The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 2

(2391 A.D.)

Short-Son of Chirr-Nig shivered in relief at the warmth. He packed his face-mask and holstered his tools with stiff fingers, dropping one of them. Just having to pick it up brought his fear and rage out in a grumbling snarls not too loud. He didn't want to attract attention. He assessed his location and picked out a cluster of bushes and trees where he could hide without leaving a trampled trail. Assume an imminent attack.

He removed his boots and began to massage blood back into his feet. Another of the baby Jotok was trying to climb a thin tree, unsuccessfully, three spindly arms waving impotently, while the other two double elbowed arms pushed against the ground. Short-Son did not kill it his rage was subsiding. Stupid leafeater. You’ll make a stupid slave when you grow up. The bark was too smooth. The soft-boned fingers of the tiny infant needed to catch on rough bark. He noticed more of the creatures. They were probably coming from the pond.

Leaves rustled, and he looked up quickly, scanning the branches. The ceiling lamps that imitated a tropical sky did not make it easy, there were too many of them and not enough shadows. Had to watch out for those Jotok. They were smart when they grew up and big, too. They had five cunning brains, one in each arm, and they never slept without at least one brain on the alert and in control.

Short-Son did not feel too threatened. The Jotoki ran from danger and the wild ones were used to being hunted. Give them an escape route and they ran. But they were said to have no fear at all when they were hidden. Caution was still called for. The father of Striped-Son of Hromfi had been killed in seconds when a wild Jotok dropped on him from above during a hunt. Yes, they knew how to hide. A nose couldn't even find them because their skin glands imitated the smells of the forest.

What to do now? Rest. Catch some game and gorge even if it was poaching. Short-Son was famished. The odors were turning his mind toward its natural ferocity, but he had no intention of hunting Jotoki without training. Any small dumb animal would do. This vast array of domes and caves was made for hunting. It was the best he'd ever do on Hssin, much better than buying frightened vatach in cages at the market, and lugging them home on his back for his father.

What he found on the second layer down was a slithering snake as long as his leg. He made a fool of himself catching it. Kzinti enjoyed hunting anywhere, but they were not built for hunting in the forest, and tree climbing snakes were not their natural prey. Nonetheless it made a good morsel and the blood had an interesting tang. The bones were unpleasantly crunchy.

He had to think about getting out of the reserve even though he didn't want to leave. If he stayed, some adult would find and thrash him; if he left, his peers would kill him. Finding refuge in his father's compound was, perhaps, not the best idea. His brothers were allies, even though they taunted and humiliated him, but his father would just throw him back into the jaws of his peers to make a good warrior out of him. He could hear his father lecturing him in the sonorous formal tense of the Hero's Tongue, "Make every use of the games to hone your skills."

He found a large fungus the size of his head, growing between two roping trees, with microscopic flowers flourishing on the black patches. He sniffed in wonder. He found the trail of some small animal and he saw a wild Jotok sitting high above on a lamp, its elbows in the air, watching him with an armored eye that poked up out of a shoulder blade. The eyes of the other arms were retracted, probably asleep.

And he wandered down to the pond and waded among the reeds, looking for fish. All he found were prejotok arms swimming about, the size of his finger, the gill-slit red. Each arm was an individual creature only joining in a colony of five when they were ready to crawl upon the land. The polliwogs had an armored eye already, but only graceful fins where the fingers would develop.

What a distraction, wading in a pond. He should be thinking about the mock battle of the game. He shouldn't be alone here. He should have a whole squad working with him, or at least be on the team of some other squad. But he didn't mind the distractions. It was probably his last day alive. His father had forgotten that the games weren't fair. The kits tested each other and there were rules of honor and honesty to keep the exchanges from being lethal. And then something happened that had no rules.

A consensus developed about who was the weakling. And from that day he was hunted and marked for death. The unweaned were "after ear." There was no escape. No act of bravery was good enough. The consensus was a death sentence. Short-Son knew. He had himself helped hound a "designated" weakling into a trap to be torn apart eight of his peers. So much for being swift to do the bidding of Puller-of-Noses.

Death. Standing to his ankles in the water he found three of the Jotok arms locked together in a union that would last a lifetime, their thin-filament headfeelers waving, sending out a chemical call for two more mates. At this stage they were particularly helpless, unable to dart away, unable to escape onto the land. He pulled them apart, curiously, to see how the head was formed. It bled because the circulation system was already joined. The intestines of the head spilled out. When his wonder was satiated, he popped the arms, one at a time, into his mouth.