Boss reached for his canes, struggled to his feet. "I'm seven minutes over the time your physician told me I could visit. We'll talk tomorrow. You are to rest now. A nurse will be in to put you to sleep. Sleep and get well."
I had a few minutes to myself~ I spent them in a warm glow. "High esteem." When you have never belonged and can never really belong, words like that mean everything. They warmed me so much that I didn't mind not being human.
IV
Someday I'm going to win an argument with Boss. But don't hold your breath.
There were days when I did not lose arguments with him-the days he did not visit me.
It started with a difference of opinion over how long I was going to have to remain in therapy. I felt ready to go home or back to duty, either one, after four days. While I didn't want to get into a dockside fight just yet, I could take light duty-or a trip to New Zealand, my first choice. All my hurts were repairing.
They hadn't been all that much: lots of burns, four broken ribs, simple fractures left tibia and fibula, multiple compound fractures of the bones of my right foot and three toes of my left, a hairline skull fracture without complications, and (messy but least disabling) somebody had sawed off my right nipple.
The last item and the burns and the broken toes were all that I recalled; the others must have happened while I was distracted by other matters.
Boss said, "Friday, you know that it will take at least six weeks to regenerate that missing nipple."
"But plastic surgery for a simple cosmetic job would heal in a week. Dr. Krasny told me so."
"Young woman, when anyone in this organization is maimed in line of duty, she will be restored as perfectly as therapeutic art can achieve. In addition to that our permanent policy, in your case
there is another reason, compelling and sufficient. We each have a moral obligation to conserve and preserve beauty in this world; there is none to waste. You have an unusually comely body~ damage to it is deplorable. It must be repaired."
"Cosmetic surgery is all right, I said so. But I don't expect to have milk in these jugs. And anybody in bed with me won't care."
"Friday, you may have convinced yourself that you will never have need to lactate. But esthetically a functional breast is very different from a surgery-shaped imitation. That hypothetical bedmate might not know... but you would know and I would know. No, my dear. You will be restored to your former perfection."
"Hmm! When are you going to get that eye regenerated?"
"Don't be rude, child. In my case, no esthetic issue obtains."
So I got my tit back as good as ever or maybe better. The next argument was over the retraining I felt I needed to correct my hairtrigger kill reflex. When I brought up the matter again, Boss looked as if he had just bitten into something nasty. "Friday, I do not recall that you have ever made a kill that turned out to be a mistake. Have you made any kills of which I am unaware?"
"No, no," I said hastily. "I never killed anybody until I went to work for you and I haven't made any that I didn't report to you."
"In that case all of your killings have been in self-defense."
"All but that 'Belsen' character. That wasn't self-defense; he never laid a finger on me."
"Beaumont. At least that was the name he usually used. Self-defense sometimes must take the form of 'Do unto others what they would do unto you but do it first.' De Camp, I believe. Or some other of the twentieth-century school of pessimistic philosophers. I'll call up Beaumont's dossier so that you may see for yourself that he belonged on everyone's better-dead list."
"Don't bother. Once I looked into his pouch, I knew that he wasn't following me to kiss me. But that was afterward."
Boss took several seconds to answer, far beyond his wont. "Friday, do you want to change tracks and become a hatchet man?"
My chin dropped and my eyes widened. That was all the answer I made.
"I didn't intend to frighten you off the nest," Boss said dryly. "You will have deduced that this organization includes assassins. I don't want to lose you as a courier; you are my best. But we always need skilled assassins, as their attrition rate is high. However, there is this major difference between a courier and an assassin: A courier kills only in self-defense and often by reflex... and, I concede, always with some possibility of error... as not all couriers have your supreme talent for instantly integrating all factors and reaching a necessary conclusion."
"Huh!"
"You heard me correctly. Friday, one of your weaknesses is that you lack appropriate conceit. An honorable hatchet man does not kill by reflex; he kills by planned intent. If the plan goes so far wrong that he needs to use self-defense, he is almost certain to become a statistic. In his planned killings, he always knows why and agrees with the necessity... or I won't send him out."
(Planned killing? Murder, by definition. Get up in the morning, eat a hearty breakfast, then keep rendezvous with your victim, cut him down in cold blood? Eat dinner and sleep soundly?) "Boss, I don't think it is my sort of work."
"I'm not sure that you have the temperament for it. But, for the nonce, keep an open mind. I am not sanguine about the possibility of slowing down your defense reflex. Moreover I can assure you that, if we attempt to retrain you in the way that you ask, I will not again use you as a courier. No. Risking your life is your business
when on your own time. But your missions are always critical; I won't use a courier whose fine edge has been deliberately blunted."
Boss did not convince me but he made me unsure of myself. When I told him again that I was not interested in becoming a hatchet man, he did not appear to listen-just said something about getting me something to read.
I expected it-whatever-to show up on the room's terminal. Instead, about twenty minutes after he left me, a youngster-well, younger than I am-showed up with a book, a bound book with paper pages. It had a serial number on it and was stamped "EYES ONLY" and "Need-to-Know Required" and "Top Secret SPECIAL BLUE Clearance."
I looked at it, as anxious to handle it as a snake. "Is this for me? I think there has been a mistake."
"The Old Man does not make mistakes. Just sign the receipt."
I made him wait while I read the fine print. "This bit about 'never out of my sight.' I sleep now and then."
"Call Archives, ask for the classified documents clerk-that's me-and I'll be here on the bounce. But try not to go to sleep until I get here. Try hard."
"Okay." I signed the receipt, looked up and found him staring with bright-eyed interest. "What are you staring at?"
"Uh- Miss Friday, you're pretty."
I never know what to say to that sort of thing, since I'm not. I shape up all right, surely-but I was fully clothed. "How did you know my name?"
"Why, everybody knows who you are. You know. Two weeks ago. At the farm. You were there."
"Oh. Yes, I was there. But I don't remember it."
"I sure do!" His eyes were shining. "It's the only time I've had a chance to be part of a combat operation. I'm glad I had a piece of it!"
(What do you do?)
I took his hand, pulled him closer to me, took his face in both my hands, kissed him carefully, about halfway between warm-sisterly and let's-do-it! Maybe protocol called for something stronger but he was on duty and I was still on the disabled list-not fair to make implied promises that can't be kept, especially to youngsters with stars in their eyes.