© 1991,1998,2003 Watts Martin
This story deals with adult themes and sexual situations.
– Chapter 1 –
Mott fell to his death a day before reaching the far side of the mountains.
It was his own fault; he had set his pitons carelessly, the type of accident Allin thought more likely to happen to an experienced climber than a novice. A novice, he had told Mott, was so afraid of errors that he triple-checked everything. Experts assumed too much.
Allin salvaged about a quarter of his equipment and continued on. The "team" had only been the two of them; most would turn back at this point. But most people wouldn't range a thousand miles from civilization, only for the sake of trailblazing, with only one other person. Allin Jesa had been called many things in his twenty-seven years. Prudent was not one of them.
Of course, he'd only travelled one thousand miles by straight reckoning. In one sense his return path to Ugietna lay on a perfect east-southeast course, but he and Mott had passed through a rift—one of the peculiar dimensional anomalies that gave Ranea its multiplicity of races and trading partners. Permanent rifts were rare, though, and often easily missed—and hence, worthy of investigation. If this one had been discovered before, it lay on no maps; little of the desolate, cold lands north of the Inopintrila Empire were known, at least to Raneans.
The land beyond the rift, though, just another day's journey past the mountain site of the accident, was desolate and warm—thick jungle brush, holding a curious air of hostility toward sapience. Or so he thought. On the dusk of the sixty-eighth day of the journey, he found another human.
The man stood just over five feet tall, completely naked, slightly hunched over, hirsute and filthy. He and Allin saw each other at the same time; the primitive gave a wild shriek of surprise and ran, vanishing into the forest's gloom.
"I'll be damned." Allin looked after him a few seconds, then walked on.
In a few moments, though, he realized the man hadn't left; he was now pacing Allin, off to one side. "Hello," Allin called, not expecting a reply.
The man grunted, staring at Allin's pack.
"I bet you don't speak Ranean," Allin continued.
The man grunted again, following it with an irritated-sounding hoot.
"Didn't think so."
The man repeated his grunt-hoot.
Allin sighed; he'd owned pets who were more communicative. Well, if nothing else, he'd already discovered another first: his fellow humans in Ranea held that they were both native to that world, and unique. No other examples of living humanity had been discovered until now. Unfortunately, it was a first he wouldn't easily be able to prove.
Another minute passed, and other wild humans began to join the one following him.
Allin stopped abruptly, resting his right hand on the hilt of his dagger. He recognized a pack of predators when he saw one, whether its members were jackals or the most "civilized" highwaymen on the Empire's back roads.
There were five of them; even though he outmassed each of them by at least thirty pounds and, at five-eleven, had near a half-foot on the tallest in the bunch, he knew he didn't stand much of a chance if they all rushed him at once.
They did.
He rolled, trying to knock them off; one managed to dislodge his biggest pack. "No you don't," Allin growled, kicking back at one and sinking his dagger deep into the chest of another.
The rest of the pack screamed, running off.
"No!" Allin sprinted after the one who had taken the large pack. He tackled him, tumbling the pack to the ground; another wild man immediately grabbed it. The first squirmed away and kicked Allin viciously in the gut.
He wheezed and staggered; there was a sudden crack, and the world disappeared.
He sat up a few seconds later and a searing pain shot through his skull. He closed his eyes and opened them again slowly.
The moon was directly overhead; he had lain unconscious for hours, not seconds. The rock used to smash his head lay nearby, a small bloodstain discoloring it. Allin touched the wound lightly. It was tiny, unlikely to be of serious consequence—but right now it hurt like hell.
The clothes he'd worn had been nearly shredded in the fight, but he had nothing else. Other than, curiously enough, the knife. Evidently his assailants hadn't recognized what it was, beyond dangerous.
After the pain cleared sufficiently for him to stand up, he set out after the tribesmen. He had no idea how to retrieve his supplies, but everything he'd brought with him lay in that pack. Even dismissing the trip journal and dried flowers, with no rations and equipment, the trip back might be impossible.
* * *
Three days passed before he saw them again. There were more of them, but he could plainly pick out the one who had stolen the pack—now jealously guarding his treasure.
Allin's appearance had become as ragged as theirs. He had discarded the remnants of his shirt. He had not taken the time to bathe in the few streams he had passed, and his beard had been two days old when his equipment had been stolen.
He couldn't mount a direct attack, of course; his only plan was to wait until they slept, then sneak amongst them and silently retrieve his possessions. He suspected they wouldn't be smart enough to post a guard.
As it turned out, he was right. By the time the moon had risen above the trees, the tribe, to a man, lay asleep.
At each rustle he stopped, looking around warily. He finally shouldered it and walked carefully away from the small clearing they had camped in.
He had barely reached shadow when the noises began. He abruptly doubled his pace, picking his way through the branches and brambles with the agility of a seasoned pathfinder.
Then he realized the noises were not coming closer—and they were screams not of rage, but of fear. He glanced back.
The clearing lay well behind him now, nearly obscured by the trees. The humans fled in all directions, scattering through the forest away from… things. Allin squinted. In the center of the clearing was a group of large bipeds. He flipped open the pack and dove for his binoculars—the lenses were scratched, but the instrument was intact.
Through the glass, the figures resolved themselves into 'morphs. Rabbits.
There were rabbit 'morphs in Ranea, but these were definitely not of the same kind. Bigger, proportionately more heavyset, slightly smaller ears in relation to their head. They all looked male, clothed casually in hiking shorts and tight, short-sleeved shirts—and they all carried rifles.
One of them suddenly dashed to his left, after one of the humans. The rabbit's "quarry" suddenly froze in place. "What the hell?" Allin said under his breath.
The rabbit walked up to the human and shot him at point-blank range. The man stiffened for an instant, standing straight up, and suddenly the scale difference snapped into focus: the rabbit stood nine feet tall.
Then the human collapsed, and the rabbit caught him with a massive hand, roughly slinging him over his shoulder.
"Great. First primitive humans, now giant slaver rabbits," he muttered. "I couldn't have discovered a normal land." He flung the goggles back in the pack, reshouldered it, turned around—and went down under the weight of a tribesman. The one who'd taken the pack in the first place.
"You goddamn moron," Allin grunted, slugging the man hard enough in the jaw to shatter his chin. The tribesman screamed—far too loudly—and charged again. He was met by a swift kick to the stomach, and went down with a loud whuff!
"This is not the time for this," Allin snarled, sprinting off with the heavy pack in one hand. After a few seconds the tribesman gave chase, screaming. A few moments later Allin heard another distant yell, modulated in fluid lepine tones—albeit much deeper and stronger than he had ever heard before.
"Oh, wonderful." Allin grabbed an outthrust branch as he ran past it and pulled it back, then turned around and let it fly in the tribesman's face. The man fell down, moaning. Allin turned and sprinted away.
In another twenty seconds the rabbit voices came again, evidently talking about the man Allin had felled. He redoubled his speed.
Then suddenly he stopped, as if he'd slammed into a cushioned wall. It felt as if his entire body was encased in a soft, unbreakable grip. The just-rescued pack kept going, carried by its own inertia into bushes five feet away.
The spell holding him pulled Allin backwards, shoes just brushing the ground. His body turned, facing two rabbits who towered above him by three feet. One held a rifle pointed languidly toward the explorer; the other one had the limp tribesman slung over his shoulder like a laundry sack.
Allin tried to dig his feet into the ground and lost his balance; he would have fallen if the spell had let him. Instead he windmilled violently, his body flopping back and forth. The rabbits gave no notice, talking animatedly between them and occasionally pointing at him.
The rifleman fired. A searing pain ripped through Allin's gut; he looked down at the rivulet of blood running from just below his chest into his pants. The small metal piece sticking out of him was the tail end of a dart.
With an audible snap, the spell broke, and he fell to the ground. A cold numbness started spreading from the wound. "This… better fucking be… a tranquilizer dart," he said weakly, head tilted straight back to stare up at his captor.
The rabbit seemed to listen, then turned and said something in an excited tone to his partner, who shrugged and replied in a few monosyllables. Then he reached down, wrapping a furry hand twice the size of Allin's own around the human's chest, pulled out the dart with two fingers of the other hand and flipped Allin over his shoulder like a rag doll.
"I just wanted my pack," Allin mumbled into the back of the giant's shirt before he passed out.
* * *
Allin woke up in darkness, all of his injuries—more than he'd known he'd incurred—throbbing dully. He rubbed his eyes and sat up, bumping his head against cold steel mesh. He bent down again, frowning, until his eyes adjusted to the dim light.
He was in a cage, two feet high, the same width, and five feet long. His feet pressed against a wooden wall flush with the cage; his head was an inch from a padlocked door. His remaining clothes had been removed, and the straw on the wooden floor held little warmth.
He sat up as best he could, scrambling to turn around. The cage was far too small for human-sized creatures. A small window had been cut in the wood wall, barely wide enough to put his arm through. A look outside revealed the silvery darkness of a full moon night. The trees passed by at a near blur—whatever he was in moved at least as fast as a horse.
"Wonderful." He leaned back against the wood wall and looked around.
The inside of the wagon was lined with cages, half of which contained tribesmen. Allin was on the middle of three tiers, each on long, wide wooden shelves. The cages had no space between them. He supposed he was lucky—in a sense—to have no neighbors.
Judging by the smell, the rabbits expected their new slaves to take care of bodily needs, whether eating, sleeping or defecating, all in the allotted twenty cubic feet of cage. A bowl of odorless—and probably tasteless—food lay near Allin's feet.
He had run into slavers before, but had never dreamed of conditions like these. Allin rolled over, groaning. With the effects of the tranquilizer gone, sleep would be difficult. And he wanted his clothes, dammit.
His fitful rest ended the next morning at the clang of a bell and the deep, fluid voices of the rabbits. A door opened in the front of the compartment, and two of the furred giants made their way down the aisle, refilling food dishes as they went. A glance at the window slit told him they still cruised at breakneck speed, now out of the forest and gliding over a vast expanse of grassland.
When they reached Allin's cage, the rabbits started talking to themselves again, occasionally glancing in his direction.
"Yes, I'm different then they are," Allin said, his voice soft and hoarse. "I'm like you. But less furry and much shorter."
One of the rabbits blinked at him and spoke a word, then repeated it.
"Yeah, well, I can't understand you, either."
The rabbit looked at the other one and laughed, his expression confirming that he couldn't understand Ranean. The second one shrugged, said something in a curt tone of voice, and they continued down the rows of cages.
* * *
By the next time his cage opened, Allin had moved his food dish all the way to the far corner of the cage and had huddled against the door. The rabbit motioned for him to fetch his dish.
"Up yours, longears."
The slaver shoved him toward the dish, mumbling something that must certainly have been a curse. Allin drew back, staring at the rabbit with a vacant smile.
The giant repeated the curse, crawling into the cage. "That's what I was waiting for," Allin said, using the rabbit's butt as a brace to vault through the opening.
He crashed into the cage opposite him, lashing out with both feet at the other rabbit, who went down with a cry of surprise, holding his gut. Allin raced to the front as the first rabbit scrambled to get out of the cage, hoping to reach the door before they grabbed him—or cast another spell.
Allin darted through the door and closed it as quietly as possible, turning a lock set at his eye-level. Then he turned around.
He stood on an open deck. A thick ladder rose to a normal door—small for the rabbits—above the cage room, presumably with the slavers' sleeping and eating quarters. Two chairs stood bolted to the deck; one was occupied, by a black-furred doe. The roaring wind hid the sounds of his escape from her big ears—at least for the next two or three seconds.
Shaking slightly, he scrambled toward the deck's side, looked down, and swallowed hard. Not only was the damn thing still going thirty miles an hour, it was eight feet off the ground. While Allin didn't know the mathematics to tell him exactly what force he'd hit with, he didn't like the implications. "Thiksa!" a voice said behind him. He whirled to see the doe charging him. She was small by their standards, only a dizzying seven-foot-ten. As he'd expected, the rabbits in the cage room had started to make a lot of noise.
An adrenalin surge hit him and time seemed to freeze, the doe moving in slow motion. Allin had plenty of time to stare up at her big, expressive brown eyes and note they looked concerned—but not for him, not exactly. As he turned back to jump, he realized her expression was that of a rabbit acquaintance of his in Ranea—who only came to his shoulder—looking at a carrot cake.
Allin jumped, and the ground grew gradually closer, the sound of the wind very faint. He started to curl up, planning to roll when he hit. Then his leg caught on something. His jump became a fall, stopping abruptly two feet from the ground. The wind came back with a vengeance and the grass—now within arm's length—was a frightening blur. Then it started moving away from him.
The doe held him by the ankle. She was saying something as she hoisted him up, but he couldn't hear it over the wind. She moved her grip down by tossing him up slightly and recatching him, a delicate-seeming hand wrapping completely around his leg below the knee, and rested his foreleg across her shoulder.
"Bitch!" he yelled, kicking violently. She walked toward the door, his head bumping against her thigh as she moved, and opened it with her free hand.
The two rabbits charged out, talking angrily at the female. The one Allin had shoved into the cage grabbed him by the chest and yanked him out of the female's grasp. She said something in an admonishing tone; he replied in an angry voice and threw his prisoner inside. Allin flew ten feet before hitting the floor, skidding across it painfully. Every part of his body felt bruised. "Thiksa," the female said again in a reproachful tone, this time directed at her abusive fellow. Allin mentally translated it as hey! as she pushed the bigger male aside and picked Allin up, cradling him as if he were a child, and gently put him back into his cage. He felt too much pain to fight.
"Shit, not back in there," he gasped.
She murmured something in a comforting tone, locked the cage door, and turned back to the other rabbits, speaking quickly and angrily, pointing at Allin. The glance she directed back at him had the carrot cake look again; he suddenly realized they had noticed he was different than the other humans they had captured—and it made him more valuable.
He closed his eyes as they left, coughing weakly. Why rabbits? he thought, unsure whether he was angry, amused, or both. Getting beat up by big tigers or bears, or lizard-men, you can tell that to people. But you're getting your ass whipped by… rabbits. Shit.
* * *
In two more days Allin's resolve—and physical endurance—broke, and he used a corner of his cage as a toilet. He covered it with straw and sat in the opposite corner, as far away from it as possible. The rabbits cleaned their captives' cages daily, at least, but he felt like a barnyard animal.
Allin spent his waking hours listening to the humans' language, trying to pick it up. After three days in the cage, he could have communicated basic ideas like danger, friend, food, and sex to them.
Especially sex. That was the first concept-word he'd picked out, and it wasn't because he'd been looking for it. The primitives' libido seemed limited only by whether a potential partner was breathing. Several of them seemed to be interested in Allin (two females and one male); he was glad they were in separate cages, although some of the humans had done their best to have sex through the wire mesh. As far as he could tell, none had been successful. Most gave up and found solitary relief.
He wondered if the rabbits ever forced themselves on their slaves, and if—given the undiscriminating sex drive of the humans, combined with the pathetic affection many already showed for their abductors—the humans thought of it badly. The thought made him nervous. What if it was expected? The black-furred doe might be a small woman to the rabbits, but if she wanted to spend a night using him for her pleasure, he'd be as helpless as a princess between a dragon's jaws.
On the third night of his captivity, Allin tried to make a rough guess of how far they had come since he had been taken and arrived at a little over fourteen hundred miles. He had travelled further in the last three days than he had in the two months he had spent travelling from Ranea to the double-damned forest the slavers had been scouting in. He went to sleep feeling colder than usual.
The next morning, the road they had been following since yesterday afternoon became paved. Two hours later they were passing civilization. The tribal humans cowered in their cages, refusing to look out. All Allin could do was stare.
The architecture sported broad, curving lines in contrast to the traditional angles of buildings in Ranea—and most other lands Allin had visited. He barely recognized half of the materials used. The road they travelled down was lined with shops, set well back from the thoroughfare—and they were in traffic. Open decks floated past, each with rails almost as high as Allin himself, rabbits seated in two-person wide benches along each side and five benches along the length. Flying ferryboats, zipping along at a pace mechanical carriages could not match and that horse-drawn vehicles could never sustain. Allin had seen off-world vehicles that could move faster, certainly, and there were magicians who had created far more lavish flying platforms for their own use. But here, the vehicles were commonplace.
He recalled the spells the slavers themselves used to catch their prisoners, the almost casual neglect with which they froze their prey and released it. Was the doe who had stopped his escape unable to cast magic, or did she simply not consider a human to be worth the effort?
Some time after noon the wagon stopped, lowering to the ground with little noticeable jarring. The door to the room opened, and six rabbits came in. Each one approached a cage and unlocked it. They withdrew the unresisting occupants and placed steel collars around their necks, carrying them out two at a time.
When the black-furred doe approached Allin's cage, a wretchedly dirty, small girl's limp form already clutched with one arm, he drew back, ready to fight. But when the door opened, his muscles all relaxed, and he fell to the floor. He willed some part of him—any part—to move, just a little, as she snapped the collar around him and pulled him gently out, grasping him around the waist and kicking the cage shut with one foot.
By the time his muscles began responding, they'd taken him into a huge, palatial building, passing through a plain wooden door ten feet high. The room beyond was small and dimly lit. A fat rabbit smoking something that looked, but didn't smell, like a tobacco cigarette sat at a table, signing papers. Occasionally he talked to two slavers in curt, businesslike tones. A young doe—he guessed about fourteen years old—looked at him, her expression curious. He stood almost as tall as she did; she reached over to him and stroked him, saying something in a brightly questioning tone.
"I can't understand you, you can't understand me," he said.
She clapped her hands together, looking over at the fat businessman and said something Allin translated as Isn't he cute? Then she picked him up in her arms easily, hugged him briefly and set him back on the ground. Allin stared at her and the black-furred doe, then shook his head.
He had enough strength to fight when the slaver doe picked him up again, but she held him with both hands this time, one arm supporting his lower legs, the other wrapped around his chest, a hand pressing his face against a breast almost the size of his head.
When she set him down again, he stood in a large, brightly-lit room, facing a glass door half his height. She opened it and pushed him through, closing it behind him with a soft click.
The new room—cage, he corrected himself—was glass-walled, about four feet on each side and seven feet high. A funnel-shaped pan with a small pit in its bottom nestled in a recessed corner. Just above his head lay a shelf; he stood and faced it. It held a multi-chambered food dish, stocked with some scraps of meat, some bread and clean water.
One wall faced the rest of the shop. A similar cage, containing another human, faced him; together the two cages formed a doorway leading into the main part of the store. The shop itself contained glass-and-wire cages containing at least a dozen humans; not all were from the tribe he'd been captured with, but all seemed just as primitive. Several cages contained various furry creatures, some of them bipeds. At least three mouse 'morphs, similar to the sapient Rilima save for size and a duller expression, occupied cages in the pack, all looking miserable.
He turned to face the last wall, the one to the right of the food shelf, facing out of the store. Beyond it lay a large hallway, suggesting the shop occupied a space inside a much larger building. Hundreds of rabbits walked past the glass in both directions. Behind them, across the hall, he could make out other storefronts.
Allin turned back to the dishes and drank, the first clean drink he had enjoyed since his capture. Then he made a sandwich of the bread and meat and sat down under the shelf.
After another five minutes, the fat proprietor approached his cage, walked to the side and stuck a parchment, marked with unrecognizable symbols, to the glass. He glanced at Allin with detached interest, then sauntered away.
Allin looked at the paper, then slumped against the wall, letting himself sink slightly into the carpet. "I hope that's a big number. I'd like to at least think I'm worth a lot," he said softly, staring into space.
In another ten minutes his cage had already begun to attract attention, rabbit couples pausing and speaking to one another briefly in their fluid, alien tongue. He wondered what they really said: can we afford him? What can he do? Is he already trained? He looks intelligent.
Allin Jesa finished the last of his sandwich, wishing he still had his journal, and wondering idly how long it would take him to go completely mad.