Read Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail for Free Online

it, and, refusing psych treatment, killed himself instead. Such things happened occasionally, particularly on the upper political levels. What didn’t happen, even occasionally, was what the boy, who just about worshiped his father, had done then. Taking advantage of the natural sympathy of the first families of Halstansir, Tarin Bul had plotted, planned, and trained to get to a reception for Daca Kra—where he’d assassinated the Councillor, in mid-handshake, by the rather quaint and ugly method of disembowling the man with a sword used in physical training. The boy was a prepubescent twelve at the time, which caused more problems than the nearly unprecedented assassination.
    Of course we picked him up and got him off-planet, where we had him evaluated by psychs, but he’d withdrawn from the world into a better one of his own imagination after carrying out the kill. The psychs could hardly reach him at all, though they spent a lot of time trying. Normally they would have simply done a complete wipe of his mind and built a new personality, but Kra’s family used some influence of its own. So now Tarin Bul was out of his shell and on his way to Medusa—but “not really. Bul had died as soon as my mind displaced his. I was now Tarin Bul, and I wondered how an ex-Councillor would take to a boy who’d killed one of his colleagues.
    Still, that would be a ways off as yet. I could see certain real advantages in the body—not the least of which was the fact that I had an extra thirty years or so on my life—but there would also be disadvantages as well. There would be the tendency to treat me as a child—and, because it was my cover, I had to go along to a certain extent. But though children get a bit more license than adults in simple behavioral areas, they are also subject to more rigid social controls. That realization led me onto the path of determining my best and most effective persona. The fact that Bul was a male of the civilized worlds born to a political family meant his IQ and general formative education would be expected to be well above average. The fact that he’d engineered a successful assassination and survived, even being sent to the Warden Diamond, was another plus. I would have no trouble convincing anyone that I was quite a bit. older than my years, which eased the problem quite a bit. Being a tough, smart kid would be an easy and useful role to play.
    I lay back down on the cot and put myself in a light trance, going over all the briefing information, filing, sorting, thinking everything out. Particularly important were the details, large and small, of Bul’s short life and family, since it was in that area I’d be most vulnerable to a trip-up. I also studied his mannerisms, nervous habits, and the like, and tried to get myself into the mind-set of a small but deadly assassin.
    By the time I reached Medusa I knew I’d better be perfect for my own sake. I had another assassination to add to Tarin Bul’s total still to come, and though I hoped they would underestimate me, I did not for one moment underestimate Talant Ypsir.

CHAPTER TWO
     
    Transportation and Exposure

     
    Except for the regular meals I had no way to keep track of time, but it was a fairly long trip. Nobody was wasting any money transporting prisoners by the fastest available routes, that was for sure.
    Finally, though, we docked with the base ship a third of a light-year out from the Warden system. I understood the situation not so much by any sensation inside my cloister but from the lack of it—the vibration that had been my constant companion stopped. Still the routine wasn’t varied—I assumed they were waiting for a large enough contingent from around the galaxy to make the landing worthwhile. For now, I could only sit and go over my data for the millionth time and, occasionally, reflect on the fact that I probably wasn’t very far from my old body—as I’d come to think of it. I wondered if, perhaps, he didn’t even