The Man-Kzin Wars 04 Read online

  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 opponents 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.

  Münchenport was a depressing introduction to the 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 "Himmelfährte" 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 building 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, München 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 four-story brick mansion that had been converted for kzin use by knocking out the tops of all the interior doors.

  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 kzinrett always gave the impression of being intelligent. Once as a spoiled hit in the Chirr-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.

  Trainer-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 Chuut-Riits 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

  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 kzinretti. 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-of-Slaves, 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 recommendation..."

  The huge red officer with yellow splotches in his fur hissed. Trainer-of-Slaves immediately took the hint, saluted with a sharp claw-across-face, and retreated.

  That evening Trainer and Ssis-Captain 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 clear
ly 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," said Trainer-of-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 München so we shall go elsewhere which will lead directly back to higher lairs." 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 kzinrett 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 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 low 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 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-Riits purposes.

  Detector-Analyst was a local kzin from a background 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-Sherek? 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 cunning to 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 Chuut-Riits Logistical Preparation 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 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 kzinrett jokes, to who had-just received a name, to the honor duel between Electronic-Systems Upkeep 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 T
rainer-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!

  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 center.

  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.