Jonah shaped a soundless whistle. Not your typical kzin. If we have any idea of what a typical kzin is like. We’ve met their warriors, coming our way behind beams and bombs.
The lieutenant’s image was agreeing with him. “The pussies find him a little eccentric, as well; according to the subject, gossip had it that he fought a whole series of duels, starting almost the moment he arrived and held a staff conference. The new directives included a pretty massive increase in the support infrastructure to go with the fleet. Meanwhile, he ordered a complete changeover in tactics, especially to ensure that accurate reports of the fighting got back to Wunderland.”
The flatlander general cut off the scene with a wave. “So.” He folded his hands and leaned forward, the yellowish whites of his eyes glittering in lights that must be kept deliberately low. “We are in trouble, Captain. So far we’ve beaten off the pussies because we’re a lot closer to our main sources of supply, and because they’re . . . predictable. Adequate tacticians, but with little strategic sense, even less than we had at first, despite the Long Peace. The analysts say that indicates they’ve never come across much in the way of significant opposition before. If they had they’d have learned from it like they are—damn it!—from us.
“In fact, what little intelligence information we’ve got, a lot of it from prisoners taken with the Fourth Fleet, backs that up; the kzin just don’t have much experience of war.”
Jonah blinked. “Not what you’d assume,” he said carefully.
A choppy nod. “Yep. Surprises you, eh? Me, too.”
General Early puffed delicately on his cigar. “Oh, they’re aggressive enough. Almost insanely so, barely gregarious enough to maintain a civilization. Ritualized conflict to the death is a central institution of theirs. Some of the xenologists swear they must have gotten their technology from somebody else, that this culture they’ve got could barely rise above the hunter-gatherer stage on its own.
“In any event; they’re wedded to a style of attack that’s almost pitifully straightforward.” He looked thoughtfully at the wet chewed end of his cigar and selected another from the sealed humidor.
“And as far as we can tell, they have only one society, one social system, one religion, and one state. That fits in with some other clues we’ve gotten. The kzin species has been united for a long time—millennia. They have a longer continuous history than any human culture.” Another puff. “They’re curiously genetically uniform, too. We know more about their biology than their beliefs, more corpses than live prisoners. Less variation than you’d expect; large numbers of them seem to be siblings.”
Jonah stirred. “Well, this is all very interesting, General, but—”
“—what’s it got to do with you?” The flatlander leaned forward again, tapping paired thumbs together. “This Chuut-Riit is a first-class menace. You see, we’re losing those advantages I mentioned. The kzin have been shipping additional force into the Wunderland system in relays, not so much weapons as knocked-down industrial plants and personnel; furthermore, they’ve got the locals well organized. It’s a fully industrialized economy, with an Earth-type planet and an asteroid belt richer than Sol’s; the population’s much lower—hundreds of millions instead of nearly twenty billion—but that doesn’t matter much.”
Jonah nodded in his turn. With ample energy and raw materials, the geometric-increase potential of automated machinery could build a war-making capacity in a single generation, given the knowledge and skills the kzin inner sphere could supply. Faster than that, if a few crucial administrators and technicians were imported too. Earth’s witless hordes were of little help to Sol’s military effort, a drain on resources, and not even useful as cannon fodder in a conflict largely fought in space.
“So now they’re in a position to outproduce us. We have to keep our advantages in operational efficiency.”
“You play chess with good chessplayers, you get good,” the Belter said.
“No. It’s academic whether the pussies are more or less intelligent than we. What’s intelligence, anyway? But we’ve proven experimentally that they’re culturally and genetically less flexible. Man, when this war started we were absolute pacifists, we hadn’t had so much as a riot in three centuries. We even censored history so that the majority didn’t know there had ever been wars! That was less than a century ago, less than a single lifetime, and look at what we’ve done since. The pussies are only just now starting to smarten up about us.”
“This Chuut-Riit sounds as if he’s, oh shit. Sir.”
A wide white grin. “Exactly. An exceptionally able rat-cat, and they’re less prone to either genius or stupidity than we are. In a position to knock sense into their heads. He has to go.”
The Earther stood and began striding back and forth behind the desk, gesturing with the cigar. Something more than the stink made Jonah’s stomach clench.
“Covert operations is another thing we’ve had to reinvent, just lately. We need somebody who’s good with spacecraft . . . a Belter, because the ones who settled the Serpent Swarm belt of Wunderland have stayed closer to the ancestral stock than the Wunderlanders downside. A good combat man, who’s proved himself capable of taking on kzin hand-to-hand. And someone who’s good with computer systems, because our informants tell us that is the skill most in demand by the kzin on Wunderland itself.”
The general halted and stabbed toward Jonah with the hand that held the stub of burning weeds. “Last but not least, someone with contacts in the Alpha Centauri system.”
Jonah felt a wave of relief. A little relief, because the general was still grinning at him.
“Sir, I’ve never left—”
An upraised hand halted him. “Lieutenant Raines?” A woman came in and saluted smartly, first the general and then Jonah; he recognized her from the holo report. “I’d like you to meet Captain Matthieson.”
* * *
“Hrrrr,” the cub crooned, plastering itself to the ground.
Chuut-Riit, Scion of the Patriarch, kzinti overlord of the Wunderland system, Grand Admiral of the Conquest Fleet; pulled on the string.
The clump of feathers dragged through the long grass, and the young kzin crept after it on all fours, belly flat to the ground. The grass was Terran, as alien to Wunderland as the felinoids, and bright green; the brown-spotted orange of the cub’s fur showed clearly as be snaked through the meter-high stems. Eyes flared wide, pupils swallowing amber-yellow iris, and the young kzin screamed and leaped.
“Huufff!” it exclaimed, as Chuut-Riit’s hand made the lure blur out from underneath the pounce.
“Sire!” it mewled complainingly, sprawled on its belly. The fur went flat as the adult kzinti picked it up by the scruff of the neck; reflex made the cub’s limbs splay out stiffly.
“You made a noise, youngling,” Chuut-Riit said, leaning forward to lick his son’s ears in affectionate admonishment “You’ll never catch your prey that way.” His nostrils flared, taking in the pleasant scent of healthy youngster.
“Sorry, Sire,” the cub said, abashed. His head pivoted; a dozen of his brothers were rioting up from the copse of trees in the valley below, where the guards and aircars were parked. They showed as ripples in the long grass of the hillside, with bursts of orange movement as cubs soared up in leaps after the white glitter of butterflies, or just for the sake of movement. They could leap ten meters or more, in this gravity; Wunderland was only about half Kzin-normal, less than two-thirds of Earth’s pull.
“Gertrude-nurse!” Chuut-Riit called.
A Wunderlander woman came puffing up, dressed in a white uniform with body-apron and gloves of tough synthetic. Chuut-Riit extended the cub at the end of one tree-thick arm.
“Yes, Chuut-Riit,” the nurse said; a kzin with a full Name was never addressed by title, of course. “Come along, now, young master,” the nurse said, in a passable imitation of the Hero’s Tongue. House servants were allowed to speak it, as a special favor. “Dinner-time.”
The God alone knows what sort of accent the young will learn, Chuut-Riit thought, amused.
“Eat?” The cub made a throaty rumble. “Want to eat, Gertrude-human.” The kzin dropped into Wunderlander. “Is it good? Is it warm and salty? Will there be cream?”
“Certainly not,” Gertrude said with mock severity. Her charge bounced up as his father released him, wrapping arms and legs and long pink prehensile tail around the human, pressing his muzzle to her chest and purring.
“Dinner! Dinner!” the other cubs chorused as they arrived on the hilltop; they made a hasty obeisance to Chuut-Riit and the other adults, then followed the nurse downslope, walking upright and making little bounds of excitement, their tails held rigid. “Dinner!”
“I caught a mouse, it tasted funny.”
“Gertrude-human, Funny-Spots ate a bug!”
“I did not, I spit it out. Liar, tie a knot in your tail!”
The two quarreling youngsters flew together and rolled down ahead of the others in a ball, play-fighting. Chuut-Riit rippled his whiskers, and the fur on his blunt-muzzled face moved in the kzinti equivalent of a chuckle as he rejoined the group at the kill. Traat-Admiral was there, his closest supporter; Conservor-of-the-Patriarchal-Past, holy and ancient; and Staff-Officer, most promising of the inner-world youngsters who had come with him from homeworld. The kill was a fine young buffalo bull, and had even given them something of a fight before they brought it down beneath a tall native toshborg tree. The kzinti males were all in high good humor, panting slightly as they lolled, occasionally worrying a mouthful free from the carcass.