Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - X

by Hal Colebatch

  “Yes,” said Dimity. “I’ve been told a bit about it all. Well, there are some ratcats I don’t fear now.”

  “Dimity helped Leonie,” said Raargh.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Raargh and Leonie old companions.”

  “Funny, she is one of the flashes of memory I have. Quite a lot of it is coming back. Seeing her now, I remember, I was jealous of her. I never dared betray that to him…She was Nils’s best student, his favorite. And she wasn’t a freak like me. I don’t suppose this means much to you.”

  “Manrretti sentient. Always problems,” said Raargh. “Dominant kzintosh have harem, some kzintosh allocated one kzinrret, most have none. Humans untidy.”

  “It must have been hard for you to change, to live with humans as you do,” Dimity said.

  “Hero do hard things,” said Raargh. “Otherwise not Hero.”

  “No,” said Dimity. “Otherwise not Hero.”

  “The human Andre, one who tried to kill you and Leonie,” said Raargh. He produced something and tossed it with a moist sound from hand to hand. “I have his maleness here. A gift for you and Leonie.”

  “Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero,” said Vaemar, “I do not think Dimity human understands kzinti customs. I will take. But here is a gift,” he held out a chess knight, moulded in osmium with sapphire eyes. “Vaemar made.” Dimity accepted the substitute gift with some relief.

  “Not fear?” asked Raargh.

  “Not so much.” As Leonie had done previously, she reached out with a tentative hand and tickled his chin. Raargh had just killed and eaten to satiety. This time he allowed himself to purr.

  “You play chess?” she asked Vaemar.

  “Oh, yes!”

  “I haven’t played more than a couple of times. But a game between us might be interesting.” Raargh reached out and picked up Dimity’s music box. Vaemar looked at it curiously. “May I see it?” he asked.

  “Wind it,” she said, “It’s running down.”

  “It is decorous,” said Vaemar, fiddling at the tiny handle with his claws. “Delicate.”

  “Keep it, if you like. A gift.”

  “Thank you.” A few tiny musical chimes drifted across the chamber.

  “If I killed a couple of them, I’m not going to take the credit for it,” Colonel Cumpston said to Arthur Guthlac. The two Earth officers and Markham had drifted together. “The low profile suits me.” He had already removed the memory bricks from the main control console. With Arthur Guthlac then immobilized and Markham commanding the troops hunting down the surviving enemy, he had been the senior military officer on the spot and no one questioned this. Their records should harvest valuable security data, and any untoward scenes that had been recorded could be discreetly removed.

  Arthur Guthlac, his chest bound up and leg encased in a flexi-splint, was now walking again. The damage, in the event, had not required amputation and transplant, but even with modern nerve-and-bone growth factors it would be some days before he was fully healed. They had identified the quite simple mechanisms that controlled the Sinclair fields and were turning them off one by one.

  “Well, somebody killed this one,” said Arthur Guthlac, as the field before them died. “But a long time ago.”

  There was part of a human skeleton. Around the bare shin and ankle-bones were orange-and-black pseudo-Kzin-striped fabric trousers, much discolored. The pelvis was female. There was some dried, crumbling tissue on and in the torso and rib cage. There was no skull. Above the clavicles there was nothing.

  “No,” said Cumpston, “not a long time ago. That must be Henrietta, if she fell feet first into the field still alive. The lower part of her body would have passed into time-compression first. It received no blood-supply and her feet and legs were dead and decomposing by the time her heart passed into it. But her heart was still beating. Everything left in the circulatory system went into her head, which was still in normal time, and from which the blood had no way of returning at such speed. Bang! A quick way to die, at least from the brain’s point of view, but the results aren’t very cosmetic.” It was probably Henrietta, he thought. But she had not been the only one in that costume. He would look at that later. But Henrietta officially dead would help defuse the time bomb of revenge on this planet. He might not look too hard.

  The other bodies that concerned Cumpston, those that had gone into a Sinclair field already dead, would be either crumbling mummies or skeletons before long, depending on how much bacteria had been present. The longer it was before that particular field was found and deactivated, the less easy it would be to tell any cause of death. Certainly if laser wounds were still discernible it would be impossible by now to identify the laser that had caused them in the confused fighting. They had had the hallmarks of genuine ARM personnel, which another ARM could recognize, as there was something else some ARMs might also recognize, but despite what he had been told, Cumpston felt credentials and mannerisms could always be faked. Anyway, they might or might not have been Early’s men. ARM was no monolith: It was, he felt, a series of interlocking and competing conspiracies like those fiendish things the kzinti called w’kkai puzzles. Well, when this place was cleaned up, all the bones of humans and kzinti would go for proper disposal. Manpower was still scarce on Wunderland, and police resources would hardly be used to investigate all the bones of kzinti victims that lay around.

  “Where’s Rykermann?”

  “Sedated. He’s had a rough time. It seemed to hit him all at once.”

  “What happened to Jocelyn?” Arthur Guthlac had asked this several times now. Cumpston had seen the phenomenon after battles before. People would keep asking the same question, but the answer would not stay in their heads.

  “Nobody seems to know. But she had no motive to run away. That business with the laser…Accidents happen in battle. Everyone accepts that.”

  “I think she was in love with Nils Rykermann,” said Markham. “Love can do strange things to people, I am told.” He was speaking good English with a fierce effort and his face was impassive. Betrayal! Stinking betrayal! But what else can one expect from prolevolk scum! And she used my Mother’s name! If he saw Arthur Guthlac flinch, he betrayed no notice of the fact.

  “Maybe after what happened she just took off. We’ll look, of course. Maybe she’d had enough. She was a heroine of the Resistance. Maybe she’d just run out of…of…”

  “We all feel that way sometimes…I’m told,” said Cumpston. Markham said nothing, but his clenched hands were trembling minutely.

  “I know it,” said Guthlac. He sounded composed and normal, if a little sad. “And the Resistance’s price on Henrietta’s head?”

  “I suppose if he pushed her into the field Raargh has the claim to it, if it’s accepted that this is she,” said Cumpston. “I haven’t asked him, but he was in the area and she had kidnapped and insulted him and his protégé—dangerous business to kidnap a kzin. I can imagine how much the Resistance veterans who posted the bounty will enjoy handing it over to him! They may not come at it, of course, and he may not want it. She was loyal to Chuut-Riit after all…

  “Odd thing to say about the arch-collaborator,” he went on, “but in her way she was loyal to humanity, too.” And was she altogether on the wrong track? he wondered to himself, thinking of the last injunction of Chuut-Riit’s testament. “I’m not sure it was Raargh who killed her. There were others with motive. But I’m not going to cross-examine him on the matter…

  “Anyway, he won’t do too badly. You know there are females here. He acquires most of the property and the harems of all the kzinti he killed!”

  “Good,” said Arthur Guthlac.

  “You’re not getting fond of the old ratcat, are you?”

  “No!” A slightly sheepish smile, and a laugh Guthlac cut off as his ribs pained him. “Well, to tell the truth, he did show up pretty well. I’m no kzin-lover yet, but perhaps my attitude’s been a bit simplistic. I need to think. I’ve accumulated quite a lot of
leave in the course of this war, and the time might be coming to take it. Probably take a couple of years to get my application through the bureaucracy, though. Leave would be good. Not alone, perhaps…Where’s Jocelyn?”

  Chapter 11

  2428 A.D.

  The walls of the dean’s interview room were heavy with antique books. A couple of ancient computers were preserved under transparent domes. There were paintings and even some marble busts of previous eminent members of the faculty. In another of its efforts toward reestablishing a milieu of scholastic tranquility after decades of chaos and war, Munchen University had recently introduced gowns and mortarboards for both staff and students to wear for major interviews and other important occasions.

  Nils Rykermann, his robe emblazoned with the esoteric colors and heraldry of his position, looked up from the application and assessment form.

  “You’re taking a big spread of subjects,” he said. “Literature, history, political theory, physics and astrophysics, economics, chemical engineering, space mechanics, pure philosophy…and you want to do a unit of biology too. That’s quite a load for a first-year student! We’re going to have to bend the rules. Still, that’s been done before for certain…exceptional cases.”

  “I hope to specialize eventually, Professor, but I feel I should get a good general background first.”

  “Joining the chess club, too, I see. Arthur Guthlac’s become the patron, you know. When he came back from his leave at Gerning he decided to extend his posting on Wunderland. And the Drama Society! Are you sure you can manage it, Vaemar?”

  “Oh yes, Professor!”

  “Well, you must tell me if you find it too much. As dean of studies this year I will be responsible for your entire performance beyond my own subject…Your test scores are encouraging…And your…er…Honored Sire Chuut-Riit…was clever enough.”

  “Yes, sir. I will not shame you. Nor him. Nor Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero.”

  “I’m sure you won’t. But prove yourself here, Vaemar, and you will win a greater victory than many…We have our first-semester field trip to the caves next month. You have some acquaintance with them already, and I’m sure you’ll be an asset to us. We may regrow some of the smashed formations with Sinclair fields…How does your Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero fare?”

  “He prospers, Professor. But my infant step-siblings can make it difficult to study. It can be noisy at home. Sometimes when I read they leap at my tail and bite it. My Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero counsels patience and self-control.”

  “Good training, Vaemar, and good counsel. You will need both.”

  Peter Robinson

  2892 A.D.

  A flock of big leather-flappers passed over the tent, filling the air with their cries. Gay Guthlac stirred against her husband, her head on his right shoulder, lips brushing his ear. “Noisy things,” she murmured. He stroked her hair and she snuggled closer against him before drifting back to sleep. Sleeping plates were fine in space, but camping out in Wunderland’s gravity they enjoyed the primitive novelty of a bed. They were falling in love with this multicolored world, and both had remarked the previous day that, long-settled as it was, it still had vast areas of vacant land.

  Richard Guthlac turned his head to kiss his wife’s sleeping face. His right arm lay along her back, his hand moving to caress the warm curved smoothness of her skin. The night beyond their tent’s window was flooded with a shifting purple light: Alpha Centauri B rising with its glorious heralding of the true dawn. He found it harder than she to return to sleep immediately.

  I am taking her into danger, he thought. Each time we violate the tomb of an ancient horror, we risk unleashing monsters.

  And then he thought: Well, it cuts two ways. Danger is part of our lives. We’re spacefarers. We knew what went with the job when we started. It’s better than living like flatlanders.

  The splinter of anxiety withdrew a little. He felt his thoughts beginning to wander as sleep claimed him again: Our race can fight monsters now, and win. We were sheep once. If that ancient collision with the Kzin and all the centuries of war that followed taught us anything, it’s that the sheep option isn’t available.

  But that was not the only lesson it taught. Had there been other, subtler ones? Had it taught the Kzin anything?

  Some of them, anyway.

  The splinter of fear again: But this is not about abstract concepts of the human race. This is about me and the woman I love as life itself.

  Gay stirred sleepily again, throwing one leg over his body, her hand caressing his chest. He turned into her embrace.

  “I have a potentially difficult task for you, Charrgh-Captain,” said Zzarrk-Skrull. He stood gazing out through the arrogantly wide castle window across the Hrungn Valley. His body was as motionless as if he were lying in wait for prey, and his right hand, claws half-extended, rested calmly on the periscope stand of an ancient Chunquen undersea ship, memento of an easy ancestral conquest, but his tail lashed, betraying disquiet.

  “Command me, Sire!” Charrgh-Captain’s own tail and ears stood erect with eagerness, and his whiskers bristled. If he had any private thought to the effect that a task which the Fleet Admiral described as potentially difficult must be daunting indeed, he kept it well hidden.

  Zzarrk-Skrull paced a moment in the audience chamber before continuing. “I do not mean merely dangerous,” he said, wrinkling his nose as if at a distasteful suggestion. “You may be called upon to exercise other qualities besides courage. Diplomacy…judgment. You will have to deal with humans in this task…and worse than humans.”

  “Puppeteers? I will do it, Sire! I serve the Patriarchy as ordered!” Things had changed since the old days. Kzinti dealt with alien races—some alien races—with diplomats and words and even contracts now instead of attack fleets. There was a growing number of kzinti turrrissti visiting alien worlds, often to ponder upon their ancestors’ ancient battlefields, kzinti as employees and partners of various alien enterprises, even as employers of free aliens…The Puppeteers were contemptible herbivores, but their trade empire had brought benefits. Most of them had left Known Space, and in their absence some kzinti were beginning to appreciate their value.

  Zzarrk-Skrull’s face took on a strange expression as he stood proud in his golden hsakh cloak and sash of Earth silk. It was also, for Charrgh-Captain, a secretly alarming one: High Kzinti officers are not easily disgusted.

  “Urrr. Worse than Puppeteers. Hear me, Charrgh-Captain.” Fleet Admiral Zzarrk-Skrull composed his face and ears, and continued:

  “You may be aware of an unfortunate incident many years ago on the planet of Beta Lyrae that the humans name Kuuborl. We lost a ship called Traitor’s Claw and a specialist crew under one Chuft-Captain. They had found a small stasis box used by tnuctipun, not Slavers.”

  Billions of years previously, depending on how various planets measured years, the ancient races of the thrint, the stupid but ruthless Slavers with their compulsive telepathic hypnosis, and the highly intelligent but at least equally ruthless tnuctipun, had fought a war that ended in omnicide: the thrintun, losing the war and about to be finally exterminated by their vengeful former slaves, had sent an amplified suicide command throughout the galaxy. Sentient life had ended, to evolve again only recently in galactic time.

  Some Slaver and tnuctipun artifacts had been found: more-or-less mutated life-forms on various planets and in space, other things preserved unchanged in stasis boxes, one of the great feats of tnuctipun technology. Some stasis boxes had been highly dangerous. The danger most feared was that when stasis boxes were opened they might be found to contain live Slavers as well as artifacts. It had happened on a few occasions, in both kzinti and human space. The results had been fearful. But the contents of some stasis boxes had been priceless. Zzarrk-Skrull allowed himself a few lashes of his tail, and went on:

  “There was a confrontation with humans. There was an explosion. One kzin survived: a telepath. Unfortunately he was injured early in events a
nd could tell us little more, save that Chuft-Captain had opened the box and was performing various tests on the artifact it contained. Then, bang.

  “That was all, but our agents learned other facts later. Of course the humans and the Puppeteer made their own reports.”

  “I read a little of the incident in my studies. One, or some, cowardly monkeys survived.”

  “Actually, the artifact contained, on a secret setting, an antimatter weapon capable of ripping a planet apart like a Chunquen’s paunch, a war-winning weapon then or now.”

  “Arrrgh!”

  “Yes, you may howl with anguish. Had Chuft-Captain had the wit merely to bring it back to us for our students to examine systematically, as he had been instructed to do with his captures, we might have had its secrets and your sires and mine might have been conquerors of monkeydom. But that was many years ago. Regrets are clawless now.

  “I come to the meat. As a result of this, and certain other incidents where we and the humans disagreed over the discovery of stasis boxes, a new clause was added to the old McDonald-Rshshi Truce and the protocols that have evolved since. It has not been widely publicized.

  “Should we discover a stasis box in a debatable or uncolonized area of space, the humans may send an observer to be present at its opening. Should the humans discover a stasis box in such an area, we may send an observer similarly. The observers have diplomatic privileges.

  “I do not know what our Sires and predecessors would say of this, but we must deal with humans on many matters now. You know we have even joined with them on various official expeditions, including some to the Ringworld artifact.

  “Charrgh-Captain, the humans of Ka’ashi have notified us that they have found a new stasis box. You will represent the Patriarch at its opening.”

  “I am honored, Sire, to represent the Patriarch in any capacity. Must I go again to a monkey-world?” A private thought: Monkey-worlds are not too bad in small doses. Better than years in a spaceship habitat or under a bubble-dome, anyway. My posting to Earth had some entertainment, and I enjoyed hunting on Wunderl—on Ka’ashi.