by Larry Niven
I don't know how long it took. Finally the firing stopped. The kzin were down and dead. So were most of the nearby humans, though they had begun by considerably outnumbering the kzin. I seemed unable to take my eyes away from naked protruding white bones and worse things. This part of the line at least was largely depopulated. Someone was beating the drum, irregularly, and a few more humans were stumbling up to the breach. Others were collecting the human and kzin weapons and dragging them up to the wall. Clouds of steam and the stenches of burnt flesh and disemboweled bodies. Van Roberts, Grotius and Kleist were nearby. I won't go into details, but only van Roberts was alive, and he was plainly dying. Even after all that had happened, up to that moment I had not realized what the felinoids' claws could do. I think it was because I was used to dissection that I didn't vomit. I still had some pain-killers in my belt and gave him most of what I had. Dimity and I tried to tie him together, though it was obviously pointless. I thought to hold his head so he couldn't see what had been done to him, but he had no strength to move it. Von Diderachs came and squatted by us. He was pouring blood where a couple of fingers and half a hand had been sliced away, but I don't think he noticed till Dimity stuffed some sort of dressing against it.
"Goodbye, Rykermann," said van Roberts. "Look after what you can." He took Dimity's hand and stroked it for a moment. "Fly!" he told her. She was soaked in dark liquid and I thought she was bleeding profusely but then it showed purple in the light and I realized that it was kzin blood.
"Time. Remember buying time is what it's all for. But when it's finished get out! Head for the hills!" van Roberts told von Diderachs. "Save yourself!"
"What for? I'll be with you soon, Roberts."
"You're not a bad fellow for a Herrenmann," van Roberts said. "God... God be with you and all of us." Von Diderachs nodded. He touched van Roberts's cheek for a moment, then walked back to the wall. Van Roberts plucked at my sleeve. We knelt beside him, clutching his hands.
"Remember, Rykermann, they're not good tacticians." he said, "They're too hasty. They can be fooled." He struggled to raise himself and shouted in a stronger voice: "Don't send the colors to the rear yet! They are still our rallying-point! Don't let the kzin capture them!" Then he died. We pulled some cloth over him.
I heard single shots and saw humans walking about killing wounded. Human wounded as well as kzin. They were stripping the bodies. Less hideously wounded humans tied up in bloody fabric were making their way back to the wall and the guns.
"Use strakkakers, you fools!" shouted von Diderachs. "Save your heavy ammunition for the kzin!" I saw two small humans struggling to lift a huge kzin sidearm and realized they were young boys. A kzin in gold armor, obviously one of their leaders, horribly damaged by an explosion, unable to leap or use a weapon, stood propped against a wall screaming as if inviting someone to kill it. Presently someone did. Another kzin, dying, used its last strength to hack at the ears of the human that lay dead beneath it. A heavy gun was firing in the direction of the kzin lines, but the gunner's hands that squeezed the triggers were attached to no body.
I saw a man, a politician who I recognized vaguely from the early meetings, standing in front of a pile of containers. Another man seemed to be arguing with him.
"I can't release more ammunition without the authorization of a competent officer," he was saying. "No, sir, I understand," said the other man, "but this is an emergency." Something in his voice seemed to alarm the first speaker.
"These are all the supplies we have. Show me some credentials and I will release them."
Yes, sir. Will this do?" asked the other politely. He pulled out a small folding gun. The first man began to back away, hands raised to his face. Then he turned to run. The man with the gun took deliberate aim and blew him to pieces with a single exploding bullet. Then he returned the weapon to his belt and began loading containers methodically onto a dolly.
How long has it taken us to go from the twenty-fourth century to the fourteenth? I thought as the strakkakers whirred and the screams of the wounded diminished. How long ago had I been dining with the abbot and had we been reflecting together over his wine upon the too complacent state of our world? I couldn't remember.
"We beat them! We beat an infantry attack!"
"One. Look at our casualties! We won't beat the next. They'll be forming up for the final attack now." But I remembered something else the abbot had said.
"We still have the aircraft!" Dimity seemed to be giving von Diderachs orders now. "An attack from the air could do them a lot of damage. Create a diversion! Fire everything you've got at them while we attack. They won't be counting on air support."
"One pass," said von Diderachs. "One pass and then get out of this. That is a direct order and I give you no discretion in the matter. You'll do no good by throwing your lives away, and there's little more time to be bought here."
"I can't leave you like this," I said. Something primitive, atavistic. I had no idea what the emotion I was experiencing might be called—it was counter-productive to my survival and Dimity's, whatever it was—but it went against the grain to leave them.
"Then let me make it easier for you," said von Diderachs. "Wunderland needs you both. But if you try to return to this doomed battle I'll shoot you down myself. There! I said you had no discretion. Wunderland will need you, Rykermann. Will need you both."
I looked at his haggard glaring face and shrugged. I had no discretion.
"Cheer, you bastards!" I heard him shout into the communicator as we mounted the sledge, and scattered cheering came from up and down the line.
Our drum was beating again. From the kzin lines we heard answering drums—a deep booming. I realized the drums were more than signaling devices: they must also be to encourage one side and terrify the other.
I flew, firing the big beam-gun as we swooped low over the kzin lines, Dimity firing the sidearms as she could at the infantry. The humans were throwing everything they had at the kzin, suppressing their fire while our beam tore into them. And our beam was hot. We saw ground tearing up and vehicles and aliens mixed in it, burning kzin flying through the air like comets. We heard alien screams of rage and agony. I thought I also still heard distant cheers from the human lines.
The humans had established some guns on an outcrop behind their main line: These too poured fire into the kzin lines, but as a stationary position they had a short life. We saw them hit by a heavy missile, possibly summoned from space.
One pass and we climbed hard away. A squat cylinder flew in an arc through the air, slow enough to be visible, and exploded in another soundless disk of blue-white light, another following—someone on the human side was still firing molecular-distortion batteries at kzin as missiles. Our sledge rocked as something hit it from below.
I banked, and we came in again, north of the end of the kzin line. We fired a few more bursts into the end of the line, setting off a chain of secondary explosions. No kzin seemed to have a thought of taking cover, and the beam-gun on continuous fire knocked them down in flames until it overheated and shut off. The whole kzin line was burning and the human cheers were unmistakable. There was still a pack of kzin vehicles, and we fired our remaining weapons into that.
Some Kzin had survived. They weren't firing much but what fire they had left was concentrated on us. Beams were coming back at us now, fast and very close. Something hit a corner of the sledge in a spray of fragments, throwing it about wildly and nearly overturning it. The beams—as I should have realized with our own gun—seemed to use so much energy that they could only be used for very short bursts, but I saw one swinging like a scythe. We avoided it narrowly but plainly a couple like that would finish us. There was nothing more we could do.
Had we bought the human army a respite? For what it was worth, I thought we had. The last I saw, every human gun was firing into the kzin lines without answering fire. But I also saw lights descending from the sky farther south. It looked like a kzin landing that would take the human forces f
rom behind. Our heavy ammunition was finished. I kept us low, following the contours of the ground. Behind us were more explosions.
"They'll get sick of that sooner rather than later," Dimity said. "Then they'll detonate a fission or fusion device."
"More to the point," I said, "why don't we use them? The Meteor Guard have them—and used them against the kzin in space, Kleist said. We could break up their landings and concentrations."
I guess if we did they would retaliate massively. They control space. München and the other cities would be obvious targets then. There's lots more both sides could do: use plasma gas, run a ramscoop in atmosphere, fire a spaceship's reaction drive downward into the infantry and melt them in one pass. If I can think of that, why can't they? Things like that have been happening in space."
"They're holding back for the same reason hunters don't go after game with strakkakers," I said. "Where would be the sport in it for the kzin?"
"It's interesting," she went on, as though discussing a problem in astrometaphysics. "Both sides are holding back from using their ultimate punches. I wonder if there is any hope in that? My head hurts. I hope Diderachs or whoever is in charge has got the sense to scatter before the kzin bring the nuclear devices in. They might get a few away into the hills. They might. I think the kzin will have to pull back before a strike." There was something wrong with her voice.
München was a sparkling patchwork of fires, lasers still lighting up the dense rolling clouds of smoke. Here and there shellfire from heavy guns climbed in strangely slow and graceful arcs into the sky, evidently following kzin aircraft. But the devastation seemed less than I had expected. There were still large patches untouched. In some of them the lights of streets and houses were still burning, and other lights showed traffic movement. It was a weird reminder of a remote and vanished world, until we got closer.
Chapter 14
Pray not for aid to One who made
A set of never-changing laws,
But in your need remember well
He gave you speed, or guile—or claws.
—Saki
As we approached, I saw in amazement the reaction flames of ships taking off from the spaceport, apparently unmolested.
Dimity saw it too. We skimmed between the high buildings, setting down a few blocks from the university. "There seems to be some areas still under human control," she said. "We'd better not fly a kzin craft here."
I had been thinking the same thing.
"But I don't understand this," I said. "What are the kzin doing? They could have walked all over any resistance."
"They don't want to smash the place up too much," said Dimity. "They can see it's an industrial center."
Wouldn't that make it a prime target?"
"It would if the issue was in doubt. But they're sure of winning."
"And why are they letting those ships take off? They must control everything in space by now?"
We'll find out, I guess."
We landed at the outskirts of the city. I still had a strakkaker and, wanting my hands and arms free and not psychologically prepared to expect trouble from fellow humans, hung it in a pouch on my belt, which I buttoned closed. It was secure even if I could not reach it quickly. Never have I done anything I was to regret so bitterly forever after.
There were people in the street now. Few and furtive at first, but as we approached the spaceport they became thicker. There seemed to be some sort of order. We even began to see police directing them. There were vehicles, ground-cars moving in their regular traffic-lanes, an oddly normal sight against the multicolored fire and smoke filling the sky. But there were dead bodies lying in the street, and groups of humans in strange clothes running crouched over weapons. The streets grew more crowded as we went on. And everyone was moving the same way. I found blood smeared on my hands and saw it clotting the back of Dimity's hair. She had had some sort of small head-wound, presumably when the vehicle had been hit by kzin fire. Neither of us had noticed it and in that light I could see nothing more. Ahead of us at the approach to the spaceport was some sort of bottleneck. Police—"soldiers" perhaps—were manning heavy weapons mounted on vehicles, pointed down into the screaming crowd that had now congested and slowed. All order seemed to have broken down. I had no choice but to use my body as a battering ram to try to get Dimity through.
A kzin craft tore up the street, a few yards over the head of the mob. It didn't fire and seemed to be simply toying with them or herding them. The crowd parted somehow, many people fleeing into side streets, but leaving bodies still on the road and pavement. Dimity and I huddled in a doorway as we saw the bulky shapes of kzin leap from the vehicle and pursue the fleeing mob up one alley with deep-throated, leonine roars that carried above the screams.
The soldiers cowered down, not touching their weapons as the kzin disappeared down the street. But as I got Dimity to the checkpoint they returned to them. The frenzied mob were pouring back into the street again. The soldiers fired two bursts, the first in front of them, the second directly into them. That cleared them again. We reached one of the vehicles and a soldier swung a weapon onto us. I shouted up at him. "This is Dimity Carmody! The discoverer of Carmody's Transform! You've got to let her through!" It didn't matter if he believed me or not, or if he had heard of her.
"No one beyond this point without a pass."
"But... "
He raised his weapon.
"There are a lot of people who want to get on the slowboats. I've no time to argue."
I could have tackled him. It would have been hopeless but I could have tried. But the other police were taking notice of us now. There were other people behind us with passes. One chance: "Help us, then, for your mother's sake as well as mine."
He stared at me blankly, then shook his head. The crowd behind pushed us to one side. Dimity stumbled and I grabbed at her. To fall here under the feet of this mob would be death for her, after all we had been through. Pushed and stumbling myself, my feet off the ground, I feared we would fall and be trampled together, but somehow I fetched up against a barrier. It was giving way and I was going down, Dimity with me. And another man stepped deliberately out of the crowd to us.
"I heard you," he said, gripping my hand. "For my mother's sake as well as yours, I will..." He pulled us back onto our feet. Another swirl of the crowd took us into an alcove, entrance to an office block. There was a passage and he helped us down it, though it only led to another street.
"Don't think too badly of them," the man said. "The first evacuations were better. I've seen some real nobility in the refugee queues. But this is the end." I was no longer surprised that in the midst of Ragnarok a human being should try to morally defend his fellow creatures.
The sky to the east turned white, then orange and red. Sometime later the shock-wave reached us. I guessed that, as Dimity had predicted, the Kzin had tired of the human resistance at Manstein's Folly. All I could hope was that it was a clean bomb and the wind would be from the sea. We were clear of the crowd now. I shook the man's hand, and we parted. There were plenty of trampled dead to show how we could have been if he had not helped.
Another kzin craft appeared. This time the troops fired at it. It was a mistake. Four more appeared, following it, and dived on the gun vehicles.
We ran, pelting down the approach-way. The checkpoint was no longer relevant. Ahead of us was the landing field and a single craft, ringed with weapons. There was more order here, it seemed, and a line of people were running aboard with some sort of organization.
A kzin aircraft, a vast red wedge-and-ovoid, hurtled low over us, fire spitting from weapons. It was heading straight for the shuttle. We threw ourselves to the ground with the explosion reflex that was becoming instinctive. Wreckage and debris fell about us. The kzin aircraft soared away. "They've had enough, evidently. No more shuttles."
A little less luck and we might have been on that shuttle now burning on the field. A crash wagon with some brave people aboard was heading ou
t to it, siren wailing. I felt I had had enough. I was unable to think. I took told of Dimity's hands as we sat there.
"Now what?"
"No slowboats now for us," she said. "Someone may tell them to get away while the going's good. I'd say it's all over here."
"We've got to get out of this crowd. This is too much of a prime target."
The front of the crowd had seen the shuttle destroyed. They were spilling around the now purposeless police block. But the crowd behind was pressing on. We saw more people going down underfoot. Then we heard the ripping-cloth sound of more kzin vehicles, and this time they were shooting as they came. We heard the whirr of strakkakers briefly between the roar of the kzin weapons. On one of the roofs a Bofors gun was still putting on a fireworks display.
There was a manhole in the pavement, its cover knocked loose. Someone had tripped and was kicking and scrambling free. Dimity pointed and we dropped in. We fell a couple of meters, nothing in our gravity, and splashed into a stormwater drain. Above us were screams and gunfire. Others fell or threw themselves through the manhole into the drain behind us. There were a few permanent tracer-lamps glowing dimly on the walls, and by the light of these we saw steps and a narrow path running above the water.
"Underground again," said Dimity.
"At least it's not crowded, and somehow I don't think it's the sort of place cats would enjoy poking their noses into."
"Let's get away from this part, all the same. They might think it too easy to pour something nasty down here."