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Obedience had been drilled into Teerts his whole life long. His captor might be a savage, but he spoke as one who had the right to command. Almost instinctively, the flight leader responded to his tone. “May I speak?” he asked, as humbly as if he were addressing a shiplord.
“Hai,” the Nipponese said, a word Teerts did not understand. As if realizing that, the Tosevite abandoned his own jargon. “Speak, speak.”
“Thank you, exalted male.” With no notion of the officer’s rank, Teerts laid the honorifics on with a trowel. “Without asking where, exalted male, do you have places in which you keep your captives from the Race?”
The Nipponese showed his teeth. Among the Big Uglies, Teerts knew, that was a gesture of amiability, not amusement The officer, however, looked not the least bit amiable. He said, “You prisoner now. No one care what happen to you.”
“Forgive me, exalted male, but I do not understand. You Tosevites”-Teerts carefully did not say Big Uglies-“take prisoners in your own wars and mostly treat them well. Is it just to use us so differently from your own?”
“Not do so,” the Nipponese officer answered. “Be prisoner go against bushido.” The word was in Nipponese. The officer explained it: “Against way of fighting male. Proper fighting male die before become prisoner. Become prisoner, not deserve to live. Become-how you say? — sport for those who catch.”
“That’s-” Teerts caught himself before he blurted out insane. “That’s not the way most other Tosevites act.”
“They fools, idiots. We Nipponese, we-how you say? — people of the emperor. Our way right, proper. Same family rule us two thousand five hundred year.” He drew himself up as if that paltry figure were a matter for pride. Teerts didn’t think it wise to point out that the Emperors’ family had ruled the Race for fifty thousand years, which was twenty-five thousand revolutions of Tosev 3. A small pride, he reasoned, might be more easily hurt by a large truth.
He said, “What will you do with me, then?”
“What we want,” the officer answered. “You ours now.”
“If you mistreat me, the Race will avenge itself on your people,” Teerts warned.
The Nipponese officer made a peculiar barking noise. After a bit, Teerts realized it had to be what the Big Uglies used for laughter. The officer said, “Your Race already hurt Nippon so bad, how you do worse on account of prisoners, eh? You try make me afraid? I show you. I not afraid to do this-”
He kicked Teerts, hard. The flight leader hissed in surprise and pain. When the Big Ugly kicked him again, he whirled round and tried to fight back-even, if he was smaller than a Tosevite, he had teeth and claws. They did him no good. The officer did not even bother reaching for the sword or the small firearm he carried on his belt He’d somehow learned to use his legs and arms as deadly weapons. Teerts couldn’t so much as tear his tunic.
The beating and stomping went on for some time. Finally the Nipponese officer kicked the flight leader’s broken wrist. Teerts’ vision blurred and threatened to go out, just as it had when the ejection seat hurled him away from his killercraft. As if from very far away, he heard someone screaming, “Enough! Enough!” He needed a while before he recognized the voice as his own.
“You talk stupid again?” the Big Ugly asked. He stood balanced on one leg, ready to kick Teerts some more. If the flight leader said no, the Tosevite might stop; if he said yes, he was sure he’d get kicked to death. He got the feeling the officer didn’t much care one way or the other what he answered. In a way, that indifference was even more frightening than the beating itself.
“No, I won’t talk stupidly again, or I’ll try not to, anyway,” Teerts gasped. The tiny qualification held all the defiance left in him.
“You get up, then.”
Teerts didn’t think he could. But if he failed, the Big Ugly would have another excuse to hurt him. He struggled to his feet, did his best to wipe the mud off his scales one-handed.
“What you learn from this?” the Nipponese officer asked.
The flight leader could hear the danger in that question. It wasn’t just rhetoric; he’d better answer it in a way that satisfied the Tosevite. Slowly, he said, “I learned that I am your prisoner, that I am in your power, that you can do whatever you want with me.”
The Big Ugly moved his head up and down. “You keep this in your mind, eh?”
“Yes.” Teerts didn’t think he was likely to forget.
The Nipponese officer gave him a light shove. “You come on, then.”
Moving hurt, but Teerts managed. He didn’t dare fail; maybe the Big Ugly really had taught him a lesson after all Dawn was breaking when they came to a transport center. The Race had worked it over at least once: truck carcasses lay here and there, some flipped over, others burnt out, still others both.
But the center still functioned. Nipponese soldiers, chanting as they worked, unloaded cloth sacks from a few intact motor vehicles and from a great many animal-drawn wagons. The officer shouted to the males there. A couple of them came rushing over. They exchanged bows with the flight leader’s captor, spoke rapidly back and forth.
The officer shoved Teerts again, pointed toward a wagon. “You go on that one.”
Teerts awkwardly climbed into the wagon. The Nipponese officer gestured for him to sit in one corner. He obeyed. The wooden bottom and sides scratched against his sore hide. The officer and a Big Ugly soldier got into the wagon with him. Now the officer took out his small firearm. The soldier kept his rifle aimed at Teerts, too. The flight leader’s mouth wanted to fall open. The Tosevites had to be crazy if they thought he was in any shape to try something.
Crazy they might have been, but they weren’t stupid. The officer spoke again in his own language. The males around the wagon obeyed with an alacrity that would not have shamed members of the Race. They snatched up a heavy, dirty tarpaulin and draped it over’ Teerts and his guards.
“No one see you now,” the officer said, and laughed his noisy, barking laugh once more.
Teerts was afraid he was right. From the air, the wagon would look like any other, hardly worth shooting up and certainly not worth investigating. Oh, in an infrared scan the wagon bed might show up warmer than it would have were it just carrying supplies, but no one was likely to bother scanning it.
Somebody with heavy, booted feet got up onto the front of the wagon, the part the tarpaulin didn’t cover. The wagon shifted under his weight. The newcomer said something, though not to Teerts or the Big Uglies. The only answer he got was a soft snort from one of the two animals tethered to the front end of the wagon.
The animals started to walk. In that instant, Teerts discovered the wagon had no springs. He also discovered the road over which it traveled did not deserve the name. The first two jounces made him bite his tongue. After that, with the iron taste of blood in his mouth, he deliberately clamped his jaws shut and endured the rattling as best he could. He was jolted worse here at a walking pace than he’d ever been inside his killercraft.
After a while, daylight began to seep through the space between the tarpaulin and, the top of the wagon. The two Tosevites did not seem to have so much as twitched since they sat down. Their weapons remained pointed straight at Teerts. He wished he were as dangerous as they thought he was.
“May I speak?” he asked. The Nipponese officer’s head moved up and down. Hoping that meant yes, the flight leader said, “May I please have some water?”
“Hai,” the officer said. He turned to the other male, spoke briefly. The soldier shifted his weight-he could move after all. He carried a water bottle slung on his right hip. He undid it with one hand (the other kept his rifle aimed at Teerts), passed it to his commander. The officer in turn gave it to Teerts, making sure all the while that the flight leader could not grab his small firearm.
Teerts found the water bottle hard to use. The Tosevites could wrap their flexible lips around its opening to keep from spilling it. His own mouthparts were less mobile. He had to hold the bottle above
his head, pour the water down into his mouth. Even so, some of it dribbled out the corners of his jaws and made a couple of small puddles on the floor of the wagon.
Refreshed, he dared ask, “May I also have some food?” Saying the word told him how empty his belly was.
