The Man-Kzin Wars 08 - Choosing Names

by Larry Niven

  But several inhabited worlds! A Vengeance-Hunt had become a promise of Conquest Glorious! The hunters’ minds were volcanic.

  “They send messages to us. They call their ship the...” I had trouble translating. Successful Plant-Eater was how it came out.

  But Tracker hung in every mind. Tracker and the great swathe of exhausted hydrogen which we had been following.

  “What weapons do they have?”

  “None, Feared Zraar-Admiral. These creatures have never fought. I find nothing of weapons, hardly a concept of war, save in one female mind. Even there it is vague.” I paused, then spoke again, all around knowing as I spoke that I repeated the words of dead Tracker’s Telepath: “They have only kitchen-knives.”

  “Feared Zraar-Admiral,” said Alien Technologies, “how could such a race have evolved a theory of ballistics?”

  “Ballistics or no, we see them in Space,” said Student of Particles. “There is a danger of weapons! I care not what the addict says.”

  “There is also the Paradox,” said Zraar-Admiral, “Do not forget it ever.”

  Zraar-Admiral had killed enemies in plenty on the ground as the Heroes’ battle-legions over-ran worlds, or fought each other, with claw, fang, W'tsai and occasionally with beam or fusion-bomb. Not all those battles had been easy, for a true Hero attacked—on the ground or anywhere else—without too much reckoning of the odds. On one planet with wide oceans the locals had had sea-ships hidden under water, armed with missiles with multiple warheads. Heroes died before our Students of Particles developed a heat-induction ray that boiled the seas. Tracker had had such a ray. And there were vague stories that came slowly from distant parts of a widespread Empire of other things... But Zraar-Admiral had never joined battle against aliens in Space.

  Perhaps he never would. The war between the Slavers and their Tnuctipun slaves that wiped out intelligent life in the galaxy billions of years previously might be the only full-scale war of species that would ever be fought in the deeps between the stars, save for the far-distant, almost legendary, Time of Glory when the Jotok had been overthrown. The few races encountered in the Hunt that had interplanetary and poor weapons were hardly substitutes. There was a legend of a Feral Jotok Fleet which had escaped when the Kzin rose, but in centuries no trace of it had been found...

  The fighting against other Kzin was controlled. Struggles of Kzinti Houses Noble produced exhilaration and bloodshed in plenty and the ambitions of young Heroes for names and territory made for a number of outlaws, rebels and pirates. There was always dueling. Zraar-Admiral had owed his first advancement to his dueling prowess and his trophy-hoard contained an impressive number of ears, but fights between Kzin, in the training arena, the hunting preserve, or even in full-scale military action, were not the Conquest Glorious or The Day. Gutting Claw’s destiny, he felt, was unfulfilled. Like the whole Navy’s. Like his own.

  Some priests said Space-faring warrior aliens were a fantasy like intelligent females, a self-evidently heretical denial of the natural order of things. The Jotok alone had been created by the Fanged God to give Heroes access to gravity-motors and High-Tech weapons without shameful dilution of our own warrior culture. But for Zraar-Admiral life with no possibility of The Day, the Triumph Supreme, presented a prospect of doleful dullness. The Battle-Drum on the bridge showed the Navy’s view. It had never yet been struck, and for one thing only would Zraar-Admiral strike it.

  Alien Technologies Officer suspected dimly the struggle between Priesthood and Military, between religious doctrine and the claims of honor which the Battle-Drum symbolized. I, whom he disdained to notice, knew more than he about the ideas that made him. But instincts less acute than mine would have told him how dangerous a path his thoughts and words might start down. AT shifted to safer ground, keeping matters purely technical.

  My report, Zraar-Admiral realized as I did, duplicated Tracker’s recorder. An alien enemy with no weapons or knowledge of weapons, and Tracker sliced by a claw of light. If the enemy deceived Telepaths there was real, and for Zraar-Admiral thrilling, danger. For me the prospect was less thrilling.

  Happy Gatherer

  “There was a signal coming from Earth,” said Paul, “but I’ve put it on record and left all channels clear for our friends. Whatever it is, it will have to wait on this.”

  “think... ?” Anna left the words unfinished.

  “Attempts at direct mind contact? It’s the kind of thing one might expect in advanced beings. If so, we’re not equipped to cope. I know telepathic ability was a factor in the selection of some of us, but we haven’t enough of it.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “I’m unhappy. What if they decide that we are too alien for them to communicate with and leave? We can’t follow. I don’t think we can just sit here and wait for them to make the next move. What a disaster if they decided we were a waste of time and vanished!”

  ‘Would they, after all this effort?” Paul asked. “That ship is big. Really big. It must have cost them energy to bring it here to meet us.” He was instilling confidence. “Look, there are scientists on that ship, people with minds like ours, or better, who look at problems the same way. They’ll adjust to us. Perhaps they expected to recognize us. Now they don’t. Perhaps,” he added after a moment, “they’re frightened. I think we’ll have to pay them a visit. We’ll take a boat across.”

  “I wonder,” said Rick, “if that would be entirely... diplomatic? We know we’re dealing with alien minds. What if they saw us as some sort of threat to them?” His confrontation with Selina had left him with food for thought.

  “Threat? What do you mean?” Anna Nagle asked.

  “Did you ever see an animal in a safari park? Go close too suddenly, and it’ll often run, though you mean it no harm. For all we know these outsiders might think the same way.”

  “But,” Paul objected, “beings that get into Space must share certain common attributes of social order, cooperation... isn’t that what the whole history of civilization is about? How could they see us—fellow Space-farers—as a... threat. If it’s obvious to us they are not savage animals, surely it must be equally obvious to them that we are the same.”

  “How do we know what they think? I’m sorry now we’ve no Belters with us. Even if they do tend to be paranoiac about Space, I need a different perspective on this...”

  “I think we can do without any paranoia here.” Peter said. He may have been looking in the direction of Selina but it was impossible to be sure. “We are mature adults and I think we can arrive at sensible decisions.”

  Peter is an ARM, Selina thought suddenly. Of course the technological police would have people aboard. He’s going to have ARM do a thorough job on my files when we get back to Earth, and this will be my last trip into space. What am I thinking of? This may well be the last trip for all of us anyway.

  “As well as the boat, why don’t we send across a free party in suits?” Paul asked. “I will go first.” He was unsure why his position compelled him to say this, but some deeply-buried thing told him it was appropriate. “I take the point that they might be frightened of us. This should demonstrate that we mean no harm.

  “Ancient people approached each other holding up empty hands,” he went on. “So civilization started. I’m sorry we haven’t an historian to tell us more... Six in the boat and six in suits. That leaves eight on board to control all essential systems and the major comm-links.”

  There was a murmur of agreement.

  Paul and Rick turned to Selina again. “You won’t want to come, of course.”

  “I certainly do want to come,” said Selina. “You’ve convinced me.” Get off the major target! The voice was screaming far in the back of her mind.

  The crew of the Happy Gatherer scattered with final instructions.

  Selina’s Space-suit was standard issue, geochronically linked to the ship’s planar logic lattices, with large pockets in the arms and legs. There was nutrient under high pressure in waist-cyli
nders, boot-caches and other compartments, and the suit recycled moisture. The lonely Belter rock-jacks might have had it differently, but in Earth’s history of this sort of Space-flight such things had seldom been needed: in an emergency you were usually near help or dead. She could think of nothing more she needed to take. She slipped her good-luck charm, the model ship, into one pocket.

  Gutting Claw

  Space-suited figures were leaving the enemy ship. Further magnifications brought them into clear view. A port opened and a boat put out. The monkeys made no attempt to conceal their approach. The enemy ship in arrogance or threat was actually shining lights upon them.

  The EV aliens moved towards Gutting Claw with small reaction jets. One, who I felt Feared Zraar-Admiral mentally marking with his own urine, was ahead of the others. Unless there was something very peculiar about those compact, long limbed bodies, they carried no weapons.

  “Telepath! What is happening!”

  “Sire, I detect no warlike intent. But if Tracker was somehow deceived, I cannot be sure...”

  “AT! What sort of tactic is this?”

  “I don’t understand it, Feared Zraar-Admiral.”

  “Are they going to attack us with those jets.”

  Feared Zraar-Admiral, I do not know, but they are far too small to do any damage to the hull. They are maneuvering jets only. That boat is powered by chemical rockets on the same principle. We detect no radio-actives in it. They still appear to me to be completely unarmed.”

  Fight them! I caught Weeow-Captain’s mind. What are you waiting for, you old fool? Kill now! Then a blur. Noyouaremymentoroldfriend... I broke that very perilous contact.

  “They are small creatures.”

  “And the creatures that killed Tracker were also small. Telepath!”

  “Sire, still all my skills tell me they have no weapons.”

  “Do they seek to take us prisoner?”

  “They seek to meet us. Sire, that must be the reason.”

  “I want live specimens,” Zraar-Admiral said. “Telepath, is there anything useful in that ship?”

  “No, Dominant One. In general the technology is primitive. The creatures have a number of gadgets and devices we do not possess, and their reaction-drive technology is of course developed, but that is all in their minds and can be extracted. The drive is inferior to ours and the materials are insignificant.”

  He turned to Weapons Officer.

  “Destroy the ship as soon as the EV kz’eerkti and the boat are far enough away not to be involved. Watch sharply for monkey-tricks!”

  The battle proved kittens’-play. Under the converging beams the enemy ship’s life-system area melted almost at once. Its fusion plant should have destabilized with a major explosion but the drive was idling and probably some monkey used its dying moments to shut off the fuel-feed in an attempt to save its fellows. Cowards. We knew little of such drives but knew a Hero would have pointed the ship at his enemy and turned off the fusion-shield. I thought of Lord Dragga-Skrull and his last historic order: “The Patriarch knows every Hero will kill eights of times before dying heroically!”

  The weedy creatures made no attempt at attack, resistance, or even evasion. The final explosion was visually fierce but of no consequence. Gutting Claw was heavily shielded.

  Watching the blue-white glare fading on the screen Zraar-Admiral regretted that the business had been so easy. There had been relatively little honor gained. Whatever had happened to Tracker, these omnivore apes, like previously-encountered aliens, had nothing to match Kzin weaponry. But that disappointment also held rich promise—of worlds ripe for the taking by his squadron alone.

  “Weeow-Captain!”

  “Sire!”

  “You have the enemy ship’s course recorded?”

  “Indeed, Sir!”

  “It is, I declare, a Patriarch’s Secret. When we have avenged Tracker we will follow that course to its home.”

  “Yes, Sire. They came in a straight line from their first appearance. They seem to have made no attempt to hide their point of origin, if they have changed course since their original take-off Telepath will take the course from their minds.” They took it for granted that I could do such things, and that I would, at whatever cost to myself. “In any event there will probably be records in the surviving boat.”

  “They will have destroyed those by now.”

  “I wonder. Their behavior is so strange... perhaps they are a death-worshipping cult…“

  “Telepath was not deceived.” Zraar-Admiral did not try to hide the contemptuous rage in his voice. He knew all his officers shared it. “They can’t fight at all.”

  Perhaps, despite the similarities in her Telepath’s report and my own, Tracker had encountered something different to these leaf-eaters. That led to another consideration: as a matter of honor, Zraar-Admiral could not turn aside from the pursuit of an enemy known to be dangerous, and against whom vengeance was owed, to attack the soft targets of this monkeydom. We were on the trail of Tracker’s killer and that account would have to be settled first. That should not take long, however. Zraar-Admiral turned to Weeow-captain.

  “When the prisoners are inboard I shall look at them. Bring my gold armor”—this was hardly a ceremonial occasion but it was what the protocol of Fleet Standing Orders declared for first meetings with conquered prey—”detail two more infantry squads for my escort.”

  The monkeys had been secured and breathed Kzin air. So we could breathe their air. The monkeydom extended, as I had reported, over several industrialized worlds. Feared Zraar-Admiral could claim the biggest continent of the homeworld for himself. And a Full Name, certainly. A Full Name for Weeow-Captain, too. Partial names for others. Many others, if Zraar-Admiral indulged. Vast fiefdoms. Smells of names, riches, glory, conquest! Perhaps some of the monkeys’ less-advanced sub-species would put up a fight on the ground. If so, there could be rich rewards for the most Heroic and ferocious of the infantry troopers. Partial names and estates might not be beyond the claws of outstanding Sergeants.

  Nothing, of course, for Telepath. Except burn-out.

  Twelve humans and thirty-four Kzin stared at each other in the ruddy light of the great hangar-deck. One squad of eight flanked the prisoners. Zraar-Admiral, with Telepath at his feet, stood at the head of his Guard squads.

  Zraar-Admiral saw Simianoids with considerable variations of skin-colors and strangely limited and irregular hair-growth. Their general morphology at least suggested the theory of common life-form seeding by the Ancients. They stood two-thirds of his height and would carry, he judged, a third of his body-weight or less. Some were leaking red liquid, presumably circulatory fluid, where marines had torn their skin in stripping away their space-suits. Frail as well as ugly, he thought. Spindly limbs with puny muscles, branch-grasping monkey-hands, with those five long fingers and tiny, useless horny tips that could not be called claws. Foreheads higher than many kz’eerkti species on Kzin, which was only to be expected. No tails, oddly enough. How did they counter-balance when running on branches or leaping between trees?

  They would be able to climb trees too slender to bear the weight of Kzinti. Sport there perhaps. On Kzinti worlds the cunning and agility of the beasts made kz’eerkti -hunts enjoyable as well as useful training for the young. The odd distribution of body-hair on these specimens suggested an ancestry with aquatic episodes, so perhaps they could also swim. There were two large, grotesquely red-centered, teats on the females. Zraar-Admiral wondered why the males had put the females into Space-suits and led them outside the vehicle. Were the monkeys in continual need of copulation? The gross external sexual organs of the males at least suggested it.

  Some of the male monkeys were holding the slightly smaller and generally longer-haired females in a manner that suggested they were either trying to groom them or lay claim to them. Evidently the females had belonged to more than one dominant monkey. Several harems in the one ship? Kz’eerkti and other arboreals on Kzin behaved in such ways... b
ut the arboreals of Kzin did not have Space-ships. Two were on their knees in an awkward posture. Some were waving their forelimbs and hands as if tantalizing the guards to break ranks and pounce. liquid was running from the eyes of some, and one, a female with oddly-patterned red hair, gave an unpleasant prolonged high-pitched cry and defecated as Zraar-Admiral watched, in what the Kzin took as a gesture of willful obscenity. A guard snarled and stepped forward. The monkey screamed and rushed at him, fingers extended as though trying to attack the guard’s eyes. The guard swiped at the monkey’s head with instinctively-extended claws, tearing it partly off. The monkey’s body flew across the compartment spraying fluid to hit the wall and fall in a puddle. The other monkeys screamed and jumped about, though no more tried to attack. Some covered their faces and wailed. The guards snarled in the Menacing Tense and most of the wailing stopped. The body of the rude monkey soon ceased to move and seemed plainly dead.

  They are even more fragile than they look, Zraar-Admiral noted. A proper kz’eerkt would have put up a better fight than that. He would not, he though, punish the guard, who was now looking at him somewhat apprehensively, too heavily. He had used no more than reasonable force. Still, it was all rather disgusting.

  He could see Telepath was in no condition to do more at the moment. When he recovered he should be able to discover a lot more with them face-to-face. Their resemblance to Kzinti life-forms suggested they were meat, but proper dissection would put the matter beyond doubt.

  Zraar-Admiral returned to the bridge. He ordered the monkeys to be confined separately from one another. After Telepath had gone through their minds thoroughly he would turn a few loose in his miniature hunting preserve to see what sort of running they made. He turned to Weeow-Captain to outline his thoughts.

  “When we have avenged Tracker it will take us at least eight and three years’ real time to get back to Hssin, more time for a fleet to be assembled. Then we have the journey to the monkey-systems.”