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now he was speaking Interworld, and perhaps Stalwart thought he was singing a
death song.
In a way, it was true-though not a song of his own death, if he could help it.
"Locklear calling the Anthony Wayne," he said, and paused.
He heard the voice of Grace Agostinho reply, "Recording."
"They've caught me already, and they intend to kill
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me. I don't much like you bastards, but at least you're human. I don't care
how many of the male tabbies you bag; when they start torturing me I won't be
any further use to you."
Again, Grace's voice replied in his ear: "Recording."
Now with a terrible suspicion, Locklear said, "Is anybody there? If you're
monitoring me live, say 'monitoring.' "
His comm set, in Grace's voice, only said, "Recording."
Locklear flicked off the switch and began to walk even more slowly, until
Stalwart tugged hard on the leash. Any kzin who cared to look, as they
reentered the village, would have seen a little man bereft of hope. He did not
complain when Stalwart retied his hands, nor even when another kzin marched
him away and fairly flung him into a tiny hut near the edge of the village.
Eventually they flung a bloody hunk of some recent kill into his hut, but it
was raw and, with his hands tied behind him, he could not have held it to his
mouth.
Nor could he toggle his comm set, assuming it would carry past the roof
thatch.
He had not said he would be in the village, and they would very likely kill
him along with everybody else in the village when they came. If they came.
He felt as though he would drown in cold waves of despair. A vicious
priesthood had killed his friends and, even if he escaped for a time, he would
be hunted down by the galaxy's most pitiless hunters. And if his own kind
rescued him, they might cheerfully beat him to death trying to learn a secret
he had already divulged. And even the gentle Neanderthalers hated him, now.
Why not just give up? I don't know why, he admitted to himself, and began to
search for something to help him fray the thongs at his wrists. He finally
chose a rough-barked post, sitting down in front of it and staring toward the
kzin male whose lower legs he could see beneath the door matting.
He rubbed until his wrists were as raw as that meat lying in the dust before
him. Then he rubbed until his muscles refused to continue, his arms cramping
horribly. By that time it was dark, and he kept falling into an exhausted,
fitful sleep, starting to scratch at his bonds every time a cramp woke him.
The fifth time he awoke, it was to the sounds of scratching again. And a soft,
distant call outside, which his guard answered just as softly. It took
Locklear a moment to realize that those scratching noises were not being made
by him.
* * *
The scratching became louder, filling him with a dread of the unknown in the
utter blackness of the Kzersatz night. Then he heard a scrabble of clods
tumbling to the earthen floor. Low, urgent, in the fitz-rowr of a female kzin:
"Rockear, quickly! Help widen this hole!"
He wanted to shout, remembering Boots, the new mother of two who had scorned
her tribe; but he whispered hoarsely: "Boots?"
An even more familiar voice than that of Boots. "She is entertaining your
guard.
Hurry!"
"Kit! I can't, my hands are tied," he groaned. "Kit, they said you were
drowned."
"Idiots," said the familiar voice, panting as she worked. A very faint glow
preceded the indomitable Kit, who had a modern kzin beltpac and used its
glowlamp for brief moments. Without slowing her frantic pace, she said softly,
"They built a walkway into the lake and-dropped me from it. But my mate, your
friend Scarface, knew what they intended. He told me to breathe-many times
just before I fell. With all the stones-weighting me down, I simply walked on
the bottom, between the pilings-and untied the stones beneath the planks near
shore.
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Idiots," she said again, grunting as her fearsome claws ripped away another
chunk of Kzersatz soil. Then, "Poor Rockear," she said, seeing him writhe
toward her.
In another minute, with the glowlamp doused, Locklear heard the growling
curses of Kit's passage into the hut. She'd said females were good tunnelers,
but not until now had he realized just how good. The nearest cover must be a
good ten meters away . . . "Jesus, don't bite my hand, Kit,"
he begged, feeling her fangs and the heat of her breath against his savaged
wrists. A moment later he felt a flash of white-hot pain through his shoulders
as his hands came free. He'd been cramped up so long it hurt to move freely.
"Well, by
God it'll just have to hurt," he said aloud to himself, and flexed his arms,
groaning.
"I suppose you must hold to my tail," she said. He felt the long, wondrously
luxuriant tail whisk across his chest and because it was totally dark, did as
she told him. Nothing short of true and abiding friendship, he knew, would
provoke her into such manhandling of her glorious, her sensual, her
fundamental tail.
They scrambled past mounds of soft dirt until
Locklear felt cool night air on his face. "You may quit insulting my tail
now," Kit growled. "We must wait inside this tunnel awhile. You take this: I
do not
use it well."
He felt the cold competence of the object in his hand and exulted as he
recognized it as a modem kzin sidearm. Crawling near with his face at her
shoulder, he said, "How'd you know exactly where I
was?"
"Your little long-talker, of course. We could hear you moaning and panting in
there, and the magic tools of my mate located you."
But I didn't have it turned on. Ohhh-no; I didn't
KNOW it was turned on! The goddamned thing is transmitting all the time . . .
He decided to score one for
Stockton's people, and dug the comm set from his ear.
Still in the tunnel, it wouldn't transmit well until he moved outside. Crush
it? Bury it? Instead, he snapped the magazine from the sidearm and, after
removing its ammunition, found that the tiny comm set would fit inside.
Completely enclosed by metal, the comm set would transmit no more until he
chose.
He got all but three of the rounds back in the magazine, cursing every sound
he made, and then moved next to Kit again. "They showed me what they did to
Scarface. I can't tell you how sorry I am, Kit. He was my friend, and they
will pay for it."
"Oh, yes, they will pay," she hissed softly. "Make no mistake, he is still
your friend."
A thrill of energy raced from the base of his skull down his arms and legs.
"You're telling me he's alive?"
As if to save her the trouble of a reply, a male kzin called softly from no
more than three paces away: "Milady; do we have him?"
"Yes," Kit replied.
"Scarface! Thank God you're-"
"Not now," said the one-time warship commander.
"Follow quietly."
Having slept near Kit for many weeks, Locklear recognized her steam-kettle
hiss as a sufferer's sigh. "I know your nose is hopeless at following a spoor,
Rockear. But try not to pull me completely apart this time." Again he felt
that long bushy tail pass across his breast, but this time he tried to grip it
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more gently as they sped off into the night.
* * *
Sitting deep in a cave with rough furniture and booby-trapped tunnels,
Locklear wolfed stew under the light of a kzin glowlamp. He had slightly
scandalized Kit with a hug, then did the same to Boots as the young mother
entered the cave without her kittens. The guard would never be trusted to
guard anything again, said the towering Scarface, but that rescue tunnel was
proof that a kzin had helped. Now they'd be looking for Boots, thinking she
had done more than lure a guard thirty meters away.
Locklear told his tale of success, failure, and capture by human pirates as he
finished eating, then asked for an update of the
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