But the summing up was clear and unavoidable. The best thing he could do would be to find some way to inactivate at least this ship, and perhaps the whole kzinti fleet. Grandiose scheme. At the very top of Early's wish-list. All else by the wayside.
And he could not do it by going on a rampage. He had to be smarter than the kzinti; he had to show how humans, with all their love of life and self-sympathy, could beat the self-confident, savage invaders.
No more being Fixer. Time to use Fixer as a front, and be a complete, fully aware Halloran.
Telepath whimpered in his sleep. There was no one near to hear him in this corridor; disgust could be as effective as status and fear in securing privacy.
Hands were lifting him. Huge hands, tearing him away from Mother's side. His own hands were tiny, so tiny as he clung with all four limbs to Mother's fur.
She was growling, screaming at the males with the Y-shaped poles who pinned her to the wicker mats, lashing out at them as they laughed and dodged. Hate and fury stank through the dark air of the hut.
“Maaaa!” he screamed. “Maaaa!”
The hands bore him up, crushed him against a muscular side that smelled of leather and metal and kzintosh, male kzin.
They will eat me, they will eat me! cried instinct. He lashed out with needle-sharp baby claws, and the booming voice above him laughed and swore, holding the wriggling bundle out at arm's length.
“This one has spirit,” the Voice said.
“Puny,” another replied dismissively. “I will not rear it. Send it to the crèche.”
They carried him out into the bright sunlight, and he blinked against the pain of it. Fangs loomed above him, and he hissed and spat; a hand pushed meat into his mouth. It was good, warm and bloody; he tore loose chunks and bolted them, ears still folded down. From the other enclosures came the growls and screams of females frightened by the scent of loss, and behind him his mother gave one howl of grief after another.
Telepath half-woke, grunting and startling, pink bat-ears flaring wide as he took in the familiar subliminal noises of pumps and ventilators.
He was laughing, walking across the quadrangle. Faces turned toward him.
—naked faces?—
Mouths turning to round O shapes of shock.
—Flat mouths? Flat teeth?—
Students and teachers were turning toward him, and he knew they saw the headmaster, buck-naked and priapically erect. He laughed and waved again, thinking how Old Man Velasquez would explain this—
Telepath struggled. Something struck him on the nose and he started upright, pink tongue reflexively washing at the source of the welcome, welcome pain. The horror of the nightmare slipped away, too alien to comprehend with the waking mind.
“Silence, sthondat-sucker!” Third Gunner snarled, aiming a kick that thudded drumlike on Telepath's ribs. Another harness-buckle was in one hand, ready to throw. “Stop screaming in your sleep!”
Telepath widened his ears and flattened his fur in propitiation as he crouched; Third Gunner was not a great intellect, but he was enormous and touchy even for a young kzin. After a moment the hulking shape turned and padded off down the corridor to his own doss, grumbling and twitching his whiskers. The smaller kzin sank down again to his thin pallet, curling into a fetal ball and covering his nose with his hands, wrapping his tail around the whole bundle of misery. He quivered, his matted fur wrinkling in odd patterns, and forced his eyes to close.
I must sleep, he thought. His fingers twitched toward the pouch with his drug, but that only made things worse. I must sleep; my health is important to the fleet. Unless he was rested he could not read minds on command. Without that, he was useless and therefore dead, and Telepath did not want to die.
But if he slept, he dreamed. For the last four sleeps the dreams of his kittenhood had been almost welcome. Eerie combinations of sound plucked at the corners of his mind as he dozed, as precise as mathematics but carrying overtones of feelings that were not his—
He jerked awake again. Mother, he thought, through a haze of fatigue. I want my mother.
The alienness of the dreams no longer frightened him so much.
What was really terrifying was the feeling he was beginning to understand them…
Halloran flexed and raised his hands, crouching and growling. Technician's-Assistant stepped aside at the junction of the two corridors, but Fire-Control-Technician retracted his ears and snarled, dropping his lower jaw toward his chest. Aide-to-Commanders had gone down on his belly, crawling aside. Beside the disguised human Chief-Operations-Officer bulked out his fur and responded in kind.
Sure looks different without Fixer, Halloran thought as he sidled around the confrontation.
The kzinti were almost muzzle-to-muzzle, roaring at each other in tones that set the metal around them to vibrating in sympathy; thin black lips curled back from wet half-inch fangs, and the ruffled fur turned their bodies into bristling sausage shapes. The black-leather shapes of their four-fingered hands were almost skeletal, the long claws shining like curves of liquid jet. Dim orange-red light made Halloran squint and peer. The walls here in this section of officer country were covered with holographic murals; a necessity, since kzinti were very vulnerable to sensory deprivation. Twisted thorny orange vegetation crawled across shattered rock under a lowering sky the color of powdered brickdust, and in the foreground two Kzinti had overturned something that looked like a giant spiked turtle with a bone club for a tail. They were burying their muzzles in its belly, ripping out long stretches of intestine.
Abruptly, the two high-ranking kzin stepped back and let their fur fall into normal position, walking past each other as if nothing had happened.
Nothing did, a ghost of Fixer said at the back of Halloran's head; the thin psychic voice was mildly puzzled. Normal courtesy. Passing by without playing at challenge would be an insult, showing contempt for one not worthy of interest. Real challenge would be against regulations, now.
Chief-Operations-Officer scratched at the ID plate on the commander's door, releasing Kfraksha-Admiral's coded scent. A muffled growl answered.
Kfraksha-Admiral was seated at his desk, worrying the flesh off a heavy bone held down with his hands. A long shred of tendon came off as he snapped his head back and forth, and his jaws made a wet clop sound as he bolted it.
“Is all proceeding according to plan?” he asked.
“Yes, Dominant One,” Chief-Operations-Officer said humbly.
“Then why are you taking up my valuable time?” Kfraksha-Admiral screamed, extending his claws.
“Abasement,” Chief-Operations-Officer said. He flattened to the floor in formal mode; the others joined him. “The jettisoning of the monopoles and gravity polarizer components has proceeded according to your plans. There are problems.”
“Describe them.”
“A much higher than normal rate of replacement for all solid-state electronic components, Kfraksha-Admiral,” the engineer said. “Computers and control systems particularly. Increasing as a function of our approach to the ghost star. Also personnel problems.”
Kfraksha-Admiral's whiskers and fur moved in patterns that meant lively curiosity; discipline was the problem any Kzin commander would anticipate, although perhaps not so soon.
“Mutiny?” he said almost eagerly.
“No. Increased rates of impromptu dueling, sometimes against regulations. Allegations of murderous intent unsupported by evidence. Superstitions. Several cases of catatonia and insanity leading to liquidation by superiors. Suicides. Also rumors.”