Chuut-Riit put his hand on the black metal of the outer portal, stopped. His ears pivoted, and he blinked; out of the corner of his eye he saw a pair of tufted eyebrows glancing through the thick twisted metal on the rim of the ten-meter battlement. Why, the little sthondats, he thought affectionately. They managed to put it together out of reach of the holo pickups.
The adult put his hand to the door again, keying the locking sequence, then bounded backward four times his own length from a standing start. Even under the lighter gravity of Wunderland, it was a creditable feat. And necessary, for the massive panels rang and toppled as the rope-swung boulder slammed forward. The children had hung two cables from either tower, with the rock at the point of the V and a third rope to draw it back. As the doors bounced wide he saw the blade they had driven into the apex of the egg-shaped granite rock, long and barbed and polished to a wicked point.
Kittens, he thought. Always going for the dramatic. If that thing had struck him, or the doors under its impetus had, there would have been no need of a blade. Watching too many historical adventure holos.
“Errorowwww!” he shrieked in mock-rage, bounding through the shattered portal and into the interior court, halting atop the kzin-high boulder. A round dozen of his older sons were grouped behind the rock, standing in a defensive clump and glaring at him; the crackly scent of their excitement and fear made the fur bristle along his spine. He glared until they dropped their eyes, continued it until they went down on their stomachs, rubbed their chins along the ground and then rolled over for a symbolic exposure of the stomach.
“Congratulations,” he said. “That was the closest you’ve gotten. Who was in charge?”
More guilty sidelong glances among the adolescent males crouching among their discarded pull-rope, and then a lanky youngster with platter-sized feet and hands came squatting-erect. His fur was in the proper flat posture, but the naked pink of his tail still twitched stiffly.
“I was,” he said, keeping his eyes formally down. “Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” he added, at the adult’s warning rumble.
“Now, youngling, what did you learn from your first attempt?”
“That no one among us is your match, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the kitten said. Uneasy ripples went over the black-striped orange of his pelt.
“And what have you learned from this attempt?”
“That all of us together are no match for you, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the striped youth said.
“That we didn’t locate all of the cameras,” another muttered. “You idiot, Spotty.” That to one of his siblings; they snarled at each other from their crouches, hissing past barred fangs and making striking motions with unsheathed claws.
“No, you did locate them all, cubs,” Chuut-Riit said. “I presume you stole the ropes and tools from the workshop, prepared the boulder in the ravine in the next courtyard, then rushed to set it all up between the time I cleared the last gatehouse and my arrival?”
Uneasy nods. He held his ears and tail stiffly, letting his whiskers quiver slightly and holding in the rush of love and pride he felt, more delicious than milk heated with bourbon. Look at them! he thought. At the age when most young kzin were helpless prisoners of instinct and hormone, wasting their strength ripping each other up or making fruitless direct attacks on their sires, or demanding to be allowed to join the Patriarchy’s service at once to win a Name and household of their own…His get had learned to cooperate and I’d use their minds!
“Ali, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, we set the ropes up beforehand, but made it look as if we were using them for tumbling practice,” the one the others called Spotty said. Some of them glared at him, and the adult raised his hand again.
“No, no, I am moderately pleased.” A pause. “You did not hope to take over my official position if you had disposed of me?”
“No, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the tall leader said. There had been a time when any kzin’s holdings were the prize of the victor in a duel, and the dueling rules were interpreted more leniently for a young subadult. Everyone had a sentimental streak for a successful youngster; every male kzin remembered the intolerable stress of being physically mature but remaining under dominance as a child.
Still, these days affairs were handled in a more civilized manner. Only the Patriarchy could award military and political office. And this mass assassination attempt was…unorthodox, to say the least. Outside the rules more because of its rarity than because of formal disapproval…
A vigorous toss of the head. “Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit. We had an agreement to divide the private possessions. The lands and the, ah, females.” Passing their own mothers to half-siblings, of course. “Then we wouldn’t each have so much we’d get too many challenges, and we’d agreed to help each other against outsiders,” the leader of the plot finished virtuously.
“Fatuous young scoundrels,” Chuut-Riit said. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You haven’t been communicating outside the household, have you?” he snarled.
“Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit!”
“Word of honor! May we die nameless if we should do such a thing!”
The adult nodded, satisfied that good family feeling had prevailed. “Well, as I said, I am somewhat pleased. If you have been keeping up with your lessons. Is there anything you wish?”
“Fresh meat, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the spotted one said. The adult could have told him by the scent, of course, a kzin never forgot another’s personal odor, that was one reason why names were less necessary among their species. “The reconstituted stuff from the dispensers is always…so…quiet.”
Chuut-Riit hid his amusement. Young Heroes-to-be were always kept on an inadequate diet, to increase their aggressiveness. A matter for careful gauging, since too much hunger would drive them into mindless cannibalistic frenzy.
“And couldn’t we have the human servants back? They were nice.” Vigorous gestures of assent. Another added: “They told good stories. I miss my Clothilda-human.”
“Silence!” Chuut-Riit roared. The youngsters flattened stomach and chin to the ground again. “Not until you can be trusted not to injure them; how many times do I have to tell you, it’s dishonorable to attack household servants! Until you learn self-control, you will have to make do with machines.”
This time all of them turned and glared at a mottled youngster in the rear of their group; there were half-healed scars over his head and shoulders. “It bared its teeth at me,” he said sulkily. “All I did was swipe at it, how was I supposed to know it would die?” A chorus of rumbles, and this time several of the covert kicks and clawstrikes landed.
“Enough,” Chuut-Riit said after a moment. Good, they have even learned how to discipline each other as a unit. “I will consider it, when all of you can pass a test on the interpretation of human expressions and body-language.” He drew himself up. “In the meantime, within the next two eight-days, there will be a formal hunt and meeting in the Patriarch’s Preserve; kzinti homeworld game, the best Earth animals, and even some feral-human outlaws, perhaps!”
He could smell their excitement increase, a mane-crinkling musky odor not unmixed with the sour whiff of fear. Such a hunt was not without danger for adolescents, being a good opportunity for hostile adults to cull a few of a hated rival’s offspring with no possibility of blame. They will be in less danger than most, Chuut-Riit thought judiciously. In fact, they may run across a few of my subordinates’ get and mob them. Good.
“And if we do well, afterwards a feast and a visit to the Sterile Ones.” That had them all quiveringly alert, their tails held rigid and tongues lolling; non-bearing females were kept as a rare privilege for Heroes whose accomplishments were not quite deserving of a mate of their own. Very rare for kits still in the household to be granted such, but Chuut-Riit thought it past time to admit that modern society demanded a prolonged adolescence. The day when a male kit could be given a spear, a knife, a rope, and a bag of salt and kicked out the front gate at puberty were
long gone. Those were the wild, wandering years in the old days, when survival challenges used up the superabundant energies. Now they must be spent learning history, technology, xenology, none of which burned off the gland-juices saturating flesh and brain.
He jumped down amid his sons, and they pressed around him, purring throatily with adoration and fear and respect; his presence and the failure of their plot had reestablished his personal dominance unambiguously, and there was no danger from them for now. Chuut-Riit basked in their worship, feeling the rough caress of their tongues on his fur and scratching behind his ears. Together, he thought. Together we will do wonders.
Chapter III
Interesting, Chuut-Riit thought, standing on the verandah of his staff-secretary’s house and lapping at the gallon tub of half-melted vanilla ice cream in his hands. Quite comely, in its way.
In a very un-kzin fashion. The senior staff quarters of his estate were laid out in a section of rolling hills, lawns and shrubs and eucalyptus trees, modest stone houses with high-pitched shingle roofs set among flowerbeds. A dozen or so of the adults who dwelt here were gathered at a discreet distance, down by the landing pad; he could smell their colognes and perfumes, the slightly mealy odor of human flesh beneath, a mechanical tang overlaid with alien greenness and animals and…yes, the children were coming back. Preceded by the usual blast of sound. The kzin’s ears folded themselves away at the jumbled high-pitched squealing, one of the less attractive qualities of young humans. Although there was a very kzinlike warbling mixed in among the monkey sounds…
The giant ball of yarn bounced around the corner of the house and across the close-clipped grass of the lawn, bounding from side to side with the slight drifting wobble of .61 gravities, trailing floppy ends. A peacock fled shrieking from the toy and the shouting mob of youngsters that followed it; the bird’s head was parallel to the ground and its feet pumped madly. Chuut-Riit sighed, finished the ice cream and began licking his muzzle and fingers clean. Alpha Centauri was setting, casting bronze shadows over the creeper-grown stone around him, and it was time to go.
“Like this!” the young kzin leading the pack screamed, and leaped in a soaring arch that landed spreadeagled on the soft fuzzy surface of the ball. He was a youngster of five, all head and hands and feet, the fur of his pelt an electric orange with fading black spots, the infant mottling that a very few kzin kept into early youth. Several of the human youngsters made a valiant attempt to follow, but only one landed and clutched the strands, screaming delightedly. The others fell, one skinning a knee and bawling.
Chuut-Riit rose smoothly to his feet and bounced forward, scooping the crying infant up and stopping the ball with his other hand.
“You should be more careful, my son,” he said to the Kzin child in the Hero’s tongue. To the human: “Are you injured?”
“Mama!” the child wailed, twining its fists into his fur and burying its tear-and-snot streaked face in his side.
“Errruumm,” Chuut-Riit rumbled helplessly. They are so fragile. His nostrils flared as he bent over the tiny form, taking in the milky-sweet smell of distress and the slight metallic-salt odor of blood from its knee.
“Here is your mother,” he continued, as the human female scuttled up and began apologetically untwining the child.
“Here, take it,” he rumbled, as she cuddled the infant. The woman gave it a brief inspection and looked up at the eight-foot height of the kzin.
“No harm done, just over-excited, honored Chuut-Riit,” she said. The kzin rumbled again, looked up at the guards standing by his flitter in the driveway and laid back his ears; they became elaborately casual, examining the sky or the ground and controlling their expressions. He switched his glare back to his own offspring on top of the ball. The cub flattened itself apologetically, then whipped its head to one side as the human child clinging to the slope of the ball threw a loose length of yarn. Chuut-Riit wrenched his eyes from the fascinating thing and plucked his son into the air by the loose skin at the back of his neck.
“It is time to depart,” he said. The young kzin had gone into an instinctive half-curl. He cast a hopeful glance over his shoulder at his father, sighed and wrapped the limber pink length of his tail around the adult’s massive forearm.
“Yes, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” he said meekly, then brightened and waved at the clump of estate worker children standing by the ball. “Goodbye,” he called, waving a hand that seemed too large for his arm, and adding a cheerful parting yowl in the Hero’s Tongue. Literally translated it meant roughly drink blood and tear cattle into gobbets, but the adult trusted the sentiment would carry over the wording.
The human children jumped and waved in reply as Chuut-Riit carried his son over to the car and the group of parents waiting there; Henrietta in the center with her offspring by her side. I think her posture indicates contentment, he thought. This visit confers much prestige among the other human servants. Which was excellent, a good executive secretary being a treasure beyond price. Besides…
“That was fun, father,” the cub said. “Could I have another piece of cake?”
“Certainly not, you will be sick as it is,” Chuut-Riit said decisively. Kzin were not quite the pure meat-eaters they claimed to be, and their normal diet contained the occasional sweet, but stuffing that much sugar-coated confection down on top of a stomach already full of good raw ztirgor was something the cub would regret soon. Ice cream, though…why had nobody told him about ice cream before? Even better than bourbon-and-milk; he must begin to order in bulk.
“I must be leaving, Henrietta,” Chuut-Riit said. “And young Ilge,” he added, looking down at the offspring. It was an odd-looking specimen, only slightly over knee-high to him and with long braided head-pelt of an almost kzinlike orange. The bare skin of its face was dotted with markings of almost the same color. Remarkable; the one standing next to it was black. There was no end to their variety.
The cub wiggled in his grasp and looked down. “I hope you like your armadillo, Ilge,” he said. Ilge looked down at the creature she had not released since the gift-giving ceremony and patted it again; the beasts had adapted well to Wunderland, but they were less common since the Kzinti arrived. A snout and beady eye appeared for a second, caught the scent of kzin and disappeared back into an armored ball with a snap.
“They’re lots of fun.” Kzin children adored armadillos and Chuut-Riit provided his with a steady supply, even if the shells made a mess once the cubs finally got them peeled.
“It’s nice,” she said solemnly.
“The ball of fiber was an excellent idea,” Chuut-Riit added to Henrietta. “I must procure one for my other offspring.”
“I thought it would be, honored Chuut-Riit,” the human replied, and the kzin blinked in bafflement at her amusement.
One of the guards was too obviously entertained by his commander’s eccentricity. “Here,” Chuut-Riit called as he walked through the small crowd of bowing humans. “Guard Trooper. Care for this infant as we fly, in the forward compartment. Care for him well.”
The soldier blinked dubiously at the small bundle of chocolate-and-mud stained fur that looked with eager interest at the fascinating complexities of his equipment, then slung his beam rifle and accepted it with an unconscious bristling. Chuut-Riit gave the ear-and tail twitch that was the kzin equivalent of sly amusement as he stepped into the passenger compartment and threw himself down on the cushions. There was a slight internal wobble as the car lifted, an expected retching sound, and a yowl of protest from the forward compartment.
The ventilators will be overloaded, the governor thought happily. Now, about that report…
Tiamat was shabby. Coming in to dock on the rockjacker prospecting craft Markham had found for them it had looked the same as it had half a century before—a little busier and more exterior lights; but basically the same spinning ironrock tube twenty kilometers across and sixty long, with ships of every description clustered at the docking yards at either end. More smelte
rs and robofabricators hanging outside, more giant baggies of water ice and volatiles. But inside it was shabby, run-down.
That was Ingrid Raines’s first thought. Shabby. The handgrips were worn, the vivid murals that covered the walls just in from the poles of the giant cylinder fading and grease-spotted. The constant subliminal rumble from the freighter docks was louder, nobody was bothering with the sonic baffles that damped the vibration of megatons of powdered ore, liquid metal, vacuum-separated refinates pouring into the network of pumptubes. Styles were more garish than she remembered, face-paint and tiger-striped oversuits. There were a quartet of police hanging spaced evenly around the entry corridor, toes hooked into rails and heads in toward the center. Obstructing traffic, but nobody was going to object, not when the goldskins wore impact armor and powdered endoskeletons, not when shockrods dangled negligently in their hands.
“Transfer booths closed down,” Jonah murmured as they made flipover and went feet first into the stickyfield at the inward end of the passage. There was a familiar subjective click behind their eyes, and the corridor became a half-kilometer of hollow tower over their heads, filled with the up-and-down drift of people.
“Shut up,” Ingrid muttered back. That had been no surprise, instantaneous transportation would foul up security too much. They went through the emergency pressure curtains, into the glare and blare of the inner corridors. Zero-G, here near the core of Tiamat, one-G at the rims. Tigertown was at one-G, she thought. The resident kzin were low-status engineers and supervisors, or navy types; they liked heavy gravity, the pussies had never lived in space without gravity control. Tigers, she reminded herself. That was the official slang term. Ratcat if you wanted to be a little dangerous.