Шарон Ли - Agent of Change

Outrage again flared in Watcher, not quite overcoming relief. He would not have to serve these monsters, after all! He would only have to wait in the dim quiet of the corridor, with occasional forays out for food, until the ship returned to him. In the face of this reprieve, rudeness could be suffered.

"It shall be as you have said." He turned without further formality and left the control room.

A minute later, Miri heard the hatch slide up, then down. She looked at Val Con, who was swaying where he stood, his eyes on the blue disk.

"Boss, are you nuts? I don't need Edger's protection. You gave us even odds, remember?"

"Miri . . . ." His voice faded off; he did not look at her.

She went to the nearest bench and sat. "Shut up," she finished for him. "Yes, sir."

A portion of the board lit and Val Con raised his hand, laid it over the blue disk, and pushed.

In the navigation tank, the stars went away.

"Already?" Miri demanded incredulously. "Maybe he meant three hours."

* * *

COSTELLO ROLLED OUT of the DownTunnel and moved along F Level, not running, but pushing the walk.

Turtles, for Panth's sake! As if he hadn't had enough trouble trying to talk to mercenaries, now he had to go and try to talk to turtles. Ah, well, he got paid by the hour and it was overtime tonight, for sure. Maybe even hazardous duty pay.

A largish green person was exiting the tunnel to Number 327. Costello quickened his pace. The green person did things to the door controls and pressed the summons stud. Costello started to run.

"Hey, you!"

The turtle did not turn around. Rather, it laid its head against the tunnel door and stood very, very still, as might someone who breathes free air again after a time in captivity.

Costello arrived panting, and laid his hand on Watcher's arm. "Hey."

Watcher opened his eyes. When he saw the horrid, misshapen hand resting upon his arm, he jerked back and whirled to face the perpetrator of that outrage.

Costello held his hands out, fingers spread placatingly. "Hey, I'm sorry. No harm meant. It's just that I'm looking for some friends of mine. Thought you might have seen them." He paused, but the turtle only stared at his hands.

"Two kids," Costello said, picking up the thread of his story. "Boy about—oh, twenty, twenty-five; dark brown hair, green eyes, thin. Girl—pretty little girl—eighteen, or maybe twenty; red hair, gray eyes. Thought you might've seen them," he repeated.

Watcher made no reply.

Costello decided to play it tough. "Look, you," he snarled, moving closer and jabbing with his finger. "I know you're hiding something. It ain't gonna do you no good to play dumb, see? 'Cause there's ways of making guys like you talk. So you just tell me where them kids—"

Enough! Enough of outrage and sickness and terror and too many fingers on hands too small! Enough and too much!

Watcher struck.

And Costello screamed, pulling back a hand from which two fingers had been cleanly bitten away.

Chapter Sixteen

WALLS, MIRI THOUGHT, should be stable things. They should not, for instance, be fuzzy one minute and translucent the next. Nor should they be shot, from time to random time, with sudden neon-bright color.

Her hands shouldn't seem to go into the wall when she touched it, and her feet shouldn't look foggy. In fact, things in general shouldn't be that—indefinite. And why did she feel so good? She wasn't drunk!

Miri sighed, which felt very good.

The good news, as far as she could tell, was that they wouldn't be on the ship very long—not the way they'd been able to slip away from Prime without a head start, clearing Jump or anything.

Yeah, that was pretty good, just sliding—

She couldn't concentrate on the thought. The wall she'd been staring at ghosted momentarily, becoming largely green fog, and she thought she saw a diamond the size of a dozen landcars on the other side.

Absently, she ran a hand down her arm. She did it again. How soft her shirt was! She stroked her arm a third time, eyes slitted in pleasure.

Putting her hands on her thighs, she immediately discovered the tactile delight of supple old leather, well-kept and clean—and snapped to her feet, holding her hands away from her body. There was a pattern in the floor she hadn't noticed before: layers and layers of large prints—the prints of Clutch feet—one on top another, pressed into the hard rock floor.

She half-laughed, then frowned as the idea struck her. She was assuming the semipsychedelics were drive-effects. What if instead there was something wrong with—her? What if she was sick? Or crazy?

Well, crazy'll be company for Tough Guy, she thought philosophically. Worse fates could befall.

Still, her fear needed to be checked out. On impulse, she unwound her braid and pulled the length of hair over her shoulder where she could see it.

It was as she had feared. Her hair was foggy, each strand a little brighter and a little less definite than normal.

Flipping the braid behind her shoulder, she turned and strode out of the bookroom, heading for the control area and her partner. When an entire wall went bright gold as she passed by, she stuck her tongue out at it.

* * *

VAL CON GOT UP when the control board began to shift.

Well, not shift so much as—fade? There was a rainbow iridescence at the edge of things that made him acutely uncomfortable; he tried hard to determine where one of his fingernails actually ended.

That experiment was interesting. He could touch edge of thumbnail to edge of thumbnail and feel it, except he'd swear he could feel it before they touched and after they were parted. Even more unsettling was that his thumbs and the fine hair that grew on the backs of his hands appeared to have a certain lack of substance.

Tired. He was very, very tired. He needed to rest.

But he hadn't been able to rest—and the so-called Survival Loop kept popping up, over and over, unbidden, each time giving him figures which seemed not to concern him, but still initiating bursts of energy as it insisted to that this time he might not get home.

Home? He closed his eyes, trying to picture the place, but the weird effects disrupted the efficiency of his memory's eye.

Shan? he thought, in something like desperation. Nova?

But the faces of his kin did not arise.

Edger? There was no difficulty recalling that person, down to the bone-rattling boom of his voice; and with it this memory brought attendant memories, of life with the Middle River Clan . . . .

Go home, he thought. Rest. Go home and be musician for the Clan . . . .

But there had been those equations when he'd played the 'chora—the Loop, showing him that the longer he played, the less chance he had of ultimate survival. And now these fadings and flashings, when things had been feeling so—unreal—in general . . . .

Seated at the map table, he took quick inventory. The effects observed were not akin to any poison he had been trained to recognize: they seemed to be nearly psychedelic, yet actual —which argued against an airborne spore or something of that nature.

It had to be an artifact of the drive—he hoped.

He massaged his wrist gently, astonished at the intense pleasure the action gave him, and closed his eyes.

CMS: .2.

Not so unusual. Except that he hadn't given the Loop a mission to calculate.

Music. Edger had said there were instruments on board. Gods, I could use a 'chora now! he thought.

The display in his head dropped the CMS to .1 instantly.

There was no sense to that, was there?

Was there?

Why should music endanger him? He needed to relax; he needed sleep, rest, a chance to let stretched reflexes loosen. He'd used the 'chora for that quite successfully in the past.