Gateway To Xanadu (10 page)

“It doesn’t much matter how many of them there are,” Ringer put in while Val grinned at my possessiveness. “Those cover I.D.’s I gave you won’t let you carry weapons on you down to Xanadu, Valdon, so Diana will put that one away with its mate in a place in her luggage where it won’t be found.

If you’ve got anything that will raise eyebrows in a customs check, you’d better let her put it in with the rest.”

“I didn’t bring any weapons with me,” Val said. It wasn’t hard to see he was. telling the truth-not to mention the fact that I’d checked his belongings during the trip. Val hadn’t come to the. Federation as a peace emissary, he’d come to work with a Special Agent; making the trip unarmed just about shouted how good he thought he was.

“I don’t know about you, but I feel a good deal safer over that,” I said to Ringer, only glancing at Val. “If you’d seen him using a sword on Tildor, you would not be very anxious to have him handling any other weapons.”

“She means I didn’t go around trying to skewer everyone in reach, unlike some people I could mention,”

Val came back, dryly. “If we can’t carry weapons openly down to Xanadu, why wasn’t that one left with its twin? Why did you have to bring it along and give it to her now?”

“They’re not fussy enough on this Station to give her a hard time over it,” Ringer answered with a shrug, clearly unwilling to go into details about the various usages a Special Agent put a knife to. “I knew she wouldn’t care to wait until she could get to her luggage, so I brought one along for her. She always claims she feels naked without a knife.”

“You spoil her like that and then complain when she gives you a hard time?” Val asked, still enough amused to cause Ringer to stiffen very slightly. “If there’s something she really wants, make her behave herself before she gets it, otherwise don’t let her have it. She might not like it, but she’s bright enough to learn to go along with it if she has to. It should save you some headaches.”

“That doesn’t apply to the knife, but you may be right,” Ringer said with something of a nod, letting the stiffness disappear as he turned his head to look at me. “Why don’t you try making her behave herself during this assignment, and then we can talk about it. Also let me know if you figure out a way of keeping her from something she really wants; I haven’t been able to come up with an answer to that one in nine years of trying.”

The look in his eyes was no more than one percent wistful as he watched me stand up to fit my knife sheath into the slot in the right side of my ship’s suit, a place that put the hilt handily close to my palm.

The slot was meant for a tool a lot more innocuous than a knife and was almost too narrow to take the sheath, but a moderate amount of forcing did the job and let the knife slide clear of its covering without the sheath coming with it. No one would bother me about carrying a knife on a Station that orbited a raw, young world like Faraway, and that was probably a very good thing. Val’s comment had annoyed me, and the only thing that had kept me from telling him what to do with himself had been the fact that I usually made it a point not to start fights when I felt annoyed and had a weapon in handy reach. That Ringer had acknowledged his idiocy even so far as to give him a sardonic approval of whatever he came up with added to my annoyance, something Ringer could see as he followed my example and stood.

“I think we’d better get those clothes bought for you, Valdon,” he said, sharp-eyed gaze warning me to keep on being smart and letting it lie. “You ready, Diana?”

“Not for the heart-stopping excitement of clothes shopping, I’m not,” I said, ignoring Val’s frown as I reached down to my monolon bag. “Now that you have room in your pocket, you can take these papers off my hands. You two have fun getting Val all decked out, and I’ll meet you in the docking area about fifteen minutes before the shuttle is due in. ”

I handed over the stack of Absari greetings into Ringer’s willing hands and began to turn away from the table while trying to close the bag again, and suddenly found myself on the verge of running into Val.

He’d gotten out of his chair at almost the same time Ringer had, and only needed a step or two to put himself directly in my path.

“You can’t really have anything so urgent to do that it can’t wait a few more minutes,” he said, looking down at me with those eyes. “It won’t take me long to decide on what I want, and then we’ll all go where you want to go.”

“Without making me earn the privilege first?” I asked with what was supposed to look like monumental surprise. “Shame on you. Are you trying to spoil me?”

“If I was, I’d be too late,” he came back calmly. “If you’re going to get mad at me again go right ahead, but at least try not to misquote me. I said you ought to be made to behave yourself before getting what you want, nothing about earning privileges. There was very little wrong with the way you behaved while we were sitting here, so there’s no reason not to let you go wherever you like once those clothes are taken care of. Which, as I said, will only be a few minutes, especially if you come along and give me some advice on color and style.”

“Ringer can give you whatever advice you need,” I told him, having no trouble resisting what he seemed to consider irresistible bait. “Since you apparently think I ought to be denied things, you should be pleased that the first thing I’m going to deny myself is the inexpressible pleasure of your company for a while. Besides, if I came along I’d be far too tempted to make sure you looked even dowdier than Ringer will make you look. Try not to miss the shuttle, or I’ll be brokenhearted. ”

I gave him a cheerful little wave to go along with the reassurance I’d already given him, then turned and walked away from the frustrated annoyance he was making no effort to hide. Ringer had excellent taste when it came to his private, non-business wardrobe, but after what I said Val would never be able to make himself believe it. He’d try to judge alien styles and material all by himself, unconsciously discounting whatever advice Ringer gave, and would end up looking like someone who was all opinion and no taste. Val understood the spot I’d put him on, and also understood that knowing about it would not get him off it again. He’d end up unhappy with whatever he got.

When I walked out of the bar, I paced along the corridor until I found a cluster of shops to do some browsing of my own in, but the near-emptiness of the Station was too much of a distraction to make anything appealing enough to buy. Despite Ringer’s worries I wasn’t in a mood to throw away departmental funds, and I didn’t care for the dismissive looks I was getting from the shops’ salespeople.

For some reason they were writing me off as a no-sale after a single glance.

The cluster of shops included a small shop catering to junk food, and I suddenly discovered that that’s what I’d missed most all those months I’d been away. My appetite did flipflops at the first sight and smell of the mouth-watering garbage, and I spent a few minutes stuffing my face with more pleasure than I’d felt in a long while.

The immense docking area wasn’t much changed from the way it had looked a few hours earlier. The right side of the Station was reserved for incoming liner shuttles, the colored lights around the bays coming on and blinking at the first approach of the shuttle and continuing on that way until it left the bay for the liner again. The left side of the Station was for private ships which, of course, included navy shuttles, which were usually as large as private ships. The lights overhead and all around were bright without glare, clearly illuminating the two blinking shuttle bays and the one new private ship that had come in. Two blinking bays out of eighteen, four private ship slips filled out of fourteen, and less than two hundred people in an area designed to hold the traffic from maximum filled shuttle and slip space. It looked like Faraway was destined to continue as a ghost station until that sector of space filled up a good deal more and the frontier moved out past it.

I continued my amble into the docking area and down the center, idly glancing at the rows of empty waiting-seats, uninterested in them despite the added weight of books in my monolon bag. I had almost reached the spot when footsteps sounded behind me, and I turned to see Val and Ringer coming up.

Ringer looked just as he had a little while earlier, but Val was no longer wearing his cobalt-blue base uniform. He’d traded it for a pair of dark slacks, a blue-green wide-sleeved shirt, dark loafer-like shoes, and an expensive-looking ,woven-metal neck chain of gleaming, silvery stellenium. He looked a hell of a lot better than an absolute stranger had any right to look, but I made sure not to let the opinion show on my face.

“Looks like we both decided to get here a little early,” I said to Ringer. “Too bad the shuttle won’t do the same.”

“Just be glad you timed it so well,” Ringer answered, glancing around at the twenty-five or thirty people sitting in waiting-seats not too far away from us. “If you’d come in too late for this liner, you would have had to wait more than a month for the next, or you would have had to take that ship in closer to Xanadu than was smart. It wasn’t hard getting the Station officials here to neglect checking the registry on your transportation, but almost anywhere else the request would have had to be through channels more public than we would have liked. We need as much quiet on this as we can manage, for as long as possible.”

“Until we spot the busy little eyes and ears at work,” I nodded, glancing around the way Ringer was doing, automatically checking that no one had too much interest in our conversation. “But if we were really up against it, we could always take your ship. A month off wouldn’t disagree with you, would it, Ringer?”

“On Faraway Station?” he asked with a growl of ridicule. “If I have to be stranded somewhere, it isn’t going to be a place like Faraway O.S. I left that behind me a long time ago. Let’s sit down for a while, or it will feel like that shuttle is never coming. ”

Ringer started for an empty section of seats in his usual way, without checking to see if anyone was following, but this time I didn’t get the immediate choice of joining him. A big hand took my arm before I could turn, nearly crushing my sleeve despite the lack of deliberate muscle in the grip, and I looked up to see Val’s calm appraisal.

“You haven’t said anything about how dowdy I look,” he observed with a hint of amusement. “I’m sure it’s as bad as you expected it to be, if not a good deal worse.”

“It was clear he knew he didn’t look dowdy at all, and it was also clear he expected me to do anything but admit it.

“Why, not at all, Val,” I protested in very sincere tones, a friendly little smile backing the words. “You look just fine, you really do, and Ringer must have been very pleased with the amount of money you saved the department. Keep it up, and you and he will get along just fine.”

“So you’ve decided to keep on being mad at me,” he said, a compromise between doubt and annoyance.

“How long do you intend keeping it up?”

“Oh, I never get mad at the men I partner with,” I assured him. “We’ll do just fine working together-but I hope some of those clothes you got are warmly lined. If you don’t manage to score elsewhere during your off-hours, you’ll need them. ”

“If being an irresponsible brat is one of your criteria for being an agent, I won’t be qualifying,” Val said with a look of scorn. “If she considers you off-limits and leaves you out of it that’s your good luck, but I intend getting a piece of it. When I get through with her, I’ll be even more off limits.”

‘‘She doesn’t consider me off-limits,” Ringer said with a frown of sudden revelation, turning his head to look at me. “She gives me the same hell she gives everyone else, but just stays out of my way a little longer. For nine years, I’ve been thinking of that as a compliment.”

“Some compliment,” Val snorted, but more in sympathy than in derision. “In case you’re wondering, the footprints don’t look any better on your face than they do on mine.”

“If you two don’t watch it, you’ll be comparing scars and discussing operations next,” I broke in, beginning to wish I’d left Val where I’d found him. Ringer was getting bent out of shape by his prodding, and I was getting tired of hearing that same song and dance.

“You see?” Val incited, and now both of them were looking at me. “She doesn’t have any regrets over what she did, to either one of us. If something isn’t done, she never will learn to behave herself.”

“You know, Valdon, I have a feeling you’re going to be the first to get somewhere with her,” Ringer growled. “Because of that, I think I’ll start you off with a little help.”

Ringer may have been nine years away from the life of an active Special Agent, but his reflexes hadn’t slowed enough to make that much difference. Before I could draw my legs in or unfold my arms, he had pulled my knife out of its sheath and was holding it in his right hand, too far away for my belated grab to do any good. He moved it even farther away when I tried to reach past him.

“Don’t even think about trying it,” he warned, his dark eyes sharp with decision. “If you wanted to keep this, you should have behaved yourself the way Valdon said. Now I’m going to give it to him, and if you want it back you’ll have to square accounts with him. It just might help to teach you to be a good little girl next time.”

“I am a good little girl,” I told him, not amused. “Especially with knives-or aren’t you remembering anything that isn’t convenient’? This is absolute stupidity, Ringer, and if that big jerk hadn’t gotten you hot on purpose you never would have done it. If you try giving him my knife, for however long, I just may decide to let him meet its twin.”

“The big jerk is willing to take that chance,” Val interrupted before Ringer could answer me, just short of a chuckle despite what I’d called him. “Put it in that bag she was carrying, Ringer, and I’ll take over the carrying. Just how important is it to you to get it back, Diana?”

He was really enjoying the game he was playing, even more so than Ringer, but I’d had a lot more experience at that sort of thing.

“Important’s the wrong word, Val,” I said with a casual shrug. “If you’ll feel safer with the knife out of my hands for a while, go right ahead and carry it for me. All I ask is that you make sure not to lose it; it has great-sentimental value for me. And I’ll probably need to use it again some day.”