Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XI

by Larry Niven

  “But there is another thing. As I grew up with Raargh after the human victory, mixing with humans, I thought long and hard on the future of my kind. And its future not here on Wunderland only. I believe that in the long run the best future for us is as partners with humans. When I say I believe in an eventual partnership of our kinds I do not just use words. What might we not do together! You have said it will take centuries and I agree, but perhaps I can do something to bring it about a little quicker here on this world at least. Hatred is not a good way to begin. And nor do I dislike you, Dimity. Dislike is more destructive than hatred, more long-lasting…

  “And there is a further thing again. Not in this case a completely rational or utilitarian consideration. Your presence is more agreeable to me than your absence. There are bonds between you and me. When I am near you I feel I am near a like mind. Almost I could wish I was a Telepath at such moments—though say that to no other kzin! Almost I have wished I was a…no, that thought is not even for you! What could I do but take you in? Raargh knew what he was doing when he ran through fire to save you in the battle in the caves.”

  Dimity reached out a hand, and scratched the kzin at the base of his ears. Vaemar permitted himself to purr.

  “And if we are both genii, we are both misfits,” he went on. “I have mixed with humans too long to be a kzintosh of the Patriarchy, even though I bear this.” He tapped the red fur on his chest. “And you…”

  “I should be teaching,” said Dimity. “When I was a professor I was not a good teacher, but I think I communicate better now. I should have the ordinary domestic life that should be any human’s lot: my own people, my own mate and children. Instead…”

  “I know that by human standards you are beautiful,” said Vaemar. “Even I can see that. Some have said you could have any mate you wanted. If he is not afraid of your mind.”

  “What I want now,” said Dimity, “is to know that for the moment I may stay here if I wish. I need a refuge.”

  Vaemar sprayed a very little—a couple of drops—of urine on the fabric of her trouser leg. It reinforced his mark for all kzinti to know.

  “Of course,” he said. “You are my guest and chess partner as long as you wish. But you care to come to Little Southland.”

  “Yes, I also need to run.”

  “From what?”

  “Everything.

  “Footfalls echo in the memory

  “Down the passage which we did not take

  “Towards the door we never opened

  “Into the rose-garden…”

  “T.S. Eliot?” said Vaemar.

  “Do not kzinti feel like that sometimes?”

  “When we do, we usually go out and kill things. Or fight each other. You are free to hunt in my preserves if you wish. I have human-size weapons you may use.”

  “Thank you, Vaemar, but I do not think that would help. I am looking forward to Little Southland. What of Karan?”

  “Like me, she must learn to live with humans. It is harder for her in some ways, perhaps, easier in others. She is not Riit. But I think she has bred true. Tabitha has intelligence! I thought that was the case when I realized her vocabulary was far beyond that of a normal female kitten of her age—or normal kzinrret of any age, to be sure—but now I know. She reads! She plans!”

  “Are you glad, Vaemar? You and I know abnormal intelligence may be a curse as well as a blessing.”

  Vaemar paced for a while before answering. His gait betrayed troubled thought.

  “I am mortal,” said a voice on the screen. “You are Elfkind. It was a beautiful dream, nothing more.”

  “Yes, I think I am glad,” Vaemar said at last. “It is a new thing, and like many new things I must accept it. She will not need to live her life as Karan did for so long, pretending to be a moron. You will help teach her, perhaps?”

  “If I can. I would like to repay your hospitality to me somehow.”

  “Are you sure you do not wish to kill something? My hunting preserve is free to you.”

  “When do we leave?”

  “Pack your equipment.”

  “I already have.”

  Chapter 6

  “He took Dimity with him? Does Nils know?” Cumpston pinched his lip in a worried gesture.

  “I didn’t feel it was my business to tell him,” Arthur Guthlac said. “I don’t want to go dancing into that minefield. It was a difficult decision to allow Dimity to go off to him at all. You can imagine the opposition and the arguments we faced. But once we decided we had no right to interfere with her we stuck by that decision. You can’t put that mind in a cage. And there had to be a demonstration of trust in Vaemar. A big one…”

  “No,” said Cumpston, “not our business to tell Nils. Especially not now, Arthur. We can’t be their keepers. Anyway, you have other things to think about at the moment than raising taboo subjects.”

  “And yet, I can’t forget we’re all bound together in funny ways.”

  “How do you feel about the safety of those two misfits off together?”

  “Let’s not forget, those two misfits are probably the two most intelligent members on this planet of the two most deadly species known. I’m not overly concerned about them.”

  “More deadly than Protectors?”

  “That’s something I hope we don’t have to find out.”

  “And Patrick Quickenden. He won’t be too pleased.”

  “That’s not my problem. He’s not a Wunderlander.”

  “He loves Dimity too, you know.”

  “I know. But we’ve got enough things to sort out without lovesick Crashlanders as well.”

  “How do you feel, General?” Cumpston asked. “About the wedding, I mean.”

  “As I should feel, I guess,” Guthlac told him. “Scared. Happy. I’ve never been married before. I want to be with Gale for the rest of my life. I want lots of children and I want them to live here on Wunderland. I’d like to get her farm back into proper production. Big John can help now he’s been patched up. Earth’s been too crowded and conformist for a long time. I don’t particularly care if I never see it again. I’d like my children here. And none of those damned birth restrictions!”

  “We had to have them. It’s the only reason we’ve been able to keep the crowding down a bit.”

  “Yes, but Earth hasn’t kept the blandness down. Or the conformity and police control, more than a little of which I had a hand in making. As somebody said: ‘I’ve seen some terrible things and a lot of them I caused.’ But I see what I’ve been missing now. Wunderland is full of surprises still. Gale was the best of them.”

  The red telephone on Guthlac’s desk called him, then went into battle-secret mode, vibrations keyed to his personal implant. He listened to it, then stared at it with curious expression.

  “That was Defense Headquarters,” he said at length. “A message has just come in on the hyperwave.”

  “I gather it’s something important. Are you going to tell me?” There was something like consternation behind Cumpston’s voice as he stared at Guthlac. The brigadier had raised a hand and was wiping away tears.

  “Oh, yes, it’s important. And I’m going to tell you. Everybody will know soon enough anyway. McDonald and the Patriarch’s negotiator have signed a treaty. Humanity and the Kzin Empire are at peace. Sixty-six years after first contact. It’s a funny feeling.” He looked at the wetness of the tears on his hand with surprise.

  “Peace. It’s a funny word, Arthur.”

  “It’s going to take some getting used to…For the kzinti, too. I doubt they’ve ever been at peace with anyone before.”

  “Some geneticists have speculated,” said Cumpston, “that the war has changed the kzinti. Killed off their most aggressive individuals, made the species less dangerous.”

  “And some,” said Guthlac, “have speculated that the war has changed them by killing off their most stupid and reckless individuals, and made the species more cunning and more dangerous.”

  �
�I know. What do we believe?”

  “After sixty-six years of war, there must still be a place for optimism, for hope…for ideals. Otherwise we are indeed no better than animals.”

  “Yes.” Cumpston raised his eyes to the window. “Does the sky look different to you.”

  They both stared at it for a long time. “Yes. Or I think it will soon. Do you believe death is not going to fall out of it again?”

  “I’m trying to…” Cumpston said. “I hope our kzin friends here will be pleased…I mean our real kzin friends…Vaemar, Raargh, Karan…Big John.”

  “You think of them first? You’re a funny bird, Michael.”

  “Vaemar’s always been vulnerable to a certain stain: quisling, collaborator. Maybe that’s gone now.”

  “Vaemar was only a kitten when the kzin forces on Wunderland surrendered. A lost, orphaned kitten, when Raargh took him in. Should he have fought to the death against us with his milk-teeth? Anyway, even if there’s now a cease-fire in space, I doubt it means the likes of Vaemar can come and go between here and the Patriarchy just like that.”

  “Perhaps he can one day. Another thing I’m realizing: we don’t have to use Baphomet.”

  “No.” Baphomet was something very new, which the two officers had been briefed on shortly before. It was an update of the old idea of a disrupter bomb. A complex carrier designed to penetrate deep into the crust of a suitable planet, and set off explosions which, it was calculated, could turn over a tectonic plate. It had been tried on a lifeless world orbiting Proxima Centauri and had worked. Had the target’s geology been a little different, Proxima would have become a twin star sub-system.

  “Sorry, Arthur, I’m still trying to get my mind around it all. There’s a lot to think about. It’s going to take a while to digest. But your children, and Gale’s, can maybe grow up in a better time.”

  “Give me a chance to get some first!”

  “Me too, perhaps.”

  They both laughed, and Guthlac poured celebratory drinks.

  There had been a resumption of brief and cryptic messages from Chorth-Captain. He had established himself on Ka’ashi. He had discovered an arms depot, and a mighty ally. It was time to leap.

  Kzaargh-Commodore had broken his rule of maximum possible silence. He sent back interrogatories. The replies remained cryptic. Things were going better than expected. The ally was unexpected but potent. Attack!

  The kzinti had no allies. Other races were enemies, prey or slaves. It was inconceivable that the kzinti needed allies. Or rather, Kzaargh-commodore thought, struggling like so many kzinti to fathom an utterly new situation, it had been inconceivable that the kzinti needed allies. His crew trod softly for he was puzzled and angry. He had sent more interrogatories, but Chorth-Captain had fallen silent again.

  Fury, puzzlement, impatience…and hope. He had become capable of waiting no longer.

  There was a comet which he had marked out, a large and highly volatile one, plainly destined to a short life. Hiding as he might in its tail, he turned his ship and plunged back towards Ka’ashi.

  A pod of dolphins broke surface in the car’s flying shadow as the Ocean rolled away below. Dimity called them. The communicator was programmed to translate into Dolphin, and Dimity had picked up some of their concepts long ago.

  They exchanged pleasantries, but with difficulty. During the decades of war many dolphins had come to maturity in the oceans of Wunderland with little knowledge of the human partners who had brought them as fellow enthusiastic colonists across interstellar space. Cooperation was being rebuilt slowly, and though the humans of Earth had employed some dolphins in their war-fleets as strategists it was hard to know how much these Wunderland dolphins knew—or cared—of the kzinti or current events. Still, they were friendly to the human walkers, and asked if, like their fathers, they might trade for hands. Dimity recorded their identities.

  Little Southland was not very little. It was a detachment of Wunderland’s southern continent, a knife-shaped triangle of land stabbing towards the South Pole, with a total area of 17,000 square miles, much of it cool to cold desert like Patagonia. With the temperate areas of Wunderland still empty or only sparsely settled, there was no need to cultivate it. There were some military installations and a few scientific ones.

  Its population of avianoids was its main macrobiological interest. Varieties of creatures with vast striking beaks resembling the diatrymas of Earth’s Eocene roamed it, and there were some introduced Earth birds, too: The “banana belt” of the northern coastal regions had a climate not unlike the south of New Zealand and there were a few ranches for reconstituted and slightly modified moas, strongly fenced in and over to protect them from the savage and powerful locals.

  The car climbed. Vaemar and Dimity approached the land at about ten miles’ height, searching with instruments.

  “There!” A fuzzy radiation signature, but one that matched the record in the brick. Dimity tracked an optical telescope in.

  “Nothing that shows on the surface,” said Vaemar. “It would be hidden, of course.”

  “Granite everywhere. Hot granite. That won’t make following a radiation trail easier.”

  They deployed a deep-radar scanner. A faint but unnatural grid of lines became visible. Vaemar grinned and his claws slid from their sheaths. “Prey,” he said, and then: “We must give no cause for suspicion. Dimity, take over flying. If anyone contacts us, better that they see your face than mine.”

  There were interrogatory signals coming in from the scientific and military stations on the ground, but the car answered them automatically with the University’s code and signature. They descended. Vaemar and then Dimity could make out the movement of life-forms on the surface. They changed into lightweight combat/utility suits, Vaemar’s leaving his claws free, and Dimity adding a helmet with breathing mask, and landed.

  Vaemar, followed by Dimity, stepped out into a landscape of grey, under a swirling grey sky, punctuated by rocks, and surrounded by rock walls and pillars, wind and rain-eroded into fantastic shapes reminiscent of dragons, sthondats and other great beasts of legend and fact. There was a thunderstorm dribbling lightning on the horizon. Distant hills were speckled with snow. Hardy, spiky vegetation grew about them. This was a cool wet plain, and days like this without high winds were rare. But life seemed reasonably abundant. Vaemar’s eyes and the infrared detector in Dimity’s face-mask found a number of small animals watching them from concealment, or in some cases burrowing frantically.

  Dimity saw what she thought at first was a man approaching them, although the motion was wrong. She activated the binoculars in her helmet and pointed to the biped. An avian, or an avianoid creature, high, with great legs, atrophied wings and a mighty striking head and beak, standing, they could see, higher than Vaemar. To Dimity it resembled a holo of a carnivorous Earth dinosaur. It was making a high-pitched scream.

  “Thunderbird,” said Vaemar. “They must have good eyes. We have evidently invaded this one’s territory.” It was fast, and in Wunderland’s gravity even those small wings could help it make great hops. Suddenly it was very close.

  Dimity brought up her rifle, but Vaemar was quicker, and he gestured to her to leave it to him. He waited a few moments more, then fired as the thing leapt again. Its huge head shattered and its body slid towards them in a kicking ruin.

  Almost on top of them, a second thunderbird erupted from concealment behind a rock wall. Vaemar’s stride became a vertical leap. The thunderbird’s huge hind-claws barely touched the ground, and it too leapt again, wings extended to show barbed claws, its colossal armored beak snapping and clashing at the kzin. Vaemar twisted in mid-air, avoiding the beak in a blur too fast for Dimity to follow, and landed on the creature’s back. As they crashed to the ground together his jaws severed its neck in a single bite. The second thunderbird ran headless for a distance, wings flapping, before it collapsed.

  “Perhaps those screams will call others,” said Vaemar. “From what we know about
them they are cooperative to some extent. However, we have no time to waste on game. Where is our real quarry?”

  They surveyed the wilderness of rock.

  “Caves are the best hiding-place from an aerial search,” said Dimity. “But they have to be a certain size. There are no caves of such magnitude here.”

  “Caves are also obvious hiding places,” said Vaemar. “If you have technology there are other ways of hiding.”

  “Bending light?”

  “Or radar pulses. You see how much we think alike, Dimity? I do not need to explain things to you.”

  “Not a technology we’ve mastered. Not without a lot of bulky and obvious equipment.”

  “No. We haven’t.”

  The portable deep-radar showed a maze of granite. The radiation signature they had been following was lost.

  There was a quick movement in the shadows of the rocks. Vaemar and Dimity spun to face it, weapons ready. Sight, smell and Ziirgah sense all told Vaemar of another kzin. He called a challenge/greeting in the Heroes’ Tongue.

  It came forward slowly. It was an adult male, with a good collection of human and kzin ears on its belt-ring. Vaemar stood rampant, staring, but with most of his fangs not yet showing. In that posture his chest was thrust forward somewhat, throwing into prominence the red splash that marked him as Riit. There was his own belt-collection as well. Both kzinti had their ears folded, and it was impossible to see their ear-tattoos in detail.

  The other kzin did not challenge or bare fangs, indeed the slightly bowed attitude of its head might indicate that it conceded Vaemar’s dominance, although, Vaemar thought, the gesture might have been made less ambiguous.

  “Who are you?” he asked in the Neutral Tense, though as Riit he might have used a far higher one. Dimity, he knew, now understood something of the Heroes’ Tongue. She had had sleep-lessons since returning to Wunderland and was a good natural linguist.