Man-Kzin Wars V

by Larry Niven

  From the position of Fellah's head, Cuiller could see that the dog was listening closely. How much was he understanding?

  "So what did these Tnuctipun build?" Cuiller asked. "Fellah himself?"

  "Not likely," Sally Krater offered. "Fellah said he was 'of-class,' part of a race, called the Pru . . . Pruntaquilun. But here!" She drew a long, sticklike device out of her belt. "This was in the stasis-box, too."

  "What is it?" Cuiller asked, taking it from her.

  "I don't know. It looks like some kind of musical instrument."

  Fellah at first regarded it with keen-eyed interest, then turned his head away.

  "Fellah?" the commander asked suddenly. "Do you know what this does?"

  The animal looked back at him, reluctantly. "Stick-thing."

  "But what did the Thrint do with it?"

  "Point at head. Work fingers. Reach deep inside. Set mind in—"

  "Is it something the Thrint used to fiddle about with your brains?" Jook asked, trying to overcome the word-hurdles for Fellah.

  "Yes, fiddle. Itself name, Fiddle."

  "It's the source of the Slavers' power, then," Jook went on eagerly, to his crewmates. "It has to be! And all this time we thought they were mentalists. But instead they had these shock-rod things. 'Fiddle,' he calls it."

  "My-Thrint," Fellah said slowly, "my—master, used it, it was secret . . ."

  "Of course it would be a secret," Jook explained. "They would keep the existence of the Fiddle from their subject races, hiding it as a musical instrument or pretending it was something else benign. In that way they could maintain the myth of their innate power. And they would be willing to kill in order to preserve their secret—as those freeze-dried brains prove."

  Cuiller, who still held the Fiddle, brought it up near his face and fitted his fingers awkwardly to the keys. He pressed them in no particular order. And nothing happened.

  "I can hear music," Krater said. "Or, sort of. Anyway, it's . . . silvery, like bells and woodwinds, far off."

  Cuiller tried a different pattern of fingering.

  "Yeah, me too," Jook said. "Kind of . . ."

  * * *

  Nyawk-Captain had been trailing the remaining human for hours, walking in his powered armor across the ground while the human swung invisibly through the high branches. His reworked radar easily tracked the quarry's particular carbon pattern as it moved east then south, pausing occasionally to rest in the trees.

  Twice he had to detour around the glimmer of large white shapes, which passed in the distance under the forest roof. They did not see or sense him, and each time Nyawk-Captain was able to regain the trail of the human's passage.

  After most of the morning, when the sun was high, the prey paused once more. This time, however, it joined two more pattern signatures that had been showing to the west of it. The monkey troupe was forming up.

  Nyawk-Captain shed his bulky armor, left the locator beside it, and began climbing a nearby bole. By his calculations, he was almost under the humans as they paused in the forest canopy. He moved as quietly as he could, gripping with his forepaws around the trunk's side and pushing with his feet and claws against the bark.

  Arriving approximately at the humans' level, and shielded by green fans from their sight, he extended his natural ears and listened to their ongoing conversation. He understood only the vaguest fragments of spoken Interworld but soon realized the humans were talking about the Thrintun and their long-ago time. He picked up the word for "master."

  Nyawk-Captain was preparing himself for the forward rush that would put an end to these human thieves and intruders on his mission—when he suddenly froze. Through a gap in the greenery he saw one of them pointing a wandlike object at him. And he could not move!

  The human diddled its fingers, and Nyawk-Captain felt his paws twitch, his leg kick, his tail go stiff. Either the humans had recently developed a psychokinetic power unknown to the Patriarchy, or this was a display of power from the Thrintun artifacts they had discovered in the box. Experience and common sense suggested the latter.

  As the device worked his body over, Nyawk-Captain could also feel his attitude toward the human holding it begin to change, becoming mellow and accepting. Nyawk-Captain hated that! After a few seconds, the human stopped diddling the keys of the device and turned away.

  Nyawk-Captain was himself again.

  Without the traditional challenging scream, he leaped through the wall of leaves and slashed left and right One of the humans went down under his blows, flagging bloody strings of tissue. Nyawk-Captain paused only to shake fragments of meat and fabric off his paws.

  The human holding the Thrintun device dropped it and rolled to one side. The artifact skittered through the leaves, up-ended, and dropped. The human reached for it.

  Realizing its immediate value, Nyawk-Captain dove after it, pushing that human away with a forehand swipe that snagged cloth and skin. He fought his way down through twigs and vines, into the lower levels of the canopy.

  Too late!

  He could see the wand falling, spinning, finally striking the brittle soil of the forest floor.

  Whatever the device might be, Nyawk-Captain's instincts told him that by retrieving it he would preserve his honor and buy his way back into Admiral Lehruff's good graces. He leapt for a nearby trunk and raced down it headfirst, moving just slower than terminal velocity. Nyawk-Captain did a diving roll across the ground and gathered up the fallen prize.

  He paused only to stash it with his powered armor and then headed back up the tree to finish off the remaining humans.

  * * *

  Hugh Jook was messily dead, scattered in four pieces across the center of their clearing. Several meters away, Sally Krater crouched in fetal position with her hands locked around a tree limb. Fellah had disappeared.

  The attack had broken Cuiller's left arm, that much he could tell from its angle, although the onset of shock had spared him much pain yet. He also felt blood oozing from four puncture wounds in his upper chest. Possibly some cracked ribs, too.

  Cuiller lifted himself and approached Krater slowly, not wanting to frighten her more. He spoke gently and touched her head, massaging her temples with his good hand.

  "Lieutenant? Sally? Are you hurt?"

  No response.

  He began moving his palm in wide circles across the nape of her neck and shoulders.

  "Sally. It's all right. Time to wake up."

  "N-no-oh," she moaned.

  "Time to move, Sal."

  "It'll come back!"

  "No, no. The cat's all gone. Come on now, wake up."

  Cuiller reached for her hands, still clenched around the limb, and pulled on them gently. Reason began to return to her eyes. She straightened. Her fingers slipped loose. The hands fell inertly into her lap.

  He lifted them with his good hand, and worked his stiff arm gently around her shoulders. He pressed it against her as much as he could without grating the ends of broken bone.

  Sally slid close to him and nestled her face against his uniform collar. Her hands crept up, around his shoulders, locking behind his neck. Cuiller rubbed her back in slow, smooth circles, pulling her closer.

  Sally's mouth lifted. Her lips first touched the corner of his jaw, then moved south to find his own.

  He kissed her for the first time, for a long time.

  Then the world began to catch up with them, and Cuiller pulled back just enough to look into her face.

  "Hello," he said, smiling.

  "What happened?" She seemed newly awakened, disoriented, lost.

  "We had a visitor. Kzinti kind. Are you hurt at all?"

  "I—I don't think so. You?"

  "Some. Not a lot of pain yet."

  "Where's Hugh?"

  Cuiller glanced over his shoulder. "The kzin got him. . . . He seems to be dead."

  Krater roused. "Seems to be . . . ? Maybe I can—"

  He pulled her back down and locked eyes with her. "You can't, Sally."
/>
  She sagged, leaning against his good arm. He caressed her once more.

  "Come on," he said. "We can't stay here. That kzin may come again."

  "Where can we go?"

  "Anywhere away from here. Back toward the ship. I don't know."

  "Can you use the harness?"

  "Not with this arm."

  Careful not to look directly at Jook's remains, she began to feel for his pack and gather their scattered possessions and laser weapons.

  "Then we'll have to make slow time," she said.

  The two of them moved off quietly. Cuiller remembered to keep a hand over his chest wounds so as not to leave blood spoor.

  * * *

  The Elders of Pruntaquila, those inventors of language and studied readers of emotion, believed that being is the process of becoming.

  "And if I do not stay out of that orange monster's reach," Fellah muttered to himself, "then I will become lunch."

  He crept under and through the varied leaf layers, hiding after the kzin's brutal attack. He spent a few solemn moments studying the remaining humans as they crouched in place, wasting time. Then he moved on, toward a place of greater distance and safety. And as he moved, Fellah considered all that the humans had been saying.

  Clearly they did believe themselves the inheritors of the Thrintun Masters. In their own inverted language, this Interworld, they were both givers and receivers of Discipline. Their talk hinted at complex relationships and exchanges of Power in patterns that even a Balladeer had never contemplated. And yet they were not alone in their desire for control. That kzin had thought of himself as "free," too.

  Much had occurred in the "long, long time" since Guerdoth had packed Fellah away in the time-bending case. And that implied other things. . . . If the Thrintun were all dead and these new creatures risen unpredictably in their place during these three-times-five unimaginable spans of time, then so were the Pruntaquila gone from this universe.

  "I will have no mate," Fellah said aloud, mournfully, in his native tongue. "I will leave none of my line. Nor any student. And I will make no mark on the future." It was a dismal thought. For a brief span, Fellah considered offering himself up to the kzin's claws.

  Then something else occurred to him.

  All his life he had known the straitjacket bindings of Thrintun Power and had endured the frivolous whims to which the Masters were prone. But in the few hours he had spent among these humans, even when they were threatened by the terrible kzin, he had felt uncertainty and . . . excitement! Fellah saw now that the iron course of Discipline, even when it was shaped as commands to love and respect, had been like a heavy weight on his mind. And that weight had been totally missing from his thoughts ever since the time-box was opened. Except for a brief moment when the Daff had used the Baton—or "Fiddle," as it was called in Inter-world—on him.

  The only trace of Power now left in this universe was the Baton itself. And it was under control of the kzin. From what Fellah had seen, they were almost as clever as the humans. They certainly had the use of fire, metals, and other sophisticated technologies. And the awareness Fellah had tasted from mirrored a whole race, millions more like this one savage kzin, waiting beyond the distances between the stars.

  They were intelligent enough to use the Baton, perhaps even to copy it, creating mind-weapons of unimaginable power. Although his experience of these creatures was limited, Fellah supposed it would not displease the kzinti to have worlds full of creatures such as the Sally and Cuiller commanded to jump on cue into their wide, waiting mouths.

  Suddenly, Fellah's mind firmed. There was indeed one thing he could do, one last gesture he could make, to leave his mark on the future.

  * * *

  Nyawk-Captain climbed quickly up into the canopy. He oriented himself on the remains of the one dead human.

  No live ones presented themselves. He was sure, however, that at least one of the remaining two was wounded. How far could they have gone? He tried to smell them out, but the scent of the kill in the immediate area was too strong and distracting, the odors of the humans too similar and confusing. Nyawk-Captain had made a shallow box search of the area, and found nothing, before he remembered his carbon-pattern detector.

  He returned to the ground, retrieved it, and sighted the locator back up into the leaf layer.

  No return signal from any direction.

  And that should not be surprising. By this time the humans, even slowed and wounded as they were, might have gone beyond the sensitivity of his locator. Though honor demanded an accounting, there was certain danger in carrying any plan of vengeance too far.

  Nyawk-Captain decided to take his prize, the Thrintun artifact, and return to Cat's Paw in order to continue his mission. Success, victory, and lasting honor were all still possible!

  * * *

  After a stumbling kilometer, Cuiller finally collapsed into the leaf layer, half-afraid—but only half—that his body would find its way through to the long fall. His arm throbbed now with the pain and swelling of the break. He could feel a raw heat creep up to his neck from the wounds in his chest. Was he developing a fever?

  "Sally . . ."

  "Wait here, Jared." Krater settled him across a solid branch and dug the remains of their autodoc out of her pack. She held up a vial of painkiller. "I'm guessing about the dosage," she said, breaking open a needle and injecting twenty cc's of clear fluid.

  A few minutes after the shot, Cuiller roused himself. Already he was feeling warm and gauzy and . . . better.

  "I should see to your arm," Krater said.

  "What're you . . . gonna do?"

  "Set it, splint it, wrap it."

  "D'you ever—?"

  "No."

  She examined his left arm, which angled slightly outward about halfway above the elbow. Before he could offer further advice, she gently extended the arm, placed her left palm against the front of his shoulder, curled her right thumb under his elbow, wrapped her fingers over his forearm, and—pulled.

  White fire boiled up in his arm and he could actually feel the ends of bone clicking together. Then Cuiller passed out.

  When he came to, Krater had already cut up one of the pack-frames with a laser and made L-shaped splints with it. She had used the pack straps to bind it to his arm and tied the pack-cloth into a sling. Now she was cutting his uniform away from the puncture marks in his chest and dabbing them with an astringent.

  "Sorry I've got nothing for bandages," she said. "But these holes don't look that deep."

  "S'all right."

  "What do you think the kzin was trying to do?"

  "Kill us," he said with authority.

  "Then why did it leave so suddenly? With us not dead."

  "I don't . . . Just before it pushed me, I seem to remember dropping the Fiddle."

  "It went through the leaves," Krater agreed, "and fell."

  "And the kzin went after it—as if he knew it was valuable."

  "Do you think he found it?"

  The foliage around them rustled, and both humans tensed for a renewed attack. As Cuiller tried to lever himself more erect he stirred sharp pains in his arm and shoulder. Krater stilled him with her hand.

  "It's Fellah," she said, pointing toward the small animal as it crept out of the leaf-cover near their feet. "The big cat must have scared him badly, too," she concluded.

  "Other kzin . . . it's gone," Fellah said.

  "Did you see it go?" Sally asked. "I mean, how do you know?"

  The Pruntaquilun raised its head, closed its eyes, and seemed to sniff the air. But Cuiller, who was watching closely, did not see the creature's nose even twitch. Fellah's attention was focused further back, behind his eyes, inside his skull.

  "Gone," Fellah confirmed.

  "How does he know that?" Sally asked Cuiller.

  "Well, how does he speak Interworld?" he asked in return. "Fellah must have some kind of telepathic sense, either innate or engineered. And it would certainly be a useful quality in a sin
ger and entertainer, to read the minds, the emotional states of his audience. His language ability had improved remarkably just from being around us."

  "You're saying he senses the kzin telepathically." She didn't sound convinced.

  "He found his way right to us, didn't he?"

  "Okay, how 'bout it, Fellah?" she asked playfully. "Do you read minds?" The Pruntaquilun looked at her seriously. "See words. Hear words." It wiggled a shrug again.

  "What is the kzin going to do next?" Cuiller asked.

  "Kzin is gone."

  "Gone back to its ship? Gone from the planet? Where did it go?"

  "Gone."

  Krater shook her head. "Jared, he doesn't know anything about the ship, remember? And he probably doesn't have much conception of planets and astronavigation."

  "Gone far." Fellah said with a nod. "With prize for Admiral Lehruff. Continue his mission."

  "What's that?" Cuiller said, fighting the fog of painkilling drugs in his head.

  "Cat's Paw . . . Mission to Margrave."

  "He's reading the kzin's thoughts directly," Cuiller told Krater.

  The linguist nodded. "I suppose we would, too—if we were a defenseless little dog hiding from those giant cats."

  "This could prove the Navy's theories," Cuiller went on. "Cat's Paw. That's probably some kind of inciting action, a deception or a fake, like a feint against a mousehole."

  "I think maybe you're reading too much—"

  "And what else would an interceptor-class warship be doing this far out?"

  "On patrol? Like us?"

  "Not with that kzin's mission so deeply ingrained in his mind that Fellah can read it this clearly."

  "Kzinti are particularly dutiful," Krater pointed out.

  "And this one is dutifully heading back toward Margrave. You heard that part, didn't you, Sally?"

  "Yes. That much was clear."

  "Then we have to stop him. Even if we can't get off this planet ourselves, we have to keep that kzin pinned here."

  "Why?" she asked.

  "It has the Slaver's device, doesn't it? That's the power to control human and other minds, to make them do anything a kzin would want them to. . . . Think about that for a minute."