Jezebel's Ladder by Scott Rhine

have infiltrated
before and sprayed graffiti.”
    Fortune grunted. They moved on to
the syllabus for the new agent and guard training seminar that day. It began
with a lesson on avoiding assassination, taught by Crusader. The former police
officer would also be instructing in self-defense. Jez fell asleep to a steady
drone of petty details.
    ****
    When Jez woke up, it was almost
nine o’clock. There were seminar students milling in the hall, and someone had
knocked. She had drooled on the conference table. Her neck was kinked, and she
was hungry. She whimpered when she saw her frumpy reflection in the glass of
the door.
    When she let the crowd in, she
noticed that several had donuts from the shop down the street. She waved to
Nena. Daniel and Benny were nowhere to be seen, just newbies. The fried
confections smelled delicious. Of course, there were none left in the box in
the hallway or in the lobby. Double-checking the time, Jez went to the front
door of the HQ.
    There, she saw Crusader carrying a
massive armload of books and charts to the front door. As he reached for the
handle, the heap unbalanced in his gloved hands and fell all over the ground.
She propped the door open for him and helped to pick up the fallen books. As
she leaned over, she said, “Here, let me…”
    The gloves were to insulate him
against the effects of the blank page. Crusader took the rolled-up page from
his pocket and jabbed it into the base of Jezebel’s skull. The result was like
a stun gun. She dropped to the ground, with only a vague impression of her surroundings
filtering through. He whispered, “Sorry, Buddy and Oobie refused. Trench Coat
said someone had to give you your medicine.”
    She had volunteered for the
experiment but not the humiliation. Crusader flung her over his shoulder and
carried her back to the classroom. He announced to the students. “This is an
example of what not to do. Never go out alone. Never leave the door
open. Never help a stranger.”
    He proceeded to give a
thirty-minute lecture on techniques and then handed out paintball guns and goggles
in the hall. They would hunt through the building in two-person teams. “The
last person left gets a ten-thousand-dollar bonus.”
    “Person?” someone asked. “I thought
we were teams.”
    “It’s like a big, dodge-ball game:
at the end, there are no sides. I find this simulates the desired level of
alertness,” explained Crusader. “There is no second place.”
    Soon after they left, Jez was able
to open her eyes again. An unmatched person, an older man, sat in the darkened
room with her. He looked like the swami, complete with the temple robe. Looking
for some way to cover her embarrassment, she asked, “Don’t you want the money?”
    “Don’t you?”
    Jez snorted, rubbing her neck
slowly. “I’d rather have my dignity back. Are you abstaining because you think
learning to kill humans is wrong?”
    The old, bald, yoga master said, “It
is what you think that is important. Is a weapon wrong?”
    Jez sat up, forcing herself to
think. “Nuclear weapons, maybe. They kill without discrimination. Weapons that
children can trigger by accident are bad, too. But as a general rule, weapons
can’t be wrong because any tool can be made into a weapon.”
    “So tools are not themselves wrong?”
    Jez warmed to the debate. “We shape
our environment with them. We made the first tools with our bare hands as extensions
of our will. So the question becomes whether the will of the user is wrong.”
    The swami bowed to her. “I look
forward to our discussions.”
    “What should I call you? Sensei,
Mahatma, Teacher?” she asked.
    “Whatever you like.”
    “Sensei, are you here to help
people who specialize in the mental aspects?”
    “Humans are not about being the
absolute best in one area. To be properly human is to be balanced. Our tools
are to help you become a more-rounded human. As to your first question, do not
try to win any zero-sum game. This is the first