by Dean Ing
“If I cannot, I am no prret,” she purred. “Certainly I can leave one lying by himself. Or two. Or…”
“Okay, don’t get graphic on me,” he snapped. “We’ve got only one stasis unit here. If only I could get more but I can’t leave in the airboat without that damned little transmitter! Kit, you’ll have to go and get Puss now. I’ll promise her anything within reason.”
“She will know we are at a disadvantage. Her demands will be outrageous.”
“We’re all at a disadvantage! Tell her about the kzin warship that’s hanging over us.”
“Hanging magically over us,” she corrected him. “It is true enough for me.”
Then she was gone, loping away in darkness, leaving him to fumble his way to the meat storage unit he had so recently installed. The memocomp’s faint light helped a little, and he was too busy to notice the passage of time until, with its usual sudden blaze, the sunlet of Kzersatz began to shine.
He was biding the wires from Puss’s bed to the foot switch near the little room’s single doorway when he heard a distant roll of thunder. No, not thunder: it grew to a crackling howl in the sky, and from the nearest window he saw what he most feared to see. The kzin lifeboat left a thin contrail in its pass, circling just inside the force cylinder of Kzersatz, and its wingtips slid out as it slowed. No doubt of the newcomer now, and it disappeared in the direction of that first landing, so long ago. If only he’d thought to booby-trap that landing zone with stasis units! Well, he might’ve, given time.
He finished his work in fevered haste, knowing that time was now his enemy, and so were the kzinti in that ship, and so, for all practical purposes, was the traitor Puss. And Kit? How easy it will be for her to switch sides! Those females will make out like bandits wherever they are, and I may learn Kit’s decision when these goddamned prongs take a lethal bite in my back. Could be any time now. And then he heard movements in the high grass nearby, and leaped for his longbow.
Kit flashed to the doorway, breathless. “She is coming, Rockear. Have you set your sleeptrap?”
He showed her the rig. “Toe it once for sleep, again for waking, again for sleep,” he said. “Whatever you do, don’t get near enough to touch the sleeper, or stand over him, or you’ll be in the same fix. I’ve set it for maximum power.”
“Why did you put it here, instead of our own bed?”
He coughed and shrugged. “Uh,—I don’t know. Just seemed like—well, hell, it’s our bed, Kit! I… um, didn’t like the idea of your using it, ah, the way you’ll have to use it.”
“You are an endearing beast,” she said, pinching him lightly at the neck, “to bind me with tenderness.”
They both whirled at Puss’s voice from the main doorway: “Bind who with tenderness?”
“I will explain,” said Kit, her face bland. “If you brought those trade goods, display them on your bed.”
“I think not,” said Puss, striding into the room she’d shared with Boots. “But I will show them to you.” With that, she sat on her bed and reached into her apron pocket, drawing out a w’tsai for inspection.
An instant later she was unconscious. Kit, with Locklear kibitzing, used a grass broom to whisk the knife safely away. “I should use it on her throat,” she snarled, but she let Locklear take the weapon. “She came of her own accord,” he said, “and she’s a fighter. We need her, Kit. Hit the switch again.”
A moment later, Puss was blinking, leaping up, then suddenly backing away in fear. “Treachery,” she spat.
In reply, Locklear tossed the knife onto her bed despite Kit’s frown. “Just a display, Puss. You need the knife, and I’m your ally. But I’ve got to have that little gadget that looks like my wristcomp.” He held out his hand.
“I left it at the birthing bower. I knew it was important,” she said with a surly glance as she retrieved the knife. “For its return, I demand our total release from this household. I demand your help to build a manor as large as this, wherever I like. I demand teaching in your magical arts.” She trembled, but stood defiant; a dangerous combination.
“Done, done, and done,” he said. “You want equality, and I’m willing. But we may all be equally dead if that kzin ship finds us. We need a leader. Do you have a good plan?”
Puss swallowed hard. “Yes. Hunt at night, hide until they leave.”
Sighing, Locklear told her that was no plan at all.
He wasted long minutes arguing his case: Puss to steal near the landing site and report on the intruders; the return of’ his zzrou transmitter so he could try sneaking back to the cave; Kit to remain at the manor preparing food for a siege and to defend the manor through what he termed guile, if necessary.
Puss refused. “My place,” she insisted, “is defending the birthing bower.”
“And you will not have a male as a leader,” Kit said. “Is that not the way of it?”
“Exactly,” Puss growled.
“I have agreed to your demands, Puss,” Locklear reminded her. “But it won’t happen if the kzin warriors get me. We’ve proved we won’t abuse you. At least give me back that transmitter. Please,” he added gently. Too late, he saw Puss’s disdain for pleading. “So that is the source of your magic,” she said, her ears lifting in a kzinrett smile. “I shall discover its secrets, Rockear.”
“He will die if you damage it,” Kit said quickly, or take it far from him. “You have done a stupid thing; without this manbeast who knows our enemy well, we will be slaves again. To males,” she added.
Puss sidled along the wall, now holding the knife at ready, menacing Kit until a single bound put her through the doorway into the big room. Pausing at the outer doorway she stuck the w’tsai into her apron. “I will consider what you say,” she growled.
“Wait,” Locklear said in his most commanding tone, the only one that Puss seemed to value. “The kzintosh will be searching for me. They have magic’s that let them see great distances even at night, and a big metal airboat that flies with the sound of thunder.”
“I heard thunder this morning,” Puss admitted.
“You heard their airboat. If they see you, they will probably capture you. You and Boots must be very careful, Puss.”
“And do not hesitate to tempt males into (something) if you can,” Kit put in.
“Now you would teach me my business,” Puss spat at Kit, and set off down the ravine.
Locklear moved to the outer doorway, watching the sky, listening hard. Presently he asked, “Do you think we can lay siege to the birthing bower to get that transmitter back?”
“Boots is a suckling mother, which saps her strength,” Kit replied matter-of-factly. “So Puss would fight like a crazed warrior. The truth is, she is stronger than both of us.”
With a morose shake of his head, Locklear began to fashion more arrows while Kit sharpened his w’tsai into a dagger, arguing tactics, drawing rough conclusions. They must build no fires at the manor, and hope that the searchers spread out for single, arrogant sorties. The lifeboat would hold eight warriors, and others might be waiting in orbit. Live captives might be better for negotiations than dead heroes. “But even as captives, the bastards would eat every scrap of meat in sight,” Locklear admitted. Kit argued persuasively that any warrior worth his w’tsai would be more likely to negotiate with a potent enemy. “We must give them casualties,” she insisted, “to gain their respect. Can these modern males be that different from those I knew?”
Probably not, he admitted. And knowing the modern breed, he knew they would be infuriated by his escape, dishonored by his shrewdness. He could expect no quarter when at last they did locate him. “And they won’t go until they do,” he said. On that, they agreed; some things never changed.
Locklear, dog-tired after hanging thatch over the gleaming windows, heard the lifeboat pass twice before dark but fell asleep as the sun faded. Much later, Kit was shaking him. “Come to the door,” she urged. “She refuses to come in.”
He stumbled outside, found the bench by
rote, and spoke to the darkness. “Puss? You have nothing to fear from us. Had a change of heart?”
Not far distant: “I hunted those slopes where you said the males left you, Rockear.”
It was an obvious way to avoid saying she had reconnoitered as he’d asked, and he maintained the ruse. “Did you have good hunting?”
“Fair. A huge metal thing came and went and came again. I found four warriors, in strange costume and barbaric speech like yours, with strange weapons. They are making a camp there, and spoke with surprise of seeing animals to hunt.” She spoke slowly, pausing often. He asked her to describe the males. She had no trouble with that, having lain in her natural camouflage in the jungle’s verge within thirty paces of the ship until dark. Must’ve taken her hours to get here in the dark over rough country, he thought. This is one tough bimbo.
He waited, his hackles rising, until she finished. “You’re sure the leader had that band across his face?” She was. She’d heard him addressed as “Grraf-Commander.” One with a light-banded belly was called “Apprentice Something.” And the other two tallied, as well. “I can’t believe it,” he said to the darkness. “The same foursome that left me here! If they’re all down here, they’re deadly serious. Damn their good luck.”
“Better than you think,” said Puss. “You told me they had magic weapons. Now I believe it.”
Kit, leaning near, whispered into Locklear’s ear. “If she were injured, she would refuse to show her weakness to us.”
He tried again. “Puss, how do you know of their weapons?”
With dry amusement and courage, the disembodied voice said, “The usual way: the huge sentry used one. Tiny sunbeams that struck as I reached thick cover. They truly can see in full darkness.”
“So they’ve seen you,” he said, dismayed.
“From their shouts, I think they were not sure what they saw. But I will kill them for this, sentry or no sentry.”
Her voice was more distant now. Locklear raised his voice slightly: “Puss, can we help you?”
“I have been burned before,” was the reply.
Kit, moving into the darkness quietly: “You are certain there are only four?”
“Positive,” was the faint reply, and then they heard only the night wind. Presently Kit said, “It would take both of us, and when wounded she will certainly fight to the death. But we might overpower her now, if we can find the bower.”
“No. She did more than she promised. And now she knows she can kill me by smashing the transmitter. Let’s get some sleep, Kit,” he said. Then, when he had nestled behind her, he added with a chuckle, “I begin to see why the kzinti decided to breed females as mere pets. Sheer self-defense.”
“I would break your tail for that, if you had one,” she replied in mock ferocity. Then he laid his hand on her flank, heard her soft miaow, and then they slept.
Locklear had patrolled nearly as far as he dared down the ravine at midmorning, armed with his w’tsai, longbow, and an arrow-filled quiver rubbing against the zzrou when he heard the first scream. He knew that Kit, with her short lance, had gone in the opposite direction on her patrol, but the repeated kzin screams sent gooseflesh up his spine. Perhaps the tabbies had surrounded Boots, or Puss. He notched an arrow, half climbing to the lip of the ravine, and peered over low brush. He stifled the exclamation in his throat.
They’d found Puss, all right—or she’d found them. She stood on all-fours on a level spot below, her tail erect, its tip curled over, watching two hated familiar figures in a tableau that must have been as old as kzin history. Almost naked for this primitive duel, ebony talons out and their musky scent heavy on the breeze, they bulked stupefyingly huge and ferocious. The massive gunner, Goon, and engineer Yellowbelly circled each other with drawn stilettos. What boggled Locklear was that their modern weapons lay ignored in neat groups. Were they going through some ritual?
They were like hell, he decided. From time to time, Puss would utter a single word, accompanied by a tremor and a tail-twitch; and each time, Yellowbelly and Goon would stiffen, then scream at each other in frustration.
The word she repeated was ch’rowl. No telling how long they’d been there, but Goon’s right forearm dripped blood, and Yellowbelly’s thigh was a sodden red mess. Swaying drunkenly, Puss edged nearer to the weapons. As Yellowbelly screamed and leaped, Goon screamed and parried, bearing his smaller opponent to the turf, What followed then was fast enough to be virtually a blur in a roil of Kzersatz dust as two huge tigerlike bodies thrashed and rolled, knives flashing, talons ripping, fangs sinking into flesh.
Locklear scrambled downward through the grass, his progress unheard in the earsplitting caterwauls nearby. He saw Puss reach a beam rifle, grasp it, swing it experimentally by the barrel. That’s when he forgot all caution and shouted, “No, Puss! Put the stock to your shoulder and pull the trigger!”
He might as well have told her to bazzfazz the shimstock; and in any case, poor valiant Puss collapsed while trying to figure the rifle out. He saw the long ugly trough in her side then, caked with dried blood. A wonder she was conscious, with such a wound. Then he saw something more fearful still, the quieter thrashing as Goon found the throat of Yellowbelly, whose stiletto handle protruded from Goon’s upper arm.
Ducking below the brush, Locklear moved to one side, nearer to Puss, whose breathing was as labored as that of the males. Or rather, of one male, as Goon stood erect and uttered a victory roar that must have carried to Newduvai. Yellowbelly’s torn throat pumped the last of his blood onto alien dust.
“I claim my right,” Goon screamed, and added a word that Locklear was beginning to loathe. Only then did the huge gunner notice that Puss was in no condition to present him with what he had just killed to get. He nudged her roughly, and did not see Locklear approach with one arrow notched and another held between his teeth.
But his ear umbrellas pivoted as a twig snapped under Locklear’s foot, and Goon spun furiously, the big legs flexed, and for one instant man and kzin stood twenty paces apart, unmoving. Goon leaped for the nearest weapon, the beam rifle Puss had dropped, and saw Locklear release the short arrow. It missed by a full arm span and now, his bloodlust rekindled and with no fear of such a marksman, Goon dropped the rifle and pulled Yellowbelly’s stiletto from his own arm. He turned toward Locklear, who was unaccountably running toward him instead of fleeing as a monkey should flee a leopard, and threw his head back in a battle scream.
Locklear’s second arrow, fired from a distance of five paces, pierced the roof of Goon’s mouth, its stainless steel barb severing nerve bundles at the brain stem. Goon fell like a jointed tree, knees buckling first, arms banging, and the ground’s impact drove the arrow tip out the back of his head, slippery with gore. Goon’s head lay two paces from Locklear’s feet. He neither breathed nor twitched.
Locklear hurried to the side of poor, courageous, ill-starred Puss and saw her gazing calmly at him.
“One for you, one for me, Puss. Only two more to go.”
“I wish I could live to celebrate that,” she said, more softly than he had ever heard her speak.
“You’re too tough to let a little burn,” he began.
“They shot tiny things, too,” she said, a finger migrating to a bluish perforation at the side of her ribcage. “Coughing blood. Hard to breathe,” she managed.
He knew then that she was dying. A spray of slugs, roughly aimed at night from a perimeter-control smoothbore, had done to Puss what a beam rifle could not. Her lungs filling slowly with blood, she had still managed to report her patrol and then return to guard the birthing bower. He asked through the lump in his throat, “Is Boots all right?”
“They followed my spoor. When I came out, twitching my best prret routine—they did not look into the bower.”
“Smart, Puss.”
She grasped his wrist, hard. “Swear to protect it with your life.” Now she was coughing blood, fighting to breathe.
“Done,” he said. “Where is it, Puss?�
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But her eyes were already glazing. Locklear stood up slowly and strode to the beam rifle, hefting it, thinking idly that these weapons were too heavy for him to carry in one trip. And then he saw Puss again, and quit thinking, and lifted the rifle over his head with both hands in a manscream of fury, and of vengeance unappeased.
The battle scene was in sight of the lake, fully in the open within fifty paces of the creek, and he found it impossible to lift Puss. Locklear cut bundles of grass and spread them to hide the bodies, trembling in delayed reaction, and carried three armloads of weapons to a hiding place far up the ravine just under its lip. He left the dead kzinti without stripping them; perhaps a mistake, but he had no time now to puzzle out tightband comm sets or medkits. Later, if there was a later…
He cursed his watery joints, knowing he could not carry a kzin beam rifle with its heavy accumulator up to the manor. He moved more cautiously now, remembering those kzin screams, wondering how far they’d carried on the breeze which was toward the lake. He read the safety legends on Goon’s sidearm, found he could handle the massive piece with both hands, and stuck it and its twin from Yellowbelly’s arsenal into his belt, leaving his bow and quiver with the other weapons.
He had stumbled within sight of the manor, planning how he could unmast the airboat and adjust its buoyancy so that it could be towed by a man afoot to retrieve those weapons, when a crackling hum sent a blast of hot air across his cheeks. Face down, crawling for the lip of the ravine, he heard a shout from near the manor.
“Grraf-Commander, the monkey approaches!” The reply, deep-voiced and muffled, seemed to come from inside the manor. So they’d known where the manor was. Heat or motion sensors, perhaps, during a pass in the lifeboat—not that it mattered now. A classic pincers from down and up the ravine, but one of those pincers now lay under shields of grass. They could not know that he was still tethered invisibly to that zzrow transmitter. But where was Kit? Another hail from Brickshitter, whose tremors of impatience with a beam rifle had become Locklear’s ally: “The others do not answer my calls, but I shall drive the monkey down to them.” Well, maybe he’d intended merely to wing his quarry, or follow him.