The Man-Kzin Wars 11

by Larry Niven

  "It makes a loud noise that carries a long way."

  "I know that. Why would I need to?"

  "Who knows? But if you did, and you didn't have a whistle, wouldn't you feel foolish?" Peace said reasonably.

  He completed his inspection in silence, less disturbed by this logic than by his agreement with it. After closing the kit, he said, "That tasted surprised."

  "That's what I was trying for. I like meat to taste more exhausted, but then I used to be human."

  "I thought so," he said sadly. "Should I have a Name?" he added, which would have given some people the impression he was changing the subject.

  "Without a doubt," she replied. "Humans get them at birth, and you're practically human in some ways. You don't attack when there's no chance of success, for example. And you make conversation, which is how humans keep constantly apprised of everything."

  The kzin needed time to get the implications of this, so Peace rose and ran to the next job. It wasn't immediately urgent, but nothing was at the moment, and it was important in the long run: producing a noncontagious Protector virus—that is, one that infected plants but not people—whose shell binding used a porphyrin nexus other than thallium. Cobalt looked good. According to Brennan, there had been cases of Pak Protectors dying of old age at 28,000 or so, but given the constant regeneration of tissues and reconstruction of the DNA therein this was obviously the result of cumulative trace thallium poisoning. Another tnuctip safety feature.

  * * *

  Manexpert had taken a lot of time to think, and the next morning he located Peace in yet another dome. It was a big dome, and it held an assembly that looked like an immense balloon tire, made of metal and lying on its side. The thing floated several feet off the ground, and Peace wore a harness that adjusted gravity so as to reach any part of the assembly. Manexpert was vaguely aware of the infeasibility of making a gravity planer that small, but by this point was so far beyond surprise at anything Peace could do that he would have accepted it without question if he'd been shown a groundcar and told that it was powered by its driver's sense of propriety. "Good morning," Peace called to him. "Come up on a cargo plate."

  He saw what it meant, found the controls obvious, and went up to join it where it was working at an access panel. "You're defying your Maker," he said without preamble.

  "Sure am."

  "How is that possible?"

  "It's called free will," Peace said, still looking into the aperture its hands were in. "It's why you can talk to me instead of attacking, for example, which is what you were made for. It does help that you're more intelligent than your forerunners. They attacked humans without even wondering why. Died without reproducing, of course. Humans and kzinti have been very helpful to each other that way."

  "I don't follow you." It would have shamed him to just admit that to a mortal being, but this was different.

  "All the kzinti stupid enough to attack humans, and all the humans stupid enough to try to talk their way out of a fight with kzinti, have been removed from their respective species' gene pools. Both races average a little smarter with every War. If you people learn to tell tactful lies and pretend not to understand what you hear, you'll actually be able to engage in diplomacy."

  "I've heard the word before, but it didn't make sense until now."

  "You've heard diplomatic definitions, from humans. Most humans have a natural tendency toward diplomacy, to the point of believing their own reassurances."

  "Delusion?" Manexpert said.

  "Of course. But usually ones that can be lived with. Kzinti have their own comforting delusions."

  Manexpert didn't say anything, experimenting with diplomacy.

  After a moment, Peace asked, "If you had vastly superior weapons, perfect troop discipline, and overwhelming numbers, could you conquer humanity?"

  "Of course."

  "With me on the human side? Look around you. How long do you think you've been in stasis and the autodoc?"

  Manexpert halved his first guess, then halved it again. "Four years?"

  "Forty-one days. I'd have made a lot more progress if I hadn't had to do all that medical research.... Nobody is entirely in his right mind, kzin or human. Delusions keep people from going any crazier. Perfect sanity is a burden far too vast for a mortal mind to bear. The nearest humans ever get to it is a condition called paranoia, and that generally just decays into a more plausible set of delusions than is usual. Kzinti Telepaths are constantly on the verge of complete sanity, and it turns them into terrified wrecks. You would do well to avoid any mention of me when you get back to Kzin. Too close to absolute reality." Peace was silent for a few moments, squinting as it worked, and said, "That'll have to do. Don't try to fly this thing through a star, though."

  "I'm not a fool."

  "But you're a kzin, and therefore fearless, right? That was irony. Follow me, we can see if your pressure suit needs improvements." She led him to an entry hatch.

  * * *

  He had things on his mind, and couldn't choose between them. Peace took over the conversation to take the pressure off, so anything that really mattered to him would work its way out on its own. She took the time to show him such consideration. She liked him. He had a kind of feral innocence to him, and was sufficiently alien that she actually had to think a little to predict what he would do. He was smarter than the rest of his ship's company put together, as well—he kept thinking of surprise attacks, which was merely brighter than average, but he kept figuring out why each one wouldn't work, too, which was unique.

  Also, he was fluffy and smelled like gingerbread.

  "I made the sleeves and leggings short so the gloves and boots would stay on by themselves, the way the short torso keeps the helmet seated," she showed him. "I noticed the combat team were all chafed bald where the straps went around their wrists and ankles. Your tools and fittings are all in front. The recyclers they had were really poor, not even as good as humans use, so I put this together. The backpack unstraps to swing around for access during use. That articulated hullmetal mail was pretty heavy, so I've just used layers of interacting polymers, which are actually better because hullmetal won't seal itself after a meteor puncture. I'm afraid the foodmaker is only one flavor; I didn't want to take chances on the cultures mutating. You can override the filters in the helmet to let in more light, but what gets in through the rest of the suit can't be increased. I didn't know your tastes in entertainment, but there's a crystal player, and some things I was able to salvage from your ship. These are for grooming, during extended stays in the suit—this paddle draws them along from outside, and as you see they return. There won't be nutritional deficiencies, but the suit's doc isn't up to much more than gluing broken bones and maintaining circulation in a crushed limb while it heals. If you stay out of trouble, though, the suit should be good indefinitely. Try it on."

  She waited for him to go through the checklist, even though she could see everything was right. She wasn't the one who needed to know it was right, in order for the suit to have any purpose. While he was doing that, she again speculated on the possibility that starseeds had been created as a genetic lifeboat for the tnuctipun, with Outsiders a machine lifeform created to guard them, immune like all machines to Slaver power. It was possible, but couldn't be checked without taking apart a starseed, and she still hadn't come up with a way to be safe from Outsiders if she did that. (Though if she cut into a starseed without being shot, sliced, blown up, neatly sorted out by isotopic weight, or accelerated off the edge of the visible universe, it would indicate that the theory was probably flawed. It was not an immediate concern.)

  It would have been good to be able to get more direct information about the tnuctipun, but Larry Greenberg had been the nearest thing to an expert, and his slowboat had never made turnaround on the trip to Jinx. That had been just barely too early to be Brennan's work, so the sabotage must have been by puppeteers. She couldn't fault their decision—a telepathic human breeder with a Slaver's memories w
as dangerous.

  "It smells good," was the first thing he said. He was surprised, as well he might be.

  "Yes, this has a good recycler. Let's get you familiarized with the ship's controls."

  "Now?"

  "You surely don't want to be around when I start scattering radioactive thallium. And this area's going to be submerged by then anyway, because I have to melt the icecaps. Now, move along before I have to get the broom."

  He didn't understand that, fortunately for his dignity, but he moved along.

  "The planer will develop two and twenty sixty-fourths 512s of a Kzin gravity. I've made up some wargame programs to add to the entertainment supplies, and the ship's autodoc is a lot better than your ship had. Tell the Patriarch you stole it from human experimenters, and he'll have to give you at least a partial Name. Damaged data files in the computer will support your claim. Don't go anywhere but Kzin with this ship. If this ship attacks any human settlement I will blow up Kzin's sun."

  "How?" he demanded, incredulous at last.

  Peace looked at him. "I am not about to tell a kzin how to blow up a sun," she said. A porous tube of a ton of lithium, extruded through the hilt of a variable-sword to half a million miles' length, filled with another ton of lithium, to be placed in stasis in its turn. The end of the wire thrust into a star's core, the central wire's stasis shut down, and fusion propagates violently up the tube to the hilt, spraying fusing plasma out the pores. The shock disconnects the tube's stasis power supply, and a channel of fusion convects heat out of the core and fuel in. Until he asked, she'd been bluffing. "This panel controls the ionizing laser for the ram's fuel—" she continued.

  * * *

  Something had been wrong with him. Possibly all his life. He had accepted the word of his father, his clan priest, and the Patriarch's Voice without ever questioning them; and now this thing, this Fury called Human Victory, that had shown them all to be fools merely by existing, was telling him to accept its word without question too. Ftah.

  From now on he would question what he'd been taught. That, at least, Peace had taught him correctly. No doubt that was against the God's orders, Peace having been created to protect humans. Well, eat God.

  Come to think of it, there was a human religion that claimed to do just that. If there was anything to human religion—and, given this creature's existence, it should at least be considered—God didn't sound too bright. There was the tuft of an idea there.

  A hand like a knotted branch took hold of his muzzle and turned his head. "What was the last thing I said?" Peace asked him.

  Manexpert glared at the liberty, then said, "If I shut down the synchrotron oscillation in the fusion pinch for more than a few minutes of my subjective time, the ship will stop generating the ultraviolet laser beam for long enough to begin encountering nonionized matter, and the ram field may not deflect all of it quickly enough. That's probably what happened to the Evita Peron on the way to Wunderland. Am I listening to you."

  Peace nodded once, said, "All right," and continued the instructions.

  It finally said, "Any questions?"

  "Is all this knowledge in the computer too?" Manexpert asked.

  "Yes."

  "Good. What would be a good Name?"

  Peace's hands, almost incessantly busy, dropped to its sides. It blinked and said, "I have no idea. You could take the Name of somebody famous, that you'd like people to associate you with."

  After considering what he'd learned here, and what he'd already known of human practices, Manexpert decided to say, "Thank you."

  * * *

  After the ship was out of the atmosphere, Peace contacted her assistants and said, "Okay, he's been released back into the wild, you can knock it off."

  "He didn't even get to see me," complained Technology Officer over the channel. "I had a squeak and everything."

  "You wouldn't have had much effect after Gnyr-Captain's performance," said Power Officer. "He sounded like Hroft-Riit's haunted axe!" He laughed softly.

  "I always liked that play," Gnyr-Captain admitted, pleased.

  "Okay, you guys, I didn't splice your brains back together so you could do dramatic reviews. I need that free-association on kzinti life more than ever now: the altered body chemistry works, and his paranoia is developing nicely. He's already got a plan, so the next Kzinti War is going to be kzinti fighting each other, and it should be the last. But I'll have to understand kzinti culture better than I do to keep the civil war from sterilizing the planet," Peace said.

  "We're on it, we're on it," said Gnyr-Captain. "You just work on restoring us to normal appearance, stealing some females, and finding a planet where we can settle down."

  "And terraforming this one just a trifle," Peace said in dry tones.

  "In your free time," Gnyr-Captain replied, magnanimous and deadpan.

  "Ftah," said Peace, quite well for somebody with no lips. In fact she was amused; she was undoubtedly the first to discover that the slavering predators who'd been humanity's bogeymen for centuries were, in fact, a race of utterly stagestruck hams. The gaslighting wouldn't have gone nearly so well without them—it had been a chance remark by Gnyr-Captain about Manexpert deserving a Name that had inspired it in the first place. She congratulated herself yet again for the idea of reviving their brains with the telepathic region removed; they were remarkably reasonable without it.

  * * *

  Manexpert's brain seethed with growing convictions. Kzinti were losing their will to fight, but they'd fight one more War if there was a real chance of winning. He thought he knew how to gain that chance: trick God into supporting them.

  It would involve remaking the basis of Kzin's culture. So be it. He would have to work with great care, to avoid rousing suspicion. It would be unwise to take the Name of a great leader or philosopher; he needed something innocuous, even ridiculous. Who was that Hero who'd come back from the First War, driven to madness and advocating an end to warfare? Ah, yes.

  Kdapt.

  WAR AND PEACE

  Matthew Joseph Harrington

  Attention Outsider vessel. Please hold your fire. I have been able to override my genetic programming.

  My name is Peace Corben, and I am a Protector of human origin. I wish to engage in commerce.

  * * *

  It came to her, as she awaited a reply through the relay, that for the first time in almost thirty years she was afraid. It would have been interesting, if it hadn't been so unpleasant. She found herself constantly formulating contingency plans whenever her mind wandered, and it was designed to wander, and none of the plans were worth a thing.

  Her plan to lie dead in space and use passive instruments to monitor the relay's fate was no good either. A maypole of metal ribbons, seemingly billowing around its central shaft, suddenly manifested nearby, appallingly huge, having decelerated at what instruments said was a couple of hundred thousand gees. As this was over 170 times what Peace could get out of a gravity planer before it became unable to compensate for anything outside its housing, she was at least reassured that she wasn't wasting her time.

  Whether she was wasting her life remained to be seen.

  * * *

  The being that would eventually be known as Outsider Ship Twelve had been carrying its children exposed to space, as was usual, its maturity limbs arranged to maximize shadow borders in the illumination it provided for them. At .9c, with Doppler effects bringing gamma bursters into their spectral range aft, and the microwave background just visible forward with a starseed silhouetted against it, life was pleasant. The youngest and oldest enjoyed watching things change color as they went by, too, though the ones in between preferred to watch the starseed.

  They had been moving into a region of considerable modulated radio noise, its largest source about eighteen light-years away. Trade was good in such areas. It took time to be noticed, though, so things were quiet—until a hyperwave message came in, using a chord that should have been known only to Outsiders. The content of the m
essage explained why it wasn't, but raised other issues of interest. The Outsider saw that the transmission came from a relay, looked around, and spotted an inactive hyperdrive motor. The Outsider ability to do this was not advertised. Some species tried to erase debts by erasing creditors. It moved over there for a better look.

  There was a well-made ship, and its sole occupant was indeed a Protector. If it had made the ship, it was much smarter than a Pak. Not attacking the Outsider was also evidence of this. The ship had lots of mountings for weaponry, as was to be expected, but the equipment that fitted them had been not merely dismantled, but distributed, so that it would take at least half a minute to assemble the easiest items—plenty of time for an Outsider to do practically anything. This Peace Corben was displaying what must have been, to a Protector, near-suicidal good faith.