Marya nodded. She portrayed embarrassment beautifully.
You did that well, lady, Niven thought. Too poor to afford a thermometer. But you serve genuine coffee. He smiled. She was doing a chemo-psychiatric internship, but had to summon an outside doctor... Was she driven by some secret death wish?
"Nice to have met you, Doctor Niven," the doctor told him.
"You too." He watched her go to the door. There was no pride in the way she walked.
"You want to get some sleep now, Gun?" Marya asked.
"Going to have to." But would his nerves permit it here in the heart of enemy territory?
They would. After he had skinned down to his underwear, had flopped into Marya's bed, and had told Michael, "Good night, Captain," the lights went out.
He wakened once, hazily, when Marya slipped into bed beside him. He mumbled foggily, then knew nothing for hours.
He wakened slowly. Gradually, he realized that The Broken Wings' truncated day had sped by. It was night again. He did not remember where he was till he rolled against the woman.
That simple movement initiated three tempestuous days.
Marya was insatiable. The only word he found to fit her was "hungry." He had never encountered a woman who had such a need for a man.
Niven astounded himself. Their lovemaking became so savage, so narrowly scoped, that it was more like combat. As if, "Let he who first cries ‘Hold! Enough!' be damned forever."
They seemed to do nothing but sleep and copulate, making attack after attack in some sort of sexual war. The outside world seemed to have lost all meaning.
Yet there was method. There was rationality. In struggling to please Marya, who was struggling to distract him, Niven kept himself motivated by remembering who she was. He kept trying to convince himself that he was doing this to sabotage the enemy chain of command.
He knew Marya was not motivated entirely by lust either.
Oh, but they did have one hell of a good time on the rumpled sheets of that battlefield.
In the interims Niven sometimes wondered what had become of Mouse. Mouse, he reflected, sure had the free hand he always wanted.
Brandy, recognizing the way of things, had taken her brother out the first night. They were staying upstairs with the doctor. Michael, looking a little better, sometimes wandered in, moped around without saying much, then wandered out again. Brandy stayed away all the time.
"What are we doing?" Niven once muttered to himself. They were enemies to the death. That was the prime rule, the blood rule, by which he and she were supposed to live and die. Yet they were denying it, or sublimating it in the form of love...
He began to dread mission's end. Debriefing... He would have to answer questions. He would have to explain.
Niven was snoring. He had one arm beneath Marya's neck.
The building shuddered like a dog shaking off water. A window cracked. Tableware clattered onto the kitchen floor. The whole neighborhood reverberated to the explosion.
Niven jerked upright. "D-14," he grunted.
"What?"
"What was that?"
"An explosion."
They dressed, almost racing. Reflections of dancing firelight colored the cracked window. Marya looked out. "Oh, Holy Sant!"
"What?"
"The warehouse... "
"Eh?"
"I'll be right back... What's that?"
A yell had come from somewhere downstairs. Cries and screams followed it.
Niven knew that first yell. That was Mouse in assassin's mind.
Earlier, he had seen the shape of the needlegun lumping her underwear in a dresser drawer. He beat her to it.
The door crashed inward. A ragged, battered, bloody Mouse hurtled through. He was so keyed for action that he looked three meters tall.
"Easy," Niven said, gesturing with the needlegun. "Everything's under control, Mouse."
Mouse was not hurt. The blood was not his own. "Got everything," he croaked through a dry throat. "Message away. Got to bend the bitch and get out."
That was their business, but... Niven could not permit the woman's murder. That she was Sangaree seemed irrelevant. "No. There's no need. Not this time."
Mouse was coming down. Thought was replacing action. He glanced at Niven's weapon, at the woman. "All right. You're the boss, Doc. But I've got to get something out of this. Where're the damned kids?"
"Upstairs. But I won't let you kill children, either."
"Wouldn't think of it, Doc. Wouldn't even drown a puppy. You know old John. So tie her up, will you? Can't have her coming after us." He backed out the door.
Siren howls tortured the streets. The grumble of a gathering crowd slipped tentacles into the room. "Sorry it had to end this way, Marya. But business is business."
"I almost believed... " She stared at him. For an instant she looked small and defenseless. He reminded himself that she was Sangaree, that she would become instant death if he were careless. "I suppose you're soothing your conscience. I wouldn't if the tables were turned. You've hurt us too much already."
Not a smart thing to say to somebody pointing a gun at you, Niven thought. He shrugged. "Maybe. It's not conscience, though. A different weakness. You'd probably have to be human to understand." He left it to her to figure out what he meant.
Mouse returned with the children and doctor. In the process he had acquired a weapon. "Tie these three, too, Doc."
The doctor was more frightened than Brandy or Michael. Humans on the fringes of the Business generally imagined operations by and against the organization to be more deadly than they were.
Brandy asked, "What're you doing, Gun?" Straight out, emotionlessly. As if she were used to being under the gun.
"Business, dear."
"Oh." She sped her mother a disgusted look.
"He's the Starduster," Marya told her.
"And you fell for his story?"
Niven tore sheets into strips, tied the doctor, then the girl, then Michael. "Told you I knew a pirate, Captain."
"Good," Mouse said. "Let me have the gun, Doc."
"Eh? Why?"
"Because I need it."
Puzzled, Niven handed the weapon over. Mouse tossed it into the hallway.
Niven shook his head, said, "We'd better get moving. They won't stay disorganized forever."
"One thing first." Mouse shoved his weapon under his arm. He took a hypo from the doctor's bag and filled it from an ampule he carried in his pocket. "This one's for your great-grandfather, kids. And all his brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews."
"What the hell are you doing?" Niven demanded.
"Just business, Doc. Turnabout's fair play, right? We should expand our own markets." He raised Michael's sleeve.
Marya understood instantly. "No! Piao! Not my children. Kill me if you want, but don't... "
Mouse answered her with a tight smile. "Just business, lady. Gag her, Doc. Hurry. We got to get the stuff out before Navy pops to we've cut out the instel here."
Niven suddenly understood what Mouse was doing. "Hey! You can't... " He wanted to stop it, to protest, to refuse, got confused by the reference to Navy. "Stardust?"
Mouse nodded, smiling wickedly. His hand strayed toward his weapon.
"Oh." How could the man be so cruel? That was murder in the worst possible way.
Marya needed gagging desperately. Her screams could attract attention...
Dazed, Niven silenced her. Her flesh seemed icy beneath his fingertips. He felt the rage and hatred boiling inside her. She started shaking.
For an instant he thought she was having a seizure.
Mouse injected the children. That wicked little smile kept playing with his lips. He was blissfully happy in his cruelty.