Gateway To Xanadu by Sharon Green Read Free Book Online Page A

asked, looking at me over the rim of his glass. “When Dameron first questioned you he found out you’d been after this Radman, but he never learned exactly why. What law did he break?”
    “Aside from what he did to me?” I asked, remembering the way I’d felt after waking up aboard that ship, the control room in ruins, unexplored vastness all around me, my future all behind me. If I hadn’t been too stubborn to give him the satisfaction, I would have gone slowly mad, locked up in a crippled hulk on my way to the far side of forever. And it was all Radman’s doing, the slime who found that sort of thing more fun than a clean death, the filth who never thought. I’d come back from it, the dead man who didn’t yet know we had a final date penciled in on the calendar.
    “Radman’s a special case among slavers,” I said after taking a deep, necessary swallow of my wine, only vaguely noticing that Val hadn’t filled the gap between my question and the beginning of my answer to his question. “As long as he stuck to ordinary slave-trading he was none of our business too many member planets consider slavery of one sort or another legal. Not long ago, though, he decided to branch out.
    “Two Councilmen were arguing for opposite sides of an important political question, and Radman, in an effort to increase his power, approached one of them with an offer. For all I know, the Councilman may have thought he was acting in the best interests of the people; whatever it was, he made a deal with Radman and two days later the other Councilman’s three children disappeared. The second Councilman was told he would see them again only if he abandoned his opposition to the first Councilman’s stand.”
    Val was still staring at me silently, his wine glass held in both hands, his lack of expression giving me no clues as to what he was thinking. I took my eyes away from him, and went on with the story.
    “Unfortunately for his children, the second Councilman was a man of honor,” I continued. “He refused to desert his stand, and the kids paid for it. They were never seen at home again, but were eventually traced to the pleasure planet Xanadu, purely by accident. Radman had sold them to the Pleasure Sphere, and it was much too late to save them. The nine-year-old-girl and twelve-year-old-boy had been used to death by the patrons, and the sixteen-year-old-girl had committed suicide. It didn’t take long before the Councilman went the same way his oldest daughter had gone.”
    “And all that because of someone’s twisted desire for power,” Vat said very softly, so softly that I looked back at him in startlement. I’d never heard such chill menace from him before. “And you were supposed to arrest him, but instead of your getting him, he got you. Why were you sent alone? Why didn’t they send a squad of peacekeepers?”
    “A squad of male peacekeepers, you mean?” I asked with a very faint smile before sipping my wine.
    “We don’t call them that in the Federation, but I catch your meaning. The only problem with that is Federation police can’t do what I do. ”
    “Why not?” he asked, almost in annoyance, his wine forgotten. “What makes a lone female more qualified to arrest filth like that than a squad of men?”
    “Possibly the fact that there’s no arrest involved,” I answered, trying not to watch him closely and failing miserably. “The Council issued a death warrant on Radman to show how much they appreciated his efforts, and I’m the Special Agent they sent to serve it. If someone hadn’t warned him I was coming, I would have killed him and left the body for his friends to find, as a warning against trying something like that ever again. It would hardly have been the first death warrant I ever served, Val, and if I’m very, very lucky, I’ll get back to find that no one else was sent to see to it in my absence. Not even police special squads are authorized to-or capable of-executing a death warrant.