Gateway To Xanadu by Sharon Green

sure she’d do more than let herself be stretched out to dry. I remember one crumb who tried to use her to prove what a big man he was; she put him face first into a brick wall.
    But there was also one who got the drop on her, and I remember what she looked like afterward. She isn’t bright when it comes to cooperating with something like that when she isn’t on assignment. ”
    “And since there wasn’t a mark on either one of us, she had no trouble with me on the trip,” Val summed up, understanding finally breaking through the confusion. “But what if I had-gotten the drop on her, and simply hadn’t beaten up on her? How would you have been able to tell?”
    “I was trying to explain how well I understood the trouble you had with her,” Ringer answered, with a sigh of patience, pausing to sip at his brandy. Brandy sits best on top of an exquisitely cooked, many-coursed meal, but Ringer had ordered it as a special welcome-home for me. Selesian brandy is very expensive, well worth every credit, and my personal favorite among potables. The only other time he’d ever bought it for me was the day I finally made it out of Blue Skies, a Federation hospital, after a particularly un”easy” assignment. When I’d first been brought in there, they hadn’t thought I would live.
    “. . . are any number of people in this Federation who have had personal experience with Diana’s sense of humor, and would love to explain. their view of the experience to her in detail,” Ringer was continuing to Val. “Unfortunately for them, none of them can fight as well as she can, or if they can, they can’t afford to have her on the sick list when there’s urgent work to be done. The common daydream is to someday get even with her, even if it means leaving a mark or two. It won’t ever happen, of course, but there’s still the dream; I was just offering you a chance to share it. ”
    “Why won’t it ever happen?” Val asked, and I could feel his eyes on me even though most of my thoughts and attention had drifted elsewhere.
    “Because most of those people believe they owe her even more than she owes them,” Ringer answered lightly. “She has a habit of exercising her sense of humor any time there’s a danger of the gratitude or sentimentality rising too high, and it does make a damned good distraction. She’s never learned how to take a thank-you gracefully.”
    I made a rude noise. “At the salary I get, thank-you’s become superfluous,” I told them both, not liking the bright interest I saw in Val’s eyes. “And my bank is fresh out of deposit forms for maudlin sentimentality. How about changing the subject to something more interesting, like where Radman might be right now?”
    I hoped I’d diverted them from silliness to business, but no such luck. Instead of taking the hint, they just laughed.
    “You’re right, of course,” Val said to Ringer, and the closeness was there again. “Most of the things she does have reasons behind them, but even if the reasons are good ones, her efforts tend to be on the excessive side. There has to be a way of breaking her of the habit.”
    “I told you,” ‘Ringer growled, making a face. “It’s been tried more than once, and by people who were downright eager to get somewhere. Even I gave it a shot once, for all the good it did. The only thing it taught her was to keep her distance when she played games, and to stay out of my reach while I still had the urge to strangle. A few members of the Council would give me a medal if I killed her, but most of them would be annoyed. They don’t like seeing agents of her caliber wasted.”
    “And speaking of agents of a particular caliber,” Ringer went on to Val, “I understand you have a certain talent of your own. If I’m not misinterpreting what Diana told me, you ought to find it a handy thing to have during the next year.”
    “It wasn’t exactly a waste during the past three years, either,” Val answered with a