by Larry Niven
“Well, you wanted me to run us aground,” Fraaf’kur rumbled bitterly, breaking the eerie ambiance. “Now you go talk to your people.” He motioned with a jab of his muzzle toward the humans.
To Dan’s disbelief, none of the Rejoiners, who were only a few meters away, reacted to their arrival. They just stood there transfixed, clustering around the few shrubs that grew on the stony ground, like living statuary adorning some gorgon’s lawn. There was no sign of the crystalline, glacial presence that had assailed him out on the sea.
Schro loped off toward a group of humans. He sniffed at them and the air around them. “They’ve been here for weeks, and they’ve relieved themselves in their clothing. This doesn’t feel right.”
Dan approached more cautiously and waved a hand in front of a gaunt young woman’s face. Her eyes were open and raw, as if she hadn’t blinked in ages. “They’re alive, barely. I can sense that congregating around these bushes is of utter importance to them, certainly more so than eating or sleeping.” The small plants were strange themselves; he only spotted three of them, anchored to large rocks. Their general shape was conical, and they were covered in auburn, hair-like fibers, quite unlike the standard lavender-to-purple flora of Sheathclaws. “Perhaps these plants have got them ensnared with some hypnotic pheromone?”
“No.” Fraaf’kur sniffed one of the shrubs, his nostrils fluffing the lank hairs of the thistle. “This thing is not vegetable, it smells of animal!” Abruptly, he jumped two meters back and away from it as if it were a land mine, his tail lashing nervously. “I know what these things are,” he roared, pointing at the three tapering shrubs—or what appeared to be shrubs. “Tzookmas!”
“What the hell is a tzookma, Fraaf’kur?”
“We need to get out of here! Now!”
But he didn’t move. He was caught just like the poor Rejoiners who had come to this dreadful island, seeking to secretly build a powerful transmitter to contact Earth, or some other human planet. How did he know that?
All of a sudden, a medium-sized pteranobat swooped in close to the fuzzy cone and was instantly snapped up with a quick whip of a tongue and swallowed into the gaping mouth concealed by the rust-colored hair.
Schro scrambled away.
Dan pulled out his sidearm and immediately fired at the thing—nothing happened; like the wrsitcomp, the weapon had been rendered inoperable by salt water. Dan tossed the useless beam gun aside and slowly moved toward the immobile kzintosh. “What are we dealing with here, Fraaf’kur?”
“They’re called grogs in your human tongue. Intelligent, stationary creatures, like cognizant trees or oysters, with vast telepathic ability, able to hijack the brains of any living thing!”
“Can you move?” Dan asked, now terrified, already aware of the answer.
“No!” yowled Fraaf’kur.
Despite his intense fear, or precisely because of it, Schro poised himself to assault the shrub—the grog. “I can still move!” All kzinti, even prepubescent ones, generally had only one response to danger: attack blindly until it or you were dead. Schro was no different.
Dan immediately grabbed the young kzinchao by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back with all his strength, receiving a few gashes in the process. “Pull back, Schro! Don’t antagonize them. They’ve spoken to us before; maybe we can talk to them now.”
You think of yourself as more enlightened than the kzin, but you attempted to fire upon us first. Negotiation was a last resort for you, too, Daneel Guthlac; or is the kzin architecture within your psyche affecting your behavior? You are quite the puzzle.
“What are you talking about?” But he knew, the alien was growing an idea in his mind as sharp and shimmering as a diamond. There were traces of Manslaughter’s telepath embedded within him, like psychic shrapnel. Their two consciousnesses—their two souls—had been in mortal combat when he killed the psychotic kzin . . .
“My biological sire is the evil telepath aboard the Righteous Manslaughter?” Schro hissed as he finally connected the pieces. “I’m a genetic copy of one who killed most of the crew, and attacked you and the Apex when you tried to rescue them?”
Dan felt sick waves of disgust and betrayal roll off his son. Damnit, the grog was broadcasting widely. This was the moment Dan had worried about since the kit first asked why he had a human father.
“A clone of the hated telepath!” Fraaf’kur roared. “I knew your stink was familiar! I will have your scrawny pelt, you little monster!”
Schrodinger’s cat was a cruel joke of a name, Schro purred to himself. Then, suddenly, he screamed and leapt at Dan, savagely shredding his flesh with his black claws. He sank his teeth into Dan’s shoulder and mauled brutally, tearing soft muscle and tendon. Dan felt like the Nautical Devastation in the maw of the ketosaurus. Then everything turned bright red when a sharp canine tooth scraped his bone. He screamed and squirmed. For a brief second, Schro was indeed both alive and dead, simultaneously Dan’s little kit and bloodthirsty telepath, existing in that terrible moment before the wave function collapses.
Dan did not fight back. He was spent, and he refused to harm his son. He loved him—and not in the harsh way a kzintosh sire cared for his kits, but in the unconditional, sacrificial way humans love their children. He tried to hug Schro with his one good arm.
Stop, projected one of the grogs. A mob of weak, emaciated humans pulled Schro off him. Dan just lay there on the cold sand and stones, listening to the surf and the two kzinti’s snarling curses. The sun, 46 Leonis Minoris, was a bleary red eye in the sky, passing judgment. The physical pain was excruciating, but the hurt and emptiness in his core were utterly unbearable.
The ghost of Manslaughter’s telepath oozed into the void.
“You can’t control us can you?” asked Schro, peering at the inert alien, with feral curiosity.
No. We don’t know why. We believe your shared mental architecture and distinct but overlapping minds are creating a feedback loop we can’t manage. This is very attractive to us, as it is how we exist with each other, but we fear you, especially the two of you, because we can’t control you.
“Kill it! Kill the feeble humans holding you back and kill the ch’rowling thing,” Fraaf’kur pleaded with Schro. He was more afraid of the tzookmas than the clone of the telepath who had killed his crewmates and maimed and marooned him on this miserable planet. “These things are rumored to be devolved descendents of the Slaver race! We’re all defenseless against them!”
Our great mnemonic archives have no memory of this Slaver race. As far as we know, we have always been as we are. We dominated this planet and its simpler organisms for billions of years. We carpeted entire continents in vast reefs, all telepathically linked, but then something happened, our population crashed—either because of disease or unexpected climate change—we were on the decline long before your people arrived.
Dan tried to sit up at this. The small action hurt immensely, but he wanted to face the faceless threat. Blood poured from his arm in buckets, and he knew that if he survived, he would spend at least a month hooked up to an autodoc—the idea of needles horrified him irrationally. When he was finally able to look up from his own gore, he saw the enslaved humans restraining his vicious son. “You say you fear us, but you wield unimaginable power against us . . . What do you want?”
We hold these beings because we wish to learn from them. We soak up their knowledge, their memories, their experiences. This being, Fraaf’kur, has current information of other worlds, of beings like us; perhaps a related species or a subspecies. We value this more than you can know.
We’ve known our world’s position is close the Kzin Empire for millennia, and this planet, with its wide rangelands and big game, is very alluring to them, so we’ve always telepathically guided them away from here. But when your grandmother, Selina Guthlac, and the fugitive kzin telepath, Shadow, set down on this planet, their interspecies telepathic rapport intrigued us. There was only a clutch of us left then, and so we allowed them
to stay and we observed them from afar.
And we’ve been watching this uncontrolled experiment in telepath breeding ever since. We theorize that, given a few eons of progress, you could develop into beings like ourselves. Your friend here accuses us of being devolved Slavers? We could very well be highly evolved kzinti.
Dan was struck dumb. He could sense that this had piqued Schro’s interest as well. The grog farthest from them snapped up a passing pteranobat as if this bombshell hadn’t been dropped. Dan stared at the reddish fur of the grogs, the vestigial paws hidden beneath the hair, their appetite . . . and he was suddenly glad Fraaf’kur couldn’t “hear” their psychic communication or he would have had an aneurism right then and there. Dan looked at his son, who had stopped struggling. The mindless humans backed off.
“Why interfere with us now?” Dan asked the impassive, pointed mass of hair.
We did not interfere with you. It was the humans from Hem, the ones who risk our security and yours with their need to contact the greater universe, who interfered with us. We were content to study you from a safe distance. You believe we have trapped them, but with proximity came a finer focus, and we were the ones who became spellbound by the most intimate details of their minds.
Even as we disagree with their rash actions—and especially now, with new information of these grogs from the planet Down gleaned from Fraaf’kur’s memories—we understand their need to reach out to others like themselves. The three of us have become something like the Rejoiners.
Dan was starting to black out. Violet spots danced in his vision. He forced himself to concentrate. “So then what do you want? You could have easily turned us away and had us forget all of this. Why all the theatrics with the ketosaurus? I’m sorry; you might be too alien for me, because I don’t understand your motivation.” He closed his eyes and let the foreign fractal thoughts form in his mind.
We could have turned all the others away and, in fact, we will. Even your friend here, Fraaf’kur, will have no memory of any of this. We have already implanted the urge in some of his nearby offspring to come here and fetch their father, but as we said, we cannot manipulate you and your child—
“I am not his child!”
You are, Schro. More than you know, for he is all that is left of Righteous Manslaughter’s telepath. Daneel Guthlac carries the part of him that has found peace here on Sheathclaws. That part, although subtle, is incredibly strong and drove him to create you. Manslaughter’s telepath did heinous things, but he was not evil. His mind was simply infected with rage, hate and addiction. You are healthy and happy. You are his redemption.
Schro grunted defiantly, but it was all bravado now. His ziirgrah was too sensitive, and he knew the truth, whether he wanted to or not.
Dan opened up to him, and the grogs, and bared the monster he had unwittingly hidden just under the surface. The astral remnant of Manslaughter’s telepath—really, just a collection of primal needs and sensations—flowed up from the recesses of Dan’s subconscious. It examined the kit with spectral tendrils and recognized its own reflection in the unpolluted pool of Schro’s mind. Content with what it saw, it sunk back down into the dark cerebral abyss from which it came.
You think we used the ketosaurus as a weapon, we did not. We wanted you here, Daneel Guthlac and Schro. We moved through the elementary network of latent kzin telepaths on this planet and rooted the idea to send you here in the Apex’s mind. We used the ketosaurus as a tool to bring out your true potential.
The young kzin said nothing. He turned and stalked away toward the interior of the island.
“Schro!”
You asked us what we want, Daneel Guthlac. We want what you have. Offspring. A second chance. We are all that you see; three adult females moored on this barren island. We are old. Our sessile lifestyle gives us slow metabolisms and long lifespans, but we will most likely not live long enough to see you complete your work on the hyperdrive, and so our new dream to meet the other grogs of the universe will rest in our daughters.
“I don’t have that anymore.”
Give him time. We’re having a parallel conversation with him at the moment and we believe he can be reached. You have raised him well.
“You want us to clone you? You need to give us something for me to even begin to trust you. Free these people. Send them home now.”
Without another word the group of humans marched back to their waiting gravtruck. Dan couldn’t see them go, but he heard their boots tromping on sediment and then, after a moment, the whirl of the gravity motor.
“If I help you with this, what do we get in return?”
The easy, obvious answer is that with greater numbers we will be able to better protect this world from a kzin invasion force. The Patriarchy will never know this colony exists.
The more complex and interesting answer is that one day we hope kzinti and humans will participate in the reconstruction of our glorious thoughtscapes.
The image of a cathedral-like structure, made entirely of stained glass and coral, was superimposed on the hostile reality of the island within Dan’s mind, and he intimately understood that the torpid physical existence of the grogs was only a mere shadow of their rich and vibrant psychological lives.
And with that beautiful image crystallized in his mind, Dan passed out.
Daneel Guthlac awoke to a loud bang, like bone smashing into metal.
He sat in the passenger seat of his gravcar, connected to a portable autodoc. The interior of the car was pleasantly warm, but a dull, throbbing ache stabbed him in the shoulder. His son was in the driver’s seat. Disoriented, Dan looked out the window, but all he could see were heavy rain clouds coasting by. “What happened?”
“I returned with Fraaf’kur to Krazári. He’s got a great story about how we ambushed the Rejoiners, and after a heated battle where you, our trusty human mascot, were severely injured, we sent them packing before they could get started on their transmitter.”
It took Dan a while to process that and remember the events of the last few hours . . . days? “Why is it that I always end up severely injured when I try to save Sheathclaws?”
“Because humans are delicately built . . . Anyways, once there, I got your car and went back for you.”
“Thanks and—how do you even know how to fly this thing?”
“Autopilot.” He waved his paws in the air. “I just like moving the wheel. It makes me feel better.” His ears fluttered, but his demeanor was somewhat distant.
Then Dan realized that he couldn’t feel their psychic link any longer and he missed it terribly. It was like having a stranger sitting next to him with the voice and scent of his son. “Hey, are we okay?”
“No.” His son looked at him for a long second, then returned to his senseless driving. “Not yet, anyway. I understand what you did and why you did it, but it still feels shameful to be a copy of someone so disgusting.”
“Try having him burrowing in your head.”
They said nothing for a while. Dan heard that odd organic bang again.
“You know, I was thinking about what the grogs were saying, that there’s a feedback loop between us, you’ve got a little bit of Manslaughter’s telepath in your soul, and I’m, genetically, Manslaughter’s telepath with a little bit of you in mine. I think we need to live in our own heads for a while.”
“Fair enough.” Dan wanted to dig his fingers in that orange coat and give him a rough shake, but didn’t. “Where are we going now?”
“Back to Shrawl’ta. I also gathered the genetic samples of the three grogs. I’m thinking three exact clones and three produced by fusing the same sex gametes of two different ones. That should give us six baby female grogs in total. They said they’ll make sure the biotech people don’t ask too many questions.”
“That worries me. Who’s to stop them from subtly herding the unsuspecting people of Sheathclaws like cattle once we increase their numbers? We’re allied now, but what happens once our goals change, or conflict?”
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“They won’t. Their reach will become greater and greater as their numbers increase, but they won’t control us because they value our minds, our ideas and concepts. They need us to be free to create in order to enjoy us. That said, they might steer someone particularly interesting to their island and immerse themselves in their mind for a while, but they’ve agreed to not let any visitors waste away. Ultimately, according to Fraaf’kur’s memories, the humans of the planet Down have learned to work with their local grogs, and we will as well.”
“You sound like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I do. The grogs gave me the information I needed for this specific task. I’m going to finish the year at the créche—actually looking forward to confronting the little sons of prreti that made my life so miserable—then I’m going back to the island with the cloned grog spawn.”
“By yourself?” This was too much for Dan; his head spun from the injuries and the pain killers.
“Yes, that is the arrangement I made with them. I will learn how to make the most of my ziirgrah without the need for the sthondat stimulant, and perhaps teach the little clones a thing or two about making a Name for onesself.”
This opened up a lingering wound. “Listen, Schro, about your Name—”
“Don’t worry about it, father. The grogs have given me a new kzinchao Name. I am now Trainer-of-Telepaths.”
“That’s a good Name.” Dan closed his eyes and said, “You know, I hoped I would get at least a year with my little kit, but you’ve matured into a fine kzintosh . . . You kzin grow up too damned fast.” He wanted to drift off to sleep. The autodoc was demanding he rest, but the banging outside the gravcar persisted. “What is that noise?”
“That’s the skull of the ketosaurus. After I got you on the autodoc, I went back and beheaded the beast.”
Dan half-opened his eyes and looked at his son, “I thought you said you didn’t need it?”