The Man-Kzin Wars 12

IV

"Seven kz’eerkti dead at least," said Ginger as he reentered the groundcar and closed the hatch, "and eleven kzinti-though eight were kits on their first hunt, and of course it's important to cull the unfit early. But from the kzinti point of view, not a very successful kill ratio. There might have been more kz’eerkti dead that the others carried away. But a successful night for Warrgh-Churrg."

"How so?"

"One of the adult kzinti who died was a small landowner. He had an estate that borders on Warrgh-Churrg's and owed him money. Warrgh-Churrg will pick it up without trouble now. Plus the harem, of course, and the kits if he should happen to want them-and the deceased landowner's eldest kit was among the other dead. A fairly easy night's work for Warrgh-Churrg, letting the kz’eerkti expand his estates for him."

"But a casualty ratio like that? There was nothing like it in the wars, even when human troops were well equipped. How do you account for it?" asked Perpetua. She had kept the car locked in Ginger's absence and herself crouched down inside it, well out of the sight and the attention of the guard-and especially of the furious wounded kzinti as they returned.

"The kzinti sought out the kz’eerkti on their own ground, as usual, and the kz’eerkti had well-prepared traps and ambushes-"

"As usual."

"Tactless, Pet. These kz’eerkti were exceptionally tough with it. And the kits, also as usual, were overexcited, overeager and inexperienced."

"And nobody told them?"

"Hunt Master believes there's no teacher like experience. Between you and me-which is a rather silly phrase in these circumstances-I think Hunt Master had directions to get a few knocked off. With modern life most affluent kzinti households grow up with too many male kits unless they are thinned out one way or another-and this helps thin out the slow and stupid, as well as the overeager who might grow up to be a nuisance by challenging their fathers. It's a rough and ready system, though. Among the kits who survived tonight were some I'd marked down as not the brightest."

"It sounds a pretty unstable society."

"It is, once you come to see it a certain way. Why do you think you humans keep winning wars? One reason my great-grandsire and a few others threw in their lot with humans after the Liberation was because they could see kzinti technology and culture were so grossly out of sync. We're barbarians with high technology, and we're lucky we didn't exterminate ourselves before space travel gave us elbow room.

"Perhaps you understand now something of what I was trying to explain before, about me. We Wunderkzin families are called the ultimate traitors to our species by the Patriarchy, but we believe we carry the best ultimate hope of our species' survival, because we see that hope as encompassing a society where half the male children don't have to be killed in the process of growing up; and where there are other ends in life beyond war and hunting. But I'm getting off the point."

"I don't mind, it's all new to me still. I'm eating it up."

Ginger curled his ears at her briefly, then said, "You omnivores have some disturbing turns of phrase. Anyway, Hunt Master limited the technology they used-with modern weapons and detection equipment it would have been a different story and no hunt at all. The kz’eerkti were tough for humans, and had resourcefulness and cooperation. And those Jotoki cooperating with them were very aggressive and well trained. They accounted for several of the young kzinti on their own. Also, they're good in trees; I think it was a Jotok that acted to create a diversion in the branches, to draw the hunt away from the human withdrawal. I've not known them to cooperate with another species before, apart from those specially trained by kzinti slave masters."

"Kz’eerkti on Kzinhome don't speak, do they?"

"Not really. A variety of squeals and grunts. I guess if any evolved speech or intelligence in the past they would have been jumped on pretty quickly."

"And yet these talk?"

"Oh, yes, no doubt about it! Damned cheek, some of it! I heard one of them calling me a-Well, I won't go into that."

"Are they truly human?"

"That's for you to say. They certainly seemed to have the usual number of fingers and toes and nipples and things. I kept some tissue samples when they passed out the monkey meat afterwards, as well as some old bones. Here."

"Thanks. How delightful." Perpetua placed the fragments into an autodoc.

"Somebody's got to do the job. And this-" Ginger produced some different tissue-"is a sample of the local Jotoki. Better analyze that too.

"And there are these." Ginger's clawtip stirred the metal fragments spread on the table.

"Smelted, refined, tempered metal."

"Yes. Smart. I'd like to have seen the heads better, but the brain cases looked big. I did get a look at a female's pelvis during the feast, and the birth canal looked big enough for a big-brained head to pass. As far as I know human anatomy, it didn't look unusual. It tasted like ordinary monkey meat. It had a fetus but I couldn't get a good look at that in time."

"…I see."

"Are you unwell?"

"No. Excuse me; I forget sometimes… This helmet: it ought to fit a human head. More than that…there's something about it I can't put my finger on. Anything else?"

"I think I've told you most of it, the tunnels and traps and so forth. There were only two kz’eerkti females killed. Maybe that was just chance, but it suggests most of their fighters are male, which suggests moderate sexual dimorphism. What else…We passed a sign just after we crossed the river. I memorized it. Let me see-yes. It was like this." He copied some marks onto an old-fashioned pad. "Hunt Master said kz’eerkti used it for marking their territory."

"Hmm, it looks like writing… Why not just zap them from space, or nuke them?"

"If they were going to do that, they should have done it right at the beginning. As a race, we don't like admitting it when we've got a problem. You must have noticed. Further, if too many young males survived there would be a higher level of endemic civil war for territory, especially now without the space war to draw them off. Civil war and generational blood feuds are endemic at a fairly low level anyway, but without a high death rate from other causes-such as hunting-among the young it would escalate. It's an acceptable loss rate, especially without the space war. But I'll tell you something else: There's something odd about Hunt Master. It took me a while to work out what, because it's something you find only relatively rarely among kzinti, but now I'm sure of it: He's a crook."

"As you say, rare in kzinti. Or so all my reading tells me."

"All successful nonviolent crime depends on the manipulation of appearances. That's what he's doing. I think he got a couple of kzinti killed deliberately-adults and kits. No honorable trainer, no matter how lethal and ruthless as a trainer, would do that when leading them in the face of an enemy. You see the difference between the two situations?"

Perpetua nodded.

"My ziirgrah sense isn't comparable to telepathy, but it's pretty good."

"Then why don't the local kzinti see it?"

"Maybe they don't know what to look for. Weathered old kzintoshi like Hunt Master-tough and hard-bitten even by kzinti standards-tend to be limited in imagination, but almost icons of propriety."

"And another thing. Even if it's not a question of space-based lasers, why not just push in with modern weapons and take the kz’eerkti territory?"

"You feel how hot it is, this far south? I imagine that's why Warrgh-Churrg is content to let Estate Manager run this place while he lives it up in his northern palace. As a marquis he should be living on and dominating the borders personally-the responsibility of guarding them goes with the title. But we're really past the edge of the temperature range which kzinti like. Not too much further south the trees give way to the savannah and then hot desert and mountains. With this planet's small axial tilt seasons hardly exist and south of here it's always hot. The slow rotation accentuates the heat during the day. Further south again and you're in unending tropic rain and steam. Conditions as horrible for kzinti as you can get.

"Kzinti don't want the badlands when there's ample land in the higher latitudes with a cooler climate. Besides, deserts don't breed enough game or support big-bodied prey. Who wants to eat rodents or telepath food?

"Also, we have here a fairly plainly defined frontier. Further west the river broadens into swamps and deltas which kzinti also don't like, and then on to the sea, which they have very little interest in. With three moons you get hypertides often enough to make building near the sea unattractive anyway, and at low tide there are vast shallows, too shallow to navigate with a sea ship, right out to the continental shelf… Odd, that. The river should have cut a very deep channel through the shallows by now…

"Further east, where the aquifer that gives birth to the headwaters of this river rises, the frontier peters out into mountains and desert, of no use to anyone.

"Of course, the kzin could attack anywhere if they were fighting a war of extermination, whether on foot or with mechanized forces, but that's not their purpose. But basically, as I said, it suits them to keep the kz’eerkti for sport and training. Hunt Master said something to the effect that life would be boring without them… Apart from the fact that he'd be out of a job-hunting and getting paid for it!-that any kzintosh would envy.

"The kz’eerkti tunnels puzzle me, though. Hunt Master said a nuclear strike would poison the surrounding land. But you could smash them effectively enough in other ways. Drop heavy conventional bombs on them, for example, or scatter mines at the entrances. You wouldn't even need smart munitions, let alone advanced weapons like disintegrators or walking doomsday dolls. Holding back like that doesn't fit in with kzinti ruthlessness toward an enemy.

"But it does fit in with the pattern of kzinti behavior toward game species on other worlds: We're not bad conservationists, actually, especially where good hunt-beasts are concerned. Better than you've been, as I read Earth history-but of course you can eat anything you find, so why would you bother?

"And it fits with what seems to be an immutable in hunting cultures: When you're dealing with a clever, hardy prey species in difficult hunts, a prey species capable of retaliation, a kind of empathy often develops between hunter and prey. Some of the terms Hunt Master was using for the kz’eerkti have a color of affection about them, the kind a kzintosh in benign mood might use for his naughty kittens. You may have noticed Warrgh-Churrg had some stuffed kz’eerkti specimens as well as heads mounted on his walls?"

"I could hardly help noticing. I didn't get a close look, though."

"Probably beasts considered noble-hard to kill, or somehow courageous Ya nar Kzinti. Further, I gather there's occasionally something like a tacit, informal truce between kzinti and kz’eerkti. You'd probably die if you bet your life on it, but I gather from Hunt Master there are times when both species are a little less aggressive toward each other. That's the liver of what puzzles me: Toleration is not a kzinti trait. We conserve species, and we know dead slaves fetch no food and work no factories, but we don't stand any nonsense.

"The mechanics of it I don't understand. And I may be wrong anyway. It's hard to interpret the nuances of body language and ear twitches in a strange culture."

"You say the kzinti don't want a lot of Kzrral because it's got a lousy climate. Surely with modern engineering they could change a lot of the climate, or build large-scale habitats?"

"At this stage it's not worth the effort and expense, not with the present population, and land for all the nobility. Most of those on the hunt had only partial names, indicating there isn't much difficulty in becoming at least a modest landowner. Kzinti government and administration are pretty sketchy on any planet. We don't like paying taxes, and without a lot of slave labor we're not much good at large-scale cooperative projects except war-and you've shown us we could be a lot better at that.

"As a matter of fact," he went on, "since we've begun to study what Vaemar once described as 'those strange Human disciplines'-economics and economic history-we've come to realize many of our wars weren't for hunting territory, or perhaps even glory, but to acquire slaves to pay our taxes for us. Thanks to the Jotoki giving us the gravity drive, we got into space without ever realizing little things like the fact that slavery creates unemployment-and is inefficient to boot. Once we defeated the Jotoki, we nearly exterminated each other because we saw the universe as a glorious prey we could simply drag down and feast upon. If we'd understood economics and administration better, I don't know if you'd have beaten us, hyperdrive or not… One of history's many ironies: None of our enemies came as close to destroying us as the Jotoki did, simply by giving us high technology and powerful weapons so we never had to develop an intellectual or scientific culture… There, how's that for a human thought?"

"Human thought?"

"We Wunderkzin are taught to think like humans. We've had a tradition of good teachers, including Dimity Carmody herself. But there's something else: I'm a Kdaptist and a Wunderkzin whose family have been in close contact with humans-and not as conquerors-for several generations. We are the least aggressive, least xenophobic, kzinti that there are: We know we are not typical. Perpetua…?"

"Yes?"

"You understand, don't you, that I am not a telepath?"

"Of course! I would never dream of thinking of you as such a thing!"

"It is just that, although I am no telepath, my ziirgrah sense is a little more highly developed than that of an average kzintosh."

"My friend, I accept that you are no telepath. I am glad of all the senses the God gave you."

"It is an embarrassment to me. Nonetheless, I cannot ignore its input. There was more going on at the hunt than there seemed.

"It took me a little while to realize how these kzinti are not typical in several ways. I can see all the reasons they tolerate the presence of wild humans or kz’eerkti or whatever they are on their planet-they all look good and sensible reasons to me, but when you remember this is a kzinti planet, with a kzinti culture, it smells odd somehow." He knotted his ears in thought. "Small things. Even the way Warrgh-Churrg lay on the fooch."

"The couch?"

"Yes. Kzintoshi normally rest on them after the hunt, when relaxing in hunting preserves, and in the company of members of their own pride, but not as a rule indoors and in front of strange kzintoshi. It makes it a little more difficult to leap up if one has to react to a sudden attack. It's a small thing, but it's part of that slight feeling of oddness. And another thing: The audience chamber was stone, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Red sandstone. The sort of re-creation of Old Kzin I've seen on a dozen kzinti worlds. The sort Sire and I have ourselves at home on Wunderland for that matter. But the floor was different somehow… I know! You should have felt it with your bare hairless feet. The temperature changed! In the audience chamber it was warm." Ears knotted again. "But what can that mean?"

"He doesn't like cold feet?"

"But is it significant? Kzinti distrust too much comfort. We like luxury when we can take it, but are hostile to anything that might soften us. But as I was dodging arrows in the night out there I realized what one of the oddities at the spaceport was. The thing I was puzzling about immediately afterwards and couldn't quite get a fang into. We left footprints in the snow… "

"I remember! I was worried I'd get frostbite! But a slave has to know her place."

"The point is, both when we went to the palace together and when I went to the banquet later, I saw human footprints without kzinti footprints beside them. Coming back to the ship after the banquet I saw one or two human slaves abroad, at night and unsupervised-and they didn't flee at the sight of me. Warrgh-Churrg has human house-slaves. We saw that. But he said almost nothing about it, despite the fact human slaves were the very subject of our conversation, and ostensibly the very point of my visit to this planet. I saw a couple at the banquet, too-they were carrying food and so forth, and I supposed they cleaned up afterwards-but none of the kzinti referred to them.

"Talk about humans as prey animals and sport, yes! Have human trophies on the walls. But to talk about humans as house slaves, as waiters, perhaps as errand-runners, as the cleaners of those trophies-a sort of tacit taboo. That's one of the oddities. Once or twice at the banquet human slaves came bearing meat to me and those near me, and what my ziirgrah picked up from my fellow guests was a faint suggestion of an emotion I've encountered in humans often enough but not with kzintoshi-embarrassment! That's something I've never encountered on a kzinti world before. Have you ever heard of an embarrassed kzin?"

"You're cats. I've never heard of an embarrassed cat of any kind. It's practically a contradiction in terms."

"It's something to bite at. I feel there's meat there."

"Uh-huh." Perpetua was absorbed in her examination of the inscription and the helmet. "I'm certain this was writing. What's more, these characters are derived from West European letters!"

"So they are from Wunderland. Not a convergent native species."

"That's right, but…this language isn't English, or Wunderlander."

"Let me see. If these marks had been linked when new, then the characters…'Nihil…proficiat…inimicus…'" Ginger spelled out the words carefully. Human and kzin shook head and ears in puzzlement. Perpetua turned to the helmet.

"What's this?" She pried at the rusted metal. A flake of something fell into her hand. "It's…paint?"

"Yes. And look at this piece."

"What about it?"

"First of all, those are beads of glass. They have a sense of decoration. More than that, they have a technology for making glass. Glass is difficult. Oh, that's just the beginning. Look at this! Look closely now!"

"How did they do that? They have no smelters."

"Haven't they? Hunt Master took it for granted they have them somewhere."

"We're talking high-temperature metallurgy here, not a few molds in a charcoal fire to make bronze or something-though even that would be significant enough."

"Maybe the Jotoki made it," said Perpetua. "They had high technology. Their gravity motors got as close to the light-barrier as one can get without the hyperdrive shunt." Ginger knotted his ears down in a gesture of puzzlement.

"You've got to train Jotoki young, practically from the time they're tadpoles. Feral Jotoki are feral forever. But human or Jotoki, if they had smelters, even primitive ones, kzinti satellites would detect the smoke plumes-for that matter, since practically all kzinti satellites have military capabilities and military sense enhancers, the heat sources would stick out like the Patriarch's testicles after a battle!"

"You're a kzin. You're allowed to say that?"

"It implies no disrespect, quite the reverse. But setting our cultural differences aside, I have the idea reinforced that these particular monkeys have more to them than meets the eye."

"Did you get any idea how many there are?"

"Hunt Master says there are different troops, and he doesn't know how far south their territory extends. I doubt he's got the means to count them."

"Would someone lend him a satellite?"

"If they were a major threat the high-tech response would be quick enough. As it is, who cares?"

"Could the monkey lands reach the equator? Maybe even into the southern hemisphere?"

"I doubt it. Near the equator it's too hot. The seas nearly boil. But they might extend a long way toward it. You monkeys are adaptable and sometimes tougher than you look."

"This whole situation could pose us problems. We've got the bullion to buy individual unrepatriated slaves from individual owners and the ship to get them home. But this sounds like a much bigger business. It'll mean putting repatriation on an industrial basis."

The autodoc beeped. Colored blocks appeared on its screen.

"Human DNA," said Perpetua. "So these are runaway slaves, not a native species. In fact, I'm taking it closer…now this is odd, very odd."

"What?"

"Look at that profile. What was the principal source of human slaves?"

"Wunderland, of course. They were shipping them out in herds-sorry; wholesale-during the occupation. Very few from other planets. There aren't many prisoners from space battles."

"Exactly. And Wunderland was settled by a North European consortium with a few Japanese and South Africans. Of course the whole human race was getting pretty mixed up by that time, and racial profiling can be misleading in any case. But Wunderland DNA tends to be recognizable, simply as coming from a particular melting pot. Here, though, according to the templates a lot of this DNA profile is far less variegated. As if it's from a population that's been separate much longer than Wunderland. And I see Southern European-Iberian, Italian, a bit of North African; plus either Irish or very old Scots. And a surprisingly strong presence of something that the library shows looks close to old Welsh, but not quite.

"Certainly there are Celts and some Anglo-Saxons on Wunderland, but the rest are minority groups; and I doubt you'd ever find a DNA profile like this anywhere there. I've tested the fresh meat and the old bones-which are from several different individuals-and they're all about the same. This is a homogenous population, and it's significantly different from Wunderland's."

"They are not from Wunderland?"

"Impossible. There's no Goth strain at all. Even the isolated, backwoods communities there are descended from people who came in the original slowboats, and the only colonists with no Goth ancestry were Japanese-which isn't even hinted here."

"What about the slowboat that disappeared?"

Perpetua shook her head. "Lost Travelers' Day hasn't been observed rigorously since before the First War, but it's still marked on calendars-on the anniversary of the day Wunderland's telescopes saw the Evita Peron blow up."

"What if that was faked?"

"Its colonists were descendants of North European refugees. There'd be Goth."

"Oh. And what of the Jotoki?"

"The Jotoki do seem to be the same kind as on Wunderland, but you did say you find the same on practically every kzinti world."

"Urrr…This helmet," said Ginger. "You say there's something else about it?"

"Yes. Connect your notebook up to the ship's library. I want to ask it some questions."

"What do you think that helmet is?"

"I need to check our encyclopedia, but-" she called up a picture "-you see the attachment for a crest, the cheek guards, the lobster tail at the back?"

"Lobster! Don't torture me, you tree-swinging sadist! Where will we get lobsters on this damned world!"

"Not a real lobster, you stomach-ruled furball! See the armor of overlapping plates that protects the back of the neck?"

"Yes."

"We had to relearn military history when your ancestors jumped on us." She stabbed with one finger at the picture on the screen. "Do you see?"

"There is a resemblance, I agree…'Roman'?…'Ancient Roman'?"

"What do you think we should do, Ginger?"

"Explore further."

"How easy will that be?"

"I've already paid Hunt Master to let me make a private expedition. I don't know that he actually had the power to permit or prevent me-it's up to Warrgh-Churrg while we're on his land-but it's as well to keep on Hunt Master's good side."

"I know it's an insulting question, and forgive me, but isn't that dangerous?"

"They would call me-to put it politely-a strange kind of kzin if they knew all about me, but I am a kzin for all that, Perpetua. Danger doesn't enter into it. For that matter I'm looking forward to the hunt. You'll never breed that reflex out of us!"

"I'm not one who would want to. I've got to admit life on Wunderland would be duller if some of you furballs hadn't joined us and kept some of your little ways. But, it's partly my own fear I speak from. I don't want you dead on the end of a kz’eerkti spear. Who wishes a friend to face danger alone?"

"Cheer up! Naturally I shall take my tame monkey with me, as bait and interpreter. I won't be facing it alone!"

"Thanks, furball!"

"Quiet your trembling heart, tree-swinger! This time we will be taking full body armor, sense enhancers and modern weapons. Even Hunt Master could hardly call me a coward for that, venturing deep into kz’eerkti territory with only my own ape in tow! And we'll be flying, not walking."

"And as another ape once said, 'This is another fine mess you've gotten us into!' I'd be better off going in alone."

"Hunt Master would never stand for it. Nor would Warrgh-Churrg. If he found out, I'd probably be dueled for letting a monkey go loose without permission; and you'd find a very hungry reception committee when and if you returned."

"You won't tell Warrgh-Churrg you're going?"

"I think that is probably not necessary. We'll make it a quick look in and out."

"Won't he be offended?"

"Hard to see exactly why he should be. He's not the only landowner and the kz’eerkti lands are unoccupied. And I did pay him gold for the hire of the car.

"Anyway, you can learn some of the language. I had Hunt Master teach me all the local kz’eerkti words he's picked up, and you'll be learning them tonight."

"What's their word for 'sword'?"

Ginger's vocal cords did something difficult. Without microsurgery in his youth it would have been impossible.

"Gladius," said Perpetua. "The Latin hasn't changed much. It's a useful language, though the numeration system is hopeless. It should be possible for us to improve on Hunt Master's vocabulary."

"You recognize it?"

"An old Earth language. English and Wunderlander are full of traces of it. You said that Hunt Master called one by a name?" Perpetua found herself suddenly a little shy of saying such a thing to a kzin. But another feeling was stronger than embarrassment.

"Yes, Marrrkusarrg-tuss."

"Could it have been 'Marcus Augustus'?"

"I suppose so." He passed her a disk and sleeper's headset, standard equipment for absorbing a new language quickly. "But here's the dictionary. Learn."

"Thanks. And you'd better do the same. But I do know some of the words already… I wonder what could have happened?"

V

Their car crossed on low power to the scrub woods on the southern side of the river.

Once out of sight of the kzinti on the northern bank they halted and reconnoitered. The land about seemed still and empty, and they picked no body-heat signatures from large live animals. They waited for a time without result at the scene of the recent fight.

Perpetua changed into the robes which the car's machine shop had made the previous night, worn over light formfitting body armor. Ginger, this time also in armor with modern sense enhancers, scanned the area ceaselessly. Insects buzzed and the air smelled strongly of recent death close by. The kzinti kits' bodies they found had been stripped of gear and lacked ears but were otherwise more or less whole. Now in daylight, they saw many bones old and new littering the area, making it look like the kzinti hunting preserve it was. They closed the car's hatch with relief.

"They haven't been too mutilated," said Perpetua.

"No, that would be too much of a provocation. Grounds for a war of extermination." They flew on over taller trees.

"Look there!" There was a stirring in the vegetation below. A heat sensor began flashing.

"Probably kz’eerkti. What do you think we should do?"

"Ignore them for the time being. Let them see we're aware of them but not attacking."

"We could drop them food. Show them we're friendly?"

"They'd think it was poisoned. Kzinti aren't friendly."

They flew round the vegetation, seeing movement, slow to the kzin's eyes, fast and fleeting to the human's. Then the car headed south.

There was no obvious or sudden change in the landscape below, and an hour later they were still flying over green-looking country, quite well-grown with trees, even if these were more widely spread.

"I'm surprised the kzinti haven't taken this for themselves," said Perpetua. "It looks fertile enough."

"I'm not so sure," said Ginger. "Or rather I'm sure it isn't. According to the map the coastal hills south of the delta make a rain shadow, and even without them the rainfall would be poor anyway. Those plants that don't have spiny leaves have shiny ones, and they are keeping them turned edge-on to the sun. I'd say they'll have every kind of moisture-conservation mechanism you can imagine, and this is a green desert with perhaps an occasional cloudburst. Look there." He pointed to something Perpetua could barely see. "Dust devils blowing about. Land here and I'd say you'll find that grass is hard dry spines, growing out of dust. And have you seen any surface water since we left the river?"

"I can't say I have."

"Or large animals?"

"No. Blurred signs on the sensor that suggest burrowing life-forms. But the kz’eerkti live here."

"The kz’eerkti aren't native," said Ginger. "And, as my species found to our cost, they are the most adaptable creatures known in space. I'd say all the native animals in these parts are small, also highly adapted to moisture-conservation. In fact, they are quite plentiful and I've seen a few already, even if you haven't. But not much meat or sport for kzinti. But in any event, have you seen any kz’eerkti?

"No. Where are they anyway?"

"Hiding, I suppose. Hills coming up. Notice anything else about those dust devils?"

"Like what?"

"The color."

"They're red. So is the soil that I can see."

"Yes, red and dusty. Filled with iron, I'd guess. This is old country. The mountains are eroded here, though they're sharp enough further south, where the tectonic plates collided more recently."

"Is that significant?"

"Perhaps not in terms of our mission. But it does mean the country could be rich in minerals. Especially in the vicinity of the rivers. These are the roots of mountains we are flying over, exposed anticlines and synclines. I can see granite in those outcrops, quartz and limestone. Traces of other minerals, too-jasper, copper, and more than traces of gold. This planet is bigger than Earth but has a much smaller core. I speculate that core formation hasn't progressed as far, taking fewer heavy elements out of the crust.

"You might have kzinti mines here if the local moons weren't so mineral-rich," he went on. "In fact I'd say they have mined it sometime in the past-see those low mounds? They look to me like the spoil of mining dumps, but somebody's spread them out as if to hide them. I desire that we had our own ship, with its deep-radar."

They flew on. A cloud of dust below resolved itself into a group of fleeing animals, vaguely caninoid, certainly carnivorous.

"Pack raiders," said Ginger. "There must be prey for them."

"And there's a river," said Perpetua. "See that line of darker trees?"

"I saw it ten minutes ago. But as we get closer you'll see its bed is dry sand. Dig in it and you probably will find water eventually. I'd guess that, apart from the aftermath of the occasional cloudburst, the rivers in this country flow underground."

"There's a big hole."

"And there are others-see, they are in a line. I'd say it's a series of roof collapses in a big cave system. Mines and caves-they probably join up… I would expect more vegetation. It seems to be concentrated around the riverbeds. Perhaps they divert water from outlying areas with underground tunnels, to grow heavier cover?"

"Maybe that's another reason we don't see kz’eerkti. They'd use the cave lines for travel, too."

"How far would cave lines reach? I suppose that's like asking: How long is a river? But when you look there are a lot of sinkholes, and they do seem to follow lines. Still, collapsed tunnels would transport water."

"Yes. And the lines don't look entirely natural. There are a lot of odd things about this planet."

"Want to land and investigate?"

"Not yet, thanks! We'd better get the big picture first."

Ginger crouched forward, ears spreading and knotting, tail rigid. "Let's get a bit of height well before we reach those hills," he said after a time. "There's something about them…"

"What do you mean?"

"I'm getting something from my ziirgrah now. It's hard to define…but there's a lot more than one pair of eyes looking at us. They're in those hills."

"They can hardly hurt a car like this with bows and arrows."

"They are an unknown," said Ginger. "Don't you think unknown means danger, on a kzinti world to boot? We're going up."

"All right. And I have suspicions of my own." The horizon widened dramatically as the car climbed. Perpetua pointed. "See there!"

"By the Fanged God! Stone walls!"

"And see there! Real mining dumps!"

"Warrgh-Churrg hass been falsse with uss. Why did he not tell uss of thesse thingss? Urrrgh!"

"Careful, Ginger!" The hissing in her companion's accent was a danger sign to Perpetua. Outright lying between kzinti was a mortal insult, and, unlike some other mortal offenses, such as open taunts and mockery, the worse because it was rare. "If he has been economical with truth, so have we… Calm, my friend."

"S-sorry. But he must have known. Satellitess would have shown. And these have been here long."

"There's no point in hanging about up here. We'll have to go down," said Perpetua after they had examined the scene for a while.

"They'll see it's a kzinti car."

"But if a human gets out of it? And a human female should look especially harmless."

"It's a risk for you."

"We're paid to take risks. Should we take her down slowly? Give them a chance to get out of the way?"

"Or a chance to prepare some really nasty surprise for us?"

"We've detected nothing on the instruments. But descending slowly might show we mean no harm."

"If you were fighting the kzinti on a kzinti planet," said Ginger, "and you saw a kzinti craft descending, fast or slow, would you think it meant no harm?"

"I take your point. But look at that!"

"A statue! Of a kzin!"

"Not just a kzin. See the length of the fangs?"

"Does that mean anything?"

"It might. The God has such fangs. I don't understand… Perhaps we could broadcast an audio signal to them," said Ginger. "Tell them we come in peace. If the translator knows enough of the language yet."

"I think I know more of the language than the translator."

The car descended, its bullhorn shouting a message. Perpetua, in a white robe with narrow gold edging, which covered her body armor, alighted. The car rose and remained hovering above her, beyond the reach of primitive weapons. One hand upraised in a peculiar gesture, Perpetua walked toward the dark, rectangular apertures in the stone wall.

At first everything seemed deserted. Then, cautiously, a small group of men appeared. Ginger, watching from above, saw them exchange a complex pattern of arm movements, and, gathered round Perpetua, move back into the structure. He waited. In ancient reflex his fur rose and fell to compensate for the movement of his breathing. Then Perpetua's face appeared on the communicator.

"Come down," she said. "Their leaders are here, and I think I've convinced them you're foederati-an ally. They seem prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt for the moment. Bring no weapons but your w'tsai. They expect that. Keep your communicator on. Tread carefully. We are being met by none other than Marcus Augustus himself."

Larry Niven

The Man-Kzin Wars 12