so the caged ratcats never ran out of monkey putdowns. Translated into butchered English, the odor of the jokes was sanitized but at the same time turned into a bizarrely hilarious travesty of which the kzin could not be aware.
Hwass enjoyed showing off his knowledge of man-beast history “Iss German monkey self-named Hitler- Fuhrer. Iss think to win thousand-year victory on Jewish slaves by mustache and salute.” Hwass imitated Hitler with a black finger under the nose of his muzzle and an outstretched furry arm. His German accent was atrocious, the point of his story incomprehensible. Still, Yankee and Jay and Beany cracked up in helpless laughter. Hitler- Fuhrer had his Germans by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, and then by the millions marching off into the stupidest of monkey adventures imaginable.
The kzinti, in turn, taught their simian chauffeurs how to play a pentagonal card game called tournament which they were convinced no mere animal could master because no money or lies exchanged hands, only honor. The Heroes became very good at gin rummy. The humans never won a single game of tournament. They had to listen to much humor at their expense.
When it was Grraf-Nig turn to tell an ethnic joke he was more impressed by human technical stupidity than by their sorry history. He loved simple observations about the intelligence of man-females. Once he had observed, he said, a blond woman (one of his experimental animals) repair an electrical appliance. She carefully joined the severed power-source wires, input to input, output to output. She pressed the input and output wires together because she didn’t like lumps. Then, because she knew about insulation, she wrapped everything in tape until no copper was showing. She plugged it in. Grraf-Nig imitated the female scream that followed the explosive vaporization of copper. His ears flapped at the jolly memory.
Yankee and Jay and Beany enjoyed Grraf-Nig’s blond “manrret” jokes but they didn’t really find his admiral- monkey jokes very funny at all. The jibes were impossibly unfair-human admirals were always jumping into battle without doing their homework, or drinking kzin piss out of bottles labeled as boosterspice, or seducing young lieutenants.
The terms of reception at Kzin had been coordinated by hyperwave and electromagnetic haggling. Grraf-Nig set the strategy, Hwass the tactic. Hwass cleverly suggested to the incorrigibly naive monkeys, and the UNSN accepted, a protocol that might sound friendly to a human but would inevitably sound hostile to a kzin. It was a protocol evolved over thousands of years of interstellar squabbling to settle disputes between rival Conquest Commanders of different star systems. After an exchange of prisoners-the exchange more desired by one side than the other-the carriers were expected to admit wrongdoing in the Dominated Tense-or accept a boarding party and a fight to the death.
Hwass knew, and Grraf-Nig conceded, that this particular protocol would make no sense to the Heroes of Kzin-the UNSN was enemy not rival, animal not warrior. But the elite warriors of Kzin were the best in the Patriarchy. They would smell the wind while listening to the words-and know what the protocol was telling them across the light-years. A boarding party would be hidden in the Heroes’ exchange ship, ready for Hwass to command when he was no longer a prisoner.
The barter was carried out in Kzin space with the efficiency of a demolition team disassembling a time-bomb. Kzinsun was the brightest star in the sky Kzinhome invisible in its glare. Kzin’s great gas giant Hgrall was brilliant by reflected light, but to find it a kzin had to know where it was against the backdrop of the Fanged God’s constellations. Grraf-Nig was in a state of fear he hadn’t felt since his failed escape from W’kkai. The tiny craft shuttling between warships was too small, too vulnerable. These critical moments after the disarming of the “dead-hand” switches were the most dangerous. He could smell his own fear inside his suit.
Hwass-Hwasschoaw was feeling no such alarm; he who believed in the God of the True Shape had nothing to fear from these divine pets. God needed the cuffing skills of the kzin to control His pets’ disloyal impiety With a Kdapt reformation, He would get just that. All was going according to plan.
Their shuttle gracefully docked with the kzin ship. Free, Hwass sent the shuttle back out into space, pilotless, car-lying the replacement diplomatic pouch and whatever treachery it might early besides whinings about peace. He thrust his grass-eating companion into the maw of the airlock. Machinery cycled. The inner entrance dilated. Before he was out of his suit, Hwass was ushering a black-spotted captain toward his command center, leaving Grraf-Nig to fend for himself
“Do we have warriors trained in boarding?”
The captain, striding to keep up, hissed qualified agreement, even enthusiasm. The war against the ghostships had been going badly for too long, the humiliation of being member to a treaty roared out the need of vengeful retaliation-but he was a professional who wanted to know more than Hwass had been able to tell him.
“Communicator!” Hwass motioned the crewkzin out of his seat; the comm equipment was standard over the whole of the Patriarchy and he was too impatient to explain his needs. He punched in a signal from memory and beamed it at the distant UNSN ghostship. Then he counted heartbeats. Now! The gas would be erupting from the suppositories of the slaves in a flatulence of death. In the null-gee human ships, air supply was circulated by machine. It was a small ship. Grraf-Nig’s test-animals from the Wunderkind orphanage had died within seconds after exposure to the gas.
When there was no response from the ghostship, he rose from the communicator’s station and turned to the captain. “They are dead. The entire crew, slaves, all. Send your boarding party! Instantly! We have captured a hyperdrive!”
Sixteen warriors, in readiness for hours, swarmed out of the kzin warship, angry wasps. Cautious at first, they were deployed so they couldn’t all be slaughtered at once. They were ready to return fire with a fire that would surgically remove any weapons that the ghostship might use. But there was no return fire. Two warriors were about to open their prey like a can of rations when… it disappeared. Fourteen warriors had nothing to attack.
Hwass-Hwasschoaw reacted in stunned surprise. At that moment, Grraf-Nig took control, almost as if he were a trainer-of-slaves again and these warriors were suddenly his by right of a higher bid. “Honored Captain! I know what has happened! Call the navy. Bring up support! In the meantime, full acceleration perpendicular to the hyperboundry. Down!”
“My warriors!” wailed the captain.
“They are safe,” he hissed urgently. “Pick them up later.
They’ll still be there. It is absolutely vital that this ship not be attacked! We carry the secret of the hyperdrive to the Patriarch-in my head! Get us down!” Then more calmly Grraf-Nig turned to a recovering Hwass. “The beasts were on automatic pilot. We should have expected that. The crew is dead but their ship flies itself” He made a gesture of respect to the captain. “You will be remembered as the Hero who delivered the hyperdrive technology to our valiant Patriarch. The secret is on board! Get out of monkey range!”
Calmly, the captain gave the orders.
As an aside to Hwass, but in a voice loud enough for the captain to hear, Grraf-Nig added, “Plans have a life of their own. We gambled that not only could we bring the secret of the hyperdrive to Kzin, but also an actual ship. We lost”
The Patriarch’s Eye tried to hide his disappointment by growling out his anger in mangled English, vocally- but only to himself. “Major Yankee Clandeboye iss not alive he!” The monkey who had humiliated him, broken Markham’s word, toyed with him, kept him in a cage- was dead at last, culled by the God of the True Form. That reminded him of his diplomatic pouch and the mission Clandeboye had interrupted by his arrival at Tiamat.
He arranged with the captain that the pouch on the discarded shuttle be retrieved by the same ship that was retrieving the stranded warriors, that it be inspected by a device expert, and returned to him as soon as it was certifiably safe. Peace! He was bringing peace! What a disappointment this trip had been. A molting yellow coward would get all the glory.
