Tales of Known Space: The Universe of Larry Niven

by Larry Niven

  None of that sank in at once. Then it did.

  Selina had decided some time before that she had no chance of getting out alive, though she had blurred the details of her likely end. She had visited zoos on Earth, and, with visual enhancers, had seen captive tigers tearing at meat, held safely on spacious islands surrounded by water and electronic barriers. She had floated in a silent airship over the African Continental Park and seen lions kill. Now she remembered red blood, and muscle and yellow fat pulled away from red and white bones, rib-cages opening like fans, great yellow teeth and bloody muscles buried in the body-cavity of prey.

  She had seen holos and dioramas of ancient sabre-tooths at her brother’s museum, where children and adults screamed with delighted horror: the leaping bulk of the Smilodon, the replica leopard dragging the limp body of a hairy hominid, streaming blood, along a tree-branch, the cat’s huge upper incisors fitting neatly into the hominid’s conveniently-spaced eye-sockets, cranial vault fitting with equal neatness between the cat’s jaws and held firmly by the lower incisors driven through the skull’s occiput.

  There had been a skeletal reconstruction of that, with Pleistocene remains from the Swartkrans Cave in southern Africa, showing how neat were the punctures of the leopard’s lower fangs in the back of the hominid’s skull, two holes to match those natural cavities the eye-sockets made for the upper fangs... the gnawed skull dropped or rolled into the cave for fossil-hunters, so many hominid bones dropped into it that they formed a geological deposit called breccia... her mind was jerking about what faced her... Rosalind torn and flapping on the deck, Paul gone? Rick? All the rest? The rest? All the Happy Gatherer’s tight-knit crew? Her mind spun into a desperate loop, turning away from that unbearable question.

  And she had her deeply-encoded biological inheritance. She did not need to know consciously of the war of great cats and hominids on the African savannah that had impelled her ancestors towards intelligence. The creature staring down at her was the embodiment of terror. Even without the drug, Telepath felt something of the effort with which she controlled herself.

  For the first time, a Kzin looked upon a human with admiration.

  She breathed heavily, and wiped the sweat from her eyes and from her body. Her next question was as brisk and businesslike as she could make it.

  “Where do we go?”

  “Steal boat. There is one chance now that may never come again for us. It is Lord Chmeee’s leap, I know, but we face certain destruction here.”

  She found an odd lucidity The prospect of being eaten concentrated the mind.

  “Your people are hunters. They would pursue us, would they not?”

  “That is part of plan. We must make them care for a mad and therefore useless Telepath and a monkey to pursue, but pursue wrong way. Monkeys on Kzin planets have tricks. You are a monkey. You must trick them.”

  “What do you think our chances are?”

  “Perhaps one in eight to fourth or fifth power. But random mathematics not my field... Does contortion of your muzzle signify anger? Or fear?”

  “No. Amusement, of a sort.”

  “I remember. Urrr. But not Heroic for leaping one to calculate odds.”

  She was silent. She noticed again the endless ripping-cloth sound that vibrated ceaselessly throughout the ship.

  “How can I believe you.” She was full of fear as she asked this question somehow she knew (a flash of thought: how do I know) that to question the honor of this creature might be a deadly insult. But Telepath answered calmly.

  “I could give you my name as my word if my kind ever had names. But name or no name, it is dishonorable to lie except as... as... you have no word for it. I have so little honor I do not wish to lose any. And you are not going to get a better deal.”

  “Where do we actually escape to? Have you thought of that?”

  “I told you, this is our only chance. We escape to your monkeyship, of course.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your Winged Undying Shining... The Angel’s Pencil... We are following it.”

  Winged Undying Shining Monkey’s Writing Stick! Yes! Suddenly an image flashed from her mind to mine. I saw our target at last.

  A “colony ship”, carrying a crew and many embryos to a planet circling a star named something like “Fifth of the River.”

  A thin cylinder, circled by a halo.

  The halo was the lifesystem in which the monkeys traveled, spinning to mimic gravity with centrifugal force. The cylinder housed the drive... and the laser.

  A reaction-drive, as I had known. Small attitude-jets and gyros. But so cumbersome, hard to turn! Defense of such a thing would be hopeless!

  But then, to fight Cutting Claw in conventional battle was not my plan.

  To reassure the Selina-monkey further, I gave it back (gave her back. I reminded myself it was female) the Space-suit which had been taken during examination. It was badly torn, but the creature seemed eager for it, and hastily put it on its body. In its damaged state it seemed quite useless, but of course all females love decorating themselves. She seemed more composed then.

  “Why are you taking me?” she asked.

  “I will need you to talk to the Writing Stick monkeys of course. Tell them that Telepath is a useful companion and will help them remain alive. That is the prime reason, but there are others also. I have read Astrogator’s mind recently. I know as much of guiding a vessel in space as Astrogator, but I will forget. The knowledge Telepaths take from other minds cannot stay with us without a... bridge. And I only need to forget a little of astrogation procedures—questions for the computer—to be lost beyond all recovery I will need you then.”

  “Or do you just want me to eat for yourself. Spare provisions perhaps?”

  “I could not eat you personally, unless I was in hunger frenzy Perhaps not even then. I have read your mind too deeply. It would be like eating myself My condition has many disadvantages, one is inhibition in that area. We have too much... empathy. Unfortunately, this does not diminish with time. There is an effect. Besides, there are plenty of rations. There are provisions in all boats, and I have identified extra stores and prepared them for loading.

  “Also, it is generally desirable to have a zzrow graff useful companion.

  “Yours was a sea-faring race before it took to the stars, I know. When Alien Technologies Officer and I examined this”—I gave it the thing we had taken from the suit—”we were baffled by its function. It was shaped something like a weapon. Yet once, when I was reading your mind as softly as I might, I discovered it was a small replica of an ancient ship. I do not know why you have it, but I thought perhaps...”

  “A gift from my brother.”

  New vistas of alien thought were opened to me. I felt new images from this monkey’s mind—of blue monkey home-world oceans, wider than those of Kzin, oceans which the monkeys had crossed for trade or even in order to stimulate some alien sense of pleasure, oceans they had voluntarily swum in and which they had written poetry about. Creatures lived in those oceans and I even caught a taste of them that stiffened my whiskers.

  How alien these aliens were! And yet... the gift from the brother—would a Hero give a Kzinrett sister a gift? Yes, perhaps, when they were young. Bright shiny ornaments young Kzinretti liked. Heroes could feel affection for sisters they had spent kittenhood with, and Heroes could and should treasure mementos of great deeds and give gifts to those they cared for. Heroes who grew up in the households of Noble Sires, as I did not. But no Kzinrett crewed a Space-ship: the vocabulary of the Female tongue was perhaps eight to the power of three words.

  The brother had been a museum guard. That was more strangeness. On Kzin Museum Guard was a task for certain old and honored warriors, perhaps heroically disabled in battle, supervised by the Conservors’ mystic order.

  These creatures had not a warrior among them, nor, it seemed to me, a real notion of honor, yet they had museums. It made no sense. What would they display in such places
? I extracted images of museums weirdly perverted—displaying not relics of battle but of games, of dances, of the origins of monkeydom and the animal forms that had preceded their own dominance.

  Or was there something else? A hint of something secret deeply buried? The model had been preserved as a curio not for associations of honor or glory but for the sake of its age alone. Its name meant nothing to the Selina. A mere sound.

  Like their other names that were not names. They gave them to objects, to ships, as we gave names to the vessels of our own Space-fleets.

  Names in such a context mattered to Heroes. If not a fine and splendid description of function and purpose, full of poetry, like Rampant Slayer or Conqueror’s Fang, the names of Kzinti ships commemorated the names of great Heroes of the past like Chmeee or the Lord Dragga-Skrull who lost a forelimb, nostrils and eye before leading his force to death and imperishable glory gutting a superior fleet of the Jotok when Heroes rose against them and leapt into Space at the dawn of the Eternal Hunt.

  All this passed through my mind in a moment or so. These creatures were not utterly unlike us in some ways, though in others strange beyond comprehension. Selina had swum in those cold salt waves for pleasure! I thought of how much I hated the feel of water on my fur and tail.

  I thought at first that Selina would be impressed by the fact that, as soon as I had catalogued the various monkeys’ mental capabilities, I had had others rather than her served up to Feared Zraar-Admiral and the officers. But I now suspected this would not increase her trust of me. There was nothing except truth, however, in what I said next:

  “But there is another reason I want you, for me compelling. In your mind is a story of curing addiction. I am an addict. I am going to need that story to have any chance of curing myself even with Admiral’s medicine. I will need to cure myself or perish, and in this I will need the example of a monkey. Yes, I foresee I will need to return to that example in what lies ahead. Can a Kzin—even a Kzin such as I—not equal one of your kind in endurance and Will?”

  I sat on the floor of the cabin beside her, deliberately relinquishing my advantage in height. Then I continued:

  “Those are the principal reasons but there is also another faint, dim spoor. But perhaps a further reason, a... sentimental... one” (that was the word I took with some difficulty from the monkey’s mind. I was not sure it was the real equivalent of any Kzinti concept but it would suffice). “Part of the reason I was selected for my talent to be developed is that I have a relatively high but undirected intelligence.

  “There is no other role for one like me. I am not a warrior and even before I was made what I am I lacked long concentration, intellectual rigor or even creative flair which would have made me useful in other areas. Yet in your mind I have seen pictures of a world which tolerates the likes of Telepath... the likes of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Yes, the minds of we two are alike at one level, you know.” It seemed to me I was stating the obvious, even if it was nothing for me to be proud of. And I felt her accept this fact more easily than I might have expected. “I feel... gratitude... that such a society has existed even if its future is to be short.

  “There is another thing, too, beyond that,” I went on, “The thing that gives rise to all my plans, small though their hope is.

  “This is a difficult thought, an even fainter spoor, a wandering track in a mind-tunnel not ventured before.

  Alien Technologies Officer reached the first prints, and Feared Zraar-Admiral has gone a little further, but only Telepath has really followed the trail. If your race now has no knowledge of weapons or warfare—less than any sapient race we have conquered—yet at some time in the past you learnt to throw missiles so powerfully that today you travel between stars, can it be that, instead of never having had such knowledge, your race has actually suppressed it to a unique degree?

  “If I had not had long times alone and without duties in which to think I would not have seen this. But you have names of a sort. You have ranks. On your Spaceship you divided time into ‘watches’ much as we do. What did you once watch for? Where did those things come from? And I know from your mind that there are areas of your past that few of your kind are allowed to study. Why? I know from your mind of the ARM: you even have a... police of knowledge.”

  “I’m no historian,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  “You speak truth here,” I replied, “You do not know. But you do not tell Telepath in words all that you think. There is something you suspect, though even to you the spoor is dim. I have read in your mind that there is another monkey, some litter-mate of yours—yes, it is the brother who gave you the small mimicry of the sea-ship—who also hides in its own lair thoughts that it... But if what I suggest is true, that knowledge was suppressed for some reason.”

  “I suppose so. Does it matter.”

  “It may matter a very great deal. For I can think of only one possible reason that a race—a race whose ships are powered by the fusion of hydrogen atoms—should suppress knowledge of weapons and war, and I am the only one of my species it has occurred to.”

  “I see,” she said. And then: “I think I understand. But I do not know if my thoughts are true.”

  “You do not know of RRizzinr... of Tracker.”

  “What is that?”

  “None in your ship knew of it. I searched for that first of all. But I think of the Eternal Hunt and I wonder if we may at last have stuck our noses into one cave too many. It is only a slight possibility; mind you.” I turned from this spoor then, but spoke more of my thoughts, which had grown in the last days. I told of Tracker, and of Cutting Claw’s present vengeance quest.

  “When we have killed the Writing Stick our fleet will search for your home-world. With your primitive drives it cannot be far away—indeed I can calculate its approximate distance easily. I know how long you live, how long you have been in Space and your course. Alien Technologies Officer has extracted all data from your boat’s computer and laid it before the Dominant One. You need not reproach yourself for that. We plotted your monkey-ship’s course from the moment we detected you.

  “The drives of your vessels and the trails they leave are easily detected. We know most of what you know. We know the composition of your atmosphere, that your home-world is the third planet from its sun, a yellow dwarf, and that it has a single very large moon. We know the other characteristics of your system including the gas-giants. We know of your long-colonized asteroid belt and the distance to your nearest extra-Solar colony world. We will find them without great trouble.”

  “Then how does it benefit us to get to the Angel’s Pencil?”

  “If the monkeys on board are alerted and if pursuit is slowed, they may escape for a long time. Space is big. Or they could fight. They have done so once. If we can warn them, we can give them time to prepare some defense. Or such was my original idea.”

  “Won’t there be guards on the boats?”

  It was a strange question. Why guard boats? Who would leave a Space-ship in the depths of Space? Did Selina think Kzintosh would fear monkey-prisoners from the live-meat lockers?

  “What if the others see us?” She persisted.

  “They will assume I am taking you to Zraar-Admiral or Weeow-Captain,” I reassured her. “I have freedom of movement in the ship since I am beneath having general duties. We must not waste more time. Who knows when the Dominant One may not in truth send for one or the other of us?”

  Selina pressed her hands to her head. Hope of escape, I knew, had flared in her mind for a moment. But now she thought I had no plan at all, only neurosis. Still, she did not think it would be a good idea to antagonize me by disagreeing.

  “We can gain access to a boat.” I said, “Of the small craft Feared Zraar-Admiral’s barge is much the biggest, best-fitted, fastest and most powerful. I have prepared various... stores and cargo to load.

  “If we ran out of other options we could self-destruct, which I think you would prefer
to being eaten, and which I would prefer to the discipline I would receive in the event of re-capture, or to burn-out. We will have some counter-measures against missiles. But outrunning a beam generated close is another matter.”

  “Yes, that would be a problem.”

  “That is another way I shall need your help, monkey. Think of a way for us to outrun a beam, and it is just possible we may live.”

  “I see. A simple task.” I caught irony in her mind.

  “The barge has devices for creating ghosts. I mean ghosts in the electronic warfare sense as well as the obvious one. Electronic replicas of ourselves.”

  “I need time to think.”

  Selina sat, head cradled in forepaws. Used to the alien mind now, I found I could mind-read with a most cautious, almost unnoticeable, entry. She was in despair. Impossibilities. And beyond impossible tasks another imperative: her home-world must be warned. I had not told her the monkeys in Tracker had already taken this task upon themselves.

  No. Not quite despair.

  “The other humans. Can you put us together?”

  “Why? Do you need to mate? We have more important things to do at present. I know what kz’eerkti are like but try to control yourself.”

  “Together we may be able to think of something... I need to pick their brains.”

  “Anyway, there is only one other monkey left.”

  I thought I had told her this already but she had evidently not taken it in. Now it shook her like a reed in a storm-wind. She staggered, fell on her knees. There was a storm on her far greater than when I had first spoken to her. I shielded myself against it. Then I thought she was becoming calmer. I did not want to go into her roiling mind until it calmed, but I was puzzled by what she had said.

  “Further, You cannot eat brains, if that is what you mean.” I told her. “They are delicacy for officers.”