"LADIES IS WHAT WE'LL BE WHEN WE'RE
MARRIED AND RESPECTABLE"
At those words, Coppertop sat up in alarm. "What are you talking about?" "Sweetie, we're ail brides-to-be," the woman said firmly. "Ganesa is taking us out beyond the Carnadyne Void to the mining planets and the colonies. On the first circuit, the men get to know us. The second time around, we get chosen for brides. Understand?"
Coppertop understood only too clearly. The women on board were husts from every planet in the Farther Reaches. And Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe was a floating brothel-a whorehouse to the stars!

SPACEWAYS
#1    OF ALIEN BONDAGE #2   CORUNDUM'S WOMAN #3    ESCAPE FROM MACHO
#4    SATANA ENSLAVED #5   MASTER OF MISFIT

PLAYBOY
PAPERBACKS
SPACEWAYS #5:   MASTER  OF MISFIT
Copyright © 1982 by John Cleve
Cover illustration copyright © 1982 by PEI Books, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by an electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording means or otherwise without prior written permission of the publisher.
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada by Playboy Paperbacks, New York, New York. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 82-80258.
The poem Scarlet Hills copyright © 1982 by Ann Morris; used by permission of the author.
Books are available at quantity discounts for promotional and industrial use. For further information, write to Premium Sales, Playboy Paperbacks, 1633 Broadway, New York, New York 10019.
ISBN: 0-867-21128-8
First printing August 1982.
10   987654321
Vast is a size and size is a distance. Along the spaceways time is a measure of distance and events, and the spaceways are vast. The crew of spaceship Satana-Captain Hellfire, First Mate Quindy, Janja, Cinnabar, and Trafalgar-must have spent some two months-standard in the marvelous self-sufficient sty of Survival. Most of the events of this novel took place during that same time.
john cleve '81

A: All planets are not shown. B: Map is not to scale, because of the vast distances between stars.
 
SCARLET HILLS
Alas, fair ones, my time has come. I must depart your lovely home- Seek the bounds of this galaxy To find what lies beyond.
(chorus}
Scarlet hills and amber skies,
Gentlebeings with loving eyes;
All these I leave to search for a dream
That will cure the wand'rer in me.
You say it must be glamorous For those who travel out through space. You know not the dark, endless night Nor the solitude we face.
(reprise chorus)
I know not of my journey's end Nor the time nor toll it will have me spend. But I must see what I've never seen And know what I've never known.
Scarlet hills and amber skies, Gentlebeings with loving eyes; All these I leave to search for a dream That will cure the wand'rer in me.
-Ann Morris
 
1
Wickedness is always easier than virtue, for it takes the short cut to everything.
Samuel Johnson
Every true man's apparel fits your thief. William Shakespeare
The world is a stage . . . so rob it-Jesse James from a Twentieth Century greeting card
Death sat in a Sixteenth Century Louis XIV armoire, contemplating the theft of The Heart Of The Universe. In rivulets sweat trickled down the pure ebony of his naked body until his skin glistened as though bathed in a fine glaze of oil. About him, intermingled with the musk of perspiration, hung the heavy scent of anticipation-excitement.
Death (who had been called that for twelve years of his life) was known by a variety of names on an equal number of diverse planets. The Shadow Walker, Will with the Wisp, The Invisible One (none was certain of the sex of the individual referred to), The Demon Cat, The-Thief-Who-Is-Not-There-these were but samples of the appellations bestowed by those who trod to either side of the invisible line Galactics called law.
The name given him (he was male) by the slave woman who bore the pains of his birth was Dorjan. "Dorjan" was known only to a handful of people, each of whom would die rather than reveal the secret.
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12
A gladiator in the Games of Harb, breeder male and personal stud to Murrah an Rahmyne, escaped slave, captain of the star freighter Misfit-Dorjan's lives were as varied as his names. Above all, he was a thief. A master thief, among the two hundred planets of the Milky Way that harbored homo sapiens, now called Galactics.
This night, on the planet Panish, in the city of Harmony, within ten standard minutes, Dorjan intended to steal The Heart Of The Universe.
For six hours Dorjan had squatted on bare haunches, totally motionless, within the claustrophobic confines of the standing closet. The muscles of his one-hundred-eighty-three-centimeter-tall body neither cramped nor twinged. Dorjan followed "The Way," the Tao (which many persisted in mispronouncing with a "t"), an ancient philosophy brought to the stars from old Urth. A lifetime of the internal discipline Tao Chi allowed him to manipulate chi, the life force that flows within all. It was an ability some might term "mental over physical." It was not. It was a natural mating of mind and body so that each performed at its highest potential when required.
Dorjan leaned forward to peer through the crack between the wardrobe's locked doors. Ten meters beyond, held within a suspensor beam at the center of the main rotunda of a museum of exquisite rarities called the Baka, floated The Heart Of The Universe. Having once caressed the neck of the Empress Adesina, sole female monarch of the short-lived and long-dead Empire that had sought to bind the human-seeded planets to a solitary rule, The Heart Of The Universe was priceless.
Handcrafted gold filigree formed the delicate web-like support of the necklace Galactics referred to as The Heart. Its pricelessness lay in the one hundred Firegems cradled by the gold. These accounted for ninety percent of the Firegems in human possession. Firegems-biologically living jewels, light-radiating gems, plucked from the depths of the planet Gazit's methane oceans.
13
A hundred times stolen in its history, The Heart Of The Universe was an ulcerous source of contention between the planets Saiping and Panish. Both planetary governments claimed "sole and legal title" to the imperial artifact. Ownership was in reality subject to immediate possession.
For twenty-five years-standard, Panish had possessed the necklace.
Each year, during the winter solstice festival of Perl Takala, the Panishi government brought The Heart from triple-fortified vaults beneath the city of Harmony and placed it on public display within the Baka Museum. The interplanetary news coverage given the annual event was a cyclic source of embarassment and irritation for the populace of Saiping and the ghosts of their honorable ancestors.
In fifteen of the twenty-five years of The Heart's sojourn on Panish, there had been attempts to purloin the necklace. All had failed miserably, to Saiping's chagrin. And to the summary execution of the would-be thieves.
Ultra-aware of the relentless schemes initiated on Saiping, the Panishi government stationed two hundred guards in the Baka during Perl Takala. Should an individual intent on stealing The Heart manage to penetrate the security force, he had to contend with a series of fifty lasers set in the five-story rotunda's domed ceiling. When activated the laser beams created a formidable, twelve-centimeter (sem) cylinder of amplified light about the necklace. The beams' maximum intensity was designed to slice away a hand or arm in an instant should anyone be so foolish as to touch The Heart.
If the guards and lasers were not deterrent enough, there was the suspensor beam itself.
The suspensor kept The Heart floating nine meters in mid-air between the rotunda's second and third floor galleries. The necklace of Firegems was barely visible from Dorjan's position within the armoire on third floor gallery.
14
The thief's eyelids blinked to moisten the glowing red orbs he wore for eyes tonight-eyes that could not see. Dorjan's "real" eyes were twenty telepresences implanted in the flesh of his lower neck like a string of smoky gems. The TPs were a gift from Ms former owner Murrah an Rahmyne, to increase proficiency in the arena. They had helped earn him the name Death.
Dorjan reached out his right hand and extended the index finger. A three-sem fingernail that was not a fingernail slid from his fingertip. Like the retractable unipolymer plasteel claws of his other fingers, the concealed vibro-knife was another bioengineered "gift" from Murrah.
Inserting the miniature sonic blade into the crack between the doors, the thief silently sliced through the brass lock that had been placed on the armoire by Sixteenth Century baroque designer Andre Charles Boulle. Dorjan mentally atuned his TP "eyes" to a full three-hundred-sixty-degree visual, then edged the door open a sem.
The clack of hard-heeled boots on polished marble floor echoed below. Dorjan's pulse pounded in his temples. He drew in several deep, quieting breaths to return it to normal. This was the moment he had waited six hours for-the changing of the night guard.
Voices rose from below. Twenty guards now stood within the rotunda's ground level. Twice the normal number. Each carried a stopper, its sonic beam set on Three. The setting would kill a man instantly, then neatly burn his remains to powder-ash if left on long enough. Silent, lightweight, effective, and oh-so-tidy were the guards' standard-issue sidearms.
A man who had killed thirty men and women in the Games of Harb and was now captain of the star freighter Misfit, Dorjan carried no weapon this night. Nor did he ever arm himself beyond the deadly surprises bioengineered into his body. As a slave he had been forced to kill to survive. Now the thief abhorred any manifestation of violence ... or perhaps it was because he had been forced to kill. Too, he had ob-
15
served that an armed man faced with physical danger tended to use the weapon rather than his brain to remove that danger.
For ten years-standard, Dorjan and those who sailed with him onboard Misfit had survived by their wits. Wits and months of detailed planning would be sufficient for Mm to succeed tonight... if whatever god or gods who ruled the universe deemed he were to succeed.
With a final deep breath to bolster himself, Dorjan pushed open the cabinet's doors and stepped onto the rotunda's third level. Without the slightest turn of the head, his TPs revealed no guards within visual range.
Timing was all, now. Delay could not be tolerated. Not if The Shadow Walker expected to see another sunrise.
Dorjan strode to the gallery's marble balustrade and climbed atop it. With one three-hundred-sixty-degree glance, he saw The Heart Of The Universe suspended below him, the lasers ready to discharge above, the guards too involved in changing posts to look up, and a stained-glass window on the second floor opposite his position. Beyond the window lay the night lights of Harmony. The Baka Museum was located a klom above the Panishi city on the side of Mount Qatava.
The window, weakened by minute drops of molecular acid earlier in the day; the night itself; and the Mom fall to Harmony-were his means of escape. If he escaped.
Dorjan flexed a series of back and shoulder muscles no other Galactic bore within his body. Wings, a full four and a half meters from tip to tip, unfolded and spread from high upon the thief's back. Gossamer thin, painted glossy black, the unipolymer plasteel wings Murrah an Rahmyne had bioengineered into his body would carry him to The Heart Of The Universe- and out into the night.
With one last mental calculation of his trajectory, Dorjan launched himself into the air. He dive-glided toward the glowing Firegems strung about the invisible neck of the suspensor beam.
16 
Below, a voice cried out in panicky terror. Twenty heads jerked up to follow a pointing hand. Forty eyes widened in horror.
What the guards saw above was not a winged man plummeting downward, but a jet-black demon. The accursed soul-stealer of a thousand religions humankind had devised over the millennia. Glowing crimson eyes burned in a skeletal ebony head. Hair, black and flying in disarray like a wild mane, unfurled from a half-shaven scalp. Talons (retractable three-sem claws instead of fingernails; thank you, Murrah an Rahmyne) rent the air.
From chest and throat, Dorjan screamed the most hideous and inhuman cry his lungs and vocal cords could produce. The action displayed a mouthful of twisted yellow teeth complete with fang-long incisors. A pair of sharply pointed ears and his nakedness completed the disguise Dorjan had chosen for tonight.
(He had considered a serpentine tail, then discarded the idea for fear that he would become entangled in the cumbersome appendage.)
The visage he presented created the desired effects. Dumbfounded, the museum guards stared upward while the winged demon raked out an arm to snatch The Heart of the Universe from the suspensor beam. Fifty lasers fired simultaneously. The continuous column of green light was too late to snare the hand of the purloiner.
Arms extended before him, legs behind, Dorjan dived arrow-straight for the stained-glass window.
Only then did the security guards come to life. Twenty hands dropped to bolstered stoppers. The wand-like weapons slid free, perhaps even fired harmlessly into the air guided by less than steady hands.
Dorjan did not know, and had he been hit he would have been beyond knowing. He narrowed the focus of his TPs and attention on the window. A fraction of a second before crashing into the multicolored glass panel, the thief folded his wings flat against his back.
17
He tucked and rolled to let momentum carry him through the window.
The winter air bit at Ms sweat-drenched body; cold shuddered to the bone. The roar of the rushing air as he somersaulted downward drowned the guards' shouts when they crowded the broken window above.
A smile on his lips and The Heart Of The Universe snugly clutched in a balled fist, Dorjan uncurled to spread-eagle in the darkness of the Panishi night. His wings unfolded, plasteel and muscle fiber withstanding the initial shock of wind resistance.
He glided, a soaring demon-man indiscernible from the night. A shadow that moved within a shadow. TPs back to three-hundred-sixty degrees and then boosted into infrared range, he saw what no mere human biological eyes could visualize. Above, guards hung half out of the window searching the darkness for the escaped thief. Occasionally one fired a random stopper blast into the sky. Wasted sonic energy expended on a man who glided a half klom beneath their position.
Below, Dorjan searched and found a rented floater car nestled discreetly in an alley of Harmony's deserted garment district.
He descended in a swooping circle to alight atop a building to the right of the alley. Plasteel wings compactly folded flat to his back, Dorjan ran to a maintenance ladder attached to the side of the building. He climbed down to the alley. When he trotted to the waiting floater, a rear door to the vehicle swung upward. The demon-disguised thief ducked into the back - seat and closed the door behind him.
"Right on time!" a not-quite-human voice greeted Dorjan. It belonged to the man seated at the car's control console.
"Songan my friend, I give you . . . The Heart Of The Universe!" Dorjan tossed the necklace of a hundred Firegems, each no bigger than a child's fingernail, to the driver. "Any word from Yuw?"
"Varn called ten minutes ago. He's waiting for us at
18
the Panish Conglomerated Exports warehouse at the shuttleport."
Lights flashed on within the car to reveal a grinning multi-hued tattooed face. The light reflected from a denuded scalp illustrated to match. Songan, former slave and gladiator of Murrah an Rahmyne, First Mate on Misfit, and friend admired The Heart for a moment before depositing it in a velvet bag. Songan whistled with pleasure. The sound came from a two-sem, circular voice box inset in the hollow of Ms throat.
Tattoos that covered his body and voice box were but two of the "gifts" Murrah had given the giant of a man. Genetically engineered while in the womb, Songan stood two meters tall and weighed in at a hundred kilograms, all of it muscle designed to triumph in the Games of Harb. With her perverse sense of the ridiculous, Murrah had treated Songan to a series of enceph-aloboosts, brainboosts. The cellular extracts injected into his body resulted in the brain of a genius within the physique of a gladiator. The combination amused Murrah. It served Songan, who no longer served Murrah.
"Best get into some clothes before you freeze your cubes." Songan passed his captain a bundle of clothing with a plastic box resting atop it.
"Let's meet the Outie and get offplanet before every policer on Panish comes down on this city." Dorjan screened the car's back windows to opaque while Songan flipped the ignition switch.
The floater rose on a cushion of air and slid from the alley under the direction of Songan's tapping fingers on the console. Dorjan watched their progress for a moment before opening the box. It contained a single syringe of subcutane and a pair of prosthetic eyes.
He injected the subcutane into his left arm. When they reached the warehouse in thirty minutes, his demon-black skin would be deep brown, the skin color of Captain Jumah Sheeham of Lady Fortune-Dorjan's disguise upon arriving on Panish, as was Lady Fortune the most recent disguise for Misfit. Disguise for
19
captain, ship, and crew were essential for the continued prosperity of all.
Cupping Ms left hand beneath his face, Dorjan removed glowing red optics and inserted the prosthetic eyes. While Songan maneuvered through the heavy Perl Takala traffic crowding Harmony's main concourses, Dorjan wiggled free the false bridges he wore. Yellowed teeth and fangs came from his mouth to reveal pearly white teeth-minus a molar lost to a sword pommel in Harb's arena.
Lastly he removed the false ears and scalp cap complete with tangled black mane. Beneath the makeup grew a full head of snow-white hair closely cropped in gladiator fashion. Dorjan maintained the less than flattering style because of the constant need for wigs and other deceptive headgear required of his chosen profession.
The hair, far too light for a normal Galactic, was immediately covered by a wig of curly black locks. He cloaked his nudity in a loose red reelsilk blouse that hid the slight bulge of his folded wings. The blouse draped over the waist of equally loose and garish purple breeches. These he tucked into the tops of black knee-high boots of equhyde, a synthetic with all the comfort and pleasure of leather, but twice the durability.
The final step in the transformation from Dorjan to Jumah was a curve-brimmed, high-crown creased, feather-and-bead-banded hat set atop curly locks. The hat, its derivation lost in the centuries humankind had sailed the stars, was called a Wayne. It belonged to Misfit's computrician Varnalgeran Yuw, an Outie or native of the planet Outreach where such atavistic apparel was commonplace rather than outlandish.
"We need to dump what remains of the demon," Songan said while Dorjan/Jumah Sheeham inspected his appearance in a courtesy mirror attached to the back of the front seat.
The floater swung from the concourse and trundled along an access artery to halt beside a public trash
20
receptacle. Dorjan lowered a window and reached out an arm (already shades lighter) to drop two red eyes, scalp-piece and fangs into the mouth of the trash unit. The interior of the receptacle flashed white light as it reduced the makeup to recyclable base molecules.
When the window rose, Songan handed Captain Jumah Sheeham The Heart Of The Universe. Dorjan securely tucked the velvet sack into a pocket and sealed its nevelcro mouth. He then sank back in the seat and released a long satisfied sigh.
Outside, Harmony's lights passed in a blur as Songan steered the floater back onto the main thoroughfare.
Varnalgeran Yuw waved to the floater when it pulled before the loading docks of Panish Conglomerated Exports. Dorjan smiled. The gesture was not needed. It was impossible to miss the overweight Outie.
Yuw wore an eye-assaulting red shirt with simupearl buttons (decorative only, since nevelcro had long ago replaced most other forms of fabric fasteners) and high collar. The shirt tucked into faded blue denim pants that flaunted large brass-imitating prass studs at the corners of the pockets. In turn, the pants legs were half tucked, half out, of a pair of reptile-skin equhyde boots. About Yuw's neck hung a blue paisley scarf that dangled to the open corner of his shirt's bibbed front.
"Varnalgeran looks naked without the Wayne," Songan commented as he stopped the car.
"He can have the damned thing back as soon as we're aboard Mi . . ," Dorjan caught himself. A slip to unfriendly ears would result in the summary execution of a man very dear to him-one Dorjan of Harb. ". . . Lady Fortune. A Wayne's a nuisance at best."
Songan grinned back at his captain and friend aware of Dorjan's distaste for anything but the merest clothing. Clothes restricted the wings implanted in his back, despite their ability to fold neatly into a compact bundle of unipolymer plasteel. Any brimmed headgear was especially designed to bring curses from the man.
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A brim limited Dorjan's three-hundred-sixty-degree vision, leaving a large blind spot directly overhead.
"The tank of Goldbellies arrived three hours ago," Yuw said when Dorjan and Songan stepped from the floater. "They're waiting your inspection, Captain Sheeham, before being shuttled up to Lady Fortune."
Dorjan/Jumah Sheeham nodded and followed the computrician up a ramp into the warehouse. The Gold-bellies were the final deception in the theft of The Heart Of The Universe.
A fish indigenous to Panish's tropical seas, Gold-bellies had the unusual ability of harvesting gold from sea water. Their digestive systems were unable to expel the element. Thus during the normal course of eating and living, gold particles gathered in the fish's gut. Goldbellies were a nice export item for planets wishing to mine the normally unattainable gold in their oceans. The two thousand packed into the self-contained aquarium tank in the warehouse were destined for the planet Thebanis-as was The Heart.
Casually dipping a hand into his pocket, Dorjan closed his fist around the velvet bag and its precious contents. With Yuw and Songan, he climbed a ladder atop the immense aluminum tank.
"Any signs of leakage?" Dorjan tilted his head to the warehouse's scan-sensor station.
Three uniformed officers of the Panish Global Security stood beside the device that probed the contents of every crate of cargo slated to leave the warehouse. Normally, only the operator was on duty.
"They arrived ten minutes before you did," Yuw whispered while they walked around the top of the aquarium in mock inspection. "No official word on why they're here."
Dorjan needed no "official" word. The moment he crashed from the Baka Museum, every police authority on Panish had been alerted to the theft. Security at the planet's three shuttleports would be quadrupled. Cargo and individuals scheduled for lift to Panishport and its
22
two sister space stations circling the planet would be scrutinized thoroughly before leaving Panish's surface.
"Care to inspect the contents, Captain?" Yuw asked in a continuance of their charade.
"Of course, you Outie sisterslicer." Dorjan played the role of the impatient freighter captain Jumah Shee-ham. "I have no intention of hauling alewives to Thebanis!"
Yuw knelt and pulled a spanner from a back pocket. He worked six over-sized nuts loose from the tank's single hatch. It took both Yuw and Songan to remove the metal hatch.
With his back to policers and scan-sensor station, Dorjan stooped. He removed hand, bag, and The Heart Of The Universe from his pocket. There was a soft kerplunk as the necklace dropped into the water and sank out of sight.
"You ready with this yet?" a brusque, grating voice called from behind.
Dorjan stood upright. Too quickly? Too startled? On the floor below stood the warehouse foreman in a glo-orange jumpsuit and a gray-uniformed PGS officer. Both craned their necks to see atop the tank.
"What in Booda's cubes is the delay?" the foreman demanded. "This is scheduled for lift in forty-five minutes. Either load it, or you'll wait till tomorrow to get it offplanet."
"One moment," Yuw- said before Dorjan could react. "This double hernia-sized aquarium can be loaded as soon as the hatch is secure."
Dorjan winked a prosthetic eye at the Outie. Yuw, overweight and outrageously dressed, was deceptive. The man had a way of handling unexpected situations without the slightest display of distress.
"Yeah, get that hatch down or you'll have the whole place smelling like fish," the foreman said without grace. "One thing I can't stomach is a bunch of stinking fish."
While Yuw and Songan secured the hatch, the foreman waved a suspensor lift beside the tank. Its power
23
beam raised the aquarium the moment the three members of Misfit's crew cleared it, then deposited the tank at the scan-sensor station.
Dorjan's heart doubled its normal rhythm when the scan began.
If Songan's calculations were correct, the sensor would read the Fkegems within the tank. However, because the jewels were living creatures, the scan would be unable to distinguish them from two thousand Gold-bellies that swam their mobile piece of ocean.
Not once, but three times, the policers ordered the tank probed. When a fourth scan was demanded, Dorjan's armpits felt like the aftermath of an Aglayan monsoon. He noted the droplets of sweat scattered atop Songan's hairless, tattooed scalp.
Only Yuw seemed unaffected by the overly cautious search. He calmly leaned against a nearby crate and appeared fully engrossed in the progress of a horned ant that scurried across the floor. There was no doubt the Outie was a cool one, a man Dorjan was glad to have aboard Misfit rather than having to face him as an adversary. Though Dorjan went far out of his way to assure he had no adversaries.
Like his fellow traveler of the less than legal routes of the spaceways, Jonuta of Qalara, caution was Dorjan's operational code. Both were thieves, traders in stolen goods. However, Dorjan would never consider dealing in the merchandise frequenting the holds of Jonuta's Coronet. Living flesh, human or alien, was a commodity Misfit would never haul. Every crew member aboard the freighter had once been on the wrong side of a slave collar.
"Captain Sheeham, cargo's clear for lifting." A PGS officer turned to Dorjan.
Dorjan released an overly held breath slowly, silently. He nodded to the officer. "Now if those damned fish make it to Thebanis without dying and bloating on me."
With a you-can-never-tell shrug from the officer, Dorjan and his companions walked from the warehouse
24
and entered the car waiting outside. None spoke until Songan pulled the floater away from the loading docks. Then, Yuw let out a howling whoop that once would have been described as a rebel yell. Songan's mechanical laughter chorused the shout. Dorjan's laugh was filled with sheer relief.
"Slick as Booda's hairless haunches!" Yuw grinned at his companions. "The Goldbellies were pure genius!"
"Agreed." Dorjan squeezed Songan's shoulder. "My compliments to the genius who devised the plan of hiding the rarest jewels in the universe among a 'bunch of smelly fish.'"
"My pleasure, Captain." Songan beamed. "Should you require similar assistance in the future, please feel free to call upon me."
The three broke into another round of shared laughter. When he subsided, Misfit's First Mate asked, "What now? Shuttle up to Misfit?"
Dorjan shook his head. "First, we return this rented car just as law-abiding citizens would do. Then, I believe, we have time for one, maybe two, quick drinks before we have to lift to Panishport. Any objections to a short, sweet celebration?"
There were no objections.
2
This 1 set down as positive truth. A -woman with fair opportunities, and without a positive hump, may marry whom she likes.
William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair
The man's desire is for the woman; but the woman's desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.
Samuel Coleridge, Table Talk
While Dorjan, a man of many names and many pasts, raised a cup in celebration with his friends in the Light Fandango Bar minutes from Harmony's shuttleport, Lizina Harith (a woman of equally varied names and pasts) arrived at Lal Autar, Harmony's most exclusive nightclub.
Were Panish the planet Franji with its antiquated caste system, Lizina Harish would be considered royalty. A dowager lady of title shedding the black robes of mourning. Panish was not Franji, and Lizina Harith held no royal title. She was Panish's equivalent; she was wealthy-no, rich! Rich enough that not even she knew the total sum of her fortune.
She would, in time. Money was new enough to her that she had not grown so jaded with its potential as to allow others to manage it for her; nameless others hidden in corporate boardrooms and within attorney offices with at least five names and "and Sons" tacked on the end. She simply had not had the opportunity to
25
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assess her newfound wealth and the limits of what it could provide.
Only two months had passed since her husband's death. Panishi propriety and social convention required two months mourning for a man who had achieved the status of Garold Harith.
Tonight, the last eve of the winter solstice festival Perl Takala, Lizina, within the bounds of propriety and etiquette, shed the blacks of mourning. Tonight, Lizina prowled for a man.
Though Lizina had been raised to the pinnacle of Panishi society during the past six months, the woman, the women, she had been remained very much alive within her. Two months of isolation were an eternity to the nth power for a normal, young, healthy Galactic woman to go without a man-without even a casual lover for a night!
A casual lover, a slicer that could flash a cake until sunrise-in the parlance of the streets that had once been her life. Anticipation tingled through her. She came to the Lal Autar looking for a man as another Lizina had visited less reputable (perhaps more colorful) establishments to fulfill the same need.
Two doormen dressed in the immaculate pseudo-silk, called reelsilk, Kelly green livery with ruffled collars, white hose, and prass buckled shoes opened the club's darkly polished mahogany doors and bowed when she stepped from the taxi. There were no cybernetic contrivances at the Lal Autar. The nightclub's patrons came to be pampered by human hands and could afford such luxury. After two months separated from the world, Lizina needed pampering, human contact.
Inside, she paused a moment to allow her eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness. The only lighting within the dark, wood-paneled entry hall was indirect. It cast a pale blue hue over what appeared to be a white stucco ceiling.
"Reservations?" The maitre d' waited at the end of the short hall.
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"Liziria Harith," she answered, the two syllables of the last name carrying their full weight.
The maitre d' ran a finger down a list atop a stand beside him. "Ah, here we are. Your table is reserved for a'n hour from now."
The man glanced up. His forehead furrowed and a pencil-thin moustache quivered. "I'm afraid ... I can't accommodate you until then."
His worried expression evaporated when Lizina assured him that she intended to meet another party in Lal Autar's bar for drinks before dining. Flourishing an arm to the left, the maitre d' invited her to enter the bar. She smiled and exited the hall to the left.
No one awaited her in the bar. However, by the time her table was ready, she had every intention of having a companion.
No blaring bands tore out the latest Wig-Wri-Fla (wiggle, writhe, and flash) pop tunes on corn-amplified, multi-voiced, synthesized instruments in Lal Autar's bar. Nor was there a strobing barrage of spinning, rebounding, careening lights to assault the optic nerves with a bombardment of photons designed to quicken the heartbeat and heighten the dissolution of mind from body that accompanied the consumption of cheap hal-lucolol. Missing, too, were cyberunits gushing pills, smokes, and drinks for anyone with a credcard to shove into their payment slots.
The Lal Autar's bar was a large circular room. The bar itself was located at the center and attended by two human bartenders in black coats and ties. Five waitresses-outfitted in mid-thigh skirts (black), net hose (black), spiked heels (black), skimpy, ruffle-sleeved tops (black) whose necklines dipped to their navels, and velvet ribbon (black) tied choker-style about their necks-served the twenty-five tables within.
The subtle indirect lighting changed from blue to suggestive red. To the left of the bar stood a piano. Soft strains flowed from the unsynthesized instrument while a woman in a (black) gown danced her fingers across the keys.
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Lizina considered the wages this artist received for her nightly performance. Undoubtedly more than a woman who called herself Coppertop had been paid in the Light Fandango in Harmony's shuttleport district.
She caught herself. That life was behind her. Unlike Coppertop, Lizina Harith had no need to enter a slime-hole such as the Light Fandango.
Stepping into the plush carpeted bar, Lizina, with casual design, wove among the patrons toward a vacant table across the room. Gazes followed her movement. Inwardly, she basked in the corner-of-the-eye stolen glances and the open stares of both men and women.
She had come dressed to kill. Her full-length gown, if one got beyond the plunging neckline, was gossamer thin, clinging prisma-fabric. The cloth shifted subtly through the range of the spectrum with one subliminal split second of transparency every standard minute. Beneath, she revealed all.
Almost invisible crysplas high heels held her feet via strapless static soles. The heels provided the illusion that she walked on air, as well as enhancing the supple calf and thigh displayed by a split in the floor-length gown that stopped just as thigh became more than thigh.
Her attire complimented her luxuriously thick copper-red hair, which fell in a sleek cascade midway down her bare back. Her hair, almost metallic in its sheen, was her pride. In a galaxy peopled by dark skin and dark hair, the coppery hue was a prized rarity. For Lizina it was a natural one. The incredible hair, down to its roots, was one hundred per cent hers.
A waitress approached the table when Lizina seated herself and took an order for a glass of chilled Adoette, a mild, white Panishi wine. Lizina had no desire to dull her senses with alcohol tonight. She had done that in the seclusion of her home too often the past two months.
"The wine is compliments of the gentleman at table ten," the waitress said when she returned to place a tulip glass before Lizina.
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"Ten?" Lizina suppressed the urge to glance around.
"Directly to your right," the waitress replied. "The gentleman is alone."
When the woman turned back to the bar, Lizina's gaze rose to table ten. A man dressed in a rich burgundy suit of Edwardian cut lifted a cocktail glass and nodded to her. The corners of Lizina's mouth rose in a non-committal smile, and her eyes glanced away.
The fellow's features, framed by a below-the-ears hair style, were definitely attractive. Still, she did not want to appear hasty, too eager. She sipped at the Adoette. The wine's mingled sweet and tart nuances pleased her.
Perhaps ten minutes and half the Adoette later, the waitress returned to place a fresh glass of wine on the table.
"The gentleman feared the wine was no longer chilled to your taste. He also wishes to convey that his name is Thax Wilanu, and that he requests permission to join you."
Lizina turned back to table ten and the smiling Thax Wilanu. She tilted her head in acceptance. The man rose. He was taller than she had estimated, a hundred eighty sems if a millimeter. Her pulse doubled its rhythm when he took the seat opposite her.
"You have the advantage of knowing my name," he said in a deep resonant voice.
"Lizina." She had misjudged him earlier. He was more than attractive; he was handsome, radiating an aura of confidence and virility.
Waving for a new drink, Thax (he insisted she call him that) easily moved her into a discussion of the Perl Takala festivities. The conversation was meaningless. Yet, it lacked the rushed sense of desperation normally present when a man focused his attention on an attractive, unknown woman. It also provided the opportunity to determine the other's intent for the evening.
Lizina caught the occasional caress of his dark eyes on an abundance of firm young flesh revealed by her
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gown's plunging neckline. He noticed her notice, but gave no pause in his appraising gaze. She had no objections.
The widow of Garold Harith was not shy about her body. For too many years as Abiona Levana, a third-rate singer in Lanatia dives, and as Coppertop, singer-hust abandoned on Panish, her body had been her only asset. She had conscientiously cared for it.
Twenty-eight years-standard old, she appeared a not-so innocent twenty-one. She stood a hundred sixty-eight sems and weighed a constant fifty-four kilos. The weight might be a bit fleshy for those who preferred tall, stringy types, she admitted, but was sensually voluptuous for those with an eye for feminine curves rather than jutting bones.
She evaluated her breasts as adequate. Though they would never be in contention with holomovie hyper-star Setsuyo Puma, whose publicity for her hyper-developed chest proclaimed "The Biggest Pair In The Universe," they were firm and topped by uplifted nipples that now glowed in tumidity beneath Thax Wilami's obviously interested gaze.
And it was her body.
Except for her eyes, subcutane-treated to achieve their emerald green, she bore no traces of cosmetic surgery or bioengineering. She might lack the physical "perfection" available to Galactics, but she felt the difference only served to kindle interest. Thax's dark eyes reflected corroboration.
By the time the maitre d' arrived to announce that a table was ready, Thax had discussed the latest poly-opera at the Octagon and a new exhibit by Zasiro due to open at the Baka Museum next month. Shortly before his death, Garold had purchased two of the artist's works, amplified laservistic art in the multimorphic style.
Lizina listened, though she was lost by a majority of what Thax said. Despite encephaloboosts she had taken to aid her adjustment to the rarified strata of being Garold Harith's wife, she still lacked a large portion of
31
the knowledge normally required of a woman of her new social position. She did not care. Thax's attention was what mattered. That and the resonance of his voice.
In the dining room, they ordered light, baked Snowing in orange and honey sauce. Thax deftly maneuvered their conversation from one topic to another, never burdening her with initiating a subject. He described himself as an investor in various interplanetary enterprises, while sidestepping any direct questions about her. That, too, she liked. He had the sense to understand that discretion is the better part of a tryst.
Dinner arrived, and Lizina ate slowly to savor each bite. Garold Harith had introduced her to the world of luxury six months ago. The pleasures were still novel. Even now, she doubted her new station in life, fearing it but a dream she would wake from all too soon.
Until eighteen months ago, she had lived on her home-world of Lanatia, a would-be singer in dives frequented by those who traveled the Tachyon Trail. On more than one occasion she had hustled to assure herself of a place to spend the night and breakfast the next morn-ing.
Then Yasah Jun had entered her life. A stevedore on one of Lanatia's spaceports, Yasah had promised her a new life, one that included a home and children. What he had done was Involve her hi an assassination attempt on the infamous Captain Jonuta of Qalara- five thousand stells in advance and another five thousand on completion of the task from the pirate Captain Corundum, Jonuta's long-standing enemy.
Jonuta evaded the murder attempt, and Yasah was killed. Jonuta then abducted her from Lanatia, allowed his crew free use of her body (along with using her himself), and dumped her on Panish with enough stells for room and board for two nights. Jonuta had also left her with the name Coppertop.*
* Spaceways #1: Of Alien Bondage.
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Harmony's bars and clubs had no need of offworld singers. After three foodless days, Lizina, using the name Coppertop found employment in a profession as old as humankind itself. She became a hust for Bina in the Light Fandango.
On her back or on her knees, she had been a cake for anyone with the right price to slice.
In the Light Fandango, she had met Garold Harith. She never asked why such a powerful man visited the less-than-reputable establishment. Booda knew that Garold had the money for high-priced cake on any of a hundred planets. That he found interest in her still amazed Lizina.
Garold purchased Coppertop's contract from Bina, only to tear it up in the face of the bar's proprietor. He offered the stranded Coppertop a secretarial job with Panish Conglomerated Exports, one arm of the Harith commercial empire. Lizina, bewildered and confused by the actions of a man who had never even bedded her, accepted.
A week later, Garold began dating her. Actually dating her! He kissed her for the first time on their third evening together, although she would have spread for him without question when and where he wanted.
He had given her presents, perhaps more expensive than she had ever received, but nothing extravagant- flowers, candy, and perfumes. He did not keep her. Her apartment, clothes and food came from her weekly salary earned on her first, regular, three-days-a-week job. She worked for what she got. Garold had given her nothing.
And he had given her everything; he had given her herself. He had instilled within her a sense of personal worth and self-appreciation. He had shown her that she was a human being rather than mere garbage to clutter the gutter. He had given her value.
Garold gave her love-a new experience. Thirty years older and wiser than she, Garold treated her as
33
an equal. His tenderness, his understanding reinforced the self-esteem he cultivated in her.
Six months ago, he had given her his name (the ancient custom of a wife's legally assuming the husband's last name being currently in vogue on Panish). Four months later, Garold died. A kiln exploded while he inspected a synthestone factory he owned. Three workers had died with him.
The last gift he had left her was-his fortune. That she would manage wisely. She had learned from Gar-old. There would be mistakes in the beginning, she realized, but she had a cushion of wealth to absorb those setbacks. In the end, she would ably carry on the Harith name.
And tonight? Thax? She felt no guilt for what would happen between them tonight. She had loved Garold and given him all of herself in their short time together. Then she had mourned him, truly mourned his death. Now she was alone. Nothing she could do would bring Garold back, nor would sealing herself from life be what he would have desired for her.
"A last drink for each of us." Thax held up the remains of a bottle of ultra-expensive Qalaran champagne.
"I believe I've had enough. I'm beginning to feel the effects of the two glasses I've had." (Three, she told herself, if she counted the two half-glasses of Adoette before dinner.)
"No problem." Thax reached into a coat pocket and brought out a tiny white pill. "Antinebri?"
Lizina shook her head, then nodded on second thought. The antintoxicant would dissipate the light-headedness she felt from the wine. Tonight, she desired no artificial highs.
Thax dropped the pill into her glass, then poured a portion of the champagne atop it. While he poured the remainder of the wine into his own glass, he swirled hers around until the Antinebri dissolved, then handed it to her.
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"To Perl Takala and the magic it weaves about strangers." Thax raised his glass in toast, then downed its contents in one swallow. Lizina did likewise.
"Shall we take in the street dancing at the Plaza of Worlds, or perhaps the Parade of Costumes?" he suggested while signaling for the check.
"The plaza will be too crowded," Lizina said as Thax handed the waiter a credcard. "And I must admit, I've never enjoyed costuming . . . except under intimate circumstances."
She held his eyes with hers so there would be no doubt as to what she intimated. Thax's smile widened knowingly. His gaze remained on her as he accepted the credcard back from the waiter.
"A short drive from here is a special spot, quiet and cozy," he said. "Perfect for intimate occasions."
"Does it have a name?" Lizina asked with the realization the preliminaries had finally concluded.
"My penthouse," Thax said simply.
Lizina squeezed the hand that reached across the table to her. "Shall we go?"
He needed no further prompting. Arm in arm, they departed the Lal Autar. Outside, the night's chill sliced through the sparse protection of the prisma-fabric gown. For an instant, Lizina wished she had dressed more appropriately for the winter weather. She edged away the thought. Had she dressed for warmth, Thax might not be on her arm now.
"Your car?" Lizina asked when they halted by the street.
"Never use it in the city. Traffic is too unmanageable." Thax glanced up and down the street. "Always take a cab."
"A taxi?" Lizina's own gaze moved along the crowded avenue. "During Perl Takala . . . and at this hour?"
An orange-and-white car floated around a corner. Thax raised an arm to hail it. The cab immediately veered toward the couple.
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"Wish I had that kind of luck." Lizina grinned up at what she perceived as two men beside her. She blinked and gripped Thax's arm more tightly.
"Anything wrong?" Concern tautened the man's face. "I think it's the champagne." The ground felt lopsided beneath her. "The Antinebri doesn't seem to be doing much."
She saw two cabs stop before them, one a phantom image overlaying the other. A door swung upward. Thax's arm slid about her waist to assist her into the taxi. What was wrong? Alcohol normally did not affect her this way.
Thax gave the cabbie directions, then asked, "Are you certain you're not ill?" "I don't know. I feel so embarrassed." She   also  felt  lethargic.   Her  eyelids  were  lead-weighted. She tried to struggle against the sensation, but lacked the will to move through the sluggish stream that lazily flowed through her head. All she wanted was to curl up and sleep. She leaned her head against Thax's shoulder and closed her eyes.
"To the shuttleport, Mikk." She heard Thax's voice in the distance. "We want to deliver this one to Kukis before the Sleeper wears off."
"Gotcha," the cabbie answered. "This high-class slice will bring top price from our friend the captain." The man sounded a Horn away. Kukis? And what had Thax said about a Sleeper? Lizina's thoughts moved like thick, sugary syrup. Sleeper . . . the Antinebri had been ... a knockout belt ... It was so difficult to think. And one did not call a lady a slice. Especially not the widow of Garold Harith. Top price? Didn't he know she didn't hust anymore?
"I believe this one might bring the best price we've ever received for a cake." Thax sounded as far away as the taxi driver now. "She's just what Captain Kukis ordered."
Kukis? Kuzis? Klubos? She strained to follow the conversation, but could no longer distinguish the words.
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What did it matter? When she awoke Thax: could tell her what had been said. Now all she wanted was sleep. Lizina Harith, former Lanatian singer, former would-be assassin of Jonuta of Qatara, former hust, and widow of Garold Harith, nestled against the shoulder of Thax Wilanu and slept.
3
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible ...
Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Insects. Choleric swarms. The fury of their screaming wings invaded the tranquility of Lizina's sleep. She groaned a drowsy protest and nestled against the security of Thax's shoulder. Her movement was met by unyielding metal. Metal?
Her fingertips touched and transmitted the cold hardness of unipolymer plasteel. Its solidity was verified by the aches of her left shoulder and hip. She no longer rode in a taxi, asleep beside Thax, but lay on her side on a floor . . . metal?
The infuriated insects swarmed closer. The chorused buzz whined louder. Insects? The metal floor vibrated beneath her. Not insects. The muffled sound of her mind probed the sleep-cotton about it for the word machinery. The sound was vaguely familiar. Yet any solid memory of its source evaded her.
Lizina's eyes opened to thin slits, then blinked shut when harsh light bombarded her subcutaned irises. She groaned again and pushed to an elbow.
"Cap'n, sleeping beauty finally decided to join us." 
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A woman's voice, husky and sarcastic, resounded in Lizina's skull.
Rough fingers grasped her chin and jerked her head up. "Thax done a'right this time, Cap'n. Won't find a piece of cake this sweet struttin' on the streets."
Lizina stared into the face of a dark brown-skinned woman. It would have been an attractive face, even beautiful, if not for the eyes. Something was missing from the icy black eyes that raked their gaze over her. Or perhaps there was something reflected in those eyes normally reserved for carnivorous predators.
"Thisun even smells of class . . . two kilostells a gram perfume if it cost a stell! Definitely worth top price!" The woman rudely wrenched her hand from Lizina's chin and stood.
Top price . . . Thax and the cabbie . . . Captain . . . the metal floor . , . the Sleeper . . . the vibration . . .
Panic cleared the sleep from Lizina's mind. Pieces tumbled horribly into place. The floor was a deck. The familiar vibration, felt-heard once before while onboard Jonuta of Qalara's Coronet, came not from machinery but from Double P engines. The knockout belt slipped into her champagne disguised as Antinebri, Thax, the taxi driver-Lizina refused to accept what had occurred. But she knew,
As Abiona Levana, as Coppertop, women who worked the bars and clubs frequented by men and women who peddled lives and souls for cash, she knew. As Lizina Harith, widow of Panishi commercial mogul Garold Harith, she denied that it could happen to her. Slavers prowled the shuttleport districts of cities for merchandise, not the Lal Autar. Society would not permit it!
Abiona Levana and Coppertop knew that society permitted exactly that. Illegal on some worlds, legal on twice that number, slavery was good for commerce. Society not only permitted it, it encouraged the trade of human and alien lives. Even the TransGalactic Order (called The Gray Organization by most)-that never
39
seen, but quite effective police authority-normally turned a callous eye away from slave trafficking.
Yet Lizina denied those facts with every fiber of her being.
Abduction, slavery could happen to such women as Abiona Levana and Coppertop, but not to Lizina Harith. Not to Lizina Harith!
Her eyes rolled up toward the woman in a bright yellow body stocking that stood above her. A long-barreled stopper was strapped to her hip. Lizina's lips trembled when they opened. Over them, she forced the single question, "Who are you?"
The woman eyed Lizina silently, then tossed back the strands of a yellow wig that strayed across a high forehead, a yellow wig commonly worn by the inhabitants of the planet Resh. An icy shiver flowed along Lizina's spine. She had never stepped foot on Resh, but she had heard tales of the planet known for its cruelty. Now she understood what she saw in the woman's eyes.
"Cap'n Kukis, ever seen hair that color?" The woman half turned to a man slouched in a chair behind her.
Kukis! Captain Kukis! Lizina remembered Thax's mentioning the name to the cabbie.
He appeared short, no more than a hundred-seventy sems tall. He wore black-shut, trousers, and ever-shine, round-toed equhyde boots. Like the woman, he wore a stopper. Though his weapon looked sems smaller than the yellow-clad woman's. This was the man Thax had . . . sold (the word could be suppressed no longer) her to.
"Never, Degula." Kukis steepled his fingers on his chest and smiled. The action displayed a set of gold-rimmed teeth. A small diamond, flashing light, was inset at the center of each tooth. "Like fine copper."
Kukis's jet eyes appraisingly roved over Lizina. For the second time that night(?), she wished she had not worn the prisma-fabric gown. She sensed that Kukis was not unaffected by its once-a-minute subliminal instant of transparency.
"Stand. I want to see if I received full value from
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Thax." His voice flowed with the fluidity of thick oil. He flipped a hand motioning for her to rise. "There's something familiar about that coppery hair."
"Where am I?" Lizina did not move. She shuddered inwardly. Familiar . . . had Kukis been one of the faceless customers who had paid for Coppertop's body at the Light Fandango? Had he known Abiona Levana on Lanatia?
"Cap'n Kukis toleya to stand, ya flaining stash!" The woman Degula grabbed a handful of copper-hued tresses and yanked upward.
Stifling a cry in mid-throat, Lizina staggered to her feet. She refused to give Degula the satisfaction of enjoying the pain she inflicted. She would not grovel. She was a human being. Not merchandise, not a piece of meat to be traded among the stars.
"She looks like a cake a man would want to slice." Kukis pushed from his chair and walked to Degula's side. He arched a bushy, black eyebrow, as though in recognition. Then his brow knitted. "There's something about you . . . something."
He stared at her long and hard, then shook his head. "Do you have a name?"
Lizina did not answer. Quietly, she released an over-held breath. Kukis could not place her. She was uncertain why, but she realized that to have this man recognize her would shatter something delicate and fragile she protected deep within her. That something was the essence of Lizina Harith.
Degula's hand shot out. Fingers closed around Lizina's left breast and dug in painfully. "Are ya deaf? Cap'n Kukis asked ya name."
Lizina pivoted and swung a back-handed fist at Degula's smiling face. The woman merely leaned back to avoid the blow. Simultaneously, her clenched hand twisted the pliant, vulnerable flesh beneath it.
Lizina could not stop her whimper; she hurt. The piteous cry quickly transformed to a painful moan when Degula's knee jerked up to slam into her crotch. Lizina doubled over, clutching herself. Degula shoved
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downward on the back of her neck to deposit her on the floor at Kukis's feet.
"You're making a terrible mistake," Kukis said in that oily voice. "My First Mate has a peculiar taste for pain . . . inflicting it, that is."
Degula's hand was back in her hair, dragging her to her feet again. "Cap'n wants to know ya name."
"Lizina . . . Lizina Harith." She tried to glare at Kukis through teary eyes.
"Lizina." Degula rolled the syllables around on her tongue. "Not much of a name for such a coppery-topped beauty."
"We'll have to come up with something a bit flashier for Ganesa. Copper . . . top . . ." Again Kukis stared intensely at Lizina. Again, his head moved slowly from side to side in puzzlement. "I do like the name Copper-top. Strip, Coppertop."
"No!" Lizina jerked away. She retreated from the pair until her back pressed against a metal wall. If they intended to use her, it would take a fight. She was no longer Coppertop. She was Lizina Harith.
"Don't make another mistake." The diamond-toothed Kukis tilted his head toward Degula.
"You're the one making the mistake. Didn't you hear me? I'm Lizina Harith-Garold Harith's widow." Lizina's gaze darted about in desperation. Aside from the chair, the room contained a bed and a stow-away desk. The door was directly opposite her. Kukis and Degula stood between. "All of Panish knows the name Harith. When the authorities discover I'm missing, they'll scour the whole planet for me."
"The PGS's got their hands full looking for a thief who snatched their precious necklace, The Heart Of The Universe, from the Baka. They ain't got time to go lookin' for ya, Coppertop." Degula grinned, her dark eyes agleam. " 'Sides, we hail from Resh and never heard the name Harith."
"And planetary policers haven't much use when one is on the Tachyon Trail," Kukis added. "Forerunner has punched subspace."
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Tachyon Trail, the words reeled in Lizina's mind. She was aboard a starship, apparently named Forerunner, traveling at faster than light speed, far beyond the reach of the PGS.
"The dress," Kukis demanded.
Lizina pressed back, attempting to make her body sink into the solid wall. Her green eyes narrowed to dart between the two predators who cornered her.
Kukis shook his head and pulled his stopper to aim it at Lizina. "Degula, I believe our guest would like to play."
Degula unfastened her holstered stopper and tossed it to the bed. Cold eyes riveted to Lizina, Forerunner's First Mate smiled with amusement. Deftly, her fingers tucked beneath the neck of her yellow body stocking and peeled the fabric downward. That too she tossed behind her to stand naked before Lizina, her breasts pendulous even in the ship's lower gravity.
"Degula also has a decided taste for women, Copper-top." Kukis diamond-grinned at his captive. "A loving kiss will stem her mounting anger."
The Mate lewdly moved to a wide-legged stance to provide an unobstructed view of the lips Lizina was to kiss. Like nearly all Galactics, the woman was hairless below the neck.
"No." Lizina's head moved from side to side. "I have money. Whatever you want . . . it's yours. Just return me to Panish unharmed."
Kukis had heard the name Garold Harith. It was a name spelled with money times money. // this woman were his widow. If she could be trusted . . .
He edged the thought aside. There were too many ifs. Besides, he had guaranteed Ganesa a high-class cake and he would deliver one. That was, if he intended to continue traveling the spaceways. Ganesa was a fair woman, unless she was crossed. Then she was deadly.
"Degula," the captain of Forerunner said simply.
Before Lizina's brain registered the motion, Degula shot across the two meters separating them. She grasped Lizina's right wrist, wrenched outward, then back. Like
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a flaccid ragdoll in a hurricane, Lizina spun around. When she stopped, Forerunners Mate held both her arms pinned high behind her back. The slightest movement sent lances of pain out from her shoulder blades across her back and up her neck.
The light Lizina had seen in Degula's eyes now gleamed in Kukis's. The same amused smile played over his thin lips. He stepped forward and reached out. Extraordinarily cold fingers delved beneath the low neckline of the gown. His smile widened.
Without warning, he yanked. The prisma-fabric briefly resisted, then rent in a loud tearing. Lizina choked back a sob. One further tug, and Kukis had completely bared her body.
"Yes, Degula, I believe you were right. Thax came through this time. Our Coppertop will bring Ganesa's top price . . . once we've made her an obedient cake."
Kukis ran a finger along the wand-like barrel of the stopper as he lifted it to Lizina's cheek.
The coppery-haired woman sucked in a startled breath. She had never felt a stopper's beam, but she knew what it could do. Set on One, the sonic blast made a body dance like a marionette gone mad. Two meant temporary paralysis and unconsciousness. Three killed.
"Ah, a hint of recognition in your eyes." Kukis brushed the cold barrel over her cheek. "No ordinary stopper, this, sweet Coppertop, but a toy of my own invention ... an aid in your education."
He lifted the stopper so that she could examine it. "I call it a Tingler. Like a stopper, it's sonic. Only it can't kill . . . just make you wish you could die."
He twisted a silver ring at the base of the Tingler's handle. Lizina saw ten distinct power settings. It was now on One.
The captain of Forerunner raised the Tingler to let the end of its plexiplas barrel rest alightly against her cheek again. Lizina tensed, ready for . . . she was not certain. All she felt was the barrel's coolness.
"You're anticipating me." An oily, mirthless chuckle
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came from Captain Kukis's throat. "It can do nothing unless I tell it to by squeezing the handle like . . . this."
A mild electrical shock, a paper cut, the annoying sting of a mosquito melted into one. That was the bite of the Tingler. Unpleasant, but far from the pain Lizina expected. Degula's unyielding hold on her arms provided more discomfort.
"A sample, hust." The First Mate's breath was hot on the nape of her neck. "A last chance to change your mind and give me my kiss."
Degula thrust her naked pubis against the bare mounds of her captive's backside. Lizina squirmed away from the contact. A mistake. The woman edged her pinioned arms higher.
The Tingler was back to her cheek. Kukis squeezed and lazily drew the "toy" over her lips, down her neck. Sample was an understatement. The first touch had been brief; this was sustained. Still, it was not unbearable, even when the man ran it across her breasts, down her belly, and lower. Then it was gone. Lizina released her breath.
"Setting Two." A metallic click sounded when Kukis twisted the silver ring. "Time to change your mind."
Double the voltage, make it a shallow razor cut, and transform the mosquito into a bee, and that was what Lizina felt as Kukis taunted the Tingler over her vulnerable nakedness. Three squared the sensations and added heat.
"Four." Kukis paused once more to change settings on his "toy." He grinned at his purchase. "Have you reconsidered?"
Lizina bit her lip, refusing to speak. She would not give in to him, or the woman who pinned her arms. Coppertop would do as they wished without a qualm. The same with Abiona Levana. But Lizina Harith could not.
Four was another geometric progression of pain: heat was now fire. Tears welled in Lizina's eyes, and she whimpered through the eternity it took for Kukis
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to trace the Tingler down its sensitive course. Five elicited a never-ceasing scream. Lizina's body jerked and twitched, bound by Degula's constant grip. Still, she denied them.
When Six reached the sensual well of her navel, she no longer controlled her body. All she knew was the knifing flame that lanced over her flesh. She begged for Kukis to stop; he did only when he slid the modified stopper from between her golden-brown thighs.
The captain of Forerunner twisted the silvered ring to Seven. Molten metal sluggishly ran down Lizina's body in the wake of the Tingler. She screamed, cried, pleaded. Her muscles convulsed in writhing agony, but could not escape the consuming fire that spewed forth from the barrel of plexiplas.
"My kiss," Degula whispered with delight. "Are ya ready for my kiss?"
"Yes." Lizina nodded weakly. It was only her body they wanted. She could do again what she had done before to survive. Only her body, not her mind. "Anything ..."
There was another metallic click. Her eyes rolled up to see Kukis move the Tingler to Eight. He shrugged his shouders. "For the inconvenience you've caused."
A talon of agony ripped into her cheek and raked down the all too familiar path of her flesh.
A lifetime of eternities later, Degula released her arms. Lizina crumpled to Forerunner's deck. Her finely coiffured hair lay sweat-plastered to the side of her face. Her nakedness glistened with the same sweat.
She touched herself. Where she expected to see raw, bleeding welts, there was only smooth unblemished skin. She raised her head to Kukis, questioning.
"The beauty of my toy." Kukis winked. "It only jangles the nerves. Never leaves permanent damage."
A slap of bare feet on the floor sounded behind Lizina. She jerked around. Degula stood over her in a wide stance. She smiled as she reached down and cradled Lizina's face in her hands. "My kiss."
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Lizina rose to her knees. With the threat of Nine and Ten waiting on the Tingler, she allowed the First Mate of Forerunner to guide her mouth to the most intimate of the woman's lips.
While Kukis dressed, Degula carefully kept her stopper leveled at Lizina. That was the way they had taken her. Each had used her body twice while the other watched with stopper in hand should their captive suddenly experience a change of mind.
"You have potential, Coppertop. But you also have spirit. We've no use for goods like that," Kukis said while he tucked in his black shirt, then closed the fly of his pants. "Before we're through, you'll do whatever is required without question. You'll live for one thing-to serve your masters."
Lizina said nothing. They had used her body; others had done the same. Her mind, her will, still belonged to her. Those they would never have. Never. She was still Lizina Harith. And while she was that, there was always a chance that she could turn the tables. The mere thought of playing Kukis's toy over his body would be enough to sustain her through whatever they intended.
She had been stupid. Her resistance had been painful and put them on guard. From here on, she would be docile and obedient, ever ready to provide pleasure. And she would wait until they provided her the opportunity she needed.
"Degula, take her below," Kukis ordered his Mate. "It's time to begin our Coppertop's education."
At stopper point, Lizina left the room through its single door. Outside, Degula directed her through a tunnel (she remembered that a ship's corridor was called a tunnel from her brief stay on Jonuta's Coronet) and down a steeply inclined ramp. A dark compartment lay at the foot of the ramp. Degula motioned her inside. When Lizina entered, the door closed behind her, the sharp clicks of its locks echoing in the darkness.
Lizina stretched her arms out before her in the black-
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ness, seeking the wall and a light switch. She found the wall; it gave with her touch. Her hand jerked away, then hesitantly reached out again. The wall sank inward beneath her fingertips. Elastiplas! The substance used to pad the cells of the violently insane. She felt the floor to the room gently depress a millimeter or two as she stepped forward, hands patting the wall for the light panel.
Why would Kukis need elastiplas?
She worked her way around the room, the floor a two-meter-by-two-meter square. There was no light switch, only the darkness. Back against a wall, Lizina slowly sank to the cushioned floor of her "room." She stared into the blackness.
I still have my mind. 1 still have my mind.
Tears welled from her eyes-to stream down her cheeks as everything that had happened since leaving Lai Autar came crashing down on her. She cried, no longer worried about displaying her fear to Kukis and his lesbian First Mate.
And while she cried, a fine, cool mist drifted down from the darkness above.
4
sport (sport) n. Biol.-An animal or plant that exhibits sudden and spontaneous variation from the normal type; a mutation.
A man may see how this world goes with no eyes. Look with thine ears: see how yond justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?
William Shakespeare, King Lear, IV, vi, 154
A metallic clang reverberated through Misfit/Lady Fortune when the docking collar released. An instant later Panishport expelled the spaceship into space. Five maneuvering rockets in the ship's blunt snout fired for thirty standard seconds. The brief thrust increased the spacer's backward momentum.
Tail exposed to the center of the galaxy, Misfit drifted twenty kloms from the space station before the second series of rockets, mounted below the nose, fired. A slow-motion kinetic sculpture, Misfit tumbled, prow replacing aft. The third series of rockets, above the nose, fired to stabilize the craft.
AH this was executed under the watchful eyes of TransGalactic Watch, the uniformed arm of TGO.
"Scanner probe," Songan said tapping a mini-display to life before Dorjan on Misfit's con. "TGW Cruiser- Barracuda Class. Eighteen hundred hours offport."
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Dorjan TP's took in the holographic image of the sleek, blue-black cruiser that lay kloms off the port side. Even at this distance, optical sensors distinctly revealed the ship's wicked-looking ordnance-enough DS (Defense Systemry) to wipe half a planet. Undoubtedly, Panish authorities summoned in the big boys to help apprehend Will with the Wisp.
Let 'em scan. Dorjan smiled. At long range the TGW sensors would reveal less than the scan-sensor in the warehouse. He looked at the man seated beside him at the con and winked at his First Mate. "Nosy spooks. Act as though they've misplaced something."
"A gem of a joke, Captain." Varnalgeran Yuw grinned from beside Songan where he ran a final systems check on SIPACUM (Ship Inboard Processing and Computing Unit: Modular).
Sotigan raised a tattooed hand to hide a smile. With disapproval, Dorjan sucked at his teeth. He had threatened to spacewalk-without a suit-any crew member who encouraged Yuw's addiction to puns.
"Lock DS?" A feminine-sounding voice came from the intercom grille on the console before Misfit's captain.
"No!" Dorjan replied emphatically. "The TGW would melt us the instant their scan read DS activation!"
"Tloo-wheetl"'," whistled from the intercom in a high-pitched surge.
The whistle-word roughly translated into Erts, the language of Galactics as "fornicate." The connotation given by its instigator was strictly human, though the owner of the whistle and the feminine voice was not. It was a Jarp, an alien that bore the human-given name Songbird.
Dorjan thought of the Jarp as a "she"; Songbird was neither female nor male, but both. It was hermaphroditic, possessing breasts (higher set than on a human), penis, one testicle, vagina, and one ovary. As with all natives of the planet Jarpi, Songbird was shockingly orange-skinned with wine-red hair. Songbird also
50
shared the decided taste for sex common among Jarps-either way, or both at the same time.
"Your 'weaponry officer' seems to have an itchy trigger finger today," Songan said while Dorjan hit Misfit's main thrusters for a ten-second burn. That would move the spacecraft out to the hundred-klom limit for subspace jump.
"I'll take her out to target practice on asteroids when we arrive at HOME." Dorjan glanced to Yuw who nodded that SIPACUM was ready whenever the captain of Misfit was.
While the ship was outfitted with full DS array, it was just that-a defensive weaponry system. For other than Songbird's target practice, the DS had been activated three times during Misfit's ten years within the Farther Reaches. Once to clear threatening asteroids from the craft's trajectory on her first arrival in the Pascal System. And twice fired across the prow of would-be pirates to provide a diversion while Misfit punched onto the Tachyon Trail-and escaped. Songbird's unofficial title of "DS officer" held no real meaning onboard the freighter.
"Eighty kloms out," Songan read aloud the sensor displays. "Panishport gives us a green go-ahead at a hundred."
Clearance confirmed for subspace, Dorjan reached for a wheel of neatly stacked programmed cassettes and pulled out one marked "Thebanis." He passed the multi-layered crysplas cassette to Yuw, who slotted it into SIPACUM. The information stored within in tetradecimal array fed into the processing and computing unit.
Misfit was now fully automatic. On reaching the hundred-klom limit, SIPACUM would punch the ship onto the Tachyon Trail at the earliest possibility with a two-minute warning alarm before transition to faster-than-light speed.
Only a soon-to-be-dead fool would manually make subspace leap. The term for such a foolhardy action was "jam-cram" or going "Forty Per Cent City." There
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was a seventy per cent chance of going City and surviving-with undefined damage; 59.7731-to-infinity per cent for survival intact. The remaining 40.2269 per cent meant utter destruction, presumably. Some speculated that the 40.2269 per cent equalled transition into another universe. No one knew. Those who bought that 40.2269 were not around to tell about it.
A course guidance cassette could be programmed to perform the same desperate act. Such a cassette was in Dorjan's wheel. It had never been used. Misfit's captain had never maneuvered his ship into a situation that desperate.
As Songan marked one hundred Moms from Panish-port, SIPACUM initiated warning. Two minutes later, Misfit sailed the Tachyon Trail, while her crew reoriented themselves from that instant of physical and mental nerve-jangling that accompanied subspace transition. Dorjan toed the intraship comm open and relieved the ship's two other crew members from their stations.
"Songan, take first watch." Dorjan swiveled from the crescent-shaped command console. "Normal rotation to begin . . ."
The con-cab's door (not hatch, naval nomenclature had been dropped by spacefarers centuries before) opened. Songbird entered with Kefira altRusalka on her (its) heels. The last of Misfit's five-member crew, and the second alien onboard.
Alien was emphasized in Dorjan's thought. Except to those at HOME and onboard Misfit, Kefira, and her homeworld Kuzih, were unknown to the race of man now called Galactic. A secret the winged thief-captain had no intention of unveiling to the Galactic worlds. The opportunity to exploit the delicate creature would be too great a temptation for the profiteers who purveyed flesh for the entertainment of others.
The stare of Kefira's (very) round and (very) gold eyes alighted on Dorjan. The diminutive native of the planet Kuzih blinked and smiled. Standing a hundred-fifty-seven sems and weighing forty-one kilos, the
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Akil-her own name for her race-was humanoid, the phraseology by which Galactics compared the five known alien races to themselves.
To be humanoid was good, acceptable.
To be Kefira was beauty.
For all practical purposes, the small Akil appeared to be an evolutionary descendant of a lemur. Though Dorjan doubted that the genetic duplicate of that Homeworld mammal ever existed on Kuzih. Thick gold-white hair tumbled in flowing waves to gather about her shoulders, coyly framing a delicate oval-shaped face of equally delicate and very human features. The eyes, gold irises, metallic gold, were more round even than those of a Jarp. Kefira's most distinguishing feature was the paler, fine, silk-like fur that covered her body.
The planet Jarpi had taught Galactics that breasts did not particularly mean female. Kefira, however, was definitely not it, but "she." At the moment, that fact was more than obvious to the captain of Misfit. The small Akil wore, barely, a skimpy prass-imitating equhyde halter that provocatively cradled two firm melon-like breasts. Triangles (also skimpy) of the same brassy material just managed to cover her pubis and hindcheeks. A thin prass chain in G-string fashion about femininely flaring hips secured the triangles in position.
Dorjan's three-hundred-sixty-degree vision caught an amused smile on Songan's tattooed lips as the Mate's gaze shifted between Kefira and him. Apparently, Songan's thoughts wandered the same paths as his.
"Routine con-watch rotation in four hours," Dorjan said, picking up where he had stopped before Kefira's entrance. "Songbird, that means you spell Songan. Unless there are duties to attend, the rest of you are on free time."
"An announcement of pinnacled importance," Yuw held out his arms to halt his companions' exit. "Among the valued items carried in Misfit's cargo holds are
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thirty prints of the complete Setsuyo Pumo holomovie library . . . including the latest, Dark Invader."
The Outie paused a moment to allow his announcement and pun to penetrate. "I have taken the liberty of securing a copy of each of the thirteen films for our entertainment during the long hours to Thebanis. A projector is awaiting in my cabin for those wishing to view the epic masochistic machinations of everyone's favorite-paired secret agent Akima Mars."
Songbird tloo-wheeted an unintelligible but delighted whistle.
The effects of Setsuyo Puma's holomovies and her warheads ("The Biggest Pair In The Universe") on normal humans and Jarps were conducive to full-fledged orgies. Rare was the man-or woman-onboard a spacer who had not taken advantage of a Jarp's insatiable sexual appetite.
"Captain, may I interest you hi a scenic excursion of Setsuyo's mountainous expanses?" Yuw grinned expectantly.
Dorjan waved the Outie away and watched three-fifths of Misfit's crew eagerly depart the control cabin to indulge their holofantasies. Songbird was doing her (its) best to cop a feel of both Kefira's and Yuw's backsides as they stepped through the door.
"Wonder if I can convince Yuw to run Akima Mars number twelve, Urth Bound, when my watch is over? Missed that one when it came out."
Songan chuckled beside Dorjan.
"You might have to twist his arm by asking twice." Dorjan crossed to the door. "Varn would give his right arm to get his left hand on 'The Biggest Pair In The Universe.'"
Buttoning the door open, Dorjan turned back to his friend. "I'll be in my cabin."
"You look a bit tight," Songan said. "The Baka?"
Dorjan nodded. "Feel like I'm strung with mono-filament wire."
"Meditate, follow the Tao," Songan answered while, he swiveled back to the con. "It will bring inner peace."
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Which was what Dorjan intended to do. However, as he turned right down a tunnel outside the con-cabin, the prospect of passive meditation was less than appealing. Post-job hypers tautened every muscle fiber in Ms body. What he needed, damn it, was in Yuw's cabin viewing Setsuyo's bioengineered warheads.
He stopped before his cabin and thumbed open the door. Cabin was the wrong word to describe what lay inside.
The word garden better described the room's appearance. In centuries-old terminology, Dorjan's cabin would have been categorized as an Oriental garden. In fact, it was a compacted version of a private garden Dorjan had seen on the plant Terasaki, brought to life by Songan's ingenuity.
Neatly manicured grass carpeted the floor-real, living, growing grass. On the right side of the five-by-five-meter room, beneath a canopy of Birdwing, also growing, was a mound of green that rose ten sems from the floor. The mound was covered by a blanket of synesturf; it concealed Dorjan's bed. The Birdwing sheltered it from the fine mist that occasionally drifted from the ceiling to water the grass and the room's two waist-high, slow-sculptured bonsai trees (one cherry, the other pine).
Across the garden from the mound-bed ran a constantly recirculated stream. The water musically gurgled over rocks and stones brought from those planets Misfit had visited. The stream was the height of Songan's genius. The touch that made the room live.
Holoprojectors disguised the walls with visions of open vistas that included an image of a snow-capped volcano. The ceiling was likewise veiled by projections of clouds drifting in programmed holotape patterns. Each twenty-four-hour-standard day, the garden experienced sunrise, sunset, and star-sprinkled night. Occasionally clouds overcast the sky, and the watering mist fell.
The illusion of open space was perfect. It could be
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truly appreciated only by a man who had spent the majority of his life in the confinement of slavery.
Stripping away the raiments of Jumah Sheeham and tossing them aside, the captain of Misfit became Dorjan of Harb.
Proudly, he spread his wings behind him to work the stiffness from his muscles. Naked, he sat cross-legged on the grass and inhaled the perfume it carried into the void of space. He rested his hands on his knees, palms up to the artificial sky overhead.
His gaze slid over his chest, arms, and legs. No longer did they bear traces of subcutaneous dyes, but were their natural color. Or natural lack of color. Dorjan of Harb, The-Thief-Who-Is-Not-There, was what Galactics referred to as a sport, a genetic mutation- an albino-a "deformity" normally corrected prior to birth in utero or in vitro.
Dorjan had been bred for the novelty of his skin. The same novelty Murrah an Rahmyne had found in Songan's depilated and tattooed body. White skin, not even the vaguely pink-hued skin once called white, was unknown among the blacks, browns, and bronzes that made up the Galactic race. Even Universal Edutapes contained no reference to the word "Caucasian." When the vast majority of the peoples of Homeworld-once-Urth had seized the planet and migrated into space, they had done a thorough job of destroying the old ruling minority and overwhelming its genetic lesser pigmentation.
Dorjan shifted bioengineered muscles within his hands. The unipolymer plasteel claws that replaced fingernails extended and retracted.
Damn! Memories of what he and Songan had been rolled into his mind. Gladiators, killers, their lot had been better than the slaves about them. Both had access to Murrah an Rahmyne's bed, when she desired it, and the female slave quarters, when they desired it. But how the woman had marked them, molded their flesh-and their minds!
How ironic that the decadent perversities she cre-
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ated with their brains and bodies were now the very instruments of their, Misfit's, and HOME'S survival. For Songan, strong of body, there was a mind, enceph-aloboosted beyond genius-the true mastermind behind The Shadow Walker and HOME'S reconstruction. The brainboosts also left the gentle, tattooed giant with what Dorjan described as latent psi ability. Songau called it "educated guesses" or "hunches."
With an accuracy of ninety-nine point nine per cent, Songan could detect the proximity of enslaved individuals, Galactic or alien. The ability had provided Misfit's present crew and led to the emancipation of HOME'S two hundred colonists.
For Dorjan, Murrah's brainboosts provided the knowledge of the spaceways and the ability to captain a luxury interplanetary flitter called Pleasure Mistress.
Fully as large as most spacers, Pleasure Mistress was Murrah's private craft for traversing the void between Harb and her sister world Ginneh. It amused Murrah an Rahmyne to have the most famous gladiator of two worlds piloting the craft, as it amused her to have an equally deadly, tattooed killer beside Dorjan in the Mate's chair.
It was on a flit between Harb and Ginneh that Pleasure Mistress's sublight drive began to flare erratically. While Dorjan flipped toggles, punched buttons, and fed in computer commands to disengage the malfunctioning drive, Murrah entered the control cabin full-strato on highly addictive eroflore. Laughing hysterically, she fell upon the console, fingers jabbing, palms pounding.
Dorjan, with unconscious effort, swept the woman from Pleasure Mistress's controls in a frantic effort to erase the conflicting commands she had punched into SIPACUM. His finely honed reactions were wasted.
Hell reached out and grasped Pleasure Mistress and the space enveloping her.
Time passed, unpleasantly. Pleasure Mistress and her four-member slave crew surfaced at the star-packed center of the galaxy. Songan speculated that Murrah's
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random commands had slammed the ship into a worm-hole and deposited it fifty thousand light years away from Harb. Within the Farther Reaches without the benefit of double P drive! In actuality, the reasons why and how did not matter. Pleasure Mistress survived, as did her crew. The only fatality was Murrah an Rah-myne. She lay crumpled on the con-cabin floor, neck broken from her fall after Dorjan had shoved her from the console.
Suddenly free men, murderers amid unfamiliar space without a subspace drive and with a malfunctioning sublight drive, the four gave birth to Misfit. Elanjan and Yoigan, the remaining members of the crew, offered no objections to Songan's outlined plans to convert the renamed Misfit into a profit-generating spaceship. In fact, they took turns converting Murrah's body to ash with a stopper, then ejected the remains into space via an airlock.
Sublight drive repaired, Misfit made her way to the nearest Galactic-inhabited planet, Thebanis. There cosmetics in Murrah's cabin provided the first disguise Dorjan ever donned. Murrah's jewelry financed the installation of Misfit's double P drive. Over the following two years, the pleasure craft converted to freighter hauled cargo within the Farther Reaches while her crew learned the spaceways' legal and less-than-legal avenues.
Eight years ago, Songan had discovered HOME. A dysfunction in the drive had popped Misfit into the Pascal System. HOME and Dorjan and Songan's mutual desire to recolonize it led to the creation of The Demon Cat, the master thief of the galaxy.
Dorjan unsheathed and retracted his claws again. Ten years since the accidental escape from Harb. A decade, and no man or woman had died at his hands. With both Misfit and HOME so near its ultimate design and him at thirty-five years-standard, he felt content.
The cabin door opened with a whispered hiss.
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Without a turn of his head, Dorjan saw Kefira step through a holographic projection of distant trees.
"I grew bored with watching the big-warheaded one being tortured. Songan suggested you might enjoy company. I don't understand the fascination for the Akima Mars holomovies."
Kefira's round, golden eyes narrowed as she stepped toward the naked captain of Misfit. "Torture is not the way of makhseem on Kuzih. I can't grasp the Galac-tics' propensity for inflicting mental and physical pain on one another."
Makhseem, like Songbird's tloo-wheetl'', roughly translated into Erts as "fornicate." The Akil word's connotation, however, was closer to "a sharing of body and spirit," as best as Dorjan had been able to determine.
"The Galactic's treatment of his fellow creatures will never cease to bewilder you, Kefira. He reserves the term 'humane' to describe the husbandry of the non-sentient animals he takes for pets," Dorjan answered. "Those of his own race, or those of other races suited to his needs, he uses in any capricious manner that pleases him. He then establishes 'law' to protect that abuse."
There was no doubt in Dorjan's mind that Kefira would be the most valuable oddity in the Farther Reaches flesh markets if her presence were common knowledge. The Akil was a one of a kind . . . item. Those who collected slaves the way others garnered inanimate objects would pay a small planet for her. Dorjan had vowed she would never fall into the hands of the spacefarers who dealt in the commerce of bodies and souls, the men and women called slavers.
"On Kuzih, the pleasures male and female have to offer one another are considered the greatest of delights." Kefira's lemur-eyed gaze ran over her captain's white nakedness.
Kuzih, a planet that had achieved almost mystical proportion in Dorjan's mind. It was a world populated by this totally unknown race of alien being, the Akil. A
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race possessing a rudimentary knowledge of space, travel, similar to humankind's position at the beginning of the Twenty-first Century on Homeworld, if Kefira were to be believed.
The woman of Kuzih (Dorjan thought of Kefira as a woman, not an alien female) was cautiously reticent when questioned about her homeworld or its location among the billions of stars within the galaxy. Kefira said as little about her past as did Varnalgeran Yuw, but then Yuw was an Outie.
Kefira had been discovered via an untranslatable radio signal SIPACUM picked up on a sublight hop from Terasaki to Luhra a year ago. She was found within a spherical lifeboat in cryogenic suspension. After an encephaloboost to provide her with the ability to speak Erts, she claimed no knowledge of how long she had been in frozen-sleep, or how she had arrived in the Farther Reaches.
She described herself as the Akil equivalent of a human anthropologist in transit to Hjor-a planet neighboring Kuzih that the Akil had colonized-when the craft she rode developed drive problems. She had been able to make it to a lifeboat before the ship exploded, then placed herself in cryogenic suspension until she could be rescued. She also claimed no astronomical knowledge of Kuzih's position in the galaxy.
Dorjan elected to accept her story as truth. His unspoken reservation was that Kefira, and perhaps others of her race, had been set adrift along the spaceways as an emissary-spy for the Akil. Purpose: to scout the section of the galaxy's center humans claimed as their own. If that were the case (Kefira had never given any indication that it was), she was damned lucky the lifeboat had not been hauled from space by the likes of the infamous slaver Jonuta of Qalara.
"In a forgotten time of humankind's past, man-or perhaps woman-placed a value on what was carried between the legs," Dorjan said. "Sex became a possession. An act to be withheld until legally consecrated-under the guise of moral or religious strictures.
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Once a possession, sex became something to be conquered, to be 'had.' The pleasures of makhseem were often forgotten in the attempt to 'have,' to possess."
Dorjan paused and narrowed his TPs to study Kefira. He could not discern from her expression whether she followed hun. "When a man or a woman has been denied the 'having,' he or she often substitutes violence or brutality for desire when the 'having' finally comes. The act of sex is transformed into a punishment for the long denial."
, "Makhseem conceived in material terms." Kefira shook her head, the gold-white strands of her long hair stirring. "We of the Akil place no such Value' on makhseem. We offer it to whomever requires shared contact, the intimacy of body and spirit."
Dorjan watched the woman of Kuzih stoop beside the room's artificial stream and dip a cupped hand (four fingers and opposing thumb) into the water to drink. When she turned back to Misfifs master, a pale lavender tongue played over moisture-sheened lips.
"Dorjan," Kefira said, golden eyes narrowing as though she pondered his words, "I sense a need for such sharing within you. And Kefira altRusalka would delight in makhseem with you."
Without waiting for a reply, she reached both arms behind her to unclasp the prass-colored equhyde halter. She tossed it aside, then with the same ease and . . . Dorjan could only describe it as innocence ... removed the G-string-held triangles that composed the remainder of her attire.
She stood before him, allowed his gaze to caress rounded breasts the size of ripened sweetfruits. Each was tipped with a pinkly blushing nipple, surrounded by a goosepimply aureole. Her breasts were devoid of the pale gold-white silk down that sleeked her supple body. The mound of her sex, too, appeared almost Galactic in its lack of hair, and was perhaps two shades pinker than her nipples.
She was exotic and more than erotic.
Dorjan's narrow-focused TP's drank in the alien
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woman's beauty. How many times had he and Kefira shared since the lifeboat was pulled from space? Some might expect such familiarity to breed disinterest. It had not. Each makhseem came as a new experience that he eagerly anticipated.
A coy fragrance, like the blossoms of spring's first wildflowers, wafted to his nostrils from the magnificent alien. Pheromone. Only subliminally sensed between humans, the scent created by the woman was highly evident to Dorjan. It elicited the desired reaction.
Kefira's round-eyed gaze languidly slid over her captain's nakedness. Her attention alighted on the hardening length of his slicer. "I see you are upright in your answer."
Dorjan opened his arms to the downy bundle of alien femininity. "And I think you've been around Yuw too long."
Kefira sank to her knees on the grass before him. Her palms and fingers stroked the hakless white of his chest. "Varnalgeran has need of sharing also."
"As does Songan, and Songbird?" For a moment, Dorjan almost drew her forward to possess her mouth. It was a natural desire, a natural human desire.
The mouth-to-mouth kiss was not shared by the Akil. While Kefira had learned to accept and perhaps tolerate the meeting of lips, the probing of tongues, Dorjan sensed that she was never truly at ease with the foremost of human sensual overtures. "There are many more interesting places on a body to kiss," she had explained once. Since then, he had refrained from covering her lips with his. She was right. There were other equally exciting places to kiss. He found one now, the ripe buttons of her nipples.
"Songbird always has such need." Her breath hissed in sharp intake while his tongue pleasantly busied one of the twin, pink buds and his fingers scissored the other.
"I bet she does," he paused long enough to whisper. Three times he had reprimanded the Jarp for taking advantage of Kefira's native willingness to share her
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body with those in need. Had he not, two of Misfit's crew would have spent the whole trip locked away in Songbird's cabin like minks in rut.
Kefira's hands flattened against his chest and gently urged him back in the grass. Her mouth was at his nipples, kissing, licking, nibbling. When they had been excited to stone-hard pebbles, her tongue and lips tauntingly worked downward until they opened wide to encompass his upright answer.
His neck craned up, eyes rolled down, to watch her head bob while her mouth sheathed and resheathed a definitely interesting place to kiss.
Before her hungry,mouth could release the flood of his desire, the captain of Misfit reached down and eased the woman of Kuzih upward. In a firm-handed grip, she clutched at the adamantine hardness of his slicer while she climbed atop him to straddle his loins. For a moment she paused, the need-swollen head of his penis poised for entry. Her pelvis thrust downward in one edacious motion. Then he was in her. Totally. The liquid heat of her body bathing him.
Only for an instant. Then she was moving in gyrating urgency.
Familiar, yet so enticingly different were the sensations that swirled within him. Never had he verbally or mentally compared the union with Kefira to that with a woman of his own kind. He simply enjoyed.
While lips and tongue toyed a small, dainty ear, Dorjan wedged a hand to their cores to add fuel to her lustful fires. Now he realized that she had entered his cabin at Songan's suggestion so that she might be able to help relax him. Dorjan had no intention, however, of allowing the pleasure to be solely his.
It wasn't. When at last he could no longer contain the demands of his body and buried himself in the depths of Kefira's belly, she flashed. Her body quaked atop his, her fingers clutching desperately to his shoulders as she soared and soared. In abandon, she moaned the satisfaction of makhseem. The moan mingled with his.
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With hearts apound and chests heaving, they lay together. Arms holding, caressing; hands exploring and soothing. Neither wishing to end the sharing.
Eventually Dorjan rolled her beneath him. Gently, their bodies began to rock again in a sleepy rhythm.
Above, an artificial sky darkened. Cool, misted rain fell. Neither Dorjan nor Kefira noticed.
5
Where Slavery is, there Liberty cannot be; and where Liberty is, there Slavery cannot be.
Charles Sumner
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing....
Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Isolation . . . darkness . . . BetalXP (Mark II) ... tetrazombase . . . isolation . . . darkness . . . BetalXP (Mark II) ... tetrazombase . . . isolation . . . darkness . . . BetalXP (Mark II) ... tetrazombase . . . isolation . . . darkness . . . BetalXP (Mark II) ... tetrazombase . . .
The isolation came in a two-meter-by-two-meter room onboard the spacer Forerunner, captained by one Kukis of Resh. On the exterior, the craft was one of thousands of freighters that sailed the faster-than-light Tachyon Trail. Clandestinely, Forerunner carried illegal cargo in one hold. A slave, one Lizina Harith.
Darkness filled the isolated compartment onboard Forerunner. It was not blackness, which is the absorption of all light. It was darkness, the absence of light.
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BetalXP (Mark II) fell in a cool mist every four hours within the room's isolated darkness. BetalXP (Mark II) was absorbed by human skin as well as the epidermis of Jarps (thus the Mark II, differentiating it from prior versions that required injection). Like the Tingler, BetalXP (Mark II) was an instrument of obedience for those who equated obedience with domination. Chemically, BetalXP (Mark II) was hytreg+ Iysphimt-dv4 in H1: Beta-nine-substance P-hystatry-plamine (a nerve-sensitizer, a pain-sensitizer, a skin-sensitizer) + lysergic sphingomeprobase (a hallucinogen with muscle relaxant) + dejavusane (Mark 4) (a deja-vu inducer) in hydroxyl solution.
The tetrazombase (illegal on all Galactic planets), a mere trace of the substance, mingled hi the mist with its chemical partner BetalXP (Mark II). It too was an aid in obedience. Tetrazombase was derived from the word zombie which, in large enough doses, was what it made the recipient.
In smaller doses, it fragmented the ego, jumbled that intangible human quality called free will.
These were the conditions in which Lizina Harith began her instructions under the tutelage of Captain Kukis and his First Mate Degula.
Thirty minutes-standard after the first mist drifted down in the darkness, she fully grasped the reason for the elastiplas covering the walls and floor of her cell. Like the muscle relaxant in the BetalXP (Mark II), it was to prevent self-inflicted injury and possible death.
The nerve, pain, and skin sensitizers were absorbed by the epidermis and assimilated into the bloodstream first. A nagging itch on the back of Lizina's hand became unbearable. To scratch was sheer hell. Her fingernails became razors slicing into her skin. She screamed. Unable to retreat from the pain, unable to ignore the itchy patches that suddenly dotted her naked body.
Next the hallucinogen penetrated the skin to the capillaries and found its way via veins to her brain. . . .
. . . She knelt on all fours in front of Kukis. The soft
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hum of the Tingler sang behind her. Hands, Degula's, kneaded her exposed buttocks, then spread them.
"Ten." Kukis's voice spread like oil.
Something cold and unyielding pressed against her. She went taut to prevent its entrance. Degula forced it into her body. The Tingler! She tried to slither forward to escape the plexiplas wand. Her muscles would not respond. Paralyzed, locked to the deck of Forerunner, she pleaded for them to spare her.
"Now all I do is squeeze my toy," Kukis said, ignoring the pleas.
A super-nova exploded in Lizina's body. . . .
. . . Kukis tilted his head to the floor. Without question she knelt before him, gaze subserviently lowered. He was without the Tingler. There would be no pain this time. To escape the pain, she would gladly lick the scuffed boots he wore.
"Hust, your lips." The crackle of parting nevelcro followed his words.
Her bowed head lifted. Kukis's slicer jutted toward her face. Closing her eyes, she leaned forward to accept the swollen burden into her mouth. Her lips sheathed-the Tingler!
Kukis snaked out a hand, fingers gripping the coppery strands of her head. He dragged her onto the smooth, hard wand. "Ten."
His hand squeezed the modified stopper's black handle. The plexiplas stuffed into her throat muffled her screams as a volcano spewed magma through her body. . . .
. . . "No," Lizina said. She would not be their hust. That life died when Garold bought her from the Light Fandango. She refused to whore herself again. Never!
"Then dance, stash!" Degula's stopper rose, leveled at Lizina's nakedness. Her hand squeezed. The stopper hummed.
Spastically, Lizina jerked and twitched within the stopper's first microwave beam setting. She begged the Reshi woman to cease, but the words remained unformed. She no longer controlled her body.
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Laughing, Kukis unholstered the Tingler and approached her. As a man slices a piece of cake, he took her with the icy cold wand. Tears welled from Lizina's eyes and flowed down her cheeks.
"Ten." Kukis's hand tightened about the Tingler.
Her vocal cords refused to transmit her screams when the agony shredded each cell of her vulnerable body. . . .
. . . "My kiss," Degula demanded. "Kneel and kiss me, ya stash!"
With a determined shake of her head, Lizina refused to submit. "I'd service a slime-dripping EFer before I'd kiss a Reshi cow!"
"Then fry, hust," Degula jerked her stopper from its holster and tightly squeezed the handle.
The sonic blast tore into her chest, melting her warheads, burning them to ash before a scream could form in her throat. . . .
. . . She heard the scrape of metal on metal in the darkness of the elastiplas-padded cell. The aroma of food tantalized her nostrils. On hands and knees, crawling through her own waste, she found the tray and the two bowls it held.
Her fingers cautiously probed below the lips of the bowls. In one, chunks of meat. The other contained raw vegetables. Unable to control her hunger, she wolfed down mouthfuls of each, using bare hands to stuff the nourishment into her mouth.
All too soon both bowls were empty. She lifted each to her lips and upturned it to catch any unseen juices that might remain. Assured that she had devoured their contents, she stretched out on the dirtied floor. She could have eaten three tunes the amount Kukis and Degula doled out, but at least the cramping hunger pains had passed. Now she could sleep.
With an arm tucked under her head, she closed her eyes.
Pain! Ulcerous pain knifed through her stomach and intestines. She bolted upright, clutching her belly. Poison! It tore at her like a thousand rodents gnawing
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their way out from inside. She writhed on the floor, screaming until death claimed her. . . .
. . . The door to the cell opened. Legs spread defiantly, Degula stood silhouetted in the rectangular hatchway. Light gleamed from the barrel of her stopper.
"Kukis wants to see ya," the First Mate of Forerunner said. "But first we gotta clean ya up."
Stopper pressed into the small of her back, Lizina entered the dazzling brightness of the ship's tunnel and climbed the ramp. There was a brief stop at a sonic shower to wash the dirt and sweat from her nakedness, then a walk down another tunnel to enter the flat-gray door to Kukis's cabin.
The captain of Forerunner sat naked on the edge of Ms bed. He smiled when they entered.
"Ah, Coppertop, I must apologize for your accommodations. But, other arrangements wait if you are prepared to give yourself to us."
There was no apology in the man's voice. Lizina- not Coppertop-glared at the spacefarer from Resh. She gathered spittle in her mouth and spat into his face. "Slice yourself!"
Kukis flipped five fingers in the universal gesture of the spaceways to signify have-it-your-way. He nodded to Degula.
"Return our cake to her quarters. She apparently isn't prepared to cooperate."
Once more at stopper point, the Reshan directed Lizina through the tunnels, down the ramp, and into the darkness and the mist. . . .
. . . The last chemical compound of the BetalXP (Mark II) to take effect was the dejavusane, a deja-vu inducer. Its presence in Lizina's bloodstream and brain meant that the nightmares began again. As vivid and real as they had been the first time.
Four hours later, another dose of BetalXP (Mark II) misted from the ceiling of the cell to recycle the horrors-doubly.
Time, in its Einsteinian relativity, ceased to exist for Lizina. Or was her name Coppertop? It became diffi-
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cult to disassociate Lizina from her former persona. After the first mist of BetalXP (Mark II), she sensed that the visit to Kukis's room was different from the chemo-induced visions; not a vision at all, but reality.
By the fourth mist, reality, like time, no longer held any meaning for the kidnapped woman. And the walk to Kukis's room repeated itself in the same manner her other drugged nightmares did.
Both Coppertop and Lizina sensed that somehow she could change the horrors that filled her mind, if only she accepted what Kukis offered. If only she bent her will to his. Coppertop was only too willing to humiliate herself, to provide for Kukis and Degula's every whim. But, Lizina, despite the never-ceasing pain, recognized that to do so would erase all that she had become.
Thus she endured, clinging to a minute grain of her identity through four cooling mists.
Pain-it stretched seconds to minutes, minutes to hours, hours to days, days to eternity. The BetalXP (Mark II) placed her within a Mobius strip of sensitized hell. The tetrazombase ate away at the solitary seed of identity.
She remained Lizina Harith, but she did not care.
A simple word, "care," overused to the point of being trite. But such a powerful human emotion! To care about oneself, to care to live. Coppertop-it was easier to think of herself as Coppertop-did not care. She wanted only to escape the hell that twisted her mind, that brought the intolerable pain. . . .
. . . "Time again for ya visit with Cap'n Kukis." The cell door swung open and Degula stood there, stopper in hand.
For the millionth time in . . . ? She did not know how long she had been onboard Forerunner. She walked into the blinding lights of the tunnel beyond her cell and mounted the ramp. Again, she stepped into the sonic shower to let the invisible vibrating fingers cleanse the filth from her skin and hair. Then there was the gray door to the captain's cabin and beyond where Kukis sat naked on the edge of his bed.
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"Coppertop." He waved her to him.
Lizina, her voice like a distant shadow, said, "No."
Coppertop, however, stepped to the Reshi space-farer. Docilely, she stood there while he reached to and cupped her warheads. His fingers were extraordinarily cold on her flesh. Her nipples popped to attention with a mere brush of the icy fingertips. Kukis grinned diamonds and gold at the response of her body.
"Today is different, isn't it?" The oil of his voice made Lizina's skin crawl.
But Coppertop did not mind. At the Light Fandango there had been far worse taps she had hustled, as a hust. What did she care? As long as it freed her from the isolated darkness and the insanity that came with the mist. Lizina struggled to surface and spit in Kukis's face again . . . but Coppertop nodded her head.
"Today you belong to me, don't you, my lovely Coppertop?" Kukis slid a hand over the silky smoothness of her flat belly and between her legs. Two fingers wiggled into her.
"I'm yours," she said. His touch was far from unpleasant. After darkness, the mist, the pain, it felt good. Her hips undulated in response to the pleasureful sensations he created.
"My slave." His words were a statement rather than a question.
She nodded. Her breath whistled in sharp intake as he tapped a thumb against her flasher. Coppertop knew what was expected of her. Her own hands cradled Kukis's hairless slicer; her caressing ringers brought him to life.
"First, Degula," he said firmly, fingers withdrawing. "She enjoyed your first kiss."
He grasped her shoulders roughly and twisted her around. Forerunner's First Mate had shed the yellow Skintite she had worn when they entered. She lifted a finger and beckoned Coppertop to her. Submissively, the coppery-haired woman obeyed. She could not consider Lizina's voice screaming within her head.
Degula's hands covered her warheads and squeezed,
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nipples stone-hard against the Reshi woman's palms. Degula pulled her forward to cover Coppertop's mouth with her own. Tongues danced out in a moist duel as they probed and explored.
Then the First Mate's lips were gone. Her hands were on the younger woman's shoulders, forcing her downward to the floor. Coppertop knelt. Without instruction she provided the kiss Degula desired. Willingly, her tongue licked, laved, swirled, doing its best to please. If she pleased, if she satisfied, she might win her freedom from the room at the end of the ramp and the pain held in its cool mist.
From behind, she heard the pad of Kukis's bare feet on the unipolymer plasteel floor. Then she heard nothing. Degula's hands grasped Coppertop's head and shoved her face into the thrusting hunches of her pelvis.
Coppertop felt. Kukis's hands were on her buttocks. Almost soothingly, his palms caressed the twin mounds so vulnerably exposed. Like a child with a new stuffed toy, the captain of Forerunner squeezed and kneaded. He teased fingertips along the inviting crease of her backside.
Above her, Degula groaned. Her body insistently threw itself into Coppertop's face with increasing der-mand. There was a moment of rigid tension; an instant when Coppertop thought the woman intended to smother her. Then Degula staggered back, coal-black eyes glazed and distant.
Kukis's hand slipped beneath her and lifted. Copper-top fell forward on hands and knees. The man behind her edged closer. His hands spreading the cheeks he busied.
"Head on the floor, stash!" he demanded.
Slavishly-she was now his slave-she lowered her head to the metal deck. The crown of his slicer firmly pressed against her. Lizina took control for a moment. Her body tensed, refusing to admit the hardness. No! Coppertop denied the woman she had been. She did not want to return to the room that misted BetalXP (Mark
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II). She could not endure the pain, the nightmares. Better this.
Coppertop relaxed, and he was in her to the hilt. There was little pleasure. Kukis had not prepared her, not even with common marge. He was big, and he hurt. But the pain was nothing compared to what she had suffered. She could and would survive this. She even performed the charade of enjoying his punishing thrusts.
She supplied the wanton moans and groans, the piteous yelps of desire that drove him on at a flesh-slapping pace. She wiggled back against him to fan the now uncontrollable lust that drove the captain of Forerunner. And she tautened herself about him as he emptied his seed into her.
She was Coppertop, and for Coppertop, nothing mattered except survival. She would spread any portion of her body for the whole planet Jarpi if it allowed her to escape the pain hi the room below.
When Kukis at last fell away from her, Degula waited once more. . . .
The taste of man and woman was heavy in her mouth and throat when Kukis and Degula rose from the floor and dressed. Both Reshans' faces were flushed with the redness of sexual satisfaction. Copper-top had performed to her fullest capabilities. Now she silently hoped, prayed to the gods Booda and Musla who were widely worshipped by Galactics, though she believed in neither. No god would allow what had happened to her.
"Take her to her new room, Degula." Kukis walked to the wall and tapped a green button. The desk folded down. He lifted the remnants of what had once been Lizina Harith's prison-fabric gown from the desk top. He tossed the torn fabric to Coppertop. "Degula will get the things you need to make a presentable dress. We rendezvous with Be Lively in thirty-six hours."
"And appearance is everything to Ganesa," Degula added, gesturing for Coppertop to rise from her knees.
Ganesa . . . the name had a familiar ring to it. Yet,
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Coppertop could not place it. Be Lively had to be another ship. She had heard of no planet by that name.
When Coppertop started toward the door, still on the wrong side of Degula's stopper, Kukis called to her. "You're to be congratulated, Coppertop. No one has lasted three days in the room before."
The eternity of nightmares had been only three days! She inwardly cringed in anticipation of Lizina's vehement curses for her weakness. She heard nothing. Nor did she sense anything within her that remained of Lizina Harith. For a hollow moment, as Degula directed her down Forerunner's corridors, she felt an indefinable loss.
The sensation was easily forgotten in her new accommodations onboard the spacer. There was light and there was food. More importantly, there was no mist and no pain. Wearily, but very much alive, Coppertop collapsed atop the clean bed that awaited her when Degula closed the door behind her and locked it. Three minutes later she slept, undisturbed by drug-induced horrors.
6
Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind;
The thief doth fear each bush an officer. William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part HI, V, vi, 11
Semantics can't hurt me. "Paranoia" is one of the most misemployed words in all history. Ifs also a stupid term to apply to intelligent apprehension and caretaking, even fear.
Captain Jonuta of Qalara
She used the name Nicole, was Theban, twenty-five, a waitress in the posh Hotel Aziza, attractive of face, slim of waist, firm of thigh, and opulent of breast. Facts Captain Barse Dukker of the freighter Solar Wind had delighted his hands and mouth with in the ten minutes since their waking. The previous night had been long and exhausting. The black-skinned woman's enthusiasm, as well as his own, was surprising. Dukker did not question their shared desire. He was content to revel in it.
Dukker, alias Dorjan of Harb, was not at all pleased when the phone rang beside their emperor-sized bed.
Reluctantly, he abandoned a very womanly-tasting nipple and answered, minus visual. Songan greeted him, also minus visual, with a reminder of the "business conference" scheduled in an hour. Graphically describing his friend's parental relationship to a female nug,
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the captain of Misfit (duly registered as Solar Wind on Corsi) told his First Mate to be at his door in fifty-five minutes. He then buttoned the phone off and made apologies to the fantastic Theban beside him.
"It's just as well. I have the evening shift today. And we didn't sleep much last night. I am a working girl, you know." With a shrug and a light kiss, Nicole rolled from the spacious bed to trot across the hotel suite.
Dorjan watched the jiggle-wiggle of her well-formed body until she disappeared into the sitter and closed the door behind her.
With a smile and a sigh, The Shadow Walker rose and stretched his wings, then compactly refolded them to his subcutaned bronze back.
Anywhere else in the galaxy, the wings would have been questioned, thus restricting his bedroom activities. On Thebanis, perhaps the most open planet in the Farther Reaches, cosmetic bioengineering was the current vogue. Last night, in the Aziza's main restaurant, he had seen a woman with a red rose growing from a bare shoulder. Another man had a wing-flapping, tail-writhing, mini-dragon attached to his left forearm.
Mere metallic wings were hardly noticeable.
He found his pants on the floor in a jumbled pile with Nicole's hastily discarded clothing, and he removed a clip of stells from a SurLock pocket. A fourth of these he slipped into Nicole's purse. The waitress was not a hust, but the unexpected money would be a pleasant surprise later. After all, she was a working "girl."
The sound of quad-showerheads, real water not sonic, drew Dorjan's attention to the closed bathroom. A chronometer beside the phone indicated that fifty minutes remained before Songan and Yuw arrived. Not as much time as a woman with Nicole's qualities deserved, but . . .
Seconds later, a delighted squeal of surprise rose above the torrent of the four showerheads. Then there were the muffled, urgent sounds of need.
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"Black," Dorjan emphasized when Vamalgeran Yuw tapped the suite's door open to leave. The winged thief knew the Outie's outlandish taste. "I want a car as inconspicuous as possible."
"Red would be superior," Yuw said with a nod of his Wayne-adorned head. "But black is what you ordered, and black is what you'll get, captain."
As Yuw redshifted to rent the car needed to make the transfer of The Heart Of The Universe, Songan placed the large case he carried atop the rumpled emperor-sized bed. He touched the static locks. The lid popped open.
"A janitor, huh?" He raised a disapproving artificial eyebrow. Dorjan nodded. Songan's subcutane-dyed brown face wrinkled tightly. "I'd hoped there was a change in plans."
Dorjan grinned. His friend had a definite aversion to participating in the escapade? of The Invisible One. Songan's forte was the extensive planning that each job required. It was Dorjan who savored the adventure, the risk.
Songan pulled a gray jumpsuit with Loophole Bar embroidered on its back from the case, a souvenir taken from that lounge's maintenance closet on Misfit's last trip to Thebanis. Donning the suit, the First Mate posed for Dorjan's approval. With subcutane-disguised tattoos and securely affixed dark brown wig, eyebrows, and eyelashes, Songan was prepared for his part in the transfer of the Firegems for ten million stells in easily marketable spectmonds. Those hue-shifting diamonds were highly prized on every planet along the spaceways.
Songan dipped into the open case once again and handed the captain his costume for the evening. The Shadow Walker's face wrinkled in the same distasteful expression Songan had displayed moments before.
"The things a man will do for money."
"Think of HOME." Songan, a jar of Quik Set Latex in one hand and a makeup kit in the other, tilted his head to a nearby chair. "There is more than money involved."
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Dorjan sat in the chair and lifted his chin toward his janitor-disguised Mate. Like Misfit, HOME was as much Songan's as it was his. There was more than money involved.
"Make yourself comfortable," Songan said. "Your new face is going to take a couple of hours."
"As long as it comes off cleanly in thirty seconds," Dorjan answered.
"It will," his friend assured him. "You can bet your life on that."
Dorjan grimaced. From what he knew of Saipese psychology, that was exactly what he was doing. He closed his eyes while Songan applied a layer of latex to his face.
At 2100 T.N.C.S. (Thebanis North Continental Standard), a black car halted before the Loophole Bar. A rear door swung upward. An elderly, stooped woman, in a neck-to-ankle black dress, black gloves, and gray hair piled in a tight bundle atop her head, stepped out. She walked through the bar's cybernetic doors, hands clutched around a small velvet handbag.
She felt awkward dressed in such a manner in this place. Still, her confidence was bolstered by the fact that the car that had delivered her now waited in the alley behind the bar. One of its occupants, a janitor, had entered the Loophole by the back door.
Her eyes-an unusual pale blue-moved from side to side in a conn of the bar's layout. Under normal circumstances, she would have found it fascinating. Massive chunks of Thebanis's ancient scoria were set in the walls. Each piece of lava was stucco-rough with a myriad of facets that caught the ever-moving ceiling lights and transformed the pocked slag into an individual light-show, atwinkle in multicolored iridescence.
Loophole was a single long room with two steps that led to a second level at the far end. She rejected the three tables contained in the raised, fenced alcove. They were too secluded. Instead, she chose an empty
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table at the center of the room, an especially well-lighted area.
She wove slowly among the tables to her selected position, drawing the stares of Loophole's patrons, spacefarers unaccustomed to having a "lady" in their midst. This was exactly what she wanted. Even in an establishment of Loophole's reputation, the customers would react and come to the aid of an elderly woman, should violence present itself.
That was the beauty of Dorjan's disguise. The Sai-pese representative who was to meet Nashota Kameko would be under the scrutiny of every eye in the Loophole. Violence-and Dorjan was certain the government of Saiping did not intend for him to keep the ten million in spectmonds-would occur after the exchange. For that, there were contingencies.
At the table, Nashota Kameko slipped two stells from her purse, placed it atop the cyber-bartender and ordered a Lanatian Creme Sherry. She sipped and waited while heads turned and eyes stared in an attempt to discern her purpose for visiting the bar.
"Dear lady," a soft voice, distinctly Saipese, came from Dorjan's side. "You have dropped your purse."
A man, cloaked in a brilliant red jacket of true silk embroidered with a green water dragon on one breast and a flame-winged phoenix on the other, stooped beside the table. He stood and handed Dorjan a velvet purse identical to the one held in Nashota's lap.
The man's face matched the hologram provided by the Saipese government. The closely trimmed hair and pencil-thin moustache belonged to one Cho Tstu, Sai-ping's ambassador to Thebanis. Even without the accent, Tstu's narrow, almond-shaped eyes marked him as a native of Saiping, whose inhabitants claimed to be direct descendants from a land once called China, somewhere.
Dorjan nodded for Tstu to join her/him.
While the ambassador took a seat opposite the elderly woman, Dorjan opened the handbag. Ten million stells in color-changing spectmonds greeted him. In all
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his ingenuity and synthesized wonder, the Galactic had never duplicated the splendor of spectmonds. Aside from the beauty, the gems were readily exchangeable, perhaps even more so than the interstellar credits called stells.
Dorjan snapped the purse closed.
"I assure you, grandmother," Tstu said softly, "that your possessions are intact."
With no means to assess the value of the gem-stones, Dorjan accepted the Saipese's assurance that the contents totaled ten million stells. Placing the handbag in his lap, he edged its twin onto the floor beneath the table.
"Clumsy of me, but I seemed to have dropped it again. Would you mind?"
Tstu ducked beneath the table to remain there long enough to extract an equhyde bag within the purse and examine its contents-The Heart Of The Universe. When he rose to hand Nashota/Dorjan the empty velvet handbag, the Firegem necklace had been discreetly hidden within his silk jacket. Transfer complete. Tstu nodded that he was satisfied with the exchange.
"If you wouldn't mind, I'd like another sherry," Dorjan said in his best elderly-woman-imitating voice. "Will you order while I visit the powder room?"
Not waiting for an answer, Dorjan rose and walked toward a flashsign that pointed the way to the rest-rooms at the rear of the Loophole. Behind him, via three hundred and sixty degree TP vision, he caught Tstu signal two seated toughs at the opposite end of the bar. The men lifted their drinks and tossed them down.
Dorjan didn't wait for more. He ducked through the doorway and pushed into the men's room. Contingency One was now in effect. The Saipese definitely did not like the idea of paying for something they considered theirs.
Inside, Songan, in janitor attire, waited with a trash-cart at his side. The First Mate of Misfit caught the purse tossed him and buried it beneath the trash while
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Dorjan moved to the bathroom's single window. Opened it. Waved. Varnalgeran Yuw stood beside the rented black car in the alley, returned the wave before disappearing through the vehicle's open door.
Dorjan heard the car's engine catch when he turned back to Songan. "Two of them. Big, nasty looking brutes who'd probably get their cubes off stomping on little old ladies."
Songan wheeled the trashcart before the door to provide a momentary delay should the two enter ahead of schedule. Simultaneously, Dorjan reached up and grabbed a handful of gray hair. He pulled forward, then down. There was a slight tug of resistance, then neatly and cleanly, Nashota Kameko peeled from his face in testimony to Songan's expert application of the liquid latex.
The mask he tossed to Songan to be shoved under the trash. In the wrong hands, it could be used to make a cast of his facial features. Will with the Wisp could not allow that, and remain living. The gloves, the shoes, and the tear-away black dress were stripped away and left on the floor under the window.
Dorjan, once again Captain Barse Dukker of Solar Wind, opened his fly and stepped to the nearest urinal. His bladder needed no urging to perform its task. Songan moved the trashcart from the doorway.
Five seconds later, the door swung inward to admit Tstu's two playmates, stoppers in hand. Their heads jerked from side to side in search of Nashota Kameko.
". . . out the window! Can ya believe it?" Songan said while he stepped toward the dress on the floor as though to pick up an added burden to his janitorial tasks. "Nev' know what to 'spect in this place. Every night is sum'in dif."
On cue, Tstu's men sighted the discarded costume. They shoved Songan against the wall in their rush to get to the dress, gloves, and shoes. They looked at one another, then peered out the window. The big engines of the car in the alley performed a mechanical
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jam-cram. Dorjan heard the Outie scream down the alley in a roar.
The two men shoved their guns through the window, fired twice, then cursed. Without a glance to the janitor or the urinating spaceship captain, they swept the remains of Nashota Kameko from the floor and exited the restroom.
While Dorjan closed his fly, Songan retrieved mask and spectmond-filled purse from the trashcart. He stuffed them into his jumpsuit. He glanced up at his friend, smiled widely, and winked.
"Later."
"Later." Dorjan watched Songan leave. He sucked in a deep, steadying breath as he thrust his hands beneath a sonic cleaner.
It had been tight, down to the very second. But it had gone smoothly, without a single glitch. Dorjan allowed himself a wide, satisfied grin in a mirror on the wall. So smooth!
A moment later, Captain Barse Dukker entered the Loophole and seated himself at an empty table. Tstu and his two toughs were nowhere to be found. Out chasing cars ... or begging forgiveness from their honored ancestors, Dorjan smiled while he ordered a mug of renowned Theban Starflare Beer. In an hour, Yuw would rendezvous with Songan in a newly rented car. In two, he would meet with them back at the Hotel Aziza.
After that, with luck, there would be time for Nicole.
Five days later Dorjan, Songan, and Yuw regrouped in the Loophole for a farewell drink to a profitable visit to Thebanis. During those five days, in various disguises, the three had crisscrossed the planet via shuttle, exchanging spectmonds for stells and stells for HOME's required equipment. The cargo was now safely onboard or stowed by tether lines to Misfit/Solar Wind's hull.
Two mugs of Starflare and a warm glow coursing through their veins, the three shipmates left the bar by
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taxi, which deposited them outside the shuttleport for lift to Thebanisport. As they started toward the main terminal building, Songan stopped in mid-stride. His head jerked around. Two men in police blues escorted a young couple, looking no more than twenty years-ess old into an unmarked hovervan.
"Songan?" Dorjan called to his friend who had fallen behind.
"I've a hunch those two aren't policers." The First Mate's emphasis on "hunch" conveyed the connotation that the young couple were not what they seemed either, but victims of police-disguised slavers.
"Want to follow?" Yuw asked; his gaze shifted between the two Harbians.
"Follow," Dorjan said simply, hailing another cab.
"Twenty minutes to scheduled lift," Songan reminded him.
"Follow," Dorjan repeated. "There will be other lifts."
When the cab pulled beside them, the three piled into its back seat. With a beaming grin, Yuw pointed to the van and said, "Follow that car." He appeared very pleased with himself.
By day Zorya Park was a botanical showcase for Thebanis's exotic flora. By night, dark, deserted, and a well-known spot for pursesnatchers, throat-rippers, rapists, and traffickers in illicit and abundant drugs. For this was Thebanis, one of the very most open of all planets. It was at Zorya Park that the van stopped and the two uniformed men emerged with the couple to vanish in the dense vegetation.
Fifty meters behind, the three crewmates of Misfit followed.
They crept within ten meters, cloaked by the park's shadows when the supposed policers stopped by a suspsensor-globe-lit fountain. Two minutes later another man approached. The newcomer circled the young man and woman several times, eyeing them with intense interest. When he at last completed his inspec-
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tion, he dug a hand inside his kuqa-furred coat to pull out a bundle of stells which he passed to one of the uniformed men.
The two men in policer uniform might be legitimate, but their activities weren't. Once again, Songan's "hunch" had paid off.
Dorjan tilted his head. The trio stepped from the shadows no more than three meters from the three men and their young captives.
"Friends," Dorjan said in ice cold tones, "I'm afraid we're here to conclude this transaction."
The two in uniform jerked around, startled by the three's sudden appearance from nowhere. Before either could complete his movement, Yuw and Songan were beside them. One's hand was poised a sem from the handle of his stopper. His wrist was caught in Songan's vise-like grip, finger unable to dip lower. The other had completely lost his weapon. It was in Yuw's, right hand, leveled at his chest. Dorjan held the would-be purchaser by the collar of his fur jacket. The man stood on tiptoes to keep from strangling.
Songan's swiftness did not surprise Dorjan. The Harbian giant had been trained for speed in the arena. But Yuw, overweight and stocky, possessed reflexes that equalled Songan's. A man was not born with such speed. Where had Yuw trained? And why? One of these days, the man from Outreach would open his past to his shipmates. Dorjan expected it would be as unorthodox as everything else about the man.
"What the hell is going on!?!" the man dangling from Dorjan's hand only just managed to gurgle.
"These two are friends of ours." Dorjan studied the young couple. They appeared as frightened of their saviors as of the three who bartered their souls. "We've come to see them home."
"You flainin' scum-sucker!" That was the one in Songan's grip. "They're mine! . . . Or his; he just bought 'em!"
The man's outburst ended in an ugly cry of pain accompanied by the crunch of bone. His wrist. He
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crumpled to the pavement clutching a hand he would not be able to use for several weeks, and his eyes were gone all huge and fearful.
The First Mate of Misfit relieved him of his stopper.
Yuw reached out to relieve the other of the bundle of stells still clutched in one hand. "Our friends require this for the inconvenience you've caused."
"You can't . . ." the remaining standing man in uniform began, but stopped with the realization that they not only could but already had.
"Friends, we leave you your lives." Dorjan released the furjacketed man, after delving beneath the coat and freeing the stopper he wore. "Which is more than you would have left these two. Get the vug out of here! NOW!"
They hesitated long enough to pull the man with the broken wrist from the ground, then started toward the darkness. They took three strides before the hum of an adjusted stopper dropped them.
Dorjan twisted around. Yuw shrugged, looking like a chubby child.
"If they're legit, they would have gone to the police. We need time to lift, or shuttle to another city. The setting was Two, enchanced to zappo, They'll be out long enough to let us do that."
Dorjan offered no objection. The Outie was right. He took the young man's arm while Songan took the young woman's and they ran from Zorya Park to the waiting taxi.
Their names were Yoluta and Edrek, sister and brother, snatched from Lanatia. When they realized that the three who saved them had indeed saved them and did not intend to re-sell them, they were grateful and frightened. On Lanatia, they had run away from home and joined a street corner improvisational acting troupe of ten other runaways called the Kosmic Klown Khorus. Nineteen and twenty respectively, neither was trained to provide for itself on a strange world, and both knew it.
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Seated in a corner of the shuttleport waiting area, Dorjan took the stells Yuw had taken off the would-be slave purchaser and held them out to the brother and sister. "This is yours if you want it-the current market value of young slaves. If you live carefully, you can stick it out on Thebanis for eighteen months, maybe two years. Or you can purchase cruiser tickets back to Lanatia and your family. Or . . ."
Quickly and concisely, Dorjan repeated the offer he had made to more than two hundred slaves the Misfit's crew had freed in the past eight years. He told Yoluta and Edrek of a dream called HOME and the two hundred people who now prepared to live that dream.
He then placed equal shares of the money into each of their hands. "The choice is yours."
Neither sister nor brother hesitated in returning the money. Dorjan had expected the reaction; they were young enough to understand the scope of the adventure HOME offered. He handed the money to his garishly attired associate.
"They'll need papers. Think you can manage it?"
"At this time of night?" Yuw frowned, face shaded under the broad-brimmed hat, then grinned widely. "Of course, I can! I'm an Outie, aren't I!"
Manage it he did. Three hours later Misfit, with two new crewmembers onboard, subspaced for the Barbro Transfer Station. It was the craft's final stop before HOME.
7
There is no medicine to be found for a life which has fled.
Ibycus
The nausea, the vertigo, the instant of mental dislocation left Coppertop huddled in a comer quaking with fear. She shook, afraid the new room had been but a ruse to lull her before Kukis began the mental and physical anguish again.
Her wide green eyes jerked upward in anticipation of the mist. There was no mist. Her nostrils flared to detect the scent of invisible gas. She smelled nothing.
She felt a growling vibration shudder through the floor, followed by a brief weightless moment of null-G. Breaking rockets, she recalled in nervous relief. She had felt them and null-G before, on Jonuta's Coronet. The nausea and vertigo came with the transition back to "real" space. Forerunner's drive no longer thrust the ship at faster-than-light speeds.
Picking herself up from the floor, Coppertop smoothed the wrinkles from the off-one shoulder, mid-thigh length dress she had made from the shredded remains of Lizina Harith's prisma-fabric gown. She sat on the edge of her bed and waited, wondering about the person called Ganesa and the ship Be Lively. Neither was a familiar name to her.
The room's door opened. Kukis and Degula entered; the First Mate handed her a pair of soft slippers.
"Put 'em on. Static soles. Let ya walk in null-gee." 86
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Coppertop placed the shoes on her bare feet and rose when Kukis motioned. He twirled one finger; she turned slowly for his inspection.
"Should have done something about her hair. Given it some curl or wave. Appearance is everything to Ganesa." Kukis sucked at gold-edged, diamond-inset teeth. "Too late now. It does look clean."
The captain of Forerunner flipped five and stepped from the room. Degula nudged Coppertop after him- with a hand, not a stopper. "Time to meet Ganesa."
Filed between Kukis and his Mate, Coppertop docilely moved through Forerunner's tunnels. In crossing to Be Lively, she made her first spacewalk, though it required no special suit. It was via a segmented plasteel extension corridor called an S-Tunnel that ran from the airlock of one ship to the other. The derivation of the nomenclature had long been forgotten.
(Many thought the "S" stood for "snake" because of the tunnel's flexibility. It did not. It stood for "slicer," an example of the designer's wit. The comparison was obvious.)
The tunnels of Be Lively weren't tunnels at all. At least, they didn't appear to be, to Coppertop. The floors were carpeted, thick, rich, and red. Red, too, were the walls, Dur-Paper with velvet-to-the-touch black baroque designs. Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling to disguise glo-globes. The corridor's stanchions were not metal, but wood, real wood, darkly stained and highly polished.
And the doors! Not the flat-gray of Forerunner, but different hues! Each was brightly colored and each was different. They lined the long tunnel, a new one every three meters. Coppertop lost count at fifty.
The corridor ended in an expansive lounge, decorated in the same red and black motif. To one side stood a cyberbar. The remainder of the room was opulently and eclectically furnished with several over-stuffed, fabric-covered chairs and couches. A Jarp in Eye-Bright pink pseudo-silk blouse and ballooned pants stood beside a door on the far side of the lounge.
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Coppertop thought of it as a blouse rather than shirt because the Jarp's clothing was open to the waist to expose orange conical warheads. The shocking hot-red of its hair flowed from beneath a translator helmet.
"Welcome friends Kukis and Degula. Ganesa waits within." The Jarp opened a burgundy-polished door inset with green gems in the design of a bird on wing.
The room beyond the door was fascinating.
At least ten times the size of the captain's quarters onboard Forerunner, it was the most elegant room Coppertop had ever seen, outstripping the luxury in which Lizina had dwelled within the Harith Mansion- and on a spacer!
Her gaze was quickly drawn to the small woman standing at its center. Diminutive she might be, but her presence paled the room itself. Lace, intricate and silky black, composed her widely flaring gown. When she stepped toward Coppertop, the rustle of starched petticoats came from beneath the gown.
Fiery red hair was piled atop her head. From there it cascaded down about her shoulders in long, springlike curls. The slim, delicate fingers of one hand-each sporting a sparkling diamond ring-toyed with an opal brooch on the ruffled neck of her high-collared gown.
This apparition of opulence held out her right hand, fingers as bejeweled as the left, and allowed Kukis to kiss.
"So gallant, my dear Captain Kukis."
Her small dark eyes shifted to Degula. "And you, sweet Degula, look as ravishing as usual. Should you ever tire of this gentleman, please consider my standing offer of a position for you on Be Lively."
The woman's manner and speech contained an affectation that Coppertop had never encountered. That it had been once called "antebellum" in a now-forgotten nation of Homeworld was unknown to her.
"And this is . . ." The woman in black turned to Coppertop.
"Coppertop," Kukis said. "She is the finest Panish society has to offer, Ganesa."
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"Mmmmmm." Ganesa fingered the opal while she eyed the young woman from head to toe. "Coppertop. I like it. We'll keep it. Coppertop, please turn slowly so Ganesa can take a look at you."
Coppertop did, and she stripped to stand naked before the three when the woman called Ganesa requested. Then she dressed again, bewildered that they required nothing more of her.
"Something will have to be done about her hair-the style, that is. Appearance is everything, you know. The color, however, is magnificent! Ganesa is most pleased, dear Kukis." Ganesa took Coppertop's hand and led her to the Jarp by the door. "This is Tweets, dear Coppertop, who has been assigned to ... shall we say Captain Kukis and I will conclude our business."
Without a question, Coppertop followed the smiling Jarp back down the tunnel. It stopped before a chartreuse-painted door and motioned her inside. Tweets waved an arm about the room when the door closed behind them.
"Of the hundred rooms on Be Lively's Level One, this is my favorite."
Coppertop walked beside a circular bed, covered in silver lame at the room's center. A thousand Copper-tops reflected back at her. Mirrors completely covered the Jarp's favorite room-floor, walls, ceiling. She looked back at Tweets, who shrugged, then reached out and pressed a mirrored panel by the door.
The room's single overhead glo-globe winked out. Coppertop, conditioned by three days hi the Forerunner's isolation cell, went rigid.
A thudding heartbeat later, multicolored, spinning lights flashed from four locations on the ceiling. The mirrored room was instantly transformed into a maelstrom of psychedelic photons folding back on themselves into infinity. Blaring, corn-amplified, multi-voiced, synthesized Wir-Wri-Fla music pulsated from concealed speakers.
A smile on its lips, Tweets walked before Copper-top. An orange hand (four fingers and two convenient-
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ly opposed thumbs) rose to slip her dress's single strap off her shoulder. A hue-shifting cloud, the prisma-fabric slid from her lithe body to gather on the floor around her ankles. The Jarp's round-eyed gaze roved appreciatively over her nakedness.
"Have you ever sliced in null-grav before?" Tweets removed the silks it wore. It watched Coppertop's head move slowly from side to side. "Neg, huh? It will be an experience you will not forget."
Coppertop remembered the static-soled slippers that kept her to the room's floor. She decided to keep them on until directed otherwise. The prospect of being sliced while floating weightlessly was less than appealing to her.
"Do you have a preference for men or women?" Tweets asked. Its palms, six digits lightly tredding, covered her warheads.
"I have had both," she answered, trying not to flinch and uncertain what this alien expected. She had been had by only one Jarp in her life-onboard Jonuta's Coronet.
"Good. Always doubly delightful to suck each other's warheads." That action Tweets immediately bent to perform on the nipples it brought to turgid life.
Warm, liquid sensations tingled through the Lanatian woman while the Jarp busied its tongue and lips on her warheads. Unlike her numerous "training" sessions with Kukis and Degula, Tweets's attentions seemed as intent on her pleasure as on its own.
With a wet smacking sound, its mouth suddenly abandoned her. Tweets stood upright and gazed at Coppertop for a moment. It whistled sharply, then through the translator helmet, it said, "Kukis and his First Mate have been using their isolation cell again, haven't they?"
Coppertop nodded hesitantly. "How did you know?"
"Your reaction." Tweets returned to the door and pressed another mirrored panel. Beside it a mirror slid back to reveal a decanter and two very small squeeze-
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bulb glasses. "No woman can remain passive while with Tweets . . . that is if she is normal."
The Jarp squeeze-poured one glass of the decanter's red liquid into a bulb. It handed it to Coppertop. "Drink. The other women call it their 'little helper.' When one of Ganesa's girls is unable to perform up to her normal potential this adds that special something. After all, appearance is everything."
Dutifully, eminently malleable now, Coppertop drank. It tasted mildly alcoholic, mostly fruity sweet. She handed the emptied squeeze-bulb back to Tweets, who merely flipped it away. The bulb floated across the room and hung there in null-G. Without further words, the Jarp resumed its oral appreciation of her shapely breasts.
By the tune skilled Jarp lips and tongue had worked their way below her navel to lave Coppertop's aroused flasher, alien and woman floated above the bed, heads buried between each other's spread thighs. The "little helper" contained, she realized, more than mere alcohol. It also held a hearty helping of Eros, or one of the many readily available sexual stimulants Galac-tics employed to enhance their undercover activities when either flesh or spirit lagged.
Normally, Coppertop might have wondered why the other women onboard Be Lively needed their "little helper." With the effects of the drug coursing through her, there was little opportunity to consider anything but Tweets's smaller-than-human slicer. She mouthed, licked, and sucked with decided enthusiasm. Not to mention the penis-imitating ringers she buried between the moist lips that opened below the Jarp's single testicle.
Clinging together, a mass of golden brown and orange skin, their bodies languidly floated head over heels in mid-air, weightless with neither human nor alien caring. Neither did they notice the metallic ringing sound that ran through Be Lively when the S-tunnel that attached the ship to Forerunner separated. Nor were they aware of the torque and the semblance of
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gravity it generated that gently brought them down atop the silver lame bed.
Coppertop flashed, her body quaking gratefully in the grip of sensations too long denied it.
Tweets doubly flashed as only a Jarp's hermaphroditic anatomy was capable of doing.
Then Coppertop was on hands and knees. The "little helper" Tweets provided had her like an animal in heat, begging. The Jarp took her animal fashion while she writhed her backside and wagged her hips and spread her legs wide to accept the small but satisfying slicer.
Its pumping jolted her. She gasped and groaned happily beneath the insistent thrusting. With each loud slapping stroke, Tweets attempted to flatten the rounded mounds of her buttocks, strove to bury itself in her to the mouth of its own vagina.
The desires and needs of a healthy woman had been forsaken during two months of mourning, ignored by Thax Wilanu, Kukis, and Degula. They were ignited and fanned by the Jarp's constantly increasing rhythm. Savagely, she threw herself back onto the orange-skinned alien. Her mouth gaped, gasped, and emitted deep throaty sounds. For the second time the delicious-ly salacious release of lust quaked through the kneeling woman.
Her outcry was definitely neither pain nor protest.
When the last trembling quiver passed, Coppertop was arranged into the age-old position once called "missionary." Her lips and tongue were thoroughly engrossed in the orange warheads and even oranger nipples Tweets fed her. How she came beneath the Jarp she was not certain. She didn't mind. Tweets firmly held her legs hoisted in the air, while its insatiable slicer delved deep. She writhed; she wiggled; she thrust; she clutched; she gyrated.
Eventually, almost incredibly, she flashed for the third time.
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Ganesa (now in a lace gown of pink ruffles and tiny bows) listened while Tweets recounted, in minute detail, their activities behind the chartreuse door. Copper-top stood beside the Jarp, gaze demurely downcast.
At Ganesa's insistence, Coppertop told of her treatment at the hands of Kukis and Degula.
"My poor, dear child." With a nourish of skirt and petticoats, Ganesa seated herself in an overstuffed arm chair. "When I first saw you, I thought as much! Rest assured you will receive no such treatment onboard Be Lively. That is, so long as you please Ganesa. Should you do otherwise, what my fellow Reshans performed with isolation cell and chemicals will be but child's play to Ganesa's wrath. Do I make myself clear, child?"
Coppertop nodded. Her gaze met the woman's. Ganesa smiled charmingly, though Coppertop held no doubt that she was quite capable of carrying out the threat.
"I will do what is required of me."
"I expected no less," Ganesa of Resh replied, gaze lingering on the younger woman for an uneasy moment before moving to Tweets. "Take her Down and introduce her to her new roommates, Tweets. And see that she has an appointment with Fadil. Something simply must be done about that hair."
Two-thumbed hand cupping her buttocks, Tweets escorted Coppertop from Ganesa's quarters and through a short, unadorned tunnel that led away from the lounge outside. "Down" was just that, Be Lively's lower level. It, too, contained a tunnel lined with doors. These, as well as the tunnel itself, were all painted institutional green. Twenty doors in all, each stencilled with a crisp, yellow numeral.
Tweets stopped and opened number twenty. The sound of startled women came from within, then catcalls and giggles.
"Come in, long tall and orange." A short woman, no more than a hundred sixty sems, appeared at the door. She eyed Coppertop and smiled. "Looks like
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Ganesa's been out pastry shopping again. The name's Bydela."
"Will you take a look at that hair!" A tall woman in a purple wig sat cross-legged on one of the room's five beds. "Honey, I'd make an appointment with your beautician right now. If you don't, your friend Tweets there will have you gray-headed in no time!"
"That's Fayola. Don't mind her," Bydela said as Coppertop entered. Then the short woman shot out an arm to block Tweets's entrance. "Sorry, icing licker, but you know Ganesa's rules about Jarps in the women's rooms."
Bydela buttoned the door closed in the Jarp's face. "If he ever got in here, Meli would never let ole Tweets leave."
A pudgy woman with forest-green subcutaned lips and nipples raised herself on an elbow from the bed on which she lay naked. "By! I ain't no flainin' Sunflower. Though by the looks of our new roomie, Tweets already ran her through the moves."
Bydela took Coppertop's arm and led her to an empty bed, asking about three hundred questions in the two seconds it took to cross the room. Coppertop barely got her name out, before a fourth woman exited a toilet-shower at the rear of the room. Nasutu was obviously from Terasaki, though there was nothing small or demure about the opulently bosomed woman.
"What a lovely mop of hair." Nasutu stopped beside Coppertop long enough to stroke a hand down the coppery-hued strands.
"Best watch Nasty," called out Fayola of the purple wig. "She has a sweet tooth for young cakes."
"Not that you've ever minded it, darling Fayola," Nasutu answered while she picked up a microfiche reader from a table by her bed. "In fact, you'd spread for anyone who'd give you a good tongue lashing."
A well-directed pillow hurtled across the room and landed squarely against the side of Nasutu's head. Catching it before it hit the floor, the Terasak flung it back at Fayola. "Slut! Hust!"
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"Ladies, please!" Bydela said firmly, her hands planted on her waist. "You'll give Coppertop the wrong impression."
"Laaaydeeess!" Meli mimicked the short woman. "Did you hear that! Ladies?"
"That's what we'll be ... and married," Bydela said. "That's the deal Ganesa promised when we signed on."
"Ganesa might be able to pull a turd from the toilet, honey," Meli answered. "But no matter what she calls it or how she dresses it up, it still stinks!"
Coppertop sat on the bed. Her head followed the verbal barrage around the room, unsure what was going on or what the four women meant.
"Ladies? My, my, hasn't our Bydela gotten uppity since she left FatJak's Fat Ass Bar?" Nasutu called out. "One would think she's already married and respectable."
"I will be!" Bydela returned. "That's why we all signed on."
"I just wanted off Thebanis," Meli said, though there was something about the woman's tone that said she lied.
"Why'd you sign, sweetie?" Nasutu looked at Coppertop.
"I didn't," Coppertop said, then gave the four a thumbnail sketch of how she had arrived on Be Lively.
"I don't know where you come from, honey," Fayola said when she had finished, "but here in Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe, you're bound to be better off than you ever were before."
"That is, as long as you don't cross Ganesa," Meli added. "Make a wrong move or take something that ain't yours and she'll track you across the flainin' galaxy to get your skin."
"And of course, you have to work when she says," Nasutu said.
"Work?" Coppertop was certain there was only one profession in which these four women had ever been employed. Still she asked, hoping against hope.
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"Sweetie, we're all . . ." Nasutu began.
"Brides-to-be," Bydela said firmly. "We're bound beyond the Carnadyne Void to the mining planets and the colonies. That's where our future husbands are waiting for us. Until then . . ."
Coppertop's brow furrowed. "Brides-to-be?"
"I guess you could say that Ganesa runs a land of marital service-mail order brides, so to speak," Fayola attempted to explain. "Eventually we will be married on one of those woman-poor planets out beyond the Carnadyne Void. Men need wives to raise families. And we are looking for new lives."
"What it boils down to, is that it costs to go jumping from star to star," Nasutu said, providing a short course in simple interstellar economics. "Ganesa makes arrangements on the colonies and the mining worlds. Men are willing to pay big money for women to be brought onplanet. We sign on to make two circuits with Ganesa. On the first, the men get to know us. The second tune around, we get chosen for brides. Understand?"
She understood only too clearly. The women onboard Be Lively were husts-from every planet in the Farther Reaches. Be Lively, Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe, was a floating brothel-a whorehouse to the stars!
8
Money is the sinew of love as well as of war. Thomas Fuller, Gnomonologia, no. 3442
The Carnadyne Void lay beyond Skylla and Karybdis. It was not a void. It was a stretch of space without star or planet. Packed with cosmic debris, rock, dust, and gas. The ghosts of stars and planets past, the seeds of stars and planets to come.
On the outer edge of the Carnadyne Void hung the Barbro Transfer Station. Like the space stations that orbited Galactic-inhabited planets, the Barbro Transfer Station was torus-shaped, a spinning wheel that generated centrifugal force and the illusion of .8 normal gravity. In the case of Barbro, though, there were twelve wheels. Each was three times larger than a planetary space station, connected by a cylindrical hub that ran through the center of each.
It was here that the freighters came: the ships from the Farther Reaches with their holds cram-packed and tether lines of attached cargo untidily streaming behind them. Here, too, came the big ships, freighters kloms in length with cargo holds that could easily swallow the smaller spacers that scurried about the star-dense center of the galaxy. These vessels served the Rim Worlds.
Barbro accepted the cargo from each and stored it until the freighter, big or small, slated for the mer-
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chandise arrived. Ten of Barbro's wheels were designated as warehouses.
Barbro thrived on docking and storage fees.
Level Two, Barbro's second wheel, was devoted solely to servicing the freighters themselves. Providing repairs, modifications, and equipment updating-a lucrative trade in itself.
The uppermost wheel-Hometown-housed the ten thousand men and women needed to maintain and operate the gargantuan transfer station. Seventy per cent of the torus was relegated to living quarters for those ten thousand. Ten per cent officed Operation Control. The remaining twenty per cent was a compacted city of offices, representing various freight lines and commercial entrepreneurs, shops and stores displaying items from throughout the galaxy (legal and illegal), and hotels for the freighter crews that came to Barbro.
It was here that Ganesa and Be Lively began their biennial, six-month circuit. Far from the normal recreation of planetary life, Barbro's residents had need of the diversion her bakery shoppe provided.
Within Be Lively's con-cabin, Captain Ganesa of Resh (she was listed as the vessel's captain, although she had not stood at the controls for five years) sat watching the approach to Barbro on a holographic display transmitted by optical sensors. The con-cabin's lights and sounds still excited her, despite the fact that she had risen above the actual operation of her ship.
It had not always been the case. There had been other ships, other captains. While Ganesa appeared thirty, she was in reality sixty. The illusion was maintained by a team of Terasak specialists.
Forty of those years ago, Ganesa had become a spacefarer as a Fifth Grade mechanic. She was quick, and she learned, working her way up from a spanner-pusher to First Mate onboard a series of freighters and cruisers in a ten-year period. Once she had served under a man named Corundum, before he became known as the notorious Captain Corundum, pirate of the Farther Reaches.
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If a superior required that she spread for him-or her-Ganesa did. Promotion was much easier when one fully cooperated.
After fifteen years, she was captain of a freighter, faced with the realization that little money was to be gained by remaining strictly legal. She also did not have the courage (she preferred to think she was too smart) to go illegal.
However, she had an idea-Be Lively. She took the unusual business proposition to a group of bankers. Three conference sessions later, she was mortgaged to the hilt and owner of a pleasure cruiser that formally belonged to the Franji royal family-fully equipped with tachyon converter.
Ten years later, Be Lively belonged solely to Ganesa. Business was that good.
Since then, she had stockpiled enough stells to purchase free and clear a sister ship. Lively Me would be operational when she returned to Resh after this circuit. Agda and Carine, who now piloted Be Lively, would be the ship's masters . . . madams.
"Clear docking, berth are-oh-one-especially cleared for your undelayed arrival, Be Lively," the voice of Barbro Control came over intership com. "Give my regards to the Diamond Lady herself."
"Get that man's name," Ganesa ordered. When it was conveyed, the Diamond Lady herself spoke with Barbro Control. "Tymon, my dear, for your assistance at clearing bureaucratic red tape, I have arranged a special date for you this night. Come calling at berth R01 whenever your shift's over."
"Eighteen hundred hours," the controller answered. "I'll be there!"
Ganesa could hear the grin on the man's face. Such little favors were not needed, but she had learned that burok machinery ran more smoothly when greased.
She caught the shark-like profile of a TGW cruiser on a mini-display. The uniformed arm of The Gray Organization was always present at Barbro. The transfer station's warehouses were always heavily laden
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prime targets for would-be pirates. Ganesa made a mental note to invite the cruiser's captain over for a visit to one of Be Lively's hundred rooms of pleasure. Just another small favor that might make things easier in the future.
When Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe (she was aware of the nickname given her vessel, and liked it) nosed into its berth, Ganesa rose and walked to her quarters. Tweets, as ordered, waited with the woman Coppertop. She dismissed the Jarp and settled into a chair with Coppertop standing before her.
Fadil, one of three hair-stylists crewed onboard Be Lively, had softly waved the coppery strands of the woman's hair. A forest green body-stocking sheathed Coppertop like a second skin. The attire left no doubt that she was every sem a woman, a very desirable woman. The unadorned outfit also conveyed a certain sense of innocence. While not to Ganesa's personal taste, the mistress of Be Lively realized that certain men and women were attracted by sensual innocence. Or its illusion.
"By now, I believe you understand what is expected of those in my employ." Ganesa watched Coppertop nod. "However, in your case there are . . . delicately stated, extenuating circumstances."
Coppertop's gaze rose to the madam of the faster-than-light brothel. Her forehead furrowed in question, though she did not speak unless asked to do so. Kukis and Degula had taught her that.
"Your presence onboard Be Lively, while not a precedent setting event, is a bit unusual," Ganesa said. "Should you decide to cause trouble during our sojourn at Barbro, I must warn you that the transfer station will not be sympathetic to allegations made about Be Lively or Ganesa. The Barbro Transfer Authority receives ten per cent of everything Ganesa's sweetcakes make while berthed here, sweetcake. One woman's plight means nothing when weighed against a heady profit share."
Ganesa paused to allow her words to penetrate. She
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smiled when Coppertop's green eyes widened with understanding.
"Furthermore, I have made a sizable investment in your future. I would not appreciate anything that interfered with that investment's coming to full maturation."
Coppertop remembered Ganesa's threat during their first meeting. While she could not conceive of anything worse than the isolation cell onboard Forerunner, she did not doubt Ganesa's ability to carry out that threat.
"I think you should know that your future is not at all dim, dear Coppertop. Like the other women onboard, you will soon be a bride. In fact, next week you will be the wife of a very special client on the planet Mirjam." Ganesa smiled. "You are doubly lucky there. First, my client is a man of relative influence on Mirjam. Secondly, Mirjam is one of the more progressive mining planets out here beyond the Carnadyne Void."
Influence. Coppertop understood the word. It meant money, power. Lizina Harith once had been married to a man of influence. The life she lived had been good. Lizina, however, had made the choice. It hadn't been forced on her.
"Your future husband is a man with special tastes. He desires a woman of class, of breeding," Ganesa said. "He also desires a woman who understands the needs of men, and is trained to satisfy those needs."
He wants a high-class hust, Coppertop realized.
"Thus, he gave me the assignment of finding such a woman . . . and training her. Tweets reports marked improvement in your daily sessions." Ganesa smiled knowingly. "But tonight is your graduation exercise."
"I am to hust with the others?" Coppertop asked, but she knew exactly what was expected of her.
"Very perceptive, dear Coppertop. My girls have a nightly quota-a minimum of three taps a night. So don't delude yourself by believing you can find one lover for the evening. You are assigned to the Red Room. Taps pay Tweets when they enter Be Lively. No
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special arrangements. All business is to be carried out onboard. Understand?"
Coppertop understood very well indeed. Her nod brought her another smile from Ganesa.
The Star-Flung Lounge boasted of being the largest establishment in the galaxy devoted to the sole purpose of quenching the thirst with every form of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage known to humankind. Its patrons had yet to disprove the admittedly hubristic claim. Totally cyberserviced, including bouncers that did not ask questions but merely pointed stoppers (set on Two) before depositing the rowdy spacefarer's unconscious body onboard its ship, the Star-Flung Lounge could easily manage a crowd of two thousand in its three differently decorated rooms. Three thousand, in a pinch.
It was here Coppertop came when she disembarked Be Lively on the first of her scheduled three nights of working Hometown. She entered the lounge's Crystal Palace Room, touted as replica of the Grand Hall within the planet Hawking's legendary Crystal Palace (Hawking had replaced Urth as the culture hub of the galaxy centuries ago). Coppertop, never having set foot on the distant rimworld, could not testify to the decor's accuracy. Nor did her mood do justice to the constantly shifting lights that subtly played over the room and furniture composed of brilliantly transparent crysplas.
Her mind was on her purpose for being in the lounge.
More of Lizina Harith remained within her than she wanted to admit. The prospect of completing the task- a minimum of three taps-Ganesa had set for her was far from appealing. She had spread for more taps than that back at the Light Fandango on Panish, but . . .
No buts, she told herself. She sucked in a deep breath and walked into the Crystal Palace Room. Light Fandango or here, it's the same thing. You'll do it because, you have to. To survive!
She found an empty table and ordered a chilled glass of Panishi Adoette from the table's cyberbarten-
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der. The wine-the same Lizina had ordered in the Lal Autar the night this had all begun-seemed somehow appropriate, though she was uncertain exactly why.
Around the room she saw several women apparently out to fill Ganesa's quota-if their salacious choice of dress was any indication of the ship they sailed. She saw none of her roommates. She sipped at the wine, feeling alone and lost. And she waited.
Her wait was short. The first tap of the night saw the bait and eagerly bit at the hook. Her name was Omena and her hair was bleached snow white in startling contrast to the blue-black of her skin-black was. now as rare among Galactics as the pink-tan color once called white. Omena was a spanner-pusher on the "big" freighter Rim Runner.
On Omena's arm hung a feminine-appearing Jarp named Twill er. It was that femininity in the alien that obviously attracted Omena. Just as obvious was the fact that it was Coppertop's femininity that brought Omena and Twiller to the table and then back to Be Lively.
The triad began, not as Coppertop expected, but with Twiller mounted solidly atop her, entrenched in a most masculine manner.
Omena sat in one of the Red Room's two chairs quietly watching while her Jarp companion sliced the cake they had purchased.
Coppertop offered no objection. Like the Jarp she had encountered onboard Jonuta's Coronet; like Tweets, Twiller derived half its pleasure from the satisfaction it provided for its partner-something Copper-top's human lovers had often ignored in their lusty desperation to sate their own needs.
Twiller's constant stroking and never-still hands flashed her in record time, despite her earlier depression about the evening's prospects. Before the Jarp could expend its own release, Omena was suddenly atop the red pseudo-velvet bed with them.
The snowy white-baked woman shoved the Jarp
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away from Coppertop and straddled her head. While Coppertop's lips and tongue replied with the correct response, Omena buried her face between Twiller's thighs, her mouth taking up the task she had so rudely interrupted. Twiller did not seem to mind in the least. The Jarp whistled and tweeted in carnal delight.
The twosome left her sprawled naked atop the bed, panting in an attempt to regain some control over her quivering and satisfied body. Eventually, with shaky steps, Coppertop managed to edge from the bed and find her way to a sonic shower attached to the rear of the Red Room. The shower and a few brush strokes through her hair left her looking almost as fresh as she had been when she started the night. Appearance is everything, Ganesa's words echoed in her mind when she once more left Be Lively for the Star-Flung Lounge. A steady flow of Ganesa's employees moved through Barbro's corridors now, each in an attempt to fill her quota for the night.
Fifteen minutes after her arrival back in the lounge's crysplas decorated room, Coppertop met her first Outie. The flamboyant man bore the improbable name of Tramonesian Ell, First Mate on the Hawking-bound freighter Flying Armadillo. Entertaining, and decidedly nice, Ell brought Coppertop dinner complete with champagne before escorting her back to Be Lively.
At the door Ell inquired if one could "rent a suite" onboard the ship for the night. Tweets, orange hand extended, quoted a price that exceeded the amount Coppertop would have earned from six taps. Without batting an eye at the exorbitant rental fee, Ell placed the stells across the Jarp's palm.
In the Red Room, much to Coppertop's surprise (especially after the money he had paid) Tramonesian Ell seemed far more interested in conversation than slicing a piece of cake. He asked her a myriad of questions. Those about Ganesa and Be Lively she answered as best she could, mostly repeating what she had heard from her four roommates.
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To the questions about herself-she lied. As much as she wanted to tell him everything-tell anyone about what had happened to her-Ganesa's threat echoed in her mind. Frightened as she was, she was not a fool.
At last, Ell came to her and helped peel away the form-clinging body-stocking she wore. He lifted her in his arms and placed her on the bed. When he slid atop her, it was with a gentleness she had found hi only one man during her life-Garold Harith. She flashed three times before he allowed his own body to release its explosive desire.
Afterwards, nestled in Ell's arms, the sound of his sleep-softened breath in her ear, Coppertop cried herself to sleep remembering all that she had been.
9
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt
Misfit, now under the Shankar registry of Star-Spider, slid its blunted nose into berth B15 of Barbro Transfer Station's tenth level. At its control console stood Captain Rurik Sambriam. Star-Spider and Sambriam were Misfit and Dorjan's regular disguise at the transfer station. Familiarity at Barbro helped slice through normal red tape.
Safely docked, all non-HOME destined cargo was offloaded to await the freighter Beeman's Romp's arrival from Lesser Sofian in a week. Dorjan checked Operations. He had soon contracted to haul a full load of hybrid wheat seed to Rahman in two months. He grinned when he announced they would have a lengthy stay at HOME.
Songan shook his head. "Take a look at this."
The tattooed First Mate of Misfit flipped two toggles and a news-scan appeared on a mini-display beside his friend. Dorjan's grin evaporated while he read. He did not like the prospect of another job for The-Thief-Who-Is-Not-There so soon after Panish.
"Forget it."
"The insurance companies will pay dearly to get those back," Songan said. "And HOME needs cultures for producing our own encephaloboosts."
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Dorjan tried to find a reason for passing on the stolen art objects, but could not. He sighed. "See what you can scope out. We'll make a decision at HOME. Right now, all I want to do is shower and enjoy a few drinks in the Star-Flung."
"And perhaps sample the pastry available." Songan winked. "I understand Be Lively is docked at Hometown."
"Heard that too, did you?" Dorjan smiled. "Ganesa has a certain ability to provide a most provocative selection within her bakery shoppe. Will you join me for desert?"
"Drinks only," Songan answered. "I promised Yo-luta a multi-coursed dinner when we reached Barbro. She has no appreciation of Misfit's cybercook."
Dorjan nodded without comment. Since Yoluta and her brother Edrek had come onboard, the Harbian giant spent a majority of his free time with the girl- young woman if one went by physical appearance alone.
That in itself was good. However, Dorjan wished the brother and sister were fully committed to HOME. The two still had the opportunity to back away from what awaited them in the Pascal System. If they did, it meant brain-wipes and their return to Lanatia. He would not like Songan to have to deal with that.
"Showers are free!" Yuw's voice shouted over the intercom. "Best get a move on, or this Outie will sample all of Ganesa's sweetcakes before you get a chance to do any window shopping."
Dorjan heard a joyously long, high-pitched whistle from Songbird before the intercqm went dead. "Guess I'll hit the shower. When Songbird and Yuw are turned loose, there just might not be anyone left for their captain."
Dorjan, accompanied by Songan, Yoluta, Yuw, and Songbird liftshafted to Hometown. Kefira remained onboard, as was customary. Edrek chose to remain with the Akil. The young Lanatian had displayed a
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definite fascination with the woman of Kuzih since his arrival on Misfit. Kefira offered no obstacles to stem that interest, and naturally Dorjan did not.
For the "enjoyment and education" of AkiI and Lanatian, Yuw wore a Songan-designed medallion about his neck. The medallion disguised a jewel-like telepresence. The TP, Yuw promised, would provide a "cornucopia of voyeuristic delights" for the two left onboard, if they cared to watch the Outie's exploits on the holoscreen.
So it was that five members of Misfit's crew entered the Yakez Room of the Star-Flung Lounge-a rain forest decorated in a wild variety of artificial plants and blooming blossoms (real) from the jungle planet Yakez. After a short wait, the group was seated near the center of the room. A perfect location for Songbird, Yuw, and Dorjan to scan the available recreation so splendidly provided by Ganesa. Songan and Yoluta were lost in themselves and gave no more than passing notice to the assemblage from Ganesa's Traveling Pastry Shoppe. Dorjan smiled; it was love, no doubt about it.
Across the room, Dorjan caught the almost metallic gleam of coppery hair. The woman under that striking mane was sheathed in a revealing mist green web-weave dress with a neckline that plunged far below the inviting valley of her bosom. The dress's hemline stopped at mid-thigh atop a pair of very well formed legs.
Yuw and Songbird pushed from the table: Songbird striding to a fellow Jarp sitting alone at a table near the entrance to the room, while Yuw walked to a table occupied by a man in a wide-brimmed Wayne and three of Ganesa's finest. Another Outie? Dorjan wondered as his attention turned back to the copper-haired woman. She was gone. How could he lose her with three-hundred-sixty degree vision? He frowned.
"She went into the Ocean Room," Yoluta said from across the table. She winked. "Very lovely."
"Want us to order while you check?" Songan suggested.
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"A very rare steak . . . make it two!" The captain of Misfit rose. "With luck, there'll be four for dinner."
He found her just inside the Ocean Room at a table with an overweight man in a tan jumpsuit worn by the transfer station's controllers. For a moment, Dorjan considered dropping the matter, then remembered the two rare steaks he had ordered. If the lady were willing, he would give her the chance to slip gracefully away from the man in tan.
"Hoshi! Hoshi Silvain! I've been looking everywhere for you!" Dorjan shouted when he approached the table. "Tonson on Double Hawk said you were here. I was afraid I woudn't find you."
The man in tan scowled when the intruder seated himself at the table and reached across to grasp the coppery-haired woman's hand. His mouth opened to protest when the woman said in total surprise, "You ..."
"Rurik, Rurik Sambriam. Bet you didn't think you'd find me here!" Dorjan smoothly supplied before the source of the woman's surprise blurted out. "When was the last time? Panish . . . Lanatia?"
"Panish?" She paused as though actually considering their imaginary meeting.
"Panish it was," Dorjan spoke quickly, keeping up the charade. "I had just gotten double pay for that Luhra haul, and you helped me spend it at the Lal Autar."
"The Lai Autar . . ." There was a wistfulness to her tone, and a distant look in her green eyes.
If she were one of Ganesa's cakes, Dorjan reflected, she had once moved in high circles even to know of the Lal Autar. Dorjan wondered if he might have been hasty in pegging her as one of Be Lively's cakes.
He said, "It was Perl Takala . . ."
The man in tan shrugged. Without a word, he stood and crossed to a table occupied by two women who were definitely off Be Lively. He never glanced back to the coppery-haired beauty he abandoned.
"Good, he's gone. For a moment, I thought I might
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be butting in where I wasn't wanted." Dorjan grinned widely.
"You . . . who are you?"
"Rurik Sambriam, captain of Star-Spider," Dorjan told her. "And I was on Panish for the last Perl Takala festival. And you?"
"Coppertop . . . and I was at Perl Takala-in the Lal Autar!" Her grin matched Rurik Sambriam's. Their common experience, no matter how fragile, seemed the strongest human bond she had ever known. "Panish ... it seems a lifetime away."
"What's your ship, Coppertop?" Dorjan asked.
"Be Lively." Her eyes were downcast during the admission.
Dorjan studied the beauty of this woman's face. It simply made no sense for her to be shipping with Ganesa. It did not fit. But then many things in the universe did not fit. Hard times often meant desperate decisions. "All of which has nothing to do with why I butted in on our friend in tan. I bring a dinner invitation-steak, very rare. Would you care to join my friends and me?"
"Friends?" She arched an eyebrow.
"For dinner," Dorjan emphasized, realizing what ran through her mind. In Coppertop's chosen profession, "friends" in all probability often led to unpleasant situations.
"Dinner only?" She frowned with uncertainty. She still had the three-tap quota to consider.
"For the moment," Dorjan answered. "Later, a tour of Be Lively if it seems suitable."
Coppertop nodded her acceptance. The prospect of spreading for this Captain Sambriam was far more attractive than what had awaited her with the overweight man in the tan jumpsuit.
Heads turned to watch the couple exit the Ocean Room. Coppertop remembered a night in Lal Autar when she had reveled in such wanton gazes. Now, she only shivered. Each probing pair of eyes was only a
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reminder of what would be required of her, if the owners of those eyes had the correct price.
Six, not four, were assembled for dinner. Yuw had returned to the table with Lian on his arm. Songbird and its newfound Jarp friend dined at their own table, transhelms doffed, whistling and tweeting happily.
Dinner came and went and was enjoyed by all, especially Coppertop, who found herself relaxed among this strange mixture that crewed Star-Spider. The one called Songan, with his tattoos and voice box straight out of some grade-z holohorror movie, had studied her intently when she first arrived at the table as though he were considering biting her head off. Yet when he spoke there was a quality about his deep voice that radiated sincerity. Songan turned out to be a pussycat of a man, a gentle giant.
Varnalgeran Yuw was undoubtedly the most entertaining of the group. He and Lian departed shortly after the meal. Coppertop hated to see the Outie go. She enjoyed his constant string of puns. But then, Lian had a quota to fill, and apparently Yuw knew it.
Captain Rurik Sambriam turned out to be an extremely interesting man. Like his First Mate, he radiated gentleness and sincerity. Not once had he attempted to paw her thighs beneath the table, though he knew her purpose for being in the Star-Flung.
When a second round of drinks appeared on the table, Coppertop waved hers off. "I must be going."
"May I accompany you?" Dorjan asked.
Sambriam's desire to come with her to Be Lively's Red Room left a hollowness in Coppertop's stomach. It hurt. Why can't he let it end with dinner? She didn't want him to use her: didn't want the pleasant evening to end in another session on her back.
Why . . .
She knew why. She was a hust, and men paid to slice husts.
"Before you redshift," Songan said while they pushed from the table, "I need to talk with Captain Sambriam a moment."
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Yoluta took the cue without batting an eye. "Shall we take advantage of the ladies' room while they talk business?"
Coppertop agreed and followed the other woman from the table. When they were alone, Songan leaned toward his friend. "Coppertop isn't what she appears to be."
"What?" Dorjan stared at Songan. "A hunch?"
"A strong one."
"Ganesa has always been on the up and up as far as we've been able to determine." For once Dorjan had trouble accepting his Mate's "hunch." "It doesn't make sense for her to threaten a profitable business by running slaves."
"Who would threaten Ganesa this far out?" Songan paused. "Do we do anything about Coppertop?"
"I want to be certain before we try anything," Dorjan said. "Ganesa has friends here at Barbro. If we take Coppertop, Star-Spider may never be able to dock here again."
"There are other disguises, other names for ship and crew," Songan replied. "Shall I prepare Misfit for a hurried departure?"
Dorjan shook his head. "Tell Yuw and Songbird to stay close. I want to talk with Coppertop before doing anything. After all, the choice is hers-if you're correct."
"I'm correct," Songan said firmly.
"Correct about what?" Yoluta asked when she and Coppertop returned.
"A bet," Songan replied while Dorjan stood and slipped an arm about Coppertop's waist. "One our captain will pay off on before the night's over."
Dorjan frowned as the coppery-haired woman and he started toward the Star-Flung's exit.
Dorjan watched her slide beneath the sheets of the spacious bed within the Red Room. His gaze caressed the sleek contours of her nakedness. It was difficult to believe so much woman had been packed into such a
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compact, alluring form. When her green eyes beckoned him, he buttoned off the lights.
Quickly, he slipped from his clothes and joined the copper-haired beauty in bed. He knew of Ganesa's habit of occasionally concealing optical sensors in her pleasure rooms to provide a show for those who would rather watch than participate. He wanted no hidden eyes viewing the metal wings attached to his back.
He pulled the bundle of femininity atop him before her arms could embrace him and discover the secret folded against his back. His mouth covered hers, tongue flicking out to explore. The firm pillows of her breasts and the sleek mound of her pubis rubbing against the steel-hard length of his slicer made it decidedly difficult to ignore his natural inclination to take this woman in a thrusting fervor of lust.
He did not. He refused to consummate thek business transaction until he was certain of Songan's "hunch." He had taken enslaved women on Harb when he was the gladiator called Death. Dorjan, captain of Misfit, colonizer of HOME, never had sliced a cake against her will.
When their mouths parted, he nibbled at her neck, then upward to the lobe of her ear. "Whatever I do or say, act completely normal." He explained the possible telepresences and their infrared capability.
Coppertop tensed for a moment. Then in a half-moan, "Yes . . . yes . . . anything you want!"
Dorjan whispered Songan's hunch. She stiffened again, then nodded in confirmation just before she ducked beneath the sheets to taunt his nipples with her tongue.
Damn! He cursed himself for his inability to concentrate on his reason for being in this bed. He also silently cursed Coppertop's realistic and provocative charade. With such a desirable woman writhing atop him it was impossible to keep his thoughts straight, despite the fact that a portion of his anatomy was having no difficulty at all keeping straight.
He reached down and brought Coppertop's mouth
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back to his. The movement pressed their cores tightly together, but lacked that most intimate of unions between man and woman. That made it all the harder to retain control while he whispered his offer to free Coppertop from her bondage to Ganesa.
"I want it!" She hunched into him violently for the benefit of unseen, infrared enhanced eyes. In a whisper she went on, "But I'm not sure. I'm frightened. You don't understand."
He did. He understood more than she could have realized. More than half his life had been spent gathering that knowledge.
Her mouth and a thrusting tongue returned to his. She wiggled and hunched atop him in an ever-increasing rhythm. Abruptly, she went rigid. An orgasm-imitating cry pushed from her throat. Dorjan followed suit. They clung to each other in a semblance of post-coital ennui.
"I offer a choice," Dorjan whispered. "Something you won't be given on Be Lively. The decision is yours. Do you understand?"
"Yes." She kissed at his ear. She also knew what would happen if his plan failed. Or worse-What if this man were no more than another Kukis?
"I'll be waiting in the Star-Flung until midnight," Dorjan said when she rolled from him. "The choice is yours."
Slipping from the bed, he dressed, feeling painfully frustrated and yet gratifyingly noble at the same time. When and if .he entered this woman's bed again, it would be of her own choosing. He switched on the lights and with one final glance at her-the captive- within the bed of red, punched the door's button.
Coppertop stared after Captain Rurik Sambriam. Within her, she felt the stirring of a person she thought dead-Lizina Harith. For Lizina there was no doubt. The woman she had been urged her to try for the freedom Sambriam held out to her. For Coppertop, there was only doubt.
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"Shall I meet with Captain Sambriam?" Tweets asked when Ganesa killed the Red Room's audio and visual.
Their whispers had concealed most of what had been said from the mistress of Be Lively, but she had heard enough. Would the woman bolt? Ganesa would if she were in Coppertop's position. But then, Ganesa would not have to face Ganesa of Resh! Coppertop did. That might be all that was needed to keep the beauty in line.
Still . . . Ganesa looked at the Jarp. "You and Sudi find out where Captain Sambriam's ship is docked. Wait there in case our little bird decides to fly her cage."
Tweets released a sharp, high-pitched whistle from between tightly stretched orange lips. With a wide grin, it turned and left his captain's quarters.
Was it possible, Ganesa wondered, for a Jarp to be sadistic? Tweets seemed as delighted by the prospect of a fight as it was when presented with a new sweet-cake to slice.
Coppertop entered the Yakez Room of the Star-Flung Lounge. Every cell in her body felt aquiver. Her stomach churned uneasily as though it might upheave its contents at any moment.
No matter. I've got to try!
Her gaze slowly moved over the room's tables, searching the faces of the lounge's patrons. Sambriam had not waited. A desperate sob choked her throat while relief suffused her body. He had abandoned her.
Now she did not have to test the strength of Ganesa's threat.
"Coppertop." A woman's voice came from behind her.
With a gasp, she pivoted. Yoluta smiled and reached out to touch her hand. "Dorj . . . Captain Sambriam told me to wait for you. He and Songan are waiting in the Ocean Room."
Coppertop stood there, uncertain what to say. Ten minutes ago when she'd left Be Lively, it all had
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seemed so clear. Now? Could she face another isolation room, or worse, if she were caught? Lizina, suddenly very much alive within her head, screamed for her to follow Yoluta, to risk all on the whispered promise of a man she didn't know.
"You are coming with us, aren't you?" Yoluta asked.
"Yes . . . yes!" she replied, though every fiber of her body rejected the idea.
Yoluta urged her into the Yakez Room. "Star-Spider is cleared for embarking as soon as we're onboard."
Before she could reply, Sambriam and Songan were beside them and they were outside the Star-Flung, weaving through the shop-lined corridors of Hometown. Yuw waited for them at Barbro's hub and the elevator that would take them to the station's tenth level.
"Songbird is below, just in case," the the man from Outreach said when they crowded into the lift.
A minute later, a green light above the door announced the tenth level of the Barbro Transfer Station. The elevator halted. The door opened. The four crewmates and one trembling copperheaded woman stepped out to be greeted by the waiting Jarp. Songbird flipped five as a signal it had not seen any hint of Ganesa or any of her crew.
With Captain Sambriam's arm securely about her waist, Coppertop allowed him to maneuver her through the tunnels of the station toward docking berth B15 where his ship waited their hasty exit from Barbro. She no longer considered what she did. She accepted that what would be, would be. This man at least promised her a chance to escape captivity.
At the end of a tunnel with heavy packing cases stacked to its left side, she saw the big B15 stencilled in red on a wall. An open hatchway waited five meters beyond.
A startled cry pushed from Coppertop's lips. Her body went rigid. Tweets and a man called Sudi, who she had seen onboard Be Lively, stepped from between
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the packing crates. Both held stoppers leveled at the approaching group.
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" Dorjan threw up a hand when Yuw started toward the two.
"Innocence won't work, Captain." The barrel of Tweets's stopper pointed directly at Dorjan's chest. "Ganesa had telltales in the cake's room. She heard everything. Best hand her over."
"Damn."
Dorjan turned to Coppertop and shrugged. "Sorry, looks like they've got us dead to rights."
The hand resting lightly on the small of the woman's back grew three-sem talons with the tensing of bio-engineered muscles. If he could get close enough, he could take the Jarp. That would give the others a shot at the remaining man and his stopper. "Time to call it quits, Sweetcake. It would have been fun."
Dorjan edged Coppertop toward Tweets. He saw Songan and Yuw tense, ready to move the instant his clawed hand struck.
"Hold it right there." Edrek called from Misfit's open hatch. Dorjan saw the youth in a wide-legged stance, a stopper in both hands. "Captain Sambriam, I believe you can take their weapons now."
Tweets whirled. Edrek calmly squeezed the stopper in his right hand. It hummed insect soft. The Jarp toppled to the floor unconscious. The stopper in Ed-rek's left hand remained leveled at Tweets's human partner.
"The one aimed at you is on Three," the young man announced to Sudi. "I'm not ambidextrous, so I'm taking no chances if I have to use it."
Sudi glanced at the unconscious Jarp, then back at Edrek. His stopper slipped from his fingers and fell to the floor. With a smile, Edrek squeezed the stopper in his left hand. Sudi joined Tweets on the floor. He was unconscious, not dead.
"I lied-it's on Two," the youth said in response to Dorjan's questioning look. "I learned it from Yarn on Thebanis."
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Dorjan did not question the necessity of Edrek's action. He was silently grateful for the second setting modification on the stopper that had rendered the two unconscious (a modification used by most spacefarers who traveled beyond the Carnadyne Void). That TGW cruiser was still hanging just off Barbro. Given the opportunity, he was certain Ganesa could manage to convince the policers to block their escape. "How did you know about these two?"
"The TP Yarn wore to give us a peek at his love life," Edrek answered with a pleased grin.
"Remind me to give the Outie a raise!" Dorjan's hand, claws retracted, moved Coppertop toward the hatch.
Fifteen minutes later Misfit, her crew, and an escaped slave named Coppertop slipped into subspace on their way HOME.
10
In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous
than man,
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche, Beyond Good and Evil
Bejeweled fingers fondling the opal at her neck, Ganesa listened to Tweets and Sudi's recount of their less-than-successful encounter with Captain Sambriam and crew. When their tale of misfortune concluded, she ordered the two offship to seek employment elsewhere.
When Tweets protested, Ganesa simply drew a concealed stopper and shot the Jarp-setting on Two. Sudi 'raised no objections, but dragged Tweets from Be Lively under gun point. Ganesa smiled as the hatch closed behind the two. Barbro Transfer Station was no place for an unattached man or Jarp. An individual without a ship did not stay that way for long-or did not live. Barbro Transfer Authority had no tolerance for those unable to support themselves. The welfare state was unheard of on Barbro.
In Be Lively's con-cabin, Ganesa contacted the station's traffic control and within five minutes knew the departure coordinates of Captain Rurik Sambriam's Star-Spider. Promised pleasures, small favors, were exchanged for the information and the assurance Ganesa's inquiry would be completely forgotten. The coordinates were not much to begin with, but they were a beginning.
Ganesa then toed open intraship communications 119
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and ordered her crew to their stations for Be Lively's unscheduled departure from Barbro within the hour. The mistress of the Traveling Bakery Shoppe settled into her "captain's" chair and waited.
Foolish? she wondered. On the surface, tracking down Sambriam and Coppertop appeared insane. Leaving Barbro a day early meant the loss of profits. The time expended in the search, if indeed she could find Star-Spider in the haystack of stars called the Milky Way, meant loss of time and profit. Coppertop was, after all, only one cake in a galaxy of women who were just as sweet a prize.
To be sure, if she arrived at Mirjam without Copper-top, her special customer would be disappointed. That meant a six-month delay in receiving the second half of a sizeable payment on his customized delivery. The man, however, could and would wait.
Who else was there to supply his need? No one serviced the planets beyond the Carnadyne Void. The profit margin was too small for those such as Kukis who had to travel great distances at even greater expense to deliver one piece of merchandise. Only Ganesa had hit upon the method to clear a large enough profit to make venturing beyond the Carnadyne Void profitable.
Besides, Coppertop, when Ganesa had her back, was no longer earmarked for that special client on Mirjam. She smiled, already savoring what lay in wait for the escaped cake. Coppertop had traded a few days of freedom's illusion for a life of hell. Mirjam would be the woman's destination, and she would be a bride, as Ganesa had promised-only there would be a new groom waiting at the altar.
It was not a simple matter of stells that motivated Ganesa to jump into subspace in search of one stolen cake. The reason was that she was Ganesa, and Ganesa had a reputation to protect. If one cake got away with what Coppertop had done, what would stop the other ninety-nine husts on Be Lively from trying the same thing?
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Or, what would stop the men who had ordered brides from suddenly deciding they no longer had to produce the purchase price for their merchandise? That had been tried more than once. And more than once, the merchandise had been recovered and a would-be thief had found himself very dead.
This was the reputation Ganesa had cultivated for years. One stupid hust could not be allowed to destroy it. Word traveled fast along the spaceways. Best that the word was that Ganesa would not be crossed.
She smiled. After all, appearance is everything.
11
The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, .uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.
Oscar Wilde,
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
PASCAL. Computing and logic language, now defunct (circa Century Twenty Urth)
PASCAL, Blaise. (1632-62 [old Urth]), one of the most eminent mathematicians and physicists of his period. His accomplishments include one of the basic theorems of projective geometry, formulation of the mathematical theory of probability (with Pierre de Fermat), and the invention of the first mechanical adding machine; see Computing and Logic
PASCAL. Star, WT3SK-type, named for the ancient Urth mathematician Blaise Pascal, situated in the GW506P sector of the Milky Way. The planetless system contains the sole distinguishing feature of an asteroid belt orbiting at a mean radius of 4.658 kloms from the star's surface. The asteroid belt is rich in deposits of aluminum and was once mined, though the development of unipolymer plasteel made it economically unfeasible to continue such operations; see Pascal, Blaise--Universal Edutapes 122
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"There!" Dorjan tapped a finger on a mini-display, pointing to a nondescript asteroid just within the fringe of debris that composed the Pascal System's sole distinguishing feature. "That is HOME-Habitat Orbiter: Modular Environment."
Lizina-Dorjan refused to use the name Coppertop once he had learned her real name-peered closely at the desolate chunk of rock floating in space. "You live on that?"
"In it," Dorjan corrected. "The asteroid is a natural shield for the colony within. Think of it as a metal cylinder three kloms in diameter and five kloms long, covered in rock. Notice how it slowly rolls on its side? That gives HOME centrifugal force and a semblance of gravity. There . . ."
Lizina-she was trying to think of herself as Lizina again-followed his finger to dark patches on the surface of the asteroid. Solar converter panels, he said. Knobby protrusions at the end of the oblong rock were in reality docking berths. This was that, and that, this.
(He lost her rapidly. Her attention was drawn to the man and his energy rather than the space colony he so proudly displayed.)
Two hours after Misfit entered subspace, Lizina got her first glimpse of the real Captain Rurik Sambriam- Dorjan of Harb.
The white-white of his albino skin and the metal wings equalled the grade-z holohorror movie that was her first impression of Songan's appearance. Now, two days later, she admitted that Dorjan was far from physically unattractive. Nor had the man exhibited any hint of being a Kukis in another guise. In fact, the captain of Misfit was just as much a pussycat as was his tattooed First Mate.
". . . you've built all that in eight years!" Edrek shook his head in disbelief.
"There must be hundreds of people inside," Yoluta said, her voice containing the same awe of HOME.
"We've got two hundred residents at the moment. Though HOME could easily manage a colony of five
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thousand." Dorjan grinned. "And we didn't build it. ... only made the modifications to suit our needs. HOME was apparently abandoned by a mining interest that once worked the belt for its aluminum."
Dorjan explained how Songan had discovered the asteroid converted to space colony when Misfifs drive had malfunctioned eight years "ago and dumped the spacer into the Pascal system.
"A slave's dream . . ." Lizina said, "... a world of freed slaves with no masters."
Dorjan nodded. "Exactly. That's the world I'm offering the three of you. The choice is yours . . ."
"Manual control," Songan announced. "Care to take her in, Captain?"
Dorjan slipped into the vacant seat at the console, while Songan opened intership communications.
A woman's voice greeted them from HOME with the assurance that berth 1A was ready and waiting for the ship's docking. "We offloaded ten freighters out of Qalara to be sure there would be no delay, Dorjan."
Dorjan laughed and thanked the woman for her excellent traffic control. The joke was Misfit's normal greeting. No other ship had docked at HOME in at least eight years. HOME's inhabitants were quite agreeable to the arrangement and anonymity.
A burst from forward rockets slowed the spacer's momentum enough to allow Dorjan to thread the treacherous path through the floating debris. Thirty minutes later, the blunted snout of the freighter- "freighter"-nestled snugly into berth 1A.
"Now the work begins." Dorjan punched buttons and flipped toggles, killing Misfit's various systemry. "And that means everyone. The holds are bulging with cargo to be offloaded."
The lift door opened. Lizina saw that she was standing within a cylinder that lay on its curved side. That was easy enough to accept. But with a plethora of buildings, trees, plants, and small lakes nudging each other all along those curved sides, that first glance
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brought a moment of swirling vertigo and spatial dis-orientation.
Dorjan reached out and firmly held her shoulders. "Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. When you open your eyes again, look straight ahead. Don't look up. It's easy that way . . . until you get used to having half of HOME hanging over your head."
She did as he directed, though her gaze occasionally crept upward along the walls-or overhead where buildings, trees, and lakes seemed to defy gravity by hanging suspended, upside down.
Above her head!
"If that doesn't work," Songan said to her and Yoluta, "try looking down at your feet."
Lizina liked that suggestion better. It helped. Her doubts about this sightseeing tour of the colony were assuaged . . . somewhat.
"I feel light." Yoluta executed a little skip that sent her sailing two meters ahead of her three companions. Her eyes were wide when she landed, almost gently.
"Point-six standard gee pull," Songan said. "Enough to keep one's feet on the ground . . . if she's careful. . . but far more comfortable than normal planetary gravity."
Lizina smiled. The incidence of sagging breasts was probably far below the norm among HOME'S female inhabitants. A cosmetic benefit of space-colony living that Dorjan had failed to mention. Well, she mused, it was something a woman noticed with appreciation, while a man appreciated the effect without thinking about it.
Their first stop was a factory, and as such was unimpressive. Its importance was obvious when Dorjan said that ninety-nine per cent of HOME'S metal came from the plant. Aluminum. It was used for everything from housing to eating utensils.
Beside the metalworks stood another building. This one produced textiles for the colony-various grades of Fiberglas spun from the silicon contained within the debris of the asteroid belt. The material, Songan as-
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sured Lizina and Yoluta, could be woven into hyper-durable carpet. Or gossamer-sheer fabric.
"We're as self-sufficient as possible," Dorjan said while the two couples left HOME'S industrial district and walked along a synthestone path that meandered toward what appeared to be houses. "We've got our own farms, both hydroponic and clone for vegetables." He pointed toward a complex of square-built buildings that hung from HOME'S ceiling at the opposite end of the colony. "Recently we've started breeding rabbits and goats."
The breeding habits of Homeworld's rabbits and hares had spread the animals across the galaxy with humankind. They were a readily replaceable source of meat protein. Their presence within HOME did not surprise Lizina.
But, "Goats?"
Dorjan smiled when she wrinkled her nose. "Goats are easy to care for and raise. They eat relatively little for the meat they supply. Goats also produce milk. And that means dairy products, including a variety of cheeses."
"My parents had goats on our farm on Lanatia," Yoluta said. "The trouble was, the milk always tasted bad. It smelled funny."
Songan chuckled. "Your parents didn't keep the nannys away from the billys! It'll happen every time the two sexes get together. We've solved that problem. The male goats are penned at one end of HOME and the females-the nannys-at the other. The milk, cheese, and butter are sweet and clean."
There were houses along the synthestone path, two-level modular constructed homes. Each had its own green-growing lawn, and the majority had a variety of flowers in neatly kept beds.
At the center of the homes was a large circular plaza set with a hissing fountain like a sparkling jewel. Dorjan led them down a wider path that forked to the left from the fountain into what he called a "distribution area."
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In fact, it was a small group of shops. Two were used for distributing food and other essentials. The others were available to anyone who wished to barter the products of special talents.
Lizina noted that one man displayed samples of several items of clothing he had sewn. They ranged from a very practical jumpsuit to an enticing negligee- testimony to the versatility of the man's ability and the spun glass fabric of HOME. Here too was a woman with hand-carved wood sculptures, and a man who offered (free) mewing, white kittens.
"Eventually, I suppose HOME will grow large enough to require actual merchants and some type of monetary system. For now, bartering goods and services seems to satisfy everyone's needs," Dorjan said.
Songan pointed to an auditorium that served as HOME'S theater and meeting hall. Outside a flashsign proclaimed that a Setsuyo Puma festival would begin that night with the showing of the first two Akima Mars holomovies.
"It appears that Yuw liberated a copy of the Akima Mars library for HOME." Dorjan grinned and shook his head.
While the four continued their walk, Songan explained that four such villages (or towns as they were referred to by the colony's residents) had been constructed by HOME'S previous owners. Presently all of the colony's inhabitants lived within one village, which they called Freedom.
"With HOME'S total support capability we have more than enough room to expand our population," Songan said. "When the need arises, a second HOME will be constructed from the raw materials found in space."
"More than enough room for this chunk of rock to begin its journey." Dorjan waved an arm about when they entered a small park complete with fruit trees in bloom. "It's officially Spring in HOME. We have it twice a year for the trees, more often for plants that are needed for food."
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Songan pointed to a calm lake thirty meters from their position. "Fully stocked with very edible fish- another source of protein."
"What about swimming?" Yoluta asked.
"That, too," the tattooed Harbian replied. "Though, we have a pool."
"Sounds terrific!" Yoluta took Songan's arm. "My father says I'm part fish."
"I think I've just been invited for a swim." Songan turned to Dorjan and Lizina. "Interested?"
Dorjan raised a questioning eyebrow at Lizina. She shook her head.
"I'll pass if you don't mind. I'd like to stay here a while. It's so beautiful and peaceful."
"Later for dinner then," Songan said as he and Yoluta started back toward Freedom.
"It is beautiful." Lizina walked to a white-blossomed tree and sank to the cool grass beneath it. Her gaze moved over the lake. "I must admit I was doubtful when I saw it from Misfit. Now it's easy to understand your and Songan's love for HOME."
"It's just beginning." Dorjan lowered himself beside her. "There's so much more it can be, and will."
Lizina's head tilted back. It was easier to look up without completely losing her orientation. Given tune, she could get used to the upside-down view. She smiled. Given time, I could call this world within an asteroid home, not just HOME!
"You said something earlier that I didn't understand." She glanced at Dorjan. "What did you mean about 'this chunk of rock beginning its journey?' "
"The stars." Dorjan lay back, folding his arms beneath his head. "There are billions upon billions of stars within this galaxy that no one has visited. That's where HOME is destined . . ."
He explained that Misfit's cargo had been the final equipment needed to provide HOME with a tachyon converter for faster-than-light movement. In two years, the space colony would leave the Pascal System to explore the wonders of those unknown stars.
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"There are fewer than two hundred Galactic-settled worlds. Croz, Aglaya, Shirash, Jarpi, and HRalix are the worlds known to support alien life-forms," he said. "There's six, if we count Kuzih, but your guess as to the location of Kefira's homeworld is as good as mine."
He rolled to an elbow when Lizina stretched out beside him. "There's no accurate way of estimating the planets that circle those stars or the number that shelter sentient life. But to discover one . . . just one , . , that's the dream of everyone within HOME."
Lizina studied the face of Misfit's captain. It held a mixture of all he was and had been. She could see the hard lines left from a tune when he was known as Death, a gladiator-slave on the planet Harb. There was a certain rakishness about the mouth that befitted a thief who had earned the name The Shadow Walker. She saw the solidarity required of Dprjan, captain of Misfit. There, too, was an almost boyish quality-Dor-jan who yearned to weave his way through the galaxy in search of new worlds.
Among all those faces contained in one was the gentleness she had first seen in Captain Rurik Sam-briam.
Without consciously considering her action, Lizina leaned forward and kissed Dorjan. It was a light, brushing kiss, no more than a "thank you" for all he had done, for bringing her to this world concealed within an asteroid.
At least, that was the way it began.
Dorjan's fingers rose to her cheek, white-white against her golden brown. Lightly, ever so lightly, they drifted to her chin, lifting her face to his. Their lips met again. This tune it was no mere brushing. His arms encircled her waist. He drew her to him so that their lengths pressed warmly together. His mouth opened, and her tongue was there to greet him.
There was no rush of desperate need, no awkward tumblings, no haste to consummate the mutual desire so evident when she pressed even closer to the winged thief from the Rim Worlds. Soothingly, his palms
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stroked as though calming her doubts. She had no doubts.
Coppertop/Lizina Harith wanted this man. She wanted him here in the quiet peace of this park within his world called HOME.
He wore a simple black, leather-imitating brief. With a shifting of hips and push and tug of her hands, it came free to bare the ever-surprising whiteness of his body.
While her fingertips lovingly reveled in the firmness she had unveiled, his hands opened the nevelcro of her jumpsuit. His head bent to bury itself in the dual pleasure she thrust forward for his mouth.
Led by her soft moans and purr-like sounds, he edged the jumpsuit back from her shoulders. She wiggled and squirmed. Her legs kicked twice, and the single-piece suit flew into the air to disappear behind her.
On her back, half under his weight, her hands returned, continued to taunt. A throaty groan pushed from his throat when those caressing fingers enclosed tightly about him. His TP gaze searched the beauty held in the face that stared up at him.
This was not the bed he had envisioned that night on Be Lively! He had no complaints. Still, he wanted to be certain. While his stroking hands explored and delved, his gaze remained on Lizina's face. Searching for any doubt, any hesitancy.
She was not a hust called Coppertop. Not just another cake purchased from Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe for a few hours' entertainment. She was a woman, a very desirable and attractive woman. With his hands and mouth, he tried to convey that.
Nor did she owe him this. As much as he wanted her, had wanted her since he'd first seen her in the Star-Flung Lounge, he would accept what she offered only if she shared his desire. Dorjan was not that kind of thief.
He saw neither hesitancy nor uncertainty in her face; only the want of a woman for a man. His mouth cover-
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ing hers, he pulled her to him and entered the liquid warmth of her.
She felt him filling her, moving in a slow gentle rhythm. There was none of the hurried flurry of hands and kisses that far too often were thought to be passion by far too many, but were merely lust.
The tenderness, the care-yes, the care-he gave were enough to have brought fulfillment. Yet it was the very gentleness he gave that awakened the delicious trembly quivers in her. Sensations that slowly mounted beneath his steady thrusting.
When she flashed, it was an eternity of pleasure unto itself. Then he was deep within her, his body tense and rigid for one soul-shattering moment. In the next moment, he lay weakly atop her, arms tightly sheltering her.
Even after he rolled to his side, he held her close. His hand stroked the smoothness of her back and his mouth returned her kisses. She sighed, warmed by the glow within her. Contentedly, she snuggled against his shoulder.
"Makhseem," he whispered.
"Mmmmmm?" It was a drowsy, satisfied hum.
"What we just had together-Kefira calls it makh-seem," he explained. "To the Akil, it means a sharing of body and spirit."
"Makhseem," she repeated. She liked the concept, even liked the feel of the word on her tongue. "It's a good word to describe what a woman and a man can have together. I had almost forgotten . . ."
She felt tears well hi her eyes. She held them back. The nightmare was over. Once again Coppertop was a part of her past. Lizina could live again. She slipped a hand behind Dorjan's head, eased his mouth to hers, and kissed the man that had given her . . . herself. "That was for not being a man named Kukis," she murmured. "Or Thax, or Tweets, or that overweight jacko in the Star-Flung."
Tweets Dorjan knew, but-Kukis and Thax? Since Misfit's hasty departure from Barbro, Lizina had said .
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nothing about her past or how she had come to be onboard Ganesa's Be Lively. As was the custom among those who dwelled within HOME, he had hot questioned her reticence. HOME meant a new life for those who came to the colony. The past was to be forgotten.
"Why couldn't you have been at the Lal Autar that last night of Perl Takala instead of Thax?" She smiled up at Dorjan. "It would have made things a lot easier."
"I had a prior appointment at the Baka Museum." He shrugged and returned the smile. His arms tightened, hugging her close. "Has anyone ever told you that you feel good?"
"Not in a long time." The tears returned. This time she could not contain them. They had been held back for too long.
Harbored in his arms, she wept in a release of all her fear and terror. When the last sobby shudder passed, she told him everything that had happened since that last eve of Perl Takala.
Dorjan lay quietly when she concluded. Gradually, she felt the tension within his body pass. Anger? He leaned down and kissed her, his palms cradling her face. Makhseem.
"There is someone I would like -you to see tomorrow." He said. "Her name is Emalia. She's HOME'S physician."
"Why?" Lizina's brow knitted.
"I want her to give you a thorough med-check," he said. "That mist in the isolation cell ... I don't know ... I just would feel better if you let Emalia take a look at you."
Liana studied him. His face revealed nothing, but she sensed he was keeping something from her. "Pos, I'll see Emalia Daktari tomorrow."
"Good." He smiled. "Now, can I interest you in dinner?"
"Dinner can wait." She coyly teased a hand across the white expanse of his chest. "Makhseem."
"Makhseem," Dorjan answered and offered no ob-
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jection when she rolled him to his back and slid atop him.
Dinner that night was "Barbarian Delight," especially prepared by Misfit's First Mate.
Songan set three trays of food before Dorjan, Lizina, and Yoluta. "These are hand foods-not finger foods. To be thoroughly enjoyed, one must have grease dripping down to his elbows."
The vegetables, raw, were for dipping into any of five sauce bowls. The succulent meat, Songan revealed after all had stuffed themselves (and had grease dripping down to their elbows), was barbequed cabri-to-kid. Testimony to the tasty choice of raising goats in HOME.
After two glasses of specially long-hauled Starflare Beer from Thebanis-which Songan assured everyone could and would be synthesized-Dorjan took Lizina's hand and led her out onto the balcony of Songan's home. Night had come to the colony. Overhead, stars twinkled.
"A holoprojection of the universe outside," Dorjan said as he wrapped his arms about her from behind.
Holoprojection or not, the night was beautiful. Lizina nestled her head beneath Dorjan's chin. It was a perfect ending for her first day HOME.
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Would that I were under the cliffs, in the secret
hiding-places of the rocks,
that Zeus might change me to a winged bird.
Euripides, Hippolytus
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
Shakespeare
Dorjan soared. Unipolymer plasteel wings fanned wide, he rode the breeze stirred by HOME'S air-con system.
Wings designed for gliding in the arena of Harb were now wings of flight. It was a feat Dorjan accomplished by hugging the null-G zone that ran through the length of the cylindrical colony-mid-air, direct center.
He beat the air. The molecular resistance of HOME'S atmosphere provided the friction required for motion. Though he would never be mistaken for some over-sized bird (the human anatomy was not constructed for free-flight), he flew in grace.
Dorjan held his body arrow-straight, arms tucked beside him. The null-G placed no strain on his muscles. He looped and dived. He swirled and soared. This was his element. This was HOME. For the moment, he was king of the air.
Murrah. The woman who once had called him property flitted across his consciousness. What would she think to see a common slave-though not that common-frolicking in the sky? King of the air above a
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world! (A small, self-contained world, but a world just the same.)
He visualized the sneer that would have twisted Murrah an Rahmyne's thin, blood-red subcutaned lips.
The woman below him grinned. She was definitely not Murrah an Rahmyne. Hand shading eyes from HOME'S artificial sun, head craned back, she followed his darting movements.
Dorjan's chest swelled. He reveled in Lizina's undivided attention. Would that she were his queen, copper hair astream as she winged through HOME'S sky at his side!
Folding wings to back, he somersaulted heels over head. Twice. Three tunes. His wings popped out to carry him upward hi a long arc.
The aerial gymnastics lacked the polish of perfection. That detail was overlooked by Lizina's uncritical eye. She laughed with delight. The sound of her voice rose through the sky to touch his ears-the soft chiming of delicate bells.
Again his chest expanded. With adolescent exhilaration, he performed to win and hold Lizina's attention. No woman-not even Kefira who had held a place in his heart-had ever created the sensations now coursing through him.
Circling in a spiral glide, Dorjan descended. He smiled-Misfit's last jaunt had been decidedly unusual. Songan reported that Kefira no longer exhibited any interest in sharing with anyone other than Edrek. Had the silk-downed Akil begun to adopt human traits?
Songbird had definitely been desolate about Kefira's sudden attitude change. That was, until Misfit's arrival at HOME. The colony held more than one man or woman who found no shame in bearing the title Sunflower, that supposedly derogatory term given those who bedded a Jarp because they liked Jarps.
Then there were Songan and Yoluta. The couple's attraction was as unexpected as was Kefira's preference for Yoluta's older brother.
And, of course-Lizina.
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Downward Dorjan swept. His wings reached out to beat the air while he dropped his legs beneath him. Gracefully, he alighted in the park four meters from the woman who had gazed upward throughout his flight.
"Beautiful!" Lizina ran to him and threw her arms about his neck. Her lips covered his in a childlike delight "Absolutely beautiful!"
It was she who was beautiful, robed in a flowing white caftan adorned with intricate prass braid and thread designs. Dorjan could only describe her as radiant! Those emerald green eyes afire with light-the metallic gleam of her copper hair-the special blush of her cheeks . . .
Am I seeing only what I want to see? Did he search the beauty of her face for some hint that she shared his feelings?
Feelings? It caught him off guard. Yes, they were there. He did not use that one, simple four-letter word that encompassed all the feelings that were alive within him. (Songan might be foolish enough to love a woman who had committed herself to HOME, but not Dorjan of Harb-never Dorjan!)
Yet, at that moment, he would have been happy were there no Will with the Wisp, no Captain Jumah Sheemah, no Captain Rurik Sambriam. It was enough to be within HOME with Lizina in his arms.
Lizina kissed him again. "You were like some great, white bird soaring the heavens!"
"Come to steal you away, back to my lofty nest!" His arms drew her close. He returned the kisses with compounded interest.
. When the strength of his embrace lessened, Lizina stepped back. Her gaze wandered over the muscular whiteness of the winged man's unashamed nudity. A pleased smile uplifted the corners of her mouth when her attention dipped below his waist.
"How long before I'm due for my appointment with the good Emalia Daktari?"
"In a hurry?" Dorjan arched a white eyebrow.
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"I thought there might be time . . . to . . ." She blushed! She felt the tingly embarrassment that colored her cheeks. Dorjan saw it too, which only deepened the hue. "After all I've been through ... I feel silly . . . I'm shy about asking a man to make love with me."
"That is the difference." He stepped toward her. "You're not a hust spreading for some tap. You're a woman who wants to make love with a man."
He enclosed her in his arms. Tenderly, gently, he kissed her. Together they sank to the coolness of the grass.
Atop Songan's open palm rested the culmination of the two-hour tea ceremony-a single, delicate china cup. This he served to Yoluta as he knelt, his legs folded under him, before the girl.
With both hands, Yoluta accepted the cup. She sipped the steaming tea, and she smiled.
Songan beamed within himself, though no smile touched his lips. The ritual, older than the Galactic colonization of Terasaki, demanded that the male remain rigidly stoic throughout the ceremony. All personal joy must be inner directed. All outward pleasure was directed to the woman the ceremony honored.
Honor and its various codes were very much a part of Terasaki, the planet on which Songan had learned the ceremony. A Taoist, a follower of chi the inner energy of life, Songan placed no value on the codes of honor or the worship of Booda.
The tea ceremony was beautiful, which was why he had performed it for Yoluta.
Whether the walnut-brown-haired Lanatian understood the ceremony's full meaning (Songan was uncertain that she did) held no consequence. It remained an honor, and he received the inner joy of so honoring her.
Yoluta did understand that the ceremony was something special, something he did only for her. That was evident in her smile.
Yoluta placed the half-empty cup before her on the
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straw mat she sat on. She reached out and took the side-handled tea pot from the small brazier beside Son-gan. She refilled the cup before Songan could stop her. When he tried to take the pot from her, she held up a hand and shook her head.
She lifted the cup. Turning it so that Songan's lips would touch where hers had, she passed it to him. The tattooed man accepted and sipped.
"This is not part of the ceremony, you know," he said. "I do this for you."
"And I do this for you." Her deep-brown eyes locked their, gaze to his. "It is my way of saying thank you, and, perhaps, returning a portion of the happiness you have given me."
He sipped the steaming tea again. Why and how Yoluta had entered his life were questions to which he had answers. But why she had chosen him-former gladiator-slave with tattoo-marred body and a voice that flowed from electrons rather than vocal cords, he would never fully grasp. Nor would he question it.
Songan, his encephaloboosted genius aside, understood what most men, intelligent or not, would never perceive. He termed it an acceptance of the way, the Tao, the yin/yang that governed the universe. Others just as wise had called it "common sense"-the ability to accept love without question when it was given freely.
This was the love Yoluta gave. It was the love Mis-fit's First Mate returned. Slave, mastermind for the thief of thieves, Songan was also a man.
"There is another sharing I'm ready for this day," Yoluta said while she watched him drink. "Do you understand?"
"You speak of sharing as Kefira does-the sharing of a man and a woman?"
"The others think we've already slept together," she said, her gaze shyly drifting to the floor. "I've made no attempt to alter that belief ... I felt we should have shared a bed . . ."
Yoluta hesitated, unable to find the exact words she
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wanted. "... I knew I loved you, but I wasn't certain of you, or of Dorjan, or of this place I now call home. Too much had happened since Edrek and I were taken from Lanatia."
"There is no need to explain." Songan set aside the cup and took her hand.
"Perhaps not for you, but there is for me. I felt I could never trust another person. Even with all you gave me, I was not certain that it was real," Yoluta's eyes rose back to Songan. "Until we came here. Now I know."
Songan did not answer with words. He scooted beside her on the mat and took her in his arms. In one kiss, he let all the love and need he contained for this woman-girl flow outward to enfold her.
When Yoluta eased away an eternity later, it was to lift his hands to the belt of the powder blue reelsilk robe she wore. Fingers surprisingly steady, Songan tugged at the knot. It fell open without resistance.
Her dark eyes, lit with expectation and anticipation, gazed into his face while his hands opened the robe and eased the fabric from her shoulders. He felt the excited quiver that raced through her when his palms lovingly cradled her breasts. His fingertips lightly brushed over her nipples setting off another series of trembly sensations in the young woman of Lanatia.
Yoluta's own hands fumbled at the knot to his matching robe (both brought from Terasaki). Eventually, it disentangled. She managed to quiet his hands to give her tune to push the robe from his illustrated shoulders.
Drawing a breath, she calmed herself. Her gaze slowly probed downward.
"Oh!" She could not contain the instant of shock. "I didn't know the tattoos were ... I mean your slicer is ... I ... I ... I ..."
Songan smiled and kissed her. His hands gently stroked and soothed away the small trauma of seeing just how thoroughly his body had been tattooed. When they parted, Yoluta hesitantly looked down again.
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"If one accepts it as an art form, it's really quite beautiful," she said after a thorough examination.
Songan laughed. "What it is, is an example of Mur-rah an Rahmyne's warped sense of humor. It's called a water dragon. On Saiping, the water dragon is considered the wisest of all their mythological creatures."
"This is. no myth." Her fingers lightly traced the green tattoo of the dragon.
"Yoluta . . ." He felt the need to place into words all that he felt, all that he wanted for them.
"Shhhhhh." She touched a finger to his lips, then replaced it with her mouth.
Together, in each other's arms, they lowered themselves to the straw mat. Stretched side by side, their hands and mouths followed the courses common to all lovers through the ages. They explored, they fondled, they reveled in the beauty and delight each discovered in the other's body.
And when their playfulness transformed into the need for the intimacy they both desired, Yoluta eased beneath the tattooed giant of Harb. There was a brief instant of resistance that Songan neither expected nor was prepared for. Yoluta winced, stiffened.
He stared down at her while his mind accepted the full measure of what she had given. Leaning down, he kissed away the hint of moisture that gathered at the corners of her eyes. "I didn't realize."
"It doesn't matter, now." She smiled up into his worry-furrowed face. "This is the way I wanted it to be -with a man I loved."
Then her arms were locked behind his neck, and she drew his mouth to hers.
His hands, flowing with love, stroked and caressed. Only when her own exploring fingertips transmitted her ' body's acceptance of him, did he move. And then in a gentle sleepy rhythm.
Man and woman, woman and man, they touched and were touched. They kissed and clung to one another. They drank each moment of this complete sharing. Though Yoluta was unfamiliar. with the Akil term
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makhseem, she experienced it-an experience that exceeded mere words, human or alien.
The door to the examining room opened. Lizina, followed by Emalia, entered the small room where Dor] an had waited for the past hour. He looked up question-ingly when Lizina sat down beside him on a squatty-looking and -feeling couch.
Lizina tilted her head toward Emalia. "She's the doctor, not me."
"Lizina appears to have suffered no physical injury, despite Kukis, Degula, and Ganesa." Emalia took a chair opposite the couple. She ran a hand through her short-cropped black hair.
"That's it, then," Dorjan said with a wide grin. "After Lizina told me what happened in Kukis's isolation cell, I was afraid the chemicals might have affected her in some manner."
"They have," Emalia answered, staring at Misfit's captain.
"But you just said that she was all right?" Dorjan looked at the physician, then at Lizina.
"I said she was fine . . . physically," Emalia said. "Mentally is another thing."
Dorian's eyes narrowed, uncertain what the doctor was trying to say. Lizina appeared perfectly normal, physically and mentally.
"From Lizina's description of the mist in her cell, I speculate she was subject to the effects of several chemical agents over an extended period of time-three days at the shortest, if we are to believe what Kukis told her." Emalia paused. "What Lizina has described to me indicates that the mist contained both a hallucinogen and possibly tetrazombase."
"Tetrazombase!" Dorjan was aware of the chemical and its properties. A few cc's and a man or woman was a biological automaton, a mindless machine totally subjugated to the will of others.
"There's no way to be certain. Tetrazombase is completely flushed from the body via the urinary tract with-
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in hours," Emalia said. "Still, I believe it's a relatively safe assumption that tetrazombase or a similar substance was contained in the mist. Not enough to completely rob Lizina of her will, but to slowly break it."
Again the doctor paused and ran a hand through her hair. "Hallucinogens and tetrazombase both play hell with the human brain. Over any extended period, the mind becomes a programmable thing. A few suggestions here, a few reward-punishment patterns there and the personality is subtly altered. On the surface, it's not that noticeable, even to the recipient of such treatment. Still, the programming is there."
"Morven," Dorjan said his thought aloud.
Songan had found Morven on Thebanis. The youth's brains had been turned to curd from repeated injections of tetrazombase-TZ.
Morven had been under Emalia's treatment for two years. The young man was almost normal-almost. One harsh word sent him cowering to the nearest corner.
"Morven is an extreme example," Emalia said. "But the principle is the same. Lizina is not Lizina Harith, the woman Kukis kidnapped from Panish. She's still Coppertop, the woman he and Degula created with their mist. Lizina is not dead, but Coppertop is very much alive and dominates her personality."
Dorjan turned to Lizina. Her gaze dropped to the floor. He had not suspected. He lied to himself. He had suspected, which was why he had brought Lizina to Emalia.
"I don't want to underplay the seriousness of what's been done to Lizina," Emalia continued, "but compared to Morven, getting Lizina back to Lizina will be relatively simple. Mostly talking with me and discovering exactly what behavior patterns Kukis jangled."
"I've already talked with Emalia about setting up daily sessions," Lizina said. "She assures me it won't take more than a month-a few hours each day."
"A month to undo what Kukis did in three days." Dorjan felt the tensing of bioengineered muscles in his
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hand. His metal claws were half extended before he caught himself.
"It's better if we take it slow and easy," Emalia said. "That way we make sure that we erase everything Ku-kis implanted."
"We begin tomorrow morning," Lizina smiled. "Emalia guaranteed it will be painless."
Dorjan took Lizina's hand and squeezed it. She " seemed to accept it so easily. Quite willing to do whatever Emalia or he wanted. Why hadn't he noticed that before? Maybe it had been easier not to notice-easier to impress her with his aerial gymnastics.
No. Dorjan shook the thought off. He hadn't known. Only suspected the possibility yesterday. In a month, Lizina would be Lizina again. That was all that mattered. The last thing either of them needed at the moment was misplaced guilt.
"Are there any questions either of you have?" Emalia looked at the couple. Both shook their heads. "Good. Then I'll see you tomorrow morning, Lizina."
Emalia rose and started toward the door. "I've got thirty sick rabbits on farside that need my attention."
"Rabbits?" Lizina's head jerked up.
Emalia grinned back over a shoulder. "Not enough people in HOME for both a physician and veterinarian ... I get to pull double duty."
The door opened and she left. Dorjan and Lizina stood. Their gazes met for a long moment. His arms opened and she came to him. He held her close, until the tears and the trembling passed.
13
When in doubt, He, Trafalgar Cuw
No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.
William Congreve, The Double Dealer
Dorjan scanned the reports on the monitor screen. He tapped a button. The screen blinked and the reports began again in slow scroll. This time through the news items, he read every word.
Without a doubt, the insurance companies were hurting. The normal ten percent recovery fee had been carefully noted in every article about theft of the three sculptures-metamorphic phasition tableaux by the Lunt artist Javas.
A Frederic Remington of the expansionist period, Javas had gained popularity among collectors during the past century. What the artist lacked in technical ability was compensated for in her sense of the dramatic. The raw strength she depicted in her scenes of Galactic exploration of galaxy center was inescapable.
With one final note of the sculptures' insured value, Dorjan returned the reports to the computer's memory. Even at ten percent recovery, the stells involved made the job worth The Shadow Walker's consideration.
"Now try file TAWNO3.RES," Songan called from the balcony where he sat conversing with Yoluta and
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Lizina. "If ever a man was fated for a visit from The Demon Cat, it's Tawno of Lanatia."
Dorjan punched out the filename. The monitor blipped twice and opened the text file. First he scanned the various items assembled, then went back and reread them carefully.
Tawno of Lanatia did deserve a visit from The-Thief-Who-Is-Not-There. The man was the largest slave owner on the planet. The majority of those beneath his yoke, both men and women, served in brothels.
The fortune Tawno garnered from the flesh he peddled was invested. The profile Songan pieced together on the swine included a fat portfolio of choice stocks and bonds that one expected to find among the assets of the rich. There, too, were the normal commercial and real estate investments.
Art, though, was Tawno's ultra-expensive hobby. He boasted that he owned the most extensive and valuable collection to be found outside a museum. That was his publicly acquired collection.
The real prizes, those obtained through less than legal means, were vaulted in a sub-basement beneath his mansion in the Lanatian city of Disvue. Investigative reports of insurance companies and policers indicated that the sculptures stolen from a Jasbir museum now resided in Tawno's vault.
Indications and proof were two different things. The authorities had no way of getting into that vault- legally.
The Invisible One did not concern himself with legalities.
Dorjan switched off the monitor. He swiveled his chair toward the balcony where Songan, Lizina, and Yoluta sat discussing the just announced engagement of Misfit's First Mate and the young Lanatian. Dorjan's earlier worries about the romance appeared to have had no basis.
"It looks interesting . . . also complicated," Dorjan said to his tattooed friend. "Tawno probably has se-
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curity crawling out his ears-human, cyber, and anything else his money can buy!"
"Filename TAWNO.SEC," Songan replied as he rose and walked to Dorjan.
Feeding in the file code, Dorjan sat back and watched the screen wink. A multicolored, high resolution graphics display appeared on the monitor. "Where did you get this?"
"It cost twice the normal rate." Songan peered over Dorjan's shoulder. "But Yarn had heard a fellow Outie was a clerk with Total Field, the security network that handled Tawno's mansion."
Songan leaned forward pointing to various points on the house plan. "The green squares indicate cyber-devices, the red-electronic. The blue triangles are human guards, and the yellow is for other." "Other?"
"Dogs," Songan said. "Big, mean, love-to-take-a-chunk-out-of-your-ass-dogs ... or any other place they can sink their teeth into. Ten in all. Each one special-bred on Resh."
"Delightful." Dorjan's TPs revealed an ear-to-ear grin on his friend's face. "The more I learn of this plan of yours, the less I like it."
"The dogs won't even know you're in the Tawno mansion. In fact, this time Will with the Wisp is not required to steal a thing. You'll be giving Tawno something," Songan said. "When it gets right down to it, Edrek will be doing all the real work on this job. You can consider the venture to Lanatia a restful vacation." "Edrek?"
"The bottom line is the insurance recovery fees," Songan continued without an explanation of Edrek's role in the job. "We aren't out to steal the sculptures . . . just to arrange for their recovery."
Songan pulled a chair beside Dorjan. His fingers danced over the console-. The display flickered again. "This is a list of what is believed to be the contents of Tawno's vault." Dorjan whistled.
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Songan tapped a single key. "And these are their insured values. Take ten per cent of the total figure and you'll see a handy profit can be made if we handle this job strictly above board ... at least as far as the authorities are concerned."
"But getting past security?" Dorjan asked. "How am I supposed to get to that vault?"
"You won't have to," Songan said. "Tawno will do it for you."
In answer to Dorjan's puzzled expression, his First Mate ran through an abbreviated sketch of his scheme. Dorjan listened. A smile slowly lifted the corners of his mouth and spread across his face.
To have described Songan's plan as merely brilliant would have been an insult.
"We need duplicates of Javas's sculptures," Dorjan said when his friend concluded. "Also something to jumble the scan-sensors when I take them into Tawno's home."
"The mini-scrambler you used on Qalara will handle everything Tawno's got," Songan assured him. "As to duplicates, I've already made contact with Kataya on Thebanis through a third party. She's willing to work for us at a very reasonable rate."
Dorjan nodded. Kataya was one of the best-if not the best-art forger in the Farther Reaches. More than one expert had been duped by her work.
"And, of course, there's Edrek," Songan said.
"You're ready to explain that, are you?"
"Since we'll be legit this time, we need a front man to work with the insurance companies and the Lanatia policers." Songan studied his friend's face. There was no hint as to how Dorjan took playing support actor in this job. "Edrek is perfect. He's Lanatian, and he's clean."
"He's also just a boy!" Dorjan saw the logic of Songan's choice, but Edrek was inexperienced. "Besides, how do you know he'll be willing to assist?"
"I've already talked with him. Edrek is willing to do whatever is needed." Songan smiled. "We couldn't ask
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for anything better, Dorjan! No need for disguise or forged idents! Edrek will be an upstanding citizen just trying to do a good deed and collect a sizable reward on the side."
Even after the Lanatian authorities took their slice of the pie through taxes, the reward amount would be sufficient to support a man comfortably for the rest of his life. It would also buy the encephaloboost cultures HOME needed.
"Tomorrow, we'll start giving Misfit her new face," Dorjan said. "We'll also need to plan the disguises to use while we're on Lanatia. Anything you haven't mentioned, or that I've forgotten?"
"A decision on Edrek."
"I want time to think about that," Dorjan said.
Songan nodded and smiled.
It was a smile Dorjan had seen a hundred times since they had created The Invisible One. It said-You'll come over to my way of thinking before we're through. Ninety-nine point nine nine of the tune, Dorjan did.
"Pregnant!" Lizina stared at Emalia in disbelief, uncertain she had heard the doctor correctly. "Pregnant?"
"That's what they still call it, Lizina."
"How? Lizina's brain refused to assimulate the pronouncement.
"I assume in the normal fashion. Unless you and Dorjan have come up with something you should tell medical science about," Emalia said. "It does happen, you know. Especially if you aren't protected. The bio-scan discovered no trace of contraceptive agents in your body. I assume you had your shot counteracted quite some time ago."
She had. Garold Harith had wanted children. During their short time as husband and wife, she had not conceived. Nor had she remembered the need for another contraceptive injection.
"And it's Dorjan's?" Lizina asked, attempting to accept what grew in her body.
"No doubt about it." Emalia studied the woman
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seated before her desk. "Lizina, you look doubtful about the pregnancy. You know there is a shot I can give you if . . ."
"No. I mean, yes." Lizina shook her head. She wasn't sure what she wanted. "I don't know. I wasn't prepared for anything like this. Accidental pregnancies aren't supposed to happen anymore."
"That's why they're called accidents," Emalia said. "Look, there's no need to rush a decision. Conception occurred four days ago. You have two months in which to make up your mind. After that, things become a bit more complicated."
"What do you suggest?" Lizina's gaze was a plea for an answer.
"To do exactly as I said. Take your time to make the decision ... at least until we've finished our sessions," Emalia said. "This is something you must decide. And we have to get you back before you can do that."
Lizina nodded hesitantly. Conflicting desires knotted her stomach.
"You have another option. Something that will give you more time," Emalia continued. "There is an injection that inhibits the usual gestation period-extends it to eighteen months-standard."
Lizina didn't answer. The added option only confused things further. She needed time to think out what was happening within her body. Time to examine all the possibilities rationally.
Dorjan's child. The thought created all sorts of warm trembly feelings.
What if he doesn't want a child? Panic swelled and drowned the warmth. Do I want a baby?
There were too many questions. She had to give herself tune. First she needed to accustom herself to the idea of what was happening within her body. Then she had to talk with Dorj . . .
No. She couldn't talk with Dorjan, not now. He and Songan were in the middle of their preparations for the jaunt to Lanatia. She couldn't burden him.
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Or am I too frightened to tell him?
What did she really know about the man who had rescued her from Ganesa? She knew she loved the winged thief from Harb (and believed that he returned that love). But did she really know him? How well could two people know each other in less than a week?
"Does Dorjan know?" Lizina looked at the physician.
"No," Emalia said with a shake of her head. "It's your decision, not his. Though I believe you should tell him."
Lizina's head moved slowly but firmly from side to side. "No, not now. Maybe when Misfit returns."
An icy chill ran through the copper-haired woman. "You won't tell him, will you?"
"Neg. When and whether Dorjan is to know is up to you," Emalia answered. And she waited for further response from her patient. When Lizina offered nothing more, she said, "Let's talk about your progress in the sessions . . ."
Lizina listened to the physician's first few sentences. She was coming along rapidly-twice as fast as Emalia had estimated. Then Lizina's mind wandered back to the unexpected announcement. It replayed in her head like a loop of holotape.
Dorjan walked through Misfit's runnels. The interior had been completely rearranged. Walls, designed to be moveable, had been shifted. Old rooms were gone and new compartments stood in their stead. Even the con-cabin had received a face lift. The normally cramped compartment was now double its former size.
TGW scans and sensors of other police authorities could no longer identify the vessel by interior design. Lady Fortune and Star-Spider were no more.
Gone, too, was Dorjan's private garden. The bonsai trees now were firmly rooted before his modular house within HOME. The grass and Birdwing had been transplanted to one of the colony's parks. The stream's water was returned to Misfit's recycling system.
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The garden was removed only after lengthy and loud protest. In the end, Dorjan had acquiesced to Songan's insistence that the room had to go. The garden had grown within the ship for two years. A very distinctive earmark for scanners.
To protect Misfit's anonymity, the garden had been assigned to HOME. Dorjan's cabin was now a mere box with a bed.
The craft's exterior also had been modified. Varnal-geran Yuw and Songbird had spent three days in space-suits repositioning Misfit's various sensory equipment. Plus attaching and rearranging tether lines.
The final touch was the welding of several hemispherical pods to the spacer's underbelly. The pods crammed with functional but totally useless electronic devices were sham. Three additional pods were placed atop the craft's hull. These were hollow and could carry cargo if required.
Gone was the sleek ship that looked meant to slice across the light years of space. Misfit (now Vainglorious under registration of the planet Samanna) appeared to be a gargantuan metal beetle with a case of terminal acne.
The ship's captain also took a new name-Abrasax. A mystical name that was old when humankind first ventured into space.
His disguise, slated to be donned before docking at Thebanisport and Lanatia, included a moustache that drooped below his chin, a scar that ran across his left cheek, and shoulder length black hair that inhibited his TP's field of vision.
Once on Lanatia, another disguise awaited in Songan's case.
Both captain and ship would assume new identities when they departed Lanatia. Both would also steer wide of the Barbro Transfer Station.
Perhaps Dorjan was being overly cautious. A second Captain Cautious: yet until the station had time to forget Captain Rurik Sambriam and the sweetcake he had
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taken from Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe, it seemed the thing to do.
Ganesa had friends at Barbro. To the station's au- thority, Dorjan was but one of a few thousand space-farers.
"Well, Captain, does she meet with your approval?" Songan stepped from an open door ahead of Dorjan.
"That she does," Dorjan said. "We should be ready to leave by tomorrow."
"Any final decisions on the crew this time out?"
"Yuw, of course." The Outie had proven himself as indispensable to Misfit's captain as Songan. "Songbird ... Iniko and Hedeon. Neither of those two has been out in six months. I don't want them getting rusty."
"Kefira?" Songan asked.
"Not this time," Dorjan replied.
"She'll be disappointed."
"She's been on the last two hauls." Dorjan shrugged. "And Edrek, if he's still willing to go."
"He's willing." Songan grinned broadly, obviously pleased with his captain's final decision.
Dorjan held Lizina close, soaking in the warmth of her body against his bare skin. For the first time since HOME'S discovery, the Harbian felt the tug of conflicting emotions. The same conflict he was certain Songan was experiencing this last night before Misfit's departure.
Neither had ever had any reason for remaining within the colony before. Now there were Lizina and Yoluta.
HOME had always been a dream-a means to reach out and grasp the unknown worlds that lay hidden among the multitude of unexplored stars. With Lizina here, the Habitat Orbiter: Modular Environment had assumed the connotation of home for the winged thief.
"Have you ever noticed the beautiful contrast of our bodies?" Lizina ran a palm across his hairless chest.
"Man and woman." He kissed her and snuggled closer on the lounger they shared.
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Beyond the balcony of Dorjan's quarters, evening came to HOME. Neither cared that the sunset that drew their attention was a holoprojection. The beauty remained.
Darkness gathered. Stars gradually glowed to life and filled the sky above them.
"It's beautiful here." Lizina's breath warmly tickled over his chest. "So peaceful."
"HOME'S designers understood the human need for living space, especially within a confined environment," Dorjan said. "I seldom consider that this world is only five kloms long."
"I'll miss you," Lizina said abruptly. "Are you certain Misfit couldn't use another crew member?"
"Not until Emalia pronounces you one hundred per cent Lizina again."
"Then . . . ?"
"Then you have a choice to make."
Lizina's gaze lifted to study his face. That was all he would ever say. That the choice to remain within HOME or to return to Panish was hers-hers alone.
If she chose Panish and the life that had once belonged to her, there would be a brainwipe to erase all knowledge of the asteroid colony . . . and Dorjan. What of his seed she carried?
"My choice . . ." Why did it seem so important for him to ask her to stay? Yet, she knew this man never would. A slave for the majority of his life, Dorjan refused to impose his will on anyone. "Do you know, you've never asked about my life on Panish?"
Dorjan touched a finger to her lips. "Our life began when I met you in the Star-Flung Lounge. If you remain here, anything before that will not matter."
She felt his body tense when he said "if you remain." Did he doubt that she would? Was he that blind not to see that she would remain with him for as long as he wanted?
"I want you, Dorjan." Her words began as a statement. Before she finished uttering them, she realized
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that he was what she wanted. Very much. At that very moment. "I want you now."
Beneath the stars above the balcony, he came to her.
Yoluta, Kefira, and Lizina gathered at berth 1A to see them off. There were more than the normal farewell hugs and kisses and tears that accompanied the departure of Misfit from home.
Someone once described parting as sweet sorrow. Damn hard, Dorjan thought when he released Lizina to enter his ship. The airlock closed, leaving him with a memory of the teary-eyed beauty who waited for his return.
"Only a month and we'll be back." Songan's hand squeezed Dorjan's shoulder. "At least, that's what I keep telling myself."
"Right." Dorjan managed to smile when they entered the con-cabin.
At the console, the captain of Misfit toed the intra-ship comm open and ordered his crew to their stations. A metallic clang ran through the spacer when the docking collar released.
A month. Dorjan's fingers flipped toggles and tapped buttons. Multicolored lights blinked in flashing arrays.
Misfit's maneuvering rockets fired. Cautiously the vessel's captain threaded the spaceship through the maze of floating boulders that surrounded the asteroid colony. One month.
The distance from Homeworld's sun to the center of the galaxy was twenty-seven-thousand light-years.
"Why," someone might glibly say, "that's only eighty-two-hundred parsecs!"
The speed of light. Such a simple little phrase! It is so easy to use ... as glibly as a general talking about multi-megaton bombs (which sounds so important, and yet ever so much nicer than "multi-million ton") and how many "units" will be lost at ground zero, or in a particular military operation. A "unit" is a military word meaning "human being," which might hurt to say,
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when  officers   are  talking   about  their  being killed, instantly.
Yet the speed of light is inconceivably fast and the measure of distance, not time, called a light-year is ... well, what's left after "inconceivable?" What's the difference whether you dream of ten million dollars, or fifty million? Either is inconceivable; wealth vaster than vast.
Suppose that you had a friend 300,000 kilometers away and suppose that you could see the beam of a flashlight across such distances. When your friend switched on the flashlight-actuated the beam--you would see the light one second later. Across all that distance!
Light travels at the rate of 300,000 kloms per second. That multiplies easily to 18 million kilometers per minute; multiplies again to over a billion kilometers per hour. That comes to about 26 billion kloms per day. Fantastic-and yet Urth's warming star, Sol, the sun, is almost 149 million kilometers away. And by the standards of the sprawling vast collection of stars in which Sol is one smallish sun among hundreds of billions of others, it isn't so much.
So, having multiplied up to a 24-hour day, go a step further. The light that travels 300,000 kloms per second and 25,920,000,000 kloms per day . . . how far does it travel hi a year?-during one transit of little planet Urth around its little sun way out here on the flail-like arm of the galaxy called Milky Way?
The problem: 300,000 X 60 X 60 X 24 X 365. The answer: Contains too many zeroes to be registered on most pocket calculators. The silly little thing goes as far as it can and registers a depressing E to let you know that it finished before you and the problem did. This time the answer is beyond millions, and billions as well.
The answer is in trillions: 9,404,800,000,000 kilometers, or 5,878,000,000,000 (Old Style) miles.
A light-year, then, is about nine and a half trillion kilometers. That is the distance traveled by a spot or
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beam or flash of light in one year-ess, or one year-standard-meaning a year on poor old forgotten planet Urth-Homeworld.
The nearest star to Sol is about four light-years away. That's a parsec and more; a parsec is three and a quarter light-years, or just under 31 trillion kloms.
And yet "a parsec" or "three and a quarter light-years away" are such easy phrases to toss off casually and glibly!
"Our casualties in the first n seconds after the landing on Normandy Beach may be some 25,000 units, Mister President."
"All we have to do to get to our nearest neighbor in space, the binary Alpha and Proxima Centauri (no, not centuri!) is traverse four light-years."
"The distance from Homeworld's sun, Sol, to the center of the galaxy is 27,000 light years."
How far?
"Uh . . . 27,000 times 9.4 trillion kilometers . . ."
How jar?
Well, it's two-hundred fifty-four quadrillion kilometers . . .
And it takes an hour to get from 80th and York to JFK, hmm? (If we could travel in space at the speed of light, how long would it take then to go by cab from 80th and York streets in Manhattan to JFK International Airport? Answer: about an hour.)
How far is it to the next subdivision or farmhouse, for a resident of that anthill out back? One light-year? If we could somehow become those sub-sub-miniature particles called tachyons and travel in space at c-the speed of light-how long would it take us to get to galaxy center, where the stars are as thick as gravel on a county road right before election-tune?
Twenty-seven thousand years.
Furthermore, the genius Einstein said that would be impossible. The result would be another inconceivable-what can the phrase "your mass would become Infinite" possibly mean? How can time "dilate" or
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"shrink?" Time is just a measure of distance, isn't it- something on a wristwatch.
Well, we've just got to invent something, or sidestep Einstein and his pesky E=mc2, or ... something. We can't write about finding fascinating new races on Mars, or Venus, as Burroughs did. We won't find the HRal on Jupiter or its moons, or the Knorese on a moon circling Saturn, or Jarps on Pluto or Uranus- and as a matter of fact life on a planet circling the Centaur stars doesn't look too darned likely, either!
What, then? Write only Westerns and Nursebooks and bodice-rippers and Gothics and accounts of new Lost Races in Africa, or the Amazon basin?
Better just say that vast refers to size, and size is a distance. Along the spaceways time/distance measure events and lifespans, and the spaceways are vast-as a matter of fact, vaster than vast. And get on with the story.
As spacer Misfit carried Dorjan and his interesting mix of companions rushing toward that entity called HOME, people were being born and were dying, all over the galaxy. So were beings that thought and created, but were not, technically, people. Other ships were rushing through the parsec abyss, too, but at distances as far, comparably, as for a resident of that anthill out back to the end of the next block.
Spacer Coronet had just redshifted from planet Front, having set off the Jarp Sweetface and his less-than-bright mistress, and was bearing Captain Jonuta and his companions toward far Qalara. Captain Jonuta had just been robbed, massively, on more than one planet. He was heading home not-quite-but-almost with his tail between his legs. Thinking about his losses; thinking about Corundum; thinking, perhaps, of Janja of Aglaya. Their confrontation was yet to come.
Spacer Satana, with its positively weird company of five, was rushing out ioward the Carnadyne Void. It bore Janja and Hellfire and the others unknowingly to a rendezvous with Corundum, and with disaster and
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captivity on-or rather inside-the "unknown" planet Knor.
Corundum? Captain Corundum was lurking, racing toward intersection with Satana, to effect the rendezvous that would so change the Jives and plans of Cinnabar of Jarpi and Quindy the former military officer with her black, black skin and lemon-yellow hair, and perhaps of the loquacious yet enigmatic Trafalgar Cuw of Outreach. And Janja, and Captain Hellfire.
And as for Dorjan and Coppertop and those onboard Misfit . . .
14
Sweet is revenge-especially to women.
Lord Byron
Methods existed to track, to trace a man. Too many for one who wished to avoid the eyes of his fellow creatures.
Once humankind, as with the other animals that shared the race's primordial world, used its innate abilities as a predator. Its senses. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.
That era lay millennia in the evolutionary past. The human animal had discarded such rudimentary tools of the hunt. Humankind now possessed mechanizations to seek its prey.
While the medium differed, the method remained. Sight-optical scanners. Smell-ion sensors. Hearing- ultra-boosted telltales. Taste-trace analyzers. Touch- tractor fields.
These were the senses of Be Lively. Program them for multidirectional search, and push them to their optimal capacity and they were senses that extended far beyond the range of a whole race. All on one ship!
Place scans, sensors, telltales, analyzers, and tractors under the direction of SIPACUM and other onboard computing and data processing units, and the mechanisms assumed an aura of sentience.
They were not. They remained mere devices.
The woman who stood behind those far-probing senses was intelligent-a thinking entity. Her name was
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Ganesa and she was of Resh. The Diamond Lady. Proprietor of Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe.
And Ganesa was predator. Her prey-^-an escaped slave called Coppertop and the man who had taken her, a Captain Rurik Sambriam.
The first scent, purchased with promised sexual favors, was the coordinates by which Sambriam's Star-Spider departed the Barbro Transfer Station. She simply fed the information into SIPACUM, then let her ship, Be Lively, follow its cybernetic nose.
The tracking was easier than Ganesa expected. On the spacer's fourth jump from subspace, the scans and sensors went wild. Star-Spider had been within this star system. Still was!
Ganesa, pleased with her ship's performance, ordered a general information cassette inslotted into SIPACUM. That incredibly sophisticated computing and logic system sorted through the star maps contained within the cassette. It matched its own coordinates with those of a map filed under the name PASCAL.
Seated in her captain's chair, Ganesa studied the map that flashed in holographic display above the ship's console. And read the information SIPACUM supplied on the Pascal System.
Ganesa's brow furrowed. Perplexed, she reread the system profile. It made no more sense the second time through. Why would Sambriam come to a system such as Pascal? The sun was dying a slow natural death. There were no planets. An asteroid belt was the system's only distinguishing feature.
Unless . . . Ganesa smiled. That has to be it. Drive malfunction!
The Diamond Lady ordered her crew to place Be Lively on a course to take the ship above Pascal's orbital plane. Two hours later, position achieved, the artificial senses onboard Be Lively were once more engaged.
Nothing. Only the thousand-klom wide belt of valueless rock.
SIPACUM reconfirmed: the various sensor readings
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indicated that Ganesa's prey had not departed the Pascal System. The artificial senses just could not locate the ship she searched for. Even mechanical senses had limitations.
Her outward composure calm, Ganesa inwardly cursed. Only a madman would risk a ship the size of Star-Spider within the jumbled belt of rock orbiting Pascal.
But then, only a madman would consider taking one of Ganesa's women.
Still, the ship's size did limit its maneuvering capability. Sambriam could not penetrate to the heart of the asteroid belt. He had to remain within its fringes.
A detailed scan of the inner fringe revealed nothing. A similar scan of the outer fringe produced the same results-nothing.
Ganesa ordered another scan. This time SIPACUM provided a holographic display of every asteroid in the belt whose diameter exceeded ten kloms. The image remained a maze of jagged mountain-sized boulders.
Next the mistress of Be Lively programmed SIPACUM to eliminate all ten-klom-in-diameter asteroids more than one hundred kloms from the belt's fringes. The number of mini-planets fitting those specifications was much more manageable.
The sensor scan still produced nothing.
Ganesa sat in her con-cabin chair sulking. Ganesa did not like riddles. Her dislike for Captain Rurik Sambriam increased with each passing second.
The Diamond Lady liked even less to lose. Thus she waited. Ganesa abided. Chewing her lip. Thinking. Demanding. Wanting.
In the middle of the second night spent hovering above Pascal's orbitary plane, Ganesa awoke from her sleep. Her first inclination was to discard the niggling thought that had wedged itself into her dream.
She couldn't. In two days, she and her crew had tried everything they could think of to locate the elusive Captain Sambriam. One additional foolish idea would
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not hurt. To put the possibility behind her would allow her to sleep again.
Cloaked in a fur robe, Ganesa entered the con-cabin. Without a word to the two crew members on con watch, she commanded SIPACUM to probe for any anomalies among the asteroids on the belt's fringes.
There was no way for her to have known that it was by this very method that Captain Sambriam's First Mate had discovered HOME. The major difference was that Songan had been merely killing time while he awaited the repair of Misfit's double P drive. Ganesa stalked.
Thirty seconds after her command, SIPACUM provided the answer complete with a color-enhanced grid that located the asteroid she sought. The Diamond Lady grinned widely.
Coolly returning to her quarters, she dressed as befitted the captain of Be Lively. In her finest gown and jewels, she ordered her crew to their stations.
The hunt had ended.
Others in Ganesa's position might have rushed hi with Defense Systemry wide open and blasting. Be Lively's mistress did not. Years past, she had learned from a man named Corundum that thoroughness, while time consuming, was usually more expedient than other methods.
With crew on alert, Ganesa took her chair within the con-cabin once more. She ordered a long-range scan of the asteroid pinpointed by SIPACUM. The rocky exterior was but a shell housing "a gigantic ship- or perhaps a colony. The sensors detected lifeform readings in excess of a hundred individuals.
Now she knew that it was big, and it was manned. The scan also registered DS-ordnance. The weaponry was not manned. Nor was the ship disguised as an asteroid scanning the space about it.
Still Ganesa did not order Be Lively into the belt. Hasty decisions on the spaceways usually led to short
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lives for those who made it. Ganesa had lived a long life. She intended to live even longer.
There were several things to consider before action, if any, was taken. No action was very much an option for her at this point. Often leaving a sleeping dog alone was the most intelligent course to take. Especially when that dog was several times larger than Be Lively.
This asteroid-disguised ship definitely was that. Unmanned as was her DS, if it came to fighting, Be Lively was outclassed.
Point one for leaving the sleeping dog alone.
Why would any ship rendezvous with such a vessel in a planetless system? The answers were not obvious to Ganesa. For her there was but one answer-something illicit. Those involved in illegal activities did not care for uninvited guests.
Point two for letting the dog sleep.
On the other hand, illicit activities normally meant profit. Ganesa understood profit. Especially if a share of it were hers.
Point one for taking a closer look at the sleeping dog.
Lizina had to be onboard the asteroid-ship. And Lizina was stolen property. While Ganesa was prepared to take a loss on the woman, she didn't like it. She had her reputation to maintain.
Point two for moving in on the dog.
Mental gymnastics aside, the final consideration that prompted the Diamond Lady to order Be Lively toward the asteroid belt's inner fringe was curiosity. (There were no cats on Resh.)
With SIPACUM constantly on alert for probes and scans, the space-going brothel slipped into Pascal's orbital plane. If the larger vessel were aware of the intruder's presence, it gave no indication. Ganesa ordered her ship closer.
SIPACUM plotted a course into the asteroid belt itself. Such a course concealed Be Lively behind a shield of debris. Had the larger vessel been tracking them somehow, Ganesa would blindside them. The ac-
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tion was for her own protection as well. It was damned hard to fire on a ship hidden behind a mountain of rock.
Fifty Moms from the asteroid-craft, Ganesa ordered a halt. Floating beside a boulder a mere klom in diameter, she homed Be Lively's scanners on the sleeping dog.
Then Ganesa waited again.
Optically the departing ship did not scan as Star-Spider. Nor did the interior probes confirm the ship's identity. The ion analyzers sampled the traces left in the wake of the spacer's double P drive. Be Lively's electronic nose recognized the scent. It was the same as the ship it had tracked from the Barbro Transfer station to the star called Pascal.
When the ulterior probes revealed that the craft contained no female occupants, Ganesa's attention returned to the asteroid-ship. Captain Sambriam could wait. Their paths would cross again. The spaceways were not that big.
The woman she came in search of remained within the giant craft. The question was, how to get her back?
For thirty minutes-standard, Ganesa pondered the avenues open to her. To herself, she admitted the risk-her own fear. But she had come too far to turn and run.
"Bring us about to face that monster," she at last ordered the three at the console. "I'll give them the first chance to make a move."
While the three fed her command into Be Lively's SIPACUM, Ganesa added, "Stand alert for evasive action. At the first indication of DS activation on thek part get us back behind this asteroid!"
The scans indicated no change with the asteroid-craft. Ganesa smiled. So far, so good. She ordered intraship comm open (bypassing the women's rooms below).
"This is your captain," her voice echoed through
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the ship. "I want everyone onboard armed immediately. Stoppers and plasma guns! Prepare for boarding."
The intraship comm killed, she grinned. She had given the gargantuan craft the first move and it had just sat there. Now it was her turn.
"Full-frequency range," she ordered the three at the console. "Broadcast distress signal every three seconds."
A minute later the sleeping dog awoke. Not a fierce guard dog, but a puppy. A woman's voice came over the intership comm requesting identification and reasons for the signal.
"Long Haul out of Thebanis," Ganesa replied, amused when the voice did not ask for visual contact. "We've got an erratic double P. Had to shut her down. Afraid it would blow."
"Stand by, Long Haul," the woman replied.
Two minutes later a man reopened communications. "Long Haul, your present drift will have you in range of our tractors in twenty minutes. A repair crew will be standing by to assist with your drive."
Thanking the poor dumb bug for the assistance, Ganesa ordered that the comm be kept open and rerouted into her quarters. Twenty minutes wasn't long, but it was time enough to slip into the appropriate attire and strap on stopper and plasma gun.
Then, Coppertop, my dear, Ganesa will come calling. Her smile grew. It would be a visit the larger craft would not forget for a long time.
Maybe never.
15
All the worlds a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts . , .
William Shakespeare
Dorjan of Harb stood naked in his room, legs spread widely and arms extended straight out from his sides. Had he known of Christmas trees, he would have felt like one.
Under each of his hairless armpits dangled a duplicate of a stolen Javas sculpture. A third, attached to a thin cord strung about his waist, dangled between his legs.
"Arms up." Songan slipped a flo-robe of swirling, bright colors over his captain's head when Dorjan hoisted arms as requested. The First Mate stepped back and nodded his approval.
"You look like a tourist from Jahpur."
"Is there any reason tourists always have to dress so loud?" Dorjan inspected the eye-blinding patterns of the loose robe.
"Captain! / personally selected that handsome robe." Mock distress filled the voice of Varnalgeran Yuw. He edged back his wide-brimmed Wayne. "I did my utmost to assure that your visit to the Tawno mansion would be a colorful experience."
The Outie's pun received the same appreciation from 166
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Misfit's captain as did Yuw's clothing selection-a pained expression.
"Try walking about the room," Songan suggested.
Dorjan gave it a try. The two replicas strung from his arms nestled relatively securely at his sides. The third was less comfortable. It banged against his thighs with each step.
"If the one between my legs were a few sems higher, it would be impossible to walk," Dorjan said. "Are they noticeable?"
Songan shook his head. "The robe's folds hide them. Now, try sitting down."
Dorjan did. That was more complicated. All three sculptures did their best to swing beneath him.
"I'll have to practice that a few times. Don't want to sit down on one of these!" Dorjan rose and sat again. With care. "Easier that time."
"Don't worry about sitting. All you've got is a tour-bus ride to Tawno's mansion," Songan said. "Can you get to the statues?"
Dorjan's arm disappeared into a loose sleeve. His hand popped out an instant later, wrapped about one of Kataya's forgeries. He winked at his tattooed friend. Hand and sculpture vanished back inside the robe. When Dorjan's arm slipped back out, he was empty handed.
"Perfect!" Songan beamed. "Though you'll have more difficulty with the third one."
"I'll manage," Dorjan assured him, with austerity. "What about Edrek?"
"He's arranged everything with the insurance companies and the Disvue Security Force. The policers will have two agents among your tourist group."
Songan paused to seat himself. "If you run into trouble, it will be with them. Edrek doesn't know their identities. He won't be able to point them out to you. So keep on your toes."
"Right." Dorjan grinned. "The last thing I need is to be arrested for attempting to deliver Tawno our three presents."
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"Remember, the policers will be looking for a seller. They'd delight in nabbing you along with Tawno. It would make for spectacular headlines," Songan said, like an anxious father continuing the warning.
Dorjan agreed that was the tricky part of the job. For the past week, with Yuw's aid, rumors had been seeded along the underground grapevine-hints that a special art delivery was to be made at the mansion this afternoon. The rumors had been calculated to reach the ears of the police. They had.
The rumors were necessary. They corroborated the story Edrek had given to the authorities. The two equalled probable cause. The legal key required to unlock Tawno's vault of stolen art treasures.
The problem was that while Dorjan concealed the sculptures, he appeared to be that seller.
Songan glanced at the chronometer on the wall of Dorjan's hotel room. He raised both eyebrows and pursed his lips. "Time to get Pias of Jahpur ready for his tour."
While Dorjan and Yuw watched, the First Mate slid his makeup case from beneath the bed. He opened it and pulled out a black plastic box that contained an exodermic syringe of subcutaneous dye. Pias of Jah-pur's flesh tone was two shades darker than that of Captain Abrasax of Vainglorious.
Dorjan winced when the syringe injected the dye into his arm. Then relaxed and lifted his chin. Makeup in hand, Songan began the slow process of transforming Abrasax to Pias.
The fat woman next to Pias/Dorjan on the tour bus would not shut up. Her mouth was non-stop-a thousand words a klom.
Playing the role of tourist from the planet Jahpur, Dorjan did his best to keep up with her travelogue on the beauties and wonders of her homeworld-Lanatia. In the end, he found that a few nods and an occasional impressed "ahhhh" were sufficient for the woman.
While he maintained the charade of being fully en-
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grossed in the babbling Lanatian's every word, Dor-jan's three-hundred-sixty-degree vision took in the faces of his sixty fellow tourists. If policers were on the bus, they had done an unusually good job of camouflaging themselves. A compliment from a man whose profession was disguise and illusion-among other things.
His pick as the most likely candidates for undercover agents were a middle-aged man on the back row and a young woman seated across from him. Both were just a bit too neatly dressed. They lacked that certain harried appearance of tourists.
Dorjan didn't delude himself about his ability to detect policers. Anyone on the bus could be an agent- anyone except him. Until he completed his tasks, he would consider everyone as such.
". . . of course, you must see the Fountain of the Ice Sprites in Vidabu," the fat woman continued. Her chins waggled more than her silly eardrops.
Dorjan ahhhhh'ed and nodded. Then he tuned her out. His TPs once more taking in the bus. He smiled.
The bus-the tour-was a tribute to Tawno's audacity. It would also be the Lanatian's downfall: the core of Songan's scheme.
Twice weekly, Tawno opened his home to the public to allow all of Lanatia to view his extensive art collection. Disvue public officials had again and again cited the man for his civic-mindedness. (Tawno cited the tours as a yearly tax write-off.)
To protect his cultural investment, Tawno kept twenty guards on duty during the public tours. Guards supplied by Total Field, the agency that handled all of Tawno's security needs.
Edrek now wore the brown uniform of a Total Field guard. Had done so for the past week. (Yuw's Outie clerk within the agency, along with two liberally greased palms, had managed that.) Thus Edrek had a sound basis for the two-pronged tale he told insurance companies and police:
One: he had seen the contents of Tawno's private
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vault. (With this he established a reward claim on the items within-all from Songan's list.)
Two: he had overheard Tawno discussing the purchase of the three stolen Javas sculptures. (The main bait for police involvement. Not even policers could ignore insurance companies.)
Edrek had done his part in the job without a hitch. All that remained was for him to pick up the reward- minus taxes-when everything was over.
Dorjan's part was just beginning.
As usual he carried no weapon, except for those bioengineered into his body. He did have some assistance. Inside the shoulder bag Pias carried was a Son-gan-designed mini-scrambler.
The device-totally constructed of plastic and non-metallic conductors-would get him and the sculptures hanging beneath his robe past the scans at the man-.sion's entrance. And, he hoped, it would aid with the other security measures within Tawno's home.
Also within the bag were three other of Songan's specially designed devices-all to provide Dorjan's civic-minded host with the illusion that he had been robbed.
Everything else depended on The Shadow Walker's ability to move unseen within a well-lighted, cyber-guarded, electronically-bugged house aswarm with (human) guards. Songan had made it sound simple.
One of these days, Dorjan would stop listening to Ms tattooed friend. Life would be a lot easier. Also a lot duller.
Dorjan peered through the window at the Resh-bred dogs outside. Each big yellow beast was restrained by a handler. Each looked as if it would damn well try to take a chunk out of his backside. Or the bus, if given half an opportunity.
The Harbian's appreciation of his tourist disguise- including Varnalgeran Yuw's robe selection-trebled. (Thank you very much, Songan.)
As the rest of the passengers stood when the bus
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stopped, Pias/Dorjan rummaged through his shoulder bag. The time needed to switch on the scrambler also lost his overweight companion in the line that shoved its way from the vehicle.
The young woman across from him, and the man at the rear of the bus (his prime choices for undercover agents) also lagged behind in their seats. Sweat prickled Dorjan's armpits when he left the bus a few steps ahead of the pak.
Guards waited at the ornate door to the Tawno mansion. Their scans read nothing when The Invisible One passed through the detection fields. The scrambler was functioning perfectly!
Dorjan went forward smiling.
Inside the mansion, a tour guide greeted the group. Dorjan half-listened to the woman's spiel about the artworks they were to see and the great, generous man who had assembled it. (She made no mention of the slaves whose lives Tawno had spent to obtain the collection.)
She did say that the majority of Tawno's art objects was on the first floor of his home. So was his office, which was Dorjan's first stop on his ... itinerary.
Edrek waited in the second room the tourists entered. As planned, Dorjan approached the youth and asked the time. There was no hint of recognition in the young Lanatian's eyes.
"Sixteen-fifteen."
In reality it was four o'clock. Edrek had just told the thief that Tawno was within the house as planned. Dorjan had fifteen minutes to complete his tasks before Tawno's regular afternoon visit to his office.
Forged sculptures adangle under his arms and abump against his thighs, Dorjan moved with the other tourists toward the third room. When the group reached its destination, they had lost one Pias of Jahpur.
Shielded by his art-admiring companions, Pias/Dorjan ducked down a long wood-paneled hall. Songan's scrambler silenced telltales implanted in the walls and
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designed to announce the presence of unwanted intruders.
From the shoulder bag, Dorjan took a small plastic box. Its contents, an oval patch of plastigraft (normally used in the treatment of burn victims), he pressed to his thumb. That, in turn, he pressed to the office's thumblock. The acid-etched swirls on the plastic (matched from Tawno's fingerprints on his official credit files) deceived the optical scan. The door swung open.
Inside Dorjan hoisted his robe and unknotted the first of the forgeries. He placed it neatly atop Tawno's desk. The other two stood beside it seconds later.
Phase one complete!
A hiss came from behind the thief. Dorjan pivoted. The door! It was opening!
Dorjan acted rather than thought. He ducked behind the door as it swung inward. Heart pounding, he waited until the intruder entered and the door closed behind him. Her!
It was the fat woman from the bus!
His hand rose and fell to end in a solid blow to the back of her neck. She crumpled to the floor like a collapsing mountain.
The contents of the woman's purse spilled out beside her unconscious body. A policer's ident stared up at Dorjan. He shook his head. So much for his ability to spot those who walked the opposite side of the law from Will with the Wisp! He wondered-did she overeat and avoid decalorics because her meat contributed to her cover, or was she just an over-eater whose weakness worked for her?
He had no time to consider her reason for entering the office, nor if she had seen him enter. Less than ten minutes remained until Tawno was due.
He left the woman's messy mass on the floor and moved outside once again. Continuing down the hall, he used the plastigraft on the thumblock to Tawno's private elevator, which dropped to the mansion's sub-basements.
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The third level contained no human guards. The electronic devices and cyberguards were completely baffled by the scrambler Dorjan carried, as Songan had promised. He moved past them without the slightest indication of alarm.
The thkd level did contain Tawno's vault. The multi-combination lock might have stymied most thieves. They did not have Songan on their support team.
From the shoulder bag, Dorjan pulled a round case-plastic with non-metallic conductors. He placed it against the vault door. It did everything else. Three minutes later, the door clinked loudly six times. And it swung open.
Vault was an inappropriate term for the room beyond. The spacious area could have housed two people, comfortably. It didn't; it did contain a collection that equalled the art Tawno displayed for the public. Including the three stolen Javas sculptures.
Once more, Dorjan dipped into the shoulder bag. He brought forth a coin-sized disk which he pressed to the vault's alarm system. Magnetically, it hung in place. The final aid Songan had provided. A microtransmitter.
Phase two completed! Dorjan moved. Smiling.
Back in the elevator, he buttoned it to the ground floor. He rejoined the tourists as they passed the hall on their way to the fourth room on display. Neither guards nor fellow art lovers noticed his movement.
Five minutes later, as Tawno entered his office, Dorjan toggled a switch within his shoulder bag. The microtransmitter received the signal.
Alarms screamed throughout the mansion.
For the week that followed the Lanatian authorities' spectacular recovery of the Javas sculptures-along with a room full of stolen art objects-Dorjan and crew monitored the newscasts long distance, on a short haul to Suzi.
The jaunt was Yuw's suggestion, to pass the time while Edrek, who remained on Lanatia, fielded the
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publicity surrounding the recovery of stolen works of art.
The news reports varied greatly. Most credited Tawno with attacking a female policer when she discovered him with the three stolen Javas sculptures. (The authorities never denied that version.)
In actuality, when Dorjan had activated the alarms, every guard in the mansion had held the tourists at gun point. All except one. The man from the back of the bus. He flashed his police ID and proceeded to Tawno's office.
Five minutes later the tour group was herded into the waiting bus and driven back to Disvue with no explanation of what had occurred. Just as the bus left the Tawno estate five squad cars, apparently stationed nearby to await the big bust, screamed to a halt before the house. Twenty officers scrambled from the vehicles. The newscasts failed to mention what had drawn the fat female policer to Tawno's office. Nor was there ever a reference to Pias of Jahpur.
There was a profusion of interviews with the young guard who had led the authorities to the cache of stolen art. On the day of Misfit's return to Lanatia, the lead news story was of Edrek's acceptance of the reward checks from the various insurance agencies involved.
The next day Captain Abrasax was summoned to an attorney's office onplanet. In accord with Songan's prearranged plan, Edrek legally purchased Vainglorious for what remained of his reward (after taxes). Abrasax left the office substantially richer and, for the moment, Edrek was the registered captain of a spaceship.
The transaction was merely show. It provided a cover story for Edrek's imminent abrupt disappearance.
The two returned to Misfit before the Lanatian tax authority could get wind of the transfer and decide to take another majority share of the money. Within the hour, the spacer departed Lanatiaport.
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Once on the Tachyon Trail, Vainglorious's underbelly pods were jettisoned. Misfit became No Joke. Captain Abrasax transformed into Captain Stiggur- the identity used on Panish to purchase the needed encephaloboost cultures for HOME.
The stopover at Panishport lasted one day-Panish, just enough time to get the cultures onboard. After that Dorjan ordered Yuw to inslot SIPACUM with the HOME cassette. Thirty minutes later the computing and processing unit found the hole it needed and punched the ship into subspace. The double P drive hurled the spacer out from the center of the galaxy toward the Camadyne Void and beyond, sneering at Einstein all the way.
16
A man and what he loves and builds have but a day and then disappear; nature cares not-and renews the annual round untired. It is the old law, sad but not bitter. Only -when man destroys the life and beauty of nature, there is outrage.
George Macaulay Trevelyan, Grey of Fallodon
The coming HOME was unusual. It was a homecoming. Dorjan had felt the anticipation of the arrival since leaving Thebanisport. Expectations mounted daily in both him and his crew.
Home is where the heart is. Someone wise, whose name the winged thief did not know, had once said that. HOME always held his soul. It now contained his heart.
How many times in the past month had his thoughts returned to Lizina? It would be Lizina who waited at HOME, too. Not Coppertop. Emalia had said it would require but a month to recover the woman Kukis and Degula had attempted to submerge within herself.
Having returned to her self, had Lizina made a decision? Did a new life wait for her within HOME? Or did she now wish to return to the life that had once been hers on Panish?
The questions spun like a wheel of fortune in Dor-jan's mind. Each abrupt stop of the wheel brought a new number-a different answer. Love conquered nothing. It only complicated matters.
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He knew nothing of Lizina's life on Panish. Only that she had been abducted from the very exclusive and very expensive club Lal Autar. To Dorjan that smelled of much, much cred. A powerful magnet for a majority of Galactics!
HOME and he offered a dream of the stars. It was a dream he was not certain Lizina shared or wanted to share.
Dorjan's gaze scanned the console. The wheel rotated again. New possibilities worried his thoughts. The monotony of the Tachyon Trail-the double monotony of con-watch-provided an abundance of time to ponder uncertainties. To recognize insecurities.
A warble-pitched warning alarm sounded.
Dorjan sat straight. The SIPACUM-generated sound announced that ten minutes remained until Misfit punched back into the slower-than-light universe humankind called "real" space.
Toeing open intraship communications, Dorjan waited until the warning died, then announced the spacer's approach to Pascal-and HOME. One by one, the six members of the crew answered as they took their stations. Songan and Yuw did so in person when they entered the con-cabin and slid beside Dorjan at the console.
"Real" space returned. With it came that moment of gut-wrenching nausea and head-spinning mental dis-orientation. And it passed.
Again Dorjan toed the communications system. This time he opened intership channels. He announced Mis-fit's arrival to HOME.
There was no reply.
Dorjan's three-hundred-sixty-degree vision saw Yuw and Songan's heads jerk around. Dorjan repeated his usual greeting.
No answer.
"Give me full sensor scan." While Songan complied, Dorjan ignited Misfit's aft rockets for a ten-second burn.
"SIPACUM readings coming up on mini-display left," Songan said. "Too far out for effective optical scan."
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"Son-of-a-nug!" Dorjan tapped the aft rockets to life again, maneuvering the spacer toward the inner fringe of Pascal's asteroid belt.
The display read:
home
(habitat orbiter: modular environment) exterior configuration: memory file mismatch
wait!!!
[sipacum attempting to determine source of mismatch]
Dorjan's hands darted over the console. Nose rockets fired to slow the craft's approach to the belt. The display cleared itself and scrolled:
*mismatch source located*
exterior probe: extensive exterior alteration
BERTH lA SECTOR
INTENSE HEAT EVIDENT
< INTERIOR PROBE? >
"Keep it taking, Yuw." Dorjan telescoped the optical scanners. "Damn! Still too far out to see anything!"
"Re-open intership frequencies?" Songan asked.
"And keep them open!" Dorjan's ringers flipped toggles and pressed buttons. "I'm coursing us for Berth 1B."
What the vug was going on?
"Captain, SIPACUM's interior probe reading is up," Yuw called out. "It doesn't look good."
Dorjan's attention shifted back to the mini-display. His pulse pounded in his temples.
interior probe:
extensive interior alteration
intense heat evident
< ANALYZE? >
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The Outie did not question his captain's wishes. He ordered SIPACUM to complete its sensor-scan routine.
analysis:
exterior and interior
alterations-human
*unable to interface with
home processing and computing unit*
<bioform reading? >
Dorjan fired the prow rockets again to slow Misfit's momentum as the spacer nosed into the floating debris of the asteroid belt. Cautiously he threaded the craft through the maze. Chunks of rock and metal floated past like the garbage of a god.
"Songbird, DS!" The captain of Misfit ordered over intraship comm. "Edrek on assist!"
He didn't know what was going on-but he wasn't taking any chances. "Iniko and Hedeon suit up. Standby the airlock. We might need assistance docking."
"Captain,, take a look at the lifeform reading," Yuw called out.
bioform: human-150
Yuw had deleted the readings of HOME'S animal population.
Dorjan's jaw tightened. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. HOME held two hundred colonists-or had!
"Still no answer on intership," Songan advised. "Want me to keep hailing?"
Dorjan nodded. His attention, though, was on an overhead display. A close-up visual of HOME'S exterior as Misfit slid over the asteroid-contained space colony.
Whatever had hit HOME had turned the Berth 1A end of the asteroid to slag. He could see where rock had run molten before the cold void of space had transformed it back to a solid.
Hit was the correct word. Dorjan could make out
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the impressions of what appeared to be ten impact craters.
"Attack?" Songan asked. He sounded nauseous.
"Looks that way." Dorjan edged Misfit beyond the opposite end of the colony. He didn't like the way his own voice sounded, either.
"Who?" Yuw stared at his two shipmates. His expression was one of total incomprehension. "Why?"
"That's what we're going to find out." Dorjan's fingers jabbed at the console. His jaw twitched.
Maneuvering rockets halted the spacer's forward motion, then gracefully tumbled the ship prow over aft. SIPACUM brought the craft into a synchronous roll with the asteroid. Dorjan nosed Misfit's blunted snout toward docking Berth 1A.
Each second required for the spacer to cross the void separating it from the yawning mouth that was 1A dilated to hours in Dorjan's mind. He felt as if a rasp grated over his raw nerve endings.
Misfit nestled snugly into the berth.
Songan swiveled toward his captain when the metallic ring of a docking collar ran through the vessel. "Somebody knew we were coming."
"The question is-who?" Dorjan's hands moved over the console to kill the ship's various systemry. He opened intraship comm again. "Songbird, Edrek: remain at your stations. Iniko and Hedeon standby. I'll be down to join you."
He flicked off the intercom and turned to his Fkst Mate. "You're to remain at the con."
"But . . ." Songan began.
"No buts!" Authority rarely heard in Dorjan's voice solidified those two words. "If something's wrong, I want you here to save my ship."
Songan nodded reluctantly. Dorjan motioned to Yuw. The two joined Iniko and Hedeon at the airlock. Dorjan distributed stoppers to his companions. A fourth, he took for himself. He thumbed the setting on its handle to Three. His crewmates followed suit.
Dorjan reached out and opened the airlock.
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'Half of HOME'S population stood in the docking area-waiting.
"We would've all died rather than give her up." Elanjan glanced away from the man who had brought him to freedom aboard Murrah an Rahmyne's Pleasure Mistress. "She broke away . . . gave herself to the woman called Ganesa to stop the killing."
The list of fifty names-all Ganesa's victims-Dor-jan held in his hand was testimony to the colonists' courage. Stoppers were of little use against plasma guns.
"And Kefira?" Dorjan asked. He had gone cold, cold, all of him on pure automatic.
"We're not certain." That was Yoigan, also one of the original crew aboard Pleasure Mistress. "She was among those waiting for the ship to dock. We never found her body . . ."
"We assume she was taken by Ganesa," Elanjan added. "But we don't know ... we don't know."
A rage Dorjan had not felt in ten years shuddered violently through his body and soul. Lizina!
"Captain," Varnalgeran Yuw said softly, "Songan."
Dorjan took a deep steadying breath. He turned to face his friend. The man's expression was one of total disbelief as he walked through the wreckage Ganesa and her crew had left in their wake.
"Iniko said they blasted the drive system and the communications system." The tattooed giant shook his head.
"Just the transmitter," Dorjan said. How do I tell him? "The receiver's pos . . ."
Dorjan paused. He handed the casualty list to Songan. "Yoluta is dead . . . one of fifty people Ganesa slaughtered."
Songan stared at his captain as though unable to comprehend Ms words. His gaze slowly dropped to the list. His huge hands trembled when he passed it back to Dorjan.
"Songan ... I..."
The First Mate's hairless, illustrated head moved
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from side to side. The electronic voice box implanted in his throat was devoid of the pain in his face. "I've work to do ... people need my help. We will talk later."
He turned from Dorjan and walked away. The captain of Misfit watched his fellow Harbian. Songan's shoulders stooped forward. There was no determination in his stride.
There would be mourning, Dorjan realized. But neither he nor anyone else would ever see it. Songan would carry it within him until he found inner acceptance of what had been taken from him. That was the way of the man who followed the Tao.
The yin, the yang. The light, the darkness. They were life and death. An endless flowing of chi that provided the illusion of change, but in truth was merely a shifting of aspects.
A simple philosophy. At the present, it felt hollow. Tears welled in Dorjan's eyes. He wept for Yoluta. He wept for Songan.
The damage was serious. It was not vital. HOME would continue to live. Ganesa had not taken the colony's life.
She had set it back at least three to five years. Berth 1A would have to be sealed off and rebuilt from the outside. Damage to the five buildings was reparable.
The double P drive was useless. Puddled slag. It would take tune, but that too could be replaced.
The transmitter-was operational again. Songan had overseen the repairs.
Dorjan stood on his balcony and overlooked HOME. The dream was not dead. It still lived. The stars would belong to the colony!
Nor would Ganesa-others if they came-ever be able to inflict such damage again. The remoteness of the Pascal System had lulled the colony with a false sense of security. The security was now real.
HOME'S DS was manned around the clock. Songbird had established a training program that would
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prepare every colonist onboard to handle any future attack.
The fifty lives were not replaceable. Oh yes, Misfit would find other enslaved men and women to join HOME. But they would not fill the void left by Gane-sa's butchery.
Lizina.
The woman refused to leave his mind. Nor would Kefira.
Was he ignorant-foolish? The spaceways stretched across a galaxy. But the Farther Reaches were a different matter. He knew the Farther Reaches. Dorjan had fared among the stars at the galaxy's heart for ten years.
Ganesa's circuit encompassed even more area. Be Lively serviced the mining planets and outposts of humankind beyond the Carnadyne Void. The territory was unfamiliar to Dorjan.
Cassettes can be bought. He tried to convince himself that he and Misfit were capable of succeeding. That he was not merely deluding himself.
His head slowly nodded in resolve. He would talk with Songan. If there were an answer-a real possibility-Songan would have it.
A buzzer invaded Dorjan's thought. He turned. A green light blinked beside the door.
"Open," he called out.
The computer-based sensors monitoring his quarters responded. The door opened. Emalia entered. She smiled weakly.
"I meant to speak with you earlier, but I've had two women in labor. We have two new HOMErs. A boy and a girl." She paused. "It almost overshadows all the terrible waste we've seen."
She was right. The two infants were HOME'S true lifeblood. The colony still lived.
Dorjan waved an arm toward a sofa. Emalia accepted the offer by plopping down. She appeared near the edge of exhaustion. She ran a hand through her short-cropped black hair.
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"I think you'd better sit down, too," Emalia said. "What I've got to say may come as a bit of a shock." "After what I found here today, I don't think anything will shock me." Dorjan joined the woman on the couch. "What's the trouble?"
Emalia studied him for a long moment. "It's Lizi-na ..."
Dorjan listened while she explained. The physician's words slowly penetrated his brain.
"My child?" Dorjan watched Emalia nod. "Why didn't she tell me?"
"Because she was frightened, Dorjan. She was trying to get back to her self before she made a decision about the pregnancy. Anyone would be frightened if she had gone through what Lizina had, then to discover she carried life in her womb. It frightens me just to think about it."
"But why didn't she tell me?" Dorjan couldn't grasp why Lizina had kept the pregnancy a secret.
"Women are always frightened of men's reactions to pregnancies. Especially when they are unplanned," Emalia replied. "She was adamant about my not telling you."
"Then why are you telling me now?" Dorjan stared at the daktari, still trying to accept what she had revealed.
"Because everyone inside this topsy-turvy tin can knows what's running through your mind, Dorjan." Emalia leaned forward. "If you need more than the excuse you already have for going after her-I've just given it to you." "Everyone, huh?"
"Everyone . . . and they'll all volunteer to crew with you. All you have to do is ask." Emalia stood. "Now, I've got work to do."
The physician walked to the door. As her hand went toward the button, she paused and turned back. "There's another thing. I gave Lizina an injection at her request. It was a chemical that inhibits gestation, prolongs the normal process to eighteen months. That
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gives you a little more time to get her back so your son can be born where he belongs."
"Son?" Dorjan's head jerked up.
"Didn't I mention that?" Emalia buttoned the door open. "Lizina's carrying a son."
Dorjan stared after the woman who casually left his quarters. As the door closed behind her, she smiled back at him.
For two hours, Songan knelt before the empty straw mat. Carefully, with the strictest attention to detail the ceremony required, he prepared the tea.
When it was ready, he poured a single cup. This he placed on the empty mat.
With this, I honor you.
The tattooed First Mate of Misfit stared across the room. His eyes saw nothing beyond the tears that filled them.
Emalia closed the cryogenic compartment. She looked up at Songan, unable to read the expression he wore.
"And you're not certain that anything can be done?" Songan asked.
"No. Nor can I do it here. I have neither the knowledge nor the equipment. That is, if it can be done." Emalia studied the strange man in her domain. She didn't want to give him hope that might not exist. "My medical knowledge is limited to what was encephalo-boosted into my head and the tapes you occasionally bring me. I know nothing of regeneration, except that it exists."
"Then there is a possibility."
"It's just that-a possibility. Don't give it more weight than that." Emalia tried to make herself sound firm. It was hard with Songan. "I don't even know what planets have the facilities required to perform what I've suggested."
Songan followed her back into her office. "Then I will accept it only as that... a possibility. But I'll find
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out if such facilities do exist and what is required. A possibility is more than I had thkty minutes ago." 
He leaned down and lightly kissed the daktari's cheek. "Emalia, thank you."
"I hope you feel that way when you've discovered what is needed." For the first time, Emalia Daktari seriously doubted the feasibility of what she had done.
She glanced at the rear door to her office. Were the frozen samples she had taken truly a possibility? She silently prayed to Booda that they were. If only for the tattooed man standing beside her.
Songan had sat silently while Dorjan explained what he intended to do. His friend's face had not changed expression for the past hour. He only sat and listened.
"Will you help?" Dorjan asked.
"To find Lizina, yes. To find Kefira, yes," Songan answered. His dark eyes shifted to the balcony. "To take revenge, no. Once I was forced to kill, Dorjan. I did it to survive. I had no choice. I have a choice now. I will not become a murderer again. It won't bring back Yoluta. If you can accept that, I'll continue as Misfit's First Mate. If not, then I'll stay here and help rebuild."
"We'll have revenge without killing, if at all possible." Dorjan's voice was very quiet. And he explained the fate that awaited Ganesa when (he would not say "if") they found her.
Songan nodded his approval. "I will personally prepare the cassette."
He paused and his head moved from side to side. "Your plan lacks much, Captain. Ganesa won't be found by chasing her across the galaxy. We have to lie in wait. Let her come to us."
17
There is nothing that by universal consent is good or evil, since everyone in a natural state consults only his own profit.
Spinoza
Lizina was prepared for the worst.
Instead, an ultra-cordial Ganesa escorted her (at gunpoint) into Be Lively's con-cabin. Kefira was already there-guards to each side of the alien woman. The Akil's lemur-eyed gaze, rounder than round with panic, darted to Lizina.
Lizina shook her head. A signal for Kefira to act as though she did not know her. She feared for the white-gold-furred woman of Kuzih should Ganesa discover that they were friends. Lizina did not underestimate Ganesa's desire for vengeance-the woman had tracked her here to a little-known star system.
From the corner of an eye, Lizina caught Ganesa's gaze moving between her and Kefira. A humorless smile slid over Ganesa's thin lips. Her attention returned to the alien.
"It seems Captain Rurik has been keeping secrets from the rest of the galaxy. A lovely secret at that." Ganesa lightly ran a fingertip over the down of Kefira's cheek.
The diminutive alien shrank from the touch.
Ganesa chuckled. "You've nothing to fear from Ganesa, my dear. It's your friend who has reason to fear."
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The Diamond Lady briefly glanced at her second captive. She smiled that deadly sweet smile. An ice floe moved along Lizina's spine.
"Later we'll have time to become acquainted." Ga-nesa looked back at Kefira. "But now Ganesa must redshift before your friends inside decide to activate their DS."
Ganesa sank into her captain's chair, ordering optical scan as Be Lively slipped from docking Berth 1A. A holographic display formed above the con-the asteroid-colony called HOME.
"DS, plasma bolt barrage at five kloms!" Ganesa commanded. "Con, redshift to asteroid cover. Keep these boulders between Be Lively and that mountain. I don't want a shot slipped up our tail while we're trying to punch onto the Tachyon Trail!"
A startled cry escaped Lizina's lips.
Ten spheres of actinic light shot from Be Lively's nose. Berth 1A burst into a rosy fusion. Rock ran molten on the asteroid's face.
The sensor-view of HOME vanished. Be Lively maneuvered behind the shield of a neighboring asteroid. Safe from the colony's DS.
"Forward scan," Ganesa called to the console crew, "Get us the hell out of this Gri-forsaken system!"
Forty minutes later Be Lively cleared the inner fringe of Pascal's asteroid belt. A cassette was in-slotted to the ship's SIPACUM. A warning sounded. Ten minutes later the traveling brothel winked from-"real" space. Onto the Tachyon Trail.
Ganesa recovered swiftly and swiveled to face her captives. She pointed to Kefira. "She remains with me. And she goes below . . . isolation. Total isolation." Ganesa tilted her head in Lizina's direction.
A guard jammed the muzzle of a stopper into the small of Lizina's back. She arched, bit back her grunt. The varying pressure of the barrel and the man's occasional grunts directed her down the decorative tunnels of spacer Be Lively. Past the one hundred doors of different colors.
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Lizina's mind raced. Isolation! Total isolation! The images, the memories, of Kukis's isolation cell cram-packed themselves into her head. Every muscle in her body tried to go liquid.
She couldn't endure the darkness and the mist again. Couldn't! And Ganesa had promised worse. Much worse.
The guard directed her down a ramp (deja vu) and into an open room waiting below (deja vu). Darkness yawned within (deja vu).
"Inside." The man jabbed the stopper into her back.
Summoning every iota of strength within her, she stepped into the darkness.
Light flashed above her. Light! It bathed the small cubicle in its brightness. Relief flowed through the coppery-haired woman. There was light! Beautiful light!
The cell was just that-a cell. Two meters by two meters. Naked metal walls. A cot-sized bed attached to one wall. A combo sitter and sonic shower was shoved compactly into one corner. But there was light.
"Strip," the guard ordered without grace.
Her back to the man, Lizina did as ordered. She opened her HOME-spun fiberglass jumpsuit and stepped from it, doing her best not to provide a show for the man.
"Now turn around, stash."
She did. The man smiled, then grinned. His gaze salaciously raked over her unveiled body. The muzzle of his stopper rose. Cool plexiplas touched beneath her chin-edged her head up to face him.
"It's a long way to Mirjam." His grin widened lewdly. "A long time for a woman like you to be alone."
His left hand reached behind him. There was a clink. The door hissed closed.
"A long time for any woman to be alone." His words formed a verbal smirk. " 'Specially hard for a cake that's used to getting her stash sliced regularly. A cake's got to have it once it's been given to her. She'll go frag without it."
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The guard's hand rose again. This time to fondle one of her breasts. His thumb taunted over her nipple. Lizina stiffened.
"If you're nice . . ." the man began.
"I'd rather slice with a Shirashite!"
Lizina had never seen a Shirashite (few Galactics had)-those telepathic, telekinetic jelly-blobs of the planet Shirash. It didn't matter. She was certain the creatures' caresses would be preferable to this man's paws!
The guard's jaw dropped a sem. He stared at her as though unable to comprehend her refusal of his offer. His eyes narrowed. The lewd grin returned.
"Have it your way, stash. And . . . I'll have it my way."
He pulled the stopper from under her chin. With a twist of the weapon's setting ring, he leveled it at her chest. And squeezed.
Lizina's head roared with the crash of thunder. Then there was darkness, the protecting peace of unconsciousness.
She awoke on the metal floor, legs spread wide. The dried silvery tracks of the guard's expended lust crusted on her inner thighs.
Head athrob from the sonic blast, she shakily pushed to her feet. Her breasts hurt. Red-blue bruises darkened the golden tan of her skin. Souvenirs left by the man's teeth and hands.
She managed to stagger-walk to the shower and clean him from her body. Lizina/Coppertop, coping. Again.
There was light-always light. And there was isolation-always isolation.
Lizina lost count of the days within the cell on Be Lively. She saw no one. She heard nothing. There was the light, the bed, the shower, the sitter, the four walls, and there was Lizina.
At first, she attempted to scratch marks into the naked metal walls in an attempt to mark the passage of
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the days. There was nothing by which to judge what was day and what was not. Nor would her fingernails mar the plasteel.
She kept count of her sleeping periods, but woke on one occasion unable to remember if she had slept twenty times or twenty-one. The count was discarded.
Food, when it came (never enough) appeared while she slept. On the floor just inside the door. Her emptied tray also disappeared while she slept.
Total isolation. If this were Ganesa's concept of torture, Coppertop had fared far worse during the three days in Kukis's cell onboard Forerunner. Boredom was her only difficulty. This she staved off by a myriad of daydreams (of HOME) and plans (with Dorjan).
And she exercised. Not to keep her underfed body fit. Merely to kill the slow passage of time.
Only when she felt that now-familiar nausea and momentary vertigo did the world beyond the four walls intrude into the cell. Be Lively had slipped from sub-space.
Mirjam. The guard who had raped her had mentioned the planet. She remembered the name. The same planet on which Ganesa had intended to sell Coppertop for a bride. Did the same fate now await Lizina?
An hour after the return to "real" space, Lizina heard-felt clanking vibrations run through the floor and walls. The sounds of a spacer mating with the docking berth of a space station. She pressed an ear to the outer wall of the cell as she had a thousand times during the flight. And as in those thousand previous attempts, she heard nothing.
Two sleeping periods passed before she learned the source of the vibrating clanks.
She was awakened from that second sleep by the hiss of her cell door. She rolled over on her cot. The guard (he who had used her unconscious body) stood in the hatchway, stopper in hand. He tossed her own jumpsuit at her.
"Dress, sweetcake. Ganesa wants you." He watched
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her dress, amused smirk twisting Ms mouth. "You've still got my marks on you, stash. Should have stayed awake and enjoyed it ... instead of trying to escape."
"Escape . . ." Lizina's question died before it was fully formed.
She had attempted to escape, so he had "been forced" to use his stopper on an unarmed, naked woman. Had he already given Ganesa the unbelievable tale? Or was he just covering his tracks?
Lizina mentally filed his smirking face beside those of Thax, a cabbie named Mikk; Kukis, Degula, Tweets; and Ganesa. Her personal rogue's gallery-if ever she were in the position to return the kindnesses they had shown her.
Guided by the motion of his stopper, Lizina left the isolation cell. Not up, but down a corridor and another ramp, she moved at the man's direction. At the bottom of the ramp, she entered a triple-plated hatchway. A ship-nestled on its belly-lay within an immense bay area beyond the door.
Ship was the wrong term, she realized as she boarded the vessel. It was a boat, an in-gravity boat. A craft designed to endure the strain and heat of maneuvering within a planet's atmosphere. That was something a spacer such as Be Lively was incapable of doing.
Ganesa waited within. The Diamond Lady (quietly attired in red, body clinging web-weave) nodded for Lizina to take the padded seat beside her. She motioned for the guard to seat himself behind them.
"Tan, take us down," Ganesa said to the woman in the pilot's seat.
While Tan busied herself with the boat's con, Ganesa turned to Lizina and smiled. "I sincerely hope you've had time to consider why you're here today."
Lizina ignored her.
"Did you know that your lover boy back there has got a thing for necrophilia? He gets his cubes off zapping women with a stopper, then raping them."
There was a brief flicker of distraction in Ganesa's
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gaze. Then her oh-so-sweet smile returned. That and her affected speech patterns and mannerisms.
"Once, I promised you a husband on Mirjam. I also promised you that if you tried to cross Ganesa on Barbro, I would make what Kukis and his Degula did look like child's play." She paused to adjust two of her ostentatious diamond rings. "Ganesa is not a woman to go back on her promises, slut."
Her dark eyes fixed on Lizina as though making sure she held the captive's attention. She had.
"Other arrangements have been made for my original client. Meanwhile, I have found a man perfectly suited to your needs, my lovely Coppertop."
Lizina cringed at the word Coppertop! Emalia had returned enough of Lizina to her that she had no intention of becoming Coppertop ever again.
"He likes women with independent spirits ... he likes breaking them." Ganesa paused to smile and bat her eyes. Time to allow her words to penetrate.
"His name is Sofian Mahir," she said. "Five years ago, I brought him a bride from Thebanis. She lasted six months! Six whole months! Committed suicide, I'm told. Since then, he's begged me for another wife. Until now, I had never found a suitable match."
Six months. Suicide. Lizina tried not to imagine the man Ganesa had chosen to sell her to. But her mind haunted her with images of Sofian Mahir.
"And should you decide to try something silly once we've landed . . ."
A wasp stung Lizina's arm. Her head jerked down. Ganesa lifted an empty exodermic syringe.
"Tetrazombase. It will keep you docile through the wedding ceremony." Ganesa smiled. "It should wear off just in time for you to enjoy your first night of wedlock to the fullest."
Planetfall to Mirjam was beautiful. From orbit the mining world was a sphere of reddish copper and golds. Electric greens marbled among the dominant hues.
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Here and there, fluffy white cloud banks rolled across the surface.
The clouds were rare. Mirjam was a desert planet. Dry, sunbaked, and dusty. Mirjam gave no mercy to the life it had spawned. Shrub trees, thorn-laden bushes, razor-edged grasses, a few million varieties of hearty insects (many poisonous), and an even heartier breed of lizard known as scampers (non-poisonous).
Mirjam vouchsafed less mercy to its human inhabitants. Despite its breathable atmosphere, the heat, the lack of water, and the wind (normally hurling sand in its fifty-five-klom-an-hour fist), the planet was not meant for humankind. Yet Mirjam held copper. And where there was copper, Galactics came-and stayed.
Ganesa's in-gravity boat, I've Arrived, fell toward Mirjam, Braking rockets roared. Like a bird, wings spread from the craft's hull, and it glided. Swooped downward, howling, thundering as it entered the planet's atmosphere at mach-8-standard size.
The craft's rockets fired again. Vibrations ran through the boat as though intent on ripping it apart at the seams. Then there was quiet. Smoothness. I've Arrived circled.
Below the soaring craft lay Windbreak-a twenty-five-thousand person assemblage of prefab buildings and smelts. Windbreak (named so because the mountain range to its east served to protect it from the thousand-klom-an-hour sandstorms howling out of the desert) reigned as the planet's capital by default. Windbreak was twice as large as Mirjam's other ten colonies.
Windbreak also had a shuttleport. Only two runways to be sure, but it handled ten daily landings and take-offs. Today it trafficked eleven. The extra was I've Arrived.
Lizina saw none of this. She sat motionless beside Ganesa. Her eyes stared straight ahead, seeing but not comprehending. She was, in ancient terminology, a zombie. Would be so until her natural bodily functions flushed the injection from her system. The process took a minimum of two hours, a maximum of eight.
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The chemical, TZ, robbed her of mind and will. She existed in limbo; aware and yet unaware. No thoughts troubled her floating mind. No sensations disturbed her body. She simply existed. Action came only at the suggestion of others. In this case, Ganesa.
When ordered, Lizina rose from her seat and walked from the spaceboat. Outside, under Ganesa's specific instructions, she entered a vehicle with an insect-segmented body and great ballooned wheels. A sand-runner, the locals called it.
The sand-runner rumbled alive beneath the rough hands of a man who sat behind its controls-face split with an ear-to-ear grin. Those same hands directed it down dusty avenues lined with low-slung buildings, weaving here and there to avoid another sand-runner or a pedestrian. After ten minutes, it stopped before a four-story building-Mirjam's claim to a skyscraper.
If the magistrate within noted the woman's subdued manner while he performed the legal ceremony that made Lizina Harith the wife of Sofian Mahir, he made no mention of the fact.
Women were rare on femininely-named Mirjam. And this woman was beautiful. Truly beautiful. There was always the hope that she might tire of this mining foreman. Except for the two annual stops by Be Lively, the magistrate's bed was empty. Had been empty for three years.
(For six months after performing the wedding, the man entertained fantasies of the copper-haired woman each night while he manually relieved his natural biological need.)
Lizina was unaware of her return to the sand-runner. She did so under Ganesa's command. Climbed into the front of the vehicle to sit beside the man at the controls. A man named Mahir. Her husband.
She sat there, staring out onto Minam as the vehicle lumbered from Windbreak. Sat there while the man- Mahir-guided it over terrain that yielded no hint of ever having been traveled.
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Her first true recognition was a cool breeze gently stirring across her chest-her bare chest!
It was not a breeze, but the air from the sand-runner's cooling unit. Her chest was bare. Her jumpsuit lay open from neck to-where the man's fingers probed. Three fingers.
Her own hand clamped around the tree-trunk-sized wrist buried inside her jumpsuit. She yanked. Next, she tried it with both hands. The man's fingers kept probing as though they hadn't noticed her effort.
The man beside her grinned. " 'Bout tune you was coming out of it! Couldn't see letting this pretty little thing going to waste. And you didn't seem to mind none."
His ringers slid from her-slowly.
He tapped a series of buttons before him. The sand-runner rolled to a stop. The door to Lizina's right swung upward. Blast-furnace wind scalded into the vehicle.
"The Diamond Lady said you'd be needing a sitter," Mahir said. "You've got the whole desert."
"Out there?" Lizina stared at him.
His face was like a block of granite with a nose that had been smashed with another chunk of rock. Small scars, like razor cuts, whitely ran across his left jaw. Five of them. His body resembled bis face-granite. Short and powerful looking. Lizina could testify to the power in those arms.
His hair was cut within a quarter of a sem of his scalp, a hair style common among those who lived with Mirjam's wind and sand. Even women. His eyes were dark, small, and wide set. His mouth when he laughed was a canyon.
"Gri's sake, cake. This is Mirjam. Ain't no people to watch you do your business." He shoved her toward the door. "Get it over with. Ore City's half a night's drive. And we've both work to do tomorrow."
Lizina stepped down from the sand-runner's cab. She walked to the rear of the vehicle and relieved herself. When she stood, she scanned the desolation sur-
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rounding her. Rock, sand, and distant mountains. The wind sent swirling Wind Devils scurrying across the rocky plain.
"Might as well get it back in here. Ain't no place to run. Windbreak's two hundred kloms 'hind us. You wouldn't make thirty 'fore the heat got you." Mahir called to her. "Cab's cool."
Carefully closing the front of her jumpsuit, Lizina started back to the cab. Her head lifted. An angry sun glared white-hot into her face. Had Dorjan seen this sun-this star whose name she did not know? Did Misfit travel out among the mining planets?
She put the thoughts aside as the sand-runner's door closed behind her. She had no guarantee that Dorjan would ever learn of her whereabouts. Unless she was resigned to living her life out here-a possibly short life, if Ganesa were to be believed-she would have to act on her own.
Mahir's paw-sized hand shot out to grab the collar of her jumpsuit. He yanked. The molecular binding gave way, and she was again exposed.
"If I'd've wanted it closed, I'd kept it closed!" He glared at Lizina, his face angry as the sun outside. "I paid a pretty price to have me a new wife. And that's exactly what I intend to have me."
For the first time Lizina saw that Mahk's khaki-colored pants were open. His slicer, as granite-appearing as the rest of him, was exposed.
"A man and a woman can make a fortune on a world like Mirjam. My first woman didn't understand what was expected of her. Ganesa told me you would." His eyes narrowed. "Ore City is a town that don't see many women. Do you understand?"
Lizina understood. She nodded dully.
"Good." Mahk's fingers ran across the controls. The sand-runner trundled forward.
"My first woman got notions about running away to Windbreak with a blastman. I caught them a hundred kloms out of Ore City. Stupid stash!" His head jerked around. "You ain't that stupid, are you?"
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Again Lizina nodded subserviently. The first woman Mahir had purchased from Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe hadn't committed suicide. He had killed her- and the man she had run away with.
Booda! What had she been thrown into?
Mahir's hand rubbed at Lizina's shoulder.
"Long as you do what I say, we'll get along all right. If you understand that, there ain't nothing else to understand." His fingers combed through her hair. "I'll see that you have a roof over your head and food in your belly. And a nice soft bed."
He laughed. Chills shuddered up Lizina's spine. His hand closed on her hair and pulled.
"With that bed and a year or two, you'll make me enough stells to buy this whole damned planet!" He laughed again, as though lost in his own private joke.
His hand, firmly clenched about her copper-colored hair, pulled her toward him. She whimpered.
"It's a long haul to Ore City. We might as well get friendly ... get to know each other better."
His hand dragged her face to his crotch. For an instant the fingers were gone from her hair. They re-materialized on the back of her neck. Mahir squeezed. Just enough to let her know that one hand held the power to crack her spine as if it were a sliver of dry wood.
Without further direction, she did as he wanted. She opened wide and showed the bastard some expertise.
18
Weapons are tools of bad omen, By gentlemen not to be used; But -when it cannot be avoided, They use them with calm and restraint. Even in victory's hour These tools are unlovely to see; For those who admire them truly Are men who in murder delight. Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Five Hawking-built double P drives arrived at the Barbro Transfer Station onboard the enormous freighter called Sunduster. Destined for the planet Ghanj, the highly prized drives were offloaded and stored in level seven of the space station.
A month later the spacer Sump'N Else arrived to transport the engines to Ghanj. The drives had disappeared from level seven. Nor were they to be found on any other of Barbro's ringed levels. Or even in the station's computer files. Indeed, those drive systems had never existed, according to Barbro's records.
(In fact, four had been sold on Qalara three weeks prior to Sump'N Else's docking at the station. The transaction was made by Captain Beall of Luhra. The fourth found its way to an overlooked star system called Pascal.)
The matter of the missing drives was eventually set-199
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tied in court. Insurance companies settled. Barbro's rates rose sharply.
On Resh lived a computer programmer, Yasa by name, who dreamed of wealth. There, too, was a strange little overweight man with a peculiar affinity for a chapeau called a Wayne. This man was named Zoryzawayit Eff and claimed the homeworld Samanna.
When these two met (by an intricate prearranged accident) Yasa did not question the origins of the fairy godfather who suddenly appeared in his life. (None of his business that Eff's name, appearance, and accent were common to those who hailed from the planet Outreach.)
Yasa simply accepted the wealth Eff spread across his palm (enough to buy four spaceship drives, were that Yasa's wish). The next day at the Resh Interplanetary Bank, where Yasa had worked for twenty loyal years, the man made one addition to the bank's computer memory. (A deletion, actually.)
The credaccounts of one Ganesa of Resh no longer existed.
Yasa never saw Eff again. At Effs suggestion, however, Yasa assumed the identity of Suz of Shankar and purchased a ticket to the rimworld Subhanallah. A fascinating planet brimming with the exotic. There Yasa lived comfortably ever after (until his death at age one hundred years-standard).
In orbit around Resh was a ship called Lively Me. The ship was registered under the name Ganesa, & woman known for the pleasures she brought to the worlds beyond the Carnadyne Void. Many considered Ganesa a genius. They looked forward to her return to see this fine vessel.
One morning a crew that had worked for months refitting the spacer for its maiden voyage under a new captain found the vessel gone-vanished into the nothingness of space.
In truth, Ganesa's genius had met a greater genius;
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a man who, for the moment, called himself Sital. Lively Me had not magically disappeared. It had merely taken to the Tachyon Trail.
The spacer bore the name Alck's Special when it was sold on Murph. Sital used the name Alck when he personally made that sale. Neither man nor ship could be recognized as its former self.
Genius!
On Murph a certain Aja, captain of Lady's Wish, approached Captain Mingan of Fleet Profession. Her proposition was the purchase of her cargo (human: ten women and ten men) destined for Terasaki. A profit was to be had, Aja assured her fellow spacefarer. She would deliver the cargo herself, but Terasaki was too hot for Lady's Wish. Would be for a long time.
For the first time in her twenty years on the space-ways, Aja made a serious mistake.
Mingan did relieve her of the cargo. He also relieved her and her all-female crew of two hours of their lives. It was time spent in the oblivion of unconsciousness (stoppers set on Two).
In a world far away (a world built on a dream) twenty men and women found freedom. For a time they called their new world HOME. Then it became simply home.
The Barbro Transfer Station Authority was in a panic. Those who sat at the top considered suicide. The memories of their processing and computing units had been wiped-completely. They found no glitches or bugs. No explanation was ever discovered.
Genius was at work.
A cargo hold full of computer parts destined for Qalara vanished from the station. It materialized onboard a spacer that subspace jumped to Lanatia.
On Lanatia computer parts were always in demand. Especially if they were sold at fifty per cent of the current market value. At prices that low, no one asked questions.
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On Lanatia, too, a genius began to learn of regeneration. It was just a beginning. Even so, what he learned brought a frown to his subcutaned black face.
Three sculptures by the long-dead artist Javas were carefully crated for transport via hovervan from Disvue to Lanatiaport. Two guards sat within the van, armed with stoppers beamed to kill. (The insurance company was taking no chance of losing the valuable artworks again.)
When the hovervan arrived at Lanatiaport two hours later and the crates were opened-two bricks of synthe-stone stood within.
Authorities speculated that master of thieves-The Shadow Walker-had visited the planet.
They were correct.
The purchase of equipment that could readily be modified into a Defense System to equal the weaponry used on a space station alerted Panish customs officials. They notified the nearest TGW destrier. TGW, in turn, decided that spacer Maelstrom would be thoroughly searched upon its arrival at Meccah.
Maelstrom never reached its destination. Nor did Meccah Registry hold any record of the ship or its Captain Rafi.
Through normal bureaucratic channels this information was passed to TGO. What became of it within The Gray Organization TGW never knew. No one knew what went on within TGO, not even its uniformed arm.
At HOME, a Jarp who used the human name Songbird tweeted and whistled while it gave repeated demonstrations of the colony's updated DS.
It was a bad day for asteroids.
On the planet Rooked, fifty men happily said their marriage vows. Fifty women, who had expected another year's employment onboard Ganesa's Traveling
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Bakery Shoppe repeated those vows and joyously kissed the men at their sides.
Then they kissed the men at the sides of other women. They kissed and hugged one another.
Barrels of Rooked-brewed beer were rolled to the square of a town called Little Hope. That night for fifty men and fifty women there was hope on Rooked. New hope for new lives.
The small town of Little Hope celebrated by dancing, laughing, and singing (the beer, while green and somewhat bitter, was potent)-and making love. It was a time of joy.
The joy was shared by all but one person-Ganesa of Resh.
Upon Ganesa's arrival at Rooked, the Reshi woman had learned of her nonexistent credaccounts and the stolen Lively Me. Attorneys informed her that the matters were being thoroughly invested. They also told her that the chance of recovery was nil.
Thus Ganesa had liquidated her stock of brides. She needed cash; in-hand cash. Someone was out to get her. Someone who played rough.
Who?
She could think of no one. No one who had the power to do what had been done to her.
Who?
Thebanis, Lanatia, Murph, Qalara, Barbro-Son-gan's definition of lying in wait for Ganesa did not correspond to Dorjan's. He did not protest.
Misfit, her captain and crew (in a myriad of disguises) had stayed busy. On the move. The rewards were substantial. HOME was on the road to recovery. And there had been little time for the spacer's crew to ponder what Ganesa had stolen from them.
Returning to Barbro, though, always summoned to mind the ship's real purpose for traveling the space-ways-a floating brothel known as Be Lively. Sooner or later, Ganesa's circuit would bring the ship back to the space station. Sooner or later.
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When it did . . .
"Captain, Barbro control on interchip comm," Son-gan announced.
Dorjan opened the communications link with a nudge of his booted toe. "Captain Dasan of Nobigthing out of Luhra. Docking assignment requested."
"Captain, we're under tight security here. Would you open visual, please?" the controller's voice came from a grille on the con.
"An unusual request, isn't it?" Dorjan's voice brimmed with indignation.
"Granted, Captain. But there's a TGW destrier stationed twenty-five kloms out to handle all ships that do not comply with that request."
"TGW!" The indignity in Captain Dasan's tone increased. "What have the spooks got to do with my docking?"
It was bluff-a game that had to be played. To give in too easily would cause suspicion. No spacefarer who traveled the parsec abyss would allow the privacy of Ms ship to be invaded without verbal battle.
"Captain," the controller continued, "your vessel is under TGW scan at this very moment. I suggest you comply without delay. The policers are a bit jittery. They've been hoping for some target practice."
"A flainin' outrage!" Dorjan answered while he nodded to Songan to transmit visual. "I'll file official complaints the moment I've docked."
"Standard issue forms are available at Hometown section Q7," the voice from the station replied. "Now, Captain Dasan, before I can issue a docking assignment you must agree to TGW inspection of your vessel."
"What?" Dorjan let loose with a string of curses.
"Forms for that are also available, Captain," the controller replied. "I should warn you that refusal of the search will bring that destrier down atop you before you can jam-cram."
More curses, more protests. When Dorjan judged
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that he had played the game to the hilt, he agreed to the search.
"Nobigthing cleared for docking Berth 11Z9," the voice replied. "Offload crew standing by."
With another chorus of vehement curses, Dorjan nosed the spacer toward Barbro. Ten minutes later the docking collar closed about the ship to secure her in berth. Five minutes after that two TGW officers boarded.
The official search was concluded within an hour and Nobigthing given a clean bill of health. Offloading took another two hours. Following that Dorjan, in keeping with his role as Captain Dasan, left ship and lifted to Hometown where he filed in his formal complaints. He also went through the routine of searching for a new cargo to take back to the galaxy center.
He learned that Be Lively was at Barbro.
The Jarps' names were Talk Softly and Screamer (their human-endowed names). That was not important.
What was important was that both were spanner-pushers onboard Be Lively. And that they were Jarps.
(Jarps persistently claimed they were not constantly in heat. Just more open about sex than Galactics. Thus they gave the impression that the orange-skinned aliens were continually on the make. Galactics-humans- had, of course, always been in perpetual heat. Rut and estrus, the drivers of the races.)
The Jarps were Phase One.
Only too happy to find such agreeable Sunflowers as Captain Dasan and his computrician Paladuracan Fri, Talk Softly and Screamer invited the men to share the pleasures of the vacant one hundred rooms on Be Lively. Dasan and Pala agreed, of course.
Onboard Be Lively, Pala and Talk Softly disappeared behind a canary yellow door. Screamer led Dasan into the room that waited beyond a puce door.
Screamer never had the chance to touch the light switch. Dasan drew the stopper he wore and squeezed
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its handle. The Jarp jerked spasmodically under the sonic beam, made a ridiculous noise, and dropped to the floor unconscious.
Monofilament wire concealed beneath the captain's shirt served to bind Screamer's arms and legs in a fashion once called hog-tied. Dorjan/Dasan stripped a case from a pillow and gagged the Jarp. If Screamer awoke before he and Yarn completed their task, it would cause them no problem.
Outside the room with the puce door, Dorjan met Yuw. The Outie had disposed of his amorous Jarp in similar fashion.
Phase One completed.
Onboard Misftt/Nobigthing, Songan (with Edrek in the Mate's seat) cleared the spacer for embarking in one hour. He was damned pleased the controller had not required visual. His makeup would not have concealed the droplets of sweat that glistened on his forehead.
Barbro Controller Bedir cleared Be Lively for docking collar release in an hour. He cursed once he'd cut the communications link.
Just my luck. Every other controller that's ever worked Ganesa's Traveling Bakery Shoppe has received a special date! Me-/ don't get the time of day!
He forgot Be Lively when an incoming spacer demanded his attention.
Dorjan and Yuw ducked out of Be Lively's deserted con-cabin. Clearing the vessel for release had been easier than expected. Now the real work began.
Together they hastened down tunnels and ramps to the craft's third level. The two crewmembers who sighted them dropped under the hum of stoppers. Within minutes the two were bound and gagged. Dorjan and Yuw moved on to the ship's spaceboat.
"Can you handle it?" Dorjan asked while Yarn examined the control console.
"No, but I can have her ready and running by the
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time you get here," the Outie assured him. "Shall we go find The Diamond Lady and the rest of her crew?" Phase Two completed.
"Manual tracking, understand?" Songan watched Songbird nod its orange head. "If we have to activate DS, we'll have only a couple of seconds' jump on the destrier. With luck DS won't be needed. But if it comes to a fight, I want your first barrage to broadside the spooks. SIPACUM should punch us on the Tachyon Trail by the time they can return fire."
Songbird whistled its approval and left the con-cabin. There would be more than asteroids in its sights today.
Songan swiveled to Edrek. He passed a cassette to the youth.
"One more time. The instant you hear me say 'we surrender'... I don't care if Dorjan and Yarn are only a sem away from the aklock . . . you inslot that to SIPACUM."
Edrek glanced down at the cassette and crystal it held at its center. Songan had explained jam-cram to him-Forty Per Cent City. He had forgotten the exact odds of survival (with and without damage) if a ship were thrust instantaneously into subspace.
He did remember the forty per cent (40.2269%). Those were the odds for non-survival.
The remaining six crew members of Be Lively Dorjan and Yarn found within the crew quarters on second level. These received the same treatment as the first four.
Ganesa was on first level in the four spacious rooms she called the captain's cabin. She went for her own stopper when the two intruders entered. Yuw jangled her with a beam on setting One from his gun. Her weapon was in Dorjan's holster when the Outie released the mistress of Be Lively.
"Who in Gri's hell are you?"
"Messengers from Captain Sambriam," Dorjan an-
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swered. "He gives you a choice-a chance for life-or death. He wants the two women you took from him."
"Sambriam!" Ganesa laughed and spat in Dorjan's face. "Who does he think he is? He stole one of the women from me!"
Sambriam? Was he the one who had done everything but take Be Lively from under her feet? Did the man have that much power?
It had to be him. Who else did she know that owned a space colony? Something as immense as that asteroid cost money-big money.
For the first time in a long, long, long time-Ganesa was afraid. She sensed Gri, the terrible, jealous god of Resh, reaching out to claim her soul.
"We're wasting time," Yuw said. "Let's kill her and be done with it. Sambriam will never know the difference. Tell him the tired old stash wouldn't come clean.""
"The choice is yours, Diamond Lady," Dorjan repeated while he calmly wiped the spittle from his face. "Personally, I believe Sambriam would prefer that your death took time. While I lack certain subtleties cultivated on Resh, I assure you I do not lack for means to provide you with a most unpleasant and lingering death."
Dorjan held out his right hand for her inspection. Muscles twitched. Muscles that should not have been there. Claws extended from his fingers. Glittering metal claws.
Ganesa gasped. Her dark eyes widened.
"And this is a vibe-knife." Dorjan extended the bio-engineered sonic blade toward Ganesa's face. "It's small, admittedly. But it's very effective. It does take longer to cut deep."
He reached out and grasped Ganesa's fiery red hair. He jerked her to him. The finger-inset blade slashed downward. Ganesa screamed. The blade hummed through the handful of hair.
Ganesa dropped to her knees before this terrible man. She sobbed and pleaded. Dorjan merely released the locks he held, letting them fall forlornly to the floor.
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"I like to start with the face-a layer of skin at a time." He was making it up as he went along, but it sounded good.
"No! Please!" Ganesa barely managed to get the words out. "I'll tell you where I sold them. I'll tell you!"
"Talk."
"The alien woman . . . Kefira. On the planet Gowon. A man named Rimril bought her. He's the head man with Gowon Mining Combine. Out of Thebanis. He'll be onplanet . . . Gowon . . , for a year."
"Lizina?" Dorjan asked.
"Who?" Ganesa looked puzzled.
"The other woman you took from the colony," Dorjan answered. "Where is she?"
"Mirjam. I sold her as bride to a man named Sofian Mahir. He's a crew foreman for a copper mine in a colony called Ore City."
"Tie her up," Dorjan ordered Yuw. "And gag her."
"You said you would let me live if I told you." Ganesa shook her head in disbelief. This couldn't be happening to her-not Ganesa, The Diamond Lady!
"I said I would give you a chance to live," Dorjan corrected.
While Yuw bound her feet and hands, then stuffed a wad of red reelsilk (actually it was real silk, torn from her gown) into her mouth, Dorjan withdrew a cassette from a pocket. He held it out for Ganesa to examine.
"In ten minutes Be Lively will leave Barbro. At twenty-five Moms out this will be inslotted to your SIPACUM." Dorjan slipped the cassette back into his pocket. "The first part of the program does absolutely nothing but count from one to six hundred . . . one numeral per second. When the last number is read, the real program is fed into SIPACUM."
Dorjan paused staring at the Reshan woman. "It's an order to jam-cram Be Lively. That's the chance at life I give you, your crew, and this ship. Forty Per Cent City. Far greater odds than you gave the fifty men and women you killed in the Pascal System."
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Dorjan turned to Yuw, and his voice was just as scarily emotionless. "Time to move." The Outie nodded.
Songan maneuvered Misfit from the docking berth. Beside him Edrek sat, cassette in hand. The youth silently prayed to Booda that there would be no need to inslot the cassette. Songan, meanwhile, trusted himself to the Way. What would be, would be.
Songbird manually sighted on the TGW destrier . . .
Below, Iniko and Hedeon waited by the airlock ready for their captain's arrival. One asked for good fortune from his ancestors. The other prayed to Musla.
Dorjan swung Be Lively toward the Carnadyne Void at ten kloms out from Barbro. He gave the ship a short burst of its aft rockets. Scans read Misfit moving on a parallel course three kloms off the port side.
Pulling the cassette from his pocket and placing it on the con, Dorjan donned the spacesuit he had brought from below. Once he inslotted the cassette, there would be no time to put on the suit.
He secured the helmet while the sensors relayed the distance from Barbro-twenty-five kloms.
He shoved the cassette home. And ran.
Down to level two. Down to level three. Four minutes gone!
Yuw (in spacesuit) waited for him within the in-gravity boat. All systems were up and ready as promised. Only awaiting a pilot. That seat Dorjan took. His fingers punched and jabbed. Inner airlocks closed. Outer ones opened.
The boat blasted free of the larger craft. Yuw clutched the cassette wheel he had taken from Be Lively. Dorjan trusted to the Tao and his ability. He set the small ship on a course that would bring it within a hundred meters of Misfit.
"Time to get ready for a walk." Dorjan swiveled from the console and moved to the airlock.
Yuw still holding tightly to the stolen cassettes fol-
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lowed his captain. The airlock opened. The star-speckied blackness of space yawned endlessly before them.
"Misfit." Dorjan extended an arm toward the ship. "Ready?"
"Ready!"
The in-gravity boat swung around to parallel the larger ship's course. An airlock on Misfit's side opened in a metal yawn. Dorjan pushed into space. His fingers pressed a red button on the belt of his suit. Back-jets fired to hurl him across the chasm of nothingness that separated the two vessels.
Thirty seconds in all and Dorjan and Yuw were safely within the closed airlock of their own ship. Air hissed loudly around them, replacing the vacuum of space.
Neither man bothered to remove his spacesuit. Instead both ran toward the con-cabin the moment the inner hatch of the airlock opened.
Seven minutes had passed.
"Inslot the Mirjam cassette," Dorjan ordered when they took their places at the console. "Songan?"
"TGW is hailing Be Lively," the First Mate answered. "The destrier is still stationary, though."
"Let's hope it stays that way." Dorjan wrenched off his helmet and tossed it to Edrek. "Optical scan on Be Lively!"
Songan switched the scan. A mini-display to Dor-jan's left gave him the view he desked.
Nine minutes had passed.
"Captain, these cassettes are programmed to punch us through with a two minute warning," Yuw called out.
"Don't complain," Dorjan said. "The destrier's coming about."
He watched the shark-sleek TGW vessel begin its lumbering maneuver. It would take six to eight minutes before the destrier's prow replaced its stern. Enough time to do what had to be done. With luck.
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A warning warbled from SIPACUM. Two minutes until Misfit hit the Tachyon Trail.
"Thirty seconds and Be Lively jam-crams," Songan counted down the remaining time.
Dorjan opened the intraship comm. "Everyone secure himself!"
He punched a series of green-glowing buttons. Misfit's sublight drive roared-full thrust. The spacer shot forward, away from Be Lively. Away from the force that could suck the ship into subspace along with the traveling brothel . . . sans "girls."
". . . three . . . two . . . one . .." Songan counted.
Be Lively filled the mini-display one moment. The next, it was gone. Jam-crammed onto the Tachyon Trail.
Seventy per cent chance for survival with undefined damage, Dorjan thought. Over fifty-nine per cent for survival intact. Better than the odds Ganesa had give HOME. Far better.
"The destrier's hailing us now," Songan said. "Answer?"
"Ignore!" Dorjan said. "She's fast, but not that fast. By the time she's in position to try one up our tail, we'll be tachyons."
They were.
Dorjan grinned widely when the disorientation of the jump passed. A few more days and Lizina would be at his side again. Then on to Gowon to reclaim Kefira. The way seemed clearer than it had in months.
19
Oh, freedom! Oh, freedom! Oh, freedom over me! And before I'd be a slave, I'll be buried in my grave . , . Anonymous, spiritual
Lizina lay on her back watching the young man dress. He visited her (and her bed) twice a week. More if the opportunity presented itself. Still, there was a shyness about Mm. A boyish quality that Lizina cherished.
In his own way Chane (pronounced CHAD-neh) loved her. It was a classical case of a young man and older woman. Chane was only twenty.
Lizina felt a thousand.
"You're beautiful. Did you know that?" His gaze caressed her nudity with appreciation. "I don't understand that son-of-a-vug Mahir. How could he do this to you?"
Lizina smiled weakly and gently shook her head. Chane was young-and innocent. In her own way she loved htm.
Motherly flitted in her mind. It was partially that. She felt protective of the boy (she thought of him as a boy). A feeling he returned, though he was powerless against Mahir.
Mostly she enjoyed the companionship Chane gave. He came to talk with her as well as to visit her bed. Lizina admitted it; she enjoyed the bed also. Chane
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understood makhseem instinctively, although he had never heard the word.
Even when he had paid for her body, he came to her with tenderness. With gratitude for what she provided. He thoughtfully tended her needs and satisfaction. Something none of the other men who paid their way into her bedroom did! There was no way not to think now and again of Jonuta, who had flashed and flashed her, so long ago . . .
Were circumstances different, she and Chane would have been friends. That a friendship (it was that, even with the bed) blossomed hi this hellhole called Mirjam never ceased to amaze her.
Now it was to end. Her one island of succor was leaving.
"You should come with me." Chane sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand. "We could make it."
"Chane . . ." She squeezed his fingers tightly. "You know what Mahir would do when he found us."
There was no if he found us. Mahir would find them. When he did, he would kill them the way he had his first wife and lover. Lizina could never place this boy hi that position. Life, even when the majority of it was spent on back and knees, was preferable to death. With life there was always a chance!
"I'd be ready when he came." Chane patted the stopper bolstered at his waist. "I know how to use this. No man, not even Mahir, can survive a blast on setting three."
For three weeks Chane had talked of using the stopper on Mahir. He had shown her the weapon-disassembled and reassembled it for her. Shown her all its intricate workings.
It was false bravado. If Lizina thought for a moment that the young man were actually capable of using the gun on another man, she would have agreed to go with him.
Instead he would be shipping offplanet without her. She would remain, married to her bed and the man
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who slowly accumulated a fortune from selling her body.
"Lizina, I know if things were different ... it ... it wouldn't be the same between us. But that doesn't matter. I want you to come with me. I want to take you away from here . . . from Mahir and what he's doing to you."
Chane's words and expression were a plea. A nice boy. A nice looking boy.
"Chane, we've been through this before." She lightly touched his cheek. "You'd best leave or you'll miss the sand-runner to Windbreak."
"Lizina ... I love you."
She pulled him to her and kissed him. One kiss to say all he had meant to her. All she would miss of him.
She eased him from her. "Go. Get out of here before I do something that will get us both killed. Go on!"
She watched him rise. He stared at her in confusion. Then he turned sharply and walked from the bedroom without glancing back. She heard the door close behind him.
Tears gathered in the copper-haired woman's eyes. Tears? She thought there were none left within her. In a universe populated with scum such as Mahir, there were always real humans. People who touched and allowed others to touch them. Chane was one.
She rose from the bed to button open a window shutter (all windows on Mirjam were shuttered tightly to keep out the sand). Chane was walking down the dusty street outside. She watched him until he turned at the corner and disappeared.
Her gaze moved over the town outside as the shutter closed. Ore City. A company-owned town of five thousand. Every person dedicated to stealing the copper locked in Mirjam's bedrock bowels.
One out of five people hi the town was female. All married. Only one of those thousand women was available-at a price. Mahir found no shortage of taps among the three thousand womanless men who worked the mines.
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He would have worked a stable of women had he been able to swing it. The company was strict-one man, one woman. Women were too scarce to be hoarded. Thus Mahir worked only one woman.
No one complained about the astronomical price he charged. It was ten times the amount Coppertop received at the Light Fandango on Panish. I've worked up, she thought, more wearily than bitterly.
When times grew lean (they often did between monthly pay days) there were always Mahir's weekly trips to Windbreak. A town with double the population of woman-hungry men. Taps abounded, ready to pay the outrageous prices.
Soon, Lizina thought. Soon she would find a way out. She, not Chane or someone similar. Each day she felt that time growing nearer.
How, or when, she wasn't certain. But it was coming. It was coming.
It began with Emalia, she realized. HOME'S physi-cian just hadn't had enough tune before Ganesa's invasion of the colony. Too much of Coppertop had remained in her mind when the Diamond Lady had sold her to Mahir.
But time was talcing care of that. Slowly and surely. I am! I will prevail!
Chane provided the first opportunity to rebel. The young man offered a way to get back at-to cheat- her husband.
She had given herself free of charge to Chane. Time stolen while Mahir was away in Windbreak or when he pulled double-shift at the mine. She had used Chane to get at the man who owned her. (Oh, it was legal, but she was Mahir's slave just the same.)
She was ashamed of her manipulation of Chane, now. She had endangered both their lives for petty spite. That had been before she had come to care for the much younger man. Weeks ago she had told Chane how she had used him. His visits since then had been his own decision.
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A childish beginning, but a beginning. A first step. One that led to others.
Her plan (she called it that though it remained nebulous in her mind) included escaping Mahir and stealing a sand-runner. The vehicle would take her to Windbreak and its shuttleport. From there, the stars were open to her.
A plan-or a dream? At times she was not certain.
The scheming continued. On the drives to Windbreak, she watched Mahir. She learned the sand-runner's control console. Read his fingertips while they tapped the multicolored, glowing buttons and panels.
She learned the landmarks and the coordinates required to cross the desert from Ore City to Windbreak. When the time came, she could make the journey. She knew she could.
She had also carefully studied Mahir each tune he deposited the ridiculous sums she earned. The stells were accessible via the computer within Mahir's quarters (she did not think of the rooms about her as her own). All that was needed was an account number.
That she had stored safely in her mind. When the time came, she would be ready.
Only one thing-two things-evaded her. When was that time? And how to eliminate Mahir?
The latter she had pondered at great length. Relished the various ways she would kill Mahir while each of the men he brought mounted and used her.
Too much of Coppertop remained within her brain for her to bring any of those delicious thoughts of revenge to life. She was too frightened of what the bastard would do were she to fail. Her life was hell- but it was life!
"Flainin' sisterslicers!" Mahir slammed a palm to the door panel when he entered. "They ain't got the brains Musla gave them!"
Lizina jumped from her chair. Ready for the worst.
The "they" were the mine's administrators. Once
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again, her husband had been given a task he wanted no part of.
"Scum-suckin' toads! If they'd wanted the damn drill bits why didn't they mention it two days ago when I drove to Windbreak! Now they want me to drive there and back tonight! Booda's ass!"
Lizina turned from him. With luck she could get his dinner, and he would be on his way before his rage turned on her.
"Where the vug do you think you're goin', stash!" Mahir glared at her. "Betcha you're tickled silly, ain't ya? Think with me gone you won't have no business tonight. Forget it! Five of the boys will be over to keep you entertained."
"I was going to get your dinner." Her voice was meek. She raged inside. "I was going . . ."
". . . to give your husband a goodbye kiss." He grinned.
Mahir motioned her to him.
She knew, the kiss he wanted. It was all he ever wanted from her, aside from the stells she earned for him.
Without protest, she went to him. She lowered herself to her knees and opened his fly. Mahir was a man of habits. Of unchanging demands. She met those demands. To have done otherwise would have brought her unnecessary hardships beneath those paw-sized hands.
She had learned that lesson repeatedly during her first week in Ore City. Now she submitted. The bruises were gone, mostly.
His slicer was free. She reached out and took him by the hips to pull him forward. Her mouth opened wide to accept the fleshy burden. Her lips closed about him and her tongue laved.
She performed as he desired-physically. Mentally her mind was elsewhere.
On the solid plexiplas rod beneath her left hand. Excitement and fear quaked through her. Mahir's stopper! It was in her hand! All she had to do was wrench it from the holster!
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She shoved the thought away. The man would be on her before she could free the gun. It would be impossible.
Or would it?
Again fear and excitement trembled through her. She sensed that the time she had waited for had arrived. Outside a sand-runner waited. All she had to do was get to the vehicle. The key to that lay in her hand.
And her mouth.
In that instant, she realized that Lizina had returned to her-totally. Coppertop was truly a part of her past. For Lizina would rather die than endure the life-the existence-that was hers on Mirjam.
That's the choice. A chance at freedom, she told herself. Or death.
There were no inbetweens. If she chose to fight, it had to be all or nothing. It was a decision Copper-top could never have made. For Lizina it was easy.
Hungrily, she worked him hi her mouth. Her head bobbed. Her tongue licked. Her lips sucked. Eagerly, edaciously, she gave Mahir what he wanted with triple the enthusiasm she had ever shown. She wanted him out of his mind with pleasure-for one brief instant.
His pelvis thrust forward in an effort to bury himself in her throat. Her hand slipped around the stopper's handle. As Mahir staggered back bestially groaning his pleasure and relief, she jerked the weapon free.
She didn't think. Merely pointed and squeezed.
Mahir danced-a puppet under the beam of sonic force.
"Vug!" Lizina cursed.
The gun was set at One. She had hoped for Three. She had wanted to watch him fry-watch his body burned to ash, then reburned.
Beam leveled at the man who had degraded her, humiliated her, used her, and sold her as a common whore, she stood. She wiped the taste of him from her mouth, and spat.
Never again. For me or for any other woman. Never!
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Chane had taught her about stoppers. She told Mahir about her lessons and the time she had stolen from him while the sand-runner trundled across the desert. She told him how she had planned for this moment, right down to memorizing his credaccount number at Mirjibank. (The account's contents were now stuffed into the pockets of her jumpsuit.)
She explained everything to him-at gunpoint. Stopper dialed to its third setting. The kill setting: Fry.
Night came to the desert. Lizina ordered Mahir to stop the sand-runner. He complied without question. Next he climbed from the cab in front of his wife to stand before the vehicle's headlights.
"Strip," she commanded.
He did. The night was cool-almost cold. Sweat stood out on Mahir's forehead. He had no doubt that she was going to kill him.
He deserved to die. Lizina wanted to watch him die. But one squeeze of the stopper's grip would be too quick. It would be over too fast to begin to repay her for all she had endured at his hands.
She had another plan. The end would be worse than death.
She flicked the stopper's setting to low. She squeezed. Held by invisible strings, Mahk did a jig on the desert sand.
While he danced, she stooped and found two rocks on the ground. She placed the stopper atop one. The other went on top of the stopper's handle. The weight of the second provided the pressure to trigger the weapon's firing mechanism, and keep triggering it.
Mahir writhed and twisted within the almost invisible beam of force.
"I'm not going to kill you." She knew he could hear and understand her every word. "I'm going to leave you here. There's a possibility you might dance your way out of the beam."
She gathered his clothes from the ground and tossed them into the sand-runner.
"Then  you'll  have to  contend  with the  night's
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cold . . . and the sun tomorrow. It's only a hundred kloms back to Ore City. Remember what you told me? You might make it."
She bent and double-checked the balance of the stones. She didn't want the wind to dislodge the stopper.
"Or maybe your friends from the mine will come looking for you when they don't find me waiting to provide their evening's entertainment. I doubt it. But it's another possibility."
She walked to the open door of the cab. Pausing for a moment, she watched the naked man jangle. She smiled.
"On the other hand, the stopper's charge is good for at least three days," she said. "In those three days, you'll be aware of your brain slowly turning to curd . .. burning out. By the time the battery runs down, you'll be mindless. A slobbering idiot."
Lizina stepped into the cab. "Goodbye, Mahk. I wish you only hell!"
Closing the door behind her, the coppery-haired woman punched the buttons she had watched Mahk tap time and again. The sand-runner rumbled to life. A grin spread across her face as she moved out into the desert toward Windbreak. Toward freedom.
Behind her a naked man squirmed beneath Mirjam's stars. A study in motion that would not end for three nights and days.
Lizina woke inside the sand-runner's cab. She felt marvelous, despite the fine layer of dust that had settled over her during the night. She was alive. She was free.
Both had a delicious taste.
She checked the bag that had served as her pillow. The stells (they were hers; she had earned them) and two fresh jumpsuits remained within. It was not much. But it was enough.
Smiling, she started the sand-runner and drove into Windbreak.
The first thing she did was stop at a company store
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and purchase a stopper and holster-the best available. Never again would she be caught without a weapon. Not while she traveled the spaceways.
The weight of the weapon secure on her hip, Lizina found the four-story building where she had become Mahir's wife. Divorce was a simple matter on the mining planet. It cost fifty stells and was swift.
The process took ten minutes. Time enough for the clerk to work up the courage to ask her out for dinner that night. (It was after all a woman-poor planet, and this very attractive cake was now unattached.)
Once again legally Lizina Harith, she found a restaurant and stuffed herself with the largest breakfast on the menu. The waiter didn't proposition her. It was cybernetic. Three of the patrons were not, and did.
Next on her agenda was the shuttleport. She wasn't certain what she would find there. It really didn't matter. It was her only means off Mirjam.
From restaurant to shuttleport was a ten-minute drive via sand-runner. She made it in seven.
Inside the low-slung terminal building, she found the shipping office. The one man on duty banded her a list of ships orbiting Mirjam. Ships awaiting cargo of processed copper. He watched her, his gaze mentally stripping away her dusty jumpsuit, while she read.
Sweetcake, Maru Singer, High Prancer, OneQuick-Fellow, Planet Runner, Out Takes, Bring It Home- twenty ships in all. None of them familiar. None of them names she knew Dorjan used to disguise Misfit.
The thought was foolish. What were the odds of Dorjan ever finding her here among the billions of stars in the galaxy? If she were ever to make her way back to HOME, it would be on her own.
"Where are these ships heading?" she asked the man undressing her with his eyes.
He tapped a finger to a column to the right side of the list. Ten of the ships were destined for the Barbro Transfer Station. From there she could purchase a ticket home, whether with stells or body. Once on
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Panish there was a fortune at her command. There she
could buy her way back HOME.
"How do I contact the captains of these vessels?" "I can arrange it ... for dinner tonight," the man
answered with a confident grin.
Lizina nodded her acceptance. First step back to
HOME.