Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

“There are monsters beneath the surface,” Daneel Guthlac said to the kit standing next to him at the edge of a cliff overlooking the roiling Kcheemic Ocean. Gliding toothy pteranobats, which infested many of the marine cliffs of Sheathclaws, skimmed over the water with long snouts in frothy waves, ready to snap up their prey. Occasionally, a large creature would burst out of the sea and catch one of the flyers. “When I said we were going to bag the biggest, meanest beast in all of Sheathclaws, I meant it.”

“What do you mean?” The kitten’s fur flattened, his naked tail curved between his legs in the presence of the infinite, crashing water. Ashamed of his display of fear, he forced his tail to relax.

“See that town down there?” Dan pointed toward a collection of houses at the bottom of the cliff, where surf met rock in battle. The houses were painted bright orange to fill some deep-seated psychological need and stood on stilts to defend against sudden storm surges. “These kzinti have learned to live off the sea.”

“I told all my crèche mates I would bring back a wombadon! When I come back with fish, they’re going to tear me apart!”

Dan scratched the kit’s scruffy neck and felt the welts of his mate’s teeth beneath the fur. Schro was about the size of an average adult human, which meant he was small for his age, an inheritance of his biological Sire, and the older kzin kittens got, the crueler and more aggressive they became. On any other kzin world, the puny kit would’ve been killed. On Sheathclaws, he was merely the target of vicious bullying. Dan sent him a telepathic flash of his own days in the crèche: a small monkey surrounded by violent, broad-pawed kittens. The human boy quickly learned to toughen up and use all his cunning to survive. “Trust me, son. When we return to Shrawl’ta, those little bastards will fear and respect you.”

Schro’s ears receded incredulously. He didn’t know which he feared more: the terrible sea, or his peers.

Dan and Schro crunched down the slope onto the rocky shore. Tall kzinti with saffron pelts watched their descent with reserved interest. Only a ragged kzintosh, whose fur had grown out patchy after severe burns had stripped him of most of his flesh, left one of the square, long-legged buildings and headed their way. The local leader.

“Chief Programmer?” Dan called from a safe distance.

The kzin slowed his advance and approached less urgently. He was massive, three heads taller than Dan, with fierce and undefeated eyes. “I haven’t been Chief Programmer in a long time, human.” He glowered at the odd pair, an unruly man with long, sandy hair and close-cropped beard, and a soft runt of a kitten. “Daneel Guthlac?”

“Correct, and this is my son, Schro.”

The old Hero breathed in the kit. Dan sensed that he found the scent familiar and unpleasant. Dan instinctively touched his sidearm, but the kzin decided it was only the stink of monkey clinging to the kit’s spotted fur. “I call myself Fraaf’kur now, and this is my territory, Krazári.”

Sea-lion? Dan got a blaze of immense pride attached to the kzintosh’s current name and opted not to correct his assumptions of what a sea lion actually was. Instead he asked, “Krazári means something like Ocean Master in the Heroes’ Tongue, right?”

“Yes, those two words had been mutually exclusive until kzinti settled on Shasht, my home planet.”

“And now you have an entirely new ocean to tame here on Sheathclaws. I envy you.”

The kzin’s ragged fur puffed up pompously, but he said nothing, unsure if the human was genuinely envious or only mocking him.

“Fraaf’kur,” Dan stifled a smile, “we want to book passage on your boat. We heard you were the only kzintosh in all of Raoneer that could take us fishing.”

“My get could also take you and your adopted kit out on the sea,” he emphasized the word “adopted” with a hint of disgust. “The longnecks are plentiful this season and make impressive trophies.”

“I was thinking we could go a little higher on the food chain.” Dan flashed him a wicked smile that made Fraaf’kur’s ears flatten. Dan wanted the Hero to understand that behind the blunt, ape grin was a kzintosh’s soul waiting to pounce. “Ketosaurs hunt longnecks. If one is plentiful, the other couldn’t be too far behind.”

Schro’s eyes widened at the mention of the sea monster. Dan could tell the kit was wondering if his father was mad enough to try to catch one of those. The kit searched their telepathic rapport and learned that, in fact, he was. It filled him with confidence.

“I could take you to them and show you how to hunt them, but they are much too large. We’d never get one back here to eat or mount. It would be a wasted kill.”

“A simple engineering problem I think I can fix.”

Fraaf’kur made a low clicking sound with his throat, but Dan could sense the grudging respect the kzin was developing for this bold human. Dan also knew Schro was picking it up with his heightened ziirgrah and that pleased him more than impressing this old dock cat.

“Very well. We will make preparations in my cabin.”

“Does my son have permission to explore Krazári? He’s never seen a kzin fishing town before.”

“Yes, but don’t stray too far; pteranobats have carried off and devoured a few of my get in the past.”

“Stay close and stay sharp,” Dan instructed his son.

The kit dashed away and disappeared between house stilts.

Dan followed Fraaf’kur into the house he’d come out of. It was nice. It looked like the seaside cabins of Harp, but designed with kzin comfort in mind. The swan-like skeleton of a longneck hung from the ceiling. When the door shut, the kzin turned to Dan and asked, “Are you really here for the ketosaurus or for the humans skulking around on the island a few kilometers off the coast from here?”

“The fishing trip is real. The crèche is not an easy place for a small kit with a monkey father. Having the skull of a ketosaurus for show-and-tell will boost his chances of survival. That said, our good friend the Apex did suggest I check out the island while I’m here, and you don’t turn down the Apex.”

“How did you end up with the kit?” the kzin asked finally.

“I was married and divorced with no human kits of my own. She cited my obsessive work on the Righteous Manslaughter’s hyperdrive as the cause for leaving me. All of a sudden, I found myself alone and with nothing to show for all my hard work…I had killed his Sire in combat, and since my family has a history of rearing kzin kits, I took him as my own.”

Fraaf’kur sniffed the air as if he found the whole matter distasteful.

“How did you end up out here?” Dan asked. “I thought the Apex had set you up in Shrawl’ta when he saved you and what was left of your shipmates from the Manslaughter.”

The kzin silently worked the controls of an old holoset for a while, then said, “I tried to live there. When the Apex offered me two females of my own and prestigious work in his Hall, I was glad for it, but as I learned more of Sheathclaws-its founding by a treacherous telepath and its laissez-faire attitude toward kz’eerekti, I was revolted with the entire system and with myself for being a part of it. I came here and tried to recreate my life on Shasht before the war.

“My get may be proud of their one drop of Shadow’s blood, and they may mewl to the Maned God, but I’ve instilled in them a love of the sea and they chose to settle here in Krazári. I’m proud to say they’ve made names for themselves out in these waters. Our pride trades seafood to Shrawl’ta.”

A staticky hologram of the coast sprang from the holoset, and Fraaf’kur stopped talking. Dan could see a clump of rock out in the middle of the ocean, as if a piece of the same cliff he had descended had been torn off and tossed into the sea. Another image replaced the aerial view, this one a close-up of the isle itself. It was bare of everything except a few humans and a flock of pteranobats. “These are the images I’ve taken of the island. For the most part, they ignore my boat. The humans are clearly from the nation of Angel’s Tome.”

Of course, they are, Dan thought, most humans on Sheathclaws resided on the human-controlled part of the continent, Angel’s Tome. “From the city-state of Hem,” Dan added out loud, recognizing their white uniforms. “Hem’s got the largest concentration of Rejoiners and they hate me for not delivering your old warship to them so they can end Sheathclaws’ long seclusion and become part of the growing network of human worlds in Known Space.” He continued to watch the shifting images. Something was off.

“So you think they’re building a launch site?” The kzin asked, scratching the back of his neck, his old wartime training creeping back.

“No, I see no sign of construction. Wait. Are all these images from the same day?”

“No, different days, almost a week in between, why?”

“No one has moved. The lighting changes, the sun rises and falls, the tides come in and withdraw, the pteranobats circle around, but the people never move. You didn’t find this odd?”

Fraaf’kur snorted. “I’m not well versed in primate behavior. You lot always seem to be standing around talking your nonsense.”

“No, this is very strange. We need to find out what’s going on out there.”

“How do you intend to find out?”

“I’m going to need you to purposefully run aground on that island. Then, I’m going to walk up to them and ask for help.”

“You want me to ground my Nautical Devastation?”

“For the Apex, of course. How soon can we go?”

“One of these days, you won’t be able to hide behind your friend, the Apex,” Fraaf’kur rumbled irritably. “We can leave now if you’re ready. You can attempt to take a ketosaurus, and then I can get you to that island.”

“I just need some equipment from my gravcar and we can go.”

Nautical Devastation, the huge catamaran with a copper-colored sail, had been designed by Chief Programmer to navigate the tumultuous coastlines around Raoneer. Despite the old Hero’s qualms about Sheathclaws, the incongruent blend of advanced kzin technology being applied to such an ancient human vessel was in itself a product of Sheathclaws’ mixed culture. The double-hulled boat pitched and yawed rhythmically in heaving waves enlarged by the planet’s weaker gravity. Dan wondered if kzin ever got seasick.

“We’re nearing the beasts’ territory!” shouted Fraaf’kur. “We’ll cut through it on the way to the island. Our opponent hunts by sound, so I’m transmitting the cries of a wounded longneck into the water.”

Dan nodded, but watched his son. The kit had been crackling with nervous energy ever since they’d cast out. He was a thin, orange smear against the vast ocean; his juvenile spots on the verge of elongating into the stripes of an adult. In a year or two, Schro would no longer be a kit, his kit-kzin grow up so fast-and there was so much he wanted to tell him: about his past, his genetic Sire, about his potential, but he feared losing him. Better to wait until he’s older, more sure of himself. Now, he wanted to simply appreciate these moments with his savage little son.

Too bad the mysterious island nagged at him, with its immobile humans standing among the surf and rocks as the scenery changed around them. Dan could now see the outline of the island on the horizon, and all his instincts told him to run.

“I can’t see or smell anything. I can’t hunt out here!” The kit slammed into Dan, knocking the thoughts out of his mind.

“Relax, Schro, I know you feel vulnerable, surrounded by endless blue, your sharp sense of smell blunted by the salt in the air-”

“I’m not scared!”

“I know you are,” Dan kneaded the plush fur on his son’s shoulder. He could feel his fear like whiplashes across his mind. “Lying about it only makes you careless. I’m telling you it’s okay. Recognize that you’re out of your element, understand that you’re only a small morsel of food in this new ecosystem, and be on guard. You have a more powerful sense that surpasses the merely visual and olfactory. Use your ziirgrah. Sweep the waves with it. Be vigilant.”

The kitten dug his claws into the catamaran hull and focused his empathic awareness on the tall and languid waves. Dan did the same, adding to the kit’s range and sharing his perception. It felt like psychic sonar. He was vaguely aware that Chief Programmer-Fraaf’kur-watched them suspiciously from the helm. Dan ignored this and paid attention to his son.

Schro slowly crawled to the bow of the boat, careful not to lose his purchase on the undulating deck. “There’s something out there, father; fish and longnecks and something else, something I’ve sensed before but different. It’s stalking an elderly longneck, keeping to the deeper, colder waters.”

“Fraaf’kur, take us further out in that direction,” Dan shouted, pointing to where his son had indicated. He, too, had caught a mental glimpse of the monster waiting in the depths and, for the first time, doubted his plan with the massive gravbelt would actually work.

“Daneel, the only way to kill this thing is to penetrate its head with chugra. Its back is heavily armored with scales, and hitting it in a flipper will only enrage it. The chugra launcher is kept in the storage compartment in the other hull.” The old dock cat adjusted the sail and hurled his ship toward the hiding beast, the fire of the hunt burning within him.

“This isn’t my kill, it’s Schro’s! Kit, go get the harpoon.”

“How will I kill it?” The juvenile hesitated, but, runt or no, he was a full-blooded kzin and the hunt was beginning to possess him.

“Stun it with your ziirgrah-confuse it-yours is more powerful than most kzinti. Then, when it’s dazed, fire the harpoon into its skull.”

“More powerful? How do you know? Are you sure I can stun something as cunning as a ketosaurus on the hunt?”

“Yes, I can feel your ability through our link,” Dan lied. “You could potentially rival even the founder of Sheathclaws, the rogue telepath Shadow, himself.”

Encouraged, Schro bounded across the trampoline that connected the twin hulls and found the heavy harpoon gun. It was longer than the length of his entire body. Kzin kittens were incredibly strong by human-child standards, but Schro wrestled awkwardly with the immense weapon, and the constant shift of the floor beneath him didn’t help.

“Careful with that! If you drop it into the sea, I’ll toss you in after it!” roared Fraaf’kur.

Dan shot him a livid, protective glare, but the kzin only flapped his ears contemptuously, his mane thrashing in the frosty wind. Dan turned away from the mangy captain and met his son, fighting every fiber in his being to help him carry the heavy gun. “We’re getting closer to it, can you feel it?”

“Yes, and it knows we’re coming. It’s not afraid of us, but it’s really annoyed we’re spooking the longnecks.”

“Very good. You said it felt familiar yet different, how so?”

“I don’t know…its mind feels like the alliogs that roam the steppes of Raoneer, only less jumpy, more confident and patient, like it could kill anything.”

“Good. I’m glad you picked up on that. The ketosaurus is a therapsid-like creature, distantly related to the alliog. It grew massive when it returned to life in the sea.”

“No more lessons! I want to see it.”

Dan laughed at that, but then the water turned black below the Nautical Devastation and the ship’s name suddenly felt like a hollow threat. “Hold on, son!” A row of dark green scales, longer than their boat, sawed through the water then disappeared into the blue.

“Everyone, dig in with your claws!” Fraaf’kur growled as he pressed close to the deck. “The only way to get at it is to let it chomp down on the boat and then spear it between the eyes! Are you ready?”

“What?” Schro clutched the harpoon gun tightly. It was all he could do not to wet himself.

“Can the ship take a hit like that?”

“This is a kzin craft, monkey! The Nautical Devastation is built for war!”

A gigantic flipper rose into the air and slapped the water with such thunderous force that the catamaran rocked and spun like so much flotsam in the sea. To his credit, Schro tried to aim his harpoon at the creature, but Dan grabbed him and hunkered down close to the bucking bow. “We can do this, kit! This is why we’re here,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “But we have to do it right.”

With one paw, Fraaf’kur got control of the flapping sail while desperately working the tiller with the other, and, after a long, queasy while, the Nautical Devastation straightened out. Just ahead, a range of olive-colored scutes rose from the water like a sudden rock formation; two of the outcroppings were large, yellow eyes and two were flaring nostrils, each an eruption of mist. Dan and Schro both knew that the ketosaurus now perceived them as a slow and stupid longneck.

“It looks like a crocodile-humpback-whale hybrid,” Dan said, and instantly regretted not having better researched their prey-now their predator-before leaving Shrawl’ta.

Schro got up and tried to target the leviathan again.

Then a voice, like that of the Maned God himself, boomed within Dan’s skull. Daneel Guthlac, you are a strange and interesting creature.

Schro stopped and looked down at him, astonished, “The sea monster can talk! It’s telepathic!”

“You heard that?” For a moment, and despite the clarity of the words-no, not words, but complete thoughts forming in his mind like ice crystals-Dan wondered if he imagined it.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Fraaf’kur snarled from his post. “These beasts are not telepathic! I’ve waged war on them before; they’re worthy and dangerous opponents, but that is all.”

Confused-terrified-Dan scanned the ketosaurus with his weak telepathy. He knew the cetaceans of Earth were intelligent, but this…the creature was unremarkable. The warrior was right; there was nothing there except simple, primal urges.

I am both attracted and repulsed by you. I don’t know how to proceed, the great voice proclaimed-or was it a second, distinct voice? — and the monster slid its gargantuan bulk beneath the waves.

There was an obvious disconnect between the dumb marine animal and the alien intellect speaking through and around them. “Schro, quickly link with me and sweep the area with your ziirgrah! I don’t think that was the ketosaurus.”

“A full-blown kzin telepath?” the Hero screamed, traumatic memories of the murderous telepath aboard his old spacecraft seizing him.

“Steady yourself, Fraaf’kur. That didn’t feel like a kzin mind or a human one.”

All of a sudden, the monster crashed into the catamaran with an explosive breach that launched the whole rig meters into the air. Without claws to maintain his hold, Dan was thrown off the boat. The acute agony of hitting the freezing Kcheemic Ocean was like going for a spacewalk in your underwear. Incandescent white blinded him. He was dying; he knew, he had almost died once before when the drug-crazed telepath aboard the Righteous Manslaughter had viciously mangled his mind. Hell, psychologically-spiritually-he had died. It was a miracle he had hung on long enough to fire a single laser beam and fry the telepath’s deadly, preternatural brain.

We wish to learn from you, Daneel Guthlac. Your patchwork psyche is fascinating to us, but you are an uncontrollable variable. Your own thoughts reveal you to be dangerous.

Fear and urgency cleared his mind, and in one perfect zen moment, he knew the alien minds were coming from the island. The ketosaurus was only a weapon. Then, encroaching hypothermia forced him back to his immediate situation, and he tried to swim back to the boat in an achingly slow and desperate doggie-paddle.

After what felt like an eternity, something sharp, like knives, sank into his left arm and hauled him out of the water, where the wind-chill made him shake wildly. Dan was distantly aware of Schro licking his face and the same knives slapping a thermal patch on his back. Warmth slowly crept into his bones, and with it came rational thought.

“What happened?” Dan asked feebly. He realized he was draped over the side of the starboard hull on his belly and facing the sail, which lay in the water.

“The heavily reinforced port hull held, but the Nautical Devastation still capsized dishonorably,” was all Dan understood of Fraaf’kur’s howling. The rest was cursing in the bloodcurdling dialect of Shasht.

“The boat’s on its side…Schro, are you okay?” He could sense his son’s terror and fury; the kit’s dormant telepathic power had sharpened like a spike by the unexpected attack.

“Yes, I still have my harpoon!” He had held onto it with his prehensile tail. “Are you all right, father? I thought you were dead!”

“I’m just cold-and surprised the thing didn’t go for me when I was in the water.”

“You’re nothing to it. The ketosaurus is treating us like a wounded longneck. Soon it’s going to strike the mast.”

As if on cue, the leviathan slammed its jaws shut on the mast and thrashed violently, testing the boat’s tolerances to the brink. Dan held on with all his might, and through the ferocious quake, Schro’s piercing cry got his attention. The kit had climbed down the now vertical trampoline and impaled the ketosaurus with two harpoons; one psychic, which bewildered its rudimentary mind, and the other, the steel projectile embedded within the creature’s left eye and driven through his brain. The jerking crescendoed into death throes, and then everything stilled.

Long moments passed. The three worn sailors just watched their monstrous kill bob in the water as if waiting for it to spring to life and pummel them once more.

An hour passed. It was clear that the sea monster was never going to move again, so Fraaf’kur carefully pried back a large scale on the ketosaurus’ side and tore off chunks of its flesh. He ceremoniously offered the first bite to the proud and still-shaky Schro, and they ate their terrible sashimi perched on the starboard hull as it jutted out of the water. The stony island loomed large in the horizon. It was close, about a kilometer away.

Dan had tried contacting his gravcar, but his wristcomp was damaged from the salt water. “We need to get to the island somehow. The telepathic voices are coming from there.”

“I can swim it, but then what? Without protective fur, you’ll freeze to death in minutes, and Schro here can’t swim. We need to right the ship. You’re an engineer, human, got any ideas?”

“I have an idea,” Schro volunteered to their surprise. “The industrial gravbelt, we can use it to lift the ship out of the water, enough to get it straight.”

That would work. “What about the trophy? We brought that to tow the ketosaurus back. What about your crèche mates?”

The kit-no, he was no longer a kit, he was an adolescent kzin now, a kzinchao-radiated confidence. “I don’t need to prove I killed the top predator on the planet. It’s enough that I know I killed it.”

Fraaf’kur slapped Schro’s back. “Not a bad idea, runt! We stowed it in the port hull. I can dive down and retrieve it.” Without another word the Hero plunged into the ocean, and, with expansive paw strokes and a rhythmic swish of his powerful tail, Fraaf’kur disappeared beneath the surface. Dan was instantly reminded of how cold the water really was.

“I didn’t know kzinti could swim,” Schro said, using his ziirgrah on Fraaf’kur. “He’s actually enjoying it.”

“Where he’s from, Kzinti have learned to swim, and on Sheathclaws, the lighter gravity and saltier oceans help buoy a kzin’s heavier frame,” Dan said, but he could tell something was wrong. Schro had crossed the link they had easily shared since he was a newborn kit and was now rummaging in Dan’s mind, which shouldn’t have been possible without the sthondat drug that boosted a talented kzin’s natural ziirgrah into true telepathy.

“What are you doing?” For the first time ever, Dan shut his mind to his son.

“What is a Schrodinger’s cat, father? Why did you name me after it?”

Dan signed heavily. He was unbearably thirsty and didn’t want to talk; he especially didn’t want to have this conversation here, now. “I had been unsuccessfully working on the captured Righteous Manslaughter’s hyperdrive for years before you came along. Honestly, I had quantum mechanics on the brain when I named you. It was only a crèche name, so I figured, what the hell, you would earn your own Name in time.”

“Are you sure that’s it? I get the sense it means something like being both alive and dead at the same time. The feeling is very strong.”

To Dan’s infinite relief, Fraaf’kur’s orange head popped out of the water. His fur was slicked back and he did indeed look like a marine mammal, like an actual sea lion. “I got it! Someone help me hoist it up.” He panted hungrily as he hefted the sealed crate.

In silence they affixed the gravbelt to the catamaran, where the mast intersected with the hull connectors. Dan activated the powerful motor and dialed up the artificial gravity field until it encompassed the entire ship, while Fraaf’kur poured his weight onto the starboard hull so that the sail swung up, perpendicular to the water, and the port hull surfaced.

“The rudder is completely gone and the sail is torn, but not tattered. If you increase the gravity motor’s strength and lift us up off the surface, only a few centimeters, just enough to remove the friction of cutting through the water, I can use the sail to steer.”

Dan complied and they were off. The airborne ride was rougher than being on the raging sea as they were now susceptible to the rapid, intense winds that hit them at odd angles. Nobody spoke. Fraaf’kur fought with the disobedient catamaran, his hunter’s concentration totally absorbed.

Schro sulked by himself in the bow of the port hull; something clearly bothered him, something he had seen in Dan’s mind. For the first time, Dan noticed the kit looked half-formed somehow, as if the Maned God ran out of kzin stuff and added a bit of human to finish the job. His body language and mannerisms were all too primate. Dan had always been accused of being too kzin, but Schro wasn’t kzin enough. It’s what his crèche mates picked up and instantly pounced on-his humanity. Dan couldn’t help but feel responsible for that, so he sat on the trampoline and focused on increasing or decreasing the output of the motor to the tempo of the surging waves.

The Nautical Devastation skidded onto the rocky shoal of the desolate island. Dan noticed a big, unmarked gravtruck abandoned on the shore, now a roost for several pteranobats; the leathery fliers eyed them as potential carrion. They disembarked quietly as if to avoid disturbing the death-like serenity of the beach. The only sound was the chill wind and pervasive screeching of immature pteranobats up in the guano-coated hills.

“Well, you wanted me to run us aground,” Fraaf’kur rumbled bitterly, breaking the eerie ambiance. “Now you go talk to your people.” He motioned with a jab of his muzzle toward the humans.

To Dan’s disbelief, none of the Rejoiners, who were only a few meters away, reacted to their arrival. They just stood there transfixed, clustering around the few shrubs that grew on the stony ground, like living statuary adorning some gorgon’s lawn. There was no sign of the crystalline, glacial presence that had assailed him out on the sea.

Schro loped off toward a group of humans. He sniffed at them and the air around them. “They’ve been here for weeks, and they’ve relieved themselves in their clothing. This doesn’t feel right.”

Dan approached more cautiously and waved a hand in front of a gaunt young woman’s face. Her eyes were open and raw, as if she hadn’t blinked in ages. “They’re alive, barely. I can sense that congregating around these bushes is of utter importance to them, certainly more so than eating or sleeping.” The small plants were strange themselves; he only spotted three of them, anchored to large rocks. Their general shape was conical, and they were covered in auburn, hair-like fibers, quite unlike the standard lavender-to-purple flora of Sheathclaws. “Perhaps these plants have got them ensnared with some hypnotic pheromone?”

“No.” Fraaf’kur sniffed one of the shrubs, his nostrils fluffing the lank hairs of the thistle. “This thing is not vegetable, it smells of animal!” Abruptly, he jumped two meters back and away from it as if it were a land mine, his tail lashing nervously. “I know what these things are,” he roared, pointing at the three tapering shrubs-or what appeared to be shrubs. “Tzookmas!”

“What the hell is a tzookma, Fraaf’kur?”

“We need to get out of here! Now!”

But he didn’t move. He was caught just like the poor Rejoiners who had come to this dreadful island, seeking to secretly build a powerful transmitter to contact Earth, or some other human planet. How did he know that?

All of a sudden, a medium-sized pteranobat swooped in close to the fuzzy cone and was instantly snapped up with a quick whip of a tongue and swallowed into the gaping mouth concealed by the rust-colored hair.

Schro scrambled away.

Dan pulled out his sidearm and immediately fired at the thing-nothing happened; like the wristcomp, the weapon had been rendered inoperable by salt water. Dan tossed the useless beam gun aside and slowly moved toward the immobile kzintosh. “What are we dealing with here, Fraaf’kur?”

“They’re called grogs in your human tongue. Intelligent, stationary creatures, like cognizant trees or oysters, with vast telepathic ability, able to hijack the brains of any living thing!”

“Can you move?” Dan asked, now terrified, already aware of the answer.

“No!” yowled Fraaf’kur.

Despite his intense fear, or precisely because of it, Schro poised himself to assault the shrub-the grog. “I can still move!” All kzinti, even prepubescent ones, generally had only one response to danger: attack blindly until it or you were dead. Schro was no different.

Dan immediately grabbed the young kzinchao by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back with all his strength, receiving a few gashes in the process. “Pull back, Schro! Don’t antagonize them. They’ve spoken to us before; maybe we can talk to them now.”

You think of yourself as more enlightened than the kzin, but you attempted to fire upon us first. Negotiation was a last resort for you, too, Daneel Guthlac; or is the kzin architecture within your psyche affecting your behavior? You are quite the puzzle.

“What are you talking about?” But he knew, the alien was growing an idea in his mind as sharp and shimmering as a diamond. There were traces of Manslaughter’s telepath embedded within him, like psychic shrapnel. Their two consciousnesses-their two souls-had been in mortal combat when he killed the psychotic kzin…

“My biological sire is the evil telepath aboard the Righteous Manslaughter?” Schro hissed as he finally connected the pieces. “I’m a genetic copy of one who killed most of the crew, and attacked you and the Apex when you tried to rescue them?”

Dan felt sick waves of disgust and betrayal roll off his son. Damnit, the grog was broadcasting widely. This was the moment Dan had worried about since the kit first asked why he had a human father.

“A clone of the hated telepath!” Fraaf’kur roared. “I knew your stink was familiar! I will have your scrawny pelt, you little monster!”

Schrodinger’s cat was a cruel joke of a name, Schro purred to himself. Then, suddenly, he screamed and leapt at Dan, savagely shredding his flesh with his black claws. He sank his teeth into Dan’s shoulder and mauled brutally, tearing soft muscle and tendon. Dan felt like the Nautical Devastation in the maw of the ketosaurus. Then everything turned bright red when a sharp canine tooth scraped his bone. He screamed and squirmed. For a brief second, Schro was indeed both alive and dead, simultaneously Dan’s little kit and bloodthirsty telepath, existing in that terrible moment before the wave function collapses.

Dan did not fight back. He was spent, and he refused to harm his son. He loved him-and not in the harsh way a kzintosh sire cared for his kits, but in the unconditional, sacrificial way humans love their children. He tried to hug Schro with his one good arm.

Stop, projected one of the grogs. A mob of weak, emaciated humans pulled Schro off him. Dan just lay there on the cold sand and stones, listening to the surf and the two kzinti’s snarling curses. The sun, 46 Leonis Minoris, was a bleary red eye in the sky, passing judgment. The physical pain was excruciating, but the hurt and emptiness in his core were utterly unbearable.

The ghost of Manslaughter’s telepath oozed into the void.

“You can’t control us can you?” asked Schro, peering at the inert alien, with feral curiosity.

No. We don’t know why. We believe your shared mental architecture and distinct but overlapping minds are creating a feedback loop we can’t manage. This is very attractive to us, as it is how we exist with each other, but we fear you, especially the two of you, because we can’t control you.

“Kill it! Kill the feeble humans holding you back and kill the ch’rowling thing,” Fraaf’kur pleaded with Schro. He was more afraid of the tzookmas than the clone of the telepath who had killed his crewmates and maimed and marooned him on this miserable planet. “These things are rumored to be devolved descendants of the Slaver race! We’re all defenseless against them!”

Our great mnemonic archives have no memory of this Slaver race. As far as we know, we have always been as we are. We dominated this planet and its simpler organisms for billions of years. We carpeted entire continents in vast reefs, all telepathically linked, but then something happened, our population crashed-either because of disease or unexpected climate change-we were on the decline long before your people arrived.

Dan tried to sit up at this. The small action hurt immensely, but he wanted to face the faceless threat. Blood poured from his arm in buckets, and he knew that if he survived, he would spend at least a month hooked up to an autodoc-the idea of needles horrified him irrationally. When he was finally able to look up from his own gore, he saw the enslaved humans restraining his vicious son. “You say you fear us, but you wield unimaginable power against us…What do you want?”

We hold these beings because we wish to learn from them. We soak up their knowledge, their memories, their experiences. This being, Fraaf’kur, has current information of other worlds, of beings like us; perhaps a related species or a subspecies. We value this more than you can know.

We’ve known our world’s position is close the Kzin Empire for millennia, and this planet, with its wide rangelands and big game, is very alluring to them, so we’ve always telepathically guided them away from here. But when your grandmother, Selina Guthlac, and the fugitive kzin telepath, Shadow, set down on this planet, their interspecies telepathic rapport intrigued us. There was only a clutch of us left then, and so we allowed them to stay and we observed them from afar.

And we’ve been watching this uncontrolled experiment in telepath breeding ever since. We theorize that, given a few eons of progress, you could develop into beings like ourselves. Your friend here accuses us of being devolved Slavers? We could very well be highly evolved kzinti.

Dan was struck dumb. He could sense that this had piqued Schro’s interest as well. The grog farthest from them snapped up a passing pteranobat as if this bombshell hadn’t been dropped. Dan stared at the reddish fur of the grogs, the vestigial paws hidden beneath the hair, their appetite…and he was suddenly glad Fraaf’kur couldn’t “hear” their psychic communication or he would have had an aneurism right then and there. Dan looked at his son, who had stopped struggling. The mindless humans backed off.

“Why interfere with us now?” Dan asked the impassive, pointed mass of hair.

We did not interfere with you. It was the humans from Hem, the ones who risk our security and yours with their need to contact the greater universe, who interfered with us. We were content to study you from a safe distance. You believe we have trapped them, but with proximity came a finer focus, and we were the ones who became spellbound by the most intimate details of their minds.

Even as we disagree with their rash actions-and especially now, with new information of these grogs from the planet Down gleaned from Fraaf’kur’s memories-we understand their need to reach out to others like themselves. The three of us have become something like the Rejoiners.

Dan was starting to black out. Violet spots danced in his vision. He forced himself to concentrate. “So then what do you want? You could have easily turned us away and had us forget all of this. Why all the theatrics with the ketosaurus? I’m sorry; you might be too alien for me, because I don’t understand your motivation.” He closed his eyes and let the foreign fractal thoughts form in his mind.

We could have turned all the others away and, in fact, we will. Even your friend here, Fraaf’kur, will have no memory of any of this. We have already implanted the urge in some of his nearby offspring to come here and fetch their father, but as we said, we cannot manipulate you and your child-

“I am not his child!”

You are, Schro. More than you know, for he is all that is left of Righteous Manslaughter’s telepath. Daneel Guthlac carries the part of him that has found peace here on Sheathclaws. That part, although subtle, is incredibly strong and drove him to create you. Manslaughter’s telepath did heinous things, but he was not evil. His mind was simply infected with rage, hate and addiction. You are healthy and happy. You are his redemption.

Schro grunted defiantly, but it was all bravado now. His ziirgrah was too sensitive, and he knew the truth, whether he wanted to or not.

Dan opened up to him, and the grogs, and bared the monster he had unwittingly hidden just under the surface. The astral remnant of Manslaughter’s telepath-really, just a collection of primal needs and sensations-flowed up from the recesses of Dan’s subconscious. It examined the kit with spectral tendrils and recognized its own reflection in the unpolluted pool of Schro’s mind. Content with what it saw, it sunk back down into the dark cerebral abyss from which it came.

You think we used the ketosaurus as a weapon, we did not. We wanted you here, Daneel Guthlac and Schro. We moved through the elementary network of latent kzin telepaths on this planet and rooted the idea to send you here in the Apex’s mind. We used the ketosaurus as a tool to bring out your true potential.

The young kzin said nothing. He turned and stalked away toward the interior of the island.

“Schro!”

You asked us what we want, Daneel Guthlac. We want what you have. Offspring. A second chance. We are all that you see; three adult females moored on this barren island. We are old. Our sessile lifestyle gives us slow metabolisms and long lifespans, but we will most likely not live long enough to see you complete your work on the hyperdrive, and so our new dream to meet the other grogs of the universe will rest in our daughters.

“I don’t have that anymore.”

Give him time. We’re having a parallel conversation with him at the moment and we believe he can be reached. You have raised him well.

“You want us to clone you? You need to give us something for me to even begin to trust you. Free these people. Send them home now.”

Without another word the group of humans marched back to their waiting gravtruck. Dan couldn’t see them go, but he heard their boots tromping on sediment and then, after a moment, the whirl of the gravity motor.

“If I help you with this, what do we get in return?”

The easy, obvious answer is that with greater numbers we will be able to better protect this world from a kzin invasion force. The Patriarchy will never know this colony exists.

The more complex and interesting answer is that one day we hope kzinti and humans will participate in the reconstruction of our glorious thoughtscapes.

The image of a cathedral-like structure, made entirely of stained glass and coral, was superimposed on the hostile reality of the island within Dan’s mind, and he intimately understood that the torpid physical existence of the grogs was only a mere shadow of their rich and vibrant psychological lives.

And with that beautiful image crystallized in his mind, Dan passed out.

Daneel Guthlac awoke to a loud bang, like bone smashing into metal.

He sat in the passenger seat of his gravcar, connected to a portable autodoc. The interior of the car was pleasantly warm, but a dull, throbbing ache stabbed him in the shoulder. His son was in the driver’s seat. Disoriented, Dan looked out the window, but all he could see were heavy rain clouds coasting by. “What happened?”

“I returned with Fraaf’kur to Krazári. He’s got a great story about how we ambushed the Rejoiners, and after a heated battle where you, our trusty human mascot, were severely injured, we sent them packing before they could get started on their transmitter.”

It took Dan a while to process that and remember the events of the last few hours…days? “Why is it that I always end up severely injured when I try to save Sheathclaws?”

“Because humans are delicately built…Anyways, once there, I got your car and went back for you.”

“Thanks and-how do you even know how to fly this thing?”

“Autopilot.” He waved his paws in the air. “I just like moving the wheel. It makes me feel better.” His ears fluttered, but his demeanor was somewhat distant.

Then Dan realized that he couldn’t feel their psychic link any longer and he missed it terribly. It was like having a stranger sitting next to him with the voice and scent of his son. “Hey, are we okay?”

“No.” His son looked at him for a long second, then returned to his senseless driving. “Not yet, anyway. I understand what you did and why you did it, but it still feels shameful to be a copy of someone so disgusting.”

“Try having him burrowing in your head.”

They said nothing for a while. Dan heard that odd organic bang again.

“You know, I was thinking about what the grogs were saying, that there’s a feedback loop between us, you’ve got a little bit of Manslaughter’s telepath in your soul, and I’m, genetically, Manslaughter’s telepath with a little bit of you in mine. I think we need to live in our own heads for a while.”

“Fair enough.” Dan wanted to dig his fingers in that orange coat and give him a rough shake, but didn’t. “Where are we going now?”

“Back to Shrawl’ta. I also gathered the genetic samples of the three grogs. I’m thinking three exact clones and three produced by fusing the same sex gametes of two different ones. That should give us six baby female grogs in total. They said they’ll make sure the biotech people don’t ask too many questions.”

“That worries me. Who’s to stop them from subtly herding the unsuspecting people of Sheathclaws like cattle once we increase their numbers? We’re allied now, but what happens once our goals change, or conflict?”

“They won’t. Their reach will become greater and greater as their numbers increase, but they won’t control us because they value our minds, our ideas and concepts. They need us to be free to create in order to enjoy us. That said, they might steer someone particularly interesting to their island and immerse themselves in their mind for a while, but they’ve agreed to not let any visitors waste away. Ultimately, according to Fraaf’kur’s memories, the humans of the planet Down have learned to work with their local grogs, and we will as well.”

“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”

“I do. The grogs gave me the information I needed for this specific task. I’m going to finish the year at the crèche-actually looking forward to confronting the little sons of prreti that made my life so miserable-then I’m going back to the island with the cloned grog spawn.”

“By yourself?” This was too much for Dan; his head spun from the injuries and the pain killers.

“Yes, that is the arrangement I made with them. I will learn how to make the most of my ziirgrah without the need for the sthondat stimulant, and perhaps teach the little clones a thing or two about making a Name for oneself.”

This opened up a lingering wound. “Listen, Schro, about your Name-”

“Don’t worry about it, father. The grogs have given me a new kzinchao Name. I am now Trainer-of-Telepaths.”

“That’s a good Name.” Dan closed his eyes and said, “You know, I hoped I would get at least a year with my little kit, but you’ve matured into a fine kzintosh…You kzin grow up too damned fast.” He wanted to drift off to sleep. The autodoc was demanding he rest, but the banging outside the gravcar persisted. “What is that noise?”

“That’s the skull of the ketosaurus. After I got you on the autodoc, I went back and beheaded the beast.”

Dan half-opened his eyes and looked at his son, “I thought you said you didn’t need it?”

Trainer-of-Telepaths’ ears twitched roguishly. “I said I was a little bit human, but not so human that I would abandon such a spectacular and hard-earned trophy.”

Dan grabbed a handful of fur and gave him a shove. “There’s hope for you yet.”