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better-dead list.”
    “Don’t bother. Once I looked into his pouch, I knew that he wasn’t following me to kiss me. But that was afterward .”
    Boss took several seconds to answer, far beyond his wont. “Friday, do you want to change tracks and become a hatchet man?”
    My chin dropped and my eyes widened. That was all the answer I made.
    “I didn’t intend to frighten you off the nest,” Boss said dryly. “You will have deduced that this organization includes assassins. I don’t want to lose you as a courier; you are my best. But we always need skilled assassins, as their attrition rate is high. However, there is this major difference between a courier and an assassin: A courier kills only in self-defense and often by reflex…and, I concede, always with some possibility of error…as not all couriers have your supreme talent for instantly integrating all factors and reaching a necessary conclusion.”
    “ Huh! ”
    “You heard me correctly. Friday, one of your weaknesses is that you lack appropriate conceit. An honorable hatchet man does not kill by reflex; he kills by planned intent. If the plan goes so far wrong that he needs to use self-defense, he is almost certain to become a statistic. In his planned killings, he always knows why and agrees with the necessity…or I won’t send him out.”
    (Planned killing? Murder, by definition. Get up in the morning, eat a hearty breakfast, then keep rendezvous with your victim, cut him down in cold blood? Eat dinner and sleep soundly?) “Boss, I don’t think it is my sort of work.”
    “I’m not sure that you have the temperament for it. But, for the nonce, keep an open mind. I am not sanguine about the possibility of slowing down your defense reflex. Moreover I can assure you that, if we attempt to retrain you in the way that you ask, I will not again use you as a courier. No. Risking your life is your business…when on your own time. But your missions are always critical; I won’t use a courier whose fine edge has been deliberately blunted.”
    Boss did not convince me but he made me unsure of myself. When I told him again that I was not interested in becoming a hatchet man, he did not appear to listen—just said something about getting me something to read.
    I expected it—whatever—to show up on the room’s terminal. Instead, about twenty minutes after he left me, a youngster—well, younger than I am—showed up with a book, a bound book with paper pages. It had a serial number on it and was stamped “ EYES ONLY ” and “Need-to-Know Required” and “Top Secret SPECIAL BLUE Clearance.”
    I looked at it, as anxious to handle it as a snake. “Is this for me? I think there has been a mistake.”
    “The Old Man does not make mistakes. Just sign the receipt.”
    I made him wait while I read the fine print. “This bit about ‘never out of my sight.’ I sleep now and then.”
    “Call Archives, ask for the classified documents clerk—that’s me—and I’ll be here on the bounce. But try not to go to sleep until I get here. Try hard .”
    “Okay.” I signed the receipt, looked up and found him staring with bright-eyed interest. “What are you staring at?”
    “Uh—Miss Friday, you’re pretty.”
    I never know what to say to that sort of thing, since I’m not. I shape up all right, surely—but I was fully clothed. “How did you know my name?”
    “Why, everybody knows who you are. You know. Two weeks ago. At the farm. You were there.”
    “Oh. Yes, I was there. But I don’t remember it.”
    “I sure do!” His eyes were shining. “It’s the only time I’ve had a chance to be part of a combat operation. I’m glad I had a piece of it!”
    (What do you do?)
    I took his hand, pulled him closer to me, took his face in both my hands, kissed him carefully, about halfway between warm-sisterly and let’s-do-it! Maybe protocol called for something stronger but he was on duty and I was still on the disabled list—not fair to make implied