There was still a slight scent of scorch in the lobby’s air, and an even fainter one of old blood. The volunteer repair crews were cleaning each section by hand with vibrosweeps and soft brushes before they began adding new material.
“Most of what we wanted,” Early said, with deliberate emphasis.
Hiroge was the oyabun of his clan, and a man of some weight on this planet. The organization had grown during the lawless occupation years, and they were putting their accumulated wealth and power into shrewd investments now. Nevertheless, he bowed his head slightly as he answered:
“We, of course. Still, did not your psychists plant sufficient key commands last year?”
“We had to be careful. Markham was unstable, of course”-no wonder, after the resurrected thrint had used him as an organic waldo mechanism for weeks on end-“and besides, he’d be no use if we altered his psyche too much. We were counting on his subconscious craving for an authority figure, but evidently that’s not as vulnerable as we thought. And he’s getting more and more steamed about the political situation here, the anti-aristocratic reaction. Ironic.”
“Which in turn is favorable to us,” Hirose said.
“Oh, in the long run, yes. Nothing more susceptible to secret manipulation than democracy.”
He sighed; in many ways, the Long Peace back on Earth had been more restful. A successful end to the long clandestine struggle, with an official agency, the ARM, openly allowed to close down disrupting technology. There had been fierce struggles within the Brotherhood over releasing the hoarded knowledge, any of it, even in the face of the kzin invasion. Necessary, of course; but the hyperdrive was another complicating factor. Now the other colonized systems were no longer merely dumping-grounds for malcontents, safely insulated by unimaginable distance. They were only a hyperwave call away, and each one was a potentially destabilizing factor.
He sighed. Perhaps the struggle was futile… Never
“There is another factor I’d like you to check into,” he went on. “Montferrat and his friends, and Matthieson. They know entirely too much.”
“An isolated group,” Hirose said dismissively. “Matthieson is disintegrating, and alienated from the others.”
“Perhaps; but knowledge is always dangerous. Why else do we spend most of our time suppressing it? And”-he paused-“there’s a… synchronicity to that crew. They’re the sort of people things happen around; threatening things.”
“As you wish, Elder Brother,” Hirose said.
“Indeed.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“My nose is dry,” Large-Son of Chotrz-Shaa said, leaning forward to lap at the heated single-malt: I’m worried. “We are impoverished beyond hope.”
His brother Spots-Son made a meeowur of sardonic amusement, and poured some cream from the pitcher into his saucer of Glen Rorksbergen. Thick Jersey mixed sluggishly with the hot amber fluid as he stirred it with an extended claw. Both the young kzin males were somewhat drunk, and neither was feeling cheerful in his cups.
“Which is why you order fifty-year whiskey and grouper,” he said, gesturing at the table. The two-meter fish was a mess of clean-picked bones on the platter; he picked up the head and crunched it for the brains, salty and delicious.
Large-Son flattened his batwing ears and wrinkled his upper lip to expose long wet dagger-teeth. “You eat your share, hairball-maker-who-never-matured.” Spots growled around the mouthful; he had never entirely lost the juvenile mottles in his orange pelt. Dueling scars and batwing ears at his belt showed how he usually dealt with those who reminded him of it. “And the price of a meal is nothing compared to what we owe.”
Spots-Son flared his facial pelt in the equivalent of a shrug. Kzinti rarely lie; it is beneath a warrior’s honor, and in any case few of them can control the characteristic scent of falsehood.
“Truth,” Spots said. “My liver is chill with worry; we are poor beyond redemption. But if we must die, at least let us do it full and soothed.”
A shape brushed past the shimmer of the privacy screen. “Owe? Poor?”
They both wheeled, grinning and folding their ears into combat-position. Long claws slid out of four-digit hands like knives at the tips of black leather gloves. A human had spoken, mangling the Hero’s Tongue with his monkey palate. During the kzinti occupation, a human would have had his tongue removed for so insulting the language of the Heroic Race.
“You intrude,” Spots-Son said coldly in Wunderlander.
“This is a public booth,” the man pointed out. “And the only one not full. Besides, we all seem to have something in common.”
That was an insult. The fur lay flat on their muzzles, and they grinned wider, threads of saliva falling from thin carnivore lips.
“Cease to intrude, monkey,” Large-Son said; this time he used the Hero’s Tongue, in the Menacing Tense.
“We’re all warriors, for one thing,” the human continued, smelling of reckless self-confidence.
Both kzin relaxed, blinking and studying the monkey. He was a tall male, with a strip of dark head-fur; the clothes he wore were uniform and also thermally adjustable padding for wear underground-combat armor. They blinked again, noting the ribbons and unit-markings, looked at each other.
He speaks truth, Spots-Son signaled with a twitch of eyebrows. Both of them had been junior engineering officers in an underground installation before the human counterattack on the Alpha Centauri system; both had been knocked out with stungas toward the end. The human was actually more of a warrior than either of them; their defense battery might or might not have made a kill during the tag-end of atmospheric combat, but this monkey had beaten kzinti fighters at close quarters. The pips on his sleeve were so many dried kzin ears dangling from a coup belt. It was permissible to talk to him, although not agreeable.
The human smiled in his turn, although he kept his teeth covered. “Besides, we’re all broke, too. My name is Jonah Matthieson, ex-Pilot, ex-Captain, United Nations Space Navy. Let me order the next round of drinks.” and so we inherit the care of our dams, our Sire’s other wives, now ours, and our siblings and half-siblings,” Spots-Son said morosely some hours later, upending the whiskey decanter over his dish. “Honor demands it.”
Harold’s was half-empty now; a waiter came quickly enough when the long orange-furred arm waved the crystal in the air, setting out fresh liquor and cream. Spots-Son slopped the amber fluid into his bowl and into Jonah’s glass. Large-Son was lying with his muzzle in his dish, tongue protruding slightly as he snored. Thin black lips flopped against his fangs, and his eyes were nearly shut.
“Kzinti females take much care,” Spots continued, lowering his muzzle. Despite his care it went too far into the heated drink as he nearly toppled, making him sneeze and slap at his nose. “And much feeding. The properties have been confiscated by the military government-all the fine ranchlands and hunting-grounds our Sire possessed, all except the house. Where once we feasted on blood-dripping fresh beef and screaming zianyas, now our families must trade heirlooms for synthetic protein. Soon we will have no alternative but honorable suicide.”
“Thas-that’s a shame,” Jonah said. “Yeah, after th’ war the fighters get nothin’ and the politicians get rich, like always.” He hiccuped and drank. “Goddam UN
Space Navy doesn’t need no loudmouths who think for themselves, either. Say, what did you say you did before the war?”
“I,” Spots said with slow care and some pride, “was a Senior Weapons System Repairworker. And my sibling, too.”
Jonah blinked owlishly. “Reminds me.” He fumbled a sheet of printout from a pocket. “Lookit this. Decided it was a good deal so I’d come in here an’ spend my last krona. Here.”
He spread the crumpled paper on the damp surface of the table. The kzin craned to look; it was in the spiky fourteen-point gothic script most commonly used for public announcements on Wunderland. Printed notices were common; during the occupation the kzin overlords had restricted human use of the information net, and since then wartime damage had kept facilities scarce.