“Meaning?”
Dzhun said, eyes cast down, “I’d rather live with you. We don’t have to marry.”
“No,” said Stef.
Dzhun sat down, still not looking at him.
“I thought you’d say that. I’ve never bothered you with my life story because I thought you’d get bored and angry. But let me tell you just a little. My family needed money, so they sold me into the District when I was nine. The owner rented me to one of his customers. The night he raped me, I almost bled to death.
“By the time I was twelve I was a registered whore, a member of the guild. It took me three more years to pay off my debts because in the District the houses charge you for everything, heat, water, towels, mediscanning, almost for the air you breathe. But I was beautiful and earning good money and I was out of debt by the time I was sixteen. Now I’m almost eighteen and I’m sick of it all. I don’t want to be arobotchi anymore.
“I hear people talk about going to the stars and I’ve never been out of Ulanor. I can barely read and write and if Selina hadn’t taught me some arithmetic so they couldn’t cheat me, I wouldn’t be able to add two and two. I don’t know anything, all I do is live from night to night-up at sixteen, to bed at eight.
I’ve had dozens of diseases-sida six times-and the last time it took me a whole month to recover. The house doctor says my immune system’s collapsing, whatever that means.
“I’ve got to get out of the life, Stef. I want to live with you, but if you don’t want me I’m going with my senator. He has some funny tastes and three wives and he’s old, but he’s also kind-hearted and rich, and that’s enough.”
She stopped, still looking down at the floor. Stef was staring at Dzhun and clenching his fists. He felt as if a favorite dog had just bitten him. Twice, in fact-once by threatening to leave him, and once by demanding a commitment from him.
“I don’t want anything fancy,” Dzhun went on. “I want to live in a house with a garden. I want to get up in the morning and go to bed at night. I want to go to school before I’m too old and learn something about the world. I can see you’re angry with me. Well, so be it. If you’re too angry to pay my way back to the city, well screw you. I’ll get the shuttle by myself.”
She stood up and walked somewhat unsteadily into the house, taking by habit the little mincing steps they taught the girls-and the boys as well-in Radiant Love House.
Half an hour later she came back out, dressed for the road. Stef was leaning on the railing, looking down into deep and black Lake Bai.
Stef said, “I’m poor. I’m a loner. I’m a kif head.”
“So you can’t afford me, don’t want me, and don’t need me because kif’s better. Right? So, goodbye.”
“Can you fend off your senator for a while?”
“Not forever. He can buy what he wants, and I don’t want to lose him.”
“I guess I could set up housekeeping with a hundred thousand,” Stef muttered. “But maybe I can bargain for more.”
Dzhun collapsed rather than sat down and drew the longest breath of her life. She put her hands over her face as if she was weeping, though in fact she had stopped crying many years before and her face was hot and dry. Her mind was running on many things, but chiefly on her friend Selina’s brainstorm, the wonderful invention of the senator, who, of course, did not really exist.
“So you’ll do it,” said Yama.
“For a million khans. Paid in advance. I want something to leave to my heirs in the event I don’t come back.”
“That’s a bunch of fucking money.”
“There’s one more thing I want. Get those two kids I captured turned loose. Otherwise Kathmann will sooner or later cut their heads off on general principles.”
Yama frowned. “He’ll never turn them loose. They’re young and the girl’s beautiful, so he’ll want to mutilate them. In my opinion, he’s saving them for something special. That’s the way Kathmann is-he’s a fucking sadist, as you of all people ought to know.”
“Try anyway.”
“It’s hopeless. But if I can save them I will.”
When Stef had gone, Yama set out to sell his prize agent to thefromazhi. He expected trouble with Kathmann but none developed, the chief of Earth Security was assembling an assassination team to kill Dyeva and viewed Stef’s mission as a chance to test the wormholer. Ugaitish, Admiral Hrka, and Xian were ready to try anything and put their chops on the proposal without a murmur. It was Yama’s own boss, Oleary, who objected because of the cost.
“Why don’t you go yourself?” he demanded. “It’d be cheaper.”
“Sir, I’ll go if you say to. But I got a wife and four kids.”
“That’s two more than the ecolaws allow.”
“I got an exemption.”
Oleary stared at Stef’s file, frowning.
“What’s wrong with this guy? I don’t trust him. Why did he have to leave the service in the first place?”
“Sir, he’s a great agent. Brave, quick, adaptable. But he’s got a soft spot in his head. He’s sentimental.
You can’t be a cop and be sentimental. A long time ago he helped a woman thief who was headed for the White Chamber to escape. Well, I found out about it, so I did my duty and turned Steffens in.”
Oleary kept on frowning.
“If he’s sentimental about women, what about when he has to kill, what’s her name, Dyeva?”
“Sir, she’s different. She’s threatening his whole world, including this little tart he seems to be in love with.”
“Oh, well,” said Oleary, shrugging. “Send him, I guess. Can’t hurt. But take the money back if he doesn’t succeed. How could I justify a budget item like that for a failure?”
“You go tomorrow,” said Yama. “Here’s some stuff to study tonight.”
Stef took the packet of copy, caught an official hovercar, and flew straight to Radiant Love House. The long farewell that followed left Stef weeping, and Dzhun-once the door had closed behind him-smiling at prospects that seemed equally bright whether he survived his mission or not.
Back home, he settled down on the balcony to study the three items that Yama had provided him: a hologram of Dyeva, a summary of her life on Ganesh, and a map of ancient Moscow. The map got little more than a glance; he needed to be in situ to use it. Dyeva’s hologram was another matter. Stef studied it as closely as if she and not Dzhun was his lover, imprinting on his mind Dyeva’s round Tartar face, high cheekbones and unreadable eyes.
Then he read her biography. To his surprise, the hardcopy with its STATE SECRET/BEHEADER stamp had been written by Professor Yang. Liking the taste of polizi money, he’d gone to work for Yama as a volunteer agent, and his first task had been writing up and annotating Dyeva’s life story.
Settlers of the Shiva system had been led by a devout Hindu who had hoped to establish a refuge for members of all the old faiths-Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Buddhists as well as his own people-where, far from corruption and unbelief, peace and justice and the worship of God could reign for all time.
“The actual results of this noble experiment,” wrote Yang, “were not without irony.” In the process of settling the system, three intelligent species had been destroyed, and among the humans religious wars and bitter sectarian disputes had constituted much of the system’s subsequent history.
Akhmatova Maria was born to a devout family on the third planet, Ganesh. They maintained Christian belief according to the Russian Orthodox rite and hated both their neighbors of other faiths and the depraved and godless civilization of other planets. In time she lost her own faith in God but adopted in its place the religion of humanity. Her private life remained austere; she had neither male nor female lovers, and the name she took in the movement which she helped to found, Dyeva, meant virgin in Russian, her native dialect.
She was attending the local academy when news of the technical advances which allowed invention of the wormholer gave her the great project of her life. She was one of a group of people loosely connected with the academy who formed a scheme to undo the Time of Troubles by returning to the past. Some members of her group transferred to the University of the Universe in Ulanor, where they made converts to their views and laid plans to build-later on, learning that one had already been built, to steal-a wormholer.
Then came a part of the account that Yama had marked in red. Dyeva’s theory that the Troubles could be
