Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - The Houses of the Kzinti

by Larry Niven

  “I am,” Lee replied grimly. “Locklear, if we get jumped by a tabby ship I’ll put a burst right into your guts, first thing.”

  As Locklear made a show of moaning and straining at his bonds, Gomulka banked the pinnace for its mapping sweep. Presently, Lee’s infrared scanners flashed an overlay on his screen and Gomulka nodded, but finished the sweep. Then, by manual control, he slowed the little craft and brought it at a leisurely pace to the IR blips, a mile or so above the alien veldt. Lee brought the screen’s video to high magnification.

  Anse Parker saw what Locklear saw. “Only a few tabbies, huh? And you took care of ’em, huh? You son of a bitch!” He glared at the scene, where a dozen kzinti moved unaware amid half-buried huts and cooking fires, and swatted Locklear across the back of his head with an open hand. “Looks like they’ve gone native,” Parker went on. “Hey, Gomulka: they’ll be candy for us.”

  “I noticed,” Gomulka replied. “You know what? If we bag ’em now, we’re helping this little shit. We can come back any time we like, maybe have ourselves a tabby-hunt.”

  “Yeah; show ’em what it’s like,” Lee snickered, “after they’ve had their manhunt.”

  Locklear groaned for effect. A village ready-made in only a few months! Scarface didn’t waste any time getting his own primitives out of stasis. I hope to God he doesn’t show up looking glad to see me. To avoid that possibility he pleaded, “Aren’t you going to give me a running chance?”

  “Sure we are,” Gomulka laughed. “Tabbies will pick up your scent anyway. Be on you like flies on a turd.” The pinnace flew on, unseen from far below, Lee bringing up the video now and then. Once he said, “Can’t figure out what they’re hunting in that field. If I didn’t know kzinti were strict carnivores I’d say they were farming.”

  Locklear knew that primitive kzinti ate vegetables as well, and so did their meat animals; but he kept his silence. It hadn’t even occurred to these piratical deserters that the kzinti below might be as prehistoric as Neanderthalers. Good; let them think they understood the kzinti! But nobody knows ’em like I do, he thought. It was an arrogance he would recall with bitterness very, very soon.

  Gomulka set the pinnace down with practiced ease behind a stone escarpment and Parker, his gaze nervously sweeping the jungle, used his gun barrel to urge Locklear out of the craft.

  Soichiro Lee’s gentle smile did not match his final words: “If you manage to hide out here, just remember we’ll pick up your little girlfriend before long. Probably a better piece of snatch than the Manaus machine,” he went on, despite a sudden glare from Gomulka. “How long do you want us to use her, asshole? Think about it,” he winked, and the canopy’s “thunk” muffled the guffaws of Anse Parker.

  Locklear raced away as the pinnace lifted, making it look good. They had tossed Br’er Rabbit into his personal briar patch, never suspecting he might have friends here.

  He was thankful that the village lay downhill as he began his one athletic specialty, long-distance jogging, because he could once again feel the synthetic gravity of Kzersatz tugging at his body. He judged that he was a two-hour trot from the village and paced himself carefully, walking and resting now and then. And planning.

  As soon as Scarface learned the facts, they could set a trap for the returning pinnace. And then, with captives of his own, Locklear could negotiate with Stockton. It was clear by now that Curt Stockton considered himself a leader of virtue—because he was a man of ideas. David Gomulka was a man of action without many important ideas, the perfect model of a playground bully long after graduation.

  And Stockton? He would’ve been the kind of clever kid who decided early that violence was an inferior way to do things, because he wasn’t very good at it himself. Instead, he’d enlist a Gomulka to stand nearby while the clever kid tried to beat you up with words; debate you to death. And if that finally failed, he could always sigh, and walk away leaving the bully to do his dirty work, and imagine that his own hands were clean.

  But Kzersatz was a whole ’nother playground, with different rules. Locklear smiled at the thought and jogged on.

  An hour later he heard the beast crashing in panic through orange ferns before he saw it, and realized that it was pursued only when he spied a young male flashing with sinuous efficiency behind.

  No one ever made friends with a kzin by interrupting its hunt, so Locklear stood motionless among palmferns and watched. The prey reminded him of a pygmy tyrannosaur, almost the height of a man but with teeth meant for grazing on foliage. The kzin bounded nearer, disdaining the wtsai knife at his belt, and screamed only as he leaped for the kill.

  The prey’s armored hide and thrashing tail made the struggle interesting, but the issue was never in doubt. A kzin warrior was trained to hunt, to kill, and to eat that kill, from kittenhood. The roars of the lizard dwindled to a hissing gurgle; the tail and the powerful legs stilled. Only after the kzin vented his victory scream and ripped into his prey did Locklear step into the clearing made by flattened ferns.

  Hands up and empty, Locklear called in Kzin, “The kzin is a mighty hunter!” To speak in Kzin, one needed a good falsetto and plenty of spit. Locklear’s command was fair, but the young kzin reacted as though the man had spouted fire and brimstone. He paused only long enough to snatch up his kill, a good hundred kilos, before bounding off at top speed.

  Crestfallen, Locklear trotted toward the village again. He wondered now if Scarface and Kit, the mate Locklear had freed for him, had failed to speak of mankind to the ancient kzin tribe. In any case, they would surely respond to his use of their language until he could get Scarface’s help. Perhaps the young male had simply raced away to bring the good news.

  And perhaps, he decided a half-hour later, he himself was the biggest fool in Known Space or beyond it. They had ringed him before he knew it, padding silently through foliage the same mottled yellows and oranges as their fur. Then, almost simultaneously, he saw several great tigerish shapes disengage from their camouflage ahead of him, and heard the scream as one leapt upon him from behind.

  Bowled over by the rush, feeling hot breath and fangs at his throat, Locklear moved only his eyes. His attacker might have been the same one he surprised while hunting, and he felt needle-tipped claws through his flight suit.

  Then Locklear did the only things he could: kept his temper, swallowed his terror, and repeated his first greeting: “The kzin is a mighty hunter.”

  He saw, striding forward, an old kzin with ornate bandolier straps. The oldster called to the others, “It is true, the beast speaks the Hero’s Tongue! It is as I prophesied.” Then, to the young attacker, “Stand away at the ready,” and Locklear felt like breathing again.

  “I am Locklear, who first waked members of your clan from age-long sleep,” he said in that ancient dialect he’d learned from Kit. “I come in friendship. May I rise?”

  A contemptuous gesture and, as Locklear stood up, a worse remark. “Then you are the beast that lay with a palace prret, a courtesan. We have heard. You will win no friends here.”

  A cold tendril marched down Locklear’s spine. “May I speak with my friends? The kzinti have things to fear, but I am not among them.”

  More laughter. “The Rockear beast thinks it is fearsome,” said the young male, his ear-umbrellas twitching in merriment.

  “I come to ask help, and to offer it,” Locklear said evenly.

  “The priesthood knows enough of your help. Come,” said the older one. And that is how Locklear was marched into a village of prehistoric kzinti, ringed by hostile predators twice his size.

  His reception party was all-male, its members staring at him in frank curiosity while prodding him to the village. They finally left him in an open area surrounded by huts with his hands tied, a leather collar around his neck, the collar linked by a short braided rope to a hefty stake. When he squatted on the turf, he noticed the soil was torn by hooves here and there. Dark stains and an abattoir odor said the place was used for butchering animals. The c
urious gazes of passing females said he was only a strange animal to them. The disappearance of the males into the largest of the semi-submerged huts suggested that he had furnished the village with something worth a town meeting.

  At last the meeting broke up, kzin males striding from the hut toward him, a half-dozen of the oldest emerging last, each with a four-fingered paw tucked into his bandolier belt. Prominent scars across the breasts of these few were all exactly similar; some kind of self-torture ritual, Locklear guessed. Last of all with the ritual scars was the old one he’d spoken with, and this one had both paws tucked into his belt. Got it; the higher your status, the less you need to keep your hands ready, or to hurry.

  The old devil was enjoying all this ceremony, and so were the other big shots. Standing in clearly-separated rings behind them were the other males with a few females, then the other females, evidently the entire tribe. Locklear spotted a few kzinti whose expressions and ear-umbrellas said they were either sick or unhappy, but all played their obedient parts.

  Standing before him, the oldster reached out and raked Locklear’s face with what seemed to be only a ceremonial insult. It brought welts to his cheek anyway. The oldster spoke for all to hear. “You began the tribe’s awakening, and for that we promise a quick kill.”

  “I waked several kzinti, who promised me honor,” Locklear managed to say.

  “Traitors? They have no friends here. So you—have no friends here,” said the old kzin with pompous dignity. “This the priesthood has decided.”

  “You are the leader?”

  “First among equals,” said the high priest with a smirk that said he believed in no equals.

  “While this tribe slept,” Locklear said loudly, hoping to gain some support, “a mighty kzin warrior came here. I call him Scarface. I return in peace to see him, and to warn you that others who look like me may soon return. They wish you harm, but I do not. Would you take me to Scarface?”

  He could not decipher the murmurs, but he knew amusement when he saw it. The high priest stepped forward, untied the rope, handed it to the nearest of the husky males who stood behind the priests. “He would see the mighty hunter who had new ideas,” he said. “Take him to see that hero, so that he will fully appreciate the situation. Then bring him back to the ceremony post.”

  With that, the high priest turned his back and followed by the other priests, walked away. The dozens of other kzinti hurried off, carefully avoiding any backward glances. Locklear said, to the huge specimen tugging on his neck rope, “I cannot walk quickly with hands behind my back.”

  “Then you must learn,” rumbled the big kzin, and lashed out with a foot that propelled Locklear forward. I think he pulled that punch, Locklear thought. Kept his claws retracted, at least. The kzin led him silently from the village and along a path until hidden by foliage. Then, “You are the Rockear,” he said, slowing. “I am (something as unpronounceable as most kzin names),” he added, neither friendly nor unfriendly. He began untying Locklear’s hands with, “I must kill you if you run, and I will. But I am no priest,” he said, as if that explained his willingness to ease a captive’s walking.

  “You are a stalwart,” Locklear said. “May I call you that?”

  “As long as you can,” the big kzin said, leading the way again. “I voted to my priest to let you live, and teach us. So did most heroes of my group.”

  Uh-huh; they have priests instead of senators. But this smells like the old American system before direct elections. “Your priest is not bound to vote as you say?” A derisive snort was his answer, and he persisted. “Do you vote your priests in?”

  “Yes. For life,” said Stalwart, explaining everything.

  “So they pretend to listen, but they do as they like,” Locklear said.

  A grunt, perhaps of admission or of scorn. “It was always thus,” said Stalwart, and found that Locklear could trot, now. Another half-hour found them moving across a broad veldt, and Locklear saw the scars of a grass fire before he realized he was in familiar surroundings. Stalwart led the way to a rise and then stopped, pointing toward the jungle. “There,” he said, “is your scarfaced friend.”

  Locklear looked in vain, then back at Stalwart. “He must be blending in with the ferns. You people do that very—”

  “The highest tree. What remains of him is there.”

  And then Locklear saw the flying creatures he had called “batowls,” tiny mites at a distance of two hundred meters, picking at tatters of something that hung in a net from the highest tree in the region. “Oh, my God! Won’t he die there?”

  “He is dead already. He underwent the long ceremony,” said Stalwart, “many days past, with wounds that killed slowly.”

  Locklear’s glare was incriminating: “I suppose you voted against that, too?”

  “That, and the sacrifice of the palace prret in days past,” said the kzin.

  Blinking away tears, for Scarface had truly been a cat of his word, Locklear said, “Those prret. One of them was Scarface’s mate when I left. Is she—up there, too?”

  For what it was worth, the big kzin could not meet his gaze. “Drowning is the dishonorable punishment for females,” he said, pointing back toward Kzersatz’s long shallow lake. “The priesthood never avoids tradition, and she lies beneath the water. Another prret with kittens was permitted to rejoin the tribe. She chose to be shunned instead. Now and then, we see her. It is treason to speak against the priesthood, and I will not.”

  Locklear squeezed his eyes shut; blinked; turned away from the hideous sight hanging from that distant tree as scavengers picked at its bones. “And I hoped to help your tribe! A pox on all your houses,” he said to no one in particular. He did not speak to the kzin again, but they did not hurry as Stalwart led the way back to the village.

  The only speaking Locklear did was to the comm set in his ear, shoving its pushbutton switch. The kzin looked back at him in curiosity once or twice, but now he was speaking Interworld, and perhaps Stalwart thought he was singing a death song.

  In a way, it was true—though not a song of his own death, if he could help it. “Locklear calling the Anthony Wayne,” he said, and paused.

  He heard the voice of Grace Agostinho reply, “Recording.”

  “They’ve caught me already, and they intend to kill me. I don’t much like you bastards, but at least you’re human. I don’t care how many of the male tabbies you bag; when they start torturing me I won’t be any further use to you.”

  Again, Grace’s voice replied in his ear: “Recording.”

  Now with a terrible suspicion, Locklear said, “Is anybody there? If you’re monitoring me live, say ‘monitoring.’”

  His comm set, in Grace’s voice, only said, “Recording.”

  Locklear flicked off the switch and began to walk even more slowly, until Stalwart tugged hard on the leash. Any kzin who cared to look, as they reentered the village, would have seen a little man bereft of hope. He did not complain when Stalwart retied his hands, nor even when another kzin marched him away and fairly flung him into a tiny hut near the edge of the village. Eventually they flung a bloody hunk of some recent kill into his hut, but it was raw and, with his hands tied behind him, he could not have held it to his mouth.

  Nor could he toggle his comm set, assuming it would carry past the roof thatch. He had not said he would be in the village, and they would very likely kill him along with everybody else in the village when they came. If they came.

  He felt as though he would drown in cold waves of despair. A vicious priesthood had killed his friends and, even if he escaped for a time, he would be hunted down by the galaxy’s most pitiless hunters. And if his own kind rescued him, they might cheerfully beat him to death trying to learn a secret he had already divulged. And even the gentle Neanderthalers hated him, now.

  Why not just give up? I don’t know why, he admitted to himself, and began to search for something to help him fray the thongs at his wrists. He finally chose a rough-barked post, sitting dow
n in front of it and staring toward the kzin male whose lower legs he could see beneath the door matting.

  He rubbed until his wrists were as raw as that meat lying in the dust before him. Then he rubbed until his muscles refused to continue, his arms cramping horribly. By that time it was dark, and he kept falling into an exhausted, fitful sleep, starting to scratch at his bonds every time a cramp woke him. The fifth time he awoke, it was to the sounds of scratching again. And a soft, distant call outside, which his guard answered just as softly. It took Locklear a moment to realize that those scratching noises were not being made by him.

  The scratching became louder, filling him with a dread of the unknown in the utter blackness of the Kzersatz night. Then he heard a scrabble of clods tumbling to the earthen floor. Low, urgent, in the fitz-rowr of a female kzin: “Rockear, quickly! Help widen this hole!”

  He wanted to shout, remembering Boots, the new mother of two who had scorned her tribe; but he whispered hoarsely: “Boots?”

  An even more familiar voice than that of Boots. “She is entertaining your guard. Hurry!”

  “Kit! I can’t, my hands are tied,” he groaned. “Kit, they said you were drowned.”

  “Idiots,” said the familiar voice, panting as she worked. A very faint glow preceded the indomitable Kit, who had a modern kzin beltpac and used its glowlamp for brief moments. Without slowing her frantic pace, she said softly, “They built a walkway into the lake and—dropped me from it. But my mate, your friend Scarface, knew what they intended. He told me to breathe—many times just before I fell. With all the stones—weighting me down, I simply walked on the bottom, between the pilings—and untied the stones beneath the planks near shore. Idiots,” she said again, grunting as her fearsome claws ripped away another chunk of Kzersatz soil. Then, “Poor Rockear,” she said, seeing him writhe toward her.

  In another minute, with the glowlamp doused, Locklear heard the growling curses of Kit’s passage into the hut. She’d said females were good tunnelers, but not until now had he realized just how good. The nearest cover must be a good ten meters away…“Jesus, don’t bite my hand, Kit,” he begged, feeling her fangs and the heat of her breath against his savaged wrists. A moment later he felt a flash of white-hot pain through his shoulders as his hands came free. He’d been cramped up so long it hurt to move freely. “Well, by God it’ll just have to hurt,” he said aloud to himself, and flexed his arms, groaning.