Man-Kzin Wars 9

by Larry Niven

  “Has Fly-By-Night committed a crime?”

  “False identity. Purchase of a Jotok without entitlement. Trivia.”

  Dumb and happy Mart Graynor wasn’t the type to carry weapons aboard a spacecraft. The recorded Covenant of 2505 might be the only weapon I had. I let it play in one ear. The old diplomatic language was murky…

  Here it was. Hostages are to be returned in health if all conditions met, conditions not to be altered…costs to be assessed in time of peace at earliest…

  Was I supposed to bet lives on this?

  Heidi asked, “Do you eat human meat?”

  Packer and the hologram both turned to the girl. Envoy said, “Hostages. I have said. The Covenants say. Kitten, we consider human meat to be…whasht-meery…unsafe. Captain Preiss, the modules we want are all addressed to Outbound on Home, yes? We will deliver them. Else we would face all the navies of human space.”

  Preiss said, “I have no such confidence.”

  Packer kicked down from the dome. He set his huge hands on the girl’s waist and looked into her face. He still hadn’t spoken.

  Nicolaus screamed and leapt. As he came at the armored Kzin, Packer reached out and wrapped both children against his armored chest. They looked up through the bubble helmet into a Kzin’s smile.

  Nicolaus bared his teeth.

  Envoy said, “Pause, Packer! Captain Preiss, think! Without gravity generators you must still fall around Turnpoint Star and into flat space. Hyperdrive will take you to the edge of Home system. Call for help to tow you the rest of the way. What other path have we? We might smash your hyperdrive and hyperwave and leave you to die here, silenced, but your absence at Home will set the law seeking us.

  “This is the better risk, to violate no law unless we must. We take hostages. You must not call your authorities until you arrive near Home. We will transport our prisoner, then deliver your passengers.”

  Packer’s arms were full of children: hampered. Preiss and Quickpony were on a hair trigger. I was unarmed, but if they moved, I would.

  “Wait,” Envoy said. Preiss still hadn’t moved. “You carry stock from Shasht? Sea life?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must speak with my leader. Lightspeed gap is two minutes each way. Do nothing threatening.”

  We heard Envoy yowling into his communicator. Then nothing.

  My pocket computer dinged.

  Everybody twitched, yeeped or looked around. Heidi floated to the rim of my booth and listened over my shoulder.

  Sea lions around the Earth’s poles live in large communities built around one alpha male, many females and their pups, and several beta males that live around the edges of the herd. When the alpha male is otherwise occupied, an exile may rush in and mate hurriedly with a female and escape. Several species of Earth’s mammals have adapted such a breeding strategy, as have life forms on Kzin and even many Kzinti clans. Biologists, particularly reproductive biologists, call them sneaky-fuckers.

  I said, “Maybe there’s a more polite term for the journals. Anyway, good name for a spy ship. Pleasemadam, seek Longest War plus Kzinti plus piracy, run it.”

  We waited.

  When Hans Van Zild couldn’t stand the silence any more, he said, “Heidi, Nicolaus, I’m sorry. We should have let you grow up.”

  “Hans!”

  “Yes, Hilde, there was all the time in the world. Hilde, there’s never time. Never a way to know.”

  Envoy spoke. “Release one of the modules for Outbound Enterprises and two addressed to Neptune’s Empire. The passengers will be returned. Neptune’s Empire will be recompensed for their stock.”

  Fish?

  Captain Preiss’s fingertips danced. Three cargo modules slowly rose out of the rim. I felt utterly helpless.

  Packer left the children floating. He pushed Fly-By-Night’s balloon toward the airlock.

  I said, “Wait.”

  The armored Kzin turned. I squinted against the glare of his weapon. “We do not permit slavery aboard Odysseus,” I said. “Odysseus belongs to the Human Space Trade Alliance. The Jotok stays.”

  “Who are you? Where derives your authority?” Envoy demanded.

  “Martin Wallace Graynor. No authority, but the law—”

  “Fly-By-Night purchased a Jotok and holds him as property. We hold Fly-By-Night as property. Local law crawls before interspecies covenants. The Jotok comes. Are you concerned for the well-being of the Jotok?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “You shall observe if he is mistreated. Enter a vacuum refuge now.”

  I caught Quickpony’s horror. She spun around to search her screen display of the Covenants for some way to stop this. Packer pulled Fly-By-Night toward the airlock. He wasn’t waiting.

  Neither did I. I launched myself gently toward the refuge that held the Jotok.

  It would not have occurred to me to hug the only available little girl before I disappeared into the Nursery Nebula. I launched, Heidi launched, and she was in my path, arms spread, bawling. I hugged her, let our momentum turn us, whispered something reassuring and let go. She drifted toward a wall, I toward the Jotok’s bubble.

  She’d put something bulky in my zip pocket.

  I crawled through the collar into the Jotok’s vacuum refuge and zipped the lips closed.

  Packer pushed Fly-By-Night into the airlock, closed it, cycled it. His armored companion on the hull pulled the bubble into space. Packer came back for us and cycled us through.

  Two bubbles floated outside Odysseus, slowly rotating, slowly diverging. Packer was still in Odysseus.

  The boat jerked into motion. We watched as it maneuvered above one of the brick-shaped cargo modules attached to Odysseus. A pressure-armored Kzin stood below, guiding.

  Nobody was coming after us.

  The Jotok asked, “Martin, was that sane? What were you thinking?”

  I said, “Pleasemadam, seek interspecies diplomacy plus Kzinti plus Longest War. Run it. Paradoxical, I was thinking of a rescue. I tried to bust you loose. You know more about Fly-By-Night than I could ever learn. I need what you can tell me.”

  “You have no authority to question us,” the Jotok said, “unless you hold ARM authority.”

  I laughed harder than he would have expected. “I’m not an ARM. No authority at all. Do you want Fly-By-Night freed? Do you want your own freedom?”

  “We had that! LE Graynor, when Fly-By-Night bought us from the orange underground market on Shasht, he swore to free us. On Sheathclaws chains of lakes run from mountains to sea. We would have bred in their lakes. All of the Jotoki populace of Sheathclaws would be our descendants. We have been robbed of our destiny!”

  I asked, “Did Fly-By-Night take more slaves than just you?”

  “No.”

  “Then who did you expect to mate with?”

  “We are five! Jotoki grow like your eels, not sapient. Reach first maturity, seek each other, cluster in fives. Brains grow links. Reach second maturity, seek a lake, divide, breed and die, like your salmon. LE Mart, you yourselves are two minds joined by a structure called corpus callosum. Join is denser in Kzinti, that species has less redundancy, but still brain is two lobes. We are five lobes, narrow joins. Almost individuals cooperate, Par-Rad-Doc-Sic-Cal, Doc talks, Par walks, Cal for fine-scale coordination. Almost five-lobe mind, sometimes lock in indecision. In trauma or in fresh water we may divide again. May join again to cluster differently, different person. You perceive?”

  Futz, it was an interesting picture, but I’d never grasp what it was like to be Jotok. The point was that Paradoxical was a breeding population.

  I asked, “Are you hungry? What do you eat?”

  “Privately.”

  “Didn’t Fly-By-Night see you eat?”

  “Only once.”

  I’d put a handmeal in my pocket, but I wouldn’t eat in front of Paradoxical after that. “Orange market?”

  “An extensive market exists among the Shasht Kzinti. They trade intelligence, electronics,
stolen goods and slaves. Shasht the continent is nearly lifeless. They seeded several lakes for our breeding and confinement, but without maintenance they die off. The trade could be stopped. Our lakes must show a different color from orbit. I surmise the law has no interest.”

  “You once held an interstellar empire—”

  “My master tells me so. The slavers don’t teach us. Properly speaking, they do not hold slaves at all. They hold fish ponds. When a purchaser wants a Jotok, five swimming forms are allowed to assemble. Our master is the first thing we see.”

  “Who chose your name?”

  “My master. I am free and slave, many and one, land and sea dweller, a paradox.”

  “He really does think in Interworld, doesn’t he? They must teach kzinti as a second language.”

  A magnetic grapple locked in place, and the first module came free.

  My pocket computer dinged. We listened:

  Longest War, a political entity never named until after the Second War With Men, has since been claimed by many Kzinti groups. It may appear in connection with piracy, disappearing LEs or disappearing ships, but never an action against planets or a major offensive. Claim has been made, never proved, that Longest War are any Patriarch’s servants whom the Patriarch must disclaim. We surmise also that the Longest War names any group who hope for the eye of the Patriarch. Events include 2399 Serpent Swarm, 2410 Kdat—

  Fly-By-Night had drifted so far that he was hard to find, just a twinkle of lensed light as starfog glow passed behind his vac refuge. Why didn’t they retrieve him? Was it really Fly-By-Night they wanted, or something else?

  I watched Stealthy-Mating’s boat retrieve a second cargo module. They weren’t being careful. Two of those boxes held only Fafnir’s thousand varieties of fish, but the other…was in a quantum state. It held and did not hold Sharrol/Milcenta and Jenna/Jeena, until some observer could open the module.

  In all the years I’d flown for Nakamura Lines, I had never seen a vac pack used. Light-years from any world, miles from any ship, with nothing but clear plastic skin between me and the ravenous vacuum…it seemed a good time to look it over.

  This wasn’t the brand we’d carried. It was newer, or else a more expensive model.

  Loops of tough ribbon hung everywhere: handholds. Air tank. A tube two liters in volume had popped out. Inner zip, outer zip: an airlock. We could be fed through that, or get rid of wastes…a matter I would not raise with Paradoxical just yet.

  A light. A sleeve and glove taped against the wall, placed to reach the outer zip. Here was a valve…hmm…a valve ending in a little cone outside. Inside, a handle to aim it.

  To any refugee there might come a moment when a jet is more important than breathing-air.

  Not yet.

  “Why would you want to rescue my master?” Paradoxical asked.

  “They have my wife and daughter and unborn, one chance out of three. Two out of three they’re still safe aboard Odysseus. Would you bet?”

  “No Jotok knows his parent. Might you find another mate and generate more children?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How do you like your battle plan so far?”

  I couldn’t hear sarcasm, but I inferred it. I said, “I have a spare vac pack. So does Fly-By-Night. Did you see what he did? He triggered a pack on the wall. Kept his own. And Heidi passed me something.”

  “What did the girl give you?”

  “Might be some kind of toy.”

  The Jotok said, “Mee-rowreet means make slaves and beasts go where can be killed. Not Envoy. Whasht-meery means infested or diseased, too rotted or parasitical for even a starving predator. Prey that dies too easily, opponent who exposes belly too soon, is suspect whasht-meery.”

  I waited for our spin to hide me from Stealthy-Mating’s telescopes before I pulled Heidi’s gift free.

  It was foam plastic, light and bulky. A toy needle gun. If this was real, her parents…Wait, now, Heidi was almost forty years old!

  They wouldn’t think quite like human adults, these children, but their brains were as big as they were going to get. Their parents might want them able to protect themselves…and if not, she and her brother had spent decades learning how to manipulate their parents.

  I couldn’t test it.

  “Needle gun. Anesthetic crystals,” I told Paradoxical. “They won’t get through armor. One wouldn’t knock out a Kzin anyway. Better than nothing, though. Where is Fly-By-Night’s w’tsai?”

  “You saw.”

  “Paradoxical, we are in too much trouble to be playing children’s games.”

  Paradoxical said nothing.

  Stealthy-Mating’s boat locked on to the third cargo module.

  I said, “That was fun to watch, though. Giving Packer silverware!”

  Paradoxical rotated to show me his mouth.

  I saw a star of tentacles around a circle of lip enclosing five circles of tiny teeth in a pentagon. Something emerged from one circle of teeth. Paradoxical vomited up a long, narrow, padded mailing bag. I pulled it free, unzipped it, and had a yard of blade and handle.

  The blade looked like dark steel. The light caught a minute ripple effect…but it was all wrong. To my fingertip’s touch the ripple was just a picture. The blade weighed almost nothing. The weight was all in the handle.

  In the end of the hilt was a small black enamel bat. Bats exist only on Earth and in the zoo on Jinx, but that ancient Batman symbol has gone to every human world. Fly by night.

  Futz, I had to try it on something.

  My lockstep ring had a silver case. That’s a soft metal, but the blade only scratched it. I tested my thumb on the edge, gingerly. Blunt.

  Customs change. A weapon can be purely ceremonial…but why make the handle so heavy? Why was Paradoxical watching me?

  Because it was a puzzle.

  Push the enamel bat. Nothing.

  Wiggle the blade. Push it in, risk my fingers, feel it give. A Kzin could push harder. Nothing? Pull out, and my fingertips felt a hum. The look of the blade didn’t change. Carefully now, don’t touch the edge—

  It sliced neatly through my lockstep ring, with a moment’s white sputter as circuitry burned out. The cut edges of the classic silver band shone like little mirrors. There should have been some resistance.

  A variable-knife is violently illegal: hair-fine wire in a magnetic field, all edge and no blade, thin enough to slice through walls and machinery. Often enough it hurts the wielder. When it’s off it’s all handle, and the handle is heavy: it holds the coiled wire and the mag generator.

  This toy was similar, but with a blade of fixed length, harder to hide. More sporting. A groove around the edge housed the wire until magnets raised it for action.

  The onyx bat was recessed now. I pushed and it popped out. The vibration stopped.

  We had a weapon.

  What was keeping Packer? They had the telepath, they had hostages, they had two modules of Fafnir seafood. What was left to do in there? Get on with it. I had a weapon!

  “Wait before you use it. I know my master,” the Jotok said. “He will take command of the boat. The larger ship is weaponless against it.”

  “Paradoxical, he’d be fighting at least three warriors trained in free fall. Don’t forget the pilots. Four if we get as far as the ship.”

  “Whasht-meery may currently be on autopilot or remote. Possession of armor does not imply training. Fly-By-Night was a champion wrestler before he was injured. We fear you’re right. But we must try!”

  “Wrestler?”

  “He tells me they fight with capped claws on Sheathclaws.”

  Somehow I was not reassured.

  Packer emerged.

  He and his companion jetted toward Fly-By-Night’s bubble. They pulled Fly-By-Night toward the boat. Clamshell doors opened around the snout of the solenoid weapon. The three disappeared inside.

  I safed and wrapped the w’tsai and gave it to the Jotok. He swallowed it, and the needler after it. He must have a
straight gut…five straight guts, I thought, like fish or worms all merged at the head.

  The two armored Kzinti came for us. They towed us toward the boat.

  The boat was a thick lens, like Odysseus but smaller. The modules were anchored against one side. The other side was two transparent clamshell doors with the hollow solenoid sticking out between them.

  The doors closed over us.

  The interior had been arrayed around the solenoid weapon. There were lockers. Hatch in the floor, a smaller airlock. A kitchen wall big enough for a cruise ship, with a gaping intake hopper. A big box, detachable, with a door in it. I took that for a shower/washroom. I didn’t see a hologram stage or a mass pointer.

  Mechanisms fed into the base of the main weapon. A feed for projectiles? The thing didn’t just burn out electronics, it was a linear accelerator too, a cannon.

  Fly-By-Night’s vacuum refuge had been wedged between the cannon and the wall. He watched us.

  The doors came down and now our balloon was wedged next to his. Gravity came on. Stealthy-Mating’s crew anchored us with a spray of glue, while a third Kzin watched from the horseshoe of a workstation. The two took their places beside him.

  Four chairs; three Kzinti all in pressure suit armor. There was no separate cabin because they might have to work the cannon. It could have been worse.

  They talked for a bit, mobile mouths snarling at each other inside fishbowl helmets. They fiddled with the controls. A sound of tigers fighting blasted from Paradoxical’s backpack vest. My translator murmured, “So, Telepath! Welcome back to the Patriarch’s service.”

  Two or three seconds of silence followed. In that moment Odysseus abruptly shrank to a toy and was gone. Disturbing eddies played through our bodies. The boat must be making twenty or thirty gravities, but it had good shielding. This was a warcraft.

  Their prisoner decided to answer. “You honor me. You may call me LE Fly-By-Night.”

  “Honored you should be, Telepath, but your credit as a Legal Entity is forged, a telepath has no name, and Fly-By-Night is only a description, and in Interworld, too! Still you will command a harem before we do. We should envy you.” That voice was Envoy’s.