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Chapter One: Hot Pursuit

H’char’n was lying under bushes with violet flowers. He was only forty meters from a house. He could hear shrill screams of childish laughter.

A small child appeared and looked at him through the leaves. A female, he thought. She must have been about four years old. So she would have speech, and could tell of his presence here.

“Hello. Are you a tigey?” she asked him, not the least bit alarmed.

“Something like that,” he told her.

“You are very nice looking, all furry,” she announced. “Can I sit on your lap?”

H’char’n wasn’t sure what a lap was. He sat up. “Yes, if you like,” he said. He spoke as softly as possible, partly so as not to frighten her, partly to avoid attracting older humans.

She moved gracefully, lifting aside branches and sat on his knee, holding onto his fur. She had grubby knees.

“I’ve never seen a real tigey before, but they have some in zoos. Have you ever been in a zoo?”

“Not yet. I don’t think I would like being in a zoo.”

“No, I wouldn’t either. It sounds horrid, doesn’t it? You wouldn’t have much room to move around, and all the people coming and looking at you would be horrid too. I’d hate it.”

“Yes. I’d hate it too.” H’char’n wondered what to do about her. He could bite her head off in a single move; the Fanged God knew she was close enough. He couldn’t do it. He would fight against warriors until he died, but to kill a human kit to preserve his freedom… No, he couldn’t do it. Of course, it wouldn’t work anyway; if she died now, somebody would come looking for her eventually, and then the hunt would be on again, with, he guessed, a great deal of vengeance. His brain produced the rationalization, but he knew it wasn’t the reason.

“I shall call you Tigey. My name is Matilda. I don’t like it much, but my other name is Veronica, which is even worse. When I grow up I’m going to call myself Crystal. Do you think that’s a nice name?”

“Yes, much better than Matilda. But why name yourself after a piece of rock? Why not something like Sky, or Sunrise? Dawn, perhaps. That means sunrise, and sounds nice. And sunrises are beautiful.”

“Yes, Dawn would be good. Dawn, dawn, dawn. Yes, I like Dawn.”

“Then I shall call you Dawn. It will be your name while we are together.”

They discussed possible names and other things for a long time. Half an hour passed companionably.

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

“No, little one. Dawn. Tonight I must be away.”

“Please come back some day; I like you. And I like my new name too. I think Dawn is best, and I like the way you say it. You’ve got a lovely voice, all deep and trembly. It goes right down to my tummy.” She looked up at him and smiled. She had small, regular teeth except for a gap where one had vanished.

“You have a nice voice too. And good manners,” he told her.

She jumped up suddenly.

“I must go now; it’s been fun talking. I so hope I see you again one day. Promise me you’ll come back.”

“If I can, Dawn,” he promised her. The word of a kzin colonel was not given lightly, but he suspected he would never see the child again.

She ran off, turned to wave goodbye and disappeared. He sat there, wondering whether to run now or not. He was so tired, so very tired. He lay down again and fell asleep instantly.

* * *

“Daddy, my new name is Dawn. Tigey gave it to me, and I like it. It means the same as sunrise, do you like it?”

“Yes dear. But I think I’ll go on calling you Matilda all the same. I don’t think I can remember all your new names. Who is Tigey? Is it a boy or a girl?”

“You are silly, daddy. It’s neither. It’s a tigey. He was under the big bush in the garden.”

He stiffened. It wasn’t possible that a kzin was around, was it? The news had warned that one was being hunted.

“We talked for ages, and he thought of lots of names, but I like Dawn best. He’s lovely. All furry. I sat on his lap and he was the one who thought of Dawn.”

He relaxed again. Whatever “Tigey” was, he sure wasn’t a kzin warrior. A figment of an overactive mind; Matilda had an imagination, that was for sure. He laughed out loud at the thought of his daughter chatting with a ferocious kzin warrior, sitting on his lap, discussing possible names for a little girl.

* * *

Once he was out of the gravity sled, H’char’n had taken only the small amount of food it carried, cubes of concentrate that was supposed to taste like meat but didn’t. Then he had sent the thing off after a squint at the early morning sun; he sent it southwest, then set off northwest up into the hills. The sled traveled no more than three meters off the ground. It would swerve to avoid anything higher, but it would not be too easy to see from the air. Of course, nobody knew what sort of technology the humans might have for detecting such things as gravity sleds. He had stood briefly, watching the sled vanish. He was wearing only a few straps with small pockets and one bag with the cubes in, and of course his wtsai, the kzin equivalent of a dirk, but bigger. A human being would have seen it as a sword, with a nasty hook sticking out of the handle.

He loped along as fast as a man could run, a pace he could keep up for days. He knew that far to the north was wild country with forests. Once in a sizeable forest, he would be hard to detect. He was leaving a scent that could be picked up by animals or artificial sniffers, but the sniffers would have to be set to his scent, which would be impossible unless they found the gravity sled. The animals, however, would know him for an alien.

The country was open at first, with no obvious signs of habitation. If he were seen, he would be finished unless he killed the humans who saw him, and even then that could only delay things. Far, far better to not be seen.

He had covered two miles before he saw signs of activity to his right. There were small dots in the sky that looked like aircraft and they were circling over some point on the ground. It might have nothing to do with him, but he dropped to all fours, and turned more westerly. He guessed that they had found the craters his ship must have made; there would be nothing there for them, but they would probably extract anything of the ship that had survived. Not much at the velocity he had been moving. And there might or might not be evidence that he had survived the crash. As well to give it a wide berth.

After a while he went more northerly again, climbing now, still on all fours. He would be visible at some point if they did a sweep; he hoped they would be too preoccupied with analyzing the remains of his ship. More likely there would be little beyond a few craters in the ground, and maybe a film of unidentifiable metal. But they must know they had downed something with the laser beams.

After a few more hours running on all fours, he cautiously rose again, looking around to see before he was seen. There were birds some distance off, and treez, yes, treez was the word. Not much like anything back on his homeworld, but recognizably a kind of vegetation. And not enough of them to be called a forest. He expected to have to travel at least a thousand human kilometers before he was in the wild.

There were small animals running around upwind of him; they hadn’t noticed him, and he needed food. Like a great shadow, he swept silently toward them and suddenly accelerated on all fours, taking two of them before they realized he was there. They were small, but plentiful. He ate them as he loped on, taking care to bury the inedible remains in one of their holes in the ground.

Over the next few hours he was able to repeat the feeding, which didn’t satisfy his hunger, but beat the hell out of concentrate cubes. He would have to make do with small, wild things, he thought. Bigger animals were unlikely here unless they were domesticated, and eating some farmer’s game was not a good idea. But in the far north, he thought, there were wild bearz. He looked forward to meeting some of them.

* * *

He had run for two days before meeting Matilda-Dawn, his first human being, and had been too exhausted to reason clearly, but as he set off at night, he recalled her with something like affection. Kzin, like most other animals, felt kindly toward the young of other species. Killing them was wasteful; better to let them grow and breed. Then kill them.

Man and Kzin had much in common, but there were some very deep differences. And now it was man hunting kzin, and he needed to be careful if he were to survive. And cunning. He thought he could manage cunning.

* * *

“Daddy, what’s a mate?” Dawn-Matilda asked.

Her father blenched. Was this birds-and-bees time? Surely that was her mother’s responsibility.

“Umm. It’s a very close friend, dear.”

Dawn-Matilda pondered. “Is Mommy your mate?” she wanted to know.

“Umm. Yes; yes she is,” her father agreed.

“Oh, that makes sense. I asked Tigey if he had a little girl like me, and he said no, he had no mate yet.” She seemed happy to have cleared up something that had puzzled her.

Her father froze. That didn’t sound like imaginary conversation with an invisible friend.

“Show me where you talked to your friend Tigey,” he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his.

Dawn-Matilda showed him the space under the rhododendron bush where she had spent a happy half hour with her friend. Her father looked at it. There was maybe a faint odor of something strange, slightly gingery, but hell, it could have been the local boys coming in here for a pee. He dithered. She clearly hadn’t come to any harm; in fact she seemed entranced with her furry friend. But a discussion between her and a warrior kzin on the subject of his children and names for little girls sounded very unlikely. Everyone knew that the kzin were cruel, callous and utterly merciless. On the other hand, he had a duty to help the government capture the alien if he was real. And on yet another hand he’d look like an idiot if he was not. He was running out of hands.

* * *

“Did your friend look like this?” Goddard asked, projecting a hologram from his notebook.

Dawn-Matilda didn’t like him. She clutched her teddy bear for comfort. It was hard to know what to say. These men and women looked very stern and some of them had guns, and they weren’t friendly. And they wanted to know about Tigey, and she sensed that they didn’t wish him well.

“No, nothing like,” she told them.

“You said that Tigey was very big,” Elain Thomas asked her gently. “How big exactly?”

“This big,” Dawn-Matilda said, putting Teddy down and opening her arms wide.

“Not as big as me then?” Goddard probed. His eyes pinned Dawn-Matilda and frightened her.

“No,” she answered. That was a fib of course, but if it made them go away it would be worth it. And she’d say sorry to Jesus when she said her prayers tonight, but she thought Jesus would approve of this particular fib. Jesus wouldn’t want her to give away her friends to bad people.

* * *

“The kid was lying,” Goddard said flatly. “No question. She wasn’t even good at it. As to why, I have no idea. The smell gets the dogs worried and excited, and they trace it two ways. One is toward the craters where the bastard came down, and the other is northwest. That’s where it’s headed.”

Elain was puzzled. “Why should she lie to save him?” she asked.

“Nothing’s gonna save him when we catch up with him,” Goddard said with tight lips. “I’m gonna blast the damned thing as soon as I see it. And it won’t be long; we’ve got the dogs now.”

Elain looked at him. They weren’t supposed to kill the kzin; they were supposed to capture it and hold it for interrogation. There was something deeply wrong with Goddard, she decided. If his superiors heard him now, he’d be in big trouble.

* * *

H’char’n slithered over the top of the ridge, avoiding the skyline, and saw it was downhill now. He went trotting down. There was a rill streaming from the rocks only a little distance away, and he turned toward it. Its source was a spring, gushing from the rock, and there were others which joined it further down. He fell down and lapped the water; it was fresh and soothing. He could store water internally, and he had needed the drink. Then he went further down to a small pool, which he slipped into. He urinated and defecated. The water would carry away the scent of both, he hoped. The water was bitingly cold, and he was glad to emerge from the pool and continue running downhill.

It was getting lighter. He had no difficulty seeing clearly. A kzin’s eyes are much better at night than a man’s.

Soon he would have to find a place to lie up during the heat of day, when human beings were more likely to be about. It had to be somewhere humans would not be likely to go; that bush where Dawn had found him was an act of desperation when exhaustion had claimed him, and he had done better yesterday, half buried in bracken.

The multiple rills became a respectable stream, with bushes growing next to it. There was no point in walking in it, he decided; there was only one direction he could take, so anything following his scent would have no difficulty knowing which direction he had taken. Later, if it joined with others it might be worth doing. He didn’t care for water as a mode of progress, but he cared even less for being scented.

In the distance was a light gray ribbon straight across his path. As he got closer he realized it was some kind of track for transport. He wasn’t going to find anywhere to lie up this side of it; he would have to cross it.

He lay on his front and inspected the road, only his nose and eyes visible. The track had three lanes going each way, but nothing seemed to be traveling on it. The war, he thought, must have restricted private travel. Then a truck came swooshing past him, going from left to right. It traveled very fast, and there was no sign of human occupancy. He waited to see if another was going to come by; being caught halfway across would be risky. If they went regularly, he would move as soon as the last one was out of sight. Nothing came for ten minutes, but predators have patience.

Another truck came, following the first. Perhaps there was a city to his right, and they were taking produce to it. Another ten minutes went by as he waited. Nothing. He still waited. Then a much smaller vehicle went by in the opposite direction. This had humans in it, four of them, pale and hunched over.

Another five minutes went by, then another truck whooshed past. So the vehicles were sporadic, and he must take his chance. He rose and ghosted down to the edge of the surface and looked both ways. Nothing was visible, so he shot across the road to the other side, on all fours. He climbed the hill fast, then sank down to look over the top of it. More open country. Good. He turned slightly south to make sure he stayed well away from the city he suspected lay to his north. He was going almost directly west now. A rising sun behind him threw an enormous shadow. He would need to hide soon.

* * *

“We aren’t gaining on it. The bastard is going faster than we are, and for longer. The dogs are following the scent alright; I guess we release them and follow them from the aircar. I’ll put a tracer on Hagon so we don’t lose them.”

The others nodded. Running after dogs was no fun, and they surely didn’t have the stamina for this.

Goddard called the aircar down. It had gone ahead to look for the kzin but had seen nothing, and was now circling overhead. The dogs were released. Hagon ran on. Vala kept after her teammate, but without much enthusiasm.

* * *

H’char’n found a field of long grass. Some sort of human-edible grain. There was a cold wind from behind him, and it sent dark waves shivering across the grass as the yellow-green heads bobbed and danced, which looked very exotic and alien to H’char’n. The grass had an odd scent. He entered the field cautiously on tiptoe, with his hind claws retracted, so as to not leave any marks of his entrance. After going in a hundred paces, he walked around in a circle to flatten the stalks, then lay down and fell asleep. One eye remained half open, and one ear checked out the sounds. Birdcalls and the whisper of the wind.

* * *

Four hours later he awoke but it was midday and he didn’t want to risk being seen. He waited. Then he stood up cautiously. There was still no sign of humanity. He stretched and yawned hugely. He was hungry. He always was. There were small animals in the grass, but they were too small and he didn’t have time to hunt them. If necessary he could go for days without food, and it seemed as if this was one of those times. He retreated carefully to his entry point and resumed a brisk trot along the side of the field, over short grass and bare earth. There was a hedge on his right and the corn grew high on his left.

The sun was south of him, high in a sky with only a few small clouds, and he headed northwest, as near as he could. Somewhere, there must be a farmer who owned the fields, but there was no sign of a building. Obviously, the farm was a big one. He crossed another field of short grass, and discovered it was tenanted. There was a large animal with horns who pawed the earth and looked to be in a bad temper. H’char’n just kept trotting across the field. The animal, while massive, was slow and clumsy. Killing it would be easy, but it was probably better not to, although there was enough meat on it to last for days. Of course, he didn’t have days. When the animal charged, H’char’n paused, skipped idly aside, grabbed one of the horns and pulled. The animal was turned sideways and fell on its knees. H’char’n gave it an idle smack across the rump, claws retracted, then moved on. The bull watched him go, its small brain baffled.

* * *

H’char’n was in a wood when he scented something strange. Unwashed man, he decided. And something burning; and another animal. He looked for a path that would take him away from the source of the smell. As he paused, a dog barked and jumped out at him, then stopped short. It was a small dog, and more surprised than H’char’n. It growled in a tentative fashion, as though wondering what the effect would be.

“Come here, Paddy, ye damned fool, ye be worritin’ somethin’ bigger than ye are agin, and ’twill be the end of ye someday, I’m thinkin’.”

A man peered around a bush. He had a grey beard of many days’ growth, and was dressed in a variety of clothes, most with holes in them. He looked at H’char’n and his eyes widened.

“Holy Mary, Mother o’ Gawd,” he said. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us. Now tell me mister tiger, are youse real? Or is it the whiskey finally warnin’ me that the end is nigh?”

H’char’n struggled with this. It was not much like the English he had learned in training. The man seemed to be suspecting that H’char’n was an illusion, a dream induced by whiskey. Which was a toxic drug, as he recalled.

“I am not an illusion. But I will not harm you,” he tried.

“Well, mither o’ mercy, that be the best sort of illusion, to be sure, if yez was one, which I hear yez say yez ain’t. But then, were youse the sort that is herald of a man’s death, yez might say the same, might ye not? Are yez telling the truth, now?” He looked cagily up at H’char’n as though to gauge his honesty.

“Yes,” H’char’n told him.

“Well, but how do I know that’s the truth?” the man asked. “Youse might be an ingrained liar, might ye not? And lie about tellin’ the truth. Still, and all, we’re getting’ into deep waters here. Come and join me, and take a snifter o’ the water o’ life an’ maybe I’ll come to trust yez.”

He waved imperiously to summon H’char’n and limped around the bush again. H’char’n followed him. He found a small fire flickering, and a big, ancient log on which the man seated himself. H’char’n sat down next to him. Paddy came back, apparently accepting that the kzin was yet another comrade.

The little man looked up at him.

“Well, youse be a broth of a whatever yez are, to be sure. Illusion, delusion, borne o’ the whiskey or some sort of wild crittur o’ the woods, who’s to say? Will ye be after havin’ a swig o’ the pot’heen now?” He took a generous helping from the neck of a bottle, and passed it to H’char’n who took it doubtfully. Since the man had taken a great swallow of the stuff, it could hardly be life-threatening, he decided, so he too took a big swallow.

And felt as though he was dying. He gasped, spat out some of the moonshine and made a sound of disgust.

“Ah, ye’ve neither taste nor judgment in licker, my friend. ’Tes t’ be acquired, I grant yez, a step at a time, and yez be new to the water o’ life, I’m after thinkin’,” the man said kindly, taking the bottle back.

“That was terrible,” H’char’n told him. “Why do you drink something that tastes so bad?”

“Well now, reflect on the matter. If whiskey tasted good, then we’d all be spendin’ all of our time an’ all of our money drinkin’ of ut, and there’d be nobody left t’ make the stuff.”

“Then there wouldn’t be any,” H’char’n pointed out.

“An’ what a tragedy that would be then, so a good thing it is that the pot’heen, it tastes dreadful,” the man explained cheerfully.

H’char’n wasn’t sure that there hadn’t been a fallacy introduced at some point, but he wasn’t willing to sample the liquid again. He declined when the man offered the bottle back.

“All the more for me then,” the man said happily. “Do ye hear a complaint? No, ye does not. Now tell me, are yez related to bigfoot? For they say he prowls the forest.”

“I should think that unlikely,” H’char’n admitted.

“Well, not to worry, for if there be sich a thing as a single sasquatch there can be a whole raft o’ them, all different, I’m thinkin’. Now tell me, what are yez doin’ for I’ll wager ye’re far from home.”

“Yes, I am,” H’char’n told him sadly. “And no way back. I try to hide from my enemies. The government is probably trying to hunt me.”

“Bad scran to the evil scunners; they makes a man’s life hard, they does, and for why? For the joy they get from meddlin’, sod them all. Bugger the gummint. Bugger it wi’ a broken bottle. Bugger it wi’ a million broken bottles; simultaneoushly and conshecutively both. If ye’ve the gummint agin youse, then ye’ve Tim O’Flaherty on ye’re side, be sure of ut.”

He held out his hand, then looked at the monstrous paw. H’char’n took the proffered hand in a part of his paw and let it go. It was some sort of exchange of good will, he thought.

Tim O’Flaherty was glad to get his hand back so he could take another swig of the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his reclaimed hand.

“So ye’re on the lam, like. Well, ye’re not the on’y one, my friend. I could tell yez a tale now would freeze the very marrow in ye’r bones and make ye’r knotted and combinéd locks to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine. As the great man put it. More nor less.”

H’char’n had only a tenuous idea of what was being talked about. There was something strange and allusive about his new friend’s manner of putting things, but there was some sort of overall sense to it, even if the detail was less than clear.

“What great man was that?” he asked.

“Why, Will! Know yez not ye’r Shakespeare? Then fortunate ye be to meet me, as someone able to repair ye’r iggurance. For I were a mummer once. A player. One who struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. And mayhap I be an idiot as well these days, full o’ sound. And fury. Signifyin’ nothin’. Like enough. It be the pot’heen in part no doubt,” he finished up wisely, and took another swig from the bottle. “Ye speak well enough for a wild animule, I has to say. But it’s agin reason t’ suppose ye’d ha’ met Shakespeare. So I forgives yez for bein’ as iggurant as a rabbit.”

“Thank you,” H’char’n told him.

“Speakin’ o’ rabbits, I was a-wonderin’ if yez might ha’ cotched one in ye’r travels?” Tim asked hopefully. “I be alright for the pot’heen, d’ye see, but I be a bit short o’ meat. And I ha’ the fire ready and burnin’ but no meat t’ put upon it. An’ they does say as a pot’heen diet on its own be a bit short o’ vitamins. Contains plenty o’ they little thingies, but there be a few absent, like.”

After getting a rather loose description of a rabbit and having identified it as one of the small creatures he had been catching and eating for days now, H’char’n went off into the woods and returned half an hour later with seven of them. He ate six, raw, while Tim roasted one over an open fire, and explained about Will Shakespeare, and how he must have been an Irishman or at least a Welshman, despite numerous arguments to the contrary.


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