“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 dry wash, 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 carven 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 goalposts, 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 westering 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 waked, 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 loosed 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.
“May I rise?”
“Depends. Do you see that I can defeat you instantly, anytime I like?” She moved her hands, snarling at the loop, starting to bite it asunder. “Stop that! Answer my question,” he said again, stern and unyielding, the finger pointing, his toe ready on the switch.
“It seems that you can,” she said grudgingly.
“I could have killed you as you slept. Or brought one of the other prret out of stasis and made her my consort. Any number of things, Kit.” Her nod was slow, and almost human. “Do you swear to obey me hereafter, and not to attack me again?”
She hated it, but she said it: “Yes. I—misjudged you, Rockear. If all men can do what you did, no wonder you win wars.”
He saw that this little charade might get him in a mess later. “It is a special trick of mine; probably won’t work for male kzin. In any case, I have your word. If you forget it, I will make you sorry. We need each other, Kit; just like I need a sharp edge on my knife.” He lowered his arm then, offering her his hand. “Here, come outside and help me. It’s nearly dark again.”
She was astonished to find, from the sun’s position, that she had “slept” almost a full day. But there was no doubting he had spent many hours on that airboat of his. She helped him for a few moments, then remembered that her kiln would now be cool, the bowls and water jug waiting in its primitive chimney. “May I retrieve my pottery, Rockear?”
He smiled at her obedient tone. “If I say no?”