The Man-Kzin Wars 06

by Larry Niven

  Grraf-Nig was a coward.

  · Chapter 21

  (2438 A.D.)

  The ship was in hyperspace. Major Clandeboye’s pilots were in command and beaming like kids in a drag race. Somehow the three of them had finagled the exchange. Nora and the children remained with them. All were safe from the two terrorizing kzin—giving them a spare room behind the cabin. Still, Yankee had a sense of foreboding. Hwass would never cool his hatred so easily. There could be a lethal joker somewhere. And if there was a joker, he had to find it—now.

  Nora’s life-monitors read out their signals—green. The kids’ monitors were in the green. Everyone was breathing in slow motion. The air was good, a little high in carbon dioxide but it always was on such a small ship. It was a little high on kzin body odor, too. It was the hibernation that worried him even though it did not involve freezing. This was a kzin technology and who knew how well it had been adapted to the human metabolism?

  He had to see Nora conscious. It was an obsession. And so he began revival procedures, slowly, carefully. Her temperature went up. Her heart rate gradually increased. Her breathing became deeper, less sluggish. All exactly as the yellow kzin had predicted. His claim was that humans couldn’t go under as deeply as kzin, and so revived more quickly. If the mechanical muscle toners were used, no physiotherapy would be needed. The mind drugs duplicated the refreshing functions of sleep but stabilized memory. They would wake up, disoriented, because of the time discontinuity but clear of the normal dulling load of saturated multitasking. At revival, colors would be bright, senses strong mind ready to focus on the first problem that presented itself.

  Too good to be true. The kzin, of course, had been using hibernation for thousands of years.

  When the monitors read normal, he lifted her out, mixtures of emotions tearing at him. He knew she was wounded but there was no sign of it in her sleeping form. Her nakedness embarrassed him but the toners required it. What horrified him was the fur. A light down swathed her face where a man had a beard. Her body was endowed with a rich auburn fur in the same places where fur might be found on a chimpanzee.

  He didn’t see her when she first awoke but when he did, he wasn’t looking into the eyes of a retarded woman, he was looking into calm serene eyes that scanned the cabin and became bewildered and then terrified. Before he could react she was in deep adrenaline flight. With kzin-swift reflexes she flashed to the safest corner, where she eyed him with a profound and hostile suspicion, arms ready to defend herself. It disoriented him. This was the cousin he had known all his life, her face older but still young—the same luxurious mane of hair, the same dimples, only the fur unnatural. Clearly she did not recognize him. He felt strangely snubbed—but that was absurd. He already knew that she had been mind-wiped.

  “Nora,” he said as gently as he could.

  She hissed at him. She was threatening him, ready to attack, afraid but brave.

  Jay spoke with a sudden quiet earnestness, calmly, no threat in his voice. “Yankee, you’ve let an angry tigress loose in here. Do something. Toss her some clothes.”

  “Nora, everything is all right.”

  By now Beany had also swiveled his couch. “It’s not all right, Yankee. You’ve never been a mother. She’s frantic with worry about her kids. She’s ready to kill us.”

  Yankee made a quick decision. He moved slowly to the hibernation cells. He’d have to show her that the children were all right. Her eyes watched every move he made. Carefully he activated the sequence to revive the oldest boy. It took forever. She never broke her battle stance. As soon as he could, he pulled out the drawer so that she could see her son breathing. Then he lifted the boy—he looked about eight years old—and gently seated him.

  ***

  Still as a statue, she snarled some kind of warning cry.

  Monkeyshine didn’t know where he was. W’kkai? But no. Some kind of a ship, closed in from the stars. Mellow Yellow’s fabled hyperspace? The strong smell of kzin. But it was not a kzin shuttle. His beloved Prrt was here and very afraid. And so were three monsters of the True Shape. No Mellow Yellow. Why wasn’t he able to make a connection between the past and the present? His mother’s warning cry was still ringing in his ears.

  He was on adrenaline alert, aware of everything, every threat, ready to pounce. The monster enemies in the True Shape were all bigger than he was, bigger than his helpless mother, one standing, two seated, all making soft slave-like sounds. They were surprised and not ready for him. That meant a very narrow window of attack. They were in freefall. He breathed deeply, remembering everything that Mellow Yellow had ever taught him. How to kill. He breathed again and spoke a simple Kdapt prayer to himself. These were enemies of the kzin. He leaped.

  In one graceful motion of grabbed hair he cracked the skulls of the pilots and on the rebound was strangling the third, elbow around his neck, crack, until he went unconscious. Warrior strength. He had already seen that the acceleration couches made perfect trusses. When the enemies woke up they would not be able to move. He made the Hero’s cry of triumph. Victory to the Patriarch! Then he went over to comfort his mother.

  ***

  When Yankee recovered consciousness with a sore windpipe he found himself hogtied. He could see everything. With monkey curiosity, Nora was examining the hibernation machines. Touching this, twiddling with that. When the boy tried to help her, she growled a warning at her son.

  “Nora. We’re your friends,” Yankee implored.

  She spit-threatened him. Carefully, remembering every gesture she had seen, she liberated each of her children— aged from about four to eight. By then the cabin was a howling pandemonium of seven savages and three officers strapped helplessly into their couches. Yankee tried out English on the warrior boy. Jay and Beany tried other languages. The naked boy replied in something that both did/didn’t sound like the Hero’s Tongue.

  Yankee, who was the only one of the three who understood anything in the Hero’s Tongue, told his pilots what he thought he had heard. “He was telling us that he’s going to kill us. I think he wants to know what has happened to his kzinti friends, if we don’t produce them, we’re lunch.”

  “Hey, guy. Can’t you see we’re human?” pleaded Jay Mazzetta

  “That’s the trouble; he does see that we are human.”

  Nora found the food. That was a very good distraction. All kids get hungry But the food wasn’t going to last very long. They were ninety days by hyperdrive from Barnard’s Starbase. The ship was too small. They were supposed to drop out of hyperspace, send out a hyperwave “yahoo” and be picked up by the Abraham Lincoln. In time they did drop out of hyperspace on automatic. They might drift there until the end of time.

  ***

  Monkeyshine was sure they had been in hyperspace when the blinds opened to the stars. He knew the sky of W’kkai both from space and from the ground. He had recently spent time with Mellow Yellow at the observatory He recognized the sky, scanning it with a professional interest. The brighter stars were more or less where they should be, some of the lesser ones were missing. They were not at W’kkai. He looked along the Pointers to find the most important star in the sky—Kzin. It was not there. It was not close. Ah, that meant they were near Kzin. His heart leaped. Maybe they had a chance!

  Carefully he scanned the sky looking for the brighter stars. He found one to the stern, bright, bright, which should not be there. That one would be Kzin! Now he knew his destination. His captives mewed in their funny sounds. He paid no attention. Hwass, the savior of Mellow Yellow, had told him about these sinners!

  For a moment he was caught up in a squabble with the babies. He assigned Fastanimal to organize their care. Furlessface, his twin, was uselessly clinging to her mother’s footsteps. His mother was a helpless nuisance but it was his duty to protect her. He watched her in amusement. She was poking around at the prisoners’ crotches to see their genitals. Monkeyshine growled a warning at her. Poking was one thing; liberation was another. She growled back
. Impudent mother!

  Now all he had to do was learn to pilot the ship. Long-Reach had taught him all the mechanics he knew. He was proud that he could repair anything even if he didn’t have five arms. He stared at the controls, trying to deduce their functions. He was not tempted to push and pull and twiddle things at random. He knew better than that. He began to take the controls apart to see how they worked.

  His kz’eerkt prisoners had a fit—but there was nothing they could do to stop him. He kept working, puzzling, careful not to break or short anything. This was no more than a W’kkai conundrum puzzle. What he didn’t understand at all, he left alone. Get the machine pointed at Kzin. Start it.

  Hours later he was still at work, concentrating like he had never before concentrated in his life. The babies were getting out of control. Still he understood nothing. His mother had been squirting water into the mouths of the prisoners and watching to see if it turned yellow and came out of their oversize penises like it did with her sons. She had to wait too long. In the meantime she became fascinated by the fur that was starting to grow on their faces. She interrupted Monkeyshine to show him, He growled at her.

  No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t make sense of the wires and little boxes and mechanical linkages. He couldn’t even read the instruments or make the screens light up. He wanted Long-Reach to explain it all to him. Even Mellow Yellow would answer his questions. He didn’t understand anything! He was angry and had to control his rage like Mellow Yellow had shown him how to do in a fight. It was important that he not break anything. He knew that if he did, he would kill his family. He knew where he had to take them—but he didn’t know how!

  The tears started to pool in his eyes and he had to shake them away. He couldn’t help himself. He was sobbing.

  His mother lost interest in the face-fur. She glided over and put her arms around him. He tried to push her away, but he didn’t really want her to go. She was very stupid but she was good at comforting. He let her hold him and he sobbed.

  ***

  Yankee completely understood the boy’s frustration. Yankee was trussed so tight that his feet had gradually gone to sleep. Tears came to his eyes, pooling in sympathy until the major was seeing from a watery world of blindness, He had been watching the boy, first with dread, then “with admiration. The kid was a mechanical genius. It didn’t matter, of course. He didn’t know the codes. The ship was kzin-proof. No stranger could have piloted it. What was going to happen to them?

  Nora was a soft focus blur holding her son’s head to her breasts and staring at Yankee. Gently she left her calmer son with soothing purrs. She came over to Yankee and stared into his eyes, perhaps bewildered that the water was coming out of them and not his penis. She touched a finger to his tears and tasted them. Then, with her tongue, she licked his eyes clear. The fear had returned to her face, but cunning fear. She was smiling. It wasn’t the kzin grin of ferocity it was a human smile, dimples and all. This woman wanted something from the man she feared and she wasn’t sure she was going to get it so she poured on the charm.

  She began to undo Yankee’s bonds with the intelligence of a mind that knows it can never ask for help. The boy, sober now, leaped in to stop her. She whacked him away with a snarl. Yankee, not yet free, watched in amazement as the boy began to plead with her in quick kzinti yappings. He could tell that she didn’t understand a single word her son was saying. Still she worked at the strapping. Alternately she smiled at Yankee and snarled like a kzin at her son.

  The boy went off with his brothers and sisters to sulk. Yankee tested his legs. They were numb and painful when he tried to use their muscles. He didn’t need them in null-gee. He inspected the control panel—no damage at all. The boy hadn’t tried to be smarter than he was. Because of that he called him over to help in the job of reassembly He smiled at the boy—human instinct was the only working language they had in common. The boy helped him fearfully but did not smile back.

  “Hey, get us out of these cocoons,” complained jay.

  “Hold your horses!” Idioms survive forever in a language. Yankee powered up the hyperwave and called their pickup ship which had to be sitting out there somewhere less than a tenth of a light-year away. That had been prearranged. He made contact. The reply was excited, stellar reference points exchanged. They were on their way.

  Now to tend to the boy. He set all the screens to run a game called Brick Bradford’s Shrinking Sphere. The screen put you inside a porous fractile sponge of incredible colors and shapes. Brick Bradford could float his sphere anywhere among the pores, and since each surface was also porous, he could penetrate any wall by shrinking into the finer sponge. The demonstration mesmerized the shaken child.

  Yankee needed a name for the boy but asking for a name in the Hero’s Tongue was a very delicate matter of the proper protocol. If a kzin had a name, you took your life in your hand to ask him his profession. Yet if he had a profession, you were not even allowed the assumption that he might have earned a name. Who knew the proper protocol for a slave?

  Yankee put on his headphones and consulted the ship’s translator. The machine gave vague advice. He tried anyway in his best hiss-and-spits. “You have the honor of speaking to Yankee-Clandeboye.” No use being modest. “And I shall need to speak with you.”

  The boy wasn’t a warrior anymore. He looked at Yankee. “Kz’eerkttt,” he said timidly with a chopped glottal bray at the end. He had the voice of a confused slave who was unsure of his station in life or whether he still had a life. The machine seemed to think his whisper translated as, “the tricks of a monkey.”

  Yankee couldn’t tell if that was a swear word in the Hero’s Tongue or the boy’s name, probably both. “Okay. We’ll call you Sir Monk Argamentine.” He took the boy’s hand and showed it how to wave fingers in the “command space” above the keyboard to move the screen viewpoint around inside the variegated sponge, and how he could shrink to pass into the pores of any wall. Yankee was giving him back a little bit of the control he’d lost Monk might not be able to handle a hyperdrive—but he could fly a mathematical ship into the depths of fractile space.

  Then Yankee unstrapped Jay and Beany, much to their relief. Lieutenant Nora Argamentine watched his every move. She’s very smart, he thought. She just negotiated the settlement of a lethal impasse. But she wasn’t the Nora he knew It broke his heart.

  · Chapter 22

  (2438 A.D.)

  The UNSN Abraham Lincoln slipped slowly into its berth in orbit above the bleak surface of Barnard’s Starbase, the news of its arrival classified by the ARM. Chloe Blumenhandler sat with a very nervous General Lucas Fry in the reception area down-planet, watching the docking through the controller’s camera. She was very pregnant and had not seen her husband for seven months. Hyperspace travel was fast but not that fast—three days to cross a light-year. Fry had not seen Nora for eighteen years.

  A phone chimed a few chords from Beethoven’s Fifth. ‘That’s me,” said Fry puffing out the comm from his belt infocomp. “Lucas here.” He listened for a second, then turned to Chloe. “It’s Yankee.” He switched on the sound. “Great operation! Smooth. We’re going to gild you and set you on top of the UN building!”

  “Finagle hasn’t told you half of it! I’m just calling up to warn you. Nora isn’t going to recognize you when she sees you.”

  “I know that,” said the general gruffly.

  “It’s still a shock. I felt snubbed after all the trouble I’d taken to rescue her. I was outraged—just for a second. She used to do that tome when we were kids. She’d snub me when she was mad at me. I hated it.”

  “Yah, well I’m made of sterner stuff than you flabby flatlanders. How is she?”

  “Healthy as a kzin. We’re having a little trouble at the moment. She’s ripping off her clothes as fast as we can put her into them. Stubborn. She doesn’t like clothes. For the reception, we’re going to have to sew her into a jumpsuit.”

  “Sounds like Nora.”

 
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Lucas. It’s not Nora. “I’ve been with her for three months now. I don’t know who the hell she is!”

  “Is the brain damage bad?”

  Yankee changed the subject “I hear they brought in Dr. Hunker for her. Is he there?” Dr. Hunker was from the Institute of Knowledge on Jinx. He was the man on the boosterspice team who studied neural-aging reversal.

  “Yah, he’s here. How bad is the damage?”

  “It hasn’t affected her intelligence at all. Bright as a brass button. She just doesn’t think with words, that’s all. Whatever intelligence is, it’s not language.”

  “You can’t think without words, Yankee.”

  “That so? Try catching a ball with words. What you mean is: words facilitate communication. A hermit never needs words.”

  “She has no words at all?”

  “I haven’t been able to teach her a single word of English. She has some kzinti chitchat, not much. She calls me ‘Hairless Hero.’ That’s a grievous insult but she says it with a smile. She’s still got her dimples.”

  “She can smile?” General Fry was reaching for straws. “You bet. Her specially is practical jokes. It’s Nora’s smile because the face is the same, but it isn’t Nora’s smile. It’s less inhibited. Nora was coy. This lady hasn’t got a drop of coyness in her body. When we met she was more interested in my funny-looking penis than me.”

  Chloe giggled and put both hands over her mouth, sputtering.