Spaceways - King Of The Slavers Part 16

She did not listen in, did not choncel Ram (as his sister had not) unless they agreed in advance. He was far more experienced at being chonceled than she was at doing it, and often knew when to make the request.

She did not choncel when she told him it would not work and he looked up with a quizzical expression, but of course she heard his spoken query: "What, Jan? What won't work?"

She told him, looking at him and liking the way he looked. He had accepted the injection that reversed the cytochromatic change of his hair's color, and of his skin. Though he retained some tan, Ramesh Jageshwar was straw-blond, an Aglayan who looked like an Aglay-an-for her.

"I have been thinking about it for weeks," she told him. "It just won't work this way. Me hGOO."

He b.u.t.toned off the financial reports he had been reviewing onscreen for the past hour. She knew he took in vast sums of money. Despite the luxury of this moun-taintop villa and his business expenditures, she could not imagine what he did with so many stells. After years of experience with Daura he knew how to mask his thoughts to a degree, and she would not probe his brain with hers.

"Why?" he asked. "Why won't it work? Isn't it working?"

She sighed and crossed the room to look out on the kilometers and kilometers of vista commanded by the windows of his aerie.

"They will find out about us, Ram. They will tell your sister. They will find a way to prove it to her, and she will begin talking. In anger, in hurt. She will tell them everything she can, and she will agree to testify. Then you are lost, and . . . so am I."

"While I think that no threats or torture would make 202.

Daura tell what she did not want to tell, I agree with you. I hadn't thought of it. Yes, in hurt and anger she might. What do you suggest?"

He spoke from behind her, and she shook her head, biting her lip as she turned back to face him. He sat half-turned from the big blank screen, an Aglayan who was king of the slavers.

Gray, she thought. Both of us. Or perhaps there is no white-for-good left, when an Aglayan is a slaver and furthermore the slaver. Perhaps we are not gray at all, but the absolute darkness of pure evil.

"I might be able to get her released . . . back here . . . but if I did that... oh Ram, you and she might take up again, and where am I?" She gazed at him a moment in anguish before adding, "Or ... I could probably kill her. She will be unable to choncel me, I think. We have our ability from the same source, and I think that means we can't choncel each other."

"You are telling me that you love me."

"Oh darling-of course I love you!"

He rose and came to her. His hands rose to her arms and gripped them tightly. His eyes were hard on hers.

"Choncel," he said, and she did, and he said, "Jan-ja, Janja-I love you as much as I can love," and she chonceled, and knew that he spoke the truth. She lunged against him. They were silent for a long while, embracing.

"And I love you without guilt," he told her. "I knew a lifetime of guilt with her; thirty years of guilt with my vicious sister. It is ridiculous, I know, but . . . its's as strong a prohibition among them as it is on Aglaya, a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p between brother and sister. Consider their insulting epithet: 'sisterslicer!' Janja ... I don't want Daura back."

"Yet you will also feel guilt at leaving her in captivity. If not now, eventually.''

203.

He said nothing, and she knew that he could not deny it.

"Then I must see that she is dead," she said, pus.h.i.+ng back a little to look into his eyes-blue, blue eyes-and the mind behind them.

He shook his head. "No. I cannot ask you or make you or even let you do that, for me. I shall kill her."

She looked at him and he nodded, bidding her choncel, that she might know his thoughts.

She did, and she chonceled what he could not know: he thought that he would do as he said. He thought that he would slay his sister Daura who had so long been his lover; slay her without pa.s.sion, without hate or love either, and with little remorse. He would do it for Janja, for himself and Janja, and for himself. She saw with shock that it was in that order, in his mind. She was first: Janja. And then their future together, and then the safety of him and his organization.

So much emotion rose up inside her that she thought her knees would give way and she might fall. She did not, clinging to him and staring into his blue Aglayan eyes while she read his thoughts, and saw what he did not know. He thought, now, that he could kill Daura that way and for those reasons, and Janja saw that he was wrong. He could not. She saw his true thoughts, his underlying thoughts; those that were not conscious. Daura was that ruthless. Ramesh was not.

Janja did not tell him. What will happen, will happen. If I must die, at least I have at last found a good reason to live, and . . . and that is also a good reason to die. For him.

She nodded. "I am their agent. I can bring her here, Ram. I will."

19.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

-Shakespeare, Hamlet "Do you know who we are?" the woman asked, the woman who was so much like Janja both in body and in mind, though twice her age.

They were in Hornet, its name changed again for this mission, and they were fleeing back to Janat. Janja had deliberately set course that looked as if it would take her out toward Qalara, and then had converted s.h.i.+p and occupants to tachyons and taken the Tachyon Trail, and again, and still again. If Ratran Yao or anyone else were somehow following, Hornet's SIPAc.u.m did not know it.

Janja's argument with Ratran had been long and often loud. She had won, primarily because knowing the thoughts of one's opponent was a tremendous advantage. Nor had Ratran Yao any notion of her ability -or of Daura's.

He had agreed to the release of Daura to Janja, agent Janja, and they left the TGO base (which was not on Homeworld, as he had told her, or on Resh, as he had told her, or any of the other places he had told her and was not indeed TGO headquarters, she knew now from 204.

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his mind; Ratran did not know where the headquarters of TransGalactic Order was, nor the name of its director. He did want very much to know, and for the first time Janja knew what perhaps only Ratran Yao knew: that he wanted to be Director, TGO. It was indeed a shadow organization, gray, and composed of gray shadow-people).

"I know who you are, pos," Janja said. And lest Daura think that she might be lying, or sure in false knowledge; "You are both of Aglaya, as I am. You were both stolen into slavery, as I was. You both freed yourselves, too, as I did. It did take me rather longer."

Another long silence followed. They sat together, the two blonds whose resemblance was almost eerie, while the s.h.i.+p conducted itself through s.p.a.ce out past Barbro Transfer Station. It did so very nicely without their help or interference.

The silence was painful. Onboard News Service broke it, but at once gave Janja something else to think about. It reported the gleeful welcome by many s.p.a.cefarers (and the uproarious opprobrium of others) of a new phenomenon along the s.p.a.ceways. At last a replacement had arrived for Ganesa and her hust-s.h.i.+p Be Lively, which had vanished with all hands a year or so ago. The new s.p.a.cefaring brothel, ONS advised, was called Stay Lively!. It featured some very attractive and superlatively exotic girls. Furthermore the s.h.i.+p was luxury itself. Not just an ins.p.a.ce brothel or a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, but a yacht. It was the personal property of the new proprietor of the Galaxy-serving floating wh.o.r.ehouse. She too served the clients, and her name was Seerava.

Janja remembered how excited Lady Seerava had been about taking care of those poor spike-heeled, corseted girls off Manjanungo's s.h.i.+p. How she had babbled of having purpose at last, and of her determination 206.

to give purpose to the liberated girls, along with employment.

Oh, Seera! I wonder if you had this in mind all along, while you drove me to distraction with your do-gooder babble! I suppose it is what they are best suited for, Jan-ja thought, making a face. And not even they could say whether they are willing wh.o.r.es-what will did Man-janungo leave them?

And I made this possible! Gray, gray! O Sunmother and Aglii and Booda and Lord Musla and Too and Lady Vikeand Theba and-and all You other G.o.ds or "G.o.ds" -what a gray, gray universe You all preside over!

Abruptly Daura-short, blond, calfy of leg, small of breast though not so small as Janja had been-snapped off the News. When Janja glanced at her, it was to find the other woman fixing her with an intense gaze from blue-tinged gray eyes just a bit more colorful than Janja's.

"Have you Deepkissed him?"

Janja nodded without breaking eye contact.

Daura made a tiny gasping sound and was silent for another long period; hundreds of thousands of kloms fled past the s.h.i.+p-although a kilometer was hardly a sensible means of measuring distance, from a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p on whose viewscreens suns in all their colors could be seen to have moved without quite being seen in motion; rather like the minute-hand on the archaic watches some people affected. After many millions of kloms-still no sensible measurement-Daura spoke again: "Can you choncel me?"

"Neg. And I know you cannot me, or you'd ask no questions."

"Because we both drank from the same man."

"Apparently it isn't merely legend."

"Hmm. And that swine, Ratran Yao? You chonceled him?"

207.

"Of course. If I hadn't known what he was thinking, I'd never have got you out, Daura."

"You chonceled that he loves you?"

Janja shrugged. "He respects me. It isn't love-it's hate. He only believes it is love, because we are both strong and respect that in each other. We hate each other, Daura. We wallowed in the s.e.x embrace and it was good and better than good. But it was an act out of our mutual hatred, not love."

"That's nonsense."

Daura-like, Janja shrugged.

Daura stared at her. "And . . . Kshatriya?"

"I do not call him by your name for him," Janja said, hoping to evade the question; hoping her non-answer would be enough, It was not: "Never mind that. Do you love him?"

"I will not answer," Janja said, looking at the console.

They talked without looking at each other. Two women who were mental superwomen, but not with each other. They might have been pitted against each other as spy and counterspy, in fiction. They were not characters of fiction. Two slender women with pale flesh and hair almost white. Daura's was very long; she had been long incarcerated, and was older besides. Daura, Janja was sure, was older and much wiser than she (and much more ruthless, calculating), and so she would not look at the sister of Ramesh Jageshwar. Queen of the Slavers.

"Does he.. . does he ... "

"Ask him."

Janja turned to her then; they were side by side in the adjustaseats before the control console of Hornet and the (artificial) window of the main viewscreen.

"I have gained you your freedom from The Gray Organization, Daura. You know that I am their agent-or 208.

was-and so does Ramesh. We cannot be friends; I understand that. On the other hand we need not be enemies. Surely there is no need for you to be torturing yourself."

The older woman glared at her, her face working, eyes bright.

"You will not survive this, Janja," she said. "There cannot be three of us. He and I have been lovers since we were-"

"-Twelve and fourteen," Janja supplied, and Daura gasped.

"Yess," she hissed at last. "Twelve and fourteen. And you are'after all their agent-or began as such." Her smile was not pleasant. "You will not survive."

Janja refused to look at her. She kept herself reminded of Daura's ruthlessness and penchant for violence-and apparent enjoyment of killing-however, and was ready for a sudden movement from her right. She stared at the screen. The little multicolored pinpoints of light and particularly the larger circles of brightness had changed, and their configuration was different. The largest white disk had vanished; that sun was "behind" them, now.

"You torture yourself," she said, "and now you seek to torture me with words and thoughts. If I believe what you say I should kill you, or return you to TGO and Ratran Yao."

"You know you dare not try to return me. You would not survive that attempt, either."

"We will arrive together, then. I have no wish to slay you anyhow. But-" Janja turned to face her with a level gaze that showed openness and serenity, rather than malice. "But if my life-reading ends, the s.h.i.+p automatically returns to base. And TGO and Ratran Yao. So, Daura. We are safe from each other."

209.

"Until we reach Janat," Daura muttered. Not only was her face full of malice, but Janja could cherm menace from the woman. Cherm, not choncel.

"Until we reach Janat," Janja said.

Onscreen, the little lights continued to change. Some grew and some shrank while others vanished, pa.s.sed by. One continued to grow larger and larger. Around it circled, in eternal begirding orbit, four planets. Janat was the second.

20.

Everything has by nature as much right as it has power. . . . good and evil indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought. . . . One and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil or indifferent....

-Spinoza Brother and sister embraced. Ramesh, wearing the little skullcap he and Daura had long ago devised, laughed and told them both that he would not have two women in his mind simultaneously.

"Now we all wear metal," he said, "like the barbarians they think we of Aglaya are. I with my mesh-cap and you with your belt, Daura, and you Janja in that ancient armor."

"Simulation," Janja smiled, and her fingerflip was deliberate; she would not mimic Daura's shoulder-shrug.

Daura's "belt" was a number of paper-thin strips of gleaming silver metal that began just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and circled her slender body down to mid-hip; from there a standard side-slit Bleaker skirt swung to caress her insteps, in ice-blue. Janja's twinkling copper-colored tunic was unfitted but clung; it was in imitation of an ancient form of armors.h.i.+rt called scale-mail. With 210.

211.

it she wore what she thought of as Quindy pants: red, they were quite snug above but belled below the knees like little skirts.

Ramesh's beige-trimmed mauve robe covered him from throat to insteps, though its sleeves were only three-quarter length. He was barefoot.

Brother and sister embraced, and he dialed drinks, and they raised three richly-detailed crystal goblets of kerala to one another. Janja still preferred wines, but kerala was Daura's favorite drink.

"Much, much better than that swill my captors have fed me, Kshatriya! Will our rescuer pardon us while my brother and I exchange our greetings in private?"

"It is the way of Aglii," Janja said, giving the ritual response, for on Aglaya it was the wont of those close to each other to withdraw for a few minutes after a separation.

They departed. She stood and stared out the great wall-window at lovely, lonely Janat while she waited, ignoring the kerala she had only tasted but smoking a Heaven High to relax the nerves she told herself (unsuccessfully) were not agitated.

They returned, and she turned to face them: Ram, frowning, looking worried and unhappy, Daura wearing a cold smile of triumph. Janja sighed.

It is now, then.

"Daura has told me of how you made your report to your TGO superiors, under drugs so that you told only truth. And of how you bragged to her on Hornet of how you would now have us together to turn over to The Gray Organization. What do you have to say?"