Man-Kzin Wars IV

was collectively puzzled by the strange chambers to which the yellow-one had taken him. It was a frightening world, more because there were no trees in it than because of the slabs that slid open in the world-boundaries. The first big discussion he had among himselves was: how would his mouth eat if there were no leaves? His eyes kept looking for leaves and each of him kept asking to stare through another’s eyes to see if there weren’t leaves in that direction. Skinny(arm) was especially apprehensive.
And for another thing, in this world there were too many of the yellow-orange carnivores. They made all of him anxious. He didn’t know why his own yellow-one was special except that the nervousness disappeared when they were together. Then very interesting things happened.
Among himselves he referred to his special carnivore companion as Mellow-Yellow, which was not a vibrating-word but was a pastel image-word of the kind used to communicate between his selves. Mellow-Yellow was “world-lights filtering down through mingled leaf-tissue.” It was the best forest image there was. His companion did seem to have a voice-name, but the rules were confusing. Sometimes he referred to his body as “Hero,” sometimes as “Warrior,” sometimes as “Kzin,” sometimes, when he was dangerous to be with it was “Eater-of-Grass,” or “Fangless.” The voice-names changed as night and day. Lately it was “Trainer-of-Slaves.” Simpler to think: Mellow-Yellow.
The furry Mellow-Yellow had a game with the low-frequency sounds that was so exciting to play that Long-Reach couldn’t seem to stop playing. If Mellow-Yellow quieted his vibrator (which seemed stuck in his mouth where he couldn’t chew it). Long-Reach felt compelled to hum and rumble and chatter in order to provoke more of that game. When he deliberately tried to keep one of his lungs silent, another was sure to interrupt the hush. Big(arm) had more restraint than skinny(arm).
The game had rules. Each eye-image had an ear-sound that only Mellow-Yellow knew and Long-Reach had to guess. Since the kinds and varieties of image were endless, it was a never ending quest to find the voice that fitted the image. What was exciting was that if his selves were clever he could use words to provoke the new sounds out of Mellow-Yellow, or even better, use the words themselves as an aid to discovering the new words. His selves carried on an internal race. Which lungs would first utter the true sequence of sounds? Sometimes they all spoke at once. Short(arm) was best at such races and tended to dominate the role of talker. When short(arm) was asleep, Long-Reach was less glib.
In this world beyond the trees, there were many new images, many new words.
“Leaves,” said short(arm). “Leaves, leaves,” repeated skinny(arm) because there weren’t any.
“Ah, you’re hungry.” Mellow-Yellow left the cave through … an elevator? Door, door, corrected short(arm). When Long-Reach tried to follow there was no door. Anxiety.
But Mellow-Yellow came back with leaves in a container of grass. Big(arm) thought about the right words for the sight and made suggestions while feeling the weave of the grass blades that were entwined in a very regular way. His eye had never seen anything like it. “Leaves sit on grass-floor,” said short(arm) while communicating the thought that flat-“floor” could not be a good word for hollow-container.
“It’s a basket, not a floor. I got it from the slave quarters. Say ‘basket.’ ”
“Basket, basket. Basket of grass. Grass basket.”
“And don’t take it apart! Don’t you ever stop being curious?”
Long-Reach picked up the basket with two arms and dumped the leaves on the floor. He sat on them, elbows in the air, and began to masticate. “Good,” exclaimed all the arms in unison.
“My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to eat.”
“My ears ripple when I watch you sitting down to excrete. One-mouth better than two.”
“Long-Reach, your ears don’t ripple. Your ears are in your wrists.”
“Ripple? Ripple?” Big(arm) rose so that its eye could look at the resonance cups on its wrist which analyzed sound.
Trainer-of-Slaves rippled his ears to demonstrate. He was genuinely amused. “That’s what I do when I tell a joke. How do I know when you are telling a joke?”
“Joke?”
“Some other day!”
Trainer-of-Slaves needed to sleep—so Long-Reach hooked himself to a wall rack and slept himself, with only freckled(arm) awake and watching the door. Freckled(arm) had things to mull over but that was difficult with sleep-silence on four channels.
Thinking did not go rapidly without question-answers from other-arms. But questions were themselves interesting. What had happened to the forest? Why did the absence of trees make floors flat? What was glass? How could something invisible resist the push of a hand? How was R’hshssira attached to its ceiling? Did all worlds have different colored lamps?
There were more questions in the morning when Mellow-Yellow led Long-Reach to a cavern full of weird shapes and vines that swallowed eyes and arms. The giant carnivore was there with the smell of leaf-eater flesh on his breath. Frightening.
“You won’t be able to put him in the machine—they panic when their arms are constrained—and his vocabulary isn’t big enough so that an explanation will register. We’ll have to shoot him up with trazine. First, we’ll let him watch a Jotok come out of the trainer unharmed.”
Long-Reach stayed as near his yellow companion as he could get. They put him too close to a big leaf-eater like himself who was suspended in mid-air, his arms in thick sleeves, with vines coming out of the caps over his eyes. His limbs convulsed as if he were running and flying among the trees—but he wasn’t going anywhere. Terrifying.
The big kzin unhooked the eyes. The sleeves came off. While the beast was being liberated, three of Long-Reach’s brains came to the simultaneous conclusion that he was going to become the replacement. Three arms started to back off—and couldn’t move.
“The trazine won’t harm you. Be gone within heartbeats.” They were putting him into the sleeves and he couldn’t resist. His eyes had retracted to their armored state in a reflex at the shock