by Larry Niven
He looked over at the Master where he lay leaking brown from his mouth onto the chair. The single eye was still covered by the vertical slit of a closed lid. Suddenly Markham felt the weight of his sidearm in his hand, pointing at the thrint. With a scream of horror, he thrust it back into the holster and slammed the offending hand into the unyielding surface of the screen, again and again. The pain was sweet as justice. My weakness, he told himself. My father’s weak sub-man blood. I must be on my guard.
Work. Work was the cure. He looked up to establish the trajectory of the renegade Catskinner, saw that it was heading in-system towards Wunderland.
Treachery, he mused. “But do not be concerned, Master,” he muttered. His own reflection looked back at him from the inactive sections of the board; the gleam of purpose in his eyes straightened his back with pride. “Ulf Reichstein-Markham will never betray you.”
Chapter VII
“Here’s looking at you, kid,” Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann said, raising the drinking bulb.
Home free, he thought, taking a suck on the maivin; the wine filled his mouth with the scent of flowers, an odor of violets. Ingrid was across the little cubicle in the cleanser unit, half visible through the fogged glass as the sprays played over her body. Absurd luxury, this private stateroom on the liner to Tiamat, but Claude’s fake identities had included plenty of valuata. Not to mention the considerable fortune in low-mass goods in the hold, bought with the proceeds of selling Harold’s Terran Bar.
He felt a brief pang at the thought. Thirty years. It had been more than a livelihood; it was a mood, a home, a way of life, a family. A bubble of human space in Munchen…A pseudo-archaic flytrap with rigged roulette, he reminded himself ironically. What really hurts is setting it to that fat toad Suuomalisen, he realized, and grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Ingrid said, stepping out of the cleanser. Her skin was dry, the smooth cream-white he remembered; it rippled with the long muscles of a zero-G physique kept in shape by exercise. The breasts were high and dark-nippled, and the tail of her Belter crest poured half-way down her back.
God, she looks good, he thought, and took another sip of the maivin.
“Thinking of Suuomalisen,” he said.
She made a slight face and touched the wall-control, switching the bed to .25 G, the compromise they had agreed on. Harold rose into the air slightly as the mattress flexed, readjusting to his reduced weight. In-grid swung onto the bed and began kneading his feet with slim strong fingers.
“I thought you hated him,” she said, rotating the ankles.
“No, despised,” Harold said. The probing traveled up to his calves.
She frowned. “I…you know, Hari, I can’t say I like the thought of leaving Sam and the others at his mercy.”
He nodded and sipped; tax and vagrancy laws on Wunderland had never been kind to the commonfolk. After two generations of kzinti overlordship and collaborationist government, things were much worse. Tenants on the surviving herrenmann estates were not too bad, but urban workers were debt-peons more often than not.
“I know something that Suuomalisen doesn’t,” Harold said, waiting for her look of enquiry before continuing. “Careful on that knee, sweetheart, the repair job’s never really taken…Oh, the pension fund. Usually it’s a scam, get the proles more deeply in debt, you know? Well, the way I’ve got it jiggered the employee nonvoting stock—that’s usually another scam, interest-free loans from the help—controls the pension fund. The regular employees all owe their debts to the pension fund…to themselves. In fact, the holding company turns out to be controlled by the fund, if you trace it through.”
Ingrid’s hands stopped stroking his thighs as she snorted laughter. “You sold him a minority interest?” she choked. “You teufel!” Her hand moved up, kneading. “Devil,” she repeated, in a different tone.
“Open up!” A fist hammered at the door.
“Go away!” they said in chorus, and collapsed laughing.
A red light flashed on the surface of the door. “Open up! There’s a ratcat warship matching trajectories, and it wants you two by name!”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand crowns!” Suuomalisen said, looking mournfully about.
He was a vague figure in bulky white against the backdrop of Harold’s Terran Bar, looking mournfully down at his luncheon platter of wurst, egg-and-potato salad, breads, shrimp on rye, gulyas soup…His hands continued to shovel the food methodically into his mouth, dropping bits onto the flowing handkerchief tucked into his collar; the rest of his clothing was immaculate white natural linen and silk, the only color jet links at his cuffs. It was rumored that he had his shirts handmade, and never wore one for more than a day. Claude Montferrat-Palme watched the light from the mirror behind the long bar gleaming on the fat man’s bald head and reflected that he could believe it.
Only natural for a man who wolfs down fastmetabol and still weighs that much. It was easy to control appetite, a simple visit to the autodoc, but Suuomalisen refused; he enjoyed being a pig. Wunderland’s .61 G made it fairly easy to carry extra weight, but the sight was still not pleasant.
“Not a bad price for a thriving business,” he said politely, leaning back at his ease and letting smoke trickle out his nostrils. He was in the high-collared blue dress uniform of the Munchen Polizei; the remains of a single croissant lay on the table before him, with a cup of espresso. Their table was the only one in use. The bar was a nightspot and rarely opened before sundown. Just now none of the staff were in the main area, a raised L-shape of tables and booths around the lower dance floor and bar; he could hear mechanical noises from the back room, where the roulette wheels and baccarat tables were. There was a sad, empty smell to the nightclub, the curious daytime melancholy of a place meant to be seen by darkness.
“A part interest only,” Suuomalisen continued. “I trusted Hari!” He shook his head mournfully. “We should not steal from each other…quickly he needed the cash, and did I quibble? Did I spend good money on having lawyers follow his data trail?”
“Did you pay anything like the going-rate price for this place?” Claude continued smoothly. “Did you pay three thousand to my late unlamented second-in-command Axelrod-Bauergartner to have the health inspectors close the place down so that Hari would be forced to sell?”
“That is different, simply business,” the fat man said in a hurt tone. “But to sell me a business actually controlled by employees…!” His jowls wobbled, and he sighed heavily. “A pity about Herrenfra Axelrod-Bauergartner.” He made a tsk sound. “Treason and corruption.”
“Speaking of which,” Claude hinted. Suuomalisen smiled and slid a credit voucher across the table; Claude palmed it smoothly and dropped it into his pocket. So much more tidy than direct transfers, he thought. “Now, my dear Suuomalisen, I’m sure you won’t lose money on the deal. After all, a nightclub is only as good as the staff, and they know that as well as you; with Sam Ogun on the musicomp and Aunti Scheirwize in the kitchen, you can’t go wrong.” He uncrossed his ankles and leaned forward. “To business.”
The fat man’s eyes narrowed and the slit of his mouth pulled tight; for a moment, you remembered that he had survived and prospered on the fringes of the law in occupied Munchen for forty years.
“That worthless musician Ogun is off on holiday, and if you think I’m going to increase the payoff, when I’m getting less than half the profits—”
“No, no, no,” Claude said soothingly. “My dear fellow, I am going to give you more funds. Information is your stock in trade, is it not? Incidentally, Ogun is doing a little errand for me, and should be back in a day or two.”
The petulance left Suuomalisen’s face. “Yes,” he said softly. “But what information could I have worth the while of such as you, Herrenmann?” A pause. “Are you proposing a partnership, indeed?”
“I need documentary evidence on certain of my colleagues,” Claude continued. “I have my own files…but data from those could be, shall we say, embarrassing
in its plenitude if revealed to my ratca—noble kzinti superiors. Though they are thin on the ground just at this moment. Then, once I have usable evidence—usable without possibility of being traced to me, and hence usable as a non-desperation measure—a certain…expansion of operations…”
“Ah.” Pearly white teeth showed in the doughy pink face. Suuomalisen pulled his handkerchief free and wiped the dome of his head; there was a whiff of expensive cologne and sweat. “I always said you were far too conservative about making the most of your position, my friend.”
Acquaintance, if necessary. Not friend. Claude smiled, dazzling and charming. “Recent events have presented opportunities,” he said. “With the information you get for me, my position will become unassailable. Then,” he shrugged, “rest assured that I intend to put it to good use.”
“This had better work,” the guerilla captain said. She was a high-cheeked Croat, one of the tenants turned off when the kzinti took over the local herrenmann’s estate, roughly dressed, a well-worn strakkaker over one shoulder. “We need the stuff on that convoy, or we’ll have to pack it in.”
“It will,” Samuel Ogun replied tranquilly. He was a short thick-set black man, with a boxed musicomp over his shoulder and a jazzer held by the grips, its stubby barrel pointed up. It better, or I’ll know Mister Claude has fooled this Krio one more time, he thought. “My source has access to the best.”
They were all lying along the ridgeline, looking down on the valley that opened out onto the plains of the upper Donau valley. Two thousand kilometers north of Munchen, and the weather was unseasonably cold this summer; too much cloud from the dust and water-vapor kicked into the stratosphere. The long hillslope down to the abandoned village was covered in head-high wild rosebushes, a jungle of twisted thigh-thick stems, finger-long thorns and flowers like a mist of pink and yellow. Scent lay about them in the warm thick air, heavy, syrup-sweet. Ogun could see native squidgrass struggling to grow beneath the Earth vegetation, thin shoots of reddish olive-brown amid the bright green.
Behind them the deep forest of the Jotun range reared, up to the rock and the glaciers. The roofless cottages of the village were grouped around a lake; around them were thickets of orchard, pomegranate and fig and apricot, and beyond that you could see where grainfields had been, beneath the pasture grasses. Herds were dotted about, six-legged native gagrumphers, Earth cattle and beefaloes and bison; the odd solitary kzinti raaairtwo, its orange pelt standing out against the green of the mutant alfalfa. The kzinti convoy was forging straight across the grasslands, a hexagonal pattern of dark beetle-shaped armored cars and open-topped troop carriers, moving with the soundless speed of distortion batteries and gravity-polarizer lift.
“Twenty of them,” the guerilla said, the liquid accent of her Wunderlander growing more noticeable. “I hope the data you gave us are correct, Krio.”
“It is, Fra Mihaelovic. For the next ten hours, the surveillance net is down. They haven’t replaced the gaps yet.”
She nodded, turning her eyes to the kzinti vehicles and bringing up her viewers. Ogun raised his own, a heavy kzinti model. The vehicles leaped clear, jiggling slightly with hand motion, but close enough for him to see one kzinti trooper flip up the goggles of his helmet and sniff the air, drooling slightly at the scent of meat animals. He spoke to the alien on his right; seconds later, the vehicles slowed and settled. Dots and commas unreeled in the upper left corner of Ogun’s viewers, their idiot-savant brain telling him range and wind-bearings.
“Oh, God is great, God is with us, God is our strength,” the guerilla said with soft fervor. “They aren’t heading straight up the valley to the fort at Bodgansford, they’re going to stop for a feed. Ratcats hate those infantry rations.” Teeth showed strong and yellow against a face stained with sweat-held dust, in an expression a kzin might have read quite accurately. “I don’t blame them, I’ve tasted them.” She touched the throat-mike at the collar of her threadbare hunter’s jacket. “Kopcha.”
Pinpoints of light flared around the village, lines of light heading up into the sky. Automatic weapons stabbed up from the kzinti armored cars; some of the lines ended with orange puffballs of explosion, but they were too many and too close. Ogun grinned himself as the flat pancakes of smoke and light blossomed over the alien war-vehicles; shaped charges, driving self-forging bolts of molten titanium straight down into the upper armor of the convoy’s protection. Thunder rolled back from the mountain walls; huge ringing changgg sounds as the hypervelocity projectiles smashed armor and components and furred alien flesh. Then a soundless explosion that sent the compensators of the viewer black as a ball of white fire replaced an armored car. The ground rose and fell beneath him, and then a huge warm pillow of air smacked him across the face.
Molecular distortion batteries will not burn. But if badly damaged they will discharge all their energy at once, and the density of that energy is very high.
The kzinti infantry were flinging themselves out of the carriers; most of those were undamaged, the antiarmor mines had been reserved for the fighting vehicles. Fire stabbed out at them, from the ruined village, from the rose-thickets of the hillside. Some fell, flopped, were still; Ogun could hear their screams of rage across a kilometer’s distance. The viewer showed him one team struggling to set up a heavy weapon, a tripod-mounted beamer. Two were down, and then a finger of sun slashed across the hillside beneath him. Flame roared up, a secondary explosion as someone’s ammunition was hit, then the last kzin gunner staggered back with a dozen holes through his chest-armor, snorted out a spray of blood, died. The beamer locked and went on cycling bolts into the hillside, then toppled and was still.
A score of armored kzinti made it to the edge of the thicket; it was incredible how fast they moved under their burdens of armor and weaponry. Explosions and more screams as they tripped the waiting directional mines. Ogun grew conscious of the guerilla commander’s fist striking him on the shoulder.
“The jamming worked, the jamming worked! We can ride those carriers right into the fort gates, with satchel charges aboard! You will make us a song of this, guslar!”
They were whooping with laughter as the charging kzin broke cover ten yards downslope. The guerilla had time for one quick burst of glass needles from her strakkaker before it struck; an armored shoulder sent her spinning into the thicket. It wheeled on Ogun with blurring speed, then halted its first rush when it saw what he held in his hand. That was a ratchet knife, a meterlong outline of wire on a battery handle; the thin keening of its vibration sounded under the far-off racket of battle, like the sound of a large and infinitely angry bee. An arm-thick branch of rosevine toppled soundlessly away from it as he turned the tip in a precise circle, cut through without slowing the blade.
Ogun grinned, deliberately wide; he made no move toward the jazzer slung over his shoulder, the kzin was only three meters away and barely out of claw-reach, far too close for him to bring the nerve-disruptor to bear. The warrior held a heavy beam-rifle in one hand, but the amber light on its powerpack was blinking discharge; the kzin’s other arm hung in bleeding tatters, one ear was missing, its helmet had been torn away somewhere, and it limped. Yet there was no fear in the huge round violet eyes as it bent to lay the rifle on the ground and drew the steel-bladed wtsai from its belt.
This was like old times in the hills, right after the kzin landed, he reflected. Old times with Mr. Harold…I wonder where he is now, and Fra Raines?
“Name?” the kzin grated, in harsh Wunderlander, and grinned back at him in a rictus that laid its lower jaw almost on its breast. The tongue lolled over the ripping fangs; it was an old male, with a string of dried ears at its belt, human and kzinti. It made a gesture toward itself with the hilt. “Chmee-Sergeant.” Toward the human. “Name?”
Ogun brought the ratchet knife up before him in a smooth, precise move that was almost a salute. “Ogun,” he said. “Deathgod.”
“Look,” Harold said, as the crewmen frogmarched them toward the airlock, “the
re’s something…well, it never seemed to be the right time to say it…”
Ingrid turned her head toward him, eyes wide. “You really were going to give up smoking?” she cooed. “Oh, thank you, Hari.”
Behind them, the grimly unhappy faces of the liner crewmen showed uncertainty; they looked back at the officer trailing them with the stunner. He tapped it to his head significantly and rolled his eyes.
This isn’t the time for laughing in the face of death, Harold thought angrily. “Ingrid, we don’t have time to fuck around—”
“Not anymore,” she interrupted mournfully.
The officer prodded her with the muzzle of the stunner. “Shut up,” he said in a grating tone. “Save the humor for the ratcats.”
More crewmen were shoving crates through the airlock, into the short flexible docking tube between the liner Marlene and the kzinti warcraft. They scraped across the deck plates and then coasted through the tube, where the ship’s gravity cut off at the line of the hull and zero-G took over; there was a dull clank as they tumbled into the warship’s airlock. Numbly, he realized that it was their cabin baggage, packed into a pair of fiberboard canyons. For an insane instant he felt an impulse to tell them to be careful; he had half a crate of best Donaublitz verguuz in there…He glanced aside at Ingrid, seeing a dancing tension under the surface of cheerful calm. Gottdamn, he thought. If I didn’t know better—
“Right, cross and dog the airlock from the other side, you two.” Sweat gleamed on the officer’s face; he was a Swarm-Belter, tall and stick-thin. He hesitated, then ran a hand down his short-cropped crest and spoke softly. “I’ve got a family and children on Tiamat,” he said in an almost-whisper. “Murphy’s unsanctified rectum, half the crew on the Marlene are my relatives…if it were just me, you understand?”