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THIRTEEN Agent of Exultation

Rain roared on the overhead windows aft of the flagship's flight deck, reminding Reille y Sanchez of the semitropical monsoons which had often interrupted training in north Florida. There, it had been possible to stand in the sunshine and see a wall of falling water coming toward you. Here, amplified by the drumlike structure of the shuttle, it was more like being in a war zone during a firefight.

She tried to keep her mind on the ramifications of her new assignment. Although it wasn't her responsibility—doubly, now that she'd been conscripted into the KGB—her first thought was for the hardware and electronics in the cargo bay. Designed for vacuum, incredible temperatures, and lots of Gs, it had never been intended to get wet.

The doors were lined with superconducting solar collectors, the only new technology aboard. They lay open as they did in space, epoxy graphite clamshells in two sections which had once given this vehicle-type the nickname "Polish Bomber." The largest such structures ever fabricated for flight, they were controlled from a console near the aft windows. Closed, they were secured with thirty-two latches which had proven no more reliable on the outward journey than anything else they were equipped with.

Others were thinking, as well. She joined what turned into a rush, clambering down the "primary interdeck access" to the middeck with Betal, Empleado, and the general, shouldering out through the crew hatch. The crews of the other shuttles had the same idea. Those within the containers jostled through the tiny airlocks into the bays. Shivering almost immediately, her ship-suit soaked, her thick auburn hair limp and streaming into her eyes, she emerged to climb another, cruder ladder of lashed branches onto the rain-slick starboard wing of the Dole. Her clothing already seemed impossibly heavy with the weight of absorbed water. Danny Gutierrez and Broward Hake were behind her, looking bedraggled.

Meters away, small figures struggled over the equally slippery airliner-sized hulls of the McCain and Hatch, heedless, in the light gravity, of the danger of falling or that they stood on "No Step" areas. Reille y Sanchez made out the drenched forms of Lee Marna and Rosalind Nguyen: thumb-sized drops struck, hundreds to the meter, atomizing themselves into a knee-deep coarse mist through which the lieutenant and the physician seemed to be wading.

The idea was to help the eighty-year-old motors close the doors and fasten the recalcitrant latches. Reille y Sanchez brushed a hand across her eyes, noticing how the ends of her fingers were wrinkled and pale. As she labored beside Owen, Pulaski (less fragile than she appeared), and other comrades, her holster slapping on her thigh through wet trousers, she abruptly remembered that her Spetznaz training had carried with it the reserve status of a KGB officer. At the time, she'd regarded it as purely ceremonial, and had never taken it seriously. Now she knew better as she tried to catch a breath from an atmosphere that seemed solid with rain.

From this perspective, it was suddenly absurd that she'd wondered whether Richardson served Washington or the Banker (why did they call him that?) and his Moscow cutthroats. Like most people, Reille y Sanchez detested all KGB, American or Russian. Now she feared that, having worked for them even in an emergency like this, she might not be allowed to quit. What was perhaps worse, certain ugly inferences—and uglier nicknames than Polish Bomber—seemed appropriate when a woman carried KGB credentials. She'd always been proud that her Marine rank and responsibilities had never had anything to do, as far as she knew, with her gender.

With Owen and Pulaski, she'd climbed to the flight-deck roof, standing over windows she'd been standing under earlier. A dozen people, including Gutierrez and his son, Delbert Roo and Demene Wise, had taken up positions along the wing root, working with a few brave souls perched atop the passenger insert. Across the camp, she saw Sebastiano bossing the same job from the roof of the Hatch. Aboard the Dole, those along the wing lifted. She felt rather than heard the whining of the elderly motors. The door rose with a series of jerks, a torrent sluicing down the curved photovoltaics, into the bay.

Those on the container seized the door, careful where they placed their hands, supporting it as it descended. Unsure whether she was helping, Reille y Sanchez held the front edge, as others at the tail fin, Empleado and Betal among them, held the rear. Someone shouted something, but she couldn't hear. Deafened by rain on the door, she tried to ignore the goosebumps covering her everywhere, tried not to ask herself what had caused them, dirty weather or dirtier politics. Her breath was visible when she exhaled.

The starboard door was down at last. Grinning at Pulaski and the machinist, she imitated them as she slid her feet carefully to the port side of the roof and prepared to be of what assistance she could. Thinking back to the EVA which had gotten her here, she realized the one good thing you could say about space was that it was dry.

Gutierrez had never really asked where she stood on the issues. He'd assumed she'd do her duty, possibly be one of the most vocal in favor of Washington's war. Scattered among the land mines in that assumption were reasons to feel complimented, she supposed. But she recognized other, dangerous possibilities inherent in her perceived bias and conflict of—

Someone shouted again—Sebastiano, pointing at the sky—and at the same time she realized they'd managed to shut the second door. From inside the bay, she could hear somebody hammering at the stubborn latches. Reille y Sanchez stepped back, nearly losing her footing as she stumbled into Pulaski, who staggered against Corporal Owen, who fell from the roof, almost floating in the asteroidal gravity to land with a disgusting splash in the mud. He stood, wiping himself off with the edge of a broad hand—the rain was doing a better job of it—laughing.

Meanwhile, Reille y Sanchez looked in the direction Sebastiano had pointed, straining to hear, above the bumble and splatter of the rain, the keening of one of the electric aircraft that had brought many of them here. The encampment was about to have a visitor, and she was curious to see how a species five hundred million years old avoided getting wet in weather like this. As it materialized from the mist and began settling toward the streaming, muddy ground, she could see some object projecting from the blue metallic doughnut-shape which hadn't been in evidence when she'd ridden a machine exactly like it from the cradle of plasticized mesh down to the infirmary. Aelbraugh Pritsch appeared to be holding a bright yellow, exceedingly large, and otherwise ordinary umbrella, attempting to keep not only his own feathers dry, but the forms of two other occupants, one of whom might not have appreciated the gesture.

It was a nautiloid, not just a tentacular extension. From the avian's bearing, Reille y Sanchez guessed that it was Mister Thoggosh in the flesh—and massive coiled shell—glistening within a covering of silvery-transparent plastic. The general's description, vivid as it had been, failed to convey how big and colorful the giant mollusc was. The grooved, candy-striped dome of his shell bulged shoulder-high from the open compartment of the vehicle, and several tentacles, draped casually over the side, perhaps to allow more room for his fellow passengers, touched ground before the undersurface of the machine.

The third rider was human, unfamiliar at this distance in the rain. She hadn't been aware that anyone was missing from the camp. As the machine squelched into the circle formed by the shuttles, a section of one side tucked itself away. Protected and concealed by the umbrella, the bipeds clambered from the vehicle, leaving the nautiloid. To her astonishment, Reille y Sanchez watched a large, white, shaggy dog jump from the machine to follow those beneath the umbrella, although it made no effort to stay out of the rain.

Creeping along the sealed door, she slid off onto the starboard wing, found the makeshift ladder at the same moment as the general and the political officer, and soon stood with them beneath the fuselage, up to her ankles in mud, waiting for those beneath the umbrella. Aelbraugh Pritsch folded the contrivance. Standing beside the bird-being was a young man she'd never seen before, certainly not on the journey to 5023 Eris.

"General Gutierrez, Mr. Empleado," Aelbraugh Pritsch intoned, "Colonel Reille y Sanchez, late of the ASSR Marines. I congratulate you on your promotion, Colonel, and present my friend and associate, Eichra Oren."

Somehow, by a miracle of transportation or simple determination, Mister Thoggosh had extricated himself from the aircraft without help and joined them under the wing of the shuttle. Behind him, between the two vehicles, his heavy shell had left a deep groove in the mud, rapidly being eradicated by the rain. Introductions started again to include the Proprietor, with whom Reille y Sanchez managed to shake appendages without flinching. The strange man smiled and put out a hand. When it got to her, she unconsciously counted the fingers—the usual five—before taking it.

"Colonel, I'm pleased to meet you." For some reason he wore nylon running shoes, an obnoxious red-and-green Hawaiian shirt, and a pair of faded Levis. Of average height, well-muscled but a little thin, he was blond, tanned, and blue-eyed. His voice, deep and mellow, wasn't that of the kid surfer from a long-gone era he resembled. He had that inward look of a combat veteran on temporary leave. In one hand he carried a leather case a meter long, half again as wide as her hand, five centimeters thick. "This," he indicated the dog, "is Sam. Sam, Col. Reille y Sanchez."

The dog barked, its own voice deeper and more powerful than she'd expected. For a moment she was afraid the animal would try to shake itself dry in the shelter beneath the wing—not that it would have made much difference to her uniform—or jump up and put its paws on her. Instead it sat, mud and all, and raised its right paw to her.

"I'm pleased," she took the paw, delighted, "to meet you, Sam."

"Glad to hear it, Colonel," Sam replied. "You're very beautiful, if a bit wet. May I call you Estrellita?"

In the stunned silence that followed, the Proprietor's assistant, unaware of the shock the humans were coping with, went on. "As a p'Nan debt assessor of great reputation, exercising his talents on behalf of the Proprietor, Eichra Oren will be your opposite number, Col. Reille y Sanchez."

"I see," she lied.

The avian paused, listening to something. Sam and Eichra Oren turned their heads to look at Mister Thoggosh. "The Proprietor, unable to communicate owing to his lack of requisite organs, asks me to explain that this means Eichra Oren will act as our investigator into the mystery of Dr. Kamanov's unfortunate demise."

"Lieutenant," Gutierrez picked his son out of the crowd gathering around them, "go inboard and patch one of the ATUs into the middeck intercom for Mister Thoggosh. That's a portable transceiver," he explained, "over which he can broadcast to the audio system. You might inform him that Eichra Oren's sudden appearance on 5023 Eris represents something of a mystery in itself."

"As well it might," the avian replied, "if you're unaware of the significance of this storm and the display preceding it. I believe I said earlier that interdimensional travel, by means of which Eichra Oren has just arrived, occurs with rather spectacular side effects. And by the way, the Proprietor can hear you perfectly well."

"That's right." The general nodded, addressing Mister Thoggosh. "You did say your hearing was good, didn't you?"

"Indeed," the Proprietor's voice came from several sources, relayed through the unit plugged in by the younger Gutierrez, "I'm surprised that you remember, General, considering all you've been through. Aelbraugh Pritsch, having presented Eichra Oren, we'll retire and leave our old friends to become acquainted with our new friends. Eichra Oren, Sam, confer with me at your convenience, if you will."

The nautiloid began to turn his ponderous shell and point himself back toward the aircraft, with Aelbraugh Pritsch behind him.

"Just a minute!" Empleado squeezed between Reille y Sanchez and the general. "You've only managed to make things worse—again!"

The mollusc paused, causing his assistant to stumble into him. "You're speaking to me, sir?" Aelbraugh Pritsch replied. "I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps by well-meaning inadvertence—"

"I'm not speaking to Tweetybird." Empleado's tone was nasty. "Or to this ventriloquist and his trained mutt! If this Oren's as human as he looks, he won't be doing any investigating for anybody. It's my duty to claim him by virtue of the fact that he's a civilian. Otherwise, he belongs to the general and Maj—Colonel Reille y Sanchez. I don't know where he came from, but he's a citizen of the United World Soviet whether he knows it—or wants to be—or not, and must therefore contribute to the general human welfare and obey the lawful orders of all duly constituted human authority."

Mister Thoggosh waved a tentacle, preliminary to speaking. "Excuse me," Eichra Oren interrupted. He faced the KGB officer. "Mr. Empleado—Art—isn't this doctrine the basis for several violent disputes now taking place between the remaining nations of Earth?" Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the general. "Including the one, sir, that squandered the life of your oldest son not long ago?" In the embarrassed silence, someone hidden in the crowd laughed at the frustrated Empleado.

"I might have anticipated this," sighed the Proprietor. "I suppose it's best to initiate Eichra Oren's tenure with a declaration of his independence. As a p'Nan debt assessor, certified by the market he serves and the sword he carries, he's immune to the laws, customs, and authority of the American Soviet Socialist Republic, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United World Soviet, and both versions of the KGB. I assure you he comes well-equipped to enforce any status he wishes to claim in that regard."

"We'll see about that!" Empleado seized Eichra Oren's arm as his four enforcers elbowed their way through the crowd. It was a mistake. Empleado, a perplexed look on his face, discovered he was holding his own arm instead of Eichra Oren's. The latter had tossed his case to Reille y Sanchez, who caught it automatically. Something heavy rattled inside.

Noncombatants, including Empleado, evaporated from beneath the wing. Broward Hake aimed broad, hardened knuckles at the side of the stranger's head, only to find his best punch captured in the man's left hand where it landed without a sound. At the same time, Delbert Roo launched a back-kick at Eichra Oren's kidney. It arrived in the man's other cupped palm. Eichra Oren spread his arms wide, as if to fling the unwanted energy away, tossing Roo and Hake a full dozen meters in different directions where they landed, with a spectacular double splash, in the mud.

Reille y Sanchez thought that Eichra Oren was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen. Despite his unnatural speed and power, the strange warrior wasn't exerting himself, showed no sign of sweating, no shortness of breath, and his hair hardly stirred from its well-combed place.

She wished Gutierrez would do something, but the general seemed to be watching the fight with personal interest. From the way he bobbed and grimaced, raising his own fists and muttering, it was plain he wasn't siding with Empleado's men. His son Danny was shouting openly, taking the same side as his father, as did Marna.

Mister Thoggosh allowed his separable tentacle to wander to the other side of the camp, where it climbed onto the wing of the Hatch, perhaps affording him a better view. Aelbraugh Pritsch might have been expected to be fluttering nervously, exclaiming how dreadful it all was. Instead, the avian stood calm, his furled umbrella tucked beneath one winglike arm, as if the outcome were already certain. Anybody else's dog would be leaping, barking, joining the fray; Sam sat where he was, as calmly as Aelbraugh Pritsch, apparently watching the fight with intelligent interest.

Sebastiano grinned each time one of Empleado's four absorbed punishment. Empleado's face became grimmer with each setback they suffered. Undismayed or unobservant, Roger Betal and Demene Wise closed in. There was a lot of yelling from the fighters who fancied themselves martial artists, mixed with grunts of exertion and occasional screams of pain. It was difficult to hear them above the yelling from the crowd.

"Go Meany!" she presumed, was for Demene Wise. Someone chanted Hake's name over and over again. It didn't make a bad cheer, at that, even if it did sound a bit Orwellian. "Punch him, Roger, put his lights out!" "Sic him, Del!" seemed a bit more to the point, given what she knew of Delbert Roo. It was foolhardy to be standing anywhere near Corporal Owen. Eyes glued on the fighting men, he swung his massive fists in unconscious sympathy, jabbing and punching the air, endangering everyone within a meter of his reach.

A flurry of movement was hidden in a confusion of shoulders and elbows. Eichra Oren stepped back, having somehow braided one assailant's fingers. The victim stared at the bizarre result, an inescapable, anatomically impossible pattern, in dumb astonishment. Reille y Sanchez suspected it would require a surgeon's help to rearrange Betal's fingers.

Rosalind Nguyen had disappeared when the first blow was struck. Now she was back again, ducking through the crew hatch of the Dole, carrying the squarish zippered-nylon container which served her as the black bag of medical tradition.

Almost as an afterthought, Eichra Oren disabled Wise with a feathery toe-brush to the knee, the crack of the broken joint echoing through the camp. As earlier, at the sight of Kamanov's body, Pulaski ran behind one of the landing gear assemblies to throw up.

That didn't end the matter. Hake and Roo were back, advancing on the investigator, short knives with blackened blades appearing like magic in their fists. Eichra Oren's response resembled dancing more than fighting. Each movement of their feet threw sprays of mud into the crowd. Each of them, except for Eichra Oren, was plastered with mud, soaked to the bone. Reille y Sanchez was fascinated, watching his undisturbed face and fathomless eyes, believing she saw the same frightening exultation she'd seen before, in the line of duty, among the outlawed and legendary Penitentes of her native southwest. It was as if the lovely, lethal dance he performed were a religious exercise, putting him in touch with another reality. Suddenly the lower half of Hake's face looked like a bloody ruin, but it was only his nose that was bleeding.

Or maybe it was something sickening, she thought with a shudder which surprised her. Maybe what moved him to ecstasy was the idea of hurting, of killing, or even of being killed. This, too, she was familiar with, from the classrooms, training fields, and barracks where she'd obtained her own training. Then he laughed, shattering the illusion as he bobbed and whirled through stylized motions, keeping up a conversation with his opponents, too quiet for her to hear, as if instructing them. She shivered, clutching the leather case to her breasts, terrified and fascinated all at once. Perhaps that was exactly what he was doing.

Water streamed off the ships in a tangle of rivulets, treacherous miniature gulleys through which they splashed and stumbled as they fought. Eichra Oren elbowed his first opponent, Hake, into semiconsciousness. Roo was faster and came closest to scoring a blow, almost landing a heel in Eichra Oren's solar plexus. It was hard to follow the movements of either man, so fast were they. Compared to the others, it was like watching the same tape at different speeds. The newcomer took a step back, leaned in and gave Roo's forehead no more than a tap of his forefinger. Roo dropped to the mud and lay still—although no more so than three dozen horrified observers. As Eichra Oren turned his back, Hake, lying on his back in the mud, fumbled in his pocket and produced a gun, another of the little K9s like the one Richardson had carried. He raised it toward the investigator.

Reille y Sanchez almost tossed Eichra Oren his case. "Don't!" he shouted, at Hake not her, a gleaming weapon of his own materializing in his hand. He hadn't even turned to see Hake. Now he did.

"Watch!" He raised whatever he carried, no bigger than a .25 auto, pointed it between the Dole and the McCain at a hillock just outside the camp. With an odd, muffled explosion, brief-lived smoke blossomed at the muzzle. The hillock vanished with a louder noise and a more impressive explosion. Where it had been, there now lay a deep, elliptical trench, the size of a human grave, into which water from the camp had already begun draining. Hake's mouth hung open. Climbing painfully to his feet, he dropped his pistol into the mud beside him, where it was quickly retrieved by Sebastiano.

"The little one hurried me," Eichra Oren told those around him, his eyes going to those of Reille y Sanchez. "I didn't have time to measure the touch. I apologize for having had to kill him."

From somewhere outside the camp, a shot rang like a thunderclap. Hake's arms stiffened and he collapsed again, face-first, legs crossed at the ankles, a ragged exit wound between his shoulder blades mingling carmine with the wet soil. The bullet had passed within a centimeter of Eichra Oren.

"A .45!" Sebastiano cried. Reille y Sanchez agreed.

"Richardson's still out there, somewhere!" the general added. "Juan, pick three people and go after her—and don't forget to duck!"

 

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