Man-Kzin Wars XII, Larry Niven [readnow .TXT] 📗

not become me to offer a warrior such as yourself less than a fair price. Two pieces it shall be."

A crescendo of simian and kzinti screams filled the night. Again the whistle and thump of arrows came to the felinoids' ears. There was the roar of kzinti rifles.

"That sounds like their counterattack," Hunt Master said, "as I warned the kits."

"Counterattack? Is that common?"

"The monkeys often have a reserve waiting. They watch and see what they're up against. If it's seasoned warriors they pull back. If it's kits and youngsters they'll wait till they are engrossed in the chase and scattered, then come up. You see a kit who collects kz'zeerekti ears here can feel he's earned them."

"It sounds like a properly organized military culture."

"It is. Well, Trader, how does their potential strike you? Nice house slaves for Kzinhome? Decorous tenders of the Nobility's harems? Would this—" he turned the female over with his foot, its bloody head and slack, splayed limbs flopping and twitching. "—have made a groom for the Patriarch's favorite kzinrett?"

"I suppose it's a matter of catching and training them young, like Jotoki. . . ."

"There!" Hunt Master leapt vertically, claws slashing at something like a huge black starfish in the bushes above.

"Speaking of Jotoki," he remarked, disentangling himself from the pieces, "there was an old rogue. Ready to drop on us. Well, Jotok and monkey meat for all survivors tonight!"

IV

"Seven kz'zeerekti dead at least," said Ginger as he reentered the groundcar and closed the hatch, "and eleven kzinti—though eight were kits on their first hunt, and of course it's important to cull the unfit early. But from the kzinti point of view, not a very successful kill ratio. There might have been more kz'zeerekti dead that the others carried away. But a successful night for Warrgh-Churrg."

"How so?"

"One of the adult kzinti who died was a small landowner. He had an estate that borders on Warrgh-Churrg's and owed him money. Warrgh-Churrg will pick it up without trouble now. Plus the harem, of course, and the kits if he should happen to want them—and the deceased landowner's eldest kit was among the other dead. A fairly easy night's work for Warrgh-Churrg, letting the kz'zeerekti expand his estates for him."

"But a casualty ratio like that? There was nothing like it in the wars, even when human troops were well equipped. How do you account for it?" asked Perpetua. She had kept the car locked in Ginger's absence and herself crouched down inside it, well out of the sight and the attention of the guard—and especially of the furious wounded kzinti as they returned.

"The kzinti sought out the kz'zeerekti on their own ground, as usual, and the kz'zeerekti had well-prepared traps and ambushes—"

"As usual."

"Tactless, Pet. These kz'zeerekti were exceptionally tough with it. And the kits, also as usual, were overexcited, overeager and inexperienced."

"And nobody told them?"

"Hunt Master believes there's no teacher like experience. Between you and me—which is a rather silly phrase in these circumstances—I think Hunt Master had directions to get a few knocked off. With modern life most affluent kzinti households grow up with too many male kits unless they are thinned out one way or another—and this helps thin out the slow and stupid, as well as the overeager who might grow up to be a nuisance by challenging their fathers. It's a rough and ready system, though. Among the kits who survived tonight were some I'd marked down as not the brightest."

"It sounds a pretty unstable society."

"It is, once you come to see it a certain way. Why do you think you humans keep winning wars? One reason my great-grandsire and a few others threw in their lot with humans after the Liberation was because they could see kzinti technology and culture were so grossly out of sync. We're barbarians with high technology, and we're lucky we didn't exterminate ourselves before space travel gave us elbow room.

"Perhaps you understand now something of what I was trying to explain before, about me. We Wunderkzin families are called the ultimate traitors to our species by the Patriarchy, but we believe we carry the best ultimate hope of our species' survival, because we see that hope as encompassing a society where half the male children don't have to be killed in the process of growing up; and where there are other ends in life beyond war and hunting. But I'm getting off the point."

"I don't mind, it's all new to me still. I'm eating it up."

Ginger curled his ears at her briefly, then said, "You omnivores have some disturbing turns of phrase. Anyway, Hunt Master limited the technology they used—with modern weapons and detection equipment it would have been a different story and no hunt at all. The kz'zeerekti were tough for humans, and had resourcefulness and cooperation. And those Jotoki cooperating with them were very aggressive and well trained. They accounted for several of the young kzinti on their own. Also, they're good in trees; I think it was a Jotok that acted to create a diversion in the branches, to draw the hunt away from the human withdrawal. I've not known them to cooperate with another species before, apart from those specially trained by kzinti slave masters."

"Kz'zeerekti on Kzinhome don't speak, do they?"

"Not really. A variety of squeals and grunts. I guess if any evolved speech or intelligence in the past they would have been jumped on pretty quickly."

"And yet these talk?"

"Oh, yes, no doubt about it! Damned cheek, some of it! I heard one of them calling me a—Well, I won't go into that."

"Are they truly human?"

"That's for you to say. They certainly seemed to have the usual number of fingers and toes and nipples and things. I kept some tissue samples when they passed out the monkey meat afterwards, as well as some old bones. Here."

"Thanks. How delightful." Perpetua placed the fragments into an autodoc.

"Somebody's got to do the job. And this—" Ginger produced some different tissue—"is a sample of the local Jotoki. Better analyze that too.

"And there are