Boots became more shy as her pregnancy advanced. Locklear’s new social problem became the casual nuances from Puss that, by now, he knew were sexual. She rarely spoke unless spoken to, but one day while resting in the sun with the big kzinrret he noticed her tailtip flicking near his leg. He had noticed previously that a moving rope or vine seemed to mesmerize a kzin; they probably thought it fascinated him as well.
“Puss, I—uh—sleep only with Kit. Sorry, but that’s the way of it.”
“Pfaugh. I am more skilled at ch’rowl than she, and I could make you a pillow of her fur if I liked.” Her gaze was calm, challenging; to a male kzin, probably very sexy.
“We must all work together, Puss. As head of the household, I forbid you to make trouble.”
“My Lord,” she said with a small nod, but her ear-flick was amused. “In that case, am I permitted to help in the birthing?”
“Of course,” he said, touched. “Where is Boots, anyway?”
“Preparing her birthing chamber. It cannot be long now,” Puss added, setting off down the ravine.
Locklear found Kit dragging a mat of dirt from the tunnel and asked her about the problems of birthing. The hardest part, she said, was the bower—and when males were near, the hiding. He asked why Puss would be needed at the birthing.
“Ah,” said Kit. “It is symbolic, Rockear. You have agreed to let her play the mate role. It is not unheard-of, and the newborn male will be safe.”
“You mean, symbolic like our pairing?”
“Not quite that symbolic,” she replied with sarcasm as they distributed stone and earth outside. “Prret are flexible.”
Then he asked her what ch’rowl meant.
Kit vented a tiny miaow of pleasure, then realized suddenly that he did not know what he had said. Furiously: “She used that word to you? I will break her tail!”
“I forbid it,” he said. “She was angry because I told her I slept only with you.” Pleased with this, Kit subsided as they moved into the tunnel again. Some kzin words, he learned, were triggers. At least one seemed to be blatantly lascivious. He was deflected from this line of thought only when Kit, digging upward now, broke through to the surface.
They replanted shrubs at the exit before dark, and lounged before the hearthfire afterward. At last Locklear yawned; checked his wristcomp. “They are very late,” he said.
“Kittens are born at night,” she replied, unworried.
“But—I assumed she’d tell us when it was time.”
“She has not said eight-cubed of words to you. Why should she confide that to a male?”
He shrugged at the fire. Perhaps they would always treat him like a kzintosh. He wondered for the hundredth time whether, when push came to shove, they would fight with him or against him.
* * *
In his mapping sorties, Locklear had skirted near enough to the force walls to see that Kzersatz was adjacent to four other compounds. One, of course, was the tantalizing Newduvai. Another was hidden in swirling mists; he dubbed it Limbo. The others held no charm for him; he named them Who Needs It, and No Thanks. He wondered what collections of life forms roamed those mysterious lands, or slept there in stasis. The planet might have scores of such zoo compounds.
Meanwhile, he unwound a hundred meters of wire from a polarizer, and stole switches from others. One of his jury-rigs, outside the cave, was a catapult using a polarizer on a sturdy frame. He could stand fifty meters away and, with his remote switch, lob a heavy stone several hundred meters. Perhaps a series of the gravity polarizers would make a kind of mass driver—a true space drive! There was yet hope, he thought, of someday visiting Newduvai.
And then he transported some materials to the manor where he installed a stasis device to keep meat fresh indefinitely; and late that same day, Puss returned. Even Kit, ignoring their rivalry, welcomed the big kzinrret.
“They are all well,” Puss reported smugly, paternally. To Locklear’s delighted question she replied in severe tones, “You cannot see them until their eyes open, Rockear.”
“It is tradition,” Kit injected. “The mother will suckle them until then, and will hunt as she must.”
“I am the hunter,” Puss said. “When we build our own manor, will your household help?”
Kit looked quickly toward Locklear, who realized the implications. By God, they’re really pairing off for another household, he thought. After a moment he said, “Yes, but you must locate it nearby.” He saw Kit relax and decided he’d made the right decision. To celebrate the new developments, Puss shooed Locklear and Kit outside to catch the late sun while she made them an early supper. They sat on their rough-hewn bench above the ravine to eat, Puss claiming she could return to the birthing bower in full darkness, and Locklear allowed himself to bask in a sense of well-being. It was not until Puss had headed back down the ravine with food for Boots, that Locklear realized she had stolen several small items from his storage shelves.
He could accept the loss of tools and a knife; Puss had, after all, helped him make them. What caused his cold sweat was the fact that the tiny zzrou transmitter was missing. The zzrou prongs in his shoulder began to itch as he thought about it. Puss could not possibly know the importance of the transmitter to him; maybe she thought it was some magical tool—and maybe she would destroy it while studying it. “Kit,” he said, trying to keep the tremor from his voice, “I’ve got a problem and I need your help.”
She seemed incensed, but not very surprised, to learn the function of the device that clung to his back. One thing was certain, he insisted: the birthing bower could not be more than a klick away. Because if Puss took the transmitter farther than that, he would die in agony. Could Kit lead him to the bower in darkness?
“I might find it, Rockear, but your presence there would provoke violence,” she said. “I must go alone.” She caressed his flank gently, then set off slowly down the ravine on all-fours, her nose close to the turf until she disappeared in darkness.
Locklear stood for a time at the manor entrance, wondering what this night would bring, and then saw a long scrawl of light as it slowed to a stop and winked out, many miles above the plains of Kzersatz. Now he knew what the morning would bring, and knew that he had not one deadly problem, but two. He began to check his pathetic little armory by the glow of his memocomp, because that was better than giving way entirely to despair.
* * *
When he awoke, it was to the warmth of Kit’s fur nestled against his backside. There was a time when she called this obscene, he thought with a smile—and then he remembered everything, and lit the display of his memocomp. Two hours until dawn. How long until death, he wondered, and woke her.
She did not have the zzrou transmitter. “Puss heard my calls,” she said, “and warned me away. She will return this morning to barter tools for things she wants.”
“I’ll tell you who else will return,” he began. “No, don’t rebuild the fire, Kit. I saw what looked like a ship stationing itself many miles away overhead, while you were gone. Smoke will only give us away. It might possibly be a Manship, but—expect the worst. You haven’t told me how you plan to fight.”
His hopes fell as she stammered out her ideas, and he countered each one, reflecting that she was no planner. They would hide and ambush the searchers—but he reminded her of their projectile and beam weapons. Very well, they would claim absolute homestead rights accepted by all ancient Kzinti clans—but modern Kzinti, he insisted, had probably forgotten those ancient immunities.
“You may as well invite them in for breakfast,” he grumbled. “Back on earth, women’s weapons included poison. I thought you had some kzinrret weapons.”
“Poisons would take time, Rockear. It takes little time, and not much talent, to set warriors fighting to the death over a female. Surely they would still respond with foolish bravado?”
“I don’t know; they’ve never seen a smart kzinrret. And ship’s officers are very disciplined. I don’t think they’d get into a free-for-all. Maybe lure them in here and hit ’em while they sleep . . .”
“As you did to me?”
“Uh no, I—yes!” He was suddenly galvanized by the idea, tantalized by the treasures he had left in the cave. “Kit, the machine I set up to preserve food is exactly the same as the one I placed under you, to make you sleep when I hit a foot switch.” He saw her flash of anger at his earlier duplicity. “An ancient sage once said anything that’s advanced enough beyond your understanding is indistinguishable from magic, Kit. But magic can turn on you. Could you get a warrior to sit or lie down by himself?”