Matadora (2 page)

Something about being on some world in a few years... ah, she had it. He'd told her that Renault, also in the Shin System, would be a good place to be. A town called—what was it?—Complex? Vindox? No, it was ... Simplex.

Simplex-by-the-Sea. A place she could stretch herself, he'd said. What had he meant by that? What had he been trying to tell her?

Dirisha walked the dark street on Tembo, oblivious to her surroundings; she wondered about Khadaji's cryptic comments, made three years past.

Simplex-by-the-sea. It had a nice ring to it, it sounded peaceful and simple.

Why not? She had no place else she had to go.

No place at all.

CHAPTER TWO

THROUGH THE DENSECRIS window of the boxcar, Dirisha could see a world which looked to be made mostly of water. She had read the standard promoscan on the Bender ship from Tembo, so she knew a little about the place: Renault, fifth from the primary, one of six inhabited worlds in the Shin System. The world had three continents, a tug equal to one-point-one gravities, oxy around twenty percent. Eight million nine hundred and sixty thousand or so inhabitants, mostly human, with a scattering of mues for flavor. They produced a lot of trees and vegetables on Renault and some refined metals, but not much of the last. And not much else. A backwater place, just like her homework!—a place Dirisha didn't like to think about.

So—why was she here? Dropping in a rock-like glide from orbit, heading toward a village on the southwestern coast of the smallest of the small continents? Well, it was as good a place as any, until she decided what she was going to do when she grew up.

Now, why had she thought that?

"Touchdown in six minutes," came the voice of the attendant over the com.

"Please engage your form-units to landing mode."

Dirisha reached for the controls of her seat, trying to put the thoughts she'd been having out of her mind.

The main spaceport for the hemisphere was on an artificial island twenty kilometers from shore—a precaution taken on a number of worlds she'd visited—in case the forerunners to modern boxcars, the rocket shuttles, decided to explode on impact. Apparently such things had been common in days past.

It was summer in (he latitudes containing Simplex-by-the-Sea, and it was hot. Even the breeze generated by the speed of the ferry did little more than rearrange the sweat drenching Dirisha. The ferry was old and it shuddered and vibrated as it rode its uneven cushion of air across the tropical water.

Dirisha stood on the forward deck, feeling the sun and air working on her tightly curled hair. Her droptacts polarized automatically and cut a lot of the glare, but it was still very bright. Just like home.

Ahead lay the village she was travelling to, a coastal burg set around the perimeter of a bay girded with fishing vessels. The boats wore strange rigging, wide V-shaped poles strung with mesh—must be nets.

There were a number of small sailing craft leaning back and forth, crisscrossing the bay. One of them, a tiny boat of maybe eight or ten meters, seemed to be having trouble aiming itself. The sailors were putting the boat directly into the path of the ferry. As the two vessels neared, Dirisha saw three people on the smaller boat, frantically pulling on ropes and gesturing wildly.

The air was rent by the ferry's warning hom, a deep, dinosaur-like blast.

The sailboat seemed to stall at the sound. It was directly ahead of the masive ferry and if it didn't move soon, it would be run down.

The sound of the ferry's engines changed, and Dirisha felt a slight tug as the big craft began to turn slightly to starboard. The dinosaur bellowed again, more insistently, but the smaller boat didn't seem to be able to move.

Dirisha calculated the angle between the sailboat and the ferry and it looked to be critical for the sailors. The ferry was turning, but ponderously, and the three on the sailboat must know how precarious their position was.

They weren't going to make it, Dirisha saw. She stepped toward the metal railing at the deck's end and gripped it tightly, leaning over to stare at the sailboat.

With perhaps fifty meters left before impact, the sailboat suddenly seemed to lurch to one side; it would still be close—

Horn still blasting, the ferry slid by the sailboat, with less than five meters to spare. The bow wave and side slip of the air cushion rocked the little boat as if it were a chip of wood. The mast nearly touched the water as the boat heeled over and then, miraculously, righted itself. Dirisha was close enough to see the faces of the three people on the boat. Two men and a young woman. It looked as if die three were laughing. Then the boat was past her, still bouncing wildly in the turbulence of the ferry.

Maybe she'd laugh too, if she'd just missed death.

She had only a small bag containing the few possessions she owned, so it was easy enough to walk away from the ferry into the village of Simplex-by-the-Sea. A sleepy town, she decided, with most of the inhabitants staying inside perched in front of air conditioners or exchange strips, to beat the heat.

Now what? She was here, but she had no reason to be. She could look for a local pub, she figured, and maybe get a job as a bouncer. Or maybe just enjoy the sunshine for awhile, take long walks on the beach and watch the seabirds and the fishing ships shuttle back and forth. She had enough stads to play the rich woman—for awhile, at least. A vacation, a real vacation. She'd never had one of those before. There were times when she hadn't worked or hadn't been training, but those hadn't been vacations, only times between. She gripped the handle of her bag tighter and picked a direction—

"Hey, Dirisha!"

She dropped the case and spun quickly, startled. She slid into a defensive stance reflexively, her hands coming up in the oldest of her fighting systems, hard-style oppugnate. Nobody could know her here—!

Dirisha's green eyes widened in surprise and she grinned as she raised herself from her martial crouch. It was Bork!

The man she stared at was five meters away and walking toward her as if nothing on the planet could stop his progress. He was big, close to two meters tall, and on this world must have weighed nearly a hundred and twenty-five kilograms. His black hair had a little more gray in it, but his massive frame didn't look diminished—if anything, he looked larger and more muscular than when she'd seen him last. He wore loose-weave osmotic orthoskins and a pair of spetsdods, one strapped to the back of each hand.

Saval Bork, homomue, and once a bouncer in the Jade Flower on Greaves, as she had been. And a nice man.

Her smiled faded as the first question hit her: what was he (doing here?

Almost as quickly, the second question crowded into her mind—how did he know she was here? From his purposeful stride, it was obvious Bork did know, and that bothered Dirisha greatly.

Bork stopped next to her. "You look good, Dirisha. I'm glad to see you."

"I'm glad to see you, too, Bork, but I can't help but wonder why I am seeing you."

He nodded. Bork had the big man's temperament in a lot of ways but he wasn't stupid. "I didn't know you were coming until they told me to come collect you," he said, "but there are people who keep track of such things at the Villa."

"People? Villa?" She wasn't afraid, but she was definitely curious. There was no sense in Bork being here.

"Yes ma'am. Look, I've got a track waiting, I can tell you what I can on the way. This sun'11 dry you out if you stand around too long. What say we ride?"

Dirisha thought about it for a few moments. She shrugged. Might as well; she had a feeling whatever Bork was into was the reason she'd come to this planet. She picked up her bag.

The track was a squarish vehicle which squatted on triple rails of what looked like weathered aluminum. Inside, the air was twenty degrees cooler.

There were comfortable, if thin seats, and a dispensing unit for water sat under one long window. Bork activated a control and the track moved smoothly off, gathering speed until it was travelling at a good eighty or ninety klicks per hour.

Bork turned away from the control panel and grinned at Dirisha.

"Automatic driver," he said. "I really am glad you're here. Sleel and Sister will be glad to see you, too."

"Sleel is here? And Sister Clamp? Come on, Bork, what is happening?"

Bork scratched at the back of his left hand with a thick finger. "Stuff itches,"

he said, pointing at the plastic flesh which joined the spetsdod to his own skin.

Dirisha repressed an urge to sigh. He was going to get to it in his own time, she supposed. She pointed at the spetsdods. "Why are you wearing them? Is it dangerous here?"

Bork laughed. "Dangerous? Nah, I'm only carrying stingers. Everybody at the Villa has to wear them. Pen's second rule."

"Bork, you're giving me more questions when what I need is answers."

"Okay, it's like this. Sleel and Sister and I and a bunch of others are all working here, at the school. It's called Matador Villa and it's a kind of...

training center put together in honor of a guy we used to work for, before he died." "Emile?"

Bork's grin grew larger. "There are people who'd kill to be able to say that name the way you just did. Those of us who actually knew him are looked upon as kind of blessed." "What are you talking about?" "You remember what happened on Greaves." "Of course I remember."

The rail car rounded a long curve at that moment, and the earth seemed to drop away to Dirisha's left. The sea was a hundred meters below all of a sudden, and the view was incredible; there was a pattern to the land ahead, almost like giant stair-steps to the water. She hadn't realized they'd been climbing. A series of buildings sat in the middle of one of the steps, terra cotta blocks against dry brown grass. It was hard to tell how large the complex was, there was little to scale it against, but it looked sizeable. "Nice, huh? I always like this part of the trip." "Let's get back to the story, Bork.

Khadaji was part of an underground resisting the Confed on Greaves and they finally caught up with him."

"Oh, there's much more than that. He was all by himself, did you know that?"

Dirisha nodded. "I heard that rumor."

"No rumor. Did you know what the military found out, after it all wound down? Our boss nailed over two thousand troopers, from bottom-grade line up to the Befalhavare Himself."

"I heard that, too. Not a rumor, I take it?"

"Nope. He did it, and every one of them with spetsdods. And that during the whole time he was darting troopers all by himself, he never once blew a shot. Not one time. And that's according to the Confed military itself."

Dirisha blinked and stared at Bork. "I didn't know that." . "They call him The Man Who Never Missed, Dirisha; he's the inspiration and idol of all the students. One man, who stood up to the Confed, who only let himself be taken when he'd done what he set out to do. On some worlds, the name of Khadaji is like a prayer for resistance fighters."

"Is that what you're doing here, Bork? Training to be a resistance fighter?"

"Oh, no. I'm a student, learning to be a matador."

"What is a matador?"

"A bodyguard, Dirisha. Matadors are the best bodyguards there have ever been."

The woman stared at the big man. Was this what Khadaji had meant? Had he known somebody was setting up this— this school three years ago? He must have known, even as he'd known he wouldn't be around to see it. She'd asked him about Renault, but he'd told her then she wouldn't see him there.

The man had obviously been much more than he had appeared to be, she had known that even on first meeting, but what was all this about?

The rail car approached the complex of buildings, slowing as it did so.

Whatever was going on, Dirisha knew she was going to find out soon.

CHAPTER THREE

THE SURFACE OF what appeared to be plastcrete was more than it seemed; it gave back a spring to Dirisha's steps as she followed Bork toward the largest of the buildings. Bork apparently noticed her interest, for he said,

"Rockfoam. They use it on tracks and gym floors, like that."

Dirisha nodded. She didn't ask the obvious question: why such an expensive surface covering such a large outdoor area? Just ahead, she saw what appeared to be a dozen twisted lines of paint—no, they were patterns of footsteps, printed upon the surface. She stopped at the nearest trail and looked at it. The patterns were all identical, as far as she could tell. And from the way they'd been drawn, the angles and distances, it seemed apparent that the steps were to illustrate some artistic bent, rather than to be trod upon—certainly no normal human could follow the pattern and stay standing. She looked up at Boric, but he only grinned. "Pen'11 tell you," be said.

Dirisha shrugged and followed the homomue into the shade of the largest building.

Where was everybody? Was the place deserted? So far, she'd seen no other people, save Bork.

Inside, the faded-brick facade gave way to stark white halls and high ceilings, with more of the rockfoam covering the floor. Bork led Dirisha through a wide hallway toward a set of what looked to be oak doors.

As they passed a side hall, a figure moved. Dirisha caught a gray blur in her peripheral vision and turned toward it—

It was a man—maybe a woman—dressed in a shroud which covered everything but its hands and eyes. As she watched, one of those hands came up suddenly, and pointed a finger at Bork. There came a cough of compressed gas—

Dirisha leaped to her right and slammed her shoulder into Bork, trying to move him aside. It was like smacking into a wall; she rebounded, turned the movement into a dive and hit the hard-but-soft floor into a roll and walk-out.

She came up and reached for the kinzoku dart hidden in her belt clasp—

Something stung the back of Dirisha's hand, a sharp twinge no worse than a wasp might do. She ignored the sensation and continued to pull the dart free—

"Ah, shit. Pen!" Bork said. "It's not fair!"

Dirisha had the dart free and she cocked it by her left hip, for a side fling.