by Larry Niven
He awoke to a gentle touch and the chill of antiseptic spray behind his right ear, and focused on the real concern mirrored on Stockton’s face. He lay in the room he had built for Loli, Soichiro Lee kneeling beside him, while Ruth and Gimp huddled as far as they could get into a corner. Stockton held a standard issue parabellum, arms folded, not pointing the weapon but keeping it in evidence. “Only a mild concussion,” Lee murmured to the commander.
“You with us again, Locklear?” Stockton got a nod in response, motioned for Lee to leave, and sighed. “I’m truly sorry about all this, but you were interfering with a military operation. Gomulka is—he has a lot of experience, and a good commander would be stupid to ignore his suggestions.”
Locklear was barely wise enough to avoid saying that Gomulka did more commanding than Stockton did. Pushing himself up, blinking from the headache that split his skull like an axe, he said, “I need some air.”
“You’ll have to get it right here,” Stockton said, “because I can’t—won’t let you out. Consider yourself under arrest. Behave yourself and that could change.” With that, he shouldered the woven mat aside and his slow footsteps echoed down the connecting corridor to the other room.
Without a door directly to the outside, he would have to run down that corridor where armed yahoos waited. Digging out would make noise and might take hours. Locklear slid down against the cabin wall, head in hands. When he opened them again he saw that poor old Gimp seemed comatose, but Ruth was looking at him intently. “I wanted to be friend of all gentles,” he sighed.
“Yes. Gentles know,” she replied softly. “New people with gentles not good. Stok-Tun not want hurt, but others not care about gentles. Ruth hear in head,” she added, with a palm against the top of her head.
“Ruth must not tell,” Locklear insisted. “New people maybe kill if they know gentles hear that way.”
She gave him a very modern nod, and even in that hopelessly homely face, her shy smile held a certain beauty. “Locklear help Ruth fight. Ruth like Locklear much, much; even if Locklear is—new.”
“Ruth, ‘new’ means ‘ugly,’ doesn’t it? New, new,” he repeated, screwing his face into a hideous caricature, making claws of his hands, snarling in exaggerated mimicry.
He heard voices raised in muffled excitement in the other room, and Ruth’s head was cocked again momentarily. “Ugly?” She made faces, too. “Part yes. New means not same as before but also ugly, maybe bad.”
“All the gentles considered me the ugly man. Yes?”
“Yes,” she replied sadly. “Ruth not care. Like ugly man if good man, too.”
“And you knew I thought you were, uh…”
“Ugly? Yes. Ruth try and fix before.”
“I know,” he said, miserable. “Locklear like Ruth for that and many, many more things.”
Quickly, as boots stamped in the corridor, she said, “Big problem. New people not think Locklear tell truth. New woman—”
Schmidt’s rifle barrel moved the mat aside and he let it do his gesturing to Locklear. “On your feet, buddy, you’ve got some explaining to do.”
Locklear got up carefully so his head would not roll off his shoulders. Stumbling toward the doorway he said to Ruth: “What about new woman?”
“Much, much new in head. Ruth feel sorry,” she called as Locklear moved toward the other room.
They were all crowded in, and seven pairs of eyes were intent on Locklear. Grace’s gaze held a liquid warmth but he saw nothing warmer than icicles in any other face. Gomulka and Stockton sat on the benches facing him across his crude table like judges at a trial. Locklear did not have to be told to stand before them.
Gomulka reached down at his own feet and grunted with effort, and the toolbox crashed down on the table. His voice was not its usual command timbre, but menacingly soft. “Gazho noticed this was all tabby stuff,” he said.
“Part of an honorable trade,” Locklear said, dry-mouthed. “I could have killed a kzin and didn’t.”
“They trade you a fucking LIFEBOAT, too?”
Those goddamn pinnace sorties of his! The light of righteous fury snapped in the big man’s face, but Locklear stared back. “Matter of fact, yes. The kzin is a cat of his word, sergeant.”
“Enough of your bullshit, I want the truth!”
Now Locklear shifted his gaze to Stockton. “I’m telling it. Enough of your bullshit, too. How did your bunch of bozos get out of the brig, Stockton?”
Parker blurted, “How the hell did—” before Gomulka spun on his bench with a silent glare. Parker blushed and swallowed.
“We’re asking the questions, Locklear. The tabbies must’ve left you a girlfriend, too,” Stockton said quietly. “Lee and Schmidt both saw some little hotsy queen of the jungle out near the perimeter while we were gone. Make no mistake, they’ll hunt her down and there’s nothing I can say to stop them.”
“Why not, if you’re a commander?”
Stockton flushed angrily, with a glance at Gomulka that was not kind. “That’s my problem, not yours. Look, you want some straight talk, and here it is: Agostinho has seen the goddamned translations from a tabby dreadnought, and there is something on this godforsaken place they think is important, and we were in this Rim sector when—when we got into some problems, and she told me. I’m an officer, I really am, believe what you like. But we have to find whatever the hell there is on Zoo.”
“So you can plea-bargain after your mutiny?”
“That’s ENOUGH,” Gomulka bellowed. “You’re a little too cute for your own good, Locklear. But if you’re ever gonna get off this ball of dirt, it’ll be after you help us find what the tabbies are after.”
“It’s me,” Locklear said simply. “I’ve already told you.”
Silent consternation, followed by disbelief. “And what the fuck are you,” Gomulka spat.
“Not much, I admit. But as I told you, they captured me and got the idea I knew more about the Rim sectors than I do.”
“How much kzinshit do you think I’ll swallow?” Gomulka was standing, now, advancing around the table toward his captive. Curt Stockton shut his eyes and sighed his helplessness.
Locklear was wondering if he could grab anything from the toolbox when a voice of sweet reason stopped Gomulka. “Brutality hasn’t solved anything here yet,” said Grace Agostinho. “I’d like to talk to Locklear alone.” Gomulka stopped, glared at her, then back at Locklear. “I can’t do any worse than you have, David,” she added to the fuming sergeant.
Beckoning, she walked to the doorway and Gazho made sure his rifle muzzle grated on Locklear’s ribs as the ethologist followed her outside. She said, “Do I have your honorable parole? Bear in mind that even if you try to run, they’ll soon have you and the girl who’s running loose, too. They’ve already destroyed some kind of flying raft; yours, I take it,” she smiled.
Damn, hell, shit, and blast! “Mine. I won’t run, Grace. Besides, you’ve got a parabellum.”
“Remember that,” she said, and began to stroll toward the trees while the cabin erupted with argument. Locklear vented more silent damns and hells; she wasn’t leading him anywhere near his hidden kzin sidearm.
Grace Agostinho, surprisingly, first asked about Loli. She seemed amused to learn he had waked the girl first, and that he’d regretted it at his leisure. Gradually, her questions segued to answers. “Discipline on a warship can be vicious,” she mused as if to herself. “Curt Stockton was—is a career officer, but it’s his view that there must be limits to discipline. His own commander was a hard man, and—”
“Jesus Christ; you’re saying he mutinied like Fletcher Christian?”
“That’s not entirely wrong,” she said, now very feminine as they moved into a glade, out of sight of the cabin. “David Gomulka is a rougher sort, a man of some limited ideas but more of action. I’m afraid Curt filled David with ideas that, ah,…”
“Stockton started a boulder downhill and can’t stop it,” Locklear said. “Not the first time a
man of ideas has started something he can’t control. How’d you get into this mess?”
“An affair of the heart; I’d rather not talk about it…When I’m drawn to a man,…well, I tend to show it,” she said, and preened her hair for him as she leaned against a fallen tree. “You must tell them what they want to know, my dear. These are desperate men, in desperate trouble.”
Locklear saw the promise in those huge dark eyes and gazed into them. “I swear to you, the kzinti thought I was some kind of Interworld agent, but they dropped me on Zoo for safekeeping.”
“And were you?” Softly, softly, catchee monkey…
“Good God, no! I’m an—”
“Ethologist. I heard it. But the kzin suspicion does seem reasonable, doesn’t it?”
“I guess, if you’re paranoid.” God, but this is one seductive lieutenant.
“Which means that David and Curt could sell you to the kzinti for safe passage, if I let them,” she said, moving toward him, her hands pulling apart the closures on his flight suit. “But I don’t think that’s the secret, and I don’t think you think so. You’re a fascinating man, and I don’t know when I’ve been so attracted to anyone. Is this so awful of me?”
He knew damned well how powerfully persuasive a woman like Grace could be with that voluptuous willowy sexuality of hers. And he remembered Ruth’s warning, and believed it. But he would rather drown in honey than in vinegar, and when she turned her face upward, he found her mouth with his, and willingly let her lust kindle his own.
Presently, lying on forest humus and watching Grace comb her hair clean with her fingers, Locklear’s breathing slowed. He inventoried her charms as she shrugged into her flight suit again; returned her impudent smile; began to readjust his togs. “If this be torture,” he declaimed like an actor, “make the most of it.”
“Up to the standards of your local ladies?”
“Oh yes,” he said fervently, knowing it was only a small lie. “But I’m not sure I understand why you offered.”
She squatted becomingly on her knees, brushing at his clothing. “You’re very attractive,” she said. “And mysterious. And if you’ll help us, Locklear, I promise to plumb your mysteries as much as you like—and vice versa.”
“An offer I can’t refuse, Grace. But I don’t know how I can do more than I have already.”
Her frown held little anger; more of perplexity. “But I’ve told you, my dear: we must have that kzin secret.”
“And you didn’t believe what I said.”
Her secret smile again, teasing: “Really, darling, you must give me some credit. I am in the intelligence corps.”
He did see a flash of irritation cross her face this time as he laughed. “Grace, this is crazy,” he said, still grinning. “It may be absurd that the kzinti thought I was an agent, but it’s true. I think the planet itself is a mind-boggling discovery, and I said so first thing off. Other than that, what can I say?”
“I’m sorry you’re going to be this way about it,” she said with the pout of a nubile teenager, then hitched up the sidearm on her belt as if to remind him of it.
She’s sure something, he thought as they strode back to his clearing. If I had any secret to hide, could she get it out of me with this kind of attention? Maybe—but she’s all technique and no real passion. Exactly the girl you want to bring home to your friendly regimental combat team.
Grace motioned him into the cabin without a word and, as Schmidt sent him into the room with Ruth and the old man, he saw both Gomulka and Stockton leave the cabin with Grace. I don’t think she has affairs of the heart, he reflected with a wry smile. Affairs of the glands beyond counting, but maybe no heart to lose. Or no character?
He sat down near Ruth, who was sitting with Gimp’s head in her lap, and sighed. “Ruth much smart about new woman. Locklear see now,” he said and, gently, kissed the homely face.
The crew had a late lunch but brought none for their captives, and Locklear was taken to his judges in the afternoon. He saw hammocks slung in his room, evidence that the crew intended to stay awhile. Stockton, as usual, began as pleasantly as he could. “Locklear, since you’re not on Agostinho’s list of known intelligence assets in the Rim sectors, then maybe we’ve been peering at the wrong side of the coin.”
“That’s what I told the tabbies,” Locklear said.
“Now we’re getting somewhere. Actually, you’re a kzin agent; right?”
Locklear stared, then tried not to laugh. “Oh, Jesus, Stockton! Why would they drop me here, in that case?”
Evidently, Stockton’s pleasant side was loosely attached under trying circumstances. He flushed angrily. “You tell us.”
“You can find out damned fast by turning me over to Interworld authorities,” Locklear reminded him.
“And if you turn out to be a plugged nickel,” Gomulka snarled, “you’re home free and we’re in deep shit. No, I don’t think we will, little man. We’ll do anything we have to do to get the facts out of you. If it takes shooting hostages, we will.”
Locklear switched his gaze to the bedeviled Stockton and saw no help there. At this point, a few lies might help the gentles. “A real officer, are you? Shoot these poor savages? Go ahead, actually you might be doing me a favor. You can see they hate my guts! The only reason they didn’t kill me today is that they think I’m one of you, and they’re scared to. Every one you knock off, or chase off, is just one less who’s out to tan my hide.”
Gomulka, slyly: “So how’d you say you got that tabby ship?”
Locklear: “On Kzersatz. Call it grand theft, I don’t give a damn.” Knowing they would explore Kzersatz sooner or later, he said, “The tabbies probably thought I hightailed it for the Interworld fleet but I could barely fly the thing. I was lucky to get down here in one piece.”
Stockton’s chin jerked up. “Do you mean there’s a kzin force right across those force walls?”
“There was; I took care of them myself.”
Gomulka stood up now. “Sure you did. I never heard such jizm in twenty years of barracks brags. Grace, you never did like a lot of hollering and blood. Go to the ship.” Without a word, and with the same liquid gaze she would turn on Locklear—and perhaps on anyone else—she nodded and walked out.
As Gomulka reached for his captive, Locklear grabbed for the heavy toolbox. That little hand welder would ruin a man’s entire afternoon. Gomulka nodded, and suddenly Locklear felt his arms gripped from behind by Schmidt’s big hands. He brought both feet up, kicked hard against the table, and as the table flew into the faces of Stockton and Gomulka, Schmidt found himself propelled backward against the cabin wall.
Shouting, cursing, they overpowered Locklear at last, hauling the top of his flight suit down so that its arms could be tied into a sort of straitjacket. Breathing hard, Gomulka issued his final backhand slap toward Locklear’s mouth. Locklear ducked, then spat into the big man’s face.
Wiping spittle away with his sleeve, Gomulka muttered, “Curt, we gotta soften this guy up.”
Stockton pointed to the scars on Locklear’s upper body. “You know, I don’t think he softens very well, David. Ask yourself whether you think it’s useful, or whether you just want to do it.”
It was another of those ideas Gomulka seemed to value greatly because he had so few of his own. “Well goddammit, what would you do?”
“Coercion may work, but not this kind.” Studying the silent Locklear in the grip of three men, he came near smiling. “Maybe give him a comm set and drop him among the Neanderthals. When he’s good and ready to talk, we rescue him.”
A murmur among the men, and a snicker from Gazho. To prove he did have occasional ideas, Gomulka replied, “Maybe. Or better, maybe drop him next door on Kzinkatz or whatever the fuck he calls it.” His eyes slid slowly to Locklear.
To Locklear, who was licking a trickle of blood from his upper lip, the suggestion did not register for a count of two beats. When it did, he needed a third beat to make the right response. Eyes
wide, he screamed.
“Yeah,” said Nathan Gazho.
“Yeah, right,” came the chorus.
Locklear struggled, but not too hard. “My God! They’ll—They EAT people, Stockton!”
“Well, it looks like a voice vote, Curt,” Gomulka drawled, very pleased with his idea, then turned to Locklear. “But that’s democracy for you. You’ll have a nice comm set and you can call us when you’re ready. Just don’t forget the story about the boy who cried ‘wolf’. But when you call, Locklear—” the big sergeant’s voice was low and almost pleasant “—be ready to deal.”
Locklear felt a wild impulse, as Gomulka shoved him into the pinnace, to beg, “Please, Br’er Fox, don’t throw me in the briar patch!” He thrashed a bit and let his eyes roll convincingly until Parker, with a choke hold, pacified him half-unconscious.
If he had any doubts that the pinnace was orbit-rated, Locklear lost them as he watched Gomulka at work. Parker sat with the captive though Lee, beside Gomulka, faced a console. The three pirates negotiated a three-way bet on how much time would pass before Locklear begged to be picked up. His comm set, roughly shoved into his ear with its button switch, had fresh batteries but Lee reminded him again that they would be returning only once to bail him out. The pinnace, a lovely little craft, arced up to orbital height and, with only its transparent canopy between him and hard vac, Locklear found real fear added to his pretense. After pitchover, tiny bursts of light at the wingtips steadied the pinnace as it began its reentry over the saffron jungles of Kzersatz.
Because of its different schedule, the tiny programmed sunlet of Kzersatz was only an hour into its morning. “Keep one eye on your sweep screen,” Gomulka said as the roar of deceleration died away.