The Man-Kzin Wars 03

by Larry Niven

  "Path—Honored Sire! Please!"

  "Hrrrr," Staff Officer rumbled. "He was as strong as a terrenki and fester." Traat-Admiral looked down to see the fresh ears of Ktriir-Supervisor-of-Animals dangling at the other's belt.

  "Not quite fast enough," Traat-Admiral said with genuine admiration. Most kzinti became slightly less quarrelsome past their first youth, but the late Ktriir's notorious temper had gotten worse, if anything. It probably came from having to deal with humans all the time, and high-level collaborators at that. Ktriir should have remembered that reflexes slowed and had to be replaced with cunning and skill born of experience.

  "Yes," he continued, "I am well pleased." He paused for three breaths, waiting while Staff Officer's muzzle dipped into the saucer. "Hroth-Staff-Officer."

  The other kzin gasped, inhaled milk and rolled over, coughing and slapping at his nose, sneezed frantically, and sat back with his eyes watering. Traat-Admiral felt his ears twitch with genial amusement.

  "Do not be angry, noble Hroth-Staff-Officer," he said. "There is little of humor these days." It was a system governor's prerogative, to confer a Name. Any field-grade officer could, for certain well-established feats of honor, but a governor could do so at discretion.

  "I will strivekercheee—to be worthy of the honor," the newly-promoted kzin said. "Little though I have done to deserve it."

  "Nonsense," Traat-Admiral said. For one thing, you are very diplomatic. Only a kzin with iron self-control could be humble, even under these circumstances. "For another, you have won… what, six duels in the past month? And a dozen back when Chuut-Riit first came from Homeworld to this system. This will satisfy those who think galactic conquest can be accomplished with teeth and claws. Also, you have been invaluable in keeping the Modernist faction aligned behind me. Many thought Chuut-Riit's heir should be from among his immediate entourage."

  Hroth-Staff-Officer twitched his tail and rippled sections of his pelt. "None such could enjoy sufficient confidence among the locally-born," he said. "If we trusted Chuut-Riit's judgment before he was killed, should we not after he is dead?"

  Traat-Admiral sighed, looking out over the exquisite restraint of the gardens. "I agree. Better a… less worthy successor than infighting beneath one more technically qualified." His ears spread in irony. "More infighting than we have had. Chuut-Riit said…" he hesitated, then looked over at the faces of his son and the newly-ennobled Hroth-Staff-Officer, remembered conversations with his mentor. "… he said that humans were either the greatest danger or greatest opportunity kzinti had ever faced. And that he did not know if they came just in time, or just too late."

  His son showed curiosity in the rippling of his pelt, an almost imperceptible movement of his fingertips. Curiosity was a childhood characteristic among kzinti, but one the murdered governor had said should be encouraged.

  "We have not faced a challenge to really test our mettle for… a long time," he said. "We make easy conquests; empty worlds to colonize, or others where the inhabitants are savages with spears, barbarians with nothing better than chemical-energy weapons. We grow slothful; our energy is spent in quarreling among ourselves, and more and more the work of even maintaining our civilization we turn over to our slaves."

  "Wrrrr," Hroth-Staff-Officer said. "But what did the Dominant One mean, that the humans might be too late?"

  Traat-Admiral's voice sank slightly. "I meant that lack of challenge has weakened us. By making us inflexible, brittle. There are other forms of rot than softness; fossilization is another: steel and bone turning to stiff breakable rock. Chuut-Riit saw that as we expand we must eventually meet terrible threats. If the kzinti are to be strong enough to conquer them, first we must be re-forged in the blaze of war."

  "I still don't smell the point, Traat-Admiral," Hroth-Staff-Officer said. The admiral could see his son hud-died on the cushions, entranced at being able to listen in on such august conversation. Listen well, my son , he thought. You will find it an uncomfortable privilege.

  "Are the humans then a challenge which will call forth our strength… or the mad raaairtwo that will shatter us?"

  " Wrrrr!" Hroth-Staff-Officer shivered slightly, his fur lying flat. Aide-de-Camp's was plastered to his skin, and his ears had disappeared into their pouches of skin. "That has the authentic flavor and scent of his… disquieting lectures. I suffered through enough of them." A pause. "Still, the raaairtwo may be head-high at the shoulder and weigh fifty times a kzintosh's mass and have a spiked armor ball for a tail, but our ancestors killed them."

  "But not by butting heads with them, Hroth-Staff-Officer." He turned his head. "Aide-de-Camp, go to the Accursed Ones, and bring them here. Not immediately; in an hour or so."

  He leaned forward once the youth had leaped up and four-footed away. "Hroth-Staff-Officer, has it occurred to you why we are sending such an armada to this system's asteroids?"

  Big lambent-yellow eyes blinked at him. "There has been much activity among the feral humans," he said. "I did scent that you might be using this as an excuse for field-exercises with live ammunition, in order to quiet dissention." Kzinti obeyed when under arms, even if they hated it. "The interstellar warships as well? That would be like cleaning vermin out of your pelt with a beam-rifle." He leaned closer. "This is a Patriarch's Secret," he continued. "Listen."

  When he finished a half-hour later, Hroth-Staff-Offlcer's belt was half laid-flat, with patches bristling in horror. Traat-Admiral could smell his anger, underlain with fear, a sickly scent.

  "You are right to fear," he said, conscious of his own glands. No kzin could hide true terror, of course, not with a functioning nose in the area.

  "Death is nothing," the other nodded. He grinned, the expression humans sometimes mistook for friendliness. "But this!" He hissed, and Traat-Admiral watched and smelled him fight down blind rage.

  "Chuut-Riit feared something like this," he said. At the other's startlement: "Oh, no, not these beings particularly. It is a joke of the God that we find this thing in the middle of a difficult war. But something terrible was bound to jump out of the long grass sooner or later. The universe is so large, and we keep pressing our noses into new caves—" He shrugged. "Enough. Now—"

  Chuut-Riit's sons laid stomach to earth on the path before the dais of judgment and covered their noses. Traat-Admiral looked down on their still-gaunt forms and felt himself recoil. Not with fear, at least not the fear of an adult kzin. Vague memories moved in the shadow-corners of his mind; brutal hands tearing him away from Mother, giant shapes of absolute power… rage and desire and fear, the bitter acrid smell of loneliness. Wipe them out , he thought uneasily, as his lips curled up and the hair bulked erect on neck and spine. Wipe them out, and this will not be.

  "You have committed the gravest of all crimes," he said slowly, fighting the wordless snarling that struggled to use his throat. There was an ancient epic… Warlord Chmee at the Pillars. He had seen a holo of it once, and had groveled and howled like all the audience and come back washed free of grief, at the last view of the blind and scentless Hero.

  And these did not sin in ignorance, nor did they claw out their own eyes and breathe acid in remorse and horror. "To overthrow one's Sire is… primitive, but such is custom. To slay him honorably, even… but to fall upon him in a pack and devour him! And each other!"

  The guilty ones seemed to sink further to the raked gravel of the path before him; he stood like a towering wall of orange fur at the edge of the pavilion, the molten-copper glow of his pelt streaked with scar-white. Like an image of dominance to a young kzin, hated and feared and adored. Not that the armored troopers behind him with their beam-guns hurt, he reflected. Control, he thought. Self-control is the heart of honor.

  "Is there any reason you should not be killed?" he said. "Or blinded, castrated and driven out?"

  Silence then, for a long time. Finally, the spotted one who had spent longest in the regeneration tank spoke.

  "No, Dominant One."

  Traat-Admiral
relaxed slightly. "Good. But Chuut-Riit's last message to us spoke of mercy. Even so, if you had not acknowledged your crime and your worthlessness, there would have been no forgiveness. Hear your sentence. The fleets of the Patriarchy in this system are journeying forth against… an enemy. You have all received elementary space-combat training." Attacks on defended asteroids often involved boarding, by marines in one-kzin suits of stealthed, powered vacuum armor. "You will be formed into a special unit for the coming action. This is your last chance to achieve honor!" An honorable death, of course. "Do not waste it. Go!"

  He turned to Hroth-Staff-Officer. "Get me the readiness reports," he said, and spoke the phrase that opened the communication line to the household staff. "Bring two saucers of tuna ice cream with Stolichnaya vodka," he continued. "I have a bad taste to get out of my mouth."

  Chapter VI

  "How did he manage it?" Jonah Matthieson muttered.

  The hauler the party from the Sol System had been assigned was an unfamiliar model, a long stalk with a life-bubble at one end and a gravity-polarizer drive as well as fusion thrusters. Introduced by the kzinti, no doubt; they had had the polarizer for long enough to be using it for civilian purposes. With half a dozen the bubble was very crowded, despite the size of the ship, and they had set the internal gravity to zero to make best use of the space. The air smelled right to his Belter's nose, a pure neutral smell with nothing but a slight trace of ozone and pine; something you could not count on in the Alpha Centauri system these days. Certainly less nerve-wracking than the surface of Wunderland, with its wild smells and completely uncontrolled random-process life-support system.

  A good ship, he thought. It must be highly automated, doing the rounds of the refineries and hauling back metals and polymer sacks of powders and liquids. What clung to the carrying fields now looked very much like a cargo of singleships, being delivered to rockjacks at some other base asteroid; he had been respectfully surprised at the assortment of commandeered weapons and jury-rigged but roughly effective control systems. A General Early looked up from his display plaque. "Not surprising, considering the state things are in," he said. "Organized crime does well in a disorganized social setting. Like any conspiracy, unless the conspiracy is the social setting."

  "It's a Finagle-damned fleet, though," Jonah said. "Don't the pussies care?"

  "Not much, I imagine," Early said. Jonah could see the schematics for the rest of their flotilla coming up on the board. "So long as it doesn't impact on their military concerns. They'd clamp down soon enough if much went directly to the resistance, of course. Or their human goons would, for fear of losing their positions. The pussies may be great fighters, but as administrators they're worse than Russians."

  What're Russians? Jonah thought. Then, oh. Them. "Surprising the pussies tolerate so much corruption."

  Early shrugged. "What can they do? And from what we've learned, they expect tame monkeys to be corrupt, except for the household servants. If we weren't goddam cowards and lickspittles, we'd all have died fighting." He smiled his wide white grin and stuck a stogie in the midst of it-unlit, Jonah saw thankfully. The schematics continued to roll across the screen. "Ahhh, thought so."

  "Thought what?"

  "Our friend Shigehero is playing both ends against the middle," Early said. "He's bringing along a lot of exploratory stuff as well as weaponry. A big computer, by local standards. Wait a second. Yes, linguistic-analysis hardware too. The son of a bitch!"

  Silence fell.

  Jonah looked at the others, studied the hard set of their faces. "Wait a second," he said. "There's an ancient alien artifact, and you don't think it should be studied?"

  Early looked up, and Jonah realized with a sudden shock that he was being weighed. For trustworthiness, and possibly for expendability. "Of course not," the general said. "The risk is too great. Remember the Sea Sculpture?"

  Jonah concentrated. "Oh, the thingie in the Smithsonian? The Slaver?" "Why do you think they were called that, Captain?" Early spent visible effort controlling impatience.

  "I…" Suddenly, Jonah realized that he knew very little of the famous exhibit, beyond the fact that it was an alien in a spacesuit protected by a stasis field. "You'd better do some explaining, sir."

  Several of the others stirred uneasily, and Early waved them back to silence. "He's right," he said regretfully, and began.

  "Murphy," Jonah muttered when the older man had finished. "That thing is a menace."

  Early nodded jerkily. "More than you realize. That artifact is a ship. There may be more than one of the bastards on it," he said, using another of his archaic turns of phrase. "Besides which, the technology. We've had three centuries of trying, and we've been able to make exactly three copies of their stasis field; as far as we can tell, the only way that thing could work is by decoupling the interior from the entropy gradient of the universe as a whole…"

  Jonah leaned back, his toes hooked comfortably under a line, and considered the flatlander. Then the others, his head cocked to one side consideringly.

  "It isn't just you, is it?" he said. "The whole lot of you are ARM types. Most of you older than you look."

  Early blinked, and took the stogie from between his teeth. "Now why," he said softly, "would you think that, Captain?"

  "Body language," Jonah said, linking his hands behind his back and staring "up". The human face is a delicate communications instrument, and he suspected that Early had experience enough to read entirely too much from it. "And attitudes. Something new comes along, grab it quick. Hide it away and study it in private. Pretty typical. Sir."

  "Captain," Early said, "you Belters are all anarchists, but you're supposed to be rationalists too. Humanity had centuries of stability before the Kzinti arrived, the first long interval of peace since… God, ever. You think that was an accident? The way humankind was headed in the early atomic era, if something like the ARM hadn't intervened there wouldn't be a human race now. Nothing we'd recognize as human. There are things in the ARM archives… that just can't be let out."

  "Oh?" Jonah said coldly.

  Early smiled grimly. "Like an irresistible aphrodisiac?" he said. "Conditioning pills that make you completely loyal forever to the first person you see after taking them? Things that would have made it impossible not to legalize murder and cannibalism? Damned right we sit on things. Even if there weren't aliens on that ship, it would have to be destroyed; there's neither time nor opportunity to take it apart and keep the results under wraps. If the pussies get it, we're royally screwed." Jonah remained silent. "Don't look so apprehensive, Captain. You're no menace, no matter what you learn."

  "I'm not?" Jonah said, narrowing his eyes. He had suspected…

  "Of course not. What use would a system of secrecy be, if one individual leak could imperil it? How do you think we wrote the Sea Statue out of the history books as anything but a curiosity? Slowly, and from many directions and oh, so imperceptibly. Bit by bit, and anyone who suspected—" he grinned, and several of the others joined him "-autodocs exist to correct diseases like paranoia, don't they? In the meantime, I suggest you remember you are under military discipline."

  "Uncle, that established the limits of control," the technician said to Shigehero Hirose.

  Silent, the oyabun nodded, watching the multiple displays on the Murasaki's bridge screens. There were dozens of them; the Murasaki was theoretically a passenger hauler, out of Tiamat to the major Swarm habitats and occasionally to Wunderland and its satellites. In actuality, it was the Association's fallback headquarters, and forty years of patient theft had given it weapons and handling characteristics equivalent to a kzinti Vengeful Slasher-class light cruiser. He reflected on how much else of the Association's strength was here, and felt a gripping pain in the stomach. Still water, he thought, controlling his breathing. There were times when opportunity must be seized, despite all risk.

  "Attempt communication on the hailing frequencies," he said, as that latest singleship stopped in its elliptical p
ath around the asteroid and coasted in to assume station among the others under Markham's control. Or the alien's, Hirose reminded himself. "But this time, we must demonstrate the consequences of noncompliance. Execute East Wind, Rain."

  The points of light on the screens began to move in a complicated dance, circling the asteroid and its half-freed alien ship. "Ah," the Tactics officer said. "Uncle, see, Markham is deploying his units without regard to protecting the artifact."

  Pale fusion flame bloomed against the stars, a singleship power core deliberately destabilized; it would be recorded as an accident, at Traffic Control Central on Tiamat. If that had been a human or kzinti craft, everyone aboard would have been lethally irradiated.

  "But," the oyabun observed, "notice that none of his vessels moves beyond a certain distance from the asteroid. This is interesting." "Uncle… those dispositions are an invitation to close in, given the intercept capacities we have observed."

  "Do so, but be cautious. Be very cautious."

  "Accelerating," Jonah Matthieson said. "Twenty thou-sand klicks and closing at 300 kps relative." The asteroid was a lumpy potato in the screen ahead; acceleration pressed him back into the control couch. Almost an unfamiliar sensation; this refitted singleship had no compensators. But it did have a nicely efficient fusion drive, and he was on intercept with one of Mark-ham's boats, ready to flip over and decelerate toward it behind the sword of thermonuclear fire. "Hold it, you cow," he muttered to the clumsy ship. His sweat stank in his nostrils. Show your stuff, Matthieson , he told himself. Singleships no better than this had cut the kzinti First Fleet to ribbons, when the initial attack on the Solar System had been launched. "Ready for attack," he said. "Five seconds and—"

  Matching velocities, he realized. It would be tricky, without damaging Markham's ship. That would be very bad. His hands moved across the control screens and flicked in the lightfield sensors. The communicator squawked at him, meaningless noises interrupting the essential task of safely killing velocity relative to the asteroid. He switched it off.