The pirate raised his brow and pursed his lips. "Hmp! Not a bad name at all, for a non-Outreacher." Grinning, he turned to his fellow Outreacher: "Petri! Set course for the outbound-shuttle's flyer station."

"Double-theta," Yahna Golden swore in a murmur. "I'm being kidnapped by pirates!"

The Jarp tried, but its translation helmet botched the "Heh-heh."

7.

High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.

-Christopher Morley High heels must've been invented by men-probably some man in love with women's calves!

-Alanni Keor By the time it was over, Yahna knew that the pirate ship was an old and cruddy-looking converted ramscoop merchanter. Now its shabby exterior belied its excellent SIPAc.u.m, tachyon conversion systemry, and defense systemry (DS). The name on the battered craft's prow was Slicer. (How gross can these creeps get?) She also learned that Slicer's master was the doll in the purple shirt, whose name was Hieronymus Jee. Second in command was the one with the polka dots, Hieronymus's brother Petronius. She was familiar with the ornate Outreacher name-pattern, but these had to go down as her least favorite.

As for the rest of the crew, the Sek answered to the name of Musla, for Musaphur. He was in charge of DS and life-control systems. Twil'im of Jarpi helped him and took turns at con duty, with limited ability. The departed crewman had been the rather flamboyant Kai Mayyasi, compu- 84.85.trician. His flair for self-dramatization had led him to shoot it out with the TGW boarding party at the time of Slicer's capture. That was why he was the late Kai Mayyasi.

That was also why Petronius Jee was subbing as computrician, and not happy about it.

Yahna could not be certain whether her presence was a matter of accident or intention. When she asked Jesti to leave her onstation rather than taking her onto Slicer, he refused, saying that she might prove useful both as hostage and psychist. On the other hand, he flatly refused Captain Jee's suggestion that they lash her to the main hatch to discourage small-arms fire. . . .

She had to wonder a bit about the Eilan. Could it be that he was keeping her beside him for . . . personal reasons? And if so-should she be pleased or outraged?

All such revelations had of course come in bits and pieces. To begin with, there'd been the shocking affair of the seizure of the shuttle.

"Shocking" because Yahna could not have dreamed it could be so easy. Obviously it had not occurred to Croz's security force that anyone might attack the shuttle's off-base flyer station. When the escapists had swarmed down from the flyer, therefore, the staff had contented itself with a lot of quivering and quaking, rather than resisting. The pirates kept it that way by taking the staff with them. In addition to preventing news of the raid from getting out, that also provided them with a fine supply of hostages when they reached the orbiting docking wheel.

Reaching Slicer's berth had involved a nerve-racking trek out though the D-spoke tunnel to the wheel's perimeter and docking berths. Jestikhan had played little part in any of this. Though the others made a show of deferring to him as rescuer, he was clearly far more at home in a mine than on a s.p.a.ce station. Or starship.

For awhile it had appeared that they might get away unchallenged. About the time the drive had been synced for redshift, though, someone down on Croz had commed up for a check on station Crossport. That left the Brothers Jee minimal options. The one Master Hieronymus chose was to blast without clearance. That was an experience to 86.whiten hair. It also demonstrated conclusively that Slicer wasn't the bucket of bolts it appeared.

Back down the enclosed ramp to the station went the hostages. Airlock and hatches were zipped up behind them like traps snapping. Hieronymus Jee flung himself into the master's chair to flip switches, mutter, push b.u.t.tons, engage links, and depress keys with flying fingers. Console lights flashed in a dexipattern like the stars of an exploding galactic arm.

Slicer dropped, spun, side-slipped, all in a lunatic pattern that even autogunnery would have been hard-pressed to follow. In sees it was threading a laser-edged trail through the planet's maze of powersats. In mins, slashing a light-track out through s.p.a.ce to a destination that could only be described as Elsewhere, Fast.

For the moment, Yahna was left alone. She took advantage of the time to inspect the ship's quarters. She found the forward cabin equipped with pulsar lights and holo-screens, plus cubes representing a dozen worlds. All circuitry to the reepr panels, she noted with raised eyebrow, was heavy duty. A Lhote coil controlled the pulsars.

It was a setup to make any psychist happy. Especially a MarsCorp psychist who had manipulated audience pulse-paps with a fear-trap, on behalf of Setsuyo Puma and the Akima Mars production company. Yahna Golden smiled. Double-theta, but it was lovely to have some little extra edge under such awful circ.u.mstances! This edge would be even better than the other . . .

The . . . other. Automatically with that thought she ran her thumb along the gilded eight-sem nail of her right hand's middle finger. It was her last resort, her final refuge. She had adapted it from something she learned about the felinoprimates called HRal, and she hoped she'd never have to use it.

But . . . Captive of pirates! Booda's belly--Me!

She discarded morbid thinking and set the screen for an airy pastoral scene. She positioned herself within the prismirror's...o...b..t, adjusted a heavy magnetic lamp, and began smoothing her extravagant halo of golden hair. Since she had chosen to wear a multicolored concealing/revealing 87.Indraba skinnt.i.te today, her coiffure could do with a bit of rearranging.

It wasn't that she enjoyed such "feminine" preoccupations. To the contrary! However it was part of His heritage, one of the ridiculous habits He had left her with: the business of being s.e.xy. Somehow she had never been able to break it. (Maybe she didn't want to-really.) d.a.m.n Him!

The hatch opened behind her. She turned-slowly, with the air of poise and casual grace He had taught her. No haste. No air of fear or even startlement. Naturally it was the purple man who entered. Naturally he was grinning. It seemed to be a habit of his. Strong, jocular . . . freak.

At least he had taken off his hardhat.

"Women and hair," he said. "They do go together."

Doubtless he intended no insult, but Yahna's lips went thin. Bad enough that he should catch her preening. To comment on it was grossporker manners, to say the least.

He stopped grinning. "We've got a problem. We need you as computrician."

She gave him a cool eyebrows-up look. "Indeed."

"Uh. Dead man's job. Right now Petri's filling in, but Hieri needs him in mate's chair, as second. Musla has to hang back there with DS. Tw.i.l.l.y doesn't qualify, and I sure don't. You do."

"Well, I hear your logic," she said, frowning, trying to a.n.a.lyze her feelings.

She found them mixed, to say the least. All of it was so close to a plot for an Akima Mars holovid melodrama-a holomellerdrammer! Except that Akima would know just what to do, d.a.m.n it. The whole mad adventure couldn't help but prove intoxicating. Part of her pulsed with the excitement of it. To lance off through the void this way-a captive on a pirate s.p.a.cer! What adventurous woman could resist co-starring in a holomeller become real?!

Yet it held an edge of another kind of tension: the rape threat. It was considerably harder for corporate psychist Yahna Golden to a.n.a.lyze that aspect. For Yahna Golden, woman, it was even harder. Emotion made a.n.a.lysis 88.impossible. And . . . she chose to smile. A good smile, properly calculated-with just the right touch of scorn.

"You still have a problem, O Leader."

"What?"

"I won't help you pirates!"

That, she had hoped, would throw him into a rage. Instead, this strange, never predictable man merely stood very still, gazing at her.

"You really don't have any choice," he told her in a nice voice.

"Because you'll rape me if I don't?"

Jesti didn't answer. Jesti only stared, flat-eyed.

"Rape," Yahna said, "is a crime of violence and aggression. Its s.e.xual content is marginal at best. It appeals to men who doubt their own masculinity. They hate women."

"Oh."

Yahna smiled gently. She put warmth and sympathy into her voice. "Let me paint you a portrait of a rapist, Eilan. He is a being-a being, you understand, not a true man. When he looks at himself in his mind's eye, what he sees frightens him. He doubts that any woman could truly want him, love him, him. Yet this piteous creature wants love desperately. When he can't find it, it does things to him. That's why he comes to hate all women. So-" She gestured. "Hate breeds frustration. Frustration sp.a.w.ns a frightful drive to violence."

Again she smiled. She spread her hands, gazing coolly at him.

"There you have it, Eilan. Portrait of a rapist. A being, not a man. Because a true man doesn't doubt himself on the rapist's level. He seeks out the woman who wants him as much as he wants her. But if it's rape that flashes you, if forcing your way into a body is all that counts . . . then I am only a woman. I cannot match your strength or stop you."

She gazed at him, waiting. It was a game she had played before. Each line, each movement of face and body and hands was experience-perfected. Always she had won. What man could maintain l.u.s.t in the face of the 89.denigrating picture she painted? And now, with this purple man . . .

Oddly, her heart was beating faster. While, maddeningly, his violet face remained expressionless.

"Really interesting lecture. Odd time to deliver it, though. You're the only one here who mentioned rape. What I mentioned was the need for a computrician on this ship, if we're to survive. You've got two mins. If you're not out by then, I'm coming in again." And he stalked from the cabin.

A shiver ran through the staring woman. This strange man-he bothered her in a way she had never known before (purple, onionheaded, arrogant, lower cla.s.s) even while he excited her, too, in a manner and to a degree that was alien to her. (No, no-that's fear I feel!) Of a sudden she knew that he would indeed be back.

Unless I'm ready merely to surrender, I must be prepared! The purple, onionheaded, arrogant lower-cla.s.sed . . . miner!) Swiftly, she crossed to the door. Switching the Lhote coil from the pulsars to the heavy-duty reepr panel, she attached it to the inner doorframe. She knew what she was doing, and it took barely a min. Lips only faintly corner-tilted in a smug smile, she resumed the smoothing of her irrepressible hair.

Seconds, ticking by ...

Across the cabin, the door opened. He stood there, in the entry. Staring.

"You heard what I said?" Jesti said, and it was not really a question. "About working."

"I heard," Yahna said, and was careful to coat her tone with scorn. "I'm waiting."

Jesti's eyes went cold. He stepped into the cabin . . . and stopped as if he had run partway onto the point of a rapier. He twitched, eyes suddenly wide and lips parted in a grimace of exploding consternation. His face showed . . . fear.

It was a moment eminently worth waiting for, Yahna thought. A just vengeance for all women down through all the ages; women terrorized by men. Ah, look at 90.the b.a.s.t.a.r.d suffer, feel the pangs of raw, inexplicable fear!

Only then, incredibly, over there in the hatchway, something happened. Though bent almost double and a.s.saulted by her scientific arts, the man named Jestikhan Churt wasn't quaking or shaking or sobbing with fear.

No. Unbelievably, he was moving. Stepping forward, forcing himself a slow and agonizing step ... out of the field . . . then the barrier, the fear-trap, was behind him. He straightened, took in a great breath, and came striding to her.

It was Yahna's turn to feel panic. She stumbled backward, hard against the cabin wall. Involuntarily, her hands rose to shield her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Because she worked with Setsuyo Puma, possessor of the well-advertised Biggest Pair In The Universe, she had sought contrast. The arts of cellular engineering and arrangement made Yahna's actually resemble warheads; taut, widely separated cones.

"That hurt," the purple man said tightly. "That circuit hurt almost more than I could stand, psychist. Good thing I'm an Eilan. Anyone else would have burned out. Of course our piratic crew would have killed you in retaliation- after using you sore and b.l.o.o.d.y-but that would have been small consolation to the man you destroyed. Fortunately for you, then, you picked an Eilan. We've got special neurons, haven't you heard? Special brain cells, they claim, along with purple skin and gill-slits."

A new thrill of terror raced through Yahna-and not just of terror. She held her breath without knowing it, waiting for his violent violet hands to seize on her.

"Thanks for the lecture. One is always happy to learn. And your courage overwhelms me." She came erect: head up, chest out, hands nervously at her sides. "Go ahead, then. I'm ready."

For what seemed an interminable moment, the purple man stared at her. Then, abruptly, he tilted back his shorn head and laughed.

To call that a first for Yahna Golden would be to use words far too pale.

His laugh was worse than hot hands by far; worse than 91.any white-hot iron. It rang beyond believing, beyond accepting, beyond enduring. The sound it brought forth from her was like nothing she had ever voiced or heard before. Spasmodically, her nails dug into her skinnt.i.te, into the cleft between her ever-outthrust b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Wrenching, ripping.

In stunned disbelief, she realized as if watching someone else that she was tearing away the fabric. Baring her body to this violet monster.

"d.a.m.n you, you grat-no, plithit!-you monster, you- you creature!" she screamed. "Rape for rape, you said! My body for your mind! Or aren't you man enough to take a woman?"

The shock of her words showed on Jesti's face. She was well-known. He knew she was free and proud-unto-arrogant and competent. And he had never heard of either Ayn Rand or Havelock Ellis. Incredibly to Yahna, he stepped back. His stare raked her nakedness up and down. And it was total nakedness; her body bore no trace of hair below the eyelashes. She looked all bosom and lean torso and what looked like about 85 sems of leg.

"Rape?" he lashed. "You think I'd rape you? No, thanks! You're not a woman, you're a stone-splitter, Golden-a ballbreaker! You'd be a lousy lay. Your head's the only part of you that counts, so far as I'm concerned. You've got a job to do as computrician, Golden."

Turning his back on her, the incredible man started for the door.

She stared, mouth forgottenly agape, and she was quivering all over. The wave of heat that washed over her was like fire. Her brain ceased to function, if it had been. s.n.a.t.c.hing up the magnalamp, she hurled it at him with all her might.

It struck him dead between the shoulders, so hard that he staggered under the impact.

He tried to turn-and Yahna kicked for his groin. Barely in time, he twisted enough to take the blow on his thigh. It still hurt, and it threw him off balance. Already staggered by the magnalamp, he banged to the floor. His hands, 92.clawing for support, caught a bare knee. She too fell, with a crash and a kicked-cat sound.

He hung on to the knee and his other hand groped, found a hold, dragged her to him.

His voice rasped in her ear: "You psycho psychist b.i.t.c.h!"

She got out one word before her eyes flared wide: "You-uh!"

They came slapping together. Writhing. His breath gushed hot on her face and his clothing was rough against bared skin. The hardness of him impaled her despite her thrashing. All breath, all possibility of forming words was driven from her by that violent invasion. Now it was she who was disequilibrated-and feeling bisected. He drove, pounding, seeking her very core. Depths of excitement she hadn't known she had possessed her while her flesh flowered, stretched around his.

She clutched him, not clawing but dragging him deeper, deeper, gasping and groaning from her dry throat, and did all she could to drive her prostrate body upward. Until she could stand no more. A paroxysm caught her and she shuddered in it, keening. The paroxysm convulsed her in spasm after spasm. Her keening scream was not of pain. And he shoved, and began twitching atop her, inside her even while she twitched and gasped in climax.

He dared not linger, in that temporary weakness of completion. Shakily, he dragged his sweaty body free. Wary of her legs, he rocked back, and rose to stare down at her.

She looked absolutely magnificent and she knew it.

He said, "You have work to do, psychist. Work as a-computrician.''

She lay back, breathing deeply. Aware of the juddering surge of bared, flushed b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Of her wide-forked legs and his marks on her.

"And you, Ellan? What of you?" she taunted. "Do you still think my head's the only part of me that's useful?"

The words I don't know-I haven't tried it yet came to his mind, and he swallowed them. The expression on his face was something to behold.

93."For a psychist, you lack insight," he told her. "All this talk about rape-I don't rape! You're the one it turns on, not me. Because you can't let go like other women. The man's got to take you. By force. The only way you can ignite and flash is to put the blame on someone else. So-you won."

He broke off, staring bleakly at wide-glaring eyes and open mouth.

"I meant what I said about you working, Golden. So far as I'm concerned, it's your head I want, not your body. Something you're skilled at. It's time you took your shift as computrician."

8.

All women are good: good for nothing, or good for something.

-Miguel de Cervantes Yellow fields of azaafrunn under yellow skies streaked with gold and fluffed with white made Nevermind seem a pleasant enough planet. Gelor supposed that one might soon grow bored with so much yellow. Too, he was aware that the few powerful Factors-capitalized, here, as an almost regal t.i.tle-ran things. Life was not exactly great for the azaafrunn farmers plodding along without decent machinery and owing their souls to the Factors' stores. (The Factors, of course, were responsible for the anti-mechanization legislation.) So? Gelor didn't give a running d.a.m.n about farmers or Factors. And things were nicely different here in Nevermind's capital, Newhope.

He did give d.a.m.ns about the andrist Shemsi, insofar as she could serve his plan. He was delighted that she was a joy to behold. Pet.i.te, delicate, with not-quite-black hair looped in a graceful chignon and a very pale azure "mask" of dye around her eyes and upper cheeks, she wore a wide-eyes air of continual surprised delight. As if just being in a man's presence const.i.tuted an ecstasy almost beyond enduring. (She also wore a mauve dress that clung 94.95.lovingly to what it covered and marvelously framed what it didn't.) It was she who suggested that they hold their meeting in a char-par, and who chose a curtained booth where they could be free of prying or even glancing eyes. Gelor only partially masked his delight and neglected to give thanks to that unladylike lady called Luck.

Tentatively, as they sat down, he let his fingers touch hers. Rather than pull away, she clasped his hand. A stone-faced 'Minder waiter saved the disconcerted Gelor from having to decide how to respond to her response. Shemsi asked for the local tea, char. She also said she liked it strong and black. Gelor shrugged and asked for the same, and the waiter left.

Pushing aside the great garnadine pendant that hung in the hollow of her throat, Shemsi lifted Gelor's hand and pressed it to her breast. He was re-astonished-and sure he felt the nipple swelling. Clearly, she wore nothing under the wetcloth sari of deep red-violet. Gelor blinked, then almost automatically cupped and squeezed that pointy breast. It was superbly shaped and felt wonderfully soft. No, firm. Firm-soft, then.

Shemsi dropped her eyes demurely, she who was about as demure as he. New color came to her cafe-au-lait (and azure-"masked") cheeks.