The Houses of the Kzinti

by Larry Niven

  The kzin superintendent of Munchen stopped its restless striding and stood close, smiling, its tail held stiffly beside one column-thick leg. Two and a half meters tall, a thickly padded cartoon-figure cat that might have looked funny in a holo, it grinned down at him with the direct gaze that was as much a threat display as the bared fangs.

  "You play your monkey games of position and money, while the enemies of the Patriarchy scurry and bite in the underbrush." Its head swiveled toward the police chief's desk. "Scroll!"

  Data began to move across the suddenly transparent surface, with a moving schematic of the Serpent Swarm; colors and symbols indicated feral-human attacks. Ships lost, outposts raided, automatic cargo containers hijacked . . .

  "Comparative!" the kzin snapped. Graphs replaced the schematic. "Distribution!

  "See," he continued. "Raids of every description have sprouted like fungus since the sthondat-spawned Sol-monkeys made their coward's passage through this system. With no discernible pattern. And even the lurkers in the mountains are slipping out to trouble the estates again."

  "With respect, Ktiir-Supervisor-of-Animals, my sphere of responsibility is the human population of this city. There has been little increase in feral activity here."

  Claws rested centimeters from his eyes. "Because this city is the locus where feral-human packs dispose of their loot, exchange information and goods, meet and coordinate—paying their percentage to you! Yes, yes, we have heard your arguments that it is better for this activity to take place where our minions may monitor it, and they are logical enough—while we lack the number of Heroes necessary to reduce this system to true order and are preoccupied with the renewed offensive against Sol."

  He mumbled under his breath, and Montferrat caught an uncomplimentary reference to Chuut-Riit.

  The human bowed again. "Ktiir-Supervisor-of-Animals, most of the groups operating against the righteous rule of the Patriarchy are motivated by material gain; this is a characteristic of my species. They cooperate with the genuine rebels, but it is an alliance plagued by mistrust and mutual contempt; furthermore, the rebels themselves are as much a grouping of bands as a unified whole." And were slowly dying out, until the UN demonstrated its reach so spectacularly. Now they'll have recruits in plenty again, and the bandits will want to draw the cloak of respectable Resistance over themselves.

  His mind cautiously edged toward a consideration of whether it was time to begin hedging his bets, and he forced it back. The kzin used telepaths periodically to check the basic loyalties of their senior servants. That was one reason he had never tried to reach the upper policy levels of the collaborationist government, that and . . . a wash of non-thought buried the speculation.

  "Accordingly, if their activity increases, our sources of information increase likewise. Once the confusion of the, ah, passing raid dies down, we will be in a position to make further gains. Perhaps to trap some of the greater leaders, Markham or Hirose."

  "And you will take your percentage of all these transactions," Ktiir-Supervisor-of-Animals said with heavy irony. "Remember that a trained monkey that loses its value may always serve as monkeymeat. Remember where your loyalties ultimately lie, in this insect-web of betrayals you fashion, slave."

  Yes, thought Montferrat, dabbing at his forehead as the kzin left. I must remember that carefully.

  "Collation," he said to his desk. "Attack activity." The schematic returned. "Eliminate all post-Yamamoto raids that correlate with seventy-five percent MO mapping to pre-Yamamoto attacks."

  A scattering, mostly directed toward borderline targets that had been too heavily protected for the makeshift boats of the Free Wunderland space-guerrillas, disconcertingly many of them on weapons-fabrication plants, with nearly as many seizing communications, stealthing, command-and-control components. Once those were passed along to the other asteroid lurkers, all hell was going to break lose. And gravity-polarization technology was becoming more and more widespread as well. The kzin had tried to keep it strictly for their own ships and for manufacturing use, but the principles were not too difficult, and the methods the Patriarchy introduced were heavily dependent on it.

  "Now, correlate filtered attacks with past ten-year pattern for bandits Markham, McAllistaire, Finbogesson, Cheung, Latimer, Wu. Sequencing.

  "Scheisse," he whispered. Markham, without a doubt: the man did everything by the book, and you could rewrite the manuscript by watching him. Now equipped with something whose general capacities were equivalent to a kzin Stalker, and proceeding in a methodical amplification of the sort of thing he had been doing before . . . Markham was the right sort for the Protracted Struggle, all right. He'd read his Mao and Styrikawsi and Laugidis, even if he gave Clausewitz all the credit.

  "Code, Till Eulenspiegel. Lock previous analysis, non-redo, simulate other pattern if requested. Stop."

  "Stop and locked," the desk said.

  Montferrat relaxed. At least partly, the Eulenspiegel file was supposedly secure. Certainly none of his subordinates had it, or they would have gone to the ratcats with it long ago; there was more than enough in there to make him prime monkeymeat. He swallowed convulsively; as Police Chief of Munchen, he was obliged to screen the kzin hunts far too frequently. Straightening, he adjusted the lapels of his uniform and walked to the picture window that formed one wall of the office. Behind him stretched the sleek expanse of feathery down-dropper-pelt rugs over marble tile, the settees and loungers of pebbled but butter-soft okkaran hide. A Matisse and two Vorenagles on the walls, and a priceless Pierneef . . . he stopped at the long oak bar and poured himself a single glass of Maivin; that was permissible.

  Interviews with the kzin Supervisor-of-Animals were always rather stressful. Montferrat sipped, looking down on the low-pitched tile roofs of Old Munchen: carefully restored since the fighting, whatever else went short. The sprawling shanty-suburbs and shoddy gimcrack factories of recent years were elsewhere. This ten-story view might almost be as he had known it as a student, the curving tree-lined streets that curled through the hills beside the broad blue waters of the Donau. Banked flowers beside the pedestrian ways, cafés, the honeygold quadrangles of the University, courtyarded homes built around expanses of greenery and fountains. Softly blooming frangipani and palms and gumblossom in the parks along the river; the gothic flamboyance of the Ritterhaus, where the Landholders had met in council before the kzin came. And the bronze grouping in the great square before it, the Nineteen Founders.

  Memory rose before him, turning the hard daylight of afternoon to a soft summer's night; he was young again, arm in arm with Ingrid and Harold and a dozen of their friends, the new students' caps on their heads. They had come from the beercellar and hours of swaying song, the traditional graduation-night feast, and they were all a little merry. Not drunk, but happy and in love with all the world, a universe and a lifetime opening out before them. The three of them had led the scrambling mob up the granite steps of the plinth, to put their white-and-gold caps on the three highest sculpted heads, and they had ridden the bronze shoulders and waved to the sea of dancing, laughing young faces below. Fireworks had burst overhead, yellow and green . . . Shut up, he told himself. The present was what mattered. The UN raid had not been the simple smash-on-the wing affair it seemed, not at all.

  "I knew it," he muttered. "It wasn't logical, they didn't do as much damage as they could have." The kzin had not thought so, but then, they had a predator's reflexes. They just did not think in terms of mass destruction; their approach to warfare was too pragmatic for that. Which was why their armament was so woefully lacking in planet-busting weapons: the thought of destroying valuable real estate did not occur to them. Montferrat had run his own projections: with weapons like that ramship, you could destabilize stars.

  "And humans do think that way." So there must have been some other point to the raid, and not merely to get an effective ship to the Free Wunderlanders. Nothing overt, which left something clandestine. Intelligence work. Perhaps elsewhere in the
system, pray God elsewhere in the system, not in his backyard. But it would be just as well . . .

  He crossed to the desk. "Axelrod-Bauergartner," he said.

  A holo of his second-in-command formed, seated at her desk. The meter-high image put down its coffee cup and straightened. "Yes, Chief?"

  "I want redoubled surveillance on all entry-exit movements in the Greater Munchen area. Everything, top priority. Activate all our contacts, call in favors, lean on everybody we can lean on. I'll be sending you some data on deep-hook threads I've been developing among the hardcore ferals."

  He saw her look of surprise; that was one of the holecards he used to keep his subordinates in order. Poor Axelrod-Bauergartner, he thought. You want this job so much, and would do it so badly. I've held it for twenty years because I've got a sense of proportion; you'd be monkeymeat inside six months.

  "Zum befhel, Chief."

  "Our esteemed superiors also wish evidence of our zeal. Get them some monkeymeat for the next hunt, nobody too crucial."

  "I'll round up the usual suspects, Chief."

  The door retracted, and a white-coated steward came in with a covered wheeled tray. Montferrat looked up, checking . . . yes, the chilled Bloemvin 2337, the heart-of-palm salad, the paté . . . "And for now, send in the exit-visa applicant, the one who was having the problems with the paperwork."

  The projected figure grinned wickedly. "Oh, her. Right away, Chief." Montferrat flicked the transmission out of existence and rose, smoothing down his uniform jacket and flicking his mustaches into shape with a deft forefinger. This job isn't all grief, he mused happily.

  "Recode Till Eulenspiegel," Yarthkin said, leaning back. "Interesting speculation, Claude old kamerat," he mused. The bucket chair creaked as he leaned back, putting his feet up on the cluttered desk. The remains of a cheese-and-mustard sandwich rested at his elbow, perched waveringly on a stack of printout. The office around him was a similar clutter, bookcases and safe and a single glowlight, a narrow cubicle at the alley-wall of the bar. Shabby and rundown and smelling of beer and old socks, except for the extremely up-to-date infosystem built into the archaic wooden desk; one of the reasons the office was so shabby was that nobody but Ogreson was allowed in, and he was an indifferent housekeeper at best.

  He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. Have to crank up my contacts, he thought. Activity's going to heat up systemwide, and there's no reason I shouldn't take advantage of it. Safety's sake, too: arse to the wall, ratcats over all. This wasn't all to get our heroic Herrenmann in the Swarm a new toy; that was just a side-effect, somehow.

  "Sam," he said, keying an old-fashioned manual toggle. "Get me Suuomalisen."

  * * *

  "Finagle," Jonah muttered under his breath. Munchenport was solidly cordoned off, antiaircraft missiles and heavy beamers all around it, and the shuttle station had been moved out into open country. The station was a series of square extruded buildings and open spaces for the gravitic shuttles, mostly for freight; the passenger traffic was a sideline. "Security's tight."

  Ingrid smiled at the guard and handed over their ident-cards. The man smiled back and fed them into the reader, waiting a few seconds while the machine read the data, scanned the two Belters for congruence, and consulted the central files.

  "Clear," he said, and shifted into Wunderlander: "Enjoy your stay planetside. God knows, more trying to get off than on, what with casualties from the raid and all."

  "Thank you," Jonah said; his command of the language was adequate, and his accent would pass among non-Belters. "It was pretty bad out in the Belt, too."

  The lineup moving through the scanners in the opposite direction stretched hundreds of meters into the barnlike gloom of the terminal building. A few were obviously space-born returning home, but most were thicker-built, as those brought up under even as feeble a gravity as Wunderland's tended to be, families with crying children and string-tied parcels, or ragged-looking laborers. They smelled, of unwashed bodies and poverty, a peculiar sweet-sour odor blending with the machinery-and-synthetics smell of the building and the residual ozone of heavy power release. More raw material for the industries of the Serpent Swarm, attracted by the higher wages and the lighter hand of the kzin off-planet.

  "Watch it," Ingrid said. The milling crowds silenced and parted as a trio of the felinoids walked through trailed by human servants with baggage on maglifters; Jonah caught snatches of the Hero's Tongue, technical jargon. They both wheeled at a sudden commotion. The guards were closing in on an emigrant at the head of the line, a man arguing furiously with the checker.

  "It's right!" he screamed. "I paid good money for it, all we got for the farm, it's right!"

  "Look, scheisskopf, the machine says there's no record of it. Raus! You're holding up the line."

  "It's the right paper, let me through!" The man lunged, trying to vault the turnstile. The guard at the checker recoiled, shrieked as the would-be traveler slammed down his metal-edged carryall on her arm. The two agents could hear the wet crackle of broken bone even at five meters' distance, and then the madman's body disappeared behind a circle of helmeted heads, marked by the rise and fall of shockrods. The others in the line drew back, as if afraid of infection, and the police dragged the man off by his arms; the injured one followed, holding her splintered arm and kicking the semiconscious form with every other step.

  "Monkeymeat, you're monkeymeat, shithead," she shrilled, and kicked him again. There was solid force behind the blow, and she grunted with the effort and winced as it jarred her arm.

  "Tanj," Jonah said softly. The old curse: there ain't no justice.

  "No, there isn't," Ingrid answered. "Come on, the railcar's waiting."

  * * *

  "And the word from the Nippojen in Tiamat is that two important ferals will be coming through soon," Suuomalisen said.

  Yarthkin leaned back, sipping at his coffee and considering him. Suuomalisen was fat, even by Wunderland standards, where the .61 standard gravity made it easy to carry extra tissue. His head was pink, egg-bald, with a beak of a nose over a slit mouth and a double chin; the round body was expensively covered in a suit of white natural silk with a conservative black cravat and onyx ring. The owner of Harold's Terran Bar waited patiently while his companion tucked a linen handkerchief into his collar and began eating: scrambled eggs with scallions, grilled wurst, smoked kopjfissche, biscuits.

  "You set a marvelous table, my friend," the fat man said. They were alone in the dining nook; Harold's did not serve breakfast, except for the owner and staff. "Twice I have offered your cook a position in my Suuomalisen's Sauna, and twice she has refused. You must tell me your secret."

  Acquaintance, not friend, Harold thought. And my chef prefers to work for someone who lets her people quit if they want to. Mildly: "From the Free Wunderland people? They've been doing better at getting through to the bands in the Jotunscarp recently."

  "No, no, these are special somehow. Carrying special goods, something that will upset the ratcats very much. The tip was vague; I don't know if my source was not informed or whether the slant-eyed devils are just playing both ends against the middle again." A friendly leer. "If you could identify them for me, my friend, I'd be glad to share the police reward. Not from Montferrat, from lower down . . . strictly confidential, of course; I wouldn't want to cut into the income you get from those who think this is the safest place in town."

  "Suuomalisen, has anyone ever told you what a toad you are?" Yarthkin said, butting out the cigarette in the cold remains of the coffee.

  "Many times, many times! But a very successful toad."

  The shrewd little eyes blinked at him. "Harold, my friend, it is a grief to me that you take such little advantage of this excellent base of operations. A fine profit source, and you have wonderful contacts; think of the use you could make of them! You should diversify, my friend. Into contracting, it is a natural with the suppliers you have. Then, with your gambling, you could bid for the lottery contrac
ts—perhaps even get into Guild work!"

  "I'll leave that to you, Suuomalisen. Your Sauna is a good 'base of operations'; me, I run a bar and some games in the back, and I put people together sometimes. That's all. The tree that grows too high attracts the attention of people with axes."

  The fat man shook his head. "You independent entrepreneurs must learn to move with the times, and the time of the little man is past . . . Ah, well, I must be going."

  Yarthkin nodded. "Thanks for the tip. I'll have Wendy send round a case of the kirsch. Good stuff, pre-War."

  "Pre-War!" The fat man's eyes lit. "Generous, generous. Where do you get such stuff?"

  From ex-affluent people who can't pay their gambling debts, Yarthkin thought. "You have to let me keep a few little secrets; little secrets for little men."

  A laugh from the fat man. "And again, any time you wish to join my organization . . . or even just to sell Harold's Terran Bar, my offer stands. I'll even promise to keep on all your people; they make the ambience of the place anyway."

  "No deal, Suuomalisen. Thanks for the consideration, though."

  * * *

  Dripping, Jonah padded back out of the shower; at least here in Munchen, nobody was charging you a month's wages for hot water. Ingrid was standing at the window toweling her hair and letting the evening breeze dry the rest of her. The room was narrow, part of an old mansion split into the cubicles of a cheap transients' hotel; there were more luxurious places in easy walking distance, but they would be the haunt of the local elite. He joined her at the opening and put an arm around her shoulders. She sighed and looked down the sloping street to the rippled surface of the Donau and the traffic of sailboats and barges. A metal planter creaked on chains below the window; it smelled of damp earth and half-dead flowers.

  "This is the oldest section of Munchen," she said slowly. "There wasn't much else, when I was a student here. Five years ago, my time . . . and the buildings I knew are old and shabby . . . There must be a hundred thousand people living here now!"