“—was very vocal about it at a staff meeting. Incidentally, they completely swallowed our little white lie about Axelrod-Bauergartner being responsible for Ingrid’s escape.”
“That must have been something to see,” Harold said. Claude sighed, remembering. “Well,” he began, “since it was in our offices I managed to take a holo—”
Coordinating-Staff-Officer was a tall kzin, well over two meters, and thin by the felinoid race’s standards. Or so Claude Montferrat-Palme thought; it was difficult to say, when you were flat on your stomach on the floor, watching the furred feet pace.
Ridiculous, he thought. Humans were not meant for this posture. Kzin were: they could run on four feet as easily as two, and their skulls were on a flexible joint. This was giving him a crick in the neck . . . but it was obligatory for the human supervisors just below the kzinti level to attend. The consequences of disobeying the kzin were all too plain, in the transparent block of plastic that encased the head of Munchen’s former assistant chief of police, resting on the mantelpiece.
Claude’s own superior was speaking, Ktiir-Supervisor-of-Animals.
“This monkey”—he jerked a claw at the head—”was responsible for allowing the two Sol-agent humans to escape the hunt.” He was in the half-crouched posture Claude recognized as proper for reporting to one higher in rank but lower in social status, although the set of ears and tail was insufficiently respectful. If I can read kzinti body language that well.
This was security HQ, the old Herrenhaus where the Nineteen Families had met before the kzin came. The room was broad and gracious, floored in tile, walled in lacy white stone fretwork, and roofed in Wunderland ebony that was veined with natural silver. Outside fountains were plashing in the gardens, and he could smell the oleanders that blossomed there. The gingery scent of kzin anger was heavier, as Staff-Officer stopped and prodded a half-kick at Montferrat-Palme’s flank. The foot was encased in a sort of openwork leather-and-metal boot, with slits for the claws. Those were out slightly, probably in unconscious reflex, and he could feel the razor tips prickle slightly through the sweat-wet fabric of his uniform.
“Dominant One, this slave—” Claude began.
“Dispense with the formalities, human,” the kzin said. It spoke Wunderlander and was politer than most; Claude’s own superior habitually referred to humans as kz’eerkt, monkey. That was a quasi-primate on the kzinti homeworld. A tree-dwelling mammal-analog, at least, as much like a monkey as a kzin was like a tiger, which was not much. “Tell me what occurred.”
“Dominant One . . . Coordinating-Staff-Officer,” Claude continued, craning his neck. Don’t make eye contact, he reminded himself. A kzin stare was a dominance-gesture or a preparation to attack. “Honored Ktiir-Supervisor-of-Animals decided that . . .”—don’t use her name—”the former assistant chief of Munchen Polezi was more zealous than I in the tracking-down of the two UN agents, and should therefore be in charge of disposing of them in the hunt.”
Staff-Officer stopped pacing and gazed directly at Ktiir-Supervisor; Claude could see the pink tip of the slimmer kzin’s tail twitching before him, naked save for a few bristly orange hairs.
“So not only did your interrogators fail to determine that the humans had successfully sabotaged Chuut-Riit’s palace-defense computers, you appointed a traitor to arrange for their disposal. The feral humans laugh at us! Our leader is killed and the assassins go free from under our very claws!”
Ktiir-Supervisor rose from his crouch. He pointed at another kzin who huddled in one corner; a telepath, with the characteristic hangdog air and unkempt fur.
“Your tame sthondat there didn’t detect it either,” he snarled.
Literally snarled, Claude reflected. It was educational; after seeing a kzin you never referred to a human expression by that term again.
Staff-Officer wuffled, snorting open his wet black nostrils and working his whiskers. It should have been a comical expression, but on four hundred pounds of alien carnivore it was not in the least funny. “You hide behind the failures of others,” he said, hissing. “Traat-Admiral directs me to inform you that your request for reassignment to the Swarm flotillas has been denied. Neither unit will accept you.”
“Traat-Admiral!” Ktiir-Supervisor rasped. “He is like a kit who has climbed a tree and can’t get down, mewling for its dam. Ktrodni-Stkaa should be governor! This talk of a ‘secret menace’ among the asteroids is a scentless trail to divert attention from Traat-Admiral’s refusal to launch the Fifth Fleet.”
“Such was the strategy of the great Chuut-Riit, murdered through your incompetence—or worse.”
Ktiir-Supervisor bristled, the orange-red fur standing out and turning his body into a cartoon caricature of a cat, bottle-shaped.
“You nameless licker-of-scentless-piss from that jumped-up crecheproduct admiral, what do you accuse me of?”
“Treason, or stupidity amounting to it,” the other kzin sneered. Ostentatiously, he flared his batlike ears into a vulnerable rest position and let his tail droop.
Ktiir-Supervisor screamed. “You inner-worlds palace fop, you and Traat-Admiral alike! I urinate on the shrines of your ancestors from a height! Crawl away and call for your monkeys to groom you with blowdriers!”
Staff-Officer’s hands extended outward, the night-black claws glinting as they slid from their sheaths. His tail was rigid now. Hairdressers were a luxury the late governor had introduced, and wildly popular among the younger nobility.
“Kshat-hunter,” he growled. “You are not fit to roll in Chuut-Riit’s shit! You lay word-claws to the blood of the Riit.”
“Chuut-Riit made ch’rowl with monkeys!” A gross insult, as well as anatomically impossible.
There was a feeling of hush, as the two males locked eyes. Then the heavy wtsai-knives came out and the great orange shapes seemed to flow together, meeting at the arch of their leaps, howling. Claude rolled back against the wall as the half-ton of weight slammed down again, sending splinters of furniture out like shrapnel. For a moment the kzin were locked and motionless, hand to knife-wrist; their legs locked in thigh-holds as well, to keep the back legs from coming up for a disemboweling strike. Mouths gaped toward each other’s throats, inch-long fangs exposed in the seventy-degree killing gape. Then there was a blur of movement; they sprang apart, together, went over in a caterwauling blur of orange fur and flashing metal, a whirl far too fast for human eyesight to follow.
He caught glimpses: distended eyes, scrabbling claws, knives sinking home into flesh, amid a clamor loud enough to drive needles of pain into his ears. Bits of bloody fur hit all around him, and there was a human scream as the fighters rolled over a secretary. Then Staff-Officer rose, slashed and glaring. Ktiir-Supervisor lay sprawled, legs twitching galvanically with the hilt of Staff-Officer’s wtsai jerking next to his lower spine. The slender kzin panted for a moment and then leaped forward to grab his opponent by the neck-ruff. He jerked him up toward the waiting jaws, clamped them down on his throat. Ktiir-Supervisor struggled feebly, then slumped. Blood-bubbles swelled and burst on his nose. A wrench and Staff-Officer was backing off, shaking his head and spitting, licking at the matted fur of his muzzle; he groomed for half a minute before wrenching the knife free and beginning to spread the dead kzin’s ears for a clean trophy-cut.
“Erruch,” Ingrid said as the recording finished. “You’ve got more . . . you’ve got a lot of guts, Claude, dealing with them at first hand like that.”
“Oh, some of them aren’t so bad. For ratcats. Staff-Officer there expressed ‘every confidence’ in me.” He made an expressive gesture with his hands. “Although he also reminded me there was a continuous demand for fresh monkeymeat.”
Ingrid paled slightly and laid a hand on his arm. That was not a figure of speech to her, not after the chase through the kzin hunting preserve. She remembered the sound of the hunting scream behind her, and the thudding crackle of the alien’s pads on the leaves as it made its four-footed rush, rising as it screamed and leapt from the ravine lip above her. The long sharpened pole in her hands, and the soft heavy feel as its own weight drove it onto her weapon . . .
Claude laid his hand on hers. Harold cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said. “Your position looks solider than we thought.”
The other man gave Ingrid’s hand a squeeze and released it. “Yes,” he said. A hunter’s look came into his eyes, emphasizing the foxy sharpness of his features. “In fact, they’re outfitting some sort of expedition; that’s why they can’t spare personnel for administrative duties.”
Ingrid and Harold both leaned forward instinctively. Harold crushed out his cigarette with swift ferocity.
“Another Fleet?” Ingrid asked. I’ll be stuck here, and Earth . . .
Claude shook his head. “No. That raid did a lot of damage; it’d be a year or more just to get back to the state of readiness they had when the Yamamoto arrived. Military readiness.” Both the others winced; over half a million humans had died in the attack. “But they’re definitely mobilizing for something inside the system. Two flotillas. Something out in the Swarm.”