The Man-Kzin Wars 06 mw-6

by Donald Kingsbury

  There was no help for it. It was God’s way of speaking to kzin in the Dominant Tense. One could only reply in the Dominated Tense. Truth was truth. An earlier generation of kzinti had been equally shocked to discover that Kzinhome was not the center of the universe.

  Killing Markham was no solution. He was Dominant. It was God’s challenge to Hwass that he find other means to circumvent this man’s treachery.

  The Club-Master approached him. “Hwass, honored Dominance.”

  Hwass-Hwasschoaw growled acknowledgment. He was not in a good mood.

  “The humans are here.”

  “Here? Throw them out!”

  “Sire.” Club-Master stood his ground. It was clear that he was not going to obey this impulsive order.

  “Then keep them confined below. In the holding room. Who is it this time? That breakable pink pole who would steal our knowledge of gravity? He’s become like a tigripard after the sheep.” Hwass had grown up in the sheep ranching territories of Wunderland.

  Club-Master spoke in the most respectful tense. “Not to contradict your Dominance, but they have requested only drink. They are drunk already.”

  Hwass swiveled on his attendant. “Learn that they lie with their every breath! They are not honest warriors like you and me! They are weak in gravitics and seek to improve their skills so that they can kill more kzin. Their ghostships do not operate near the mass of stars and it is only the gravitic superiority of our warcraft that keeps them at bay. They control only interstellar space. We still dominate the stellar realms. I have spoken with this man before.”

  “There are two. One is the lean monkey known to you. The other is a Major Yankee Clandeboye.” Club-Master had a hard time with the name because it did not translate properly into the hisses and sibillated snarls of the Hero’s Tongue.

  “That one?” Now the play was clear to Hwass. To obtain his freedom he would not only have to deliver a message of peace to Kzinhome, which would cost him nothing (maybe), but he must also act as a hunt guide in the hills of gravity, which would cost him dearly. What else would they demand—his hide for a rug? “Bring them here,” he said reluctantly.

  “What shall I offer them to drink?”

  “Banana pulp mixed with orange juice!” At this reply, Club-Master’s membranous ears went into shock. Hwass remembered that this servant had no sense of humor. “They will take Kahlua with cream. Charge them triple.” He tapped his furless tail three times.

  When Club-Master departed via the dropway, Hwass surveyed the great room to see that it was in presentable order. Much kzin carousing went on here and it wasn’t always tidy, but the present hour was a quiet one with few celebrants. These simians could be entertained with some propriety. The Hwasschoaw family still retained some of the more elegant manners of the inner worlds, spot-worn like the rugs but serviceable.

  He stooped at the entrance to view the room from a dwarf’s height to see it as a kz’eerkt might see it. He straightened the kudlotlin hide rugs, all of which had been imported in the holds of Chuut-Riit’s armada and now showed signs of wear. They could not be replaced. There were no furry kudlotlin to hunt on Wunderland—the planet was everywhere too warm for that beast. No matter. How would he seat such midgets? Kits were not allowed in this room of Heroes and so there were no proper sized furnishings. His membranous ears waggled. It would do these monkeys good to look silly with their feet dangling.

  When they finally arrived, after Club-Master had delayed them as long as one could possibly delay a Dominant, the tall pole with the pink eyes was his usual disgustingly ingratiating self. The lesser man showed all the signals and smells of monkey fear that Hwass had learned to read from years of owning human slaves. He did not look like the hero of 59 Virginis who had “defeated” a local kzin fleet, but that’s what the records said.

  Hwass had carefully researched this major since finding his name on the orders that countermanded those of Markham. “Defeated” was probably the usual primate exaggeration. Humans lied even in their records. Their dishonest officers routinely told their commanders whatever the commander wanted to hear. The record probably meant that Major Clandeboye had “escaped.”

  “And how iss that I must serve you?” He was frustrated that he could not put irony in his voice but was relieved that he did not have to speak the Hero’s Tongue—the humiliating circumstances would have required him to use the Dominated Tense. These barbarian human languages were fortunately deficient in the nuances of tense. “Iss you able understand my accent?”

  “Major Clandeboye has a pocket device that compensates for the distortions—and I don’t need one.” The white-haired human led them to a table as if he had built the Club himself, and accepted his Kahlua with cream as if he had a full name. His friend behaved like a servant, following, watching Brobding before he acted. He twiddled uncomfortably with his pocket device.

  Hwass accepted a Kahlua and cream for himself in a kzin-sized cup. He was tempted to push his muzzle close into the major’s space, to play with the fear he smelled there, but such behavior would not advance his cause. He restrained himself admirably and sat down across from the table, rather than next to the major. “You,” he said, “iss the man-thing I am interested in for you iss failed approve my return to Kzin.”

  The major seemed startled. “You’re the heroic Hwass-Hwasschoaw?” He glanced up at Brobding Shaeffer in mute appeal, then returned his gaze to the eyes of Hwass before he shuddered and dropped it to the watery ring that his infant’s cup had made. “I apologize for that.”

  It was the second astonishing apology Hwass had received for this act of human duplicity. They promised you freedom, whacked off your head—and apologized. He gazed at this marvel who could not have survived for a heartbeat without the aid of the Great God who seemed to have a fortress in his liver for sniveling weaklings created in His image. “Continue.”

  “I have no desire to abort your journey to Kzin.”

  Kzinti nostrils flared. That was the first lie. The next sentence would contain the second lie. The warrior waited.

  Major Clandeboye was struggling with the simplified, non-idiomatic grammar used to converse with the kzin. “I have determined that you have information we need and have been looking forward”—he shuddered—“to a friendly conversation.”

  “I iss not gravitics expert,” Hwass replied curtly. “I fly ships; I not build them.”

  “Gravitics is Shaeffer’s concern, not mine. You were in Intelligence?”

  “All carnivores iss intelligent,” grumbled Hwass, misunderstanding the statement.

  “Excuse me. I meant that you are a student of spoor.”

  How had the UNSN guessed that? The kzin used his tongue to flip a taste of his drink into his toothy mouth. “Yess, I iss been known to be observant. Iss you expect me betray my Patriarch?”

  “No. We are at peace. It is in both our interests to cement the peace with acts of goodwill.”

  There they were again—peace and goodwill. Hwass-Hwasschoaw did not quite understand what he was being told. The only translation he had for the human word “peace” was the word from the Hero’s Tongue for “subservience.” The nearest translation he had for “acts of goodwill” was “tribute.” He replied carefully. “What information that you wish as tribute to ensure my voyage toward Kzin?”

  “I require nothing of you. I only wish to ask you a few questions.”

  You lie! thought the kzin, enraged, his lips twitching as he tried to suppress a smile.

  Brobding nudged his companion. “You are being unnecessarily polite.”

  Yankee retorted, “I’m allowed to be polite to a kzin—especially when he is so much bigger than I am.”

  “The tense is wrong. Interworld is deficient in tenses. So far as a kzin is concerned, the direct tense is the only ‘tense’ it has. I’ll explain to you later.” What Brobding meant to say, and what he was not going to say in front of a kzin, was that politeness required the use of the Dominant/Dominated Tenses, and
since the humans were the victors, they would only be able to speak insults while Hwass, who was the defeated, would be restricted to the groveling politenesses. He could see that Yankee was lost. “Recall, my friend, that politeness in the Direct Tense is a form of lying.” Yankee paled.

  Brobding Shaeffer turned his attention casually to their kzin host to smooth the conversation. “My companion was using an idiom that you do not understand. Humans have been lying for so long that we have standard lies which everyone understands. Since the second meaning of such a lie is known, it is no longer a lie.” The crashlander had the kzin’s full attention. “Let me illustrate. When my companion said that he required nothing of you, he was using an idiom to tell you that if you do not answer his questions, he will never allow you passage to Kzinhome.”

  Hwass calmed at this clear truth and his claws, which he had kept hidden, were retracting naturally. “You iss already promised me the passage. Now you retract your promise. You iss without honor.”

  The crashlander spat out a phrase in the Hero’s Tongue which roughly translated as, “The victor has room to roam.” Then he resumed in Interworld, “I believe the basic nature of the promise remains intact. Answering my companion’s questions may taste like leaves but there will be no trickery in them. Am I correct, Yankee?”

  “My questions do not form a conundrum prison. They are answerable by an honorable kzin. Is it not true that an honorable warrior will not abandon his warrior mate in battle? Some of our warriors feel the same. I seek information about a fallen comrade.”

  “I iss not the God who iss seeing every fallen warrior.”

  “But you were a member of the Third Black Pride at the time of the Battle of Wunderland?”

  “I be.”

  “And the Third Black Pride captured prisoners.”

  “We capture prisoners. All iss destroyed when our Pride iss destroyed. I not know details.”

  “But there were survivors. You, for instance.”

  “I not know details. You iss recall that the climax of battle occurs as I iss the unconscious companion of my laser-fried companions, and furthermore iss dying in damaged spacesuit. I not recover consciousness until weeks beyond the battle ending.”

  “The Third Black Pride was the first to capture a prisoner—long before the Pride left its station to reinforce Traat-Admiral.”

  “The records iss destroyed.”

  “Not all of them,” insisted Yankee. “We are still piecing together records from your burnt-out hulks. The old codes are no longer secure. Your security officers did an excellent job of sending sensitive information to computer heaven, but not all ghosts make it to heaven. I am interested in your first prisoner.”

  “Yess, I iss remember her much well.” Hwass was thinking furiously as he talked. They were not interested in the prisoner; she was the one captured with a more-or-less intact hypershunt three-man scout ship. They were interested in the fate of their ship.

  Yankee interrupted. “You just used the word ‘her.’ Kzin tend to make mistakes with that word. Are you talking about a female prisoner?”

  “Yess. I remember such detail much well. We iss all astonished that humans try use females in combat role.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I iss not remember such detail like that.”

  “Was it ‘Nora Argamentine’?”

  “I iss not know.”

  “What became of her?”

  As long as this monkey was asking only about the female, Hwass was willing to answer. “She iss be destroyed in the battle.” Along with the hyperdrive scoutship, alas.

  “But you have no personal knowledge of that?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to her after she was captured?”

  “Chuut-Riit established the unit to study animal behavior. She is put in thralldom to animal-trainer who iss been given authority conduct behavior research.”

  “Ship-based, or on Wunderland?”

  “Ship-based. That iss why I say she iss destroyed. All kzin ships iss destroyed in battle. None does surrendered.” He spoke with pride.

  “But you have no personal knowledge of this?”

  “How iss I know such thing? I iss critical wounded before battle iss taken to disastrous end.”

  “To what ship was she assigned? Our records are complete on the fate of every one of your warships. We can determine her fate.”

  “Our Third Pride has large mother ship,”—large enough to hold the hyperdrive scout in her maintenance womb. “Trainer-of-Slaves worked from there. I iss not recall its title.”

  “Was it a…” Yankee paused. He was thinking “drydock,” but there was no equivalent word in the Hero’s Tongue. The continents of Kzin were all linked by narrow shallow seas and the kzin had evidently gone to space before they had a strong seagoing tradition. Eighty percent of their space naval terms were not related in any way to basic kzinti sea lore, and did not obey the normal rules of kzinti grammar, showing strong fossil evidence that the kzin had been taught their spacefaring skills by an alien race. “Was it a ship used to overhaul other ships?”

  “Yess. This be mother ship.”

  Yankee called up a word on his infocomp and showed it to Brobding. “Could you try to pronounce this for me?”

  “Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch,” said the crashlander in his best growling-hiss.

  “Was it that ship?”

  “Yess.”

  “No such ship has ever been recovered.” Yankee posed the statement as a question.

  “Bitch warcraft ordered to battle-zone.”

  “It never arrived,” Yankee insisted.

  The mind of Hwass raced. This was news. Then Trainer-of-Slaves had actually carried through on his determination to take the hyperdrive scout back into the Patriarchy! He couldn’t have done that, of course. He was under arrest and in suspended animation, if he had, he deserved a full name. Could his captain have disobeyed orders and revived Trainer? Probably not. That old Hero had never had an original thought in his life.

  Mystery. That’s what this monkey was tracking down. Now Hwass was interested! Was a hypershunt motor actually in possession of the Patriarch? That changed everything. He felt a curious elation.

  “I iss help you. Then you iss help me go Kzin?”

  “It’s a deal.”

  Chapter 7

  (2436 A.D.)

  The landscape could have been anywhere in the universe and nowhere. A triple-cross rose out of the swirling fog at dawn. It was an illusion, of course, built within a tiny chapel inside a distant corner of Tigertown. The bulk of a kzin warrior purred his supplications to the triple-cross. He wore a mask of steam-stretched human skin. The mask was all bushy eyebrows, scowl, and beard, its human face too large because it was there to hide a kzin’s muzzle.

  The purring words, couched in the Dominated Tense, were for the invisible Grandfather on the left, to the Father offstage on the right, and to the Son in the middle. They were exactly those words prescribed by the teachings of Kdapt. The mask honored the true shape of God and made Hwass-Hwasschoaw bold in his thanks for the fortune of the day. He was dedicating himself to the goal of finding the lost hyperspace shunt.

  An interesting challenge. Hwass had contacts within the kzin community that no human could match. Clandeboye had access to hyperwave communication and hypershunt transportation and to the naval records of the humans. Neither man nor kzin could succeed without the other, yet at the same time each dared not help the other. It was a puzzle subtle enough to intrigue a W’kkai Conundrum Priest.

  In the days that followed, he prowled Tigertown, trying to find any surviving crew member of the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch at the time of the battle. Not a trace. Then he began to put together a compendium of stories about Trainer-of-Slaves, who had disgraced himself by insisting, probably correctly, that the human scoutship Shark should immediately be shipped back to the naval yards of Kzin. Hwass had not known the slave master at all, and was aware of him only because he was a
favorite of Grraf-Hromfi, the Dominant of Chuut-Riit’s Third Pride. By now Hwass was very curious about this nameless barbarian from Hssin.

  He used his new authority with the simian navy to obtain a restricted visit to Aarku of Beta Centauri where Trainer-of-Slaves had been stationed as a slave breeder before being assigned to the Third Pride. He was evidently a superior trainer of the nasty Jotok slaves. But Aarku had been more than a slave factory. Aarku was still used to maintain kzinti-equipped vessels of the Serpent Swarm. The technicians were all kzin and many of them had known Trainer.

  Hundreds of wrecked kzinti battle craft were beached on Aarku. It was a mine of information about how kzinti weapons performed against their human counterparts. He had time here to expand on the Wunderland Battle analysis he intended, someday, to deliver to the Patriarch. If he could not deliver the message in person, then his sons or grandsons would. While Clandeboye was using him, he was using Clandeboye.

  He spent much of his time at Aarku setting up a Kdaptist cell. The kzin salvagers had found a desiccated man-beast in the wreckage of one of the ships and Hwass showed them how to skin the corpse so that its leather could be used to form masks for their Kdaptist services. Carved, the beast’s bones made excellent altar pieces and candelabra.

  Through his contacts on Aarku he learned that most of Trainer’s surviving associates were on Wunderland. That was convenient. Hwass was granted a second restricted travel pass. From Aarku, he went to Wunderland. No Kdaptist had more freedom of movement to spread the word.

  Hwass’s questioning around the kzinti tenements of München fed him many tales. Trainer had achieved a reputation in the animal world through a devotion to the chemistry of the human brain. The simians had mawkishly converted an orphanage, which once supplied some of his experimental subjects, into a memorial commemorating the martyred children, hundreds of them, each child’s name engraved into an eternium plaque. Kzinti documents were on display, some in Trainer-of-Slaves’s compact dots-and-comma style. Descriptive drawings of brain operations, Trainer’s bad poetry, the skull-clamps from basement test rooms, the saws and micro-fluid taps were all there.