Dragon's Teeth

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Well, they know better now,” Dick replied grimly.

  “I’ll put the Embassy on alert—and give me that—” Vena took the bowl from him. “I’ll have the Marines run it through an analyzer.”

  Embassy guards by long tradition were called “Marines,” although they were merely another branch of the Patrol. Dick readily surrendered the poisoned food to Vena, knowing that if SCat could smell a poison, the forensic analyzer every Embassy possessed—just in case—would easily be able to find it. Relations with the Lacu’un were important enough that Vena had gone from being merely a trade advisor and titular consul to a full-scale ambassador, with the attendant staff and amenities. It was that promotion that had persuaded her to remain here instead of returning to her former position in the Scouts.

  Dick himself went to the storage vault that held the imported cat-food, got a highly compressed cube out, and opened it over a freshly washed bowl. The stuff puffed up to ten times its compressed size once it came into contact with air and humidity; it would be impossible to tamper with the packages without a resulting “explosion” of food. The entire feline family flowed into the kitchen as soon as his fingers touched the package; the kittens swarmed around his legs, mewling piteously, but he offered the bowl for SCat’s inspection before allowing them to engulf it.

  His mind buzzed with questions, but two were uppermost—who would have tried to poison the kittens? And why?

  SCat and SKitty herded their kittens along like a pair of attentive sheepdogs when they’d finished eating, following behind Dick as he left the palace, heading for the Embassy. The Marine at the entrance gave him a brisk nod of recognition, saving her grin for the moving black-furred flock behind him.

  A second Marine at a desk just inside, skilled in the Lacu’un tongue, served double-duty as a receptionist. “The Ambassador is expecting you, sir,” he said. “She left orders for you to go straight in.”

  Dick led his parade past the desk—a desk of cast marble reinforced with plastile, which would serve very nicely as a blast-and-projectile-proof bunker at need. The door to Vena’s office (a cleverly concealed blast-door) was slightly ajar; it sensed his approach and opened fully for him after a retinal scan.

  “Have you ever wondered why our peaceful hosts happen to field a battle-ready army?” Vena asked him, without even a preliminary greeting.

  “Ah, no, I hadn’t—but now that you mention it, it does seem odd.” Dick took a seat, cats pooling around his ankles, as Vena tossed her compuslate aside.

  “Our hosts aren’t the sole representatives of their race on this dirtball,” Vena replied, with no expression that Dick could see. “And now they finally get around to telling me this. It seems that there is another nation entirely on this continent—we thought that it was just another fief of the Lacu’ara, and they never disabused us of that impression.”

  “Let me guess—the other side doesn’t like Terrans?” Dick hazarded.

  “I wish it was that simple. Unfortunately, the other side worships the kreshta as children of their prime deity.” Vena couldn’t quite repress a snarl. “Kill one, and you’ve got a holy war on your hands—we’ve been slaughtering hundreds for better than two years. The attempt on the Octet was just the opening salvo for us heretics. The Chief Minister has been here, telling me all about it and falling all over himself in apology. Here—” She pulled a micro reader out of a drawer in her desk and tossed it to him. “My head of security advises that you commit this to memory.”

  “What is it?” Dick asked, thumbing it on, and seeing (with some puzzlement) the line drawing of a nude Lacu’un appear on the plate.

  “How to kill or disable a Lacu’un in five easy lessons, as written by the Patrol Marines.” Her face had gone back to that deadpan expression again. “Lieutenant Reynard thinks you might need it.”

  The prickling of claws set carefully into his clothing alerted him that one of the cats was swarming up to drape itself over his shoulders, but somewhat to his surprise, it wasn’t SKitty, it was SCat. The tom peered at the screen in his hand with every evidence of fascinated concentration, too.

  He was Patrol, after all . . . . was his second thought, after the initial surprise. And on the heels of that thought, he decided to hold the reader up so that SCat could use the touch screen too.

  It was easier to disable a Lacu’un than to kill one, at least in hand-to-hand combat. Their throats were armored with bone plates, their heads with amazingly thick skulls. But there were vulnerable major nerve-points at all joints; concentrated pinpoint pressure would paralyze everything from the joint down when applied there. When Dick figured he had the scanty contents by heart, he tossed the reader back to Vena, though what he was supposed to do with the information was beyond him at the moment. He wasn’t exactly trained in anything but the most basic of self-defense—that was more in Erica Makumba’s line, and she was several light-years away at the moment.

  “The Lacu’un Army has been alerted, the Palace has been put under tight security, and the caretakers of the other cats have been warned about the poisoning attempt. However, the mysterious kitchen-helper got clean away, so we can assume he’ll make another attempt. My advisors and I would like to take him alive if we can—we’ve got some plans that may abort this mess before it gets worse than it already is.”

  SCat’s deep-voiced growl showed what he thought of that idea, and Vena lowered her smoldering, dark eyes from Dick’s to the tom’s, and smiled grimly.

  “I’d like to put a Marine guard on the cats—but I know that’s hardly possible,” Vena continued, as SCat and SKitty voiced identical snorts of disdain. “But let’s walk back over to the Palace and talk about what we can do on the way.”

  SCat looked up at him and made an odd noise, easy enough to interpret. “SCat thinks he and SKitty can guard the kittens well enough,” Dick replied, as Vena waved him through the door, a torrent of cats washing around his ankles.

  “I’m sure he does,” Vena retorted. “But let’s remember that he’s only a cat, however much his genes have been tweaked. I hardly think he’s capable of understanding the danger of the current situation.”

  “He isn’t just a cat, he was a Patrol cat,” Dick pointed out, but Vena just shook her head at that.

  “Dick, we don’t even know exactly what we’re into—all we know is that there was an attempt to poison the cats by an assassin that got away. We don’t know if it was a lone fanatic, someone sent by our hosts’ enemies, if there’s only one or more than one—” She sighed as they reached the street. “We’re doing all the intelligence gathering we can, but it’s difficult to manage when you don’t look anything like the dominant species on the planet.”

  The street was empty, which was fairly normal at this time of day when most Lacu’un were inside at their evening meal. The sky of this world seemed a bit greenish to him, but he’d gotten used to it—today, there were some clouds that might mean rain. Or might not, he didn’t know very much about planetside weather.

  SCat’s squall was all the warning Dick got to throw himself out of the way as something dark and fast whizzed through the place where he’d been standing. SKitty and the kittens fairly flew back to the safety of the Embassy, SCat whisked out of sight altogether; a larger, cloaked shape sprang from the shadows of a doorway, and before Dick managed to get halfway to his feet, the gray-cloaked, pale-skinned Lacu’un seized Vena and enveloped her, holding a knife to her throat.

  “Be still, blasphemous she-demon!” it grated, holding both of Vena’s arms pinned behind her back in a way that had to be excruciatingly painful. She grimaced but said nothing. “And you, father of demons, be still also!” it snapped at Dick. “I am the righteous hand of Kresh’kali, the all-devouring, the purifier! I am the bringer of cleansing, the anointed of God! In His name, and by His mercy, I give you this choice—remove yourselves from our soil, take yourselves back into the sky forever, or you will die, first you and your she-demon and your god-killing pests, then all of those who
brought you.” Its voice rose, taking on the tones of a hellfire-and-brimstone preacher. “Kresh’kali is the One, the true God, whose word is the only law, and whose minions cleanse the world in His image; His will shall not be flouted, and His servants not denied—”

  It sounded like a well-rehearsed speech, and probably would have gone on for some time had it not been interrupted by the speaker’s own scream of agony.

  And small wonder, for SCat had crept up unseen even by Dick, until the instant he leapt for the assassin’s knife-wielding wrist, and fastened his teeth unerringly into those sensitive nerves at the joining of hand and wrist.

  The knife clattered to the street, Vena twisted away, and Dick charged, all at the same moment; his shoulder hit the assassin and they both went down on the hard stone paving. But not in a disorderly heap, no; by the time the Marines came piling out of the Embassy, alerted by the frantic herd of cats, Dick had the miscreant face down on the ground with both arms paralyzed from the shoulders down. And, miracle of miracles, this time he wasn’t the one battered and bruised—in fact, he was intact beyond a few scrapes!

  He wasn’t taking any chances though; he waited until the Marines had all four limbs of the assassin in stasis-cuffs before he got off his captive and surrendered him.

  “Do we turn him over to the locals?” one of the Marines asked Vena diffidently.

  “Not a chance,” she growled. “Hustle him into the Embassy before anyone asks any questions.”

  “What are you going to do?” Dick asked sotto voce, following the Marines and their cursing burden.

  “I told you, we’ve got some ideas—and a couple of experiments I’d rather try on this dirtbag rather than any Lacu’un volunteers,” was all she said, leaving him singularly unsatisfied. All he could be certain of was that she didn’t plan to execute the assassin out-of-hand. “We caught him, and we’ve got a chance to try those ideas out.”

  He continued to follow, and was not prevented, as Vena led the way up the stairs to the Embassy med-lab. The entire entourage of cats followed, and Vena not only let them, she waved them all inside before shutting and locking the door. The prisoner was strapped into a dental chair and gagged, which at least put an end to the curses, though not to the glares he cast at them.

  But Vena dropped down onto one knee and looked into SKitty’s eyes. “I know you’re a telepath, SKitty,” she said, in Terran. “Can you project to anyone but Dick? Could you project into our prisoner’s mind? Put your voice in his head?”

  SKitty turned her head to look up at Dick. :Walls,: she complained. :Dick has no walls for SKitty.:

  “She says he’s got barriers,” Dick interpreted. “I understand that most nontelepathic people have and it’s just an accident that the two of us are compatible.”

  “I may be able to change that,” Vena replied, with a tight smile, as she got to her feet. “SKitty, I’m going to do some things to this prisoner, and I want you to tell me when the barriers are gone.” She turned to a cabinet and unlocked it; inside were hypospray vials, and she selected one. “We’ve been cooperating with the Lacu’un Healers; putting together drugs we’ve been developing for the Lacu’un,” she continued. “There are hypnotics that are proven to lower telepathic barriers in humans, and I have a few that may do the same for the Lacu’un. If they don’t kill him, that is.” She raised an eyebrow at Dick. “You can see why we didn’t want to test them even on volunteers.”

  “But if the drugs kill him—” Dick gulped.

  “Then we save the Lacu’ara the cost of an execution, and we apologize that the prisoner expired from fear,” she replied smoothly. Dick gulped again; this was a ruthless side of Vena he’d had no notion existed!

  She placed the first hypo against the side of the prisoner’s neck; the device hissed as it discharged its contents, and the prisoner’s eyes widened with fear.

  An hour later, there were only two vials left in the cabinet; Vena had administered all the rest, and their antidotes, with sublime disregard for the strain this was probably putting on the prisoner’s body. The effects of each had been duly noted, but none of them produced the desired effect of lowering the barriers nontelepaths had against telepathic intrusion.

  Vena picked up the first of the last two, and sighed. “If one of these doesn’t work, I’ll have to make a decision about giving him to the locals,” she said with what sounded like disappointment. “I’d really rather not do that.”

  Dick didn’t ask why, but one of the two Marines in the room with them must have seen the question in his eyes. “If the Ambassador turns this fellow over to them, they’ll execute him, and that might be enough to send cold war hostilities into a real blaze,” the young lieutenant muttered as Vena administered the hypo. “And the word from the Palace is that the other side is as advanced in atomic physics as our lot is. In other words, these are religious fanatics with a nuclear arsenal.”

  Dick winced; the Terrans would be safe enough in a nuclear exchange, and so would the bulk of city-dwellers, for the Lacu’un had mastered force-shield technology. But in a nuclear exchange there were always accidents and as yet it wasn’t possible to encase anything bigger than a city in a shield; he’d seen enough blasted lands never to wish a nuc-war on anyone, and certainly not on the decent folk here.

  SKitty watched the prisoner as she would a mouse; his eyes unfocused when the drug took hold, and this time, she meowed with pleasure. It didn’t take Dick’s translation for Vena to know that the prisoner’s telepathic barriers to SKitty’s probing thoughts were gone.

  “Excellent!” she exclaimed with relief. “All right, little one—we’re going to leave the room until you send one of the kittens to come get us. Let him think we’ve lost interest in him for the moment, then get into his head and convince him that he is a very, very bad kitten and you are his mother and you’re going to punish him unless he says he’s sorry and he won’t do it again. Make him think that you are so angry that you might kill him if he can’t understand how bad he’s been. In fact, any of you cats that can get into his head should do that. Then make him promise that he’ll always obey everything you tell him to, and don’t let up the pressure until he does.”

  SKitty looked at Vena as if she thought the human had gone crazy, then sighed. :Stupid,: she told Dick privately. :But okay. I do.:

  Dick as baffled as SKitty was, as he followed Vena out into the hall, leaving the cats with the prisoner. “Just what is that going to accomplish?” he demanded.

  She chuckled. “I rather doubt he’s ever heard anyone speak in his mind before,” she pointed out. “Not even his god.”

  Now Dick saw exactly what she’d had in mind—and stifled his bark of laughter. “He’s going to be certain SKitty’s more powerful than his god if she can do that—and if she treats him like a naughty child rather than an enemy to be destroyed—”

  “Exactly,” Vena said with satisfaction. “This is what Lieutenant Reynard wanted me to try, though we thought we’d have to add halucinogens and a VR headset, rather than getting right directly into his head. My problem was finding a way to tell her to act like an all-powerful, rebuking god in a way she’d understand. In the drugged state he’s in now, he’ll accept whatever happens as the truth.”

  “So he won’t threaten the cats anymore—but then what?” Dick asked.

  “According to Reynard, the worst that will happen is that he’ll be convinced that this new god of his enemies is a lot more powerful and real than his own, and that’s the story he’ll take back home.”

  “And the best?” Dick inquired.

  She shrugged. “He converts.”

  “Just what will that accomplish?”

  She paused, and licked her lips unconsciously. “We ran some simulations, based on what we’ve learned about Lacu’un psychology and projecting the rest from history. Historically, the most fanatic followers of a new religion are the converts who were just as fanatical in their former religion. In either case, imagine the reaction when he returns ho
me, which he will, and miraculously, because we’ll take a stealthed flitter and drop him over the border while he’s drugged and unconscious. He’ll probably figure out that we brought him, but there won’t be any sign of how. Imagine what his superiors will think?”

  The Marine lieutenant standing diffidently at her elbow cleared his throat. “Actually, you don’t have to guess,” he said respectfully. “As the Ambassador mentioned, we’ve been running a psych-profiles for possible contingencies, and they agree with her educated assessment. No matter what, the fanatics will be too frightened of the power of this new ‘god’ to hazard either a war or another assassination attempt. And if we send back a convert—there’s a seventy-four-point-three-percent chance he’ll end up starting his own crusade, or even a holy war within their culture. No matter what, they cease to be a problem.”

  “Now that,” Dick replied with feeling, “is really a better mousetrap!”

  This is a very old story, dating back at least ten years. Published in a short-lived magazine called American Fantasy, I doubt that many people had a chance to see it. It was old enough that I felt it needed a bit of rewriting, so although the general plot is the same, it’s undergone a pretty extensive change.

  The Last of the Season

  Mercedes Lackey

  They said on TV that her name was Molly, but Jim already knew that. They also said that she was eight years old, but she didn’t look eight, more like six; didn’t look old enough to be in school, even. She didn’t look anything like the picture they’d put up on the screen, either. The picture was at least a year old, and done by some cut-rate outfit for her school. Her hair was shorter, her face rounder, her expression so stiff she looked like a kid-dummy. There was nothing like the lively spark in her eyes, or the naughty smile she’d worn this afternoon. The kid in the picture was so clean she squeaked; where was the sticky popsicle residue on her face and hands, the dirt smudges on her knees?