Man-Kzin Wars XIV

by Larry Niven

  “So you think they’re building a launch site?” The kzin asked, scratching the back of his neck, his old wartime training creeping back.

  “No, I see no sign of construction. Wait. Are all these images from the same day?”

  “No, different days, almost a week in between, why?”

  “No one has moved. The lighting changes, the sun rises and falls, the tides come in and withdraw, the pteranobats circle around, but the people never move. You didn’t find this odd?”

  Fraaf’kur snorted. “I’m not well versed in primate behavior. You lot always seem to be standing around talking your nonsense.”

  “No, this is very strange. We need to find out what’s going on out there.”

  “How do you intend to find out?”

  “I’m going to need you to purposefully run aground on that island. Then, I’m going to walk up to them and ask for help.”

  “You want me to ground my Nautical Devastation?”

  “For the Apex, of course. How soon can we go?”

  “One of these days, you won’t be able to hide behind your friend, the Apex,” Fraaf’kur rumbled irritably. “We can leave now if you’re ready. You can attempt to take a ketosaurus, and then I can get you to that island.”

  “I just need some equipment from my gravcar and we can go.”

  Nautical Devastation, the huge catamaran with a copper-colored sail, had been designed by Chief Programmer to navigate the tumultuous coastlines around Raoneer. Despite the old Hero’s qualms about Sheathclaws, the incongruent blend of advanced kzin technology being applied to such an ancient human vessel was in itself a product of Sheathclaws’ mixed culture. The double-hulled boat pitched and yawed rhythmically in heaving waves enlarged by the planet’s weaker gravity. Dan wondered if kzin ever got seasick.

  “We’re nearing the beasts’ territory!” shouted Fraaf’kur. “We’ll cut through it on the way to the island. Our opponent hunts by sound, so I’m transmitting the cries of a wounded longneck into the water.”

  Dan nodded, but watched his son. The kit had been crackling with nervous energy ever since they’d cast out. He was a thin, orange smear against the vast ocean; his juvenile spots on the verge of elongating into the stripes of an adult. In a year or two, Schro would no longer be a kit, his kit—kzin grow up so fast—and there was so much he wanted to tell him: about his past, his genetic Sire, about his potential, but he feared losing him. Better to wait until he’s older, more sure of himself. Now, he wanted to simply appreciate these moments with his savage little son.

  Too bad the mysterious island nagged at him, with its immobile humans standing among the surf and rocks as the scenery changed around them. Dan could now see the outline of the island on the horizon, and all his instincts told him to run.

  “I can’t see or smell anything. I can’t hunt out here!” The kit slammed into Dan, knocking the thoughts out of his mind.

  “Relax, Schro, I know you feel vulnerable, surrounded by endless blue, your sharp sense of smell blunted by the salt in the air—”

  “I’m not scared!”

  “I know you are,” Dan kneaded the plush fur on his son’s shoulder. He could feel his fear like whiplashes across his mind. “Lying about it only makes you careless. I’m telling you it’s okay. Recognize that you’re out of your element, understand that you’re only a small morsel of food in this new ecosystem, and be on guard. You have a more powerful sense that surpasses the merely visual and olfactory. Use your ziirgrah. Sweep the waves with it. Be vigilant.”

  The kitten dug his claws into the catamaran hull and focused his empathic awareness on the tall and languid waves. Dan did the same, adding to the kit’s range and sharing his perception. It felt like psychic sonar. He was vaguely aware that Chief Programmer—Fraaf’kur—watched them suspiciously from the helm. Dan ignored this and paid attention to his son.

  Schro slowly crawled to the bow of the boat, careful not to lose his purchase on the undulating deck. “There’s something out there, father; fish and longnecks and something else, something I’ve sensed before but different. It’s stalking an elderly longneck, keeping to the deeper, colder waters.”

  “Fraaf’kur, take us further out in that direction,” Dan shouted, pointing to where his son had indicated. He, too, had caught a mental glimpse of the monster waiting in the depths and, for the first time, doubted his plan with the massive gravbelt would actually work.

  “Daneel, the only way to kill this thing is to penetrate its head with chugra. Its back is heavily armored with scales, and hitting it in a flipper will only enrage it. The chugra launcher is kept in the storage compartment in the other hull.” The old dock cat adjusted the sail and hurled his ship toward the hiding beast, the fire of the hunt burning within him.

  “This isn’t my kill, it’s Schro’s! Kit, go get the harpoon.”

  “How will I kill it?” The juvenile hesitated, but, runt or no, he was a full-blooded kzin and the hunt was beginning to possess him.

  “Stun it with your ziirgrah—confuse it—yours is more powerful than most kzinti. Then, when it’s dazed, fire the harpoon into its skull.”

  “More powerful? How do you know? Are you sure I can stun something as cunning as a ketosaurus on the hunt?”

  “Yes, I can feel your ability through our link,” Dan lied. “You could potentially rival even the founder of Sheathclaws, the rogue telepath Shadow, himself.”

  Encouraged, Schro bounded across the trampoline that connected the twin hulls and found the heavy harpoon gun. It was longer than the length of his entire body. Kzin kittens were incredibly strong by human-child standards, but Schro wrestled awkwardly with the immense weapon, and the constant shift of the floor beneath him didn’t help.

  “Careful with that! If you drop it into the sea, I’ll toss you in after it!” roared Fraaf’kur.

  Dan shot him a livid, protective glare, but the kzin only flapped his ears contemptuously, his mane thrashing in the frosty wind. Dan turned away from the mangy captain and met his son, fighting every fiber in his being to help him carry the heavy gun. “We’re getting closer to it, can you feel it?”

  “Yes, and it knows we’re coming. It’s not afraid of us, but it’s really annoyed we’re spooking the longnecks.”

  “Very good. You said it felt familiar yet different, how so?”

  “I don’t know . . . its mind feels like the alliogs that roam the steppes of Raoneer, only less jumpy, more confident and patient, like it could kill anything.”

  “Good. I’m glad you picked up on that. The ketosaurus is a therapsid-like creature, distantly related to the alliog. It grew massive when it returned to life in the sea.”

  “No more lessons! I want to see it.”

  Dan laughed at that, but then the water turned black below the Nautical Devastation and the ship’s name suddenly felt like a hollow threat. “Hold on, son!” A row of dark green scales, longer than their boat, sawed through the water then disappeared into the blue.

  “Everyone, dig in with your claws!” Fraaf’kur growled as he pressed close to the deck. “The only way to get at it is to let it chomp down on the boat and then spear it between the eyes! Are you ready?”

  “What?” Schro clutched the harpoon gun tightly. It was all he could do not to wet himself.

  “Can the ship take a hit like that?”

  “This is a kzin craft, monkey! The Nautical Devastation is built for war!”

  A gigantic flipper rose into the air and slapped the water with such thunderous force that the catamaran rocked and spun like so much flotsam in the sea. To his credit, Schro tried to aim his harpoon at the creature, but Dan grabbed him and hunkered down close to the bucking bow. “We can do this, kit! This is why we’re here,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “But we have to do it right.”

  With one paw, Fraaf’kur got control of the flapping sail while desperately working the tiller with the other, and, after a long, queasy while, the Nautical Devastation straightened out. Just ahead, a
range of olive-colored scutes rose from the water like a sudden rock formation; two of the outcroppings were large, yellow eyes and two were flaring nostrils, each an eruption of mist. Dan and Schro both knew that the ketosaurus now perceived them as a slow and stupid longneck.

  “It looks like a crocodile-humpback-whale hybrid,” Dan said, and instantly regretted not having better researched their prey—now their predator—before leaving Shrawl’ta.

  Schro got up and tried to target the leviathan again.

  Then a voice, like that of the Maned God himself, boomed within Dan’s skull. Daneel Guthlac, you are a strange and interesting creature.

  Schro stopped and looked down at him, astonished, “The sea monster can talk! It’s telepathic!”

  “You heard that?” For a moment, and despite the clarity of the words—no, not words, but complete thoughts forming in his mind like ice crystals—Dan wondered if he imagined it.

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Fraaf’kur snarled from his post. “These beasts are not telepathic! I’ve waged war on them before; they’re worthy and dangerous opponents, but that is all. ”

  Confused—terrified—Dan scanned the ketosaurus with his weak telepathy. He knew the cetaceans of Earth were intelligent, but this . . . the creature was unremarkable. The warrior was right; there was nothing there except simple, primal urges.

  I am both attracted and repulsed by you. I don’t know how to proceed, the great voice proclaimed—or was it a second, distinct voice?—and the monster slid its gargantuan bulk beneath the waves.

  There was an obvious disconnect between the dumb marine animal and the alien intellect speaking through and around them. “Schro, quickly link with me and sweep the area with your ziirgrah! I don’t think that was the ketosaurus.”

  “A full-blown kzin telepath?” the Hero screamed, traumatic memories of the murderous telepath aboard his old spacecraft seizing him.

  “Steady yourself, Fraaf’kur. That didn’t feel like a kzin mind or a human one.”

  All of a sudden, the monster crashed into the catamaran with an explosive breach that launched the whole rig meters into the air. Without claws to maintain his hold, Dan was thrown off the boat. The acute agony of hitting the freezing Kcheemic Ocean was like going for a spacewalk in your underwear. Incandescent white blinded him. He was dying; he knew, he had almost died once before when the drug-crazed telepath aboard the Righteous Manslaughter had viciously mangled his mind. Hell, psychologically—spiritually—he had died. It was a miracle he had hung on long enough to fire a single laser beam and fry the telepath’s deadly, preternatural brain.

  We wish to learn from you, Daneel Guthlac. Your patchwork psyche is fascinating to us, but you are an uncontrollable variable. Your own thoughts reveal you to be dangerous.

  Fear and urgency cleared his mind, and in one perfect zen moment, he knew the alien minds were coming from the island. The ketosaurus was only a weapon. Then, encroaching hypothermia forced him back to his immediate situation, and he tried to swim back to the boat in an achingly slow and desperate doggie-paddle.

  After what felt like an eternity, something sharp, like knives, sank into his left arm and hauled him out of the water, where the wind-chill made him shake wildly. Dan was distantly aware of Schro licking his face and the same knives slapping a thermal patch on his back. Warmth slowly crept into his bones, and with it came rational thought.

  “What happened?” Dan asked feebly. He realized he was draped over the side of the starboard hull on his belly and facing the sail, which lay in the water.

  “The heavily reinforced port hull held, but the Nautical Devastation still capsized dishonorably,” was all Dan understood of Fraaf’kur’s howling. The rest was cursing in the bloodcurdling dialect of Shasht.

  “The boat’s on its side . . . Schro, are you okay?” He could sense his son’s terror and fury; the kit’s dormant telepathic power had sharpened like a spike by the unexpected attack.

  “Yes, I still have my harpoon!” He had held onto it with his prehensile tail. “Are you all right, father? I thought you were dead!”

  “I’m just cold—and surprised the thing didn’t go for me when I was in the water.”

  “You’re nothing to it. The ketosaurus is treating us like a wounded longneck. Soon it’s going to strike the mast.”

  As if on cue, the leviathan slammed its jaws shut on the mast and thrashed violently, testing the boat’s tolerances to the brink. Dan held on with all his might, and through the ferocious quake, Schro’s piercing cry got his attention. The kit had climbed down the now vertical trampoline and impaled the ketosaurus with two harpoons; one psychic, which bewildered its rudimentary mind, and the other, the steel projectile embedded within the creature’s left eye and driven through his brain. The jerking crescendoed into death throes, and then everything stilled.

  Long moments passed. The three worn sailors just watched their monstrous kill bob in the water as if waiting for it to spring to life and pummel them once more.

  An hour passed. It was clear that the sea monster was never going to move again, so Fraaf’kur carefully pried back a large scale on the ketosaurus’ side and tore off chunks of its flesh. He ceremoniously offered the first bite to the proud and still-shaky Schro, and they ate their terrible sashimi perched on the starboard hull as it jutted out of the water. The stony island loomed large in the horizon. It was close, about a kilometer away.

  Dan had tried contacting his gravcar, but his wristcomp was damaged from the salt water. “We need to get to the island somehow. The telepathic voices are coming from there.”

  “I can swim it, but then what? Without protective fur, you’ll freeze to death in minutes, and Schro here can’t swim. We need to right the ship. You’re an engineer, human, got any ideas?”

  “I have an idea,” Schro volunteered to their surprise. “The industrial gravbelt, we can use it to lift the ship out of the water, enough to get it straight.”

  That would work. “What about the trophy? We brought that to tow the ketosaurus back. What about your créche mates?

  The kit—no, he was no longer a kit, he was an adolescent kzin now, a kzinchao—radiated confidence. “I don’t need to prove I killed the top predator on the planet. It’s enough that I know I killed it.”

  Fraaf’kur slapped Schro’s back. “Not a bad idea, runt! We stowed it in the port hull. I can dive down and retrieve it.” Without another word the Hero plunged into the ocean, and, with expansive paw strokes and a rhythmic swish of his powerful tail, Fraaf’kur disappeared beneath the surface. Dan was instantly reminded of how cold the water really was.

  “I didn’t know kzinti could swim,” Schro said, using his ziirgrah on Fraaf’kur. “He’s actually enjoying it.”

  “Where he’s from, Kzinti have learned to swim, and on Sheathclaws, the lighter gravity and saltier oceans help buoy a kzin’s heavier frame,” Dan said, but he could tell something was wrong. Schro had crossed the link they had easily shared since he was a newborn kit and was now rummaging in Dan’s mind, which shouldn’t have been possible without the sthondat drug that boosted a talented kzin’s natural ziirgrah into true telepathy.

  “What are you doing?” For the first time ever, Dan shut his mind to his son.

  “What is a Schrodinger’s cat, father? Why did you name me after it?”

  Dan signed heavily. He was unbearably thirsty and didn’t want to talk; he especially didn’t want to have this conversation here, now. “I had been unsuccessfully working on the captured Righteous Manslaughter’s hyperdrive for years before you came along. Honestly, I had quantum mechanics on the brain when I named you. It was only a créche name, so I figured, what the hell, you would earn your own Name in time.”

  “Are you sure that’s it? I get the sense it means something like being both alive and dead at the same time. The feeling is very strong.”

  To Dan’s infinite relief, Fraaf’kur’s orange head popped out of the water. His fur was slicked back and he did indeed look like a
marine mammal, like an actual sea lion. “I got it! Someone help me hoist it up.” He panted hungrily as he hefted the sealed crate.

  In silence they affixed the gravbelt to the catamaran, where the mast intersected with the hull connectors. Dan activated the powerful motor and dialed up the artificial gravity field until it encompassed the entire ship, while Fraaf’kur poured his weight onto the starboard hull so that the sail swung up, perpendicular to the water, and the port hull surfaced.

  “The rudder is completely gone and the sail is torn, but not tattered. If you increase the gravity motor’s strength and lift us up off the surface, only a few centimeters, just enough to remove the friction of cutting through the water, I can use the sail to steer.”

  Dan complied and they were off. The airborne ride was rougher than being on the raging sea as they were now susceptible to the rapid, intense winds that hit them at odd angles. Nobody spoke. Fraaf’kur fought with the disobedient catamaran, his hunter’s concentration totally absorbed.

  Schro sulked by himself in the bow of the port hull; something clearly bothered him, something he had seen in Dan’s mind. For the first time, Dan noticed the kit looked half-formed somehow, as if the Maned God ran out of kzin stuff and added a bit of human to finish the job. His body language and mannerisms were all too primate. Dan had always been accused of being too kzin, but Schro wasn’t kzin enough. It’s what his créche mates picked up and instantly pounced on—his humanity. Dan couldn’t help but feel responsible for that, so he sat on the trampoline and focused on increasing or decreasing the output of the motor to the tempo of the surging waves.

  The Nautical Devastation skidded onto the rocky shoal of the desolate island. Dan noticed a big, unmarked gravtruck abandoned on the shore, now a roost for several pteranobats; the leathery fliers eyed them as potential carrion. They disembarked quietly as if to avoid disturbing the death-like serenity of the beach. The only sound was the chill wind and pervasive screeching of immature pteranobats up in the guano-coated hills.