The conversation changed from such mundane topics when Yiao-Captain arrived to rip off a hunk of meat for his own fangs. He dominated the conversation with his enthusiasms. He added fire to the tinder-dry debate over Chuut-Riit’s Logistical Preparation as the Rey to Victory In War. He provoked insults and countered them with witty insults of his own that both needled and defused. When he tired of that, he turned the collective attention of his coterie to tales of adventure.
Adventure, to Yiao-Captain, meant astronomy. His haunch of herbivore held motionless, he stopped eating while the sputtering of the Hero’s Tongue quickened to an almost battle intensity. To know the stars! There were rumors of strange beings who lived in the depths of space, rumors of ancient empires that had casually abandoned tools upon the ice of comets long before any of the giant stars of the constellations had yet flamed to life.
Hr-roghk! The hints! The spoor untracked! Starseeds that spawned at the galaxy’s very edge. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Mysteries! What were those moon caves deep in the outer planetary gloom around red dwarfs? Caves so ancient they must have been carved by disintegrator beams? Wealth! Honor!
Then silence to let all this sink in while Yiao-Captain noisily stripped his morsel. He left, reminded of duty by some new passion. The conversation drifted back to kzinrret jokes, to who had just received a name, to the honor duel between Electronic-Systems-Upkeep and Builder-of-Walls, the spike on yesterday’s scope, the taste of space rations. And finally, finally, the tongue-wagging licked around that most degenerate bone of speculation—fleet rivalries; who would reach Man-sun first?
Days of hunting brought Trainer-of-Slaves and Detector-Analyst together in a friendship broader than the commonality of Hssin. They often went out at dawn without Ssis. Detector had been hunting in the woods around Gerning since the opening of the base, and knew the ways and the smells of the forest. He knew the waterholes and the places where a tigripard might be found stalking its own prey.
The aroma of Wunderland, the expanse, the open skies, an evening standing on the beach by the sea—all of this overwhelmed Trainer with joy. He had been a hunter himself, moving daily out into the Hssin Jotok Run to cull the wild Jotok or lure a transient into slavery, or measure the salinity of the marshes where the Jotok larvae wriggled among the reeds. He had thought the Jotok Run a capacious relief from the cramped city, but this! This Wunderland went on forever!
Once the hunting through the woods took them as far as the Korsness estate. Trainer saw from the hill Yiao-Captain helping a man-beast and his child move a fallen tree from the main road. He went to help the Captain. It seemed like a political thing to do—ingratiating himself with this officer could only prove useful. But why was he moving a tree when there were so many slaves and machines?
“Rrrr, we have welcome help,” purred Yiao-Captain to the tiny child who had been trying to lift the tree at its center.
Trainer recognized the larger of the tame animals as the local king of beasts. He couldn’t tell one monkey from the other but this one was tall for a man, with a hideous hooked nose. Unfairly, he had an unearned name, Peter Nordbo, but that was the way of the monkeys who did not know the value of a name.
“You’re big,” said the Herrenmann’s child to the new kzin. “What’s your name?”
Trainer-of-Slaves could hardly understand beast talk, and he knew the child would not understand his. He had not yet grasped enough words in the slave language to translate his name. But Long-Reach’s name for him was an easy translation…“Mellow-Yellow,” he said. Those two words he did know. He added stiffly, “You are Short-Son of Nordbo.”
The boy cocked his ear. “I’m Ib Nordbo, ehrenvoll Yellow.” He put his three-year-old back to the tree. “Push!”
After the two kzin had carried the log to the roadside with token help from their human vassals, the child found a nest of petal-pickers that had been disturbed by their activities, the tiny scaled creatures dashing grief-stricken around their paper home. Ib Nordbo, not the least bit afraid of the kzin, took Trainer by the paw and made him stoop to his haunches while he explained the social life of petal-pickers with three year old seriousness.
Peter Nordbo watched his son anxiously while Yiao emitted a purr to reassure his vassal. Trainer-of-Slaves listened intently to everything Ib told him, even understanding some of it. He was fascinated. The man-beasts he had seen were very badly organized into slavehood. There had to be a better way. Learning animal psychology by direct communication with their young was a source of important clues to domestication.
Mellow-Yellow let a petal-picker climb onto his stick waving its long front legs. Ib laughed. “They like roses. I feed them roses but it makes them sick.” And he got up and staggered around for Trainer like a petal-picker drunk on the alien essence of rose.
“Do you have petal-pickers on Kzin?” asked the child curiously.
“Never…been…Kzin-home,” Trainer struggled with the language.
“I go to Kzin,” Ib pointed at himself. “I will tell the Patriarch to be nice.”
Peter Nordbo had been licking his lips. He hastily picked up his son who was as much of a chatterbox as his young wife Hulda. “Maman wishes you for nap time.”
“Not” The boy struggled.
“Sir,” apologized Nordbo, “he is young yet to learn the proper forms of respect.”
Kzinti have a soft spot in their liver for sons who struggle. Yiao-Captain nodded his mane. “If ever I reach Kzin-home, I will deliver the katzchen’s message with great respect to the Patriarch.”
Only days later Yiao-Captain appeared at the lodge with his Nordbo Herrenmann, violating all protocol. Kzin and beast came there to play some sort of man-game. Bored with fleet gossip, Trainer-of-Slaves tried to follow the moves and the logic of the game. It was played out on an octal by octal board, with stationary combat pieces. There seemed to be no action, no attack. The pieces stood there, sometimes without moving for minutes. One piece was moved at a time, to some trivial advantage. Sometimes, very gently, a piece would be set aside.
Yiao-Captain seemed fascinated by the game; his eyes never left the pieces. He asked questions roughly, and would cuff Herrenmann Nordbo as if he were a son, and he would purr happily when he captured a piece. But the stationary nature of the game obviously took its toll. When beast-Nordbo spent too much time on his moves, the Captain would pace restlessly, and if his opponent, even then, had not moved, he would stand towering over the small slave and impatiently suggest what the next move should be.
“Ach, that would give me too much trouble with your bishop when you jumped your knight. I think I’ll move my pawn. I see advantage there.”
“How do monkeys ever win a war? You’d be slashed to pieces before you decide which trench to sit in!” He turned to Trainer-of-Slaves. “You’ve been watching. Do you understand this ponderous wargame?”
“It is much too slow for me. I’m looking for fast action around Man-sun.”
“You have a conventional mind. Five and a half years in hibernation is action?” Yiao-Captain roared in good humor. “Do you have a ship yet? Chuut-Riit is always looking for Heroes who want to get their tails singed.”
“I have a ship, but the Admiralty is being slow with my rating.”
“Hr-r, that’s easy to fix. I’ll tell you who to go to.”
Yiao-Captain seemed to be at ease anywhere. When Traat-Admiral arrived for an inspection, Yiao took him hunting and entertained him without the slightest hint of propitiation. He appeared to be very well connected. Ssis-Captain hid in the bushes so that when Traat-Admiral came for his aircar on the day of departure, he could step out along the path and pass the Admiral with a sharp salute.
It was a glorious day. A chill wind blew in from the sea that ruffled the fur and took away the heat of exertion. Ssis was in a mood for celebration. He chatted excitedly about what Yiao-Captain could do for them, counting sons before they were born. Trainer guided him north to the creek where they wandered upstream
on the boulders. Ssis leaped very carefully not to get wet—stone by stone—but Trainer didn’t mind wading when he had to.
“Shissss!” the Captain whispered, freezing. “I’ve caught a scent.”
They skulked downwind over a lightning-felled tree silently on pads. Bent underbrush led around-hill. A splash of white through the leaves. There he was. They had a man-beast. A youngling with a spear. He saw them and started to run. In a flowing gait Ssis-Captain cut him off, drove him back toward Trainer. He fled in a perpendicular dash, away from them both. Ssis flanked him, around a gray outcropping, grinning. The boy-beast turned. Futilely. The natural carnivorous leap of the kzin was awesome in the low gravity. Ssis was blocking his way again, not hurting him, not coming close. Toying with his prey.
Trainer-of-Slaves had flashes of the poor monkeys he had tried to save back on Hssin during that fatal man-hunt. He stood, frozen with fear, not for himself but for the wretched animal. Ssis was only playing, having fun, but the beast didn’t know that. Trainer reached a hand up, trying to think of something to growl at his companion that would restrain him.
The terrified boy, unable to retreat, charged with his spear. “Die Zeit ist um! Rattekatze!”
Ssis whacked him aside with unsheathed claws, but instead of picking himself up and running, the animal charged again with berserk energy, spearless. His body rebounded from the massive bulk of the moving kzin. He no longer had a face.
“No sense of humor,” said Ssis-Captain, rolling the corpse onto its back with his foot.
Trainer-of-Slaves lowered his hand. They were so frail! He stooped over the youngling-beast to check for signs of life, the heady blood-odor stimulating his hunger. “He’s dead!” There was no help for it. They stripped the clothes off the body and took turns ripping it apart with their fangs. What they left was a pile of bloody bones, half the flesh still uneaten, the braincase smashed open for the delicacy within.
One day later a grim Herrenmann arrived at the kzin base desperately trying to hold his rage within a propitiative framework. Yiao-Captain greeted him, at first not reading Peter Nordbo’s state of mind. The hints of rebellion only raised Yiao-Captain’s ire. Nordbo shifted his argument. Gerning was a small town. If the taxpayers were hunted, who would pay the taxes?
“I have supplied your base faithfully. How can I collect your tithe if this goes on?”
“I will conduct an investigation.” Yiao opened a switch on his desk. “Data-Sergeant. Get me information. Who was hunting yesterday?”
Later Yiao had Ssis-Captain and Trainer-of-Slaves ordered to his office. He left them standing at attention. His mouth was twitching around its fangs. “You have been guests here at this base,” he growled, making it plain that they no longer were. “I have let you roam freely. You have been serving in cramped quarters and I have sympathy for those who do their duty under trying circumstances. You have no authority to kill my taxpayers. Nor any reason. The woods abound with lower game.” Contemptuously, the tip of Yiao’s naked tail flicked back and forth. “This youngling you attacked, was that the best test of your prowess that you could find? Next you’ll be devouring suckling kits.”
Yiao-Captain let the warriors stand while he attended to other matters. Finally he pulled out papers for Ssis-Captain. “You have been recalled to the fleet immediately. I have seen to it that you will not return to the surface of Wunderland. You’ll have to do your hunting on Man-home. I hear that there they have a surplus of taxpayers.”
He had even worse words for Trainer-of-Slaves. “And I have investigated you, too. You have been toadying around the base seeking a fighting position in the Fourth Fleet, slithering behind the command of those who have been appointed to consider the staffing of the Fleet. You have a record of cowardice. Your presence aboard a fighting ship would endanger its Heroes. I have seen to it that you are being recalled to your duties at Fortress Aarku, immediately.”
CHAPTER 15
(2402–2403 A.D.)
When the Fourth Fleet convoys began to assemble, stripping Centaurian space of its slaves and Heroes and warcraft, the Fortress Aarku became a tomb smelling of the Jotoki pens burrowed into the rock. The trained slaves were gone. The maintenance hangars were empty.
After wonderland, Aarku was a coffin.
Trainer-of-Slaves suffered for another year at Alpha Centauri B. He tried to keep his contraband kzinrret happy, but she missed the flirtations of the warriors who were on their way to Man-sun and became moody and demanding. She did not comprehend the war. She only knew that she had been abandoned. She wanted attention. She rubbed against Trainer while he was trying to work. When he rebuffed her, she took to stalking his personal Jotoki and actually killed one of his trainees. When Long-Reach discretely approached his master for help, they decided to store her away in a hibernation coffin and only bring her out when Trainer felt the craving.
Months after the Fourth Fleet was gone, remnants of the Third Fleet began to arrive at Alpha Centauri. Hangers at Aarku filled. Polarizers improperly maintained for a decade needed a fully stripped overhaul, but more than that there was much old battle damage too drastic to have been repaired in transit.
Trainer-of-Slaves personally crawled through the last of the stragglers. Eight survivors out of a crew of forty had brought it home, three of them dying of injuries en route. Inspection showed that The Vindictive Memory had taken a near fatal internal explosion. The ship’s command sector had been pierced in three places by x-ray bolts. Space desiccated kzin were still trapped in one compartment. In the main gunnery turret three carbonized kzin lay melded to their weapons. The ship was not salvageable.
It was enough to chill the liver. Trainer-of-Slaves was reminded that he was afraid of death. How had he let Ssis-Captain mesmerize him with dreams of valor?
Orders relieving him of his duties at Aarku came as an electric surprise.
Some young son of a noble name had annoyed Chuut-Riit and was being given the Aarku assignment as penance. Even though Trainer was to be allowed three personal slaves, the new post didn’t look appetizing—the commission involved a permanent position, not on Wunderland or Tiamat, but in deep space. Another dead-end for a coward? Yet the commission script bore the seal of the Fifth Fleet.
The tiny ship that brought him out, all gravitic drive and no armor or armament, was called a Ztirgor after a long-legged browser of Kzin that could run and dodge skillfully through brush and hills but had no other defense against attack. They were two light-days out, a six day trip by Ztirgor at 70 Kzin gravities of acceleration with a turn-around velocity a third that of light. Alpha Centauri had been reduced from suns to a coruscant pair of stars in Andromeda.
They were drifting in to dock. By starshine the great hull of the communications warship was dwarfed by its extended antenna. The transmission/reception fabric, shimmering in the palest of rainbow colors, dominated the heavens. From a distance there were no clues as to its size—binocular vision is erased by space.
This great antenna faced Man-sun, now brilliantly overlaying the constellation that the man-beasts called Cassiopeia and the kzin called God’s Fang Drinking at the River of Heaven. The Father-sun, appropriately, lay in the constellation of the Dominant Warrior that, to monkeys, was not a warrior but represented a ferocious bear.
Strange, thought Trainer-of-Slaves, how little the constellations varied over the whole of Patriarchal Space. The brightest stars were too distant to move. The stars of God’s Fang were all giants, the brightest a red giant, the others, massive white giants, furious forges of the heavy metals.
They were met in the shuttle bay by an efficiently formal Master-Sergeant who recognized Trainer-of-Slaves by the slaves he brought with him. “Grraf-Hromfi will see you immediately. Lesser-Sergeant will settle your slaves. Welcome aboard.” Trainer was already missing his kzinrret. He’d had to sell her on the sleight-of-paw market, too quickly to get a good price.
The warship was maintaining a light artificial gravity, just enough to settle dust and los
t objects. They glided through the passageways effortlessly. It wasn’t much different from Fortress Aarku. During the journey Trainer-of-Slaves deduced that Grraf-Hromfi ran a disciplined ship—the smell of it was remarkably clean.
At the Command Center, the Sergeant snapped off an alert ripping-salute. He was dismissed. Trainer-of-Slaves imitated with his snappiest claws-across-face and Grraf-Hromfi replied with a salute that wouldn’t have taken the hide off a kit’s tail. He wore a soft vest over his robe that he must have repaired himself, but he smelled like a hard task-master.
“I don’t think that on the Sherrek’s Ear we can provide you with the kind of feral life to which you have become accustomed; nevertheless, we do have interesting duties. You haven’t smuggled aboard a kzinrret, have you?”
“No, Sire!”
“I thought that I’d let you know that we don’t tolerate such irregularities here.”
“Of course, Sire!”
“I’ve been reviewing your record, Eater-of-Grass.” He returned his heavy duty data-goggles to his eyes which didn’t prevent him from seeing, through the data, the sudden stiffness in Trainer-of-Slaves posture—or the way ears folded against skull—or the layback of the fur on cheeks. “Yes, youngling, I know everything. At ease!”
“My cowardice has shamed me, Dominant One! I sought to restore my honor by volunteering for the Fourth Fleet.”
“I assume that you believe the Fourth Fleet’s mission would be more successful with cowards in key positions?”
“No, Sire!”
“I also have here, printed across your face at the moment, a report on a recent conversation of yours. You were speculating that old enemies from Hssin sabotaged your efforts to join the Fourth Fleet by telling stories about your legendary cowardice.”