by Larry Niven
This rolled over Bobcat like a sudden storm. The concept of being a sire was so remote, so impossible, that the actual fact rocked him. Varsha felt squalls of equal parts joy and fear crashing down on him.
She turned to the expecting females and spoke in the closest approximation of their proto-Heroes’ Tongue her vocal cords allowed, “First, let me just say it’s an honor to finally meet intelligent kzinretti, and congratulations, you’re going to be mothers.” She gently stroked their cheeks, then turned to Bobcat and said in the same language so the females could understand, “Well done, champ!”
He said nothing for a while as his own personal paradigm shifted toward the paternal. “We have to get out of here,” he rumbled at last.
“Right. The Sun Wukong is taking off in three minutes, and I want the I Love Lucy to be ready to launch right along with it,” she barked, and all the techs ended their last-minute fretting.
Bobcat placed a massive paw on Varsha’s shoulder. “Thank you, Agent Khan. I give you my word that I will name my first female kitten after you.”
She smiled warmly. “You know, I’ve been giving some thought as to why kzinti telepaths are born scrawny.”
“Enlighten me.” His spotted, rust-colored fur bristled at the mention of such a delicate subject. He removed his paw from her shoulder.
Varsha continued enthusiastically, “I believe there’s a battle for nourishment in the kzinrett’s womb, between the kzin body, which is a high-maintenance, calorie-hogging machine, and a telepath’s developing brain, which also demands more energy than most. Inevitably, the brain wins out at the cost of a fully developed body.”
“An interesting theory,” he spit between gritted teeth. He turned to see his two mothers-to-be being tenderly placed in freezer caskets.
“Don’t you see? If you took better care of your females and perhaps gave them specially formulated prenatal vitamins, you could have big, strong killer telepaths!”
Bobcat’s lips pulled back and flashed her the obscene stiletto teeth Varsha had briefly glimpsed back in the kzin restaurant. His ears fluttered like pink moth wings.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.”
“Relax, Agent Khan; sometimes a smile is just a smile. That’s quite a brilliant and rather obvious observation.” He wondered if the Patriarchy suppressed such knowledge.
“Thanks.” She walked out and down the walkway clapping her hands. “Alright, grease monkeys, time’s up! Everybody out!”
Alone on the bridge, Bobcat took out his last remaining shot of sthondat lymph extract and delicately placed it on the console. He felt the insubstantial ball of soot on his lap stir and look up at him with big, powerful blue-green eyes.
“You need a crèche name, little one. Fortunately, your mother was too stupefied to give you one, so the Honor falls on me,” he said appraising the kit as if it were a fine, olden trophy belonging to a great Hero. Neither Interworld nor the Heroes’ Tongue seemed appropriate now that they were leaving known space.
The kitten yawned, revealing needle point teeth and a small curled tongue. “A very casual attitude in the face of danger.” Bobcat’s ears flicked and he wondered if the painkillers from the autodoc were making him silly. “Then you shall be called Jarri, until such time as you earn a Hero’s Name. It means valiant in the exotic language of your new den mothers.”
He gave the sleepy kit a reassuring lick between the ears. “I give you my word, on what little Honor I have, that you will not be dragged into a life of slavery and never feel the sting of animal poison in your veins.”
* * *
The two war-era ships lifted off the autumnal, pockmarked surface of Canyon with perfect synchronization and into the waiting maw of the immense, spherical ship. The kzin ship’s armored hull plating shone like polished copper and did nothing, patiently waiting like a hunter in the bush. Bobcat entered the coordinates for 46 Leonis Minoris into the kzin computer recklessly rigged to the ARM dashboard. He sent a silent prayer to the cruel Fanged God that he reward his audacity with better territory. Then, he leaned back in the command chair and meditated on the rapidly shrinking planet.
“How’s the shoulder?” Varsha asked, entering the small bridge.
“You didn’t have to stay.” He had known that she would before she closed the ship’s airlock behind her staff.
“Of course I did. You can’t get into Yearrl-Captain’s head, and I can’t do it all the way from Canyon. Besides, you haven’t given me all the valuable intel you promised and my superiors would be livid otherwise.”
He dumped a heavy load of memories into the human’s mind. It felt good somehow to be relieved of his glorious past.
Varsha faltered for an instant, all the death and mayhem wrought by Devourer of Monkeys . . . because of Bobcat, gross violations of the Covenants of Shasht. She placed the weighty information in a sealed compartment of her mind and steadied herself. No room for doubts anymore.
“Will you be reprimanded for allowing me to escape?” Bobcat and Varsha were still linked by the provisional psychic bridge.
“Nah, think of it as extreme witness protection.”
As the two identical ARM vessels coasted along their parallel trajectories, he tried to imagine the infuriated Yearrl-Captain pacing the control deck of his ship, mulling over which prey to leap upon. “I cannot reach Yearrl-Captain! He’s skirting the limits of my telepathic reach!” Bobcat moved to tear out all the tubes and lines from the autodoc. “This machine is already scrubbing the sthondat fluid from my system!”
“Calm down.” She placed a soothing hand on his trembling shoulder. “You’ve crept in Yearrl-Captain’s inner mind many times. Show me a layout of his psyche from memory.”
The sleek and sterile command center of their ship faded around them. Varsha and Bobcat, with Jarri cradled in his good arm, stood on an ethereal bluff overlooking the wide tangerine savannah of Yearrl-Captain’s most primitive hindbrain. The illusion was so palpable that Varsha could taste the acidic aroma of the svelte rising in the morning heat. Two glowing moons hung low on the horizon, like the eyes of the Fanged God skulking behind the curve of the world. A pair of lumbering alien herbivores plodded along on their own ancient migration. A faint rustle in the grass hinted at a concealed killer.
“Wait a minute, those beasts are us! Is this how Yearrl-Captain sees the situation?” The level of detail astounded her. She had to remind herself this was a reconstruction and not Yearrl’s actual mind.
“Only subconsciously, Agent Kahn. As you see, the captain is too far and well hidden for direct manipulation.”
“Trust me. You’ve spent your entire career trying to block out other minds. Me? I’m an expert at this.” She studied the primordial scene much as her own simian ancestors might have.
Bobcat got visceral insight into human thinking. Where kzin brains evolved from the low, direct vantage point of the ground, humans took in the bigger picture. He also instantly recognized the Australopithecine meaning behind the name of their small ark.
“Okay, Yearrl might be beyond telepathic tampering, but he’s not above manipulation. The captain of the Sun Wukong is close enough to mess with.”
“I don’t follow . . . You wish to sway an ally into attacking a kzinti warship? That’s madness!”
“No, the Sun Wukong’s captain is already nervous. I can use that to push him to speed up just a bit. Get his ship away from the constraining mass of p Eridani and into the safety of hyperspace.” Varsha stroked the part of Captain Garcia’s mind that informed his forebears to hide from Iberian cave lions during the last glacial maximum.
One of the elephantine creatures began a light, anxious trot and at once an almost imperceptible crackle in the grass moved in closer toward it. Sensing danger, the dumb animal picked up its pace.
“They’re feeding off each other!”
“Exactly. Yearrl-Captain’s primal instincts are telling him that the animal that shows fear is the weaker prey. His logic is telling him tha
t the ship that’s trying to run must harbor the fugitive. The closer he gets, the more Sun Wukong reacts.”
The prehistoric scene melted away and Bobcat was still hooked up to the beeping medical machine. The little kit curled up in his lap. Varsha pointed to the display showing the Devourer of Monkeys gravitating toward the Sun Wukong, which was now ahead of them by many AU and entering the system’s heliopause.
I Love Lucy’s own hyperspace shutters began to slide across all windows. Before the stars were completely blotted out, they saw the Sun Wukong, followed by the Devourer, wink out of Einsteinian space. Bobcat and Varsha simultaneously exhaled. Soon after, they felt their own ship slip into hyperspace.
She patted his good shoulder, where her hand had comfortably rested the entire time, then let the pontoon bridge collapse between them. “Alright, the chief engineer’s ice box is over in the second half of this ship near the hyperdrive. I’m going to sleep now before our rapport does become permanent and demonic.” She smiled slyly. “What’re you going to do when you get to where you’re going?”
“Thrust this last dose of sthondat drug into my arm and give a telepathic cry for help like no other. A planet of telepaths, even latent ones, won’t be able to ignore it.”
Unless they’ve been reduced to inbred idiots by two hundred years of isolation, she thought, but kept it to herself. Instead she picked up the slumbering kit. “Here, I’ll put this little warrior to bed next to his mother.”
“Why don’t you join us? You make a truly worthy companion.” He tried to turn, but the autodoc numbed his entire left side.
“I lack your faith. Besides, I’ve always wanted to retire on Canyon. That’s why I telepathically maneuvered my boss back on Earth to transfer me.”
He leaned back in his command chair. “Treat it better than I did.”
She left Bobcat to heal.