Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XI

by Larry Niven

  Strictly speaking, his duty as a commander in the Patriarch’s Navy, if not to die on the attack, would have been to get his ship back to the nearest kzin world, or to Kzinhome itself.

  But who knew which were the kzin-held worlds now? Further, he knew, his one ship, added to whatever kzin fleet was still in the area, would make no real difference to the situation. On the other hand, lurking in the Centauri system, it could still inflict terrible slashes if it could leap from hiding. His experience of humans was that, like other monkeys, they lacked persistence. No doubt the skies over Ka’ashi would be guarded and patrolled by human ships in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. But given a quiet time, that guard would grow slacker and more perfunctory. Then he would fall on them out of those skies like the vengeance of the Fanged God. The greatest shame that the Patriarchy and the Heroes’ Race had ever suffered would be blotted out in the blood of the insolent omnivorous apes. Given the element of surprise, the arsenals of his ship were more than enough to lay the planet to waste. Surprise would be impossible at first, but given time…And he carried several battalions of infantry in hibernation for landings when the monkey-cities and bases had gone down in nuclear fire.

  Later, with new data passively collected and after thought and discussion with Captain, he modified his plan. Knock out the defenses of population centers of Wunderland from the sky, certainly, but use the troops to seize Tiamat. The shipyards there, they had learned, were converting to hyperdrive technology. To capture that for the Patriarch would be a feat to eclipse merely burning a world in vengeance!

  Meanwhile, he would repair his ship’s damage as a Hero might lick his wounds, and wait for the monkey guard to slacken and become distracted. A simple enough plan, but as time went by he came to realize it might not be an easy one. As was so often the case, the kzinti’s worst enemy was themselves. The monkey-prisoners in the live-meat cages were eaten faster than they bred and with manufactured food life became less pleasant. Telepath went mad. With boredom, tension and unappetizing food there were several death-duels until he put a stop to it. Since Night-Lurker had set out on a battle-mission, and he was not yet a full admiral, there were not even females of his harem aboard. He made rousing speeches to the crew, promising them inglorious death and their ears on his belt if they crossed him, glorious death or perhaps just plain glory, if they obeyed as Heroes.

  His ship had drifted beyond the outer Comet halo. He had watched the broadcasts from Ka’ashi, and had seen the reassertion of monkey government and authority. A few messages passed back and forth with Chorth-Captain, pulses too fast to be detected except by a dedicated receiver. Then Chorth-Captain’s replies stopped. Perhaps he was laying low in deep grass, waiting his chance to leap. Perhaps the monkeys had found him.

  He thought now and then of the full Name that would undoubtedly be his: Kzaargh-Chmeee, perhaps? Or perhaps—for given such a feat and such a service it was not quite impossible—Kzaargh-Riit?

  Kzaargh-Commodore had learnt the superluminal drive could only be engaged outside the gravitational singularity of a star system, and the double-star of Alpha Centauri A and B gave a huge volume of space in which it could not operate.

  He had seen on various screens, too, something of the so-called Wunderkzin. Many of the kzinti of human-recaptured Wunderland lived lives at least as independent of their simian conquerors as any such defeated creatures might, and clung to some poor rags of honor. They were hardly pleasant to look upon. But a few had gone further and actively sought a partnership with the apes. It was sickening and at first unbelievable. Indeed, Kzaargh-Commodore was by no means convinced that the broadcasts featuring these creatures were anything more than monkey propaganda. He cut off even the passive reception of messages, lest the apes had some method of detecting this, and also lest this propaganda should somehow reach his Heroes. The longer the wait the better.

  Orlando, Vaemar noticed as he entered the nursery, had finished his jigsaw puzzle, a five-thousand-piece picture of Lord Chmeee locked in slashing battle with a herd of sthondat-like monsters. Good. Human-derived jigsaw puzzles were not in the same league as the puzzles of the kzinti priesthood, but they were useful for schooling infants in patience and persistence. And he had finished it very quickly.

  Orlando was lying on his back, holding a large ball of fiber in his front claws while ripping at it with his back ones. Vaemar remembered for a moment the first time he himself had leapt on such a ball, the day his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit had brought him to the Naming Day of Inga, one of Henrietta’s children. He did not know what had happened to Inga, and twice he thought he had seen Henrietta dead, though each time he had been left with suspicions that it had not really been her…A lot of blood down the runnel. But he remembered well leaping onto the fiber ball, running and tumbling with the squealing human infants, and gorging on sugary cake.

  The cake had made him sick afterwards, as he was held by an unfortunate Guard Trooper in the car flying back to Honored Sire’s Palace, but a taste for it had remained a small secret pleasure with him, one to which he had recently introduced Karan. The abbot at Circle Bay Monastery, with whom he sometimes discussed ethics, said it could hardly count as a vice. Indeed, since the ova of birds and the mammary secretions of cattle had gone into its making, it did not have the connotations of being entirely vegetable matter (in any case kzinti, despite their boasting, had never been complete and total carnivores). The ball shrieked as Orlando tore at it. His claws reached the center, slicing through the last tough envelope. Tuna-flavored ice cream poured out, drenching the kitten. He jumped and spat, then when he realized what it was, settled down to licking it from his fur and the floor, purring like a small gravity-motor. Vaemar smiled indulgently and contributed a lick of his own. “The kzin is a mighty hunter,” he told his son. Those fiber balls were juggled high in the air by a robot, and it took some leaping for the kitten to capture one—with the penalty of a very painful electric shock if it misjudged timing and distance. A possibly lethal shock in the most advanced mode.

  “Tabitha caught two, Daddy,” Orlando told him.

  “Did she? Did she indeed? Where is Tabitha now?”

  “Upstairs. She took them with her. She caught the first ball and then one after I caught mine.”

  Each time a ball was caught, the robot increased its speed, the complexity of its juggling and its shock. The third ball was by no means easy even for a kitten older than Orlando with fast reflexes and a powerful leap to catch. It required, and was meant to require, some planning ability as well as strength and dexterity. Kzin kittens matured at somewhat variable rates, but Orlando—still younger than Vaemar had been when his Honored Sire perished and Raargh adopted him—had done very well to catch the second.

  “How did she do that?”

  “She climbed into the roof and jumped down.”

  Vaemar thought for a moment.

  “Have you ever caught a fourth ball, Orlando?” he asked.

  “No, Daddy.” Then, realizing that this was said as a challenge, Orlando’s posture changed. “Program the robot, Honored Sire! I will catch the fourth ball now!”

  Vaemar watched while he did so, then groomed his son and soothed his scorches, both proud.

  Alpha Centauri B had risen when Vaemar strode up the steep winding track above his mansion to the small guest house in the wood. The forest, normally full of stir at this time as the nocturnal creatures took over their shift, fell almost silent about him. There was game to be flushed here, but he was not hunting.

  Like all kzin buildings, the guest house was large and thick-walled. But unlike most it had windows of some size close to the ground and a human-sized as well as a kzin-sized door. Its roof sprouted electronics. His presence was signalled as he drew near, and the kzin-sized door opened.

  There was a fooch for him in the main room. He reclined in it as Dimity Carmody dialed him bourbon and another tuna ice cream. Although he had eaten already custom and politeness demanded he take a little (in any case, as
he told himself, no kzin is ever entirely full).

  She had been watching an ancient classic film from Earth, Peter Jackson’s original of The Two Towers. She turned the set down. Vaemar read a sampler Dimity had put on the wall, a quotation from a human writer who had lived on Earth more than five hundred years earlier: “Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.”

  “Chesterton,” Vaemar remarked.

  “Yes.”

  “I have taken some notes of his writing. ‘It is constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?’”

  “I know you have a good memory,” said Dimity. “You have that word perfect.”

  “Yes, don’t I? Which may suggest that particular passage has been important to me. Perhaps there is some reason for that.”

  “Your sense of humor means more to me than you may know, Vaemar.”

  “When will you be ready for the Little Southland trip?” Vaemar asked.

  “Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. As soon as you like,” she told him.

  “I have some new instructions,” he told her. “Looking for stolen radioactives. It’s not quite what was planned.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’m ready to go. You’ll take me with you, won’t you, Vaemar?”

  “So we agreed,” He looked at her with great eyes for a silent moment. “Dimity…” He paused again.

  “Yes, Vaemar?”

  Vaemar knotted and unknotted his ears for a moment. He lashed his tail. He rose and walked across to their chess-game set up on a table, making a single move. Then he spoke slowly.

  “Dimity, you know that I am one of the first kzinti to have been brought up, almost from kittenhood, with a good degree of human contact on more or less equal terms, with human companions and…friends. Among my very earliest memories are running with the human infants and leaping on a ball of fiber that Henrietta prepared for me. Much later I learned where she got that idea…After the Liberation I helped Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero when he worked on human farms. I have learnt Wunderlander and English from the best of sleep-tapes. I am a postgraduate at the University and a commissioned member of the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, with even a limited access to lesser military secrets. Human students whom I tutor prepare assignments for me diligently. I have led expeditions and fought against dangers with humans as allies. I have talked late into the night with human companions and shared many thoughts with them. I take part in many human, and encourage to the best of my ability many mixed, social activities. In chess I am a system master and aspire to interstellar master. Soon I hope I will be the first kzin to add the post-nominals PhD, DLitt and DSc to my Name. I am the leader of the Wunderkzin, and, slowly, our numbers among the whole kzin population of Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri A System grow. I recite all this to emphasise the fact that no kzin knows humans better than I. I know humans better than I know the kzinti of the Patriarchy.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am also, like my Honored Sire, a genius. That is a fact. In the society of the Patriarchy ‘genius’ is an insult rather than a compliment. Geniuses may live on sufferance if they have useful skills. Otherwise they are generally killed by their fellow kittens, the warriors, in their nursery games and first combat training. Honored Sire lived because he was a great fighter as well, as befits one of Riit blood. You are…a super-genius. Even if we had not fought as allies in the caves against the Mad Ones, that would be a bond between us. We genii must stick together. Yours is a deeper mind than mine. It is hard work for me to read your papers—even those I am allowed to. Dimly I grasp the implications of Carmody’s Transform, which you discovered so young! Do not worry, if I were allowed to see your hyperdrive work I doubt that I could steal it, Dimity friend, even if I were so inclined. But perhaps my talents spread wider.”

  “Vaemar scatter-brain! Everything from astrophysicist to warrior to song-writer! Mine are so narrow!”

  Vaemar shifted uneasily. His tail lashed again. If a sinuous felinoid like a nine-foot tower of claws, fangs and muscle could look awkward, Vaemar did so. He licked his lips once or twice. “I…care about you, Dimity. We are alike.”

  “You have been good to me. I do not know what I would have done without you.”

  “You said song-writer? The university review, you mean?”

  “Yes!”

  They sang together, laughing:

  “Frightened monkeys yell, when our fangs gleam bright!

  “What fun it is to yowl and scream a slaying song tonight!

  “We are the monkey boys and girls, going for a spin!

  “If pussy gives us trouble, we will take off pussy’s skin!”

  “I thought it was important to get the students laughing at that one,” Vaemar said. “Our ‘Cat in the Hat’ really laid them in the aisles, too, didn’t it? I’m afraid Orlando and Tabitha got hold of the hat, though. There wasn’t enough left of it to keep when those two had finished.”

  He paused, again washing his black lips with his great tongue, and then continued, looking down into Dimity’s eyes: “Honored Step-Sire Raargh also taught me never to be ashamed of using my Ziirgah sense, or to hide it as though fearing someone would come and make me into a Telepath. I know some humans fairly well, I think, and I read emotions. And in you I read desperation…How do you see the future, Dimity?”

  “It could be full of hope. We are still digesting the implications of what the hyperdrive means. Planets for all? And one day, after the eventual peace in Space, the kzin worlds will get it too.”

  “You think so? So do I. It is among a number of reasons why I have felt no inclination to try and steal it. Such action would be counter-productive.”

  “Of course,” she said. “They may have it already. At least one hyperdrive ship went missing when the Armada swept in. It may have been captured. But anyway knowledge leaks, and some humans would be prepared to spy for the Patriarchy, and kzinti students-of-particles are clever.”

  “The war will go on, you think? A hyperdrive war?”

  “It may or it may not,” she said. “There is nothing I can do about it. I try to school myself not to brood upon things I cannot change. But there is another thing which is less dramatic but whose implications may be at least as important—humans now have the technology of kzin gravity-control. That will give us new planets, too. In the early days of human exploration of Sol system, terraforming even the nearer planets had low priority because the asteroids had lighter gravity. A little slow work done on Mars. Nothing on Venus, though Earth in theory at least had the biology to start transforming its atmosphere cheaply since the twentieth or twenty-first century. Such things will matter much less now. And there need be less competition for territory.

  “We can have the stars, humans and kzinti, too. If we can live together here, Vaemar-Riit, then we can share a universe in peace. It may take several centuries, of course. It may never happen. There is a chance, more than a chance, even if we can achieve a peace now, of more wars before it really happens. I have heard rumors that peace negotiations drag on, but so does the war in space.”

  “Those are my thoughts also,” said Vaemar. “Stars and planets for all, one day. And a pair of species that nothing can challenge. Soon I must begin teaching Orlando to share this purpose. Today I found something important: he has the patience to solve puzzles. Many kittens do not. But, Dimity, how do you see your future?”

  “You have been good to me Vaemar,” Dimity said again. “You don’t hate me?”

  “Hate you? Why should I?”

  “One great reason. I made building the hype
rdrive possible. In time to win the war for humans. I could be seen as the greatest enemy the kzin species has ever had.”

  “I could answer that several ways,” said Vaemar. “When you translated and applied the manual for the hyperdrive I understand you did not even know of the war. And whether that was so or not, you did what you did for your kind. Any kzin who could have done the same would have done so. It would be irrational to hate you for that.

  “Further, I think now that we needed to lose a war. As a race, we were becoming more than foolish with victory. We were becoming permanently intoxicated with it. We were so used to swallowing up feeble, peaceful races that we took for granted that was the only way things could be in the Universe. But the God was more subtle and more generous than we had come to assume. Our ancestors had prayed for enemies worth the fighting. They were given to us just before our own arrogance and savagery ate us up.

  “There are other things. We were lucky, I think, to have met humans when we did and not just gone on expanding unopposed until we ran into something worse. We had missed, or deprived ourselves of, a great deal. I have read Honored Sire’s meditations and have come to see how right he was when he perceived that humans have talents and abilities we lack—or have deprived ourselves of. I enjoy biology and mathematics, for instance, and reading of historical events, human as well as kzin. I sang ‘Lord Chmeee’s Last Anthem’ for sheer joy in the words as well as Heroic blood-lust. It excited me—actually excited me!—to discover how the Normans of Earth combined barbarian vigor with Roman order and discipline to conquer so much from so tiny a base. Could I have enjoyed these things as a princeling in Honored Sire’s palace? I would have been killed by my brothers or by Combat Trainer as a freak. Who knows how many other young kzinti died like that—intellectual misfits in a warrior culture? My brothers would have had to gang up on me, though, and there would have been fewer of them at the end of it, for in single combat I…” He trailed off.