Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

BOUND FOR THE PROMISED LAND

Bobcat swaggered through the seedy Orange District of Canyon like a bloody victorious warrior. If his tail hadn’t been blown off in that Fanged God’s anus of a planet, Wunderland, it’d be swishing around proudly. This current intelligence-gathering campaign had yielded very little data of military value. Two domesticated kzintoshi had been appointed to the City Council as representatives of the burgeoning kzin population. Of slightly more interest, those two kzinti had suggested they open up the site of the stasis-enshrined Heroes buried beneath set magma, to tourism. Bobcat’s ears quivered and his stumpy tail darted around cheerfully as he imagined the Patriarchy attempting to free these savage warriors while on a guided tour of the lava fields, but he knew that was a bit farfetched.

More disturbingly, he had sensed another telepath, a human ARM Agent, poking around the fringes of his mind. They had chased each other through the white caves of thought, a monkey holding onto a tiger’s tail. The tiger was caught, but if the monkey let go, the tiger would snap it up. Little did the agent know that this particular tiger had no tail! Bobcat locked down and moved away. He hadn’t sensed her presence in quite a while.

Now he simply enjoyed the brisk walk. Despite the pointlessness of this specific mission, he loved Canyon. Something about this hostile planet, with its cratered and scarred auburn surface, spoke to him on a cellular level. Old, desolate Warhead had found a new life, as if the monumental disintegrator wound had become infected with glittering architectural encrustations, creating a strange human-kzin amalgam society. Sometimes in the still void between stars, he toyed with the dream of someday retiring to Canyon. That was not likely. He understood that he would be worked until his synapses sizzled and nothing remained but a drooling kshat. He only regretted that every time he visited this world he so admired, he betrayed it. Telepaths were by nature poetic; they relied too much on imagery and metaphor to process the intangible world of the mind, so the irony was not altogether lost on Bobcat.

He pushed the thought out of his head and continued to walk through the bright lights and salty smells of the old seaside district that predated the vertical urban sprawl. As Devourer of Monkeys’ Telepath, he was permitted a modicum of liberty, he had been Yearrl-Captain’s faithful servant since before the captain had a partial Name and his covert missions on other human-kzin worlds had made Yearrl rich and admired throughout the Patriarchy. There was a saying aboard the Devourer: when Yearrl bathes in blood, we all get splattered; and, in truth, as kzintoshi went, Yearrl-Captain was what humans would call a decent fellow. His Captain obliged him a few hours of leave after the operation, so Bobcat held his scruffy chin high, as if admiring the lavish balconies and clinging structures rising up the sheer cliff walls, and let the thoughts of the tall, spindly Canyonites wash over him in tune to the sound of the sea’s lazy surf. Where the true warriors on his ship saw an old, mangy half-kzintosh, humans saw a leaner, meaner version of their nightmares. His long-battered ego always appreciated these jaunts.

Bobcat stopped at an old kzin building made up in garish detail to look like an ancient human sanctuary. The flashing sign above the entrance read TEMPLE OF SEKHMET in Interworld. Inside, the walls were covered with vertical lines of primitive pictorial script and vulgar murals of stiff angular humans prostrating themselves before a kzinrett with the hairless body of a human female. Bobcat assumed the artist had never laid eyes on a true kzinrett as this representation had round, furry ears.

The smell of sex hung in the air like mist and young nameless warriors lurked about the lobby avoiding eye contact with each other. His ears twitched as he met Iggy Larsson, the large, barrel-shaped human in charge of this outfit. If you considered your average human to be a monkey, Larsson was a silverback gorilla.

“Bobcat!” The human flashed him a lascivious smile full of blunt, plant-crunching teeth, “We got some new merchandise brought over from Kzin itself!”

“Foliage must quake in terror at the sight of those incisors,” Bobcat snarled acidly.

Larsson slapped his back in a rude show of familiarity and the kzin’s ears fell flat on his head, then rose slowly with well-practiced restrained ire. He clamped down his mind, not wanting to sully it with what passed for Larsson’s thoughts. “Before you do your thing, I need to show you something I think Yearrl-Captain would be very interested in.”

A slow clicking noise in Bobcat’s throat began to announce his growing frustration, but he allowed the corpulent human to lead him into a small room housing a single orange female and a small, utterly black kit still suckling. All the frayed fur on Bobcat’s wiry frame flattened in horror. “I thought you euthanized all kittens born here?”

“Oh we do, except for a few females to replenish our stock, but something is different about this dusky little runt. At first, I thought it was the shock of his color. I’ve never seen a melanistic kzin before, but I just can’t bring myself to put it down. I wanted to know if it’s got some telepathic juju mucking with my brain. That’s where you come in.”

Larsson harshly grabbed the measly kitten by the scruff of his neck and lifted him up for the kzin’s inspection. The dull female made no attempt to rip the human’s arm off, so Bobcat guessed she was sedated. The telepath grudgingly loosened his mental grip and permitted a swift sweep of the kit. A low-grade telepathic cry emanated from this tiny nugget of neutron star, repeating the same reflexive message like an emergency distress beacon: protect me. Care for me. Love me.

Bobcat tore himself away and walked out of the cramped, suffocating room, “Yes, he’s got telepathic potential.”

“I knew it!” Larsson absently tossed the kitten back at his mother.

Bobcat’s nostrils flared and the long-denied scent of estrous pheromones entered his body, grounding him in the material world. He tried to control his arousal in front of the leering human. “I’m going to do now what I came here to do!” he roared as his mind went blank.

The old telepath bounded like a fresh kitten down the hall and into a gaudy room unsuccessfully made up to look like a palatial harem chamber. He pounced on the three females anxiously pacing the room. Something buried deep in the back of his mind understood that these little freedoms allowed him by Yearrl-Captain were as much a part of his imprisonment as his addiction to the sthondat drug. At the moment though, he didn’t care.

Hours of painful clawing and biting ensued, but he savagely took each of the kzinretti like a hot-blooded warrior conquers planets. No, whole systems!

When the females were all soundly vanquished, Bobcat lay on the large fur-covered waterbed surrounded by the sweaty bodies of the females. The bed gently rocked back and forth with the rhythm of their panting. He thought lazily of the kitten and its primal, drilling petition. He imagined the kit all grown up: a drug-sick wraith aboard some ship, pitch black as a tear in the hull. The crew would not be able to ignore him as they do the rest of us. Their hatred would be sharper. I should kill him now, he thought. First Telepath should have killed me in the crèche instead of training me. The tight hold on his mind slowly melted away with the drowsy warmth of the kzinretti and the swirling sthondat drug still in his system. He brushed against three distinctly female, quietly desperate minds filled with thoughts he found all too familiar.

Bobcat leapt out of bed, ears erect, small numb of a tail thrashing and he glared at the complex females like a trapped animal. “You’re sentient?” he whispered in the Heroes’ Tongue.

No answer. They only clustered around themselves for protection. Cautiously, he walked over to the small case buried in the clothes he had carelessly strewn about the room, took out a syringe and pushed the intimate needle into the crook of his arm. The hit was instantaneous. Tentatively, he scanned their thoughts again and noticed they were thinking neither in the Heroes’ Tongue nor in the limited females’ tongue. They spoke a sort of primitive cousin of the Heroes’ Tongue. A more precise scan revealed that they were taken from a remote, underdeveloped region of Kzinhome. He felt their longing for a dense blond jungle nestled between majestic mountains. The priesthood that cultivated meekness in females had never tampered with their bloodline.

After decades of mastering the humans’ monotonous grunts, he easily learned the rich and rumbling tongue clearly birthed by a kzin larynx, “Can you understand me?” he asked. He knew metaphysically that they could, but he still disbelieved it.

Fear and hope flared in them like a triple star system cascading into a super nova. The psychic blast charred his soul into a black silhouette. He desperately tried to shield himself from the torrent of their minds. Most telepaths are weakened by their rampant empathy, but Bobcat had learned early on to shut his mind like a clenched jaw. It was a trick that allowed him to do some of the more hands-on jobs of his career as Devourer’s Telepath, but now he was paying it back with interest. He profoundly understood their oppression; after all, was he not a despised slave himself?

After a short time one of them, the gorgeous golden one, Raxa, unaccustomed to speaking out loud, hissed, “Yes.”

“Will you help us?” another female, with blue crystalline eyes, Xast, growled pleadingly, and for the first time in his long and miserable life, Bobcat saw himself as they saw him, not as cripple or a man-eater, but as a Hero.

His knees buckled and he collapsed onto all fours. “I will,” he spat and braced himself for another annihilating wave of hope.

Bobcat fled the emotional singularity created by the psychic kitten and cogent females. Larsson yelled out to him, “I took the liberty of calling Yearrl-Captain and he wants that kitten, said he’ll transfer payment when it’s on his ship.”

Bobcat hurried down the street. His mind whirled. He needed to ground himself, sink his teeth into something warm and bloody, something solid. He noticed another old kzinti building, dots and commas above the doorway read SERENGETI: AUTHENTIC EARTH GAME. Hunger welled up as the effects of his last shot of sthondat extract slowly drained from his system. He would never be allowed in the public hunting park, so he ducked inside the eatery.

The place was deserted except for two local kzintoshi hunched over the gleaming red carcass of an animal no longer recognizable. Bobcat entered a feeding stall and punched up something called a zebra.

Escape was the only option. Take the kitten and the sentient kzinretti and go. There was only one place in all the universe a tattered old telepath with his stolen harem could go. He had grown up with the legends. He needed help of course. Bobcat used the ebbing traces of his telepathic power and unlocked all the remaining blocks and compartments he had so meticulously put up around his mind. It was easy after the onslaught at the Temple of Sekhmet.

He instantly caught an image of the ARM Agent who had been tracking him, a dark young woman, though of course, youth could be deceptive with these humans. She wore the blue uniform of Canyon police, but her true employers were the UN back in the Sol system. Her hair and eyes were black streaked with violet, a cosmetic allusion to her flatlander past. She was all muscle, with enough body fat to make her absolutely delicious. He sent her an image of Serengeti and asked her to join him for dinner. Then, he sat and meditated on his predicament.

Varsha Khan entered the restaurant and the metallic tang of blood and wet extraterrestrial fur hit her like a slap. She breathed through her mouth and surveyed the room. A smaller kzintosh with russet, black-spotted fur and large erect ears like the junk sails on ancient Chinese boats waved her over. Varsha approached cautiously. He had ruffs of longer hair on his cheeks ending in two points on either side of his chin. She also noticed he was more ragged than most kzintoshi, like a shabby old alley cat.

“You opened up on purpose. Is this some kind of trap?”

“Not at all, Agent Khan. We’re both talented telepaths and I’m pressed for time. Allow me to get right to the point. Right here on Canyon, sentient kzinretti are being held as sex slaves.”

“That’s absurd,” but as she spoke, a faint, guarded mental transmission passed from Bobcat to Varsha and she knew it was true.

A young man with a gaunt face and sunken eyes led a small striped horse into the stall and quickly left. “Ah, so this is a zebra,” Bobcat licked his muzzle with a broad pink tongue and proceeded to chaw down on its neck with bone-crushing force. The pitiful animal hee-hawed in terrible pain. Varsha dodged kicking hoofs, then the beast went still.

She suppressed a sudden surge of terror and revulsion and said, “I don’t think that’s an actual zebra, probably a genetically modified donkey.”

Bobcat didn’t look up as he lacerated a large chunk of dripping scarlet meat and threw it back whole.

“How do you know about this?” she continued.

“I partake of their services.” His face was all sticky and red.

Despite her businesslike demeanor, she arched a curious eyebrow, “I thought telepaths weren’t allowed to breed?”

“No, not breed, but my captain allows me to ch’rowl until my heart’s content.”

“And what, some of you macho kzintoshi have a fetish for exotic sapient females? Not in proper harems, of course, but you can ch’rowl them in brothels, huh?”

“I don’t believe those responsible know they are sentient. The kzinretti are quite scared and reluctant to talk, and even if they did, they don’t speak the Heroes’ Tongue or Interworld.” He rent another heavy mass of equine muscle, and Varsha’s skin crawled at the sound of striped flesh ripping.

“Wait. I caught that thought! You want me to believe that this is a human operation?”

“It is. Humans are an enterprising ape. They’ve learned to take advantage of this odd situation of coexistence with kzinti, and a sort of cottage industry has sprung up, catering to our gruesome needs.” He pointed to the drain at the center of the stall’s tiled floor as if that explained everything. “As a matter of fact, Serengeti is also a human establishment. Who else would come up with the idea of a restaurant that brings you a live animal, allows you to ravage it, hoses you down, and then is ready to serve the next famished kzin in less than an hour?”

“That’s barbaric.”

Bobcat caught the waves of nausea and denial rippling through the agent, and he decided that her smooth and supple youth wasn’t a product of boosterspice. His ears twitched like the pectoral fins of a Fafnir flying fish.

“You think kzinti are the only barbarians in known space? Do not fool yourself, Agent Khan. We’ve had four glorious wars and you’ve won every one of them. We are currently sitting at the bottom of a planetwide scar etched by one of your claws of mass destruction. I believe the veneer of civility has long been cast off. You have soundly beaten us, and as consolation, you offer us whorehouses and fast-food restaurants.”

Varsha knew he was right. The wars had changed humanity, just as much as they had changed kzinti. Now, each species met somewhere in the muddy middle. She composed herself rather quickly and said, almost in the Menacing Tense, “Did you invite me here to mess with me? To gloat?”

“No, Agent Khan. I need your assistance.” The kzin was covered in blood, and a bloated, banded cadaver lay bare on the floor.

“My assistance? What makes you think I’m not going to arrest you right now for espionage? Remember, I was tracking you before all this tanj prostitution affair came up. I know you’ve been selling information to the Patriarchy.”

“I am just a simple tool. Would you arrest the listening device or the listener? If you help me, I can open up further and reveal the full extent of my spying on at least three worlds, as well as some colorful sabotage and an assassination.” He let a trickle of information pass between them and her large, lilac eyes widened into saucers. “If you play your cards right and use your clever little monkey tricks to help me, you might even arrest Yearrl-Captain himself.”

“Why now? It doesn’t make any sense!”

“I’m a strung-out old telepath on his last hunt and I’ve just had something of an epiphany. I know now that what I’ve done is wrong.”

The dribble of thought continued between them, and she knew he was lying about his guilt. He was quite proud, in fact. It was the closest this drug-addled kzin had come to feeling like a true warrior, but some kind of revelation had shaken him recently. Varsha caught a flash of a small, sickly kitten, black as night with aquamarine eyes, and three trapped and desolate kzinretti.

“What do you want of me?”

“Transport. I need you to pull some ARM strings and get me a ship so I can get off this fractured rock.”

“Where will you go? Fafnir? Wunderland?”

“No, those are regular scratching posts along Devourer’s prowl. Yearrl-Captain will have ample connections and resources to hunt me down.”

“Then where the tanj else can a sthondat-juice junkie and his freemother females hide in the universe?”

The predatory speed with which Bobcat slammed Varsha against the blood-splashed wall made her heart stop. “That will be the last time you refer to my harem in such a disrespectful manner. We did not choose our horrid circumstances.” The words came out hot with the stench of the fresh kill on his breath.

“I’m sorry. I really am.” Varsha immediately regretted her remark, not because she could feel the prickling of reaperlike claws pressed against her jugular, but because she had touched the kzinretti’s awesome heartache through the tiny telepathic feed.

Bobcat released her. “Will you assist me? All I have is one hour. By then, Yearrl-Captain expects me to be onboard the Devourer with the kit. When I don’t show up, he’ll immediately send Heroes down to fetch me.”

Varsha realized that that infinitesimal filament of thought running from this creature’s soul to hers had given her a taste of its bleak perspective and that of the females and even the poor shade of a kitten. She understood that, like it or not, she was becoming invested, which is precisely why she severed the connection. “I’m sorry. I guarantee you that we will investigate this prostitution ring, but I cannot under any circumstances help a spy escape. All I can give you is the assurance that I will not impede you in any way.”

Varsha turned and left the gory feeding stall before Bobcat could even process her rebuff. She thought she caught a glimpse of his lips peeling back exposing rows of deadly, ivory-colored teeth, a black hole where a three-inch canine should’ve been.

Rage erupted from Bobcat in the form of an explosive roar as Varsha Khan exited the restaurant. The female monkey had outright betrayed him. He had been so sure she would help. He had felt her pity, her genuine concern. After all these years, how little he understood these honorless kz’eerkt! He pounded the wash button in the stall and let the boiling water cleanse the blood and fury off of him.

Bobcat hastily made his way back to the bordello. He didn’t stop to appreciate the dazzling human civilization scrambling up the crag. He had no plan and he was entirely alone. He had two doses of the psychoactive steroid left and he needed to conserve at least one of them. He stopped suddenly at the foyer of the so-called temple and urinated on a faux stone column. The immature warriors mulling about the lobby caught a whiff of Bobcat’s musky kairomone challenge and hurriedly left, not wanting to shame their families by being embroiled in an embarrassing situation.

He ran toward the chamber holding the sentient kzinretti.

“Did you think that monkeys bold enough to work with warcats don’t hoot and holler at each other whenever there’s danger? I got a call the second your server at Serengeti overheard you murmuring to that cop.” That kchee kz’eerkt, Larsson, blocked his path, brandishing an impressive fifty-year-old gun.

Bobcat slowed a bit, but only a bit. He slashed with a laser-sharp claw across the pimp’s belly, and his stinking innards spilled to the carpet with an audible slosh. Bobcat jumped over the spasming body and stormed the room. The kzinretti were gone. He sniffed the air and caught their distinct spice not far off. He launched himself out of the cheap harem chamber.

Bobcat found them toward the back of the building as four of Larsson’s gorilla goons were trying to wrestle them out to the alley and into a waiting airtruck. He charged. One of the wretched apes lifted a beam pistol and shot a straight red lance of light through his shoulder. Pure, blazing agony dropped Bobcat onto the filthy alley floor. The females instinctively, viciously took note and mauled their captors with such contempt that Bobcat caught sobering pangs of it despite not being on the drug. He picked himself up, screamed and leapt onto the gun-monkey, ripping out his throat (and a better part of his shoulder), exposing clean white vertebrae.

“Yara, Xast, go back and get the simple kzinrett and her black kit!” he spat in their native tongue. They hesitated for an instant, not wanting to reenter their prison, but a fast moment later, they sprang back inside. “Raxa, prepare the cargo compartment of the truck for our escape.”

Bobcat took the hypodermic from its case and plunged it into his arm. The familiar rush of extrasensory force exploded from his brain. He tracked and gulped down the necessary knowledge to fly the human vehicle from a shredded and dying human. He also knew that Larsson had already reported his treachery to Yearrl-Captain. He had less than an hour.

The two intelligent kzinretti came out escorting the dazed mother, Tirran, and her little bundle of mewling dark matter. Without question, the group jumped into the airtruck and shut the door. Bobcat shoved himself into the cramped driver’s seat as electric pain spread from the burnt hole in his shoulder across his body. He blocked it, like he’d blocked other people’s pain, and released the brake. The airtruck rocketed out of the alley and over the bottom of the artificial canyon. He flew the tight vehicle made for small primates with reckless abandon, nearly hitting a penthouse terrace as he raced to the spaceport.

Doubt and balconies rushed by as he flew up the nineteen-plus kilometers along the north precipice. He looked across the wide gap to the south cliff and saw shining white structures and rugged, indigenous amarillo moss running up and down its face like gold and silver veins in the rock. He grasped that, one way or another, he would never see this world again.

What did he hope to accomplish? All he had was an insystem shuttle, which was absolutely no match for the might of the Devourer of Monkeys. Where could he take his parody of a pride that would be safe? Another thought struck him: despite her betrayal, Varsha had kept her promise, no police had even attempted to get in his way.

He slowed near the lip of the massive ravine just enough to dip into the airlock tunnel that led to the pressurized portion of the spaceport. Once at the garage, he skidded the truck to a stop. Something was wrong. He sensed no mind (or too few) in this usually busy area of spaceport. Canyon Police must have evacuated this entire zone. He tore the cargo hold’s door open and hastily pulled the females out, absorbing their fear and disorientation.

“Hurry!”

The group ran, huddled in a tight knot of flame-colored fur, down the airtight tarmac toward the waiting shuttle. Bobcat was all too aware that a second shuttle, from the bowels of Devourer, had just touched down nearby. His mind was so completely focused on the coming Heroes, that the sight of Canyon law enforcement officers surrounding, no, dismantling his ship nearly floored him. The Canyonites looked like cobalt-uniformed social insects carrying away components of his ship in single file.

His keen sense of smell and even keener telepathy discerned the presence of five fully-armed kzinti warriors before he even saw them pouring out of a passage that led back to their ship parked on the surface. His phantom tail lashed furiously. He was trapped.

“You will die, Nameless Traitor!” shouted Remover-of-Obstacles of the Devourer’s elite boarding squad. The black-swathed, orange warrior dwarfed the injured telepath.

“I have a Name!” Bobcat bared his teeth and dug in his hind claws, preparing to die fighting single-handedly and finally meet the Fanged God.

Hold your breath, a human voice rang in his mind and compelled his lungs to lock up. The Heroes were upon them. Everything blurred. He choked. His females were suffocating. He heard the distinct clank of a metal container hitting asphalt and then a blast of smoke filled the spaceport’s pressurized terminal.

Don’t breathe; just run to me. Varsha’s spectral voice controlled Bobcat and his harem like holopuppets. They ran, lungs yearning for air, muscles burning for oxygen. After an eternity, they cleared the haze and reached the undercover agent waiting by an old ARM ship. She finally allowed them to suck in air.

“You look like cinnamon-sprinkled shit,” she said without a hint of jest.

“Trap?” he managed to gasp, ignoring the wicked monkey’s verbal feces.

“No. I need you to link with me. Do that bridge thing you kzinti telepaths do,” she said, helping Tirran and her kit.

“Nwarrkaa Kishri Zaaarll?” he coughed. “How do you know of the Double Bridge of Demons?” Was she trying to help him? These monkeys lied too easily.

“We had a kzinti telepath as a consultant during the wars. Do you think you’re the first to defect?”

“No, of course not.” In fact, he bet his life on it. “That is a permanent mental structure. We would be inextricably bound forever!”

“Does it have to be lasting and demonic? How about a telepathic pontoon bridge?” She sent him an image of a temporary military bridge. “Quickly now! You didn’t give me the hour you promised and I need to explain the situation. Anything less than the speed of thought would be dangerously slow.”

They both opened up to each other, much more so than the small bond they had shared back in the restaurant. Their minds bled together, but they took great care not to lose themselves in the experience. “They were listening to us at the restaurant! They were prepared,” Bobcat said with the speed of a neuron firing.

“Of course they were listening to us. That’s why I made it a point to refuse you out loud. I didn’t want them to know you had ARM help.”

“I thought you had abandoned us!”

“Sorry, I didn’t think you were going to leap into the whorehouse and kill everyone!”

“I’m a kzintosh. What else did you expect?” Bobcat looked back and saw Devourer’s Heroes writhing and purring on the tarmac like lunatics, frantically licking and scratching the pavement. “What did you do to them, some kind of nerve agent?”

Varsha laughed. “Nah, we tossed a Catnip Canister at them, made of a powerful strain of genetically engineered zheerekti plant. Canyon Police has been experimenting with non-lethal violence deterrents to break up the regular death-duels that spontaneously erupt.”

She led them up the gangplank and into a chaotic ARM ship. Canyon medics gently ushered his nervous females toward the coldsleep caskets. “This is the I Love Lucy. I had our techs cannibalize your shuttle and moved over a kzinti autodoc and autokitchen. They’re in the process of installing your command console to this ship so you can pilot it.”

Bobcat looked around at the blue-garbed officers working with haste on the small ship and was entirely unimpressed. “Thank you,” he said politely, sinking into the command chair. Fussy medics descended upon him, hooking tubes and cables from the autodoc to his long-abused body. The acute pain of the wound dulled.

Varsha instantly felt his dismay and added, “Trust me, this is all part of my cunning monkey plan. There is another ship exactly like this one primed to take off in minutes. These old ships are hardened against invasive kzinti scans. Yearrl-Captain won’t know which one to pounce on and he won’t act within Canyon space, anyway. They’ll respect the Covenant of 2505.”

Bobcat noticed his orange female being put under the freezer. “Bring me the kit!” he howled at the medics while trying to get up from the chair, but pain and pushy doctors held him down. “When I tell him of our fight for freedom, I want to say he sat right here on the bridge!” A tall, reluctant female medic handed him the tiny ebon kitten. Bobcat thought with great shock that this was the first time he’d ever held a kit.

“That only gives me a fifty-fifty chance. Those aren’t wonderful odds.”

Varsha rapidly checked the tech’s work. These local kids are good, she thought and turned back to Bobcat, “Can’t you telepathically nudge Yearrl-Captain toward the Sun Wukong, like I did with you during the gas attack?”

“I cannot. Will you help?”

“Hmmm, that complicates things a bit, but I’ll think of something.”

“I can guide you through his mind, but I cannot deposit any thoughts.”

“Anyway, I should mention that we’re not going to give you an incredibly expensive hyperdrive ship. ARM isn’t a charity and no amount of telepathic manipulation on my part will change that. The faster-than-light section of the ship will separate from the crew subdivision once it has reached its destination and return to its point of origin, leaving you to navigate the system with a fusion drive alone.”

“Despite my many considerable talents, piloting in hyperspace is not one of them.”

“I thought of that. The I Love Lucy is a coldsleep troop transfer ship; you just punch in the target location, go to sleep, and it wakes you up when you get there. Are you going to tell me where you’re going? I’ve been trying to pick it from your brain since the restaurant and all I’m getting is a vague idea that alludes to something like the Promised Land.”

“What do you know about the Angel’s Pencil?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

He sensed her ignorance. “Angel’s Pencil was part of the first wave of human colonization about two hundred years ago. It had the misfortune of running into two kzinti warships and plunging deeper into Patriarchy space. Somehow, this slow and antiquated vessel managed to destroy the two ships. Then it disappears. Its ion trail goes cold, but no debris was ever found. The Dripping Crimson Saber was sent to investigate the wreckage of the Gutting Claw, and it found a defiant message from the Gutting Claw’s Telepath to its Captain recorded on the ship’s surviving backup computer.

“On the surface, it was a tirade of insults and challenges and a clear declaration of treason. The telepath had sided with the humans and escaped. The official Patriarchy statement was that the Angel’s Pencil and its weak telepath ally were obliterated beyond any detectable trace. The techs however deduced that they cut off the Angel’s messy fusion drive and were then towed by the captured kzin barge using its faster and untraceable gravity-engine to another location. The Dripping Crimson Saber’s Telepath also perceived a hidden vibrational message embedded within the recording. It said, Brother Telepaths, an opportunity presented itself and I pounced. I have taken a harem and I will earn a Name. I challenge you to join me.

“Over the years this account has become legend, Agent Khan. Their secret location has grown into some kind of mythical sanctuary for our kind, although I don’t know of any telepath that has heeded the call.”

“Because they don’t know the exact location! You don’t know that these humans didn’t just shoot this telepath in the head the second they were clear of the Patriarchy.”

“Come now, Agent Khan, you know as well as I do that these humans went against their instincts and helped Gutting Claw’s Telepath just as you are helping me now.”

“You still don’t know where you’re going!” She felt that all of this had been for nothing. She should have probed deeper into his desperate delusional mind. When had kzinti become the dreamers and humans the cold realists?

“I have a spoor of a theory. Telepaths have a penchant for the symbolic. If Gutting Claw’s Telepath wanted us to follow him as his message suggests, he’d give us an emblematic sign post. If he towed them, he certainly had some say in their destination. I believe they went to 46 Leonis Minoris.”

“The lesser lion, the eunuch?” She grasped the archaic human imagery from his mind.

“Are feeble telepaths not lesser lions? Unable to breed, are we not eunuchs?” He flushed with emotion.

Varsha sensed that these blasphemous ideas had been percolating within him for a long time. She also had to admit that they carried a sort of mystical logic; the reasoning of a drug-crazed telepath.

One of the fresh-faced medics that a second ago had waved diagnostic instruments around the kzinretti, now approached and broke the spell, bringing them back to the slow pace of the material plane. “Two of the yellow females are pregnant. I suggest they go into coldsleep before takeoff. I’d hate for them to get jostled around.”

This rolled over Bobcat like a sudden storm. The concept of being a sire was so remote, so impossible, that the actual fact rocked him. Varsha felt squalls of equal parts joy and fear crashing down on him.

She turned to the expecting females and spoke in the closest approximation of their proto-Heroes’ Tongue her vocal cords allowed, “First, let me just say it’s an honor to finally meet intelligent kzinretti, and congratulations, you’re going to be mothers.” She gently stroked their cheeks, then turned to Bobcat and said in the same language so the females could understand, “Well done, champ!”

He said nothing for a while as his own personal paradigm shifted toward the paternal. “We have to get out of here,” he rumbled at last.

“Right. The Sun Wukong is taking off in three minutes, and I want the I Love Lucy to be ready to launch right along with it,” she barked, and all the techs ended their last-minute fretting.

Bobcat placed a massive paw on Varsha’s shoulder. “Thank you, Agent Khan. I give you my word that I will name my first female kitten after you.”

She smiled warmly. “You know, I’ve been giving some thought as to why kzinti telepaths are born scrawny.”

“Enlighten me.” His spotted, rust-colored fur bristled at the mention of such a delicate subject. He removed his paw from her shoulder.

Varsha continued enthusiastically, “I believe there’s a battle for nourishment in the kzinrett’s womb, between the kzin body, which is a high-maintenance, calorie-hogging machine, and a telepath’s developing brain, which also demands more energy than most. Inevitably, the brain wins out at the cost of a fully developed body.”

“An interesting theory,” he spit between gritted teeth. He turned to see his two mothers-to-be being tenderly placed in freezer caskets.

“Don’t you see? If you took better care of your females and perhaps gave them specially formulated prenatal vitamins, you could have big, strong killer telepaths!”

Bobcat’s lips pulled back and flashed her the obscene stiletto teeth Varsha had briefly glimpsed back in the kzin restaurant. His ears fluttered like pink moth wings.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Relax, Agent Khan; sometimes a smile is just a smile. That’s quite a brilliant and rather obvious observation.” He wondered if the Patriarchy suppressed such knowledge.

“Thanks.” She walked out and down the walkway clapping her hands. “Alright, grease monkeys, time’s up! Everybody out!”

Alone on the bridge, Bobcat took out his last remaining shot of sthondat lymph extract and delicately placed it on the console. He felt the insubstantial ball of soot on his lap stir and look up at him with big, powerful blue-green eyes.

“You need a crèche name, little one. Fortunately, your mother was too stupefied to give you one, so the Honor falls on me,” he said appraising the kit as if it were a fine, olden trophy belonging to a great Hero. Neither Interworld nor the Heroes’ Tongue seemed appropriate now that they were leaving known space.

The kitten yawned, revealing needle point teeth and a small curled tongue. “A very casual attitude in the face of danger.” Bobcat’s ears flicked and he wondered if the painkillers from the autodoc were making him silly. “Then you shall be called Jarri, until such time as you earn a Hero’s Name. It means valiant in the exotic language of your new den mothers.”

He gave the sleepy kit a reassuring lick between the ears. “I give you my word, on what little Honor I have, that you will not be dragged into a life of slavery and never feel the sting of animal poison in your veins.”

The two war-era ships lifted off the autumnal, pockmarked surface of Canyon with perfect synchronization and into the waiting maw of the immense, spherical ship. The kzin ship’s armored hull plating shone like polished copper and did nothing, patiently waiting like a hunter in the bush. Bobcat entered the coordinates for 46 Leonis Minoris into the kzin computer recklessly rigged to the ARM dashboard. He sent a silent prayer to the cruel Fanged God that he reward his audacity with better territory. Then, he leaned back in the command chair and meditated on the rapidly shrinking planet.

“How’s the shoulder?” Varsha asked, entering the small bridge.

“You didn’t have to stay.” He had known that she would before she closed the ship’s airlock behind her staff.

“Of course I did. You can’t get into Yearrl-Captain’s head, and I can’t do it all the way from Canyon. Besides, you haven’t given me all the valuable intel you promised and my superiors would be livid otherwise.”

He dumped a heavy load of memories into the human’s mind. It felt good somehow to be relieved of his glorious past.

Varsha faltered for an instant, all the death and mayhem wrought by Devourer of Monkeys…because of Bobcat, gross violations of the Covenants of Shasht. She placed the weighty information in a sealed compartment of her mind and steadied herself. No room for doubts anymore.

“Will you be reprimanded for allowing me to escape?” Bobcat and Varsha were still linked by the provisional psychic bridge.

“Nah, think of it as extreme witness protection.”

As the two identical ARM vessels coasted along their parallel trajectories, he tried to imagine the infuriated Yearrl-Captain pacing the control deck of his ship, mulling over which prey to leap upon. “I cannot reach Yearrl-Captain! He’s skirting the limits of my telepathic reach!” Bobcat moved to tear out all the tubes and lines from the autodoc. “This machine is already scrubbing the sthondat fluid from my system!”

“Calm down.” She placed a soothing hand on his trembling shoulder. “You’ve crept in Yearrl-Captain’s inner mind many times. Show me a layout of his psyche from memory.”

The sleek and sterile command center of their ship faded around them. Varsha and Bobcat, with Jarri cradled in his good arm, stood on an ethereal bluff overlooking the wide tangerine savannah of Yearrl-Captain’s most primitive hindbrain. The illusion was so palpable that Varsha could taste the acidic aroma of the svelte rising in the morning heat. Two glowing moons hung low on the horizon, like the eyes of the Fanged God skulking behind the curve of the world. A pair of lumbering alien herbivores plodded along on their own ancient migration. A faint rustle in the grass hinted at a concealed killer.

“Wait a minute, those beasts are us! Is this how Yearrl-Captain sees the situation?” The level of detail astounded her. She had to remind herself this was a reconstruction and not Yearrl’s actual mind.

“Only subconsciously, Agent Kahn. As you see, the captain is too far and well hidden for direct manipulation.”

“Trust me. You’ve spent your entire career trying to block out other minds. Me? I’m an expert at this.” She studied the primordial scene much as her own simian ancestors might have.

Bobcat got visceral insight into human thinking. Where kzin brains evolved from the low, direct vantage point of the ground, humans took in the bigger picture. He also instantly recognized the Australopithecine meaning behind the name of their small ark.

“Okay, Yearrl might be beyond telepathic tampering, but he’s not above manipulation. The captain of the Sun Wukong is close enough to mess with.”

“I don’t follow…You wish to sway an ally into attacking a kzinti warship? That’s madness!”

“No, the Sun Wukong’s captain is already nervous. I can use that to push him to speed up just a bit. Get his ship away from the constraining mass of p Eridani and into the safety of hyperspace.” Varsha stroked the part of Captain Garcia’s mind that informed his forebears to hide from Iberian cave lions during the last glacial maximum.

One of the elephantine creatures began a light, anxious trot and at once an almost imperceptible crackle in the grass moved in closer toward it. Sensing danger, the dumb animal picked up its pace.

“They’re feeding off each other!”

“Exactly. Yearrl-Captain’s primal instincts are telling him that the animal that shows fear is the weaker prey. His logic is telling him that the ship that’s trying to run must harbor the fugitive. The closer he gets, the more Sun Wukong reacts.”

The prehistoric scene melted away and Bobcat was still hooked up to the beeping medical machine. The little kit curled up in his lap. Varsha pointed to the display showing the Devourer of Monkeys gravitating toward the Sun Wukong, which was now ahead of them by many AU and entering the system’s heliopause.

I Love Lucy’s own hyperspace shutters began to slide across all windows. Before the stars were completely blotted out, they saw the Sun Wukong, followed by the Devourer, wink out of Einsteinian space. Bobcat and Varsha simultaneously exhaled. Soon after, they felt their own ship slip into hyperspace.

She patted his good shoulder, where her hand had comfortably rested the entire time, then let the pontoon bridge collapse between them. “Alright, the chief engineer’s ice box is over in the second half of this ship near the hyperdrive. I’m going to sleep now before our rapport does become permanent and demonic.” She smiled slyly. “What’re you going to do when you get to where you’re going?”

“Thrust this last dose of sthondat drug into my arm and give a telepathic cry for help like no other. A planet of telepaths, even latent ones, won’t be able to ignore it.”

Unless they’ve been reduced to inbred idiots by two hundred years of isolation, she thought, but kept it to herself. Instead she picked up the slumbering kit. “Here, I’ll put this little warrior to bed next to his mother.”

“Why don’t you join us? You make a truly worthy companion.” He tried to turn, but the autodoc numbed his entire left side.

“I lack your faith. Besides, I’ve always wanted to retire on Canyon. That’s why I telepathically maneuvered my boss back on Earth to transfer me.”

He leaned back in his command chair. “Treat it better than I did.”

She left Bobcat to heal.