“That bad?” the human said, with a closed curve of the lips; the locals had learned that barring their teeth at a Kzin was not a good idea. The expression was called a “smile,” Chuut-Riit reminded himself. Betokening amusement, or friendliness, or submission.
“Worse, the” — he lapsed into the Hero's Tongue, since no human language was sufficient — “couldn't apply the strategy properly in circumstances beyond the calculated range of probable response.”
It was impossible to set out too detailed a plan of campaign, when communication took over four years. His fur began to bristle again, and he controlled his reaction with a monumental effort of will.
“Screen out all calls for the next sixteen hours, unless they're Code VI or above.” A thought prompted at him. “Oh, it's your offspring's naming-day next week, isn't it?”
“Yes, Chuut-Riit.” Henrietta had once told him that among pre-Conquest humans it had been a mark of deference to refer to a superior by title, and of familiarity to use names. His tail twitched. Extraordinary. Of course, humans all had names, without having to earn them.
“Well, I'll drop by at the celebration for an hour or so and bring one of my cubs.” That would be safe enough if closely supervised.
“We are honored, Chuut-Riit!” The human bowed, and the Kzin waved a hand to break contact.
“Valuable,” he muttered to himself rising and pacing once more. Humans were the most valuable subject- species the Kzin had yet acquired.
“Fools,” he said in the same undertone; his Kzin peers knew his opinion of them, but it was still inadvisable to get into the habit of saying it aloud. “I am surrounded by fools.” Humans fell into groups
Most refused to admit that, as though it somehow diminished the Hero to grant that a servant could do what the master could not. Idiocy. Chuut-Riit yawned, revealing a pink-red-and-white expanse of ridged pallet, tongue and fangs, his species' equivalent of a dismissive shrug.
He pulled his mind away from vistas of endless victory, a hunt ranging over whole spiral arms; that was a familiar vision, one that had driven him to intrigue and duel for this position. To use a tool effectively, you had to know its balance and heft, its strengths and weaknesses. Humans were more gregarious than Kzinti, more ready to identify with a leader-figure. But to elicit such cooperation, you had to know the symbol-systems that held power over them.
Chuut-Riit intended to take his offspring with him to earth, after the conquest, the best of them. Early exposure to humans would give them an intuitive grasp of the animals that he could only simulate through careful study. With a fully-domesticated human species at their disposal, his son's, son's, sons could even aspire to… no, unthinkable. And not necessary to think of, that was generations away.
Besides, it would take a great deal of time to properly tame the humans. They were useful already, but far too wild, too undependable, too various. A millennium of culling might be necessary before they were fully shaped to the purpose.
“… didn't just bull in,” Lieutenant Raines was saying, as she followed the third akvavit with a beer chaser. Jonah sipped more cautiously at his, thinking the asymmetry of nearly pure alcohol and laager was typically Wunderlander. “Only it wasn't caution, the pussies just didn't want to mess the place up and weren't expecting much resistance. Rightly so.”
Jonah restrained himself from patting her hand as she scowled into her beer. It was dim in their nook, and the gravity was Wunderland-standard .61 Earth; the initial refugees from the Alpha Centauri system had been mostly planetsiders, and from the dominant Danish-Dutch-German-Baltic ethnic group. They had grown even more clannish in the generation since, which showed in the tall ceramic steins along the walls, plastic wainscoting that made a valiant attempt to imitate fumed oak, and a human bartender in wooden shoes, lederhosen, and a beard clipped closer on one side than the other.
The drinks slipped up out of the center of the table, of course.
“That was, teufel, three years ago, my time. We'd had some warning, of course, once the UN started mastering what the crew of the
“Before my time, Lieutenant,” Jonah said, then cursed himself as he saw her wince. Raines had been born nearly three quarters of a century ago, even if her private duration included only two and a half decades of it.
“I'm Ingrid, if you're going to be Jonah instead of Captain Matthieson. Time— I keep forgetting, my head remembers but my gut forgets… Well, we just weren't set up to think in terms of war; that was ancient history. We held them off for nearly six months, though. Long enough to refit the three slowships in orbit, and give them emergency boost. I think the pussies didn't catch up and blast us simply because they didn't give a damn; they couldn't decelerate us and get the ships back, so why bother? Arrogant sons of…” another of those broad urchin grins “well, bitches isn't quite appropriate, is it?”
Jonah laughed. “You were in Munchen when the Kzin arrived?”
“No, I'd been studying at the Scholarium there software design philosophy — but I was on sabbatical in Vallburg with two friends of mine, working out some, ha, personal problems.”
The bartender with the unevenly-forked beard was nearly as attenuated as a Belter, but he had the disturbingly mobile ears of a pure-bred Wunderland
“That'd be, hmmm, Claude Montferrat-Palme and Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann?”
Raines nodded, moodily drawing a design on the tabletop with a forefinger dipped in the dark beer. “Yes… teufel, they're both of them in their fifties now, getting on for middle-aged.” A sigh. “Look… Harold's a, hmmm, hard to explain to a Sol-Belter, or even someone from the Serpent Swarm who hasn't spent a lot of time dirtside. His father was a Herrenmann, one of the Nineteen Families, senior line. His mother wasn't married to him.”
“Oh,” Jonah said, racking his memory. History had never been an interest of his, and his generation had been brought up to the War, anyway. “Problems with wills and inheritances and suchlike?”
“You know what a bastard is?”
“Sure. Someone you don't like, such as for example that flatlander bastard who assigned me to this project.” He raised his stein in salute. “Though I'm fast becoming resigned to it, Ingrid.”
She half-smiled in absent-minded acknowledgment, her mind 4.3 light-years and four decades away. “It means he got an expensive education, a nice little nest-egg settled on him… and that he'd never, never be allowed past the front door of the Yarthkin-Schotmann's family schloss. Lucky to be allowed to use the name. An embarrassment.”
“Might eat at a man,” Jonah said.
“Like a little kzin in the guts. Especially when he grew enough to realize why his father only came for occasional visits; and then that his half-siblings didn't have half his brains or drive and didn't need them either. It drove him, he had to do everything twice as fast and twice as good, take crazy risks… made him a bit of a bastard
