and shrubs and eucalyptus trees, modest stone houses with high-pitched shingle roofs set among flowerbeds. A dozen or so of the adults who dwelt here were gathered at a discreet distance, down by the landing pad; he could smell their colognes and perfumes, the slightly mealy odor of human flesh beneath, a mechanical tang overlaid with alien greenness and animals and… yes, the children were coming back. Preceded by the usual blast of sound. The kzin's ears folded themselves away at the jumbled high-pitched squealing, one of the less attractive qualities of young humans. Although there was a very kzinlike warbling mixed in among the monkey sounds…
The giant ball of yarn bounced around the corner of the house and across the close-clipped grass of the lawn, bounding from side to side with the slight drifting wobble of. 61 gravities, trailing floppy ends. A peacock fled shrieking from the toy and the shouting mob of youngsters that followed it; the bird's head was parallel to the ground and its feet pumped madly. Chuut-Riit sighed, finished the ice cream and began licking his muzzle and fingers clean. Alpha Centauri was setting, casting bronze shadows over the creeper-grown stone around him, and it was time to go. 'Like this!” the young kzin leading the pack screamed, and leaped in a soaring arch that landed spreadeagled on the soft fuzzy surface of the ball. He was a youngster of five, all head and hands and feet, the fur of his pelt an electric orange with fading black spots, the infant mottling that a very few kzin kept into early youth. Several of the human youngsters made a valiant attempt to follow, but only one landed and clutched the strands, screaming delightedly. The others fell, one skinning a knee and bawling.
Chuut-Riit rose smoothly to his feet and bounced forward, scooping the crying infant up and stopping the ball with his other hand.
'You should be more careful, my son,' he said to the Kzin child in the Hero's tongue. To the human: 'Are you injured?'
'Mama!” the child wailed, twining its fists into his fur and burying its tear-and-snot streaked face in his side.
'Errruumm,' Chuut-Riit rumbled helplessly. They are so fragile. His nostrils flared as he bent over the tiny form, taking in the milky-sweet smell of distress and the slight metallic-salt odor of blood from its knee.
'Here is your mother,' he continued, as the human female scuttled up and began apologetically untwining the child.
'Here, take it,' he rumbled, as she cuddled the infant. The woman gave it a brief inspection and looked up at the eight-foot height of the kzin. 'No harm done, just over-excited, honored Chuut-Riit,' she said. The kzin rumbled again, looked up at the guards standing by his flitter in the driveway and laid back his ears; they became elaborately casual, examining the sky or the ground and controlling their expressions. He switched his glare back to his own offspring on top of the ball. The cub flattened itself apologetically, then whipped its head to one side as the human child clinging to the slope of the ball threw a loose length of yarn. Chuut-Riit wrenched his eyes from the fascinating thing and plucked his son into the air by the loose skin at the back of his neck.
'It is time to depart,' he said. The young kzin had gone into an instinctive half-curl. He cast a hopeful glance over his shoulder at his father, sighed and wrapped the limber pink length of his tail around the adult's massive forearm.
'Yes, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,' he said meekly, then brightened and waved at the clump of estate worker children standing by the ball. 'Goodbye,' he called, waving a hand that seemed too large for his arm, and adding a cheerful parting yowl in the Heroes Tongue. Literally translated it meant roughly drink blood and tear cattle into gobbets, but the adult trusted the sentiment would carry over the wording.
The human children jumped and waved in reply as Chuut-Riit carried his son over to the car and the group of parents waiting there; Henrietta in the center with her offspring by her side. I think her posture indicates contentment, he thought. This visit confers much prestige among the other human servants. Which was excellent, a good executive secretary being a treasure beyond price. Besides…
'That was fun, father,' the cub said. 'Could I have another piece of cake?'
'Certainly not, you will be sick as it is,' Chuut-Riit said decisively. Kzin were not quite the pure meat-eaters they claimed to be, and their normal diet contained the occasional sweet, but stuffing that much sugar-coated confection down on top of a stomach already full of good raw ztirgor was something the cub would regret soon. Ice cream, though… why had nobody told him about ice cream before? Even better than bourbon-and-milk; he must begin to order in bulk.
'I must be leaving, Henrietta,' Chuut-Riit said. 'And young age,' he added, looking down at the offspring. It was an odd-looking specimen, only slightly over knee-high to him and with long braided headpelt of an almost kzinlike orange. The bare skin of its face was dotted with markings of almost the same color. Remarkable; the one standing next to it was black. There was no end to their variety.
The cub wiggled in his grasp and looked down. 'I hope you like your armadillo, Ilge,' he said. Ilge looked down at the creature she had not released since the gift-giving ceremony and patted it again; the beasts had adapted well to Wunderland, but they were less common since the Kzinti arrived. A snout and beady eye appeared for a second, caught the scent of kzin and disappeared back into an armored ball with a snap.
'They're lots of fun.' Kzin children adored armadillos and Chuut-Riit provided his with a steady supply, even if the shells made a mess once the cubs finally got them peeled.
'It's nice,' she said solemnly.
'The ball of fiber was an excellent idea, Chuut Riit added to Henrietta. 'I must procure one for my other offspring.''
I thought it would be, honored Chuut-Riit,' the human replied, and the kzin blinked in bafflement at her amusement.
One of the guards was too obviously entertained by his commander's eccentricity. 'Here,' Chuut-Riit called as he walked through the small crowd of bowing humans. 'Guard Trooper. Care for this infitnt as we fly, in the forward compartment. Care for him well. '
The soldier blinked dubiously at the small bundle of chocolate-and-mud stained ftir that looked with eager interest at the fascinating complexities of his equipment, then slung his beam rifle and accepted it with an unconscious bristling. Chuut-Riit gave the ear-and tail twitch that was the kzin equivalent of sly amusement as he stepped into the passenger compartment and threw himself down on the cushions. There was a slight internal wobble as the car lifted, an expected retching sound, and a yowl of protest from the forward compartment.
The ventilators will be overloaded, the governor thought happily. Now, about that report…
Tiamat was shabby. Coming in to dock on the rockjacker prospecting craft Markham had found for them it had looked the same as it had half a century before-a little busier and more exterior lights; but basically the same spinning ironrock tube twenty kilometers across and sixty long, with ships of every description clustered at the docking yards at either end. More smelters and robofabricators hanging outside, more giant baggies of water ice and volatiles. But inside it was shabby, run-down.
That was Ingrid Raines's first thought. Shabby. The handgrips were worn, the vivid murals that covered the walls just in from the poles of the giant cylinder fading and grease-spotted. The constant subliminal rumble from the freighter docks was louder, nobody was bothering with the sonic baffles that damped the vibration of megatons of powdered ore, liquid metal, vacuum-separated refinates pouring into the network of pumptubes. Styles were more garish than she remembered, face-paint and tiger-striped oversuits. There were a quartet of police hanging spaced evenly around the entry corridor, toes hooked into rails and heads in toward the center. Obstructing traffic, but nobody was going to object, not when the goldskins wore impact armor and powdered endoskeletons, not when shockrods dangled negligently in their hands.
'Transfer booths closed down,' Jonah murmured as they made flipover and went feet first into the stickyfield at the inward end of the passage. There was a familiar subjective click behind their eyes, and the corridor became a half-kilometer of hollow tower over their heads, filled with the up-and-down drift of people.
'Shut up,' Ingrid muttered back. That had been no surprise, instantaneous transportation would foul up security too much. They went through the emergency pressure curtains, into the glare and blare of the inner corridors. Zero-G, here near the core of Tiamat, one-G at the rims. Tigertown was at one-G, she thought. The resident kzin were low-status engineers and supervisors, or navy types; they liked heavy gravity, the pussies had never lived in space without gravity control. Tigers, she reminded herself. That was the official slang term. Ratcat if you wanted to be a little dangerous. They turned into a narrow side corridor that had been a residential section the last time she was here, transients' quarters around the lowgrav manufacturing sections of the core. Now it was lined on three sides by shops and small businesses, with the fourth, spinward, side acting as the 'downward' direction. Not that there was enough gravity to matter this close to the center of the spin, but it was convenient.
