Najendra preceded him and was soon glad once again that she wore garb that was far from tight-fitting. She could feel his stare, all the way along the ship"s tunnels to the door of Seera"s cabin.
Behind her he muttered, "Starqueen, eh?" and chuckled.
They reached the handsomely decorated, oak-veneered door. She turned.
"In here, Admiral. Would you like to-"
"Stargueen," he said with obvious relish, and chuckled at the sound of the latch clicking. Then he said, 72."Follow," and thrust open the door. He strode into the cabin of his cousin (by marriage, as he had been at pains to point out).
"h.e.l.lo, Lady Cousin!" he said at once. "No no- close your mouth, please-I need to talk for a few mins. A monolog, rather than a conversation. Nor shall I call yer "cousin" again; you look no older than I now, and good for yer!"
In her capacious bed, the Lady Seera sat up to stare wide-eyed, and the sheets slipped down to prove that she was not naked.
One of the Jarps must have slipped in and prepared Seera-and her bed-for the visitor, Najendra surmised. Of course the Jarps had no more notion than Pak as to who was corning, and of course no one on Lewuvul knew that Najendra had known all along. The melon-colored bedsheets were freshly changed, and lovely, smooth. The Most n.o.ble Lady had contained her bosomy abundance in a lacy halter of the exact same color and hue. Lewuvul"s mate had no doubt that whatever Seera wore below was also that beautiful soft melon color. A negligee, ecru tr.i.m.m.i.n.g its melon shade, lay atop the oversheet beside Seera.
Entering behind "Admiral" Jacath Manjanungo, Najendra moved over to his left, midway between him and the bed and off to the side, before the built-in closet and drawers. Like the door and walls, it was faced in a lovely fruitwood veneer, the panels separated by dark strips that might have been mahogany. Three paces to his left but in advance of him so that he could easily see her at a glance or peripherally, Najendra willed herself to be motionless and invisible. She succeeded in the first, and very nearly in the second.
Naturally more than apprehensive but not knowing 73.the ident.i.ty of the employer of her kidnappers, Lady Seera had spent time arranging her hair, choosing a dully glowing moonstone on a serpentine chain of gold, and to get herself up fetchingly. She did indeed look only a year or three older than Manjanungo, who was just under half her age. Najendra realized that the woman had made a conscious effort to look soft, vulnerable, and s.e.xually appealing to the unknown chieftain of her captors.
How surprised, perplexed, and almost dizzy she must be to be greeted by her outlaw cousin, who strode in and began lecturing her with the only preamble being to bid her, with a semblance of politeness, to be silent and let him monologize her.
She was, and he did.
"Among all the pretentious people of the Twelve Clans, Seera, you and I are the mavericks. It is I who am the true accomplisher among them all-I now have five ships under my command and am rightly called Admiral. True, one of those five s.p.a.cers I only happened upon. It was lumbering along with no one in control, really. A crippled ship with only three people onboard. Victims, but. He was a smuggler and a pirate, pathetic poseur. He did have a fleet of his own, this Captain Vet-tering. Now he joins me, or will. He has no choice, you see. His ship was salvage. Now it is mine, and it will not long remain crippled! He was so incompetent as to allow himself to be taken over and sent off on an unchangeable course by a mere boy-the same one who dared tangle with me in the Great Race! This Vettering and his woman Althis-a common enough blowze, dear Lady Seera-had a pet. A slave with them, whom they kept naked. A former TGW officer, he says. Now she too is mine-as is the TGO agent Prime who sought to take me, on Ghanj. Me!"
74.Najendra well remembered Althis, and was just starting to call up an image of that woman she had met a year or so ago, when he mentioned the agent Prime of TGO. She blinked, and said nothing. In an instant her face showed nothing. At any rate Manjanungo had not glanced her way; he had paused to bark a scornful little laugh.
"A high TGO operative, Seera-mine! Aha, high in two ways, this Val.u.s.triana See, my guest. She is a shade taller than I. She resists being broken. I will break her, for I am Manjanungo."
Sitting erect in her outsized bed, outstretched legs covered and lightly molded by the sheet that lay in folds about her broad hips, Seera continued to stare large-eyed at him.
"Why are yer telling me all this dangerous wickedness, cousin?"
"Why indeed! To let yer know that I take, and have taken four ships and various people, Seera." He stressed the name a bit, since she had called him "cousin" despite his opening statement. "I have five ships, as I said. Three I have taken; captured. And another has fallen to me-the very liner Starqueen herself, Seera, though I left her adrift and all hands and pa.s.sengers free and safe." Except for those taken by Sibanda, to be sold. . . . "Because-"
"You aren"t by chance a little crazy are yer, Jacath Manjanungo?"
Najendra tensed when she saw Manjanungo tense. He stared at Seerava, trembling a little as he worked to control himself. Hardly a wise thing to say to a man with Manjanungo"s obvious needs and ident.i.ty problems, Lewuvul"s first mate thought, and kept her face open and bland.
Both women saw him regain control, firm and 75.straighten himself to his height that was somehow added to by the supercilious arch of his brows, and resume his air of supreme, superior self-confidence. The next conqueror of the universe. The perfect half-mad villain for an Akima Mars holomeller movie.
"Lady Vike preserve, Seera, what a thing to say! Think of what yer"ve done! Ask yerself the same question. Are you a bit fobbo, Seerava?" He jerked up his head and laughed his affected laugh. "O"course not! Not I! Not you! We may be the only thoroughly sane pair among the Twelve Clans! We merely choose to live out on the edge-where it is truly living! The pirate Vet-tering who is now mine tried it, but he is without cla.s.s or genius. Your steward tried it, though only with a bit of smuggling, and look at him! A steward, and without cla.s.s or genius! The agent of The Gray Organization, Val.u.s.triana See, tried it. She has cla.s.s and some genius and competence, true, but she was outcla.s.sed and not competent enough and short of intellect. She misjudged me. She was up against superior cla.s.s and competence and intellect, Seera-me. As yer must know, Lortice is my man. Mine! The Jarps of this crew are mine. Lewuvul is mine, Seera."
She regarded him, sitting upright in bed in a lovely soft halter and with her legs sheet-covered. "And you think that I am yours now, Manjanungo, is that it?"
This woman has several times the. . . pluck I dreamed she might have, Najendra thought. She noted that the eyes of the man in the long coat of midnight taffetas were bright, full of vision.
"We! Think of it that way, Seera! I rule here in s.p.a.ce, and I rule more than a clan of bloodless aristocrats. Yet I was born to that aristocracy, and I tire of cla.s.sless people. You know how I was raised, how I lived. To be served by peasants, not to consort with them! No no, 76.Seera. I went to a great deal of trouble to kidnap not just anyone, but another soul of Jorinne, another soul of cla.s.s and breeding, of culture and education! And, Sondelayne* Seerava, another rebel. Another who chooses to live. I need such a person, just to talk with, rather than to! You, supremely sensuous Seera, you can see that! You know all about it. Surrounded by peasants ... I want you to join me!"
Seera was silent for a long while, staring at him, his clothing so out of time and yet so at home in this warmly paneled cabin. She glanced over at the drab mate, who miraculously had got her colors together this ship-day. Seera studied her features.
He"s right, Seera thought. Look at her: the great stone face. He"s right! We"re surrounded by loutish peasants without imagination or any sense of what living means. She is too ignorant and decla.s.se even to understand what he is saying-about her!
Those were unusual thoughts for Seerava, and she paused to examine herself and her thinking. And of course her situation. Of a sudden she remembered where she was, how she was, and dropped her. chin to look down into her lace-bordered cleavage. b.l.o.o.d.y good cleavage, she mused. Let him look! I"ll be b.l.o.o.d.y d.a.m.ned if I"ll cover up now! And she lifted her head, putting back her shoulders a bit, to meet the waiting gaze of those bright, almost fever-bright eyes.
"Manjanungo," she said at last. "Jacath Manjan-ungo . . . you are twenty-nine, isn"t it? And yer know that I am ... that I am old enough to be ... to be ..."
He laughed. He clapped his hands in pleasure.
"You cannot say it! I can say what you were about to: old enough to be my mother! Ho, that dull, dull woman, my mother. Compared to my father"s wife you are as the sun to a candle! Besides, look at yer, as you 77.must enjoy doing. You do not look sixty or even fifty, Seera. You look thirty or so, as nearly everyone does in our Galactic society of perfect health and rejuvenation and long, long life. And you do prefer younger men. We both know that, don"t we?"
Again he laughed, less loudly this time. Najendra was sure that they had forgotten her presence. Both think I"m too ignorant and cla.s.sless to understand what they"re saying, much less be offended-certainly he thinks that, at any rate! Suddenly he extended an arm to point dramatically at Seera. With snowy lace at his wrist.
"Neither of your husbands came even close to me, and we both know it. Join me, Seera. Here, here is the excitement you seek!" he cried, striking his chest, again in a tres dramatique manner. "Here is the life yer want to live-and always have!"
Blinking, she stared at him. Both he and Najendra, who might as well have been meat or a piece of furniture, gazed steadily at Lady Seerava. Waiting. Barely able to breathe, awaiting the answer of the apparently-thirtyish woman on the bed.
"I am . . . astonished, Manjanungo. Yet one thing . . . one thing lingers in my mind. How can I help it? It nags and disturbs me, Manjanungo. Just speaking philosophically, you with your intellect understand, just wondering . . . what if I should start screaming "No!" -or even say so quietly? I am a prisoner here, with no one on my side and no one to take my part if I were to consider refusing. That is not refusal, Manjanungo; I am pointing out the reality of my position. Everyone else on this ship is in your employ. Can yer see that I have no options, no choices?"
Najendra blinked. This woman was hardly the ever-in-oestrus dolt they had a.s.sumed her to be! (Of course, 78.Seera doubtless a.s.sumed Najendra to be both dolt and enemy. . . .) Again Manjanungo laughed aloud, a high-voiced bark of the laughter of true delight. Boyishly he spun half-around in his excitement, then back to face his relative-by-marriage, who looked no older than he. A meter from the end of the melon-sheeted bed where she sat with the topsheet molding her outstretched legs and emphasizing them. His black-taffetaed sleeves whispered when he extended both hands to her as if in supplication.
"I knew it, I knew it!" he cried, and his voice carried that same boyish excitement. "You see? You are as I thought, as I knew. Who else would dare ask such a question, even hypothetically-rhetorically? Haha!" Again that not-quite-real laugh burst from him, and he seemed ready to dance a jig.
In an instant, eerily, all trace of smile left his face and eyes so swiftly that it was shaking to see. Both women blinked and stared at this new evidence of this very dangerous man"s mercurially changing moods. It was frightening.
"And of course you see why I cannot answer, Seera," he said in a quiet voice with nothing of the boy in it. "If I say "Why, nothing happens if yer refuse, save that I"ll run yer right on out to Franji," you would only wonder if I was lying. Yet if I say other things-the dreadful but true promises-not-threats I"d make to anyone else in your situation-why, then you would feel intimidated and know that the only course would be to agree. And then how could / ever know that you were sincere, and really with me willingly-as I really do want yer to be, clever, lovely Lady Seera!"
Najendra, looking at him as he spoke, swung her gaze 79.to the woman on the bed when he had finished. The Lady Seerava in her natural habitat. The Scandal of Sondelayne. Of all the Twelve Clans, as he was. She sat slumped a bit, looking small.
Abruptly she straightened. Her face seemed to glow, though her eyes did not have the gleam of his. The zealot"s glow ... or a manic gleam? Both she and Na-jendra wondered now which it was that lit this man"s eyes.
"Oh well then. I have but one course to follow then, Manjanungo; only one answer to give. It may be disaster for me if I disagree and refuse. You see? Your listing of choices works both ways. I have no choice. Only a fool would say no to yer, Manjanungo. So-pos! Pos, I say: I join you. Let us live out on the edge-truly live as yer say!"
Najendra looked at once to the pirate whose attire matched that of sea-captains of centuries and centuries agone, on the oceans of Homeworld. It was no surprise to Lewuvul"s mate that Seera"s words brought no barking boyish (psychotic? she wondered) laugh from him. Not even a smile touched his face. Seera"s intelligent reasoning and her daringly stated preface had robbed him of that exultation of exaltation. He could only stare, looking petulant.
"But. . . then how can I... I cannot be sure!"
Seera heaved a sigh that set her bosom amove in its halter. Of course she was entirely aware of that effect of her sighing. "Neither can I, Manjanungo, magnificent pirate. Neither can I. It"s you who holds the power and the weapons." She pointed briefly, almost negligently to the curved pra.s.s grip thrusting from his belt. "Reason and decision collapse without power in the face of drawn weapons."
80."My weapons are not drawn!" Beaming as if he had made an important point, he held his empty hands well out from himself.
Now, Najendra thought, and tensed all over for movement . . . and relaxed herself. She did not move. No. This confrontation was high drama, and high drama had a right of its own: to be allowed to play out.
Seera said, "No, but the guns are there, Manjanungo. I have none." She spread her bare arms wide in imitation of him. "I have nothing."
You have superb pectorals, Najendra thought, but glanced to Manjanungo still again, for his reaction and response.
Abruptly he laughed. "Madam, you do underestimate yourself and amaze me!" Just as abruptly, with a jerky movement, he tugged the replica of an ancient pistol out of the broad belt under his long shining black coat.
Both women tensed-alid swiftly Manjanungo reversed the weapon.
"My pistole-my stopper, Seera, which is ever set on Three. Death by disintegration ray. Haha-a disintegrator ray-gun!"
Taking two jackbooted steps forward, he extended the weapon to Seera, who shrank from it. "Here! Now you too are armed, Lady Seerava. Careful now! Don"t use it on me, dear Seera!" And he chuckled.
She took it gingerly. Hefted it, examined it, squeezed it exploratorially. With her fingers wrapped around the downcurving arc of the grip, she aimed at a chair close to neither Manjanungo nor Najendra, and squeezed. Nothing happened.
"Hmp." She looked questioningly at him, brows lofty.
81.He laughed. "True, with an ordinary stopper one does squeeze the grip. Thus."
He drew a normal stopper, a simple-looking blue-black cylinder, carefully changed its setting, and without warning swung it at Najendra and squeezed.
Ship"s Mate Najendra stiffened, quivering tightly all over. She looked shocked, surprised, without motor control, and ridiculous.
"Setting number One, you see. Merely Freeze, as it is called. Wouldn"t really want to hurt her-can"t go about disintegrating Captain Lortice"s first mate!"
With an amiable chuckle he lowered the weapon. Najendra staggered at the abrupt release from the awful nerve-jangling grip of the beam. Her quaking ceased, but she looked drained.
"My apologies, my dear First. Only a demonstration-a little Freeze will never hurt you and I was of course too considerate to use setting Two-the Dance setting." He smiled engagingly.
"That pistole,"" he went on, looking back at Seera, "has a trigger. The little arced item depending just in front of the grip. Right, that"s it. It actuates the stopper barrels built into the pistole."
Seera continued gazing at Najendra, her face drawn into an expression of concern. "You-you beamed her- made her helpless, just to ..."
He flipped his fingers in a manual shrug. "It is nothing, the first setting. Only as a demonstration for yer, dear Seera. She is fine. Aren"t yer, First Mate?"
"P...OS.".
"This grows tiresome," Seerava said, in a Most n.o.ble Lady tone of voice. "What shall I disintegrate, then?" She shot a worried glance back at Najendra.
"Why must yer disintegrate anything, Seera?"
82."To prove that you have not given me a harmless "weapon" as a trick. We are proving trust, remember?"
"Ah. Well, it disintegrates only living matter- organic matter," he advised. "Ah-zoological matter, that is. People, animals. So long as they are . . . warm. Yet you can test it, for though I could find that insulting, in truth I would have yer know that my gesture is more than a gesture, and no trick. I gave yer a deadly weapon to prove that I am not threatening yer, but genuinely want yer to join me. You can direct it at something metal, though, as a test of my sincerity. Anything. Ah-here."
He took a folding knife from his pocket and tossed it carefully onto the bed before her, between the sheet-draped legs necessarily parted by her sitting position.
"Beam that," he said.
He and Najendra watched while Seera did. They could see the beam only faintly. Only just visible, that beam of the most horrid of personal weapons. And yet the neatest ever devised, for a disintegrator did after all clean up after itself.
Nothing happened to the knife. Nothing visible.
"Cease your pressure on the trigger," the pirate Man-janungo said. "Now extend your other hand to the knife"s blade. Don"t touch it! Can yer feel anything? Please do not say what."
"Yes!"
"Ship"s Mate-we are working on trust, here. Can you briefly explain stopper setting Three to a Most n.o.ble and beautiful lady with no knowledge of such dreadful things?"
Najendra spoke in a low, dull voice. "Setting Three affects only animal life-forms as he-as the Admiral said. It disintegrates them utterly, painlessly. It otherwise affects only metal, really. Oh, I suppose that over a 83.long period of time the ray directed at something such as wood might perhaps shiver it, sonically?-disrupt the molecules? I am not sure. Its effect on metal is to heat it. The first two settings affect living beings, only. If that is indeed a stopper and it is indeed set on Three, Poof, the knifeblade should have warmed. Hold the beam on metal long enough and it becomes hot, truly hot."
"It is quite warm," Seera said, and raised the pistol in a seemingly instinctive two-handed grip, aiming briefly, and squeezed the trigger.
Her target had time only for the beginning of a horrified outcry.
Then he seemed to shimmer, to turn opalescent, and then . . . and then he vanished, to become only motes of dust and less than dust, adrift in the cabin. Pirate Admiral Manjanungo"s career was at an end. Manjanungo had been disintegrated, in every component.
"d.a.m.n," Najendra whispered.
At the sound of her voice, Seera swung the pistol to cover her. The lady"s finger still lay on the trigger, but without pressure.
"You . . . will pardon me, Lady Seera, if I am badly shaken. Astonished, rather than commiserating with him or grieving for him. You have made your choice and I presume you saw that he was insane, as I did. Politely put, "dangerously psychotic," with garnish. Nor have you done wrong-my purpose here was to take him. I am on this ship as a spy, and of course have been all along. Just now I had the opportunity but did not because . . . well, my reason is unworthy. I was fascinated. I saw your shock and sympathy for me. I wanted to see what you would do."
"Ever a distasteful boy, and now gone quite fobby- psychotic, as yer say. I knew what I must do when he 84.demonstrated that dreadful weapon on yer because you happened to be here ... a "peasant" and inconsequential, to him. Then I realized that I could not merely take the weapon and aim and shoot-I had to be sure that it really functioned, else he"d have known what I intended. He is quite capable of killing, isn"t he, Najen-dra?"
"Was. Pos, quite capable," the first mate of Lewuvul said, nodding. "Firm. He has killed a fair number of innocents, and enslaved many, many. I am not named Na-jendra, Lady Seerava. This is neither my true color nor the true color of my hair-though my eyes are natural. I am an agent of TransGalactic Order-The Gray Organization, TGO, pos-and my name is Janja-Janjaglaya Wye."
Lady Seera considered one more in a series of surprising revelations, one of which was that she had had the will to kill Jacath Manjanuago. After a moment she lifted her wrists so that the pistol she still held in both hands was pointed at the ceiling.
"Well, Janja, I am not in disguise. I am Seera and I may be about to faint. Vomit, perhaps. I"ll try not to, though-am trying. I have never had occasion to sho-shoot anyone . . . uh, that monster has two men and three Jarps loyal to him on this ship, and his own ship is just . . . right out there," she said in a weakly declining voice accompanied by a vague gesture.
"Uh . . . firm. I wish that I could have let you know who I am, that I was and am on your side, because now we are in trouble. We"d have been better off to take him alive, but of co-oh."
Janja broke off, for Lady Seera had jerked and jerked again, and made a gagging noise, and she began throwing up.
7.
"A sunflower and a TGO agent?" Vermillion said, rolling oversized round eyes. "Via, Najendra-I mean Janja-you are something. What . . . what"s going to happen to me, TGO agent?"
"You"re pardoned."
"Here and now?"
"Here and now, Vermillion."
Vermillion stared at her, hardly able to believe. "Like that? No strings?"
Janja shook her head. "You"re pardoned, s.p.a.cefarer Vermillion, for having been party to mutiny. Since this is Lady Seerava"s ship and she was not taken off it, I don"t see any kidnap. She won"t bring any charges, either."
"You are something," Vermillion said, shaking its head so that the metal on its translation helmet flashed.