Gwen frowned. "In what way dost thou think them opportune?"
"For our enemies."
"I'll drink to that." Yorick lifted his mug, also his glass.
"You'll drink to anything." But Rod clinked glasses with him, anyway. "Here's to the enemy—may he be confounded."
"Whoever he is." Yorick drank, then set his glass down and leaned forward. "But I'll agree with you, Major, somebody's definitely out to get you."
Rod stared. "When did I say that?"
"On our way from the castle," Gwen explained.
"Oh." Rod frowned. "Yeah, I did say something of the sort then, didn't I?"
"Does he get this way often?"
"Off 'n' on," Rod answered; but Gwen assured Yorick, "Tis only when matters of great moment preoccupy him."
"Oh." Yorick turned back to Rod. "Is that when you get paranoid, too?"
Gwen frowned."What is the meaning of that word?"
"Suspicious," Rod explained. "He means that I feel as though everybody's out to get me."
"Oh!" Gwen turned back to Yorick. "Nay; he is always in that condition."
"But this time, he's right."
They turned in surprise; that voice hadn't been one of theirs.
The newcomer was slender, and wore the same uniform as all the other troopers, but she made it look totally feminine. It couldn't have been deliberate: her blond hair was shorter than most of the men's, cropped close and showing her ears; but there was something in its styling, something about the way she held herself, something in the delicacy of her features that made her very clearly female.
"That's a professional opinion," she added. "They're out to get you."
"Who?" Rod demanded; but Yorick said, softly, "What profession?"
"Secret agent," she snapped, "spy." And to Rod, "You should be able to say better than I can. Who'd rather see you dead than alive? Not that it matters much; on this planet, anybody who's getting hassled is my friend."
Rod just stared at her, but Gwen pushed a chair out. "Sit, an it please thee."
The woman sat, scowling. "You've got a funny way of talking."
Rod said, "I hate to be blunt, but—who are you?"
"I'm Chornoi Shershay—and you'd better hear the whole of it. I was a government spy, up until about five years ago."
"Five years." Rod frowned. "That was just about the time of the PEST coup, if I remember…" He managed to bite off the sentence just before he said, "… my history rightly."
"Yeah." Chornoi nodded. "I was a secret agent for the LORDS party, digging up information for them and helping set up assassinations on some of their more outspoken enemies. I knew I was helping kill people, but I never saw it happen, so it didn't bother me much. I didn't think it would, either." Her face lost expression. "But after the coup, I suddenly found out I was part of the secret police, and the bosses ordered my squad to go hunt down a professor." Her mouth twisted. "He was a gentle old duffer, quiet and humble, and you could see from his house that he and his wife took good care of each other. We yanked him out of bed in the middle of the night, and kicked him out of his house into a darkened floater—and he was terrified, scared stiff but he never blamed us. Not a curse, not a word of anger, just stared at us with those wide, frightened eyes that knew, and understood…" She shuddered. "So they laid into him harder, of course. Even on the way to HQ, they were working him over. It was cruel, vicious beating until he was out cold. I was lucky—I only had to drive. But I still had to hear it…
"Then we landed on top of Base Building, and I had to help carry him inside. His face was so bloody and swollen that I wouldn't have recognized him. We laid him out on the table, ready for the sadists." Her face worked, then was still. "Oh, they try to pretty it up by calling it 'interrogation,' but it's still just plain torture. They clip electrodes on to them, instead of thumbscrews, but agony is agony. I didn't have to stay and watch it, but I felt soiled and debased anyway, as though I'd been turned into something less than human. They told me I could go back to quarters, but I went straight to the Boss, and told him, I quit.
"He sat back in that plastic-walled office behind his stainless steel desk, and just laughed at me. Then he said, 'You can't quit the Secret Security, Shershay. The only way you go out, is feet-first.'
'It's a deal,' I said, and I slammed out of his office. But I headed for the portal as fast as I could walk. I didn't run—that would have been advertising—but I walked very fast. He was as good as his word, though; I saw a gunman running to intercept me as I came in sight of the main portal. I just kept going while he pulled up and aimed at me, then I jerked to the side at the last second.
He wasted time trying to track me with the gun, then he squeezed off a shot, but the bolt didn't come anywhere near me. I lashed out with a kick, and caught him right under the chin with my heel. His head snapped back, and something made a cracking sound, but I landed on the other side of his body, and I landed running. Right out the door."
She paused for breath, trembling, and Yorick said softly, "How far did you get?"
"About a kilometer. Because there was a courier in a floater, just coming in. I kicked him out at gunpoint and took off—but I just went over the parapet, and down into the city, before they could get an intercepter after me. I was in the Old Town—the part where the streets go this way and that—organic, you know? I ducked in there, and was gone."
"You knew better than to stay there, though," Rod said softly.
"Of course." Chornoi shrugged. "Not that it made much difference. They had the cordon out by dawn, and a SecSec force behind me, tracking. I stepped up to a food-counter, to put down a bowl of soy-meal—and when I came out, they jumped me."
"Hard?" Yorick asked.
Chornoi glared at him. "Very."
She turned to Rod. "But I healed. Oh, I was still bleeding here and there when they hauled me up in front of the judge—that was only a couple of hours later. And, of course, SecSec had six witnesses who swore they'd seen me kill that gunman; they'd never been anywhere near him, of course. I think one of them had watched it on a security monitor, though. Which didn't matter, 'cause they played the recording—and the judge said, 'Re-form her.'"
Gwen frowned, not understanding; but Rod paled. "They were going to wipe your brain and install a new personality?"
Chornoi nodded. "And if I didn't live, what difference did it make? But I didn't even get that far. They slammed me into the floater, to go to the re-form center—but we never even lifted. There was a courier there, with a document. Seems the whole time I'd been in front of the judge, SecSec had been going to the Secretary-General, convincing him that secret police were military personnel—so they didn't bother re-forming; they just loaded me into a convict barge, and shipped us all out to Wolmar." Her mouth tightened. "It wasn't a pleasant trip. It lasted two weeks, and only three of us convicts were women. The rest of the soldiers tried to take turns on us." She glared at Rod. "But three is just enough to guard each other's backs. After we killed a couple, they held off. They tried to get the ship's brass to tie us down, but they told us they just steered the damn thing and made it go; we convicts were each other's problems." She shivered. "We had to take turns sleeping, but we got here intact."
"And here?" Gwen's eyes were huge.
Chornoi shrugged. "It's a little easier now. Oh, the other two—when they found out how much they could make, once the convicts were getting paychecks again—they set up shop. They own their own houses now, and each of them is richer than any man on the planet."
Gwen was pale now, and her hand trembled as she lifted her glass, then put it down. "Yet thou didst not—how didst thou say it…"
"Go into business." Chornoi nodded, eyes glittering. "But I had to fight 'em off every day, at first—two or three in any twenty-four hours, till I got a reputation. Now it's just two or three a week. The ones who survive out here are smart, though—they back off when it starts getting dangerous, so I've never had to kill one."