Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - X

by Hal Colebatch

  “Don’t you know what he wants to ask you about? Or want to know?”

  “Not particularly. I’m not in the business of advising ratcats.” He laughed abruptly. “If one bizarre day they got the vote and they were in my Parliamentary constituency I suppose I’d have to talk to them. I can’t see that happening, somehow.”

  “Well, I seem to have come on a fool’s errand,” said Cumpston. “Still, seeing your work has been fascinating.”

  “Come back in another five years,” said Rykermann. “We might have a clean planet by then. Leonie will show you the way back to the crepuscular zone.”

  Cumpston fed the tapes of the conversation and the films of Rykermann and Leonie into the car’s computer. Buford Early was back to him before he had traveled far.

  “According to the speech and body language analyses, coupled with the analyses of their earlier speeches and their contact profiles several things emerge plainly,” he said. “Rykermann is an Exterminationist. His wife isn’t. She half-knows he is and she’s trying to convince herself he doesn’t mean it.”

  “That’s bad.”

  “But it’s not quite that simple. He wants all kzin dead but he feels under a debt to Raargh. For Leonie’s life at least as much as for his own. I don’t think he values his own life very highly. There’s a lot of death wish in that boy.”

  “Do we know why?”

  “Do I have to draw you a diagram? Little thing you might have noticed called the war. It screwed up a lot of Wunderlanders pretty badly. And not only Wunderlanders. People did things they can’t live with now, lost people they can’t live without, sometimes. The euphoria of Liberation is wearing off and survivors’ guilt is coming back. People are blaming themselves for things they did to stay alive. Certainly he has a major hang-up about this girl professor, for whose death he blames the Kzin and himself about equally, depending on the weather and what he last ate. Who knows all the details? But after fifty-three years of Kzinti occupation there aren’t too many on Wunderland who are a picture of glowing mental health. And Rykermann had a tougher war than most. Why do you think he’s working a lot harder than he needs to now?”

  “Because he’s politically ambitious?”

  “In that case he’d be concentrating on the one thing: politics. Instead of which he’s scattering himself all over the shop—politics, cave antics, television features, the memorial to this professor—all displacement activity. He’s trying to stop himself thinking, and I think he’s going to snap soon, but he could do a lot of harm before he does.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Give me time to think, boy. I can’t come up with an optimum plan in a second.”

  “Raargh is seeking him out.”

  “What for? Still wanting his head for a wall decoration? Wouldn’t be popular now, not with Rykermann a celebrity. That’s how he found him, I suppose. The old devil must watch monkey television.”

  “For his advice. I gather he trusts him because of their old alliance.”

  “Advice? Advice on what?”

  “What to do about Vaemar’s future. I think Vaemar is with him.”

  “Cumpston, Vaemar is valuable!”

  “Raargh thinks so too. For what it’s worth, so do I. That’s why I disturbed your esteemed labors.”

  “There are hopes riding on that cub for…for…Where are they now?”

  “Close by. I’ve got them on the tracker.”

  “Get in closer. In fact check them now.”

  “They’re not far away. But…Buford, the signal is odd. Muzzy. But it’s there. They may be resting up in a cave. They’re cats. They love exploring holes.”

  “Find them! Go in now! Close enough to help them if need be. If they must see you, so be it. Keep them away from Rykermann. If you need help I’ll send the cavalry.”

  “They called the spaceport the Himmelfährte,” said Jocelyn. “The way to Heaven. Not for the reason you might think obvious, but because so many humans died slaving here when the Kzin wanted to expand it in a hurry. This place is built on human bones.”

  “I see,” said Arthur Guthlac.

  “There are the memorials.”

  “Pretty realistic. Are those children?”

  “Yes,” she said. “We commissioned the best sculptors on Wunderland. Something never to be forgotten. There are going to be a lot of memorials on this planet. We’re going to make sure nothing’s forgotten, ever.”

  A section of one of the kzinti warcraft hulks, cut free, fell to the ground in a metallic crash and a cloud of dust. A clutch of dead kzin, freeze-dried in space years before, stared out eyelessly at them from the new cavity in the hull. Jocelyn banked the car away and headed for the main spaceport building.

  “I suppose the ratcat-lovers are very pleased it’s all kzin-sized,” she remarked as they flew between the huge doors into the parking bays. “Convenient for them when they come back.” In fact human-sized facilities were replacing the giant and brutally utilitarian kzinti military buildings and installations. Black paint was smeared over a wall that had once been adorned with a heroic kzin mural. “That’ll be them now.” She gestured to the tube extending from a recently-landed shuttle. Professor Meinertzhagen, the head of the Wunderland Science Authority, and other gray-uniformed Wunderland officials who Arthur Guthlac had met previously, joined them.

  “She’s turning a few heads!” he remarked, as the We Made It party approached.

  “Not my image of a hyperdrive expert,” Jocelyn told him. There was no need to specify who they meant. “That’s odd,” she added.

  “What?”

  “I’d say she’s a Wunderlander. That’s not a Crashlander’s musculature. Look at the rest of them. Far more solidly built. Blondie’s muscles were formed in Wunderland gravity with a lot of exercise, although I’d say she’s lived in Crashlander gravity for a while since. Also, she’s walking scared.”

  “Agoraphobia? The original Crashlander party that returned to Earth tended to suffer from it under an open sky.”

  “There are treatments for that now. And those ears. Those are Herrenmann ears.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You’re a flatlander. And I’m a cop, remember?” She gave him an enigmatic smile as she said it. Her swinging hand brushed his and for a moment she squeezed his fingers.

  “We notice things like that,” she went on. “Look at her eyes. She’s as jumpy as a Kzin on a hot osmium roof. Watch.” She made a peculiar and difficult noise with her lips. The ears of the blonde woman and of several passersby twitched noticeably. The blonde woman looked bewildered. Jocelyn’s face was composed as if nothing had happened.

  “Once I looked for UNSN infiltrators.”

  Her words had taken them into uncomfortable territory. The head of the Crashlander delegation shook hands, carefully restraining his grip.

  “Patrick Quickenden,” he introduced himself. “Helen Moffet, Roger Selene, Sam Kim…”

  “We’ve got a couple of cars waiting,” said Jocelyn when the introductions were completed. “We’re lunching at the university. You’ll be able to see the city on the way.”

  The Crashlander party had seen Earth, but as the belt carried them toward the cars, they gazed in astonishment at Wunderland’s open skies, mild weather, tall hills and buildings and blazes of multicolored plants. We need not spend our lives under a single star again, thought Arthur Guthlac. Once I saved money in the hope of a cheap holiday on the Moon before I died. The hyperdrive has liberated us from more than the Kzin. Let this war finish—let the threat be destroyed, and Starman will come into his own! And then, Why, I could be a Wunderlander!

  “There’s more dust in the air,” said the blond woman suddenly. She had been watching a flutterby that rested on the tip of her finger, fanning its delicate wings.

  “More dust than what?” Arthur asked.

  “Than I expected, I suppose. The light is different.”

  “There was a war,” said Jocelyn. “A big war. There were
nukes used during the Invasion, during the intra-kzinti war, during the Liberation, and worse than nukes during the UNSN’s ramscoop raid before that. It hasn’t all settled yet. But it will. We’re going to build a better planet here. A cleaner planet!”

  “I see…of course.” Her face contorted suddenly and she clutched at Arthur Guthlac’s arm. Whatever gravity she came from, her grip was so painfully tight he thought for a moment she was attacking him. Her blue eyes were wide with terror. He saw her fight down a scream.

  Three of the scrapyard workers across the way were loading a sled. One of them was a kzin.

  “There are quite a few of them around,” Jocelyn said, following her gaze. Her voice was cold and expressionless. Either she disliked the sight or she despised the woman’s obvious stab of terror. “You needn’t worry about it.” She rustled the dried objects that hung from her belt-ring. “Kzinti ears,” she said, then added, “and human collabos. A custom we copied from them.”

  The blond woman stared at the things for a moment. Her hand brushed her hair in a gesture Jocelyn had already noted. The sledge was loaded now. The workers killed the engines of their lifts and one of the humans opened a flask. He tossed a can of beer to the other human and one to the kzin. The delegation and the reception committee boarded their cars and headed toward the university, flying by a scenic route. But more than one head turned to look back at the trio.

  Chapter 5

  “This redoubt,” Henrietta said, “was begun by Chuut-Riit shortly before the ramscoop raid. Initially he feared a coup against him by an alliance of other kzin, particularly followers of Kfrashaka-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, much more than he feared humans.

  “He kept it secret from all but a few of his own pride, and me, Executive Secretary and most senior and trusted of his slaves. Very shortly before his murder he began to have other thoughts, which he entrusted, posthumously, to me alone.

  “Traat-Admiral was of course one who knew of the original project, though not his very deepest thoughts, and after Chuut-Riit’s murder Traat-Admiral carried it on. He and nearly all his pride perished in space. By the time of the human landings it was unfinished, much as you see this section now. But enough had been done to enable it to support a few of us. As well that more Heroes did not know of it, or they would have raided its stockpiles of weapons for the last battles.”

  “Who built it, if it was secret?” asked Vaemar. His Wunderlander was correct, much better than Raargh’s, though with a nonhuman accent. Raargh had procured sleep tapes for him to learn from.

  “Slaves, Noble Prince. They were killed before the surrender. Then the Heroes who had supervised them went out to die heroically.”

  “I was at my post at the Governor’s Palace in Munchen when the end came. On the day of the cease-fire the mob stormed the palace. Zroght-Guard-Captain and some of the others made a last stand there. I escaped with Andre and a few other loyal humans of Chuut-Riit’s household. And with Emma, my eldest daughter. Save for her I could not get my family away. Many humans who had obeyed and served the Heroes, who had interceded with them for humans and kept order and production on this world, were lynched by people who owed their lives to them. The mob seized my man and fed him alive to kzinrretti in the zoo cages. I think a priest intervened to save the children. Or perhaps not. I do not remember those days well.

  “In the chaos we made our way here, mingling as need be with the hordes of refugees,” she went on. “Ensign here and other Heroes who had been informed in time got here as well. Chuut-Riit had given me this shortly before his murder, warning me that he had a premonition of doom, and that this was his last ktzirrarourght in case doom fell.” She fished at a chain around her neck and drew forth an antique gold and silver locket, a human thing, perhaps made in Neue Dresden. “It contained four things: a map and the keys to this fortress, a tuft of his fur, and a hologram recording.

  “While you slept, Noble One, I already tested your nucleonic acid against his. I know the reports that you are his son are true.”

  “This was built, all in a few weeks?” asked Vaemar, looking about him again.

  “Indeed, Noble One. You come of the greatest race in the Universe.”

  “Truly, I come of a great people…Great works.”

  “Yes, there is nothing the kzinti cannot accomplish, though all the fates turn against them. But I have no secrets from your blood. We had an advantage. ARM suppressed the knowledge of Sinclair fields on Earth, but they had been used to enhance the reaction-drives of the first interstellar slowboats. There were still plans of them in the old archives here.”

  “Sinclair fields?”

  “Time precesses faster inside them. They would have had major military and weapons applications for both sides—war-winning weapons if we had got them in time—but we only rediscovered the plans late in the day, and used them here to speed up production. Inside the fields, much could be built while little time passed outside. We used them also, to grow and age the trees we planted above to conceal the work, even, with high-pressure pumps, to grow stalactites to conceal disturbances at cave entrances. And to grow some stray kzin kittens quickly to adulthood, increasing our strength. We have young Heroes here, thoroughly trained, who know only this place and its discipline.

  “As for the major rooms and excavations, the God had done much of that already. These chambers link to the great caves of the Hohe Kalkstein, are indeed an extension of them. But still, it was a mighty feat…Come with me now. Noble Prince, do you remember your Honored Sire Chuut-Riit?”

  “A little,” said Vaemar. “Images.”

  “You will see your Honored Sire once more.”

  Henrietta, accompanied by Andre, Emma and Ensign, led them to another chamber. Human chairs and Kzin-sized stone fooches surrounded what looked like an auditorium. There was an instrument console and racks of sidearms on the walls as well as a few stuffed humans, a battle-drum, and other trophies that emphasized its kzinti, and in particular its military kzinti, appearance. There was even a gonfalon of Old Kzin, and some of the artificial lights shone from cressets of antique appearance.

  At a gesture from Henrietta, Raargh and Vaemar reclined on two of the fooches. Emma at the console touched a keypad. There was a faint hissing as concealed ducts pumped out odors. A hologram of a mighty kzin appeared. It spoke in the Heroes’ Tongue, in the Ultimate Imperative Tense of Royalty:

  “This is the Testament of Chuut-Riit, Planetary Governor of Ka’ashi, of the blood of the Patriarch, to my slave and friend Henrietta-human.

  “Henrietta, if you are watching this I shall be dead. One attempt by the human Arrum to assassinate me has been thwarted. There will be others, and by kzinti as well as humans.

  “This I have always accepted. We Kzinti have long had proverbs like your human ‘Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown,’ and I chose to wear the crown and accept what goes with it. Yet it was a surprise for me to discover that the humans of Sol System knew so much of us as to know to strike at me personally.

  “How did this happen? I thought on it. The humans who fled from Ka’ashi to Sol System left long before I arrived. There must have been secret comings and goings between the two systems since. Light-messages, perhaps.

  “We had, I suppose, known this was possible, yet had had no interest in it. If the Sol Humans knew the terror of our Names, so much the worse for them! And in that lack of interest I detect a deep-seated military weakness in our kind. I long ago realized, Henrietta, that your kind have talents we lack. We are curious if mysteries are presented to us, we enjoy showing our talents for solving puzzles and conundrums, and we are always eager to stick our noses into caves that may hide secrets or prey, but we lack your degree of curiosity for its own sake. Sometimes I think the deadliest blow the Jotok ever struck against us was to give us knowledge so that we never came to love the hunt for it.

  “I summoned the telepaths who have examined human prisoners, and forced myself to interrogate them. That was perhaps prodigal of me—by th
en all telepaths were urgently needed for war security. But I uncovered many things which I had not suspected, not least about the telepaths themselves.

  ”However my main discovery was this: When we first met humans and our telepaths reported a race given over wholly to peace and as weaponless as the Kdatlyno and others we have encountered, even as the human laser-cannon slashed at our fleets, some speculated that monkey pacifism was not natural but had been conditioned in them by another race. Perhaps some race had sought to use them as the Jotok sought to use us when they recruited us as mercenaries and gave us technology.

  “Some even speculated that those conditioners of monkeys were the Jotok—the fabled free Jotok fleet that had escaped us. We searched for those conditioners, whoever they might be, without result.

  “So I discovered, putting together one piece and another, that humans had indeed been conditioned: first by the Arrum. But second by something behind the Arrum that has no name. I am a kzintosh of the Blood Royal, brought up in palaces, now a Planetary Governor with enemies and rivals. I am used to dominance-ploys and Konspirrissy. Most Konspirrissies have inbuilt limitations to their growth and fall apart, are betrayed or fission after they pass a certain size. But this was Konspirrissy beyond Konspirrissy.

  “By human standards very old, very large. So old and large that the normal fission of Konspirrissy, even exposure, would not be fatal to it. It had grown and changed through many human lifetimes. We Kzin nobles have studied Konspirrissy, yes, we have made a science of it—I shall say we of the Riit clan most of all. We did not come to rule the kzinti by the speed of our fangs and claws alone. We know that Konspirrissy may grow in such a way that the Konspirritors hardly need to conceal their aims. They need only manipulate a few appearances and emphases. Humans are so inconstant that even one who tells the truth about his plans is not believed: Look at your Hitler, your Lenin, your Sunday. But we kzinti have had some equivalents.