The Man-Kzin Wars 05

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Durvash whimpered to himself, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Agony, agony to speak. Agony to think. Last. He was the last. I failed. Suicide night had succeeded. The thrint had won. Egg mother Womb mother Father Siblings. All dead. The tnuctipun race was dead, and he was the last. The last by three billion years. One-celled organisms had evolved to intelligence while belay within this planet’s crust. He was not even sure it was the planet he had lost consciousness on; there was more than enough time for his damaged craft to have drifted through several systems. Time for all the bodies of thrint and tnuctipun and shotovi and zengaborni to rot away, and the fabric of their cities to erode to dust and the dust to be ground down under moving continents, and for stars to age and Rest, the faithful machines said; they had no souls, no souls that longed for the deep red velvet sleep of death. Your functions are at less than 45% of optimum and you must rest for the healing to be complete.

He jerked. No. I must think. He was not the last tnuctipun! His race had won, not the mouth-beshitting Slavers. Joy brought Durvash tears as painful as despair. He existed; his autodoc and computer existed. They contained the knowledge to clone his cells, to modify the genetic structures to replicate individuals of all three sexes. Genetic records of thousands of tnuctipun; that was part of the general autodoc system. His rubbery lips peeled off his serrated teeth in aggression pleasure. Tnuctipun were pack-hunters of great sociability; group survival was sweet ecstasy.

I will need facilities. Laboratories, tools, time. The current sentients here would be complete fools to allow a rebirth of the tnuctipun species, of tnuctipun culture-and all of that was encoded in the memory of his computer as well.

They were not complete fools. Not very bright by tnuctipun standards, but then few races were. They were certainly more acute than thrint-by about a fifth to a third, he judged, from the hour or so of conversation, and to judge from their technology. It was fairly advanced, in a quaint sort of way-the beginnings of an industrial system, interstellar travel and fusion drives.

They were divided, too. Species from species, as was natural: the tnuctipun word for “alien” translated roughly as “food that talks”. Also individual from individual, a common characteristic of inferior races-he quickly suppressed memory of his own rivals at home. Durvash knew what to make of that. He had been trained as a clandestine agent, and his proudest accomplishment had been an entire thrint world wiped clean of life by engineering a civil war between thrintun clan elders.

The large carnivore, he decided. Carnivores were easiest to work with, in his opinion-as he was one himself. He is in a minority of one. It should be easy to persuade him to use the neural-connector earplug. That would make communication easy, and certain other things, if the biochemistries were similar enough.

Durvash squeezed his eyes shut. No warrior of tnuctipun had ever been so alone as he. He had lost a universe; there was a universe to win.

If I do not go mad, he thought; although his autodoc would probably not let him do so. He did not know if that was fortunate, or the most terrifying thing of all.

Sleep…

The little caravan prepared to depart in the blueish half-light of Beta dawn, with Alpha still a hint on the horizon, blocked by the peaks whose passes they would have to traverse. The mules had become inured to kzin scent-somewhat-and were loaded first, to proceed Tyra’s skittish horses who were doubly disturbed by the smell of carnivore and the dead horses from yesterday’s battle. Fading woodsmoke and coffee smells mixed with the crisp earthy scent of dew on the bushes, and the cries of birds and gliders cut a sharper undercurrent through the sound of the waterfall. That came into focus again, now that they were leaving it after so many months of labor.

“Done right well by us, this mountain,” Hans said reflectively, strapping the packsaddle of his mule. “Wonder Wit has a name? Not likely,” he decided. “Too small.” The little eroded volcanic peak was a midget among the Jotuns, even in the comparatively low hollow.

“Muttiberg,” Tyra said, passing by with her saddle over her shoulder. The dog Garm pressed against her leg, casting another apprehensive look back at the two kzin. He had been trying to keep himself between her and them since she rode into camp, despite the flattened ears and tucked tail of intimidation. Kzinti were nightmares to canines, of course. “The locals call it the Mother Mountain-for obvious reasons.”

Probably a man named them. This and the bill opposite did look like a woman’s breasts, if you squinted and had the right attitude. Muttiberg.

“Let me give you a hand with that,” Jonah said; then he was a little surprised at the weight of the saddle. Strong for a Wunderlander, he thought; but then, you could tell that from her build, almost like an Earther’s.

Bigs lifted the life-capsule possessively. It was lighter than it should be, some application of gravity polarizer technology beyond current capacities, and opaque now as well. The whole assemblage had seemed to ooze through the wall of the spaceship, leaving no mark of its passage. For the first time in his life Bigs felt lust as a purely mental state, not just the automatic physical reaction to kzinretti pheromones. It was an oddly cerebral sensation, yet it had the same obsessive quality of excluding all other considerations. The tnuctip un-voice murmured in his ear, and he commanded them not to twitch. Only the slightest subvocalization was necessary to reply, too faint even for Spots’s ears to catch.

He fitted the life capsule into one side of the pack saddle; the other was balanced with sacks of gold dust, worthless as dirt now. ‘We have a means of converting matter into energy along a beam,’ the voice said. Bigs’s mind blossomed with visions of monkey warships flashing into fireballs, galaxies of fire to light the triumphant passage of kzinti dreadnoughts. Planetary surfaces gouted upward, gnawing down to fortresses embedded in the crusts. ‘Matter-energy conversion is also available as a power source.’ Fleets crossed between suns in days, weeks. Once or twice, no more, in the history of the Patriarchy a warrior-a Hero-had been adopted into the Rut clan, promoted to the inmost lairs. What reward would be great enough for Chotra-Riit, savior of the kzinti? What glory great enough for the one who brought the Heroic Race domination not merely over the monkeys, but over a galaxy as well? Man was not the only enemy of the Patriarchy. None of them could stand against the secrets of the tnuctipun. The Eternal Pride would sweep the whole spiral arm in a conquering rush.

Slaver dripped down from his thin black lips to the fur of his chest. He ignored it, raking the mule’s bridle as tenderly as he might have borne up his firstborn son.

“…and so after Father was forced to leave on that crazy astrological expedition with Riao-Captain, Mutti had more and more trouble with the kzin,” Tyra went on.

Jonah leaned his head closer, interest and concern on his face. They were strung out over rocky plateau country, following a faint trail upwards toward the nearest pass through the central Jotuns. The mountains curved away northeastward, this slightly-lower hilly trough between the main ranges heading likewise; directly east and south were the headwaters of the Donau, and the long road down to the fertile lowlands where Munchen lay. Tyra hesitated and went on; Jonah seemed to be that rare thing, a man who knew how to listen. Not to mention looking at you without salivating all the time, something that was more subtly flattering than open interest.

“She had not his strength of body. Or;” she went on more slowly, “his strength of will-they were very close. So she must yield more to the kzinti, and the replacement for Riao-Captain was less… willing to listen, in any case. Things were growing worse all over Wunderland then; the war was going against the rat-cats, and they squeezed harder on the human population.” She scowled. “Yet Mutti did her best; more than can be said for some others, who were punished less.”

“I agree with you,” Jonah said. “Your family seems to have gotten a raw deal. Mind you,” he went on, “I wasn’t here, dealing with the kzin occupation. That twists people’s minds, and there’s little justice in an angry man-or a frightened one.”

She nodded, liking him better for the honesty than she would have for more fulsome support.

“In the meantime,” he went on, lowering his voice, “I’m worried about our kzin here and now.” He dropped into English, which was a language they shared and the sons of Chotrz-Shaa did not “They’re not acting normal.”

Tyra blinked puzzlement. They had been sullen, true, “Kzinti are not supposed to be talkative or gregarious, are they?” she said.

“Tanj, no,” Jonah said, taking a moment to fan himself with his hat This high up the heat was dry rather than humid, but the pale volcanic dirt and scattered rocks threw it back like a molecular-film reflector,

“Bigs is surly even by kzin standards, but now he’s downright euphoric. Not talking, but look at the way his fur ripples, and the way he holds his tail. Spots is talkative-for a kiln. Now he’s miserable.”

Tyra looked more closely. The smaller kiln was plodding along with back arched, the tip of his tail carelessly dragging in the dirt, even though it must be sore. His nose was dry-looking and there was a grayish tinge to its black, and his fur was matted and tangled, with burrs and twigs he had not bothered to comb out. Bigs’s pelt shone, and his head was up, alert, eyes bright.

“It is a bad sign when a kzin neglects his grooming, isn’t it?” she murmured.

“Very bad.”

She glanced aside at him. “You know them very well. From having fought them so long?”

He shrugged. “I know these two,” he said. “You have to be careful you don’t anthropomorphize, but offhand I’d say Spots is thoroughly depressed and worried. I don’t know if that worries me more than Bigs being so happy, or not.”

Spots folded his ears. “Must you torture that thing?” he said to Hans, as the old man blew tentatively into his harmonica. “It screams well, but the pain to my ears is greater.”

Off curled asleep around the canvass-wrapped tnuctipun module, Bigs’s ears twitched in harmony. His hands and feet were twitching as well, hunting in his sleep, and an occasional happy mreeowrr trilled from his lips.

Hans shrugged and put it away, picking up his cards. “Don’t signify!,” he said mildly. “You want to bet?”

“Sniff this group of public-transit tokens,” Spots snarled, throwing down his hand. “I fold. Count me out of the game.” He stalked off into the night, tail lashing.

“Ratcats don’t have the patience for poker,” Hans observed. “Bids?”

“I fold too,” Jonah said. Tyra had dropped out a round before.

“Neither do youngsters,” Hans observed, showing his hand; three sevens. He raked in the pot happily. “Could be we’ll all be very rich, but I never turn down a krona.”

Jonah made a wordless sound of agreement and looked over at the girl. She was sleeping, curled up against her saddle with one hand tucked beneath her cheek. He smiled and drew the blanket up around her shoulders…

“Awake!” Spots shouted, rushing back into the circle of firelight on all fours.

Jonah leaped. Tyra awoke and stretched out a hand for her rifle in its saddle-scabbard; Garm growled and raised his muzzle.

The kzin kicked his brother in the ribs and danced back from the reflexive snap. “Awake. Are you injecting sthondat blood? Get ready!”

He turned to the humans. “A dozen riding beasts approached; their riders dismounted and are coming this way, a half-kilometer. They will be within leaping distance in a few minutes.”

Bigs awoke sluggishly, shaking his head and licking at his nose and whiskers. Spots efficiently stripped the beamer from a pack-saddle and tossed it to his brother before freeing his own weapon. Jonah checked his rifle; Tyra and Hans were ready.

“Careful,” he said. “These might be the bandits-but they might not. We can’t fight our way back to Nev Friborg through a hostile countryside.”

Spots snorted. “Who would be pursuing us but the ones we fought, thirsty for blood and revenge?” he said. Bigs was growling, a hand resting on the module. Still, the smaller kzin licked his nose for greater sensitivity and stood stretched upright, sniffing open-mouthed.

“The wind favors us,” he said after a moment. “And I do not recognize any individual scents. That does not mean these are not the ones we defeated-I had little time to pay close attention then.” He sounded disappointed, thwarted in his longing to lose himself in combat and forget the decisions that had been oppressing him.

“Spread out and we’ll see,” Jonah said; it made no sense to outline themselves against their campfire. “No, leave the fire. If you put it out, they’d know we’d spotted them.”

Not bandits, was his first thought, as he watched through his field glasses. The bandits had been in a mismatch of bits of military gear and outbacker clothes. These were in coarse cotton cloth and badly tanned leather, with wide-brimmed straw hats and blanket-like cloaks. Their weapons were a few ancient, beautifully-tended chemical hunting rifles, and each man carried a long curved knife, heavy enough to be useful chopping brushwood. Tough looking bunch, he thought, but not particularly menacing. They stopped a hundred or so yards out from the fire and called, a warning or hail. He could not follow their thick backcountry dialect, but Hans and Tyra evidently could. They stood and called back, and Jonah relaxed.

“Act casual,” Hans said as they all returned to the fire. “These people are deep outback. They’ve got peculiar ways.” He frowned a little. “Don’t think they’ll like we’ve got kzin with us.”

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 mules. As he came level with the last his hand rested on its pannier, and Spots could hear the edge of a whisper.

My tail is cold, he thought in panic. What can I do? What can I do?

Three nights later Spots watched desperately as Jonah prepared for sleep, tilting his broad-brimmed hat forward over his eyes; it was a bright night, alive with the shooting stars so common on Wunderland and with Beta Centauri overhead near the moon. The human gave him a puzzled look as he settled in, and then his breathing grew slow and steady, his heartbeat sounded like an ancient Conundrum Priest drum to Spots’s straining ears. A heavy drum, regular, soothing. Heavy as his eyelids, so soothing as they dropped across dry and aching eyes, so pleasant. Making the ground soft like piled cushions, like piled cushions in the palazzo when he was young, and his father was crooning:

“Brave little orange kzin

Brave little spotted kzin,

Turn to the din

And if it makes you smile,

Leap

But if it is nothing at all

Really nothing at all

You may turn-in;

And droop your eyes while

You sleep.”

Spots sighed and turned, drifting, content. Then shot half-erect, trembling, his fur laid tension-flat on the bones of face and body, tail out and rigid.

Bigs was halfway from his lair of blankets to Jonah, moving with ghost-lightness. Moonlight and Betalight glinted on the heavy blade of the w'tsai in his hand. He caught his brother’s eye and shrugged with fur and tail, grinned insolence, flared his nostrils.

I scent that which you do not. Slowly, insultingly, he sauntered back to his blankets, laid himself down. Then he yawned, a pink-and-white, curl-your-tongue yawn of drowsy contentment, stretching every limb separately and grooming a little. He circled, finding exactly the right position, and curled up with tail over nose. One eye remained open for a second, glinting at Spots from beneath the tufted eyebrow.

You were lucky. But I only have to be lucky once.

Spots whimpered, tongue dangling as he panted with envy and despair. “Are you all right?”

Spots blinked. What am I doing lying on the ground? he thought.

The mule had stopped, pulling at the brushes nearby with a dry tearing sound as leathery leaves parted. One limb at a time, the kzin pulled himself up. Heavy, heavy, more heavy than the battle-practice in the old days, when their Sire worked them to exhaustion under kzin-normal gravity in the exercise room of the palace. Something seemed to hold his hands to the dry packed soil, and pains shot up his back as he stood and squinted into the bright daylight. He ran his fingers through the tangled mass of his mane, and hanks and knots of hair came loose, the furnace wind snatched it from him and scattered the long orange hairs on the air, on the dirt, on the scrubby bushes and sparse grass. He stood, dully staring after them.

“Are you all right?” Jonah asked again. Then he recoiled hastily from the vicious snap that nearly ripped open his arm. “If that’s the way you want it,” he said, tight-lipped, and went back to the lead mule.

Bigs’s ears smirked as he came by, his hand on the capsule. He never left it, now. “Soon we will camp for the night,” he jeered. “Won’t it be good to sleep?” More seriously: “It will be for the best, brother.”

“I have no brother,” Spots rasped, and stumbled forward to take the reins of his mule.

Even the scream hardly woke Spots. His eyes were crusted and blurred even when he opened them. The savage discord of metal on metal jarred him to some semblance of consciousness, and the scent of hot fresh-shed blood. He stumbled erect, mumbling, and stepped forward. The raw-scraped tip of his tail fell across the white ash crust that covered the embers of the fire, and he shot half a dozen meters into the air, screeching.

When he came down, he could see. Bigs’s first leap had failed, and Jonah had gotten out of his blankets and erect. Now the two were circling; Jonah had a four-furrowed row of deep scratches across his chest, and the very tip of Bigs’s tail was missing. The w'tsai gleamed in the kzin’s hand, and Jonah had his arm-long cutter-bar whistling in a figure-eight between them. Totally focused, Bigs lunged forward. Density-enhanced steel shrieked against the serrated edges of the bar and Rigs danced back, smooth and fast. There was a ragged notch in the blade of his honor knife, and his snarl grew more shrill. For a moment Spots thought desperately that his brother would walk the narrow path of honor, weapon against weapon.

“Get back,” Bigs flung over his shoulder, reaching for the strakkaker at his waist.

The world stood still for Spots. I owe my life to Jonah-human. I owe my life to the Patriarch. This is my brother That is my- There was no more time for thought.

Spots screamed and leaped. “No!” he howled. His leap carried him onto the larger kzin’s back.

There was nothing wrong with Bigs’s reflexes. Even as Spots fastened on to him with all sixteen claws he ducked his head between his shoulders to avoid the killing bite to the back of the neck and threw himself backward, stabbing with reversed w'tsai, The blade scored along Spots’s massive ribcage, but there was no soft unarmored midsection to a kzin body. He twisted to lock the arm as they rolled, accepting the savage battering and the pain as they rolled across the campfire, fangs probing deeper and deeper through fur ruff and into the huge muscles of Bigs’s neck. Groping for the vulnerable spine, to drive a spike into the nerve.

Jonah stepped forward, cutter bar raised to strike in a chop that would have cut through Bigs’s torso to the hearts. To the hormone-speeded reflexes of the battling kzinti, the movement might as well have been in slow motion. A full-armed swipe of Bigs’s free hand caught him across face and neck and shoulder, sending him spinning limp to the ground in a shower of flesh. In a tuck-and-roll that was a continuation of the same movement Bigs levered his brother off his back and sent him a dozen meters away. They screamed together and met in a flowing curve of both their leaps, mouths open in the killing gape, hands and feet ripping and tearing and stabbing. Rolling over and over in a blurred mass of orange fur, blood, distended eyes, flashing steel and gleaming inch-long fangs.

Spots’s grip on his brother’s knife-wrist weakened, the daw-grip on his throat choking him until his eyes bulged almost out of their deep-set sockets. Stronger and fresher, the muscles of the short thick arm straining against his were as irresistible as a machine. Pain shot through his hand as his thumb popped out of its socket, and then something cold and very hot at the same time lanced into his body. Gray swam before his eyes as vision narrowed down to the killgrin of his brother’s face, then winked out.

Sleep, he told himself. You fought to the death.

Victory was cold and pain and nausea, after the first liver-jolting flash of adrenaline. Bigs staggered away, away from the body that lay at his feet with blood bubbling on its chest-fur, blood in mouth and nose and eyes where his teeth had savaged it. He threw away the broken hilt of his w'tsai and gave a sobbing shriek of grief and triumph at the risen moon.

“I have killed my brother. Howl for God!” His brother; guardian of his back in the tussles of childhood. Last son of Chotrz-Shaa beside himself.

“Not now,” the voice whispered in his ears. “You have work to do. Gather the equipment. Bury the bodies. We must move.”

Bigs shook his head as if shaking off water, clawing at his own ear. The little implant seemed impossible to dislodge; sometimes these days in evil dreams he felt that it was growing tendrils into his brain from his ear. Pain shot through his head at the thought.

“Nonsense. Now, get to work.”

Howling again, Bigs beat fists on the capsule until the mule reared and kicked and nearly escaped. Then he seized the halter and dragged it after him into the night. He must run, like Warlord Chmee, run from his guilt. Had not Chmee broken an oath for ultimate power? He must run.

“Stop, you brainless savage! Obey!” The pain again, but Bigs ignored it.

“I did it for the Heroic Race!” he screamed into the night. “None shall command us. No more monkey arrogance. I did it for you, my brother!” His grief rose shrill, a huge sound that daunted even the advokats pack that had come to prowl at the edge of sight, attracted by the blood. Dragging the mule behind him, Large-Son of Chotrz-Shaa ran into the darkness.

The pain in his head was continuous now. Sometimes he felt as if his brain were being dragged out, and he found himself walking in a circle to the left, head bent to his shoulder. When it lessened, he was conscious of the voice again. It was daylight, but he was uncertain of the day. They were over the pass, and the ground on either side was covered in long grass, with patches of trees on the higher slopes. The cool damp scent from the lowlands spread out below him was like a benediction in his nostrils; there was no sight of Man, not even of his herdbeasts.

“Very well,” Durvash said. “We will proceed straight.

That pack of scavengers probably finished them off in any case. No time may be spared to go back, in any case.”

Bigs mumbled something. He felt he should resent the tone; did the ancient revenant not know he was speaking to a Conquest Hero? Soon to be the greatest of all Conquest Heroes? Yet the emotion was r away, as if muffled behind a thick layer of sherrek fur. Why was his mind wandering so? Great chunks of time seemed to be missing, and sometimes his vision would blurr like a badly adjusted holoscreen. It kept the grief at bay, though. With that he began to weep, an eeeuuureuee sound.

“My brother fought for me when the older kits pulled my nose,” he mumbled to himself “I grew bigger, but he never quarreled with me.” Not enough to really draw blood. “We shared our first kzinrett.” An under-the-grass transaction with a warrior needing quick cash to cover a gambling debt. “We -“

“Silence.”

“Urr-urrr-” Bigs’s throat would not work anymore, and he found he had lost interest in speaking.

Well, now I know how the implant will work on. these kzin, Durvash thought sourly. Badly. It had been designed to use on thrint and thrintun slave species, of course, with multiband capacity. Kzinti seemed very resistant to pain-center stimulus, and on a strange species the control of volitional routines was impossibly coarse.

Report, he thought/ordered the autodoc system. Impatiently, he ran through the diagnostic and came to the conclusion. Prepare to decant me, he told it. Warnings flashed, but he overrode. The autodoc would be priceless as part of his breeding program, since it was capable of acting as an artificial womb, but he must not run down the base supplies of organic molecules for recombinant synthesis before he was sure of obtaining more. The local biochemistry was unlikely to have all a tnuctipun metabolism required.

Besides, I am hungry and mad to see the sky, to smell fresh air again. If he was to be reborn into this new world, let his fangs and tongue take seizin of it.

“I will emerge,” he said to the kzin. It stood apathetic, eyes dull; he ordered the machine to jolt its pleasure centers and relax forebrain restriction, and awareness returned to the big golden eyes. “Where are we?”

“Near… hrreeawho, how did we come here so fast? Where is… we are near Neu Friborg, I think. We are there, I think.”

It lifted the module to the dirt and sank exhausted to the ground. Fluid began to cycle out of Durvash’s lungs, and he wrapped his lips against the pain.