“No.”
+If you don’t want more details, we won’t give them to you.+
“You are deliberately misinterpreting my statements. I may decide I like being a General Maintainer and spend my life working my way up in that profession.”
+You wouldn’t. Vavacq don’t.+
“Tell me about vavacq. Why aren’t there many around? Why do most of the other species treat us (me) like dirt, especially the humans?”
+The last time you ruled this part of space you were a particularly unpleasant group. That’s why most species dislike you. The humans knocked you down and took over; before that you knocked the humans down and took over. This has cycled four times.+
“So everyone hates vavacq and loves humans?”
+No, they hate both species. The humans aren’t any better at ruling than vavacq.+
That agreed with my one data point—Lady Susan.
“Couldn’t you have told this to me while I was on the ship? It might have made things easier.”
+Not out of RealSpace.+ Pause. +Your job is to break the cycles. We will talk to you again when necessary. Use your personal imagination when the pain becomes too great.+
The screen was just a screen again. I had gotten the runaround, threats, and an impossible job, but I had to pay for the connect time. I walked around the accessible part of the station, entered the equivalent of a bookstore, bought some reels of popular history with most of my remaining tokens and returned to the ship. I wasn’t going to be able to retire on my earnings. I wondered if saving the universe for unknown races paid well.
I’m reading the tapes in my off hours. Most of them are meaningless because I don’t have the referents— the sort of thing that doesn’t get into the book because everyone knows it. The vavacq and the humans have been fighting over this part of space for a few hundred thousand years. Currently, the humans are on top, but vavacq are sniping at them everywhere. The other species are not particularly happy, either.
There’s no mention of Mrrthow. Mrrthow, and the Mrr System, are a Logical Exclavity. We don’t exist as far as the galaxy is concerned. The opinions of six-plus billion of us Mrrthowq don’t count because we don’t exist. There’s no such term as “logical exclavity” either.
I now understand this: I am vavacq: most sentient beings dislike me; Lady Susan hates me. Lady Susan is human: most sentient beings dislike her, too; if she vanishes me, there’s no one to complain about it. She is showing remarkable restraint for a human forced to be on the same ship with a vavacq.
The tapes are interesting. They’re biased, but all history is written from someone’s point of view and few cultures rate anyone higher than themselves. This part of the galaxy is a mess. There are tens of thousands of polities trying to undercut each other, putting high tariffs on goods, taxing passage—just like early Mrrthow. On Mrrthow, we thought this sort of behavior disappeared when technology came, but… Space is big, and worlds self- contained so that most trade is in intangibles and rarities. Bulk materials are there on the planets or in the planetoid belts that most systems have. Everyone should be secure and happy—but they aren’t. One of the intangibles that gets exported is religion. Jihads and crusades through space and time with high-tech weapons. Half of one tape is a list of extinct sentients.
In my CR stories we would come bursting out of Mrrthow, rip ears, order the galaxy, and all the subser-vients would live happily ever after. In reality, vavacq were a big part of the problem.
We’re docking at Haavio orbital station. The computer says it’s huge and has a reasonably-sized vavacq colony aboard. Do I want to meet my long-lost out-sibs or would I rather keep them lost? Do I know enough to keep from screwing up? Probably not, but I’m getting tired of reacting to events. Maybe I should go out and push something to see if it pushes back.
I find a map. I’m planning to go to the vavacq sector and see what information I can pick up. Perhaps my fellow vavacq could do something about getting me back to Mrrthow. I doubt this, but it’s worth a try. The path seems long, but it goes through safe areas where solitary vavacq aren’t likely to be molested. I pass a few vavacq who stare at me, but they ignore me so I ignore them. The vavacq sector could be closed off easily. The bends in the corridor allow a small human force to pen in any number of vavacq.
It stinks. The ship’s air was stale, but this is not passive staleness; this is an active, living stench compounded of rotting food, unwashed bodies, and un-emptied litter. Groups of vavacq glared at me or ostentatiously ignored me. I saw no females or kits. It looked more like a prison than a community. I walked briskly as if I knew what I was doing and where I was going and turned into the third cafe I came to.
It was dim. I ordered a mild drink and took it to an empty table. I was sipping the foul-tasting brew when it was wrenched from my hand and thrown at the dispenser, who ducked with an alacrity born of practice. “That’s human piss! Take a real drink.” Some distilled beverage was slammed down before me. The container was attached to a large paw; the large paw was attached to a large arm; and then to a huge vavacq.
“Er, no thanks.”
“Drink!” It was not a request but an order. I had made a mistake coming here. These sorts of problems had not occurred in the library. I looked at the drink again; I looked at the large person again. I picked up the drink. It didn’t smell too vile. I took a sip.
“All of it.” I drank. Whatever was in it was potent. I think I lost consciousness even before I tilted in the chair.
My head hurt badly. My one comfort was the knowledge that I would soon die and end the pain.
“You are not going to die.” A high voice removed that hope.
I sat up; my head did not fall off.
“You vavacq have no tolerance for ethanol, why do you imbibe it?”
“One drink, and not a large one.”
“Yes, only one drink, but its trace impurities had a powerful effect upon you.”
“You drugged me!”
“It was the easiest way to get you here without complications.”
I had been kidnapped. Some ship must want a General Maintainer (Probationary) very much. “Where am I? Who are you?”
“Open your eyes, vavacq! I will fix your pain.”
The pain vanished; I could have become rich on Mrrthow if I knew how to do that. I opened my eyes, slowly this time. There was an alien of a type I had never seen before. He(?) was tall, slim, covered with a golden down and almost glowing. This creature was beautiful.
“Trapelo Sector. It is so much more pleasant here without the prying eyes of interfering busybodies. You need not know who we are. Ask why you are here.”
“Why am I here?”
“We have a proposal of mutual advantage. Something that you will enjoy as much as we will.”
“What do you want from me?”
“A better question would be—what can we gain together?”
“What can we gain together?”
“Pleasure.”
“Pleasure? How?”
“You are a vavacq. The humans hate you and you hate the humans.”
“It’s the generally prevailing opinion,” I allowed. The alien looked at me silently, then continued.
“Between you and the human on your ship exists massive hatred, contempt, and other strong emotions.
For your pleasure, we have brought her here.” One of the walls thinned and vanished—and suspended there was Lady Susan.
I had never seen more of Lady Susan than her hands or face. Her body was brown and almost furless. She was clearly a mammal with two gross breasts. “She is yours. We give her to you.”
This was moving too fast. “Why do I want her— and for what?”
“For eons, her species and yours have been locked in battle. They devastated your planets, killed your people, destroyed your culture. Now, you can attain personal revenge. Take it.” A wave of dark eroticism swept through my mind. I imagined myself doing things that I had never before imagined. There was a seductive pleasure underlaid with a righteous indignation against this enemy of the vavacq. The pleasure would be justified; nothing I could do to Lady Susan would be wrong. I turned to the alien. “What’s in it for you?”
