Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - VI

by Larry Niven

  In the trees, the Jotoki crowd were very serious about their council. Nervously munching leaves that one arm stuffed into his underside mouth, and talking through the lungs of his others arms, Long-Reach told him that Mellow Yellow was in confinement. “We have a new master who owns all.”

  The other Jotoki keened their distress and the five shoulder eyes of each one of them stared at Monkeyshine. He looked at the eyes glinting in the night lights and uneasily glanced back at Long-Reach—and then at his toes. He knew they wanted something. “Why is he confined?”

  “He is a warrior.”

  That, of course, was supposed to explain everything. Fighting was warriors’ work and some fights were lost and others won. Monkeyshine was not satisfied with the explanation. Warring led to honorable death, not to confinement. “Warriors die!” he said disdainfully.

  “No.” Long-Reach was collectively sad. “Sometimes warriors are confined after a loss. Mellow Yellow has been confined before. Then it is the duty of another warrior to free him.”

  “A warrior must free him,” said one of Creepy’s arms. “We insist,” reiterated Creepy’s thinnest arm.

  Monkeyshine was aware that his friends were setting him up. There had a message for him to deliver to some great warrior kzin. “I’ll get lost,” he replied defensively. “I’ve hardly been off the estate.”

  “A great warrior freed him during the Battle of Wunderland,” intoned Long-Reach, his five voices resonating together.

  “Will his friend help him now?” Monkeyshine asked slyly, hoping to stay out of the discussion.

  “No. But it is the duty of the son of a crippled warrior to carry on his father’s purpose.”

  Monkeyshine giggled. Slaves would be beaten even for talking like that. “Is this Hero son aware of his father’s noble cause?” If such a warrior was just a few hours away, he might be able to sneak a message through at night to tell him of Grraf-Nig’s dire need. Monkeyshine was scared already just thinking about it even if he was good at sneaking. And then he thought of his dim-witted mother. What would they all do without Mellow Yellow? The situation was desperate. “I’m only a little boy!” He was crying.

  “You are the son of a warrior!” Long-Reach insisted sonorously in a collective voice that was followed by a squeaking from the most sympathetic of Long-Reach’s arms in defiance of the other four. “Leave him alone! He’s not a warrior yet.”

  “I’m not Mellow Yellow’s son!” lamented Monkeyshine, only now wakening to the purpose of this cabal. “I only spar with him! It’s pretend!”

  “You come of a warrior race,” said Long-Reach gently.

  Were they hinting about his unknown father? “Was my father a warrior?” The mere thought terrified him.

  “We know nothing of your father. Your mother was a great warrior.”

  Monkeyshine rebelled. That again. They had hinted at such foolishness before, in their multiple babblings. He was angry. “My mother is my foolish mother!” he shouted.

  “Your mother killed thirteen kzin warriors,” came a slow melodious reply.

  The other Jotoki had folded up their stalklike limbs to protect their heads and were sitting defensively on their undermouths, arm-lungs fixed in the mode that allowed soft breathing but silenced the voice. The remembrance of the horrible crime gripped the council and only one tiny voice had the courage to justify it. “She was saving Mellow Yellow…from confinement,” it piped.

  Monkeyshine was just as frightened by the tale as his hosts.

  They told the story in bits and pieces, sharing the details to share the guilt, exaggerating to impress the boy. The account wasn’t always coherent for it was told in a slave language poorly designed to discuss revolt and war strategy. They had to make up words and string words together and build explanations around their compound words to define them. They had to make analogies to machines and slave work. They had to tell this to an eight-year-old-boy who had only half the language abilities of a human adult. Totally unaware of the human developmental cycle, they thought of Monkeyshine as the full intellectual equal of the Lieutenant Nora Argamentine they had once known.

  They had once convinced the kzinti war captive to lead a rebellion against the crew of the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to save their master, and they were fully convinced that they could do the same now. Guilt and horror had long suppressed their memories of the mutiny. Now it was necessary to save their master again and they argued and squabbled back and forth, arm to arm, Jotok to Jotok, to revive the details so that Monkeyshine might profit from them. Nora’s warrior deeds seemed clear to them—but they argued long and hotly about how she had planned her campaign. Military strategy was still a mystery to them. What they couldn’t understand they expected Monkeyshine to understand for them because he was of a warrior race.

  When Monkeyshine, in an effort to understand, pointed out his mother’s obvious mental failings, they spoke evasively of “wounds” or “injuries.” None of them dared tell Monkeyshine of their part in betraying her. After she had masterminded the destruction of the crew of the Bitch they had been afraid that she would also destroy their beloved master, too. Nor did they dare tell Monkeyshine of their collaboration while Mellow Yellow delicately destroyed Nora’s memories and her ability to manipulate language. To make her safe. To make her over into something he could understand.

  The household learned that the name Grraf-Nig was never to be mentioned again. They learned from their authoritarian new master that their old master was being sent to the Conundrum Priests of the Rivals Range. They were told that they would have to work harder. A new factory to assemble delicate naval components was to be built on the estate.

  I’m a slave; I’m a slave; I’m a slave, Monkeyshine kept telling himself. He treated his mother with a new respect when he came to curry her with his kzinrretti brush. Grinning while he combed the knots out of her long auburn mane, he imagined that her kzin opponents had died of surprise when she growled. He curried her fur vigorously, the way she liked, never even wondering why female monkeys had fur and males didn’t; that’s the way it had always been. He buried his head in her hair, afraid, hugging her.

  He was not used to thinking of himself as a warrior. It was safer to be a slave. He’d have to be angry when he grinned. What would he do for claws? His teeth weren’t sharp. Something stubborn in him was resisting his Jotoki comrades. They were ready to rescue Mellow Yellow tomorrow. He wasn’t. He knew the difference between being and pretending. Being something could get you killed. Pretending let you repeat yourself. For now he was only willing to pretend to rescue Mellow Yellow.

  Eight+One acolytes guided the naked kzin at pike point, pleased to have duty away from their studies. He would remain naked no matter how cold it got. They wore weavings of yellow and gold done in maze design. The claspings were a ring-puzzle and let the Fanged God help the acolyte who forgot the untwining sequence. Their tall headdresses of multiple heads made them bob and loom like the giants of mythology.

  The tidal action of W’kkaisun kept the crust of W’kkai active even though that leisurely planet had a week-long day. There were plenty of mountains and upwelled plateaus. It was middle morning in the Rival’s Range but the evening’s snow still lay on the northern slopes. The steps to the Heart of Paradox were brilliant in the sunlight and wet with melting snow. Where was the entrance to this Temple carved high along the cliff? Even that was an enigma.

  Conundrum-Prisoner could not see the roof of the Temple but it was the floor of the plateau. Conundrum Priests had carved there in the stone for millennia, building themselves a maze of prisons so wonderful that no warden ever needed keys. The balanced stones just closed around their victims. A finger’s push along the magic vectors would open the prison again, perhaps—or cause a rumbling that would close the cell down to the size of a coffin.

  In the Temple they were led by a gray-furred warden, stooped, with a scar across his face that had removed half his nose. It wasn’t a corridor of cells they followed, it
was a terrifying forest of stones and pillars and blocks and paving that had all the solidity of a master juggler’s climactic act at the Patriarch’s Palace. One looked around in desperation for the hand that was rushing around keeping it all from collapsing, but there was no such hand—only the occasional soft paving or pillar that swayed or monolith that swung down to block their way while it opened another. The Priests said it was earthquake proof.

  Conundrum-Prisoner did not recognize his cell when they came upon it. It was like a field of cut stone, or some bizarre world from the eye of an electron microscope. It had been opened for him the day before. The acolytes gathered up the bones of the previous occupant. The warden pulled a hood over his head and wove it shut. All the prisoner heard was the slight whisperings and low rumble as the walls shifted and the plugs fell into place.

  He tore at the hood with his claws, uselessly. Then he began to work at the lacings. Was this another kind of puzzle? Finally he smelled the slight odor of oxidation. The hood gradually disintegrated in strength until he could tear it off, and finally it turned to ash. The cell was ample, though of no sane geometric shape. There were openings, some of them large enough for a kzin to crawl into. Death traps. He could control light or darkness. He could control smell. He had a tap for liquid food. And he had a hose to wash away his excrement.

  He thought of the cages in which he had kept the experimental monkeys procured from Wunderland for his studies of the man-beast’s nervous system.

  He felt rage.

  But the Conundrum Priests weren’t impressed by rage. Every item and action of their philosophy was designed to control rage. No amount of rage against these walls would move them by a claw’s breadth. Only reason would open them. The panicked reason of “try everything” wouldn’t work, either. There would be Sixtyfour+One ways of moving those stones—and Sixtyfour of them would collapse his cell to the volume of a coffin, and he’d die in some distorted pretzel shape.

  He remembered a time of boredom when he had been stationed at Centauri’s Aarku base; he had found himself a W’kkai Conundrum Puzzle and stayed awake three days and nights trying to solve it. It had driven him mad!

  Now he was trapped in the puzzle. Controlling his rage was going to drive him mad. Restraining his reason was going to drive him mad. No matter how good his hypothesis about the geometry of his cell, he couldn’t test it with shove and push until all of the consequences had been reasoned out in his head. Madness, every alternative was madness! And there wasn’t even any grass to eat!

  Conundrum-Prisoner was his name.

  •

  Chapter 15

  (2437 A.D.)

  The diary of Lieutenant Nora Argamentine was fed into the handwriting analyzer and posted on the Wunderland frigate’s server, access denied only to Hwass-Hwasschoaw. Their kzin had been right about a lot of the details of the insurrection aboard the Bitch, including the loyalty of the Jotoki slaves to their trainer, but he had been wrong about its leader. Yankee grinned. Even the most paranoid of the kzin wouldn’t believe in a female opponent.

  Of course, Clandeboye was seeing some consternation among his own men on that score. Taking out a kzin warship at a distance of light-seconds required skill and bravery—taking one from the inside in what amounted to hand-to-claw combat, with only unarmed slaves for allies, was a remarkable feat. Yankee caught his Wunderland marines in the briefing room replaying the contest in loud agitation and debate.

  These men had actually fought on the ground, in the city, during the Hssin mop-up operation in 2422. They had a full simulation of the Bitch’s interior displayed on the main lecture screen. Nora’s diary was on multiple infocomps—even floating around in paper copies—and Hwass’s analysis of the battle was being annotated with excerpts from Nora’s diary. And argue, argue, argue. They were re-creating the battle, blow by blow. A heroic myth was in the making.

  Through introspective monologues Yankee drafted his conclusions, even his feelings, into frantic missives that he threw out by hyperwave to General Fry, one after the other without waiting for replies. The general wrote back expansively, in a less formal manner than his usual terse style. He was astonished by Nora’s feat and begged more details. Just knowing what had happened to her healed some wounds, but what had happened was not pleasant. Even the noblest of heroes does not always win.

  If she was still alive, which they doubted, her mind had been wiped clean and the only language that was left to her was a primitive female form of the Hero’s Tongue. And worse, from a strategic point of view brave Nora had not prevented the delivery of the Shark into Patriarch hands. Yankee’s worst nightmare had come true. And General Fry was no longer a man covering his bets by exploring all scenarios—he was Yankee’s open ally.

  The ARM, as usual, suppressed the Hssin expedition’s news. Rear Admiral Blumenhandler’s voice was sealed. His marines were shipped to Barnard’s Starbase. The repatriation of Hwass-Hwasschoaw was so accelerated that upon the kzin’s return to Wunderland he was not even allowed to contact his fellow Wunderkzin; he had a final meeting with Interworld Space Commissioner Ulf Reichstein Markham and then was gone. Yankee was warned not to publish. Somehow the major saw the hand of Admiral Jenkins in all this.

  Back at Gibraltar Base in Sol System, Yankee spent hours in discussion with General Fry in his small asteroid apartment. They were good friends by now. Yankee was appalled at the navy’s reaction to the Shark capture. In spite of the fact that there was “no news,” the news was getting around by rumor and gross speculation. The prevailing opinion was that the kzinti were too incompetent technically to duplicate a captured hypershunt.

  An alien race had sold them their technology eons ago and it hadn’t improved since then because they had no engineers.

  They were all brawn and no brain—and brawn was never enough. Who had wiped out the big cats and the whales and the mammoths?

  They were technologically stagnant and no longer had the will or the ability to change.

  The Patriarchy was the degenerate remains of an ancient civilization. What would they do with the Shark? Who had ever heard of a curious kzin?

  It would take them a millennium to duplicate the hyperdrive. Haw, haw, the kzinti were so dumb that when they got the hyperdrive they would ship all their warriors into hyperspace and not be able to bring them back! Half the time, a kzin had to stand on his head to screw in a lightbulb because he could never remember the direction of the screw.

  “How long do you think it will take?” asked Fry.

  “My odds are that they are tooling up a prototype out there right now. We’ll be hit with our tanks empty.”

  “Progress takes time. A lot of the younger officers are coming around to your viewpoint. It takes time, Yankee. Politics takes time.”

  “Forget the kzin. How many men does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

  “Granted that this younger generation knows what a bulb is. Yeah, tell me.”

  “A thousand and one—five hundred with their hands on the bulb turning it counter-clockwise, and five hundred and one with their hands on the bulb turning it clockwise.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry I lost Nora’s trail. If we knew where the Shark jumped to, we could blow the hell out of the place,” grumbled Yankee.

  “And risk another war? No way.”

  Yankee took on a distant look. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something. Our informant, that Hwass-Hwasschoaw, never did take his repatriation to Kzin. I hear rumors that he had himself dropped off at W’kkai. Do you suppose he picked up something I didn’t?”

  The general grinned. “I arranged that behind Markham’s back—as a favor to Hwass and maybe as a favor to myself. My file has our kzin born on W’kkai. I’m not sure he wanted to be repatriated to Kzin. That was Markham’s idea. Did you meet Markham?”

  “Yeah. Tough old buzzard. I don’t think he’s happy with the turmoil on Wunderland. It’s against his sense of order. He has weird ideas of promoting a universal
peace with Kzin and any other alien races we might meet out there. Maybe he’s feeling guilty about his bloody past. I don’t think his peace plan is very realistic.” Yankee paused, as if he were contemplating something incredible. “I hear he was using Hwass as a peace emissary between man and kzin.”

  “That’s right. It is not so strange as you might think Markham has information that he is a very religious kzin. He has dreams of proselytizing the galaxy. Markham thinks he is a secret convert to Christianity.”

  The major was amused. “Hwass as a peace emissary that’s got to be the laugh of the century. Don’t get me wrong. That old kitten and I got along. Shall we say we understood each other; he knew I’d order him killed if he stepped out of line, and I knew he’d kill me first chance he got. Peace emissary! Murphy have mercy on us!”

  “He decided at the last minute that he wanted to go to W’kkai. So I arranged it. I thought we might just learn something if we let him follow his own nose. Just a shot in the dark. I gave him protocols and some unclassified equipment so that he could keep in touch. Did you ever tell that proud warrior about Nora? I mean Nora as kzin-killing terror.”

  “Naw. I didn’t want to upset him while I was in the same room.”

  “My little sweetheart clerk,” Fry reminisced with a smile, “going around upsetting a kzin’s macho sensibilities. I’ll tell you some good news. It is Nora who’s getting out the news about the Shark in spite of…” The general pointed his finger at the ceiling in the general direction of The Powers That Be and rolled his eyes. “Even though the ARM is keeping the lid on the story, it is getting around via the bilge water. It’s all over Barnard’s Starbase. Who can resist the story? The kzin captured themselves a hypershunt with no one to stop them but a determined little woman. Without an official ARM account; the story gets wilder by the minute. Last time I heard it Nora killed thirty kzin on her way to the powder room. Each day the cats grow an inch taller, and she gets more beautiful. Those space cadets are making a warrior saint out of her.”