The Man-Kzin Wars 11 mw-11

by Hal Colebatch

  “He talk to you much?”

  “Nothing informative. 'Go there, do that, you baby-eater.' Made eye contact and grinned a lot. Seemed to bother him that I didn't get hostile.”

  “I expect so. Did you explain?” Peace said, amused.

  “No, the baby-eater remark offended me, so I just let him pant.”

  “Sweat.”

  “Sweat? Yes, that would mean the same thing, wouldn't it?”

  “Not quite. A human letting someone else work off his foul mood on his own doesn't need as much self-control,” Peace pointed out. “So there's less satisfaction involved for us. Well, I'd better check his ship. Want to come along?”

  “If it's as big a mess as he was I'll need my suit.”

  “I'll put mine back on too,” Peace agreed.

  There was only one boobytrap; it was in the airlock, and Buckminster spotted it too. The ship only had deck gravity in the exercise room, and that was turned off. There wasn't any debris floating about, but surfaces were dirty and smeared, and the air plant was in extremis. The ship's arms looked like he'd tried for the greatest lethality for the money: there was a turret with two disintegrators, plus and minus, to slice targets open with bars of lightning; and torpedo tubes that fired Silver Bullets, a weapon the Wunderlanders had devised at the end of the Third War but never got to use. These were all-but-invisible pellets of stasis-held antihydrogen, stasis shutting down on impact—the blast would punch through thick hullmetal, and the surplus neutrons from the destroyed atoms would flood a ship's interior. “What a stupid concept,” Buckminster said. “That'd ruin everything but the hull. You'd have to rebuild the ship almost completely for any sort of prize.”

  “Though it is an excellent killing device,” Peace said.

  “If that's all you want.”

  “It's all he wants, and it's his ship.”

  “It's still stupid. What if he had a chance at a better ship?”

  Peace shrugged—which, given the swollen joints of a Protector's shoulders, was a very emphatic gesture—and said, “I doubt he intends to live long enough for it to matter.”

  “Urr,” Buckminster growled, which from a kzin qualified as tactful acknowledgment.

  “I agree it's unusually stupid,” Peace added, aware that he might not have understood that.

  They searched the ship without finding further portable weapons, which made some sense if he was on a suicide mission—he'd hardly go back for more. The only question was, what was he doing here? “Did he say what he was doing here?” she said, realizing Buckminster wouldn't mention it unless it came up—small talk was “monkey chatter” to kzinti, and Peace judged this was not an unfair assessment. It probably did derive from primate chattering.

  “No, he wanted to know what I was doing here.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I was a deserter.”

  Peace, who had never thought of it in exactly that phrasing, blinked once. Then she said, “What did he say to that?”

  “Eventually, 'Oh.' Then he locked me away in my dank and lonely prison.”

  “Uh huh,” said Peace, who judged that if a delay in her trip had extended Buckminster's durance vile to six months he'd have gotten too fat to sneak back into his cell. “Okay, let's see what's behind the fake bulkhead.”

  Buckminster did a good job of hiding his surprise when she opened the wall, though it took him a while to realize that that partition had had no fixtures, fittings, or access panels on either side, and therefore had no reason for existing in a one-man ship.

  The interior was a shrine. Correction: a monument. There were pictures of three women, two men, and several children at progressing ages, but there were also single pictures of 51 other humans, almost all male, each with a neat black X inked onto the forehead. Peace recognized 22 of them as officials during the kzinti occupation, and had seen news stories about two of those and four of the other 29, reporting their accidental deaths. All six had struck her as being well-concealed homicides. It seemed probable that the entire 51 were dead collaborators, who had all contributed in some way to the deaths of the psychist's spouses and children.

  Buckminster got it almost as soon as she did. “I'm impressed,” he said. “It's hard to kill one human being without being found out. I still can't understand how you can tolerate the constant monitoring.”

  He didn't mind her monitoring him, so she said, “With humans it's actually less unpleasant if it's a stranger doing it.”

  “Oh, thanks, now it makes perfect sense.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  They blinked at each other—a grin was inappropriate for him, and impossible for her, though the broad gash of her beak partook of a certain cheerful senile vacuity—and closed the place back up before leaving. “Cleaning robot?” Buckminster said as they passed through the airlock.

  “Sure. Have to tweak the programming.”

  “I'll do that. You can get to work on your new ship.”

  Peace nodded, pleased with his intelligence. Obviously, things had gone well with the Outsider: she'd come back. “Have you decided what to do after I leave?”

  “Go to Home and make a fortune as a consulting ecologist with what you've taught me, then start a family somewhere else. Sårng would be good.”

  “Don't know it,” she was startled to realize.

  “No reason to, it's at the far end of kzinti space. Atmosphere's a couple of tons per square inch, they've been trying to kzinform it from floating habitats for about a thousand years, I think it was. I thought I could move things along.”

  Peace shook her head. “That'll mostly be carbon dioxide. Even without the impact and combustion of hydrogen for oceans, there's millennia of red heat latent in carbonate formation.”

  Removing his suit, Buckminster was nodding. “I had an idea from Earth news. Transfer booths are getting cheap enough for something besides emergencies, so I thought: refrigeration.” He looked at her quizzically. “I don't think I've ever mentioned this, but are you aware that you hop up and down when you hear a new idea you really like?”

  “Yes. Were you thinking convection, or Maxwell's Demon?”

  “Both in one step. Transmitter in the atmosphere, receiver in orbit. Only the fast molecules get transmitted, the rest are pushed out and fresh let in. Dry ice comes out near true zero, slower than orbital speed, and falls in eccentric orbit to make a shiny ring. Less heat arriving, and the gas returns to the atmosphere very gradually for slow heat release. You're doing it again.”

  “I know. Suggestion: send all the molecules in the transmitter, and draw the momentum shortage from the adjacent atmosphere. Faster turnover, massive downdraft, more hot air comes in from the sides.”

  Buckminster thought about it. Then he carefully hung up his suit, turned back to her—and hopped up and down.

  * * *

  Buckminster had the cleaner on monitor when Peace came up and said, “He's ready to come out. Want to be there?”

  “No.”

  “Okay,” she said, and went off to the autodoc.

  She'd naturally set it so Corky didn't wake up until it was opened, so the first thing he saw was a Protector. He stared, appalled—she was something of a warning notice for “Don't Eat Spicy Foods At Bedtime”—and then, astoundingly, said, “You're Jan Corben's little girl?”

  Widening her eyes was just about her only option in facial expressions. “Now how did you arrive at that?” she exclaimed.

  “You have her eyes,” he said.

  “It didn't actually work out that way,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Not unless you can come up with a really good reason for breaking into my home.”

  She watched him catch up. “Protector,” he said to himself, just grasping it. Then he said, “Where were you during the War?”

  She scooped him out of the autodoc, shut it, and plunked his bare behind down on the lid, stingingly hard. “You are an invader in my home,” she said, looking up at him. �
��You may now explain yourself to my full satisfaction.”

  “You can't kill a human breeder,” he said skeptically.

  “You're not a relative. Even if you were, invasive brain readout wouldn't damage your testicles.”

  For the first time he looked worried. “I thought it was a kzinti base. I wanted to steal a ship.”

  Peace blinked, then said, “Buying a ship would be recorded. You wanted to attack their home planet.”

  “To land. And kill the Patriarch.”

  Peace blinked again, then touched her caller and said, “Buckminster, come to the kitchen. You have to hear this.”

  “Four minutes,” came the reply.

  She hauled Corky off the 'doc by his elbow, and walked to the kitchen still holding his arm. He stumbled a few times, then got his feet under him. She was exasperated enough to contemplate changing step just to louse him up, but refrained, as it would be waste work to haul him the rest of the way. She had the floor produce a seat, stuck him in it, and dispensed a few small dishes. “Eat,” she said.

  “What is this stuff?” he said suspiciously.

  “Stewed rat heads, giant insect larvae, and assorted poisonous plants.”

  He scowled, but got the message—don't be ridiculous—and began eating. Presently he said, “This is wonderful.”

  “Good, that'll be the neurotoxins kicking in.”

  He scowled again, shut up, and ate.

  Buckminster came in soon, got something hot with alcohol in it, took a good gulp, and said, “What is it I have to hear?”

  “This fellow came to this kzinti base, that we're in, here, to steal a ship, to take to Kzin. Guess what he wanted to do there?”

  Buckminster shrugged. “Assassinate the Patriarch?”

  “Right.”

  Buckminster took another gulp and said, “No, really.”

  “Really.”

  Kzinti rarely laugh, and it is even rarer for a human to be present when it happens; but the sound was similar enough to human laughter for Corky to stop eating and scowl. “What's so funny about it?”

  Buckminster had an analytical mind, for an evolved creature, so he sat down and made a serious attempt to answer. “Many years ago,” he said, “when I was first allowed out, still almost a kitten, I used to hunt… birds, sort of… out on the grounds. I was very good at it. Some were bigger than I was, and all of them wanted their meat even more than I did, but I devised snares and weapons and brought them down. All but one. It was big, and kept going by higher than I could shoot an arrow, and I was never able to find the right bait to lure it down. However, it had very regular habits, so I built a sort of giant crossbow thing—”

  “Ballista,” said Peace.

  “Thanks. A ballista, to shoot at it. Just to get the range, at first. As it turned out, I only got to fire it once. The shot landed in a neighbor's grounds, stampeding some game. I was too little to know yet that there was a world outside my sire's estate, which included things like other estates. And orbital landing shuttles.”

  It took Corky a few moments to realize: “You were trying to shoot down a spaceship.”

  “With a crossbow. Yes.”

  “And my plan reminds you of that.”

  “Vividly. Almost perfectly.” Buckminster was chuckling again.

  Corky had been getting himself carefully poised for the last couple of minutes. Now he launched himself over the edge of the table at Buckminster.

  Buckminster threw the rest of his drink on the table.

  Corky's right foot came down in the liquid, and he spun sideways and tumbled the rest of the way. Buckminster swung his mug into Corky's hip, knocking him aside, and Corky slid past him off the edge of the table. He hit the ground about four feet away—then six feet away—then seven—then he rolled a few more feet. After that he tried to get up a few times, but kept slipping.

  Buckminster got up and dispensed himself a towel, refilled his mug, and said, “You want a drink? It'll reduce bruising.” The reply he got wasn't articulate enough to be obscene. The kzin flapped one ear, and went to mop up his first drink.

  When Corky had finally managed to get as far as sitting upright on the floor, Peace—who'd seen it coming and known she didn't need to move—said, “Buckminster and I have been working together, and working out together, for years. He's a strategic minimalist, and he's got enough cyborg enhancements that I hardly have to hold back. If he'd been holding your previous rude remarks against you, he might have been mean enough to let you actually use that Hellflare nonsense on him, and shatter your bones in the process.”

  Buckminster tossed the towel at the trash and told Corky, “What's on you is your problem. Likely to remain so, judging from your past habits. Do you use a name, or just mark things?”

  Corky scowled again, evidently his default expression, but said, “Doctor Harvey Mossbauer.”

  “Doctor?” Buckminster exclaimed in disbelief. “What kind of a doctor are you supposed to be?”

  “I'm a psychist.”

  Buckminster was speechless for the fifth time in the twenty-eight years Peace had known him, and that was counting when she'd first met him and shot him in the head. “He really is,” Peace confirmed. “My mother was one of his inmates. She called him Corky. One of her puns.” Buckminster looked unenlightened, so she added, “Moss grows on trees. 'Bauer' is Wunderlander for 'farmer.' A moss farmer would be a tree. Cork is a kind of tree bark.”

  An appalled exclamation from the floor indicated that Corky had just gotten it, after something like forty years since he'd first heard it. The wordless exclamations went on for a while.

  Buckminster put up with a couple of minutes of it, then went to the dispenser and got some Irish coffee. He handed it to Corky, who said, “I don't drink,” and took a swig.

  “Do you know how many assassins try to kill the Patriarch each year?” Buckminster said, beginning to be amused again.

  “No,” Corky grumped.

  “Neither does he. Most don't get as close as the horizon. I did security contracting before I joined the military. There have been two Patriarchs assassinated in the history of the Patriarchy. The more recent was about twelve hundred years ago, and it was done with a thermonuclear warhead, arriving at relativistic speed to overload the palace shielding. The design defect was corrected during repairs to that wing, by the way.”

  “For a fearless leader of 'Heroes,' he sure puts a lot of defenses around him,” Corky said.

  Buckminster looked at Peace. “Was that supposed to offend me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You can scream and leap anytime.”

  “I'll make a note on my watch. The Patriarch doesn't put the defenses around himself. The rest of us do that. This leaves him free to deal with serious matters, like settling disputes or conquering the universe.”

  “Or discrediting religious cults,” Peace said cheerfully.

  Buckminster's tail lashed, and his ears closed up for a moment. Then he reopened them and said, “I never really understood that you were going to make him that crazy.”

  “The Patriarch?” said Corky, startled.

  “No, Kdapt-Preacher,” Buckminster said.

  “But—”

  “Not the original, a crewmate of mine. Before he was Named, his title would have translated as Manexpert. He took the pacifist's Name to make people think he was a harmless lunatic.”

  Corky looked interested. “You know, I don't believe I've ever heard a kzin title of Expert before.”

  “Usually a kzin who's that good at something already has a partial Name. Manexpert was a little too weird. He identified with his subject matter—to the point where he tried to confuse the God by praying in a disguise made of human skin.”

  “What?”

  “He thought Peace was a divine avenger who'd mutinied, and decided the Fanged God was on your side but could be gotten around. He had some technology Peace had built him, so he convinced a lot of kzinti. The Patriarch had to kill him personally, and barely managed be
fore Kdapt-Preacher could kill him.”

  “Too bad,” said Corky.

  Peace spoke up. “If he'd won the duel, the first the human race would have heard of it would have been a simultaneous attack on every star with humans on its planets. Flares from relativistic impacts would keep everyone busy coping with heat, and they could pick off worlds one by one.”

  “And where would you be this time?” Corky said, repressing fury.

  “For the Patriarch to lose that duel I would have had to be years dead,” she said. “I spent a lot of effort—more than you're equipped to comprehend—making changes in kzinti society, opening minds, getting precedence for some cultures and taking it from others. There won't be another attack on humanity, by this Patriarch at least.”

  “'Cultures,' plural?” Corky said.

  Buckminster looked at Peace. “I should have bit him,” he said.

  “You'd have expired in convulsions.”

  “I may anyway. —Have you bothered to learn anything about the enemy you're planning to kill? What do you think the Patriarchy is for?”

  “'The purpose of power is power,'” Corky quoted.

  Buckminster's ears cupped. Then they curled tight, and reopened with a snap that must have been like thunder to him, and cupped again. Then he said, “I think that may literally be the stupidest thing I've ever heard.”

  “People who have power want to keep it and try to get more,” Corky said.

  “I understood you. The purpose of power is action. They try to get more because they keep seeing more things they can almost do. Kzinti are not a tribal people, which is one thing that worked in your favor in the Wars. We argue a lot, and fight almost as much. We would never have entrusted the Patriarchy with power over the rest of us if there was any alternative.”

  Corky narrowed his eyes. “'Entrusted'? It's a hereditary monarchy,” he said suspiciously.

  Buckminster blinked. “And before a human is sworn in as a government official, he has to give homage to a flag. Tell me, before you became a psychist, did you have to actually learn anything, say about symbolism and rituals for example?” Peace kept an eye on him—sarcasm was one thing, but when Buckminster got rhetorical it meant he was really angry—but when Corky didn't answer, he just went on, “You seem to be under the impression that the Patriarch is someone whose primary qualification is the ability to beat up everybody else, like a medieval human king. The Patriarch is called that because he has a lot of sons. The firstborn isn't automatically the heir—less than half the time, I believe—”