“You’re a butcher,” said Alex.
“No.” Paul Lourier shook his head. “They’re tough buggers. Sey-Zo will survive… long enough to hear the news of the obliteration of her entire race. She even has a chance to be the last living Zzygou in the galaxy.”
He lowered his gun into his pocket. Smiled—openly, with natural ease.
“Consider me whatever you like. An executioner. A xenophobe. A psycho. But really, I’m just an ordinary man. A normal human, making normal plans for the future. The Zzygou are our main rivals in the galaxy. The Bronins don’t share our attitude toward expansion. They have long given up conquering new territories. The Fenhuans need to colonize planets that don’t suit us. With the Cepheideans—we can coexist just fine, and our alliance with the Zzygou is the only thing that prevents us from assimilating new planets together. The Church of the Angry Christ are insane idealists. And the Ebenian speshes—nothing but cannon fodder. The Imperial speshes are all emasculated degenerates. Imperial power is just a screen for trans-galactic corporations. The Empire has, to its shame, lost its fighting fist, the planet Eben. Lost all those who have always served humans… real humans. Like me. Those of us who really rule the universe. We got rid of the last Emperor too late… he was a real Emperor, I admit, but he lapsed into stupid idealism. Now all of that can be reversed.”
“Why are you telling us all this, Committee rat?” cried Janet.
“Not just to kill you off for knowing way too much,” smirked the agent. “You can’t understand it… valiant Ebenian Fleet Major Janet Ruello… Ah! The hopes I had for you! But you let me down. I’m not afraid of your testimonies. In ten more hours, they won’t mean a thing. But I want all you self-satisfied scumbags to know who rules the universe. To know it and remember it for the rest of your lives! And it isn’t you, spiritually mutilated speshes. And not the orthodox naturals, who get drunk on one glass of vodka, come down with the sniffles, and aren’t any good for any job. Those who have absorbed all the strength of genetic alterations but created no blocks in their consciousness—they are your real masters! They rule the planets, they move billions, and they decide between war and peace. And all that’s intended for you—are illusions. Sweet dreams. False belief in your own exclusiveness. And that’s the way it has always been and always will be. Always. Masters and slaves never switch places… my dear, harmonious crew. Your place will always be reserved for you. In an asteroid mine. Behind an office computer. At a ship’s control panel. In combat line with your ray gun.”
He was clearly enjoying what was happening. He was on a roll—this Imperial Security agent, Ebenian Human Control officer, secret Imperial politician… and whoever else he was, this spesh who wasn’t a spesh. Unfettered by anything—neither the moral barriers of speshes, nor the ancient ethics of naturals. And Alex caught himself thinking that he could understand the agent’s overwhelming need to unburden himself. Perhaps for the first time in decades. To shed the latest in a long line of masks he’d grown sick of, so that now, standing there with his own—or was it?—face before his recent friends, he could tell them everything he really had on his mind.
“You have nothing to say? Are some of you surprised, perhaps?” The agent looked around at them. “Or maybe you believed that ancient gibberish about human equality? How much of that have we had! Christianity, free enterprise, communism, the genetic revolution… And always the same thing—equality of opportunity… the thing than never existed in the first place. Social origin is what has always determined everything. Starting capital, social status, the choice made by parents—that’s what determines your destiny. And yours has been decided a long, long time ago. The destiny of a slave. And the slave-parents told the slave-children, ‘All those around you are chattel, and you are the master.’ And the slave-children said to each other, ‘We’ll be masters of all Life.’ But everything has already been decided. Long before your time. And the real rulers are those who are silent. Standing silently in the shadows. But if we have to…”
Alex had been watching Kim for a minute or so now. The girl grew quiet… she was regrouping.
And now she dealt her blow. Right from the floor, without getting up, without even looking at the agent, by hearing alone—she recoiled, kicking the agent in the stomach with both feet, as she pushed up on her arms and jumped to her feet with a springy bounce.
He didn’t seem to even notice the blow that had the power to rip through a normal man’s entrails. His body had been so stuffed with alterations that the agent only swayed a little—and the next moment Kim was once again frozen in front of him, her arms cruelly twisted behind her back, her face awful with the pain, or with those sensations that are pain substitutes in a fighter-spesh.
“If we have to, we act independently,” the agent said, finishing his phrase. “Didn’t I tell you I don’t want to kill you, Kim O’Hara? Calm down. People like you are always in demand, any place you go. Do your work and be happy during your long and interesting life.”
Kim laughed, spat—unsuccessfully trying to turn her head far enough back to hit the agent. “You… master of Life… you spend it under other people’s names, in other people’s bodies… groveling before those of us you call your slaves!”
The agent burst into laughter. “You’re like an impotent actor who can only screw when he plays Casanova… what are you so proud of?”
“That’s a good idea.” The former engineer of Mirror glanced over at Generalov. “I’m so sick of that sniveling sodomite!”
“But you liked it!” Puck shouted. It seemed he was stung to his very core. “But you—”
The agent no longer paid any attention to the rest of them. The blows that he landed on Kim seemed more like soft touches—but the girl went limp, her head lowered feebly.
“Monster…” whispered Janet. “God… what a monster.”
“They’re all monsters,” said Alex.
Janet looked at him with hatred. “It’s all your order… the force field. You should have known that a fighter-spesh would break right through it.”
“I should have,” Alex agreed. “But we needed this… moral striptease. I had no idea it would end up being a real striptease.”
The agent tossed Kim down onto the floor. Bent over, ripping off her clothes.
“Excuse me for not inviting you all to participate, my dear colleagues,” he said through clenched teeth. “But those of you with a penchant for voyeurism can satisfy your curiosity.”
He heaved himself heavily on top of the girl. Despite the monstrosity of what was happening, Alex was suddenly sharply hit by a strange, unpleasant sensation of a similarity between the rapist and the victim. The sturdy, stalwart agent and the slender, fragile girl—they seemed to be parts of a whole. They made up some kind of perverted but integral duo. It was as if they had been made for each other…
Alex lowered his eyelids. Whispered with his lips alone:
“Captain’s access. No reply necessary.”
Less than three and a half yards away from him, the Ebenian counter-intelligence agent was taking possession of Kim O’Hara. Alex waited four unbearably long seconds, ready to give the rest of his order to the ship at any moment. Waited four endless centuries, before the agent screamed.
There was nothing human about the sound of his scream. Mixing within it were pain and a panic-stricken, endlessly ancient terror, rooted in the very depths of the subconscious.
“Remove the lounge block!” This time Alex yelled out loud, jumping up.
Sherlock Holmes, of course, reacted faster. When Alex leaped toward the agent, who was twitching convulsively on top of the half-undressed Kim, the detective’s ‘Bulldog’ was already pressed to the rapist’s temple. Holmes’s other hand had dug into the agent’s neck with the strength of steel pincers.