by Larry Niven
Locklear laughed aloud. “Probably it was me. It ought to be the whole bleeding planet,” he said. “If you stand near the force wall and look hard, you can see what looks like a piece of the Kzin homeworld close to this one. You can’t imagine the secrets the other compounds might have. For starters, the life forms I found in stasis had been here forty thousand years, near as I can tell, before I released ’em.”
“You released them?”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have, but—” He glanced shyly toward Lieutenant Agostinho. “I got pretty lonesome.”
“Anyone would,” she said, and her smile was more than understanding.
Gomulka rumbled in evident disgust, “Why would a lot of walking fossils be important to the tabby war effort?”
“They probably wouldn’t,” Locklear admitted. “And anyhow, I didn’t find the specimens until after the kzinti left.” He could not say exactly why, but this did not seem the time to regale them with his adventures on Kzersatz. Something just beyond the tip of his awareness was flashing like a caution signal.
Now Gomulka looked at his commander. “So that’s not what we’re looking for,” he said. “Maybe it’s not on this Newduvai dump. Maybe next door?”
“Maybe. We’ll take it one dump at a time,” said Stockton, and turned as the swarthy private popped into the cabin. “Ah. I trust the Armagnac didn’t insult your palate on the way, Nathan,” he said.
Nathan Gazho looked at the bottle’s broken seal, then began to distribute nested plastic cups, his breath already laced with his quick nip of the brandy. “You don’t miss much,” he grumbled.
But I’m missing something, Locklear thought as he touched his half-filled cup to that of the sloe-eyed, languorous lieutenant. Slack discipline? But combat troops probably ignore the spit and polish. Except for this hotsy who keeps looking at me as if we shared a secret, they’ve all got the hand calluses and haircuts of shock troops. No, it’s something else…
He told himself it was reluctance to make himself a hero; and next he told himself they wouldn’t believe him anyway. And then he admitted that he wasn’t sure exactly why, but he would tell them nothing about his victory on Kzersatz unless they asked. Maybe because I suspect they’d round up poor Scarface, maybe hunt him down and shoot him like a mad dog no matter what I said. Yeah, that’s reason enough. But something else, too.
Night fell, with its almost audible thump, while they emptied the Armagnac. Locklear explained his scholarly fear that the gentles were likely to kill off animals that no other ethologist had ever studied on the hoof; mentioned Ruth and Minuteman as well; and decided to say nothing about Loli to these hardbitten troops. Anse Parker, the gangling belter, kept bringing the topic back to the tantalizingly vague secret mentioned in kzin files. Parker, Locklear decided, thought himself subtle but managed only to be transparently cunning.
Austin Schmidt, the wide-shouldered blond, had little capacity for Armagnac and kept toasting the day when “…all this crap is history and I’m a man of means,” singing that refrain from an old barracks ballad in a surprisingly sweet tenor. Locklear could not warm up to Nathan Gazho, whose gaze took inventory of every item in the cabin. The man’s expensive wristcomp and pinky ring mismatched him like earrings on a weasel.
David Gomulka was all noncom, though, with a veteran’s gift for controlling men and a sure hand in measuring booze. If the two officers felt any unease when he called them “Curt” and “Grace,” they managed to avoid showing it. Gomulka spun out the tale of his first hand-to-hand engagement against a kzin penetration team with details that proved he knew how the tabbies fought. Locklear wanted to say, “That’s right; that’s how it is,” but only nodded.
It was late in the evening when the commander cut short their speculations on Zoo, stood up, snapped the belt flash from its ring and flicked it experimentally. “We could all use some sleep,” he decided, with the smile of a young father at his men, some of whom were older than he. “Mr. Locklear, we have more than enough room. Please be our guest in the Anthony Wayne tonight.”
Locklear, thinking that Loli might steal back to the cabin if she were somewhere nearby, said, “I appreciate it, Commander, but I’m right at home here. Really.”
A nod, and a reflective gnawing of Stockton’s lower lip. “I’m responsible for you now, Locklear. God knows what those Neanderthals might do, now that we’ve set fire to their nests.”
“But—” The men were stretching out their kinks, paying silent but close attention to the interchange.
“I must insist. I don’t want to put it in terms of command, but I am the local sheriff here now, so to speak.” The engaging grin again. “Come on, Locklear, think of it as repaying your hospitality. Nothing’s certain in this place, and—” his last phrase bringing soft chuckles from Gomulka, “they’d throw me in the brig if I let anything happen to you now.”
The taciturn Parker led the way, and Locklear smiled in the darkness thinking how Loli might wonder at the intensely bright, intensely magical beams that bobbed toward the ship. After Parker called out his name and a long number, the ship’s hatch steps dropped at their feet and Locklear knew the reassurance of climbing into an Interworld ship with its familiar smells, whines and beeps.
Parker and Schmidt were loudly in favor of a nightcap, but Stockton’s, “Not a good idea, David,” to the sergeant was met with a nod and barked commands by Gomulka. Grace Agostinho made a similar offer to Locklear.
“Thanks anyway. You know what I’d really like?”
“Probably,” she said, with a pursed-lipped smile.
He was blushing as he said, “Ham sandwiches. Beer. A slice of thrillcake,” and nodded quickly when she hauled a frozen shrimp teriyaki from their food lockers. When it popped from the radioven, he sat near the ship’s bridge to eat it, idly noting a few dark foodstains on the bridge linolamat and listening to Grace tell of small news from home. The Amazon dam, a new “mustsee” holo musical, a controversial cure for the common cold; the kind of tremendous trifles that cemented friendships.
She left him briefly while he chased scraps on his plate, and by the time she returned most of the crew had secured their pneumatic cubicle doors. “It’s always satisfying to feed a man with an appetite,” said Grace, smiling at his clean plate as she slid it into the galley scrubber. “I’ll see you’re fed well on the Wayne.” With hands on her hips, she said, “Well: Private Schmidt has sentry duty. He’ll show you to your quarters.”
He took her hand, thanked her, and nodded to the slightly wavering Schmidt, who led the way back toward the ship’s engine room. He did not look back but, from the sound of it, Grace entered a cubicle where two men were arguing in subdued tones.
Schmidt showed him to the rearmost cubicle but not the rearmost dozen bunks. Those, he saw, were ranked inside a cage of duralloy with no privacy whatever. Dark crusted stains spotted the floor inside and outside the cage. A fax sheet lay in the passageway. When Locklear glanced toward it, the private saw it, tried to hide a startled response, and then essayed a drunken grin.
“Gotta have a tight ship,” said Schmidt, banging his head on the duralloy as he retrieved the fax and balled it up with one hand. He tossed the wadded fax into a flush-mounted waste receptacle, slid the cubicle door open for Locklear, and managed a passable salute. “Have a good one, pal. You know how to adjust your rubberlady?”
Locklear saw that the mattresses of the two bunks were standard models with adjustable inflation and webbing. “No problem,” he replied, and slid the door closed. He washed up at the tiny inset sink, used the urinal slot below it, and surveyed his clothes after removing them. They’d all seen better days. Maybe he could wangle some new ones. He was sleepier than he’d thought, and adjusted his rubberlady for a soft setting, and was asleep within moments.
He did not know how long it was before he found himself sitting bolt-upright in darkness. He knew what was wrong, now: everything. It might be possible for a little escort ship to plunder records from a dereli
ct mile-long kzin battleship. It was barely possible that the same craft would be sent to check on some big kzin secret—but not without at least a cruiser, if the kzinti might be heading for Zoo.
He rubbed a trickle of sweat as it counted his ribs. He didn’t have to be a military buff to know that ordinary privates do not have access to medical lockers, and the commander had told Gazho to get that brandy from med stores. Right; and all those motley shoulder patches didn’t add up to a picked combat crew, either. And one more thing: even in his half-blotted condition, Schmidt had snatched that fax sheet up as though it was evidence against him. Maybe it was…
He waved the overhead lamp on, grabbed his ratty flight suit, and slid his cubicle door open. If anyone asked, he was looking for a cleaner unit for his togs.
A low thrum of the ship’s sleeping hydraulics; a slightly louder buzz of someone sleeping, most likely Schmidt while on sentry duty. Not much discipline at all. I wonder just how much commanding Stockton really does. Locklear stepped into the passageway, moved several paces, and eased his free hand into the waste receptacle slot. Then he thrust the fax wad into his dirty flight suit and padded silently back, cursing the sigh of his door. A moment later he was colder than before.
The fax was labeled, “PRISONER RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES,” and had been signed by some Provost Marshal—or a doctor, to judge from its illegibility. He’d bet anything that fax had fallen, or had been torn, from those duralloy bars. Rust-colored crusty stains on the floor; a similar stain near the ship’s bridge; but no obvious damage to the ship from kzin weapons.
It took all his courage to go into the passageway again, flight suit in hand, and replace the wadded fax sheet where he’d found it. And the door seemed much louder this time, almost a sob instead of a sigh.
Locklear felt like sobbing too. He lay on his rubberlady in the dark, thinking about it. A hundred scenarios might explain some of the facts, but only one matched them all: the Anthony Wayne had been a prisoner ship, but now the prisoners were calling themselves “commander” and “sergeant,” and the real crew of the Anthony Wayne had made those stains inside the ship with their blood.
He wanted to shout it, but demanded it silently: So why would a handful of deserters fly to Zoo? Before he fell at last into a troubled sleep, he had asked it again and again, and the answer was always the same: somehow, one of them had learned of the kzin records and hoped to find Zoo’s secret before either side did.
These people would be deadly to anyone who knew their secret. And almost certainly, they’d never buy the truth, that Locklear himself was the secret because the kzinti had been so sure he was an Interworld agent.
Locklear awoke with a sensation of dread, then a brief upsurge of joy at sleeping in modern accommodations, and then he remembered his conclusions in the middle of the night, and his optimism fell off and broke.
To mend it, he decided to smile with the innocence of a Candide and plan his tactics. If he could get to the kzin lifeboat, he might steer it like a slow battering ram and disable the Anthony Wayne. Or they might blow him to flinders in midair—and what if his fears were wrong, and despite all evidence this combat team was genuine? In any case, disabling the ship meant marooning the whole lot of them together. It wasn’t a plan calculated to lengthen his life expectancy; maybe he would think of another.
The crew was already bustling around with breakfasts when he emerged, and yes, he could use the ship’s cleaning unit for his clothes. When he asked for spare clothing, Soichiro Lee was first to deny it to him. “Our spares are still—contaminated from a previous engagement,” he explained, with a meaningful look toward Gomulka.
I bet they are, with blood, Locklear told himself as he scooped his synthesized eggs and bacon. Their uniforms all seemed to fit well. Probably their own, he decided. The stylized winged gun on Gomulka’s patch said he could fly gunships. Lee might be a medic, and the sensuous Grace might be a real intelligence officer—and all could be renegades.
Stockton watched him eat, friendly as ever, arms folded and relaxed. “Gomulka and Gazho did a recon in our pinnace at dawn,” he said, sucking a tooth. “Seems your apemen are already rebuilding at another site; a terrace at this end of the lake. A lot closer to us.”
“I wish you could think of them as people,” Locklear said. “They’re not terribly bright, but they don’t swing on vines.”
Chuckling: “Bright enough to be nuisances, perhaps try and burn us out if they find the ship here,” Stockton said. “Maybe bright enough to know what it is the tabbies found here. You said they can talk a little. Well, you can help us interrogate ’em.”
“They aren’t too happy with me,” Locklear admitted as Gomulka sat down with steaming coffee. “But I’ll try on one condition.”
Gomulka’s voice carried a rumble of barely hidden threat. “Conditions? You’re talking to your commander, Locklear.”
“It’s a very simple one,” Locklear said softly. “No more killing or threatening these people. They call themselves ‘gentles,’ and they are. The New Smithson, or half the Interworld University branches, would give a year’s budget to study them alive.”
Grace Agostinho had been working at a map terminal, but evidently with an ear open to their negotiations. As Stockton and Gomulka gazed at each other in silent surmise, she took the few steps to sit beside Locklear, her hip warm against his. “You’re an ethologist. Tell me, what could the kzinti do with these gentles?”
Locklear nodded, sipped coffee, and finally said, “I’m not sure. Study them hoping for insights into the underlying psychology of modern humans, maybe.”
Stockton said, “But you said the tabbies don’t know about them.”
“True; at least I don’t see how they could. But you asked. I can’t believe the gentles would know what you’re after, but if you have to ask them, of course I’ll help.”
Stockton said it was necessary, and appointed Lee acting corporal at the cabin as he filled most of the pinnace’s jumpseats with himself, Locklear, Agostinho, Gomulka, and the lank Parker. The little craft sat on downsloping delta wings that ordinarily nested against the Wayne’s hull, and had intakes for gas-reactor jets. “Newest piece of hardware we have,” Stockton said, patting the pilot’s console. It was Gomulka, however, who took the controls.
Locklear suggested that they approach very slowly, with hands visibly up and empty, as they settled the pinnace near the beginnings of a new gentles campsite. The gentles, including their women, all rushed for primitive lances but did not flee, and Anse Parker was the only one carrying an obvious weapon as the pinnace’s canopy swung back. Locklear stepped forward, talking and smiling, with Parker at their backs. He saw Ruth waiting for old Gimp, and said he was much happy to see her, which was an understatement. Minuteman, too, had survived the firing on their village.
Cloud had not. Ruth told him so immediately. “Locklear make many deaths to gentles,” she accused. Behind her, some of the gentles stared with faces that were anything but gentle. “Gentles not like talk to Locklear, he says. Go now. Please,” she added, one of the last words he’d taught her, and she said it with urgency. Her glance toward Grace Agostinho was interested, not hostile but perhaps pitying.
Locklear moved away from the others, farther from the glaring Gimp. “More new people come,” he called from a distance, pleading. “Think gentles big, bad animals. Stop when they see gentles; much much sorry. Locklear say not hurt gentles more.”
With her head cocked sideways, Ruth seemed to be testing his mind for lies. She spoke with Gimp, whose face registered a deep sadness and, perhaps, some confusion as well. Locklear could hear a buzz of low conversation between Stockton nearby and Gomulka, who still sat at the pinnace controls.
“Locklear think good, but bad things happen,” Ruth said at last. “Kill Cloud, many more. Gentles not like fight. Locklear know this,” she said, almost crying now. “Please go!”
Gomulka came out of the pinnace with his sidearm drawn, and Locklear turned toward him,
aghast. “No shooting! You promised,” he reminded Stockton.
But: “We’ll have to bring the ape-woman with the old man,” Stockton said grimly, not liking it but determined. Gomulka stood quietly, the big sloping shoulders hunched.
Stockton said, “This is an explosive situation, Locklear. We must take those two for interrogation. Have the woman tell them we won’t hurt them unless their people try to hunt us.”
Then, as Locklear froze in horrified anger, Gomulka bellowed, “Tell ’em!”
Locklear did it and Ruth began to call in their language to the assembled throng. Then, at Gomulka’s command, Parker ran forward to grasp the pathetic old Gimp by the arm, standing more than a head taller than the Neanderthal. That was the moment when Minuteman, who must have understood only a little of their parley, leaped weaponless at the big belter.
Parker swept a contemptuous arm at the little fellow’s reach, but let out a howl as Minuteman, with those blacksmith arms of his, wrenched that arm as one would wave a stick.
The report was shattering, with echoes slapping off the lake, and Locklear whirled to see Gomulka’s two-handed aim with the projectile sidearm. “No! Goddammit, these are human beings,” he screamed, rushing toward the fallen Minuteman, falling on his knees, placing one hand over the little fellow’s breast as if to stop the blood that was pumping from it. The gentles panicked at the thunder from Gomulka’s weapon, and began to run.
Minuteman’s throat pulse still throbbed, but he was in deep shock from the heavy projectile and his pulse died as Locklear watched helpless. Parker was already clubbing old Gimp with his rifle-butt and Gomulka, his sidearm out of sight, grabbed Ruth as she tried to interfere. The big man might as well have walked into a train wreck while the train was still moving.
Grace Agostinho seemed to know she was no fighter, retreating into the pinnace. Stockton, whipping the ornamental braid from his epaulets, began to fashion nooses as he moved to help Parker, whose left arm was half-useless. Locklear came to his feet, saw Gomulka’s big fist smash at Ruth’s temple, and dived into the fray with one arm locked around Gomulka’s bull neck, trying to haul him off-balance. Both of Ruth’s hands grappled with Gomulka’s now, and Locklear saw that she was slowly overpowering him while her big teeth sought his throat, only the whites of her eyes showing. It was the last thing Locklear would see for awhile, as someone raced up behind him.