Audacious by Mike Shepherd

got to my class. It’s an eye-opening experience, let me tell you.”
    Kris mulled that over while she took another nibble at her lunch. It was really quite good. It was just that her appetite had done a vanishing act. She’d have to give this place another chance when she could concentrate on the food.
    “What would have happened,” she said slowly, “if we hadn’t caught that bomb yesterday? What if it had gotten who it was intended to? That looked like a very prestigious cavalcade.”
    “The papers would have said nothing,” Ruth said, munching something that she’d unwrapped from a grape leaf.
    “And the dead,” Kris said, reaching for one of the fig-wrapped items.
    “Heart attack, poor dear. Didn’t get him to the hospital on time. Or one of those rare, untreatable cancers. Or maybe a skiing accident. Amazing the number of eighty-year-old types who take up skiing late in life.”
    “Here on Eden!” Kris said.
    “That’s true,” Nelly said. “I’ve just checked the database. Kris, the most likely cause of death for people in business or government is heart attack, cancer, or skiing. Five times the planet’s average for people not in those lines of work.”
    “How many skiers died the day after our little shoot-out?” Jack asked.
    “None,” Nelly reported. “However, a large helicopter went down. It was taking twelve people to ski in Aspen.”
    “Nelly,” Gramma Ruth said with an impish grin. “Could you tell me how many of them had ever been skiing before?”
    “No.” The computer’s response actually sounded like a whimper. “On just about any other planet I could. Not on Eden. Here databases are a babble.”
    Before Nelly could go into depth on that, Gramma Ruth succeeded in cutting her off. “I know. I’ve had Trudy send me the best hacking and cracking gear she has. No go. This place is locked down tight.”
    “You know my Aunt Tru?” Kris asked.
    “Since long before you were born. We owe each other a life several times over. I’ve forgotten who’s ahead at the moment.”
    Kris nodded, taking in the quiet statement of life on the line time after time, and death just one misstep away. But Gramma Ruth had lived to sport all those gray hairs. And Tru was enjoying her retirement. Or near retirement. Or maybe not retirement. Last Kris had heard, Tru was heading for Alien 1.
    “So,” Kris said thoughtfully, “we all agree Eden has a problem and needs to change. Most folks even seem to know how.”
    “Though there are the usual suspects who like the way things are and won’t take kindly to messing with how it is, was, and ever should be their way,” Gramma Ruth cut in.
    “Isn’t it always.” Kris sighed. “But what’s one young Longknife supposed to do? Grampa Ray can’t expect me to snap my fingers and change this planet. I don’t change planets.”
    “I know a few that might disagree,” Penny said dryly.
    “Want me to name them,” Jack added with a grin.
    “But all of them were already headed downhill and in a hurry. All I did was nudge them a bit here. Maybe a bit more there. I affected what happened. I didn’t make it happen.”
    Jack and Penny thought for a moment, then nodded agreement.
    Gramma Ruth munched away for a minute on her lunch, then patted her lips and laid her napkin down. “You know, there’s a reason why folks don’t like change. You start to change a bit, you never can tell where you’re going to end up. History is full of changes that started out good, then went bad. People who got a ball rolling, then found that some thugs— Robespierre, Lenin— grabbed it and ran off with it where nobody wanted to go, where no reasonable person would want.”
    Gramma Ruth eyed them for a moment. “The problem when you’ve got all the news scrubbed down to just the nice is that you don’t know who the players are. I don’t. Do you, Kris?”
    And with that unsettling thought, they parted company.
    A fourth rig joined them for the ride back to campus. It