Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII

by Larry Niven

  I didn’t expect to find any other kzinti on the ship at this time, since they kept to a roughly human diurnal cycle and most of them spent their “nights” back on their own ship. I guess it smelled better to them or maybe it was because our doors and other equipment were too small for their comfort. The normal complement of kzinti during the evening was just Slave Master, Fritz and two guards. Very seldom did I find other kzinti on the Paradox after the day’s work had been completed. But the computer was flashing an indication that one of the autocams in the freefall section was detecting a change in its image matrix. I tapped a key and the autocam from inside Coldsleep Chamber Number Three showed me its picture, a pair of kzinti floating weightlessly and inspecting the coldsleep coffins.

  They stopped in front of one coffin and stared intently through its cloudy glassine cover. Then they did the unimaginable. They slid the coffin out of its place in the carefully designed arrangement of cryogenic storage units, started the pumps to remove the liquid nitrogen from the coffin and afterwards forced open its cover.

  I tried to see who it was, to make out the identity of the person in the coffin. And then I saw the thick shock of flaming red hair cut in a Belter’s crest, the tall slender frame with improbably large breasts. It was Sara d’Lambert, a Belter with whom I’d spent several months in a three-person ship prospecting the Saturnian Trojan points for volatiles, rare earth elements and monopoles. I remembered the excitement of the discoveries we’d made, the friendship and camaraderie, the disagreements and reconciliations. I imagined the things we might have done but were now forever impossible.

  No!!! Those mother-raping kzinti were making no pretense of trying to activate the thawing mechanism! They ripped away the restraints that had held Sara in place and stripped away the gold-foil mylar blankets that were wrapped around her. Flecks of ice and shredded gold mylar went tumbling into the frosty air of the coldsleep chamber.

  The kzinti were reaching into Sara’s coffin and removing her from it. Clouds of fog formed around Sara’s liquid nitrogen temperature body as the remains of the restraining straps waved in the breeze of the air circulators like mindless snakes. Her nude form was obscenely stiff as the kzinti floated her weightless corpse toward the door of the coldsleep locker.

  As they were about to reach the door of the coldsleep chamber One Ear entered the room. He eyed Sara’s body like she was nothing more than a piece of meat. The three kzinti’s mouths moved but I didn’t have the audio feed activated so I couldn’t hear what they were saying. (Like I could understand that growling spitting excuse for a language that they spoke.) One of the two kzinti who had pulled Sara from coldsleep turned and grabbed a bag that was floating near the door and pushed it over to One Ear who opened it like it was a Winter Solstice present.

  From within the bag One Ear extracted something that horrified me more than anything I’d seen since coming out of coldsleep. It was a human leg, raggedly cut off at the thigh with a stump of bone projecting out from the raw red wound. One Ear eyed his gift hungrily and then put it back into its bag before pushing off into the corridor carrying it off for purposes my mind did not want to imagine.

  I watched in horrified disbelief as the other two kzinti made their way with Sara toward one of the cargo locks where they had attached a docking collar for their boarding craft. I was thankful for the freefall since it would keep them from dropping Sara. At liquid nitrogen temperatures things don’t break when they fall, they shatter into millions of pieces. No matter what horrors might be in store for her, at least she would be spared the indignity of becoming a snapsicle. I watched in stunned silence as the two kzinti guided Sara’s body through the docking collar into their ship and then vanished through the hatch behind her.

  The computer chirped and switched the display to an external camera. A small kzinti boarding craft undocked from Obler’s Paradox, slowly withdrew a few hundred meters and then pointed itself toward the kzinti warship and moved off without any trace of flame or exhaust. In minutes it was just another star lost in the darkness.

  No!

  This couldn’t be happening!

  I screamed out in rage and fear. I threw my ’cafe mug against the wall and watched the green intercom light wink out as my cup shattered against it. I gripped the plate that held the remnants of my meatless handmeal—damn those kzinti for forcing me to be a vegetarian—and threw it against the mirror over the ’fresher. The mirror shattered into thousands of unsafe pieces with two large fragments hanging from the wall reflecting my image. My eyes were wide and my mouth pulled back in a rictus of anger. Sweat beaded on my forehead and my body quivered with the energy of unrequited hatred.

  I screamed and leapt at the door of my room and pounded on its unmoving metal surface. I felt my hands pulling into the unfamiliar shape of fists and beat on the door with them like they were organic mallets. The door rattled under my fists but stayed closed in locked mockery of my anger.

  I turned and looked around the room, trying to find something to use for a weapon. My back curled into an angry arch, the muscles of my arms bunched up in tension. I’ll teach those rat-cats the danger of fighting with humans over who’s at the top of the food chain! My eyes darted around the room but our oh-so nonviolent culture had made sure there weren’t any weapons.

  I searched the room, tearing things apart in my search for something I could use to force the door open so I could get at those future-stealing kzinti. Something that I could use to put paid to the debt of pain the kzinti had laid upon us. Just give me a weapon and I’d teach those rat-cats to fear us. Give me the chance and I’d introduce the kzinti to the extinct Sabretooth Cat, African Lion and Bengal Tiger. I’m sure they could explain just how dangerous humans were.

  My search for a weapon took me into the ’fresher where my shoes crunched the broken glass from the mirror as I looked for anything that could be turned against the kzinti. The prick of a bit of glass through my soft ship shoe made me think of using the broken mirror as a weapon. Most of the pieces were too small but those two large pieces . . . They had potential.

  I set about freeing those two large pieces of silvered glass from the wall and in a moment had two large sharp shards in my hands, ready to use on my enemies.

  The sharp edges of the mirror fragments had cut my fingers, causing rivulets of blood to stain the arms of my flight suit, but I felt no pain. The feel of these weapons made me dizzy and delirious. I was the embodiment of Man the Hunter. The killing rage flowed through my veins and I knew the primal blood lust that our innumerable animal ancestors must have felt. And it felt good. Now all I had to do was find a way to get past the locked door.

  “Ib! What’s the matter? I heard your screaming. The intercom’s broken. I didn’t know what to think. I had to tell Slave Master there was a medical emergency before he let me check in on you.” The words tumbled from Tom’s throat as he rushed up behind me and stood in the door of the ’fresher. I turned to face him with those large shards of the mirror held in my hand. It took a moment of concentration for me to bring him into focus, to not lash out at this new sound source.

  “Tom! Those kzinti are taking people out of coldsleep. Killing them and eating them. I’ve got to stop them. Get out of my way.” I pushed forward to get past Tom but he blocked my way.

  “Don’t try it that way, Ib. You’ll just get killed and accomplish nothing.”

  “Get out of my way,” I barked again, harshly this time. “I should have done this a long time ago. I don’t know why I didn’t.”

  “You couldn’t. No one could. Until now.” Tom looked at me with guilt in his eyes. Or was it fear?

  “No one on this ship had the mindset needed to confront the kzinti,” he continued. “That type of person would have been labeled a schitz and kept back on Earth where they could be treated by the psychists.”

  “What? You’re saying I’m schitz? Can’t be. I feel fine. Better than ever.”

  “You weren’t schitz. Maybe you’re not even one now. I’m
not sure. But you were almost borderline. Nothing serious. But close enough.”

  “Close enough? For what?”

  “Close enough that the right medicines could alter the chemical balance of your neural system. The techniques that cure a schitz can also be used to push the right person the other way. It took some careful reprogramming of the autodoc, but you’d be amazed at what a determined practitioner can do.”

  “What? You made me schitz?”

  “No. I keep telling you, not schitz. Just unbalanced. At least by the standards of our age. By the standards of any other time, you’d probably be considered perfectly normal. It’s our situation that’s abnormal, not you.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the rest of us are too conditioned, too well-balanced. We can’t even consider the possibility of using violence to accomplish anything. You were the only person who was borderline enough to be pushed over the edge. Pushed into becoming a warrior.” Tom looked away. He knew what he had done to me. He’d done it for the best of reasons. But now, like Doctor Frankenstein, he was afraid of his creation.

  “But Ib, you can’t go off unprepared like this,” Tom continued. “You’ll be killed. Maybe your body has been pushed into being aggressive, but you don’t have any training as a fighter. You’ve got to fight with your brain, not your emotions.”

  “Tom, if I think too much then Fritz will see what I’m planning and I’ll get killed just the same.”

  “Well, at least take a minute and try to think of something you might use against them. Something you might have picked up in the last week. Some weakness or maybe some blind spot they have, something they don’t notice. I don’t know . . . Something. Just think before you act.” Tom stared at my bloody hands for a minute. “And put down those glass shards. They’ll just get you killed.”

  His suggestion was reasonable. I dropped the pieces of the broken mirror to the floor and thought about what he had just said. There had to be some blind spot in the kzinti’s behavior. Something that I had seen during my nightly sessions reviewing what they had done. An idea tickled the back of my mind while Tom got out his medkit and went to work on my hands.

  “First thing we’ve got to do is get out of here,” I said as Tom finished working on my hands. “Find someplace where they’ll have trouble finding us.” I walked past Tom, out of the ’fresher and into my room. “But how do we get past that?” I said motioning to the locked door.

  Tom looked at my bloody flight suit. “You’re doing a convincing imitation of a hurt crewmember. I can probably get them to let me take you down to the autodoc. After that,” he paused, “it’ll be up to you.”

  A plan had begun to acquire form and substance in my imagination. Maybe not a great plan, but at least it was something. “Then let’s do it,” I answered, before my higher brain functions could kick in and convince me of the insanity of my plan.

  Tom went to the door and rapped twice on it. The locked door slid open and Shit Head stared in at us. Tom pantomimed something and pointed at me as I tried to do my best imitation of a person in pain. The kzinti guard stared at me and growled as he removed the communications device from his belt and handed it to Tom. I caught snippets of his conversation with Slave Master, comments about an accident and my needing the attentions of the autodoc if I was going to be ready for tomorrow’s test of our drive system. Tom must have convinced him because more spitting growling sounds came from the communications device and Shit Head motioned us into the corridor.

  I made a show of leaning on Tom as we walked in the down spin direction toward the Med-Center. Dead light strips, broken down doors and burn marks on the walls spoke silent volumes about the nature of the kzinti. It didn’t take long before we were passing an emergency equipment locker set into the wall.

  This one seemed unused, its door closed and latched, but most importantly—it looked undamaged.

  I counted my halting footsteps as we went past it. Turning my head I could see that Shit Head was still a couple of paces behind us. And then with what I hoped was a convincing cry of pain I fell to the floor taking Tom with me. Our kzinti guard couldn’t stop in time, his feet tangling with our rolling bodies—my flailing arms didn’t help his balance—and went tumbling to the floor.

  Performing the fastest recovery in medical history, I leapt to my feet and dashed to the emergency equipment locker and twisted open its door. The locker contained a full set of tools for dealing with emergency situations, but nothing had been included for the problem facing us right now. I’d have to improvise.

  Shit Head was rising from the floor as I pulled out a three-person vac-raft. This was nothing more than a fabric sphere that was large enough to hold three people in a pressurized environment while they waited for someone else to come and get them. But in its unpressurized condition it was just a limp hunk of Beta cloth fabric. I unzipped the vac-raft and threw it at Shit Head. I got lucky. His arms got entangled in the vac-raft’s open end and multiple hand holds.

  His claws tore at the vac-raft and ripped long tears in it as ropes of fabric became entangled with his arms. I looked back into the locker and found a breathing mask with an oxygen bottle. I threw them at Shit Head but he batted them aside, though the reaction made him slip back onto the floor.

  The oxygen bottle rolled down the corridor and Tom hurled it back at our guard’s head, which it hit with a satisfying thump. The kzinti lashed out with one free arm, leaving deep gashes in Tom’s chest and sending him tumbling down the corridor.

  In a moment Shit Head would be free of the vac-raft. I was pulling out another one when I saw a heavy pry bar that was designed to open sealed doors during power failures. It was over a meter long and had a bulging torqueless ratchet on one end.

  Turning back to Shit Head I saw that he was pulling out his communications device. This was not the time to let him call for reinforcements. I grabbed the pry bar and swung it with both hands. It connected with our guard’s arm with a weird snap like glass breaking under water, and the communications device went sliding down the corridor. Tom stepped on it, smashing it into a star of electronic debris.

  I tried to bring the pry bar back down on our guard’s head, but he was rising from the floor and coming toward me with his injured arm dangling limply by his side. There wasn’t room to swing the pry bar again so I stabbed at him with it. The impact against his chest knocked the air out of his lungs and almost made me fall backwards. Shit Head swung his good arm against the metal tool and sent it flying out of my hands.

  I snatched the weapon I’d dropped, turned and ran, hoping that Shit Head would ignore Tom and follow me. He did.

  Running up-spin I could feel my synthetic weight increase slightly as my running speed added to the rotational velocity of the spinning crew section. It was a small effect and I could easily compensate for it. I didn’t think the kzinti chasing me was familiar enough with centripetal acceleration to do the same.

  Shit Head lowered his body toward the floor as he chased me. At any moment I expected him to drop down and run on all fours. He was inhumanly fast and gaining on me.

  I was holding the second vac-raft. My weapon. I did the only thing I could. I pulled the inflation tab on the vac-raft and tossed it behind me. It expanded to a size that almost filled the corridor. Shit Head ran into the inflated vac-raft and it bounded in front of him like a demented beach ball. He swung the claws of his uninjured hand and the vac-raft exploded with a loud pop. Again he lowered his body toward the floor and closed the gap between us. The raft clung to his claw and dragged behind him until he shook it loose. And then he screamed and leapt with his uninjured arm stretched out before him.

  But he hadn’t counted on the effect running would have on his centripetal acceleration or on the fact the floor was gently curved, not flat. Those two small but significant differences between our ship and a planetary surface made him hit the deck sooner than he expected. He went sprawling behind me. That kzinti was ignorant but not stupid; I didn’t think he
’d make that same mistake a second time. I had to think of something.

  The entrance to one of the cargo transfer tubeways loomed ahead of us. I ran in. The tubeway was a hollow cylinder over six meters in diameter that stretched a hundred meters from the rim of the spinning part of the ship to the weightless transfer hub. A ladder surrounded by a safety cage made of wide spaced metal frames ran up the length of the tubeway and ended in the zero-g area. The lift was parked in the zero-g part of the ship and I didn’t have time to wait for it to come down to me. I ran over to the ladder and started climbing as if my life depended on it.

  I had never gone up a ladder as fast as I did just then as I raced for the weightless part of the ship. I only hoped that One Ear had not heard the commotion and come to investigate. The thought of being trapped between two angry kzinti was the stuff of nightmares.

  As I rose up the ladder I could feel my weight dropping as I got closer to the rotational axis of the spinning section and the centrifugal force was correspondingly lowered. The effective gravity had fallen to almost half of its normal value when I heard Shit Head enter the tubeway.

  I hazarded a look below but did not slow my hurried journey upward. Shit Head saw me with his upraised eyes. In a moment he was on the ladder and following me upward. He was using his injured arm to help maintain his balance on the ladder. I hoped it hurt him. A lot.

  Nearing the end of the ladder my effective weight had been reduced to almost nothing and I pulled myself upward in a continuous motion. A lifetime of zero-g reflexes helped me increase the distance between myself and the hungry carnivore that was chasing me. I thought about the times I had played weightless tag with my friends while growing up in orbital habitats in the Belt. Those games had seemed so important to us children, but the stakes were never as high as the game I was playing right now.