Part 15 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+vered 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 s.h.i.+elding 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 s.h.i.+p and a crew of three. We killed all four of them. Daura had the rudiments of the s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 s.h.i.+eda). 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 s.h.i.+rash.

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 relations.h.i.+p 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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