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.”
“No!” 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 mangame. 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 fumed 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 grey 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 uml 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 tale 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 sucklings!” 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 seeding 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 kzinrett 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.
