The Man-Kzin Wars 04

deliberation of Mellow-Yellow.

Long-Reach was uneasy. The other Jotoki became somber in their fear. “Not now. First we clean up ship. Blood! Dents! Awful mess!”

Big(arm) added somberly, “He must never know.”

Freckled(arm) shivered. “The rage if he finds out…”

“Lie to a kzin, and it's the torture chamber for you,” said Nora knowingly.

“The mutiny never happened!” said Long-Reach adamantly. “All is as it was.”

The Jotoki knew enough about gravity polarizers to alter course. They were almost at turnover by the time of the revolt and were doing a quarter of the velocity of light. They didn't try to decelerate. They just changed direction with deep space as their only destination.

One team spaced the kzin corpses. Each corpse was ejected violently by the polarizer field in a transient restabilization of the ship's energy and momentum balance. Other teams cleaned and scrubbed and repaired. Long-Reach slaughtered all Jotoki who were bonded to deceased kzin, dressing and storing them for Mellow- Yellow's table.

For the first time in millennia, the ancient conquerors of the barbarian warlords of Kzin-home commanded their own warship.

CHAPTER 24

(2420 A.D.)

Hibernation did damp the immediacy of the thoughts and rages with which one went into hibernation, but there was no memory loss upon revival. Waking up and expecting to confront Grraf-Hromfi and possible death, to find oneself instead the master of a kzinless lumbering drydock headed off in the general direction of kzinspace was a disorienting experience. At the minimum he should have rated a navigator and crew.

Trainer-of-Slaves’ first assumption had been that Grraf-Hromfi had undergone a drastic change of liver, had seen the reasonableness of the request to flee the battle with the superluminal motor and had simply sent him on his way. It was the only logical assumption. Everything was in order. The Shark was still in the hangar—the first thing he checked—and the Bitch was shipshape.

But Grraf-Hromfi didn't trust Jotoki to massage his pelt, let alone take command of a ship. Something else had happened. Trainer didn't have the time to ponder.

He was new to ship command and priority tasks kept cropping up and demanding his attention. noticed things.

The record of orders was absent. The log file was too clean. The transfer of command was broken. When had his Jotoki been forced to take command? He couldn't even locate information about how the developing battle at Alpha Centauri had ended. The last he'd heard it had been chaos—UNSN superluminal vehicles winking on, Grraf-Hromfi foaming at the mouth about mythical green-scaled monsters trying to take over his mind, a feral flotilla of animal rock-jacks converging on the monster, and a massive mobilization of the Fifth Fleet to the wrong rendezvous at the wrong time.

Now not a word of that. Not a sniff of kzin fur. Not a trace of kzinti hierarchy. Almost, a discontinuity.

In all this pastoral calm no battles, no emergencies serenity should have been master. But his Jotoki, who had clearly been in command of the ship in violation of standing admiralty orders, were terrified—that's what was wrong.

His slaves were honest. If Grraf-Hromfi had found himself in a hopeless situation and had ordered the Bitch to flee under Jotoki control, they would have said so and been proud of Grraf- Hromfi's trust. But they were all running around, tripping all over their arms, trying to please him, inventing orders to be obeyed and keeping their mouths shut.

It was plain that they were expecting their mild-mannered Mellow-Yellow to murder them all. Each of them had the fear of the Fanged God in all of their five hearts. Trainer couldn't bear to question them. He insisted, absolutely, upon the truth from his slaves but sometimes the truth was better left unsaid. He had never, ever, questioned Long-Reach or Joker or Creepy about the death of Puller-of-Noses. The subject had always been taboo.

Murder in the service of loyalty.

Jotok-Tender had mumbled about Jotok loyalty as if it were a sin when he was drinking too deeply of his contraband sthondat blood. The rumors about their treachery were true but Trainer had always put that down to poor slavecraft. Was it more? Did a threatened bond sometimes lead to a murderous frenzy?

He examined the ship for evidence of murder, and found not a mark. His suspicion was absurd, of course. He knew his Jotoki very well. Perhaps they were capable of well-meaning murder, but they were not capable of organized mutiny. Their education had been standardized for ages. Military prowess was not part of it. Indeed, military prowess had been systematically bred out of their root stock.

But there was something else he was noticing. His Jotok slaves were carefully shielding him from that she- man Lieutenant Argamentine. They were taking care of the cages all too well. He purred at such a revealing insight. In the mystery surrounding his revival, he had forgotten her, and no one had reminded him.

He had pity for his Jotok, but he had no scruples about questioning a man-beast. She must be healthy by now.

While he thought about it, he spent time in the Command Center checking the Bitch's course towards faint R’hshssira. Navigation was not his specialty, but he'd spent half his life out under the interstellar heavens absorbed by the majesty of the celestial sphere. He had the lore of perhaps twice octal-cubed stars etched into the passion lobe of his liver. Finding his way was no problem. It was avoiding the treacherous shoals of mass that was the navigator's art and pride and nightmare—and at that Trainer was an amateur.

Nora Argamentine was in a sullen mood when he found her in the cages. His Jotoki had exceeded their authority by merging four of the barred boxes into one large space for her and the children, but he had to agree that the new arrangement was a better one. The three children cried when they saw him.

“Silence, slaves” he said, and they were silent.

“So, your little tricksters let you out of the cold box, did they? They had the command of a whole warship to themselves, and they let you out.”

“I trust my Jotoki in all things. But Grraf-Hromfi would never have trusted this vessel to any Jotok without a wide-awake kzin on hand,” he said. “I'm curious how that happened.”

“Ask them!”

He unlocked the cage, and turned to the apprehensive children to reassure them. “I'll only be questioning her for a short while. She'll be right back.”

He pulled her out by the arm, and kept her more or less at arm's reach so that she couldn't attack him, thus propelling her to the inter-floor capsule station. She tried to shake off his arm. “I'm not fighting.” But she was resisting every Patriarch's toe-length of the way.

In the kzin-sized chair of the torture chamber, he strapped her down and attached the instruments. He set up the vocoder to monitor their conversation so that there would be no misunderstandings. “Tell me the truth and there will be no pain,” he said gently.

“I've been here before and I killed my torturer.”

The muddled situation was beginning to clear. Female acumen could only be a tiding of vast troubles. “Hr-r, this is the truth?”

“Why should I cover for your perfidious little tricksters?”

“They betrayed you?”

“They tranquilized me and put me back in the cages. They betrayed themselves.”

“What happened? I can't question them—their fear produces an agony of pity in my liver regions. My shame is that they are my friends.”

“Friends? Together we cleaned you ratcats out of this ship in half an hour. They took a positive pleasure in the mayhem. I made one mistake.” She spat at him. “I let you live.”