by Dean Ing
“So now they're in a position to outproduce us. We have to keep our advantages in operational efficiency.”
“You play Go with masters, you get good,” the Belter said.
“No. It's academic whether the pussies are more or less intelligent than we. What's intelligence, anyway? But we've proven experimentally that they're culturally and genetically less flexible. Man, when this war started we were absolute pacifists — we hadn't had so much as a riot in three centuries. We even censored history so that the majority didn't know there had ever been wars! That was less than a century ago, less than a single lifetime, and look at what we've done since. The pussies are only just now starting to smarten up about us.”
“This Chuut-Riit sounds as if he's… oh shit. Sir.”
A wide white grin. “Exactly. An exceptionally able ratcat. The Kzinti are less prone to either genius or stupidity than we are; they don't tolerate eccentrics, duel them to death, usually. But here they've got a goddamn genius in a position to knock sense into their heads.”
“He has to go.”
The flatlander stood and began striding back and forth behind the desk, gesturing with the cigar. Something more than the stink made Jonah's stomach clench.
“Covert operations is another thing we've had to reinvent, just lately. We need somebody who's good with spacecraft… a Belter, because the ones who settled the Serpent Swarm belt of Wunderland have stayed closer to the ancestral stock than the Wunderlanders downside. A good combat man who's proved himself capable of taking on Kzin at close quarters. And someone who's good with computer systems, because our informants tell us that is the skill most in demand by the Kzin on Wunderland itself.”
The general halted and stabbed toward Jonah with the hand that held the stub of burning weeds. “Last but not least, someone with contacts in the Alpha Centauri system.”
Jonah felt a wave of relief. A little relief, because the general was still grinning at him.
“Sir, I've never left—”
An upraised hand halted him. “Gracie. Tell Lieutenant Raines we're ready for her.”
A woman came in and saluted smartly, first the general and then Jonah; he recognized her from the holo. “I'd like you to meet Captain Matthieson.”
“God, what have you done to her?” Jonah asked the tall lieutenant as they grabbed stanchions and halted by the viewport nearest his ship.
The observation corridor outside the central graving dock of the base-asteroid was a luxury, but then, with a multi-megaton mass to work with and unlimited energy, the Sol-system military could afford that type of luxury. Take a nickel-iron rock. Drill a hole down the center with bomb-pumped lasers. Put a spin on the resulting tube, and rig large mirrors with the object at their focal points; the sun is dim beyond the orbit of Mars, but in zero-G you can build awfully big mirrors. The nickel-iron pipe heats, glows, turns soft as taffy, swells outward evenly, like cotton candy at a fair. Cooling, it leaves a huge open space surrounded by a thick shell of metal-rich rock. Robots drill the tunnels and corridors. Humans and robots install the power sources, life-support, gravity polarizers…
An enlisted crewman bounced by them horizontal to their plane of reference, sketching a sloppy salute as he twisted, hit the corner feet first and rebounded away. The air had the cool clean tang that Belters were used to, but with an industrial-tasting underlay of ozone and hot metal; the seals inside UNSN base Gibraltar were adequate for health but not up to Belt civilian standards. Even while he hung motionless and watched the technicians gutting his ship, some remote corner of Jonah's mind noted again that flatlanders had a nerve-wracking tendency to tolerate jury-rigged and barely adequate solutions. Simple self-respect demanded that the air one breathed be clean, damn it!
UNSN Catskinner hung in the vacuum chamber, surrounded by the flitting shapes of space-suited repair workers, compu-waldos and robots, torches that blinked blue-white, and a haze of detached fittings that hinted at the haste of the work. Beneath the mods and clutter the basic shape of the Dart-class attack boat still showed: massive fusion-power unit, tiny life-support bubble, asymmetric fringe of weapons and sensors designed for deep-space operation.
“What have you done to my ship?” Jonah asked again.
“Made some necessary modifications, Captain,” Raines replied. “The basic drive and armament systems are unaltered.”
Jonah nodded grudgingly. He could see the clustered grips for the spike-pods, featureless egg-shaped ovoid's, that were the basic weapon for light vessels, a one-megaton bomb pumping an X-ray laser. In battle they would spread out like the wings of a raptor, a pattern thousands of kilometers wide slaved to the computers in the control pod. The other weapons remained as well: fixed lasers, ball-bearing scatterers, railguns, particle-beam projectors, the antennae for stealthing and beam-deflection fields.
Unconsciously, the pilot's hands twitched; his reflexes and memory were back in the crashcouch, fingers moving infinitesimally in the lightfield gloves, holos feeding data into his eyes. Dodging with fusion powered feet, striking with missile fists, his Darts locked with the Kzinti Vengeful Slashers in a dance of battle that was as much like zero-G ballet as anything else…
“What modifications?” he asked.
“Grappling points for attachment to a ramscoop ship. Experimental. They're calling it the Yamamoto. The plan is that we ride piggyback until we reach the Wunderland system at high tau, having accelerated all the way. We drop off just this side of Alpha Centauri. They won't have much time to prepare for us at those speeds.” The ship would be on the heels of the wave-front announcing its arrival.
“Great,” he said sarcastically. “And just how are we supposed to stop?”
“Oh, that's simple,” Raines said. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, she smiled. Damn, she's good looking, Jonah thought with mild surprise. Better than good. How could I not notice?
“We ram ourselves into the sun.”
Several billion years before, there had been a species of sophonts with a peculiar ability. They called themselves (as nearly as humans could reproduce the sound) the Thrint; others knew them as Slavers. The ability amounted to an absolutely irresistible form of telepathic hypnosis, evolved as a hunting aid in an ecosystem where most animals advanced enough to have a spinal cord were at least mildly telepathic. This was a low-probability development, but in a universe as large as ours anything possible will occur sooner or later. On their native world, Thrintun could give a subtle prod to a prey-animal, enough to tip its decision to come down to the waterhole. The Thrint evolved intelligence as an additional advantage. After all, their prey had millions of years to develop resistance.
Then a spaceship landed on the Thrint homeworld. Its crew immediately became slaves. Absolutely obedient, absolutely trustworthy, willing and enthusiastic slaves. Operating on nervous systems that had not evolved in an environment saturated with the Power, any Thrint could control dozens of sophonts. With the amplifiers that slave-technicians developed, a Thrint could control an entire planet. Slaves industrialized a culture in the hunting-band stage in a single generation; controlled by the Power, in a few generations more slaves built an interstellar empire covering most of a galaxy.
Slaves did everything, because the Thrint had never been a very intelligent species, and once loose with the Power they had no need to think. Eventually they met, and thought they had enslaved, a very clever race indeed, the tnuctipun. The revolt that eventually followed resulted in the extermination of every tool-using sentient in the Galaxy, but before it did the tnuctipun made some remarkable things…
“A Slaver stasis field?” he said. Despite himself, awe showed in his voice. One such field had been discovered on Earth, then lost. Later, one more on a human-explored world. Three centuries of study had found no slightest clue concerning their operating principles; they were as incomprehensible as a molecular-distortion battery would have been to Thomas Edison. Monkey-see monkey-do copies had been made, each taking more time and expense th
an the Gibraltar. So far exactly two had functioned.
“Uh-mmm, give the captain a big cigar; right first time.”
Jonah shuddered, remembering the flatlander's smoke. “No, thanks.”
“Too right, Captain. Just a figure of speech.”
“Call me Jonah, we're going to be cramped enough on this trip without poking rank-elbows in each other's ribs.”
“Jonah. The Yamamoto skims through the system, throwing rocks.” At .999 of C, missiles needed no warheads. The kinetic energies involved made the impacts as destructive as antimatter. “We go in as an off course rock. Course corrections, then on with the stasis field, go ballistic, use the outer layer of the sun for breaking down to orbital speeds.”
Nothing outside its surface could affect the contents of a Slaver field; let the path of the Catskinner stray too far inward and they would spend the rest of the lifespan of the universe at the center of Alpha Centauri's sun, in a single instant of frozen time. For that matter, the stasis field would probably survive the re-contraction of the primal monobloc and its explosion into a new cosmic cycle… he forced his mind away from the prospect.
“And we're putting in a Class-VII computer system.”
Jonah raised a brow. Class-VII systems were consciousness-level; they also went irredeemably insane sometime between six months and a year after activation, as did any artificial entity complex enough to be aware of being aware.
“Our… mission won't take any longer than that, and it's worth it.” A shrug. “Look, why don't we hit a cafeteria and talk some more — really talk. You're going to have briefings running out of every orifice before long, but that isn't the same.”
Jonah sighed, and stopped thinking of ways out of the role for which he had been “volunteered.” This was too big to be dodged, far and away too big. Two stasis fields in the whole Sol system; one guarding United Nations Space Navy H.Q., the other on his ship. His ship, a Dart-Commander like ten thousand or so others, until this week. How many Class-VII computers? Nobody built consciousness-level systems any more, except occasionally for research; it simply wasn't cost-effective. And if you built them to be more intelligent than genius humans they went noncomp so quickly you couldn't prove they had ever been aware. A human-level machine gave you a sentient entity with a six-month lifespan that could do arithmetic in its head. Ordinary computers could do more — and for thinking people were much cheaper. It was a dead-end technology, like direct interfacing between human neural systems and computers. And they had revived it, for a special-purpose mission.
“Shit,” Jonah mumbled, as they came to a lock and reoriented themselves feet-down. There was a gravity warning strobing beside it; they pushed through the airscreen curtain and into the dragging acceleration of a one-G field. The crewfolk about them were mostly flatlander now, relaxed in the murderous weight that crushed their frames lifelong.
“Naacht wh'r?” Ingrid asked. In Wunderlander, but the Sol-Belter did not have to know that bastard offspring of Danish and Plattdeutsch to sense the meaning.
“I just realized… hell, I just realized how important this must all be. If the high command were willing to put that much effort into this, willing to sacrifice half of our most precious military asset, throw in a computer that costs more than this base complete with crew… then they must have put at least equal effort into searching for just the right pilot. There's simply no point in trying to get out of it. Tanj. I need a drink.”
“Take your grass-eater stink out of my air!” Chuut-Riit shrieked. He was standing, looking twice his size as his orange-red pelt bottled out, teeth exposed in what an uninformed human might have mistaken for a grin, naked pink tail lashing. The reference to smell was purely metaphorical, since the conversation was 'cast. Which was as well; he was pouring aggression-pheromones into the air at a rate that would have made a roomful of adult male Kzinti nervous to the point of lost control.
The holo images on the wall before him laid themselves belly-down on the decking of their ship and crinkled their ears, their fur lying flat in propitiation.
“Leave the recordings and flee, devourers of your own kittens!” screamed the Kzinti governor of the Alpha Centauri system. The Hero's Tongue is remarkably rich in expressive insults. “Roll in your own shit and mate with sthondats!” The wall blanked, and a light blinked in one corner as the data was packed through the link into his private files.
Chuut-Riit's fur smoothed as he strode around the great chamber. It stood open to the sky, beneath a near-invisible dome that kept the scant rain of this area off the kudlotlin-hide rugs. They were priceless imports from the home world. The stuffed matched pair of Chunquen on a granite pedestal were souvenirs acquired during the pacification of that world. He looked at them, soothing his eyes with the memory-taste of a successful hunt, then at other mementos. Wild smells drifted in over thin walls that were crystal-enclosed sandwiches of circuitry. In the distance something squalled hungrily. The palace-preserve-fortress of a planetary governor, governor of the richest world to be conquered by Kzinti in living memory. Richest in wealth, richest in honor… if the next attack on the human homeworld was something more than a fifth disaster.
“Secretariat,” he rasped. The wall lit.
A human looked up from a desk, stood and came to attention. “Henrietta,” the Kzin began, “hold my calls for the rest of the day. I've just gotten the final download on the Fourth Fleet fiasco, and I'm a little upset. Run it against my projections, will you?”
“Yes, Chuut-Riit,” he said — no, God devour it, she, I've got to start remembering human females are sentient. At least he could tell them apart without smelling them, now. Even distinguish between individuals of the same subspecies. There are so many types of them!
“I don't think you'll find major discrepancies.”
“That bad?” the human said, with a closed curve of the lips; the locals had learned that barring their teeth at a Kzin was not a good idea. The expression was called a “smile,” Chuut-Riit reminded himself. Betokening amusement, or friendliness, or submission. Which is it feeling? Born after the Conquest Fleet arrived here. Reared from a cub in the governor's palace, superbly efficient… but what does it think inside that ugly little head?
“Worse, the” — he lapsed into the Hero's Tongue, since no human language was sufficient — “couldn't apply the strategy properly in circumstances beyond the calculated range of probable response.”
It was impossible to set out too detailed a plan of campaign, when communication took over four years. His fur began to bristle again, and he controlled his reaction with a monumental effort of will. I need to fight something, he thought.
“Screen out all calls for the next sixteen hours, unless they're Code VI or above.” A thought prompted at him. “Oh, it's your offspring's naming-day next week, isn't it?”
“Yes, Chuut-Riit.” Henrietta had once told him that among pre-Conquest humans it had been a mark of deference to refer to a superior by title, and of familiarity to use names. His tail twitched. Extraordinary. Of course, humans all had names, without having to earn them. In a sense, they're assigned names as we are rank-titles, he thought.
“Well, I'll drop by at the celebration for an hour or so and bring one of my cubs.” That would be safe enough if closely supervised.
“We are honored, Chuut-Riit!” The human bowed, and the Kzin waved a hand to break contact.
“Valuable,” he muttered to himself rising and pacing once more. Humans were the most valuable subject-species the Kzin had yet acquired. Or partially acquired, he reminded himself. Most Kzin nobles on Wunderland had large numbers of human servants and technicians about their estates, but few had gone as far as he in using their administrative talents.
“Fools,” he said in the same undertone; his Kzin peers knew his opinion of them, but it was still inadvisable to get into the habit of saying it aloud. “I am surrounded by fools.” Humans fell into groups naturally; they thought in terms of organization. The remote ancestors of
Kzin had hunted in small packs, the pre-humans in much larger ones. Stupidity to deny the evidence of senses and logic, he thought with contempt. These hairless monkeys have talents we lack.
Most refused to admit that, as though it somehow diminished the Hero to grant that a servant could do what the master could not. Idiocy. Chuut-Riit yawned, revealing a pink-red-and-white expanse of ridged pallet, tongue and fangs, his species' equivalent of a dismissive shrug. Is it beneath the Hero to admit that a sword extends his claws, or a computer his mind? With human patience and organizational talent at the service of the Heroes, there was nothing they could not accomplish! Even monkey inquisitiveness was a trait not without merit, irritating though it could be.
He pulled his mind away from vistas of endless victory, a hunt ranging over whole spiral arms; that was a familiar vision, one that had driven him to intrigue and duel for this position. To use a tool effectively, you had to know its balance and heft, its strengths and weaknesses. Humans were more gregarious than Kzinti, more ready to identify with a leader-figure. But to elicit such cooperation, you had to know the symbol-systems that held power over them. I must wear the mask they can see. Besides which, their young are… what is their word? Cute. I will select the cub carefully, one just weaned, and stuff it full of meat first. That will be safest.
Chuut-Riit intended to take his offspring with him to earth, after the conquest, the best of them. Early exposure to humans would give them an intuitive grasp of the animals that he could only simulate through careful study. With a fully-domesticated human species at their disposal, his son's, son's, sons could even aspire to… no, unthinkable. And not necessary to think of, that was generations away.
Besides, it would take a great deal of time to properly tame the humans. They were useful already, but far too wild, too undependable, too various. A millennium of culling might be necessary before they were fully shaped to the purpose.
