“Ah, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, we set the ropes up beforehand, but made it look as if we were using them for tumbling practice,” the one the others called Spotty said. Some of them glared at him, and the adult raised his hand again.
“No, no, I am moderately pleased.” A pause. “You did not hope to take over my official position if you had disposed of me?”
“No, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the tall leader said. There had been a time when any kzin’s holdings were the prize of the victor in a duel, and the dueling rules were interpreted more leniently for a young subadult. Everyone had a sentimental streak for a successful youngster; every male kzin remembered the intolerable stress of being physically mature but remaining under dominance as a child.
Still, these days affairs were handled in a more civilized manner. Only the Patriarchy could award military and political office. And this mass assassination attempt was . . . unorthodox, to say the least. Outside the rules more because of its rarity than because of formal disapproval. . . .
A vigorous toss of the head. “Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit. We had an agreement to divide the private possessions. The lands and the, ah, females.” Passing their own mothers to half-siblings, of course. “Then we wouldn’t each have so much we’d get too many challenges, and we’d agreed to help each other against outsiders,” the leader of the plot finished virtuously.
“Fatuous young scoundrels,” Chuut-Riit said. His eyes narrowed dangerously. “You haven’t been communicating outside the household, have you?” he snarled.
“Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit!”
“Word of honor! May we die nameless if we should do such a thing!”
The adult nodded, satisfied that good family feeling had prevailed. “Well, as I said, I am somewhat pleased. If you have been keeping up with your lessons. Is there anything you wish?”
“Fresh meat, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,” the spotted one said. The adult could have told him by the scent, of course. A kzin never forgot another’s personal odor; that was one reason why names were less necessary among their species. “The reconstituted stuff from the dispensers is always . . . so . . . quiet.”
Chuut-Riit hid his amusement. Young Heroes-to-be were always kept on an inadequate diet, to increase their aggressiveness. A matter for careful gauging, since too much hunger would drive them into mindless cannibalistic frenzy.
“And couldn’t we have the human servants back? They were nice.” Vigorous gestures of assent. Another added: “They told good stories. I miss my Clothidal-human.”
“Silence!” Chuut-Riit roared. The youngsters flattened stomach and chin to the ground again. “Not until you can be trusted not to injure them. How many times do I have to tell you, it’s dishonorable to attack household servants! You are getting to be big enough to hurt them easily; until you learn self-control, you will have to make do with machines.”
This time all of them turned and glared at a mottled youngster in the rear of their group; there were half-healed scars over his head and shoulders. “It bared its teeth at me,” he said sulkily. “All I did was swipe at it. How was I supposed to know it would die?” A chorus of rumbles, and this time several of the covert kicks and clawstrikes landed.
“Enough,” Chuut-Riit said after a moment. Good, they have even learned how to discipline each other as a unit. “I will consider it, when all of you can pass a test on the interpretation of human expressions and body-language.” He drew himself up. “In the meantime, within the next two eight-days, there will be a formal hunt and meeting in the Patriarch’s Preserve; kzinti homeworld game, the best Earth animals, and even some feral-human outlaws, perhaps!”
He could smell their excitement increase, a mane-crinkling musky odor not unmixed with the sour whiff of fear. Such a hunt was not without danger for adolescents, being a good opportunity for hostile adults to cull a few of a hated rival’s offspring with no possibility of blame. They will be in less danger than most, Chuut-Riit thought judiciously. In fact, they may run across a few of my subordinates’ get and mob them. Good.
“And if we do well, afterwards a feast and a visit to the Sterile Ones.” That had them all quiveringly alert, their tails held rigid and tongues lolling; nonbearing females were kept as a rare privilege for Heroes whose accomplishments were not quite deserving of a mate of their own. Very rare for kits still in the household to be granted such, but Chuut-Riit thought it past time to admit that modern society demanded a prolonged adolescence. The days when a male kit could be given a spear, a knife, a rope, and a bag of salt and kicked out the front gate at puberty were long gone. Those were the wild, wandering years in the old days, when survival challenges used up the superabundant energies. Now they must be spent learning history, technology, xenology, none of which burned off the gland-juices saturating flesh and brain.
He jumped down amid his sons, and they pressed around him, purring throatily with adoration and fear and respect; his presence and the failure of their plot had reestablished his personal dominance unambiguously, and there was no danger from them for now. Chuut-Riit basked in their worship, feeling the rough caress of their tongues on his fur and scratching behind their ears. Together, he thought. Together we will do wonders.
Chapter 3
Dreaming, Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann twitched. Sweat ran down his stubbled bulldog face, and his fingers dug into the sodden sheets. It had been—
Crack. Crack.
Pulses of orange-purple light went by overhead. Ahead of them the building where the aircar was hidden exploded. The air was pitch-black, stars hidden by the smoke of burning buildings, air full of a chemical reek. It rasped at the inside of his throat, and he coughed savagely as they went to ground and he slapped down the hunting goggles. Green-tinted brightness replaced the black, and he raised his head to peer back over the rim of the shattered house. Overhead the scorched yellow leaves of the jacaranda tree rustled.
“Scheisse,” he muttered in awe. Half of Munchen seemed to be burning, the ruddy light glittering off the unnatural waves of the Donau river.
“Von Sydow, Hashami, get a hundred meters or so west and take overwatch on our route. Mogger, spread the rest out. Wait for my word,” Harold snapped. The half-dozen others melted back into the rubble of the low stone-block houses that had lined this street, the half-dozen who were left out of the thirty who had been with them yesterday.
Sam Ogun grunted beside him, shifting the burden of the makeshift antitank rocket in his arms. Everything was makeshift. . . . “Anything, Claude?” he said.
“Spaceport’s still holding out,” he said, fiddling with the keyboard of the communicator unit. “And the Ritterhaus. Not for long. We make it in half an hour or we don’t make it.”
“Why they still letting launches go on?” Sam wondered.
“I think they’re playing with us,” Harold said. God, I’m tired. At least there were no civilians around here . . . Most of them had gone bush, gone to ground outside town, when the ratcats landed. Nobody had known what to do; no human had fought a war for three hundred-odd years.
At least we weren’t completely domesticated, like the flatlanders. Wunderland still had the odd bandit, and a riot now and then. The Families maintained a ghost of a martial tradition as well . . . We knew enough to take the Angel’s Pencil warning seriously. The Angel had been the first human ship to contact the kzinti, and had survived by a miracle. Back in the Sol system, the ARM had suppressed the news—suppressed the fact that the first aliens humans had encountered traveled in warships. Wunderland had had a year to prepare, although most of it was spent reinventing the wheel.
“Much good it did us, oh scheisse,” he muttered.
A vehicle was floating down the broad stone-block pavement of K. von Bulowstrasse. Some sort of gravity-control effect, too small for fusion-power, but massive, like a smoothly gleaming wedge of some dark material, bristled with the pickups of sensors and communications gear. From the sharply sloped front jutted a segmented tube. Plasma gun, he recognized from the sketchy briefings. The howling whine of its passage overrode the roar of flames, and gusts of smoke and dirt billowed sideways from under it. A wrecked groundcar spun away from a touch of the kzinti vehicle’s bow, flipping end-over-end into the remains of an outdoor restaurant.
The others had frozen; he heard Claude whisper, very softly; “Why only one?”
Because it’s more Finagle-fucked fun, Claude, Harold thought savagely. Because they’re hunting us.
Don’t miss, Sam. There was a taut grin on the black Krio’s face as he raised the tube.