The men did stiffen and bristle when they saw the silent red-orange forms on the other side of the fire, but they removed their hats and squatted none the less, their hands away from their weapons. One peered across the embers of the fire at Tyra and smiled, nudging the others. That brought a chorus of delighted, crook-toothed grins; the kzinti controlled themselves with a visible effort.
“I passed through their village,” Tyra explained.
“What do they want?” Jonah asked.
Now that fear was gone it was a nagging ache to be delayed. They must get to Nev Friborg before Early and his cohorts could think up something else. Jonah never doubted for a moment that the bandits had had Early’s backing, doubtless through his Nipponjin friends. The ID cards proved that, the forgery was far too good for hill- thieves to have managed.
“Got to handle the formalities first,” Hans said. “Go on, light up.”
The outbackers were passing around their pouch of tobacco; Jonah clumsily rolled a cigarette and passed it to Tyra, who managed the business far more neatly, even one-handed. She poured cups of coffee and handed them around as Hans filled his pipe, lit it with a burning stick from the fire and passed that likewise; the kzinti were pointedly ignored, crouching back with their eyes shining as red as the coals. Time passed in ritual thanks, in inquires about their health and that of their horses and mules, talk of the dry weather…
Tyra leaned forward intently as the real story came out. “They had a brush with our bandits,” she said. “And- oh, Gott, no!”
Hans took up the story, listening intently; Jonah could catch no more than one word in three. “Sent some of their kids up-hill for safety. Ran into an ambush. Couple of men killed; they got the kids back, but they’d been hit with some sort of weapon they don’t understand. The kids are alive and breathing, but they won’t wake up.”
Jonah’s skin crawled. He relayed a few questions through the two Wunderlanders. “Neural disrupter,” he said, when the villagers had answered. “Didn’t know they had one-nasty thing, short-range but effective.”
“They want- they want us to do something for them, heal the children,” Tyra burst in. “What can we do?”
“Hmmm.” Hans broke off to rummage through their medical kit. “Yep. That might work.” He spoke to the headman of the strangers; they stood. “Wants us to come right away. That’d be better. Take a day or two to get to their settlement, two three days there.”
Jonah opened his mouth to object-couldn’t they call in to one of the lowland villages and get a doctor in by aircar?-and then shut his mouth again when Tyra looked at him. Damn. Shame works where guilt wouldn’t.
Bigs felt no such objection; he shot to his feet, sputtering in the Imperative Mode of the Hero’s Tongue, with his brother only half an expostulation behind. A dozen outbacker heads turned to the aliens like gun-turrets tracking, hands moving towards rifles and machetes. A sudden chill hit Jonah’s stomach as he heard Bigs:
“We will not delay.”
Even then, Jonah frowned in puzzlement. His command of the Hero’s Tongue was excellent if colloquial, and he could have sworn that that had been in Ultimate Imperative Mode-which only the Rut, the family of the Patriarch, were entitled to use. Not that there was anything on Wunderland to stop Bigs using any grammatical constructions he pleased, but it was an unnatural thing for the big kzin to do. He was a traditionalist to a fault, that much had been clear for months. Spots stopped in mid-yowl to glance aside at him, confirming Jonah’s hunch.
No matter. Both kzin were on the verge of fighting frenzy, and a very nasty little battle could break out at any second with a scream and leap. Garm backed up, bristling and barking hysterically; the kzinti ears twitched, and that was just the extra edge of hysteria that might set them off.
“Shut that damned dog up!” he barked. Tyra grabbed its collar and soothed it. “You two, you won’t get extra speed by starting a battle now.”
“What are the kittens of these feral omnivores to us?” Spots said, all his teeth showing. “You pledged to cooperate in this hunt with us, Jonah-human. And you were the one who said we risk failure with every minute of delay. Is the word of Man good, or is it not?”
A weight of meaning seemed to drop on that last phrase; Spots was watching him intently, not staring at the outbackers the way Bigs did. Jonah had a sudden leaden conviction that more rested on his decision than he could estimate.
“Look… “he began. Then an idea struck. “Tyra, these people, they’re trustworthy?” An emphatic nod. “You and Hans are the ones with the medical training. You two go to the village; Spots and Bigs and I will take our… load on ahead. You can catch up-the outbackers will lend you a horse, surely, Hans.”
Bigs’ head jerked around to look at him, and his muzzle moved in the half-arcs of emphatic agreement. Spots brushed back his whiskers, as if confirming something to himself.
“That would be according to your oath,” he said softly. “I apologize.” Jonah was a little surprised; ‘sorry’ was something kzinti were reluctant to say, especially to other species.
The outbackers followed the exchange with wary eyes. Hans turned to them and spoke, then smiled at Jonah:
“As it turns out, young feller, they don’t want our kzin anywhere near their place anyway. Just me and Fra Nordbo here are fine. We’ll start right away, if that’s all right with you. Sooner begun, sooner done.”
Tyra rose. “Will you be all right?” she asked softly.
“We’ll manage,” Jonah replied.
“I do not have to account to you,” Bigs said loftily.
“Stop using that tense!” Spots snapped in a hissing whisper, glancing ahead to where Jonah walked beside the lead mule. “Who contacted the Fanged God and promoted you to royalty, Big-son of Chotrz-Shaa?”
“I am self-promoted,” Bigs replied softly, but with no particular effort to keep his voice down. “And the Fanged God fights by my side. How else would the two monkeys remove themselves? We will take the northeastern path, abandoning all but the beast necessary to carry the capsule. Alone, we will make better time. There is a kzin settlement at Arhus-on-Donau. We will seek shelter there. We will build a means to get off-planet, or buy it-these monkeys will do anything for money.”
“You are self-befuddled!” Spots said. “Fool. What will Jonah-human say to this?”
“It is what Durvash says that is important,” Bigs said, resting his hand on the module. “He becomes clearer all the time.”
Spots recoiled. “Now you, oh patriarchal warrior, take orders like a slave from that little horror?”
Bigs bristled, suddenly swelling up and hulking over his smaller sibling in dominance-display. Spots forced himself to match it, letting his claws slide free.
“At least it is a carnivore, you…you submitter-to-omnivores,” Bigs grated. “Your breath stinks of grass!”
Spots’s mouth gaped at the horrendous insult. All their lives they had sparred and tussled for dominance, insulting each other in the friendly fashion of non-serious rivals. That was a blood libel.
“Is your oath nothing to you?” he grated.
“Oh, I will allow the monkey to fight me… barehanded,” Bigs said, with a sly, horrible amusement in the twitch of his ears and brows. “That fulfills the oath.” He paused for effect “What of your blood-obligation to the Patriarchy and the Heroic Race, Spots-Son of Chotrz-Shaa?”
Abruptly, Spots collapsed into a fur-flattened, droop-eared, limp-tailed puddle of misery. “I know,” he muttered. “I am ripped in half! If you have forgotten your honor in madness, I have not We are the last of the line of Chotrz-Shaa. Two lives and the life of our House we owe these monkeys. Your life to Jonah-human. Mine to a female! Yet we owe blood and honor to the Patriarch.”
Bigs smirked, and Spots flared into a gape-jawed scream of rage: “Stop whacking at my tail, fatherless sthondat-sucker”
He could see Jonah turning, alarmed at the sound, and he forced calm on himself with an effort greater than he had thought was in him.
“No killing by stealth,” he finished, dropping into the Menacing Tense, “Or you die.”
Bigs smirked again, and continued in the infuriating inflections of a Patriarch: “You will conspire with a monkey against your own sibling?”
“No. But I will not allow you to kill him.”
A sneer, just showing the ends of the dagger incisor-fangs. “He is helpless as a kit at night.”
“I will be watching.”
“How long can you go without sleep, brother? I will feast on his liver yet” Bigs stalked off after the train of
