Now a confused Janja obeyed. Zippers, made their wheep noises. (That had been improved out of zippers long ago, which had then been replaced by Velcro and molecular bonding. When zippers returned, consumer demand soon resulted in a return of the wheeep! or zzzip! sound. Five or seven years ago seams had returned to hose, too, and remained popular on over half the worlds of the galaxy.) Hardly happy, Janja at last stood naked under the weird blue lighting, facing her naked captors.

So much for independence, she thought bitterly. Corundum, Corundum . . . maybe I am just a silly little stash who needs a keeper! Now I am a captive, but not yours, my loving Emery!

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Still, she was watching for her chance. Others had tried this, and received grievous shocks. Something approaching a berserker fighter lurked beneath the taut skin and powerful muscles necessarily developed on a high-gravity planet.

Then h.e.l.lfire walked, tight-a.s.sed, to the typically Theban dresser, which was ridiculously encrusted with gingerbread. She opened a drawer, dumped the three stoppers inside. All three, yes. She turned back with a grin like a big neon-mnemonic sign.

"Now you're our s.e.x prisoner for the night, heh-heh, and are you ever going to get and give a lotta heh-heh loving, you doll! Oh, are we glad you came! Oh are you going to come! Huh, Raunchy?"

"Ldl-leet'l!"

Janja's legs went weak as they seized her, laughing, and she realized that it had indeed been a game, and happiness soared with all the added force of relief.

h.e.l.lfire was right, too. She got a lot of loving, and gave, too, while thrills leaped and pulsed through her like the rippling flare of a luxichord's light-music.

She groaned at the flickering of tongues and the stroking and probing, tweaking and scissoring of fingers, at deep deep kisses at mouth and belly and b.r.e.a.s.t.s and mouth. Her hips arched and surged automatically and her lips and fingers and tongue were powerless not to move, to find, to explore, to give and strive, to love. Moans and groans became sobbing cries and high-voiced outcries.

h.e.l.lfire watched with fascination, way over an hour later, when Raunchy a.s.sumed the male role and Janja clamped it to her so that Aglayan and Jarp wallowed in thrusting s.e.xual embrace and h.e.l.lfire did not know that she was watching two aliens, not just one. Janja was not exactly stuffed, but she was definitely sliced, and the movements and straining were mutual.

After that it was the three of them again, wrecking the bed, with Raunchy a "her" again, and then . , .

12.

The sky over Velynda was stained pink, lavender, cinnabar, and an electric blue. Shadows were black. Some shaded into indigo. Jonuta glanced edgewise at the weary old primary sun of Franji, now a ball sliced in half and laid flat side down on the horizon. Its dark mate was small and pale and sullen; asleep or moribund. Jonuta could look directly at it.

This system was a binary, as most were; a few more than half the suns in the galaxy had smaller, paler companions. Most were B-2 suns. The double stars were mated for life. Two separate cults on Franji maintained that this was clearly part of Booda's Plan For All In The Universe, BOOPFAITU. They argued accordingly that humans were meant to mate for life. Others pointed out with just as much logic that it could as well be said that Booda intended such a fate for only a few over half of His children. Too, they demanded to know whether one mate was also "meant to be" so small and pale and hardly significant, so over-shone by the other. The absolutist fundamentalists were not amused.

Leaning on the rail of the hotel balcony, Jonuta glanced over to the west. There, where darkness crept 177.

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stealthily, other suns showed bright along with those lights that were not stars. A crescent moon, barren, was a silvered pink that would grow more and more eerie as the planet slid over its warming suns and the solitary moon slid forth in transitory triumph.

h.e.l.lpit, many kilometers from Velynda, showed the . long-ago fate of a second moon.

As night claimed Franji's sky, other lights burned brighter and brighter, too. Comsats One through Six; Powersats One and Three. Monitor Beta and Fran-jistation Prime, closer than the moon hi geosynchronous...o...b..t. Larger than the moon in appearance and yet, coincidentally, almost the same diameter. Booda made the one-or Allah, or Primover, or She, or Tao or Theba or Tiwan, depending upon which Franjese was speaking-and mortal humans had made the others.

By whatever name, G.o.ds or G.o.d made suns and their satellite planets and the planets' satellite moons; and, too, G.o.d made humankind: mortals, Galactics.

Galactics made and hung Comsats and Powersats and Defensats and Franjistations and the slender tethers that linked the latter physically with the planet. Mortal Galactics, not being G.o.ds or G.o.d, had to start from scratch. G.o.d or G.o.ds had no cause to be proud. Pride was for His or Her or Its creations. They were Galactics, the children of the Earth, the Thingmakers, Janja called these s.p.a.cefarers Them, and Thing-makers. It had not occurred to her that G.o.d-Aglii, in her language, and female-had also made things. Suns and planets and trees and stones; flowers and mountains and rivers; and strivers made of bone and flesh.

Now one of those strivers stood on the balcony outside his suite in the Hotel Royal Franjis, gazing at sunset on Franji.

Franji is beautiful at dusk, Jonuta thought. Here at this hour and the hour to come, or on the far side when dusk kisses and colors it all pink and copper and sanguine, it is beautiful.

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Qalara is home, and beloved. It is part of me and in my blood, a mystical matter. That's why I love it. But I can be content on Franji.

He wore clothing of Franji's capital, for only so would he come down onto this planet. His ship nuzzled the vast wheel of a s.p.a.ce station above. Coronet was docked there; electromagnetically coupled. Now it was being scanned and nurtured by two great segmented leads like vast intravenous tubes. Coronet was here for a physical exam. The ship's captain was a most cautious man, and proud of that caution. And alive because of it.

Captain Jonuta's collarless shirt resembled a tunic and he wore it outside his waistband, Franji style, like a tunic. Its three-quarter sleeves were cuffed. There were four pockets and shoulder straps no longer called epaulettes or even epaulets (and serving no purpose beyond decoration). The shirt was white and the b.u.t.tons were spheres the silvered pink of Franji's moon. His trousers, cut to blouse at the bottom and called blousars, were the color of the dark Franjese whiskey made from native maize: berbun. Soft-soled shoes of openwork scrim were popular among the leisured cla.s.s of Franji, this year-Franji. Jonuta's were of a beige lighter than his skin.

Too recently a law had been pa.s.sed prohibiting people from going publicly armed in Velynda, and so a special holographic mini-projector disguised the stopper on Jonuta's right hip. It appeared to be an insy bag-for the carrying of incidentals-of Saipese lizard-skin. They were not quite in fashion among the wealthy of Franji, but Jonuta's ident.i.ty here could afford to wear the eclectic and exotic.

On Franji he was Haj Seablood, party-loving heir to something-or-other, a fortune, and a transplant here from . . . where was it? Ghanj, perhaps, where there was Real n.o.bility? Or was it distant Shankar, with its strange G.o.d, whatsHisname?-or had Haj ever said, really?

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No matter. He was Haj Seablood, well traveled and a loosecard. Fun to be with and around. He was well liked. That big woman with all the wigs was always with Mm, but everyone knew he got laid. The big woman was hardly as aristocratic as he, that was obvious. But nice. Oh yes, she was nice enough, though a bit daunting with all that chest, don't you know.

(Her name was of course Kenowa and she of course accompanied him into the Royal Franjis in Velynda of Franji.) She checked in wearing a long flowing Franjisari of darkish heather green woven with metallic threads, cuprous. And a rope-sung "belt," loose, and a truly voluminous cloak of old-blood red. The sari was not, even decollete. Or not meant to be; on Kenowa, about any garment showed cleavage unless it was genuinely high collared.

Her cloak-matching wig was cut to reveal ornate earrings of two metals and three colors. The center stone was blood-hued and blinked steadily off and on, deep in its depths.

Those pendants and the cloak and chest-taut sari drew attention from her lower body. That was deliberate and studied. Kenowa had gamed weight again and was sensitive of extra meat at her middle, and of swollen haunches. Her body's delight in enlarging itself was a curse and a lifelong battle. Depending on where her womanly rhythm and her circadian rhythm were at the moment, Kenowa could eat a pound of food and gam two pounds of weight, always between bosom and v.u.l.v.a. At least she was a woman who cared, and who knew how to disguise extra weight without looking like a woman hiding extra weight.

Franji's .73 gravity was nice. It helped. Indeed there were only two aspects of this planet with its warmth and its double shadows in black and purple that Kenowa did not like: one was the women, and their continuing, constant hanker for JonutaIHaj. The other was the fact that here only the lower cla.s.ses wore those 181.

tall blue or lavender wigs popular all along the s.p.a.ce-ways. They were called Terasaki coils and Kenowa loved them.

Her high-teased coiffure this time was the yellow beige of a big gun's stock. The silver flask at her left hip was not a silver flask or even a stylish purse. Kenowa, too, wore a holoproj-disguised stopper.

Their appearance alone had a.s.sured Jonuta's and Kenowa's welcome at the Royal Franjis. Then the a.s.sistant manager had come out smiling, to greet Jonuta by (false) name while appreciatively conning Kenowa's cleavage flanked by the happy bra.s.s-hued hills of her chest. She was aware of that; she stood close up to the desk, leaning forward a little.

The a.s.st-mgr made apologies. The Jasbiri amba.s.sador was in the Nirvana Suite. Good old Haj Sea-blood graciously accepted the inconvenience, and the Sultana Suite. His luggage was 'chuted straight up, along with Kenowa's four large bags and a box, also large.

Jonuta and Kenowa followed a bit less swiftly, on the liftplate. They entered the Sultana to find it mostly pink and green, and exchanged a twisty-faced look. They toyed with the neons and holocontrols until they had created an environment with hues to their liking, along with two nicer "paintings." All pink later, Kenowa thought, also thinking of the few things she had brought along for Jonuta's and her mutual delectation. He did not know about them.

Two hours later they had soni-showered and eaten -in the suite, whose furnishings were suitably opulent, if not fabulous-while being videotape-updated on events Franjese. There was no hint of the shock in store for Haj Seablood.

Once they had broken that helpful telecomm-link to Franjicentral, they discussed the most recent argument with Sweetface.

For years the Jarp and its captain had gotten along very well indeed. Jonuta's constant "Sweetface turn on 182.

your d.a.m.ned translator dammit!" had never been deadly serious, nor had Sweetface's habit of occasionally patting Jonuta's small tight b.u.t.t. Now, however, the idiot was really attached to Tweedle-dee-who really was an idiot-and herIits defense and pleasure. Sweetface resented being denied access to Franji's surface. The objection had developed into a serious altercation of words and loud voices.

Coronet's crew always remained off Franji, dammit. That was, dammit, a standard CoronetIJormta. rule. Haj Seablood was careful of bis ident.i.ty. He was, after all, Captain Cautious.

In the Sultana Suite Haj and his big woman-she was Dulcinea on Franji, because she loved the name of that character in one of her beloved captureI rip bodice-and-everything-elseIrapeIlove-forever holo-dramas-had discussed that altercation and the growing Sweetface Problem, and then Jonuta wanted to be rid of that subject. He made a suggestion. Kenowa smilingly acquiesced and made a countersuggestion. Or perhaps a parallel one. . . .

Kenowa's suggestion stemmed from her hobby, which was absorption with her collection of holodrama tapes. She added constantly to that cache of reactive-ca.s.settes of what had once been called truconfessions or bodice rippers. (Female p.o.r.nography, Jonuta called both related genres. Kenowa merely flipped her fingers. Sticks and stones! No laws had ever been pa.s.sed to prohibit such melodramas! Few candidates for office had ever pandered to the bigot element by crusading against them or even condemning them. Those few who did had been females, who understood their concealed carnal appeal. They lost elections, too, hi proof that women of all ages were more devoted to their p.o.r.nography than males.) Kenowa had never been a slave ... to owners.

Kenowa had once been a slave to the swiftly addictive eroflor.

Kenowa owed her very existence to the man who 183.

had drag-carried her, addicted and hurting, screaming and resisting, out of a low bar in Sopur. He had hauled her all the way to his s.p.a.ceship. There he had just as forcibly "overseen" her kicking the EF habit. Naturally, she loved him. And naturally she was an unrecon-structable romantic. She would spread for him, kill for him, suffer for him, hold her b.u.t.tocks open for him, even sell her body for him, if need be.

Once she'd have done all those things for the next EF fix. Jonuta was a far preferable addiction. Too, EF would have killed her. Jonuta had saved her life, then.

Tonight, her suggestion was simply that he go out onto the balcony and occupy himself with Franji's suns-set. He would return to the suite only when he heard the wake-up alarm.

Jonuta agreed readily. He knew that she would prepare herself and a t.i.tillatingly interesting scenario-a Change.

Jonuta's imagination encompa.s.sed chicanery, planning, and the getting out of sc.r.a.pes without violence. He did entertain normal male erotic fantasies, but those were in his mind. Kenowa was less a.n.a.lytical and less imaginative-except in the area of eroticism. Kenowa took fantasies out of holos and the mind and put them into the bedchamber where they belonged.

Only a few "nights" ago, on Coronet, he had entered his cabin to the startling and exciting sight of no less than Setsuyo Puma languidly awaiting him, on his bed.

A hyperstar because of the Akima Mars series of holomovies popular all along the s.p.a.ceways. Setsuyo Puma. And a hyperstar because of her hyperdeveloped chest. Unsubtly touted as "The Biggest Pair in the Universe!," 'tsuyo Pumo stood 175 sems tall and measured a quite incredible 134E-100-64. Her presence in Jonuta's bed was Kenowa's most clever use of holoprojection, a new high for her.

* 53E-25-40 at five feet nine inches.

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Jonuta appreciated it. Both he and Kenowa appreciated the result. Secret Agent Akima Mars was magnificently loved, mauled, mouthed, stuffed, plumbed, and fondled off after.

Kenowa was hardly brilliant. She was wise enough to know herself, and what excited her. She was wise enough to know that men did need their t.i.tillation and their variety, which she called their Changes, even if the Change was an illusion. Having seen the audience-delighting amorous and rather m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic secret agent Akima Mars in his bed, Jonuta knew she was there. As he joined her, she wisely pitchdarked the cabin. The illusion was preserved; now he saw behind his eyes what he had "seen" in the light. His memory saw what his eyes did not, and it became a memorable occasion. Jonuta's toenails did their best to ruin the sheet while Kenowa would have sworn he was in her past the cervix and nudging the floor of her stomach. Considerably later, his fondling her off took less than a minute. Later she told him that was her second time, that night.

A bit later still he snarled, "Now get your warheads and overblown bust's body out of here, Setsuyo, and send me my Kenowa!" And in the darkness he slapped the backside of his sprawled bedmate.

"You . . . win, slaver darling," she gasped, and in the darkness "Setsuyo PumaIAkima Mars" departed. Jonuta imparted a bit of light to the cabin just before Kenowa entered to find her grinning man waiting with arms opened wide.

When they awoke, it was for herself that Kenowa received what she'd got last night, as Setsuyo Puma.

And so tonight Jonuta willingly watched the suns-set from a balcony overlooking Velynda while Kenowa prepared herself and their suite for another Change. He focused his mind to think about Jonuta because his brain treacherously wanted to think about Janja, who lingered in his memory still, to fascinate him. What a Jonutan woman was that barbarian! But he did not 185.

really want to think about the b.i.t.c.h. (Kenowa's unfortunate attempt, months ago, at diverting and pleasing him by making herself resemble Janja had been short-lived. That pallid little wig was gone forever.) By now he knew that here on Franji Janja had an I.D. as Tachi-Linshin 810244204TR for Resh, cred-less former wife of one Tachi, merchant captain. Tachi existed. There was no Tachi-Linshin, and Tachi had never been married to anyone. She had managed to escape Resh on the merchant s.p.a.cer of Captain Tachi, because her fellow Aglayan, Whitey, was a member of that ship's crew.

This Jonuta knew about Janja. He wanted to know more, and yet he wanted most sincerely-or most sincerely thought he wanted-to forget her. And so, while Kenowa prepared, he thought about Kislar Jonuta, and Haj Seablood, and bis other ident.i.ties.

13.

Nothing is more varied than the pleasures of love, although they are always the same.

Anne de Lanclos His Franjese friends knew little about Haj Seablood other than that he had a fine home and apparently limitless funding and traveled a lot. Calls to that fine home, far from the capital, usually reached only cyber-answers and recordings. The callers left regrets plus their best wishes and invitations. They did not think of him as mysterious.

Those society friends of the wealthy Seablood did not know that he was also Eri Haddad, of the planet Jasbir.

Eri Haddad acc.u.mulated interest here hi a large account at the Franji State Bank & Transfer. A large account. The I.D. for Eri Haddad's account was the retinal print of the infamous but glamorous figure of the s.p.a.ceways, Kislar Jonuta of Qalara. No one at the Franji State B & T knew that. No one had reason to check Eri Haddad. (There had indeed been an Eri Haddad of Jasbir. He was both clean and dead. Finan- 186.

187.

cial inst.i.tutions were not motivated to question the business and bona fides of major and thus profitable depositors. Franji State B & T had no reason to go checking the retinal prints against the Galactic Master Databank-which may or may not have existed. . . . Could it exist? The galaxy was a prodigiously, an inconceivably vast ent.i.ty. There were many, many stars in the cosmos. And planets. And people. And I.D.'s. Few, however, were stellar depositors in financial inst.i.tutions. Those who were formed the backbones of banks.) The I.D. card of the late, clean Eri Haddad had come into the possession of Captain Cautious as part of a business transaction on still another planet.

Then there was Panish. Panish was another world on which Jonuta maintained two fat backup accounts for possible emergency or retirement use. He was also heavily invested in a fund based on the overall economy or Gross Planetary Product of Panish. A package of Crescent Emeralds awaited him there too, the price of one female. (They came from Terasaki, a world where Jonuta was about as welcome as vomit in free-fall.) Captain Jonuta could have had a fleet, or bought a government. Indeed he could have bought any of several planets, not to mention Arsane er-Jorvistor and other such men he dealt with.

Success in his line of work, Captain Jonuta had said, demanded caution, genius, and luck. After those came the factors he claimed to consider less important: Continuous information from sources kept happy by thorough oiling; Fine equipment; A willingness to accept an unimpressive, even smallish percentage of profit-constantly.

He saw to the third by investing so much in the first and second . . . along with caution, genius, and luck.

His seemingly ungreedy methods had paid. Profits acc.u.mulated and piled up until they might have bought 188.

the contents of All Baba's cave. Jonuta minimized the appearance of such real, stellar wealth while maximizing its usefulness and its distribution. Had not the Booda said, "Wise is he who entrusts not all his bites to one meal and not all his bytes to one databank?"

Jonuta put the golden eggs of his fortune into many baskets. He also maintained a ma.s.sively expensive backup computry system just seconds from online status. Only Januta knew what he was worth, in the stellar purchasing credits called stells more often than SPC or creds. Jonuta's "mate," SIPAc.u.m, did not know. The backup computer did. The information could be accessed only by someone who knew all the cred-backed ident.i.ties of Captain Cautious. Even then, such a resourceful genius was likely to be blown to bits, not bytes, by SIPAc.u.m's defense circuitry and attached explosive.

Only Jonuta knew all the cred-backed ident.i.ties of Captain Jonuta.

He carried in his head the key words that bade SIPAc.u.m release its set of code phrases-without self-destructing. A specific rearrangement of those phrases, with the interpolation of three more phrases out of Jonuta's head, bade SIPAc.u.m II yield up the information he might eventually require. Not his financial standing. Not his worth. SIPAc.u.m II "knew" only where the investments were, and under what ident.i.ties. Both Jonuta and SIPAc.u.m II knew that the chances of someone else's obtaining just that information, all of it, were on the order of 713. Jonuta judged that to be a sufficient hedge to merit being called "impossible." The system was Jonuta. All the records could be accessed only by Jonuta, and that only laboriously.

Should he ever decide to cash in everything, more than a year-standard would be required, even with communication by tachyon beam.

There was more.

(The last visible sun of Franji was almost gone now, leaving a rosy wash in the darkening sky. Noise 189.

rose from the city of Velynda, whose population was about fifteen thousand, with a daily workforce approaching twenty-five thousand. The bright green shafts of the elevated tubeway system arabesqued against the sky, full of outbound bureaucrats and agents of enterprise.) Various favors were owed him on various planets. They were ancillary to agreements all along the s.p.a.ce-ways, throughout the galaxy. Gaining such favors, due on call, was part of the trading style of Captain Cautious.

He was owed several on Jasbir, where he had still another I.D. His investment there was sufficient to finance four months of living based on the economy then current. Even if it underwent considerable change, he would have the financing for a well-funded hiding out.

On his homeworld of Qalara, Jonuta was hardly unknown and hi fact no minor figure. Local boy had made good-very good. Kislar Jonuta maintained Qalaran citizenship. His Qalaran investments remained major despite his withdrawal of several. He took that step after the messy attempt on his life there, and he saw to it that it was well publicized. The Kenuta Investment Consortium of Qalara (Ltd.) was almost solely Jonuta's. He maintained a large luxurious apartment in the capital, Norcross.

And he was a major (stellar) backer of the galaxy-renowned Hakimit Medical Center. It was a cautious man's superlative form of insurance. Even Kenowa did not know about his very special secret project at HMC, although in a way it had been her suggestion.

Nor did anyone know that the speculator in Sekhari Minerals, Jone Shuttlesteader, was Kislar Jonuta.

Only TGO had the power and (maybe) the capability to learn enough (maybe) to break Jonuta. And TGO had not. The Gray Organization's purpose was to maintain order in the galaxy. Order was preserved by good trade and a healthy overall economy. Slavery 190.

fed such a sprawling, ungoverned economy, and propped it. Slaver Jonuta had not had to work for years and years.

Jonuta, however, liked to work. What fun was play, except after one had worked, dared, risked, accomplished?

These things he reviewed under the twinkling astral lights that cl.u.s.tered thick in the sky of Velynda, on Franji. And he heard the bong-bong of the wake-up alarm he and Kenowa took onplanet with them, everywhere. Leaning on the suite's balcony rail, Jonuta smiled. Kenowa had readied this night's Change. The evening was about to debouch into debauchery.