She’s right: I lie for a living. Lie number one: “There were no drugs.” Lie number two: “As for electroconvulsive therapy, you might be misremembering cardiac stimulation: your heart stopped twice during the first surgery.”
She had not stopped looking at him. “Could be. But I seem to recall something a lot less benign than a few zaps with the paddles.” She broke the accusing stare, picked up her gym bag: “Anyway, I’ll never know if you’re telling me the truth or not, so I might as well let it go—but that’s the problem, isn’t it, Mr. Downing? I never know if you’re telling me the truth.”
He couldn’t bring himself to contradict her: that would be just one more lie. “You can be sure of this: today you’re free.”
“Free to do what? To become a commando-courtesan for a man I don’t even know? You’ve got a mighty strange definition of ‘freedom,’ Mr. Downing.”
“Captain, you’re not a civilian—and nor am I. For us, freedom isn’t a blank check: it’s a limited, occasional luxury—that we buy for millions of others at the expense of our own.”
She looked up: he hadn’t realized that the tone of his voice had become so sharp. Then she nodded: “Okay, you’re a true believer. I wasn’t sure until right now, when you got pissed off at me. Took two weeks to find out, but better late than never.” She rose, walked over to him, put her hands on her hips and looked up into his face from only a foot away. “Nothing else could make what you do excusable. I still don’t like you; I still don’t trust you. But I can accept a person who feels he is performing a necessary duty.” She extended her hand.
Downing looked at it, smiled, was grateful, but also thought: I should find out how good she is.
He extended his hand toward hers, but at the last possible moment, reached past it and grabbed her wrist—
—but she had seen, or felt, it coming. She let him pull her in—he had the advantage of height and weight—but stepped outside and past him. With surprising—fearsome—speed, she had her right leg snugged behind his right knee. He felt her trapped hand recoil sharply, tugging him toward a forward fall—but the instant that he leaned back to pull away, her left hand came up, grabbed a fistful of his right shoulder and shirt, and added a sharp push to his backward reflex.
Flat on his back, Downing looked up at her. “Textbook,” he grunted. “Well done.”
“Wish I could say the same for you, Scarecrow. That was pretty predictable.”
He rose to his spare elbows. “Just a basic check; sometimes, after extended time in cryosleep, reflexes go along with short-term memories.”
“Not in my case. Here.” She extended a hand to help him up.
He smiled crookedly, reached across with his own right hand—and again, snapped it down sharply on her wrist.
But she rolled her wrist around and out of his grab, even as she once again allowed herself to be pulled forward by him, this time into a trajectory that carried her across his body. But as her right wrist finished rotating, the outer edge of her hand came up around his own wrist, clasped hard. She landed on the far side of his body, breaking her fall with her right knee, and using her left hand to secure a double grip on his wrist. She tugged towards herself sharply with both hands. Downing felt his elbow snap straight and then strain uncomfortably: his upper arm was tucked unyielding against her right tibia. Four or five more foot-pounds of backward pressure on his forearm from the combined pull of her arms and his elbow would snap.
“Ow,” he said.
Her eyes—the color of pecans, the shape of almonds—did not blink or smile. “Do I pass the audition or do we dance some more?”
“That will be quite enough, Captain: I’m done.”
Her eyes flicked down at his pilloried elbow. “Yes, I’d say you are.” She pushed his arm away in the same motion that she used to stand up. “Like I said, Downing, you never give me reason to do anything except distrust—”
And she stopped. Her eyes were looking beyond him, her mouth still open a little, but the words abandoned. He rolled his head around, back in the direction of the shadowed archway.
A man was walking out of its black maw: Caine. “Am I interrupting—something?” he asked, looking from Opal to Downing.
“No, no, not at all, Caine. I just had a tumble trying to get in a little exercise of my own. Can’t keep up with this young lady. She’s too fit for me, I’m afraid.”
Opal offered Downing a helpful hand, tried to smile at him, failed. Caine stepped in, extended his hand as soon as she had finished helping Richard. “Hello. I don’t think we really had a chance to meet, other than a few minutes in the back of that vertibird five weeks ago. I’m Caine Riordan.”