“What did you hear?”

“You were in the inner quadrant, among the imports. You found a valuable animal—”

Louis sat bolt upright. “A white Bengal tiger! I’d found this nice green forest nesting in all that red and orange kzinti plant life, and I was feeling kind of safe and cozy and nostalgic. Then this-this lovely-but-oh-futz maneater stepped out of the bushes and looked me over. Chmeee, he was your size, maybe eight hundred pounds, and underfed. Sorry, go on.”

“What is it? Bengal tiger?”

“Something of ours, from Earth. An ancient enemy, you could say.”

“We were told that you stepped briskly past it to pick up a branch. Confronted the tiger and brandished the branch like a weapon and said, ‘Do you remember?’ The tiger turned away and left.”

“Yeah.”

“Why did you do that? Do tigers talk?”

Louis laughed. “I thought he might go away if I didn’t act like prey. If that didn’t work, I thought I might whack him on the nose. There was this splintered tree, and a hardwood branch that looked just right for a club. And I talked to him because a Kzin might be listening. Being killed as an inept tourist in the Patriarch’s hunting park would be bad enough. Dying as whimpering prey, nyet.”

“Did you know the Patriarch had set you a guard?”

“No. I thought there might be monitors, cameras. I watched the tiger go. Turned around and was nose-to-nose with an armed Kzin. I jumped half out of my skin. Thought he was another tiger.”

“He said he almost had to stun you. You challenged him. You were ready to club him.”

“He said stun?”

“He did.”

Louis Wu laughed. “He had an ARM stunner with a builtup handle. Your Patriarchy never learned how to make mercy weapons, so they have to buy them from the United Nations, I guess. I set myself to swing the club. He dropped the gun and extended his claws, and I saw he was a Kzin, and I laughed.”