Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XII

by Larry Niven

  Telepath was gazing at him with a kitten’s wonder. He realized it and looked down. “I meant no intrusion.”

  “I do not duel.”

  Telepath’s ears extended back against his head in the position of utmost curiosity, but he said merely, “Urr. I believe we are done…Commander.”

  “Well, that wasn’t too dignified,” Richard said after they’d gotten themselves under control and had been waiting a while.

  “In the circumstances I doubt they’ll hold it against us,” Gay said.

  “Mm, no,” he agreed. “And there is the formal excuse that we wouldn’t want to watch them eat.” Kzinti courtesy was decidedly not human courtesy, but one of the points in common was occasionally pretending not to notice something.

  The door opened, and Telepath said in Interworld, “Good, you’re still clothed. We should go to the bridge now.”

  Richard opened his mouth, realized that Telepath had never dropped in on them while they were making love or immediately after and therefore knew their habits, and closed his mouth again, attempting to keep some dignity.

  It didn’t help that Gay giggled all the way to the bridge.

  Slaverexpert looked around and said, “I had hoped you were exaggerating. Start a cleaning robot.”

  “Sir,” said Telepath, and obeyed.

  “I cannot use a mass detector,” said Slaverexpert, “so we will need a kzin and a human here at all times. Watches will be…” He thought, and found the word. “Staggered. Four hours. Which of you is currently less fatigued?”

  Richard and Gay looked at each other.

  “They need much rest before they can proceed, sir,” Telepath said.

  Slaverexpert growled wordlessly, then caught himself. Old habits came back unexpectedly. “There will be a few days before we enter hyperspace. After that we will all have to make do with solitary…” He found the word. “Naps.”

  The humans left without a word, their postures dismayed.

  “They’re not getting paid enough,” Telepath said after they had left. “Each of them thought that.” His ears were twitching just a bit.

  “Given that my own household will still be six light-years away once we get back to Kzin-aga, my sympathy is all that it should be. You seem well; how are you able to read them without drugs or pain?”

  “The euphoria the roots produce has a remarkable stabilizing effect, sir.”

  “But the ship has been decontaminated,” Slaverexpert said.

  Telepath stood very still for a long moment. Then he looked toward the door of the Captain’s Battle Quarters. Then he said—almost a question—“I still feel good.”

  Without hesitation Slaverexpert firmly said, “Good. What has been done with the rest of the roots?” They represented a tremendously powerful weapon against the Patriarchy.

  “Spaced, sir.”

  Slaverexpert stared in shock. “How did you get them to agree to that?”

  “It was their idea, sir. They were concerned about the effect on our civilization, sir.”

  Slaverexpert contemplated that, and came to the same conclusion he had shortly after he had awakened as a cyborg: Humans were weird. Then he said, “Telepath, in the circumstances I think it reasonable to regard military discipline as held in abeyance. You don’t have to be formal in your address.”

  “Thank you. I think I should stay in practice, though.”

  Slaverexpert said mildly, “As executive officer the ship’s records are in your keeping, including those of the last three days and those of the events in private cabins. I imagine henceforth you may never have to be formal in your address.”

  Telepath looked at him in puzzlement, then visibly realized the implications. His ears stood out, but his voice was controlled as he said, “I will need instruction in guiding the ship.”

  “Of course.” Slaverexpert stepped over the cleaning robot to indicate controls, politely ignoring the faint purring Telepath produced as he contemplated a voyage under the command of a flagrant subversive.

  Gay knew that Slaverexpert was being considerate. She also knew that the kzin would never understand that to a human—at least, to a civilized human—there are few things likelier to diminish arousal than a deadline. A kzin would probably be trying to establish a record.

  Both the Guthlacs were frustrated and irritable by the time the Cunning Stalker left the system’s singularity.

  Weeks of watch-and-watch routine did nothing to improve this.

  Second Trooper’s intermittent brief appearances and immediately disappearances were provoking in the extreme. He still had a chunk of the root, too, so they persisted.

  Returning from her second watch of the fifty-first day in hyperspace, having steered the ship around a record four suspicious fuzzy red lines, Gay was passing the door to Second Trooper’s quarters when it suddenly opened. She jumped and stared at him.

  In response to this perceived aggression, equally surprised, Second Trooper bared his teeth and claws.

  Lacking both weapons and patience, Gay stuck her tongue out at him.

  Second Trooper’s pupils grew huge, his ears curled, and with a faint squeak he leapt back into his quarters and sealed the door.

  Astounded, Gay stared at the door for a moment. The kzin had reacted like he was scared to death.

  She shook off the momentary paralysis and quickly entered the door’s security override, then turned, thinking to go back to the bridge and report the last straggler caught. She refrained. It could wait.

  She continued back to their cabin for what sleep she could get.

  She was always tired now, though, and never did think to ask what could have prompted the reaction.

  Toward the end of hyperspace transit, even Slaverexpert’s fatigue override system was under some strain. It manifested as garrulity.

  At least he was interesting.

  On the seventy-fifth day he was on watch with Richard when he looked up from his screen and said, “Most of the design changes in this ship are based on human ideas, you know.”

  “They are?” Richard said, looking around incredulously. Past the row of little blue globes the humans used to avoid eyestrain, the kzin-scale mechanisms with their deep orange lighting looked not unlike the foundry of the Cyclopes.

  “Very much so. Crew posts not facing a common center, for instance, so everyone can see the same view. Far less distracting than my old command.”

  “You commanded a ship before?” Richard exclaimed.

  “At the start of the Fourth War,” Slaverexpert said, which made him something over three hundred years old—unheard of! “I had a partial Name then. I gave it up after my injuries were repaired. Having a Name is grounds for killing if it is not used properly, and I had lost the desire to kill.”

  “What was it?” Richard had never heard of any kzin giving up a Name, and hadn’t known it was possible.

  “Richard, I told you: I no longer use it,” he said patiently. “Twice since then I have been offered one for my competence. Normally the degree of ability adhering to being an Expert carries such an honor. However, one of my crew had been an Expert, so I knew it was done.”

  “Why didn’t he have one?”

  “His behavior was too exotic,” said Slaverexpert. “I learned much later that he had been raised in an obscure sect which worships death. He had left the faith, though.”

  “I may have heard of it,” Richard said, taking another look at the mass detector. “There were a few incidents after the First War. When kdaptism got started there was a form that adopted crucifixion of humans as a means of prayer. Rare events, but memorable.”

  “Indeed. It does sound like the same sect as his. Some time after we parted I understand he resumed a worship of death.”

  “I wonder what happened,” Richard said absently, noticing something at the edge of the globe.

  Slaverexpert was silent for a moment, then said, “I suppose you could call it an epiphany—”

  “I think we’re there,” sai
d Richard. He pointed, then remembered and said, “Sorry.”

  “As long as you’re correct,” said Slaverexpert. “Take us to the edge and we’ll drop out and look.”

  Richard was no daredevil, but he was very intent on getting home. He let the line get almost to the shell before shutting down the motor, then lit the viewscreens.

  Slaverexpert studied the dome, altered the perspective twice, then pointed. “That’s the Axe, and that’s the Puffball,” he said, indicating stars which suggested nothing to Richard, but were presumably grouped into constellations to the eye of a native of Kzin. “Well done, Richard Guthlac. Turn the Returning Vessel beacon to the fifth setting and pull twice.”

  “I remember.” That was for Medical Assistance, Nonlethal. “What happened to the rest of your crew?”

  “All but one are dead now,” Slaverexpert said, starting deceleration. “The last is a Patriarch’s Counselor.”

  “Wow.”

  “What? Where?”

  “No no, sorry, ‘wow’ is a human expression of admiration. I’m sorry.” Wow was also a kzinti exclamation, usually used when something was broken or lost.

  Slaverexpert waved a hand in a very human gesture. “I’ll live.” He began preparing a message giving details of their situation.

  After far too many unpleasant surprises, only the latest of which had been the Wallaby incident, the kzinti were taking no chances. The lead team of the boarding party was four telepaths in powered armor, each with a fusion bomb and his own gravity generator. They flew through the Cunning Stalker’s corridors on a swift initial survey and found them apparently clear. Three then stood guard while the fourth took out rescue bubbles, enclosed the four acting crew one by one, and linked them to retrieval lines that drew them to the intercept ship.

  A judicious mixture of friendly persuasion and stunners got the other ten kzinti bagged and delivered. The telepaths packaged the items from the stasis box, followed by personal keepsakes, and sent those after the personnel. Then they flooded the Cunning Stalker with ozone, set off radiation flash bombs, let the atmosphere out, and did another inspection in vacuum. No green-scaled corpses were found, and they returned to the Excessive Force, which took the exploration vessel in tow.

  The ARM general was keeping his voice and hands under control, but his body language would have started a fight in any bar on Kzin-aga. Probably on Earth, for that matter. “Our legal position is unassailable,” he insisted. “The Guthlacs were working as employees of the UN, and any bonuses due for their performance belong to the ARM.”

  Charrgh-Uft replied cheerfully, “After five centuries of dealing with humans, the kzinti are well-qualified to state that no position is unassailable. You, personally, insisted on their military rank being officially acknowledged in all particulars for this mission. That makes them crew. They get prize shares.”

  “If these things are as good as they look it’s going to leave two people owning half a dozen of the biggest industries in human space!”

  Charrgh-Uft was growing tired of the argument, and he played the trump the Patriarch had told him he could if necessary: “This is a matter of the Patriarch’s honor.”

  The gray-bristled human froze in place. The First War had dragged on well after it was lost, killing over a million kzinti, before a way was found for the then-Patriarch to surrender with honor. Weakly, he said, “All they wanted was enough money to start a farm.”

  “They’ll be able to afford quite a large one, I should think,” said Charrgh-Uft. “If I recall the invasion analysis correctly, there is an equatorial highland on Wunderland’s second continent which could benefit from irrigation.”

  “It’s the size of France! A bubble asteroid would cost less to make!”

  “Good idea. Every landowner should have a vacation home as well,” Charrgh-Uft said reasonably.

  The Guthlacs had been given all the privacy they wanted, and had made enthusiastic use of it. After a week or so the pace slowed, and they began wearing clothing now and then, for meals and such.

  “Slaverexpert must have some real pull to get us left alone like this,” Richard said at the end of one meal. “I’d have thought someone would have been giving us a very thorough debriefing.” He saw Gay’s grin, and laughed, “Besides each other.”

  The computer’s message light came on, for the first time since they were given their quarters. Gay was closer, and lit the screen. It said:

  “Lord Krosp requests the honor of your company at the receiving platform of his landing shuttle, sometime prior to sunset of the day after tomorrow, when he will be departing for his estate on Kzrral.”

  “Who’s Lord Krosp?” Richard said.

  “He must be awfully important to get through to us,” Gay said. “And you did say you were getting a little sore.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but you admitted it first.”

  They got there the morning of the second day, after spending some time in a fruitless search for the whereabouts of Slaverexpert. Charrgh-Uft had contacted them briefly to let them know he would be fully occupied socially (translation: looking over the daughters that various nobles were offering him), but thanked them for their help and assured them of fair treatment. He signed off before explaining that last.

  The attitude of the kzin they’d asked for directions had altered from barely-tolerant to deeply impressed when the Name Krosp was mentioned: “You know him? I will tell my sons that I met you!”

  Gay murmured, “Who is this ’tosh?”—Wunderkzin equivalent of “guy.”

  Lord Krosp’s shuttle was a converted troop lander, and it had a place all to itself on the landing field. When their groundcar stopped, four kzinti formed an honor guard beside their path, and drew claws before their faces in salute as the Guthlacs got out.

  Slaverstudent, in steel-studded harness with equipment pouches attached, marched out and said, “Welcome, Richard Guthlac and Gay Guthlac!”

  “You’re Lord Krosp?” Gay exclaimed.

  “Hardly. I am his aide-de-camp. Hospitality!” he called out to the ship, and a dozen elegantly decorated Jotoki wearing Freed insignia deployed seats, table, dispensers, canopy, and windscreens.

  Lord Krosp, resplendent in weapons belt and governor’s sash, stepped out and declared, “My friends, and authors of my good fortune, be welcome!”

  It was Telepath.

  Naturally they were eaten alive by curiosity, but the manners they were raised with required him to bring it up first. Krosp knew it, and cheerfully tormented them by seating them and plying them with food and drink before sitting down himself. “I trust you have not been disturbed since we got back? I was most specific.”

  “That was you? Thanks!” Richard said.

  “I hope you made good use of the time—” Krosp jumped a trifle, then went on, “I see. It is well my family is in the shuttle and not the main ship.” He turned his head as a human would to ease a stiff neck, then said, “I wanted to thank you for your kindness, and inform you that should you ever visit Kzrral the governor’s hospitality is open to you.”

  “How did you get appointed governor?” Gay burst out, finally unable to restrain her curiosity.

  “It was entirely due to the vivid and enthusiastic praise of my accomplishments, given me by my crewmates from the Cunning Stalker—Ah, this will be Weapons Officer,” he said, indicating a groundcar that was just approaching.

  There was no honor guard for Weapons Officer, and Krosp did not get up. Ears mostly folded (and bats tattooed on his tail), Weapons Officer came up with a parcel and stood at attention.

  “Relax. It is good to see you,” Telepath said in Hero. “I was just discussing our trip with the Guthlacs, who like the rest of us are going to be very rich from the salvage we brought back. Is that a gift?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Weapons Officer, and held out the parcel. “It was my grandsire’s.”

  “I am certain it does us both honor. I hope for your part you will find this small item gra
tifying,” Telepath said, and took something from one of his belt pouches.

  It looked remarkably like a recording crystal for a kzinti ship’s log.

  Weapons Officer accepted it, took a deep breath, let it out, and looked a lot less uncomfortable. His ears spread, and he said, “I am certain I will always be glad to have this. I have no doubt that you will fulfill the duties of your new post most capably,” he added in a decidedly dry tone.

  “A generous parting wish,” Krosp said.

  Weapons Officer saluted, and turned to the Guthlacs. “I hope you will enjoy your well deserved prosperity on Wunderland for many years to come,” he said in Interworld.

  Richard, staring at the ear tattoos, couldn’t think of a thing to say. Gay got the context, and recovered sufficiently to say, “I’m sure we will, though sadly our responsibilities will prevent us from returning here to visit you.”

  With a distinct sigh of relief, Weapons Officer said, “We all do what we must,” and departed.

  Richard was still getting over the tattoos. The right ear had been decorated with tiny stylized bats, but the left displayed a human face: Herrenmann white, but with long black hair and a heavy jawline. The eyes were faintly outlined in black, and their wild stare was an excellent complement to a deeply disturbing grin. “Who was that?” he finally got out.

  “An Earth musician from the post-classical period, I believe,” Krosp said, opening the parcel. “Weapons Officer’s family has considerable interest in the arts.” A Jotok picked up the wrapping as the gift was revealed: a fan of cords attached to a long frame, with a hollow box at one end. He plucked a string with a claw, and a pleasant tone came out. It was a musical instrument.