Matadora (16 page)

The trip took three weeks, T. S., and by the time the ship returned to normal space, Dirisha was more than ready to begin her new job. She was eager.

"You'd be Zuri," the man said, disdain in his voice.

Dirisha nodded. "Yes." She looked at the man, and recalled where she'd seen him before: he was one of Carlos's bodyguards, with him at Matador Villa. A big man, he was, hard and dangerous, more so because he now felt threatened.

They stood in the lee of a bank of lockers in the ground building of the boxcar terminal. Gusts of wind moaned against the lockers from an open door across the large room, warm wind bearing the foreign smells of a new planet.

Dirisha decided to put this on a professional basis immediately. The contract with a matador stipulated that he or she was to be in complete charge of a client, and any other security personnel were to be under the command of the matador. "Who is watching Pr. Carlos?"

The big man seemed to mull that one over for a moment before he answered. "Starboard is with him. Grandle Diggs."

That would likely be the impersonator she'd seen at the school. Nicknamed

'Starboard'?

"Then you'd be called Port', right?"

He nodded. "Tork Ramson."

Dirisha said, "Let me guess: you always cover the left, and Starboard always covers the right."

Port looked surprised. "Yeah."

Dirisha shook her head. She'd bet these two clowns were standard security issue, probably running simple set patterns that never varied. It was a wonder Carlos was still alive. She said as much to Port.

"Hey, listen sister, we've been keeping him alive for three years-!"

"A miracle, in any faith. Now you listen up, Port. You've got your job as long as you do what I tell you. The first time you fuck up or drag your heels or even look surly, you're gone, copy? There are people who want this man dead, and it isn't going to happen while I'm running the show."

Port looked as if he were ready to take a swing. Dirisha almost wanted him to, but decided it would be better to impress him without undue violence.

Before he could move, she stepped around him, her faster reflexes kicking in so that he seemed to be moving in slow motion. She jabbed Port lightly just under the seventh vertebrae of his thick spine with the barrel of her spetsdod, printing a small circle into his flesh. He froze.

"I'm loading heavy shock-tox darts," she said, "and if I let one go, you'll spend a very unpleasant two hours wishing you could die, Port. I was hired because I'm one of the best there is at this business, that's no scat, just plain fact. Do we understand each other?"

She heard Port swallow dryly. He nodded. "Yes, Fem Zuri."

Dirisha moved her hand away from Port's back. "Good. Now, let's go see our employer."

Dirisha was appalled at how easy it was to get to Carlos. Port led her past a single guard holding a .177 Parker at port-arms, through an unarmored gate that a strong man or mue could have kicked open. The guard glanced at the carrier with Port and Dirisha inside, and waved them through without a word, much less a security scan. Dirisha felt her stomach knot. There were so many ways to gain entrance here she didn't bother to start thinking of them.

That system would be changed before the day was out.

There were several small buildings surrounding the headquarters of the Antag Union, itself a blocky structure with more glass than stone in its walls, four stories tall. One terrorist with a vacuum bomb could bring the place down like a house of twigs. Chang, didn't these people know anything?

At the lobby entrance, one guard again, an old woman wearing an antique explosive pellet pistol. Couldn't they at least give her a shotgun or hand wand? The woman nodded at Port, and didn't ask who Dirisha was. Gods.

Up the tube to the second floor. Down a hallway to a plain door. Well, that was one way to do it, hide the client. Except that the big man sitting at the door looking bored was a dead revelation. Starboard. He smiled. Then he must have seen the scowl on Port's face, for Starboard's grin faded in a hurry.

"He in?" Port asked.

"Yeah. 'Less he went to the pissor."

"You remember Fem Zuri," Port said. "He wanted to see her as soon as I brought her back."

"Sure. Go on in."

Dirisha's earlier decision about keeping Port and Starboard changed. They resented her, and they were incompetent. A possibly lethal combination for her client.

Prebendary Rajeem Carlos stood next to the lighted stall of a betydelse space, blinking. He must have just finished, for he wore that confused, vulnerable look operators often had during post-transmit/receive fugue.

A floor-to-ceiling window behind Carlos allowed the afternoon sun to paint the room in a warm yellow; aside from the betydelse space, the room held a standing desk, a computer terminal, a short couch and a file cabinet.

Carlos wore a gray business coverall and his feet were bare, against the thick brown carpet.

"I brought her," Port said, his voice barely civil.

Carlos blinked again, a night creature unused to daylight, and squinted at Dirisha. A smile lit his face. "Ah, Fem Zuri! I've been looking forward to your arrival."

Dirisha acknowledged Carlos with a choppy, military bow. "Could we speak privately, Prebendary?"

"Rajeem, please. Certainly. Would you mind waiting outside, Tork?"

Port turned wordlessly and stalked out.

Dirisha shook her head at the broad smile Carlos wore. He looked genuinely happy. She hated to kill that smile, but she had her job to do.

"Prebendary-Rajeem-if I were-an assassin, even one with as little skill as a prepube at play, you would certainly be dead by now. Your bodyguards and your security are a not-funny joke. I could have been holding a gun on Port, to force him to bring me here-nobody challenged us! A determined killer could have shot his way in almost as easily, past that spit-shined trooper at the gate and your great-grandmother downstairs, and Starboard on the door would've had to wait for signals from his hindbrain before he moved, by which time you'd be history and the assassin would be halfway across the galaxy. And that window you're standing in front of-move away from there!

There could be a shooter with a wire or radio-opped cruiser two klicks away, waiting for a chance to take out this room or the whole building, for that!"

If she thought to scare him or make him angry, Dirisha was wrong. His smile, if anything, grew. "Yes, m'lady," he said, moving obediently away from the window. "How nice to see you again."

For a moment, Dirisha felt disarmed in her argument. How could she be angry with him? He was a religious man, not a matador; more, that smile was infectious. She fought her own grin, barely holding it back.

"Surely things are not as bad as all that?" he said.

There was an underlying, unspoken laughter that seemed to mock her. Not maliciously, but it was as if Carlos held some terribly funny secret. As if she were being tested again.

Suspicion dawned on Dirisha.

She walked to the window and tapped it lightly with the barrel of her left spetsdod. The clink! told her what she thought was true. The window wasn't glass or plastic, it was stressed densecris, and a good two centimeters thick.

That it was so clear and did not distort the light testified to the expense of the armor. Forget the cruise attack, then. No small firepower was coming through that window.

It had to be more than that, though. Somebody with enough sense to install densecris and to hire a matador wouldn't leave much else to chance.

Dirisha turned back toward Carlos, feeling the beginnings of chagrin.

"The gate," she said.

"Electrified and rigged with explosive bolts," Carlos said. "Capable of stopping any ground vehicle short of a class two megatruck. The guard's shack contains enough scanning gear to pick up bone nails."

"The old woman?"

"The pistol isn't what it seems. A wide-beam hand wand. And she's backed by three young women masquerading as secretaries. And the tube's controls are mislabeled-this is the third floor, not the second."

"Port and Starboard are not, I take it, as slow-witted or easy to anger as they appear."

"They are fair actors; I'm sure you'll like their real personalities."

"But there's more," Dirisha said.

Carlos nodded. "Pen said you were the best. I'm a fair hand at kung-fu, first degree sifu in rank."

Dirisha chewed on what Carlos had just told her. "All of this is very sophisticated. Who set it up?"

Carlos's smile returned.

"That's what I thought," Dirisha said. "Why did he send me, if he gave you all this?"

"If you had known about my security set-up, could you have figured a way to get to me anyway?"

"Eventually," Dirisha said without hesitation. "Any system can be bypassed."

"That's why Pen wanted you to help me. He told me you'd start to figure it out before I told you."

Dirisha shook her head again. Damn, Pen seemed to know everything about everything. Light years away, and he was still standing just behind her, laughing silently under his gray robes.

Carlos extended a hand. Automatically, Dirisha took it. She felt a rush as his fingers touched her, as a flock of butterflies took flight in her stomach.

What was it about him that affected her this way? There was no denying the attraction, just as Dirisha was certain Pen knew of it. What was Pen up to?

Just why had he set her up with Rajeem Carlos? Well. It didn't matter. She wasn't a broadcast toy, her will was her own, that much was certain. She didn't have to play Pen's game, she didn't want to. The problem, as always with Pen, lay in figuring out what his game was.

"Come on," Carlos said. "I'll show you around."

Dirisha nodded.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

SETTING UP HER first-stage security arrangements for Carlos was easier than she'd first anticipated. Pen's system was first class, and both Port and Starboard were adept at their jobs. While the Confed would have loved to see Rajeem Carlos messily dead, it had apparently made no overt moves in that direction. Carlos explained that to her, as they ate breakfast in his home.

"The Confed is so busy swatting larger flies it can't afford the time and energy to swat one so apparently harmless as I. Too many hindbrains, I suspect." He bit into a soft roll, chewed and swallowed. "And the Antag Union is not without allies in high places. So, for now, no direct action. If they should ever clean up enough of the brush wars scattered throughout the galaxy-some of which are no doubt inspired by the matadorial icon, Khadaji-then they might begin to attend to nits. Until then, all I have to worry about are freelancers trying to score points, or pro-Confed fanatics."

"There seems to be no shortage of them," Dirisha said. She sipped at her cup of hot herb tea.

Carlos flashed his smile at her. "Admittedly so. Still, now I have you to worry about them-"

A soft chime sounded, that of the communicator inset into the wall over the small table. "Yes?" Carlos said.

"We've arrived at the port," came a female voice. "Expect to see us in, oh, an hour or so." The voice was clear and strong, and Dirisha got a mental image of a woman who knew what she was about.

"Good," Carlos said. "I can hardly wait."

He sipped at his citrus juice before answering Dirisha's unspoken question.

"Beel," he said, "in charge of the Antag Union's money, such that we have. The brightest woman in the organization, if not this system. And my spouse."

Dirisha's stomach clutched. She gulped at her tea, swallowed too much, and burned her mouth for her trouble. She knew he was contracted, why should hearing that his spouse was arriving make her feel uneasy?

"Beel will have Stenelle and Akeem with her, back from their adventures in galactic geography. I don't get to see as much of them as I'd like." He seemed troubled, but then brightened. "I have holographs of them, would you like to see?"

"Sure," Dirisha said, a weak smile on her lips.

The pictures showed a striking woman with streaked black hair standing in the middle of a pair of teenagers. The boy had red hair, was about thirteen, and the image of Carlos. The girl was perhaps two years older, nearly as tall as her brother, and wore her hair cut in green frizzlocks.

"Very attractive," Dirisha said.

Carlos smiled broadly. "I know."

Dirisha could think of nothing else to say, but the new silence was discomforting, too much so to allow to stand. She said, "The new sensor system has been delivered, I'll get around to testing and installing it today. I wish you'd consider my idea to relocate to a more defensible location, though."

Carlos waved one hand in a half-shrug. "My work is the most important thing, and I can do that best here."

"If my observations are any indication, you work too hard. Sleeping and eating are considered necessary for optimum health." Dirisha's voice was dry.

Carlos laughed. "Funny." He finished his juice and stood. "Shall we get to it?"

Dirisha came to her feet. "Your show, Deuce."

It was some weeks later. Carlos had just entered the betydelse space when Dirisha got the call from the perimeter gate.

"Three for the Prebendary," the guard said. "His spouse and offspring. Shall I admit them?"

"Don't be droll," Dirisha said. "Of course."

Dirisha turned, and watched Carlos play the triple communications mode, both hands working quickly. The guard- she still thought of him as Spit-shine-had orders to report anybody seeking an audience with Carlos. He might not like it, but he did as he was told. She wondered what would have happened if she'd told him to turn Carlos's family back. She wondered what kind of a woman Beel Carlos was, that she could command so much obvious respect and affection from her husband. Not to mention mothering his children-Port entered the room. "Fem Carlos is here."

"Allow her to come in."

She was a fair-sized woman, not as large as Dirisha, but not small. She wore a plain white tunic and pants, and pearl silk slippers. The children were not with her.

Beel Carlos smiled and raised her hand in a palm-out greeting to Dirisha.