“You,” said the herder, grinning at Lysander. “You get the cubs out. No, don’t worry,” she added kindly. “The mothers won’t hurt you. Just let them smell you first, pat them, don’t get them upset. And bring me the cubs, one at a time.”
Lysander peered down into the nearest pen. He had done this before, but he still felt uncertain about it.
The cow hoo’hik didn’t shrink away as he approached. She only gazed mildly up at him, her forepaws protectively pressing two of the cubs to her teats. They were sucking away vigorously.
“Don’t be all twelfth-day,” the herder called irritably.
“Which one shall I get first?” Lysander asked.
“Any one! Hurry up, will you? I’ve got forty of them to do, and then there’s all the milking—”
Lysander took a deep breath and reached down under the cow hoo’hik’s belly, where the other half dozen cubs were squirming blindly around, impatient for their turn. He picked one up at random, a wobbly little thing the size of his head that mewed and gasped worriedly as it felt his hands grasp it. He carried it over to the herder. “Turn it over,” she ordered, picking up a thing like a huge needle. The handle of it was shaped to fit her hand, and it had a dial and a button. She checked the dial and waited impatiently for Lysander to hold the squirming body still. Then with one hand the herder grasped the cub’s head, not roughly but firmly, and with the needle searched out a point at the base of the cub’s skull, just where it joined the neck.
“Did you see that Earth movie last night?” she asked, making conversation as she worked. Sandy shook his head, wishing she would get on with it. “It was called A Bridge Too Far, and it was all about fighting and not being at peace. Oh, Lysander, you must be careful when you go there—”
Then she grunted with satisfaction. “There,” she said. When she pressed the button there was a tiny, almost inaudible bleep of sound. The cub squawked and stiffened, and then relaxed.
“Now get another,” the herder ordered.
It didn’t help Lysander’s mood that Obie, taking turns with him in carrying cubs to be pithed, seemed as depressed as he. Of course, the causes were different.
Obie was simply sulking, thinking of what was going on back in the cohort quarters that he was not a part of, while Sandy’s thoughts were all of MyThara-tok.
Still, the cubs were cute. They didn’t seem hurt by the pithing. They cuddled in Sandy’s arms as he carried them back to the mother, and she accepted them amiably enough. They were shorter and paler than some of the other strains he had worked with. The geneticists were always varying the breed a bit, introducing new textures and flavors, but they all had the sunny dispositions that would last them right up until the time they licked the fingers of their executioners.
Even Obie was charmed by the cubs. He poked one of his thumbs at them as he carried them back to their mothers and giggled as the little things tried to suck on it. By the time they finished with the forty the first twelfth-day had passed, and when he joined Sandy for the wafers and broth he was weeping in amusement, humming along with the omnipresent music, his grievances forgotten.
But Lysander was still troubled. He pushed the wafers away. “Eat, Sandy,” Obie said anxiously. “You aren’t still upset about MyThara, are you?”
“I’m just not hungry.”
“You are still upset about her,” Obie diagnosed. “But our tutor explained all that to you.”
“I know he did.”
Obie nibbled quietly for a moment, absently listening to the background music. It was Hakh’hli music, very unlike the Earth tunes they had recorded and played in their own quarters. Earth music was waltzes, polkas, marches—rhythmic tunes tied to regular foot movements; but Hakh’hli didn’t have the foot anatomy to dance or march. Obie remembered his own grievance and burst out, “And anyway, how do you think I feel? They’re all doing amphylaxis back in the quarters, and here I am with you!”
“You did it already,” Sandy pointed out. “I’m sorry, Obie. I guess I just don’t like pithing cubs.”
“What’s the matter, Sandy? You’ve done it before.”
“I didn’t like it then, either,” Lysander confessed.
“But we have to pith them,” Obie said reasonably. “For their own sake, you know? It keeps them from being too smart.”
Lysander blinked at him. “What do you mean, too smart?”
“Oh, too smart,” Obie said vaguely. “Can you imagine how horrible it would be for them if they grew up with, you know, some kind of rudimentary intelligence? So you’d know that you were alive only so you could be killed and eaten?”
“They can’t be that smart!”
“Not after we pith them, no,” Obie said smugly.
“But— But— But it’s wrong to kill intelligent creatures, isn’t it?”
“They aren’t intelligent. That’s why they’re pithed.”
“But you’re telling me they would be, if we just didn’t pith them. There has to be a better way! Can’t the gene-splicers arrange them so that they aren’t intelligent?”
“Oh, Lysander,” Obie sighed. “Do you imagine they didn’t think of that? They keep trying. But it always spoils the taste of the meat.”
When they straggled back to their quarters it was almost time for the big midday meal, and the other members of the cohort were happily playing a rough-and-tumble game of what they considered to be touch football. “How’d it go?” Obie asked jealously.
“Oof, “ said Tanya, as Polly plowed into her, knocking the tied-rag ball out of her hands. “Oh, it went just fine, Obie. Imagine! I coupled with ChinTekki-tho, and you never saw so many eggs!”
“I bet I saw even more when I did it,” Obie snapped, but there was no point in being resentful. He hunkered down on his strong legs for added strength and then hurled himself across the room at Polly, now scrambling rapidly away with the ball.
“Want to get in the game, Sandy?” called Helen, in hot pursuit.
Sandy shook his head. “No, thanks.” No one was surprised at that, since everyone knew he didn’t belong in body-contact sports with the Hakh’hli, especially when their natural competitiveness was sharpened by hunger for the midday meal.
Sandy simply went over to his own carrel and sat there. He didn’t turn on a flick. He didn’t open his locker to gaze again at his mother’s picture. He didn’t even daydream about the landing on Earth, so very near, with its promise of human females and the almost certain prospect of glorious coupling. He just sat and glowered into space, thinking of MyThara’s flesh being torn away by the titch’hik, while the game finished, and the food cart arrived, and the cohort flung itself, shouting and slobbering, on the meal.
Sandy didn’t even approach the cart until the last of them had staggered, empty-eyed, into stun time. Then he sighed, got up, and surveyed what was left.
There was quite a lot, actually. The main roast had been torn apart, but there were human bite-sized pieces all over.
As he lifted one morsel to his mouth, Sandy stopped to look at it.
It was roast hoo’hik, of the tender kind that came from the very young cubs.
Sandy hesitated for a moment. But then he ate it and, still chewing, strolled back to his carrel to turn on an Earthly musical film with pretty girls in scant costumes.
Chapter 6
The landing vessel which will take the Earth-mission cohort down to the surface of the planet is 150 feet long and shaped pretty much like a paper airplane. Its wings are retractable. Once the lander is in the atmosphere the wings can be extended as needed for the various flight domains they will encounter, stretching farther out and changing shape as speed is reduced. The lander’s rockets are fueled by alcohol and hydrogen peroxide—once in air the atmosphere will supply the oxygen needed, and so the hydrogen peroxide load is only enough for maneuvering while still in space. This is important to the Hakh’hli. The fuel for the lander represents a serious expenditure of irreplaceable materials. The alcohol and peroxide it burns are lost forever to the ship’s recirculatory systems, and must be made up from outside. Most of the weight of the lander is fuel, because it needs to carry enough for a two-way trip. The structure of the ship itself is comparatively light, due to excellent Hakh’hli technology, but even so the total launch weight of the craft is something over 200 tons. Landing on Earth is a piece of cake, because Earth ’s surface gravity is only 1.0. The landing ship can handle twice that. The interior of the ship has squatting seats for a crew of eight. One of them has been removed, and another refitted for Lysander’s non-Hakh’hli anatomy—it is a special, big one, meant for a Senior, but no Senior is going. Because of that it is impossible for Sandy to reach the ship’s controls, but that doesn’t matter. None of the cohort would trust him to fly them anyway.