THE SURVIVOR
                 
MAN- KZIN
  WARS IV

            Created by
            Larry Niven
               with
         Donald Kingsbury
             Greg Bear
                and
           S.M. Stirling
                 
               CALL
                 
MAN-KZIN WAR:;; IV

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictional and
any resemblance to real people or incidents is
purely coincidental.

Copyright (it) 1991 by Larry Niven

All rights reserved, including the right to
reproduce this book or portions thereof in any
form.

A Bacn Books Original
Bacn Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, N.Y. 10471
ISBN: 0-671-72079-1
Cover art by Stephen Hickman
First printing, September 1991
Distributed by
SIMON & SCHUSTER
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, N.Y. 10020
Printed in the United Stutes of Amenca

CONTENTS

 Introduction, Larry Niven    vii
 THE SURVIVOR, Donald Kingsbury1
 THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN,
 Greg Bear & S.M. Stirling    245

            INTRODUCTION

  Last month a stranger in New Jersey asked
permission to use the kzinti in his fanzine.
(Fanzines, fan magazines, exist strictly for
recreation.) Gary Wells wanted nothing of
Known Space, just the kzinti, embedded in a Star
Trek backgrounds

  I wrote I hereby refuse you permission to use the
kzinti in any literary property.

  The last guy who did that involved the kzinti in a
sadomasochistic homosexual gang,bang, badly, and
published it on a computer network. A friend
alerted me and we spoke the magic word and
frightened him away. (Lawsuits) I'm still a little
twitchy on the subject, so don't take any of this too
personally....

  Wells persisted. He sent me the Fleet bio for
his kzin: a crewman aboard a federation
battlewagon. He's got his format well worked
out. It would have been fun to see what he might
do with it; but I'm going to refuse him anyway. I
don't want the playground getting too crowded.

I hope the network bandit doesn't turn up again.

  I wouldn't be so picky with a story set in
someone else's territory . . . but when you play in
my playground you don't vandalize the
equipment. Jim Bacn and I have solicited stories
which we bought and then rejected because they
didn't fit my standards.

  The bandit's kzin was ridiculous. Large
warm-blooded animals that have to fight don't
have big impressive

dongs. There's no flexibility in their mating habits.
(We have some partial understanding of why
humans are an exception.) Humans will smell
wrong; this is established as important to kzinti.

  Yet such matters can be handled with taste, or
at least versimilitude.

  If you once read Donald Kingsbury's Courtship
Rite . . . but the nightmares have since gone away
. . . "The Sulvivor" is your chance to get them
back. Kingsbury writes horror stories for bright
people. You will come to understand his cowardly
kzin, and even to sympathise with him, but not, I
hope, to love him. Grass-Eater is not normal.

  "The Man Who Would Be Kzin," as portrayed
by Greg Bear and S.M. Stirling, isn't normal
either.

  There are writers out there who know
considerably more about the kzinti than I do. The
Man-~zin Wars authors have already delved deep
into normal kzinti family life. The kzinti are mean
and dangerous and intelligent. I fear I've been
taking them too lightly.

 Lay Niven

           THE SURVIVOR
        Donald Kin'~gshnry

Copyright ~ 1991 by Donalcl Kingsbury

CIIAPTER

(2391 A.D.)

His tail was cold. Where could he run to?

  The Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig fluffed the fur
inside his suit to help him keep warm. At the
airlock exit he hadn't had time to appropriate
better surface garb from the public racks. The
suit was non-standard, too large and good only
for a limited surface excursion. Eventually he
would freeze. The oxygen mask and support pack
should last indefinitely.

  Ruddy light from an enormous red sun gilded
the snow-swept rocks. A dim rose cast itself
across the hunching sprawl of atmosphere-tight
buildings that spread down into the valley gloom.
The scene demanded infra-red goggles to
penetrate the shadows but Short-Son had no
goggles. Could he run to the mountains? The
jags against the sky had been named the
Mountains of Promised Victory by the founding
warriors of Hssin, but they were mountains of
death.

  Dim as R'hshssira was, the sanguine glare from
the snow peaks drowned the stars along the
horizon. But above, undismayed by the pale glow
of R'hshssira, the

                  3
                  
4 Mun-Kzin Wars IV

heavens peered from a darkly mauve sky, seeming
to give more light than Hssin's
litter-runt-of-a-star, even as they peered through
wisps of cirrus.

  If there was little light, there was warmth. But
one had to be standing out on the open plain of
Hssin in full daylight forge-red R'hshssira
looming full round in the sky to feel the warmth.
Nevertheless it was real warmth that soaked into
space armor if one was willing to freeze his
backside and tail.

  Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig turned his back to the
sun, his tail held up to the radiation.

  His warrior elders sometimes joked about
whether Hssin was a planet or a moon because no
kzin was really sure whether the pitiful primary,
R'hshssira, was a father star or a mere lost whelp
with slave. R'hshssira was too cool, too smaD to
be a star, already having collapsed, without
igniting its hydrogen, to the density of a heavy
metal. Still it bathed them in a bloody warmth.

A star-beast in hibernation, its metabolism
inactive.

  A beast with no rotation, no magnetic field,
fighting nothing. It slept and the slave satellite
Hssin patrolled protectively close to the master's
lair.

  Short-Son couldn't go to the mountains. He had
to escape back into the city he had just run from.
He stared up at the constellations, at five brilliant,
distant giants that lay across the River of Heaven.
If there was no place to run to then let the
Fanged God Who Drank at the River of Heaven
take him to the stars.

  Hssin served as a forward military base of the
Kzin Patriarchy, barren as a moon, yet with
atmosphere like a planet. The gas was thin,
wicked, noxious, sometimes as stormy as the
surface of R'hshssira was docile. The
temperatures ranged over extremes impossible for
life to endure. Nothing worth hunting could Eve
in those hills and plains of shattered rock and ice.
The kzinti

THE SURVIVOR 5

who stayed here were pitied by the kzinti who
passed through on their way to greater glory.

  . . . And, thought Short-Son bitterly, who mock
and torture the loyal kzin whose heroism keeps this
wretched base open for the use of the Patriarchy. He
envied the outward-bound warriors their journey,
their wily females, the wood and leather and
tapestry in their starships. He scorned their petty
complaints about the hardships of space. He openly
hated their sons who used him as sport, but kept
private his thoughts about violating their
soft-furred daughters.

  The Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig knew where they
were running to. The brightest star on the horizon
of Hssin was the beacon that made them endure
both their travels and the tedious duty at bleak
military bases along the way. Looking at it, he
refused to call that white binary by its Kzin name,
Ka'ashi he always called it by its unpronounceable
exotic alien name, Alpha Centaurs. What did those
weird sounds mean?

  An old warrior had once told him that the
monkey aliens had named it after a beast that was
half monkey, half herbivore; four cloven hooves
and two hands. Just the name could make him
smell the hunting and stalking of strange beasts!
He had salivated over smellpictures of the
six-legged underland gagrumphers.

But it was he who was being hunted!

  The Son of Chiirr-Nig thought of himself as a
freak, as the only kzin in the Patriarchy who had
ever felt fear. Perhaps others had felt fear but
they did not run.

  What was a half-grown kzin youth doing on the
surface, hurrying in a pressure suit so hastily
donned that he had forgotten his thermal
underwear? He had also forgotten his oxygen. His
mask-pack was rumbling to make up the lack by
the dissociation of atmospheric carbon dioxide and
his fur was not keeping him warm. His tail was
already numb. Heroes as stupid as he was,

6 Mandarin Wars IV

died, he castigated himself. He was alone. He
didn't even have his mother to protect him.

  I m a coward, he thought, using a particularly
vicious word from the Hero's Tongue which
referred to scurrying animals too small to bring
hunt-honor. He would never have let another kzin
know that he used such a word to describe
himself. Nevertheless, he wished he could
understand why no one else was afraid to die.

  Puller-of-Noses and Hidden-Smiler he had his
own private names for his youthful
comrades were hunting him and they would
catch him and kill him. A game. His father was
always pushing him into such games before he
was ready. His father wouldn't care if he died
stupidly. It would please Short-Son's sire not to
be embarrassed anymore. That noble one had a
name and many sons to do him honor, enough
sons themselves to earn names and make
themselves rich on the labor of monkey slaves.

  An old warrior friend of Short-Son had told
him that there were octal-to-the-octals of the
man-monkeys to be had out there, swarms! herds!
forestfuls! You could kill them by the army and
eat them by the feast and still have enough
monkey slaves left over to make you rich! For a
while Son-of-Chiirr-Nig held his furless tail
between his legs to warm it and, shivering, found
Man-sun, a radian to the right of Wunderland's
two stars, at the edge of the constellation Raised
Dagger. It was almost touching Victim's Blood, a
distant red giant star that the man-beasts
worshiped as lucky Mirach or simply as Beta
Andromeda. They had a rich vocabulary of
hauntingly soft sounds.

  Sometimes it awed him to be on the frontier.
From within the Patriarchy, it was said, one could
gaze at the night sky and be unable to espy any
nearby unconquered stars but out here the sky
was filled with unspoiled herds and grass! So
much monkey meat; too

THE SURVIVOR 7

bad those kit warriors were going to kill him before
he got his fangs into it. What a waste! His claws
extended and retracted.

  Short-Son had a problem. As long as he was
outside, he was probably safe. But Puller-of-Noses
was one organized kzin, a born commander.
Already Puller's father was arranging to send him
with the recruits to Wunderland for the fourth
assault on Man-home. By now there were probably
two octals of his fur-licking sycophants waiting at
the entrances to the city with their wtsai daggers
ready to clip ears.

Looking for me.

  But the base was enormous. The original assault
on Wunderland had been staged from here. And
the base had grown fivefold since then as the news
of the coming conquest of the Man-system spread
back deep into the Patriarchy. New ships arrived
constantly and new facilities, tunnels, buildings,
floater landing sites were springing up with
disordered proliferation. Surely there was a place
to hide.

  The kzin youth began stumbling his way in the
direction of some newer diggings, taking deceptive
shortcuts that only led into mazes of walls. He had
certainly not been prepared for this frantic
expedition. He was already too cold to continue.
When the pads of his feet began to go numb a
more local solution seemed in order. He almost
turned back when he found his advance blocked by
the great Jotok Run, an extensive collection of
domes and subterranean warrens used for the
breeding and hunting of the Jotok slaves. He was
going to freeze to death before he worked around
it.

  Why didn't he get it over with? If he went back
through a main residential entrance, they'd catch
him there would be a fight and he would be killed
or hopelessly maimed. Maybe he could surprise
them with a terrible rage and kill one of them
before they

8 Man-Kin Wars IV

  t him? He could smile, but the rage paralyzed
his leap. He had never been able to leap. It was
hopeless. Why not let them kill him today? Even
if he escaped today, they'd find him tomorrow
and kill him to purify the race.

  That was when he remembered that kits were
not allowed to hunt in the Jotok Run without a
guardian. Puller-of-Noses could not be there with
his gang. Of course, Short-Son was not allowed in
the Jotok Run either, and if he was found there
he'd be mauled, but at least the adults would not
kill him.

  There were no windows, and the walls were
thick, self-repairing mechanisms which would give
warning of malfunction. He found ways to climb
up over the walls, with four fingered hands that
had evolved for rock climbing.

  In his mind, as he climbed, he dreamed that he
was clandestinely attacking a monkey-fort. At
every corner and ramp he brought out an invisible
beam-rifle and poured light into the swarming
man-monkeys. By the time he was overlooking the
central loading courtyard, vast enough to take
twenty floaters, he had killed octals and octals of
the furless beasts. He gazed down upon the
shadowed landing area and planned his final
assault on Man-home.

Doom for all mankind! Then he could hunt
giraffes!

  He saw surface elevators big enough to take a
floater down into the city. He could dimly make
out some small kzin-sized airlocks. But a freight
entrance would be the easiest to jimmy. There
were good locks on the inside to contain the
Jotok, who were clever and sometimes
treacherous, but no real barriers from the outside.
There was no need for barriers from the outside-
a kzin did not break and enter without a reason
he would be vvilling to explain to another kzin.

  Short-Son did not have the normal entering
tools, but he did have a toolkit on his suit and he
had always

THE SURVIVOR 9

been curious about mechanisms, probing them
until he understood their function. He could no
longer feel his feet when he dropped into the
courtyard, and his fingers were so frozen he took
an eternity to release the outer freight door. Stupid
mechanism! A female could design a better latch
hold!

  The black wall slid open. He entered the freight
chamber to swirls of condensation while the outer
door rolled shut and the purifiers hummed to life

cleaning the nitrogen of carbon dioxide and
methane, and adding oxygen. It took him seconds
to disable the alarm. By virtue of kzin habit he was
battle ready when the inner door released, ready
for the fivelimbed Jotok leap, or an adult
custodian, or even a follower of Puller-of-Noses.

  What he found was three of the baby five-armed
Jotok, about the size of his hand, crawling around
the loading area, totally confused by the stone
floor. He squashed them with his foot. He passed
through the barrier maze of opaque glass walls
into a verdant biocology tall trees, the babble of
a brook, and when he removed his oxygen mask,
the rotting steamy smells of a pampered rainforest
and the hint of a distant pond with rushes. Some
of the smells he couldn't classify.

              CHAPTER 2
             (2391 A.D.)

  Short-Son of Chiirr-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 snarUnot 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 doubleelbowed
arms pushed against the ground. Short-Son did
not kill it his rage was subsiding. Stupid leafeater.
You ll make a stupid slave when s/ou 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.

                 10
                  
THE SURVIVOR 11

  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 Jotoh. 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 fam-
ished. 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

12 Man-Kzin Wars IV

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 distracffons. 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.

THE SURVIVOR 13

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.

              CHAPTER 3
             (2391 A.D.)

  "You devour my charges!" came a rough voice
from the shore.

  Before he turned, Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig
heard in his head an inane lullaby tune that his
father sometimes sang to his sons when they
had scampered and tussled too much and were
very tired.

"Brave little orange kzin Brave little striped
kzin, Turn to the din And if' it makes you
smile, Leap But if it is nothing at all Really
nothing at all You may turn-in; And droop your
eyes while You sleep."

  The fear was there again. Short-Son faced his
challenger obediently. "Honored Jotok-Tender!"
And he

                 14
                  
THE SURVIVOR 15

clouted his own nose to indicate that he knew that
he had offended, and stood willing to take the
consequences. Inwardly he cringed, waiting for a
clawed fist to smack him. Standing among the
reeds, he couldn't roll onto his back and expose his
throat. His stance was too defiant, but that couldn't
be helped in water. The huge scarred kzin wasn't
smiling, so at least there was a temporary truce.

  "I was enjoying the smells of this delightful
Run," he said absurdly.

  "And killing Jotok, which is forbidden!" The
voice was smiling, and that was bad.

  'Tiny Jotok," the kit blurted out, knowing this
was the wrong thing to say before he was finished
speaking.

  "Little ones, hr-r? The size of your opponent is
a measure of your warrior skillsP"

  I'm dead, thought Short-Son. "My inferior
warrior skills badly need the attention of a great
scarred warrior such as yourself!" Maybe flattery
would help.

  The right ear and what was left of the left ear of
this giant flanged kzin flapped in amusement. "I am
no veteran of any war. My scars were earned as a
kit in the games, at which I did very badly or I
would bear no scars. Out of my reeds nowl"

  So he knows what is happening to me! thought
Short-Son wonderingly, quick to obey the
command to come out of the water.

  "I will have to report this transgression to your
father."

  "Yesl" agreed Short-Son quickly, glad that the
thrashing was to be postponed though perhaps it
might be better to be "disciplined" by this orange
giant than to be "disciplined" by his father. He fol-
lowed the Jotok-Tender closely, trying to match his
long stride.

After working their way through the swamp and

16 Mandolin Wars 1V

then making a gradual climb through many turns
within the arboretum, and finally passing beneath
a chattering of Jotoki from the trees, they came to
a rock face. The blast and cutting tool marks were
still in the stone. Some stunted trees were trying
to make it in a bed of flowering vines high on a
ledge. A door in the rock face led into a more
conventional kzin interior, stone-walled like a
fortress keep with skins on the walls.

  They were met by a silent Jotok slave, in
yellowlaced livery, who walked leisurely upon the
pads of his primary elbows, thus freeing his hands.
When a Jotok ran, and they could run very fast,
they ran on their waist pads, with their
five-thumbed hands locked out of the way around
the waist. The centerpiece of the room beyond
the hallway was a replica of ancient kzin battle
armor of the kind that had been supplied to the
kzinti by their then Jotok employees. The bat-
tlewear had, tied to it, ceramic tokens of kzin
manufacture.

  Sorn~thing to humble the Jotok slaves who
dusted it, thought Short-Son except slaves were
never taught their history. This yellow frocked
dandy who preceded them would not even know
that his kind had once had a home sun or that
they had been stupid enough to hire mercenaries
to fight their battles for them.

  Jotok-Tender relaxed himself on his big lounge.
He did not invite Short-Son to sit, and the youth,
taking the hint, stood at attention, alert, his ears
respectfully raised to catch any wisdom or
approbation that might be sent his way.

  "Your father will not be pleased with you,
youngling!" he growled.

"NO, Tender."

"I will have to offer him an explanation."

"Yes, Tender."

THE SURVIVOR 17

  "Younglingshave been known to tell the truth by
remaining silent. I wish the true story without the
silent parts. It will save me beating it out of you.

"My tongue is at your command!"

  The giant's ragged ears rippled in amusement.
"In the meantime you may sit and relax."

  He turned his great head to the waiting slave.
"Server-One, refreshments. Grashi-burrowers in the
iridium bowls!" Above the arms, full of intestines,
the slave's warty head could show no expression.
His invisible undermouth clicked acknowledgment.
One eye was fixed on the Tender, a second eye
fixed on ShortSon, while three other eyes
wandered.

  Short-Son did not dare to sit down and put
himself at ease, but he had been ordered to do just
that! He sat and tried to stay at attention.. This
Jotok-Tender seemed to like him despite gruff
ways. Why? It was suspicious. He scanned all the
hypotheses he could think of.

  The slave reappeared on three elbows, two arms
carrying a black lacquered tray with legs, upon
which sat two small but tall ceramic sacrificial
bowls, inlaid with iridium, and set in carved wood.
Short-Son could smell the spices in the
sauce imported, expensive, inappropriate for a
thrashing.

  A second slave in blue livery brought the
squirming Grashi-burrowers, who were mewing
softly, handing one of the animals to Server-One,
keeping the other. Expertly the animals were
beheaded and their blood drained into the cups to
enrich the sauce, the Jotoki squeezing/releasing to
help the failed hearts move the blood. Then each
slave sliced open his delicacy, swiftly removing the
intestines, feet, and other inedible parts. The small
beasts went back into the bowls, neck down; the
slaves curtsied, and left the room.

  For all this while Jotok-Tender had not spoken.
He pushed one of the cocktails slightly forward
toward

18 Man-Kzin Wars IV

Short-Son, taking one himself, to pick up the
burrower and munch on it delicately, without
using his ripping fangs. Then he dunked the beast
back in his bowl for more sauce. Short-Son
watched carefully. To him the morsel in the cup
was but one mouthful, but he had no intention of
displeasing his host he ate his gift one tiny bite
at a time, returning it again and again for more
sauce. He was too anxious to actually enjoy what
he was tasting.

  "You are brave to have Jotoki for personal
servants," he said to make polite conversation. He
knew that his father detested the five armed
creatures and thought of them as treacherous liars
fit only for the mines and factories.

  "No. There are rules to training a Jotok. Do it
right and one can find no more loyal slave among
the stars. A competent kzin wins his baKles; a
kzin in a hurry loses his life so goes the saying
and few pay attention to it. A kzin troubled by his
Jotok is a poor trainer. However, you need not
listen to me. You are an impetuous youth and
impetuous youths do not have the time to listen
to an old kzin."

  "I am indeed impetuous in my ways and lacking
in the wisdom that so great a one as you could
impart to me but not so impetuous that I would
leap ahead of your stalking. There is pleasure in
following the pads of a graceful gait."

  The ears fluttered again. "But I doubt that I
would have anything to teach you about flaKery.
Your tale, youngling!"

  Short-Son was already aware of his good luck.
He had by now deduced that this old kzin, who
had never made a name for himself and had
never been allowed a household of females,
dwelled upon the pleasures of fatherhood. Living
`~lone, he lacked all knowledge of how much
trouble kits and grown sons and pampered
females could be. So he longed for a son. It was
plain.

THE SURVIVOR 19

  Just as plain as it was that Short-Son of
Chiirr-Nig longed for a protector.

  This was a delicate situation. Jotok-Tender
would want a brave warrior for a son, and that was
something that Short-Son could dream about but
never be. Yet he couldn't lie about himself to this
potential protector only slaves and monkeys
lied but if he told the truth . . .

  "We young trouble-makers play games," he began
carefully.

"I remember," said the old kzin gruffly.

  "Today I was at a disadvantage. Seven
well-trained warriors were arrayed against me."

  "Seven adolescent kits short-tempered, with the
brains of pre-adolescent Jotoki were arrayed
against you, yes," snorted the kzin. He was insulting
ShortSon's companions; a pre-adolescent Jotok had
no more wit than a female animal cunning at
best and did not acquire male reason until after
full growth.

  "Brawn without brain can be quite effective in
some situations," the youth sidestepped. "There
have been times when an immature Jotok killed his
kzin hunter," he added.

  The old kzin was grinning. It frightened
Short-Son into a state of heart palpitations, even
though he could see the faraway look in
Jotok-Tender's eyes. "I faced such a group as yours
once. I also stayed and fought. I didn't die. They
only got half an ear for their belts." Then the
Tender did a strange thing. He stopped grinning,
and he rippled only one ear, the ear that was half
gone.

  What could Sholt-Son say to that? He quoted
military history. "It is recorded that the great
HanashGrrsh at the battle of the Furry Nebula,
when faced by a superior Jotok fleet, disengaged."

  "Ah, you are telling me, with oblique honesty,
that you ran from your attackers."

20 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "Hanash-Grrsh defeated the Jotok fleet some
octalto-three days later!" said Short-Son
defensively.

  "With a command that included octal-to-six of
tested warriors, don't forget. I suspect that you,
on the other paw, are acting alone. If you were
indeed surrounded by these seven ferocious
youths, how then were you able to escape?"

  This discussion wasn't going at all well.
"Through an airlock," he said meekly. "They
weren't thinking of the outside as a battlefield
and neglected to cover that option."

  "Not likely. You surprised them. They didn't
suspect that you'd run. Kzin warriors don't run
from honor. You surprise even me. No need to
explain to me why you chose to re-enter through
the Jotok Run they wouldn't be here or even
have spies here."

  "I will train myself and fight them to victory
another day!" Short-Son half-growled defiantly.

  "Not likely. I know the games. You are marked
for death. They have smelled your cowardice just
as I smell it now."

  Short-Son was stung. "I could stay here and
work for you. I'm good with machines."

  "No. You are cruel with my helpless Jotoki.
Cowardice makes a kzin cruel, always, always,
always. I cannot shield your cowardice. You are
your father's responsibility." He drooped his eyes
sadly.

  I'll never have a protector, thought Short-Son.
There was no place to hide. "My father will thrash
me for trespassing."

"I suppose he will."

"I would rather have you thrash me, old one."

  Jotok-Tender cuffed the youngling gently, as if
he were a brother. He growled for Server-One,
who came scuttling in on five wrists, one armored
eye on JotokTender and another eye on the tray
and bowls. After

THE SURVIVOR 21

a whispered conversation, the eyes focused on
ShortSon. The slave returned with a thin, polished
switch.

  "This will make welts that will impress your
father,-" the kzin growled, "but it won't do any
damage, and the pain will be gone within days.
Three welts should be enough. Are you ready?"

  Short-Son could endure anything when he knew
he wasn't going to be killed. "Yes, honored
warrior."

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

  Strange when this giant beat him he was not
even afraid. "You would make a good father." He
was trying to tempt the old kzin.

  "We will never know. I will take you home to
your father's compound so that you will not be
waylaid before you get there. I will explain your
situation to him, and convince him to give you one
last course in bravery. Listen to him. Do not listen
to your false emotions. Your life depends upon
that."

"You speak the truth, old kzin."

  "I myself can teach you little about combat, not
being as skilled a warrior as your honorable father,
but I can teach you one maneuver that saved my
life. Do you sometimes find it difficult to leap?"

  All the time. "I have found it difficult to leap at
seven smiles."

  "Hesitation is the essence of this maneuver.
Studied hesitation is best, but hesitation induced by
fear can serve just as well. This trick was never
taught to me. I learned the whole thing at once, by
chance, and killed my attacker. I practiced months
to learn what I had done and how to repeat it. It is
the only real warrior skill I have. Come."

  The giant took Short-Son through rock tunnels to
a domed arena which was used to train many
Jotoki at once, seducing them to the discipline of
taking orders. An eight-and-four of the Jotok were
there, practicing the physical arts in a game of
move-ball. Their master

22 Man-Kzin Wars IV

shooed them to the sidelines where they clustered
in a chaos of amms.

  He placed Short-Son in front of him, then
backed away, crouching. "Now leap at me!"

  The youngling tried but fear paralysed him
and he couldn't leap.

  Jotok-Tender roared. "This is only a
demonstration! Leap!"

He leapt at the giant, feebly hoping to please
him.

  The huge kzin sidestepped, fumed, and reached
out an amm. Short-Son felt his leap go awry, felt
his amms fling out from the attack posture in an
instinctive attempt to regain his balance, felt
himself twisted to flop onto his back like a
carcass of flung meat. How did that happen? A
fanged face was grinning down at him. When he
moved his dizzy head in an attempt to get up he
saw along the wall an array of armored eyes
watching him from the shoulders of a tangled
mass of limbs, undermouths tittering.

  Jotok-Tender was unconcemed. "If my claws
had been extended, you'd be Iying there with your
throat ripped out, temporarily a very surprised
kzin. Standing over my first victim, I was very
surprised myself. Get up. Now I will jump ?JOU
as soon as I have shown you how to swivel the
pads of your feet."

              CHAPTER 4
         (2391 - 2392 A.D.)

  In the social protocol of the Hssin Fortress,
ChurrNig, the elder, would never have
entertained Hssin's nameless Jotok-Tender but
a matter of father and son always took
precedence. There was no better way to enter a
named-one's household than to voluntarily take
upon oneself the son-duties of an absent father,
and, while doing so, protect the father's
reputation. Since the Jotok-Tender had handled
the son's transgression discreetly, without public
humiliation for the father, with disciplined
kindness for the son, he was welcome, even to a
seat, in the great front room of the Chiirr-Nig
compound.

  Awkward kdatlyno slaves were in attendance
and two wives lounged on the rug beside the
rippling dance of the infrared warmer. Chiirr-Nig
took the opportunity to unburden his
disappointment and frustration at Short-Son's
inability to master the basics of self-defence.
While he lavishly fed his guest fresh Jotok-arm
with fish, passing the fish from his own dish down
to his youngest wife, he grumbled, first raging

                 23
                  
24 Man-Kzin Wars IV

and then growling about the lack of self-discipline
in the younger generation.

  Quietly, Short-Son's mother had slipped into
the high-ceilinged room, sensing from wherever
she had been the emotional tone of the conflict.
Gracefully Hamarr wandered river to sniff the
welts on her kit's back. She paced about the
reception room, eyeing the two males and her
son, ignoring the kdatlyno. With a low growl she
drove off one of Chiirr-Nig's younger wives.

  She nuzzled Chiirr-Nig in a way that
interrupted his conversation, trying to tell him
that she was concerned about her son. Idly he
scratched her head, paying her concerns no heed.
She had fiercely protected the runt of her litter
from his brothers and scrappy sisters, and
especially from the sons of the compound's other
kzinrretti but Chiirr-Nig himself had too many
sons for him to even think of playing favorites.

  Frustrated by her inability to gain her
named-one's attention Hamarr turned to
Short-Son, nuzzling him. Playfully she began to
shove him from the room, blocking his every
attempt to return, to get past her, to stay.

  Chiirr-Nig watched the display with amused
ears. His son was acting properly in attempting to
stay while his fate was being discussed but a
kzin indulged his females. They always provided
good excuse to break the rigid rules. "Go play
with Hamarrl" he dismissed his son, waving a
hand. "She's bored. Take her for a run."

  Presently Jotok-Tender and Churr-Nig were
exchanging stories about the escapades of their
youth, when Hssin was a dynamic new base on
the frontier. Chiirr-Nig offered honors to the
giant for bringing his son home, and the giant
tactfully suggested that the son needed an
intensive crash workout on the finer points of the
martial attack.

THE SURVIVOR 25

  A playful mother herded her son down to the
recreation dome, loping ahead of him, then
backtracking to hit him from behind, then facing
him mill silently poised to run or attack. When
she reached the recreation room, she chased away
the other kzinrreW with low growls and threats,
and bowled ShortSon onto the floor, where she
could sniff and lick his welts. She stared at him
with admonishing eyes, asking a question whose
answer she would be unable to comprehend.

  It bothered Hamarr that he was so passive. Her
other sons weren't passive. She belted him to his
feet, approached' withdrew, surprised him with a
cuff that shook his head but was designed not to
hurt. She smiled at him and rippled her ears at the
same time. She retreated so fast that he had to
come after her but when he got too close she
cuffed him again with enough force to rattle his
fangs. He enjoyed playing with her, but he was
already bigger than she was and he didn't want to
hurt her. Nevertheless she forced him to leap and
attack until the juices of the fight were running in
him savagely. Once he almost bit her too hard.

  That evening Hamarr refused to leave him; she
refused to return to her own quarters and insisted
on sleeping at her son's feet, sometimes waking up
to lick his welts, worriedly. She remembered how
Greedy her other sons had been when they were
suckling, how she'd had to growl and cuff the
others away when they'd had their fill so that the
runt wouldn't starve to death. He was an odd child,
and she didn't understand him.

  The father dutifully talked to Short-Son's
brothers and the brothers good-naturedly set up
practice sessions for their runt sibling. It gave them
a chance to show their warrior skills, and to make
the training so rigorous that the runt was hard
pressed to meet their

26 Man-Kzin Wars IV

demands. They could cuff him around, goad his
rage, tease him, work him over, all for the
virtuous cause of improving his warriorness.

  Short-Son merely endured the practice, resigned
to his fate, knowing that the one-on-one combat
was not preparing him to face a whole gang intent
on killing him for his ears. The only thing of
possible use that he had learned recently was the
trick shown him by Jotok-Tender.

  For a while he escaped the games. His father
used his son's interest in machinery to get him
apprenticed to the shipyards where he went to
work on the gravitic motors being assembled for
the Prowling Hunters. Many octals of them were
being shipped out to the Wonderland System. He
found himself working with Jotoki slaves, even
being taught by them.

  Zrkrri-Supervisor had short words of advice for
him. "The slaves will save you work, use them, but
never put yourself in a position where a slave
knows how to do something you do not. That is
fatal. I will not consider you competent until you
can replace at any time any slave under your
command."

  There was nothing new in the motors they were
building, a four hundred year old design. The
Patriarchy had long ago set up standardisation so
that no matter where a ship was assembled it
could be serviced at any other base. How else
could the Patriarch run an empire? When a ship
needed repairs it might be a lifetime from its
mother shipyard, as light traveled, totally
dependent upon locally manufactured spare parts.

  Innovation, anywhere except in the Admiralty
labs of Kzin-home, was discouraged. Heroes,
always chafing under inappropriate rules forged at
a distance, tended to ignore the decree. But such
insubordination was balanced as unauthorised
invention was stripped

THE SUAVIVOR 27

out of weaponry and replaced by standard issue
due to lack of spare parts for the innovation.

  The engine work was not easy, the conditions of
the shop impossibly dark and noisy, made for the
needs of Jotok rather than kzin. He had a desk
and console beside the superstructure that
surrounded the motor being built or refurbished.
The desk had never been cleaned and when
Short-Son tried to clean it, the edges and pockets
still stained his hands.

  The superstructure seemed to have been
designed by,Fotoki; they could swing from platform
to platform with ease trees were their natural
medium but it seemed to shake under kzinweight
and frustrate his attempts at climbing. He didn't
like to look down. His ever-present Jotok
companion always watched him patiently with one
eye, other eyes on handholds and general
surveillance.

  The language he had to learn drove him crazy. It
was a corruption of the Hero's Tongue that didn't
hiss or rumble, but flowed and chirped. Worse, the
expressiveness of the Hero's Tongue had been
disemboweled there were no more insults, the
military idiom was gone, the mollifications and
flattery were gone. What remained was a utilitarian
ability to describe, to point, to anticipate.. With a
language like that, a slave wouldn't even be able to
think about revolt but it was annoyingly bland for
a kzin to speak.

  However, learning the patois gave Short-Son the
first power he had ever had. If he asked a question
of any of the Jotoh who worked for him, the slave
would stop working and explain very carefully
whatever he wanted to know. Nobody teased him.
Nobody insulted him. Nobody told him that a
warrior didn't need to know that. He didn't have to
phrase his questions to flatter, or worry that they
might insult. He just got answers. If he grinned, he
got answers quickly.

So absorbed was he in learning the craftsmanship

28 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

of gravities and puzzling over the theory and
mathematics of it, that he forgot the games that
young warriors play, forgot that they were still
hunting him down. They almost found him. After
one of his shifts at the motoryard, while he was
hurrying toward the shops that served the local
factories, his mind occupied with the remembered
taste of a vatach snack he was about to buy, he
spotted a member of Puller-ofNoses's pride,
waiting, watching, seeming to be busy doing
nothing while he lounged beside the empty cages
outside of the meat shop.

  Short-Son backed up, fear driving him to return
to his dim little desk on the vast floor of the
motoryard. He couldn't think. He couldn't stay
here. He couldn't leave. He chose instead to go
up the yard maintained a grassland park up
there for their kzin workers. It was empty at this
hour, but the tall grass soothed him and he had
an overview of the shops and the giant freight
elevators that rose to the surface. He stayed here
under the artificial light, repressing the growlings
of his hunger, waiting, waiting until he was sure
his enemy was gone. Then he sneaked back home
to his father's compound, ashamed.

  It didn't matter. He was sent with a crew into
space to install new drives in a Hunting Prowler
that had recently come in from Kzrrosh on its way
to Wunderland to join the armada forming
against the monkeys. It was his first time in space.
And it was the first time he had ever seen a
Hunting Prowler whole. Nothing of the experience
was familiar, the deep space armor that
constrained him, the sled that was bringing him
closer, the bulky Jotok armor that extended his
slaves' reach by a full metallic hand.

  The spheroidal warship was one of the smaller
kzin naval killers. Short-Son's chief slave pointed
out a larger battleship in the far distance, a red
dot moving in the light of R'hshssira, but their
Hunting Prowler,

THE SURVIVOR 29

close as it was, seemed far more formidable,
studded with weapon pods, sensor booms, control
domes, drive field ribs, and boat bays with a shuttle
drifting alongside. Still, for the moment it was
helpless its motor was gone, the new one still
held in the claws of the shuttTe, uninstalled.

  Hssin rolled beneath them, clotted red, like
another giant battleship. It was more than illusion.
From Hssin, Wunderland had been conquered.
Hssin still attracted warcraft from ever more
distant regions of the Patriarchy as the news of the
monkeys spread at the unhurried pace of light. The
kzin fought their battles that way. Reinforcements
arrived for a generation after the battle was won.
Sometimes they were needed, sometimes not. In
this case the latecoming Conquest Warriors were
needed, for the star-swinging monkeys still owned
unconquered systems.

  Under the stars, maneuvering the giant gravitic
motor into this lethal ship of conquest, Stort-Son
first thought that perhaps he too might be able to
join the armada being thrown against Man-sun. His
power gave him the illusion that he was a real
warrior. It felt very good. With magnetic boots on
the hull of the kzin ship, his ship, he could look up
and imagine what it would be like to destroy the
ships of men.

  But the very same day he returned from space,
the watcher for the pride of Puller-of-Noses was
there, waiting patiently by the meat shop, waiting
for him. He had thought that the glory of space
had reformed him. He had given the power to
travel between the stars to a valiant ship of prey,
juggled that monstrous motor in his own army
Didn't that give him the power to crush all fear? to
become a warrior?

  Yet it took only a second sighting of the watcher
to trigger all the cowardice he had ever known. It
meant that they had found him. Fear! An image of
himself that he had brought from space, crumbled.
He was no

30 Man-l~zin Wars IV

kzin who could carry a star engine on his
shoulder he had been no more than an insect
carrying a stone. How to save himself?

  Again he retreated back into the motoryard and
climbed. It was all he could think of now, waiting
them out a second time, hiding. Tomorrow he
would think of some better plan. It was a
miserable feeling. He stepped out onto the roof
into the still tall grass. Why didn't they leave him
alone?

  Only when the Grass moved did he realize his
terrible mistake. First he faced one casual kzin, in
the shirt and epaulets favored by the young of
Hssin. But there were others; he smelled their
exertion. When he edged back toward the door he
confronted the brown striped watcher who had
followed him. To his right a third kzin rose from
the grass. Before he could run, a fourth blocked
his way. Two others guarded distant exits. He was
trapped by six grinning kzin who wanted his ears.

  "Now you'll have to fight," said Puller-of-Noses,
already crouched and waiting for his leap.

             CEIAPTER 5
             (2392 A.D.)

  Short-Son tried to look over the edge of the
roof but he was too far away and he already knew
there was no escape in that direction. He glanced
toward the pair of almost ship-sized elevators that
rose into the artificial sky. Much too far away.
Could a kzin fly?

  Never had he felt such a rage. His mouth was
wrapped back over his fangs in a death grin and
he couldn't have erased it from his face if he'd
tried. His claws were out. His haunches were
primed to leap at his tormentor and tear him to
bits with fang and claw and hatred. He breathed.
Only the fear kept him rooted.

  "We hear you do it in trees with Jotok
playmates"" taunted Hidden-Smiler whose smile
was not hidden.

  He remembered clearly through the rage how
Jotok-Tender had told him the usage of fear, and
practiced with him. Wait for the first leap. Apply
that body-twist while extending the claws just so.
A strange part of his mind was noticing that he
had no control over his claws now they were
unretractable.

                 31
                  
32 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

  "Your father was a vatach!" rumbled another
kzin who was not coming too close.

"His mother taught this toothless kit how to fight!"

  Puller-of-Noses was relaxing now, sensing that
Short-Son really didn't have the courage to fight.
That emboldened him. He wasn't going to need
his friends. He motioned them away. He'd take
these ears himself. "You're tied up like a zianya
on the table, ready for the feast. I smell your fear,
zianya."

Short-Son snarled.

  "Oh, we disturbed you! You came up here to
feed on the grass. Don't let us stop you."
Puller-of-Noses was enjoying the repartee.

  "The grass is choice for one with a double stom-
ach," jibed Hidden-Smile.

  Attack me! I'llflip and slash your throats out!
ShortSon's thoughts were ravening, but he could
say nothing. He hated them for teasing him,
playing with him before they killed him. His fangs
were sticking to dry lips, frozen by his grin.

  "Our coward stinks of fear," said
Puller-of-Noses, ready for the kill, charging
himself for a single leap that would rip the life
from his prey. "You smell like a fattened
grass-eater." When his opponent didn't respond,
he couldn't resist the final, ultimate insult. While
he composed it, the tip of his pink tail flipped
back and forth. "I'll make a deal with you. Be an
herbivore. Put your head in the grass and eat it,
and I'll spare your life. Or fight like a Hero and
I'll give

,,

you . Donor.

  If Puller-of-Noses had attacked then, a
desperate Short-Son might have unbalanced him
and slashed him to a quick death, but the pride
leader was prolonging the agony, waiting for a
reply, enjoying his wit too much to begin a battle
that would end instantly and thus instantly end his
fun. While he taunted, his

THE SURVIVOR 33

only caution was to reestablish his crouch. The
pause gave Short-Son a fatal moment of thought.

  Puller-of-Noses had tendered a verbal bargain:
eat grass and live or be a Hero and die.

  His word of honor would force him to keep that
bargain.

  Puller-of-Noses was also too stupid to
understand that he had actually offered Short-Son
a real choice between life and death. In the
challenger's mind there was no choice at all
between honor and eating grass. He thought he had
Short-Son trapped.

  Trembling, full of disgust for himself, Short-Son
sank to his knees and began to eat the tall strands
of Preen crawling, ripping it from its roots with
his fangs, chewing, though his teeth were not
meant for such chewing. There was no way for his
throat to swallow the fibrous cud, but he kept
chewing and chewing.

  Six kzin came forward with stunned eyes. Their
ears twitched in amusement, but it wasn't
amusement they felt, what they felt was disbelief.
And only then did Puller-of-Noses realize that he
could gain no honor by Idlling this sniveling
coward. Worse, he would be condemned to death
if he broke his word. The ears of his intended
victim were worthless.

  From that day on Hssin's "herbivorous" kzin had
a new name spontaneously bestowed upon
him Eaterof-Grass. There was no suppressing the
story. It spread like grassfire throughout the Hssin
base. The Chiirr-Nig household disowned him. The
naval shipyards no longer trusted him to work on
their gravity polarizers.

  He had no place to sleep, no place to eat, no
one to talk to, no work. For a while he lived in
corners and on roofs and in tunnels, hunting
escaped rodents. It was hard to keep clean. Once
he was mistaken for a wretched telepath. He even
tried chewing on roots to

34 Man-Kin Wars 1V

ease his hunger, but in his stomach they turned to
gas and indigestion. He begged and grown kzin
pretended he didn't exist. He robbed a cage once
of its live vatach which had been hung out for
fresh air, a death offense if caught. He made it
look as if the vatach had escaped. They all
expected him to walk out onto the surface of
Hssin and disappear into the mountains to die but
he had no suit.

  When he begged for a surface suit, yes, then
they paid attention to him and charitably granted
his wish. Eater-of-Grass didn't walk into the
mountains, however he used the suit to break
back into the Jotok Run, mostly because he
wanted a bath. Soaking in water wasn't the best
way to take a bath, but it would do. He spent a
day cleaning and grooming his fur. When no one
came to throw him out, he saw no reason to
leave.

  This time he was more covert. He knew how to
hide. He kept away from the hunting parties and
he knew much more about Jotok manners. He
stalked the wild Jotoki up in the trees and they
hunted him when he wasn't looking. He studied
Jotok anatomy for lack of anything else to
do the lungs on the inner arm that fed the heart
and doubled as a singsong voice, the
strange~tasting brain tissue that grew in a cortex
around the heart, the leaf-grinding teeth in the
undermouth that made great spearheads when
sharpened.

  Eater-of-Grass built three hidden lairs. He pre-
tended he was an ancient kzin, before language or
iron or gunpowder, spraying and defending his
territory. According to the Conservors that was
the era when kzin fathers often ate their sons to
keep down the competition. Wryly, he wondered
how different it was today. Then a kzinrret hid
her children and defended them fiercely.
Kzinrretti still tried to be protective. He

THE SURVIVOR 35

remembered his mother fondly without her he
would not be alive today.

  When the lights came on one morning, green
and yellow through the leaves, he lifted his ears to
listen for kzin hunting parties but heard only
insects and the fall of a branch. Broad leaves
dumped their water. Swooping from one branch to
another, a firg cackled every time it took to the air,
visible because of the red scales down its back.

  He sniffed detecting no kzin smells but he
wasn't alone. He could never pick up the scent of
a Jotok, because of a Jotok's ability to mimic any
aroma, but a forest is full of clues. With nostrils
{fared, he was catching the tang of lush broken
cells, sugar, acid, spice. The rind of the pop-spray.
A Jotok was out there, eating fruit.

  Yes there he was, many eyes watching from a
rocky ridge, one hand already around a branch
ready to shoot himself up into the growth above,
and far enough away to escape. Prey for today's
meal, perhaps. But the creature would be hard to
track. Best to ignore him for now. But not totally.

  Eater-of-Grass found a tree being parroted by a
pop-spray vine and shimmied up the bark to tear
off a bunch of ripe balls. The rind was tough but
that meant nothing to a Jotok's grinding molars.
He placed the balls on a stump in sight of his prey
and retreated far enough away to be out of fear's
range, trusting the animal's natural curiosity to
induce it to examine the offering.

  He wasn't quite sure how to spring a trap. This
Jotok's limbs had the bulk and shape of an adult,
but the skin wore a youthful shine. The beast
might still be too young to have intelligence, yet
must be about the ace at which its kind acquired
(very quickly) kzinlike deductive powers, becoming
both hard to catch and dangerous.

36 Man-K=inWars IV

  After eating the fruit-balls his prey didn't move
away. It sat on its mouth, watching him, elbows in
the air. He approached and it retreated, he
casually distanced himself and it
followed peculiar behavior for a wild Jotok. The
animal was still there the next morning, much
closer, sitting in the tree above him and watching.

  He fed it again. "Some pop-spray for you, Long-
Reach. Hai! Long-Reach!"

  When he had retreated the required distance, it
dashed to the ground to devour his offering,
shoving the balls one at a time into its
undermouth with a weird lateral chewing motion.
All the while it stared at him with two eyes,
focused one on the fruit, while the others jerkily
kept a cautious watch on the neighborhood.

  Then . . . "Long-Reach," it imitated from a lung
slit on one of the arms. "Long-Reach," replied
another arm.

  Fan-like ears suddenly erect, the amazed kzin
recognized what it was saying from his recent
verbal exchanges with Jotok slaves. Its voices were
musical, muting the hisses and gutturals of the
Hero's Tongue. He listened, fascinated, as the
arms began to play with the words, chatting to
themselves in harmony. "LongReach.
L~mg-Reach. Long-Long-Long-Reach. Reach ...
Reach ... Reach!"

  It fettered, pleased with itself, shifted to the
mockery of the chirping of various insects, then
sat down to await the orange-yellow kzin's
response.

  "Come here, Long-Reach," he said in his most
ingratiating manner. "Stupid animal, I want to eat
you.

"Want to eat you. Want to eat you," it replied.

  Hot stackable, he thought. He had found a Jotok
in transition. Jotok-Tender had told him that if he
fed one of the beasts at this stage, it would follow
him

THE SURVIVOR 37

around and imitate him. The Jotoh were very pecu-
liar, indeed; children were not raised in a family,
they had no household keep, no patriarch, no
mothers, no brothers to terrorize them, no
teachers, no discipline, no toys, no warrior games.
They just grew up in the forest, and when an adult
wanted a family he just took a trip to the forest,
picked out a healthy youth who had managed to
survive and took him home.

  The transitional Jotok was "programmed" to
bond to whoever adopted it. Unfortunately for the
Jotok race, the transitional mind, having evolved
on a planet where the Jotoki were the only
intelligent life form, couldn't easily differentiate
between an adult Jotok and an adult kzin. Any
intelligent parent sufficed. Thus they made
excellent slaves.

  Days later Long-Reach was still following him
around, no longer afraid of its kzin parent at all.
Astonishingly, it had acquired a vocabulary of
more words than it could count on its
five-times-five thumbs. He tried to remember
himself as a small kit; certainly he had never
learned the basics of the Hero's Tongue in so short
a time.

  After catching a rodent to eat, and being
astonished when Long-Reach promptly dashed off
into the woods and came back with another rodent,
he became challenged to find out how much he
could teach the creature. Could it learn to use
tools? He sharpened a stake with his knife and
handed the blade to one of the five arms.

"Long-Reach, now you try."

  "Long-Reach, try." The Jotok didn't succeed. It
wailed in consternation, but wouldn't return the
knife to Eater-of-Grass, demanding the right to
continue to try. Half a day later it was still trying,
by then more pleased with itself. The stake was
sharp, if very short.

  The kzin youth became delighted with the
absurdity of their relationship. He found himself
struggling up

38 Man-Kzin Wars IV

trees, which sometimes tottered under his weight,
to gather delicacies for his Long-Reach, while
LongReach got tangled in the underbrush chasing
rodents for him. He no longer thought of
Long-Reach as a meal, or even as an "it." What
he appreciated most was that Long-Reach never
slept at least one arm was always awake, watching
for danger.

  There were dangers. The wild Jotoki, who had
passed through the transitional phase without
being adopted, were antisocial beasts, protective
of their territory, and, though hunter-shy in the
daytime, were vicious at night. They had no
language or learning, but were quite capable of
inventing tools and devising intricate revenges for
remembered transgressions. They knew that the
kzinti were their enemies. They backtracked to
deceive, they laid traps, they played jokes.

  Of course, the worst danger was the kzin
hunting parties.

  Eater-of-Grass was amazed at how well
Long-Reach knew the Jotok Run and how quickly
he could take them away from danger. He was a
very useful companion.

              CHAPTER 6
             (2392 A.D.)

  Thumbs were pulling at his fur. He did not
mind because Long-Reach was fascinated by his
hairiness. The thumbs grew more insistent. They
pulled his eyelids open. "Hunters, hunters,
hunters," the arms whispered, sometimes
interrupting each other.

  Eater-of-Grass was on his feet instantly,
soundlessly moving. But it was soon evident that
they were being tracked by experts. They hiked
from the tall trees under the domes, ducking
through tunnels, wading across dark swamps,
climbing over blasted rock faces, squirming down
through a crevasse to the treetops of the level
below. Mostly Long-Reach chose their route. But
evasions didn't shake their pursuers for long. All
the while the desperate kzin youth gauged the
hunting party, sniffing the wind, sometimes
sending out a circumspect Long-Reach to
reconnoiter through the rainforest's canopy.

  The fugitives were being tracked by three
Jotoki scouting among the branches and one kzin
on the ground, in an unhurried manner but
diligently.

                 39
                  
40 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  The final backtrack was a mistake. They fell
into the center of the Jotok shepherds, and the
triangle moved with them no matter where they
turned. Pinned. He caught a flash of yellow livery
in the trees and knew who was hunting them.

"Long-Reach, we won't escape. Stop."

  His Jotok slave did not fully understand. Arms
waving, the beast ran ahead on three wrists,
returned in confusion, ran up and down trees, and
finally stopped close by, primed to run on five
wrists, swaying with fear.

  Eater-of-Grass waited, death resignation on him
at the same time that his mind was trying out
various phrases of flattery. Eventually the giant
kzin appeared in the copse below, his age showing
in his lame pace. He approached the youngling.

"Ah, you," he said.

  "I had no place else to go, honored warrior,"
explained Eater-of-Grass sullenly.

  This excuse for his crime was ignored. "You no
longer have the youth-name of the house of
ChurrNig. How shall I address your" asked
Jotok-Tender.

  "Eater-of-Grass," replied the ostracised kzin,
defiantly.

  "An inappropriate name," growled
Jotok-Tender. "Names must bear on the day's
truth. Have you been eating grass? I think
not you've been hunting and eating my Jotoki,
and various small warm creatures.
Eater-of-Ferocious-Jotoki might be a better
name." He glanced down at Long-Reach.

  "We runt" said Long-Reach. "Nowl" admonished
another of the arms, but the beast stood its
ground.

  The giant reached down gently to pop an
eyeball out of its armor as far as it would go,
examining the lubrication petals. Then he took
one of Long-Reach's arms and examined the
thumbs. "Exactly the right age.

THE SURVIVOR 41

You will have an absolutely loyal slave if you train
him as I shall instruct you. You didn't frighten him
away?"

  "Honoredoldster, I had some recent experience
with Jotoki at the shipyard. I speak the
appropriate patois. Long-Reach, here, found me
more than I found him."

  "Perhaps we could call you Trainer-of-Slaves. A
good trade-name that. Does it suit you?"

"Better than Eater-of-Grass."

  "Never use that name in front of mel" snarled
Jotok-Tender. "I asked you a civil question.
Answer! Does it suit you?"

  "Trainer-of-Slaves at your service, honored half-
ear!" He paused. 'Am I being offered
employment?"

  "A slaver like me offering employment? Perhaps
I could give food and shelter in exchange for
unquestioned service."

  "I am loyal to the warrior who gives honest
leadership!"

  "Said well for a recidivist." He let his ears flap
for effect. "We can't parade you around, of course,
but I can keep you busy and out of sight. We have
mutual needs. Are your ears erect? Have you been
in contact?"

"In hiding one is deaf."

  "The startling news, then. By lightbeam, Hssin
has had advance warning of a small armada
coming through, long on its way, ruled by High
Conquest Commander Chout-Riit of the Kzin
Admiralty. He will be stripping Hssin of Heroes
and warships, including all the Jotoki slaves we
can provide. His Conquest Campaign against the
monkey-worlds has been authored by the
Patriarchy itself. The Patriarch!

  "I have already received my advance demands,
and dare not be lax in meeting them. Who knows
how this Chout-Riit deals with faibure? I am not
of a mind to find out. I drill be busy and I need
help. No one will

42 Man-Kzin Wars IV

begrudge me your services. As for those moralists
who would have you wasted, a mere wave of
Chout-Rut's orders before the noses of such
kit-eaters will lay flat their pompous fur."

'Chunt-Riit?"

  "Obviously a member of the Patriarch's family.
Other than that we know nothing."

"Coming here?"

  "In truth, we don't see much of the Patriarchy
in these dismal regions, and do quite well without
it, but evidently news of our contact with the
monkeys seems to have filtered inward and given
our wealthier Heroes Long-Journey fever. The
families of Ka'ashi" he gave the Kzin name for
Wunderland "will not be pleased."

"Not be pleased by the attention of the
Patriarchyl"

  "Youngling, for lifetimes this outback of the
Empire has attracted only adventurers driven
from the richer worlds by their fathers, by debts,
by a desire to be where the Patriarchy isn't, driven
here sometimes by kzin hubris, and sometimes,
like me, by cowardice. Heroes with ragged fur.
Who else would tolerate the cramped quarters of
stinking ships for years on end? Wunderland was
a gift of the hanged god. Why should its Heroes
desire to roll on their backs and expose their
throats to those who already have vast wealth? In
rage they will challenge Chout-Rut, but if Chout-
Rut proves able, they will submit. Chout-Riit will
prove able. Do you know history?"

"I listen to the Conservors."

  "Not them! The Collected Voices. Last night I
put the memoirs of the Riits in my scanner. They
scent victory and track it down at the leisurely
pace of starlight. Then they impose their victory
upon the victor. The Riits are the conquerors of
successful Conquest Commanders. If we obey
them, we get to keep a goodly portion of what we
have conquered."

THE SURVIVOR 43

"And if we don't?"

  "Then they begin by taking our daughters. After
that the air parches and the fur gets wet with fear."

"I see many duels."

  "Yes, and as you watch the mayhem if you are
wise, from within a thick bunker remember that
only fools who wish to cleanse the race of their
own fool's blood challenge the Patriarch's family.
This is the Patriarchs family, not some wandering
warlord. Are you with me?"

  "I begin to serve your needs at this very moment,
wise and merciful Hero! I will make no mistakes!"

  "You will make mistakes, arrogant kit, and for
that I will cuff your brains hard enough to rattle
them in your skull, but not hard enough to damage
them. Before you follow me, soothe your slave.
Disarming his fear at this stage of his development
is very important. He must feel free to leave us,
though he has already hormonally locked-on to you
and cannot leave you. And it is essential that he
take direction from you, not me. As we travel back
to my lair, make sure that your slave is always
closer to you than to me. Do you understand that?"

"Yes, honored teacher."

  "I will try to trick you into violating my
admonition. No matter what I do, keep your Jotok
closer to your side than to mine! Your training has
begun." JotokTender made a high Rrwrowr, and his
liveried slaves dropped from the trees and formed
a point for their return procession.

  As Trainer-of-Slaves followed his new protector,
he thought about the mysterious Chunt-P`iit. An
armada! The mythical Patriarchy was coming to
Hssin! Because light was faster than the gravity
polarizer, it would be impatient years before the
High Conquest Commander arrived but the good
in that was the time it gave Trainer-of-Slaves to
make himself ready.

M Man-Kzin Wars IV

He would produce slaves for the Patriarch's
family! The thought returned his attention to
Long-Reach, who was following them with all the
enthusiasm of a monkey tied to a nose-ring. He
patted the beast's warty head and threw a stick for
him to fetch in a direction which would keep
him away from the giant.

  But Trainer-of-Slaves was having a difficult time
thinking about slaves. His mind was on the bridge
of a Prowling Hunter, following Chuut-Rut
through the starry reaches, seeking prey. His soul
had already vowed eternal allegiance to this Hero
whose miraculous message from space had saved
his life. The miracle of it was an omen:
Chuut-Riit was the light leading him to Heroism.

  Back in the slaver compound, Jotok-Tender
tattooed a black splotch on Trainer-of-Slaves's
facial skin so that charcoal could be discreetly
seen through the fine hair, and he ordered fitted
for his charge a purple and mauve tunic of the
distant W'kkai style, unfashionable on Hssin.
None of this was a disguise, but it made it
possible for a local kzin to face this pariah and
say "Trainer-of-Slaves" and not think
Eater-of-Grass.

  The old slaver warned his youngling apprentice
never to discuss his cowardly past. That way the
subject would never come up. It was dangerous
for a kzin to mention another kzin's former life
under a different name before the subject kzin
mentioned it himself.

  "In time you will have your own army of slaves,
who are owned by others but loyal to you. You
will need no other name than Trainer-of-Slaves to
bring fear into the feet of kzin warriors. Dress
well, pretend to no honors beyond your station,
honor your timeless word and keep your slaves
close at hand."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was shown to his sparse lair,
and taken on a tour of the Jotok dormitory, poles
and platforms under a windowless dome. On the
level below,

THE SURVIVOR 45

underground, were the training simulators where
Jotoki learned their trade.

  "Why will Chuut-Riit want so many Jotok slaves?
Many families of Hssin will not permit Jotoki in
their houses.

"I imagine that C'huut-Riit values them as
mechanics."

  "They handle tools well! In the shipyards my
supervisor commanded that I learn all that my
slaves knew, but I must admit that when I needed
three arms, I was at a loss! One plus three-octals
of thumbs!"

  "Recall that the Jotoki evolved the gravity
polarizer while we were puzzling over flint. We
were hired by the Jotoki for our abilities as
warriors, not for our way with machines."

"Is it really true that the Jotoki once ruled over
us?"

  "They commanded the ships that first took us
out to the stars. But order evolves from disorder.
Vegetation evolves to dominate the rock, the
herbivore evolves to dominate the vegetation, and
the carnivore evolves to dominate the plant-eater.
Intelligence evolves in males to dominate the
female. In the natural order of things the warrior
rises above the mechanic."

  "And the wisdom of age rises above the
untutored youth. Have I got that right?"

  "You've had a bad beginning, but you may yet
live to an age when your fur sheds without
replacing itself if your flattery doesn't get you
into trouble first.'

              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.
Shnny(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. Mel

                 46
                  
THE SURVIVOR 47

low-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
lowfrequency sounds that was so exciting to play
that Long-Reach couldn't seem to stop playing. If
MellowYellow 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 ear-
sound 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, LongReach
was less glib.

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

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

48 Mandarin IV

  "Ah, you're hungry." Mellow-Yellow left the
cave through ... an elevator? Door, door,
corrected short(arrn). 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

THE SURVIVOR 49

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 them-
selves 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

50 Man-Kzin Ware IV

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 lalce out of sight lest
it disappear. High above the beach he paused.

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

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

TEIE SURVIVOR 51

  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 predictables 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-ofSlavesl" 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.

52 Man-Kzin Wars IV

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

  The giant kzinbacked 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 fThe wonder of itl

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

  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 practicall mathematics and the
art of maintaining machines and proper ways of
addressing his kzin masters. There were the play
worlds of forest

THE SURVTVOR 53

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 LongReach 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

54 Man-Kzin Wars IV

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.

              CHAPIER 8
             (2396 A.D.)

  The armada was arAving. Like all things in the
Patriarchy, there was no great hurry.

  First the swift Victory at S'Rawl fell out of space
into orbit around Hssin. It disgorged no warriors,
and made no diplomacy, but imperiously took
over the duties of the local Orbit Command by
AuthoAty of the PatAarch. Traat-Admiral was
acting as point-liaison for Chout-Riit, Warrior
Ambassador Extraordinary. The Admiral was
under strict orders to dominate the local Iczinti
from the moment of first contact they were
considered to be fierce but not reliably obeisant.

  An inner-world kzin, however territorial, was
used to the formalisms of hierarchical command,
but out here in the wilds a less disciplined breed
of kzinti were notorious for the way they fought
over and defended the spoils of their adventuring;
crass in their willingness to defy a messenger of
the Patriarch if he gave any appearance of
weakness. The Patriarch was thirty years distant
by lightbeam and forty years distant by ship.

                 55
                  
56 Man-Kin Wars IV

  The Hssin fleet might have responded
arrogantly. The Conquest Heroes of Hssin were
brothers of the Conquest Heroes of Wunderland.
They could have ignored, or even ordered an
attack on the Victory at S'Rawl after all, it was a
mere command warcraft heavy with electronics
but deficient in armaments. But would the Hssin
household of Kasrriss-As have dared such disdain,
knowing who was to follow TraatAdmiral?

  No action was taken against the Victory at
S'Rawl. Space traffic control was relinquished with
grinless self-restraint.

  Ships began to drift into the R'hshssira System
in ones and twos, every few hours, over months,
the transports with their time-suspended warriors,
the warcraft, the auxiliaries all that Chaut-Riit
had been able to exhort, to tempt, to command
from five systems. No ship debarked a single
warrior to Hssin, taking orbit instead in a great
ring around red R'hshssira. To awe Hssin at a
distance, that was Traat-Admiral's intention.

  In time Chunt-Riit himself arrived, his flagship
a spherical dreadnought of the Imperial Ripper
class larger than anything that the barbarians of
Hssin had ever seen, the first new battle design
from Kzin in centuries, ominous, weapons-laden.
These out-world adventurers of the borderlands
would fawn all over him for its specifications and
he would sell those details for a price.

  During the six days it took for the gravitic drive
field of the Throat Ripper to collapse from a
cruising speed of six-eighths light down to the
velocity of R'hsEssira, Chout-Riit had been in
post-hibernation training massage, fight
simulation, strenuous amusements with a favorite
kzinrret. Hibernation was good for neither muscle
tone nor quick reflex. Swift repairs to the
physique, he never neglected.

THE SURVIVOR 57

  Most confrontations Chuut-Riit handled with a
logic that cowed his foes, but if that failed he used
wit before falling back on an awesome rage that
could subdue opposition with the sheer stench of
his anger. Still, he liked to be in prime physical
shape for those times when it was necessary to
bloody an irrational enemy with fang or claw.

  The work den adjacent to his stateroom was
small, paneled along one wall by holographic
savanna mismatched to the ceiling pipes, Above his
data-link hung a modern pulse-laser and an
antique crossbow. The floor beside the data-link
provided place for but a single kdatlyno-hide
rug this one bare along an edge, old, a trophy of
his first hunt as a servitor of the Prime Household.
In those days, having more strength than sense, he
had aligned himself with a Patriarch who was too
young to have remained alive long, but live he did,
to grow old and perish while Chunt-Rut served
him as military trouble-slasher, first on Kzin, and
then among the stars where the endless years of
hibernation had slowed his aging.

  He was not old but (having outlived his regal
pridemate) he felt his age. He remembered things
vividly that his subordinates knew of only through
the distortion of imaging and writing. These kits
thought of the Asanti Wars as one battle and knew
nothing of the treason of Grrowme-Kowr. They
purred of the Long Peace, as if there had been no
battles before they were weaned. Unshared
memories made a kzin feel old, old, old.

  Ah, though perhaps not as old as the Rut
crossbow. Chunt-Rut had on his electronic
spectacles and was staring at it Jotok light-alloy,
forged by kzin ironmongers, inlaid with blueshell
by a semi-professional kzin artist. The leather
strapping had been replaced but all else was
ori!inal.

It was saiby his grandfather that this crossbow was

58 Man-Kzin Wars IV

the weapon of choice carried into space by the
first Riit ancestor hired to battle off-planet. The
family genealogy traced him back through to the
household of one of the almost mythical Riit
Patriarchies, but the truth was probably less
romantic perhaps he was a game-keeper at some
distant hunting reserve who scandalised his
household (even endangered their lives) by vowing
fealty to the Jotok infidels.

  Those spider-armed monsters arrived with
wealth and magic. They had swords of fire and
gravitic machinery and dreams of hiring
mercenaries to conquer them a stellar empire,
preferring someone else to do their dying for
them. In the aftermath of the siege of the
Patriarch's castle and his ignoble defeat, Jotok
wealth could have bought these spacefaring ani-
mals any number of wretched kzinti.

  This crossbow and a letter (written in what
competent historians had charitably called an
"illiterate" hand) were all that remained of the
ancestor. The letter was a wonderful attempt at
trying to describe stars to a kzin father who was
convinced that the stars were the souls of Great
Heroes embedded in the Fanged God's Dome.

  The Riit medallion engraved into the crossbow
was supposed to have been the family mark since
prehistorical time. Popular notion held that it was
a stylized carnivore's grin, hut Chuut-Riit's careful
historical research had shown that it was really the
shoulder patch assigned by the lotoki to their elite
kzin warriors. It represented a dentate leaf. The
dots and comma motto that surrounded the
medallion was, however, a later addition "From
Mercenary to Master."

  The most invidious sentiment that Chuut-Riit
had ever heard was voiced while he was recruiting
support for his armada at Ch'Aakin. "If these
monkeys put up such a fanatical fight, we should
hire them to do battle

THE SURVIVOR 59

for us, to be killed in our place. It is time we
enjoyed the Long Peace we have created. If a
master is truly a master, he can buy life for himself
and death for his servants." Said by a fop who had
never challenged his father to combat, a fop who
owned his share of Jotok slaves yet had never seen
the forest-buried ruins of the Jotok worlds, looted
by trusted orange mercenaries.

  Chuut-Riit was both a mathematician and a
historian. He was a student of the rise of the Jotok
Empire. It had attained less than an eighth the size
of the modern Kzin Patriarchy, yet could still teach
important contemporary lessons. How had their
purely commercial fleets developed, to such a fine
art, logistic battle support over interstellar
distances?

Once the Jotok had been military geniuses.

  The ancient kzin commanders, using deadly ships
thoughtfully supplied by the Jotok, had been
enthusiastic plunderers the language of their
teachers was destroyed, lost even to the surviving
Jotoki. Nothing but the melancholic forests and
foggy lakes remained. For his studies, Chuut-Riit
was forced to rely on secondhand kzin texts by kzin
warriors who had never mastered Jotoki
five-stream grammar. Only with the aid of
queueing theory, delay-prediction analysis,
intent-result resolution, did the anecdotal
fragments provide insight into Jotok military
strategy.

  The Jotok should have won any war that pitted
them against their strategically immature hirelings,
except that at the time of the confrontation kzinti
warriors were already the mainstay of the Jotok
military. The Jotok overwhelmingly preferred
commerce to military service. Why that was so was
a deep puzzle to ChuutRiit, but the records that
would have answered his questions could not be
found in kzin archives. If one had lifetimes to
rummage in all the distant places . . .

  Enough reverie. Ile had work to do before he
went planetside.

60 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

  The armada was closer now to Wunderland
than it had ever been, with the Alpha Centauri
binary effulgent in the heavens of R'hshssira. A
very bright Mansun was the new central jewel of
the constellation the kzinti called The Water Bird.
Hssin Tracker files would contain the most recent
information about the Man-Hero war, even if the
news was years behind the current situation. He
called up everything that Hssin Central Command
was willing to transmit.

  Assessing only the bulk of the material and its
general nature, he began to ferret out a list of the
Hssin staff responsible for tracking. He marked
off five names from Chief Intelligence Officer to
Spoor Level Collator, then contacted them
personally, checking their answers against each
other's statements. He wanted to know that he
had everything. He was polite, firm, to the point,
and appreciative. That was the way to secure
cooperation.

  He tapped the phone link. "Gig-Captain, give
orders that I am to be disturbed by no one."

  His youthful kzinrret, Hasha, stuck her head
through the oval door, huge yellow eyes lambent
with appeal, sensing that he was busy, testing her
welcome. He gently purred to her a few simple
words of encouragement in the Female Tongue.
She did not qualify as a taxing distraction. "My
Hero," she replied traditionally, then slunk to his
side where he stroked the back of her neck while
he growled and spat information out of his
data-link, organizing it on his spectacles. She was
well trained and said nothing, but she let her tail
flirt with him. Sometimes his other fingers flicked
purposefully over the command plate.

  He was not here on the direct orders of the
Patriarch. There was no time for that in an
emergency. Because of the snail's pace of light,
the Patriarch's awareness of what was happening
on his border was more than thirty years out of
date. Chuut-Rint had

THE SURVTVOR 61

general orders and made his decisions without con-
sulting Kzin-home; in essence he was a traveling
Patriarch. When the diameter of the Patriarchy was
a whole lifetime, field commanders had broad
authority. They did what they did and reported
when they could. Once an obligation was assumed,
they honored it or they trained their sons to honor
it.

  Chuut-Riit came to the boundary of the
Partriarchy on a hunch generated by
electromagnetic spoor. Rumors. Strange signals.
With hardly more than hints picked up at a hunting
match, he had set out from W'kkai as if his nose
could read a wind of scent from across the
interstellar reaches. A new starfaring species?

  Four years closer, at Ch'Aakin, he learned that
his nose was good. An obscure little border fortress
circling R'hshssira had mustered a fleet of
irregulars, attacked and actually conquered one of
their worlds. Tree-bred omnivores with ten fingers.
It was a major victory. Who would have thought
that a planet-grinding binary system would contain
such Kzin-like richness?

  He knew then that the consequences for the
Patriarchy might be immense and not all of the
consequences were necessarily good. Inept military
leadership on the borderlands was always a
possibility and always an invitation to disaster.

  The Tracking Teams at Ch'Aakin had given him
their reading of the lightbeams. He spent days with
those documents. The Conquistadors of
Wunderland were indeed reckless Heroes, but he
already knew all about that. What interested him
most was the nature of the man-animal's
resistance. The details of that campaign fascinated
him.

  In his journal he made a prediction already
fourteen years out of date. He guessed that the
local warriors from Hssin would settle down,
become

62 Man-Kzin Wars IV

Wunderkzin, then grow restless and make a
reckless strike toward the hairless-beasts' home
system a tempting five-and-a-half years away by
warship. They would fail, too. Their tactics at
Wunderland had shown not the slightest
understanding of logistics.

  Years passed. Chunt-Rut spent time in
hibernation and brief periods of frenzy adding to
his armada. The closer he came to the Alpha
Centauri double system, the fresher became the
scent.

Now at Hssin he was close enough for the kill.

  (1) He already knew that the First Fleet probe
into the man-system had been a disaster. That was
as he had predicted, long before he had known
that a First Fleet had been launched.

  (2) He already knew the numbers and
deployment of the Second Fleet. He had obtained
that information when he passed through
miserable Fang. Given the facts about the
man-system obtained by the First Fleet, he had
been predicting a second disaster.

  Now he was curious to see how well his
prediction had held. He began to dig into the
Hssin files. These out-world kzinti might be
recklessly brave, but they were poor strategists,
gland-strong bunglers. An early victory would be
welcome, however unlikely, but such a success
would also complicate his mission winners were
more reluctant to accept help from the Patriarchy
than were losers.

  Ah, there it was. With grunts and finger-waving
he flicked the relevant documents over the surface
of his spectacles.

  He was not surprised to read that the attack of
the Second Fleet had also failed. Still the details
galled him. His claws were out; his rage was such
that he would have slashed to death commanders
who had already died for their incompetence.
Why hadn't they attacked the laser batteries of
the inner planet from below? He spent some
hours doing careful calcula

THE SURVIVOR 63

lions, but his insight was useless the Third Fleet
was long launched, already near Man-sun, and
probably marked for destruction. Save the
Patriarchy from these Hero irregulars!

  The news, even though it was cold meat, pressed
urgency upon Chuut-Riit. His stay at Hssin would
have to be short.

  With the proper timing, he could arrive at Alpha
Centauri during the slump just before the
formation of the inevitable Fourth Fleet. It would
give him leeway to staff that Fourth Fleet with all
the resentful enemies he was going to make on
Wunderland and with the hot-heads who had
swarmed to the battlescream of his hastily
collected armada. They were expendable.

  But the best of his Heroes he intended to hold
back and discipline into a real naval threat. The
hapless man-beasts, slaves-to-be, would have to
wait for the arrival of the Fifth Fleet before they
tangled with their first professional kzin army.

             CH\PI`ER 9
             (2396 A.D.)

The excitement!

  The recruiters weren't just taking volunteers;
they were conducting tournaments and selecting
the warriors who were to accompany the armada
to Wunderland. Competition was in the very air
that wafted through the ventilators. The warriors
even smelled different. They cuffed each other
and tussled. They boasted about their skill and
about the number of man-animals they would own
when they were their father's age. They invented
new and wonderful insults.

  "My Near-Sighted Hero!" roared a kzin youth to
a myopic friend at the feast between the jousts.
"You say you see yourself on an estate in Africa
hunting elephants? You have selected an elephant
as your prey, I presume, not for his bravery but
because he is big enough to see?"

  "Will you wrestle the tusked beast to the ground
with me, or will you shoot at him from a tree
while he waves the tree over his head?" retorted
the myopic friend, peering, not quite sure who it
was who had challenged him.

                 64
                  
THE SURVIVOR 65

  The challenger directed his booming voice to the
other orange-red tournament contenders who were
devouring their Jotok arms noisily. "Let me recite
to all, to this gathering of noble Heroes, the
illustrious saga of my stumbling friend who is too
tall to see his feet!" He stumbled in imitation,
rousing a flurry of flapping ears and good-natured
growls.

  "Well, don't fall over before you've read me my
fate!"

  "You'll make it through the fiery battles in space.
You have courage and quickness to compensate for
your weak eyes! You'll smash ships and disgorge
the boiling hairless corpses to the vacuum. We
know that you have blind luck and the cunning of
a mole! You'll stagger through the traps that
explode in space. You'll drop on your
grav-platform to the surface of Africa, there to
slaughter battalions with your broad-beam fire!"
The raconteur was spitting and snarling with relish
as he described the fights, purring through the
compliments.

  "Get on with it!" taunted the myopic friend. "I
demand the glorious day of my elephant hunt!"

  "Ah that. Hr-r. You see the elephant-beast's grey
bulk looming in the distance. You stalk him. You
leap mightily! But what is this? You have dived,
headfirst into a gigantic grey boulder! The boulder
takes the first round. Birds land in your mane,
singing. Uniformed beasts, wearing the colors of
the UNSN, crawl out of hiding, intrigued by your
sudden stillness. Alas, they skin you, and there you
are, Conqueror of Manhome, cured and spread
upon some floor in Africa to tickle the feet of
monkeys!"

  The audience roared approval. Some waved
Jotok bones in the air.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was uncomfortable in this
crowd  there were too many of his old enemies
present. He was here only because he desperately
wanted to volun

66 Man-Kzin Wars IV

seer, wanted to follow Chuut-Riit to glory. His
courage was not permitting it. He didn't dare
enter the tournament, even though claws were
padded and no one could attack outside of the
circle. In all this time of preparation for the
coming of his savior, it had never occurred to him
once that he might have to fight for the privilege
of following!

  I'm doomed, he thought. He would have stayed
longer at the meet, struggling to find a way
around his fear, but he spotted Puller-of-Noses
moving through the crowd.

  So he caught a jerking auto-car through the
tunnels back to the Jotok Run. Back to work. It
didn't matter. Hssin would be emptied after the
armada left, and most of his enemies would be
gone. There was that.

  Jotok-Tender spotted his apprentice in the
dome near the main entrance of the Run and
moved to greet him, animation in his gait. Hssin
was indeed in a state when even the giant caught
its fever! The giant didn't stop as he usually did
but came right up and cuffed Trainer with force
enough to half-knock him down.

  "Look at this!" He showed a golden honor card.
"Chuut-Rut has commended us for our slaves!
Our work groups have been overhauling some of
his fleet's worn gravitic polarisers. He is pleased.
A small thing, but we have honor!"

  Trainer took the arm of his master, almost
gently, and walked him through the trees and
grass of the plaza. There was nothing much to say,
but they made purring noises at each other. There
was no question of working for the rest of the
day. The old kzin fussed about, providing
sparkling water and tasty hard bits to chew on. He
talked quietly of his best memories.
Trainer-of-Slaves listened fondly to the familiar
tales.

  The next day was not so quiet. Kasrriss-As, the
Patriarch of Hssin, who had never said a word in
his life to Jotok-Tender, using underlings to deal
with

THE SURVIVOR 67

him, made a personal voice call. Chuut-Riit was
interested in the response range of the man-beast's
physiology and had bought two Wunderland
monkeys from Kasrriss-As which he wished to
hunt. An elaborate hunting party was to be
arranged immediately for the Jotok Run, which
was the only really large hunting run on Hssin.

  "They don't make good prey," Kasrriss-As grum-
bled. "They're badly designed. Weak. They can run,
but not well; they can climb trees, but not well.
Good to eat, though.' Sulkily he added, "I wanted
them for my menagene.

"Noble Hero, when shall we have the hunt ready?"

  "He hasn't given me enough notice!" complained
Kasrriss-As. "It takes months to exercise them into
fit enough shape to make a good run! Terrible
muscle tone! Ah well could your kit possibly do
something with them, teach them something in a
day? Anything to make the hunt more interesting!
I'm so distracted. I have so many things to do.
Take care of everything. The honor of Hssin rests
upon your accomplishment."

  At the instant of disconnect, Jotok-Tender
reached out and pulled down an enchiridion not
a data capsule or an eyewriter but a slim, lavishly
illustrated book, bound in Jotok hide and printed
on the finest fiber paper in subtle colors and
everlasting scent. "Read it now! Learn everything
you can." It was the most popular kzin manual on
men.

  Huem-Sergeant and two of his assistants immedi-
ately brought the rare beasts around to the Jotok
quarters. Trainer-of-Slaves, still with the book in
his hand, saw three battle-ready kzin, so enormous
that they could enter through the door only one at
a time, roughly nudging two helpless charges
between them. The hairless bipeds, together,
couldn't have massed as much as the smallest
guard. The monkeys looked much less formidable
than their pictures, and they

68 Man-Kzin Wars IV

didn't smell like flower-water. They were far more
vivid. They wore the smell of fear.

  He tried to fit on them the details he had been
reading in the enchiridion. The one without facial
hair was a young male? Trainer-of-Slaves stared
intently; yes, that must be right. The one with the
facial hair had looser folds in his tail-like skin,
and tiny wrinkles signs of age. It was the youth
who was radiating the essence of fear most
strongly. That must account for why his genitals
were retracted.

  "Aowrrgh, said Huem-Sergeant, "strange lot."
He was reminding Trainer-of-Slaves to relieve
him of his guard duty.

  Trainer forced his eyes off the monkeys. He
gave the swift transfer-of-contract sign with his
hand, and the kzinwarriors left him, one at a time
through the door.

  Alone with his deformed charges, he felt his
own fear stirring, the need for a grin. But he had
a strange sympathy for the frightened young one
there was no need to frighten the doomed animal
further. He suppressed his smile and kept his face
as expressionless as possible under the
circumstances.

  "I have a stall for you," he hissed and spat, but
they understood nothing.

  "I think he wants us to go with him," said the
bearded biped.

"Should we resist?"

"Don't be crazy, Marisha.

  They followed him through the corridors to the
stall. "This is where you will sleep and defecate
until the hunt. I have orders to make you
comfortable." The spits were mixed with the
atonal inflections and hurry rumblings of the
Hero's Tongue.

"I think we ve been demoted."

  "What's happening? Look at this place! I
thought we were getting along with the Chief
Kumquat?"

THE SURVIVOR 69

  "There's a big buzz stirring up this ratcat trap. I
think we've been sold."

  "You have a theory that we are slaves. Are we
really slaves?"

  "I don't know an~thir~g, Marisha. Nothing at
all. I'll see if I can get us some food. Big Yellow
Lineman here is just standing around staring,
wondering where the football is." He made finger
motions to his mouth.

"Long-Reach, some food for the slaves."

  The Jotok scuttled into the stall. "Honored kzin,
what do they eat?"

  "Sol's Blazes, what is that tenfel!" screeched
Marisha.

  "I've seen them at a distance and once close up.
That was in a kzin engine room. I think he has a
better deal than we do."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was consulting his book. These
rotting manuals never seemed to carry what you
needed in the place you were looking at!
"Omnivore," he clacked and hissed. Not very
helpful. "Try one of everything. Water, too."

  Long-Reach returned with a variety of warm,
raw meats on a skewer and a bowl of leaves with
a side dish of leaf sauce.

  The older man sniffed the meat but tried the
leaves first. "Tastes like eucalyptus. Same texture,
too.' He spat it out and tried the meat with a sour
expression. "We're going to have to teach them
how to cook all over again."

"It's raw? Gottdamn!''

"And tough."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was impressed when he
watched them chewing on the meat and rejecting
the leaves.

  "Can you ask him for some clothes?" whimpered
Marisha.

  "I don't think they have our size. Maybe
something in yellow lace with five arm holes?"

70 Man-K~'n Wars IV

  Trainer-of-Slaves busied himself with
professional questions asked of himself because
it was impossible to ask them anything. He
examined the bottoms of their feet, clawing the
sole gently, and decided that the skin was too soft.
Had they been carried about by machines on
Wunderland? Maybe on the two-year trip to Hssin
in the hibernator their feet had grown soft?
Certainly they wouldn't be able to last out the
hunt on those!

  Item provide them with makeshift sandals. The
giant was frugal to the point of insanity and had
all sorts of hides around that had been softened
by Jotok mastication,

  He wasn't sure what to do about the rest of
their skin. It had no fur to protect them from heat
and cold, and would be useless against brambles
and branches. Nor was it thick like a Jotok's hide.
Just running his claws along their skin made them
flinch in pain and make noises that didn't sound
like polite conversation. Had they been shelled
out of their carapace? Or was it just that
Man-home was a paradise?

  Item: provide them with leggings. With their
build and fragility, what they really needed was a
military suit of armor.

  At first light he took them into the forest with
Long-Reach, Joker, and Creepy following in the
trees. He tried to teach them the lay of the
caverns, how to run and where to run, how to
backtrack and hide, what to rub on their bodies to
disguise their rank smell. After frustrating
misunderstandings, he decided that they didn't
understand that they were going to be hunted.
Were they stupid?

  For a while Trainer-of-Slaves entertained the
notion that they might be females. What did he
know of monkey anatomy? They certainly didn't
understand him when he quite carefully
enunciated from his man-talk phrase book. They
behaved exactly like kzinrretti he'd

THE SURVIVOR 71

tried to converse with lifting their faces
attentively, listening, all attention and no
comprehension. Females for sure.

  But they did chatter. Was it mindless chatter?
Some sounds seemed ... meaningful. "Notsofast!"
was a demand that he stop demonstrating kzin
reflexes. "Let's-restaminute!" was a cry of
weakness. "LunkheadOverThere" and "BarrelRibs"
was a way of referring to a dominant slave master
while deferentially averting one's eyes.

  At twilight he tried an experiment. Painfully he
copied for them words from his phrasebook using
manscript.

        day tomorrow run fast
   = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
     4/8 day hunt catch man die
     6/8 day hunt catch man die
   8/8 day hunt end hunt man live

  "Holy Mother Earth, he's telling us that
tomorrow we're going to be on the wrong end of
a kzin hunt!"

The young one paled.

  The older one turned toward Trainer. "Jack,
she's only fifteen!"

  They understood! He could smell their sudden
fear. They could read! Ah, males for sure.

- CHAPTERO

(2396 A.D.)

  Trainer-of-Slaves took the game animals out
into the darkness of the caverns before lights-on.
This time they were far more receptive to his
instructions about sneaking away, dodging, and
hiding. It was fascinating to observe the sudden
increase in their intelligence. Now he owned an
essential fact: a motivation-prompt accelerated a
man-beast's learning rate.

Interesting.

  He compared this with what he knew about the
Jotoki. A Jotok's intelligence depended upon a
hormone that was triggered by body-size; they
were all

niuses during transition. You couldn't stop them

  m learning! Then, at adulthood when the mass
of their arm-brains stabilised, their ability to learn
began to taper off rapidly. A mature Jotok could
always retain what he had mastered during
transition, but he learned new facts and new ways
only slowly. Motivation was a minor variable.

  He wondered if a motivator triggered some
kind of intelligence hormone in a man-beast? A
kzin who

                 72
                  
THE SURVIVOR 73

controlled such a hormone directly would have a
useful tool. Perhaps that could be accomplished
through a chemical bypass-block that shunted
around the motivator. The slave-master could
induce a rapid learning mode, teach a specialised
behavior to his monkey, then turn off the monkey's
ability to self-modify that behavior. A compulsive
slave. No chains. No threats. Very economical.

  As he watched them, Trainer-of-Slaves began to
catalog in his mind the motivators he was
observing. Certainly these beasts were able to
modify their behavior rapidly when their lives were
threatened. They're like me, he thought as he
helped the Marisha-beast lay a false trail through
the marshes.

  But, of course, they were different, too. He
doubted that they had a concept of honor.

  Sometimes life was not valuable.
Trainer-of-Slaves was beginning to resent the hunt.
These slaves were valuable alive. Study your
enemy who had said that? What was valuable in
a pile of stripped and bloody bones?

  When it was still dark he released the game at a
multiple divide of caverns which Long-Reach
called The Place of Many Ways. He felt sad. He
needed at least ten more days to toughen them up,
to learn enough of their language to train them in
the more subtle evasions.

  "Long-Reach," he said to his companion when
the man-beasts had disappeared beyond hearing,
"as my special hunter, I have a service for you to
perform. Who knows these sprawling forests and
caves and liquid ponds better than you?"

  "Only the Fanged God," replied Long-Reach in
the formal ritual of their conversations.

  "Your official function in this hunt is as my
scout. I have specific orders."

"I am five ears.

74 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "The monkeys won't until twilight without help.
You will scout for them, not for me. Appear to
me from time to time, for the sake of appearances
but scout for the beasts. Give them aid, but be
careful never to tell me what you have done! I
don't want to know."

"As my master commands."

  At first-light the hunting party began to
assemble under the primary dome of the Jotok
Run. The thin banners of Kasrriss-As hung in
brilliant color, carried by four kzin servitors who
were experienced hunters in this Run.
Trainer-of-Slaves was without colors but he had
been hastily outfitted in the light armor of the
Kasrriss-As household. Three Jotoki in green and
red striped livery remained respectfully on call but
at a distance.

  Chuut-Riit's party was less formal, but
nevertheless elegant. He wore a pale
peacock-green armor of a leather style that
pre-dated spaceflight. He had decreed no weapons
and no devices and carried none. He lead brought
with him only Traat-Admiral and a young
recruit, Hssin-Liaison, proud of his new
cognomen.

  Trainer-of-Slaves felt one moment of
shock and then repressed, invisible rage. He
stared straight ahead. How does my enemy do it?
This pest had the persistence of a fur-tick! Could
he lead even ChuntRut around by the nose?

  Hssin-Liaison, whatever he was called, was
never subtle. He did not return disregard. In front
of ChuntRint and without preamble he grinned at
Trainer-ofSlaves. "You will not live out the
day Coward-ofCowards."

"What is this?" inquired Chuut-Riit mildly.

  "This Animal is unfit to carry the duties of a
Conquest Hero."

THE SURVIVOR 75

  The ears of Chuut-Riit flicked in amusement. "I
believe the tournament is settling such matters."

  "This cowardly Animal won't be found in any
tournament ring. I challenge him here."

  "I see." Chout-Riit seemed aloof from the
menace and anger. He turned to Trainer-of-Slaves
matter-offactly. "Hssin-Liaison has been using his
contacts among the young warriors to enlist troops
for my Fourth Fleet." He lapsed into silence,
waiting, perhaps curious that Trainer-of-Slaves had
chosen to ignore the challenge.

  "Voice of the Patriarch, my duty is to the
execution of the hunt," Trainer replied stiffly.

  "Good." Chuut-Riit only glanced toward his
liaison underling, then addressed the others. He
was obviously not willing to interfere in local
squabbles about which he knew nothing. "I am
here for a slow hunt  no quick kill. We flush and
pursue. We challenge and fall back. We play. We
save the kill for twilight. Yes, I'm anticipating my
first taste of human flesh, but I am far more
interested in observing the response of the enemy
under attack. No weapons. No devices. Those are
the rules."

  Every other kzin at the meet added another rule
silently. The harassing would be enjoyable, but the
final kill must be given to Chunt-Riit alone.

  The banners were staked into a circle.
Noiselessly the hunters moved into the woods
under the arching ceilings. Chuut-Rut loosened his
leather armor and gave Trainer-of-Slaves one last
noncommittal gaze. "So the hunter becomes the
hunted." Then he was gone.

  Deeper into the trees a five-limbed beast
dropped beside Trainer. "Hssin-Liaison threatened
you with death."

  "He won't be able to find me. Only you know the
Run better than I. He's good on rooftops. He's a
city

76 Man-Kzin Wars IV

kzin.' Contempt. "I'm Mellow-Yellow, remember,
who floats among the leaves like lamplight. I'll
take him in circles." But the plan wasn't to take
him in circles; the plan was to lead
Puller-of-Noses away from the man-beasts. It was
the least he could do for them, to neutralise one
of the hunters.

  The man-beasts were trapped, and allowed to
escape, twice before midday. Jotok-Tender's
slaves brought in a simple lunch for the hunters,
served on collapsible canvas tables. Chuut-Rut
paced about their vale making intellectual
pronouncements upon the evasive tactics of the
day's game. "Innovative," he called them. He liked
that. Hssin-Liaison managed to mix some leaves
into Trainer-of-Slaves's meat. Kasrriss-As spent
his time ingratiating himself into ChuntRiit's favor
and discussing the textile trade with Traat-
Admiral. He was the one who had stayed behind
while the other warriors raided Alpha Centauri.

  The canvas tables were folded and whisked
away by the slaves. Chuut-Riit amiably resumed
his tracking. However old his eyes, his nose was a
marvel at spotting spoor, his mind superb at
guessing the moves of his prey.

  "We'll wound them this time, and watch how
they handle that."

  When Chuut-Riit smiled beside a craggy lava
outcrop and then moved left instead of right a
secret pleasure rippled under the fur of
Trainer-of-Slaves. Last night he had not been able
to determine for sure whether his man-beasts had
understood this intricate back-track and feint
move. A perfect execution. The maneuver had
been taught to Trainer (too many times) by a wily
old Jotok who was probably still at large, up there
in the trees watching them, keeping his distance.
It worked well on the kzin mind.

  Trainer-of-Slaves followed the real trail,
"carelessly" obscuring what spoor he found. He
knew where they

THE SURVIVOR 77

had gone, a broad and growth-sheltered ledgeway
along the wall of a cavern that had all the
appearance of a dead-end. It led to three good
escape routes, but to anyone unfamiliar with the
layout of the Run, the wide ledge smelled of trap.
Prey avoided it and hunters avoided it because
they thought prey would be avoiding it. Trainer
was in no hurry to get there, perhaps to lead
another hunter to them. They needed a rest from
terror. He urinated. He smelled the flowers which
reminded him of his mother.

 With a rustling of leaves, Long-Reach dropped
from the branches bearing the news that their
game was safe but exhausted, laying low. He had
other news. Puller-of-Noses was following and had
cut around and in front to intercept
Trainer-of-Slaves.

"Where are Joker and Creepy?"

"I have given them instructions."

"I'll have to do a decoy. What do you surest?"

  "Climb up along the trinity hill he wiif~see you
from there, being on the other slope. Then drop
down through the Burr Crevasse to The Lakes. He
will have to follow, so you'll know where he is, but
you'll already have passed through, so he won't
know where to find

you.

  "I like it." The slave-trainer kzin became Mellow-
Yellow, half Jotok, slipping along swiftly through
all the little shortcuts he knew, unlit he came to
the hill with the three giant trees that could grow
here because of the ceiling vault, carved by tons of
rock that had collapsed during the excavation, and
now supported by a cathedral of arches. While he
climbed he was looking intently into the woods
across the depression for an orange-red blur.

  Disaster is always abrupt. He met his enemy. In
the wrong place. Five kzin-lengths in front of him,
wearing that persistent grin.

They both fell into an instant crouch.

78 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

  His mind reeled. What had happened a light
breeze? for critical moments blowing in the wrong
direction? Had his enemy smelled him coming?
and simply waited? He made an instant tactical
assessment. Puller-of-Noses was unaware of the
Burr Crevasse or he would have blocked off that
escape route. It was still available if he could
dance his enemy a few paces downhill.

  "There's no grass to eat here,
Defecator-of-Undigested Grass."

  "You swore before witnesses that you would let
me live."

  "That was then. We have many lives and one
death. You've already lived an extra life. Today I
have sworn to kill you."

  Chuut-Riit had talked about the value of the
unexpected tactical option. Trainer leaped,
without grinning, without screaming, while an
incredulous Pullerof-Noses shifted just too late to
save his balance

simultaneously, a reflexive swipe, accurate, deadly,
disabled Trainer's right arm. They were both
bowled over, taking out a tree before bouncing to
their feet. Blood poured from the arm. But the
coward was now on the right side of the Burr
Crevasse. Facing the wrong way.

  He couldn't run toward that escape. He had no
way to defend his back.

  Five kzinti screams descended from the trees,
four arms wrapping around the enemy warrior
while the fifth ripped his nose open. Before the
attack was over, Long-Reach was jumping out of
harm's reach. He skittered away, then turned to
face the kzin. Motionless. It was a draw. The kzin
could run him down, but he could climb a tree
faster than any kzin could follow.

  "A slave who attacks a kzin is warm meat!"
snarled Puller-of-Noses while the blood ran into
his mouth. "I'll kill you later!"

THE SURV;VOR79

"There are three of us," said Long-Reach.

  The kzin's eyes scanned the treetops rapidly,
looking for the others. Nothing. When he turned
back to his kzin target, he was alone. Chagrin.
Both coward and slave were gone. No matter. All
he had to do was follow the blood.

  Trainer-of-Slaves jimmied himself down through
the Crevasse at a record pace, one-armed, rocks
ripping gashes out of his hide, leaving a trail of fur
and blood as he bounced to the level below. He
felt no pain. He ran. At first he gave no thought to
obscuring his trail. What was the use?
Hssin-Liaison or Puller-of-Noses or
Second-Son-of-Ktrodni or whatever in hell was his
name would follow him to the ends of the
Partriarchy right now, fangs ready for the kill.

  In neat livery of Preen and red stripes, Joker
swung out of the sky. "Follow me." He scrabbled
along the ground, picking a route by some criterion
Trainer-ofSlaves did not understand. What greater
mortificationon could there be than to have a slave
lead him in flight! "Make for the water," said Joker
before swinging back up into the sky to disappear.

  Bolting, driven by the fear, all else lost to his
mind, he reached The Lakes, exhausted,
bewildered that a relentless Puller-of-Noses had
been unable to follow. His arm was torturing him.
His disgrace was complete. Of course, there was
always humor in every situation. He had been a
successful decoy.

  Are the man-beasts doing any better than my
wretched self

  He trudged a circuitous route back toward the
ledgeway where the hunt's prey had been hiding.
They were gone. He found a happy Chuut-Riit
instead, relaxing, playing a poetry game with
Traat-Admiral, which wasn't going well for the
Admiral.

  "Where is everybody?" asked the Conquest Com-
mander amiably. "Is it the custom on Hssin to take

80 Man-Kzin Wars IV

afternoon naps?" He noticed Trainer-of-Slaves's
arm. "I see that my righteous Liaison officer
hasn't been able to put you out of action." He
came over and examined the wound. "I've seen
worse." And he began to dress the slashes.

  It was only then that Trainer-of-Slaves realized
how dazed he was. He was just standing there,
letting one of the highest military officers of the
Patriarchy fuss over a minor clawing.

"I'm all right, sir. Have we relocated our prey?"

  "One is wounded. He attacked me to let the
other escape. I let them both go but in such a way
that they will remain separated. We may now
destroy them one at a time. You're from Hssin.
You must know these monkeys better than I. It is
said that as a mob they fight bravely. Do you have
any information about how they fight alone?"

  "These man-animals are the first I have ever
met, sir."

  "Yes, they're rare. Curious beasts.
Trainer-of-Slaves, do you have an idea of what
kind of slaves they'll make?"

  "I have a theory that they might be controlled
through biochemistry. I would need to have a
large sample size upon which to experiment in
order to confirm or deny my hunch."

  "Of course. I'll have to take you to Alpha
Centauri with me. There are monkeys on
Wunderland, sufficient I should imagine."

  "Dominant One, I am not qualified.
Hssin-Liaison will tell you why."

  "Hssin-Liaison will tell me nothing! He's dead.
Not far from here. He was found by a scout of
KasrrissAs who was following a trail of kzin
blood." ChoutRiit glanced knowingly at a certain
wounded arm.

  Trainer-of-Slaves maintained a shocked silence.
His enemy dead?

THE SURVIVOR 81

  "His legs were broken and there was a stake
through his eye," said Traat-Admiral.

  Like the incoming whine of a bomb, Trainer real-
ized what had happened and who was guilty.

  "He broke his legs when he ran full-paced into a
trip wire, since removed. The trip wire was set
across the trail of your blood. The stake was buried
in the ground and set to pierce anyone unfortunate
enough to fall upon it. He missed, but his head was
later lifted and rammed down onto the stake.
Through the eye."

"A terrible way to die, your excellency."

  "I'd take you there now, but twilight would
overtake us and our prey would escape by virtue of
my lenient rules. We'd go hungry. Let's make it
simple. Do you admit that he was murdered?"

  "Yes, sir." Trainer had anguished images of
LongReach all of his slaves being hacked to bits.

  "Since Hssin-Liaison was my servitor, I will pass
judgment on you. Let's be clear about the circum-
stances. Hssin-Liaison widened the circle of the
tournament to include you against your will. The
rules of the tournament require gloved claws. He
neglected that detail as your wounds testify. He
who so broadens the rules cannot complain when
his life is forfeit as the consequence of his rules."

  "He was not killed in face-to-face combat," said
Traut-Admiral. "He was murdered.''

  "Wait, Traaty. There is a military lesson in this
which we should consider. If a force stays to fight
knowing that it will be slaughtered, yes, there is
honor in that defeat. But what if the same force
retreats and lures the enemy into a trap in which
he can be slaughtered? Can we call such a victory,
dishonor? I find a contradiction here. If defeat is
honor, does it follow that victory is dishonor? Save
us all from such logicl"

82 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  He thinks I did it! He can t conceive of slaves
murdering kzin. Neither can I.

  "I say the tournament was fairly fought and
fairly won. Hssin-Liaison made new rules without
consulting our Hero here. Trainer-of-Slaves
replied with his own unorthodox rules, also
without consulting our now dead warrior. I see a
balance."

  Truth was always sacred. Trainer-of-Slaves
desperately searched for the kind of courage that
would allow him to speak the truth.

  Ignoring the youth's sputterings, Chuut-Riit
continued with his line of reasoning. "Yes, there
is a just balance. However, my young Hero, you
have done me harm and owe me recompense. I
have lost a warrior for my Fourth Fleet. You have
won this unusual tournament fairly and so you
must join my service. I will be assigning you to
Traat-Admiral who is building for me an elite
corps I choose to call the Fifth Fleet." He nodded
to his Admiral. "Doesn't he have just the qualities
we need?"

  Long afterward, a dazed Trainer-of-Slaves was
still pondering the consequences of Jotoki who
murdered kzin, barely able to keep his attention
on the hunt. Fortunately the hunt seemed
forgotten. Long-Reach was nowhere to be found,
hiding probably. Should he execute Long-Reach?
Should he bring up the perils of slavery to
Chuut-Riit? Yes, that's what he should do. The
coward in him shuddered.

  Kasrriss-As appeared from the direction of
Burr Crevasse. "The body has been removed.
Since there are fewer of us, I suggest an
immediate resumption of the chase before twilight
overtakes us."

  "Your arm looks bad." Chuut-Riit's voice
carried a fatherly tone. "No need to follow us.
There will be other hunts."

"This hunt is my responsibility."

But he couldn't keep up. They stalked and killed

THE SURVIVOR 83

the wounded man-beast first. Before the lights
dimmed they had the young one cornered. The
animal's wailing cries of rage turned to screams
before Chuut-Riit tore the body apart. Trainer
shared in the feast when it was his turn to gnaw
and rip at the carcasses. What else could he do?
At least the meat was delicious.

He spent half the night wandering in the forest.

  Later Trainer-of:Slaves found his three personal
Jotoki cowering in their stalls. How could he talk
to them about their crime? Shouldn't he just
destroy them? Shouldn't he speak to
Jotok-Tender? When he remembered the giant
musing about the depth of the loyalty found in a
Jotok properly adopted, his heart curdled, was that
what was meant? Murder? Had Jotok-Tender
known all along?

  Long-Reach was huddled arms, head hidden by
arm stalks, eyes barely peeping out of their armor,
silent. As the kzin master of these slaves he had to
say something. Yet how could he even mention
such a crime? It was too horrible! "I'm angry!" His
fangs were bared in a grin. "You disobeyed my
instructions! Specifically, I told you to protect the
man-beasts, and what were you doing
instead.2 you were watching over me. The
man-slaves were lost! I take care of myself! I'm a
warrior! I'm a Hero! Do not violate the wishes of
a Hero! Obey!"

The subject was never mentioned again.

             CHAPTER 11
         (2399 - 2401 A.D.)

  The warships of the Patriarchy were large but
cramped. Sub-light supply lines don't exist in an
interstellar empire. Every need of a conquest had
to be thought of by the Ordnance-Officer and
brought along. The storage took space. Hydrogen
took space. Purifiers filled the ship with ducts.
The hibernation vaults took space. Machine shops
took space. The gravitic drives and their shielding
alone took up half the space in the ship.

  No savanna-roaming kzin could ever have
created, or imagined, such a claustrophobic
horror of passageways and pipes and tiny rooms,
where even the ceilings had to be used for storage
and the doors stayed locked for years. But long
ago, as mercenaries, the kzinti had fallen into this
hell-in-heaven as penance for their sin of
impatience.

  Light took two and a half years to travel
between the R'hshssira infrared dwarf and the
Alpha Centauri binary. Kzin warships spent more
than three years on the same journey.
Chuut-Riit's flagship, from the first

                 84
                  
THE SURVIVOR 85

scent of man-animal rumor, had given seventeen
years to this single mission.

  The voyages were grueling. Without their
hibernation coffins, touchy and argumentative
warriors lacked tolerance for the time-gulf between
stars. Trainer-ofSlaves would have none of that. He
took ship duty for himself. All his life he had been
bound to an essentially uninhabitable rock of a
rapidly dying star. How could he not stay awake to
relish his adventure?

  To prepare himself for Wunderland, he devoured
the written sagas of Kzin. After all, his race had
been born on a planet. Roaming a planet with
breathable winds was a kzin's natural maskless
state. Wasn't it truth that Wunderland was
desirable because it was so Kzinlike?

  He followed the patricidal tragedy of Warlord
Chmee at the Pillars, almost squeezing the wetness
out of his fur after the Storm at the Pillars. When
the Hero blinded himself in remorse, he stopped
reading he wanted to see Kzin-home, first, before
he searched his soul.

  There were many sagas. He imagined himself
with Rgir's pride in the Mooncatcher Mountains.
He felt the drifting snow and vapor breath at
warcamp in the Rungn Valley.

  And there were heroic poems. He listened to the
boiling-fat sounds from the Poems of Eight Voyages
as he recited them aloud, marveling at plains of
waving grass, at a winter wind whose chill claws
could ice a Patriarch's fur to the white of age.

  The sagas always spoke of the wind. The hunter's
wind. Death's wind. The howling wind. Sweetgrass
wind. The seasalt wind. The wind of many
messages. Running with the wind. Wunderland had
winds, too, he thought.

  Trainer-of-Slaves soon found the confined spaces
of the warship intolerably full of smells that
machine

86 Man-Kin Wars IV

made winds never took away. Nor was a diet of
meatbiscuit conducive to an even humor. He
snarled. His temper was short. Ile had a broad
comment to cover every ship deficiency.

  One warrior became irritated enough at this ire
to grasp him by the vest, repeatedly shoving him
against a bulkhead. "Let my ears hear more of
your foul insults! I'm here to inspire your mouth!
I demand more!" Finally Deck-Officer interfered
and ordered them both to the Vault, where they
were antifreezed and stacked with five hundred
other suspended Heroes.

  All trips come to an end. The Vault was
unloaded at the grimy Fortress Aarku orbiting
Alpha Centauri B and when Trainer awoke he
wondered why he had ever left Hssin. Aarku was
only nine-hundred kilometers in diameter and it
didn't even have amenities like a poisonous
atmosphere. The Fortress itself had been started
as a major installation a generation ago after the
invasion, and then left unfinished. It was a "strate-
gic position" thought up by an admiral who didn't
have to live there.

  Alpha Centauri B would have been an outer
planet if it had massed a thousand times less.
Instead, it had grown into a healthy orange-tinged
star, but with only three quarters of A's mass and
a quarter of A's luminosity. The two stars orbited
each other with a period of eighty years, coming
as close as eighty-eight lightminutes and moving
away from each other as far as 280 light-minutes.

  They had disrupted the formation of one
another's outer planets, leaving nothing circling A
but Wunderland and three dense inner worlds,
plus the myriad rocks of the Inner Swarm. A ring
of rubble surrounded B that included ten major
asteroids. In between lay the bulk of the Serpent's
Swarm buzzing

THE S URVIVOR 87

in an intricate dance of resonance rings,
pseudo-trojan orbits, high inclination orbits, and
other exotic solutions to the problems posed by
forced cohabitation with two major stars. There
were vast gaps in the Swarm where no asteroid
could survive without being pumped into another
orbit.

  To view the Wunderland on which he had
expected to serve, Trainer-of Slaves had to tune up
the base's electronic telescope and blot out the
blinding spear of Alpha Centauri A. Elis unit was
stationed about as far away from its forests and
grasslands and mountains as they could be sent,
dashing his dreams of loping over the surface of a
planet under an open sky.

  War was war. Each warrior had his own
emplacement and his own fight. Trainer's fatalistic
companions had a saying that even the rocks
around Centauri B had their duties. His duties
were to turn out slaves for the engine rooms of the
Fourth Fleet. The conditions in the hastily
prefabricated tunnels were appalling. He was stuck
with his smelly Jotok cages, with his wire-mesh
runs and masses of Jotok babies crawling all over
each other without enough space and never enough
wind to carry away the smell. Hssin seemed like
paradise.

  A berth on the Fourth Fleet began to seem more
and more desirable. He began to dream about
Manhome. If he couldn't have Wunderland, then
why not Earth? Earth, too, had winds and an open
sky. The winds had fascinating names culled from
Wunderland libraries. Norteaster. The icy candelia
of the Andes Mountains. Trade winds. The dry
chinook wind that blew down the slopes of the
Rocky Mountains after depositing all its moisture
on the western slopes. Mediterranean sirocco.
Whirlwind. Tempest.

  Trainer-of-Slaves began to take a personal
interest in the fate of the Fourth Fleet. He was too
busy with Jotoki, and too far away from the center,
to face poli

88 Man-Kzin Wars IV

tics from a crouch. But he followed Chuut-Rut's
duels and celebrated every win. The locals were
resisting the economic burden of preparing a new
fleet. They made loud claims about the ferocity
with which the Third Fleet would slash the Solar
System, though that battle must already have been
fought and won or lost.

  Chuut-Rint was adamant that the burden
continue. It was, he told his Heroes, the
Patriarch's policy that in any war a backup fleet
was always in preparation to follow a battle-fleet,
no matter how sure the battlefleet's victory. That
was the only way a slow-motion interstellar
crusade could be fought. Better to send expensive
reinforcements to a victory won years ago than
penniless faith-in-victory to a defeat. The kzin had
a saying, "Don't count your fingers when your
claws are sheathed."

  Alpha Centauri B was a favored space for
Fourth Fleet maneuvers. As a result,
Trainer-of-Slaves met many gung-ho captains who
had driven their graviticpolarizers past normal
specifications and needed urgent maintenance.
They liked him because his crews did a good job.
They also liked him because he served Jotok meat
and that was a treat hard to come by.

  Ssis-Captain took a special liking to Trainer-of-
Slaves. Theyy shared an avid interest in Earth. It
was he who introduced card-tricks to Trainer's
slaves. The monkeys used a peculiar set of plastic
symbols, five plus an octal of cards in a suit, with
four suits. The Captain never ceased to flap his
ears while LongReach did his five-handed shuffle,
rotating half the deck clockwise and the other half
counterclockwise while sitting on his mouth. He
didn't like to play poker with Long-Reach,
though, because the Jotok always took the pot.

  On one run in from the A star, Ssis-Captain
brought in some Wunderland musical instruments
and they put together a combo, a rather
cacophonous effort. Creepy

THE SURVIVOR 89

managed the twelve string banjo with three hands,
Long-Reach played the drums and did harmony
with all five lungs, while Joker handled the cymbals
and xylophone. Trainer-of-Slaves did his imitations
of Heroic Poetry on the kazoo.

  "I've got to have you animals on the Blood of
Heroesl Do you want to pledge honor to my ship?
I'll pledge all of you! We've got to be playing
together when we march under the Arc de
Triomphe in Berlinl"

  "The Arc de Triomphe is in Moscow," corrected
Trainer-of-Slaves righteously.

  "You must be wrong. The red monkeys not out
of that war~early. I distinctly remember that the
Arc de Triomphe was built by French-beasts to
honor the victory of their Kaiser at Berlin. The
High French Conquest Commandant Hitler
marched under it with his whole army when he
defeated the Huns. I've seen the daguerreotype!"

  On another trip Ssis-Captain smuggled in a
kzinrret inside an old polarizer housing. She was a
beauty with a luminous red sheen to her fur and
streaks of tan in her nose, but she wasn't at all
pleased with the ride and studied them both from
sulky, undecided eyes.

"Jriingh, meet your new mounter."

"My hero," she purred.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was horrified. "You stole an
illustrious one's wife? Or worse, a daughter?"

  Ssis-Captain's ears flapped while he rumbled in
his throat. "He gave her to me. She's a little terror.
She spits and hisses at his wives and fights with
them. She kept chasing his favorite off into the
woods of his estate where he couldn't find her. She
boxes the heads of his daughters and tries to take
his sons down under the bridge."

"An ideal mother for great fighting Heroes!"

"It didn't work that way. All her sons got killed as

90 Mandolin Wars IV

kits in rage-fights. Crazy, the lot of them. Her
mate backhand-cuffed her often enough, without
profit, but he's too soft-clawed to kill her. I
reasoned that you and I could solve his problem."

  "Do you suppose the man-beastesses give their
males as much trouble as ours?"

  "Worse! A manrret is smart enough to pick the
lock on her door!"

  Jriingh stepped gracefully from the polarizer
housing, haughtily exploring her new abode,
sniffing warily. She was half the size of a male
kzin and probably twice as agile. She snapped up
a baby Jotok that had escaped from its wire run,
and swallowed five arms in one bite and then
peered into the smelly tank, pondering ways to
catch more.

  "She's being boarded on the Blood of Heroes, of
course."

"Against regs. You ll have to keep her."

  "It's against regs to keep her here, too."
Trainer-ofSlaves was beginning to feel angry.

  "Hr-r, yet you do have the space, a corner
somewhere with a lock and key."

  "But I won't be able to keep her pheromones
out of the air!"

  "You won't have to. That's the whole beauty of
this sally."

  "I'm supposed to give this little hissing terror
the run of the place?!

  "It's not a problem. She likes males. She just
doesn't like females. Fix up a room. Give her
some nice things. We'll run a beneath-the-grass
pride to keep her happy. Let her keep your feet
warm. We need a beneath-the-grass pride out here
card-tricks, music war stories, ch'rowl. Do you
think a Conservor will come here and give you a
lecture on the One True Way of Honor and the
nature of the Furry God?"

Trainer-of-Slaves settled into himself giving way

THE SURVIVOR 91

just a little. He was not used to such camaraderie
and he liked it. Yes, he wanted to conquer Earth
with this warrior and own a huge hunting preserve
in the Amazon next to France with hundreds of
pink, tailless slaves tending to his animals. Of
course, Long-Reach would always be his top slave.

  For two years High Conquest Commander
ChuutRut had been caught in the snare of a
painful power struggle. Then the first news from
Man-sun burst from the Tightbeams, 4.3 years after
the fact: the Kzin had dealt a great surprise victory
in the first skirmish. The Third Fleet was
positioning itself for battle.

  Wunderland kzinti forgot all else. Even
Chunt-Rut paused. Infighting died. The
Radio-Operators became the Heroes of the
Moment, drifting in space at the instruments of
their huge antennae pointed at Mansun.

The good news did not last.

  By the end of the month the extent of the
disaster was evident. Trainer-of-Slaves was
outraged at the man-beasts. Kzinti became morose.
They grinned more often, thoughts of monkeys on
their minds. And Chout-Riit's situation changed
dramatically. There was no longer any question
that he was Governor of Alpha Centauri. There
was no longer any opposition to his design for the
Fourth Fleet, or to his date of launching.

Trainer put in for a transfer to the Blood cuff
Heroes.

             CHAPTER 12
             (2402 A.D.)

  Ssis-Captain arrived at Fortress Aarku with a
new uniform, slightly non-standard. The padded
underarmor vest was a too-rich shade of mauve
with sapphire blue trimmings. The buttons on his
epaulets were Wunderland jade from mines in the
Jotun Range. The eight-pointed captain's star
radiated from a real diamond. Pagoda style
three-quarter sleeves were of the satin one might
find on a kzinrret's bed. The arcuate leather cuffs
of the undershirt, setting for his
chronometer/comp, were tooled from high quality
kz'eerkt the tanned hides of Wunderland
criminals, selected to be without blemish or lash
mark.

"Impressive," said Trainer-of-Slaves.

  "I am determined that you shall have your fleet
rating!" Ssis was flicking the tip of his tail back
and forth in agitation as he paraded to show off
his tailoring.

  "Hr-r. Yet I have sworn enemies who would
make it difficult."

"Harrgh! I have proper papers here for you that

                 92
                  
THE SURVTVOR 93

will make it all easy, letters of introduction and
recommendation." He began to purr. "And a pass
to Wunderland! I don't dance around, I just leap
right in. They have to give you to me. I need you."

  "Friend, I shall be satisfied with the trip to
Wunderland."

  "Not after you've served as my gunner!" The ele-
gant captain lifted his bushy head and with a great
grin emitted a spitting-yowling imitation of the
sounds of battle. "We're going to carve up some
asteroids on the way in. Great sport."

  Trainer-of-Slaves decided that he could leave
LongReach in charge of polariser repairs, and took
his chief slave on a tour of the shop. One giant
field-generator was suspended in the light gravity
of Aarku while two of the five-armed Jotoki slaves
worked to replace its laminated planers.

  Long-Reach stood proudly on four wrists while
pointing with his fifth arm. "This unit will be ready
for testing in two days," said skmny(arm). "I am
honored by your trust in me, brave master,"
interrupted short(arm), checking various screens by
taking control of three eyes. "Alf will go well with
the polarizer repairs. We are expecting another
unit for overhaul at the end of the day. And my
duties among the juveniles?"

  Trainer-of-Slaves trusted Long-Reach with all
but one thing the Jotok transients. "Just keep the
lifesupport functional. Change the filters again. ' It
would never do to have one of those curious
five-armed, fivebrained fledglings fixate upon a
mature Jotok as parent. "Third-Teacher-of-Slaves
will be in charge. Your first duty is to the shop."

  "You will be traveling to Wunderland? The crew
has checked over the engines of the Blood of
Heroes from finger-tip to elbow. They hum. Do tell
Ssis-Captain to stay within specs."

94 Man-~inWars IV

  The gravitic polarizer was the foundation stone
of the Patriarchy and of warrior military
superiority. In its stationary version it made
artificial gravity possible, but its most useful
application was as the reactionless space drive
which ahowed vehicles to accelerate in "free fall":
one gravity for the lumbering freighters, sixty or
seventy gravities for the faster military warships.

  These kzin craft bewildered the Wunderland
defenders at the time of the 2367 A.D. conquest.
They darted about with incredible velocity and
acceleration changes, yet ejected no reaction mass,
and didn't seem to-need refueling even after
maneuvers that would have exhausted the tanks of
a torchship. The kzin warships could be goaded
and provoked and then harassed like a bull in Old
Spain, they could be burned, but they couldn't be
chased. They didn't seem to obey the laws of
physics.

  For years after that terrible six months,
war-impoverished professors from the Munchen
Scholarium gathered in the cafes along Karllorge
Avenue in Old Munchen, writing equations and
speculating with preposterous assumptions while
they sipped their schnapps. Research equipment
can be confiscated. Equations and speculation are
free. When Alpha Centauri B was in the night sky,
wan but brighter than any streetlight, each new
theory about kzin technology was carried like an
epidemic between the sidewalk cafes until second
sunset when the nightlife of Munchen died.

  Given that a reactionless drive did exist they
eventually sketched out the beginning of an
understanding that had a sound theoretical footing
by the time Chaut-Riit arrived as governor. The
human mind, unlike the kzin mind, is obsessed
with resolving the contradictions between what it
observes and what it thinks it should be seeing.

THE SURVIVOR 95

  Momentum did not appear to be conserved by
the reactionless kzin ships, but the gravitic field
equations upon which the polariser was based
invoked negative space curvature, a necessary
element of any reactionless space drive. Normal
intuitions about momentum fail in the presence of
negative curvature

momentum then has a direction opposite
velocity  but the equations of momentum
conservation still hold.

  Trainer-of-Slaves took up his gunner's berth on
the Blood of Heroes. He was outfitted with
mask-goggles. They imposed diagrams upon his
visual field which supplied all that he might need
to know while firing. During check-down he had
time to make simulation runs with his goggles
feeding him the dangers of a virtual world. It gave
the liver a jolt to kill monkeyships even if they
were only program-generated ghosts.

  The five spherical ships of the hunter-pack
drifted into position. There was ear-bulb chatter as
the captains readied themselves for the three
li~ht-hour sweep from Alpha Centauri B across to
Alpha Centauri A, roughly the equivalent of a run
from the distance of Uranus to Man-home. The
Serpent's Swarm would give the sweep realism,
though it contained hundreds of times the mass
and debris of the Solar Bek.

  Because of this plethora of asteroids, the Kzin
Training Command was able to designate as many
target asteroids as it pleased without disrupting the
economy of the Swarm. Fourth Fleet
attack-training stressed destruction of the kind of
asteroid defensive installations which the monkeys
used extensively to protect the north and south
approaches to Man-home.

  At maximum acceleration the Blood of Heroes
could make the three-light-hour trip from B to A
in less than two days at a turn-around velocity a
tenth the speed

96 Mandarin IV

of light, but this was not common practice
because of the density of maker in the Centauri
System which created field energy losses.

  The gravity polariser of the kzin high-velocity
drive contained a natural mechanism to protect
the ship from impact by gas and micrometeoroids.
The offending particle was violently accelerated as
it entered the field while, at the same time, the
ship reacted to the added mass by recoiling. In
the exchange, field energy was re-converted to
mass. The particle size was not critical unequal
masses accelerate at the same rate within any
gravitic field.

  Unfortunately, atoms impacting into a
polarizer's field generated a weak electromagnetic
interaction which drained field energy into
radiation. Inside a planetary system this
could~have been a serious problem if high
velocities had been desirable. Between the stars,
where high velocities are desirable, kzin ships
weren't able to travel much above eighty percent
of light speed through normal densities of
interstellar gas without bleeding to death from
"blue shine."

  While a gravity polarizer was accelerating it
converted mass to energy, when it decelerated it
converted that same energy back to mass. Its
power requirements were orders of magnitude
less than a torchship, needing power only to make
up for the losses involved in field interactions with
the local media.

  The hunting pack was practicing the standard
maneuver. Come in high over the Swarm, then
aback down through it at a moderate velocity.
There was much bantering back and forth
between the offensive team and the defensive
team during an "engagement" debriefing. All kzin
insults weren't delivered in anger the real
meaning lay in the inflections of the spit-hisses.
Ssis-Captain was fond of calling his oppo

THE SURVIVOR 97

nents baboons because they had been ordered to
"think like monkeys." Amiably they dubbed him
"Kshat-Lunch," referring to a herbivore who was
known to eat offal.

  It took them twelve days, not two, to work their
way across the Swarm on patrol/attack status,
instruments scanning at full vigilance. The Blood of
Heroes recorded static from the Tiamat industrial
world: instructions to some lonely rockjack in his
torchship, calls for part replacements, a medical
emergency. Doppler shifts alerted monitors.

  Of the man-ships they saw only glimmers flicking
across detection screens. Somewhere among the
stones armed feral humans grubbed about, plotting
revenge but the Blood of Heroes saw none,
though its instruments were looking. These sullen
beasts were mostly no more of a nuisance than
fur-ticks but they made good target practice when
found. On this run the Heroes sparred only with
tumbling rubble.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was an experienced gunner by
the time they reached the cloud-streaked globe of
Wunderland. He was not yet an experienced
politician.

             CHAPTER 13
             (2402 A.D.)

  In its simplest design, the kzin gravity polarizer
just floated. If it was shoved toward a mass,
energy was fed into its polarizer field which
forced it to rise. If it was pushed away from a
mass, energy was drained from its polarizer
field which forced it to fall.

  The shuttle "platforms" that transported freight
and passengers into and out of Wunderland's
mass-well were straight modifications of this
primitive device. Descent was controlled by
electromagnetically bleeding the field to charge
molecular distortion batteries. Ascent was
controlled by feeding the field from those same
batteries. Horizontal velocity was controlled by a
torsion field interaction that spun-up or
spun-down Wunderland's rotation.

  The cycle was highly efficient, leaking some
spillover energy at the electromagnetic-gravitic
interface and some in tidal friction. When
dropping from orbit around Wunderland to the
surface, the shuttles polarizer rose only a few
degrees in temperature.

Munchenport was a depressing introduction to
the

                 98
                  
THE SURVIVOR 99

fabulous wealth that Trainer-of-Slaves had heard
about all his life. A proper spacedrome had yet to
be constructed. They settled onto an open field
that was serviced by extruded buildings of recent
fabrication, all square and ugly, all laid out and
finished by forced labor. The Wundervolker wryly
called it the "himmelfahrt" both because it was
from here that one ascended to the heavens and
because so many of them had "gone to heaven"
building it.

  The number of unleashed man-beasts was
appalling, lined up with their baggage, milling
around, shuffling through the weapons scanners,
arguing with attendants. Most of them were
looking for work in the military industries of the
Serpent's Swarm, needing the wages badly enough
to be willing to build weapons that would be used
against their father system. They smelled of
unwashed bodies and poverty, a peculiar
sweet-sour odor blending with the
machinery-and-synthetics smell of the buidding and
the residual ozone from cheap electric vehicles.

  Ssis-Captain knew the routine. He hired some
manbeasts of burden to carry his and Trainer's
luggage to the aircar terminal. The clean cool
breeze inside the car was a relief. "We'll go to the
old city. It's better there," he said.

  To a Hero born in space on a hostile outpost
near a dying star, Munchen was odd for a city. This
was a city? The low-pitched tile roofs weren't
airtight and the windows opened to the
atmosphere. From some views the buildings were
hidden by the trees that shaded streets. The broad
blue waters of the Donau cut through parks of
palms and blooming frangipani. Of what use was
the steel steeple of the Saint Joachim cathedral?

  Ssis-Captain found a room for them in an old
fourstory brick mansion that had been converted
for kzin use by knocking out the tops of all the
interior doors.

100 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

He gave their luggage to an old man-female who
staggered under the load, finally setting * down to
breathe before dividing her job into two trips.

  "She's ready for the glue-factory, commented
Ssis, who was three times her size.

"It's a she? But she took your instructions!" Of
course."

  He stared at the old lady. Dumb male-animals
Trainer-of-Slaves could understand, but females
who comprehended sentences' He tried to
imagine his mother speaking in whole phrases. He
had talked enough to her, and sometimes . . .
sometimes he had imagined that she was listening,
such big round eyes she had.

  It was a powerful deception. A kzinrret always
gave the impression of being intelligent. Once as
a spoiled hit in the Churr-Nig household he had
been so taken by this illusion that he had given
his mother an adventure picture-book to read to
him at nap-time. She had chewed the book to
pieces.

  But enough of amazement. They beeped their
automatic car on its way, settled into their room,
and set about to pad the rest of the way to the
Admiralty by foot.

  Tramer-of-Slaves had been close to only two
monkeys in his life and found a city-herd of them
disconcerting. Ssis-Captain just ignored the
animals while they scurried around him or waited
against a wall. They all wore clothes a fact
somehow surprising to Trainer though obviously
they belonged to no military unit. Since
Chout-Rut's hunt on Hssin, he had imagined that
naked was the natural state of all manbeasts.

  The Admiralty could have whatever it wanted.
At the time of the occupation they had wanted
the Landholder's Ritterhaus. It stood with great
Gothic arches and stone buttressing at the head of
the cobblestoned

THE SURVIVOR 101

Grunderplatz. The victorious Heroes had not
bothered to demolish the crowded bronze
memorial of the Nineteen Founders, perhaps
because the Ritterhaus dominated the group and
the kzinti were in the Ritterhaus. Down there,
those laboring bronze figures looked like
hard-working slaves.

  The Fourth Fleet bureaucracy was at a frenzy
with the final logistic preparations and assignments
just months away. Trainer-of-Slaves was received
by a harassed kzin officer who kept having to duck
under manheight doors as he busied himself trying
to find his files. He couldn't remember which
computer he had fed them to. Finally, in
distraction, he reset his batlike ears and offered
the absolute certainty of his help tomorrow, at the
same time, if Trainer would be so good as to
return.

  They retreated to their lodgings in the old manor
house. A dignified kzin passed them on the stairs
with two leashed kzinrretti. Females could be
dangerous in a city; they tended to spat with any
unpleasantly odorous animal who dared approach
them, and man-beasts with alcohol on their breath
were always likely victims. They would even attack
a male kzin twice their size if the lives of kits were
at stake.

  "Reasonableness does not control female
emotions," explained their patriarch. "Have a good
night. You'll have to fold your ears against the kzin
at the end of the hall he growls and fights ghosts
in his sleep."

  A return to the Admiralty in the morning
produced puzzling results. The kzin clerk dismissed
Trainer-ofSlaves, and when Trainer politely
persisted, another kzin ducked out of an adjoining
office.

  "You are not qualified for the Fourth Fleet and
your rating application has been refused."

"I have these recommendations . . ."

  The huge red officer with yellow splotches in his
fur hissed. Trainer-of-Slaves immediately took the

102 Man,Kzin Wars IV

hint, saluted with a sharp claw-across-face, and
retreated.

  That evening Trainer and Ssis-Captam were
considering their other options at a trunkshuppen
off one of the side streets that led into the
Grunderplatz. There were no other kzin present
at the Mondschein. The waitress was clearly
terrified to serve them but she was brave in her
order-taking.

  "Guten Abend, ehrenvoll Helden," she trembled.
"Haben Sie gewahlt?" When they were slow to
reply, she suggested a popular bourbon with milk.

  "Ich . . . nehme eine . . . Coca Cola," sa d
Trainerof-Slaves, twisting his tongue around his
teeth with his best animal imitation.

  Ssis-Captain's remarks in the Hero's Tongue
were meowls and spits of derision and approval.
"The place smells like vatach-in-a-cage." He was
referring to the humid scent of furless fear. "Nice
little planet, Hr-r?" He nodded his mane at the
waitress while playfully punching Trainer. "I'll take
one of those to curry my backside in my European
castle." Then, he consulted his translator. "Ich
nehme einen Whiskey Kentucky mit Milch," he
ordered, before he returned to business.

  "You have some slandering enemies here in
Munchen so we shall go elsewhere which will lead
directly back to higher [airs." Ssis-Captain had an
invitation to the base at Gerning in the isolated
northern province of Skogarna. "Friend
Detector-Analyst is pleased with his post. The vast
woods are isolated both from man-beast traffic
and the arrogance of kzin patriarchs who are so
well fed with land that they guard their holdings
against the likes of us as if we were one-eyed
kzinrret bandits."

  Ssis-Captain rearranged his ears knowingly and
flared his nostrils to hint that what he knew about
the base was special. "Chuut-Riit established the
Gerning

THE SURVIVOR 103

station within months of his ascension as governor.
The officers there are all kzin who sided with him
in the struggle. Good contacts."

  As he leaned forward with more conspiratorial
details, Ssis-Captain s chair suddenly collapsed,
and milk-in-bourbon arced to slosh onto his mane
and vest. His massive head rose above the table
with a fanged grin. When he was fully erect, his
mane touching the fow ceiling, he snarled in the
direction of the pale bartender.

  The other patrons, who had been uneasy, were
now no longer even twitching.

  Their waitress calmly dried her hands, sauntered
to the door as if there was nothing more important
going on than quitting time then fled.

  Ah hero the giver rules the mind, thought Trainer-
of-Slaves, noticing both the man-beast behavior
and Ssis-Captain's rising rage. How much different
was rage than fear? He knew enough not to touch
Ssis for he could not hide his amusement, and too
much tail whacking would turn the rage against
himself. He appealed to the Captain's vanity as he,
too, rose, "We'll have to wash your vest right away
before the milk dries. Come." To the bartender he
raised his glass, careful not to smile. He wanted to
put that apprehensive creature at ease. "Zum
Wohl!" he said, proud of his growing facility with
animal grunts.

  Ssis-Captain did not come right away. He took
his rage out on the chair, taking the remnants of
its poor wooden frame apart with bare hands and
teeth as if it were a United Nations Warship.

             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

                 104
                  
THE SURVIVOR 105

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-Riit's
purposes.

  Detector-Analyst was a local kzin from a back-
ground 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-sherrek'? 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 cun

106 Man-Kzin Wars IV

ningto 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 Chout-Riit's
Logisffcal Preparaffon 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

THE SURVIVOR 107

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 kzinrret jokes, to who
had-just received a name, to the honor duel
between Electronic-SystemsUpkeep 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!

105 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  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 venter.

  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

THE SURVIVOR 109

haunches while he explained the social life of
petalpickers 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 domesffcaffon.

  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 napffme. '

"Not" The boy struggled.

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

  Kzinff 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

110 Mandarin IV

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 int" 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?
Chuot-Rut 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

THE SURVIVOR 111

of propitiation. He appeared to be very well con-
nected. 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 com-
ing 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 Rattekatzel"

112 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  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 deadl" 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

THE SURVIVOR 113

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."

             CHAPTER 15
         (2402 - 2403 A.D.)

 When the Fourth Fleet convoys began to
assemble, stripping Centaurian space of its slaves
and Heroes and warcraft, the Fortress Aarku
became a tomb smelling of the Jotoki pens
burrowed mto the rock. The trained slaves were
gone. The maintenance hangars were empty.

After wonderland, Aarku was a coffin.

  Trainer-of-Slaves suffered for another year at
Alpha Centauri B. He tried to keep his
contraband kzinrret happy, but she missed the
flirtations of the warriors who were on their way
to Man-sun and became moody and demanding.
She did not comprehend the war. She only knew
that she had been abandoned. She wanted
attention. She rubbed against Trainer while he
was trying to work. When he rebuffed her, she
took to stalking his personal Jotoki and actually
killed one of his trainees. When Long-Reach
discretely approached his master for help, they
decided to store her away in a hibernation Colin
and only bring her out when Trainer felt the
craving.

                 114
                  
THE SURVIVOR 115

  Months after the Fourth Fleet was gone,
remnants of the Third Fleet began to arrive at
Alpha Centauri. Hangers at Aarku filled.
Polarizers improperly maintained for a decade
needed a fully stripped overhaul, but more than
that there was much old battle damage too drastic
to have been repaired in transit.

  Trainer-of-Slaves personally crawled through the
last of the stragglers. Eight survivors out of a crew
of forty had brought it home, three of them dying
of injuries en route. Inspection showed that The
Vindictive Memory had taken a near fatal internal
explosion. The ship's command sector had been
pierced in three places by x-ray bolts. Space
desiccated kzin were still trapped in one
compartment. In the main gunnery turret three
carbonised kzin lay melded to their weapons. The
ship was not salvageable.

  It was enough to chill the liver. Trainer-of-Slaves
was reminded that he was afraid of death. How
had he let Ssis-Captain mesmerise him with dreams
of valor?

  Orders relieving him of his duties at Aarku came
as an electric surprise.

  Some young son of a noble name had annoyed
Chunt-Riit and was being given the Aarku
assignment as penance. Even though Trainer was
to be allowed three personal slaves, the new post
didn't look appetizing the commission involved a
permanent position, not on Wunderland or Tiamat,
but in deep space. Another dead-end for a
coward? Yet the commission script bore the seal of
the Fifth Fleet.

  The tiny ship that brought him out, all gravitic
drive and no armor or armament, was called a
Zlrirgor after a long-legged browser of Kzin that
could run and dodge skillfully through brush and
hills but had no other defense against attack. They
were two light-days out, a six day trip by Z;tirgor at
70 Kzin gravities of acceleration with a turn-around
velocity a third that of

116 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

light. Alpha Centauri had been reduced from suns
to a coruscant pair of stars in Andromeda.

  They were driRing in to dock. By starshine the
great hull of the communications warship was
dwarfed by its extended antenna. The
transmission/reception fabric, shimmering in the
palest of rainbow colors, dominated the heavens.
From a distance there were no clues as to its
size binocular vision is erased by space.

  This great antenna faced Man-sun, now
brilliantly overlaying the constellation that the
man-beasts called Cassiopeia and the kzin called
God's Fang Drinking at the River pf Heaven. The
Father-sun, appropriately, lay in the constellation
of the Dominant Warrior that, to monkeys, was not
a warrior but represented a feroc~ous bear.

  Strange, thought Trainer-of-Slaves, how little
the constellations varied over the whole of
Patriarchal Space. The brightest stars were too
distant to move. The stars of God's Fang were all
giants, the brightest a red giant, the others,
massive white giants, furious forges of the heavy
metals.

  They were met in the shuttle bay by an
efficiently formal Master-Sergeant who recognised
Trainer-ofSlaves by the slaves he brought with
him. "GrrafHromfi will see you immediatefy.
Lesser-Sergeant will settle your slaves. Welcome
aboard." Trainer was already missing his kzinrret.
He'd had to sell her on the sleight-of-paw market,
too quickly to get a good pnce.

  The warship was maintaining a light artificial
gravity, just enough to settle dust and Tost
objects. They glided through the passageways
effortlessly. It wasat much different from Fortress
Aarku. During the journey Trainer-of-Slaves
deduced that Grraf-Hromfi ran a disciplined
ship the smell of it was remarkably clean.

At the Command Center, the Sergeant snapped
off

THE SURVIVOR 117

an alert ripping-salute. He was dismissed.
Trainer-ofSlaves imitated with his snappiest
claws-across-face and Grraf-Hromfi replied with a
salute that wouldn't have taken the hide off a kit's
tail. He wore a soft vest over his robe that he must
have repaired himself, but he smelled like a hard
task-master.

  "I don't think that on the Sherrek's Ear we can
provide you with the kind of feral life to which you
have become accustomed; nevertheless, we do have
interesting duties. You haven't smuggled aboard a
kzinrret, have you?"

"No, Sire!"

  "I thought that I'd let you know that we don't
tolerate such irregularities here."

"Of course, Sire!"

  "I've been reviewing your record,
Eater-of-Grass." He returned his heavy duty
data-goggles to his eyes which didn't prevent him
from seeing, through the data, the sudden stiffness
in Trainer-of-Slaves posture or the way ears
folded against skull or the layback of the fur on
cheeks. "Yes, youngling, I know everything. At
ease!"

  "My cowardice has shamed me, Dominant One!
I sought to restore my honor by volunteering for
the Fourth Fleet."

  "I assume that you believe the Fourth Fleet's
mission would be more successful with cowards in
key positions?"

"No, Sire!"

  "I also have here, printed across your face at the
moment, a report on a recent conversation of
yours. You were speculating that old enemies from
Hssin sabotaged your efforts to join the Fourth
Fleet by telling stories about your legendary
cowardice."

  Trainer thought frantically for a moment,
scanning his memories. He damned his loose
mouth. "I admit to that conversation, Sire."

118 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "That's hardly necessary since I have an audio
recording of it. The stories are true; you do have
enemies, as my files will testify. They have made
depositions unflattering to your bravery, but those
reports were filed on Hssin. In the meantime
those enemies you cherish so close to your liver,
have forgotten you. In their memory you have
impugned the efforts of those who sought to grant
your self-seeking application to join the Blood of
Heroes. Your application was accepted at all
levels, even by those who disapproved of you. The
'enemy' you are so bitter about is ChuutRut
himself.'

"Then I abase myself"

  "Shall I read to you what you said about this
enemy? I particularly liked the one about him
speaking with his anus and beshitting with his
mouth."

'I have made a grievous errorl"

  "Beshitted with your mouth, did you? Hr-r, but
you will be sufficiently punished. You have come
under my command by the orders of Chout-Rut.
That is punishment enough for any sin. I make
Heroes out of kits. It is easier on me if you do all
the work."

  "I volunteer immediately for any duty you may
assign mel"

  "Excellent." Grraf-Hromfi pulled an antique
flintspark pistol from a belt holster, and raised the
goggles to his forehead, out of the way. "I prefer
this to a wtsai knife," he said wryly. "It gives me
several octenturies over my opponents. That
makes me feel modern." Since the pistol could fire
only one musket ball at a time, it had
skull-cracking knobs on the barrel so that it could
be used as a club. "Disassemble and polish my
weapon while we talk." He handed Trainer-
of-Slaves a polishing kit.

"Yes, Sirel"

  "shout-Rut has been building two fleets for the
last three years, not one. The Fourth Fleet was a
full

THE SURVIVOR 119

attack unit. The Fifth Fleet, to which you are now
an honored member by the personal order of
Chuut-Rut, was conceived of as an elite seed. With
the launching of the Fourth Fleet, the seed is being
planted. The Fifth Fleet is to grow into a fully
operational attack force assimilating warriors and
warships only as fast as they can learn its strict
code. It will not be a loose confederation like the
Fourth Fleet..Any breaks in discipline will not be
tolerated."

  "Already I feel the juices of obedience in my
liver, Dominant One!"

"Do you have questions?"

  "Will we see action, Wise One? Or are we just a
Fourth Fleet backup?" For a moment, Trainer-of-
Slaves stopped his vigorous polishing of the
ceremonial pistol.

  "Let's take an example. Your brazen friend, Ssis-
Captain, takes what he wants and does what he
wants. Once he has an idea in his head, he acts. If
his ears are tickled, he acts. His liver stops at
nothing. If it took his fancy to put a kzinrret in
command of his bridge, there she'd be pacing
about and purring!"

  The ears of Trainer-of-Slaves had to be
consciously immobilised as he polished. He was
imagining their kzinrret in command of the Blood
of Heroes.

"Am I not right about your friend?"

"Hr-r, absolutely!"

  "Yes. And he has never commanded a ship in
battle. He sees an enemy position and he takes it,
right?"

  "The Blood of Heroes has a valiant crew. They
are totally loyal to Ssis-Captain."

  "What will his battle-lifetime be? An octal-day?
Two if he's lucky! Then again he may have no
more than the time to see a monkey before he is
dead and his ship, cooked meat. Chuut-Riit has
assigned all such commanders to the Fourth Fleet.
If they survive he may be able to teach them
something. They may even

120 Man-Kzin Wars IV

kill a few monkeys. Perhaps not even that. What
have the first three fleets of you
outworldbarbarians accomplished, you screaming
berserkers of Hssin, you borderland ragpickers?
Bloody nothingI"

  Grraf-Hromfi was now stirred up enough to
clutch his planning-surface. "Hr-r, perhaps you
wild barbarians have been teaching the monkeys
military strategy in your own cunning way, one
fleet at a time, never making the problems harder
than a monkey can solve? The next thing we
know, you Imperial-border scavengers will be
hiring man-beasts to do your fighting. Why waste
the talents you have taught them? Put them in
command of your warships!"

"Sir, you speak of my father, not me."

"Hr-r, and you are different?"

  "I admire firearms. This is a fine pistol, Sire. I
believe I'm ready to reassemble it."

  "Picked it up on W'kkai. That's where
Chout-Riit found me. We were both bored and
listening to rumors in the marketplace to see if we
couldn't sniff up some action. I had just bought
the pistol from an old warrior who needed the
good. Chunt wanted the pistol, too, being a
collector of pre-space weapons. He swears that he
added me to his retinue so that he can keep track
of this pistol. Notice the mark of Kai, a famous
forger for the Ruts.

  "The Fourth Fleet will have glory with such a
great weapons collector as Chuut-Riit.

  "You are clawing for fish? The flattery does not
disguise your question. Let me be blunt since my
position allows it. Chunt-Riit is not the leader of
the Fourth Fleet. He is here, mere light-days
away, sitting in a palace on Wunderland. You can
have no idea of the difficulties he has had in
trying to shape Fourth Fleet discipline. Every
border Hero thinks of himself as Heaven's
Admiral ripe to pillage the wealth of the

THE SURVIVOR 121

unexplored frontier. The Fourth Fleet is a fleet of
admirals!"

  Hromfi was raving again. "And let me tell you
something else, youngling. It will be Chunt-Riit
who will be taking the Fifth Fleet to Man-sun as
his personal armada. That's where his lies. But we
won't be stalking that path of victory until he is
certain that both you and I are ready. I am ready;
you are not."

  "I am instantly ready to take any assignmentI"
Eagerness flamed.

  "Hr-r, now. Finish the pistol first. I keep even
the flint ready to spark, so test that." He checked
the weapon, then returned it to Trainer-of-Slaves.
"It must have been a cramped journey in the
Z/;irgor. Take some rest. Then report to
Duty-Sergeant at lights-on. We'll have time to talk
again. What else to do but exercise the Hero's
Tongue? We have heaven above and stars below
and years of time. An interstellar warrior's main
duty is to wait."

"Have I been dismissed, Grraf-Hromfi, Sire?"

  "Not on this ship. Your duties never cease. You
will, of course, take charge of maintenance
immediately. But there will be many other tasks
you will have to learn besides the polishing of
pistols. Correct communication protocols. How one
coordinates an interstellar war. And we have
fighter craft out here with the Sherrek's Ear. You
wily learn how to defend a deep space base such as
ours. Coextensively you will be learning sound
military strategy. To cudgel that into your Hssin
head, you will be teaching what I teach you, in
turn, to my sons, a thankless and trying task, alas,
for which I need help."

"Is that all, Sire?"

  "I detect a note of sarcasm in your hisses. No,
that is not all. That is the beginning."

"I look forward to your regime. In the end I shall

122 Man-Kzin Wars IV

become convinced that I am one of Heaven's
Admirals, a worthy goal for a Hssin barbarian."

"Claw your face and begone Eater-of-Grass."

  Trainer-of-Slaves took no notice of the insult
for Grraf-Hromfi had spoken it with a purr.
What could one's liver make of it all? He was
terrified of this old kzin battle-ax but he
wasn't afraid of him.

             CEIAPIER 16
          (2403~2404 A.D.)

  The "unclawed," as the new ratings were called,
had to attend an irregular seminar given by
GrrafHromfi. The texts, the simulations, the work
sheets, the drills were based on Chuut-Riit's
Military Comprehendium, the complete collection
of his works. The lectures, however, were pure
Grraf-Hromfi. They were all based on the
exhortation: "Think before you leap!" He had a
thousand ways of drubbing that message home as
if he despaired of it being received.

  Sometimes he used it to deliver a warning. The
day he received Chuut-Riit's final report on the
Third Fleet, he paced his students through that
defeat, what was known of it.

  On the screen he pointed, here, where
Kgiss-Colonel had been left without
reinforcements because the impetuous Warriors
of the Right Arm had found their own irresistible
target. The pointer moved to the details of the
ancillary battle. Hindsight showed that the two
monkey torchships had been both a decoy and a
trap for valiant and overeager Heroes.

                 123
                  
124 Man-Kxin Wars IV

  Grraf-Hromfi called other engagements to the
screen. Ordnance had arrived at the battle of
Ceres when there were no longer any functioning
warships to be supplied. Since the warships were
already derelict, no warriors rallied to defend the
late-arriving kzin freighters. It was a recipe for
massacre.

  Further sunward, against orders, the Second
Maintenance group had found, and
enthusiastically attacked, a target of opportunity.
They were not equipped to blitz a major laser
battery and were so crippled by the attempt that
they lost the capacity to refit damaged
Scream-of-Vengeance fighters their appointed
assignment. Without fighter cover, the Vic-
tory-at-Swordheak's-Nebula was destroyed by a sui-
cidal squadron of Darts.

  "Think before you leap," Grraf-Hromfi
admonished the Heroes who had died in those
battles. His was the funeral voice of a father
reprimanding the corpse of an arrogant son.

  Trainer-of-Slaves had been all too willing to
leap aboard the Fourth Fleet. He recalled the
carbonized Gunners of the Third. Whatever flesh
hadn't been burned had been mummified by space
during the desperate journey home. The images
were vivid. Fangs grinning through fried face. The
black ash of fur along a pair of legs. Yet each of
those Gunners must have had his ambitions of
liveried slaves, of estates on the pampas of
Central France or on the great steppes of
England. For the first time Trainer-of-Slaves felt
a real contentment with his own simple, unexotic
servants.

  And sometimes, when he was in a bad mood,
GrrafHromfi used the practical arts to illustrate
his motto.

  With gloved claws, he took his seminar group
into the tournament ring. None of the young kzin
could touch him while the cameras were active.
He always drew them into a {atal move and then
stopped the fight for review. Full-sized
slow-motion bolos of the

THE SURVIVOR 12S

contest flickered in the ring. The master's pointer
jabbed at the swimming image of his last opponent
with caustic comment.

  "By launching his assault from here, he gave me
too much time to react. Look at my feet
anticipating. He can't change his trajectory. Here
your eyes on my feet I'm braced for the attack
and" the pointer whipped upward "see my arm
coming to grab his wrist? There, I've got it, and all
I do is flick him around his axis just enough so that
his own feet trip him when they touch the ground.
Three seconds later he is dead." Grraf-Hromfi
cuffed the young loser while the youth's holo image
leisurely impacted the mat. "See? Think before you
leap! Develop your brains beyond the level of a
sthondat ganglion!"

  And sometimes Grraf-Hromfi used the dry
rhetoric of formula to hammer home his motto.

  The Sherreks Ear was the nucleus of the Third
Black Pride that was to go out with the Fifth Fleet.
What was a Black Pride? Black was space's
invisible colon Grraf-Hromfi scratched his nose
with a claw. That was a sure sign that he was going
to hold their ears for hours explaining, in detail,
how every actionof-the-moment had a future
consequence. Yes, he would repeat it again and
again. Warriors who won battles could actually
smell consequences, could read the spoor of distant
consequence in current events.

  What startled Trainer-of-Slaves was the depth of
Chout-Rint's long-term planning. Two
stripped-down and experimental Black Prides of
the Fifth Fleet had preceded the Fourth Fleet to
Man-sun. They would stand in place to assess the
coming battles from two positions at distances far
greater than the aphelion of Neptune. If the latest
armada met with valorous defeat they alone would
remain, undetectable, monitoring the
electromagnetic fetor of man's activities, photo

126 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

graphing the solar planets, mapping the asteroids,
waiting . . . brooding the ultimate avenging strike.

  Kzin equipment was competent to find large
defensive systems. Grraf-Hromfi showed his
students what the Sherrek's Ear could do from
such a distance. He had photographs of ships
docking at Tiamat in the Serpent's Swarm. He
showed them street maps of Munchen, fuzzy but
readable by a trained hunter. He played for them
an overlay composite of the fusion power station
at Wunderland's Wachsamkeit, done in twenty
frequencies from gamma to ELF.

Think before you leap.

  Before the Fifth Fleet attacked, five full-strength
Black Prides would be girding Man-sun at
distances too great to be observed without already
knowing their location, unreachable by torchship
even if detected  each a fallback and resupply
base for a sustained operation, each a spoor
gathering center.

  Grraf-Hromfi outlined two main flaws in the
previous conquest attempts (1) local logistics
dependent upon pillaging the fruits of the
battlefield, and (2) long-distance logistical support
which was nonexistent.

  The Black Prides were designed to serve local
logistic needs. A Black Pride was to comprise (1)
a communication ship such as the Sherrek's Ear,
(2) for defence, a Carrier and its litter of
Scream-of-Vengeance fighters and Ztirgors, (3) a
combination manufacturing ship and floating
drydock which could tool up for and build any
spare part within hours, (4) four fast ships to mine
the comets, (5) a warehouse, and (6) a hospital
ship. The antenna was to be assembled by
replicating robots after arrival. Prefabricated and
expendable rest-and-exercise modules were to be
built in the case of a protracted battle.

  Long-distance logistic support was to come from
Alpha Centauri. For a full six years Wunderland
and the factories of the Serpent's Swarm would be
launch

THE SURVPVOR 127

ingamonthly convoy of supplies and hibernating
warriors, divertible either for battle or occupation
use.

  But talk and diagrams never really reached the
liver of a kzin warrior who had survived the
quarrels of youth. Sometimes, to teach what he had
to teach, Grraf-Hromfi called in a student to assign
special duty. Then he would repeat his motto, sotto
voce, flicking his tale leisurely. There was always a
trap in such duty, some hidden factor to waylay the
over-hasty. Doing was learning. A brush with death
stimulated thinking.

  Grraf-Hromfi turned over the education of his
sons to Trainer-of-Slaves. The sons learned little.
Trainer learned how to anticipate lethal pranks. He
even had to kill one of the fiends. The Conquest
Commander did not reprimand him for that. It was
the first trophy he had ever earned for his belt.

  Over the next few years the primary duty of
Trainer-of-Slaves remained to train Jotoki for
Pride maintenance as the group built up to
strength. Pretransient Jotoki were shipped out to
him from Fortress Aarku. He took each one of
them through their parent fixation, and when they
were trustworthy, he introduced them to the
simulators.

  It was difficult to remain aloof from his
creatures. He couldn't talk to them about their
history or about military strategy, but they were so
curious that they often tricked him into
conversations he didn't know he was having. One
of his charges he found skittering jerkily across a
forbidden corridor on his second elbows; a
shoulder eye was following an insect with great
puzzlement.

  Another eye caught the appearance of Trainer.
"Master. What is?"

  "An insect. Probably from Wunderland, and won-
dering how it got here."

"Alive or machine?"

"It's organic, like you or me."

128 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  That took Trainer-of-Slaves into a discussion of
the differences between the reproductive of life
and automated factory production..

  His Jotok charge wanted to know if machines
were "made up" in the imagination.

"Of course."

"By us?" He meant intelligent life, including
kzinti.

"Of course!"

  The Jotok scratched his undermouth and
wondered about the mind that had made up the
"assembly book" for kzin.

  They had to retire to the arboretum to handle
that one, Trainer-of-Slaves gently bringing the
virescent insect with him. Mellow-Yellow gave his
lecture on evolution to a rapt audience.

"How did I evolve?"

And there they were, right up against Jotok
history.

  One time when he was playing cards with Long-
Reach they were discussing the marvelous estate
they would have together after the conquest of
Man-home. Long-Reach asked him about the
forests of Earth.

  "How different could they be from the forests in
Hssin?" countered Trainer, looking through his
hand for the ace of clubs.

"Will the Conquest burn them to charcoal?"

  And there they were, right up against the
subject of military strategy. Conversation was
spherical no matter whether one headed north,
south, east, or west to avoid a subject, one always
navigated right into it.

               CHAPTER
         (2404 - 2409 A.D.)

  Over the years Grraf-Hromfi honed his force,
expanded it. The shipyards of the Serpent's
Swarm were busy. Gradually, he acquired the
warcraft he needed to bring the Third Black Pride
up to strength. He ran the Pride as if it were
actually in place above Man-sun. Perhaps his
Heroes spied on the Wunderland Admiralty for
fun, but they listened to the fading broadcasts of
the Fourth Fleet with disciplined seriousness.

  Once they received their floating drydock, the
duties of Trainer-of-Slaves multiplied.
Grraf-Hromfi did not trust the monkey
workmanship of any Alpha Centauri-built ship or
weapons system. He had his maintenance staff
check everything, sometimes rebuilding to tighter
specifications. It was exhausting work for Trainer.
By necessity he learned the customs of the naval
architect. Eventually he just gave up, found ways
to delay the overhauling and trained more
Jotoki to do the work for him.

At other times there was no real activity at all.
He

                 129
                  
130 Man-Kzin Wars IV

filed reports and played cards. He sniffed for
trouble. During one of those lulls he learned to
fly a Screamof-Vengeance fighter. That was safer
than dreaming about Grraf-Hromfi's harem.
Dreams about kzinrretti tended to fill idle
moments. Sometimes he was back in the
Chiirr-Nig household on Hssin, in the study, with
his mother's loyal head in his lap, scratching her
forehead. He regretted having to sell his
sex-demon, Jriingh.

  It was natural for a kzinto want a household.
But Trainer couldn't understand why he wanted
sons, not after he'd had to teach the Terrible-Sons
of Hromfi. Nor was it moral for a coward to pass
on his traits to sons who would disgrace the
Patriarchy. Nevertheless he wanted sons. He
supposed that his real sons were the Jotoki he
took on during their fixation phase.

  Sons challenged their fathers to physical
combat. His many Jotoki "sons" wore him out by
a different kind of challenge. The curiosity of a
pestering Jotok in transition demanded that
Trainer keep learning. It wasn't that he needed to
learn. It wasn't that he was curious. He never
asked a question whose answer didn't have a
solidly rank smell. But he hated not to have a
ready retort when a slave asked a stupid question
like, "What is the minimum size of the universe?"
The answer to a question like that not only didn't
have a smell it couldn't even be seen or heard.

  Long-Reach started it all by telling four of his
young apprentice polarizer mechanics about the
black dwarf R'hshssira. It would collapse forever
without fusing its hydrogen because it only had
seven-eighths of the mass needed for ignition. But
R'hshssira would still have a finite radius when
there was no longer any radiation pressure
pushing out from within.

  The four youthful Jotoki had been learning
gravity polarizer mechanics together under the
supervision of Long-Reach and Creepy. That was
twenty freshly curi

THE SURVIVOR 131

ousbrains in concert in teams of five-to-a-body. To
rebuild and tune a polarizer one did not need to
master unified field theory, but such practicall
constraints never appealed to an eager transient.

  The "terrible four" roughed out the calculation
that gave them the minimum diameter of a white
dwarf star as a function of its mass. They didn't do
nova mechanics that was beyond their youthful
abilities, but they did work out the mass range and
size at which neutron stars existed. For each mass
they could calculate a number for the diameter of
the neutron star.

  Masses large enough to collapse behind a light
barrier were more difficult. Before those
calculations were done, one of their brains infected
all the others with the burningly important
question, "If the whole universe collapsed, what
would be its minimum diameter?"

  Mellow-Yellow tried to give them a practical
kzin answer. "The universe is expanding."

  But all four Jotoki (twenty voices) wouldn't let
him get away with that. Tuning polarisers was
practical. This was recreation. What if the universe
was contracting?

  Data-link texts on gravity shouldn't be allowed.
Worse, gravity polarizers were constructed all too
elegantly. They should have flashing lights and be
built along the lines of a W'kkai wooden puzzle.
Then his Jotoh would be kept too busy to go off
onto one of their wild chases.

  Alast Let it slip that the polarizer worked with
negative space curvature and immediately they
were delving into the tensor equations. From there
insanity was only questions away. What is the
difference between negative and positive
curvature? Since positive curvature is
common and that means everything attracts
everything else why isn't the universe imploding?

132 Mandolin IV

When will it start to implode? If the universe
imploded, how small would it get? Tell us,
MellowYellow!

  Thank the Fanged God that Long-Reach and
Creepy and Joker had outgrown such questions.
Nevertheless, Trainer-of-Slaves gave up an
interesting card game to examine the matter. His
data-link surprised him. It asked him to rephrase
his inquiry several times, then produced the
answer which had been known for some
octal-squared generations. It was a theorem
named after Stkaa-Mathematician-to-S'Rawl.

  Stkaa, of course, was one of those kzin who
wrote the commas and dots of the Hero's Tongue
in the blood of martyrs. For the return price of an
equal amount of blood, he made himself clear.
On the datalink screen Trainer had to run the
theorem's equations with different boundary
values. He had to call up the definitions of words
he'd never seen sometimes because unified field
theory was an arcane subject with its own hisses
and snarls, and sometimes just because the
language had mutated since the time of Stkaa. As
often as not the definitions required that he run
even more equations before he could make sense
of the definition.

Three days later . . .

  It was an easy enough theorem to declare. "A
universe cannot contract beyond its lowest state of
information." But it required a hackles-raising use
of the uncertainty principle to find the
temperature at which every particle in the
contracting universe had an equal probability of
being anywhere in the fireball the required lowest
state. But once you did that: outpopped the
minimum radius. Very neat.

  Trainer-of-Slaves dutifully lectured his four
"sons." He set up the unified field equations. He
contracted to the essentials. He pulled a trick out
of his ears

-              THE SURVIVOR 133

that allowed him to apply the uncertainty principle to
eliminate all the singularities.

  If you knew the velocity of a particle you didn't know
its position. Was it still approaching the central point
or had it already passed through? If you fixed the
position of a particle you no longer knew its velocity.
Was it inward or outward bound? All information
about whether the universe was contracting or
expanding had been lost.

  Prestol A minimum radius for the universe. (Thanks
to Stkaa-Mathematician-to-S'Rawl, but don't tell them
that.)

  You knew you had the attention of a Jotok when
three eyes were focused on you when you com-
manded all five eyes you were a sensation. Big-
Undermouth skittered off to bring him some squealing
Grashi-burrowers in a bowl, which he munched while
other arms curried his fur. Why couldn't kzin sons be
like this?

  He was beginning to understand his success as a
Jotok trainer. At the onset of intelligence a Jotok
bonded to anything that gave the basic verbal cues.
He'd seen a machine-bonded-Jo/ok cripple its mind
trying to be the son of a machine. The bonding
moment was critical but it wasn't enough. The Jotok
was looking for a father, and you had to be a father if
you wanted a reliable Jotok slave.

  This was a confusing concept for Trainer-of-Slaves.
He couldn't be a real father to his Jotoki because he
couldn't give them combat training. They were herbi-
vores, not Heroes. Only a father who was a coward
would sire sons who were unable to fight. (Did Trainer
still remember the murder of Puller-of-Noses? Perhaps.
As an inexplicable aberration.)

  Trainer-of-Slaves liked his isolation, mostly because
it kept him out of fights. He had to maintain a delicate
balance between dueling and not dueling. He pre

134 Man-Kzin Wars IV

ferredtobe obsequious older warriors
appreciated subservience because it allowed them
to delegate duffes but younger Heroes tended to
mark a deferential kzin as potential prey.

  To keep that nuisance at bay he had to
maintain a reputation in the tournament ring.
That he was GrrafHromfi's favorite opponent was
enormously useful to him. The proud warriors of
the Third Black Pride, awed by their
Commandant, didn't see that Hromfi would never
have hurt or humiliate Trainer, that the old
warrior was only interested in providing an able
disciplinarian for his sons. He was training
Trainer-ofSlaves as proxy to cull his sons, a
fatherly duty for which he fad no liver.

  A warrior who smelled Trainer's fear was
restrained by the ear of the Commandant's son he
wore on his belt, and by the many scars Trainer
carried on his arm and body from contests with
those same sons. The scars were a badge of sorts
which Trainer appreciated, however painful had
been their healing, because they warned others to
keep their irritation in check.

  Nevertheless, despite his growing skill as a
combatant, he preferred his isolation. In the old
days he would have hunted the savannas of
Kzin-home alone.

             CEIAPTER 18
          (2410~2413 A.D.)

  Isolation be complete within a military machine,
no matter how remote the posting.. Trainer-
of-Slaves might hide behind his work, but his
superiors always found him because they needed
him. In ffme, Chunt-Rut came out for an
inspection. The Black Prides were the bones of his
Fifth Fleet, and he liked to keep his tail around
developments. While his officers were with him in
the maintenance hold of the Pride's floating
drydock, the Nesting-S7ashtooth-Bitch, and looking
out over a dismantled Scream-of-Vengeance from
a catwalk, Chuut-Riit turned to Trainerof-Slaves.

"I recall our conversation at that hunt on Hssin."

  "Sire, I was young then, of shrunken liver and
rattle-brain."

  "But you showed the talents of a fine captain, a
gift for feint and kill," Chuut-Rut replied
diplomatically.. "Let me refresh your memory
about the topic which intrigued me. You had a
theory that male humans might be domesticated
through their biochemistry. I

                 135
                  
136 Mun-K~ir' Wars IV

recollect that you talked about a trigger to control
the pace of their learning, then a block to freeze
that plasticity once they had attained the desired
slave behaviors."

  "Sire, I have speculated thus but never with
any experimental animals upon which I could test
my ideas. Mental physiology can take strange
twists. The turns cannot be followed without
sniffing the trail. Nor can the males be
domesticated without providing the proper kind of
breeding female."

  "I have a partial-name for you if you succeed in
this venture."

"Sire!"

  "Too many of our humans go feral. I suspect
that on Earth, with its very large population, the
problem will be worse. Hunting those humans
who can't adapt to slavery is a limited solution.
The feral human is covert and has the ability to
pose as a slave. When he strikes he can be deadly.
There was a recent massacre of kzinrretti and
their kits. It reminded me of your proposal. If you
have the time to pursue the subject I can send
you all the experimental animals you can use. I
should like to take such knowledge with the Fifth
Fleet.

"I am eager to accept!"

"You have the space out here?"

"I can set up feeding cages."

  Trainer-of-Slaves had a wall of clean cages
erected in a munitions area that was
unused they were not on a war mission yet. The
cages were small by kzin standards but quite
adequate for a man-beast who wished to stand
erect or lie down, and more than adequate for
children. When the first group of experimental
animals arrived, he established a fixed regime.
They received five-eighths of the water and food
they needed simply for keeping their cages clean.
The

THE SURVIVOR 137

remaining rations were given for appropriate
cooperation. No other pressure was placed on the
animals for refusal to cooperate.

They were very noisy.

  Included with the first shipment was the best
human-tech autodoc that Chuut-Rut's officers had
been able to locate, complete with instructions in
German, English, and Japanese. Its computer was
essentially a full compendium of human
biochemistry, though not in an easily decipherable
form. The autodoc had been supplied so that he
could recycle animals damaged in experiments.

  First he tackled the autodoc's exotic computer
and set up a program to translate its records of
human biochemistry into kzin-symbolics so that
they could be transferred to his data-link and
integrated with the generalized model of all known
organic alien brains. He was amazed to recognize
one of the human neuro-transmitters as similar to
a kzin neurotransmitter. Its peculiar chemical form
gave him a clue as to why kzin reflexes were so
much faster than human reflexes.

  Within weeks Trainer-of-Slaves had his first
experiments running. Long-Reach was proving to
be a talented surgical student. His initial try at
removing the top of a male's skull had provoked
massive hemorrhaging a mistake that was being
repaired in the autodoc. Long-Reach's second
attempt was a success. His animal was restrained in
a comfortable chair, the dome of her cranial bone
sliced off at the top to expose the brain, her human
head cramped rigidly to prevent her from hurting
herself

  Trainer had upped the room temperature in
deference to the female's furless skin. He had
tattooed a dots and comma identification on her
arm so that he wouldn't mix her up with the other
animals. Delicate probes were already embedded in
her brain, measur

138 Man-Kzin Wars IV

ingtransmitter chemical activity, mapping the
neural circuits involved in sensory input,
monitoring blood flow, measuring neural activity
changes as basic emotions were chemically
switched on and off. He needed to get a paws-on
feel for the brain structures he had extracted from
the autodoc.

  But he hovered around his experiment
nervously. He didn't want her to die of shock
while he was still so unsure of the human
performance envelope. He had special catfish ice
cream to give her when the data gathering was
over in appreciation for her discomfort.

  In time he would learn how to erase her
inquiring mind while retaining her ability to bear
children and perform her sexual functions. He
wasn't yet quite sure what would be the best use
for the males. If he was to domesticate them as
work animals, he would need a different approach
than if they were to be domesticated for food.

  Thus the years went by uneventfully.
Experiments on slaves. Biochemistry studies.
Neural map deciphering. Polarizer maintenance.
A bit of fighter acrobaffcs in exchange for a fast
repair job. Another lethal fight with one of
Hromfi's sons; another ear for his belt. More
lectures on strategy. An embarrassing incident
with one of Hromfi's coy daughters, fortunately in
the dark. Gunnery practice. More Jotoki to train.
More questions to answer. Another round of brain
experiments.

  His most productive line of research came after
he deciphered the autodoc records which gave
him the switching codes that horned neural
growth on and off. He found it useful to know
under what conditions human neurons could be
made to reproduce or to bud-off new neurons. It
fascinated him when he found that he could cause
dendritic sprouting.

That was only one of the enthusiasms for which
his

THE SURVIVOR 139

kzin impatience got him into trouble. He was
wildly hoping to astonish his peers by fabricating a
genius slave- but when he increased the number of
neural connections in a man-male's brain by an
order of ma~-nitude he succeeded merely in
killing off his animal. Depressing.

  Occasionally excitement broke through the
drudgery of incremental scientific advance.
Yiao-Captain visited, his fervor so persuasive that
the Pride actually moved their great antenna forty
degrees away from Man-sun to observe some sort
of freak gamma source.

  The wonder never lasted. Always they returned
to the monotony. Yes, he was having solid if
exasperatingly slow success with his
experiments but the work was so tedious! Yes, he
was getting so expert that he could recycle most of
his man-animals through many brain operations
before they died but the finicky detail work
constantly left him on the edge of rage. He wasn't
sure that he could have gone through it all if it
wasn't for Chuut-Rint's promise of a name. Thank
the Fanged God for the high spots that broke the
ennui.

  There was that second vacation on Wunderland
when he was able to set up steady arrangements to
restock his cages from an orphanage he couldn't
just pirate experimental animals out of the war
factories without the risk of a duel with some
touchy kzin manager. Criminals and political
prisoners were too much in demand for the hunts.

  His Jotoki kept his mind busy. Sometimes it was
a racy card game. One of his Jotok discovered a
mathematical theorem that was not in any
data-link. Another of his slaves did an excellent
project on the biochemistry of pain-accelerated
learning in humans. That cleared up a whole lot of
puzzling questions about human brain function. He
didn't know how he would have survived if his
incurably curious Jotoki weren't

140 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

taking so much of the load off his mind.
Sometimes all he had to do was ask a question,
and one of his Jotoki would experiment with an
orphan and come up with the answer. They had
more patience than a kzin.

  Trainer-of-Slaves knew he had been with the
Third Black Pride for too long when their
antenna began to receive news of the gigantic
battles in the Man-system. He had been at this
post almost ten years. The battles that were
juicing up Wunderkzin livers were themselves
more than four years dead. Of course, with
light-speed messages it never seemed that way. If
a space battle lasted a month, it still took a month
to play out four years after the fact.

  The Fourth and Fifth Black Prides were
stationed up ahead, listening, too. The Third
Black Pride was behind Alpha Centauri as the last
backup. The Prides frantically compared
messages, filling in the transmission gaps, but they
were all light-days apart, and it took days for the
final compilation to be authenticated by the
communications officers.

  None of the news surprised Grraf-Hromfi.
Stoically he repressed his rage. But
Trainer-of-Slaves was surprised.

  The Blood of Heroes was destroyed on the
eleventh day. Vaporized. Trainer, tired from
following every new bulletin, was stunned by the
heroic death of his best friend. Four years ago.
His ancestors were whispering. It was as if he had
been living four unearned years. I'm a ghost, he
thought, but that was silly. He felt pathos. Then
the kzin anger took him. He wanted to fight, and
there was no one to fight. He wanted monkey
ears on his belt. But they had Ssis-Captain's ears
on their belt.

  Something about these humans that he did not
understand. He went to his cages in a foul mood.

  "Hey, Dr. Moreau," jeered a female with long
black hair, "when do you sew on my wolfs head?"

"Svelda! Clean up your cage!" he snarled with his

THE SURVIVOR 141

best animal pronunciation. It was just a matter of
feeding the suction nozzle.

"You come any closer and you get shit in your fur!"

  His mouth was twitching over his fangs. "Be
careful. I'm in a vile mood."

  "That's news to me? What do I care? What have
I got to lose? Kill me!"

  He purred to disguise his ire. "I'll give you ice
cream if you clean up your cage."

  She was weeping. "You've mucked around in my
brain so often I can't think straight. Ice creaml Do
you understand anything? Open the cage door and
I'll kill you. Do you know what happens to a
woman when you cut up her brain? All the
emotions come out! She loses control. She
becomes an animal." She held onto the bars and
snarled at him, gnashing her teeth.

  The orphan children in the adjoining cages
began to wail. They were so much easier to
manage than these political ferals.

  So another failure; she was still capable of con-
nected reason and the only obvious result of the
experiment had been to produce a state of
constant, poorly controlled rage. These
man-females clung to their reason even after
drastic surgery. And when he was able to delete
their intelligence they showed grave, and
sometimes startlingly weird behavior deficits.

  Once he had tried to eliminate curiosity and had
produced instead an idiot who compulsively asked
questions with no interest at all in the answers.
Another experiment in intelligence reduction had
produced a perfectly rational woman with a deadly
lack of common sense. He had tried for docility,
using the autodoc's knowledge of human brain
chemistry, and achieved only passivity leading him
to the discovery that there wasn't much difference
between passivity and sloth. Passivity neutralised
intelligence, but it neutralized everything else of
importance, too. Docility,

142 Man-Kzin Wars IV

on the other hand, seemed to require intelligence
if a kzin was to get any use out of it.

He was still missing some essential key.

  "You like ice cream," he stated firmly, hoping to
motivate the Svelda-female toward cleanliness.

"Suck it up your nose!"

  Was that a reasonable statement? Borderline.
He wanted to make her happy so that she would
clean her cage and stop disturbing the other
animals. Ice cream wasn't going to work. Perhaps
she could no longer understand the concept of ice
cream? If reason was failing, he should try
something emotional a kzinrret always
responded to emotion. What would she respond
to since she did not like him? since she was fixed
at rage? Victory? He thought about that.

  Victory was very emotional; it stirred the
purring vibrations. Kzin and animal alike all
relished victory. "At this moment your race is
happy and I am bereaved," he said.

  "Happy?" she shrieked. "A finger in your eye!
That would make me happy!" She rattled her cage
some more and snarled some more. "Gattdamm
Urin-Pelz! You stinkl Urin-Pelz! Take a bath!"
When he tried to reach in his hand, unclawed, to
give her a soothing pet, she snapped at his black
fingertips.

  A remarkable display. Svelda had come to him
shy and quiet and properly propitiative. He had
been delighted into thinking that very little
modification of her mind would be necessary. But
his surgery had evidently de-inhibited a whole
layer of vicious instinct. Puzzling. Reluctantly he
dismissed his latest theory about human brain
function.

  How far could she still reason at the abstract
level? She was having trouble connecting victory
with joy. He enunciated his animal call imitations
more carefully as if he were talking to his mother.
"You monkeys have done grave damage to our
fleet attacking Sol.

THE SURVIVOR 143

Noble warriors have died valiantly. That is why you
are happy and I am bereaved.

  "Sol? The beast began to weep hysterically.
Another singular transformation. "The Solarians
took you out . . . the sobs were racking her
body "you Rattekatze father-suckers?" she asked
between sobs. "At Sol?"

"Another fleet will be sent."

  He was observing that the she-animal's brain
damage was extensive. All the emotions seemed to
be operating at once, uncoordinated. Tears of grief
were streaming down the furlessface. She was
grinning the way humans did when they were
radiantly happy, but the way she bared her teeth
seemed to have a kzinlike ferocity. Some ancient
hardwired instinct had been severed from its
inhibitory subprograms.

  "Kill! Kill! Kill!" she screamed happily through
her grief and through the bars to drown out the
wailing of the children.

  Later, with the she-Svelda under sedation,
Trainerof-Slaves tried to repair the damage to her
brain by regrowing neurons in the places where
they had been excised, but it didn't work. She went
into a coma. The autodoc could keep her alive but
she responded to no outside stimulation, could not
groom or feed herself, or even eat. He had to give
the meat to Grraf-Hromfi's sons for good behavior,
but he kept the head and sliced up the brain,
feeding its neural circuitry into his data-link in the
hopes that someday he could make sense of what
had gone wrong.

  He couldn't resist clipping one of her ears to his
bek. After the Fourth Fleet disaster, he needed a
monkey ear at his waist.

  He was thinking more about his mother than
ever before. He had always thought of his mother
as nonrntelligent. All the idioms for stupidity in the
Hero's Tongue were references to females. If one
kzintosh

144 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

said of another kzintosh, "You kzinrret," what he
meant was, "You brainless stupid fool!" And yet ..
. when Trainer-of-Slaves had tried to replicate, in
human females, that endearing kzinrret stupidity,
what he had achieved was bizarre
non-functionality.

  Still in a rage induced by the defeat of the
Fourth Fleet, he took his rage out in an aggressive
attack on this problem which had been plaguing
him. He thought about his mother. He was
thinking about all the times she had saved his life.

  His experimental mistakes had confronted him
with strange facts. He'd had to question his ideas
about intelligence, to break that concept down
into its many parts. Now he analyzed what his
mother must have been aware of while she was
actively protecting him and he came to the
remarkable conclusion that his mother had to be
intelligent.

  But that was impossible. He flashed on his cher-
ished image of catching her chewing on one of his
first books, chewing it to a pulp.

  The Fanged God had given souls to the first
kzinrretti but at the crucial Battle of Hungry
Years they had betrayed both Him and their
mates while the males stayed loyal to their God
and so He had taken away the female souls and
given their bodies over to kzintosh masters so that
the race might continue to propagate itself. That
was mythology, tales of events that had happened
before science, before writing. What had
happened? What had the kzinrretti lost at the
Battle of Hungry Years if it wasn't intelligence?

  Trainer-of-Slaves was sure that he loved his
mother whatever she was. What she was
remained locked behind silence; she seldom spoke
and when she did speak she used only the
elementary vocabulary of the Female Tongue, no
more than a few octalsquared words. Was it a
contradiction in terms to call an animal intelligent
if she couldn't use language?

             CHAPIER 19
         (2414 - 2419 A.D.)

  "Why don't we go!" He stooped through the
oval bulkhead door, trying to tromp out his anger.
But in the light artificial gravity he had to hold on
to the handrails to make the floor shake.

  His Jotoki scattered before his voice and busied
themselves with what they thought would please
him. Some went to their sleeping frameworks and
hid.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was eager to launch toward
Mansun to avenge the Fourth Fleet. He had
expected action after a ten year wait and buildup.
His liver demanded an explosion of Heroism
raging out toward the enemy star. He was tired of
waiting, waiting, waiting with nothing to claw but
the claw-sharpening "bark" in his miserably small
stateroom. He was restless. His blood told him to
make something happen . . .

  But the implacable, immovable, unmoving
ChuutRiit thought differently. Waiting wasn't
waiting, said his bulk, grinning at his foes.
Waiting was planning. The size of the defeat had
sobered him. May the Fanged God not lose
patience with his inaction!

                 145
                  
146 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

  Grraf-Hromfi conceded in one of his seminars
that the Wunderland Admiralty was reassessing
top strategy. Chuut-Riit had cynically expected the
Fourth Fleet to fail because of its arrogant
commanders, but he had also expected it to
demoralise the monkey hive and drastically
weaken human military capability. Now
Chuut-Riit was opting for a few more years of
preparation. He wanted Centaurian industry built
up to the point where it could keep an interstellar
supply line filled. And he needed that extra crop
of warriors that more time would provide.

  In the meantime the Third Black Pride kept
track of Sol through the distant transmissions of
the First and Second Black Pride communication
warships. Those scoutships of the Fifth Fleet had
remained in place, well away from the battle zone
undetected as of 4.3 years ago keeping their vigil
out where Mansun was only the brightest star in
the heavens.

  A steady flicker and hiss of messages came
through to be filtered and cleaned and analyzed
by the kzinti spoor specialists back in the
Centaurian system. Fuzzy pictures of UNSN
Gibraltar Base. Specks that looked like a fleet
moving in the asteroid belt. Some new markings
on Mercury. The trace of search beams scannlng
the skies. Non-military beamcasts giving the tone
and morale of the monkey civilizaffon. Better and
better maps of the cities of Earth.

  Trainer-of-Slaves often flipped through the
images. He gave only a glance to one of the
earliest post-battle transmissions. It was a single
crude picture of a vehicle being assembled in the
asteroid belt. The scale markings indicated
enormous size but its size was deceptive. Most of
the structure seemed to be a flimsy magnetic
funnel one of the monkey ramscoops of no
military utility. To be noted and ignored. Perhaps
it was to be an emissary to one of their local
allies.

Months later there was a second flurry of activity

THE SURVIVOR 147

when more pictures of the ramscoopcame through.
Now it was equipped with massive disposable
hydrogen tanks and was actually being launched
toward Alpha Centauri! To what possible purpose?
This time Trainer noticed the furor only because
Grraf-Hromfi used the item as the inspiration for
a seminar lecture on human technology.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was not to recall that seminar
for another five years. Immediately when he left
the briefing room other worries occupied his mind.
He had a sick Jotok to tend and he was in the
middle of a card game that he was losing to
Long-Reach.

  In that five years the Fifth Fleet doubled in size.
The effort caused great hardship among the vassals
of Wonderland, more than Chuut-Rut thought
prudent to impose. Such stress created an alarming
increase in feral activity. But there was no help for
it. Extraordinary war efforts always cause hardship,
both among slave and Hero. Sacrifices had to be
made for the Long Peace, always. Peace did not
exist without war to impose it.

  Trainer-of-Slaves developed a lucrative sideline.
It did not pay off in coin, but it paid off in favors.
His Jotoki became experts at modifying warships
and fighter craft to better than standard
performance. This was not particularly difficuk to
do.

  "Kr-Captain, your Screanzer now gives us a
perfect check-down. But ~ do know ways its
performance could be improved." While unbinding
the terrified zianya who was to be their dinner,
Trainer paused to let his message sink in. It was
against regulations to make non-standard changes.
Waiting without comment, he watched Kr-Captain
tear out his hunk of flesh to an anguished animal
cry. Trainer was not going to mention the subject
of irregular modifications again.

14S Man-K=in Wars IV

  "I'll take any edge," said Kr-Captain, blood on
his Jaws.

"Of course, any alteration can be restandardized."

"A laudable way to deal with fussy bureaucrats."

  "Useful too, in case non-standard parts are
unavailable during an emergency."

"When might such work be done?"

  To avoid equipment chaos, standardisation had
been rigidly imposed since the time of the first
interstellar Patriarchs. All improvements, by
decree, had to come out of Kzin-home. In a
subluminal empire, sixty light-years in diameter,
new standards diffused slowly.

  Brilliant innovations built to serve a need
during the heat of some local war tended to die in
the files. First the innovation had to reach
Kzin-home. Then it had to be tested by a
bureaucracy which considered itself to be the sole
font of all change---and was understaffed. The
ideas that lived often took ten or fifteen
generations to become the new standard
authorized by the High Admiralty, not because
the Admiralty was particularly senile, but because
the pace of light from star to star was pitiably
slow.

  Still, many such battle-tried ideas could be
found hibernating within the labyrinthine network
of lairs inside the data-links. Finding them took
maze-tracking skills, and battle-cunning to know
what was wanted, and an engineering background
to know what was possible. Having fanatically
loyal Jotoki technicians also helped.

  The Flayer-of-Monkeys was a three-kzin fighter-
scout. They were well away from the Sherrek's
Ear, testing the illegal modifications, when they
got an emergency message. "Flayer. Flayer. Flayer.
Record. Record. Record." Kr-Captain was at the
leading point of the delta-shaped control
chamber. He switched on his combat
communications memory. Trainer-ofSlaves
happened to be riding in the Sensor's harness,

THE SURVIVOR 149

and Long-Reach was uncomfortably seated on his
mouth in the Weapons-Operator chair, peering at
his instruments. He was used to maintaining them,
not reading them.

  Sherrek's Ear continued urgently. "Acknowledge
and Execute. Time Lag too Long for Confirmation.
Will Repeat Message. Ramscoop Coming Through.
Intercept and Destroy. Flayer is only Warcraft in
Combat Range. Repeat: Intercept and Destroy.
Ramscoop Coming in Much Faster than Predicted."
The excited kzin controller spat out a number. "We
See Target: Three Octal-squared Light-days Out,
Coming In. Real Position: Passing A-star; Perhaps
Already Outbound. Possible Collision A-star. If So:
Cancel Intercept. Now Read Coordinates for Flayer
Intercept."

  They were given a position which placed
Man-sun almost in occultation with Alpha Centauri
A, on a circle surrounding A at a point thirty
degrees north-east of a reference longitude through
Kzin-sun. If they couldn't intercept within
forty-seven hours, the ramscoop would escape.

  ". . . We Assume You Are Unarmed.
Destroy-mode Your Choice. Message Will Now
Repeat. Flayer. Flayer . . ."

  A startled Kr-Captain swung his outer antenna
toward the Sherrek's Ear. "Flayer Ack. Will
Intercept. Flayer Ack. Flayer Ack. Moving out." He
switched off the comm they were too far away to
carry on a conversation pulled down his goggles,
and took a brief look at the heavens while he
rolled Flayer-ofMonkeys in the direction of the line
joining Man-sun and Alpha Centauri A, now
separated by about seven degrees.

  "We've got to close up Man-sun and the A-star.
That's shaving the hairs. Hope your juiced-up
polar

150 Man-K=inWars IV

izer really will do octal-sqtlared 8's. What the
sthondat is a ramscoop?"

  "Hey, two missiles!" said long-Reach's
short(arm) after checking the weapons readout.

  "Camera missiles," snarled Kr-Captain, lolling
his tongue. "For maneuvers."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was suddenly remembering
GrrafHromfi's long forgotten seminar on
ramscoops. "I know what a ramscoop is."

  "Good. Whatever it is, can we kill it? We're dis-
armed." They were already accelerating at
sixty-three g's, yet it would be hours before they
began to see Alpha Centauri creeping across the
starfield. Kr-Captain turned to calculating orbits
on his screen. They were going to have to cross
the line-of-flight of the man-thing at ninety
degrees. "We have just enough time to decelerate
and stop on their line-of-flight. Should we stop or
do a flying pass?"

  All of Grraf-Hromfi's lectures on tactics
crowded into Trainer's thoughts. Think before you
leap. "Stop if we can. We get one try. We don't
want our fire crossing the line-of-flight at an
angle not at those velocities."

  The old seminar room on the Sherrek's Ear was
filling Trainer's imagination. The smell of
frame-beryllium and old fur. The wet sniff of
algae. But especially that room five years ago.
Grraf-Hromfi was the same benevolent tyrant that
he had always been, mane a bit scraggly. His halo
mockup of the ramscoop floated to one side and
he held his shamboo pointer tipped with
slashtooth tusk that he liked to jab into his
bolos  and sometimes into the bellies of his less
attentive listeners.

  "We do not know its intention," the
ghost-memory was saying to Trainer. "It is
probably coming to sniff spoor around our
boundaries. It cannot have an attack capability."

THE SURVIVOR 151

  Trainer tried to reevaluate was that still
true.9 and drew a blank.

"It cannot defend itself."

  Yes, thought Trainer, its speed * its only defence,
running like a fangless herbivore.

  "The most interesting fact that this mockup
reveals about the United Nations Space Navy is
that they have not as of four years ago, I
repeat learned how to build an interstellar-grade
gravity polarizer. Otherwise they would not be
launching such a massive low-performance device.
The magnetic funnel" he pointed "is used to
collect interstellar hydrogen for the reaction drive.
Can any of you tell me its major constraint?"

  There had been silence in the classroom. Today
it was the silence of interception through soundless
space.

  Trainer remembered himself prompting, mischie-
vously, "Ask Long-Tooth. He knows."

  Long-Tooth-Son of Grraf-Hromfi jumped out of
his reverie. "Honored patriarch, a ramscoop is too
slow."

  "Its acceleration is too feeble," corrected the
father. "And why is that?"

  Long-Tooth cast Trainer a venomous look for
getting him into this dialog. "There's not much
hydrogen for it to use."

"How much?"

"Sire! I don't know."

"Trainer-of-Slaves?"

  "Please accept my surrender if I am wrong.
Between here and Man-sun the density is about an
octal-squared to four-octal-squared hydrogens per
fistful of space."

  Grraf-Hromfi again passed the slashtooth tusk of
his pointer through the fuzzy holographic ramscoop
in front of him. The spout of its funnel was
burdened by racks of spherical tanks. "They need
these huge hydro

152 Man-Kin IV

gen tanks to prime their reaction engines since
they can't collect much hydrogen at low speeds.
The tanks will be dropped off once they are
moving fast enough to devour more than
starvation rations of the interstellar hydrogen."

  He was grinning at monkey folly. "They can't
collect much at high speeds either in spite of the
fact that the main funnel collector surface seems
to be about as large as the Patriarch's private
hunting estate. Their maximum speed is a quarter
that of light if they use a ramjet design. With a
more sophisticated flow-through design they are
only limited by relativistic effects which are
considerable. I doubt a top velocity beyond a
half-lightspeed."

  . . . and you were wrong . . . The Flayer was at
the canter of a sphere of stars, intercepting some
manthing that was coming at them close to the
velocity of light.

  "At really high speeds they would have to know
how to burn proton cosmic rays an unpleasant
diet." Grraf-Hromfi got an amused ripple of ears
when he added that this might be to the taste of
a herbivore.

  ... yes, and the monkeys have managed to thrive
on that unpleasantly lethal diet . . .

  "Those are engineering details and I presume
they can be mastered. Ramscoops are a primitive
solution and we've never used them, so we know
little of the details. The major problem is not an
engineering one it is a flaw in the concept. A
fusion funnel cannot attain high accelerations,
first because it is fuelstarved, and second because
reaction drives produce inertial acceleration. How
do you build a gossamer funnel that can take even
one gravity of inertial acceleration?"

. . . but at a fifth of a gravity, year after year . . .

  Grraf-Hromfi did not mention in his lecture
that a fighting kzin warship could accelerate at
sixty gravities

THE SURVIVOR 153

with the pilot floating in his cockpit and thus reach
its maximum cruising speed in about five days,
because all of his officers knew that. "How long
would it take this funny-funnel to attain six-eighths
the velocity of light?"

  "Six months?" ventured a bored officer who
leaped to conclusions before.

  "More like eight-ten years with most of that
time spent at low velocity. When will it reach
Alpha Centauri?"

  "About the time the Fifth Fleet has occupied
Manhome," said Long-Tooth-Son with a grin for
the poor beasts.

  ... but it is here and the Fifth Fleet hasn't even
started yet ...

  "That's a reasonable estimate. I'd like to remind
you that these pictures are more than four years
old."

. . . it took them only nine plus years to get here . . .

  "The monkey-funnel is already out of range of
both the First and Second Black Pride. But even
after all this time" the 4.3 years the Pride's
message took to reach Alpha Centauri "the
ramscoop will still be close to Man-sun and just
beginning its journey. It is not something we'll ever
have to worry about. We'll keep an automatic
tracker looking for it that's our duty but I doubt
if we'll ever sniff it again. The monkeys will
decelerate and sulk around outside Alpha Centauri
well out of our range."

So even Grraf-Hromfi could be dead wrong.

  Trainer-of-Slaves did a calculation on the
Sensor's data-link. The automatic tracker had
detected the first trace of the ramscoop
two-hundred light-days out  yet years earlier than
expected. Which meant that its maximum speed
was far higher than kzin engineers had anticipated.

  Kr-Captain finished his trajectory plot and put
the Flayer-of-Monkeys on automatic. Turnaround
was in

154 Man-Kzin Wars IV

twenty-three hours. "Sherrek's Ear gave us orders
to be creative." He meant that they were
unarmed.

  "Best little mechanic in the galaxy sitting right
beside me," said Trainer-of-Slaves.

"So how are we going to kill this what-ever-it-is?"

  "We may not have to. Grraf-Hromfi proved that
a monkey can't stay alive in a ship moving at that
speed cosmic sleeting."

  "Give old red-mane an ear," he purred
sarcastically. "We don't have to fight because the
enemy has already suicided! A nice philosophy
until a monkey leaps out of the funeral pyre." He
returned to a commander's inflected spits and
growls. "We shall assume they have a gravity
polarizer shield and are still alive."

  "A gravity shield is the same as a gravity drive.
Then they wouldn't need a ramscoop."

"What's a ramscoop?"

  "A magnetic funnel that collects interstellar
hydrogen and ejects helium as reaction mass."

  "Is a monkey going to stand at a porthole and
shoot arrows at us?" Kr-Captain flapped his
batwing ears.

  "Maybe the magnetic field protects them," sug-
gested Long-Reach, two arm-slits speaking in
unison.

"Slave! Shut up," growled Kr-Captain.

  "Does he play cards?" whispered the arm
nearest the relaxed ears of Trainer-of-Slaves.

  "Don't eat your seat, Long-Reach. I'll need your
brains in due time."

  Long-Reach hunkered down on his
undermouth, petulantly. He was muttering along
internal channels to himselves that he was
Weapons-Operator. That started an argument
among the arms about who was to take charge of
the camera missiles.

  "The line-of-flight cuts right past the A-star,"
said Trainer. "They'll already be dead. The
starwind is fierce at that distance. It will have hit
them like your father's claw." Kr-Captain seemed
unconvinced and so

THE SURVIVOR 155

Trainer used an analogy from a virtual
horror-adventure they had both lived together
under shared eyecaps. "It's like a hurricane wind in
your sails."

  Kr-Captain bared his fangs. He didn't like being
reminded of that horror-story world covered with
water, trying to survive in the company of five war-
stranded Heroes on board a fleeing sloop in
typhoon weather. His liver was still recovering. "I
will not repeat myself again! We shall assume that
the monkeys are alive, you miserable fur-tick
fleeing-the-skin-of-adying-sthondat! "

"As you command, brave Hero!"

  "Now how shall we kill them? It was you who
took out my particle-beamer for this test!" The
thought of being disarmed put him back on the
edge of anger. Not even a nuke. "Shall I slash at
them with my wtsai as they zip past?"

  "This combat couch is very uncomfortable,
revered Hero," muttered short(arm). Listening to
himself gave Long-Reach perversely practical ideas.
"We could toss my combat couch at the enemy."

"Silence!" roared Kr-Captain.

  Trainer-of-Slaves was looking around the cockpit
for things that might be ripped out. "Gold dust is
what we need, but your honor-bearing wtsai blade
is powerful enough to destroy even the most
invincible monkey battleship."

  Long-Reach gave a good imitation of a kzin
"hisssss" of profound inspiration. "We leave our
noble Hero on the line-of-flight, waving his wtsai.
He leaps," said short(arm). "He strikes!" exclaimed
freckled(arm). Then a chorus of arms imitated the
spits and snarls of a kzin fight. Skinny(arm)
intoned the denouement, "In one blow the enemy
ship disintegrates in a blaze of shame! and ever
afterwards Kr-Hero radiates bluely from the honor
roll of the Patriarch!"

Discretely, fast(arm) gripped a rod on the back of

156 Man-Kzin Wars IV

Trainer-of-Slaves's combat couch in case he had
to yank Long-Reach to a safer place.

  His lips twitching, Kr-Captain eyed his more
yelloworange than red-orange kzin companion.
"Where did you find this five course lunch?"

  "We've been together since Hssin. He really is
a good mechanic."

  "We seem to have reached a consensus,"
grumbled the Captain. "Some massive object left
along the lineof-flight."

  "Perhaps not massive. If we sprinkled gold dust
in its path, each grain of dust carries the impact
energy of a medium nuclear strike," said Trainer.

  Kr-Captain did not believe him. Kzin are not
used to combat passes at relativistic speeds. But
he did the calculation on his screen. The numbers
convinced him. "A little dust in the monkey's path
and nuclear firebal!l Easy."

  "Not so easy," moaned big(arm). Long-Reach
had been consulting among himseives. "It is not
just a bigger high-velocity kinetic impact," stated
the practical fast(arm). "We now pass into a new
realm of the unimaginable where our intuition
fails," expostulated the expansive short(arm).

  At relativistic speeds, kinetic impact becomes a
cosmic ray shower.

  Visibly, Alpha Centauri began to creep across
the glittering heavens toward Man-sun. The stars
shimmered unnaturally through the strengthening
polarizer field. Long-Reach, as "honorary"
Weapons-Operator, busied himself with a simple
project. He removed cameras from missiles. Then
he built two makeshift warheads out of bottled
oxygen and half their water rations and a few
grams of tungsten-carbide grinding powder from
his toolkit.

  The Flayer-of-Monkeys was well equipped with
sensors. Seventeen hours from their rendezvous it
began

THE SURVIVOR 157

to pick up the ramscoop which had an "apparent
velocity" of 120 lightspeeds. Electronic
amplification constructed a foreshortened image.
The scoop was gone. That was a shock.
Trainer-of-Slaves thought, at first, that it had been
"burnt-off' during the close flyby of A-star, but
when he had the Flayer's data-link rotate the image
to a side view, he saw that the funnel was simply
folded-in to a vastly reduced scoop area so that its
magnetic field was being used only to protect the
crew. In the high mass regions around Alpha Cen-
tauri they had simply "furled their sails"!

  From a standstill, Flayer aimed and directed its
missiles down the line-of-flight toward the
oncoming UNSN ramscoop which was now
occulting Man-sun. The makeshift warheads bled a
lethal mist of oxygen and ice-coated tungsten. Then
Flayer moseyed down the line, away from the
ramscoop, bleeding its helium coolant, its cabin
nitrogen reserve, plus a bottle of argon and for
good measure the talcum powder that Kr-Captain
used to bathe his fur. They returned at full
acceleration, stopped, rolled and dropped to the
side, rotating to face the coming action. Trainer-of-
Slaves mounted the salvaged cameras.

  "All they have to do is dodge!" complained
Kr-Captain, who was an expert at sixty-g
maneuvers.

  "They are blind in front. Their course is
laser-true. Do you know how much lateral-thrust
energy it would take to deflect them a whisker's
breadth? They don't command that kind of energy.
They are committed!"

  The Heroes strapped in to do the warrior's
greatest duty wait.

  Half an hour later the nameless ramscoop, its
mission still a mystery to its attackers, zipped by,
moving faster than any explanation can describe
what the eye saw.

The first missile missed.

The second missile ticked through an edge of the

158 Man-Kzin Wars IV

folded scoop, ionizing into a fireball genie that
lashed a flaming arm out after the ramscoop too
late, too slow.

The ramscoop plowed ahead into the mist.

  Valiantly the magnetic field tried to cope with
the overload but wasn't equipped to handle the
dust or the oxygen. Superconductors overheated.
Electrical resistance began to vaporize the surface
of the

scoop....

  Meanwhile hydrogen and oxygen and tungsten,
helium and nitrogen and argon, even talcum
powder, were ionizing on impact to become tiny
superdense nuclear projectiles sleeting through
what to a nucleus is mostly empty space the
bulkhead, the air, the life support, the
instruments, the protein, the fusion engine,
hardened lead-tungsten radiation barriers,
everything and on out to the other side, leaving
behind ionized trails as spoor.

  A few of these "cosmic rays" collided with the
relativistically massive nuclei of the ramscoop,
scattering, smashing nuclei into a spray of particle
fragments. Mesons flashed into gamma rays and
gave birth to muons. Muons lived out their
leisurely lives and died. Positrons blinked into
existence. Anti-matter screamed out of collisions.
Wildly exotic nuclei spat out particles in a
desperate search for a new equilibrium. Neutrons
bounced and bled into space.

  But it was the energy of the stripped electrons
that destroyed the monkeys' ramscoop. The ship
was essentially transparent to the impacting
nuclei but opaque to the electrons. The kinetic
energy of the electrons was instantly transformed
to heat.

  The flare blazed, then was gone at near
lightspeed, doppler-shifting into the red. It had
left them. Inertia is implacable. What is moving
continues to move.

  The UNSN vessel was destined to travel on
through the universe as a dense cosmic ray
packet, slowly dis

THE SURVIVOR 159

integrating and falling apart from its contact with
the interstellar medium, from collisions with gases
and particles. Billions of years later, in some
distant galaxy, scientists might note its passing as
an increase in the cosmic ray count from some
strange quadrant of the sky. There would be
theories about the high metallic content of the
rays.

  On the return of the Flayerof-Monkeys to the
Sherrek's Ear, they learned of the ramscoop's
mission a bombing run. From a great distance it
had launched precision pellets at specific targets.
The relativistic pellets carried the wallop of a
nuclear blast.

  UNSN spoor was dated and their gunner's
accuracy terrible. Whole areas of the arctic zone
had been blasted without a single kzin or human
casualty because there was nothing there. One
lucky hit on a kzin base had killed four thousand
Heroes. The human-beasts had taken gruesome
casualties, only five percent of which were military
related. A miss had impacted the ocean and
created a tidal wave that had rolled over four
seaside communities.

  Kr-Captain was furious. "Why didn't we get it
before it attacked!"

  Alas, warriors were always reminded of the
fortunes of war. Only the Black Prides carried the
really long distance detection equipment. Both the
Tigripard s Ear of the Fourth Black Pride and the
Patriarch's Nose of the Fifth Black Pride had
detected the ramscoop two days before the
Sherrek's Ear had sniffed the electromagnetic scent,
but each was almost two light-days from the
line-of-flight. By lightbeam they didn't have time to
warn Alpha Centauri, and by their fastest fighters,
they didn't have time to intercept. The ramscoop
was following too closely behind its own
electromagnetic arrival notice.

  Sherrek's Ear, though it was behind Alpha
Centauri, was stationed only eight light-hours from
the line-of

160 Man-Kzin Wars IV

flight. Even then, interception would have been
difficult had the Flayer not been out on a
maintenance run in the right direction.

  Grraf-Hromfi gave a diagnostic lecture. Think
before you leap. Never underestimate an enemy.
He was furious at himself for assuming that no
ramscoop could fly faster than half lightspeed. He
was so furious that he set up a whole day of
tournament to clean his liver of rage, taking on
all comers.

  Only months later they learned the covert
mission of the ramscoop when Chuut-Riit was
assassinated.

               CHAPTER
             (2420 A.D.)

  Detection-Orderly-Two summoned
Grraf-Hromfi immediately, rousing him from a
curled sleep. Hromfi was not the kind who made
life miserable for warriors who interrupted his
rest. A Hero on duty had the obligation to wake
the dead if he felt it in the interest of the
Patriarchy. The Commander of the Third Black
Pride appeared at the Command Room, naked in
his copper red fur except for slippers, grumpy, but
not angry.

  Analysis began promptly, without preliminaries.
The small object had appeared in the heavens out
of nowhere, near Rhtya in the House of the
Fanged God's Kzinrretti the Pleiades. Only
light-hours away. Very anomalous gravity pulse.
That had set off the alarms. It was also a neutrino
source.

Another strange event.

  The Third Black Pride was up to full strength.
Its Commander ordered a discrete reconnaissance
probe. If the mystery pulse came from a small
ship, he wanted it captured for interrogation.
Quickly. And not destroyed.

                 161
                  
162 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  Instantly, he chose for the mission three pilots
he could trust. the first an old warrior with grey in
his pelt who had flown Scream-of-Vengeance
fighters for Chunt-Rut since he was a kit, the
second a wild-eyed Hssinbarbarian who liked to
pick the meat out of his fangs and comb his mane
before he leaped, and the third, Grraf-Hromfi's
most promising son.

  They, in turn, were shaken out of their sleep.
Each hastily donned goggles so that he could
receive his orders. "The intruder is to be disabled,
not vaporised!" growled their Commander. "And
while I have your attention: a warning." He shifted
into the menacingtense of the Hero's Tongue to
jolt their livers. "Our instruments tell us that this
object appeared out of nowhere. Instruments can
be deceived. The best kzin minds can be deceived.
However, regardless of how irrational the concept,
expect the object to defend itself by vanishing into
nowhere. Attack without warning! Disable it
immediately! Prisoners are to be takent If it is an
automatic ship, the brain is to be salvaged!"

  While the three crews scrambled, he called
ahead to make sure that Fighter Command was
ready to equip them with Screamers modified by
Trainer-ofSlaves. He wanted them to have
whatever edge he could supply.

  Grraf-Hromfi's nose was beginning to sniff the
oddness of an alien technology lurking about. On
the borderlands of the Patriarchy that could be
extremely dangerous. But how to put these
enigmaticc pieces together? He thought of the
wooden puzzles of the kzin Conundrum Priests of
W'kkai. Eight ways there were to put any puzzle
together, and seven of those ways always left an
awkward shape protruding.

  In the meantime, decisions never waited for a
finished puzzle.

How had that unnaturally fast ramscoop dropped

THE SURVIVOR 163

off agents? No obvious mode of deceleration sug-
gested itself. At an incoming velocity near
lightspeed any agent would have carried the energy
of a continent-smashing bomb; the energy from any
kind of capsule-braking would have been observed.
And how had they penetrated Chuut-Riit's security
to juggle creche feeding procedures so that
Chuut-Rut had to face his own ravenously hungry
sons behind locked doors? It seemed like magic.
Of course it wasn't.

  But now an unauthorised ship that wrote its
own unique gravity pulse. Could it be that the
ramscoop hadn't delivered the agents? Was there
a new player? He remembered Yiao-Captain's visit
and his infectious insistence that they point their
long distance antenna toward a possible "alien"
artifact. Another orphaned piece of the puzzle that
"protruded."

  This was indeed a time of troubles. After the
launch of the three Screamers, Grraf-Hromfi
brooded briefly on the other troubles while he did
his warrior's duty, waiting. . .

  ... troubles enough to incline Grraf-Hromfi to
leap off for Man-sun immediately and let these
slashing Wunderkzin rip their own faces apart.
Octals of the kzin nobility, who had been chafing
under the rule of the outsider Chuut-Riit, had
seized the assassination as license for them to seize
power. Traat-Admiral's claws had been busy with
duels. Political chaos.

  Regrettably, border barbarians were uneducated
in honor! They thought of duels and Ascendancy
as honor. They thought of death as Opportunity.
They knew nothing of the honor of Loyalty After
Death.

  Leaving them to their own murders was a warm,
meaty idea, but impractical. The Fifth Fleet
needed Wunderland as its supply base. They
couldn't use Hssin. It was extra light-years away
and Hssinkzin

164 Mandarin IV

were all related by blood and. warrior oaths to
the original Centauri Conquest Heroes anyway.

  The ramscoop attack, itself, had done little
damagc but it had brought hundreds of honest
slaves to a state of feral defiance. Now open
defiance was spreading like a plague as the
squabbles among the kzin became public
knowledge. Ferals had even attacked the Gerning
base from space and put its detectors out of
commission for three days, long enough to land
supplies for some of the renegade animals.

  Grraf-Hromfi was in a bad mood because he
was just back from a political tour of Wunderland
estates. He had picked the most obsequious of
the power hungry back-stabbers first, cleverly led
them to state the claims they believed to be true,
challenged them to a duel for false claims, and
killed them. After three such contests of honor,
the rest of the Wunderkzin learned more quickly
the value of careful reason. The power hungry
always made the same mistake they built their
True Case, the case they were willing to defend in
public, upon false logic.

  Detection-Orderly-Two appeared at the oval
bulkhead door of the Command Center of the
Sherreks Ear. "Sire! May I have your attention
again?"

  Grraf-Hromfi glanced up. The orderly
mock-slashed his face sharply. "You look like
you've just bested your father at arm-tug. Found
something new? I hope not another of those
objects."

  "No, Sire, not in this system. But I have
something for you to consider, if you will, sir.
May I use your data-link?" Without even waiting
for assent, he switched on the wall screen and
spat-hissed commands to the retrieval slavecrystal.
Ribbons of telemetering appeared. "These are
mystery signals which the Second Black Pride has
been relaying to us from Mansun for analysis.
They started arriving about three

THE SURVIVOR 165

months ago, off and on. We have never been sure
that they weren't noise, or the artifact of some
instrument malfunction."

"You've found something there besides noise?"

  "Yes, sir! They all have the same signature as
our mysterious visitor. I did a comparison. It came
out at the seven-eights confidence level excellent,
considering that the signals we have are only
whiskers above the noise jiggles. The Patrzarch's
Nose has been seeing what we have been
seeing but just inside their maximum range.

  "And 4.3 years ago," muttered Grraf-Hromfi. "We
must never the lightlag. A lot can happen in five
years. The Fifth Fleet has doubled in that time.
Who knows what cunning they have been up to at
Man-sun."

"What do you think the mystery object is, sir?"

"A scout."

  "Do you think they've found a way to travel at
lightspeed, sire"

  "We'll find out. All detection squads are on full
battle alert?"

"Yes, Sirel"

  Grraf-Hromfi was now very worried. Was the
pulseobject a visitor from Man-sun? He turned up
the gravity in the Command Room so that he
could pace. On impulse he called Trainer-of-Slaves
for a goggle-togoggle conference. "You paw around
with those agonized shrieks-and-spits of demented
mathematicians? Their water-hole tracks describing
unified field theory?" The virtual image of
Trainer-of-Slaves hung in the air like a ghost, fixed
in position.

  "Dominant Sire, I've inflicted some of that
torture upon myself, yes. Do you want an opinion
on that

  'What would this sudden appearance of mass
mean?"

166 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "You are suggesting that the pulse tells of the
creation of mass out of nothing?" asked Trainer.

"Yes."

"That's impossible, sir. My opinion of the pulse .
. ."

  "Mate yourself to a sthondat! I didn't ask your
opinion, Eater-of-Grass, I asked what it meantl"

  "To avoid your insults, I will tell you what you
wish to hear. Any mass passing through the light
barrier would appear as if it had been created out
of nothing."

"But this one wasn't moving at relativistic speeds."

  "Light barriers can be stationary. I refer you to
the work of Ssrkikn-the-Juggler: 'The Event
Horizons of . . .' "

  "Yes, yes, yes. Can mass pass through an event-
horizonP '

  "Mass pops out of black holes all the time but
it can't bring any information with it. Your
faster-thanlight ship would fry its occupants down
to their unreadable parts. You couldn't find out
where they came from not even the direction..

  "You think we'll have a simpler explanation for
this pulse?"

  "I do, but my opinion is worthless beside your
own, Lord Commanderl"

  "In a few days I may have the object for you to
examine if it doesn't play hide-the-copper7enny
with us, or worse, put us in cages for some alien
zoo! In the meantime I suspect that our visitor
may be from Man-home. I want prisoners. There
may be injuries in the attack. You are our
veterinarian. Take a Zt;irgor with that autodoc
Chout-Rut gave you, and follow the attack force.
Do not attack. Your only function will be to
handle human casualties."

  Grraf-Hromfi broke the contact and lifted his
goggles above his eyes. His ears were folded and
buried, his lips trembling over fangs. He didn't
like to waitl

             CHAPTER 21
             (2420 A.D.)

  The United Nations Space Navy Shark
materialised at a radius of 335 AU, some 50
billion kloms behind Alpha Centauri the
location picked to keep them hidden from kzin
eyes which might be watching Sol. There was
minimal danger at this distance but UNSN
Lieutenant Nora Argamentine was still filled with
the dangerous excitement of her first combat
patrol. She had a special reason for wanting
revenge against the kzin.

  "It's looking okay, Charlie. Clear field," she
said. The detectors were in the green.

  Charlie was captain. Prakit was hyperdrive
engineer. The other two in the cramped cargo
capsule didn't belong. They were special forces,
checking out the fate of the Yamamoto, silent,
untalkative, to be dropped off in their tiny
torchship if a closer approach was possible, their
mission to kill Chunt-Rut if that ratcat had
survived the attempt on his life by Captain
Matthieson and Lieutenant Raines. Efficient
killers.

Once she got her telescope operational they'd be

                 167
                  
168 Man-Kzin Wars IV

looking at Wunderland. The Yamamoto's
relativistic pellets should have left
marks perhaps not visible from this distance.
They intended to move much closer, in stages.

  Nora wasot so sure that the Yamamoto had
even passed through Alpha Centauri yet. It might
still be hell bent on its mission, delayed by a patch
of low density interstellar gas or a magnetic field
breakdown or tanj knew what kind of trouble. The
arrival time of a ramscoop was not highly
predictable. Raines and Matthieson would be
shocked by the level of technological progress
since 2409. Wonderland might be liberated before
they even arrived!

  Prakit fussed over his hyperdrive unit, tuning it
up for the next jump. Nora could turn around to
encourage him, but there wasn't room for her to
help him. She reached out a fist and banged him
affectionately on his helmet with her wrist,
grinning at him because he was so sober.

"Betsy giving you trouble?"

  "New, Betsy s just a baby. If I feed her every
four hours and bounce her on my knee, she calms
down."

  Betsy was a new crashlander model and they
were lucky to have her. We Made It had been in
the hyperspace-shunt engine business two years
earlier than Earth, having bought the technology
from incomprehensibly alien spacewanderers. The
quality of the product from Procyon was better
than Earth's for all of Earth's vaunted
technological superiority and the UNSN crews
fought over every shipment from Crashlanding
City.

  This model could make the transition between
relativistic and quantum modes in half an hour
when it was fined-tuned. When it wasn't
fined-tuned, when Prakit couldn't get the
hyperwave functions of the atoms into the proper
phase relationship, Betsy just wavered and whined
and if you were looking at her

THE SURVIVOR 169

you'd feel as if pieces of retina were peeling off the
back of your eyeball. Prakit didn't mind.

"She's fastened down," he'd say.

  "If you guys need to stretch your legs just stick
them up here!" Nora joked, shouted into the hold
at the "special forces." Argamentine was a
good-natured woman who liked to take care of her
men even if that wasn't the style of military
women. Her father had been fried in the Battle of
Ceres during the Fourth Kzin Invasion when she
was a teenager, and somehow she could never give
enough love or hate enough.

  "We've got lots of room. There's room for you
down here," said the first killer because there
wasn't.

  "Are we there yet! Are we there yet!" cried the
other holler.

  Nora fixed her two commandoes ration crackers
with a little smuggled Camembert, and passed her
gift down the "hole. "Don't get crackers in your
belly'

  Charlie and Nora spent more than a day
between naps taking photos and scanning the
volume of space they wanted to move to, about 50
AU farther in. Nora spent a few moments off duty
just gazing at the Serpent's Swarm through the
electronic image amplifier. "God, Charlie, you've
got to take a look at their Belt!" There was no
hurry about tasks and no frantic priorities. They
were making a very cautious approach. It took only
about five minutes to move across 50 AU in
hyperspace, but they didn't want to jump into a
nest of kzin, not when they needed a minimum of
30 minutes to set up another jump.

  Sometimes she had nightmares sleeping in the
cockpit. As a teenager on the Iowa farm-city she
had imagined such a cockpit around herself at dusk
while the stars rose above the trees, imagining
herself killing kzin before they got to Daddy,
wondering where he was, what he was doing out
there and if he was safe. It had been a nightly
ritual, murdering imaginary kzin.

170 Man-K=in Wars IV

  Charlie woke her up with a gentle nudge.
"Bandits, at eight o'clock, twenty degrees high.
Hey, Prakit, get us the tanj out of here!"

  Lieutenant Argamentine was instantly awake
and reading the flowing graphics on her screen.
She asked her machine questions and the graphs
changed in response. "Bandits coming in fast. The
doppler reading shows a deceleration of sixty-four
8's. Three fighters. They carry the
Scream-of-Vengeance signature. That's the fighter
that got my Dad."

  "How much time have we got?" Charlie's voice
was rapid-fire, impatient with chatter.

  "Easy, Charlie. This is a different war. We
aren't fighting the last war. They are hours away
and we'll never have to engage them." Daddy had
had no choice in a fighter with only a fraction of
their maneuverability. "We have time for coffee
and crullers." But she was nervously straightening
a strand of curly hair. "I used to play this game
with my little sister when she was three. I'd let
her almost catch me then I'd disappear." She
turned around to smile at Prakit. "How are you
doing?"

"I'm doing! I'm doing," snapped Prakit.

  The phase-change built up while Prakit counted
off the minutes. They fell into a silence of
suspense. War was waiting for those few seconds
of action. "We love you, Betsy," said Nora when
she couldn't stand the suspense any more.

"Shut up. Let Prakit work."

  The hyperdrive suddenly went into a vibration
that built up over three seconds and then died.
Prakit cursed. "She just reset."

"Plenty of time," said Lieutenant Argamentine.

  "I'm going to take five to make an adjustment.
We don't want Betsy to burp again."

Charlie was thinking of defensive action now. He

THE SURVIVOR 171

rolled the Shark so that the jet of its piggy-back
torchship was pointed toward the Screamers.

  "It won't do any good," said Nora. "Those devils
are maneuverable enough to get out of the way of
anything."

  Charlie called down to his special forces. "We're
under attack. Get ready to fire the torch. When I
call for fire, fire!"

"We're going to be out of here!" said Prakit.

  This time, as the phase-change built up, nobody
broke the silence. Nora stared at the engine even
while the sight of it started to "peel" the rods off
the back of her eyeballs. Go! she prayed. But the
Shark stayed suspended, agonisingly. Too long.

Betsy shuddered and reset.

"I should rebuild her," said Prakit frantically.

  "You had all day!" snarled Charlie. "Time?" He
was asking Nora how much time they had to live.

  "They're still decelerating. Looks like a boarding.
If they decide to take us alive, Betsy will have time.
If they decide to make a fast pass, we are dead
meat."

  "Suits sealed," said Charlie. He meant helmets
and gloves. They were already wearing airtights
under their uniforms.

  "Can't!" Prakit's voice was frantic. "I can't afford
to be encumbered. I'm taking her up manually. I
can shave off minutes that way. I can keep her in
the canyon. I've done it before. The autoguide has
been hitting the walls. Shouldn't happen."

  They began a third countdown. "Can we do a
short tunneling? Charlie was looking for straws.

"Doesn't work that way. Don't talk to me."

  They waited. Again. Finally Charlie could wait
no more. "Attention. All crew. I'm arming the self-
destruct." If they got into hyperspace, each officer
knew how to deactivate it before it blew. If they
didn't . . .

172 Mandarin Wars IV

They waited. The kzin continued to close.

  "Down below. Get your torch primed." Charlie
turned to Nora. "You and I are going to practice
keeping our ass aimed at the kzin."

  "There are two bandits coming in. One is doing
a boarding maneuver, the other seems to be
setting up a fast flyby." Nora twisted that ringlet
of hair with her free hand, then found she needed
both hands for her combat duties.

"And the third?"

"Hanging back. He'll be able to board or kill."

  "We'll practice wiggling our ass between the two
lead Screamers.' The Shark began to oscillate
between two points the aiming
precision-controlled by the ship's computer.

They waited.

  "We're going to make it," Prakit said, calm
certainty in his voice.

"Fire!" screamed Charlie to his torchmen.

  Fire blazed out at the dancing kzin, seeking
while the Screamers avoided. The countdown
continued.

  A lurch as the torchship was blown away. Nora
saw it cartwheeling across the heavens before it
detonated. A moment later the cabin took a hit.
She didn't see Prakit sucked into space,
helmetless. Her faceplate was triggering to opaque
on cue from the explosive glare while actinic light
burned the unshadowed half of her uniform. In
the instant of death's visitation she saw, not the
father's battle doom which had until now, never
left her mind, but a baby sister running toward
her with ruffles around the bottoms of her tiny
pants . . .

  The Hssin barbarian had already flashed past.
The second Screamer dropped from 60 g's down
to a fraction of a g and was only nudging the alien
object as the old warrior jumped out with a
backpack into the

THE SURVIVOR 173

hole that had been opened for him. He knew what
he was looking for, but it took him precious
seconds to find it. He slapped the backpack down.
Its electrograviffc vibrators cut a clean hole
through the floor and the backpack disappeared at
230 g's carrying an amputated hunk of the Shark
with it. The battlearmored Gunner leapt into the
cockpit with two airbags, and in a choreographed
economy of gesture the old Hero and his Gunner
each stuffed a body into a bag, and then
h~mkered down, waiting for the explosion.

  Chunt-Rut's warrior was grinning through his
faceplate. "Maybe the acceleration killed it."

  But no the destruct bomb lit up the underside
of the Screamer and the wreckage of the Shark.

  The engine was intact. Give that wild Hssin
barbarian credit he could shoot straight! While
the old warrior was examining the salvage,
Hromfi's son drifted to within hailing distance. The
veteran Hero made hand signals to Hromfi's Son:
Where was that laggard, Trainer-of-Slaves?

Double arm motions signaled back: On his way.

  The Ztirgor rolled and locked onto the bottom of
the old warrior's Screamer. Its insides had been
stripped out to accommodate the autodoc. The
body airbags were delivered efficiently and opened.
Messy. Trainer-of-Slaves had a choice. There was
room for only one prisoner in the autodoc. He
chose the manmale because he was a male, then
changed his mind because the male was dead,
space-boiled blood clotting a neck wound, half his
back carbonized to the bone. The female would
have to do after all, the man-females were
intelligent and information could be tortured out
of them.

  He didn't know if the autodoc could save her.
He slashed away the remains of the green UNSN
uniform with his claws. He slit, and then peeled
off, the air

174 Man-Kzin Wars IV

tights. Some of the melted flesh came with it. He
didn't know what to do with the bra, trying
various techniques of pumle-solving to unleash it,
then in exasperation cut it off. The rest was easy.

  The first time Lieutenant Argamentine rose out
of her dark delirium she was proud that she knew
exactly where she was she was in the womb-like
care of an autodoc. She could feel it all around
her and, if she moved her right side, she could
feel the needles and the jell. But where was the
autodoc?

  Memories were elusive. When she struggled
with their vapors she saw corncobs cooking in
their husks in a bonfire. That didn't seem right. It
was too distant. She saw a starving man in a red
shirt selling cow dung. Damn! She wanted to
remember yesterday! What had happened to her?

  She struggled to remember where she was,
almost getting it and then forgetting. General Fry!
A flash! That was the right clue! The sudden
jubilation of knowing. But then it all went away.
All she could remember about General Fry was
being caught naked in a space-hammock with him
by a laughing Colonel who wrapped them around
and around in their netted prison.

  But that was it! Revelation! Sobs of relief! She
was at the hospital in Gibraltar Base and the
SharJc had blown up trying to jump to Alpha
Centauri. She faded back into delirium with a
desperate need to tell her baby sister that she was
all right, and when she woke up again she was
talking to General Fry, not sure that the
conversation wasn't a dream, trying to convince
him that he should still let her go out to fight the
kzinti.

  The delirium went away. The autodoc became
more real. She could feel herself healing. She
slept normally. She knew her life signs were good.
They would

THE SURVIVOR 175

open the box and talk to her. General Fry loved
her and he would be there when they opened the
box, tenderness in his flinty old eyes. Maybe not.
Maybe just a nurse.

  When the box opened it was a kzin face staring
down at her, tall, massive, hairy, fangs as large as
the wolfs in Little Red Riding Hood. It was the
first kzin face she had ever seen. She still
remembered nothing.

  "Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" the ratcat asked. "Ich
spreche nicht sehr gut."

  Had the kzinti conquered Germany? Had the
Fifth Invasion begun just as the Shark launched for
Wunderland? She was still certain that she was in
the Solar System.

  The yellow-orange monster brought out a
portable translator which began to recite the same
phrase in many languages. Finally the cultured
electronic voice asked, "What languages do you
speak?"

"English," she said.

  "My English also is very nasty," spat-hissed the
kzin. "Might be machine help us. I learn English.
You teach?"

  "Thomas Alva Edison!" she swore in utter
amazement.

  "Brain injury," he growled. "I am decorous and
able veterinarian. Skilled with female brains." His
ears unfolded proudly. "Much experimentation. Fix
all animals."

  He set the autodoc to raise her to a sitting
position and then held out a dish for her, a
stemmed sherbert glass with a spoon. Nora noticed
that she was ravenously hungry. Her kzin
continued to babble without making much sense.
"Please be decorous slave and clean cage," he said.
He held a spoonful of his gift to her mouth.

It was vanilla ice cream flavored with chunks of
fish.

             CHAPTER 22
             (2420 A.D.)

  While Lieutenant Nora Argamentine recovered
in the autodoc of the slave quarters,
Hrith-Master-Officer maneuvered his
Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to pick up the wreck of
the mystery scout. The floating drydock's
maximum acceleration capability was ten g's, thus
they took much longer to reach the scout than
had the original fighting triad. After grappling the
wreck into the repair hangar, Trainer-of-Slaves
and his Jotoh mechanics began a meticulous study
of the vehicle.

  The structure of the engine made no immediate
sense. Trainer didn't expect it to. His first priority
was to determine its function and limitations, his
second, its manufacturability. Then, at leisure, he
could reverse-deduce its operating principles with
the aid of a team of physicists.

  Long-Reach came up with a preliminary
assessment of pieces that were clearly gravitic
manipulators. That tended to confirm
Trainer-of-Slaves's suspicion that the monkeys
were now building a sophisticated gravity

                 176
                  
THE SURVIVOR 177

polarizerthatcould travel very close to the speed of
Tight, somehow bypassing the "blue-light" bleeding
effect that limited all kzin drives.

  Such a conclusion fitted the data. The peculiar
pulse patterns observed at Man-sun and
transmitted by the Patriarch s Nose were five years
old. They looked like a series of tests of a new
vehicle. And here, 4.3 years after the completion of
the tests, was one of the test vehicles on a test
combat mission. Simple. GrrafHromfi's fear-hope
of faster-than-light magic was just that.

  Non-scienffsts like Grraf-Hromfi, in spite of their
admonitionss to others, were always leaping to
conclusions before they gave their science
speculations deep thought. The rumors about an
ancient lost civilizaffon that had spanned the galaxy
before the birth of the sky's brightest stars
provided just the kind of fantasy universe in which
to dream of superluminal travel.

  Spread the rumor that fossil relics survived on
some wrinkled moon of a red star forty light-years
thither and kzin, by the herds, would set upon an
aimless life of wandering to track down the
chimera. The older the empire, the grander its
mysteries. The deader the empire, the greater the
heights to which it must have risen. The Hero's
Tongue had a short word for such fantasies
the-forest-bush-with-leaves-that-smell-likemeat.
Somewhere there were always kzinti hunting that
bush.

  Trainer made the rounds, feeding the naked chil-
dren in the cages. His experimentation schedule
had been destroyed by recent events, but animals
had to be fed no matter what. Tired, he retreated
to his cramped quarters, putting off Long-Reach,
who wanted a game of cards.

  He rubbed in the talcum to get at the dirt and
smell. He worked the powder into his fur, and then
massaged himself down with a good vacuum
vibrator.

178 Man-Kzin Wars IV

That felt good! He found a hard pillow for his
head, and stretched out on the bunk. Now for a
liverjolting virtual adventure to get away from
life's problems! He popped the goggles over his
eyeballs with a little squirt of lubricant.

  Would it be possible to find out what
Grraf-Hromfi had been watching lately to get him
so nervous about superluminal superstitions? The
Lord's access file was restricted, but that didn't
stop some shrewd guessing. Vocally, he keyed in
"faster-than-light," then, after some thought,
"ancient empires." He already knew that would
give him more than a thousand titles, so he
narrowed it down even farther by adding to the
list, "fight adventure," and for good measure, since
he hadn't had a sniff of kzinrret in years, "female
interest. '

  He got a bad virtual adventure of a Pride of
Heroes swept beyond the Border of the Patriarchy
by a Warp Storm. They fought giant worms who
chased them into the crystalline mins of a
civilisation that had been born during the Fireball
of Creation, so old it had died before the galaxies
could form. Just as the largest worm was about to
eat them for slaying its worm warriors, they fell
into a crystal room with a perfectly preserved
superluminal device that glowed malevolently
when they touched it.

  Unable to resist temptation, they were
transported to the inner glory of the galaxy, to a
dark cool world guarded by giants. The giants
were protecting the galaxy from the sight of
creatures that would destroy all who looked upon
them, such was their beauty. Over the dead bodies
of the giants they found the svelte kzinrret-like
creatures deep at the center of the dark forest, at
a wondrous waterhole. Then kzin warriors fell
upon each other, slicing, stabbing, clawing until
only the greatest warrior remained. Faster than
light, he brought his kzincret-like harem back to
the ancient

THE SURVIVOR 179

crystalline mysteries and lived happily ever after
hunting throughout the grassy plains beyond his
palace.

  In the morning Trainer-of-Slaves tried gentle
questioning of the lieutenant-beast about her ship.
She was not yet fit enough for torture. She
volunteered only her name and rank, a puzzling
concept for Trainer. He did discover that she was
interested in a picture of her youngest sister and so
he went through the personal effects of the Shark's
crew which had survived. That was how he came to
be caught up in the illustrations of a "comic book,"
copyright date January 2420 After the Damning.
Purple-caped flying monkeys KAPOWed ferocious
red kzin who were defending the walls of their
captured Elvis Presley Monastery.

  Something made him check the data-link files on
the material they were receiving from Man-home.
He didn't keep it in his head but their dating
system was well known because of its oddity. All
events were referenced from the time they had
tortured a Trinity of Criminals on Golgotha Hill,
nailing the Father and the Son and the
Grandfather to wood so that buzzards (a carrion
bird) might feast upon their livers.

  The latest events to come in from the Patriarch's
Nose and the Tigr~pard's Ear carried the Man-sun
date: November 2415 After the Damning. By the
immutable laws of physics any Solar event later
than that was forbidden to Alpha Centauri. 2420
was essentially a taboo future.

  Trainer-of-Slaves pondered alien copyright law
for a day. Did they have a five-year grace period in
which plagiarism was allowed before the copyright
applied? In the meantime, his Jotoki disassembled
a burned controller. All the intricate electronic
parts were labeled We Made 1~. That would have
been an ear tickler if you didn't know that We
Made It was a monkey colony more than eleven
light-years from Man-sun and thirteen light-years
from Alpha Centauri.

180 Man-Kzin Wars IV

There wasn't any economical way that such
standard parts could be shipped via ramscoop or
slowboat.

  It was time for another devious conversation
with the lieutenant-animal. He researched the
transcripts from the First and Second Black
Prides, selecting nonmilitary items that she might
be willing to talk about. He had an ally in
Long-Reach. His Jotok had discovered that she
liked the sweet-bitter berries his slaves enjoyed
with their ration of leaves.

  He came armed with berry ice cream. She was
still suffering from extensive burns and the
after-effects of a concussion, but she could remain
out of the autodoc for hours at a time, if she was
properly chained.

  "Fur Face, when does my uniform come back
from the cleaners?"

  He grinned at her around his fangs in response
to her insolence, though his liver wasn't in the
expression. The indignities one had to put up with
from kzinrrettil He was confused. He wasn't sure
which rules applied to sentient females. The grin
was purely reflexive.

  "All right, already. Sire! I abjectly request some
decent clothing, and will kiss the ground you sit
on when they appear.

  He put on his goggles to consult his English
Vocoder, spitting and growl-hissing requests. "I
can inject you with chemicals that will make your
fur grow," said the elegant voice of the machine.
Then a rougher voice. "Auburn hair. Your head,"
said Trainerof-Slaves who hated to rely on
translators, but he had to give up and let the
machine finish his thought. "Your fur will grow in
fine and attractive. I have already done the
experiments and can guarantee a positive result."

  So much for having 98 percent of the genes of a
chimpanzee, thought Nora wryly. "Sire! I'm sure
your five-armed sewing machine over there could
stitch

THE SURVIVOR 181

together an elegant little outfit for me in no time
at all! He gets to wear livery. Why can't 1? Please."

  The monstrous yellow-orange cross between a
Basketball Centerand Football Tackle didn't
understand, but politely listened to the catfight
coming out of his translator.

  His eyes lit up as he comprehended. "Yes.
Livery. Will make red-green garters for " he
consulted his Vocoder 'knees and elbows. You
like?"

  "I think I need some of that ice cream," she
groaned. She had already consulted with
Long-Reach about the fish in kzinti ice cream, and
he'd promised a fix. He proffered a golden dish of
vanilla with purple spots. He'd already stolen some
of the berries, an irresisffble temptation. She didn't
complain. She just ate in silence, sometimes
twirling her little curl nervously.

  "Long-Reach will now sing Top Ten Songs of
2415 years after torture of Christ Gang. English I
can speak. Sing no. Now, Number One on your
Hot Shot Hour!" What else could he say? He was
taking the words straight off the recording.

  The green and red liveried being who was also a
quintet began to sing to the naked prisoner of war
as she sat among the cramped grey bulkheads of a
warship, in chains, eating ice cream. She did not
know that she was being deviously questioned. She
did not know that this was a substitute for torture,
that the answers to his questions were vital to him.
Was she a seer? Could she see the future? Could
she tell Trainer-of-Slaves of events between 2415
and 2420 that weren't permitted yet at Alpha
Centauri?

  The five voices that came from the five lung slits
in the arms weren't human, but they knew harmony
and each word was enunciated with passionate
clarity though the accent was no sound that she'd
ever heard in her short life.

182 Man-Kzin Wars IV

"When the night * cold and my arms are bold and
you are very far away . . ."

  It was the song they'd been singing everywhere
at the time her graduation prom, at the end of
High School, when the two year Military
Academy course was just a kid's dream. She had
to cry. She tried not to, but that only made the
bawling worse when it came. Charlie was dead.
Prakit was dead. Those tough thugs in the hold,
so gung ho to kill kzin, were wasted. Her mission
had failed. She had failed her Dad. And she
didn't have the least idea about what to do with
a seven-foot tall kzin who courted her with a five-
armed singing comedian.

  "Humans cry when the ice cream is good," she
sniffed to cover herself.

"Berries, ptui!" said Trainer-of-Slaves.

  "I think too much," continued Nora, wiping her
face.

  "That can be corrected," said Trainer-of-Slaves.
"I have done the experiments."

"How did you learn these songs?"

"You animals do not keep radio silence."

"You listen to that? All the way out here?"

  "In Rast-gone hour, I watch beastly halo, Blaze
of Glory!

  She wasn't crying anymore. She was grinning.
"Lots of kzin killing in that one. I loved it! You
monsters killed my beloved Dad. That holo won
an award for its acting. Passion, the spirit of
mankind that you'll never crush!"

  Won an award. She was predicting the future.
In November 2415 Blaze of Glory had only been
nominated for an award, one of sixteen. "Bad
acting," said Trainer-of-Slaves. "Monkey in
kzin-suit, too slow. Wrong emotions. Liver was
sick."

THE SURVIVOR 183

  He pulled the lieutenant-animal further into the
conversation, letting her vent her anger at the
kzinti. When she was angry she leapt before she
thought. Three more times he caught her
predicting the future.

By then he was sure.

  He reported his suspicions immediately to Grraf-
Hromfi, though the timelag between the Nesting-
Slashtooth-Bitch and the main body of the Pride
was still too great for conversation.

  Trainer's old mentor took the news well. His
return message read: "So the old warrior can still
sniff out a different scent. A superluminal drive is
exciting. But it compromises our whole strategic
position. We 11 have to react quickly. Keep me
informed."

  In the vast hangar in the belly of the
Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch Trainer drove his Jotoki
slaves in their dissection of the wreck. How could
such a little thing, lost in the spotlights of the
hangar, bring back the awful fear he thought he
had lost forever? He paced around the hangar,
looking down at the alien shape, keeping his feet
inside the local gravitic field of the catwalk. His
liver was telling him to run in panic. He was no
longer the mighty Hero willing to take on the
whole Man-system, and after conquering it, to ride
elephants to the hunt with monkeys carrying his
bedding and his equipment and his kzinrretti in
palanquins.

  He returned to Lieutenant Argamentine in the
middle of the day and opened the autodoc coffin,
waking her, to ask her his question directly. "You
came here faster than light!" he accused.

  She smiled at him without showing her teeth.
There were dimples in her furless cheeks. 'YThat's
not for me to say."

The answer terrified him and he went away.

  With a superluminal drive the animals could
penetrate the Patriarchy with impunity. Every
system

184 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

would be isolated, on its own, unable to call on
nearby warriors for aid. Heroism would be a
sham. A newborn kit could kill his father with
unopened eyes. In the face of such unnaturalness,
rum The Fifth Fleet should run, should disperse,
should hider

  Kzin warriors are taught to obey orders on
penalty of death. But it is also instinct for them to
create their own orders. A superior officer might
be only lighthours away but the skirmish will be
decided in minutes. The General Staff might be
only light-days away, but battles can be decided in
hours. The Patriarch who orders a warrior to the
borderspaces, gives his order only once. After that
the warrior makes his own orders for a lifetime
and trains his sons to train his grandsons to report
back that the mission has been accomplished.

  The Patriarch requires obedience, but the
ruthless Emperor of Light executes all warriors
who are not their own Chief of Staff.

  Trainer-of-Slaves's internal Chief of Staff was
telling him to flee. How can I be such a cowards
He thought he had conquered cowardice. He'd
tried so hard! Desperately he recalled words that
Grraf-Hromfi had once tossed away
casually almost unaware of their profound
wisdom words which had found a fertile home in
Trainer's mind "To flee one's duty is cowardice,
but to flee while retaining a grip on duty can be
the act of a Hero!" Perhaps his mentor would
condone fleeing in this extreme case. The thought
that he might have an ally in his fear was
comforting.

  Trainer vowed by his grandfather that wherever
he fled, he would bring duty with him. He was in
turmoil. He had conquered fear only to be
trapped by his own prey. Short-Son of Churr-Nig
was running on the surface of Hssin with no place
to go, every door guarded by the enemy.

He knew that this little engine mounted in the

THE SURVTVOR 185

wreck of a tiny ship was the most valuable asset in
the whole of the Patriarchy. The entire Fifth Fleet
must be devoted to protecting it. If a hundred
thousand Heroes died in its defence, that would
not be too areas a sacrifice. He could flee, but
there could be no honorable fleeing without the
engine.

  By the time the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch had
reestablished its station within the Third Black
Pride, Lieutenant Argamentine was well enough for
the cages. The berries in the ice cream had done
no good at all. She became violent when she was
introduced to the cage room, incoherent with rage
at the sight of the orphans, even though there were
only three of them left uneaten and they had
ample room.

  "They are children! You monster, they are just
children!"

  She actually attacked him. To defend himself he
had to hold her by the forearms off the floor. That
didn't help him because of the well Dlaced kicks.
She had hands-and-feet combat trainingt He had to
toss her away. It was a true kzinrret rage. But most
kz~nrretti did not get that angry unless you were
about to eat their htsl

  To appease her he did what any kzintosh would
have done he gave her the children and put them
all in the same cage and left her alone.

  He found it remarkable how quickly that single
act calmed her down. She forgot her bruises as she
lavished attention upon his experimental tots. He
liked that. She was going to make very good
breeding stock. The cage was too small for them
all he noticed that but he did nothing about it
because he was interrupted by an urgent message.

  There is a kzin saying: Trouble does not give the
single finger; trouble comes untie four clatvs.

  Detection staff reported three more gravitic
pulses with the signature of the superluminal
drive but at

186 Man-Kin IV

distances too far to intercept. And Detection was
reporting the appearance of an armed feral navy
in the Serpent's Swarm. Trainer-of-Slaves had
received a priority query from Grraf-Hromfi.

  Could Man-sun, as in right now, be using
superluminal craft to deliver weapon supplies for
the feral fleet?

  Then Traat-Admiral began to send out ominous
directives. The messages were fresh, but their
source events were two days old.

  Grraf-Hromfi ordered an emergency
goggle-briefing of all officers of the Third Black
Pride. He wasn't waiting for them to reach his
lecture room on the Sherrek's Ear, he wasn't even
waiting for a quorum of goggle-connects. By the
time Trainer-of-Slaves was in link, the chaotic
meeting was at full tempest, and though he could
not smell it, he could see that the air was redolent
of aggression. When Trainer moved his goggled
head, he saw no less than five warriors, lips
twitching, barely able to repress their fightfever.

  His claws extended, almost in self-defence,
though he was alone.

  Astonishingly, Grraf-Hromfi wasn't analyzing
the attack that Man-system had launched with
their deadly new weapon. He had gone crazy. He
was ranting about mythological warriors who had
risen out of the misty past and were attacking the
Fifth Fleet along a whole section of the Serpent's
Swarm. He was screaming about superkzin mental
powers and super technology. He was raving
about Wunderkzin Traitors. He was snarling
about cyclopean terrors. And he was exhorting
warriors to their Final Bravery.

  He had already ordered the full Third Black
Pride into battle, repositioning all ships down to
Alpha Centauri to reinforce Traat-Admiral's fight.
Even as Trainer watched through his goggles in
awe, HrithMaster-Officer gave the command for
the Nesting

THE SURVIVOR 187

Sl~shtoothBitch to move downstar.Itwasn't the way
Chout-Riit had taught them to fight.

  They were in mid-leap without a thought in their
heads. Pure rage.

  Without thought himself, Trainer-of-Slaves
ripped off his goggles and raced to the hangar
where he requisitioned a Zttrgor from the upper
racks. LongReach and Joker scampered to unhook
it and swing it down to the airlock tracks for
release.

"You are agitated, master!"

  "Old Smelly Fur is trying to get us all killedl He
wants you dead and he wants me deadl And he's
willing to claw the Patriarch in the bargain!"

  Long-Reach froze in fear at such wrath in
MellowYellow.

  Trainer-of-Slaves sped across the heavens to the
Sherreks Ear which had already abandoned its great
antenna to the blackness its antenna, its strength!
Calmer now, he checked the Ztirgor into a receiver
bay.

  Why was Grraf-Hromfi doing this? Think before
you leap. Was that his motto because he knew in
his liver that he was impulsive, his reflexes faster
than thought? Had he needed all these years the
constant image of that motto across his eyes to
keep his blood in check?

  The communications officer knew
Trainer-of-Slaves, and knew of his close
relationship with Grraf-Hromfi, yet still he tried to
discourage Trainer from his call. Trainer insisted,
and surprisingly, when Grraf-Hromfi learned he
was there, found himself ordered to the Command
Center immediately.

  "I have a question for you about your captive.
Was she behaving like a slave in thrall?"

"Sirel She strikes me as highly feral."

  Grraf-Hromfi's eyes were maddeningly bright as
they pierced through to Trainer-of-Slaves. "Did you
feel the commanding pulse this morning that came

188 Man-Kzin Wars IV

with the wallop of a religious revelation driving
you to obey?"

"My alarm clock?"

  "The Slaver! The scaly green monster with one
eye!"

  "Sire! I came here because the superluminal
drive in the hangar of the Bitch is the only one
we've got."

"Yes? And?" growled Hromfi.

  Trainer was in a rage that this stupid old fossil
couldn't see the obvious. "We are leaping without
a thought in our head! Think before you leap!
Remember? We have to get that drive to
Kzin-home!"

  Grraf-Hromfi bared his fangs and fell into his
dangerous fighting crouch. "You mock me!" he
threatened. "You mock me with my own words, a
son stabbing his father!" At this commotion the
Lord's Second Officer turned to watch, almost
ready to interfere should Trainer become
dangerous. Hromfi was virulent. "You haven't
been listening, youngling! What do you know of
ancient empire and craft and war? Nothing."

  Trainer-of-Slaves was already regretting his
insolence and moved into a more propitiative
posture. "I could never be so great a student of
mythology as you, Dominant One."

  "Mythology!" Grraf-Hromfi was now grievously
enraged. "Five octal-squared years past, these
audacious monkeys who are giving us so much
trouble found and revived one of those one-eyed
monsters. That is mythology?"

  "I am glad that it amuses my Lord to wander
among the fairy tale shelves of the Munchen
library." Why am 1 goading himP Trainer-of-Slaves
was terrified by the ferocity he had unleashed in
his mentor who was now clearly angry as well as
insane.

  Hromfi was circling Trainer, growling out his
words, slowly, threateningly. "They found this
horror. They

THE SURVIVOR 189

released him out of monkey curiosity and he took
over the minds of all the monkey vassals within
range. They'd still be in thrall but 'monkey-daffy;
monkeylucky.' They tricked him back into his stasis
suit and turned it on. And then do you know what
those hollow-brains did? They put him in a
museum. Their silver Sea Statue."

  Grraf-Hromfi spun from the confrontation to
calm himself. He dropped into one of the
command chairs and growled and spat out his rage
at the instrument panels. Then he turned over his
shoulder and spoke to Trainer-of-Slaves again.

  "You speak to me of that superluminal drive of
yours. Where do you think it came from? You've
seen monkey technology. You destroyed their
pitiful ramscoop. You've refitted their quaint
torchships with gravities. You've seen their
weapons. Could they have created a superluminal
driver for spaceships? Not likely. Impossible. But
from evidence on a dozen worlds, students of the
ancient mysteries suspect that the Slavers could
travel faster than light.

  "We are confronted with a W'kkai puzzle. And
I have put it together with no protrusions. The
monkeys have released their Sea Statue again. The
ultimate weapon against the Patriarchy. It was this
ancient beast who must have given them their
superluminal ships and he is here now, in the
Serpent's Swarm, because I felt his mind and my of
fleers are with me because they, too, felt that mind
which would make slaves of kzinkind! If you hadn't
been asleep, you too would believe!"

  Trainer-of-Slaves was always awed by Grraf-
Hromfi's ability to convince. Still it was foolish to
take as true a tale told five lifetimes ago by the
member of a race whose individuals were known to
lie at every opportunity. Indeed! One eye and
green scalesl

190 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "SirelIamhere to request permission to take the
superluminal drive unit to Kzin-home."

  Grraf-Hromfi rose from his chair. He walked
over to Trainer-of-Slaves. His nose came to
Trainer's forehead and his shoulders were
broader. "Permission denied. Do you think you'll
get anywhere if we fail to destroy this menace?
His mind will pluck you right out of the sky and
bring you whimpering to his feet."

  The fear was overpowering. Never in his life
had Trainer-of-Slaves defied anyone, not his
father, ChiirrNig, not Puller-of-Noses, not
Jotok-Tender, not his friend, Ssis-Captain. He was
universally sweet-tempered with his military
associates. He had always accommodated
Grraf-Hromfi's wishes, and the wish of every
officer who held authority above him. His
inclination now was to flatter Grraf-Hromfi into
letting him disappear into interstellar space with
the wreck of the SharJc.

  "Sire! In your great wisdom you have advocated
thinking before leaping . . ."

  Grraf-Hromfi slashed this impudent warrior's
vest through to the flesh of his chest beneath. "Do
you think that I would let you flee from a battle,
Eaterof-Grass? Only Heroes who are eager to die
in battle can carry the burden of flight." He
gestured to two tall kzin guards. "I cannot kill this
coward. Take him back to the Bitch and put him
in hibernation. He'll die there in battle, and if we
survive . . . I'll deal with him then."

  The Lord Commander of the Black Pride was
desperate to eliminate the smell of abject fear
from his command room.

            CEI4PItER 23
             (2420 A.D.)

  Long-Reach was in a panic argument with
himselves. The ship was no longer a safe place.
Mellow-Yellow was in danger. Mellow-Yellow
was in hibernation. Kzin warriors were talking
about slashing the throat of MellowYellow for
cowardice. They were rough with him when they
put him away. After the battle they would take
him out and kill him. Joker had heard them say
so while he was relining the gravity walks. Long
Reach felt grief in the tips of His thumb-fingers.
No more card games. No more currying that fine
pelt.

He felt an unexplainable desolation.

  Fourteen Jotoki were directly bonded to
MellowYellow. In the slave quarters these
fourteen bundled together, avoiding conversation
even with Jotoki who were bonded to other Iczin.
Arms entwined, they chattered and moaned and
sifted thoughts among their brains. The need to
help Mellow-Yellow was unsettling and painful
because they could not help him. Disoriented,
they set about their tasks mechanically, then
returned to the slave quarters to share their
agony.

                 191
                  
192 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  Long-Reach knew that the man-beasts had to
be fed, but while he went through the motions he
was remembering another such terrifying time of
threat  long ago on another world. Simpler
times. Only one kzinhad been menacing
Mellow-Yellow then, not a ship full. The
challenge had taken place in the birthhaven of
Long-Reach among the trees and swamps and
caverns that had nurtured himselves during the
growing-up and were almost alive enough to come
to his aid when he needed to call upon a glen or
ridge between hillbanks. The very land Lad helped
him kill that other kzin.

  Now there were only the cold corridors of a
ship and pipes and snaking power lines and
catwalks and patrolling warriors. Killing one kzin
to save his master had been the most troubling
horror of his life. To kill a whole shipload was
unthinkable, enough to make his arms disconnect
from each other and send him stumbling in an
uncoordinated scramble of arm-legs.

  Nevertheless, that is what he, himselves, was
thinking.

  Lieutenant Argamentine knew that her routine
had been upset. That bizarre kzin who was called
MellowYellow by his five-armed followers
disappeared to be replaced by a taciturn kzin who
was larger and redder, whose only function
seemed to be that of interrogator. He took her
from her cage, never very gently, never so roughly
that he hurt her. Together they rode a capsule to
his tiny torture chamber. He questioned her. He
brought her back to the charge of the slaves,
forgetting her until the next time he needed to
torture her.

  She had grown up dealinl: with difficult people,
including her father, and she had long ago
developed a facility of manner with intractable
personalities but this one fitted none of her
patterns. He was distur6

THE SURVIVOR 193

Tingly. He was impatient with chitchat. He was
impossible to reason with about anything like her
living conditions or the needs of the children. He
was interested only in answers and he was
impatient with devious answers.

  When she did not give him what he wanted he
turned immediately to torture, preferring agonizing
nerve-slim to mutilation. But she got no feeling
that he was interested in torture. He had an
uncanny sensitivity, almost as if he was a latent
telepath. When she didn't have answers to his
questions, he blandly moved on to the next
question. But if she did have answers and tried to
withhold them, he became ruthlessly persistent.

  Desperately, she tried to get an angle on him.
He was curious about the strangest things.

  "Sea Statue at UN Comparative Cultures Exhibit.
You know?"

  She knew, but like most flatlanders, she'd never
really wanted to know much about the one-eyed
thrintun monster who lived inside, frozen in stasis.
It was a story three hundred years old. She was
tortured into remembering.

Had the Sea Statue been moved?

  Elad the Sea Statue been transported to Alpha
Centauri?

  Had the Sea Statue provided the principles of
superluminal flight?

Were the UNSN officers in thrall?

  War bred the strangest paranoias from its soup
of deceptions, misinformation, misdirection, and
poor communication. And lack of any cultural basis
for understanding.

  When she was thrown back into her cage after
her last session, the silent children seemed to know
that she was hurting and her mind half incoherent.
They just held her. They were too numb, and too
mal

194 Man-Kxin Wars IV

treated themselves, to be able to give her much.
Finally the food came.

  "You're late. We're starving," said Lieutenant
Argamentine. She wasn't even ready to try to
figure out a five-brained spider.

  The three children were very quiet around
LongReach. He fed them but he was also the
chief lab technician in a place where they were
mere lab animals. She couldn't read Lona-Reach's
emotions. He had no face. A mottled pot-behly
where his face should have been. His eyes and
arms were expressive but she didn't know how to
read their mobility.

  "Bean mash on kzinbones," said Long-Reach's
translator with an appropriately apologetic
melody. Short(arm) took umbrage with the
vocoder and offered an English translation. "Not
kzin bones! Shudder. Groundified bone and
marrow, rolled to cracker shape. Bonding heated.
Kzin rations for ship. Not kzin bones! Kzin not
cannibals except with kits of wrong father."

  Freckled(arm) made an interjection to correct
an aspect of short(arm)'s terrible English
grammar.

  "Are you going to stay around for another
English lesson?" asked Nora. She didn't really
want this strange creature to go. The torture was
demoralising her.

  "No. Must go. Mellow-Yellow in trouble,"
lamented Long-Reach. "Bad, bad, bad,"
commented three of his arms in a round-robin.

  "I haven't seen him for a while." Was she better
off with Mellow-Yellow or Redfur?

  A pause while the vocoder sorted out the
conversation. "We are all doomed by death," said
its speaker. "A big battle," kibitzed skinny(arm).
"Ship has been recalled to Alpha Centauri,"
intoned big(arm).

  She decided to exact some intelligence of her
own. "Why are they interested in thrintun
slavers?"

THE SURVIVOR 195

  "What?" Long-Reach consulted the vocoder and
drew a blank.

  "One-eyed scaly monsters who take over minds.
They died in a war with the tnuctipun billions of
years ago. I've just had my memory forcibly
refreshed," she said ruefully.

  "Kzin worry about free-will," said Long-Reach.
"All the time, worry. Warrior fetish. Always must
be in control. Didn't you feel the wave of
intrusion? Myselves went right to the kitchen and
made up hot soup for Mellow-Yellow, then
wondered why I do this. Pleasant feeling to serve
others. Kzin no like."

  Suddenly Nora was remembering an impulse of
feeling that had overwhelmed her just days ago.
Devotion. An enormous need to help someone. She
had supposed it was something Mellow-Yellow had
put in her food to make her tack. "There's a Slaver
loose down there?"

  "Was. Big explosion, hour ago here, days ago
there. Don't know what's happening today.
Tomorrow we find out. We're all doomed."

  "Are you a slave?" she asked, curious about the
creature's response. She found out that his vocoder
couldn't translate the word for him, and she
couldn't explain it to him. The nearest he could
come was the English word "friend." As in "only
friend."

  Redfur the Torturer didn't come back. But a
delegation of four Jotoki did. They seemed ill at
ease in their body motions. It was impossible for
her to stop trying to read expressions off the
belly-faces that sat on their mouths even though
she knew they weren't faces. The
shoulder-mounted eyes watched her. They wanted
something. They gave her a delicate dish of stuffed
leaves that tasted like Greek dolmad~k7a, vine
leaves, almost as if it were a ceremony. Another
presented her timidly with green and red garters
for her elbows and knees.

196 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  They were bargaining! "Yes?" she asked, gently,
not knowing what to do with her revelation.

  "Our master wished to take this ship out of the
battle," intoned their translator, which had been
carefully pre-programmed.

"An interesting idea," replied Nora, warily.

  The four were talking among themselves in a
spitting language that sounded like a corruption
of the Hero's Tongue. Finally the translator spoke
again. "Your race and the kzinti are enemies."

"Perhaps someday . . ."

  The translator wasn't listening to her. It
continued. "Men kill kzinti. Kzinti kill men. Is this
not so?"

"It's war."

  "You are military man," said Long-Reach,
impatient with the machine. "Your ice cream
desire is to kill all kzin. I understand mankind."

  No you dons, she thought while she twiddled
with her curl.

"We work, side together, like many arms."

  What she was hearing sounded like mutiny. It
also sounded like they had an exaggerated respect
for her powers. A naked woman with garters was
a threat to no one. "I have been deranged and
you will notice that I am locked behind bars.'

  Long-Reach opened the cage and quickly closed
it. "Bargain," he said. "We make bargain." She
could hear the tremor in his voices, and she was
sure she could see his arms shaking. He was
terrified. She could almost see him running. The
tremors came from inhibiting the flight.

"What can I do for you?"

  "You kill all kzin, but one. We free
Mellow-Yellow. Bargain? Mellow-Yellow live."

  "I'm quite willing to let Mellow-Yellow live,"
she lied. She almost saw the four of them relax.
"What makes you think I might be able to kill all
kzin?"

THE SURVIVOR 197

  "Ferocious monkey warriors defeat kzin. We
know. Monkey squash kzinships. We repair. We
scrape kzin off wall."

  Were they thinking that if they let her out of her
cage she might not settle for anything less than the
death of all kzin on board? As if she had a hope of
hilling even one of the behemoths! It hadn't
slipped her notice that her interrogator had two
sets of human ears casually attached to his belt.

  "Mellow-Yellow live. Bargain?" Long-Reach re-
peated.

  Why were these creatures so bonded to Mellow-
Yellow? Why was he different from the others? His
name translated as something like Overseer of
Inferiors, or Animal Manipulator. Perhaps he had
a chemical hold on them? Perhaps he was an
expert at some kind of hypnoticc conditioning? No
matter. The irraffonal loyalty was there. She
remembered the day she had attacked
Mellow-Yellow, ready to die, because he was cruel
to children, and Long-Reach had been watching
her with four eyes. If she had hurt MellowYellow,
Long-Reach would have hilled her.

  It was a strange bargain. If she protected their
master (from her cage?), the Jotoh were hers.

  Was it a good bargain? It was dangerous to have
naive allies. Were they as naive as they seemed?
Were they treacherous? How much did the kzin
trust their slaves? How reliable were these Jotoki?
What skills did they have? What skills did she
have? What weapons did she have? Nothing. She
knew the formula for a nerve gas that would kill
kzin and was harmless to men, but even given the
equipment, she wouldn't have known how to
mamlfacture it. This whole situation wasn't part of
her Gibraltar Base training.

  No, it wasn't a good bargain, but it was the only
bargain she had.

198 Man-Kxin Wars IV

  "I'm no match for a kzin," she said. She wanted
them to tell her something.

  "You have military mind. We have arms. Ship
is our playground."

  They began to feed her more often. They
cleaned cages and when they moved her to a new
cage, she found a ship map on the floor. She was
surprised that they controlled the cage locks. They
were trusted. Or was it just that Mellow-Yellow
trusted them and in the heat of battle that kzin's
duties had not been fully reapportioned? Why was
he in disgrace?

  Her allies came up with vicious little plans.
They had molecular trip-wire that they could set
up that would cut a kzin's legs off. They knew
how to rig a gravity floor plate into a booby trap
that would grab a kzin in a sudden six-g field. But
when she tried to plan with them, she understood
why they needed her. What they didn't have was
an overall strategic sense. When one starts a
battle, it sets off an avalanche of activity. The
good commander is able to predict where the
avalanche will go, and have his responses already
in place.

  She could make detailed plans, but could they
follow orders? Can a slave follow orders? She was
willing to bet that they could.

  Some of the events she wasn't going to be able
to predict. So far as Nora knew, the human
hyperfleet was already fighting at Alpha Centauri.
That was one wild card she could be vaporized
by her comrades before the mutiny even started.
On the other hand, the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch
was the most sluggish ship of the Third Black
Pride and so would reach its new station many
days later than the maneuverable elements of its
squadron. if the mutiny could be carried out
before they reached the battle, their chances were
much better. Haste was in order.

Lieutenant Nora Argamentine did not expect to
sur

THE SURVIVOR 199

vive the mutiny, so she was optimizing her strategy
for maximum kzin kill. She wanted as many kzin
dead as possible before the inevitable moment
when her plans fell apart. Meticulously, with the
information the slaves gave her, she targeted every
kzin on board the Batch. Mellow-Yellow was at the
bottom of the list. He could be killed by flooding
his hibernation cell with liquid nitrogen but not
while she still needed her Jotoki allies.

  They were able to manufacture her nerve gas.
That surprised her at first until she remembered
what Mellow-Yellow had been doing to the
children. He had some kind of "grant" to do
"medical research" on humans. No, she was not
going to spare that one.

  The Jotoki fiends even cobbled together hand
weapons. They had a spaceman's usual devout
respect for high-velocity projectiles and high-energy
cutting tools. The result was a launcher for a
concussion pellet that could hemorrhage a kzin's
insides but wouldn't damage bulkheads.

  The Bitch's manufacturing shop was designed for
interstellar war. You didn't fly in spare parts to an
interstellar battle, you tooled up for anything, on
the spot, at a moment's notice and burped out
one-of-akind items. It was incomprehensible to
Nora that such facilities could be trusted to slaves,
but then she wasn't a kzin.

  The attack began in the dorm. The airseal bulk-
heads sealed without triggering alarms gas
flooded the rooms, stayed, and was flushed
out the airseal bulkheads unlocked. A gas-killed
kzin looks like he's asleep except that he's not
breathing.

  Jotoki who were not already at their stations on
regular jobs began to move to their assigned
position. The Command Center was gassed.
Hrith-MasterOfficer was comprehending what was
happening to him at the same time his nervous
system was failing

200 Man-Kzin Wars IV

to obey his order to sound a gas alarm. The
officer farthest from the air purifier did issue that
alarm before he died.

  The surviving kzinti moved efficiently into their
battle armor, which was gas-proof alert,
thoroughly alarmed, and ready for action. They
were primed for orders, and they got them:
"Battle Stations!" That was the wrong order. The
ship was being attacked internally, not from an
external threat. "Boarding Stations!" would have
been a better order. "Damage Containment!"
might have worked. Even "Abandon Shipt" would
have collected them into a defensible position.
"Battle Stations1" just dispersed them to known
destinations, along known routes, across Jotok-
devised booby traps. A Jotok, in a rack-held
ztirgor, picked off the kzin who tried to pass
through the anger.

  Lieutenant Argamentine was master-minding
the battle from a tiny munitions closet which had
been jury-rigged into the Bitch's main
communications net, finally wearing trousers and
a shirt she'd ordered her Jotoki allies to make for
her, plus an ugly kzin oxygen mask, retailored for
her head. She knew the jig was up when a kzin
commando team retook the Command Center,
killing the occupying Jotoki, and cut off her
contact.

They could trace her location.

  She evacuated instantly, taking the best position
she could, facing down both legs of an L-shaped
corridor, her only weapon the improvised
concussion-pellet launcher. Hunkering behind her
portable stun-gun barricade, she knew that this
was where she was going to die. She wondered
what the kids would think when they came out of
sedation. She was damned if she wanted to die in
a cage.

  Without warning, a stun-bolt ripped down the
corridor, covering the advance of a kzin clean-up
team.

THE SURVIVOR 201

The barricade hardly did any good at all. She felt
the bolt hit her back, probably from a bounce off
a wall, numbly noting that her fingers were now so
frozen that she could hardly fire off the concussion
rounds  one at the lead kzin, one at the kzin
behind, and one for good measure at the blind
bend from whence they had appeared. The blasts
went off. She was suddenly deaf and her paralyzed
legs refused to propel her out of the way but she
saw the disabled kzinti carried toward her down
the gravityless corridor. She felt the thuds on the
wall as she was buried in kzin armor.

  When a little girl studied war, odd things stuck
in her memory. Now she was remembering the
fragment of a twentieth century Frenchman's letter
from a hospital near Reims describing how he had
spent four days buried with eight dead comrades
on top of him in a shell-destroyed trench.

  The duty of a soldier is to wait. And while one
is waiting, paralysed, life goes on. Three Jotoh
raced around the corner, chattering in their
pseudo-Hero's Tongue. Efficient hands rolled the
kzinti over, removed their helmets and slit their
throats. They stripped the corpses of weapons,
piled the armored bodies in a neat barricade for
Nora, reloaded her launcher, and propped her up
facing down the L. Two of the beasts skittered
away. The third remained just long enough to give
her a shot of paralysis antidote

effective for a kzin but no better than a bee sting
for a human. Hands rearranged her trousers, and
then he, too, was gone.

  The duty of a soldier is to wait, soaked in the
blood of an enemy, fingers unable to fire, praying
that the fingers will come back to life before it is
necessary to kill again.

Daddy had been burned alive.

Eventually Long-Reach arrived, arguing with him

202 Mandolin Wars IV

selves about how to help Nora. Three Jotoki
carried her away for a bath by multitudinous arms.
While her mouth was still only able to make the
noises of a baby trying to discipline its tongue, she
learned of their impossible victory.

  Lieutenant Argamentine couldn't speak her joy
but her eyes could leak. If General Fry could see
me now, naked and being bathed by monster slaves!

  Long-Reach was combing out her hair with
three hands, caressing the auburn richness of it,
fluffing it, adding proteins to it to give body. He
knew how to take care of a pelt!

"Did ... Mellow ... Yellow... survive?"

"Slept through it all. Like a kit."

  Nora grinned to herself. One to go! A half an
hour later, when she could speak coherently, she
suggested the dehibernation of Mellow-Yellow.

  Long-Reach was uneasy. The other Jotoki
became somber in their fear. "Not now. First we
clean up ship. Bloodl Dents! Awful mess!"
Big(arm) added somberly, "He must never know."
Freckled(arm) shivered. "The rage if he finds out
. . ."

  "Lie to a kzin, and it's the torture chamber for
you," said Nora knowingly.

  "The mutiny never happened!" said Long-Reach
adamantly. "All is as it was."

  The Jotoki knew enough about gravity
polarisers to alter course. They were almost at
turnover by the time of the revolt and were doing
a quarter of the velocity of light. They didn't try
to decelerate. They just changed direction with
deep space as their only destination.

  One team spaced the kzin corpses. Each corpse
was ejected violently by the polariser field in a
transient restabilisation of the ship's energy and
momentum balance. Other teams cleaned and
scrubbed and repaired. LongReach slaughtered all
Jotoki who were

THE SURVIVOR 203

bonded to deceased kzin, dressing and storing
them for Mellow-Yellow's table.

  For the first time in millennia, the ancient
conquerors of the barbarian warlords of
Kzin-home commanded their own warship.

               CHAPTER
             (2420 A.D.)

  Hibernation did damp the immediacy of the
thoughts and rages with which one went into
hibernation, but there was no memory loss upon
revival. Waking up and expecting to confront
Grraf-Hromfi and possible death, to find oneself
instead the master of a kzinless lumbering
drydock headed off in the general direction of
kzinspace was a disorienting experience. At the
minimum he should have rated a navigator and
crew.

  Trainerof-Slaves's first assumption had been
that Grraf-Hromfi had undergone a drastic
change of liver, had seen the reasonableness of
the request to flee the battle with the
superluminal motor and had simply sent him on
his way. It was the only logical assumption.
Everything was in order. The Shark was still in
the hangar the first thing he checked and the
Bitch was shipshape.

  But Grraf-Hromfi didn t trust Jotoki to massage
his pelt, let alone take command of a ship.
Something else had happened. Trainer didn't
have the time to ponder.

                 204
                  
THE SURVIVOR 205

He was new to ship command and priority tasks
kept cropping up and demanding his attention.
noticed things.

  The record of orders was absent. The log file
was too clean. The transfer of command was
broken. When had his Jotoki been forced to take
command? He couldn't even locate information
about how the developing battle at Alpha Centauri
had ended. The last he'd heard it had been
chaos UNSN superluminal vehicles winking on,
Grraf-Hromfi foaming at the mouth about mythical
green-scaled monsters trying to take over his mind,
a feral flotilla of animal rockJacks converging on
the monster, and a massive mobilizaffon of the
Fifth Fleet to the wrong rendezvous at the wrong
ffme.

  Now not a word of that. Not a sniff of kzin fur.
Not a trace of kzinff hierarchy. Almost, a
discontinuity..

  In all this pastoral calm no battles, no
emergencies serenity should have been master.
But his Jotoki, who had clearly been in command
of the ship in violation of standing admiralty
orders, were terrified that's what was wrong.

  His slaves were honest. If Grraf-Hromfi had
found himself in a hopeless situation and had
ordered the Bitch to flee under Jotoki control, they
would have said so and been proud of
Grraf-Hromfi's trust. But they were all running
around, tripping all over their arms, trying to
please him, inventing orders to be obeyed and
keeping their mouths shut.

  It was plain that they were expecting their mild-
mannered Mellow-Yellow to murder them all.
Each of them had the fear of the Fanged God in
all of their five hearts. Trainer couldn't bear to
question them. He insisted, absolutely, upon the
truth from his slaves but sometimes the truth was
better left unsaid. He had never, ever, questioned
Long-Reach or Joker

206 Man-Kin IV

or Creepy about the death of Puller-of-Noses. The
subject had always been taboo.

Murder in the service of loyalty.

  Jotok-Tender had mumbled about Jotok loyalty
as if it were a sin when he was drinking too deeply
of his contraband sthondat blood. The rumors
about their treachery were true but Trainer had
always put that down to poor slavecraft. Was it
more? Did a threatened bond sometimes lead to
a murderous frenzy?

  He examined the ship for evidence of murder,
and found not a mark. His suspicion was absurd,
of course. He knew his Jotoki very well. Perhaps
they were capable of well-meaning murder, but
they were not capable of organised mutiny. Their
education had been standardised for ages. Military
prowess was not part of it. Indeed, military
prowess had been systematically bred out of their
root stock.

  But there was something else he was noticing.
His Jotok slaves were carefully shielding him from
that she-man Lieutenant Argamentine. They were
taking care of the cages all too well. He purred at
such a revealing insight. In the mystery
surrounding his revival, he had forgotten her, and
no one had reminded him.

  He had pity for his Jotoh, but he had no
scruples about questioning a man-beast. She must
be healthy by now.

  While he thought about it, he spent time in the
Command Center checking the Bitch's course
towards faint R'hskssira. Navigation was not his
specialty, but he'd spent half his life out under the
interstellar heavens absorbed by the majesty of the
celestial sphere. He had the lore of perhaps twice
octal-cubed stars etched into the passion lobe of
his liver. Finding his way was no problem. It was
avoiding the treacherous shoals of mass that was
the navigator's art and pride and nightmare- and
at that Trainer was an amateur.

THE SURVIVOR 207

  NoraArgamentu~e was in a sullen mood when
he found her in the cages. His Jotoki had exceeded
their authority by merging four of the barred boxes
into one large space for her and the children, but
he had to agree that the new arrangement was a
better one. The three children cried when they saw
him.

"Silence, slaves"" he said, and they were silent.

  "So, your little tricksters let you out of the cold
box, did they? They had the command of a whole
warship to themselves, and they let you out."

  "I trust my Jotoki in all things. But Grraf-Hromfi
would never have trusted this vessel to any Jotok
without a wide-awake kzin on hand," he said. "I'm
curious how that happened."

"Ask theml

  He unlocked the cage, and turned to the
apprehensive children to reassure them. "I'll only
be questioning her for a short while. She'll be right
back."

  He pulled her out by the arm, and kept her more
or less at arm's reach so that she couldn't attack
him, thus propelling her to the inter-floor capsule
station. She tried to shake off his arm. "I'm not
fighting." But she was resisting every Patriarch's
toe-length of the way.

  In the kzin-sized chair of the torture chamber, he
strapped her down and attached the instruments.
He set up the vocoder to monitor their
conversation so that there would be no
misunderstandings. "Tell me the truth and there
will be no pain," he said gently.

"I've been here before and I killed my torturer."

  The muddled situation was beginning to clear.
Female acumen could only be a tiding of vast
troubles. "Hr-r, this is the truth?"

  "Why should I cover for your perfidious little
tricksters?"

"They betrayed you?"

208 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "They tranquilized me and put me back in the
cages. They betrayed themselves."

  "What happened? I can't question them their
fear produces an agony of pity in my liver regions.
My shame is that they are my friends."

  "Friends? Together we cleaned you ratcatsoutof
this ship in half an hour. They took a positive
pleasure in the mayhem. I made one mistake."
She spat at him. "I let you live."

  There was a low growl in his voice despite
himself. Here was the leader of the mutiny.. Now
events made sense. "Details!" he insisted.

She told him where he could stuff his tail.

He turned on the nerve-slim.

  "All right, all right. Why should I cover for your
monsters?" There was no way for her to withhold
the story of the mutiny but she could make him
work for it. She described the attack as if it were
a spontaneously lucky uprising, careful not to
mention the nerve gas, steeling herself to resist
"offering" its chemical structure if he pressed
her but he didn't ask for details. He was too
appalled by the total picture. She sensed,
surprised, that he didn t want to see his Jotoh as
hllers. He even released her restraints as a way of
telling her that he wanted no more answers.

"I should space them all!" he roared.

"Why don't you? I'll helps"

  "I've had that dilemma before. Then who would
cover my back? Kzin who hunt alone are
vulnerable." He whacked his tail against the
bulkhead in annoyance. "You led them astray," he
accused.

"Will you execute me?"

  "Females are not responsible for their actions..
It is not your fault that you are intelligent. The
Fanged God has his jokes."

  "I can see you on my living room rug by the
fireplace," she snarled, twisting her curl.

THE SURVIVOR 209

  He did not reply. Her story of massacre had
sobered him. What other terrible consequences of
female intelligence were there? A thinking, talking
female could severely disturb a household by
teaching what she knew to her litter. His mind
reeled at the thought of female military genius
within a kzinrret palazzo! They would steal the
younglings! They would turn youth against wisdom!

  How unlucky for a race to have been cursed with
such a cruel twist of evolution. He felt his first stab
of pity for mankind. In the last two hundred
generations, just on Man-home alone, there had
been more wars than in all the expanse of
Kzinspace and more death by war on that one
planet than in all of the wars waged by Heroes to
protect the Long Peace. What else could arise
while female quickness sowed dissent between
father and sons?

  Such a waste of the feminine essence which
could be better employed in play with kits and on
the mating couch with males.

  He put the torture implements away. A
black-fingered paw touched her auburn tresses. He
was missing his long lost Jriingh. "Do not be afraid
of me. I am a strange kzintosh, known for the
unwarlike feelings I have in my liver for my slaves.
You have beautiful natural hair. I shall see to it
that you grow a fine pelt over your nakedness. You
have your feral flaws, but your intelligence can be
improved."

  This female was perfectible. No hurry. It was a
long journey home.

             CHAPIER 25
           (242~2423 A.D.)

  The Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch was sluggish but
her cruising velocity was as high as any large kzin
warship. Three and a half years was the estimated
trip-time to Hssin, which was 2.6 light-years from
Alpha Centauri. Detection was unlikely even
though they might now be traveling through
hyperdrive infested space. Hssin lay 5.6 light-years
to the north of Man-sun. Nobody could patrol
that much volume any more than an acorn could
patrol an ocean.

  He was going to have problems with his female.
Keeping experimental animals caged was
expedient, but a cage would not do for slave
breeding and he was anxious to begin his
breeding program. He had a sufficiency of frozen
sperm. He probably did need to do more
experimentation, but without a source of
experimental animals, that was no longer an
option. He'd have to use what he already knew.

  But if he gave the Nora-beast the breeding
room a female needed, even built her a kzinrret
palazzo with enough space for her children, he
was leaping into

                 210
                  
1:HE SURVIVOR 211

trouble. He picked the larger of the crew
dormitories for her, but left her in her cage while
he refitted the room think before you leap!

  The original dorm layout was not sabotage-proof.
If he were building an ordinary palazzo, that would
not matter. But he knew very well that she was
dedicated to destroying the Shark and would give
her life to do so. Next on her priority list was
killing the one kzin she'd missed when she'd used
his Jotoh against the Patriarchy. Feral intelligence
in a female was a captivaffng nuisance. He dare not
underestimate her.

  The walls he had his Jotoki armor-plate. He built
in monitors to watch her for dangerous behavior.
They weren't the most intelligent of monitors but
they probably wouldn't gas her too frequently if she
was careful.

  When her chambers were ready, he took her for
a visit. She was wearing clothes again, he noted
disapprovingly. They weren't decorative but they
did cover her tail-like baldness.

  "I like it," Nora said laconically. "It reminds me
of the Alahama. The munitions room."

"The Alabama?"

  "You wouldn't know the war. The USN Alabama
was a seagoing battleship with a steelclad munitions
room that could take an internal
explosion hopefully without sinking the ship."

  He listened and then ran her words through his
vocoder to make sure of what he'd heard.
Dangerous memories. For all he knew, she could
make high explosives out of paper and spit. Her
memories would have to be replaced, and her
emotions would have to be altered, and her facility
with language crippled. While she had her
memories and her full repertoire of skills, she was
dangerous. Perhaps he could add some
aesthetically pleasing fur. Then he would be able to
relax and enjoy her.

In the meantime he needed her memories.

212 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  To please the Nora-beast he let her design the
furniture for herself and the children.

  "You're going to let me have whatever I want?"
She looked at him with a whimsical smile that he
knew was amusement, but which he couldn't help
but read as a subliminal warning of attack. Her
fingers were twirling with that long curl of hers.

"No weapons," he admonished.

"I want a big stuffed pillow that I can Hop into."

  His mind worked on that one. How could a
pillow be turned into a weapon to kill him when
he least suspected it? This was a nerve-racking
game. He imagined himself being smothered. His
mind's eye watched her soaking the stuffings in
nitric acid to make high explosive, while she wove
a noose out of the shreaded covering. None of
the scenes were plausible. "All right," he said.

  He was astonished at the ornate furniture she
designed. A bed with a satin roof and adjustable
gravity? Golden man-babies with wines, dancing
on the headboard? He grumbled but had his
Jotoki make them for her, scrounging substitutes
for satin and wood. They had to reprogram the
weavers and the plastic molders.

  The time went quickly because there was so
much to do. Deciphering the superluminal drive
was top priority. Trainer-of-Slaves couldn't be
reckless with the device, couldn't test it to
destruction because it was the only one he had.
He developed a tvvo-pronged approach.

  (1) Analysis. Isolate the sub-units. Attempt to
craft a duplicate of the subunit. Test. The Bitch
was a repair facility that could make any part in
the kzin arsenal. He practically owned a prototype
factory and he had the slave power to utilise it.

  (2) Explore the military memories of
Lieutenant Nora Argamentine.

THE SURVIVOR 213

  Trainer-of-Slaves had had many years with his
experimental animals to determine that human
memory was very plastic, approximately five times
as plastic as the kzin memory.

  Torture could get at gross detail quickly, but it
didn't work well with nuances. Every time a human
memory was recalled, it was altered in some way.
If the memory was recalled to relieve pain while
the brain was saturated in the chemical stew
brought on by agony the memory trace was
drastically mutated. Torture gradually obliterated
the nuances it was meant to recover. He had to
veto the use of torture.

Slowly, he worked out other methods.

  Trainer-of-Slaves got his best results with
Lieutenant Argamentine when he doped her into a
sleep state from which she couldn't waken, but in
which she remained on the verge of dreaming. He
strapped her into a mock-up of the Shark's cockpit
and fed her dreaming-mind virtual images of
combat conditions in which she was being attacked
by kzin warcraft. Winning kept up her interest in
the dreams and reduced her anxiety.

  While she was dreaming, he read off her motor
responses. That told him what she was doing to
counter the images he was feeding to her eyes.
From that he learned the combat characteristics of
the Shark. For one thing, he discovered that
phasing into hyperspace took half an hour to set
up. For another thing, he learned that the Shark
had only been captured because of an engine
malfunction.

  All this while Trainer-of-Slaves was studying his
female as an evolutionary curiosity. In a bisexual
animal, the rational female was clearly an
unwanted trait for domestication. If kzinti were to
husband properly obedient human slaves and the
Nora-beast was not properly
obedient child-animal care would have to be
divorced from male-child teaching. With second,

214 Man-Kzin Wars IV

third, and fourth, etc., voices from the harem
subverting the patriarch's word, a household
would disintegrate into chaos. Monkey society
must be shifting around like the surface of a
quake-world!

  He explained all this to Nora, but she was just
as stubborn as Grraf-Hromfi's sons while she sat
under her canopy, arguing back with
inappropriate aYaressiveness for a female. She
didn't know how to Tisten. It was proof that
females couldn't use the gift of language even
when it was given to them.

  In idle moments, when the analysis of the
hyperdrive motor had exhausted him, he toyed
with hypothetical ways of using chrorr~some
engineering to cure the man-females of male
language skills. The daydreams went nowhere
because such a neat answer probably wasn't
practical.

  The kzin solution, which was genetic, wouldn't
work.

  During Heroic reproduction the male egg
combined with the female egg to form a doubled
nucleus. The kzincode-groups, not unlike human
chromosomes, were then distributed, leaving the
super-eYe to divide into two fertile male and
female eggs which then migrated to the kzinrret's
pouch in pairs, a litter always containing an even
number of kits, half kzintosh, half kzinrret.

  Reproduction wasn't all that dissimilar among
monkeys but there were unfortunate differences.
The nuclei of kzincells were more complicated
than those of mancells, containing three distinct
kinds of protein coding, sexual, major-group, and
lumpy-constetation.

  The kzincode-strands that determined kzinsex
were enormous, four times as large as any strand
in the major kzincode-group, and several octals
larger than any member of the lumpy
kzincode-constellation. In male cells the
kzintosh-strand appeared twice, while in female
cells a dominant kzintosh-strand was lord

THE SURVIVOR 215

over the single kzinrret-strand, the latter acting to
edit physical size and repress language in the
female who carried it.

  It would be difficult to genetically engineer male
sex dominance in the man-beasts because with
these animals it was the female who carried the
twinned sex chromosome! A perverse reversal of
the normal situation. Given their genetic makeup
one might well wonder how male monkeys, balding
and hemophiliac, came to be intelligent! Worse,
the male and female sex-chromosomes of the
man-beast were normal-sized, the male
chromosome runtish, even, and unlike the
kzintosh-strand or the kzinrret-strand, were not
major canters of developmental switching.

  In any event, Trainer-of-Slaves wasn't in a hurry
to destroy the Nora-beast's intelligence. As a
younger, more reckless researcher his haste had
ruined many promising experiments. Think before
you leap.

  Intelligence had many facets, and it was
disastrous to confuse its parts, to destroy one thing
when you thought you were destroying another. It
was better to be patient, to alter only small pieces
of her mind at a time and then carefully observe
the incremental change as a guidepost to the next
change.

  Several months into their journey, the Lieutenant
actually did try to destroy the ship. She used
furniture parts to escape. She assembled a
makeshift gas mask to keep herself conscious
during the breakout, and she headed straight for
the ship's vital parts through an airconditioner
she'd learned about from the Jotoh at the time of
the mutiny. She had memorised the ship too well!

  He found her unconscious. She had been stopped
by a whimsical trap he had set up more as a
paranoid afterthought than as a serious line of
defence. He had been reading too much Chuut-Riit
who believed in covering low-probability events.

216 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  The Nora-beast insisted on wearing clothes, to
her downfall. He had tried to argue her out of it,
to reach her sensibilities by creating virtual images
for her eyes of elephants in sombreros and
boleros, of newts in weskits, of giraffes in middies,
of yaks in yoke skirts, but she had only laughed
until her curls shook and told him that she had
been brought up on books in which animals wore
clothes. Obscene! Imagine having to unbutton a
vatach's vest before devouring himt

  When Trainer lost the argument he had simply
booby-trapped her trousers to release a nerve
poison into her skin if she ever came too close to
electromagnetic triggers in certain vital
installations.

  Lying beside her was a lethal firebomb. Where
had she obtained the oxidizer? From the airt
Trainer-ofSlaves growled in disgust at his
oversight. What would a monkey do with a harem
of these creatures" How did the males survive?

  That incident decided Trainer. Her memories
had to go. She was already clamped to the
operating table when she recovered consciousness.

  "We're still here. I goofed," she said sadly, near
tears.

  If she'd been kzin, she would have earned a
partial name as a break-out artist. "Forget it," he
growled. "The Alabama was designed not to sink."

  "Are the kids all right?" Now she was crying.
The three cage- and brain-damaged orphans were
her responsibility. She didn't know whether she
was a mother or a UNSN Lieutenant.

  "Long-Reach is in there teaching them how to
play cards.

  "Louie won't be able to learn. You hurt him. He
can't concentrate.'

  Trainer-of-Slaves was unmoved. He had grown
up in a society with a high kit mortality rate. The
younglings died routinely by violence and neglect.
There

THE SURVIVOR 217

were always more where they came from. Suffering
was the way to Heroism.

  "You're going Al hurt me now, too, aren't you?
You're going to carve me up? Make a drooling
idiot out of me?"

  She was afraid. He had an unnatural compassion
in his liver for that combination, fear and bravery.
"I'm going to sew a tail on your backside," he
growl-hissed. It was his way of hying to crack a
joke.

  She came out of the operation with artificial
gland implants in her brain. She didn't feel any
different. Her mind was clear. She was still driven
to destroy the Shark. She still hated kzin.

  Trainer-of-Slaves had been spending his spare
time away from the Shark completing his
mathematical model of the human brain. It wasn't
all that difficult. The data-link did most of the
work. All he had to do was enter the special
human conditions (taken from the autodoc and his
experiments) into the generalized model that kzin
physiologists had developed cons ago to cover
diverse organic brains Jotok, Kzin, kdatlyno,
Chunquen, etc. They were all different and they
were all the same.

  Memory erasure was a delicate matter.
Memories were all interrelated like a giant
e-dimensional crossword puzzle. No memory could
be erased without snipping out pieces of a myriad
of other memories. And the erased memory could
always be reconstructed by "filling in" the empty
puzzle blanks. The reconstruction went on
automatically by the mere act of using the
remaining memories. The missing pieces were
"interpolated" during recall. If the erasure had
been caused by wetware destruction, the "interpo-
lated" information was simply stored elsewhere.

  Organic brains, having evolved over hundreds of
millions of years of deadly struggle, were systems
designed to military specs. They could take great
dam

218 Man-Kzin Wars IV

age with minimal degradation of performance. No
single location vital for system operation. And
efficient redundancy insured that even heavy
losses of data were recoverable.

  That meant that Trainer couldn't erase the
whole of the Nora-beast's memory at once without
killing her. What he could do was set up a steady
degradation of memory that didn't overwhelm the
general homeostaffc balance. He could alternately
shrink and accelerate the dendritic root growth of
her neurons, disconnect and randomly reconnect.
He could arbitrarily change the strength of the
synaptic coefficients. He could switch on or off the
machinery that converted short-term memory into
long term memory.

  He could tuna on or off specific neural receptor
sites in a way that unbalanced her brain so that it
had to compensate with rapid neural learning. He
could chemically accelerate learning by up to a
factor of twenty, a dangerous game which if
continued caused a kind of self-reference that left
the mind fixated upon one event. Rapid learning
overwrote old memories faster than they could be
reconstituted.

  The brain normally learned in spurts. Neural
disequilibrium induced by failure turned learning
on untill a new equilibrium state was reached.
Success turned learning off. Constant learning
degraded old memories without ever giving them
time to reintegrate into a new equilibrium state.

  The Wunderland autodoc had taught Trainer-of-
Slaves another neat trick. Using a carrier
pseudo-virus, he could induce a neuron to suicide
by budding. The bud killed its parent upon
detatching but the bud then either reproduced
itself (under one kind of stimulus) or began to
sprout an axion (under a second stimulus). If the
neural attachment sites were active, the axion
would sprout dendrites and hardwire itself into the

THE SURVIVOR 219

brain. That was another way of nondestructively
degrading old memories.

  The fur-growing gland he had implanted was
only a whim.

  He was not yet ready to tackle the disassembly
and rewiring of her language processor. One leap
at a time.

  When the Nora-female recuperated he had an
ice cream party for her in her rebuilt palazzo.
Probably it was still not "monkey-proof' but it was
the best he could do. The major improvement was
a removable barricade across the nursery, so that
she could get some peace from the little monsters
if she wanted it. Louie was indeed impulsively
destructive. The girls were all right. They fought
each other like two kzinti in a tournament ring,
and each was jealous of the attention that the
Nora-beast gave the other. Brunhilde would die in
a few years of too many brain cells.

  Long-Reach played with the children while
Trainerof-Slaves was lounging on the giant pillow
eating his liver-and-kidney ice cream. He spoke to
Nora, unable to keep his eyes off her face.

  "Hrr-r. You are very precious to me. I want you
alive. But the hyperdrive motor is even more
precious. It is precious to the Patriarchy. If you try
to escape again, I will kill you."

  "If I don't kill you first." She was picking out the
purple berries and eating them before tasting her
ice cream. She had dimples. It was the first time he
noticed.

  He grinned, hying hard to imitate a human smile
by forcing a curl to his lips. "Forget you ever said
that."

  When they reached R'hshssira Nora's fur was
coming in nicely. She wore a lustrous pelt that had
changed her from an ugly pink "tail" into a
stunningly handsome animal. She could still argue
fluently in English, after a fashion, between the
pauses, and he hadn't yet found a way to
impregnate her with twins.

             CHAPIER 26
             (2423 A.D.)

  Short-Son of Chiirr-Nig, alias Eater-of-Grass,
alias Trainer-of-Slaves, was home and excited.
Why did he love that hot stove, R'hshssira? What
was Hssin to him? Why was he looking forward
to wandering through the old Jotok Run and
gossiping with lotokTender?

  He sat in the Command Center trying to read
the instruments long before they got there. He
was babysitting Louis for his Nora-female because
the boy's hostility was running her ragged and she
needed a rest.

  "Grrough! Stay away from that!" he
commanded in slave patois. He whacked the boy,
not too hard, and returned to his seat. "Come
over here. I'll have something to show you soon."
He was hoping to interest Louis in the stars.
Younglings brought out the father in a kzin, no
matter how badly they behaved, and this one was
his only male.

  The electromagnetic silence disturbed Trainer.
Had his instrument gone dead?

                 220
                  
THE SURVIVOR 221

  Louis was already back into mischief, glancing
warily at the kzin to see if he dared do what he
really wanted to do. He decided that he could. The
kzin was busy.

  When the Bitch had maneuvered closer into the
R'hshssira system, the electronic telescope
confirmed the awful truth. Trainer-of-Slaves let out
a wretched scream of anguish. Destruction. The
man-ghouls had been here first! They had come
and gone. There wasn't a glimmer of any
spacefaring. He howled and clawed the walls!

  Louis dived under the astrogator's desk, terrified,
leaving the fragment of plastic wall-stripping half
stuffed into the computer slot.

  The wrathful kzin saw only a monkey trying to
destroy his machine. A claw scooped the screaming
child out from under the desk, ripping jaws
beheading him to silence the shriek. Angrily
Trainer shook the child apart, the bloodlust driving
him to devour an arm. But he wasn't hungry. He
dropped the corpse and beat his breast.

  The Fanged God had forsaken them without
warning! Hssin would have had no news from
Ka'ashi he reverted to the kzin name for
Wunderland, unable to speak or think the human
words. He howled! Death would have come from
the heavens with superluminal surprise! His family
wouldn't have had a chance. His mother! He tore
his mane with bloody claws, bellowing. Hamarr the
beautiful, his beloved comforter, his youth, his
earliest friend! Dead! He stormed around the
Control Center, smashing his Ka'ashi relics, things
he had collected from that planet with love.
Hamarr would have been fascinated by the
porcelain, shattered now against the bulkhead.

  The rage of a kzin knows no bounds. But it sub-
sides, sometimes into anguished mewling. He went
to

222 Mandarin Wars IV

his oldest friends Long-Reach, Joker, Creepy,
who stared, shocked by the blood on his vest.

  "Jotok-Tender is dead," he wailed, and they
grieved with him for grief is the universal emotion
that does not even need intelligence to wrack the
soul. It comes from the liver.

  They helped him clean up the Control Center.
A trip to the planet showed the details of the fury
of the man-monsters. In some places the
destruction was total. Where the power plant had
been was only slag. But it doesn't take much to
kill a space colony. Holes in the roofs.

  In the Jotok Run they found a desiccated Jotok,
one of the wily ferals, clinging to his tree, the
powder-dry leaves still green. They found giant
Jotok-Tender in his kitchen with a dehydrated
grin defiantly threatening a bowl of preserved
vatach. His Jotok slave had died trying to help
him, now convulsed into an emaciated heap.

  By torchlight they found Hamarr holding three
tiny mummified kits; not her own, for she was too
old to bear such a litter. He hunched beside his
mother, taking her dried corpse in his arms,
howling in his helmet. Her face still seemed to be
whimpering silently, almost alive. Even the
flesh-rotting bacteria had died. They found a
roomful of suffocated kzinrretti and kits, the room
sealed against the poisonous Hssin atmosphere.

  Somewhere there must be survivors? Without
rest he searched. A shelter, a special life support
unit must have withstood the attack? A city that
lives in a deadly atmosphere is not one single unit,
it is a collection of self-contained cells built
around the assumption of disaster. The death of
cells is possible but some cells survive! Trainer
searched, for days, with tireless Joker whose arms
slept in rotation. Then the kzin had to sleep. All
he found were signs of human infantry who

THE SURVIVOR 223

had been there after the air attack in a thorough
campaign of genocide.

  Exile. The crew of the Bitch was still in exile.
They were still alone. Eleven Jotoki, one
man-female, two orphans and a kzin.

  Back on the ship Nora asked him what had hap-
pened down there. She wanted to ask him what
had become of Louis, but she didn't dare. She felt
his rage. Poor maltreated Louis who hated
everybody and would only obey and smile when
you were looking straight into his eyes and being
stern.

  Trainer-of-Slaves had stopped talking to Nora in
English, had broken off all her access to her own
culture. He spoke to her now in the corrupt form
of the Hero's Tongue which he used to
communicate with his Jotoki. "No one lives on
Hssin," he spat-growled. "Your Navy has murdered
them, kits and all."

  I shouldn t have let him baby-sit Louis, she
thought. She had had a theory that kzin males
must have lots of paternal abilities inside
somewhere, since their females were so mentally
limited. I was trying to stimulate h* compassion.
Compassion? That was my excuse.

  Actually, Nora had needed time off from Louis.
Stupid. Louis could work even "love-everybody
Nora" into a murderous rage. Imagine what he
could do to a kzin who had just lost his family and
nation?

  I think My Hero killed Lou*. "What happened to
Louis?" she asked in the staccato patois because
she wanted a reply.

  He wouldn't tell her. He turned away, as contrite
as a kzin who has just eaten one of his own kits.

  But later, as he was making plans to move her
down to Hssin, he did talk to her about Louis,
however obliquely. He told a story about his own
family. He was reminiscing about Hssin and
recalled for Nora the

224 Man-Kzin Wars IV

day his father murdered a youngling
half-brother on a point of discipline.

  Poor doomed Louis. I saved him and then If
ed him back to the lion's den. She felt horrible
that all she felt was relief. Maybe with her pelt
of chimpanzee/ kzinrret fur she really was
turning into a kzin.

            CHAPTER 27
         (2423~2435 A.D.)

  Selected excerpts from the journal of UNSN
Lieutenant Nora Argamentine found in the ruins
of a kzin border fortress.

Day 1

  The fotoki have cleaned out and refurbished an
old ~zinrret palazzo among the rubble left by
the UNSN attack, admittedly in one of the least
damaged areas of the city. It is, of course, only
for the use of me and the two girls. His Royal
Male Highness will take up appropriately mascu-
line quarters, I think the domicile once used by
the late lamented Grand Panjandrum himself.
The Jotoki have sealed our unit and arranged for
water and air. What about food? My Hero says
this will be no problem but I expect pretty awful
fare.

  I have found a hiding place for my journal! It
seems the kzinrretti keep secrets from their
masters! The cache is cunningly clever, crudely

                225
                 
226 Man-Kzin Wars IV

constructed and invisible to curious eyes. I
don't know what to make of its contents.
Found trinkets, I would call them. What kind
of a mind would think such things beautiful
enough to cherish? Dare I make the analogy of
a dog hiding precious bones from his master?

  I was touched as I stared at the trinkets. Is
that what I am to become, a mind who values
such simple things and knows somewhere in
her soul that her master will not let her keep
such junk?

  I am living a nightmare. I can't kill myself
because of the girls, who are pathetic in their
need for me, and I can't escape. My brain is
dissolving slowly and I don't know enough
about the human mind to know what parts of
it he's going to leave me. I can't feel the
difference from day to day except for the
temporary rushes and blackouts he triggers
with his gizmo but I can tell the difference
from last year and I fear the future. For
instance, I'm not sure I'm qualified anymore to
lead a mutiny.

  Sometimes I don't believe that My Hero is
doing this to me, and then I stroke the soft
auburn fur on my body and know that, yes, he
is. I can't argue with him. I've tried. He is like
some men I know. He listens. I feel his
kindness, even his love but he doesn't listen!

  Brunhilde is dying of some malady of
perception that has grown markedly worse in
the last year. Some days she can't take care of
herself or eat. Jacin is thin, chronically
insecure, and epileptic. I expect neither of
them to live, but I try. Louis was beyond my
meager skills poor abandoned, caged,
brutalised child!

  Once, back on the ship, when I was going
out of my mind with worry, I asked My Hero
for

THE SURVIVOR 227

help with the children's health. He had the prac-
tical suggestion that they be destroyed. Yet he
surprised me. He actually read my horror at his
suggestion and came back a day later with an
experimental program of damage control. Wet-
ware revision and editing. He couldn't promise
results.

  How can I bear this lily to let my girls die,
perhaps like Louis, or to ask My Hero to experi-
ment on them again to fix what he has botched?
Would anyone trust him with girls?

Day 4

  The kzin use an octal clock and a hopelessly
complicated dating system. I really have lost
track of what time it is, what day it is, what
month it is. Females aren't supposed to care
about such things. The year, I think, is 2423. I
have periods of blankness, where whole days are
missing. Of these I remember nothing. That
makes keeping track of time even harder. I
could put X's on my prison wall. Would that
mean anything? How do I know when it is a new
day? I'm arbitrarily assigning this day the
number four, counting from the day of
planetfall.

  Writing is easier than talking for me now.
When I write I have time to remember the
words, to pause and rebuild what I've lost or to
think my way around any mental block. Nora-
From-My-Future, if you are reading this over
and do not understand it, I am writing it because
my memory is going. The loss is subtle. But I
have noticed that if I practice remembering, I
can hold on to things. It is when I forget to
remember, that I forget how to remember what
I want to remember.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Remember that.

228 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  THIS IS MY MEMORY. If you've forgotten
something, Nora, maybe you' I find it here.
Maybe. My ability to learn doesn't seem to be
impaired, except during the blanks. My Hero
has told me that I'll always be able to learn as
well as I do now, I just won't be able to talk or
think with words. He's phasing out English and
phasing in Heroic patois. Then he's going to
phase out the patois. Thanks a lot, buster!

  He's also phasing out the Earth. All the
early parts of my life.

  I try to remember Earth. I do not want to
forget Earth. 1 remember my home town and
the cornfields. I can see the afternoon sun on
the church steeple. I know where I went to
high school. I remember holding Benny's wrist
when he was trying to kiss me and fondle my
breasts at the same time. It was in the gazebo
behind the lilacs in the backyard of the
Yankovich place. But I can't for the life of me
remember the name of my home town. How
could I forget that?

Day 5

  Sin is a wonderful moniker for this planet.
That is as close as I can come to the hiss-rum-
blings that pass for its name in the Hero's
Tongue. It is an awful place.

  I no longer have a hope of getting to the
Shark. I can only pray that the UNSN finds it
like they found Sin, then blows it to hell.
Maybe My Hero will never fix the hyperdrive
engine, but don't count on that. He is obsessive
about his work and the hyperdrive is always on
his mind. Those five-armed mechanics of his
are good. I think kzin science is much better
than we supposed back on ... dammit, I can't
even remember the name of my base. It begins
with

THE SURVTVOR 229

a J. I'm sure. It has the same name as the rock
at the head of the Mediterranean Sea.
Tomorrow I'll remember.

  I have no idea whether My Hero is a great
scientist or only a mediocre one. I do know that
the aids he has available to him terrify me. I've
seen him tackle problems that make me chuckle.
I relish the decade he's going to spend beating
his brains out and then he just looks up the
answer in that ding-bat of his, tailors the answer
to his needs and zips on to the next problem. An
answer might be buried in the work of some
obscure kzin scholar who lived when the Romans
were raping the . . . whoever the hell they were
. . . and he can zero in on that answer faster
than I can slurp a bowl of soup even if he starts
with the wrong question. The ease with which he
can search makes up for his lack of curiosity.
God help us if they get the hyperdrive!

  And then again maybe it doesn't matter about
the Shark. Nobody has a monopoly on science.
My grandfather used to say that you can't build
a dike with a single brick. There ... I should
remember the name of my grandfather and I
can't. He had a white beard and a silver handled
cane. Grandmother? Should I remember a
grandmother? It is gaps like that which drive me
build.

Day 12

  I've been neglecting my journal. Brunhilde has
been sick. My Hero surprised me and ran off a
simulation on his ding-bat's human brain model
and came up with some medicine that helps. He
says it won't work for long. Brunhilde doesn't
have a normal human brain anymore (he says).
Something is running amok in there and doing

230 Man-Kzin Wars IV

irreversible haywiring. A side effect of the long
ago experiment.

Day 17

  I never thought a ratcat had a sense of
beauty. But when My Hero looks at me I know
he is seeing beauty. He didn't used to see me
as beautiful. On Earth, I remember Earth, they
have stories about what happens to sailors who
spend so much time away from their women.
Am I starting to think My Hero is beautiful?
He's graceful. But I go cross-eyed when I look
at him. After all these years, he still scares the
shit out of me. I'm living in a palazzo for
kzinrretti. He put me there. That scares the
shit out of me.

Day 21

  Today My Hero took me out into the City of
Sin to show me what my UNSN colleagues
have done. He cobbled together an
atmosphere suit for me, awkward but
servicable. I wouldn't want to take it into
space.

  General Whatzisname was right. War is hell.
Parts of the city around the power station are
utterly devastated. That kind of annihilation is
so complete that the horror is muted and
melted into a dissonant abstract sculpture.

  It is the least damaged parts of Sin that give
me the heebiejeebies. The preserved corpses
make it a museum of horror.

  I flashed on Earth, vividly. I once walked
over an American Civil War battlefield. It was
only a pile of well-tended mounds that might
once have been trenches if you exercised your
imagination. The thousands of corpses spread
over that field disappeared without a trace
within months five centuries before I was
born. I suspect that the

TIE SURVIVOR 231

trenches had collapsed within a year, by then
already overgrown with weeds.

  Here there are no weeds. Here the corpses
remain, freeze-dried and pickled in the gases of
Sin. How long will it take to banish the horror?
Sin does have an active atmosphere. Eventually
I suspect that drifting dust will sanitize this speck
of man-kzin history.

  I can't describe how strange it was for me to
walk through the gloom of the Chiirr-Nig house-
hold with my giant Hero, trying to imagine how
a kzin patriarch ran all that, trying to imagine
My Hero as a kit. He showed me the very spot
where his father murdered his son, the half-
brother of my power-driven master. In this one
walk I saw a greater range of kzin emotion than
I knew existed. He introduced me to his father,
quite formally, still frozen in the rictus agony of
suffocation, trying to reach his oxygen mask. The
evidence of a total surprise attack is everywhere.

  Long ago My Hero gave his mother the
funeral rites. His father he won't touch.

  We took a long walk in the old Jotok Run,
climbing down through a hole in the roof. Why
did My Hero want to show me the very spot
where he met Long-Reach? He stayed there lost
in contemplation and then he showed me all the
trails that Long-Reach had once shown him. I
can't imagine what it was like with smells and
breezes, with waving leaves and baby Jotoki
crawling out of the marshes. All I saw was a
petrified forest from hell. When you stand in the
light of R'hshssira you know you are in hell.

  Why does he want to show me this when he is
going to erase it all from my mind, and then
erase my ability even to put it into poetry?

232 Man-Kzin Wars IV
   Day 62

  Brunhilde died today. That rat-tailed
Seventh Son-of-a-Ghoul wanted to eat herlGod
knows we are short of fresh meat. I had to pull
a fit. There is a strange power in being a
kzinrret. I can rage at him without triggering
his anger. He just gives me what I want. We
cremated her. I put the ashes in a delicate
little box, carved and inlaid, once owned by a
noble kzinrret of the very palazo that is now
mine. The box must have been given as a gift
by some male.

Day 63

  There is only so much power in rage. My
Hero does not always give me what I want. He
won't strike me, but when I cross some line, he
just becomes stubborn: kindly stubborn,
amused stubborn, arrogantly stubborn, angrily
stubborn, passively stubborn implacable, in
other words. (I keep words like implacable on
a list so I won't forget them. My list is hidden
with the trinkets that no kzintosh must see.)

  What did we fight about? A subject dear to
me: The Second Phase of his attack on my
brain. He's going to start chipping away at my
ability to process language. I think I'm in for
another "operation."" He can black me out with
his gismo that runs the gland implants in my
brain. When I start remembering again there
will be a blank of unknown length. I'll never
know whether or not I've had an operation.

  He isn't going to do brain surgery. He's
going to set up a disassembler and hardwire
reor~anizer. Neural networks resist such
changes so the whole effect will be a transition
rather than a discontinuity.

He says it is safe. He says that the language

TI]E SURVIVOR 233

processing ability was added last to the functions
of the human brain and so is the easiest to dis-
connect. He says I don't need language to think
with. Of course, I won't be able to communicate
what I'm thinking to anyone else and won't be
able to tap into anyone else's thoughts, but I'll
be able to think! Great! Isolated is what I'll be.
And I'll start to hoard trinkets or something.

  My Hero swears by the Fanged God and his
mother's nipples that he isn't the Wild Leaper
that he was in his youth when he did all those
botched experiments on helpless orphans. He's
checked out what he intends to do to me on the
model of the human brain that he built out of
the genetic codes he took from the autodoc. He
says he built that model so he wouldn't have to
risk hurting me! I'm having apoplexy! (Hurrah!
Yesterday I tried all day to remember the word
"apoplexy"! Is that the way to spell its)

  Sometimes I love the bastard as a kind of
strange friend of fate, but I'd kill My Hero if I
could. I would! I would! He says that's why I
must change, so I won't hate him enough to kill
him, so I won't be intelligent enough to figure
out a way to kill him. He doesn't understand
that I only plot to kill him to save myself! He
doesn't understand that we could be friends. Yes,
I'm some kind of possession. I'm to be a slave.

  I can't kill him. If I did kill him, his Jotoki
would kill me quick as a flash. I could kill them,
too. Great. Me and epileptic Jacin up against the
universe.

  My Hero actually patted me on the head, the
paternalistic ... Poor me, what he's doing is
working, I can't even remember my naval vocab-
ulary and I used to be able to curse with the
best of them!

234 hlan-Kzin Wars IV

  "Now, now," he said. "Changing our personality
is very difficult. I tried for many years on myself
and despaired often, but still I persevered and
triumphed. You will, too." He thinks of female
intelligence as a disease that can be cured.

  I think about murder! That is, when I'm not
crying.

  Jacin follows me around all the time. She won't
leave me. She crawls into my bed when I'm
asleep. If she knows I want to be alone, she hides
behind my back so I won't see her. I've found her
under my pillow. I've found her behind my
curtains.

Day 243

How can I tell him?

  My intelligence is all I have. My language is my
way of seeing a greater world. There must be
mercy somewhere in that heart of his??????? I try
to remember Earth. I no longer know if Ceres is
in New York or San Francisco.

  After Day 479, Argamentine s day headings
become incoherent, and sometimes are missing
altogether. The following is one of the last journal
entries.

Day is a pretty word. Night and day.

  He told me I will talk boo words. I know that is
clump which kzinrret can talk. I tried remember
Earth. I saw cornfields. I saw a red scarf.
Cornfield cornfield cornfield cornfield ears of
yellow corn, red scarf red scarf red scarf around
neck, but remember only facts. Earth is 4.3 light
years from Wunderland. Earth whirls in space.
Whirl pretty word. Cornfield cornfield cornfield.

THE SURVIVOF~ 235

Remember sight of Earth from space. Earth is
blue with clouds. Pretty Earth.

  Sin I remember. House in Sin. Death in Sin.
My Hero won't let me talk English. Write secret
dictionary of Hero-English words. Mnemonic
trick. Clever me. Clever Nora. Clever is pretty
word. Can read English. Practice. Practice day
and night. Easy talk Hero, talk in spits and
snarls. Hard speak English. Write English
because I practice. Practice. Nora is clever. Now
I copy some of words I save.

  inkwell pocket shepherd's pie microscope
ultramarine harmonize plumbing joystick wind-
mill insect crawl cornfield tired never-never land
tip-of-tongue tanj . . .

  The Nora-beast paced through her palazzo and
always when she came to the great circular rug she
followed the design around in circles because that
seemed to focus her thinking. She was
concentrating. She wore trousers. It was something
she wouldn't give up. A narrow-faced girl, nakedly
furless, followed behind her closely, sporadically
complaining in the Female Tongue.

  The furry woman did not forget the girl, and
sometimes stroked the child's hair, but she was
busy and concentrating. What she wanted was on
the tip of her tongue but it wouldn't come. Simple
Heroic words got in the way. She had to
concentrate.

  She gave up for a while and ate a meal. She fed
the girl. She cleaned up the kitchen. She toured
the palazzo to spruce up the rooms. Then she
returned to her single-minded concentration.

It started with a hiss.

  She knew that much. Finally a broad grin of tri-
umph crossed her face, dimpling her cheeks. She
said the word aloud, relishing the sounds, all three
sylla

236 Man-Kzin Wars IV

blest The word did indeed begin with a hiss! She
knew it! She repeated the English word over and
over again so that she might learn it faster than
she forgot it.

  When she was sure of her mastery she went to
the little niche and took out the book from
among the pretty baubles. She opened the book
to a fresh page, not looking at the writing because
the words no longer meant anything to her and
she had a hard time pronouncing them. She knew
they were words just like the hissing-staccato
words of Her Hero.

  She picked up the stylus and wrote her word
very carefully, eighteen times, pronouncing it each
time with a smile. She knew exactly what it
represented. She had the picture in her. head. It
was important because it wasn't a Heroic word.
Then she hid the book and hid the stylus. It was
the last entry she ever made in her journal.

  She couldn't stop smiling. No kzinrret ever
smiled like that; it wasn't part of the hardwiringof
their brains to do so. She waited impatiently for
Her Hero to arrive. He always came to lie in her
bed with her, stroking her fur, making her feel
cozy.

  When she heard him at the entrance, heard the
airlock cycling, she began to mumble to herself.
This time she didn't greet him. She waited coyly
for him to come into the stone room with the
round rug. She waited until he was right beside
her before she turned to him and said her word
straight to his face, grinning happily in her victory.

  '~cenffpede'', she said, hissing it out. She had
the image clearly in her mind, a tiny centipede
furry with legs, legs, legs.

  For twelve years the crew of the
Nesting-SlashtoothBitch stayed among the ruins of
Hssin, living alternately on the ship and in the
buildings they had refurbished. The kzin's Jotoki
slaves rebuilt the body of the

THE SURVIVOR 237

Shark. The secrets of its hyperdrive motor came
less quickly. Without a UNSN operations and
repair manual, puzzles that should have been
solved in days, took years.

  Trainer-of-Slaves learned how to impregnate the
Nora-female with sperm extracted from the bodies
of his previous experiments. He was delighted to
discover that he could always arrange to give her
a normal birth of one son and one daughter. Jacin
died of a brain seizure. Nora never forgot her and
the memory made her fiercely protective of her
own twins. She loved Her Hero but she did not
trust him with children.

  In that twelve years of exile the refugees from
Alpha Centauri had to hide from one patrolling
UNSN vessel. Two kzin ships arrived and fled, and
one unsuspecting kzin flotilla coming into
Hssin probably not even aware that a
superluminal war was happening  ran into a
UNSN ambush while decelerating. They were
wiped out to the last kzin, as a cautious Bitch later
determined.

  The final tests of the refurbished Shark took
three months. Trainer-of-Slaves was not aware that
the war was already over.

             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 Chiirr-Nig. Nobody had
expected him to live except his protective
mother.

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

                 238
                  
THE SURVIVOR 239

  In the meantime how had the warriors of Riit
and Nig fared? Chuut-Rut was dead, his sons dead,
his entourage slaughtered. Churr-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

240 Man-Kzin Wars IV

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
LongReach 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 kzinrretti: 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 kzinrret fur. To
stock his harem he'd be able to walk into the
most noble of households

THE SURVIVOR 241

carved woods, tapestries, trophies, ancient heir-
looms and take his pick of their favorite
daughters.

  Still nothing but the electromagnetic hubbub of
a thriving civilisation, 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 Wikkai 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

242 Man-K=inWars IV

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, Chiirr-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

THE SURVIVOR 243

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

244 Man-Kzin Wars IV

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
u~onderfillly feminine man-kzinrret. 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-Nigl This unworthy
KppokissGuardian 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.

             THE MAN WHO
              WOULD BE
                KZIN
     Gre,g Bear ~ Sat. Stirling

Copyright ~ 1991 by Creg Bear and S.M.
Stirling

  "I am become overlord of a fleet of transports,
supply ships, and wrecks!" Kfraksha-Admiral said.
"No wonder the First Fleet did not return; our
Intelligence reports claimed these humans were
leaf-eaters without a weapon to their name, and
they have destroyed a fourth of our combat
strength!"

  He turned his face down to the holographic
display before him; it was set for exterior-visual,
and showed only bright unwinking points of light
and the schematics that indicated the hundreds
of vessels of the Second Fleet. Here beyond the
orbit of Neptune the humans' sun was just
another star . . . we will eat you yet, he vowed
silently. A spacer's eye could identify those suns
whose worlds obeyed the Patriarch. More that
did not, unvisited, or unconquered yet like the
Pierin holdouts on Zeta Reticuli. Yes, you and all
like you! So many suns, so many . . .

  The kzin commander's tail was not lashing, he
was beyond that, and the naked pink length of
that organ now stood out rigid as he paced the
command deck

                 247
                  
248 Man-Kzin Wars IV

of the Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs. The
orange fur around his blunt muzzle bristled, and
the reddish washcloth of his tongue kept sweeping
up to moisten his black nostrils. The other kzinti
on the bridge stayed prudently silent, forcing their
batwing ears not to fold into the fur of their
heads at the spicy scent of highstatus anger. The
lower-ranked bent above the consoles and
readouts of their duty stations, taking refuge in
work; the immediate staff prostrated themselves
around the central display tank, laying their facial
fur flat. Aide-to-Commanders covered his nose
with his hands in an excess of servility; irritated,
Kfraksha kicked him in the ribs as he went by.
There was no satisfaction to the gesture, since
they were all in spacecombat armor save for the
unhinged helmets, but the subordinate went
spinning a meter or so across the deck.

  "Well? Advise me," the kzin admiral spat.
"Surely something can be learned from the loss of
a squadron of Gut Tearer-class cruisers?"

  Reawii-Intelligence-Analyst raised tufted
eyebrows and fluttered his lips against his fangs.

  "Frrrr. The ... rrrr, humans have devoted great
resources to the defense of the gas-giant moons,
whose resources are crucial."

  As Kfraksha-Admiral bared teeth, the
Intelligence officer hurried on. Reawii's
Homeworld accent irritated Kfraksha-Admiral at
the best of times. His birth was better than his
status, and it would not do to anger the supreme
commander, who had risen from the ranks and
was proud of it. He hurried beyond the obvious.

  "Their laser cannon opened fire with uncanny
accuracy. We were unprepared for weapons of
this type because such large fixed installations are
seldom tactically worthwhile; also, our preliminary
surveys did not indicate space defences of any
type. It is worth the

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN249

risk to further fleet units to recover any possible
Intelligence data from wreckage or survivors on
appropriate trajectories."

  Kfraksha-Admiral's facial pelt rippled in patterns
equivalent to a human nod.

  "Prepare summaries of projected operations for
data and survivors," he said. Then he paused; now
his tail did lash, sign of deep worry or
concentration.. "Hrrr. It is time we stopped being
surprised by the Earthmonkeys and started
springing unseen from the long grass ourselves.
Bring me a transcript of aD astronomical
anomalies in this system."

  The staff officers rose and left at his gesture, and
Kfraksha-Admiral remained staring into the display
tank; he keyed it to a dose-in view of the arsenal
planet. Blue and white, more ocean than
Homeworld, slightly lighter gravity. A rich world. A
soft world, or so the telepaths said, no weapons, a
species that was so without shame that it
deliberately shunned the honorable path of war.
Thousands of thousands squared of the animals.
Unconsciously, he licked his lips. All the more for
the feeding.

  The game was wary, though. He must throttle his
leap, though it was like squeezing his own throat in
his claws.

"I must know before I fight," he muttered.

He was the perfect spy.

He could also be the perfect saboteur.

Lawrence Halloran was a strong projecting
telepath.

  He could read the minds of most people with
ease. The remaining select few he could invade,
with steady concentration, within a week or two.
Using what he found in those minds, HaDoran
could appear to be anybody or anything.

  He could also make suggestions, convincing his
subjects or victims that they were undergoing
some

250 Man-Kin IV

physical experience. In this, he relied in large
measure on auto-suggestion; sometimes it was
enough to plant a subliminal hint and have the
victims convince themselves that they actually
experienced something. The problem was that the
Earth of the twenty-fourth century had little use
for spies or saboteurs. Earth had been at peace
for three hundred years. Everyone was
prosperous; many were rich. The planet was a
little crowded, but those who strongly disliked that
could leave. Psychists and autodocs saw that
nobody was violent or angry or unhappy for long.
Most people were only vaguely aware that things
had ever been very different, and the ARM, the
UN technological police, kept it that way,
ensuring that no revolutionary changes upset the
comfortable status quo.

  Lawrence Halloran had an unusual ability that
seemed to be completely useless. He had first
used his talents in a most undignified way,
appearing as the headmaster of his private Pacific
Grove secondary school, sans apparel, in the
middle of the quad during an exercise break. The
headmaster had come within a hair's-breadth of
being relieved of duty; an airtight alibi, that he
had in fact been in conference with five teachers
across the campus, had saved his job and
reputation. Halloran's secret had not been
revealed. But Halloran had learned an important
object lesson foolish use of his talents could
have grave consequences. He had been raised to
feel strong guilt at any hint of aggression.
Children who scuffled in the schoolyard were sick
and needed treatment.

  Human society was not so very different from
an ant's nest, at the end of the Long Peace, a
stick, inserted from an unexpected direction, could
raise hell. And woe to the wielder if he stayed
around long enough to let the ants crawl up the
stick.

  That Halloran had not manifested his ability as
an infant not until his sixteenth year, in
fact was some

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZ'N 251

thing of a miracle. The talent had undoubtedly
existed in some form, but had kept itself hidden
until five years after Halloran's first twinges of
pubescence.

  At first, such a wild talent had been exhilarating.
After the headmaster fiasco, and several weirder if
less immediately foolish manifestations (a dinosaur
on a slidewalk at night, Christ in a sacristy), and
string of romantic successes everyone else found
bewildering, he had undergone what amounted to
a religious conversion. Halloran came to realize
that he could not use his talent without destroying
himself, and those around him. The only thing it
was good for was decep tion and domination.

He buried it. Studied music. Specialized in Haydn.

  In his dreams, he became Haydn. It beat being
himself.

  When awake, he was merely Lawrence Halloran
Tr., perpetual student: slightly raucous, highly
intuitive (he could not keep his subconscious from
exerting certain small forays) and generally
regarded by his peers as someone to avoid. His
only real friend was his cat. He knew that his cat
loved him, because he fed her. Cats were neither
altruists nor hypocrites, and nobody expected them
to be noble. If he could not be Haydn, he would
rather have been a cat.

  Halloran resented his social standing. If only they
knew how noble I am. He had a talent he could use
to enslave people, and by sublimating it he became
an irritating son of a bitch; that, he thought, was
highly commendable self-sacrifice.

  And they hate me for it, he realized. I don't much
love them either. Lucky for them l m an altruist.

  Then the war had come; invaders from beyond
human space. The kzinti: catlike aliens, carnivores,
aggressive imperialists. Human society was turned
upside down once again, although the process eras
swift only from a historical perspective. With the
war

252 Man-Kzin Wars IV

eight years along, Halloran had grown sick of this
masquerade. Against his better judgment, he had
made himself available to the UN Space Navy;
UNSN, for short. Almost immediately, he had
been sequestered and prepared for just such an
eventuality as the capture of a kzinti vessel. In the
second kzin attack on the Sol system, a cruiser
named War Loot was chopped into several pieces
by converted launch lasers and fell into human
hands.

  In this, Earth's most desperate hour, neither
Halloran nor any of his commanding officers
considered his life to be worth much in and of
itself. Nobility of purpose . . .

  And if Halloran's subconscious thought dif-
ferently

  Halloran knew himself to be in control. Had he
not sublimated the worst of his talent? Had he not
let girls pour drinks on his head?

  Halloran's job was to study the kzin. Then to
become one, well enough to fool another kzin.
After all, if he could convince humans he was a
dinosaur  which was obviously an
impossibility why not fool aliens into seeing what
they expected?

  The first test of Halloran-Kzin was brief and
simple. Halloran entered the laboratory where
doctors struggled to keep two mangled kzin from
the War Loot alive. In the cool ice-blue maximum
isolation ward, he approached the Hotation bed
with its forest of pipes and wires and tubing.
Huddled beneath the apparatus, the kzin known
to its fellows as Telepath dreamed away his final
hours on drugs custom-designed for his
physiology.

  Telepaths were the most despised and yet
valued of kzinti, something of an analogue to
Halloran a mind reader. To kzinti, any kind of
addiction was an unbearably shameful thing a
weakness of discipline and concentration, a giving
in to the body whose territorial

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN253

impulses established so much of the rigid Kzinti
social ritual. To be addicted was to be less
self-controlled than a kzin already was, and that
was pushing things very close to the edge. And yet
addiction to a drug was what produced kzinti
telepaths.

  This kzin would not have looked very good in
the best of times, despite his two hundred and
twenty centimeters of height and bull-gorilla bulk;
now he was shrunken and pitiful, his ribs showing
through matted fur, his limbs reduced to lumpy
bone, lips pulled back from yellow teeth and
stinking gums. Telepath had been without his fix
for weeks. How much this lack, and the presence
of anesthetics, had dulled his talents nobody could
say, but his kind offered the greatest risk to the
success of Halloran's mission. The kzin had been
wearing a supply of the telepath drug on a leather
belt when captured. Administered to him now, it
would allow him to reach into the mind of another,
with considerable effort . . .

Halloran-Kzin had to pass this test.

  He signaled the doctors with a nod, and from
behind their one-way glass they began altering the
concentration of drugs in Telepath's blood. They
added some of the kzinti drug. A monitor wheeped
softly, pitifully, indicating that their kzin would
soon be awake and that he would be in pain.

  The kzin opened his eyes, rolled his head, and
stared in surprise at Halloran-Kzin. The dying
Telepath concealed his pain well.

  "I have been returned?" he said, in the hiss-spit-
snarl of what his race called the Hero's Tongue.

"You have been returned," Halloran-Kzin replied.

  "And am I too valuable to terminate?" the kzin
asked sadly.

  "You will die soon," Halloran-Kzin said, sensing
that this would comfort him.

"Animals ... eaters of plants. I have had night

254 Man-Kin

mares, dreams of being pursued by herbivores.
The shame. And no meat, or only cold rotten
meat . . ."

  "Are you stilll capable?" Halloran-Kzin asked.
He had learned enough about kzinff social
structure from the relatively undamaged prisoner
designated Frxer-ofWeapons to understand that
Telepath would have no posiffon if he was not
telepathic. Fixer was the persona he would
assume. "Show me you are still capable.''

  The kzin had shielded himself against stray
sensaffons from human minds. But now he closed
his eyes and knotted his black, leathery hands into
fists. With an intense effort, he reached out and
tapped Halloran's thoughts. Telepath's eyes
widened untill the rheumy circles around the wide
pupils were clearly visible. His ears contracted
into tight knots beneath the fur. Then he emitted
a horrifying scream, like a jaguar in pain. Against
all his restraints, he thrashed and twisted untill he
had torn loose the internal connecffons that kept
him alive. Orange-red blood pooled around the
flotation bed and the monitor began a steady,
funereal tone.

  Halloran left the ward. Colonel Butord Early
waited for him outside; as usual, his case officer
exuded an air of massive, unwilling patience..

  "Just a minor problem, Halloran said, shaken
more than he wished the other man to know.

"Minor?"

"Telepath is dead. He saw my thoughts."

"He thought you were a kzin?"

  "Yes. He wouldn't have tried reading me if he
thought I was human."

"What happened?"

  "I drove him crazy," Halloran said. "He was
close to the edge anyway . . . I pushed him over."

  "How could you do that?" Colonel Early asked,
brow lowered incredulously.

"I had a salad for lunch," Halloran replied.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN255

  Halloran knew better than to wake a kzin in the
middle of a nightmare. Fixer-of-Weapons had not
rested peacefully the last four sleeps, and no
wonder, with Halloran testing so many hypotheses,
hour by hour, on the captive.

  The chamber in which the kzin slept was roomy
enough, five meters on a side and three meters
high, the walls colored a soothing mottled green.
The air was warm and dry; Halloran had chapped
lips from spending hours and days in the hapless
kzin's company.

  Thinkinga of a kzin as hapless was difficult..
Fixer-ofWeapons had been Chief Weapons
Engineer and Alien Technologies Offlcer aboard
the invasion cruiser War Loot, a position
demanding great strength and stamina even with
the wartime dueling restrictions, for many other
kzinti coveted such a billet.

  War Loot had been on a mission to probe
human defences within the ecliptic, to that extent,
the kzinti mission had succeeded. The cruiser had
been disabled within the outer limits of the
asteroid bek by converted propulsion beam lasers
three weeks before, and against all odds,
Fixermf-Weapons and two other kzin had been
captured. The others had been severely injured,
one almost cut in half by a shorn and warped
bulkhead. The same bulkhead had sealed Fixer-of-
Weapons in a cabin corner, equipped with a
functional vent giving access to seven hours of
trapped air. At the end of six and a half hours,
Fixer-of-Weapons had passed out. Human
investigators had cut him free . . .

  And brought him to Ceres, largest of the
asteroids, to be put in a cage with Halloran.

  To Fixer-of-Weapons, in his more lucid
moments, Halloran looked like a particularly
clumsy and socially inept kzin. But Halloran was a
California boy, born and bred, a graduate of
UCLA's revered school of

256 Man-Kzin Wars IV

music. Halloran did not look like a kzin unless he
wanted to.

  Four years past, to prove to himself that his life
was not a complete waste, he had spent his time
learning to differentiate one Haydn piano sonata
or string quartet from another, not a terribly
exciting task, but peaceful and rewarding. He had
developed a great respect for Haydn, coming to
love the richness and subtle invention of the
eighteenth century composer's music.

  To Earth-bound flatlanders, the war at the top
of the solar system's gravity well, with fleets
maneuverin~ over periods of months and years,
was a distant and dimly perceived threat. Halloran
had hardly known how to feel about his own
existence, much less the survival of the human
race. Haydn suited him to a tee. Glory did not
seem important. Nobody would appreciate him
anyway.

  Halloran's parents, and their fathers and
mothers before them for two and a half centuries,
had known an Earth of peace and relative
prosperity. If any of them had desired glory and
excitement, they could have volunteered for a
decades-long journey by slowboat to new colonies.
None had.

  It was a Halloran tradition; careful study,
avoidance of risk, lifetimes of productive peace.
The tradition had gained his grandfather a long
and productive life one hundred and fifty years
of it, and at least a century more to come. His
father, Lawrence Halloran Sr., had made his
fortune streamlining commodities distribution; a
brilliant move into a neglected field, less crowded
than information shunting. Lawrence Halloran Jr.,
after the death of his mother in an earthquake in
Alaska, had bounced from school to school,
promising to be a perpetual student, gadding from
one subject to another, trying to lose himself . . .

And then peace had ended. The kzinti not the
first

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN257

visitors from beyond the Solar System, but certainly
the most aggressive- had made their presence
known. Presence, to a kzin, was tantamount to
conquest. For hundreds of thousands of kzin
warriors, serving their Patriarchy, Earth and the
other human worlds represented advancement;
many females, higher status, and lifetime sinecures,
without competition.

  Humans had been drawn into the war with no
weapons as such. To defend themselves, all they
had were the massive planet- and asteroid-mounted
propulsion lasers and fusion drives that powered
their starships. These technologies, some of them
now converted to thoroughgoing weapons by
Belters and UN engineers, provided what little
hope humans had . . .

  And there was the bare likelihood unconfirmed
as yet that humans were innately more clever
than kzinti, or at least more measured and
restrained. Human fusion drives were certainly
more efficient  but then, the kzinti had gravity
polarisers, not unlike that found on the Pak ship
piloted by Jack Brennan, and never understood.
The Brennan polarizer still worked, but nobody
knew how to control it or build another like it.
Gradually, scientists and UNSN commanders were
realising that capture of kzinti vessels, rather than
complete destruction, could provide invaluable
knowledge about such advanced technology.

  Gravity polarizers gave kzin ships the ability to
travel at eight-tenths the speed of light, with rapid
acceleration and artificial gravitation . . . The kzinti
did not need super-efflcient fusion drives.

  Halloran waited patiently for the
Fixer-of-Weapons to awaken. An hour passed. He
rehearsed the personality he was constructing, and
toned the image he presented for the kzin. He also
studied, for the hundredth time, the black markings
of fur in the kzin's face and along his back,
contrasting with the brownish-red undercoat. The
kzin's ears were ornately tattooed in

2~;8 Man-Kzin Wars IV

patterns Halloran had learned symbolizedthe
inter~neshed bones of kzinti enemies. This was
how the kzinti recognized each other, beyond
scent and gross physical features; failure to know
and project such facial fur patterns and ear
tattoos would mean discovery and death. The
kzinti's own mind would supply the scent, given
the visual clues; their noses were less sensitive
than a dog's, much more so than a human's.

  Another hour, and Halloran felt a touch of
impatience. Kzinti were supposed to be light and
shortterm sleepers. Fixer-of-Weapons seemed to
have joined his warrior ancestors; he barely
breathed.

  At last, the captive stirred and opened his eyes,
glazed nictitating membranes pulling back to
reveal the large, gorgeous purple-rimmed golden
eyes with their surprisingly humanlike round
irises. Fixer-ofWeapons's wedge-shaped,
blunt-muzzled face froze into a blank mask, as it
always did when he confronted Halloran-Kzin,
who stood on the opposite side of the
containment room, tapping his elbow with one
finger. Distance from the captive was imperative,
even when he was "restrained" by imaginary bonds
suggested by Halloran. A kzin did not give
warning when he was about to attack, and
Fixer-of-Weapons was being driven to emotional
extremes.

  The kzin laid back his ears in furious misery. "I
have done nothing to deserve such treatment," he
growled. He believed he was being detained on a
kzinti fleet flagship. Halloran, had he truly been
a kzin, would have preferred human capture to
kzinti detention. I cant say I like the ratcat, he
thought, with a twinge of guilt, quickly suppressed.
But you've got to admit he's about as tough as he
thinks he is.

  "That is for your superiors to decide," Halloran-
Kzin said. "You behaved with suspected
cowardice,

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN259

you allowed an invasion cruiser to be disabled and
captured "

  "I was not Kufcha-Captain! I cannot be
responsible for the incompetence of my
commander." Fixer-ofWeapons rose to his full two
hundred and twenty centimeters, short for a kzin,
and flexed against the imaginary bonds. The
muscles beneath the smooth-furred limbs and
barrel chest were awesome, despite weight loss
under weeks of captivity.. "This is a travesty! Why
are you doing this to me?"

  "You will tell us exactly what happened, step by
step, and how you allowed
animals plant-eaters to capture War Loot."

  Fixer-of-Weapons slumped in abject despair. "I
have told, again and again."

  Halloran-Kzin showed no signs of relenting..
Fixerof-Weapons lashed his lone pink rat-tail,
sitting in a ffeht ball on the floor, swallowed hard
and began his take again, and again Halloran used
the familiar litany as a cover to probe the kzin's
inner thoughts.

  If Halloran was going to be a kzin, and think like
one for days on end, then he had to have
everything exactly right. His deception would be of
the utmost delicacy. The smallest flaw could get
him killed immediately.

  Kzinti, unlike the UN Space Navy, did not take
prisoners except for Intelligence and culinary
purposes.

  Fixer-of-Weapons finished his story. Halloran
pulled back from the kzin's mind.

  "If I have disgraced myself, then at least allow
me to die," Fixer-of-Weapons said softly.

  That s one wish you can be granted, Halloran
thought. One way or another, the kzin would be
dead soon; his species did not survive in captivity..

  Halloran exited the cell and faced three men and
two women in the antechamber. Two of the men
wore the new uniform barely ten years old the
UN

260 Man-Kin IV

Space Navy. The third man was a Belter cultural
scientist, the only one in the group actually native
to Ceres, dressed in bright lab spotter orange.
The two women Halloran had never seen before;
they were also Belters, though their Belter tans
had faded. All three wore the broad Belter
Mohawk. The taller of the two offered Halloran
her hand and introduced herself.

  "I'm Kelly Ysyvry," she said. "Don't bother
trying to spell it."

  "Y-S-Y-V-R-Y," llalloran said, displaying the
showoff mentality that had made his social life so
difficult at times.

  "Right," Ysyvry said, unflappable. "This," she
nodded at her female companion, "is Henrietta
Olsen."

  Colonel BuLord Early, the shortest and most
muscular of the three men, nodded impatiently at
the introductions, he was an Earther, coal-black
and much older than he looked, something Ultra
Secret in the ARM before the war. Early had
recruited Halloran four years ago, trained him
meticulously, and shown remarkable patience
toward his peculiarities..

  "When are you going to be ready?" he asked
Halloran.

"Ready for what?" Halloran asked.

"Insertion."

  Halloran, fully understanding the Colonel's
meaning, inspected the women roguishly.

"I'm confused," he said, smiling.

  "What he means," Ysyvry said, "is that we're all
impatient, and you've been the stumbling block
throughout this mission."

"What is she?" Halloran asked Early.

  "We are the plunger of your syringe," Henrietta
Olsen answered. "We're Belter pilots. We've been
getting special training in the kzinti hulk."

  "Pleased to meet you," Halloran said. He
glanced back at the hatch to the cell airlock.
"Fixer-of-Weap

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE Kz~N 261

onswill be dead within a week. I can't learn any
more from him. So . . . I'm ready for a test."

  Early stared at him. Halloran knew the Colonel
was restraining an urge to ask him, Are you sure?,
after having displayed such impatience.

  "How do you know Fixer-of-Weapons will die?"
the black man said.

  Halloran's smile stiffened. He disliked being
challenged. "Because if I were him, and part of me
is, I would have reached my limit."

  "It hasn't been an easy assignment," the cultural
scientist commented.

  "Easier for us than Fixer-of-Weapons," Halloran
said, smirking inwardly as the scientist winced.

  There would be many problems, of course.
Halloran would never be as strong as a kzin, and if
there were any sort of combat, he would quickly
lose . . .

  Halloran, among the kzinti, thinking himself a
kzin, would have to carefully preprogram himself to
avoid such dangerous situations, to keep a low
profile concomitant with his status, whatever that
might be. That would be difficuk. A high-status
kzin had retainers, sons, flunkies, to handle
status-challenges; many of the retainers picked
carefully for a combination of dim wits and
excellent reflexes. An officer with recognized rank
could not be challenged while on a warship, pun-
ishments for trying included blinding, castration,
and execution of all descendants all more terrible
than mere death to a kzin. Nameless ratings could
duel as they pleased, provided they had a senior's
permission ... and Halloran-Kzin would be outside
the rank structure, with no protector.

  Fixer-Halloran, when he returned to the kzinff
fleet, would likely find all suitable billets on other
vessels filled. To regain his position and keep face
among his fellows, he could not simply "fit in" and
be docile. But

262 Man-Kzin Wars TV

there were more ways than open combat to gain
social status.

  The kzinti social structure was delicately tuned,
though how delicately perhaps not even the kzinti
understood. Halloran could wreak his own kind of
havoc and none would suspect him of anything
but overweening ambition.

  All of this, he knew, would have to be
accomplished in less than three hundred hours:
just twelve days. His body would be worn out by
that time. Bad diet all meat, and raw at that,
though digestible, with little chance for
supplements of the vitamins a human needed and
the life of a kzin did not produce; mental strain;
luck running out.

He did not expect to return.

  Halloran's hope was that his death would come
in the capture or destruction of one or more
kzinti ships.

  The chance for such a victory, however
negligible it might be in the overall strategy of the
war, was easily worth one's life, certainly his own
life.

  The truth was, Halloran thought he was a
thorough shit, not of much use to anyone in the
long run, a petty dilettante with an unlikely
ability, more a handicap than an asset.

  Self-sacrifice would give him a peculiar
satisfaction: See, I'm not so bad.

Nobility of purpose.

  And something deeper: to actually be a kzin. A
kzin could be all the things Halloran had trained
himself not to be, and not feel guilty about it.
Dominant. Vicious. Compeffffve.

Kzinff were allowed to have fun.

  The short broadcast good-byes to his friends
and relatives on Earth, as yet unassailed by kzinti:

  His father, now one hundred and twenty, he
was able to say farewell to; but his grandfather, a
Struld

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN 263

brug and still one of the foremost collectors of
Norman Rockwell art and memorabilia, was
unavailable.

  He disliked his father, yet respected him, and
loved his grandfather, but felt a kind of contempt
for the man s sentimental passion.

  His grandfather's answering service did not know
where the oldest living Halloran was. That brought
on a sharp tinge of disappointment, against which
he quickly raised a shield of aloofness. For a
moment, a very young Lawrence Larry had
surfaced, wanting, desperately needing to see
Grandpa. And there was no room for such active
sub-personalities, not with Fixer-of-Weapons filling
much of his cranium. Or so he told himself,
drowning the disappointment as an old farmer
might have discarded a sack of unwanted kittens.

  Halloran met his father on the family estate at
the cap of Arcosanti Two in Arizona. The man
barely looked fifty and was with his fifth wife, who
was older than Halloran but only by five or ten
years. The sky was gorgeous robin's egg at the
horizon and lapis overhead and the green desert
spread for ten kilometers around in a network of
canals and recreational sluices. Arcosanti Two
prided itself on its ecological balance, but in fact
the city had taken a wide tract of Arizona desert
and made it into something else entirely, some-
thing in which bobbing lizards and roadrunners
would soon go crazy or die. Halloran felt just as
much out of place on the broad open-air portico at
two kilometers above sea level. Infrared heaters
kept the high autumn chill away.

  "I'm volunteering for a slowboat," Halloran told
his father.

  "I thought they'd been suspended," said Rose
Petal, the new wife, a very attractive natural blond
with oriental features. "I mean, all that expense,
and we're bound to lose them to the, mmm,
outsiders . . ." She

264 Mandolin Wars IV

looked slightly embarrassed; even after nearly a
decade, the words war and enemy still carried a
strong flavor of obscenity to most Earthers.

  "There's one going out in a few weeks, a private
venture. No announcements. Tacit government
support; if we survive, they send more."

  "That does not sound like my son," Halloran Sr.
ventured.

  When I tried to assert myself, you told me it was
wrong. When I didn't, you despised me. Thanks,
Dad.

  "I think it is wonderful," Rose Petal said.
"Whether characteristic or not."

  "It's a way out from under family," Halloran Jr.
said with a little smile.

  "That sounds like my son. Though I'd be much
more impressed if you were doing something to
help your own people . . ."

  "Colonization," Halloran Jr. interjected, leaving
the word to stand on its own.

"More directly" Halloran Sr. finished.

  "Can't keep ail our eggs in one basket," his son
continued, amused by arguing a case denied by his
own actions. So tell him.

  But that wasn't possible. Halloran Jr. knew his
father too well; a fine entrepreneur, but no
keeper of secrets. In truth, his father, despite the
aggressive attitude, was even more unsuited to a
world of war and discipline than his son.

  "That's not what you're doing," Halloran Sr.
said. Rose Petal stood by, wisely keeping out from
this point on.

"That's what I'm saying I'm doing."

  His father gave him a peculiar look then, and
Halloran Jr. felt a brief moment of camaraderie
and shared secrets. He has a little bit of the touch
too, doesn't he? He knows. Not consciously, but . .
.

He's proud.

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZTN 265

  Against his own expectations for the meeting and
farewell, Halloran left Arcosanti Two, his father,
and Rose Petal, feeling he might have more to lose
than he had guessed, and more to learn about
things very close to him. He left feeling good.

  He hadn't parted from his father with positive
feelings in at least ten years.

  There were no longer lovers or good friends to
take leave of. He had stripped himself of these
social accoutrements over the last five years. It was
difficult to have friends who couldn't lie to you,
and he always felt guilty with women. How could
he know he hadn't influenced them subconsciously?
Knowing this, as he returned to the port and took
a shuttle to orbit, brought back the necessary
feeling of isolation. He would not be human much
longer. Things would be easier if he had very little
to regret losing.

  Insertion. The hulk of the kzin cruiser, its gravity
polariser destroyed by the kzin crew to keep it out
of human hands, was propelled by a NEO
mass-driver down the solar gravity well to graze the
orbital path of Venus, piloted by the two Belter
women to the diffuse outer reaches of the
asteroids, there set adrift with the bodies of
Telepath and the other unknown kzin restored to
the places where they would have died. The Belters
would take a small cargo craft back home.
Halloran would ride an even smaller lifeboat from
War Loot toward the kzin fleet. He might or might
not be picked up, depending on how hungry the
kzin strategists were for information about the loss.

  The fleet might or might not be in a good
position; it might be mounting another year-long
attack against Saturn's moons, on the opposite side
of the sun; it might be moving inward for a massive
blow against Earth. With the gravity polarisers, the
kzin vessels

266 Man-Kzin Wars IV

were faster and far more maneuverable than any
human ships.

And there could be more than one Beet.

  The confined interior of the cargo vessel gave
none of its three occupants much privacy. To
compensate, they seldom spoke to each other. At
the end of a week, Halloran began to get
depressed, and it took him another week to
express himself to his companions.

  While Henrietta Olsen buried herself in reading
when she wasn't tending the computers, Kelly
Ysyvry spent much of her time apparently doing
nothing. Eyes open, blinking every few seconds,
she would stare at a bulkhead for hours at a
stretch. This depressed Halloran further. Were all
Belters so innerdirected? If they were, then what
just God would place him in the company of
Belters during his last few weeks as a human
being?

  He finally approached Olsen with something
more than polite words to punctuate the silence.
A kzin wouldn't have to put up with this, he
thought. Kzinti females were subsapient, morons
incapable of speech. That would have its
advantages, Halloran thought halfjokingly.

  Women frightened him. He knew too much
about what they thought of him.

  "I suppose lack of conversation is one way of
staying sane," e said.

  Olsen looked up from her page projector and
blinked. "Flatlanders talk all the time?"

"No," Halloran admitted. "But they talk."

  "We talk," Olsen said, returning to her reading.
"When we want to, or need to."

"I need to talk," Halloran said.

  Olsen put her book down. Perversely guilty,
Halloran asked what she had been reading.

"Montagu, The Man Who Never Was," she replied.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZTN 267

"What's it about?"

  "It's ancient history," she said. "Forbidden stuff.
Twentieth century. During the Second World
War  remember that?"

  "I'm educated," he said. As much as such
obscene subjects had been taught in school. Pacific
Grove had been progressive.

  "The Allies dressed up a corpse in one of their
uniforms and gave him a courier's bag with false
information. Then they dumped him where he
could be picked up by the Axis."

Halloran gawped for a moment. "Sounds grim."

"I doubt the corpse minded."

"And I'm the corpse?"

  Olsen grinned. "You don't fit the profile at all.
You re not The Man Who Never Was. You re one
of those soldiers trained to speak the enemy's
language and dropped behind the lines in the
enemy's uniforms to wreak havoc."

"Why are you so interested in World War Two?"

  "Fits our times. This stuff used to be
pornography  or whatever the equivalent is for
literature about violence and destruction, and
they'd send you to the psychist if they caught you
with it. Now it's available anywhere. Psychological
refitting. Still, the thought of . . ." She shook her
head. "Killing. Even thinking like one of therr~so
ready to kill . . ."

  Ysyvry broke her meditation by blinking three
times in quick succession and turned pointedly to
face Halloran.

  "To the normal person of a few years ago, what
you've become would be unspeakably disgusting."

"And what about now?"

  "It's necessity," Ysyvry said. That word again.
"We're no better than you. We're all soldiers now.
Killers.'

"So we're too ashamed to speak to each other?"

268 Man-Kzin Wars IV
  "We didn't know you wanted to talk," Olsen
  said.

  Throughout his life, even as insensitive as he
had tried to become, he had been amazed at how
others, especially women, could be so ignorant of
their fellows. "I'll probably be dead in a month,"
he said.

  "So you want sympathy?" Olsen said, wide-eyed
"The Man Who Would be Kzin wants sympathy?
Such bad technique . . ."

"Forget it," Halloran said, feeling his stomach
twist

  "We learned a lot about you,' Ysyvry continued
"What you might do in a moment of weakness,
how you had once been a troublemaker, using
your abilities to fool people ... Belters value
ingenuity and independence, but we also value
respect. Simple politeness."

  Halloran felt a deep void open up beneath him.
"I was young when I did those things." His eyes
filled with tears. "Tanjit, I'm sacrificing myself for
my people, and you treat me as if I'm a bleeping
dog turdl"

  "Yeah,' Olsen said, turning away. "We don't like
flatlanders, anyway, and . . . I suppose we're not
used to this whole war thing. We've had friends
die. We'd just as soon it all went away. Even you.'

  "So," Ysyvry said, taking a deep breath. "Tell us
about yourself. You studied music?'

  The turnabout startled him. He wiped his eyes
with his sleeve. "Yes. Concentrating on Josef
Haydn."

  "Play us something," Olsen suggested, reaching
into a hidden corner slot to pull out a portable
music keyboard he hadn't known the ship carried.
"Haydn Glenn Miller, Sting, anything classical."

  For the merest instant, he had the impulse to
become Halloran-Kzin. Instead, he took the
keyboard and stared at the black and white
arrangement. Then he played the first movement
of Sonata Number 40 in E Flat, a familiar piece
for him. Ysyvry and Olsen listened intently.

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN 269

  As he lightly completed the last few bars,
Halloran closed his eyes and imagined the portraits
of Haydn, powdered wig and all. He glanced at the
Belter pilots from the corners of his eyes.

  Ysyvry flinched and Olsen released a small
squeak of surprise. He lifted his fingers from the
keyboard and rotated to face them.

"Stop that," Olsen requested, obviously impressed.

Halloran dropped the illusion.

"That was beautiful," Ysyvry said.

"I'm human after all, even if I am a flatlander,
no?"

  'We'll give you that much," Olsen said. "You can
look like anytlun~ you want to?"

  "I'd rather talk about the music," Halloran said,
adjusting tones on the musicomp to mimic
harpsichord.

  "We've never seen a kzin up close, for real,"
Ysyvry said. The expression on their faces was
grimly anticipatory: Come on, scare us.

"I'm not a freak.'

  "So we've already established that much," Olsen
said. "But you're a bit of a show-off, aren't you?"

"And a mind-reader," Ysyvry said.

  He had deliberately avoided looking into their
thoughts. Nobility of purpose.

  "Perfect companion for a long voyage," Olsen
added. "You can be whatever, whomever you want
to be." Their expressions had become almost
salacious. Now Halloran was sorry he had ever
initiated conversation. How much of this was
teasing, how much  actual cruelty?

  Or were they simply testing his stability before
insertion?

"You'd like to see a kzin?" he asked quietly.

  "We'd like to see Fixer-of-Weapons," Ysyvry
affirmed. "We were told you'd need to test the
illusion before we release the hulk and your
lifeship."

270 Man-Kzin Wars 1V

"It's a bit early we stilll have two hundred
hours." "All the more time to turn back if you
don't convince us," Olsen said.

  "It's not just a hat I can put on and take off."
He glanced between them, finding little apparent
sympathy. Belters were polite, individualistic, but
not the most socially adept of people. No wonder
their mainstay on long voyages was silence. "I
won't wear Fixerof-Weapons unless I become
him."

"You won't consciously know you're human?"

  Halloran shook his head. "I'd rather not have
the dichotomy to deal with. I'll be too busy with
other activities.""

  "So the kzinti will think you're one of them, and
. . . will you?"

  "I will be Fixer-of-Weapons, or as close as I can
become," Halloran said.

  "Then you're worse than the fake soldiers in
World War II," Olsen commented dryly.

<'Show us," Ysyvry said, over her companion's

words.

  Halloran tapped his fingers on the edge of the
keyboard for a few seconds. He could show them
Halloran-Kzin the generic kzin he had
manufactured from Fixer-of-Weapons's memories.
That would not be difficult.

  "No," he said. "You've implied that there's
something wrong, somehow, in what I'm going to
do. And you're right. I only volunteered to do this
sort of thing because we're desperate. But it's not
a game. I'm no freak, and I'm not going to
provide a sideshow for a couple of bored and
crass Belters."

  He tapped out the serenade from Haydn's string
quartet Opus 3 number 5.

  Ysyvry smiled: "All right, Mr. Halloran. Looks
like the UNSN made a good choice-- not that
they had much choice."

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 271

  "I don't need your respect, either," Halloran said,
a little surprised at how deeply he had been hurt.
I thought I was way beyond that.

  "What she's saying," Olsen elaborated, "is that we
were asked to isolate you, and harass you a little.
See if you're as much of a show-off as your records
indicate you might be."

  "Fine," Halloran said. "Now it's back to the
silence?'

  "No," Ysyvry said. "The music is beautiful. We'd
appreciate your playing more for us."

  Halloran swore under his breath and shook his
head.

  "Nobody said it would be easy, being a hero . . .
did theyP" Ysyvry asked.

"I'm no hero," Halloran said.

  "I think you have the makings for one," Olsen
told him, regarding him steadily with her clear
green eyes. "Whatever kind of bastard you were on
Earth. Really."

  Will a flatlander ever understand Belters k They
were so mercurial, strong, and more than a little arro-
gant. Perhaps that was because space left so little
room for niceties.

  "If you accept it," Ysyvry said, "we've decided
we'll make you an honorary Belter."

Halloran stopped playing.

  "Please accept," Olsen said, not wheedling or
even trying to placate; a simple, polite request.

"Okay," Halloran said.

  "Good," Ysyvry said. "I think you'll like the
ceremony."

  He did, though it made him realise even more
deeply how much he had to lose . . .

  And why do I have to die before people start treat-
ing me decently?

 O  O  O

272 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  The Belter pilots dropped the hulk a hundred
and three hours after his induction into the ranks.
They cut loose the kzinlifeship, with Halloran
inside, five hours later, and then turned a shielded
ion drive against their orbital path to drop inward
and lose themselves in the Belt.

  There were beacons on the lifeship, but no
sensors. In the kzinff fleet, rescue of survivors was
strictly at the discretion of the commanding
officers. Halloran entered the digitized
odor-signature and serial number of
Fixer-of-Weapons into the beacon's transmitter
and sat back to wait.

  The lifeship had a month's supplies for an
individual kzin. What few supplements he dared
to carry, all consumable, would be gone in a week,
and his time would start running out from that
moment.

  Still, Halloran half hoped he would not be
found. He almost preferred the thought of failure
to the prospect of carrying out his mission. It
would be an ordeal. The worst thing that had ever
happened to him. His greatest challenge in a
relatively peaceful lifetime.

  For a few days, he nursed dark thoughts about
manifest destiny, the possibility that the kzinff
really were the destined rulers of interstellar
space, and that he was simply blowing against a
hurricane.

  Then came a signal from the kzmti fleet.
Fixer-ofWeapons was still of some value. He was
going to be rescued.

  "Bullshit," Halloran said, grinning and hugging
his arms tightly around himself. "Bullshit, bulDshit
bullshit."

Now he was really afraid.

  Wherever you are, whether in the crowded
asteroid belt or beyond the furthest reaches of
Pluto, space appears the same. Facing away from
the sun negligible anyway past the Belt~he same
vista of indeci

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZTN 273

pherable immensity presents itself. You say, yes, I
know those are stars, and those are galaxies, and
nebulae; I know there is life out there, and
strangeness, and incident and death and change.
But to the eye, and the animal mind, the universe
is a flat tapestry sprinkled with meaningless points
of fire. Nothing meaningful can emerge from such
a tapestry.

  The approach of a ship from the beautiful flat
darkness and cold is itself a miracle of high order.
The animal mind asks, Where did it come from?

  Halloran, essentially two beings in one body,
watched the kzinti dreadnought with two reactions.
As Fixer-of-Weapons, now seating himself in the
center of Halloran's mind, the ship a
rough-textured spire with an X cross at the
"bow" was both rescue and challenge.
Fixer-of-Weapons had lost his status. He would
have to struggle to regain his position, perhaps
wheedle permission to challenge and supplant a
Chief Weapons Officer and Alien Technologies
Officer. He hoped and Halloran prayed that the
positions on the rescue ship were held by one kzin,
not two.

  The battleship would pick up his lifeship within
an hour. In that time, Halloran adjusted the
personality that would mask his own.

  Halloran would exist in a preprogrammed
slumber, to emerge only at certain key points of his
plan. Fixerof-Weapons would project continuously,
aware and active, but with limitations; he would
not challenge another kzin to physical combat, and
he would flee at an opportune moment (if any
came) if so challenged.

  Halloran did not have a kzin's shining black
claws or vicious fangs. He could project images of
these to other kzinti, but they had only a limited
effectiveness in action. For a moment, a kzin might
think himself slashed by Fixer-of-Weapons's claws
(although Halloran did not know how strong the
stigmata effect was

274 Man-K=in Wars IV

with kzinti), but that moment would pass.
Halloran did not think he could convince a kzin
to die . . .

  He had never done such a thing with people.
Exploring those aspects of his abilities had been
too horrifying to contemplate. If he was pushed to
such a test, and succeeded, he would destroy
himself rather than return to Earth. Or so he
thought, now . . .

  Foolishness, Fixer-of-Weapons's persona
grumbled. A weapon is a weapon.

Halloran shuddered.

  The battleship communicated with the lifeship,
first difficulty. The coughing growl and silky
dissonance of the Hero's Tongue could not be
readily mimicked, and Halloran could not project
his illusion beyond a few miles; he did not
respond by voice, but by coded signal. The signal
was not challenged.

  The kzinti could not conceive of an interloper
invading their fold.

  "Madness," he said as the ships closed.
Humming the Haydn serenade, Lawrence
Halloran Jr. slipped behind the scenes, and
Fixer-of-Weapons came on center stage.

  The interior of the Sons Contend With Bloody
Fangs or any kzinti vessel, for that
matter smelled of death. It aroused in a human
the deepest and most primordial fears. Imagine a
neolithic hunter, trapped in a tiger's cave,
surrounded by the stench of big cats and dead,
decaying prey and that was how the
behind-the-scenes Halloran felt.

  Fixer-of-Weapons salivated at the smells of
food, but trembled at the same time.

  "You are not well?" the escorting Aide-to-Com-
manders asked hopefully; Fixer's presence on the
battleship could mean much disruption. The kzin's
thoughts were quite clear to fixer: Why did
l~fraksha

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 275

Admiral allow this one aboard? He smells of confine-
ment... and ...

  Fixer did not worry about these insights, which
might be expected of a pitiful telepath; he would
use whatever information was available to
re-establish his rank and position. He lifted his lip
at the subordinate, lowest of ranks aboard the
battleship, a servant and licker-of-others'-fur.
Aide-to-Commanders shrank back spreading his
ears and curling his thick, unscarred pink tail to
signify non-aggression.

  "Do not forget yourself," Fixer reminded him.
"Kfraksha-Admiral is my ally. He chose to rescue
me."

  "So it is," Aide-to-Commanders acknowledged.
He led Fixer down a steep corridor, with no
corners for hiding would-be assailants, and
straightened before the hatch to
Kfraksha-Admiral's quarters. "I obey the
instructions of the Dominant One.

  That the commander did not allow Fixer to
groom or eat before debriefing signified in how
little regard he was held. Any survivor of a warship
lost to animals carried much if not all the disgrace
that would adhere to a surviving commander.

  Kfraksha-Admiral bade him enter and growled
to Aide-to-Commanders that they would be alone.
This was how the kzin commander maintained his
position without losing respect, by never exhibiting
weakness or fear. Loss of respect could mean
constant challenge, once they were out of a combat
zone with its restrictions. As a kzin without rank,
Fixer might be especially volatile; perhaps
deranged by long confinement in a tiny lifeship, he
might attack the commander in a foolish effort to
regain and then better his status with one combat.
But Kfraksha-Admiral apparently ignored all this,
spider inviting spider into a very attractive parlor.

"Is your shame bearable?" Kfraksha-Admiral asked,

276 Man-Kin Wars IV

a rhetorical question since Fixer was here, and
not immediately contemplating suicide.

  "I am not responsible for the actions of the
commander of War Loot, Dominant One," Fixer
replied.

  "Yes, but you advised Kulcha-Captain of alien
technologies, did you not?"

  "I now advise you. Your advantage that I am
here, and able to tell you what the animals can
do."

  Kfraksha-Admiral regarded Fixer with
undisguised contempt and mild interest. "Animals
destroyed your home. How did this happen?"

  Th* is why I am aboard, Fixer thought.
I~frakshaAdmiral overcomes h* d*gust to learn
things that will give him an edge.

  "They did not engage War Loot or any of our
sortie. There is still no evidence that they have
armed their worlds, no signs of an industr
preparing for manufacture of offensive weapons

"They defeated you without weapons?"

  "They have laser-propulsion systems of
enormous strength. You recall, in our first
meetings, the animals used their fusion drives
against our vessels "

  "And allowed us to track their spoor back to
their home worlds. The Patriarchy is grateful for
such uneven exchanges. How might we balance
this loss?"

  Fixer puzzled over his reluctance to tell
KfrakshaAdmiral everything. Then: My knowledge
* my life.

  "I am of no use to the fleet," Fixer said, with
the slightest undertone of menace. He was
gratified to feel but not see Kfraksha-Admiral
tense his muscles. Fixer could measure the
commander's resolve with ease.

  "I do not believe that," Kfraksha-Admiral said.
"But it is true that if you are no use to me, you
are of no use to anybody . . . and not welcome."

Fixer pretended to think this over, and then
showed

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 277

signs of submission. "I am without position," he said
sadly. "I might as well be dead."

  "You have position as long as you are useful to
me," Kfraksha-Admiral said. "I will allow you to
groom and feed . . . if you can demonstrate how
useful you might

  Fixer cocked his fan-shaped ears forward in
reluctant obeisance. These maneuvers were delicate
he could not concede too much, or
Kfraksha-Admiral would come to believe he had no
knowledge. "The humans must be skipping
industrialisation for offensive weapons. They are
converting peaceful "

  Kfraksha-Admiral showed irritation at that word,
not commonly used by kzinti.

" propulsion systems into defensive weapons."

  "This contradicts reports of their weakness,"
Kfraksha-Admiral said. "Our telepaths have
reported the animals are reluctant to fight."

"They are adaptable," Fixer said.

  "So much can be deduced. Is this all that you
know?"

  "I learned the positions from which two of the
Dropulsion beams were fired. It should be easy to
ca~culate their present locations . . ."

  Kfraksha-Admiral spread his fingers before him
unsheathing long, black and highly polished claws.
Now it was Fixer's turn to tense.

  "You are my subordinate," the commander said.
"You will pass these facts on to me alone."

"What is my position?" Fixer asked.

  "Fleet records of your accomplishments have
been relayed to me. Your fitness for position is
acceptable." The days when mere prowess in
personal combat decided rank were long gone, of
course, qualifications had to be met before
challenges could be made. "You will replace the
Alien Technologies Officer on this ship."

278 Mandolin Wars IV

  "By combat?" A commander could grant permis-
sion . . . which was tantamount to an order to
fight. Another means of intimidating subordinates.

  "By my command. There will be no combat.
Your presence here will not be disruptive, so do
not become too ambitious, or you will face me ...
on unequal terms."

"And the present officer?"

  "I have a new position he will not be unhappy
with. That is not your concern. Now stand and
receive my mark."

  Halloran-Frxer could not anticipate what the
commander intended quickly enough to respond
with anything more than compliance.
Kfraksha-Admiral lilted his powerful leg and
swiftly, humiliatingly, peed on Halloran-Fixer,
distinctly marking him as the commander's charge.
Then Kfraksha-Admiral sat on a broad curving
bench and regarded him coldly.

  Deeply ashamed but docile what else could he
be? Fixer studied the commander intently. It
would not be so difficult to . . . what?

  That thought was swept away even before it
took shape.

  Fixer-of-Weapons had no physical post as such
aboard the flagship. He carried a reader the size
of a kzin hand slung over his shoulder with some
difficulty, which did not immediately concern
him and went from point to point on the ship to
complete his tasks, which were many, and
unusually firing.

  The interior spaces of the Sons Contend With
Bloody Fangs were strangely unfamiliar to him.
Halloran had not had time (nor the capacity) to
absorb all of his kzin subject's memories. He did
not consciously realize he was giving himself a
primary education in kzinti technology and naval
architecture. His disorientation would have been
an infuriating and goading sign

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE Kz~N 279

of weakness to any inferior seeking his status, but
he was marked by Kfraksha-Admiral physically
marked with the commander's odor,like female or
a litter  and that warned aggressive subordinates
away. They would have to combat
Kfraksha-Admiral, not just Fixer.

  And Fixer was proving himself useful to
KfrakshaAdmiral. This aspect of Halloran's mission
had been carefully thought out by Colonel Early
and the Intelli~ence Staff what could humans
afford to have kzinti know about their technology?
What would Fixer logically have deduced from his
experience aboard tee War Loot?

  Kfraksha-Admiral, luckily, expected Fixer to
draw out his revelations for maximum advantage.
The small lumps of information deemed reasonable
and said

past locations of two Belter laser projectors that
had since burned out their mirrors and lasing field
coils, now abandoned and useless except as
scrap could be meted out parsimoniously.

  Fixer could limp and cavil, and nobody would
find it strange. He had, after all, been defeated by
animals and lost all status. His current status was
bound to be temporary. Kfraksha-Admiral would
coax the important facts from him, and then

  So Fixer was not harassed. He studied his
library, with some difficulty deciphering the
enigmaticc commas-and-dots script and
mathematical symbologies. Unconsciously, he
tapped the understanding of his fellows to buttress
his knowledge.

  And that was how he attracted the attention of
somebody far more valuable than he, and of even
lower status Kfraksha-Admiral's personal
telepath.

  Kzinti preferred to eat alone, unless they had
killed a large animal by common endeavor. The
sight of another eating was likely to arouse
deep-seated jealousies not conducive to good
digestion; the quality of

280 Man-Kzin Wars IV

one's food aboard the flagship with rank, and rank
was a smoothly ascending scale. Thus, the officers
could not eat together safely, because there were
no officers at the same level, and if there was no
difference in the food, differences could be
imagined. No. It was simply better to eat alone.

  This suited Fixer. He had little satisfaction from
his meals. He received his chunks of reconstituted
meatsubsfftute heated to blood
temperature common low-status battle rations
from the commissary officer, and refired to his
quarters with the sealed container to open it and
feed. His head hurt after eating the apparent raw
slabs of gristle, bone and meager muscle; he
preferred the simulated vegetable intestinall con-
tents and soft organs, which were the kzinff
equivalent of dessert. A kzin could bolt chunks
the size of paired fists . . . But none of it actually
pleased him. What he did not eat, he disposed of
rapidly: pitiful, barely chewed-fragments it would
have shamed a kzin to leave behind. Fixer did not
notice the few pills he took afterwards, from a
pouch seemingly beneath his chest muscles.

  After receiving a foil-wrapped meal, he
traversed the broad central hall of the dining area
and encountered the worst-looking kzin he had
ever seen. Fur matted, tail actually kinked in two
places, expression sickly-sycophanffc, ears recoiled
as if permanently afraid of being attacked.
Telepath scrambled from Fixer's path, as might be
expected, and then

Addressed him from behind.

"We are alike, in some respects are we note"

  Fixer spun around and snarled furiously. One
did not address a superior, or even an equal, from
behind.

  "No anger necessary," Telepath said, curling
obeisantly, hands extended to show all claws
sheathed. "There is an odd sound about you . . .
it makes me

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 281

curious. I have not permission to read you, but you
are strong. You send. You leak."

  Halloran-Fixer felt his fury redouble, for reasons
besides the obvious impertinence. "You will stand
clear of me and not address me, Addict," he spat.

  "Not offending, but the sound is interesting,
whatever it is. Does it come from time spent in
solitude?"

  Fixer quelled his rage and bounded down the
Hall or so it appeared to Telepath. The mind
reader dropped his chin to his neck and resumed
his halfhearted attempts to exercise and groom, his
thoughts obviously lingering on his next session
with the drug that gave him his abilities.

  Fixer could easily tell what the commander and
crew were up to, if not what they actually thought
at any given moment. But Telepath was a blank
slate. Nothing "leaked."

  He returned to his private space, near the com-
mander's quarters, and settled in for more sessions
in the library. There was something that puzzled
him greatly, and might be very
important something called a ghost star. The few
mentions in the library files were unrevealing;
whatever it was, it appeared to be somewhere
about ten system radii outside the planetary orbits.
It seemed that a ghost star was nothing surprising,
and therefore not clearly explicated; this worried
Fixer, for he did not know what a ghost star was.

  Kzinti aboard spaceships underwent constant
training, self-imposed and otherwise. There were
no recreation areas as such aboard the flagship,
there were four exercise and mock-combat rooms,
however, for the four rough gradations of rank
from executive officers to servants. When kzinti
entered a mock-combat room, they doffed all
markings of rank, wearing masks to disguise their
facial characteristics and strong mesh

282 Man-Kzin Wars IV

gloves over their claws to prevent unsheathing and
lethal damage. Few kzinti were actually killed in
mock-combat exercise, but severe injury was not
uncommon. The ship's autodocs could take care
of most of it, and kzinti considered scars
ornamental. Anonymity also prevented ordinary
sparring from affecting rank; even if the
combatants knew the other's identity, it could be
ignored through social fiction.

  Fixer, in his unusual position of commander's
charge, did not receive the challenges to
mock-combat common among officers. But there
was nothing in the rules, written or otherwise, that
prevented subordinates from challenging each
other, unless their officers interfered. Such
combats were rare because most crewkzin knew
their relative strengths, and who would be clearly
outmatched.

  Telepath, the lowest-ranked and most despised
kzin aboard the flagship, challenged Fixer to
mock-combat four day-cycles after his arrival.
Fixer could not refuse; not even the commander's
protection would have prevented his complete
ostracization had he done so. His existence would
have been an insult to the whole kzinti species. A
simple command not to fight would have spared
him but the commander did not imagine that
even the despised Fixer would face much of a
fight from Telepath. And Fixer could not afford to
be shunned; ostensibly, he had his position to
regain.

  So it was that Halloran faced a kzin in
mock-combat. Fixer the kzin persona did not
fall by the wayside, because Fixer could more
easily handle the notion of combat. But Halloran
did not remain completely in the background. For
while Fixer was "fighting" Telepath, Halloran had
to convince any observers including
Telepath that he was winning.

  Fixer's advantages were several. First, both
combatants could emerge unharmed from the fray
without

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN283

raising undue suspicions. Second, there would be
no remote observers no broadcasts of the fight.

  The major disadvantage was that of all the kzinti,
a telepath should be most aware of having psychic
tricks played on him.

  The exercise chambers were cylindrical,
gravitation oriented along one flat surface at Kzin
normal, or higher for more strenuous regimens.
The walls were sand-colored and a constant hot
dry wind blew through hidden vents, conditions
deemed comfortable in the culture that had
dominated Kzin when the species achieved
spaceflight. The floor was sprinkled with a flaked
fluid-absorbing material. Kzinti rules for combat
were few, and did not include prohibitions against
surprise targeting of eye-stinging urine. The flakes
were more generally soaked with blood, however.
The rooms were foul with the odors of fear and
exertion and injury.

  Telepath was puny for a kzin. He weighed only
a hundred and fifty kilograms and stood only two
hundred and five centimeters from crown to toes,
reduced somewhat by a compliant stoop. He was
not in good shape, but he had little difficulty
bending the smallest of the ten steel bars adjacent
to his assigned half of the combat area a little
gesture legally mandated to give a referee some
idea how the combatants were matched in sheer
strength. This smallest bar was two centimeters in
diameter.

  Halloran-Fixer made as if to bend the next bar
up and then ostentatiously re-bent it straight,
hoping nobody would examine it closely and find
the metal completely unmarked. Probably nobody
would; kzinti were less given to idle curiosity than
humans.

  Telepath screamed and leaped, arms spread
wide. The image of Fixer was a bare ten
centimeters to one side of his true position, and
that allowed one of the kzin's feet to pass a
hair's-breadth to one side of Hal

284 Man-Kzin Wars IV

loran's head. Halloran convinced Telepath he had
received a glancing blow across one arm. Telepath
recovered somewhat sloppily, for a kzin, and sized
up the situation.

  There were only the mandated two observers in
the antechamber. This fight was regarded as little
more than comedy, and comedy, to kzinti, was
shameful and demeaning. The observers'
attentions were not sharply focused.
Halloran-Fixer took advantage of that to dull their
perceptions further. This allowed him to concen-
trate on Telepath.

  Fixer did not crouch or make any overt signs of
impending attack. He hardly breathed. Telepath
circled at the outside of the combat area,
nonchalant apparently faintly amused.

  Halloran had little experience with fighting.
Fortunately, Fixer-of-Weapons had been an old
hand at all kinds of combat, including the mortal
kind that had quickly moved him up in rank while
the fleet was in base, and much of that
information had become lodged in the Fixer
persona. Halloran waited for Telepath to make
another energy-wasting move.

  Kzinti combat was a matter of slight advantages.
Possibly Telepath knew this, and sensed
something not right about Fixer. Something weak
. . .

  But Telepath could not read Fixer's thoughts in
any concentrated fashion; that required a great
effort for the kzin, and debilitating physical
weakness afterward. Halloran's powers were much
more efficient and much less draining.

  Fixer snarled and feigned a jump. Telepath
leaped to one side, but Fixer had not completed
his attack. He stood with tail twitching furiously
several meters from the kzin, needle teeth bared
in a hideous grin.

  Telepath had good reason to be puzzled. It was
rare for a threatened attack to be aborted, from
a kzin so much larger and stronger than his
opponent. Now the

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 285

miserable kzin was truly angry, and afraid. Several
times he rushed Fixer, but Fixer was never quite
where he appeared to be. Several times, Halloran
came near to having his head crushed by a passing
swipe of the weak kzin's gloved hand, but managed
to avoid the blow by centimeters. Something was
goading Telepath beyond the usual emotions
aroused by mock combat.

  "Fight, you sexless female!" Telepath shrieked. A
deeply obscene curse, and the observers did some
of their own growling now. Telepath had done
nothing to increase their esteem.

  Fixer used the kzin's anger to his own advantage.
The fight would have to end quickly he was tiring
rapidly, far faster than his puny opponent. Fixer
seemed to run to a curved wall, leaping and
rebounding, crossing the chamber in a flash and
bypassing Telepath without a blow. Telepath
screamed with rage and tried to remove his gloves,
but they were locked, and only the observers had
the keys.

  While Telepath was yowling fury and frustration,
Fixer-Halloran delivered a bolt of suggestion that
staggered the kzin, sending him to all fours with an
apparent cuff to the jaw. The position was not as
dangerous for a kzin they could run more quickly
on fours than erect but Halloran-Kzin's image
loomed over the stunned Telepath and kicked
downward. The observers did not see the maneuver
precisely, and Telepath was on the floor writhing in
pain, his ear and the side of his head swelling with
auto-suggestion injury.

  Fixer offered his gloves to the observers and they
were unlocked. He had not harmed Telepath, and
had not received so much as a scratch himself.
Fixer had acquitted himself; he still wore
Kfraksha-Admiral's stink, but he was not the lowest
of the kzinti on Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs.

 O  O  ~

286 Mandarin IV

  "The humans obviously have a way of tracking
our ships, yet they do not have the gravity
polarizer . . ." Kfraksha-Admiral sat on his curved
bench, legs raised, black-leather fingers clasped
behind his thick neck, seeming quite casual and
relaxed. "What is our weakness, that they spy on
us and can aim their miserable adapted weapons
upon us?"

  Fixer's turmoil was not apparent. He knew the
answer but of course he could not give it. He
had to maneuver this conversation to determine if
the commander was asking a rhetorical question,
or testing him in some way.

"By our drives," he suggested.

  "Yes, of course, but not by spectral signatures
or flare temperatures, for in fact we do not use
our fusion drives when we enter the system. And
without polarizer technology, gravitational
gradient warps cannot be detected ... short of
system wide detectors, which these animals do not
have, correct?"

Fixer rippled his fur in agreement.

  "No. They detect not the effects of our drives,
but the power sources themselves. It is obvious
they have discovered magnetic monopoles. I have
suspected as much for years, but now plans are
taking shape . . ."

  Fixer-Halloran was relieved, and horrified, at
once. This was indeed how kzinti ships were
tracked, in fact, it was a little slow of the enemy
not to have thought of it before. The cultural
scientists back on Ceres had been puzzled as well;
the kzinti had a science and technology more
advanced than the human, but they seemed
curiously inept at pure research. Almost as if the
knowledge had been pasted onto a prescientific
culture . . .

  Every Belter prospector had monopole
detection equipment; mining the super-massive
particles was a major source of income for
individual Belters, and for huge Belt corporations.
Known monopole storage cen

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZTN 287

ters and power stations were automatically
compensated for in even the cheapest detector. In
an emergency, a detector could be used to
determine position in the Belt or anywhere else
in the solar system by triangulation from those
known sources. An unknown or kzinti monopole
source set detectors off throughout the solar
system. And the newlyconverted propulsion lasers
could then be locked onto their targets . . .

  "This much is now obvious. It explains our losses.
Do you concur?"

"This is a fact," Fixer said.

  ''And how do you know it is a fact?" Kfraksha-
Admiral challenged.

  "The lifeship from War Loot is not powered by
monopoles. I survived. Animals would not
distinguish monopole sources by the size of the
vessel they woul attack all sources."

  Kfraksha-Admiral pressed his lips tight together
and twitched whiskers with satisfaction. "Precisely
so. We must have patience in our strategies, then.
We cannot enter the system using our
monopole-powered gravity polarisers. But there is
the ghost star . . . if we enter the system without
monopoles, and without approaching the gas-giant
planets, where we might be expected . . . We can
enter from an apparently empty region of space,
unexpectedly, and destroy the animal populations
of many worlds and asteroids. This plan's success
is my sinecure. Many females, much terri-
tory glory. We are moving outward now to pass
around the ghost star and gain momentum."

  Fixer-Halloran again felt a chill. Truly, without
the monopoles, the kzinti ships would be difficult
to detect.

  Fixer pressed his hands together before his chest,
a sign of deep respect. Kfraksha-Admiral nodded
in condescending fashion.

288 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  "You have proven valuable, in your own
reluctant, rankless way," he acknowledged, staring
at him with irises reduced to pinpoints in the wide
golden eyes. "You have endured humiliation with
surprising fortitude. Some, our more enlightened
and patient warriors, might call it courage." The
commander drew a rag soaked in some pale liquid
from a bucket behind his bench. He threw it at
Fixer, who caught it.

  The rag had been soaked in diluted acetic
acid  vinegar. "You may remove my mark,"
Kfraksha-Admiral said. "Henceforth, you have the
status of full officer, on my formal staff, and you
will be in charge of interpreting the alien
technologies we capture. Your combat with
Telepath .. . has been reported to me. It was not
strictly honorable, but your forbearance was
remarkable. In part, this earns you a position."

  Fixer now had status. He could not relax his
vigilance, for he would no longer be under the
commander's protection, but he could assume the
armor of a true billet; separate quarters, specific
duties, a place in the ritual of the kzinti flagship.
Presumably the commander would not grant
permission for many challenges, and as a direct
subordinate he would count as one of the
commander's faction, who would retaliate for any
unprovoked attack.

  The Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs had pulled
its way out of the sun's gravity well at a
prodigious four-tenths of the speed of light, faster
than was safe within a planetary system, and was
racing for the ghost star a hundred billion
kilometers from the sun. Sol was now an
anonymous point of light in the vastness of the
Sagittarius arm of the galaxy; the outer limits of
the solar system were almost as far behind.

  The commander's plans for the whiplash trip
around the ghost star were secret to all but a few.
Fixer was still not even certain what the ghost star
was it was

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN289

not listed under that name in the libraries, and
there was obviously a concept he was not
connecting with. But it was fairly easy to calculate
that to accomplish the orbital maneuvers the
commander proposed, the ghost star would have to
be of at least one-half solar mass. Nothing that size
had ever been detected from Earth; it was
therefore dark and absolutely cold. There would be
no perturbed orbits to give it away; its distance was
too great.

  So for the time being, Fixer assumed they were
approaching a rendezvous with either a dark, dead
hulk of a star, or perhaps a black hole.

  A hundred billion kilometers was stilll close to
the solar neighborhood, as far as interstellar
distances were concerned. That kzinff knew more
about these regions than humans worried the
sublimated Halloran. What other advantages would
they gain?

  The time had come for Halloran to examine
what he had found. With his personality split in
half, and locked into a kzin mentality, he might
easily overlook something crucial to his mission.

  In his quarters, with the door securely bolted,
Halloran came to the surface. Seven days in the
kzinff flagship had taken a terrible toll on him; in
a small mirror, he saw himself almost cadaverous,
his face deeply lined. Kzinti did not use water to
groom themselves, and there were no taps in his
private quarters  the aliens were descended from
a pack-hunffng desert carnivore, and had efficient
metabolisms so his skin and clothing would
remain dirty. He took a medicinal towelette, used
to treat minor scratches received during combats,
and wiped as much of his face and hands clean as
he could. The astringent solution in the towelette
served to sharpen his wits. After so long in Fixer's
charge, there seemed little brilliance and fire left
in Halloran himself.

290 Man-Kzin Wars IV

 And Fixer is just not very bright, he thought
sourly. Think, monkey, think!

He looked old.

  "Bleep that," he murmured, and picked up the
library pack. As Fixer, he had subliminally marked
interesting passages in the kzinti records. Now he
set out to learn what the ghost star was, and what
he might expect in the next few hours, as they
approached and parabolically orbited. A half-hour
of inquiry, his eyes reddening under the strain of
reading the kzinti script without Fixer's
intercession, brought no substantial progress.

  "Ghost," he muttered. "Specter. Spirit.
Ancestors. A star known to ancestors? Not
likely they would have come on into the solar
system and destroyed or enslaved us centuries ago
. . . what the tanj is a ghost star?"

  He queried the library on all concepts
incorporating the words ghost, specter, ancestor,
and other synonyms in the Hero's Tongue.
Another half-hour of concentrated and fruitless
study, and he was ready to give up, when the
projector displayed an entry. Specter Mass.

  He cued the entry. A flagged warning came up;
the symbol for shame-and-disgrace, a Patriarchal
equivalent of Most Secret.

  Fixer recoiled; Halloran had to intervene
instantly to stop his hand before it halted the
search. Curiosity was not a powerful drive for a
kzin, and shame was a very effective deterrent.

  A basic definition flashed up. "That mass created
during theJirst instants of the universe, separatedirom
kzinti space-time and detectable only by weak
gravitational interaction. No light or other
communication possible between the domain of
specter mass and kzinti space-time. "

Halloran grinned for the first time in seven days.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KNIN

Now he had it he could feel the solution coming.
He cued more detail.

  "Stellar masses of specter matter have been
detected, but are rare. None has been found in living
memory. These masses, in the specter domain, must
be enormous, on the order of hundreds of masses of
the sun" the star of Kzin, more massive and a
little cooler than Sol 'for their gravitational
influence is on the order of .6 [base 8] Knin suns.
The physics of the specter domain must differ widely
from our own. Legends warn against searching for
ghost stars, though details are lost orforbidden by the
Patriarchy."

  Not a black hole or a dark star, but a star in a
counter-universe. Human physicists had discovered
the possible existence of shadow mass in the late
twentieth century Halloran remembered that
much from his physics classes. The enormously
powerful superstring theory of particles implied
shadow mass pretty much as the kzinti entry
described it. None had been detected . ..

  Who would have thought the Earth was so near
to a ghost star?

  And now, Kfraksha-Admiral was recommending
what the kzinti had heretofore forbidden close
approach to a ghost star to gain a gravitational
advantage. The kzinti ships would appear, to
human monopole detectors, to be leaving the
system retreating, although slowly. Then the fleet
would decelerate and discard its monopoles,
sending them on the same outward course, and
swing around the ghost star, gaining speed from
the star's angular momentum. No fusion drives
would be used, so as not to alarm human sentries.
Slowly, the fleet would swing back into the solar
system, and within a kzinti year, attack the worlds
of men. Undetected, unsuspected, the kzinti fleet
could end the war then and there. The monopoles
would be within retrieval distance.

292 Man-Kzin Wars lV

  And all it would require was a little k~inti
patience, a rare virtue indeed.

  Someone scratched softly at the ID plate on his
hatch. Halloran did not assume the Fixer persona,
but projected the Fixer image, before answering.
The hatch opened a safe crack, and Halloran saw
the baleful, rheumy eye of Telepath peering in.

  "I have bested you already," the Fixer image
growled. "You wish to challenge for a shameful
rematch?" Not something Fixer need grant in any
case, now that his status was established.

  "I have a problem which I must soon bring to
the attention of Kfraksha-Admiral," Telepath said,
with the edge of a despicable whimper.

"Why come to me?"

  "You are the problem. I hear sounds from you.
I remember things from you. And I have dreams
in which you appear, but not as you are now . . .
sometimes I am you. I am the lowest, but I am
important to this fleet, especially with the death
of War Loot's Telepath. I am the last Telepath in
the fleet. My health is important "

"Yes, yes! What do you want?"

"Have you been taking the telepath drug?"

"No."

  "I can tell ... you speak truth, yet you hide
something."

  The kzin could not now deeply read Halloran
without making an effort, but Halloran was
"leaking." Just as he had never been able to quell
his "intuition,' he could not stop this basic
hemorrhage of mental contents. The ladies
drug-weakened mind was there to receive,
perhaps more vulnerable because the subcon-
scious trickle of sensation and memory was alien
to it.

  "I hide nothing. Go away," the Fixer-image de-
manded harshly.

"Questions first. What is an 'Esterhazy'? What are

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN 293

these sounds I hear, and what is a 'Haydn'? Why
do I feel emotions which have no names?"

  The kzin's pronunciation was not precise, but it
was close enough. "I do not know. Go away."

  Halloran began to close the door, but Telepath
wailed and stuck his leathery digits into the crack.
Halloran instinctively stopped the hatch to prevent
damage. A kzin would not have . . .

  "I cannot see Kfraksha-Admiral. I am the lowest
. . . but I feel danger! We are approaching very
great danger. My shields are weakening and my
sensitivity increases even with lower doses of the
drug . .. Do you know where we are going? I can
feel this danger deep, in a place my addiction has
only lightly touched ... Others feel it too. There is
restlessness. I must report what I feel! Tell the
commander "

  Cringing, Halloran pressed the lever and the
door continued to close. Telepath screamed and
pulled out his digits in time to avoid loosing more
than a tip and one sheathed claw.

  That did it. Halloran began to shake
uncontrollably. Sobbing, he buried his face in his
hands. Death seemed very immediate, and pain,
and brutality. He had stepped into the lion's den.
The lions were closing in, and he was weakening.
He had never faced anything so horrible before.
The kzinti were insane. They had no softer
feelings, nothing but war and destruction and
conquest . . .

  And yet, within him there were fragments of
Fixerof-Weapons to tell him differently. There was
courage, incredible strength, great vitality.

  "Not enough," he whispered, removing his face
from his hands. Not enough to redeem them, cer-
tainly, and not enough to make him feel any less
revulsion. If he could, he would wipe all kzinti out
of existence. If he could just expand his mind
enough,

294 Man-Kzin Wars IV

reach out across time and space to the distant
homeworld of kzin, touch them with a deadliness
. . .

  The main problem with a talent like Halloran's
was hubris. Aspiring to god-like ascendancy over
others, even kzinti. That way lay more certain
madness.

  A kzin wouldut think that way, Halloran knew.
A kzin would scream and leap upon a tool of power
like that. "Kzin have it easier," he muttered.

  Time to marshal his resources. How long could
he stay alive on the kzinti flagship?

  If he assumed the Fixer persona, no more than
three days. They would still be rounding the ghost
star . . .

  If he somehow managed to take control of the
ship and could be Halloran all the time, he might
last much longer. And to what end?

  To bring the Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs
back to human space? That would be useful, but
not terribly important the kzinti would have
discarded their gravity polarizers. Human
engineers had already studied the hulk of War
Loot, not substantially different from Sons
Contend.

  But he wanted to survive. On that Halloran and
Fixer-Halloran were agreed. He could feel
survival as a clean, metallic necessity, cutting him
off from all other considerations. The Belter
pilots and their initiation . . . Coming to an
understanding of sorts with his father. Early's
wish-list. What he knew about kzinti . . .

  That could be transmitted back. He did not
need to survive to deliver that. But such a
transmission would take time, a debriefing of
weeks would be invaluable.

SurvivaL

Simple life.

To win.

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN 295

  Thorough shit or not, Halloran valued his
miserable life.

  Perhaps I'm weak, like Telepath. Sympathetic. Par-
ticularly towards myself:

  But the summing up was clear and unavoidable.
The best thing he could do would be to find some
way to inactivate at least this ship, and perhaps the
whole kzinti fleet. Grandiose scheme. At the very
top of Early's wish-list. All else by the wayside.

  And he could not do it by going on a rampage.
He had to be smarter than the kzinti; he had to
show how humans, with all their love of life and
self-sympathy, could beat the self-confident, savage
invaders.

  No more being Fixer. Time to use Fixer as a
front, and be a complete, fully aware Halloran.

  Telepath whimpered in his sleep. There was no
one near to hear him in this corridor; disgust could
be as effective as status and fear in securing
privacy.

  Hands were lifting him. Huge hands, tearing him
away from Mother's side. His own hands were tiny,
so tiny as he clung with all four limbs to Mother's
fur.

  She was growling, screaming at the males with
the Y-shaped poles who pinned her to the wicker
mats, lashing out at them as they laughed and
dodged. Hate and fury stank through the dark air
of the hut.

"Maaaa!" he screamed. "Maaaa!"

  The hands bore him up, crushed him against a
muscular side that smelled of leather and metal
and kzintosh, male kzin.

  They will eat me, they will eat me! cried instinct.
He lashed out with needle-sharp baby claws, and
the booming voice above him laughed and swore,
holding the wriggling bundle out at arm's length.

"This one has spirit," the Voice said.

  "Puny," another replied dismissively. "/ will not
rear it. Send it to the creche."

296 Man-Kzin Wars IV

  They carried him out into the bright sunlight,
and he blinked against the pain of it. Fangs
loomed above him, and he hissed and spat; a
hand pushed meat into his mouth. It was good,
warm and bloody; he tore loose chunks and
bolted them, ears still folded down. From the
other enclosures came the growls and screams of
females frightened by the scent of loss, and
behind him his mother gave one howl of grief
after another.

  Telepath half-woke, grunting and starting, pimk
batears flaring wide as he took in the familiar
subliminal noises of pumps and ventilators.

  He was laughing, walking across the quadrangle.
Faces turned toward him

 nakedfacesP

Mouths turning to round O shapes of shock.

 Flat mouthsP Flat teethe

  Students and teachers were turning toward him,
and he knew they saw the headmaster,
buck-naked and piriapically erect. He laughed and
waved again, thinking how Old Man Velasquez
would explain this

  Telepath struggled. Something struck him on
the nose and he started upright, pink tongue
reflexively washing at the source of the welcome,
welcome pain. The horror of the nightmare
slipped away, too alien to comprehend with the
waking mind.

  "Silence, sthondat-suckerI" Third Gunner
snarled, aiming a kick that thudded drumlike on
Telepath's ribs. Another harness-buckle was in
one hand, ready to throw. "Stop screaming in your
sleepl"

  Telepath widened his ears and flattened his fur
in propitiation as he crouched; Third Gunner was
not a great intellect, but he was enormous and
touchy even for a young kzin. After a moment the
hulking shape turned and padded off down the
corridor to his own doss, grumbling and twitching
his whiskers. The smaller kzin sank down again to
his thin pallet, curling

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN297

into a fetal ball and covering his nose with his
hands, wrapping his tail around the whole bundle
of misery. He quivered, his matted fur wrinkling in
odd patterns, and forced his eyes to close.

  I must sleep, he thought. His fingers twitched
toward the pouch with his drug, but that only made
things worse. I must sleep; my health is important to
the fleet. Unless he was rested he could not read
minds on command. Without that, he was useless
and therefore dead, and Telepath did not want to
die.

  But if he slept, he dreamed. For the last four
sleeps the dreams of his kittenhood had been
almost welcome. Eerie combinations of sound
plucked at the corners of his mind as he dozed, as
precise as mathemaffcs but carrying overtones of
feelings that were not his

  He jerked awake again. Mother, he thought,
through a haze of fatigue. I want my mother.

  The alienness of the dreams no longer frightened
him so much.

  What was really terrifying was the feeling he was
beginning to understand them . . .

  Halloran flexed and raised his hands, crouching
and growling. Technician's-Assistant stepped aside
at the junction of the two corridors, but
Fire-ControlTechnician retracted his ears and
snarled, dropping his lower jaw toward his chest.
Aide-to-Commanders had gone down on his belly,
crawling aside. Beside the disguised human
Chief-Operations-Officer bulked out his fur and
responded in kind.

  Sure looks different without Fixer, Halloran
thought as he sidled around the confrontation.

  The kzinff were almost muzzle-to-muzzle, roaring
at each other in tones that set the metal around
them to vibrating in sympathy; thin black lips
curled back from wet half-inch fangs, and the
ruffled fur turned their

298 Man-Kzin Wars IV

bodies into bristling sausage shapes. The
black-leather shapes of their four-fingered hands
were almost skeletal, the long claws shining like
curves of liquid jet. Dim orange-red light made
Halloran squint and peer. The walls here in this
section of officer country were covered with
holographic murals; a necessity, since kzinti were
very vulnerable to sensory deprivation. Twisted
thorny orange vegetation crawled across shattered
rock under a lowering sky the colorof powdered
brickdust, and in the foreground two Kzinti had
overturned something that looked like a giant
spiked turtle with a bone club for a tail. They
were burying their muzzles in its belly, ripping out
long stretches of intestine.

  Abruptly, the two high-ranking kzin stepped
back and let their fur fall into normal position,
walking past each other as if nothing had
happened.

  Nothing did, a ghost of Fixer said at the back of
Halloran's head; the thin psychic voice was mildly
puzzled. Norrn`~l courtesy. Passing by without
playing at challenge would be an insult, showing
contempt for one not worthy of interest. Real
challenge would be against regulations, now.

  Chief-Operations-Officer scratched at the ID
plate on the commander's door, releasing
Kfraksha-Admiral's coded scent. A muffled growl
answered.

  Kfraksha-Admiral was seated at his desk,
worrying the flesh off a heavy bone held down
with his hands. A long shred of tendon came off
as he snapped his head back and forth, and his
jaws made a wet clop sound as he bolted it.

"Is all proceeding according to plan?" he asked.

  "Yes, Dominant One," Chief-Operations-Officer
said humbly.

  "Then why are you taking up my valuable time?"
Kfraksha-Admiral screamed, extending his claws.

"Abasement," Chief-Operations-Officer said. He

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KziN 299

flattened to the floor in formal mode; the others
joined him. "The jettisoning of the monopoles and
gravity polariser components has proceeded
according to your plans. There are problems."

"Describe them."

  "A much higher than normal rate of replacement
for all solid-state electronic components, Kfraksha-
Admiral," the engineer said. "Computers and
control systems particularly. Increasing as a
function of our approach to the ghost star. Also
personnel problems."

  Kfraksha-Admiral's whiskers and fur moved in
patterns that meant lively curiosity; discipline was
the problem any Kzin commander would
anticipate, although perhaps not so soon.

"Mutiny?" he said almost eagerly.

  "No. Increased rates of impromptu dueling,
sometimes against regulations. Allegations of
murderous intent unsupported by evidence.
Superstitions. Several cases of catatonia and
insanity leading to liquidation by superiors.
Suicides. Also rumors."

  "Herr!" Kfraksha-Admiral said. Suicide was an
admission of cowardice, and very rare.

Time to fish or be bait, Halloran decided.

  Gently, he probed at the consciousness of the
kzin, feeling the three-things-at-once sensation of
indecision. Kfraksha-Admiral knew something of
why the Patriarchy forbade mention of
phenomenon; because the Conservors of the
Ancestral Past couldn't figure out what was
involved. Inexplicable and repeated bad luck,
usually; the kzin was feeling his fur try to bristle.
Kzinti believed in hick, as firmly as they believed in
games theory. Eternal shame for Kfraksha-Admiral
if he turned back now. His cunning suggested
aborting the mission; an unwary male would never
have become a fleet commander. Gut feeling
warred with it; even for a kzin, Kfraksha-Admiral
was aggressive;

300 Man-Kin IV

otherwise he could never have achieved or held
his position.

  Shame, Halloran whispered, ever so gently. It
was not difficult. Easier than it had ever been
before, and now he felt justified.

  Eternal disgrace for retreating, his mind intruded
softly. Two years of futility already. Defeat By plant-
eaters. Sickening images of unpointed grinding
teeth chewing roots. Endless challenges. A
commander turned cautious had a line of
potential rivals lightyears long, waiting for
stand-down from Active Status. Kzin were
extremely territorial; modern kzin had transferred
the instinct from physical position to rank.

  Glory if we win. More glory for great dangers
overcome. Conquest Hero Kfraksha-Admiral no
Kfraksha-Tchee, a full name, unimaginable wealth,
planetary systems of slaves with a fully industrialized
society. Many sons. Generations to worship my
memory.

  The commander's ears unfolded as he relaxed,
decisions made. "This is a perilous course. Notify
Flashing Claws" a Swift Hunter-class courier,
lightly armed but lavishly equipped with drive and
fuels "to stand by on constant datalink." The
Patriarchy would know what happened. "The fleet
will proceed as planned. Slingshot formation, with
Sons Contend With Bloody Fangs occupying the
innermost trajectory."

  That would put the flagship at the point of the
roughly conical formation the fleet was to assume,
the troopships with their loads of infantry would
be at the rear. "Redouble training schedules.
Increase rations." Well-fed kzin were more
amenable to discipline. And "Rumors of what?"

  "That we approach the Darkstar of III-Omen,
Dominant One."

  Kfialcsha-Admin~l leaned forward, his claws
prickling at the files of printout on his desk. "That
was confi

THE MAN WHO WOWED BE KZIN 301

dential information!" He glared steadily at Chief-
Operations-Officer, extreme discourtesy among
carnivores. The subordinate extended hands and
ears, with an aura of sullenness.

  "I have told no one of the nature of the object
we approach," he said. Few kzinti would trouble to
prod and poke for information not immediately
useful, either. "The ship and squadron commanders
have been informed, so have the senior staff."

  "Hrrr. Chirrru. You " a jerk of the tail towards
Aide-to-Commanders. "Fetch me Telepath."

  Halloran slumped down on the mat in his
quarters, head cradled in his hands, fighting to
control his nausea. Murphy, dons tell me I'm
developing an alergy to kzin, he thought, holding his
shaking hands out before him. The mottled spots
were probably some deficiency disease, or his
immune system might be giving up under the strain
of ingesting all these notquite-earthlike proteins.
He belched acid, swallowed past a painfully dry
throat, remembering his last meeting with his
father. A kzin ship was like the real Arizona desert,
and it was sucking the moisture out of his tissues,
no matter how much he drank. A dry cold, though.
It held down the soupy smell of dried rancid sweat
that surrounded him; that had nearly given him
away half a dozen times.

  A sharp pain thrilled up one finger. Halloran
looked down and found he had been absently
stropping nonexistent claws on the panel of
corklike material set next to the pallet. A broken
fingernail was bent back halfway. He prodded it
back into place, shuddering, tied one of the
antiseptic pads around it and secured it with a strip
of cloth before he lowered himself with painful
slowness to his back. Slow salt-heavy tears filled
the corners of his eyes and ran painfully down the
chapped skin of his face.

302 Mandolin Wars IV

  It was easier to be Fixer. Fixer did not hurt.
Fixer was not lonely. Fixer did not feel guilt;
shame, perhaps, but never guilt.

  Fixer doesn't exist. I am Lawrence Halloran Jr.
He closed his eyes and tried to let his breathing
sink into a regular rhythm. It was difficult for
more reasons than the pain; every time he began
to drop off, he would jerk awake again with
unreasoning dread. Not of the nightmares, just
dread of something.

  Intuition. Halloran had always believed in
intuition. Or maybe just the trickle of fear from
the crew, but he should not be that sensitive, even
with fatigue and weakness wearing down his
shields. His talent should be weaker, not stronger.

  Enough. "My status is that of a complete shit,
but my health is important to the mission," he
mumbled sardonically to himself. Sleep was like
falling

   and the others were chasing him again,
through the corridors of the creche. Pain shot in
under his ribs as he bounded along four-footed,
and his tongue lolled dry and grainy. They were
all bigger than him, and there were a double
handful of them! Bright light stabbed at his eyes
as he ran out into the exercise yard, up the
tumbled rocks of the pile in the center, gritty
ocher sandstone under his hands and feet.
Nowhere to run but the highest . . .

  Fear cut through his fatigue as he came erect
on the central spire. He was above them! The
high-status kits would think he was challenging
them!

  Squalls of rage confirmed it as the
orange-and-spotted tide boiled out of the doorway
and into the vast quadrangle of scrub and sand.
Tails went rigid, claws raked toward him; he stood
and screamed back, but he could hear the quaver
in it, and the impulse to grovel and spread his
ears was almost irresistible. Hate flowed over him
with the scent of burning ginger, varied only by
the individual smells of the other children.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 303

Rocks flew around him as they poured up the
miniature crags; something struck him over one
eye. Vision blurred as the nictitating membranes
swept down, and blood poured over one. The smell
of it was like death, but the others screeched
louder as they caught the waft.

  Hands and feet gripped him as he slumped down
on the hard rock, clawing and yanking hair and
lifting, and then he was flying. Instinct rotated his
head down, but he was already too stunned to get
his hands and feet well under him; he landed
sprawling across an edge of sandstone and felt ribs
crack. Then the others were on him, mauling, and
he curled into a protective ball but two of them
had his tail, they were stretching it out and raising
rocks in their free hands and crack and crack

  Halloran woke, shuddering and wincing at pain
in an organ he did not possess. Several corridors
away, Telepath screamed until the ratings dossed
near him lost all patience and broke open an arms
locker to get a stunner.

  "Dreams? Explain yourself, ks1'at," K~h~d~
growled.

  Telepath ventured a nervous lick of his nose,
eyes darting around, too genuinely terrified to
resent being called the kzin equivalent of a rabbit.

  "Nothing. I said nothing of dreams," he said, then
shrieked as the commander's claws raked along the
side of his muzzle.

"You dare to contradict me?"

"I abase mysel "

  "Silence! You distinctly said 'dreams' when I
asked you to determine the leakage of secret
information."

  "Leaks. First Fixer-of-Weapons was leaking. He
is strong. He leaks. I ton from him but I cannot
hide in sleep. Such shame. Now more are leaking.
The of ficers

304 Man-Kzin Wars IV

dream of the Ghost Star. Ancestors who died
without honor haunt it ... their hands reach up to
drag us down to nameless rot. One feels it. All
feel it "

  "Silencel Silence!" Kfraksha-Admiral roared,
striking open-handed. Even then he retained
enough control not to use his claws; this thing was
the last Telepath in the fleet, after all, even if
insanity was reducing its usefulness.

  And even such a sorry excuse for a kzin
shouldn't be much harmed by being beaten
unconscious.

  "You find time to groom?" Kfraksha-Admiral
asked sullenly.

  Finagle, Halloran swore inwardly, drawing the
Fixer persona more tightly around him. The last
sleep-cycle had seen a drastic deterioration in
everyone's grooming, except his memorised
projection. The commander s pelt was not quite
matted; it would be a long time before he looked
as miserable as Telepath Finagle alone knew
what Telepath looked like now, he seemed to
have vanished but he was definitely scruffy. The
entire bridge crew looked peaked, and several
were absent, their places taken by younger,
less-scarred understudies. Some of those
understudies had new bandages, evidence that
their superiors' usefulness had deteriorated to the
point where the commander would allow
self-promotion. The human's talent told him the
dark cavern of the command deck smelled of fear
and throttled rage and bewilderment; the skin
crawled down his spine as he sensed it.

  Kzinti did not respond well to frustration. They
also did not expect answers to rhetorical
questions.

  Kfraksha-Admiral turned to
Chrung-Fleet-Communications Officer.
"Summarize."

  "Herr>s Lair still does not report," that kzin said
dully.

That was the first of the troop-transports, going
in

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 305

on a trajectory that would leave them "behind" the
cruisers, dreadnoughts, and stingship carriers when
the fleet finally made its out-of-elliptic slingshot
approach to Earth. Kfraksha-Admiral had
calculated that Earth was probably the softest
major human target, and less likely to be alert. Go
in undetected, take out major defences and
space-industrial centers, land the surface-troops;
the witless hordes of humankind's fifteen billions
would be hostages against counterattack.

  If things go well, Halloran thought, easing a
delicate tendril into the commander's
consciousness. Murphy rules the kzin, as well as
humans. Wearily When do things ever go wells

   and the long silky grass blew in the dry cool
wind that was infinitely clean and empty. His Sire
and the other grown males were grouped around
the carcass, replete, lapping at drinks in shallow,
beautifully fashioned silver cups. He and the other
kits were roundstomached and content,
play-sparring lazily, and he lay on his back batting
at the bright-winged insect that hovered over his
nose, until Sire put a hand on his chest and leaned
over to rasp a roughly loving tongue across his
ears

  "It is well, it is well," Kfraksha-Admiral crooned
softly, almost inaudibly. Then he came to himself
with a start, looking around as heads turned
toward him.

  Finagle, l set him off on a memor4-fugue!
Halloran thought, feeling the kzin's panic and
rising anger, the tinge of suspicion beneath that.

  All must admire Kfraksha-Admiral's strategic
sense," Halloran-Fixer said hastily. "Light losses,
for a strategic gain of the size this operation
promises."

  Kfraksha-Admiral signed curt assent, turning his
attention from the worthless sycophant. Behind
Fixer's mask, Halloran's human face contorted in
a savage grin. Manipulatmg Kfraksha-Admiral's
subconscious

306 Man-l~in Wars IV

was more fun than haunting the other kzin. Even
for a ratcat, he's a son-of-a ... pussy, I suppose. Sin-
gleminded, too. Relatively easy to keep from
wondering what was causing all this I wish I
knew and tightly, tightly focus on getting through
the next few hours. Closest approach soon.

And it was all so easy. He was unstoppable . . .

  Scabs broke and he tasted the salt of blood. I'm
not ,o~ng to make it. He ground his jaws and felt
the Loosening teeth wobble in their sockets.
Death was a bitterness, no glory in it, only this
foul decay. Maybe I shouldn't make it. I'm too
dangerous. His face had been pockmarked with
open sores, the last time he looked. Maybe that
was how he looked inside.

  So easy, sucking the kzinti crews down into a
cycle of waking nightmare. As if they were doing
it to themselves. Fixer howled laughter from
within his soul.

  "I have the information by the throat, but I still
do not understand," Physicist said, staring around
wildly. He was making the chirau-chiruu sounds of
kzinti distress. Dealer-With-Very-Small-and-Large
was a better translation of his name/title. "I do
not understand!"

  Most of the bridge equipment was closed down.
Ventilation still functioned, internal fields, all
based on simple feedback systems. Computers,
weapons, communications, all had grown too
erratic to trust. A few lasers still linked the
functioning units of the fleet.

  Outside, the stars shone with jeering brightness.
Of the Ghost Star there was no trace; no visible
light, no occlusion of the background . . . and
instruments more sophisticated had given out
hours ago. Many of the bridge crew still stayed at
their posts, but their scent had soured; the steel
wtsai knives at their belts attracted fingers like
unconscious lures.

"Explain," Kfraksha-Admiral rasped.

"The values, the records just say that physical law

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE Kz~N 307

in the shadow-matter realm is unlike kzinti
timespace ... and there is crossover this close! The
effect increases exponentially as we approach the
center of mass; we must be within the radius the
object occupies in the other continuum. The
cosmological constants are varying. Quantum
effects. The U/R threshold of quantum probability
functions itself is increasing, that is why all
electronic equipment becomes
unreliable probability cascades are approaching
the macrocosmic level."

  Kfraksha-Admiral's tail was quivering-rigid, and
he panted until thin threads of spittle drooled
down from the corners of his mouth.

  "Then we shall win! We are nearly at point of
closest approach. Our course is purely ballistic.
Systems will regain their integrity as we recede
from the area of singularity."

  Murphy wins again, Halloran thought wearily
slumping back against the metal wall. His body was
shaking, and he felt a warm trickle down one leg.
He s right. The irony of it was enough to make him
laugh except that that would have hurt too much.
Halloran had done the noble thing. He had put
everything into controlling Kfraksha-Admiral,
blinding him to the voices of prudence . . .

And the bleeping ratcat was right after an.

  His shields frayed as the human despaired.
Frayed more strongly than he had ever felt, even
drunk or coming, until he felt/was
Kfraksha-Admiral's ferocious triumph, Physicist's
jumble of shifting equations, Telepath's hand
pressing the ampule of his last drug capsule against
his throat in massive overdose, why have the kzinti
disintegrated like this

  Halloran would never have understood it. He
lacked the knowledge of physics the ARM had
spent centuries discouraging that but Physicist
was next to him, and the datalink was strong. No
kzinti could have

308 Man-Kzin Wars IV

understood it; they were simply not introspective
enough. Halloran-Fixer knew, with the
whole-argument suddenness of revelation; knew
as a composite creature that had experienced the
inwardness of Kzin and Man together.

  The conscious brain is a computer, but one of
a very special kind. Not anything like a digital
system; that was one reason why true Artificial
Intelligence had taken so long to achieve, and had
proven so worthless once found. Consciousness
does not operate on mathematical algorithms,
with their prefixed structures. It is a quantum
process, indeterminate in the most literal sense.
Thoughts became conscious decision was taken,
will exercised when the nervous system amplified
them past the one-graviton threshold level. So was
insight, a direct contact with the parama-
thematical frame of reality.

  They couldn't know, Halloran realised.zinff
physics was excellent but their biological sciences
primitive by human standards.

  And I know what's driving them crazy, he
realised. Telepathy was another threshold effect.
Any conscious creature possessed some ability.
The Ghost Star was amplifying it to a terrifying
level, even as it disabled the computers by turning
their off/on synapses to off and on. Humans might
be able to endure it; Man is a gregarious species.

  Not the kzinti. Not those hard, stoic, isolated
killer souls. Forever guarded, forever wary,
disgusted by the very thought of such an
involuntary sharing . . . whose only glimpse of
telepathy was creatures like Telepath. Utter
horror, to feel the boundaries of their personali-
ties fraying, merging, becoming not-self.

  Halloran knew what he had to do. It's the right
thing. Fixer-of-Weapons stirred exultantly in his
tomb of flesh. Die like a Hero! he
battle-screeched.

Letting go was like thinning out, like dying, like

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KzIN 309

being free for the first time in all his life.
Halloran's awareness flared out, free of the
constraints of distance, touching lightly at the raw
newly-forged connections between thousands of
minds in the Ghost Sun's grip. I get to be
omnipotent~ust before the end, he thought in some
distant corner. To his involuntary audience MEET
EACH OTHER.

  The shock of the steel was almost irrelevant, the
reflex that wrenched him around to face Telepath
automatic. Undeceived at last, the kzin's
drug-dilated eyes met the human's. Halloran
slumped forward opening his mouth, but there was
no sound or breath as

 he-

"Get out of my dreams!"

 the human

 fell

 released

  "Shit," Halloran murmured. His heels drummed
on the deck. Mom.

  The roar from Colonel Buford Early's office was
enough to bring his aide-de-camp's head through
the door. One glance at his Earther superior was
enough to send it back through the hatch.

  Early swore again, more quietly but with a
scatological invention that showed both his
inventiveness and his age; it had been many
generations since some of those Anglo-Saxon
monosyllables had been in common use.

  Then he played the audio again, without
correction, but listening carefully for the rhythm of
the phrasing under the accent imposed by a vocal
system and palate very unlike that of Homo sapiens
sapiens:

  ' so you see" it sounded more like no urn
thee  "it's not really relevant whether I'm Halloran
or whether he's dead and I'm a kzinti with
delusions.

310 Man-Kzin Wars IV

Halloran's . . . memories were more used to
having an alien in his head than Telepath's were,
poor bleeping bastard. The Fleet won't be giving
you any trouble, the few that are still alive will be
pretty thoroughly

insane.

  "On the other hand," the harsh nonhuman voice
continued, "remembering what happened to Fixer
I really don't think it would be all that advisable
to come back. And you know what? I've decided
that I really don't owe any of you that much.
Died for the cause already, haven't I?"

  A rasping sound, something between a growl
and a purr kzinti laughter. "I'm seeing a lot of
things more clearly now. Amazing what a
different set of nerves and hormones can do. My
talent's almost as strong now as it was . . . before,
and I've got a lot less in the way of inhibitions.
It's the Patriarchy that ought to be worried, but
of course they'll never know."

  Then a hesitation: "Tell my Sire . . . tell Dad I
died a Hero, would you, Colonel?"

              EPILOGUE

  The kzin finished grooming his pelt to a
lustrous shine before he followed
Medical-Technician to the deepsleep chamber of
the Swift Hunter courier Flashing Claws. His face
was expressionless as the cover lowered above
him, and then his ears wrinkled with glee; there
would be nobody to see until they arrived in the
Alpha Centauri system a decade from now.

  The Patriarchy had never had a Telepath who
earned a full name before.

Too risky! Telepath wailed.

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KZIN 311

Kshat, Fixer thought with contempt.

  Shut up both of you, Halloran replied. Or l U
start thinking about salads again. All of them
understood the grin that showed his/their fangs.

  The Patriarchy had never had one like
Halloran before, either.

      LARRY NIVEN'S KNOWN SPACE
         IS AFLAME WITH WAR!

Once upon a time, in the very earliest days of
interplanetary exploration, an unarmed human
vessel was set upon by a warship from the
planet Kzi~home of the fiercest warriors in
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the reason humanity had decided to study war
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And thus began The Man-Kzin Wars. Now,
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The Man-Kzin Wars: Featuring the Niven
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Man-Kzin Wars 11: Jerry Pournelle and S.M.
Stirling weigh in with a tale of Kzinti homelife;
and another adventure from Dean Ing.

Man-Kzin Wars 111: Larry Niven's first new
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All featuring fantastic series covers by Stephen
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the combined cover price(s) to: Been Books,
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