The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 14

(2402 A.D.)

In an aircar over the province of Skogarna the social structure of Wunderland stood out in a way that never would have shown from the ground. It was clearly a wilderness dominated by a manorial elite. Coming into the kzin base they passed over the Nordbo estate at Korsness, huge, isolated from Gerning by hill and primeval wood along an expanse of beach. A ribbon of roads leading to Korsness clearly showed who was master of Gerning.

The light armored aircar carried the two kzin Heroes above the forested hills, past the hillside scar of recent kzin construction. It was afternoon but sunset hues of red washed over the clouds along the horizon where Alpha Centauri B was disappearing. The sea showed an astonishingly clear blue that faded into pastel shades of green where the shallow coastal waters had flooded a crater and left a curving string of islands.

Many such craters littered Wunderland. The planet suffered continual impact from meteorites straying out of the Serpent's Swarm so that some nights were aglow with falling stars. A major strike every few million years had left Wunderland's lifeforms permanently poised for adaptation. The navy that had defended Wunderland from the Conquering Heroes had consisted mainly of a Meteoroid Guard unit.

Gerning Base was created by kzin who loved to hunt; the actual station that monitored the high atmosphere for thousands of kilometers around to detect feral spacecraft seemed more of an afterthought. Some cunning kzin had his eye on this area, anticipating the time when honor and heroism would earn him the right to a full name. In the meantime he was serving Chuut-Riits purposes.

Detector-Analyst was a local kzin from a background that gave him a Hssin heritage, though he had never been to R'hshssira. He gave Trainer-of-Slaves special consideration out of curiosity for the planet of his patriarchs. Ssis-Captain grumbled at all this talk about a place he had passed through while in hibernation and kept interrupting to turn the conversation into a lighter vein.

Jokes: "How do you stop a monkey from running around in circles? Nail his other foot to the floor."

Zoology: was a Wunderland tigripard faster than a Kzin Krrach-Sherek? Or only more cunning?

Better than he liked stalking through the forest, Ssis liked to sit in the lodge on the carved logs, supping fermented milk. The political intrigue was all in the lodge. He speculated with Trainer about the identity of the ambitious kzin who was "pissing around the borders of this territory," looking for a noble name so that he might found a household here. They decided it must be Yiao-Captain.

Yiao-Captain was an unlikely candidate. He was as short as Trainer and as slight, not the kind one would expect to dominate a fight, but he had a cautious cunning to him and an energy that would make any challenge to his honor dangerous. But it was his ambition that struck them both.

Trainer-of-Slaves first sniffed around its edges when he was invited to share a kill with four of the local kzin. The kill was a forest herbivore, headless, and carved in places that facilitated sundering, the fresh blood still running into the table-gutters where a spout delivered it to a bloodbowl. The tang of bloodscent was overpowering. On a sidetable stood green homeblown bottles of the local akvavit, ready to mix with the blood.

Trainer learned in conversation that the akvavit had been seized in Gerning for unpaid taxes and its distiller's daughter sold into factory slavery at Valburg. The normal procedure was for the indigenous Herrenmann to handle such details but the kzin purposefully audited estates and villages when taxes seemed low and found simple ways to encourage ardent taxpaying. After all, the taxes were set at fair levels.

The conversation changed from such mundane topics when Yiao-Captain arrived to rip off a hunk of meat for his own fangs. He dominated the conversation with his enthusiasms. He added fire to the tinderdry debate over Chuut-Riits Logistical Preparation as the Rey to Victory In War. He provoked insults and countered them with witty insults of his own that both needled and defused. When he tired of that, he turned the collective attention of his coterie to tales of adventure.

Adventure, to Yiao-Captain, meant astronomy. His haunch of herbivore held motionless, he stopped eating while the sputtering of the Hero's Tongue quickened to an almost battle intensity. To know the stars! There were rumors of strange beings who lived in the depths of space, rumors of ancient empires that had casually abandoned tools upon the ice of comets long before any of the giant stars of the constellations had yet flamed to life.

Hr-roghk! The hints! The spoor untracked! Starseeds that spawned at the galaxy's very edge. Where did they come from? Where did they go? Mysteries! What were those moon caves deep in the outer planetary gloom around red dwarfs? Caves so ancient they must have been carved by disintegrator beams? Wealth! Honor!

Then silence to let all this sink in while Yiao-Captain noisily stripped his morsel. He left, reminded of duty by some new passion. The conversation drifted back to kzinrett jokes, to who had-just received a name, to the honor duel between Electronic-Systems Upkeep and Builder-of-Walls, the spike on yesterday's scope, the taste of space rations. And finally, finally, the tongue-wagging licked around that most degenerate bone of speculation fleet rivalries; who would reach Man-sun first?

Days of hunting brought Trainer-of-Slaves and Detector-Analyst together in a friendship broader than the commonality of Hssin. They often went out at dawn without Ssis. Detector had been hunting in the woods around Gerning since the opening of the base, and knew the ways and the smells of the forest. He knew the waterholes and the places where a tigripard might be found stalking its own prey.

The aroma of Wunderland, the expanse, the open skies, an evening standing on the beach by the sea all of this overwhelmed Trainer with joy. He had been a hunter himself, moving daily out into the Hssin Jotok Run to cull the wild Jotok or lure a transient into slavery, or measure the salinity of the marshes where the Jotok larvae wriggled among the reeds. He had thought the Jotok Run a capacious relief from the cramped city, but this!

This Wunderland went on forever!

Once the hunting the woods took them as far as the Korsness estate. Trainer saw from the hill Yiao-Captain helping a man-beast and his child move a fallen tree from the main road. He went to help the Captain. It seemed like a political thing to do ingratiating himself with this officer could only prove useful. But why was he moving a tree when there were so many slaves and machines?

"Rrrr, we have welcome help," purred Yiao-Captain to the tiny child who had been trying to lift the tree at its center.

Trainer recognized the larger of the tame animals as the local king of beasts. He couldn't tell one monkey from the other but this one was tall for a man, with a hideous hooked nose. Unfairly, he had an unearned name, Peter Nordbo, but that was the way of the monkeys who did not know the value of a name.

"You're big," said the Herrenmann's child to the new kzin. "What's your name?"

Trainer-of-Slaves could hardly understand beast talk, and he knew the child would not understand his. He had not yet grasped enough words in the slave language to translate his name. But Long-Reach's name for him was an easy translation.. "Mellow-Yellow," he said. Those two words he did know. He added stiffly, "You are Short-Son of Nordbo."

The boy cocked his ear. "I'm Ib Nordbo, ehrenvoll Yellow." He put his three-year-old back to the tree. "Push!"

After the two kzin had carried the log to the roadside with token help from their human vassals, the child found a nest of petal-pickers that had been disturbed by their activities, the tiny scaled creatures dashing grief-stricken around their paper home. Ib Nordbo, not the least bit afraid of the kzin, took Trainer by the paw and made him stoop to his haunches while he explained the social life of petal-pickers with three year old seriousness.

Peter Nordbo watched his son anxiously while Yiao emitted a purr to reassure his vassal. Trainer-of-Slaves listened intently to everything Ib told him, even understanding some of it. He was fascinated. The man-beasts he had seen were very badly organized into slavehood. There had to be a better way. Learning animal psychology by direct communication with their young was a source of important clues to domestication.

Mellow-Yellow let a petal-picker climb onto his stick waving its long front legs. Ib laughed. "They like roses. I feed them roses but it makes them sick." And he got up and staggered around for Trainer like a petal-picker drunk on the alien essence of rose.

"Do you have petal-pickers on Kzin?" asked the child curiously.

"Never… been… Kzin-home," Trainer struggled with the language.

"I go to Kzin," Ib pointed at himself. "I will tell the Patriarch to be nice."

Peter Nordbo had been licking his lips. He hastily picked up his son who was as much of a chatterbox as his young wife Hulda. "Maman wishes you for nap time."

"Not" The boy struggled.

"Sir," apologized Nordbo, "he is young yet to learn the proper forms of respect."

Kzinti have a soft spot in their liver for sons who struggle. Yiao-Captain nodded his mane. "If ever I reach Kzin-home, I will deliver the katzchen's message with great respect to the Patriarch."

Only days later Yiao-Captain appeared at the lodge with his Nordbo Herrenrnann, violating all protocol. loin and beast came there to play some sort of mangame. Bored with fleet gossip, Trainer-of-Slaves tried to follow the moves and the logic of the game. It was played out on an octal by octal board, with stationary combat pieces. There seemed to be no action, no attack. The pieces stood there, sometimes without moving for minutes. One piece was moved at a time, to some trivial advantage. Sometimes, very gently, a piece would be set aside.

Yiao-Captain seemed fascinated by the game; his eyes never left the pieces. He asked questions roughly, and would cuff Herrenmann Nordbo as if he were a son, and he would purr happily when he captured a piece. But the stationary nature of the game obviously took its toll. When beast-Nordbo spent too much time on his moves, the Captain would pace restlessly, and if his opponent, even then, had not moved, he would stand towering over the small slave and impatiently suggest what the next move should be.

"Ach, that would give me too much trouble with your bishop when you jumped your knight. I think I'll move my pawn. I see advantage there."

"How do monkeys ever win a war? You'd be slashed to pieces before you decide which trench to sit in!" He fumed to Trainer-of-Slaves. "You've been watching. Do you understand this ponderous wargame?"

"It is much too slow for me. I'm looking for fast action around Man-sun."

"You have a conventional mind. Five and a half years in hibernation is action?" Yiao-Captain roared in good humor. "Do you have a ship yet? Chuut-Riit is always looking for Heroes who want to get their tails singed."

"I have a ship, but the Admiralty is being slow with my rating."

"Hr-r, that's easy to fix. I'll tell you who to go to."

Yiao-Captain seemed to be at ease anywhere. When Traat-Admiral arrived for an inspection, Yiao took him hunting and entertained him without the slightest hint of propitiation. He appeared to be very well connected. Ssis-Captain hid in the bushes so that when Traat-Admiral came for his aircar on the day of departure, he could step out along the path and pass the Admiral with a sharp salute.

It was a glorious day. A chill wind blew in from the sea that ruffled the fur and took away the heat of exertion. Ssis was in a mood for celebration. He chatted excitedly about what Yiao-Captain could do for them, counting sons before they were born. Trainer guided him north to the creek where they wandered upstream on the boulders. Ssis leaped very carefully not to get wet stone by stone but Trainer didn't mind wading when he had to.

"Shissss!" the Captain whispered, freezing. "I've caught a scent."

They skulked downwind over a lightning-felled tree silently on pads. Bent underbrush led around-hill. A splash of white through the leaves. There he was. They had a man-beast. A youngling with a spear. He saw them and started to run. In a flowing: gait Ssis-Captain cut him off, drove him back toward Trainer. He fled in a perpendicular dash, away from them both. Ssis flanked him, around a grey outcropping, grinning. The boy-beast turned. Futilely. The natural carnivorous leap of the kzin was awesome in the low gravity. Ssis was blocking his way again, not hurting him, not coming close. Toying with his prey.

Trainer-of-Slaves had flashes of the poor monkeys he had tried to save back on Hssin during that fatal man-hunt. He stood, frozen with fear, not for himself but for the wretched animal. Ssis was only playing, having fun, but the beast didn't know that. Trainer reached a hand up, trying to think of something to growl at his companion that would restrain him.

The terrified boy, unable to retreat, charged with his spear. "Die Zeit ist uml Rattekatze!"

Ssis whacked him aside with unsheathed claws, but instead of picking himself up and running, the animal charged again with berserk energy, spearless. His body rebounded from the massive bulk of the moving kzin. He no longer had a face.

"No sense of humor," said Ssis-Captain, rolling the corpse onto its back with his foot.

Trainer-of-Slaves lowered his hand. They were so frail! He stooped over the youngling-beast to check for signs of life, the heady blood-odor stimulating his hunger. "He's dead!" There was no help for it. They stripped the clothes off the body and took turns ripping it apart with their fangs. What they left was a pile of bloody bones, half the flesh still uneaten, the braincase smashed open for the delicacy within.

One day later a grim Herrenmann arrived at the kzin base desperately trying to hold his rage within a propitiative framework. Yiao-Captain greeted him, at first not reading Peter Nordbo's state of mind. The hints of rebellion only raised Yiao-Captain's ire. Nordbo shifted his argument. Gerning was a small town. If the taxpayers were hunted, who would pay the taxes?

"I have supplied your base faithfully. How can I collect your tithe if this goes on?"

"I will conduct an investigation." Yiao opened a switch on his desk. "Data-Sergeant. Get me information. Who was hunting yesterday?"

Later Yiao had Ssis-Captain and Trainer-of-Slaves ordered to his office. He left them standing at attention. His mouth was twitching around its fangs. "You have been guests here at this base," he growled, making it plain that they no longer were. "I have let you roam freely. You have been serving in cramped quarters and I have sympathy for those who do their duty under trying circumstances. You have no authority to kill my taxpayers. Nor any reason. The woods abound with lower game." Contemptuously, the tip of Yiao's naked tale flicked back and forth. "This youngling you attacked, was that the best test of your prowess that you could find? Next you'll be devouring suckling Yiao-Captain let the warriors stand while he attended to other matters. Finally he pulled out papers for Ssis-Captain. "You have been recalled to the fleet immediately. I have seen to it that you will not return to the surface of Wunderland. You'll have to do your hunting on Man-home. I hear that there they have a surplus of taxpayers."

He had even worse words for Trainer-of-Slaves. "And I have investigated you, too. You have been toadying around the base seeding a fighting position in the Fourth Fleet, slithering behind the command of those who have been appointed to consider the staffing of the Fleet. You have a record of cowardice. Your presence aboard a fighting ship would endanger its Heroes. I have seen to it that you are being recalled to your duties at Fortress Aarku, immediately."