by Larry Niven
Smiling gently, as if they had just shared a joke, Dr. Anixter continued. “I have promised not to tell you how long you have been here, so forgive me if my references to time are vague. When you were brought in you were in terrible condition. Long-bones in your legs had been broken multiple times by something falling on them. Your hands were in bad shape as well. From recordings I was shown later, you’d apparently tried to hold up a bulkhead.
“You’d lost a considerable amount of blood, but internal injuries were less severe than we had first imagined. Your vac suit was hardened. That, combined with the angle at which you fell, preserved you from damaging organs beyond our ability to repair them. The worst was some damage to your lungs, but that marvelous basket-work rib cage of yours is so much more nicely designed than ours—no rib-ends to poke into the lungs. Your head was protected by your suit helmet—and by your singularly tough skull.”
She paused and looked thoughtful, doubtless reflecting over her labors.
“Our efforts to save your life were helped because the crew that rescued you—or, as you doubtless prefer to think of it, ‘captured’ you—also salvaged some medical gear before a back-up self-destruct mechanism took out the remainder of your ship.”
The ship was gone then, the kzin thought. Well, at least his family had the comfort of thinking him honorably dead—not that there would be over many to mourn him, a nameless junior officer. His father had many sons and, in the manner of traditional kzinti, saw the promising ones as much as rivals as ornaments to the household.
“Cosmetically,” Dr. Anixter went on, “to be honest, you didn’t do too badly, since you took more crushing damage than cutting. Your helmet protected your ears and face. We did need to shave areas of your fur to facilitate surgery, but most of that is growing back nicely.”
She smiled, this time not so gently. Although the fur on the back of his neck rose, the kzin felt instinctively that this teeth-bared expression was not intended for him. Dr. Anixter’s next words confirmed this impression.
“Otto Bismarck said I should tell you that you were shaved repeatedly, so that you cannot use the rate of fur-growth as a means to calculate the time you have been in our custody.”
This Otto Bismarck may be her supervisor then, the kzin thought, but not one she particularly likes. Yet that does not fit the interactions I have witnessed. Perhaps they are more rivals than master and slave or commander and soldier. She reigns in the medical areas, he elsewhere—and in matters such as how much I may know, Otto Bismarck is the master.
“As of this date,” Dr. Anixter said, “your condition is no longer critical. However, as I have painstakingly explained to Otto, you are also not ‘well.’ Indeed, it is likely you will begin to decline. Already, despite the use of electrical stimulus, you have suffered considerable muscle atrophy. New bone must bear weight if it is to develop properly. With a human patient, I could employ a wide variety of technological aids. Doubtless my assistants and I could design the same for kzinti, but that would take time . . . time I do not believe you have.”
Again the kzin was aware of a tightening around Dr. Anixter’s eyes, a tension in her muscles.
This “time” she feels she lacks is not then completely dictated by the deterioration of my body. There is another factor as well. Impatience on the part of Otto Bismarck, no doubt.
“Therefore,” Dr. Anixter said, “we’re going to fall back on older methods. Already you have been eating some solid food to condition your gut.”
(The kzin winced a little at this. He had tried to resist, but the hot meat had smelled so very good . . . After the male called Roscoe demonstrated how they could use a muscle relaxant to make it impossible for the kzin to lock his jaw, resistance had seemed not only futile, but foolish.)
“Now we must condition your body. We will begin with upper-body exercises while you are still in bed. Soon, very soon, I hope, you will graduate to walking about.”
The kzin considered what he would do when Dr. Anixter unstrapped his arm. Perhaps he could make amends for being weak enough to eat the hot meat.
“My people have a saying,” Dr. Anixter said as she rose from her chair and moved to unfasten the straps that held the kzin’s right arm. “‘Where there is life, there is hope.’ I don’t know if you have a similar saying. In any case, I think you should see the logic of this one. Someone who could break his hands attempting to hold up a bulkhead is not immune to the value of being alive.”
She paused with her fingers on the strap. “However, although I would like to believe you are capable of listening to an appeal to reason, I must warn you that precautions have been taken to assure that you do not exploit this opportunity. You will not be killed or punished, but you will be prevented from acting in any fashion counter to what is suitable for your continued healing. Do you understand?”
The kzin resisted either nodding in the human fashion—a mannerism quite addictive—or twitching his ears in the kzinti equivalent of the gesture. His heart was beating very quickly, his breath coming fast and short in excitement. Doubtless the humans could read this on their monitors, but could they interpret it? He doubted it. The obvious interpretation would be that he was excited, overstimulated by the proximity of the doctor and the fact that she was apparently about to release him without the presence of guards.
No. They could not know.
Those swift and dextrous human fingers—weirdly clawless though they were—moved to undo catches. He felt the strap loosening, sliding down. Heard the fastener click against the hard material of the floor.
Quickly, Dr. Anixter stepped back out of reach.
“Why don’t you try flexing your elbow?” she suggested.
He did, but not in the fashion she might have expected. Although his arm was stiff and weak, he moved with what for a human in similar condition would have been incredible speed. Claws extended, he went for his own throat.
Swift as he was, his weakness betrayed him. He was too slow, the grip of his formerly broken fingers surprisingly flaccid.
Dr. Anixter pointed a finger at him. Too late, the kzin saw that a tranquilizer gun had been attached directly to her hand. Shaking her head ruefully, she shot him.
“I was so hoping you’d choose to listen to reason.”
* * *
A few days later, Dr. Anixter once again dismissed her assistant—this time the eager young male called Theophilus—and pulled a chair next to the bed in which the kzin was strapped.
“Now, we’re going to have a nice talk again. I’m going to assume that not only do you remember what I said about your receiving physical therapy, but that you also remember what I said about the conditions under which you would receive that therapy.”
When the kzin did not respond, Dr. Anixter sighed deeply and her ever-present smile faded.
“I know you understand me, but if you prefer one-sided conversations, very well. I suppose you think of your silence as resistance, but I think the need goes deeper. Refusal to speak is the only freedom you have . . .”
The prisoner nearly unfurled his ears in astonishment. This human thought so very strangely, yet there was something of truth in what she said. Did that also mean there was truth in that odd idea that life and hope were inseparable?
He had thought the idea an outgrowth of the human’s strange creed of pacifism, for every kzin knew that life was only of value when it was spent for glory, honor, and, possibly, advancement.
Despite himself, he found he was listening—not merely hearing—for the first time.
At that moment, a siren went off. So did all but the emergency lighting and power to the medical monitors. Dr. Anixter’s smile returned and she began to speak very quickly, her voice hushed.
“We should have a moment’s privacy. You doubtless think your only value to us is a source of information, but we’ve already learned a great deal. Miffy—I mean Otto—is becoming impatient. I have heard rumors that kzinti consider torture dishonorable—although I’ve heard other st
ories, about humans being eaten piece by piece while kept alive, that make me wonder. Whatever your interpretation, many humans don’t view torture of an enemy as wrong. If you work with me, we may be able to save you from that, but . . .”
The lights came back up. The door to the corridor slid open, bringing the shrieking sound of the siren closer. Two men in battle armor, holding guns, came rushing in.
“Dr. Anixter, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. What is that racket?”
“Something went . . .”
The soldier stopped. Looked at the kzin. Obviously decided not to speak in front of him.
“Ask Otto Bismarck.”
“You may report to him that I’m fine and so is my patient,” she replied. “The lights dimmed, but the kzin is no longer dependant on life support. Thanks to Otto Bismarck’s forethought, his restraints are quite primitive, nothing that could be affected by a power outage.”
“Will you leave now?”
She rose, nodding. “I think so. I think trying to begin physical therapy after this break in routine would be impractical. I could tranq him again, but repeated doses in a short time would defeat the purpose of making him stronger.”
Without another glance at the kzin, she departed. She did not return that day nor the next, giving the patient a great deal of time to think over his options.
* * *
Jenni knew she’d been taking a risk when she’d altered the station’s power systems, but she’d had to do something to permit her to say a few words to the kzin without Miffy hearing. She thought she’d been quite clever in how she’d worked it. Futzing one of Miffy’s own bugs so that not only would power be cut, but any bugs with independent power sources would also be messed up had been very neat. And how could Miffy complain without admitting how extensively this facility was bugged?
She sighed contentedly. The funny thing about Miffy was that although he had hired her for her intellect, he actually thought of her as rather stupid. She supposed this was because he had bought into the stereotype of the absent-minded professor, maybe because he worked with specialists of various types who really didn’t know much beyond their own field.
However, Dr. Jennifer Anixter, M.D., Ph.D. (this last so many times over that all the B.A.s and M.A.s had been discarded as superfluous), was a generalist. How could she be otherwise when she was studying something that—until the advent of the kzinti—even she had not known existed?
Savoring her minor triumph over the snoopers, Jenni walked back to her lab. If her kzinti patient persisted in attempting to commit suicide, she supposed she’d have no choice but to let him. The other option was to hand him over to Miffy for torture. She couldn’t do that. The reason wasn’t just that she felt such an act would be a violation of her Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Quite simply, she didn’t like Miffy.
There was a lust for dominance in the man from Intelligence that stank. True, the kzinti had beaten humans in battle over and over again. The kzinti had destroyed or looted human ships, making slaves or food animals of those humans they captured. She understood that humanity needed an edge or they were going to end up just another slave race. But what Miffy wanted was something more than an edge, something more than victory. He wanted to get one up on the Patriarchy personally. If he got the opportunity, he’d do something just to show himself as better than her patient.
She didn’t know what she’d do about the problem of Miffy in the long term. First her kzin had to be gotten healthy. The rest must come later.
* * *
The next time his arm was unbound, the kzin didn’t take a swipe at Jenni or, more importantly, at himself. Dutifully, he exercised the muscles, then permitted the arm to be restrapped, and exercised the other arm. There were more exercises for the legs.
After three days—far more quickly than anyone else thought wise—Jenni decided to let the kzin get up and try walking. He still wasn’t speaking to her, but she kept chattering at him anyway.
“We have a full machine shop here,” she said, trundling in before her a gigantic walking frame, “and I had one of the machinists put this together for you. Your upper body simply isn’t strong enough for you to use crutches.”
She grinned impishly at him. “Anyhow, Otto was worried you’d use the crutches for clubs. This walker is heavy—and bulky—enough that you’d have trouble lifting it.”
The kzin had answered Jenni’s grin with one of his own, showing a mouthful of needle-sharp teeth. For a moment, Jenni was delighted. Then she noticed that his hackles had risen and his ears were folding tight.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you feel defensive. Funny, funny . . . Big, mean you reacting because little me shows you my flat, boring omnivore teeth. Really, I wonder that enough kzinti survive to adulthood for you to put armies into the field.”
He glowered at her. Defiantly, she gave him a closed-lipped smile.
“I have an idea,” she said. “Maybe you’d feel less defensive if you could talk to someone. Since you won’t admit you know Interworld, well, then, I’ll teach it to you. After all, it’s possible I’m wrong about your linguistic capabilities.”
“However, first we need to get you on your feet. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to call in Roscoe and Theophilus. They’re going to help you stand upright. You, in turn, are not going to bite or claw either of them. I suspect you’re actually going to need to put your full concentration into balancing. You’ve been on your tail—quite literally—for . . .”
She’d been about to say how long, then caught herself. “For quite a while.”
Getting the kzin to his feet was easier than anyone but Jenni herself had expected. Even her medical staff tended to think of the kzin as a sort of furry human—when they weren’t thinking of him as a monster.
Jenni didn’t make either of those mistakes. She thought of the kzin as what he was—an alien, descended from a race of predators, from a culture where even a show of teeth was considered a challenge that could lead to a fight to the death. Such a species would not survive very long if its members did not heal fast and cleanly.
Still, Jenni permitted the others to think she was as surprised as they were. Best Otto did not realize how much closer to recovery the kzin was. She wasn’t really lying. Certainly the kzin had been able to stand, but he was still weak—she couldn’t resist the image—as a kitten. Certainly, he was far weaker than he himself had expected to be. His fingers had curled very tightly on the handgrips of the walker and he had shuffled forward as carefully as any geriatric case deprived of his float-chair.
While they walked, Jenni had started very simple vocabulary lessons, focusing on concrete nouns such as “door” and “floor.” She avoided names. From the minimal information that had been gathered from humans who had escaped the kzinti and from the kzinti themselves, Names were a complex matter within kzinti culture.
She wondered by what name or title her patient thought of himself, wished she could ask, but knew that he would never reply. That would mean admitting how much he actually understood.
This first walking/language lesson session had not lasted long. The kzin had seemed relieved to get back into the hospital bed. The next day, he had to be hurting, but unlike a human patient who would probably have complained, he was evidently eager to try again.
And so it went. Eventually, even the guards didn’t immediately tense when the gigantic orange-furred, black-striped creature went by, his pink, hairless tail twitching with the effort involved in every step. This was foolish, of course, because the kzin was far stronger and more mobile than he’d been on that first day he’d teetered to his feet, but humans were like that. The familiar was far less terrifying than the strange.
Perhaps the kzinti are wiser than we, Jenni mused as she walked alongside her patient, his only escort, for as she had pointed out to Otto, why should they put more humans at risk? Kzinti do not forget what bared teeth mean, nor that an enemy is an enemy. Perhaps they ar
e wiser. Perhaps . . .
She did not fool herself into thinking that familiarity alone had led to this reduced attention to her patient when out and about. There was another reason the sight of a kzin shuffling behind a gigantic walker did not attract as much attention as before. Something had changed at the base. Something new had been brought in and captured the attention and enthusiasm of Miffy and his cohorts.
Jenni had managed to gather only fragmented rumors, but from what she could piece together from these, she thought the new prize might be the wreck of a kzinti ship.
* * *
The kzin found himself looking forward to his daily physical therapy sessions. He knew he should not. Getting stronger and healthier was the last thing he should desire in this place where there was no hope for escape. As long as he was unwell, he was in Dr. Anixter’s custody. After he was well, she would have little excuse not to turn him over to the human she sometimes referred to as Otto Bismarck, but more frequently (although never when the man was present) as “Miffy.”
The kzin wondered at the significance of these different names, but he did not ask. To do so would be to give away how much he understood. Already, he had grown to fear his own eagerness to talk. Dr. Anixter’s language lessons had robbed him of the excuse to not speak at all.
She had explained to him that although human mouths and throats often had difficulty shaping the rasps and gutturals of the Heroes’ Tongue, humans had learned that kzinti could easily master Interworld. She framed this as a compliment, praise of the kzinti race’s greater abilities. However, the captive soon realized that her words were also a warning that he should not resist these lessons.
On the evening following the deliciously memorable day she had taught him the words for “meat,” “steak,” “chicken,” and “fish,” her assistant, Roscoe, had used these words when arranging for the evening meal. When the kzin refused to use any of the words for more specific types, settling on “meat,” instead of giving him the hot steak that had been usual to this point, Roscoe served him fish—cold fish at that.