by Larry Niven
Something touched his foot. He kicked frantically, hoping to damage it before it struck, but it was the upward-sloping sandy bottom. The current, once they were into it, had helped them more than they realized, but it had almost carried them past their sandbar, and already they were on the far side of it, away from the wreck. Just as well, Vaemar thought, kicking now with full, purposeful, disciplined strength. No point in letting the Jotok see what we're doing. In a few moments the tree was aground, and they waded ashore, Vaemar carrying Swirl-Stripes again. There, on the other side of the island's low central ridge, were the outriggers as they had left them. All were tired, and both the kzinti and the naked humans found themselves shivering. Hugo looked very weak, bent over cradling his injured arm.
"Are you able to carry on?" Vaemar asked him.
"We are soldiers now," said Hugo. And you win wars, Vaemar thought, looking at the frail creature striving to stand rampant with his weapon. Well, this is a war for me to win now.
Vaemar realized that despite the meager compressed rations they had had in the ship, he was beginning to get hungry again. They faced a long and difficult journey to safety, but...
We have won, thought Vaemar. Land under their feet and the outriggers, proper boats and with a good deal of their equipment, changed the whole situation.
But the situation was changing again. He looked back to the hulk. The water round it was seething, now, and the kzin's keen eyes could see Jotok—large, mature Jotok—climbing out of the water back into the hull. The hunters returning. There were eights-squared of them already. It would not be a good idea to wait till the returned Jotok attacked them here in force. Best to head back to Marshy's island at once, and hope to escape them by hard paddling and straight shooting. Hope too, that the signal for help had got through and help would arrive in time. He remembered what the old hermit had told them: the kzin crew's number was smaller by the time they got to this island. And they had not had armed Jotok swimmers pursing them. But the outriggers made all the difference. They could also make a proper call for help now.
The outriggers exploded in boiling orange mushrooms of flame. Humans and kzinti flung themselves flat. Explosion reflex had been drilled and engrained into them all. The ridge running along the axis of the sandbar saved them.
Hugo had landed on his broken arm but Vaemar could pay no attention to his noises as he crawled to the crest of the ridge. The bushes overtopping the crest of the ridge flashed into fire. Behind him, another half-mile away, the vegetation on the next island was also burning—and in no ordinary fire. The long-dead, tinder-dry stuff was exploding. Pushing a small "V" in the sand with his claws he risked a quick view of the cruiser.
One of the weapons-turrets on the hulk was pointing at them. Already there was enough drifting smoke to show the ghost of a beam passing back and forth. From somewhere near the burning island behind him came a vast explosion, not of flame, this time, but of steam. More steam, he saw, was beginning to rise around the derelict.
The Jotok were firing a battle laser. Not one of the cruiser's main weapons—those, if they had been serviceable, would have melted the island to slag—but still something designed to knock out armored ships in space-battles. It was mounted in a functioning, armored turret which their own weapons could never damage. He backed away down the slope of sand that was their only protection. As he did so the low coarse vegetation on the top of the ridge, analogous to marram on Earth, flashed into flame. A trickle of melted silica ran down the slope behind him.
The laser played back and forth. The heart of Grossgeister was burning as well as boiling for the second time. A great semicircle of the dead islands were ablaze. Mighty rolling clouds of smoke and steam billowed up.
Good, thought Vaemar. A bit more of that and we will be hidden. Also, it will have to be noticed soon, if our signal did not get through. He realized satellites must have already registered that a heavy kzin military laser was firing in Grossgeister. He hoped the response would be an investigation, rather than a nuke from the Strategic Defense Command.
For the moment they were sheltered in the lee of the sand ridge, though the laser was sweeping just above their heads, lighting the smoke cloud more brightly as the smoke thickened.
He realized Rosalind was beside him. The others were huddled down some distance away. Dust and soot particles, suddenly incandescent in the beam, flared and sparkled in the air above them. Vaemar slapped out a burning spot on his fur and worked himself further down into shelter.
"Can't you stop them?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean." He grinned at her, the fanged grin that humans on Wunderland has learned long before to dread. There was saliva in reflex and his fangs dripped. Humans had learned to dread that also. "You have been in contact with them, haven't you?" He would have lashed his tail if it had not meant a risk of losing it.
"I don't understand you."
"This is no time for monkey lies!" Naked as she was, she looked very Simian to him. "The old Jotok knew you! They were crying out to you, weren't they, trying to say your... name"—suddenly, for the first time since he had been a kit, it was hard for the kzin to acknowledge a human name—"'Rrrzld... stand clear!' And in the fighting, you were the only one whose shots hit no Jotok. You were firing to miss. I saw."
"You see a great deal, young Riit. But not everything," she replied. "You do not see that we have met before."
"Go on!" His claws and teeth were very close to her now. "Speak or die!" The razor-tip of a black claw touched her naked skin. There was a small trickle of blood.
"We met in the caves," she said. "You were my prisoner once. I was Henrietta."
She was a third-year university student. About twenty Earth-human years old. Henrietta had been his Sire Chuut-Riit's executive secretary, the highest-ranking human slave under the kzinti occupation, the collaborator with the highest price on her head after Liberation. When, six years before, she had held him and Raargh captive in Chuut-Riit's secret redoubt, he had seen her closely. She had had an adult daughter, Emma. Emma whose crazy plan had been to lead a kzin rebellion. This dark-haired young manrret could not be Henrietta. There was no similarity in voice, in eyes, in anything. And then he realized that she could be. Henrietta had had many contacts. She could have had transplant surgery. New eyes to thwart retinal pattern analysis, new skull-shape, new lungs to thwart breath-particle analysis. Something odd about the hair... Sufficient new parts would make DNA testing useless. He could see no scars, but with sophisticated surgery and regrowth techniques they could be made invisible anyway.
What had Anne said of her? That she kept to herself. And she did not move like a human? Did that mean not like a young human? Not like a human with its own legs? He remembered something else. In Marshy's house, the last time they had been together in formal circumstances, she had not sat while he remained standing. And she had begun to call him "Honored" before biting off her words.
"In the Name of my Honored Sire, Chuut-Riit, I command you!" he snarled in the Ultimate Imperative Tense. "Speak truth!"
"I escaped when the ARM stormed the secret redoubt," she told him. "Another body was taken for Henrietta's. Its head was completely destroyed and it had spent some time in a Sinclair field. ARM and the Resistance had the body they wanted. No one had an interest in looking or testing too closely. Markham had the body destroyed."
"I rremember."
"I hid. I changed my appearance. At length I got to the swamp. A lot of fugitives have come here at one time or another. Yes, I made contact with the Jotok, fairly recently. Then I returned to München. I took the identity of a student. Largely to be near you."
"Why? Why did you deal with the Jotok? Was dealing in conspiracy with kzinti and humans not enough for you?"
"No. You know what your Honored Sire came to believe—that kzinti and humans both are threatened by a conspiracy of which the human ARM is but one aspect—one tentacle. He warned Henrietta of such. I saw that it could ma
nipulate well-meaning humans. More, that it could manipulate kzinti—and would. It had tricked your Honored Sire into shameful death."
"His death was not shameful! He died saving me and the other kits! I rremember his last day."
"There was no kzintosh nobler and braver. The shame was upon others. I was desperate to secure you as an ally. But... you saw how Henrietta's plans failed. Several of those around me were ARM agents. Humans are easily manipulated by them. Kzinti they have experience in manipulating, too. They have selected and seek to breed what some call Wunderkzin, kzinti who are like men. You are the first among those who their eyes and hopes are fixed upon."
"I musst be a leaderr to the kzinti of Wunderland!" He was speaking in Wunderlander again. "Many have ssaid sso. I am of Chuut-Riit's blood!"
"Few know that better than I. Few would grudge you your destiny less or hope more for its fulfillment. But humans and kzinti together are not enough. To defeat the ARM we must add the Jotok to the equation. Another set of alien brains, I thought. Those linked brains perceive things differently to either of ours. A great potential asset. I thought I had reached them. But they have been masterless too long. The older ones will never reenter servitude."
"You are hardly in a position to persuade them to." He was able to get his accent under control again.
"I tried. I spoke with them. Living with the kzinti, Henrietta had seen what the Jotok were capable of. Their brains were not destroyed. Gaining their confidence was slow and dangerous, but I managed it in the end. I have made many secret trips here in the last three years. Easily done. There are many places one can enter and leave this swamp unobserved, and what was left of Henrietta's organization could at least get me a small, stealthed boat. I told them what I could of... recent developments on Wunderland, but the old one's minds were too set for them to properly take it in, the young one's minds were too unformed. But I was making progress! They came to acknowledge me as an entity, a non-Kzin, and would not willingly harm me. At least"—bitterly—"that old Jotok entity we have killed would not. Does that not tell you something about them? They are not naturally savage. Well, we have repaid his trust in the way humans so often do!"
"Stand up then. See if their laser will not willingly harm you. And what of the dead humans? The dead kzinti who sought but to fish? How do we repay them! Urrr!"
"The Jotok are not like humans. They are not like kzinti. That is the whole point. But within them still is the remnant of something high and great. The universe needs them. To unite the best of the three species against ARM."
"I do not see how..."
"It is all spoilt now. Even if they would listen to me, I have no way of reaching them. I wished to stay with you, Honored One, to speak with you when we might, to have you see... things... It was foolish of me to come on this expedition, but I thought I could control it. I should have realized that I as one of six could do little. I have made bad judgments, mistakes."
Her eyes looked into Vaemar's eyes. How could I ever have taken her for young? he thought as he saw the weariness there. "I have tried to do my best... for all... I have paid somewhat of a price..." There was liquid running out of her eyes now, the human sign of grief. "But now there is another plan, another chance. If I can live... If I can but reach the abbot. He may shelter me, I think. And then, and then..." Something else came into her eyes, making her look like the young Rosalind again, and then faded.
"I am confused often, Vaemar-Riit... and you see how I look. I have had much surgery. My skull is not my own..."
And you weren't excessively sane last time I saw you, Vaemar thought. The ghostly beam sweeping through the smoky air above them suddenly ceased. Cautiously they raised their heads. The turret on the hulk was not moving, as far as they could see, though it was hard to make out in the huge bank of white steam boiling around it. The laser had not been cooling efficiently. Either it had burnt out—not unlikely given that it had probably not been systematically serviced for the last ten years, and its cooling system was designed for firing in space anyway—or the Jotok thought them dead.
Meanwhile, thought Vaemar, the outriggers that would have been their means of escape were gone. Even the dead tree that had carried them here was burning fiercely. Alpha Centauri A had fallen far towards the horizon and night would be only a few hours away. There was no point in thinking about what to do with Rosalind/Henrietta now. He summoned the others.
"We will wait until it begins to grow dark," he told them. "Then we must set out to swim to the next island. And the next after that."
They would have to try to keep Swirl-Stripes afloat with the aid of his inflated Jotok, but Vaemar did not feel optimistic. If the returning Jotok adults pursued them they would have no chance. And even without the Jotok there would be dire problems for swimmers. The further they got away from the dead area and the Jotok, the more numerous the crocodilians and other predators would become.
Vaemar was confident that his, and Karan's, teeth and claws would see him and her through, and in other circumstances he would have reveled in such a chance to hunt and kill, especially as the channels got narrower and the water shallower towards the edges of the swamp, but he had other charges. "Do not show yourselves on the skyline!" he ordered. There was no point in letting the Jotok know they were alive. Swirl-Stripes was still drifting in and out of consciousness, but seemed to be slowly sinking. They fed him a little water when he could take it, and some compressed food from their last remaining ration pack. That reminded Vaemar of another problem. He himself was beginning to get hungry. So, he imagined, was Karan. He knew he could control his own hunger for a while yet, but in an extremity of hunger a kzin, especially, and sooner, a young kzin, could lose control and mind and attack any living thing in a mad frenzy. As Chuut-Riit's last surviving kit he had especial reason to be reminded of that. Let me not forget I am a Hero, he asked the Fanged God. Time passed.
The fires on the islands beyond them were beginning to die down now. The dry dead plant-stuff had not lasted long. Then in the distance he heard, or rather felt, the drumming of an engine. Marshy's boat partially surfaced in the wide channel between two of the smoldering islands. Weapons pods and sensors were extended on it.
Vaemar knew their body-heat would not show up in infrared—not with half the land masses around them still red-hot. Though the fur on his back crawled with the expectation of a laser-blast, he leapt to the highest point of the ridge, waving his arms and roaring, the tightly-focused kzin roar that can carry for miles across land or water. He saw the boat alter course towards them and dropped again. It approached and grounded in the shallows. Marshy, wearing a battle exoskeleton and carrying a beam rifle of a pattern forbidden to civilians on Wunderland of either species, leapt through the water and dropped down beside them. Vaemar, Hugo and Anne began to tell him what had happened. Then Rosalind/Henrietta screamed.
It was a scream of pain that almost shocked the kzin as his glands reacted. She was thrashing in the sand, clutching her head. A convulsive lurch took her whole body clear of the ground, then she fell back limply. She was plainly dead.
Vaemar turned to Marshy, seeking some explanation. Then he saw the old human's face was also contorted with pain. He was struggling desperately out of the exoskeleton. He flung it aside and leapt away from it, almost naked now like the rest of them.
"Heat!" he cried.
At the same moment Vaemar felt a burning against his skin, on his hands and between his shoulders. The metal fastenings of his belt, the only substantial thing he was now wearing, were hot, as were the rings keyed to the guns. He smelt a new burning smell, one that reminded him of the battle in the redoubt: burning kzin-hair. They had just now burnt through his fur. There was also smoke raising from Swirl-Stripes, but with his nerve-damage he would be unable to feel anything except his hands, which were tearing at each other. Vaemar stripped the belt from him, with no time for gentleness, and felt its metal components and compartments burn his hands. The rings followed. He tore off his ow
n belt and rings. The humans were doing the same, Hugo with one arm having a difficult time of it. Between Vaemar's shoulders was a point of agony as if a rusty nail was being driven into a nerve-trunk.
"Heat-induction!" cried Marshy. "It's the heat-induction ray!"
The Jotok in the hulk must have been playing it on the islands and the surrounding water for some time. It heated metal first, nonmetallic substances and living tissue much more slowly. Some ceramics were nearly proof against it and the weapon's own containment chamber was ceramic. But it heated everything in the end. It was too slow to be useful in space-battles, but it was standard equipment on kzin warships also outfitted for ground-attack, and a terrible weapon in the right circumstances, like these. The kzinti had developed it to boil the seas of Chunquen, when the natives of that watery planet had tried to resist their invasion from primitive missile-armed undersea ships. It was the weapon that had boiled the heart out of Grossgeister before.
Vaemar yelled to Karan, explaining through clenched fangs what had to be done. Her claws made quick work of slicing through the loose skin between his shoulders and removing the locator. Then they did the same for the others, Vaemar having to hold them as Karan worked. Fortunately the locators were intended to be removable, but not like this and it was painful work. Human and kzin blood spilt and ran together in the sand. No doubt with the heat and change in chemical environment the devices would be transmitting emergency signals before they cooked. Rosalind/Henrietta's head was smoldering now. Much of the skin and flesh had burnt or peeled away to reveal a metal skull.