I’m a slave; I’m a slave; I’m a slave, Monkeyshine kept telling himself. He treated his mother with a new respect when he came to curry her with his kzinretti brush. Grinning while he combed the knots out of her long auburn mane, he imagined that her kzin opponents had died of surprise when she growled. He curried her fur vigorously, the way she liked, never even wondering why female monkeys had fur and males didn’t that’s the way it had always been. He buried his head in her hair, afraid, hugging her.
He was not used to thinking of himself as a warrior. It was safer to be a slave. He’d have to be angry when he grinned. What would he do for claws? His teeth weren’t sharp. Something stubborn in him was resisting his Jotoki comrades. They were ready to rescue Mellow Yellow tomorrow. He wasn’t. He knew the difference between being and pretending. Being something could get you killed. Pretending let you repeat yourself. For now he was only willing to pretend to rescue Mellow Yellow.
Eight+One acolytes guided the naked kzin at pike point, pleased to have duty away from their studies. He would remain naked no matter how cold it got. They wore weavings of yellow and gold done in maze design. The claspings were a ring-puzzle and let the Fanged God help the acolyte who forgot the untwining sequence. Their tall headdresses of multiple heads made them bob and loom like the giants of mythology.
The tidal action of W’kkaisun kept the crust of W’kkai active even though that leisurely planet had a week-long day. There were plenty of mountains and upwelled plateaus. It was middle morning in the Rival’s Range but the evening’s snow still lay on the northern slopes. The steps to the Heart of Paradox were brilliant in the sunlight and wet with melting snow. Where was the entrance to this Temple carved high along the cliff? Even that was an enigma.
Conundrum-Prisoner could not see the roof of the Temple but it was the floor of the plateau. Conundrum Priests had carved there in the stone for millennia, building themselves a maze of prisons so wonderful that no warden ever needed keys. The balanced stones just closed around their victims. A finger’s push along the magic vectors would open the prison again, perhaps-or cause a rumbling that would close the cell down to the size of a coffin.
In the Temple they were led by a gray-furred warden, stooped, with a scar across his face that had removed half his nose. It wasn’t a corridor of cells they followed, it was a terrifying forest of stones and pillars and blocks and paving that had all the solidity of a master juggler’s climactic act at the Patriarch’s Palace. One looked around in desperation for the hand that was rushing around keeping it all from collapsing, but there was no such hand-only the occasional soft paving or pillar that swayed or monolith that swung down to block their way while it opened another. The Priests said it was earthquake proof.
Conundrum-Prisoner did not recognize his cell when they came upon it. It was like a field of cut stone, or some bizarre world from the eye of an electron microscope. It had been opened for him the day before. The acolytes gathered up the bones of the previous occupant. The warden pulled a hood over his head and wove it shut. All the prisoner heard was the slight whisperings and low rumble as the walls shifted and the plugs fell into place.
He tore at the hood with his claws, uselessly. Then he began to work at the lacings. Was this another kind of puzzle? Finally he smelled the slight odor of oxidation. The hood gradually disintegrated in strength until he could tear it off, and finally it turned to ash. The cell was ample, though of no sane geometric shape. There were openings, some of them large enough for a kzin to crawl into. Death traps. He could control light or darkness. He could control smell. He had a tap for liquid food. And he had a hose to wash away his excrement.
He thought of the cages in which he had kept the experimental monkeys procured from Wunderland for his studies of the man-beast’s nervous system.
He felt rage.
But the Conundrum Priests weren’t impressed by rage. Every item and action of their philosophy was designed to control rage. No amount of rage against these walls would move them by a claw’s breadth. Only reason would open them. The panicked reason of “try everything” wouldn’t work, either. There would be Sixty-four?One ways of moving those stones-and Sixty-four of them would collapse his cell to the volume of a coffin, and he’d die in some distorted pretzel shape.
He remembered a time of boredom when he had been stationed at Centauri’s Aarku base; he had found himself a W’kkai Conundrum Puzzle and stayed awake three clays and nights trying to solve it. It had driven him mad!
Now he was trapped in the puzzle. Controlling his rage was going to drive him mad. Restraining his reason was going to drive him mad. No matter how good his hypothesis about the geometry of his cell, he couldn’t test it with shove and push until all of the consequences had been reasoned out in his head. Madness, every alternative was madness! And there wasn’t even any grass to eat!
Conundrum-Prisoner was his name.
Chapter 15
(2437 A.D.)
The diary of Lieutenant Nora Argamentine was fed into the handwriting analyzer and posted on the Wunderland frigate’s server, access denied only to Hwass-Hwasschoaw. Their kzin had been right about a lot of the details of the insurrection aboard the Bitch, including the loyalty of the Jotoki slaves to their trainer, but he had been wrong about its leader. Yankee grinned. Even the most paranoid of the kzin wouldn’t believe in a female opponent.
Of course, Clandeboye was seeing some consternation among his own men on that score. Taking out a kzin warship at a distance of light-seconds required skill and bravery-taking one from the inside in what amounted to hand-to-claw combat, with only unarmed slaves for allies, was a remarkable feat. Yankee caught his Wunderland marines in the briefing room replaying the contest in loud agitation and debate.
These men had actually fought on the ground, in the city, during the Hssin mop-up operation in 2422. They had a full simulation of the Bitch’s interior displayed on the main lecture screen. Nora’s diary was on multiple infocomps-even floating around in paper copies-and Hwass’s analysis of the battle was being annotated with excerpts from Nora’s diary. And argue, argue, argue. They were re-creating the battle, blow by blow. A heroic myth was in the making.
Through introspective monologues Yankee drafted his conclusions, even his feelings, into frantic missives that he threw out by hyperwave to General Fry, one after the other without waiting for replies. The general wrote back expansively, in a less formal manner than his usual terse style. He was astonished by Nora’s feat and begged more details. Just knowing what had happened to her healed some wounds, but what had happened was not pleasant. Even the noblest of heroes does not always win. If she was still alive, which they doubted, her mind had been wiped clean and the only language that was left to her was a primitive female form of the Hero’s Tongue. And worse, from a strategic point of view brave Nora had not prevented the delivery of the Shark into Patriarch hands. Yankee’s worst nightmare had come true. And General Fry was no longer a man covering his bets by exploring all scenarios-he was Yankee’s open ally.
The ARM, as usual, suppressed the Hssin expedition’s news. Rear Admiral Blumenhandler’s voice was sealed. His marines were shipped to Barnard’s Starbase. The repatriation of Hwass-Hwasschoaw was so accelerated that upon the kzin’s return to Wunderland he was not even allowed to contact his fellow Wunderkzin; he had a final meeting with Interworld Space Commissioner Ulf Reichstein Markham and then was gone. Yankee was warned not to publish. Somehow the major saw the hand of Admiral Jenkins in all this.
Back at Gibraltar Base in Sol System, Yankee spent hours in discussion with General Fry in his small asteroid apartment. They were good friends by now. Yankee was appalled at the navy’s reaction to the Shark capture. In spite of the fact that there was “no news,” the news was getting around by rumor and gross speculation. The prevailing opinion was that the kzinti were too incompetent technically to duplicate a captured hypershunt.