Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“What do you know about the Angel’s Pencil ?”

“Absolutely nothing.”

He sensed her ignorance. “ Angel’s Pencil was part of the first wave of human colonization about two hundred years ago. It had the misfortune of running into two kzinti warships and plunging deeper into Patriarchy space. Somehow, this slow and antiquated vessel managed to destroy the two ships. Then it disappears. Its ion trail goes cold, but no debris was ever found. The Dripping Crimson Saber was sent to investigate the wreckage of the Gutting Claw , and it found a defiant message from the Gutting Claw ’s Telepath to its Captain recorded on the ship’s surviving backup computer.

“On the surface, it was a tirade of insults and challenges and a clear declaration of treason. The telepath had sided with the humans and escaped. The official Patriarchy statement was that the Angel’s Pencil and its weak telepath ally were obliterated beyond any detectable trace. The techs however deduced that they cut off the Angel ’s messy fusion drive and were then towed by the captured kzin barge using its faster and untraceable gravity-engine to another location. The Dripping Crimson Saber ’s Telepath also perceived a hidden vibrational message embedded within the recording. It said, Brother Telepaths, an opportunity presented itself and I pounced. I have taken a harem and I will earn a Name. I challenge you to join me.

“Over the years this account has become legend, Agent Khan. Their secret location has grown into some kind of mythical sanctuary for our kind, although I don’t know of any telepath that has heeded the call.”

“Because they don’t know the exact location! You don’t know that these humans didn’t just shoot this telepath in the head the second they were clear of the Patriarchy.”

“Come now, Agent Khan, you know as well as I do that these humans went against their instincts and helped Gutting Claw ’s Telepath just as you are helping me now.”

“You still don’t know where you’re going!” She felt that all of this had been for nothing. She should have probed deeper into his desperate delusional mind. When had kzinti become the dreamers and humans the cold realists?

“I have a spoor of a theory. Telepaths have a penchant for the symbolic. If Gutting Claw ’s Telepath wanted us to follow him as his message suggests, he’d give us an emblematic sign post. If he towed them, he certainly had some say in their destination. I believe they went to 46 Leonis Minoris.”

“The lesser lion, the eunuch?” She grasped the archaic human imagery from his mind.

“Are feeble telepaths not lesser lions? Unable to breed, are we not eunuchs?” He flushed with emotion.

Varsha sensed that these blasphemous ideas had been percolating within him for a long time. She also had to admit that they carried a sort of mystical logic; the reasoning of a drug-crazed telepath.

One of the fresh-faced medics that a second ago had waved diagnostic instruments around the kzinretti, now approached and broke the spell, bringing them back to the slow pace of the material plane. “Two of the yellow females are pregnant. I suggest they go into coldsleep before takeoff. I’d hate for them to get jostled around.”

This rolled over Bobcat like a sudden storm. The concept of being a sire was so remote, so impossible, that the actual fact rocked him. Varsha felt squalls of equal parts joy and fear crashing down on him.

She turned to the expecting females and spoke in the closest approximation of their proto-Heroes’ Tongue her vocal cords allowed, “First, let me just say it’s an honor to finally meet intelligent kzinretti, and congratulations, you’re going to be mothers.” She gently stroked their cheeks, then turned to Bobcat and said in the same language so the females could understand, “Well done, champ!”

He said nothing for a while as his own personal paradigm shifted toward the paternal. “We have to get out of here,” he rumbled at last.

“Right. The Sun Wukong is taking off in three minutes, and I want the I Love Lucy to be ready to launch right along with it,” she barked, and all the techs ended their last-minute fretting.

Bobcat placed a massive paw on Varsha’s shoulder. “Thank you, Agent Khan. I give you my word that I will name my first female kitten after you.”

She smiled warmly. “You know, I’ve been giving some thought as to why kzinti telepaths are born scrawny.”

“Enlighten me.” His spotted, rust-colored fur bristled at the mention of such a delicate subject. He removed his paw from her shoulder.

Varsha continued enthusiastically, “I believe there’s a battle for nourishment in the kzinrett’s womb, between the kzin body, which is a high-maintenance, calorie-hogging machine, and a telepath’s developing brain, which also demands more energy than most. Inevitably, the brain wins out at the cost of a fully developed body.”

“An interesting theory,” he spit between gritted teeth. He turned to see his two mothers-to-be being tenderly placed in freezer caskets.

“Don’t you see? If you took better care of your females and perhaps gave them specially formulated prenatal vitamins, you could have big, strong killer telepaths!”

Bobcat’s lips pulled back and flashed her the obscene stiletto teeth Varsha had briefly glimpsed back in the kzin restaurant. His ears fluttered like pink moth wings.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”

“Relax, Agent Khan; sometimes a smile is just a smile. That’s quite a brilliant and rather obvious observation.” He wondered if the Patriarchy suppressed such knowledge.

“Thanks.” She walked out and down the walkway clapping her hands. “Alright, grease monkeys, time’s up! Everybody out!”

Alone on the bridge, Bobcat took out his last remaining shot of sthondat lymph extract and delicately placed it on the console. He felt the insubstantial ball of soot on his lap stir and look up at him with big, powerful blue-green eyes.

“You need a crèche name, little one. Fortunately, your mother was too stupefied to give you one, so the Honor falls on me,” he said appraising the kit as if it were a fine, olden trophy belonging to a great Hero. Neither Interworld nor the Heroes’ Tongue seemed appropriate now that they were leaving known space.

The kitten yawned, revealing needle point teeth and a small curled tongue. “A very casual attitude in the face of danger.” Bobcat’s ears flicked and he wondered if the painkillers from the autodoc were making him silly. “Then you shall be called Jarri, until such time as you earn a Hero’s Name. It means valiant in the exotic language of your new den mothers.”

He gave the sleepy kit a reassuring lick between the ears. “I give you my word, on what little Honor I have, that you will not be dragged into a life of slavery and never feel the sting of animal poison in your veins.”

The two war-era ships lifted off the autumnal, pockmarked surface of Canyon with perfect synchronization and into the waiting maw of the immense, spherical ship. The kzin ship’s armored hull plating shone like polished copper and did nothing, patiently waiting like a hunter in the bush. Bobcat entered the coordinates for 46 Leonis Minoris into the kzin computer recklessly rigged to the ARM dashboard. He sent a silent prayer to the cruel Fanged God that he reward his audacity with better territory. Then, he leaned back in the command chair and meditated on the rapidly shrinking planet.

“How’s the shoulder?” Varsha asked, entering the small bridge.

“You didn’t have to stay.” He had known that she would before she closed the ship’s airlock behind her staff.