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offense, but you're not as educated as I am--not formally, at least. I know
who Mata Hari is. But I don't think you do."
Her forehead crinkled. "Sure I do. He was.." uh..."
He grinned. "Wrong. She was a spy. A real old-timey one, back three
centuries or so on old Terra. Prespace, even."
"That what you think I am? A spy?"
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He shrugged. "I dunno. You could be, I suppose. An spy, maybe, working for
some Terran company. I mean, if have all this money, why do you live in a
dump like this?
you could live anywhere? Unless you're living exactly where want to--and for
the same reasons I am?"
For a moment he hesitated, wanting to say something something honest, but
afraid to. He was treading too close to many edges--his own, and perhaps hers
as well. But... he shrugged. In for a penny, in for a pound.
"Um, and killing people doesn't seem to bother you too much." She aimed an
opaque glance at him, then twisted off one minuscule bit of bagel, popped it
in her mouth--giving another delightful flash of pink tongue--and chewed. Her
turned somewhat vague. As if she were considering something. "It's a fair
analysis, Jim. Better than I
would have given you for. You're what--sixteen? You think better than most
old kids. How come is that?"
He felt himself sliding closer to dangerous territory. He really tell her the
truth, could he? Well, why not? It all came to a matter of trust. Did he
trust her?.
Pie tried to weigh it all, but in the end it balanced on his hunches,
feelings, the intuition he'd never known he had, beginning to find and trust.
She was strange, yeah, but it bad strange. Not like those murderers who had
come to the Not like whatever awful secret had come snarling out of his past
to wreck his present and poison his future.
And God, he so desperately wanted to tell someone:
So he did.
I Low," she said, when he had furnished.
Even he had not understood just how much poison had up in his system, and how
good it felt to spew it out into bright, cleansing light of day.
But when he finished, a dull fire burned in his cheeks that had nothing to do
with Cat, and everything to do with his own shame.
"I'm a murderer," he said, simply. "I didn't want to be, but I am.
That's why I couldn't use the moly knife on that Pleb kid who tried to mug me.
I didn't want to be a murderer again. Not by my own choosing.
He looked across the table at her, helplessly. Her features were set, almost
blank. Her expression frightened him more than anything he'd ever seen on a
human face. "Do... do you hate me?" he said. She made up her mind then.
She stood up, came slowly around the table, and bent down. Her breath was
slow and warm in his ear. Gently, she urged him out of the chair, turned him,
guided him toward the still-rumpled mattress on the floor.
"You're not a murderer," she said. "And, no, I don't hate you at all."
He didn't wake up to a new day. It was more like a new life. Or perhaps his
old one, miraculously restored to him, at least as much as it could be.
The morning sun leaked a faded rose glow through the drawn plastic shades,
softening the rough edges of the shabby little apartment, draping cool shadows
in the corners so that everything looked just the slightest bit unreal. A
holovid set, maybe.
Jim pushed himself up on his elbows, the thin sheet across his chest.
She was a vague warmth next to him. His slow movement brought her half-awake.
She smacked her lips a couple of times, snorted softly, and rolled back over,
taking a good bit of the sheet with her.
He smiled down on her--if smile was the correct designation for the expression
that stretched his face so wide his jaw muscles ached and his lips felt drawn
out of shape. He wondered if it was better than he'd expected, and decided he
really had no idea of what he'd expected, not in the face of the reality of
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it. All his previous notions had been those of a child. Now he'd opened a
door and stepped through, and on the other side everything was changed.
Everything... That sadness he would never entirely lose took him then, and
under his breath he whispered, "Dad..."
But even that shade passed him by, leaving only the coolness of regret, a
perfect match for the shadows in the corners of the room, in the corners of
his soul.
How could he ever repay her?. With her one simple act of of offering the
thing every woman possessed, she had rescued The act that opened wide space
and let in the moon and the had worked its eternal and mysterious magic, and
somehow had given him back a future. Not, perhaps, the future he had
innocently imagined even a week ago, but something; the wish have a future,
perhaps. So fragile, and yet so incredibly
He could still have the stars, if he yet wanted them. That was she had
returned to him: the stars, and the great white ships sought them.
Today I am a man, he thought to himself, feeling a vague of memory, of a link
between those words and a ritual far ancient than he knew. But this passed as
well, as the rose glow dawn slowly deepened into the red heat of a Wolfbane
morning, and a cockroach, its ancestors inadvertently from distant Earth, ran
crazily across the wall.
I have to know, he told himself. She gave me back my life. who tried to take
it in the first place? And why?
"Mom, hang on. Wherever you are, I'm coming.
Later... "So," she said, "now what?"
She was stirring too much sugar into her second cup and the longer she was
awake, the more distant she seemed become. He couldn't understand it.
"Is something the matter?" he asked. "No... yes... I don't know.
Maybe." "Is it me?"
She stared at him over the rim of the cup, her pale blue wary. Then she
nodded. "Probably."
He tried to feel his way into it. But he felt so young, so enced, so clumsy.
He didn't want to hurt her. He didn't want hurt himself, either.
"You, uh, didn't have to... you know?."
"Yeah, damn it. I know. That's the problem. Knew it when I did it, and
didn't care. I'm not supposed to do stuff like that. But you seemed so... I
don't know. You needed me, needed somebody, and I guess
I just nominated myself."
She paused, sipped coffee, smiled faintly. "Not that it was all that
unpleasant or anything. Actually, I enjoyed it. You seemed to be pretty
happy with it, yourself.I' She eyed him demurely.
"Hey," she said. "Did I mention you're cute when you blush?"
He shook his head. She was just too quick for him, especially when he was in
this state--whatever this state was he was in. A little voice in the far
reaches of his mind whispered that he had just discovered an eternal secret,
but that knowing it would do him, a male, absolutely no good at all. No more
than if a steer in its slaughterhouse had the wit to understand a hammer. It
would make the blow no less strong, nor less ultimately fatal.
"Maybe," he offered, "it would be better if I took off. You know."
But she shook her head. "After I went to all that trouble? Offering you the
flower of my... uh, flower? Nope, Jim Smith, I now have stuff invested in
you. So I think I want you to stick around. Besides, there's somebody I want
you to meet."
"Huh? Who's that?" He wasn't sure he wanted to meet anybody. In fact, the
thought of stepping out of this tiny cubicle brought an uncomfortable cramping
sensation into his belly.
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