by Larry Niven
Insane, he thought with a corner of his mind that watched his slinking progress through the dark halls. It was insane, like something from the ancient songs of homeworld. Like the Siege of Zeeroau, the Heroic Band manning the ramparts against the prophet, dwindling one by one from wounds and weariness and the hunger-frenzy that sent them down into the catacombs to hunt and then the dreadful feasting.
Chuut-Riit turned a corner and wheeled, blade up to meet a possible attack from the dropstand over the corner. Nothing, but the whirl-and-cut brought him flush against the opposite wall, and he padded on. Noise and smell; a thin mewling, and an overpowering stink of kzinmeat. A door, and the first body before it. There was little of the soft tissue left, but the face was intact. One of his older sons, the teeth frozen in an eternal snarl; blood was splashed about, far more than one body could account for. Walls, floor, ceiling, gouts and spattered trails that dripped down in slow congealing trails toward the floor. A chugra spear lay broken by the wall, alongside a battered metal shield; the sound had been coming from behind the door the corpse guarded, but now he could hear nothing.
No, wait. His ears folded out to their maximum. Breathing. A multiple rapid panting. He tried the door; it was unlocked, but something had it jammed closed.
A mewl sounded as he leaned his weight against it and the iron creaked. “Open!” he snarled. “Open at once.”
More mewls, and a metallic tapping. The panel lurched inward, and he stooped to fill the doorway.
The infants, he thought. A heap in the far corner of the room, squirming spotted fur and huge terrified eyes peering back at him. The younger ones, the kits just recently taken from their mothers; at the sight of him they set up the thin eeeuw-eeeuw-eeeuw that was the kzin child’s cry of distress.
“Daddy!” one of them said. “We’re so hungry, Daddy. We’re so frightened. He said we should stay in here and not open the door and not cry but there were awful noises and it’s been so long and we’re hungry, Daddy, Daddy—”
Chuut-Riit uttered a grating sound deep in his chest and looked down. His son’s wtsai had been wedged to hold the door from the inside; the kits must have done it at his instruction, while he went outside to face the hunters. Hunger-frenzy eroded what little patience an adolescent kzin possessed, as well as intellect; they would not spend long hammering at a closed door, not with fresh meat to hand and the smell of blood in their nostrils.
“Silence,” he said, and they shrank back into a heap. Chuut-Riit forced gentleness into his voice. “Something very bad has happened,” he said. “Your brother was right, you must stay here and make no noise. Soon I…soon I or another adult will come and feed you. Do you understand?” Uncertain nods. “Put the knife back in the door when I go out. Then wait. Understand?”
He swung the door shut and looked down into his son’s face while the kits hammered the knifeblade under it from the inside.
“You did not die in vain, my brave one,” he whispered, very low, settling into a crouch with the sword ready. “Kdari-Riit,” he added, giving the dead a full Name. Now I must wait. Wait to be sure none of the gone-mad ones had heard him, then do his best. There would be an alert, eventually. The infants did not have the hormone-driven manic energy of adolescents. They would survive.
✩ ✩ ✩
“Zroght-Guard-Captain,” the human said. “Oh, thank God!” The head of the viceregal household troopers rose blinking from his sleeping-box, scratching vigorously behind one ear. “Yes, Henrietta?” he said.
“It’s Chuut-Riit,” she said. “Zroght-Guard-Captain, it wasn’t him who refused to answer—I knew it and now we’ve found tampering; the technicians say they missed something the first time. We still can’t get through to him in the children’s quarters. And the records say the armory’s open and they haven’t been fed for a week!”
The guard-captain wasted no time in speech with the sobbing human; it would take enough time to physically breach the defenses of the children’s quarters.
✩ ✩ ✩
“Hrrnnngg-ha,” Chuut-Riit gasped, panting with lolling tongue. The corner of the exercise room had given him a little protection, the desks and machinery a little more. Now a dozen lanky bodies interlaced through the equipment about his feet, and the survivors had drawn back to the other end of the room. There was little sentience left in the eyes that peered at him out of the starved faces, not enough to use missile-weapons. Dim sunlight glinted on their teeth and the red gape of their mouths, on bellies fallen in below barrel-hoop ribs.
That last rush almost had me, he thought. An odd detachment had settled over him; with a sad pride he noticed the coordination of their movements even now, spreading out in a semicircle to bar the way to the doors. He was bleeding from a dozen superficial cuts, and the long sword felt like a bar of neutronium in his hands. The blade shone liquid-wet along its whole length now, and the hilt was slimy in his numb grip, slick with blood and the lymph from his burned hands; he twisted it in a whistling circle that flung droplets as far as the closing pack. Chuut-Riit threw back his head and shrieked, an eerie keening sound that filled the vaulted chamber. They checked for a moment; shrinking back. If he could keep them…
Movement at his feet, from the pile of bodies. Cold in his side, so cold, looking down at the hilt of the wtsai driven up into the lung, the overwhelming salt taste of his own blood. The one they called Spotty crawled free of the piled bodies, broken-backed but evading his weakened slash.
“Kill him,” the adolescent panted. “Kill the betrayer, kill him.”
The waiting children shrieked and leapt.
✩ ✩ ✩
“He must have made his last stand here,” Zroght-Guard-Captain said, looking around the nursery. The floor was a tumbled chaos of toys, wooden weapons, printout books; the walls still danced their holo gavotte of kits leaping amid grass and butterflies. There was very little of the kzin governor of the Alpha Centauri system left; a few of the major bones, and the skull, scattered among smaller fragments from his sons, the ones wounded in the fighting and unable to defend themselves from their ravenous brothers. The room stank of blood and old meat.
“Zroght-Guard-Captain!” one of the troopers said. They all tensed, fully-armed as they were. Most of the young ones were still at large, equipped from the practice rooms, and they seemed ghostly clever.
“A message, Zroght-Guard-Captain.” The warrior held up a pad of paper; the words were in a rusty brownish liquid, evidently written with a claw. Chuut-Riit’s claw, that was his sigil at the bottom. The captain flipped up the visor of his helmet and read:
FORGIVE THEM
Zroght chirred. There might be time for that, after the succession struggle ended.
✩ ✩ ✩
“Gottdamn, they’re out of range of the last pickup,” Montferrat said.
Yarthkin grunted, careful to stay behind the policeman. The tubecar route was an old one, left here when this was a country club. The entrance was a secluded cleft in the rocky hill, and it appeared on no kzin records; its Herrenmann owners had felt no need to inform the municipal authorities of what they did, and had died in the war. His hand felt tight and clammy on the handle of the stunner, and every rustle and creak in the wilderness about them was a lurking kzin.
Teufel, I could use a smoke, he thought. Insane, of course, with ratcat noses coursing through the woods.
“Are they alive?” he asked tightly.
“The tracers are still active, but with this little interfacer I can’t—Ingrid!”
He made a half-step forward. A pair of scarecrow figures stumbled past the entrance to the cleft, halted with a swaying motion that spoke of despair born of utter exhaustion. The man was scratched and bloodied; Yarthkin’s eyes widened at the scraps of dried fur and blood and matter clinging to the rude weapon in his hand. Both of them were spattered with similar reminders, rank with the smell of it and the sweat that glistened in tracks through the dirt on their faces. More yet on the sharpened pole that Ingrid leaned on as a
crutch, and fresh blood on the bandage at her thigh.
Jonah was straightening. “You here to help the pussies beat the bushes?” he panted. Ingrid looked up, blinked crusted eyes, moved closer to her companion. Yarthkin halted, speechless, shook his head.
“Actually, this is a mission of mercy,” Montferrat began in his cool tone. Then words ripped out of him: “Gottdamn, there are two kzin coming up, I’m getting their tracers.” Fingers played over his interfacer. “They’re stopping about a kilometer back—”
“Where we left the body of the one we killed,” Jonah said. His eyes met Yarthkin’s levelly; the Wunderlander felt something lurch in the pit of his stomach at the dawning wonder in Ingrid’s.
“Yah, mission of mercy, time to get on with it,” he said, stepping forward and planting the projector cone of his stunner firmly in Montferrat’s back. “Here.”
He reached, took the policeman’s stunner from his belt and tossed it to Jonah. “And here.” An envelope from inside his own neatly tailored hunting-jacket. “False identity, guaranteed good ones. You’ll have to get cosmetic work done to match, but there’s everything you need in the room at the other end of the tubeline here. Money, clothes, contacts.”
“Tube?” Jonah said.
“Hari—” Montferrat began, and subsided at a sharp jab.
“You said it, sweetheart,” Yarthkin replied. His tone was light, but his eyes were on the woman.
“We can’t leave you here,” she began.
Yarthkin laughed. “I didn’t intend for you to, but it looks like you’ll have to. Now get moving, sweetheart.”
“You don’t understand,” Ingrid said. “Jonah’s the one who has to get away. Give him the permit.”
“The Boy Scout? Not on your life—”
“You can give it to me. No, don’t move.” The voice came from behind him, the tube entrance; a woman’s voice, with a hint of a sneer in it.
“Efficient as usual,” Montferrat said, with a tired slump of the shoulders. “Allow me to introduce my ambitious chief assistant.”
“Indeed, dear Chief,” Axelrod-Bauergartner said as she strolled around to where everyone was visible. The chunky weapon in her arms was no stunner; it was a strakaker, capable of spraying them all with hypervelocity pellets with a single movement of her finger. “Drop it, commoner,” she continued in a flat voice. “Thanks for disarming the chief.”
Yarthkin’s stunner fell to the ground. “Did you really think, Chief, that I wasn’t going to check what commands went out under my codes? I look at the events record five times a day when things are normal. Nice sweet setup, puts all the blame on me…except that when I show the kzin your bodies, I’ll be the new commissioner.”
The tableau held for a moment, until Montferrat coughed. “I don’t suppose my clandestine fund account…?” He moved with exaggerated care as he produced a screenpad and light-stylus.
Axelrod-Bauergartner laughed again. “Sure, we can make a deal. Write out the number, by all means,” she taunted. “Porkchops don’t need ngggg.”
The stylus yawped sharply once. The woman in police uniform fell, with a boneless finality that kept her finger from closing on the trigger of her weapon until her weight landed on it. A boulder twenty meters away suddenly shed its covering of vegetation and turned sandblast-smooth; there was a click and hiss as the strakaker’s magazine ran empty.
Yarthkin coughed, struggled not to gasp. Montferrat stooped, retrieved his stunner, walked across to toe the limp body. “I knew this would come in useful,” he said, tapping the captured light-pencil against the knuckles of one hand. His eyes rose to meet Yarthkin’s, and he smoothed back his mustaches. “What a pity that Axelrod-Bauergartner was secretly feral, found here interfering with the Hunt, a proscribed weapon in her hands…isn’t it?” His gaze shifted to Ingrid and Jonah. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
The woman halted for an instant by Yarthkin. “Hari—” she began. He laid a finger across her lips.
“G’wan, kid,” he said, with a wry twist of the lips. “You’ve got a life waiting.”
“Wait a minute,” she said, slapping the hand aside. “Murphy’s Balls, Hari! I thought you’d grown up, but not enough, evidently. Make all the sacrificial gestures you want, but don’t make them for me.” A gaunt smile. “And don’t flatter yourself, either.”
She turned to Jonah, snapped a salute. “It’s been…interesting, Captain. But this is my home…and if you don’t remember now why you have to get back to the UN, you will.”
“Data link—”
She laughed. “It would take hours to squirt all that up to Catskinner and you know it. Get moving, Captain. I’ll be all right. Now go.”
He started to protest and his finger throbbed unbearably. “All right, but I’ll wait as long as I can.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort.”
He hesitated for a second more, then walked to the tubeway entrance. A capsule hissed within.
Ingrid turned to face the two men. “You males do grow up more slowly than we,” she said with a dancing smile in her eyes. “But given enough time…there are some decisions that should have been made fifty years ago. Not many get another chance. Where are we going?”
Montferrat and Yarthkin glanced at each other, back at the woman, with an identical look of helpless bewilderment that did not prevent the policeman from setting the tube’s guidance-plate.
“All three of us have a lot of catching up to do,” she said, and swung the hatch down over herself.
“Well,” Montferrat said dazedly. “Well.” A shake of his head. “You next.”
“Where did you send her?”
Montferrat grinned slightly. “You’ll just have to trust me to send you there too, won’t you?” Much of the old tube system was still functioning.
“Claude—”
“You’ve been there. A landing stage, and then aircar to my family’s old lodge. I’ve kept it hidden from—from everyone.” He laughed slightly. “You’ve already had a head start with her. A few more days won’t matter. But when I get there, I’ll expect equal time. Now get moving, I have to set the stage.”
“Better come now.”
“No. First I see that the Sol-Belter gets offworld. Then I fix it so we can follow. Both will take time.”
“Can you bring that off, Claude?”
“Yes.” He straightened, and the look of the true Herrenmann was unmistakable. “It’s good to be alive again.”
Chapter 7
In the great courtyard of the Viceregal castle, the kzinti nobility of the Alpha Centauri system gathered to pay their last respects to Chuut-Riit. Stone and spiked iron walls surrounded the court; edged metal and orange fur crowded the wooden bier.
What was left of the body was wrapped in battle-banners atop a huge pile of logs, precious and aromatic woods stacked in open lattices. The pyre was hung with banners, honors awarded for past campaigns, the house emblems of nobles Chuut-Riit had killed in duels. Raaiitiro and buffalo had been slaughtered and heaped around the base, to add the blood-scent of victory. Other things lay tumbled amid logs and flesh: fine weapons, ornaments, heirlooms, the bodies of six household troopers who had volunteered to death-duel that they might accompany their lord into the mind of God. Around and around the great heap of treasure danced the warriors of Kzin, shuffling, leaping, twisting in midair to snap fangs at the sky and land on all fours. Clangor filled the air as they hammered the blades of four-foot swords on steel shields and screeched their defiance and their grief. Many had shaved portions of their pelts and thrown the braided hair upon the wood as well.
Traat-Admiral broke from the dance, stood, took the blade of his sword in both hands and gashed his face above the muzzle, then snapped it across one column-thick thigh. He cast the pieces onto the pyre; one edge lodged quivering in a log of sandalwood, and the hilt rang off an antique space helmet. The ginger smell of anger and the dark musk of pain were everywhere in the air.
“Arreeeeeawreeeeeee!
” he wailed, throwing his head back and letting his mouth widen into the ninety-degree killing gape. “Arreeeeawreeeeee!”
Conservor and an acolyte thrust burning torches into his hands. He thrust them toward the sky and began to run around the pyre; the warriors and nobles parted to make a path for him, smashing steel on steel and screaming.
Once, twice, thrice he made the circuit of the courtyard. Then he halted once more by his starting point. Silence fell, broken only by the massed panting of the crowd.
“Warriors of the Patriarchy,” he shouted. “A Hero of Heroes is fallen. God the Hunter has taken the greatest of us. God has drunk of the blood of the Riit. Howl for God!”
A huge wailing screech lifted and slammed back from the distant walls of the courtyard.
“Chuut-Riit is fallen, sword in hand, fangs in his slayer’s throat. So should all Heroes fall. Howl for God!”
Another echoing screech.
“Chuut-Riit is fallen by kzinti claw, but the real slayers, the cowards who set son against sire and dared not face him in honest war, are the monkeys of Sol system. As his chosen successor, I pledge my blood for vengeance. Who is with me? Howl for God!”
This time the sound was a massed roar, an endless deep-toned belling snarl. He threw both torches into the resin-soaked wood, and it caught with a throaty pulsing bellow that matched the sound from a thousand carnivore throats. The kzinti began to dance once more, swaying and dipping their muzzles in unison to the ground, whirling, stamping forward. Others dragged out huge drums made from the bones and skins of monsters and leaped up to dance on them, and the rhythmic booming mixed with the chanting snarl of the crowd and the toning of the fire. A pillar of flame shot up into the darkening sky; Alpha Centauri was down, and Beta on the horizon cast steel-silver shadows across the wavering black-and-crimson of the pyre.
