the only world of life. Then the Jotok landed, and for a time we thought they were from the God, because they had swords of fire that could tumble a Patriarch's castle-wall, while we had only swords of steel. Our musket-balls were nothing to them… Then we saw that they were weak, not strong, for they were grass-eaters. They lured our young warriors, hiring them to fight wars beyond the sky with promise of fire-weapons. Many a Sire was killed by his sons in those times!'
Traat-Admiral shifted uneasily, chirring and letting the tip of his tongue show between his teeth. That was not part of the racial history that kzinti liked to remember.
The sage made the stretching motion that was their species' equivalent of a relaxed smile. 'Remember also how that hunt ended; the Jotok taught their hired kzinti so much that all Homeworld obeyed the ones who had journeyed to the stars… and they listened to the Conservors. And one nightfall, the Jotok who thought themselves masters of kzin found the flesh stripped from their bones; are not the Jotok our slaves and foodbeasts to this very night? And a hundred Patriarchs have climbed the Tree since that good night.'
The sage nodded at Treat-Admiral's questioning chirrup. 'Yes, Chuut-Riit was another like that first Patriarch of all Kzin. He understood how to use the Conservor's knowledge; he had the warrior's and the sage's mind, and knew that these humans are the greatest challenge the Kzin have faced since the Jotok's day.' The Conservor brooded. 'This he was teaching to his sons. The humans must have either great luck, or more knowledge than is good, to have struck at us through him. The seed of something great died with Chuut-Riit.'
'I will spurt that seed afresh into the haunches of Destiny, Conservor,' Traat-Admiral said fervently.
'Witless Destiny bears strange kits,' the sage warned. He seemed to hesitate a second, then continued: 'You seek to unite your warriors as Chuut-Riit did, in an attack on the human home-system that is crafty-cunning, not witless-brave. Good! But that may not be enough. I have been evaluating your latest intelligence reports, the ones from our sources among the humans of the Swarm.'
Traat-Admiral tossed his head in agreement; that always presented difficulties. The kzinti had had the gravity polarizer from the beginnings of their time in space, and so had never colonized their asteroid belt. It was unnecessary, when you could have microgravity anywhere you wished, and hauling goods out of the gravity well was cheap. Besides that, kzinti were descended from plains-hunting felinoids, and while they could endure confinement they did so unwillingly and for as short a time as possible. Humans had taken a slower path to space, depending on reaction-drives until after their first contact with the warships of the Patriarchy. There was a whole human subspecies who lived on subplanetary bodies, and they had colonized the Alpha Centauri system along with their planet-dwelling cousins. Controlling the settlements of the Serpent Swarm had always been difficult for the kzinti.
'There is nothing definite, as yet,' the Conservor said. 'Much of what I have learned is useful only as the absence of scent. Yet it is incontestable that the feral humans of the Swarm have made a discovery.'
'tttReet?' Traat-Admiral said enquiringly.
The Conservor's eyelids slid down, covering the round amber blanks of his eyes; one was milky-white from an old injury that had left a scar across the massive socket and down the side of his muzzle. He beckoned with a flick of tail and ears, and the commander leaned close, signaling the guards to leave. His hands and feet were slightly damp with anxiety as they exited in a smooth drilled rush; it was a fearsome thing, the responsibilities of high office. One must learn secrets that burdened the soul, harder by far than facing lasers or neutron-weapons. Such were the burdens of which the ordinary Hero knew nothing.
'Long, long ago,' he whispered, 'Kzinti were not as they are now. Once females could talk.'
Traat-Admiral felt his batwing ears fold themselves away beneath the orange fur of his ruff as he shifted uneasily on the cushions. He had heard rumors, but obscene, he thought. The thought of performing ch'rowl with something that could talk, beyond the half-dozen words a kzinti female could manage… obscene. He gagged slightly.
'Long, long ago. And Heroes were not as they are now, either.' The sage brooded for a moment. 'We are an old race, and we have had time to… shape ourselves according to the dreams we had. Such is the Ancestral Past.' The whuffling twitch of whiskers that followed did kzinti service for a grin. 'Or so the encoded records of the oldest verses say. Now for another tale, Traat-Admiral. How would you react if another species sought to make slaves of Kzin?'
Traat-Admirals own whiskers twitched.
'No, consider this seriously. A race with a power of mental command; like a telepathic drug, irresistible. Imagine kzinti enslaved, submissive and obedient as mewling kits.'
The other kzin suddenly found himself standing, in a low crouch. Sound damped as his ears folded, but he could hear the sound of his own growl, low down in his chest. His lower jaw had dropped to his ruff, exposing the killing gape of his fangs; all eight claws were out on his hands, as they reached forward to grip an enemy and carry a throat to his fangs.
'This is a hypothetical situation!' the Conservor said quickly, and watched while Traat-Admiral fought back towards calm. The little nook behind the commander's dais was full of the sound of his panting and the deep gingery smell of kzinti rage. 'And that reaction… that would make any kzin difficult to control. That is one reason why the race of Heroes has been shaped so. And to make us better warriors, of course. In that respect perhaps we went a little too far.'
'Perhaps,' Traat-Admiral grated. 'What is the nature of this peril?' He bent his muzzle to the heated bourbon and milk and lapped thirstily.
'Hrrrru,' the Conservor said, crouching. 'Traat-Admiral, the race in question-the Students have called them the Slavers-little is known about them. They perished so long ago, you see; at least 2,000,000 years.' He used the Kzin-standard measurement; their home-world circled its sun at a greater distance than Terra did Sol. 'Even in vacuum, little remains. But they had a device, a stasis field that forms invulnerable protection and freezes time within; we have never been able to understand the principle and copies do not work, but we have found them occasionally, and they can be deactivated. The contents of most are utterly incomprehensible. A few do incomprehensible things. One or two we have understood, and these have won us wars, Traat-Admiral. And one contained a living Slaver; the base where he was held had to be missiled from orbit.'
Traat-Admiral tossed his head again, then froze. 'Stasis!' he yowled. 'Hero?'
'Stasis! How else-the monkey ship, just before Chuut-Riit was killed! It passed through the system at. 99 C; we thought, how could anything decelerate? By collision! Disguised among the kinetic-energy missiles the monkeys threw at us as they passed. Chuut-Riit himself said that the ramscoop ship caused implausibly little damage, given the potential and the investment of resources it represented. It was nothing but a distraction, and a delivery system for the assassins.' His fur laid fiat. 'If the monkeys in the Solar System have the stasis technology.' The sage meditated for a few moments, 'he'rrearow't'chsssece mearoweet'aatrurree,' he said: This does not follow. Traat- Admiral remembered that as one of Chuut-Riit's favorite sayings, and yes, this Conservor had been among the prince's household when he arrived from Kzin. 'If they had it in quantity, consider the implications. For that matter, we believe the Slavers had a faster-than-light drive.'
Stasis fields would make nonsense of war… and a faster-than-light drive would make the monkeys invincible, if they had it. The other kzin nodded, raising his tufted eyebrows. Theory said travel fester than lightspeed was impossible, unless one cared to be ripped into subatomic particles on the edges of a spinning black hole. Still, theory could be wrong; the kzinti were a practical race, who left most science to their subject species. What counted was results.
'True. If they had such weapons, we would not be here. If we had them—' He frowned, then proceeded cautiously. 'Such might cause… troubles with discipline.'
The sage spread his hands palm up, with the claws showing slightly. With a corner of his awareness, Traat-Admiral noted how age had dried and cracked the pads on palm and stubby fingers.
'Truth. There have been revolts before, although not many.' The Patriarchy was necessarily extremely decentralized, when transport and information took years and decades to travel between stars. It would be fifty years or more before a new prince of the Patriarch's blood could be sent to Wunderland, and more probably they would receive a confirmation of Treat-Admiral's status by beamcast. 'But with such technology… it is a slim chance, but there must be no disputes. If there is a menace, it must be destroyed. If a prize, it must fall into only the most loyal of hands. Yet the factions are balanced on a w'tsai's edge.'
'chrrr. Balancing of factions is a function of command.'
Traat-Admiral's gaze went unfocused, and he showed teeth in a snarl that meant anticipated triumph in a
