It was a very civilized highjack. Janip was riding over the wilderness in a small airship, en route to his first meeting with his customer, and the attack began when a flock of flying creatures rose out of the leaf tops and drove straight for the ship. Janip knew something was happening as soon as he realized he was looking at birds. There were no natural birds on Conalia.

The birds ended their drive in a suicide attack on both propellers. The airship came to a halt. Two birds with absurdly exaggerated wingspans descended from some vantage point in the sky and hovered about five hundred meters from the starboard windows—well beyond the range of any weapons Janip might be carrying. Their wings measured a good ten meters, tip to tip, and they were both carrying small two-handed creatures with brain-machine links fastened to their heads. They banked downward as soon as they had given him a good look and disappeared under the gondola.
“I have encountered a difficulty,” the airship said. “I believe I am under attack. I have signaled for help.”
Janip settled into his seat and transmitted messages to two addresses. He was the only passenger in the gondola. His customer had chartered the ship just for him—an extravagance that indicated he could have negotiated a higher price when they had haggled over the merchandise he was carrying.

The ship quivered. It floated upward for a second and stopped. The birds’ passengers had obviously attached contacts to the bottom of the gondola. The ship’s control system was trying to gain altitude while it fought a silent battle with an electronic invasion.

The gondola trembled again. The two oversized birds flapped into view, one on each side.
“Good afternoon,” the ship said. “Your ship is now descending. The two riders positioned on the gondola are both armed. They can enter the passenger area at any time and administer a pacifier. Or you can indicate you are willing to follow instructions. The choice is up to you.”
Janip glanced out the window and verified the leaves were getting closer. A wash of enforced calm settled over his emotions. He had experimented with uncontrolled passion when he had been in his twenties but he had installed a full suite of neurological emotional controls when that bit of youthful probing had reached its predestined end.
“You will not encounter resistance,” Janip said. “I can see you’ve taken control of the situation.”
The gondola brushed against wide dark leaves. There were no real trees on Conalia. The tallest organisms on the planet were essentially giant soft-bodied plants. The ship pushed them aside as it descended and hovered a couple of meters above the ground. The rear hatch swung open. A ladder extended.

“If you will please descend,” the ship said, “it will save us the trouble of boarding.”
A man and a woman stepped into view as he backed out of the hatch. They both had functional, sparsely utilitarian brain-machine links on their heads and swivel-mounted laser-electric stunners in their hands. Sighting glasses hid their eyes. They escorted him to an all-terrain vehicle with oversized wheels and Janip entered the first stage of his captivity.

His captors drove him to a compound on the river. They ushered him into a large, lightly furnished room and left him alone for three days.
They didn’t tell him why he had been kidnapped, but it didn’t take him long to figure it out. His communications implant still worked and they didn’t try to jam it. The face of his account manager at Kaltuji Merchant Bank hovered in front of him minutes after the door clicked shut. Margelina had been the second person he had contacted when the attack had begun.

“You’re in the compound established by the Taranazzu Cultivators,” Margelina said. “I think we can assume this has something to do with their dispute with your customer.”
Janip scowled. “I thought the Taranazzu Cultivators were supposed to be non-violent.”
“They are, ideologically. We’re just as surprised by this as you are.”
“I checked out that squabble when I started negotiating with my customer. Elisette’s the party who looks like she might consider a little kidnapping.”
“Elisette is already attempting to initiate negotiations. In the meantime, I can advise you we can let you have full access to our communications system, with all security mechanisms functioning. You can continue to conduct all your normal business and social activities, just as you have been. The only restriction will be items that can be used to help you escape. We have to maintain a neutral stance in all disputes. It’s the only way we can keep secure communications open in this kind of situation.”
“Can I assume my jailers will let me maintain communications unless you advise them I’ve violated the agreement?”
“We’re working on that now. But I have to advise you we will immediately terminate your communications account if we discover you’ve violated the agreement.”
“I’d be very surprised if you didn’t, Margelina.”

The top politician in the compound’s social structure visited Janip late in the morning of the fourth day. The politician’s constituents referred to him as their primary facilitator—without capitals. He was a large man whose clothes flowed over swellings and indentations that indicated his muscles had received the maximum enhancement he could impose on them.
Janip had held several discussions with his customer and she had given him her take on the primary facilitator. “Sivmati’s settled into a very nice arrangement,” Elisette had argued. “They’re supposed to be egalitarian and non-competitive but you don’t have to examine their accounts to see he gets an extra share of everything. He became a convert about a year after they established the compound. And gradually wormed his way to the top.”
Elisette didn’t have to tell Janip she shared his attitude toward politicians. People like Sivmati didn’t build. They didn’t create. They didn’t trade. They just worked their way up hierarchies.

The dispute between Elisette and the Taranazzu Cultivators was a conflict over hydroelectric power. Elisette controlled the biggest hydroelectric plant currently functioning on the planet. She and three of her friends had occupied the waterfall at Belita Lake when they arrived on Conalia and invested twenty standard years in the construction of the plant.
“We have no desire to harm you or anyone else,” Sivmati assured him. “Or cause you the slightest inconvenience. The only person you should blame for this is Elisette. We settled here, by the rapids, because we innocently assumed the planet could use a second power source on this river. Nothing we have done should cause your client any loss of income. The new dam she is building upstream from us is deliberately designed to interfere with the flow of the river and negate our own efforts. It has no other purpose. She is building it because she wants to monopolize the energy potential of the biggest river in this area of the planet.”
“Elisette doesn’t need me,” Janip said. “You have eight people on Conalia who can give her a perfectly good set of new eyes.”
“But not as good as the eyes you’re selling her. We know Elisette. We’ve been coping with her since we inaugurated our settlement. She’s the kind who demands the best. Nothing else will do.”
“And what are you going to do if she turns out to be more stubborn than you think?”
“We know she is going blind. We know she needs your services. We think you will be our guest for a year at worst. In the meantime you will be given whatever you need to carry on your business from here. And the full freedom to enjoy all the hospitality we can offer you.”
Sivmati smiled. “This is a very pleasant place. We have every amenity. I hardly ever leave it myself.”

It was a pleasant place. The Cultivators served the life-giving, nurturing Power postulated by the Taranazzu sect and their expressions of devotion included a healthy round of mandatory feasting and dancing.
The central tenet of the Taranazzu belief system was a rigid acceptance of everything mankind had learned about the physical universe. The theory that a single all- powerful god ruled the universe had become indefensible, in their view, as soon as human beings had discovered they were the products of the heartless process of evolution through natural selection. No loving god could have inflicted so much pain on his creation.
There must, therefore, be several Powers, the Taranazzu founders had argued. We don’t know what these Powers are. It’s possible we can’t know. They may be superior beings, like the families of gods our ancestors imagined. They may be natural forces inherent in the structure of the universe. We must accept our ignorance. But we can choose the Powers we will serve.

The sexual mores of the settlement had their attractions, too. Janip got his first look at their system while he was eating his second dinner in the communal hall. The six people sitting near an ornamental fountain became involved in a discussion that kept attracting glances from the other tables. An outburst from one of the participants brought an immediate response. Two people hurried toward the commotion. A woman bent over a man who was glaring across the table. A man crouched beside the woman who was receiving the glare and nodded rhythmically as he talked to her.

The Cultivators had adopted a modified version of a sexual pattern developed by terrestrial primates called bonobos. Bonobo females used sex to regulate social behavior. The Cultivators felt both sexes should shoulder the responsibility. Touches and soothing words calmed the two diners. The dining hall had two small side rooms that could have been put to use if the situation had required a more extensive response.
As a “guest” Janip was a prime candidate for emotional regulation. Two women had invited him to join their table when he entered the hall. A third joined them a few minutes later.
The primary facilitator received his share of regulating, too. Janip wasn’t surprised to learn that Sivmati had purchased the maximum sexual enhancement available on Conalia.

Elisette was a large, big-boned woman who liked to wear bright colors. She had started scheming as soon as she heard about the kidnapping. As Janip had assumed she would.
“We can discuss anything we want,” Elisette said. “Correct?”
“That’s my understanding of my agreement with the bank,” Janip said. “I’d love to have a well-written program that would totally disrupt the Cultivators’ security system, if you happen to have one handy. We can talk about the possibility all day. But don’t transmit the program over this channel.”
“And what will they do if we violate their rules?”
“I’ll be barred from all contact with the planetary banking system.”
“They can enforce that? They can make every bank on the planet follow their orders?”
“Against a lone visiting trader? Who’s done something every bank on the planet would object to if he did it to them? My bank may be overestimating its influence, Elisette. But I’d rather not run a test.”
Elisette shrugged. “There’s a basic conflict between the general thrust of the Cultivators’ ideology and the fact that they’ve kidnapped you and taken you prisoner. There must be a few people in that compound who feel our friend Sivmati isn’t quite as pure as he should be.”
“I’ve been watching for attitudes like that. Sivmati doesn’t seem to think there’s any conflict. He feels they’re just defending themselves—that you’re building your new dam so you can force them off the river and control the whole length of it. So far he doesn’t seem to be running into any serious opposition.”
“And what do you think? “
“I’m a trader, Elisette. You and I have a deal. He’s interfering with a legitimate business transaction.”
“That’s what I want to hear. We’ll get you out of there, Janip. I’m not the only one working on this. The whole business community in Kaltuji is seething. They all know they can’t let a bunch of religious fanatics get away with this kind of barbarism.”
Janip could have pointed out that she could resolve the whole situation, at any time, by announcing she was canceling her dam project. But why bother? Elisette had her objectives. Sivmati and his followers had theirs.

Janip had been born on a world that had passed through a nightmare created by a moral fanatic. The revolt that had toppled David Jammet’s tyranny had killed hundreds of people. Personalities that might have lived for thousands of years had been snuffed out like deleted bits of data. Janip’s own father had been killed before he could complete his second century. Janip existed because his mother had managed to save her husband’s genome. She knew she couldn’t recreate the dead. That was impossible. But she had to do something.

She had been a good mother. But no one could stop the flow of time. She had acquired other relationships. Janip had developed his own circle of friends. Inevitably, there had come a moment when he had known he could leave her behind. He had lived through six decades of experience and he was still one of the youngest people on Arlane. He was faced with the situation that confronted every “young” person sooner or later. The top social and economic niches in his society were all occupied and the people who occupied them were still going to be perched on the same branches when he was plodding toward the end of his first millennium.

The eyes he was selling Elisette had been a cutting edge technology on Arlane. He had spent two standard years learning to deal with all the problems that could pop up when you planted them in a living human body with all its biological quirks. He continued developing his skills during the twenty tendays he had been imprisoned in the closet the starship’s owners called a minimum-fare cabin. The eyes would be a state of the art item on Conalia in a few standard years but for now he had a de facto monopoly. Just as he had a temporary monopoly on the lesser items he had selected before he placed eleven light years between himself and the haunted world that had goaded a woman into producing him.
Eleven light years in space. Eleven standard years in time. Two hundred days ship time as the ship pulled energy from the interstellar vacuum and pushed against the speed of light. His mother had lived through every minute of those years during the two hundred days he had kept himself busy in his closet. He had known that would happen since his first childhood contacts with elementary physics, but the reality still seemed eerie. Every friend he had left behind was eleven years older. The laws that governed space and time and the movements of starships were weirder than the most bizarre religions humans had invented.

David Jammet had taken control of the human settlements on Arlane so he could pursue a dream that had bedeviled mankind for seven centuries. Jammet had actually believed, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that he could produce human beings who had been cured of the human tendency to engage in violence. It was an experiment that had been tried eight times in the last few centuries and it always ended in disaster. The creatures who emerged from the laboratories walked around in human bodies but they were psychological monsters. The human capacity for violence was inextricably linked to every trait the species needed or valued. It couldn’t be sliced out of the human personality without damaging everything around it.
Janip was an interstellar trader. A visitor who sold the things he brought from another world. And bought the things he would sell on the next. People were always fighting over something. He wouldn’t exist if they didn’t.

The woman named Farello liked to sit on the observation deck that overlooked the river. She reminded him, in some ways, of the last woman he had bonded with on Arlane. She was tall and graceful and she maintained an air of good humored calm. The first time he noticed her, she was sitting at a table with two friends when he wandered onto the deck after dinner. The other women in the group invited him to join them and a pair of warm, interested eyes regarded him from the other side of the table as he traded light chatter with her companions. Her eyes were the primary memory he took away from the conversation.

He had been settling for whoever came his way. His “hosts” wanted to keep him placid and the women who accepted the task were pleasant and pleasurable. This one triggered something deeper. He even felt a twinge of jealousy when he sought her out two days after that first encounter and discovered she and one of the men were double-linked on a work assignment.

“They work together a lot,” the schedule tracker said. “They’ve got a high level of rapport and they seem to have a talent for spotting things that deserve a closer look. Would you like me to tell her you asked about her?”
Janip shook his head. He had tried to sound casual but he knew Sivmati was going to hear about this. This was the first time he had indicated he was interested in a particular woman.
“I’ll see her when I see her.”
“They usually stay linked for forty-two hours when they’re working together. They like to put in long work sessions and follow them up with long leisure periods.”
Janip suppressed the temptation to check the work schedules. Sivmati would learn about that, too.

He “ran into” Farello the morning after her work session ended, when he wandered into the dining room in search of a late breakfast. She was sitting by herself, with a small plate of rolls in front of her, and she waved to him as she bit into a roll.
It was a sharp day in early winter but the observation deck had an enclosed area. They carried their plates and cups to the deck a few minutes after he joined her and settled into one of the easiest streams of conversation he had ever navigated with a female companion. Farello and her working partner had been connected to the network that monitored the settlement’s impact on the natural, unterrestrialized ecological system that surrounded the compound. She briefed him on the things she had just learned about the interactions between two of the native plants and a network of communal leaf nesters, he countered with some observations about the different directions evolution had taken on Conalia and Arlane, and from there they moved on to all the anecdotes and tidbits you could toss into the flow when you were chatting with someone you had just met.

Janip knew he was emotionally vulnerable. His life had been disrupted. He was a stranger on a new world. No one had to tell him he was succumbing to one of Sivmati’s manipulations. He had processed a quick calculation as he crossed the room toward her table and noted that she had made herself available at the earliest time he could have seen her again, if you assumed she needed to sleep for a few hours after her extended work period. Her wave had been well calculated, too. It had been friendly and pleasant but there had been no indication it was an invitation.

The interlude that followed their breakfast chat was just as warm and fervent as he had hoped it would be. She wasn’t calming him. She wasn’t rewarding him for maintaining the peace and stability of the group. She was responding to him.
He knew her emotions had been tampered with. No one reacted like that after two pleasant social encounters. But what difference did it make? Every situation had its pluses. Why shouldn’t he take advantage of them?
Elisette even encouraged the relationship. “It may be something we can use,” she said. “Sivmati may be playing with her need to bond. If he is, he could have set up conflicts we can exploit.”
“You don’t think she’s just been enticed by my natural sexual magnetism?” Janip said.

“You have your attractions. But I think you can see that she’s developed a fixation on you in a remarkably short time. Sects always attract personalities with a strong drive to form bonds. She bonded with the group. She bonded with Sivmati. He’s probably enhanced her impulse to bond with you. The bonders that sects attract tend to be really strong—in the upper five percent in that area. She would be doing something for him and the group if she let him apply the modification. And she would be agreeing to reinforce a natural tendency. A tendency most bonders consider a virtue.”

Janip had thought of Elisette as someone who had the brains to spot an obvious site for a hydroelectric installation and the tenacity to spend years working on it. Now he was beginning to realize she had qualities that went beyond that.
“Sivmati may know what he’s doing,” Elisette said. “Don’t underestimate him. But we shouldn’t assume he’s a political mastermind just because he’s managed to manipulate a bunch of sect adherents. Somebody who really understood personality modification would have thought twice before he created the kind of conflicts he’s set up in that woman. He’s burdened her with a serious psychological stress if I’m right—the tension between her bonds with her group and the bond she’s developing with you. Don’t let up, Janip. Work on that bond like you were planning to make it last to the end of eternity.”

Janip had decided the watchcats were the critical element in the compound security net. There were six of them and they patrolled the compound day and night.
“They’ve always got at least one cat within striking range,” he advised Elisette. “I’ll be dealing with a cat two minutes after somebody decides I’m making a break.”
“I can get you a program that will disrupt the cats’ programming any time you want it. Just give me the word. I can break it up into a hundred segments and hide it in as many messages as it takes. Your friends at the bank will never notice it.”
“They’ll know we did it afterward.”
“By then you’ll be free.”
“And what do I do after that? What happens when I land on my next world and the banks know I can’t be trusted?”
“I need those eyes, Janip. I’m paying you to deliver.”
“Can you send the program through some other link?”
“As secure as the bank link? Do you think I’d be paying the kind of money the banks are charging me if we had anything else on the planet as good as this link?”

The personal quarters building contained six suites that had been set aside for couples. Janip and Farello moved into a vacant set of rooms nine tendays after he began his sojourn at the settlement. The suite wasn’t as big as the layout Sivmati occupied, but Janip liked the rugs and the heavy, ornately molded furniture the last tenants had installed.
“You sound like you’re settling in,” Elisette said.
Janip shrugged. “I may as well enjoy what’s available. I spent three days in a decent guest house in between the jail cell I lived in on the ship and the camouflaged prison I’m living in now.”
“And how about your companion? Are you planning to take her along when you leave?”
“I want to get out of here, Elisette. That’s priority number one. If she wants to join me later—we can deal with that then.”
Elisette studied him for a moment and let the subject die. Janip had given her the answer she wanted to hear. He was certain he had been telling the truth. But he also knew he hadn’t really thought about the matter.

Elisette wasn’t the only party who was negotiating with the Cultivators. The bureaucrats in the government of Kaltuji City had entered the conversation. They worked for a political system dominated by traders and economic hustlers. Kidnappings and acts of violence interfered with the civilized pursuit of wealth.
“They aren’t making any threats,” Sivmati said. “They’re sending me the usual extremely polite messages. But we both know they can create annoying inconveniences for our community if they initiate the economic sanctions they like to flourish. But that’s all it would be. Inconvenience.”
Janip smothered his emotions under a blanket of bland serenity—his standard response to the useless rush of anger Sivmati usually provoked.
“Is that a message I’m supposed to relay to my banker?” Janip said.
Sivmati smiled. “I’m keeping you informed. Uncertainty can create unnecessary emotional stress.”
Margelina received Sivmati’s message with a shrug. “We know what his medical resources are. They’re good but he’s a long way from total self-sufficiency.”
“Have you considered the fact that you’re dealing with a religious community? People can be very stubborn when they feel they have to live up to a moral code.”
“He’s not David Jammet, Janip. This isn’t Arlane.”
“He could still hold out a lot longer than you might expect. And I’m the one who has to sit here while you make faces at each other.”

Janip could believe Farello might be torn by the emotional conflict Elisette had hypothesized. But she had apparently resolved it by deciding the villain in the situation was Elisette, not Sivmati.
At Elisette’s urging, Janip had linked to a second, lower-security network and used it to expand his social contacts and take his case to the general populace. Over three hundred thousand people currently inhabited the various settlements humans had established on Conalia. Most of them seemed to have an opinion on his situation.
Farello’s contributions seethed with rage at the people who objected to her leader’s tactics. To Farello, Elisette was an empire builder who wanted to seize control of an economic chokepoint. The Cultivators’ power plant would have no impact on Elisette’s plant at Belita Falls. Why shouldn’t other people tap the river’s potential?

We are a peaceful community. We are building a facility that will benefit everyone who lives on Conalia. The new dam Elisette is erecting has only one purpose—a monopoly on the resources of the river. Why aren’t you threatening Elisette? Why are you directing your anger at a leader who is trying to protect you from her ambitions?
Janip maintained the most neutral stance he could manage. He had opened the second link so Elisette could slip him a clandestine program, if they decided they should activate an escape plan. He confined his public statements to principled arguments based on the importance of free trade, unhampered by political disputes.
We all understand the benefits of trade. People like me bring you things that become valuable, important additions to your society. We buy other things so we can eventually sell them elsewhere. Everybody gains. But we can’t carry out our function if we can’t circulate freely.

Janip had linked to dramas about men who became addicted to sexual liaisons with particular women but he had never taken the idea seriously, even when the links had fed him the physical sensations that were supposed to fuel the addiction. Some part of him had always remained detached. It was a fantasy that was just as unlikely as simulations crowded with women driven by an inexplicable need to give him anything his imagination could conceive.
Was it happening to him now? Or was he just reacting to his isolation? It had been at least forty years since he had thought about sex as much as he thought about it now. He would leave Farello after a three-hour session that should have quelled all his yearnings for a couple of tendays and his mind would start wandering toward their next encounter before he’d spent an hour looking after his business interests.
He could shut off his urges, of course. But he didn’t want to. He had to force himself to make the effort. When he made it.
“I think it’s time we set a date,” he told Elisette.

“It’s like I said, right? She let Sivmati focus her biggest need on you?”
“You want your merchandise. I want to get back to a nice normal place like Kaltuji where I can talk to people with nice normal interests like profit and pleasure. And there’s only two ways that can happen. You can give them what they want. Or we can get me out of here.”

* * *