, and we can talk about your pillow investment.”

Once again her glance was more covert than open, and then she was gone. Pushing away feelings of abandonment, I turned to look the question next to Pete and Ringer.

“I have to get back to work, but I won’t be that far away,” Pete said as he lowered the sleeves he had rolled up. “If Ringer tells me you didn’t eat everything on your plate, you’re in trouble.”

He nodded once to showing he wasn’t joking, and then he was also gone. That left only Ringer, who seemed to be badly confused.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ringer demanded, staring at the door Pete had used. “I’ve never before seen him talk or act like that.”

“Fathers are like that,” I replied with a shrug, glad I could relax to some extent now.

“Or at least he thinks they are. Are you going to desert me too?”

“Not when we have an assignment to discuss,” he returned, looking me over as though he hadn’t already done it three or four times. “I didn’t come all the way out here because I knew you were auditioning for ward K.”

“An assignment,” I said flatly, returning his stare. “I thought that was just a put-on, but I guess I should have known better. After everything the Council did to me, they still expect me to jump to it without a word of complaint. You had a lot of fun making suggestions about all this, Ringer, so now you can have just as much when you tell them what they can do with themselves. I’m through.”

I began to turn away from him, but his hand came to my arm and stopped me.

“I’ve already told them you’d probably say that,” he responded, having flinched only a little at what my tone had been like. “Most of them went shrill at the idea of losing you, and none of that was indignation. You know they’ll never admit out loud to making a mistake, but this time they can’t even deny it to themselves. They owe you, and you can get your satisfaction from making them pay up.”

“Not interested,” I said at once, really meaning it. “They have nothing I want, so they can shove it all. I have other plans for the rest of my life.”

“Like what?” Ringer demanded, his gaze hard and direct. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to get your original features back, but what happens then? Do you take a job in an office somewhere, or just join some of those friends of yours in full-time partying?

You’ll probably be able to grit your teeth and stick with your choice for a little while, but what happens when you get bored? And what will happen when you need to work off some frustrations, but don’t have a legal means of doing it? Will you just let it all keep mounting up – or will you take that one small step across the line?”

He’d asked that last question without hesitation, but something in his eyes said he had personal knowledge about that line. The thought of it still terrified me, but even more disturbing was the realization that he was right. I’d forgotten for a moment that it was my own nature that had me trapped, my own needs that kept me chained more tightly than that leg shackle. Talk about quitting was futile as well as stupid, and I had no choice but to acknowledge that.

“All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” I said tiredly, then looked at him more directly. “But I still don’t understand why you’re here. Is mine the only name on your list?”

“You’re the only one right on the scene,” he returned, walking over to pick up some papers from a small table near the bar. “Here’s the report.”

I accepted the papers and took them into Pete’s tiny kitchen, then sat at the small table and began to look them over while Ringer dished up a plateful of Pete’s idea of haute cuisine. I’d already put aside the drink I hadn’t really wanted, and Ringer quickly replaced it with a much more welcome cup of coffee.

After a few minutes of reading, I realized I could have saved a lot of complications if I’d known sooner about what was going on. The friendly folks of Flowerville, those innocent natives Freddy had been so concerned about, had apparently decided to branch out from simple ambushing. They had somehow broken into Blue Skies, and had gotten away with a vial of something highly secret and highly dangerous from the experimental labs there. The date the report gave showed that the break-in had happened the first night Freddy and I had flown to 2, and the activity we’d seen from the air must have been part of it.

“Why did you wait so long to get started on this?” I finally asked Ringer before taking a taste of Pete’s version of food. My first reaction was to spit it out again, which proved that I’d been right and was taking my life in my hands by eating it.

“No one could find out where the vial had been taken,” Ringer answered from where he’d sat down opposite me with his own cup of coffee. “The people in the labs finally worked out a detector for it, and it registers somewhere in Flowerville.

They’ve checked on it twice, and it’s obvious that the ones who have it are moving it around. We can’t go into the town in force, because we don’t want to push them into trying to use the chemical. The lab people turn green and shaky at the idea.”

“This isn’t hyper-A stuff,” I pointed out, having already decided to ignore the food.

“There are other agents at 2, so I’ll ask the question again: why me?”

Ringer leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette before answering.

“It’s you because the computers say that if that vial is used, it will become hyper-A stuff so fast we won’t have time to blink,” he finally replied, calmly looking over at me. “Do you want me to wait, and only send you in afterward?”

“How soon can we get started?” I countered, giving him his answer with my own question as I stood. In my line of work, you don’t often get the chance to make your job easier before it gets fatally hard.

“We’ll get started as soon as that plate’s empty,” he said, gesturing toward the food I’d already abandoned. “You’ll be missing enough meals once this gets rolling.”

“Is this business catching?” I demanded, putting my fists to my hips. “When was the last time you forced Jeff to clean his plate before he started an assignment?”

“Jeff has enough sense to do it on his own,” Ringer came back wryly. “And you can decide what you’ll need while you’re eating.”

“I already know what I’ll need,” I said, sitting back down and tasting the food again to find it hadn’t changed. “Do we still have an undercover agent in Wheatley?”

“Yeah, but Wheatley’s 1200 miles away from Flowerville,” Ringer countered. “Do you think your arms will be long enough?”

“Wheatley will be the jumping off point,” I said, ignoring his sarcasm. “That is, unless you’d rather I walk out of 2 or Blue Skies in full daylight to start work. I’ll also need a very small version of that detector, and local clothing for two.”

His eyes narrowed when he heard that last, but he didn’t say anything.

“I’ll need some help on this,” I told him, doing nothing to avoid his stare. “I can’t be everywhere at once, and there’s a trainee in my class at 2 who should be able to handle it. Her name is Hughes.”

“Hughes?” he blurted, obviously having expected to hear something else entirely.

“What about – ”

“Nothing about him,” I interrupted with a gesture of my hand, still refusing to think in that direction. “He can’t do any good here, and Hughes will be easier to work in. I know the signs, so I know she’s been out hunting. You arrange for us to pick Hughes up, and make sure he’s busy somewhere else. If this thing blows up I won’t be around for the Council to blame when they find out something’s happened to him, but you will be. But don’t let me influence your decision.”

“Hughes it is,” he agreed, his voice heavy. “I’ll call 2.”

He got up and went out, and I didn’t waste any time dumping the mess on my plate.

I found a couple of eggs and scrambled them, then washed them down with another cup of coffee. Pete was smart and used throw-away dishes and pots, and I was just putting them in the disposer when Ringer came back.

“We can pick up the detector and clothes at Blue Skies, then go on to 2 for Hughes,” he said, gathering up the report I’d left on the table. “Lammerly will be expecting you two when you get to Wheatley.”

“That’s good, but I’ve been trying to figure something out,” I said as I watched him.

“How were those people from Flowerville able to get into Blue Skies in the first place, not to mention all the way to the labs? And how did they know what to take?”

“They had help,” he said, folding the report so that it could be carried more easily.

“As a matter of fact, they had the same help Radman did when you found him waiting for you. Selling information can be a profitable business if you have the right information to sell, and Masterson couldn’t resist it.”

“Who?” I asked blankly, never having heard the name.

“That’s what I said,” Ringer agreed with a grimace. “He was a clerk at central headquarters whose job wasn’t very important – except for the fact that he had access to every piece of business that went through there. A team from there went over everybody who could have gotten the security plans on Blue Skies, and they found that Masterson had had an unusual interest in the place lately. They picked him up along with some of his records, but he suicided on them before they could stop him. He was so colorless, they never even searched him.”

“Did they get any idea of who he was dealing with?” I asked. Considering all the trouble the man had made for me, I would have enjoyed … meeting him.

“They got no idea, so you start from scratch,” Ringer answered. “You know, you still look a little tired. Do you want to hold off another day or two before you get going? One night’s sleep isn’t all that much, and another day or so would still put it well within the computer’s safety margin.”

“I am going to get more sleep, but not here,” I responded after finishing the last of my coffee and throwing away the cup. “Hughes can spend the time learning Wheatley while I spend the time sleeping, since she might have to know something about the place when we get to Flowerville.” At that point I started to lead the way out, but stopped short to mutter “Damn,” when I remembered something.

“What’s wrong?” Ringer asked, and I turned to see that he was obviously trying to decide whether or not to be worried.

“I forgot about those stupid progress reports on my class at 2,” I said in annoyance, watching the worry quickly disappear from Ringer’s attitude. “I’d better get them and hand deliver them to Pete. If I try to tell anyone where I left them, they’ll have to half dismantle the room.”

“Hold on a minute,” Ringer said as I began to turn toward the door again. “You can’t go walking around the school like that when everyone thinks you’re a cadet. You’d better wear this I.D.”

He reached into his pocket, then tossed me a pin-on that had my name and “Special Agent” on it. I studied it for a minute, then brushed at the “Special Agent” part.

“Are you sure?” I asked, finding it impossible not to put the needle to him just a little. “I’d hate to see you make any hasty decisions. You could always come with me and keep a sharp eye out for danger.”