Matadora

Matadora by Steve Perry Page A

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Authors: Steve Perry
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later, after she had begun to tire of the Hex. She understood other things, too. If she had only been a little wiser, she could have backed down, and given her youthful idol face, honor. She could have even fought and lost—pretended to lose—it wouldn't have cost her any more pain than some of her early sparring sessions with Instru'isto. But she hadn't been wise, she'd been young and stupid and full of herself. So she had taken the older woman, had beaten her in such a way that there could be no doubts about who was the better fighter. It had been a sin to do that, Dirisha knew that now. Hindsight, and useless, but she at least knew. Now.
    What hindsight would she be viewing in a year or five years or twenty years—assuming she was still alive? Had she really gotten any wiser? Or was she just fooling herself?
    Dirisha stared at the school, and leaned back against the scrub tree. She was more troubled than she could ever recall being. Damn....

CHAPTER TWELVE
    TALVO SEN, SUPREME High President and Beloved Ruler for Life of the Glorious Corporate State of Mzaha, smiled nervously into the photomutable gel of the broadcast camera's eye. Many of his eight million subjects would be watching the cast, and he obviously wanted to impress them.
    Dirisha was not impressed. President Sen was a man she cared not at all about, save that he was in her charge. All that mattered was that he survive the holoprojic cast—a thing ordinarily not something one would worry about, since appearing on an audiovisual net was seldom fatal, in and of itself. But somebody wanted to assassinate Sen, and Dirisha's job was to prevent such an assassination.
    Dirisha stood to the President's left, wearing a set of soft gray flexweave orthoskins and her spetsdods, watching the technicians flurry around the broadcast gear as the time for the program drew near.
    The room was large—President Sen could hardly occupy a less-than imposing office—a good eight meters square, and even the four technicians and all their equipment did little to shrink the space. There were no windows, and only two doors. The main entrance was ringed with detection gear—axial scanners, HO detectors and a zap field—and the emergency exit was a one-way that could only be unlocked from the inside by President Sen's right palm print. The floor and ceiling were both ferrofoam, and laced with sensors. Dirisha had inspected each tech as he or she entered, done a physical and hard-object scan, and a spec-chrome for possible contact poisons. The four techs were all clean.
    When she had learned of the broadcast, Dirisha had taken a quick-course in broadcast engineering. When she checked each piece of equipment allowed into the room, she knew what it was she was checking, and what it should look like. In theory, it would be almost impossible for anybody dangerously armed to get into this room, short of an all-out attack with heavy weapons.
    Dirisha had a couple of armored monitors set outside, to cover the building, so if somebody did throw heavy stuff at it, she'd get enough warning to hustle Sen into the emergency exit.
    She had it covered, she figured.
    One of the techs dropped a lens mount. The expensive piece of equipment thumped down on the thick carpet and bounced. They were a clumsy bunch.
    That was the second time somebody had mishandled the cast gear.
    Another tech said, "One minute, President Sen."
    The ruler leaned over and put the palms of his hands flat on his desk, and did a son of half-push up. It was a gesture he sometimes did when nervous.
    Well he should be nervous, Dirisha thought. He was not a popular man.
    Three times in the past week, people had tried to send President Sen to join his ancestors. Three times, Dirisha had kept him alive. A fanatic with a hand wand had tried to get Sen from a crowd; a woman cook had tried to poison the President; a religious cabal had sent a team of assassins with bombs against the ruler of Mzaha. Dirisha had stopped them all. So

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