“We are companions,” said Charrgh-Captain. “In a companionship sealed by bonds that will not be broken lightly. In any case, this is a large ship, with a small crew. We all like what you call elbow room, and here we can be generous with living space.”
Yes, thought Richard, you kzinti always build ships larger than you need—as though you just might want them for something else one day. I'm sure this one is a lot more intricately subdivided than a simple trader needs to be, too. And lots of mountings and installations for very high-energy signaling devices, just in case your message laser fails, of course. Aloud he said: “How small a crew, Honored Charrgh-Captain?”
“Myself, a weapons officer who is second-in-command, two flyer/watchkeepers, a Slaverexpert, two engineers, four troopers, and the telepath.”
Twelve kzinti. If it comes to a fight over the stasis box, we wouldn't stand much chance against that lot. I don't suppose we're here to fight for the stasis box, though. We're really only here taking the role of canaries in ancient submarines or coal mines. As long as we live, things are okay. If the kzinti don't let us return to make a full report, humanity will assume the box contained a major weapon of the Slavers, and will hit the kzinti worlds with everything it's got.
“Leave your things here for the moment,” said Charrgh-Captain. The commonplace, domestic phrases of hospitality sounded strange from a nine-foot-tall felinoid with dagger fangs. “You are officially part of the crew and should familiarize yourselves with the ship.”
He escorted them through it from end to end. It turned out to be a refitted warship—most kzinti vessels were, not too surprisingly; a ship built entirely out of hardpoints doesn't tend to wear out very soon. The puppeteers were still running a few General Products outlets, to help with moving expenses, but aside from a yacht for the Patriarch, for the publicity, they weren't providing the kzinti with invulnerable hulls. (Which was a pity; one would have been nice now, under the circumstances.) Still, there were a lot of awfully tough merchant ships out there lately.
Slowly, the kzinti were becoming integrated into the great web of interstellar trade and commerce. Slowly, some kzinti were taking to the business and mercantile life and coming to appreciate the rewards it brought. At first they put a good face on it by saying to one another that it was a temporary expedient, until more Heroic times returned; but as time went on, and sons grew up in family businesses, this claim was made less often.
Humans (with puppeteer advice, when that wasn't absurdly naïve) had gradually initiated them into a system of rewards, rituals, stories, respect, and honors for successful merchants. There was a Kzinti Chamber of Commerce now, with the Patriarch's ninth son as Honorary President, and several wholly or partially kzinti chapters of Rotary Interstellar—though the Rotarians' cherished ritual of the Sergeant-at-Arms levying small fines upon members before dinner, for charitable purposes, had been dropped in the kzinti chapters, as it had occasionally led to death duels.
This ship, Cunning Stalker, was officially a merchant vessel, seconded to the science-and-research branch of the new Kzinti Mercantile College. (Kzinti of the old school, who had not read Adam Smith's writing on trade's mutual advantages for both parties, still called it “House-to-Learn-Plundering-from-Animals-by-Stealth.”) Cunning Stalker was built in the classical kzinti hemisphere-and-cone pattern, though with three drives—a traditional kzinti gravity-planer, a human-derived hydrogen-fusion reaction drive, and of course a hyperdrive. The first two had long been obsolete for interstellar travel, but were still essential within a star's singularity, and had other uses. The hugely oversized power plants of the Red Age were now banned by treaty, so that gravity effects were no longer used for casual convenience—like, as an alternative to reaching for things—but lesser motors throughout the ship did allow for a variety of useful effects, including whatever was comfortable at the moment.
The aft part of the ship contained several cargo holds, whose partitioning could be altered. Richard wondered briefly if it might have been a slave transport; it was just barely old enough. There was a control center well forward. The engineers had sleeping cabins near the engine spaces, the rest of the personnel about the control center. There were many empty cabins and other spaces, some of these suggestive to a trained eye. As Charrgh-Captain had said, there was plenty of room.
Sometimes in the wars, humans, who, one way or another, found themselves sharing ships with kzinti, had managed to elude or ambush those kzinti by climbing through ducting too narrow for the great felinoids to enter. Richard noticed, not without wry amusement, that Cunning Stalker appeared to have been refitted with memories of this in mind. Any ducting too small to admit a kzin was either also too small to admit a human, or else covered with very tough gratings.
Overall, it contained few surprises for the humans, though much of the machinery and instrumentation was quite alien to them. Both Richard and Gay had long ago absorbed the standard layout of various classes of kzinti ships through imprinting, as part of their reserve officer training, but those designs were from the Red Age, pre-hyperdrive, when transit times were measured in decades; back then, any innovation meant newly arrived personnel would require complete retraining. Nowadays changes could be implemented Empire-wide in months, with the result that the Guthlacs found the latest kzinti designs just short of baffling. The control center was downright intimidating, with three kzinti busy at instrument consoles whose combined complexity was worthy of a hospital doc. The ports had not yet been opaqued for the transition to hyperspace, and Kzinhome's primary was a vast red ball filling the sky to one side as they skimmed it. (Slingshot maneuvers were thrifty if there was no hurry, and of course kzinti were up on all the gravity business.)
There too was Telepath, smaller, bowed, skittering nervously about, not daring yet to sleep. Beside the tigerish magnificence of Charrgh-Captain, and after the tall, strong, normal-looking Wunderkzin telepaths Richard and Gay knew at home on Wunderland, the twitchy, doomed, neurotic creature was an awful sight. Looking at him, they understood afresh why so many telepath POWs had aided humanity; and why so many other telepaths, stranded in the Centauri System after its liberation in the first great war, had been so eager to throw in their lot with humanity, with its milder, less-destructive drugs, and to take human names and loyalties.
Richard and Gay were used to non-humans, particularly kzinti—on Wunderland there were Wunderkzin they thought of as companions and friends. But these were not Wunderkzin. The Guthlacs' nerves were on edge in the ruddy orange light, hulking tigerish forms around them.
The last time they had flown with Charrgh-Captain, he had been the attached observer, and their crew had been two other humans and a Wunderkzin. Now they felt their minority status with painful nervous tension. It was not improved by the knowledge that even nontelepathic kzinti could sense emotions, so that their companions were certainly aware of how the humans felt. Even Earth canines could smell fear, and to kzinti it could be an intoxicant. It was a relief to thank Charrgh-Captain for the tour and close their cabin door behind them.
“This bed is something!” Gay commented, bouncing on it. “And the covers are real fabric! I was half-afraid they'd be human skin or something.”
Richard bounced onto the bed beside her. Was the gravity here less? It was something the kzinti could arrange easily enough, but he had not anticipated such thoughtfulness. Gay grabbed him and wound her arms around him.
“I do feel a bit nervous here,” she said, “and I think I need some comforting.”
“You want to make love now?”
“Yes. Don't you? I think we'd better give this bed a test flight.” She grabbed him and pulled him down.
I feel sorry for those who need new partners all the time, Richard thought afterward as they lay in each other's arms, dreamy and contented, thoughts drifting. They had been married nearly twenty years, and the more they knew one another's bodies the better they became, even as—something they had once thought impossible—their love for one anothe
r seemed to continue to deepen. This is perfection, he thought, kissing his wife's skin. Most twenty-ninth-century human bodies were perfect, but beyond that their minds, spirits, and desires were in a radiant union. Lying together there, his arms about her, it was as if each basked in an aura of the other's comfort, happiness, and contentment. He murmured something below speech, running his knuckles along her spine.
She turned away from him, her curves of shoulder and back and buttocks making her seem rather more surrendered and giving than when she faced him.
“You know, eighty days of this each way shouldn't be too hard to bear,” Richard mused.
“And we're getting paid to do it!”
“Hah! True. Not sure how I'd phrase it on a resumé, though. Of course the kzinti aren't what they were, not quite. Even with a full shipyard doing nothing else it would take several hours, at least, to convert this ship back for Navy use in another war… I'm still digesting the idea of kzinti Rotarians.”
“I remember hearing somewhere there's been attempts to set up kzinti Lions Clubs. The fines officer's known as the Tail-Twister, you know! The mind boggles.”
They both laughed, rather nervously, and Richard reached for her again.
The door beeped. Someone desired entrance. Gay kicked herself over and pulled the cover up to her chin, then let it fall. “What the hell, kzinti aren't going to be shocked by monkeys.”
“Shall we let them in?”
“Why not?”
“Admit,” said Richard. Unless specially locked, the door was voice-keyed.
“May I join you?” It was Telepath. Like Charrgh-Captain, he spoke Interworld, the largely Jinxian-based common human tongue which, despite its name, was difficult for nonhumans to pronounce.
“We speak some kzinti tongues,” said Richard, experimentally. Even on Wunderland, some kzinti strongly disliked simians “defiling” the Heroes' Tongue—and this, as he was all too well aware, was not Wunderland. Still, his accent was good; and a certain amount of the hostility was due to frequent mangled pronunciation.
“I would be grateful,” said the telepath, “if I could spend some time here with you. The minds of the Heroes leak at me endlessly. I can shield, but it is not enough. Humans are so different that when I am not drugged I need to concentrate to understand you at all. The noise drowns out the others. This cabin, your minds, give me a refuge.”
Richard felt uncomfortable. Telepath was obviously trying to control his neurotic behavior. Good manners toward the humans were clamped about him like a coat of mail. Yet this timid, wistful, depressed, and undersized kzin was so hideously unnatural. It's just the instinctive revulsion one feels towards a sick animal, he thought. Don't let him sense it! How do I stop him sensing it? No headaches yet. He's not trying to read my mind. But I'll bet he gets the vibes.
Gay nodded. “Stay awhile,” she said, sitting up. “We can offer you bourbon if you like.”
“A small one, thank you. So that is what you really look like, without your clothing.”
They had forgotten for a moment that they were naked. Richard and Gay came from a culture where nudity, if not everyday, was less uncommon for everyone than it had been in the past—after the wars, Wunderland had needed a lot of work to clean up its climate, and there had been no reason to stop short of comfort. In any case Telepath himself, like most kzinti, wore very minimal garments consisting chiefly of utility belts and pouches for tools (including, they presumed, his drugs). “What you see is what you get,” said Richard, a laugh covering a momentary stab of embarrassment. He swung his feet to the deck and crossed to the drinks cabinet.
“It is fascinating,” said Telepath, looking them both up and down. “I knew you were tailless, but I have never actually seen tailless beings like you before. How do you balance? And would you not need them when you are swinging through trees?”
“We don't actually swing through trees very much,” Richard said. “Not now.”
“And only two teats. You must have small litters.”
“Yes, usually one, sometimes two. More are rare.”
“A lot of your cubs must survive, then. This is the first time I have left Kzin-aga. You are the first aliens I have met. Such spindly limbs, no muscles at all.” He reached out and touched. “Such soft skins. Yet you have fought Heroes. And won. I am glad you are not like Heroes.”
His voice changed.
“But so many similarities,” he said. “Spinal column, skull, ribs, two forelimbs, two hindlimbs. Same number of eyes and ears, similar mouth, same arrangement of alimentary canal, same division of functions by organ. Both mammalian. It is extraordinary.”
“Well, it's a good design,” said Richard. “Crops up all over. The ancestors of humans evolved on a world in the Galactic Core, while I understand that kzinti evolution can be traced back in a nearly unbroken chain to an incredible distance.”
“I hadn't known that myself,” Telepath said.
“It was in an article in Jinx Goshographic,” Richard said. “Something about geological stability—or, no, continuity of processes,” he said, trying to remember. “What's the word—gradualism! Changes were very standard, and laid down fossils pretty reliably up to two or three million years ago.”
“What happened then?” Telepath wondered.
“Asteroid impact. After that the geology wasn't as stable. Anyway, it's not that big a coincidence.”
“But our brains have functional similarities, too, I think. I have read minds of Pierin, of Jotoki. More strange. They don't understand about the need to fight.” Telepath's voice was becoming slurred. His eyelids were beginning to droop. “I think I am going to sleep now,” he said. “Let me sleep here. They will not come and kick me here.” He curled on the deck like a house cat after a large meal. After a minute he began to purr faintly, his claws extending and retracting rhythmically, though irregular twitches also ran over his muscles. He was runtish for a kzin, under eight feet tall, but it was still fortunate that their cabin was roomy. I think the poor creature is actually happy at this moment, Richard realized with a shock. With some memory of their own old cat in mind, he moved to scratch him under the chin, a gesture which with old Shebee had never failed to produce an ecstatic purring. Gay reached out quickly to halt him, and he stopped, shaking his head at himself. Telepath was, after all, still a kzin, small and weak by kzinti standards, but still with teeth and claws and speed capable of dismembering a buffalo. The rules for a human touching kzinti were very strict, and the rule for touching a sleeping one was NEVER.
It was a long time later that Telepath awoke.
“I have never slept so well that I remember,” he said. “But I should not have trespassed on you.”
“Perhaps you will come and talk with us again,” said Gay.
“We don't want him as a permanent guest!” said Richard after Telepath left.
“I think he knows that. Well, he would, wouldn't he? But I'm sorry for him.”
“I'd rather have him for a friend than an enemy,” said Richard. “I hate to think what a telepath enemy might do! But you're right as usual. And I guess I'm sorry for him, too.”
“I know you are. I've known you a long time, remember?”
The voyage proceeded. Neither Richard nor Gay could feel very comfortable in the main body of the ship, with its dim light, lower temperatures, and the hulking kzinti here and there—not all of them, they suspected, as sophisticated as Charrgh-Captain about the company of humans, or with the pathetic friendliness of Telepath. Their orange fur, camouflage in this light, and their capacity for perfect stillness, often made them hard to see, for all their size, until the humans came startlingly close. Their eyes, glowing in the dimness, were not friendly, and both Richard and Gay knew enough of kzinti body language to be under no illusions about that.
Things were peaceful enough—the kzinti had a gym to work off their energy and aggression, Charrgh-Captain forbade death duels among the relatively small crew, and foodmakers in private quarters avoided the m
ost common source of fights—but it was still like walking through a cage of tigers.
They spent some time with Charrgh-Captain on the bridge, familiarizing themselves further with the ship—it was the instinct of any spacer to do that, though they couldn't really hope to know more than the rudiments of the systems. Especially since they were wary of touching meters or control panels or interrupting kzinti watchstanders. Both made as sure as they could that the other kzinti were reminded as often as possible, by the sight of the three of them together, that they were under Charrgh-Captain's protection—the Patriarch's protection, if it came to that.
Sometimes—not very often—Charrgh-Captain was in the mood to talk; sometimes, when he wished to relax, even to joke and share a drink and reminiscences, or game with them in his suite; but the other kzinti were not companions from a past adventure, and it soon became abundantly clear that, for some reason, they had no particular inclination to socialize with representatives of the most terrible enemy their race had ever known.
As far as Richard could tell, none of the other kzinti spoke Interworld. He thought it unwise to try to press conversation upon them in either his insulting, monkey-mangled attempt at the Heroes' Tongue, or in what was still known in the Patriarchy (of which this ship was a part) as the slaves' patois. The windows were opaqued and there was nothing to be gained by looking through them anyway, except possibly madness—the blind-spot effect of looking upon hyperspace affected kzinti every bit as badly as it did humans. In their cabin there were entertainments.
Telepath, however, visited them; as often, they surmised, as he thought they could tolerate him. They played chess and card games with him sometimes, never developing the violent headache which would have warned them he was cheating. He won routinely at chess, but card games that involved bluffing were something of a kzinti handicap. He could easily sense their emotions when one of them had a good hand; it was the idea of folding—surrendering—that so often threw him.
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