-Fenton Morris "You and I will go over to Starwolf, Vermillion," Janja said. "We"ll be escorting Vettering, who will have his hands behind him, supposedly bound. You"ll have a stopper in your waistband in back, Vett. Your hands will cover its grip."
"I"d better have the belt that b.a.s.t.a.r.d took away from me," Vettering said, rather sullenly.
His suggestion had been that they try to get one more crewmember from Starwolf over onto Lewuvul. Preferably Javad, Vett said; Javad was the real punk tough Manjanungo had taken onboard. Janja had considered that, but had shaken her head.
"Consider. I get on the comm and try that. But suppose Skive comes up with the b.a.l.l.s to demand confirmation from Manjanungo, and decides to take the consequences if the "Admiral" is angry. We can"t produce. That way we"ll have lost ground, see. When we go over as we"d have to do then, they"ll be waiting, and they"ll be suspicious. So. We don"t try that. We get our own b.a.l.l.s together and go over, ready to fight. They"ll be waiting, of course, or one of them will, but with no need to be suspicious. So. We go, and we be very, very careful. I"ve considered asking Seera-see, we could 97.98."escort" her over, to be incarcerated with Althis and/or Lhari, if those two aren"t together on Starwolf. Seera would have two stoppers, concealed in her clothing. But -I don"t like that. We really have no justification for putting her into danger, and I won"t do it. She"s the one who Poofed Manjanungo, after all. So ..."
Janja bit her lip as she motioned Vettering to follow her to the con. Vermillion followed the pirate, whom they had untied but not armed.
"Skive," Janja told Starwolf"s mate, "things are getting a little, uh, fobby over here. Now I"m ordered to bring Vetterman over and pop him in with Lhara somebody. Help!"
"c.r.a.p. That"s Vettering and Lhari, by the way. What"s the Admiral doing?"
"Visiting with his cousin. Behind closed cabin door, too. She owns, I mean, owned this yacht. Semi-sane gal of apparent-age thirty or so who"s really sixty but also s.e.xy enough to ignite a bucket of water. I think he, uh, wants her. We don"t dare tell him how fobby she is. You ever dare tell him anything?"
"I understand," Skive said, not quite committing himself. "So-Red Rover, Najendra."
"Coming over, Skive."
Once they"d got a belt around Vettering and the stopper tucked into his pants behind, they draped a couple of loops over his wrists back there.
"Just don"t forget and move your hands at the wrong time," Janja said, and he gave her a look, and the three of them went over to the other ship. Manjanungo"s yacht-turned-pirate-flagship.
Skive was at the airlock when Vettering appeared, hands apparently linked uncomfortably behind him. Janja and Vermillion of Jarpi followed, Vermillion with 99.drawn stopper. Janja thought it clever to keep her own holstered at her thigh.
"Welcome home," Skive said with exaggerated dryness.
"Push it right up your nostril," Vettering said conversationally.
"Ha," Skive p.r.o.nounced exaggeratedly, "ha." His eyes shifted to gaze past the captive pirate at Janja. "Should I be worried about my captain, Najendra?"
Janja sighed. "Skive . . . what would we dare do or say if we were?""
"Not a flainin" thing! Come along this way. Oh- keep that stopper on this creep, uh . . . "
"Vermillion," Vermillion"s translation helmet said. "Be nice, Captain Vettering."
"Captain," Skive sneered, as he preceded them along an incredibly mural-decorated ship"s tunnel.
They followed him to a door, which he opened merely by turning the handle. Janja heard the double click and knew that it had been firmly locked on the other side. Stepping back, Skive made a sweeping gesture to Vettering. Janja swallowed; the overdone action reminded her of Trafalgar Cuw. Vettering stepped into the doorway and looked into the cabin.
"Vett!"
Janja fancied that she recognized the voice of his woman, Althis, but said, "Is that Lhari?"
"Neg-his piggy woman," First Mate Skive said. "They"re together in there, the whole fobbin" menagerie. Althis, Lhari, and the Admiral"s three gurlz."
Janja grinned and made a gesture. "Lord, lord," she said, quoting someone she knew, or had known. "How do you control yourself, Mate?"
"Mate, it ain"t easy!"
100.Janja returned his grin, then looked around. They were alone in the ship"s tunnel. "Let"s go inside," she said. "I must see this."
She stepped into an ancient hareem-chamber, pushing Vettering before her. A fine woven carpet covered the floor and was in turn strewn with cushions in a rainbow of hues. Janja wondered idly if they were batened down against freefall. A divan in the style of old Turkey; another, with purple fringes dripping to the carpet; ancient-looking wrought tables, definitely battened. All that was missing was a water pipe. Yes, even the keyhole windows were present. Holograms, she presumed, since one hardly added windows to a s.p.a.ceship-and these showed a lovely blue-skyed vista.
And here were Manjanungo"s odalisques.
The three girls were incredible, and incredibly shaped, fetchingly almost attired in nothing much and yet distinctly non-Persian, non-Turkish in their taut-drawn corsets. Althis was here, and she was still blowzy Althis in transparent, very full purple blouse and belly-dancer"s sirwal or full trousers, in rose pink. Lhari Had-dad, formerly Suffragen Captain, TGW, was entirely naked save for two bracelets and a pair of openwork shoes on stilt heels. She resembled a starlet trying to look s.e.xy and succeeding in looking whorish. Althis was as fullblown as Janja remembered her and the girls were not. Not a one of them was as old as nineteen and all were blessed with willowy, leggy figures that were believable only because Janja had to believe: she was looking at them. One wore a filmy yellow bandeau and a strip-"skirt"-a hip-slung strap in cloth-of-gold with a strip of cloth dangling to the floor before and behind, patterned in lavender and green and blue. Her hair was a rippling fall of deep Prussian blue to her waist. Another was similarly dressed, save that the colors were 101.
different and her hair fell to mid-back in waves of pure honey. The third was heavily bejeweled though bare of breast, and wore the usual corset plus a real skirt to the ankles. Somehow its modesty emphasized the nudity of her upper body with its taut cones of warheads. Her hair was fairer than Janja"s was in its real color, meaning the girl"s was dyed quite white and yet glossily soft and beautiful.
The overall effect was of languid indulgence and opulent sensuality. All awaiting the return of their lord and master, who would never return.
Janja turned to Skive and in a moment he no longer gazed upon the women of the Admiral"s harem. Skive was looking into the bores of three leveled stoppers. He snarled one word: "d.a.m.n."
"Vett!" Althis said again, this time in an enthusiastic I-just-knew-it tone.
"What"s happening?" one of the nymphets murmured lazily, and Janja was both jolted and revulsed by the vacuousness of lovely face and sweet voice. The trio was drugged, surely.
Not sweet-voiced was Lhari Haddad, nor languid either: "Poof the b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
Astonishingly, Vettering did.
Since his stopper was set on Two rather than Three, Starwolfs first mate lurched into a mindless nerveless shuffle. He had Danced thus for ten or eleven seconds before Janja reached for Vettering"s arm. Just then Skive"s eyes rolled up. He ceased shuffling, went limp, and pa.s.sed out. He hit the ornately carpeted floor hard.
"Tie him up, Althis," Vettering said.
"What"s happening?" another of Manjanungo"s girls said.
"That wasn"t in our agreement, Vett. Totally un- 102.
necessary. We had him. You-"
He turned. "Don"t crowd me, Janja. This swine has treated me like dirt and before that it was Zo and Ulf. I"m up to here with being done to and not being able to do. Crowd me now and your Jarp is going to have to use its stopper on me. Skive isn"t harmed, but he"s no longer a problem. I doubt these idiot s.e.xpots are either, but with his stopper in Althis"s hand this whole cabin is secured. That leaves Paridon, and Intaglio the Weirdo, and the real hardcase, Javad. We can argue or discuss what we should or shouldn"t do, or we can get started getting them."
"Oh," Janja said, exaggeratedly batting her eyes, "Veh-yutt! You"re so force-ful!"
"He"s also right," Althis said, cheerfully peeling a strap-t.i.tser off the blue-tressed girl to bind Skive"s arms together behind him-tightly. "Amber-give me the skimpy briefs I know you"re wearing under all that skirt, so we can gag this swine. Hurry girl, hoist it and whip "em off! Janja, Janja. Don"t I know that name?"
"Right," Janja said. "Vermillion, make sure your stopper"s on Two, and turn right out of here. Take the first left turn and head for the con. Vett-let"s go. We go left and turn right, to head for the con. Vermy, please be alert. Remember: we stopper anything we see, and yell!"
"Firm."
"You know this ship?" Vettering asked.
"Althis, you take Skive"s stopper. Just-"
"I already have, thanks."
"Just hold everyone here and no communications! Vett-pos, I know this ship. TGO has a simulation, and I memorized it."
"TGO!" Althis and Lhari simultaneously exclaimed, as Vettering and Janja followed the Jarp out of the 103.
cabin. Janja thoughtfully made sure the door was locked.
"Janja," Vettering said, as they moved cautiously along the luxuriously paneled tunnel.
"Name"s Najendra, Captain Vettering."
"Oh, pos. Firm. I just thought I"d tell you that your hair has paled out to a sort of beery amber, on its way back to whi-well, I remember it as white."
"Oh. Thanks. It"s called platinum blond, I"ve learned. Found that in a very old edutape. Here comes our turn to the right. That tunnel leads all the way to the con-cabin. You don"t by chance have two straws, do you?"
"No," Vettering said, "but I"ll go first," and that was how he ran into the ravening bolt from a pulsar beamer, and died fierily, horribly, with a scream-and yet he died quickly.
Janja was still in the side-tunnel. Just beyond the main corridor from whence the pirate"s death had come, Janja fell flat. She lay there with her stopper out in both hands, covering the intersection. Vettering wasn"t moving or making a sound, now, while flames ate his clothing.
As she waited Janja considered her prejudice against killing; against the Three-setting. She came from a planet called Light. She was pale, in a universe of dark skin, dark eyes, and black hair except when dye was used. Less than a standard year and a half ago she had been innocent; Aristoteleanly white. With each pa.s.sing month she had adapted more to their environment; adopted more of their ways; the ways of the Galactics she called Thingmakers, and them. More and more she had become one of them-in Aristotelean terms, mingling more and more black with the white to form what Aristotle and Rand had mistakenly thought could not 104.
exist: gray. She had become gray, then grayer. She had joined, not quite voluntarily and yet in the end consciously and by choice, TGO-The Gray Organization. Gray because it was shadowy and gray because it did bad in the name of good, to achieve good.
She still did not like it but she knew now that it was good. In the universe they had created and called civilization, there had to be what Ratran Yao, her recruiter and prime trainer-indoctrinator, had called James Bonds. TGO could and did at least interfere, and hold down the victimization of the innocent. Naturally it still went on, and on. Yet there had been no war-the ultimate victimization of the innocent by their leaders" personal needs-since the inception of TGO.
Now, thoughtfully, thinking sensibly, Janja took her left hand off the stopper"s grip and changed its setting. She moved it up to Three. Thus the second barrel within the slim cylinder was made active. The disintegrator beam; the Poof or kill beam. And she lay flat in the corridor of an enemy s.p.a.ceship, and waited.
Hours seemed to pa.s.s, and she leaked sweat. She heard nothing, but that ability to cherm, that extra sense that set her race apart from the Galactics who did not know about Aglayan women and their abilities, told her that nemesis lay around the corner. He had not left after killing Vettering. He was waiting, or advancing. Her stopper remained trained on the corner. What remained of Vettering stank, because it was burned dead meat.
At last, at last his killer appeared. The ruthless murderer Javad, his pulsar beamer ready for another enemy, its powerpak strapped to his leg and the awful barrel and nozzle gripped in both hands. He came carefully, slowly, a killer and a pro at killing, seeking another enemy . . .
But he did not expect another enemy to be p.r.o.ne and 105.
silent and motionless on the floor of the s.p.a.cer"s tunnel. He turned the corner, saw nothing. His eyes started to widen as his lower peripheral vision picked up his danger, and he started to look down at the same time as he lowered the beamer"s nozzle. Janja was intelligently already squeezing her stopper, and the killer Javad was killed.
He went spectacularly and yet in seconds, as his latest employer had died. Nothing remained of him but the pulsar beamer that rattle-clanked to the floor and rolled a little.
Janja ignored it, pacing through the molecular dust that had been Javad. She squatted beside Vettering. The pirate who would also have been an admiral, and who had fallen on hard times and then worse. Too bad his needs would not allow him to let a woman go first. And it was not Vettering beside whom or rather which she squatted; the corpse that had been Captain Vettering was hideous.
"Sorry, Vett, pirate. I hope there is an afterlife, and a Loophole Bar. I"d have gone first."
9.
My Mission is that I want Jonuta. That is my purpose and my life. Since he destroyed my life on Aglaya, he provides its purpose.
-Janjaheriohir of Aglaya Janja rose and went up the tunnel toward Starwolfs con-cabin. Her caution was unnecessary; she met no one. Quietly she approached the open door to the control cabin and looked in at the backs of the chairs before the console. Third chair, set behind the others, was empty. So was the captain"s chair. Just above the high back of the mate"s chair she could see a curly-haired head.
"Knock knock," she said, and entered.
The chair spun as if kicked and a harried-looking man stared at her with dilated eyes. Very long, very lean, tightly chiseled face. He wore drab tans.
"Najendra, mate of Lewuvul," Janja identified herself. "I just returned that failed pirate, Vetter-some-thing. Javad"s putting him away. I don"t know you either..."
"Paridon, s.p.a.cefarer First and DS man, Mate Najendra. Is Javad coming? You see Skive? I can"t raise him on inship comm."
"Skive"s over on Lewuvul, where the Admiral is.
106.
107.
Javad won"t be here right away, no. What"s the problem, Paridon? You look shaken."
Paridon"s face changed. He had found what he sought. The harried look became the relieved expression of a man about to transfer a heavy problem to someone with more responsibility. This woman was in the organization, after all: Manjanungo"s. Paridon blurted, spinning in his chair to gesture at the console with its multicolored gauges, scan-winkers, keys, telits, alerters.
"I"ve been trying to conta-I just took an incoming comm. It"s TGW! A Captin R.O. Farz, mighty grim and stiff-lipped type. Says he"s boarding us, right away. Routine, he says. Probably already started over! Two yachts hove to in s.p.a.ce naturally attracted attention, he says. That"s trouble! And the Admiral"s over there, and Skive"s over there too, and Javad"s not here ner even Jenk and I don"t know what to do!"
"Easy, s.p.a.cefarer Paridon. What did you tell this Captain Farz?" Do I know the name? No. Do I know all TGW captains" names? Of course not. Lhari Had-dad, sure-because she disappeared. R. O. Farz, hmmm? Well, fine! A lucky happenstance. / can use some TGW strength to help with these ships and all these people.
"I told him the captain was over on the ship we"re coupled to and I couldn"t raise the mate on onship comm. He said that was "regrettable" and he understood my anxiety, he said, but he"s coming right over and onboard, he said."
"Ummm. The airlock"s coupled with Lewuvul"s by an S-tunnel. How"s he going to board? Ah-emergency airlock!"
"Right, right! What do we do, Mate? This is-1 shouldn"t even be-I don"t know how to cope with this!"
108.
"We"re going to have to let him board. It"s either that or put you to work on DS, but only fools blow away TGW ships-or try. I have a crewmember off Lewuvul with me, Paridon. We"ll send it back to apprise the Admiral."
Paridon gestured at the commsender suspended in front of his face. "We can just-"
"The TGW ship will be monitoring our comms, of course."
"Oh."
"I"m here, Najendra," a new voice said, and both Paridon and Janja swung to find Vermillion gazing at them from big round Jarp eyes. "Mighty empty ship"s tunnels around here," it said, to let Janja know it had met no one.
"This is Vermillion, Paridon. I can"t say I like doing it," Janja said slowly, as if both pondering and reluctant, "but I"m here and that TGW jacko is Red Rover-ing. So-I"ll meet him. Vermillion, why don"t you and Paridon both go on over to Lewuvul and tell the Admiral. He"ll want it direct from you, s.p.a.cefarer Paridon, right? Go ahead; I"ll take care of this Captain Farz until Manjanungo comes over to settle the matter."
Paridon shot her a glance. "I shouldn"t leave my sh- I should be at DS ... no, I guess not... I guess that- he"ll be here any sec and the Admiral"s got to know . . . Thank you, Mate Najendra!"
Paridon scurried with Vermillion right behind. The Jarp paused to give Janja a significant look, then hurried after the other s.p.a.cefarer.
Janja swung to the console and flipped on the outship comm. She a.s.sumed it was still set on the tightest link with the TransGalactic Watch ship.