In the days that followed, he prowled Tigertown, trying to find any surviving crew member of the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch at the time of the battle. Not a trace. Then he began to put together a compendium of stories about Trainer-of-Slaves, who had disgraced himself by insisting, probably correctly, that the human scoutship Shark should immediately be shipped back to the naval yards of Kzin. Hwass had not known the slave master at all, and was aware of him only because he was a favorite of Grraf-Hromfi, the Dominant of Chuut-Riit’s Third Pride. By now Hwass was very curious about this nameless barbarian from Hssin.
He used his new authority with the simian navy to obtain a restricted visit to Aarku of Beta Centauri where Trainer-of-Slaves had been stationed as a slave breeder before being assigned to the Third Pride. He was evidently a superior trainer of the nasty Jotok slaves. But Aarku had been more than a slave factory Aarku was still used to maintain kzinti-equipped vessels of the Serpent Swarm. The technicians were all kzin and many of them had known Trainer.
Hundreds of wrecked kzinti battle craft were beached on Aarku. It was a mine of information about how kzinti weapons performed against their human counterparts. He had time here to expand on the Wunderland Battle analysis he intended, someday, to deliver to the Patriarch. If he could not deliver the message in person, then his sons or grandsons would. While Clandeboye was using him, he was using Clandeboye.
He spent much of his time at Aarku setting up a Kdaptist cell. The kzin salvagers had found a desiccated man-beast in the wreckage of one of the ships and Hwass showed them how to skin the corpse so that its leather could be used to form masks for their Kdaptist services. Carved, the beast’s bones made excellent altar pieces and candelabra.
Through his contacts on Aarku he learned that most of Trainer’s surviving associates were on Wunderland. That was convenient. Hwass was granted a second restricted travel pass. From Aarku, he went to Wunderkind. No Kdaptist had more freedom of movement to spread the word.
Hwass’s questioning around the kzinti tenements of Munchen fed him many tales. Trainer had achieved a reputation in the animal world through a devotion to the chemistry of the human brain. The simians had mawkishly converted an orphanage, which once supplied some of his experimental subjects, into a memorial commemorating the martyred children, hundreds of them, each child’s name engraved into an eternium plaque. Kzinti documents were on display, some in Trainer-of-Slaves’s compact dots-and-comma style. Descriptive drawings of brain operations, Trainer’s bad poetry, the skull-clamps from basement test rooms, the saws and micro-fluid taps were all there.
The collectors of the memorabilia for this holocaust museum had been thorough. But Hwass (cynically wearing a black ribbon of contrition so that he could gain admittance) noticed one item that he was sure the humans didn’t understand. It was labeled as a little three-dimensional puzzle used by Trainer-of-Slaves to amuse himself while long experiments were in progress. But it wasn’t that at all. Hwass-Hwasschoaw, whose patrilinial ancestry was rooted in W’kkai, recognized it as a wooden puzzle built by the Conundrum Priests. But it was much more than that to a Patriarch’s Eye. It was a covert datastore.
Hwass shopped around in the back streets of Munchen until he found a real Conundrum Puzzle in a curiosity and antique shop. He repolished it to duplicate the sheen of the other, then returned to the museum and switched the two. The locks on the display cases were human-primitive. From the engraved markings on the original he traced it to a now legless kzin who had originally given the device to Trainer-of-Slaves as a present of respect for a problem solved.
The crippled warrior restored obsolete kzin electronic devices for a living-hundreds of thousands of them were still in circulation. He had no trouble in reading the datastore. The solution to the puzzle itself was the codekey. The database proved to be an encyclopedic compendium of the neurochemistry of the human nervous system bought by the lives of slaves and orphans. Interestingly, among the poisons were micro-dose gases that would stop a human nervous system instantly but not affect a kzin at all.
From his malfunctioning gravitic chair, Trainer’s friend shared a wealth of stories about his polyvalent comrade and thus it was revealed to Hwass that this Trainer-of-Slaves had excellent credentials in gravitic maintenance and, even though he was not qualified as an engineer, he was more knowledgeable of gravitic mathematics than his duties required.
The extensive discussion provided fresh meat for Hwass’s speculative chewing. Trainer knew chemistry and gravitics-an unusual technical versatility. Difficult problems never seemed to bother him. Where another ship’s captain might be baffled by hyperdrive mechanics, Trainer would be inclined, at the least, to try to restore the function of a misbehaving hypershunt motor. Had he succeeded?
Did he have the courage? That was always important Grraf-Hromfi’s youngest son had survived the battle and told stories of how Trainer-of-Slaves had served as an instructor for Grraf-Hromfi’s kits and had even killed several of them for lack of discipline. Hwass knew that challenging and killing a kit of one’s dominant superior was a very dangerous act-if the kit wasn’t victorious the father might be so incensed as to challenge the instructor himself. And no Hero had ever survived a fight with Grraf-Hromfi. Yes, the courage was there-even if he had a reputation as a “grass-eater.”
It was not probable, but it was possible for such a strange warrior to have challenged the captain of the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to a duel-but to win? Had he had an ally among the crew to bring him out of hibernation? Two against a full crew? Preposterous! But the ship had escaped Alpha Centauri. How? It was useless to speculate.
This Trainer-of-Slaves was a Hssin barbarian, recruited when Chuut-Riit’s armada passed through R’hshssira on the last leap of the crusade to Wunderland. If he had achieved command of the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch, where would he have taken it? To nearby Hssin. He could not have abandoned the Bitch and proceeded in the Shark-the human scout had been badly damaged when captured and subsequent analysis had shown that it had only been captured because its drive unit was malfunctioning. On-board repair was impossible, even on a superbly equipped repair vessel like the Bitch.
Hwass had much time to review and check out and correct his projection of events. By human reckoning Hssin had been sacked in 2422. The Bitch could not have arrived before 2423. That had been thirteen human years ago. Trainer-of-Slaves would have required elaborate facilities at Hssin to reoutfit and re-equip the Bitch for another interstellar hop. The Bitch was not a vessel that could flit from star to star. Could it have pushed on from the ruins of Hssin? Not likely. Was it still there?
Such a delicate decision. Hwass could sniff out no way to reach Hssin without being taken there by Major Clandeboye on a human ship. Clandeboye would not help him unless he received some kind of cooperation in return.
So he would have to be a valuable assistant to Clandeboye. Then he’d have to destroy the human expedition and proceed to Kzin on his own. Perhaps they’d never notice if he smuggled aboard a tiny capsule of Trainer’s neural gas.
Could he succeed? He thought about it for only a moment. A Hero might attempt such a coup-but if there was anything to be learned from the debacle at Wunderland it was that a warrior would not win without the aid of the Bearded God. To claim God’s favor in a contest with the favored humans required the greatest of Kdaptist skills. No simple prayer, no wordy supplication would be enough.
This hunt was in fresh theological territory! Perhaps a sacrifice? But the most ferocious fighting animal of Kzin delivered on a golden altar would not impress this God when His precious humans were at stake. A Kdaptist must ceaselessly strive to understand God’s needs and His view of the universe. Certainly a sacrifice had to involve great fighting bravery and skill-but it must also be appropriate. Would a wise herbivore proffer a gift of rare grasses to the Patriarch!