Conquerors' Pride

He got the disk all the way in, smoothed over the spot as best he could, and shut off the water. Brushing the excess water off his arms and torso, he stepped out.

It was like a not-quite instant repeat of a week earlier. The four Zhirrzh standing outside his cell with gray sticks or flashlights at the ready; the two unarmed Zhirrzh inside the opened door; Thrr-gilag standing off to one side, his tongue flicking in and out, watching the whole operation. "What's going on?" Pheylan asked, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

"You walk away," Thrr-gilag said.

So they'd done it again. With a quiet sigh Pheylan moved away from the shower. One of the unarmed Zhirrzh left the door, passing him and stepping into the stall. Producing a small tool, he proceeded to dig into the soap where Pheylan had hidden the disk.

"Not proper," Thrr-gilag said. "You claim not know?"

Pheylan turned to look at him. "It came loose somehow," he said. "I thought I'd take a look at it. As I told you before, we humans are curious."

For a long moment the only sounds were the quiet hum of the air system and the soft scraping noise of the Zhirrzh tool. "The Zhirrzh wrong," Thrr-gilag said at last. "You not unthinking predators. You think and plan. Too much. Tomorrow not go outside."

"That's not fair," Pheylan protested, the bitter taste of stomach acids boiling up into his throat.

"Speak fair?" the Zhirrzh in the shower retorted, emerging from the stall with the soap-covered disk held in his hand. "No fair to animal."

Deep inside Pheylan something snapped; and for that single heartbeat he didn't care anymore if he lived or died. "You want animals?" he snarled. "I'll show you animals." He took a step toward the Zhirrzh, his hands curling into fists, dimly aware that Thrr-gilag was shouting something, and that the Zhirrzh directly behind Pheylan's intended target had raised his flashlight weapon—

And without warning the whole world exploded into a flash of brilliant white light in front of him.

Pheylan staggered back, stifling a curse as he threw his hands up to his face. Across the room he heard the Zhirrzh scuttle across the floor, the door slamming hastily shut behind him.

"You not unthinking," Thrr-gilag said from behind Pheylan. "But you still predators. You create war."

Carefully, Pheylan blinked his eyes open again. Aside from some residual stinging and a massive purple blob blocking the middle of his vision he seemed all right. Around the edges of the blob, he could see the group of Zhirrzh headed for the outer door. "We don't always create the wars," he told Thrr-gilag. "But whether we do or not, we always win them. Tell your Elders that."

There was a short pause. "I will tell them," Thrr-gilag agreed.

He turned and crossed the room, and a minute later Pheylan was alone. Except, as always, for the handful of Zhirrzh techs ma

Slowly, blinking at the ache in his eyes, feeling drained, Pheylan picked up his jumpsuit and started getting dressed. So Act One was over. That little show of submissive naivete he'd pulled early on had gotten him this far, but now they were onto him. But that was okay. The gambit had gotten him a lot further than he'd expected it to, and he'd gathered some useful information along the way.

Among other things, that the time for subtlety was over. Whatever form his escape attempt took, it was going to have to depend heavily on simple, raw brute force.

20

"All right," Cavanagh murmured back, forcing sandpapery eyes open. "What is it?"

"Time to leave, sir. You need to get dressed."

Cavanagh squinted toward the window. The leaf-filtered sunlight that had been there when he'd gone to bed had been replaced by the brighter haze of artificial lighting. Apparently, the Yycromae were ru

"We'll be in the cleansing room when you're ready," Hill said, stepping back and disappearing out the door.

The cleansing room was an odd melding of human and Yycroman designs: a water-efficient staggered system of slickglass sink and toilet facilities, juxtaposed with a typically open Yycroman cloudburst-shower compartment. The walls and floor were done in layers of thin gray stone crisscrossed with living moisture vine, with a cloudy sky design imprinted on the ceiling. The whole thing left Cavanagh with the strange impression of a human bathroom stuck out in the woods somewhere, which was probably not exactly what the designer had had in mind.

But, then, the designer probably hadn't intended to have a large hole picked in his slate wall between the slickglass system and the cloudburst shower, either.

"Lord Cavanagh," Kolchin nodded in greeting as Cavanagh came in. He was covered in grime and dust, with a sheen of sweat mixed in on his forehead. "Sorry to wake you, sir."

"That's all right," Cavanagh said, frowning at the damage to the wall. "How on Earth did you manage all this?"

"A Peacekeeper commando is never entirely without resources," Kolchin said, looking rather grimly satisfied with himself. "What do you think?"

Cavanagh stepped to the hole and looked in. At one edge was a rectangular duct that ran vertically inside the wall, with a parallel set of pipes ru

"Yes, sir," Kolchin said. "We can climb down the pipes to the subbasement, and from there out to the work field."

Cavanagh looked at Kolchin's grimy outfit, noting for the first time that the other seemed to be breathing a little heavily. "I take it you've already checked this out?"

"Yes, sir. Don't worry—it's easier going down than coming back up."

Cavanagh eyed the hole again. "What about Fibbit?" he asked. "I don't think she's going to fit in there."

Kolchin and Hill exchanged glances. "No, she won't," Hill said. "That's why she and I are staying here."

Cavanagh shook his head. "Out of the question. We all go or none of us does."

"We don't have any other choice, sir," Kolchin said, his tone respectful but insistent. "Fibbit can't get through the wall; and by herself she can't keep up the illusion that all of us are still here. Hill and Fibbit together can. The local government center, Vind Kaye, shouldn't be more than three thousand kilometers away from here. If we can make it down there and get in touch with the NorCoord consulate, we should be able to get a skitter message out under diplomatic seal. But we need time to do that."

Cavanagh looked at Hill. "Hill?"

"I agree with Kolchin, sir. And we really don't have time to argue about it."

Cavanagh sighed. They were right, of course. But that didn't mean he had to like it. "The Yycromae are going to have a fit when they see this wall," he said, shaking his head. "All right, Kolchin. Let's go."

The climb wasn't nearly as difficult as Cavanagh had feared it would be. Kolchin had rigged a sling sort of arrangement out of his tunic, which allowed Cavanagh to descend with less muscular exertion than would otherwise have been needed. And with Kolchin directly beneath him in case of a slip, there was little actual danger involved.

That didn't stop the climb from being thoroughly unpleasant. The dankness and musty odor kept his nose on the edge of a sneezing fit the whole way, the dust and filth made his skin crawl, and every few seconds some form of insect or other multilegged creature skittered away into the deeper recesses of the opening or into the cover of the moisture-vine roots that continually brushed against his hands and face. The trip seemed to last forever, and by the time Kolchin's hands reached up to help him down the last meter, he was half-convinced they'd missed the subbasement entirely and were tu