by Larry Niven
“Which one?” she asked. Bengar pointed.
“Do not step on a disc, My Lady. Follow me carefully, and when I point to the one we want, follow me instantly.”
I could hear the pirates at the open doorway below. Then they started up the ramp.
Bengar strode into one of the rooms. The floor was covered by hundreds of black discs, with only room for one to walk between them. He made his way about three-quarters of the way down the room, then to one side.
“This one, My Lady, quickly, lest they see which one we choose.” Then he took a firm pace onto it, and the room vanished. He stepped away. We were in a very similar room, but I knew it was different; the sound was different, the smell was different, and the light was different. Suddenly Marthar was there on the disc, and Bengar motioned her to join him.
“Now we has to get out. Did they see you coming, My Lady?”
“No, but they were almost at the door when I came. They weren’t sure which room to try.”
Bengar gave an almost human sigh of relief. “Then we has a little time, My Lady; follow me out of this room, and do not step on a disc. Even a little touch of one of them ’twould be the end of ye, d’ye see.”
He led the way out of the room, turned down a corridor and then into another room which looked almost the same as the one we’d come from. This also had hundreds of black discs on the floor, and Marthar followed him carefully. He went almost to the far corner before pointing to another disc.
“This be the last one, lady, then we be safe, for even K’zarr hisself would not use up all his crew on trying the combinations, d’ye see?” I could see Marthar upside down, and she looked exhausted. Bengar stepped on the disc, and again the room vanished, to be replaced by another one. This one had fewer discs on the floor, with more space between them, so we had no trouble moving well away until Marthar came through. I’d had a terror that she wouldn’t follow us, but she seemed content to let Bengar lead.
We went out of the room through another huge arch, and Bengar put me down as if he forgot he had me. It was nice to be the right way up again. I ran to Marthar and hugged her. She patted me absently and looked around.
“We be safe now, My Lady, young manling; they’ll ne’er find old Bengar here, no they won’t. We can rest and go into the sunshine, which is bright still, for a few months, so we don’t have to leave for a while.”
We followed Bengar as he led the way down the ramp, passing another floor on the way, until we walked into bright sunshine.
We sat on mossy ground that was soft and quite comfortable. The sun was lower in the sky here, and to the southwest, assuming that the gates all faced north as the first one had. We must have come thousands of miles in seconds. The tower here was recognizably similar to the one where we had left the pirates, but looked subtly different, perhaps being less eroded. Still, it bore the marks of many centuries, perhaps millennia.
“Thank you for rescuing us, Bengar,” Marthar said in a hopeless sort of way. I could see that she had still decided to take her road to infinity in short order.
“Ye will be wanting some food, I daresay, warrior-lady; well, that is something will be easy enough, for I have a stock of it just around the corner. Let me be showing ye both.”
He stood and walked with his strange shuffling gait, and we followed him. We found he had a sort of farm, with wires strung up on posts to form small enclosures, and in them a variety of small animals.
“’Tes not the sort o’ food for ye, my lady, not at all what ye’d be used to,” he said apologetically. “There be no hunting, but ye can help yourself to anything when ye feel the hunger.” He reached over and grabbed one of the things like kangaroos or big rabbits, and, as it screamed, he bit its head off, spat it out and then proceeded to munch on the warm corpse.
“Thank you, Bengar, but I’m not hungry,” Marthar said. She sounded apathetic. And I recalled having heard it said, more than once, that a kzin was never quite full.
“Perhaps you can help us, Bengar,” I said. “You see, we have somehow to get to the ship, the Valiant. It’s up there in L1, and we need to get the Lady Marthar there urgently, she has a sickness, and it will kill her if we delay.”
Bengar looked puzzled. “Ye have a spaceship in orbit?”
“Not in orbit,” I explained. “At least, not in orbit about this world; in orbit around the sun, but keeping close to the planet. It’s in the direction of the sun. You can’t see it, of course, but a big telescope pointed at the sun would show a small black dot. That’s the Valiant.”
Bengar seemed to want to think about this. “You are sure ’tes not a ship of K’zarr, nor full o’ pirates?” he asked timidly.
“No, there’s nobody alive on it at present. And it was never a pirate ship, though we accidentally brought a load of pirates with us. But they are now down on planet. You rescued us from some of them,” I explained slowly. I had the feeling he was a few asteroids short of a solar system.
“Why can’t ye call her down here?” Bengar wanted to know. I don’t think he was suspicious; I think he trusted us, but he wasn’t able to make sense of it all. He had been alone a long time, and I suppose he’d got used to taking his being stranded on this world rather for granted. Also, I realized, he was perhaps smarter than I had thought a moment before.
“We have no way of getting in touch with her, and anyway, she would need a crew to get her down here and also to get us back up, and there isn’t one. A crew, I mean. She is an old human ship, retrofitted for hyperdrive, and she needs a big crew. We could maybe get back home from orbit, but we could never get her down on planet.”
“Then how did ye get here? Ye must have a pinnace of sorts, but a big one if all o’ K’zarr’s crew got here in it.” He waved an ear, as if this was a joke.
“We carried three landing craft, and they are all down here on planet. You rescued us from just underneath one of them. Two are badly damaged, including the one where we were tied up, and the third had its drive locked from the ship. It’s a long story,” I told him. It was frustrating explaining things to him. He seemed to want everything reduced to terms he could understand before he would commit himself to anything. Not that I had much hope of getting anything useful out of him; but I’d try anything to get Marthar back on the Valiant for an hour. Who knew? Maybe one of those transit discs could be programmed to get us inside the Valiant. It didn’t seem very likely since transport seemed to be from disc to disc.
“So your ship is empty?” Bengar was amazed.
“Yes, I told you. And Silver killed the ship’s mind, so it can only be controlled from the console on the bridge, and we can’t get to the bridge because we have nothing that can fly us there.”
Bengar considered this carefully.
“I don’t suppose we could get there using your magic discs, or something like that?” I asked him.
“No, no, they discs are stations; ye cannot take them anywhere.”
My shoulders fell in dejection. “Then we are finished, because Marthar is desperately sick and she needs an autodoc urgently,” I said hopelessly.
“Ah, I thought there was something wrong wi’ the little lady,” Bengar said with satisfaction, as though he was pleased to have his perceptions confirmed. “She is so quiet and sad seeming. What is it ails her? Mayhap I might help. I know a little doctoring, I does.”
“No, you cannot help. She needs an autodoc, a kzin autodoc, and even then it will have to be programmed. I think I can do it, if there’s a sensible interface. But the nearest one is on the ship.”
“And this ship is straight up towards the sun, ye say? And not too far away?”
“Little more than a few hundred planetary radii, but going straight up is a little hard,” I said. It all seemed hopeless.
“Not too far, I should say, not too far for a pinnace.” Bengar said complacently.
“But we haven’t got a pinnace,” I shouted at him in anger. Why couldn’t he understand?
“Ah, but we does.
K’zarr left one behind when he went, so he did. I ha’ flown it meself, though not for a year or more. ’Tes not so difficult, a kit could do it. And if it is only a matter of a few hundred thousand miles, why then, I can have ye both there in jist a few hours.”
PART FIVE
THE RETURN TO THE VALIANT
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Ah, did I not tell ye? Old Bengar he knows a thing or two, yes he does, and he knows where the treasure is too, so he does. And if ye will promise to take me with ye, I can help ye and show ye how the truth may be read from them there bars; so ye keep that Silver away from me.” He shuddered at the name of his enemy. “Ah, everyone was afeared o’ K’zarr, save Silver, and K’zarr was afraid o’ him, him being so genteel, d’ye see. K’zarr he were fierce, an’ he were cold, so he were, an’ he reckoned a life as nothing at all, but Silver, he could seem to be anything he wanted, so he could. He could be your friend or teacher one moment and bite your throat out the next; not angry like, not in a rage, cool as liquid air he were, wi’ a friendly flick o’ the ears before he drank o’ a kzin’s heart’s blood. Oh, the on’y ones did not fear Silver was those what didn’t know him. And K’zarr knew him, so K’zarr feared him. There was talk among some of the crew, beggin’ yer pardon, Lady, that he was full of rage, because his Sires had fallen in the world, fallen far.” He touched the fur on the center of his chest.
We were following him to the so-called pinnace, although I had doubts as to whether it existed outside his imagination. My heart sank when we got there, for there was what at first looked like nothing but a very large bush or broad tree. Then I began to hope, for it was clear that Bengar had carefully concealed the machine beneath vegetation, no doubt to hide it from pirates. Fortunately he had more than a touch of paranoia about K’zarr, not truly able to believe the old monster dead. Between us, he and I cleared the vegetation away from the machine while Marthar watched. I felt something of dread when I looked at her. I could almost see her mind failing. I returned to clearing the vegetation away from the small lander. Another nasty thought: let her mind fail enough, and she might see me as prey.
The pinnace was small; there was room in it for only two full-sized kzin, but since I was small, I could fit on Marthar’s lap. Bengar was jumping up and down in excitement.
“Best we get away as soon as may be; are ye sure there be none o’ the pirates still on this here ship o’ yourn?”
“The Captain and Orion, Marthar’s father, said they had cleaned them all out,” I told him.
“Arrr, but they be cunnin’, they pirates, so they be, yes they does.” He looked at me with some cunning himself, I thought.
“I’m sure that the only thing on board will be us, if we can get there,” I told him. I still had limited faith in his ability to fly the thing; was there even enough fuel to get us up to the ship? If there wasn’t, we presumably would fall back and crash on the planet. That would be quick, anyway. And if we could not rendezvous with the ship, maybe we would fall into the sun. But anything was better than watching Marthar lose her mind.
We helped Marthar into her seat, and Bengar climbed into the main pilot’s place beside her. I sat on Marthar’s lap and struggled to put our belts and webbing around us both. Bengar closed the door and sealed it. Then he went through some sort of checklist, muttering to himself. Little lights came on and illuminated the panel in front of him. The computer came up and checked the functioning of the ship and seemed happy. I breathed a sigh of relief. If the computer thought we were in reasonable shape then perhaps we were.
“I cannot program the pinnace, d’ye see, on account o’ we doesn’t know whereabouts the destination is, save in a general way, no we doesn’t. We could tell her to head for L1, o’course, but she would not know where that is exactly, on account o’ she doesn’t know the mass o’ the planet, her bein’ only a poor little bit of a pinnace what doesn’t need to know sich things. But I can tell her to head up into the sun, straight up, an’ she can do that; then when we’re close enough we shall find that there ship on the radar no doubt.”
I hoped it was going to be that easy. And when we got there, would the ship let us in? I hadn’t thought of that problem.
There was a humming sound that climbed into a scream and then we lifted. I looked out of the window to see where we were. We shot up very fast, but I had no sense of being pressed into Marthar; the gravity-planer technology was operating. Outside, the tower was well below us. I made a mental note of the surrounds. Three canals crossed in a junction, not far away, and some craters made a unique pattern. I pulled out my phone and took a shot of it so we could find our way back. From space, one tower would look much like another, and there seemed to be scores of them, dotted around in no obvious pattern.
The sky changed: the horizon was now a pink ribbon around a curving planet, and the sky was indigo only a few degrees above it, then above the indigo ribbon it was black. The sun dominated above us, but out to the side I could see stars, or maybe other planets of the system. And as we climbed higher, there were more and more stars, and then the nebulae shone faintly, purple mostly, but green and gold with streaks of rose pink and flecked by stars. It was very beautiful and I pointed it out to Marthar, but she was listless and uninterested. I felt panic again. She was going from me, faster and faster. We had to get her into the autodoc soon.
“We be about twenty thousand miles up now, and we should be a tenth o’ the way there, if I’m any judge,” Bengar announced. I had no idea if he was any judge or not, I am ashamed to say. Marthar had probably calculated how far L1 was from the planet but I had been too lazy. If I knew both masses, the sun and the planet, I could do it in my head, but I didn’t have the data, and neither did my phone. It was laziness and sloppiness that got you killed in space, and I was painfully conscious of it for the first time in my life.
“Do you know who built the towers, Bengar?” I asked him, as much to take my mind off Marthar as for any other reason.
“No, young monkey, I do not. Maybe one of the ancient races—the slavers or the Tnuctipun…”
Though I had already decided the buildings were too recent as well as too big for that, they were words to send a shiver down any spine. From what our archaeologists had pieced together, when the war of the Slavers and the Tnuctipun ended, there has not been a sentient mind left in the Galaxy, save the Bandersnatchi found on Jinx and a few other worlds created by the Tnuctipun to be immune to the Slaver power. By the time the Slavers had blanketed the Galaxy with a telepathic suicide command, both sides had begun using anti-matter. The war of men and kzin had been a chivalrous, genteel affair by comparison.
It was another hour before Bengar gave a grunt, and pointed to a green speck on a screen. “That be your ship, that be. A bit further out than I thought, but we shall be there within the hour or thenabouts. We be goin’ quite fast now.”
It was less than an hour before we heard from the ship. It spoke in kzin, the harsh roars and spittings, and my blood ran cold. I looked at Bengar. He had started when he first heard the voice of the ship. It was a voice I recognized too, cold as ice.
“’Tes the very voice o’ K’zarr that it be usin’,” he said quietly. “Though ’tes but a machine, when all’s said an’ done, and I ain’t afeared of no machine, be sure of it.”
Now he was calm. Marthar was taking an interest too.
“’Tes the ship, enquiring who we are and warnin’ us to hove to before we hit her amidships, which be fair enough. She told me that she’d destroy us if we don’t slow down or change course.”
“Can you ask her if we can board her with an injured kzin for autodoc treatment?”
Bengar looked doubtful. “I can, but the ship has been programmed by pirates, d’ye see. They doesn’t care much about showin’”—he groped for a word of which there was no concept in the Heroes’ Tongue—“mercy to strangers. And she wants some sort of identification. And this be a ship o’ K’zarr we be in. Which may be a good thing, if ye think about it,
for if Silver had the doing, he may have used the standard hack. In which case, the ship will be on’y too happy to welcome us. It might have fired upon the landers ye used from the Valiant, for ’tes not Valiant that ye have to reckon with now, d’ye see, but something closer to the old Warrior Beast. Though it speaks wi’ the voice o’ K’zarr hisself, so it does. Let me see now, I shall find if the ship knows us.”
I thought of talking to a Warrior Beast instead of Valiant. I supposed it could speak other languages, but my heart sank to my boots again. I hadn’t anticipated these problems. I’d just assumed we could talk directly to at least a portion of the old Valiant. But the thought also came to me, and it was a comforting one, that Bengar, at least sometimes, was not as stupid as he appeared.
“Aargh, she knows enough to recognize us. Which means she won’t just turn us into starlight as long as we doesn’t threaten her. So I shall need to turn the ship around so as to slow down, so we will be coming to her slowly. And not in a straight line, for we doesn’t want to make her even a bit nervous, no we doesn’t.”
Bengar seemed to know what he was doing. I remembered he was an old spacer, and I watched as he deftly tapped panels and gestured to control sensors to swing the universe around us. Marthar seemed to have lapsed back into apathy. Now the sun was underneath us, and the glory of the nebulae burned bright. It looked as if swathes of silk had been swirled about and then frozen in motion. Of course the swathes were in fact moving, and doing so quicker by far than silk fabric, but no trace of that showed because of the sheer size of the thing. I suppose if you could watch for millennia, you would see it swoop and turn and spin, like ladies dancing in long dresses. But for now it was a fixed image. I took some pictures of it on my phone. If I ever got back to Thoma’stown, I would show them off to my friends and my mother.