Curious, he thought, as the majority of his consciousness wondered how to answer the Master. The controls were odd, separate crystal-display dials and manual levers and switches, primitive in the extreme. But the machinery behind the switches was… there were no doors; something happened, and the material went… vague, and you could walk through it, like walking through soft taffy. The only mechanical airlock was a safety-backup.
There was no central power source for the ship. Dotted around were units that apparently converted matter into energy; the equivalent of flashlight batteries could start it. The basic drive was to the kzinti gravity polarizer as a fusion bomb was to grenade; it could accelerate at thousands of gravities, and then pull space right around the ship and travel faster than light.
Faster than light—
“Stop daydreaming,” the Voice said. “And tell me why.”
“Master, we don't know how.”
The thrint opened its mouth and then closed it again, the tendrils stroking caressingly at its almost nonexistent lips. “Why not?” he said. “It isn't very complicated. You can buy them anywhere for twenty znorgits.”
“Master, do you know the principles?”
“Of course not, slave! That's slavework. For engineers.”
“But Master, the slave-engineers you've got… we can only talk to them a little, and they don't know anything beyond what buttons to push. The machinery—” he waved helplessly at the walls “—doesn't make any sense to us, Master! It's just blocks of matter. We… our instruments can barely detect that something's going on.”
The thrint stood looking at him, radiating incomprehension. “Well,” he said after a moment. “It's true I didn't have the best quality of engineering slave. No need for them, on a routine posting. Still, I'm sure you'll figure something out, Chief Slave. How are we doing at getting the Ruling Mind freed from the dirt?”
“Much better, Master! That is well within our capacities… Master?”
“Yes?”
“Have I your permission to send a party to Tiamat? It can be done without much danger of detection, beyond what the deserters already present; we need more personnel and spare parts. For a research project on… well, on your nervous system.”
The alien's single unwinking eye stared at him. “What are nerves?” he said slowly. Dnivtopun took a dopestick from his pouch and sucked on it. Then: “What's research?”
“Erreow.”
The kzinrett rolled and twisted across the wicker matting of the room, yowling softly with her eyes closed. Traat-Admiral glanced at her with postcoitial satisfaction as he finished grooming his pelt and laid the currycomb aside; he might be de facto leader of the Modernists, but he was not one of those who could not maintain a decent appearance without a dozen servants and machinery. At the last he cleaned the damp portion of his fur with talc, remembering once watching a holo of humans bathing themselves by jumping into water. Into cold water.
“Hrrrr,” he shivered.
The female turned over on all fours and stuck her rump in the air.
“Ch'rowl?” she chirrupped. Involuntarily his ears extended and the muscles of his massive neck and shoulders twitched. “Ch'rowl?” With a saucy twitch of her tail, but he could smell that she was not serious. Besides, there was work to do.
“No,” he said firmly. The kzinrett padded over to a corner, collapsed onto a pile of cushions and went to sleep with limp finality.
A kzinrett of the Patriarch's line, Traat-Admiral thought with pride; one of Chuut-Riit's beauteous daughters. His blood to be mingled with the Riit, he whose sire had been only a Third Gunner, lucky to get a single mate even when the heavy casualties of the First Fleet left so many maleless. He stretched, reaching for the domed ceiling, picked up the weapons belt from the door and padded off down the corridor. This was the governor's harem quarters, done up as closely as might be to a noble's Kzinrett House on Kzin itself. Domed wickerwork structures, the tops waterproof with synthetic in a concession to modernity; there were even gravity polarizers to bring it up to Homeworld weight, nearly twice that of Wunderland.
“Good for the health of the kzinrett and kits,” he mused to himself, and his ears moved in the kzinti equivalent of a grin. It was easy to get used to such luxury, he decided, ducking through the shamboo curtain over the entrance and pacing down the exit corridor; that was open at the sides, roofed in flowering orange vines.
Each dome was set in a broad space of open vegetation, and woe betide the kzinrett who strayed across the low wooden boundaries into her neighbor's claws; female kzinti might be too stupid to talk, but they had a keenly developed sense of territory. There were open spaces, planted in a pleasant mixture of vegetation; orange kzinti, reddish Wunderlander, green from Earth. Traat-Admiral could hear the sounds of young kits at play in the common area, see them running and tumbling and chasing while their mothers lay basking in the weak sunlight or groomed each other. Few of them had noticed the change of males over much, but integrating his own modest harem had been difficult, much fur flying dominance-tussles.
He sighed as he neared the exit-gate. Chuut-Riit's harem was not only of excellent quality, but so well trained that it needed less maintenance than his own had. The females would even let human servants in to keep up the feeding stations, a vast help, since male kzinti who could be trusted in another's harem were not common. They were all well housebroken, and most did not even have to be physically restrained when pregnant, which simplified things immensely; kzinrett had an irresistible urge to dig a birthing tunnel about then, and it created endless problems and damage to the gardens. Through the outer gate, functional warding-fields and robot guns, and a squad of Chuut-Riit's household troopers. They saluted with enthusiasm. Being hereditary servants of the Riit, he had been under no obligation to let them swear to him… although it would have been foolish to discard so useful a cadre.
Would I have thought of this before Chuut-Riit trained me? he thought. Then: He is dead: I live. Enough.
Beyond the gates began the palace proper. The military and administrative sections were largely underground, ship-style; from here you could see only the living quarters, openwork pavilions for the most part, on bases of massive cut stone. Between and around them stretched gardens, stones of pleasing shape, trees whose smooth bark made claws itch. There was a half-acre of zheeretki too, the tantalizing scent calling the passer-by to come roll in its intoxicating blossoms.
Traat-Admiral wiggled his ears in amusement as he settled onto the cushions in the reception pavilion. All this luxury, and no time to enjoy it, he thought. It was well enough, one did not become a Conquest Hero by lolling about on cushions sipping blood.
His eldest son was coming along one of the paths. In a hurry, and running four-foot with the sinuous gait that reminded humans of weasels as much as cats; he wore a sash of office, his first ranking. Ten meters from the pavilion he rose, licked his wrists and smoothed back his cheek fur with them, settled the sash.