Man-Kzin Wars 9

by Larry Niven

  Actually, while Ghrul-Captain had needed to vent some wrath, he could not afford to disable personnel for anything less than outright insubordination. The Strong Runner was undercrewed, underweaponed, alone. And his instruments were identifying the stranger as a human warship.

  For a heartbeat he glared at the scene in the viewscreen. The target sun was a small disc, its luminance selectively dulled till an extravagant corona was eye-visible. Undimmed, a big world much farther out shone brighter than the true stars. They sprawled in strange constellations—seen at more than thirty light-years from the Father Sun and well off the galactic plane. The Ice River itself looked slightly different, against the background blackness of space.

  His gaze focused on the meters and readouts before him, and then on the image a computer program was constructing. He had been taught to know that lean shape, those rakish lines of gun turrets and launch tubes. A lancer, a light naval vessel but easily able to annihilate this wretched carrier. It was about five million kilometers off, adjusting its vectors with an acceleration he could merely envy. A proper warcraft would have spotted it immediately when it emerged from hyperspace, wherever in this system that had been. Surely it had picked him up then, and set about reducing the gap between.

  Ghrul-Captain forced steadiness on himself, as he might have donned a pressure suit too tight for him. He would have to communicate with the monkeys and offer them no threat. The necessity was foul in his mouth. He could have voice-ordered a beam in the standard band to lock on; instead, his claw stabbed the manual board.

  They were obviously awaiting it yonder. In some thirty interminable seconds, the time for electromagnetic waves to go back and forth, his comboard lighted up. He sent a “Ready” signal—make them introduce themselves to him—and activated the translator program.

  The screen came to life with a human face. Those always suggested to him the faces of flayed corpses. “United Nations Navy unit Samurai calling kzin vessel,” it gabbled, while the translator gave forth decent growls and hisses. “Request conference with your commanding officer.”

  “I am he,” Ghrul-Captain answered. “I will speak to none but your own master.” They could kill him, but they could not make him lower himself.

  In the time lag he felt a ventilator breeze stir his hair. It bore a sharp tinge of ozone. But no cleansing thunderstorm was going to break. Not now. Not yet.

  The scan switched to another den and another face, dark brown. From its delicate lines and glabrous cheeks he decided it belonged to a female. Ruch! Still, human females were supposed to have as much consciousness as the males, and often held important positions. He must accept the perverted fact and cope with it.

  “Captain Indira Lal Bihari, commanding UNN Samurai,” she was saying. “Our intentions are peaceful. We trust they can remain so.”

  “Ghrul-Captain, master of Strong Runner.” He would volunteer no more. If that piqued her, and if he could know it did, he would have won a tiny satisfaction.

  Full lips drew back, upward. Ghrul-Captain had studied many views of human faces but never learned to tell whether a baring of teeth meant amusement, conciliation, or anger. “Apparently you prefer that I take the initiative. Very well. Your people announced they would send an expedition here like us. We were not quite certain of its nature or its timing. I am not much surprised that you arrived first. Kzinti are…quick to act; and our preparations have doubtless been more elaborate.

  “We have ascertained that you have one large vessel carrying boats and probes. Our basic arrangements are similar. However, this ship has gone in advance of the civilian to make sure all is well, and will remain in her vicinity after rendezvous. I assume you agree it’s wise to take precautions against possible contingencies.” That smile again. “Do you wish to respond now, or shall I proceed?”

  “We will not tolerate interference with our undertakings. That includes too close an approach to any unit or work of ours.”

  While the time lag hummed, Ghrul-Captain considered what else to say. He had better not antagonize her, for he did need information. Fortunately, humans were devoid of true pride.

  “None is intended, Ghrul-Captain. Should any of you be in distress, we will gladly give assistance.” He lashed his bare pink tail but held his ears up under the insult, realizing it was unwitting. “Otherwise we will keep as separated as feasible. Let us establish a few rules between us to this end. We can begin by spelling out our plans to each other.”

  “What are yours, then?”

  She must have prepared the speech that followed the silence:

  “While at hyperspacing distance, our civilian mother ship will unload a disassembled hyperwave transceiver, with radio relays to the inner system, and leave a gang to make it ready. The job should not take long, given their robots. They’ll have a boat and rejoin the rest of us when they are done.

  “Subject to change as circumstances warrant, the mother ship and escort will take ecliptic orbit around the sun at approximately three-fourths of an astronomical unit. The scientists will make observations from there, but naturally will also dispatch probes and boats on appropriate courses. These will include visits to the stable planets and their satellites, for survey, and landings if closer investigation seems warranted. We propose to notify you in advance of these, as well as any important maneuvers of the ships themselves.

  “Early on, the scientists will put three small robotic observatories in polar orbit around the sun, at about the same radius, 120 degrees apart, to keep the inmost planet under constant study from that angle.

  “We…request…noninterference, too. We will always be open to communication with you. Let neither party judge hastily. Correct, Ghrul-Captain?

  “This is our basic plan. May I ask what yours is?”

  Ghrul-Captain did not answer for a minute or two. First he must overcome his rage. He wanted to scream and leap. But he had nothing to kill, only this phantom of a monkey five million kilometers out of reach. Useless, anyway, for anything but one instant of release, which would bring down his mission and his dreams.

  The humiliation, though! Her words had come like one whip flick after the next. Not that the she-monkey intended it. She was totally insensitive. It never occurred to her how she flaunted those capabilities—a hyperwave station brought along, a swarm of lesser craft, three solar watchposts—before his poor little expedition—wealth and power such as belonged to the race of Heroes, before her rabble overran and robbed them.

  There would be a day of justice, a night of revenge.

  Not for years.

  Meanwhile, he remembered, and helped congeal his feelings thereby, meanwhile I may do a deed they cannot and dare not match, to shame them whether they know it or not—we will know, at home—and, possibly, bring back a prize they are also unaware of, which may possibly hold within it the making of some mighty weapon for their destruction. Yes, possibly I will.

  First he must reach an accommodation with them, at least for immediate purposes. Grand Lord Narr-Souwa and he had developed some ideas about that back on Kzin.

  “You may ask,” he said, as the stranglehold on his throat slackened. “For the present, I deem it best that my ship take the same orbit as yours, 90 degrees ahead. That should be a safe distance, while leaving you able to communicate with me on short notice when necessary.” And for us to keep an eye on you. “You understand that we will dispatch our own lesser craft as we see fit.”

  He cooled further during the time lag.

  Bihari didn’t seem to notice how she had been disdained. He didn’t want to believe that she had noticed and simply didn’t care. “A question, if you please. We have detected activity of yours at a certain satellite of an outer planet. May I inquire what the purpose is?”

  “Supply operations,” Ghrul-Captain snapped. He would give her no more. Let the monkeys discover the rest as it happened.

  She didn’t push the matter. Evidently she had been briefed on kzin ways. Or did she have direct experience? Had she
fought in the war? Ghrul-Captain almost hoped so. One prefers an enemy for whom one can feel a trifle of respect. “I see. If you don’t wish to speak further for the time being, shall we close?”

  He replied by cutting off transmission.

  5

  Tyra had more and more enjoyed her voyage, until near the end. Everyone aboard was an interesting person. While not yet ready to do formal interviews, she took pleasure in cultivating their acquaintance, from Captain Worning on down. She had met some of the half-dozen crew before, but not all, and none of the scientists except Jens Lillebro, a physical chemist at the University of Munchen; the rest were from Earth. Not that the distinction was absolute. Anybody serving on an explorer was necessarily a technician of wide-ranging skills and scientific turn of mind. Thus, the work gang who would assemble the hyperwave unit, engineer Reiner Koch and boat pilots-cum-rockjacks Birgit Eisenberg and Josef Brandt, would be much in demand after they rejoined the ship. Tyra heard many good stories and found ample cause for admiration.

  She was oftenest in Craig Raden’s company. She preferred to believe there was more on both sides than physical attraction. Of course, that played its part. Among other factors, she was the only woman out of the six with whom anything but the mildest flirtation was possible. Biologist Louise Dalmady made a team with her husband, Emil. Stellar astronomer Maria Kivi, middle-aged, kept quiet faith with her husband at home. Planetologist Toyo Takata was young and pretty but, in spite of being as shy as her colleague Verwoort was bluff, made plain that this was her great career opportunity and she wanted no distractions. Matronly mate Lili Deutsch had her own family back on Wunderland and seldom missed a chance to speak of the new grandchild. Pilots Eisenberg and Brandt had for years been a pair in every sense of the word. Once Tyra spied Raden and physicist Ernesto Padilla exchange a wry glance and a rueful grin. Had the first staked his claim on her? Whether or no, he was never offensive, merely fun and fascinating. They played games physical, intellectual, and childish; they listened to music and watched drama and quoted favorite poetry, they explored the ship’s wine stock, they joked, they talked.

  And talked and talked. He was a magnificent conversationalist, who always made it a two-way thing.

  His account of the finding of their destination fascinated her. She knew about spaceborne interferometry—Wunderland had lately embarked on a project to build a set of such instruments and orbit it around Alpha Centauri C—but why had Earth’s matchless facilities not identified this situation long ago? He explained in some detail how many other, more obviously exciting ventures were absorbing funds and attention, notably though not exclusively visits to the sites themselves, while the search for additional high-tech civilizations, beyond known space, grew ever more tantalizing. The star they were seeking had of course been catalogued in early times, but nothing further. It appeared completely ordinary, obscure in its remote location. Finally a slight spectral flutter, noticed in the course of a systematic survey of that region, betrayed it.

  How had this given data enough to show not only what was happening, but when the climax would come? Raden had a gift for making analytical techniques clear to a non-mathematician. The precision awed her.

  “Well, there’s a significant probable error,” he admitted. “We’ll be getting there none too soon, possibly a little too late for the actual event. Let’s hope not! Sheer luck, making this discovery just when we did. True, it isn’t unique, but to have one within our own lifetimes, at an accessible distance—” He laughed. “We live right, I suppose.”

  The last weekly dance of the trip became an especially gleeful occasion. The gym was festooned with homemade decorations. Champagne sparkled on a sideboard. Every woman joined in, with no lack of partners, while music lilted from the speakers. Best for Tyra was when she and Craig were together. She was a good dancer; he was superb.

  The hour was late when he saw her to the compartment known as her stateroom. They paused at the door, alone in the passageway. He took both her hands. “It’s been wonderful,” he murmured. “Throughout.”

  “Yes.” She felt the blood in her face and her pulse.

  “It needn’t end immediately, you know.”

  “We have three daycycles left.”

  “Once I’d have thought that was three too many. Now it’s far too few.” He stepped close and laid arms around her waist. “Tyra, we do have them. Beginning this nightwatch.”

  Not altogether surprised, she slipped free with a motion learned in a dojo and drew back a pace. Though her heart thudded, she was able to look into his eyes and say quite steadily, “I’m sorry, Craig. I like you very much, but I don’t do casual.”

  Robert Saxtorph thinks I do, wrenched within her. I had to make him think that, didn’t I? After I saw I had no right to ruin his marriage. The kindest way—make it not too hard for him to let go—wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?

  “We don’t have to stay casual, Tyra,” Raden said. “I’m hoping we don’t.”

  He could be lying. She recalled his reputation. Or he could be sincere…temporarily. Or if he really meant it, or if there was a chance he might come to mean it, still, the gulf between them was interstellar. Not easily or surely bridged. Nevertheless—“Let me think, Craig. We’ll have time, also at the star and on the voyage back. We’ll stay friends at least. Won’t we?”

  He nodded. “At least,” he answered low, with a smile. “Goodnight, then, dear.” He leaned across, kissed her gently on the lips, and departed.

  She stood for a moment staring after him. He knew better than to insist, tumbled through her. A gentleman, as well as everything else. Suppose he had kept trying—

  Memory stabbed her again. Perhaps that was why she went to her bunk bewildered.

  She slept poorly and awoke feeling on edge. At breakfast in the saloon she ate skimpily, said nothing, and when she was done returned to her room and screened book after book. None could hold her. When she went to the gym, it lay hollow and forlorn. Just the same, a workout followed by a shower was refreshing. She came to lunch with an appetite.

  Raden was on hand, chatting easily with others. He gave her a smile as if nothing had happened, and brought her into the conversation. Afterward, however, as they were going out, he came alongside and asked, “Can we talk a bit?”

  “What about?” Her voice sounded ragged in her ears.

  He shrugged. “Anything you like. If I upset you, I’m terribly sorry and want to make amends.”

  So he had read her mood in spite of her effort to seem her usual self. “No, I’m not upset, not offended.” She managed to give him back his smile. “A compliment, really, and if I couldn’t accept, I did appreciate.” How honest was she? She didn’t know.

  He took her elbow. “Look, it’s early in the watch for a drink, but on that account we should have the wardroom to ourselves. No harm in nursing a beer. Can we sit down and simply talk? I promise not to go importunate on you.”

  It wasn’t possible to refuse, was it? She liked the idea, didn’t she?

  Yet she must work to keep from showing her tension. To gaze across the table into his handsomeness reawakened the old pain and whetted it. She’d laid it aside, she’d actually been happy, now she must start over.

  Self-pity wasn’t in her nature. Resentment took its place. Oh, she had more sense than to blame him. He’d had no way of knowing what a nerve he touched. For that matter, she hadn’t known it was still so raw. To rail at dice that fell wrong was idiotic. However, the anger had to strike at something.

  “Yes, we’ll be busier than a one-armed octopus,” he was saying. “Perhaps with the kzinti too.”

  “God, I hope not!” burst from her.

  “I’m hoping for it, actually. I’ll see what I can do toward bringing it about, in whatever degree.”

  Startled, she asked, “What?”

  “We might manage some scientific collaboration. You know how fruitful, how inspiring and stimulating, our exchanges with other races have been,” he said earnestly. “We’
re overdue for an interaction with the kzinti that isn’t hostile.”

  “How?” demanded scorn.

  He raised his brows. “How not? They’re intelligent, sentient beings. Their civilization surely has its own riches. What might we learn from them?”

  “New ways of murder and torture, maybe,” she sneered.

  “You can’t be serious, Tyra. Yes, they’ve been aggressors, they’ve committed atrocities, but that’s been true of humans in the past. Read your history. Nor have we lost the potential, I’m afraid.” He gulped from his stein. “Blood guilt is one of the most vile and dangerous concepts our race ever came up with. We’ve got to put it behind us, for decency’s sake, for survival’s sake.”

  She unclenched her teeth. “I’m not talking about inherited guilt. I’m talking about inherited drives and instincts. The kzinti are what they are. You can no more deal with them in good faith than you can with a—a disease germ.”

  “They live among us, Tyra!” he protested.

  “A few. In their enclaves. Eccentrics, misfits, atypical—abnormal, for kzinti. But don’t ever turn your back on one.”

  His whisper sounded aghast. “I didn’t imagine you were a racist.”

  “I didn’t imagine you were an utter fool.” The flare damped down. “Craig, I know them. I grew up under their occupation. I saw what they did to my people. I felt what they did to—my father, my family—” The tears stung. She blinked them away. “And then I myself—but that doesn’t matter. They tried their best to kill my friends and me, that’s all. What does matter is how often they’ve succeeded with others.”

  “Culture—Ethnic character is mutable. It can grow in the right directions.”

  “When enough of their most murderous are dead, out of their gene pool, maybe then,” she said. “You and I won’t live to see the day, if it ever comes. And first the weeding has to be done.”