Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII (Man-Kzin Wars Series Book 8) Read online

  The fabric of the pale tunnels was suddenly tearing. My fear and Selina’s fear merging. I felt other things merging, too: I knew what it was to have a flat whiskerless face with tiny teeth, udders, a soft, boneless, vulnerable stomach, well-padded rounded tailless buttocks. And a name. Zraar-Admiral had wondered why their tails had been amputated. I now knew they had not had tails for millions of years. They did not live in trees. More than the idea of salt oceans now—the stinging cold of salt waves. Swimming in a tumbling green ocean under a blue sky lit by a yellow sun, wind drying salt-crystals on exposed skin, darting silver fish in the water, quick as viiritikii, yellow ground and green vegetation behind. Weird memories of human mating. Memories of human kittenhood . . . childhood.

  More. Emotions which I had analyzed and reported previously had changed as if from two-dimensional to four-dimensional things. A nameless blend of loss and excitement at the sight of a blue and white planet dwindling into Space. I saw myself, saw Telepath, grown taller and more terrible than any warrior, and fear like a Wtsai of black ice in the liver—in the heart, and then Telepath again but changing.

  The viewer and the instruments moved far away. And as I returned to them, I was not the same. Nwarrkaa Kishri Zaaarll . . . the Double Bridge of Demons.

  It is a term of Telepaths’ Art, to describe an event that is not rare. It is particularly common when dealing with a subject that itself has some telepathic ability, latent or actualized: when the Single Bridge of Demons is erected, the Telepath loses his own identity and becomes the subject whose mind he has entered. With the Double Bridge the process is mutual but may be only partial for each party. Perhaps with the communality of our hopes and fears as a catalyst, that is what had happened here.

  I had felt too much empathy with Selina before to regard her as prey, but Selina was truly in my mind now. Because I was Telepath I had never thought entirely like a Kzin. Now I no longer thought entirely like Telepath. There was a monkey—a human—in me too. I was reading the alien thoughts and feelings from experience.

  The Bridge, once erected, is not completely broken while both of the two parties live.

  I could now enter Selina’s mind without the Sthondat-drug.

  And she could now enter my mind.

  While both of the two parties live. I could end that in an instant, with one sweep of my claws. Yet I did not. Could not. There was now too much of Telepath in Selina too.

  “You know what has happened,” I said. It was not a question and needed no answer.

  We were silent for a time, but each mind was assimilating what had flowed to it from the other. The motor snarled and rippled and purred behind us. A long time passed as the two bruised minds recovered. I think we both slept at some time. As in a dream, I rose at last and wandered to the barge’s trophy-drier and preserved Weapon’s Officer’s ears for my belt. Selina watched me.

  “Do you still feel a duty to warn Earth?” I asked her at last.

  She knew from my mind now the fragment of human speech that Zraar-Admiral had ordered me to memorize in a time that suddenly seemed long ago.

  “It seems the Angel’s Pencil has done that already,” Selina said. “I wish I did not think it so likely that it will be disbelieved. But if they disbelieved the Angel’s Pencil, they will come to know that Happy Gatherer has disappeared in the same part of Space. We never answered their last signal. Let them make of that what they will.”

  Selina thought of Earth and of her brother, guarding and herding gangs of children through the strange human museum, her brother with a secret collection hoarded as a Kzinrett might hoard playthings. A collection with a purpose I now began to understand truly for the first time. Crumbling pages of forbidden books and “military” paraphernalia.

  A secret history—or set of false legends—of Earth that the government had banned. “Banned” was a strange concept (Or was it so strange? How much of Kzin’s own history was in the control of the Priests and Conservors?). But was this brother a secret rebel against the dominant humans? Both he and Selina thought of something called the Military Fantasy: a forbidden cult that suggested the humans had once been something very different to what their histories told. I followed this a little way, some of it over ground I had previously guessed out for myself. Many of Selina’s own thoughts were not clear on the matter, but when her thought combined with mine a picture emerged.

  Then, perhaps because I had touched the image of her brother in her mind, I felt her thoughts flare with something almost Kzin-like: Your destiny is upon you! Rouse them! Rouse the silly sheep before the tigers spring!

  Sheep? Brainless quadruped grass-eaters, I saw. Herds of them had once been husbanded by monkeys for food or to make clothing from their fur. They were almost displaced on Earth now. A few were reared as delicacies and others were kept on hunting preserves called zoos, but these latter were not hunted. Humans came simply to watch them. Strange. Strange.

  And tigers? What were they? Merrower! There was an image there! Kzin, and something else. Fangs, and leaping and eyes like fire. The images became conflicting. But the overwhelming impression was unambiguous: I knew what she thought of tigers.

  Or did I? For in the images of blood and death and fangs and slashing claws, all the splendid rampant slaying, there was a strange claw-point of something else that Selina herself was hardly aware of, to do with my attempts to console her for the death of Rick, something that contained the words: “poor creature!”

  What did this mean? Did it matter? Why?

  And other thoughts: I know their reaction will be disbelief, denial . . . And then panic? Gangs of humans swarming through hive-like cities . . . and screaming in terror and then . . . and then, perhaps . . .

  Overwhelming all again came the image of the sheltered sheepfold and the tiger leaping from the stars. But even if the sheep were roused, what could they do? Then I thought of Tracker, and the wound blazing in the side of Gutting Claw.

  And another Kzin-like thought leapt in Selina’s mind, perhaps triggered by own. A leap against Fate, a thought that in the Heroes’ Tongue might have been expressed in the God-Defying Tense itself: The launching lasers! In the human system were giant laser-cannon used for boosting the launch of reaction-drive Space-craft, some on the planet nearest the sun of the human home-system, a few on the human home-world and its moon, some in the human-settled belt of asteroids and the moons of the outer gas-giants. And then another thought, Kzin-like but of a different kind: they are obsolete. They are being phased out and not replaced! Time! Time! Will there be time?

  And then: Nothing I can do.

  For an instant she tried to keep these thoughts from me, knowing it was futile. In any case, what did it matter now, driving into black Space, death behind us and death, surely, before us?

  That took my thoughts back to Gutting Claw, and Weeow-Captain on the bridge, in command, determined now to make an end of the Angel’s Pencil straight away, once and for all, without toying with it.

  The Angel’s Pencil!

  If Selina and I conferred, it was at a level too high and at a speed too fast to record. From her mind came the radio frequencies used by the human ship.

  And then I cast my mind back to the Claw, and knew what Weeow-Captain planned.

  Angel’s Pencil

  “Explosions. And Big Cat is moving at a tangent.” Crouched over the makeshift weapons console, Jim Davis shook his head as if trying to clear it. The autodoc was good, but it was not intended to keep a man keyed to this pitch for so long.

  “What does it mean?”

  Steve Weaver made a gesture of incomprehension. “I can only guess . . . somebody else is fighting them.”

  “It can’t be one of our ships. Nothing human. Not against that maneuverability.”

  “Were you expecting a human ship? Why do you think there were anti-missiles on that ship we struck? They were expecting attack from . . . something else. Something worse than they are, perhaps. Something higher on the food-chain.”

&nbs
p; “Steve! Steve! Jim!” Sue Bhang leapt to the console. “There’s a message coming through!”

  Fingers flickered at keyboards. The comscreen lit. A picture rolled, slowed, stabilized. A human woman, haggard, eyes huge in black, sunken pits, clad only in the torn scraps and under-strappings of a Spacesuit. And behind her one of the felinoids, huge and alive.

  “Who are you?”

  The woman and the felinoid were in a small compartment, obviously in a cat Space-ship. The fittings and design they could see were cat not human. Panels behind her head showed stars. The reply came quickly. Either she was very close or she had anticipated the question.

  “I am Selina Guthlac of the Happy Gatherer. There is no time to talk. Fire your Kzin missiles now! Jettison them! They are slaved to the Kzin battleship’s computer. It can detonate them whenever the enemy wishes! Inside your own hull! Do it! Do it!”

  Steve and Jim stared at each other in horror. They had been braced for a battle against odds since the huge pursuer had been detected, but not for this. The comscreen shouted at them again:

  “Do it! Do it now!”

  Her voice propelled Steve’s hand to the firing button. Jim snatched it away.

  “Don’t! You see she’s a prisoner! The cat is forcing her to say that. You can see she’s been tortured.”

  The face on the screen was still speaking.

  “This is an ally. We escaped in a boat from the Kzinti ship. Listen to me!”

  The felinoid’s lips moved. It spoke in a hard, grating English:

  “Zelina zpeakz trruth. My wurrd az my honorr.”

  Then again the woman spoke.

  “This is a Kzin Telepath. We read your thoughts. You think we want to disarm you. But we can prove we are your allies. We have struck a blow against the enemy. See! This is our escape!”

  The screen rolled again. There was film of a ship, apparently an oversized version of the one Angel’s Pencil had encountered, burning with internal fires and spewing wreckage into Space.

  “It means nothing,” said Jim. “It could be a virtual reality simulation.”

  “Jim!” Sue held her voice as low and steady as she might, “There is some activity beginning in those missiles.”

  On the control-panel that had been fastened to the Pencil’s main console lights were glowing. Green lights, the alien color for danger. That panel had been taken from the alien ship, as had the missiles it controlled.

  “The missiles are arming themselves!”

  Jim Davis stabbed the firing button. The Pencil lurched violently as, eight upon eight, the missiles fired. Propelled by Kzin gravity-planers that left no drive-flame, they were invisible from the viewing ports.

  “Now we’re disarmed.” There was no question of using the ramscoop as a weapon unless an enemy with suitable physiology flew into it. Its conical field covered a vast area of Space, but it projected ahead of the ship. The laser, intended to beam messages back to the Solar System, could only be adjusted within a narrow cone behind them. The small attitude jets and gyros could be disregarded as measured against the total, inertialess, mobility of a ship powered by Kzin gravity-planer.

  There was a heavy, fearful silence in the control-room. Then black visors crashed down over the ports. Across the gulf of Space, blue-white spheres were swelling like new suns.

  “Where are you?” Steve asked the screen. “We’ll take you aboard.”

  “No time for that. The Claw is coming. And it thinks you are clawless now.”

  “We are. When we armed ourselves with those missiles, we gave ourselves hope and courage.”

  “No. You are not clawless and it is time to fight. Your laser is still a weapon . . . wait!”

  The watchers in the Angel’s Pencil saw her turn to the felinoid. Something without words was taking place between them. The bulk of the Kzinti battleship was returning a bigger echo on the radar screens now, almost directly behind them. There too was a smaller echo, a little closer and to the Galactic north-west. Then the screen spoke again.

  “Are they in range of your laser yet? We do not believe they know this frequency or that they could translate these transmissions.”

  “Extreme range for damaging their hull-material, I think. We tested it on wreckage from the other ship.”

  “No good. The Kzinti fight each other a good deal. They attack head-on and they expect to take enemy . . . slashes . . . head-on. The bow of Gutting Claw is designed against beams as well as bombs. It is mirror-finished and in battle other mirrors and dust projectors are deployed. It is made of super-hardened materials and has super-conductors to lose heat. This is a capital unit, not a scout-ship.”

  “The Pencil’s laser is Tanj big. Bigger than they might expect.”

  “Hit the bow and you might burn through eventually, if they kept still for you. But it would take more time than you have. And there would be beams and missiles coming the other way. The sides and the damaged area are less well-protected but you cannot maneuver to attack them. Be thankful she can launch no fighters from the boat-deck yet. Your best chance is to hit the Command Bridge or the center of the damage in the side if they are presented. But they are small targets and they do not present when Claw is head-on.”

  “What can we do?”

  “Keep your laser on the target but do not fire yet. You must let her get closer. And we must make her turn.”

  Admiral’s Barge

  There was Gutting Claw. With radar, infra-red and sense enhancers and my own senses guiding me I could find the hull now. The human ship was no problem to find on the end of its vast column of exhausted hydrogen.

  The vented material that Claw had trailed like a bloodstain had tapered away. The hull was cooler with fires under control, and the hangar area had been sealed off. The motors were undamaged, and the weapons capacity was still colossal.

  Time moved slowly. But the Selina’s chatter with the Writing Stick humans became instantaneous as the distance between us decreased.

  The barge’s computer and weapons-systems could not be over-ridden from Gutting Claw. It had been the Admiral’s own. I armed a fusion-missile and fired it at the Claw. Beams and anti-missiles converged on it and destroyed it. Another. It got no closer. I sent a stream of ball-bearings at the Claw. Its meteor defenses could cope with that but it took up more computer capacity. They must have identified the signature of the barge’s motor now. They had some idea of who was attacking them. Rage on the bridge was moving out of control.

  The blind noseless fools! Never to think what an enemy a Telepath might make! They had no conception that I was reading the minds of Weeow-Captain and the whole bridge and attack-team! It was easy after the minds of aliens. They might have felt pain in their brains—I had no time for the subtle dance—but the Claw’s lifesystem was still full of noxious fumes which would explain that.

  Weeow-Captain’s rage engulfed him now. I punched up the visual comlink to Claw’s bridge. He saw me. He would not understand Telepath insults, so I did my best with ordinary Kzintosh ones. But coming from a Telepath at all, they must have been shattering.

  “Eat vegetable matter from the dung of the Sthondat that chrowled your mother! You seek only to chrowl the female monkey!” I snarled at him. “Where is Weapons Officer, you wonder? His cinders float in Space, but see, his ears hang from Telepath’s belt! And from my belt hangs the path to the monkey home-worlds! Try to take them if you dare! Come and fight me! Fight Telepath, if you dare, Coward-Captain!”

  The screen went blank as Weeow-Captain leapt at it. He had less control than Zraar-Admiral. My last picture was of his fangs. And Gutting Claw was turning towards us. I was already breaking contact. No Telepath could long stand that intensity of rage and hatred tearing directly at his own mind. I sent the rest of my missiles on their way. If some by chance got through the battleship’s defenses, so much the better. But no missiles or beams were fired back at us yet. Weeow-Captain still wanted us alive.

  Gutting Claw and the human ship were much less than
a light-second apart now. One flash of thought to Selina, one command from me, one word from her. Gutting Claw had turned its bow away from the human ship now, and had at that moment no attention to spare for it. The loss of Zraar-Admiral and many other officers was like a brain-wound for it.

  There were the Claw’s missiles! I fired our anti-missiles. They would probably stop the first wave, but the first wave only. The humans would have to be quick.

  In the darkness of Space ahead and a little below us a green nova-like light flared, impossibly bright. Then there was another light-spot in space, another incandescent green star.

  Gutting Claw was hit side on. I felt it in my mind as the laser hit the bridge, then it began a slow slicing move into the hull. But it still took armored bulkheads and the massive bulk of the main gravity-engines and their containment-fields long seconds to melt. I had told them Tracker had been far more lightly built. It was moving out of the laser’s field: the green star that was Gutting Claw faded. Then the ravaged containment-fields failed and it exploded.

  There was agony in my head. It was the Death. I had burned my brain too much. But when I died Selina would lose all my knowledge of piloting the barge. Honor demanded I get her to her fellow-monkeys . . . fellow-humans.

  Green light flashing! A missile fired from the Claw in its last seconds still alive and heading towards us.

  I had to leap again, to trigger our remaining anti-missiles. A huge, blinding explosion, too close. The stars spun, the meteor-defenses activated. There was an indescribable sound as something hit the bulk of the gravity-motor behind us. I thought that bulk had saved us but then came the dreadful howl of air escaping from a hull-puncture. I struggled with a meteor-patch. On the dials lights and wave-bands were showing engine malfunction. Power would be gone in a few heart-beats. Think quickly! From Selina’s mind I snatched what no Kzin astrogator trained on gravity-motors would have had ready enough: a knowledge of inertial forces sufficient to turn the barge with the last of its power and align its course towards the human ship.