by Larry Niven
"Well. Two weeks, faster than light," he said.
The executive officer nodded, her eyes on the displays. "More breakthroughs," she said. "Seven… twelve… looks like the whole fleet made it." She laughed. "Wunderland, prepare to welcome your liberators."
"Careful now," the captain said. "This is a reconnaissance in force. We can chop up anything we meet in interstellar space, but this close to a star we're strictly Einsteinian, just like the pussies."
The executive officer was frowning over her board. "Well, I'll be damned," she said. "Sir, something very strange is going on in there. If I didn't know better… that looks like a fleet action already going on."
The captain straightened. "Secure from hyperdrive stations," he said. "General Quarters. Battle stations." A deep breath. "Let's go find out."
THE END
INCONSTANT STAR
Poul Anderson
Copyright © 1990 by Poul Anderson
Chapter I
A hunter's wind blew down off the Mooncatcher Mountains and across the Rungn Valley. Night filled with the sounds of it, rustling forest, remote animal cries, and with odors of soil, growth, beast. The wish that it roused, to be yonder, to stalk and pounce and slay and devour, grew in Weoch-Captain until he trembled. The fur stood up on him. Claws slid out of their sheaths; fingers bent into the same saber curves. He had long been deprived.
Nonetheless he walked steadily onward from the guard point. When Ress-Chiuu, High Admiral of Kzin, summoned, one came. That was not in servility but in hope, fatal though laggardness would be. Something great was surely afoot. It might even prove warlike.
Eastward stretched rangeland, wan beneath the stars. Westward, ahead, the woods loomed darkling, the game preserve part of Ress-Chiuu's vast domain. Far and high beyond glimmered snowpeaks. The chill that the wind also bore chastened bit by bit the lust in Weoch-Captain. Reason fought its way back. He reached the Admiral's lair with the turmoil no more than a drumbeat in his blood.
The castle remembered axes, arrows, and spears. Later generations had made their changes and additions but kept it true to itself, a stony mass baring battlements at heaven. After an electronic gate identified and admitted him, the portal through which he passed was a tunnel wherein he moved blind. Primitive instincts whispered, "Beware!" He ignored them. Guided by echoes and subtle tactile sensations, his pace never slackened. Ress-Chiuu always tested a visitor, one way or another.
Was it a harder test that waited in the courtyard? No kzin received Weoch-Captain. Instead hulked a kdatlyno slave. It made the clumsy gesture that was as close as the species could come to a prostration. However, then it turned and lumbered toward the main keep. Obviously he was expected to follow.
Rage blazed in him. Almost, he attacked. He choked emotion down and stalked after his guide, though lips remained pulled off fangs.
Echoes whispered. Corridors and rooms lay deserted. Night or no, personnel should have been in evidence. What did it portend? Alertness heightened, wariness, combat readiness.
A door slid aside. The kdatlyno groveled again and departed. Weoch-Captain went in. The door closed behind him.
The room was polished granite, austerely furnished. A window stood open to the wind. Ress-Chiuu reclined on a slashtooth skin draped over a couch. Weoch-Captain came to attention and presented himself. "At ease," the High Admiral said. "You may sit, stand, or pace as you wish. I expect you will, from time to time, pace."
Weoch-Captain decided to stay on his feet for the nonce.
Ress-Chiuu's deceptively soft tones went on: "Realize that I have offered you no insult. You were met by a slave because, at least for the present, extreme confidentiality is necessary. Furthermore, I require not only a Hero-they are many-but one who possesses an unusual measure of self-control and forethoughtfulness. I had reason to believe you do. You have shown I was right. Praise and honor be yours."
The accolade calmed Weoch-Captain's pride. It also focused his mind the more sharply. (Doubtless that was intended, said a part of his mind with a wryness rare in kzinti.) His ears rose and unfolded. "I have delegated my current duties and am instantly available for the High Admiral's orders," he reported.
Shadows dappled fur as the blocky head nodded approval. "We go straight to the spoor, then. You know of Werlith-Commandant's mission on the opposite side of human-hegemony space." It was not a question. "Ill tidings: lately a human crew stumbled upon the base that was under construction there. They came to investigate the sun, which appears to be unique in several ways."
Monkey curiosity, thought Weoch-Captain. He was slightly too young to have fought in the war, but he had spent his life hearing about it, studying it, dreaming of the next one. His knowledge included terms of scorn evolved among kzinti who had learned random things about the planet where the enemy originated.
Ress-Chiuu's level words smote him: "Worse, much worse. Incredibly, they seem to have destroyed the installations. Certain is that they inflicted heavy casualties, disabled our spacecraft, and went home nearly unscathed. You perceive what this means. They conveyed the information that we have developed the hyperdrive ourselves. All chance of springing a surprise is gone." Sarcasm harshened the voice. "No doubt the Patriarchy will soon receive 'representations' from Earth about this 'unfortunate incident.' '
Over the hyperwave, said Weoch-Captain's mind bleakly. Those few black boxes that the peace treaty provided for, left among us, engineered to self-destruct at the least tampering.
Well did he know. Such an explosion had killed a brother of his. Understanding leaped. If the humans had not yet communicated officially—"May I ask how the Patriarchs learned?"
"We have our means. I will consider what to tell you." Ress-Chiuu's calm was giving way ever so little. His tail lashed his thighs, a pink whip. "We must find out exactly what happened. Or, if nothing else, we must establish what the situation is, whether anything of our base remains, what the Earth Navy is doing there. Survivors should be rescued. If this is impossible, perhaps they can be eliminated by rays or missiles before they fall into human grasp."
"Heroes—"
"Would never betray our secrets. Yes, yes. But can you catalogue every trick those creatures may possess?" Ress-Chiuu lifted head and shoulders. His eyes locked with Weoch-Captain's. "You will command our ship to that sun."
Disaster or no, eagerness flamed. "Sire!"
"Slow, slow," the older kzin growled. "We require an officer intelligent as well as bold, capable of agreeing that the destiny of the race transcends his own, and indeed, to put it bluntly—" he paused- "One who is not afraid to cut and run, should the alternative be valiant failure. Are you prepared for this?"
Weoch-Captain relaxed from his battle crouch and, inwardly, tautened further. "The High Admiral has bestowed a trust on me," he said. "I accept."
"It is well. Come, sit. This will be a long night."
They talked, and ransacked databases, and ran tentative plans through the computers, until dawn whitened the east. Finally, almost jovially, Ress-Chiuu asked, "Are you exhausted?"
"On the contrary, sire, I think I have never been more fightworthy."
"You need to work that off and get some rest. Be-sides, you have earned a pleasure. You may go into my forest and make a bare-handed kill."
When Weoch-Captain came back out at noontide, jaws still dripping red, he felt tranquil, happy, and, once he had slept, ready to conquer a cosmos.
Chapter II
The sun was an hour down and lights had come aglow along streets, but at this time of these years Alpha Centauri B was still aloft. Low in the west, like thousands of evening stars melted into one, it cast shadows the length of Karl-Jorge Avenue and set the steel steeple of St. Joachim's a shimmer against an eastern sky purpling into dusk. Vehicles and pedestrians alike were sparse, the city's pulsebeat quieted to a murmur through mild summer air-day's work ended, night's pleasures just getting started. München had changed more in the past decade or two than most places on Wunderland. Comme
rcial and cultural as well as political center, it was bound to draw an undue share of outworlders and their influence. Yet it still lived largely by the rhythms of the planet.
Robert Saxtorph doubted that that would continue through his lifetime. Let him enjoy it while it lasted. Traditions gave more color to existence than did any succession of flashy fashions.
He honored one by tipping his cap to the Liberation Memorial as he crossed the Silberplatz. Though the sculpture wasn't old and the events had taken place scarcely a generation ago, they stood in history with Marathon and Yorktown. Leaving the square, he sauntered up the street past a variety of shop windows. His destination, Harold's Terran Bar, had a certain venerability too. And he was bound there to meet a beautiful woman with something mysterious to tell him. Another tradition, of sorts?
At the entrance, he paused. His grin going sour, he well-nigh said to hell with it and turned around. Tyra Nordbo should not have made him promise to keep this secret even from his wife, before she set the rendezvous. Nor should she have picked Harold's. He hadn't cared to patronize it since visit before last. Now the very sign that floated luminous before the brown brick wall had been expurgated. A World On Its Own remained below the name, but humans only was gone. Mustn't offend potential customers or, God forbid, local idealists.
In Saxtorph's book, courtesy was due everyone who hadn't forfeited the right. However, under the kzinti occupation that motto had been a tiny gesture of defiance. Since the war, no sophont that could pay was denied admittance. But onward with the bulldozer of blandness.
He shrugged. Having come this far, let him proceed. Time enough to leave if la Nordbo turned out to be a celebrity hunter or a vibrobrain. The fact was that she had spoken calmly, and about money. Besides, he'd enjoyed watching her image. He went on in. Nowadays the door opened for anybody.
As always, a large black man occupied the vestibule, wearing white coat and bow tie. What had once made some sense had now become mere costume. His eyes widened at the sight of the newcomer, as big as him, with the craggy features and thinning reddish hair. "Why, Captain Saxtorph!" he exclaimed in fluent English. "Welcome, sir. No, for you, no entry fee."
They had never met. "I'm on private business," Saxtorph warned.
"I understand, sir. If somebody bothers you, give me the high sign and I'll take care of them." Maybe the doorman could, overawing by sheer size if nothing else, or maybe his toughness was another part of the show. It wasn't a quality much in demand any more.
"Thanks." Saxtorph slipped him a tip and passed through a beaded curtain which might complicate signaling for the promised help, into the main room. It was dimly lit and little smoke hung about. Customers thus far were few, and most in the rear room gambling. Nevertheless a fellow at an obsolete model of musicomp was playing something ancient. Saxtorph went around the deserted sunken dance floor to the bar, chose a stool, and ordered draft Solborg from a live servitor.
He had swallowed a single mouthful of the half liter when he heard, at his left, "What, no akvavit with, and you a Dane?" The voice was husky and female; the words, English, bore a lilting accent and a hint of laughter.
He turned his head and was startled. The phone at his hotel had shown him this face, strong-boned, blunt-nosed, flaxen hair in a pageboy cut. That she was tall, easily 180 centimeters, gave no surprise; she was a Wunderlander. But she lacked the ordinary low-gravity lankiness. Robust and full-bosomed, she looked and moved as if she had grown up on Earth, nearly two-thirds again as heavy as here. That meant rigorous training and vigorous sports throughout her life. And the changeable sea-blue of her slacksuit matched her eyes…
"American, really. My family moved from Denmark when I was small. And I'd better keep a clear head, right?" His tongue was speaking for him. Angry at himself, he took control back. "How do you do." He offered his hand. Her clasp was firm, cool, brief. At least she wasn't playing sultry or exotic. "Uh, care for a drink?"
"I have one yonder. Please to follow." She must have arrived early and waited for him. He picked up his beer and accompanied her to a privacy-screened table. Murky though the corner was, he could make out fine lines at the corners of her eyes and lips; and that fair skin had known much weather. She wasn't quite young, then. Late thirties, Earth calendar, he guessed.
They settled down. Her glass held white wine. She had barely sipped of it. "Thank you for that you came," she said. "I realize this is peculiar."
Well, shucks, he resisted admitting, I may be seven or eight years older than you and solidly married, but any wench this slightly rates a chance to make sense. "It is an odd place to meet," he countered. She smiled. "I thought it would be appropriate." He declined the joke. "Over-appropriate." "Ja, saa?" The blond brows lifted. "How so?"
"I never did like staginess," he blurted. His hand waved around. "I knew this joint when it was a raffish den full of memories from the occupation and the tag-end of wartime afterward. But each time I called at Wunderland and dropped in, it'd become more of a tourist trap."
"Well, those old memories are romantic; and, yes, some of mine live here too," she murmured. Turning straightforward again: "But it has an advantage, exactly because of what it now is. Few of its patrons will have heard about you. They are, as you say, mostly tourists. News like your deeds at that distant star is sensational but it takes a while to cross interstellar space and hit hard in public awareness on planets where the societies are different from yours or mine. Here, at this hour of the day, you have a good chance of not to be recognized and pestered. Also, because people here often make assignations, it is the custom to ignore other couples."
Saxtorph felt his cheeks heat up. What the devil! The schoolboy he had once been lay long and deeply buried. Or so he'd supposed. It would be a ghost he could well do without. "Is that why you didn't want my wife along?" he asked roughly.
She nodded. "You two together are especially conspicuous, no? I found that yesterday evening she would be away, and thought you would not. Then I tried calling you."
He couldn't repress a chuckle. "Yah, you guessed right. Poor Dorcas, she had no escape from addressing a meeting of the Weibliche Astroverein." He'd looked forward to several peaceful hours alone. But when the phone showed this face, he'd accepted the call, which he probably would not have done otherwise. "After she got back, I took her down to the bar for a stiff drink." But he'd kept his promise not to mention the conversation. Half ashamed, he harshened his tone. "Why'd you do no more than talk me into a, uh, an appointment?" He hadn't liked telling Dorcas that he meant to go for a walk, might stop in at some pub, and if he found company he enjoyed-male, she'd taken for granted- would maybe return late. But he'd done it. "Could you not have gone directly to the point? The line wasn't tapped, was it?"
"I did not expect so," Tyra answered. "Yet it was possible. Perhaps a government official who is snoopish. You have legal and diplomatic complications left over, from what happened at the dwarf star."
Don't I know it, Saxtorph sighed to himself.
"There could even be undiscovered kzinti agents like Markham, trying for extra information that will help them or their masters," she continued. "You are marked, Captain. And in a way, that am I also."
"Why the secrecy?" he persisted. "Understand, I am not interested in anything illegal."
"This is not." She laid hold of her glass. Fingers grew white-nailed on its stem, and trembled the least bit. "It is, well, extraordinary. Perhaps dangerous."
"Then my wife and crew have got to know before we decide."
"Of course. First I ask you. If you say no, that is an end of the matter for you, and I must try elsewhere. I will have small hope. But if you agree, and your shipmates do, best that we hold secret. Otherwise certain parties-they will not want this mission, or they will want it carried out in a way that gives my cause no help. We present them a fait accompli. Do you see?"
Likewise tense, he gulped at his beer. "Uh, mind if I smoke?" "Do." The edges of her mouth dimpled. "That pipe of yours has become
famous like you."
"Or infamous." He fumbled briar, pouch, and lighter out of their pockets. Anxious to slack things off: "The vice is disapproved of again on Earth, did you know? As if cancer and emphysema and the rest still existed. I think Puritanism runs in cycles. One periodicity for tobacco, one for alcohol, one for-Ah, hell, I'm babbling."
"I believe men smoke much on Wunderland because it is a symbol," she said. "From the occupation era. Kzinti do not smoke. They dislike the smell and seldom allowed it in their presence. I grew up used to it on men." She laughed. "See, I can babble too." Lifting her glass: "Skaal."
He touched his mug to it, repeating the word before remembering, in surprise: "Wait, you people generally say, 'Prosit,' don't you?" "They were mostly Scandinavians who settled in Skogarna," Tyra explained. "We have our own dialect. Some call it a patois." "Really? I'd hardly imagine that was possible in this day and age."
"We were always rather isolated, there in the North. Under the occupation, more than ever. Kzinti, or the collaborationist government, monitored all traffic and communications. Few people had wide contacts, and those were very guarded. They drew into their neighborhoods. Keeping language and customs alive, that was one way they reminded themselves that humans were not everywhere and forever slaves of the rat-cats." Speaking, Tyra had let somberness come upon her. "This isolation is a root of the story I must tell you."
Saxtorph wanted irrationally much to lighten her mood. "Well, shall we get to it? You'd like to charter the Rover, you said, for a fairly short trip. But that's all you said, except for not blanching when I gave you a cost estimate. Which, by itself, immediately got me mighty interested."
