"They say we're for coming out and behaving ourselves. Guns are locked on to us. If they have to come and fetch us, we're for eating alive. If we behave and answer their questions, they'll let us die first. I said we weren't for eating."
The speaker appeared to be having trouble swallowing that one. It took it a good few moments before it spoke.
"It says all life is food. What shall I tell it?"
"Say we'll give it indigestion," said Pausert. "Tell it it would be very wise to help us fix the damage it did to our ship and let us go."
There was a longer pause. Then another burst of croaks and clicks. "It wants to know how we know the holy language. And it says we're for coming out now because they will start opening the ship up with lasers if we don't. What do we do, Captain?"
Pausert took a deep breath. "Go out, I reckon. If they open up with those space-cannon, they can cut the old
Venture
's hull open like paper."
"And then?"
"I wish I knew. But we'll work it out. We have to," said Pausert with a confidence he did not feel. He could protect them all with the klatha force cocoon that he'd learned to make, except he'd also have to remain at liberty to free them later. But it was plain the Megair Cannibals wanted them alive, at least at the moment. They wanted to ask them questions. Well, Pausert had a few himself. And he still had a few tricks up his sleeve. His gambler's instinct said that going out of the
Venture
was dangerous, but less dangerous than staying here would be. "Tell them we're coming. Tell them the ship is booby trapped, and to leave it alone. And then let's go."
So they collected the very nervous Mebeckey, and the less nervous Vezzarn. "What about the other young lady?" asked Mebeckey.
"Gone back where she came from," said Pausert.
"Ah." Mebeckey looked relieved only for a minute. "They'll find her. We should have fought."
"You leave the decisions to me," said Pausert, aware that something invisible had taken his hand. He gave it a brief squeeze. And he relled the baby vatch too. Well, it would probably enjoy them being eaten. After all, it described people by taste. He had a feeling that that didn't mean quite the same thing to vatches, though.
They opened the airlock and lowered the gangway. Megair 4 was, if anything, more bleak and miserable in reality than it was on the viewscreens. That was quite an achievement, Pausert thought. The gray-skinned Cannibal squad that came across to the
Venture
at a dogtrot seemed unperturbed by it. Other than small leather loincloths and belts plainly intended for the weaponry that dangled from them, the Cannibals wore nothing but a layer of wetness. They didn't even seem to notice being wet, let alone the chill breeze. The bulbous things in their hands were plainly guns of some sort, Pausert decided.
The lead gray-face spoke in their odd code of croaks.
"What did he say? Come this way, we have a nice fire and hot drinks, while we fix your ship?" said Pausert, with an attempt at a smile.
"He said 'Meat, walk or be butchered,' " said the Leewit.
"Nice people, the Megair Cannibals," said Pausert sardonically.
"Yeah. Can I whistle at him? Just a little? I've got one you can't actually hear. Does some neat stuff."
"Save it for whoever sent him."
The Leewit wrapped her hand in his other one. He had a Karres witch on both sides now. "You have some pretty good ideas sometimes, Captain," she said.
Escorted by the gray squad of Megair Cannibals, they walked across towards the pill-box-studded hill. As they got closer, the squad leader gave a whistle of his own. A complicated one. It might have been less destructive than the Leewit's, but it did make two massive doors set into the front of the hill slide open. They walked forward into the dim green-lit passage. "Cheerful looking place, isn't it, Captain?" said Vezzarn, his sharp little eyes darting about, taking in details.
The walls were a polished stone, smooth, but with regular panels of intricate carvings to shoulder height. Above that, the constructors seemed to have run out of patience and just roughly hewed it. "I'm surprised they don't try to market it as a vacation destination," said Pausert as they came to a halt in front of yet another massive door. The leader of the squad whistled again with a slightly different series of notes.
That door opened. Inside, on couches that looked as if they might be carved from stone, lounged several of the gray-skinned ones—only these all wore collars of leather, ornamented with hanging bits of bone, spreading out onto their chests.
The escorts licked their sharp teeth and bowed their heads respectfully.
The croak and whistle ensued.
"He says the meat has been brought for the masters of devouring," whispered the Leewit. "He says the little one is for his share."
"If he tries, you can do as much whistling as you please," said the captain quietly.
One of those who lounged about looked rather like the one who had spoken to them earlier. He grunted something that was plainly a curt dismissal.
The squad leader paused briefly and snarled. And then hastily turned away, backed off to the doorway, and waited.
The high Megair Cannibals stared at them, red-eyed and unblinking. Then one of them spoke imperiously.
"What's he say?" asked the captain.
"He says they have waited to capture one of our kind for a long time. We're for answering questions. He wants to know: Why are we keeping them from their prey?"
"What?"
The Megair Cannibal leader let loose with another collection of grunts and whistles and a small shriek.
"He says they're for examining our ship and finding out how we cannot be shot. He says he's for driving us out of the Megair cluster. He says we're for talking, spilling all our secrets. He says they're for destroying us."
Pausert rubbed his forehead. "Great Patham! Has he ever got the wrong end of the stick. They must think we're the one of the Phantoms. Tell him that, please."
The Leewit let loose with her own collection of grunts, whistles and shrieks. And got a reply that Pausert guessed the content of by the tone, even before the Leewit translated.
"He's not for believing us," said the Leewit. "He says put us in the fattening pens. They're for examining the ship and finding our secret. And for dining on one of us tonight. Alive."
Goth found no-shape in the rain was actually one of the most difficult things she had ever had to do. Light was easy enough to bend around her. But the constant, moving raindrops meant that there appeared to be a Goth-shaped piece of rain doing the wrong thing. She had to light-shift raindrops onto it. It was tiring and took a lot of concentration.
Going inside the Megair fortress was at least a relief from that. Of course no-shape had its usual problems there too. People didn't know you were there, and the entire burden of avoiding collisions fell on you. Not to mention the fact that nothingness should not leave wet footprints. Fortunately, those mingled nicely with the rest of the wet footprints. She seriously considered the possibility of becoming, via light-shift, one of the guards. But it was the Leewit who could understand them and speak their language, not her.
Besides, this place was making her feel really, really weird. As if she was having some kind of hallucination. She worked out what it was, after a time. It was touching the walls. Peculiar . . . hope. Abject terror. Small furry animals with too many limbs . . .
Goth shook herself. She didn't have time for this right now. She held the captain's hand and walked into the chamber full of Megair muck-a-mucks, lounging about and staring.
She let go of the captain's hand and moved about, exploring the room. Always learn as much about your opponent as possible, Threbus said.
There was a limited amount to be learned here, other than the fact that the ceiling was quite low. She noticed that the guards had to stoop slightly. This was plainly just a meeting room. All she could say, feeling the surface of the couches, was that the Megair Cannibals didn't go in for creature comforts much. They were exactly what they looked like. Stone. Carefully indented, polished and carved stone, but still as hard as rock. The only other things the room contained of interest were vast screens up on one wall. They appeared to show the map of Megair 4 and tiny moving lights—presumably atmospheric craft—moving across its face.
She listened to the Leewit's translation of the croaks and whistles, and the last comment.
She was lucky not to be cut when the vast screens shattered and fell into fragments. Looking at the Leewit's face, Goth was sure that it had been one of her newest whistles, and that she was quite pleased with it.
The Megair Cannibals weren't. There was a lot of noise, shouting, croaking and yelling—but the end result was two things. One was that Goth got knocked tail over teakettle by a running Megair Cannibal guard. The other was that the prisoners were hustled out of there.
It took Goth a few moments to get to her feet and try to set off after them, only to discover the heavy doors of the Megair bunker had shut.
They plainly thought they were under attack, realized Goth. Well, they were. Just not in the way they thought.
She had a long and fairly boring wait before she could set off to look for the others. That was when things got really complicated, as she realized that she had absolutely no idea where they'd been taken. She was alone inside the Megair mound with the locals running about as if they were a colony of ants stirred up by a big stick. To make matter worse, she couldn't understand a word—or a croak or a click or a whistle—that they were saying. And no-shape meant keeping out of their way. Eventually she got tired of it. She found a quiet corner and light-shifted to look like one of the lordly ones who had questioned them, complete with the thoracic collar of wire and finger-bones. She found the other Megair Cannibals avoided her. That helped in some respects. It just didn't get her any closer to finding the others. She went deeper. Found some strange places—a vast indoor arena—she wouldn't have thought that the Megair Cannibals were in the least interested in the performing arts, as Dame Ethy would have put it—and other rooms with loot that she recognized—a fire control center, plainly using looted computer elements that must have come from ships plying Empire space. A communications center. Other areas were more mysterious. And the lower she went down the ramps, the more Megair Cannibals there were with the same collars. After a while it occurred to her why. In most places, deeper was where the dungeons were. Here, deeper was where it was safer and warmer—for the more important people. Here, the prisoners would not be deeper . . . they'd be shallower . . . or even outside.
And that was where she eventually found them.
Outside, in the rain.
They had been provided with a roof and walls. Well, one wall.
And an ample supply of vegetables. Lots of starches to fatten them up.
Captain Pausert, too, had expected to be taken down to a cell, somewhere in the bowels of the mound. He had not expected to be marched back outside.
They were taken to an enclosure on the edge of the swamp.
As prison camps went, it was not particularly bad. There were no watchtowers or huge fences. There was a wall, with an overhanging roof on the inside, but it wasn't particularly impressive.
They were pushed in through the gate. The enclosure was quite large, but they didn't have it entirely to themselves. There was certainly room for a thousand people inside. At the moment, though, it held just three men. They looked at Pausert and his companions with the lifeless eyes of those whom hope had deserted, although they were still alive. They didn't bother to get up or even say anything as they lounged against the wall underneath a makeshift awning that kept off the rain.
Other than the three, there were stacks of vegetable matter in troughs next to the wall. Spigots protruded above that.
The gate clanged shut behind them.
"I suppose we might as well get out of the rain," said Pausert. A cold trickle was making its way down his neck. So they moved under the awning. The three old prisoners stared at the newcomers. They still hadn't said anything.
"What's wrong with you?" demanded the Leewit. "Don't you known how to talk?"
"What's there to talk about?" replied one of the men, shrugging. He was short and squat and covered with spectacular tattoos. The other two were rather alike—tall men with deep-sunken eyes. They were skinny to the point of being emaciated.
The Leewit planted hands on her hips and scowled. "Well, you might say: 'Hello, where are you from and when are we leaving?' "
The tattooed man shook his head gloomily. "You only leave here to get eaten, kid. And you don't want to get to know people too well. Then you get to thinking about it too much."
"Huh!" said the Leewit. "You are a bunch of losers. We're getting out of here and going home, see."
"This is Megair, kid. There's no way out and there's nothing you can do about it."
"I know that accent," said Vezzarn. "You're from Na'kalauf, aren't you?"
The tattooed man showed the first sign of emotion. Sadness. "Yes. I'd rather not think about it."
"We'll get you back there," said Pausert, taken aback. Na'kalauf wrestlers were famous. The small planet did not have much in the way of resources, but its men hired out as bodyguards and bouncers across the Empire. They were famed for their courage, their skill at unarmed combat—and their swirling tattoos. Those were part advertisement, and part warning.
"We're breaking out of here soon." He thought of the threat. "Before this evening."
The prisoner shrugged. "Good luck. The back wall is easiest."
"What's wrong with you?" demanded Pausert, exasperated by the man's behavior. "And what's your name, anyway?"
"The name's Ta'zara. And there's nothing wrong with me except being here," said the tattooed man. "If you climb that pole, you can get onto the roof and over into the swamps easy enough."
The pole in question was not much of a challenge to the Leewit or Pausert. The wall beyond was not very high either. Pausert could certainly reach the top of it.