“No, Janet. Not everyone hates you, believe me. More people feel sorry for you.”
“Why should they?”
“Your minds have been altered by genetic engineers …”
“Ours but not yours?” Janet burst out laughing, sitting up on her bed. “Friend-spesh, they’ve mutilated you much more than me. You aren’t even capable of love!”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, ‘so what’?” The black lady spread out her arms. “You stupid pilot … You go on getting laid, having orgasms, and thinking that’s what makes a relationship between a man and a woman?”
“Why, of course not. There’s also personal empathy, warm congeniality …”
“Oh, go shove your personal empathy! You’re much more of a freak than I am! I was made to hate the Others, so I hate them. Maybe I’m way, way wrong, but at least I haven’t lost anything! I’ve found something—hate! Do you get that? But you … you’ve lost everything! Lost half the universe! Kim, the poor little girl, watches you with adoration, follows you around like a puppy. And you don’t even notice it!”
“I do notice it, Janet! A few hours ago she and I had sex, and we both …”
Janet Ruello, the Ebenian executioner-spesh, burst out laughing.
“Deus Irae! How do I describe a sunset to a blind man?! Alex, did you know that on Eben, pilots were left capable of love?”
“That was dumb. A complete confluence with the ship can be achieved only with a lack of attachment to people.”
“That’s not it at all! It’s just that everything is interconnected. Both love and hate. It is impossible to get rid of love without putting in at least some kind of surrogate. For you pilots, that surrogate is the confluence with the ship. For detectives and tax collectors, it’s the ecstasy of discovering the truth. One day, they’ll find a surrogate for all the rest of us, as well.”
Janet thought for a moment and added:
“All but the soldiers, probably. For them, love is a necessary counterbalance to the working hatred for the enemy. We were all soldiers … so we were all capable of love.”
Alex was silent. It was impossible to argue with a spesh defending her own specialization. Besides, she was right to some extent—Edgar, in virtuality, had also talked about biochemical links.
“Janet, what are we going to do?”
“Were you convinced that the Zzygou race are not our allies?”
“They’re temporary allies,” Alex corrected her. “I’ve never had any illusions about it.”
“I won’t provoke them again.”
“Do I have your word?”
“I swear as a spesh, friend-spesh.”
“Swear an oath to me, as your captain.”
Janet smiled.
“Why?”
“Swear the Ebenian military oath.”
Her features quivered.
“Friend-spesh, I am no longer a citizen of Eben. What remains of our army is hermetically sealed off from the galaxy.”
“What difference does that make?”
Janet looked away. Reluctantly admitted:
“None.”
“Swear an oath to me, as your captain.”
“In the name of divided Humanity …” Janet began, her lips trembling.
“Continue,” ordered Alex mercilessly. Then added, in a softer voice, “I have to ask you to do this, friend-spesh.”
“In the name of divided Humanity, reigning over the stars, worshiping our Lord, in the name of my ancestors and my progeny, I swear …”—she paused briefly, while the words came to her—“I swear that I won’t harm the aliens Zey-So and Sey-Zo, temporarily occupying the same ship with me. I will not show them my true feelings. I will not prevent them from leaving the ship alive and unharmed.”
In Alex’s estimation, this oath was comprehensive. Or very nearly so.
“Thank you, Janet. Forgive me. I had to order you to do it.”
“It’s all right, Captain.” Strangely enough, Janet really meant it. “You took all my responsibility upon yourself. Now I feel I am in a war situation, so I must conceal my true feeling from the Others.”
“Thank you …” Alex bent down and kissed her lips. He hoped the kiss would be brief, just a token of affection and gratitude.
But it didn’t work that way.
Janet folded her arm around his neck, then pressed him closer. Her kiss was not as artful as Kim’s, but much more distinctive and personal. Alex felt himself unintentionally returning the movement of her lips. Forced himself to stop.
“Janet, if Kim finds out …”
“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “She and I have talked this over.”
“What?”
“I told her right off the bat that I found you attractive. Kim agreed that I had a right to feel the way I do.”
Alex could barely suppress a laugh. Incapable of love, he felt compelled to remain faithful to his girl. Kim was crazily in love with him, but she let him sleep with Janet.
With Janet, everything was different. She didn’t have any illusions about their relationship, and never demanded more than he could give. She may have lacked the genetically programmed art of the geisha, but her ordinary human experience turned out to be a worthy substitute. Everything was different. Just as different as the two women’s appearances. They were each other’s opposites—the fragile fair nymphet, and the heavyset black lady.
Although he had to give himself just as energetically to both of them.
“I have another quarter of an hour,” he said, as they rested. “Then it’s back to the bridge.”
“Just a sec …”
Janet got out her cigarettes, lit two up, handed one to Alex, and avidly smoked the other one herself.
“I enjoyed it very much,” said Alex, caressing her dark thigh, glistening with sweat. “You are a wonderful lover, Janet.”
“Better than Kim?” she asked with a mischievous smile.
“Yes, I would say … because of your age. She has very little experience. And that makes a big difference, despite all her efforts.”
“In five years or so, she’ll far outshine me.” Janet smiled. “Well, I don’t really mind … Oh, Alex, I should’ve warned you in advance …”
“What about?”
“I didn’t block conception. There’s a possibility that I’ll get pregnant.”
Alex was quiet for a moment before admitting:
“How unusual. I’ve never had a woman like that.”
“Does that turn you on?” Janet smiled again.
“Yes,” said Alex earnestly. “I have three kids, but all were conceived under the terms of an agreement. Two boys under the government order—they are at some boarding school on Earth—and a girl from a … good friend of mine. I visit her regularly.”
“All speshes?” Janet inquired.
“The boys—I don’t know, to be honest with you. Probably. I have a good genotype. But the girl is specialized as a detective.”
“Poor thing …”
Alex said nothing. He didn’t really feel like continuing the argument about the necessity of love.
“I have five, but no one specialized for a profession that requires the loss of major emotions,” Janet told him.
“You seem to have mentioned four …”
“The fifth one’s on Eben. If he’s alive, that is. I prefer to think he is alive … I would have felt him die.”
“What do you mean, you would’ve felt him die? Is that also a part of your specialization?” Alex asked curiously.
The woman laughed. “No, of course not. We have this belief … a mother feels if her children are alive.”
“Very romantic,” Alex agreed. “A bit archaic, but sweet.”
“We kept to our old traditions in many respects. I gave birth to my first three kids personally, for instance.”
She said that with an easy and even careless air, but Alex felt his skin crawl.
“Why?” was all he could ask.
“
It’s a tradition. Are you disturbed by that?”
“No … not much. After all, a third of all people are born that way. I’ve even been trained to assist with natural childbirth, in case of unforeseeable flight circumstances. But I didn’t expect it of you… .” He laughed a forced laugh. “Don’t tell me you also suckled them yourself?”
“Yes. All five of them. Each one at least once.”
Alex started.
“Your lactation isn’t blocked?”
“No. An Ebenian soldier is a military unit unto herself. A woman must be able to give birth and nurture future warriors without any assistance.”
Alex looked sideways at her voluptuous breasts. He had thought their size to be a result of genetic modifications or individual peculiarities of her constitution … now he knew.
“Sorry. I should’ve told you before …” said Janet pensively. “Many people are disgusted by that fact of my biography. I let my children consume my own bodily fluids … I can certainly see how that would be shocking.”
Alex was listening to his own reactions. Then gave up, unable to sort out all the raging sensations and thoughts, and looked down at the Demon. What he saw made his face turn red.
“Janet, I must be some kind of pervert. All that … just turns me on.”
Janet Ruello looked at him. Her eyes were blazing.
“I hoped it would, Alex.”
Chapter 4
New Ukraine was considered to be a successful planet, with solid prospects for the future and more or less loyal to the Imperial government. In a word, it was the golden center of the Empire, one of the pillars propping up civilization. Peaceful, plentiful, and utterly dreary.
Had the hyper-channel near the planet been a continuously functioning one, Alex wouldn’t have even considered landing on New Ukraine. But the colony wasn’t a galactic crossroads like Gamma Snakebearer. Neither was it a bustling trading post like Quicksilver Pit. Mirror came out of the channel, traced another arc to return to the entrance, but didn’t manage to re-enter. A whole caravan of refrigerators loaded with frozen and nominally live pork—the two main New Ukrainian exports—was slowly pulling into the narrowing aperture of the channel.
“The next time it opens will be in nine hours and seventeen minutes,” reported Xang gloomily. “Do we wait, Captain?”
Alex was lost in thought. He had walked onto the bridge about a minute before they exited the channel, and Janet appeared in the system literally one second before they came out into real space. His emotions hadn’t yet settled, and mentally he was still with this tall, dark-skinned woman, so charmingly depraved, and at the same time so conservative …
“C-the-Third …” Alex had connected to the ship’s inner net. The clone was in his cabin—he sat at the computer terminal working on a text file. “We have some nine hours in the New Ukrainian system. Shall we land or wait in orbit?”
“Let’s go down,” replied the clone without hesitation. “The Zzygou prefer to attend to their natural needs in open air or running water.”
Alex was using an open channel, audible to the whole crew, and Janet let out a quiet, spiteful laugh.
“Very well. Please tell your wards,” Alex asked him. “And … how are they feeling, by the way?”
“Everything’s back to normal,” answered the clone calmly. “Sey-Zo has explained to me what had happened. The cocktail included some anise liqueur from Hellada-2. It was an unfortunate misunderstanding. Turns out, the natural alkaloids of anise cause a strong intoxication in the Zzygou, which is accompanied by a propensity for mystification and an uncontrollable need to say things that are unpleasant to their interlocutors. They beg your pardon … and ask not to offer them any more beverages that contain anise.”
It was impossible to tell whether C-the-Third really believed that what had happened was an accident, or if he simply preferred not to blow up the scandal. He seemed ready to believe it was an accident.
“Propensity for mystification …” Janet murmured. “Yes, of course …”
“Right battle station, please be quiet,” said Alex dryly. And Janet fell silent. Not offended; rather, fully satisfied with what she had heard.
They began their descent toward the planet.
New Ukraine had four spaceports. One was located near the capital city, Mazepa-Misto. Two more were out in the boundless green steppes, where herds of mutated swine roamed—huge, elephantine creatures, covered by a three-and-a-half-foot-thick layer of aromatized lard, rich in vitamins. Alex had had occasion to try various kinds of local pork, created by the artful cunning of geneticists. He had also tried the lard, which, though untreated, had a smoked flavor and consistency. He had also sampled the sweet “chocolate” lard you could buy in small cans. Alex wasn’t a great fan of the local delicacies, but the geneticists’ mastery was unquestionable.
The fourth New Ukrainian spaceport, where they would be landing, was located near the planet’s one and only sea. The colony was not lacking for water, but by a strange caprice of nature, there were no large lakes on New Ukraine, to say nothing of seas or oceans. A long and arduous terraforming process had artificially created the sea. There was no true necessity for it, especially considering that this large body of water had a significant, and not positive, effect on the climate of the adjacent regions. But at this point, it had become a matter of principle. Every colony wanted to have everything a normal planet should: seas and mountains, forests and swamps. Alex had already seen the shapeless, monstrous, artificially created mountain chain on Serengeti, so the New Ukrainians’ desire to have a sea did not surprise him.
The ship went in for landing over the sea. Tore through a line of clouds—a sign of an approaching storm moving toward the shore at a leisurely pace. Rushed over the pallid gray blotches of water poisoned by hydrogen sulphide—the terraforming was still not completed. The view changed closer to the shore. The sea turned a clean greenish blue, and the air got clear and bright. The ship was moving about three hundred thirty feet above the surface of the water, having reduced its speed to a minimum and shifted to the clean, though energy-consuming, plasma thrusters.
“Will there be any shore leave, Captain?” inquired Generalov, in a businesslike tone. He had absolutely nothing to occupy him at the moment, so he was visibly bored.
“Yes. A six-hour leave for anyone interested. The only one to stay on duty …”—he hesitated briefly—“will be me.”
The raging white vortex—Kim’s consciousness—tossed a needle of white light at him.
“Alex!” The girl was clearly mad at him, but at least she chose to confront him on a private channel. “I thought we’d hang out on the planet together!”
“Kim …” He transferred the piloting to Xang, who was delighted with this unexpected gift. Then Alex focused on the conversation. “As the ship’s captain, I must make sure that the crew has a chance to rest. By tradition, the first shore leave is the captain’s time to stay aboard.”
“I hate your traditions! I won’t leave the ship, either!”
“Fine. Stay on,” Alex agreed.
She fell silent immediately. Then grumbled:
“I changed my mind.”
“Come on, don’t be mad …” Alex tried to imbue his words with as much warmth as he could. “We’ll hang out together on Zodiac for sure. And it’s a much more beautiful planet, trust me.”
“Do I have your word?” asked Kim quickly.
“I swear.”
Kim fell silent, apparently satisfied. Alex returned to piloting, though he did not take the controls away from Xang, simply keeping an eye on the co-pilot instead. There was no real need for that—the ship was already coming in for landing. Below them stretched green fields of lush alfalfa, pigs leisurely plodding through them. Alex turned on the magnification to take a closer look at these gigantic, imperturbable animals in all their glory. They did not in any way react to the landing ship—they were used to them. And only a mischievous shepherd boy, making his rounds on the back of a fas
t young piglet, turned his little face toward the sky and waved at the ship enthusiastically, his little hand clutching a thermal whip. Alex smiled, regretting the fact that he couldn’t greet the happy kid in kind.
“Landing glissando …” Xang reported.
Mirror slid down to the very surface, rushing over the landing field paved with six-sided concrete slabs.
“Standing in the pillar …”
The ship came to a stop over the spot assigned to it by flight control.
“Touchdown …”
The landing supports had slid out of the body of the ship and touched the work-weary slabs of the spaceport.
“Thank you very much, Mister Morrison,” said Alex ceremoniously.
“Much obliged to you, Captain,” replied Xang with feeling. “Shall we make the transfer to parked mode?”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
Alex slipped out of the glimmering rainbow, out of the warm, caressing embrace of the ship. Felt the ship reaching for him, striving to prolong the moments of contact.
“I’ll be back … I’ll be back … I’ll be back …”
Leave on terra firma!
What could bring more joy to a spaceship crew?
No matter how long the flight had been—a few hours or a few weeks. No matter what kind of world the ship had landed on—the fragrant valleys of Edem, or the wide open New Ukrainian steppes, or among the biodome settlements of the mining planets.
It made no difference; nothing was more joyous or more eagerly anticipated.
The balmy air of a new world, new faces, funny and strange customs, exotic dishes, happy local hetaeras, interesting though useless souvenirs—all that awaited the crew stepping out for shore leave. Combined with the pleasure of one’s favorite work, the ship was their home, and the most beloved little part of the Universe. But what human being doesn’t enjoy being a guest? And that was why all astronauts cherished even the briefest hours of leave so fervently.
Alex stood under his ship’s belly and smiled, looking at his crew. His wards, his coworkers, his friends, his children … they stood waiting for the land transport. This spaceport wasn’t so large as to have a well-developed underground transportation network like the one on Quicksilver Pit.