The Man-Kzin Wars 07 Read online

  THE COLONEL'S TIGER

  · Hal Colebatch

  Copyright © 1995 by Hal Colebatch

  India, Northwest Frontier, 1878

  "Lie still. Rest," the doctor told him. "You're not recovered yet."

  "Lie still? And listen to that?"

  The wind brought to the field hospital the sounds of an intermittent drumfire from the barren, snow-topped hills to the north, the flat thud-thud of screw-guns and the thorns-in-fire crackle of distant musketry.

  "Rest, I say. You're out of this one, Captain Vaughn."

  "I've had enough. Dreams. Sickness. Delirium."

  The sick man swung his legs to the floor and rose to his feet. He took a half dozen steps, and the doctor caught him as he fell.

  A punkah coolie took part of the emaciated soldier's weight and they helped him back to the bed.

  "I'll make a bargain with you: When you can get as far as the latrine without help you can try leading your squadrons in the mountains. Not before."

  "I just feel so... useless lying here. Those are my men."

  "If it's any consolation to you, the cavalry have been resting for the last week: It's work for mules and infantry up there. And if it's any further consolation, I had you marked off for dead a week ago. You and your friends."

  The sick man smiled weakly. "I don't suppose my kit would have fetched much. There must have been a few auctions in the mess lately."

  "It hasn't been too bad. Old Bindon's cautious with men's lives on punitive expeditions. Your tigerskin would have fetched something though... here, steady on!"

  The doctor held the sick man's head as a violent retching shook him. Then, as he recovered, Vaughn raised his hand to the part of his scalp the doctor had held and gasped, "My head! What's happened?"

  "I suppose I can show you." The doctor held up a mirror.

  "Oh, my God!"

  "Curlewis and Maclean are the same. And that Afridi devil of yours. But you're all alive. It was blood you were spewing a week ago, though you were in no condition to notice." The doctor held a glass of water to the captain's lips, steadying his trembling as he drank. "I must go. Rest, I say."

  "Where is the skin?”

  "Salted. The gomashta's got it. I advanced him a couple of rupees." He rose at the sounds he had been waiting for: hooves and the approaching wheels of ambulance carts from the direction of Dirragha.

  Captain Vaughn sank back exhausted. He closed his eyes and saw again, hanging in blackness, the great cat's head with its blazing gold and violet eyes and batwing ears, the interlocking fangs protruding beyond the lips, the great cat they called his tiger-man. The dark cave, the rockets...

  The wounded were being brought from the carts. The unmistakable sounds recalled him from his own visions to reality, and the work that had been done that day. At the tail end of the Afghan Campaign, a force of no less than five thousand men was fighting to pacify these barren hills with all that that implied in terms of death and wounds. Besides that, his own recent moment was nothing at all. But he was not fully clearheaded yet. The doctor could say what he liked, but at that moment the feeling of his weakness and uselessness oppressed him. He felt ashamed.

  "They will forget you and me," he whispered to the image of his enemy. "But they will not forget the Dirragha Expeditionary Force.”

  Adding these statements together he was, at best, only partly correct.

  ·CHAPTER 1

  It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. The long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.

  — Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

  One of the largest of all British local council libraries, at Brent, lately destroyed approximately 66,000 of its 100,000 books. The explanation which the council gave for this destruction was that the offending books were "books on war, history books and other books irrelevant to the community.”

  — R. J. Stove, Where Ignorance is Bliss, 1993

  Sir Bors had been taken away, so had Sir Kay, and Sir Launcelot and Lady May and Lady Helen and the rest. It was a routine matter, and the 'doc would soon be logging its report.

  When they emerged from memory-wipe, the members of the Order of Military Historians, restored to their proper names, plus numbers, would find themselves new people.

  They would be privileged in a sense, with an all-expenses-paid trip into space, and actual paid jobs at the end of it. Not very far into space, and not the very best jobs, of course — tending elderly machinery at the bottom of Martian canyons in a long-term, low-priority terraforming project, kept up mainly for its use in criminal rehabilitation. But work that some would envy, for all that.

  Crime could pay in our civilized world: A coven of fantasists, who had given each other special names and titles of rank at bizarre ceremonies and who had cherished collections of ancient weapons and war-gaming programs, were going to get something to do to fill their lives after all.

  They would have adequate medi, geri and other care in the red canyons. Lady May and Lady Helen would still be beautiful when they returned to Earth. The 'knights' when rehabilitated would be able to take part in approved sports. They were lucky, but even without the memory-wipe I doubted they would ever have known just how lucky they were. Some of their predecessors had gone into organ-banks.

  I closed the files down and sent Alfred O'Brien my own report. Finding and closing the Order of Military Historians, as quietly and indeed as gently as possible, had been a piece of variety in increasingly routine literary work. I reprogrammed my desk, wishing the 'doc could do something with my brain chemistry to make me immune from what a forbidden book I had once come across called the Great Mystery of Human Boredom.

  At least I told myself it was boredom. There seemed to be less and less need now for the 'gifts' which had made me valuable to ARM. There was still plenty of desk work, but desk work anyone reasonably intelligent could do. The Games were of no interest to me when I knew how we had programmed them. What puppet master wants to join the puppets' sports? Two days later I was toying with a not-very-realistic idea of rearranging certain things to allow me a trip into space myself (Wunderland had been a dream abandoned long ago, but would the Belt have use for anyone like me? I doubted it.) when Alfred O'Brien called. He wanted to see me personally.

  He began with a rundown of my report.

  "Not so many of these people now," he remarked.

  He had the statistics and the global picture. I didn't know, or want to know, much more than I needed to: A long time ago, before my time, the militarist fantasy had been widespread. It had produced a great deal of pathological fiction and pseudohistory. We had had a lot of people working on it once. But our whole society had progressed in recent years.

  Also, the study of real history was being progressively restricted. That, too, seemed to have helped put military fants out of business. A few years ago one in ten might have had clearance to study history. It would be one in thousands now.

  Personally, I was not among that chosen few. My job was quite distinct. Literary, not historical.

  The controller seemed talkative. Almost oddly so. He usually kept conversation either strictly business or strictly social. It was not like him to ruminate on what we were doing, at least to people like me. Even someone with less training than I possessed would have recognized him as being slightly ill at ease, and not bothering to disguise the fact overmuch. Something was, if not worrying him, I thought, puzzling him at least. After a moment’s pause he w
ent on. "It's a few years now since we had anything like this But they're hard to clear out altogether. I sometimes think it's I odd how military fant variations persist. Do you remember the Magnussen business?”

  I did. Magnussen, a part-time volunteer helper at this very museum and a member of a now quietly closed-down body called the Scandinavian Historical Association had evolved a theory from ceremonial objects he had examined that his ninth- and tenth-century Danish and Norwegian ancestors had been members of a warrior culture living in part by war and plunder. It might have seemed a very academic point to some, and frankly very few people would have been interested one way or another, but ARM had not wanted it sensationalized. Actually, Magnussen had been hard done by: Those of us inside ARM, and working professionally in the field knew that indeed there still had been sporadic outbreaks of large-scale organized violence later than officially admitted, at least in remote areas away from the great cities of the world. I didn't want or need to know more of the details than my work required, but of course I had an outline. Well, whatever the reason Magnussen's ancestors had put to sea, he himself had gone on a longer voyage.

  "I do think we're getting rid of them though," Alfred O'Brien said. "Sometimes I've thought there's no end to human perversity and folly... Speaking of which... " He drummed his fingers on the table, hesitated again, and now I was sure he seemed embarrassed. "There is another matter," he said at last. "Yes?" "An odd one.”

  "I can tell that." "Yes. It's a bit out of our usual line, but we've been asked to look into it. Do you remember the Angel's Pencil?”

  There had been a send-off a long time ago, shortly after I was seconded to the special literary research section of the program. It must be beyond the orbit of Tisiphone by now. "I've heard the name," I said. "A colony ship, wasn't it?”

  "Yes. With a mixed Earth-Belter crew. It left for Epsilon Eridani eighteen years ago." He touched a panel on his desk and a hemisphere map beamed up behind him. More time had passed than I thought. The ship's telltale reached out to a point light-years beyond the last wandering sentinel of the Solar system.

  "Don't tell me they've got military fants on board?" I laughed. We had had a little worry recently about a scientific exploration ship named Fantasy Prince.

  Finally we had decided after investigation that the name was an innocuous coincidence and had nothing to do with military fants. He didn't laugh. "I don't know. But it might be something like that. They've had trouble. If trouble's the right word for it... "We thought we knew every tanj thing that could go wrong in space, but this one came out of nowhere." He lit one of his 'cigars'. He'd copied that from Buford Early. It wasn't usual that he had trouble putting words together. This, I thought, is going to be something bizarre. But then, he would hardly have sent for me otherwise. ARM has plenty of people available for normal problems. "It may be something mental affecting the crew. Something the ships 'doc quite evidently can't handle. We're getting its readouts and it's diagnosed nothing wrong.”

  Docs failing in space were a nightmare, for spacers at least.

  "Either that, or it's criminal behavior, which we like even less... They're sending back messages about... Outsiders." "Yes?" He heard the excitement in my voice. Alien contact was one of the Big Ones. It was also a mirage. We had looked for friends among the stars for four hundred years and more and some false hopes had been raised and dashed. His next words damped my excitement. "No. Not real Outsiders. There would be people involved at much higher levels if they were real. What they are sending back is quite impossible.”

  "Delusions?”

  "Nothing so simple, though that would be serious enough. They've sent back pictures, holos. You can't transmit photographs of delusions — There may be some sort of group psychosis. I know that's hardly a satisfactory description, but... they've made things... not very nice... “

  He nodded to himself, muttered something, and then went on.

  "The whole report of alien contact is bizarre but carefully detailed nonsense. They've gone to a lot of trouble in some ways to try to be convincing, but in others they've made elementary mistakes. Mistakes in science so obvious they look deliberate. Why? Maybe one crew member has got control of the others.”

  "I don't see what that's got to do with me. I'm not a medical man. Or a Psychists. You know what I am.”

  "We've got medical men working on it too. But a stronger possibility is criminal conspiracy: Someone may stand to make a financial gain from this.”

  "But a criminal could only be rewarded on Earth — or in the Belt. Why commit a crime light-years beyond any reward? Besides, surely being crew on a colony ship... It just about guarantees a good life at the end of the trip.”

  "That may be taking a bit for granted. Colonies haven't always gone as planned. And being beyond reward means being beyond prosecution as well. But I won't speculate on possible Belt motives. You can think of some yourself. And even on Earth, family could be rewarded.”

  We didn't like families very much. But, thinking it over in silence for a moment, another question came to me that seemed rather obvious.

  "If it's a hoax, then, at the bottom line, does it matter? I mean, it's a long way away, isn't it?”

  "You know the sort of money that's involved in colonization," he said. Then he continued. "No, on second thoughts you probably don't know. But think of this: What if it comes to be believed that long space flights send crews crazy, light-years from treatment?”

  "Not so good.”

  "Another thing: A colony founded by criminals — or military fants — well, that's an entire world we're dealing with. Think about it.”

  I thought. It didn't take much thought to feel a chill at the long-term implications.

  "Maybe that's a worst-case scenario," he went on, "but anything that might affect space colonization matters, given the type of money we're dealing with. A colony ship is never a good investment, Karl. It's money and resources thrown away, at least from the point of view of a lot of political lobbyists. It's never easy to... persuade... a politician to take the long-term view One more negative factor at any time could tip the balance against the whole program.

  "There's another thing, too: the obvious ARM thing. We don't like anything we don't understand. We can't afford it. One thing is sure: This business had its origins on Earth or in the Belt and we want to know why and where.

  "It doesn't look like a simple practical joke. And the whole thing is detailed enough to make me believe it's not going to stop there. I think this was set up on Earth before they took off. There was once a practice called blockbusting. Have you heard of it?”

  "No.”

  "It was marginally legal for a long time, or at least illegality was difficult to prove. A joker wanted to buy real estate. He spread rumors of nasty diseases in the neighborhood, even paid nasty neighbors to move in, perhaps spread stories of nasty developments in area planning. Property values fell, he bought the property for less than its real value.

  "For obvious reasons, that hasn't happened for a long time on any major scale, but this may be blockbusting brought up to date. The rumor gets out that space travel of more than a few light-years sends people crazy. Shares in all space and colonizing industries fall. Some smart guy buys them up, then

  — “

  "He'd be prosecuted, and treated. Unless — “

  "Unless it couldn't be traced back. And if that's right, whoever thought it up is subtle and powerful.”

  "And you think this could have such an effect?”

  "Not by itself... and not if this was to be the last we heard of it, perhaps... Frankly, we're simply bewildered by it. I guess," he added, "quite a lot of what I've said is grasping at straws.”

  It was an unusual confession for someone in his position to make to someone in mine.

  "So suppress it.”

  "We did. The reports were dead-filed by Director Bernhardt and Director Harms left them that way. With the cooperation of the Belt. But our new director feels that leaves
too many questions unanswered. And the messages keep coming. Find out where this thing originated.”

  He touched the desk again and the heavens disappeared. We had windows and view again. Alfred O'Brien's office was on the fortieth floor of a museum complex, and out the window I could see the high leafy crowns of megatree oxygen factories and, on the ground beyond, a herd of pigmy mammoths, a gift from St. Petersburg, browsing on buttercups in their climate-controlled subarctic meadow. There was a complex of sports stadia beyond that, part of the vast group ringing the city, and the river, blue in the sun.

  "We're puzzled," he said, "not only as to why they should have delusions or whatever it is, but why this particular one. You see, they are trying to tell us that these Outsiders tried to destroy them!

  "The word is war.”

  He fell silent. It was as if the obscenity hung in the air before us.

  "The word, Karl, we have been working for centuries to remove from human consciousness. Why did they resurrect the idea?”

  The progressive censorship of literature had been my job for a long time. Search and closure operations of military fants cults went with it. It was an inescapable complement to the genetic part of the program.

  "You remember 1938," he said.

  It was one of the secret dates every ARM operative in my section knew: In that year a 'radio' broadcast about an imaginary hostile Martian invasion had caused panic and terror and had paralyzed a large part of the United States of America for a night. One of the most serious landmark outbreaks of the Military Fantasy. The 'War of the Worlds'. It was pointed out to us in our training, lest we become complacent, that the idea of war had still had the potential to be taken seriously by large numbers of people only five years before the first test flight of the V-2 had launched the beginnings of the Space Age. Did the hoaxers know of that, too?

  "I'll need to know more," I said.

  "Of course. Look at these.”

  O'Brien touched his desk again. A succession of holos sprang up in the air between us. There were also a series of flats.