scuppernong - 2

25 November 2410 15:17 GMT, Stockholm at Earth

Before I left the college, I hunted up the campus combat gym. The slave quarters were behind it. There was a single-roomed hut not far from the outhouse, its frame built of fir logs peeled and shaped with an adze. It had a sod roof. The walls were over-lapping vertical wooden slats, painted brown once long ago. The door was open. There was a glass-paned window at the rear.

Inside was a stack of firewood and a cold stove, a cold kettle, and an immense tin bathtub. The place smelled like woodsmoke and garlic. The floor was hard-packed dirt.

There was a swing hanging by fibrous rope from tremendous ringbolts in one ceiling beam. The knots in the rope looked industrial. On the swing was an orangutan.

The tang sat quietly with its legs crossed at the ankles and its long arms hanging beside them. It must have weighed 90 kgs. I thought it was x.

Its copper-colored body hair was long and silky and covered it completely, except where its muzzle and high forehead showed bare and bright blue-black. I caught a flash of black nipple.

It wore only a loincloth and old Birkenstock sandals. Two 45-centimeter blades hung in black nylon scabbards strapped just below its knees. I guessed about a kg apiece. Its hand fingers touched the hilts. Its full brown eyes watched me impassively.

Now I could smell it. It was definitely x.

"I'm Django Boldt," I said.

"Sasgatch," it replied, in Tanglish.

I heard "Min da hetta Saesquac." I got "I'm Sasgatch." We had a lingua franca. At least that ice was broken.

"You have any idea why you're on this job?" I asked.

It shook its long head, slowly.

"Ever been to New Berkeley?"

It grinned, exposing ominous yellow fangs. "Born there," it said.

How in hell did you wind up at Earth, I wondered, but it probably wasn't the most diplomatic question.

"You got load from Slott?"

"Yuh," it said. Loquacious.

"You know you'll have to slave to me, even at New Berkeley?"

It made no reply. Its eyes didn't shift. Its whiskers didn't twitch. Not a silky hair moved.

"OK, then you know I have to do this," I said. I mastered it.

"But I'll deactivate that while we're at New Berkeley. They don't like slavery, and neither do I."

Sasgatch sat motionless.

"I'll jump on the day after tomorrow and meet you there," I said. "We should talk before that."

Sasgatch, poker-faced, said "Yuh".

"Want to eat at my place <see caseload> tomorrow night at 18?"

It nodded. It looked aside and made a grimacing smile toward the ceiling, over its right shoulder, drawing its upper lip back over its teeth and rolling its eyes. Not as direct as the grin, but still showing plenty of tooth.

"Ping when you get there. And bring the knives."

It showed the smile grimace again.

"Orayt vi gong tal bak," it said.

"OK, we'll talk later," it meant.