The Man-Kzin Wars 03

by Larry Niven

  "He did not tell us why," Tyra said. The tears would no longer stay captive. "He was forbidden. He could only say he must go, and be gone a long time, but would always love us. We can only guess what happened."

  Chapter III

  The air was rank with kzin smell. The whole compound was, but in this room Yiao-Captain's excitement made it overwhelming, practically to choke on. He half leaned across his desk, claws out, as if it were an animal he had slain and was about to rip asunder. Sunlight through a window gleamed off eyes and wet fangs. Orange fur and naked tail stiffened erect. The sight terrified those human instincts that remembered the tiger and the Sabertooth. Although Peter Nordbo had met it before and knew that no attack impended- probably-he must summon his courage. He was big and muscular, Yiao-Captain was short and slender, yet the kzin topped the man by fifteen centimeters, with a third again the bulk and twice the weight.

  Words hissed, spat, snarled. "Action! Adventure! Getting away from this wretched outpost. Achievement, honor, a full name. Power gained, maybe, to end this dragged-on war at last. And afterward-afterward—" The words faded off in an exultant growl.

  When he thought he saw a measure of calm, Nordbo dared say, in Wunderlander, "I don't quite understand, sir. A very interesting astronomical phenomenon, which should be studied intensively. I came to request your help in getting me authorization to- But that is all. Isn't it, sir?" While he knew the Hero's Tongue, he was not allowed to defile it by use, especially since his vocal organs inevitably gave it a grotesque accent. When he must communicate with a kzin ignorant of his language, he used a translator or, absent that, wrote his replies.

  Yiao-Captain sat down again and indicated that Nordbo could do likewise. "No, humans are slow to perceive such possibilities," he said. With characteristic rapid mood shift, he went patronizing. "I supposed you might. You are bold for a monkey. Well, think as best you can. A mysterious source of tremendous energy. Study of the stars deepened knowledge of the atom, and thus became a key to the development of nuclear weapons. What now have you come upon?"

  Nordbo shook his head. His mouth bent upward ruefully in the bushy brown beard that was starting to grizzle, below the hook nose. "Scarcely an unknown law of nature in operation, sir. What it may be I'd rather not try to guess before we have much more data. It does suggest- No, how could it have appeared so suddenly, if it were what has crossed my mind? In any case, not every scientific discovery finds military applications. Most don't. I can't imagine how this one could, five light-years off."

  "You cannot. We shall see."

  "Well, sir, if I get the kind of support I need for further research—" Nordbo stopped. Appalled, he stared at the possibility that his eagerness had camouflaged from him. Might this really mean a weapon to turn on his folk? No. It must not. Please, God, make it impossible.

  "You will have better than that," Yiao-Captain purred. "We shall go there."

  Have I misheard? Nordbo thought. Even for a kzin, it is crazy. "What?"

  "Yes." Yiao-Captain rose again. His tail switched, his bat's-wing ears folded and lay back. He gazed out the window into the sky. "If nothing else, maybe that energy source can be transported. Maybe we can fling it at the enemy. They may have noticed too. If they have, they are bound to send an expedition sometime. Their peering, prying curiosity. But Alpha Centauri is closer to it than Sol by… three light-years, is that a good guess? We shall forestall. I can readily persuade the governor, given the information you have brought. And I will be in command."

  Nordbo had risen too, less out of deference, for he realized that at present the kzin wouldn't notice or care, than because he couldn't endure being towered over by those devils. It struck him, not for the first time, that the reason few households on Wunderland kept cats any longer was that their faces were too much like a kzin's. Well, that was far from being the only happy thing the conquest had ruined.

  "I, I wish you would reconsider, sir," he said.

  "Never." The bass voice grew muted. "Our ancestors tamed their planet and went to the stars because they had learned that knowledge brings might. Shall we dishonor their ghosts?"

  Nordbo moistened his lips. "I mean you personally, sir. We will… miss you."

  It twisted in him: The damnable part is that that is true. Yiao-Captain has never been gratuitously cruel, nor let others be when he had any control over them. By his lights, he is kindly. He has helped us directly or intervened on our behalf when I showed him the need was dire and there would be no loss to his side. He has received me as hospitably as a Hero can receive a monkey, and, yes, we have had some fascinating talks, where he listened to what I said and thought about it and gave answers that approached being fair. Why, he got me to teach him chess, and if he loses he doesn't fly into a murderous rage, only curses and goes outside to work it off in hand-to-hand combat practice. He likes me, after his fashion, and, confess it, I like him in a crooked sort of way, and-what will happen to us in Gerning if he leaves us?

  Yiao-Captain turned his head. Something akin to mirth rasped through his words. "Lament not. You are coming along."

  Nordbo took a step backward. The horror was too vast for him to grasp immediately. He felt as if he were in a cold maelstrom, whirling down and down. His hands lifted. "No," he implored. "Oh, no, no."

  Yiao-Captain refrained from slashing him for presuming to contradict a kzin. "Assuredly. You will keep total silence about this, of course." Lest a rival, rather than an enemy spy, learn, and move to get the coveted task himself. "Hr-r, you may return home, tell your household that you are going on a lengthy voyage, and pack what you need for your personal use. Then report back here for sequestration until we leave. I want your scientific skills." Laughter was a human thing, but a gruff noise vibrated. "And how can I do without my chess partner?"

  Nordbo sagged against the wall. He seldom wept, never like this.

  "What, you are reluctant?" Yiao-Captain teased. "You care nothing for struggle, glory, or your very curiosity? Take heart. Your time away shall be minimal. I am sure all arrangements can be completed within days."

  A kzin's way of challenge is to scream and leap.

  Chapter IV

  Tyra wiped furiously at her eyes. "I am, am sorry," she stammered. "I did not plan to cry at you."

  No more than a few drops had glistened along those cheekbones. Saxtorph half reached to take her hand. No. She might resent that; and after snapping once or twice for air, she had regained her balance. Best stay prosy. "You think the kzin honcho forced your father to go," he deduced.

  She shrugged, not quite spastically. "Or ordered him. What was the difference? He could not tell us anything. If he had, and the kzinti had found out—"

  Uh-huh, Saxtorph knew. Children for dinner at the officers' mess. Mother to a hunting preserve, unless they didn't reckon she'd make good sport and decided on a worse death as a public example. "This implies the ratcats considered the object important," he said. "Even more does the item that it involved an interstellar journey, in those days before hyperdrive and with a war under way. It was interstellar, wasn't it?"

  "Yes. Father spoke of… long years. Also, after the war, investigators got two or three eyewitness accounts by humans who worked for the kzinti. They had only seen requisition orders, that sort of thing, but it did establish that Yiao-Captain and a small crew left for some unrevealed destination in a vessel of the Swift Hunter class. Hardly anything else was learned."

  Saxtorph laid his pipe on the ashtaker rack and rubbed his chin. "You're right, kzinti don't do science for the sake of pure knowledge, the way humans sometimes do. They want it to help them cope with a universe they see as fundamentally hostile, or to win them power. In this case, surely, they thought of military potential."

  Tyra nodded. "That is clear." She braced herself. "Father had been excited, almost happy. He spoke to several people of a marvelous discovery he had made from his observatory. I do not remember that, but I was little, and maybe I did not happen to be there. Mother was not i
nterested in science and did not understand what he talked of, nor recall it afterward well enough to be of any use. Likewise for what servants or tenants heard. Ib was at school, he says. Everybody agrees that Father said he must see Yiao-Captain about having a thorough study made; the kzinti had the powerful instruments and computers, of course. He came home from that and-I have told you." She bit her lip. "The accusation later was that he deliberately put the kzinti on the trail of something that might have led them to a new weapon, and accompanied them to investigate closer, in hopes of wealth and favors."

  "Forgive me," Saxtorph said softly, "but I've got to ask this. Could it possibly be true?"

  "No! We, his family, knew him. Year by year we had heard as much of his pain as he dared utter, and felt the rest. He loved us. Would he free-willingly have left us, for years stretching into decades, whatever the payment? No, he simply never thought in terms of helping the kzinti in their war, until they did and it was too late for him. But the hysteria immediately after liberation- There had been many real collaborators, you know. And there were people who paid oft" grudges by accusing other people, and- It was what I think you call a witch hunt.

  "The feet that Peter Nordbo had cooperated, that was not in itself to be held against him. Most Landholders did. Taking to the bush was maybe more gallant, but then you could not be a thin, battered shield for your folk. Just the same, this was part of the reason why the new constitution took away the special status of the Nineteen Families. And in retrospect, that Peter Nordbo gave knowledge to the kzinti and fared off with them, that was made to make his earlier cooperation look willing, and like more than it actually was." Tyra's grip on the table edge drove the blood from her fingertips. "Yes, it is conceivable that in his heart he was on their side. Impossible, but conceivable. What I want you to find for me, Captain Saxtorph, is the truth. I am not afraid of it." After a moment, shakily: "Please to excuse me. I should be more businesslike." She finished her wine.

  Saxtorph knocked back his beer and rose. "Let me get us refills," he suggested. "Care for something stronger?"

  "Thank you. A double Scotch. Water chaser." She managed a smile. "You may take you an akvavit this time. I have not much left to tell."

  When he brought the drinks back, she was entirely self-possessed. "Ask whatever you want," she invited. "Be frank. I believed my wounds were long ago scarred over. What made them hurt again tonight was hope."

  "Don't get yours too high," he advised. "This looks mighty dicey to me. And, like your dad, I've got other people to think about before I agree to anything."

  "Naturally. I would not have approached you if the story of your adventures had not proved you are conscientious."

  He attempted a laugh. "Please. Call 'em my experiences. Adventures are what happen to the incompetent." He sent caraway pungency down his throat and a dollop of brew in pursuit. "Okay, let's get cracking again. I gather no details about that expedition ever came out."

  "They were suppressed, obliterated. When the human hyperdrive armada arrived and it became clear that the kzinti would lose Alpha Centauri, they destroyed all their records and installations that they could, before going forth to die in battle. Prisoners and surviving human witnesses had little information. About Yiao-Captain's mission, nobody had any, except what I mentioned to you. It was secret from the beginning; very few kzinti, either, ever knew about it."

  "No report to the home world till success was assured. Nor when Wunderland was falling. They were smart bastards; they foresaw our new craft would hunt for every such beam, overtake it, read it, and jam it beyond recovery."

  "I know. Ib has described to me the effect of faster-than-light travel on intelligence operations."

  Her grasp of practical things was akin to Dorcas', Saxtorph thought. "When did the ship leave?" he asked.

  "It was- Now I am forgetting your calendar. It was ten Earth-years before liberation."

  "And whatever messages she'd sent back were wiped from the databases at that time, and whatever kzinti knew the content died fighting. She never returned, and after the liberation no word came from her."

  "The general explanation was-is-that it and the crew perished." In bitterness, Tyra added, "Fortunately, they say."

  "But if she did not, then she probably got news of the defeat. A beam cycled through the volume of her possible trajectories could be read across several light-years, and wasn't in a direction humans would likely search. What then would her captain do?" Saxtorph addressed his beer. "Never mind for now. I'd be speculating far in advance of the facts. You say you have come upon some new ones?"

  "Old ones." Her voice dropped low. "Thirty years old."

  He waited.

  She folded her hands on the table, looked at him straight across it, and said, "A few months ago, Mother died. She was never well since Father left. As surrogate Landholder, she was not really able to cope with the dreadful task. She did her best, I grew up seeing how she struggled, but she had not his skills, or his special relationship with a ranking kzin, or just his physical strength. So she… yielded… more than he had done. This caused her to be called a collaborator, when the kzinti were safely gone, and retrospectively it blackened Father's name worse, but-she was let go, to live out her life on what property the court had no legal right to take away from us. It is productive, and Ib found a good supervisor, so she was not in poverty. Nor wealthy. But how alone! We did what we could, Ib and I and her true friends, but it was not much, and never could we restore Father to her. She was brave, kept busy, and… dwindled. Her death was peaceful. I closed her eyes. The physician's verdict was general debility leading to cardiac failure.

  "Ib has his duties, while I can set my own working hours. Therefore it was I who remained at Korsness, to make arrangements and put things in order. I went through the database, the papers, die remembrances. And at the bottom of a drawer, under layers of his clothes that she had kept, I found Father's last notebook from the observatory."

  Air whistled in between Saxtorph's teeth. "Including the data on that thing? Jesus Kristi! Didn't he know how dangerous it was for his family to have?"

  "He may have forgotten, in his emotional storm. I think likelier, however, he hid it there himself. No human would have reason to go through that drawer for many years. He knew Mother would not empty it."

  "M-m, yah. And if nothing made them suspicious, the kzinti wouldn't search the house. Beneath their dignity, pawing through monkey stuff. And they never have managed to understand how humans feel about their families. Yah. Nordbo, your dad, he may very well have left those notes as a kind of heritage; because if you've given me a proper account of him, and I believe you have, then he had not given up the hope of freedom at last for his people."

  A couple of fresh tears trembled on her lashes but went no farther. "You understand," she whispered.

  Enthusiasm leaped in him. "Well, what did the book say?" "I did not know at once. It took reviewing of science from school days. I dared not ask anybody else. It could be-undesirable."

  Okay, Saxtorph thought, if he turned out to have been a traitor after all, why not suppress the information? What harm, at this late date? I don't suppose it'd have changed your love of him and his memory. You're that kind of person.

  "What he found," Tyra said, "was a radiation source in Tigripardus." Most constellations bear the same names at Alpha Centauri as at Sol-four and a third light-years being a distance minuscule in the enormousness of the galaxy-but certain changes around the line between them have been inevitable. "It was faint, requiring a sensitive detector, and would have gone unnoticed had he not happened to study that exact part of the sky. This was in the course of a systematic, years-long search for small anomalies. They might indicate stray mono-poles, or antimatter concentrations, or other such peculiarities, which in turn might give clues about the evolution of the whole- But I explain too much, no?

  "The radiation seemed to be from a point source. It consisted of extremely high-energy gamma rays. The spectrum sug
gested particles were being formed and annihilated. This indicated an extraordinary energy density. With access to the automated monitors the kzinti kept throughout this system, Father quickly got the parallax. The object was about five light-years away. That meant the radiation at the source was fantastically intense. I can show you the figures later, if you wish."

  "I do," Saxtorph breathed. "Oh, I do."

  "He checked through the astronomical databases, too," she went on. "Archival material from Sol, and studies made here before the war, showed nothing. This was a new thing, a few years old at most."

  "And since then, evidently, it's turned off."

  "Yes. As I told you, Ib got a Navy observer to look at the area, on a pretext. Nothing unusual."

  "Curiouser and curiouser. Any idea what it might be, or have been?" "I am a layman. My guesses are worthless."

  "Don't be humble. I'm not. Hm-m-m… No, this is premature, at least till I've seen those numbers. Clearly, Yiao-Captain guessed at potentialities that made it worth taking a close look, and persuaded his superiors."

  Saxtorph clutched the handle of his mug and stared down as if it were an oracular well. "Ten years plus, either way," he muttered. "That's what I'd estimate trip time as, from what I recall of the Swift Hunter class and know about kzinti style. Sparing even a single ship and crew for twenty-odd years, when every attack on Sol was ending in expensive defeat and we'd begun making our own raids-uh-huh. A gamble, but maybe for almighty big stakes."

  "And the ship never came back," Tyra reminded him. "A ten-year crossing, do you reckon? It should have reached the goal about when the hyperdrive armada got here to set us free. Surely the kzinti sent it word of that. The news would have been received five years later. Sooner, if the ship was en route home." Or not at all if the ship was dead, Saxtorph thought. "Then what? I cannot imagine a kzin commander staying on course, to surrender at journey's end. He might have tried to arrive unexpectedly and crash his ship on Wunderland, a last act of terrible vengeance, but that would have happened already."