Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC

by Larry Niven

  “Overruled, Strategist. We have higher priorities than solving academic problems of no interest or importance to the Patriarchy. We leave immediately.” He hoped for some kind of argument which would have justified his taking Strategist’s throat out, but there was none.

  “Delete those absurd so-called communications records, Technology Officer. They were obviously some sort of malfunction of the computing machines. I’ve never trusted them, and I was right. Prepare for take-off. We shall log our experiences on the planet and pass the reports back, but we have no reason for delay. That is all.”

  Strategist watched him stalk from the bridge and shrugged internally. Not all captains of small warships were fools, for some reason he had been cursed with one of the more foolish. Quick reactions, yes; courage, enormous. Brains and capacity for thinking, zero. The usual story, high birth beat brains. One could only hope he never got promoted. He’d be a menace were he to command a proper fleet. Telepath caught his eye and nodded almost imperceptibly but said nothing.

  * * *

  Back on Glot, the children were allowed to move again. They’d been good except for the one that had started Thomas, and who had lost his toy in appropriate punishment. Everyone started extruding avatars for various reasons, including keeping the numbers of animals down.

  “I do feel a bit sad about it all,” John Wayne told Coco. “A whole culture, with all its splendor and wonder, all gone. Look how much we’ve been enriched by exposure to the human beings, even when we’ve only seen them on their old movies. And another species, it could have had so many insights for us, so many puzzles, so many interesting things to think about.”

  “We wouldn’t have had much from this lot,” Coco argued. “They’d want to eat our avatars, and enslave them. Face it, they just wouldn’t have been fun. And something that’s been puzzling me, how on earth did you say what you did?”

  “What did I say?”

  “That stuff about travelling in time. I think he took you seriously.”

  “Yes,” John Wayne sounded very pleased with himself. “It was a lie. I’ve always wanted to tell a lie and of course we can’t do it in the ordinary way. I mean you need a barely intelligent alien to tell it to; one of those low bandwidth ones, if you can call them intelligent at all. So there he was, and there I was, and I thought, this is my big chance, and I might not get another anytime soon. So I did it. I lied like a human.” He gave the Dililly equivalent of a beam of pride. “It’s not even particularly difficult. But I hope we meet up with some more aliens soon, because I think I could get to quite enjoy telling lies. We’ll have to make one of those spaceship things so we can go looking for them.”

  Coco thought about it. “That’s an interesting idea. It will take a few hundred years, of course. No time at all by our standards, but the human beings and tiger folk will have done new things by then. And it will have to be quite big. Lots bigger than the ones which just left.”

  “Oh, there’s no hurry. It will be an interesting problem. We couldn’t extrude a whole spaceship, but we could do it in bits. The lifting and carrying and sticking things together will have to be done by avatars. But if the kzinti and human beings can figure it out, it can’t be too hard.”

  The wind blew, and the wind blew, and the wind blew, as it always did. And the bushes and the trees with their crystalline leaves moved in the wind and tinkled like a billion tiny bells. The leaves flashed and glittered. Just for a moment, one of the bigger trees had some of the leaves flash what looked remarkably like a picture of a spaceship balanced on a tower of flame. And the tinkling sound was a little bit like laughter.

  Two Types of Teeth

  Jane Lindskold

  Jenni Anixter was one of the happiest people in the universe. Born at a time when aliens had been little more than a matter of speculation and rumor, she had seen them become a reality in her lifetime.

  Her happiness showed in the lines lightly etched into her round face, in the way she moved her plump body as if dancing, in the bounce of short, untidy mahogany curls. That happiness might keep someone from noticing the thoughtful expression of her dark grey eyes. Certainly, this aura of happiness meant that despite her numerous academic degrees, Jenni was often dismissed as just a wee bit frivolous.

  Now, Jenni herself was among the first to admit that the kzinti hadn’t proven to be a very nice reality. They might be real live aliens, but they were also warlike, focused on conquering and enslaving any sentient race they encountered. Non-sentient species gathered in along the way were a bonus, like sprinkles on an ice-cream sundae.

  But nice or not, the kzinti were a reality. Due to them, Jenni Anixter, who had studied medicine because there simply weren’t scholarships and grants for those who wanted to specialize in hypothetical alien biology, found herself in much demand.

  She was courted by a branch of ARM that very carefully didn’t name itself but had “Intelligence” (itself a euphemism for other, less genteel-seeming activities) written all over it. The members of this agency who came to speak to Jenni in her cramped little lab had clearly read all her papers. Jenni was flattered. Not many people bothered to read speculations on alternate biologies and the psychologies that would evolve along with them.

  But these agents had done so. Moreover, they wanted to give Jenni a very big, very fancy new lab. Along with the lab would come lots of resources, an extensive budget, and even a few assistants.

  There were, of course, conditions that went along with this largesse. Jenni would need to relocate to a very isolated Intelligence station, a base with an address so secret even Jenni couldn’t have it. Instead, she was assigned a postal drop and a new e-dress. She was assured her correspondence would be rushed to her. Needless to say, she had to agree to having all her correspondence—in-going and out-going—reviewed and censored.

  None of these conditions bothered Jenni. Her last serious relationship had ended in an argument over silicon-based life forms—specifically as to the likelihood thereof and would humanity even recognize such unless they bashed into or rolled over our collective feet.

  Jenni’s family had long grown accustomed to hearing from her only through short notes on holidays and birthdays. Jenni didn’t doubt that her relatively introverted personality had been a major factor in causing Intelligence to select her over one of the handful of co-professionals who shared her esoteric interests.

  Time passed. Jenni settled happily into her new home. There, in addition to her new lab and extensive budget, she was given three assistants: Roscoe Connors, Ida Mery, and Theophilus Schwab. She rather suspected that at least one of them, if not all three, reported to Intelligence, but that didn’t bother Jenni in the least. After all, so did she.

  Not very long after Jenni was established in her new lab, she was given access to information that was unknown to the majority of humanity. What she learned about the Slavers and Protectors was fascinating, but since both these ancient races were unlikely to ever interact with humanity, what she learned was also largely inapplicable to the current problem.

  More importantly, Jenni was also sent files containing raw data taken from study of wrecked kzinti ships. (There was no other kind. The kzinti did not surrender.) She voraciously read this material, then set Ida Mery to constructing data bases. The one thing Jenni refused were files containing speculations about the kzinti.

  “Such information,” she explained, “would pollute my own conjectures. Perhaps later, but for now give me raw data. If my conclusions match those of other researchers, all the better for you.”

  So Jenni was sent raw data, some of it very raw indeed. First there were tissue slices, already mounted on slides. Later there were entire limbs, flash-frozen and untampered with (beyond, of course, the circumstances that had contributed to the death of the source in the first place). Eventually, she was sent whole corpses—or mostly whole. Kzinti extended their violent natures to themselves, suiciding rather than accepting surrender or capture. Therefore, the corpses Jenni received
were rarely all in one piece.

  Here her practical medical experience—for she had worked both as a diagnostician and a surgeon, archaic skills that had all but died out with the coming of the autodoc—came in very handy. She dissected corpses, humming as she inspected organs and bone structures, comparing these to other samples.

  From her studies she slowly built a database representation of a “typical” kzin. She discovered that—at least among humanity’s attackers—there was minimal variation within the species. Kzinti seemed closely related as the “races” of Europe had been closely related. Certainly, there was no such variation as there had been between, say, an African pygmy and a strapping Nordic Viking.

  Kzinti males (she had yet to see the corpse of a female) were uniformly large—almost three meters tall. Their fur was usually a deep orange, adorned with a variety of tabby patterns that ranged from tigerish black on dark orange to paler orange on marmalade orange, to almost yellow stripes also on orange, although in this last the undercoat was sometimes of a pleasantly pale hue. Their long tails were pink and hairless. Their ears were complex, furling and unfurling in response to a wide variety of stimuli.

  Yet, despite the human tendency to call the kzinti “cats” or “catlike,” kzinti were no more so cats than humans were monkeys. Jenni went out of her way to stress this in her reports, but she didn’t know if anyone was paying attention.

  In fact, what use her reports would be to Intelligence, Jenni did not know, nor did she care. She was happy learning new things every day, unhampered by mundane constraints regarding equipment or funding. In some vague sense, she was even happy to know that she was helping in the war effort, especially since she herself did not need to go to war.

  Then came the day when they brought her a live kzin.

  Somewhat alive might be a better way to put it. The kzin was floated into her largest lab, still encased in what looked like a ship’s emergency freeze unit. Beneath the frost, he appeared to be wearing a spacesuit of peculiar configurations.

  “Fix him,” was the order that came with this surprise delivery.

  Jenni, slightly less happy than she had been, agreed to try.

  * * *

  Human voices wakened him.

  The listener remembered the explosion. He remembered how the bulkhead had come at him, how he’d held up his hands, claws extended in a vain attempt to stop armored metal from smashing into him. There had been pain, then darkness. He’d thought he was dead.

  When he came around, he wished he were dead. This wasn’t because of the pain, although that was considerable. However, a warrior of the Patriarchy did not admit pain as a consideration in matters of life and death.

  No. What made him wish he were dead was the voices.

  Later, the listener would realize he was hearing through the open communications unit on his suit’s helmet, the default setting of which was to fasten on any active channel. At the time, he was not capable of such coherent thought. He simply heard voices, human voices, speaking Interworld, a language he had learned because it was always useful to know what your enemy was saying.

  “We’re down in what looks like a combination engineering and gunnery deck, Captain. It’s a real mess.”

  “Survivors?”

  The captain’s voice was strong and firm, but its pitch and timber identified it as female. The concept of a female as captain of what must be a warship was still a strange one.

  “Doubt it, Cap. Looks as if someone set off explosives. What didn’t boil away from contact with vacuum has painted the walls with fur and guts.”

  The listener felt pleased at this confirmation that he might indeed be dead. He was even more pleased that the self-destruct had worked. The Patriarchy’s policy was that neither ships nor crew should be taken. As the Patriarchy knew from experience, much could be learned even from a damaged ship or an uncooperative prisoner.

  Reassured that he was dead, the listener drifted on background waves of alien speech, not even trying to understand what was being said. Then an excited burst of speech roused him.

  “Captain! We may have found a live one! He’s buried under a bulkhead. Looks like it came down and protected him from the worst of the explosion. He doesn’t look good, but the telltales on his suit show live.”

  “Careful! He may be playing dead to lure you in.”

  A coarse laugh, a sound that didn’t express humor as much as disbelief.

  “Maybe, but it’s not going to do him much good. The bulkhead kept him from getting smeared, but he’s not a pretty sight.”

  “Can you capture him?”

  “Well, Captain, I don’t think he’s going to be running anywhere anytime soon. In fact, I doubt he’s going anywhere under his own power for a long time—if ever.”

  The listener felt himself being shifted. Pain shot through him.

  Human hands lifted him. Something was attached to his suit. He felt himself being moved, but try as he might, he could not break free. Had they actually gone to the trouble of restraining him? He felt a surge of pride that they recognized him for the danger he was.

  He was aware of being examined as he felt a sequence of jolts of pain so acute that he lost his ability to follow the alien language. Words washed over him. Some at least, he thought, were directed at him.

  Human voices had wakened him. Now, smothered by their babble, grateful for the darkness that claimed him, he drowned.

  * * *

  “The prisoner was found after a battle,” the man from Intelligence explained, leaning in a proprietary fashion against the large freeze unit that now dominated her largest lab.

  After he had come to stay at the research station, the man had told Jenni to call him “Otto Bismarck.” This was so obviously a pseudonym that Jenni still tended to think of him as “the man from Intelligence,” or “MFI,” transformed into “Miffy” for short.

  She thought the name gave the man a certain distinction he otherwise completely lacked. He was so neutral in appearance as to be completely forgettable: brown eyes, light-brown skin, brown hair cut to average length, average build, average height, average features. The one thing that would set him apart in a crowd was his exceptional physical conditioning, but Jenni had no doubt that Miffy could make himself look soft and flabby if the need arose.

  Miffy went on. “Usually a kzinti crew suicides and a self-destruct takes out the ship. Best as we can reconstruct, this one would have followed protocol, but he was already down and out. Between his suit—he was wearing a hardened vac suit—and the bulkhead, he survived. The self-destruct did take out key areas of the ship, but not the compartment this one was in.”

  Jenni nodded. Taking this as encouragement, Miffy continued.

  “The ship’s doctor was worried she couldn’t keep the prisoner alive, so they popped him in a freeze unit. It wasn’t built to hold a kzin, but the hope was his suit would take up the slack. Best as we can tell, it did. At least the telltales haven’t shifted to indicate a deceased occupant.”

  Jenni didn’t ask how the man from Intelligence knew which indicators meant what. Knowing things like that was part of his business.

  “If you can read that suit panel, I’ll need a translation,” she said, “as well as anything else you’ve learned about the suits, what they do, how the hardened variety differs from the standard.”

  She pretended not to notice how Miffy stiffened. She could almost hear him saying, “That information is classified, released on a Need To Know basis only.” Then as clearly, his automatic conservatism was immediately countered by the realization that if anyone “Needed to Know,” it was the doctor that Intelligence hoped could save this improbable patient.

  Miffy cleared his throat to swallow his automatic response. “I’ll have the information downloaded to your terminal at once.”

  Jenni studied the figure in the freeze unit, wondering how severe his injuries were, if she could even bring him out of the freeze without killing him in the process.

  “H
ow much time do I have?” she asked.

  “As much as you need,” Miffy said. “Of course, the sooner we can talk to him, the better, the more lives that may be saved.”

  Jenni nodded again. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “That’s all we can ask.”

  Fiddle-faddle, Jenni thought. You do realize that what you’re asking for is little short of a miracle?

  * * *

  The kzin came conscious. As soon as he was certain he was alive, he tried to kill himself.

  This proved to be impossible since he was strapped down so securely he could hardly move a finger. However, he felt better for having made the attempt.

  Now that he had resolved that he could not kill himself, the kzin set about assessing his surroundings without giving away that he was conscious. Knowing how sight-dependant humans were, he did not open his eyes. His ears were slack against the pillow on which his head rested. He struggled against the impulse to unfurl them in order to hear better.

  Sound told the kzin that he was the only creature breathing in the room, but it was likely there were several recorders, both visual and audio, trained on him. He attempted to hold his breath and learned that his breathing was being mechanically assisted. After ascertaining that, he next isolated the sounds of several devices and tried to guess what they did.

  When he shifted, he heard one device begin to beep more rapidly. This was the sound he had heard when he had attempted to kill himself upon waking. A monitor of some sort. Likely he would have company soon.

  The kzin flared his nostrils. Most of the scents meant nothing to him, registering as vaguely “medical.” He sought the scents of urine and feces, for both would tell him something about his condition. He caught neither. This indicated that he was probably being fed via tubes, the nutrients carefully calculated so that his waste production was minimal.

  That was interesting. He had not thought humans knew enough about kzinti biology to devise such formulas. Perhaps they had been able to analyze what was contained in his vac suit. That wasn’t good. He wondered what else they had captured.