after the war was over, when the blockade was already in place. What was another fifteen light years? He could see Kzin from here, shining at magnitude 4, twelve degrees off galactic north, a proud hilt in the Constellation of Swords.
The trip had to be risked. There was no way around it. By the terms of the MacDonald-Rishshi Peace Treaty the humans insisted upon retaining control of all superlurninal communications. The Patriarch, light years to the galactic north, would not yet even know that a hyperdrive ship had been captured. No human was likely to tell him.
Escape was a matter of timing. If he stole away before the physicists of W’kkai fully understood the nature of the hyperdrive shunt, and if, by unluck, the Patriarchy’s only working model was captured or destroyed on the way to Kzin, then his premature decision would have left the kzinti in thrall to the humans forever Patience. That was the lesson Chuut-Riit had taught. That was the lesson his name donor, Grraf-Hromfi, had tried to teach, and had not quite learned himself.
Timing. Too soon or too late. If he waited too long to carry his gift to the Patriarch, the W’kkai might become so strong as to be deluded into waging war by themselves. And that, too, would leave the kzinti in the thrall of victorious humans. There was no such thing anymore as a “local” war. W’kkai could attack human space, but the humans would simply bypass W’kkai and destroy a helpless Kzin. All kzinti worlds would have to be armed with the hyperdrive shunt. If Heroes were to undo their humiliation, as one pride they would have to hunt and kill the man- beasts and their women and their children.
And where was the pride that could command that kind of interstellar loyalty? Only the glorious Patriarchy!
Later, returned from the hunt, walking along the balcony of his mansion, Grraf-Nig watched one of his human slaves play with his younger brothers. The Lieutenant Nora-beast had proved to be excellent breeding stock. The way her sons showed their teeth to each other, a naive kzin might think they were about to attack but they were only laughing.
He was genuinely disappointed that he would have to leave them behind. Leaving his wives he didn’t mind, but good slaves were hard to come by. The older male-beast might have made just the right slave gift for the Patriarch. Life’s regrets!
Chapter 9
(2436 A.D.)
Because Hwass-Hwasschoaw was on Wunderland, he had not dared bring with him his masks of human hide- there had been no secure place to conceal them on the tiny shuttle craft from Tigertown, staffed as it was by kzin hating animals. That made difficult any communion with God.
Kdapt’s forms had to be observed rigorously.
Hwass went into retreat above the cluttered electronics workshop in a room that was often used for secret meetings by Munchen’s Kdaptists. He meditated in this claustrophobic space built to human size. How was a devout kzin to appeal to a Bearded God who had given the Patriarch thousands of years of victory-but who thwarted every kzinti attack on His newly discovered tree-climbing pets? Noseplugs attached, he fasted alone in darkness among the salvaged junk, thinking.
Where was the logic behind God’s bias?
Hwass, a noble of the Patriarch’s Eye, was here in a crumbling slum while they were being resurrected in prosperity all about him. Strange. God never interfered with a kzin who made an ill decision; such a kzin was respected as a noble intelligence and allowed to grow wise-or to die-by living the consequences of his decisions. Not so with humans. Why?
A master crafter, Hwass reasoned, only interferes in his creation when it is moving away of his intention. A mechanic repairs only after his machine begins to fail. A potter touches clay only when he sees imperfection. God was an artisan. When he ceased admiring the beauty of His work, how did He choose to interfere?
In all of God’s universal masterwork, the man-beasts, molded in God’s perfect image, seemed to be the only imperfection that disturbed God. God interfered ceaselessly for human salvation. Let a man-beast make a mistake, and God rushed in to save him. God’s simians might lie and cheat and beat their females, they might run in battle-but He was always saving them. Let a man make a lethal decision, and God invited him to be born again. Some divine author was not allowing the men to lose no matter how iniquitous their behavior. Saved from blunders, mankind was never allowed to grow wise… as a kzin became wise through the blunders of his youth.
It was told by men that they had mightily offended their God by eating vegetables from the tree of knowledge. Perhaps God’s purpose in saving the man-beasts was to keep them in their animal state-naive, innocent, lacking in wisdom. What better way to cage an animal from knowledge than to save him from the consequences of his acts?
Hwass was beginning to understand. The sins of men caused God pain; He interfered to put things right. Men tore down His work wantonly; God rebuilt their homes. While God demanded bravery and discipline and honesty of His kzin because he respected them, He spoiled His simians out of love. In their writings did not men see Him as one who raged at their sins but who was always merciful? Was not this Bearded God obsessed with the salvation of those He had created in His image? There, that was the path to His liver!
Understanding salvation was the key to understanding God. And the Son of God was the key to salvation. Kdaptist rigor had found the way. His mighty frame stirred in the attic, shaking spiders into their cracks. Through His Son, Hwass could reach God.
Clandeboye had planted on Hwass a homing device no more sophisticated than those the ARM used to map the wanderings of criminals. In the Munchen workshop he showed his legless electronics Hero how to remove it and how to plant it on a young Kdaptist of the correct height and color who was to proceed to a safe house farther south-and stay there until Hwass returned.
He chose a time before the rising of Beta, in the dark of the night, to slip from the back of a truck into the forest outside of Munchen, intending to place himself far from any city The holy quest for the Son of God began as a kind of reverse hunt, avoiding everything, loping quickly, silently, tirelessly, always out of sight and smell-hiding himself by day, moving by night and by the pale ardor of Beta-until he was totally beyond human habitation. The journey was endless joy. Many times he broke his trail so that it could never be followed. It was joy to hunt the Son of God.
Each evening the quetzbirds gargled on their night hunt. They hunted only when Alpha had set but were most active when brilliant Beta dominated the night sky of stars. Once he saw one on a log munching a luminescent fungus, its brilliant feathers eerily glowing. The smell of the bird and the tang of broken fungus was a forest poem. How could he ever give this up again for civilization?
On the third day he sniffed the smoke of a human bonfire and thought he might have found the Son. He smelled burning oak from Earth, mixed with slightly green bundlestick. Fresh meat on the fire was too hot and charring blood was ablaze. He could detect human sweat and sourbeer, a background of spicy insect pheromones, moist soil. But long before he was close enough to see his prey he smelled its female scent. Not the Son of God. Avoiding the woman, he came to a steep slope that overlooked the stars. He reveled in the stars, then plunged on, silently swift.
At dawn he found a grassy meadow being grazed by a small herd of six-legged sprinters, hardly taller than the grass itself. He was tempted and hungry but he did not attack. This was a religious mission and hunger drove a keener spirit. Now he was well beyond the boundaries of human settlement. It made the hunt venturesome because his prey was a man. Beta was now the only star in the dawn sky.
Two days later, still deliberately fasting, eating only the odd rodent, ravenous, he found his first spoor, fish skins by a stream. By that evening, at Alpha-set, he had located the cabin, its log walls twice the length of a man, made from thin logs one man could haul and notch. The roof was pond reeds. Best of all was the smell of male.
