Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XIII

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

  Selena nodded. “Right. Well, I can see coming out here was mistake. I’ll see you next week, Hap, as per the schedule.” She turned on her heel and made for the floater with a brisk step.

  “Selena, wait.”

  She paused, turned.

  Hap was staring at her and she couldn’t read his eyes, not because they were guarded, but because the mix of emotions and impulses was so tangled and contradictory that it defied delineation. “I’d like to know what happened to the female. ‘Pretty,’ you called her, right?”

  Selena folded her arms but did not reapproach. “That is correct.”

  “And one of your researchers decided to see what would happen if she was put together with one of the other males, now that they are sexually mature.”

  Selena felt her stern demeanor slip. Come to think of it, Hap was right: they were just lab rats, after all. At least that’s how Pyragy had acted: playing god with his specimens…

  Hap’s voice was patient: “You didn’t approve.”

  Selena shouted, thereby overriding what started as a choked sob. “Of course I didn’t approve! I fought him—the decision—every way I could.”

  “But you weren’t in charge.”

  “No. And the person who was normally in charge had a heart attack and was still recovering.” Please, Mikhail: get better quickly, for your sake, for my sake, for Hap’s sake. “So the decision rested with someone who is not involved in our work directly.”

  “Ah. An administrator?”

  She nodded, both at the word and the way he said it: with a healthy measure of parodic hauteur. “He gave the orders and I tried to get them overturned. But there wasn’t enough time. He wouldn’t wait.”

  “Is he a…a…” Hap struggled for the word; although infinitely more mature than a human nine year old, he still had a lot of language learning to do. “…a sadist?”

  “No.” Although sometimes I wonder…“He wasn’t motivated by sadism.”

  Hap thought. “He was trying to use mating as a reward mechanism, then.”

  Selena felt her mouth snap shut, stunned at the canny insight of the almost mature kzin before her. Yes, he might be young, but like all his breed, he learned quickly; he had to, if he was to survive. The kzin genotype did not breed many geniuses: the species was inherently unsuited to long periods of reflection. But the genotype also didn’t breed many idiots: in accord with the old axiom that there were two kinds of combatants, the quick and the dead, the kzinti survived by having quick reflexes, quick wits, or both.

  Hap pushed for confirmation of his conjecture. “So it was an attempt at creating a new reward mechanism?”

  Well, why not answer? Hap had figured it out on his own, anyway. “Yes. And I wouldn’t let him use you as the test subject. I had that much authority over the process, anyway.”

  “Hmm. Perhaps I wouldn’t have killed her, either.” A sharp, territorial glint danced briefly through Hap’s eyes and was gone, or maybe just quickly concealed.

  Selena sighed. “Perhaps not. Probably not. But if I had given him access to you, that would have just been the edge of the wedge. I could have lost control, might no longer have been able to—” She dragged to a halt, not knowing how to explain.

  “You might not have been able to continue to protect me,” he finished for her.

  Selena nodded. “I know it sounds absurd, that I have to protect you from a colleague who wants to give you the opportunity to mate. But—”

  “No, actually, I can see it very clearly, Selena. I may not like the restrictions on my life—and I’m coming to see that you don’t, either—but you’ve been as consistent, and also as humane, as you can be in maintaining those constraints. But this administrator seems rash. Which I find odd: aren’t administrators supposed to be the more cautious persons in an organization, the ones who keep the workers from running off in all directions, acting without authorization?”

  Selena smiled. “Yes. And he certainly does that. But—”

  “But what?”

  “He had very different ideas about how you were to be raised. Several of us, his lieutenants you might say, had to appeal to his superiors to keep him from treating you kzinti in…questionable ways.”

  “Torture?”

  “No. Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.”

  Hap frowned, then his eyes opened wide. “Oh, I see: not bodily torture. Something mental. Or behavioral.”

  “Behavioral.”

  Hap thought a long time, his eyes half-lidded. Then he nodded: “He was the one who tried to make me eat cooked meat, wasn’t he?”

  Selena gaped. “You remember that?”

  “Of course I do. So it was him?”

  Selena nodded.

  “So the torture you are referring to: he wanted to—how would you say it?—humanize us?”

  Selena sighed. “Something like that. But higher powers intervened shortly after you came to live with us.”

  “And these higher powers are the ones who want to send me back to the kzinti as a mediator, as Dieter described?”

  “Yes. But they aren’t really in charge of, of”—she almost said “the project” but stopped herself in time—“our actions. They only step in if something goes wrong.”

  “So they’ll be stepping in, now.”

  “Yes, in a very big way.” And would very probably do so by permanently removing Pyragy, a step that was at least five years overdue.

  Hap nodded. “So I take it that this administrator introduced Pretty to the oldest male, the one who almost tore into me. What did you name him, by the way?”

  Selena stumbled after a lie, gave up, closed her eyes as she spoke: “Cranky Cat. They named him Cranky Cat.”

  When she opened her eyes, Hap’s fur was rippling, but his eyes were hard. Sardonic amusement was a kzin expression she was learning to identify quickly these days. “What a dignified name,” Hap slurred. “Although I have to admit it is accurate, too. So Cranky Cat didn’t like Pretty any more than he liked me.”

  “No, he didn’t.” Selena shut her eyes. “It was a disaster. Because I was trying to do everything I could do to stop it, the administrator didn’t inform me when the introduction was taking place. I got a panicked call from the researcher who worked most closely with Pretty, but by the time I got there, it was too late.”

  Selena tried to put the memory of the blood-spattered paddock out of her mind, couldn’t. “We knew that kzin mating was pretty rough by human standards. So the overseers didn’t know until it was too late that this was—well, way beyond that.” The tapes ran on endless loop in her memory: the frenzied thrashing of Pretty; the pinning paws of Cranky Cat, which, as he came close to completing the coupling, began crushing, piercing, slashing—“He was coupling and killing her at the same time. And when our people realized what was happening, and tried to intervene, he finished. Both acts.”

  Hap’s voice buzzed with a suppressed snarl. “Why did he do it?”

  Selena shrugged. “There’s no way to find out. Cranky Cat never learned how to speak: not our language, nor yours. He wouldn’t have anything to do with us. So we’ll never know why he did it. But if you want my gut reaction, Cranky Cat’s drives made him unable to resist the urge to copulate, even as his speciate aversion to us made him kill her.”

  “And why would his hatred of humans prompt him to kill her? Because he couldn’t reach you?”

  “No, he wasn’t symbolically killing us. It was because he could smell that she was our creature. And at a deep, primal level, he could not abide that. He didn’t think about what he did; he just did it.”

  Hap continued to stare at her, unblinking. Then his tail switched fitfully and he rose, moving to sit alongside the mauled carcass that, two hours ago, had been a black bear. “Selena, I want to know your world. All of it.”

  “Hap, you’ve figured out so much on your own, so you’ve got to know I don’t have the authority to make that promise.”

  “I know that. But if you don’t convince
them to let me know more about Earth, then how will I be able to help you later on? Knowing your language and your ways is not enough. The kzinti—the real kzinti—will ask me for my honest opinion, for what you would call my gut reaction, but which is better expressed in the Heroes’ Tongue as grreeowm’m’hysh. ‘Ancestral spine-whispers.’ If I do not know your world, I won’t be able to answer the questions that will make me useful to them. So they will ignore me.”

  Selena shut her eyes tightly, finding herself required to reject the very appeal that she herself had made so many times to the board, and for precisely the same reasons. “I cannot let you out into our world. I’m not permitted to do so. And I know they won’t change their minds about that.”

  “Then allow your world to come in here.”

  Selena opened her eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Give me free and unrestricted access to your public records, your library, your news: all of it.”

  Selena smiled. “Relying on any one of those sources could give you a very distorted view of our world.”

  “That is why I want—why I need—to see all of it. I presume no one voice will speak a complete truth. So I will get to know your world in the same way I get the full measure of each new prey animal you provide: by studying it from all perspectives.” Hap’s fur rippled slowly in a show of good-natured amicability. “Is it not a reasonable request?”

  Selena stared at him. “It is. Quite unreasonable.”

  Pyragy was putting on a good show in front of the admiral and the associate executive chair: to watch and listen to him, you’d never have guessed that he was doing everything he could to get Selena discredited and drummed out of the scientific community. “This is an excellent turn of events. You might even say that this has produced a silver lining greater than the darkness which started it: the unfortunate death of the female.”

  Admiral Coelho-Chase shrugged, suppressing disgust at Pyragy’s increasingly obsequious mannerisms. “Dr. Navarre, much as I regret admitting it, the director does make a good point: it seems that Hap is now interested in the mission for which we’ve been grooming him, and that he’s coming back around to us in general. By any objective standards, those are excellent changes in him.”

  “Yes, Admiral, they are quite excellent. But I’m afraid you are dead wrong about him becoming interested in his mission. Or rather, yes, he’s interested now—but not for the reasons you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “Admiral, Hap intends to betray us. At the very first opportunity he has to do so.”

  “What? You mean this is all a conceit?”

  Pyragy seemed ready to rub the admiral’s arm soothingly. “Dr. Navarre is exaggerating, at best, or prevaricating, at worst. She is just trying to diminish the new opportunities which have arisen from the unfortunate incident involving the female—”

  “No, I’m quite serious. And I know my subject: Hap means to betray us.”

  In the nine years she had known him, this was the first time Admiral Coelho-Chase had ever sputtered. “This is outrageous, if it’s true. After we’ve cared for him all these years—why, if he wasn’t a kzin, it would be treason, pure and simple.”

  “But,” Selena explained levelly, “he is a kzin and therefore it is not treason. In fact, it is probably not as much a political action as it a developmental action.”

  “What?”

  “Admiral, look at his age. At this point in his growth phase, it is entirely natural for kzinti, like humans, to buck authority. Buck it hard. In the case of young kzinti, this takes the shape of suiting their actions to their words: when they start to talk the talk, they expect that they will be called upon to walk the walk. It is a phase of high aggression and a need to distinguish themselves from their parental and mentor figures by pursuing opposed paths, by separation, and frequently, by turning upon those who supported them.”

  “And that’s natural?”

  “Yes, just like rebelliousness in a teenager.”

  “But he is almost full-grown and is now, according to you, determined to work as a confidential agent for the natural kzinti.”

  Pyragy squared his shoulders dramatically. “Then, if this is true, we must euthanize him. Immediately.”

  Selena surprised herself with the speed and vociferousness of her rebuttal. “Why? Because he won’t join hands and sing kumbayah with us? Damn it, he has to go through this if he’s to become an adult. Our own human children do. Or did, until lotus-eating idealists neutered them. But at least that’s over with.”

  Pyragy’s upper lip contracted as though he had caught a whiff of dung. “Yes. The Golden Age of Peace is indeed behind us, and we have allowed our children to be raised with the knowledge of war and violence. With terrible results.”

  “If speciate survival is a terrible result, then I guess you’re right, Director Pyragy. But this new generation has—thank god—the gumption and aggressiveness that comes from having a few fistfights growing up, and trying cases with their parents.”

  “Yes,” Pyragy retorted, “and in all probability, by the time those children are as old as I am, they will no longer need to fight the kzinti, because they will have become as kzinti, themselves.” Pyragy looked as though he might spit. “It is horrific, barbaric.”

  “A lot of real-life situations are, Director—horrific and barbaric. And having some familiarity with those realities is necessary if you’re going to have a reasonable chance of surviving a serious encounter with any of them. That’s part of the advantage of having kids, human or kzin, grow up in contention with their own parents, as well as their peers. It teaches kids not only about the limits of change, but also about conflict itself. They learn when it’s appropriate and when it’s not. Which battles to fight, which to avoid, which warrant biding one’s time. And every scrap of evidence we have says that the kzinti need that experience more than humans, much more. So before we declare Hap an irreclaimable turncoat, let’s remember this: we’re all he’s got, which means we’re his only scratching post. So, of course, he’s going to go through this phase. And a valid point of contention like this one—to whom he owes his first loyalties—is a natural lightning rod for those impulses and emotions.”

  Associate Executive Chair Dennehy was studying Selena closely, as if he were making several decisions at once. “And what if this isn’t just a teenage phase, Dr. Navarre? After all, Hap has more reason to rebel against authority than any teen ever born.”

  Selena nodded soberly. “Now that’s truth, plain and simple, Executive Dennehy. And yes, in turning away from us now, he could be starting down a path that ultimately makes him our permanent, sworn enemy. It might be that he never turns back toward us the way most human kids do when they overcome the tempests of their social and hormonal storm season that we call adolescence. And that’s too bad.

  “But it was always a risk, one we knew and articulated right at the outset of this project. And after all, he’s right to feel the way he does. He’s been brought up to be a traitor to his own people, insofar as he is a creature of our making and interests. So we can only hope that, when his wisdom catches up with his intelligence, he will also realize that we were as honest as we could be throughout, eschewed the tactics of coercion, and have always worked not just for own best interests, but for his, and his people’s, as well.”

  Pyragy snorted. “You give him entirely too much credit. He will not stop to think about these things. This is why he had to be civilized—fully and effectively civilized—first: by remaining a creature driven by his primal drives rather than thought, he will remain insensate to these higher appeals.”

  “Then, Director Pyragy, you should be glad that he is turning away from us, here and now. Because if he’s not smart enough on his own to reflect upon his upbringing in the years to come, then he’s not the right person for the job of being our voice to the kzinti. A person incapable of autonomous reflection or insight would be disastrous to our diplomatic efforts, whatever their end.”

>   Pyragy grumbled but said nothing loud enough for anyone to hear.

  Dennehy was nodding, though. “Dr. Navarre, however else these events might play out, I think you’re absolutely right about one thing: we can’t make a being what he is not. If a kzin, or at least this kzin, is capable—as you posit—of one day seeing our actions in perspective, then this is just a bump in the road, and possibly a necessary one. But if he is not, then you’re right again: he never would have been any good to us as a liaison.”

  Selena nodded. “So does this mean that we can start giving Hap increased access to news, to libraries, to—?”

  Dennehy nodded back. “Show him our world, Dr. Navarre. Starting today.”

  2406 BCE: Subject age—ten years

  Selena twisted the strand of silver-grey hair around her finger again and again and again.

  “What is that?” Hap’s voice was throaty and deep.

  “This? Oh, nothing. This is nothing.”

  “You don’t toy obsessively with nothings, Selena.” He sniffed speculatively. “It’s a lock of Dieter’s hair, isn’t it?”

  She felt a hot blush rise high on her cheeks, looked away: schoolgirl-stupid, that’s what I am.

  Hap’s fur pulsed once, slowly. “Don’t be ashamed. I wish they still allowed Dieter to come in to see me. I miss him, too. A lot.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “Because Dieter had true strakh, honor.”

  “There was a time you couldn’t abide the sight or smell of him.”

  Hap swung his head slightly from side to side; an instinctual gesture, not learned, that was the kzin equivalent of a shrug. “It wasn’t as straightforward as that, Selena. I just didn’t know how to deal with what he had done.”

  “And now you do?”

  Hap’s eyes partially narrowed in easy acquiescence. “Yes. He was a warrior, doing a warrior’s work. But when I was no longer part of his warrior work, he became a friend. He watched over me, even when your rules said he wasn’t supposed to.” And Selena could feel, or at least imagined, the unuttered rebuke: which was more than you ever did for me. Which was, sadly, bitterly, true.