Cobra Slave

by Timothy Zahn

  It wasn’t going to be like that. Because the wing in winghunting didn’t refer to a bird. It referred to the delta-shaped wing of a hang-glider.

  “It unfolds this way,” Anya explained, opening the accordion-style folds as far as the cramped space in the lodge’s storeroom would permit. “You strap yourself into this harness, lying in a face-down position beneath the wing, then use this control bar and the movements of your body to shift yourself left or right, up or down.”

  “Right,” Merrick said, his mouth unpleasantly dry. He’d never had a particular fear of heights, certainly not in aircars or spaceships. But the thought of hanging hundreds of meters above the ground beneath a mere strip of cloth, his life at the mercy of air currents, storms, and his own ineptitude, was twisting his stomach into multiple knots. “I suppose there are techniques for keeping yourself from falling straight to the ground?”

  “There are many such, yes,” Anya said, giving him an odd look as she picked up a stack of thin, sheer white cloth. “While we fly, we’ll each have one of these fastened to our ankles and spread out behind us.” She unfolded the top layer and showed him the meter-wide opening. “We’ll seek out swarms of jattorns and fly through them, capturing some in the net with each pass.”

  Merrick stared at her. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “Of course,” she said, looking puzzled. “Jattorns are a delicacy beloved by the masters.”

  So naturally they would set their slaves to capturing them, Merrick thought blackly. And just as naturally, they would order them to do it in the most dangerous way possible. “You can’t just drop in on them with an aircar?” he growled. “Or shoot them from the ground?”

  “They fly too high for arrows, and lasers and projectile weapons destroy too much of the meat,” Anya said. “Aircars are also of no use, as the sound and emissions frighten and scatter the swarms.”

  She straightened up and gave him a surprisingly sharp glare. “And if there were no jattorn hunts for us to participate in, many more of us would be bred to the Games. Would you prefer that?”

  Merrick sighed. It was so easy to forget—or to refuse to remember—that these people were slaves, under the absolute authority of their Troft masters. “No, of course not,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t…”

  “Think like a slave?” Anya looked away. “I wish I didn’t. I long for the day when I will no longer have to.” She shook her head, a quick twitch as if shaking away unpleasant thoughts. “Have you ever used something like this?”

  “Not even close,” Merrick admitted. “I guess you’re going to have to teach me on the fly. So to speak.”

  “I’ll try,” she said doubtfully as she refolded the wing and fastened its straps. “But there’s no time now. The masters are waiting and will be suspicious if we linger. We’ll speak later tonight, while they sleep. Come over here—there is clothing more suitable for mountain travel. We can take whatever we choose.”

  “Okay,” Merrick said, following her as she moved down the narrow space between the shelves of equipment. Her proposed nighttime conversation assumed, of course, that the Trofts were comfortable enough in the presence of their slaves for both of them to sleep at the same time. If the positions were reversed, Merrick wouldn’t be nearly so trusting.

  On the other hand, if Merrick didn’t think like a slave, he also didn’t think like a slave master. Maybe the Trofts assumed their pet humans were so beaten down and servile that they had no fear of them.

  If they did, great. If they didn’t, Merrick would probably have to learn winghunting right on the job. From a few hundred meters in the air.

  He could hardly wait.

  The clothing Anya found for them was sturdy, warm, and considerably cleaner than the jumpsuits they’d worn since leaving Qasama. She selected two sets of shirts, trousers, boots, belts, and jackets, and they changed quickly into them. The fasteners were of unfamiliar design, but Merrick was able to figure them out without too much trouble.

  Henson and the two Trofts were still waiting when they returned, but the two boys and the other referee were gone. Hopefully for medical attention, but of course Merrick couldn’t ask about that. [The preparations, they are complete?] the second Troft asked, his membranes quivering with impatience.

  [The preparations, they are complete,] Anya confirmed. [The mountain, we shall begin ascending it.]

  [Your progress, we shall observe it,] the first Troft said, climbing into the aircar and motioning his companion to do the same. [The ascent, you will begin it now. Haste, you will make it.]

  The aircar lifted from the ground and disappeared over the rooftops to the east. “You remember the path?” Henson asked stiffly.

  “I remember it,” Anya said. “Don’t fear. We’ll return safely.”

  “See that the Trofts return safely alongside you.” Henson’s eyes bored into hers. “If they don’t, neither will you. Either of you.”

  He spun around, putting his back to them. Anya gazed at him a moment, a sequence of unreadable expressions flashing across her face. Then, silently, she also spun around and strode across the field toward the mountains. Merrick followed, wondering briefly if he should ask her what that had been about.

  Staring at the rigidity of her back, he decided it would be smarter to keep his silence.

  Earlier, as they’d approached Gangari, Merrick had had the impression that the mountain behind it rose directly from the edge of the village. Now, he found that sense had been correct. Barely five meters past the last house the ground turned rocky and angled upward. There were no trees right at the lower edge, probably having been removed long ago for fuel or building material, but there were plenty of bushes scattered along the edge. Between two of the bushes was a path that snaked upslope through the undergrowth before disappearing into the clusters of small trees that began about twenty meters past the village edge.

  The Troft aircar was hovering over the path, its rear crash plate shining with the light of the sun now hanging low in the western sky. Without breaking stride Anya stepped onto the path and headed up. Trying to look as confident as she did, Merrick followed.

  The lower parts of the mountain were easy enough. The slope increased only gradually, and the potentially foot-tangling undergrowth and half-exposed tree roots were easily visible where they intruded across the path’s mostly open ground. The slope itself was nothing that Merrick and his servos couldn’t handle, though he kept a close eye on Anya to make sure he didn’t look like he was having it too much easier than she was.

  More of a problem was the sunlight, which first hid potential obstacles in long shadows, and then, as the sun sank below the trees, concealed everything in a uniform gloom. They kept at it long after Merrick expected, certainly longer than he could have made it safely without his opticals’ light-amplification enhancers. Why Anya was pushing so hard he didn’t know, and was rather afraid to ask.

  It was approaching full dark when her reason finally became clear. Rounding one final stand of scrubby trees, they stepped out into a thirty-meter-wide clearing with a small but sturdy-looking hut at one edge. “We’ll spend the night there,” she said, pointing to the hut. “It will be safer and more comfortable than sleeping beneath the sky.”

  “Assuming the Trofts don’t commandeer it,” Merrick murmured, looking at the aircar now settling to the ground at the opposite end of the clearing.

  “They will stay with their vehicle,” Anya predicted. “There’s wood in the shed behind the hut—bring two or three pieces and some kindling and I’ll start a fire. Then I’ll hunt our dinner.”

  By the time Merrick returned with the wood Anya had cleared the brush from a fire pit a few meters in front of the hut and added some kindling. “Put it here,” she directed.

  [The male human slave, he will come here.]

  Merrick looked across the clearing. The two Trofts were standing in the gloom beside their aircar, gazing through a gap in the trees toward the forest stretching out beneath them, the tops o
f the distant trees catching the last hint of glow from the western sky. [The male human slave, he will come here,] the first Troft repeated more sharply. [A puzzle, the male human slave will explain it to us.]

  Merrick flashed a look at Anya. [The male human slave, he cannot speak,] she reminded them, getting to her feet and gesturing Merrick to follow. [The puzzle, perhaps I can explain it.]

  [The explanation, we will hear it,] the first Troft said.

  A moment later, Merrick and Anya stopped beside the aliens. [The puzzle, may I hear it?] Anya asked.

  [The puzzle, it is there,] the first Troft said, pointing out across the forest and handing Anya a small nightscope. [A gap in the trees, there is one. A naturally formed gap, it does not appear to be one.]

  Anya took the scope and pressed it to her eye. Peering over her shoulder, Merrick activated his telescopics and keyed up his light-amps.

  There was a gap in the woods, all right. It was long and narrow, more like a tear in some exotic fabric than any normal clearing. His opticals marked it as just over twenty-five kilometers away and about half a kilometer from the road he and the others had come in on.

  [The gap, perhaps it was created by disease,] Anya suggested. [The gap, it doesn’t look like it was created by fire.]

  [Yet the gap, its edges show evidence of fire,] the second Troft pointed out. [A fire, what form of it burns only small areas?]

  [The answer, I don’t have one,] Anya admitted.

  Merrick frowned, notching up his opticals a bit more. The Troft was right—the trees at the edge of the gap did appear to have been scorched.

  Abruptly, he stiffened. It hadn’t been a fire. It had been a crash. Some large aircraft or small spaceship had gone down at that spot, cutting a swath through the trees and scorching them as the ship itself burned or disintegrated.

  Only it hadn’t been just a random spaceship, he realized suddenly. It had been one of the transports bringing in razorarms from Qasama. That was how the predators he and the group had encountered had ended up so far from Gangari. Some of them must have survived the crash and set up housekeeping right there.

  He frowned. He’d solved the alleged puzzle from twenty-five kilometers away, in the darkness, after barely thirty seconds of study. Were these Trofts really so stupid that they couldn’t figure it out, too?

  Unless they had figured it out, and this was a test to see if Merrick and Anya could do likewise. Or, worse, it was a test to see if they would give the true answer or else feign ignorance in hopes of hiding guilty knowledge.

  And there was only one reason Merrick could think of for any such test.

  Casually, he took a step backward, pretending he was trying to find a spot where he could see better. Out of the corner of his eye he could see now that both Trofts’ radiator membranes were quivering with suppressed excitement.

  They knew about the crash, all right. This was a test to see how Merrick reacted to that knowledge.

  They were on to him.

  His first impulse was to run. To kill the Trofts, grab their aircar, and run. There was a whole forest out there where he could hide. Maybe even a whole planet.

  Only he couldn’t. He couldn’t shoot down a pair of Trofts in cold blood that way, no more than he’d been able to do it back on Qasama. He could stun them, of course, but that would buy him even less time than killing them would.

  In fact, as the adrenaline rush faded and his mind started working again he realized that running would be the absolute worst thing he could do. If this was a test to smoke out a possible spy they would surely have backup waiting for him to make his move. He would most likely barely get the aircar off the ground before he would surrounded and forced down again.

  And even if he somehow got clear, what would happen to Anya and Gangari? Henson had warned them not to come back without the two Trofts. Did that mean there were already threats hanging over the village?

  He took a second sideways look at the Trofts’ radiator membranes. They were still quivering.

  But they weren’t stretched out the way he would have expected for a pair of aliens facing an enemy Cobra. That suggested they had no idea who he actually was.

  In fact, as he studied the membranes and the Trofts’ infrared facial patterns more closely, he realized it wasn’t even clear that they knew for a fact he and Anya were spies.

  Which made sense. The theft of the food bars aboard the slave ship might have been noticed without the aliens having any idea which human or humans had been responsible. These two Trofts might be nothing more than the first-pass investigators, sent here to poke around and see if there were any slaves they could definitely cross off the suspect list.

  [The male human slave, he will look at it,] the first Troft said, taking the scope from Anya and thrusting it toward Merrick.

  Merrick took a careful breath. Steady… Taking a step closer to the trees, deliberately putting the Trofts at his back like a slave with nothing to fear, he keyed off his opticals and pressed the scope to his eye.

  The first decision had been made: he wasn’t going to run. Now for the second, equally crucial question: what exactly would a totally innocent, non-spy slave make of the gap in the woods? Especially a slave who had no idea that the Trofts had been importing razorarms onto Muninn?

  Once again, the question turned out to have a straightforward answer. The Trofts’ nightscope had even better telescopics than Merrick’s own opticals, and seen through it the gash in the foliage was clearly and obviously the result of some cataclysmic event. Only a fool, and a blind fool at that, could conclude otherwise.

  And no matter how innocent a slave he was, Merrick decided, he certainly wasn’t a foolish one. Handing the scope back to the Troft, he used his hands to pantomime an aircraft plowing through the trees on its way to a fiery crash landing.

  [The answer, you are certain of it?] the first Troft asked, eyeing Merrick closely as he rolled the scope gently between his fingers.

  Merrick shrugged, holding his hands palm upwards. [The answer, he is not completely certain of it,] Anya translated. [But the answer, it seems reasonable to him.]

  For a moment the Trofts looked at each other in silence. Then, to Merrick’s cautious relief, their membranes folded back down onto their arms. If it wasn’t the exact response they were looking for, it was apparently close enough. [The answer, we will ponder it,] the first Troft said. [Your work, you may return to it.]

  [The order, we obey it,] Anya said as she and Merrick both bowed to the aliens.

  They returned to the fire pit and knelt down beside it. “I don’t understand,” Anya murmured as Merrick adjusted the chunks of wood on top of the kindling. “Why did they ask such a question of us?”

  “I think one of their ships went down over there,” Merrick murmured back. “Looks to me like they wanted to see what we knew about it.”

  “How could we know anything?” she asked, sounding bewildered. “Such an event would have left smoke and odor lingering in the air for days afterward. Yet we only arrived yesterday. Surely they know that.”

  “One would certainly assume so,” Merrick agreed, casually turning his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw that the Trofts were working on their aircar, reconfiguring the couches into the flatter mode used for sleeping. Apparently, they were planning to spend the night up here instead of returning to their base and rejoining the winghunt in the morning.

  On the plus side, he could see nothing in their movements or the positioning of their radiator membranes to indicate extra stress or excitement. “Even if they’re suspicious of us I doubt they’ll do anything until they see how we do at winghunting tomorrow,” he went on. “That’ll be the real test of whether we’re who we say we are.”

  Anya was silent a moment. “Only you aren’t,” she said.

  “Not yet,” Merrick admitted. “But hopefully, I will be by morning. Or at least good enough to fake it.”

  “Without getting yourself killed?”

  Merrick swallowed. “
Definitely,” he agreed, still studying the Trofts. Everything seemed to have settled down.

  But something still wasn’t right.

  “Is there trouble?” Anya asked.

  “I don’t know,” Merrick said, trying to chase down the troubled feeling whispering through him. “So there was a crash, and they wanted to see our reaction to it. But why? Usually there’s nothing all that noteworthy about a crash—equipment fails, the weather goes crazy when they’re trying to land, or the pilot just makes a mistake.”

  “Yet this crash seems important to them,” Anya said slowly. “Could it have been something other than an accident?”

  “You mean sabotage?”

  “Sabotage from within, or destruction from without,” she said. “Perhaps it was attacked, either from the sky or from the ground.”

  Merrick shivered. A successful attack deep in their territory would definitely get the Drims to stand up and notice.

  And how and from where that attack had come was a bit of information that could end up being crucial. To the Trofts, but also to Merrick. “I need to get a look at the crash site,” he said, running the numbers through his mind. From the previous night’s encampment he knew the darkness would last about ten hours. Getting back down the mountain, a twenty-five-kilometer jog down the road, through the forest to the crash site, then reverse the process…

  “No,” Anya said, her hand snaking out to grab his wrist. “Not now. Please. If they catch you—”

  “Hey, relax,” Merrick said, reaching over to pull her hand off his arm.

  “No,” she said, her grip tightening. “You can’t do this.”

  “It’s all right, Anya,” Merrick soothed, wincing a little. He’d known she was strong, but she had some serious reserves in those slender fingers. “I’m not going anywhere. Not tonight. I’ll wait until we’re off the mountain and the Trofts have left. Okay?”

  She stared into his eyes, though how much she could see of his expression in the dim starlight he couldn’t guess. Then, slowly, the grip on his wrist eased and she took her hand away. “The dark memory the master spoke of earlier,” she said, her voice full of old and distant pain. “I don’t want my village to go through that again. Ever.”