Man-Kzin Wars V

by Larry Niven

The crowd was denser now; Gruederman felt a little nervous, after so long in the bundu, but he kept his smile broad, even when he felt a plucking at his belt. Nothing there for a pickpocket to get, but in a few hours he'd be rich. With luck, he might be able to shed the others before he got to Munchen and cashed the assessor's draft. Pickings were slim in the Jotuns these days. From what he heard, Munchen was a wide-open town with plenty of opportunities for a man with a little ready capital and not too many foolish scruples.

  A woman in a good suit came down the steps with the little girl and touched a reader to the mule's neck.

  "That's the one," she said quietly.

  Danger prickled at Gruederman's spine. He shouted and leaped back, reaching for his machete. It was gone, hands gripped him, the honed point of his own weapon pricked behind his ear. He rolled his eyes wildly. All his men were taken, only one had unslung his weapon and it was wrestled away before he could do more than fire a round into the air. The crowd pushed in with a guttural animal snarl.

  "Kill the bandits!" someone shouted.

  The snarl rose, then died as the woman on the steps shouted and held up her hands:

  "This is a civilized town, under law," she said firmly. "Put them in the pen—tie them, and two of you watch each of them. We'll call the police patrol back, they can't have gone far."

  "Take your hands off me!" Gruederman screamed, as rawhide thongs lashed his wrists behind his back and a hundred hands pushed him through the welded steel bars of the livestock pen. "You can't do this to me!" He spat through the bars, snapping his teeth at an unwary hand and hanging on until a stick broke his nose. "Motherfuckers! Kzinshit eaters!"

  He screamed and spat through the strong steel until the square emptied.

  "What do we do now, boss?" one of the men asked, from his slumped position on the floor of the cage.

  "We fuckin' die," Gruederman shouted, kicking him in the head. His skull bounced back against the metal; it rang, and the bandit fell senseless.

  * * *

  Neu Friborg seemed deserted in the early evening gloaming, as Jonah and his party rode down the rutted main street. He stood in the saddle—painfully, since riding was not something a singleship pilot really had to study much—and craned his neck about. He could hear music, a slow mournful march, coming from the sidestreet ahead, down by the church.

  A little ahead of the riders, Spots lifted his head and sniffed. "They are there," he said flatly. "Also a large crowd of monke—of humans. Many armed. They do not smell of fear, most of them; only the ones we hunt."

  "Odd," Jonah said.

  He swung down from the saddle. Finagle, but that beast was trying to saw me in half from the crotch up, he thought. It had been downright embarrassing in front of Tyra, who seemed to have been born in the saddle from the way she managed it. She'd said something, about how a spacer must know more real skills than riding, though . . . quite a woman.

  "Cautious but polite," Jonah said, leading the way. "Remember that." For Spots's benefit; the kzin seemed to be in a fey mood, bloodthirsty as usual but relieved. Perhaps that his brother hadn't broken an oath entirely under his own power, although Jonah suspected the tall kzin had been a willing victim at the start. The temptation was simply too great. There are times when I think Early is right, he mused. But they never last.

  The little laneway opened out into a churchyard, and a field beyond that; the crowd stood in an arc about the outer wall of the graveyard. There, outside the circle of consecrated ground, four men were digging graves. A double file of armed men and women faced them, with Provisional Gendarmerie brassards. Seeing the genuine article, Jonah wondered how he could have been taken in by the bandits, even for a moment. He also decided that the mounted police were decidedly more frightening than the freelance killers had ever been. Beside him, Tyra checked for a moment at the sight of the tall crop-haired blond officer who led the firing party.

  Jonah scanned the slab-sided Herrenmann face, and reluctantly conceded the family resemblance. If you subtract all the humor and half the brains, he decided. Aloud, in a whisper:

  "Your brother?"

  "Ib," she confirmed.

  One of the digging men swung his shovel too enthusiastically, and a load of dirt ended up in the middle grave. The man there climbed out and leaned over to swat the culprit with his hat, cursing with imaginative obscenity. Hans shaped a soundless whistle.

  "Seems the Provisionals got in before us," he said. "Can't say as I'm sorry."

  "Neither am I," Jonah said.

  "I am," Spots grinned.

  The bandits stood in front of the graves they had dug. The rifles of the squad came up and Ib Nordbo's hand swung down with a blunt finality.

  Whack. The bodies fell backward, and dust spurted up from the adobe wall of the churchyard behind. A sighing murmur went over the watching townsfolk, and they began to disperse. The Gendarmerie officer cleaved through them like a walking ramrod, marching up to the little party of pursuers.

  "So," he said, with a little inclination of his head. "Sister."

  "Brother," she replied, standing a little closer to Jonah. Ib's pale brows rose.

  "This is most irregular," he said, and turned to Jonah, ignoring the kzin and Hans as an obvious commoner. "You are the owner of the stolen mule and gold?"

  "We are," Jonah said with a nod.

  "You understand, everything must be impounded pending final adjudication," he said crisply. "Proper reports must be filed with the relevant—why are you laughing?"

  "You wouldn't understand," Jonah wheezed. Beside him, Tyra fought hiccups, and Hans's face vanished into a nest of wrinkles. Even Spots flapped his ears, although his teeth still showed a little as he watched the work-crew shovel the dirt in on the dead bandits.

  "Ah, life," Jonah said at last; twin red spots of anger stood out on the young policeman's cheeks. "Tanj. And now, we'd like a line to Herrenmann Claude Montferrat-Palme, and transport to Munchen—if you please, Herrenmann Lieutenant Nordbo."

  "Except for me," Hans said, turning his horse's head. He leaned down to shake hands. "Goin' back. These people, they need me. You know where to reach me—always more fried chicken and rum for visitors!"

  * * *

  Jonah began to laugh again as the old man touched a heel to his horse and the outbackers fell in behind him.

  "One happy ending at least," he said.

  "Oh, perhaps more," Tyra said.

  "Perhaps," Spots murmured.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Buford Early's laughter rolled across the broad veranda of the Montferrat-Palme manor. Evening had fallen, purple and dusky across the formal gardens, still with a trace of crimson on the terraced vineyards and coffee fields in the hills beyond. The ARM general leaned back in his chair puffing at his cigar until it was a red comet in the darkness. The others looked at him silently; Montferrat calm and sardonic as always, Jonah stony-faced, Tyra Nordbo openly hostile. Only Harold Yarthkin and his wife seemed to be amused as well, and they were not so closely involved in this matter. With the human-style food out of the way Spots had joined them, curled in one of the big wicker chairs with saucers of Jersey cream and cognac, still licking his whiskers at the memory of the live zianya that had somehow, miraculously, been found for him.

  "Glad you're happy," Harold said sardonically, pouring himself a glass of verguuz and clipping the end off a cigar.

  "Why shouldn't I be?" Early said. "An excellent dinner—it always is, here, Herrenmann Montferrat-Palme—"

  "Please, Claude."

  "—Claude. And fascinating table talk, also as usual. Politics aside, I enjoy the company here more than I have on Earth for a long, long time. But you said you had something to negotiate! It seems to me you've wound this affair up very neatly, and just as I would have wanted. All the evidence buried or gone, the bandits conveniently dead, and nothing of the tnuctipun but rumors. You might," he added to Jonah, "consider writing this up as a holo script. It'd make a good one."

  "Not my field,
" the ex-pilot said with a tight smile.

  "You're forgetting something, my dear fellow," Montferrat said with wholehearted enjoyment. "You know the approximate location of the tnuctipun spaceship. We know the exact location, and as you love to point out, you don't believe in swift direct action. We can get to it before you can—in fact, we just might have secured and moved it already. In which case you could look forever, it's a big planet. Treasure-trove law is clearly on our side too, for what that's worth. We could decipher some of those secrets you're so afraid of, and send them off—to We Made It and Jinx, for example. Think of the joy you'd have trying to suppress it there."

  "No joy at all," Early sighed, taking the cigar out of his mouth and concentrating on the tip. "I don't suppose an appeal to your sense of responsibility for interstellar stability . . . no. You might try not to be so gleeful," he went on. "What terms did you have in mind?"

  "Well, my young friends here—" Montferrat nodded at Jonah, Tyra and the kzin "—and their rather older friend back in the outback, have all gone to a great deal of trouble and expense. I think they should be compensated. To about the extent of a hundred thousand krona each, after tax."

  "Agreed," Early said, sounding slightly surprised. "What's the real price?"

  "Well, in addition, you might get the blacklisting on Jonah removed—and have him and Fra Nordbo given security clearance for interstellar travel."

  Tyra's face lit up with an inner glow at the ARM general's nod.

  "And?" he said with heavy patience, sipping at his cognac.

  "And you go home. Or to another star system, but you get out of Alpha Centauri."

  Early laughed again, more softly, and set the snifter down. "I hope you don't think I'm the only agent the . . . ARM has?" he said.

  Jonah cut in: "No. But you're the smartest—or if you're not, we're hopeless anyway. It's a start."

  "It will win me time, which I will use," Montferrat added.

  Early sat in silence, puffing occasionally, while the sun set finally; the stars came out, and a quarter moon, undimmed by Beta Centauri. A flash of shooting stars lit up the night, ghostly soft lightning across the hills and the faces of humans and the kzin.

  "More time than you might expect," he said. "Bureaucracies tend to get slower as they age, and mine . . ." More silence. "Agreed," he said. "It's time for me to move on, anyway. I'm getting too well known here. Lack of discretion was always my besetting sin. There's still the war—we have to organize the ex-kzin slave worlds we're taking as reparations—and doubtless other work will be found for me. Ich deinst, as they say." He looked over at Montferrat. "Checkmate—for now," he said, rising and extending his hand.

  "For now," Montferrat agreed. "Harold here to hold the stakes?"

  "Agreed; we can settle the details at our leisure." He bowed to the ladies, an archaic gesture he might have picked up on Wunderland. Or not, if he was what they suspected. "And now, I won't put a damper on your victory celebrations."

  He strolled like a conqueror out to the waiting aircar, the stub of his cigar a comet against the night as he threw it away and climbed through the gullwing door. The craft lifted and turned north and west, heading for Munchen, an outline covering a moving patch of stars.

  "I doubt he's going to accept defeat gracefully," Jonah said, sipping moodily at his coffee. Montferrat had winced a bit when the younger man dumped his cognac into it. "Especially when he discovers the interior of the spaceship melted down into slag when the tnuctipun bastard died."

  "The hull alone is a formidable secret; he'll have the satisfaction of putting that in the archives," Montferrat said judiciously. "You know, I could almost pity him."

  That brought the heads around, even Spots's. "Why?" Harold demanded, pulling himself out of reverie.

  "Because he's so able, and so determined—and his cause is doomed to inevitable defeat," Montferrat said. At their blank looks, he waved his cigarillo at the stars.

  "Look at them, my friends. We can count them, but we cannot really know how many. The number is too huge for our minds to grasp! With the outsider's gift of the hyperdrive, we have access to them all—and the kzinti will too, in their turn, you cannot keep a law of nature secret forever, despite what the ARM thinks."

  His voice deepened. "The universe is too big to understand; vastly too big to control even by the most subtle and powerful means, even this little corner of it we call Known Space. There is an age of exploration coming—as it was in the Renaissance, or the twenty-first century. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can stop what we—all the sentient species—will do, and venture, and become. That is why I pity Buford Early—and why I never despair of our cause, no matter how bleak the situation looks. Tactically we may lose, but strategically, we cannot."

  Jonah looked thoughtful, and Harold grinned across his basset-hound face. Tyra Nordbo laughed, and leaned forward to put a hand on his arm. The jewels in her tiara glistened amid the artfully-arranged piles of blond hair, and the shimmering silk of her gown clung.

  "Thank you for everything," she said.

  "Nonsense," he said, watching Jonah's gaze on her, warm and fond. Bless you, my children, he thought sardonically. And if I wasn't a middle-aged eighty and didn't have commitments elsewhere, you wouldn't have a chance, Jonah the Hero.

  "The stars," she said. "For both of us."

  "Perhaps," Montferrat said. "Someday."

  "Someday."

  Jonah laughed. "Myself, after the past couple of years, I'm not so sure I'll ever want to leave the confines of Greater Munchen again."

  Tyra laughed, but Montferrat had a suspicion the Sol Belter might mean what he said; he sounded very tired, at a level below the physical.

  "May," Jonah added, standing and extending his crooked arm, "I show you the gardens, Fra Nordbo?"

  "I would be delighted, sir," she said.

  Montferrat watched them go. "A satisfactory conclusion, all things considered," he said. "Very satisfactory indeed."

  EPILOGUE

  Harold's Terran Bar was far too noisy and crowded and smelled of tobacco smoke. Spots-Son of Chotrz-Shaa still felt it was appropriate, in memory of his brother. He had taken the same booth for the evening, and the remains of a grouper lay clean-picked on his plate. Glen Rorksbergen and jersey mingled in yellow and amber delight in a saucer, beside his belt computer.

  It will take many years to decode that download, he thought. There had been far more in the tnuctipun spaceship's system than the mere fifty terabytes his belt model could hold, as well. Piecing together the operating code with nothing but fragmentary hints and sheer logic would be a torment.

  Still, he had time.

  To you, my brother, he thought silently, dipping his muzzle towards the drink. I dedicate the hunt.

  THE END

  Hey Diddle Diddle

  Thomas T. Thomas

  "A kzinti warship!" Daff Gambiel called from the watch-keeping station at the mass pointer in the ship's waist. "No—a whole fleet of them!" he corrected. "Dead ahead!"

  Up near the control yoke Hugh Jook, Callisto's navigator, spun on his own axis and dove toward the detector. He braked by grabbing a nearby stanchion and going into partial parabola around it. Once he stabilized, Jook studied the thin blue line that peeked out of the milky globe.

  "Relax, Daff." He sketched the line with his finger. "Is that what you're excited about? Look at the mass actually showing there. Way too much for hull metal, even in a tight formation. That's an asteroid."

  "So far out?" Gambiel said doubtfully.

  "It's a rogue. A rock that got perturbed from its orbit."

  "Perturbed enough to reach stellar escape velocity?" Gambiel still sounded unconvinced, but the Hellflare tattoo on the Jinxian's blunt forehead glowed violently with the flush that was creeping up from his cheekbones. "I'd rather believe the Navy's conclusions. They say it should be a fleet."

  "Coming through on gravity polarizers? Oh sure!" The navigator's native Wunderlander superiority leaked out around
the edges of his debating style. "And if they were accelerating, pointing away from us, then they would mask the gravity wave so thoroughly our detector wouldn't budge. Pointed toward us, in braking mode, they'd show the shadow of a couple of solar masses.

  "This line's just right for a small iron or carbonate body." The Wunderlander pulled his chin. "How it got here, and moving so fast—probably pulled out by the gravity well of a passing star or black hole. . . . No kzinti need apply for that picture, however much you want to believe. Anyway, the Navy is dead wrong. We blasted the Patriarchy back to a collection of cinder worlds and a basketful of kittens in the Third War. They're harmless."

  Jared Cuiller, commander of the Callisto, listened casually to this conversation. By now, it was going through its seventh or eighth cycle among his tiny four-person crew. They were thirty-six days out of Margrave and twelve light-years beyond the Chord of Contact between Known Space and the Patriarchy. Although his ship's mission had come up fast, the debate behind it had been years in the making.

  Over the decades since the Third Man-Kzin War, various industrial conglomerates had gone in to rebuild the shattered Kzinti homeworld and reconstruct the Patriarchy's fractured system of colony and tribute planets along more market-oriented lines. The organized religions had sent in missions to introduce concepts of peace and love, equality and reciprocity—as far as they would go. The universities had sent archaeological and sociological study teams. All of these observers insisted that the Kzinti were pacified, if not exactly civilized. And the U.N. Peacekeeping Commission still controlled strictly the production facilities of Kzin and its colonies, as well as the goods they could buy and sell. So conventional wisdom said the Kzinti had neither the war spirit nor war making capability left in them.

  But in the last six months, the Admiralty had convinced the U.N. politicians, the ARMs, and the Peacekeeping Commission that an anomaly existed in the economic and cultural profiles that these on-the-spot observers had sent back from the Patriarchy. The tactical-analysis computers at Naval HQ had found indications that this sudden docility among the kzinti was just a clever screen.