Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

“Yes, sir.” (I didn’t try to tell him about the laboratory crèche; human people think all crèches are like those they’ve seen. I didn’t tell him about the plastic spoon that was all I had to eat with until I was ten because I didn’t want to tell how, the first time I tried to use a fork, I stabbed my lip and made it bleed and they laughed at me. It isn’t any one thing; it’s a million little things that are the difference between being reared as a human child and being raised as an animal.)

“You’ll be taking a bare-hands combat refresher but you are to work out only with your instructor; there are to be no blemishes on you when you visit your family in Chnistchurch. You will receive advanced training in hand weapons, including some you may never have heard of. If you change tracks, you will need this.”

“Boss, I am not going to become an assassin!”

“You need it anyhow. There are times when a courier can carry weapons and she must have every edge possible. Friday, don’t despise assassins indiscriminately. As with any tool, merit or demerit lies in how it is used. The decline and fall of the former United States of North America derived in part from assassinations. But only in small part as the killings had no pattern and were pointless. What can you tell me of the Prussian-Russian War?”

“Not much. Mainly that the Prussians got their hides nailed to the barn when the smart money figured them for winners.”

“Suppose I tell you that twelve people won that war-seven men, five women-and that the heaviest weapon used was a six-millimeter pistol.”

“I don’t think you have ever lied to me. Flow?”

“Friday, brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value. Any human organization can be rendered useless, impotent, a danger to itself, by selectively removing its best minds while carefully leaving the stupid ones in place. It took only a few careful ‘accidents’ to ruin utterly the great Prussian military machine and turn it into a blundering mob. But this did not show until the fighting was well under way, because stupid fools look just as good as military geniuses until the fighting starts.”

“Only a dozen people-Boss? Did we do that job?”

“You know that is the sort of question I discourage. We did not. It was a contract job by an organization as small and as specialized as we are. But I do not willingly involve us in nationalistic wars; the side of the angels is seldom self-evident.”

“I still don’t want to be an assassin.”

“I will not permit you to be an assassin and let us have no more discussion of it. Be ready to leave at nine tomorrow.”

V

Nine weeks later I left for New Zealand.

I’ll say this for Boss: The supercilious bully always knows what he’s talking about. When Dr. Krasny let me go, I wasn’t “wellest.” I was simply a recovered patient who rio longer needed sickbed nursing.

Nine weeks later I could have taken prizes in the old Olympics without working up a sweat. As I boarded the SB Abel Tasman at Winnipeg freeport, the skipper gave me the eye. I knew I looked good and I added a waggle to my seat that I would never use on a mission-as a courier I usually try to blend into the scenery. But now I was on leave and it’s kind of fun to advertise. Apparently I hadn’t forgotten how as the skipper came back to my cradle while I was still belting in. Or it may have been the Superskin jump suit that I was wearing-new that season and the first one I had had; I bought the outfit at the freeport and changed into it in the shop. I’m sure that it is only a matter of time until the sects that think that sex has something to do with sin will class wearing Superskin as a mortal sin.

He said, “Miss Baldwin, is it not? Do you have someone meeting you in Auckland? What with the war and all it is not a good idea for an unescorted woman to be alone in an international port.”