Man-Kzin Wars V

by Larry Niven

  Fellah waved a paw at the recumbent kzin. "Does he?"

  * * *

  "Time lies with we-us. Our side," the Whitefluff growled sternly to Nyawk-Captain. "You . . . risk. With Lehruff. Damn bad doings."

  "I know it," the kzin growled in return, idly making gestures at a disused bank of controls that the Fluff could demonstrate to the humans as a pretext for making conversation. The human male cautiously worked the sliders, unaware that he was just opening and cycling the ship's atmosphere vanes. "I thought it was an opportunity worth the taking," Nyawk-Captain explained.

  "Risk to be taking! Do not again."

  "Why not?"

  "Human the Sally will use maximum setting. Painstick cripples. It also kills."

  Nyawk-Captain eyed the device where it was stuck to the main panel, aimed at him. After his trick with the comm-circuits, the woman had readjusted its settings. For a brief time, the Painstick had left him dazed and trembling.

  And this had been good, Nyawk-Captain thought now. The experience had shown him the weapon's unique flaw. Continuous exposure, even at the highest settings, allowed an active brain to become acclimatized to the effect. Like a patch of skin under abrasion, his mind was developing the neural equivalent of a callus. After a span of hours he had found himself able to shape coherent thoughts and activate useful synapses around the offending signals. He still did not have much control—not enough to slip the bonds of his couch, turn upon the humans, and rend them to bloody fragments. But his head was definitely growing clearer and his limbs felt more his own.

  "On this . . . heading, at this . . . velocity," Fluff groped for the navigational terms in the Hero's Tongue, "Lehruff catches us?"

  "What? No, his fleet is still a day or more behind us."

  "All along way to Margrave?"

  "He was going there already."

  "But these humans, we-they get there first," Fluff concluded. "Humans have their own fleet at Margrave?"

  "Yes, there will be a battle. Not as grand as the one we kzinti had planned, but enough still to—"

  "Humans have the Painstick. Soon all humans have it. Some will learn better than human the Sally." Fellah spat in a particularly suggestive manner.

  Now that was a bad thought. Nyawk-Captain envisioned bands of raucous monkeys armed with copies of the Painstick. They were cutting down armed kzinti in mid-leap and marching them off as twitching zombies. He saw the males of the Patriarchy reduced to the status of shivering, voiceless females. . . . And the Fluff was right. These two humans would get to Margrave ahead of the Last Fleet and call out their Navy. They would certainly have time to turn the Painstick over to their high command, who would remove it from the battle theater for study and duplication. The Patriarchy might win this coming Battle of Margrave, and still lose their souls for eternity.

  Could Nyawk-Captain stop them? Could he give these humans not just useless instructions but damaging ones? Could he dupe them into disabling Cat's Paw, so that Lehruff would draw even with them and take everyone aboard his flagship? That would deliver the Painstick neatly to Lehruff and then to the Patriarchy.

  Or, barring that, might Nyawk-Captain trick the humans into destroying this ship?

  Unlikely. . . . His stupid (yes, it was stupid!) attempt with the communications switch had alerted the human male to Nyawk-Captain's potential for trickery. The humans would be doubly careful with every command he suggested now. Only those with no effect—like their current twiddling of the atmosphere vanes—would escape that scrutiny.

  However, Nyawk-Captain might be able to slow them up. He could cut their lead ahead of the Last Fleet. Then Lehruff would overtake and . . . But no. Even if that one glimpse over the comm-circuits had alerted Lehruff to some kind of disturbance aboard the Paw, the old kzin still had his orders. He would only follow the interceptor down to Margrave and let the Cat's Paw make its feinting run, as planned. Lehruff knew how to do his duty, even if things he saw in a flash of broken communications might trouble his eyes.

  Then Nyawk-Captain knew what he had to do.

  His only worry was his failing strength. At their current speed, it would be many days before the human fleet stationed at Margrave came out to take possession of the fleet. Until that time, the two humans would keep him bound, physically and mentally, or so they thought. They would loosen the bonds only to feed him and take instruction in ship operations. But even then, the woman had discovered intravenous supplements among the medical supplies, and these had diagrams to guide a nonmedical kzin in an emergency. The woman had rigged drip equipment above his crash-couch and was running the tasteless liquids into the vein at Nyawk-Captain's neck.

  His flesh would soon be melting away. Eventually his atrophied muscles would be as weak as the humans' own. He would be weak as a kzitten when they finally released him—but maybe that would be enough.

  "Tell the human to stop his adjustments," he instructed Fluff. "We've had enough nonsense for one watch."

  The little animal nodded and turned away to make his soft and useless mouthings.

  Nyawk-Captain relaxed and composed his mind, exploring new pathways around the Painstick's ingrained signals. He prepared himself for a continued stream of idle days.

  * * *

  For twenty days Jared Cuiller had been surreptitiously monitoring the approach of the kzinti warfleet behind them and relaying his observations ahead to the human fleet that had sailed from Margrave on his alert. He had also hoped to renew with Sally the intimacy they had derived from that one long kiss among the treetops. But the quarters in the captured interceptor were too cramped, the kzin was too restless, and Fellah too keenly observant.

  "Maybe later." Sally had smiled, when he first shyly proposed it. "We'll have lots of time."

  But would they? He thought dismally of the major battle that was brewing, with a war surely to follow. As Cuiller made his observations of the kzinti fleet, he dared probe in their direction for no more than a few seconds. And still these peeks accounted for hundreds of obvious warships and other massed vessels. When the two forces came together, it was going to be a battle to remember.

  Too bad, in a way, that they wouldn't be on hand to take part in it. But earlier he had arranged to rendezvous with an Empire-class supply ship somewhere on the human side of the conjectured clash point among the stars. The Navy would take this captured ship in tow and transfer off Jared and Sally's prisoner and their prizes: a new sentient life form, a working stasis-box, and—best of all—a mechanical enhancement of the Slavers' power. Rich prizes.

  In the many days that the two humans and Fellah had to study the interceptor's layout, Cuiller had worked out its flight sequencers to his own satisfaction. And now, within visual-contact distance of the globe comprising the human fleet, he shut down the gravity polarizers and let the ship drift forward at a considerable fraction of light-speed.

  "Cuiller to Sumeria," he called, adjusting the comm panel. "Ready to match velocities."

  The supply ship dropped out of the battle formation, dived below hyperspace, and showed up on one of the control board's screens.

  "We'll take you with magnetic grapples, Captain Cuiller," the bridge officer informed him. And no, the rank he used was not a slip of the tongue, either: "Captain," instead of "Lieutenant Commander."

  Jared and Sally began powering down nonessential systems.

  "What about him?" she asked, pointing at the recumbent kzin.

  At first their captive had thrashed around, testing his restraints, but as the days wore on he had become increasingly silent, spending more and more time sleeping. Krater had changed his fluid bottles regularly, raking new ones from the food generator, which she had programmed from a card in the medical supplies. Now, as they approached the englobement, the kzin's only response was an occasional yawn and whole-body shudder. She routinely wiped white drool from the fanged mouth as he lay there.

  "I guess we'll have to untie him to make the transfer," Cuiller said. "We knew that sooner or later we'
d have to trust your control with the Fiddle alone."

  He flexed his own left arm, which had begun to heal straight and painlessly. That was probably thanks in part to his new diet of rich, red meat which seemed to be the food machine's only other setting.

  Krater unstuck the Fiddle from its place on the control panel, being careful to keep it oriented on the kzin's head. Cuiller bent to undo the couch's straps and braces. One by one he released the mechanical controls over their comatose enemy.

  Cuiller's head was down near the backrest when he heard the couch squeak.

  "Jared! Look out!" Sally warned.

  A huge paw, twenty centimeters wide, swept across over his head and snagged the Fiddle out of her hands. In the partial gravity of the control space, the device flew toward the wall, bounced off it with a clack!, missed Cuiller's ear by four centimeters on the rebound, ricocheted under the control panel, and skittered along the floor.

  He dove for the Fiddle, but before his hands could close on it, a massive, clawed foot stamped down on the hullmetal plates. The barrel of the device exploded in a shower of fragments and sparks. Cuiller closed his eyes in reflex and felt the pieces patter against his face.

  The kzin ground its foot against the floor for good measure, then kicked the mixed fragments off to one side. It had lurched out of the crash-couch to reach the Fiddle, and now the kzin collapsed against the padded armrest, gasping with the effort.

  Before the kzin could move again to attack Cuiller, Sally had retrieved one of their laser rifles and slid its projector up against the prisoner's left eye. The kzin raised his paw in a warding gesture and shook his head. Then he slipped back into the chair and made to fasten the restraints again.

  The kzin growled and hissed in Fellah's direction. "Better this way, he says," the alien translated, and then, speaking directly: "Thrintun power . . . Bad thing, yes? Bad in your world. Bad in his. Now, no more."

  The kzin stretched his lips without baring his teeth.

  Cuiller looked down at the shattered tube and glittering shards of what could be electronic circuits—or perhaps conductors of some other energy. He nodded.

  "Do humans eat their prisoners?" Fellah asked, again translating. "Or do you allow an . . . honorable death . . . in hunt for sport."

  "Neither," Cuiller answered. "You—" He pointed at the kzin. "—will probably be interned for the duration of the coming war."

  "Kept in . . . confinement?" Fellah asked, still working through the Hero's Tongue.

  "Yes, certainly."

  "Worse yet. But . . ." And here the kzin thumped his paw on the couch's padding. "Better at least than this."

  Magnetic grapples seized the hull. Fellah gave out a glad, barking laugh that would translate the same in both Interworld and the Hero's Tongue.

  THE END