“Well, go ahead and feel sorry for those two rockjacks pretending to be soldiers. I saw both fights and I’m still laughing.” He paused. “You sound worried.”
Clandeboye was feeling guilty that he had suspected his friend of ratting on him. Mystery was unnerving. What did they have on him and from what source? “I’m fertilizing my suit right now. I’ve been called in to Gibraltar It sounds like I’m going to be relieved.”
“Naw. Yankee, sir, you’re the best Training officer we have. They’ve always had enough on you to court- martial you to lighthouse duty on Titan, but they never do. If you really want to worry, think about the upbeat stuff it could be. Maybe some stone-brained general thinks we might field a regiment of kzin waldos and they want to nm the notion past you. Generals get ideas like that. How would you like to head up a regiment of orange waldos?” He grinned.
“Let Finagle toast God’s Death!” exclaimed Yankee, horrified.
“Speaking of Finagle, you know what Finagle said; he said reality can outbid your worse nightmare every time.”
“Maybe I should do some quick research on this guy. Smelly, all you Belters know each other. Tell me about General Fry. He’s the name on my orders.”
“Never met him. We were out there fighting. He was sitting in an office. He’s an ex-goldskin. As a young man he sat at a telescope and watched for torchship exhaust-placement violations. Developed an algorithm for catching offenders. Came up through the ranks. Administrator. He was a goldskin who liked catching smugglers! Got a hot jet name in logistics during the second kzin assault. Cops make the best thieves. He could smuggle anything through a kzin blockade.”
“All I know about him is that he’s a womanizer. He had an affair with my cousin, then sent her off to Wunderland to be killed.”
“I’ve never figured out why it bothers you flatlanders when a man has more than one woman, or a woman has more than one man.”
“He’s in Intelligence now,” grumbled Yankee, changing the subject
“And you, you paranoid, think he is onto our little caper.”
“Yah.”
“Maybe I’m not as impressed by ex-goldskins as you are. It has always been an old rockjack tradition to bypass Ceres’s thirty percent tax with an occasional display of fancy shipping. Rockjacks get away with it all the time.”
“Rockjacks get caught, too, and then the tax is one hundred percent if I remember correctly our Commander Shimmel was an old rockjack who liked to take impulsive risks.” Commander Shimmel had died some forty-four light years from home, at 59 Virginis on the far side of kzin space, taking twelve hyperships with him. And seven hundred and eighty men. The official United Nations Space Navy story was that he’d died valiantly in battle.
“That’s my point,” said Smeegie, “The UNSN still believes he lost all those ships because you refused to support his attack maneuver. Now if that’s the best that intelligence can do, how do you expect them to track down a little practical joke that was done invisibly?”
“Smelly, for a Belter, your systems check out green. Wisdom personified. You can be my valet in prison.”
“What’s to worry? They don’t convert nuisances like you into spare body parts anymore. We’ll send our furry ratcat in after you, sir.”
“You guys would.”
“Sure we would. We were there. We know what happened.”
The loyalty of Clandeboye’s comrades didn’t reassure him. He shipped out to Gibraltar via Farmer’s Asteroid in a little supply truck, huddled and cramped where the vegetables would be on the return trip. Belters never thought in terms of the elegant transport that a flatlander took for granted-the distances were too great. They flitted about in light, cheap ships and took the inconvenience for granted. In such a primitive can, Yankee could hardly connect with the man in himself who had piloted a hyperdrive probe on an interstellar journey to the back of the Patriarchy, farther than any man had ever reached.
After three days, and still only halfway to Gibraltar, he was a tired tourist fascinated by the truck’s approach to the awesome mirrors that fed sunlight into this vegetarian’s bubbleworld. The mirrors grew during sedate docking maneuvers until they filled half the starkly sky. At a berth, far up the long axis-mount, he debarked with the truckers and wandered through the fallways- for the docks were not rotating like the rest of the world-until he found a reception area. He was reluctant to insert his infocomp at a terminal, to reconnect with society.
The machine put him through to military service, which read his orders. He waited. An automated voice confirmed hotel reservations at Farmer’s and told him that his infocomp would be called as soon as transportation to Gibraltar was located. Click.
Three centuries ago Farmer’s had been blown up like a balloon out of the substance that had once been an asteroid, then filled with people and farms. The pioneer days were long gone. He had a full day in one of the hotels, resting in the gentle centripetal gravity. It was as near as he’d been to an earthlike environment in years. The smells were right, but he could never get used to a sky paved with farms. He thought about his singing cows and dancing geese-and his cousin, Nora Argamentine, who had once lived in a real farm city in Iowa.
Chapter 3
(2436 A.D.)
The old Patriarch had failed. The Patriarchy belonged to whomever could restore the glory and the order. When a father weakened, his son had the heroic duty to reclaim his heritage. W’kkai was the son of Kzin. In a mansion of the sprawling central metropolis of W’kkai, a magnificent kzin, taller and heavier than an ordinary kzin warrior, had a plan to break the blockade and conquer the galaxy under a new dynasty. It all depended upon how he was dressed tonight and the subtlety of his perfume.
Si-Kish wore the high brocades and lace of evening wear that kept him warm during W’kkai’s lengthy night. Passing from his mansion’s dressing room to the mezzanine he stole glances at himself in the gold-tinted Reflection Glass that lined the walls to the stairwell. He had no wish to out dress the young and inexperienced Voice of the Patriarch.
It was a good choice to be seen in the bold colors of the Design of Zealous-Power. Lesser kzin he would have to deal with might be impressed-if he couldn’t simply avoid them. He liked the effect of the lace fins down his sleeves. Yet there was an austerity to this outfit, a proper respect for the Voice. Such a fuss, these evening styles. But fashion clearly established dominance/dominated roles. In that, they were useful. Si-Kish had no time for ranking fights. The war with the man-beasts had grown to govern his time and mind in an all-consuming passion.
So obsessed was he that he no longer hunted his own food, but had it brought into his office freshly killed. He let his best officers service his harem so that he might have sons. He had long been a neglectful father, relegating the training of his sons to others, even to slaves. He did not think he was a better kzin for his neglect, there was no help for it. He missed his hunt, and sometimes even missed his harem duties. Most of all he missed the sparring matches in the tournament ring with his kits.
He was not known to miss the entertainment circuit- on W’kkai, business was conducted as an afterthought of theater gossip, as bantering across the game boards, as haggling at the market stalls-sometimes even during the hunts if one could stand the group hunts where whole families turned out in colors and breeches with pompous lackeys carrying banners that did little more than scare the game. The bargaining was done with all the formality and skill of a tournament match, sometimes even with the viciousness of the killing ring.
Si-Kish lightly powdered his multi-braided mane, choosing a scent that was the barest illusion of sweat and hard work and slaughtered game. Ready, he swept down the broad stairway of his mansion’s hail, his personal pride of splendidly dressed kzinti falling in around him as an escort. They had been ready long ago. A star-white limousine was floating above the driveway and ready for the journey across the city.
