capable of mental control.
The protector came back while he was reading her speculations about what was happening on Kzin. He looked up and said, 'You did all this to collect me?'
'Right. The records don't say where the device was put.'
Back in 2107, Larry Greenberg had been Earth's top telepath. Greenberg had been put into contact with an alien, Kzanol, who'd been in stasis for, it turned out, two billion years. Kzanol had been a much more powerful telepath-a Slaver of the Slaver Empire, with the Power to control dozens of ordinary minds-and his transferred memories had overwhelmed Greenberg's personality for weeks. There had ensued a hunt for something which would have made Kzanol, essentially, God:
'You mean the stasis field with the Slaver amplifier in it?'
'No, Lucas Garner's hoverchair, I always wanted it for my weapon collection.' Given that Garner had then been a 169-year-old paranoid, that was almost reasonable; his travel chair probably violated all kinds of safety laws, and possibly one or two disarmament treaties.
Greenberg flushed a little and said, 'It was dropped into Jupiter.'
'Good. I was afraid Garner would have talked them into the sun. That'd be difficult.'
'You can retrieve it?'
'What do you think I've been working on while you read, a better mousetrap?'
'Oh… Still mice around, huh?'
'Yeah, but changed some. All that radiation during the Kzinti Wars. We've signed a treaty, though.'
'You're kidding.'
'Yes.'
'…You are kidding.'
'Yes.'
He blinked a few times, shook his head violently, and said, 'Where's everybody else?'
'Still in stasis. I wanted you apprised of the situation before I extended the accelerator field around them. I mean to spend about fifteen subjective years in this ship, in part to get them adapted before I release them, and I need you to look after their sanity.'
'I thought you had an emergency.'
'To the rest of the universe it'll be about eleven days. Stasis won't work inside any kind of time-distortion field, so I had to tell you separately.'
'Wait a minute, what about my wife?'
'She's here. I got everybody.'
'I mean, we wanted children.'
Peace nodded. 'This vessel was built to house up to half a million Protectors and their fighter craft. You won't find it crowded in fifteen years, I don't care how enthusiastic you are.'
The Tnuctip walked right past a group of older kzintosh, who were following a Pierin tutor. (Paid regular staff were a recent innovation, but one that seemed to work. All it took was regarding a contract as an oath.) There were six to avoid, not counting the Pierin, who wasn't being paid to notice Shleer. The group fell silent as the Tnuctip scurried by.
'Here we have the tablets of Great Sire Chof-Yff-Riit, who, in amongst his personal tastes, specified the penalties for willfully ignoring a known gesture of surrender, which act was a great contribution to all kzinti cultures, and may be argued to have led to unification thereof under the Patriarchy. Who knows how humans signal surrender?' the Pierin asked. It would take more than the end of civilization to shut a Pierin up. Shleer crept along the wall behind his siblings-far behind.
K'nar-Riitt, who was likely to be the next Patriarch, said dryly, 'Their hearts stop beating. It's not always a sure sign, though.'
'Wittily phrased, though possibly misleading. Humans do not have a surrender gesture. They are descended from the Pak, a species that knew nothing but war, and are as a consequence the least reasonable or tractable intelligent race presently known. They are never satisfied until things are entirely the way they want them, and genuinely expect everyone else to cooperate.'
One of his siblings was turning toward Shleer. Shleer froze, turned only his head, and made eye contact as soon as he was seen. The kzintosh flexed his ears a little and turned back to the Pierin. Shleer continued out of the hall, head pounding terribly.
The Tnuctip was out of his sight, but passed through somebody else's. Shleer took the correct exit from the next chamber, doing military respiration exercises to get the headache under control. It got a little easier each time.
He evaded the guards who'd seen the thing, which was indeed heading for the Jotoki labs. Shleer shortened the distance between them to get through the (manifestly useless) containment doors on the same activation, then let it get ahead. It went into the lifeboat, out of sight.
Then it vanished from his perception.
Shleer immediately took cover. The Tnuctip came out of the lifeboat wearing a cap of metal mesh, then went over to where the Jotoki traditionally worked on weapons they fondly imagined the kzinti didn't know about, entered, and was invisible again.
The Tnuctip was wearing a shield against telepathy. The sthondat-nuzzling imbeciles had had a mental shield, but hadn't been using it when they went into stasis! Shleer noticed his claws were out, and retracted them with an effort. A phrase he'd picked up from Felix crossed his mind: 'unusually stupid.' It certainly seemed to apply.
What would the Peer do now? Examine his options.
Shleer could sneak in on just nose and ears.
He could wait and follow the Tnuctip further.
He could wait and look inside after the Tnuctip left.
Or he could leave now-at least in theory; he only listed it to be thorough.
Shleer waited.
Eventually the Tnuctip came out-looking directly toward him. Pure chance, but bad. Shleer hoped really hard their brains were arranged like modern ones, and maintained eye contact. The Tnuctip sniffed a few times, then turned and went to put the shield back in the lifeboat.
After it had scurried away, Shleer moved for the first time in over an hour, stretching slowly. The only place for the Tnuctip to go was the Residence; it could therefore be ignored now. Shleer entered the Jotoki secret weapon shop for a look.
Nothing was lying out, but compartments had been handled. He sniffed them out, then checked for traps. One had a hair across the opening, another hair hanging from the hinge, and a deadfall of a canister of dry lubricant powder inside. Intended only to reveal Jotoki interference-so kzinti reflexes kept the powder from spilling a grain.
The Tnuctip had been working on another mental shield. Cruder-looking, but with an active power source. Jamming? Would that work?
He looked it over carefully, Felix having taught him a great deal. It most certainly would not work. There were conductors that would melt if full power were applied for more than a few seconds. The Tnuctip had been Programmed to waste its time here.
Shleer almost pitied the evil little creature. Almost. He replaced the deadfall and the hairs, and began trying to remember, as he headed back toward the harem, where he'd last seen a camera.
The design seemed worth copying-and Shleer hadn't been Told to use flawed components.
The Slaver Gnix watched a movie and sucked a gnal, or at least the best approximation his slaves had produced so far. He had nobody to tell it to-yet-but he was mostly pleased. He'd been lucky beyond belief.
He'd manifested full Power later than usual for a Thrint. This had led to his being employed at a food
