Шарон Ли: Agent of Change

She closed her eyes. Every time you get the world by the tail, she thought, you gotta remember there's teeth on the other end.

"Where'd a spy learn to play the 'chora like that?"

His brows twitched together in surprise, and he answered carefully. "My kinswoman, Anne Davis, taught me. It gave her joy to see that I had the talent, when none of her own children did."

"Your kinswoman." She wasn't sure she'd meant it as a question, but he answered it.

"Yes. My—is it aunt? The wife of my father's brother?"

"Aunt," she agreed, puzzled by this lapse in his smooth command of Terran.

"More," he said thoughtfully. "She was my—foster-mother. After my mother died I went into her home, was raised with her children."

"Is this any more—or less—real than Connor Phillips?" she demanded. "Do you really know who you are?"

He looked at her closely. "If you are asking if I'm insane, which of the answers I may give will comfort you more? I know who I am, and I have told you. Even when I am on assignment, I know who I really am."

"Do you? That's comforting." She said it without conviction, aware that she was tensing up again.

"Have you a problem, Miri Robertson?"

"Yeah. I do. The problem is that I don't know why you're helping me. Your logic don't hold up. If you were Connor Phillips, why can't you be him again, find a ship, and go away? You can get out of it! The Juntavas don't know who you are—what kind of description can they have? That you're short? Skinny? Dark?" She moved her shoulders to throw off some of the tension.

"The clincher is that you're with me. Without me they look—" She spread her arms. "—and they look away."

The equation had formed in his head, showing him how he might get away, her death balancing his escape. She knew much about him and could be a danger. In fact, he thought, if I—no! He forced the Loop back and down, refusing to know how useful she would be, dead.

Setting his empty glass aside, he began to read the breakfast selections.

She studied his profile, but saw nothing more than polite interest in the information imparted by the selection grid.

"Well?" she demanded.

He lifted a slender hand to select an egg dish, then glanced at her. "I think that last night's reasoning is sound. The Juntavas may have an imperfect description of me. Or they may have a photo image. I cannot afford to ignore that possibility."

Another equation showed itself, this one concerning not her death, but her betrayal. It noted that it was an approximation; the odds were good that her life would buy his own from the Juntavas.

The long lashes dropped over his eyes and he turned back to the panel, choosing hot bread and a fruit. Gathering the plates from the dispenser, he moved back to the table and took the seat across from Miri.

She got up silently, selected a slightly stronger brew of Terran coffee, and returned to her chair.

"So where does that leave me? Instead of wanted by the Juntavas, I'm a political prisoner of Liad, right?"

He shook his head, attention seemingly more than half occupied by slicing a ripe strafle into two equal portions. He offered her half. When she made no move to take it, he placed it on the table by her hands."Where does that leave things?" she insisted, an edge in her voice.

"I think," he replied, swallowing a mouthful of eggs, "that it leaves things where they were in the beginning. We are thrown together. We wish to live. Already each of us has brought something useful to the task of surviving. If we are fortunate, we shall live through the experience. In fact, we make our own fortune simply by doing what must be done, as it needs to be done."

He took a bite of bread, frowned as he reached for the glass that wasn't there, and combed a hand through his forelock, sighing.

"Mutual survival being the goal, I think you should tell me about these people—the man who owes you money and the friend who keeps your things—so that we may plan usefully."

He pushed back his chair and went to ask the chef for more milk.

Miri drank coffee, acutely aware of the weight of the gun in her pocket. She understood about mutual survival: it was why so many of the Gyrfalks had partners. Trust wasn't something that came easily to her; still it was obvious that her companion knew what he was doing in a tight spot.

"Okay," she said slowly. "The man who owes me money—that's Murph. Angus G. Murphy. The third. He was in my unit in the Merc. Decided he couldn't take all the killing." She smiled at the man across from her. "Thought there'd be lots of glory and romance. Anyhow, he wanted out, and it was safer to have him out, if he felt that way about it."

Val Con ate, watching her face as she spoke.

"So, I lent him most of his severance money," Miri continued, "with the understanding that he'd pay it back with interest in three Standards. Been damn near four."

She leaned farther back in the chair, leaving the untouched fruit between them like a challenge. He did not appear to see it.

"Murph is recalcitrant?"

"Absent," she corrected. "Address listed in the poploc. Nobody home." She shook her head. "I didn't have time to buttonhole all the neighbors. Somehow, from the way I remembered him, I figured he'd be home." She sipped her coffee.

"The friend who's keeping my things is Liz. Friend of my mother's, first. Lives closer to where we met than where we are now. Plan is to call her, make sure she's home and gonna stay there so I can drop by and pick up my box."

"And then pursue the search for the absent Murph?"

"Say!" she said, opening her eyes wide and smiling. "You've got almost as many smarts as a real person!"

To her surprise, he laughed—a sound oddly at variance with his tightly controlled face and unemphatic voice. There was joy in his laugh. Miri filed that information away with the echoes of the music he'd pulled from the 'chora.

"The best course," he said, "is for you to call your friend Liz and explain that you will need your things. Explain also that you will not be coming yourself but will be sending an associate—"

"Wrong."

He shook his head. "Consider it. The risk is less—they may know me; they do know you. And in the time it takes me to accomplish the errand you may be profitably employed in locating Murph." He waved his hand toward the common room.

"The comm is quite adequate. The planet is at your disposal."

She stared into the dregs of her coffee, considering it. Her own life was one thing, but to gamble Liz on the feeling that an undoubtedly deadly stranger meant her well? A Liaden stranger, just for fun. Liadens were known for playing deep: it seemed a source of racial pride. Miri closed her eyes.

Judgement call, Robertson, she said to herself. You trust him at your back or you don't.

She opened her eyes. "Liz hates Liadens."

The straight brows pulled together, his mouth nearly twisted, and he thumped the half-full glass on the table.

"It seems that all the galaxy hates Liadens," he said. He pushed his chair back to balance on two legs, taking a sharp bite out of his strafle.

Somehow, that decided it. Miri rose, deposited her cup in the clean-up slot and headed to the big room.

"I'll call her," she said over her shoulder.

Liz was at home. She was also unhappy to learn that Miri would be sending her "partner," rather than coming to collect the box herself.

"Since when have you had a partner, anyway?" she wanted to know, brown eyes shrewd. "You always played single's odds."

"Times change," Miri told her, trying to sound as if they had.

Liz snorted, eyes softening. "How much trouble you in?"

"More'n last week, less than next. You know how it goes."

Liz did know; she'd been a mercenary herself, after all.