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

"What do you think that helmet is?"

"I need to check our encyclopedia, but—" she called up a picture "—you see the attachment for a crest, the cheek guards, the lobster tail at the back?"

"Lobster! Don't torture me, you tree-swinging sadist! Where will we get lobsters on this damned world!"

"Not a real lobster, you stomach-ruled furball! See the armor of overlapping plates that protects the back of the neck?"

"Yes."

"We had to relearn military history when your ancestors jumped on us." She stabbed with one finger at the picture on the screen. "Do you see?"

"There is a resemblance, I agree . . . 'Roman'? . . . 'Ancient Roman'?"

"What do you think we should do, Ginger?"

"Explore further."

"How easy will that be?"

"I've already paid Hunt Master to let me make a private expedition. I don't know that he actually had the power to permit or prevent me—it's up to Warrgh-Churrg while we're on his land—but it's as well to keep on Hunt Master's good side."

"I know it's an insulting question, and forgive me, but isn't that dangerous?"

"They would call me—to put it politely—a strange kind of kzin if they knew all about me, but I am a kzin for all that, Perpetua. Danger doesn't enter into it. For that matter I'm looking forward to the hunt. You'll never breed that reflex out of us!"

"I'm not one who would want to. I've got to admit life on Wunderland would be duller if some of you furballs hadn't joined us and kept some of your little ways. But, it's partly my own fear I speak from. I don't want you dead on the end of a kz'zeerekti spear. Who wishes a friend to face danger alone?"

"Cheer up! Naturally I shall take my tame monkey with me, as bait and interpreter. I won't be facing it alone!"

"Thanks, furball!"

"Quiet your trembling heart, tree-swinger! This time we will be taking full body armor, sense enhancers and modern weapons. Even Hunt Master could hardly call me a coward for that, venturing deep into kz'zeerekti territory with only my own ape in tow! And we'll be flying, not walking."

"And as another ape once said, 'This is another fine mess you've gotten us into!' I'd be better off going in alone."

"Hunt Master would never stand for it. Nor would Warrgh-Churrg. If he found out, I'd probably be dueled for letting a monkey go loose without permission; and you'd find a very hungry reception committee when and if you returned."

"You won't tell Warrgh-Churrg you're going?"

"I think that is probably not necessary. We'll make it a quick look in and out."

"Won't he be offended?"

"Hard to see exactly why he should be. He's not the only landowner and the kz'zeerekti lands are unoccupied. And I did pay him gold for the hire of the car.

"Anyway, you can learn some of the language. I had Hunt Master teach me all the local kz'zeerekti words he's picked up, and you'll be learning them tonight."

"What's their word for 'sword'?"

Ginger's vocal cords did something difficult. Without microsurgery in his youth it would have been impossible.

"Gladius," said Perpetua. "The Latin hasn't changed much. It's a useful language, though the numeration system is hopeless. It should be possible for us to improve on Hunt Master's vocabulary."

"You recognize it?"

"An old Earth language. English and Wunderlander are full of traces of it. You said that Hunt Master called one by a name?" Perpetua found herself suddenly a little shy of saying such a thing to a kzin. But another feeling was stronger than embarrassment.

"Yes, Marrrkusarrg-tuss."

"Could it have been 'Marcus Augustus'?"

"I suppose so." He passed her a disk and sleeper's headset, standard equipment for absorbing a new language quickly. "But here's the dictionary. Learn."

"Thanks. And you'd better do the same. But I do know some of the words already. . . . I wonder what could have happened?"

V

Their car crossed on low power to the scrub woods on the southern side of the river.

Once out of sight of the kzinti on the northern bank they halted and reconnoitered. The land about seemed still and empty, and they picked no body-heat signatures from large live animals. They waited for a time without result at the scene of the recent fight.

Perpetua changed into the robes which the car's machine shop had made the previous night, worn over light formfitting body armor. Ginger, this time also in armor with modern sense enhancers, scanned the area ceaselessly. Insects buzzed and the air smelled strongly of recent death close by. The kzinti kits' bodies they found had been stripped of gear and lacked ears but were otherwise more or less whole. Now in daylight, they saw many bones old and new littering the area, making it look like the kzinti hunting preserve it was. They closed the car's hatch with relief.

"They haven't been too mutilated," said Perpetua.

"No, that would be too much of a provocation. Grounds for a war of extermination." They flew on over taller trees.

"Look there!" There was a stirring in the vegetation below. A heat sensor began flashing.

"Probably kz'zeerekti. What do you think we should do?"

"Ignore them for the time being. Let them see we're aware of them but not attacking."

"We could drop them food. Show them we're friendly?"

"They'd think it was poisoned. Kzinti aren't friendly."

They flew round the vegetation, seeing movement, slow to the kzin's eyes, fast and fleeting to the human's. Then the car headed south.

There was no obvious or sudden change in the landscape below, and an hour later they were still flying over green-looking country, quite well-grown with trees, even if these were more widely spread.

"I'm surprised the kzinti haven't taken this for themselves," said Perpetua. "It looks fertile enough."

"I'm not so sure," said Ginger. "Or rather I'm sure it isn't. According to the map the coastal hills south of the delta make a rain shadow, and even without them the rainfall would be poor anyway. Those plants that don't have spiny leaves have shiny ones, and they are keeping them turned edge-on to the sun. I'd say they'll have every kind of moisture-conservation mechanism you can