by Larry Niven
One, climbing over the new mound of soil and rock, exposed one of the containers. It grasped it with splayed, five-fingered hands and worked it partly loose. The container’s hard ceramic outer casing had been damaged, as had some of the metal of the inner casing beneath, but not completely penetrated. The Morlock shrieked and spat as it touched a jagged metal surface still hot. It knew only that it had no smell about it of food. It abandoned the container and joined the others tearing at the mynock and human corpses.
When all was eaten the Morlocks left again. Later the mynocks came back. The life-cycles and the chemical processes of the cave ecology resumed.
Chapter 2
Liberated Wunderland, 2433 A.D.
Again, Alpha Centauri A was setting, though at this time of year Alpha Centauri B rose early, filling the sky with wondrous purple light, silver-cored. Two watchers took their ease on the scarp of the Hohe Kalkstein, admiring the splendour of evening as their system’s twin star cleared the horizon in its diamond-brilliant glory, offset by the ruby point of Proxima. There were satellites in the near sky, and the frequent sliding and flash of meteors: the wonder-filled evening of Wunderland. Before them, the escarpment swept down into a great plain, with a view of distant mesas to the south-east and a few far scattered lights. From certain cave mouths in the cliffs below them flying creatures issued into the twilight—great leather-flappers, species of mynocks, and little flittermyce in clouds like smoke.
Nils Rykermann, Professor of Field Biology at Munchen University, lay back on a portable couch, punching a notebook’s keys in a leisurely manner. His colleague and pupil Vaemar, sometimes known as Vaemar-Riit, Master of Arts and Science, doctoral student in several disciplines and son of the late Planetary Governor Chuut-Riit, recent injuries at his neck and shoulders sutured, disinfected and dressed, reclined on another.
“I think we’ve done all we can for the moment,” Rykermann remarked. “Back to the city tomorrow.” He had recently taken to smoking Wunderland chew-bacca and now he looked into his pipe’s glowing bowl as an aid to thought. The pipe, an intricately-worked thing of wood and metal, was a gift from his pupil, who did not himself smoke.
“I suppose it has to be.” Vaemar lashed his tail meditatively. “I enjoy the High Limestone.”
“Even with your Morlock bites?”
“Yes. Stupid creatures to attack me at odds of only eight to one. And it’s a few more ears for my trophy-belt. Honored Step-Sire Raargh will bawl me out about the scars but he’ll approve none-too-secretly. So will Karan. And young Step-Siblings will admire. And Orlando.”
“Raargh’s got plenty of scars himself, and a lot of them from the same creatures,” said Rykermann. “I got some with him. Anyway, it looks as if we won’t have to breed a new Morlock population in test-tubes. We know now that they’re living and breeding in the deep caves all by themselves. Lots of them, it seems. We’ll have to improve security for our expeditions, though. And you’ve got other work to do.”
“Yes, I’m afraid I tend to let my enthusiasm for field-trips bias me too much towards my biological studies.”
“I’d noticed. But as the greeting goes, The Kzin is a Mighty Hunter. I don’t want to discourage you. And your other grades and projects leave nothing to be desired. The physics, mathematics and history prizes were a good trio. And up here the formations grow well. You positioned the Sinclair Fields and the pumps cleverly.”
The two were silent again for a time, contemplating the night and the majestic view. Vaemar pointed. “Visitors,” he said.
Rykermann squinted in the direction of Vaemar’s extended claw. A few moments later his eyes too made out the lights of an approaching car. Vaemar gave a churr of delight as it landed and his old friend and chess partner, Colonel Michael Cumpston, alighted.
Cumpston greeted them briefly, giving Vaemar a scratch under the chin in response to his grooming lick, but in a half-crouching position: in the past Vaemar’s enthusiastic welcome had knocked him over more than once.
“I’ve got a message from Arthur Guthlac,” he told Rykermann. “He would take it as a personal favor if you could meet him at your first convenience.” He paused and went on in a different tone. “Early’s involved.”
“Why didn’t Arthur just send me an e-mail? We’re seeing him in a few days anyway, aren’t we?”
“This isn’t social, I’m afraid. Security,” said Cumpston.
“Why couldn’t he come himself?”
“Give him a break! He’s been working round the clock trying to get his desk cleared before the big event. There’s some secret business.”
“What?”
“As I said, secret. He didn’t confide in a humble colonel. Anyway, you’re wanted back at the ranch. Now.”
“I’m not a soldier any more. He can’t order me round. In fact, since I’m a Member of Parliament, it could be a breach of Parliamentary privilege to do so.”
“Nils, Arthur may be a friend of ours, but don’t mess with Early. You know better.”
“I thought he’d left Wunderland. That Montferrat-Palme or someone had put pressure on him to go—to get out of the system.”
“He went—physically. Some have said it would be better if he was still under our noses.”
“We’re just about finished here for the time being, anyway,” Rykermann said. “Vaemar can take charge of packing things up.”
Cumpston nodded. Though he kept his expression blank, the former exterminationist’s friendship for and trust in the young kzin pleased and amused him. “Another thing. Arthur says you should upgrade your security. He was vague about the details, but I gather there have been a few…problems in this area.”
“I suppose we have let things get a bit lax.” There were farms and hamlets dotted about the fertile tableland beyond the great escarpment and things seemed very peaceful.
They were silent for a moment. Then Cumpston stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles in a leisurely way. It had the effect of showing him the instruments on the forearm of his jacket.
“Don’t look now,” he said slowly, making a gesture that took in a heap of boulders to his left, and raising his hand to pinch his lower lip, “but I am getting a signal from the motion detector from behind that rock-pile. Something quite large and bipedal. The high probability is human.”
Rykermann nodded thoughtfully, as if agreeing with the point Cumpston had made. He did not have a laser-ring like the ARM officer, but the ring on the hand that brushed his thigh activated his pistol. Vaemar yawned and also stretched, a feline’s extravagant stretch that arched his back and dug his claws into the ground. He pulled up one forearm and then the other, in a lazy, breadmaking gesture. Then he leapt over the rock.
There was a human scream, and an angry spitting from Vaemar. He reappeared holding a human child or adolescent. Thrust into his belt was a gun it had evidently been carrying.
“Feral,” he said, though the clothes it was wearing made it obvious. “And clever. Look at this.” His hand with retracted claws touched his captive’s cheek with surprising gentleness. “Rarctha fat. That’s why I didn’t smell him. No weapons.”
“Who are you?” asked Rykermann. The youngster struggled and spat.
“Not a Wabbit,” said Cumpston. The Wascal Wabbits were the most sociopathic gang of ferals on Liberated Wunderland. Their facial tattoos were easy identifiers.
“Turn him round,” said Guthlac, though the young feral’s sex was not in fact obvious. With a single practiced movement he brought a tranquilizer-gun from his belt and fired a Teflon dart into its shoulder. The feral went limp.
“They don’t hunt alone,” said Cumpston, as the feral was put into his car.
“I know,” said Guthlac.
“A gang of them, armed, can be a real danger,” said Cumpston. “I’ll report to security, of course, and get some proper people out here after them, but in the meantime, it wouldn’t be a good idea for any of your students to be wandering about unsupervised or unarmed.”
“That’s up to you. You’re the politician,” said Cumpston. “But as I say, I gather Arthur’s had…reports. Disappearances. Within a few miles of here. Maybe this lot are to blame.” He turned to Vaemar. “Don’t leave your students here alone. I’d suggest, if I may, that you call them up now. Get them back to town as soon as you can.”
Chapter 3
“You sent Earth a message a couple of years ago, asking us if a consignment of radioactives or biological weapons had been sent to Wunderland at a certain time during the war,” said Brigadier Arthur Guthlac. “Why?” He spoke with the indefinable awkwardness of a friend suddenly turned official.
“Two years ago?” Rykermann frowned. “Yes, of course I did. But why bring that up now? I assume it’s been dealt with.”
“No. Thanks to our bureaucracy it has only reached the relevant desk recently. And that by chance. One of Early’s subordinates with a long memory happened to see it on its way to the files. It was, of course a secret job, and very few ever knew about it. Normally we, or the Wunderland Government, would have sent out a team to clean it up in due course—when a mountain of higher priorities had been disposed of.”
“So?”
“Why did you send it?” Guthlac repeated. “When you did?”
“A routine part of tidying up,” Rykermann told him. “We buried some stuff during the war, stuff we were told had been sent from Earth, and I thought the UNSN should remove it. It was obviously something secret and military. Therefore something dangerous. I won’t apologize that it took us a long time to get round to it. We’ve also had one or two other things on our hands, you know.”
“You’re sure it was stuff sent from Earth.”
“That was what we were told,” said Rykermann. “From Earth via the Serpent Swarm belt. The courier who delivered it to us was killed. I don’t know any more than that.”
“When did it happen?”
“It was about a year before the kzinti captured me in the caves. About fourteen Earth-years before liberation.”
“So it got through,” Guthlac said. “We thought it had been lost in space.”
“What was it?…Don’t pull that stone face on me. We took risks for it,” Rykermann told him. “A number of people died for it. Answer my question, please, Arthur. Also, I happen to be not only the chief biologist for the cave complexes, I’m very close to the Minister for Environmental Protection. Do you want me to tell him there’s an unknown bioweapon from Earth at large and Earth won’t tell us anything about it? That is my duty as a Wunderlander and a member of the Government. And there was nuclear stuff, too.”
“Nils, I know well enough you are a politician,” said Guthlac. “In any case I suppose you’ll need to know. It’s Pak tree-of-life. And, Nils, I’m ordering you to say nothing about it.”
Rykermann drew in his breath sharply. He looked as if he was about to burst out with something, but then said only: “Why?”
“I’ll tell you. But I’ll trade you information. Tell me more. Everything that happened then.”
“We were in the wild country beyond the Hohe Kalkstein. There was a fight.” Rykermann told him the story.
“We hid the stuff and cleared out,” he concluded. “After that we had plenty of other things to do, beginning with getting away. If I thought about it at all later, I wondered if it might be a radioactive agent we were meant to smuggle into kzin ships or areas and then open. Enriched uranium for detonators, perhaps. Initiators for simple fission bombs. Plutonium. Caesium. Or some biological plague that the Sol Laboratories had developed to use on ratcats. But I had other things on my mind. We’d done as Sol instructed, at big risk all along the way. In the day-to-day matters of staying alive I didn’t give it too much thought.
“The resistance was getting into a bad way then. Not just because attrition was wearing us down and more and more humans were either giving up and accepting their lot or just dead. Chuut-Riit had begun studying humans and that was making life harder for us all. Some kzinti were investigating monkey stuff—it had been beneath their dignity before—and some were also getting all too interested in what they found. They were learning more about us and it was getting harder to hide.
“Then I was captured by the kzinti,” Rykermann went on. “Thanks to Raargh-Sergeant and because we’d fought together against the Morlocks, and Leonie had soft-heartedly saved his life, I was awarded fighters’ privileges and paroled. That changed my lifestyle. I wouldn’t risk front-fighting and then falling into kzin claws again after breaking my word to them—there are some things you can’t ask of a man and that’s one of them. I was exhausted anyway. Plus they had a zzrou implant in me, not being overly trusting of any monkey. I became more a back-room boy for a long time. There was plenty for a backroom boy to do.”
Guthlac nodded. Rykermann went on.
“Time passed. We did what we could, growing a little weaker and more hopeless each year. Then came other things, it seemed on top of one another, hard and fast: the ramscoop raid and the death of Chuut-Riit, followed by the kzinti’s civil war and the Liberation. That didn’t mean the end of work for us. In many ways we were busier than ever.
“I thought the zzrou would kill me come Liberation. But a human doctor managed to hack it out. He died instead of me when it exploded. Thanks to Leonie, some of my people found me in the wreckage just before I bled to death. But without fancy surgery I spent the Liberation with a hole the size of your fist where my right scapula had been, and not, as you can imagine, taking a very active part. Finally they got me to the UNSN forces and one of the military regeneration tanks. Other wounded had to make do with organ banks. I was fortunate enough to be spared that.”
Rykermann was telling Guthlac things he knew already, but Guthlac let him speak on. He knew one terrible thing Rykermann might be referring to when he spoke of organ banks and apparently it still helped him to talk.
“Later, when things had settled down, and I was generally tidying up loose ends, I asked the authorities if they had sent us any dangerous radioactive material. I didn’t hear anything more. That was the last I thought about it until now. I love my biological work and that’s what I’d rather concentrate on. And…well, there were other things on my mind, too.”
“Dangerous, to leave radioactives around.”
“Cleaning up Wunderland will be a long job, Arthur,” Rykermann said. “There are lots of crashed ships, lots of spilled radioactives, lots of munitions, half-made experimental bioweapons, lots of hot dumps still. Our granite’s generally a lot hotter than Earth’s as well, which can make detection more difficult. I guess we’ll have to wait till the war’s over in space before we can even think of seeing the resources to do the job properly. But now you say…” Again he stopped as if biting off words.
“Anyway, you were right,” Guthlac said. “There were some nukes in it, along with triggers—bombs ready to go. Some of them very dirty and with a big bang for their size.”
“That’s not very nice to have loose on Wunderland,” said Rykermann. “There are still kzin revanchists around, not to mention some humans who could be even more dangerous. Apart from—the other thing. We must bring it in now. I suppose you have the signatures of the nukes?”
“Yes. Here.” Guthlac gestured to a computer-brick. “They shouldn’t be too hard to find—in fact they were designed to leave signatures so they could be retrieved from hiding-places easily. We also had transmitters broadcasting those signatures. They are so miniaturized they aren’t very effective, but they might help. We also have triggering codes. But you want the full story?”
“To Hell with the nukes! Pak tree-of-life. Why?”
“One of the greatest services Markham and the Alpha Centauri resistance did for humanity was to set up a maser facility on Nifelheim,�
� Guthlac said. “They were able to send Sol a lot of information about the kzinti and in particular their fleets.”
“Markham? He knocked down a lot of the kzin surveillance satellites,” said Rykermann. “And his people jinxed others to send misleading information. The resistance would never have survived otherwise. That’s what we owe him for. But what’s Markham got to do with tree-of-life?”
“For us it was the intelligence he sent that mattered. Keeping that secret channel open was priceless. We were also masering them, but at both ends we kept our messages short and few. For the kzinti to have intercepted them would have been disastrous. But as you say, until Chuut-Riit settled firmly into command they didn’t take much interest in what monkeys did so long as they were decorous slaves. We, like you, took advantage of that.
“The message we sent with the special consignment was deliberately cryptic. Decoded it said only: ‘Hide it. You’ll get further instructions if and when the time comes.’
“When things were going from bad to worse in the war, about the time of the third big kzin fleet attack on Sol,” Guthlac went on, “Early’s people launched Operation Cherubim.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“Very few did. By that time we were beginning to fear sabotage of the war effort by pacifists and would-be quislings in Sol system. Thanks to Markham’s masers we knew that in the Centauri system humans had not been exterminated but were living under a collaborationist government. We made that public knowledge, thinking it might be good for morale—Sol people would have grounds to hope their families and so forth here might still be alive. Anyway, we only rediscovered the need for any censorship slowly. It was a mistake. It meant there was a temptation to some Sol people, when they knew they might go on living under the kzinti, to settle for something like the same, rather than endless, grinding, hopeless war and increasing poverty, hardship and coercion for all.”