A contemptuous gesture and, as Locklear stood up, a worse remark. 'Then you are the beast that lay with a palace prret, a courtesan. We have heard. You will win no friends here."
A cold tendril marched down Locklear's spine. "May I speak with my friends? The Kzinti have things to fear, but I am not among them." More laughter. "The Rockear beast thinks it is fearsome," said the young male, his ear-umbrellas twitching in merriment.
"I come to ask help, and to offer it," Locklear said evenly.
"The priesthood knows enough of your help. Come," said the older one. And that is how Locklear was marched into a village of prehistoric Kzinti, ringed by hostile predators twice his size.
His reception party was all-male, its members staring at him in frank curiosity while prodding him to the village. They finally left him in an open area surrounded by huts with his hands tied, a leather collar around his neck, the collar linked by a short braided rope to a hefty stake. When he squatted on the turf, he noticed the soil was torn by hooves here and there. Dark stains and an abattoir odor said the place was used for butchering animals. The curious gazes of passing females said he was only a strange animal to them. The disappearance of the males into the largest of the semi-submerged huts suggested that he had furnished the village with something worth a town meeting.
At last the meeting broke up, Kzin males striding from the hut toward him, a half-dozen of the oldest emerging last, each with a four-fingered paw tucked into his bandolier belt. Prominent scars across the breasts of these few were all exactly similar; some kind of self-torture ritual, Locklear guessed. Last of all with the ritual scars was the old one he'd spoken with, and this one had both paws tucked into his belt. Got it; the higher your status, the less you need to keep your hands ready, or to hurry.
The old devil was enjoying all this ceremony, and so were the other big shots. Standing in clearly separated rings behind them were the other males with a few females, then the other females, evidently the entire tribe. Locklear spotted a few Kzinti whose expressions and ear-umbrellas said they were either sick or unhappy, but all played their obedient parts. Standing before him, the oldster reached out and raked Locklear's face with what seemed to be only a ceremonial insult. It brought welts to his cheek anyway. The oldster spoke for all to hear. "You began the tribe's awakening, and for that we promise a quick kill."
I waked several Kzinti, who promised me honor," Locklear managed to say. "Traitors? They have no friends here. So you have no friends here, said the old Kzin with pomp ous dignity. "This the priesthood has decided."
"You are the leader?"
"First among equals," said the high priest with a smirk that said he believed in no equals.
"While this tribe slept, Locklear said loudly, hop ing to gain some support, "a mighty Kzin warrior came here. I call him Scarface. I return in peace to see him, and to warn you that others who look like me may soon return. They wish you harm, but I do not. Would you take me to Scarface?"
He could not decipher the murmurs, but he knew amusement when he saw it. The high priest stepped forward, untied the rope, handed it to the nearest of the husky males who stood behind the priests. "He would see the mighty hunter who had new ideas," he said. "Take him to see that hero, so that he will fully appreciate the situation. Then bring him back to the ceremony post."
With that, the high priest turned his back and, followed by the other priests, walked away. The dozens of other Kzinti hurried off, carefully avoiding any backward glances. Locklear said, to the huge specimen tugging on his neck rope, "I cannot walk quickly with hands behind my back."
"Then you must learn," rumbled the big Kzin, and lashed out with a foot that propelled Locklear forward. I think he pulled that punch, Locklear thought. Kept his claws retracted, at least. The Kzin led him silently from the village and along a path until hidden by foliage. Then, "You are the Rockear," he said, slowing. I am (something as unpronounceable as most Kzin names)," he added, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He began untying Locklear's hands with, "I must kill you if you run, and I will. But I am no priest," he said, as if that explained his willingness to ease a captive's walking.
"You are a stalwart," Locklear said. "May I call you that?"
"As long as you can," the big Kzin said, leading the way again. I voted to my priest to let you live, and teach us. So did most heroes of my group."
Uh-huh; they have priests instead of senators. But this smells like the old American system before direct elections. "Your priest is not bound to vote as you say?" A derisive snort was his answer, and he persisted. "Do you vote your priests in?"
"Yes. For life," said Stalwart, explaining everything.
"So they pretend to listen, but they do as they like," Locklear said. A grunt, perhaps of admission or of scorn. "It was always thus," said Stalwart, and found that Locklear could trot, now. Another half-hour found them moving across a broad veldt, and Locklear saw the scars of a grass fire before he realized he was in familiar surroundings. Stalwart led the way to a rise and then stopped, pointing toward the jungle. "There," he said,.. is your scarfaced friend."
Locklear looked in vain, then back at Stalwart. "He must be blending in with the ferns. You people do that very-"
"The highest tree. What remains of him is there."
And then Locklear saw the flying creatures he had called "batowls," tiny mites at a distance of two hundred meters, picking at tatters of something that hung in a net from the highest tree in the region. "Oh, my Godl Won't he die there?"
"He is dead already. He underwent the long ceremony," said Stalwart, "many days past, with wounds that killed slowly."
Locklear's glare was incriminating: "I suppose you voted against that, too?"
"That, and the sacrifice of the palace prret in days past," said the Kzin.
Blinking away tears, for Scarface had truly been a cat of his word, Locklear said, "Those prret. One of them was Scarface's mate when I left. Is she-up there, too?"
For what it was worth, the big Kzin could not meet his gaze. "Drowning is the dishonorable punishment for females," he said, pointing back toward Kzersatz's long shallow lake. "The priesthood never avoids tradition, and she lies beneath the water. Another prret with kittens was permitted to rejoin the tribe. She chose to be shunned instead. Now and then, we see her. It is treason to speak against the priesthood, and I will not."
Locklear squeezed his eyes shut; blinked; turned away from the hideous sight hanging from that distant tree as scavengers picked at its bones. "And I hoped to help your tribal. A pox on all your houses,” he said to no one in particular. He did not speak to the Kzin again, but they did not burry as Stalwart led the way back to the village.
The only speaking Locklear did was to the comm set in his ear, shoving its pushbutton switch. The Kzin looked back at him in curiosity once or twice, but 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 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 I 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 re-entered 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.