by Larry Niven
“But you have shown us how the kzinti advance everywhere.”
“In some directions faster than others. But the longer the kzinti are delayed, the better the chance we will have of escape. Which means leading their empire away from your Earth. That is also buying time for your kind to develop defenses of your own.”
“Spaceships? Beam-weapons?”
“One day, perhaps. Why not? Your kind have the brain for arches and aqueducts, maps and mathematics and even a bureaucracy. That means, we think, you have the brain to build spaceships. We do not know why the gods gave your kind—plains-dwelling apes—so much brain, though they also gave it to us, colonial amphibians, and to the cursed cats. There is more brain in each of us than you—or we, or they—ever needed for mere survival. But if it happened once, if can happen again. Perhaps it is a condition of amphibianism.”
“But we are not amphibians! We are not frogs or sea creatures!”
“You have poetry, art, philosophy, as well as arches and aqueducts and armies. You have religion. That makes you amphibians. That is why we argued against Jufadirvanlums that you be recruited.”
“The felines appear to have all those things too.”
“Yes. That is a part of the mystery. Those barbarians have a glimmering of something else as well. We have tried to civilize them and failed. Now nothing remains for us but to fight to ward off our final destruction by them. We, and the species we brought forward into the light, are doomed to be but their slaves and prey. And yet, perhaps, one day far beyond our vision, you may be the agent that…” They stopped, and their strange eyes took on a yet stranger cast, as though they were focused upon some faraway light.
“Yes?”
“Perhaps, perhaps…one day…you will civilize them. We cannot.”
“We have civilized Greeks, and Gauls, and Britons. A few Caledonians. Even a few Germans. But for how long? I do not know.”
“You are physically more like the kzinti than we are.”
“I am surprised you recruited us, then.”
The strange mood was broken. Jegarvindertsa laughed.
“My dear Maximus, that was precisely the reason we did recruit you. That and the fact we were desperately short of mass for our fighting units anyway. But it was the argument we—that is, this five-unit of the Jotoki, comprising the group-individual that is Jegarvindertsa—put before the poor makeshift that has replaced our trade council.”
The strange mood was broken. But I left my sword sheathed. I knew now what the Ninth Legion had to do. The old man had often spoken to me when I was a child, of the ultimate duty of dying for civilization. I wished my task had been so simple and easy.
Again the picture jumped.
A strategos does not lead a Legion on foot. Nor did I now. For all that had changed, and for all the Jotoki learning machines had taught us, our legionaries still remembered something of Roman tactics: scrupulous preparation, and then a thrust in the right place—use the sword for the thrust into the belly, don’t waste time slashing at the armored head and chest. We dealt with the felines in the same way. The vanguard of their ships rushed at us, and we passed between them to attack from behind.
The kzinti gravity polarizers were as good as ours, as were their beam-weapons, but when the legions had fought barbarians it had been feet and hooves against feet and hooves, and swords and spears against swords and spears. When, with their scout ships and fighters smashed, we closed on their line of capital ships, it reminded me of tales of fighting in the arena.
We had learnt not to attack the heavily armored weapons turrets, or the strengthened prows, but to burn into the sides. Damage in the vacuum of space multiplies itself. The first felines I saw then were bodies flying into space when my beams tore into the semi-globular belly of a great feline warship.
We cut their line at two points, using their own speed against them and allowing their van to fly on until it could return and join the battle. By the time they did, the line was in chaos.
Human barbarians often keep attacking though it is plain they have lost the tactical upper hand, and have no concept of a fighting, strategic withdrawal, fighting instead as a furious disorganized mass, each unable to support the other. The kzinti were much the same.
There were gaps in our ranks—there always are after a battle—when we flew back to the carrier, but there was wine and women and feasting too. The Jotoki poured freshly minted gold on us, still valuable even though they had a technology for transmuting metals. I had read Caesar’s Commentaries and imagined how he would have relished being here, lecturing the Jotoki on how to improve their space tactics and quietly plotting to take them over. It was then that I began to write this commentary of my own.
And we fought. Many times, crossing distances I cannot grasp even now, to strike in unexpected new places. And we won, many times.
Not always.
We must have missed a survivor once, who told the tale.
Finally we found kzinti who were ready for us.
Then, with our fleet slashed by kzinti claws, it was ground fighting again. We of the Ninth—the Caledonian cales were mostly expended by then—and what Jotoki could be spared.
A couple of the Jotoki ships, almost empty, with only the barest shadows of Jotoki crews, escaped. We bought them that chance of escape at the cost of our own. I do not know where they went. But perhaps they led the kzinti away from Terra as they promised. Perhaps they escaped and bred their little swimmers again.
We were left behind to divert and delay the kzinti like Horatius on the ground, defending the abandoned hulks of most of the Jotoki ships. Jegarvindertsa were one of the Jotoki who remained with us. The kzinti had withdrawn at last, but we knew they would soon be back, with fresh legions of their own.
Again the picture flickered and jumped.
“We have lost everything and there is no hope. We die here on a strange, cruel world. Well, we can still die like Romans. We are not strangers to hardness. I suppose we had better kill the women and children first. We will not give them to the beasts as if they were criminals in the arena.”
“It may not be necessary to die at all,” said Jegarvindertsa. “We still have other weapons.”
“I see none. Can we fight the felines with short swords?”
“No. With gold.”
“I do not understand.”
“We will hide. Human and Jotok together. There is gold on this world, and we know the kzinti like gold as do so many species.”
I did not understand.
“This world has underground rivers.” I did not then know how he knew that, but I accepted that he did. “Many could hide in the wilderness, where kzinti believe nothing could live, for a long time.”
“The felines would hunt us out. I do not want to die like criminals I have seen, fleeing and hunted by lions in pits and cellars under the arena.”
“There are caves. We Jotoki might even breed there. It is unfortunate we are unlikely to have more than a little time to deepen them further.”
That gave me a thought. I have seen the mines on my Sardinian estates. “Use your gravity engines, then. With them and Jotoki weapons you can break and move great masses of rock very quickly. You can enlarge the caves, join them up, and you can dump the spoil in the sea where it will not alert the enemy.”
The kzinti returned in strength. We hid and fled. The kzinti hunted and captured and killed as they might. And then they began to see this world had much rich land that supported the game and hunting they craved. Perhaps they thought us all dead.
Another gap. Then a new speaker took up the story. He looked enough like Maximus Gaius Pontus to be his son—Perpetua realized he almost certainly was his son—but, like a number she had just seen, with red in his hair, that suggested something other than Latin in his parentage.
Gold was left out for the kzinti. It came to be seen that when and where gold was left out, the kzinti would take it and not attack. That was the first real victory.
There
were other things we left—platinum, precious gems, carvings…slowly, the kzinti began to take it for granted that these would be left for them in certain places. A human bringing them would be unmolested, and allowed to depart in peace. It took decades. It was the first modification of total war…
“Total peace was too much to expect,” said Marcus Augustus. “We settled for the best that could be hoped for: low-intensity, contained conflict along defined borders while we bought peace elsewhere.
“But there were two things to note: We brought the kzinti gold and other tribute on our terms. We were not slaves but, tacitly at least, trading partners as well as game. And slowly, slowly, as they became used to luxury, they became dependent on us, used to the luxuries we could provide, even as they hunted us. At last, it was our artisans—brave ones, those—who offered themselves as slaves and who installed hypocausts to warm their floors in the long nights. Over the centuries, we have got as far as you have seen. A fragile, unspoken, imperfect modus vivendi far too fragile ever to put to a real test.”
VIII
Marcus Augustus looked steadily at Perpetua. “And now men make allies of the kzinti?” His expression did not indicate that he considered this probable—nor particularly desirable.
It seemed like a very good time for Ginger to switch on their translator’s active function. “Not all kzinti,” he said, the speaker startling Marcus for a moment. “I am what the humans sometimes call a kdaptist. Kdapt-Pilot was a Hero of noble birth who had the radical inspiration that peace was better than war. He found followers after the First Defeat. Some fought on the human side in the Second War with Men, simply because Men were the only ones who were trying to establish peace.”
“Indeed.” The translator carried overtones well; which was not to say agreeably.
Ginger said, “I don’t know it all, but there’s a poem. About the siege of a base on an asteroid orbiting Proxima Centauri. A human wrote it.” He half-closed his eyes and ears, and began to recite:
We served the deep-space radar guiding the giant laser guns:
We’d hold for fifteen days, or twenty at the most.
Hold! Manteufel told us, in that dark Hell past the suns!
Hold! His dying words: Let every Man die at his post!
We fought with desperate makeshifts, caught unprepared for war
Found death as we manned our weapons, death as we burned the dead.
Death at gunport and conduit, death at each airlock door,
Death from the Vengeful Slashers in the sky of black and red.
Handful that we were, we were Man in heart and limb
Strong with the strength of Men, to obey, command, endure!
Each of us fought as if hope for the garrison hung on only him,
Though the siege went on forever and it seemed our doom was sure.
But honor our kdaptist allies, and give the kdaptists their due!
Remember the valiant kdaptists, who fought by us, faithful and few,
Fought as the bravest among us, and slashed and burned and slew,
Where blood flowed under the blood-red sun, kdaptist blood flowed too!
Ginger trailed off, and said, “I don’t remember everything, but I do know the end.”
Saved by kdaptists, sing their praise,
Saved by the blessing of Heaven!
We couldn’t have held for twenty days.
We held for ninety-seven.
Marcus Augustus cleared his throat. Then he cleared it again. “I must speak with you sometime soon, of Horatius,” he said at last. “Excuse me a moment.” He left the chamber, not wishing to show his face just now.
The translator had carried overtones very well indeed.
Ginger switched it off as Perpetua said, “Quick thinking.”
“I got up and read some of their literature last night. Learning sets cost me sleep. How are we going to get them out of here?”
“The slaves, you mean?”
“The ones here too.”
“The slaves?”
“All of them.”
“What, every human on the planet?”
“It’s the only way to free all the slaves,” Ginger said reasonably. “Otherwise the kzinti and the patricians will just make more slaves.”
“You’re certifiable. There must be thousands.”
“Probably about fifty thousand,” Ginger estimated. “Certifiable as what?”
“Demented. Any psychist would recommend you for treatment at public expense. We might get one percent out on our ship if we packed them in in stasis, if we had a stasis field, which we don’t.”
“We’ll need more ships, certainly,” Ginger agreed.
“Stop agreeing with me when I’m arguing with you! Even,” she said, breathing hard, “even if we had the ships, we’ve got no pilots, no fuel, no weapons, and no destination we could reach before we were caught! And we don’t have the ships, and we don’t have the money to get the ships!”
“It is possible these problems may be overcome,” said a synthesized voice.
They both looked up. A Jotok was settled in the web of branches overhead, two tentacles holding an oblong metallic device that had clearly been repaired many times.
Marcus Augustus hadn’t been surprised by their translator for very long, Ginger recalled. “What are you doing here?” he exclaimed, beginning to be offended.
“We live here,” said the Jotok.
“I mean in this room!”
“So do we. We are Jinvaretsimok, senior archivist.” The Jotok swung down by one tentacle and landed on the two free ones. “Tradition tells us that most problems are the result of insufficient money. This should not be the case here. If there are aspects of the problem that money cannot solve, perhaps something else will prove applicable. May we hear more about the circumstances?”
IX
Once they were back in the car, the first thing Perpetua said was, “Incredible.”
“Having never spoken with Jotoki who have been free for the past nine centuries, I am in no position to judge,” Ginger remarked. “At least now we know why they’ve never been found. I hope my sense of smell comes back. I wonder what those trees are?”
“Cedar,” she said absently. “From Earth. Must have intended the wood as trade goods…I meant all that gold is incredible!”
“I suppose the Jotoki had to find something to keep themselves busy for nine hundred years,” Ginger said.
“They certainly haven’t been sitting on their hands,” Perpetua said.
Ginger thought about it. “Yes they have,” he finally said. “Where else could they?”
“It’s a metaphor,” she said.
“Oh.” Ginger, like most Wunderkzin, understood metaphors, though many other kzinti simply found them annoying—a race which occasionally resorts to disembowelment in the course of reasoned debate has little motivation to search for subtle means of expression. “Would that be why Marcus Augustus warned me against garlic? An unusually obscure metaphor?”
“Garlic? When was this?”
“When you and Jinvaretsimok were talking about how to get hold of phase initiators.”
“Garlic,” she said, puzzled. “I have no idea. Maybe they’ve bred poisonous insects that attack anything that smells like it? They certainly had plenty of other schemes in the works!”
“Not that one,” Ginger said positively. “The kz’zeerekti on the hunt had been eating it, and so had the Jotoki. The local kzinti have actually developed a taste for the stuff.” He blew out air through his mouth to expel the memory of the taste of a particularly concentrated mouthful.
“You never mentioned that.”
“I noticed the details were troubling you. Arm yourself. The car is not going where I’m telling it to.”
Perpetua leaped up to look out the windscreen, then got down and opened an access panel. Then she said, “There’s something that’s probably an autopilot override, and a transceiver, and a booby trap in case I try to remove them. I thin
k somebody can hear us.”
“Let me in there.” Ginger got down and looked it over. It was a good booby trap. It wouldn’t blow up the car; just the control circuitry, crashing them. “Well, this is hopeless,” he said, picking up a pad to write her a note.
The car landed in the courtyard of Trrask-Rarr’s castle—an almost traditional structure—and shut down. The troops standing by kept it covered, and Trrask-Rarr went to the hatch himself and opened it.
Trader was on the deck, using his wtsai to hack frantically though a mass of seat restraints he’d evidently tried to make into a net. He seemed pretty well immobilized. Trrask-Rarr stepped in, amused, and the monkey appeared overhead, head down, and dropped a bomb on him.
It was a can of emergency patching foam, rigged to burst open; and, as it was designed to do, the foam stuck to everything it touched. Trrask-Rarr tried to take a swing at the monkey before the stuff could set, but Trader turned out not to be tangled, naturally, and whipped the webwork around Trrask-Rarr’s arm and jerked it off course.
Trrask-Rarr inhaled deeply and held his breath until the foam went rigid—not long—then exhaled, disdaining to notice the yanks on his fur as he breathed.
The monkey dropped down, landing on its feet as they always seemed to do, and said, “Please excuse the poor hospitality.” In formal Kzin. Not a bad accent, either. “We are still recovering from the interruption in our efforts to arrange the removal of all kz’zeerekti from Kzrral.”
It took Trrask-Rarr a moment to absorb this. He stopped planning the details of their vivisection and said, “I’m listening.”
“May I offer our guest some solvent?” said Trader, putting Trrask-Rarr on the spot.
Soon, bound by hospitality and his honor, instead of the less-definitely-confining hull-repair material, Trrask-Rarr was brushing conditioner through his fur and taking in the most amazing scheme he’d ever heard. The monkey kept speaking without permission, but as Trrask-Rarr was now in the role of guest, and Trader didn’t object, he treated this as if it were normal. A Jotok was brought in to remove the monitor and override, and worked as they discussed the plan.