“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.
“I am,” Lee replied grimly. “Locklear, if we get jumped by a tabby ship I’ll put a burst right into your guts, first thing.”
As Locklear made a show of moaning and straining at his bonds, Gomulka banked the pinnace for its mapping sweep. Presently, Lee’s infrared scanners flashed an overlay on his screen and Gomulka nodded, but finished the sweep. Then, by manual control, he slowed the little craft and brought it at a leisurely pace to the IR blips, a mile or so above the alien veldt. Lee brought the screen’s video to high magnification.
Anse Parker saw what Locklear saw. “Only a few tabbies, huh? And you took care of ’em, huh? You son of a bitch!” He glared at the scene, where a dozen kzinti moved unaware amid half-buried huts and cooking fires, and swatted Locklear across the back of his head with an open hand. “Looks like they’ve gone native,” Parker went on. “Hey, Gomulka: they’ll be candy for us.”
“I noticed,” Gomulka replied. “You know what? If we bag ’em now, we’re helping this little shit. We can come back any time we like, maybe have ourselves a tabby-hunt.”
“Yeah; show ’em what it’s like,” Lee snickered, “after they’ve had their manhunt.”
Locklear groaned for effect. A village ready-made in only a few months! Scarface didn’t waste any time getting his own primitives out of stasis. I hope to God he doesn’t show up looking glad to see me. To avoid that possibility he pleaded, “Aren’t you going to give me a running chance?”
“Sure we are,” Gomulka laughed. “Tabbies will pick up your scent anyway. Be on you like flies on a turd.” The pinnace flew on, unseen from far below, Lee bringing up the video now and then. Once he said, “Can’t figure out what they’re hunting in that field. If I didn’t know kzinti were strict carnivores I’d say they were farming.”