Man-Kzin Wars IX Read online

  "Have you lived and grown old knowing there was nothing—nothing—to prevent you, your wife, your parents, your children, your lover, your closest friend, from dying in the Public Hunt, or conscripted to die manning kzinti auxiliaries in space battles? To know that whatever day's life you gained, the only future for you and yours was as kzinti slaves? And you ask us to have mercy on these monsters?

  "You know the new Munchen Space Port? We call it the Himmelfarte, the Heaven Way, not because it leads to the Heavens, but because so many of us died in the building of it, under the lashes and fangs of their `Supervisors-of-animals' when fleet facilities had to be expanded quickly. Children, old ones, sick! A child would take food to its parent conscripted to slave there in the morning, and itself be dead under the lash by the time the First Sun had set!

  "Orphanages raided, humans taken from the streets, casually, to provide specimens for neurological dissection when the Great Chuut-Riit, the Enlightened Chuut-Riit, the kindly planetary governor the collaborators flattered as a `good master,' decided we should be studied! Humans taken to Kzin and its other colony worlds who are there still, lost souls in Hell. And we police, who licked the boots of our chief Montferrat-Palme in terror even as he prostrated himself before his Master, who might be a kzin trainer-of-humans too lowly to have a kzin name! Shall we forgive and forget those things?"

  "You have had revenge on Chuut-Riit," said Hroarh-Captain. "He died terribly. And your vengeance is widespread. Few of full or partial name survive, and none of the best save Hroth who was Staff Officer. Where is Traat-Admiral who tried to be a benign master to you humans? Where are all those I knew? Indeed, even few of the nameless survive. I have sought to save a few kzinretts, and kits and wounded . . . You seek further vengeance on kzinti? Look at me, man. Would you be as I am?"

  Jocelyn stared at the wreck of the kzin officer in its hovering craft as though seeing it for the first time.

  "No," she said at last.

  "Or Raargh-Sergeant? Is it a crime for a soldier to abide by his duty?"

  "We never denied your strength and courage. Hell seeks always the worst ways to torment us, and it was one of the cruellest tricks of Hell that demons should be so magnificent. We could not—we cannot—afford to think of your suffering."

  "I would not expect you to. We enjoy the smell of a prey's terror, but humans might as well have no noses. I remember in the Hohe Kalkstein, I smelt a group of ferals lying in ambush. I kept downwind and they never smelled me till I was a dozen bounds from them . . . Then one jumped up and leaped to heft his strakakker . . . too late. And underground . . ." Hroarh-Captain's ragged ears folded and unfolded in a kzinti laugh. Some memories were still good.

  "Our fathers tried to negotiate with you when your ships first appeared in our system," she replied. "Some of us tried to empathize with you. Your answer was beams and bombs and enslavement. We were a peaceful culture then and nightmare fell upon us. Well, we have learnt better now, half-ratcat!"

  "Let us all put down our weapons," said the colonel. "There is no need for more to die here, human or kzin. Enough have died in this war. And I see the guns in the monastery are still trained upon us. We have won, Captain van der Stratt, we do not need heroic rhetoric."

  "But we have needed heroic rhetoric, Earthman. Flatlander! We who lived and died under the ratcats needed to rediscover heroism! And we did!"

  "So did we," the colonel replied. "It was we who built the Space Navy."

  "I can no longer order you to sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant," said Hroarh-Captain. It was a difficult word to pronounce, a new word that had crept into the Kzinti vocabulary on Wunderland over the last few months, and until very recently, on the occasions it had been used, it had been prefixed by the modifier "nevirr." He went on: "I can no longer take the burden from you. Who is in the Mess?"

  "Wounded. A kzinrett. A very old Conservor. A few others . . . a suckling infant." He paused. "And a/the kit." He wondered if the humans would catch the blurring of the article. "And the Jorg. The human who has been under my protection."

  "If they die, they will die uselessly, and there will be fewer of us left on Wunderland. We had better go to them."

  "I shall come," said Staff Colonel Cumpston.

  "A UNSN human enter a den of armed kzintosh?"

  "I have not always been a staff officer. Jocelyn, you should perhaps wait here."

  "Why? Do you think I fear a few shot-up ratcats, Flatlander? When we Wunderlanders have fought them face-to-face these years?"

  "I am thinking of Jorg. I wish to negotiate with him."

  "He is mine lawfully! As are all the human traitors lawfully in the power of the Free Wunderland Forces to deal with! You have agreed to that!"

  "Nevertheless, I think it would be best."

  "No."

  "Please do not forget our respective ranks."

  How strange! thought Raargh-Sergeant. To the kzin, human discipline seemed both soft with its feeble punishments and unyielding in its hierarchy. Kzinti discipline was ferocious but admitted a streak of anarchy as well. He who gave an order was expected to be able to enforce it physically at once. It is almost a parody of kzin dominance establishment, without death-duels. How much did they learn from us?

  "You may answer to Markham!"

  "I answer to the UNSN alone."

  "And do you think I do not know who the UNSN's real masters are? You have revealed more of yourselves than you think these last few days! This is our planet, our system!"

  "Which we have just liberated for you! A few days ago you were still weeping at the wonder and glory of the Hyperdrive Armada. . . . Let the dust of this last battle at least settle before we quarrel among ourselves. Jocelyn, I ask you, let me handle this my way . . . and let us not be shamed—before Heroes. Very well. Come."

  "Do you sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant?"

  "Hroarh-Captain, it seems there is no choice. H'rr."

  "Let the monkeys settle with the monkeys then. I will tell our Heroes to fire no more. Our task is to save what we can of our own."

  Chapter 4

  The two kzin and eight humans, six of the latter armed troopers, crossed the compound, past the smouldering wreck of the gun car. Raargh-Sergeant still carried his guns, for no human had seemed disposed to take them from him, but their barrels pointed to the ground.

  "It is finished," he said, as he entered the Mess—Hroarh-Captain could no longer negotiate the steps. "I shall report that you have accomplished your duties satisfactorily," he added in the old formula, though he did not know whom he would report to. The Fanged God, perhaps? He saw that the Staff Colonel removed his headdress as he entered. Jocelyn-Captain did not.

  The remnants of his "garrison" fell back from the weapons. The head-wounded Hero was in a twitching coma; the kzinrett, thankfully, now seemed engrossed in the suckling kitten and needed no restraints. The great drum was broken, he saw. They must have struck it too hard in their efforts. It hardly matters. We have no more Sergeants' Mess.

  "So you hand me over," said Jorg. He spoke not to Raargh-Sergeant but to the human male.

  "I will make diplomatic representations," Staff Colonel Cumpston replied. "A fair trial, at least. I want to see no more undeserving dead. No more human dead, even no more kzinti dead."

  "Hear the Flatlander," muttered one of the human troopers. "Merciful to ratcats he never fought against or suffered under."

  Jocelyn said no word of rebuke. The colonel turned to the trooper and began to raise a hand, then dropped it. It might have been simply an aborted gesture, but it might have served the purpose of calling attention to the row of decorations that he wore.

  "A fair trial! What farce is this!"

  "What trial did you give the humans in your power?" flared Jocelyn. "A one-way ticket to the Public Hunt! `Our masters tell us there is a continuing demand for monkeymeat, a quota to be met!' Do you think I have forgotten those words?"

  "A quota you helped supply. And if we had not, things would have been worse. We
had a civilization. We lost it. Do you think by these methods you will build it again?"

  "Yes, plead for your life! You should do it well. You have heard plenty of your victims' pleadings. Take all their best phrases!"

  "What is happening?" asked Bursar. "If there is a crisis, we must be calm. What is this monkey chatter?"

  The kit ran to Raargh-Sergeant. "Yes, what is happening? May we fight now? The shooting was over very quickly."

  "Not now," said the colonel. The soft syllables of the Female Tongue which the kit was used to were relatively easy for a human to pronounce, yet he could place in it a churr of authority as well: "Your Raargh-Sergeant Hero will tell you no more fighting." He strode around the room, nodding at what he saw. At the block encasing Peter Brennan, he made a peculiar gesture. Raargh-Sergeant realized he was beckoning to him.

  "More should see this," he said.

  "I do not think more will. There will be no more Sergeants' Mess."

  "No. Tell me, Raargh-Sergeant, have you ever been on furlough in the hills?"

  "A few times, when things were quiet. And I have hunted ferals there."

  "I see. Captain Jocelyn wants you dead."

  "I would like that tree-swinger dead too."

  "She has reasons. Her family . . . H'rr."

  "I have reasons too. She lied to us, and because of her, Lesser-Sergeant and the others are dead and my Honor is in the mud with monkey dung."

  "Let us be calm. It would be too easy for a war of extermination to flare up again, and it is your kind that would perish on this planet. I and some others have tried hard to prevent that. So has Hroarh-Captain and Hroth-Staff Officer, and he is the last of Traat-Admiral's own Pride to survive."

  "And when our Patriarchal Navy returns in force? What of you monkeys then?"

  "They will find it hard to fight a space war against the hyperdrive, I think. But we look to a cease-fire not on Wunderland only, but between the planets. Perhaps you will go home to Kzin."

  The concepts were largely too alien to take in. He grasped what he could.

  "Home to Kzin? I was born here, as was my Honored Sire. Somewhere here lie my kit's bones. And why should Kzinhome receive us, who are defeated and disgraced and should have died if we could not conquer? Ka'ashi is my home."

  "Yes. Have you seen much of this home of yours, Raargh-Sergeant?"

  "I have been in the Patriarch's Forces since I was a youngster. I have gone where I was sent."

  "The mountains?"

  "Yes, of course, as I said. I was made Sergeant and Raargh-Sergeant in campaigning."

  "There could be good hunting there, for man or kzin."

  "Yes."

  "There still can be."

  "I do not understand."

  "No place for you here now. No place for you on Kzinhome. The hills are wide."

  "And what of Hroarh-Captain?"

  "The UNSN will need him, and all the very few kzin officers who have survived, to administer the kzin population. Montferrat-Palme has made arrangements."

  "As the Jorg-human was needed by us?" So the humans' highest controller had been a secret feral too.

  "No. Come a proper peace settlement, the kzin will not be enslaved. In any event, they could not be . . . That kitten, is he your son?"

  "No. A war orphan."

  "So he will die?"

  "Male kits who lose their fathers too soon usually die, unless a kzintosh without get of his own adopts them."

  "There must be many orphans on this planet now."

  "Many indeed."

  "I suppose the UNSN will be sitting up orphanages for kittens as well as children. It will be interesting to see the results in a generation or so."

  "You would turn our children into monkeys?"

  "No. Take your hand from your wtsai. It would be futile to even try. But you asked of Hroarh-Captain. I see a place for him."

  "And the Jorg?"

  "A traitor. He goes to the Free Wunderlanders."

  "He dies."

  "I will not kill him. But I will shed no tears for him. How would you feel about a kzin who did what he has done?"

  "I do not know tears. But you monkeys are hard to understand. No Hero would do what he has done."

  "Raargh-Sergeant . . ."

  "Raargh-Sergeant no more. There is no force for me to be Sergeant."

  "Raargh, then."

  The single, rankless Name hung for a moment in the air as the kzin tasted it.

  "Raargh, I cannot allow you to spill more human blood. You understand that."

  Jocelyn strode to them.

  "Raargh-Sergeant! There can be no further delay. It is time for your kzin to hand over their weapons now! We have two gun cars outside now. And there are more humans all round the monastery, armed. If you refuse I will take it as an act of war, and one UNSN officer and one geriatric priest will not interfere."

  Think quickly, he told himself.

  Then: "Very well."

  He spoke to the others in the Heroes' Tongue, using the ordinary dominant tense in which military orders were given.

  "Step back from the weapons."

  "And your own, Raargh-Sergeant!"

  He set down the beam rifles.

  "I suppose you had better stay here for the time being. I have no facilities for these wounded. You may be moved to a holding camp later."

  "Jocelyn-Captain . . . the Ptrr-Brunurn. He is a trophy of the Sergeants' Mess."

  "I said he could remain. I will abide by my word."

  "But there is no Sergeants' Mess now, only a few wounded kzinti who will soon be gone I know not where. We can no longer toast him with ritual and honor him and Kzarl-Sergeant. I give him back to you, so humans at least may honor him as he deserves. He is at risk of being dishonored otherwise."

  "Very well."

  "There is another matter. Chuut-Riit's urine." He indicated the ceremonial jar.

  "What do I want with cat piss? We will clear that stink away from this world."

  "It was a great gift to the Mess, presented in token of our Honor and Valor. Again there is no Mess. You are the conqueror. Do with it what you will, but it is a great trophy and thing of pride for us. A great night it was." Of feasting, too, though I should not say that, lest she think upon that feast. But, oh, my Sire, and O Honored Chuut-Riit, it tears my liver and shaves my mane to do this thing! Know that I pick my way as best I can along trails of Honor that have grown twisted. "A gift from an old rratcat who tried to fight with Honor."

  "Very well." She passed her beam rifle to a trooper and took the jar, noting, perhaps, its intricate carvings and inlays. She gestured at Jorg von Thoma. "Come."

  The human party turned and walked towards the car. Staff Colonel Cumpston lingered, looking back at the collection of wounded kzinti.

  "I will carry the Ptrr-Brunurn" said Raargh. He beckoned to the kit. "Vaemar," he said, "give me good help to move this honored human. For you see my arm and legs are little use." To the colonel he said, "There is a debt."

  The human nodded just perceptibly. "I know that Heroes are honorable in their debts," he said, "for good or ill. I may collect this debt one day . . . In the meantime, your Name as your word that you will harm no more humans?"

  "My Name as my word. Save in defense."

  "I have been a sergeant myself. If I may say so, perhaps old sergeants of all kinds tend to understand one another. It is a thankless job."

  "Thankless? We of the Patriarch's forces do not serve for thanks but for knowledge of Honor upheld."

  "I know."

  "And sometimes for the loot, of course . . . Centurion."

  "You know that word? Yes. I see the jar is heavy."

  They followed the other humans to the cars. The rear part of the second was already filled with the human and kzin remains that had been retrieved from the aerial combat, scorched, smoking, smelling like . . . a smell that Raargh realized he had had too much of, in the last few weeks and the last few years. I have had enough, he realized with amazement. H
e and Vaemar-Riit worked Peter Brennan's block into the small area that was left. He turned to the colonel.

  "I ask you, one more thing. Not for myself, but for him: he has no colored ribbons for bravery like you but see that he is not buried as you bury humans under white stones."

  "I will speak to the abbot. He will be reopening the monastery as it was. It will be up to him, I think. You know that you kzinti made us religious again."

  "Farewell."

  His wtsai was out in a blur of light. He flung it with inhuman accuracy into the small intake port of the car. He seized the kit in one arm, Jorg in the other. A standing leap took him into the cockpit of the other car. He slammed the canopy closed, struck at the switches with claws and prosthetic hand that moved too fast for a human eye to follow. The glass and Teflon needles of a strakakker sizzled into the car, turning half the canopy behind him opaque.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Jocelyn drop the precious jar and snatch for a beam rifle. But the second's delay was enough. The car was already airborne, accelerating away at full thrust.

  He dived, pulling out centimeters above the roofs of the human shanties. A couple of bolts came after him, but the buildings and then the smoke blinded the shooters. He banked away from an approaching human ground vehicle with red crosses on its sides and, hugging the ground, zoomed towards Grossgeister Swamp, swerving to left and right as they passed the first surviving trees. The car buffeted and boomed into supersonic, reached full acceleration.

  The monastery left behind, he climbed fast, eye flickering to the fuel gauge. They could travel a long way yet. The landscape opening up below was pockmarked with craters, and there were scattered fires and drifting smoke, but the smoke was lit by the passage of no lasers and there were no new explosions. Across Wunderland the cease-fire seemed to be holding.

  The UNSN would be sending radio warnings about him, but as long as he headed away from militarily sensitive areas, they would probably not shoot him down. They would have much else to do and a crippled sergeant and a human would hardly be worth the effort. Still, he stealthed the car.

  The silver water and dark vegetation of the swamp flashed below, then open park-like land again, in the Wunderland multicolor of plants, the local red, the green of Earth and the orange of Kzin. A purplish tinge of night was beginning to appear in the sky and Alpha Centauri B stood forth in its glory.