Get your mind off the troubles of Wunderland and on to the more urgent matter of saving your own ass, she told herself as they turned into the Ba'hai quarter. Back to Harold's Place… she winced. Then out to the Swarm. Catskinner would be waiting, and Markham would simply have to accept them; that was one of the virtues of a ship with a will of its own.
Then a straight boost out of the system, a Dart usually didn't have anything approaching interstellar capacity, but the stasis field changed things. Boost out, tightbeam the precious data, and wait for the fleet to scoop them up. Nothing could affect them within a stasis field, but the field as a whole could still be manipulated with a gravity polarizer…
The chances of coming through this with a whole skin had seemed so remote that it wasn't even worth the trouble of thinking about. Now… The ship'll hold three. Hari, this tinze I twn't leave you.
They turned into the street that fronted Harold's Place. Ingrid had just time enough to see Hari standing beside Claude at the entrance. Then police vomited forth, dark in their turtle helmets and goggles, and aircars rose silently over the roofs all about. Giant ginger-red shapes behind them. She rolled out of her side of the pedicab as Jonah did on his, a motion so smooth they might have rehearsed it. The light-pen was in her hand, and it made its yawping sound. A policeman died, dropping like a puppet with the strings cut, and she dove forward, rolling, trying for an angle at the kzin and Blackness.
"The interrogation is complete?' Chuut-Riit reclined again at ease on the bubblecouch behind his desk; a censor was sending up aromatic smoke. The holo, on the far wall showed a room beneath the Munchen police headquarters; a combination of human and kzin talents had long proven most effective for such work. Ktriir-Supervisor-of-Animals was there, and a nameless shabby-looking telepath. The mind-reader's fur was matted and his hands twitched. Chuut-Riit could see spatters of vomit down the front of his pelt, and hear his mumble: "… salad, no, no, ak, ak, pftht, no please boiled carrots ak, pfffth-"
He shuddered slightly in sympathy, thinking of what it must be like to enter the mind of a human free-associating under drugs and pain. Telepathy was not like speech; it was a sharing that extended to sensations and memory as well. Food was a very fundamental drive. It would be bad enough to have to share the memory of eating the cremated meats humans were fond of-the very stink of them was enough to turn your stomach-but cooked plants… The telepath fumbled something out of a wristpouch and carefully parted the fur on one side of his neck before pressing it to the skin. There was a hiss, and he sank against the wall with a sigh of relief. His eyes slitted and he leaned chin on knees with a high-pitched irregular purr, the tip of his tongue showing pink past his whiskers.
Chuut-Riit wrinkled his nose and dismissed false compassion. How could you sympathize with something that was voluntary slave to a drug? And to an extract of sthondat blood at that.
"Yes, Chuut-Riit," Ktriir-Supervisor-of-Animals said. "Telepath's reading agrees with what the trained monkeys determined with their truth drugs." Chuut-Riit reminded himself that the drugs actually merely suppressed inhibition. "The attempt was a last-minute afterthought to the main attack of the monkey ship. Some gravitic device was used to decelerate a pod with these two; they came down in a remote area, using the disturbances of the attack as cover, and reached the city on foot. Their aim was to trigger the self-destruct mechanisms on your estate, but they were unable to do so."
Chuut-Riit brooded, looking past the kzin liaison officer to the human behind him. "You are not the human in charge of the Munchen police," he said.
"No, Chuut-Riit," the human said. It was a female. A flabby one, the sort that would squish unpleasantly when your fangs ripped open the body cavity, and somehow the holo gave the impression of an unpleasant odor. I am Chief Assistant Axelrod-Bauergartner at your service, dominant one," she continued, giving the title in a reasonably good approximation of the Hero's Tongue. A little insolent? Perhaps-but also commendable, and the deferential posture was faultless. "Chief Montferrat-Palme delegated this summary of the investigation, feeling that it was not important enough to warrant his personal attention. "
"Chrrrriii," Chuut-Riit said, scratching one cheek against a piece of driftwood in a stand on his desk. This Montferrat-creature did not consider an attack on the governor's private control system important? That monkey was developing a distorted sense of its priorities. The human in the screen had blanched slightly at the kzin equivalent of an irritated scowl; he let his lips lower back over the fangs and continued: "Show me the subjects." Axelrod-Bauergartner stepped aside, to show two humans clamped in adjustable plastic brackets amid a forest of equipment. These were two fine specimens, tall and lean in the manner of the space-bred subspecies. Both were unconscious, but seeming intact enough apart from the usual superficial cuts, abrasions, and bruises. "What is their condition?" "No irreparable physical or mental harm, Chuut-Riit," Axelrod-Bauergartner said, bowing. "What are your orders as to their disposal?"
"Rrrrr," Chuut-Riit mused, shifting to rub the underside of his jaw on the wood. The last public hunt had been yesterday, the one to which he had taken his sons. "How soon can they be in a condition to run amusingly?" he said.
"Half a week, Chuut-Riit. We have been cautious."
"Prepare them." His sons? No, best not to be too indulgent. There was a bad smelling lot of administrative work to be attended to; he would be chained to his desk for a goodly while anyway. Let the little devils attend to their studies, and he would visit them again when this had been disposed of. Besides, while free there had been a certain attraction in the prospect of dealing with this pair personally; as captives they were just two more specimens of monkeymeat-beneath his dignity. "Get a good batch together, and have them all ready for the Public Preserve at the end of the week. Dismissed."
"Was that Suuomalisen I saw coming out of here?" Montferrat said. "Unless you know another fat, sweaty toad in a linen suit looking like he'd just swallowed the juiciest fly on the planet." Yarthkin grinned like a shark as he settled behind his desk and pushed a pile of data chips and hardcopy to one side. "Sit yourself down, Claude, and have a drink. If it isn't too early."
"15:00 too early? That's in bad taste, even for you." But the hand that reached for the Maivin shook slightly, and there were wrinkles in the tunic. "But why was he so happy?"
"I just sold him Harold's Terran Bar," Yarthkin said calmly. Light-headed he laughed, 4 boy's laugh. "Prosit!” he toasted, and tossed back his own drink.
'What!" That was enough to bring him bolt-upright. "Why-what- You've been turning that swine down for thirty years!”
"Swine, Claude? What's so especially swinish about him?" Yarthkin leaned forward, resting his chin on paired thumbs. "Or have you forgotten exactly who's to be monkeymeat day after tomorrow?"
The reaction was more than Yarthkin had expected. A jerk, as if high-voltage current surged through the other man's body. A dry retching sound. Then, incredibly, the aquiline Herrenmann mask crumpled, slumping and wrinkling like a balloon from which the air has been withdrawn… and he was crying, head slumping down into his hands. Yarthkin swallowed and looked away; Claude was a collabo and a sellout, an extortionist without shame… but nobody should see another man this naked. It was obscene.
"Pull yourself together, Claude; I've known you were a bastard for forty years, but I thought you were a man, at least."