Statesman by Piers Anthony Read online

  "And your wife—would she not support the Dream?"

  I knew she would. "Yet—"

  "With agreement and support from Jupiter and Saturn, proper management should bring the other planets in line," he said. "It is an opportunity that exists only now—because only while I am in power here will Saturn support a thrust it does not dominate, and only while the Tyrant lives will Jupiter do the same. Now is the time politically as well as scientifically, and if we do not act at this juncture, our species may destroy itself before such a chance again occurs."

  "But the nomenklatura will oppose this," I said, returning to his earlier consideration. "So you propose to use me to eliminate their power, for the sake of the dream."

  "Exactly. I cannot oppose them directly—indeed, they would have eliminated me by now if I did not control the Spetsnaz and the secret police—but I cannot commit sufficient resources to the Dream while their power remains. But you may be able to accomplish this."

  Those were dread units indeed that he mentioned. Spetsnaz was the USR's ruthless terrorist strike force, an army in itself, whose mission was to paralyze a potential enemy through selective assassinations and bombings before overt hostilities commenced. Had it seemed that I, as Tyrant, intended to make war against the USR, the first thing I would have had to do was to guard against a Spetsnaz mission. As for the secret police—indeed, the man who controlled that had the very nerve center of power on this planet. But these were Khukov's mainstays, not mine. "How? I cannot simply go into the Saturn society and start firing personnel!"

  "I will put you in charge of our farm program," he said. "You will be directed to quadruple the harvest in two years."

  "Two years! That would be a revolution!"

  He smiled. "Yes, I suspect it would require heroic measures—such as the prompt elimination of anyone who interfered with it in any way. We know who will interfere."

  I nodded. Khukov and I both knew well the applications of power. I would be a hatchet man indeed. But with my sister to organize it, I could certainly make progress.

  I looked at Spirit. She nodded; she was ready for this.

  I extended my hand to Khukov.

  Another thing occurred at this time, a minor episode really, but it touched me. It was a letter from my daughter, Hopie Megan Hubris. She was now in her mid-twenties, but to me she was always my little girl of nine or ten, or of fifteen. She was with the Department of Education of Jupiter, and from time to time she published papers on this subject, yet I always perceived a little-girl quality in what she wrote to me.

  Dear Daddy,

  I was so concerned when we got the news about your ship being attacked in space, though the excitement was all over by the time I knew. Don't scare me like that! You aren't a Navy officer anymore, you know.

  Megan is setting up the new government here. You know, most of the people you put in are remaining, at least until senators and representatives can be elected There was a lot of grumbling about things when you were in power, but already there's grumbling about how much better things were in the "old days" of the Tyrancy. I just thought you'd like to know.

  Take care of yourself, Daddy. I miss you already.

  And I missed her! I showed the letter to Spirit, and she nodded. A daughter's a daughter, for all of her life," she murmured. How true!

  Chapter 3 — WOMAN

  Saturn, as the local saying went, was not colonized in a day, and my farm reform program was not instituted any faster. Spirit and I had to get down to some homework, nominally on the Saturn farm program, but also on the nomenklatura. We had grown accustomed to having comprehensive staffs to assist us, and we were not young; in addition, Spirit did not speak Russian. Texts were available in English but not in Spanish, to our regret.

  The upshot was that we got a secretary. She was approved by Khukov's staff, which meant we could depend on her, but I trusted my own reading more. She was Saturnian, but of occidental descent; the USR is really more of a Western nation than is generally thought. She surely had a Saturnian name, but employed a code name, as was standard practice in this line of work, so we knew her simply as Tasha.

  Tasha spoke several of the dialects of the Union, including that of the Kranian Saturn Republic where the most productive farming was; she would be a help there, for I knew only the standard Russian. She was a competent typist and computer operator. She knew most of the great cities intimately, from Skva to Kov, and understood the complex bureaucratic mechanisms of residence within them and travel between them. She was also young and attractive and intelligent and even-tempered. In short, the ideal secretary.

  Of course she reported everything we did to her superiors; that was a matter of course on Saturn. It would have been suspicious if it were not so. No personnel were cleared for service of this nature who were not primarily agents of the government. Since I had nothing to hide from Khukov, this didn't bother me.

  What did bother me, as we spent weeks reviewing the statistics and personnel of the farm bureau and the Kranian SR, was Tasha's sex appeal. At first she was chill and formal and beautiful, but as time passed she relaxed and unbound her fair hair and became warm and informal and luscious. I was sixty, but by no means immune to female presence. As her blouses became more sheer and her skirts shorter and her attitude more accommodating, I reacted exactly as any man would. Tasha was letting it be known, in the quiet arena of body signaling, that she found me interesting.

  Certainly I found her interesting. The increasingly supple curvature of her bosom and the firmness of her lengthening thighs were stripping years from my age. I knew that if I wanted a woman for sexual purpose, all I had to do was requisition one; Tasha herself would put in an order and the pool would provide whatever description of girl I desired. But I was never keen on anonymous flesh, and less so as I aged; I preferred to have a larger relationship.

  So in due course, when Spirit was away on related business, I took Tasha to a private chamber and kissed her. She accommodated me so expertly in this, too, that I knew that it was considered to be part of her job description. I was reminded of the ancient Saxon joke about a secretary not being considered a permanent fixture until screwed on the desk. As with many jokes, there was truth in it; Tasha was evidently prepared to be permanent. I was sure she was making it her business to learn as much about me as possible, and to report it, but I do have a certain way with women and like to think that she would have been similarly amenable if not required to be. I drew out the seat of the couch, converting it to a serviceable bed; even the furniture was accommodating.

  She let me undress her, for she knew too that the typical occidental man likes to believe he is in charge. Her body was exactly as her clothing had suggested: perfect in detail. It was evident that Saturnian notions of beauty aligned with those of Jupiter. She was full and soft without being extreme.

  I stripped as she lay on the bed, discovering myself to be too eager for the culmination to resort to any subtleties of approach. I took down my trousers and undershorts, but was overcome by desire before getting to my shirt. I approached her, and she lay supine, smiling and spreading and lifting her legs. I dived for her, and those legs circled my torso and locked behind me while her hands came up to grip my collar on either side.

  In retrospect I consider myself to be a fool. I had had experience with the martial arts, including judo, and I well knew the nature of the Osae-waza, or art of holding, and the Shime-waza, or art of strangleholds. But I was overcome by lust, and so missed the signals. I plunged for her genital region, and got inside—and her wrists twisted and locked against my throat, cutting off my breath. It was the reverse cross lock, lightly but firmly applied.

  "Finish your business, lover," she murmured, drawing my face down toward hers. As she did, the strangle tightened, as was its nature. Her right hand gripped my collar on my right side, and her left on my left, so that her wrists crossed, and the closer she brought my neck to her, the more firmly those crossed wrists dug in. "It is your last."
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br />   I tried to break free, but that is almost impossible when such a hold is properly applied. I couldn't twist out, because her legs held me in place, and I couldn't pull back, because the leverage was hers. Even my intimate connection to her body facilitated that lock; my loin could not rotate. What a position!

  "Kiss me," she said, drawing me lower. Instead I reached for her face, for my own hands were free. In a desperate situation like this, I was prepared to strike or gouge; anything to make her grip on my throat break. But immediately her hold tightened, and I grew faint. She had had a choke on me, which cut off my air, but it can take some time for that to deprive a person of consciousness. The tightening put pressure against the buried carotid arteries, cutting off the supply of blood to my brain, and that could put me out in five seconds. My hands fluttered helplessly.

  She eased up, and the blood and a little air returned. There was no question: she knew the potential of this lock, and was toying with me. She could render me unconscious or dead at any time, despite my experience in combat.

  "Finish it, lover," she repeated, nudging my ribs with her thighs. "I would not wish you to die unfulfilled."

  Some finish! I remembered the notorious historical woman of a death camp who had taken lovers from the condemned, then had their skins fashioned into lampshades. Such romance loses its appeal quite rapidly.

  But what could I do? If I did not make some show of obliging her, she would simply kill me immediately. So I used what very limited freedom remained to my body, and I thrust, finding little pleasure in it despite the original delight of the connection, and thrust again, going through the motions. I was really stalling for time, yet I could not see what use I would have for a few more minutes. Spirit would not return for another hour, at least, and no one else would intrude on our privacy. Tasha had plenty of time to play with me before she dispatched me. "You can do better than that, Tyrant," she said. "What would all your prior conquests think, if you had plumbed them no more efficiently than this? Move it!"

  Brother! She was like a cat with a mouse, first trapping or crippling it, then playing with it, having no intent to let it survive. But how could even the smartest of mice survive that game?

  Then I had a notion. I had lived a good deal longer than she had, and had had advanced training in specialized combat techniques. It had been decades since I had practiced them, but I had not forgotten. There had been one line of nerve attack that had at one time fascinated me. A choke can take minutes for full effect, and a strangle seconds, as I explained, but the right pressure on the right nerve can be instantaneous. Furthermore, a nerve attack is more versatile than a neck lock, because it can be applied to any part of the body, and does not require that body to be anchored in place. If Tasha was ignorant of this system of techniques—

  I increased the vigor of my thrusting, obliging my captor, who evidently got her satisfaction from forcing a climax in the victim she was about to kill. No doubt her own climax would be set off, not by mine, but by her perception of my body stiffening in the rigor of termination. Some people are like that.

  Meanwhile, I slid my hands around behind me. She might have been aware of this, but unconcerned; her legs were far stronger than my arms, and I could not force them apart that way. Perhaps, again catlike, she relished the futility of my attempt. I took hold of her left ankle with my left hand and her right with my right. Then I slid my left hand onto her right ankle, though this was a difficult stretch, and held it in place. My achievement of this grip was facilitated by the slight leeway she was giving me to enable me to thrust into her.

  Now I had her right foot precisely placed. This was important, for I could not see it, and the nerve I required was not readily accessible. I stroked that foot with the fingers of my right hand, searching out the precise spot.

  "Forget it, lover," she said disdainfully. "I am not ticklish." And she tightened the lock momentarily, warning me to keep to my proper business.

  Then I lifted my right hand and brought it down hard, striking her foot. I was going for a particular bone that would in turn impact on the key nerve. This was at best a difficult trick, and my present circumstance was far from the best.

  But it worked. Her foot stiffened as the pain lanced through it. Involuntarily she drew it away, breaking the lock her legs had on my body. Ready for this, I whipped my left hand about and forward and down to her inner thigh as I withdrew from my prior thrust, giving myself some room. I jammed my thumb into another nerve there.

  Tasha gave a truncated scream of amazement and discomfort, for suddenly her entire leg was numb. Now she could not hold me, and I withdrew and scrambled with my legs, pushing my body into a forward somersault. Her hands had to let go, lest her wrists be broken.

  Even as I rolled across her face, I twisted, catching her head. I found my place again and dug into the nerves of her neck, half stunning her. She was helpless, unable to make her own body respond.

  Then I had the respite to reconsider. I had known this woman for three weeks, and had read her many times. Nothing had suggested that she was capable of such an attack. How could I have been mistaken? Was my talent going bad, or was there something else?

  I realized that I had to question her, and not politely. But torturing women has never been my notion of fun. How could I get her to tell me what she was surely conditioned never to reveal?

  Well, she evidently had a hankering for terminal sex. Perhaps I could reverse this.

  I assumed the original sexual position, setting her hands loosely against my throat, clinging to my collar. But I had pressed the nerves in her shoulders, and now her arms lacked volition; she could not throttle me. I set her legs about me as before; their hold too was ineffective. We had the form but not the substance of her reverse cross lock.

  I thrust into her, as before. "I am about to climax," I said. "What will you do then?"

  Dazed by my succession of nerve blocks, she responded, "I will strangle you to death."

  "Why?"

  "Because you represent a threat to the system."

  "What system?"

  "The established order of Saturn." This was working well; she believed I was about to die, so her resistance to imparting information was relaxed. Perhaps she even wanted to reveal it, as part of her expiation. "The nomenklatura?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "How did they get an assassin past the screening process?"

  "They have many moles."

  A mole. A person who performed some routine office for an indefinite period, then abruptly surfaced as a spy or agent at a critical occasion. Such a person could be conditioned not even to know she was a mole, until the correct circumstance triggered the transformation. That explained how Tasha had eluded my discovery. I read a person's attitude and intent; I could not read what the person did not know.

  Tasha had been conditioned to manifest as an assassin when I, or perhaps any man, entered her body sexually. Obviously she had been well trained for this. I had left my shirt on, giving her the opportunity to use the cross lock; had I been entirely naked, that would not have worked, but she would have used some other technique. There are many ways to kill a naked man bare-handed. Perhaps I was fortunate that she had chosen this one, so that I had had the chance to remember my counter to it.

  So I had foiled the nomenklatura plot. But was that enough? If they could get a mole through Khukov's defenses once, they could surely do so again—and next time it might be a man equipped to kill without warning, with a single strike. I remained vulnerable.

  Unless I found a way to deceive this enemy about the prospects of my demise. Tasha had not been on any fixed schedule; she had manifested as an increasingly attractive and willing sexual partner, but no one could know how long it would be before I took advantage of that. It might have been days, or weeks (as was the case), or months. Probably the nomenklatura didn't care; they were assured that eventually I would get around to it, and then I would be dead. Thus they had no need to imperil their position by any other
attempts against me; they had their sleeper placed.

  What I needed to do was keep Tasha, who was, after all, an excellent secretary, but not attempt any further sex with her. In that manner she should serve as my protection from my enemies.

  But I didn't want her mole-self forever lurking, waiting to assassinate me. Could I recondition her? I was not expert in this science, but I could try. Perhaps if she believed, in her assassin guise, that she already had killed me, then she would not be inclined to try again.

  So I played it through. I continued my motions, working up to my sexual climax, which despite my narrow escape was not really difficult. Tasha remained an infernally attractive woman, after all, and aspects of this engagement were reminiscent of the manner I raped Roulette, half my life ago. What a woman Rue had been! Still was, for my taste, though she was now nearing fifty. The thought of her enhanced my performance, and in due course I erupted in creditable fashion.

  "Now I shall do it," Tasha said, smiling grimly. She tightened her lock.

  Her effort was not sufficient, but I made up for it with my performance. I gagged and held my breath, trying to make my face go mottled, and in due course collapsed. I came down on her luscious torso, my face separated from hers only by her grip.

  Tasha lifted her head to touch my lips with hers. We kissed, in our fashion, though I remained carefully unresponsive, playing dead.

  But I knew I wasn't fooling her. Dazed she might be, but she could still tell the living from the dead.

  She rolled me off her, then got up, went to the bathroom, dressed, and put her hair and makeup back in order. She left the room without speaking again.

  I got up and followed much the same routine. Soon I returned to the main office, where Tasha had resumed work.