Mjipa scrambled up, to see the Krishnans rush out the door and slam it. He heard heavy bolts shot. Behind him the same voice said in English:
"Good God! Aren't you Percy Mjipa, whom I met in Baianch?"
Mjipa turned, wincing and limping from the bruises. There stood Alicia Dyckman, a slender young woman of a little over average height—just under 170 centimeters. She had honey-blond hair and blue eyes. White men, Mjipa thought sourly, would doubtless find her the most beautiful thing on two legs. Her well-defined cheek bones, her narrow nose with a tiny up-tilt at the end, and her delicately-refined features were just what Caucasoids found attractive in advertisements and on the cinematic screen. These features made little impression on Mjipa, whose ideas of feminine beauty, formed in his youth in Botswana, were different.
Barefoot, Alicia was clad in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and shorts. The garments were not very clean, and a pocket of the shirt was torn to uselessness.
Mjipa looked around. The room was about four by six meters—the interior part of it. A similar area extended out from the house into the palace gardens. Metal bars, upholding a roof, walled in this section. A system of curtains and blinds, now rolled up against the ceiling, divided the indoor and outdoor parts of the apartment.
A low bed with a wooden frame criss-crossed with rope stood in one corner. Another corner was occupied by an inclosure of rough boards, through the door of which Mjipa could see the crude Khaldonian equivalent of bathroom accessories. A simple bench completed the furnishings.
Mjipa's glance around took but seconds. He said: "Yes, I'm Mjipa."
"But how—why—"
"I was sent here to rescue you, but now it looks as if they'd have to send someone to rescue both of us."
"You poor darling! Why should Khorosh throw you in here, too? Mostly they 're pretty careful how they treat Terran officials. Don't you have diplomatic immunity?"
"These blokes never heard of it. For that matter," said Mjipa, "why has he chucked you in chokey? Did you provoke him, as you seem to have done Vuzhov and Ainkhist?"
"I didn't have time to do anything. I had hardly arrived when Khorosh's people seized me and put me in here."
"Didn't they give any reason?"
"Oh, Khorosh visited me. He said he wanted to study a Terran in depth, because he was sure we were his enemies, who would try to conquer and exploit his people."
"Sounds as if he'd been reading Earthly history."
"Perhaps he had. He thinks of us as the same as the European empire-builders of the nineteenth century."
"Or Muhammad's Arabs or Caesar's Romans; it's all the same thing. Neither Bill Kennedy nor I ever had an imperialistic thought; but how do we know what the policy at Novorecife will be a hundred years hence?"
"Well, perhaps. But do you see those holes in the ceiling?" She pointed. "That's so Khorosh or his minions can peer down to watch us. That's why I insisted on a private bathroom and finally talked them into making one." She indicated the inclosure. "It sometimes pays to be a talker; I think they built it so as not to have to listen to my complaints any more. But what about you?"
"If Khorosh were human, I'd call him a bloody paranoid, who can't brook the slightest disagreement. Besides— ahem—" Mjipa stared at the ground. "If I understood him—my Khaldoni isn't very good, and when they rattle it at me I get lost—anyway, I think he said he wanted to learn if your race and mine were—ah—interfertile."
Alicia stared, then burst into laughter. "You mean, he wants to see us fuck and find out what comes of it?"
Mjipa visibly winced. Alicia said: "Oh, come, Percy, don't tell me I've shocked a big, strong, experienced man like you?"
"In Botswana, among my kind of people," said Mjipa stiffly, "ladies don't use such language. But you Americans can do as you like."
"Well, I'll call it coition or sexual congress or carnal knowledge, if it'll make you happier. Anyhow, these people seem to have a glimmering of the distinction between species and varieties. I'm afraid—"
The bolts clanked, and the door opened. A pair of shaven-headed Zhamanacians, backed by armed guards, stepped gingerly into the room. One tossed in a rolled-up pallet; the other, Mjipa's duffel bag. They backed out and slammed and bolted the door.
"Excuse me," said Mjipa, unfastening his bag. He went through the contents with experienced hands and straightened up. "God damn these bloody natives! The beggars took out every piece of metal—everything they think I might use to get out of here. They even took my razor." Mjipa angrily stuffed tobacco into his pipe, started to light it, then waved it at Alicia. "Mind?"
"Not a bit," she said. Mjipa lit the pipe and sent out a vast cloud of smoke. Alicia continued:"Then you'll have to grow a beard, that's all."
"Trouble is, my whiskers are as sparse as a Krishnan's, so they'll look like hell."
"They did the same sort of thing with me. I can't even mend my clothes, because they wouldn't leave me my sewing kit. Do you still have your longevity pills? I'm nearly out of mine."
"Yes, here are my LPs, thank Bákh. So we shan't grow old and die at a mere seventy as our poor forebears did. But about this daft idea of Khorosh's—"
"Don't look at me with the lust light in your eyes, Percy! I don't care for it. I didn't bring any contraceptive pills or devices with me; I knew I was safe from pregnancy while I was alone among Krishnans, even if I got raped. That hasn't happened yet, thank goodness."
"You mean, because you're not interfertile with Krishnans. I must tell you of Fergus Reith's interplanetary romance, which hinged on just that point."
"And I'm certainly not going to bear a stranger's child," she added, "just to please the local raja's curiosity."
"Oh, please, Miss Dyckman—Doctor Dyckman, I should say—"
" 'Alicia' is what you should say, or 'Lish' for short."
"Very well, if you insist, Alicia. I assure you I had no such intention. No reflection on you, my dear; it's just that I try to live up to my own standards."
"Good for you! But how shall we get out otherwise?"
"Better lower our voices in talking about escape."
"Oh, I don't think so," she said. "I've tried these people on all the Terran tongues I know, and none seems to know a word of any. But if you start tinkering with the door or sawing the bars outside, they'll see you through those holes."
"Do they have somebody watching through them all the time? Does Khorosh himself watch?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. But when I started poking around to see if there was a way I could dig myself out, they quickly knew what I was up to. They made me go a day without food or water as punishment."
"Bastards," growled Mjipa. Moodily he unrolled his pallet and spread it on the floor across the room from Alicia's bed. "We need some sort of commando raid from Novorecife. But how to get word? By the time they heard, the station will be run by that drunken ass Glumelin, so nothing will be done. If they send one more man, Khorosh'll just toss him into bridewell as he did us. Are we the first Terrans Khorosh has given a rough time?"
"N-no," said Alicia. "I heard a missionary named Hanson or something got into trouble for preaching against the local polytheism."
"His name was Jensen," said Mjipa. "An American like you. Last year a package reached Novorecife via the Mejrou Qurardena. When they opened it, they found a wooden cask and inside that the head of the Reverend Jensen, packed in salt."
"Ugh! How dreadful!"
"One gets used to that sort of thing. We knew Jensen had been missionarying in the South, but there was no return address on the package. Now I see what happened. Serves the idiot right."
"You don't like missionaries?"
"They give us consulars a hell of a time, trying on one hand to keep the fools out of trouble and on the other, when they get into it, to pacify the Terran governments they come from. But I come by my anti-missionary prejudice honestly. Back in the 1880s, a chap named Hepburn came from Britain and converted the baMangwato. That was in the days of Kgama the Great, and the two worked together. Of course, Hepburn and his fellow Christers did some good things, like emancipating the slave tribes and the Bushmen.