Man-Kzin Wars IV by Larry Niven (graded readers .txt) 📗

whatever it wanted. At the time of the occupation they had wanted the Landholder’s Ritterhaus. It stood with great Gothic arches and stone buttressing at the head of the cobblestoned Grunderplatz. The victorious Heroes had not bothered to demolish the crowded bronze memorial of the Nineteen Founders, perhaps because the Ritterhaus dominated the group and the kzinti were in the Ritterhaus. Down there, those laboring bronze figures looked like hard-working slaves.

The Fourth Fleet bureaucracy was at a frenzy with the final logistic preparations and assignments just months away. Trainer-of-Slaves was received by a harassed kzin officer who kept having to duck under man-height doors as he busied himself trying to find his files. He couldn’t remember which computer he had fed them to. Finally, in distraction, he reset his batlike ears and offered the absolute certainty of his help tomorrow, at the same time, if Trainer would be so good as to return.

They retreated to their lodgings in the old manor house. A dignified kzin passed them on the stairs with two leashed kzinrretti. Females could be dangerous in a city; they tended to spat with any unpleasantly odorous animal who dared approach them, and man-beasts with alcohol on their breath were always likely victims. They would even attack a male kzin twice their size if the lives of kits were at stake.

“Reasonableness does not control female emotions,” explained their patriarch. “Have a good night. You’ll have to fold your ears against the kzin at the end of the hall—he growls and fights ghosts in his sleep.”

A return to the Admiralty in the morning produced puzzling results. The kzin clerk dismissed Trainer-of-Slaves, and when Trainer politely persisted, another kzin ducked out of an adjoining office.

“You are not qualified for the Fourth Fleet and your rating application has been refused.”

“I have these recommendations…”

The huge red officer with yellow splotches in his fur hissed. Trainer-of-Slaves immediately took the hint, saluted with a sharp claw-across-face, and retreated.

That evening Trainer and Ssis-Captain were considering their other options at a trunkshuppen off one of the side streets that led into the Grunderplatz. There were no other kzin present at the Mondschein. The waitress was clearly terrified to serve them but she was brave in her order-taking.

“Guten Abend, ehrenvoll Helden,” she trembled. “Haben Sie gewahlt?” When they were slow to reply, she suggested a popular bourbon with milk.

“Ich … nehme eine … Coca Cola,” said Trainer-of-Slaves, twisting his tongue around his teeth with his best animal imitation.

Ssis-Captain’s remarks in the Hero’s Tongue were meowls and spits of derision and approval. “The place smells like vatach-in-a-cage.” He was referring to the humid scent of furless fear. “Nice little planet, Hr-r?” He nodded his mane at the waitress while playfully punching Trainer. “I’ll take one of those to curry my backside in my European castle.” Then, he consulted his translator. “Ich nehme einen Whiskey Kentucky mit Milch,” he ordered, before he returned to business.

“You have some slandering enemies here in Munchen so we shall go elsewhere—which will lead directly back to higher lairs.” Ssis-Captain had an invitation to the base at Gerning in the isolated northern province of Skogarna. “Friend Detector-Analyst is pleased with his post. The vast woods are isolated both from man-beast traffic and the arrogance of kzin patriarchs who are so well fed with land that they guard their holdings against the likes of us as if we were one-eyed kzinrret bandits.”

Ssis-Captain rearranged his ears knowingly and flared his nostrils to hint that what he knew about the base was special. “Chuut-Riit established the Gerning station within months of his ascension as governor. The officers there are all kzin who sided with him in the struggle. Good contacts.”

As he leaned forward with more conspiratorial details, Ssis-Captain’s chair—suddenly—collapsed, and milk-in-bourbon arced to slosh onto his mane and vest. His massive head rose above the table with a fanged grin. When he was fully erect, his mane touching the low ceiling, he snarled in the direction of the pale bartender.

The other patrons, who had been uneasy, were now no longer even twitching.

Their waitress calmly dried her hands, sauntered to the door as if there was nothing more important going on than quitting time—then fled.

Ah how the liver rules the mind, thought Trainer-of-Slaves, noticing both the man-beast behavior and Ssis-Captain’s rising rage. How much different was rage than fear? He knew enough not to touch Ssis for he could not hide his amusement, and too much tail whacking would turn the rage against himself. He appealed to the Captain’s vanity as he, too, rose, “We’ll have to wash your vest right away before the milk dries. Come.” To the bartender he raised his glass, careful not to smile. He wanted to put that apprehensive creature at ease. “Zum Wohl!” he said, proud of his growing facility with animal grunts.

Ssis-Captain did not come right away. He took his rage out on the chair, taking the remnants of its poor wooden frame apart with bare hands and teeth as if it were a United Nations Warship.

CHAPTER 14

(2402 A.D.)

In an aircar over the province of Skogarna the social structure of Wunderland stood out in a way that never would have shown from the ground. It was clearly a wilderness dominated by a manorial elite. Coming into the kzin base they passed over the Nordbo estate at Korsness, huge, isolated from Gerning by hill and primeval wood along an expanse of beach. A ribbon of roads leading to Korsness clearly showed who was master of Gerning.

The light armored aircar carried the two kzin Heroes above the forested hills, past the hillside scar of recent kzin construction. It was afternoon but sunset hues of red washed over the clouds along the horizon where Alpha Centauri B was disappearing. The sea showed an astonishingly clear blue that faded into pastel shades of green where the shallow coastal waters had flooded a crater and left a curving string of islands.

Many such craters littered Wunderland. The planet suffered continual impact from meteorites straying