by Larry Niven
“Not before afternoon,” Stalwart said. “They never mount ceremonies during darkness. If I am any judge, they will drown the beauteous prret at high noon.”
Locklear: “Don’t they ever learn?”
Boots: “No. They are the priesthood,” she said as if explaining everything, and Stalwart agreed.
“All the same,” Scarface said, “they might do a better job this time. You,” he said to Stalwart; “could you get to the village and back here in darkness?”
“If I cannot, call me acolyte. You would learn what they intend for your mate?”
“Of course he must,” Locklear said, walking with him toward the main entrance. “But call before you enter again. We are setting deadly traps for anyone who tries to return, and you may as well spread the word.”
Stalwart moved off into darkness, sniffing the breeze, and Locklear went from place to place, switching on traps while Scarface tended Boots. This tender care from a Kzin warrior might be explained as gratitude; even with her kittens, Boots had tried to substitute herself for Kit. Still, Locklear thought, there was more to it than that. He wondered about it until he fell asleep.
Twice during the night, they were roused by tremendous thumps and, once, a brief Kzin snarl. Scarface returned each time licking blood from his arms. The second time he said to a bleary-eyed Locklear, “We can plug the entrances with corpses if these acolytes keep squashing themselves against our ceilings.” The grav polarizer traps, it seemed, made excellent sentries.
Locklear did not know when Stalwart returned but, when he awoke, the young Kzin was already speaking with Scarface. True to their rigid code, the priests fully intended to drown Kit again in a noon ceremony using heavier stones and, afterward, to lay siege to the cave.
“Let them; it will be empty,” Scarface grunted. “Locklear, you have seen me pilot my little craft. I wonder…”
“Hardest part is getting around those deserters, if any,” Locklear said. “I can cover a lot of ground when I’m fresh.”
“Good. Can you navigate to where Boots had her birthing bower before noon?”
“If I can’t, call me acolyte,” Locklear said, smiling. He set off at a lope just after dawn, achingly alert. Anyone he met, now, would be a target.
After an hour, he was lost. He found his bearings from a promontory, loping longer, walking less, and was dizzy with fatigue when he climbed a low cliff to the overhang where Scarface had left his scooter. Breathing hard, he was lowering his rump to the scooter when the rifle butt whistled just over his head.
Nathan Gazho, who had located the scooter after scouring the area near the pinnace, felt fierce glee when he saw Locklear’s approach. But he had not expected Locklear to drop so suddenly. He swung again as Locklear, almost as large as his opponent, darted in under the blow. Locklear grunted with the impact against his shoulder, caught the weapon by its barrel, and used it like a pry-bar with both hands though his left arm was growing numb. The rifle spun out of reach. As they struggled away from the ten-meter precipice, Gazho cursed—the first word by either man—and snatched his utility knife from its belt clasp, reeling back, his left forearm out. His crouch, the shifting of the knife, its extraordinary honed edge: marks of a man who had fought with knives before.
Locklear reached for the Kzin sidearm but he had placed it in a lefthand pocket and now that hand was numb. Gazho darted forward in a swordsman’s balestra, flicking the knife in a short arc as he passed. By that time Locklear had snatched his own wtsai from its sheath with his right hand. Gazho saw the long blade but did not flinch, and Locklear knew he was running out of time. Standing four paces away, he pump-faked twice as if to throw the knife. Gazho’s protecting forearm flashed to the vertical at the same instant when Locklear leaped forward, hurling the wtsai as he squatted to grasp a stone of fist size.
Because Locklear was no knife-thrower, the weapon did not hit point-first; but the heavy handle caught Gazho squarely on the temple and, as he stumbled back, Locklear’s stone splintered his jaw. Nathan Gazho’s legs buckled and inertia carried him backward over the precipice, screaming.
Locklear heard the heavy thump as he was fumbling for his sidearm. From above, he could see the broken body twitching, and his single round from the sidearm was more kindness than revenge. Trembling, massaging his left arm, he collected his wtsai and the beam rifle before crawling onto the scooter. Not until he levitated the little craft and guided it ineptly down the mountainside did he notice the familiar fittings of the standard-issue rifle. It had been fully discharged during the firefight, thanks to Scarface’s tactic.
Many weeks before—it seemed a geologic age by now—Locklear had found Boots’s private bower by accident. The little cave was hidden behind a low waterfall near the mouth of a shallow ravine, and once he had located that ravine from the air it was only a matter of following it, keeping low enough to avoid being seen from the Kzin village. The sun was almost directly overhead as Locklear approached the rendezvous. If he’d cut it too close…
Scarface waved him down near the falls and sprang onto the scooter before it could settle. “Let me fly it,” he snarled, shoving Locklear aside in a way that suggested a Kzin on the edge of self-control. The scooter lunged forward and, as he hung on, Locklear told of Gazho’s death.
“It will not matter,” Scarface replied as he piloted the scooter higher, squinting toward the village, “if my mates dies this day.” Then his predator’s eyesight picked out the horrifying details, and he began to gnash his teeth in uncontrollable fury.
When they were within a kilometer of the village, Locklear could see what had pushed his friend beyond sanity. While most of the villagers stood back as if to distance themselves from this pomp and circumstance, the remaining acolytes bore a bound, struggling burden toward the lakeshore. Behind them marched the bandoliered priests, arms waving beribboned lances. They were chanting, a cacophony like metal chaff thrown into a power transformer, and Locklear shuddered.
Even at top speed, they would not arrive until that procession reached the walkway to deep water; and Kit, her limbs bound together with great stones for weights, would not be able to escape this time. “We’ll have to go in after her,” Locklear called into the wind.
“I cannot swim,” cried Scarface, his eyes slitted.
“I can,” said Locklear, taking great breaths to hoard oxygen. As he positioned himself for the leap, his friend began to fire his sidearm.
As the scooter swept lower and slower, one Kzin priest crumpled. The rest saw the scooter and exhorted the acolytes forward. The hapless Kit was flung without further ceremony into deep water but, as he was leaping feet-first off the scooter, Locklear saw that she had spotted him. As he slammed into deep water, he could hear the full-automatic thunder of Scarface’s weapon.
Misjudging his leap, Locklear let inertia carry him before striking out forward and down. His left arm was only at half-strength but the weight of his weapons helped carry him to the sandy bottom. Eyes open, he struggled to the one darker mass looming ahead.
But it was only a small boulder. Feeling the prickles of oxygen starvation across his back and scalp, he swiveled, kicking hard—and felt one foot strike something like fur. He wheeled, ignoring the demands of his lungs, wresting his wtsai out with one hand as he felt for cordage with the other. Three ferocious slices, and those cords were severed. He dropped the knife—the same weapon Kit herself had once dulled, then resharpened for him—and pushed off from the bottom in desperation.
He broke the surface, gasped twice, and saw a wide-eyed priest fling a lance in his direction. By sheer dumb luck, it missed, and after a last deep inhalation Locklear kicked toward the bottom again.
The last thing a wise man would do is locate a drowning tigress in deep water, but that is what Locklear did. Kit, no swimmer, literally climbed up his sodden flightsuit, forcing him into an underwater somersault, fine sand stinging his eyes. The next moment he was struggling toward the light again, disoriented and panicky.
> He broke the surface, swam to a piling at the end of the walkway, and tried to hyperventilate for another hopeless foray after Kit. Then, between gasps, he heard a spitting cough echo in the space between the water’s surface and the underside of the walkway. “Kit!” He swam forward, seeing her frightened gaze and her formidable claws locked into those rough planks, and patted her shoulder. Above them, someone was raising Kzin hell. “Stay here,” he commanded, and kicked off toward the shallows.
He waded with his sidearm drawn. What he saw on the walkway was abundant proof that the priesthood truly did not seem to learn very fast.
Five bodies sprawled where they had been shot, bleeding on the planks near deep water, but more of them lay curled on the planks within a few paces of the shore, piled atop one another. One last acolyte stood on the walkway, staring over the curled bodies. He was staring at Scarface, who stood on dry land with his own long wtsai held before him, snarling a challenge with eyes that held the light of madness. Then, despite what he had seen happen a half-dozen times in moments, the acolyte screamed and leaped.
Losing consciousness in midair, the acolyte fell heavily across his fellows and drew into a fetal crouch, as all the others had done when crossing the last six meters of planking toward shore. Those units Locklear had placed beneath the planks in darkness had kept three-ton herbivores in stasis, and worked even better on Kzinti. They’d known damned well the priesthood would be using the walkway again sooner or later; but they’d had no idea it would be this soon.
Scarface did not seem entirely sane again until he saw Kit wading from the water. Then he clasped his mate to him, ignoring the wetness he so despised. Asked how he managed to trip the gangswitch, Scarface replied, “You had told me it was on the inside of that piling, and those idiots did not try to stop me from wading to it.”
“I noticed you were wet,” said Locklear, smiling. “Sorry about that.”
“I shall be wetter with blood presently,” Scarface said with a grim look toward the pile of inert sleepers.
Locklear, aghast, opened his mouth.
But Kit placed her hand over it. “Rockear, I know you, and I know my mate. It is not your way but this is Kzersatz. Did you see what they did to the captive they took last night?”
“Big man, short black hair? His name is Gomulka.”
“His name is meat. What they left of him hangs from a post yonder.”
“Oh my God,” Locklear mumbled, swallowing hard. But—look, just don’t ask me to help execute anyone in stasis.
“Indeed.” Scarface stood, stretched, and walked toward the piled bodies. “You may want to take a brief walk, Locklear,” he said, picking up a discarded lance twice his length. “This is Kzin business, not monkey business.” But he did not understand why, as Locklear strode away, the little man was laughing ruefully at the choice of words.
Locklear’s arm was well enough, after two days, to let him dive for his wtsai while Kzinti villagers watched in curiosity—and perhaps in distaste. By that time they had buried their dead in a common plot and, with the help of Stalwart, begun to repair the pinnace’s canopy holes and twisted hinges. The little hand-welder would have sped the job greatly but, Locklear promised, “We’ll get it back. If we don’t hit first, there’ll be a stolen warship overhead with enough clout to fry us all.”
Scarface had to agree. As the warrior who had overthrown the earlier regime, he now held not only the rights, but also the responsibilities of leading his people. Lounging on grassy beds in the village’s meeting hut on the third night, they slurped hot stew and made plans. “Only the two of us can make that raid, you know,” said the big Kzin.
“I was thinking of volunteers,” said Locklear, who knew very well that Scarface would honor his wish if he made it a demand.
“If we had time to train them,” Scarface replied. “But that ship could be searching for the pinnace at any moment. Only you and I can pilot the pinnace so, if we are lost in battle, those volunteers will be stranded forever among hostile monk— Hostiles,” he amended. “Nor can they use modern weapons.”
“Stalwart probably could, he’s a natural mechanic. I know Kit can use a weapon—not that I want her along.”
“For a better reason than you know,” Scarface agreed, his ears winking across the fire at the somnolent Kit.
“He is trying to say I will soon bear his kittens, Rockear,” Kit said. “And please do not take Boots’s new mate away merely because he can work magics with his hands.” She saw the surprise in Locklear’s face. “How could you miss that? He fought those acolytes in the cave for Boots’s sake.”
“I, uh, guess I’ve been pretty busy,” Locklear admitted.
“We will be busier if that warship strikes before we do,” Scarface reminded him. “I suggest we go as soon as it is light.”
Locklear sat bolt upright. “Damn! If they hadn’t taken my wristcomp—I keep forgetting. The schedules of those little suns aren’t in synch; It’s probably daylight there now, and we can find out by idling the pinnace near the force walls. You can damned well see whether it’s light there.”
“I would rather go in darkness,” Scarface complained, “if we could master those night-vision sensors in the pinnace.”
“Maybe, in time. I flew the thing here to the village, didn’t I?”
“In daylight, after a fashion,” Scarface said in friendly insult, and flicked his sidearm from its holster to check its magazine. “Would you like to fly it again, right now?”
Kit saw the little man fill his hand as he checked his own weapon, and marveled at a creature with the courage to show such puny teeth in such a feral grin. “I know you must go,” she said as they turned toward the door, and nuzzled the throat of her mate. “But what do we do if you fail?”
“You expect enemies with the biggest ship you ever saw,” Locklear said. “And you know how those stasis traps work. Just remember, those people have night sensors and they can burn you from a distance.”
Scarface patted her firm belly once. “Take great care,” he said, and strode into darkness.
The pinnace’s controls were simple, and Locklear’s only worry was the thin chorus of whistles: air, escaping from a canopy that was not quite perfectly sealed. He briefed Scarface yet again as their craft carried them over Newduvai, and piloted the pinnace so that its re-entry thunder would roll gently, as far as possible from the Anthony Wayne.
It was late morning on Newduvai, and they could see the gleam of the Wayne’s hull from afar. Locklear slid the pinnace at a furtive pace, brushing spiny shrubs for the last few kilometers before landing in a small desert wadi. They pulled hinge pins from the canopy and hid them in the pinnace to make its theft tedious. Then, stuffing a roll of binder tape into his pocket, Locklear began to trot toward his clearing.
“I am a kitten again,” Scarface rejoiced, fairly floating along in the reduced gravity of Newduvai. Then he slowed, nose twitching. “Not far,” he warned.
Locklear nodded, moved cautiously ahead, and then sat behind a green thicket. Ahead lay the clearing with the warship and cabin, seeming little changed—but a heavy limb held the door shut as if to keep things in, not out. And Scarface noticed two mansized craters just outside the cabin’s foundation logs. After ten minutes without sound or movement from the clearing, Scarface was ready to employ what he called the monkey ruse; not quite a lie, but certainly a misdirection.
“Patience,” Locklear counseled. “I thought you tabbies were hunters.”
“Hunters, yes; not skulkers.”
“No wonder you lose wars,” Locklear muttered. But after another half-hour in which they ghosted in deep cover around the clearing, he too was ready to move.
The massive Kzin sighed, slid his wtsai to the rear and handed over his sidearm, then dutifully held his big pawlike hands out. Locklear wrapped the thin, bright red binder tape around his friend’s wrists many times, then severed it with its special stylus. Scarface was certain he could bite it through until he tried. Then he
was happy to let Locklear draw the stylus, with its chemical enabler, across the tape where the slit could not be seen. Then, hailing the clearing as he went, the little man drew his own wtsai and prodded his “prisoner” toward the cabin.
His neck crawling with premonition, Locklear stood five paces from the door and called again: “Hello, the cabin!”
From inside, several female voices and then only one, which he knew very well: “Locklear go soon soon!”
“Ruth says that many times,” he replied, half amused, though he knew somehow that this time she feared for him. “New people keep gentles inside?”
Scarface, standing uneasily, had his ear umbrellas moving fore and aft. He mumbled something as, from inside, Ruth said, “Ruth teach new talk to gentles, get food. No teach, no food,” she explained with vast economy.
“I’ll see about that,” he called and then, in Kzin, “what was that, Scarface?”
Low but urgent: “Behind us, fool.”
Locklear turned. Not twenty paces away, Anse Parker was moving forward as silently as he could and now the hatchway of the Anthony Wayne yawned open. Parker’s rifle hung from its sling but his service parabellum was leveled, and he was smirking. “If this don’t beat all: my prisoner has a prisoner,” he drawled.
For a frozen instant, Locklear feared the deserter had spied the wtsai hanging above Scarface’s backside—but the Kzin’s tail was erect, hiding the weapon. “Where are the others?” Locklear asked.
“Around. Pacifyin’ the natives in that tabby lifeboat,” Parker replied. “I’ll ask you the same question, asshole.”
The parabellum was not wavering. Locklear stepped away from his friend, who faced Parker so that the wrist tape was obvious. “Gomulka’s boys are in trouble. Promised me amnesty if I’d come for help, and I brought a hostage,” Locklear said.
Parker’s movements were not fast, but so casual that Locklear was taken by surprise. The parabellum’s short barrel whipped across his face, splitting his lip, bowling him over. Parker stood over him, sneering. “Buncha shit. If that happened, you’d hide out. You can tell a better one than that.”