by Larry Niven
Much had occurred in the “long, long time” since Guerdoth had packed Fellah away in the time-bending case. And that implied other things.... If the Thrintun were all dead and these new creatures risen unpredictably in their place during these three-times-five unimaginable spans of time, then so were the Prunraquila gone from this universe.
“I will have no mate,” Fellah said aloud, mournfully, in his native tongue. “I will leave none of my line. Nor any student. And I will make no mark on the future.” It was a dismal thought. For a brief span, Fellah considered offering himself up to the kzin’s claws.
Then something else occurred to him.
All his life he had known the straitjacket bindings of Thrintun Power and had endured the frivolous whims to which the Masters were prone. But in the few hours he had spent among these humans, even when they were threatened by the terrible kzin, he had felt uncertainty and... excitement! Fellah saw now that the iron course of Discipline, even when it was shaped as commands to love and respect, had been like a heavy weight on his mind. And that weight had been totally missing from his thoughts ever since the time-box was opened. Except for a brief moment when the Daff had used the Baton—or “Fiddle,” as it was called in Inter-world—on him.
The only trace of Power now left in this universe was the Baton itself. And it was under control of the kzin. From what Fellah had seen, they were almost as clever as the humans. They certainly had the use of fire, metals, and other sophisticated technologies. And the awareness Fellah had tasted from mirrored a whole race, millions more like this one savage kzin, waiting beyond the distances between the stars.
They were inteffigent enough to use the Baton, perhaps even to copy it, creating mind-weapons of unimaginable power. Although his experience of these creatures was limited, Fellah supposed it would not displease the kzinti to have worlds full of creatures such as the Sally and Cuiller commanded to jump on cue into their wide, waiting mouths.
Suddenly, Fellah’s mind firmed. There was indeed one thing he could do, one last gesture he could make, to leave his mark on the future.
Nyawk-Captain climbed quickly up into the canopy. He oriented himself on the remains of the one dead human.
No live ones presented themselves. He was sure, however, that at least one of the remaining two was wounded. How far could they have gone? He tried to smell them out, but the scent of the kill in the immediate area was too strong and distracting, the odors of the humans too similar and confusing. Nyawk-Captain had made a shallow box search of the area, and found nothing, before he remembered his carbon-pattern detector.
He returned to the ground, retrieved it, and sighted the locator back up into the leaf layer.
No return signal from any direction.
And that should not be surprising. By this time the humans, even slowed and wounded as they were, might have gone beyond the sensitivity of his locator. Though honor demanded an accounting, there was certain danger in carrying any plan of vengeance too far.
Nyawk-Captain decided to take his prize, the Thrintun artifact, and return to Cat’s Paw in order to continue his mission. Success, victory, and lasting honor were all still possible!
After a stumbling kilometer, Cuiller finally collapsed into the leaf layer, half-afraid—but only half— that his body would find its way through to the long fall. His arm throbbed now with the pain and swelling of the break. He could feel a raw heat creep up to his neck from the wounds in his chest. Was he developing a fever?
“Sally...”
“Wait here, Jared.” Krater settled him across a solid branch and dug the remains of their autodoc out of her pack. She held up a vial of painkiller. “I’m guessing about the dosage,” she said, breaking open a needle and injecting twenty cc’s of clear fluid.
A few minutes after the shot, Cuiller roused himself. Already he was feeling warm and gauzy and... better.
“I should see to your arm,” Krater said.
“What’re you... gonna to do?”
“Set it, splint it, wrap it.”
“D’you ever—?“
“No.”
She examined his left arm, which angled slightly outward about halfway above the elbow. Before he could offer further advice, she gently extended the arm, placed her left palm against the front of his shoulder, curled her right thumb under his elbow, wrapped her fingers over his forearm, and—pulled.
White fire boiled up in his arm and he could actually feel the ends of bone clicking together. Then Cuiller passed out.
When he came to, Krater had already cut up one of the pack-frames with a laser and made L-shaped splints with it. She had used the pack straps to bind it to his arm and tied the pack-cloth into a sling. Now she was cutting his uniform away from the puncture marks in his chest and dabbing them with an astringent.
“Sorry I’ve got nothing for bandages,” she said. “But these holes don’t look that deep.”
“S’all right.”
“What do you think the kzin was trying to do?”
“Kill us,” he said with authority
“Then why did it leave so suddenly? With us not dead.”
“I don’t... Just before it pushed me, I seem to remember dropping the Fiddle.”
“It went through the leaves,” Krater agreed, “and fell.” “And the kzin went after it—as if he knew it was valuable.”
“Do you think he found it?”
The foliage around them rustled, and both humans tensed for a renewed attack. As Cuiller tried to lever himself more erect he stirred sharp pains in his arm and shoulder. Krater stilled him with her hand.
“It’s Fellah,” she said, pointing toward the small animal as it crept out of the leaf-cover near their feet. “The big cat must have scared him badly, too,” she concluded.
“Other kzin... it’s gone,” Fellah said.
“Did you see it go?” Sally asked. “I mean, how do you know?”
The Pruntaquilun raised its head, closed its eyes, and seemed to sniff the alt But Cuiller, who was watching closely, did not see the creature’s nose even twitch. Fellah’s attention was focused further back, behind his eyes, inside his skull.
“Gone,” Fellah confirmed.
“How does he know that?” Sally asked Cuiller.
“Well, how does he speak Interworld?” he asked in return. “Fellah must have some kind of telepathic sense, either innate or engineered. And it would certainly be a useful quality in a singer and entertainer, to read the minds, the emotional states of his audience. His language ability had improved remarkably just from being around us.”
“You’re saying he senses the kzin telepathically.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“He found his way right to us, didn’t he?”
“Okay, how ‘bout it, Fellah?” she asked playfully. “Do you read minds?” The Pruntaquilun looked at her seriously. “See words. Hear words.” It wiggled a shrug again.
“What is the kzin going to do next?” Cuiller asked.
“Kzin is gone.”
“Gone back to its ship? Gone from the planet? Where did it go?”
“Gone.”
Krater shook her head. ‘Jared, he doesn’t know anything about the ship, remember? And he probably doesn’t have much conception of planets and astronavigation.”
“Gone far.” Fellah said with a nod. “With prize for Admiral Lehruff. Continue his mission.”
“What’s that?” Cuiller said, fighting the fog of painkilling drugs in his head.
“Cat’s Paw... Mission to Margrave.”
“He’s reading the kzin’s thoughts directly,” Cuiller told Krater.
The linguist nodded. “I suppose we would, too—if we were a defenseless little dog hiding from those giant cats ”
“This could prove the Navy’s theories,” Cuiller went on. “Cat’s Paw. That’s probably some kind of inciting action, a deception or a fake, like a feint against a mousehole.”
“I think maybe you’re reading too much—”
“An
d what else would an interceptor-class warship be doing this far out?”
“On patrol? Like us?”
“Not with that kzin’s mission so deeply ingrained in his mind that Fellah can read it this clearly.”
“Kzinti are particularly dutiful,” Krater pointed out. “And this one is dutifully heading back toward Margrave. You heard that part, didn’t you, Sally?”
“Yes. That much was clear.”
“Then we have to stop him. Even if we can’t get off this planet ourselves, we have to keep that kzin pinned here.”
“Why?” she asked.
“it has the Slaver’s device, doesn’t it? That’s the power to control human and other minds, to make them do anything a kzin would want them to.... Think about that for a minute.”
“All right, Jared,” she agreed. “But we have a problem: only two laser rifles and three kzinti to kill.”
“Two,” Fellah said. “Kiln the Daff fought, died soon after.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Krater asked. “You were with me all the time, and I didn’t see that.”
“His mind...“ The animal paused significantly. “Gone.”
“And not back to his ship, either,” Cuiller summed up. “That’s good news, Sally.... Ahh-gahhh,” he yawned. “It makes the odds a little more even.” Gullet finished sleepily, finally succumbing to the painkillers. His arm felt a long way away.
“Those are armed kzinti you’re talking about,” Sally protested. “With a functioning warship to boot.”
He was already halfway down the well of sleep, but Cuiller roused. “Then the trick,” he said easily, “will be to separate them from their ship... before they can take off.” He yawned again.
The forest around him darkened as if with the flu of night, and Krater caught him as he fell into it as into abed.
“In any human army, that would be a field piece,” Cuiller observed.
After sleeping, recuperating, and moving on, he and Krater now hung inside the canopy, lost in the shadows of the curving, vaulting branches that ascended from one of the trunks. They looked down through holes in the greenery that they opened—slowly, naturally, like a riffle of wind—with their dangling toes. They were suspended above the kzinti ship, with a horizontal offset of less than fifty meters.
Cuiller studied the vessel with a pair of binoculars, working them one-handed. One of the kzinti was climbing on the outside, naked except for a beltful of tools, working with a mechanical fitting against the curve of the hull. The other, in full armor, stood watch. That one’s visored helmet moved across regular arcs of the canopy surrounding the ship, and each time he panned toward them, Cuiller let the veil of leaves slide smoothly into place.
It was the kzin’s massive rifle that had caught the commander’s attention: some kind of pulsed energy weapon.
“Can you sense them, Fellah?” he asked the small creature snuggled into Sally Krater’s arms. “How close are they to finishing repairs, hey?”
Fellah raised his head and looked gravely down, past their toes. He appeared to consider. “Repair Soon.”
Cuiller realized that the alien’s exposed white hair would make an effective aiming point for that cannon. And that gave him an idea.
“I think I can improve our odds with one shot,” he told Krater.
“How?”
“First, by splitting our positions and halving our vulnerabilities. I want you and Fellah to maneuver off to the west, around the ship. Put about twenty degrees of radial separation between us.”
“But then what are you going to do?”
“I think I can pick off the kzin who’s doing the work. Without breaking my cover.”
“You’ll get killed!” Sally said, alarmed. “That other one, in the armor—with the weapon he’s carrying, all he has to do is bear close on you. And poof!”
“It’s a big jungle.”
“He can take bigger sweeps with that thing,” she said. “Sure, but I’ll have time to get him with my second shot. In case he does a sweep, however, I want you in an alternate position... You can offer a diversion or something.”
“I don’t want you to risk yourself— sir! Look, why not wait for a Bandersnatch to come along? That’ll really keep him busy.”
“Because long before then the kzinti’ll be all finished up and ready to lift ship.”
“All right, Jared,” she said coolly. “If you won’t listen to reason, we’ll do it your way. But give me time to get in position.”
“Ten minutes?”
“Time enough. But not a minute sooner, you hear?”
“A full ten minutes, I promise.”
With a baleful look, she withdrew higher into the canopy, taking Fellah with her. Soon he could hear only the faint whirr of her rig’s winder motor.
As he waited, Cuiller spread the leaves below him and practiced taking aim with his rifle. Holding it steady in his right hand did not work, and he could not find a point of purchase on the cloth sling covering his left arm. Then he figured out a solution.
Cuiller worked his winder and rose into the forest cover until he could get his feet under him. Paying out slack, he took a loop of the fluorescent-dyed monofilament and wrapped it around the rifle housing. He would have to control the rifle’s tendency to lever up and slip the loop as he put his weight on the line, but he could do that with his right elbow. The only other danger was that the monofilament might cut into the weapon’s barrel and tear it apart A calculated risk.
Sally’s time limit was still a minute short of coming up when Cuiller lowered himself back into firing position. He had no intention of letting her offer any kind of diversion and so becoming a target herself.
Cuiller moved the rifle around, holding it steady with his armpit on the stock, sighting down the pips, to the forehead of the unarmed kzin. His body was tending to pivot on the looped line, so he braced his feet against the springy branches, the same ones that made up his concealment Then he gathered his concentration, breathed out slowly, and—
A spear of blue-white light stabbed down from twenty degrees away to his left and opened the kzin’s skull. She had fired first!
The kzin on guard wheeled and sighted his field piece back in the direction from which the beam had come—toward Sally!
Bobbling slightly on his line, Cuiller shifted his aim faster, immediately found a good side-on view of the aiming figure, and fired at the breech of the kzin’s rifle.
The weapon exploded.
When his weapon’s energy packs discharged all at once, Nyawk-Captain was thrown backward. The eyeshield of his visor flared white but saved his vision from flying shrapnel. His whiskers were singed below the limits of its protection, however, and the insides of his arms hurt terribly. He smelled and tasted burned hair.
Only when he tried to rise did he understand how critically the blast had injured him. His upper limbs moved slowly, and some of the armor’s joints worked not at all. Molten metal from the exploding weapon had locked them, dripping even as far as the knee flexor on his right side. He rolled in the dirt, trying to break out of the imprisoning bodysuit. The shell clasps up his belly line were sticking, too.
With a mammoth, flexing spasm of his back, he brought the armor upright on its knees and started to limp toward the ship’s hatchway and the relative safety inside the hull. There he would also find tools to help him get free of the imprisoning suit. With every step he took, Nyawk-Captain expected more energy pulses to blast away the ablative surface and heat the steel shell over his back.
When he got his locked paws on the hatch coaming, he remembered the impossible squeeze that moving into and out of the airlock had been, even with fully functioning armor. He wasn’t going to make it.
He was beating the suit’s belly against hullmetal, trying to break the clasps free, when one of the humans dropped out of the trees on a thin, purple wire and put the projector of a laser rifle against his forehead. A small, fluffy white animal which curled under one of its arms jumped free
and scrambled into the ship.
Nyawk-Captain, staring into the human’s glaring eyes, did not dare move.
After a second, the white animal came out with the Thrintun artifact held in its jaws. Nyawk-Captain remembered leaving the device on the ship’s workbench for his and Navigator’s further study. As the animal emerged, a second human—this one more wounded than the first—came down on another wire and also leveled its rifle.
The first human put aside its own weapons, took the alien artifact from the White fluff, and aimed it at Nyawk-Captain’s forehead instead.
Krater tried various settings on the Fiddle and watched with a clinical eye as the kzin twitched and went into convulsions. She settled on one which left it trembling and hypnotized inside its steel restraints.
“This process can either be painful or not,” Cuiller explained to the kzin slowly in Interworld. “I don’t think it understands, Sally,” he said finally.
“Well, if I let up with this thing,” she proposed, “he might be able to nod or something. Want to try it?”
“No thanks. You keep him under.” Cuiller turned back to the kzin and said conversationally, “Now, we need to borrow your ship, Kitty I’m going to burn you out of that armor, and you’re going to cooperate—one way or another.”
Cuiller studied the latches down the suit’s front. They were gobbed with metal and streamers of burned plastic. He placed the projector of his laser alongside the middle one and fired a short burst. The clasp flew off into the dirt. He repeated with the other two, and the clamshell halves of the belly plate sagged apart The commander then laid the rifle against the soft, reddish fur underneath.