Jacobi continued to speak softly. “Kenneth-we owe the Earthers nothing.”
“We’re still-”
“They’ve left us to the kzin for nearly forty years. What have they done for us? And the Herrenmannen in the slowboats… well, you have even more reason than most to hate them.”
“I’m no Prole, Jacobi,” I told him firmly.
“I’ve left out a few details, Kenneth.” Jacobi said nothing for a moment. “The slowboat that the kzin have targeted is the K P Feynman.”
My mother had left Wunderland space aboard Feynman.
It was too much. Jacobi had always been a sadistic bastard at his core. If he was to be Judas, then he intended to use me as a Judas goat. Using my own hated past as a bargaining chip. I braced myself carefully with my hands, face blank. I leaned down, then kicked Jacobi as hard as I could. Alas, less a stranger to micro-g combat than I, he managed to rotate slightly on his vertical axis; in reaction, I floated across the room toward the opposite wall. One of the kzin guards launched himself at me like a three-meter furry orange missile.
Kraach-Captain shrieked a banshee wail. The guard streaked past me, rebounded against the wall, and came to attention. The old kzin then hissed and spat orders to the other growling guards.
In a few moments, Jacobi and I were in front of Kraach-Captain’s desk again. The guards stood over us this time, ready to cuff any more slave outbursts. Jacobi wheezed a bit and moved to ease the sprained ribs that had taken the blow intended for vertebrae.
“Upton-Schleisser,” Kraach-Captain growled, “I approve of your spirit. The Jacobi-beast is indeed an eater of grass. Still, we will reward him with the legs and face he wishes, if our quest is successful. And wealth and females, of course.” He blinked, heavy-lidded. “None of this will give him even monkey honor, however.”
My brain whirled. When the kzin invaded, one of the first things shut down were the organ banks. To the kzinti, an organ bank was a restaurant.
Jacobi was selling out humans for a pair of legs and a new face.
I sat tight, thinking. There wasn’t anything to do. Jacobi had sewed up things too thoroughly. He must have planned this years in advance. There was only one option. I looked up at Kraach-Captain and stared him directly in the eye. The guards began to rumble with menace at my intentional rudeness.
“You cannot make me serve you,” I said. “I have one thing to say, Kraach-Captain.”
The kzin blinked in curiosity Time to take my shot.
“Ch’rowl you!” I shouted in falsetto kzin at the top of my lungs. The kzinti curse would surely be my death sentence, but at least I would go clean. The room was deathly silent as I thought of my wife and children, so far away in Tiamat. I felt the guards’ huge hands clamping down on my shoulders, holding me in place, and prepared to die.
Nothing happened. I could hear blood singing in my ears.
Even the guards were silent.
Finally, Kraach-Captain coughed in laughter. “The Jacobi-beast is correct yet again!” He pointed an ebony clawtip at Jacobi. “This slave did exactly as you predicted. You indeed deserve your legs.” In a burst of generosity he added, “And I will see that they are taken from a well-muscled youthful specimen of precisely your height or a little taller. Fresh killed, of course. It is well worth the loss of a Hero’s meal!”
Jacobi said nothing, simply stared straight ahead at a blank wall.
The kzin turned his head toward me. In what passed among kzinti for warm benignity he said, “Again I salute your courage, little slave. It is like that of an undisciplined kitten, but courage just the same.” His violet eyes turned suddenly hard and opaque. He hissed, “But know this, slave: you will serve us.” Kraach-Captain jabbed a claw at a small cryobox on his makeshift desk “Open it.”
I reached forward and pulled the cryobox free of the Velcro strip holding it down. It was the kind of container used to store low-temperature medicinals for autodoc supplies. Numbly I toggled the keypad. Seals hissed and unlocked. The lid to the box slid smoothly open.
There was a human hand in the container.
A left hand.
Then I recognized the ring on the third finger. The one I had placed there. On Sharna’s hand.
I could not speak. My eyes would not focus.
From very far away, I heard Jacobi’s voice. “She is still alive, Kenneth. It was I who convinced them that your wife would be more useful alive than dead. Remember that, boy.”
I said nothing, still staring into the box. Frost gleamed on my wife’s severed hand. Then a giant four-fingered black hand eclipsed the smaller one and took the box from my grasp. Kraach-Captain sat back in his seat, axing the cryobox back to its Velcro strip.
Jacobi continued, his voice almost drowned out by the pounding in my temples. “It’s still viable. They’ll reattach it if you work for them. Just like they are going to give me new legs and a new face.”
My lips were numb. “My children?”
The scarred little man next to me was quiet for a moment. “Kenneth,” he said at last, “Kraach-Captain will do nothing to you or your family if you work with him. He’ll even make you a member of his household. Protection, see?” He cleared his throat, continued. “Refuse, and he’ll… eat your wife. His teeth will be the last thing she sees.”
I was just breathing, taking it in. There was a ringing in my ears.
“Your children will attend. Then they will be hunted for sport by Kraach-Captain’s sons.”
I dared not look at Jacobi. I would try to kill him if I did. Someday, some way, he would pay for his treachery. But for now I turned my attention back to the captain. I had to be clear, for their sake.
“Kraach-Captain,” I said, the words dead and empty in my mouth, “how do I know you will abide by this… agreement?”
The guards growled and grumbled at the implication, but the old kzin merely blinked at me. “Little slave,” he rumbled, “a Hero’s Word is binding. I stake my Name on it, my lands, and my sons.”
Kraach-Captain did the kzinti equivalent of a shrug. “Do not fail.”
Kraach-Captain tapped a clawlip on an innocuous-looking holocube sitting on his desk He picked it up and extended it to me. “Take this recording. Watch it, then carry it with you as a reminder.”
“What is it?” I asked dully, taking it. But I knew the answer.
“It is a recording of my session with your mate, when I removed her hand,” the old kzin rasped. ‘This interview is concluded.”
The guards’ hands released my shoulders, and Jacobi murmured in my ear. “Come on, Kenneth. Kraach-Captain has laid in everything we need. There is much to plan.”
I let Jacobi lead me away.
Chapter Three Catspaw Gambit
Lies. They made a sour lump in my chest as I stood waiting in Feynman’s airlock.
Control was everything at this point, but it was difficult to stay focused. I thought of my children. My wife. I thought of the cryobox on that huge table back at Blackjack. I thought of Kraach-Captain’s oath, delivered four light-years away. My children’s faces swam in my memory Did little Gretha remember me? She was not so little now, it occurred to me suddenly; it had been four years in absolute time, a few weeks to me.
The damned holocube seemed a massive weight in my inner pocket, reminding me of what was at stake. I could not let any of my children become a plaything in a kzin hunting park. Not even to save elitist, cowardly Herrenmann lives. No choice. So I swallowed my bile and looked at the opening inner lock with false calm.
The hatch to Feynman finished sliding open with a metallic grinding and a blast of compressed air. My little Herrenmann friend stood just inside the lock, a welding laser held meaningfully in his hands. Not much of a weapon, but one that would do the job, yes. His eyes flicked swiftly from side to side, scanning the airlock behind me. A young Herrenmann woman stood near a doorway about ten meters away and watched us intently.
“Ah, Herr Bergen, I presume,” I said, forcing a smile to my lips and tone. Hard to do, but what choice did I have?
Act like Jacobi, yes, perhaps-but don’t become like him.