Tracker and Antoinette came off of the buffet line with their trays the next morning to a hail of greeting.
”Yo, Tracker!” Jay’s jaunty baritone voice bellowed through the quiet of the open room. Tracker’s head jerked around. Red and Jay already occupied a table and Jay was waving. “Over here.”
Tracker glanced at Antoinette, then led her over to their table.
She looked around. Other than noticing a swarthy, darkly-handsome man in a conservative, well-cut suit eating at a nearby table, the room was practically empty..
”I know how hard it is to find a place to sit when it gets crowded like this,” Jay said as he waved his hand at the empty tables, “so I saved you seats.”
Antoinette glanced at Jay with a puzzled expression, taking a moment as she worked out the joke. “Thank you too much for your concern,” she finally laughed.
Red was on his feet, holding a chair for her. She smiled up at him.
”Merci.” She picked up her fork and began to take quick, dainty bites of scrambled egg. She listened and laughed, unconsciously sensual and provocative, as Jay and Red bantered. Tracker, meanwhile, ate silently, watching her. When she finished, she started to pick up her dishes, but Red beat her to it.
”Here, let me get that for you, pretty lady.”
She smiled. “Thank you.” He whisked the plates and utensils into a bussing tub sitting nearby, then came back and met them at the door. He fell into step on her left side, opposite Tracker. She looked up, first at him, then at Tracker, and laughed. “I have two handsome men escorting me. How can it get any better?” She laughed again and slipped her arms through theirs. Tracker glanced down at her hand, surprised she would put him equal to Red.
Before they could step away, the man she’d noticed in the dining room walked up. “Excuse me,” he said to Red, then turned to her.
”My name is Walter d’Armand,” he said.
”And mine is Antoinette Duval,” she replied with a smile.
”I’d like to take you out to dinner this evening, if I may.”
”This is all too new to me,” she replied, putting him off without putting him down with the ease of long practice. She enjoyed his attentions but didn’t want to spread herself too thin. “I do not know where I will be or when I will have the dinner. Perhaps another time?”
”All right,” he said. “Some night soon?”
”We will see,” she said with another smile. “Now I must go to the mentalists.” She glanced up at Tracker and Red.
They skirted the Plaza and took the elevators up to Mentalism. Once out of earshot of Walter, Red growled, “Pushy bastard, isn’t he?”
She laughed up at him. “But if you are not pushy, you do not get the things you want.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah, I guess we are kinda trying to keep you locked up, aren’t we?”
She laughed again. “But it feels good, Red. To be wanted.” Tracker opened the door to the Mentalism.
”When will she be finished?” Tracker asked the orderly as he was leading her away for her testing.
He shrugged and held the door. “Haven’t the faintest idea.”
She paused and looked at Tracker. “Au moment. I will find out when I will be through.” She stepped inside. A middle-aged man with a beard stood by a console. A younger man sat at another console in the corner. “Please, m’sieur. How long will I be here today?”
”Just sit over there. It’ll be a while,” the bearded man said gruffly.
She hesitated. “Please, m’sieur. I need to know when I will be through here.”
”Just go sit down,” he growled. “You’ll be ‘zhrough’ here when we’re done with you.”
She looked at him with apprehension, then shook her head. “That is not good enough, m’sieur. I have people coming to take me to dinner and I must tell them when I will be available.”
”Young lady,” he said sternly, with an angry scowl as he raised his voice. “Do as you are told. Go sit down. Now!”
”Non!” she said. Anger and defiance thickened her accent. “Not until you answer my question. I will not have my friends made to wait, for no reason.”
He hunched his shoulders, folded his arms and fixed her with a glare. She raised her chin and glared back. In the back of her mind, she could feel the beast stir as it rose to her anger.
The tableau was broken by a chiming from the console at his side. The man relaxed and smiled at her. “Sorry. That was just a test,” he explained in a friendly voice, “to see how you react to being pushed around.”
The man in the corner relaxed and took his finger away from a button. “Doc, I think you nearly got burned that time.” The bearded man looked at his console.
His eyebrows rose. “My goodness. I see what you mean.” He scribbled something on a digital notepad, then looked at her. “Well, we now know that whatever it is you do can be stimulated by anger, don’t we?”
She looked at him and nodded. “Oui. The beast, it rises to my anger, and to my fear. And when will I be through here?”
He laughed again and made another note on the pad. “Not easily sidetracked either, are you? We’ve got a lot to do today. How about, oh, between six-thirty and seven this evening? We’ll be providing lunch again, as usual.”
”Merci, m’sieur.” Turning back to the open door, she saw Tracker and Red watching. Tracker’s ears were slanted back along the sides of his head. Like a dog or wolf about to fight, she thought. “Between six-thirty and seven, Tracker? Red? See you then?”
Tracker nodded and his ears returned to their usual erect position. “See you then, Antoinette.”
”Have fun!” Red said with a laugh as the orderly firmly closed the door between them.
In the small conference room on Level Five, DeAlvarez and Carfield looked up as Magnum walked in. “Hi, Todd. How are things?” Carfield asked.
”Pretty good,” he said. He sat down and leaned his elbows on the conference table. “How’s Miss Duval doing?”
”She’s coming along nicely,” Carfield replied. “She’s a natural shapechanger to tiger and she can dematerialize. Heals rapidly. Can resist moderate amounts of damage. Most of her abilities are restricted to her tiger form, which has about half normal human intelligence. She’ll have a problem communicating with her teammates; something we’ll have to work on a lot. Also, if rendered unconscious, she reverts back to human. That could be dangerous if it happens in the middle of a battle.
”There may be a problem, however. Unlike Animal, who uses a magical talisman to shapechange, Antoinette has to strip down before she can change to the tigress, and she is very attractive. She’s likely to cause distractions among the males.”
”I don’t think it will be as much of a problem as you’re afraid it will be, Colonel,” DeAlvarez said. “She’s a nudist in all but name. She’s completely comfortable clothed or nude. She swims in the nude every evening and doesn’t seem to care who is watching. I think that the susceptible portion of our population will get used to seeing her nude and the novelty will wear off. I doubt that anyone will become blasè about her looks, but the distractive factor will wear off quickly enough. Much as it did with Laura.”
”I hope you’re right, Doctor,” Carfield said. “She has to be able to strip, and she has to be able to remain in human form until the last minute, so she’ll understand what will be required of her in her tiger form.”
Magnum nodded and glanced at DeAlvarez.
”As to Miss Duval’s qualifications, I agree with the Colonel,” DeAlvarez said. “You have a jewel here. Both Doctor Carter and the report from the mentalists say that she is very well-balanced. Intuitive, not rational. Emotional, not logical. Strong-willed, with a well-developed sense of individual rights and freedoms. A bipolar world view – everything is either right or wrong, friend or foe. No middle ground.
”I foresee only two problems. The biggest one is, she’s a drifter. She forms loyalties to people, not to ideas or groups. Until she forms an attachment to a committed member, nothing will bind her to the Defenders. Two, she’s very people-oriented and lives very much in the present. This makes her very skilled in understanding what people are thinking and feeling at the moment; almost telepathic. However, she will have a hard time planning ahead, and a hard time analyzing the past and learning from it. Not impossible, but she’ll have to concentrate to do it. It won’t just come naturally.”
”Is she likely to betray us?” Magnum asked.
DeAlvarez shook her head. “No, and for the same reason. Unless she forms an attachment to someone outside of the Defenders, she will stay with us until she gets restless. I think we can trust her, but not simply because she is a Defender, as we can Scott Nolan, for example.”
”Sounds good,” Magnum said. “Let’s touch base on her again next week. How is Jerry Beringger shaping up?”
”He’s doing very well,” DeAlvarez said. “In the last two months, he has matured almost one year emotionally, which makes him fourteen, in a ninteen-year-old body.”
”He’s got full control of his powers,” Carfield said. “The only thing he lacks is good judgment. I’m glad he and Scott have hit it off so well. Scott’s a good role-model for him.”
Magnum said, “Okay. We’ll review them both next week.
”Another thing, Shal-ir will be arriving tomorrow. I’ve mentioned it to you earlier, but it is official now. Isan-ira made it quite plain that she wanted a stable home for her younger daughter. She did not want Bonner Institute, nor did she want the governmental housing offered them by the President. So, Shal-ir will be arriving to set up housekeeping here. Isan-ira and her daughters will arrive in a week or two.”
Carfield raised an eyebrow. “They’re letting her go? The exiled Clan Mother of the deposed Valani royal line and her consort?”
Magnum chuckled. “She refused to talk to anyone until her wishes were met. So, neither Shal-ir nor Larin-a would talk to them either. We must have made a good impression when we helped rescue them last year.”
”Guess we did,” Carfield agreed.
”Is the head of the clan always female?” Doctor DeAlvaraz asked.
”Apparently, yes,” Magnum replied. “Theirs’ is a pure matriarchy. She sets policy and controls the government; her mate becomes Commander-in-Chief of the military. Head of Clan and Clan Mother are synonymous with them. ‘-ira’ is the honorific for the Clan Mother, ‘-ir’ is for her consort and C-in-C, and ‘-a’ is for the heir presumptive. It’s a bit too complex to go into now. However, they’ll have a diplomatic circuit on their com unit, as well as all the regular com circuits. They’ll spend much of their time in diplomatic negotiations, but they insisted that they be able to go on missions. New Washington hit the roof, but she was adamant. She said, ‘The Valani are warriors, not vhar-sith fa,’ which means something similar to lap dogs, ‘and will be treated as such’.”
”Sounds like a formidable female,” Carfield said. “Hope we won’t have trouble with her.”
”I don’t think we will,” Magnum replied. “I told her that she and her consort were welcome to go on missions with us, but under our command. She replied, ‘Of course. The fights are yours. I simply require our right to participate in them to be recognized’.”
He looked at them. “That’s all I had. Anyone else have anything?” They both shook their heads. He stood. “Then lets go get supper.”
