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apartment, Spirit looked inquiringly at me.
    “I accepted her seduction, and she tried to kill me,” I said simply. “She's a mole—an assassin mole.”
    “And you don't want to eliminate her?” she inquired with raised eyebrow.
    I explained my thinking on that matter. “But it's dangerous,” I concluded. “She still tempts me.”
    “You always were a fool about women,” Spirit said. “Fortunately, they always were bigger fools about you.”
    “Not this one. If I touch her again I may not survive it.”
    “Put a pacifier on her,” she suggested.
    I smiled. Of course that wasn't serious. A pacifier makes a person lose volition, and it can indeed be used for rape, but that never appealed to me any more than rape itself did. What I wanted was of course impossible: Tasha's willing, nonmalicious acceptance of my advances.
    “So what do I do?” I asked, somewhat plaintively.
    “You get another woman.”
    “Another woman might well be another mole,” I pointed out.
    “Not if the source differs. You can get a guaranteed safe woman, with all the qualities you require.” She seemed amused.
    “What source?” I asked, perplexed.
    “Your wife, of course.”
    “Megan?” I asked, appalled.
    “She knows your tastes, I suspect.”
    I realized that she was serious. It would be presumptuous to suggest that my sister resents any part of my life-style, including my romantic affairs, but perhaps she suffers a certain impatience on occasion. I'm sure she regrets my breakup with Megan, as I do myself.
    I pondered, then decided to call her bluff. “Then send Megan a message from me: 'Send me a woman.' ”
    Spirit smiled enigmatically. “I shall.”
    And she did.

Bio of a Space Tyrant 5 - Statesman
    Chapter 4 — FARM
    We traveled—Spirit and Tasha and I, and our security personnel—to the Saturnine Republic of Kraine, and to the bubble city of Dessa within it. This was south from Skva, but the phenomenal differentiation in wind velocity made that direction largely meaningless. Dessa circled the planet significantly faster than did Skva, so while its geographic location was south, its actual position could be around at the far side of the planet. This was part of the rigor of Saturnian society that we had not experienced on Jupiter. It made intercity travel more complicated than elsewhere, and tended to set apart the different bands, resulting in greater isolation of subcultures. Saturn, far more than Jupiter, was a conglomeration of peoples, as its overall designation indicated: the Union of Saturnine Republics.
    We used an airplane provided by the government; apparently we counted as Party officials, and as such did not mingle with the common herd. Certainly that was safer, considering the two assassination attempts that had been made against me. I glanced covertly at Tasha, still amazed that she should change character so thoroughly, becoming a sadistic killer before reverting to her pleasant innocence. Again I felt that dangerous attraction; I wanted to possess this woman again, perhaps because I knew she was truly forbidden.
    We navigated the currents and homed in on Dessa. It was on the so-called Black Sea, which was a band of turbulence generated by the shear between winds of radically differing velocities. It was possible to navigate the sea, but not to live in it, for the irregular storms that manifested would have severely shaken any city-bubble. Actually, our preliminary research suggested that the political turmoil of this region was just as severe as the geographic violence.
    We landed and in due course were ensconced in an office complex very like the one we had left in Scow. Dessa was not the largest city in Kraine, or even the third largest, but it did have most of a million residents and was important as a port. During System War One it had been occupied by five or six conflicting forces in succession; in System War Two it had suffered a quarter million casualties by massacre or deportation. Yet there