“Well, the problem is with what we’ve got of their language: not much, and not the right kind of lexicon.”
“What do you mean?”
“All we know about kzin speech is the comm traffic we’ve picked up when they invade, almost all of which is heavily encrypted and non-verbal. We got a bit more from debriefing you Wunderlanders who came in on the slow boats from Centauri. But most of what we have was harvested from the few military wrecks that were intact enough to do us any good. Like that Raker-class small-boat you modified for snatching the kits.”
“So what’s the problem with the information from the wrecks? Were their computers corrupted?”
“No, we got very clean data. But it was the wrong data. Normal speech and military comm traffic may overlap, but the latter is really just a word-poor, albeit highly specialized, dialect of the former. We don’t have very much in the way of domestic vocabulary, or terms that describe states of being, or emotional or philosophical concepts. And we won’t have any access to informal idiom until we get Dr. Yang’s first response. If she’s still there.”
Dieter nodded. “I see. And the kzinti don’t use voice recognition software?”
“Very little. In place of voice recognition software, they depend upon ocular tracking. And since their physical reflexes are much faster than ours, the differential between their ‘look-and-blink’ systems and our voice command programs is pretty low.”
With the next lesson over, Hap flopped backward, sprawling in a manner that somehow mixed the boneless repose of early adolescence with “limp as a kitten.” Then his head swiveled slightly, his nose flaring after a peripherally detected scent. His ears shot out to full extension, his shoulders tensed.
“What’s that?” asked Dieter.
“That,” Selena explained, feeling a bit of inexplicable melancholy as she did, “is Hap detecting the scent of other kzinti.”
“Females?”
“Males. We can’t start with females. Every bit of data we have suggests that once the male cubs are separated from the mothers, they are not allowed further contact. We suspect that the scent of females could-um, confuse them.”
“How long have you been piping in the scent?”
“Just today. And just a few whiffs. Nothing very-”
Hap rose slowly, his head turning, searching. Then he looked at the teaching module and turned his back on it. This left him facing Selena directly. “Where are the others?”
Damn it, he distinguished it that quickly. At one part per million, he-
“Where are they?” Hap’s tone, while not quite imperious, was crisp and no-nonsense. “Where are the others like me?”
Selena kneeled down: he had grown so large that she hardly needed to anymore. “They are in other paddocks, in other spaces.”
“Why? Why are we not kept together? Why have I not met them?”
“Well, that’s a long story-”
Hap promptly sat down; he looked up at her. “Tell me. Please.” He looked at Dieter. “When you come and then go-sometimes for weeks-I start wondering ‘why do I have to stay here? Why can’t I go with Dieter?’ But I know I’ll get the same answer as when I ask to go somewhere else: not yet. Always ‘not yet.’ It doesn’t make sense. All of you-without hair-you go other places. Places beyond the walls, beyond the fence. But I don’t. I stay here. It’s a big space, but I can’t go anywhere else. You don’t let me.” He looked back at Selena. “Why?”
Selena looked at Dieter and then took a deep breath. Before she could start speaking, Hap leaned forward. “Before you start telling me, I need to know something.”
Selena blinked. “What?”
“This language you’re teaching me: that’s my language, isn’t it? I mean, the language that people like me-kzinti? — speak. Right?”
“That’s right.”
Hap nodded. “So I’m going to meet some other kzinti soon, right?”
“Eventually. Why do you think that?”
“Because with the language and the smells, it’s like you’re getting me ready. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Selena thought how many ways that was true: getting him ready for the rest of his life, actually. “Yes, that’s it.”
“I knew it! I knew it! So I’ll meet them soon.”
“Meet who soon?”
Hap blinked, surprised. “Why, my mother and my father.” He stared at her expression. “I do have a mother and a father, don’t I?”
As Dieter moved further off, Selena felt her eyes becoming wet. Hap’s face was suddenly tense as he watched her fighting against the tears. He blinked twice, rapidly: the kzin equivalent of a nervous gulp. “Tell me,” he said. “I can take it.”
2401 BCE: Subject age-five years
Selena entered the paddock slowly, carefully. She waited to see if Hap could detect Dieter’s scent, despite her extensive efforts at cleansing.
“So, Dieter is back for a while?”
How did he-? “Yes. I know that his scent disturbs you. I tried to-”
“Oh, I can’t smell him.”
“Then how did you know-?”
Hap stood, flexed his prodigiously growing limbs: they were long, rangy, distinctly immature, but already quite deadly. “I knew because you don’t smell like anything, not even yourself. And that’s how you smell, now, when he is back for a visit. Completely without scent.” Hap wrinkled his nose, which was now more angular, less button-like. “It’s not natural.” He tossed the last of his automated chase-toys from paw to paw. “Of course, nothing is natural around here.”
Selena looked at the toy: it had been a self-powered, semi-autonomous fuzzy quadruped. Originally quite fast and agile, it was now defunct and shredded beyond recognition: one of the rear limbs was missing, the other had been stripped down to the metal servos and armatures. The front limbs had been broken so that they now reached around behind the pseudocreature as easily as they did to its front. Which was consistent with the apparent theme of physiognomic reversaclass="underline" the neck coupling had been snapped, allowing the creature’s featureless head to stare backward over its shoulder blades. It wasn’t the result of play; it was bloody-minded, fixated destruction. Hap had done the same with the other objects provided for his amusement; in fact, over the past three months, he had systematically reduced all of them to so much junk. Starting with the far simpler, slower “chase-and-chomp” toys that he had played with since he was two, he smashed every play/training ’bot he had been given. And now he had finished by mauling the most sophisticated model available, specially designed to hone hunting and stalking skills during his “training years.” Whatever modest challenges this ’bot had presented to him, he had caught it within two hours. Now, he set its remains aside, carefully putting it on the end of what had come to be known as Death Row: the queue of toys he had methodically destroyed, one after the other.
And it was Selena’s job to find out why.
Fortunately, Hap’s next comment provided a convenient way to segué into the topic. “I was wondering when you’d finally ask me about the toys.”
“Hap, the toys are just part of something larger. I know that.” And how could she not? For the last year and a half, cheery, affectionate Hap had been on an emotional and behavioral roller-coaster ride, more than had been observed in the other two males as they entered the human equivalent of the terrible teens. No surprise there: neither of the other two had experienced the sudden, rude awakening to the peculiarities of their existence as stranded orphans the way Hap had, twenty months ago. It made matters worse when Hap’s introduction to the next oldest male ended with that kzin shunning him suspiciously. The oldest one had been downright hostile. All these events had initially pushed him closer to Selena. He frequently sought the comfort of her patient lap, his eyes wide but seeing inward, and seeing nothing but uncertainty. Uncertainty about his origins, his nature, his future. At first, he spoke about it frequently, then in fits and starts, and finally, not at all. At which point he ceased to seek her lap. That change had been permanent.