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 tailtip 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.