The Houses of the Kzinti

by Larry Niven

  He nodded, remembering the sprawling squatter-camps that surrounded the town. "We're going to have to act quickly," he said. "Those passes the oyabun got us are only good for two weeks."

  "Right," she said with another sigh, turning from the window. Jonah watched with appreciation as she rummaged in their bags for a series of parts, assembling them into a featureless box and snapping it onto the bedside datachannel. "There are probably blocks on the public channels . . ." She turned her head. "Instead of standing there making the passing girls sigh, why not get some of the other gear put together?"

  "Right." Weapons first. The UN had dug deep into the ARM's old stores, technology that was the confiscated product of centuries of perverted ingenuity. Jonah grinned. Like most Belters, he had always felt the ARM tended to err on the side of caution in their role as technological police. Opening their archives had been like pulling teeth, from what he heard, even with the kzin bearing down on Sol system in all their carnivorous splendor. I bleed for them, he thought. I won't say from where.

  The killing-tools were simple: two light-pencils of the sort engineers carried, for sketching on screens. Which was actually what they were, and any examination would prove it, according to the ARM. The only difference was that if you twisted the cap, so, pressed down on the clip that held the pen in a pocket and pointed it at an organism with a spinal cord, the pen emitted a sharp yawping sound whereupon said being went into grand mal seizure. Range of up to fifty meters, cause of death, "he died." Jonah frowned. On second thought, maybe the ARM was right about this one.

  "Tanj," Ingrid said.

  "Problem?"

  "No, just that you have to input your ID and pay a whopping great fee to access the commercial net—even allowing for the way this fake krona they've got has depreciated."

  "We've got money."

  "Sure, but we don't want to call too much attention to ourselves." She continued to tap the keys. "There, I'm past the standard blocks . . . confirming . . . Yah, it'd be a bad idea to ask about the security arrangements at you-know-who's place. It's probably flagged."

  "Commercial services," Jonah said. "Want me to drive?"

  "Not just yet. Right, I'll just look at the record of commercial subcontracts. Hmm. About what you'd expect." Ingrid frowned. "Standard goods delivered to a depot and picked up by kzin military transports; no joy there. Most of the services are provided by household servants, born on the estate; no joy there, either. Ahh, outside contractors; now that's interesting."

  "What is?" Jonah said, stripping packets of what looked like hard candy out of the lining of a suitcase. Sonic grenades, but you had to spit them at the target.

  "Our great and good Rin-Tin-Kzin has been buying infosystems and 'ware from human makers. And he's the only one who is; the ratcat armed forces order subcomponents to their own specs and assemble them in plants under their direct supervision. But not him."

  She paused in thought. "It fits . . . limited number of system types, like an ascending series, with each step up a set increment of increased capacity over the one below. Nothing like our wild and woolly jungle of manufacturers. They're not used to nonstandardized goods; they make them uneasy."

  "How does that 'fit'?"

  "With what the xenologists were saying. The ratcats have an old, old civilization—very stable. Like what the UN would have become in Sol system, with the psychists 'adjusting' everybody into peacefulness and the ARM suppressing dangerous technology—which is to say, all technology. A few hundred years down the road we'd be on, if the kzin hadn't come along and upset the trajectory."

  "Maybe they do some good after all." Jonah finished checking the wire garrotes that lay coiled in the seams of their clothing, the tiny repeating blowgun with the poisoned darts, and the harmless-looking fulgurite plastic frames of their backpacks—you twisted so and it went soft as putty, with the buckle acting as detonator-timer.

  "It fits with what we know about you-know-who, as well." The room had been very carefully swept, but there were a few precautions it did not hurt to take. Not mentioning names, for one; a robobugger could be set to conversations with key words in them. "Unconventional. Wonder why he has human infosystems installed, though? Ours aren't that much better. Can't be." Infosystems were a mature technology, long since pushed to the physical limits of quantum indeterminancy.

  "Well, they're more versatile, even the obsolete stuff here on Wunderland. I think"—she tugged at an ear—"I think it may be the 'ware he's after, though. Ratcat 'ware is almost as stereotyped as their hardwiring."

  Jonah nodded; software was a favorite cottage industry in human space, and there must be millions of hobbyists who spent their leisure time fiddling with one problem or another.

  "So we just enter a bid?" he said, flopping back on the bed. He was muscular for a Belter, but even the .61 Wunderland gravity was tiring when there was no place to get away from it.

  "Doubt it." Ingrid murmured to the system. "Finagle, no joy. It's handled through something called the Datamongers' Guild: 'A mutual benefit association of those involved in infosystem development and maintenance.' Gott knows what that is." A pause. "Whatever it is, there's no public info on how to join it. The contracts listed say you-know-who takes a random selection from their duty roster to do his maintenance work."

  Ingrid sank back on one elbow. "We need a local contact," she said slowly. "Jonah . . . We both know why Intelligence picked me as your partner. I was the only one remotely qualified who might know . . . and I do."

  "Which one?" he asked. She laughed bitterly.

  "I'd have thought Claude, but he's . . . Jonah, I wouldn't have believed it!"

  Jonah shrugged. "There's an underground surrender movement on Earth. Lots of flatlander quislings; and the pussies aren't even there yet. Why be surprised there are more here?"

  "But Claude! Oh, well."

  "So who else you got?"

  She continued to tap at the console. "Not many. None. A lot of them are listed as dead in the year or two after I left. No cause of death, just dead . . ." Her face twisted.

  Survivor guilt, Jonah thought. Dangerous. Have to watch for that.

  "Except Harold."

  "Can you trust him?"

  "Look, we have two choices. Go to Harold, or try the underworld contacts. The known-unreliable underworld contacts."

  "One of whom is your friend Harold."

  She sighed. "Yes, but—well, that's a good sign, isn't it? That he's worked with the—with them, and against—"

  "Maybe."

  "And a bar is a good place to meet people."

  And mostly you just can't wait to see him. A man who'll be twice your age while you're still young. Do you love him or hate him?

  "I . . ." She paused and ran a hand over her hair. "I don't know; he just didn't make the rendezvous in time, they were closing in, and . . ." A shrug.

  Jonah linked hands behind his head. "I still say it's damned iffy but I guess it's the best chance we have; I certainly don't want to give the gangsters another location to find us at. I guess it's the best chance we have. At least we'll be able to get a drink."

  Chapter 4

  "This is supposed to be a Terran bar?" Jonah asked dubiously. He lifted one of the greenish shrimpoids from the platter and clumsily shelled it, got a thin cut under his thumbnail, and sucked on it, cursing. There was a holo of a stick-thin girl with body paint dancing in a cage over the bar, and dancing couples and groups beneath it; most of the tables were cheek-to-jowl, and they had had to pay heavily for one with a shield, here overlooking the lower level of the club.

  Ingrid ignored him, focusing on the knot in her stomach and the clammy feel of nervous sweat across her shoulders under the formal low-necked black jumpsuit. Harold's Terran Bar was crowded tonight, and the entrance-fee had been stiff. The verguuz was excellent, however, and she sipped cautiously, welcoming the familiar mint-sweet-wham taste. The imitations in the Sol system never quite measured up. Shuddering, she noticed that two Swarm-Belter type
s at the next table were knocking back shot glasses of it, and then following the liqueur with beer chasers, in a mixture of extravagance and reckless disregard for their digestions. The squarebuilt Krio at the musicomp was tinkling out something old-sounding, piano with muted saxophone undertones.

  Gottdamn, but that takes me back.

  Claude had had an enormous collection of classical music, expensively enhanced stuff originally recorded on Earth, some of it on hardcopy or analog disks. His grandfather had acquired it, one of the eccentricities that had ruined the Montferrat-Palme fortunes. A silver-chased ebony box as big as a man's head, with a marvelous projection system. All the ancient greats, Brahms and Mozart and Jagger and Armstrong . . . They had all spent hours up in his miserable little attic, knocking back cheap Maivin and playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik or Sympathy for the Devil loud enough to bring hammering broomstick protests from the people below. . . .

  Gottdamn, it is him, she thought, with a sudden flare of determination.

  "Jonah," she said, laying a hand on his arm. "This is too public, and we can't just wait for him. It's . . . likely to be something of a shock, you know? That musician, I knew him back when too. I'll get him to call through directly, it'll be faster."

  The Sol-Belter nodded tightly; she squeezed the forearm before she rose. In space or trying to penetrate an infosystem, rank and skill both made him the leader, but here the mission and his life were both dependent on her. On her contacts, decades old here, and severed in no friendly wise.

  Ingrid moistened her lips; Sam had been on the edge of their circle of friends, and confronting him would be difficult enough, much less Harold . . . She wiped palms down her slacks and walked over to the musicomp; it was a handsome legged model in Svarterwood with a beautiful point resonator, and a damper field to ensure that nothing came from the area around it but the product of the keyboard.

  "G'tag, Sam," she said, standing by one side of the Instrument. "Still picking them out, I see."

  "Fra?" he said, looking up at her with the dignified politeness of a well-raised Krio country-boy. The face was familiar, but one side of it was immobile; she recognized the signs of a rushed reconstruction job, the type they did after severe nerve-damage in the surface tissues.

  "Well, I haven't changed that much, Sam. Remember Graduation Night, and that singalong we all had by the Founders?"

  His features changed, from the surface smoothness of a well-trained professional to a shock so profound that the living tissue went as rigid as the dead. "Fra Raines," he whispered. The skilled hands continued over the musicomp's surface, but the tune had changed without conscious intent. He winced and hesitated, but she put a hand on his shoulder.

  "No, keep playing, Sam.

  "Remember me and you

  And you and me

  Together forever

  I can't see me lovin' nobody but you—

  For all my life—"

  The musician shook his head. "The boss doesn't like me to play that one, Fra Raines," he said. "It reminds him, well, you'd know."

  "I know, Sam. But this is bigger than any of us, and it means we can't let the past sleep in its grave. Call him, tell him we're waiting."

  "Mr. Yarthkin?" the voice asked.

  He had been leaning a shoulder against one wall of the inner room, watching the roulette table. The smoke in here was even denser than by the front bar, and the ornamental fans made patterns and traceries through the blue mist. Walls were set for a space scene, a holo of Jupiter taken from near orbit on one side and Wunderland on the other. Beyond them the stars were hard glitters, pinpoints of colored light receding into infinity, infinitely out of reach. Yarthkin dropped his eyes to the table. The ventilation system was too good to carry the odor of the sweat that gleamed on the hungrily intent faces. . . .

  Another escape, he thought. Like the religious revivals, and the nostalgia craze; even the feverish corruption and pursuit of wealth. A distraction.

  "Herrenmann Yarthkin-Schotmann?" the voice asked again, and a hand touched his elbow.

  He looked down, into a girl's face framed in a black kerchief. Repurified Amish, by the long drab dress. Well-to-do, by the excellent material; many of that sect were. Wunderland had never relied much on synthetic foods, and the Herrenmen estates had used the Amish extensively as subtenants. They had flourished, particularly since the kzin came and agricultural machinery grew still scarcer . . . That was ending now, of course.

  "No 'Herrenmann,' sweetheart," he said gently. She was obviously terrified, this would be a den of Satan by her folks' teaching. "Just Harold, or Mr. Yarthkin if you'd rather. What can I do for you?"

  She clasped her gloved hands together, a frown on the delicately pretty features and a wisp of blond hair escaping from her scarf and bonnet. "Oh . . . I was wondering if you could give me some advice, please, Mr. Yarthkin. Everyone says you know what goes on in Munchen." He heard the horror in her voice as she named the city, probably from a lifetime of hearing it from the pulpit followed by "Whore of Babylon" or some such.

  "Advice I provide free," he said neutrally. Shut up, he added to his mind. There's thousands more in trouble just as bad as hers. None of your business.

  "Wilhelm and I," she began, and then halted to search for words. Yarthkin's eyes flicked up to a dark-clad young man with a fringe of beard around his face sitting at the roulette table. Sitting slumped, placing his chits with mechanical despair.

  "Wilhelm and I, we lost the farm." She put a hand to her eyes. "It wasn't his fault, we both worked so hard . . . but the kzin, they took the estate where we were tenants and . . ."

  Yarthkin nodded. Kzin took a lot of feeding. And they would not willingly eat grain-fed meat; they wanted lean range beasts. More kzin estates meant less work for humans, and what there was was in menial positions, not the big tenant holdings for mixed farming that the Herrenmen had preferred. Farmholders reduced to beggary, or to an outlaw existence that ended in a kzin hunt.

  "Your church wouldn't help?" he said. The Amish were a close-knit breed.

  "They found new positions for our workers, but the bishop, the bishop said Wilhelm . . . that there was no money to buy him a new tenancy, that he should humble himself and take work as a foreman and pray for forgiveness." Repurified Amish thought that worldly failure was punishment for sin. "Wilhelm, Wilhelm is a good man, I told him to listen to the bishop, but he cursed him to his face, and now we are shunned." She paused. "Things, things are very bad there now. It is no place to live or raise children, with food so scarce and many families crowded together."

  "Sweetheart, this isn't a charitable institution," Yarthkin said warily.

  "No, Mr. Yarthkin." She drew herself up and wrapped pride around herself like a cloak. "We had some money, we sold everything, the stock and tools. Swarm Agrobiotics offered Wilhelm and me a place—they are terraforming new farm-asteroids. With what they pay we could afford to buy a new tenancy after a few years." He nodded. The Swarm's population was growing by leaps and bounds, and it was cheaper to grow than synthesize, but skilled dirt-farmers were rare. "But we must be there soon, and there are so many difficulties with the papers."

  Bribes, Yarthkin translated to himself.

  "It takes so much more than we thought, and to live while we wait! Now we have not enough for the final clearance, and . . . and we know nothing but farming. The policeman told Wilhelm that we must have four thousand krona more, and we had less than a thousand. Nobody would lend more against his wages, not even the Sina moneylender, he just laughed and offered to . . . to sell me to . . . and Wilhelm hit him, and we had to pay more to the police. Now he gambles, it is the only way we might get the money, but of course he loses."

  The house always wins, Yarthkin thought. The girl steeled herself and continued.

  "The Herrenmann policeman—"

  "Claude Montferrat-Palme?" Yarthkin inquired, nodding with his chin. The police chief was over at the baccarat tables with a glass of verguuz at his elbow, playing his usual cauti
ously skillful game.

  "Yes," she whispered. "He told me that there was a way the papers could be approved." A silence. "I said nothing to Wilhelm, he is . . . very young, younger than me in some ways." The china-blue eyes turned to him. "Is this Herrenmann one who keeps his word?"

  "Claude?" Yarthkin said. "Yes. A direct promise, yes; he'll keep the letter of it."

  She gripped her hands tighter. "I do not know what to do," she said softly. "I must think."

  She nodded jerkily to herself and moved off. Yarthkin threw the butt of his cigarette down for the floor to absorb and moved over to the roulette table. A smile quirked the corner of his mouth, and he picked up a handful of hundred-krona chips from in front of the croupier. Stupid, he thought to himself. Oh, well, a man has to make a fool of himself occasionally.

  The Amishman had dropped his last chip and was waiting to lose it; he gulped at the drink at his elbow and loosened the tight collar of his jacket. Probably seeing the Welfare Office ahead of him, Yarthkin thought. These days, that meant a labor camp where the room-and-board charges were twice the theoretical wages . . . They would find something else for his wife to do. Yarthkin dropped his counter beside the young farmer's.

  "I'm feeling lucky tonight, Tony," he said to the croupier. "Let's see it."

  She raised one thin eyebrow, shrugged her shoulders under the sequins and spun the wheel. "Place your bets, gentlefolk, please." Impassively, she tossed the ball into the whirring circle of metal. "Number eight. Even, in the black."

  The Amishman blinked down in astonishment as the croupier's ladle pushed his doubled stakes back toward him. Yarthkin reached out and gripped his wrist as the young man made an automatic motion toward the plaques. It was thick and springy with muscle, the arm of a man who had worked with his hands all his life, but Yarthkin had no difficulty stopping the motion.

  "Let it ride," he said. "Play the black, I'll do the same."

  Another spin, but the croupier's lips were compressed into a thin line; she was a professional, and hated a break in routine. "Place your bets . . . Black wins again, gentlefolk."