Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XIII

by Hal Colebatch, Jessica Q Fox, Jane Lindskold, Charles E Gannon, Alex Hernandez, David Bartell

  “I have but one sort of teeth,” the kzin growled.

  “Do you?” Jennie said. “But your claws retract. Think on that. Now, here is what we must do…”

  They laid their plans with great care, not only that day, for if the physical therapy session extended too long, suspicions would be raised.

  Happily, the kzin’s nature was impatient rather than otherwise. Had he possessed a human’s cautious desire to plan, to cover any and all contingencies, Jenni feared she might need confide in him his new value to Miffy.

  Bioweapons had not been a real possibility to this point in the conflict between humans and kzinti because too little had been known about the kzinti’s biology. A great deal can be learned from genetic scans, but in the end, a test subject is needed.

  Jenni knew that her patient thought his value would end when every bit of information had been extracted from him. She suspected he thought that he would then be killed. She did not think he had any idea that more likely Miffy would keep him alive so that various infections could be tested upon him.

  Jenni herself would refuse to participate in such tests. She thought that Theophilus would also refuse. Ida and Roscoe, though, were of a different sort. Roscoe was Miffy with a background in medicine, rather than in espionage. Like Miffy, Roscoe enjoyed power and domination. She knew he had found it difficult to work as her subordinate.

  Ida was a more complex person. A great number of her family members had been on a ship when the kzinti had taken it. Moreover, she knew without a doubt that many of them were dead. Ships with holes like that in their hulls didn’t usually preserve the passengers. It was hardly any comfort for her to imagine them enslaved.

  Moreover, Jenni did not trust herself to become an accomplice at one remove. Could she really refuse to try to keep the kzin alive if he was infected with something deadly and painful? Could she keep from trying to create a cure, even if she knew that cure might be used to blackmail the Patriarchy into a surrender?

  Her only choice was to get the kzin away before he could be so used. It would be a small victory, but if one only thought of winning a war, not individual battles, then there could be no hope for victory.

  So while the kzin made certain the scout ship was capable of flight, she did her best to learn what she could to facilitate the escape itself.

  There were many small details, but she was quite good at details. As she gathered codes and set trails, she was aware that Roscoe was cooking up a horrible brew in a lab she wasn’t supposed to know about, that experts were coming to take a closer look at the drive of the scout ship, that time was, in fact, running out.

  Had it not been for his long captivity and the practice he had acquired in suppressing his immediate response to behaviors to which most Heroes would have reacted with fang and claw, the kzin did not think he could have kept from giving away his intent during the days that led up to the planned escape.

  It was not only his own tension he must suppress—although he thought that if Roscoe came and drew any more of his blood he would have the man’s ears and accept the consequences. No. He must also hide his awareness of increased tensions among the humans themselves.

  Externally, Dr. Anixter seemed her usual placid, smiling self, but to anyone with a nose, she reeked of anxiety. The reasons for this, the kzin quite understood. Not only was she taking risks in assisting with the escape attempt, but afterwards there would be consequences.

  What concerned the kzin more deeply were the changes he sensed in some of the others. Roscoe’s body language had shifted. Did Dr. Anixter realize he no longer deferred to her except in form?

  Miffy was more moody, some hours almost merry, others so tense that he lashed out—usually verbally—at whoever was closest. From snippets of conversation he overheard, the kzin gathered that specialists were coming to look at the scout ship. This had made Miffy very happy. It had been the later news that someone important from ARM would be coming along with these specialists that had triggered the mood swings.

  The kzin understood, actually. In a detached fashion, he almost sympathized with his enemy. The arrival of those above one in the hierarchy was always a mixed blessing. On the one hand, they had the power to grant promotion. However, they were more likely to hand out punishment or reprimand.

  And my departure, the kzin thought, will surely make this a visit Miffy will long remember.

  Assuming the kzin actually made it onto the scout ship and got it out of the hanger, he was left with one dilemma. Did he try to escape as Dr. Anixter intended or did he take advantage of his opportunity to try and damage this base?

  The first was full of uncertainties. He might escape the base only to be shot down later. He might be recaptured. He might make it all the way to Kzin only to find himself reviled.

  Taking out the base would be so much more certain. Taking out the base would provide death with honor. Some day in the future, if word of his deeds reached the Patriarchy, he might be awarded a posthumous Name.

  Really, the more he considered it, taking out the base was his best option.

  But always beneath that certainty came a niggling doubt: Or are you simply afraid to return?

  The day came or rather the night. In an artificial environment like the base, night and day could be eliminated, a shift schedule established. Advocates of efficiency often argued in favor of such plans, but even if night and day could be eliminated, the human need for sleep could not.

  Yes. There were sleep sets that reduced the need for rest. Drugs that did the same—although these had colorful side effects. However, especially for those engaged in creative endeavors, there was no replacement for seven to nine hours of good, solid natural rest.

  As more and more substitutes for actual dream-filled sleep had been developed, a side effect had been found. Much creative work was done in the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind used dream time to organize material, to rearrange it, to move toward that “Eureka” moment.

  So it was, in some professions, where creativity and questioning were not valued, ersatz sleep was actually a preferred alternative. However, in the research and development branches of the arts and sciences, sleep had proven irreplaceable.

  The base was, as such things went, a relatively small community. This was another reason that the continuous shift model did not work well. Best to have the majority of staff awake at the same time, so they would be able to interact.

  The final reason was as old as human civilization. No one liked to be inconvenienced by routine maintenance. This had probably been true when such inconvenience meant dealing with the sweepers who cleaned out the cart ruts in ancient Troy. It was certainly true in the modern era.

  So the base had night and day shifts. It was during the equivalent of the deepest, darkest night that Dr. Jenni Anixter and the kzin readied themselves.

  Jenni’s preparations had begun earlier that day, with the baking of twelve dozen chocolate chip cookies. As might be expected of one possessed of her rounded and jovial figure, Dr. Anixter was an excellent baker. Of course, the majority of the food at the base was provided by auto-kitchens, but scientists have always surpassed themselves in finding ways to create the rare and strange.

  In another day and age, this might have been a still for the distillation of forbidden liquor, but on the base, nonreconstituted food was valued more highly than any amount of alcohol. Long ago, Jenni had rigged her oven and figured out how to get the auto-kitchen to produce the equivalents of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and the like.

  Her cookies were very popular, even with those who claimed to disdain sweets, such as Miffy. She made certain to hand deliver cookies to the guards who were on watch during the late shift. They were quite grateful. Her kindness was widely known.

  Later, when questions were asked about why everyone had slept so soundly that night, why the guards on duty hadn’t been overly attentive to the feeds supplied to their various monitors, the cookies would certainly be remembered. For this reason, Jenni
e made certain to have a dozen or so set by in her private cookie jar.

  She was completely confident nothing out of the ordinary would be found in those cookies, because there would be nothing to find. The drug that had contributed to that lack of attention had only been partly contained in the cookies. The rest had been in the drink dispensers—very few will eat fresh cookies without a beverage of some kind.

  This last had been a bit trickier to pull off, but Jenni had been confident. In any case, all the drug components were engineered to break down within eight hours. Jenni might be determined to help the kzin escape, but she was not suicidal enough to point a finger directly at herself. Of course, if she was questioned under proper circumstances, she would give it all away, but that would take time and time was what the kzin needed.

  She had acquired the passcodes to the various doors (including that of the hanger) and supplied a data loop that would show empty corridors during minutes when the kzin would pass down them. However, the kzin had insisted she do nothing to actively help him depart.

  “You must be safe in your bed when I make my escape,” he’d said. “My honor insists that you have that much opportunity to clear yourself from complicity in my escape.”

  And Jenni had agreed. Now she lay curled in her bunk, eyes closed, breathing regular, but wide awake, listening for the sound of the klaxon that would indicate that everything had gone wrong.

  At the appointed moment, the kzin opened the locked door to his cell. The guard who stood outside was awake, but his reflexes were slower than they should have been. Even at their best, they would have been no match for those of a trained kzinti warrior.

  As the guard swung his weapon around, the kzin clipped him hard to one side of his neck, using a subdural stroke perfected when someone pointed out that killing slaves that bred and matured as slowly as did humans was a waste of resources.

  The man crumpled. The kzin paused only long enough to use the man’s own tranquilizer gun to make certain he would not wake again for many hours. Dr. Anixter had assured him the drug meant for the kzin would also work on humans, that the concentration would not be sufficient to be fatal.

  Holding the tranquilizer gun in one hand, the kzin loped down the passage. He wondered why Dr. Anixter had wanted to reassure him that he wouldn’t be killing anyone if he used the tranq gun. Did she think he cared or was she really reassuring herself?

  Unerringly, he headed in the direction of the hanger. His escorts had attempted to confuse his sense of direction, but they had no idea how well he read Interworld. Moreover, in a facility where there was only one kzin, tracking his own trail was easy. As a last assurance, in a few places where he might be confused, Dr. Anixter had left a small scent marker, a tiny spritz of something floral.

  Three times more he had to disable guards. Each time, he used the tranquilizer rifle. The trigger mechanism was too small for his fingers, but his index claw worked admirably. Each guard was down before he—or in one case, she—was aware someone had entered his (or her) zone.

  At the door to the hanger, a human would have been stumped, for the pressure pad used to enter in the passcode was behind a section of wall. The kzin was unfazed. Extending the claws on his right hand, he inserted them into a barely visible seam, then pulled back and ripped. He’d spent a great deal of time reconditioning his arm muscles and was now rewarded for the effort. The wall material, tough stuff that would have resisted a human’s best efforts, ripped back.

  He entered the keycode—the one Miffy himself used—and the door slid open, automatically closing once it sensed he was through. So far, all was going according to plan. However, as he loped over to the scout ship, he realized that something was wrong. The hatchway stood open and light was coming from within.

  The kzin scented the air, isolating fresh scent traces from the older ones that eddied about. One person, male…The kzin’s hackles went up. He had to swallow a growl. The scent was Miffy’s!

  Unfurling his ears, he listened, trying to ascertain whether Miffy was present or if he had been here recently and might return. Humans had an annoying tendency that way, always running off to use the ’fresher or grab a snack or drink bulb. What would he do if Miffy wasn’t there? It would be very inconvenient to be warming up the drive in preparation for departure and to have the man come walking in. That period of time had always provided the most uncertainties, for the kzin needed time not only to get the drive powered up, but to put various systems on line.

  The kzin stood poised, listening, sniffing, then slowly prowling forward, tail lashing behind him as he fought down an urge to rush forward and end the suspense. But although kzinti were known to be impulsive, they were also descended from plains hunters. Every cell in their bodies contained the knowledge that a successful hunt began with patient stalking.

  He was a few meters from the open door when he heard it, a faint clink as of a tool being set down or a panel shifted. Miffy was in there, then. What was he doing? The sound was slightly muffled, so probably he was not in the airlock, nor in the cockpit.

  The kzin leapt in through the door, rifle ready. His bare feet landed soundlessly on the deck. No one. He paused and listened. Again another click and clink, this time a slight tuneless whistle. Definitely Miffy.

  The kzin began to smile. He readied the rifle. Flashing around the frame of the airlock, he placed himself so that the cockpit was at his back, the short corridor that led back to the engines and life-support systems in front of him.

  Miffy sat on the floor next to one of the access hatches into the engines. He had apparently been taking images, projecting them onto a small screen. The kzin could see schematic diagrams. He didn’t wait to see more. Eschewing the tranquilizer rifle, he leapt forward, his attacking scream perfectly silent and the twisting of his features all the more horrible for the self-restraint silence demanded of him.

  His hand came down. Miffy crumpled. The kzin inspected the man quickly. He should come around in a few minutes, time enough to restrain him, then to make certain no one else was expected. There had been no other fresh scent, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t coming. It was unlikely that Miffy was sending images to someone else. The kzin had learned during earlier visits that the hanger walls were thick enough to prevent broadcast communication and that the humans had not gotten around to laying cables.

  The kzin stepped over the unconscious human and closed the panel into the engines. Then he moved into the cockpit and tapped in the sequence that would start the engine warm-up. Miffy was beginning to stir when the kzin returned. That didn’t stop the kzin from picking him up, dropping him into a chair, and securing him.

  His own previous training, combined with careful observation during these long days of captivity, meant that he knew how to inspect Miffy for communications gear. There was surprisingly little. Apparently, the watcher did not like being watched, the one who made others talk did not care to say much himself. The kzin also shut down the small recording unit Miffy had been using.

  The kzin was fastening himself into one of the spare pressure suits when Miffy came around. To the human’s credit, he did so quickly and without the usual disorientation.

  “You! What…” he began, but the kzin cut him off.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Miffy pressed his lips firmly closed. The kzin pricked out the longest claw on his right hand and stroked it across Miffy’s face, raising a line of blood. A kzin would have felt this as unworthy of notice, but Miffy had all too much awareness of what he’d done to the kzin. A guilty conscience is a wonderful prod. Miffy began talking.

  “You’ll never get out of here, so why shouldn’t I tell you? Something Dr. Anixter said this evening made me realize we’d been overlooking some aspects of the gravity polarizer—seeing them with human logic, rather than kzinti. I came down here to check and she just could be right…”

  He trailed off. The kzin felt his rising growl shifting into a purr…Dr. Anixter, eh? An accident? A bit of nerv
ous babbling? He didn’t think so. What then could she have intended?

  Glancing over at the piloting readouts, he saw that the engine was halfway through its warm-up routine.

  “Are you alone?” he said, activating the life-support system and the back-up navigation.

  “I…” Miffy’s words came slowly, but his sweat reeked with fear.

  The kzin looked at him. “I am committed to my course of action. If you wish an honorable death, that is all one.”

  Miffy swallowed hard. Like many people who deal out pain and death to other people, he never really contemplated that the same could come to him. In his little world, he was the only real person, the rest were supporting cast.

  “You’re speaking,” Miffy said slowly, “very good Interworld.”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose you lied about other things as well? Such as how many people it takes to fly this vessel? Perhaps only one pilot is needed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why should I talk to you?”

  “I told you. You don’t need to.” The kzin turned his head and smiled slowly, showing an expanding array of teeth. “I believe the auto-kitchen is still operational, but I cannot be certain it will remain so. Living or dead, you will be of use to me.”

  Miffy started talking. Fast. He had come down to the hanger alone. Dr. Anixter’s comment had been provocative and he had wanted to make certain that he was the first to confirm the accuracy of her insight. Implied in this was that he also planned to claim her insight as his own.

  “And now,” the kzin said, “you are ruined.”

  “Ruined?” Miffy’s voice broke. “You mean you’re going to eat me?”

  “No. I would just as soon bring home a prisoner,” the kzin replied. “What I mean is that I am about to escape—or at least attempt to escape. If I am recaptured, I will explain how your carelessness—talking in front of me in Interworld although Dr. Anixter had assured you she thought I spoke the language, letting me move about the base under my own power, permitting me to see you or members of your staff enter in codes—permitted me to craft this escape attempt.”