“My nose is dry, Conservor,” he said. He was speaking metaphorically, of course, but his tongue swept over the wet black nostrils just the same, and he smoothed back his whiskers with a nervous wrist.
“What troubles you, my son?” the sage said.
“I feel unequal to my new responsibilities,” Traat-Admiral admitted. Not something he would normally say to another male, but Conservors were utterly neutral, bound by their oaths to serve only the species as a whole.
“Truly, the Patriarchy has been accursed since we first attacked these monkeys, these humans. Wunderland is the richest of all our conquests; the humans here the best and most productive slaves in all our hunting-grounds. Yet it has swallowed so many of our best killers! Now it has taken Chuut-Riit, who was of the blood of the Patriarch himself and the best leader of warriors it has ever been my privilege to follow. And in such a fashion!”
He shuddered slightly, and the tip of his naked pink tail twitched. Locked in his own keep by technosabotage. Chuut-Riit the wise, imprisoned by monkey cunning. Eaten by his own sons! No nightmare was more obscene to a kzin than that; none more familiar in the darkest dreamings of their souls, where they remembered their childhoods before their sires drove them out.
“This is a prey that doubles back on its own trail,” the sage admitted. He paused for a long time, and Traat-Admiral joined in the long slow rhythm of his breathing. The older kzin took a pouch from his belt, and they each crumbled some of the herb between their hands and rubbed it into their faces; it was the best, Homeworld-grown and well-aged.
“My son, this is a time for remembering.”
Another long pause. “Far and far does the track of the kzinti run, and faint the smell of Homeworld's past. We Conservors remember; we remember wars and victories and defeats… once we thought that Homeworld was the only world of life. Then the Jotok landed, and for a time we thought they were from the God, because they had swords of fire that could tumble a Patriarch's castle-wall, while we had only swords of steel. Our musket-balls were nothing to them… Then we saw that they were weak, not strong, for they were grass-eaters. They lured our young warriors, hiring them to fight wars beyond the sky with promise of fire-weapons. Many a Sire was killed by his sons in those times!”
Traat-Admiral shifted uneasily, chirring and letting the tip of his tongue show between his teeth. That was not part of the racial history that kzinti liked to remember.
The sage made the stretching motion that was their species' equivalent of a relaxed smile. “Remember also how that hunt ended; the Jotok taught their hired kzinti so much that all Homeworld obeyed the ones who had journeyed to the stars… and they listened to the Conservors. And one nightfall, the Jotok who thought themselves masters of kzin found the flesh stripped from their bones; are not the Jotok our slaves and foodbeasts to this very night? And a hundred Patriarchs have climbed the Tree since that good night.”
The sage nodded at Traat-Admiral's questioning chirrup. “Yes, Chuut-Riit was another like that first Patriarch of all Kzin. He understood how to use the Conservor's knowledge; he had the warrior's and the sage's mind, and knew that these humans are the greatest challenge the Kzin have faced since the Jotok's day.”
The Conservor brooded.
“This he was teaching to his sons. The humans must have either great luck, or more knowledge than is good, to have struck at us through him. The seed of something great died with Chuut-Riit.”
“I will spurt that seed afresh into the haunches of Destiny, Conservor,” Traat-Admiral said fervently.
“Witless Destiny bears strange kits,” the sage warned. He seemed to hesitate a second, then continued: “You seek to unite your warriors as Chuut-Riit did, in an attack on the human home-system that is crafty-cunning, not witless-brave. Good! But that may not be enough. I have been evaluating your latest intelligence reports, the ones from our sources among the humans of the Swarm.”
Traat-Admiral tossed his head in agreement; that always presented difficulties. The kzinti had had the gravity polarizer from the beginnings of their time in space, and so had never colonized their asteroid belt. It was unnecessary, when you could have microgravity anywhere you wished, and hauling goods out of the gravity well was cheap. Besides that, kzinti were descended from plains-hunting felinoids, and while they could endure confinement they did so unwillingly and for as short a time as possible. Humans had taken a slower path to space, depending on reaction-drives until after their first contact with the warships of the Patriarchy. There was a whole human subspecies who lived on subplanetary bodies, and they had colonized the Alpha Centauri system along with their planet-dwelling cousins. Controlling the settlements of the Serpent Swarm had always been difficult for the kzinti.
“There is nothing definite, as yet,” the Conservor said. “Much of what I have learned is useful only as the absence of scent. Yet it is incontestable that the feral humans of the Swarm have made a discovery.”
“tttReet?” Traat-Admiral said enquiringly.
The Conservor's eyelids slid down, covering the round amber blanks of his eyes; one was milky-white from an old injury that had left a scar across the massive socket and down the side of his muzzle. He beckoned with a flick of tail and ears, and the commander leaned close, signaling the guards to leave. His hands and feet were slightly damp with anxiety as they exited in a smooth drilled rush; it was a fearsome thing, the responsibilities of high office. One must learn secrets that burdened the soul, harder by far than facing lasers or neutron-weapons. Such were the burdens of which the ordinary Hero knew nothing.
“Long, long ago,” he whispered, “Kzinti were not as they are now. Once females could talk.”
Traat-Admiral felt his batwing ears fold themselves away beneath the orange fur of his ruff as he shifted uneasily on the cushions. He had heard rumors, but— obscene, he thought. The thought of performing ch'rowl with something that could talk, beyond the half-dozen words a kzinti female could manage… obscene. He gagged slightly.
“Long, long ago. And Heroes were not as they are now, either.” The sage brooded for a moment. “We are an old race, and we have had time to… shape ourselves according to the dreams we had. Such is the Ancestral Past.” The whuffling twitch of whiskers that followed did kzinti service for a grin. “Or so the encoded records of the oldest verses say. Now for another tale, Traat-Admiral. How would you react if another species sought to make slaves of Kzin?”
Traat-Admiral's own whiskers twitched.
“No, consider this seriously. A race with a power of mental command; like a telepathic drug, irresistible. Imagine kzinti enslaved, submissive and obedient as mewling kits.”
The other kzin suddenly found himself standing, in a low crouch. Sound damped as his ears folded, but he could hear the sound of his own growl, low down in his chest. His lower jaw had dropped to his ruff, exposing the killing gape of his fangs; all eight claws were out on his hands, as they reached forward to grip an enemy and carry a throat to his fangs.
“This is a hypothetical situation!” the Conservor said quickly, and watched while Traat-Admiral fought back towards calm. The little nook behind the commander's dais was full of the sound of his panting and the deep gingery smell of kzinti rage. “And that reaction… that would make any kzin difficult to control. That is one reason why the race of Heroes has been shaped so. And to make us better warriors, of course. In that respect perhaps we went a little too far.”