Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

The kzin had not enjoyed being tortured. However, since submitting had served his purposes, he behaved as he hoped was expected. First he had fought, then he had cringed, finally, he had begun to do as his handlers directed. It helped that he understood more Interworld than Miffy and his assistants believed was the case.

He found himself thinking of Otto Bismarck by Dr. Anixter’s nickname for him, as if renaming his tormentor gave him a measure of control. It also was a small matter of revenge for the names they called him. The favorite was “ratcat,” a reference to two Terran creatures. He’d heard “warcat” as well, but while this held a degree of respect, ratcat was the purest insult.

He pretended ignorance and suffered, mostly in silence, although not completely. Once, he’d gotten a good swipe in at Miffy, a solid hit where the man’s tail should have been. Miffy had bled most satisfactorily, almost enough to balance the pain he inflicted on the kzin afterwards.

The strike at the smiling human had not been quite the accident they believed. Over the long days of his captivity, the kzin had learned to discipline his response to that particular human mannerism, but they didn’t know that. He took some satisfaction in the straps that bound him after that, proof that while they considered him humbled, they did not consider him tamed.

When he began to show them how the control panel of the scout ship worked, he was careful not to tell too much, but also not to directly lie. Not only was a lie dishonorable (although he ascribed to the creed that said lies told to a captor were not dishonorable), but also if he was caught out in one, his entire plan would be jeopardized.

First, he established that he was not a pilot. These humans apparently had some idea that kzinti society was structured around hierarchies and specializations. He gave out that he was nothing more than an infantry solider, what he heard Miffy refer to as a “grunt.” However, he admitted to some second-hand familiarity with how space-capable vessels were operated. After that, matters went smoothly enough.

“So,” Miffy asked, “how many are needed to operate this craft?”

The kzin considered. The actual answer was “one,” for no kzin would wish to be left operating a machine when he could be fighting. However, the cockpit was furnished with three chairs, so that during slow times duties could be shared.

He decided to lie. “Two.”

“But there are three chairs,” Miffy called up holographic representations. “What do these do?”

The kzin took refuge in his presumably limited vocabulary. “Operator,” he said, pointing to the pilot’s chair. He pointed to the next. “Operator assistant.” The third chair, “Operator assistant assistant.”

This led to a heated discussion between Miffy and a couple of his own assistants. In the end, they decided-or rather Miffy did-that what the kzin meant was pilot, co-pilot (possibly a navigator), and back-up. Such redundancy was apparently common among humans. Their discussion explained to the kzin, who had once been a Human Weapon’s Technology expert, the high degree of back-up systems and safeguards in human machinery.

So it went. “What does this button do?” “What does this one do?” “How do you operate this lever?”

Mostly, the kzin answered truthfully, for his goal was to be taken to the actual scout ship. The minute some device operated other than he had said it would, that opportunity would be lost.

The hologram was useful, but only to a point. Since the handgrips and levers had been designed for kzinti hands, which were much larger than those of humans, the kzin could only mime how the grips and levers were pulled or pushed or shoved into position. (Kzinti liked to handle their equipment. The smooth pressure pads humans usually employed were not for them.) Moreover, kzinti equipment had been designed to be operated using a manual attribute humans did not possess-claws. Overall, human fingers were more delicate and dexterous than those of kzinti, but claws changed that equation. They could be extended to make fine manipulations, to extend reach.

The humans, accustomed as they were to having fingers that stayed one length, conditioned by experience and comparison with Terran species (such as the frequently mentioned “cat”) to thinking of claws merely as biological weapons, had a great deal of trouble adapting to this view.

Only after they had gone to the trouble of dismounting a control panel and bringing it to where the kzin could demonstrate how the various shifters and buttons worked when one had claws, not merely fingers, did they believe he was not misleading them.

“Fascinating,” said the man called Roscoe, a man who the kzin had first met as one of Dr. Anixter’s assistants and who he now realized answered first to Miffy. “Where we would put in a spring or some other sort of release, they simply employ a claw-tip to pull the key back into position. For many years, it has been speculated that body form would influence how problems are approached and solved, but this is an elegant demonstration of the proof of that theory.”

“Write your paper later,” Miffy grunted. “Right now I want to know how much more the ratcat can teach us from holograms.”

“There should be more,” Roscoe assured him. “We haven’t even touched on the weapons systems-of course, those were pretty badly slagged. I must say, however, if you’re interested in their piloting and navigation, eventually, we’re going to need to take the ratcat to the ship.”

“I wonder if he can tell us anything,” Miffy said. He seemed to have forgotten the kzin was there. “He says he was just a grunt.”

“Still,” Roscoe said, “I would think the effort would be worth it, even if we only learned a little, especially with the computers down…”

He trailed off. Miffy nodded. The kzin struggled to hide his fierce joy. He had not invited torture for nothing. He was going to see the ship.

The captured scout ship was being kept in a hanger scooped from the asteroid’s outer surface and fitted with sliding doors that were smooth and shiny on the inside, but did a remarkable job of mimicking the exterior of the asteroid when they were closed.

When the kzin saw the ship-most especially when the doors into the interior of the craft were opened and odors, stale but still present, wafted out-the kzin found himself overwhelmed with the last sensation he had expected: homesickness.

Through all of his long captivity, the kzin had been so acutely aware of the shame of having been captured by humans that his main emotion when he thought of those he had left behind had been apprehension. He had dreaded the scorn and reproach he would certainly meet if other kzinti learned that not only had he been captured, but that these weak, furless, fangless primates had kept him captive. Nor had he thought that scorn would be undeserved.

Now, however, as familiar shapes and smells assailed him, he had to fight against the contradictory urges to rush forward or to shrink back. He longed for the feeling of furniture designed not only for his size, but for a backside equipped with a tail. His gaze feasted on color schemes and shapes designed around the aesthetic values of his people, his culture.

But most of all he drank in the scent of his own kind. Some of these were not pleasant-old blood, least of all-but even the rankest and most foul odors belonged to his own kind.

He had forgotten the humans, so when Miffy spoke, only the restraints the kzin wore kept him from wheeling around and taking off the man’s head. The kzin found himself grateful for the restraints. Killing Miffy-at least now-would not suit him at all.

“We’ve patched the holes in the hull,” Miffy said, “but other than that, we’ve not tampered with anything. Time to earn your kibble, kzin.”