She squirmed away from him. “How dare you! After what I have just done for you!”
“That is a sign of endearment among my kind,” he informed her. A glance showed an amused George nodding confirmation.
“Oh. I suppose that is all right, then.” A tentacle tip brushed self-consciously across the top of her head. “As a superior being, one must learn to tolerate the archaic affectations of primitive peoples, I suppose. At least the gesture was not dehydrating.”
As she finished, full illumination returned to the corridor. Four sets of eyes that varied considerably in size and shape scanned their immediate surroundings. They were still alone.
“Seems the Vilenjji have succeeded in restoring their lighting,” Walker murmured uneasily.
“Your kind must be famed for its ability to restate the blindingly obvious.” Sque immediately headed off to her right, scuttling past the control box. “We need to absent ourselves from this place.”
“Drowning in freedom, my hearts are glad, onward advancing,” Braouk declaimed as he followed.
“But advancing where?” Walker wanted to know. Having grown used to the K’eremu’s innate sarcasm, he was able to largely ignore it.
“I have not just been standing here, tentacles aflutter, waiting for you to put in an appearance.” Thanks to her flexible body, Sque was able to look back at him without slowing her forward motion. “In addition to instrumentation, in the time that was available to me I was able to access a selection of schematics of this vessel. It is, as I originally surmised, fairly large. Large enough to hide even one so grossly unwieldy as a Tuuqalian, if we are careful in our movements.” They were heading, Walker saw, deep into a rapidly darkening maze of conduits, machinery, and related equipment.
“Won’t the pointy-heads have some way of tracking us down as we move through their ship?” George trotted alongside his human, occasionally glancing back over a shoulder. The corridor behind them remained empty as the control box receded around a curve.
“Why should they?” Sque was comfortably, if not justifiably, confident. “No one treks the service ways of a vessel who does not belong there, and anyone encountering difficulty or needing help would carry with them the means to summon it. There is no reason to build in an expensive systemology to follow the movements of those who have with them the means to call for assistance. Exercising care, I think we can extend the period of our freedom for some time.”
“They’ll be after us,” Walker pointed out. An exasperated Sque replied without repeating her previous criticism.
“That the lighting has been fully restored suggests that the electrical barriers that restrain captives within their enclosures have also been reactivated. The Vilenjji will be busy for some time recapturing those of our fellow unfortunates who are racing aimlessly through the same corridors that are utilized by the crew. After that, our captors will be forced to spend some time winkling out the smarter ones among the escapees, who will be busily seeking hiding places from their captors. By that time we should be well away from here, in another part of the vessel, where hopefully they will not think to search for a while.”
Both Sque and George seemed to know exactly where they were going. As such, it did not take long before the escapees found themselves standing (and in Braouk’s case, crawling) beneath the particular enclosure that had been home to Walker from the day he had first awakened to find himself a captive on the alien spacecraft. It felt strange to be standing there, so close to his simulated piece of California mountains, knowing that familiar objects like his tent, and spare clothing, and miscellaneous but homey camping gear lay not far above his head, yet impossibly out of reach. Even if they could somehow manually operate the small, circular food service lift, he did not dare risk ascending lest Vilenjji surveillance equipment detect his presence. As far as their current accessibility was concerned, everything from his compact flashlight to his few remaining energy bars might as well have been lying buried in the dust of Earth’s moon.
In place of the latter he and George helped themselves to as many of the stacked food bricks as they could. Ripping some flexible bits of what looked like metal fabric from nearby mechanisms, Braouk showed himself to be as adept a weaver of scavenged materials as of words, fashioning a brace of crude but serviceable carry sacks for all four of them. The impermeable material was capable of holding water as well as bricks. Two problems immediately presented themselves.
“I’ll carry yours,” Walker told his companion when it was apparent that George’s back was too narrow to support even a small sack.
The dog grinned up at him. “I always said humans were good for something.”
The second awkwardness was less easily resolved.
“I do not carry things.” Tentacles contracted as Sque refused the sack proffered by Braouk. “The K’eremu do not indulge in manual labor.”
“What do the K’eremu deign to indulge in?” The Tuuqalian’s eyestalks extended threateningly toward the much smaller alien.
Walker stepped between them and extended a hand. “It’s all right, Braouk. I’ll carry hers.”
The big alien hesitated. Then, instead of handing over the pair of empty sacks he had fashioned for the K’eremu, a powerful tentacle took the ones the human had been holding out of Walker’s hand and slung them over a fourth limb. They hung there, all four of them, as easily as an old lady’s purse from her shoulder.
“Never mind. I will carry all the food and drink. The sum of it weighs less on my mind than the complaining of others.”
Sque had prepared a riposte, but for once the K’eremu took Walker’s cautioning glance to heart, or whatever equivalent internal system she employed to pump critical body fluids through her system.
Retracing their earlier steps, she and George led the way to the locations beneath both her enclosure and that of the Tuuqalian. When they had accumulated all the food bricks, cubes, squares, and liquids they could reasonably carry, the K’eremu led them out from beneath the vast circle of the enclosures and back into the light of the service corridor that encircled them, following, as she informed them, “the map I have made in my mind” based on what information she had been able to glean from her time spent waiting in the manipulative miasma of the Vilenjji control box.
And still they had not encountered or seen a single one of their captors since entering the accessway that encircled the enclosures. Busy the Vilenjji must be, as she had told them, rounding up the more easily recapturable of their fellow abductees. As they emerged from beneath the thick overhang of the enclosures, Walker could not keep from glancing upward. The misery of those being reimprisoned must be beyond measure, he knew. He could imagine how he would feel if, after a few hours of freedom, he suddenly found himself immobilized and dumped back into his own small enclosure.
Maybe before they were retaken, he thought hopefully, a few of the other escapees had managed, like Braouk at the rampway, to sow a little pain and hurt of their own among the arrogant Vilenjji. It gave him considerable pleasure to imagine the latter slumping to and fro, manipulating their capture devices and weapons as they struggled to retrieve every one of their prisoners. If Sque was right, it would take them some time.
Eventually, though, with no destination in mind and no access to weapons, each and every fleeing captive would eventually be returned to its enclosure. No doubt there would ensue the equivalent of a prison lockdown as the Vilenjji repeatedly counted heads. No matter how many times they repeated the count, they would find four of their captives missing. At which point all the resources of the great ship would be mobilized to find them.
Sque seemed to think they could avoid recapture for some time. Walker did not see how that was possible, but was willing to countenance the fact that a K’eremu might be able to envision possibilities he could not. He certainly hoped so. As they turned down the corridor and headed toward what looked like another blank, solid wall, he knew that without her expertise the Vilenjji would probably pick him up inside a
n hour. Able to squeeze into smaller hiding places, George might last a day or two longer. Braouk they would find right away—perhaps not to their immediate satisfaction. Remembering the fight at the top of the rampway, Walker experienced a surge of bloodthirsty satisfaction that appalled him. Briefly. He did have some regrets, though.
He regretted not being able to participate more actively in the dismemberment of the last two Vilenjji.
At their approach, a doorway materialized in the wall. Why shouldn’t it? he mused. Only authorized personnel, only authorized Vilenjji, roamed the manifold corridors of the ship. Their very presence authorized their access. Following Sque, they entered another dimly lit passageway. It was narrow, high enough to accommodate the tall Vilenjji, just barely wide and high enough to admit Braouk. As the Tuuqalian ducked slightly to clear the entrance, the door re-formed behind them.
Ahead lay softly humming machinery that was indifferent to their presence, a passage so extensive that he could not see its terminus, and the mysterious but not necessarily unknowable bowels of the Vilenjji ship.
12
His presence not required for the capture at hand, Pret-Klob stood back and observed thoughtfully as the two desperate zZad skittered backward on the ceiling. Suction pads on the ends of their feet allowed them to find a purchase on virtually any surface, while their six multijointed limbs gave them great flexibility. Off to one side, Arud-Tvet was recording everything for future use.
Not a united company of materialistic individuals inclined to waste any opportunity that might lead to profit, the Vilenjji had turned the mass escape from the holding enclosures into an opportunity to learn a great deal more about their inventory. They were not panicked. The only urgency that lent itself to the rounding up of those who had taken flight arose from a desire on the part of their captors to ensure that none of the escapees came to any harm, lest their asking price have to be lowered.
There was some concern because the Tuuqalian was still among the unrecovered. Of all the sentients and semi-intelligences the Vilenjji held, they feared it alone. And with good reason, Pret-Klob thought grimly. The lives of four good partholders had already been lost to the rampaging behemoth. He had vowed there would be no more. Despite the high price it might bring he had reluctantly been forced to issue orders to, if it could not be immediately sedated, execute the treacherous entity rather than risk any more deaths. Should that outcome eventuate, they would make up for the loss by boosting the price of the others.
It was fascinating to watch the zZad pair in their struggle to find a way past the Vilenjji who were inexorably herding them to the rear of the storage chamber. If the inventory records were correct, there was one each of a healthy male and female of breeding age. Pret-Klob had no intention of losing them, or of damaging so much as a sensing hair on their underbodies. As stock went, they were not particularly intelligent. In their case, that was a useful feature. Superbly acrobatic as they were, they were just bright enough to accept training. There were worlds whose overlords and merchants would pay many credits to acquire such unique entertainment—not to mention entertainment that could be counted upon to reproduce itself, thereby repaying the original investment many times over.
Ripped from the primitive technology of their home planet, the zZad ought to be grateful that they were going to be given the opportunity to live out the remainder of their lives on a world that was a part of galactic civilization. The suckers on Pret-Klob’s arm flaps contracted and expanded reflexively. Regrettably, that was rarely the case with ungrateful inventory. With very few exceptions, if given a hypothetical choice, stock invariably wished to be returned to their homeworlds. Such desires were not Pret-Klob’s concern, nor that of his association. Their sole concern was profit. And in a civilization where many wants and needs were easily supplied, profit could be hard to come by. Fortunately, no one had yet found a way to synthesize novelty.
“See how rapidly they can change direction, even when moving upside down.” Nearby, Dven-Palt gestured with the device she was holding. It looked like a gun, but it was only one example of the kind of tools the association maintained for manipulating difficult captives. Her task was to back up the trio of crew that was inexorably crowding the pair of desperate zZad into a far corner of the storeroom.
“Yes, their agility is quite impressive,” Pret-Klob readily admitted. “See—I think they are about to try to break through.”
Raising the device he held in his suckers, one of the approaching crewmembers took aim at the female zZad and fired. The sticket missed as she sprang forward, releasing her grip on the ceiling and bounding off the top of a supply interlock. The male followed behind her, only to run into not one but two stickets launched by the other members of the cornering trio. On contact, the device instantly contracted, collapsing the zZad’s multiple limbs tightly against its body. Stricken and immobilized, it whistled for its mate: a series of rapid fretful pipings. From the top of the storage unit on which she had landed, she turned to look back at him. Seeing that the two Vilenjji who had trapped her companion were already finalizing his bindings, she turned away and leaped again.
It was a credit to the creature’s nimbleness that the waiting Dven-Palt nearly missed her. That would have resulted in another chase that, while it would have been additionally enlightening as to the evasive skills of the zZad, would have taken still more time away from normal crew duties. Set on low charge to compensate for the zZad’s smaller size, Dven-Palt’s shocker froze her in midleap. As she crashed to the deck, the two senior Vilenjji rushed to make sure she had suffered no permanent damage.
Passing her pin checker over the elongated, unmoving form, Dven-Palt glanced up at her companion and gestured with her free arm flap. “Internal indications are all in the positive. The creature may suffer some minor bruising, but it did not fall far enough, I think, to break limbs.”
The tendrils atop Pret-Klob’s tapering cranial cavity squirmed tellingly. “I am pleased to hear you say so. The load of the maintenance physicians is already heavy.” Not all of the escapees had been recovered so efficiently, he knew, nor without spoilage. And then there was the need to mend what punishment had been meted out to those who had physically resisted recapture. Still, it could have been worse. Thus far only two of the inventory had died during retrieval. Two, in addition to one who had perished from injuries inflicted by its fellow captives. Pret-Klob particularly regretted the latter loss. The Ghouaba had been clever, and useful.
Well, it should be easy enough to replace. Among the inventory, one or two individuals could always be found who were willing to assist the Vilenjji in return for special food, or entertainment, or other exclusive privileges. With the successful recovery of the zZad, he turned his attention to the communicator attached to his left upper limb and requested an update on the progress of the remaining ongoing recovery.
As he already knew, the ship’s automatics confirmed that of one hundred percent of inventory, ninety-two percent had taken advantage of the opportunity to flee their enclosures. Of that, the majority had already been recovered or otherwise located. Of the remainder, not counting the zZad, six were still unaccounted for, including, the ship’s automatics now confirmed, two commodities previously thought to be nullified. Pret-Klob scrutinized these indicators without preconception. No matter how well one came to know a commodity, it often exhibited surprising and unexpected behavior as well as unsuspected abilities. The small, physically weak quadruped from the undistinguished third world of a minor sun, for example. Who would have expected it to be among those few escapees still running free? The Tuuqalian’s continued autonomy, now, that made sense. But the small furry quadruped had required a cerebral boost just to render it intelligent enough to be capable of basic conversation, and thereby understand the orders that were given to it. Truly, alien species from the rough outer worlds were full of surprises.
He and Dven-Palt watched as the recovered zZad were carefully hauled away. Their injuries and abrasions would be
treated, and they would be given appropriate nourishment and medication. Then they would be returned to the enclosure they shared. When they had recuperated sufficiently, they would be allowed to once again join the other recovered inventory in the grand enclosure. By that time, Pret-Klob fully expected all six of the remaining inventory still at large to have been recovered.
If one discounted the deaths of several members of the association at the tentacles of the Tuuqalian, the mass escaping could be considered an instructive diversion. Even those four casualties were not to be entirely mourned, as their shares would now be divided among the surviving crew. Now that a careful tracing and analysis of records made prior to the actual breakout had been completed, it was known that at least one among the escapees was capable of operating Vilenjji instrumentation. Security steps had been instituted to ensure that would not happen again. There would be no more illicit switching of directives, no more unauthorized deactivation of restraining barriers.
He would rest easily tonight. The excitement had been good for the members of the association. But now it was time to ease back into normal routine. Another ship-day at most should see the last of the escapees recovered and returned to their enclosures. Then it would be time to relax again and leave the bulk of the maintenance work to the automatics.
One had to admire whichever species had initiated the breakout. For a primitive sentient or two, they had proven surprisingly creative. Pret-Klob was curious to learn the details of how it had been accomplished. Not only for his own edification, but so that steps could be taken to ensure that it never happened again. It was always interesting when an inferior species managed to rise up long enough to make a blip on the screen of inherent Vilenjji superiority—before they were knocked back down to where they belonged.
Tomorrow, he decided as he and Dven-Palt shuffled down the nearest rampway. Except for the instructive postmortem, it would all be over and done with by tomorrow. He almost regretted that it would be so. The escape and its invigorating aftermath had provided the most enjoyment he had experienced in quite some time.
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