by Larry Niven
This struck me as a good argument. So we walked off briskly towards a hill. In fact it was practically a mountain by local standards.
“Why is the soil red?” I asked idly. “It would be easy to understand it looking like Mars or the Australian outback if this were a second-generation planet, but those places are red because of haematite and iron-based minerals. And this planet shouldn’t have any iron.”
“I think the system acquired a second-generation planet, and it seems to have collided with this world a long time ago. Second-generation planets are all over the galaxy. They get detached from binary systems pretty easily, and sometimes they get captured by another system. So there’s a certain amount of iron and other metals around on the surface, but the core isn’t iron. One of the reasons there’s no magnetic field to speak of. And one of the reasons eating the local food isn’t a waste of time. If it were all first-generation life it wouldn’t be very nutritious. In fact, you should have been able to taste the iron in the meat you ate.”
“I think the fruit I had was first generation. It was pretty bland. Still, there was water in it.”
Marthar looked at me amiably. “You monkeys have disgusting habits. Still, I’ve got used to them. Mostly.”
We bickered in friendly fashion as we walked towards the mountain. I’ll call it that, even though it was a pretty sad sort of mountain in comparison with the ranges of Wunderland.
“So this world is pretty old. Much older than Wunderland or Old Earth?”
“Three times as old. So some of the early lifeforms ought to have done some serious evolution; but if it was hit by an asteroid big enough to spread iron and nickel around the surface, it might have had all life wiped out and had to start again. Earth nearly had that happen. But life is pretty tenacious. I don’t know how deep the oceans are, or how deep they were five billion years ago, but if they weren’t very deep we might be looking at a place that’s quite young as far as the life on it is concerned. And we don’t know where the things that left the towers came from. They might have put the iron here deliberately. In which case it would have been the first thing they did, I suppose.”
“You mean they might have deliberately crashed a big asteroid here? And wiped out most if not all of the lifeforms? They must have been pretty murderous, don’t you think?”
Marthar yawned, an impressive sight. “You know why you’re so squeamish, you humans? It’s because you are afraid of yourselves; you know that there is something truly black and horrible inside you, something utterly murderous and evil, and you think if you can hide from it, it will go away. So for most of you, it only comes out at time of serious need. But no lifeform dominates its planet unless it’s murderous. Evolution takes care of the nice guys. And you beat the might of all Kzin in a war by being more murderous than we are. It’s why I’m nice to you, Chimpy. I don’t want you mad at me.”
She was joking of course. At least I thought so.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We were halfway up the mountain and walking around it in a curve when Marthar stopped. She sniffed the air.
“Don’t look now, but there’s some sort of animal following us, a big one.”
I froze but didn’t turn around. “How big?”
“About my size, more or less. May even be a bit bigger. Might be wounded, it’s got a funny way of moving. Or maybe it’s got its legs on backwards or something silly. I mean, evolution produces some very odd stuff, and things that look as if they’d never survive for a day manage to keep themselves going for mega-years.”
“Usually by being unpleasant to eat,” I said. I knew a bit about evolution too.
“When we get to that boulder just ahead, carry on as if I’m still with you, and talk to me normally. I’ll wait and catch it. I don’t like being followed.”
“Alright. Be careful. And don’t eat it if it looks really clumsy.”
“Right. Or if it has poisonous quills.”
“Hey, be careful,” I told her, suddenly worried. Of course it was a stupid thing to say, but Marthar was used to me. I don’t know if she thought the only reason I was concerned for her was because I knew I couldn’t survive without her, or if she knew I cared for her. I’d told her I did, lots of times, but she wouldn’t just believe me. Not Marthar, I thought ruefully. She’d think I might be deceiving myself the better to deceive her.
She didn’t even bother looking pityingly at me, she just stepped back behind the boulder and I carried on.
“I know you don’t trust anyone, not even me,” I told her in my normal voice, even though she wasn’t there. “I suppose you don’t do empathy with anything except prey.” This was unfair and untrue. Sometimes she could read my mind. Well, not my mind, my feelings. Just as some animals can read your fear and respond to it, so kzin and kzinretti could read a whole range of feelings with uncanny accuracy. In a few it can be made into the telepath’s power, but all have it to some degree. It was just that they didn’t react the way a human being would. It all got taken into account, even when the reaction was an impulsive one, and Marthar was certainly impulsive. It was why I had some hope that she did understand my feeling for her, she must have been able to read it. I was an open book to Marthar. I wondered if the creature that followed us was the same. If she didn’t like the look of whatever it was, it could be dead very quickly.
“I do wonder a bit how far I have to go like this,” I continued in a conversational tone. Wouldn’t the creature work out that this was a rather one-sided discussion? Then there was a squawk and shriek from behind me. Neither sound came from Marthar, although there was a low growling. I turned and ran back.
Marthar had the creature on its back. It was a kzin, though hardly a warrior or Hero. It was gaunt and starved-looking. It had few of the fabric pouches of an ordinary kzin, and these were held by vines rather than leather bands, but it had no weapons that I could see. Marthar had her wtsai at its throat and was interrogating it.
“Are you one of the pirates?” she hissed at it.
“No, kzinrett-that-speaks, please spare my life. I will be your servant, I will help you!”
“How did you come to this world?”
“I was marooned. Marooned! I was abandoned here. I was press-ganged by that devil K’zarr; from Argent, a poor enough world in truth, and brought to this world, I was, by that master of evil. Made to step on a black disc, I was, which moved me a thousand miles away in the blink of an eye.”
“I think we saw it in the memo pad,” I told Marthar. “I think this is indeed one of K’zarr’s crew who was left behind. Do you remember seeing two of them step on one of those transfer discs and vanish?”
Marthar released the poor devil, who was no match for her at all. He struggled to his feet.
“Thank-ee, kzinrett.”
“My Name is Marthar. Marthar-Riit…Get up!” She commanded, as he went down in the full prostration at the Name. Some of the kzin at home called her “My Lady” on formal occasions, but that was a term used by some Wunderland kzin only, taken from human speech. I realized he had almost certainly never met an intelligent kzinrett before, or at least not one that did not hide her intelligence. He had almost certainly never met a member of the Riit Clan, either. I realized later that, quite apart from her ear-tattoos, the possibility she was an imposter never occurred to him. Falsely pretending to be Riit was something no kzin would, literally, ever dream of doing.
“And how did you get here?” he asked. “Don’t say you’re with K’zarr, I beg of ye!”
“K’zarr is dead,” Marthar told him. “But some of his crew are here, and they are our enemies. They are led by a kzin called Silver.”
“Silver! He were as bad as K’zarr. Worse, he were, if ’twere possible. Years and years since they left me here to die. Hah, but I didn’t die, did I? Old Bengar is still here, still alive, though I had to eat scuttling vermin and worse.” So he called himself Bengar. It sounded like a nursery name, and I doubted this creature could ever have acquired a real Name o
f his own.
“And me the child of brave and honorable kzin,” he went on, almost babbling, “though poor, ’tis true. An’ I tried to be as bad as they pirates, so I did, for a kzin has to be loyal, but loyalty cuts both ways, don’t it? Pray ter the Fanged God now, is what I do. Pray for another meal, an’ sometimes I gets it and sometimes I doesn’t. But I’m still here. And what I begs yer is take me away from this world, for ’tes not natural that it be always daytime. For when the sun goes down, it grows dreadful chill, and I walked ter keep it higher in the sky, so I did. I walked all around this cursed world, more than once. An’ a day that lasts forever is part o’ the curse, I should say, for a poor tired old kzin, trudging his way about ter keep the sun where it belongs, overhead. Ah, there be daymares, d’ye see, nightmares bein’ nothin’ on daymares, where there be no easy dusk, on’y the threat of endless night. So ye walks, d’ye see? Ye walks.”
The picture of an endless trudge to outwalk the sun was as horrible as anything else I had seen. I felt sorry for the poor creature. But I wasn’t sure I could believe it. I suppose it might just be possible in high enough latitudes.
“Where did you come out when you stepped on the transfer disc?” I asked Bengar.
“Why, in another tower, on another disc. Thought it were the same tower at first, and everyone gone and me alone in it. I were alone, o’course, but when I got out, there were differences outside. I were near some water and the sun were lower in the sky. And the tower were in even worse shape than this one. Some of they discs lead to stranger places. Some must lead off this world, and I was tempted, but no, there be places worse than this, I seen some o’ them wi’ K’zarr. Places where the air is green and burns. Places where there’s beasts can tear yer heart out o’ yer chest before yer can draw a wtsai. Once, I saw a beast with three legs and two heads, if you’ll believe me, but it were dead and where it came from I don’t know. No, I found out some things, I can tell yer about them. Yes, I can help yer, Marthar-Riit, young man-kit, I can tell yer things that there K’zarr never knew, may his soul burn for ever wi’ the Demon Goddess’ fangs in his throat.”
Marthar looked at me. “Please let him live, Marthar,” I said. “I believe he is an honest kzin, and he may be able to help us defeat the mutineers.”
“You are a softie, Peter, though I love you for it. But sometimes your human methods seem to work. I don’t say I understand it, but you don’t have to understand facts, just to face them.” She turned to Bengar. “Very well, in the hope that you are honest and will keep your word and in the hope that you can see that I am a deal more dangerous than K’zarr and Silver combined if I am your enemy, I will spare you in exchange for your help. You have a family somewhere?”
“Yes, Marthar-Riit.”
“Then, if you swear loyalty to me, you swear loyalty to the generations. I bind you in the name of the Riit Clan and give my Name as my word!”
Bengar flinched a little at what must have been for him a dreadful oath. Then he knelt clumsily before her. “I pledge my fealty. For ye be a warrior-lady come again out of the ancient legends, those stories what was told i’ the old days afore the Fanged God punished all kzinretti. Ye can be sure o’ me, to the death. For yer gives me something to die for if I must, something wi’ some point and meaning to it.”
“You must know that this man-kit here, my friend Peter, begged for your life. And that you owe him fealty too.”
Bengar looked at me vacantly. I don’t suppose owing fealty to any other than a kzin made any real sense to him. An intelligent kzinrett must have been strange enough. To my surprise he nodded to me. “Protect you I will, wi’ me life if need be,” he promised me. Or perhaps he promised Marthar. It wasn’t easy to tell. Anyway, he promised.
“Is kzin fealty like human fealty?” I asked Marthar as we went on.
Marthar considered. “I suppose so,” she said. “I think it varies from world to world. Some of the earlier worlds settled are more, well, feudal, I suppose. Fealty is about duty, and I guess it’s a sort of trade between kzin rather than just obeying all orders. I don’t suppose that any kzin could even think of turning into an obedient slave, but an oath of fealty gives those who swear it more freedom. I guess it sort of regulates things so it isn’t necessary to threaten force all the time. But the thing is that force and power are all things that ensure the race won’t degenerate. That’s something we have that human beings don’t: a sense of duty to the species.”
“We do,” I protested. “We look after each other. If one of the tribe is threatened, the others try to help.”
“There you are. If a human is weak and falls into a trap, the other humans help it escape. That’s not thinking of the species at all, that’s thinking of the tribe. It has a good effect on the tribe, but a bad effect on the species, because it keeps alive a weak creature with the lousy judgment to fall into a trap. If a group of kzin found one of its members had fallen into a pit, they’d just look hard at the pit to make sure they never got caught the same way. Then they’d move on and leave the inept kzin there. That way, the group survives, the group learns, the same as your system. But we don’t dilute the gene pool with incompetents.”
“It might not have been incompetence, just bad luck,” I pointed out.
“We believe in weeding out the unlucky. You keep them. Eventually you’ll all be unlucky. Or incompetent. Same thing. It’s strange how lucky you’ve been so far.”
In school, I’d been told that Napoleon asked people if they were lucky, wanting to appoint only generals who were lucky. It had seemed strange at the time and still did.
“Why do you think being lucky is the same as being competent? Luck just happens.”
“No it doesn’t. Anytime some idiot has a disaster, he blames it on bad luck. He can’t or won’t see it was always just a consequence of a bad decision. When things go wrong, you have to figure out what you did to screw up and make sure you don’t do it again.”
“And if it leads to you getting trapped in a pit, you don’t get the chance to change or learn, not under your system,” I retorted. “The rest of the gang just look down at you in the pit and wave goodbye. That’s an awful waste, don’t you think?”
Marthar shrugged. “Saves the gene pool. Maybe there’s a middle way. We could hoick them out of the pit but the price is sterilizing them so they don’t pass their stupidity onto the next generation. If they find some way to get out themselves, good for them!”
I decided that kzin and man were very different in some ways. “I’m not ashamed that we humans are more compassionate than you kzin,” I told her.
“You aren’t. You just save your compassion for losers, we save ours for the species. It’s called evolution in action when some idiot gets himself killed. It’s the way the Fanged God does things. We accept that and go along with it; you try to fight it. As if you think your god got it wrong, and you’re going to improve on creation. Doesn’t look to be a good strategy in the long run. We’ve never exterminated a species in all our conquests, by the way.”
No, I thought, just reduced them to slaves and prey-animals, like the wretched Jotok, who once had a great trading empire that lifted races out of barbarism, and the God alone knows how many other peaceful societies. But this was hardly the time to be picking a fight.
“What if I got hurt, or fell into a pit, would you help me?”
“Of course. You’re my friend, and more to the point, you aren’t my species. I don’t mind if your species fills up with more incompetents. But I won’t have it happen to mine.”
I don’t think she meant to be hurtful, but I also don’t think she cared much whether she hurt my feelings or not. Kzin don’t put much store in feelings about other kzin, much less humans. I think she was just giving a truthful answer, but it was a bit chilling. You can get along with kzin and feel that they aren’t all that different from human beings on the inside, and then they say something which just shows you that you were wrong all along. There are similarities, but deep d
own, kzin are different from us, or at least from me. When she said she was more dangerous than K’zarr or Silver, she meant it.
We continued walking towards the Andersons’ lander in silence, Bengar trudging after us.
Bengar came up to us. Kzin are less gregarious than humans, but I think he was hungry for company, as who wouldn’t be after years of solitude?
“Ye’ll take me back off this world, will ye not?” he asked, with almost a whine in his voice. “And ye’ll not gi’ me up to Silver, will ye? Else I’m prey. And you treat poor Bengar right and there’s much he can tell ye. The treasure, ye know. I can lead ye to the treasure, so I can.”
“We know where the treasure is, it’s in the tower,” Marthar told him.
“Ahh, that’s what K’zarr thought, and he left me to it, so he did. I reckon he knew that if either of those of us that he abandoned by those discs came back, ’twould do us no good. For we’d have had to fix those dreadful snakes to our eyes and be blinded like Gra-Prompyh. So though he didn’t know what was on those bars, he thought they was treasure. But I knows different. I knows which of they is valuable and which is dross, so I do. And dross there be a-plenty, unless ye be awful interested in stories o’ aliens and their follies, and lore of other worlds, long since passed away, I should think.”
“What do you mean?” Marthar asked.
“What I means is, I found meself in another tower, far from here. And when I was shivering in the long night, I braved one o’ they discs on my own, I did, and gradually I learned a few things. Like I made some sense o’ the writin’ they aliens put on the discs. An’ not just the discs, and there was other ways o’ reading them silver bars, there was. ’Cos there was more kinds o’ aliens than those what they were aiming at in the first tower. There be ways o’ getting information about what’s in the bars, an’ they don’t need to put yer eyes out to get it. So if there’s treasure in the knowledge o’ how the discs work, for instance, and how other things work, engineering sort o’ stuff, mathematical sort o’ stuff, not just stories for kits and kzinretti, beggin’ your pardon, warrior-lady, for I sees you aren’t just an ordinary kzinrett, indeed I do.”