Man-Kzin Wars XII

by Larry Niven

  He glared, but she was right—no one would ever ignore one of her warnings after that shattering experience. Finally he nodded. Then he said, "We could only find the author for one—glad we looked, though, this guy Zelazny is incredible! Was Firebird published under some different title? The only other reference I could find was a piece of classical animation with the same music."

  She nodded. "The one where the Firebird is the bad guy? This one was done in rebuttal, I believe. Later it was suppressed by the ARM because of its accurate depiction of the history of industrial development. I've never found the credits, but clearly somebody couldn't bring himself to destroy the last copy. The other one I made myself. I don't think anybody else ever trusted themselves to be able to convey Zelazny's imagery adequately. The old woman and the cube, for instance."

  " 'Go crush ore!' " he murmured, and his voice caught.

  "It wasn't easy to get the timing on that pause right," she remarked. "Look, if there's nothing else right now I've got an errand. I'll be gone a couple of months your time." And she was off again.

  Shleer had to spend six days out of sight while the Thrint wandered through the harem, nagging the Tnuctipun and their Jotoki assistants. Gnix had been an immensely powerful telepath even before he had the amplifier, but he was too stupid to follow his slaves' thoughts very far when they did something as simple as free-associating. The Tnuctipun had delayed the adaptation of the kzinretti as long as they could, simply to put off the day when they had another Thrint to cope with; still, Gnix's constant pestering—Pestering, rather—forced them to maintain some kind of progress, however slow.

  About one surviving kzinrett in four was hairless and developing skin flakes—the biological modifications seemed to be trying to produce scales. The survivors weren't going toxic, so it appeared the Tnuctipun had stalled as long as they could.

  Then, while Gnix was doing another nag-through, a kzinrett began screaming and thrashing. The thrashing continued after the screaming stopped; though her arms and legs gradually fell still, her torso kept jerking. Then a greenish larval thing tore a hole into the open air from inside her, shuddered, and died.

  CLEAN THAT UP, Gnix commanded irritably. AND FIX THE PROBLEM. Then he left.

  The Tnuctipun had not been surprised. That was what made Shleer risk detection and go searching for a camera that night. They hadn't been surprised.

  Shleer's own birthing tunnel gave him a private place to work; his mother had been one of the first to die.

  Peace shut down Cordelia's accelerator as soon as she was in range.

  Larry had living quarters set up outside the control area, so he could work on the door every day. Being able to draw on the expertise of dozens of colonists had actually gotten him through the first lock. He'd been working on the second long enough not only to grow a beard, but to start grooming it during the times when he couldn't think of what to try. He'd quit smoking and resumed, too, probably twice.

  "I apologize," she said as soon as he saw her. "I should have set the field to shut down. Please come in, so I can show you how to run things in case I'm killed or trapped."

  He said nothing as he entered.

  "One of the things I was looking for was any residue of an ARM agent named Hamilton," she said, leading him to a workshop. "He was a telekinetic esper who lost an arm and an eye, and the shadow organs his brain produced in compensation let him feel inside things and see in the dark, and like that. I figured the proper training would allow a clone to develop an entire remote presence, very handy. Unfortunately the woman running the ARMs now really hates Protectors, and they wasted a lot of my time before I could meet her and frighten her into cooperation. There's a lot less margin now for what I need to do before we get to Kzin."

  "So we'll just go out and have fun while you sit at home, alone, in the dark, and go blind," he said as they reached the shop.

  She stared at him a little longer than necessary; it was no mean feat to surprise a Protector, and he was entitled to something for it. He kept his gratification off his face, but it had grown to be considerable by the time she said, "Sorry. I'll watch that." She opened the door and led him to where a crumpled perfect mirror lay. "I'll need to study your telepathy to develop some myself," she said as she got out the control for the accelerator field and switched it back on.

  "Um," he said as the suit went from perfect reflection to merely shiny.

  She looked at him, and saw that he was horribly embarrassed all of a sudden.

  Something inside the suit moved.

  She drew and aimed, realized what had to have happened, and was putting the gun away when he said, "It's a slave! Kzanol found a planet and brought one back with him."

  "Yes. Let's get him out." She removed the helmet and opened up the suit, and a head the size of a breeder's fist poked warily out. Two eyes; those refractive nodes would serve as ears; a generally humanoid shape aside from thumb displacement; traces of something more like feathers than hair; and some pretty fine clothes and jewelry. Of course Kzanol had taken their leader.

  "Oh my God, he was their High Judge," Greenberg said.

  "Figures. And it never mattered to the Slaver, so you never realized it before. Talk to him while I rummage."

  There was a baroquely embroidered cloth bundle, and as she got it out the trace of scent on it made her want to kill something. Hardwired response; the Pak were survivors of the Slaver era, and the Protectors had been created as a Tnuctipun weapon. (They hadn't evolved in two billion years because they ate mutated descendants; there wasn't really a tactful way to mention that to Greenberg.) She had to spend several seconds learning how to override it, then unwrapped the bundle to reveal a remarkably prosaic watch—with a casing of niobium chromide, so that it would survive events that would vaporize the wearer. Absurd: Anybody who could afford a watch like this didn't have to be on time. Two more bundles held figurines of extraordinary repulsiveness: Thrintun females. Next was the amplifier helmet.

  She'd been listening and building up vocabulary, not without amusement. Greenberg had the unusual combination of perfect comprehension coupled with no ear at all. The alien was of a race called chukting, and of his names and titles the important one was Tinchamank. He was having a lot of trouble figuring out what Greenberg was saying. Admittedly there was a trick to the accent: the language was fourth-stage. (Much vocabulary is onomatopoetic. Tribal gatherers hear and repeat the sounds made by sticks and rocks. Hunters, herders, and farmers pick up animal sounds. Civilized people add metallic noises, and advanced peoples include sounds made by complex machinery. Names of things tend to change last as a language alters, so the chuktings must have been civilized for thousands of years.)

  "There's a map in the sleeve," Greenberg said.

  "Thanks." She got it out. The Milky Way had been a little sloppier in shape two billion years ago; of course the spiral arms bore no relationship to present arrangements. The sapphire pin would be Tinchamank's home system—well outside the main galactic lens. Might be worth looking at later. She spoke to him: "A long time has passed. Your home is gone. I will learn what you need to eat. Come."

  Greenberg gasped suddenly, then recovered as he put up his shield. Tinchamank curled into what must be his fetal posture. Doubled wrist joints, looked useful. Peace picked him up and took him to the analytical doc. She limited the stunner effects to local anesthesia, since the hearing nodes looked very efficient and thus vulnerable, and waited while the microprobes sampled organs.

  "Get any samples of that agent? Hamilton?" Greenberg said.

  "Obviously not," she replied. "I'd have set up a culture tank at once. You should have figured that out without asking."

  "Big talk from someone who can't walk and chew gum," he retorted, nettled.

  A beak was no good for chewing gum. She gave him another stare. "You've been saving these up."

  "I find you inspiring. How did you manage to scare the director of the ARM?"

  "Threatened to build a giant robot and destr
oy Tokyo."

  "Holy cow. Why Tokyo?"

  "Traditional."

  Simultaneously exasperated and amused, he said, "Goddamn it, I can never tell when you're kidding!"

  "True," she said sadly. She looked at the doc readout and said, "Odd. His ribosomes are just like ours."

  "Aren't everybody's? I mean, they're how DNA gets implemented, right?" He'd been a colonist back in the days when it took a city's annual income to send a ship to another star, and he'd studied everything that might be useful to qualify. And it wasn't like some Ivy League education—he'd had to understand the material.

  She nodded, pleased with him. "Yes. But our Pak ancestors, and bandersnatchi, and the photosynthetic yeast everybody else is evolved from, all came from Tnuctipun design labs. The chukting were never anywhere near them, and they have the same ribosomes."

  "The what?"

  "The chukting. Tinchamank here."

  "Oh. Kzanol called them 'racarliwun.' "

  "Why?"

  The question seemed to startle him. "Well, he named the planet after his grandfather Racarliw, who built the family stage-tree farm up into a major industrial enterprise."

  "So this would be someone who used all his income to recapitalize the business, and didn't set anything aside for his descendants, which would be why Kzanol was out prospecting and ended up on Earth to cause the deaths of hundreds of human beings?"

  "Um. Yeah."

  "So the hell with him. As I said, the chukting have ribosomes just like ours, but are of completely unconnected origin. Which is weird."

  "Panspermia?" Theorists had often speculated that life had only needed to evolve once per galaxy, then spread offplanet due to meteor impacts, and to other stars via light pressure.

  "Their home system is far enough outside the then-explored Galaxy for any spores to die en route."

  "Carried on something else?"

  "The only things," she began, and blinked as everything finally fitted together. "Of course. Good thinking."

  "Thanks," he said, not really understanding.

  Tinchamank adjusted to circumstances better than Peace did. His had been the most adaptable mind of an advanced industrial society, chosen from among many thousands of trained experts to sit in judgment on any matter that arose, and he was able to serve in this capacity for the colonists as well. He actually settled some feuds that had been developing.

  Peace, on the other hand, had no knack for direct mind contact at all. Seeing what breeders were thinking was something any Protector could do, but it wasn't telepathy; it was on the order of a breeder seeing a dog snarl and bare its fangs and guessing what would happen next. Monitoring and feedback devices were invaluable for telling her what, in her brain, was simply not happening.

  They kept working at it for almost three years.

  One day Larry stopped in the middle of another adjustment and said miserably, "I have to go in."

  "You'd just die," she said.

  He sighed. Then he said, "You're not that obtuse."

  "I'm not that cold, either. I sure as hell wouldn't have given up sex if I'd had a choice."

  He blinked. "I had an image of you as kind of a spinster."

  She chuckled audibly. "I know. If I'd told you stories about my sex life your brain would have cooked in its own juices. Now, though—Larry, I want you to imagine being employed at the most enjoyable activity—sustainable activity, that is—you can think of."

  "Hitting baseballs through the windows of ARM headquarters?" he said with a straight face.

  "Damnation," she said earnestly.

  "Sorry, I'll be serious."

  "No, it's just I don't know when I'll get back there again, and I never once thought to do that." She enjoyed his astonishment for a moment, then added, "The top of that dome would be an ideal place to stand, too."

  Hesitantly, he said, "Kidding?"

  She waggled a hand. "Not entirely. Larry, imagine feeling like that all the time."

  "Look, I'm volunteering, right?"

  "I wonder. This is what I originally planned, and I worked on you to push you in that direction, at least at first. I decided a few years back to learn telepathy myself instead."

  "Well, you can't." He was as terrified as she'd ever seen anyone, not excepting kzinti who had supposed her to be the Wrath of God Incarnate; and he was going to go through with it. He had courage she'd never dreamed of as a breeder, and she loved him for it more than she'd loved any other human who'd ever lived.

  "I know. Come on," she said, removing the contact helmet: "I'll buy you lunch."

  Shleer had the disruption helmet finished in two days. He tried it out the only way he could, as befit a Hero: on himself. He put it on and hit the switch.

  Everyone went away. The quiet was unbelievable.

  He immediately switched it off and got moving out of the harem, in case the effect had been noticed.

  It hadn't. In the Residence they had other things on their minds.

  HOW CAN THEY MOVE THAT FAST? Gnix Screamed at the Patriarch, who staggered.

  "Speed field," slurred Rrao-Chrun-Rrit. "Reduced inertia, almost five hundred and twelve times as fast as normal."

  Aircraft had dropped into the atmosphere all over the planet, swarms of them, moving at something like two million miles an hour in all directions.

  Suddenly they were in a ring, converging on the Patriarch's Palace.

  DO SOMETHING!

  The Patriarch opened the master panel of his fooch and tapped a switch.

  The incoming craft slowed to about Mach 6 on the monitor system, and the palace defenses began shooting them down.

  WELL DONE. . . . WHAT DID YOU DO?

  "I accelerated us as well. The system was installed three hundred years ago, after we found signs that someone had gotten in undetected."

  IF THEY WERE "UNDETECTED," HOW DID YOU FIND SIGNS?

  "Things worked better, like food dispensers and data retrieval."

  One of the craft hit the palace, not far from Rritt's Past.

  A pilot hurtled out in a suit of powered armor, and began charging in through automatic defensive fire. Pieces of armor were jettisoned as lasers heated them intolerably—which was possibly their principal reason for existing. The pilot got a long way before the armor was down to a single flexible suit. That was black, coated with superconductor, and appeared to be venting coolant whenever lasers touched it.

  The lasers made contact less often with each passing minute. The pilot was fast, almost invisibly so on the security screens. A funny-looking human.

  Gnix detected recognition in two nearby minds. One was the Patriarch, whose perplexing and repetitive thought was Peace. The other was Darfoor.

  Darfoor was terrified out of his mind, and he was thinking assassin, assassin! Gnix Told him, COME HERE. TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS THING.

  "I made them," whimpered the Tnuctip. "The tarkodun were too stupid to follow instructions, and we were told to make them smarter. We gave them a third stage of life. They have brains Thrintun can't control all at once. They're smarter than anything else, and they live forever, and we made them to kill you. They gave us the hyperjump and disintegrator and stasis field when we asked for ways to disrupt your lives. We're all going to die."

  SHUT UP. STAY PUT AND ATTEND UNTIL I TELL YOU OTHERWISE. FIGHTING SLAVES, STOP THAT THING!—NOT YOU, CHIEF SLAVE.

  On the screen, the assassin came into Rrit's Past at high speed, faster than a Hero's charge. Companions were still assembling in its path, and it produced a needlegun and shot them all. There was respectable return fire, but there was impact armor under the superconductor, and the assassin was either immune to stunners or shielded somehow. The needles got through all the armor the Companions had, but apparently didn't tumble—none of them began vomiting blood, anyway; they just fell asleep at once.

  A Companion in powered armor was beyond the next archway. He fired a staggered laser array—and none of it hit. The assassin had turned sideways and bent ba
ckward and tilted its head, and all the beams passed it by. Then the assassin fired the needlegun into the wrist control of the armor, and the armor fell off. The Companion drew his wtsai and leapt even as the armor was hitting the ground, and the assassin dodged the blade and hit him with both hands, one on either side of the rib cage. The Companion fell, gasping. He wasn't dead or dying, but he wasn't going to be getting up until someone came with a medikit and pulled back his dislocated rib joints, where the assassin had caved them into his lungs.

  The assassin got to where the stuffed alien stood on a pedestal and hesitated for an instant. That was enough for the lasers to slice up the needlegun. The assassin ran on.

  A section of the monitoring system went dead, just as the assassin was getting to it.

  HOW DID IT DO THAT? Gnix demanded.

  "It couldn't have," the chief slave replied. "It could be damage from the crash."

  FIND THAT THING!

  "There are Heroes massing in its only path."

  The statue looked like a six-legged Jotok. Given its imposing size, it was a religious image, probably based on a real individual; each Jotoki limb had its own brain lobe, so a six-legged Jotok would have been far smarter than usual, and probably also a holy cripple. Certainly a legend.

  From above came a voice, speaking Flatlander: "Hey. Protector. Up here."

  There was a half-grown kzintosh hanging by one foot. "I know a shortcut," he said.

  An army could be heard ahead—could be smelled ahead.

  After the youngster had been hauled into the duct and the hatch closed, he said, "There's one Thrint and four Tnuctipun. Rrao-Chrun-Rrit is obeying as slowly as feasible. And," he said, "and he is my father, so—"

  "Alive if any chance exists," the Protector said, and sniffed. "Harem? Right. Stay someplace safe."

  "Felix said Protectors liked jokes."

  "Felix?"

  "Felix Buckminster. Former technology officer on the Fury. I'm a Patriarch's Son."

  "Okay, but be inconspicuous."

  The kzintosh wrapped a piece of metal mesh around his head and touched a switch. "The Thrint won't notice me. Felix taught me a lot."