The Man-Kzin Wars 06

Chapter 3

(2436 A.D.)

The old Patriarch had failed. The Patriarchy belonged to whomever could restore the glory and the order. When a father weakened, his son had the heroic duty to reclaim his heritage. W’kkai was the son of Kzin. In a mansion of the sprawling central metropolis of W’kkai, a magnificent kzin, taller and heavier than an ordinary kzin warrior, had a plan to break the blockade and conquer the galaxy under a new dynasty. It all depended upon how he was dressed tonight and the subtlety of his perfume.

Si-Kish wore the high brocades and lace of evening wear that kept him warm during W’kkai’s lengthy night. Passing from his mansion’s dressing room to the mezzanine he stole glances at himself in the gold-tinted Reflection Glass that lined the walls to the stairwell. He had no wish to out dress the young and inexperienced Voice of the Patriarch.

It was a good choice to be seen in the bold colors of the Design of Zealous-Power. Lesser kzin he would have to deal with might be impressed-if he couldn’t simply avoid them. He liked the effect of the lace fins down his sleeves. Yet there was an austerity to this outfit, a proper respect for the Voice. Such a fuss, these evening styles. But fashion clearly established dominance/dominated roles. In that, they were useful. Si-Kish had no time for ranking fights. The war with the man-beasts had grown to govern his time and mind in an all-consuming passion.

So obsessed was he that he no longer hunted his own food, but had it brought into his office freshly killed. He let his best officers service his harem so that he might have sons. He had long been a neglectful father, relegating the training of his sons to others, even to slaves. He did not think he was a better kzin for his neglect, there was no help for it. He missed his hunt, and sometimes even missed his harem duties. Most of all he missed the sparring matches in the tournament ring with his kits.

He was not known to miss the entertainment circuit- on W’kkai, business was conducted as an afterthought of theater gossip, as bantering across the game boards, as haggling at the market stalls-sometimes even during the hunts if one could stand the group hunts where whole families turned out in colors and breeches with pompous lackeys carrying banners that did little more than scare the game. The bargaining was done with all the formality and skill of a tournament match, sometimes even with the viciousness of the killing ring.

Si-Kish lightly powdered his multi-braided mane, choosing a scent that was the barest illusion of sweat and hard work and slaughtered game. Ready, he swept down the broad stairway of his mansion’s hail, his personal pride of splendidly dressed kzinti falling in around him as an escort. They had been ready long ago. A star-white limousine was floating above the driveway and ready for the journey across the city.

It was a city carefully laid out to give the illusion of space. The gravitic floater raced over grassways that blended into masking treescapes. Dikes seemed to be hills. The wandering hunting parks were designed as much to block the city from view as they were for feeding. Supply trucks which brought in thousands of animals a day for the parks arrived unobtrusively underground. When a building did reveal itself among the foliage it seemed to be the only structure within a day’s hunting range. W’kkai’s architects were masters of landscape art.

While they traveled, Si-Kish activated his ear/nose implant. He was checking the ongoing deployment of his special forces-a warrior to this ministry, a triad to that hierarch, warriors to a “sixteen” of the most influential patriarchs who had decided to spend the evening at home, some whom he would have to rouse out of bed. Other “ambassadors” were in the process of contacting lower-echelon nameless ones who had shown an acute awareness of the danger and must be recruited as allies. All law and policy supposedly came from the Patriarch’s Voice on W’kkai. In fact Jaws came out of lengthy battles of influence and argument and pressure that went on for weeks. Si-Kish preferred a well-organized blitz built around the paradigm of a naval battle.

The target of his personal contingent of Heroes was the Leaping Palace.

There were many entrances to W’kkai’s greatest cultural establishment, all hidden from each other. Even during an important dancing event, hosting hundreds, the immense Palace gave the illusion of being the abode of a single mighty kzin who was entertaining only a few select friends. The white limousine dropped them off at the sunken portico of the Lurking Entrance-and vanished on automatic.

Si-Kish led his admiral’s pride past a stone column that housed an ornate blue and gold vial done in the design of the Riit seal; the Patriarch’s urine had been imported for the dedication of this proud edifice and sat here now to announce to all his suzerainty over this hallowed ground. Then they were inside, marching through a frescoed corridor. For the last time Si-Kish briefed each of his splendidly robed aides, sending each warrior to his private battle on some balcony. All had a special contact mission.

The dance was already in progress when the High Admiral of W’kkai parted the curtained entrance to the gallery of the Patriarch’s Voice and took a seat at the Voice’s table. The male attendants of His Fierceness remained attentive to the choreographed prancing of the kzinretti. The Voice was mesmerized by their beauty Si-Kish watched only the Voice. Quietly he removed a jeweled breast-banner that outranked one his master was wearing. He had entered a ring of combat, perhaps even a friendly sparring ring. He had to expect anything. The Voice ignored him.

It was a dangerous opponent who pretended you were not there before he struck This elaborately dressed Hero was a powerful kzin-Si-Kish would not have relished challenging the youth physically. He was an enigma. Sometimes he was even wise. He was as apt to kill fools as he was to tolerate them, but he never challenged his best advisors, even when they told him what he did not want to hear; he tested them ruthlessly with verbal jabs and intellectual leaps. It almost made him great.

Yet the magnitude of the disaster that had befallen the Patriarchy had hardly penetrated his skull. A calamity of such immensity was beyond his comprehension. The Voice had noticed the silence of Kzin-but it was as if he had no need to listen; he had noticed the absence of trade, but as long as the warriors of Si-Kish kept the human devils at bay beyond the boundary that their ghostships could not penetrate, and as long as he could watch his kzinretti dance, the predicament of the Patriarchy did not seem to impress him. He had been born among the elite and his weakness was overconfidence. He could not imagine the kzinti as the hunted.

At some pivotal moment such a deadly conceit could be used to overbalance and depose him-but this evening’s festivities only marked a preliminary bout.

Si-Kish dared not lose tonight’s event, but tonight there was no way he could win his liver’s ambition. His aim was more than to depose the Patriarch’s Voice; he desired the role of Patriarch itself and he expected to move the seat of power from Kzin to W’kkai. Every warrior’s skill was demanded of him. Even patience.

Alert, mentally limbering himself, Si-Kish waited for the attack. The Voice would not be able to comprehend his ambition and therefore could not counter it; nevertheless he was a kzin who enjoyed each and every minor skirmish with the nobles he dominated. The secret of survival in his court was to let the Voice win-without ever acceding defeat. It was like having an aggressive student who liked to spar with his nameless weapons master; the master had the duty to teach the student without destroying the student or being destroyed. For now.

The kzinretti on the terraced stage were attired in mock battle armor and leapt through a formalized battle, trained to perfection. The delicately arousing scent of estrus-being piped into the gallery by a dance master more interested in female sales than in art-clashed with the old warrior’s battle sensibilities. Though he hardly approved of such perverted sexual displays as kzinretti in armor, Si-Kish had no real problem with them intellectually; a kzinrett who could perform in the more intricate military dances produced sons with fast reflexes. Being a battle master it pained him to imagine the vivid slaughter that would befall such innocent females in a real fight- but fraudulent dances were popular and he knew enough not to interrupt the Voice’s rapt attention.

Overtly the Voice had his eye on a lithe specimen and would probably buy her for his harem-to the vast financial advantage of Dance-Master.

Covertly the Voice was preparing to knock Si-Kish off balance.

Suddenly, the Patriarch’s Voice tipped his head to Si-Kish while his eyes remained on stage. “‘That small one is very quick,” he breathed. “I’m struck by the shape of her nose, so long and arrogant” She was removing her silver armor, which was a silly thing to do in the middle of a battle, but it made her the center of attention. The flavor of estrus in the air subtly increased. “Such power!” the Voice exclaimed.

“We could send her out against the man-beasts,” said Si-Kish in the mocking tense of the Hero’s Tongue. It was a riposte to redirect the conversation to military matters where Si-Kish was far more prepared than the Voice would ever be.

The Voice growled disparagement with a slight flap of his fanlike ears, turning the riposte to his advantage. “You promised me a plan of action tonight. Is that your best device, to send tiny beauties out to their deaths in ornamental light armor?”

Si-Kish flipped the table top to a convenient angle for the Voice’s eyes and entered a code. “My second best plan, in case our kzinretti fail in their bravery, is to go ahead with the building of five hundred and twelve hyperdrive warships.”

For a moment, off balance, the Voice’s eye fell from his favorite kzinrett. “The mechanics of the drive have been mastered already?”

“No. All is as it was. But we cannot wait. Time is critical. We already know enough of hyperspace to design the hyperdrive mountings. When the ships are ready, we will have motors in production. Better to have the ships ready and no motors than to have the motors ready with no ships.”

Choew-Aide, immense, taller and more ponderous even than the Voice, had been scanning through the war plans like a weapons carrier selecting an appropriate weapon for his waiting lord. Other aides activated other screens. The Voice continued to admire his favored kzinrett. In time Choew found what might be a flaw in the war scenario and whispered to his master.

“Your warships have a strange design. Lean,” commented the Voice. The implication was that they would not be able to fight a sustained battle.

Si-Kish countered with the fable of Reoll-Riit and the sthondat. The kzin warrior, who was as swift as all Riits of fable, could resupply himself from a distant waterhole. The sthondat-massive, powerful, but slow-had to hoard his water within his own body. In the fable, victory went to the swift. The implication was that ships faster than light could be resupplied quickly. A subluminal kzin warship retrofitted with a hypershunt motor would not fight as well as a W’kkai warship designed to strike from hyperspace.

The aides continued to search their flatplates for flaws in the major plan. They concentrated on the lightning assault against Procyon and Barnard’s Starbase. With human control of the hyperwave and strangulation of kzinti trade, was there enough man-beast spoor to make intelligent strategy? How would W’kkai be defended during the assault? Si-Kish was expecting the UNSN to pull in their ships to regroup against the planned W’kkai attack-but could he depend upon that?

The aides moved around the gallery almost as if they were on a tournament mat as they consulted each other and formed defensive groupings against the High Admiral of W’kkai. On the stage the kzinretti were now floating through a multicolored dream sequence. The Voice paid no attention; he was leading a more interesting foray.

Si-Kish had an easy answer for everything-the lace fins of his waistcoat gestured in emphasis and sometimes in mock parry-it had all been thrashed out long ago.

The Admiral had asked the same questions of himself until the answers shone-but he let the Voice’s staff feel that they were giving him a good workout. What they didn’t understand was that the attack against the man-beasts was a feint. It was an opening gambit not meant to defeat anyone.

Neither human nor kzin understood what Si-Kish had winnowed from his assiduous analysis. The man-beasts were artificially strong. The Patriarchy was artificially weak. The purpose of his fleet was not to conquer the humans in a bloody interstellar battle but to reestablish the Patriarchy’s nervous system and trade. Then the galaxy’s Heroes could turn to crush the monkeys and reduce them to useful slavery.

In the middle of a particularly tail-thumping debate, the spotlights swung to the Voice’s gallery. It was time for the assembled multitude of male kzinti to rise. They rose as one. Two petite kzinretti rushed in through the balcony curtains-his favorite dancer and another-placing a magnificent helmet upon his head. He stood-the Voice of the Patriarch for all to see. Then the lights dimmed upon him but brightened everywhere in all of the galleries, allowing the dominated kzinti standing there to be seen by their Voice as they gifted their master with the slash-across-face salute. The kzinretti, half his size, were at his feet, and he was tickling his favorite behind the ears, contented by the accolade of his subject males.

The mood of discussion and contest was over, as suddenly as it had begun, broken in the middle of an important argument. The Voice remained pensive under his grandiose helmet. When the entertainment resumed he watched kzinretti stalk across a stage of fog boiling from witches’ pots. He glanced at Si-Kish. “Let me watch.” He was no longer interested in war. He brought out his seal and electronically imprinted all of the programs with his approval. He had established to his satisfaction that the conflict was in competent hands. Let the hierarchy of hierarchs vex over the details.

That was the breakthrough for Si-Kish. The rest of the evening could be conducted as a mop-up operation. He tuned his ear/nose implant to the high command codes and asked for a status report while his eyes watched the kzinretti stalk a brilliantly feathered beast through the fog. The online reports came in, sector status at a time. The greatest resistance was coming from the Production Hierarch. An amused warrior admiral preened his ears. The geezers in production would be balking at abandoning their standards, some of which were thousands of years old.

Quietly he backed out of the gallery, into the corridors of the Leaping Palace, still listening to what were essentially battle reports. He left the Palace by the Northern High Entrance, feeling the need for a walk alone. It had been three Kzin days since sunset and the air was frigid. His breath steamed. The hair around his mouth frosted. Even some snowflakes were drifting. He passed through a narrow-walled street of cut stone laid out like a carryon, night-flowers blooming through the cracks. He was not yet willing to call for transportation.

He could go anywhere in the city to reinforce his minions, but he should probably go into the catacombs of the Production Hierarch and bring his full prestige to bear His whole plan for W’kkai’s dominance of the Patriarchy depended upon the rapid deployment of new standards throughout a Patriarchy so starved and desperate for hyperdrive technology that they would abandon their age-old commitment to Kzin technology.

Standards never supported the most advanced technology, and standards which could only be promulgated at 80 percent of the speed of light were lifetimes behind what could be done. Kzin was crippled in that its power depended upon standards that were not good enough to fight the man-beasts. W’kkai had no such constraints. With a hyperdrive fleet it could promote its technology to Meerowsk, to Hrooshpith-Pithcha, even to Ch’Aakin or Warhead, faster than Kzin could keep up. And where the center of trade was, there would sit the new Patriarch.

A daunting dream-with a single suck-fly in Si-Kish’s eat.

W’kkai’s physicists had not yet built their first hypershunt motor.

The High Admiral hated to channel all his hopes through one kzin. The failure of that one kzin was too dangerous. And it galled him in the liver where it hurt that his one kzin, Grraf-Nig, wasn’t a known W’kkaikzin but an outer barbarian who, the Fanged God help him, needed a valet to dress him properly and, worse, whose loyalty to the reigning Patriarch was set into him with the mindlessness of a berserker to whom distant Kzin was some kind of mythical warrior’s Valhalla.

The simple-minded Grraf-Nig would never be persuaded to believe in a power shift from Kzin to W’kkai. Never. Not by wit. Not by cunning. Not by torture.

You had to be of W’kkai-belong to a family that had been grossly tithed for a thousand years by the Patriarchs of Kzin, be master of a colorful art that balanced ferocity, be superior-to understand Si-Kish’s ambition.