Spaceways - King Of The Slavers Part 17

"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 shirt; 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 shivered, 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-shielding 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 mailshirt 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 Shieda 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 ship, 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 slaveship, 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.

But he was honest and straightforward, she told herself, even while tears blurred her vision. Ratran Yao was a liar, a congenital and constant liar. He delighted and gloried in lying. He lied and killed and blackmailed and used people . . . people such as Janja. Ramesh was totally honest. He admitted his business of slavery and his sin of incest-for which he had for decades suffered the mind-rot of guilt. (Is Rat capable of guilt? Oh d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n these tears!) Ramesh confided in her, left her her ship and even made it a present from him. He loved her and he was honest about it.

He, only he and Trafalgar Cuw, have not tried to use me.

Surely Rat, laboring for the force of Good, was incapable of love as well as incapable of eliciting it. Even if he were capable of love, could he find the honesty to admit it? No, Janja mused; Rat would see that as an admission of weakness and a danger to him and his TGO effectiveness.

And what does Ramesh do with the billions he takes in? If only I knew that he gave it to thousands or millions of orphans-or returned it to Aglaya!

She knew that he did not. She did not know what he did with the enormous wealth he took in and so possessed. He lived well, but not as well as he might. His income was so great that he and four others could spend 219.

the rest of their lives as wastrels and never deplete the wealth. She thought of TGO's motto. Those were Ra-mesh's means-but what was the end?

She shook her head and, surrept.i.tiously, wiped her eyes. Blinking, she thought: and TGO's motto-is it not mine? Isn't that what I've told myself, while I was adopting any means toward the n.o.ble end of Jonuta's death? And now I have lied and tricked and caused another death-never mind that the Galaxy and Ramesh are the better for Daura's death!

I hated, and I used any means to get to Jonuta, and I did. I killed him. And he is not only alive, but has saved my life! So has Ramesh. Him I do not hate-and yet I must destroy him, and have lied and tricked him toward that end. Are the means justified? Yet how can I compromise still again ?

I serve Good: The Gray Organization. And again her eyes blurred, so that she saw dimly, through a film of gray.

On the sleek ship speeding in toward the undeveloped planet that was Aglaya (valuable only for its extravagant blue orchids), she directed a mental question at her self, at Aglii, at the universe: Is the whole universe only shades of grayness? Is there then no black and no white, and am I as gray as the rest of them ?

As enigmatic as it had remained when Stephen Crane advised it that "Sir, I exist!", the universe did not reply.

On the viewscreen one of the little lights in the pa.r.s.ec abyss continued to grow and grow larger and larger. Around it, basking in its radiant warmth, circled eight planets. The clouded one was Aglaya.

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If A is, B must be; if B is, then C must be; therefore if A is, C must be. ... if A is, then A must be....

-Aristotle, Posterior a.n.a.lytics A cannot be the same as B, and gray cannot be the same as white. This time I shall not compromise.

-Janjaglaya Wye, TGO They had just made what remained of Daura part of the gentle winds of the gentle planet of her birth. Janja, standing behind Ram who stood with bowed head, blinked at the glint of wan sunlight on burnished metal. She glanced up. Then she stepped back and drew her stopper.

"What-" He swung, looking up. "A ship's lander! Janja, get-"

Then he saw the stopper in her hand, leveled at him. He frowned at it, raised his gaze to her eyes. And frowned more deeply. Cold, determined eyes stared back at him. Now they were what she had said they were, Janja's eyes: dead.

"Jan!"

"Stand still, King of the Slavers," she said. "That will be Ratran Yao. I knew that whether you slew me or Daura, you would return the 'ashes' to Aglaya. Ratran and I arranged this . . . rendezvous."

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He stared speechlessly at her while the gravity-boat slid almost silently down. It settled to the ground a short distance away, with a whoosh. Ratran Yao emerged, with two others. They carried drawn stoppers.

"Ramesh Jageshwar called Kshatriya?"

Ram glanced at Janja, looked back at Rat. He nodded.

"You are under arrest, Ramesh Jageshwar."

Again Ram looked at Janja, and back to Rat Yao. He nodded. "All right. But there is nothing illegal on our ship and I really think you can never prove a thing."

Rat's eyes shifted from him to Janja, who had hol-stered her stopper and was pulling her coppery "mail-shirt" off over her head. Under it she wore a white garment that had been called a T-shirt for a millennium and more.

"Wrong," Rat said, transferring his stopper to his left hand. He raised his right to catch the garment Janja slung to him, twinkling and rustling. He caught it and grinned at Ramesh. "Like the current fashion from Harb? Those barbarians are going through another of their metal phases-you should see the makeup! But this one's special. It takes moving pictures, slaver."

"A complete record," Janja said quietly, dully, "of Ramesh Jageshwar in the act of killing his sister."

Ratran nodded. "Jageshwar, I arrest you for the murder of your sister. I believe we can prove that-and with this sort of evidence, just what crime we convict you of, with a very great deal of publicity, isn't important, is it?" His smile was broad, delighted, reminding Janja of Daura's, just before her death. "We have you, regardless, King of the Slavers."

"Putting me out of business will be a great mistake, Yao."

Ratran laughed. "I don't think so!"

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Janja had been regarding Ramesh with a little frown. Now, before he could speak, she went to him and kissed his impa.s.sive lips.

"You are worthy of Aglaya," she told him quietly, with the sparkle of tears in her eyes.

He thrust her from him. "You are worthy of a kennel!"

"Enough of that, quite enough," Ratran said. "Get away from him, Janja-I'd hate to have him grab you and hide behind you." Because then I'd have to Poof you both, he thought, and the thought was clear in Jan-ja's mind. "Quong, get into the lander so you can cover our guest while he enters. We'll follow."

"You'll never get to have your highly publicized trial and conviction, Ratran Yao. I'm going to have to be killed while attempting to escape."

"Uh-huh," Rat said, and that was all the attention he gave Ramesh's strange words. "Come along, Janja."

Janja shook her head, watching a little breeze bend tall, bluegreen grain-gra.s.s like a lovingly caressing hand. "No," she said. "I'm home."

They stared at her, all of them. Then, all of them, at Ratran Yao. He was frowning.

"You're serious, aren't you, or think you are?"

She nodded. "I'm serious." Her stopper hung at the end of her arm.

"You can't stay here, Janja-on an undeveloped world! You'd die in no time-every person on this planet will be like a child to you. You belong out there," he said, jerking his head skyward. "In civilization."

Janja shrugged. It was all the reply she intended, but she added words: "There is no civilization. And no black and white, either."

"Well, you aren't staying here, my dear! No One Leaves TGO, Janja."

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