The Man-Kzin Wars 02

by Larry Niven

  .. Silence," he said, and they shrank back into a heap. Chuut-Riit forced gentleness into his voice. "Something very bad has happened," he said. "Your brother was right, you must stay here and make no noise. Soon I... soon I or another adult will come and feed you. Do you understand?" Uncertain nods. "Put the knife back in the door when I go out. Then wait. Understand?"

  He swung the door shut and looked down into his son's face while the kits hammered the knifeblade under it from the inside.

  "You did not die in vain, my brave one," he whispered, very low, settling into a crouch with the sword ready. "Mari-Rift," he added, giving his dead son a full Name. Now I must wait. Wait to be sure none of the gone-mad ones had heard him, then do his best. There would be an alert, eventually. The infants did not have the hormone-driven manic energy of adolescents. They would survive.

  " Zroght-Guard-Captain," the human said. "Oh, thank God!”

  The head of the vice regal household troopers rose blinking from his sleeping-box, scratching vigorously behind one ear. "Yes, Henrietta?" he said.

  It's Chuut-Riit, "she said. "Zroght-Guard-Captain, it wasn't him who refused to answer, I knew it and now we've found tampering, the technicians say they missed something the first time, we still can't get through to him in the children's quarters. And the records say the armory's open and they haven't been fed for a week!”

  The guard-captain wasted no time in speech with the sobbing human; it would take enough time to physically breech the defenses of the children's quarters.

  "Hrrnnngg-ha," Chuut-Riit gasped, panting with lolling tongue. The corner of the exercise room had given him a little protection, the desks and machinery a little more. Now a dozen lanky bodies interlaced through the equipment about his feet, and the survivors had drawn back to the other end of the room. There was little sentience left in the eyes that peered at him out of the starved faces, not enough to use missile-weapons. Dim sunlight glinted on their teeth and the red gape of their mouths, on bellies fallen in below barrel-hoop ribs.

  That last rush almost had me, he thought. An odd detachment had settled over him; with a sad pride he noticed the coordination of their movements even now, spreading out in a semi-circle to bar the way to the doors. He was bleeding from a dozen superficial cuts, and the long sword felt like a bar of neutronium in his hands. The blade shone liquid-wet along its whole length now, and the hilt was slimy in his numb grip, slick with blood and the lymph from his burnt hands; he twisted it in a whistling circle that flung droplets as far as the closing pack. Chuut-Riit threw back his head and shrieked, an eerie keening sound that filled the vaulted chamber. They checked for a moment, shrinking back. If he could keep them ...

  Movement at his feet, from the pile of bodies. Cold in his side, so cold, looking down at the hilt of the w'tsai driven up into the lung, the overwhelming salt taste of his own blood. The one they called Spotty crawled free of the piled bodies, broken-backed but evading his weakened slash.

  "Kill him," the adolescent panted. "Kill the betrayer, kill him." The waiting children shrieked and leapt.

  "He must have made his stand here," Zroght-Guard-Captain said, looking around the nursery. The floor was a tumbled chaos of toys, wooden weapons, printout books; the walls still danced their holo gavotte of kits leaping amid grass and butterflies. There was very little of the kzin governor of the Alpha Centauri system left; a few of the major bones, and the skull, scattered among smaller fragments from his sons, the ones wounded in the fighting and unable to defend themselves from their ravenous brothers. The room stank of blood and old meat.

  '. Zroght-Guard-Captain!” one of the troopers said. They all tensed, fully-armed as they were. Most of the young ones were still at large, equipped from the practice rooms, and they seemed ghostly clever. "A message, Zroght-Guard-Captain." The warrior held up a pad of paper. The words were in a rusty brownish liquid, evidently written with a claw. Chuut-Riit's claw; that was his sigil at the bottom. The captain flipped up the visor of his helmet and read:

  Forgive them Zroght chirred. There might be time for that, after the succession struggle ended.

  "Gottdamn, they're out of range of the last pickup," Montferrat said. Yarthlan grunted, careful to stay behind the policeman. The transfer booth was an old one, left here when this was a country club. It stood in a secluded cleft below the rocky hill. Deactivated, supposedly permanently, it appeared on no kzin records. His hand felt tight and clammy on the handle of the stunner, and every rustle and creak in the wilderness about them was a lurking kzin. Teufel, I could use a smoke, he thought. Insane, of course, with ratcat noses coursing through the woods.

  "Are they alive?" he asked tightly.

  "The tracers are still active, but with this little interfacer I

  can't-Ingrid!"

  He made a half-step forward. A pair of scarecrow figures stumbled past the entrance to the cleft, halted with a swaying motion that spoke of despair born of utter exhaustion, The man was scratched and bloodied; Yarthkin's eyes widened at the scraps of dried fur and blood and matter clinging to the rude weapon in his hand. Both of them were spattered with simflar reminders, rank with the smell of it and the sweat that glistened in tracks through the dirt on their faces.- More yet on the sharpened pole that Ingrid leaned on as a crutch, and fresh blood on the bandage at her thigh.

  Jonah was straightening. "You here to help the pussies beat the bushes?" he panted. Ingrid looked up, blinked crusted eyes, moved closer to her companion. Yarthkin halted speechless, shook his head.

  "Actually, this is a mission of mercy," Montferrat began in his cool tone. Then words ripped out of him: "Gottdamn, there are two kzin coming up, I'm getting their h-acers." Fingers played over his interfacer. "They're stopping about a kilometer back-"

  "Where we left the body of the one we killed ,

  Jonah said. His eyes met Hari Yarthkin's levelly; the Wunderlander felt something lurch at the pit of his stomach at the dawning wonder in Ingrid's.

  “Yah, mission of mercy, time to get on with it," he said, stepping forward and planting the projector cone of his stunner firmly in Montferrats back. "Here."

  He reached, took the policeman's stunner from his belt and tossed it to Jonah. "And here." An envelope from inside his own neatly tailored hunting-jacket. He handed it to Jonah. "False identity, guaranteed good one. I couldn't get but one exit permit, but maybe you can manage that somehow. You'll have to get cosmetic work done to match, but there's everything you need in the room at the other end of the booth here. Money, clothes, contacts."

  "Booth?" Jonah said.

  "Yeah. Let's get going. You get the exit permit."

  Hari-" Montferrat began, and subsided at a sharp jab.

  "You said it, sweetheart," Yarthkin replied. His tone was light, but his eyes were on the woman.

  I won't leave you here," she began.

  Yarthkin laughed. I didn't intend for you to, but it looks like you'll have to. Now get moving, sweetheart. "

  "You don't understand, " Ingrid said. "Jonah's the one who has to get away. Not me. I don't matter, but he does. Give him the permit."

  "The Boy Scout? Not on your life—7

  "You can give it to me. No, don't move, any of you." The voice came from, the transfer booth behind them. A woman's voice, sneering but triumphant.

  "Efficient as usual," Montferrat said, with a fired slump of the shoulders. "Allow me to introduce my ambitious chief assistant."

  Indeed, dear Chief," Axelrod-Bauergartner said as she strolled around to where everyone was visible. The chunky weapon in her arms was no stunner, it was a strakkaker, capable of spraying them all with hypervelocity glass needles with a single movement of her finger. "Drop it, commoner," she continued in a flat voice. "Thanks for disarming the Chief." Yarthkin's stunner fell to the ground. "Did you really think, Chief, that I wasn't going to check what commands went out under my codes? I look at the events record five times a day when things are normal. Nice sweet setup, puts all the blame on me... except that when
I show the kzin your bodies, I'll be the new commissioner."

  The tableau held for a moment, until Montferrat coughed. "I don't suppose my clandestine fund account?" He moved with exaggerated care as he produced a screenpad and light-stylus.

  Axelrod-Bauergartner laughed again. "Sure, we can make a deal. Write out the number, by all means," she taunted. "Porkchops don't need ngggg." The stylus yawped sharply once. The woman in police uniform fell, with a boneless finality that kept her finger from closing on the trigger of the weapon until her weight landed on it. A boulder twenty meters away suddenly shed its covering of vegetation and turned sandblast-smooth; there was a click and hiss as the strakkakers magazine ran empty. Yarthkin coughed, struggled not to gasp. Montferrat stooped, retrieved his stunner, walked across to toe the limp body. "I knew this would come in Useful ,

  he said, tapping the captured hgbt-pencil against the knuckles of one hand. His eyes rose to meet Yarthkin's, and he smoothed back his mustaches. "What a pity that Axelrod-Bauergartner was secretly feral, found here interfering with the Hunt, a proscribed weapon in her hands... isn't it?" His gaze shifted to Ingrid and Jonah. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

  The woman halted for an instant by Yarthkin. "Harii-" she began. He laid a finger across her lips.

  "G'wan, kid," he said, with a wry twist of the lips. "You've got a life waiting."

  "Wait a minute," she said, slapping the hand aside. "Murphy's Balls, Hari! I thought you'd grown up; not enough, evidently. Make all the sacrificial gestures you want, but don't make them for me." A gaunt smile. "And don't flatter yourself, either."

  She turned to Jonah, snapped a salute. "It's been... interesting, Captain. But this is my home... and if you don't remember now why you have to get back to the UN, you will."

  "Data link-"

  She laughed. "It would take hours to squirt all that up to Catskinner and you know it. Get moving, Captain. I'll be all right. Now go."

  He started to protest and his finger throbbed unbearably. "All right, but I'll wait as long as I can."

  “...You’ll do nothing of the sort."

  He hesitated for a second more, then walked to the transfer booth. Ingrid turned to face the two men. "You males do grow up more slowly than we," she said with a dancing smile in her eyes. "But given enough time... There are some decisions that should have been made fifty years ago. Not many get another chance. Where are we going?"

  Montferrat and Yarthkin glanced at each other,

  back at the woman with an identical look of helpless bewilderment that did not prevent the policeman from keying the booth.

  "All three of us have a lot of catching up to do," she said, and disappeared.

  "Well." Montferrat said dazedly. "Well." A shake of his head. "You next."

  "Where did you send her?"

  Montferrat grinned slightly. "You'll just have to trust me to send you there, too, won't you?"

  "Claude-”

  "You've been there. My family's old lodge. I've kept it hidden from-4rom everyone." He laughed slightly. "You've already had a head start with her. A few more days won't matter. But when I get there, I'll expect equal time. Now get moving, I have to set the stage. " I

  "Better come now."

  "No. First I see that the Sol-Belter gets offworld. Then I fix it so we can follow. Both will take time."

  "Can you bring that off, Claude?"

  "Yes." He straightened, and the look of the true Herrenmann was unmistakable. "It's good to be alive again.