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Lod knew about the Terran feline from TechPlex images and docudata. Periapt
had a lot more Old Earth sample bioforms than
Concordance did. "The original should be flattered," he remarked.
"A quip, just like on the news loops!" She took his hand, stroking
it "Tell me another one."
"'The simple things are always hard.' " When she flickered her long cat eyes
at him, he gave her his most innocent smile.
"Why, Major Lod!" She gave his fingers a long lick with her raspy tongue.
"Come right over here and tell me more."
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Chapter
Thirty
Thirty
Thirty
Thirty
Burning watched Lod wander off with the cheetah on his arm.
Changes in the woman's skeletal framework and musculature had given her the
fluid, high-rumped gait of her namesake.
He had told both Lod and Ghost not to stray too far, but there wasn't much
he could do about his cousin at the moment; a freshman Hierarch had
chatted him up insistently, and Dextra was busy autographing a copy of her
poetry collection, Summer Gloves and Sherry
. Over the decades the book had been cited in scores of spousal abuse
retaliation cases, including a half dozen homicide trials.
The newly installed Lyceum member, a ranch stationer's kerchief worn
over his chasuble, insisted on shaking Burning's hand. The hand
surprised Burning in that it was big and weathered.
But something about the calluses felt wrong in his grip, as if they were
unaccustomed to following their own creases and rigidities.
"Great, huh?" the Hierarch chortled, turning the hand so that
Burning could admire both sides. He appeared to be halfway hoisted on
drink or drugs. "Cost me a bundle at TransSoma Labs.
But I pressed the flesh like no candidate you ever saw, General!"
Again the man began pumping Burning's hand to demonstrate.
"I'm not a gener "
"Voters go for that image of a hardworking honest man! 'Give the people what
they want,' that's what I told my iconography consultants. 'Old-time
virtues.' It's what won me my chasuble.
Common sense and homespun values."
To Burning's left grew one of the expanding pools of silence that tended to
form in the wake of combative words. The sound of Ghost's voice breaking
the silence ruffled the determined
Flowstate in which he had hoped to glide through the ball.
"I do not feel threatened," Ghost was saying. "I simply won't have hands laid
on me by anyone, much less the likes of you."
The object of her wrath was wearing a Hierarch's chasuble but was turned
out in Preservationist formal attire. The man had
the size and carriage of a ramball forward and the battered face and beetling
smile of a man who enjoyed violent collisions.
"That's my point," he told Ghost. "You are thinking confused and
contrabiological thoughts because you're living an unnatural life. A vestal
soldier! Do you hear voices, Joan of Arc?" He was saying it playfully, but he
was reaching to touch her death scars in spite of her warning.
Burning glided toward them, exercising a
Yu serenity inoculation the Skills masters had drawn from the 3,500-year-old
writings of Chuang Tzu.
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Someone else had stepped in to intervene, saying, "Torio.
Torio, enough."
But the Preservationalist ignored the tug on his sleeve and was continuing to
close on Ghost. "You should be bearing children who'll claim the stars
for mankind!" Torio said. "These scars, this pretense that women make good
soldiers they're nothing but symptoms of your misguided ego."
Ghost did not react to his facial caress. Burning knew that it was because
Torio was bulky and bad-looking and because she'd want to be sure to plant him
for good with her opening attack.
He slid precisely between them without seeming hasty, his shoulder
moving Torio's hand aside as if by accident, putting them almost eye to
eye. Burning hoped that the act itself would be enough to defuse the
incident; he didn't know what word or act might bring down retribution on him
and the Exts.
Torio gazed at him as if he'd spied a shiteboar. "The proprietary
Allgrave intervening in the cause of procreative shirking? Or is there
something sexual in his possessiveness?"
"She's my sister."
It came out plaintive and flummoxed instead of admonishing.
The spoken word had never been his strong suit. Burning was only beginning to
apprehend what Torio had been getting at when the
Preservationist sidestepped and again reached for Ghost.
Burning made up his mind that no sane code of behavior could ask him
to suffer this. He would quite likely be ousted as
Allgrave if he tolerated it.
The inside of Torio's extending right arm had presented itself, as good an
opening as any. Burning crab-stepped slightly, bringing his left hand in and
up to guard the right side of his head, cocking his right fist with the
middle knuckle out, and driving a
KaJuKenBo punch into the nerves where Torio's biceps and triceps
converged. He made it fast, letting the angle and leverage add the force.
Torio was half spun by the impact, the smile only beginning to disappear as
his right arm popped away, paralyzed. But where
Burning was glumly expecting an instant and expert counter, Torio's
head came wobbling his way instead, complying with centrifugal force.
In the calm of Flowstate Burning assessed it as one of those flukes not to
be gainsaid. Shifting his guard so he would not clothesline himself
on his own left forearm, he skull-butted
Torio in the snout, feeling bone and cartilage crack and stave.
Torio floundered back, making a gurgling, lamenting sound, with
crimson squirting from his face. Burning wondered how long it would be
before matters started going seriously wrong.
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
* * * *
"That's two hops you've made to
Matsya in two days, Driver
Elide. Getting addicted to Steamer Quant's jolly naval camaraderie, is
that it?"
"Why do they call him 'Steamer'?"
Tonii half turned, resting an elbow on the seat back. "It's a navy
term that goes back to Old Earth. It denotes a skipper who hates sitting
still, who feels the need to be under way and going somewhere, no matter what
it takes."
Kurt Elide snorted. "He doesn't go many places these days.
What I heard is that the damn ship just putt-putts in circles when it moves
at all."
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"Mm-hm, but Commander Quant got the nickname a long time ago."
They were sitting in the passenger compartment of the air-limo,
killing time with the main holoscreen on mute, waiting for Dextra's call that
would allow Tonii into the Empyraeum. The aircraft was grounded in a VBP
transport waiting area downhill from the landing platforms. A few other
drivers had gathered to talk and kill time, but Kurt clearly wasn't pining for
their society.
Covertly, he glanced at Tonii, unable to resist eyeballing the mixed-signals [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]