Chapter 43

Places of confinement: initially a clean, neat room with a couple of comfortable issue chairs. Part of the room is barred off.

Chip Connolly had been sipping a cup of tea that one of the MPs had made for him. He was beginning to relax completely for the first time since he'd been to Shaw House. Ginny was free, and had a chainsaw in her hands, and she had the rats and bats to guard her.

Then he looked up at the suits that had come into the back room, and realized that his troubles might only just be starting.

There were four MPs, and, as the case had gone on they'd become increasingly easygoing with their prisoner. By now it was apparent that they, at least, had acquitted him.

"Excuse me, but only military police personnel are allowed back here," said the sergeant firmly.

The leader of the suits reached into an inner pocket and took out his badge. "Special Branch," he said. "We've come to collect the prisoner."

The sergeant blinked. "He's a military prisoner. You can't do that."

The lead suit pulled out another piece of paper. "Here is my authorization. Signed by Chief Director Asmal and Judge Jurgens. You can't stop us."

The sergeant took the piece of paper and examined it. "I'd need to talk to Judge McCairn fir—"

"Sarge!" yelled Chip. "Guns!" He flung the tea, hitting the second suit in the eyes just as the man raised his weapon and fired. The gun had a silencer and made scarcely any noise. The sergeant crumpled, still clutching the piece of paper.

Then everything happened very fast. Chip tried to retreat, and fell over his forgotten manacles. Then he felt the needle, as he wrestled with one of them. He managed a head-butt and felt a nose crunch. Flaccidity seemed to invade his limbs. He still heard the lead suit say, "Quick. Grab him and let's run. Someone might have heard that shout."

The rest was blackness.

When Chip awoke, the first thing he was aware of was the reek of naphthalene. He tensed. He knew that smell all too well. Korozhet . . . 

Immediately his mind was filled with warm, fuzzy-nice images. Korozhet were good. Korozhet were kind. Korozhet could do no wrong.

He tried to sit up and failed; opened his eyes, reluctantly. He was in a small, tall room, metal-walled and racked to the roof with what appeared to be shelves. Metal shelves, about eighteen inches apart, populated by aliens. He was lying on the floor, and a blue-furred alien and a naked woman were leaning over him. This had to be a nightmare. The naked woman was not Virginia.

He groaned. Then, realized that he too was stark naked.

"Do you understand English?" the woman asked, in an odd high-pitched voice.

He nodded, his mouth still too dry to allow him to speak. "Well, at least they didn't mindscrub you. We're taking a chance, but Yetteth says that they don't hear so high. You'll feel better presently when the implant gets a proper nerve interface. It takes a while."

" 'ater," he managed.

"There's a wall-nipple," she pointed. "And try to pitch your voice higher."

Chip struggled to his knees, and to the metal nipple. He sucked at it and was rewarded by some vile-tasting water. It was still very welcome.

He blinked at the Jampad. He couldn't speak Korozhet—although he knew they were wonderful masters and theirs was the best language in existence—but he'd love to ask the alien just how it had gotten here. Lieutenant Capra had told him that Liepsich had said that it had gotten away from the wonderful Korozhet' s assassination team. Of course, the good masters would never kill anything that wasn't evil. Capra must have been mistaken. Or he, Connolly, must have misheard. The blue-furred creature must have come to its senses and come here, because surely this was place of the masters . . . 

He wrinkled his forehead with the effort of thinking. Capra had said that the Crotchets had tried to kill the Jampad . . . what was it doing here? Jampad hated the Crotchets' guts.

Then it struck him, thinking back to the rats, rats, and Virginia. Crotchets. Think "Crotchets," Chip.  

The rats and bats seemed to be able to think ill of "Crotchets." Chip found, with a little effort, that he could, too. And found he could make a horrible kind of sense of where he was. And now, unlike earlier when he'd thought of the Korozhet, the benign and wonderful creatures, he could hate and fear the Crotchets. Whatever had happened to him since the Specials had snatched him, had also included him getting a soft-cyber chip implanted in his head.

To think that he'd once mocked "head plastic"! He wondered what download they'd put into his memory. Would he speak Shakespearean English? Or start saying "indade"? Or speaking in the Cervantes-style? Then he realized that none of these were true. He'd only had one language added: Korozhet. And he would be able to think no ill of them. And he would have to obey them. He'd seen how Ginny had struggled merely to speak against them.

"How did they catch you?" he squeaked, in what he realized was passable Korozhet.

"They came to our farm one night," said the woman. "Snatched the whole family. I don't think any of the others are alive any more." There was terrible pain in her voice. "But at least I can still remember them, unlike Marie. They took everything from her. Even her name. I named her after my little girl. My daughter died too."

Chip peered at her. And realized, with horror, that he had seen this face before in a newspaper. She'd not been gaunt and lined in those pictures. And . . . it had been before the war. Before the Crotchets, or the Magh' had arrived. The disappearance had been blamed on the farm-help.

"They hung the Vat-kid," he said quietly. "Everyone had thought that he was mad, insisting that the family he worked for had been snatched by aliens. They blamed him."

"Andre?" she said incredulously. "He wouldn't hurt a fly! He couldn't even kill chickens on the farm."

"And I," said the Jampad in an appallingly mangled English accent, "Soldier of the Kishran water skirmisher was. Our tunnels collapse was. Magh' me captured. You other Jampad met have?" There was a desperate yearning that transcended the alien-ness of the thing.

Chip nodded. "Yes. One. I thought you were him. Ginny said that he was a pilot in a Jampad starship."

"Starship? My people starships have not?" The alien was nodding his head, furiously.

"They did, according to Darleth. He said he was shot down. They killed the rest of the crew, but we freed him from the Magh'."

"And . . . he was killed. Here. Masters . . . speak it."

Chip shook his head. "He got away, we think."

The creature rocked and keened softly. At first Chip thought he was distraught. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"I think it is a sort of prayer," said the woman. "He does it sometimes. Tell me about . . . Home. Please. I have heard whispers from other humans that there is a war going on out there."

Imagine not even knowing that! Well, if he was right, she'd been captured long before the war. Before the . . . Crotchets were supposed to have arrived, in desperate haste, to warn humanity on Harmony and Reason of the approaching Magh' slowship peril. They'd claimed they'd damaged their engines in the race, so they could not move. Ha. "Yeah. We just took a Magh' scorpiary. And I just found out that the Crotchets are behind it."

"Crotchets?"

"You know. Fellows like beach balls with a lot of pricks on the outside. They look a lot like our beloved and wonderful Korozhet, but they're different. You can think how bad Crotchets are."

The woman blinked. "Crotchets," she said experimentally.

And then with more vehemence "Crotchets!" She sighed. "Why didn't I think of that? It's . . . it's so obvious."

Chip understood now, how difficult it would be to think of this piece of lawyerly double-talk. But knowing it before the chip was inserted had made all the difference. "It works. A fair number of"—she would never have heard about intelligent rats and bats—"other implanted ones do it out there."

She sighed again. "It does, indeed. But they will find out now, when they question you. You won't be able not to tell them. That's why they haven't mindscrubbed you."

"I need to get away from the . . . Crotchets." Somehow he knew that it would be terribly evil to even think of escaping the beloved Korozhet.

"The only way to do that is to die. You will be incinerated, and your ash dumped."

"If that's what I have to do, that's what I'll do," said Chip, grimly. If there was no way out he'd kill himself before he talked and gave Ginny and the rats and bats away. But how?

A siren rang out. "Come. Or no food get," said the Jampad.

"I think not." Chip shook his head. "I'm not hungry yet. Actually I feel as sick as a horse. And I suppose they'll take me for questioning when I am up. How long can I pretend to be unconscious, before they come looking?"

The woman shrugged. "You never can tell. They'll leave a body in here until we lug it out, or it rots. When we go out to eat they'll assign us to tasks. They have visual and auditory pickups in here, though. We think that they're not always active."

Chip sighed. It was so much to absorb and his head hurt terribly. "Which is my shelf?"

"Marie's old shelf," said the woman with pain in her voice and pointed.

Unsteadily, Chip got to his feet and managed to climb into it. The effort was of such an order that he did not have to fake unconsciousness.