by Larry Niven
Vaemar settled himself onto the sand, forelimbs before him, head raised, hindlimbs tucked ready to spring, his tail curled out of the way but ready to give that spring extra power. He looked like a sphinx. Anne sat before him, almost between his great forepaws, arms wrapped around her knees.
"Hugo and Toby, like you and Swirl-Stripes if I may say so, like the adventure of the hunt," she said. "Simian curiosity, feline inquisitiveness... they're not so far apart. And hunters' pride. Rosalind never says much."
"No. But in some ways she is a little like a cat, that one. Or she has spent time with cats."
"She wanted to share this watch with you. But so did I."
"Indeed? Am I to be flattered by such attentions?"
"I asked her why, and she changed the subject."
"There will be other watches."
"So I said. She has always been nice to me. I think she is lonely. I gather she grew up in München, without family." Delicate ground to tread on when talking to a kzin, thought Vaemar. But there are many kzinti on Wunderland without families also. Thoughts ran on: Zroght-Guard Captain carrying me out of the Keep, pausing at the bloody litter of my Honored Sire's bones so I might remember. Old Traat-Admiral comforting me with a few grooming licks and a spray of his urine...
"Perhaps she saw more of kzinti than I did during the Occupation," Anne went on. "They say the human city-bred and farm-bred are different on this planet now."
"She does not move like you," said Vaemar. "And there is something strange about her hair."
"I hadn't noticed."
"I have to watch humans."
"None of them have any theories about a predator here. Obviously," she laughed again, "it can hardly be an alien from space!"
"It is an ecological mystery," said Vaemar seriously. "From what we saw at the island I have a puzzling feeling—it is not more than a feeling—that our prey... our enemy... behaves like both a sapient and a nonsapient. It does not seem to use weapons, yet it disables computers."
"And it appears to attack kzinti," said Anne. "When there is so much food in the swamp, is it sapient behavior to select the most fearsome warriors in the Galaxy for prey?"
"As you have reminded me," said Vaemar, "it also appears to hunt humans. You speak of the most fearsome warriors. But you are the species that have defeated the kzinti on this planet."
"I am not sure what my point is," she replied, "but, whatever it is, does that not tend to prove it further? If there is indeed something predating upon kzinti and humans, it is either very stupid, or very, very dangerous. If it was stupid, it would be dead."
"What predators hunt lions and tigers on Earth?"
"Apart from humans in the past, nothing. There are biological laws. A tiger-predator—a dragon, perhaps—would have to be too big to survive."
"And the same here. Unless such a predator lived in water."
"And there is plenty of water here. Or unless it was very cunning and well armed."
"Or unless it was small. Microbes and bacteria kill as well."
"Generally not quickly," said Anne.
"No, but my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero told me once of campaigning in the great caves. A Hero who had been curled asleep with his head on the ground awoke mad and died screaming. They found insectile predators had crawled into his ears and eaten his brain from within. And there are plants on Kzin that herbivores have learnt never to touch. Should they eat them the seeds grow claws in their bellies and devour..."
"There were great reptiles on Earth once—dinosaurs," said Anne. "And similar creatures on Kzin. They were very successful and lasted many millions of years. And we have found big fossils here. As well as the giant birds still living in Southland, and big things in the Equatoria forests. We don't know them all."
"That is a long way away."
"Big water-dwellers too... Could there be something like a Plesiosaur with a long flexible neck and a mouth full of teeth, lifting silently out of the water and descending silently to seize us from above." She looked up and gave a slightly nervous laugh. "I'd better stop before I scare myself. This isn't the best time or place to imagine monsters. It's good to see fangs gleam in the dark and know that they are yours, Vaemar."
"Yes. There have been... there are... big creatures and water tends to support bigger ones," said Vaemar. "But I don't see any dinosaurs or thunderbirds around at the moment. Nor do any satellites see them... But I see something there!"
Something large and dark was moving up the channel. Vaemar and Anne whipped out infrared glasses, their weapons cocked. But the swimmer, somewhat reptilian, showed the small jaws and teeth of a herbivore. It turned into the thin fringe of vegetation and began to browse. Vaemar stretched again.
"What was that!" He was instantly poised for battle, ears flat, claws extended, jaws gaping, strakkaker poised. Anne dropped into a crouch over her weapon, her own ears—the mobile ears of the Wunderland aristocracy—swivelling towards the sound. There were long moments of silence.
"I heard something," she said. "Nothing clear. Just swamp-noises, perhaps... but..."
"It sounded like the cry of a kzin... a long way away."
"My ears aren't as good as yours."
"I barely heard it." Vaemar bent to the recorder, and played it back, amplified. He filtered out the water-noises.
"Yes, I hear it now."
"One burst of cries, and then silence. Nothing more," said Vaemar.
"Are you sure it was a kzin?"
"No. I am not even sure it was something imitating a kzin. There are many voices in this swamp... but... it reminded me of a kzinret...
"I shouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of rational explanation for all this," he added. "But that doesn't mean it's necessarily a comfortable one."
The browsing creature vanished suddenly. The two took a few steps beyond the defenses towards the dark, star-spangled water. It exploded at them. The crocodilian was medium-sized but more than twice the length of the human. More than two meters clear of the ground in its leap, its movement was too fast for a human eye to follow. The boat shrieked a belated and futile warning. The fence flared. Anne was knocked sprawling, but before the jaws could seize her, Vaemar had leapt screaming, fangs, claws and w'tsai flashing. He did not need the beam rifle. Two slashes severed the monster's head, though one set of its claws ripped his shoulder. Not deeply, but enough to make admirable scars. How fragile they are! he thought, as he helped Anne to her feet and helped her dress his wounds and her own cuts with the small medical kits they all carried. How did they ever win? It was not a new question. Foolish. We should have stayed within the defenses and not allowed the quiet of the night to lull us. I am glad Honored Step-Sire Raargh was not with us to see that.
Anne was relieved by Hugo, and at midnight he and Vaemar handed over to Toby and Swirl-Stripes. Cameras and monitors recorded the sparse life that showed itself in the vicinity of the island, but by the time they had breakfasted, with Alpha Centauri A standing well above the horizon, they had noted nothing significant. Rosalind collected some small transparent creatures which had gathered in the muddy depressions of the kzinti's footprints at the water's edge. Vaemar removed the crocodilian's jaws for a trophy and bagged them to contain the smell. They broke camp and pressed on. Rosalind raised the matter of returning again, but the other humans outvoted her without the kzinti needing to express any further opinion.
They saw nothing but the unchanging, ever-changing, swamp for several hours, largely clear water and islands where a little new life struggled to establish itself. The channels widened again. With the wider water came gentle, rippling wind and the boat hoisted a small sail. They moved quietly on. Virtually at water-level, they could not see far. Then a great curved shape loomed over the near horizon.
* * *
Half-submerged, water lapping at its ports and open air-locks, many of the blisters of its weapons-turrets empty and broken, a couple of massive electro-magnetic rail-guns shattered and pointing uselessly at th
e sky, the great wedge-and-ovoid of the kzin cruiser was still an impressive sight.
Life seemed to be returning a little quicker here, perhaps because organic compounds in the wreck provided a food-source, or perhaps because its many compartments provided a nursery for juveniles.
It was so obviously a dead and broken thing, however, that there was little air of menace about it. This, Vaemar and the others knew, might be deceptive. With derelict kzin warships all over the planet, and huge dumps of them being slowly demolished at München and elsewhere, this one had not been worth attention and had been left to the swamp since its crew abandoned it. There was no reason to suppose some of its various engine-systems were not still fuelled and much of its war-load not still aboard.
Keeping their distance, they cruised around the wreck.
"No sign of life," said Hugo.
"Yet it will be full of hiding places," said Swirl-Stripes, "for both predators and prey. We should approach silently."
They cast off the outriggers—convenient for cargo but unnecessary for stability—and secured them on a sandbar. As they approached the hulk they stopped the engine and took to their paddles again. The humans stood to their guns at bows and stern as the kzinti's muscles drove the boat almost silently through the water.
"Skraii rar kzintoshi!" The words had been shrieked under many stars, but as the great hull loomed over them, only Swirl-Stripes and Anne, sitting immediately by Vaemar, heard him utter the ancient battle-cry: "I lead my Heroes!"
They passed through the gaping airlock into the hulk. Sunlight through the airlock and from holes below the surface refracted upwards through the rippling water, casting dancing patterns of light in the cavernous gloom. There was much more life here: molds, insectoids, many things that found the great wreck a shelter and nursery. In the bars of green-gold sunlight that shot the water below them tiny minnowlike creatures could be seen swarming. It would be an excellent place for crocodilians to be lurking, but they saw none.
Vaemar, remembering his battle with Raargh Hero and their human allies against the Mad Ones in the caves six years before, paid particular attention to what was, or might be, above them. The minnows obviously did not matter. His eyes were capable of seeing in the dimmest light, and were reinforced by other senses and sensors, but in the chaos of wires, ducting, unidentifiable wreckage and swarming small life neither his eyes nor the artificial biological sensors made out major life-forms. The water lapping through the whole chamber made it impossible to tell anything meaningful from motion detectors. The ceaseless lapping also provided a background noise, enough to defeat kzin ears that could normally pick up the heartbeats of a hiding prey or enemy. Nor were the kzinti's noses much use in the overwhelming smell of dampness and decay. Here and there as they proceeded further into the dimness a few lamps still glowed above and below the water on dials and meters but they revealed little. Vaemar called up the plans for this class of cruiser on the boat's internet terminal, but they lacked detail. Like all spaceships, but especially large kzin warships, it was intricately subdivided. His Ziirgah sense—evolved to aid a kzin on a solitary hunt—detected principally the keyed-up nervous tension of Swirl-Stripes and the humans around him. That was not quite all, but he was unable yet to identify the added factor.
They passed through a door, and paddled up a narrow companionway. It was much darker here and two of the humans had to put down their guns and operate lights. Had the ship been human-sized the boat would have been unlikely to get into such a passage and as it was the lack of room on either side would have brought on claustrophobia for any sufferer.
They passed one open door leading into a room whose ruined finery suggested it had once been a senior officer's cabin. There were trophies fixed on the bulkhead above the lapping water, rotted in the living damp into bare black skulls that startled them until they realized their age, and the remains of a ceremonial hsakh cloak that would never be worn again. There were kzin bones on the bunk, laid out to suggest someone had taken a moment to arrange the occupant's body with decorum before the survivors abandoned the ship. He must have been a respected officer.
As they went on something dark and swift flashed ahead of them and out of sight. It was hard to tell its size, but it was not small, and its movements did not seem to be like either man or kzin. At the end of the companion was another door, open but with a sill at its foot that prevented further passage in the boat.
"Toby will remain and guard the boat," said Vaemar. "The rest of us will proceed on foot. It will give us more hands for the guns and lights. Rosalind, you will bring up the rear." Heroes should go first, and Rosalind struck him as the least clumsy human.
Wading through opaque water that came at least knee-deep on the kzinti and considerably higher on the humans was not an appealing prospect. There was, however, a vertical ladder that led upwards to what would obviously be drier areas. Rosalind lagged behind, doing something with the flasks she carried on her belt. Collecting samples of the water, he supposed, though he could not see the point of such activity. He growled and gestured. This was no time for undirected monkey inquisitiveness. He gathered them around the foot of the ladder, guns still facing outwards.
In an emergency a kzin could have scrabbled up it in a single leap. That was not necessary now. They went cautiously. Vaemar, remembering again the caves, making a mental map of the way they had come. As he did so, a smell hit him that knocked away all the conflicting smells of wetness, mold, humans and plant and animal life. It was a smell of pure death. The humans had never heard Vaemar's battle-snarl before. He went up the last rungs in one bound, Swirl-Stripes and the humans crowding behind.
They swung the beams of their lights round the chamber. The humans cried out. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes roared.
Hanging upside down from the deckhead were the flayed corpses of several kzinti. Though the skin and several of the limbs were missing and the bodies otherwise damaged, it was plain from the sizes that they were both males and females. There were five males. There had been five males at the little fish-processing business.
Guns ready, instinctively moving again into a circle with their eyes and weapons facing outwards, they approached the bodies.
They had been dead for days, but not many days. Vaemar exerted his self-control. A kzintosh warrior must not lose judgement in the presence of death, however much the dishonoring of Heroes' bodies might provoke it: rage and blood-lust should be channeled into the worthwhile and efficient vengeful slaughter of enemies. Such, he thought at that moment, had been the teaching of his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, whose military writings he had studied, and the lessons drilled into him by Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero.
There did not seem to be marks of beam-weapons, blades, or projectile weapons on what was left of the bodies, though the heads were much damaged. He heard a high-pitched whirring sound behind him, and spun round, claws extended to strike, but it was only Rosalind, with a high-speed camera, filming the scene. For a moment he was doubly infuriated by this insult to the dead and raised his claws to strike it away. Then reason returned: a film of the scene would be useful as evidence. She was behaving correctly. Still, orders should be formerly given.
"This is now a military situation," he said. "As holder of the senior ROTC commission, I am taking formal command. Hugo, you are second in seniority and will be second-in-command. We press on. Any questions?"
There were none. He was the youngest present but kzin matured faster than humans. It would have been a bold or foolish human on Wunderland who questioned a kzin standing as Vaemar stood, claws extended, beam rifle cocked, ears flat in his head and his jaws salivating and wide in a killing gape.
Something moved in the darkness overhead. It was hard to tell its size or shape, but it was fast, and it disappeared before they could focus on it. A quick shot after it produced no result but a fall of sparks where some still-live power-line ruptured.
Lights played over the deckhead showed a few small ventilation ducts. But humans ha
d used the ducting of kzin ships in the war, hiding in and crawling along passages where the great felinoids could not follow. Nerve-gas was the prescribed kzin treatment for the problem...
"Humans would have used weapons," said Anne cautiously. Vaemar growled in his throat but said nothing. Whoever or whatever had hung up those kzin bodies like animals, it was plainly the work of intelligence, not any predatory swamp creature.
"These appear to have been eaten," said Anne. "Humans never eat kzinti."
"Never?"
"Well, hardly ever."
Then something pale caught Anne's eye. She pointed. Vaemar recognized the bones at once as a pair of human femurs, still joined to a human pelvis. Hugo was cursing softly and incessantly, jerking the snout of his weapon about, aiming futilely at one dark, silent opening after another. Anne's chest was heaving as she took deep, deliberate breaths.
Humans eat other humans? Vaemar had heard of it happening in famines during the Occupation, though it was rare. That kzinti could eat other kzinti he of all the kzintosh on Wunderland, last son of Chuut-Riit, had the direst reason to know. But that was a matter of hunger-frenzy when, in adolescents, mind and control went together. This was systematic butchery.
From the compartment below them the boat suddenly screamed. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes leapt back down the steps. Their beam rifles fired, but for an instant only. Their reflected beams hit the water, flashing it into live steam. Had they depressed the triggers an instant longer, the kzinti would have broiled themselves. There were two explosions, ear-crackingly loud in that confined space. Something hit Vaemar and knocked him backwards across the door-sill. Swirl-Stripes screamed and charged through the water. Then whatever it was had gone.
Vaemar rose cautiously. The rifle had been torn from his claws and he was, he knew, lucky not to have lost digits as well. Its bulk had saved him, but its charge-regulator was smashed. Something had hit it hard. One rifle was useless.
Not only one rifle. Hugo's strakkaker was in two pieces, and one of his arms hung broken. Anne strapped the arm with an expanding mini-splint and applied a pain-killer, but he was plainly out of any fighting for a time.