Had he been a scion of the aristocracy, such spoiling would have been taken for granted. Further, he would have had the best of combat and physical trainers and a rich diet. As it was, he was sprung from what might possibly be called the lower middle class of kzin society, though with a military heritage which should have given him something to live up to. His Sire's wounds had prevented him giving him personal combat training.
For a time as he grew up he had been very happy. After the normal young male kitten's pursuits of chasing small game, he had come to enjoy playing his Sire's drums and even reading books, a pastime generally thought more suitable for the honorably retired than for a future Hero. Unfortunately, there were other young kzinti, and in the way of kzinti society, with most females the property of the aristocracy, they tended to be brothers and cousins. As an only male kitten he had not been well-equipped for socializing with them, and he had had no relatives with whom to ally.
The odds had been that he would not survive adolescence. Other young kzinti had a keen instinct for spotting and ganging up on such natural victims. The nickname they had given him then, "Thinker," had definite connotations of insult about it which could very, very easily have proven fatal.
He would have enjoyed having a friend, and this would also have made his position safer, but after some observation he had decided that it was not worth the risk of making overtures to anyone and being rejected. He continued his precarious position on the edge of the group of youngsters, camouflaging his constant fear. He worked desperately to stalk the delicate path between over-self-effacement and an overprominence that might be equally fatal without sufficient swinging claw to back it up. Eccentric activities like reading he learned to keep strictly to himself. Sometimes the others enjoyed his drumming, which was a good thing.
However, and fortunately for him, among his contemporaries there had been another, even more of a nonconformist, whose fate he had watched and learned from. He had become fairly adept at joining in the persecution of this one in order to deflect it from himself. By the time this other was dead and his contemporaries were casting about for a replacement, the Patriarch's army had claimed them all.
His juvenile experiences of self-protection had been good preparation for staying alive as a recruit. He had survived military training, and the army disapproved of death duels entered into lightly between troopers upon whose training resources had been expended. He had been, at different times, a toady, a clown, a butt of jokes (very dangerous), and not yet quite a victim, but it had been a near-run thing.
In any case, on the completion of his training period he had been drafted to a new unit where, he reasoned, he might make a fresh start. "You will win glory for the Patriarch!" he and his fellows had been told upon completion of training and the granting of their new rank-titles. They had been marched aboard a heavy transport, placed in hibernation tanks, and shipped to the newly conquered kz’eerkti world of Ka'ashi.
Most of the talks by senior officers emphasized the value not so much of surviving with victory, rewards and honor, but of a Noble Death. The ancient Lord Dragga-Skrull's famous signal before leading his fleet to death and glory against the Jotok in the ancient days of the Glorious Insurrection was frequently quoted: "The Patriarch knows each Hero will kill eights of times before Dying Heroically!" That had been the one-eyed, one-armed, one-eared, noseless Lord High Admiral's final signal to the fleet as he flashed in upon the enemy.
But when they had disembarked on Ka'ashi and had been given their new quarters it appeared that they were not going to be made into new Admiral Dragga-Skrulls just yet. They had a special Hunt on the anniversary of Lord Dragga-Skrull's last battle, but there was plenty of humbler work to be done. They were replacements, and the draft was soon broken up and sent out piecemeal to other units. Trooper Number Eight did not mind this particularly. Further, his new rank-title was much safer than "Thinker."
Unfortunately for Trooper Number Eight he had made a bad start with his new platoon. On his first day he had failed to recognize and salute the sergeant. In other ways, too, he had soon shown that he was less than a perfect soldier. He had lost or spoiled pieces of his issued equipment. He had endured punishments and learned to dread the prospect of worse punishments. The sergeant was a tough veteran, scarred from battles and with a number of kzinti and human ears on his earring. Of course no one in the new draft had been so suicidally tactless as to ask him what had happened, that he should have found himself put in charge of a second-line unit in a humdrum post. It soon became obvious to all that Sergeant was not one to cross.
After a time the new troopers came to understand that Ka'ashi was not quite as conquered as they had been told. Bands of feral kz’eerkti were still resisting the Patriarchy, and, unlike the kz’eerkti on Kzinhome and elsewhere, they had weapons. The other troopers, when they learned this, had been exhilarated by prospects of battle and glory. Some spoke of promotion, estates, mates-names even!-of their own. Trooper Number Eight joined cautiously in this talk because he had learned that staying alive depended upon joining in, but his liver had no enthusiasm of its own.
They had seen no fighting while they formed part of the general garrison pool held in one of the big infantry bases near the human city of Munchen, areas of which had now been rebuilt as kzinti government and administrative headquarters. He had not been branded a coward, but neither had he distinguished himself by heroic blood-lust and savagery.
The kz’eerkti-or as he gradually came to think of them, the human-slaves assigned to the platoon at the base had taken to approaching Trooper Number Eight for their orders.
In two ways this had been a bad sign-the others in the platoon might pick up that the humans sensed he was a less ferocious warrior, and this would help to fatally mark him out. It also confirmed his status as the lowliest of them. But on the other hand, it gave him a confirmed position of a sort, a stable one below which it would be difficult to sink.
Further, it was a job none of the other kzin would have deigned to accept, and were glad to leave to him, provided, of course, that he did it so as to leave them no cause for complaint. He had a chance to make himself useful, if not publicly appreciated.
The consequences of doing the job badly would be disastrous, and it had become plain to him that to be effective he would have to learn the slaves' patois "language." He had set out to do so.
All kzinti had a rudimentary ability to feel something of their prey's state of mind, should they care to exercise it. It had evolved, presumably, as an aid in hunting in caves, tall grass, or other places where, for prey, hiding was easy. However, because in a few cases it could be developed into the despised gift of the telepaths (and also because in some cases it was reported to have led to a contemptible empathy for members of various prey and slave races), normal kzinti were ashamed of it and disdained to use it. Trooper Number Eight, who knew he needed all the advantages he could acquire to survive, had not only used it, but had exerted himself, furtively, to develop it. In his dealings with slaves it had stood him in good stead. It had also made learning the language much easier.
Indeed it had been true that the slaves apparently realized that he was not like Sergeant or the other troops. He had never killed any of them. Once when a clumsy, white-haired slave had spilled food over him just before he had been due to go on parade, he had not punished it.
A few nights after that incident, Corporal and some of the other troopers who had drawn irksome duties had decided to work off their bad temper with monkey meat following a group hunt for a few slaves. Slaves, or at least trained ones, had some value of course, and they would have to provoke an incident, even a runaway attempt, but that would not be at all difficult. Trooper Number Eight had heard their talk. It would, he had thought then, be a waste of his action in deciding to let the white-haired slave live intact if it was included among the hunted. He had sought out the white-haired slave and quietly told it to make itself scarce for a while. He had suggested it and its mate clean and check the inside cabins of the officers' cars, a duty in which they would be out of sight.