Lord of Janissaries

by Jerry Pournelle

  In truth, she scared hell out of everyone who tried to take her seriously. She was intelligent, she talked a lot, and she was interested in everything. She wrote for the school paper. She did so much extra classwork that she could get an A in any subject even if she turned in a blank final exam. She earned real money at such unfeminine activities as buying stale bread and reselling it to chicken farmers. In short, she was real competition for any boy she met, and the ones she liked were never secure enough to survive that threat.

  When she was sixteen and a senior at John Marshall High, she met Fred Linker in the school library. Fred had never had a date in his life and was terrified of girls. Gwen was a bit cynical about men by that time, but she was enough of a product of her culture to wish she had someone to take her on dates. Fred seemed perfect. He wasn’t at all bad looking, just shy. He liked to read and knew of works like Silverlock that she adored as soon as he told her about them. He was a good listener, and they shared many opinions. So she worked on him until he asked her out, and three dates later, he got the nerve to kiss her goodnight. He didn’t know how to do that very well, but Gwen was a good teacher. She’d found books that told how.

  Fred wanted to be a writer. He wrote constantly. Someday he’d sell a story. He was certain of it. He’d even sent a few off to magazines and got rejections slips.

  Gwen read the magazines Fred liked, and three weeks later got a short story accepted in one of his favorites. She thought he’d be proud of her, and she knew she could show him how he could sell, too—it was only a matter of studying the editor’s prejudices—but a week after that Fred took another girl to the sock hop. Later he sold three stories himself, but he never asked Gwen out again.

  College hadn’t been much different. Gwen’s physical urges got stronger, and sometimes she was so lonely she’d read in an all-night restaurant rather than sit in her room; so lonely that she made resolutions about not competing with the next man she liked. She even tried to carry them out. It did no good. Even when she didn’t actually do whatever her current boyfriend thought he was good at, eventually it would come out that she could if she wanted to.

  Or maybe, she told herself as she dressed in her compulsively neat one-room apartment, maybe that’s all wrong. Maybe they just didn’t like me in the first place. God knows there must be something wrong with me.

  I’m not ugly. She studied herself in the mirror. Too short, yes. Five foot two and eyes of blue sounds very good in songs, but in fact that’s pretty short, and besides my eyes are more greenish-brown. Nose too pointed, face too angular, but there are plenty of girls with longer and pointier noses and they aren’t ugly. And I’ve got all the right equipment. Not a lot of it, but in good proportion. I bounce all right if I go without a bra, and my hips aren’t bony. I don’t wear clothes well because I’m too thin, but I don’t look too bad. Men don’t turn away.

  And everyone tells me I talk well. I’m bright and witty. They say it just after we meet, and just as they’re walking out.

  But this time it’s different.

  * * *

  She dressed carefully. This time for sure, she thought. Things will happen tonight. She felt a delicious sensation of anticipation. Maybe this will last, she thought. Please. Let it last.

  She grinned at her image in the mirror. To whom was she praying? Her image of the universe had room in it for a god, but not one who paid much attention to that kind of prayer. If prayer worked, there were a lot of people worse off than Gwen Tremaine praying their arses off. They didn’t get what they wanted. Why should she?

  But there was a chance. Les was different.

  She’d met him in an all-night coffee shop near the university library. It had been quite late, and she was ready to go home. She was carrying a half-dozen books, and he’d seen the anthropology book. “That looks like a new one,” he’d said. “I think I have not seen that one before. May I look?”

  And then they’d got to talking. He was brilliant. She could tell that from the few things he said. But mostly he wanted her to talk. He liked listening to her—about everything, about anything she wanted to say.

  He got her to tell him about growing up in Iowa, about moving to California when she was fourteen, about high school and college and her unsuccessful love affairs, about her theories of history and physics and mathematics and especially anthropology and—

  He liked her. He listened, and he liked her, and to Gwen that was devastating.

  And she couldn’t compete with him. Partly she couldn’t because she didn’t know what he did. He never said directly, but she had the impression that he was in advanced physics. Once he’d got her talking about the origin of the universe. She’d told him what she thought, and he scribbled some equations on a napkin. They meant nothing to her. He’d thrown the napkin away. She went back the next morning and retrieved it from the garbage behind the restaurant and went to the library. After spending all day working on them the equations still meant nothing to her. She couldn’t even find many of the symbols.

  Which meant he was a liar—only it didn’t. Les didn’t have to lie. He talked about himself only when she urged him to, and never to impress her. He’d already done that on the first night, when she found he’d read nearly every anthropology book ever written and understood all the major theories.

  When she could get him to talk, she learned more in an hour with Les than she did in a month of classes.

  For three weeks she had never seen him except in the coffee shop. He came in late, always after midnight, sometimes not until dawn. He drove a truck for spending money and had no fixed schedule; but he always came, and she was always waiting. They’d never discussed it, but she knew he came just to see her.

  For three weeks they talked in the shop. He waved goodbye to her when it got so late she had to go home (or to morning classes).

  Until yesterday. Yesterday he got up when she did, paid his check, and walked home with her. It seemed perfectly natural that he come in with her and that they go to bed together, and that he aroused her to flights of passion she had never supposed possible.

  He stayed until noon.

  And now he was coming back and wanted to take her somewhere. She dressed carefully. A skirt that didn’t wrinkle. They didn’t have to wrestle in a car—he was welcome in her bed—but who knows? she thought. She grinned at her image in the mirror. “Painted hussy,” she told it.

  The image grinned back. “We like it, don’t we, ducks?”

  “Damn straight,” Gwen said. “Damn straight. Never thought I would—”

  She laughed at herself, but she studied her small collection of jewelry and perfume just the same. What would he like?

  “Independent. Liberated. And working my arse off to make him want me,” she told the mirror.

  “Hang on to this one,” the image said.

  “Right.” If we can. Please. Let this be all right. Let this last.

  * * *

  When the doorbell rang an hour after midnight, she ran to it, then caught herself. He knew she liked him, but she didn’t want him to think she was that nuts over him. Still, she was a little breathless when she opened the door. Would he leap at her? Carry her to bed? She damned well wasn’t going to resist—

  He kissed her, but broke away quickly before that could lead to anything else. Then he grinned. “Later. We’ll have a lot of time.”

  “Good.”

  “Go for a drive?” he asked.

  “Sure. Where? Do I need a coat?”

  “Actually, I had in mind a weekend trip. Can you pack a bag?”

  She frowned. Was he that confident? But then he had reason to be. And why not? “I can get away,” she said. “For a couple of days. but I ought to call my landlady and tell her—”

  “Leave a note. It’s late.”

  “What should I pack? Swimsuit? Ski clothes?”

  “Do you like boats? Sailing?”

  “I never went on one before. I don’t get motion sick—I guess I’ve told you that.�
�

  “You have.”

  There it was. The tiny accent. “Just where did you grow up?” she asked.

  “I thought you were the professional who’d guess from my speech patterns.” He grinned.

  It’s a nice grin, she thought. A nice grin, on a nice face. She moved closer to him. “Wheedle, wheedle.”

  He pulled her against him and held her for a moment.

  “You’re just the right size,” she said.

  “How’s that?”

  She shrugged. “Big enough that I think of you as a big man, but not so big you tower over me. And not so big in other ways, if you know what I mean—”

  He laughed. “We do seem compatible.”

  “Yes, I like that. I’ll pack my sailing clothes,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  * * *

  “I didn’t know they kept boats in the mountains,” Gwen said. “Just where are you taking me?”

  It seemed a reasonable question. The road climbed steadily higher into the Angeles Mountains, directly away from the sea. At first she’d thought they were driving up the coast toward Santa Barbara, but he’d turned east.

  The truck hummed along the road. It was a heavy Ford pickup, and the bed was crammed with odd shapes covered with a tarpaulin. That seemed strange too. Why a loaded truck for a weekend date? “Where are we going, Les?”

  “Don’t you trust me?”

  “I—I don’t know. I don’t—Les please. Don’t play head games with me.”

  “I don’t want to, Gwen.” His voice was very serious. “But I don’t have much choice.” He hesitated a moment. “You told me you want to learn. You like anthropology because you want to learn. To travel, see strange people and learn how they live—”

  “Yes—”

  “I can give you a chance to do that. Right now. But it’s a long trip. Will you come with me?”

  “Right now? Just like that? Not tell anyone—”

  “Yes.”

  “Les, I can’t—”

  “Sure you can. You told me yourself, nobody cares what happens to you. Your mother’s dead, and you haven’t heard from your father in years. Sure you can. Who’ll care? The people at the university? Landlady? Not really.”

  “But—right now? Just like that? Where do we go?”

  “That’s the part I can’t tell you. A long voyage to exotic and distant lands. I can promise you that.”

  “With you.”

  “Yes. With me.” He drove with both hands on the wheel, both eyes on the road; almost as if he were afraid of the truck. Now he let go to take her hand for a moment and squeeze it. “With me. I promise you that.”

  She thought about it. But it was all so strange. “What’s in the truck? Your travel equipment? What—who are you? CIA?”

  “What if I were?”

  “I—wouldn’t like that.”

  “Then I’m not,” he said. “Let’s see. Other question. The gear in the truck is for travel, but it is not mine. I get equipment for others. Get it and deliver it.”

  “But always at night—”

  “Generally,” he agreed.

  “Les, where are we going? I thought Mexico for a moment, but we’re going northeast. Where—”

  “Can’t tell you. But will you come with me?”

  “If I don’t?”

  He let the truck slow. “I turn around and take you home.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I leave. I have to go, Gwen. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to tell you much, but I can’t. I do want you to go with me, but you don’t have much time to make up your mind.”

  “How long—how long will we be gone?”

  “A long time. Years. But you’ll see exotic places, faraway places, places you’ll never see unless you come with me.”

  “I didn’t pack very much,” she said. “Not for being away that long. Will you buy me a grass skirt?”

  The truck ran on for a second more. Then he stopped, turned, and kissed her. “I’m glad,” he said. Then he started up. “We don’t have a lot of time. They won’t wait all night.”

  “Who won’t?” she asked.

  An hour later she knew.

  2

  Gwen was on the Moon. She had to keep telling herself that. She was on the Moon and talking to a TV set.

  The face on the TV was human. Strange, but human, and after what Gwen had seen on the ship, any human face was a relief.

  The man looked bored. “You have come voluntarily?” he asked.

  An embarrassing question. Gwen was naked, except for a sheet that she wrapped around herself when she realized that the TV screen worked both ways. She sat on the edge of the bed to talk to the man in the rust-colored tunic who’d appeared on the screen. Les lay partly covered on the bed, and his expression was—worried? Why worried, she wondered.

  “Yes, I came voluntarily,” she said. “Les asked me to come. He said I would visit strange and exotic lands and—”

  “You boarded voluntarily,” the man said. “Will you be missed? Will your disappearance cause difficulties? Widespread search by the authorities?”

  “I don’t think so. I left a note for my landlady that said I was going for a weekend trip. She’ll worry when I don’t come back after that. She may call the police.”

  “They will probably assume you were murdered. That is no problem of mine.” The screen went blank.

  “That’s over,” Les said. He looked relieved.

  Why relieved? And why had he been worried? There was a lot that Gwen didn’t understand. But certainly she was glad she had come. There were marvels enough, even here in the compartment. It was lavishly furnished, mostly with goods from Earth; but some of the furnishings were new and strange. There was the TV with its strange control box that could call up books and maps and all kinds of interesting material—the only problem was that she couldn’t read a word of it. And there had been the aliens, and the experience of seeing Earth from space. Now she felt the low gravity of the Moon and could see the lunar surface on the TV screen. It was all frightening, but exciting, too.

  “Who was that man?” she asked.

  “A policeman,” Les said.

  “What would have happened if I had said you kidnapped me?”

  “He probably would not have believed you. But if you had said the Shalnuksis had kidnapped you, there would have been trouble.”

  Gwen shuddered, but not in fear. It was all so marvelous. Aliens. Spaceships. And they were so nice to her. Les had given her clothes and jewelry—not that the gifts meant anything, but he had got them for her. He cared. She knew that. He cared.

  “And you don’t come from anywhere on Earth?” she asked. “I still can’t believe that.”

  “It’s true, though,” he said. “My home is twenty light-years from here.”

  “How long have you been on Earth?”

  “Four years. A bit more than that.”

  “But you speak English so well! No wonder I couldn’t tell where you came from. How did you learn to speak English so well in four years?”

  “It’s a gift,” he said. “I speak a number of human languages. Four from your planet.”

  “A number of human languages—Les, what do you do for these—for the aliens?”

  “You can think of me as a civil servant,” he said. “I pilot ships, make studies of primitives, buy equipment and see that it gets aboard ship—any number of activities that the traders or the confederacy need done.”

  “A civil servant.”

  “Sort of,” Les told her. “That is, most humans work for the confederacy, but they sometimes rent us out to traders when the work involves other humans. Just now I’m doing some errands for the Shalnuksis.”

  “But why don’t you go to Washington and tell them? Or someone? Why such secrecy?”

  “Time enough for questions later,” he said. “We will have a lot of time. For the moment, we are together, and we have a few hours before we go to the other ship.”

  “Ano
ther ship?”

  “Yes. I’m supposed to take some people—human volunteers, soldiers—to another planet. I’ll have to brief them on the way.”

  “Soldiers. Volunteers. You mean mercenaries.” She made no attempt to disguise the contempt in her voice.

  He laughed. “You don’t like warriors? You ought to feel a bit sorry for these. They’ve got their work cut out. More than they know.”

  “Who will they fight? What are they going to be doing?”

  “All in good time. You’ll know more about them than you want to by the time we get to Tran. For now—” He reached for her.

  For a moment she resisted, but she could feel his urgency.

  Why resist? she thought. Why resent his need? A need for me. He cares. I can lose myself in him. And he keeps his promises.

  He’d already showed her marvels beyond her imagination. What more would there be? She shuddered in anticipation.

  * * *

  The screen came to life while the troops were cooking lunch. Rick Galloway went over carrying his new lists of equipment. There was a lot they needed, and they hadn’t received much of what they’d asked for.

  “No time,” Agzaral said. “No time at all. Gather your equipment. You must leave this cavern immediately. There is a ship outside, and you must be aboard it with everything you propose to take with you. You have two hours.” He seemed very excited. “You must hurry.”

  “Why? We can’t go now. We don’t have anything like the gear we asked for—”

  “Some is aboard the ship. The rest may be supplied later. But hurry. Those who remain behind will not be happy with the consequences.”

  “Why?”

  “You will learn,” Agzaral said. “But you will not go at all if you do not board the ship now. Recall the alternatives I gave you. They have not changed.”