Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 11

So much for the cupboard. I found it vaguely unsettling, and with no answers. No skeleton, anyway. I lay down again and waited till Gale reappeared. She was dressed in another colorful gown, a semi-formal one of clearly prewar style, a little more revealing than the last. Beautiful Gale.

"You're better, I know," she said after we had kissed. "But wait till later. We'll be dining shortly."

"I'm more than ready," I told her. And then, again rather clumsily, "And I thank you once more. If there is any way I can repay you for what you have done for me…" I was trying to convey several things and probably didn't do any of them properly. I raised my hands and caressed her. She responded, but there was something abstracted in her response. I asked her about the resident kzin.

"He wants to see you," she said. I did not want to see him. I wanted to leave the first moment I could, preferably perhaps the next morning after another night warmed by her without having anything to do with any kzinti, to find my car or otherwise call for help-I supposed even this place had some sort of communications-get back to Gerning and have my ankle seen to, and get on with my life.

Thinking about another night with her though, and the previous night, made me wonder if this should be the end of the affair. I very definitely did not want it to be the end. Perhaps she would come too?

But one thing I had learned about backwoods Wunderlanders. They were sticklers for their own codes of hospitality. If this kzin wanted to see me, as courtesy, and more, to Gale, I could not refuse. Indeed to have refused could have caused more than offence to her. I thought it might well have been enough to provoke the creature's hair-trigger anger, and perhaps against her as well as me. Did he still consider her his slave? And was he resentful about my handling of his property?

Anyway, I consented to his desire to see me. There seemed no alternative.

"Does he speak English or Wunderlander?" I asked. "I know something of the slaves' patois, and the script, but I cannot manage the Heroes' Tongue." In any case, I knew, it was an insult for a monkey to use the Heroes' Tongue to a kzintosh. During the Occupation it was a fatal insult.

"Conversation will not be required," she said. "He is not meeting you to converse." A few moments before, with the touch of her on my hands, and her lips on mine, I had felt positive and happy enough. Suddenly, things seemed abnormal and disturbing again. There was, I realized, strain in every line of her face and stance now, in every tone of her voice. This kzin-or something-was making her do something against her will. No, I didn't like any of this at all.

"We will dine together," she said.

I didn't like that either. Not one bit. It was abnormal. Kzinti did not eat with humans. Monkey eating-habits disgusted them as theirs disgusted us. They tore and gulped at raw meat, often enough live meat. Those fangs could sheer the biggest bones.

A sudden hideous chill in my spine: kzinti did eat with humans, of course, when humans were the meal. Was that what this was all about? A trap to supply the kzin with monkey-meat? Was I to be a course rather than a guest at the dinner? Was Gale some sort of bait for unwary travellers? Kzinti had sometimes-often-taken hostages to force humans to act against their wills. Those children?

I told myself I was being stupid, but a doubt remained. The main point with which I reassured myself was that if this kzin was determined to eat me it could have done so the previous night, or at any time during the day just finished when I was virtually helpless. Or did they like their meat conscious and terrorized? They did when they ate a zianya, I knew. The glandular secretions of its terror and pain added flavor to the meat, and it was said they considered that flesh ripped from a zianya's body before it died to be especially delicious. Did they consider attacking a human recovering from a zeitunger pack-attack unsporting, as I had considered it unsporting to beam or shoot the tigripard from the air?

Should I run now? Bad ankle and all? Stupid. A human even with two sound legs could not hope to outrun a kzin-many had tried. And to attempt to flee is guaranteed to provoke the attack reaction in them. Even Cumpston, who knew some individual kzinti far better than I did, had warned me that never, even in games with those he knew, would he make a feint of running from them. And Gale had the beam rifle. I could not outrun that.

Yet I could not believe anything so hideous.

Or could I? What good explanation for any of this could there be? And why, why was this woman living so, serving a kzin as if humans were still their slaves on Wunderland? What hold did it have on her? I hadn't cared a little time before, but suddenly, as my mind came back towards normal, that question did matter. I remembered a horrible old story about the aftermath of an ancient human war and a surviving death-camp victim found protecting and serving his old torturer, hiding him from the vengeance of the liberators: "He promised to treat me better next time." Was there something like that here?

Or was there some explanation even worse? That Gale was acting as a willing bait in a trap? Acting from some perverted hatred of her own kind like Emma, or getting a share of the meat and a kick out of cannibalism? I had encountered crazy humans on Wunderland before-not very long before. Indeed it was they who had, I now realized, killed my love, my Jocelyn. Humans steeped in more tragedy than their minds could cope with, humans raised as privileged kzin collaborators, humans twistedly pro-kzinti or simply wicked for wickedness' sake. That there were human cannibals on Wunderland I knew. There was not a sick perversion but some human would indulge in it. After decades of war and occupation madness was abroad on this planet. There was a rigid control about Gale, something damming and stopping her emotions, something desperately abnormal. She seemed to wish not to speak, to betray nothing, and yet was clearly under some terrible pressure.

Then Gale said something else. Defensively, as if she expected protest:

"His eyes are not… he does not like strong light. We will be dining in the dark."

I would be insane to agree to that. I had my suspicions about this kzin and his meat-appetites already.

And yet… My sister Selina was said to have had latent telepathic abilities. I had never been tested but I had at least something-an erratic and occasional intuition about others-which, when I had felt it in the past, had stood me in good stead. I felt it now and it told me Gale was not lying about that half-stated fact of the creature's eyes, at least. Not exactly. But I was equally sure that she was keeping something back.

And I felt her care for me, her tenderness, was genuine. Or had she used sex to, among other things, deliberately confuse my perceptions?

I would be at every sort of disadvantage. Kzinti were happy to be night-hunters. Further, darkness enhanced the rudimentary sense they possessed which, in a few individuals, was developed into the power of the telepaths. If they were physically close to one in the dark, I had been told-and when I was told it, by a human under a bright sky, the idea of being physically close to one in the dark had made me shudder inwardly-even the non-telepaths could read something of one's state of mind. It was an ability evolved to help them to hunt out game that attempted to hide at night and in caves and other darknesses. Not that they often deigned to read monkeys' states of mind when they strode Wunderland as conquerors…

I should have refused absolutely. But something prevented me. Was it the fear and sadness in Gale's eyes? Was it some dawning feeling of love for her, that great destroyer of survival-instincts? The tenderness in her that I felt? Was it that the zeitunger attack had simply left me in no mental state to put up any resistance? Perhaps the desire not to appear a coward to her? And besides, if the kzin wanted me dead, then I, alone, unarmed, and unable to run, was dead anyway. I allowed Gale to lead me towards whatever lay at the top of the stairs.