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

"More is good," Jonah nodded, remembering to turn away his eyes. Never stare at a kzin. Seven times, never stare at a hostile kzin. "I'd like forty thousand myself. Starting a business is risky. Plenty of people have gone bust just because they didn't have enough cash to tide them over until the returns started."

"Forty thousand would satisfy me," Spots mused, using a branch he had whittled to scratch himself on one cheek, then under his chin. He slitted his eyes and purred, tongue showing slightly. "Plenty of land coming on the market; we might even be able to buy back some of our Sire's lost estate. Enough over to start a consulting firm; there are kzinti in the Serpent Swarm, on Tiamat, who would be glad to have Wunderland agents."

"Forty thousand it is, then," Hans said. He hooked the coffeepot off the fire and poured himself a cup. "Nothing like a cup of hot coffee to settle you for sleep."

Bigs spoke up. "When shall we divide it?"

The old man's hands stopped and he looked up, face carefully calm. "Well, that's a question. We could split it up when we leave, or when we get back to civilization, or each day. Something to be said for all three."

"Each day, where I can see it," Bigs snarled. Literally; talking with kzinti made you realize that humans never really snarled. "I labor in the earth like a slave. The prey I toil for shall rest in no monkey's larder."

Spots hissed at him; he turned and hissed back through open jaws, and the smaller kzin shrugged with an elaborate ripple of spotted orange fur.

"I will be content either way," he said. "By all means, divide it. It makes no difference."

Jonah locked eyes with Bigs for a moment, then shrugged himself. It didn't make any difference. Except . . . why was the kzin so insistent? A surly brute, to be sure—if Jonah had been in the habit of naming kzinti, he would have christened him Goon—but it was also a little strange he had never so much as mentioned what he intended to do with the money. In modern kzin society few ever satisfied the longing for physical territory with game on it, and their harem and retainers about them; that was reserved for the patriarchs. It must have been doubly cruel for a noble's sons to have the prospect snatched away; Spots daydreamed about it constantly, and Jonah could see him imagining the wilderness about them to be his own. Whereas Bigs seemed more and more withdrawn, as if Wunderland were not really real to him any more.

Again, he shrugged. Kzinti psychology was still a mystery to those humans expert in it. Jonah Matthieson had killed quite a few kzin, and worked a few months with two. That was no basis for easy judgment—in fact, just enough to lull your sense of difference and put you most at risk of anthropomorphizing them. That could be dangerous; besides the weird culture the orange-furred aliens had produced, dragged straight from the Iron Age into an interstellar civilization, their basic mental reflexes were not like a human being's. And never had been, even before they used the new technology to alter their own genes.

They wanted to be more like their folk heroes. So they did genetic engineering to make it so. That was what the ARM intelligence people decided was the only plausible explanation for Kzinti behavior and customs. Usually civilization changes things. Defects don't result in death. Evolution stops, then works backwards. Bad genes are preserved. Not with the kzin. They really are like the Heroes they admire.

Hans wordlessly set out the scales, checking that each bag was identical. Then he divided them into four piles, and silently invited his partners to take their pick. Bigs scooped his up and disappeared into the dark; they heard him stop and make a long leap onto bare rock further up the slope, hiding his trail. Spots sighed and trotted out into the night in the opposite direction.

"Of course, now we've each got to wonder about our goods," Hans added; the smaller kzin hesitated for a second, then continued. "Wonder if any of the others has found them, you see. Couldn't tell who, not if some of it just disappeared."

Jonah halted with an armful of small, heavy bags. "Finagle's hairy arse, now you mention that?"

"Well, son, if it was all in one place it'd also be a teufel of a temptation, now, wouldn't it?" There was a twinkle in the little blue eyes beside the button nose, but they were as hard as any Jonah had ever seen. "Been at this business quite a few years now. Not the first time I've had partners, no indeed. Something to be said for all the methods."

* * *

Jonah yawned cavernously over his morning coffee, then hauled the crisp air deep into his lungs as he stretched work-stiffened muscles. It was a cool morning, a relief before the long blazing heat of the day. Alpha Centauri was rising red over the mountains to the east, and the eye-hurting bright speck of Beta hung on a peak like a jewel on a wizard's staff. No mountain on Earth could have been so slender and so steep, but Wunderland pulled its heights less fiercely. Birds and ornithoids were waking down in the ribbon of forest that filled the valley, purling and cheeping. None of the kzin were present, which was not surprising in itself. The aliens had fallen into a gorge-and-fast cycle which seemed to be natural to them, and the bacon and eggs frying in the pan would be repulsive to them.

They used to be that way to me, he admitted: far too natural. After this much pick-and-shovel work, he just felt hungry all the time.

"Want some hash-browns?" Hans asked.

"You're bleeping right I do," Jonah said, yawning again.

"See you didn't get any more sleep than the rest of us," Hans said.

"The rest of us?" Jonah paused with his fork