by Larry Niven
He showed her how to open the cages only after she threatened him, and watched as she grasped waking vatach by their legs, quickly releasing them to the darkness outside. No need to release the (something) yet, she said; Locklear called the winged beasts “batowls.” “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he grumbled. “I’d stop you if I could do it without a fight.”
“You would wait forever,” she retorted. “I know the animals of my world better than you do, and soon we may need a lot of them for food.”
“Not so many; there’s just the two of us.”
The cat-eyes regarded him shrewdly. “Not for long,” she said, and dropped her bombshell. “I recognized a friend of mine in one of those cages.”
Locklear felt an icy needle down his spine. “A male?”
“Certainly not. Five of us were executed for the same offense, and at least one of them is here with us. Perhaps those Outsiders of yours collected us all as we sank in that stinking water.”
“Not my Outsiders,” he objected. “Listen, for all we know they’re monitoring us, so be careful how you fiddle with their setup here.”
She marched him to the kzin cages and purred her pleasure on recognizing two females, both prret like herself, both imposingly large for Locklear’s taste. She placed a furry hand on one cage, enjoying the moment. “I could release you now, my sister in struggle,” she said softly. “But I think I shall wait. Yes, I think it is best,” she said to Locklear, turning away. “These two have been here a long time, and they will keep until—”
“Until you have everything under your control?”
“True,” she said. “But you need not fear, Rockear. You are an ally, and you know too many things we must know. And besides,” she added, rubbing against him sensuously, “you are (something).”
There was that same word again, t’rralap or some such, and now he was sure, with sinking heart, that it meant “cute.” He didn’t feel cute; he was beginning to feel like a Pomeranian on a short leash.
More by touch than anything else, they gathered bundles of grass for a bower at the cave entrance, and Miss Kitty showed no reluctance in falling asleep next to him, curled becomingly into a buzzing ball of fur. But when he moved away, she moved too, until they were touching again. He knew beyond doubt that if he moved too far in the direction of his lance and axe, she would be fully awake and suspicious as hell.
And she’d call my bluff, and I don’t want to kill her, he thought, settling his head against her furry shoulder. Even if I could, which is doubtful, I’m no longer master of all I survey. In fact, now I have a mistress of sorts, and I’m not too sure what kind of mistress she has in mind. They used to have a word for what I’m thinking. Maybe Miss Kitty doesn’t care who or what she diddles; hell, she was a palace courtesan, doing it with males she hated. She thinks I’m t’rralap. Yeah, that’s me, Locklear, Miss Kitty’s trollop; and what the hell can I do about it? I wish there were some way I could get her back in that stasis cage . . . And then he fell asleep.
To Locklear’s intense relief, Miss Kitty seemed uninterested in the remaining cages on the following morning. They foraged for breakfast and he hid his astonishment as she taught him a dozen tricks in an hour. The root bulb of one spiny shrub tasted like an apple; the seed pods of some weeds were delicious; and she produced a tiny blaze by rapidly pounding an innocent-looking nutmeat between two stones. It occurred to him that nuts contained great amounts of energy. A pile of these firenuts, he reflected, might be turned into a weapon . . .
Feeding hunks of dry brush to the fire, she announced that those root bulbs baked nicely in coals. “If we can find clay, I can fire a few pottery dishes and cups, Rockear. It was part of my training, and I intend to have everything in domestic order before we wake those two.”
“And what if a kzin ship returns and spots that smoke?”
That was a risk they must take, she said. Some woods burned more cleanly than others. He argued that they should at least build their fires far from the cave, and while they were at it, the cave entrance might be better disguised. She agreed, impressed with his strategy, and then went down on allfours to inspect the dirt near a dry-wash. As he admired her lithe movements, she shook her head in an almost human gesture. “No good for clay.”
“It’s not important.”
“It is vitally important!” Now she wheeled upright, impressive and fearsome. “Rockear, if any kzintosh return here, we must be ready. For that, we must have the help of others—the two prret. And believe me, they will be helpful only if they see us as their (something).”
She explained that the word meant, roughly, “paired household leaders.” The basic requirements of a household, to a kzin female, included sleeping bowers—easily come by—and enough pottery for that household. A male kzin needed one more thing, she said, her eyes slitting: a wtsai.
“You mean one of those knives they all wear?”
“Yes. And you must have one in your belt.” From the waggle of her ears, he decided she was amused by her next statement: “It is a—badge, of sorts. The edge is usually sharp but I cannot allow that, and the tip must be dull. I will show you why later.”
“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 kzinrret 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 kzinrret 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 kzinrret. “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 excit
ement 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 kzinrret 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 kzinrret. 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 whims 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.”