“Why not a bigger crew?” asked Richard Guthlac.
“Money, as usual. The General Products Foundation has had little income since most of the Puppeteers quit Known Space. The few that remain have, as far as we know, been more concerned with winding up existing enterprises than with starting new trade or supporting abstract knowledge.
“But they evidently think a new stasis box is worth having someone investigate. It reinforces my suspicions, for what they're worth, that, wherever the Puppeteers have gone, they've not gone as far or as fast as we thought. If their fleet had been travelling FTL for more than two hundred years, why should they bother with something so far behind them?
“And you should have enough talents between you to cover all emergencies,” he went on. “You know the drill with the contents of stasis boxes: If they are safe, bring them home, if they are dangerous, destroy them.”
He paused. Richard was suddenly struck by the thought that his benign expression had more to do with his extraordinary musculature than any internal contentment. His eyes were those of a worried man.
“To persevere in opening stasis boxes at all has always been a difficult policy decision, with many opposed to it. However the majority view at the Institute—and… er… other authorities… is that if we'd let the danger prevent us opening any stasis boxes, ever, we'd have passed up a great deal of priceless knowledge. So far, our procedures have worked. You yourselves have retrieved and opened three without trouble, so you're the obvious choice for this job.”
“Perhaps we were just lucky. We found no live Slavers.”
“Perhaps. But in any event the danger wouldn't deter our furry friends: whatever their paranoia they are brave. For many reasons—and the Puppeteers concur with this quite definitely—we can't let our fears give them a monopoly of stasis-box discoveries.
“Of course, it's not their own necks the Puppeteers risk—did you know that when they first revealed themselves to Pierson, we actually named them after their appearance rather than their preferred mode of operation? Anyway, it's you who'll be at the sharp end.
“You may have to make a quick judgment, and in the event of encountering live Slavers, a small crew like yours is as good as an army. We are sure Slavers coming out of stasis will need some time to orient themselves. We hope Peter Robinson will give us an edge there: He can tell us instantly of any active Slaver minds. Don't use that time to speculate or anything else, just launch your missiles and never mind the knowledge that may be lost. That is, of course, a direct order given from under my military hat.”
He paused for a moment to let that one sink in.
“Your observer from the Patriarchy is one Charrgh-Captain, a naval officer who has had off-world postings as an attaché. I met him when he was here previously. I think he's a fairly typical kzin of the officer class. 'Captain' is our translation of a term whose significance varies, but in his case he's in a senior grade—about the equivalent of a colonel as far as there's an equivalent. I expect he'll support a strike on the box if the situation calls for it, but he's an observer only, with no power except to make recommendations. He's under your orders in any emergency…
“Just make sure, if it's something the kzinti would regard as, er, useful—I think you know what I mean—that he doesn't… step beyond the protocols. Kill him without hesitation, if necessary, and we'll cook up some cover story. Plausible accidents can always happen in space.” Killing any adult male kzin is not exactly easy, Richard thought. Oh, and to make it a little more challenging, this one just happens to be a professional military officer as well. I suppose this Jinxian has had kamikaze combat training and wears a Hellflare tattoo, though discreetly out of sight in these peaceful days. When, incidentally, killing a kzin would be treated as murder, and killing a kzin colonel, if it got back to the Patriarchy, would be a good deal worse. It might even mean extradition for us if the Kzin insisted. And they would. I had forgotten how many Jinxians have chips on those vast shoulders of theirs and enjoy putting us beanpole-men and our willowy women on the spot.
“And Peter Robinson?” said Gay. “How is Charrgh-Captain going to like him?”
“He isn't. But he's got no choice. Don't worry, kzinti can be more adaptable than you might think. They're cats, after all. They'll growl and snarl, but they'll accept a situation they can't change, provided you leave them a way to do it that doesn't compromise their dignity or honor.”
“We know.”
“It's when they get really adaptable, of course, that they get dangerous. Some geneticists say the wars have changed the kzinti gene pool to produce less aggressive, less ferocious kzin. I wonder if they've rather produced more cunning kzin, capable of biding their time, and this time not attacking till they're good and ready…
“Speaking of adaptability,” he went on, “even with hyperdrive the trip will take several months. That's another reason the crew is small: Your salaries will be loaded to compensate for the time out of your lives and general inconvenience. You'll have to spend time in hibernation or standing watch alone, almost as in the STL days.”
“Just how much will our salaries be loaded?” asked Richard.
“Adequately. I have the contracts here. A bigger crew would mean more divisions of a limited cake. Don't forget, the stock market has had some rocky times since the Puppeteer pull-out. We're reconstructing our economies successfully, but a new golden age isn't going to come overnight. In fact, we are lucky to have an expedition even of this size. At least”—this time he really did laugh—“even if your crew is small, you have all the talents.”
Whomping Wallaby was a General Products #3 hull. Puppeteer-produced, it was spacious for the six crew, though its life-system, with kzin as well as human requirements to cater for, was relatively complex, and kzinti liked lots of elbow-room. The hull was thought to be indestructible and impenetrable to anything but visible light, which interior paint kept out. It was well-fitted with computers and a laboratory, boats, ground craft and an outfit of heavy weapons, including a laser cannon and bomb-missiles. It was standard in well-armed research ships (and all research ships were well-armed) to fit discreet precautions against their being misappropriated, but it was also considered bad form to discuss these. It was a legend that all such expeditions still carried at least one covert ARM agent, though ARM's unseen grip on human society was reputed to have been weakening for some time. It was also now standard for ships fitted out for possible dealing with Slaver stasis boxes to carry self-destructs. General Products had provided all the nonpersonal equipment, including the boats and weapons. Puppeteers were pacifists themselves except in direst need, but that did not prevent them making effective weaponry. There was human and kzin medical equipment, including a kzin military autodoc.
Melody Fay, the representative of the Institute of Knowledge on the expedition as well as weapons and security officer, was another blocklike Jinxian with a penetrating voice. Probably, Richard thought, she also wore the Hellflare tattoo. I hope it stays out of sight, he thought, and for more, he reflected a little uncharitably, than diplomatic reasons: The idea of seeing her naked was frankly unappealing. She was Jinxian in manner as well as appearance, given to striking her chest boomingly for emphasis. Jinxian females in lower-gravity societies, perhaps even more than their male counterparts, tended to have a mental armor of defensiveness and aggression.
Gatley Ivor was a tall, thin Wunderlander and specialist in the study of Slaver Empire relics. He still wore the asymmetrical beard that had been a status mark for aristocratic Wunderlanders of past generations. Although with modern medicines the physical age of human adults was hard to tell, his speech and mannerisms were those of a very old man in whose body those medicines were not working perfectly.
All the talents! Richard thought, recalling the Jinxian's words as they stowed their gear. This is a crew about as ill-assorted as it is possible to get, even before our other members join.
* * *
“My cabin will be completely secure?�
� Peter Robinson, junior partner of Robinson and Son, Mental Investigations, seconded to the Institute-Guthlac Expedition, asked for the third time. He pitched his hat into one corner of the cabin, took off his sunglasses, and wiped them with a nervous gesture.
“Yes. Completely. Remember this is a Puppeteer-built ship.”
“I don't know if you understand how fearf—how difficult it is for me to be sharing a ship with a specimen of Pseudofelis sapiens ferox… with a kzintosh of the Patriarchy.”
“You won't have to mix until we get there. And he is a diplomat, bound by protocols,” Gay assured him again.
“I will have to use my will to assert dominance,” said Peter Robinson. “And not just once as in normal civilized society of our kind, but continually. This will be an ordeal. He will try to destroy me, either by crushing me psychologically, or physically. I will not let him. But I wish there was a human telepath good enough to do this job. I have a nice business and plenty of work here on Wunderland.”
“There isn't,” said Richard. “But,” he added awkwardly after a pause, “this kzintosh is a representative of the Patriarch, no less, and bears the Patriarch's Sigril. It embarrasses me but must ask you: Are you sure you will feel no conflict of loyalty?”
“I once saw a real kzinti telepath,” said Peter Robinson. “A dribbling, vomiting, twitching freak, despised by all and doomed to die a terrible death after a short life of misery and degradation.
“In thousands of years the laboratories and science of the Patriarchy never tried to find a drug that would allow us to function without destroying us. Research along those lines was even deliberately forbidden: The Patriarchy did not want strong or sane telepaths. The human laboratories on Wunderland found such a drug only a few years after the Liberation, and since then we Wunderkzin telepaths can live almost normal lives. Liberation! Can you have any doubt where my loyalties lie?”
He paused, and stared into Richard's eyes.
“I will not deny that there are times I look in a mirror and ask: 'What am I? What are my kind? Where do we go?' I am not free of everything… But I saw a kzinti telepath once.”
Most kzin, even if they had a perfect academic grasp of human languages, spoke them with a harsh, grating tone. Peter Robinson's vocal chords had been altered by microsurgery when he was young. It was strange to hear the perfect, almost accentless Interworld, with only traces of the now-dead language and accent of Wunderlander, from the fanged jaws of Man's ancient enemy.
“You did say my cabin will be secure?”
Charrgh-Captain arrived from Kzin by a regular flight. His Interworld was fluent, but his voice could never be taken for human. He handed over his credentials, retaining a bag with diplomatic markings for himself, and briefly acknowledged the human members of the crew. At the sight of Peter Robinson he curled his lip and said nothing. He thought something, though, and Richard and Gay saw Peter Robinson flinch. He shuffled backward into his cabin, looking more like a telepath of the Patriarchy than they had ever seen him look. Then suddenly he came out again and returned Charrgh-Captain's stare. Then he burst forth:
“I am a Wunderkzin and my destiny is my own. Regarding low Kdaptists I have nothing to say. Neither I nor my ancestors have committed any crime against the Patriarchy save to assert our freedom after you lost a war. You have no legal rights over our kind and no claims against us. The Patriarchy conceded that in the MacDonald-Rishshi Treaty and the protocols.
“Further, Wunderland jurisprudence is still derived from the old Law and our independence is established by legal precedent. I refer you to Sraakra-Rykermann v. Representatives of the Patriarchy, cited in the 154th Edition of Nichols on Police Offenses.”
Charrgh-Captain was moved to snarl back, but in Interworld rather than the Heroes' Tongue.
“I have no interest. We signed those truces when we were defeated and had no choice! Do not speak of them!”
“But sign them you did. Have your kind not voiced contempt for the humans who say a promise made under duress does not bind? And as for being defeated, would you hazard another war now?”
“We rebuild our Empire with the hyperdrive, smug freak. But fear not this day. My diplomatic status protects you.”
Peter Robinson closed the door again. This time he locked it.
Charrgh-Captain inspected his own quarters and assured himself that the kitchen and food supplies were suitable for kzin needs. He ran a quick eye over their stores in general and a rather more thorough one over their weapons. He stared coldly at the kzin autodoc, though with many kzinti traveling on human ships now it was no longer on the military secret list. He checked it without comment. There was little more to be done. He watched as Richard and Gay went through the takeoff checks.
The Whomping Wallaby climbed out of the vast singularity of the Centauri system and dropped into hyperdrive.
Few humans or Kzin can stand to “look” upon Hyperspace for long, and there is no purpose in trying to do so. For most of its flight the Wallaby's ports were opaqued. A crew member remained on watch in case of emergencies, which would mainly concern the life-system, but automatic pilot and mass-detector—the latter considered by many a greater technological miracle than the hyperdrive shunt itself—flew the ship.
Most spacefarers of all kinds adjust to the long watches alone or with a skeleton crew while their shipmates hibernate. It is also a widespread ritual of human space travel that changeover time is leisurely. This is not merely for debriefing and briefing: The retiring crew member, if he or she has stood watch alone, is usually hungry for company and conversation before returning to hibernation, and the relieving crew member needs time to adjust.
Gatley Ivor, first on watch, had spent changeover rambling gently to Melody Fay about the antiquities he loved. Charrgh-Captain, who took over from Melody, was the only one who had not obeyed—and possibly did not know of—this convention of relaxed talk, though in his case no one would have insisted upon it, and the Jinxian apparently did not care for Kzin company in any case.
His hand-over report to Gay had been brief and to the point, though comprehensive. She had no idea whether the big kzin was hardened against loneliness and boredom or simply not prepared to betray feeling them. But to a previous generation the idea of entrusting the watch of a human ship to a kzin of the Patriarchy would have been beyond belief in any case. Gay spoke long to Peter Robinson when she handed over to him in turn.
The watches aboard the Whomping Wallaby had had to be planned with some care. Richard relieved Peter Robinson to take what they calculated would be the last watch of the voyage. They inspected the ship and the log, and settled down in the couches on what was still called the bridge for a bourbon and ice cream together.
Peter Robinson knew the ritual even if he did not need it. And perhaps he does need it, thought Richard. He is far more talkative and gregarious than any kzin of the Patriarchy—anxious to prove his human credentials, perhaps. And his preference for being called by his full name—there are two explanations for that, of course: While on the one hand it reinforces his Wunderkzin identity, on the other hand in kzin society a full name is the rare and ultimate sign of high nobility.
Aloud he said: “I hope the watch was not too boring.”
“Being alone for a while is no great hardship for me,” the Wunderkzin replied. “The computer's gaming skills are adequate without being overwhelming, and I have my sculpting tool and my poetry. There is my little laboratory, and I enjoy experiments—I assure you I stick to safe ones in these circumstances. I do not miss my mate much without her scent. To me being on watch in a spaceship when all others aboard sleep is the equivalent of silence, such as I only know otherwise sometimes in the wilder parts of Wunderland. It is very peaceful. It is precious to me.
“The human drugs are incomparably kinder than the sthondat drugs of the Patriarchy, but they are not perfect, nor do they armor us against all the ordinary neuroses of telepathy, which even human telepaths—such as they are—are subject to. We
fight battles always against too much empathy, against losing ourselves in other minds—with the glands of hunting carnivores who can never enjoy the chase and kill of our prey as even an ordinary nontelepathic Wunderkzin of Arhus or the Hohe Kalkstein may. Have you seen what we eat? Either animals too mindless to know terror, or meat made to move artificially, or dead meat. The one time I tried to eat Zianya was terrible for me… Still, it is a small price to pay. But sometimes I have waves of fear.”
“What do you do?”
“What can I do? I shield and carry on… Everyone I touch leaks a little. One human aboard this ship is keeping a secret of which I sense enough to guess the rest without probing. I will say no more of that. I do not think it has a vital bearing on the success of this mission, and we have vows not to divulge any such secrets we may stumble on save in direst emergency. Better for me to keep my shield strong…
“At least, my friend, I know that you do not dislike me. Nor Gay. I have not tried to probe the minds of any aboard here, but all give forth a general… coloration, an aura. Hers is one mind whose aura I enjoy. I do not mind if you and Gay call me by my first Name alone.”
Richard said, “Gay dislikes very little that lives. She found me when I was broken and unlovable, and rebuilt me… You are a telepath on a human world. You must know the darknesses in which humans can live.”
“Yes. And once or twice in my work I have found myself screaming and leaping as a result. Angry enough to use my claws and fangs as well as the Telepath's Weapon. Some human poetry is dangerous for the likes of me to read, you know. Chuut-Riit set 'The Ballad of the White Horse' as a text for the human-students of his day:
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