Dorsai!

Mercenary

Donal shrugged his shoulders in the tight civilian half-jacket and considered its fit as reflected in the mirror of his tiny, boxlike cabin. The mirror gave him back the image of someone almost a stranger. So much difference had three short weeks brought about in him, already. Not that he was so different, but his own appraisal of himself had changed; so that it was not merely the Spanish-style jacket, the skintight under-tunic, and the narrow trousers that disappeared into boots as black as all the rest of the costume, that made him unfamiliar to himself — but the body within. Association with the men of other worlds had done this to his point of view. Their relative shortness had made him tall, their softness had made him hard, their untrained bodies had made his balanced and sure. Outbound from the Dorsai to Alpha Centauri and surrounded by other Dorsai passengers, he had not noticed the gradual change. Only in the vast terminal on Newton, surrounded by their noisy thousands, had it come on him, all at once. And now, transhipped and outbound for the Friendlies, facing his first dinner on board a luxury-class liner where there would probably be no others from his world, he gazed at himself in the mirror and felt himself as suddenly come of age.

He went out through the door of his cabin, letting it latch quietly behind him, and turned right in the tightly narrow, metal-walled corridor faintly stale with the smell of dust from the carpet underfoot. He walked down its silence toward the main lounge and pushed through a heavy sealing door that sucked shut behind him, into the corridor of the next section.

He stepped into the intersection of the little cross corridor that led right and left to the washrooms of the section ahead — and almost strode directly into a slim, tall girl in an ankle-length, blue dress of severe and conservative cut, who stood by the water fountain at the point of the intersection. She moved hastily back out of his way with a little intake of breath, backing into the corridor to the women’s washroom. They stared at each other, halted, for a second.

“Forgive me,” said Donal, and took two steps onward — but between these and a third, some sudden swift prompting made him change his mind without warning; and he turned back.

“If you don’t mind—” he said.

“Oh, excuse me.” She moved back again from the water fountain. He bent to drink; and when he raised his head from the fountain, he looked her full in the face again and recognized what had brought him back. The girl was frightened; and that strange, dark ocean of feeling that lay at the back of his oddness had stirred to the gust of her palpable fear.

He saw her now, clearly and at once; at close range. She was older than he had thought at first — at least in her early twenties. But there was a clear-eyed immaturity about her — a hint that her full beauty would come later in life, and much later than that of the usual woman. Now, she was not yet beautiful; merely wholesome-looking. Her hair was a light brown, verging into chestnut, her eyes wide-spaced and so clearly green that, opening as she felt the full interest of his close gaze, they drove all the other color about her from his mind. Her nose was slim and straight, her mourn a little wide, her chin firm; and the whole of her face so perfectly in balance, the left side with the right, that it approached the artificiality of some sculptor’s creation.

“Yes?” she said, on a little gasping intake of breath — and he saw, suddenly, that she was shrinking from him and his close survey of her.

He frowned at her. His thoughts were galloping ahead with the situation, so that when he spoke, it was unconsciously in the middle of me conversation he had in mind, rather than at the beginning. “Tell me about it,” said Donal. “You?” she said. Her hand went to her throat above the high collar of her dress. Then, before he could speak again, it fell to her side and some of the tightness leaked out of her. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

“See what?” said Donal, a little sharply; for unconsciously he had fallen into the tone he would have used to a junior cadet these last few years, if he had discovered one of them in some difficulty. “You’ll have to tell me what your trouble is, if I’m going to be any help to you.”

‘Tell you — ?” she looked desperately around her, as if expecting someone to come upon them at any moment “How do I know you’re what you say you are?”

For the first time Donal check-reined the horses of his galloping estimate of the situation; and, looking back, discovered a possible misconception on her part

“I didn’t say I was anybody,” he answered. “And in fact — I’m not I just happened to be passing by and saw you seemed upset about something. I offered to help.”

“Help?” Her eyes widened again and her face suddenly paled. “Oh, no—” she murmured, and tried to go around him. “Please let me go. Please!”

He stood his ground.

“You were ready to accept help from someone like me, if he could only provide proofs of identity, a second ago,” said Donal. “You might as well tell me the rest of it.”

That stopped her efforts to escape. She stiffened, facing him.

“I haven’t told you anything.”

“Only,” said Donal, ironically, “that you were waiting here for someone. That you did not know that someone by sight, but expected him to be a man. And that you were not sure of his bona fides, but very much afraid of missing him.” He heard the hard edge in his own voice and forced it to be more gentle. “Also that you’re very frightened and not very experienced at what you’re doing. Logic could take it

further.”

But she had herself under control now. “Will you move out of the way and let me by?”

she said evenly. “Logic might make it that what you’re engaged in

is something illegal,” he replied.

She sagged under the impact of his last word as if it had been a blow; and, turning her face blindly to the wall, she leaned against it.

“What are you?” she said brokenly. “Did they send you to trap me?”

“I tell you,” said Donal, with just a hint of exasperation, “Fm nothing but a passer-by who thought maybe I could help.”

“Oh, I don’t believe you!” she said, twisting her face away from him. “If you’re really nobody… if nobody sent you… you’ll let me go. And forget you ever saw me.”

“Small sense in that,” said Donal. “You need help evidently. I’m equipped to give it. I’m a professional soldier. A Dorsai.”

“Oh,” she said. The tension drained from her. She stood straighter and met his eyes with a look in which he thought he read some contempt. “One of those.”

“Yes,” he said. Then frowned. “What do you mean ‘one of those’?”

“I understand,” she answered. “You’re a mercenary.”

“I prefer the term professional soldier,” he said — a little stiffly in his turn.

“The point is,” she said, “you’re for hire.”

He felt himself growing cold and angry. He inclined his head to her and stepped back, leaving her way clear. “My mistake,” he said, and turned to leave her.

“No, wait a minute,” she said. “Now that I know what you really are, there’s no reason why I can’t use you.”

“None at all, of course,” said Donal.

She reached in through a slit in her tight gown and produced a small, thick folding of some printed matter, which she pushed into his hand.

“You see this is destroyed,” she said. “I’ll pay you — whatever the usual rates are.” Her eyes widened suddenly as she saw him unfold what he held and start to read it. “What are you going? You aren’t supposed to read that! How dare you!”

She grabbed for the sheet, but he pushed her back absently with one hand. His gaze was busily running down the form she had given him, his own eyes widening at the sight of the facsimile portrait on it, which was that of the girl herself.

“Anea Marlivana,” he said. “Select of Kultis.”

“Well, what if I am?” she blazed. “What about it?”

“Only,” said Donal, “that I expected your genes to imply intelligence.”

Her mouth fell open.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that you’re one of the worst fools I’ve had the bad fortune to meet.” He put the sheet into his pocket. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You will?” Her face lit up. A second later it was twisted in wrath. “Oh, I don’t like you!” she cried. “I don’t like you at all!”

He looked at her a little sadly.

“You will,” he said, “if you live long enough.” He turned about and pushed open the door through which he had come just a few minutes ago.

“But wait a minute—” her voice leaped after him. “Where will I see you after you’ve got rid of it? How much do I have to pay—”

He let the door, sucking to behind him, be the period to that question of hers — and his answer to it.

He went back through the section he had just traversed to his own cabin. There., with the door locked he considered the sheet she had given him, a little more closely. It was nothing more — and nothing less — than a five-year employment contract, a social contract, for her services as companion in the entourage of William, Prince, and Chairman of the Board of that very commercial planet Ceta which was the only habitable world circling the sun Tau Ceti. And a very liberal social contract it was, requiring no more than that she accompany William wherever he wished to go and supply her presence at such public and polite social functions as he might require. It was not the liberalness of the contract that surprised him so much — a Select of Kultis would hardly be contracted to perform any but the most delicately moral and ethical of duties — but the fact that she had asked him to destroy it. Theft of contract from her employer was bad enough, breach of contract infinitely worse — calling for complete rehabilitation — but destruction of contract required the death penalty wherever any kind of government operated. The girl, he thought, must be insane.

But — and here the fine finger of irony intruded into the situation — being the Select of Kultis she could not possibly be insane, any more than an ape could be an elephant. On the extreme contrary, being die product of a number of the most carefully culled forebearers on that planet where careful genetic culling and wizardry of psychological techniques was commonplace, she must be eminently sane. True, she had impressed Donal on first acquaintance as possessing nothing much out of the ordinary except a suicidal foolishness. But this was one instance where you had to go by the record books. And the record books implied that if anything about this business was abnormal, it was the situation itself, and not the girl involved in it.

Thoughtfully, Donal fingered the contract. Anea had clearly had no conception at all of what she was requesting when she so blithely required him to destroy it. The single sheet he held, and even the words and signatures upon it, were all integral parts of a single giant molecule which in itself was well-nigh indestructible and could not be in any way altered or tampered with short of outright destruction. As for destruction itself — Donal was quite sure that there was nothing aboard this ship that could in any way burn, shred, dissolve, or in any other fashion obliterate it. And the mere possession of it by anyone but William, its rightful owner, was as good as an order of sentence.

A soft chime quivered on the air of his cabin, announcing the serving of a meal in the main lounge. It chimed twice more to indicate that this was the third of the four meals interspersed throughout the ship “day.” Contract in hand, Donal half-turned toward the little orifice of the disposal slot that led down to the central incinerator. The incinerator, of course, was not capable of disposing of the contract — but it might be that it could lie unnoticed there until the ship had reached its destination and its passengers had dispersed. Later, it would be difficult for William to discover how it had reached the incinerator in the first place.

Then he shook his head, and replaced the contract in his pocket. His motives for doing so were not entirely clear to himself. It was that oddness of his at work again, he thought. Also, he told himself that it seemed a sloppy way of handling the situation this girl had got him into. Quite typically, he had already forgotten that his participation in the matter was all of his own contriving.

He straightened his half-jacket and went out of his cabin and down the long corridor through various sections to the main lounge. A slight crowding of likewise dinner-bound passengers in the narrow entrance to the lounge delayed him momentarily; and, in that moment, looking over the heads of those before him, he caught sight of the long captain’s table at the far end of the lounge and of the girl, Anea Marlivana, amongst those seated at it.

The others seated with her appeared to consist of a strikingly handsome young officer of field rank — a Freilander, by the look of him — a rather untidy, large young man almost as big as the Freilander, but possessing just the opposite of the other’s military bearing; in fact, he appeared to half-slouch in his seat as if he were drunk. And a spare, pleasant-looking man in early middle age with iron-gray hair. The fifth person at the table was quite obviously a Dorsai — a massive, older man in the uniform of a Freiland marshal. The sight of this last individual moved Donal to sudden action. He pushed abruptly through the little knot of people barring the entrance and strode openly across the room to the high table. He extended his fist across it to the Dorsai marshal.

“How do you do, sir,” he said. “I was supposed to look you up before the ship lifted; but I didn’t have time. I’ve got a letter for you from my father, Eachan Khan Graeme. I’m his second son, Donal.”

Blue Dorsai eyes as cold as river water lifted under thick gray brows to consider him. For pan of a second the situation trembled on the balance-point of Dorsai pride with the older man’s curiosity weighed against the bare-faced impudence of Donal’s claim to acquaintance. Then the marshal took Donal’s fist in a hard grip. “So he remembered Hendrik Galt, did he?” the marshal smiled. “I haven’t heard from Eachan for years.”

Donal felt a slight, cold shiver of excitement course down his spine. Of all people, he had chosen one of the ranking Dorsai soldiers of his day to bluff acquaintance with. Hendrik Galt, First Marshal of Freiiand.

“He sends you his regards, sir,” said Donal, “and… but perhaps I can bring you the letter after dinner and you can read it for yourself.”

‘To be sure,” said the marshal. “I’m in Stateroom Nineteen.”

Donal was still standing. The occasion could hardly be prolonged further. But rescue came — as something in Donal had more than half-expected it would — from farther down the table.

“Perhaps,” said the gray-haired man in a soft and pleasant voice, “your young friend would enjoy eating with us before you take him back to your stateroom, Hendrik?”

“I’d be honored,” said Donal, with glib promptness. He pulled out the empty float before him and sat down upon it, nodding courteously to the rest of the company at the table as he did so. The eyes of the girl met him from the table’s far end. They were as hard and still as emeralds caught in the rock.