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

by Larry Niven

  Fly-By-Night had drifted so far that he was hard to find, just a twinkle of lensed light as starfog glow passed behind his vac refuge. Why didn't they retrieve him? Was it really Fly-By-Night they wanted, or something else?

  I watched Stealthy-Mating's boat retrieve a second cargo module. They weren't being careful. Two of those boxes held only Fafnir's thousand varieties of fish, but the other . . . was in a quantum state. It held and did not hold Sharrol/Milcenta and Jenna/Jeena, until some observer could open the module.

  In all the years I'd flown for Nakamura Lines, I had never seen a vac pack used. Light-years from any world, miles from any ship, with nothing but clear plastic skin between me and the ravenous vacuum . . . it seemed a good time to look it over.

  This wasn't the brand we'd carried. It was newer, or else a more expensive model.

  Loops of tough ribbon hung everywhere: handholds. Air tank. A tube two liters in volume had popped out. Inner zip, outer zip: an airlock. We could be fed through that, or get rid of wastes . . . a matter I would not raise with Paradoxical just yet.

  A light. A sleeve and glove taped against the wall, placed to reach the outer zip. Here was a valve . . . hmm . . . a valve ending in a little cone outside. Inside, a handle to aim it.

  To any refugee there might come a moment when a jet is more important than breathing-air.

  Not yet.

  "Why would you want to rescue my master?" Paradoxical asked.

  "They have my wife and daughter and unborn, one chance out of three. Two out of three they're still safe aboard Odysseus. Would you bet?"

  "No Jotok knows his parent. Might you find another mate and generate more children?"

  I didn't answer.

  "How do you like your battle plan so far?"

  I couldn't hear sarcasm, but I inferred it. I said, "I have a spare vac pack. So does Fly-By-Night. Did you see what he did? He triggered a pack on the wall. Kept his own. And Heidi passed me something."

  "What did the girl give you?"

  "Might be some kind of toy."

  The Jotok said, "Mee-rowreet means make slaves and beasts go where can be killed. Not Envoy. Whasht-meery means infested or diseased, too rotted or parasitical for even a starving predator. Prey that dies too easily, opponent who exposes belly too soon, is suspect whasht-meery."

  I waited for our spin to hide me from Stealthy-Mating's telescopes before I pulled Heidi's gift free.

  It was foam plastic, light and bulky. A toy needle gun. If this was real, her parents . . . Wait, now, Heidi was almost forty years old!

  They wouldn't think quite like human adults, these children, but their brains were as big as they were going to get. Their parents might want them able to protect themselves . . . and if not, she and her brother had spent decades learning how to manipulate their parents.

  I couldn't test it.

  "Needle gun. Anaesthetic crystals," I told Paradoxical. "They won't get through armor. One wouldn't knock out a Kzin anyway. Better than nothing, though. Where is Fly-By-Night's w'tsai?"

  "You saw."

  "Paradoxical, we are in too much trouble to be playing children's games."

  Paradoxical said nothing.

  Stealthy-Mating's boat locked on to the third cargo module.

  I said, "That was fun to watch, though. Giving Packer silverware!"

  Paradoxical rotated to show me his mouth.

  I saw a star of tentacles around a circle of lip enclosing five circles of tiny teeth in a pentagon. Something emerged from one circle of teeth. Paradoxical vomited up a long, narrow, padded mailing bag. I pulled it free, unzipped it, and had a yard of blade and handle.

  The blade looked like dark steel. The light caught a minute ripple effect . . . but it was all wrong. To my fingertip's touch the ripple was just a picture. The blade weighed almost nothing. The weight was all in the handle.

  In the end of the hilt was a small black enamel bat. Bats exist only on Earth and in the zoo on Jinx, but that ancient Batman symbol has gone to every human world. Fly by night.

  Futz, I had to try it on something.

  My lockstep ring had a silver case. That's a soft metal, but the blade only scratched it. I tested my thumb on the edge, gingerly. Blunt.

  Customs change. A weapon can be purely ceremonial . . . but why make the handle so heavy? Why was Paradoxical watching me?

  Because it was a puzzle.

  Push the enamel bat. Nothing.

  Wiggle the blade. Push it in, risk my fingers, feel it give. A Kzin could push harder. Nothing? Pull out, and my fingertips felt a hum. The look of the blade didn't change. Carefully now, don't touch the edge—

  It sliced neatly through my lockstep ring, with a moment's white sputter as circuitry burned out. The cut edges of the classic silver band shone like little mirrors. There should have been some resistance.

  A variable-knife is violently illegal: hair-fine wire in a magnetic field, all edge and no blade, thin enough to slice through walls and machinery. Often enough it hurts the wielder. When it's off it's all handle, and the handle is heavy: it holds the coiled wire and the mag generator.

  This toy was similar, but with a blade of fixed length, harder to hide. More sporting. A groove around the edge housed the wire until magnets raised it for action.

  The onyx bat was recessed now. I pushed and it popped out. The vibration stopped.

  We had a weapon.

  What was keeping Packer? They had the telepath, they had hostages, they had two modules of Fafnir seafood. What was left to do in there? Get on with it. I had a weapon!

  "Wait before you use it. I know my master," the Jotok said. "He will take command of the boat. The larger ship is weaponless against it."

  "Paradoxical, he'd be fighting at least three warriors trained in free fall. Don't forget the pilots. Four if we get as far as the ship."

  "Whasht-meery may currently be on autopilot or remote. Possession of armor does not imply training. Fly-By-Night was a champion wrestler before he was injured. We fear you're right. But we must try!"

  "Wrestler?"

  "He tells me they fight with capped claws on Sheathclaws."

  Somehow I was not reassured.

  Packer emerged.

  He and his companion jetted toward Fly-By-Night's bubble. They pulled Fly-By-Night toward the boat. Clamshell doors opened around the snout of the solenoid weapon. The three disappeared inside.

  I safed and wrapped the w'tsai and gave it to the Jotok. He swallowed it, and the needler after it. He must have a straight gut . . . five straight guts, I thought, like fish or worms all merged at the head.

  The two armored Kzinti came for us. They towed us toward the boat.

  The boat was a thick lens, like Odysseus but smaller. The modules were anchored against one side. The other side was two transparent clamshell doors with the hollow solenoid sticking out between them.

  The doors closed over us.

  The interior had been arrayed around the solenoid weapon. There were lockers. Hatch in the floor, a smaller airlock. A kitchen wall big enough for a cruise ship, with a gaping intake hopper. A big box, detachable, with a door in it. I took that for a shower/washroom. I didn't see a hologram stage or a mass pointer.

  Mechanisms fed into the base of the main weapon. A feed for projectiles? The thing didn't just burn out electronics, it was a linear accelerator too, a cannon.

  Fly-By-Night's vacuum refuge had been wedged between the cannon and the wall. He watched us.

  The doors came down and now our balloon was wedged next to his. Gravity came on. Stealthy-Mating's crew anchored us with a spray of glue, while a third Kzin watched from the horseshoe of a workstation. The two took their places beside him.

  Four chairs; three Kzinti all in pressure suit armor. There was no separate cabin because they might have to work the cannon. It could have been worse.

  They talked for a bit, mobile mouths snarling at each other inside fishbowl helmets. They fiddled with the controls. A sound of tigers fighting blasted
from Paradoxical's backpack vest. My translator murmured, "So, Telepath! Welcome back to the Patriarch's service."

  Two or three seconds of silence followed. In that moment Odysseus abruptly shrank to a toy and was gone. Disturbing eddies played through our bodies. The boat must be making twenty or thirty gravities, but it had good shielding. This was a warcraft.

  Their prisoner decided to answer. "You honor me. You may call me LE Fly-By-Night."

  "Honored you should be, Telepath, but your credit as a Legal Entity is forged, a telepath has no name, and Fly-By-Night is only a description, and in Interworld, too! Still you will command a harem before we do. We should envy you." That voice was Envoy's.

  "Call me Fly-By-Night if I am expected to answer. Does the Patriarch still make addicts of any who show the talent?"

  "You have hibernated for three centuries? We use advanced medical techniques in this age. Chemical mimic of sthondat lymph, six syllable name, more powerful, few side effects, diet additives to minimize those."

  A second Kzin voice said, "You need not taste the drug yourself, Telepath, by my alpha officer's word."

  "Only my poor kits, then. But how well do Kzinti keep each other's promises? I know that Odysseus was disabled despite all reassurance."

  What? Fly-By-Night had no way to know that. I was only guessing, and his vac refuge had floated further from Odysseus than our own.

  But Envoy said, "All follows the Covenants sworn with men at Shasht. That was my assurance, and it is good."

  "Do those allow you to maroon a Legal Entity ship in deep space?"

  "Summon them. Read them."

  "My servant carries my computer and disk library."

  The pilot tapped; we heard a click, then silence.

  Paradoxical turned off his talker. "We can use this to speak to my master, but they may listen. What can you say that those oversized intestinal parasites may hear too?"

  "Right now, nothing. Thrusters were yours first, weren't they? Called the gravity planer?"

  "Jotoki created gravity planers, yes. Kzinti enslaved us and stole the design. Your folk stole it from Kzinti invaders."

  "Is there anything you know about thrusters that they don't? Something that might help?"

  "No. Idiot. What we learned of gravity motors, we learned from Kzinti!"

  "Futz—"

  "I had thought," Paradoxical said carefully, "that they would not keep their control room in vacuum."

  "Their hostages are all frozen. Can't fight. Can't escape. Maybe they like that? Anything we try now would leave us dying in vacuum. How long can a Jotok stand vacuum?"

  "A few seconds, then death."

  "Humans can take a few minutes." Humans had, and survived. It was rare. "I might go blind first. Do you mind if I think out loud for a bit?"

  "Do you talk to yourself to move messages across that narrow structure in your brain, the corpus callosum?"

  "I have no idea." So I talked across my corpus callosum. "This is bad, but it could be worse. We might have been in a separate cargo hold, still in vacuum and locked out of a flight cabin."

  "Rejoice."

  "I thought I wouldn't have to worry about Odysseus. The ship's on a free fall course around Turnpoint Star, through the Gap and into free space. They still had hyperdrive and hyperwave and the attitude jets, last I saw. Attitude jets are just fusion reaction motors. That won't take them anywhere. Hyperdrive only works in flat space, so it won't get them into a solar system. They could still cross to Home system, call for help and get a tow. Two weeks?"

  "Envoy said all of that to Captain Preiss. Wait—but—stop—didn't Envoy confess otherwise?"

  "I heard. Futz." Fly-By-Night had done that very cleverly. But Envoy hadn't confessed; he had only insisted that he had not violated the Covenants.

  "We'd better assume Packer shot up the control board. That would leave Odysseus as an inert box of hostages. Leave them falling. Retrieve them later."

  Paradoxical said nothing.

  "Next problem. Fly-By-Night can't get out of his refuge."

  "Surely—"

  "No, look, he can't slash his way out. He's got only his claws. He can zip it open. All the air spews out, and now he can try to get through the opening. He's too big. He'd die in vacuum while he was trying to wiggle free with those three laughing at him."

  "Yes. Less than flexible, human and Kzinti. Are you small enough to get through the collar?"

  "Yes." I was pretty sure. "Now, we can't warn Fly-By-Night. Any fighting, I'll have to start it. You're dead if I slash the refuge open, so I don't. I unzip it. Air pressure blows me out, poof. You zip it behind me quick so the refuge re-inflates. I'm in vacuum. I slash Fly-By-Night's refuge wide open and hand him the w'tsai. We're both fighting in vacuum against three Kzinti in pressure armor. How does it sound?"

  "Beyond madness."

  "There's no point anyway. If we could take the boat, we still couldn't break lightspeed, because the hyperdrive motor is on the ship. We'd die of old age here in the Nursery Nebula."

  "You don't have a plan?"

  I was still feeling it out. "The only way out has us waiting for these bandits to berth the boat to Stealthy-Mating. Maybe it's a good thing Fly-By-Night doesn't have his w'tsai. Kzinti self-control is . . . there's a word—"

  "Oxymoron. But my master integrates selves well."

  "They'll have to move the cargo modules inside the ship. Can't leave them where they are, they're blocking the magnets, the docking points. Where does that leave us? Whatever we do, we want the ship and the boat. After they birth the boat, likely enough they'll still leave the cabin in vacuum and us in these bubbles."

  "My kind can survive six days without food. Two without water."

  Two of the Kzinti crew might have been asleep. The third wasn't doing much.

  One presently stirred—Envoy, by his suit markings—got up and disappeared into the big box with a door in it. Fifteen minutes later he was back.

  Wouldn't a shower or a toilet have to be under pressure?

  I watched my alien companions and my alien enemies. I watched the magnificent pageant of stars being born. I thought and I read.

  Read everything.

  Covenants of 2505. Commentary, then and recent. Kzinti sociology. Revisions: what constitutes torture . . . loss of limbs and organs . . . sensory deprivation. Violations. The right to a speedy trial, to speedy execution, not to be evaded. What is a Legal Entity. . . .

  Male Kzinti were LEs. A computer program was not. Heidi and Nicolaus were not, poor kids, but Kzin kittens weren't either; it was a matter of maturity as an evolved being. Jotoki and Kdat were LEs unless legitimately enslaved. Entities with forged identities were not. Ice Class passengers were LEs. Good! Was there a rule against lying to hostages? Of course not, but I looked.

  Paradoxical produced a computer from his backpack and went to work. I didn't ask what he might be learning.

  I did not see Fly-By-Night tearing at his prison. When I caught his eye, I clawed at my own bubble. Our captors might be reassured if they saw some sign of hysterics, of despair.

  He didn't take the hint.

  Maybe I had him all wrong.

  A telepath born among the Kzinti will be found as a kzitten, conscripted, and addicted to chemicals to bring out his ability. Telepaths detect spies and traitors; they assist in jurisprudence; they gradually go crazy. Alien minds drive them crazy much faster.

  If a telepath feels an opponents' pain, he can't easily fight for mates. For generations the Patriarchy discouraged their telepaths from breeding. Then, battling an alien enemy during the Man-Kzin Wars, they burned them out.

  Probably Envoy had spoken truth: what the Kzinti wanted from Fly-By-Night was more telepaths.

  They'd get the location of Sheathclaws out of him. After they had what they wanted, they'd give him a harem. They'd imprison him in luxury. Envoy had said they wouldn't force the drug on him; it might be true.

  A Kzin might settle for that.

  I could come
blasting out of my plastic bottle, screaming my air away, w'tsai swinging . . . cut him loose, and find myself fighting alone while he blew up another bubble for himself.

  Fly-By-Night floated quite still, very relaxed, ears folded. He might have been asleep. He might have been watching his three captors guide the boat toward Stealthy-Mating.

  I watched their ears. Ears must make it hard for a Kzin to lie. Lying to a hologram might be easier . . . and they wouldn't have called him Envoy for nothing.

  Flick-flick of ears, bass meeping, a touch on the controls. We were flying through a lethal intensity of gamma rays.

  The Jotok's armtips rippled over his keyboard. His computer was a narrow strip of something stiff; he'd glued or velcroed it to the bubble wall. The keyboard and holoscreen were projections. I knew the make—"Paradoxical? Isn't that a Gates Quintillian?"

  "Yes. Human-built computers are superior to Patriarchy makes."

  "Oh, that explains the corks! Fly-By-Night's fingers are too big for the keyboard, so he puts corks on his nails!"

  The Jotok said, "You are Beowulf Shaeffer."

  I spasmed like an electrocuted frog, then turned to gawk at him. "How can you possibly . . . ?"

  How can you possibly think that a seven foot tall albino has lost fourteen inches of height and got himself curly black hair and a tan?

  Hair dye and tannin secretion pills, and futz that, we had real trouble. I asked, "Have you spent three hours researching me?"

  "You are the only ally at hand. I need to understand you better. You are wanted by the ARM for conspiracy abduction, four counts."

  "Four?"

  "Sharrol Janss, Carlos Wu, and two children. Feather Filip is your suspect co-conspirator. ARM interest seems to lie in the lost genes of Carlos Wu, but Sharrol Janss is alleged to be a flat phobe, hence would never have left Earth willingly."

  "We all ran away together."

  "My interest lies in your abilities, not your crimes. You were a civilian spacecraft pilot. Were you trained for agility in free fall?"

  "Yes. Any emergency in a spacecraft, gravity is the first thing that goes."

  "You're agile if you've escaped the ARM thus far. What has your reading gained you?"

  "We have to live. We have to win."