Part 16 (1/2)

She did not listen in, did not choncel Ram (as his sister had not) unless they agreed in advance. He was far more experienced at being chonceled than she was at doing it, and often knew when to make the request.

She did not choncel when she told him it would not work and he looked up with a quizzical expression, but of course she heard his spoken query: ”What, Jan? What won't work?”

She told him, looking at him and liking the way he looked. He had accepted the injection that reversed the cytochromatic change of his hair's color, and of his skin. Though he retained some tan, Ramesh Jageshwar was straw-blond, an Aglayan who looked like an Aglay-an-for her.

”I have been thinking about it for weeks,” she told him. ”It just won't work this way. Me hGOO.”

He b.u.t.toned off the financial reports he had been reviewing onscreen for the past hour. She knew he took in vast sums of money. Despite the luxury of this moun-taintop villa and his business expenditures, she could not imagine what he did with so many stells. After years of experience with Daura he knew how to mask his thoughts to a degree, and she would not probe his brain with hers.

”Why?” he asked. ”Why won't it work? Isn't it working?”

She sighed and crossed the room to look out on the kilometers and kilometers of vista commanded by the windows of his aerie.

”They will find out about us, Ram. They will tell your sister. They will find a way to prove it to her, and she will begin talking. In anger, in hurt. She will tell them everything she can, and she will agree to testify. Then you are lost, and . . . so am I.”

”While I think that no threats or torture would make 202.

Daura tell what she did not want to tell, I agree with you. I hadn't thought of it. Yes, in hurt and anger she might. What do you suggest?”

He spoke from behind her, and she shook her head, biting her lip as she turned back to face him. He sat half-turned from the big blank screen, an Aglayan who was king of the slavers.

Gray, she thought. Both of us. Or perhaps there is no white-for-good left, when an Aglayan is a slaver and furthermore the slaver. Perhaps we are not gray at all, but the absolute darkness of pure evil.

”I might be able to get her released . . . back here . . . but if I did that... oh Ram, you and she might take up again, and where am I?” She gazed at him a moment in anguish before adding, ”Or ... I could probably kill her. She will be unable to choncel me, I think. We have our ability from the same source, and I think that means we can't choncel each other.”

”You are telling me that you love me.”

”Oh darling-of course I love you!”

He rose and came to her. His hands rose to her arms and gripped them tightly. His eyes were hard on hers.

”Choncel,” he said, and she did, and he said, ”Jan-ja, Janja-I love you as much as I can love,” and she chonceled, and knew that he spoke the truth. She lunged against him. They were silent for a long while, embracing.

”And I love you without guilt,” he told her. ”I knew a lifetime of guilt with her; thirty years of guilt with my vicious sister. It is ridiculous, I know, but . . . its's as strong a prohibition among them as it is on Aglaya, a s.e.xual relations.h.i.+p between brother and sister. Consider their insulting epithet: 'sisterslicer!' Janja ... I don't want Daura back.”

”Yet you will also feel guilt at leaving her in captivity. If not now, eventually.''

203.

He said nothing, and she knew that he could not deny it.

”Then I must see that she is dead,” she said, pus.h.i.+ng back a little to look into his eyes-blue, blue eyes-and the mind behind them.

He shook his head. ”No. I cannot ask you or make you or even let you do that, for me. I shall kill her.”

She looked at him and he nodded, bidding her choncel, that she might know his thoughts.

She did, and she chonceled what he could not know: he thought that he would do as he said. He thought that he would slay his sister Daura who had so long been his lover; slay her without pa.s.sion, without hate or love either, and with little remorse. He would do it for Janja, for himself and Janja, and for himself. She saw with shock that it was in that order, in his mind. She was first: Janja. And then their future together, and then the safety of him and his organization.

So much emotion rose up inside her that she thought her knees would give way and she might fall. She did not, clinging to him and staring into his blue Aglayan eyes while she read his thoughts, and saw what he did not know. He thought, now, that he could kill Daura that way and for those reasons, and Janja saw that he was wrong. He could not. She saw his true thoughts, his underlying thoughts; those that were not conscious. Daura was that ruthless. Ramesh was not.

Janja did not tell him. What will happen, will happen. If I must die, at least I have at last found a good reason to live, and . . . and that is also a good reason to die. For him.

She nodded. ”I am their agent. I can bring her here, Ram. I will.”

19.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

-Shakespeare, Hamlet ”Do you know who we are?” the woman asked, the woman who was so much like Janja both in body and in mind, though twice her age.

They were in Hornet, its name changed again for this mission, and they were fleeing back to Janat. Janja had deliberately set course that looked as if it would take her out toward Qalara, and then had converted s.h.i.+p and occupants to tachyons and taken the Tachyon Trail, and again, and still again. If Ratran Yao or anyone else were somehow following, Hornet's SIPAc.u.m did not know it.

Janja's argument with Ratran had been long and often loud. She had won, primarily because knowing the thoughts of one's opponent was a tremendous advantage. Nor had Ratran Yao any notion of her ability -or of Daura's.

He had agreed to the release of Daura to Janja, agent Janja, and they left the TGO base (which was not on Homeworld, as he had told her, or on Resh, as he had told her, or any of the other places he had told her and was not indeed TGO headquarters, she knew now from 204.

205.

his mind; Ratran did not know where the headquarters of TransGalactic Order was, nor the name of its director. He did want very much to know, and for the first time Janja knew what perhaps only Ratran Yao knew: that he wanted to be Director, TGO. It was indeed a shadow organization, gray, and composed of gray shadow-people).

”I know who you are, pos,” Janja said. And lest Daura think that she might be lying, or sure in false knowledge; ”You are both of Aglaya, as I am. You were both stolen into slavery, as I was. You both freed yourselves, too, as I did. It did take me rather longer.”

Another long silence followed. They sat together, the two blonds whose resemblance was almost eerie, while the s.h.i.+p conducted itself through s.p.a.ce out past Barbro Transfer Station. It did so very nicely without their help or interference.

The silence was painful. Onboard News Service broke it, but at once gave Janja something else to think about. It reported the gleeful welcome by many s.p.a.cefarers (and the uproarious opprobrium of others) of a new phenomenon along the s.p.a.ceways. At last a replacement had arrived for Ganesa and her hust-s.h.i.+p Be Lively, which had vanished with all hands a year or so ago. The new s.p.a.cefaring brothel, ONS advised, was called Stay Lively!. It featured some very attractive and superlatively exotic girls. Furthermore the s.h.i.+p was luxury itself. Not just an ins.p.a.ce brothel or a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, but a yacht. It was the personal property of the new proprietor of the Galaxy-serving floating wh.o.r.ehouse. She too served the clients, and her name was Seerava.

Janja remembered how excited Lady Seerava had been about taking care of those poor spike-heeled, corseted girls off Manjanungo's s.h.i.+p. How she had babbled of having purpose at last, and of her determination 206.

to give purpose to the liberated girls, along with employment.

Oh, Seera! I wonder if you had this in mind all along, while you drove me to distraction with your do-gooder babble! I suppose it is what they are best suited for, Jan-ja thought, making a face. And not even they could say whether they are willing wh.o.r.es-what will did Man-janungo leave them?

And I made this possible! Gray, gray! O Sunmother and Aglii and Booda and Lord Musla and Too and Lady Vikeand Theba and-and all You other G.o.ds or ”G.o.ds” -what a gray, gray universe You all preside over!

Abruptly Daura-short, blond, calfy of leg, small of breast though not so small as Janja had been-snapped off the News. When Janja glanced at her, it was to find the other woman fixing her with an intense gaze from blue-tinged gray eyes just a bit more colorful than Janja's.

”Have you Deepkissed him?”

Janja nodded without breaking eye contact.

Daura made a tiny gasping sound and was silent for another long period; hundreds of thousands of kloms fled past the s.h.i.+p-although a kilometer was hardly a sensible means of measuring distance, from a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p on whose viewscreens suns in all their colors could be seen to have moved without quite being seen in motion; rather like the minute-hand on the archaic watches some people affected. After many millions of kloms-still no sensible measurement-Daura spoke again: ”Can you choncel me?”

”Neg. And I know you cannot me, or you'd ask no questions.”