by Larry Niven
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 over 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 Hamarr!” he dismissed his son, waving a hand. “She’s bored. Take her for a run.”
Presently Jotok-Tender and Chiirr-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.
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—still and silently—poised to run or attack. When she reached the recreation room, she chased away the other kzinrretti with low growls and threats, and bowled Short-Son 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 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.
Kzinti-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 standardization 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 unauthorized invention was stripped 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 Jotoki; they could swing from platform to platform with ease—trees were their natural medium—but it seemed to shake under kzin weight 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 Jotok 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 of gravitics 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-of-Noses’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, 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 shuttle, 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, Short-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 arms! 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 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.
CHAPTER 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.
“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 stomach,” jibed Hidden-Smile.
Attack me! I’ll flip and slash your throats out! Short-Son’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 honor.”
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 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 green—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 killing 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—Eater-of-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 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 mo
untains, 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 pretended 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 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 flared, 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.