Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC Read Free Page B

suggestive insults otherwise. The idea of a slave, or a meal, refusing a command was too alien to be digested easily. It had happened, from time to time in the past, but to say the consequences had been drastic would be putting the matter altogether too mildly.
    Then Captain asked: “Can you keep records? Do you have good record-keeping devices?” He had not had a good record-keeper since he lost his temper with his Chunquen slave for spilling the ship’s ceremonial jar of the Patriarch’s urine during a sudden maneuver.
    “Well, with all due modesty, I think I have a good memory,” John Wayne told him. “And so does my colleague here. Weather now, and rainfall . . . I think I can recall the weather-patterns for most of my lifetime so far. Or do you mean by ‘record’ those round things humans previously placed on turn-tables to make sounds? Coco thought-skibbed it was to make music, but I fropgrivened to him that that was not possible—not once you heard it.”
    “Do not presume to trade on your usefulness!” Captain snarled. “Trade” in the Heroes’ Tongue was in most contexts one of those many deadly insults. Still, good record-keepers would be useful, he admitted to himself. He was in no mood to track down the meaning of the various strange words the creature used.
    “I skrieg that you are using the speaking-to-slaves tense already. But I think you’re wrong about that,” John Wayne told him soberly, using the tense of equals, a breach of etiquette which would certainly cost any slave his tongue and shortly thereafter his life if he was within reach of Captain’s claws. “I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but we’re not very good at obedience. And frankly, we don’t often even try.”
    For the unfortunate Telepath, it was as if the control-room turned white as Captain’s rage washed over him. At least it blotted out the alien thoughts, even of the . . . jam . . . for a time.
    “Some might manage to learn it,” John Wayne went on, “but only if they want to. And I doubt if anyone would. There’s always the odd nutty eccentric of course, but not many that odd. Or that nutty. Still, we do hope you’ll come soon and talk it over with us. Or perhaps we shall come to see you, in person, so to speak. Yes, we’ll visit tomorrow sometime, if that’s alright with you, Coco?”
    Coco nodded, looking slightly bored, though equipped with very little by way of facial expression to manage it with.
    “Nutty” . . . that seemed to have multiple meanings. Captain knew what nuts were—seed-pods of certain vegetable matter. He did not know he was being offered a fleeting clue to many things that would bewilder him.
    “There you are then, we’ll drop in tomorrow.” John Wayne waved nonchalantly at the kzinti. “Bye-bye for now.” And the picture vanished.
    * * *
    “What do they mean drop in ?” the captain asked Alien Technologies and the rest of the Bridge Team.
    “I interpret it as meaning that they will appear on Prowler some time within an eight of hours. Some sort of teleporting by the sound of it. They said ‘tomorrow,’ and that would seem to mean a day away. Their planet, like their sun, rotates very quickly.”
    “Then we must be ready for them. They clearly have some advanced technology, but they may not be expecting an attack. I, of course, shall lead my Heroes. Follow me with whatever weapons we can use without damage to the ship. Technology, Weapons, you will prepare every weapon we have that might be useful in conquering them. Oh, and make sure Telepath is awake. It might get us useful information from their minds.”
    Strategist was not consulted. He was used to that. He had long ago concluded that his captain, although undoubtedly brave and aggressive, was not very bright. Telepath might, of course, detect that thought; but Telepath was intelligent enough to work out that Strategist would know that he might. Simply doing nothing made a certain kind of alliance there.