The Man-Kzin Wars 06

by Larry Niven

  Yankee laconically referred to the MacDonald-Rishshi Peace Treaty as the “Truce.” For the first year of the Peace the Erfolg’s seventy man crew had patrolled kzinti worlds until forced into a less active role by a newer class of smaller and more economical (and less warworthy) UNSN patrol vessels. But Blumenhandler, with Wunderlander paranoia, had managed to keep the Erfolg out of retirement. She was war ready.

  As Yankee boarded the ship through his shuttle’s umbilical he remained apprehensive. Admiral Blumenhandler sympathized with a military readiness that went beyond patrol duty; but were his men as imaginative? Yankee was met by a thin young officer with an adam’s apple and the nametag “Claukski” who took him through a cramped corridor that was stuffed with pipes and boxes and leads; most of them from the ‘26 retrofitting. The officer, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, apologized solicitously for the inconvenience, pointing out possible hazards as they moved along. But where else could they have found room for new equipment but in the corridors? Military vessels are not designed for comfort.

  He was led to a claustrophobic gunnery stuffed with five companions of Claukski, most of them too young to have been veterans of the war Clandeboye expected bland camaraderie and a stash of beer but they seemed to know him and to be more interested in discussing his writings than in drinking. Such enthusiasm was heartening. Better yet, they were eager to show him what mischief they had been up to.

  The Erfolg’s battle stations were spliced into a simulator that could put the whole ship into game mode. They showed him software “saves” of recreations of the original Battle of R’hshssira, which had been refought with full crew participation. The tactics which had evolved from their practices were a radical departure from standard UNSN procedures.

  Brilliant. Yet Yankee was depressed by their approach Like hundreds of generations of military men before them they were preparing themselves to fight the Last War.

  He tried to express his concern diplomatically. He had no intention of dampening such ardor. “Haven’t you been unnecessarily restricting yourselves? Suppose war broke out again, might not UNSN ships themselves be equipped with gravitic polarizers? There is some effort being extended in that direction. War is never static.”

  Six men just grinned and immediately showed him a wilder scenario. Ship specifications—from firepower to performance—were modifiable with an initialization table. Already tactics were available for several specification upgrades. The recorded simulations on the battle screens appealed to Yankee’s trainer instincts and he found himself grinning, too.

  Ensign Tam Claukski, the youth with the adam’s apple, was the first to sober. “We have a big problem we all want to discuss with you, sir.”

  They did have a big problem, he thought—they hadn’t equipped their kzinti warcraft with hypershunt capabilities. That would turn out to be a major oversight if their intention was to ready themselves for some future war “Problems? What kind?”

  “When we tried to simulate a kzinti hyperdrive fleet we ran into major problems with our model.”

  Yankee was not used to naval types who could accept the obvious, and it startled him, suddenly, to find out that with these boys he was not going to have to cajole and convince. They already knew. He felt relief. He nodded and let Claukski continue.

  “It turns out that our basic model is an efficient tactical analyzer, but that is more by accident than by design. In it we know everything about our own fleet and what help we can bring in from outside the battle. Without hyperdrive the kzin are limited to what ships they have on site. That makes the number of unknowns manageable. Tactics dominates over strategy.” Tam made a face. “Assuming that the kzinti have hyperdrive changes everything. It connects any local battle to the whole Patriarchy. The number of unknowns, escalates. Strategy begins to dominate tactics. We thought...” The ensign trailed off. Obviously what he had once thought had proved incorrect. They were all waiting for Yankee to comment.

  He said nothing. He thought. The Patriarchy already had a distributed military apparatus. With sub-light transport, centralized response to a threat was impossible. And so kzinti factories were everywhere. The ratcats had outposts in places where no hyperdrive-based civilization would bother to maintain a base. Thus given hyperdrive technology the kzin inherited an automatic advantage. They were immune to a centralized knock-out blow. At the same time they could mount an offensive from many directions. Not an easy threat to counter

  “Tm impressed with your tactical know-how. What you want from me, I suppose, is to teach you the art of Grand Strategy”

  The look in their eyes said yes.

  Yankee sighed. “I’m a poor excuse for a strategist. But I suppose we could work on it together.” Just the thought delighted him. This trip was going to be a pleasure.

  Eight days later, the Wunderland crewed frigate approached its target star cautiously R’hshssira still a point of red. Military junk from the old battle tumbled on the telescopic screens, each a potential ambush. No hurry. They had days to scan and evaluate. It would be kzin strategy to lure them as deeply inside the singularity as possible before attacking. The sensors showed nothing from a distance, no power spots, no sudden acceleration changes. It did look like a dead system. Circumspectly they moved in closer. Still nothing.

  Only when this runt of a stillborn star was hugely round in the sky did they spot a whole ship. It rose over the roiling reds of R’hshssira, clearly of kzinti design, spherical, huge, motherly, with all the grappling accouterments of a floating drydock. The Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch. They knew what they were looking for.

  The Wunderkind captain kept weapons trained from a distance while adjusting velocity

  “Wrong radiation characteristics for an active ship,” said one of Yankee’s men from the sensor couch.

  The captain was now asking for suggestions. He craned his head toward Yankee. “How close do you want to get?”

  “It’s all right to keep your distance. No hurry. She looks dead. But I’m not assuming she is dead.” She could be dead but boobytrapped. He was hoping for crazy luck, hoping that the Shark would be there in the Bitch’s womb. He didn’t expect that kind of luck.

  They tried hailing the ship on all kzinti communication frequencies. Nothing. If she wasn’t dead, she was playing dead.

  “We could send our kzin over,” came a voice in their helmet phones.

  “Not a chance!” Yankee snapped. “That hairy fighting machine stays confined!” He sent over two marines in armor with robot inspection ants, little hand-sized creatures that were programmed with the curiosity to crawl everywhere and record everything.

  They were three hours reaching the ship and boarding. It was routine—but the long suspense kept everyone on edge and on alert.

  “All their shuttles are gone,” reported one marine in a tinnyvoice. Five minutes later the second marine reported that there was no Shark and no air. That was the last move they made for eight hours while the robo-ants sniffed about, crawled in holes, zoomed down corridors, disassembled light fixtures and air ducts. Bits of news came in from ant sensors. No food stores. Hibernation locks empty. Fuel tanks empty. Atmosphere rechargers dead. Gravitic polarizers dead. The ship had been abandoned.

  Only then did Yankee take the trip himself. His team’s headlamps found things that the robo-ants were not programmed to sense. In the airlock, which had no air to recycle, some desiccated leaves turned out to be Jotok fodder. On the floor of the empty spacesuit locker, Yankee found a kzin’s currying brush, worn out at one end, still clogged with kzin fur.

  Bolder penetration took them for a quick glide along cold corridors of unhoused pipes and snaking power cables and gravityless catwalks. Their marine escorts loped ahead of them, lamps off, weapons ready, covering each other, signaling them forward, signaling them to freeze. When the group came to the unpowered bridge, its outer-armor was rolled open to the sky with interior layout illuminated dandy by the ruddy rays of R’hshssira. White beamlight from human
heads moved silhouettes across the command center. It was jerry-rigged for operation by one kzin. Interesting. The ship had been ordered into battle with a full crew.

  A scanning search by beamlight across the shadows found a porcelain fragment of a long-necked bird that had once been part of a unique Wunderland piece—a war trophy which had not survived the war. Navigation instruments were set up ready to be used. The team’s kzinti electronics expert found the command brains, wiped. In the snack-bar there wasn’t even a stick of kzinti jerky. Monkey curiosity caused Yankee to punch a button that normally provided drink. Nothing. But underneath the tap was the top of a human child’s skull that had been converted to a drinking cup.

  Moving on, they located the main machine shops. Some of the tools had been ripped out. The quality of the tools was amazing. But that’s the way the kzinti fought. They couldn’t call home for spare parts. They had to build them while the battle was going on. These tools weren’t instruments for mass production. They were versatile, designed to turn out one of a kind of anything.

  “Hey, sir. Come here. Some of this stuff isn’t kzinti scrap.”

  He swung his beam toward the stalls and went in. They were looking at racks for old parts to be rebuilt or replaced.

  His engineer was pointing with his beam. “These neatly cataloged pieces are right off the Shark. They’re badly damaged pieces. Frame, not motor. The Shark must have taken some heavy hits. It wouldn’t be operational after that kind of damage.”

  “Could the crew have survived?”

  “Dunno. You can die by breathing a rose petal into your windpipe and you can be standing in just the right place when a nuke goes off. The Shark was the smallest hyperdrive ship made. There would be injuries.”

  He was trying to imagine his cousin under attack. She had survived. His kzin had verified that. But how much did the kzinti know about healing humans? How much did they care? How long would an injured prisoner last? A day? A week? Sixteen years?

  Reluctantly he turned back to the tools. He loved his cousin. Still she wasn’t his primary concern—never forget the hypershunt. The tools all about him were of extraordinary sophistication; given clever hands, were they enough to rebuild a hyperdrive motor? He doubted it, but you never knew.

  Leave that question for a later team. Now there was a ship to explore.

  They explored. One tiny room was equipped as a torture chamber. A hot needle of inquiry Restraints. Nerve-stim. Stretchers. Desocketers. A strip skin-flayer. He had to leave the room in a rage. Poor Nora. Then, in what had once been a storage area, human-sized cages were locked together. His horror increased.

  In another place they found slave quarters with the kind of climbing-bar furniture you might associate with tree dwellers. Jotoki again. Yankee nodded. ‘That solves the mystery of how one kzin could operate a ship like this. He had a Jotoki crew. Does anyone know anything about those beasts?”

  “Major Clandeboye, sir.” The voice of one of the marines resonated from his phones. “On your starboard, sir. Take a look at this.”

  It looked like a prison. It hadn’t been built with the ship. Extra plates had been welded into place, armor plating. The surface was plastered with alarm electronics.

  “Well, well, well,” said Yankee. “Whatever fiend was held in there was something that terrified the fur off a kzin.” He laughed. “Maybe we shouldn’t open it.”

  “There’s no air in there, sir. Nothing could be alive.”

  “If it would scare a kzin, maybe it doesn’t need air.”

  “Sir, this is no time for ghost stories. I’m edgy enough as it is.”

  One of the marines replied, a touch of a smile to his voice. “Nothin to worry a man. By the size of the room— whatever’s in there—it just cain’t be no bigger’n ten kzin, if that”

  “Can you crack it?” Yankee asked his electronics man. He was staring at the floor-to-ceiling lock.

  The men waited silently, listening to each other breathe over the phones while their expert probed with his instruments.

  “Sorry sir. That’s secure. From both sides. Maybe it’s not a jail. Maybe it’s a vault. We need a safe cracker. Gonna have to bring in some torches.”

  A weapons man popped over from the frigate and cut a neat hole out of the door, leaving hinges and lock in place. The width of the cut was less than a millimeter and its depth was regulated by a sonic signal so that the electron cutting beam wouldn’t fly what was inside. Yankee made the mistake of having to look in first. He was rudely moved out of the way by a marine sergeant. “Sir, where there’s monsters, its my job to show head.” He took a peek in, weapon at the ready. “Finagle’s Dropping Jaw!” was all the sergeant could say.

  Yankee got the second look. It was a woman’s boudoir.

  He just stood there in the hole not believing what he was seeing. It’s her, he thought.

  He recognized Lieutenant Argamentine’s taste in furniture. She adored the rococo excesses of the eighteenth century’s Ancien Régime which she tended to combine with the excesses of the late twenty-second century Turbulence style, Here was a Turbulent—Rococo bed with kzinti touches, even a hint of the classical baroque. It had a satin canopy and adjustable gravity controls. On the headboard golden cherubs flexed their bows in the direction of the King of France and his bevy of acrobatic mistresses. The king sat on a Roman throne.

  Trance and Dance musicians clambered up the bedposts in a frenzy. Some of them had human heads on the bodies of Kzin animals. A chimera with a rat’s tail and eagle’s wings carried his violin like a bandolier while he climbed. At the top of the posts this frantic ascent was blocked by seashells upon which stood bosomed caryatids who held up the canopy.

  One tended not to notice the rest of the room. There was an expansive futon for lounging. A deep pile rug. An inlaid, two drawer commode. A mirror with rococo frame. A small secretary.

  Cousin Nora had spent more than a few of her teenage hours telling him what kind of furniture her husband was going to have to buy her. She had a file, thicker than her thumb, of 2D images collected from decorating mags and catalogs. She had disks of 3D display images that you could zap to change the inlay trim or furniture color or wood finish or upholstery pattern or cabinet style. In wartime one dreamed of peace.

  Through thick gloves he tried to examine the delicate secretary by concentrated beamlight. Where had such pieces come from? No Wunderland cabinet maker had ever assembled anything like it! He pulled down his helmet scope and in magnification saw foamed metal! Plastic of the kind that appealed to kzinti engineers looking for lightweight and strength. Somehow the foam had been laid down in layers that came out like wood grain. The inlay pattern was an exuberant Flemish floral design. All of it must have been made in the Bitch’s machine shop. Still—the time! Ah, but on a subluminal voyage there was always time.

  He well knew that his Nora was a con artist—but her magic was for men. How could it work on a kzin? He went to the bedposts. Nora wouldn’t have known how to carve like that in metal, nor had the patience, nor the models. They showed evidence of having been variable-form extruded, not carved. Probably from a 3D template based on Nora’s sketches. An alien mind had fleshed out the template. The animal bodies weren’t human, weren’t even of Earth. Less of Earth, even, than the gargoyles of the French cathedrals. Why would a kzin have done this for her? And at the same time held her in such a formidable brig? Whoever had built such a prison had both been terrified of Nora Argamentine and deeply under her spell.

  It didn’t make sense. The Nora he knew would stand on a stool and scream if you brought a ratcat into the same room with her. For that matter, Yankee knew that if he ever had to face an armed kzin at anything less than a couple of light-minutes, he would stand on a stool and scream.

  It got worse. The marines found the neural lab—almost stripped of its equipment, but not of its displays. The electronic records were gone. Yet conveniently near the operating table was a collected bundle of notes on what kzinti used for paper.
The script was meticulous. This kzin jotted down real-time remarks during his experiments. His comments were in chronological order.

  Back on the frigate their Wunderland kzinti specialist wasn’t optimistic about a translation. He had worked in the kzinti bureaucracy most of his adult life. “It’s technicalese. Even the technicalese of a standardized scientific language like English is hard to decode if you’re just a linguist. This is the Hero’s Tongue all right, and I can get the words and the dates and the sense of it—but the content of it is another matter. The chemical symbolism is all there—but we don’t really understand how they think about biochemistry. It’s like trying to read a scientific paper from Newton’s time. But the mere fact that we know it is chemistry and medicine gives us a leg up. We’ll figure out something. Don’t know how far we’ll get”

  The initial analysis did reveal that they were dealing with experiments on many different humans; one of them was Lieutenant Nora Argamentine. Her genetic makeup was on her military records—and whoever this kzin was he had been entering in his experiments genetic codes that belonged uniquely to Argamentine.

  “Can you tell what he’s been trying to do to her?”

  “Yeah, but I had to check it. Grow hair.”

  “What?”

  “He was adjusting her body to grow a full coat of fur. Don’t know the full outcome. The record ends suddenly, maybe when they left for Hssin.”

  Yankee wasn’t ready for the surface just yet. The evidence was that kzin and slaves had abandoned ship for residence on Hssin, and Yankee needed to know all he could find before having to stalk them through the wreckage of a dead city. If Nora was still alive down there he didn’t want her killed as a hostage just because of failed preparations.