Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

the change. He had memories of his previous life, and of the war. Of Heroes and monkeys, of weapons and fighting, which he was soon able to understand. His intelligence had, of course, become very high, though he had been barely sentient before. He did not kill me, but showed me that an alliance against the apes would be in the interest of both our kinds." He lied a moment ago, but he's not lying now, Vaemar thought. Chorth-Captain went on.

"He demonstrated his intelligence to me, and together we modified this craft, and built other things. I contacted Heroes the apes had not corrupted and they too supplied us with knowledge and equipment. We tested his improvements to cloaking devices and they worked. We flew to the southern island undetected and carried out much work there, free from the attention of monkeys or . . . other things. Under his direction we studied what we could of the plight of Ka'ashi. I told him what I knew of space and the war. We agreed the monkeys were the most noxious vermin of the universe . . ."

Dimity caught it vaguely, Vaemar much more clearly. There was a great deal wrong with Chorth-Captain. There was a strange kind of buzzing in his voice. But there was more than that. Most kzinti of the officer class, used to framing orders, did not commonly in such a situation deliver themselves of prolix monologues like this, least of all to monkeys or prisoners. And Vaemar's Ziirgah sense picked up a fuzziness, something off-key, in Chorth-Captain's emotions as well as in his voice and body-language. His brain has been tampered with, thought Vaemar. By the Protector, obviously. The thing that was a brainless Morlock. Rykermann is right. They are a peril indeed.

"Where are we going?"

Chorth-Captain gestured at another screen. Wunderland was a great sphere. Vaemar saw they were already several hundred miles up, and still accelerating. There was no interference from the guardships, manned and automated, that patrolled the space above the planet.

"The Hollow Moon. There we will be undisturbed."

I don't think so, thought Vaemar. Our disappearance will be noted. But then he thought that, thought they might be searched for, there would be no particular reason to include the Hollow Moon in the search, especially if this craft's cloaking was truly good. There would be no reason to think they were in space at all.

Dimity had thought of no way to remind him of the locators.

"Where is the tree-of-life?" asked Dimity.

"Most of it is still in the caves, along with most of the warheads. It is safe. There was a little we took to the Hollow Moon but it is now being used. You will not be exposed to it."

There was something else Dimity and Vaemar could hardly help noticing. Chorth-Captain would hardly be talking to them so frankly if he expected them to live to tell the tale, whatever the Protector said. The Protector may be smarter than most human geniuses, thought Dimity, as, by our IQ tests, are Vaemar and I. But Chorth-Captain sure isn't.

Wunderland continued to shrink on the screen. Now it was a great, multicolored disk in space. The Protector had been sitting calmly in a lotus-position. Its oversized eyes appeared almost dreamy. But both the captives sensed it was absorbing every word. Both knew that in an instant it could spring. After a time it spoke into what appeared to be the mutated descendant of a standard kzin-pattern com-link. When Dimity asked who it was speaking to she was ignored. There were flexible tubes for food and waste-disposal, and human and kzin were evidently expected to use them together, in each other's sight. On Wunderland members of the two species who had ties with one another might sometimes drink together, or eat small delicacies like ice cream, but there were usually powerful taboos beyond more than that. Evidently there had been captives on this vessel before.

Chorth-Captain told them of how he had made contact with a number of the kzinti who had been in Chuut-Riit/Henrietta's Redoubt and escaped or survived its storming. Through them he had begun to build up a knowledge-base for the Protector about Dimity and Vaemar.

The kzinti had been masters of gravity control for millennia—the gravity-planer was their principal space-drive—and normal Wunderland gravity was maintained in the chamber. Chorth-Captain fitted caps on their heads and they slept.

* * *

Leonie, after asking permission and giving certain passwords, landed her car in the courtyard of Vaemar's palace. Patrick Quickenden remained in the car, keeping out of sight as much as possible.

Raargh, Seneschal in charge in Vaemar's absence, greeted her. One of his kittens, folicking in the long grasses nearby, leapt to join his sire, going down into a mock-attacking crouch at the sight of the human. He was about as big as, and somewhat more powerful than, an Earth leopard. Leonie had once beaten such a kitten to death with a metal bar in a prolonged and desperate fight. Her old legs and thighs had borne the scars of that fight for a long time. Rarrgh looked at him, gave a single growl in an unmistakable tense, and the kitten fled.

Twenty-five years earlier Rarrgh and Leonie had seen each other for the first time, across the sights of a beam rifle, as Raargh lay pinned under rocks in a Morlock-infested cave. Each owed the other at least one life. Raargh raised his remaining natural arm and touched her shoulder.

"Got message, urrr!" he said. "Trouble!" He gave a purr of satisfaction and anticipation. He passed Big John the w'tsai of the Seneschal's office, in its ornately-engraved gold and purple sheath. "Care for this, Hero, till I return." He slapped his belt where his own old w'tsai hung. "Urrr!" he repeated, snapping his teeth and flexing his claws.

Chapter 9

"The Hollow Moon," said Chorth-Captain, waking them.

The purring of the gravity-planer had ceased. The panels opened. Chorth-Captain gestured and they followed him out. The Protector came behind them.

Gravity changed abruptly. This