Part 17 (1/2)

”That it is not true,” Janja said quietly. ”Ratran Yao mentioned truth-drugging me. I acted indifferent and he forgot it, since I did not appear to care. Naturally I said no such thing to her on our way here. She did tell me as 212.

we came, though, that I would not survive once she was back with you again.”

Daura made a snorting sound. Her cold smile widened a little. Janja was impressed. Ram nodded. Staring at Janja, he drew the stopper from the holster he had not worn when he and Daura left the room.

”I am sorry,” he said. ”Obviously the three of us cannot survive together-and obviously one of you is lying.”

He was staring at the coppery scintillance of Janja's metallic s.h.i.+rt; she was staring at the dark muzzle of the stopper and wondering if it was set on Fry. She raised her gaze to Daura's.

”Goodbye,” Janja said.

”Fry her!” Daura said intensely.

He raised the stopper but did not do as she bade. The weapon was set on Two. Janja Danced. Even as she shuffled and s.h.i.+vered, she was aware of the sound of Daura's laughter.

”Let me! Let me, Kshatriya!”

Janja staggered as the beam was taken off her, and saw Ramesh hand the stopper to his sister, and step away. Staring at Janja from a face that wore a grin that was a rictus of pure malevolence, Daura deliberately clicked the stopper's setting up a notch. To the Third setting: Fry.

At least it is swift, Janja thought, willing her sphincters to hold, willing herself not to try to flee or attack across too many meters of carpet.

Wearing that grin, looking abruptly not at all beautiful or even pretty, Daura raised the dark cylinder. ”On the count of three,” she said, in a low voice that quivered with excitement, ”you are molecules! One-”

”O Aglii, but you are rotten,” Ramesh Jageshwar said.

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”Two-”

”I had to know that you would do it,” he said, and drew the stopper out of the pocket of his robe, and leveled it at his sister.

Janja saw his knuckles whiten as he squeezed, far harder than necessary to trigger the weapon. She heard the faint beginning of a cry, saw and squinted before the bright flash of light, the wavering image in the air. She caught only the hint of scorched air rather than flesh, and then Daura was dust and less. And then she was nothing, and her stopper thumped to the carpet.

He squeezed so hard, Janja thought, starting at last to tremble, for he wanted to do it-he wanted to more than kill her!

Ram's stopper made a similar thud on the green-gold carpet. A moment later he dropped the mind-s.h.i.+elding skullcap beside it with a little clink. He looked at Janja, and his eyes were tortured.

”I am sorry I made you Dance-sorry I had to torture you, but I-I had to -to know how evil she was ...”

She rushed to him and he grunted at the impact of her body on his. Her mails.h.i.+rt rustled with faint metallic sounds. She clutched him, and his arms came around her to squeeze just as hard.

”I thought you believed her,” she said brokenly into his neck.

He squeezed harder, then thrust her from him, holding her almost at arm's length while his eyes stared into hers.

”Oh Janja-you really did? Oh Janja! There was never any such thought in my mind-never any possibility of believing her over you. I had seen the two of you together. The one-the one I've so long lied to myself about, blinded myself-the one so cold, so calculating and ruthlessly vicious as she has always been; the other 214.

warm and loving and strong, brave, a daughter of Aglay and worthy of Aglaya-O Janja! I realized that my sister has always been as nearly pure evil as a human can be. What a long and sick spell of infatuation I've been under! I could not have loved her. It was because we were both so strong and so-so wanting, so ambitious. We found none stronger, and respected each other and sneered at everyone else. I knew only guilt and my blindness about her. I love you, Janja.''

Her trembling returned and she felt weak in both legs. She tugged from him, turned from him.

”I am cold, Ram. Slashed inside. Burned and scarred inside. Ratran Yao told me that some blows kill and some merely injure, leaving scars. He told me truth, Ram-that Jonuta's crewmember's killing Tarkij and stealing me left a scar in my head. He was right, as he was right about my eyes: burned out.” She shuddered, starting to mention ”ash” and thinking of Daura, who was less than ash. ”And I am calculating, and vicious ... I canot even smile. The perfect TGO agent.”

He touched her from behind, grasped her from behind, turned her and held her there, facing him. He was shaking his head, and the tightening of his hands on her arms hurt her. She did not mind.

”Perhaps you are calculating,” he told her, ”but you are also direct. To attempt what Daura attempted could never be your way. To go further, to kill as she would have killed you-that is not within you, Janja. Vicious? Perhaps . . . you have killed . . . but do you love it, so that your nipples erect when you kill?” His voice had become more and more intense. ”And your eyes-Janja, Janja! Haven't you looked in a mirror in the past month and more? Your eyes are bright, and they sparkle, and I have seen you smile again and again. Not the bitter Daura smile I saw when you first came here.

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That's not the smile you flash at me, not any more.” He smiled. ”Choncel!”

Janja gazed at him and she frowned, wondering. Was he right? Had it happened without her knowledge? And if it had-his mind told her that it had indeed-then was it because she had achieved her goal of slaying Jonuta, who would not stay dead, but then s.h.i.+eda as a sort of subst.i.tute so that at last she felt freed of that quest for vengeance that she had thought was keeping her alive ... or was it a result of Ramesh Jageshwar. and her weeks here with him?

She was silent on the s.h.i.+p, the charcoal-and-black Warrior Jansa as it swept through the vacuum separating Janat from Aglaya. She sat in a frequently-frowning, brain-wrestling silence, and he said little to her; he too was locked with his thoughts.

He had slain his sister, his partner and paramour for three decades. Now, symbolically at least, Ramesh was taking Daura home. It was not that he still held the Aglayan belief that she needed to be where Aglii might more easily find her; he no longer believed in Aglii or Sunmother either. Nevertheless he was driven to this act, as Janja had known he would be. He was of Aglaya, and Daura was, and so was Janja who had been Janjaheriohir. The act was even more symbolic because of the fact that nothing remained of Daura save sub-microscopic particles. Yet he had decided that they were in the carpet, and that he would not walk on her, and that she and the carpet together would return to the soil of Aglaya.

The re-renamed Hornet bore Janja, and Ramesh, and the great roll of green-gold carpet that so resembled Aglayan moss.

The King of the Slavers was wrapped in thoughts of 216.

his sister, and of Janja, and surely of himself. Nearby Janja was thinking, in the main, about Janja.

A thousand years ago she had promised Tribemother and her parents, and she and Tarkij had lived a year without enjoying each other's bodies, never giving in to the intensity of their youthful desire. That would have been wicked, and the girl named Janjaheriohir was not wicked. She had shrunk back from Tarkij on that day (a thousand years of experience ago); that day when the Sky-demons came, for she had promised Tribemother, and to have lain with Tarkij would have been to break the Law and to lie, and that would have been evil, doubly evil, lying to Tribemother.

A thousand years ago on Jonuta's slaves.h.i.+p, his woman Kenowa had said that Jonuta was both good and bad, for he had saved her life from enslavement to drugs while he had taken Janja's life, stolen it to enslave her.

On Aglaya, Janja had said sententiously that day a thousand years ago, where we are not civilized, we always know what is good and what is bad. Jonuta, she said even when she had never heard of Aristotle, was one or he was the other. He could not be good-pure white-with the elements of evil-total black-merged in him. Since he did evil, she had told Kenowa oh so positively, he was evil, and so she had continued to believe. Smugly.

She was sold to a man who was priest of his G.o.d, and Janja had explained Sicuan's evil to her own youthful, unsophisticated satisfaction by a.s.suming that Gri of Resh was a false G.o.d. But was he, or He? Was Aglii? Did either of them exist?-and was Sunmother other than one more star among billions? Because there was evil in Sicuan-and in his son Chulucan, and the slavemaster, too-Janja told herself before ever she had 217.

heard of the philosopher Rand; and because gray was only white with black mixed in, it was therefore not white. Q.E.D.: Sicuan and Chulucan and Gri were evil.

I have seen two or three Aglayan slaves, Whitey had told her, once she had served the cause of good and of herself by slaying her masters. She asked Whitey who had been Fidnij of Aglaya what he had done and he had said nothing; there was nothing to be done. And she had judged him. Smugly.

Aglii was pleased, she told Whitey, with the deaths of the evil men she had slain. Aglii would not have been pleased had she taken their money and so, righteously, she had left that b.l.o.o.d.y house with nothing of theirs save what she wore. And yet later she had taken the money of a man named Banerjee. And she had been enslaved and brutalized, turned into a thing-for-s.e.x, on Knor* and she had slain her ”owner,” righteously. And she and her companions had brought away from Knor much loot, so that they were rich. So swiftly were the contradictions moving in to shake her sureness and her righteousness!

Yet all her actions had been toward the goal of reaching Qalara, and Jonuta. A goal of white good: the killing of Jonuta. She had felt a sense of great accomplishment when she had slain him. Smugly. A blow for people, and for life and freedom: she had slain a master-slaver!

Beside her sat her lover, the master-slaver of the Galaxy.

The end, Makiavely had implied, justified the means, and Janja had discussed and argued that tenet with Rat-ran. She learned that it was the firm belief and motto of TransGalactic Order, TGO: The Gray Organization. By In s.p.a.cEWAYS #4, Satana Enslaved 218.

illegal means, by immoral means, by ”sinful” means, TGO prevented war-and had done so for many years. Ratran Vao killed without compunction. He slew strangers when they were a threat to the balance of Society. It was one of the means of protecting millions and perhaps billions of persons from war and from rapacious men who would dominate and control and even enslave them.

Beside her sat the master-slaver of the universe.