It was the pain that brought him awake; that, and the sound of loud static. No, more like the zaps of an arc welder in the hands of a novice — or like a catfight. And then he turned a blurred mental page and knew it, the way a Rorschach blot suddenly becomes a face half-forgotten but always feared. So it did not surprise him, when he opened his eyes, to see two huge kzinti standing over him.
To a man like Herrera they would merely have been massive. To Locklear, a man of less than average height, they were enormous; nearly half again his height. The broadest kzin, with the notched right ear and the black horizontal fur-mark like a frown over his eyes, opened his mouth in what, to humans, might be a smile. But kzinti smiles showed dagger teeth and always meant immediate threat.
This one was saying something that sounded like, “Clash-rowll whuff, rurr fitz.”
Locklear needed a few seconds to translate it, and by that time the second kzin was saying it in Interworld: “Grraf-Commander says, 'Speak when you are spoken to.' For myself, I would prefer that you remained silent. I have eaten no monkeymeat for too long.”
While Locklear composed a reply, the big one — the Grraf-Commander, evidently — spoke again to his fellow. Something about whether the monkey knew his posture was deliberately obscene. Locklear, lying on his back on a padded table as big as a Belter's honeymoon bed, realized his arms and legs were flung wide. “I am not very fluent in the Hero's tongue,” he said in passable kzin, struggling to a sitting position as he spoke.
As he did, some of that pain localized at his right collarbone. Locklear moved very slowly thereafter. Then, recognizing the dot-and-comma-rich labels that graced much of the equipment in that room, he decided not to ask where he was. He could be nowhere but an emergency surgical room for kzin warriors. That meant he was on a kzin ship.
A faint slitting of the smaller kzin's eyes might have meant determination, a grasping for patience, or — if Locklear recalled the texts, and if they were right, a small “if” followed by a very large one — a pause for relatively cold calculation. The smaller kzin said, in his own tongue, “If the monkey speaks the Hero's tongue, it is probably as a spy.”
“My presence here was not my idea,” Locklear pointed out, surprised to find his memory of the language returning so quickly. “I boarded the Weasel on command to leave a dangerous region, not to enter one. Ask the ship's quartermaster, or check her records.”
The commander spat and sizzled again: “The crew are all carrion. As you will soon be, unless you tell us why, of all the monkeys on that ship, you were the only one so specially protected.”
Locklear moaned. This huge kzin's partial name and his scars implied the kind of warrior whose valor and honor forbade lies to a captive. All dead but himself? Locklear shrugged before he thought, and the shrug sent a stab of agony across his upper chest. “Sonofabitch,” he gasped in agony. The navigator kzin translated. The larger one grinned, the kind of grin that might fasten on his throat.
Locklear said in kzin, very fast, “Not you! I was cursing the pain.”
“A telepath could verify your meanings very quickly,” said the smaller kzin.
“An excellent idea,” said Locklear. “He will verify that I am no spy, and not a combatant, but only an ethologist from Earth. A kzin acquaintance once told me it was important to know your forms of address. I do not wish to give offense.”
“Call me Tzak-Navigator,” said the smaller kzin abruptly, and grasped Locklear by the shoulder, talons sinking into the human flesh. Locklear moaned again, gritting his teeth. “You would attack? Good,” the navigator went on, mistaking the grimace, maintaining his grip, the formidable kzin body trembling with intent.
“I cannot speak well with such pain,” Locklear managed to grunt. “Not as well protected as you think.”
“We found you well-protected and sealed alone in that ship,” said the commander, motioning for the navigator to slacken his hold. “I warn you, we must rendezvous the Raptor with another Ripping-Fang class cruiser to pick up a full crew before we hit the Eridani worlds. I have no time to waste on such a scrawny monkey as you, which we have caught nearer our home worlds than to your own.”
Locklear grasped his right elbow as support for that aching collarbone. “I was surveying life-forms on purely academic study — in peacetime, so far as I knew,” he said. “The old patrol craft I leased didn't have a weapon on it.”
“You lie,” the navigator hissed. “We saw them.”
“The Weasel was not my ship, Tzak-Navigator. Its commander brought me back under protest; said the Interworld Commission wanted noncombatants out of harm's way — and here I am in its cloaca.”
“Then it was already well-known on that ship that we are at war. I feel better about killing it,” said the commander. “Now, as to the ludicrous cargo it was carrying: what is your title and importance?”
“I am scholar Carroll Locklear. I was probably the least important man on the Weasel — except to myself. Since I have nothing to hide, bring a telepath.”
“Now it gives orders,” snarled the navigator.
“Please,” Locklear said quickly.
“Better,” the commander said.
“It knows,” the navigator muttered. “That is why it issues such a challenge.”
“Perhaps,” the commander rumbled. To Locklear he said, “A skeleton crew of four rarely includes a telepath. That statement will either satisfy your challenge, or I can satisfy it in more conventional ways.” That grin again, feral, willing.
“I meant no challenge, Grraf-Commander. I only want to satisfy you of who I am, and who I'm not.”
“We know what you are,” said the navigator. “You are our prisoner, an important one, fleeing the Patriarchy rim in hopes that the monkeyship could get you to safety.” He reached again for Locklear's shoulder.
“That is pure torture,” Locklear said, wincing, and saw the navigator stiffen as the furry orange arm dropped. If only he had recalled the kzinti disdain for torture earlier! “I am told you are an honorable race. May I be treated properly as a captive?”
“By all means,” the commander said, almost in a purr. “We eat captives.”
Locklear, slyly: “Even important ones?”
“If it pleases me,” the commander replied. “More likely you could turn your coat in the service of the Patriarchy. I say you could; I would not suggest such an obscenity. But that is probably the one chance your sort has for personal survival.”
“My sort?”
The commander looked Locklear up and down, at the slender body, lightly muscled with only the deep chest to suggest stamina. “One of the most vulnerable specimens of monkeydom I have ever seen,” he said.
That was the moment when Locklear decided he was at war. “Vulnerable, and important, and captive. Eat me,” he said, wondering if that final phrase was as insulting in kzin as it was in Interworld. Evidently not…
“Gunner! Apprentice-Engineer,” the commander called suddenly, and Locklear heard two responses through the ship's intercom. “Lock this monkey in a wiper's quarters.” He turned to his navigator. “Perhaps Fleet Commander Skrull-Riit will want this one alive. We shall know in an eight-squared of duty watches.” With that, the huge kzin commander strode out.