The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 7

(2392 A.D.)

Long-Reach was collectively puzzled by the strange chambers to which the yellow-one had taken him. It was a frightening world, more because there were no trees in it than because of the slabs that slid open in the world-boundaries. The first big discussion he had among himselves was: how would his mouth eat if there were no leaves? His eyes kept looking for leaves and each of him kept asking to stare through another's eyes to see if there weren't leaves in that direction. Short(arm) was especially apprehensive.

And for another thing, in this world there were too many of the yellow-orange carnivores. They made all of him anxious. He didn't know why his own yellowone was special except that the nervousness disappeared when they were together. Then very interesting things happened.

Among himselves he referred to his special carnivore companion as Mellow-Yellow, which was not a vibrating-word but was a pastel image-word of the kind used to communicate between his selves. Mellow-Yellow was "world-lights filtering down through mingled leaf-tissue." It was the best forest image there was. His companion did seem to have a voice-name, but the rules were confusing. Sometimes he referred to his body as "Hero," sometimes as "Warrior," sometimes as "Kzin," sometimes, when he was dangerous to be with it was "Eater-of-Grass," or "Fangless." The voice-names changed as night and day. Lately it was "Trainer-of-Slaves." Simpler to think Mellow-Yellow.

The furry Mellow-Yellow had a game with the low frequency sounds that was so exciting to play that Long-Reach couldn't seem to stop playing. If Mellow-Yellow quieted his vibrator (which seemed stuck in his mouth where he couldn't chew it). Long-Reach felt compelled to hum and rumble and chatter in order to provoke more of that game. When he deliberately tried to keep one of his lungs silent, another was sure to interrupt the hush. Big(arm) had more restraint than skinny(arm).

The game had rules. Each eye-image had an earsound that only Mellow-Yellow knew and Long-Reach had to guess. Since the kinds and varieties of image were endless, it was a never ending quest to find the voice that fitted the image. What was exciting was that if his selves were clever he could use words to provoke the new sounds out of Mellow-Yellow, or even better, use the words themselves as an aid to discovering-the new words. His selves carried on an internal race. Which lungs would first utter the true sequence of sounds?

Sometimes they all spoke at once. Short(arm) was best at such races and tended to dominate the role of talker. When short(arm) was asleep, Long-Reach was less glib.

In this world beyond the trees, there were many new images, many new words.

"Leaves," said short(arm). "Leaves, leaves," repeated skinny( arm) because there weren't any.

"Ah, you're hungry." Mellow-Yellow left the cave through… an elevator? Door, door, corrected short(arm). When Long-Reach tried to follow there was no door. Anxiety.

But Mellow-Yellow came back with leaves in a container of grass. Big(arm) thought about the right words for the sight and made suggestions while feeling the weave of the grass blades that were entwined in a very regular way. His eye had never seen anything like it. "Leaves sit on grass-floor," said short(arm) while communicating the thought that flat-"floor" could not be a good word for hollow-container.

"It's a basket, not a floor. I got it from the slave quarters. Say 'basket.'"

"Basket, basket. Basket of grass. Grass basket."

"And don't take it apart! Don't you ever stop being curious?"

Long-Reach picked up the basket with two arms and dumped the leaves on the floor. He sat on them, elbows in the air, and began to masticate. "Good," exclaimed all the arms in unison.

"My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to eat."

"My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to excrete. One-mouth better than two."

"Long-Reach, your ears don't ripple. Your ears are in your wrists."

"Ripple? Ripple?" Big(arm) rose so that its eye could look at the resonance cups on its wrist which analyzed sound.

Trainer-of-Slaves rippled his ears to demonstrate. He was genuinely amused. "That's what I do when I tell a joke. How do I know when you are telling a joke?"

"Joke?"

"Some other day!"

Trainer-of-Slaves needed to sleep so Long-Reach hooked himself to a wall rack and slept himself, with only freckled(arm) awake and watching the door. Freckled(arm) had things to mull over but that was difficult with sleep-silence on four channels.

Thinking did not go rapidly without question answers from other-arms. But questions were themselves interesting. What had happened to the forest? Why did the absence of trees make floors flat? What was glass? How could something invisible resist the push of a hand? How was R'hshssira attached to its ceiling? Did all worlds have different colored lamps?

There were more questions in the morning when Mellow-Yellow led Long-Reach to a cavern full of weird shapes and vines that swallowed eyes and arms. The giant carnivore was there with the smell of leafeater flesh on his breath. Frightening.

"You won't be able to put him in the machine they panic when their arms are constrained and his vocabulary isn't big enough so that an explanation will register. We'll have to shoot him up with trazine. First, we'll let him watch a Jotok come out of the trainer unharmed."

Long-Reach stayed as near his yellow companion as he could get. They put him too close to a big leafeater like himself who was suspended in mid-air, his arms in thick sleeves, with vines coming out of the caps over his eyes. His limbs convulsed as if he were running and flying among the trees but he wasn't going anywhere. Terrifying.

The big kzin unhooked the eyes. The sleeves came off. While the beast was being liberated, three of Long-Reach's brains came to the simultaneous conclusion that he was going to become the replacement. Three arms started to back off and couldn't move.

"The trazine won't harm you. Be gone within heartbeats." They were putting him into the sleeves and he couldn't resist. His eyes had retracted to their armored state in a reflex at the shock of paralysis, but he could not keep them closed while the giant popped out each eye in turn and stuck them into caps. He was blind and paralyzed. Was this the death he had been avoiding all his life?

All of his minds went into escape mode. But before he could even think of escape… suddenly… he was transported to a forest. There was a precision smoothness to each detail and no smell. He had not passed through any walls or doors. Did one die and go to an odorless forest? He still couldn't move, but his thumbs were wrapped around branches and he wasn't falling. He saw no kzinti. When the paralysis wore off, he took the chance and ran; he zipped through the trees like flying, barely touching a branch before he was reaching for another.

The Landmarks were unfamiliar and there were no odor clues. The trees were too tall. When he climbed as high as he could go there were no ceiling lamps. White moss floated overhead where the roof should have been. Nothing he did seemed to orient him, even his acceleration senses were subtly contradicting his eyes and the feel of his skin. He couldn't backtrack because the world changed behind him as it passed out of sight what was behind was as unknown as what was in front. It was wrong.

A lake appeared through the trees, larger than any lake he had ever seen, biker than it had any right to be. He skittered among broad branches that had been able to reach outward along the shoreline, afraid to let the lake out of sight lest it disappear. High above the beach he paused.

His tree developed a lung-slit and spoke. "I am a tree."

Startled, he leaped into another tree, nearly missing it. "Nice leap," said a bird who had been watching hunt.

He was gaping at the tree (with three eyes) and the bird (with two eyes). How many different kinds of worlds were there? asked freckled( arm) frantically. After a while Long-Reach got used to it. The world patiently gave him lessons in speech with the same image-sound codes as Mellow-Yellow had used. Stones talked. Stumps talked. Animals talked. It was very disconcerting.

The predicable’s had shifted. And not to be able to predict meant danger. Hide and meditate upon the consequences. Idly fast(arm) plucked some berries in their leaf-cones and shoved them up into the undermouth to placate hunger. But there was nothing for Long-Reach to chew on. Shock. In this world food was going to be a problem. Too many problems.

"Eat me," said a leaf.

He tried. It was only a strong taste, still nothing to chew on.

"Bitter," said the leaf which had miraculously regrown. "Eat me again."

He did so. It tasted like the caps of marsh-reed, or even seed-berries, but again there was nothing to chew on.

"Sweet," said the everlasting leaf. "Eat me again."

Right now he wanted Mellow-Yellow. "Trainer-of-Slaves!" he bellowed.

His call produced an immediate twilight, fading into a night darker than the deepest cavern.

Beside him, Mellow-Yellow appeared slowly, like a ceiling lamp at dawn, without casting any light into the darkness. The carnivore's image was too sharp, too orange, and flickered a little. A furry hand reached out and touched the eye of big(arm). Then weirdly with only one eye he was back where he had started; Mellow-Yellow was the right color, the giant kzin was beside him and so was all the machinery in the cavern. His selves jumped to look through big(arm)'s eye.

Long-Reach could now feel his arms in their tight trap. Panic. Death… he began to struggle.

The giant kzin backed off but Mellow-Yellow efficiently freed the capped eyes and removed the constraints. Long-Reach walked away, miffed, with only freckled(arm) watching the big yellow trickster curiously.

"Joke," said Trainer-of-Slaves.

"You have brains where your intestines should bet" sulked Long-Reach, who had begun to assimilate his anatomy lessons. "Joke," he added, having no intention of insulting a carnivore.

But for the rest of the day he refused to speak. At night while Mellow-Yellow slept, his minds debated what they had seen. The whole event reeked of danger. Hide, said all of his instincts. And yet the curiosity was overpowering! Talking freest Moving through wallet Seeing different worlds with each eye The wonder of it!

At the first sign that Mellow-Yellow was awake, he herded him toward the door. "More joke," he said.

During his second session in the confinement rig he learned numbers and image symbols for numbers. Released, he enthusiastically counted everything still amazed that the region between three and many could be divided up endlessly into distinct parts, that no matter how high he counted, there was one more. He counted kzin, he counted lamps, and he counted the leaves he ate, one by one because freckled( arm) wanted to know how many leaves it took to stop hunger.

The virtual worlds of the confinement rig were of two kinds. The moment he tired of one, he was shifted to the other. There were the work worlds where he learned practical mathematics and the art of maintaining machines and proper ways of addressing his kzin masters. There were the play worlds of forest and dungeon where natural law changed whimsically, sometimes in frightful ways, sometimes amusingly. When capricious play taxed his minds, a shift to the tuning of gravitic force fields was a relief; when tedious machining drove him to singing mental tunes in harmony, a shills to the free world of play was pleasure.

Time blurred. He saw less and less of Mellow-Yellow, yet the hours he spent with his kzin companion were rich in conversation.

Trainer-of-Slaves admitted that Jotok-Tender was a hard taskmaster while Long-Reach taught his friend geometry and how to disassemble machines. Once they couldn't reassemble a machine because the slave hadn't got that far in his lessons. For that sin Jotok-Tender had them both scrubbing floors together.

The best days were spent hunting. Long-Reach wore a special uniform of cloth that distinguished the slaves of Mellow-Yellow, green and red stripes, ruffles. They swept through the Jotok Run searching out new slaves, leisurely, with no special command to return. To the senses of Long-Reach, the familiar woods and ponds and rock faces of his youth were better than the virtual forests of the confinement rig. There was fresh forest odor and the trees didn't talk. The ceiling had lamps and the caves led only to the level below.

Long-Reach would flush the prey, knowing where the young gathered. Then Trainer-of-Slaves would seduce the youth while Long-Reach hid in the trees. The hunt was not always successful. The Jotok they stalked might prove large enough, yet still untouched by curiosity-hunger he'd have to be released until he matured. Or he might be wild, past his prime, good only for the dinner table, his intelligence lost to language, metamorphosed into cunning.

Trainer-of-Slaves kept the best of the Jotok captives for himself. Three became his personal retinue Long

Reach, Joker, and Creepy. The three had the usual training in mathematics, mechanics, and gravitic device maintenance. But they were also Mellow-Yellow's hunting companions. They noticed that he had enemies among the kzin, and chattered about the danger to him among themselves, covertly. Inevitably they became his bodyguards, the eyes who watched his back.