Part 10 (2/2)

12.

We call ”just” those acts that tend to produce, and preserve happiness and its components for the political society.

-Aristotle G.o.d d.a.m.n it, slavery in the s.p.a.cefaring age is simply good economics!

-the economist Sarcon (born free, died free) She had shoulder-length hair the color of suns.h.i.+ne in July on Resh and eyes blue-gray as new steel, the captain of the already infamous s.p.a.cer Hornet. She was en-sheathed in an insulated body-stocking that would turn any form of electrigun or stopper yet devised, over a slender body with a stout chest and conical b.r.e.a.s.t.s and an almost non-existent belly and shortish, muscular legs; almost heavy legs. The skinnt.i.te was white. The laced vest and bucket boots and gauntlets and belt supporting the holster of her stopper were gleaming black leather. Real leather, yes.

She had left the caravansery or hotel in Alisse in baggies and dark temporary skindye and a hooded brown cloak that was dull as an economics lecture. With her was this outfit she and Rat had decided on, together. It was feminine, and it was dangerous-looking, befitting the captain of a s.h.i.+p named Hornet. He had not needed 137.

138.

to explain why when dealing with a man as brilliant as Ramesh Jageshwar the little s.p.a.cer should not be called Tarkij, or even Revenge.

Rat had also decided to help her put together the crew. They were five, a woman and four men. The woman was a gutter-rat from Ramadan; the men, all save one, from the crew of a Shankari privateer whose captain and mate had been personally Diplomatic Missioned by Ratran Yao. The other man was wanted on Resh, for murder.

That was fine with his new captain. She had been wanted for murder on Resh for a long time now.

The woman had been enslaved once, as Janja had. Unlike Janja, she was perfectly willing to enslave others to keep herself living. She had accepted employment and her ”captain happily; there had been no incident. With one of the men there had. His questioning the captain's authority and his sneers were unwise; how was he to know that she was TGO-trained? She beat the very arrogance out of him, along with a bit of blood.

They didn't understand why or how they had become so infamous so swiftly, but it didn't bother them much. On the contrary, all but one of the men off the privateer were proud of it. It was the first renown of their lives, the negative publicity Ratran Yao had carefully orchestrated.

Above the seventh planet of the star Thales they practiced at this and that, including gunnery. The two off privateer Jumper proved good DS men. Captain Jan-sanerima and SIPAc.u.m took Hornet on in toward another planet of Thales, well in toward the sun. The planet was called Aglaya. By then the crew were strutting, doing s.e.xual things with each other (but never never with the captain) and looking upon Cap'm Jansa much as a far earlier crew might have looked upon 139.

Cap'm Harry Morgan, later Sir Henry.

They swooped down from s.p.a.ce and into the cloud-pearled skies of Aglaya, and the captain bit her lip as they scudded above rain-forests and came to the misty mountains that, long ago, she had seen in the distance.

A lifetime ago, when I was only a little girl, really, walking hand in hand with Tarkij my love, discussing a tomorrow that never came. Back then I wondered about the mountains that were sometimes purple and sometimes an ugly gray; wondered how anything as ugly as ash-gray could exist in such a beauiful world . . . the only world I knew, then.

A lifetime ago, that innocence and naivete, and yet not quite a year and a half, Galactic standard measurement. And how long had it been on Aglaya, she wondered. She programmed the manual computer at her side. The s.h.i.+p's main 'puter-a really superb new SIPAc.u.m, for The Gray Organization did not scrimp when it came to things-was busy, bringing them in. The lighted screen gave her the answer, and she stared at the outer viewscreen that showed Aglaya.

What would I have been like, if I had spent these nineteen Aglayan months on Aglaya?

No screen gave her the answer: her mind did. I'd be a loving mother, and perfectly happy. And I'd be able to choncel.

//, she thought with a growing feeling of sadness, or resignation to the inevitability of her alienation from her own world and her own people, if I were still alive. In that case I'd probably be pregnant again, by now. And looking three years older than I do, or maybe five . . . now, in the cabin of a small s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p easing down into the Purple Mountains in search of a hiding-place that would not hide it too well from the air.

A barbarian, she reminded herself. That's what I was 140.

and still would be. A know-nothing. How is it possible? All there is out there, planets and suns and more planets and billions of people, and all the technology-all the Things the Galactics have made. And here is Aglaya, living ages in the past. I'd have been like some half-civilized-no, not even half-woman from Ratran Yao's distant past. From the distant past of his people . . . his race, since it's different from mine.

And I'd have been happy, she thought, and her face was grim and yet a bit whimsical; a bit wistful.

Living, she mused without satire, on love.

My belt and boots should be gray, gray, and the skinnt.i.te too. Gray. All gray. And me, too. Janja-graya.

But I am happy!

Are you? Is it possible to be happy, living on love rather than hate, making ecstatic, animal, shrieking love with a man because of a bond of burn-out and hate?

”Black is black, and white is white,” she murmured, but the Purple Mountains are really gray when one comes down into them, rather than standing off looking at them from the ignorance of distance. And the end justifies the means.

”All right, let's get this thing on the ground.”

The crew did not know her problems and did not know that they had not really come here to take slaves. They thought she was a bit fobby, their pale captain in her dark garb. Trouble reared again, and she tried to handle it. That proved not possible with the man from Samanna, and she had to duck and then to shoot him. She reduced him to ash and molecules just as a similar weapon had reduced to nothing a man called Tarkij here, over a year ago one day when he was out walking with his Promised, Janjaheriohir.

141.

After that the others were sullen, but they obeyed. They did at least see that their captain was no happy woman. As sullen as they, perhaps.

They waited, on Aglaya.

They saw Aglayans. Once Janja-now-Jansa sat for hours, watching a young couple. She watched them laugh at the pa.s.sage of a Leapfoot that had startled them and perhaps momentarily frightened them. She watched them cavort and touch and pick flowers to decorate each other, and lie on their backs in the tall gra.s.s to gaze at the pearl-hued sky and at the mountain they thought was purple. And they fondled, happy in the warmth and tall gra.s.s of Aglaya.

Janja sighed and was not happy. She a.s.sumed that something similar though more athletic was taking place among her crew, or between two members at least. Nothing had interfered with the few duties she required of them while they were grounded here, and Captain Jansa chose to say nothing about their s.e.xual doings. It was hardly unnatural. She was not available to them and the woman from Ramadan on Rahman, Kimry, was.

Janja had not noticed any specific pair-bonding that could lead to tension and worse. As a matter of fact she noticed the opposite. Their furtive s.e.xual doings...o...b..ard and in the Aglayan bushes were definitely relievers of tension, among slave-taking s.p.a.cefarers who were not happy with their just being here, doing nothing.

At last Janja's hand moved angrily to slash off the long-viewer. It was that or start weeping; she couldn't bear to stare at the happy couple any more and she couldn't turn off her moping thoughts. In her black and white garb she went to tell her crew that no, they were not going to s.n.a.t.c.h that couple.

142.

They were waiting for a larger group of what they called ”Glyans,” she told them. (She knew they were making an effort to say ”Aglayans,” now, since their captain was a native of this planet.) The Aglayans always came out en ma.s.se at this time of year, she told them, and added that it was part of the local religion. Sunmother forgive me these lies! Her four crewmem-bers nodded in silence, looking sullen, when she turned and strode so s.e.xily away on tight-sheathed legs with their typical Aglayan calves.

Then they began muttering. This Captain Ice was the coldest and worst monster in the Galaxy, surely! Coming back here to prey on the people of her own lovely world (even if they were all just barbarians) and actually using her knowledge as a native against them; actually waiting patiently for a larger group.

Barbarians?

Of course Glyans were barbarians-look at her, at Captain Ice and what she's planning!

”She may be waitin' patiently,” Chan said, ”but I be grat-gnawed if I'm patient with all this waitin'!”

They were not, any of them. Yet they made it, Janja made them make it, for five days. They needed badly to do something by then, or for something to happen. Something did. They detected the other s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p and were seasoned enough to know that it had detected them.

”Who the purple blazing h.e.l.l are you?” the voice demanded from s.p.a.ce.

”We're here-who are you?” Hornet asked coyly, and the other s.h.i.+p came down, and at last dispatched a s.p.a.ceboat to investigate.

The crew of the newcomer had no reason to be apprehensive. Hornet was small, and grounded. Hornet was a child compared to the size and experience of the 143.

other s.h.i.+p and its complement. Each naturally suspected the other, since both avoided identifying themselves.

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