Grraf-Nig had his own way of handling his rage at the wasted time invested in argument with his liver-driven co-conspirator. He was absolutely sure that, unarmed, he could kill Hwass probably quickly. His instructor in Heroic Combat and name-sake, Grraf-Hromfi of the Black Pride, had given him years of personal training—and in the end had trusted the martial training of his Sons to Grraf-Nig. It was not strength that counted in combat. But killing Hwass would strand him on W’kkai.
He took out his anger in controlled combat—by exercising the rules of tournament. He had a student. Monkeyshine liked to fight. It gave the outcast kzin away to use up his rage and learn to control it at the same time. The old trainer-of-slaves in him was still curious about the limits of slaves. His ears wiggled to see the tiny boy charge him with a full-faced grin.
Part of Grraf-Nig was still furious about the fate of his own male kits. He had daughters but the sons were dead, murdered, probably devoured, by the scarless kzin who had taken over his harem. Monkeyshine was probably the only son he’d ever have. Was there any harm in teaching him a few fancy tricks? The little slave would be dead himself soon enough. He would die for the Patriarch. Sometimes fathers had to sacrifice their Sons for the triumph of the Patriarchy.
It was a day of heavy wind. The final batch of nerve gas was being synthesized under less than ideal conditions. There was no threat to kzinti but Grraf-Nig took the whole family of man-beasts upwind for a picnic to keep them out of possible danger. Almost tenderly he spent the time with Monkeyshine in the dry orange grass of the field, teaching him how to sidestep an oncoming blow, then reverse-kick for a deadly riposte.
In time the whole operation was in place. A UNSN vessel arrived to patrol the singularity—a flea of a ship that aroused no passionate feeling on W’kkai. Friends of the Eye were ready with a small kzin corvette. Its captain requested—and was given—the mission to shadow the new ghostship. His cargo of human slaves were first tranquilized (while sleeping) and each administered a sealed suppository of nerve gas. They were drugged with the metabolic retardants Grraf-Nig had developed during those long gone days when an adequate supply of man-beast experimental animals were coming to him from the Wunderland orphanages. Suspended, the slaves were stored in their specialized container and smuggled to the spaceport.
To Grraf-Nig’s immense relief, the enterprise went smoothly. There was no wild chase by Si-Kish’s elite units. Hwass was a superb organizer—just as he boasted—a hunter who could pass silently over twigs in the driest of summers. Even the transfer from W’kkai corvette to UNSN flea was a model of smooth cooperation. Only the mistrust made it uncomfortable. Grraf-Nig, allergic to prisons, was outraged at their prisoner status. Hwass, who had been caged before by Major Yankee Clandeboye, delighted in his associate’s discomfort. He knew how to use the formidable weaponry afforded by the Mocking Tense of the Hero’s Tongue. A murderous Grraf-Nig decided that it was fortunate for Hwass that there were two cages.
They were in no danger. As arranged by Hwass, they were allowed a “dead-kzin” switch; the death of a kzin would trigger the explosive death of the slaves. It amused Grraf-Nig that Hwass hadn’t counted on a “dead-man” switch rigged by the efficient Captain Jay Mazzetta. If any of the slaves died, the UNSN’s kzinti guests would be administered a lethal injection. Grraf-Nig wiggled his ears in slow fan-like waves, which was his own way of retaliatory mocking. The gesture plainly said, “I told you so!”—Hwass’s original plan to take over the UNSN’s vessel would not have worked.
It was a tense journey. Three humans; two kzin; seven sleeping slaves. It lasted forty-five days. The time wasn’t altogether unproductive. Yankee taught his kzinti gin rummy. Since they had no common currency, the winnings were paid off in ethnic jokes. The Hero’s Tongue is the richest language for insults in Known Space and so the caged ratcats never ran out of monkey putdowns. Translated into butchered English, the odor of the jokes was sanitized but at the same time turned into a bizarrely hilarious travesty of which the kzin could not be aware.
Hwass enjoyed showing off his knowledge of man-beast history “Iss German monkey self-named Hitler-Führer. Iss think to win thousand-year victory on Jewish slaves by mustache and salute.” Hwass imitated Hitler with a black finger under the nose of his muzzle and an outstretched furry arm. His German accent was atrocious, the point of his story incomprehensible. Still, Yankee and Jay and Beany cracked up in helpless laughter. Hitler-Führer had his Germans by the tens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, and then by the millions marching off into the stupidest of monkey adventures imaginable.
The kzinti, in turn, taught their simian chauffeurs how to play a pentagonal card game called tournament which they were convinced no mere animal could master because no money or lies exchanged hands, only honor. The Heroes became very good at gin rummy. The humans never won a single game of tournament. They had to listen to much humor at their expense.
When it was Grraf-Nig turn to tell an ethnic joke he was more impressed by human technical stupidity than by their sorry history. He loved simple observations about the intelligence of man-females. Once he had observed, he said, a blond woman (one of his experimental animals) repair an electrical appliance. She carefully joined the severed power-source wires, input to input, output to output. She pressed the input and output wires together because she didn’t like lumps. Then, because she knew about insulation, she wrapped everything in tape until no copper was showing. She plugged it in. Grraf-Nig imitated the female scream that followed the explosive vaporization of copper. His ears flapped at the jolly memory.
Yankee and Jay and Beany enjoyed Grraf-Nig’s blond “manrret” jokes but they didn’t really find his admiral-monkey jokes very funny at all. The jibes were impossibly unfair—human admirals were always jumping into battle without doing their homework, or drinking kzin piss out of bottles labeled as boosterspice, or seducing young lieutenants.
The terms of reception at Kzin had been coordinated by hyperwave and electromagnetic haggling. Grraf-Nig set the strategy, Hwass the tactic. Hwass cleverly suggested to the incorrigibly naive monkeys, and the UNSN accepted, a protocol that might sound friendly to a human but would inevitably sound hostile to a kzin. It was a protocol evolved over thousands of years of interstellar squabbling to settle disputes between rival Conquest Commanders of different star systems. After an exchange of prisoners—the exchange more desired by one side than the other—the carriers were expected to admit wrongdoing in the Dominated Tense—or accept a boarding party and a fight to the death.
Hwass knew, and Grraf-Nig conceded, that this particular protocol would make no sense to the Heroes of Kzin—the UNSN was enemy not rival, animal not warrior. But the elite warriors of Kzin were the best in the Patriarchy. They would smell the wind while listening to the words—and know what the protocol was telling them across the light-years. A boarding party would be hidden in the Heroes’ exchange ship, ready for Hwass to command when he was no longer a prisoner.
The barter was carried out in Kzin space with the efficiency of a demolition team disassembling a time-bomb. Kzinsun was the brightest star in the sky Kzinhome invisible in its glare. Kzin’s great gas giant Hgrall was brilliant by reflected light, but to find it a kzin had to know where it was against the backdrop of the Fanged God’s constellations. Grraf-Nig was in a state of fear he hadn’t felt since his failed escape from W’kkai. The tiny craft shuttling between warships was too small, too vulnerable. These critical moments after the disarming of the “dead-hand” switches were the most dangerous. He could smell his own fear inside his suit.