Hwass-Hwasschoaw was feeling no such alarm; he who believed in the God of the True Shape had nothing to fear from these divine pets. God needed the cuffing skills of the kzin to control His pets’ disloyal impiety. With a Kdapt reformation, He would get just that. All was going according to plan.
Their shuttle gracefully docked with the kzin ship. Free, Hwass sent the shuttle back out into space, pilotless, carrying the replacement diplomatic pouch and whatever treachery it might carry besides whinings about peace. He thrust his grass-eating companion into the maw of the airlock. Machinery cycled. The inner entrance dilated. Before he was out of his suit, Hwass was ushering a black-spotted captain toward his command center, leaving Grraf-Nig to fend for himself.
“Do we have warriors trained in boarding?”
The captain, striding to keep up, hissed qualified agreement, even enthusiasm. The war against the ghostships had been going badly for too long, the humiliation of being member to a treaty roared out the need of vengeful retaliation—but he was a professional who wanted to know more than Hwass had been able to tell him.
“Communicator!” Hwass motioned the crewkzin out of his seat; the comm equipment was standard over the whole of the Patriarchy and he was too impatient to explain his needs. He punched in a signal from memory and beamed it at the distant UNSN ghostship. Then he counted heartbeats. Now! The gas would be erupting from the suppositories of the slaves in a flatulence of death. In the null-gee human ships, air supply was circulated by machine. It was a small ship. Grraf-Nig’s test-animals from the Wunderland orphanage had died within seconds after exposure to the gas.
When there was no response from the ghostship, he rose from the communicator’s station and turned to the captain. “They are dead. The entire crew, slaves, all. Send your boarding party! Instantly! We have captured a hyperdrive!”
Sixteen warriors, in readiness for hours, swarmed out of the kzin warship, angry wasps. Cautious at first, they were deployed so they couldn’t all be slaughtered at once. They were ready to return fire with a fire that would surgically remove any weapons that the ghostship might use. But there was no return fire. Two warriors were about to open their prey like a can of rations when… it disappeared. Fourteen warriors had nothing to attack.
Hwass-Hwasschoaw reacted in stunned surprise. At that moment, Grraf-Nig took control, almost as if he were a trainer-of-slaves again and these warriors were suddenly his by right of a higher bid. “Honored Captain! I know what has happened! Call the navy. Bring up support! In the meantime, full acceleration perpendicular to the hyperboundry. Down!”
“My warriors!” wailed the captain.
“They are safe,” he hissed urgently. “Pick them up later. They’ll still be there. It is absolutely vital that this ship not be attacked! We carry the secret of the hyperdrive to the Patriarch—in my head! Get us down!” Then more calmly Grraf-Nig turned to a recovering Hwass. “The beasts were on automatic pilot. We should have expected that. The crew is dead but their ship flies itself.” He made a gesture of respect to the captain. “You will be remembered as the Hero who delivered the hyperdrive technology to our valiant Patriarch. The secret is on board! Get out of monkey range!”
Calmly, the captain gave the orders.
As an aside to Hwass, but in a voice loud enough for the captain to hear, Grraf-Nig added, “Plans have a life of their own. We gambled that not only could we bring the secret of the hyperdrive to Kzin, but also an actual ship. We lost.”
The Patriarch’s Eye tried to hide his disappointment by growling out his anger in mangled English, vocally—but only to himself. “Major Yankee Clandeboye iss not alive he!” The monkey who had humiliated him, broken Markham’s word, toyed with him, kept him in a cage—was dead at last, culled by the God of the True Form. That reminded him of his diplomatic pouch and the mission Clandeboye had interrupted by his arrival at Tiamat.
He arranged with the captain that the pouch on the discarded shuttle be retrieved by the same ship that was retrieving the stranded warriors, that it be inspected by a device expert, and returned to him as soon as it was certifiably safe. Peace! He was bringing peace! What a disappointment this trip had been. A molting yellow coward would get all the glory.
Chapter 20
The domain of the Patriarch was sparse, austere, even gloomy when compared with W’kkai. The granite walls were ancient and of a cruder stone masonry than one might expect at the center of galactic power. Spiraling stone stairs to the attic guest rooms had depressions where thousands of years of feet had polished them. The decorations were simple. Tapestries. Ancient, fragile weapons. Armor of beads and woven metal. A collection of w'tsai blades. Vases from an age when fire was the mightiest of energies.
Grraf-Nig was guided everywhere by a kdatlyno slave who had strict orders; thus he saw but a small portion of the Palace. He didn’t even know which Riit Palace he was in. He had glimpses of passages. From his room he could see a rotunda’s dome and on a distant bill the ruin of the old Palace destroyed more than eight millennia ago by the Jotok traders who had been annoyed by the murder of an accountant. Few kzin could any longer imagine their spiderlike Jotok slaves as fierce merchants. An old trainer-of-slaves could. Their fierceness had not altogether been bred out of them.
When his kdatlyno led him to his endless interviews with the science bureaucrats of the Palace, he took quick peeks into chambers, galleries, and into a fascinating maze where an earless snow-furred kzintosh led a bevy of silent kzinretti in flowing lace. He longed to sneak off on his own but in this awesome seat of power he had no intention of disobeying even a slave’s suggestion. Everywhere there were signs that the slightest infraction meant an instant death.
His guide had orders to give his life to stop any transgression—or face death himself. Who knew in what black arts the beast had been trained? His arms were huge, even in proportion to a height that was taller than any kzin. The hands were strangler’s hands that brushed his knees as he led, eight retractile claws at the knuckles. Horns marked his knees and elbows. Attack him? They were filed sharp and then buffed to a polished glow. His brown hide would have stopped a knife. With only his radar sense to shape his surroundings, he had nothing resembling eyes. His face was marked only by a gash of a mouth and by a lumped region above it where the skin was stretched taut.
On the fourth day his kdatlyno made an awkward gesture of obeisance, a bow that forced the beast to lift his hands slightly so that his fingers would not touch the floor. A machine strapped to his body spoke in the Hero’s Tongue. “Make ready for your audience with the Patriarch.”
Jotok slaves dressed him. One of them was propped on three hands while two other hands cut and sewed. The other sat on its underbelly mouth to free five hands for rapid hem-work. They produced a heavy, flowing robe that would have hampered any fighting; indeed, guards attacking him could have used it to wrap him into a sack. It looked good in the mirror, though not up to W’kkai flamboyance. Grraf-Nig followed the kdatlyno through keeps he had never seen. A pride of kzinti guards let them pass into the sanctuary of the Patriarch’s lair.