Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - XIV

by Larry Niven

  “They’re teachers?”

  “They train children, yes, but they train anything. Animals, plants—the plant that produced the sutures I used on you, for instance. Didn’t hurt coming out, did it? When we landed it started out as flax, and the fibers would have soaked up some of your blood, which would have clotted. We have bad stories about those days. There were people hurt in the last landing.” He looked grim.

  Persoff could just imagine. “How many landing craft did you have working?”

  “One,” said Tom.

  Nobody added anything to that. Persoff sought anything to say that didn’t involve asking if anybody had ended up being left on the Galaxias. They would learn that anyway, if McCabe’s plan worked. He remembered about the trees. “I wanted to talk about—”

  “They’re here!” someone shouted from down on the beach, and most of the people around him left. Six remained.

  The woman who’d spoken first said, “It’ll take a while to sort out protocol. Meanwhile, do you prefer Blacker or Wells?”

  “For what?”

  “Sex. It’s getting really difficult to find partners with low consanguinity, and yours is zero. So, Blacker or Wells?”

  “Uh, Newmar, as a matter of fact. She’s our ship’s master at arms.”

  This was greeted with glum expressions. The woman who’d spoken just before the last said, “You have female crewmen.”

  “Nine, in a current complement of seventy. We lost six men when your ship fired on us.”

  “Oh hell,” she said. “I don’t think anyone expected to be found by anyone but the kzinti. I’m awfully sorry about that.” There was a chorus of agreement.

  Lacking a useful comment—“me too” seemed tactless—he said, “What do I call you?”

  She looked stunned for a moment. “You don’t know our names, of course! I’m Sophia, this is Betsy, that’s Liz, she’s Susan, and they’re Eva and Donna.” She’d alternated between types, which he took to be Blackers and Wellses. Blackers seemed more intense, Wellses more amiable.

  “Hey,” said Betsy, who’d spoken to him first, “their ship only had a complement of seventy-six.”

  “Seventy-seven. And forty dolphin fighter pilots. Those died when the kzin ship blew.” They’d been the reason the Yorktown hadn’t included any Wunderkzin, since dolphins became insanely hostile in the presence of kzinti. There had been training incidents.

  Betsy said, “But the only way that could be enough people is if you have hyperdrive.” They all went quiet.

  “We do.”

  It was half an hour or so before he had another quiet moment. By that time they’d learned more than he’d realized he knew about hyperdrive and hyperwave. The first interruption came when a large man—no, a man the size of Tom or Ron, who had built himself up with exercise—came over, shook hands without using a neurotically insecure bonecrusher, and said, “I’m Henry, currently the senior Hale. Understand your ship’s damaged. We’ll be glad to help. How many of us can you take back on this trip?”

  “It depends on whether we can fix the Galaxias once we’re in orbit. My storesmaster thinks we probably can, and we have better technology than when it was built, so conceivably thousands. How many of you are there to take back?”

  Henry looked at Sophia, who said, “Last count was four thousand nine hundred and three, breeding and sterile. Call it five thousand until we can check.”

  “I have a crewman who says the Galaxias was designed to hold up to six thousand,” Persoff said.

  “That was before the battle,” said Henry.

  Sophia recited: “‘Ship’s original complement was three hundred and two, with thirty-eight survivors after the collision. Thirty-one were in coldsleep and had to be awakened via emergency protocol, resulting in impaired cognition. The remaining seven included the two stowaways, who were instrumental in getting the Galaxias back in working order and the awakened into functional condition, respectively. When the ship reached a system with an adaptable planet, the only survivor of the original mission was the pilot. He died bringing the last of the supplies and the ship’s complement, then numbered one hundred and three, to the surface. He was the only casualty of the ferry trips.” She looked at Persoff and smiled. “That was Stuart William Denver. It was by his order that records were kept of accomplishments, and full acknowledgement given to stowaways Marion Johnson and Russelle Wells, without whose work none of us would have lived to get here. Stuart with a ‘u,’ Marion with an ‘o,’ Russelle with a final ‘e.’ The distinctions are made because one name derives from a profession, and both other names were then considered sexually ambiguous.”

  Persoff nodded, wishing he could think of something sufficiently respectful to say about that pilot. Then he frowned. “Johnson, Denver, Hale, Wells, Blacker, and Schafer make six,” he said. “Who was the seventh survivor?”

  “Foote,” said a voice from outside the firelight. An old-looking woman stepped forward, propping herself up on two canes. “James Foote.”

  “Foote with a final ‘e,’” said Sophia.

  “He financed the Galaxias,” said the old woman. “He was a planner.”

  “One man paid for that thing himself?” Persoff said, thinking of the Cyclopean ship he’d seen so briefly.

  The old woman smiled. “He was a good planner. My name is Eden. Currently I’m the senior Foote. There are seldom more than eight or nine of us. Everyone else is good at some form of implementation, but original planning is too abstruse.”

  “Then I guess you’re the one I need to talk with about cutting the trees,” he said.

  Everyone else had been quiet, but up to then they’d been breathing. It got quieter.

  “Out of the question,” Eden said. “Those are our history. The first of them were planted by the Pilot’s own hand.”

  “The thing is, to get off the planet we’ll need to build a launch catapult.”

  “Do it on another island.”

  “We can’t move the power plant off this one.”

  “We’ll help you make others. There may not be much smeltable iron, but there’s sure plenty of thorite.”

  “All the other islands are volcanic.”

  “There are ways to drain off the magma, we’ve just never gone to the trouble.”

  “They’ll take time.”

  “We’ve waited a couple hundred years so far.”

  “Goddammit, we’re forty years overdue on our mission already!” Persoff bellowed, then shut up, ashamed.

  She frowned. “What’s your mission?”

  “We were supposed to attack the kzin home system, but we were attacked before we got there and flung this way when their gravity planer blew.”

  “Just like us,” said Eva.

  Eden said, “You mean, you need to cut the trees to beat the kzinti?”

  He actually felt the air go out of him. “Uh, well, yes.”

  “Then cut the trees,” she said, and her voice broke. She turned to Henry and said, “Go tell the rest of the Hales, and make sure everyone’s at the first trees, first thing, morning after tomorrow. Captain Persoff, there’s something we’ll want to do before you start cutting. It’s going to take us at least a few days. Will that delay you, or are there other steps you can take while we’re doing that?”

  Things were changing too fast for him. “I doubt we’d be able to start cutting for weeks,” he said.

  “Good. Then we can do this properly. If you don’t mind, Captain, it would be better for your nerves if you were back with your ship while the news is spread. I have arrangements to make as well.”

  “It was out of the question, but now we can cut them? Just like that?”

  She gave him a look that made him wonder if he’d make it to his car, but all she said was, “Yes, Captain, just like that. Be at the first trees on time if you want to know the story.”

  When he took the car up, he saw hundreds of campfires below. The entire population must have come—and if they never cut the trees, then th
ey’d brought the firewood with them. Yet they were letting him cut them, if it meant striking against the kzinti.

  He set the car to take him back to the ship, wished he drank, and got on the radio. The tech on duty was Blackwell, who was evidently startled out of watchstanding trance by the call: “Is there an emergency, sir?”

  “No, I’m just coming back early. Pass the word that I’ve met the locals, and they are disposed to help.” Had he said “friendly,” it would have told his crew that he was under duress. “I did get a minor injury, but they treated it. I want Meier to look at their work. Some of the things they’ve come up with are likely to be useful.”

  “Yes, sir. May I speak freely, sir?”

  Wondering, he said, “Granted.”

  “The ship doesn’t feel right without you here, sir. Mister Thurston’s a good man to work for, but I’m glad you’re coming back early.”

  “Thanks, Blackwell. Fact is, I didn’t feel right being away from the ship. Persoff out.”

  Meier kept exclaiming under her breath, and finding more things to exclaim over with every instrument she used. “Did you know your jaw had been broken?” she finally said.

  “It was?”

  “By some kind of blunt impact. Right at what I would judge to be the weakest spot, if that’s not a silly thing to say about a jawbone. It’s had two pins put in, which the autodoc says are made of cellulose, gelatin, and powdered sterile bone. New bone is already growing as your cells digest the protein. The tooth they restored is pegged, but that seems to have been done out of sheer thoroughness, as it’s already taken root. And as for the scars, if I hadn’t seen you without them I’d swear they were weeks old. You’re absolutely right, I do want to see what else these people have got. It’s like they had to reinvent medicine.”

  “I think they did. I didn’t see any equipment from their shuttle, so I think it must have sunk in the last landing. I’d sure want to keep that stuff handy.”

  “It wouldn’t have worn out, either,” Tokugawa said from his bed. “Those old colony ships had equipment that was even better than required by law. And in those days you could go to the organ banks for making defective lightbulbs.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” Meier said.

  “He’s not,” Kershner said, walking in. “I hated the idea of organ banks when they thawed me out, so they had me read about one case. Indicator light on a paranoid’s autodoc burned out. He killed off an entire family, root and branch. I still hate organ banks, but I have to admit the only other thing that could possibly be appropriate for that degree of negligence, when you know how serious the risks are, is eternal damnation. Which is difficult to enforce. You need a demon on monitor duty, at least.”

  “They get the paranoid?” Persoff said.

  Kershner froze in place, mouth open, an odd habit he had when he couldn’t retrieve a piece of information. It could be disturbing, but he had fewer quirks than a lot of other ex-corpsicles. “I’m sure they must have, but I can’t call up the details. There was something weird about his case. But I was talking about the manufacturer. Three people went to the organ banks for negligent homicide. It was open and shut. One didn’t do maintenance on a monitor that supervised the filament composition, one was the middle manager who used to fire employees in quality inspection for failing too many products, and one was the interviewer who hired the manager and gave her instructions about keeping costs down. If any one of them had been doing a diligent job, the killer would have gone on being treated properly. What really capped it for the jury was that the ARMs investigated all the other lamps they’d sold over the same period, and found two more of inferior quality. We’re talking a specialty light here, made specifically for ’docs.” He frowned. “I wish I could remember—I do recall, the guy who did maintenance on the ’doc in question had to have some serious therapy. Totally blameless, but it was eating him up.”

  Kershner didn’t look much happier than the man he was discussing. “Did you have a report for me, Mr. Kershner?”

  Kershner came out of his funk and said, with a different kind of gloom, “We’ve got no spares for the hyperwave. It looks like when the railgun shot us, a piece of the bulkhead spalled through that locker. Since I have to use parts from the ’wave for redundant systems in the drive, we won’t be in contact with Earth until we get there.”

  Persoff considered, then said, “And after forty years the war may have been won already, and if we carry out our mission we may be starting another.” What a freemother. He carefully did not say that aloud.

  “I’m afraid so, sir.”

  “The people here hold the trees we have to cut in very high regard, and they’ve given permission based on the idea that it’ll help win the war.”

  “I’ll explain the situation to them, sir,” Kershner said.

  “Thank you, but it’s not your duty.”

  “Beg pardon, Captain, but it is my specialty. If I’m standing by, explaining the fine details as you refer them to me, it’ll look to them like you’re avoiding responsibility. I think it’d better if I explained before you said your piece.”

  “Are you trying to let me off the hook, Kershner?”

  The hypertech looked startled, then grinned. “Just this once, sir. It is your first time.”

  Meier and Tokugawa both made strangled noises, while Persoff just rolled his eyes. “Are you off watch, Kershner?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “Then go engage in optional activity,” Persoff said. “Consult McCabe if you’re not certain of the term. Dismissed.”

  He brought his crew to the beach as the locals were assembling for whatever they had planned. Full dress uniform, no exceptions. Tokugawa was still in a float chair, but Meier was able to get his blues around his neck brace. The only grumbling anyone did was the sort that was used to complain about the weather, since everyone understood what these people had agreed to give up.

  They thought they did, anyway.

  Persoff took his senior officers to where most of the orders were coming from, and addressed the elders there. “Before we go on, there’s something I need you to know. Even if everything works right, we may not be able to strike against the kzinti. It took us decades longer than planned to get here, and the war may be over by now. We can’t find out until we get to a human world, because we won’t have the hyperwave. Mr. Kershner can explain the technical details if you wish.”

  One very old man said, “Johnson. I can see a civilian vessel just carrying spares, but I would expect a fighting starship to be able to fabricate replacement parts for everything it used. Why can’t you fix the hyperwave?”

  Kershner stepped forward. “Sir, it isn’t practical to put something of that complexity aboard a vessel. The parts we need are of mixed composition, and have to be made to standards of molecular precision.”

  The Johnson—apparently The Johnson—nodded and said, “That’s to produce an effect that’s necessary for the thing to work.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kershner said, looking surprised.

  “What’s the effect?”

  Kershner gave a faint sigh and began explaining hyperwave physics in baby talk, as if he were describing it to a journalist.

  The old man stopped him after no more than fifteen seconds and said, “It sounds like you’re setting up a standing wave to maintain a constant peak pulse, because keeping the whole system at that power level will burn it out.”

  Kershner stopped dead, blinked about nine times, and said, “Yes.”

  “How big is it?”

  Kershner held up his thumb and forefinger a little ways apart.

  “The Blacker?” said The Johnson.

  An old woman said, “Yes?”

  “What’s the stuff for alloys in constant friction, very rare?”

  “Rhenium?”

  “That’s it, thanks—Why can’t you run the wave at full strength through a cubic foot or so of rhenium? There’s plenty of asteroids.”

  What Persoff knew about this su
bject he had mostly learned from journalists’ work, but it must have been a good idea, because Kershner got all excited. “That could work! People still think of rhenium as too rare to be used for most things, but you’re right, there’s lots of asteroids! How did you think of it?”

  “Captain Persoff described hyperdrive, and we spent yesterday discussing possible causes for the Blind Spot effect and working out implications. It seemed to us that in hyperspace, normal matter must be the local equivalent of a massless particle, which accounts for the standard speed.”

  “That’s right! Captain, permission to—”

  “Denied. It’ll wait until after we’ve attended the ceremony.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t mind,” said The Johnson.

  “Yes, we do,” said someone who must have been The Hale. “Captain Persoff, there’s been some discussion, and the general opinion is that the ship’s organics will have to be replaced. Since the trees have to be cut anyway, it’ll be best all around if they’re used for that. And we’d appreciate it if you could use everything from the first row there. Roots and all.”

  “Thank you, that’ll help a lot.” They were taking it a lot better than he’d dared hope.

  The Blacker stepped forward. In the moment before she spoke, Persoff had a chance to notice and realize a lot of things that he hadn’t fitted together before. To begin with, she was wearing something that actually looked sort of Polynesian: a necklace of long, sharp teeth. Old teeth. Kzinti teeth. He’d been assuming the Galaxias had merely fired, survived, and gotten thrown this way, but that had to be wrong: they knew what the kzinti called themselves, which meant they’d had prisoners, and they’d forced them to learn English, because they didn’t use kzin loan words. Near the Blacker there were other women, in hearing range but not close enough to interrupt, who were dressed in clinging outfits of orange fur, extremely worn in spots.

  He was suddenly very glad he hadn’t been able to bring any Wunderkzin. Something had happened back then, and these people made damned sure they remembered it.

  “Captain,” said The Blacker, “are you certain you wish to be part of this? It can be a strain even for us, and we grow up with it.”