[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

was not the kind she was accustomed to. So, being none of those three, the
mission simply wasn't in her line of work.
And in the past, even when engaged in work that was her line, Gweanvin had
always gone out with detailed and specific orders with a plan to put into
operation. But this time all she had been told by the
Special Assignments Bureau was to go to Jopat and bring the Primgranese
Guardsmen home.
Gromon had been watching her emo as she glummed over her problem, and was
radiating glee. "This is going to hand everybody here a hell of a big laugh,"
he chortled. "I can't wait to see old Dargow's face when I tell him! But slow
down. We're on top of my camp."
Gweanvin followed him as he eased down among the tall trees to come to ground
in a widely dispersed and rustic-looking campsite. A well-endowed young woman
with dark hair was watching them from beside a stone fireplace, on which a
crude earthware pot of stew simmered. It sent out odors fit to drive
Gweanvin mad.
"Gweanvin, meet Valla," Gromon muttered, a touch of embarrassment showing.
Gweanvin knew
Gromon's wife, a barb named Samis, who had refused to come to Jopat with her
husband. Guardsmen seldom had difficulty getting women, however, barb or
otherwise. Gweanvin was not surprised to find a young beauty presiding over
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Gromon's cookfire.
Valla's emo-pattern showed dislike and misgiving for a moment as she studied
Gweanvin's slim, almost boyish figure. Then, evidently deciding that such a
wispy though pretty girl was no real competition, she smiled.
Half-regretfully, Gweanvin decided not to disabuse her on that score. On a
wilderness world like
Jopat it would be foolish to get on bad terms with a talented cook, while
available men were more than plentiful.
"That stew smells wonderful, Valla," she cooed.
* * *
Before Gweanvin had more than started eating, numerous barbs began dropping by
that part of the
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camp. Some were old friends of hers desiring to renew acquaintanceship; most
were strangers eager for a close look at the doll-faced little dish of
dynamite whose skirmish with a whole squad of Lonnies had tizzied the top
brass of both sides. Gromon, meanwhile, drifted away, presumably to report to
General
Dargow.
Gweanvin enjoyed the evening being the center of attention was always fun. At
least ten of the younger AWOL Guardsmen, either unattached to women or lightly
attached, courted her unsuccessfully.
Not that she didn't regard sex as fun. It was just that she would not want the
barbs to think of her as a camp-follower and, with her thus classified to
their satisfaction, dismiss her from their curiosity. To accomplish anything
at all toward the completion of her mission, she felt, she would need to keep
the barbs attentive and if possible, mystified.
The cookfire was finally permitted to die down and the last of the visitors
departed. Gromon had returned, but Valla had already discreetly lured him away
to safety, evidently suspecting from the male attention Gweanvin was getting
that she had underestimated the Prima Gran girl as potential competition.
Gweanvin chuckled to herself. Women were bigger idiots than barbs sometimes.
That chick Valla, trying to own Nathel Gromon, who was certain to drift back
to his wife sooner or later. If he didn't get vaporized first, of course.
She yawned, went semi-inert, and kicked herself up into a secluded treetop.
There she hooked a beltsnap around a limb as a tether, and relaxed. After a
moment she activated her tightbeam comm, tongued her toothmike, and said
softly:
"GO to HQ SA-Forty. Smitwak?"
"I'm here, Gweanvin,"
came the response from distant Prima Gran.
"Report."
"I'm on Jopat, in contact with our barbs," she said. "Nothing new here since
the last time you heard from the doctrinists. They're alive, by the
way field-stripped and isolated."
There was a pause on the other end. Gweanvin giggled as she imagined the angry
thoughts that must be passing through the Prima Gran Bauble.
Smitwak spoke again. "Get us the precise location of the doctrinists," he
snapped. "We've got enough loyal barbs to send out a heavily armed rescue
party . . ."
"Cool down, Smitty," she replied. "I can dicker the barbs into letting you
rescue them without a fight.
These knuckleheads wanted to show how ornery they could be if anybody tried to
interfere with them.
They've made their point, and I think that now they'll let the doctrinists
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go."
"Okay, work on that. Meanwhile, the rescue team will be on its way. Now, any
progress with your mission?"
"What the hell do you think?" she snarled. "I don't even know how to begin.
Don't you have further instructions?"
"No. Continue under your original orders, Gweanvin."
"Those damned orders don't tell me a thing!"
"Sorry. You're on the scene, Gweanvin. In a position to evaluate the situation
more thoroughly than HQ
can and devise a practical plan to pursue. Give yourself time to think it
through . . . not too much time, however. The need for those experienced
Guardsmen is getting urgent here."
"Take my time, but hurry, huh?" she grunted disdainfully. "Thanks a lot. I'll
set your words to music and sing myself to sleep with them. Out."
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"Stay in touch, Gweanvin. Love and out."
A light rain had started falling. For a few minutes Gweanvin listened to the
drops bounce off her invisible shieldscreen. Then she went to sleep.
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Framed
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3
The general wanted to see her the next morning.
He was waiting outside when Gromon brought her to Battle Headquarters, the
only solid building
Gweanvin was to see on Jopat. Constructed of meltstone, it had feet-thick
walls and roof that were obviously flareproof.
Gromon and a few other staff officers stood around grinning as Spart Dargow
glared disapproval at the slim shorts-and-haltered figure. Gweanvin glared
back with cool disdain. Dargow was a seven-footer, several inches taller than
the barb average, a middle-aged man of perhaps sixty-five whose hair and beard
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were grayshot.
"You look the same as when I last saw you, and that was a good seven years
back," he growled. "When are you going to become a woman?"
She made a gesture of indifference. She was well aware of the striking
contrast between herself and the normal woman of twenty-seven E-years. But she
had never found the contrast disturbing. "Who knows?"
she said. "Maybe never, like some boneheads I know whose brains never
develop."
His reaction to the verbal jab was minimal. "I recall somebody describing
you," he said, "as fifty-five pounds of brass and fifty-five pounds of viper
venom. I see that hasn't changed, either."
"Right. I still weigh one hundred and ten," she replied.
Dargow's frown deepened, and his emo slowly shifted from disapproval to
curiosity. Gweanvin knew what he was trying to do understand her well enough
to categorize her, and thus discover how to deal with her.
"I keep thinking," he finally muttered, "that you must be the victim of an
incompetent psych-release, but that doesn't hold up. And I never heard of a
physical deficiency the docs can't handle. Just what the hell is it with you,
girl?"
Ask a polite question and get a polite answer, thought Gweanvin. "The
physiologists tell me I'm a mutant, with a characteristic of late physical
maturity."
"Oh . . . any more like you around?"
"I don't know of any yet." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]