The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  Brenda Curtis had been a Sauron superman.

  Current tales of the Sauron breeding centers were entirely imaginary. Terry had no idea what his ancestor had escaped from. Only the bald fact of her origin was known, and only to her children...and their fathers? Who could tell, now?

  But twenty-four gene-tailored Motie Warriors were about to learn whether a child of Brenda Curtis could take care of himself.

  He was not required to fight, Terry reminded himself. He would be judged by whether he survived.

  The canister surged. Aft defined itself: the window was wreathed in pale flame. Terry's chair rotated; the others didn't.

  "They're pampering me, I think."

  His eye and camera found a broad patch of black against the stars, and a scattering of blunt cylinders accelerating alongside his own. The black edged across the stars. The troopship struck it with a surge and an ominous crunch.

  The troopship turned powerfully. Thrust distorted Terry's voice. "We've punched through the mirror. It's stronger than I expected. Maybe they reinforced it after Cerberus's attack. I can see a ragged black hole-ooppshit!" Pellets blasted through the cabin.

  Terry hadn't even had a chance to curl around himself. He took a moment to understand that he was alive, unhurt. The rest- "Some Warriors are hit, but they're ignoring it." He let the camera watch Warriors place meteor patches in a tearing hurry. "The ship's decelerating hard. The hailstorm isn't over. Maybe you can hear the impacts, but the pellets aren't hitting the life support system anymore. We're thrusting, too. Something-" Terry grabbed handholds.

  The ship smacked nozzles-first into a wall, with a booming recoil.

  Terry's vision cleared quickly. One of the odd ones had already cut the ship's hull wide open, and the Warriors were pouring through. Terry searched for a strap release.

  The four odd ones moved last.

  Terry cut himself free and followed them out. "I'd bet anything that one's a Warrior-Doctor," he told his audience. "Those two are officers: better armor, and the widgetry they're carrying looks like communications, not weapons." The officers separated quickly. The last Motie was more compact, larger head, the hands more delicate. "That one looks like a cross between Warrior and Engineer. I'll follow it."

  The starscape was gaudy, but the mirrors were brighter yet. Terry opened his silver umbrella... his laser shield.

  Pandemonium was brilliantly backlit by the mirrors. The troops were jetting into a madman's maze. One and another Warrior flashed red, then puffed neon-red gas. Answering fire made actinic flares among the spires and blocks. Warrior troops swarmed from other directions. The ships of Captor Fleet were on all sides of Pandemonium.

  Once Terry looked back. He reported, "The troopship's wrecked and nobody cares. They must be counting on their Warrior-Engineer to build them a way home. They'll guard him pretty carefully." But Terry was no longer sure of that. Pandemonium was very close.

  They were approaching a windowless wall. The lasers that menaced them were suddenly unable to reach them, except for stragglers... such as Terry Kakumi, crouched behind his umbrella. A red dot played across it, and then he, too, was out of the lasers' view. He moved his umbrella-mirror and saw a bulging crater in the wall, and Captor troops diving through.

  Too fast. He activated his backpack jets, then swore luridly for his audience and posterity. "Sorry. I'm getting low thrust. Watchmakers must have fixed my bloody jet pack." The crater came up, too fast, and he steered to miss the edge. "Must think I don't mass that much after all." He clutched his camera to his chest, pointing down into the dark.

  A racer's crew must see what's going on. A warship is a different matter, and most of Hecate's window space had disappeared . .. but not all.

  So Cerberus's human crew had three views of the battle. There was Freddy's telescope, and the window, and Terry's camera. Mostly they watched the feed from Terry's camera.

  Thirty-four black-armored Warriors had plunged through a black wall, and the camera POV plunged after. Mirrorlight glowed through from behind, illuminating a honeycomb structure too small for humans or normal Moties. Ruby and green flared within the structure. An explosion ripped open a score of rooms. Then tiny forms in silver armor were jetting among the larger Warrior shapes, riding bullet-shaped rockets no larger than themselves, swerving at terrific accelerations, or just blasting through walls and Warriors and into space carrying dead passengers.

  Terry's voice said, "Watchmakers, I think."

  Jennifer said, "Right. It's like films from MacArthur."

  Terry's voice ran on. "They're using projectile weapons, and so are the Warriors: spray guns with tiny bullets."

  Jennifer clutched Freddy's arm and pointed through a window. Glenda Ruth didn't turn around. In a moment Freddy touched her shoulder and said, "Somebody's arrived, some other ship. Real Moties, not vermin. We can see the ripples in the skin of Cerberus. Maybe your brother's arranged something."

  "Great," Jennifer said. She started to say something to Glenda Ruth and fell silent.

  "Glenda Ruth?" Freddy said. "Are you-"

  "Not okay, Freddy. Not. He's so scared!"

  "Traces of the original structure here, I think. Nickel-iron being shaped on site. This may have been an icy asteroid rather than a comet, closer to the sun before all these mirrors altered its orbit-"

  "I never saw you like this. How do-"

  "Can't you hear the fear in his voice? He could be killed. That's why Mediators can't stand battle. They're all trying to chew each other up, the Warriors and those little Hell beasts and whatever's out of sight and-oh God!" The view jerked and skewed, and Terry's voice stopped. Her hands clamped hard on Freddy's arm.

  Freddy didn't speak. Glenda Ruth saw that her nails had drawn blood. Her voice rose into a hysterical whine. "They shot him!"

  This looked solid, some kind of support strut. Terry had dodged behind it when the bullets sprayed across him. He huddled behind it, reaching. Engineers and Watchmakers had been at work on his suit, and he could only hope-there, the pouch of meteor patches.

  He pulled one open. His fingertip traced three tiny holes across his chest carapace, between his right nipple and right shoulder. They'd nearly closed themselves; the hiss had dwindled. The patch covered all three.

  But the hiss continued, and he wondered how he would reach his back. The pain and wet were just over his shoulder blade.

  The Warriors had gone on. A big Motie head poked around a partition (big was friendly) looked him over (officer?) and withdrew. Another such shape floated nearby, leaking fog through scores of tiny holes, its laser weapon spinning nearby. Maybe the little demons had gone after it deliberately. It was the Warrior-Engineer.

  "Doctors probably aren't intelligent." Terry had forgotten his audience; he was talking to himself. "Probably. One to treat any Class, but none to treat a human. Who's going to treat me? Three bullets through my right lung."

  With his fingers on the edge of the second patch, he reached behind him, forced it past the pain, then rubbed his back across the support strut. The hiss stopped.

  A cough would have worried him. He'd be coughing blood before this was over. Meanwhile, for his audience: "These were high velocity slugs intended to penetrate armor. Fast but small. No tumble. No stopping power. They're for Watchmakers or something not much bigger. Infections aren't any danger out here. Ronald Reagan was shot through the lung with a bigger bullet than these, seventy years old in FDA-era medicine, and he went on to finish two terms as president of the United States of America." And Reagan hadn't had Brenda Curtis for an ancestor.

  "I'm going for the gun," Terry said, and leapt. Turning, he snatched the Warrior-Engineer's laser rifle and impacted his feet against a wall, the camera and gun turned down. The wall shuddered, and his camera caught six silver shapes plunging through.

  His gun caught them, too, in a spray of projectiles. There was no answering fire, only a twinkling of edged weapons. His tiny bullets were cutting them up good, but six had become twenty jum
ping in pursuit as Terry Kakumi's recoil and suit jets hurled him up through the crater hole. And now they were all bright in mirror light and starlight, and Terry held his camera on the swarm.

  A fireball blasted out of Pandemonium, half behind an angular bulge. Terry didn't bother with it. The camera recorded the shock wave surging through the city.

  His breathing was going ragged; he'd have to stop talking soon. But: "They don't fit the suits. There are slack parts. Six-limbed suits, Watchmaker suits, with one limb tied down, and-" He coughed and stopped trying. Let the camera speak for him.

  They wore borrowed pressure suits with the lower left arm tied down. Half of them had used up their jets and jumped anyway. Animals. Others were fleeing the light; but three turned and made for Terry. He held the camera on them and slashed them with high-V pellets.

  Nice. Two merely died, but one silver suit, filleted, puffed its occupant thrashing into space. They weren't Watchmakers at all.

  They were something nastier.

  "I never saw …" Freddy peered at the display. "Victoria? What in Hell-" Victoria was missing. "Glenda Ruth? I've seen ‘em before."

  She didn't want to look. She made herself look and considered what she was seeing. She said, "The Zoo on Mote Prime," and watched them remembering.

  Fourth floor: a Motie city, struck by disaster. Cars overturned and rusted in littered, broken streets. Aircraft had embedded their wreckage in the ruins of fire-scorched buildings. Weeds grew from cracks in the pavement. In the center of the picture was a sloping mound of rubble, and a hundred small black shapes darted and swarmed over it.

  Every student at the Institute had studied that scene. The Motie cycle of boom and bust was so dependable that plants and animals had evolved specifically for ruined cities!

  One had a pointed, ratlike face with wicked teeth. But it was not a rat. It had one membranous ear, and five limbs. The foremost limb on the right side was not a fifth paw; it was a long and agile arm, tipped with claws like hooked daggers.

  "But those were quite different," Jennifer said. "Look, these are all hands, and longer, leaner. Freddy, can you summon up a copy of What I Did on My Summer Vacation? I think the skulls are bigger, too!"

  "They're changed," Glenda Ruth said. "Evolution must have moved much faster for them. Shorter generations, bigger litters. Why not? Freddy, I've got to get Victoria."

  Terry Kakumi's voice was much weakened. "I don't know how to tell Warriors that I need medical help. Freddy, if you're still hearing me, s-s-s—" Coughing.

  Freddy nodded. He floated toward the airlock, slowly, hands visible for the Warrior on duty. When Freddy reached the lock, the Warrior put his gunpoint in Freddy's ribs.

  Freddy put his head in the lock and yelled, "Victoria! Now! Terry's been shot! Do you hear me?"

  A lopsided face wreathed in white fur confronted him. Freddy wondered if he was seeing Ozma. The Master spoke a word to the Warrior, who pointed its gun elsewhere. The Master turned full away and hiss-whistled.

  Victoria came. Freddy explained rapidly; Victoria translated; the Master went away; so did Victoria. The Warrior reached, turned Freddy around, and pushed him back to the control center.

  On-screen, a pair of Warriors had retrieved Terry. Freddy could glimpse them at the screen's edge, towing him. Voiceless, Terry pointed the camera to pick up: A snowstorm of dead war rats, big as greyhounds and small as puppies, all armed with edged weapons, some armed with guns.

  A factory, empty, scaled down. That looked to be a distillery; that, a smelter. Even in the asteroid mines of most systems, humans would align their furniture. Here boilerplate-bulky machines pointed off at all angles, leaving almost no waste space.

  A sudden firefight receded as Terry's escorts made for safety. A Warrior's grenade opened a wall to space. War rats blew past them toward the stars. Warriors picked off the few in stolen suits.

  Victoria was back. "Ozma has told the Chief, but-" She saw the screen. "That's better. Your friend was inside too many walls. Ozma has also summoned a hybrid who might help your friend, an interbreeding of Doctor and Master. We only have one."

  Freddy nodded and said appropriate things. Glenda Ruth only watched. The camera didn't seem to be pointing at anything interesting anymore.

  3 Chocolate

  And there're a

  hun-dred-mil-lion-oth-ers, like

  all of you successfully if

  delicately gelded (or spaded)

  gentlemen (and ladies)

  e. e. cummings

  When the Doctor-Master arrived, Freddy had anticipated him. He had library medical tapes already running. The long-fingered almost-Master watched for a few minutes, looked the three humans over, decided Freddy was the male, peeled him, and began comparing him to what he was seeing on the screen. The Anglic commentary ran at low volume while Victoria spoke a running translation into the fleshy trumpet of the Doctor's ear. She was frequently baffled.

  The Doctor was a young male, Victoria told them. "Doctor Doolittle," Glenda Ruth named him, and saw Jennifer smile. Freddy's face remained a rictus of discomfort.

  Glenda Ruth wondered why Captor Fleet had chosen to feed such a peculiarity when they were so obviously short of resources. As if they had known aliens were coming... known ten years ago. Where the hell was Terry?

  Terry was alive, technically, when they brought him in nearly two hours later. A misshapen Warrior was pumping his rib cage, breathing for him, Glenda Ruth looked at him and gave up hope.

  Doctor Doolittle spoke rapidly.

  The Warrior slashed the front of Terry's suit and pulled him out. A pair of Watchmakers pulled a black pressure balloon open and fished out transparent tubes and a canister. The little Doctor-Master wrapped itself around Terry's head and shoulders, planted his ear on Terry's torso, and listened. Then it pulled his head far back and fed the tube into his nose.

  Terry thrashed weakly. Red flowed down the tube. The Motie watched for a few minutes, then spoke. The Warrior had gone back to breathing for Terry, flexing his chest, on and on, without fatigue. The Watchmakers fished out a squeezebulb of clear fluid.

  Glenda Ruth stopped watching. She couldn't stand it.

  Freddy pulled his shorts on and left it at that; the Motie Doctor might need to compare again. He caught her eye as she turned away, and she knew another moment of dread.

  "Glenda Ruth-"

  She turned away as the strange doctor spoke softly to the Warriors.

  Captor Fleet was at work beyond Cerberus's windows. From all they could see, the War Rats and Watchmakers were no longer to be feared. Larger ships had moved in. Altered troopships and tinier ships yet moved in a cloud around Pandemonium. An Engineer with a crew of Watchmakers worked on one of the damaged troopships. Large Moties from time to time came out of the ruins with-things. Broken machinery. Tankage. Plastic bags.

  Jennifer said, "Remember the battle? Just before we were captured? Just lasers, no projectiles. In Pandemonium the Warriors used bullets, but only inside walls. But the rats and brownies were shooting everywhere."

  "Your point?"

  "Well, Victoria keeps calling them animals. She especially likes the word vermin. Maybe because they don't care how much stuff they throw away, even if it can be recycled. That's what all those little ships are doing, chasing down stuff that got loose during the fight."

  Glenda Ruth nodded. "Yeah. How's Terry?"

  "Breathing on his own. I want a human doctor."

  "Hang in there. Terry's tough."

  Silence.

  "I couldn't watch."

  "I noticed," Jennifer said.

  "You think he's not feeling anything, and you're almost right, he won't remember how bad it is. But his body, his nerves, he's hurt, Jennifer, and I can feel it. Oh, hell, don't you leave me, too!"

  "Too?"

  "Freddy saw me! He saw me turning away from Terry. Squeamish. I'm going to lose him, Jennifer!"

  "Not if he watches you save our asses. But you're juggling priceless eggs in var
iable gravity, girl."

  Glenda Ruth only nodded. She couldn't answer that at least they were right on schedule.

  "I hope you're not overly tired, sir," Chris Blaine said.

  "Not yet, not in this gravity," Bury said. He looked across the room to Omar, who once again held Ali Baba. "Against all reason I find myself attracted to the pu-to Ali Baba. An unexpected pleasure. But I fear we are away from the comforts of Sinbad to no great purpose. Except, of course, to reassure our hosts." It was an awkward situation, made more so because no one wanted to talk about it. It was the one thing East India and Medina Traders agreed to completely: neither would allow the other to talk to Horace Bury alone. "They cling to me as to a talisman," Bury said.

  "Or a credit card," Blaine said, and Bury glared.

  The outer door opened and a thin, spidery shape entered. The Motie went to Omar and waited patiently as Omar and Eudoxus gathered around it, then chattered excitedly.

  "Something important," Blaine said. He thumbed the microphone of his communicator. "Captain, an East India messenger just came in. Whatever it's saying has got both the Mediators listening hard."

  "Could it be about Hecate?" Renner's voice asked.

  "I don't-"

  "Stand by one," Renner said.

  "What?" Joyce demanded. "What's happening?" She edged closer to the Moties, pickup camera whirring softly.

  "Rawlins has spotted a fleet," Renner said. "A big one, coming from in-system. Hyperbolic orbit, accelerating like they've got lots of power."

  "Warships," Blaine said.

  "Sure sounds like it," Renner said. "Don't know whose, but they're heading this way."

  "Excellency, we have news," Omar said.

  "Thank you."

  "Excellency, the humans are all safe. One, the ship's engineer, was injured in a way that I do not quite understand, but I am assured it was through no fault of the Crimean Tartars, who have been persuaded of the value of their guests. One of my apprentices, very young and inexperienced but fluent in Anglic, has been accepted by the Tartars and will presently be allowed to speak with the humans." Omar beamed. "He will, of course, be pleased to invite a representative of our Medina Allies, as soon as one arrives."