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

be in this case, my principals are very security-conscious. Perhaps even overly so. But my alive and physiologically healthy presence in my ship is necessary for it to respond to the activating code words and pattern-recognition logic. Coercing me or using parts of my dead person to gain access would be futile."

"The Patriarch has few hyperdrive ships. We lost most of our ships in the wars, and the accursed UNSN has informed us what their response would be to any large-scale rebuilding program."

"The Patriarch's Admiralty keeps such things for military purposes, and its security is strict. It has, I am sure, a building program for a fleet that will one day enable us, at last, to . . . Urrr. The humans allow us a token fleet, presumably thinking that such a scrap will satisfy us. . . ." His voice trailed off. After the Second War with Men, humans had greatly restricted kzinti access to the hyperdrive again, but any kzintosh knew what the Patriarch's fleet would be looking to do one day.

"However, Dominant and Feared Warrgh-Churrg, if I cannot offer you the technology of the hyperdrive, I can perhaps offer you a profitable trade. On my way here I noticed human slaves in the streets. As other visitors have told me, you have kz'zeerekti on this planet."

"Kz'zeerekti? Yes."

"Like this one?"

"The same sort of thing, yes." Warrgh-Churrg made a negligent, regal gesture with his tail at the sculptures and to one of the floor mosaics, showing somewhat stylized humanoids and other beasts arranged with hunting and leaping kzinti amid fylfots and patterns of battlements and teeth. His tail wave also took in a couple of stuffed specimens bearing another golden bowl and one posed in a fighting crouch with its puny fingers extended and its mouth open to scream. His hall was further adorned with the heads of several species, kzinti among them, but also a fair-sized troop of simians. "Got a few live ones around too." His gesture also took in a live simian in slave's drab peering at them from a distant archway. It turned and fled from sight.

"You hunt them?"

"Oh, the wild ones, yes." Warrgh-Churrg indicated his trophy belt, adorned with a proud showing of dried simian ears along with kzinti ones, taking in as he did so the similar but smaller collections on his guest's belt.

"Are they intelligent?"

"They are trainable, clever like trained Jotoki, but less reliable. Unless caught as infants, they are not trusty slaves. But," he added, "trained up young they can be useful."

"Where do they live? In the forests?"

"Mainly in the south. The forest belt and the hot savannah beyond. Probably also in the badlands."

"Are they common?"

"I have not counted them. I chased them when I was a kit, as my own kits do now, and still I hunt there sometimes when I visit my southern estates. Some southerners hunt them regularly." Warrgh-Churrg's body language indicated that while he was pleased to display the visible signs of affluence in his palace, his interest in the kz'zeerekti habitat was less than overwhelming. His guest adopted a tense-of-polite-request, humble but not too humble.

"Forgive my curiosity, Noble Host and Marquis Warrgh-Churrg, but my interest is professional. How did they get here?"

Warrgh-Churrg shrugged his ears in a dismissive gesture.

"We had Heroes in the first fleet to Ka'ashi. Some may have returned with kz'zeerekti slaves. I had relations among them. And other Heroes came later. Possibly new slaves mixed with the locals . . .

"Some of the landowners want to get rid of them altogether. As slaves, the adult-caught ones are never very reliable. We tried castrating them and removing their teeth and fingernails, but we found that, often enough, that only made them more savage. And, eunuchs being eunuchs everywhere I suppose, they often joined with our own kzinti eunuchs in the harems and elsewhere to plot and spread disloyalty."

"Still, on other worlds human slaves can command a very high price now," Trader told him. "My principals have the resources to buy many if they are suitable—whole troops of them. They would send ships to collect them. They are still popular on Kzinhome."

"Even after the monkeys burnt our fleets and took Ka'ashi back?"

"They took more than Ka'ashi in the First and Second Wars. But exactly. That is a large part of the reason why human slaves are in demand, apart from the sport the best of them can give in the hunt. It reminds us in these unfortunate times that they are not all-conquering, and that times can change. You may have a great source of wealth here."

"I have much wealth already, Trader." Warrgh-Churrg again gestured expansively about the room, heavy with gold, hung with lustrous purple, panels on floors and walls bedizened with intricate stones, their tiles slanted minutely to catch the shifting sunlight in changing pictures and patterns.

"Feared Warrgh-Churrg, that is plain from the magnificence of your abode and of your hospitality. Still, perhaps there are things I can offer . . . with trade between the stars so limited by the cursed kz'zeerekti . . ."

Warrgh-Churrg nodded, his ears and tail twitching thoughtfully.

"Urrr. I will speak to Estate Manager. We will perhaps discuss this later. Now I shall prepare for the entertainment tonight."

"I am looking forward to it. I respectfully seek your leave to return to my ship and prepare on my own account, that my apparel and grooming may be less unworthy of your hospitality."

Trader bent while Warrgh-Churrg sprayed a little urine on him, an archaic lordly gesture signifying to all kzinti that he was the magnate's guest and under his protection. Trader exposed his throat and belly in the equally ancient ritual gesture of submission and Warrgh-Churrg dismissed him with a gracious flick of his tail.

The offworld kzin departed with decorum, striding through the great doors and down the wide snowy street toward the space port, the bowed, shackled human scurrying behind on its lead.

II

The inner door of the airlock closed behind the kzin and the human. Both moved differently as they stepped into the main cabin. The gravity-planer, running with a low, continuous purr, reduced gravity here