by Larry Niven
The screaming began at once, sank to a bubbling sound and the wet tearing noises of feeding. Shouts of protest rose from the dance floor and the other tables, and the sound of someone vomiting into an expensive meal. Yarthkin touched the spot behind his ear and the screen switched back to mirror. The protests lasted longer, and the staff of Harold’s went among the patrons to sooth with free drinks and apologies, murmurs. Technical mistake, government override, here, let me fix that for you, gentlefolk…
“And that,” Yarthkin said, “is a good reason why you’re not going to be finding hordes beating down your door to volunteer. We’ve been living with that for forty years, you fool. While you in the Sol system sat fat and happy and safe.”
Jonah leaned forward. “I’m here now, aren’t I? Neither fat, nor very happy, and not at all safe right now. I was in two fleet actions, Mr. Yarthkin. Out of four. Earth’s been fighting the kzin since I was old enough to vote, and we haven’t lost so far. Been close a couple of times, but we haven’t lost. We could have stayed home. Note we didn’t. Ingrid and I are considerably less safe than you.”
Ingrid and I, Yarthkin thought, looking at the faces, side by side. The young faces; at the Sol-Belter. Hotshot pilot. Secret agent. All-round romantic hero, come to save us worthless pussy-whipped peons. Tonight seemed to be a night for strong emotions, something he had been trying to unlearn. Now he felt hatred strong and thick, worse than anything he had ever felt for the kzin. Worse even than he had felt for himself, for a long time.
“So what do you need?”
“A way into the Datamongers’ Guild, for a start.”
Yarthkin looked thoughtful. “That’s easy enough.” He realized that Ingrid had been holding her breath. Bad. She wants this bad. How bad?
“And any other access to the—to networks.”
“Networks. Sure. Networks. Any old networks, right? Want into Claude’s system? Want to see his private files? What else would you like?”
“Hari—”
“I can do that, you know. Networks.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Help. You want help,” he said slowly. “Well that leaves only one question.” He poured himself a drink in Jonah’s water glass, tossed it back. “What will you pay?”
“Anything we have. Anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Of course. When do you want me?”
“Ingrid—”
“Not your conversation, Belter. Get lost.”
The club was dim, with the distinctive stale chill smell of tobacco and absent people that came in the hours just before dawn. Yarthkin sat at the table and sipped methodically at the verguuz; it was a shame to waste it on just getting drunk, but owning a bar did have some advantages. He took another swallow, letting the smooth sweet minty taste flow over his tongue, then breathing out as the cold fire ran back up his throat. A pull at the cigarette, one of the clove-scented ones well-to-do Baha’i smoked. My, aren’t we wallowing in sensual indulgence tonight.
“Play,” he said to the man at the musicomp. The Krio started and ran his fingers over the surface of the instrument, and the brassy complexities of Meddlehoffer lilted out into the deserted silence of the room.
“Not that,” Yarthkin said, and knocked back the rest of the Verguuz. “You know what I want.”
“No you don’t,” Sam said. “That’s a manti-manti mara,” he continued, dropping back into his native tongue: a great stupidity. “What you want is to get drunk and manyamanya, smash something up. Go ahead, it’s your bar.”
“I said, play it.” The musician shrugged, and began the ancient melody. The husky voice followed:
“…no matter what we say or do—”
A contralto joined it: “So happy together.”
They both looked up with a start. Ingrid dropped into a chair across from Yarthkin, reached for the bottle and poured herself a glass.
“Isn’t there enough for two?” she asked, raising a brow into his scowl. The musician rose, and Yarthkin waved him back.
“You don’t have to leave, Sam.”
“Do I have to stay? No? Then it’s late, boss, and I’m going for bed. See you tomorrow.”
“Where’s the Sol-Belter?” Yarthkin asked. His voice was thickened but not slurred, and his hand was steady as he poured.
“In the belly of the whale…still working in your office.” And trying not to think about what we’re doing. Or will be doing in a minute, if you’re sober enough. “That’s a pretty impressive system you have there.”
“Yeah. And I’m taking a hell of a chance letting you two use it.”
“So are we.”
“So are we all. Honorable men, all, all honorable men. And women. Honorable.”
“Hari—”
“That’s Herr Yarthkin to you, Lieutenant.”
“If you let me explain—”
“Explain what?”
“Hari, the rendezvous time was fixed, and you didn’t make it! We had to boost; there were hundreds of lives riding on it.”
“Oh, no, Lieutenant Raines. The ships had to boost, and we had to keep the kzin off your backs as long as we could. Not every pilot had to go with them.”
“Angers was dying, radiation sickness, puking her guts out. Flambard’s nerve had gone, Finagle’s sake, Hari, I was the best they had, and—” She stopped, looking at his face, slumped. “Long ago, long ago.”
Not so long for you as for me, he thought. Her face was the same, not even noticeably aged. What was different? Where did the memory lie? Unformed, he thought. She looks…younger than I remember. Not as much behind the eyes.
“Long ago, kid. How’d you get here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Probably I wouldn’t. That raid—”
She nodded. “That raid. The whole reason for that raid was to get us here.”
“For god’s sake, why?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“It’s part of the price, sweetheart.”
“Literally, I can’t,” Ingrid said. “Post-hypnotic. Reinforced with—The psychists have some new tricks, Hari. I would literally die before I told you, or anyone else.”
“Even if they’re taking you apart?”
She nodded.
Harold thought about that for a moment and shuddered. “OK. It was a long time ago, and maybe—maybe you saw things I didn’t see. You always were bigger on romantic causes than the rest of us.” He stood.
She got to her feet and stood expectantly. “Where?”
“There’s a bedroom upstairs.”
She nodded. “I’ve—I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“Not as much as I have. You haven’t had as long.”
She laughed. “That’s right.”
“So now I’m old—”
“No. Not old, Hari. Not old. Which way? The stairs over there?”
“Just a minute, kid. So. Assuming it works, whatever you have planned, what afterward?”
“Once it’s done it doesn’t matter.”
“Tell that to a man under thirty. Women and we oldsters know better.”
“Well, we brought a ship with us. Nice boat, the best the UN’s making these days. Markham’s keeping her for us, and then we’ll do the guerrilla circuit afterwards.”
“Markham? Ulf Reichstein-Markham?” An old enmity sharpened his tone, one less personal. “A legitimate bastard of a long line of bastards, who does his best to out-bastard them all. He’d cut your throat for six rounds of pistol ammunition, if he needed them.”
“Didn’t strike me as a bandit.”
“Worse, a True Believer…and you can whistle in the wind for that ship.”
She smiled. “That ship, you might say she has a mind of her own; really, we’ve got a hold on it.”
Then you’ll be off to the Swarm, Yarthkin thought. Playing dodgem with the ratcats, you and that Jonah. Flirting with danger and living proud. There was a taste of bile at the back of his
mouth. Remembering the long slow years of defeat, strength crumbling away as one after another despaired; until nothing was left but the fanatics and the outlaws, a nuisance to the enemy and a deadly danger to their own people. What was honor, going on with the killing when it had all turned pointless and rancid, or taking the amnesty and picking up the pieces of life? But not for you. You and Jonah, you’ll win or go out in a blaze of glory. No dirty alliances and dirtier compromises and decisions with no good choices. The two of you have stolen my life.
“Get out,” he said. “Get the hell out.”
“No.” She took his hand and led him toward the stairs.
Chapter 5
Chuut-Riit shook his clawed fists in the air and screamed. “I will have his ears! I will have his testicles for my cubs to eat! I will kill, kill, kill—”
Someone bit his tail, hard. The kzinti governor leapt for the ceiling screeching, whirled, and landed in attack position; almost horizontal, with hands outstretched.
It was Conservor. Chuut-Riit halted his leap before it began, glaring murderously at the priest-counsellor. His calm was unkzin, only a slight quirking of eyebrow-tufts and whiskers indicating sympathetic amusement; his scent had the almost buttery flavor of complete relaxation. Yet of his own will Chuut-Riit was apprentice in the ways of the Conservors—unorthodox for a high noble, but not without precedent—and such tricks were among the teaching techniques.
“You must think before you attack, Chuut-Riit,” Conservor said firmly. “You must. This I lay on you in the name of the God.”
The younger kzin rose and began pacing; the inner sanctum was a five-meter square of sandstone block, with the abstract-looking sculptures and scent-markings of his ancestors standing in niches in the walls. Iron braziers wrought in the shape of crossed claws glowed, sending trails of incense to the high blackened beams of the ceiling. For the rest it was empty save for the low desk and three reclining cushions, with floors of sanded pine. Traat-Admiral occupied the third cushion, and he was quivering-eager for battle, ears folded away and gingery anger-smell rising from him.
“I cannot tolerate open flouting of my authority,” Chuut-Riit said. He had forced enough relaxation that his tail lashed instead of standing out behind him like a rigid pink column of muscle. “What am I to do? Turn him loose in my harem? Invite him to urinate on the shrines?”
One arm slashed at the figures; some of them were so ancient that nostrils must flare to take their scent. He licked his nose and inhaled deeply with his mouth open. The smell of their strength and pride flowed into him, heartening and maddening at the same time.
“Ktrodni-Stkaa disclaims all responsibility for the destruction of the Feud and the Severed-Vein,” Conservor said. Traat-Admiral let his lips flutter against his fangs, derisive laughter.
“No,” Conservor continued, making a palm-up gesture: do not seize what you cannot hold. “Ktrodni-Stkaa is…hasty. He is your enemy. He is not the best tactician in the fleets of the Great Pack. He is overproud of his blood. But he is a Hero; he would not engage in such deception against an honorable”—that was, kzinti—“foe.”
“Unless he has decided that I am not worthy of honorable combat, because of my cautious ideas,” Chuut-Riit said. He snarled, drooling slightly, fingers flexing as he imagined fangs grinding into bone as he brought up his rear feet and ripped and ripped and ripped…
“That is so,” Conservor acknowledged with a ripple of his spinal fur. “Yet the balance of hard data could be construed to support his claim of noninvolvement. Is this not so?”
Traat-Admiral gave a grunting cough and licked angrily at his forearms for a moment. “The fur lies flat in that direction,” he said grudgingly. “Few recordings survived the EMP of the engagement. They show only a corvette of the Bone-Breaker class, of which there are thousands. Data is insufficient for identification. With the damage to our systemwide surveillance net, we have no direct remote tracking of where it went. Perhaps it is as Ktrodni-Stkaa says”—Traat-Admiral’s claws slid in, sign of unconscious distaste—“and an individual firebrand was responsible.”
“Arreeoghw,” Chuut-Riit said; he had stopped in mid-stride, his fur bottling out. “Bone-Breaker class—that is the older specification, is it not?”
The other two kzinti flexed thumbclaws in agreement; when Chuut-Riit had arrived two decades ago he had brought the latest designs from the inner worlds. Not that there had been great differences—warship design was a mature technology, like most within the Patriarchy—but there had been some refinements in weapons mountings.
“Many of those would have been dispatched with the Fourth Fleet,” Chuut-Riit continued softly, musing. “Very many. According to the reports of the survivors, Kfraksha-Admiral lost a number of vessels relatively intact.”
“Arrrh.” Traat-Admiral came up on all fours, back arching. Conservor sank down fluidly, eyes seeking something beyond the walls.
“Arrrh,” Traat-Admiral repeated. “The mass is low enough that the human ramscoop vessel could have included a corvette. But deceleration—the energy discharge—No corvette could carry enough fuel, not with the most efficient of polarizers. And a reaction-drive deceleration is ridiculous; such a discharge would have been a banner across the system for days.”
Chuut-Riit licked meditatively at his wrist and smoothed his ears with it, fluttering them out for the soothing feel of cool air on the pink bare-skin membranes.
“Hrrrr. Doubtless correct. A thought, no more.”
“Still,” Conservor said. The two younger kzin started slightly. “Physics is not my specialty. Yet consider: we and the humans have been learning of each other, in the best of schools.” War—nothing taught you a being’s inwardness like fighting it. “If such a thing were possible, and if the humans had learned somewhat of us, would this not be a shrewd jugular-strike?”
“Not if we knew—arrrhhhg. Ktrodni-Stkaa.”
“Yes.” They were all imagining trying to convince that arrogance that mere monkeys were capable of playing on kzinti internal rivalries. Ktrodni-Stkaa barely acknowledged that humans existed, save when he was hungry.
“Still, it is unlikely,” Traat-Admiral said, twitching the end of his tail.
“So is sentience,” Conservor said. Silence dwelt for long moments. “Let us consider, and clear our minds.”
All three sank into the hands-folded-under-chests posture of meditation and let their chins sink to the floor.
✩ ✩ ✩
“They’ve accepted our bid, Captain.”
Jonah nodded stiffly. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Not that I’m surprised.”
“No, sir.”
Back in Sol system a thousand hackers had labored to produce advanced software they thought might be salable on Wunderland. Most of it had been too advanced; they’d predicted a higher state of the art than Wunderland had retained, and the stuff wouldn’t work on the ancient hardware. Even so, there was plenty that did work. It had only taken fifty days to make Jan Hardman and Lucy van den Berg moderately big names in the Datamongers’ Guild. The computer records showed them as old timers, with a scattering of previous individual sales. They told everyone on the net that they owed their big success to teaming up.
Teaming up. A damned tough fifty days…Jonah looked unashamedly at Ingrid. “I admit you’ve improved Herr Yarthkin’s disposition one whole hell of a lot, but do you have to look so tanj happy?”
“Capt—Jonah, I am happy.”
“Yeah.”
“I—Jonah, I’m sorry if it hurts you.”
“Yeah. All right. Lieutenant. We’ve got work to do.”
✩ ✩ ✩
“These are the same monkeys as before.” The guards spoke in the Hero’s Tongue. “The computer says they have access.”
The kzin tapped a large button on the console, and the door lifted.
Jonah and Ingrid cringed and waited. The kzin sniffed, then led the way outside. Another kzin warrior followed, and two more fell in on either side. The routine had b
een the same the other two times they had been here.
This will be different. Maybe. Jonah pushed the thoughts away. Kzin weren’t really telepathic, but they could sense excitement and smell fear. Of course the fear’s natural. They probably like that scent.
Sunlight was failing behind evening clouds, and the air held a dank chill and the wild odors of storm-swept grassland. The two humans crossed the landing field between forms a third again their height, living walls of orange-red fur; claws slid out in unconscious reflex on the stocks of the giants’ heavy beam rifles.
Jonah kept his eyes carefully down. It would be an unbearable irony if they were killed by mistake, victims of some overzealous kzin spooked by the upsurge in guerrilla activity. The attack of the Yamamoto had created the chaos that let them into Wunderland, but that same chaos just might kill them.
Doors slid aside, and they descended into chill corridors like a dreadnought’s, surfaces laced with armored data conduits and the superconducting coil-complexes of field generators.
One of the kzin followed. “This way,” he said, prodding Jonah’s shoulder with the muzzle of his weapon. The light down here was reddish, frequencies adjusted to the aliens’ convenience; the air was drier, colder than humans would have wished. And everything was too big, grips and stairs and doors adapted to a thick-bodied, short-legged race with the bulk of terrestrial gorillas.
