Honor - Kevin Killiany [10]
She knew the situation wasn’t good before she opened her eyes.
A cage. About twice her body length square, standard low-tech metal frame and floored with peat and mud. There was a rectangular box, evidently an overturned packing case of some sort, just big enough to hold her with an opening cut in the near side. Several varieties of what she assumed were local wetland plants were arranged in neat piles along one side of the cage, no doubt a selection of potential foodstuffs.
“Let me guess,” she said, addressing the humanoid shape beyond the bars. “You found me sticking out of a hole in the mud and assumed I’m a large burrowing insect.”
The animal keeper, if that’s what he was, started at the sound of her voice and moved closer.
He—Pattie based her assumption of gender on the fact that the alien appeared to be both mammal and flat-chested—had charcoal gray skin and a thick helmet of copper-red hair. If he had external ears they were hidden by the hair, but the thin nose, generous mouth, and widely spaced yellow eyes were all classic humanoid phenotypes. Another descendant of the ancient progenitors who’d spread their DNA over so much of the galaxy.
The keeper made cooing and clucking sounds. Not language, Pattie realized, but nonsense noises meant to soothe a possibly hurt and probably frightened animal. Reaching through the mesh of her cage he picked a sprig of a plant from one of the piles and offered it to her.
“There is no way a collapsing tunnel of peat moss knocked my combadge off.” Pattie tapped her thorax to indicate where the device had been. “That means you have it.”
The keeper froze, his eyes locked on the bare spot on Pattie’s chest.
“Struck a nerve, did I?” she asked. “Why don’t you give it back so we can have a real conversation?”
The keeper’s eyes shifted from Pattie’s chest to her face. She could not believe he mistook the reasoned tones of her bell-like language for animal noises. Whatever he thought they were, however, scared him. He dropped the sprig of greenery and backed away from the cage.
“Don’t overreact,” she said. “I’m really quite harmless.”
This did not seem to reassure the humanoid. Turning quickly, he disappeared behind a rack of smaller cages. A few moments later Pattie heard what sounded like an exterior door slamming shut.
“That went well.”
The animals in the nearest cages—and given the zookeeper’s mistake, she studied them for several minutes before deciding those in her immediate area were animals—regarded her silently. They knew she didn’t belong there, but there was nothing they could do about it. Counting, she saw they all had eight legs. A few of the smaller ones even had exoskeletons. So the zookeeper wasn’t a complete idiot; she did bear a passing resemblance to the local fauna. Or at least what a humanoid might mistake for a resemblance.
Except there weren’t supposed to be any humanoids—zookeeper or otherwise—on Zhatyra II.
But that was a question for another time. Right now her priority was escape.
Thirty minutes of thorough study later, she decided to reassess her priority hierarchy. At least in the short term. The cage was solidly built and the lock unreachable from the inside. And neither any of the bog plants nor the packing box were sturdy enough to pry the mesh work open far enough for her to squeeze through.
Evidently the most recent addition to the zoo, her cage faced an open expanse of floor and the rest of what was apparently a warehouse of some sort. The walls she could see were log, though the roof looked like metal. She thought the floor was made of half logs fitted tightly together, their sawn faces sanded smooth but unfinished. If her theory was correct, floor polish was likely a low priority.
Directly in front of her cage was an assembly and repair area, judging by the organized tool racks and various stains on the wood floor, with storage of parts or materials beyond. There was also an office area of sorts,