Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XI

by Larry Niven

  Four more Protectors entered. They glanced briefly at Vaemar and Dimity and turned to the changing Morlocks. Dimity noticed again that they were laid out in four rows.

  “Are they their children?” she asked Chorth-Captain.

  The big kzin raised his ears in a gesture of assent. “Each cares for his own children.”

  “And the other Protector? Your ally?”

  “He is childless. He came upon the tree-of-life first, and later we exposed others. They brought their children here, and waited. Why do you wish to know?”

  Dimity began a retort, and bit it off. Her relationship with the untypical Vaemar had almost made her forget the hair-trigger temper of kzintosh in what she supposed must be called their natural state, particularly in their dealings with humans. She had never lived on kzin-occupied Wunderland, but knew that a human there who answered a question from a kzin with another, rhetorical, question, or in a formulation that smacked of sarcasm or irony, would have been lucky to keep tongue, face or life.

  “I will be a more effective teacher, if I know the beings I am teaching.”

  Chorth-Captain inclined his own ears again. Apparently he accepted her explanation.

  “And if I am to teach, I must have access to a knowledge base.”

  “That is anticipated. Come,” Chorth-Captain said.

  He led Dimity and Vaemar into another chamber nearby. They passed a couple of sealed passages, and dark tunnels with an old look about them. Only a small part of the hollow moon seemed to have been restored as living space. There was a chair for each of them, and two computers, based on kzin military models, but with what they guessed were Protectors’ improvements, each with a keyboard adapted for their respective hands. “You may prepare your lessons,” said Chorth-Captain. He was also carrying the suit, much ripped and of questionable use now as a garment, which he had taken off Dimity, and her boots. He dropped these on the floor and then gestured at Vaemar. “When the door is closed you may free him,” he added.

  He passed Dimity a tube, like an old-fashioned tube of toothpaste, and backed out. A door flashed shut behind him.

  Dimity squeezed the contents of the tube over Vaemar’s bonds. They foamed and dissolved.

  Dimity looked desperately for a writing instrument. There was nothing. She took Vaemar’s hand and pressed out one of his razor claws. She scratched on her arm. “They listen.” Like most humans on Wunderland she had anticoagulants added to her blood and it dried quickly.

  Vaemar raised his great eyes to the ceiling, then pointed to the tiny eyes of cameras. “They watch,” he said. “They must hear what we say. Unless we do or say nothing, we must accept that fact.”

  “If they have been watching Wunderland television,” said Dimity, “they probably know all the languages we do.”

  “I studied the history of Human International Law,” said Vaemar. He added casually “Loquorisne Latinum?”

  “Yes,” said Dimity in the same language. “But it won’t frustrate them long. Too logical and consistent. They’ll translate. And they are bound to be recording us now.”

  “All the same, we have a little time to talk,” said Vaemar. “Time is against us anyway for other reasons as well. How long will it take those Morlocks to change?”

  “I don’t know. No one knows much about the Pak. In a Sinclair field they could speed it up. But the fact that they are not using Sinclair fields for that purpose suggests the time may be variable.”

  “How do we stop them? How do you anticipate what they will do?”

  “Wunderland has war-geared defenses,” Dimity said. “If you were a Protector, what would you do?”

  “I cannot think like a Protector, but here is one scenario: seize Tiamat. You agree that would be possible.”

  Tiamat was a roughly cylindrical asteroid of the Serpent Swarm, about fifty kilometers by twenty. It was an administrative center and military base of the Swarm and was heavily industrialized for space industries as well as a major production center for weapons and IT. It was also a research center for the Swarm. As the main site of the Swarm’s experiment in commensalism it had a kzin community with a limited degree of self-government at “Tigertown” and some kzinti working with humans. Both Dimity and Vaemar had been there several times.

  “For forty and more trained Protectors? Easy!”

  “That would give them factories tooled up for hyperdrive technology, and working hyperdrive ships,” Vaemar said. “And all the gravity-control industries. It would also give them very heavy battle lasers and other military weapons installations. Tiamat is well-defended.”

  “Yes.”

  “But not well-defended against the kind of surprise attack Protectors could mount. Then, if I were directing their strategy, I would attack Wunderland and the other settled asteroids of the Serpent Swarm from Tiamat. And while Wunderland’s defenses are busy, crash this moon or another into it.

  “Morlocks fight by dropping on their enemies and hurling rocks down on them. This would be the same thing on a bigger scale.

  “The Protectors could break the moon up on its way by controlled explosions so that the fragments would impact in a predetermined pattern and with predetermined force. That would be the end of human—and kzin—life on Wunderland. If all was not destroyed by the first impacts, it would be so shattered that the Protectors could finish off any remnants at leisure. But the Morlocks in the great caves could survive. With Tiamat, they would not need Wunderland’s industrial centers. They could destroy the other asteroid settlements one by one. Many are still reduced by war-damage anyway. I do not think their defenses would last long against Protectors.”

  “I cannot fault your reasoning,” said Dimity. “And then…how many breeders would they get from the Morlocks of Wunderland?”

  “Their numbers were thinned in the war, but they are breeding up again, as I know from personal experience,” said Vaemar. “Hundreds, at least. Thousands, I am sure. We do not yet know how far the cave systems go.”

  “The Sinclair fields! That is why they have them here!”

  “Yes, of course! I should have seen at once! They can use the Sinclair fields to accelerate breeding! They could have thousands more breeders and thousands of Protectors.”

  “That would also give them the numbers for genetic diversity.”

  “It would give them the numbers for a double leap into human and kzin space,” said Vaemar. “And another bad thing strikes me, one which this Protector has perhaps not realized yet but sooner or later must: you humans have put much effort into developing reproductive technology, though you do not exploit its full potential. A Protector with access to that would not need to have got all its children before the change. It could clone as many as it wished from its own cell structure. There would be no limit to their numbers!

  “We kzinti have experimented with cloning. A band of celibate warriors, who had dedicated themselves to the Eternal Hunt, tried to breed without females once. Each cloned his own kittens. But the kittens were incurably savage and aggressive…Is that so amusing?”

  “If a kzin hero calls them incurably savage and aggressive,” said Dimity, “they must have been a problem indeed!”

  “They were. But the point is that the inhibitions of your culture or mine about cloning would mean nothing to a Protector. Dimity, we must stop them now. The cost of our own lives is nothing in these circumstances.”

  “I know,” said Dimity.

  “Unfortunately, at this moment I cannot see how.”

  “Nor I.”

  “Why didn’t the original Pak Protectors simply clone themselves?” said Vaemar.

  “Perhaps they had no need to think in such directions,” said Dimity. “Their mature bodies were so strong, long-lived and perfect that they did little to develop biological sciences. They didn’t need to improve on what they had. All that we know of the Pak species’ thinking was what Brennan picked up while he was a Pak’s prisoner and told to the humans who he met later. But there seem to be some
gaps in Pak thinking. Humans are more creative. And, from what little I know about them, Protectors are unable to cooperate with one another beyond the briefest temporary alliances. Further, our own science showed us long ago that cloning sapient beings is fraught with risks. It seemed to promise everything at first, but then we discovered the pitfalls.

  “The Protectors’ science as far as we know is exclusively military-oriented. Each cares only for his own blood-line. It seems their only stimulation and excitement is war. They could have been the greatest race in the galaxy, but their intelligence and instincts together locked them into a dead-end. Their single-mindedness virtually robbed them of free will. Even their spaceflight was stimulated by nothing but a desire to find new breeding grounds. No curiosity, no sense of wonder. No sense of anything beyond themselves. The kind of creature I yearn desperately not to be. When I had to read of them it horrified me, because I saw so much of myself in them.”

  “It is something to be horrified,” said Vaemar. “Raargh told me that to be aware of horror is an early step to knowledge. Know horror and you know glory. Know fear and you know courage.”

  “You understand the human idea of the knight, Vaemar? The ideal, I mean.”

  “I trust so. I have read much human history. It fascinates me that the knight should emerge from the dark ages, as it fascinates me that Roman order, Greek art and thought, could combine with barbarian vigor to build an order that would take you to the stars. Was it like that with other star-faring races, I wonder, races that did not have the Jotok as we did? But yes, I know of human knights. Some kzinti are like that too, but not many, and as you would expect, not quite the same.”

  “Can you imagine Pak knights, crusaders, chivalrous champions of some cause beyond ensuring more breeders?” said Dimity. “I cannot. I loved Nils because he, for all his lack of self-awareness, had something of the knight in him. I never saw what he did in the war, of course, Leonie had all of that…The Pak were—it seems are—little more than gene-carrying machines, breeding and fighting and crossing between the stars for no end but reproduction. Trapped by their own brain structure. Trapped, as I fear most of all to be trapped.”

  “Can we use that, I wonder? There are at least four blood-lines here.”

  “With the childless Protector to keep them in order.”

  “Yes. He is our prime target.”

  “Target? You have high hopes, Vaemar-Hero.”

  “A Hero does not need hope, Dimity-Human.”

  They logged onto the internet with the computers supplied. As they had guessed, they could receive but not send data. Dimity and Vaemar were both clever with computers, and they spent a lot of time trying to circumvent this.

  Chapter 10

  The well-armed car carrying Arthur Guthlac, Colonel Cumpston and Karan touched down beside Vaemar’s empty vehicle. Apart from its turret-mounted weapons, Cumpston had a strakkaker and Guthlac a heavy, powerful beam rifle, a great cannon of a thing based on a kzin sidearm, and with mini-waldos for human use. Karan had a kzinrret’s knife, the new and improved female version of a w’tsai, and another strakkaker. Weapons ready, the occupants alighted, the humans wearing breathing filters as Dimity had. In case they needed the car quickly, the engine was left idling and the doors unlocked. There was no sign of any live friend or enemy.

  Karan pointed and bounded to the dead thunderbirds, the humans hurrying behind. Small scavengers scattered.

  “Beam rifle, close range,” said Cumpston. “And the other looks like a kzin bite.”

  “They stood here,” said Karan, pointing. Looking closely, Guthlac and Cumpston could make out two very different-sized sets of footprints, the larger tipped with claw points. “It didn’t get near them.”

  “The car has been tampered with,” said Cumpston. “Look! Its antennas are gone.” He also tried the door.

  “Dimity and Vaemar, according to the ways we can measure IQs, are possibly the two cleverest beings on Wunderland,” said Guthlac. “I hope they can look after themselves.”

  “Clever doesn’t necessarily mean survivor,” said Cumpston. “There’s more than a touch of the idiot savant in Dimity. Super-genius she may be, but she’s narrowly focused. Just because she shatters the old sexist stereotype of the beautiful blonde doesn’t mean she…More common sense, better instincts and reflexes, may mean survival in a place like this. Vaemar, I can’t pronounce on. But he’s an intellectual, too, however sharp his claws are. I wish old Raargh was with them, or some human sergeant-major.”

  Guthlac thought he detected something in his friend’s voice when he spoke of Dimity. There could hardly be a less appropriate time or place for him to comment. “Karan, can you follow their trail?” he asked.

  Karan was already moving down one of the rock-tunnels, almost on all fours, a barred orange shadow in the shifting and flickering grey light.

  “We might do better to search from the air,” Guthlac said. “This is another labyrinth.”

  “If there was anything to see from the air I think we’d have seen it,” said Cumpston. “Come on! We’re lucky to have her, but I don’t want her getting too far ahead on her own. If anything happened to her, would you want to be the one to tell Vaemar?”

  “Trail stops,” said Karan a few minutes later.

  They caught up to her. They were standing in a circular space in the rock-maze.

  “Do you smell anything?” Guthlac asked her.

  “Sand and rock turned over.” Karan said. “Not a long time past. And kzintosh. There has been another male kzin here. And at the car. And something else. A bad smell.”

  Cumpston pointed to the edge of the rock wall. “Sand and rock turned over there?” he asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “A gravity motor.”

  “But all gravity motors are monitored,” said Guthlac.

  “Get through to the monitoring stations,” said Cumpston. “Pull your rank, Arthur! Hurry! They must have recorded something.”

  Guthlac sent the message. His face was dark. “I’m getting a very ugly thought,” he said.

  “So am I. But tell me yours first.”

  Guthlac made sure Karan was out of earshot, still hunting along the rock wall. He spoke softly and quickly.

  “Vaemar has taken Dimity into space. He’s a kzin. It looks as if he’s taking her to the Patriarchy. Our pioneering hyperdrive expert!”

  “Any ship that took off from here would be too small for interstellar travel.”

  “But it could meet a bigger one.”

  “We’ve monitored Vaemar pretty carefully. And taken other precautions. There’s been no hint of anything like that.”

  “Apart from reversing the kzinti’s whole military position, it would get him back his place beside the Riit throne. Perhaps position him for a bid for the Patriarchy! Why should we trust him to be more loyal to us than to his own species? Especially when the reward could be so enormous? I know policy was to trust him as much as possible, but perhaps we’ve put too much temptation in his way. Or perhaps it was just a mistake to trust a ratcat!”

  “That hangs together very nastily,” said Cumpston. “I have just one small ray of hope that you’re wrong. It was we who sent him here. He couldn’t have planned a secret rendezvous with a spacecraft…unless it had been waiting for a long time.”

  “And unless he manipulated us into sending him. He knew he’d be coming this way sooner or later. I’ve given Defense Headquarters an emergency alert. The next thing is to get after them, anyway. But Vaemar doesn’t feel like that to me.”

  “I put some trust in someone when all appearances were against her a little while ago,” said Guthlac. “In a ruined hamlet beyond Gerning in a storm. I haven’t regretted it. I’ll try to believe the best of Vaemar yet, but I’m putting out an emergency alert to Defense HQ all the same.”

  “We should have stopped her associating with him so. That’s obvious enough with hindsight.”

  “Dimity is an Asperger’s. A superlatively high-fun
ctioning one. When she makes up her mind to do a thing the only way you can stop her is by breaking that mind.

  “She can be killed any time,” Guthlac went on. “There’s an implant in her that can be activated remotely. An idea we got from the kzin zzrou. ARM insisted on it.”

  “Arthur! We’ve got to get her back!”

  “I know!”

  “You mustn’t let ARM know what’s happened! Not yet!”

  “Michael, there are a lot of things neither of us let ARM know about. And I don’t mean your peculiarly-colored bird or a certain Earth flower with green petals. Try to hang onto hope.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I don’t know. ARM was subtler than the kzinti about such things. Nanobots in the food. But Vaemar’s got one too. ARM is not trusting. It wasn’t my idea or orders, but…” Guthlac suddenly smacked his own head. “Idiot! How do we win wars with generals like me? I had completely forgotten! They both have locators in them anyway! Standard VIP models. We can read them from the car!”

  “Come on!”

  Calling Karan, they turned and headed back out of the granite maze. The thunderbird launched itself at them from the rock wall. Half as big again as the ones Dimity and Vaemar had killed, its vast striking beak knocked Guthlac sprawling. The tough fabric of his coverall saved him from being torn apart, but had the thing snapped its beak it would have crushed his bones in an instant. Karan was a blur of rippling orange muscle as she leapt at it. Screaming, two more thunderbirds launched themselves from the rock wall.

  Karan severed the first thunderbird’s neck with her fangs and claws before the beak could seize her. Cumpston, getting his beamer up just in time, shot another in the chest. The third sprang into the air again, and came down on their car. Guthlac fired at the bird and hit the car. Its tough materials could normally have withstood far worse hits, but the unlocked door flew open. Either the beam or the avian’s great kicking legs activated the controls, and car and avian tangled together shot fifty feet into the air, rolled, dived, and crashed into the rock wall.