The Houses of the Kzinti

by Larry Niven

  "Telepath's reading agrees with what the trained monkeys determined with their truth drugs." Chuut-Riit reminded himself that the drugs actually merely suppressed inhibition. "The attempt was a last-minute afterthought to the main attack of the monkey ship last month. Some gravitic device was used to decelerate a pod with these two; they came down in a remote area, using the disturbances of the attack as cover, and reached the city on foot. Their aim was to trigger the self-destruct mechanisms on your estate, but they were unable to do so."

  Chuut-Riit brooded, looking past the kzin liaison officer to the human behind him. "You are not the human in charge of the Munchen police," he said.

  "No, Chuut-Riit," the human said. It was a female. A flabby one, the sort that would squish unpleasantly when your fangs ripped open the body cavity, and somehow the holo gave the impression of an unpleasant odor.

  "I am Chief Assistant Axelrod-Bauergartner at your service, Dominant One," she continued, giving the title in a reasonably good approximation of the Hero's Tongue. A little insolent? Perhaps—but also commendable, and the deferential posture was faultless. "Chief Montferrat-Palme delegated this summary of the investigation, feeling that it was not important enough to warrant his personal attention."

  "Chrrrriii," Chuut-Riit said, scratching one cheek against a piece of driftwood in a stand on his desk. This Montferrat-creature did not consider an attack on the governor's private control system important? That monkey was developing a distorted sense of its priorities. The human in the screen had blanched slightly at the kzin equivalent of an irritated scowl; he let his lips lower back over the fangs and continued:

  "Show me the subjects." Axelrod-Bauergartner stepped aside, to show two humans clamped in adjustable plastic brackets amid a forest of equipment. These were two fine specimens, tall and lean in the manner of the space-bred subspecies; both unconscious, but seeming healthy enough apart from the usual superficial cuts, abrasions, and bruises. "What is their condition?"

  "No irreparable physical or mental harm, Chuut-Riit," Axelrod-Bauergartner said, bowing. "What are your orders as to their disposal?"

  "Rrrrr," Chuut-Riit mused, shifting to rub the underside of his jaw on the wood. The last public hunt had been yesterday, the one to which he had taken his sons. "How soon can they be in condition to run amusingly?" he said.

  "Half a week, Chuut-Riit. We have been cautious."

  "Prepare them." His sons? No, best not to be too indulgent. There was a badsmelling lot of administrative work to be attended to; he would be chained to his desk for a goodly while anyway. Let the little devils attend to their studies, and he would visit them again when this had been disposed of. Besides, while free there had been a certain attraction in the prospect of dealing with this pair personally; as captives they were just two more specimens of monkeymeat—beneath his dignity.

  "Get a good batch together, and have them all ready for the Public Preserve at the end of the week. Dismissed."

  * * *

  "Was that Suuomalisen I saw coming out of here?" Montferrat said.

  "Unless you know another fat, sweaty toad in a linen suit looking like he'd just swallowed the juiciest fly on the planet." Yarthkin grinned like a shark as he settled behind his desk and pushed a pile of data chips and hardcopy to one side. "Sit yourself down, Claude, and have a drink. If it isn't too early."

  "Fifteen hundred too early? That's in bad taste, even for you." But the hand that reached for the Maivin shook slightly, and there were wrinkles in the tunic. "But why was he so happy?"

  "I just sold him Harold's Terran Bar," Yarthkin said calmly. Light-headed, he laughed, a boy's laugh. "Prosit!" he toasted, and tossed back his own drink.

  "What!" That was enough to bring him bolt-upright. "Why—what—you've been turning that swine down for thirty years!"

  "Swine, Claude?" Yarthkin leaned forward, resting his chin on paired thumbs. "Or have you forgotten exactly who's to be monkeymeat day after tomorrow?"

  The reaction was more than Yarthkin had expected. A jerk, as if a high-voltage current surged through the other man's body. A dry retching sound. Then, incredibly, the aquiline Herrenmann's face crumpled. As if it were a mask, slumping and wrinkling like a balloon from which the air has been withdrawn . . . and he was crying, head slumping down into his hands. Yarthkin swallowed and looked away; Claude was a collabo and a sellout, an extortionist without shame . . . but nobody should see another man this naked. It was obscene.

  "Pull yourself together, Claude; I've known you were a bastard for forty years, but I thought you were a man, at least."

  "So did I," gasped Montferrat. "I even have the medals to prove it. I fought well in the war."

  "I know."

  "So when, when they let us out of the detention camp, I really thought I could help. I really did." He laughed. "Life had to go on, criminals had to be caught, we were beaten and resistance just made it harder on everyone. I'd been a good policeman. I still could be."

  He drank, choked, drank. "The graft, everyone had to. They wouldn't let you get past foot-patrol if you weren't on the pad too, you had to be in it with them. If I didn't get promotion how could I accomplish anything? I told myself that, but every year a little more of me was gone. And now, now Ingrid's back and I can see myself in her eyes and I know what I am, no better than that animal Axelrod-Bauergartner, she's gloating, she has me on this and I couldn't, couldn't do it. I told her to take care of it all and went and I've been drunk most of the time since, she'll have my head and I deserve it, why try and stop her, it—"

  Yarthkin leaned forward and slapped the policeman alongside the head with his open palm, a gunshot crack in the narrow confines of the office. Montferrat's mood switched with mercurial swiftness, and he snarled with a mindless sound as he reached for his sidearm. But alcohol is a depressant, and his hand had barely touched the butt before the other man's stunner was pointed between his eyes.

  "Neyn, neyn, naughty," Yarthkin said cheerfully. "Hell of a headache, Claude. Now, I won't say you don't deserve it, but sacrificing your own liver and lights isn't going to do Ingrid any good." He kept the weapon unwavering until Montferrat had won back a measure of self-command, then laid it down on the desk and offered a cigarette.

  "My apologies," Montferrat said, wiping off his face with a silk handkerchief. "I do despise self-pity." The shredded cloak of his ironic detachment settled about him.

  Yarthkin nodded. "That's better, sweetheart. I'm selling the club because I need ready capital, for relocation. Grubstaking my people, the ones who don't want to come with me or stay here."

  "Go with you? Where? And what does this have to do with Ingrid?"

  Yarthkin grinned again, tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. Exhilaration filled him, and something that had been missing for far too long. What? he thought. Not youth . . . yes, that's it. Purpose.

  "It isn't every man who's given a chance to do it over right," he said. "That, friend Claude, is what I'm going to do. We're going to bust Ingrid out of that Preserve. Give her a chance at it, at least." He held up a hand. "Don't fuck with me, Claude, I know as well as you that the system there is managed through Munchen Police HQ. One badly mangled corpse substituted for another, what ratcat's to know? It's been done before."

  "Not by me," Montferrat said, shaking his head dully. "I always kept out of the setup side of the Hunts. Couldn't . . . I have to watch them, anyway, too often."

  Odd how men cling to despair, once they've hit bottom, Yarthkin thought. As if hope were too much effort. Is that what surrender is, then, just giving in to exhaustion of the soul?

  Aloud: "Computer, access file Till Eulenspiegel."

  The surface of his desk flashed transparent and lit with a series of coded text-columns. Montferrat came erect with a shaken oath.

  "How . . . if you had that, all these years, why haven't you used it?"

  "Claude, the great drawback of blackmail is that it gives the victim the best possible incentive to find a permanent way of shutting yo
u up. Risky, especially when dealing with the police. As to the how, you're not under the impression that you get the best people in the police, are you?" A squint, and the gravelly voice went soft. "Don't think I wouldn't use it, sweetheart, if you won't cooperate, and there's more than enough to put you in the edible-delicacy category. Think of it as God's way of giving you an incentive to get back on the straight and narrow."

  "I tell you, Axelrod-Bauergartner has the command codes for the Preserve! I can override, but it would be flagged. Immediately."

  "Computer, display file Niebelungen AA37Bi22. Damned lack of imagination, that code . . . There it is, Claude. Everything you always wanted to know about your most ambitious subordinate but were afraid to ask, including her private bypass programs." Another flick of ash. "Finagle, Claude, you can probably make all this look like her fault, even if the ratcat smells the proverbial rodent."

  Montferrat smoothed down his uniform tunic, and it was as if the gesture slicked transparent armor across his skin once more. "You appear to have me by the short and sensitives, kamerat," he said lightly. "Not entirely to my dismay. The plan is, then, that Ingrid and her gallant Sol-Belter are whisked away from under the noses of the kzin, while you go to ground?"

  Yarthkin laughed, a shocking sound. "Appearances to the contrary, Claude old son, you were always the romantic of us two. The one for the noble gesture. Nothing of the sort: Ingrid and I are going to the Swarm."

  "And the man, Jonah?"

  "Fuck him. Let the ratcats have him. His job was done the minute they failed to dig the real story out of him."

  Montferrat managed a laugh. "This is quite a reversal of roles, Hari . . . but this, this final twist, it makes it seem possible, somehow." He extended a hand. "Seeing as you have the gun to my head, why not? Working together again, eh?"

  * * *

  "All right, listen up," the guard said.

  Jonah shook his head, shook out the last of the fog. Ingrid sat beside him on the plain slatted wood of the bench, in this incongruous pen—change-rooms for a country club, once. Now a set of run-down stone buildings in the midst of shaggy overgrown wilderness, with the side open to the remnants of lawn and terrace covered with a shockfield. He looked around; there were a round two dozen humans with them, all clad alike in gray prison trousers and shirts. All quiet. The shockrods of the guards had enforced that. Some weeping, a few catatonic, and there was an unpleasant fecal smell.

  "You get an hour's start," the guard said, in a voice of bored routine. "And you'd better run, believe me."

  "Up yours!" somebody shouted, and laughed when the guard raised her rod. "What you going to do, ratcat-lover, condemn me to death?"

  The guard shrugged. "You ever seen a house cat playing with a mumbly?" she jeered. "The ratcats like a good chase. Disappoint them and they'll bat you around like a toy." She stepped back, and the door opened. "Hell, keep ahead of them for two days and maybe they'll let you go." A burly man rose and charged, bounced back as she took another step through the door.

  Laughter, through the transparent surface. "Have fun, porkchops. I'll watch you die. Five minutes to shield-down."

  "You all right?" Jonah asked. Neither of them had been much damaged physically by the interrogation; it had been done in a police headquarters, where the most modern methods were available, not crude field-expedients. And the psychists' shields had worked perfectly; the great weakness of telepathic interrogation is that it can only detect what the subject believes to be true. It had been debatable whether the blocks and artificial memories would hold. . . . Kzin telepaths hated staying in a human's mind more than they had to, and the drug addiction that helped to develop their talents did little for motivation or intelligence.

  "Fine," Ingrid said, raising her head from her knees. "Just thinking how pretty it is out there," she continued; tears starred her lashes, but her voice was steady.

  Startled, he looked again through the near-invisible shimmer of the shockfield. The long green-gold grass was rippling under a late-afternoon sun, starred with flowers like living jewel-flecks; a line of flamingos skimmed by, down to the little pond at the base of the hill. Beyond was forest, flowering dogwood in a fountain of white against the flickering-shiny olive drab of native kampfwald trees. The shockfield let slow-moving air through, carrying scents of leaf mold, green, purity.

  "You're right," he said. They clasped hands, embraced, stepped back and saluted each other formally. "It's been . . . good knowing you, Lieutenant Ingrid."

  "Likewise, Captain Jonah." A gamin smile. "Finagle's arse, we're not dead yet, are we?"

  "Huh. Hun-huh." Lights spun before Jonah's eyes, wrenching his stomach with more nausea. Gummy saliva blocked his mouth as he tumbled over the lip of the gully, crashing through brush that ripped and tore with living fingers of thorn and bramble. Tumble, roll, down through the brush-covered sixty-degree slope, out into the patch of gravel and sparse spaghetti-like grass analog at the bottom. To lie and rest, Murphy, to rest . . .

  Memories were returning. Evidently his subconscious believed there wouldn't be another interrogation. Believed they were dead already. My fingernail. I have to escape. And there's a laugh . . . but I have to try.

  He turned the final roll into a flip and came erect, facing in the direction of his flight; forced his diaphragm to breathe, stomach out to suck air into the bottom of the lungs. His chest felt tight and hot, as if the air pumping through it was nothing, vacuum, inert gas. Will kept him steady, blinked his eyes into focus. He was in a patch of bright sunlight, the forest above deep green-gold shade that flickered; the soil under his feet was damp, impossibly cool on his skin. The wind was blowing toward him, which meant that the kzin would be following ground-scent rather than what floated on the breeze. Kzin noses were not nearly as sensitive as a hound's, but several thousand times more acute than a human's.

  And I must stink to high heaven, he thought. Even then he could smell himself; he hawked and spat, taking a firmer grip on his improvised weapon. That was a length of branch and a rock half the size of his head, dangling from the end by thin strong vines; thank Murphy that Wunderland flora ran to creepers . . .

  "One," he muttered to himself. "There ain't no justice, I know, but please, just let me get one." His breathing was slowing, and he became conscious of thirst, then the gnawing emptiness under his ribs. The sun was high overhead; nearly a day already? How many of the others were still alive?

  A flicker of movement at the lip of the ravine, ten meters above him and twenty away. Jonah swung the stone-age morningstar around his head and roared. And the kzin halted its headlong four-footed rush, rose like an unfolding wall of brown-red dappled in the light at the edge of the tall trees, and slashed across with the white of teeth. Great round eyes, and he could imagine the pupils going pinpoint; the kzin homeworld was not only colder than Wunderland, it was dimmer. Batwing ears unfolding, straining for sound. He would have to stop that, their hearing was keen enough to pick a human heartbeat out of the background noise. This was a young male, he would be hot, hot for the kill and salt blood to quench his thirst and let him rest . . .

  "Come on, you kshat, you sthondat-eater," Jonah yelled in the snarling tones of the Hero's Tongue. "Come and get your Name, kinless offspring of cowards, come and eat turnips out of my shit, grass-grazer! Ch'rowl you!"

  The kzin screamed, a raw wailing shriek that echoed down the ravine; screamed again and leaped in an impossible soaring curve that took it halfway down the steep slope.

  "Now, Ingrid. Now!" Jonah shouted, and ran forward.

  The woman rose from the last, thicker scrub at the edge of the slope, where water nourished taller bushes. Rose just as the second bounding leap passed its arc, the kzin spread-eagled against the sky, taloned hands outstretched to grasp and tear. The three-meter pole rose with her, butt against the earth, sharpened tip reaching for the alien's belly. It struck, and the wet ripping sound was audible even over the berserk siren shriek of the young kzin's pain.

  It to
ppled forward and sideways, thrashing and ululating with the long pole transfixing it. Down onto Ingrid's position, and he forced rubbery leg muscles into a final sprint, a leap and scream of his own. Then he was there, in among the clinging brush and it was there too, convulsing. He darted in, swung, and the rock smashed into a hand that was lashing for his throat; the kzin wailed again, put its free hand to the spear, pulled while it kept him at bay with lunging snaps. Ingrid was on the other side with a second spear, jabbing; he danced in, heedless of the fangs, and swung two-handed. The rock landed at the juncture of thick neck and sloping shoulder, and something snapped. The shock of it ran back up his arms.

  The pair moved in, stabbing, smashing, block and wriggle and jump and strike, and the broken alien crawled toward them with inhuman vitality, growling and whimpering and moving even with the dull-pink bulge of intestine showing where it had ripped the jagged wood out of its flesh. Fur, flesh, scraps of leaf, dust scattering about . . . Until at last too many bones were broken and too much of the dark-red blood spilled, and it lay twitching. The humans lay just out of reach, sobbing back their breaths; Jonah could hear the kzin's cries over the thunder in his ears, hear them turn to high-pitched words in the Hero's Tongue:

  "It hurts . . ." The Sol-Belter rolled to his knees. His shadow fell across the battered, swollen eyes of his enemy. "It hurts . . . Mother, you've come back, Mother—" The shattered paw-hands made kneading motions. "Help me, take away the noise in my head, Mother . . ." Presently it died.

  "That's one for a pallbearer." The end of his finger throbbed. "Goddamn it, I can't escape!"

  Ingrid tried to rise, fell back with a faint cry. Jonah was at her side, hands moving on the ruffled tatters that streaked down one thigh.

  "How bad . . . ?" He pushed back the ruined cloth. Blood was runneling down the slim length of the woman's leg, not pumping but in a steady flow. "Damn, tanj, tanj, tanj!" He ripped at his shirt for a pressure-bandage, tied it on with the thin vines scattered everywhere about. "Here, here's your spear, lean on it, come on." He darted back to the body; there was a knife at its belt, a long heavy-bladed wtsai. Jonah ripped it free, looped the belt over one shoulder like a baldric.