She'd put something bulky in my zip pocket.
I crawled through the collar into the Jotok's vacuum refuge and zipped the lips closed.
Packer pushed Fly-By-Night into the airlock, closed it, cycled it. His armored companion on the hull pulled the bubble into space. Packer came back for us and cycled us through.
Two bubbles floated outside Odysseus, slowly rotating, slowly diverging. Packer was still in Odysseus.
The boat jerked into motion. We watched as it maneuvered above one of the brick-shaped cargo modules attached to Odysseus. A pressure-armored Kzin stood below, guiding.
Nobody was coming after us.
The Jotok asked, “Martin, was that sane? What were you thinking?” I said, “Pleasemadam, seek interspecies diplomacy plus Kzinti plus Longest War. Run it. Paradoxical, I was thinking of a rescue. I tried to bust you loose. You know more about Fly-By-Night than I could ever learn. I need what you can tell me.”
“You have no authority to question us,” the Jotok said, “unless you hold ARM authority.”
I laughed harder than he would have expected. “I'm not an ARM. No authority at all. Do you want Fly-By-Night freed? Do you want your own freedom?”
“We had that! LE Graynor, when Fly-By-Night bought us from the orange underground market on Shasht, he swore to free us. On Sheathclaws chains of lakes run from mountains to sea. We would have bred in their lakes. All of the Jotoki populace of Sheathclaws would be our descendants. We have been robbed of our destiny!”
I asked, “Did Fly-By-Night take more slaves than just you?”
“No.”
“Then who did you expect to mate with?”
“We are five! Jotoki grow like your eels, not sapient. Reach first maturity, seek each other, cluster in fives. Brains grow links. Reach second maturity, seek a lake, divide, breed and die, like your salmon. LE Mart, you yourselves are two minds joined by a structure called corpus callosum. Join is denser in Kzinti, that species has less redundancy, but still brain is two lobes. We are five lobes, narrow joins. Almost individuals cooperate, Par-Rad-Doc-Sic-Cal, Doc talks, Par walks, Cal for fine-scale coordination. Almost five-lobe mind, sometimes lock in indecision. In trauma or in fresh water we may divide again. May join again to cluster differently, different person. You perceive?” Futz, it was an interesting picture, but I'd never grasp what it was like to be Jotok. The point was that Paradoxical was a breeding population. I asked, “Are you hungry? What do you eat?”
“Privately.”
“Didn't Fly-By-Night see you eat?”
“Only once.”
I'd put a handmeal in my pocket, but I wouldn't eat in front of Paradoxical after that. “Orange market?”
“An extensive market exists among the Shasht Kzinti. They trade intelligence, electronics, stolen goods and slaves. Shasht the continent is nearly lifeless. They seeded several lakes for our breeding and confinement, but without maintenance they die off. The trade could be stopped. Our lakes must show a different color from orbit. I surmise the law has no interest.”
“You once held an interstellar empire—”
“My master tells me so. The slavers don't teach us. Properly speaking, they do not hold slaves at all. They hold fish ponds. When a purchaser wants a Jotok, five swimming forms are allowed to assemble. Our master is the first thing we see.”
“Who chose your name?”
“My master. I am free and slave, many and one, land and sea dweller, a paradox.”
“He really does think in Interworld, doesn't he? They must teach kzinti as a second language.”
A magnetic grapple locked in place, and the first module came free. My pocket computer dinged. We listened:
Longest War, a political entity never named until after the Second War With Men, has since been claimed by many Kzinti groups. It may appear in connection with piracy, disappearing LEs or disappearing ships, but never an action against planets or a major offensive. Claim has been made, never proved, that Longest War are any Patriarch's servants whom the Patriarch must disclaim. We surmise also that the Longest War names any group who hope for the eye of the Patriarch. Events include 2399 Serpent Swarm, 2410 Kdat…
* * *
Fly-By-Night had drifted so far that he was hard to find, just a twinkle of lensed light as starfog glow passed behind his vac refuge. Why didn't they retrieve him? Was it really Fly-By-Night they wanted, or something else? I watched Stealthy-Mating's boat retrieve a second cargo module. They weren't being careful. Two of those boxes held only Fafnir's thousand varieties of fish, but the other… was in a quantum state. It held and did not hold Sharrol/Milcenta and Jenna/Jeena, until some observer could open the module. In all the years I'd flown for Nakamura Lines, I had never seen a vac pack used. Light-years from any world, miles from any ship, with nothing but clear plastic skin between me and the ravenous vacuum… it seemed a good time to look it over.
This wasn't the brand we'd carried. It was newer, or else a more expensive model.
Loops of tough ribbon hung everywhere: handholds. Air tank. A tube two liters in volume had popped out. Inner zip, outer zip: an airlock. We could be fed through that, or get rid of wastes… a matter I would not raise with Paradoxical just yet.
A light. A sleeve and glove taped against the wall, placed to reach the outer zip. Here was a valve… hmm… a valve ending in a little cone outside. Inside, a handle to aim it.
To any refugee there might come a moment when a jet is more important than breathing-air.
Not yet.
“Why would you want to rescue my master?” Paradoxical asked.
“They have my wife and daughter and unborn, one chance out of three. Two out of three they're still safe aboard Odysseus. Would you bet?”
“No Jotok knows his parent. Might you find another mate and generate more children?”
I didn't answer.
“How do you like your battle plan so far?”
I couldn't hear sarcasm, but I inferred it. I said, “I have a spare vac pack. So does Fly-By-Night. Did you see what he did? He triggered a pack on the wall. Kept his own. And Heidi passed me something.”
“What did the girl give you?”
“Might be some kind of toy.”
The Jotok said, “Mee-rowreet means make slaves and beasts go where can be killed. Not Envoy. Whasht-meery means infested or diseased, too rotted or parasitical for even a starving predator. Prey that dies too easily, opponent who exposes belly too soon, is suspect whasht-meery.”
I waited for our spin to hide me from Stealthy-Mating's telescopes before I pulled Heidi's gift free.
It was foam plastic, light and bulky. A toy needle gun. If this was real, her parents… Wait, now, Heidi was almost forty years old!
They wouldn't think quite like human adults, these children, but their brains were as big as they were going to get. Their parents might want them able to protect themselves… and if not, she and her brother had spent decades learning how to manipulate their parents.
I couldn't test it.
“Needle gun. Anesthetic crystals,” I told Paradoxical. “They won't get through armor. One wouldn't knock out a Kzin anyway. Better than nothing, though. Where is Fly-By-Night's w'tsai?”
“You saw.”
“Paradoxical, we are in too much trouble to be playing children's games.” Paradoxical said nothing.
Stealthy-Mating's boat locked on to the third cargo module.
I said, “That was fun to watch, though. Giving Packer silverware!” Paradoxical rotated to show me his mouth.
I saw a star of tentacles around a circle of lip enclosing five circles of tiny teeth in a pentagon. Something emerged from one circle of teeth. Paradoxical vomited up a long, narrow, padded mailing bag. I pulled it free, unzipped it, and had a yard of blade and handle.
The blade looked like dark steel. The light caught a minute ripple effect… but it was all wrong. To my fingertip's touch the ripple was just a picture. The blade weighed almost nothing. The weight was all in the h
andle.
In the end of the hilt was a small black enamel bat. Bats exist only on Earth and in the zoo on Jinx, but that ancient Batman symbol has gone to every human world. Fly by night.
Futz, I had to try it on something.
My lockstep ring had a silver case. That's a soft metal, but the blade only scratched it. I tested my thumb on the edge, gingerly. Blunt.
Customs change. A weapon can be purely ceremonial… but why make the handle so heavy? Why was Paradoxical watching me?
Because it was a puzzle.
Push the enamel bat. Nothing.
Wiggle the blade. Push it in, risk my fingers, feel it give. A Kzin could push harder. Nothing? Pull out, and my fingertips felt a hum. The look of the blade didn't change. Carefully now, don't touch the edge…
It sliced neatly through my lockstep ring, with a moment's white sputter as circuitry burned out. The cut edges of the classic silver band shone like little mirrors. There should have been some resistance.
A variable-knife is violently illegal: hair-fine wire in a magnetic field, all edge and no blade, thin enough to slice through walls and machinery. Often enough it hurts the wielder. When it's off it's all handle, and the handle is heavy: it holds the coiled wire and the mag generator.
This toy was similar, but with a blade of fixed length, harder to hide. More sporting. A groove around the edge housed the wire until magnets raised it for action.
The onyx bat was recessed now. I pushed and it popped out. The vibration stopped.
We had a weapon.
What was keeping Packer? They had the telepath, they had hostages, they had two modules of Fafnir seafood. What was left to do in there? Get on with it. I had a weapon!
“Wait before you use it. I know my master,” the Jotok said. “He will take command of the boat. The larger ship is weaponless against it.”
“Paradoxical, he'd be fighting at least three warriors trained in free fall. Don't forget the pilots. Four if we get as far as the ship.”
“Whasht-meery may currently be on autopilot or remote. Possession of armor does not imply training. Fly-By-Night was a champion wrestler before he was injured. We fear you're right. But we must try!”
“Wrestler?”
“He tells me they fight with capped claws on Sheathclaws.”
Somehow I was not reassured.
Packer emerged.
He and his companion jetted toward Fly-By-Night's bubble. They pulled Fly-By-Night toward the boat. Clamshell doors opened around the snout of the solenoid weapon. The three disappeared inside.
I safed and wrapped the w'tsai and gave it to the Jotok. He swallowed it, and the needler after it. He must have a straight gut… five straight guts, I thought, like fish or worms all merged at the head.
The two armored Kzinti came for us. They towed us toward the boat. The boat was a thick lens, like Odysseus but smaller. The modules were anchored against one side. The other side was two transparent clamshell doors with the hollow solenoid sticking out between them.
The doors closed over us.
The interior had been arrayed around the solenoid weapon. There were lockers. Hatch in the floor, a smaller airlock. A kitchen wall big enough for a cruise ship, with a gaping intake hopper. A big box, detachable, with a door in it. I took that for a shower/washroom. I didn't see a hologram stage or a mass pointer.
Mechanisms fed into the base of the main weapon. A feed for projectiles? The thing didn't just burn out electronics, it was a linear accelerator too, a cannon.
Fly-By-Night's vacuum refuge had been wedged between the cannon and the wall. He watched us.
The doors came down and now our balloon was wedged next to his. Gravity came on. Stealthy-Mating's crew anchored us with a spray of glue, while a third Kzin watched from the horseshoe of a workstation. The two took their places beside him.
Four chairs; three Kzinti all in pressure suit armor. There was no separate cabin because they might have to work the cannon. It could have been worse. They talked for a bit, mobile mouths snarling at each other inside fishbowl helmets. They fiddled with the controls. A sound of tigers fighting blasted from Paradoxical's backpack vest. My translator murmured, “So, Telepath! Welcome back to the Patriarch's service.”
Two or three seconds of silence followed. In that moment Odysseus abruptly shrank to a toy and was gone. Disturbing eddies played through our bodies. The boat must be making twenty or thirty gravities, but it had good shielding. This was a warcraft.
Their prisoner decided to answer. “You honor me. You may call me LE Fly-By-Night.”
“Honored you should be, Telepath, but your credit as a Legal Entity is forged, a telepath has no name, and Fly-By-Night is only a description, and in Interworld, too! Still you will command a harem before we do. We should envy you.” That voice was Envoy's.
“Call me Fly-By-Night if I am expected to answer. Does the Patriarch still make addicts of any who show the talent?”
“You have hibernated for three centuries? We use advanced medical techniques in this age. Chemical mimic of sthondat lymph, six syllable name, more powerful, few side effects, diet additives to minimize those.”
A second Kzin voice said, “You need not taste the drug yourself, Telepath, by my alpha officer's word.”
“Only my poor kits, then. But how well do Kzinti keep each other's promises? I know that Odysseus was disabled despite all reassurance.”
What? Fly-By-Night had no way to know that. I was only guessing, and his vac refuge had floated further from Odysseus than our own.
But Envoy said, “All follows the Covenants sworn with men at Shasht. That was my assurance, and it is good.”
“Do those allow you to maroon a Legal Entity ship in deep space?”
“Summon them. Read them.”
“My servant carries my computer and disk library.”
The pilot tapped; we heard a click, then silence.
Paradoxical turned off his talker. “We can use this to speak to my master, but they may listen. What can you say that those oversized intestinal parasites may hear too?”
“Right now, nothing. Thrusters were yours first, weren't they? Called the gravity planer?”
“Jotoki created gravity planers, yes. Kzinti enslaved us and stole the design. Your folk stole it from Kzinti invaders.”
“Is there anything you know about thrusters that they don't? Something that might help?”
“No. Idiot. What we learned of gravity motors, we learned from Kzinti!”
“Futz—”
“I had thought,” Paradoxical said carefully, “that they would not keep their control room in vacuum.”
“Their hostages are all frozen. Can't fight. Can't escape. Maybe they like that? Anything we try now would leave us dying in vacuum. How long can a Jotok stand vacuum?”
“A few seconds, then death.”
“Humans can take a few minutes.” Humans had, and survived. It was rare. “I might go blind first. Do you mind if I think out loud for a bit?”
“Do you talk to yourself to move messages across that narrow structure in your brain, the corpus callosum?”
“I have no idea.” So I talked across my corpus callosum. “This is bad, but it could be worse. We might have been in a separate cargo hold, still in vacuum and locked out of a flight cabin.”
“Rejoice.”
“I thought I wouldn't have to worry about Odysseus. The ship's on a free fall course around Turnpoint Star, through the Gap and into free space. They still had hyperdrive and hyperwave and the attitude jets, last I saw. Attitude jets are just fusion reaction motors. That won't take them anywhere. Hyperdrive only works in flat space, so it won't get them into a solar system. They could still cross to Home system, call for help and get a tow. Two weeks?”
“Envoy said all of that to Captain Preiss. Wait—but—stop—didn't Envoy confess otherwise?”
“I heard. Futz.” Fly-By-Night had done that very cleverly. But Envoy hadn't confessed; he had only insisted that he had
not violated the Covenants. “We'd better assume Packer shot up the control board. That would leave Odysseus as an inert box of hostages. Leave them falling. Retrieve them later.” Paradoxical said nothing.
“Next problem. Fly-By-Night can't get out of his refuge.”
“Surely—”
“No, look, he can't slash his way out. He's got only his claws. He can zip it open. All the air spews out, and now he can try to get through the opening. He's too big. He'd die in vacuum while he was trying to wiggle free with those three laughing at him.”
“Yes. Less than flexible, human and Kzinti. Are you small enough to get through the collar?”
“Yes.” I was pretty sure. “Now, we can't warn Fly-By-Night. Any fighting, I'll have to start it. You're dead if I slash the refuge open, so I don't. I unzip it. Air pressure blows me out, poof. You zip it behind me quick so the refuge re-inflates. I'm in vacuum. I slash Fly-By-Night's refuge wide open and hand him the w'tsai. We're both fighting in vacuum against three Kzinti in pressure armor. How does it sound?”
“Beyond madness.”
“There's no point anyway. If we could take the boat, we still couldn't break lightspeed, because the hyperdrive motor is on the ship. We'd die of old age here in the Nursery Nebula.”
“You don't have a plan?”
I was still feeling it out. “The only way out has us waiting for these bandits to berth the boat to Stealthy-Mating. Maybe it's a good thing Fly-By-Night doesn't have his w'tsai. Kzinti self-control is… there's a word—”
“Oxymoron. But my master integrates selves well.”
“They'll have to move the cargo modules inside the ship. Can't leave them where they are, they're blocking the magnets, the docking points. Where does that leave us? Whatever we do, we want the ship and the boat. After they berth the boat, likely enough they'll still leave the cabin in vacuum and us in these bubbles.”
“My kind can survive six days without food. Two without water.”
Two of the Kzinti crew might have been asleep. The third wasn't doing much. One presently stirred—Envoy, by his suit markings—got up and disappeared into the big box with a door in it. Fifteen minutes later he was back. Wouldn't a shower or a toilet have to be under pressure?
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