The Man-Kzin Wars 11

by Larry Niven

  * * *

  Richard Sakakida was the name of an intelligence academy-ship in the Third War, and a singleship-infiltration carrier in the Second—the same vessel. The name had been held by various people over previous years, but the search for relevance went all the way back to the 20th century, to the war that had established the UN's existence.

  Richard Sakakida, an American of Japanese ancestry, had washed ashore in Japanese-held territory during the war and explained that he was a defector. After some torture to make certain that he wasn't lying, he was accepted as a civilian servant. His work as a servant was exemplary, and he was soon taken into the service of the local commanding officer. He was a fine valet, though not much of an aide—when told to clean the CO's sidearm, he displayed a thorough ignorance of military matters by polishing the exterior to a high shine, without taking it apart.

  In the course of his duties as a servant, he also acquired, and delivered to US Army Intelligence, the entire Imperial Japanese order of battle: name and function of every division, where the men in each were from, who their officers were, organization of the chain of command, and the overall war plan. That is, what places would be attacked, what size and type of force would be used to do it, what contingencies had been anticipated, and how they would be responded to. Once this was in American hands, the Japanese never won another battle.

  In the Fourth War, the kzinti had won exactly one battle: the surprise attack on Pleasance. After that, every attack force they sent anywhere had been ambushed by human fleets, usually within minutes of entering a region where they couldn't use hyperdrive to escape. The forces guarding Kzin itself had ultimately been drawn off by diversions, allowing individual stasis capsules of Hellflare troops to hit the planet at hundreds of miles per second, unmolested. The Fourth War had lasted less than six years, from the invasion of Pleasance to acceptance of the terms of surrender. The Patriarch had called for armistice about a week after the arrival of the human commandos, who displayed an understanding of kzinti anatomy rather better than that of most kzinti field surgeons. Peace Corben must have gone to Kzin at the start of the War, gotten into their toughest security areas, and walked out with the entire military database.

  A childless Protector could adopt the entire species; Peace Corben had done a fine job indeed of caring for her wards. Decidedly better than a certain psychist.

  * * *

  Buckminster flinched as Corky burst—almost exploded, really—into tears. He said, "You want me to take that?" and reached for the screen.

  Corky looked at him.

  Buckminster carefully drew back his hand. Corky was taut as a bowstring, and his face bore an expression of kzinlike wrath. "I'll just go get a drink," Buckminster said, and kept his movements slow as he got up and left.

  Buckminster called Peace as soon as he was clear. "Corky's in death-seek," he said.

  "That was quick."

  "Oh. What did you do?"

  "Injected him with one of my witch's brews. He thought he was forgetting his family, so I put together some stuff that'll let him call up old memories without swamping them with irrelevant associations."

  "How did you manage that?"

  "I synthesized the things that let me do it," she said. "Do you want details, or did you have plans for the next month?"

  "I was thinking of eating and sleeping, which I'm sure would slow things down. What do we do now?"

  "Have you gotten the Silver Bullets out of his ship?"

  "Oh yes." He'd done that before starting the cleanup.

  "Then you keep out of sight, and we wait for him to come see me."

  * * *

  Corky was waiting for her in the kitchen when she went in for a scheduled meal. (As a breeder she'd suffered from depression and hypothyroidism, so she was accustomed to eating whether she felt hungry or not—yet another lucky break for humanity, since there was no tree-of-life growing where she made the change to Protector.) He said, "I need to leave." Then he actually looked at her.

  Peace was wearing a knee-length singlet, in white, with the usual array of pockets down both sides to the knees. There were black letters on the chest:

  BECAUSE I'M THE PROTECTOR, THAT'S WHY!

  His fierce expression went blank with surprise, then developed into amusement and dismay—the latter largely at the amusement. He cleared his throat superfluously, then said, "I need a pressure suit and a schedule of the Patriarch's movements—I want to know when he'll be away from his palace."

  "You've given up on assassination."

  "Yes," he confirmed unnecessarily. "I still don't think it's a bad idea, but his successor wouldn't understand. The trouble with kzinti is they're still too much in shock over losing. They don't take it personally."

  "True," she realized, suddenly admiring his plan. "He won't be traveling for a few months yet."

  "I have to get back in condition anyway, and practice with my lift belt, so the pressure suit first, I think."

  "First we eat."

  "I'm not hungry."

  "Don't make me cut up your meat for you."

  That look of dismayed amusement returned. Corky shut up.

  * * *

  Less than a day later he was gone. Peace had gotten a tissue sample in the course of fitting the suit, and was telomerizing some cells when Buckminster found her. "You let him go," the kzin said.

  "Had to."

  "Are those his cells? Are you cloning him?"

  "Yes and no."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Yes, they are, and no, I'm not. I'd been planning to provide infertile women of good character with viable ova containing my original gene pattern, suitably modified to meet local fertility laws, and large trust funds. I had enough for one or two Peace Corbens per human world. Now, though, I'm adding his genes to the recipe. The paranoia can be retained as a recessive, and there'll be more variety in their appearance."

  "You're having children with him, you mean."

  "Near as I can."

  "Why?"

  Peace looked up at him. "Same reason I had to let him go. He's a good father, Buckminster. Whether he believes it or not—he's a very good father."

  * * *

  Harvey Mossbauer's family had been killed and eaten during the Fourth Man-Kzin War. Many years after the truce and after a good deal of monomaniacal preparation, Mossbauer had landed alone and armed on Kzin. He had killed four kzinti males and set off a bomb in the harem of the Patriarch before the guards managed to kill him.... The stuffed skin was so scarred that you had to look twice to tell its species; but in the House of the Patriarch's Past it was on a tall pedestal with a hullmetal plaque, and there was nothing around it but floor....

  It's safer to eat white arsenic than human meat.

  The Hunting Park

  Larry Niven

  October 20, 2899 CE

  "Why do they call you 'white hunter'?"

  I smiled but didn't grin. "It's anyone from somewhere else who conducts hunting for sport in Africa. I was born in Confinement Asteroid and raised in Ceres and Tahiti." He was wondering about my skin, of course. The parts he could see, hands and face, are jet black, from moderately black American ancestry subjected to three decades of raw sunlight in space and in the islands.

  "Odd," said the kzin, but he waved a big furry hand, claws sheathed, dismissing the subject. Waldo had ordered hot milk with black rum; he slurped noisily. I'd ordered the same. He asked, "Why is it taking so long to arrange a safari?"

  "First rule is, everything takes forever when you're gearing up. When you're out in the field, everything interesting happens before you can blink. That's when you find out what you forgot to take."

  We studied each other. Waldo was big for a kzin, maybe five hundred pounds, maybe eight feet four or five inches tall. No chairs here could hold him; he squatted in a cleared space in a corner of the restaurant. His fur was marmalade, with a darker stripe diagonally down his chest and abdomen that followed four long runnels of scar tissue, and a sho
rter scar, also darkly outlined, that just missed his left eye and ear. A thong around his neck held a few leathery scraps: dried ears, I presumed. He kept his claws sheathed as carefully as I kept my lips closed. You don't show your teeth to a kzin.

  I hadn't volunteered for this. What sane person would? It was October of 2899 CE; I'd hoped to celebrate my fiftieth birthday next year, when the century turned. I planned to quit the safari business and write.

  Then again, who could turn this down? They were paying twice the going rate in Interworld stars, but that was nothing compared to the publicity value. I was wearing some recording gear. We'd have the whole safari on tape, right up to my death, if it broke that way, and my daughters would hold the rights. If I lived, I'd have a tale worth writing.

  Waldo was examining Legal Entity Bruce Bianci Bannett, a tall, long-headed black human male forty-nine years old, with yellow tattoos around the eyes and ears that make me look just a bit like a leopard. I guessed what else he was looking for, and I said, "I don't have any really gaudy scars except for the tattoos. It's because I'm careful."

  "I should be glad of that. LE Bannett, our permissions still haven't come through, and I see no kind of a caravan forming."

  "We'll have our permissions." This trip I wouldn't even need bribes; the United Nations had spoken. "I'm having trouble getting bearers."

  "Offer more money?"

  "Money isn't as powerful an argument here in Nairobi. I think they've lived too long with governments that can just snatch it away. They're all a combination of socialist and bandit. A good story, that's a lure, but a man only needs one fortune and one good story.

  "But traveling with... there are four of you? With four kzinti, that's bad enough. You're not using guns?"

  "No, not on a hunt. On a hunt we use only the w'tsai. You, though, you'll take a gun?"

  "Several."

  "Do not shoot another hunter's prey," Waldo told me.

  "My point was, bearers would usually count on all of us, me or any of my clients, to shoot a, say, a leopard before he gets to the bearers. But there's only one of me, and you—you can't throw a w'tsai, can you?"

  Again Waldo waved sheathed claws: a shrug.

  "So it's not even a spear. I've hunted with natives who use spears. They have a point. A spear doesn't jam. So my bearers would risk you not being fast enough to save them, plus anything you might do in a rage because you missed your prey."

  "But we have these," Waldo said, and I saw his claws, three or four inches long, exposed only for a moment. "Not just the w'tsai."

  "What do you want out of this, Waldo?"

  "Wave Rider and Long Tracks and I, we are brothers," Waldo said, "part of Starsieve's crew. Starsieve seeks treasures of the cosmos using ship's instruments. I operate the waldos, of course, the little hand-and-jaw-guided robots. It can be very dull work. We seek an adventure out of the ordinary here on Earth. Kashtiyee-First has been our teacher and First Officer under Prisst-Captain. Both would gain honor if we three gained partial names."

  Names are important to kzinti. Most bear only the names of their professions. "Would this—"

  "It would help. A hero's hunt is the story that defines him."

  "What do you want to kill?"

  "What have you got?" he asked.

  "Not much. The Greater Africa government is solid Green. They tell me what they can spare. Some species are grown beyond the limits of the Refuge." I fished my sectry out of my pocket and tapped at it, summoning the current list, just in case it had changed in the past two hours. Sure enough— "Cape buffalo is off the list. If a Cape buffalo charges you, you hope you can duck. Elephants are out, of course. We can have a lion... or all the leopards we want. Crocs don't offer much of a trophy, but again—"

  "Why are the, rrr, Greens so free with leopards?"

  "We used to think leopards were scarce, even endangered. They're not. They're just shy, and really well camouflaged, and they're everywhere. If a lion turns to human prey, he's generally got a reason. Maybe he's hurt his mouth and can't hunt anything difficult. But a leopard, he kills for fun. Antelope, zebra, man, woman, whatever turns up," I babbled, and suddenly realized— "Of course none of that might apply to kzinti."

  "What are the rules for kzinti?"

  "Nobody's got the vaguest idea. We might not catch anything. Your scent might drive them all away." Waldo didn't smell unpleasant; just really different. "Or bring everything in from miles around. Kzinti have never hunted on Earth."

  "More's the pity," Waldo said lightly.

  October 31, 2899 CE

  Waldo is the one who speaks Interworld. The other three have translators, and I carry one built into my sectry. In Africa everyone speaks a different language, but with kzinti involved—I'd better buy a spare.

  Wave Rider and Long Tracks bear wildly different markings from Waldo, though they're near as tall and about as massive. Wave Rider's a darker marmalade with no noticeable scars; he keeps his sectry open a lot, reading whenever things turn slack. It's Singapore built, with oversized keys. Long Tracks is sheer yellow, barring minor scarring close to the eyes and a missing ear. He wears a thong with one ear on it. Kashtiyee-First is smaller and older, brown and orange marked with a lot of white. No thong.

  We've packed everything on floaters. Floaters go almost anywhere, but there are places where we'll have to carry everything. These kzinti will be carrying their share and the bearers' too, because we've got no bearers.

  I don't worry about their stamina. Most of the kzinti-occupied worlds have Earth gravity or higher, and my clients look tough. They can port their own weight, but will they? Will they follow orders? I always worry about that. There's no sane limit to what a man is likely to do with a charged gun.

  But they aren't men. Should I worry about those blades? In a kzin hand a w'tsai looks like a long knife crudely forged. In mine, it's an overbuilt sword. If they started swinging wildly—well, we'll see.

  They've brought more medical gear than I'd expected given their macho background. It looks like equipment from a ship's infirmary. From Starsieve, of course. Where on Earth would they get kzinti medicines and stretchers? Kzinti forces never managed to invade Earth, not in any of the four interstellar wars (plus "incidents") that ended more than two hundred years ago.

  They carry antiallergens and diet supplements. Earthly life doesn't quite fit their evolution.

  Guns and ammunition: well, those are all mine. I can't carry everything I might need. One of the kzinti might have to be my bearer, but first I'd better test them out a little. It can turn sticky when the bearer runs up a tree with your gun.

  Food: I've packed oranges and root vegetables and dry stuff. We'll make do with less cookware than usual, some canned goods, sugar, flour, condiments and so forth. That's all for me. Clients eat mostly meat, and we shoot that on the trail. Kzinti eat nothing but raw meat. I'll be doing all the cooking.

  And of course I'm carrying nine kilos of sensory equipment spotted over my head and body: cameras, sound, somasthetic, scent.

  Cape buffalo are back on the permitted list. I'll get them one before the Greens pull him off again.

  November 3, 2899 CE

  Three days into the brush. We camped by a river. It's low and yellow, and we're filtering the water. The kzinti drink a lot of it. I'm not carrying booze. It's hard on me, but I don't want them drinking.

  Wave Rider wants to know why it's taking so long to get anywhere interesting. I waved around and told him to pick out a transfer booth for me. Long Tracks laughed at him, teeth showing. I've never seen a kzin's killing gape. I hope I can recognize the difference in time.

  In fairness to Wave Rider, there are a few transfer booths out here, and we white hunters tanj well know where each of them is. They're big enough to pass a mini ambulance. We use them for medical emergencies, including veterinary work. I usually don't tell clients about them.

  * * *

  Waldo's been attacked by a lion.

  He was sleeping outdoors. We s
et up a palisade, of course. I pitched my tent not too close so that I can cook without their complaining. Smoke my pipe, too.

  I was updating my log when I heard the yowling. I got out there, armed, and barely glimpsed the lion smashing out through the branches of the palisade. I fired and got no joy of it.

  Wave Rider's right front claws are bloody, but so's his ear, torn half off. He swung at the lion and scored, and the lion swung back, then kept going. But Waldo looks worse. The lion was stalking him. It found him asleep and attacked in a lion's favorite fashion: it tried to bite through the kzin's skull. Do that to a man, the prey barely twitches and the lion can just haul him away.

  Waldo is big and the lion may be smaller than usual, though he sure didn't look it in mid leap in the moonlit dark. The beast's fangs didn't get through Waldo's skull. They tore off half his scalp. Waldo came awake with a screech, and I expect Leo had never heard anything like that.

  I used antiseptic on both injured. They put up with it, but Waldo assures me that Earthly bacteria have little interest in kzinti. Waldo's half-scalping is the subject of much merriment.

  November 5, 2899 CE

  We're looking at a herd of Cape buffalo, maybe a hundred. The buff have made a nice comeback. "Once upon a time they were near extinction," I say.

  Kashtiyee-First asks, "These are herbivores?"

  "Yeah, grass eaters, but they're not rabbits and they're not puppeteers—"

  "LE Bannett, we're familiar with oversized herd beasts who charge in numbers."

  "How do you handle them, LE Kash?"

  "Run. Hide. Climb rocks or trees. How shall we approach these? We want only one head."