foreboding. Hwass would never cool his hatred so easily. There could be a lethal joker somewhere. And if there was a joker, he had to find it-now.
Nora’s life-monitors read out their signals-green. The kids’ monitors were in the green. Everyone was breathing in slow motion. The air was good, a little high in carbon dioxide but it always was on such a small ship. It was a little high on kzin body odor, too. It was the hibernation that worried him even though it did not involve freezing. This was a kzin technology and who knew how well it had been adapted to the human metabolism?
He had to see Nora conscious. It was an obsession. And so he began revival procedures, slowly, carefully. Her temperature went up. Her heart rate gradually increased. Her breathing became deeper, less sluggish. All exactly as the yellow kzin had predicted. His claim was that humans couldn’t go under as deeply as kzin, and so revived more quickly. If the mechanical muscle toners were used, no physiotherapy would be needed. The mind drugs duplicated the refreshing functions of sleep but stabilized memory. They would wake up, disoriented, because of the time discontinuity but clear of the normal dulling load of saturated multitasking. At revival, colors would be bright, senses strong mind ready to focus on the first problem that presented itself.
Too good to be true. The kzin, of course, had been using hibernation for thousands of years.
When the monitors read normal, he lifted her out, mixtures of emotions tearing at him. He knew she was wounded but there was no sign of it in her sleeping form. Her nakedness embarrassed him but the toners required it. What horrified him was the fur. A light down swathed her face where a man had a beard. Her body was endowed with a rich auburn fur in the same places where fur might be found on a chimpanzee.
He didn’t see her when she first awoke but when he did, he wasn’t looking into the eyes of a retarded woman, he was looking into calm serene eyes that scanned the cabin and became bewildered and then terrified. Before he could react she was in deep adrenaline flight. With kzin-swift reflexes she flashed to the safest corner, where she eyed him with a profound and hostile suspicion, arms ready to defend herself. It disoriented him. This was the cousin he had known all his life, her face older but still young-the same luxurious mane of hair, the same dimples, only the fur unnatural. Clearly she did not recognize him. He felt strangely snubbed-but that was absurd. He already knew that she had been mind-wiped.
“Nora,” he said as gently as he could.
She hissed at him. She was threatening him, ready to attack, afraid but brave.
Jay spoke with a sudden quiet earnestness, calmly, no threat in his voice. “Yankee, you’ve let an angry tigress loose in here. Do something. Toss her some clothes.”
“Nora, everything is all right.”
By now Beany had also swiveled his couch. “It’s not all right, Yankee. You’ve never been a mother. She’s frantic with worry about her kids. She’s ready to kill us.”
Yankee made a quick decision. He moved slowly to the hibernation cells. He’d have to show her that the children were all right. Her eyes watched every move he made. Carefully he activated the sequence to revive the oldest boy. It took forever. She never broke her battle stance. As soon as he could, he pulled out the drawer so that she could see her son breathing. Then he lifted the boy-he looked about eight years old-and gently seated him.
Still as a statue, she snarled some kind of warning cry.
Monkeyshine didn’t know where he was. W’kkai? But no. Some kind of a ship, closed in from the stars. Mellow Yellow’s fabled hyperspace? The strong smell of kzin. But it was not a kzin shuttle. His beloved Prrt was here and very afraid. And so were three monsters of the True Shape. No Mellow Yellow. Why wasn’t he able to make a connection between the past and the present? His mother’s warning cry was still ringing in his ears.
He was on adrenaline alert, aware of everything, every threat, ready to pounce. The monster enemies in the True Shape were all bigger than he was, bigger than his helpless mother, one standing, two seated, all making soft slave-like sounds. They were surprised and not ready for him. That meant a very narrow window of attack. They were in freefall. He breathed deeply, remembering everything that Mellow Yellow had ever taught him. How to kill. He breathed again and spoke a simple Kdapt prayer to himself. These were enemies of the kzin. He leaped.
In one graceful motion of grabbed hair he cracked the skulls of the pilots and on the rebound was strangling the third, elbow around his neck, crack, until he went unconscious. Warrior strength. He had already seen that the acceleration couches made perfect trusses. When the enemies woke up they would not be able to move. He made the Hero’s cry of triumph. Victory to the Patriarch! Then he went over to comfort his mother.
When Yankee recovered consciousness with a sore windpipe he found himself hogtied. He could see everything. With monkey curiosity, Nora was examining the hibernation machines. Touching this, twiddling with that. When the boy tried to help her, she growled a warning at her son.
“Nora. We’re your friends,” Yankee implored.
She spit-threatened him. Carefully, remembering every gesture she had seen, she liberated each of her children- aged from about four to eight. By then the cabin was a howling pandemonium of seven savages and three officers strapped helplessly into their couches. Yankee tried out English on the warrior boy. Jay and Beany tried other languages. The naked boy replied in something that both did/didn’t sound like the Hero’s Tongue.
Yankee, who was the only one of the three who understood anything in the Hero’s Tongue, told his pilots what he thought he had heard. “He was telling us that he’s going to kill us. I think he wants to know what has happened to his kzinti friends, if we don’t produce them, we’re lunch.”
“Hey, guy. Can’t you see we’re human?” pleaded Jay Mazzetta
“That’s the trouble; he does see that we are human.”
Nora found the food. That was a very good distraction. All kids get hungry But the food wasn’t going to last very long. They were ninety days by hyperdrive from Barnard’s Starbase. The ship was too small. They were supposed to drop out of hyperspace, send out a hyperwave “yahoo” and be picked up by the Abraham Lincoln. In time they did drop out of hyperspace on automatic. They might drift there until the end of time.
Monkeyshine was sure they had been in hyperspace when the blinds opened to the stars. He knew the sky of W’kkai both from space and from the ground. He had recently spent time with Mellow Yellow at the observatory He recognized the sky, scanning it with a professional interest. The brighter stars were more or less where they should be, some of the lesser ones were missing. They were not at W’kkai. He looked along the Pointers to find the most important star in the sky-Kzin. It was not there. It was not close. Ah, that meant they were near Kzin. His heart leaped. Maybe they had a chance!
Carefully he scanned the sky looking for the brighter stars. He found one to the stern, bright, bright, which should not be there. That one would be Kzin! Now he knew his destination. His captives mewed in their funny sounds. He paid no attention. Hwass, the savior of Mellow Yellow, had told him about these sinners!
For a moment he was caught up in a squabble with the babies. He assigned Fastanimal to organize their care. Furlessface, his twin, was uselessly clinging to her mother’s footsteps. His mother was a helpless nuisance but it was his duty to protect her. He watched her in amusement. She was poking around at the prisoners’ crotches to see their genitals. Monkeyshine growled a warning at her. Poking was one thing; liberation was another. She growled back. Impudent mother!
Now all he had to do was learn to pilot the ship. Long-Reach had taught him all the mechanics he knew. He was proud that he could repair anything even if he didn’t have five arms. He stared at the controls, trying to deduce their functions. He was not tempted to push and pull and twiddle things at random. He knew better than that. He began to take the controls apart to see how they worked.
His kz’eerkt prisoners had a fit-but there was nothing they could do to stop him. He kept working, puzzling, careful not to break or short anything. This was no more than a W’kkai conundrum puzzle. What he didn’t understand at all, he left alone. Get the machine pointed at Kzin. Start it.
