Шарон Ли - Agent of Change

Mrs. Hansforth agreed, though she'd never been off-planet, herself.

When the connection was cut, Mrs. Hansforth was sorry. But, still, a ship-to! Why, Angus must be more important in his field than she had realized. Imagine!

* * *

MIRI LEANED BACK in the chair, flipping switches and smiling slightly. Engineering the delay hadn't been hard at all—simply a matter of bouncing her signal off seven different satellites and across the single continental landline about three times. Her new partner had called the unit "adequate." She wondered if understatement was his usual style.

Now, sipping some exquisite coffee, she considered the information gathered. Not much, but maybe something. Flipping another series of toggles, she tapped "Econsey" into the query slot.

The door cycled at her back and she was up, spinning, hand on the gun in her pocket, as Val Con entered, a blue drawstring bag slung over one shoulder. He stopped just inside the room, both eyebrows up and a look of almost comic horror on his face.

She pouted and took her hand off the gun. "You don't like my makeup!"

"On the contrary," he murmured. "I am awestruck."

He slid the string off his shoulder and held the bag out. She nearly snatched it away from him, plopping crosslegged to the floor by the 'chora. The box was out in a flash, and she ran her pale fingers rapidly over the shiny black surface before cradling it in her lap and looking at him.

"How'd Liz do?"

"On the whole, I'd say she came off better than I did," he returned absently, staring at her as he drifted forward to sit on the 'chora's bench.

The hair. Was it really possible to twist, torture, and confine one head of hair into so many unappealing knobs and projections? But for the evidence before him, he would have doubted it. She'd also smeared some sort of makeup on her face, imperfectly concealing the freckles spanning her nose, and done something else to her eyes, making them seem larger than usual, but exquisitely lusterless. The color of her cheeks had been chosen with an unerring eye to clash with the color of her hair, and the blue on her lips was neon bright. Every piece of jewelry—and there was far too much of it—vied with the other for gaudery. He shook his head, lost in wonder.

She caught the headshake and smiled a ghastly smile that consisted only of bending her sealed lips and creasing her cheeks.

"You do think I look nice, doncha?"

He folded his arms on top of the 'chora and nestled his chin on a forearm. "I think," he said clearly, "that you look like a whore."

She laughed, clapping ring-laden hands together. "So did the woman at the collection firm!" She sobered abruptly, slanting lusterless eyes at him. "Your face was wonderful! I don't remember the last time I saw somebody look so surprised." She shook her head. "Don't they teach you anything in spy school?"

He grinned. "There are some things that even spy school cannot erase. I was raised to be genteel."

"Were you?" She regarded him in round-eyed admiration. "What happened?"

He ignored this bait, however, and nodded toward the comm. "Murph?"

She sighed. "On vacation with his fiancée in some place called Econsey—southern hemisphere. That's what I know. I was gonna see what else the comm knew when you came in and insulted my hairdo."

"Econsey is situated on the eastern shoreline of the southern hemisphere," he told her, singsonging slightly as he read the information that scrolled before his mind's eye. "It sits at the most eastern point of a peninsula and is surrounded on three sides by the Maranstadt Ocean. Year round population: 40,000. Transient population: 160,000, approximate. Principal industries: gambling, foodstuffs, liquors, hostelries, entertainment, exotic imports." He paused, checking back, then nodded. "Juntavas influenced, but not owned."

Miri stared at him; whatever expression may have been in eyes and face was shielded by the makeup.

"Mind like that and it's all going to waste."

Irritation spiked from nowhere and he frowned. "Will you go wash your face?"

She grinned. "Why? You think it needs it?" But she rolled to her feet, box in hand, and headed for her room. Behind her, Val Con flipped open the cover and touched the keyboard plate.

In the bathroom, Miri stripped the rings from her fingers and the bobs from her ears, jangling them along with the necklet and hair jewelry into the valet's return box. A glance at the readout showed that her leathers were at long last clean and the jumpsuit joined the gaudy jewelry. She closed the lid, hit the return key, and turned to the sink.

It took longer to scrape the gunk off her face than it had to put it on—the eyeshadow was especially tenacious—but a clean face was eventually achieved and, moments later, a braid was pinned in a neat crown around her head.

Her leathers slipped on smoothly, sheathing her in a supple second skin; she stamped into her boots, tied the knot in the arm-scarf, and carried the belt with its built-on pouch back to the sleeping room.

Sitting on the edge of the tumbled platform, she picked up the lacquer box and spun it in her hands like a juggler, hitting each of the seven pressure locks in unerring sequence. There was a click, loud over the soft drift of 'chora music from the other room. Miri set the box down and raised the lid.

Opening the belt-pouch, she pushed at the back bracing wall until she coaxed the false panel out, and laid it aside.

From the box she took a key of slightly phosphorescent blue metal, a thin sheaf of papers, a badly-cut ruby the size of a Terran quarter-bit, a loop of pierced malachite, and a gold ring much too big for her finger, set with a cloudy sapphire. She stowed each item in the secret space in the pouch. Then she removed the last object, frowned, and sat balancing it in her hand.

The room's directionless light picked out a slash of red, a line of gold, and a field of indigo blue. She flipped it to the obverse, and light skidded off the polished metal surface, snagging on the roughness of engraving. As she'd done a hundred times since she'd gotten the thing, she ran her finger over the engraving, trying to puzzle out the alien characters.

In the room outside her door, the comm unit buzzed once ... twice.

Miri dumped the disk among her other treasures, sealed the hiding place, and was on her way to the door, threading the belt around her waist as she went.

* * *

VAL CON WAS on his feet and moving as the comm buzzed a second time. He touched BLANK SCREEN and GO.

His eyebrows shot up as he saw one of his four captors of the night before standing in the lobby below, a squad of six ranged at his back, and he shook his head to banish the feeling of creeping déjà vu.

"Mr. Phillips?" demanded the man he recognized.

"Yes," Val Con said, taking the remote from its nesting place atop the comm.

"Mr. Connor Phillips," the leader insisted. "Former crew member on the Salene?"

Val Con strolled across the room to the bar. "It would be useless to deny it," he told the remote. "I was Cargo Master on Salene. To whom am I speaking? And why? I left instructions that I was not to be disturbed." He set the remote on the shiny bartop and activated the refreshment screen.

"My name is Peter Smith. I'm working with the police in the investigation of the explosion that took place at Terran Party Headquarters last night."

Val Con dialed a double brandy from the selection list "I am unenlightened, Mr. Smith. Unless I understand you to say that I am suspected of causing an explosion in—where was it? Terra Place?"

"Terran Party Headquarters." There was a real snarl in that correction, then a pause, as if for breath. "We're looking for a man named Terrence O'Grady, who caused the explosion and disappeared. We're asking everybody who's come on-world during the last fifteen days to answer a few questions about the—incident. Refusing to assist in a police investigation, Mr. Phillips," Pete said, with a very creditable amount of piety, "is a criminal offense."