“—and so we inherit the care of our dams, our Sire’s other wives, now ours, and our siblings and half-siblings,” Spots-Son said morosely some hours later, upending the whiskey decanter over his dish. “Honor demands it.”
Harold’s was half-empty now; a waiter came quickly enough when the long orange-furred arm waved the crystal in the air, setting out fresh liquor and cream. Spots-Son slopped the amber fluid into his bowl and into Jonah’s glass. Large-Son was lying with his muzzle in his dish, tongue protruding slightly as he snored. Thin black lips flopped against his fangs, and his eyes were nearly shut.
“Kzinti females take much care,” Spots continued, lowering his muzzle. Despite his care it went too far into the heated drink as he nearly toppled, making him sneeze and slap at his nose. “And much feeding. The properties have been confiscated by the military government—all the fine ranchlands and hunting-grounds our Sire possessed, all except the house. Where once we feasted on blood-dripping fresh beef and screaming zianyas, now our families must trade heirlooms for synthetic protein. Soon we will have no alternative but honorable suicide.”
“Thas—that’s a shame,” Jonah said. “Yeah, after th’ war the fighters get nothin’ and the politicians get rich, like always.” He hiccuped and drank. “Goddam UN Space Navy doesn’t need no loudmouths who think for themselves, either. Say, what did you say you did before the war?”
“I,” Spots said with slow care and some pride, “was a Senior Weapons System Repairworker. And my sibling, too.”
Jonah blinked owlishly. “Reminds me.” He fumbled a sheet of printout from a pocket. “Lookit this. Decided it was a good deal so I’d come in here an’ spend my last krona. Here.”
He spread the crumpled paper on the damp surface of the table. The kzin craned to look; it was in the spiky fourteen-point gothic script most commonly used for public announcements on Wunderland. Printed notices were common; during the occupation the kzin overlords had restricted human use of the information net, and since then wartime damage had kept facilities scarce.
Technical personnel wanted, he read, for heavy salvage operation. Categories of skills were listed. Heavy work, some danger, high pay. Suuomalisen Contracting, vid. 97-777-4321A München.
“Urrrowra,” Spots said mournfully. “Such would be suitable—if we were not kzinti. Surely none will hire us. No, suicide is our fate—we must cut our throats with our own w'tsai and immolate our households. Woe! Woe for a dishonored death in poverty, among furless omnivores! No shrine will enclose our bones and ashes; only eating-grass will cover our graves. Perhaps Kdapt-Preacher is right, and the God has a hairless face!”
Large-Son whimpered in half-conscious agreement and slapped his hands over his eyes to blank out the horrible vision of the heretic’s new creed, that God had created Man in His own image.
“Naw,” Jonah said. “I talked to the boss, she don’t care anything but you can do the job. Or wouldn’t have hired me, with a black mark next to my discharge. C’mon—bring the bottle. Talk to her tomorrow.”
“You are right!” Spots bellowed, standing to his full two meters and a half of massive, orange-furred height. His naked pink tail lashed. “We will fight against debt and empty-accountness. We leap and rip the throat of circumstance. We will conquer!”
From the other side of the long room beads rustled as a tall black-skinned human stuck his head through the curtain. He was dressed in archaic white tie and tuxedo, but there was a fully functional military-grade stunner in his fist. Behind the bar several other employees reached down and came up with shockrods as guests’ heads turned toward the booth.
“Shhhhh!” Jonah said, tugging recklessly at the felinoid alien’s fur. “The bouncers.”
“Rrrrr. True.” There was no dignity in being stunned and thrown out in the gutter. “Where shall we go? Our quarters are far outside München, and transport for kzin costs much.” Sleeping outside would not be very wise, given the number of exterminationist fanatics ready to attack a helpless kzin.
“C’mon. I know a doss where they don’t care ‘bout anything but your coin, and it’s cheap.”
They weaved their way to the door, Spots half-carrying his brother and Jonah lifting the unconscious kzin’s tail with exaggerated care.
CHAPTER FIVE
“…still worth lookin’, oh, yes,” the old man said.
Jonah yawned and looked over at him. The two kzin were unrolling their pallets up a level in the framework; the human had a stack of blankets and a pillow instead, all natural fiber in the rather primitive way of Wunderland, and all smelling dubious and looking worse. It must be even more difficult for the felinoids, with their sensitive noses.
“Look at ‘er this way,” the man was saying. “You take hafnium—”
It was hard to estimate his age; he could be as young as seventy or as old as one-fifty, depending on how much medical care he had been able to afford during the occupation.
“—good useful industrial metal; or gold, likewise, and we use it as monetary backing. Usually don’t pay to mine it anywhere but in the Swarm, in normal times. But there ain’t been any normal times, not since the pussies came, no sirree. So people’ve been out in the Jotuns for a dog’s age now, finding deposits. Don’t pay to bring in heavy equipment; deposits are rich but small. You can make yourself rich that way, and that’s not counting salvage on all the equipment the pussies abandoned out there, all very salable these days. I’d go myself, don’t you doubt it, go again like a shot.”
“Hey,” Jonah called. “You sound like you’ve done that before; what’re you doing here?”
The great room was noisy with the sounds of humans settling down to sleep, snores, snatches of drunken song. There were still tens of thousands of displaced from the war years.
“Made me a fortune, oh, yes, more than one,” the old man said. His wrinkled-apple face looked over at Jonah, eyes twinkling. “Lost ‘em all. Some the government took, and I spent the others going back and looking for a bigger strike. Most people get into that game don’t know where to stop. Get thirty thousand crowns worth, they want sixty. Get sixty, spend it trying to find half a million. Stands to reason, of course; that’s why the heavy metals are so valuable. Value of’em includes all the time and labor and money spent by those who don’t find anything, you see.”
“Wouldn’t be like that with me,” Jonah said, unrolling the blankets. Finagle, but I’m tired of being poor, he thought. Odd; poverty had never come up before he got to Alpha Centauri. Before then he’d been a Navy pilot, or a rockjack asteroid prospector. The Navy fed you, and rockjacks generally made enough to get by—certainly during the war, with industry sucking in all the materials it could find. “Just enough to set me up. Software business.” He had a first-rate Solarian education in it, and the locals were behind. “That’s all I’d want.”
“Likely so, stranger, likely so,” the old man said. “Well, don’t signify, does it?”
“Finagle!” Jonah swore, as the beam jerked backward towards him. He heaved at the bight of control line. “Get it, Spots!”
“Hrrrrr,” Spots growled, and caught the end of it. His pelt laid itself flat under the harness, and the long steel balk slowed and then touched gently on the junction-point. A little less power in the stubby plump-cat limbs and they would both have been crushed against the uprights of the frame.
“Slack off!” Jonah called down.
Large-Son flapped his ears in amusement thirty meters below and turned the control rheostat of the winch. The woven-wire cable slacked, and together man and kzin guided the end of the beam into its slot. Jonah clamped the sonic melder’s leads to the corners and stepped back onto the scaffolding.