Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (54 page)

They both opened up to each other, much more so than the small bond they had shared back in the restaurant. Their minds bled together, but they took great care not to lose themselves in the experience. “They were listening to us at the restaurant! They were prepared,” Bobcat said with the speed of a neuron firing.

“Of course they were listening to us. That’s why I made it a point to refuse you out loud. I didn’t want them to know you had ARM help.”

“I thought you had abandoned us!”

“Sorry, I didn’t think you were going to leap into the whorehouse and kill everyone!”

“I’m a kzintosh. What else did you expect?” Bobcat looked back and saw
Devourer
’s Heroes writhing and purring on the tarmac like lunatics, frantically licking and scratching the pavement. “What did you do to them, some kind of nerve agent?”

Varsha laughed. “Nah, we tossed a Catnip Canister at them, made of a powerful strain of genetically engineered zheerekti plant. Canyon Police has been experimenting with non-lethal violence deterrents to break up the regular death-duels that spontaneously erupt.”

She led them up the gangplank and into a chaotic ARM ship. Canyon medics gently ushered his nervous females toward the coldsleep caskets. “This is the
I Love Lucy
. I had our techs cannibalize your shuttle and moved over a kzinti autodoc and autokitchen. They’re in the process of installing your command console to this ship so you can pilot it.”

Bobcat looked around at the blue-garbed officers working with haste on the snall ship and was entirely unimpressed. “Thank you,” he said politely, sinking into the command chair. Fussy medics descended upon him, hooking tubes and cables from the autodoc to his long-abused body. The acute pain of the wound dulled.

Varsha instantly felt his dismay and added, “Trust me, this is all part of my cunning monkey plan. There is another ship exactly like this one primed to take off in minutes. These old ships are hardened against invasive kzinti scans. Yearrl-Captain won’t know which one to pounce on and he won’t act within Canyon space, anyway. They’ll respect the Covenant of 2505.”

Bobcat noticed his orange female being put under the freezer. “Bring me the kit!” he howled at the medics while trying to get up from the chair, but pain and pushy doctors held him down. “When I tell him of our fight for freedom, I want to say he sat right here on the bridge!” A tall, reluctant female medic handed him the tiny ebon kitten. Bobcat thought with great shock that this was the first time he’d ever held a kit.

“That only gives me a fifty-fifty chance. Those aren’t wonderful odds.”

Varsha rapidly checked the tech’s work
. These local kids are good
, she thought and turned back to Bobcat, “Can’t you telepathically nudge Yearrl-Captain toward the
Sun Wukong
, like I did with you during the gas attack?”

“I cannot. Will you help?”

“Hmmm, that complicates things a bit, but I’ll think of something.”

“I can guide you through his mind, but I cannot deposit any thoughts.”

“Anyway, I should mention that we’re
not
going to give you an incredibly expensive hyperdrive ship. ARM isn’t a charity and no amount of telepathic manipulation on my part will change that. The faster-than-light section of the ship will separate from the crew subdivision once it has reached its destination and return to its point of origin, leaving you to navigate the system with a fusion drive alone.”

“Despite my many considerable talents, piloting in hyperspace is not one of them.”

“I thought of that. The
I Love Lucy
is a coldsleep troop transfer ship; you just punch in the target location, go to sleep, and it wakes you up when you get there. Are you going to tell me where you’re going? I’ve been trying to pick it from your brain since the restaurant and all I’m getting is a vague idea that alludes to something like
the Promised Land
.”

“What do you know about the
Angel’s Pencil
?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

He sensed her ignorance. “
Angel’s Pencil
was part of the first wave of human colonization about two hundred years ago. It had the misfortune of running into two kzinti warships and plunging deeper into Patriarchy space. Somehow, this slow and antiquated vessel managed to destroy the two ships. Then it disappears. Its ion trail goes cold, but no debris was ever found. The
Dripping Crimson Saber
was sent to investigate the wreckage of the
Gutting Claw
, and it found a defiant message from the
Gutting Claw
’s Telepath to its Captain recorded on the ship’s surviving backup computer.

“On the surface, it was a tirade of insults and challenges and a clear declaration of treason. The telepath had sided with the humans and escaped. The official Patriarchy statement was that the
Angel’s Pencil
and its weak telepath ally were obliterated beyond any detectable trace. The techs however deduced that they cut off the
Angel
’s messy fusion drive and were then towed by the captured kzin barge using its faster and untraceable gravity-engine to another location. The
Dripping Crimson Saber
’s Telepath also perceived a hidden vibrational message embedded within the recording. It said,
Brother Telepaths, an opportunity presented itself and I pounced. I have taken a harem and I will earn a Name. I challenge you to join me.

“Over the years this account has become legend, Agent Khan. Their secret location has grown into some kind of mythical sanctuary for our kind, although I don’t know of any telepath that has heeded the call.”

“Because they don’t know the exact location! You don’t know that these humans didn’t just shoot this telepath in the head the second they were clear of the Patriarchy.”

“Come now, Agent Khan, you know as well as I do that these humans went against their instincts and helped
Gutting Claw
’s Telepath just as you are helping me now.”

“You still don’t know where you’re going!” She felt that all of this had been for nothing. She should have probed deeper into his desperate delusional mind.
When had kzinti become the dreamers and humans the cold realists?

“I have a spoor of a theory. Telepaths have a penchant for the symbolic. If
Gutting Claw
’s Telepath wanted us to follow him as his message suggests, he’d give us an emblematic sign post. If he towed them, he certainly had some say in their destination. I believe they went to 46 Leonis Minoris.”

“The lesser lion, the eunuch?” She grasped the archaic
human
imagery from his mind.

“Are feeble telepaths not lesser lions? Unable to breed, are we not eunuchs?” He flushed with emotion.

Varsha sensed that these blasphemous ideas had been percolating within him for a long time. She also had to admit that they carried a sort of mystical logic; the reasoning of a drug-crazed telepath.

One of the fresh-faced medics that a second ago had waved diagnostic instruments around the kzinretti, now approached and broke the spell, bringing them back to the slow pace of the material plane. “Two of the yellow females are pregnant. I suggest they go into coldsleep before takeoff. I’d hate for them to get jostled around.”

This rolled over Bobcat like a sudden storm. The concept of being a sire was so remote, so impossible, that the actual fact rocked him. Varsha felt squalls of equal parts joy and fear crashing down on him.

She turned to the expecting females and spoke in the closest approximation of their proto-Heroes’ Tongue her vocal cords allowed, “First, let me just say it’s an honor to finally meet intelligent kzinretti, and congratulations, you’re going to be mothers.” She gently stroked their cheeks, then turned to Bobcat and said in the same language so the females could understand, “Well done, champ!”

He said nothing for a while as his own personal paradigm shifted toward the paternal. “We have to get out of here,” he rumbled at last.

“Right. The
Sun Wukong
is taking off in three minutes, and I want the
I Love Lucy
to be ready to launch right along with it,” she barked, and all the techs ended their last-minute fretting.

Bobcat placed a massive paw on Varsha’s shoulder. “Thank you, Agent Khan. I give you my word that I will name my first female kitten after you.”

She smiled warmly. “You know, I’ve been giving some thought as to why kzinti telepaths are born scrawny.”

“Enlighten me.” His spotted, rust-colored fur bristled at the mention of such a delicate subject. He removed his paw from her shoulder.

Varsha continued enthusiastically, “I believe there’s a battle for nourishment in the kzinrett’s womb, between the kzin body, which is a high-maintenance, calorie-hogging machine, and a telepath’s developing brain, which also demands more energy than most. Inevitably, the brain wins out at the cost of a fully developed body.”

“An interesting theory,” he spit between gritted teeth. He turned to see his two mothers-to-be being tenderly placed in freezer caskets.

“Don’t you see? If you took better care of your females and perhaps gave them specially formulated prenatal vitamins, you could have big, strong killer telepaths!”

Bobcat’s lips pulled back and flashed her the obscene stiletto teeth Varsha had briefly glimpsed back in the kzin restaurant. His ears fluttered like pink moth wings.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Relax, Agent Khan; sometimes a smile is just a smile. That’s quite a brilliant and rather obvious observation.” He wondered if the Patriarchy suppressed such knowledge.

“Thanks.” She walked out and down the walkway clapping her hands. “Alright, grease monkeys, time’s up! Everybody out!”

Alone on the bridge, Bobcat took out his last remaining shot of
sthondat
lymph extract and delicately placed it on the console. He felt the insubstantial ball of soot on his lap stir and look up at him with big, powerful blue-green eyes.

“You need a crèche name, little one. Fortunately, your mother was too stupefied to give you one, so the Honor falls on me,” he said appraising the kit as if it were a fine, olden trophy belonging to a great Hero. Neither Interworld nor the Heroes’ Tongue seemed appropriate now that they were leaving known space.

The kitten yawned, revealing needle point teeth and a small curled tongue. “A very casual attitude in the face of danger.” Bobcat’s ears flicked and he wondered if the painkillers from the autodoc were making him silly. “Then you shall be called Jarri, until such time as you earn a Hero’s Name. It means
valiant
in the exotic language of your new den mothers.”

He gave the sleepy kit a reassuring lick between the ears. “I give you my word, on what little Honor I have, that you will not be dragged into a life of slavery and never feel the sting of animal poison in your veins.”

* * *

The two war-era ships lifted off the autumnal, pockmarked surface of Canyon with perfect synchronization and into the waiting maw of the immense, spherical ship. The kzin ship’s armored hull plating shone like polished copper and did nothing, patiently waiting like a hunter in the bush. Bobcat entered the coordinates for 46 Leonis Minoris into the kzin computer recklessly rigged to the ARM dashboard. He sent a silent prayer to the cruel Fanged God that he reward his audacity with better territory. Then, he leaned back in the command chair and meditated on the rapidly shrinking planet.

“How’s the shoulder?” Varsha asked, entering the small bridge.

“You didn’t have to stay.” He had known that she would before she closed the ship’s airlock behind her staff.

“Of course I did. You can’t get into Yearrl-Captain’s head, and I can’t do it all the way from Canyon. Besides, you haven’t given me all the valuable intel you promised and my superiors would be livid otherwise.”

He dumped a heavy load of memories into the human’s mind. It felt good somehow to be relieved of his glorious past.

Varsha faltered for an instant, all the death and mayhem wrought by
Devourer of Monkeys
. . . because of Bobcat, gross violations of the Covenants of Shasht. She placed the weighty information in a sealed compartment of her mind and steadied herself. No room for doubts anymore.

“Will you be reprimanded for allowing me to escape?” Bobcat and Varsha were still linked by the provisional psychic bridge.

“Nah, think of it as extreme witness protection.”

As the two identical ARM vessels coasted along their parallel trajectories, he tried to imagine the infuriated Yearrl-Captain pacing the control deck of his ship, mulling over which prey to leap upon. “I cannot reach Yearrl-Captain! He’s skirting the limits of my telepathic reach!” Bobcat moved to tear out all the tubes and lines from the autodoc. “This machine is already scrubbing the
sthondat
fluid from my system!”

“Calm down.” She placed a soothing hand on his trembling shoulder. “You’ve crept in Yearrl-Captain’s inner mind many times. Show me a layout of his psyche from memory.”

The sleek and sterile command center of their ship faded around them. Varsha and Bobcat, with Jarri cradled in his good arm, stood on an ethereal bluff overlooking the wide tangerine savannah of Yearrl-Captain’s most primitive hindbrain. The illusion was so palpable that Varsha could taste the acidic aroma of the svelte rising in the morning heat. Two glowing moons hung low on the horizon, like the eyes of the Fanged God skulking behind the curve of the world. A pair of lumbering alien herbivores plodded along on their own ancient migration. A faint rustle in the grass hinted at a concealed killer.

“Wait a minute, those beasts are us! Is this how Yearrl-Captain sees the situation?”
The level of detail astounded her. She had to remind herself this was a reconstruction and not Yearrl’s actual mind.

“Only subconsciously, Agent Kahn. As you see, the captain is too far and well hidden for direct manipulation.”

“Trust me. You’ve spent your entire career trying to block out other minds. Me? I’m an expert at this.”
She studied the primordial scene much as her own simian ancestors might have.

Bobcat got visceral insight into human thinking. Where kzin brains evolved from the low, direct vantage point of the ground, humans took in the bigger picture. He also instantly recognized the Australopithecine meaning behind the name of their small ark.