Allies Read Free Page A

Miri said, and meant it.
    "Huh," Liz said again. "Your momma know
about it?"
    "No." She hesitated, then added. "I took
their money. Told her I found the purse out behind the bar."
    Liz nodded.
    "I heard two different ages out there on the
street. You want to own one of 'em?"
    Miri opened her mouth – Liz held up her
hand.
    "It'd be good if it was your real age. I can
see you're small. Remember I knew your momma. I seen what small can
do."
    Like whaling a man half again as tall as her
and twice as heavy across a room and out into the hall . . .
    "Almost fourteen."
    "How close an almost?"
    "Just shy a Standard Month."
    Liz closed her eyes, and Miri froze.
    "I can read," she said.
    Liz laughed, soft and ghosty. "Can you,
now?" she murmured, and opened her eyes, all business again.
    "There's a signing bonus of fifty cash. You
being on the light side of what the mercs consider legal age, we'll
need your momma's hand on the papers."
    *
    Braken eyed Miri's tall companion, and
stepped back from the door.
    "She's in her chair," she said.
    Miri nodded and led the way.
    Braken's room had a window, and Katy
Tayzin's chair was set square in front of it, so she'd get whatever
sun could find its way through the grime.
    She was sewing–mending a tear in one of
Kale's shirts, Miri thought, and looked up slowly, gray eyes black
with the 'juice.
    "Ma–" Miri began, but Katy's eyes went past
her, and she put her hands and the mending down flat on her
lap.
    "Angela," she said, and it was nothing like
the tone she'd used to deny Robertson, but it gave Miri chills
anyway.
    "Katy," Liz said, in her lazy way, and
stepped forward, 'til she stood lookin' down into the chair.
    "I'm hoping that denial's wore off by now,"
she said, soft-like.
    Katy Tayzin smiled faintly. "I think it
has," she murmured. "You look fine, Angela. The soldiering treated
you well."
    "Just registered my own command with merc
headquarters," Liz answered. "I'm recruiting."
    "And my daughter brings you here." She moved
her languid gaze. "Are you for a soldier, Miri?"
    "Yes'm," she said and stood forward,
marshalling her arguments: the money she'd send home, the signing
cash, the–
    "Good," her mother said, and smiled, slowly.
"You'll do well."
    Liz cleared her throat. "There's a paper
you'll need to sign."
    "Of course."
    There was a pause then. Liz's shoulders
rose–and fell.
    "Katy. There's medics and drugs and
transplants–off world. For old times–"
    "My reasons remain," Katy said, and extended
a frail, translucent hand. "Sit with me, Angela. Tell me
everything. Miri–Kale needs you to help him in the boiler
room."
    Miri blinked, then nodded. "Yes'm," she
said, and turned to go. She looked back before she got to the door,
and saw Liz sitting on the floor next to her mother's chair, both
broad, tan hands cupping one of her mother's thin hands, brown head
bent above red.
    *
    Miri'd spent half her recruitment bonus on
vacked coffee and tea, dry beans and vegetables for her mother, and
some quality smokes for Braken and Kale. Half what was left after
that went with Milt Boraneti into Boss Abram's territory, with a
paper spelling out the name of the drug Braken'd thought would help
Katy's lungs.
    She'd gone 'round to Kalhoon's Repair, to
say good-bye to Penn, and drop him off her hoard of paper and
books, but he wasn't there. Using one of the smaller pieces of
paper, she wrote him a laborious note, borrowed a piece of twine
and left the tied-together package with his dad.
    Liz'd told her she'd have a uniform when she
got to merc headquarters, the cost to be deducted from her pay. For
now, she wore her best clothes, and carried her new-signed papers
in a bag over her shoulder. In the bag, too, wrapped up in a clean
rag, was a smooth disk–intarsia work, her mother had murmured,
barely able to hold the thing in her two hands.
    "It was your grandmother's," she whispered,
"and it came from off-world. It doesn't belong here, and neither do
you."
    "I'll send money," Miri said,