by Larry Niven
“Ha,” growled the captain in the mocking tense. “They may not be so pleased to see us when we arrive. I don’t know what they taste like, but they look as if they could be made into competent slaves.” A new, populated planet! That would mean wealth for him, and a Name! A pity there were not really enough marines aboard to leave a garrison, but that could wait until their return. However, he wondered at the big mouth on the fat one. He had not seen teeth, but there was something unsettling about the implied swallowing power.
Telepath had slumped into a semi-sitting position, hind-legs sprawled out before him. The captain thought of bringing him to his feet and to attention very forcibly indeed, but he knew from past alien contacts that he must be suffering from information overload. Some alien species, like the Chunquen with their nasty undersea boats, were like enough to kzinti in their thought processes to make it relatively easy to get a handle on them. Species on different planets followed broadly similar evolutionary paths, possibly because they had common microbe ancestors, possibly because those were the best way to go. Assuming these were mammalian, the number of teats would indicate the size of their litters. But the sexual dimorphism was more extreme than anything he had ever heard of. He found it hard to imagine either of them being sexually attractive even to each other. Perhaps they were different species. But could different species share a planet? The screen came on again, though no one had laid a claw on the control console.
“Taste like?” the pink one spoke in bewilderment.
Captain’s comfortable ideas were turned upside-down. If these enemies had superior technology, and they’d just demonstrated that they had, then not only was Prowler in trouble, so was the whole kzin species.
Captain shot a look full of death at Technology Officer. “They can hear us? They control our communications links! How is that possible?”
“I cannot imagine, sir. They must have some advanced technology indeed.”
Alien Technologies remembered, fortunately for him, that stating the obvious to Captain was never a good idea at the best of times, and this was decidedly not one of them. He tried to shift the blame:
“We know, sir, that they have been listening to us, as Strategist pointed out.”
Strategist broke in. “And if they deduced our language on only one sample, they are extremely advanced in linguistics. And if they have had other samples, how far-ranging are their probes? . . . or ships?”
That was also not a pleasant thought. If other kzinti had met them, why had they not reported the fact and staked their claim? A reason occurred to the captain and he did not like it. It fitted uncomfortably with the pink one’s big mouth.
The pink Jabba avatar spoke breezily. “Never actually met a space-faring species before, Captain, not to speak to. But my friend, Coco, here has been visiting you by the hielterober for some dozens of days now.” Coco lifted his tophat respectfully and put it back. His head appeared fleshless bone, not unlike the skull of a kz’eerkt. “So naturally he picked up your languages. But let’s get back to this tasting business. What exactly did you have in mind?”
“I have it in mind to find you on your planet, hunt you down, and then rip off your head and gorge myself on the flesh of your body,” the captain explained.
“Good Lord, are you serious?” John Wayne asked in astonishment.
Captain snarled, showing a lot of teeth, most of them very pointy. Still, addressing him as “Good Lord” showed the creature had some elementary grasp of decorum. Perhaps, thought Captain, making what was for him an unusual effort at empathy, it was attempting to pay him a compliment—or was it an insult? None of his slaves on Kzin had ever addressed him as “Good,” though they certainly addressed him as “Lord.”
The big pink creature studied the teeth thoughtfully. “Yes, I see what you mean,” he told the captain. “Well, I’m very sorry, but I don’t feel that it’s a good idea. I can see that opinions may honestly differ on this point, but on balance I’m against it. How about you, Coco?”
Coco, or the avatar that looked like death in a formal costume, considered the matter. Then he shrugged. “It seems a frightful waste to me. But you want—and let me be quite clear about this—you want that you should eat us?”
“Yes!” snarled the captain, who wasn’t used to arguments from food.
“Not that we should eat you?”
Captain was lost for words. Telepath, who had been struggling to his feet, was knocked down again by the full psychic blast of Captain’s outrage, made no less devastating by the fact, which even the other officers sensed, that it also contained more than a hint of fear.
Coco looked out at them from the screen, turning to look at each of the kzinti in turn, another cause for worry. “I’m not wildly keen on that idea either, frankly, but I just want to be sure.” Coco was trying to be polite on the off-chance there was a misunderstanding here.
There wasn’t. The captain made it very clear that he was expecting to greatly enjoy tearing them limb from limb and feasting on the remains.
“But the plain fact is that we would taste absolutely terrible. Think sawdust laced with lots of small pebbles and nails, with a dollop of jam,” John Wayne told him reasonably. “Particularly nasty jam. Made from sour fruit that was stolen from the trees by plague-stricken sthondats. We’re talking serious indigestion here. And that’s the best bit. Coco’s body here has got hardly any meat on him by any standards.” John Wayne had wanted to say avatar, but there didn’t seem to be a word for it and had chosen body as the next best thing.
If the captain did not understand the meaning of the word “jam,” Telepath did. Vegetable reproductive structures crushed to a pulp, fermented with sucrose, and . . . and eaten! Generally when spread upon a paste of crushed and baked vegetable seeds! He began vomiting convulsively, with barely time to turn away from Captain. Fortunately, the bridge, as in every ship which might encounter aliens and carried a Telepath, was fitted with a disposal unit for just such emergencies.
“Then he and his kind will make slaves.” The captain was not in a good mood, but he saw that what the enemy said was probably true enough. It was plain from Telepath’s behavior that here was a horribly perverted race . . . or races. Further, he had to admit to himself, neither of them looked particularly appetizing. One more-than-vaguely resembled a long-dead and sun-dried kz’errkt, the other a very large version of something that lived under a rock.
“Slaves. You mean fetching and carrying and dying in the arena, that sort of thing?” John Wayne asked.
“That sort of thing,” Captain agreed. “I see you’ve got the idea.” It was interesting that they were showing some sense. Two questions rose at the back of his mind. Where did they get the idea? And who had told them about the arena? True, dying in the arena was a criminal punishment by which disgraced kzin nobility might regain some honor, far beyond a slave’s aspirations, but the fact that these aliens were aware of it suggested that they had the rudiments of culture. They did, of course, but in this case it came from watching old broadcast versions of Gladiator and Spartacus.
“Well, I suppose it could be interesting,” John Wayne said reflectively. “What do you think, Coco?”
“Only for a week or so,” Coco told him. “After that, I should think, it could get rather tedious. And those who got to die in the arena might very well object. It would be a terrible waste, some of those bodies have been around for decades. I think they’d quite possibly refuse, frankly. Not really much of an improvement over being eaten, when you come right down to it.”
“You will obey in all things, vermin,” Captain told them with emphasis, the kzinti words for “alien,” “enemy,” “slave” and “vermin” all being much the same, though the Heroes’ Tongue was remarkably rich in suggestive insults otherwise. The idea of a slave, or a meal, refusing a command was too alien to be digested easily. It had happened, from time to time in the past, but to say the consequences had been drastic would be putting the matter altogether too mildly.
“Well, with all due modesty, I think I have a good memory,” John Wayne told him. “And so does my colleague here. Weather now, and rainfall . . . I think I can recall the weather-patterns for most of my lifetime so far. Or do you mean by ‘record’ those round things humans previously placed on turn-tables to make sounds? Coco thought-skibbed it was to make music, but I fropgrivened to him that that was not possible—not once you heard it.”
“Do not presume to trade on your usefulness!” Captain snarled. “Trade” in the Heroes’ Tongue was in most contexts one of those many deadly insults. Still, good record-keepers would be useful, he admitted to himself. He was in no mood to track down the meaning of the various strange words the creature used.
“I skrieg that you are using the speaking-to-slaves tense already. But I think you’re wrong about that,” John Wayne told him soberly, using the tense of equals, a breach of etiquette which would certainly cost any slave his tongue and shortly thereafter his life if he was within reach of Captain’s claws. “I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but we’re not very good at obedience. And frankly, we don’t often even try.”
For the unfortunate Telepath, it was as if the control-room turned white as Captain’s rage washed over him. At least it blotted out the alien thoughts, even of the . . . jam . . . for a time.
“Some might manage to learn it,” John Wayne went on, “but only if they want to. And I doubt if anyone would. There’s always the odd nutty eccentric of course, but not many that odd. Or that nutty. Still, we do hope you’ll come soon and talk it over with us. Or perhaps we shall come to see you, in person, so to speak. Yes, we’ll visit tomorrow sometime, if that’s alright with you, Coco?”
Coco nodded, looking slightly bored, though equipped with very little by way of facial expression to manage it with.
“Nutty” . . . that seemed to have multiple meanings. Captain knew what nuts were—seed-pods of certain vegetable matter. He did not know he was being offered a fleeting clue to many things that would bewilder him.
“There you are then, we’ll drop in tomorrow.” John Wayne waved nonchalantly at the kzinti. “Bye-bye for now.” And the picture vanished.
* * *
“What do they mean drop in?” the captain asked Alien Technologies and the rest of the Bridge Team.
“I interpret it as meaning that they will appear on Prowler some time within an eight of hours. Some sort of teleporting by the sound of it. They said ‘tomorrow,’ and that would seem to mean a day away. Their planet, like their sun, rotates very quickly.”
“Then we must be ready for them. They clearly have some advanced technology, but they may not be expecting an attack. I, of course, shall lead my Heroes. Follow me with whatever weapons we can use without damage to the ship. Technology, Weapons, you will prepare every weapon we have that might be useful in conquering them. Oh, and make sure Telepath is awake. It might get us useful information from their minds.”
Strategist was not consulted. He was used to that. He had long ago concluded that his captain, although undoubtedly brave and aggressive, was not very bright. Telepath might, of course, detect that thought; but Telepath was intelligent enough to work out that Strategist would know that he might. Simply doing nothing made a certain kind of alliance there. Alliances were something which had occasioned Strategist a good deal of thought. They did not come naturally to the kzinti, for whom the largest natural group was the pride, and packing hundreds of them into a spaceship caused stress. Clans were, of course, much larger than prides, but essentially an alliance of prides. Alliances of individuals was a radical idea. Exploring new and radical ideas was a part of how Strategist saw his job description.
* * *
Far-Ranging Prowler was heading for Altair One under the full thrust of its gravity-motor. Coco and John Wayne appeared on the bridge as promised the following day. They were not images on a screen, but three-dimensional and apparently solid, and they glanced around with keen interest, looking fearlessly into the eyes of the captain and each of the bridge team. It would have been considered the most appalling insolence in any species, including the kzin. Captain held his instinctive reaction in check.
“Captain,” John Wayne said, “I understand you mean to land on our world. We call it Glot, by the way. At least, that’s as close as we can get in your spoken language.”
“You understand correctly,” Captain told him grimly. With remarkable self-control, not to mention an unadmitted hint of caution, he had decided that he would not scream and leap at them just yet.
“Well, we’ve given the matter a certain amount of thought, and this is really rather embarrassing, but, frankly, we don’t feel a meeting would be a good idea. We had hoped for an exchange of ideas, but you don’t seem to have many. Of all the possible relationships we might establish in principle, you don’t seem to get beyond eating us or enslaving us. Neither of which, after extended reflection, look to be a whole lot of fun. And if you tried your ideas, you might damage us. Or, much more likely, we might have to damage you. So we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the best thing for you to do is to copulate off.”
Captain, not for the first time when dealing with the Dilillipsan, was rendered speechless. Telepath, unable to stop himself, howled in terror.
“We shall land, whatever the results of your thinking,” the captain told them contemptuously. “And then I shall hunt you down and rip your entrails out with my bare claws.”
Coco and John Wayne looked at each other.
“Oh, you won’t find us, you know,” John Wayne told him brightly. “We shall simply move to a different time. Our religious studies require us to do a certain amount of time-travelling, so we shall just all move somewhen else. A few thousand years in the past should do it. That will avoid unpleasant complications all round.”
Coco gave him an odd look but didn’t speak.
“You . . . travel . . . in . . . time?” Captain ground out the words with difficulty.
“Yes, just like Rod Taylor. Don’t you? I thought everybody did it. Even the humans do it.”
Had Captain thought to pursue what the Dilillipsan meant by humans, subsequent history might have been very different. He was, however, too preoccupied with this matter of insolent slaves, an idea comparable to his earlier thoughts on insolent food.
“How?” He demanded.
“Well, that would be rather difficult to explain,” replied John Wayne, cheerfully. “In any event, I don’t think your primitive physics has the terminology to express it.”
Many things in the Heroes’ Tongue are insults, but “primitive” is generally regarded as a compliment. It implies connection with the sthondat-defeating progenitors of Old Kzin.
“You will reveal it under torture,” Captain told him, a little calmed by the compliment.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” John Wayne told him. “You see, we won’t be around.”
They disappeared. The captain’s scream and leap ended in empty air and he landed on the deck in a somewhat less than dignified manner. He surveyed his officers, hoping one of them would laugh. None did, and they turned to preparations for the landing.
* * *
Down on Altair One, Coco and John Wayne were discussing their first contact. “You don’t think they are semi-autonomous avatars of something with genuine intelligence do you? Sort of avatars made of meat?” Coco asked. John Wayne thought about it.
“We made that mistake with the human beings for a long time. No, I think they are more like wasps. There is a sort of hive-mind which is extremely stupid, and the individuals are a bit brighter. Brighter than the hive-mind that is. Brighter even than wasps. The hive-mind directs them to go out in spaceships and make slaves of other species and a
lso to make their young. Using sex I expect, just like the human beings.”
They both laughed boisterously at the thought. There’s nothing quite as funny as a pornographic movie made by a totally different species. Coco and John Wayne had watched dozens of human porno-flicks, or what they thought were porno-flicks, before the joke had begun to pall. Still, they liked straight comedy best. Dunkirk had been particularly hilarious. (The moment when the Stukas dived on the artillery battery was positively convulsive. They watched it again and again.)
“No, seriously, if their hive-mind wants them to run around to different planets and eat whatever they can find palatable and enslave everything intelligent, I can’t believe that they have much to offer us.” Coco was thoughtful. “And I am sure you were right in thinking that they assumed our avatars were like them. Sort of autonomous and intelligent on their own.”
“Yes, it’s a considerable disappointment,” John Wayne admitted. “But perhaps we should have given them a chance. They might be prepared to trade. Human beings do it quite a lot, with each other.”
“I don’t remember Shere Khan trading in The Jungle Book,” Coco said. “Maybe tigers don’t. These certainly didn’t give any sign of it.”
“These tiger folk can’t have met human beings yet,” John Wayne said reflectively. “But it won’t be long before they detect their television signals. I wonder what will happen then.”
“I suspect the human beings won’t much want to be eaten either. And probably they won’t want to be enslaved. It will be interesting to find out, there could be some really complicated arguments for both sides,” Coco said, recalling Spartacus. “Possibly involving those gun and bomb things the human beings used with each other. I never thought that showed much feeling for logic, you know.”
“Their hive-mind is too stupid for logic. So is that of the tiger people, I am afraid. Not the one on the spaceship, anyway. At least there are some signs the human one has developed a bit recently. But there’s a good chance that the tiger folk will be the same as the human beings used to be. And if one side uses logic and reason and the other side uses guns and bombs, it’s not altogether clear that the logic will win. Which makes being illogical quite logical really.”
