Free Lord of Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle, Roland J. Green Page B

same effect on Shalnuksis as on humans, and they use it about the same way Americans use alcohol. And Tran Natural gets a premium price, like Talisker scotch, or the rarer wines.”
    Gwen stared at him.
    “I see you don’t approve,” Les said. “Look, what is it to me if the Shalnuksis use drugs? Or to you?”
    But there has to be more, she thought. There has to be. Or is it that I can’t accept being in love with a drug dealer? “Isn’t all this illegal?” Gwen asked.
    Les shrugged. “The drug traffic isn’t precisely legal, but no one really cares. Keeping Tran a secret—now, that’s highly illegal.”
    “But the crop is important to you,” Gwen said.
    The pilot was very serious now. “More important than you can guess that the mercenaries succeed.”
    “Then you should stay and help them,” she said.
    “Can’t. The ship’s too valuable. And this trip has to be kept secret, which means the ship must return as quickly as possible—”
    And then, as he always did, he changed the subject.
    * * *
    The computer’s files on Tran were sketchy. As nearly as Gwen could tell, the planet had never been visited except to obtain a harvest, and there had never been any systematic studies made. No one had been sufficiently curious. There were only groups of traders who had brought mercenary soldiers from Earth with instructions to seize a particular area and cultivate surinomaz , harvest it, and sell the product to ships that would come later.
    That had begun in Indo-European times, as Gwen had deduced from the language. She was pleased to find confirmation in the computer’s records. The first humans had been sent to Tran because a dominant life-form, centauroid (vaguely similar to the Greek centaur of legend, but the intelligent and unrelated centauroids she’d seen in other pictures far more so) and about as intelligent as a chimpanzee, could not be trained to do cultivation. She could not find out why humans had been chosen, or why, once they had decided on humans, they had brought a band of Achaean warriors and their slaves instead of planting a high-technology colony.
    The original expedition had been expensive. In addition to the Achaeans, the Shalnuksi traders had brought a variety of Earth plants and animals, scattering seeds broadside on the planet and returning years later with more animals and insects. There had been no scientific rationale to what they had brought, no attempt at a balanced ecology. It was instant natural selection; adapt or die.
    The records didn’t say so, but Gwen wondered if one of the reasons that surinomaz had become increasingly difficult to cultivate might be the competition from Earth plants, animals, and insects. Tran’s native life-forms used levoamino acids and dextro sugars, like Earth’s, and thus competed for many of the same nutrients.
    Tran’s history and evolution was dominated by its suns. The two major suns together gave it at best only a bit more than ninety percent of what Earth receives from Sol; Tran was normally a cold world, with only the regions near the equator comfortable for humans. But then came the cyclic approach of the third star; for twenty years out of each six hundred, Tran received nearly twenty percent more sunlight, a combined total of ten percent more illumination than Earth ever got.
    In those times of burning, ice caps melted. Weather became enormously variable, with cycles of drought and rainstorms alternating nearly everywhere. The higher latitudes, in normal times too cold for humans and resembling the Alaska tundra, were warmed and became temperate, experiencing a brief but glorious bloom of life.
    The effects of the invader’s passage were devastating to the human cultures. They never rose higher than an Iron Age feudalism. Gwen thought that curious and wanted to talk to Les about it, but she didn’t feel very good and went to bed early.
    The next morning she vomited her breakfast.
    * * *
    In a week she was certain. She went to find