My pocket computer dinged.
Everybody twitched, yeeped or looked around. Heidi floated to the rim of my booth and listened over my shoulder.
Sea lions around the Earth's poles live in large communities built around one alpha male, many females and their pups, and several beta males that live around the edges of the herd. When the alpha male is otherwise occupied, an exile may rush in and mate hurriedly with a female and escape. Several species of Earth's mammals have adapted such a breeding strategy, as have life forms on Kzin and even many Kzinti clans. Biologists, particularly reproductive biologists, call them sneaky-fuckers.
I said, 'Maybe there's a more polite term for the journals. Anyway, good name for a spy ship. Please madam, seek Longest War plus Kzinti plus piracy, run it.' We waited.
When Hans Van Hild couldn't stand the silence any more, he said, 'Heidi, Nicolaus, I'm sorry. We should have let you grow up.'
'Hans!'
'Yes, Hilde, there was all the time in the world. Hilde, there's never time. Never a way to know.'
Envoy spoke. 'Release one of the modules for Outbound Enterprises and two addressed to Neptune's Empire. The passengers will be returned. Neptune's Empire will be recompensed for their stock.'
Fish?
Captain Preiss's fingertips danced. Three cargo modules slowly rose out of the rim. I felt utterly helpless.
Packer left the children floating. He pushed Fly-By-Night's balloon toward the airlock.
I said, 'Wait.'
The armored Kzin turned. I squinted against the glare of his weapon. 'We do not permit slavery aboard Odysseus,' I said. 'Odysseus belongs to the Human Space Trade Alliance. The Jotok stays.'
'Who are you? Where derives your authority?' Envoy demanded.
'Martin Wallace Graynor. No authority, but the law-'
'Fly-By-Night purchased a Jotok and holds him as property. We hold Fly-By-Night as property. Local law crawls before interspecies covenants. The Jotok comes. Are you concerned for the well-being of the Jotok?'
I said, 'Yes.'
'You shall observe if he is mistreated. Enter a vacuum refuge now.' I caught Quickpony's horror. She spun around to search her screen display of the Covenants for some way to stop this. Packer pulled Fly-By-Night toward the airlock. He wasn't waiting.
Neither did I. I launched myself gently toward the refuge that held the Jotok. It would not have occurred to me to hug the only available little girl before I disappeared into the Nursery Nebula. I launched, Heidi launched, and she was in my path, arms spread, bawling. I hugged her, let our momentum turn us, whispered something reassuring and let go. She drifted toward a wall, I toward the Jotok's bubble.
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, 'Please madam, 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