Statesman

  She changed as it happened. Her body tightened, and her teeth bared. "So you summon me again, Tyrant!" she said, her voice assuming a hissing texture. "Enjoy me while you can!"

  Damn! I had hoped—but of course that had been foolish. It was entry that triggered the change. I could never truly possess Tasha, only the mole.

  Her legs wrenched, first one, then the other. This enhanced my sensation. But something was odd. I glanced down—and discovered that her legs were free. The handcuffs remained, but they had ripped out of the anchorages on the bed.

  Horrified, I looked at her wrists—and they too came free, the cuffs dangling. I had failed to check the security of the anchorages; now, too late, I realized that they were inadequate. Tasha may not have known this, but the mole did.

  I tried to disengage, to leap off her. But her legs came up to clamp me in a painful scissors, and her arms swung to catch my head and lock it down beside hers. "Now finish your business, Tyrant!" she hissed in my ear, and bit it.

  This time I could not get my arms back to press the nerves of her feet, or up to reach her neck. She held me secure, and her grip tightened cruelly the moment I tried to move. She had the chains of the manacles across the back of my neck, digging into it, and I was helpless.

  "Scream, Tyrant!" she said into my ear. "I want to hear you suffer!" And those chains abruptly cut in hard.

  It was useless, but I screamed. "Smilo!" I cried, though I knew that he was confined and could not help me. I had fashioned my own demise, oh so neatly!

  Smilo roared in response. He thrashed about in his cage, trying to break out.

  "How delightful!" the mole said. "The animal wants to help." She bucked her hips against me as well as she could without releasing the scissors, and clenched her internal muscles, trying to force my climax.

  In my pain and desperation, I remembered something. The bars beneath my bed were secure—but the bed itself was not. It consisted of adjustable panels, and it seemed to me that these were not locked. "Smilo—up!" I cried.

  There was a pause, then an answering crash. The tiger had stood, his massive body thrusting against the ceiling of his cage, and that ceiling had sprung loose. The base of my bed was designed to sustain maximum weight pressing down from above, not from below. Smilo was working his way out.

  "Oh, damn!" she said, as if this were a mere inconvenience. "I'll have to finish you immediately."

  She tightened the chains, drawing them down around my neck, constricting it, cutting into my flesh. But Smilo was wasting no time himself; he bounded into the room. I saw only his shadow as he landed beside us and hesitated; I realized that he didn't want to bite me.

  Then he decided on his spot and did bite. His fangs plunged into the mole's shoulder and neck, on the side away from my own head. The woman jerked as those terrible weapons sought her vitality; it seemed that the tiger knew instinctively where to bite to cripple instantly. Her legs released me, and her arms slackened.

  I fought my way free of her embrace. I thought she would be dead already, but realized in a moment that she wasn't; she had been paralyzed by the bite, and death would occur more slowly. It was the way of the cat, to allow for additional entertainment by the prey before final dispatch. Perhaps it was fitting that the mole be treated this way, exactly as she had tried to treat me.

  Smilo stood over us, his heavy breath blasting down on my head. I realized that he was waiting for me to get clear, so he could finish the prey in his own fashion.

  The woman shuddered. Then her eyes opened. "Oh, Hope," she said raggedly. "Please..."

  It was Tasha! The mole had been banished by the terrible bite, or had perhaps deserted when she realized that her mission was lost, leaving the body and the agony to her host. "I'm sorry," I said. "The mole got free—"

  "Please," she repeated. "One time..."

  She wanted me to complete the act I had started! "But you must have medical attention!" I protested.

  She only looked at me pleadingly. She was dying, and this was her dying wish.

  I realized I had to do it. It was her passion for me that had brought her to this pass, and she deserved its fulfillment. It was the only chance that Tasha proper would ever have to make love to me.

  I did it. I thought the twin horrors of her nearly successful attempt to assassinate me and her mauling by the tiger would turn off my own passion, but this was not the case. The moment I made the decision to proceed, the urgency was upon me, and I erupted in her with the sensation of a volcano. I kissed her amidst it, and this heightened and extended the experience, and I knew from the reactions of her body that it was just as transcendent for her.

  And all the time, the tiger stood over us, breathing.

  It subsided at last, and she sighed and lost consciousness, and then the horror of the situation came to me more strongly. I could not simply let Tasha die!

  "Back off, Smilo," I said. "You've done your job."

  Obediently, the tiger backed off. Perhaps he figured I wanted to play with the prey some more. I checked the two great stab wounds in her neck and shoulder, surprised to see that they were bleeding only modestly; evidently no artery had been punctured. I covered her with a sheet and hastened to the phone.

  "Emergency medic," I snapped, and the phone, tuned to my language, obliged.

  In a moment the face of a Rising Sun medic appeared. "Woman bitten by tiger," I said tersely. "Send ambulance to this address." I gave the clearance code so their unit could approach our complex.

  "It is being accomplished," he said politely, holding his gaze aloft. That was when I realized that I stood naked before the phone's video pickup, my member only partially detumesced. It was obvious that more than the tiger had had at the woman! Well, it would add only a minor episode to the legend of the Tyrant of Jupiter. I cut the connection.

  In a few minutes the ambulance arrived. By then I had gotten into my clothing and taken my stand by Smilo, so as to reassure him about the intruders. They worked efficiently, checking Tasha's vital signs. She was not dead, but had sunk into a coma. They performed spot medication and carried her away.

  Then I cleaned up the blood-spotted bedclothes and reassembled my own burst-asunder bed as well as I could. Smilo had certainly saved my life! While I deeply regretted what had happened to Tasha, I knew it was neither the lady's fault nor the tiger's; it was mine. I had done a foolish thing, and paid for it with the near loss of my own life and perhaps that of my secretary. It was not just that I had yielded to forbidden passion; I had been careless about it. That was what bothered me most in retrospect: All I had had to do was check those anchorages to make sure they were secure. I was getting careless in my age, and I did not like that at all.

  In due course Spirit and Forta returned, and I acquainted them with the events of the hour. Neither commented; evidently they hoped I had learned my lesson. I hoped so too.

  Tasha, as it happened, did not die. The excellent Rising Sun medical treatment she received saved her life and her health; all that remained was two physical scars that she chose not to have removed, and perhaps a similar number of emotional scars that she chose not to forget. She resigned as my secretary and applied to Rising Sun for sanctuary as a defector, and this was granted. She cooperated fully in their investigation of the nature of her mole; they were very interested in the particular type of conditioning used, and after considerable labor they succeeded in blocking it. She then took a job as translator and office worker for one of their executives, and I'm sure she gave him much satisfaction. Certainly I was pleased to know that she had made the transition; she was a good woman, just unsuitable for association with me. Not while Smilo remained with me. Because even with her mole nullified, there would have been trouble if I had tried to have further sexual relations with her, and surely I would have tried if she had been constantly with me. There is, as the ancient saying goes, no fool like an old fool.

  Of course I was left out of sorts, romantically. I was in what might be termed a sexual depressi
on, whether the result of age or reaction to that lady/tiger episode I am not sure, so sought no companion of that nature. But socially I felt a need, and it was difficult to meet.

  Thus my attention gradually returned to Forta, who had come to be my mistress but who had not pushed the suit. She remained confident, as she had said, that once I came to know her properly, I would appreciate her qualities. Indeed, this seemed to be true; she now moved into the secretarial position Tasha had vacated, and performed excellently. She helped coach me on the language of Japanese, using her sophisticated translation device, so that I could communicate increasingly well with my hosts. In fact, a great deal of my energy during this period went into the learning of this language. I was always apt at tongues, but seemed slower now than in the past; I prefer to think that this was because of the difficulty of this particular language, but am prepared to concede that at age sixty-one or -two I was not as supple mentally as in my youth. I have no joy of aging, but do try to accept it with reasonable grace. In the course of working with Forta on this, and generally, I came to understand with increasing conviction the remarkable abilities she possessed. She was as versatile a person as I had known.

  But her face—it was simply not in me to be physically attracted to a woman who looked like that. I cursed myself as a fool—so what else is new?—but could not override that private repulsion. As a worker she was excellent; as an object of romance, she was a null.

  Meanwhile, the base developed, and the pilot project with it. I call it pilot, but it was nevertheless huge, a tiger in its own right. Rising Sun was putting an enormous amount of effort into it, assisting with the financing as well as the personnel; I was involved in the negotiations to give Rising Sun a larger amount of control and credit, in proportion to its practical support. It had become a two-planet effort, and I am glad that my presence and influence facilitated this. There was a constant flow of iron ore from Saturn to Titan, and, before long, a counterflow of Rising Sun expert technicians to Saturn, helping to modernize their facilities and production policies. The work that Spirit and I had done on Saturn was of course not complete; we had set the stage by putting the nomenklatura on the defensive, but it was the Rising Sun practical know-how that made real progress possible.

  Thus, in about two years, the sample demonstration of the new technique was ready to be made. I deem it a significant event in the history of our species.

  Dear Daddy,

  So you got a tiger! Well, I guess it happened some time ago, but the new government put a hold on news from Saturn—they seem to be trying to heat up the cold war again, I don't know why—so I didn't learn of it until recently. But I think it's terrific! A big old Smilodon from Earth's paleontology! Just take care he doesn't bite you. I wish I could meet him!

  Business is booming here, but I am uneasy, because I know they are flooding the economy with money so that things will be positive for the next election. That didn't happen during the Tyrancy. Oh, well, it's really not my business; I have enough to do just keeping up with education. There's a drive on to censor some of the texts used currently, and of course I have to oppose that. Thorley has been writing some pithy columns on the subject. It's amazing how eloquently he can arrange to call a governor an idiot without actually saying it outright.

  Take care of yourself, Daddy, and watch that tiger!

  Chapter 9 — DEMO

  It was time for the demo: the first demonstration of the process for transmission at light speed. I had discussed this with Spirit and with Forta, and come to an agreement. Then I had discussed it with Khukov, and he had demurred. "Tyrant, this project is moving well only because of you. I cannot afford to lose you."

  "But if you believe in the technology—"

  "I do believe! But the risk is too great. We can use anyone for this, and after it is successful—"

  "But after the test, there is still the remainder of the System to enlist," I pointed out. "It stands to be a long, difficult task, at best, and perhaps it will fail. We have to have the resources of Uranus and Jupiter, or the effort is wasted. Only the united System can afford the expense of the major project. This will go far toward getting the attention of every planet."

  "You could do it after the technique has been proved reliable," he said.

  "But the point is, I must establish my faith in it at the outset. There will be no occasion as important as the first."

  "But if it fails, through some trifling error—"

  "It will only fail if the theory is invalid. We already know from the laboratory that it works for matter, and for small living animals and plants. The only doubt remains about human beings, in a genuine travel situation. That doubt must be totally resolved, at the outset. There can be no better way to resolve it. Then the political aspect will become possible. A technical success without the full political impact will be useless; the one is as important as the other, and we must have both."

  And so, reluctantly, he agreed. The political aspect was, after all, my agreed domain, and I had the right to play it my way.

  Thus it was that Spirit and Forta and Smilo and I were conveyed by shuttleship to the orbiting test ship, and given possession. It was small, intended for a crew of three and a passenger load of four, but Smilo's mass qualified him to be all four passengers. This was a public event; the newsships of all the major planets and many of the minor ones were present, and we interviewed them freely as we proceeded. I piloted the ship, enjoying the feel of her. She was named Hope, an honor I had not sought but did not regret. After all, she was the hope of the future of man, as we saw it.

  "Yes, it is a three-light-hour test flight," I said, in answer to a query from a reporter on the screen. "From the orbit of Saturn, here, to the orbit of Uranus, cutting across to the far side at a slant to avoid the sun. We shall be transformed to light, and will then proceed at light speed in the direction the transmitter is aimed, until we are intercepted by the receiver tube at the other end. Three hours to Uranus!"

  I knew the System audience would be properly impressed; that trip would ordinarily take three months, by standard travel. In fact, we would arrive there at the same time as the news of our departure did.

  "But suppose the alignment is off, and you miss the receiver tube?" the reporter asked.

  "Then we go to another star," I replied, smiling. It was a joke, but a grim one; that was exactly what would happen. But there would be no receiving tube deep in the galaxy, so we would travel forever.

  "But the computer aligns them perfectly," Spirit put in. "If they are not aligned, the transmission will not be activated. There is no danger."

  "Still, there is a risk," the reporter persisted.

  "I wouldn't have anybody else take a risk I wouldn't take myself," I replied, and smiled bravely. Oh, they would eat this up, all across the System! As a publicity ploy, this was working perfectly.

  But as we approached the transmitter station, which most resembled a ship-sized tube in space, an alarm sounded. "Unauthorized vessel intruding!"

  The newsships quickly oriented on the intruder. It turned out to be a destroyer that had masqueraded as a newsship itself; how it had gotten past the clearance procedure was a question whose answer I was sure would cause some heads to roll. It was headed for us.

  A Saturn battleship guarded us. Immediately it challenged the intruder, but received no answer. Therefore it warned all other ships clear so that it could commence firing. This was a formality; it could score readily enough on the intruder without hitting any of the authorized vessels.

  In response, the intruder fired a missile cluster at us. We were far enough from it so that there was plenty of time for the battleship to laser the missiles down. But then the cluster split apart, and suddenly there were thousands of decoys, mixed with a few genuine missiles. That complicated things considerably.

  The battleship attacked on two fronts: It fired a barrage of missiles at the intruder, and simultaneously used its lasers to knock out the missiles heading for us. But it w
as difficult to tell which were real and which were the decoys, as the latter were designed to simulate the real ones for just this purpose. The battleship had to take out all the apparent missiles—and I knew from my own Navy experience that some of them would reach us before that happened. With luck, those that reached us would be decoys, harmless. But it was a gamble.

  Then a new alarm sounded. "Sub alert! Sub alert!"

  Spirit whistled. "The nomens are really after us this time!" she said. "They sneaked a sub in under cover of the missile action."

  "And we know its target," I agreed. "Hang on; I'm taking evasive action."

  I spoke figuratively, for we were already strapped in. But it was rough on Smilo, who didn't understand about erratic space maneuvers; his body was thrown back and forth. That couldn't be helped.

  The missiles and decoys corrected course to maintain their orientation, closing the gap between us. Those were sophisticated decoys! But the real menace was the sub, which would launch a torpedo when it got the range. That would be target-seeking too, and there was no chance it would be a decoy.

  Sure enough, our torpedo alarm activated. The sub could not be seen, but the torpedo could, and it was uncomfortably close.

  "Got to run for it!" I said. I maxed the drive, and we took off at four gees. Hoo! That just about stopped my old heart right there! But the missiles still gained on us, and so did the torpedo.

  Then the torpedo detonated; the battleship had scored on it with a laser. But we knew the sub was still there, and it would fire another torpedo when ready; this was a loser's game, for us.

  "Go for the transmitter!" Spirit said. She was cool, of course, though Fortuna seemed frightened. She had reason!

  Of course! I went for the transmitter, which we had been approaching anyway. Its personnel, cognizant of the situation, would be ready; they would activate it the moment we entered it.

  Our torpedo alarm sounded again. This one was closer, and closing on us faster; the sub had zeroed in on us.