"As a matter of fact," he went on, "since we've begun to study what Vaemar once described as 'those strange Human disciplines'-economics and economic history-we've come to realize many of our wars weren't for hunting territory, or perhaps even glory, but to acquire slaves to pay our taxes for us. Thanks to the Jotoki giving us the gravity drive, we got into space without ever realizing little things like the fact that slavery creates unemployment-and is inefficient to boot. Once we defeated the Jotoki, we nearly exterminated each other because we saw the universe as a glorious prey we could simply drag down and feast upon. If we'd understood economics and administration better, I don't know if you'd have beaten us, hyperdrive or not… One of history's many ironies: None of our enemies came as close to destroying us as the Jotoki did, simply by giving us high technology and powerful weapons so we never had to develop an intellectual or scientific culture… There, how's that for a human thought?"
"Human thought?"
"We Wunderkzin are taught to think like humans. We've had a tradition of good teachers, including Dimity Carmody herself. But there's something else: I'm a Kdaptist and a Wunderkzin whose family have been in close contact with humans-and not as conquerors-for several generations. We are the least aggressive, least xenophobic, kzinti that there are: We know we are not typical. Perpetua…?"
"Yes?"
"You understand, don't you, that I am not a telepath?"
"Of course! I would never dream of thinking of you as such a thing!"
"It is just that, although I am no telepath, my ziirgrah sense is a little more highly developed than that of an average kzintosh."
"My friend, I accept that you are no telepath. I am glad of all the senses the God gave you."
"It is an embarrassment to me. Nonetheless, I cannot ignore its input. There was more going on at the hunt than there seemed.
"It took me a little while to realize how these kzinti are not typical in several ways. I can see all the reasons they tolerate the presence of wild humans or kz’eerkti or whatever they are on their planet-they all look good and sensible reasons to me, but when you remember this is a kzinti planet, with a kzinti culture, it smells odd somehow." He knotted his ears in thought. "Small things. Even the way Warrgh-Churrg lay on the fooch."
"The couch?"
"Yes. Kzintoshi normally rest on them after the hunt, when relaxing in hunting preserves, and in the company of members of their own pride, but not as a rule indoors and in front of strange kzintoshi. It makes it a little more difficult to leap up if one has to react to a sudden attack. It's a small thing, but it's part of that slight feeling of oddness. And another thing: The audience chamber was stone, wasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Red sandstone. The sort of re-creation of Old Kzin I've seen on a dozen kzinti worlds. The sort Sire and I have ourselves at home on Wunderland for that matter. But the floor was different somehow… I know! You should have felt it with your bare hairless feet. The temperature changed! In the audience chamber it was warm." Ears knotted again. "But what can that mean?"
"He doesn't like cold feet?"
"But is it significant? Kzinti distrust too much comfort. We like luxury when we can take it, but are hostile to anything that might soften us. But as I was dodging arrows in the night out there I realized what one of the oddities at the spaceport was. The thing I was puzzling about immediately afterwards and couldn't quite get a fang into. We left footprints in the snow… "
"I remember! I was worried I'd get frostbite! But a slave has to know her place."
"The point is, both when we went to the palace together and when I went to the banquet later, I saw human footprints without kzinti footprints beside them. Coming back to the ship after the banquet I saw one or two human slaves abroad, at night and unsupervised-and they didn't flee at the sight of me. Warrgh-Churrg has human house-slaves. We saw that. But he said almost nothing about it, despite the fact human slaves were the very subject of our conversation, and ostensibly the very point of my visit to this planet. I saw a couple at the banquet, too-they were carrying food and so forth, and I supposed they cleaned up afterwards-but none of the kzinti referred to them.
"Talk about humans as prey animals and sport, yes! Have human trophies on the walls. But to talk about humans as house slaves, as waiters, perhaps as errand-runners, as the cleaners of those trophies-a sort of tacit taboo. That's one of the oddities. Once or twice at the banquet human slaves came bearing meat to me and those near me, and what my ziirgrah picked up from my fellow guests was a faint suggestion of an emotion I've encountered in humans often enough but not with kzintoshi-embarrassment! That's something I've never encountered on a kzinti world before. Have you ever heard of an embarrassed kzin?"
"You're cats. I've never heard of an embarrassed cat of any kind. It's practically a contradiction in terms."
"It's something to bite at. I feel there's meat there."
"Uh-huh." Perpetua was absorbed in her examination of the inscription and the helmet. "I'm certain this was writing. What's more, these characters are derived from West European letters!"
"So they are from Wunderland. Not a convergent native species."
"That's right, but…this language isn't English, or Wunderlander."
"Let me see. If these marks had been linked when new, then the characters…'Nihil…proficiat…inimicus…'" Ginger spelled out the words carefully. Human and kzin shook head and ears in puzzlement. Perpetua turned to the helmet.
"What's this?" She pried at the rusted metal. A flake of something fell into her hand. "It's…paint?"
"Yes. And look at this piece."
"What about it?"
"First of all, those are beads of glass. They have a sense of decoration. More than that, they have a technology for making glass. Glass is difficult. Oh, that's just the beginning. Look at this! Look closely now!"
"How did they do that? They have no smelters."
"Haven't they? Hunt Master took it for granted they have them somewhere."
"We're talking high-temperature metallurgy here, not a few molds in a charcoal fire to make bronze or something-though even that would be significant enough."
"Maybe the Jotoki made it," said Perpetua. "They had high technology. Their gravity motors got as close to the light-barrier as one can get without the hyperdrive shunt." Ginger knotted his ears down in a gesture of puzzlement.
"You've got to train Jotoki young, practically from the time they're tadpoles. Feral Jotoki are feral forever. But human or Jotoki, if they had smelters, even primitive ones, kzinti satellites would detect the smoke plumes-for that matter, since practically all kzinti satellites have military capabilities and military sense enhancers, the heat sources would stick out like the Patriarch's testicles after a battle!"
"You're a kzin. You're allowed to say that?"
"It implies no disrespect, quite the reverse. But setting our cultural differences aside, I have the idea reinforced that these particular monkeys have more to them than meets the eye."
"Did you get any idea how many there are?"
"Hunt Master says there are different troops, and he doesn't know how far south their territory extends. I doubt he's got the means to count them."
"Would someone lend him a satellite?"
"If they were a major threat the high-tech response would be quick enough. As it is, who cares?"
"Could the monkey lands reach the equator? Maybe even into the southern hemisphere?"
"I doubt it. Near the equator it's too hot. The seas nearly boil. But they might extend a long way toward it. You monkeys are adaptable and sometimes tougher than you look."
"This whole situation could pose us problems. We've got the bullion to buy individual unrepatriated slaves from individual owners and the ship to get them home. But this sounds like a much bigger business. It'll mean putting repatriation on an industrial basis."