The Gripping Hand

by Larry Niven

  The Engineers were up and crawling; the Mediators watched. Kevin bit back his questions and presently understood. The Moties had Cynthia's couch disassembled and were putting it back together next to Bury's water bed. That crowded Glenda Ruth, so they had to move her couch before they could return to their couches and collapse.

  "Commodore? I've got the Master ships' target. It's the brown dwarf. Maybe they expect to take cover in the ring."

  "Once they kill us."

  Cynthia had finished her exercise set in the kitchen space. The view through the window was a uniform cheerful green.

  On the enlarged screen that the Watchmakers had finished erecting, one blazing point reached the Sister and disappeared without exploding. Then the second. Jennifer heaved a great sigh of relief. "They're through," she said.

  Terry squeezed her foot. She reached around to pat his cheek. "How are you doing?"

  "Healing. You?"

  Just waiting. Harlequin's up front getting battle data. Should I really stop talking, or try to talk them into something?"

  "Talk. They'll read you anyway."

  But it was over an hour before Harlequin rejoined them. "The Sister hides your ships for the moment," he said. "We did not expect they could survive our barrage."

  "That's another thing about resources," Jennifer said. "Our ships are bigger, better defended, more powerful."

  Harlequin laughed in great amusement and some scorn: Freddy's laugh. Harlequin must have had it from Pollyanna. "Another thing about our breeding problem: our ships are more numerous by far! Jennifer, our intentions are not your concern. We will discuss strategy. These two ships-"

  "I must stop listening-"

  But the Mediator's big left palm was out, pause a minute, while the Warrior spoke.

  They finished. Harlequin said, "Jennifer, we sent most of our Warriors to chase your two Empire ships down, under the command of our junior Master. Medina's lizard-raping Warriors managed to destroy that command ship as they passed, but our Warrior ships are nearly untouched. They will follow your Empire-built ships through the Sister to Mote system. They can't hide, Jennifer, their drives are too peculiar."

  In fact, the blue sparks of the Warrior ships' drives were disappearing even as Harlequin spoke. Other, larger sparks had flown past: the Khanate Master ships were on their way to Bury's Star. "Where will your Masters hide?"

  "In the rocks. Does it matter? We've given up hope of bursting through the other bridging point into your Empire. We must wait until our Warriors report success at the Mote."

  "You intend to kill us all?"

  "Yes. Your ships will have the advantage in the first instants because they will go through first and recover first from the shock. Unless humans tolerate the shock worse than we do?"

  Jennifer laughed.

  Harlequin frowned. "No? We watched you. You recovered very slowly."

  "Harlequin, I'm half-dead of fatigue. Poor Terry's half-dead, period." An instant later she could have bitten her tongue off. Too late: Harlequin was leaping aft.

  Terry's hand closed on the Motie's ankle and yanked him backward. Jennifer shrieked, "Kill him! Kill him, Terry!"

  The Warrior was arrowing toward them.

  Terry's arms closed around the Motie's head and shoulders. He twisted. "Dammit!" he muttered, and set himself and twisted much harder. The lopsided head turned with a pop like a branch breaking, and then the Warrior was wrapped around Terry like strangler vine, with his gun in Terry's ear.

  Terry let go. Harlequin floated loose, still screaming thinly.

  Under the Warrior's gun, they watched the Doctor pull and twist the Motie's head back into place. Harlequin's screaming died to a moan.

  "No good," Terry said. "I forgot. No vertebrae, just that kind of handle that connects the skull to the shoulders. I only dislocated it, and the spinal cord isn't even in it, it's underneath. He'll talk."

  "Jump shock. It hurts them much worse than it hurts us. They didn't know it."

  "Yeah. But that was the last Warrior ship going through. I'm right, aren't I, Jennie?"

  Jenny looked. "Yeah. Those other lights are all big Master ships, and they're all past the Sister."

  "Hah. Slowed Harlequin down just enough. Now their whole Warrior fleet is in Mote system chasing down Sinbad and Atropos, and no Master to tell them different. Isn't that interesting? I wonder what a Navy man can do with that."

  "We may not live to see it."

  "Jenny, that took everything I had. If they decide to shoot me, don't bother to wake me." Terry's eyes closed.

  8 Stern Chase

  Retreat, hell! We're just attacking in the opposite direction!

  US. Marine Corps commander, Changjin Reservoir, Korea

  I'm just too damned old for this. Renner gradually became aware...

  Cynthia was swearing in a loose-lipped mumble. Her body covered Bury's, obscenely, kissing... breath for him, squeeze his rib cage closed, blow into his mouth, squeeze...

  Freddy said, "Atropos calling."

  "Put'm through... Hello, Rawlins."

  "Commodore, you're a flawless diamond on black velvet, Brilliant blue-white."

  "Flattering. Ss'a quote-" From a historical novel, The Taking of Serpons Peak, just before the ship exploded. "Any threats here?"

  "We're clear. Bandit Group One-Two-Three pulled well back from the Medina ships. East India is still holding the Crazy Eddie point for us, but not with enough ship to defeat what's coming here. Byzantium hasn't got here yet. Nobody's shooting at us. What's our move?"

  Reimer's eyes were properly focusing now.

  "General order: Make for the Crazy Eddie point. Keep station with Sinbad. Are we in communication with the Motie fleet?"

  "Yes. I'll relay."

  Bury was trying to sit up. Cynthia braced him.

  Renner didn't recognize the Motie on-screen. A young Mediator, presumably male. "Commander Rawlins has informed us that a large Khanate war fleet, too large for our power, will arrive here through the Sister within the hour," the Motie said. "I am ready to convey your instructions to our Master."

  "Avoid combat with the main fleet," Renner said. "Preserve your power, but we want you to take out any command ship that comes through. We expect the main Khanate fleet to chase us. As long as it does, leave it alone, but we don't want that fleet to get new instructions.

  "Same for the Jump point. Make it expensive to go back through the Sister. Their main war fleet can do anything it wants to, and you can't stop them, but you can stop them reporting back to the Masters on the other side with anything short of a real battle group. Do that, please."

  "Instruction received. Stand by for acknowledgment."

  What else? "Townsend, get us moving toward the Crazy Eddie point. Cynthia, how much can he stand?"

  "Pulse is strong."

  "Anything," Bury said. "Kevin, do what you must. It is now in the hands of Allah."

  "Yeah." And I think I'm too old for this. "Run up to one gee, Townsend. There's a stunt I want to try."

  The communications screen lit again. "Your instructions will be obeyed," the Mediator said. "We will do what we can."

  "Thank you. Rawlins, you stay with us."

  "I can boost harder than you can."

  "I thought of that, but no. I need you with us."

  "You're assuming they're sending their whole fleet."

  "I sure hope so," Renner said. "The warships anyway." His last observation in the red dwarf system was of the Master ships making for Bury's Star at low thrust. It didn't look as if they'd be coming back to the Mote system soon. And as long as the Warriors were chasing Sinbad- "We're bait," he said to no one in particular.

  After Rawlins rang off, Renner looked around his ship. Horace was breathing by himself, eyes open, jaw slack, full of funny chemicals. Borloi extract, no doubt: no prohibition in the Koran against borloi. It was amazing that he could talk at all.

  Freddy had recovered from Jump shock with stunning speed. Renner resented that. Gle
nda Ruth Blaine still looked as if she'd been blackjacked. The Moties were worse off, still keening in pain and angst. That couldn't last. Renner needed them.

  The Empire ships fell toward the Crazy Eddie point at zero gee, following forty-five minutes of thrust. Renner couldn't tell them how long that would last. Cynthia was leading Horace Bury through a program of stretches. Joyce was preparing a sketch lunch. Nobody had ever asked if the reporter could cook. She could.

  Telescopes aboard Atropos, then aboard Sinbad, observed small hot ships emerging through an invisible hole at high velocity and high acceleration. They dimmed, reducing thrust while they sought their targets. Presently they flared and moved at low acceleration toward the position of Bandits One-Two-Three.

  "It worked."

  "Why are you whispering? Call Atropos."

  Freddy cleared his throat. "Yessir."

  "They can't have taken time to refuel," Renner told Rawlins. "They're burning fuel they can't spare. Which means we can beat them to the Crazy Eddie point at anything above one point one gee."

  If they chase us."

  "Yeah. Assume they will."

  "Then their best bet is to take it easy," Rawlins said. A stern chase is a long chase. Easy to use all your fuel in the chase and have none for the battle, Of course, they won't know where you're headed." Pause. "Or if they do figure it out, they won't know why."

  "Okay. All we have to do is make sure they don't cripple us. I want to beat them to the Crazy Eddie point, but not by much, and I want to make sure we have plenty of maneuvering fuel when they catch up to us. Meanwhile, maintain your watch. You, too, Freddy. I want to know instantly if large ships with cooler exhaust and lower acceleration come through."

  "Aye, aye, sir." Rawlins signed off.

  At least he didn't ask if I know what I'm doing.

  An hour later Freddy saw the Khanate Warriors turning. "They've found us," he said. "Somehow."

  Renner grinned widely. "They've found us and they're chasing us. Stand by for acceleration. Horace, how does one standard gee sound? We'll take it up slowly."

  "Heavenly," Bury said.

  "Stand by." Weight returned slowly.

  "There," Freddy said. "You can unstrap now. It should be steady enough."

  Behind Sinbud, little dots of fusion flame now numbered over a hundred and rising. As many more Khanate ships had not turned: they were still on route toward the massed Khanate allies, Bandits One-Two-Three. Other lights... what were they doing? Converging, then going out one by one.

  Renner said, "Omar, get on the horn to our forces around the Sister. Orders unchanged: leave the main fleet alone, but watch for stragglers. Keep it expensive going through the Sister, but stay alive."

  "Fleet in being," Victoria said.

  "Right-where did you learn that phrase?"

  "It was in one of the books MacArthur left behind. The reference was to sea power, but-"

  "Mahan," Joyce said. "He wrote before space travel."

  "Oh. Victoria, I need your help."

  "Yes, Kevin."

  "I need some work done. Get the Engineers on it. We need some alterations in Sinbad's Langston Field. Townsend can show you what we need."

  "Right away."

  "Horace, how are you feeling?"

  "I've been better, Kevin. I've been altering my will. I will need you to witness that it is my work, and that I am in my right mind."

  "Bizarre. You never were before."

  "Kevin, you will need to be convincing. Truly. Now say, ‘Horace Bury was in his right mind,' without smiling."

  "Maybe another approach. Tonight, Igor, we must build a convincing duplicate of Kevin Renner."

  "May we have doglike devotion this time, Master? I wanted doglike devotion last time."

  Glenda Ruth was staring. It was something, to have shaken Glenda Ruth Blaine.

  "But it might interfere with his sense of humor, Igor!"

  "Yes, Master, yes, yes! Please may we interfere with his sense of humor... . I don't have the energy, Kevin."

  "Yeah. Give me a sanity check, Horace. Glenda Ruth, listen up. Here's what I have in mind...."

  Joyce's hand was steady as she poured tea into Cynthia's cup. Acceleration was down to one-half gravity for the moment, but she didn't expect that to last. For the past ten hours there had been sudden and random accelerations as Sinbad avoided different attacks from the hundreds of ships following.

  "If someone tells me that ‘a stern chase is a long chase' one more time," Joyce said, "I'll scream." She sipped carefully, then looked at the older woman, not bothering to conceal her curiosity. "You've been with Bury a long time. Is it always like this?"

  Cynthia's smile might have been painted on. "Not precisely. When my uncle Nabil offered me service with His Excellency, I knew we would face many enemies, but few of them had warships. Mostly we are concerned with assassination."

  "What's it like, working for a man who has that many enemies?"

  "He has enemies because he is a great man," Cynthia said. "I feel honored to serve him. When I graduated from medical school-"

  Joyce was startled and showed it despite her news training. "You're a doctor?"

  "Yes. Does that seem so unlikely?"

  "Well, no, but-yes, actually. I thought you were a bodyguard."

  Cynthia's smile softened. "I do that as well. But you were supposed to assume I am a concubine. Thank you, I will have more tea."

  "I'm supposed to think you're a concubine. Are you?"

  "The appearance is a professional duty. Nothing else is required."

  Which could mean anything. "It must be a strange career for a doctor."

  "Call it my first career. I will have others after I retire from His Excellency's service. And think of the stories I can tell my children!" Cynthia's laugh was almost inaudible. "Of course first I will have to find a father for them."

  Joyce laughed. "Looking at you, I wouldn't think that would be so hard to do."

  Cynthia shrugged. "I have no difficulty finding lovers. And our culture is changing. Not just on Levant."

  "That's for sure." Joyce looked around Sinbad's crowded lounge, humans and aliens, magnate and aristocrats and naval officer, and grinned. "That's for damned sure."

  The Empire ships fled across the Mote system. For Joyce it had been three days of trying to make sense out of myriad details.

  Sinbad and Atropos had jumped into Mote system, then accelerated toward the inner system for forty-five minutes, then coasted. Minutes later the Khanate Warrior ships had poured through an invisible hole, paused, then blasted away in the wrong direction. They'd used up an hour's fuel-but at low thrust-before they found Sinbad and Atropos.

  Since then it had been a race; but there were nuances.

  Bury's couch was located near the door to the control cabin. It made a convenient gathering point when the cabin door was open. When Freddy went over to tell Bury what was happening, Joyce went to listen-and noticed that Glenda Ruth didn't come over until after Joyce had joined the party.

  "We laid low. Got them moving in the wrong direction for a while," Freddy said. "Odds are they can recognize our exhaust, so we didn't give them one. Maybe they found Atropos's old-style Langston Field. But this much for sure, they're chasing us."

  "Flattering," Glenda Ruth said.

  Freddy didn't answer.

  "Getting all our enemies into one bunch," Bury said. "It is not the first time. On Tabletop-but that was a long time ago."

  "Yeah. Well, it isn't quite working," Freddy said. "We've got maybe a hundred twenty on our tail, out of a thousand. Three hundred kept going; they've just about reached the Bandit cluster. We still don't know what they think they're guarding, but never mind that. I've lost five hundred of the buggers."

  Kevin Renner said, "They haven't disappeared. It only means they're not under thrust."

  "What are they doing?" Glenda Ruth asked.

  Freddy shrugged. Kevin said, "Something else. Something interesting."

  Ho
race Bury spoke suddenly. "The thing to remember is that we've won."

  Joyce said, "I beg your pardon?"

  "The Khanate Axis will not pass Agamemnon. Will not burst free into the Empire. They can never reclaim that option. Now their only hope is to replace the Medina Alliance. Well, what of that? They must reproduce Medina's agreements and fulfill them as best they can. They must even be over cooperative, to cover promises they might be expected to remember."

  Joyce thought that through. "But they'd have to kill us all. And our friends."

  "Silence every voice, yes. But the Empire of Man is safe now. The Mote will be organized according to our wishes and custom. We have won that war now," said Horace Bury. "We have protected the Empire of Man, indeed."

  And Kevin Renner was trying to swallow a laugh; but why?

  Wait- "You could do it!" Joyce cried. "I mean, I'm being very unprofessional here, but-if push came to shove, if they've got us in a box, you could still negotiate. The Empire could get what it wants from the Khanate instead."

  They were looking at her. Joyce was sorry she'd spoken. Nobody spoke until Renner said, "Yup."

  "Would you? Rather than, um, die?"

  "No."

  Now the eyes turned away, and only Glenda Ruth sighed in relief. Joyce thought, Why not? and said, "Okay."

  "We don't want to teach the wrong lesson here, Joyce. Treachery can become habit-forming."

  Five days: part acceleration, part coasting, Sinbad and Atropos led the enemy fleet across Motie space. Five days to observe, not just the battle, but the people.

  Freddy Townsend was busy, too busy to talk... but it was more than that.

  Freddy was avoiding Glenda Ruth, just a bit. Joyce was willing to learn why, but she hadn't thought of an excuse to probe. And Freddy would clam up a bit when Joyce was wearing her "reporter" hat.

  But he would talk to both women. Joyce found herself coming on to him a little; when she caught herself at that, or when Glenda Ruth did, she would back off; but she could loosen his tongue that way. There was so much to understand, and Freddy was her best source of information.

  "But this is the part we're wondering about," Freddy said, and with a woman peering over each shoulder, he moved his cursor about the screen. "Here, a quarter of the fleet turned around to chase us. Another third went on to join the Bandit cluster, the Khanate allies that never went through. What are they after? Why did they think they'd find Sinbad and Atropos in that direction?"