Man-Kzin Wars IX (Man-Kzin Wars Series Book 9)

by Larry Niven

  "If this is a word-duel you have made a good stroke. Yes, we fight among ourselves. Too much, even, I will say who am old and wounded. But we are warriors. Battle is necessary to keep the warriors' claws sharp, to see that only the most Heroic survive and breed. But this . . . killing your own kind in the moment of, of . . . your victory"—that was a hard phrase to get out—"what Honor is there here? And what point in a word-duel now?"

  "There is Honor," she said. He had not realized that humans attached large significance to the word before. Perhaps Honor comes more easily when you are winning, he thought. But in that case it is not Honor at all.

  "They are part of the forces of the Patriarchy," he told her. "I am responsible for the forces of the Patriarchy here in the absence of superior officers. Hroarh-Captain has charged me. This human is under the Patriarch's protection, and until I am relieved of the charge, the Patriarch's Honor is on my head."

  "I will speak of that in a moment. Those humans"—she pointed to the two Mess-waiters—"are to leave. No harm will come to them. They were constrained and enslaved and have committed no wilful offense."

  Raargh-Sergeant nodded. She spoke to the humans in their own language. They edged towards the door, plainly readying themselves to run. Then she halted them.

  "They are to take those with them." She gestured to the stuffed human trophies. "They will be disposed of with decorum." Then she pointed: "Why is that one so mounted?"

  The figure she indicated stood in a translucent cube, its arms folded and eyes closed. It was a ragged, shabby thing, torn and gaping with innumerable wounds. There was a complication at what had been its waist.

  "That one is disposed of with decorum already," said Raargh-Sergeant. That is"—he pronounced the human syllables with care—"Ptrr-Brunurn."

  Jocelyn stepped over to the plinth and read the name.

  "Peter Brennan."

  "A great fighter. Once he led a feral band against us in the hills that did much damage. When he was cut off at last, he killed an eight plus one of Heroes though armed with only a ratchet-knife while the others of his troop escaped. We did not eat him but honor him and honor Kzarl-Sergeant who killed him at last. I cannot give you Ptrr-Brunurn."

  "You say his full name. I thought kzinti never said the full names of humans."

  "We say his. It is a Mess tradition. Before setting out on a hunt for ferals, we have toasted Ptrr-Brunurn and Kzarl-Sergeant for many years. Since before I became Raargh-Sergeant."

  "I never heard of him."

  "It was many years ago. Soon after the first landings, in the time of my GrandSire."

  "We have lost so much even of our own history. But we will find it again! We are not like the wretched Jotok."

  "No. It may have been our mistake to think you were. Jotok are faithful slaves when they have been trained."

  She peered more closely at the trophy.

  "He still has kzinti ears on his belt!"

  "Yes. We did him Honor. We left him his own trophies."

  He smelled or sensed a sort of change in her.

  "Perhaps that one may stay. The rest go now!" She rapped out human orders. The waiters and two of her guards gathered the human trophies and carried them away.

  "Now," she said, "the traitor. He comes with us."

  "You did not call him traitor a few hours ago. He was your dominant one. Are you not traitor to him?"

  "It has been said that treason is largely a matter of timing. But treason it is."

  "He is loyal to the Patriarchy."

  "And I am loyal to humanity."

  "If we had put a Telepath on you a month ago, I think you would have gone to the public hunting arena."

  "No. I knew it might happen. I have carried the means of suicide for years." She felt in the pocket of her garment and produced a white capsule. She spoke for a moment in a different voice, as though surprised at a thought.

  "Now I can throw it away. We were taught other techniques—how to make ourselves die of shock quickly when we were tortured. Now . . . I cannot quite believe it yet . . . we may forget them. The whole ghastliness is departing from us. We may live as . . . as humans again."

  Suddenly she whirled on him: "Some may say it was the humiliation and helpless anger of our slave status that hurt us most. Well, they lie. It is possible, easy for some, to be a certain kind of slave. No, those things were bad enough but it was not humiliation or anger that we felt worst but naked terror, terror of our lives and our people in every waking moment and in our dreams as well! How many humans took to wandering mad—mad from sheer terror—before the ratcats or the collabo government tidied them up in their different ways? There is not a human family on Wunderland that has not dead to mourn!"

  "Nor a kzin family."

  "You started the war. Is war too hard for you?"

  She opened her hand and let the thing drop to the floor. He saw liquid run out of her eyes which she quickly wiped away. "And my people, who I, to keep sane, had thought of as having gone away for a time, who I told myself, in the night, that I would meet again when I chose, I can mourn now as dead." He was no Telepath but all kzin had a rudimentary ability to detect emotional emanations at short range if they cared to use it. The terror of prey was a powerful stimulant as well as a guide when hunting in darkness or tall grass. Now he felt this creature's rage and hatred giving way to a greater degree of calm. The liquid ran more freely. Did it discharge emotions with it? You can learn something new every day, he thought.

  "And now, Raargh-Sergeant, we come to the meat. Hand over Jorg von Thoma and the weapons. I will place you under my personal protection."

  "Jocelyn-human, I will not."

  "Then you will die. I speak not in challenge. I but state a fact. Kill me on this spot and the result will be the same. You see my people at the gate."

  "The Patriarch's Honor is involved. And mine."

  The six-foot human female and the scarred eight-foot felinoid carnivore stared at each other. Raargh-Sergeant knew all eyes in the room were upon them.

  "The live humans are your people. I see I have no right to detain them now. Also I accept that with the human victory you have a right to the trophies. It comes to my mind that were I the victor I would wish to see what had been the bodies of Heroes disposed of according to the customs of our kind. So be it. But the Jorg-human is under my protection, and so are all these of my kind. I will not give up the Jorg-human and I will not give up the means of protecting my charges."

  "I offer you my protection. I . . . I will give you my Name as my word."

  "I do not mean to insult you, but I know that humans lie. Honor does not hang on human names. I do not say it to condemn you. You are made so. You yourself have already turned against your profession of loyalty to the Patriarchy."

  "We took oaths to you kzin in order to save our lives. A promise made under threat of death does not bind."

  "All promises bind. There is no exception, ever, ever! How could it be otherwise when Honor is real? Were I to give my word under threat my word would still be my word though the stars fell and till the Fanged God took me. But I will not leave my folk defenseless. And you do not offer the Jorg-human your protection."

  "No, I do not offer it to him. We have waited too long, endured too much. The collaborators will pay for their treachery and for what we have suffered. We hate them even more than we hate you!" She controlled herself with an effort.

  "So I have seen."

  "In return I offer you and these kzin safe conduct to . . . wherever you wish to go."

  "And where would that be?"

  "The UNSN has set up holding camps. You can see it is caring for the surrendered kzin—giving them food, medical care even. I . . . I will go further: safe conduct to the hills, if you give me your Name as your word that you will harm no humans. You see I do not believe that you lie. You can stay there till things . . . settle down."

  You have won one planet. Do you think you have won the war? What when the Patriarch's forces return?
No, I must not be too provocative. Yet where else is there for me to go? Perhaps, false arm and wounded legs and all, I could live like a hunter, as Sire once said the Fanged God meant kzintosh to live . . . free in the hills of Ka'ashi, with kzinretts, perhaps, get more kits, ensure my line. Jocelyn watched him as though reading his thoughts.

  "I never believed I would say this to a ratcat, but this is your home, too, isn't it?"

  "Rratcat? What is rratcat?"

  "The name we always called you kzin out of your hearing."

  "You mean to insult me?" His wtsai was in his hand, his body in the fighting crouch. Fast for a human, a ratchet-knife was in one of her hands, the outline of its blade extended, its high wailing sound filling the room, a pistol in the other. Humans and kzinti raised their weapons.

  There was a sudden cry. A nightmarish parody of a human was moving towards them. A thing long dead, with vast staring eye sockets empty save for fragments of dried matter, and yellow fangs. As Jocelyn turned to it with a cry of her own he struck with the wtsai, twice, but to disarm, not to kill, knocking her weapons to the floor. Then they saw what the thing was. A dried Morlock head and hide from the trophy hoard, carried by the kzin kitten. At any instant the situation could have exploded. Then some human of the guard laughed, and others joined in. Quickly Jocelyn laughed as well, though the laughter to human ears would have sounded forced and mechanical. There was even kzin laughter. She picked up the weapons carefully, offering no aggression, switched off the knife and replaced them in her belt. Then she ostentatiously buttoned the flaps that covered them. It had been a very near thing.

  "You mean to insult me?" he asked again.

  "Not necessarily . . . I don't know." Then: "I apologize. No insult was intended. My words cannot affect your Honor."

  "I have never insulted you!"

  "Insulted! Insulted! Didn't you ever understand how much we hated you! You terrified us and enslaved us and killed us in tens of thousands. Killed us in millions, not only by direct murder but by starvation and by smashing our civilization into chaos!"

  "At first, yes. There was much to be done, much trouble for monk—for humans who did not show respect. But things were becoming orderly with time. You learned decorum . . . most of you."

  "We learnt not to show our teeth when we smiled, if we ever smiled. We learnt not to hunt in the woods even with sharpened sticks unless you had deigned to tell us you would not be there that day, not to let our children cuddle pet kittens, not to show possessions that a kzin kit or kzinrett might fancy, not to shout or to pass kzin or kzinretts without prostration or with alcohol or tobacco on our breaths. Death could follow all such even if you did not need us or our children for experiments or hunts. To toil in your war factories so other humans might be killed and enslaved. All slaves, and any runaway slave was monkeymeat, fair game for all kzint—" She corrected herself deliberately. "For all ratcats. Our population is half what it was before you came—as far as statistics can be kept to tell us. And we aged and died and saw our loved ones age and die before their time because there were no more modern medicines or geriatric drugs except for the privileged few—for people like him."

  "And you."

  "Yes. God forgive me! I have a family too . . . I compromised to stay alive . . .

  "Oh, a few humans, Jorg was one—damaged goods, that creature—may have dreamed that they or their descendants might somehow rise—the eternal dream of the deluded slave—and some tried to snuggle into your fur like parasites, and some used you for revenge against their own kind, but most of us who worked for you hated you even more than those who fought openly against you. Wasn't that obvious to you?"

  "No. Till Chuut-Riit instituted human studies we never cared what monkeys thought so long as they obeyed and were decorous slaves. Why should we? Oh, I look into the sky and see now why we should have cared. . . . But some humans rose to high places. Life for some humans slaves was good and seemly. Look at your Henrietta-human, a female but executive secretary to the great Chuut-Riit himself."

  "There is a special price on that one's head! The UNSN will not protect that one! We will have that head if we must cut down our own liberators to get it! We have prayed to the God to spare her life so we may take it!"

  "Some of your monkey lawyers then, have made most useful slaves. Your book Law of Contracts stopped several death-duels."

  "Should I be glad of that? More kzin dead in duels meant less terror for us, less human land taken, fewer fangs and claws on Wunderland or in space."

  "But right at the start we offered you amnesty," he replied. "As the war drew on we . . . some of us . . . came to respect your kind in a way . . . The feral leader Markham . . . I heard an officer say once: 'That one is almost a kzin.'

  "A lost human kit, if it or its parents had not offended and it was decorous, could probably walk with safety past a pride of kzintosh. Will a lost kzin kit be able to walk with safety among humans now?"

  "Perhaps you do not know all that happened to human children. Certainly many of them were lost. But I do not wish to word-duel now."

  "And some thought the Fanged God had sent you to teach us various lessons. I am only Raargh-Sergeant but I know there were officers who thought that way . . . as the war went on."

  "Strange. Some thought our God had sent you to teach us lessons."

  "You think that makes a bond between us, Monkey? . . . Ratcats . . . You always called us ratcats? But you say Ka'ashi is my home. So it is. I have lived nowhere else."

  "We call it Wunderland, remember. Some of us see you kzinti who were born here as a little . . . different . . . to the first Conquest Warriors." Her voice changed and he perceived some other shift in her chemistry since she had made herself laugh at the kit. "We sometimes call you Wunderkzin. You are changed physically. Already in this light gravity you are taller and more lightly built. It has changed us in the same way, but for you the difference is even greater for Kzinhome was heavier than Earth. I think perhaps you are changed mentally more. May I drink? The Heroes' Tongue is not easy for human throats."

  "Yes. I concede that life on Ka'ashi was changing us. Who could live with you daffy monkeys and not be changed?"

  "Chuut-Riit nearly began to understand us. And unlike most of your geniuses—"

  "Chuut-Riit was a warrior! A great Hero!"

  "For us 'genius' is not an insult . . . Chuut-Riit, and perhaps Traat-Admiral, were the first high-ranking kzintosh to try to understand us . . . and all the more dangerous enemies for it. And yet I have wondered once or twice if it were not possible that . . . a son of Chuut-Riit, brought up on Wunderland with humans, might . . . No! No! And again, no! Have you kzin driven us mad?" There was liquid on her face again. He smelled its salt.

  "There could still be a life here for you and yours," she went on. "Sometimes, just lately, when it seemed we would be slaves and prey no longer, I wondered if the children of our two kinds might work together on this world." She gestured at the sleeping youngster and at the kit, who had been watching them with his huge eyes. "Would you not save those at least? Is one of them not as your son might have been, Raargh-Sergeant?"

  This monkey is a female and knows female wiles. Does she try to wheedle me? She cannot know my son and his mother died in the UNSN ramscoop raid. But Chuut-Riit's son! How has the God devised it that I am caught in this vise! The life of a monkey or blood of the Riit is spilt and Chuut-Riit's seed is lost! A monkey under my protection. Raargh-Sergeant's eye fell upon the poison pill. He wondered if it would be deadly for kzinti as well as humans. Probably. After all, their biochemistry was patently alike enough for them to eat one another. He picked it up, then threw it with all his strength out the open door. A dead Hero was no use. Responsibility could not be abrogated that way. And if he died, he would die as a kzin should, in battle, on the attack.

  "You spoke of terror. You are not so terrified of this old kzintosh now, with one arm and eye gone and holes in his legs?"

  "I have the weapons now. Except for tho
se which you are about to hand over along with Jorg the traitor. There is not a kzin formation left fighting on the surface of the planet or a kzin warcraft left in the space of Alpha Centauri! No, ratcat, I am not terrified now! I am offering you life and freedom if you surrender the traitor and the weapons at once. Death for all otherwise. Your deaths will cause me no loss of sleep nor tears."

  "I cannot . . . I will not hand over the Jorg-human or the weapons without authority from Hroarh-Captain or higher Patriarchal orders," he said.

  "I will return in one hour," she said. "Then there will be no further argument." She spoke the last words in the Heroes' Tongue's tense of ultimatum. She turned and left, her escort following.

  Chapter 3

  The tank display showed almost no orange lights now, only the green of human, moving and deploying without interruption.

  "Those manretts can be trouble," said Trader-Gunner. "It was a manrett that killed Cherrg-Captain."

  A last orange light grew into a globe, flashed and disappeared in a sea of green. It appeared that kzin resistance had ceased everywhere. He clicked to erase the tank's memory. Around the room, the kzinti remained crouched behind their scanty collection of weapons.

  "What is happening, Raargh-Sergeant?" Lesser-Sergeant asked him.

  "I think there is tension between the two human bands. The UNSN dominates the locals, who have all or almost all turned feral, even many of those who swore to serve the Patriarchy."

  "They are not attacking because they fear our weapons?"

  "I think they are not attacking because the UNSN wants us alive."

  "Why?"

  "I do not know. If it is a matter of dishonor we may still die heroically. But I have Hroarh-Captain's orders." He dialed some food. There was almost nothing left now but basic infantry rations. He sloshed bourbon-and-prawn ice cream on one of the unappetizing blocks of protein and carbohydrate and passed it to the kit.