Gordon Dickson: Dorsai!

“Donal,” she said tenderly, putting her arms around him. “You’ll catch cold, Donal.”

“Mother—” he said, thickly. “If you ever need me… to take care of you—”

“Oh, my boy,” she said, holding his hard young body tightly to her, “take care of yourself; my boy… my boy—”

Donal shrugged his shoulders in the tight civilian half-jacket and considered its fit as reflected in the mirror of his tiny, boxlike cabin. The mirror gave him back the image of someone almost a stranger. So much difference had three short weeks brought about in him, already. Not that he was so different, but his own appraisal of himself had changed; so that it was not merely the Spanish-style jacket, the skintight under-tunic, and the narrow trousers that disappeared into boots as black as all the rest of the costume, that made him unfamiliar to himself — but the body within. Association with the men of other worlds had done this to his point of view. Their relative shortness had made him tall, their softness had made him hard, their untrained bodies had made his balanced and sure. Outbound from the Dorsai to Alpha Centauri and surrounded by other Dorsai passengers, he had not noticed the gradual change. Only in the vast terminal on Newton, surrounded by their noisy thousands, had it come on him, all at once. And now, transhipped and outbound for the Friendlies, facing his first dinner on board a luxury-class liner where there would probably be no others from his world, he gazed at himself in the mirror and felt himself as suddenly come of age.

He went out through the door of his cabin, letting it latch quietly behind him, and turned right in the tightly narrow, metal-walled corridor faintly stale with the smell of dust from the carpet underfoot. He walked down its silence toward the main lounge and pushed through a heavy sealing door that sucked shut behind him, into the corridor of the next section.

He stepped into the intersection of the little cross corridor that led right and left to the washrooms of the section ahead — and almost strode directly into a slim, tall girl in an ankle-length, blue dress of severe and conservative cut, who stood by the water fountain at the point of the intersection. She moved hastily back out of his way with a little intake of breath, backing into the corridor to the women’s washroom. They stared at each other, halted, for a second.

“Forgive me,” said Donal, and took two steps onward — but between these and a third, some sudden swift prompting made him change his mind without warning; and he turned back.

“If you don’t mind—” he said.

“Oh, excuse me.” She moved back again from the water fountain. He bent to drink; and when he raised his head from the fountain, he looked her full in the face again and recognized what had brought him back. The girl was frightened; and that strange, dark ocean of feeling that lay at the back of his oddness had stirred to the gust of her palpable fear.

He saw her now, clearly and at once; at close range. She was older than he had thought at first — at least in her early twenties. But there was a clear-eyed immaturity about her — a hint that her full beauty would come later in life, and much later than that of the usual woman. Now, she was not yet beautiful; merely wholesome-looking. Her hair was a light brown, verging into chestnut, her eyes wide-spaced and so clearly green that, opening as she felt the full interest of his close gaze, they drove all the other color about her from his mind. Her nose was slim and straight, her mourn a little wide, her chin firm; and the whole of her face so perfectly in balance, the left side with the right, that it approached the artificiality of some sculptor’s creation.

“Yes?” she said, on a little gasping intake of breath — and he saw, suddenly, that she was shrinking from him and his close survey of her.

He frowned at her. His thoughts were galloping ahead with the situation, so that when he spoke, it was unconsciously in the middle of me conversation he had in mind, rather than at the beginning. “Tell me about it,” said Donal. “You?” she said. Her hand went to her throat above the high collar of her dress. Then, before he could speak again, it fell to her side and some of the tightness leaked out of her. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“See what?” said Donal, a little sharply; for unconsciously he had fallen into the tone he would have used to a junior cadet these last few years, if he had discovered one of them in some difficulty. “You’ll have to tell me what your trouble is, if I’m going to be any help to you.”

‘Tell you — ?” she looked desperately around her, as if expecting someone to come upon them at any moment “How do I know you’re what you say you are?”

For the first time Donal check-reined the horses of his galloping estimate of the situation; and, looking back, discovered a possible misconception on her part

“I didn’t say I was anybody,” he answered. “And in fact — I’m not I just happened to be passing by and saw you seemed upset about something. I offered to help.”

“Help?” Her eyes widened again and her face suddenly paled. “Oh, no—” she murmured, and tried to go around him. “Please let me go. Please!”

He stood his ground.

“You were ready to accept help from someone like me, if he could only provide proofs of identity, a second ago,” said Donal. “You might as well tell me the rest of it.”

That stopped her efforts to escape. She stiffened, facing him.

“I haven’t told you anything.”

“Only,” said Donal, ironically, “that you were waiting here for someone. That you did not know that someone by sight, but expected him to be a man. And that you were not sure of his bona fides, but very much afraid of missing him.” He heard the hard edge in his own voice and forced it to be more gentle. “Also that you’re very frightened and not very experienced at what you’re doing. Logic could take it

further.”

But she had herself under control now. “Will you move out of the way and let me by?”

she said evenly. “Logic might make it that what you’re engaged in

is something illegal,” he replied.

She sagged under the impact of his last word as if it had been a blow; and, turning her face blindly to the wall, she leaned against it.

“What are you?” she said brokenly. “Did they send you to trap me?”

“I tell you,” said Donal, with just a hint of exasperation, “Fm nothing but a passer-by who thought maybe I could help.”

“Oh, I don’t believe you!” she said, twisting her face away from him. “If you’re really nobody… if nobody sent you… you’ll let me go. And forget you ever saw me.”

“Small sense in that,” said Donal. “You need help evidently. I’m equipped to give it. I’m a professional soldier. A Dorsai.”

“Oh,” she said. The tension drained from her. She stood straighter and met his eyes with a look in which he thought he read some contempt. “One of those.”

“Yes,” he said. Then frowned. “What do you mean ‘one of those’?”

“I understand,” she answered. “You’re a mercenary.”

“I prefer the term professional soldier,” he said — a little stiffly in his turn.

“The point is,” she said, “you’re for hire.”

He felt himself growing cold and angry. He inclined his head to her and stepped back, leaving her way clear. “My mistake,” he said, and turned to leave her.

“No, wait a minute,” she said. “Now that I know what you really are, there’s no reason why I can’t use you.”

“None at all, of course,” said Donal.

She reached in through a slit in her tight gown and produced a small, thick folding of some printed matter, which she pushed into his hand.