Man-Kzin Wars V Larry Niven (e novels to read .txt) 📖

and even on Wunderland it weighed three times his body mass. The other three hauled on the cable rigged over a wood-frame block and tackle, and the long gum-tree timber rose slowly in swaying jerks until it settled into the predug hole with a rush and stood nearly upright, vibrating. The two kzin took turns bracing it upright and hammering rocks into the hole to hold it so. Three more of equal size stretched in a line across the gully; up on the lip the humans returned to slicing other trunks into square-cut troughs with the cutter bars. When the line of supports was complete, they would swing the troughs out and lash them to the poles with monofilament.

"We're doing the slave's part of this," Bigs complained to his brother, as they climbed down the boulders to where the next upright waited to be dragged up to its hole.

"Suck sthondat excrement," Spots said.

They set themselves on either side of the massive timber and braced themselves, securing a good hold on the oozing slab-cut timber with their claws. The sharp medicinal scent of eucalyptus sap was overwhelming.

"Strike!"

The kzin heaved in unison, lifting the end of the beam and running it half a dozen steps upslope before letting it fall.

"It's the heavy lifting," Bigs went on, as they rested for a second, panting. His tongue worked on nose and whiskers, reaching almost to his tufted eyebrows. "They slice planks off trees, we carry the trunks."

"We are larger and stronger," Spots pointed out reasonably. He had tied a wad of cloth over his head and soaked it in water; now he patted at it, and runnels fanned down his neck and muzzle, plastering the fur to his skin. Mud streaked his legs and the paler-colored pelt of his belly. "If the monkeys were hauling these trunks, they would go very slowly—or we would have to take more time to rig a dragway with a winch and tackle."

"Hrrrr. Then we should get more of the gold," Bigs went on. "Now—strike."

They moved the log another dozen meters. This time they dropped it next to a rock-pool full of water and crouched to lap up a drink; instinctively, their muzzles rose every second or two to scan the surroundings.

"We contributed less than a quarter of the capital, yet we are to have equal shares," Spots replied. "You would complain if a monkey brought you a zianya with its muzzle already taped."

Bigs yawned enormously and licked his lips. "Zianya—ah, the first mouthful, full of fear-juices! With dipping sauce and grashti on the side." He paused. "Yet I would complain if a monkey brought one. It is disgraceful to be dependent upon them."

"Silence, fool. You did not complain when they were our slaves—and we were even more dependent on them then! Ready—strike."

This rush carried them to the line of supports, where the next hole waited.

"You are a whisker-splitter," Bigs said, unlimbering his cutting bar. They had dropped the thigh-thick end of the log across a boulder, leaving it at comfortable chest height. With four swift strokes he trimmed the hard wood to a point.

"Besides," Spots continued, raising his voice slightly from the other end of the log, where he belayed a loop of cable to a hole punched through the wood. "There are probably no zianyas closer than Hssin."

They whined; zianyas were a homeworld beast, and they had never flourished in the ecology of Wunderland, unlike many other kzinti animals. Before the human hyperdrive armada arrived some kzin estates had specialized in rearing them, coaxing them to reproduce and investing in expensive gravity-polarizer sheds to rear them under homeworld gravity, 1.55 of Earth's. Most of those had been smashed in the fighting, or confiscated in the aftermath of liberation, and the markets were vanished now that kzinti were few and poor in a human-ruled Wunderland.

"Reason enough to shake the dust of this world from our paws," Bigs went on. "Push—slowly, slowly."

Spots heaved with a steady pressure on the smaller end of the log, as his brother guided the point to the lip of the hole. As he did, his ears waggled ostentatiously.

"Yes—I can see us prostrating ourselves before the Patriarch's Cushion. ‘Admittedly we did surrender to the omnivores and obey them; nevertheless we long to have Full Names and be permitted to maintain the noble-sized households we, the penniless refugees, have brought.’ Aha! The Patriarch's liver overflows with kin-feeling for us! His pelt stands on end with joy at our scent! With his own hands, he serves us tuna ice cream. He awards us Names; he allows us possession of every one of our kzinretti; he grants us vast estates on the extremely expensive savannahs of Homeworld . . ."

His lips flapped derisively against his teeth in imitation of a kzinti snore; you dreamer, it implied. "We could not even afford passage to kzinti space without human help."

"That may change," Bigs said, grimly sliding out his claws. Long silvery needles against the black leather of his hands. "That may change . . ."

"Not without gold," Spots replied. He took the end of the cable in his mouth and climbed the wall of the canyon with a bounding four-footed rush; kzinti had evolved hands to help them climb rocks.

"Next one ready!" he called, dropping back into Wunderlander. Jonah and Hans straightened; the older man groaned, kneading his hands into the small of his back. "Reave this to the block line."

CHAPTER TWELVE

Gracious lord God, but these are primitive! Tyra Nordbo thought.

Friendly enough, but so backward. The village was hidden, with dwellings of straw and bamboo tucked deep under an overhang of rock. There was a waterfall at one end of the little valley, and channels irrigated gardens of banana, citrus and vegetables. There were goats and sheep, a few horses . . . and that was all. There was plenty to eat here, but not a book, not a powered tool, not a single comp or receiver. The only metal or synthetic was what their ancestors had