The Man-Kzin Wars 12 mw-12

by Matthew Joseph Harrington

  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-Riit. “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 Riit'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 Riit'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 backward 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 w'tsai 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-Riit 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.”

  “Good for him.” The Protector wriggled down the duct, came out the access hatch, and pretty well ran along the ceiling loops to the wall handholds. It went down the wall and was working out the door mechanism before Shleer was all the way out of the hatch, and was gone well before he reached the ground.

  It hadn't been patronizing him, though: It had scratched the combination into the wall before it left. Shleer followed as quickly as he could.

  I CAN'T FIND IT! Gnix Shrieked, and slaves howled and fell.

  “It may have a shield,” Darfoor said.

  MY AMPLIFIER CAN GET THROUGH A SHIELD, FOOL! UNLESS YOU MEAN THE KIND YOU WERE MAKING.

  Despair added flavor to the spy's thoughts. “I do.”

  CAN YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT? Darfoor seemed much too pleased at this question, so Gnix learned why and said, CAN YOU DO IT WITHOUT SHUTTING DOWN THE AMPLIFIER?

  “No,” Darfoor said miserably.

  THEN WAIT A MOMENT. Gnix paused to exclude his immediate group of slaves, then Told the rest of the palace:

  GO TO SLEEP.

  Then he Told Darfoor, NOW SHUT IT DOWN.

  Shleer staggered a bit as his jammer quit, but it wasn't bad—almost everyone in range had gone to sleep.

  He got to the Place of Contemplation, which the Thrint had had redone as a TV room, just as Rrao-Chrun-Riit was stunned asleep by the Protector.

  The Thrint had three of the Tnuctipun in front of him in a pyramid, and said something that the Tnuctipun understood to mean, “Drop your weapons.” There was a strong Push behind it. It didn't work, and the Thrint raised a variable knife—the Patriarch's, Shleer noted, offended—and pushed the switch.

  The glowing red ball fell off the end and rolled away. The Thrint stared after it. Then he looked up.

  The Protector shot his eye out with a plain old slug pistol. “Apparently a knife doesn't always work,” it said as Gnix fell backward.

  Then it blew the three Tnuctipun's brains out too.

  It turned to the fourth, Darfoor, who screeched desperately, “Fa la be me en lu ki da so mu nu e ti fa di om sa ti po ka et ri fu…” and more of that general nature.

  The Protector said, “Glossolalia?… Machine code?… Hard… wire… ta… lo…”

  Shleer pulled out one of the Peer's anemones, leapt into the room, and thrust its disk against the Tnuctip's side. As designed, the disk stayed put against the target's skin, while the ultrafine hullmetal wires it bound together passed through it, resuming their original shapes: curves, varying from slight to semicircular. In combination they made up a rather fluffy blossom: an anemone.

  They had to pass through the Tnuctip to do it. I
t fell into two pieces and a good deal of goo.

  The Protector shook its immense head in relief and said, “Kid, I owe you a big one.”

  “You don't either,” said Shleer.

  “I do. The Tnuctipun created my ancestors, and they clearly hardwired our brains to respond to a programming language this one knew. I was about to become his adoring slave. I owe you big.”

  “You gave me my father back.”

  “I wanted him healthy anyway. Give me a minute here.” It went to the control panel and looked it over. “Wow, good traps you guys make. Got it.” It shut down the acceleration field. Then it opened a belt pouch and got out a disk about the size of a decent snack, pulled a switch, and set it down to inflate into a globe.

  “How did you do that with the variable knife?” Shleer said.

  “One time-alteration field won't work inside another. The wire was too thin to support the weight of the ball when it wasn't in stasis. Sorry, I'm being rude. I'm Judy Greenberg.”

  “Who?” said Shleer, utterly surprised.

  When he'd come out of it, Larry had abruptly sat up in his rinse tank and said, “Why the hell do kzinti dislike eye contact?”

  They were felines, after all. “Good question,” said Peace. “That's Judy there. She insisted. She'll be out tomorrow.”

  “What about the girls?” They had four daughters, Gail, Leslie, Joy, and Carolyn. Carolyn was four. (All had blond hair the young Peace Corben would have given up three fingers for.)

  “Old Granny Corben explained everything, and they're all proud of you two.” The colonists' children, at least, trusted her, not least because kids usually know a pushover when they see one. (It is a protector's duty to spoil children absolutely rotten.)

  Larry had then said, “Oh god damn. Telepath in orbit to be sure the situation is resolved.” So Judy had to be the one going in with the amplifier.

  “At least she's a precog.” So she'd duck before being shot at.

  “Thanks.” That had helped. Larry picked up a pack of cigarettes, left thoughtfully nearby, and lit one. “Gaahhh!” he bellowed, and threw it into the rinse tank he'd just left. “What did you put in that?”

  “Tobacco,” Peace said.

  He looked her over. “They've always smelled like that to you?”

  “Yes, but you seemed to enjoy them.”

  He spent almost a full second thinking this over. Then he said, “Thanks.”

  When the globe had inflated, it split open, and another Protector came out. Shleer goggled for a moment, then realized the globe had been a portable transfer booth.

  The new Protector looked at the red ball, then at Judy Greenberg, and said, “Aristocrat.” Judy snorted.

  “What?” said Shleer.

  “Sorry, ancient Earth joke,” said the new one. “At a gunfight, how do you recognize an aristocrat—that is, a noble who inherited his rank? He's the one with the sword.”

  Shleer began laughing and found it hard to stop. He'd been through a lot lately. The new arrival got out a brush and did Shleer's back a little, which calmed him down. “Thanks,” he said.

  “You would have done this yourself if we hadn't shown up, wouldn't you?”

  “Not as fast.”

  “Details. I'm Peace Corben.”

  “Felix Buckminster told me about you.”

  “Felix? Hm! He did love gadgets. What's your Name?”

  Shleer got self-conscious. “It's a milkname. I'm only four. Shleer.” He took a deep breath, and said, “Can you help the harem?”

  It was interesting to see that Protectors had claws that came out when they were upset too. Peace looked at Judy and said, “Doc.”

  “Larry's on it,” said Judy, who had begun inflating a bigger receiver.

  Peace was shaking her head. “The thing that gets me,” she said, “is why the hell someone who can do this didn't just tailor a disease to exterminate the Thrintun?”

  “Against their religion,” Shleer said.

  Peace looked at him. “You're a telepath.”

  “Uh—”

  “You have to have gotten that from a Tnuctip, because no kzin who ever lived could possibly have come up with a reason that stupid.”

  They were making eye contact. Shleer gave it a try.

  Peace shook her head. “I realize you're distressed,” she said, “but if you ever give me another headache this bad, the slap you get is gonna give you an ear like a grapefruit. You're looking at it from the wrong end. This doesn't discredit you; it makes telepaths respectable. Are you aware that you've single-handedly saved civilization? Everybody's civilization? I intend to make damn sure everyone else is.”

  Judy was loading kzinretti into the autodoc that had arrived, and Peace joined in.

  Notwithstanding their removal of the Thrintun—and Tnuctipun—embryos, and restoration of the kzinretti to health, the Patriarch had clearly been glad to see the Protectors go. While the Greenbergs had been tailoring plagues for kzinti ships to spread, to kill off any Thrint or Tnuctip that got loose in Known Space thereafter, Peace had spent some time interviewing survivors about the chain of events, and it had evidently upset her. Nobody really welcomes a cranky Protector.

  She piloted Cordelia out to the local Oort cloud, then got on the hyperwave and said, “We need to talk.”

  Such was the seriousness in which she was held that the Outsider came via hyperdrive, which they normally didn't use. “It is good to see you were successful.”

  “Yeah, you don't have to blow up their sun or whatever. You're in contact with the puppeteer migration.”

  “That information is not available for sale.”

  “It wasn't a question. I have a message for you to relay to them, to be paid for out of my credit balance.”

  “Proceed.”

  “Keep going.”

  There was a pause. “Is that all?”

  “If they don't seem to respond appropriately, add this:

  “The kzinti found a stasis box you had neither opened nor destroyed, in the debris you abandoned in your system when you left Known Space. It held a Slaver and several Tnuctipun genetic engineers. They were found by the kzinti. The Slaver had the Tnuctipun growing Slaver females by the time they were stopped, and had the kzinti fleet preparing antimatter weapons. All you had to do was drop the thing into a quantum black hole. Your interference is offensive, but your irresponsibility is toxic. In the event that you inflict either upon humans, or their associates, ever again, you will be rendered extinct. Message ends.”

  “Peace Corben, you should be aware that we have contractual agreements with the puppeteers for their well-being. Whatever you have planned, we would have to stop it.”

  “Planned? What am I, Ming the Merciless?” she exclaimed. “I'm not going to warn someone about something I haven't done yet! I set up my arrangements over three hundred years ago.”

  “What arrangements?”

  “It's the bald head, isn't it? I don't know. I expected to have this conversation someday, and I knew you could do a brain readout, so I erased it from my memory. If you're bound by an obligation to look out for their safety, the best help you can give is to have them get out of our lives and stay out.

  “And as regards debts and contracts, diffidently I point out that I have just taken action to clean up the leftover results of your big mistake. Nobody will hear about that but Protectors, by the way.”

  “Thank you.” And the Outsider was gone.

  “Damn, I didn't mean to humiliate them,” she said.

  “Hm?” said Larry.

  She glanced at him. “They—What are you doing?”

  He took the tennis ball he'd been chewing out of his beak. “I just ate. Flossing.”

  The true tragedy of the Pak had been their utter lack of humor. Conversely, every human Protector was an Olympic-class smartass.

  “Hm!” she said, and shook her head. “We got the name 'starseed' from the Outsiders, and nobody ever questioned it in spite of the fact that the damn things
never sprout. The Outsiders made them. Starseeds go around sowing planets with microorganisms that are meant to evolve into customers. Outsiders keep track of what worlds are seeded and monitor development to make sure nothing really horrible happens. Three billion years ago they were lax in this, and two billion years ago a species they'd missed exterminated all organic intelligence in the Galaxy. They charge high for questions about starseeds because they're ashamed. So what's the verdict?”

  “The kids all wanted to name whatever planet we settle everybody on Peace. I persuaded them it was against your religion.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Everybody else wants to call it For a Breath I Tarry. Including Judy and me.”

  Pleased, she said, “What about Tinchamank?”

  “We thought we'd clone him some mates and find them their own planet. After that it's up to them. Can we go look at Altair One?”

  “The Altairians didn't have time travel,” she said.

  He didn't read her mind. (He'd tried it once after the change. She was still a lot smarter than he was, so it had been much like peeking through a keyhole and seeing a really big eye looking back.) After a second he said, “You already looked.” At her self-conscious nod he said, “So how did they vanish?”

  “Kind of an immaterial stasis field is the best I can describe it. The math's on record if you care. They'll reappear in a couple of thousand years, probably shooting. I left the kzinti a note.”

  He nodded. “I'm still a little sore about our kids smelling wrong. Judy's not.”

  “I did the same with my own.”

  “I didn't say I didn't understand it. We won't restart the Pak wars, fine. They just seem like strangers.”

  She nodded. “Yah.”

  Rrao-Chrun-Riit signed the edict. Anyone using slaves would henceforth have no trade or tax advantages over anyone using paid free employees, and would face a choice of slowly going broke or changing over to workers who had a motive to do their work well. He had recently acquired some strong views on the subject of slavery.

  He turned to his son, who had saved everything that mattered to anyone. Before the assembled clan of Riit he declared, “Felix Buckminster taught you as well as I had hoped. Yes, I assigned him to you,” he said, amused at Shleer's astonishment. “I'd have arranged for you to be brought out of the harem if he hadn't been sterile! You really thought I wouldn't know that a kzinrett came from a lineage of telepaths? My own mother did! But it's recessive. My son, you are not merely a telepath, you are a full telepath, with the ability humans call Plateau eyes. You can vanish, yes—but you can also charm disputants out of fighting.