The Houses of the Kzinti

by Larry Niven

"Oh." When you put it that way, he could think of about a half-dozen ways to destabilize one; drop, oh, ultracompressed radon into it. Countermeasures . . . luckily, nothing the kzin were likely to have right on hand.

  "For that matter," she continued, "throwing relativistic weapons around inside a solar system is a bad idea. If you want to keep it."

  "Impact," the computer said helpfully. An asteroid winked, the tactical screen's way of showing an expanding sphere of plasma: nickel-iron, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon-compounds, some of the latter kzin and humans and children and their pet budgies.

  "You have to aim at stationary targets," Ingrid was saying. "The things that war is supposed to be about seizing. It's as insane as fighting a planetside war with fusion weapons and no effective defense. Only possible once."

  "Once would be enough, if we knew where the kzin home system was." For a vengeful moment he imagined robot ships falling into a sun from infinite distances, scores of light-years of acceleration at hundreds of G's, their own masses raised to near-stellar proportions. "No. Then again, no."

  "I'm glad you said that," Ingrid replied. Softly: "I wonder what it's like, for them out there."

  "Interesting," Jonah said tightly. "At the very least, interesting."

  Chapter 2

  "Please, keep calm," Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann said, for the fourth time. "For Finagle's sake, sit down and shut up!"

  This one seemed to sink in, or perhaps the remaining patrons were getting tired of running around in circles and shouting. The staff were all at their posts, or preventing the paying customers from hitting each other or breaking anything expensive. Several of them had police-model stunners under their dinner jackets, like his; hideous illegal, hence quite difficult to square. Not through Claude—he was quite conscientious about avoiding things that would seriously annoy the ratcats—but there were plenty lower down the totem pole who lacked his gentlemanly sense of their own long-term interests.

  Everyone was watching the screen behind the bar again; the UNSN announcement was off the air, but the Munchen news service was slapping in random readouts from all over the planet. For once the collaborationist government was too busy to follow their natural instincts and keep everyone in the dark, and the kzin had never given much of a damn; the only thing they cared about was behavior, propaganda be damned.

  The flatlander warship was still headed insystem; from the look of things they were going to use the sun for as much of a course-alteration as possible. He could feel rusty spaceman's reflexes creaking into action. That was a perfectly sensible ploy; ramscoop ships were not easy to turn. Even at their speeds, you couldn't use the interstellar medium to bank; turning meant applying lateral thrust, and it would be easier to decelerate, turn and work back up to high Tau. Unless you could use a gravitational sling, like a kid on roller-skates going hell-for-leather down a street and then slapping a hand on a lamppost—and even a star's gravity was pretty feeble at those speeds.

  He raised his glass to the sometime mirror behind the bar. It was showing a scene from the south polar zone. Kzin were stuck with Wunderland's light gravity, but they preferred a cooler, drier climate than humans. The first impact had looked like a line of light drawn down from heaven to earth, and the shockwave flipped the robot camera into a spin that had probably ended on hard, cold ground. Yarthkin grinned, and snapped his fingers for coffee.

  "With a sandwich, sweetheart," he told the waitress. "Heavy on the mustard." He loosened his archaic tie and watched flickershots of boiling dust-clouds crawling with networks of purple-white lightning. Closer, into canyons of night seething up out of red-shot blackness. That must be molten rock; something had punched right through into the magma.

  "Sam." The man at the musicomp looked up from trailing his fingers across the keyboard; it was configured for piano tonight. An archaism, like the whole setup. Popular, as more and more fled in fantasy what could not be avoided in reality, back into a history that was at least human. Of course, Wunderlanders were prone to that; the planet had been a patchwork of refugees from an increasingly homogenized and technophile Earth anyway. I've spent a generation cashing in on a nostalgia boom, Yarthkin thought wryly. Was that because I had foresight, or was I one of the first victims?

  "Sir?" Sam was Krio, like McAndrews the doorman, although he had never gone the whole route and taken warrior scars. Just as tough in a fight, though. He'd been enrolled in the Sensor-Effector program at the Scholarium, been a gunner with Yarthkin in the brief war in space, and they had been together in the hills. And he had come along when Yarthkin took the amnesty, too. Even more of a wizard with the keys than he had been with a jizzer or a strakaker or a ratchet knife.

  "Play something appropriate, Sam. 'Stormy Weather.' "

  The musician's face lit with a vast white grin, and he launched into the ancient tune with a will, even singing his own version, translated into Wunderlander. Yarthkin murmured into his lapel to turn down the hysterical commentary from the screen, still babbling about dastardly attacks and massive casualties.

  It took a man back. Humans were dying out there, but so were ratcats . . . Here's looking at you, he thought to the hypothetical crew of the Yamamoto. Possibly nothing more than recordings and sensor-effector mechanisms, but he doubted it.

  "Stormy weather for sure," he said softly to himself. Megatons of dust and water vapor were being pumped into the atmosphere. "Bad for the crops." Though there would be a harvest from this, yes indeed. I could have been on that ship, he thought to himself, with a sudden flare of murderous anger. I was good enough. There are probably Wunderlanders aboard her; those slowships got through. If I hadn't been left sucking vacuum at the airlock, it could have been me out there!

  "But not Ingrid," he whispered to himself. "The bitch wouldn't have the guts." Sam was looking at him; it had been a long time since the memory of the last days came back. With a practiced effort of will he shoved it deeper below the threshold of consciousness and produced the same mocking smile that had faced the world for most of his adult life.

  "I wonder how our esteemed ratcat masters are taking it," he said. "Been a while since the ones here've had to lap out of the same saucer as us lowlife monkey-boys. I'd like to see it, I truly would."

  * * *

  " . . . estimate probability of successful interception at less than one-fifth," the figure in the screen said. "Vengeance-Fang and Rampant-Slayer do not respond to signals. Lurker-At-Waterholes continues to accelerate at right angles to the ecliptic. We must assume they were struck by the ramscoop fields."

  The governor watched closely; the slight bristle of whiskers and rapid open-shut flare of wet black nostrils was a sign of intense frustration.

  "You have leapt well, Traat-Admiral," Chuut-Riit said formally. "Break off pursuit. The distant shadow-watchers would have their chance."

  A good tactician, Traat-Admiral; if he had come from a better family, he would have a double name by now. Would have a double name, when Earth was conquered, a name, and vast wealth. One percent of all the product of the new conquest for life, since he was to be in supreme military command of the Fifth Fleet. That would make him founder of a Noble Line, his bones in a worship shrine for a thousand generations; Chuut-Riit had hinted that he would send several of his daughters to the admiral's harem, letting him mingle his blood with that of the Patriarch.

  "Chuut-Riit, are we to let the . . . the . . . omnivores escape unscathed?" The admiral's ears were quivering with the effort required to keep them out at parade-rest.

  A rumble came from the space-armored figures that bulked in the dim orange light behind the flotilla commandant. Good, the planetary governor thought. They are not daunted.

  "Your bloodlust is commendable, Traat-Admiral, but the fact remains that the human ship is traveling at velocities which render it . . . It is at a different point on the energy gradient, Traat-Admiral."

  "We can pursue as it leaves the system!"

  "In ships designed to travel at point-eight lightspeed? From
behind? Remember the Human Lesson. That is a very effective reaction drive they are using."

  A deep ticking sound came from his throat, and Traat-Admiral's ears laid back instinctively. The thought of trying to maneuver past that planetary-length sword of nuclear fire . . .

  Chuut-Riit paused to let the thought sink home before continuing: "This has been a startling tactic. We assumed that possession of the gravity polarizer would lead the humans to neglect further development of their so-efficient reaction drives, as we had done; hr'rrearow t'chssseee mearowet'aatrurrte, this-does-not-follow. We must prepare countermeasures, investigate the possibility of ramscoop interstellar missiles . . . At least they did not strike at this system's sun, or drop a really large mass into the planetary gravity well."

  The fur of the kzin on Throat-Ripper's bridge lay flat, sculpting the bone-and-muscle planes of their faces.

  "Indeed, Chuut-Riit," Traat-Admiral said fervently.

  "A series of polarizer-driven missiles, with laser-cannon boost, deployed ready to destabilize ramscoop fields . . . In any case, you are ordered to break off action, assist with emergency rescue efforts, detach two units with interstellar capacity to shadow the intruder until it leaves the immediate vicinity. Waste no more Heroes in futility; instead, we must repair the damage and redouble our preparations for the next attack on Sol."

  "As you command, Chuut-Riit, although it goes against the grain to let the leaf-eating monkeys escape, when the Fifth Fleet is so near completion."

  The governor rose, letting his weight forward on hands whose claws slid free. He restrained any further display of impatience. I must teach him to think. To think correctly, he must be allowed to make errors.

  "Its departure has already been delayed. Will losing further units in fruitless pursuit speed the repairs and modifications which must be made? Attend to your orders!"

  "At once, Chuut-Riit!"

  The governor held himself impressively immobile until the screen blanked. Then he turned and leaped with a tearing shriek over the nearest wall, out into the unnatural storm and darkness. A half-hour later he returned, meditatively picking bits of hide and bone from between his teeth with a thumb-claw. His pelt was plastered flat with mud, leaves, and blood, and a thorned branch had cut a bleeding trough across his sloping forehead. The screens were still flicking between various disasters, each one worse than the last.

  "Any emergency calls?" he asked mildly.

  "None at the priority levels you established," the computer replied.

  "Murmeroumph," he said, opening his mouth wide into the killing gape to get at an irritating fragment between two of the back shearing teeth. "Staff."

  One wall turned to the ordered bustle of the household's management centrum. "Ah, Henrietta," he said in Wunderlander. "You have that preliminary summary ready?"

  The human swallowed and averted her eyes from the bits of something that the kzin was flicking from his fangs and muzzle. The others behind her were looking drawn and tense as well, but no signs of panic. If I could recognize them, the kzin thought. They panic differently. A Hero overcome with terror either fled, striking out at anything in his path, or went into mindless berserker frenzy.

  Berserker, he mused thoughtfully. The concept was fascinating; reading of it had convinced him that kzin and humankind were enough alike to cooperate effectively.

  "Yes, Chuut-Riit," she was saying. "Installations Seven, Three, and Twelve in the north polar zone have been effectively destroyed, loss of industrial function in the seventy-five to eighty percent range. Over ninety percent at Six, the main fusion generator destabilized in the pulse from a near-miss." Ionization effects had been quite spectacular. "Casualties in the range of five thousand Heroes, thirty thousand humans. Four major orbital facilities hit, but there was less collateral damage there, of course, and more near-misses." No air to transmit blast in space. "Reports from the asteroid belt still coming in."

  "Merrower," he said, meditatively. Kzin government was heavily decentralized; the average Hero did not make a good bureaucrat, that was work for slaves and computers. A governor was expected to confine himself to policy decisions. Still . . . "Have my personal spaceship prepared for lift. I will be doing a tour."

  Henrietta hesitated. "Ah, noble Chuut-Riit, the feral humans will be active, with defense functions thrown out of order."

  She was far too experienced to mistake Chuut-Riit's expression for a smile.

  "Markham and his gang? I hope they do, Henrietta, I sincerely hope they do." He relaxed. "I'll view the reports from here. Send in the groomers; my pelt must be fit to be seen." A pause. "And replacements for one of the bull buffalo in the holding pen."

  The kzin threw himself down on the pillow behind his desk, massive head propped with its chin on the stone surface of the workspace. Grooming would help him think. Humans were so good at it . . . and blowdryers, blowdryers alone were worth the trouble of conquering them.

  * * *

  "Prepare for separation," the computer said. The upper field of the Catskinner's screen was a crawling slow-motion curve of orange and yellow and darker spots; the battle schematic showed the last few slugs dropping away from the Yamamoto, using the gravity of the sun to whip around and curve out toward targets in a different quarter of the ecliptic plane. More than a few were deliberately misaimed, headed for catastrophic destruction in Alpha Centauri's photosphere as camouflage.

  It can't be getting hotter, he thought.

  "Gottdamn, it's hot," Ingrid said. "I'm swine-sweating."

  Thanks, he thought, refraining from speaking aloud with a savage effort. "Purely psychosomatic," he grated.

  "There's one thing I regret," Ingrid continued.

  "What's that?"

  "That we're not going to be able to see what happens when the Catskinner and those slugs make a high-Tau transit of the sun's outer envelope," she said.

  Jonah felt a smile crease the rigid sweat-slick muscles of his face. The consequences had been extrapolated, but only roughly. At the very least, there would be solar-flare effects like nothing this system had ever witnessed before, enough to foul up every receptor pointed this way. "It would be interesting, at that."

  "Prepare for separation," the computer continued. "Five seconds and counting."

  One. Ingrid had crossed herself just before the field went on. Astonishing. There were worse people to be crammed into a Dart with for a month, even among the more interesting half of the human race.

  Two. They were probably going to be closer to an active star than any other human beings had ever been and survived to tell the tale. Provided they survived, of course.

  Three. His grandparents had considered emigrating to the Wunderland system; he remembered them complaining about how the Belt had been then, everything regulated and taxed to death, and psychists hovering to resanitize your mind as soon as you came in from a prospecting trip. If that'd happened, he might have ended up as a conscript technician with the Fourth Fleet.

  Four. Or a guerrilla: the prisoners had mentioned activity by "feral humans." Jonah bared his teeth in an expression a kzin would have had no trouble at all understanding. I intend to remain very feral indeed. The kzin may have done us a favor; we were well on the way to turning ourselves into sheep when they arrived. If I'm going to be a monkey, I'll be a big, mean baboon, by choice.

  Five. Ingrid was right, it was a pity they wouldn't be able to see it.

  "Personally, I just wish that ARM bastard who volunteered me for this was here—"

  —discontinuity—

  "Ready for separation, sir," the computer said.

  Buford Early grunted. He was alone in the corvette's control room; none of the others had wanted to come out of deepsleep just to sit helplessly and watch their fate decided by chance.

  "The kzinti aren't the ones who should be called pussies," he said. Early chuckled softly, enjoying a pun not one human in ten million would have appreciated. Patterns of sunlight crawled across his face from the screens; the Inn
er Ring was built inside the hull of a captured kzinti corvette, but the UNSN—and the ARM—had stuffed her full of surprises. "I don't know what the youth of today is coming to."

  At that he laughed outright; he had been born into a family of the . . . even mentally, he decided not to specify . . . secret path. Born a long, long time ago, longer even than the creaking quasi-androids of the Struldbrug Club would have believed; there were geriatric technologies that the ARM and its masters guarded as closely as the weapons and destabilizing inventions people knew about.

  Damn, but I'm glad the Long Peace is over, he mused. It had been far too long, whatever the uppermost leadership thought, although of course he had backed the policy. Besides, there was no real fun in being master in the Country of the Cows; Earthers had gotten just plain boring, however docile.

  "Boring this isn't, no jive," he said, watching the disk of Alpha Centauri grow. "About—"

  —discontinuity—

  "Greow-Captain, there is an anomaly in the last projectile!"

  "They are all anomalies, Sensor-Operator!" The commander did not move his eyes from the schematic before his face, but his tone held conviction that the humans had used irritatingly nonstandard weapons solely to annoy and humiliate him. Behind his back, the other two kzin exchanged glances and moved expressive ears.

  The Slasher-class armed scout held three crewkzin in its delta-shaped control chamber: the commander forward and the Sensor and Weapons operators behind him to either side. There were three small screens instead of the single larger divisible one a human boat of the same size would have had, and many more manually activated controls. Kzin had broader-range senses than humans, faster reflexes, and they trusted cybernetic systems rather less. They had also had gravity control almost from the beginning of spaceflight; a failure serious enough to immobilize the crew usually destroyed the vessel.

  "Simply tell me," the kzin commander said, "if our particle-beam is driving it down." The cooling system was whining audibly as it pumped energy into its central tank of degenerate matter, and still the cabin was furnace-hot and dry, full of the wild odors of fear and blood that the habitation-system poured out in combat conditions. The ship shuddered and banged as it plunged in a curve that was not quite suicidally close to the outer envelope of the sun.