Man-Kzin Wars IX, Larry Niven [leveled readers TXT] 📗

Then he saw two or three humans in the first and second ranks of the troop were carrying half-concealed strakakkers. So it would be suicidal. Well, that made little difference where honour was concerned.

He dug his hind claws into the dirt, ready to scream and leap. They sensed his poise—humans of the third generation of the occupation of Wunderland tended to be able to read kzin body language—and became still. One human at the rear, who had been holding up something on a pole, lowered it very quickly, too quickly even for Raargh-Sergeant to be quite sure what it was in the smoke-filled air. Then Jorg moved and the human growling began again.

The monkey priest ("abbot" was the human word though like many human words easier to visualize than pronounce), whom he knew and had played games with, was speaking to them, ordering them to disperse. As far as Raargh-Sergeant could gather, he was telling them to let things take their course, and not let violence now imperil the cease-fire or cause more humans to be killed.

"Do you think I am a collaborator?" he was shouting. He had thrown back his dusty cloak to reveal some sort of ceremonial costume beneath, hung with monkey ornaments. "No! And well you should not! But I place these under my protection now!"

"You have no power!" shouted one human.

"I do not believe your memory is so short, your gratitude so small, that you do not remember what the monastery and my brothers did for you so recently. You took its protection for yourselves willingly enough a little while ago. I extend its protection, and mine, to these, I say!"

That evidently had some effect. Two other humans began to jabber urgently with the one who had shouted. He finally made a head-nodding gesture. There was silence again for a few moments. Then the troop began to disperse. "We'll be back!" shouted one. Raargh-Sergeant felt his dignity demanded he ignore the whole event. He walked to the abbot and Jorg as casually as the state of his legs would allow, aware of human eyes watching them from the shanties and alleyways. His spine crawled as he waited for the blast of a strakakker. But "Cease-fire," Hroarh-Captain had said. Where was Hroarh-Captain now?

"Things are getting uglier," said Jorg. It seemed an odd statement to Raargh-Sergeant, to whom no humans were beautiful. "Things are starting to break up fast."

"Time," said the abbot, "time may let tempers cool. It would hardly help to lose either of you now."

"They could have gone for you, too," said Jorg. "Whatever you did for them in the past—and I think I know more of that than I should!"

"I was aware of that," said the abbot. He turned to Raargh-Sergeant and made a gesture that was somehow an acknowledgement of respect without being a prostration, not good enough for a few days ago. "Neither of you may know," he went on, "but my predecessor enacted a scene very much like that in reverse, many years ago. Perhaps I had the easier part. But we might do well to get you behind some high walls. The next mob may not be refugees whom the monastery sheltered."

Jorg spoke urgently into his wristcomp as they walked. As they reached the monastery gates, a dun-painted groundcar with the insignia of the human police daubed on it appeared out of the smoke. The human driver got out, handed Jorg the keys and, before anything could be said to him, was gone, pelting off and disappearing down the alley.

"Another loyal servant of the Patriarchy and government," Jorg said, though it seemed to Raargh-Sergeant that his behavior could bear the opposite interpretation. "I'll do a patrol, round up those I can and bring them here. Thanks to you it's probably safer than anywhere else."

"You should be careful," said the abbot.

"I think it's a little too late for that," said Jorg, "and even a collaborator can have a sense of duty."

Three of the twelve humans who had been posted at the gate appeared to have gone, Raargh-Sergeant saw as they approached, but the remainder were still fallen in with weapons. They made the stiff, unnatural movements with them as the three approached which he realized were meant to be salutes. At least some of them did.

"Will you join us?" he asked the abbot. "We could play chesss."

"Thank you, Raargh-Sergeant, but I think I would do better doing what I can to calm things here, while I still have a little credit."

Raargh-Sergeant lashed his tail in puzzlement. He thought he more or less understood the abbot's position in the human hierarchy—the kzin had their own priests although the military tended to respect the old warriors of the Conservor caste rather more. But he did not fully understand the ebb and flow of human authority. The abbot looked too old and frail, even by human standards, to make his authority stick, and he had no weapons, especially now when the human government seemed to be melting away. And how many loyal humans remained at the gatehouse? Nine? Or had another slipped away even in the last few moments?

He reentered the Mess and turned on the strategic tank-display. A specialized idiot savant, it was little more informative than the internet: a few orange patches of kzinti units surrounded by the green of human. But the human-kzin fighting seemed to be almost over.

Tail twitching, he paced and waited, watching the last of the orange lights die one by one, trying to remain coolly alert while closing his ears to the more distant sounds. He erased the Mess records, though they held little in the way of military secrets, and smashed the Mess computer, the only possible military asset in the place.

He passed out the last meat from the refrigeration unit, telling the others to make sure that the larger bones went into the excrement turbines. A last luxury, he thought, and better disposed of before the monkeys see it.

He heard a vehicle in the parade ground