Spaceways - King Of The Slavers Part 14

175.

She shrugged. "Home. My original home. It seemed fitting."

"What did you hit s.h.i.+eda's s.h.i.+p with?"

"We were on the ground, a small s.h.i.+p, and they were up in parking orbit. They didn't think to fear us. Got 'em with a deprotonizer. Poof!" She smiled at him. It was a tight smile, in which the eyes failed to cooperate, and he studied it.

"Why a depro gun?"

"My secret."

He leaned a little forward. "No, it isn't." Firmness and strength rode his voice. The man radiated great strength, great firmness, intense purpose.

"All right then. It was all I could afford, that ancient and I understand short-lived weapon. Effective, wasn't it."

"s.h.i.+eda thought so, if he had time to think." Leaning forward from the divan, he opened the table and took out a small cube of clear plas. He looked into it. Ramesh Jageshwar smiled. "This still says you're still telling the truth."

"You've already heard it, haven't you? Haven't you checked? By the way, do I ever get any clothing?"

"Sometime, probably. We checked you partially, pos; back to Resh. Hawking takes longer, of course. I'll send the query by tachyon next month and we'll have the answer tomorrow. Have you ever used the name Yanya?"

She chuckled. "No, but some people have called me that. Why is 'Jansa' so hard to p.r.o.nounce?"

"Don't look at me, Jansa. People are stupid, and especially about words that sound or look unusual."

"Doesn't sound unusual to me."

"All right. Think your story will check out on Hawking?"

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This time she flipped her fingers. "If your sources are accurate, it will."

She was right; there were records of her on Hawking, by now, 'way out there in the outermost of the Outer Worlds, because Rat Yao would have planted them. If he had asked about the privateer she had killed-and his mates-well, that was Raon, whom Yao had slain on Shankar-along with both his mates. By now records would show that she had purchased the depro gun on Shankar and installed it on Rahman, in secret.

"I can't understand why the truth, my history, is so necessary, Ramesh Kshatriya."

He leaned back on the couch and stared at her with the tiniest of enigmatic smiles. "Can't you? Even I don't know how many people want me, Jansa. Various people are extensions of me, in a way, and you've indicated that you thought s.h.i.+eda was. You could have been-could be-part of an elaborate plot to placidate me. Too, there's another Reason."

She waited, looking at him expectantly but otherwise letting the provocative statement hang there without the question he must expect.

Ramesh Jageshwar rose, extending a hand. Naked, she took it and went with him. Down a corridor and into a big room done all in red and silver with a laserstrobe ceiling that was not quite this side of eerie. He opened a broad, tall maroon drape to reveal a huge three-dimensional picture; a holopainting. Full-length, and naked. A woman, with shoulder-length hair that was very light, ash-blond, and a slender, nicely curved body. She wore only a belt, deep purple and stark against her pale flesh. Buckled in silver, it hung aslant across her hips to support an empty holster. The stopper was in her hand, leveled at the viewer.

"My sister, Daura."

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"Odd sort of family pose, but she's lovely. She looks familiar, although I don't think I know her."

He did not smile, much less chuckle. "You might better recognize a mirror image of her, since that's what you are accustomed to seeing. You are more like her," he said quietly, staring at the tall painting, "than anyone I have ever seen or hoped to see."

"I beg your pardon?"

He turned to look at her. "You are very much like my sister Daura," he said, and something s.h.i.+fted in Janja's mind.

As he spoke that key phrase (one of seven possible variations prepared for her), the mental shackles that had protected her throughout interrogation and torture slid from the mind of Janja-not-Jansa. At once she remembered it all; who and what and why she really was, and why she was here.

Now, if she were again questioned under drugs or surveillance of a liar's cube, she would immediately betray herself, because she no longer believed the story she had repeatedly told here; the story she had believed was true, the whole time. It had been her "memory." Heretofore only she had been in danger. Now both she and TGO were.

Ratran had installed the hypnochemic block and false story for her protection, of course. And for the protection of the far more important TransGalactic Order.

16.

No man voluntarily pursues evil, or what he thinks to be evil. To prefer evil over good is not in human nature; when a man is compelled to choose between the two evils, no one will choose the greater when he can have the less.

-Socrates He gave her things to wear. Skin-fitting things, oftener in white than in black or anything dark. Garments or "outfits" with interesting cutouts and hardware. Salacious and kinky things. The matching breast-cups and briefs of bra.s.s-imitating pra.s.s were nicely padded within for her protection. She laughed at them and felt ridiculous, but he told her they were s.e.xier than nudity and part of an ancient s.p.a.ce tradition. She wore them, naturally; the reason was simply because he provided them and wanted her to wear them. Another "outfit" consisted only in various long, flowing streamers of cloth, baby blue on one surface and silver on the other. More s.p.a.cefaring tradition, he told her.

On another occasion she was painted here and there, and otherwise wore nothing for an entire morning. Jan-ja really didn't mind. She was of Aglaya, not of them.

Ramesh, she learned, was beset by neither guilt nor doubt about his slaving operations.

He commanded many s.h.i.+ps and derived income from 178.

179.

the operations of others whose captains were not directly in his employ but whom he backed or had backed when they were beginning their enterprises. (Janja was reminded of the way TGO kept various caught-and-re-leased outlaws on call, for occasional use-or-else.) Interestingly, he was not served byslaves.

Indeed he did not, she learned, really approve of slavery!

It was merely a most excellent means of acc.u.mulating wealth by administering to the needs of rapacious people in power who were too stupid or cruel or uncaring to end slavery; leaders or "leaders" who had the need to be served by human beings whom they owned, body and mind. It was a matter in which Ramesh was not immoral, but un-moral.

On the other hand he was beset by both doubt and guilt concerning his sister.

The guilt had been with him for thirty years; he was aged forty-four years-standard. The siblings had begun to act as lovers when he was fourteen and she twelve. He was at pains to advise "Jansa" that it was not that either he or Daura had seduced the other, but that instead it was a mutual longing and drifting together that first time. It continued.

Janja a.s.sumed that he was covering the fact that he had seduced Daura. Janja was wrong. As she came to know him better, she realized that he had chosen the opposite tack from the truth. He was covering for Daura. The just-nubile girl of twelve had initiated the incestuous liaison. To lie so as to cover for her was the way of Ramesh Jageshwar called Kshatriya.

Again Janja was compa.s.sed about by swirling gray. It was hard not to think of this man as honorable, after over five weeks here with him.

He and Daura had married, each to another. Within 180.

two years he had been divorced. Since then he had lived unmarried, although that did not mean that he lived either unattached or celibate. His sister's husband had died four years after their marriage. A year later she had joined her brother in what became a permanent partners.h.i.+p, in business and in bed. A year or so after joining him, Daura had told Ramesh directly that she had slain her husband. His guilt heightened, though he had neither had anything to do with the murder nor even known about it.

Ramesh Jageshwar, slaver and commander of scores of slavers, stealer and seller of thousands of human beings annually, felt no guilt about his business. His guilt came from his incest and was magnified by the fact that his sister had murdered her husband in order to come here and live with him, as His lover.

He admitted to a feeling near relief when she vanished, months ago. At first he had a.s.sumed that she had been s.n.a.t.c.hed by a rival. Then, when no threats or attempts at bargaining were made, he suspected something called the Outerworld League.

"And when still nothing came, no demands or attempts to blackmail or bargain, I realized that she must be dead or the prisoner of The Gray Organization, which is as good as dead."

Janja, who knew very well that Daura was a prisoner of TGO, continued to hold her silence and let him talk.

Since then, he told her easily, he had had many women. All, all of them were pale of skin and hair, slender of body. He had used skindye and even celldye to adjust the hair and skin of some likely candidates. But none of them was the Daura he was helpless not to seek, and he decided that none could take her place.

"I thought it was the judgment of the G.o.ds," he said, to the ceiling. "I was to be punished by being forced to 181.

live without her . . . and never to find with another woman what I found with her."

"Which G.o.ds?" Janja asked, lying beside him on her back as he was, gazing up at their nude reflections in the mirrored ceiling above the gigantic airbed with its sheets of dark lavender satin. The room was carefully temp-controlled to make such ridiculous cold-conducting sheets pleasant.

He waved a hand, letting it drop to her thigh. "Any G.o.ds. All of them, or none of them. Is it possible to believe in G.o.ds, unless one needs to, in spite of intellect? But all of us believe in some sort of justice, some sort of overriding force and purpose, Purpose with a capital letter, whether we need G.o.ds or admit to belief or not. So ... belief in an overriding Force, a universal Purpose, is a form of belief in.G.o.d or a G.o.d or G.o.ds."

"Uh. And what had you found with her?"

"Peace. Partners.h.i.+p. Joy. Comfort. Happiness, Jansa-with my own sister," he added, for he must torture himself. "In every way. She was the perfect partner -intelligent and ruthless! More ruthless than I. On the other hand I knew that I could trust her. She was the perfect s.e.xual partner for me, too."

His fingers tightened in the superlatively firm flesh of Janja's thigh. He stroked and kneaded it.

"I just said 'was,' twice," he mused aloud in a wondering voice. "I used the past tense about Daura! Hmm."

"And the others?" she asked. "All those subst.i.tutes you brought here or had brought here since her disappearance ... what of them?"

"Merely females," he said. "There was one with a brain . . . and unfortunately more avarice than I have ever encountered in anyone, anywhere. Two did possess, umm, inordinate abilities in bed. One of them had 182.

no mind whatever. And the other, the Franjese girl with the ability to ... to squeeze with her v.u.l.v.ar sphincter, like masturbating a man within her body . . . she was merely insipid. And of course false. Painted and dyed, all over hair and body."

Janja closed her eyes. His hand had wandered. It was his left, crossing his body to hers as she lay on his right, and his thumb was probing. She moved on it, just a little, by tightening first one b.u.t.tock beneath her and then the other. His hand made her want to grasp or seize her breast, to worry the nipple, and she forbore.

"I asked," she said quietly, "what of them?"

"They were returned to whence they came," he said in his often oddly formal way; at times he spoke the Galactic language-Erts-as if it were as new and alien to him as it was to Janja. "Most of them. All are better off than they were; naturally I saw to that. Two are far better off, financed so that they can and are using what abilities I saw that they possessed. s.h.i.+vita, the avaricious one, is dead."

"I won't ask more about them. Will I be returned to the Gotoh.e.l.l Bar? Where is my s.h.i.+p? "

"Your s.h.i.+p is here," he said.

"Here? On your planet?"

"On Janat," he confirmed.

He spoke the word, the name he had given this world, as if it meant "home" rather than "Garden of Paradise," its true meaning. Yet it did mean home to Ramesh Jageshwar, in a very real way. Janat was his. Janat was unsettled and otherwise unpopulated. "Garden of Paradise" or no, Janat's air was about as breathable as that of a planet he had studied, called Mars. Oxytanks and -masks were needed, and what need had Galactics to colonize a world whose air required that they cover their faces with such devices? On 183.

the other hand, it was perfect for the headquarters of Ramesh Jageshwar. It was not unusual, he had told her, that "Jansa" had never heard of Janat. It was known only by numbers, an unsuitable planet. He had named it.

The atmosphere and temperature within his keep were artificial and controlled. Janat's defenses were his. The fantastic defenses ringing this citadel high on its cuesta perch were his; the power systemry that made living here possible-all were his. He and his people had constructed it all, to his design. Below, within Janat, the keep of Ramesh Jageshwar sprawled in the manner of a good-sized town. That was for the benefit of his employees here.

Ramesh Jageshwar was a recluse. Like the barons of ancient Homeworld/Urth, he lived here, high in this aerie that he seldom left. Unlike those ancient n.o.bles, he lorded it over no peasants below, fawning or rebellious or otherwise. Here, guarded from ground and air and s.p.a.ce, almost fantastically defended by automatic systemry and cybers and humans as well, he presided over his empire, his business. His domain, which extended from here throughout the Galaxy.

Here, in a big technologically-sophisticated-unto-su-perior command center whose interior Janja had never seen, he was in contact with s.h.i.+ps and planets and cities and individuals all over the Galaxy. Reports flowed in constantly. They were taken and compiled and tested and compared by his cybernetic systems and by his secretariat of four, who pa.s.sed most on to Durga Jhond, who pa.s.sed them to his employer. (Communications coded URGENT were in the hands of Kshatriya almost instantly.) Ramesh trusted Durga and Durga trusted the secretaries. (They lived extremely well, though they never left Janat. Neither did Durga, and Ramesh almost 184.

never did.) Because of their widespread comm-net and various check-lines, the secretaries did not have to trust anyone. They were able to test and compare, compile and report to their employer with certain knowledge that every comm had been sent by one of his people, somewhere.

Durga Jhond lived his own way. His personal business, Ramesh said, was no concern of his, and had not been since he had decided he was Sure of the man, nine years ago.

Long and lean and austerely severe in manner and appearance, Durga kept a harem of nine or ten women and girls, replacing one now and again. Durga Jhond's sadism did not interfere with his work or the mental state of Ramesh or the secretariat. His women were m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.ts or at least so inclined. Durga Jhond was something that Ramesh could not be: a s.a.d.i.s.t, yes, but also an administrator, a laborious, pedestrian compila-tor of information and a.n.a.lyses and shrewd insights included as marginal notes, verbally presented with his reports. And he was wholly dirigible-steerable or manageable-for there had been many brilliant men in the history of the Galaxy who could not have run their own operations and recognized that fact and so became the confidants of kings and popes and entrepreneurs; the executives of executives.

And of course Ramesh was what Durga could not be: a genius. A genius who needed the other man with his mandarin moustachioes and pointy black beard-which he wore, he did not hesitate to admit, because of their satanic appearance and connotations. (Janja looked up "Satan." The entry windingly led her to the puterbank entry headed "Fu Manchu.") "I need Jhond because genius is often ingenuous as well as ingenious," Ramesh Jageshwar had told her.

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Because he had no stomach for the millions of details necessary to the prodigious operation he had created and kept alive, by his own genius and personality. Nor could any sort of computer or puter systemry handle all that Durga Jhond did, as Durga did; a very special human was necessary. Engaged in a business that many would call egregious-with a shudder-Ramesh thus could not afford to be concerned with Jhond's off-duty habits and predilections-which Ram Jageshwar found emphatically and grievously deplorable.

Like many geniuses before him, whether they had masterminded the operation of the Roman Empire or the Holy Roman Empire or the British Empire or the PanAsian Accord or TAI-or TGO, perhaps-Ramesh worked for the love and joy of it, and he worked hard, many hours daily. And like those other geniuses, he was possessed of a superabundance of s.e.xual desire and energy. And loneliness.

Some things, many things, he could not share with Jhond. A genius-entrepreneur had no peers, Janja knew, any more than had a pope or a king or a president-even semicompetent ones without genius. Those who had shared had generally been mistaken in having done so; weakness led them to lower the barriers and take others into their confidence. Ramesh Jageshwar understood that, as to an unusual degree he understood himself.

"Some men like me have taken their wives into their confidence and some have not. Some individuals in each group have been proven wrong in one way or another. But my sister . . . For years, before our marriages and after the dissolution of those unfortunate alliances . . . and the re-establishment of the alliance of our teens, I was fortunate in having a true confidante, Jansa. I could trust Daura not only to keep my secrets but to 186.

discuss and suggest and a.s.sist; to share rather than to serve me-as Jhond does. As prime ministers and chancellors so frequently have served, only partially sharing if at all-until and unless they themselves seized or a.s.sumed the power of lesser men."

"Or overly trusting men," Janja said, and had to add, "and women."

"Pos. But they never succeeded in seizing the power of conquerors," he said.

"And you are a conqueror, Ram," she said, and knew that she spoke truth.

He turned directly to her and stared into her eyes with those piercing ones of his. "So are you a conqueror, Jansa."

She looked into those eyes, and met his lips with hers.

In the almost six weeks since she had come here, a raped captive sent for and fetched to be questioned, chastised, perhaps killed, Janja had replaced the woman she resembled. Because she was herself, and because of what had been taught her and done to her by Ratran Yao and TGO, she resembled Daura both outwardly and inwardly.

No woman, no honest person could fail to respect and admire the perpetually-generating dynamo that was Ramesh. Like other such men, he radiated confidence with his competence; he radiated power. Sent here in disguise, as a trickster to gain his confidence and destroy him, Janja had become as caught up with Ramesh Jageshwar as she knew he was with her.

Now she had asked, not quite seriously, what would be done with her and where her s.h.i.+p was; and he had told her that her Hornet was here on Janat. He rose on one elbow to look down at her.

"Would you like to see your nice little Hornet!"

"I have been a prisoner here for over five weeks," she 187.

said. "I welcome the opportunity to go outside, for any reason."

He stared down at the supine woman with hurt and sadness in his eyes. "Oh Jansa! Are you a prisoner?"