Cats in Space and Other Places

by Bill Fawcett

  Royal lips pursed in distaste, bringing the Emperor's full sensual mouth into a tight circle. His dark brows drew together over muddy brown eyes giving him the look of a hunting bird of prey.

  "Unsatisfactory, Elena. Most unsatisfactory."

  The dragons embroidered on his golden robe writhed around each other as he swirled out of the sterile sea-foam green chamber.

  Ki's hands, the right one natural, tawny as the rest of him, strong-nailed and fine-fingered, the left mechanical, grey metallic, automatically straightened his meticulous uniform.

  "Your Majesty," he said, the sorrow he felt for the Emperor's reaction thickening his deep, rich voice.

  Elena Accalia regarded this Lionman carefully. The distaste he felt for the Emperor's reaction did not escape her, even now in her extreme weariness. How long had he been with her? Ever since she had been sent from her own planet to the Homeworld to be the wife of the Emperor. He had been among those sent to escort her. His mane had been totally dark then. It seemed the years spent in this Emperor's court took their toll even on the long-lived Lionmen. The grey-white streaking his mane now was not unattractive, however, and Elena remembered the many kindnesses to her that had probably added to the streaks as she took his metallic hand in hers.

  Ki "felt" the pressure of her touch, the softness of her skin, through his sensory receptors, but none of her warmth. That was not one of the hand's capabilities.

  "Ki, the child is a girl. Firstborn, and a girl. Her life is in danger from her first breath." Elena took the square of silk and lifted it into his line of vision. "Her blood and mine are tied to your sword, Ki. Protect her. Love her. Stay with her as long as you can. Teach her the things she needs to know. Ki Lawwnum, I put her in your care." Elena tucked the silk into Ki's hand.

  Ki bowed to his Empress, acknowledging her wishes, awed by the responsibility and the trust placed in him, and inserted the square of silk carefully into his sash. He felt unworthy in spite of his long association with the Empress. He gently withdrew his hand from her grasp, promised again with his eyes to do his best to obey her command, and backed respectfully out of the room to go to the royal nursery to stand guard over his newest charge until utter fatigue forced him to seek rest.

  The door slid aside into its pocket and Aubin stepped back involuntarily, startled, as a rumbling war cry reverberated down the palace corridor. Looming over him, glowing menacingly in the bright yellow light from the hallway was a wild Nidean dressed in the deep desert robes of his people, untamed golden-brown mane free to the winds and stippled with braided-in beads. The warrior's face, with the ochre and scarlet tattoos that denoted his Pride, was a hardened mask of determination. The outstretched, gently curved hoj, the longer of the two blades Nideans traditionally wore, swept past Aubin's face. He shied as he felt the cold breath of air that followed it, too late, though, to have avoided the stroke had it been intended to be deadly.

  Then, from behind the Nidean, Aubin caught a flash of blue-white skin, and he sank heavily against the wall of the wide palace hallway, shaking with warm relief.

  "That's a damned puppet!" he exclaimed as his heart rate slowly began to recede to normal. "Ki Lawwnum, how could you do that to me?"

  Lawwnum answered with his rumbling Nidean laugh, and dropped the massive puppet's head and built-in harness from its place on his wide, well-muscled shoulder.

  "I was a little homesick, and the 'General' here was helping me to practice my Pridecaft. Surely you remember 'General' Haarwaa?"

  Aubin forced himself away from the wall and tugged at the royal blue skinsuit he was sporting on his stocky frame. "I'm afraid I don't," he said, with just a little acidity.

  Ki grabbed the puppet's hair and raised the face so that it peered down into Aubin's. "Look again, my friend. He's been hanging on my living room wall ever since I took over these quarters."

  Aubin studied the mask. Now that it was not animated, and therefore decidedly less vicious, he recalled. He nodded to Ki, then, drawn by this masterwork of the carver's craft, reached out to touch the heavily defined features with a tentative finger. He leaned in closer, and the distinctive odor of the wallumnar wood from which such puppets were traditionally carved reached him. It was an odor he loved, rich and clean, and it brought a smile to his world-weary face.

  Ki gently pulled the puppet back. Aubin followed and Ki closed the door.

  "You remember who Haarwaa was, don't you?" he asked Aubin.

  Slightly embarrassed, the Lunar Envoy answered, "Sorry. I'm not up on such things."

  Ki seated himself on one of the padded wooden benches that served as furniture in his spartan quarters and began to adjust the buckles that held the puppet's feet to his knees. "It was Haarwaa who united the Prides to keep the Imperium from overrunning Nide." Then he stood and raised the puppet's head so that it fitted with its harness over his left shoulder. He placed his hands into those of the puppet, and suddenly "General" Haarwaa lived again, a vicious, antique Nidean come to life out of dusty history.

  "Please, sir," the "General" rumbled in full Nidean intonation. "Take a seat. There's a story to be told."

  The hair on Aubin's arms raised, and he felt his skin prickle. The Nidean rumble, raspy and rash, always did that to him. He collapsed into the offered chair, afraid to speak, wanting very much to see the living history of Nide's oral tradition, something very few outsiders were ever permitted.

  The "General" began to move, stalking an invisible quarry, eyes shifting, head turning, shoulders lifting, hands gesturing, all with the fluid grace of water over stone, and Ki no longer existed except as a white nimbus, a shadow, a ghost to match Haarwaa's movements.

  Aubin forced himself to look away from the puppet and to his friend of some twenty years. Ki's leonine face with its broad, flat nose was only partially visible behind the cloud of Haarwaa's hair, but its fierce Lawwnum Pride tattoo of rose-colored swirls on the cheek and short, black downward strokes at the corners of the mouth were still impressive. Ki's mane, worn in the full style similar to that of the Lionmen of the Kabuki theatre of old Japan, floated like a blue-white halo behind the puppet s head. Then the "General" began the tale, and Ki once more faded from existence.

  "When the Eighth Ozenscebo held the throne," rumbled Haarwaa, "he began the era of exploration. Many worlds were brought under his sway, and one was not. That one, vateem, friend, was Nide.

  "When the Emperor's ships first filled our skies, we watched. When the soldiers landed, we killed them."

  Aubin marvelled at the tidal fullness of the motions, the wholeness, the reality of what he was seeing. This was a wild Nidean, untamed by contact with the "civilized" worlds. Of course he knew Ki was still there, but he had diminished into insignificance. Aubin was amazed to realize that, at that moment, only the puppet was real.

  "When more soldiers landed," the "General" continued, drawing his hoj, "we killed more!" This was accented with a broad arc of the sword.

  "But we were a backward people," the "General" said sadly, "at least to those with technology. And the technology was defeating us. It killed us faster than we could kill in return."

  Aubin's throat was suddenly constricted. How painful it must have been to those warlike creatures to lose! And how in blazes had that emotion been communicated? What a huge effort it must be to move the monstrous puppet with such grace and ease!

  "But I knew we were fierce! I knew we were many! As Didentaar, Aashtraar, Lawwnum, Streestawwn, Gelshanaam, we could not win. But, as Nideans, we could not lose!"

  Aubin's head bobbed as he nodded assent.

  "We joined our people into one and we began to win, destroying the technology that had destroyed us."

  There was a long dramatic pause and Aubin waited breathlessly for the "General" to continue.

  "This Ozenscebo was not a fool. He saw us as fighters and recognized us as the best in the known worlds. He came to me, the Emperor Himself, and made this offer. We on Nide should have autonomy in perpetuity if we would swear
fealty. But if we did not swear, our world would be destroyed." Haarwaa's head dropped in weariness. "It was a hard decision, and many preferred to fight on. But at last we swore."

  Aubin wanted to cheer! They'd made the right choice.

  The "General" turned his head quickly in Aubin's direction and caught some hint of the Envoy's emotion. His puppeteer was extremely attuned to the human audience, refining the motions to ones the human could comprehend, smelling his reactions, listening for the little clues such as indrawn breaths and subvocal sighs.

  "But that is not the end of the tale, cub!" he hissed, menace spitting from voice and pointed finger.

  Aubin quickly subsided, a slight shiver of fear stealing down his spine.

  "This Emperor knew he needed fighters such as we, and he was . . . intrigued by our appearance, like the demons of their legend. And so we became his special soldiers, his Guardsmen, and he called us Lionmen in their honor."

  The "General" faced Aubin squarely and, step by step, approached in a most menacing fashion. Aubin found himself retreating further and further into the cushions of the chair.

  "And we still do not allow your kind on our world, human!"

  "Then the "General" was gone, his head thrown to one side, Ki's hands slipping from those of his ancestor's. Aubin slumped in his chair, emotionally drained, surprised at his responses. And perhaps a bit embarrassed.

  "Ki, that was marvelous!" Aubin said enthusiastically as he stood to pat his friend on his muscle-hard back. "I've never seen anything like it!"

  "Nor will you, I hope. That was appallingly bad."

  "Bad! It was wonderful. I felt it all! All the emotion! No wonder your people know their history so well!"

  Ki shook his head in denial. "No, Aubin. It was not good. At my finest I was barely acceptable. I was never even in line to be puppetmaster. And now I'm grossly out of practice."

  Aubin pouted. He did not like having his praise shunted aside. "I thought it was good."

  "You are uneducated," Ki responded with typical candor.

  Aubin's eyes opened wide in surprise. "Nobody's told me that for a long time. I thought I was rather worldly."

  "Ah," Ki replied. "But which world?"

  Aubin laughed, a rich and full sound that told anyone listening that here was one who enjoyed life. Then he shook his head. "Capitol Center and Luna, but obviously not Nide." He cocked his head and studied his friend.

  Ki was dressed only in a fundoshi, a white loincloth that covered the minimum, and Aubin noticed that the pattern of the hair on the Nidean's body that covered a broad area across the chest and then ran in a narrow line down the hard, flat stomach to disappear into the cloth had indeed lost its youthful reddish-gold. But in spite of the labor of working the heavy and demanding puppet, there was not the smallest sign of exertion, not even a heavy breath. The finely honed, slim, lithe body worked to perfection, every motion as supple as Ki's blue-white skin. His legs were as powerful as ever, and longer than the norm.

  Ki's nose twitched, and Aubin noticed, raising an eyebrow in question.

  "Nothing. A scent from the garden."

  Aubin nodded, and added to his inventory the fact that Ki's extraordinarily fine olfactory sense was as sharp as ever. But as Aubin's green-flecked brown eyes stayed locked with Ki's golden, slatted ones, he could not quite keep the humor out of them.

  "I may be uneducated in the ways of Nide, but may I point out that you are hardly appropriately attired for an Imperial banquet at Capitol Center?"

  Ki's lip curled back partially exposing semi-pointed teeth, and a snarl rumbled heavily in his throat. "I have no use for Imperial banquets where hangers-on and leechs guzzle the Emperor's roed until they're drowning in their own senses!"

  Aubin nodded. He had no use for the drug either. He had seen many a fine mind lost to the siren song of the enhanced sensory input and long, long life that roedentritic quopapavaradine provided. Though it was supposedly non-habitforming, in fact many would suicide rather than do without their daily dose.

  "Nonetheless," Aubin said, "you are the Commander of the Imperial Lionman Guard, and your presence is required."

  Ki sneered, making a wonderfully exaggerated wild face. "I've never needed a human to tell me my duty," he rumbled.

  "Perhaps not," Aubin returned as he flipped an item from an end table in Ki's direction, "but maybe you need a nanny to see you properly dressed."

  Ki grabbed the missile out of the air with his left hand unerringly, though his eyes never left Aubin's. There was a soft "chink" as the metallic hand closed over it, and any humor that had been in Ki's face fled with the sound.

  "If you've damaged it, human . . ." rumbled threateningly from deep in his inflated chest.

  Aubin winced. "I'm sorry, Ki," he said sincerely. "Check it."

  Ki opened his hand. On it rested a beautifully crafted ring, an unusual affair that wrapped completely around the hand and was constructed of tarsh, a flexible silvery metal that, in the presence of body heat, moved as its wearer did. Set in it were two opals, one larger than the other, but each of excellent color and quality. It was intact and Ki nodded his acceptance of that fact.

  Aubin let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He really had no idea how Ki would have reacted to the destruction of the last gift he'd received from his now-dead wife. Relief that he wouldn't need to find out flooded over him.

  "Aubin, will you always try my patience?" Ki asked with great exasperation.

  With a silly smile that reflected his relief, Aubin answered, "Almost certainly."

  Ki's nose was twitching. Something was wrong. All things have their peculiar scent, and a Lionman, born to use his senses to hunt, trained to use his senses for his own protection and the protection of those in his care, was keenly aware of the world about him. He changed his path from the one that led into the palace and followed instead the one that led off to the practice field. He was supposed to meet the Empress, but she would understand if he were delayed. She valued the men who served her.

  He sniffed. It was there, among the dust and the sweat and the body-generated heat. One of the new recruits was bathed in arrogance. The odor of it was so strong it almost wiped away the traces of Nide that still clung to the new arrivals.

  Ki walked to the edge of the field, then stopped in the dappled shade of the only tree and watched. The new recruits were all dressed alike in the jumpsuits that would constitute their uniforms until they won the right to wear the red Imperial tri-lozenge. Except for wide variations in coloring, they looked much the same. They were young, lithe, tall, and eager. The eagerness made Ki smile. He remembered his own well, and sometimes felt it still.

  But the arrogance he was catching was a different and dangerous thing. The cub who gave in to that would think himself invincible, and Ki wore the case-hardened proof that no one was invulnerable. He rubbed his metallic left hand with his right, remembering, then dropped it to his side and pulled the digits across the palm in an unconscious motion, not really feeling the bumps and ridges of the hand as his "fingers" crossed them.

  The arrogant one was not hard to find. He was showing off. While the rest of his group worked hard just to maintain the pace Lieutenant Mikal Lawwnum set for them during dueling practice, the arrogant one ran ahead, adding fillups and flourishes to passes that were intended to be clean and simple.

  Ki rested his back against the rough bark of the tree and watched for a time, satisfying himself as to the quality of Mikal's leadership. His instructions were excellent. He judged the recruits well and gave them enough to challenge, but not so much as to discourage. The recruits were a good group, too, working hard, trying for perfection, taking instruction well. Except for one.

  The Commander rumbled deep in his throat while musing, then nodded to himself. It was time for them to meet the boss. He clasped his hands behind his back and strode out onto the field.

  Mikal had been aware of the Commander's attendance for some time. He had not been born into t
he same Pride and trained by the same men as Colonel Ki himself for nothing. But the Commander's presence brought with it something akin to panic. Mikal never understood why the Colonel's presence did that to him, bringing him to the edge of losing control. It was certainly nothing about Ki personally. But every time Colonel Ki looked in on Mikal, the same thought recurred. "Oh Mmumna! Don't let me mess up now!" He ran his eyes over the group, trying to assess them the way the Commander would. They were good, and they would become excellent. Except for one, there would be no difficulties. And he would be no difficulty either if his course could be changed from one of cocky display to one of quiet excellence.

  Mikal turned as he heard the Commanders step behind him. "Awwmuum!" he called and was gratified that all activity came to an instant halt.

  Though the men stood still at attention, there was a kind of ripple that passed through them as they recognized the Lionman who had joined the group.

  Mikal asked politely as the Commander approached, "Would you like to see how this group is coming along, sir?"

  Ki nodded once.

  "Bakim!" Mikal barked, and the organized disorder of a swordsmanship practice resumed.

  Ki walked among the men, slipping between the mock battles as if he were made of air. He knew he was being carefully and surreptitiously watched. He also knew his visual impression was a powerful one, his white face and hair floating over the black-fleck on black of his rank's mantle, demonic even, enhanced by the facial tattoos of his Pride, pale red slashes up across the eyes trailing down into an open swirl on each cheek. It was an unsettling appearance that Ki worked hard to maintain. He sneered a bit, squinting his eyes slightly, to enhance the fierceness of his appearance. A first impression of a ferocious Commander would be a deep and lasting one, one Ki chose to cultivate.