Objects were hitting the cabin floor, and Diamond said, “Are you putting Good in that sack?”
“No, Diamond. You are.”
The monkey said, “Bad. Bad, shitty bad.”
Noises built a picture. Quest listened to a battle that ended with one loud bite, and what might have been bone snapped. But then the monkey was inside the sack, cursing and sobbing at the same time.
“Show me,” said the papio.
“No.”
The man laughed. “I’ve seen that kind of marvel before. You’ll have a fine new thumb soon enough.”
The boy didn’t talk.
Metal objects were moved.
“What is that?” Diamond asked.
“A cooler.”
“What’s inside it?”
“Dry ice.”
“Why?”
“Trousers,” said the man.
“What?”
“Let your trousers fall.”
“No.”
There was a pause, brief and tense. Then the man asked, “Do you think that I want to do this? I don’t. I don’t at all. But I have orders. We need pieces of you for study. I’ll take them and place them carefully in this cooler, and everything will grow back quickly enough, I promise.”
“No,” Diamond said.
The man tried to laugh. Then he tried to sound angry disapproving. “It won’t hurt any worse than your thumb hurt. And how bad was that?”
Diamond was breathing quickly.
“Or maybe I should settle for taking your thumb,” said the man. “Here. Let me kill the monkey and cut him open.”
“No.”
“What I want looks a little bit like a thumb, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t,” said the boy.
“Trousers,” the man said.
Silence.
The man said, “Now.”
“All right,” said Diamond.
Quickly, without a sloppy step, Quest ran. She was a quiver of light racing across the ship’s skin, hurrying toward the shop. Every big door had been closed and secured, but there were hatches for emergencies and vents to push fumes out of the close spaces. She slipped inside the first vent. Fear didn’t exist. Without hesitation and very little caution, she slipped into a big noisy room smelling of tree-walkers and the papio. Only the papio were visible. Three whiffbirds were being refueled, and that’s what she needed. Quest wanted energy and mass, and the odors of the living couldn’t hide the sweet fragrances of dead meat.
A storage closet was closed but not locked.
Nobody noticed the door open briefly. Inside that small dark space, dead tree-walkers had been stacked on the floor. They were in pieces. Quest looked for living faces and found none, and then she eased her way down to the carnage, ready to battle any kind of revulsion for what was to come next.
But there was no revulsion.
She dissolved one of her shells and made a mouth.
Two bites told her what she had always suspected: humans tasted exactly like monkeys.
“I don’t feel good,” Seldom said.
“Are you throwing up?” Elata asked.
“Not yet.”
The prisoners were jammed inside the galley. Bountiful’s crew sat in the back, shoulder to shoulder. Only the pilot and captain were missing, presumably helping the papio fly their stolen ship through the night-bound wilderness. The first table was half-empty, reserved for the children and Master Nissim, for Tar`ro and Merit. The galley wasn’t built for papio. A giant woman was squatting in front of the door, and three glowering males were jammed inside the kitchen, guns behind the long counter.
“Are you ill, or are you scared?” asked the papio woman.
“He’s scared,” said Karlan.
“You shouldn’t be,” she said. “Nobody lifts a hand, unless you give us cause.”
“I won’t,” Seldom promised.
“Then you are spectacularly safe.”
Seldom was sitting between his brother and Elata, arms wrapped around his aching belly, his back to the guards. He was a stick next to Karlan, but there was no denying the resemblance in their faces, in the eyes and noses and the shape of their mouths. They had never looked more like brothers.
Karlan was the only prisoner whose hands were tied. He liked that. There was an honor in the caution, and he picked up his thick wrists, studying the sharp brown cords that were already cutting into the flesh.
“So you’re taking us to the reef,” said Tar`ro.
The guards said nothing.
Nissim and Tar`ro were facing the children, facing the kitchen. Merit had been told to sit alone at the far end at the table, closest to the woman soldier.
“I’ve never walked the reef,” Tar`ro said.
“I have,” Seldom said, and then he smiled at the memory, momentarily forgetting his bellyache.
“Flying the canopy at night,” Merit said. “That’s a tough game.”
The ship’s crew made concurring sounds.
“I hope we don’t snag a sneaky branch,” he said.
The male papio didn’t know the language, and they didn’t approve of any noise. One of them said something harsh to the woman, and showing her canines, she said a papio phrase to him.
“What did she say?” Elata asked Nissim.
The Master and Merit glanced at each other, neither answering.
The papio woman had a quiet, careful laugh. “Wanting this and wanting that don’t matter, I said. Orders have been given, and we are walking the path.”
Elata squirmed against the steel seat. “But why take all of us? If you want Diamond, put him inside a whiffbird and fly home.”
Merit knew why but decided to keep quiet.
“Whiffbirds can’t fly far,” Seldom said.
Karlan snorted. “But they can refuel from Bountiful’s tanks. They’re probably doing that right now.”
His tiny brother squinted at nothing. “Yeah, I forgot.”
The woman papio shifted, letting her weight find a little more comfort. “I’m brave,” she said, “but I wouldn’t risk such a trip. Night inside a little craft is too dangerous. A rotor clips one branch, and the mission ends. And if we sit still and wait for daylight before launching, then your people would enthusiastically shoot down the whiffbird before it’s home, and that would be a terrible loss for the world.”
Nobody spoke.
“You see, we believe the boy is precious,” she said. “And we aren’t like you, killing ourselves while trying to murder him.”
Seldom let loose a moan.
“Let me take him to the toilet,” said Elata.
“No,” said the woman. Then she spoke to the other guards, and a cooking pot was found under the counter. One guard handed it to her, wanting nothing to do with the prisoners, and she kicked it along the floor, putting it under his seat. “Heave into that bucket.”
“Throw up in front of people?” he asked unhappily.
“Do it,” she said.
Always agreeable, Seldom bent down, and his last two meals spilled out into the bright steel pot.
Elata patted her friend on the back.
To nobody in particular, Tar`ro said, “Thunderflies.”
The Master nodded.
“Know of any chrysalises sitting around in easy reach?” Tar`ro asked.
Merit looked at the two men, curious now.
“Not so far,” said Nissim. “How about you?”
“No. But I’ll keep hunting.”
The papio understood none of that. But the woman was suspicious enough to say, “Be quiet now.”
“Sorry,” Tar`ro said.
Merit took a breath, and then against the rules, he stood.
“Sit down,” said the woman.
In papio, Merit said, “No, I will not.”
“Sit down,” she repeated, in papio.
He shook his head. “Shoot me.”
The male guards were willing. The woman studied the old tree-walker, planning where she would slap him and what would break if she used force.
A solitary thud came from some distant part of the ship.
Nobody inside the galley noticed.
“My son won’t be safe with your people either,” Merit said, shifting back to the prisoners’ language.