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 München, 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.
A few days later, he and Trooper Number Seven had had the job of checking the slave camp for any forbidden technology or weapons. Much technology for heating and other power for the humans of München had been reduced to steam, sometimes produced by heating water with wood-fired boilers. There were old heaps of ash from some of these about the camp (the ash itself being kept for eventual use in soap making and other surviving low-tech human industries), and to make sure there was nothing hidden in them the kzinti had kicked the larger of these heaps apart. The white-haired human had been there and warned him that one of these was in fact fresh and glowing red and white-hot beneath the surface. Trooper Number Eight had appreciated the warning (which somehow did not reach his companion) and had seen to it after that that the white-haired one received lighter duties.
Later again, in the wait for assignment to combat duty, this slave had nervously presented him with a monkey musical instrument. It was called a “triangle” and this described it well. It was a piece of metal in triangular shape which gave off a musical note when struck.
Trooper Number Eight did not know what a philharmonic orchestra was, or that this slave had once been a musician in the München Philharmonic, but he had kept the triangle and the small mace with which it was struck. He had known it would annoy Sergeant, so had only struck it when he was alone. Striking the triangle and hearing and meditating upon its solitary note was better than thinking about either the past, about the Sire and mother and the home on another world that he knew he would never see again, or about the future.
Eventually a movement order had come. They were going south, they were told, to a rioting jungle where feral humans hid.
It turned out that it was not quite a jungle, but not far off one. They had been added to the garrison of a small post on the edge of a large area of hilly rainforest under a single officer.
Their new assignment—disappointingly unimportant, and without the compensations of servants or amenities and generally inglorious—had increased the ill-temper of the other kzinti, who had expectations of great battles and conquests. There were rumors that the planetary governor was holding back his best troops and weapons for his own purposes. A double-star system with its mineral-rich asteroid belt and what the humans called the Proxima System not far away could add up to a fertile hunting territory in which one of high nobility might nurture ambitions and plans. Earth and its rich belt, as well as other minable planets and the satellites of its gas giants, were but little more than four light-years away—a distance that fell very far short of daunting the heroic race. The governor might plan much.