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

interested in the behavior of the slave species (the former slave species).

Raargh-Sergeant had attended a couple of Chuut-Riit's lectures on the subject of how valuable, with a few more generations of culling, humans might be. He was on the right track to be interested, he thought, even if, to use a human term, he didn't know the half of it. He remembered something of those lectures now.

Humans, according to Chuut-Riit, had originally hunted in larger groups than had kzin. This both gave them greater social cohesion and meant the greater growth of power diversity. In the Kzinti Empire, power had diversified because, with the slowness of the speed of light, communications took many years. In the Alpha Centauri system humans had diversified more rapidly and spontaneously. Those who lived among the asteroids were in many ways not the same as those on-planet, tending to be descended from space-born stock in the Man-Sun system, and all the humans in this system were different to those who lived on their home-world.

Humans could be the most valuable slaves ever encountered. And yet, Chuut-Riit had said in his last lecture, there were things beyond this: the new kzinti study of humans was indicating secret spoor.

Until the war had disrupted communications between them, the humans of their homeworld had set out to subtly and secretly control and influence the humans of the Ka'ashi System. The UNSN, or Yarooensssn, the Sol-humans' chief space and military force, the simian equivalent of the Patriarch's Navy (only Chuut-Riit could get away with saying there was a simian equivalent to the Patriarch's Navy) was not the ultimate human power.

There was something called Arrum, itself apparently the tool of something else that had no name. There was a system known as konspirruussee, which, Chuut-Riit has said, subtly sought to control not only the monkeys, but might in some way come to threaten the Heroic Race itself. Its invisible tentacles reached far. Individuals on Ka'ashi, kzintosh who had had dealings with humans, had already touched the edges of it . . .

Well, there was meat in all this. It seemed the Ka'ashi humans—the Wunderland humans now—were not the ultimate masters of the situation on this world. The Yarooensssn—it was easier to visualise the symbols UNSN—had some claw upon them. And, it seemed, there might be something else beyond that. . . .

That was, no doubt, what restrained the Jocelyn-human at present and why he and his charges were still alive. The UNSN wanted them.

For what? Slaves? They must know no kzin would live long as a prisoner or live at all as a slave. Interrogation? There were dark stories of monkey tortures and chemicals for any kzin unHeroic enough to be taken alive, but what could sergeants and rankers tell the UNSN that it did not know? Sport in some human Public Hunt? Most of those here were too shot up to run well, though monkeys might like tormenting cripples (well, monkeys who had refused to run in the Hunt had gained nothing from it).

Hostages? The kzin had occasionally taken human hostages when wishing to compel cooperation or the surrender of ferals but for a Hero, a kit of the Fanged God, the fate of a hostage of his own kind would not deflect his feet from the path of Heroism in dealing with an Enemy. A Hero taken hostage would be expected to die like a Hero. . . . They must not know of Chuut-Riit's son!

A darker possibility crossed his mind. Earlier in the war a human female had appeared briefly on television screens promising them roomy cages in the Munchen zoo with a diet of carrots and cabbages to pasture on, should they surrender, but this had apparently been a trick to madden senior officers into losing control and had not been seen for some time. He told himself it was not true. Rather, the UNSN and now Jocelyn had been promising honorable treatment. But which was the lie? Do not think of it. That way leads to madness, to clouded thoughts and inappropriate actions. That had been the subject of another lecture from the Great One: "They learnt early to make us lose control of our emotions. They exploited this ability in the earliest space battles for this system, almost instinctively, before they had seen us. It is a variation of the old story of the kz'eerkti teasing Heroes into frenzy in the forests of Homeworld."

That reminded him of something. He beckoned to the kitten.

"That was a strange thing you did, Vaemar-Riit," he told it.

"I could think of nothing else, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. The man had to be diverted."

Kits of this one's age spent their time chasing their own tails and flutterbys in the meadow grass. "You mean"—he felt stunned for a moment—"that was what you planned?"

"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I wished to scream and leap when she drew weapons but I knew I was too little."

"There was danger. You know she might have shot you where you stood. Or flung the ratchet-knife into you."

"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I knew. But here your life is more important than mine."

"I see . . . You do not need your blazon or your ear tattoos, Vaemar-Riit . . . not for all to see that you are truly Chuut-Riit's son. And here no life is more important than yours. The kzin of Ka'ashi will have need of you." He bent and licked the kitten's head.

Jorg came forward: "Raargh-Sergeant, your pardon, may I speak?"

"Yes. Speak on."

"They demand my life, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps I should go to them. It would save you."

"You would give your life for us?"

"I think I am a dead man one way or another."

"You want your head on a pole like those others?"

"When you are dead, it hardly matters where your head is."

"We think differently. Look at Ptrr-Brunurn. He is honored."

"If I or my kind deserve any Honor, history may honor us."

"I do not understand."

"Passions may cool in a generation or so. They will come to see that we collaborators did what we did partly for them. Yes, for them. Without us to intercede between the mass of humans