The Man-Kzin Wars 02

by Larry Niven

  Yarthkin nodded. "That's better, sweetheart. I'm selling the club because I need ready capital, for relocation and grubstaking my people, the ones who don't want to come with me."

  "Go with you? Where? And what does this have to do with Ingrid?" Yarthkin grinned again, tapped ash off the end of his cigarette. Exhilaration filled him, and something that had been missing for far too long. What? he thought. Not youth... yes, that's it. Purpose.

  "It isn't every man who's given a chance to do it over right," he said. "That, friend Claude, is what I'm going to do. We're going to bust Ingrid out of that Preserve. Have a shot at it, at least. " He held up a hand. "Don't fuck with me, Claude; I know as well as you that the system there is managed through München Police H.Q. One badly mangled corpse substituted for another, what ratcat's to know? It's been done before." "Odd you should think of that," Montferrat said, shaking his head dully. "For the past several days I have been regretting that I always kept out of the set-up side of the Hunts. Couldn't... I have to watch them, anyway, too often."

  Odd how men cling to despair, once they've hit bottom, Yarthkin thought. As if hope were too much effort. Is that what surrender is, then, just giving in to exhaustion of the soul?

  Aloud: "Computer, access file Till Eulenspiegel."

  The surface of his desk flashed transparent and lit with a series of coded text-columns. Montferrat came erect with a shaken oath. "How... if you had that, all these years, why haven't you used it?" "Claude, the great drawback of blackmail is that it gives the victim the best possible incentive to find a permanent way of shutting you up. Risky, especially when dealing with the police. As to the how, you're not under the impression that you get the best people in the police, are you?" A squint, and the gravelly voice went soft. "Don't think I wouldn't use it, sweetheart, if you didn't cooperate, and there's more than enough here to put you in the edible-delicacy category. Think of it as God's way of giving you an incentive to get back on the straight and narrow."

  I tell you, Axelrod-Bauergartner has the command codes for the Preservel I can override, but it would be flagged. Immediately."

  "Computer, display file Niebelungen AA37Bi22. Damned lack of imagination, that code... There it is, Claude. Everything you always wanted to know about your most ambitious subordinate but were afraid to ask, including her private bypass programs." Another flick of ash. "Finagle, Claude, you can probably make all this look like her fault, even if the ratcats smell the proverbial rodent."

  Montferrat smoothed down his uniform tunic, and it was as if the gesture slicked transparent armor across his skin once more. "You appear to have me by the short and sensitives, kamerat," he said lightly. "Not entirely to my dismay. The plan is, then, that Ingrid and her gallant Sol-Belter are whisked away from under the noses of the kzin, while you go to -ground?"

  Yarthkin laughed, a shocking sound. "Appearances to the contrary, Claude old son, you were always the romantic of us two. The one for the noble gesture. Nothing of the sort: Ingrid and I are going to the Swarm."

  "And the man, Jonah?"

  "Fuck him. Let the ratcats have him. His job was done the minute they failed to dig the real story out of him."

  Montferrat managed a laugh. "This is quite a reversal Of roles, Hari... but this, this final twist, it makes it seem possible, somehow." He extended a hand. "Seeing as you have the gun to my head, why not? Working together again, eh?"

  "All right, listen up," the guard said.

  Jonah shook his head, shook out the last of the fog. Ingrid sat beside him on the plain slatted wood of the bench, in this incongruous pen... change-rooms for a country club, once. Now a set of run-down stone buildings in the midst of shaggy overgrown wilderness; the side open to the remnants of lawn and terrace was covered with a shockfield. He looked around; there were around two dozen humans with them, all clad alike in grey prison trousers and shirts. All quiet. The shockrods of the guards had enforced that. Some weeping, a few catatonic, and there was an unpleasant fecal smell.

  "You get an hour's start," the guard said, in a voice of bored routine. "And you'd better run, believe me.

  "Up yours!” somebody shouted, and laughed when the guard raised her rod. "What you going to do, ratcat lover, condemn me to death?"

  The guard shrugged. "You ever seen a house cat playing with a mumbly?" she jeered. "The ratcats like a good chase. Disappoint them and they'll bat you around like a toy." She stepped back, and the door opened. "Hell, keep ahead of them for two days and maybe they'll let you go." A burly man rose and charged, bounced back as she took another step through the door. Laughter, through the transparent surface. "Have fun, porkchops. I'll watch you die. Five minutes to shield-down. "

  "You all right?" Jonah asked. Neither of them had been much damaged physically by the interrogation; it had been done in a police headquarters, where the most modem methods were available, not crude field expedients. And the psychists' shields had worked perfectly; the great weakness of telepathic interrogation is that it can only detect what the subject believes to be true. It had been debatable whether the blocks and artificial memories would hold... Kzin telepaths bated staying in a human's mind more than they had to, and the drug-addiction that helped to develop their talents did little for motivation or intelligence.

  "Fine," Ingrid said, raising her head from her knees. "Just thinking how pretty it is out there." Tears starred her lashes, but her voice was steady.

  Startled, he looked again through the near-invisible shimmer of the shockfield. The long green-gold grass was rippling under a late-afternoon sun, starred with flowers like living jewel-flecks. A line of flamingos skimmed by, down to the little pond at the base of the hill. Beyond was forest, flowering dogwood in a fountain of white against the flickering-shiny olive drab of native kampfwald trees. The shockfield let air through, carrying scents of leafmold, green, purity.

  "You're right," he said. They clasped hands, embraced, stepped back and saluted each other formally. "It's been... good knowing you, Lieutenant Ingrid.

  "Likewise, Captain Jonah." A gamin smile. "Finagle's arse, we're not dead yet, are we?"

  "Huh. huh-huh." Lights spun before Jonah's eyes, wrenching his stomach with more nausea. Gummy saliva blocked his mouth as he tumbled over the lip of the gully, crashing through brush that ripped and tore with living fingers of thorn and bramble. Tumble, roll, down through the brush-covered sixty-degree slope, out into the patch of gravel and sparse spaghettilike grass analog at the bottom. To lie and rest, Murphy, to rest ...

  Memories were returning. Evidently his subconscious believed there wouldn't be another interrogation. Believed they were dead already. My fingernail. I have to escape. And that's a laugh. But I have to try.... He turned the final roll into a flip and came erect, facing in the direction of his flight; force the diaphragm to breathe, stomach out to suck air into the bottom of the lungs. His chest felt tight and hot, as if the air pumping through it was nothing, vacuum, inert gas. Will kept him steady, blinked his eyes into focus. He was in a patch of bright sunlight, the forest above a deep green-gold shade that flickered; the soil under his feet was damp, impossibly cool on his skin. The wind was blowing toward him, which meant that the kzin would be following ground-scent rather than what floated on the breeze. A kzin nose was not as sensitive as a hound's, but several thousand times more acute than a human's.

  And I must stink to high heaven, he thought. Even then he could smell himself; he hawked and spat, taking a firmer grip on his improvised weapon. That was a length of branch and a rock half the size of his head, dangling from the end by thin strong vines. Thank Murphy that Wunderland flora ran to creepers...

  "One," he muttered to himself. "There ain't no justice, I know, but please, just one." His breathing was slowing, and he became conscious of thirst, then the gnawing emptiness under his ribs. The sun was high overhead; nearly a day already? How many of the others were still alive? A flicker of movement at the lip of the ravine, ten meters above him and twenty away. Jonah swung the stone-age
morningstar around his head and roared, and the kzin halted his headlong four-footed rush. Rose like an unfolding wall of brown-red, dappled in the light at the edge of the tall trees, slashed across with the white of teeth. Great round eyes, and he could imagine the pupils going pinpoint; the kzin homeworld was not only colder than Wunderland, it was dimmer. Batwing ears unfolding, straining for sound; their hearing was keen enough to pick a human heartbeat out of the background noise. This was a young male, he would be hot, hot for the kill and salt blood to quench his thirst and let him rest... "Come on, you kshat, you sthondat-eater," Jonah yelled in the snarling tones of the Hero's Tongue. "Come and get your name, kinless offspring of cowards, come and eat turnips out of my shit, grassgrazer! Ch'rowl you!”

  The kzin screamed, a raw wailing shriek that echoed down the ravine; screamed again and leaped in an impossible soaring curve that took it halfway down the steep slope.

  "Now, Ingrid. Now!" Jonah shouted, and ran forward.

  The woman rose from the last, thicker scrub at the edge of the slope, where water nourished taller bushes. Rose just as the second bounding leap passed its arc, the kzin spread-eagled against the sky, taloned hands outstretched to grasp and tear. The three-meter pole rose with her, butt against the earth, sharpened tip reaching for the alien's belly. The two met, and the wet ripping sound was audible even over the berserk siren shriek of the young kzin's pain.

  It toppled forward and sideways, thrashing and ululating with the long pole transfixing it. He forced rubbery leg muscles into a final sprint, a leap and scream of his own. Then he was there, in among the clinging brush and it was there, too, convulsing. He darted in, swung, and the rock smashed into a hand that was lashing for his throat; the kzin wailed again, put its free hand to the spear, pulled while it kept him at bay with lunging snaps. Ingrid was on the other side with a second spear, jabbing; he danced in, heedless of the fangs, and swung two-handed. The rock landed at the juncture of thick neck and sloping shoulder, and something snapped. The shock of it ran back up his arms.

  The pair moved in, stabbing, smashing, block and wiggle and jump and strike, and the broken alien crawled toward them with inhuman vitality, growling and whimpering and moving even with the dull-pink bulge of intestine showing where it had ripped the jagged wood out of its flesh. Fur, flesh, scraps of leaf, dust scattering about... Until at last too many bones were broken and too much of the bright-red blood spilled, and it lay twitching. The humans lay just out of reach, sobbing back their breaths; Jonah could hear the kzin's cries over the thunder in his ears, hear them turn to high-pitched words in the Hero's Tongue:

  "It hurts..." The Sol-Belter rolled to his knees. His shadow fell across the battered, swollen eyes of his enemy. "It hurts... mother, you've come back, mother-" The shattered paw-hands made kneading motions, like a nursing kitten. "Help me, take away the noise in my head, mother... " Presently it died.

  "That's one for a pall-bearer." The end of his finger throbbed. "Goddamn it, I can't escape!” he shouted at it.

  Ingrid tried to rise, fell back with a faint cry.

  Jonah bent over, hands moving on the ruffled tatters that streaked down one thigh. "How bad..." he pushed back the ruined cloth. Blood was running down the slim length of the woman's leg, not pumping but in a steady flow. "Damn, tanj, tanj, tanj!" He ripped at his shirt for a pressure-bandage, tied it on with the thin vines scattered everywhere about. "Here, here's your spear, lean on it, come on." He darted back to the body; there was a knife at its belt, a long heavy-bladed w'tsai. Jonah ripped it free, looped the belt over one shoulder like a baldric.

  "Let's move," he said, staggering slightly. She leaned on the spear hard enough to drive the blunt end inches deep into the sandy gravel, and shook her head.

  "No, I'd slow you down. You're the one that has to get away." His finger throbbed anew to remind him. And she's Hari's girl, not mine. But another memory returned, and he laughed.

  "Something's funny?"

  "Yeah, maybe it is! Maybe-hell, I bet it worked!”

  "What worked?"

  "Tell you on the way."

  "No, you won't, I'm not coming with you. Now get going!”

  "Murphy bugger that with a diode, Lieutenant. Get moving, that's an order." She put an arm around his shoulder and they hobbled down the shifting footing of the ravine's bed. There was a crooked smile on her face as she spoke.

  "Well, it's not as if we had anywhere to go, is it?"

  The kzin governor of Wunderland paced tiredly toward the gate of his children’s quarters, grooming absently. The hunt had gone well, the intruder humans were undoubtedly beginning a short passage through some lucky Hero's digestive system, and it was time to relax.

  Perhaps I should have stayed to track them myself, he mused as he passed the last guard station with an absent-minded wave. No, why bother. That prey is already caught, this was simply a re-enactment.

  Chuut-Riit felt the repaired doors swing shut before him and glanced around in puzzlement, the silence penetrating through post-Hunt sluggishness. The courtyard was deserted, and it had been nearly seven days since his last visit; far too soon for another assassination attempt, but the older children should have been boiling out to greet him, questions and frolicking... He turned and keyed the terminal in the stone beside the door.

  Nothing. The kzin blinked in puzzlement. Odd. There has been no record of any malfunction. In instinctive reflex he lowered himself to all fours and sniffed; the usual sand-rock-metal scents, multiple young-kzin smells. Something underneath that, and he licked his nose to moisten it and drew in a long breath with his mouth half open.

  He started back, arching his spine and bristling with a growling hiss, tail rigid. Dead nwat and blood. N"irling, he slapped for the exterior communicator. "Guard-Captain, respond. Guard-Captain, respond immediately."

  Nothing. He bent, tensed, leaped for the summit of the wall. A crackling discharge met him, a blue corona around the sharp twisted iron of the battlement's top that sent pain searing through the palms of his outstretched hands. The wards were set on maximum force, and he fell to the ground cradling his burned palms. Rage bit through him, stronger than pain or thought; someone had menaced his children, his future, the blood of the Riit. His snarl was soundless as he dashed on all fours across the open space of the courtyard and into the entrance of the warren. It was dark, the glowpanels out and the ventilators silent; for the first time it even smelled like a castle on homeworld, purely of old stone, iron, and blood. Fresh blood on something near the entrance. He bent, the huge round circles of his eyes going black as the pupils expanded. A sword, a four-foot kreera with a double saw edge. The real article, heavy wave-forged steel, from the sealed training cabinets which should only have opened to his own touch. Ignoring the pain as burned tissue cracked and oozed fluids, he reached for the long hide-wound bone grip of the weapon. The edges of the blade glimmered with dark wet, set with a matt of orange-red hairs.

  His arm bent, feeling the weight of the metal as he dropped into the crook-kneed defensive stance, with the lead ball of the pommel held level with his eyes. The corridor twisted off before him, the faint light of occasional skylights picking out the edges of granite blocks and the black iron doors with their central locks cast in the shape of beast-masked ancestral warriors. Chuut-Riit's ears cocked forward and his mouth opened, dropping the lower jaw toward the chest: maximum flow over the nasal passages to catch scent, and fangs ready to tear at anything that got past the weapon in his hands. He edged down the corridor one swift careful step at a time, heading for the central tower where he could do something, even if it was only lighting a signal fire.

  Insane, he thought with a comer of his mind that watched his slinking progress through the dark halls. It was insane, like something from the ancient songs of homeworld. Like the Siege of Zeeroau, the Heroic Band manning the ramparts against the prophet, dwindling one by one from wounds and weariness and the hunger-frenzy that sent them down into the catacombs to hunt and then the dreadful
feasting.

  Chuut-Riit turned a corner and wheeled, blade up to meet a possible attack from the dropstand over the corner. Nothing-but the whirl-and-cut brought him flush against the opposite wall, and he padded on. Noise and smell; a thin mewling, and an overpowering stink of kzinmeat. A door, and the first body before it. There was little of the soft tissue left, but the face was intact. One of his older sons, the teeth frozen in an eternal snarl; blood was splashed about, far more than one body could account for. Walls, floor, ceiling; guts and splatters that dripped down in slow congealing trails toward the floor. A chugra spear lay broken by the wall, alongside a battered metal shield; the sound had been coming from behind the door the corpse guarded, but now he could hear nothing.

  No, wait. His ears folded out to their maximum. Breathing. A multiple rapid panting. He tried the door; it was unlocked, but something had it jammed closed.

  A mewl sounded as he leaned his weight against it and the iron creaked. "Open!” he snarled. "Open at once.

  More mewls, and a metallic tapping. The panel lurched inward, and he stooped to fill the doorway.

  The infants, he thought. A heap in the far comer of the room. Squirming spotted fur and huge terrified eyes peering back at him; the younger ones, the kits just recently taken from their mothers. At the sight of him they set up the thin eeeuw-eeeuu-eeeuw that was the kzin child's cry of distress.

  "Daddy!” one of them said. "We're so hungry, Daddy. We're so frightened. He said we should stay in here and not open the door and not cry but there were awful noises and it's been so long and we're hungry, Daddy, Daddy-

  Chuut-Riit uttered a grating sound deep in his chest and looked down; his son's w'tsai had been wedged to hold the door from the inside, the kits must have done it at his instruction, while he waited outside to face the hunters. Hunger-frenzy eroded what little patience an adolescent kzin possessed, as well as intellect; they would not spend longing at a closed door, not with fresh meat to hand, and the smell of blood in their nostrils.