"I don"t remember coming her willingly." She smiled a lazy, devilish, sensuous smile, and circled his neck with her arm. "Whether I am a prisoner now is for you to say."
He shook his head, and he spoke low and quietly. "You are emphatically not a prisoner, Jan."
She pulled him down to her. "I am," she said, ""whether you think so or not.""
After they had kissed, rubbing their bodies together gently so that only the surfaces touched in soft all-body caresses, he spoke again, in that quiet, low voice.
"Then you will be free today. I do not think of you as a prisoner."
And what did I say I am-a dam" good TGO agent? Again she showed him the lazy smile he loved; a smile that was not Daura"s at all. "Ah . . .but I didn"t say that I am an unwilling prisoner, my Ram."
She drew him down again, and in moments they were panting into each other"s mouths and in minutes more she was crying out as once again she received his seed. After a few more minutes he came out of her softly, and then both of them were at her with hands at v.u.l.v.a and nipples, mildly mistreating both, and within a minute more she was screaming anew in a boiling release.
Soon they rose and showered and dressed. Janja was delighted to see what was laid out for her: the piratical clothing she had worn when Redhand Gopal had brought her here-the protective white body-stocking, the black vest and belt and gloves. Yet these were not the garments she had worn. The skintight body-stocking was of the newer monofilamental metallic weave that 188.
was spun out, at tremendous expense and with an ever more transcendent retail price, into fabric softer and thinner and far more beautiful than silver lame had ever been. This garment was deceptively lightweight. She glided into it.
The belt was jeweled, and the gems were real. So was the stopper in its holster. It bore his crest on the b.u.t.t.
So did the one he wore, when they met again outside the wonderful large room that was hers, with one entire wall a hologram of Aglayan savannah and forest. He wore a jumpsuit in a chocolate brown that was neither loose nor snug. The pants-legs bloused over his boots.
"d.a.m.n!" he said with a glad smile, "You look wonderful, madam-good enough to f.u.c.k."
"You just did," she said, thrusting an elbow at his ribs.
"d.a.m.n."
In the swift, unmarked little flyer he used, its armor and armaments well disguised, they soared out from the great hill surrounded by his citadel. Half around unpopulated Janat they swooped, and down to a mountain, and into that mountain, and into an una.s.sumingly raw-looking cave-mouth. Inside, it was far from una.s.suming or raw, but presumptuous and sumptuous. A great well-lighted cavern begun time out of mind by Nature and completed by the money and workers of Ramesh Jageshwar Kshatriya.
There lay the sleek charcoal-gray ship with its black trim: Hornet. Inside were the most modern equipment and accommodations. In its hide, ready to slither out and become unequivocally deadly, were the most modern of weapons that Rat Yao had been able to provide with TGO money. Janja saw that the ship was Hornet no longer. On its sleek flanks was painted the new name she had not known about: KSHATRIYA JANSA.
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With Janja at the controls-hardly necessary, since ship"s puter, housed in a cube a half-meter on a side, took as complete control as it was allowed-they fled out across Janat, a streak of black and deepest gray impatiently ready to take on more speed and rise beyond the clouds, beyond a sky that was yellow and white with a bit of blue.
Back they came, Janja laughing and her eyes flashing, to swoop once more within the cavern, Ram pretending fear all the way. The three loyal servicers-guards, all men, were awaiting the emergence of their master and his leman. They waited. And waited, for Janja would not leave the ship without making love within its handsome sh.e.l.l, and Ram would deny her nothing-certainly not that.
At last they emerged, the master and his leman. Yet she was not that. She was his mistress, which did not mean leman or doxy or paramour or wh.o.r.e but was merely the feminine form of "master."
"Good ship," he commented.
"Good ship-handler too," she said, with eyes alight. "And you were scared, weren"t you!"
"Oh sure. Scared half to death. Biting my nails all the way. Want to go again?"
No, and they returned to the aerie he called Citadel Cuesta. They were old words from a dead Homeworlder language, describing a fortress on a hill, one side of which was a sheer drop and the other a long scarp. That did not matter; "Citadel Cuesta" was marvelously exotic. Inside he shifted to the robe he loved, while requesting that she remain in the silver and black that hugged her so lovingly. He liked it; it was s.e.xy. Janja was more than willing to comply.
"All that worries me, Jansa, is your own recklessness in a ship like that," he said, lifting his gla.s.s-not only 190.
was it not a pla.s.s made of plas, it was etched crystal and it rang. "You have one dreadful fault. You have more bravery than sense."
"Well, you don"t have to worry about me in a ship like that one," she said, overdoing the archness. "I"ll just stick to that one, not one like it."
"Twit me about my grammar and I"ll rape you, rotten b.i.t.c.h!"
"Twit. . .twit. . . twit. . . "
She was grinning and he chuckled. Then she c.o.c.ked her head, sipping, to show him that she was listening.
"Your action regarding Shieda was senseless; your reaction and strutting about after his death, allowing yourself to be taken-that was simply stupid." He smiled to show her that the sting in the word was not his doing; that he was stating a fact, admonishing rather than chastising or attacking.
"Wrong," she said in a strong voice, and set down her drink with an air of finality and determination. "I wanted to be taken. I wanted to be brought to you, to be here. I wanted to be sliced by you, and I wanted to be alone with you here this way, right now."
He stared at her intense eyes, which were staring. He sat forward sharply. "Wha-why?"
Janja told him. She told him all of it this time, naming Ratran Yao and going into detail about Daura"s kidnap and Janja"s training. He listened, and he repeated his one-word question: "Why?"
Before he could move to counter her, she took from its holster the stopper he had given her . . . and just as his eyes flared, she tossed the nasty little cylinder to him. He caught it in a reflex movement unslowed by his shock. Almost at once, he laid it on the divan beside him without looking at it. Both of them knew the stopper 191.
was in fine working order. His giving it to her had been a sign of trust. She had tested it, outside, without feeling sorry for the weird orange lizard she Fried.
There were nearly as many lizards in the universe as people. Cheap, both of them.
He repeated himself still again. "You could have used it," he said. "Then, or on the ship when we were alone, and kept on going. You could have used it and taken me anywhere or killed me. Why didn"t you? Why have you told me all this, TGO agent?"
Janja shrugged. "You know, Ram. You know my story, and you know me. All you have to do is get used to calling me Janja rather than Jansa, and that doesn"t matter. I don"t belong on Aglaya any more, and I don"t belong with them-with TGO. You have more honor than Ratran Yao or any of his Gray Organization. I think you are worthy of Aglaya, Ram. I belong with you, Ram. If you don"t agree . . . you have the stopper, now."
He gazed at her, studying her. She searched his face for pain. He closed his eyes. Trying not to cherm, she chermed no menace. He picked up the stopper and her heartbeat stepped up. He looked at the weapon distastefully, sadly, and leveled it at her. Janja"s cherming ability gave no warning, but she held her breath as she waited, just the same. She had gotten around Ratran first, by having the clammup taken out of her mind so that she could talk openly on this mission, once her captor had said one of the releasing phrases. She and Rat had foreseen that she might need to tell Ram who and what she was.
Now the next hurdle. She had got past Rat; would she get past Ramesh?
He tossed her the stopper.
She didn"t catch it. Instead she batted it aside with her 192.
wrist. It rolled across the carpet and was swiftly joined by two bodies not at all interested in the weapon. The stopper lay forgotten while Ram and Janja hurled themselves into their wildest bout of lovemaking yet.
He had denied her what she had started to do, weeks ago, and then had asked for. No. His first act with his sister, he had told her, had been her taking him in her mouth when she was twelve and he fourteen, to suck his seed from him. She had done it frequently, ever after, because she loved it and so did he. He had not allowed that to Janja. He had not been ready to admit that much, to give that much.
This time she gave him no opportunity to demur or pull back, knowing as he knew that all prohibitions were at an end between them.
While his mouth worried at hers, seeking simultaneously to enter and to enclose it in his fiery enthusiasm, her fingers caressed the inside of his thigh. She stroked and squeezed and caressed until, by unspoken common accord, they separated and sprang to their feet to strip. They lurched as if drunk, and that could have accounted for the glaze in their eyes. Neither was drunk-not on alcohol or any other drug except each other.
The seams of her body-stocking ran down both shoulders and over her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and down the fronts of her legs. Hurling the belt from her, she touched the tiny depolarizing mechanism in her left armpit. The taut-stretched cloth sprang away like a clipped fence, and fell from her. Her clothing fell to the green-gold carpet with his, and before he could move she dropped to her knees. Her hands shot out.
One clutched his haunch, pulling him to her, while the other guided him into her mouth. He grunted at the feel of the humid clasp. She had to do it, had to try, she had to attempt, again and again, to try to become whole.
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She was an Aglayan woman, and yet she was not on Aglaya and she was not complete, not whole. She wanted to do this and it was more than that. It was necessary to a woman of Aglaya, mandatory; an obligatory act of f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o.
She exerted all the power she possessed in that first sunken-cheeked suction, as if seeking to drag rather than to coax his s.e.m.e.n from him in a moment, lest he refuse her. Yet that was impossible, and not truly her goal. She knew his control. She knew his ability to maintain an erection for an hour or longer, putting off and putting off that final helpless flurry of action that was a race to climax. Too, less than three hours had pa.s.sed since they had sprawled half on and half off the captain"s couch of the s.p.a.cer Kshatriya Jansa, his gift to her. He was not a boy, to spurt again so soon, despite his excitement.
She drew back her head to tease him with her hot breath, and he did not withdraw while she teased and squeezed, and poked with her tongue until he shivered and groaned.
"Ah G.o.d, that"s good, you"re good," he murmured, quivering, and he remained where he was.
She drew him into her mouth again, her lips caressing him and shielding him from her teeth, while he looked down at her with glazing eyes. He watched the sleek blond head that bobbed more and more frenetically. The contrast of that long dark shaft disappearing into the soft paleness of her face was irresistible. It made him hunch and groan and stroke her hair, trying not to grasp it. Her ravenous mouth seemed unable to get enough of him, to do enough to and with and for his beloved slicer, which she was thinking of in Aglayan terms, insofar as she was capable of thought: lifegiver. His beloved lifegiver.
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He groaned, again and again, and shudders went through him as wordless exclamations gusted from his mouth-a mouth he could not close. Then, because the urgency came upon him and he had to, now, he took over. He bent a little to seize her head. With her cheeks close-pressed between his hands, he tightened his small taut b.u.t.tocks still more and thrust, thrust, plunging himself in and out of her face until she moaned with the impalement, the use that, for the first time, she welcomed. And relished.
Her hand felt the new tensing of his b.u.t.tocks as he thrust harder, groaning as he lost control and plunged deeper into her face. She maintained her strong suction when it began and while he spurted and when it had ended, until he was nearly screaming with the exquisite pleasure-pain of his climaxing into the powerfully sucking mouth.
Staggering back, he collapsed onto the couch and sprawled weakly, gasping. Janja sank lower, still on her knees, and pillowed her face on his thigh while she swallowed again and again.
17.
To the sick man his food appears to be bitter, and to the wealthy man the opposite of bitter.
-Plato, Theaetetus Now do you understand, Janja?
The question interrupted and elicited a sleepy groan from Janja. She twisted and sighed and tried to root deeper into the soft caress of the satin sheet.
"Mnnnmf."
"Wake up, Jan!"
She obeyed without wanting to. Turning onto her back, feeling him warm there beside her-and feeling his tension. Janja frowned.
He repeated it: Now do you understand?
She turned her head to find him up on one elbow, gazing at her with a very serious expression. She answered it with a frown.
"Now do I understand what?"
He gazed at her and she heard his words: / didn"t say anything.
He said that, and she knew he said that because she heard him. Except that she was looking at him while she heard it, and his mouth was closed and his lips did not move. Janja stared, shaking off the muzziness of sleep.
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Realization and then a.s.similation took a moment; then. ..
"You-" She lurched up into a sitting position. "You -I heard you but-you"re Aglayan!"
He nodded. I am from Aglaya, he said, but his lips did not move. At the same time the picture entered her mind: Janja "saw" a mental picture of sky and rainforest and Phrillias dragging at their overladen stems. He "said," I was stolen from Aglaya by a slaver when I was eighteen.
A picture of that came into her mind, crowding, muddy and yet there. She realized that this was his memory; that she was seeing what he saw behind his eyes. The muddiness was because he did not remember exactly. Thus the picture that entered her mind from his was like an artist"s unfinished work: here color and detail, there dimness, achromatism, or plain blankness. At once she saw his face, and she saw his memories, and she "heard" him as well: My sister and I both, of course-she was sixteen. (Yes; Janja saw the young Daura, or whatever her real name was-oh yes, there was her name, and his as well. Their Aglayan names. Pale, both of them. He was a pale and straw-haired Aglayan, her dark, dark Ram!) The pictures kept coming as he told his story, speaking aloud while his memories showed hers the details: "We gained our freedom much the same as you did yours, but much sooner. Our captor was little more than a one-man operation. He had a small ship and a crew of three. We killed all four of them. Daura had the rudiments of the ship"s operations from his mind." (Janja saw blood and twisted faces and bodies; his face a twisted, ugly mask of anger and savagery; Daura looking simply vicious, as though enjoying herself while she stabbed the man again and again. And then of course 197.
she sliced off his genitals, for she was of Aglaya.) "Daura had a great deal more from his mind, too. We learned computry as we went and of course that ship"s SIPAc.u.m helped. We became slavers. We were lucky and smart and of course we had Daura"s ability. In two years we had three ships. All her abilities were of tremendous value, in any situation." (Flash of Daura: delightedly killing.) "In five years we dominated the slavers. In seven we were king and queen of the slavers. I was twenty-eight when we discovered this world and made it our headquarters. We hardly had all this installation then! This place was finished only six years ago."
Janja heard, and saw, but she had to go back and repeat it to herself and sort it out later. The elation of her new ability was paramount now, and transcendent; she had sucked and drunk the lifejuice of an Aglayan. Among Aglayans orally ingested s.e.m.e.n gave women a great deal more than life. On Aglaya at least seven in ten women were born with the knowing; the ability to cherm, to feel emotions and att.i.tudes of nearby persons. By p.u.b.erty the factor might have been some 85 per cent of females who could cherm. Yet those women were not whole, with their abilities. Once each drank from a man"s loins, the ability to choncel was on her. It was that ability known to the Galactics as pa.s.sive or receptive telepathy: "mind-reading."
That was the reason why the ancient taboo was so strong: f.e.l.l.a.t.i.o was reserved for wives. It was a way of combating adultery and avoiding a youth-revolt-too much power in the hands or rather minds of those too young and unattached to be trusted to use it properly. A married woman was the "property" of all married persons, any one of whom could take sanctions if she misused her power. Thus lying was impossible, and false 198.
testimony, since other women would know instantly. Because she had been born with the cherm power, the knowing, and they had wed, and had drunk from her husband"s loins (seldom on the wedding night, though occasionally; no taboo governed that, but there was tradition and her husband"s desire to burst into her v.a.g.i.n.a and expend himself there in response to instinct and the mandates of biplogy and reproduction), she heard the thoughts of others in her mind as if they were spoken words.
It was part of that which told Janja that Aglayans were not of the same stock as Galactics and so, technically, not human. Beyond human. Ramesh Jagesh-war, of course, had dyed both his skin and his hair at the cellular level, and changed both his navel and his canine teeth, one way or another. With the technology and command of biochemical science the Galactics possessed, very little was impossible and what was possible had become far from difficult.
Janja had sought the ability to choncel from the loins of a Jarp once, in the household of her first owners after Jonuta (oh, she would have to correct that lie to Ram; it was Jonuta who had taken her off Aglaya, not Shieda). Nothing had changed. She had sought it from Whitey/ Fidnij, who would not allow her to perform the act on him. She had sought it from another Jarp, and from Ratran Yao. It had not happened. The catalyst had not been there. Something prompted the catalytic action to change her mind-an enzyme that opened a closed portion of the mind of an Aglayan woman? It was missing, she supposed, from the s.e.m.e.n of the men of all planets except Aglaya. That was logical. Naturally Galactic scientists had never sought to seek such an enzyme; they were not even aware of the chonceling ability of those 199.
they took as slaves from a planet they hypocritically called "Protected."
It was racial. The power was not just something within the woman of Aglaya. It was what was within her when combined with the admixture of some (enzyme?) substance in the s.e.m.e.n of a man of her own people. Her own race. The race of Aglaya, as unique in the Galaxy as the race of Jarpi or Croz or Shirash.
It had happened. Ram was an Aglayan, and she had given him the Deepkiss. And now she was whole, a superwoman among these people, among the members of this Galaxy-dominating race she thought of as them.
18.
He must be of a strange and unusual const.i.tution who can content himself to live in constant disgrace and disrepute within his particular society. . . . This is a burden too heavy for human sufferance. ?
-John Locke "It won"t work, Ram."
He looked up, his eyes questioning, but she did not "hear" his thoughts, by her choice.
On Aglaya, for a woman constantly to remain attuned to her man"s mind was as "unfair" and dangerous as for a Galactic to hypnotize his wife without her knowledge. The relationship would be jeopardized. In the month since she had drunk that first time from Ram"s staff and thus gained the ability to receive thoughts, Janja had learned another reason for learning to damp them out. The power was also a curse. The constant influx into her mind from the minds of others was horrid, brain-shattering. Nor was it only Ram"s mind that hers "heard." She had learned to damp them out, at least partially.
Although she could not totally block the thoughts emanating from a group of people, or even all of Ram"s when he was angry or otherwise emotionally wrought up and unintentionally "broadcasting loudly," Janja had made contact with her self, and changed her self and her newfound power. She had learned to not-hear as well as to hear.
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