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area off the kudlotlin-hide rugs. They were priceless imports from the home
world;
the stuffed matched pair of Chunquen on a granite pedestal were souvenirs
acquired during the pacification of that world. He looked at them, soothing
his eyes with the memory-taste of a successful hunt, at other mementos. Wild
smells drifted in over thin walls that were crystal-enclosed sandwiches of
circuitry;
in the distance something squalled hungrily. The palace-preserve-fortress of a
planetary governor, governor of the richest world to be conquered by kzin in
living memory. Richest in wealth, richest in honor .
. . if the next attack on the human homeworld was something more than a fifth
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disaster.
"Secretariat," he rasped. The wall lit.
A human looked from a desk, stood and came to attention. "Henrietta," the kzin
began, "hold my calls for the rest of the day. I've just gotten the final
download on the Fourth Fleet fiasco, and I'm a little upset. Run it against my
projections, will you?" Most of the worst-case scenarios he had run were quite
close to the actual results; that did not make it
much easier to bear.
"Yes, Chuut-Riit," he said-No, God devour it, she, I've got to start
remembering human females are sentient. At least he could tell them apart
without smelling them, now. Even distinguish between individuals of the same
subspecies. There are so many types of them!
"I don't think you'll find major discrepancies."
"That bad?" the human said.
The expression was a closed curve of the lips; the locals had learned that
baring their teeth at a kzin was not a good idea.
Smile, Chuut-Riit reminded himself. Betokening amusement, or friendliness, or
submission. Which is it feeling? Born after the Conquest Fleet arrived here.
Reared from a cub in the governor's palace, superbly efficient . . . but what
does it think inside that ugly little head?
"Worse, the --"-he lapsed into the Hero's Tongue, since no human language was
sufficient for what he felt about the Fourth Fleet's hapless
Kfraksha-Admiral-"couldn't apply the strategy properly in circumstances beyond
the calculated range of probable response."
It was impossible to set out too detailed a plan of campaign, when
communication took over four years. His fur began to bristle again, and he
controlled his reaction with a monumental effort of will. I need to fight
something, he thought.
"Screen out all calls for the next sixteen hours, unless they're Code VI or
above." A thought prompted at him. "Oh, It's your offspring's naming-day next
week, isn't it?"
"Yes, Chuut-Riit." Henrietta had once told him that among pre-Conquest humans
it had been a mark of deference to refer to a superior
by title, and of familiarity to use names. His tail twitched. Extraordinary.
Of course, humans all had names, without having to earn them. In a sense,
they're assigned names as we are rank titles, he thought.
"Well, I'll drop by at the celebration for an hour or so and bring one of my
cubs." That would be safe enough if closely supervised; most intelligent
species had long infancies.
"We are honored, Chuut-Riit!" The human bowed, and the kzin waved a hand to
break contact.
"Valuable," he muttered to himself, rising and pacing once more. Humans were
the most valuable subject-species the kzin had yet acquired. Or partially
acquired, he reminded himself. Most kzin nobles on Wunderland had large
numbers of human servants and technicians about their estates, but few had
gone as far as he in using their administrative talents.
"Fools," he said in the same undertone; his kzin peers knew his opinion of
them, but it was still inadvisable to get into the habit of saying it aloud.
"I am surrounded by fools." Humans fell into groups naturally, they thought
organization. The remote ancestors of Kzin had hunted in small packs; the
prehumans in much larger ones. Stupidity to deny the evidence of senses and
logic, he thought with contempt. These hairless monkeys have talents we lack.
Most refused to admit that, as though it somehow diminished the Hero to grant
a servant could do what the master could not. Idiocy.
Chuut-Riit yawned, a pink, red, and white expanse of ridged palate, tongue,
and fangs, his species's equivalent of a dismissive shrug. Is it beneath the
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Hero to admit that a sword
extends his claws, or a computer his mind? With human patience and
organizational talent at the service of the Heroes, there was nothing that
they could not accomplish! Even monkey inquisitiveness was a trait not without
merit, irritating though it could be.
He pulled his mind away from vistas of endless victory, a hunt ranging over
whole spiral arms; that was a familiar vision, one that had driven him to
intrigue and duel for this position. To use a tool effectively, you had to
know its balance and heft, its strengths and weaknesses.
Humans were more gregarious than kzin, more ready to identify with a
leader-figure; but to elicit such cooperation, you had to know the
symbol-systems that held power over them. I
must wear the mask they can see. Besides which, their young are . . . what is
their word? Cute. I will select the cub carefully, one just weaned, and stuff
it full of meat first. That will be safest.
Chuut-Riit intended to take his offspring, the best of them, with him to
Earth, after the conquest. Early exposure to humans would give them an
intuitive grasp of the animals that he could only simulate through careful
study. With a fully domesticated human species at their disposal, his sons'
sons' sons could even aspire to . . . no, unthinkable. And not necessary to
think of it; that was generations away.
Besides that, it would take a great deal of time to tame the humans properly.
Useful already, but far too wild, too undependable, too varied. A millennium
of culling might be necessary before they were fully shaped to the purpose.
* * *
" . . . didn't just bull in," Lieutenant Raines was
saying, as she followed the third aquavit with a beer chaser. Jonah sipped
more cautiously at his, thinking that the asymmetry of nearly pure alcohol and
lager was typically Wunderlander.
"Only it wasn't caution-the pussies just didn't want to mess the place up and
weren't expecting much resistance. Rightly so."
Jonah restrained himself from patting her hand as she scowled into her beer.
It was dim in their nook, and the gravity was
Wunderland-standard, .61 Earth. The initial refugees from the Alpha Centauri
system had been mostly planetsiders, and from the dominant
Danish-Dutch-German-Balt ethnic group. They had grown even more clannish in
the generation since, which showed in the tall ceramic steins along the walls,
plastic wainscoting that made a valiant attempt to imitate fumed oak, and a
human bartender in wooden shoes, lederhosen, and a beard clipped closer on one
side than the other.
The drinks slipped up out of the center of the table, of course.
"That was, teufel, three years ago, my time. We'd had some warning, of course,
once the UN started masering what the crew of the
Angel's Pencil found on the wreckage of that kzin ship. Plenty of singleships,
and any reaction drive's a weapon; couple of big boost-lasers. But"-a
shrug-"you know how it was back then."
"Before my time, Lieutenant," Jonah said, then cursed himself as he saw her
wince. Raines had been born nearly three quarters of a century ago, even if
her private duration included only two and a half decades of it.
"Ingrid, if you're going to be Jonah instead of
Captain Matthiesson. Time-I keep forgetting, my head remembers but my gut
forgets . .
. Well, we just weren't set up to think in terms of war, that was ancient
history. We held them off for nearly six months, though. Long enough to refit
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