by Larry Niven
I remembered my speed-reading of the last few weeks, and the attempted defense of Singapore in the Second World War. As the Japanese advanced down the Malay Peninsula towards it, the defending general had refused to construct field defenses in case they lowered the spirits of the civilians. It had not been a good decision.
"If people knew too much, I gather, it was feared they would simply flee into the hills, or mob the slowboats," he went on. "And then there was that... that one brief shining moment... when it looked as if we were winning.
"There was another matter too, which we found out late in the day: Some of our politicians minimized the threat because they hoped to enlist the Kzin as allies for their own factions in our internal disputes here."
I wished I could have said I found that unbelievable, but I knew too much.
"Maybe, if we could have duplicated their drive," he went on, "got factories into production, maybe if we had had a few more months, or a year, we could have fought them on equal terms. As it is... "Wunderland is their prime target, of course. Anyway, the Swarm is more difficult to subdue. Dozens of inhabited asteroids, with defenses now. But we haven't much left here. Those drives and weapons are too good for us. And they've got reinforcements too. More of the big carrier ships have arrived."
They could hardly have been alone," said Dimity. "With drives like that and what we know about them from Sol. Where there was one ship there would be more coming...
"Tell me," she asked him, "Is there any suggestion, any indication, that they may have got through the light-barrier?"
"No. They get close to the speed of light. They can match velocities with any of our ships, and of course they are much more maneuverable."
"Could they have a superluminal drive in outer space and drop into subluminal close to star systems?"
I don't know. We've not been in a position to observe. There's no evidence of it. Anyway it's impossible. Why do you ask?"
"Nothing."
"I only saw a bit of what was happening. I'm just a meteor jockey. The fighting was spread all over the system."
"You must have learned a bit about these creatures. Language, that sort of thing?"
"A bit." The pilot took a red disk from a pocket. "It's here, what we know. The spoken language is hard to understand, even with a computer, at present impossible to imitate, although some people are trying. The written is a little easier, at least when it's not in war code. It's another of those things we might have got better at with time."
"Can I play it?"
He shrugged and passed it to her. "I don't see why not. But what do you intend to do now?"
Repair the car as soon as I can," I said.
"You can't show a light or heat source. They're still around up there."
"Well, we can't trek very far on foot, and we can't stay here. In any case, there are almost certainly a group of aliens in the Hohe Kalkstein caves. We know there's one."
"Kzin," he said. He pronounced it differently, a snarling cough it made my vocal chords ache just to hear. "They are called Kzin. Plural and possessive kzinti, we think."
"Oh yes, I know."
Kleist's nervous excitement was running down now. We were all pretty beaten up, and he and I sank into a sort of doze. Dimity had earphones on, and was playing the disk, staring at the screen. More than once I saw dark shapes, too sharp-edged to be cloud, driving high and silent across the luminous bands of the Swarm and the Milky Way, and more sliding lights that might have been meteors.
Chapter 12
"If I am the Scourge of God, you must be truly wicked."
—Attributed to Genghis Khan
I woke in daylight. Modern cars have complex machinery and neither Dimity nor I were practical mechanics.
"I guess we're walking out of this one," said Kleist. He added: "That's a Spacers' joke. It's got a bit threadbare lately."
Repairing the car was an even longer job than I thought. I soon saw that without Kleist we would never have done it. We hoped the daylight heat reflected on the rocks of the mesa would mask what we were doing. We spent most of that day and the next working on the fuel line and its feeder controls, freezing when we saw flying things. We kept a watch in the direction of the Hohe Kalkstein, but though we thought we saw some distant activity on the escarpment nothing emerged from it to come our way. We also thought we saw an ordinary air-car flying well to the north close to the ground, but had no safe way of trying to signal it. It never came back. Alpha Centauri A had set by the time we were finished, Alpha Centauri B rising and casting long shadows in the purple twilight. And in the direction of the escarpment our glasses were definitely picking up lights and movement.
Where to go? I had tried to get Dimity away from München partly to protect her from rioting and chaos and also to protect her knowledge. But there seemed no obvious safer haven now. Kleist insisted he must get back to München , which in any case was the planetside center of the defense effort. (Had it been stupid of us to place our defense headquarters in our major city? I wondered, and came to the conclusion that it had been very stupid indeed.) Then Dimity recalled something.
"You said 'mob the slowboats.' What did you mean?"
"The old slowboats are still intact," Kleist said. "The Kzin haven't bothered with them for some reason, at least they hadn't a few days ago, and I saw them in the sky last night. Presumably because they are deactivated they don't see them as a threat, or a high-priority target. But they are being reactivated. We're getting people out."
That they could be reactivated had been firm policy, and every Wunderlander knew it. It was part of our history that when humanity's first interstellar colony was established, the pioneers laid down that the huge spaceships would be kept fully fueled and ready to fly if some unforeseen disaster on the new planet compelled evacuation. They were still there. Closed down and in orbit they required little maintenance, but it had been necessary at first to resist a temptation to cannibalize them. By the time it was obvious that we were here to stay and in any case the population had grown far too big to evacuate, we had factories supplying everything we needed without them. Besides, we might always want to get to Proxima or Alpha Centauri B. Why break up expensive assets unnecessarily?
"Do the Kzin know that?" asked Dimity.
"I think so. Their mind-readers know a lot... During the breathing-space, the happy time after the Swarm reinforcements came, we got crews and fuel into them," he said. "It seemed the unforeseen disaster was well and truly upon us, and we could at least get several thousand people away. They're virtually useless as warships, anyway."
"Where would they go?"
"Back to Sol, I guess. Sol System should have been able to cobble together better defenses than we have. They've had more time and they've more people and factories, and their Belt has good technology, even if flatlanders think like sheep."
"Wouldn't the... Kzin just destroy the slowboats?"
"They haven't so far. But maybe it's a cat-and-mouse game. We found in one of our own old texts—Sun Tzu's Art of War—that an enemy should always be left with an apparent escape route as a disincentive to fighting with the courage of despair. But they're hard to understand. They fight without any concept of mercy, but they've also pulled their punches a few times. They could have smashed Wunderland's cities from space, or vaporized the major bases in the Swarm, but they've held off. They seem to be trying to do as little damage to infrastructure as possible. We don't know why."
"What do you know," asked Dimity, "about their concept of humans?"
"Very little."
"You say they have no interest in negotiation. Do they accept surrenders?"
"They have, yes. They have taken human prisoners. We think... It's horrible and bizarre, but we think they eat them unless they've promised otherwise."
"When do they do that? Promise otherwise, I mean."
"Perhaps sometimes if the humans have useful skills. Once or twice when humans have been in relatively strong positions they have bargain
ed and seem to have kept their bargains. But that hasn't been often."
"So they don't look on humans simply as vermin to be exterminated?"
"That's hard to say. We've got a little of their language. Their word for human is kz'eerkt, which seems to mean 'monkey.' There must be monkeys or analogs on their homeworld. They refer to our ships as 'monkeyships.' " Kleist closed his eyes for a moment and frowned as if remembering something difficult. "There was one odd incident: One of our ships was cut off and surrounded by a kzin squadron. It had expended its major weapons and the kzin boarded it. It was a big ship, a Swarm passenger liner originally, and they fought from cabin to cabin for days. At the end the surviving humans made a last stand on the bridge deck. Some of the com-links were still working and broadcasting what was happening to the fleet. We saw and heard the last fight when the kzin broke through. "They killed the humans pretty quickly. In hand-to-hand fighting we don't stand a chance against them. The last surviving human detonated a bomb. Only a small one, but he must have taken a lot of kzin with him.
"That put the picture out, but we still got sound for a while. We think we heard one of the kzin say something we translate like 'brave monkey' or 'worthy monkey.' But I'm not sure.
"As far as we can gather, they honor brave enemies, if not to the extent of sparing their lives. Is that what you mean?"
"Perhaps a little. But if you were about to get control of an industrialized world," said Dimity, "would you smash up its factories and industrial plant?"
"No. Of course not."
"And nor do they. That means they're coming to stay. Their build suggests they come from a world with heavier gravity than Earth, and a lot heavier than Wunderland. This would be pleasant for them. They can breathe the air. Of course they are coming to stay—what price a whole habitable planet with industrial development ripe for the taking, with light gravity and meat on the hoof as bonuses? They landed scouts. They know something about human biology and morphology. They want to keep our planet, and it follows that they also want humans to work it... Do you have any evidence, or any intuition, that they act more or less independently than humans?"
"More independently, definitely. Tactically they sometimes fail to cooperate with each other to a surprising degree. We'd all be long dead otherwise."
"Cats are generally independent-minded. And you think they know what the slowboats are for?"
I think they probably do. Does it matter?"
"It could. If they think they are industrial assets of some kind—major asteroid miners or something—they might be reluctant to destroy them. And if they think they are refugee ships... "
Once they see them leaving the system they'll be after them," I said.
"Not necessarily. Not if they got a long enough start. I'm trying to think like an intelligent cat, with a cat's independence. Go after a slowboat and yes, assuming you found it, you'd catch it. A slow obsolete ship technologically inferior to your own and useless except for its own specialized purpose. You might have a feed. But then you'd have to turn around and come back. Meanwhile, the other cats are all grabbing the choicest parts of the planet.
"Like terrestrial lions at a kill, or tigripards here: Would one leave a big kill that was already warm and bloody on the ground, with the rest of the pride lined up and feeding, to chase after a rabbit? Probably not. At least, we might as well think that way."
"I hope you're right," I said. "Anyway, you're going to be a slowboat passenger."
"Me?"
"Your drive theory. Humanity's got to have it. The Kzin must not."
"There was talk of drawing lots or something" said Kleist, "but I don't know if there will be time for that. What drive?"
"No, it may not work," said Dimity. "Besides, if you don't know, you can't reveal it under torture." I had been about to tell him what I knew of it.
"Yes," he said. "They're good at torture, except they don't seem to understand shock. As far as we can gather they tend to kill the victims too soon. That annoys them. But I suppose they are learning."
So we head for München and the spaceport. And hope we get there before they do."
Fly as low as you can," said Dimity. "We don't want to show up on radar and get shot down by our own people." The subject of torture had left me rather preoccupied. "Don't head straight for the city. Hug the contours of the hills and trees."
"We'll have to slow down," I said.
"We should slow down anyway. Both sides will be looking for war craft, and they travel fast." It was a relief to be moving again, anyway.
Sunset seemed unusually prolonged for the season. There were also sounds in the air that puzzled me. As we headed toward München we saw lights streaming up from the surrounding hills, lights in the sky, rising orange blossoms of fire, with the diffuse background glow of that strange slow sunset behind them.
It was like no light I had seen before: a wavering, pulsating orange glow.
Something moving in the sky against the glow, something black. Kleist grabbed my arm. "Kzin aircraft!"
I wrenched the car round in a tight turn. The dark shape turned too, with a deliberation that was somehow terrifying in itself, and began to move towards us.
"What weapons do we have?"
"Personal strakkakers, a couple of big ones mounted on the car, some bullet projectors. Flashlight lasers."
No use. Glass and teflon needles won't stop that thing."
"Ram it!" said Dimity.
"That means the end of us."
"We bail out with lift-belts. Keep the strakkakers by you."
Instinct had taken over my fingers. I had the car close to the ground, jigging violently from side to side. Our pursuer had lost height too, and was closing with us. I estimated it would be on us in two to three minutes.
"They like to get in close," Kleist said.
"Then get belts on, fast!"
Desperate fumbling. I programmed the car to fly steady and stop in two minutes. Then we stepped out, three hundred feet in the air. We fell for another two hundred feet or so and then the ground effect of the lift-belts operated and we hovered. There was the alien craft, big and black and fast.
Some instinct made me shut me eyes and throw my hands in front of my face. It hit the car with an explosion that deafened us and painted multicolored light across my eyelids. A blast of hot air knocked me spinning away.
There was the alien craft, stopped in midair. There were flames curling up out of its front part and its nose was dipping. It was sinking, quite slowly, toward the ground.
A hatch opened in its side, and we saw dark bulky shapes emerging. So they had lift-belts too. Of course they would, and with their gravity technology they would be better belts than ours.
There was the whirr of a strakkaker in the air behind me and a hideous scream. The first of the creatures became suddenly fuzzy in outline, and then disintegrated, leaving a half-skeleton hanging in the air. Two others followed, fast, and they were shooting as they came. The exit port was their point of vulnerability. Kleist and Dimity had their strakkakers trained on it, and though the aliens were fast, they couldn't get through the glass needles.
But a strakkaker has a limited magazine capacity. I heard theirs fall silent, and brought up my own, ready at the movement I could see beyond the hatch.
More alien shapes, horribly bigger than men, were maneuvering something out of the hatch, and leaping onto it. It was rectangular, and I thought idiotically for a moment of a flying carpet, realizing it must be some sort of evacuation vehicle.
Whatever it was, it seemed to be an emergency device only, like a sledge. The aliens on it must, I thought, be dazed and injured by what had happened, but there was no opportunity for mercy now. They were still carrying weapons, and, though the flames of the burning craft in the air beside them must have affected their night vision, they would surely be able to see us soon. I fired the strakkaker again in a long burst, and swept them off the sledge as the two craft separated. I realized the fact that the strakkaker,
unlike a beam weapon or bullet-rifle, had no betraying flame might be a great advantage. The main alien craft was falling faster now, and breaking up, pouring fire from several ports. There was an internal explosion, and it dropped like a stone, exploding again as it hit the ground and scattering wreckage.
Our own lift-belts were bringing us down, too. They were emergency devices only, with limited power, intended at altitudes like this to slow a fall more than to fly. One of the floating aliens was still firing a beam weapon, but it was either dead or badly wounded, for the bolts were flying at random. I raised my strakkaker again to finish it.
I fired a burst of a second or so, and the gauge clicked on empty. But the thing dropped its weapon. I thought I heard it scream, but between the deafening explosions and the flames I couldn't be sure. I marked where the weapon fell, though, as my own feet touched the ground. The others landed nearby. I was amazed we were all alive.
Kleist and I lifted the alien weapon between us and we staggered away. There seemed to be something still moving in the wreck of the alien craft, and I thought there might be explosions still to come. "They were trying to capture us, weren't they?" said Dimity. "That's why they didn't shoot at first."
They often try to capture if they can," said Kleist. "It's better not to let them...
"Well," he continued after a moment, "at least it should be difficult for them to find us now. Have either of you got any metal prostheses in you?"
We hadn't. The small locator implant in my arm was plastic.
"Good. Get rid of the belts, and any electronic gadgets you've got on you. Watches, calculators, pocketbooks. They can detect electronic activity in space. I don't know how much metal their detectors need, but why make it easy for them? And they can use the heat-induction ray to cook any metal parts you have inside you while you're still alive. I've seen it happen..."