Man-Kzin Wars XII Read online

  Charrgh-Uft replied cheerfully, "After five centuries of dealing with humans, the kzinti are well-qualified to state that no position is unassailable. You, personally, insisted on their military rank being officially acknowledged in all particulars for this mission. That makes them crew. They get prize shares."

  "If these things are as good as they look it's going to leave two people owning half a dozen of the biggest industries in human space!"

  Charrgh-Uft was growing tired of the argument, and he played the trump the Patriarch had told him he could if necessary: "This is a matter of the Patriarch's honor."

  The gray-bristled human froze in place. The First War had dragged on well after it was lost, killing over a million kzinti, before a way was found for the then-Patriarch to surrender with honor. Weakly, he said, "All they wanted was enough money to start a farm."

  "They'll be able to afford quite a large one, I should think," said Charrgh-Uft. "If I recall the invasion analysis correctly, there is an equatorial highland on Wunderland's second continent which could benefit from irrigation."

  "It's the size of France! A bubble asteroid would cost less to make!"

  "Good idea. Every landowner should have a vacation home as well," Charrgh-Uft said reasonably.

  The Guthlacs had been given all the privacy they wanted, and had made enthusiastic use of it. After a week or so the pace slowed, and they began wearing clothing now and then, for meals and such.

  "Slaverexpert must have some real pull to get us left alone like this," Richard said at the end of one meal. "I'd have thought someone would have been giving us a very thorough debriefing." He saw Gay's grin, and laughed, "Besides each other."

  The computer's message light came on, for the first time since they were given their quarters. Gay was closer, and lit the screen. It said:

  "Lord Krosp requests the honor of your company at the receiving platform of his landing shuttle, sometime prior to sunset of the day after tomorrow, when he will be departing for his estate on Kzrral."

  "Who's Lord Krosp?" Richard said.

  "He must be awfully important to get through to us," Gay said. "And you did say you were getting a little sore."

  "Aren't you?"

  "Yes, but you admitted it first."

  They got there the morning of the second day, after spending some time in a fruitless search for the whereabouts of Slaverexpert. Charrgh-Uft had contacted them briefly to let them know he would be fully occupied socially (translation: looking over the daughters that various nobles were offering him), but thanked them for their help and assured them of fair treatment. He signed off before explaining that last.

  The attitude of the kzin they'd asked for directions had altered from barely-tolerant to deeply impressed when the Name Krosp was mentioned: "You know him? I will tell my sons that I met you!"

  Gay murmured, "Who is this 'tosh?"—Wunderkzin equivalent of "guy."

  Lord Krosp's shuttle was a converted troop lander, and it had a place all to itself on the landing field. When their groundcar stopped, four kzinti formed an honor guard beside their path, and drew claws before their faces in salute as the Guthlacs got out.

  Slaverstudent, in steel-studded harness with equipment pouches attached, marched out and said, "Welcome, Richard Guthlac and Gay Guthlac!"

  "You're Lord Krosp?" Gay exclaimed.

  "Hardly. I am his aide-de-camp. Hospitality!" he called out to the ship, and a dozen elegantly decorated Jotoki wearing Freed insignia deployed seats, table, dispensers, canopy, and windscreens.

  Lord Krosp, resplendent in weapons belt and governor's sash, stepped out and declared, "My friends, and authors of my good fortune, be welcome!"

  It was Telepath.

  Naturally they were eaten alive by curiosity, but the manners they were raised with required him to bring it up first. Krosp knew it, and cheerfully tormented them by seating them and plying them with food and drink before sitting down himself. "I trust you have not been disturbed since we got back? I was most specific."

  "That was you? Thanks!" Richard said.

  "I hope you made good use of the time—" Krosp jumped a trifle, then went on, "I see. It is well my family is in the shuttle and not the main ship." He turned his head as a human would to ease a stiff neck, then said, "I wanted to thank you for your kindness, and inform you that should you ever visit Kzrral the governor's hospitality is open to you."

  "How did you get appointed governor?" Gay burst out, finally unable to restrain her curiosity.

  "It was entirely due to the vivid and enthusiastic praise of my accomplishments, given me by my crewmates from the Cunning Stalker—Ah, this will be Weapons Officer," he said, indicating a groundcar that was just approaching.

  There was no honor guard for Weapons Officer, and Krosp did not get up. Ears mostly folded (and bats tattooed on his tail), Weapons Officer came up with a parcel and stood at attention.

  "Relax. It is good to see you," Telepath said in Hero. "I was just discussing our trip with the Guthlacs, who like the rest of us are going to be very rich from the salvage we brought back. Is that a gift?"

  "Yes, sir," said Weapons Officer, and held out the parcel. "It was my grandsire's."

  "I am certain it does us both honor. I hope for your part you will find this small item gratifying," Telepath said, and took something from one of his belt pouches.

  It looked remarkably like a recording crystal for a kzinti ship's log.

  Weapons Officer accepted it, took a deep breath, let it out, and looked a lot less uncomfortable. His ears spread, and he said, "I am certain I will always be glad to have this. I have no doubt that you will fulfill the duties of your new post most capably," he added in a decidedly dry tone.

  "A generous parting wish," Krosp said.

  Weapons Officer saluted, and turned to the Guthlacs. "I hope you will enjoy your well deserved prosperity on Wunderland for many years to come," he said in Interworld.

  Richard, staring at the ear tattoos, couldn't think of a thing to say. Gay got the context, and recovered sufficiently to say, "I'm sure we will, though sadly our responsibilities will prevent us from returning here to visit you."

  With a distinct sigh of relief, Weapons Officer said, "We all do what we must," and departed.

  Richard was still getting over the tattoos. The right ear had been decorated with tiny stylized bats, but the left displayed a human face: Herrenmann white, but with long black hair and a heavy jawline. The eyes were faintly outlined in black, and their wild stare was an excellent complement to a deeply disturbing grin. "Who was that?" he finally got out.

  "An Earth musician from the post-classical period, I believe," Krosp said, opening the parcel. "Weapons Officer's family has considerable interest in the arts." A Jotok picked up the wrapping as the gift was revealed: a fan of cords attached to a long frame, with a hollow box at one end. He plucked a string with a claw, and a pleasant tone came out. It was a musical instrument.

  Richard suddenly laughed, getting it under control just as quickly.

  Krosp didn't seem offended, just puzzled: "What's funny?"

  "I was just thinking: all you need to join the Gasperik Society is a motorcycle."

  "What's that?"

  "An outfit established a long time ago, even before space habitats, with the stated intention of being prepared for alien invasion. It was sort of a literary club, really. Every member was theoretically supposed to own, and keep in good order, a motorcycle, a guitar, a spacesuit, and an elephant gun. A kzinti sidearm could surely stop an elephant, we've seen your suit, and that ought to qualify as a guitar."

  "Yes, I know about the Gasperik Division," said Krosp. "It was part of the Hellflare Corps. What's a motorcycle?"

  "Oops. It's a vehicle with two wheels in a line, with a seat in between. Very popular in rough country. Blackmail?" Richard exclaimed.

  "Oh, no," Krosp assured him. "Blackmail is an insult that warrants death, being a threat to publicly claim that the victim is dishonorable. However, when
the question is one of looking like a fool for the rest of one's life, solicitation of bribery is another matter entirely. I am pleased that you were here when he arrived, as it saved considerable explanation."

  Gay began to laugh. Richard, thinking of the abuse they had been unable to stop, joined in. Slaverexpert came over and said, "Lord Krosp, do you want to mention the plan?"

  "Oh yes. Slaverexpert has—you have a question," he said to Richard.

  "I never heard the kzinti Name Krosp before," Richard said, still laughing.

  "It's not a kzinti Name. It was a character from human literature, a brilliant leader who provided calm insight and perspective when no one around him could see a solution."

  "What's it from?"

  "I don't know. The Patriarch suggested it. Did you want to hear Slaverexpert's plan?"

  "Sure."

  "Most of Kzrral is disagreeably hot. We plan to put gravity-planers on its moon, after which we will gradually drag it further from its primary over the course of the next few centuries—that is, Slaverexpert and my heirs will."

  The two humans goggled at him. Gay said, "That'll cost a fortune!"

  "We have two. We expect to get another, as we will be able to improve the health and reliability of telepaths all over the Patriarchy."

  "How?"

  "We're going to raise catnip."

  For Frank and Peggy,

  but especially for Jim.

  Peace and Freedom

  Matthew Joseph Harrington

  One of the less appreciated points of being the smartest organic intelligence in the known universe is that, when you find out you've screwed up, you get to feel much stupider than anyone else can.

  Peace Corben switched the hyperwave to the Project Supervision channel and said, "Ling."

  "Problem?" said Jennifer Ling.

  "You need to divert resources and build a couple more Quantum II ships. The Outsiders have just informed me that someone's mining the Hot Spot, and I need to take Cordelia back to Known Space."

  "The Outsiders called you?" The Outsiders were a life-form whose metabolism was based on the quantum effects that cropped up at superconductive temperatures. (Probably. If anyone ever tried to dissect one, he hadn't gotten back with details. Or at all.) They made their living all through the Galaxy by selling information to the races they encountered as they cruised past inhabited systems; the idea of them volunteering information was weirdness on the order of a Protector trusting a stranger's good intentions.

  "They still owe me money for mass conversion and a new form of math. They're very scrupulous. Unfulfilled obligations give them bubbles in the liquid helium or something."

  "Can I give you backup?"

  "Wouldn't help. I've got a zip, if necessary." She could keep breeders in the zip, the Sinclair accelerator field. She could spend several years talking human breeders into becoming protectors, while a few days passed outside the field. Instant allies.

  "We're on it," Jennifer said.

  Peace signed off and moved Cordelia out of the main site on thrusters, to avoid dragging anything along. Of a population of almost two hundred thousand Protectors, more than half were working on the primary disintegrator array. (The region wasn't what you could call crowded, since they were spread through an area that would not quite have fitted into the orbit of Pluto, but alignment was important, and courtesy counts. Especially between people who do things like vaporizing planets for raw materials.) She paused to note that the work was going well—arrangements to disperse the oncoming particle blast from the Core explosion could be complete in a matter of decades—then went to hyperdrive.

  She knew of two races that could be mining antimatter from Gregory Pelton's rogue solar system. One, human, had actually visited the Hot Spot briefly. The other species might have noticed, at closest approach to their home system, the inordinate neutrino production, from annihilation of interstellar matter, that had given it its nickname among Protectors. Both races qualified as very bad news, especially since the only way for either race to be doing it would be as a result of a massive cultural shift—greater than what a human Protector had arranged three and a half centuries back.

  Therefore, somebody had done something unusually stupid. Peace never even wondered who would have to fix it.

  Shleer couldn't take another minute of the horror in the harem, not one, so he went up the wall to the loops in the ceiling and used them to get across to the exhaust vent. The plastic wrapper was still in its crevice, and he put it on and squirmed out through a passage that shouldn't have held a kzintosh—was specifically designed not to, in fact; that was the whole point. It had been widened at key spots by Felix, of course.

  Shleer missed Felix Buckminster. The ancient, fully-Named cyborg kzin might not have known what to do, but at least he would have been someone to talk to. Shleer was as alone as any kzin could be on his own planet.

  He got to the death trap—stasis-wire mesh—and got out a grippy to work the maintenance controls, which were designed for Jotok use. The access panel slid back, Shleer checked for observers and emerged, and the panel shut again. Shleer opened the outside of the maintenance duct with a panel which wasn't supposed to be movable, swung out over empty air, and closed the panel, clinging to handholds invisible from below. He hung upside down by a foot while he removed the wrapper—if a human could do it, he could do it!—then hauled himself back up, took a better hold, and put it into another crevice.

  Then he turned and leapt toward the God of the Jotok as an arm went past.

  The souvenir of conquest of the Jotoki homeworld was immense, but there was no way to see the thing while settled firmly enough to leap the full distance, and as it was silent in its rotation Shleer simply had no choice but to remember the timing after seeing it upside down. If he ever got it wrong, there was going to be considerable puzzlement after they found his body; it was about a two-hundred-foot drop, from nowhere anybody knew about.

  Getting back was always a lot easier, though. He faced his target then.

  He got to the end of the arm just as it passed the floor, and gave himself a light, military-looking brushing once he was down. A front-and-back medallion went over his head, labeling him a Patriarch's Guest—well, he was—and he padded comfortably into the more modern areas of Rrit's Past.

  It was a bad habit to get into a routine, but this was something nobody knew about anyway, so the first place he always went was to see the Patriarch's Peer.

  Harvey Mossbauer stood in the exact spot he had been in when the bomb decapitated him. They'd had to pretty much build a new harem anyway, so that was done in a more secure location and the House of the Patriarch's Past was expanded to include this area. Reassembling him must have been awfully difficult, and there had been some dispute about whether to include both arms—one having been lost a couple of floors up. Patriarch Hrocht-Ao-Rritt had said all of him, though, and nobody had altered that since.

  He had his gear these days. Some Patriarchs had thought he looked more fierce all by himself, but he looked more right with his weapons. He stood poised to spin and kick, flechette launcher strapped to the extended forearm, anemone in the hand drawn back to thrust. Five empty slots were left in the anemone bandolier, a nice historical touch; he'd left four in Companions who had decided to engage in claw-and-fang combat.

  They were the only kzinti he'd killed before reaching the harem. He'd disabled more than sixty-four—

  The bandolier, Shleer was annoyed to see, was now filled, by the new and unhistoried Tender-of-Legends no doubt. Shleer took four and put a fifth into the Peer's hand.

  He wished the Peer was alive. The Peer had clearly known how to manage his priorities, and wouldn't attack kzinti until the real problem was solved.

  Shleer realized someone was coming, and began moving to remain continuously out of sight. He was extremely annoyed at the interruption, which was the first of its kind.

  A Tnuctip scurried in, through, and out the far side without so much as look
ing at the Peer. Shleer was doubly offended. They'd never come in here before; the least the little monster could have done was appreciate the display.

  Though it might not have had a choice.

  Come to that, what could it be doing? The only things down that way were still older history (which he doubted was its goal) or the servant quarters, with their laboratories—and the lifeboat they'd come from.

  Shleer considered. What would the Peer have done in this situation?

  Harvey Mossbauer (he deserved three Names, but no other was ever discovered, and it would have been disrespectful to assign him one) had come, after many years, to inflict justice. He had infallibly turned toward the harem wherever there was a choice; he had used ammunition that disabled without being immediately fatal, causing pursuit to be obstructed by autodoc remotes; he had blasted walls to open shortcuts, or to block reinforcements, but the only antipersonnel charge he'd set off was in the harem itself. The Patriarch had killed his family; he killed the Patriarch's family; now they were even.

  The Peer would have gathered information. And he would have made plans.

  Shleer followed the Tnuctip.

  Larry Greenberg stepped into the stasis capsule and the door closed.

  Suddenly the gravity was different—but lighter? This wasn't Jinx!

  The door opened. There was an alien standing there, resembling nothing so much as the mummy of a patient dead of terminal arthritis. With a head like a deformed basketball. It wore a white sleeveless singlet from neck to knees, apparently made out of filled pockets.

  A really smart alien, too. Mind too fast to read. "Speak English?" he said helplessly.

  "Yes, but I still have to point at the menus," it replied.

  "What?"

  "Come out, will you?"

  He came out, feeling foolish, and stopped. The Lazy Eight III, colony ship to Jinx, was gone. His stasis capsule had been brought inside another, bigger(!) ship—"What the hell happened?"