Authors: Steve Perry
Maybe it has to do with his training with the Siblings."
Dirisha considered that. "Am I the only one he—or the school—has had followed like this?"
"As nearly as I can tell, almost all of us had similar experiences. Maybe a couple of us found our way here on our own, but of the thirty-two students—thirty-three, now that you're here—I'd guess all had somebody watching them at one time or another."
"You are probably tired of me asking it by now, but— why?"
"You'll get to understand that after you've been here awhile, Dirisha. Why the training, why us, what we're supposed to do—" "Hello."
Dirisha looked at the doorway and saw a slightly-built red-haired man of maybe fifty standing there, holding a long and flat case. He smiled at the two women.
Geneva said, "Red. You didn't waste any time." "Second Rule, kid, it's my job." "Dirisha, this is Red—I think he had a real name—" "Lyle Gatridge," the man said, smiling at Dirisha. "But Red will do, until my hair falls out."
Dirisha looked at the man. For a moment, she didn't notice the pair of spetsdods he wore, they seemed so natural on the backs of his hands. When she thought about it, she remembered that everyone she had seen so far at the school had worn such weapons. Red's face looked familiar, too.
Red put the case down on the table and opened it. Inside were a row of spetsdods, ammunition magazines, and blocks of plastic flesh. The man looked carefully at Dirisha, then picked a small ampule of dark liquid from the case. He took one of the blocks of plastic flesh and squeezed the bottle's contents into the material, then began to knead the substance. The pinkish-tan of the flesh darkened as Dirisha watched; Red kept adding color until the mass nearly matched her skin tone.
"If you're making that for me, don't bother," Dirisha said. "I'm well-armed with my own gear."
Red smiled but said nothing and Geneva turned from him toward Dirisha.
"Second Rule," she said. " 'Students always wear a spetsdod.'" .
"Pen's rules," Dirisha said. "Bork rattled on about them. And Pen mentioned the first one when he shot Bork in the hall. Just how many of these rules do I have to learn?"
"Stroke up your computer," Geneva said.
Dirisha strode to the table and rubbed one finger along the pressure-sensitive ignition control. The holoprojic screen ran through a color check, then lit with three lines:
1. STUDENTS MUST BE PREPARED FOR ATTACK AT ALL TIMES.
2. STUDENTS WILL WEAR A SPETSDOD AT ALL TIMES.
3. THERE ARE NO RULES IN A FIGHT INVOLVING DEATH.
Dirisha turned to look at Geneva. The younger woman shrugged. "That's it," she said. "Just the three. Very martial, but then, that's what we're here to learn."
Dirisha nodded. She had no problem with the three lines, they were standard enough fare; she'd seen similar things in dojos on several worlds.
The ceremonial bow on entering meant one was supposed to be ready for anything from that point on. Be ready, be armed, survive; simple enough.
"Students don't generally shoot at each other too much," Geneva said, "but they can. You get points if you win a shoot, lose points if you don't—how many depends upon the circumstances. They're only awarded by instructors.
Mostly, it's the instructors who will be blipping you when you least expect it.
Get used to the pop of a spetsdod's dart, you'll be feeling it fairly often.
Keeps you awake in otherwise boring after-lunch lectures on a hot afternoon, it does." "It sounds like children playing games." "Not according to Pen.
You're only supposed to shoot somebody who, in your opinion, isn't alert and ready for you. If you shoot back and hit an assassin within a second of his hit, it's mutual slaying and you both lose points— that helps keep hot-shots from blasting everybody they see just for the dork of it."
"Who keeps score?"
"Everybody does. Honor system."
Dirisha nodded.
Red moved toward her, stretching the now-dark plastic flesh into thin sheets. "Hands," he said.
Dirisha extended her right hand and watched Red apply the material to the dorsal side. "I thought spetsdods came equipped ready-to-wear with their own flesh."
Red looked at her, interested. "You know the weapon?" "I've never used one, but I've seen them." Red went back to smoothing the flesh. "Custom gives a better fit," he said. "We don't want somebody developing an allergy to the commercial mix, so we use a hypoallergenic that won't spark human or mue immune systems. Once it sets, you can pull it off and reapply it easily enough, but you always wear at least one piece, even in the fresher. You learn to eat with 'em, sleep with 'em, make love with 'em. You don't want to get careless, even loading blunt-tips. Especially while—ah—dallying with another in the altogether."
"I can see where that might be painful," Dirisha said. She kept a straight face as long as she could, then smiled.
Red seated the pair of aluminum devices on the still-warm artificial flesh.
Dirisha moved her hands experimentally, adjusting to the new weight. Red watched her carefully.
He showed her how to load the magazines into the body of the spetsdod, and explained the firing mechanism. "It's simple; the trigger is in the tip of the barrel, just here. Electronic circuit, completed by application of the fingernail. You point your index finger at your target and hyper-extend it, so—"
The spetsdod coughed and the dart it fired chunked into the wall across the room.
"You'll start the basic class in the morning," Red continued, "and I don't expect anybody will be nasty enough to sting you on the first night, until you have some idea of how to shoot back."
"Pen might," Geneva said.
"Yeah, likely. If you see him, stay awake. If he points his finger at you, duck and start shooting as fast as you can."
"No point ducking," Geneva said. "If he shoots, he's gonna hit you.
Probably on the hands, so you don't get a return shot off in time for mutual-kill. He's terrific, probably as good as Khadaji himself was."
Red laughed. "You might be exaggerating a little, Geneva."
"Maybe. He doesn't shoot at you much, does he?"
"Now and again."
"And how do those come out?"
Red shrugged, but said nothing.
After Red left, Geneva smiled and waved her own spets-dods at Dirisha.
"You're technically fair game now. I'll wait until you've had a chance to check out the range and get used to these new toys, but after that, I might sting you myself. Points are points."
"Fair enough."
After a moment, Geneva's face grew more serious. "You knew him, didn't you?"
Dirisha misunderstood. "Red?"
"No, not Red. Khadaji."
"I worked for him. On Greaves." Geneva's face took on a kind of awe. "So you knew him when he was the resistance?"
"All I knew was that he ran the Jade Flower, a rec-chem. pub. I didn't know about the other. Nobody did, apparently." "But you must have seen something special about him." Dirisha thought about it for a second before she answered. Yes, he'd seemed a cut above the ordinary, he'd moved well, but either he was good at hiding it or not particularly special. But she sensed that wasn't what Geneva wanted to hear. So she said, "Yes, he was something special, all right."
"I envy you," the younger woman said. "I wish I could have met him. A man willing to take on an army alone, a man who won."
"In a manner of speaking, I suppose he won." Geneva seemed startled.
"What do you mean?" "Well, he made an important point, surely. But they got him, in the end."
"He allowed them to take him out." Dirisha shrugged. "Whichever. He isn't around any more; I was always taught that honor lies in staying alive to fight the good fight again."
Geneva was silent for a moment, and Dirisha got the impression she was angry at what she'd said. Well. She hadn't known Khadaji, only the legend which had apparently arisen after his death. Dirisha had seen the man, and he'd seemed human enough to her, whatever he managed to do. But she didn't want to make any enemies here. Not yet, anyway. So she said, "Red did a good job on these. I hardly know they're on."
Geneva seemed to shake her serious mood. "Oh, Red is good. If you see him watching you like he might sling a dart at you, better find an exit and get to it—he's deadly."
"Better than Pen?"
She seemed pleased at the question. "Nobody knows, for sure. They don't keep score between themselves. I figure the pair of them could probably take out the entire school in a shoot, if it came to that."
"Two men against thirty-three?"
Geneva nodded. "There's nothing official on record about Pen and Red, but the rumor is that Pen taught Khadaji i himself sumito, years before Greaves.
Red taught Khadaji j how to use a spetsdod."
Dirisha nodded, not speaking. It sounded as if there were j some high-class talents working at Matador Villa. It ought to be interesting to see what they were teaching, and why.
"You know a lot about them," Dirisha said.
"Not really. But I have an advantage: Red is my father."
Geneva left and Dirisha spent a few minutes meditating, to clear her mind.
When she finished, she gathered a handful of the stinger magazines and went to find the shooting range Red had spoken about. If people were going to be shooting at her any time soon, she wanted all the experience she could get with the weapon they and she would be using. There was no point in waiting for official training to begin, especially in light of the Third Rule.
After forty-five minutes of practice, Dirisha felt more comfortable with the spetsdods. She was far from expert, but by the end of five magazines, she could hit a man-sized target at combat range every time, with either weapon.
Tagging a target the size of hand—a moving hand, at that— would take a lot more practice, but at least she could fight back with some chance of success.
Back in her room, Dirisha slid her door shut and locked the closure mechanism. There was no key, and she found her thumbprint would unlatch the lock. Good; still, to be on the safe side, she set a portable squeal on the door. If somebody tried to come through the entrance, the squeal would let everybody for a long way know it.
Dirisha shucked her clothes and headed for the shower. She passed in front of a full-length mirror in the fresher, and paused to give herself a critical appraisal. 177 cm tall, that was the same; 75 kilos, plus a couple, on this world. Muscles still tight under her chocolate skin, hair cropped short and tightly curled. Not bad for a battered old woman of thirty-one T.S. She grinned. Naked, save for the spetsdods, she stepped into the shower.
The hot water and ultrasonics washed away travel grime, and she allowed the fatigue to steal over her. She started to peel the spetsdods off, to wash her hands, but stopped. True, she was locked into her room, alone; still, it would be a good habit to get into, keeping one on. She removed the right spetsdod, scrubbed and dried that hand, then reset the plastic flesh before tending to the left hand. There was no one to see, but Dirisha felt virtuous for her action.
After the warm air jets dried her, she finished her toilet and headed for the bed.
In three minutes, Dirisha was asleep.
She was being chased by a giant beast, some kind of reptile; it screamed at her, its voice a high whine—
Dirisha rolled from the bed, onto the floor, as she awoke. The dream-reptile's screech was that of the squeal she'd hung on her door: somebody was coming in.
The double cough of a pair of spetsdods was almost drowned by the screaming alarm, and the small vibrations of the darts smacking into her bed could hardly be felt, as Dirisha kept rolling. The angle was bad, but she managed to swing her left arm around and point it in the general direction of the open door. It was too dark to see anyone, but Dirisha fired rapidly, four shots, and fanned her arm to spread the pattern. She heard the first two darts thunk into the wall to the left of the door—too high, dammit!—and knew the third and fourth shots had gone through the portal. Unless the attacker was a giant, those final two darts would have gone over his head. She dropped her arm slightly, to fire again, but the quick bite of a dart stung her on the inner thigh, just above her left knee.
Damn! It was dark, she couldn't see, so therefore it was likely her attacker couldn't see either, he would be shooting at the sound of her weapon. She could blast him and say he'd missed, nobody would know the truth...
She shook her head. She would know.
She sighed. "Okay, Deuce, you got me. Tell Pen to add points to your tally and take some away from mine."
The attacker must have found the squeal, for the racket died suddenly. In the dense quiet which followed, he spoke.
"If you had been a hair better with your spetsdod, you would have tagged me; nobody else has ever gotten off four shots on the first night. One point, no more." The voice belonged to Pen. "You can sleep easy, now; I won't be back tonight."
Suddenly, he was gone; Dirisha felt him leave. She got up from the floor and went to slide the door shut. Even so, she kept her right spetsdod at the ready; despite his promise, Dirisha also reset the squeal when she closed the door. Whatever else this place was going to be, she didn't think it would be dull.
CHAPTER FIVE
IN THE MORNING, they gave Dirisha a disease.
A medic in white orthoskins led the tall black woman to a form-chair in a private booth. "Lean back," he said, "I need to get at your right carotid. You'll feel a cold rush, but otherwise nothing. Takes about fifteen minutes for the program to run its course."
Dirisha nodded. She knew about viral-inject learning, though she hadn't been able to afford it until years after it would have been really useful. On her homeworld, a planet her mother had named her for, Dirisha's first education had been real-time at Sawa Mji Primary. Flat Town's basic was limited, and as much as the daughter of a good-time woman could expect, for free. At fifteen, Dirisha had found a compliant ship's officer; for use of her body, he had traded her a secondary ed disk he'd stolen from his freighter, the Go Placid. Real-time, that disk was, and hard. Even with his help, it had taken two years to assimilate. After that, she had discovered the Arts, and so much of them was muscle memory that inject or hypnosia was of little use.