The Loioc woman nodded. "Yes. He husbands me. He fertilizes my eggs, when and as I permit. He need not be sentient for that." She leaned forward to peer more closely into Althea's face. "All our males are nonsentient. Just as yours will be, in time."

Vellis protested with a whimper that was nearly a howl, but Efthis spoke sharply and stamped one delicate foot, and the Loioc male became submissive. At his mistress's direction, he went reluctantly into a room whose sole furnishings were a thin mattress, a hassock, and a large box filled with some crumbly substance, sat upon the hassock in a peculiarly canine fashion, and bowed his head. Efthis swung the room's door, a grate of closely spaced metal bars, closed with a muted clang and twisted a knob that sent a deadbolt home. She turned back to Althea with an air of chagrin.

"I must beg your pardon," the Loioc said. "Despite all the study we have made of Hope and its people, I had momentarily forgotten that you allow your males to remain sentient. Indeed, that fact has caused no small amount of consternation among our people. We have awaited true, bidirectional intercourse with you with great eagerness for that reason among others."

We allow our males to remain sentient?

"I had assumed," she said, measuring out the words, "that this...condition was a consequence of some unfortunate cosmic phenomenon. Maybe a radiation field that swept over your home world, or something like that. You...engineered it? Genetically?"

Efthis had led her to a rather conventional-looking kitchenette, complete with sink, faucet, counter, table, and chairs, and bade her to sit. The Loioc pulled open a large metal cabinet, extracted a pitcher and two glasses, and brought them to the table.

"This is called kiara," Efthis said. "It's a fruit juice, moderately sweet, with a mildly acidic tang. You might enjoy it. Would you like to try it?"

"Efthis..." Althea said, "I do appreciate your hospitality, but how do I know it's not toxic to me? Just because we look alike?"

Efthis smiled. "I had your body chemistry analyzed while you were in the bath with us. Our metabolisms are nearly perfectly identical. What would poison you would be equally lethal to me, if not more so."

"Why did you do that?"

The Loioc gestured at the pitcher. "To know whether we could do this, for one thing." She poured generous helpings of juice into both glasses and passed one to Althea. "For another, so that I could be certain that our body-maintenance devices can repair you, should you come to any harm while you are my guest."

Althea started to say got my own, thanks, and held her tongue.

"So you're completely self-sufficient here? Food, clothing, energy, medicine, diversions all taken care of?" She sniffed at the glass of kiara. Its aroma was as Efthis had described it: moderately sweet, with a citrus-like tang. Unsure of the proprieties but unwilling to proceed solely on Efthis's assurances, she set the glass down and pushed it a little away.

Efthis nodded. "Completely. It was a condition of the assignment. To be supplied with our necessities from groundside, with all the complexities and intrusions that would entail, would be entirely too troublesome for all concerned."

"But you could return to the planetary surface if you chose, couldn't you?"

"Oh yes," Efthis said. "We have a one-way vehicle docked on the other side of the station." She smiled. "Believe me, from time to time these past eight years, I've felt the urge to return. However, my relief won't be ready to assume her duties for another two years, so it would be viewed with disfavor."

She and her...husband must have a lot of ways to keep occupied.

"Concerning your earlier question," the Loioc said, "yes, we quenched the sentience of our males by decision and design. What we learned from comparable races, to say nothing of our own experiences, made it imperative.

"Before we did so, our world was riven by every kind of strife and madness. Loioc males were quite as aggressive and proprietary as yours, and we females could do little to mitigate their tendencies toward violence and destruction. The nations of our world were almost continuously at war.

"Your ancestors on Earth provided a fertile field for study," Efthis said. "Were you aware that over the two millennia that preceded your people's departure from that system, your planet of origin had known peace-real peace, not merely a temporary lull in the slaughters-for a grand total of three days? That throughout the rest of that interval of history, Earth males had been killing and being killed, laying waste to whatever they could reach?

"You, Althea, are the beneficiary of what progress your race could achieve despite the continuity of slaughter. Your achievements and those of your kindred began from the plateau of knowledge and technology build by those who preceded you-those who managed not to fall as the ordnance flew around them. By our measures, you of Hope have reached a technological level perhaps seventy-five percent as high as we Loioc have attained. At that, Hope has not progressed as far as the Earthly societies from which it was derived. I shall not denigrate it, even so. But have you ever contemplated how much higher your world would have risen-how much greater your own achievements would have been, Althea-had Earth known the blessings of peace?

"About twenty-two hundred of your years ago, a great geneticist isolated the constellation of genes and alleles that give rise to a brain capable of sentience and rational thought. It was well that she was female and discreet. She immediately conceived of the application to the pacification of our race, and set about assembling a team that would construct a nanite that would unmake the sentience constellation in our male progeny. As soon as they were certain it was effective and safe, they flooded the waters of our world with the devices. Within fifty years, there was virtually no violence among us."

She glanced back at the door of Vellis's cell. "My husband is typical of Loioc males. His brain masses to about sixty percent of mine. His ability to communicate is limited to what he can absorb through conditioning: simple sounds and simple gestures. He's not the sort of companion with whom I could have a conversation such as this." Efthis smiled. "But he essays no violence. He recognizes females-Loioc females, at least-as his superiors by inborn instinct, and submits to us without hesitation. Now that he's been conditioned for personal loyalty, he does as I command him, and nothing more.

"We had a few regrets, of course. Society was more dynamic, and more interesting, before we unmade our males' minds. But the consensus was that a degree of social and economic stasis would be a small price to pay for the elimination of the horrors male aggression had brought us. At any rate, that door is closed forever. The nanites are self-replicating. The waters of our world are saturated with them, and they can never be seined out."

Althea suppressed her desire to shudder and did her best to smile.

"If you had asked your men whether they would agree to be...pacified that way," she said pleasantly, "do you think any great number of them would have said yes, do it?"

Efthis shrugged. "Possibly not, but what does it matter? The moral imperative was too obvious to permit any resistance. We had learned all too well what develops when male aggression is permitted to operate unchecked." She waved an elfin hand. "You would not find a Loioc anywhere below who's unsatisfied with the arrangement."

Except the ones who can no longer say so.

"I think the women of Hope would have a different opinion," Althea said. "We love our men as they are. I can't imagine perpetrating the sort of...adjustment on them that you've inflicted upon yours. In fact, among us what your great geneticist did would constitute an unimaginably vile crime, the rape of an entire species. She would be ostracized for life if she were even to suggest it."

Althea paused for a moment of reflection, and smiled. "Hope has never known war, or mass violence of any other sort. We left that sort of madness behind us when we set out from Earth. I doubt my sisters could bring themselves to think as yours do, no matter how eloquently you might argue it to them."

Efthis raised an eyebrow. "No war or mass violence, you say? Then why does nearly every denizen of your world go armed whenever he ventures beyond his home?"

Althea shrugged. "Simple caution. Men-humans, both sexes, have free will and the capacity for evil. Besides, you never know what might come up."

"And from where might some threat that requires an armed response arise, Althea?" Efthis's smile acquired a predatory edge. "Which of the two sexes are you being cautious about?"

Althea's temper strained against her leash. "We like our men as they are," she grated. "They're our partners in..." What did Martin call it? "...in the adventure of life. Not a threat we have to defend ourselves against at all costs." She hardened her expression into lines of defiance. "You can keep those clever little nanites for yourselves."

Efthis smiled slyly. "Is that why you haven't touched your kiara, Althea?"

Despite her resolution to maintain her reserve, Althea felt a snarl form on her features.

"What do you think, Mistress Efthis?"

"I think you need not deprive yourself," Efthis said. "You've been thoroughly infused with the nanites since a few seconds after you stepped into the bath. We are no more willing to allow your males than ours to pollute our galactic neighborhood with their violent ways. You will be the instrument of their gentling."

A tidal wave of fury surged within Althea Morelon. She reeled from her sudden, all but overpowering desire to smash, kill, and lay waste around her.

"When I return to Hope," Althea ground out, "the men of my world will very likely construct and commission an expeditionary fleet-a well armed fleet-and send it here. I can't be certain what they'll do when they get here, but I doubt you and your sisters groundside will find it pleasant."

The Loioc's smile turned superior.

"Then you will not be returning to Hope."

"Oh? Do you have a way to stop me?"

Efthis rose from the table, turned toward a dim corridor into the station, and indicated with a negligent wave of her hand that Althea should follow.

"The mechanism you see via this viewscreen," Efthis said, "occupies most of the volume of this station. It generates a high-intensity muon flux that permeates the galactic disk for two hundred light-years around. It's powered by our sun, it's self-repairing, and it cannot be turned off. Alone of all the children of Earth, you have learned how to negate the effects of that flux and relax the so-called speed-of-light limitation. But since you passed within the cometary belt, the flux has been far too intense for your ship's superluminal drive to countervail. Nor will it avail you to exit our system on your reaction drive alone, for the suppressor has already infiltrated and taken command of your drive. You will not achieve interstellar velocities again unless I permit it."

Althea gazed in silence at the huge, faintly humming machine that held her prisoner.

I never thought I'd find a machine that's an abomination, all by itself, just because of what it can do.

She closed her eyes, set her viewpoint free of her body, and sped it into the vast machine.

The thing was complex beyond Althea's understanding. It possessed hundreds of interlinked subsystems, only a few of which resembled anything she knew. She thought she could identify radiation sources and targets, direct-and-deflect conduits, baffles for stray emissions and sinks for excess heat. But far more assemblages were completely opaque to her comprehension. Some of them, though they appeared to be as unitary as gemstones, possessed internal structures of bewildering intricacy. She could not even be certain where any component began and ended. The whole hinted at properties of space-time and modes of matter-energy interaction beyond her attainments.

She tested her telekinesis against a handful of the smaller pieces. None of them moved detectably, even when she exerted her full power.

It doesn't matter. I can't just wrench a few bits of this contraption loose telekinetically and call the job finished. Not as long as it might retain the ability to fix itself, or if the Loioc might discover the damage and repair it...and not as long as I don't really know what I'm doing.

The whole thing has to go.

"What's the price for my freedom?" she said at last.

Efthis turned toward her, a glittering metallic torque in one hand.

"You must agree to wear this. It contains an advanced artificial intelligence, equipped with a full suite of environmental sensors, that will sense any attempt to violate the ethical constraints programmed into it. It also contains a generator capable of shocking you into unconsciousness, which will activate at any attempt, even a dubious one, to commit a violation or to remove it from your body."

Althea peered at the gleaming thing. "You have artificial intelligences that can read a person's body language and forestall undesirable actions?"

"Not entirely body language, Althea," Efthis said. "Look at the inner surface of the torque."

Althea leaned in for a close inspection. At close range, a great many filaments, each one finer than a hair, became visible. "Neural probes?"

Efthis nodded. "Quite sensitive ones. They give the onboard intelligence a way to anticipate the wearer's actions, as well as react to his current ones. It's how we restrain our few remaining lawbreakers without having to incarcerate them." She smiled.

Althea had seen that smile before. It was that of a woman who knows, beyond all possibility of contradiction, that she holds all the trumps. Her blood rose. She answered the Loioc's smile with one of her own.

"How clever," Althea said. "I suppose I've no choice. But may I ask a question first?"

Efthis cocked an eyebrow.

"How do your sisters travel the galaxy?"

The Loioc frowned. "We don't. The suppressor's speed-of-light restriction binds us as firmly as any other world within the machine's radius of effect."

Althea widened her eyes. "But a race as advanced as yours must be working on some alternative, surely?"

Darkness touched Efthis's features. "Of course. We've been researching teleportation for centuries, but so far it's remained out of reach. Entropic effects arising from the energies required fatally disorder anything we try to teleport."

"I see," Althea said. "Has it ever occurred to you that those effects might be due to an even more advanced race's suppression of your desire to wander the stars?" She gestured at the viewscreen. "Just as you've used that machine in there to confine the peoples around you?"

Efthis's mouth dropped open. She glanced at the huge machine, Althea moved with sudden, violent speed, and the Loioc fell to the floor unconscious.

"Bitch," Althea muttered as she hoisted the smaller woman into a fireman's carry. "Never tell a Morelon there's something he can't do. Now just where do you keep your stash of rope?"

It took a while to locate the reentry vehicle Efthis had mentioned and secure the unconscious Loioc female in one of its seats. It took still longer to persuade the badly frightened Vellis that Althea meant him no harm, that it was safe to leave his cell and go where she directed him. Eventually she had the two properly strapped into their anti-acceleration chairs and ready for launch.

One more thing to see to.

She returned to Liberty's Torch, powered up her voice recorder, and dictated a brief message.

"This is Althea Morelon, mistress of interstellar vessel Liberty's Torch from Hope, approximately eleven light-years out toward the galactic rim. I'll be returning to Hope in just a little while, to tell my compatriots all about your society. I expect my reports will make them very angry. I expect that they'll decide to do something about you...and that the time you'll have to brace yourselves for our next visit will be a lot shorter than you'd like.

"As you can see, I've returned your sentinels-excuse me, your gaolers to your loving arms. Don't treat them too harshly. They did their best. They just didn't reckon with having to face a Morelon. Anyway, try to smile about it all. I'm leaving you a present. Before I depart your system, you'll have the same interstellar potential I've contrived for us of Hope. Think you'll be able to make use of it without the help of your menfolk?

"That's all for now. Althea Morelon signing out."

She transferred the recording to a memory cartridge, returned to the reentry craft, and tucked it into a pocket of Efthis's coverall. As she made to leave, Vellis looked up at her and whimpered.

"Sorry, fella," she murmured. "I can't do a thing for you. Maybe we'll be back to help your kids, some day."

She stepped out of the hatch and closed it behind her.

When Liberty's Torch's sensors showed the reentry craft to be safely beyond Efthis's station, Althea seated herself at the command console and strove to compose herself for her next moves. She checked the ship's tanks of reaction mass, did a swift mental calculation, reached for the reaction drive igniter, and took a deep breath.

It had to be Loioc men who built this abomination. The women would never have dared. The dangers of large-scale construction in space are far too great. They probably used collars like the one Efthis threatened me with to compel them to comply.

But were they derationalized creatures like Vellis, or were they intact men? If the former, how could they have coped with the complexities? If the latter, what did the women promise them for their cooperation? A homeland of their own, where they could live as they pleased to their dying days? Or a privileged status of some sort among their derationalized brethren?

Her thoughts veered toward an even less pleasant subject.

An isolated group of genes responsible for sentience? Just one group that can be removed without damaging the rest of the genetic code? Not bloody likely. I should have probed for more details. What did the excision of the sentience constellation do to the rest of the male physiognomy? Was their strength reduced? Their dexterity? Their endurance? Their lifespan? What sort of process did the "great geneticist" go through in deciding that the tradeoff would be worthwhile?

She tried to imagine Martin reaved of his intellect and reduced to a well-conditioned slave. To a mindless, soulless thing, good only for what his sinews could do and his heart and lungs could endure. The thought was enough to revive her fury. It burned white hot at the center of her soul-a soul whose reality she could no longer doubt, a soul uniquely and indissolubly hers beyond any possibility of separation.

Only a part of her in direct contact with the moral laws of the universe could have flamed into such righteous rage.

What right did they have? How on Hope-strike that; how in the galaxy did they convince themselves that this was their prerogative?

Women have been civilizing the men of Hope for thirteen centuries. We've never needed to geld them. They've fought no wars. They've taken no slaves. They've erected no States, which is where all the other horrible ideas always came from. Maybe doing it our way, with love and devotion and lives filled with family and enterprise and riches, just seemed to the Loioc women like too much work.

The more fools they.

Another unpleasant possibility rose to bedevil her.

Will the menfolk of Hope burn as fiercely as I do over this obscenity, or will it fall to Clan Morelon to arrange vengeance and salvation for their cousins on the world below?

Will it fall to me?

It doesn't matter. If no one else will lead the expedition, I'll do it myself. Strike that: I'll do it, period. I'll craft the warships, invent the weapons, and build the armada. I'll train the leadership cadre and inspire the troops. I'll bring the hammer of vengeance down on these arrogant bitches. And I'll make a thorough job of it.

She engaged the reaction drive, opened the exhaust baffles wide, sent power to the attitude jets, and slowly circumnavigated the station.

She bathed the Loioc space station from end to end in the fusion plume. The station was tough; it had to be to accept, contain, and direct the energies required for its duties. But it wasn't nearly tough enough to resist temperatures kindled in the heart of a star. Within minutes, the shell of the station had softened and turned to slag. The shell and all its contents were no more than plasma shortly thereafter.

It never occurred to you that a mere female might have a little violence in her soul, did it, Efthis? Enough to deal with you and turn the door of your jail cell into a cloud of incandescent gas? Enough to return with a fleet of ships and weapons sufficient to deliver your menfolk from bondage and treat you and your sisters to the fate you've earned?

In time, bitch. In time. I have a little more physics to do, and a lot more planning. But I'll be back. With a fleet and a gaggle of angry companions...some of them women.