Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

Hours of painful clawing and biting ensued, but he savagely took each of the kzinretti like a hot-blooded warrior conquers planets. No, whole systems!

When the females were all soundly vanquished, Bobcat lay on the large fur-covered waterbed surrounded by the sweaty bodies of the females. The bed gently rocked back and forth with the rhythm of their panting. He thought lazily of the kitten and its primal, drilling petition. He imagined the kit all grown up: a drug-sick wraith aboard some ship, pitch black as a tear in the hull. The crew would not be able to ignore him as they do the rest of us. Their hatred would be sharper. I should kill him now, he thought. First Telepath should have killed me in the crèche instead of training me. The tight hold on his mind slowly melted away with the drowsy warmth of the kzinretti and the swirling sthondat drug still in his system. He brushed against three distinctly female, quietly desperate minds filled with thoughts he found all too familiar.

Bobcat leapt out of bed, ears erect, small numb of a tail thrashing and he glared at the complex females like a trapped animal. “You’re sentient?” he whispered in the Heroes’ Tongue.

No answer. They only clustered around themselves for protection. Cautiously, he walked over to the small case buried in the clothes he had carelessly strewn about the room, took out a syringe and pushed the intimate needle into the crook of his arm. The hit was instantaneous. Tentatively, he scanned their thoughts again and noticed they were thinking neither in the Heroes’ Tongue nor in the limited females’ tongue. They spoke a sort of primitive cousin of the Heroes’ Tongue. A more precise scan revealed that they were taken from a remote, underdeveloped region of Kzinhome. He felt their longing for a dense blond jungle nestled between majestic mountains. The priesthood that cultivated meekness in females had never tampered with their bloodline.

After decades of mastering the humans’ monotonous grunts, he easily learned the rich and rumbling tongue clearly birthed by a kzin larynx, “Can you understand me?” he asked. He knew metaphysically that they could, but he still disbelieved it.

Fear and hope flared in them like a triple star system cascading into a super nova. The psychic blast charred his soul into a black silhouette. He desperately tried to shield himself from the torrent of their minds. Most telepaths are weakened by their rampant empathy, but Bobcat had learned early on to shut his mind like a clenched jaw. It was a trick that allowed him to do some of the more hands-on jobs of his career as Devourer ’s Telepath, but now he was paying it back with interest. He profoundly understood their oppression; after all, was he not a despised slave himself?

After a short time one of them, the gorgeous golden one, Raxa, unaccustomed to speaking out loud, hissed, “Yes.”

“Will you help us?” another female, with blue crystalline eyes, Xast, growled pleadingly, and for the first time in his long and miserable life, Bobcat saw himself as they saw him, not as cripple or a man-eater, but as a Hero.

His knees buckled and he collapsed onto all fours. “I will,” he spat and braced himself for another annihilating wave of hope.

Bobcat fled the emotional singularity created by the psychic kitten and cogent females. Larsson yelled out to him, “I took the liberty of calling Yearrl-Captain and he wants that kitten, said he’ll transfer payment when it’s on his ship.”

Bobcat hurried down the street. His mind whirled. He needed to ground himself, sink his teeth into something warm and bloody, something solid. He noticed another old kzinti building, dots and commas above the doorway read SERENGETI: AUTHENTIC EARTH GAME. Hunger welled up as the effects of his last shot of sthondat extract slowly drained from his system. He would never be allowed in the public hunting park, so he ducked inside the eatery.

The place was deserted except for two local kzintoshi hunched over the gleaming red carcass of an animal no longer recognizable. Bobcat entered a feeding stall and punched up something called a zebra.

Escape was the only option. Take the kitten and the sentient kzinretti and go. There was only one place in all the universe a tattered old telepath with his stolen harem could go. He had grown up with the legends. He needed help of course. Bobcat used the ebbing traces of his telepathic power and unlocked all the remaining blocks and compartments he had so meticulously put up around his mind. It was easy after the onslaught at the Temple of Sekhmet.

He instantly caught an image of the ARM Agent who had been tracking him, a dark young woman, though of course, youth could be deceptive with these humans. She wore the blue uniform of Canyon police, but her true employers were the UN back in the Sol system. Her hair and eyes were black streaked with violet, a cosmetic allusion to her flatlander past. She was all muscle, with enough body fat to make her absolutely delicious. He sent her an image of Serengeti and asked her to join him for dinner. Then, he sat and meditated on his predicament.

Varsha Khan entered the restaurant and the metallic tang of blood and wet extraterrestrial fur hit her like a slap. She breathed through her mouth and surveyed the room. A smaller kzintosh with russet, black-spotted fur and large erect ears like the junk sails on ancient Chinese boats waved her over. Varsha approached cautiously. He had ruffs of longer hair on his cheeks ending in two points on either side of his chin. She also noticed he was more ragged than most kzintoshi, like a shabby old alley cat.

“You opened up on purpose. Is this some kind of trap?”

“Not at all, Agent Khan. We’re both talented telepaths and I’m pressed for time. Allow me to get right to the point. Right here on Canyon, sentient kzinretti are being held as sex slaves.”

“That’s absurd,” but as she spoke, a faint, guarded mental transmission passed from Bobcat to Varsha and she knew it was true.

A young man with a gaunt face and sunken eyes led a small striped horse into the stall and quickly left. “Ah, so this is a zebra,” Bobcat licked his muzzle with a broad pink tongue and proceeded to chaw down on its neck with bone-crushing force. The pitiful animal hee-hawed in terrible pain. Varsha dodged kicking hoofs, then the beast went still.

She suppressed a sudden surge of terror and revulsion and said, “I don’t think that’s an actual zebra, probably a genetically modified donkey.”

Bobcat didn’t look up as he lacerated a large chunk of dripping scarlet meat and threw it back whole.

“How do you know about this?” she continued.

“I partake of their services.” His face was all sticky and red.

Despite her businesslike demeanor, she arched a curious eyebrow, “I thought telepaths weren’t allowed to breed?”

“No, not breed, but my captain allows me to ch’rowl until my heart’s content.”

“And what, some of you macho kzintoshi have a fetish for exotic sapient females? Not in proper harems, of course, but you can ch’rowl them in brothels, huh?”

“I don’t believe those responsible know they are sentient. The kzinretti are quite scared and reluctant to talk, and even if they did, they don’t speak the Heroes’ Tongue or Interworld.” He rent another heavy mass of equine muscle, and Varsha’s skin crawled at the sound of striped flesh ripping.

“Wait. I caught that thought! You want me to believe that this is a human operation?”

“It is. Humans are an enterprising ape. They’ve learned to take advantage of this odd situation of coexistence with kzinti, and a sort of cottage industry has sprung up, catering to our gruesome needs.” He pointed to the drain at the center of the stall’s tiled floor as if that explained everything. “As a matter of fact, Serengeti is also a human establishment. Who else would come up with the idea of a restaurant that brings you a live animal, allows you to ravage it, hoses you down, and then is ready to serve the next famished kzin in less than an hour?”