Suttee

by Tyree Campbell

you'll come and find the place where I am lying

and kneel and say an Ave there for me . . .

. . . and you will bend and tell me that you love me

and I will sleep in peace until you come to me

"Danny Boy" by Frederick Weatherly

Sweeney deftly negotiated the pullropes along the passageway toward Da Cosimo, intent on a drink or several now that she had been paid for the contraband she had just delivered.  Vesta's artificial gravity invested her with a weight of just under fifty kilograms, or eighty percent Earth-standard, a reminder to her muscles of her planet of origin.  Superfluous, gravity was just one of the exasperations on Vesta, albeit the least dangerous.  As Sweeney drew herself into the tavern, the three men seated at a table in the far corner jogged her recollection of others.

In another place they might have worn uniforms, and even here in the neutral territory of Da Cosimo they had points of commonality, from the erect posture and squared shoulders to the hair shorn so close to the scalp that they seemed to be wearing sprayed-on berets, to the severity of countenance and bleakness of expression that marked them as very focused predators.

Sweeney, heart rumbling, had no doubts regarding the identity of their prey.  But it was too late to turn around and make for her spaceskip aDhainéal at the Vesta Port Authority docks.  In that moment of recognition she turned and aimed for a table at the opposite corner, seating herself with her back to the corner to protect herself on two flanks.  Unless one wanted to take on Cosmo and his two bouncers, one behaved in this place with civility and decorum.  An assault on her was almost, but not quite, unthinkable:  officers of Port Authority, if in pursuit of orders, might violate that neutrality.  Sweeney's security measures--the corner seat, the automatic pistol tucked under her belt and concealed by her gray sweatshirt--helped to augment her defenses against the "almost." 

With two fingers she signaled her preference to the bartender.  Moments later a serving girl arrived with a nippled plastic bottle containing two shots of chilled Laphroaig that would cost Sweeney five percent of the illicit fee she had just earned.  In the dim light of the tavern the girl's legs, bare from mid-thigh, fairly glowed with vitality, and Sweeney briefly cast envious gray eyes at her before withdrawing into her defenses.  The girl, at least, had purpose without the excitement of uncertainty. 

Sweeney sighed, and sucked at her drink.  In the back of her mind a familiar face smiled at her.  A fine pair we made, she thought, in the voice and lilt of her native tongue.  The smile dimmed, a warning that brought her back to the immediate moment.  Of their own volition her fingers slipped under the sweatshirt and wrapped themselves around the butt of the old Army automatic pistol and the magazine of seven .45-cal rounds on-call inside it.  There was no need for her to jack the slide back to chamber a round--she always carried an eighth in the pipe whenever she made rockfall.

The man from the far corner was approaching warily, eyes fixed on her left arm as if it were a snake.  His tongue flicked against his lips once, a lizard's stretching exercise as it prepared to take on the insect.  He reached the back of the chair across the table from her but did not sit down. 

Sweeney inclined her head solemnly.  "Snyder."

"Evening, Nollaig.  You'll notice I did not say 'Good.'  May I sit down?"

"As long as your hands remain empty, and flat on the table."

Snyder tipped the chair back slightly on the hinges that affixed it to the deck, then folded himself into it and leaned forward.  Sweeney's left hand remained under the table, but he knew better than to object.  "You docked at the wrong bay at the PA," he said, almost conversationally.

Sweeney's lips tugged at the nipple, and a stream of peat-smoked single-malt spilled into her mouth.  "As soon as I noticed the error, I took corrective action."

"It's the seventeen minutes between your arrival at the wrong bay and the corrective action you spoke of that are of interest," said Snyder.  His official tone added, "Of interest to Port Authority Imports Division."

"I was in the loo," said Sweeney.  "Which you know, having hacked my L-chip."

Snyder's expression told her nothing.  She always assumed someone was monitoring the signal from her implant.  Even in the asteroid belt artstate technology made surveillance of individuals a routine matter.  Given the ID codes and the associated L-chip frequency, anyone's location and itinerary could be traced, for as long as desired.

"For seventeen minutes?" pressed Snyder.

Sweeney shrugged.  "I sometimes forget:  never eat cafeteria food."

"And the cafeteria in question?"

"On Tally."

"Tally's not on your official trip ticket."

Again she shrugged, and hoisted the nippled bottle.  "I'm just here for a quiet drink, Snyder," she said, prodding him to get to the point.

"You picked up four containers on Tally."

"Did not."

"I'll amend that.  Four shipping containers were loaded onto your 'skip while you were in the cafeteria on Tally.  What was in them?"

"Hypothetically speaking?  I wouldn't have asked."

"Incurious?  Or discreet?"

"I wouldn't have been interested."  She drained the bottle.  "I assume you found no trace of these hypothetical containers on the aDhainéal when you illegally searched him." 

Snyder ignored the goad.  "If we had, this conversation would be held at PAID."

Sweeney stood up, her left hand still under the pullover.  "See you around, Snyder."

"Nollaig?"

She paused, and countered his presumption of familiarity with formal address.  "Yes, Inspector?"

"It's one thing to smuggle foodstuffs and agricultural items past the Port Authorities to avoid paying the tariffs and local ad valorem," said Snyder.  His voice straddled the boundary between official and amiable.  "The PA's haven't the time or resources to track down all you 'indies,' L-chips or no.  It's quite another to supply militant dissidents with the chemicals for manufacturing explosives.  Don't go bearding the lion, Nollaig."

*           *           *

Aboard the aDhainéal Sweeney collapsed onto the starboard captain's chair and allowed her mind to drift like a cloud, seeking its own level of relaxation.  She had escaped for the moment, but Snyder had been right:  transporting the components for pemex had been a venture of far greater risk than that to which she was accustomed.  Worse, it had gotten her noticed.  She drew scant comfort from having known the extra attention would accrue to her.  It had been time--it was time--for her to move in that direction.  The memories demanded it of her.

Once again she closed her eyes and gazed into the face in the back of her mind, the face of a spirit as stout as her own, but innocent still.  Now a shock of hair even more golden than her own short locks had spilled over his left eye, and she could see the familiar and endearing sweep of his hand, nudging it back in place.  He wore it long for her, only for her, because she liked to run her fingers through it, and to grab hold of it with both hands while they . . .

Abruptly she pulled back from her reverie, angry with herself for indulging in a moment of weakness.  The pleasure of revisiting such a memory had to be earned.  Not yet, she whispered fiercely.  Not yet.  Swiftly she initialized the 'skip for departure, not caring whether Port Authority granted permission, not even bothering to enTrack from orbit around Vesta.  A terse go-code from her sent the aDhainéal directly from the docking bay into null-Space, and she was temporarily immune from the predations of Snyder, Port Authorities, militant dissidents, and black holes.  She would catch hell and certainly a stiff fine when/if she returned to Vesta for not following departure protocols.  It was unseemly simply to poof out of existence even within the privacy of your own bay.  Neighbors, Sweeney supposed, would natter.

With the 'skip safely in null-Space, Sweeney unbuckled the harness that held her in the captain's chair and drifted to the bridge's aft bulkhead.  On the other side of the sliding door there was the loo in question, and she sat down, not to relieve herself, but to press a latch hidden behind the sanitary paper dispenser.  The deck parted at her feet to reveal a compartment between the power housing and the cargo bay.  On the 'skip's schematics the compartment did not exist; rather, the bay abutted the bulkhead that separated it from the power housing.

During the two dozen or so times the aDhainéal had been searched, it had not occurred to anyone that the cargo bay was two meters shorter than indicated on the schematics.

Sweeney peered down.  The hermetically sealed plastic refrigeration unit that served as a casket, secured by straps to the deck, had not shifted or been disturbed during the Port Authority intrusion.  She pulled herself forward so that her body lay stretched out on top of it.  A tear formed, but she would not weep, not yet.  "Rest easy, mo chroi," she whispered.  The plastic was hard against her body, and pressed against bone here and there, but she slept. 

*           *           *

In her dream Sweeney was carried along in a current of the colors of death.  Grays twisted and merged with pastels of turquoise and tangerine, and the terrain far below--she had entered the dream flying--seemed awash with writhing.  Hell is filled with snakes, she thought, although she could not have said where this notion had come from.  Doubtless, like the flying, it was a condition of her existence in the dream.

There was also a voice, and it was not hers.  The words oscillated, soft and loud and soft again, in cadence with the swirling all about her, but she had heard the words before and now in her dream she could wash herself in the sound of his voice.  He had been about to depart on an assignment when they had fought, and his tone was not kind, but it was his tone, his voice, and in the dream she clung to that like a child with a favorite blanket.  Everyone dies, he had said, was saying, and it is better to die a death for something you believe in.

"Death is still dead," she cried, had cried.  Then, ever so softly, "The only thing I believe in is you, mo ghra."

The swirls swallowed her then.  There was more, but when she awoke, she could not recall what it was, only that he had been there, inside her, one more time.

Content atop the casket, she went back to sleep.

*           *           *

Static hiss awoke her.  With deliberate movements she descended from the casket and resealed the hidden compartment and shuffled forward to the bridge.  She was barely conscious.  Somewhere in time a memory had been lost, and in a spot just behind her eyes she tried to retrieve it, but it would not reveal itself, it was not there.  Mo ghra, she whispered.  My love.  The whisper was enough for now.

"Sweeney," she grumbled into the mike.

Unsurprisingly she did not recognize the man's voice, but he spoke the right Irish words.  "Ar mhaith leat deoch?"

Yes, she thought, I actually would like a drink.  "Ba mhaith," she agreed, the code signifying that she was free to talk.  In an aside, she muttered, "Níl an dara suí sa bhuaile agam."

"What?  Yes, you do have a choice," the man snapped, countering her muted complaint.  "It was understood that you had made yours."

"It was made for me," said Sweeney, with some asperity.  "What do you want, . . . ?"

"If I must have an identity, call me Liam," the man continued.  "Your drink is ready for you, if you are ready, when next you make rockfall."

Sweeney's heart thudded.  "So soon?" 

"Strike while the iron is hot," said Liam.  After a brief silence, he went on, "You know, I never understood that saying.  You're supposed to press your shirt, not beat it."

"It's a smithing term," muttered Sweeney.

"A what?  It's a what?"

She shook her head, although Liam could not see her through the mike.  "Is cuma.  It doesn't matter."  She closed commo before Liam could respond, then instructed Niamh, the aDhainéal's computer, to calculate and impose the next leg of her journey.  Finally she climbed out of the chair and made for her stateroom.

The vanity in her stateroom was itself a vanity.  She did not need it.  The drawers and bins set into the bulkhead served much the same purpose.  But the vanity came with a mirror, and he liked to stand behind her and watch her while she touched a light powder to her cheeks or brushed a gloss over her lips, he liked to stand with his hands on her bare shoulders and slowly slip them down over the upper swells of her breasts, and he laughed when, aroused, she slipped with the gloss brush or the powder pad.  She remembered trembling . . .

And now she sat down in front of the vanity with only the memory of the dead behind her.  She sat very still, staring at her reflection like a shrike eyeing prey.  She had looked forward to the commo from Liam and the announcement that the components she had brought to Vesta had been assembled, that the explosive device was ready for delivery, but now that it had come she found herself strangely hesitant.  It was not the anticipation of the pain about to come, that was nothing, it was as nothing compared to the loss she had suffered already.  The hesitation stemmed from the utter irrevocability of what she was about to do. 

"'And how can man die better,'" she whispered, her heart unexpectedly calm now, "'than facing fearful odds / for the ashes of his fathers / and the temples of his Gods?'" 

He had said that to her, quoting from Macaulay's Horatius, just before leaving her for the last time. 

With thoughts only of him, with ears keen to the echoes of his words and his love-words, Sweeney broke free of her hesitation.  From one of the top drawers she withdrew a thick gauze anti-bacterial bandage, a roll of surgical tape, and a filleting knife.  From the roll she cut four approximately equal lengths, then opened the bandage and pressed a length of tape along each edge of the bandage.

She did not look at it, nor did she contemplate what the bandage portended.

Crossing her arms, Sweeney grasped the hem of her sweatshirt, and drew it over her head, casting it aside with a desultory motion.  Her right hand swept up the filleting knife.  She leaned forward, so that in the mirror she could see the back of her bare right shoulder.  With the fingers of her left hand she probed and prodded, until finally the pressures produced the nodule:  there, just there, deep in the muscle above the scapula, where it was next to impossible to get at.  A surgeon could find it, but surgeons were registered with the Beltway Ports Authority and it was mandatory to report even a request to remove the L-chip.  In theory it could be removed if one didn't care how much damage was inflicted during removal--and surely someone had removed it, else why the law that declared a person without one subject to immediate execution?  Liam perhaps knew such people, but he could not trust her, not yet.  Smuggling contraband was one thing.  She had to prove herself beyond all doubt before they would allow her to deliver the device.

Níl neart air.  So be it.

With a swift hard slash she cut the skin, the muscle there, and blood spurted.  Again she slashed, deeper this time, and heard and felt the grate of metal blade on metal and plastic nodule.  There was no pain because she was already in agony.  The sensation of pain--the tearing of skin and flesh--hovered in the dim reaches of her mind.  She knew it was there, poised to burst through her defenses, but she held it at bay by not caring.  The fingers of her left hand pried the flesh apart, now slippery with blood.  She drew her right hand up over her shoulder, seeking.  The unnatural articulation of the shoulder joint would have made her cry out if she had allowed herself not to feel the agony of loss.  A Dhainéal, she cried silently.  Oh, Danny . . .

Growling against pain, Sweeney forced herself to dig her fingers into the incision and pry loose the nodule, tearing at flesh and muscle and nerve there.  Finally she freed the nodule as one might pop a pea from its pod.  Drenched in her blood, it rolled over her shoulder and onto the top of the vanity and stuck in a red puddle there.

In relief Sweeney screamed, and put her face down to the top of the vanity, and fought for breath:  haugh, haugh, haugh.  Blood spilled onto the vanity top, and mingled with her hair there.  In her shoulder pain sizzled like a live electrical wire pulled loose from its mooring.  She gave a little shrug, testing:  the joint and muscles still functioned--not that it mattered now.  Warm blood reached her cheek, her eyelashes caught in it when she blinked.  One more thing had to be done before she continued to the next phase.

Sweeney sat up.  More blood spilled from the incision and down her back.  She pulled open the door to a small cabinet atop the vanity and got out a green bottle.  The label identified it as Jameson whiskey.  The bottle was not quite full, as if it had been opened only for a special occasion.  Sweeney opened it again and took a quick swig, and toasted his reflection in the mirror.  "For you, mo ghra," she said.  Then, without allowing herself even an instant to think about what she had to do, she tilted the neck of the bottle across her shoulder and poured whiskey into the incision, disinfecting it, cauterizing it. 

And she screamed.

The scream and the searing pain left Sweeney breathless.  Again she fought the urge to pause for rest, to recover, and allowed the momentum of what she had done propel her toward what remained to be done.  Quickly she scooped up the bandage and slapped it over the wound, pressing the tape to her skin as best she could, given the awkward position.  Her shoulder joint protested this fresh abuse, and she snarled it back into submission.  With the bandage fixed, she got up and went to the 'fresher for one of the folded bath towels.  This she draped over her shoulder before she laid down on her bunk, adjusting her position to allow as much of her body weight as possible to press against the towel.

Settled, she spoke in a voice made hoarse by effort.  "Wake me in an hour, Niamh."  She then closed her mind to the past few minutes, and allowed exhaustion to take its toll.

#

The bleeding had all but stopped by the time Sweeney awoke to the gentle pulse from Niamh.  Very carefully she rolled her feet to the deck and stood up, clutching a stanchion for support until the wave of dizziness passed.  The red-stained towel slipped from her shoulder, revealing an equally stained bandage.  She returned to the vanity and sat down once more, and prepared several small lengths of adhesive tape and another bandage.  It were best done without thinking, she thought.  She drew a huge breath, then ripped the old bandage from her shoulder.  Fresh blood beaded along the incision, but it did not open.  It looked to be approximately six centimeters long, and clean, for the filleting knife had been razor sharp.  One by one she pressed the adhesive strips across the incision, the makeshift butterfly bandaids meant to keep the incision closed.  Finally she placed the fresh bandage directly over the wound, and pressed it into place.

The L-chip--lens-shaped and the size of a lima bean--still lay in a puddle of her blood, almost dried now.  The sight of it aroused in Sweeney a flood of nausea, of loathing.  Nothing she had done before--carrying the stiffened corpse of her man to the refrigeration unit, or mutilating her shoulder, or reaching deep within herself to rip free the detested object--none of this had prepared her for the necessity now of touching the hated L-chip.  With steeled will, because she was not finished yet, she pried it free with a fingernail and held it up for inspection.  As a smuggler, she understood the Port Authority's desire to monitor her travels and activities.  But even those who were constitutionally incapable of deviant behavior had security implants, victims of an administration's quest to achieve a perfect society.  Space, she thought, was supposed to be free.

Was that freedom worth dying for?  He had thought so.  At the time, she had not understood this.  Now she did.  What had changed?

I could have accepted a life of subservience to the Port Authorities, could I but have lived it with you.  But you chose to live your way, to live free, and in dying you chose for me as well.  Because alive or dead, it is together that we are meant to be.  I see that now.

I miss you, mo Dhainéal, she whispered.  My Danny.

For a fleeting moment she thought she heard his voice, made husky by desire.  Ta me anseo.  I am here.  She stared into the mirror, seeking she knew not what.  His face and hands and body, behind her like before?  If she closed her eyes, she could feel him, feel his hands on her oh God!  With a mighty effort she struggled free from that memory.  Almost, she thought, but not yet.  There's still something left to do.

The face in the mirror stared back at her impassively, as yet unimpressed.  My nose, she thought, my face . . . my freckles.  She remembered his fingertip drifting across her face, playing connect-the-dots with her freckles.  Epona, the horse.  Aoife the witch.  A bunny.  Then his lips replaced the fingertip, and he would ever so slowly outline other shapes, on her face--on her neck her shoulders her breasts her stomach until she grabbed his hair and wrapped her limbs around him and screamed at him for God's sake just drill me!

Sweeney sat back from the mirror, gasping for breath.  Don't do this to yourself. 

A trickle of blood began to seep from under the bandage. 

Once more she looked into the mirror, and saw there this time a face at peace.  Perhaps there was just a line or two of pain, just there, beside the eyes, but they would fade in time, and reunion would ease the pain of separation as if to nothing at all, as if it were not now, nor had it ever been. 

Sweeney retrieved the sweatshirt and drew it on, then swept up the L-chip as she might have brushed a crumb from the table, and stalked off to the loo, to the latch that opened the secret compartment.  After easing herself onto the lower deck, she leaned briefly on the cover of the refrigeration unit.  Already the aDhainéal's transponder lay within.  If she lifted the lid, she might catch a glimpse of him as she dropped the L-chip inside.  Sweeney fought that urge, as ferociously as a wolf defending her cubs, a widow defending a memory.  If she saw him, even for an instant . . .

It was not the thought of seeing his injuries that unnerved her, for they were not extensive, merely fatal.  Nor was it the pale, cold, bloodless skin that put her off, for she expected as much--he was dead, after all.  It was the contrast.  She knew he was dead, but that fact had yet to reach her memories.  As long as he remained alive in her living memory . . .

She cracked the cover and flicked the chip inside.  My blood, she whispered, with yours, mo ghra.  My love.

Eyes dry, she pulled herself erect.  "It's time," she told him and the Universe, and withdrew from the hidden compartment.

#

An hour later Sweeney returned to Vesta, knowing they were watching her, were aware of her.  She could feel their distant eyes on her.  The intensified surveillance was to be expected--Snyder as much had warned her of this--but now she sought to use it to her advantage.  With a practiced, gentle hand she brought the aDhainéal to rest beside the low wall of a small crater some fifty kilometers from the Vesta Docks and main settlement. 

Immediately the countdown began.  She had, she reckoned, half an hour, seventy five minutes at most, before someone from Port Authority arrived to investigate.  In preparation for EVA she had donned her outsuit.  Hydraulics opened the bulkhead that separated the hidden compartment from the rest of the cargo bay, and lowered the bay door to rest on the surface of the asteroid.  In the minimal gravity she broke the inertia of the refrigeration unit and thrust it out of the cargo bay and onto the surface, guiding it manually toward a crevasse that perhaps had been opened by the impact that had caused the crater.

All the while, Sweeney wept.  The sacrilege of abandoning the body of her man in this remote and soulless world raked her soul like raptor's talons.  Her heart ached like bone against bone.  She paused once, twice, to clutch at her chest under the outsuit, so hard it hurt. 

Then it was done, without thought, without memory.  The end of the unit dipped as it reached the crevasse, and its momentum carried it into the fissure.  In slow-motion it dropped:  three meters, five, and stopped.  In her mind's eye Sweeney had already foreseen the next step, and had begun to implement it, carrying boulders and rocks to the fissure to conceal the unit, the casket, her man.  It was done.

Sweeney continued to weep.

As if burdened by Vesta itself Sweeney trudged back to the 'skip and boarded.  Prolonged minutes later, divested of her outsuit, Sweeney allowed her fingers, her digital memory, to program for departure, while she sat in the captain's chair and stared blankly through the viewscreen.  At last, with the lift-off of the aDhainéal, a palpable weight left her shoulders.  Now she was free.  They were blind to her.  They would not find her unless she wanted to be found.

The rendezvous point lay on the other side of Vesta, as far as one could get from the main settlement and still remain on the asteroid.  Sweeney did not know who would meet her there, nor did she care.  Nothing mattered but the device, the bomb they had assembled from the components they had off-loaded while she was in the loo.  The risk was theirs now.  She was free.

Sweeney made rockfall in the center of a crater, which offered little concealment but allowed such a field of vision that no one could take her unawares.  There she waited, cargo hatch open to receive.  She had, she calculated, another twenty minutes before Port Authority discovered that she and the aDhainéal were not at their electronically confirmed location.  An all-out search would commence at that point.  Whether PA would think to search the far side of Vesta, she could not say.

Despite the calm she had forced on herself, her heart began to pound.  If only her contacts would hurry . . .

Through the viewscreen she saw them, at last.  Two figures in white, transporting between them on a slideskid a dark object perhaps half the size of the refrigeration unit.  For a moment Sweeney hated them.  Of a certainty they had had their L-chips removed, and by a competent medic.  She, however, could not be trusted, unless she removed her own chip herself.  She did not concern herself now with their trust.  Their cause was not hers, no matter what they assumed.

The aDhainéal shifted slightly as the two individuals boarded with the explosive device.  Radio silence paramount, Sweeney remained unsummoned.  Presently the two figures appeared before her again, each with a hand raised.  In salute?  In farewell?  Though she doubted they could see her through the tinted viewscreen, Sweeney waved in reply, and enabled the 'skip into Track.  What remained to be done, after all that she had been through, was a cakewalk.

*           *           *

Seated at a table in Da Cosimo with her back to a corner, Sweeney sucked from a plastic bottle containing a double slug of Laphroaig.  She had expected to be accosted upon entry, but no one from Port Authority was lying in wait for her.  The L-chip, she recalled dimly.  Of course they would not know where she was.  But they would watch for her at her usual haunts. 

Briefly she glanced around the tavern for the "eye" that was certain to be there.  Several men were speaking into commo cameos, and it was impossible for her to determine whether any of them were reporting on her whereabouts.  She downed another long pull of whiskey and let her mind float like a feather in the light gravity of Vesta, float to the dusty surface of the asteroid and come to rest there.  All sounds save those of entry into the tavern she dismissed from her mind, and waited.  They would send Snyder, she thought.  Thinking she had betrayed him, he would demand this assignment.

It was not unthinkable that Snyder would mete out punishment in Da Cosimo, but once he spotted her, if he took the time to look at her, he would hesitate, pause, wait.  He knew her Army history, and knew what she was capable of.  He would talk.  That was all she wanted.

Any moment now, she thought.  It had to be.

Under the table she freed the old Army automatic from its clip and held it in her left hand.  Carefully she thumbed the hammer back, breaking it out of its half-cock safety.  In the noise of the tavern no one recognized the sound, although the metallic click echoed in her own ears.

Shadows and light moved near the entrance, and Sweeney held her breath.  Into the tavern stepped Snyder, followed by the two security personnel who had accompanied him the last time she had visited Da Cosimo.  Snyder turned toward her as if he had known exactly where she would be.  Across five meters their eyes met and locked, and Sweeney shook her head once, a hard signal of warning.  Snyder's hand arrested the arm of the man to his right, who had been about to draw his handweapon.  At a sharp order from Snyder that Sweeney could not hear, both of his companions held their empty hands in front of them.  Together they approached her table, the two companions flanking Snyder.  At the back of the chair opposite her, Snyder halted.

"Sit down, Inspector," said Sweeney.  Her tone did not make it a request.

"Sir," began one of the companions, "the law clearly states---"

"Belay that, Corporal," ordered Snyder, and sat down, very carefully and placing his hands palm-up on top of the table.  Sweeney waited patiently while Snyder inspected her, knowing that he saw the same face she had seen in the mirror scant hours ago.  "The corporal is correct," he said softly.  "We have the authority and the duty to shoot you on sight.  With your weapon drawn," here he lowered his eyes to the table, as if gazing through the plastic top to her lap, where she held the pistol, "perhaps you think you can take the three of us.  Even so, others will come for you."

Something between them had changed, Sweeney thought.  Previously they had been friendly adversaries--she a smuggler, he duty-bound to catch her in the act.  For just a moment she felt a pang of regret.  She had taken a small pleasure in the game between them.  Now the game was over, and clearly he believed she had lost.

"I don't know whether I'm glad it's to be you, or not," said Sweeney.  She took another pull of whiskey.  "Incidentally, how did I do?"

In the space of half a minute Sweeney had deTracked from null-space inside a large conference room at Port Authority, on the level just above the security computer that contained all the tracking data for all L-chips in the asteroid belt, had off-loaded the pemex device, and enTracked back into null-space, scant seconds before the explosion.

"Damn you, Sweeney."

Not Nollaig, she thought.  The game is over.

"Port Authority has lost all tracking capability," said Snyder.  His voice was low and calm, yet Sweeney sensed the anger behind it, cold and palpable.  "We have no idea where anyone is.  The data cannot be recovered.  We'll have to recreate the database from scratch.  Happy?"

Sweeney shrugged.  "It seemed well to 'beard the lion' while I was at it."

"While you were at it!  What does that mean, while you were at it?"

"Here's what I want---"

The Corporal let out a gasp.  "Inspector, you can't negotiate---!"

Snyder did not look at him.  "One more, Corporal, and I will dismiss you.  Go ahead, Sweeney."

The faint smile that crossed her face was a gift to herself.  "You did not find me or the aDhainéal when you tracked his transponder," she said.  "I want to be taken to that location.  I want a few moments there, nothing more."

"If I refuse?"

Sweeney sat back, her face contemplative.  "Maybe I can take the three of you," she said.  "Maybe not.  But I will get off all eight rounds.  Some of them might strike people who had nothing to do with any of this."  She paused, drumming the fingers of her free hand on the table top.  "I'll want your word, Inspector."

"I accept your conditions," said Snyder.  "You have my word."

Carefully Sweeney raised her left hand and passed the pistol across the table to Snyder.

*           *           *

By the time they reached the far side of Vesta the sun, a point of starlight not quite a disk, had risen.  While Sweeney remained under guard, Snyder and the corporal went EVA.  After some ten minutes had passed, during which Sweeney wondered whether Snyder was reneging on his word, she was sent for.

Port Authority had discovered her ruse.  The rocks had been removed from the fissure, and the refrigeration unit had been opened.  Through the tinted visor of her helmet Sweeney saw that the lid had been left open, exposing the corpse of her man to space--or perhaps it had just now been opened.  She had supposed that depth of understanding to be beyond Snyder.  On the other hand, it was convenient if not prescient. 

She did not look at them as she knelt down on the surface of Vesta, beside the fissure, peering down into it.  Inside the helmet her lips moved.  "Ave, Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.  Benedicta tu in mulieribus . . . "

"Sweeney," said Snyder, after she had fallen silent.

Sweeney stood up.  Still gazing into the fissure, she whispered, "I love you."  Then she straightened.

"We will recover," insisted Snyder.  "All this damage you did, and for what?  Do you truly imagine that you have furthered your cause by all this?"

Sweeney smiled indulgently, though he could not see her through the visor.  "What I did was not about the cause, Snyder.  It was never about the cause."

She turned slightly to face him, steeling herself for one final act, imprinting it on her mind so that even in death she would know what to do.  She had nothing more to say, now.  Through the visor she saw Snyder raise his right arm, so that her pistol was aimed at her head.  He seemed to hesitate, as if he were waiting for a final word from her, or were trying to muster some words to say to her. 

At last she saw a flash of light and felt simultaneously a terrible crimson impact.  There was the sound of air escaping and the sensation of blackness shrouding the image she had implanted of her final act.

Fading, Sweeney twisted and spilled into the fissure, and as cold darkness won out she landed on top of her man.