The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 28

(2435 A.D.)

On the fourth dropout from hyperspace, W'kkai-sun was the brightest star in the heavens, two light-days away. It was fifteen light-years from here to Hssin, and they had made it in a miraculous forty-four days. The Empire of the Patriarch would never be the same. They had reached mighty W'kkai!

Trainer-of-Slaves paused for a moment to consider the event. Fifty-eight years ago, bargaining among the rumor-laden bazaars of this illustrious star-system, the great Chuut-Riit had first sniffed the scent of the manbeast and laid his plans for the Patriarch's Glory. In that same year, inside the humble Fortress Walls of Hssin, the runt of Hamarr's new litter had been given the name Short-Son of Chirr-Nig. Nobody had expected him to live except his protective mother.

From W'kkai it had taken Chuut-Riits caravan nineteen years to reach the outpost Hssin. From Hssin it had taken Short-Son of Chirr-Nig fifty-eight years to reach the legendary W'kkai by means of a short cut of forty-four days at the end.

In the meantime how had the warriors of Riit and Nig fared? Chuut-Riit was dead, his sons dead, his entourage slaughtered. Chirr-Nig, who had chosen to stay at Hssin and breed sons, was dead. His brothers were fried corpses circling Man-sun or dead at Ka'ashi. His "warrior" sons had died in the Fourth Fleet or found valiant martyrdom during that final valiant cataclysm at Ka'ashi-suns.

One son had survived. Only one. The runt, the short-son, the eater-of-grass. The coward. The lowly Trainer-of-Slaves. The survivor.

The Nora-beast beside him was suckling her third pair of twins at milk-swollen breasts, fascinated by the heavens as she always was. She didn't like the shutters that were in place during hyperspatial travel, or the dim electric glow of the cabin. Her dimples told him that she was excited that her world had opened up again.

There was a slight hint of human urine on Nora's fur the boy's soaker needed to be changed again. The baby girl suddenly opened up her eyes (or a burp, then closed them and went back to her obsessive sucking. She was going to grow up to be a beauty. She ought to be very marketable as a breeder if he could manage her verbal development to peak at 500 words.

The softly furred female was thinking that she had been very patient with her Mellow-Yellow, but enough was enough! Ex-Lieutenant Argamentine wanted her big room back. With its colors and furs and its baby beds. Where were her other babies? It made her uncomfortable to see them frozen in the hold. They didn't mover

Bad Mellow-Yellow! He'd kept them all cooped lap too long in his silly ship. Poor Long-Reach, funny Long-Reach, with no place to put his arms back there. The return of the stars was welcome but big old Mellow-Yellow had tricked her before with those. It didn't necessarily mean they were home. "We home?" asked Nora in the elementary hiss-spits of the Female Tongue. She no longer remembered any English at all.

The kzin warrior spent a day scanning the sky. He was looking for the gravitic pulse of a UNSN ship, worried that they might have inflicted on W'kkai the same horrible fate they had delivered to Hssin. It wasn't likely. That was why he had picked W'kkai. The UNSN ships could outflank the worlds of the Patriarchy. They could lay siege to whole systems. They could disrupt trade. But siege wasn't conquest. W'kkai-system had the resources to resist siege for a dozen generations!

His sensors detected only kzin.

He was moving in on the system using the same careful plan that he had extracted from Lieutenant Argamentine's mind, the same maneuver she had been using to close in on a hostile Alpha Centauri.

They jumped in, one light-day closer. It took Long-Reach half an hour to phase in the motor for that jump and fifteen minutes to arc through hyperspace.

W'kkai! Trainer-of-Slaves was already dream-seeing his noble household. He saw the stone walls. There would be a vast Jotok Run out back, bigger than the whole Run on Hssin had ever been. He had some nice little bungalows in mind for the man-slaves. They'd need a common dormitory, too. Monkeys were communal animals.

And the palazzo for his kzinretti: that would be a marvel of carved red sandstone and tall wrought iron walkways to let the light in, W'kkai style all laid out with cool inner corridors, and mazed plazas for the chasing and leaping games. He could almost smell the perfume of kzinrett fur. To stock his harem he'd be able to walk into the most noble of households carved woods, tapestries, trophies, ancient heirlooms and take his pick of their favorite daughters.

Still nothing but the electromagnetic hubbub of a thriving civilization, and the characteristic gravitic signature of polarizer-driven interplanetary commerce.

Another jump, and then he knew they were near a military base.

He beamed out an identification code, so hoary in its use among the worlds of the Patriarchy that it was conjured in base twenty-five mathematics which probably meant that it had been invented by the ancient Jotoki and learned by the kzin while they were still mercenaries. The code was a royal tail-pain to use. But changing standard regulations in a sublight empire could be impossibly complex.

The man-monkeys weren't any different. He had often wondered why the navigation instruments in the Shark were calibrated to odd intervals of twenty-four and sixty, translated to base ten mathematics. It was a minor miracle that he'd been able to find W'kkai using them. The custom probably reflected something that the humans had inherited from their chimpanzee ancestors.

He wasn't expecting a fast response to his signal. The Shark was eleven light-minutes from the nearest kzin military unit, well out of "leap first and ask questions later" range. He'd have to wait twenty-two minutes for a reply.

Eventually that reply arrived. "Kppukiss-Guardian speaking. Identification code incompatible with vessel type. You are putting out the neutrino profile of a UNSN ghostship. You are presently trespassing, I repeat, trespassing the defense sphere permitted to W’kkai by the MacDonald-Rishshi Peace Treaty of the 2433rd year honoring the torture of the Fanged Father, the Monkey Son, and the Unseen Grandfather."

The rest of the message was unstated but the menace was there- no truce existed inside the treaty perimeter. Good. That meant that they were within kzin controlled space.

Trainer-of-Slaves decided that now was the time to use a new name. Then he would never have to reveal his duty names and no one could ever flaunt them to insult him. Self-promotion wasn't unknown in the Patriarchy if a Hero had the swinging-claw to make it stick. And this Hero's swinging-claw moved faster than light!

"Lord Grraf-Nig acknowledging Kppukiss-Guardian. Grraf-Nig here. Grraf-Nig receiving." In taking this name he was honoring his mentor, Grraf-Hromfi (out of affection) and his father, Chirr-Nig (out of spite). For the rest of his life he intended to spread the wisdom of Grraf, and for the rest of his life he intended to be such a fulgent Nig that all other Nigs, especially his father, would fade from the sky.

His beamcast continued. "This servant of the Patriarch does indeed travel in a salvaged UNSN vessel, unfettered by the luminiferous bondage. We come from the wreckage of Ka'ashi-system and from the martyrdom of Hssin. Light will not yet have delivered its message of these distant woes to W'kkai, so you must only have heard the version spoken to you by the superluminal man-beasts who tell lies to suit the mood of their livers.

"Grraf-Nig's desire is to settle upon the lush plains of W'kkai to breed a new generation of warriors for which I will need the aid of your magnificent daughters.

"I come in poverty and lamentation from our wasted worlds. I bring with me only a superluminal drive and a functioning hyperwave receiver, neither of which I can fully comprehend without the help of W'kkai scholarship and neither of which can be comprehended by W'kkai scholarship without the fifteen years of sweat and thought given to these devices by me and my slaves.

"I come in poverty without a warrior entourage, with only the memory of martyred Heroes. My pitiful wealth is reduced to ten Jotoki-slaves of mechanical bent who know gravitic and superluminal mechanics, and one female breeder of a new slave race and her litter of six child-slaves.

"The Lord Grraf-Nig requests a full military escort to W'kkai. The vessel Shark is unarmed. Your Heroes are welcome aboard for inspection. Lord Grraf-Nig out. Standing by."

Grraf-Nig was almost shaking in his fear. After fifteen years of living a Winless life he had forgotten what contact was lime. The frightened Short-Son had been impressed by the speech but appalled that it had been coming out of his mouth. Trainer-of-Slaves was just glad that the W'kkai warriors couldn't smell the fear in the Shark's cabin. He was going to have to request a talcum rubdown by Nora to get the evidence of cowardice out of his fur. Then he'd replace the entire cabin air supply minutes prior to the boarding.

He expected the next contact to be visual. That gave them twenty-two minutes to dress. He pulled out the case from behind the box that had been made on We Made It and held up the best kzin finery he had been able to salvage from the ruins of Hssin.

Grraf-Nig had fresh livery for Long-Reach who was sitting on his mouth atop the hyperdrive motor, three brains asleep and two arms holding sleeping babies. That pose would have to be changed. He wanted his slaves to appear as well-groomed animals. He combed the Nora-beast's fur on her torso and legs until the soft down glimmered. It pleased him to do things for her. She was able to perform miracles upon his pelt. Then he gave her new lace garters for her video debut. She slipped them on, her dimples in her cheeks. That meant she liked them. Of course she didn't understand about the video.

I've gone crazy from loneliness, thought Grraf-Nig. I love my five-armed sons and my wonderfully feminine man-kzinrett. It was a venal sin to become attached to slaves but that was the risk a slave-master had to take.

The twenty-two minutes were up. The radio came to life. "Honored Grraf-Nig! This unworthy Kppukiss Guardian offers you a military escort of six Screamers. W'kkai welcomes its Rescuing Hero! Our wealth is your wealth! My only daughter will comfort your couch! A thousand of our sons will be your Warrior's Guard…"

Though Long-Reach was mostly asleep, short(arm) had been keeping an eye on things. "Dominant Master, don't let all that sthondat excrement overheat your liver."

"Trip over?" asked Nora brightly.

Grraf-Nig banged the box from We Made It. "We Made It!" he exclaimed in English.

Nora didn't understand a word. But she knew what to do. She snuggled up to Mellow-Yellow. "My Hero," she purred-spat in her charming human accent.