"I'm not talking abour rape." Shemsi's eyes gleamed. "What do you know about aphrodizzies?"

"s.e.xciters? Like-Eros? Breeder's Friend?"

"Right! I slipped one into her drink tonight while we ate. It'll hit her now, any min. When it does she'll go crazy for s.e.x. She'll have to have a man, and you're the one who's there. She'll give you a ride to make your bones ache! You'll be lucky if you can walk after that tryst!"

158.

The excitement was back in Gelor's belly, and stirring him lower. It was all he could do to keep from quivering. DeyMeox!

He admitted it now. The crober genius was the woman he had ached for, day after day in this decaying old palace. Ached for her because he couldn't have her. And now he could. With her wild with pa.s.sion, more than willing because Shemsi had slipped her an aphrodizzy, What did that matter? It would still be DeyMeox's body, her gasps and sobs, her writhing and spasms. Her need, for him. For that, his plan could be held in abeyance for a while . . .

Except . . . Except that suspicion was all at once a heaviness in him. He locked his gaze on Shemsi. "Why so eager to do me favors, Shemsi?"

"Do you f-I'm not! I don't care a jinkle about your pleasure! You might as well be a stray grat off the street, for all I care. You-you're a double-dyed villain, Gelor, a certified card-carrying member of s.a.d.i.s.t b.a.s.t.a.r.ds Unanimous, surely! No, no-it's that DeyMeox b.i.t.c.h I'm after!" She stepped closer and clutched Gelor's quivering arm. (It wanted to hit her.) "Her High Majesty will remember this in the morning, all of it!"

No, she won't, Gelor managed to think, through his rising excitement. Neither of you will remember anything, because neither of you will awake in the morning, you abusive little sourcake!

"She'll wake up knowing that she soared with you like a mare in heat, even though you turn her stomach," Shemsi went on with some relish. "Any time she forgets, I'll be there to remind her. Every hour of every day I'll stick her with it, till she's ready to slash her wrists!" She paused, breathing fast, her color high. "Well? Do you want her or don't you?"

Gelor's voice was hoa.r.s.e: " I want her."

"This way then!" Shemsi bustled him back to the other cell. She clutched his arm while he shakily unlocked the door. "I'm coming in too, Gelor. I want to listen; see her get it-and love it!" Her voice was as raw as his.

Together, they entered and paused in the small, very 159.

dark room. In the stillness, Gelor could hear the sound of the crober's breathing. It came fast and shallow, as if DeyMeox were on the verge of panting.

Shemsi's whisper gloated: "She's ready. The s.e.xciter's. .h.i.t her!" She suddenly shoved him forward, almost violently. "Take her, take her, you thrice-cursed son of a b.a.s.t.a.r.d jinni! Take the high-and-mighty b.i.t.c.h and slice 'er till her eyeb.a.l.l.s fall out!"

Gelor stumbled into blackness, groping. He found a bare, supine leg that twitched. Found a body open and hunching to receive him. The jumpsuit was gone. She was naked and ignited. He strove to get his robe out of the way while strong legs tried to lock around him. The body beneath his writhed, humped at him until he grunted with pain. He got the robe out of the way. Her excitement heightened his. High and hard, he sought and found in the darkness, and their gasping grunt of penetration rose loudly in unison. He did not have to slam himself home in her; she was lunging up with her body and dragging at him with both arms and legs.

The moments that followed were an explosive turbulence of flesh and l.u.s.t. The odor of s.e.xuality and joined groins arose in the dark cell, mingling with the scent of sweat. Gelor's mind blurred as he surged against her surging body and into it. DeyMeox's body, DeyMeox, DeyMeox's . . , G.o.d, the delicious obscenity of the wet slapping sounds they made! His body convulsed as in a seizure. Dimly he heard voices crying out throatily: Hers: "I'm dying! I'm dy-inng! I can't wait. Quick, quick-ahhh-''

And Shemsi's: "That's it, you sickofobber! Ram it to her! Ream the wh.o.r.eb.i.t.c.hmare!"

He did. He rode and pounded, having to fight her clamping legs so he could move, realizing that she seemed anxious to have her b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushed out of shape beneath him. He felt the clawing of pa.s.sion at his back and was glad the robe protected him from b.l.o.o.d.y scratches. He pounded, sluiced in and out of her. He bellowed out his climax and kept on pumping until she shrieked. Both of 160.

them were shuddering violently. He hurt, and right now he couldn't give a d.a.m.n. What better hurt could there be? DeyMeox!

The clutching hands relaxed their grasp of pa.s.sion. The straining arms softened and the legs slithered down on either side of his. Numb and shaking, he moved. His withdrawal from her inundated stash was accompanied by another obscene slosh-sucking sound. He rolled over, almost falling off her bunk onto the floor. Lurching to his feet, he groped his way doorward. Just to his right, Shemsi's voice spoke again, sounding hollow now to his staggery perceptions: "Wonderful! Wonderful! You can walk! And you haven't the voice for any thanks to me, you handsome b.a.s.t.a.r.d stud of a double-dyed monster?"

"I-have-thanks for you," he gritted, squinting in darkness. "For all the things you've been calling me- here's my-thanks!"

His right arm swung out and around to smash her face--and he nearly fell. She was not there; must have ducked. Stumbling, he cursed and went on. Then he was out the door and into the pa.s.sage. With both Shemsi and DeyMeox in the one cell. Good!

A panting Gelor was just strong enough to slam the cell-door and bolt it. He reached up to the niche that held the ventilation duct, already prepared. Tremulous fingers twisted open the valves of the minitanks that held monocyan gas. He could just hear the gentle, almost delicate ssss of gas forced into the duct, into the cell. At last he had possessed the so-brainy DeyMeox. Now he'd at last pay off Shemsi, too. Now ... the Final Solution to the problem of his two slaves.

Hissing faint as a lost whisper, the deadly gas streamed into the cell.

Gelor shivered. It was a shiver of release, of relief. Just what he needed to clear his brain in preparation for the climax of his duel with a corporation equally as treacherous as he. Now for the final step of his brilliant climb toward wealth and the power bought by wealth.

He managed a chuckle. "Double-dyed and card-carrying 161.

villain, am I? Yes! And I'll beat the corporate villains, too!"

He left the old dungeon that was now the execution chamber of the two who had made his plan reality. The charter carrier came first. He contracted for it by remote comm and ordered it to a locked slot up on Jasbirstation.

He sealed the Bleaker dupfadroid, the converted cal-culator/comtrol box, and the two-step canisters of Terato-genesis Six in standard shipping cases. Those he sent up to the s.p.a.ce station's freight ramp. They were marked to be picked up by a nonexistent Dhofar Ishutin.

Well attired in grays, he took the shuttle up to Jasbirstation.

There he paged the pilot a.s.signed to the carrier: one Rafi. Gelor had Rafi pick up the cases in Ishutin's name and bring them to the carrier's private c.o.c.king berth. Of course that meant Rafi must die, since he could link Gelor to the cases. . . . Well, Gelor was working on a fine big omelet, and he awaited the pilot-turned stevedore. One more egg.

A single stroke of the spring-thing attended to that unthrilling and necessary killing. He even tucked Rafi's raffish jacket under his head to catch the blood from his crushed face and mouth. Then Gelor uncrated the droid, calculator, and canisters. Gingerly, he piloted the carrier himself. Rafi's helmet and standard miss s.p.a.cesuit barely fitted him.

He swept out to the off-satellite location where CongCorp was to deliver the System Speeder s.p.a.ceship.

It arrived, brought piggyback and left hanging in s.p.a.ce, as he had instructed. He nudged the carrier over, failed twice, b.u.mping the other craft, and smiled when he had locked the two ships together with EM grapples. He double-checked his s.p.a.cesuit, took a deep breath of canned air, and boarded the bigger speedcraft. When he found the loot and checked it, he went shaky again.

It was as specified. An absolute fortune. Gelor's knees gave way and he sat down suddenly, bouncing a little in freefall.

162.

Knowing that he had to get up and go on, he did. "Swimming" through the silent ship with stopper in hand. No need; it was empty. Here was the special compartment, with its hatch designed to separate the T6 canisters from the rest of the System Speeder. No contact would be necessary between the ship's supposed pilot and whoever picked up the toxin.

Helmet off in the ship's good air, Gelor installed the simulacrum droid and his special calculator. The late Rafi replaced the dupladroid in the case. Gelor saw to it that all semblance of address and instructions were charred off the big crate. HOLD FOR CONGCORP PICKUP, he marked it clearly, and with a sigh he looked around. Oh. He repro-grammed ship's computer.

Done! He donned the helmet, clamped it, checked its seals and used the suit's air to check for leaks. All secure. He pushed the crate back to the carrier. Cutting the electromagnetic field, he let carrier and s.p.a.ceship have plenty of time to drift apart, despite his anxiousness to be away from here. At last he powered up, executed a long curve, and returned to the wheel.

The suit he left in its slot on the carrier. The crate he eased down and abandoned for a stevedore to find and store. Gelor ducked into the scanning room. Everything had gone so smoothly!-so far.

It continued smooth. He watched a carrier (CongCorp's testers, of course) peel off from the old XN-sat. It eased out to the speeder and locked onto the T6 hold. Gelor grinned. Obviously the company a.n.a.lysis had accepted the T6 and CongCorp bra.s.s had decided to go through with the pickup; the trade.

The System Speeder's SIPAc.u.m actuated the comm-screen. Shock and horror!

A man leered out across all grids, onto all screens. A monster of a man. His was a terrifying face, hideously scarred, with a single rolling, glaring eye. The other was an electroptic, opaque and flaming red.

"Done then, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, and see me now!" he snarl-shouted in a voice no prettier than he. "See me and know 163.

you've dealt with Dravan of Bleak-Dravan the Marked! Back from the dead to carve a new life in your blood! Get away from my ship you b.a.s.t.a.r.d grats! Cross me at your peril!''

A mean laugh erupted from the awful face, and an armored Bleaker glove rose and thrust forth in wordless threat. Gelor's grin died and he shuddered in spite of himself. Oh, Shemsi-the late Shemsi-had done her work well!

And CongCorp had something to think about. So did those on the company carrier. It parted from the System Speeder with alacrity-while Gelor sagged back in his scanning seat. Even with elation soaring in him, he was breathing hard. So many things might have gone wrong! Dupladroid programming had its limits, and ... but the real test-moment was still to come.

Now the System Speeder powered. It moved. Sec by sec, its velocity increased. As per plan and programming, it swung off in a wide loop. That course would ultimately carry it out between the star of Ghanj and those of the Tri-System Accord-if continued. Gelor grinned tightly. That course would not be continued.

It was then that he saw the other s.p.a.cers. Two of them, lancing into view. If they weren't RT-Quads, Janissary cla.s.s, they rated as next best thing, surely. As surely, it spoke something about CongCorp's power and/or relationship with The Gray Organization: those ships were the ships TGW used! They were forbidden to private operators.

A tightness came into Gelor's belly. He leaned forward, staring at the scanner and trying not to blink. New sweat formed.

Blurs on the screen, the Janissaries closed on the speeder. A lance of evilly greenish light said that one had zapped a beam close to the quarry: a warning and a command: Power down. Stand by for Red Rover to accept boarders.

The treacherous lying sisterslicers! They've got the T6 they wanted-I dealt honorably with them! Not they-all the time they've planned this: to take back ship, loot, and . .. me. That is, Dravan. Red Rover, my a.s.s!

164.

The tightness in Gelor's belly knotted. The palms of his hands were wet. Unsteadily, he wiped them hard along his pants-leg. Go! Go! he urged silently, staring at the onscreen scene: approaching intercept of his fortune.

For a moment the speeder seemed to slow. Another, and it flashed so fast that Gelor was hard-pressed even to see it. The Janissaries leaped after it- The speeder vanished.

His modified Badakeacorp box and SIPAc.u.m had done their work. The sleek System Speeder had jam-crammed into subs.p.a.ce. Straight to Forty Percent City, the CongCorp crews would report. Except that with a speeder, the odds had to be on the order of 99.99-to-infinity that no Galactic could survive such stress. What anyone onboard would throw up would be his life, not just his dinner. So long, Dravan. Say h.e.l.lo to Corundum and Artisune Muzuni!

So that was that. The megabillion multiplanetary corporation would write off the payoff in this venture and know it was safe from the not-clever-enough creep it had dealt with. Not that the loss would particularly matter to the company's top command. CongCorp could simply shrug and slide the loss over into the slot reserved for the Expense of Doing Business: Developing New Enterprise.

Eilong's kiraoun catalysts and the men who mined the ore would cover the loss and move into the profit column in the long run. Sooner.

This of course left one Gel Gelor in an enviable position, involving incredible wealth and official non-existence.

That was the virtue of his scheme, his concept. It eliminated Forty Percent City from the list of hazards. A speeder could convert instantly to tachyons and jam-cram "into subs.p.a.ce" with virtually no danger. After all, Gelor's speeder had no human onboard to die or be bollixed. From start to finish the operation would be conducted by computer, cybernetics, and-an android. Shemsi's computerized, cyberneticized, cross-circuited simulation of life that performed its programmed functions with no distress whatever from pressure or gravities or lack of either or both.

So: it had been part of his plan all along. The speeder would disappear-had disappeared-into "subs.p.a.ce"- 165.

along the Tachyon Trail the hard way. CongCorp would write it off and go on about its business.

Gelor was aware of an obscure theory. The bindingpost/ boomerang hypothesis, it was called, by those few who'd heard of it. Rooted even further in the past, it sprang officially from the work of an ignored and nearly forgotten psya.n.a.lyst, Tzentis Querumen of Gelor's own world.

Querumen's belief was that the dangers and unpredictability of what was called subs.p.a.ce could be circ.u.mvented. Given proper correlates and sufficiently advanced computational unit, a jam-crammed ship should surface predictably at any desired place and time . . . provided that no living life form was...o...b..ard, according to Querumen-and another inexplicable: provided also that a sufficiency of a specific chemical composition was involved/onboard. Someone had observed that he had described almost the chemical composition of emeralds, and T. Querumen's "Emerald Road" theory was laughed into obscurity.

Gelor had studied Querumen's theory for months on end. He wondered if anyone else had discovered what he had: that the so-called "ice emeralds" of planet Havoc were not only technically not emeralds because their composition was not quite that which specifically officially identified that form of uniaxial beryl called emerald- Be3Al2Si6O18-but was precisely the formula described by Querumen . . . who had apparently never heard of the icy-green '"Vocker gemstones.

Gel Gelor came to accept his fellow-worlder's theory. He believed in it. Accepted it as fact-and stood ready to gamble his fortunes on it. So long as that fortune contained some of the Querumen composition: Be3Al2Si5O18. 'Vocker ice emeralds. And so long as he had his ability, and the modified calculator he had shipped out with the Bleaker dupladroid. It would instruct SIPAc.u.m, no matter what CongCorp might have programmed it to do.

He had scheduled the loot-laden speeder to surface a week hence, off Shankar's second satellite. When it did appear there, to orbit that moon-worse-than-barren Phapanom-he would be there to pick it up and move 166.

on to the delights of wealth and power and prodigious pleasure.

If it did not show . . . Gelor shuddered.

He would not think about that. At least he had the handful of uncut Joser stones he had thoughtfully taken off the speeder. And the rest was days away. He had other uses for that time. For one thing, there was the matter of disposing of the ga.s.sed corpses of Shemsi and DeyMeox.

15.

A shape of doom; a Vengeful Judge-A dreaded mystery.

-Laura Simmons So what difference does it make if a man's skin is violet, Yahna Golden asked herself. What was beneath the hide was what counted, and always had. Courage, character. Intelligence! Cleverness; a sense of humor.

She brought her reverie up short. Such thoughts were dangerous. Especially for a woman of her strange disposition (and she admitted to that freely, now), no man was to be trusted. Least of all a purple lunatic up out of a mine on a skungeball planet and wanted by the Powers That Be for everything from murder to subversion and piracy to advanced mopery.

Twil'im came knocking, just then. She heard the familiar birdlike whistles of its truly alien language, saw it adjust its translahelm as she opened the cabin's door.

The translation helmet said, "Want to make it with a h.o.r.n.y Jarp?"

"Not today thanks-and that's redundant."

The system of straps and devicery did not translate Jarp laughter worth a jinkle. It only tried. Tw.i.l.l.y had come to advise that a small charter carrier was hanging in limbo somewhere off The Sponge. Presumably it bore one Jestikhan Churt of Eilan and was seeking a coordinate signal to ride in 167.

168.

to the cavern where Slicer lay hidden. And-Hieri was taken, down on Jasbir.

Yahna approved transmission of the signal and told Twil that if it did that again she would kick it where it would do the most serious damage; the Golden bottom was not available for six-fingered gropings. Twil'im accepted that philosophically. Mins later, carrier locked to Slicer. Jesti came onboard. (Yahna was not exactly delighted to realize that her heart was beating more than a trifle faster.) An hour ago, she had persuaded Twil'im to loan her a cream-yellow halter and a pair of trunks, pinstriped in green and cream-yellow. Her attributes bulged out of the halter, for no Jarp was truly big of breast. On the other hand she tugged the shorts up and contrived to take a tuck in the waistband, for though Twil's p.e.n.i.s and t.e.s.t.i.c.l.e were necessarily also not huge-there had to be room down there, after all, for a v.a.g.i.n.al opening and ovary, too-the crotch was cut for male parts, not hers. Still, she was aware that she looked pretty d.a.m.ned good.

Then the rainbow-robed Jesti came stalking in, and stalked was the word. He had removed the mask and she saw eyes that were afire. The skin around his lips was as pale as purplescent skin could become. His voice was hoa.r.s.e as he slammed the door behind him: "Well, brotherslicer?"

It was hardly a greeting to evoke cordiality. Startled, Yahna made the effort and refrained from answering. Instead, she made a show of peering here and there behind her. Furiously, Jesti caught her by the wrist, and clamped.

"Hoy! I spoke to you!"

"You did?" She met his eyes and despite pain to her wrist she held herself very erect. She made no effort to pull free. "I thought you were addressing someone who makes it with her brother. I don't even have one."

His face worked with rage. "How'd you like to have that smirk knocked off your treacherous face?"

She stared at him, face composed. Waiting.

Jesti's other hand moved-and he remembered. "Oh no, Golden. No rewards, b.i.t.c.h. I am not going to hit 169.

you-so why did you tell Hieri I'd be wearing this Xan robe?"

Ah, she thought-and considered it a stupid question. Perversely-perhaps predictably so-she reacted to his belligerence rather than to his query.

"And what makes you think I betrayed you?" Her tone was as imperious and disdainful as only she could make it.

"That should be clear enough, d.a.m.n you. Hieri told me."

"Oh well, then. And sure, Hieri is an honorable man who'd never lie to his beloved Jesti-whom he's never even called by name! And so you chose to believe him rather than me."

'"You haven't said anything to believe or not. So-Do!"

"That insulting order in that peremptory tone I do not deign to answer, Churt."

"Oh you do beg for violence, don't you!" He clamped both arms now, and renewed her knowledge of his strength. "Tell me!"