by Larry Niven
Carita choked. “Alien.”
“Kzin,” Yoshii said. “Got to be.”
“But I never heard of anything like—”
“Nor I. What did you see?”
“Big. Sphere with fins or flanges or—whatever they are—all around. Mirror-bright. Doesn’t look like she’s intended for planetfall.”
Yoshii nodded. “Me too. I wanted to make sure of my impression, as fast as she went by. Just the same, I think we have a while to wait.” He stood up. “Suppose I go fix us some sandwiches and also bring that bottle. We may as well take it easy. We’ve played our hand out.”
“But won’t they—Oh, yes, I see. That’s no patrol craft. She was called off her regular service to come check Prima. We being found, she’ll call Secunda for further orders, and relay our message to a translator there.”
“About a five-minute transmission lag either way, at the present positions. A longer chain-of-command lag, I’ll bet. Leave the intercom on for me, please, but just for the sake of my curiosity. You can talk to them as well as I can.”
“There isn’t a lot to say,” Carita agreed.
Yoshii was in the galley when he heard the computer-generated voice: “Werlith-Commandant addressing you directly. Identify yourselves.”
“Carita Fenger, Juan Yoshii, of the ship Rover, stuck on Prima—on Planet One. Your crew has seen us. I suppose they realize our plight. We’re being . . . swallowed. Please take us off. If your vessel here can’t do it, please dispatch one that can. Over.”
Silence hummed and rustled. Yoshii kept busy.
He was returning when the voice struck again: “We lost two boats with a total of eight heroes aboard before we established the nature of the peril. I will not waste time explaining it to you. Most certainly I will not hazard another craft and more lives. On the basis of observations made by the crew of Sun Defier, if you keep energy output minimal you have approximately five hundred hours left to spend as you see fit.”
A click signalled the cutoff.
Werlith-Commandant had been quite kindly by his lights, Yoshii acknowledged.
He entered the control cabin. “I’m sorry, Carita,” he said.
She rose and went to meet him. Starlight guided her through shadows and glinted off her hair and a few tears. “I’m sorry too, Juan,” she gulped. “Now let’s both of us stop apologizing. The thing has happened, that’s all. Look, we can try a broadcast that maybe they’ll pick up in Shep, so they’ll know. They won’t dare reply, I suppose, but it’s nice to think they might know. First let’s eat, though, and have a couple of drinks, and talk, and, and go to bed. The same bed.”
He lowered his tray to the chart shelf. “I’m exhausted,” he mumbled.
She threw her arms around him and drew his head down to her opulent bosom. “So’m I, chum. And if you want to spend the rest of what time we’ve got being faithful, okay. But let’s stay together. It’s cold out there. Even in a narrow bunk, let’s be together while we can.”
16
The sun in the screen showed about half the Sol-disc at Earth. Its light equaled more than 10,000 full Lunas, red rather than off-white but still ample to make Secunda shine. The planetary crescent was mostly yellowish-brown, little softened by a tenuous atmosphere of methane with traces of carbon dioxide and ammonia. A polar cap brightened its wintered northern hemisphere, a shrunken one the southern. The latter was all water ice, the former enlarged by carbon dioxide and ammonia that had frozen out. These two gases did it everywhere at night, most times, evaporating again by day in summer and the tropics, so that sunrises and sunsets were apt to be violent. Along the terminator glittered a storm of fine silicate dust mingled with ice crystals.
The surface bore scant relief, but the slow rotation, 57 hours, was bringing into view a gigantic crater and a number of lesser neighbors. Probably a moon had crashed within the past billion years; the scars remained, though any orbiting fragments had dissipated. A sister moon survived, three-fourths Lunar diameter, dark yellowish like so many bodies in this system.
Thus did Tregennis interpret what he and Ryan saw as they sat in Rover’s saloon watching the approach. Data taken from afar, before the capture, helped him fill in details. Talking about them was an anodyne for both men.
Markham entered. Silence rushed through like a wind.
“I have an announcement,” he said after a moment.
Neither prisoner stirred.
“We are debarking in half an hour,” he went on. “I have arranged for your clothing and hygienic equipment to be brought along. Including your medication, Professor.”
“Thank you,” Tregennis said flatly.
“Why shouldn’t he?” Ryan sneered. “Keep the animals alive till the master race can think of a need for them. I wonder if he’ll share in the feast.”
Markham’s stiffness became rigidity. “Have a care,” he warned. “I have been very patient with you.” During the 50-odd hours of 3-g flight—during which Hraou-Captain allowed the polarizer to lighten weight—he had received no word from either, nor eye contact. To be sure, he had been cultivating the acquaintance of such kzinti among the prize crew as deigned to talk with him. “Don’t provoke me.”
“All right,” Ryan answered. Unable to resist: “Not but what I couldn’t put up with a lot of provocation myself, if I were getting paid what they must be paying you.”
Markham’s cheekbones reddened. “For your information, I have never had one mark of recompense, nor ever been promised any. Not one.”
Tregennis regarded him in mild amazement. “Then why have you turned traitor?” he asked.
“I have not. On the contrary—” Markham stood for several seconds before he plunged. “See here, if you will listen, if you will treat me like a human being, you can learn some things you will be well advised to know.”
Ryan scowled at his beer glass, shrugged, nodded, and grumbled, “Might as well.”
“Can you talk freely?” Tregennis inquired.
Markham sat down. “I have not been forbidden to. Of course, what I have been told so far is quite limited. However, certain kzinti, including Hraou-Captain, have been reasonably forthcoming. They have been bored by their uneventful duty, are intrigued by me, and see no immediate threat to security.”
“I can understand that,” said Tregennis dryly.
Markham leaned forward. His assurance had shrunk enough to notice. He tugged his half-beard. His tone became earnest:
“Remember, for a dozen Earth-years I fought the kzinti. I was raised to it. They had driven my mother into exile. The motto of the House of Reichstein was ‘Ehre—’ well, in English, ‘Honor Through Service.’ She changed it to ‘No Surrender.’ Most people had long since given up, you know. They accepted the kzin order of things. Many had been born into it, or had only dim childhood memories of anything before. Revolt would have brought massacre. Aristocrats who stayed on Wunderland—the majority—saw no alternative to cooperating with the occupation forces, at least to the extent of preserving order among humans and keeping industries in operation. They were apt to look on us who fought as dangerous extremists. It was a seductive belief. As the years wore on, with no end in sight, more and more members of the resistance despaired. Through the aristocrats at home they negotiated terms permitting them to come back and pick up the pieces of their lives. My mother was among those who had the greatness of spirit to refuse the temptation. ‘No Surrender.’ “
Ryan still glowered, but Tregennis said with a dawn of sympathy, “Then the hyperdrive armada arrived and she was vindicated. Were you not glad?”
“Of course,” Markham said. “We jubilated, my comrades and I, after we were through weeping for the joy and glory of it. That was a short-lived happiness. We had work to do. At first it was clean. The fighting had caused destruction. The navy from Sol could spare few units; it must go on to subdue the kzinti elsewhere. On the men of the resistance fell the tasks of rescue and relief.
“Then as we returned to our homes
on Wunderland—I and many others for the first time in our lives—we found that the world for whose liberation we had fought, the world of our vision and hope, was gone, long gone. Everywhere was turmoil. Mobs stormed manor after manor of the ‘collaborationist’ aristocrats, lynched, raped, looted, burned—as if those same proles had not groveled before the kzinti and kept war production going for them! Lunatic political factions rioted against each other or did actual armed combat. Chaos brought breakdown, want, misery, death.
“My mother took a lead in calling for a restoration of law. We did it, we soldiers from space. What we did was often harsh, but necessary. A caretaker government was established. We thought that we could finally get on with our private lives—though I, for one, busied myself in the effort to build up Centaurian defense forces, so that never again could my people be overrun.
“In the years that my back was turned, they, my people, were betrayed.” Markham choked on his bitterness.
“Do you mean the new constitution, the democratic movement in general?” Tregennis prompted.
Markham recovered and nodded. “No one denied that reform, reorganization was desirable. I will concede, if only because our time to talk now is limited, most of the reformers meant well. They did not foresee the consequences of what they enacted. I admit I did not myself. But I was busy, often away for long periods of time. My mother, on our estates, saw what was happening, and piece by piece made it clear to me.”
“Your estates. You kept them, then. I gather most noble families kept a substantial part of their former holdings; and Wunderland’s House of Patricians is the upper chamber of its parliament. Surely you don’t think you have come under a . . . mobocracy.”
“But I do! At least, that is the way it is tending. That is the way it will go, to completion, to destruction, if it is not stopped A political Gresham’s Law prevails; the bad drives out the good. Look at me, for example. I have one vote, by hereditary right, in the Patricians, and it is limited to federal matters. To take a meaningful role in restoring a proper society—through enactment of proper laws—a role which it is my hereditary duty to take—I must begin by being elected a consul of my state, Braefell. That would give me a voice in choosing who goes to the House of Delegates—No matter details. I went into politics.”
“Holding your well-bred nose,” Ryan murmured.
Markham flushed again. “I am for the people. The honest, decent, hard-working, sensible common people, who know in their hearts that society is tradition and order and reverence, not a series of cheap bargains between selfish interests. One still finds them in the countryside. It is in the cities that the maggots are, the mobs, the criminals, the parasites, the . . . politicians.”
For the first time, Ryan smiled a little. “Can’t say I admire the political process either. But I will say the cure is not to domesticate the lower class. How about letting everybody see to his own business, with a few cops and courts to keep things from getting too hairy?”
“I heard that argument often enough. It is stupid. It assumes the obvious falsehood that an individual can function in isolation like an atom. Oh, I did my share of toadying. I shook the clammy hands and said the clammy words, but it was hypocritical ritual, a sugar coating over the cynicism and corruption—”
“In short, you lost.”
“I learned better than to try.”
Ryan started to respond but checked himself. Markham smiled like a death’s head. “Thereupon I decided to call back the kzinti, is that what you wish to say?” he gibed. Seriously: “No, it was not that simple at all. I had had dealings with them throughout my war career, negotiations, exchanges, interrogation and care of prisoners, the sort of relationships one always has with an opponent. They came to fascinate me and I learned everything about them that I could. The more I knew, the more effective a freedom fighter I would be, not so?
“After the . . . liberation, my knowledge and my reputation caused me to have still more to do with them. There were mutual repatriations to arrange. There were kzinti who had good cause to stay behind. Some had been born in the Centaurian System; the second and later fleets carried females. Others came to join such kinfolk, or on their own, as fugitives, because their society too was in upheaval and many of them actually admired us, now that we had fought successfully. Remember, most of those newcomers arrived on human hyperdrive ships. This was official policy, in the hope of earning goodwill, of learning more about kzinti in general, and of—frankly—having possible hostages. Even so, they were often subject to cruel discrimination or outright persecution. What could I do but intervene in their behalf? They, or their brothers, had been brave and honorable enemies. It was time to become friends.”
“That was certainly a worthy feeling,” Tregennis admitted.
Markham made a chopping gesture. “Meanwhile I not only grew more and more aware of the rot in Wunderland, I discovered how much I had been lied to. The kzinti were never monsters, as propaganda had claimed. They were relentless at first and strict afterward, yes. They imposed their will. But it was a dynamic will serving a splendid vision. They were not wantonly cruel, nor extortionate, nor even pettily thievish. Humans who obeyed kzin law enjoyed its protection, its order, and its justice. Their lives went on peacefully, industriously, with old folkways respected—by the commoners and the kzinti. Most hardly ever saw a kzin. The Great Houses of Wunderland were the intermediaries, and woe betide the human lord who abused the people in his care. Oh, no matter his rank, he must defer to the lowliest kzin. But he received due honor for what he was, and could look forward to his sons rising higher, his grandsons to actual partnership.”
“In the conquest of the galaxy,” Ryan said.
“Well, the kzinti have their faults, but they are not like the Slavers that archeologists have found traces of, from a billion years ago or however long it was. Men who fought the kzinti and men who served them were more fully men than ever before or since. My mother first said this to me, years afterward, my mother whose word had been ‘No Surrender.’ “
Markham glanced at his watch. “We must leave soon,” he reminded. “I didn’t mean to go on at such length. I don’t expect you to agree with me. I do urge you to think, think hard, and meanwhile cooperate.”
Regardless, Tregennis asked in his disarming fashion, “Did you actually decide to work for a kzin restoration? Isn’t that the sort of radicalism you oppose?”
“My decision did not come overnight either,” Markham replied, “nor do I want kzin rule again over my people. It would be better than what they have now, but manliness of their own is better still. Earth is the real enemy, rich fat Earth, its bankers and hucksters and political panderers, its vulgarity and whorishness that poison our young everywhere—on your world, too, Professor. A strong planet Kzin will challenge humans to strengthen themselves. Those who do not purge out the corruption will die. The rest, clean, will make a new peace, a brotherhood, and go on to take possession of the universe.”
“Together with the kzinti,” Ryan said.
Markham nodded. “And perhaps other worthy races. We shall see.”
“I don’t imagine anybody ever promised you this.”
“Not in so many words. You are shrewd, Quartermaster. But shrewdness is not enough. There is such a thing as intuition, the sense of destiny.”
Markham waved a hand. “Not that I had a religious experience. I began by entrusting harmless, perfectly sincere messages to kzinti going home, messages for their authorities. ‘Please suggest how our two species can reach mutual understanding. What can I do to help bring a detente?’ Things like that. A few kzinti do still travel in and out, you know, on human ships, by prearrangement. They generally come to consult or debate about what matters of mutual concern our species have these days, diplomatic, commercial, safety-related. Some do other things, clandestinely. We haven’t cut off the traffic on that account. It is slight—and, after all, the exchange helps us plant our spies in their space.
“The responses I
got were encouraging. They led to personal meetings, even occasionally to coded hyperwave communications; we have a few relays in kzin space, you know, by agreement. The first requests I got were legitimate by anyone’s measure. The kzinti asked for specific information, no state secrets, merely data they could not readily obtain. I felt that by aiding them toward a better knowledge of us I was doing my race a valuable service. But of course I could not reveal it.”
“No, you had your own little foreign policy,” Ryan scoffed. “And one thing led to another, also inside your head, till you were sending stuff on the theory and practice of hyperdrive which gave them a ten-or twenty-year leg up on their R and D.”
Markham’s tone was patient. “They would inevitably have gotten it. Only by taking part in events can we hope to exercise any influence.”
Again he consulted his watch. “We had better go,” he said. “They will bring us to their base. You will be meeting the commandant. Perhaps what I have told will be of help to you.”
“How about Rover?” Ryan inquired. “I hope you’ve explained to them she isn’t meant for planetfall.”
“That was not necessary,” Markham said, irritated. “They know space architecture as well as we do—possibly better than you do, Quartermaster. We will go down in a boat from the warship. They will put our ship on the moon.”
“What? Why not just in parking orbit?”
“I’ll explain later. We must report now for debarkation. Have no fears. The kzinti won’t willingly damage Rover. If they can—if we think of some way to prevent future human expeditions here that does not involve returning her—we’ll keep her. The hyperdrive makes her precious. Otherwise Kzarr-Siu—Vengeful Slasher, the warship—is the only vessel currently in this system which has been so outfitted. They’ll put Rover on the moon for safety’s sake. Secunda orbits have become too crowded. The moon’s gravity is low enough that it won’t harm a freightship like this. Now come.”