Part 16 (2/2)
”Because we both drank from the same man.”
”Apparently it isn't merely legend.”
”Hmm. And that swine, Ratran Yao? You chonceled him?”
207.
”Of course. If I hadn't known what he was thinking, I'd never have got you out, Daura.”
”You chonceled that he loves you?”
Janja shrugged. ”He respects me. It isn't love-it's hate. He only believes it is love, because we are both strong and respect that in each other. We hate each other, Daura. We wallowed in the s.e.x embrace and it was good and better than good. But it was an act out of our mutual hatred, not love.”
”That's nonsense.”
Daura-like, Janja shrugged.
Daura stared at her. ”And . . . Kshatriya?”
”I do not call him by your name for him,” Janja said, hoping to evade the question; hoping her non-answer would be enough, It was not: ”Never mind that. Do you love him?”
”I will not answer,” Janja said, looking at the console.
They talked without looking at each other. Two women who were mental superwomen, but not with each other. They might have been pitted against each other as spy and counterspy, in fiction. They were not characters of fiction. Two slender women with pale flesh and hair almost white. Daura's was very long; she had been long incarcerated, and was older besides. Daura, Janja was sure, was older and much wiser than she (and much more ruthless, calculating), and so she would not look at the sister of Ramesh Jageshwar. Queen of the Slavers.
”Does he.. . does he ... ”
”Ask him.”
Janja turned to her then; they were side by side in the adjustaseats before the control console of Hornet and the (artificial) window of the main viewscreen.
”I have gained you your freedom from The Gray Organization, Daura. You know that I am their agent-or 208.
was-and so does Ramesh. We cannot be friends; I understand that. On the other hand we need not be enemies. Surely there is no need for you to be torturing yourself.”
The older woman glared at her, her face working, eyes bright.
”You will not survive this, Janja,” she said. ”There cannot be three of us. He and I have been lovers since we were-”
”-Twelve and fourteen,” Janja supplied, and Daura gasped.
”Yess,” she hissed at last. ”Twelve and fourteen. And you are'after all their agent-or began as such.” Her smile was not pleasant. ”You will not survive.”
Janja refused to look at her. She kept herself reminded of Daura's ruthlessness and penchant for violence-and apparent enjoyment of killing-however, and was ready for a sudden movement from her right. She stared at the screen. The little multicolored pinpoints of light and particularly the larger circles of brightness had changed, and their configuration was different. The largest white disk had vanished; that sun was ”behind” them, now.
”You torture yourself,” she said, ”and now you seek to torture me with words and thoughts. If I believe what you say I should kill you, or return you to TGO and Ratran Yao.”
”You know you dare not try to return me. You would not survive that attempt, either.”
”We will arrive together, then. I have no wish to slay you anyhow. But-” Janja turned to face her with a level gaze that showed openness and serenity, rather than malice. ”But if my life-reading ends, the s.h.i.+p automatically returns to base. And TGO and Ratran Yao. So, Daura. We are safe from each other.”
209.
”Until we reach Janat,” Daura muttered. Not only was her face full of malice, but Janja could cherm menace from the woman. Cherm, not choncel.
”Until we reach Janat,” Janja said.
Onscreen, the little lights continued to change. Some grew and some shrank while others vanished, pa.s.sed by. One continued to grow larger and larger. Around it circled, in eternal begirding orbit, four planets. Janat was the second.
20.
Everything has by nature as much right as it has power. . . . good and evil indicate nothing positive in things considered in themselves, nor are they anything else than modes of thought. . . . One and the same thing may at the same time be both good and evil or indifferent....
-Spinoza Brother and sister embraced. Ramesh, wearing the little skullcap he and Daura had long ago devised, laughed and told them both that he would not have two women in his mind simultaneously.
”Now we all wear metal,” he said, ”like the barbarians they think we of Aglaya are. I with my mesh-cap and you with your belt, Daura, and you Janja in that ancient armor.”
”Simulation,” Janja smiled, and her fingerflip was deliberate; she would not mimic Daura's shoulder-shrug.
Daura's ”belt” was a number of paper-thin strips of gleaming silver metal that began just below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and circled her slender body down to mid-hip; from there a standard side-slit Bleaker skirt swung to caress her insteps, in ice-blue. Janja's twinkling copper-colored tunic was unfitted but clung; it was in imitation of an ancient form of armors.h.i.+rt called scale-mail. With 210.
211.
it she wore what she thought of as Quindy pants: red, they were quite snug above but belled below the knees like little skirts.
Ramesh's beige-trimmed mauve robe covered him from throat to insteps, though its sleeves were only three-quarter length. He was barefoot.
Brother and sister embraced, and he dialed drinks, and they raised three richly-detailed crystal goblets of kerala to one another. Janja still preferred wines, but kerala was Daura's favorite drink.
”Much, much better than that swill my captors have fed me, Kshatriya! Will our rescuer pardon us while my brother and I exchange our greetings in private?”
”It is the way of Aglii,” Janja said, giving the ritual response, for on Aglaya it was the wont of those close to each other to withdraw for a few minutes after a separation.
They departed. She stood and stared out the great wall-window at lovely, lonely Janat while she waited, ignoring the kerala she had only tasted but smoking a Heaven High to relax the nerves she told herself (unsuccessfully) were not agitated.
They returned, and she turned to face them: Ram, frowning, looking worried and unhappy, Daura wearing a cold smile of triumph. Janja sighed.
It is now, then.
”Daura has told me of how you made your report to your TGO superiors, under drugs so that you told only truth. And of how you bragged to her on Hornet of how you would now have us together to turn over to The Gray Organization. What do you have to say?”
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