Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XIII

by Larry Niven

  “What is the history of ‘Bothme’?”

  An odd question. The only reason Flex could imagine for the kzin’s curiosity was that he wanted to know how to label the pedestal that would soon hold Flex’s stuffed carcass.

  “Bothme derives from the old English words ‘both’ and ‘me.’ My great-grandfather Argumos was an organlegger, and he had an illegal clone of himself made, so he could harvest the organs when his failed. There’s a black market for those on Jinx. For some reason the clone grew up as an independent citizen. I don’t know why; maybe Argumos was caught. Anyway, the family split from two ancestors, which Argumos called ‘both me,’ to avoid legal battles over inheritance. To this day, none of his descendants knows which was from the original or the cloned line.”

  “So you are not even a bastard, but an artificial one!” S’larbo’s hooded ears perked.

  Flex shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe I’m from the original line.”

  “To be uncertain is the greatest shame imaginable. But let’s cut to the quick. If you monkeys have quick inside those pink beetles that pass for claws. Why are you here?”

  “Right now, the only thing I care about is my mate, who is injured somewhere out in the jungle. She and I have a secret mission, that even the mercenaries we came with didn’t know. All they knew was that they were to help kidnap you. It was to be a surgical strike.”

  “Not to kill as many kzinti as possible?”

  “I’ll be honest with you. No one was concerned about collateral damage. It happens. But no, the clients that funded the mission only wanted you alive. There’s something they need from you.”

  That was mostly true. Flex did not know the details, only that a Puppeteer named Hylo wanted information from S’larbo. He knew little about the peculiar two-headed creatures, and had only seen Hylo on image screens, and then only in silhouette. The information sought was about something called Zeno’s Wormhole, whatever that was. How this pompous puss came upon such esoteric data was a mystery. But then, with so many ranking kzinti passing through his lair, it made sense that he might be involved in some far-flung enterprises.

  “And you don’t know why they wanted to capture me?”

  “You’re rich, aren’t you? I can imagine any number of reasons.”

  S’larbo roared. The sleeping female stirred, but did not wake. She only purred louder. “Do you honestly think that paltry bit of disinformation would free you?”

  “Of course not. But the Puppeteer home world might.”

  “Your ship has scampered away,” S’larbo said, “though that could be a ruse, just like your transparent offer. You don’t know where that home world is.”

  “Not yet, but there’s a way to find out. It’s dangerous, especially for you.”

  S’larbo bared his teeth and inhaled, but held his breath, ready to hiss. Good, thought Flex. He had to get through to this overgrown housecat somehow; time was running out for Annie.

  “The Puppeteers targeted you for some reason,” Flex said. “I have no idea why, but we were supposed to shanghai you and turn you over to them.”

  Jarko-S’larbo hissed, spattering Flex’s face. The Jinxian wiped it off and continued. “Suppose you go along with that plan, sending a decoy in your place. Then you can track the decoy right back to the Puppeteer’s home world. We’ve already got data to suggest where it is.”

  “Do you now,” S’larbo said, still hissing. “Why don’t you just give me that?”

  Bait taken. “I can do that here and now. Get your best astrogator in here.”

  S’larbo eyed him suspiciously, but paced to a com console next to the fireplace. He pushed a button and muttered something Flex could not hear. At the same time, one of the hunters who had captured Flex returned to the gallery, and with a guard ready to cut Flex open with a beam rifle, S’larbo conferred in gruff whispers with the hunter. Then the hunter left, and the guard moved next to Flex. In a moment, another kzin entered, smaller than most. He wore a helmet on his head, not for protection in battle, but for virtual computing.

  “I’d be a fool to allow you access to my network,” S’larbo said. “But First Technician can check out your story. Can you do this securely First Technician?”

  “Certainly, sir. I am familiar with every cyber-trap the humans have conceived.”

  That’s what you think, Flex mused. The time was ripe for him to fulfill his mission, and he was intent on doing it, whether he got out of this or not. “Start with the code for the Institute of Knowledge,” Flex instructed the technician. “But do not commit the request.”

  “Done,” said First Technician, as a series of connection indicators lit to life. Then, to Jarko-S’larbo, “No risk yet, sir. Everyone uses this portal, kzinti included.”

  “Now,” said Flex, “cancel the last three digits of the code.”

  “Cancel them?”

  “Yes. The system treats the cancel codes as additional entry codes. It doesn’t actually erase the previous three.”

  First Technician looked impressed, and he exchanged glances with S’larbo.

  “Now re-enter the last three digits, and commit. That will get you into the back door, and I’ll give you my personal code. Of course, the code changes each time, so you’ll need me…”

  “Technician?”

  “It may be as the human says, m’lord. It would not be a trivial conquest to penetrate the Institute of Knowledge at this level.”

  “But?”

  “It could be a mousetrap.”

  Flex saw his opportunity waning, so he tongued his lower left molar and released a capsule that had been implanted there prior to the voyage. Then he stifled a sneeze.

  Flex held a hand to his mouth. “Sorry,” he said. “I must be allergic to your technician’s fur. Some kzinti have that effect on me.”

  With Annie, they might still have a chance at their first plan, to catnap S’larbo. Without her, he would at least carry out his part of the mission. Flex sneezed, then covered his mouth politely.

  “Monkey tricks!” said S’larbo. “Sever the connection.”

  First Technician turned a hard switch on his helmet, and the row of blinking indicators went dark.

  S’larbo hissed. “My grandfather was right. Technician, dismiss! As for you, Argumos Bothme, I have decided to kill you only after you have been my guest for dinner. You see, my warriors have found your female, dead in her metal coffin. I want her on tonight’s menu while she is still fresh. What kzin can say he’s tasted a human female?”

  He spat a command to someone outside the hall, and two kzinti guided a chrome-finished gravity sledge into the hall. Flex tensed as he saw Annie Venzi, still in her armor, atop the gurney. Her helmet had been removed and her eyes were closed. The sight evoked the memory of how he had fallen in love with her when they had wrestled over the last spacesuit during a decompression emergency, and his horror as she floated in vacuum, looking dead. Now her body was truly lifeless. Flex choked in horror, and felt the blood flee from his head.

  “Doesn’t she look positively succulent?” S’larbo said, gnashing his fangs in mockery.

  Flex shivered. He chewed the inside of his mouth, and then let out a scream of anger. At the same time, a shrill klaxon blared, and everyone leaped in alarm. Jarko-S’larbo whirled around, and the guards ran out of the hall, raising their weapons.

  Rifle beams fired outside the steaming windows, and Flex came to his senses. He ran to Annie, placing one hand on her head, and the other on her suited arm. Her skin was cold.

  The sounds of a firefight echoed outside, and two of the tall windows shattered. Flex heard an engine whining. It was the extraction team from the Catscratch Fever. His message had gotten through.

  Flex raked Annie’s hair, then reluctantly cut loose. He threw Annie over his broad naked shoulder, and hauled her to the shattered opening. Amidst gunfire and chaos, the kzinti were least worried about an unarmed monkey.

  But S’larbo’s slumbering kzinrett had awoken, and took notice. She t
ook to all fours, and with an earsplitting shriek, she arched her back, sliced her leather bonds with painted claws, and pounced.

  Flex bolted for the nearest shattered window and somersaulted through the opening. Something caught, and he fell hard, his face impacting on a stone walkway. Dazed, he swore and tried to figure out what had happened.

  “Annie!” The female kzin had stripped her from his back. Flex tried to stand, but his vision was clouded. From his knees, he looked frantically for the help he knew was nearby.

  His sneeze had worked, sending a shower of nanocomps into the technician’s data port. The tiny components coalesced into a homing beacon, signaling good old Zel Kickovich and the Catscratch Fever to commence extraction. Eight armored men had swung in from a roaring lander, beams blazing. Flex was thrown bodily into a stealth shuttle, still calling for Annie. But there was no time. The shuttle rose above the palace.

  “So it’s only you,” said the pilot grimly.

  Flex huffed an affirmation. He’d lost his Annie.

  “I’m sorry.” The pilot ducked the shuttle under some ground fire.

  “Just a sec,” Flex said, grinding his teeth until he could feel the pain. “We haven’t killed any kzinti yet.”

  “You planted the spybot?” said the pilot.

  Flex nodded. “But the Puppeteers expect some collateral damage, to maintain the ruse. Do you know where the kits are?”

  “Easy enough to figure out. I saw their jungle gym on the way in. The kittens are all over the place. Even under attack, the kzinti can’t herd their own cats to safety. You want to scratch some of them?”

  Annie’s admonition burned in his mind. Don’t kill the kits. He had promised he would not. But that was before. Another image seared his brain—that of the kzinti eating his beloved Annie.

  “Drop a butt-breaker on them.”

  The pilot smiled. “Can’t do it. That would make us unbalanced. I’m going to have to drop two.” He pushed two release switches, and made for the sky.

  Below, an enormous fireball grew to engulf half of the palace.

  As they made orbit, joined by two other strike shuttles, the pilot pointed to a flashing yellow indicator. “I’ve been ignoring that,” he told Flex. “A com request from the kzinti.”

  “This I gotta hear,” said Flex, still grinding his teeth furiously.

  The pilot opened the line, and the screaming voice of Jarko-S’larbo graced the shuttle mid-sentence. “…And I’ll kill you and every shit-flicking monkey that has ever breathed your bastardized name…”

  “He’s a real sweetie,” said the pilot.

  Flex said nothing, but resumed grating his teeth until they began to crack.

  Most battles are cold and impersonal, especially for a data puller. You sit at your station reading data and instructions, pushing buttons and relaying information. Somewhere out there maybe a million klicks away is a faceless enemy, claws and jaws atrophying for lack of flesh on which to gnaw. You have to remind yourself who your enemy is and what they’ve done. That is most battles, for most people. This battle was personal, and Flex was a field agent as well as an ops researcher.

  A hundred days passed, filled with thoughts of Annie. He had done everything in his power to save her, but could not. Her lifeless face haunted his soul, and thoughts of what the kzinti might have done to her sickened him physically. On top of all that his broken promise gnawed at his gut because it was the one thing that he had done willingly.

  His supervisor sympathized, but eventually felt obliged to growl, “Get to work!”

  As if on cue, Flex’s nanos began to report in, giving his ingenuity something tangible to gnash at. Jarko-S’larbo obviously had designs on a more honorable station than that as a tour guide. If Flex could rob him of his wormhole prize, Annie would rest easier.

  The nanobots hidden in Flex’s tooth were much more than homing signals. They were the latest tool in the kit of the professional information spy, of which Flex was the best. His sneeze had deployed millions of microscopic vectors, electronic germs whose first task was to unite in as many numbers as possible inside the target device—the kzinti technician’s data helmet in this case. Once the nanobots organized themselves into functional units, they deployed their malicious programs. Sending the homing signal was simple, but incidental. Their primary function took fifty standard days to bear fruit.

  On Jinx, Flex returned home to downtown Sirius Mater where he had access to equipment best suited for receiving the precious fragments of intelligence. The Puppeteers were waiting patiently for his report, but Flex was no longer motivated by their money or promises to increase his longevity. Nor was he consumed by the fire of revenge. What was working its way under his skin and into his bones was his broken promise to Annie. Her most strenuous desire was to complete the mission and collect the intelligence without resorting to feline infanticide. A fault of hers, perhaps, but he had sworn to her. Worst of all, his breach of her trust cast a dark shadow over her death.

  He did not know how to make it up to her, other than to proceed as originally planned and make good with the Puppeteers. Perhaps in the process, he would find some way to redeem himself. If not, a real suicide attack might be a very good idea, kits be damned.

  When the nanobots began feeding stolen data to Flex’s collection system, co-opted from forgotten coldputer cycles, he did not immediately inform the Puppeteers. Better to figure out just what this wormhole thing was all about first, so he would know the full value of his efforts.

  In fact, there wasn’t much data to be had, but the information the cat Jarko-S’larbo had dragged in was very specific. There was reference to something that translated to a “non-transversable wormhole,” which he managed to correlate with something called a Zeno’s Wormhole in some esoteric mathematical literature. The intelligence implied that such an object had been found, and its location was given. The importance of this object was not known, but the information had cost the lives of at least one entire expedition.

  With that as his basis, Flex commenced his private research in two directions. First, he learned all he could about the theoretical Zeno’s Wormhole. He did not understand much of the detail, but he compiled it for future use. A non-transversable wormhole was a natural vortex that could form in space connecting two places with a shortcut through hyperspace. Possibly the result of an interaction between two black holes passing in the night, the wormhole could remain stable long after its parents had moved on. What made a Zeno unique was that it didn’t lead anywhere—the far end was pinched off. If one entered the wormhole opening, one would eventually hit a dead end. The literature was unclear whether one could exit from such an object, and Flex guessed that this may have been the little snag faced by previous expeditions. In any case, it was clear why the Puppeteers were interested in a Zeno’s Wormhole. It would be a groundbreaking scientific discovery, if nothing else. Still, Flex couldn’t shake the suspicion that there was more to it than just that.

  His second line of inquiry was concerned with Jarko-S’larbo. He surmised that the wealthy kzin had bought the information from someone who did not have the means to mount another expedition, and that S’larbo intended to do so himself. The sweetest revenge would be to rob the kzin at the moment of his finest glory. Flex set about orchestrating his own trip to the wormhole.

  With access to all public information in known space, and great skill at piecing together seemingly unrelated data from the great rumor mill in the sky, it was not difficult for Flex to outline S’larbo’s plan. What ships come and go at Meerowsk? Where had they come from, and where did they go next? Who had been talking with whom? What statistical anomalies were there in com logs that might lead to S’larbo’s co-conspirators?

  The art of intelligence is to assemble bits of information, make deductions, draw a coherent big picture. At best one might plant information designed to reach a desired outcome. As such an artist, Flex Bothme fancied himself as a pointillist, seeing a broad pattern emerge from the bits. U
ltimately, this painting would have his signature on it.

  The light was wan, most of it coming from the lights of two landers. Overhead, the bright arm of the Milky Way was cold and remote.

  Flex stood next to the spacesuited Jarko-S’larbo, on the dead moon of a gas giant circling a spent sun beyond 18 Scorpii that was gasping its last breaths of exhausted hydrogen. He had timed his arrival just ahead of the kzin. To his surprise, S’larbo had landed alone, presumably to claim his prize for himself. Perhaps not so surprising after all. Flex had a beam rifle leveled on the cat, who was surprised, though he did not yet recognize his human adversary. Spacesuits and vacuums do wonders to mask odors. It was too late for the cat to call for reinforcements and preserve his honor.

  The dead moon was larger than Earth, orbiting in a leaden march as if looking for a more pleasant site to be buried. It was a wonder anyone found it. Flex suspected that the Outsiders had tipped someone off, but since the information had been bought and sold several times already, it was impossible to determine.

  At nearly twice the gravity of Earth—a bit more than Jinx—Flex felt quite at home. The burden on the kzin helped even up the odds, should there be a fight. Then again, S’larbo’s gloves were tipped with metal claws twice the size of his natural ones. Overhead, Catscratch Fever and the kzin ship, Sizthz Chitz, circled in wary orbits. Zel Kickovich had reconfigured the Fever so as not to be recognized from the cat-and-mouse game back at Meerowsk. It got no trouble from the kzinti ratliner—so called because of the fresh game allowed to scurry the dim corridors as food and sport.

  Zeno’s Wormhole? Flex stood at the mouth of an artifact, a cylindrical tube of something like a General Products hull, but showing signs of scarring from what must have been hundreds of millions of years of exposure to the cruel elements of space. The tube was sixty-four meters long, according to data collected shipside (and downloaded into Flex’s in-helmet knowledge well) and just under ten meters in diameter. It floated above a gravity polarizer that had been set up below it by the unnamed party that had vanished from record.