Many unanswered questions remained. How, if they were so powerful and accomplished, had these been captured? The nacyl (Krumm continued thinking of them as "flatsies," hoping, in frustrated moments, that they could read his mind) were unable to explain, beyond bald facts not significantly different from the story rollerballers told. The captain, who spent half his time learning to whistle like a flatsy, would understand someday. Krumm was compelled to imagine a human party of nude sunbathers caught in a surprise attack by savages.
"Murdering those people," Tula objected, "he must hate someone terribly."
Krumm nodded. Punctuated by kinergic thrumming, Henry Martyn's first months as a starbandit had streamed by in a river of blood, his reputation for implacability well earned. Appreciating less and less the alleged differences between contending imperia-conglomerate, he extended his attentions to ships and installations of Hanover's arch-enemy, the Empery-Cirot, to its supporting polities, as well as to those of Hanover and their many lesser rivals.
Everywhere he went, any time he achieved a victory in the Deep, or later, as his prowess and resources grew, upon the surfaces of outpost planets, he liberated slaves—by whatever euphemism they were called to deny the injustice of their estate. Common people, no better off—Hanoverian, Jendish, others all alike, were victims like himself. Whatever retribution he visited upon their masters, he left them unmolested. Often he spent time recruiting those he liberated, persuading them to become shipcrews for his fleet or his eyes and ears upon planets ruled by their masters. He gave special and mysterious assignments to aliens he set free, and to humans whose peculiarities suited them to whatever task he had in mind. Krumm pitied anyone whom the captain calculated still owed him a moral debt. Those who acted for the ceos were not long in responding. Hunted by two dread imperia-conglomerate, Henry Martyn's infamy as buccaneer, starship-robber, and freebooter continued to swell.
Tillie and Tula, accustomed to husbandly idiosyncrasies other than bad-tempered outbursts, waited in patience for
368 HENRY MARTYN
Krumm to break his thoughtful silence. "No doubt, me dear, an' with sufficient reason. Yet he delivered himself of the order as a housekeepin' matter—ye know prisoners in any number, let alone a hundred, are a knotty problem 'board ship—as calm as he*d order the shortenin' of star-sail."
"The way he's followed about by those flattie things," 1ila shuddered.
"They saved his life," he answered. "He takes comfort in their company, as they do in his, bein' lost t'their own people as they are." Tillie opened her mouth. Krumm interrupted, "An' before ye remind me, yes, Henry Martyn gives many a humane order. Such as his policy with slaves an' pressed beings. But he offers only cold pragmatics for a reason. There's no more humanity in his many kindnesses than there is malice in his many cruelties."
Mathilde Krumm would not be put off. "And the little girl?"
Krumm shook his head. "Tillie, I've driven pressed crews into the yards an' t'duties belowdecks most of me life. I've been, as ye know well, a slave m'self, first sold in the port Etumalam we're bound for. That this was not me choice in the matter is irrelevant. Had I dwelt upon me qualms, and not upon the discipline and workin' of the ship, I'd not be discussin' it with ye now, for I'd still be a slave, or, far more likely, good an' dead."
Tillie stepped closer, Tula rested a commiserating hand upon his arm. Even as he spoke, Krumm sensed within himself the poison of moral compromise which, addicting one and all within the imperia-conglomerate, permitted continuation of institutions that ought to have been smashed centuries ago. Compromise was not the only addiction a man could suffer, he thought bitterly. Perhaps he should never have led a mutiny nor rescued Henry Martyn from the Deep. An accommodation he had earlier reached with what he had conceived to be unchangeable had been breached. Forever afterward, anything he undertook which failed to measure up to those moments would smack to him of cowardice.
He shrugged. "We've no more t'say about that lass than of
liow he Spends his share of what we gamer in shipraid, for that's what she be, his share from our attack upon the Pelican." He stared up into the §-field. "Now be hush, darlin' spouses, an' belowdecks with ye. Yonder comes the captain's gig, and over there the pilot in his boat t'take us down t'Nosaer.
Chapter XL: The CAPTAIN'S Cabin
Through the metalloid fabric of the starship about her, Loreanna heard the thump of an auxiliary arriving and being made fast below.
Without being told so—and perhaps for the sake of preserving her sanity—she had decided she was being held for ransom. Having resigned herself to a long wait until the sum demanded of her uncle (or even of the Ceo) could be paid, she had resolved to make the best of her ordeal and to maintain the appearance of composure, so that, afterward, she might hold her head up. In this manner she would represent both herself and the Hanoverian people to these barbarians as the superior stock she had grown up believing they were. Although, of late, she had begun entertaining some soul-disturbing doubts upon this score. However that may be, perhaps Uncle Sedgeley would be proud enough of her, in the end, to relent in the matter of her exile.
To this purpose, she was at the moment sitting—almost content, washed and gowned afresh as she had striven to appear each day from the outset of her captivity—in a straight-backed chair beside the broad, soft, railed bed, mending with skillful care a traveling dress, among her favorites, which the repulsive Bowmore had torn. She was aware that these accommodations, with their unique plumbing and bathing facilities, were the captain's personal quarters, and even cognizant, in a vague way, of the fact that this
370 HENRY MARTYN
hospitality, and his continuous absence since she had come aboard, was what had given her an impression her release was, if not in the immediate offing, at least certain to come soon or late. It did not occur to her, perhaps because she had not let it, that the place she had been quartered might portend another sort of fate.
Now she heard thumping upon the maindeck, saw moving shadows cast from beyond the angle of vision which, from this vantage-point, the cabin windows permitted. She looked up from her mending as the cabin door swung open. The young man she knew as Henry Martyn stepped inside and shut the door behind him. Without a word, he strode to the many-paned windows overlooking the maindeck, polarized them until they were purple-black, and shook out curtains in front of them which had been tied back and not let down for years.
She stood. He turned to face her, cupping his left palm over the aperture of the thrustible he wore upon his right arm in a warrior's gesture of well-intentioned greeting the significance of which she did not realize.
"Good afternoon, Mistress Daimler-Wilkinson. Forgive the fact that I have, until this moment, been too busy to pay you proper attention. Remove your clothing." Loreanna took a step backward and discovered, to her dismay, that she had placed a hand over her mouth as if she were the heroine of some melodrama thille. Henry Martyn grinned and stepped forward, taking two deep strides to her one. "I will not repeat myself, girl, do it now!"
Swallowing, she raised her other hand, and, where it met the first, began, with fingers rendered awkward by terror, to unfasten the short row of small buttons at her throat. The startling thought struck her that this moment would not have passed much differently had she agreed to give herself as bribe and bride to the Jendyne Ceo.
With a local pilot at the helm, one Lua P'nor, captain-by-courtesy and foremost among those badgering him to join that stupid Privateer's Thing, and Krumm to do the breathing down his neck, Henry Martyn had left instructions that he was to be undisturbed until their arrival at the ice asteroid Nosaer. He was free to take his time with the little cap-
tive. Yielding to impatience despite himself, he obliterated the distance between them, swept her hands down, and finished off the row of buttons for her. He did not tear her clothing, but, before she was altogether aware of it, he had the short jacket off her shoulders, her blouse as well, the sheer camisole beneath it over her
head, and she was standing before him in stockings and her long, full skirt, naked from the waist up, just as she had been before Bowmore.
Above all, she was aware that the hands upon her—his thrustible glittered in the cabin light, cold where here and there it brushed her bare and goose-fleshed skin—had murdered countless men, perhaps brutalized many women. Had it been within her character, she might have fainted, or prayed to the long-dead gods of her ancestors for another interruption, however disastrous. Instead she stood straight, disdaining to cover her nakedness, even with upraised arms.
"Go ahead, sir, mock me.*' She tried with all her might to keep a tremor from her voice. For all she had despised him as an animal, Bowmore's sneering criticism of what was, in fact, her slim, youthful figure had stung her pride. "Do not hesitate to enumerate the many bovine virtues of which I fall short. Make whatever brutish remark lies foremost upon your mind. But I will have you know that you do this at your peril, for I am niece to—"
"I know who you are," replied Henry Martyn. "We shall have the skirt off, as well." Out of modest reflex, she turned to unfasten her waistband, as she did so spying the mending basket she had placed upon the bed. Suddenly, her knees collapsed beneath her as if in a faint. When she rose again, with his assistance at her elbow, she whirled, startling herself with a snarl, a long pair of gleaming scissors raised in one tiny fist. Henry Martyn clapped a hand about her wrist, squeezing until her hand grew numb. She heard, rather than felt, the scissors fall from her tingling fingers and clatter to the floor where, still holding her, he kicked them^nder the bunk. Eyes shut tight, she waited for a backhand blow across her face which never came. "No more nonsense," he told her. "Take the skirt off, or I shall take it off for you."
Defeated, Loreanna complied. As she did so, he reached
372 HENRY MARTYN
out, timidly, it struck her afterward, and brushed his fingers across one of her nipples. A shudder, not altogether of revulsion, swept through her body.
"Please . . ." As he pulled her forward, she stepped out of her skirt where it lay upon the floor, clad only in her garters and sheer stockings. "Have mercy, for I am a virgin."
"And you talk too much," he replied, "but I've an idea how to deal with both failings." He stared at Loreanna, fascinated by her moist, full-lipped mouth, having given it much thought. His plans for her were detailed and precise. This first night, for as many hours as it took, he would make repeated use of her in this manner, handling her with cuffs and sharp words when, in his estimate, she failed to please him. He would stroke her hair and caress her when she managed to perform to his criterion. One curiosity satisfied, the next time he came for her, probably tomorrow when they were hove to at Nosaer, he would use her as he had first been used, keeping her at it until she was accustomed to that outrage as well. After they cast off for Sisao and Somon, he would begin with something new.
These thoughts singing in his blood and weakening his limbs, he pushed her backward until something struck her behind the knees and she found herself sitting upon the edge of the bunk. In almost the same motion, he unfastened his own clothing so that, stepping toward her, lacing his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck—she raised protesting hands to push him back, but he was too strong—he might lever her teeth open with a thumb.
"Please . . ."
Of a sudden, having no reason he could account for, he stopped before completing the act he had intended. Looking down at her, what he saw upon her face was an expression of resignation—her eyes were squeezed shut, her body quaking with fear and tense anticipation of his assault upon her— articulate of all the suffering he had himself endured. In short, this lovely creature had composed herself for a dishonored death.
Thus the dreaded Henry Martyn could not bring himself to do to Loreanna what had been done to him, to inflict upon her the merest fraction of pain and terror which had changed his life. She seemed so small and fragile he wished only
to protect her, even from himself. He shook his fingers loose from her hair, and sat down beside her upon the bunk, wrapping his arms about her naked, vulnerable form, holding her to him as tightly as he could. After a time, she began trembling violently, making odd choking noises deep inside her throat as if she would not release, in his unwelcome presence, the wail of despair he was certain, from his own [experience of life, she was feeling. He held her closer and stroked her hair until the trembling subsided and she began to weep softly into his shoulder, discovering, as he held her, that his own face had become wet with tears.
A considerable time passed.
It was in his mind to say that he regretted having frightened and humiliated her. Feeling an apology was only words, and in the circumstances grotesquely inadequate, he continued, in its place, to sit beside her, holding her without words, until—noticing how chilled her flesh had become, how exhausted she looked, and finding he felt much the same himself—he lowered her to the pillows, lay down beside her, and, still holding her thin, pale form in his arms, covered her with the quilted comforter upon the bunk.
Loreanna*s eyes remained shut, but her expression of terror and defeat relaxed by gradual stages. Perhaps without realizing what she did—for he could not imagine it to be an act of deliberation upon her part—she laid a small, white hand upon his forearm where it rested across her midriff, and began to breathe more evenly and deeply. So it was, in the warmth and semidarkness of his cabin, in the comfort of encircling arms which neither of them had felt for so long, they both fell asleep.
Henry Martyn awakened to the startling sensation of soft fingers stroking his cheek. Not until long afterward did he realize that his first thought had not been for the readiness of his thrustible. Instead, he opened his eyes to the sight of Loreanna, propped upon one elbow, looking down at him with an expression he could not altogether fathom. She did not speak.
He had surprised—and frightened—himself by drifting off in this manner. Yet he had spent several days and nights without sleep, almost without pause, at the backbreaking
labor of refitting the captured Peregrine. This was the first rest he had enjoyed in all that time. She might have killed him as he lay insensible. He suggested as much, and asked her why she had not.
The comers of her pretty mouth twitched upward. "I might have, at that," she told him, "but my scissors were under the bed where you earlier kicked them. You were sleeping so peacefully, I could not bring myself to disturb you by retrieving them. Perhaps another time."
Still feeling exhausted, he grinned, relaxed again, and closed his eyes—until he felt a small, soft hand, not quite as gentle as before, upon his shoulder. Puzzled, he opened his, eyes and looked up.
"Please have mercy," she told him, with the same fathomless expression, "for I am still a virgin."
A thrill of wondering disbelief, perhaps something resembling joy, passed through his body like a wave of frozen fire. He opened his mouth. "Fve an idea how to deal with that, but..." He hesitated over what he was about to say, which, in a sense, he considered a half lie. "I believe it only honest and straightforward to inform you beforehand, Mistress Daimler-Wilkinson . . . that this will be my first time, as well."
"You talk too much," she told him. "We shall learn together."
In answer he seized her—ever so tenderly—by the hair at the nape of her neck, and pulled her mouth to his own. Afterward, they did not sleep. He unsealed the outboard gallery windows, battened down for battle and not since reopened, so that they might gaze upon the faraway mist-shrouded glory of the Sisao-Somon System. They lay beside one another, talking far into those hours which, had they been upon a planet's surface, would have been fading into dawn. Loreanna spoke of her Uncle Sedgeley, of her life upon the dangerous fringes of the 'Droom, of power and politics, of her studies of history and economics, of her friend and servant the redoubtable Brougham, and, in a somewhat halting manner, of how she came to be aboard the Pelican.
Henry Martyn spoke, with equal diffidence in the begin-
&nb
sp; ning, of moonringed Skye, his long-dead mother Glyn-nau^fem, his murdered father Robret, his brothers Robret fils and Donol, his tutor and sister-in-law Lia, and in particular of his wise, valorous friend Old Henry, whom he had never quite been able to think of as a servant. At last he came to Morven's usurpation. It surprised him to discover his own interest in everything she had to tell him of galactic politics. In large measure she approached in theory what he was able to confirm by virtue of experience. He found her eager and incisive intellect as stimulating as her beauty. Watching her speak fascinated him all over again with her lovely mouth. He was even more surprised to hear himself telling her, at last, of his first evil hours aboard the Gyrfalcon, of the shroom crate, and of what had happened upon the foul, dark liftdeck.
"Sometimes, Loreanna, I ache in my bones because no one is left upon whom to revenge myself, save Morven and his obscene daughter, as yet beyond my reach." She nodded, trying to understand. "And Bowmore,** he added, "whom circumstance has twice compelled me to set free."
"And if any were left?"
"Man after guilty man would fall to the skill-at-arms I daily practice. Toward that end would I frequent ports where other brigands supply themselves and exchange information. I find myself in possession of a deal of money for which I have no better use. I have let it be known I am willing to pay for information bearing upon Bowmore's whereabouts, should he again survive the Deep, for I swear he will not escape me a third time."
Coordinated Arm 01: Henry Martyn Page 41