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

of the terms Hunt Master was using for the kz'zeerekti have a color of affection about them, the kind a kzintosh in benign mood might use for his naughty kittens. You may have noticed Warrgh-Churrg had some stuffed kz'zeerekti specimens as well as heads mounted on his walls?"

"I could hardly help noticing. I didn't get a close look, though."

"Probably beasts considered noble—hard to kill, or somehow courageous Ya nar Kzinti. Further, I gather there's occasionally something like a tacit, informal truce between kzinti and kz'zeerekti. You'd probably die if you bet your life on it, but I gather from Hunt Master there are times when both species are a little less aggressive toward each other. That's the liver of what puzzles me: Toleration is not a kzinti trait. We conserve species, and we know dead slaves fetch no food and work no factories, but we don't stand any nonsense.

"The mechanics of it I don't understand. And I may be wrong anyway. It's hard to interpret the nuances of body language and ear twitches in a strange culture."

"You say the kzinti don't want a lot of Kzrral because it's got a lousy climate. Surely with modern engineering they could change a lot of the climate, or build large-scale habitats?"

"At this stage it's not worth the effort and expense, not with the present population, and land for all the nobility. Most of those on the hunt had only partial names, indicating there isn't much difficulty in becoming at least a modest landowner. Kzinti government and administration are pretty sketchy on any planet. We don't like paying taxes, and without a lot of slave labor we're not much good at large-scale cooperative projects except war—and you've shown us we could be a lot better at that.

"As a matter of fact," he went on, "since we've begun to study what Vaemar once described as 'those strange Human disciplines'—economics and economic history—we've come to realize many of our wars weren't for hunting territory, or perhaps even glory, but to acquire slaves to pay our taxes for us. Thanks to the Jotoki giving us the gravity drive, we got into space without ever realizing little things like the fact that slavery creates unemployment—and is inefficient to boot. Once we defeated the Jotoki, we nearly exterminated each other because we saw the universe as a glorious prey we could simply drag down and feast upon. If we'd understood economics and administration better, I don't know if you'd have beaten us, hyperdrive or not. . . . One of history's many ironies: None of our enemies came as close to destroying us as the Jotoki did, simply by giving us high technology and powerful weapons so we never had to develop an intellectual or scientific culture. . . . There, how's that for a human thought?"

"Human thought?"

"We Wunderkzin are taught to think like humans. We've had a tradition of good teachers, including Dimity Carmody herself. But there's something else: I'm a kdaptist and a Wunderkzin whose family have been in close contact with humans—and not as conquerors—for several generations. We are the least aggressive, least xenophobic, kzinti that there are: We know we are not typical. Perpetua . . . ?"

"Yes?"

"You understand, don't you, that I am not a telepath?"

"Of course! I would never dream of thinking of you as such a thing!"

"It is just that, although I am no telepath, my ziirgrah sense is a little more highly developed than that of an average kzintosh."

"My friend, I accept that you are no telepath. I am glad of all the senses the God gave you."

"It is an embarrassment to me. Nonetheless, I cannot ignore its input. There was more going on at the hunt than there seemed.

"It took me a little while to realize how these kzinti are not typical in several ways. I can see all the reasons they tolerate the presence of wild humans or kz'zeerekti or whatever they are on their planet—they all look good and sensible reasons to me, but when you remember this is a kzinti planet, with a kzinti culture, it smells odd somehow." He knotted his ears in thought. "Small things. Even the way Warrgh-Churrg lay on the fooch."

"The couch?"

"Yes. Kzintoshi normally rest on them after the hunt, when relaxing in hunting preserves, and in the company of members of their own pride, but not as a rule indoors and in front of strange kzintoshi. It makes it a little more difficult to leap up if one has to react to a sudden attack. It's a small thing, but it's part of that slight feeling of oddness. And another thing: The audience chamber was stone, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Red sandstone. The sort of re-creation of Old Kzin I've seen on a dozen kzinti worlds. The sort Sire and I have ourselves at home on Wunderland for that matter. But the floor was different somehow. . . . I know! You should have felt it with your bare hairless feet. The temperature changed! In the audience chamber it was warm." Ears knotted again. "But what can that mean?"

"He doesn't like cold feet?"

"But is it significant? Kzinti distrust too much comfort. We like luxury when we can take it, but are hostile to anything that might soften us. But as I was dodging arrows in the night out there I realized what one of the oddities at the spaceport was. The thing I was puzzling about immediately afterwards and couldn't quite get a fang into. We left footprints in the snow. . . ."

"I remember! I was worried I'd get frostbite! But a slave has to know her place."

"The point is, both when we went to the palace together and when I went to the banquet later, I saw human footprints without kzinti footprints beside them. Coming back to the ship after the banquet I saw one or two human slaves abroad, at night and unsupervised—and they didn't flee at the sight of me. Warrgh-Churrg has human house-slaves. We saw that. But he said almost nothing about it, despite the fact human slaves were the very subject of our conversation, and ostensibly the very