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?”