of the snail's pace of light, the Patriarch's awareness of what was happening on his border was more than thirty years out of date. Chuut-Riit had general orders and made his decisions without consulting Kzin-home; in essence he was a traveling Patriarch. When the diameter of the Patriarchy was a whole lifetime, field commanders had broad authority. They did what they did and reported when they could. Once an obligation was assumed, they honored it or they trained their sons to honor it.
Chuut-Riit came to the boundary of the Patriarchy on a hunch generated by electromagnetic spoor. Rumors. Strange signals. With hardly more than hints picked up at a hunting match, he had set out from W'kkai as if his nose could read a wind of scent from across the interstellar reaches. A new starfaring species?
Four years closer, at Ch'Aakin, he learned that his nose was good. An obscure little border fortress circling R'hshssira had mustered a fleet of irregulars, attacked and actually conquered one of their worlds. Tree-bred omnivores with ten fingers. It was a major victory. Who would have thought that a planet-grinding binary system would contain such Kzin-like richness?
He knew then that the consequences for the Patriarchy might be immense and not all of the consequences were necessarily good. Inept military leadership on the borderlands was always a possibility and always an invitation to disaster.
The Tracking Teams at Ch'Aakin had given him their reading of the lightbeams. He spent days with those documents. The Conquistadors of Wunderland were indeed reckless Heroes, but he already knew all about that. What interested him most was the nature of the man-animal's resistance. The details of that campaign fascinated him.
In his journal he made a prediction already fourteen years out of date. He guessed that the local warriors from Hssin would settle down, become Wunderkzin, then grow restless and make a reckless strike toward the hairless-beasts' home system a tempting five-and-a-half years away by warship. They would fail, too. Their tactics at Wunderland had shown not the slightest understanding of logistics.
Years passed. Chuut-Riit spent time in hibernation and brief periods of frenzy adding to his armada. The closer he came to the Alpha Centauri double system, the fresher became the scent.
Now at Hssin he was close enough for the kill.
(1) He already knew that the First Fleet probe into the man-system had been a disaster. That was as he had predicted, long before he had known that a First Fleet had been launched.
(2) He already knew the numbers and deployment of the Second Fleet. He had obtained that information when he passed through miserable Fang. Given the facts about the man-system obtained by the First Fleet, he had been predicting a second disaster.
Now he was curious to see how well his prediction had held. He began to dig into the Hssin files. These out-world kzinti might be recklessly brave, but they were poor strategists, gland-strong bunglers. An early victory would be welcome, however unlikely, but such a success would also complicate his mission—winners were more reluctant to accept help from the Patriarchy than were losers.
Ah, there it was. With grunts and finger-waving he flicked the relevant documents over the surface of his spectacles.
He was not surprised to read that the attack of the Second Fleet had also failed. Still the details galled him. His claws were out; his rage was such that he would have slashed to death commanders who had already died for their incompetence. Why hadn't they attacked the laser batteries of the inner planet from below? He spent some hours doing careful calculations, but his insight was useless—the Third Fleet was long launched, already near Man- sun, and probably marked for destruction. Save the Patriarchy from these Hero irregulars!
The news, even though it was cold meat, pressed urgency upon Chuut-Riit. His stay at Hssin would have to be short.
With the proper timing, he could arrive at Alpha Centauri during the slump just before the formation of the inevitable Fourth Fleet. It would give him leeway to staff that Fourth Fleet with all the resentful enemies he was going to make on Wunderland and with the hot-heads who had swarmed to the battlescream of his hastily collected armada. They were expendable.
But the best of his Heroes he intended to hold back and discipline into a real naval threat. The hapless man-beasts, slaves-to-be, would have to wait for the arrival of the Fifth Fleet before they tangled with their first professional kzin army.
CHAPTER 9
(2396 A.D.)
The excitement!
The recruiters weren't just taking volunteers; they were conducting tournaments and selecting the warriors who were to accompany the armada to Wunderland. Competition was in the very air that wafted through the ventilators. The warriors even smelled different. They cuffed each other and tussled. They boasted about their skill and about the number of man-animals they would own when they were their father's age. They invented new and wonderful insults.
“My Near-Sighted Hero!” roared a kzin youth to a myopic friend at the feast between the jousts. “You say you see yourself on an estate in Africa hunting elephants? You have selected an elephant as your prey, I presume, not for his bravery but because he is big enough to see?”
“Will you wrestle the tusked beast to the ground with me, or will you shoot at him from a tree while he waves the tree over his head?” retorted the myopic friend, peering, not quite sure who it was who had challenged him.
The challenger directed his booming voice to the other orange-red tournament contenders who were devouring their Jotok arms noisily. “Let me recite to all, to this gathering of noble Heroes, the illustrious saga of my stumbling friend who is too tall to see his feet!” He stumbled in imitation, rousing a flurry of flapping ears and good-natured growls.
“Well, don't fall over before you've read me my fate!”
“You'll make it through the fiery battles in space. You have courage and quickness to compensate for your weak eyes! You'll smash ships and disgorge the boiling hairless corpses to the vacuum. We know that you have blind luck and the cunning of a mole! You'll stagger through the traps that explode in space. You'll drop on your grav-platform to the surface of Africa, there to slaughter battalions with your broad-beam fire!”
The raconteur was spitting and snarling with relish as he described the fights, purring through the compliments.
“Get on with it!” taunted the myopic friend. “I demand the glorious day of my elephant hunt!”
“Ah that. Hr-r. You see the elephant-beast's grey bulk looming in the distance. You stalk him. You leap mightily! But what is this? You have dived, headfirst into a gigantic grey boulder! The boulder takes the first round. Birds land in your mane, singing. Uniformed beasts, wearing the colors of the UNSN, crawl out of hiding, intrigued by your sudden stillness. Alas, they skin you, and there you are, Conqueror of Manhome, cured and spread upon some floor in Africa to tickle the feet of monkeys!”
The audience roared approval. Some waved Jotok bones in the air.
Trainer-of-Slaves was uncomfortable in this crowd—there were too many of his old enemies present. He was here only because he desperately wanted to volunteer, wanted to follow Chuut-Riit to glory. His courage was not permitting it. He didn't dare enter the tournament, even though claws were padded and no one could attack outside of the circle. In all this time of preparation for the coming of his savior, it had never occurred to him once that he might have to fight for the privilege of following!
So he caught a jerking auto-car through the tunnels back to the Jotok Run. Back to work. It didn't matter. Hssin would be emptied after the armada left, and most of his enemies would be gone. There was that.
Jotok-Tender spotted his apprentice in the dome near the main entrance of the Run and moved to greet him, animation in his gait. Hssin was indeed in a state when even the giant caught its fever! The giant didn't stop as he usually did but came right up and cuffed Trainer with force enough to half-knock him down.
