by Larry Niven
“Dammit, these things could take weeks!”
“Not if we find the clay, and if you can make a wtsai somehow. Trust me, Rockear; these are the basics. Other kzinrett will not obey us otherwise. They must see from the first that we are proper providers, proper leaders with the pottery of a settled tribe, not the wooden implements of wanderers. And they must take it for granted that you and I,” she added, “are (something).” With that, she rubbed lightly against him.
He caught himself moving aside and swallowed hard. “Miss Kitty, I don’t want to offend you, but, uh, humans and kzinti do not mate.”
“Why do they not?”
“Uhm. Well, they never have.”
Her eyes slitted, yet with a flicker of her ears: “But they could?”
“Some might. Not me.”
“Then they might be able to,” she said as if to herself. “I thought I felt something familiar when we were sleeping.” She studied his face carefully. “Why does your skin change color?”
“Because, goddammit, I’m upset!” He mastered his breathing after a moment and continued, speaking as if to a small child, “I don’t know about kzinti, but a man can not, uh, mate unless he is, uh,—”
“Unless he is intent on the idea?”
“Right!”
“Then we will simply have to pretend that we do mate, Rockear. Otherwise, those two kzinrett will spend most of their time trying to become your mate and will be useless for work.”
“Of all the,” he began, and then dropped his chin and began to laugh helplessly. Human tribal customs had been just as complicated, once, and she was probably the only functioning expert in known space on the customs of ancient kzinrett. “We’ll pretend, then, up to a point. Try and make that point, ah, not too pointed.”
“Like your wtsai,” she retorted. “I will try not to make your face change color.”
“Please,” he said fervently, and suggested that he might find the material for a wtsai inside the cave while she sought a deposit of clay. She bounded away on all-fours with the lope of a hunting leopard, his jacket a somehow poignant touch as it flapped against her lean belly.
When he looked back from the cave entrance, she was a tiny dot two kilometers distant, coursing along a shallow creekbed. “Maybe you won’t lie, and I’ve got no other ally,” he said to the swift saffron dot. “But you’re not above misdirection with your own kind. I’ll remember that.”
Locklear cursed as he failed to locate any kind of tool chest or lab implements in those inner corridors. But he blessed his grooming tool when the tip of its pincer handle fitted screwheads in the cage that had held Miss Kitty prisoner for so long. He puzzled for minutes before he learned to turn screwheads a quarter-turn, release pressure to let the screwheads emerge, then another quarter-turn, and so on, nine times each. He felt quickening excitement as the cage cover detached, felt it stronger when he disassembled the base and realized its metal sheeting was probably one of a myriad stainless steel alloys. The diamond coating on his nailfile proved the sheet was no indestructible substance. It was thin enough to flex, even to be dented by a whack against an adjoining cage. It might take awhile, but he would soon have his wtsai blade.
And two other devices now lay before him, ludicrously far advanced beyond an ornamental knife. The gravity polarizer’s main bulk was a doughnut of ceramic and metal. Its switch, and that of the stasis field, both were energized by the sliding cage floor he had disassembled. The switches worked just as well with fingertip pressure. They boasted separate energy sources which Locklear dared not assault; anything that worked for forty thousand years without harming the creatures near it would be more sophisticated than any fumble-fingered mechanic.
Using the glasslike cage as a test load, he learned which of the two switches flung the load into the air. The other, then, had to operate the stasis field—and both devices had simple internal levers for adjustments. When he learned how to stop the cage from spinning, and then how to make it hover only a hand’s breadth above the device or to force it against the ceiling until it creaked, he was ecstatic. Then he energized the stasis switch with a chill of gooseflesh. Any prying paws into those devices would not pry for long, unless someone knew about that inconspicuous switch. Locklear could see no interconnects between the stasis generator and the polarizer, but both were detachable. If he could get that polarizer outside—. Locklear strode out of the cave laughing. It would be the damnedest vehicle ever, but its technologies would be wholly appropriate. He hid the device in nearby grass; the less his ally knew about such things, the more freedom he would have to pursue them.
Miss Kitty returned in late afternoon with a sopping mass of clay wrapped in greenish yellow palm leaves. The clay was poor quality, she said, but it would have to serve—and why was he battering that piece of metal with his stone axe?
If she knew a better way to cut off a wtsai-sized strip of steel than bending it back and forth, he replied, he’d love to hear it. Bickering like an old married couple, they sat near the cave mouth until dark and pursued their separate stone-age tasks. Locklear, whose hand calluses were still forming, had to admit that she had been wonderfully trained for domestic chores; under those quick four-digited hands of hers, rolled coils of clay soon became shallow bowls with thin sides, so nearly perfect they might have been turned on a potter’s wheel. By now he was calling her “Kit,” and she seemed genuinely pleased when he praised her work. Ah, she said, but wait until the pieces were sun-dried to leather hardness; then she would make the bowls lovely with talon-etched decoration. He objected that decoration took time. She replied curtly that kzinrett did not live for utility alone.
He helped pull flat fibers from the stalks of palm leaves, which she began to weave into a mat. For bedding, he asked? Certainly not, she said imperiously: for the clothing which modesty required of kzinrett. He pursued it: would they really care all that much with only a human to see them? A human male, she reminded him; if she considered him worthy of mating, the others would see him as a male first, and a non-kzin second. He was half amused but more than a little uneasy as they bedded down, she curled slightly facing away, he crowded close at her insistence, “—For companionship,” as she put it.
Their last exchange that night implied a difference between the rigorously truthful male kzin and their females. “Kit, you can’t tell the others we’re mated unless we are.”
“I can ignore their questions and let them draw their own conclusions,” she said sleepily.
“Aren’t you blurring that fine line between half-truths and, uh, non-truths?”
“I do not intend to discuss it further,” she said, and soon was purring in sleep with the faint growl of a predator.
He needed two more days, and a repair of the handaxe, before he got that jagged slice of steel pounded and, with abrasive stones, ground into something resembling a blade. Meanwhile, Kit built her open-fired kiln of stones in a ravine some distance from the cave, ranging widely with that leopard lope of hers to gather firewood. Locklear was glad of her absence; it gave him time to finish a laminated shamboo handle for his blade, bound with thread, and to collect the thickest poles of shamboo he could find. The blade was sharp enough to trim the poles quickly, and tough enough to hold an edge.
He was tying crosspieces with plaited fiber to bind thick shamboo poles into a slender raft when, on the third day of those labors, he felt a presence behind him. Whirling, he brandished his blade. “Oh,” he said, and lowered the wtsai. “Sorry, Kit. I keep worrying about the return of those kzintosh.”
She was not amused. “Give it to me,” she said, thrusting her hand out.
“The hell I will. I need this thing.”
“I can see that it is too sharp.”
“I need it sharp.”
“I am sure you do. I need it dull.” Her gesture for the blade was more than impatient.
Half straightening into a crouch, he brought the blade up again, eyes narrowed. “Well, by God, I’ve had about all your whim
s I can take. You want it? Come and get it.”
She made a sound that was deeper than a purr, putting his hackles up, and went to all-fours, her furry tail-tip flicking as she began to pace around him. She was a lovely sight. She scared Locklear silly. “When I take it, I will hurt you,” she warned.
“If you take it,” he said, turning to face her, moving the wtsai in what he hoped was an unpredictable pattern. Dammit, I can’t back down now. A puncture wound might be fatal to her, so I’ve got to slash lightly. Or maybe he wouldn’t have to, when she saw he meant business.
But he did have to. She screamed and leaped toward his left, her own left hand sweeping out at his arm. He skipped aside and then felt her tail lash against his shins like a curled rope. He stumbled and whirled as she was twisting to repeat the charge, and by sheer chance his blade nicked her tail as she whisked it away from his vicinity.
She stood erect, holding her tail in her hands, eyes wide and accusing. “You—you insulted my tail,” she snarled.
“Damn tootin’,” he said between his teeth.
With arms folded, she turned her back on him, her tail curled protectively at her backside. “You have no respect,” she said, and because it seemed she was going to leave, he dropped the blade and stood up, and realized too late just how much peripheral vision a kzin boasted. She spun and was on him in an instant, her hands gripping his wrists, and hurled them both to the grass, bringing those terrible ripping foot talons up to his stomach. They lay that way for perhaps three seconds. “Drop the wtsai,” she growled, her mouth near his throat. Locklear had not been sure until now whether a very small female kzin had more muscular strength than he. The answer was not just awfully encouraging.
He could feel sharp needles piercing the skin at his stomach, kneading, releasing, piercing; a reminder that with one move she could disembowel him. The blade whispered into the grass. She bit him lightly at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and then faced him with their noses almost touching. “A love bite,” she said, and released his wrists, pushing away with her feet.
He rolled, hugging his stomach, fighting for breath, grateful that she had not used those fearsome talons with her push. She found the blade, stood over him, and now no sign of her anger remained. Right; she’s in complete control, he thought.
“Nicely made, Rockear. I shall return it to you when it is presentable,” she said.
“Get the hell away from me,” he husked softly.
She did, with a bound, moving toward a distant wisp of smoke that skirled faintly across the sky. If a kzin ship returned now, they would follow that wisp immediately.
Locklear trotted without hesitation to the cave, cursing, wiping trickles of blood from his stomach and neck, wiping a tear of rage from his cheek. There were other ways to prove to this damned tabby that he could be trusted with a knife. One, at least, if he didn’t get himself wasted in the process.
She returned quite late, with half of a cooked vatach and tuberberries as a peace offering, to find him weaving a huge triangular mat. It was a sail, he explained, for a boat. She had taken the little animal on impulse, she said, partly because it was a male, and ate her half on the spot for old times’ sake. He’d told her his distaste for raw meat and evidently she never forgot anything.
He sulked awhile, complaining at the lack of salt, brightening a bit when she produced the wtsai from his jacket which she still wore. “You’ve ruined it,” he said, seeing the colors along the dull blade as he held it. “Heated it up, didn’t you?”
“And ground its edge off on the stones of my hot kiln,” she agreed. “Would you like to try its point?” She placed a hand on her flank, where a man’s kidney would be, moving nearer.
“Not much of a point now,” he said. It was rounded like a formal dinner knife at its tip.
“Try it here,” she said, and guided his hand so that the blunt knifetip pointed against her flank. He hesitated. “Don’t you want to?”
He dug it in, knowing it wouldn’t hurt her much, and heard her soft miaow. Then she suggested the other side, and he did, feeling a suspicious unease. That, she said, was the way a wtsai was best used.
He frowned. “You mean, as a symbol of control?”
“More or less,” she replied, her ears flicking, and then asked how he expected to float a boat down a drywash, and he told her because he needed her help with it. “A skyboat? Some trick of man, or kzin?”
“Of man,” he shrugged. It was, so far as he knew, uniquely his trick—and it might not work at all. He could not be sure about his other trick either, until he tried it. Either one might get him killed.
When they curled up to sleep again, she turned her head and whispered, “Would you like to bite my neck?”
“I’d like to bite it off.”
“Just do not break the skin. I did not mean to make yours bleed, Rockear. Men are tender creatures.”
Feeling like an ass, he forced his nose into the fur at the curve of her shoulder and bit hard. Her miaow was familiar. And somehow he was sure that it was not exactly a cry of pain. She thrust her rump nearer, sighed, and went to sleep.
After an eternity of minutes, he shifted position, putting his knees in her back, flinging one of his hands to the edge of their grassy bower. She moved slightly. He felt in the grass for a familiar object; found it. Then he pulled his legs away and pressed with his fingers. She started to turn, then drew herself into a ball as he scrambled further aside, legs tingling.
He had not been certain the stasis field would operate properly when its flat field grid was positioned beneath sheaves of grass, but obviously it was working. Indeed, his lower legs were numb for several minutes, lying in the edge of the field as they were when he threw that switch. He stamped the pins and needles from his feet, barely able to see her inert form in the faint luminosity of the cave portal. Once, while fumbling for the wtsai, he stumbled near her and dropped to his knees.
He trembled for half a minute before rising. “Fall over her now and you could lie here for all eternity,” he said aloud. Then he fetched the heavy coil of fiber he’d woven, with those super-strength threads braided into it. He had no way of lighting the place enough to make sure of his work, so he lay down on the sail mat inside the cave. One thing was sure: she’d be right there the next morning.
He awoke disoriented at first, then darted to the cave mouth. She lay inert as a craven image. The Outsiders probably had good reason to rotate their specimens, so he couldn’t leave her there for the days—or weeks! that temptation suggested. He decided that a day wouldn’t hurt, and hurriedly set about finishing his airboat. The polarizer was lashed to the underside of his raft, with a slot through the shamboo so that he could reach down and adjust the switch and levers. The crosspieces, beneath, held the polarizer off the turf.
Finally, with a mixture of fear and excitement, he sat down in the middle of the raft-bottomed craft and snugged fiber straps across his lap. He reached down with his left hand, making sure the levers were pulled back, and flipped the switch. Nothing. Yet. When he had moved the second lever halfway, the raft began to rise very slowly. He vented a whoop—and suddenly the whole rig was tipping before he could snap the switch. The raft hit on one side and crashed flat like a barn door with a tooth-loosening impact.
Okay, the damn thing was tippy. He’d need a keel—a heavy rock on a short rope. Or a little rock on a long rope! He erected two short lengths of shamboo upright with a crosspiece like goal posts, over the seat of his raft, enlarging the hole under his thighs. Good; now he’d have a better view straight down, too. He used the cord he’d intended to bind Kit, tying it to a twenty-kilo stone, then feeding the cord through the hole and wrapping most of its fifteen-meter length around and around that thick crosspiece. Then he sighed, looked at the weltering sun, and tried again.
The raft was still a bit tippy, but by paying the cordage out slowly he found himself ten meters up. By shifting his weight, he could make the little platform slant in any direction, yet he
could move only in the direction the breeze took him. By adjusting the controls he rose until the heavy stone swung lazily, free of the ground, and then he was drifting with the breeze. He reduced power and hauled in on his keel weight until the raft settled, and then worked out the needed improvements. Higher skids off the ground, so he could work beneath the raft; a better method for winding that weight up and down; and a sturdy shamboo mast for his single sail—better still, a two-piece mast bound in a narrow A-frame to those goalposts. It didn’t need to be high; a short catboat sail for tacking was all he could handle anyhow. And come to think of it, a pair of shamboo poles pivoted off the sides with small weights at their free ends just might make automatic keels.
He worked on that until a half-hour before dark, then carried his keel cordage inside the cave. First he made a slip noose, then flipped it toward her hands, which were folded close to her chin. He finally got the noose looped properly, pulled it tight, then moved around her at a safe distance, tugging the cord so that it passed under her neck and, with sharp tugs, down to her back. Then another pass. Then up to her neck, then around her flexed legs. He managed a pair of half-hitches before he ran short of cordage, then fetched his shamboo lance. With the lance against her throat, he snapped off the stasis field with his toe.
She began her purring rumble immediately. He pressed lightly with the lance, and then she woke, and needed a moment to realize that she was bound. Her ears flattened. Her grin was nothing even faintly like enjoyment. “You drugged me, you little vatach.”
“No. Worse than that. Watch,” he said, and with his free hand he pointed at her face, staring hard. He toed the switch again and watched her curl into an inert ball. The half-hitches came loose with a tug, and with some difficulty he managed to pull the cordage away until only the loop around her hand remained. He toed the switch again; watched her come awake, and pointed dramatically at her as she faced him. “I loosened your bonds,” he said. “I can always tie you up again. Or put you back in stasis,” he added with a tight smile, hoping this paltry piece of flummery would be taken as magic.