Man-Kzin Wars XIV (27 page)

“He only dreamed of places now and the lions on the beach.

They played like young cats in the dusk

and he loved them as he loved the boy.”

—Ernest Hemingway,

The Old Man and the Sea

“THERE ARE MONSTERS
beneath the surface,” Daneel Guthlac said to the kit standing next to him at the edge of a cliff overlooking the roiling Kcheemic Ocean. Gliding toothy pteranobats, which infested many of the marine cliffs of Sheathclaws, skimmed over the water with long snouts in frothy waves, ready to snap up their prey. Occasionally, a large creature would burst out of the sea and catch one of the flyers. “When I said we were going to bag the biggest, meanest beast in all of Sheathclaws, I meant it.”

“What do you mean?” The kitten’s fur flattened, his naked tail curved between his legs in the presence of the infinite, crashing water. Ashamed of his display of fear, he forced his tail to relax.

“See that town down there?” Dan pointed toward a collection of houses at the bottom of the cliff, where surf met rock in battle. The houses were painted bright orange to fill some deep-seated psychological need and stood on stilts to defend against sudden storm surges. “These kzinti have learned to live off the sea.”

“I told all my créche mates I would bring back a wombadon! When I come back with fish, they’re going to tear me apart!”

Dan scratched the kit’s scruffy neck and felt the welts of his mate’s teeth beneath the fur. Schro was about the size of an average adult human, which meant he was small for his age, an inheritance of his biological Sire, and the older kzin kittens got, the crueler and more aggressive they became. On any other kzin world, the puny kit would’ve been killed. On Sheathclaws, he was merely the target of vicious bullying. Dan sent him a telepathic flash of his own days in the créche: a small monkey surrounded by violent, broad-pawed kittens. The human boy quickly learned to toughen up and use all his cunning to survive. “Trust me, son. When we return to Shrawl’ta, those little bastards will fear and respect you.”

Schro’s ears receded incredulously. He didn’t know which he feared more: the terrible sea, or his peers.

Dan and Schro crunched down the slope onto the rocky shore. Tall kzinti with saffron pelts watched their descent with reserved interest. Only a ragged kzintosh, whose fur had grown out patchy after severe burns had stripped him of most of his flesh, left one of the square, long-legged buildings and headed their way. The local leader.

“Chief Programmer?” Dan called from a safe distance.

The kzin slowed his advance and approached less urgently. He was massive, three heads taller than Dan, with fierce and undefeated eyes. “I haven’t been Chief Programmer in a long time, human.” He glowered at the odd pair, an unruly man with long, sandy hair and close-cropped beard, and a soft runt of a kitten. “Daneel Guthlac?”

“Correct, and this is my son, Schro.”

The old Hero breathed in the kit. Dan sensed that he found the scent familiar and unpleasant. Dan instinctively touched his sidearm, but the kzin decided it was only the stink of monkey clinging to the kit’s spotted fur. “I call myself Fraaf’kur now, and this is my territory, Krazári.”

Sea-lion?
Dan got a blaze of immense pride attached to the kzintosh’s current name and opted not to correct his assumptions of what a sea lion actually was. Instead he asked, “Krazári means something like Ocean Master in the Heroes’ Tongue, right?”

“Yes, those two words had been mutually exclusive until kzinti settled on Shasht, my home planet.”

“And now you have an entirely new ocean to tame here on Sheathclaws. I envy you.”

The kzin’s ragged fur puffed up pompously, but he said nothing, unsure if the human was genuinely envious or only mocking him.

“Fraaf’kur,” Dan stifled a smile, “we want to book passage on your boat. We heard you were the only kzintosh in all of Raoneer that could take us fishing.”

“My get could also take you and your adopted kit out on the sea,” he emphasized the word “adopted” with a hint of disgust. “The longnecks are plentiful this season and make impressive trophies.”

“I was thinking we could go a little higher on the food chain.” Dan flashed him a wicked smile that made Fraaf’kur’s ears flatten. Dan wanted the Hero to understand that behind the blunt, ape grin was a kzintosh’s soul waiting to pounce. “Ketosaurs hunt longnecks. If one is plentiful, the other couldn’t be too far behind.”

Schro’s eyes widened at the mention of the sea monster. Dan could tell the kit was wondering if his father was mad enough to try to catch one of those. The kit searched their telepathic rapport and learned that, in fact, he was. It filled him with confidence.

“I could take you to them and show you how to hunt them, but they are much too large. We’d never get one back here to eat or mount. It would be a wasted kill.”

“A simple engineering problem I think I can fix.”

Fraaf’kur made a low clicking sound with his throat, but Dan could sense the grudging respect the kzin was developing for this bold human. Dan also knew Schro was picking it up with his heightened
ziirgrah
and that pleased him more than impressing this old dock cat.

“Very well. We will make preparations in my cabin.”

“Does my son have permission to explore Krazári? He’s never seen a kzin fishing town before.”

“Yes, but don’t stray too far; pteranobats have carried off and devoured a few of my get in the past.”

“Stay close and stay sharp,” Dan instructed his son.

The kit dashed away and disappeared between house stilts.

Dan followed Fraaf’kur into the house he’d come out of. It was nice. It looked like the seaside cabins of Harp, but designed with kzin comfort in mind. The swan-like skeleton of a longneck hung from the ceiling. When the door shut, the kzin turned to Dan and asked, “Are you really here for the ketosaurus or for the humans skulking around on the island a few kilometers off the coast from here?”

“The fishing trip is real. The créche is not an easy place for a small kit with a monkey father. Having the skull of a ketosaurus for show-and-tell will boost his chances of survival. That said, our good friend the Apex did suggest I check out the island while I’m here, and you don’t turn down the Apex.”

“How did you end up with the kit?” the kzin asked finally.

“I was married and divorced with no human kits of my own. She cited my obsessive work on the
Righteous Manslaughter
’s hyperdrive as the cause for leaving me. All of a sudden, I found myself alone and with nothing to show for all my hard work . . . I had killed his Sire in combat, and since my family has a history of rearing kzin kits, I took him as my own.”

Fraaf’kur sniffed the air as if he found the whole matter distasteful.

“How did you end up out here?” Dan asked. “I thought the Apex had set you up in Shrawl’ta when he saved you and what was left of your shipmates from the
Manslaughter
.”

The kzin silently worked the controls of an old holoset for a while, then said, “I tried to live there. When the Apex offered me two females of my own and prestigious work in his Hall, I was glad for it, but as I learned more of Sheathclaws—its founding by a treacherous telepath and its
laissez
-
faire
attitude toward
kz’eerekti
, I was revolted with the entire system and with myself for being a part of it. I came here and tried to recreate my life on Shasht before the war.

“My get may be proud of their one drop of Shadow’s blood, and they may mewl to the Maned God, but
I’ve
instilled in them a love of the sea and they chose to settle here in Krazári. I’m proud to say they’ve made names for themselves out in these waters. Our pride trades seafood to Shrawl’ta.”

A staticky hologram of the coast sprang from the holoset, and Fraaf’kur stopped talking. Dan could see a clump of rock out in the middle of the ocean, as if a piece of the same cliff he had descended had been torn off and tossed into the sea. Another image replaced the aerial view, this one a close-up of the isle itself. It was bare of everything except a few humans and a flock of pteranobats. “These are the images I’ve taken of the island. For the most part, they ignore my boat. The humans are clearly from the nation of Angel’s Tome.”

Of course, they are,
Dan thought
, most humans on Sheathclaws resided on the human-controlled part of the continent, Angel’s Tome.
“From the city-state of Hem,” Dan added out loud, recognizing their white uniforms. “Hem’s got the largest concentration of Rejoiners and they hate me for not delivering your old warship to them so they can end Sheathclaws’ long seclusion and become part of the growing network of human worlds in Known Space.” He continued to watch the shifting images.
Something was off.

“So you think they’re building a launch site?” The kzin asked, scratching the back of his neck, his old wartime training creeping back.

“No, I see no sign of construction. Wait. Are all these images from the same day?”

“No, different days, almost a week in between, why?”

“No one has moved. The lighting changes, the sun rises and falls, the tides come in and withdraw, the pteranobats circle around, but the people never move. You didn’t find this odd?”

Fraaf’kur snorted. “I’m not well versed in primate behavior. You lot always seem to be standing around talking your nonsense.”

“No, this is very strange. We need to find out what’s going on out there.”

“How do you intend to find out?”

“I’m going to need you to purposefully run aground on that island. Then, I’m going to walk up to them and ask for help.”

“You want me to ground my
Nautical
Devastation
?”

“For the Apex, of course. How soon can we go?”

“One of these days, you won’t be able to hide behind your friend, the Apex,” Fraaf’kur rumbled irritably. “We can leave now if you’re ready. You can attempt to take a ketosaurus, and then I can get you to that island.”

“I just need some equipment from my gravcar and we can go.”

Nautical Devastation
, the huge catamaran with a copper-colored sail, had been designed by Chief Programmer to navigate the tumultuous coastlines around Raoneer. Despite the old Hero’s qualms about Sheathclaws, the incongruent blend of advanced kzin technology being applied to such an ancient human vessel was in itself a product of Sheathclaws’ mixed culture. The double-hulled boat pitched and yawed rhythmically in heaving waves enlarged by the planet’s weaker gravity. Dan wondered if kzin ever got seasick.

“We’re nearing the beasts’ territory!” shouted Fraaf’kur. “We’ll cut through it on the way to the island. Our opponent hunts by sound, so I’m transmitting the cries of a wounded longneck into the water.”

Dan nodded, but watched his son. The kit had been crackling with nervous energy ever since they’d cast out. He was a thin, orange smear against the vast ocean; his juvenile spots on the verge of elongating into the stripes of an adult. In a year or two, Schro would no longer be a kit,
his
kit—
kzin grow up so fast
—and there was so much he wanted to tell him: about his past, his genetic Sire, about his potential, but he feared losing him.
Better to wait until he’s older, more sure of himself.
Now, he wanted to simply appreciate these moments with his savage little son.

Too bad the mysterious island nagged at him, with its immobile humans standing among the surf and rocks as the scenery changed around them. Dan could now see the outline of the island on the horizon, and all his instincts told him to run.

“I can’t see or smell anything. I can’t hunt out here!” The kit slammed into Dan, knocking the thoughts out of his mind.

“Relax, Schro, I know you feel vulnerable, surrounded by endless blue, your sharp sense of smell blunted by the salt in the air—”

“I’m not scared!”

“I know you are,” Dan kneaded the plush fur on his son’s shoulder. He could feel his fear like whiplashes across his mind. “Lying about it only makes you careless. I’m telling you it’s okay. Recognize that you’re out of your element, understand that you’re only a small morsel of food in this new ecosystem, and be on guard. You have a more powerful sense that surpasses the merely visual and olfactory. Use your
ziirgrah
. Sweep the waves with it. Be vigilant.”

The kitten dug his claws into the catamaran hull and focused his empathic awareness on the tall and languid waves. Dan did the same, adding to the kit’s range and sharing his perception. It felt like psychic sonar. He was vaguely aware that Chief Programmer—Fraaf’kur—watched them suspiciously from the helm. Dan ignored this and paid attention to his son.

Schro slowly crawled to the bow of the boat, careful not to lose his purchase on the undulating deck. “There’s something out there, father; fish and longnecks and something else, something I’ve sensed before but different. It’s stalking an elderly longneck, keeping to the deeper, colder waters.”

“Fraaf’kur, take us further out in that direction,” Dan shouted, pointing to where his son had indicated. He, too, had caught a mental glimpse of the monster waiting in the depths and, for the first time, doubted his plan with the massive gravbelt would actually work.