III
I remember lying on my back for quite awhile before I wanted to open my eyes. I knew I wasn’t on the street. The air was warm, and heated, and I was on a bed, or something like it. My leg was giving me hell where it had been burned, but I could feel the pressure of a bandage. I couldn’t tell about my hand and face—they felt as if something had been done about them, too, but I couldn’t find out for sure without looking or touching them, and I didn’t want to do that yet.
Why the hell had Pat jumped me? I couldn’t figure it.
I opened my eyes, and she was standing over me, a gun dangling from one hand. I threw a look at my watch, and saw I’d been out a half hour, at most.
“What the hell—” I began.
She cut me off with a gesture of the gun. “Shut up,” she said wearily. “You’ll have plenty of time to start lying later.” She grimaced with tired disgust.
I shook my head, but I knew better than to go on talking. There was anger working its way into the hurt look in her eyes.
I got up, ignoring the feeling in my calf, and noticed several other things. I’d been lying on a low couch. My flying boots were unzipped, so that I couldn’t move faster than a shuffle. The coveralls were loose around my waist where my harness had been.
I pressed my left upper arm against my ribs. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t found my insurance policy—a little singleshot burner hidden between two of my ribs under a strip of what looked like skin. There was collodion on my face, and tape on my knuckles.
“Happy?” she asked.
“Uh-huh. I’m Prince Charming, you’re Snow White, and, as far as I can add up, somebody’s fresh out of dwarves. What’s going on around here, anyway?”
“You double-crossed me, that’s what happened. We made a deal, and you sold out on it!” She was working herself to boiling mad, clear through—and that explained why she’d looked at me the way she had.
I shook my head again, trying to clear it. I was getting mad myself.
“Look, Pat, I can take just so much mysterious crap, and no more,” I said, feeling the blood starting to work itself into my face. “I got in from Venus, after winding up one of the prettiest insurrections you ever saw. I got my belly full of the sound of guns and the smell of death, and all I wanted to do was relax and spend the dough I made. No sooner do I take my first drink of decent liquor in six months than you walk up to me and start the goddamdest mess I’ve ever been in!
“All right—we made a deal. As far as I know, I’ve carried out the orders you gave me. I got the job for Transolar, and I started it. Nobody but you and I know there’s something funny going on, though I suppose the cops are starting to suspect—seeing as I’ve killed five men in two days, and helped you knock off two more. Now let’s get a few things straight around here! I’ve been shot at, slugged, and generally treated like a supporting star in a cloak and dagger movie. Either I get some fast answers, or I start slugging!”
I’d been moving forward as I talked, getting madder and madder, and closer to being ready to dive for that gun and rip it out of her hand.
She was starting to lose some of her determination. The gun muzzle was dipping. I reached out my hand.
The gun was centered on me again in an instant, but the fire was gone out of her eyes.
“Hold it, Ash!” she said. “You sound too mad to be lying, but you haven’t convinced me yet. Just stay put a minute. You want to know what’s going on? You should have a pretty fair idea by now,” she went on, still keeping the gun on me. “I’m after that power pile you’re supposed to fly out to Titan. Harry needs it.”
I should have known, I suppose. Well, maybe she was still space-struck. Thorsten played rough, and he had some strange friends, but so far he hadn’t earned a full-scale visit from the T.S.N. It didn’t mean as much in this case, though. He would have been a tough nut to crack, sitting out there in the Asteroids with a good-sized fleet behind him. Still—
But that was for another time. I let her see by my face that the subject wasn’t closed, and then I went on.
“Yeah—keep talking. Who jumped you on Rocket Row last night? Why were you trying to pot me a while ago?”
“Because—goddam it, I don’t know what to think!” she said. “Those were S.B.I. men last night. I knew they were trailing me, but I thought I’d gotten rid of them before I contacted you. Maybe I did—maybe they picked me up again when I went back out on the street. Anyway, we killed them, but the S.B.I. knows damn well who did it. We did enough yelling back and forth to let all of New York City know who it was.”
That had been a dumb play, all right. I didn’t have time to curse my stupidity, though. I didn’t care one bit for the idea of me having shot an S.B.I. man. It was his own fault, but it wouldn’t help my record any.
“All right,” I said, “so they were S.B.I. men. That’s tough—for them.”
“Why haven’t we been picked up? I’ve been hiding out all day—but how did you get away with walking in Transolar in broad daylight and coming out again, if you didn’t make some kind of deal?” She was gnawing on her lip. “Damn it, give me a reasonable explanation, and I’ll forget the whole thing.”
That sent me off. I knew why I hadn’t been picked up, all right—they were waiting for me to blow this deal open for them. Maybe, if I did that, they’d forget I’d killed one of them. I’d have to do a really good job, though.
But I wasn’t doing too much reasoning, right then. I’d been mad all night, but that was nothing to what I felt right then.
I could feel a big red ball of pure rage building up inside me. My fingers started to tremble, and my vision got hazy.
I swung out my hand and slapped the muzzle of the gun as hard as I could, and to hell with what it did to my bum hand. The gun went spinning away, taking skin off her fingers as it went, and crashed into a wall. I swung my hand back and slapped her across the face. She fell back and hit the floor. She lay huddled in a corner, looking up at me, her eyes wide and her mouth open with surprise.
“You’ll forget the whole thing, huh? All I have to do is explain away some half-baked idea that came into your head, and you’ll forgive me, is that it?” I reached down, grabbed her shoulder, pulled her to her feet, and held her there. Her mouth was still open, and she couldn’t get any words out of her throat.
“You’re going to forgive me for getting me into a deal that involves killing S.B.I. men. You’re going to forgive me for having a guy that used to be a buddy of mine hate my guts, I suppose. You’re going to forgive me for slapping my face, and I’m going to get your gracious pardon for having to fight it out for my life tonight against five guns. That’s just fine! Is that supposed to cover getting shot and knocked around and slugged?”
I hauled back and slapped her again. “And that’s for pointing a gun at me! Twice. I live by a gun, and I expect to die by one, someday. But not at the hands of a woman who can’t fight a man on his own terms, and has to keep him off with a gun after she gets herself into a mess. All right—you know how to use one. But, so help me, you wave one of those things at me again, and I’ll ram it down your throat catty-cornered!”
I pushed her away, and she slammed back against the wall. “One more thing,” I said. “Have you ever heard of the S.B.I. fooling around making deals with a guy that’s killed one of their men? Not on your life! They’re a tough crew, and a smart one. If they thought I had anything to do with that fracas last night, I’d be on my way to a Federal gas chamber right now, if I was lucky enough to live through the working-over they’d give me! Use your brains!”
She stood against the wall, staring at me, making sounds in her throat. One of her cheeks was starting to puff.
I started for her again. Her eyes got even wider.
“Ash!”
Her voice was high and frightened. Somehow, it cut through the deadly anger in my chest, and made me stop.
“Ash! Please—Ash—I. …” She put her hands up to her face and stood there, sobbing into them.
My nails were digging into my palms. I opened my hands, and saw blood running over my knuckles where the tape had torn away. There was some of my blood on her dress, where I’d grabbed her shoulder.
“Ash! Please—I’m sorry—It—it’s just that I didn’t know what to think.”
I don’t know how I got over to her, but then I had my arms around her, and she was digging her teeth into the cloth of my shoulder, and sobbing.
“Pat, why do you have to be this way? Why can’t you—” I was saying, and stroking that red-brown hair. She wasn’t a tough, self-assured woman who could gun a man down without blinking. She was a soft, hurt, crying girl, mumbling through tears, her body shaking.
I wasn’t a guy who’d fought his way through a war and countless battles since, either.
She pulled her face away from me, and looked up. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn’t scared any more.
I looked down at her. I started to say something, but she stopped me.
“I had it coming, Ash,” she said softly. “I didn’t trust you. I should have known better.”
She half-smiled. “I haven’t met too many people who could get worked up over not being trusted.”
I couldn’t look at her. I was going to have to turn her over to the S.B.I. some day, and I couldn’t look at her.
“Ash, remember the night you spanked me? Remember what you did first?”
I felt her hand on my face, turning it. Then she was kissing me, her lips soft and fresh, her wet face under my glance, her long lashes down over closed eyes. Her arms moved on my back, and her body was as light as a dream in my arms.
My own eyes closed.