The World of Ptavvs

by Larry Niven

  “To what?” Kzanol was clearly lost. Thrintun had never fought anything but other thrintun, and the last war had been fought before star travel. Kzanol knew nothing of war.

  Kzanol tried to get back to basics. “You said you could tell me where the thrintun are now.”

  “With the tnuctipun. They’re dead, extinct. If they weren’t dead they would have reached Earth by now. That goes for the tnuctipun too, and nearly every other species that served us.”

  “But that’s insane. Somebody has to win a war!”

  He sounded so sincere that Kzanol/Greenberg laughed. “Not so. Ask a human. He’ll think you’re an idiot for needing to, but he’ll be happy to tell you. Shall I tell you what may have happened?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. “This is pure conjecture, but it makes sense to me, and I’ve had two weeks to think about it. We must have been losing the war. If we were, some thraargh—excuse me. Some members of our race must have decided to take all the slaves with us. Like Grandfather’s funeral ceremony, but bigger. He made an amplifier helmet strong enough to reach the entire galaxy. Then he ordered everyone within reach to commit suicide.”

  “But that’s a horrible attitude!” Kzanol bristled with moral outrage. “Why would a thrint do a thing like that?”

  “Ask a human. He knows what sentients are capable of when someone threatens them with death. First they declaim that the whole thing is horribly immoral, and that it’s unthinkable that the threat would ever be carried out. Then they reveal that they have similar plans, better in every respect, and have had them for years, decades, centuries. You admit the Big Amplifier was technically feasible?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you doubt that a slave race in revolt would settle for nothing less than our total extinction?”

  The tendrils writhed in battle at the corners of Kzanol’s mouth. “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Then—”

  “Certainly we’d take them with us into extinction! The sneaky, dishonorable lower-than-whitefoods, using our concessions of freedom to destroy us! I only desire that we got them all.”

  Kzanol/Greenberg grinned. “We must have. How else can we explain that none of our slaves are in evidence except whitefoods? Remember whitefoods are immune to the Power.

  “Now, that other information. Have you looked for your second suit?”

  Kzanol returned to the present. “Yes, on the moons. And you searched Neptune. I’d have known if Masney found it. Still, there’s one more place I’d like to search.”

  “Go ahead. Let me know when you’re finished.”

  Gyros hummed faintly as the Golden Circle swung around. Kzanol looked straight ahead, his Attention in the control room. Kzanol/Greenberg lit a cigarette and got ready for a wait.

  If Kzanol had learned patience, so had his poor man’s imitation. Otherwise he would have done something foolish when the thrint blithely took over Masney, his own personal slave. He could have killed the thrint merely for using his own body—Kzanol/Greenberg’s own stolen body, by every test of memory. And the effort of dealing with Kzanol, face to his own face!

  But he had no choice.

  The remarkable thing was that he was succeeding. He faced a full grown thrint on the thrint’s own territory. He had gone a long way as another thrint mind, a ptavv at least. Kzanol still might kill him; he wished that the thrint would pay some attention to the disintegrator! But he had done well so far. And was proud of himself, which was all to the good.

  There was no more to be done now. He had better stay out of Kzanol’s way for a while.

  XV

  Kzanol’s first move was to radar Kzanol/Greenberg’s ship. When that failed to turn up the suit, Kzanol took over Masney again and made him search it from radar cone to exhaust cone, checking the assumption that the shielded slave had somehow sneaked the suit aboard and turned off the stasis field. He found nothing.

  But the other seemed so sure of himself!

  They searched Triton again. Kzanol/Greenberg could see Kzanol’s uncertainty growing as the search progressed. The suit wasn’t on Neptune, wasn’t on either moon, positively wasn’t on the other ship, couldn’t have stayed in orbit this long. Where was it?

  The drive went off. Kzanol turned to face his tormentor, who suddenly felt as if his brain were being squeezed flat. Kzanol was giving it everything he had: screaming sense and gibberish, orders and rage and red hate, and question, question, question. The pilot moaned and covered his head. The copilot squealed, stood up and turned half around, and died with foam on her lips. She stood there, dead, with only the magnets in her sandals to keep her from floating away. Kzanol/Greenberg faced the thrint as he would have faced a tornado.

  The mental tornado ended. “Where is it?” asked Kzanol.

  “Let’s make a deal.”

  Kzanol took out his variable-knife. He treated the disintegrator with supreme disregard. Perhaps he didn’t think of it as a weapon. Anyway, nothing uses a weapon on a thrint except another thrint. He opened the variable-knife to eight feet and stood ready to wave the invisibly thin blade through the rebellious sentient’s body.

  “I dare you,” said Kzanol/Greenberg. He didn’t bother to raise the disintegrator.

  GET OUT, Kzanol told the pilot. Kzanol/Greenberg could have shouted. He’d won! Slaves may not be present at a battle, or squabble, between thrint and thrint.

  The pilot moved slowly toward the airlock. Either some motor area had been burned out in the mind fight, or the slave was reluctant to leave. Kzanol probed and saw what the slave wanted.

  ALL RIGHT. BUT HURRY.

  Very quickly, the pilot climbed into his spacesuit before leaving. The family of Racarliw had never mistreated a slave…

  The airlock door swung shut. Kzanol asked, “What kind of deal?”

  “I want a partnership share in control of Earth. Our agreement is not to be invalidated if we find other, uh, beings like you, or a government of same. Half to you, half to me, and your full help in building me an amplifier. You’d better have the first helmet. I want your oath, your…Wait a minute, I can’t pronounce it.” He picked up a bridge sheet and wrote, ‘prtuuvl’, in the dots and curlicues of overspeak. “I want you to swear that oath that you will protect my half ownership to the best of your ability, and that you will never willingly jeopardize my life or health, provided that I take you to where you can find the second suit. Also that we get Earthmen to build me another amplifier, once we get back.”

  Kzanol thought for a full minute. His mental shield was as solid as the door on a lunar fort, but Kzanol/Greenberg could guess his thoughts well enough. He was stalling for effect. Certainly he had decided to give the oath; for the prtuuvl oath was for use between thrint and thrint. Kzanol need only regard him as a slave…

  “All right,” said Kzanol. And he gave the prtuuvl oath, without missing a single syllable.

  “Good,” Kzanol/Greenberg approved. “Now swear me the same thing, by this oath.” He pulled a bridge sheet from his breast pocket and passed it over. Kzanol took it and looked.

  “You want me to swear a kpitlithtulm oath too?”

  “Yes.” There was no need to spell it out for Kzanol. The kpitlithtulm oath was for use between thrint and slave. If he swore the kpitlithtulm oath and the prtuuvl oath he would be committed, unless he chose to regard Kzanol/Greenberg as a plant or a dumb animal. Which would be dishonorable.

  Kzanol dropped the paper. His mind shield was almost flickering, it was so rigid. Then his jaws pulled back from the fangs in a smile more terrible than Tyrannosaurus Rex chasing a paleontologist, or Lucas Garner hearing a good joke. Seeing Kzanol now, who could doubt that this was a carnivore? A ravenous carnivore which intended to be fed at any moment. One might forget that Kzanol was half as big as a man, and see that he was larger than one hundred scorpions or three wildcats or a horde of marching soldier ants.

  But Kzanol/Greenberg saw it as a smile of rueful admiration, a laughing surrender to a superior adversary; t
he smile of a good loser. With his thrint memories he saw further than that. The smile was as phony as a brass transistor.

  Kzanol gave the oath four times, and made four invalidating technical mistakes. The fifth time he gave up and swore according to protocol.

  “All right,” said Kzanol/Greenberg. “Have the pilot take us to Pluto.”

  “A-a-all right, everybody turn ship and head for three, eighty-four, twenty-one.” The man in the lead ship sounded wearily patient. “I don’t know what the game is, but we can play just as good as any kid on the block.”

  “Pluto,” said someone. “He’s going to Pluto!”

  Old Smoky Petropoulos thumbed the transmitter. “Lew, hadn’t one of us better stop and find out what’s with the other two ships?”

  “Uh. Okay, Smoky, you do it. Can you find us later with a maser?”

  “Sure, boss. No secrets?”

  “Hell, they know we’re following them. Tell us anything we need to know. And find out where Garner is! If he’s in the honeymooner I want to know it. Better beam Number Six too, and tell him to go wherever Garner is.”

  “Of course, Pluto. Don’t you get it yet?” Reluctantly, Kzanol/Greenberg began to worry about his former self’s intelligence. He’d been afraid Kzanol would figure it out for himself. But—?

  “No,” said Kzanol, glowering.

  “The ship hit one of Neptune’s moons,” Kzanol/Greenberg explained patiently, “so hard that the moon was smacked out of orbit. Power, the ship was moving at almost light-speed! The moon picked up enough energy to become a planet, but it was left with an eccentric orbit which takes it inside Neptune at times. Naturally that made it easy to spot.”

  “I was told that Pluto came from some other solar system.”

  “So was I. But that doesn’t make sense. If that mass dived into the system from outside, why didn’t it go right back out again? Well, I’m taking a gamble.

  “There’s only one thing that bothers me. Pluto isn’t very big. Do you suppose the suit may have been blown back into space by the explosion when it hit?”

  “If it was, I’ll kill you,” said Kzanol.

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Garner begged. “Aha! I’ve got it. Smoky Petropoulos. How are you?”

  “Not as good as your memory. It’s been twelve years.” Smoky stood behind the two chairs, in the airlock space, and grinned at the windshield reflection of the two men. There wasn’t room to do much else. “How the hell are you, Garner? Why don’t you turn around and shake hands with an old buddy?”

  “I can’t, Smoky. I’ve been ordered not to move by a BEM that doesn’t take No for an answer. Probably a good hypnotherapist could get us out of this fix, but we’ll have to wait ’till then. By the way, meet Leroy Anderson.”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “Now give us a couple of cigarettes, Smoky, and put them in the comer of our mouths so we can talk. Are your boys chasing Greenberg and the BEM?”

  “Yeah.” Smoky fumbled with cigarettes and a lighter. “Just what is this game of musical chairs?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Old Smoky put their cigarettes where they belonged. He said, “That honeymoon special took off for Pluto. Why?”

  “Pluto!”

  “Surprised?”

  “It wasn’t here.” said Anderson.

  “Right,” said Garner. “We know what they’re after, and we know now they didn’t find it around here. But I can’t imagine why they think it’s on Pluto. Oops! Hold it.” Garner puffed furiously at his cigarette. He didn’t seem to have any trouble moving his face. “Pluto may have been a moon of Neptune once. Maybe that’s it. How about Greenberg’s ship? Is it going in the same direction?”

  “Uh-uh. Wherever it is, its drive is off. We lost sight of it four hours ago.”

  Anderson spoke up. “If your friend is still aboard he could be in trouble.”

  “Right,” said Garner. “Smoky, that ship could be falling into Neptune with Lloyd Masney aboard. You remember him? A big, broad guy.”

  “I think so. Is he paralyzed too?”

  “He’s hypnotized. Plain old garden-variety hypnotized, and if he hasn’t been told to save himself he won’t. Will you?”

  “Sure. I’ll bring him back here.” Smoky turned to the airlock.

  “Hey!” Garner yelped. “Take the butts out of our mouths before our faces catch fire!”

  From his own ship Smoky called Woody Atwood in Number Six, the radar-proof ship, and told his story. “I think it’s the truth, Woody,” he finished. “But there’s no point taking chances. You get in here and stick close to Garner’s ship; if he makes a single move he’s a bloody liar, so keep an eye open. He’s been known to be tricky. I’ll see if Masney is really in trouble. He shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  “Pluto’s a week and a half away at one gravity,” said Anderson, who could do simple computation in his head. “But we couldn’t follow the gang even if we could move. We don’t have the fuel.”

  “We could refuel on Titan, couldn’t we? Where the hell is Smoky?”

  “Better not expect him back today.”

  Garner growled at him. Space, free face, paralysis and defeat were all wearing away at his self-control.

  “Hey,” he whispered suddenly.

  “What?” The word came in an exaggerated stage whisper.

  “I can wiggle my index fingers,” Garner snapped. “This hex may be wearing off. And mind your manners.”

  Number Six, invisible to radar, hovered near the Heinlein, patiently waiting for Garner to make a move.

  Smoky was back late the next day. He had inserted the pointed nose of his ship into Masney’s drive tube to push Masney’s ship. When he turned off his own drive the two ships tumbled freely. Smoky moved between ships with a jet pack in the small of his back. By this time Atwood had joined the little group; for it would have been foolish to suspect trickery after finding Masney.

  Not because Masney was still hypnotized. He wasn’t. Kzanol had freed him from hypnosis in the process of taking him over, and had kindly left him with no orders when he left for Pluto. But Masney was near starvation. His face had deep wrinkles of excess skin, and the skin of his torso was a loose, floppy, folded tent over his rib cage. Kzanol/Greenberg had forgotten to feed him for a little more than two weeks, and had given him water only when his thirst seemed about to break him out of hypnosis. Kzanol would never have treated a slave that way; but Kzanol, the real Kzanol, was far more telepathic than the false.

  Masney had started an eating spree as soon as the Golden Circle was gone, but it would be some time before he was ‘stocky’ again. His ship’s fuel was gone, and he had been drifting a highly eccentric orbit around Triton.

  “Couldn’t possibly be faked,” Smoky said when he called the Belt fleet. “A little bit better fakery, and Masney would be dead. As it is he’s only sick.”

  Now the four ships fell near Nereid.

  “We’ve got to refuel all these ships,” said Garner. “And there’s only one way to do it.” He began to tell them.

  Smoky howled. “I won’t leave my ship!”

  “Sorry, Smoky. See if you can follow this. We’ve got three pilots, right? You, Woody, Masney. Anderson and me are paralyzed. But we’ve got four ships. We have to leave one.”

  “Sure, but why mine?”

  “Five men to carry. That means we keep both two-man ships. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “We give up your ship, or we give up a radar-proof ship. Which would you leave?”

  “You don’t think we’ll get to Pluto in time for the war?” Smoky asked.

  “We might as well try.”

  “All right, all right!”

  The fleet moved to Triton without Number Four, and with half of Number Four’s fuel in Masney’s ship. Garner was Masney’s passenger, and Smoky was in the Heinlein with Anderson. The three ships hovered over the icy surface while their drives melted through layer after thick layer o
f frozen gasses, nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide, until they reached water. They landed on water ice, each in its own shallow cone. Then Woody and Smoky went after Number Four.

  They used the tank of Number Four to hold and heat water ice chipped from the landing area, and they used the battery from Number Six to electrolyze the melted water. Hydrogen and oxygen, mixed, poured into the Heinlein’s tank. They set the tank thermostat above the condensation point of hydrogen; but the oxygen fell as snow, and Smoky stood in the bottom of the tank and shoveled the snow out. In two days they had fueled all three ships. Number Four was useless, her tank clogged with dirt.

  “We’ll be two days late for whatever happens,” Woody said glumly. “Why go at all?”

  “We can stay close enough for radio contact,” argued Smoky. “I’d like to have Garner close enough to tell the fleet what to do. He knows more about the Bug Eyed Monsters than any of us.”

  Garner said, “Main argument is that it may take the fleet two days to lose. Then we get there and save the day. Or we don’t. Let’s go.”

  Woody Atwood masered the fleet immediately, knowing that the others could not intercept the conversation. If they had moved into the maser beam their radios would have blown sky high.

  XVI

  “Matchsticks!” Kzanol’s voice was heavy with thrintun contempt. “We might just as well be playing solitaire.” It was a strange thing to say, considering that he was losing.

  “Tell you what,” suggested Kzanol/Greenberg. “We could divide the Earth up now and then play for people. We’d get about four billion each to play with. In fact, we could agree right now that the Earth should be divided by two north-south great circle lines, leave it at that ’till we get back, and play from four billion each.”

  “Sounds all right. Why north-south?”

  “So we each get all the choices of climates there are. Why not?”

  “All right.” Kzanol dealt two cards face down and one up. “Seven-card stud,” announced the pilot.

  “Fold,” said Kzanol/Greenberg, and watched Kzanol snarl and rake in the antes. “We should have brought Masney,” he mused. “It might be dangerous, not having a pilot.”