My mother left with the slowboats. In the chaos of the invasion, I ended up as indentured labor.
I looked back up at Kraach-Captain. “Yes,” I said. “My… fathers… did battle with Heroes at that time.”
His huge eyes were searching my face again. Apparently he was familiar enough with humans to at least attempt to read expressions. “You seem a clever beast. Perhaps you shall be allowed to live.”
I said nothing, eyes partially averted. It was safer not to volunteer anything to a kzin, unless an actual question was asked. Part of me was surprised at how quickly I recalled the manners appropriate to staying alive around a kzin. Slave manners were reemerging, a hated reflex.
“I have need of a slave-human—one with knowledge of the feral-human ways,” the kzin added.
“Dominant One,” I said slowly and distinctly, hating the servility, hating my desire to keep on breathing, “Jacobi is much wiser in the ways of the feral-humans.” Jacobi sucked in his breath.
The old kzin looked at me for a moment, blinking. Then he coughed ratcat laughter, licking his thin black lips with a lolling tongue. “Most amusing, human. Jacobi is crippled. Worse than a cull from the sickliest litter of the most lowborn monkey. Useless for a Valiant One’s plan.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“The Jacobi-beast will now explain to you my Hero’s plan. You will serve me in its execution, indeed you will.” Kraach-Captain began to methodically groom his pelt. Chinese parasol ears unfolded to listen better.
Jacobi leaned closer. “Kraach-Captain wishes to regain his full Name. He has permission from the Conquest Governor to take a small troopship to one of the slowboats on the way back to Sol.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. The slowboats were almost to Sol by now. The ratcats could have destroyed them at any time. For some reason, they had chosen not to bother. Perhaps it just wasn’t worth their time to do so. Why now, when the costs would be significant?
He didn’t respond to my reaction, just continued emotionlessly, refusing to look at me. “The kzin have gotten bloodied trying to penetrate Sol’s perimeter defense. Kraach-Captain wants to put a crack force of kzinti and weaponry inside a commandeered slowboat. He will then use the slowboat in a surprise attack on perimeter defenses, allowing a follow-on kzin fleet into solar space.” Jacobi paused. “A Trojan Cat, as it were.”
Shock kept my voice low. “You Judas!”
Kraach-Captain stopped grooming for a moment and looked at me closely. Perhaps I had raised my voice a bit after all. He scented the air wetly and rumbled.
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 R. 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.”