Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - X

by Hal Colebatch

  A morlock, more silent than a kzin, leaped up at him, striking with a daggerlike pointed stone. It tore a burning furrow across his chest spurting purple blood. He hoped the creatures were too stupid to know of poisons. It leaped backward with the slash, but his right claws held it and his left claws tore its face away. He flung it from him, leaving it eyeless, screeching. Good! Let it terrify the others! Its screech went into ultrasonic.

  Above him something was happening. The whole pile of boulders was shifting. It was slow at first, but like the movement of a hill. Another trap, and evidently the morlock’s dying shriek had triggered it. Cleverer than we thought. He leaped aside, into the short tunnel leading to the morlock den. Not quite quickly enough. A section of stalactite the width of a tree trunk fell across him, pinning his legs and the lower part of his body. He struggled to push it clear, but even in that gravity it weighed too much. Fortunately the ends were held on other rocks. It pinned him down but did not crush him.

  The dust cleared. He was unsure if he had lost consciousness, or if he had taken a fatal blow to the skull. He lay completely still, his fur lifting and lowering minutely to compensate for the movement of his breathing. His surface blood vessels contracted. A heat sensor would have picked him up, but a motion detector might not have. A corpse in the rubble.

  The short tunnel seemed partially blocked by fallen rocks, but the banks of this chamber were so honeycombed with holes there might be any number of other entrances. The injured kzinrret youngster was mewling where he had left it. Could it help him? No, even if it could understand him its injuries were plainly disabling.

  Ziirgah, developed for stalking, was very little use to a non-telepath in a situation like this. Too many stressed and desperate minds nearby reduced its simple impressions to confusion, and it was better blocked out.

  There was a scrabbling sound from one tunnel. The morlocks were returning. Nothing for it but to lie still and hope to kill a few when they came within reach of his claws. They would probably draw back then and stone him to death. It would be painful and undignified. He would never have a Name or a line. The Fanged God would have no use for a son who had not died as a Hero should, on the attack. Death loomed huge and dark as he waited there, like the Emptiness of Space. I am afraid, he suddenly realized. The realization was more terrible than the fear itself. He would go to the Fanged God not merely with the shameful death of helpless prey in a trap, but a coward. There was the glow of a lamp. But morlocks had no lamps. Then he saw the scrabbling creature. It was not a morlock but a human. It approached the young kzinrret and bent over it.

  Unable to control himself further, he snarled a challenge. The human jumped away, a weapon flashing into its hands as it vanished behind a rock.

  The kitten was crying out now, in the nursery tongue.

  “Come back! Pain! Pain! Help me!”

  The human cried back. But it was speaking the nursery version of the kzin tongue too. He recognized its voice as that of a female.

  “Be still! Try not to move. Help will come!”

  Sergeant was amazed. He had been raised by human slaves in his Sire’s house, and he knew some humans understood and even spoke the simpler kzin tongues, the soft sounds and small vocabularies of females and kittens. He knew—it was part of their alienness—that human females were sapient. But why did this human speak to a young kzinrret?

  He had regained control of himself now. If he could not move he could speak.

  “What are you doing?” He spoke in the slaves’ patois, a combination of the female and the nursery tongues plus some Heroic and Wunderlander words and constructions.

  She approached him cautiously, weapon raised. But he was plainly trapped and helpless. That, presumably, was why she did not fire. The sounds of fighting in the main chamber seemed to have stopped, and he wondered what that meant.

  “Some of us have been caring for this one,” she answered. She spoke in Wunderlander, the human tongue, which he like many Ka’ashi-born kzintosh understood but found hard to speak.

  She turned the lamp to a greater brightness, inspecting him.

  “Light keep morlocks away,” he said in the patois.

  “No, their eyes are for twilight zones. Bright lights, they close eyes. I was a research student once.”

  If this monkey is talking she is not killing me, he thought. Keep her talking. He remembered how, as a kit, he had learned to wheedle sugary cakes and other favors from his human nurse-slave. Wheedling had been better than claws, from which her predecessors had simply learned to flee.

  “Why you feed small one?” he asked.

  “Some of us began caring for her before morlocks attacked,” she replied.

  “Why? You are ferals.”

  “There were feral children. Human and kzin. They had set up a camp in the caves…together. Most of them, human and kzinti, were much younger than this one. It would have been impossible otherwise.” That was certainly true, he thought. It seemed impossible enough anyway. Young kzin kittens might play with strange species till they decided it was time to try their teeth and claws on them, but kzin adolescents of either sex were ferocious, predatory, and xenophobic far beyond even adult kzintosh. The only regard they gave other life-forms was as links on their food chain and their value as sport. That was especially true of the males after a little training. But evidently something very odd had happened here.

  “This one, and that dead human, both older, seem to have held them together,” the female man continued. “She is a young kzinrret only but she seemed to have some…instinct I do not understand. She is special. We found out too late. The morlocks carried them off and when we followed, she and he were all that was left. Then there was more fighting and we lost them.”

  “Why you feed small one?” he repeated.

  “Have I not explained?”

  “No. She is kzin, you are monkey.”

  “I don’t know. It is a thing some humans do. Evidently it is a thing some kzin may do too.”

  “She will eat monkey-meat one day.”

  “We have our own sense of honor…some of us.”

  “Wire is honor?”

  “Wire is war. Is war too hard for kzintosh?”

  Sergeant checked his convulsive effort to throw off the rock and leap with the thought that perhaps the monkey was deliberately trying to madden him with the insult. He would not oblige. He remembered one of Chuut-Riit’s lectures: “You think you understand them, and find you do not. You think you do not understand them, and find you do. They are full of paradoxes, but with a few generations of proper culling, this will be a most useful species.” He thought upon what it had said:

  “Ferals? Human cubs and kzin kittens? Together?”

  The human looked at him. This time he detected something complex in the emotions emanating from it, but it was as if he had passed some kind of test. It reminded him of the feelings of old Kiirg-Greater-Sergeant when he survived his recruit training.

  “How close together I do not know. They were in the same part of the cave system. But morlocks got them anyway. They will be back soon.”

  “Lift this rock off me!”

  “I cannot. And if I could, it would not be wise.”

  “I fight morlocks. Morlocks eat you.”

  “You would eat us too.”

  That was certainly true.

  “Give me your word that you will not fight me and I will not eat you now,” he said. “We need to fight morlocks.”

  “Better for me to kill one kzin than an eight-squared of morlocks. And morlocks are victims like humans. They fight invaders of their world.”

  He had no idea what the word “victims” meant but he saw the human’s military logic. Indeed he appreciated it. Arguing with a monkey! he thought. Still, I must get this creature to be of use. My duty is to return to my Heroes.

  “Kill me and they kill you,” he replied. “Break legs like kitten, like monkey.”

  “Instead of kzin killing us? What difference does it ma
ke?”

  The voice reminded him again of old nurse-slave, and he repeated something it had once said. “Live to fight another day.” It was not an argument that would affect most kzintosh, but he thought he knew something of human psychology. He thought of something else, but it was difficult to say it without giving the impression that he was trying to beg for his life. Better a thousand times to die at the hands of a monkey than that a monkey should think that. She was raising the beam rifle.

  “Kzin remember,” he said.

  That made her hesitate.

  “You will not harm me,” she said. “Your Name as your Word.”

  “I have no Name. My Rank and my Sire’s Honor as my Word. Release me I will not harm you while we are in this cave, or during the day that we leave it.”

  He saw her dial the rifle down. Did she mean to cook him slowly? Then she fired it into the ground beside him, the blast digging a shallow pit. Slowly, she moved the beam an inch or two toward him, the heat of it scorching his fur and skin. Then, staying out of reach of his claws, she climbed onto the pillar, and smashed the butt of the rifle down onto the crust of flow-stone that remained. She dialed the rifle up to full beam and showed him the lights on the stock indicated that it was fully charged. She crouched and held it on him with one hand, steadying its weight on her bent leg, while with the other hand she scraped smashed rock away.

  “Stay still,” she ordered him. She backed away, then settled herself into a bay of rock that protected her back and flanks.

  “Now move,” she said.

  Lurching and twisting, he was able to get to this cavity and work himself free. The human lay prone, pointing the beam rifle at him. Her finger was pressed on the firing-button and the light on the stock showed it was at first pressure. The dot of its laser sight was on the fur in the center of his torso. Deliberately, he turned away from her so that he could not spring.

  “We fight morlocks now,” he said.

  “So be it,” she said. She stood on her hind legs, but with the weapon still held ready. “We fight morlocks. Poor bastards! They did us no harm.”

  Sergeant felt an odd conflict of emotions in this human. It must have been strong to register with him. He continued speaking to her in an attempt to steady her, asking the question which another kzin would find of the greatest importance and which he assumed mattered to monkeys equally. “You have human Name?”

  “Leonie.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Lion.”

  “What is lion?”

  “A cat. A big, ferocious cat.”

  “Is that a joke?”

  “No. We used to think cats were beautiful…”

  He recognized the emphatic human past tense but did not pursue the matter. Something had evidently happened to make them change their minds.

  “Truce now,” he said.

  “Yes, truce now. I find I do not want to die in this stinking hole. Does our truce hold into the next cave?”

  “No sense if it does not.”

  “I suggest it holds until we both agree to end it. Your Rank and your Sire’s Honor as your Word.”

  “Yes. And yours.”

  “Yes. If you trust a monkey.”

  “You could have killed me already. I trust.”

  “Markham told us kzinti keep their word when it is solemnly given, usually.”

  “Usually. But do not trust too much.”

  “The main tunnel seems blocked,” she said. “There are others. We should go before the morlocks return. But we cannot move the kitten. Broken legs. Marrow get into blood. Die.”

  “She is kzin. She is female but she is brave. Other Heroes will get her. Or she will die like kzin.”

  “We could move her slowly and carefully into a shallow hole. It may kill her but it is a chance we must take. Then with your Hero’s strength you could move a big rock across the entrance. Too big for Morlocks to move easily.”

  “Then, if we die, Heroes not find her. She starve. She die.” He realized with an odd feeling that he had just said “we” to a monkey—a feral, at that.

  “It would not be a perfect seal. Just to delay the morlocks getting to her. If we die she can scream and alert other kzin when they come. But I suggest we hurry. This is not the place for us to be caught by the morlocks in our turn.”

  The tunnel she led him through was long and winding. At certain places he saw that something—humans, he guessed—had widened it. With the human going ahead he did not fear wires.

  There was the tunnel mouth. He poised to leap.

  “No! There!” she pointed. He could not see it but guessed there was a wire. “There!” Putting his life in the monkey’s hands, he charged, bursting out through a curtain of straw stalactites and a lacy stone shawl, sending crystal fragments flying.

  The great cave had far fewer lights now, only a few swirls and flashes of beams and glow-lamps from a single source, a high place beside one of the cave streams. It formed a natural amphitheater, and Sergeant had briefly noted it previously. But he could see the swift dark shapes of morlocks attacking from the roof and through the stalagmite groves. And there were two very distinct sets of voices coming from the single patch of the lights.

  “Listen,” Leonie said. “It sounds as if human and kzinti have made a truce there, too.”

  “Urrr. Should turn up lights. Blind morlocks.”

  “More likely to blind themselves if they do. Morlocks don’t like light but have thick eyelids. I think with most cave lights, they can close eyes and simply stay in total dark. Need very bright light to drive away.”

  “You know lot about morlocks. Urrr.”

  “I’ve dissected them. I told you I was a student of life once.”

  “We join companions. Come.”

  They got most of the way to the amphitheater before the morlocks rushed them. They came from above and behind, piling on the human female first. She snarled and screamed in a way that reminded him she was named for a cat. He turned and saw she was fighting, but giving ground. There were too many morlocks for her. He screamed and leaped into the fight.

  Now it was the morlocks who were giving ground. Or rather, dying where they stood. There was a trail of the things dead and dying behind him, but as he advanced alone into the thick of them he was being outflanked. In a moment, he knew, he would be surrounded. He began to back away. Then he stumbled over a torn, writhing body, slipped in the blood now covering the cave floor, and fell. As he tried to rise morlocks leaped onto his shoulders from behind, biting at his throat.

  “Drop, Tabby!” he heard the human female. Thoughts too fast to describe as he clawed and fought. “Tabby” was a nursery word humans used sometimes for kzinti, though not in their hearing. Was she cursing him to his death?

  “Drop,” she cried again, and this, he just recognized, in the imperative tense of the Heroes’ Tongue. It was the same warning Trooper had given him previously. He threw himself forward and the female struck with her ratchet knife, sending the morlocks flying in pieces.

  “Back! We can still hold them!” Back they went side by side, slashing with knife and claws, a dozen slow steps or so, into the little amphitheater. There stood two of his Heroes, aided by two more doubled-up wounded, surrounded but fighting still, another Hero badly wounded or dead, and three humans, also injured, but two of these still fighting with beam rifles and knives. Most of the beam rifles had yellow lights glowing on their stocks. He saw Platoon Officer’s valuable deep-radar set lying smashed to pieces. No human would carry that off, anyway, he thought.

  A single male human stood in the largest gap in the palisade of stalagmites and columns, fighting too many morlocks, its movements painfully slow to the kzin. An exhausted beam rifle lay beside it. Its ratchet knife still howled, but the human needed both arms to hold it: Even for a human it was doing badly. Its arms, even by human standards, looked skinny. Its hair was pale, either yellow or white with age. Sergeant leaped into the breach beside it, rampant and slashing. The morlocks f
ell back from the kzin’s berserker assault, and there was a pause.

  “We underestimated them,” this human said in Wunderlander when it had ceased respiring violently. “They are more numerous and intelligent than we thought. Also,” he added, “they are well-motivated.” Its hair was yellow, he saw, not the white of a really old monkey. But it was not strong. Sergeant was sizing it up as the Morlocks came again.

  They came in waves, inflicted a little more damage on the defenders each time, caused more ammunition to be expended, and then drew back. There was a bombardment of missiles from the roof. One badly injured Hero lost control and hobbled, shrieking and howling, out of the perimeter into the darkness after them. He did not return. A little later another followed. Falling rocks accounted for the other two and also for one of the injured humans. The female human ran from place to place, firing one of the rifles. Perhaps from a distance it would create the illusion of a greater number of defenders, but he doubted it. Sergeant left the male human to hold the breach in one lull while he dragged and lifted some larger stone fragments onto the tops of broken stalagmite stumps in an effort to make a sheltering roof. It did not last long. Occasionally his ears picked up sounds of other fighting far away. He lost track of time, and was amazed when his timepiece told him a day and a night had passed. The dead humans provided monkey meat, though he tried to eat it out of the other humans’ sight in the interests of holding together the fragile alliance that seemed to have evolved. Once after this, knowing he must conserve his strength, he even slept. If the humans took advantage of this to kill him, so be it.

  He was again amazed to find how long a time had passed when he awoke. The Morlocks had not attacked, and the humans, he noticed, had not killed him. In other times of lull the humans slept.

  At times they tried the lamps at high strength, but they seemed of little use: the Morlocks did not like the light but they simply dodged away in the stalagmite forest or were lost in the shifting shadows.

  The bombardment of stone waxed and waned, but for long periods it was unceasing. The morlocks were throwing chunks of rock and throwing them accurately, but the dense calcite crystals from the roof were doing the most damage. A well-aimed rock could injure, but those heavy falling spear points could kill, and there was nowhere to hide from them.