“What do you mean?”
“Is it not obvious? The oligarchic control, the culling of intelligent females, the rigidity of discipline: the kzin heart finds iron rules easier to tolerate than a nuanced and constantly shifting reality.”
Selena twisted her mouth sourly. “Oh, you mean the way we demonstrated our flexibility by imposing three centuries of self-inflicted social brainwashing that we still call our Golden Age of Peace?”
“Nothing proves my point more than your Golden Age.”
“What? How?”
“Because it was only three centuries long.”
“Only three centuries? Apparently kzinti have an intrinsically different sense of time, as well.”
Hap shrugged. “Perhaps we do. Did you mislead yourselves when you turned your swords into ploughshares and then denied that swords had ever existed? Yes, of course you did, but that is the risk of being creatures that advance through experiment and change. You try new things. Often, they do not work. Just as often, you then over-correct in rejecting them. But somehow, a dynamic equilibrium emerges. It may not be obvious until one has a perspective of far hindsight-looking back across decades, centuries, even millennia-but it is the truth of you humans: you improve by changing, and the process does not destroy you. Quite the contrary, it is the wellspring of your vitality.”
Selena smiled crookedly when he was finished. “I thank you, Hap. We had thought to teach you, but I suspect, when I reflect upon what you just said, that it is you who will have taught us.”
“And that comment teaches me, in turn.”
“Why?”
“Because, unless I am much mistaken, making that kind of admission-that you humans can and do learn fundamental truths about yourselves from outsiders-comes relatively easily to your species. It does not come easily to the kzinti.”
“Then perhaps that will be the greatest insight, and example, you will bring back to your species. After all, you admitted to learning from us, just now, and you did so with great ease.”
“It is simply a sign of your bad influence upon me.” Hap’s fur rippled in waves of mirth. “So I will have to learn to be more inflexible and stubborn.” He bowed. “I will not bid you farewell, or good-bye. The Wunderlanders have a better phrase for parting: Auf Wiedersehen. Until we see each other again.”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Hap. Success and good luck always.”
He stood tall-tall as only a massive kzin could stand-and turned with what seemed a ruffle and flourish of his pelt. Had he been a human hero, the movement of his fur would have been accomplished by a cape, swirling to mark his long-striding exit.
“Auf Wiedersehen,” Selena called after him again. And then, remembering one of Dieter’s intimate phrases, she whispered “-und tschüss, Liebling,” at Hap’s broad, receding back.
TOMCAT TACTICS
2413 BCE: Wunderland, leading Trojan point asteroids
“If you botch the insertion, the oyabun will have your left testicle,” muttered Pytor Iarngavi over the tightbeam. “Probably your right one, too.”
Moto Yakazuki snorted defiance. “Just let him try and get them.” The wiry EVA expert shut off and detached the portable compressed air retro: it was old, reliable, zero-energy-signature tech. Perfect for this job. Yakazuki stowed the retro on the side of his life-support unit, and then shifted his grip on the small space-rock. Only four meters in length and two wide, one couldn’t seriously call it an asteroid. He fired his suit jets in quick bursts to make small side-vector corrections.
“It’s going to be too close to the other-”
“It’s not, Pytor,” Yakazuki snapped. “Now, shut up.” The small Serpent Swarmer pulled himself hand over hand to the other side of the probably artificial splinter of rock. Once secured, he pulsed his suit jets, counter-boosting until he had zeroed out the inertia along its insertion vector. He pushed gently away, assessed his EVA handiwork: the tiny lozenge-like object was now motionless relative to the other rocks at the trailing end of Wunderland’s leading Trojan point asteroids. “Perfect: like it’s been there since the beginning of time.”
“Whaddya think it is?”
“I dunno,” confessed Yakazuki as he began boosting back to the small prospecting boat they had been loaned for this task. “Way too light to be a genuine rock, that’s for sure. But the man didn’t say what it was, and I wasn’t about to ask. I’m just glad to start paying off for my, eh, overzealous lovemaking with Funikawa’s prize baishunfu.”
“Since when has ‘beating a whore’ become ‘overzealous lovemaking’?”
“Mind your own business and vices, Iarngavi. Just how many thousands are you in debt, now? Word has it that when you couldn’t pay last month, you offered your ass to the Yamikin’s collection goons. Who kicked it raw for you.”
“Fuck you, Moto.”
“I’ll bet you would, if you got the chance. Open the hatch. I’m done out here.”
Tomoaki Kitayama sipped at the small porcelain cup: the sake was ever so slightly less than body temperature. Not really tepid, yet, but not correct. However, this was probably going to be the least of his problems, today.
His gang’s senior accountant, or kaikei, appeared at the entrance of his office, located in the back of the restaurant that bore Kitayama’s name. The kaikei bowed. “Kobun?”
“Proceed.”
“We have received the signal from the debtor and the rapist. They have completed their task.”
“Has our spy drone verified their report?”
“Yes, kobun. Shall I inform the oyabun that the mission has been a success?”
“No, I shall do that personally.”
“Very well, kobun. Are there other matters which need my attention today?”
“No, but tell me: the men who performed the mission-is their ship still in line-of-sight, for clear transmission?”
“Yes, kobun. Shall I raise them?”
“No, I shall tend to that also. You may go home. My regards to your family.”
“We hope you will honor us by coming to dinner soon again, kobun.”
“Yes, perhaps.” Please no; his wife is as dull as a potted plant. And less comely. “However, it is uncertain when I might be free to do so. I shall inform you if my schedule becomes less taxing.” Which will never happen.
Kitayama nodded in response to his kaikei’s bow, then studied the data tablet beside him. Two channels were already pulsing, ready to be activated: a red one that would send a narrow lascom transmission to the prospecting boat, and a green one that would open a secure line to the oyabun. Kitayama smiled, pressed the red button, and then the green one.
Forty seconds after the red button was pressed, and at a distance of forty light-seconds, the computer in Iarngavi’s and Yakazuki’s small prospecting boat received a lascom signal that did not route through to the communications panel in the bridge. Instead, it was a coded command that was addressed for the subprocessor overseeing engine operations. Which obeyed the command immediately.
The magnetic bottle on the plasma drive flickered out of existence. The superheated hydrogen expanded in every direction, including right through the hull of the craft. When it came into contact with the oxygenated atmosphere within, combustion occurred.
Which Tomoaki Kitayama’s small, undetected spy drone duly recorded and transmitted.