Pournelle, Jerry - Houses of the Kzinti

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The Houses of the Kzinti

Jerry Pournelle

S.M. Stirling

Dean Ing

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and

events portrayed in this

book are fictional, and any resemblance to real

people or incidents is purely

coincidental.

Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling.

reproduce this book or portions

thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original Omnibus

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-3577-X

Cover art by Larry Elmore

First printing, December 2002

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Pournelle, Jerry, 1933-

The houses of the Kzinti / by Jerry Pournelle,

S.M. Stirling & Dean Ing.

p. cm.

"A Baen Books original omnibus"-T.p. verso.

Contents: Cathouse / by Dean Ing - The children's

hour / by Jerry Pournelle

& S.M. Stirling.

ISBN 0-7434-3577-X

1. Human-alien encounters-Fiction. 2. Life on

other planets-Fiction. 3.

Science

fiction, American. I. Ing, Dean. II. Stirling,

S.M. III. Ing, Dean.

Cathouse. IV.

Pournelle, Jerry, 1933- Children's hour. V. Title.

PS3566.O815 H67 2002

813'.54-dc21

2002028324

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Produced by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Baen Books by Jerry Pournelle & S.M. Stirling

The Prince

The "War World" series

Blood Feuds

Blood Vengeance

Baen Books by Jerry Pournelle

Janissaries

Birth of Fire

Baen Books by S.M. Stirling

The Draka series:

The Domination

Drakon

Drakas! (anthology)

with James Doohan:

The Flight Engineer series:

The Rising

The Privateer

The Independent Command

with David Drake:

The Forge

The Chosen

The Reformer

The City Who Fought (with Anne McCaffrey)

The Ship Avenged

Snowbrother

Cathouse

by Dean Ing

Sampling war's minor ironies: Locklear knew so little

about the Weasel or

wartime alarms, he thought the klaxon was hooting for

planetfall. That is why,

when the Weasel winked into normal space near that

lurking kzin warship, little

Locklear would soon be her only survivor. The second

irony was that, while the

Interworld Commission's last bulletin had announced

sporadic new outbursts of

kzin hostility, Locklear was the only civilian on the

Weasel who had never

thought of himself as a warrior and did not intend to

become one.

Moments after the Weasel's intercom announced

completion of their jump, Locklear

was steadying himself next to his berth, waiting for

the ship's

gravity-polarizer to kick in and swallowing hard

because, like ancient French

wines, he traveled poorly. He watched with envy as

Herrera, the hairless,

whipcord-muscled Belter in the other bunk, swung out

with one foot planted on

the deck and the other against the wall. "Like a

cat," Locklear said admiringly.

"That's no compliment anymore, flatlander," Herrera

said. "It looks like the

goddam tabbies want a fourth war. You'd think they'd

learn," he added with a

grim headshake.

Locklear sighed. As a student of animal psychology in

general, he'd known a few

kzinti well enough to admire the way they learned. He

also knew Herrera was on

his way to enlist if, as seemed likely, the kzinti

were spoiling for another

war. And in that case, Locklear's career was about to

be turned upside down.

Instead of a scholarly life puzzling out the meanings

of Grog forepaw gestures

and kzin ear-twitches, he would probably be

conscripted into some warren full of

psych warfare pundits, for the duration. These days,

an ethologist had to be

part historian, too-Locklear remembered more than he

liked about the three

previous man-kzin wars.

And Herrera was ready to fight the kzinti already,

and Locklear had called him a

cat. Locklear opened his mouth to apologize but the

klaxon drowned him out.

Herrera slammed the door open, vaulted into the

passageway reaching for

handholds.

"What's the matter," Locklear shouted. "Where are

you-?"

Herrera's answer, half-lost between the door-slam and

the klaxon, sounded like

"atta nation" to Locklear, who did not even know the

drill for a deadheading

passenger during battle stations. Locklear was still

waiting for a familiar tug

of gravity when that door sighed, the hermetic seal

swelling as always during a

battle alert, and he had time to wonder why Herrera

was in such a hurry before

the Weasel took her fatal hit amidships.

An energy beam does not always sound like a

thunderclap from inside the stricken

vessel. This one sent a faint crackling down the

length of the Weasel's hull,

like the rustle of pre-space parchment crushed in a

man's hand. Sequestered

alone in a two-man cabin near the ship's aft galley,

Locklear saw his bunk leap

toward him, the inertia of his own body wrenching his

grip from his handhold

near the door. He did not have time to consider the

implications of a blow

powerful enough to send a twelve-hundred-ton

Privateer-class patrol ship

tumbling like a pinwheel, nor the fact that the blow

itself was the reaction

from most of the Weasel's air, exhausting to space in

explosive decompression.

And because his cabin had no external viewport, he

could not see the scatter of

human bodies into the void. The last thing he saw was

the underside of his bunk,

and the metal brace that caught him above the left

cheekbone. Then he knew only

a mild curiosity: wondering why he heard something

like the steady sound of a

thin whistle underwater, and why that yellow flash in

his head was followed by

an infrared darkness crammed with pain.

* * *

It was the pain that brought him awake; that, and the

sound of loud static. No,

more like the zaps of an arc welder in the hands of a

novice-or like a catfight.

And then he turned a blurred mental page and knew it,

the way a Rorschach blot

suddenly becomes a face half-forgotten but always

feared. So it did not surprise

him, when he opened his eyes, to see two huge kzinti

standing over him.

To a man like Herrera they would merely have been

massive. To Locklear, a man of

less than average height, they were enormous; nearly

half again his height. The

broadest kzin, with the notched right ear and the

black horizontal furmark like

a frown over his eyes, opened his mouth in what, to

humans, might be a smile.

But kzinti smiles showed dagger teeth and always

meant immediate threat. This

one was saying something that sounded like,

"Clash-rowll whuff, rurr fitz."

Locklear needed a few seconds to translate it, and by

that time the second kzin

was saying it in Interworld: "Grraf-Commander says,

'Speak when you are spoken

to.' For myself I would prefer that you remained

silent. I have eaten no

monkey-meat for too long."

While Locklear composed a reply, the big one-the

Grraf-Commander,

evidently-spoke again to his fellow. Something about

whether the monkey knew his

posture was deliberately obscene. Locklear, lying on

his back on a padded table

as big as a Belter's honeymoon bed, realized his arms

and legs were flung wide.

"I am not very fluent in the Hero's tongue," he said

in passable Kzin,

struggling to a sitting position as he spoke.

As he did, some of that pain localized at his right

collarbone. Locklear moved

very slowly thereafter. Then, recognizing the

dot-and-comma-rich labels that

graced much of the equipment in that room, he decided

not to ask where he was.

He could be nowhere but an emergency surgical room

for kzin warriors. That meant

he was on a kzin ship.

A faint slitting of the smaller kzin's eyes might

have meant determination, a

grasping for patience, or-if Locklear recalled the

texts, and if they were

right, a small "if" followed by a very large one-a

pause for relatively cold

calculation. The smaller kzin said, in his own

tongue, "If the monkey speaks the

Hero's tongue, it is probably as a spy."

"My presence here was not my idea," Locklear pointed

out, surprised to find his

memory of the language returning so quickly. "I

boarded the Weasel on command to

leave a dangerous region, not to enter one. Ask the

ship's quartermaster, or

check her records."

The commander spat and sizzled again: "The crew are

all carrion. As you will

soon be, unless you tell us why, of all the monkeys

on that ship, you were the

only one so specially protected."

Locklear moaned. This huge kzin's partial name and

his scars implied the kind of

warrior whose valor and honor forbade lies to a

captive. All dead but himself?

Locklear shrugged before he thought, and the shrug

sent a stab of agony across

his upper chest. "Sonofabitch," he gasped in agony.

The navigator kzin

translated. The larger one grinned, the kind of grin

that might fasten on his

throat.

Locklear said in Kzin, very fast, "Not you! I was

cursing the pain."

"A telepath could verify your meanings very quickly,"

said the smaller kzin.

"An excellent idea," said Locklear. "He will verify

that I am no spy, and not a

combatant, but only an ethologist from Earth. A kzin

acquaintance once told me

it was important to know your forms of address. I do

not wish to give offense."

"Call me Tzak-Navigator," said the smaller kzin

abruptly, and grasped Locklear

by the shoulder, talons sinking into the human flesh.

Locklear moaned again,

gritting his teeth. "You would attack? Good," the

navigator went on, mistaking

the grimace, maintaining his grip, the formidable

kzin body trembling with

intent.

"I cannot speak well with such pain," Locklear

managed to grunt. "Not as

well-protected as you think."

"We found you well-protected and sealed alone in that

ship," said the commander,

motioning for the navigator to slacken his hold. "I

warn you, we must rendezvous

the Raptor with another Ripping-Fang class cruiser to

pick up a full crew before

we hit the Eridani worlds. I have no time to waste on

such a scrawny monkey as

you, which we have caught nearer our home worlds than

to your own."

Locklear grasped his right elbow as support for that

aching collarbone. "I was

surveying life-forms on purely academic study-in

peacetime, so far as I knew,"

he said. "The old patrol craft I leased didn't have a

weapon on it."

"You lie," the navigator hissed. "We saw them."

"The Weasel was not my ship, Tzak-Navigator. Its

commander brought me back under

protest; said the Interworld Commission wanted

noncombatants out of harm's

way-and here I am in its cloaca."

"Then it was already well-known on that ship that we

are at war. I feel better

about killing it," said the commander. "Now, as to

the ludicrous cargo it was

carrying: what is your title and importance?"

"I am scholar Carroll Locklear. I was probably the

least important man on the

Weasel-except to myself. Since I have nothing to

hide, bring a telepath."

"Now it gives orders," snarled the navigator.

"Please," Locklear said quickly.

"Better," the commander said.

"It knows," the navigator muttered. "That is why it

issues such a challenge."

"Perhaps," the commander rumbled. To Locklear he

said, "A skeleton crew of four

rarely includes a telepath. That statement will

either satisfy your challenge,

or I can satisfy it in more-conventional ways." That

grin again, feral, willing.

"I meant no challenge, Grraf-Commander. I only want

to satisfy you of who I am,

and who I'm not."

"We know what you are," said the navigator. "You are

our prisoner, an important

one, fleeing the Patriarchy rim in hopes that the

monkeyship could get you to

safety." He reached again for Locklear's shoulder.

"That is pure torture," Locklear said, wincing, and

saw the navigator stiffen as

the furry orange arm dropped. If only he had recalled

the kzinti disdain for

torture earlier! "I am told you are an honorable

race. May I be treated properly

as a captive?"

"By all means," the commander said, almost in a purr.

"We eat captives."

Locklear, slyly: "Even important ones?"

"If it pleases me," the commander replied. "More

likely you could turn your coat

in the service of the Patriarchy. I say you could; I

would not suggest such an

obscenity. But that is probably the one chance your

sort has for personal

survival."

"My sort?"

The commander looked Locklear up and down, at the

slender body, lightly muscled

with only the deep chest to suggest stamina. "One of

the most vulnerable

specimens of monkeydom I have ever seen," he said.

That was the moment when Locklear decided he was at

war. "Vulnerable, and

important, and captive. Eat me," he said, wondering

if that final phrase was as

insulting in Kzin as it was in Interworld. Evidently

not . . .

"Gunner! Apprentice Engineer," the commander called

suddenly, and Locklear heard

two responses through the ship's intercom. "Lock this

monkey in a wiper's

quarters." He turned to his navigator. "Perhaps Fleet

Commander Skrull-Rrit will

want this one alive. We shall know in an

eight-squared of duty watches." With

that, the huge kzin commander strode out.

* * *

After his second sleep, Locklear found himself

roughly hustled forward in the

low-polarity ship's gravity of the Raptor by the

nameless Apprentice Engineer.

This smallest of the crew had been a kitten not long

before and, at two-meter

height, was still filling out. The transverse

mustard-tinted band across his

abdominal fur identified Apprentice Engineer down the

full length of the hull

passageway.

Locklear, his right arm in a sling of bandages, tried

to remember all the mental

notes he had made since being tossed into that cell.

He kept his eyes downcast

to avoid a challenging look-and because he did not

want his cold fury to show.

These orange-furred monstrosities had killed a ship

and crew with every

semblance of pride in the act. They treated a

civilian captive at best like

playground bullies treat an urchin, and at worst like

food. It was all very well

to study animal behavior as a detached ethologist. It

was something else when

the toughest warriors in the galaxy attached you to

their food chain.

He slouched because that was as far from a military

posture as a man could

get-and Locklear's personal war could hardly be

declared if he valued his own

pelt. He would try to learn where hand weapons were

kept, but would try to seem

stupid. He would . . . he found the last vow

impossible to keep with the

Grraf-Commander's first question.

Wheeling in his command chair on the Raptor's bridge,

the commander faced the

captive. "If you piloted your own monkeyship, then

you have some menial skills."

It was not a question; more like an accusation. "Can

you learn to read meters if

it will lengthen your pathetic life?"

Ah, there was a question! Locklear was on the point

of lying, but it took a

worried kzin to sing a worried song. If they needed

him to read meters, he might

learn much in a short time. Besides, they'd know

bloody well if he lied on this

matter. "I can try," he said. "What's the problem?"

"Tell him," spat Grraf-Commander, spinning about

again to the holo screen.

Tzak-Navigator made a gesture of agreement, standing

beside Locklear and gazing

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摘要：

TheHousesoftheKzintiJerryPournelleS.M.StirlingDeanIngThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Cathousecopyright©1990byDeanIng;TheChildren'sHourcopyright©1991byJerryPournelle&S.M.Stirling.Allrightsreserv...

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Pournelle, Jerry - Houses of the Kzinti

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