by Larry Niven
His claws extended, almost in self-defense, though he was alone.
Astonishingly, Grraf-Hromfi wasn’t analyzing the attack that Man-system had launched with their deadly new weapon. He had gone crazy. He was ranting about mythological warriors who had risen out of the misty past and were attacking the Fifth Fleet along a whole section of the Serpent’s Swarm. He was screaming about superkzin mental powers and super technology. He was raving about Wunderkzin Traitors. He was snarling about cyclopean terrors. And he was exhorting warriors to their Final Bravery.
He had already ordered the full Third Black Pride into battle, repositioning all ships down to Alpha Centauri to reinforce Traat-Admiral’s fight. Even as Trainer watched through his goggles in awe, Hrith-Master-Officer gave the command for the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to move downstar. It wasn’t the way Chuut-Riit had taught them to fight.
They were in mid-leap without a thought in their heads. Pure rage.
Without thought himself, Trainer-of-Slaves ripped off his goggles and raced to the hangar where he requisitioned a Ztirgor from the upper racks. Long-Reach and Joker scampered to unhook it and swing it down to the airlock tracks for release.
“You are agitated, master!”
“Old Smelly Fur is trying to get us all killed! He wants you dead and he wants me dead! And he’s willing to claw the Patriarch in the bargain!”
Long-Reach froze in fear at such wrath in Mellow-Yellow.
Trainer-of-Slaves sped across the heavens to the Sherrek’s Ear which had already abandoned its great antenna to the blackness—its antenna, its strength! Calmer now, he checked the Ztirgor into a receiver bay.
Why was Grraf-Hromfi doing this? Think before you leap. Was that his motto because he knew in his liver that he was impulsive, his reflexes faster than thought? Had he needed all these years the constant image of that motto across his eyes to keep his blood in check?
The communications officer knew Trainer-of-Slaves, and knew of his close relationship with Grraf-Hromfi, yet still he tried to discourage Trainer from his call. Trainer insisted, and surprisingly, when Grraf-Hromfi learned he was there, found himself ordered to the Command Center immediately.
“I have a question for you about your captive. Was she behaving like a slave in thrall?”
“Sire! She strikes me as highly feral.”
Grraf-Hromfi’s eyes were maddeningly bright as they pierced through to Trainer-of-Slaves. “Did you feel the commanding pulse this morning that came with the wallop of a religious revelation driving you to obey?”
“My alarm clock?”
“The Slaver! The scaly green monster with one eye!”
“Sire! I came here because the superluminal drive in the hangar of the Bitch is the only one we’ve got.”
“Yes? And?” growled Hromfi.
Trainer was in a rage that this stupid old fossil couldn’t see the obvious. “We are leaping without a thought in our head! Think before you leap! Remember? We have to get that drive to Kzin-home!”
Grraf-Hromfi bared his fangs and fell into his dangerous fighting crouch. “You mock me!” he threatened. “You mock me with my own words, a son stabbing his father!” At this commotion the Lord’s Second Officer turned to watch, almost ready to interfere should Trainer become dangerous. Hromfi was virulent. “You haven’t been listening, youngling! What do you know of ancient empire and craft and war? Nothing.”
Trainer-of-Slaves was already regretting his insolence and moved into a more propitiative posture. “I could never be so great a student of mythology as you, Dominant One.”
“Mythology!” Grraf-Hromfi was now grievously enraged. “Five octal-squared years past, these audacious monkeys who are giving us so much trouble found and revived one of those one-eyed monsters. That is mythology?”
“I am glad that it amuses my Lord to wander among the fairy tale shelves of the Munchen library.” Why am I goading him? Trainer-of-Slaves was terrified by the ferocity he had unleashed in his mentor who was now clearly angry as well as insane.
Hromfi was circling Trainer, growling out his words, slowly, threateningly. “They found this horror. They released him out of monkey curiosity and he took over the minds of all the monkey vassals within range. They’d still be in thrall—but ‘monkey-daffy; monkey lucky.’ They tricked him back into his stasis suit and turned it on. And then do you know what those hollow-brains did? They put him in a museum. Their silver Sea Statue.”
Grraf-Hromfi spun from the confrontation to calm himself. He dropped into one of the command chairs and growled and spat out his rage at the instrument panels. Then he turned over his shoulder and spoke to Trainer-of-Slaves again.
“You speak to me of that superluminal drive of yours. Where do you think it came from? You’ve seen monkey technology. You destroyed their pitiful ramscoop. You’ve refitted their quaint torchships with gravitics. You’ve seen their weapons. Could they have created a superluminal driver for spaceships? Not likely. Impossible. But from evidence on a dozen worlds, students of the ancient mysteries suspect that the Slavers could travel faster than light.
“We are confronted with a W’kkai puzzle. And I have put it together with no protrusions. The monkeys have released their Sea Statue again. The ultimate weapon against the Patriarchy. It was this ancient beast who must have given them their superluminal ships and he is here now, in the Serpent’s Swarm, because I felt his mind and my officers are with me because they, too, felt that mind which would make slaves of kzinkind! If you hadn’t been asleep, you too would believe!”
Trainer-of-Slaves was always awed by Grraf-Hromfi’s ability to convince. Still it was foolish to take as true a tale told five lifetimes ago by the member of a race whose individuals were known to lie at every opportunity. Indeed! One eye and green scales!
“Sire! I am here to request permission to take the superluminal drive unit to Kzin-home.”
Grraf-Hromfi rose from his chair. He walked over to Trainer-of-Slaves. His nose came to Trainer’s forehead and his shoulders were broader. “Permission denied. Do you think you’ll get anywhere if we fail to destroy this menace? His mind will pluck you right out of the sky and bring you whimpering to his feet.”
The fear was overpowering. Never in his life had Trainer-of-Slaves defied anyone, not his father, Chiirr-Nig, not Puller-of-Noses, not Jotok-Tender, not his friend, Ssis-Captain. He was universally sweet-tempered with his military associates. He had always accommodated Grraf-Hromfi’s wishes, and the wish of every officer who held authority above him. His inclination now was to flatter Grraf-Hromfi into letting him disappear into interstellar space with the wreck of the Shark.
“Sire! In your great wisdom you have advocated thinking before leaping…”
Grraf-Hromfi slashed this impudent warrior’s vest through to the flesh of his chest beneath. “Do you think that I would let you flee from a battle, Eater-of-Grass? Only Heroes who are eager to die in battle can carry the burden of flight.” He gestured to two tall kzin guards. “I cannot kill this coward. Take him back to the Bitch and put him in hibernation. He’ll die there in battle, and if we survive … I’ll deal with him then.”
The Lord Commander of the Black Pride was desperate to eliminate the smell of abject fear from his command room.
CHAPTER 23
(2420 A.D.)
Long-Reach was in a panic argument with himselves. The ship was no longer a safe place. Mellow-Yellow was in danger. Mellow-Yellow was in hibernation. Kzin warriors were talking about slashing the throat of Mellow-Yellow for cowardice. They were rough with him when they put him away. After the battle they would take him out and kill him. Joker had heard them say so while he was relining the gravity walks. Long Reach felt grief in the tips of his thumb-fingers. No more card games. No more currying that fine pelt.
He felt an unexplainable desolation.
Fourteen Jotoki were directly bonded to Mellow-Yellow. In the slave quarters these fourteen bundled together, avoiding conversation even with Jotoki who were bonded to othe
r kzin. Arms entwined, they chattered and moaned and sifted thoughts among their brains. The need to help Mellow-Yellow was unsettling and painful because they could not help him. Disoriented, they set about their tasks mechanically, then returned to the slave quarters to share their agony.
Long-Reach knew that the man-beasts had to be fed, but while he went through the motions he was remembering another such terrifying time of threat—long ago on another world. Simpler times. Only one kzin had been menacing Mellow-Yellow then, not a ship full. The challenge had taken place in the birth-haven of Long-Reach among the trees and swamps and caverns that had nurtured himselves during the growing-up and were almost alive enough to come to his aid when he needed to call upon a glen or ridge between hillbanks. The very land had helped him kill that other kzin.
Now there were only the cold corridors of a ship and pipes and snaking power lines and catwalks and patrolling warriors. Killing one kzin to save his master had been the most troubling horror of his life. To kill a whole shipload was unthinkable, enough to make his arms disconnect from each other and send him stumbling in an uncoordinated scramble of arm-legs.
Nevertheless, that is what he, himselves, was thinking.
* * *
Lieutenant Argamentine knew that her routine had been upset. That bizarre kzin who was called Mellow-Yellow by his five-armed followers disappeared to be replaced by a taciturn kzin who was larger and redder, whose only function seemed to be that of interrogator. He took her from her cage, never very gently, never so roughly that he hurt her. Together they rode a capsule to his tiny torture chamber. He questioned her. He brought her back to the charge of the slaves, forgetting her until the next time he needed to torture her.
She had grown up dealing with difficult people, including her father, and she had long ago developed a facility of manner with intractable personalities—but this one fitted none of her patterns. He was disturbingly alien. He was impatient with chitchat. He was impossible to reason with about anything like her living conditions or the needs of the children. He was interested only in answers and he was impatient with devious answers.
When she did not give him what he wanted he turned immediately to torture, preferring agonizing nerve-stim to mutilation. But she got no feeling that he was interested in torture. He had an uncanny sensitivity, almost as if he was a latent telepath. When she didn’t have answers to his questions, he blandly moved on to the next question. But if she did have answers and tried to withhold them, he became ruthlessly persistent.
Desperately, she tried to get an angle on him. He was curious about the strangest things.
“Sea Statue at UN Comparative Cultures Exhibit. You know?”
She knew, but like most flatlanders, she’d never really wanted to know much about the one-eyed thrintun monster who lived inside, frozen in stasis. It was a story three hundred years old. She was tortured into remembering.
Had the Sea Statue been moved?
Had the Sea Statue been transported to Alpha Centauri?
Had the Sea Statue provided the principles of superluminal flight?
Were the UNSN officers in thrall?
War bred the strangest paranoias from its soup of deceptions, misinformation, misdirection, and poor communication. And lack of any cultural basis for understanding.
When she was thrown back into her cage after her last session, the silent children seemed to know that she was hurting and her mind half incoherent. They just held her. They were too numb, and too maltreated themselves, to be able to give her much. Finally the food came.
“You’re late. We’re starving,” said Lieutenant Argamentine. She wasn’t even ready to try to figure out a five-brained spider.
The three children were very quiet around Long-Reach. He fed them—but he was also the chief lab technician in a place where they were mere lab animals. She couldn’t read Long-Reach’s emotions. He had no face. A mottled pot-belly where his face should have been. His eyes and arms were expressive but she didn’t know how to read their mobility.
“Bean mash on kzin bones,” said Long-Reach’s translator with an appropriately apologetic melody. Short(arm) took umbrage with the vocoder and offered an English translation. “Not kzin bones! Shudder. Groundified bone and marrow, rolled to cracker shape. Bonding heated. Kzin rations for ship. Not kzin bones! Kzin not cannibals except with kits of wrong father.”
Freckled(arm) made an interjection to correct an aspect of short(arm)’s terrible English grammar.
“Are you going to stay around for another English lesson?” asked Nora. She didn’t really want this strange creature to go. The torture was demoralizing her.
“No. Must go. Mellow-Yellow in trouble,” lamented Long-Reach. “Bad, bad, bad,” commented three of his arms in a round-robin.
“I haven’t seen him for a while.” Was she better off with Mellow-Yellow or Redfur?
A pause while the vocoder sorted out the conversation. “We are all doomed by death,” said its speaker. “A big battle,” kibitzed skinny(arm). “Ship has been recalled to Alpha Centauri,” intoned big(arm).
She decided to exact some intelligence of her own. “Why are they interested in thrintun slavers?”
“What?” Long-Reach consulted the vocoder and drew a blank.
“One-eyed scaly monsters who take over minds. They died in a war with the tnuctipun billions of years ago. I’ve just had my memory forcibly refreshed,” she said ruefully.
“Kzin worry about free-will,” said Long-Reach. “All the time, worry. Warrior fetish. Always must be in control. Didn’t you feel the wave of intrusion? Myselves went right to the kitchen and made up hot soup for Mellow-Yellow, then wondered why I do this. Pleasant feeling to serve others. Kzin no like.”
Suddenly Nora was remembering an impulse of feeling that had overwhelmed her just days ago. Devotion. An enormous need to help someone. She had supposed it was something Mellow-Yellow had put in her food to make her talk. “There’s a Slaver loose down there?”
“Was. Big explosion, hour ago here, days ago there. Don’t know what’s happening today. Tomorrow we find out. We’re all doomed.”
“Are you a slave?” she asked, curious about the creature’s response. She found out that his vocoder couldn’t translate the word for him, and she couldn’t explain it to him. The nearest he could come was the English word “friend.” As in “only friend.”
Redfur the Torturer didn’t come back. But a delegation of four Jotoki did. They seemed ill at ease in their body motions. It was impossible for her to stop trying to read expressions off the belly-faces that sat on their mouths even though she knew they weren’t faces. The shoulder-mounted eyes watched her. They wanted something. They gave her a delicate dish of stuffed leaves that tasted like Greek dolmadakia, vine leaves, almost as if it were a ceremony. Another presented her timidly with green and red garters for her elbows and knees.
They were bargaining! “Yes?” she asked, gently, not knowing what to do with her revelation.
“Our master wished to take this ship out of the battle,” intoned their translator, which had been carefully pre-programmed.
“An interesting idea,” replied Nora, warily.
The four were talking among themselves in a spitting language that sounded like a corruption of the Hero’s Tongue. Finally the translator spoke again. “Your race and the kzinti are enemies.”
“Perhaps someday…”
The translator wasn’t listening to her. It continued. “Men kill kzinti. Kzinti kill men. Is this not so?”
“It’s war.”
“You are military man,” said Long-Reach, impatient with the machine. “Your ice cream desire is to kill all kzin. I understand mankind.”
No you don’t, she thought while she twiddled with her curl.
“We work, side together, like many arms.”
What she was hearing sounded like mutiny. It also sounded like they had an exaggerated respect for her powers. A naked woman with garters was a threat to no one. “I have been
deranged and you will notice that I am locked behind bars.”
Long-Reach opened the cage and quickly closed it. “Bargain,” he said. “We make bargain.” She could hear the tremor in his voices, and she was sure she could see his arms shaking. He was terrified. She could almost see him running. The tremors came from inhibiting the flight.
“What can I do for you?”
“You kill all kzin, but one. We free Mellow-Yellow. Bargain? Mellow-Yellow live.”
“I’m quite willing to let Mellow-Yellow live,” she lied. She almost saw the four of them relax. “What makes you think I might be able to kill all kzin?”
“Ferocious monkey warriors defeat kzin. We know. Monkey squash kzin ships. We repair. We scrape kzin off wall.”
Were they thinking that if they let her out of her cage she might not settle for anything less than the death of all kzin on board? As if she had a hope of killing even one of the behemoths! It hadn’t slipped her notice that her interrogator had two sets of human ears casually attached to his belt.
“Mellow-Yellow live. Bargain?” Long-Reach repeated.
Why were these creatures so bonded to Mellow-Yellow? Why was he different from the others? His name translated as something like Overseer of Inferiors, or Animal Manipulator. Perhaps he had a chemical hold on them? Perhaps he was an expert at some kind of hypnotic conditioning? No matter. The irrational loyalty was there. She remembered the day she had attacked Mellow-Yellow, ready to die, because he was cruel to children, and Long-Reach had been watching her with four eyes. If she had hurt Mellow-Yellow, Long-Reach would have killed her.
It was a strange bargain. If she protected their master (from her cage?), the Jotoki were hers.
Was it a good bargain? It was dangerous to have naïve allies. Were they as naïve as they seemed? Were they treacherous? How much did the kzin trust their slaves? How reliable were these Jotoki? What skills did they have? What skills did she have? What weapons did she have? Nothing. She knew the formula for a nerve gas that would kill kzin and was harmless to men, but even given the equipment, she wouldn’t have known how to manufacture it. This whole situation wasn’t part of her Gibraltar Base training.