The Man-Kzin Wars 07

by Larry Niven

  Intelligent creatures with two heads, one of which spoke Belter Standard! They looked like bizarre mutant deer costumes from a masquerade party, with one-eyed heads at the ends of what should be arms. Like dual hand-puppets.

  Puppeteers? Carol considered.

  She shook her head again. The cobwebs were starting to clear, but slowly. She had to put her mind on a battle footing. Curiosity began to overtake shock in her mind. Okay, she thought. So you are facing three sets of aliens now. What's the big deal?

  These newest aliens waited in what seemed somehow like politeness. The big one, loaded down with weaponry, said nothing and made no move.

  Carol wanted to take control. Maybe there was a way out of this mess.

  Yeah, right.

  Bruno continued to chuckle softly at the implausible sight of the two creatures, with an almost hysterical undertone. Was it too much, too fast for him?

  "Knock it off," she hissed at him. "Why? They look like something out of three-D, put together by people suffering from... ah, chemical enhancement. Kidvid aliens.”

  "Yeah," Carol whispered, smiling despite herself. "A puppet show on braindust." "It's a little tough to take them seriously. And that might not be smart." Carol frowned and narrowed her eyes. Bruno was right; the aliens looked more laughable than imposing at first glance. The Outsiders appeared far more frightening. Because they were more alien looking? Or because they had defeated a kzin singleship and dismantled Dolittle?

  Even with the snaky necks, the three-legged aliens looked silly. But what about the big one's weapons? she reminded herself. Her singleship fighter-pilot reflexes were making the back of her neck crawl. That subconscious danger signal made her very suspicious. Carol had learned to trust her hunches while fighting kzinti in the borderland of Sol.

  Things were seldom what they seemed in space. Carol poked Bruno in the ribs with a forefinger for emphasis. "I think you're right. Don't underestimate them.”

  "I agree," he nodded.

  "The big one in particular seems locked and loaded for a whole herd of angry bandersnatch. Look at the gear it's carrying, Tacky, Edged weapons and laser tech at the same time? Makes no sense." Bruno's smile faded as he thought it over. "Thing about aliens is... " he began. "... they're alien," she finished with him in a tired chorus. "Many thanks to your old buddy Buford Early." "The real one, that is," Bruno agreed. Carol took a deep breath and faced the three-legged aliens visible through the bubble-window. "How do you know us?" she demanded.

  The smaller of the two aliens' twin heads suddenly whipped up, facing one another eye to eye. Just as quickly, the aliens necks returned to their previous posture. Carol wondered what that meant. "Captain Faulk," it fluted in mellow tones, "time is, as I stated earlier, of the essence. Still, it would perhaps be more conducive to swift results if we shared names. Labels are, after all, important to your species. Am I not correct?”

  Carol felt an incongruous smile spread across her face. She just couldn't help it. The aliens two heads cocked in different directions, the single eyes in each head blinking with almost human-looking lashes. "Captain Faulk?" it sang. "Is this communications module translating my words properly? You are not responding.”

  "Oh, we understand you," Bruno broke in, sounding both tired and amused. "We just have a little trouble believing in you." The alien looked at Bruno for a few seconds, then turned back to Carol. "We, too, have difficulties when meeting new species. May I continue?”

  The odd alien waited until Carol finally shrugged agreement. "Excellent," it warbled. "You may call me Diplomat, after my profession." One head gestured cautiously at its companion. "This one you may address as Guardian, or... " Here the alien paused, an odd and somehow hesitant note in its voice. "... Warrior." Carol pulled on her lower lip. "Are we out of the waveform guide and into the emitter array, then?" After a pause, the smaller alien's twin necks snapped upward, the two flat heads facing each other, eye to eye. Again, the heads immediately returned to a normal posture.

  Normal, Carol reflected, for a three-legged alien. And where was the beasts brain? Not in those tiny flat heads. The midsection? The creature spoke, the voice unmistakably that of a sultry-throated young human woman. "Ah, I at length apprehend your meaning from symbolic context. It is an attempt at something like discordant synthesis, or... humor." Bruno chuckled out loud and leaned close to Carol's ear. "I see that your Belter lack of humor is appreciated even by alien species," he whispered, breath warm and comforting.

  Carol ignored him, looking directly at the weaponry carried by the larger alien. She then raised an eyebrow at the smaller one.

  It whistled a high melodic note. "To answer your unspoken supposition, Captain Faulk, you have nothing to fear from my quiet companion. Under normal circumstances, you would never have the opportunity to perceive that particular caste of my race.”

  Bruno crossed his arms and spoke up. "That is what you say, my friend.”

  Carol was slightly annoyed at Bruno's interruption, but he did have a point. Military discipline had its drawbacks.

  "Quite so, Mr. Takagama," replied the little alien. "However, I should point out that had I or our hosts intended you harm, you would not have been repaired and awakened.”

  "Repaired?" Carol was confused.

  "Of course. You both received a very high dosage of ionizing radiation and were severely damaged during your... ah... acquisition." The small alien hummed for a moment. "Of course, you were not so severely damaged as your more aggressive and combative opponent in the next environment locus.”

  It gestured with a loose-lipped head toward the clear aperture Carol had seen earlier. That bubble-window still displayed the fallen kzin next to his singleship. The whitish tendrils wrapping the orange-furred figure were moving slowly.

  Bruno nudged Carol. "That ratcat must have received Principle knows how high a dose when the Sun-Tzu exploded. How could they repair such damage so quickly?”

  Before Carol could reply, the larger of the two aliens trumpeted loudly. The other alien fluted and sang back.

  "My esteemed colleague is quite correct," the smaller alien crooned, honey voiced. "The briefing with our hosts was quite explicit that haste was crucial. There is not time to deal with these niceties, as I mentioned earlier. We must take action, with your help.”

  "I don't understand," Carol frowned.

  "Nor should you at this point. Suffice it to say that because of your... altercation... with these... kzin creatures... you have succeeded in rousing forces you would not have wished to disturb, had you but known. That difficulty must be addressed immediately.”

  The larger of the three-legged aliens trumpeted again, a martial brass band.

  "Again, my colleague is quite right," sang the alien called Diplomat in clear bell-like tones. "If we live long enough to address the problem properly.”

  Frustration grew in Carol. She knew that they were in trouble, but it irked her not to know that trouble's extent. "At least tell us what will be done with us, why we have been captured.”

  The little alien cocked both heads at Carol in different directions. "You have not been captured, Captain Faulk.”

  "What would you call it, then?" drawled Bruno. "It seems to me that the universe has been pushing us around a lot.”

  "Mr. Takagama, are you feeling well? Paranoia is not a common condition for your naive species, according to my briefings. As for the term 'capture,' I would think the word 'rescue' more appropriate, were I you.”

  "Rescued from what?" asked Carol, feeling a cold chill run across her shaven skull and down her back.

  Now they were getting to it. "From the Zealots," replied the small alien. "A delicate balance of power has been upset by your unwitting actions.”

  Carol did not like the sound of this. "Zealots?" The alien called Diplomat sang quickly. "There exist different factions of our low-temperature hosts.

  Some are traders in information and goods to life-forms like ourselves. Other factions have... ah... more ob
scure concerns." "Obscure?" Bruno prodded at the alien, seeming just as out of place as Carol felt. "You mean hostile?" A slow roll of one of the heads, flashing eyes. "The Zealots are a Traditionalist group with very different attitudes than our hosts. They will arrive soon, and will attempt to destroy us all. Thus, we must most assuredly not be present at that time." Again, the enclosure with its false sky and too-green grass seemed to whirl around Carol. The alien ground pushed firmly up against her feet, but she felt as if she were in free fall.

  "Bruno?" she murmured. She glanced over and saw that his eyes were narrowed, face pinched. "Yes, Captain-my-captain?" Carol sighed. "We appear to have fallen right into someone else's war." A snort. She felt Bruno squeeze her arm. "You sure know how to show a fella a good time." Carol turned back to the aliens. "What happens now?" She needed more information, fast, but the issue of their fate needed to be settled first.

  Again, the creature cocked both heads in different directions. An expression of confusion? "What every intelligent being would do under these circumstances." Carol licked her lips. "And that would be?... " "We run," chorused both the little alien and Bruno.

  ·CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Radiants moved throughout the young universe, and plumbed the diverse strangenesses within it. The beings burned as bright as their cores with curiosity, all on behalf of They Who Pass.

  There was much to learn, and vast room for such a broad education. The sentient clouds of plasma swam within vast seas of glowing gas and lanes of sparkling dust, ever seeking, and felt the electrical equivalent of awe.

  All they learned, they reported to their creators on the other side of the cosmic string.

  But some parts of that fresh reality were beyond the abilities of the Radiants to explore. The world of cold matter defeated the ever-curious plasma beings. The very touch of dark solids greedily drained away the heart-fire of the incandescent gas clouds. The Radiants were forced to ignore their innate programmed curiosity for a time, and avoid the enigmatic points of darkness that swung around stellar fires.

  There was still much to learn, and an entire new universe as lecture hall.

  To They Who Pass, this new universe made little sense. It seemed paradoxically composed of two extremes: the very hot and the very cold. The Radiants could easily explore the former conditions on behalf of their masters, but the bitter chill remained quite deadly. They Who Pass grew intrigued at these newest findings from the other universe, and sent fresh instructions through the cosmic string window to their Radiant servants. This still-stranger frontier of cold must be explored as well.

  Under careful instruction, the Radiants recapitulated the original act of their own genesis. They used the interactive properties inherent to matter far colder than their own diffuse blaze. Instead of patterns implicit in the dance of atoms stripped bare of electron clouds, subtle and little-known forces pushing and pulling at atoms were investigated.

  Tests began. Cool gas clouds were visited and influenced at a distance by the Radiants. The beings of plasma reached out with tools of collective force into the dusky strangeness. Linear chains of atoms met and branched, joined, and were torn asunder with careful prodding. Complexity grew, as did the knowledge of the Radiants.

  They Who Passed marveled in their distant way at such knowledge, and urged their servants to continue the investigation. Regardless of the medium used, Mind was formed from Pattern. Perhaps even this killing blackness could give birth to Mind, and thus fresh servants, in yet another mode of existence.

  Much was discovered about condensed matter. It was blunt, willful, incapable of vibrating with the singing energies that were the lifeblood of the Radiants. But diffuse clouds of dust were not enough. With great care, the Radiants learned to come near the cold deadly spheres of matter, and study their composition by deft inductance. Patterns were imposed by the Radiants into slow currents of superconductive liquids, found in pools on the cold lumps of matter. There, as in the plasma clouds of the Radiants' birth, impurities lent a non-homogeneous nature to the medium: raw material for the primitive minds even then forming structures within the liquid.

  As electromagnetic forces were not sufficient to touch and move cold matter, a skin of protective polymer was fashioned over the superconductive liquid. Flexible struts of crystalline material gave shape and strength under the brute, inexorable pull of gravity.

  After a time, a bulbous entity heaved itself out of a pool of liquid helium. It slowly extruded a strand of matter from its center. The tentacle slid along the cold surface, and finally wrapped around a small rock.

  Slowly, the dimly thinking coldlife automaton lifted the rock against the light gravity. It waved the prize toward the glittering plasmid cloud orbiting the cold planetoid. The tentacled construct felt something like a frigid triumph, and quested around for new objects to investigate.

  Thus were the Dark Ones born.

  For many revolutions of the galaxy, the Dark Ones carried out the bidding of the Radiants in the world of cold matter. The Radiants themselves continued their explorations at the other end of the spectrum, basking in heat and light unimaginable. Together, the two classes of Mind explored the new universe, finding things awesome and strange.

  The Dark Ones moved from cold rock to still colder, tasting and examining. Learning. Yet it was not sufficient, as they could sense other worlds in space around them. They learned to build self-contained nests to carry expeditions across great distances in search of knowledge. Such was the curiosity of the Dark Ones that some nests could travel faster than a photon in vacuum.

  The Radiants in turn fashioned large structures of gas, dust, and electromagnetic fields. The tenuous constructs were designed to listen to the faint songs of other galaxies, or the brittle noises from the surfaces of neutron stars. Mysteries worth investigating abounded at the fiery centers and great whorls of galaxies.

  Much was learned about the new universe by the Dark Ones and the Radiants. That information was carried by the glowing plasma clouds to one of the still wriggling cracks in time and space. The messenger Radiant, bloated with information, would intercalate into the very field lines of the cosmic string, an intimate touch of blended attraction and repulsion. Stretched thin, the intelligent cloud would wrap tightly around the portal between universes, and send the collected information to They Who Pass, dwelling on the other side of the cosmic string. In return, new information and instruction would be transmitted from They Who Pass into the Radiant messenger. The messenger, in turn, would free itself from the cosmic string and spread the new tidings.

  So the situation remained for many eons. Until the Conundrum.

  They Who Pass ceased to speak to the Radiants through the tortured windows of their cosmic strings. The children they had sired in the new, strange universe were left to their own devices. To find their own destinies without the influence of their creators, fallen silent on the other side of an interdimensional crack between realities.

  The strange children of They Who Pass had drive, but no longer purpose. Their drive became their purpose.

  The Radiants soon became uninterested in the Dark Ones, focusing instead on issues far from the solid phase of matter. Some Radiants learned how to transform themselves into less delicate forms, able to withstand existence within the cores of suns. Vast communities of the plasma beings lived in the turbulent core of the galaxy, seeking the unknowable. Others remained wrapped and intertwined within the massive lines of force surrounding the now silent cosmic strings, plaintive, hoping for the return of They Who Pass.

  After a time the Radiants seldom communicated with their cold servants, made of dull matter instead of lively plasma. The sentient clouds fell as silent as their creators on the other side of the cosmic string.

  They had other concerns.

  The Dark Ones, too, were forced to find their own destiny in the cosmos. Many of them simply traveled without end, continuing to observe and store data as they had before — even without a recipient to which they could deli
ver.

  Others made a ritual and religion of following precisely the ways of the Old Time, when Radiant and Dark One and They Who Pass were in constant communication — perhaps the Great Silence was due to a lack of following instructions with strictest accuracy. A few Dark Ones developed their own interests among the other, native minds that eventually dwelled in the new universe. These less organized Dark Ones found that their ancient drive to collect information could be useful, and that it was possible to manipulate these new upstart sources of data to acquire still more.

  The majority of the Dark Ones — regardless of social structure — would have nothing to do with other, lesser minds which developed in the new universe. They preferred to brood in a silence to match that of They Who Pass.

  Those Dark Ones who did upon occasion interact with the new sentients came to be known by many names throughout the galaxies, a name pronounced by a dizzying variety of communication organs.

  In one area of space-time, the various inhabitants called them the Outsiders.

  ·CHAPTER EIGHT

  Rrowl-Captain's dreams were not pleasant.

  They stalked him like a loud predator closing confidently on prey. Crippled bleeding prey, limping across a field without proper cover. Without allies or weapons.

  There was no escape.

  In his dream, he was still a crèche-kit, with no name other than Second Son of Graach-Gunner. He and his litter brother, First Son of Graach-Gunner, had been inseparable comrades in crèche. In their sleeping lair, after the illuminators were dimmed, they had often hissed and spat about what Hero-Names they would choose when they were both grandly honored for bravery.