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!
What was it that God seemed to desire most?
Chapter 8
The lord called Grraf-Nig was out for a solitary hunt on his W’kkai estate, naked in his fur, seeking a little relaxation while he tried to make order out of what he was up against one of his more adventurous wives, in estrus, had been following him at a discreet distance, watching his every move with cool yellow eyes, patiently waiting for his attentions. She was the daughter of his most powerful W’kkai sponsor, Si-Kish the High Admiral. He let her tag along, but ignored her, his alertness elsewhere. The pungent scent of a zianya distracted him into a marvelous chase up along the rocky crests, where he trapped the animal in a ravine, killing the beast after one sudden leap while it tried to escape. His blood lust satiated, he had time to climb the talus to the top of his world.
His year and a half on W’kkai had been exhilarating, yet Grraf-Nig felt deceived.
He had been swept into direct contact with the best philosophers and tool makers. He merely had to grope aloud with a question and a work force appeared with tools to master the answer. He was flown across continents to hunt with W’kkai’s best mathematicians who gloriously tore apart the fabric of the universe while they tore apart their meat by the light of all-night campfires. He had been flown to space often, where a whole shielded laboratory was being built to study hyperspace. He had been given females and honors and servants to manage his estate—but he had been deceived.
At first the sashes and clasps and pinned-on ruffles of W’kkai clothing had intrigued him—now they felt like a straitjacket. He was often close to killing his valet. His servants were spies. His closest associates were guardians. If his co-workers spoke the truth they also told him only what the W’kkai patriarchs wished him to know.
The brilliantly slow sunset was worth watching from high on these ridges, though it hardly seemed natural standing here on broken shale, exposed to the sky, without pressure walls to protect him, without even the walls of a ravine to hold in the air. He had lived in space too long ever to adjust to a planet. But the orange play of light on the scudding clouds was a worthy battleground for his imagination. Aboriginal plains kzinti could have evolved their protective coloring hunting among such clouds.
The sunset would bring night. He shuddered. The weather here was harder to get used to than his overstocked harem.
W’kkai was too close to its K2 sun. Tidal friction had slowed W’kkai’s rotation until there were only two seasons-seventy-nine hours of light and seventy-nine hours of night. The huge sun broiled them by day, steaming them in their fur, sapping the energy of the hunt. After dark a cloud cover formed and the rains came, dumping heat into the atmosphere, retarding nighttime cooling. Even so there was a skin of ice on the puddles at dawn and, sometimes, snow.
Orange W’kkaisun seemed to have twice the diameter of Alpha Centauri as seen from Wunderland, but it was not nearly as immense to behold or as red as R’hshssira, the brown dwarf that had warmed Grraf-Nig when he was the young Trainer-of-Slaves. Why, amidst the luxury of his own estate, should he suddenly be nostalgic for the tiny hellworld of Hssin, for the hunting caves of its Jotok Run where he had taken refuge as a nameless hunted kit?
A furless tail lashed.
He was aware of his wife’s overpowering attraction, the beauty of her black fingers clinging to the red rock below him, but instead of responding, he threw to her the remains of the zianya. She must have been hungry for she ripped into it with a coy glance of thanks. He did not move to her; he talked to her instead, coaxing her closer, knowing she would not comprehend an iota of what he said. Because he did not have to make her understand, he omitted the inflected growls and hisses, the spices and smells of language, hearing them only in his mind’s ear. He rambled, dredging up memories he would not have bared before a male.
How to tell her that out there alone with only slaves he had dreamed of his own harem of lovelies? He had dreamed of her. He lapsed into the simple patois of gestures and grunts that a female could respond to. “Love you. Lust your fingers,” was all he could manage within her vocabulary. It was not enough. His wives were a burden; he had been without females too long in the wretched emptiness of space ever to get used to the attention they required.