Larry Niven's Man-Kzin Wars II Read online

  He made the same preparations as before, this time with shreds of smelly Kzin rations as well, and stood leaning against the cage for long moments, facing Lolita who lurked fifty meters away, to make his point. The young woman revolving slowly inside the cage was at his mercy. Then he pressed the baseplate, turned his back as the plastic levered upward, and strode off a few paces with a sigh. This one was a Neanderthal and no mistake; curves a little too broad to be exciting, massive forearms and calves, pug nose, considerable body hair. Nice tits, though. Stop it, fool!

  The young woman stirred, sat up, looked around, then let her big jaw drop comically as she stared at Locklear, whose smile was a very rickety construction. She cocked her head at him, impassive, an instant before he spoke.

  “You’re no beauty, lady, so maybe you won’t throw rocks at me. Too late for breakfast,” he continued in his sweetest tones and a pointing finger. “How about lunch?”

  She saw the bowls. Slowly, with caution and surprising grace, she stepped from the scooter’s deck still eyeing him without smile or frown. Then she squatted to inspect the food, knees apart, facing him, and Locklear grew faint at the sight. He looked away quickly, flushing, aware that she continued to stare at him while sampling human and Kzin rations with big strong teeth and wrinklings of her nose that made her oddly attractive. More attractive. Why the hell doesn’t she cover up or something?

  He pulled another plum from a pocket, and this magic drew a smile from her as they ate. He realized she was through eating when she wiped sticky fingers in her straight black hair, and stepped back by reflex as she stepped toward him. She stopped, with a puzzled inclination of her head, and smiled at him. That was when he stood his ground and let her approach. He had hoped for something like this, so the watching Lolita could see that he meant no harm.

  When the woman stood within arm’s length of him she stopped. He put a hand on his breast. “Me Locklear you Jane,” he said.

  “(Something,)” she said. Maybe Kh-roofeh.

  He was going to try saying it himself when she startled him into a wave of actual physical weakness. With eyes half-closed, she cupped her full breasts in both hands and smiled. He looked at her erect nipples, feeling the rush of blood to his face, and showed her his hands in a broad helpless shrug. Whereupon, she took his hands and placed them on her breasts, and now her big black eyes were not those of a savage Neanderthal but a sultry smiling Levantine woman who knew how to make a point. Two points.

  Three points, as he felt a rising response and knew her hands were seeking that rise, hands that had never known velcrolok closures yet seemed to have an intelligence of their own. His whole body was tingling now as he caressed her, and when her hands found that fabric closure, she shared a fresh smile with him, and tried to pull him down on the ground with her.

  So he took her hands in his and walked her to the cabin. She “hmm”ed when he pulled the latchcord loop to open the door, and “ahh”ed when she saw the big pallet, and then offered those swarthy full breasts again and put her face against the hollow of his throat, and toyed inside his velcrolok closure until he astonished her by pulling his entire flight suit off, and offered her body in ways simple and sophisticated, and Locklear accepted all the offers he could, and made a few of his own, all of which she accepted expertly.

  He had his first sensation of something eerie, something just below his awareness, as he lay inert on his back bathed in honest sweat, his partner lying face-down more or less across him like one stick abandoned across another stick after both had been rubbed to kindle a blaze. He saw a movement at his window and knew it was Lolita, peering silently in. He sighed.

  His partner sighed, too, and turned toward the window with a quick, vexed burst of some command. The face disappeared.

  He chuckled, “Did you hear the little devil, or smell her?” Actually, his partner had more of the eau de sweatsock perfume than Lolita did; now more pronounced than ever. He didn’t care. If the past half-hour had been any omen, he might never care again.

  She stretched then, and sat up, dragging a heel that was rough as a rasp across his calf. Her heavy ragged nails had scratched him, and he was oily from God knew what mixture of greases in her long hair. He didn’t give a damn about that either, reflecting that a man should allow a few squeaks in the hinges of the pearly gates.

  She said something then, softly, with that tilt of her head that suggested inquiry. “Locklear,” he replied, tapping his chest again.

  Her look was somehow pitying then, as she repeated her phrase, placing one hand on her head, the other on his.

  “Oh yeah, you’re my girl and I’m your guy,” he said, nodding, placing his hands on hers.

  She sat quite still for a moment, her eyes sad on his. Then, delighting him, she placed one hand on his breast and managed a passable, “Loch-leah.”

  He grinned and nodded, then cocked his head and placed a hand between her (wonderful!) breasts. No homecoming queen, but dynamite in deep shadows…

  He paid more attention as she said, approximately, “Ch’roofh,” and when he repeated it she laughed, closing her eyes with downcast chin. A big chin, a really whopping big one to be honest about it, and then he caught her gaze, not angry but perhaps reproachful, and again he felt the passage of something like a cold breeze through his awareness.

  She rubbed his gooseflesh down for him, responding to his “ahh”s, and presently she astonished him again by beginning to query him on the names of things. Locklear knew that he could thoroughly confuse her if he insisted on perfectly grammatical tenses, cases, and syntax. He tried to keep it simple, and soon learned that “head down, eyes shut” was the same as a negative headshake. “Chin elevated, smiling” was the same as a nod—and now he realized he’d seen her giving him yesses that way from the first moment she awoke. A smile or a frown was the same for her as for him—but that heads-up smile was a definite gesture.

  She drew him outside again presently, studying the terrain with lively curiosity, miming actions and listening as he provided words, responding with words of her own.

  The name he gave her was, in part, because it was faintly like the one she’d offered; and in part because she seemed willing to learn his ways while revealing ancient ways of her own. He named her “Ruth.” Locklear felt crestfallen when, by midafternoon, he realized Ruth was learning his language much faster than he was learning hers. And then, as he glanced over her shoulder to see little Lolita creeping nearer, he began to understand why.

  Ruth turned quickly, with a shouted command and warning gestures, and Lolita dropped the sharpened stick, she’d been carrying. Locklear knew beyond doubt that Lolita had made no sound in her approach. There was only one explanation that would fit all his data: Ruth unafraid of him from the first; offering herself as if she knew his desires; keeping track of Lolita without looking; and her uncanny speed in learning his language.

  And that moment when she’d placed her hand on his head, with an inquiry that was somehow pitying. Now he copied her gesture with one hand on his own head, the other on hers, and lowered his head, eyes shut. “No,” he said. “Locklear, no telepath. Ruth, yes?”

  “Ruth, yes.” She pointed to Lolita then. “No—telpat.”

  She needed another ten minutes of pantomime, attending to his words and obviously to his thoughts as he spoke them, to get her point across. Ruth was a “gentle,” but like Locklear himself, Lolita was a “new.”

  When darkness came to Newduvai, Lolita got chummier in a hurry, complaining until Ruth let her into the cabin. Despite that, Ruth didn’t seem to like the girl much and accepted Locklear’s name for her, shortening it to “Loli.” Ruth spoke to her in their common tongue, not so much guttural as throaty, and Locklear had a strong impression that they were old acquaintances. Either of them could tend a fire expertly, and both were wary of the light from his Kzin memory screen until they found that it would not singe a curious finger.

  Locklear was bothered on two counts by Loli’s insistence on
taking pieces of Kzin plastic film to make a bikini suit: first because Ruth plainly thought it silly, and second because the kid was more appealing with it than she was when stark naked. At least the job kept Loli silently occupied, listening and watching as Locklear got on with the business of talking with Ruth.

  Their major breakthrough for the evening came when Locklear got the ideas of past and future, “before” and “soon,” across to Ruth. Her telepathy was evidently the key to her quick grasp of his language; yet it seemed to work better with emotional states than with abstract ideas, and she grew upset when Loli became angry with her own first clumsy efforts at making her panties fit. Clearly, Ruth was a lady who liked her harmony.

  For Ruth was, despite her rude looks, a lady—when she wasn’t in the sack. Even so, when at last Ruth had seen to Loli’s comfort with spare fabric and Locklear snapped off the light, he felt inviting hands on him again. “No thanks,” he said, chuckling, patting her shoulder, even though he wanted her again. And Ruth knew he did, judging from her sly insistence.

  “No. Loli here,” he said finally, and felt Ruth shrug as if to say it didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t matter to Neanderthals, but—“Soon,” he promised, and shared a hug with Ruth before they fell asleep.

  During the ensuing week, he learned much. For one thing, he learned that Loli was a chronic pain in the backside. She ate like a Kzin warrior. She liked to see if things would break. She liked to spy. She interfered with Locklear’s pace during his afternoon “naps” with Ruth by whacking on the door with sticks and stones, until he swore he would “…hit Loli soon.”

  But Ruth would not hear of that. “Hit Loli, same hit Ruth head. Locklear like hit Ruth head?”

  But one afternoon, when she saw Locklear studying her with friendly intensity, Ruth spoke to Loli at some length. The girl picked up her short spear and, crooning her happiness, loped off into the forest. Ruth turned to Locklear smiling. “Loli find fruitwater, soon Ruth make fruitfood.” A few minutes of miming showed that she had promised to make some kind of dessert, if Loli could find a beehive for honey.

  Locklear had seen beehives in stasis, but explained that there were very few animals loose on Newduvai, and no hurtbugs.

  “No hurtbugs? Loli no find, long time. Good,” Ruth replied firmly, and led him by the hand into their cabin, and “good” was the operative word.

  On his next trip to the crypt, Locklear needed all day for his solitary work. He might put it off forever, but it was clear by now that he must populate Newduvai with game before he released their most fearsome predators. The little horses needed only to see daylight before galloping off. Camels were quicker still, and the deer bounded off like golf balls down a freeway. The predators would simply have to wait until the herds were larger, and the day was over before he could rig grav polarizers to trundle mammoths to the mouth of the crypt. His last job of the day was his most troublesome, releasing small cages of bees near groves of fruit trees and wildflowers.

  Locklear and Ruth managed to convey a lot with only a few hundred words, though some of those words had to do multiple duty while Ruth expanded her vocabulary. When she said “new,” for example, it often carried a stigma. Neanderthals, he decided, were very conservative folk, and they sensed a lie before you told it. If Ruth was any measure, they also had little aptitude for math. She understood one and two and many. She understood “none,” but not as a number. If there wasn’t any, she conveyed to him, why try to count it? She had him there.

  Eventually, between food-gathering forays, he used pebbles and sketches to tell Ruth of the many, many other animals and people he could bring to the scene. She was no sketch artist; in fact, she insisted, women were not supposed to draw things—especially hunt-things. Ah, he said, magics were only for men? Yes, she said, then mystified him with pantomimes of sleep and pain. That was for men, too, and food-gathering was for women.

  He pursued the mystery, sketching with the Kzin memo screen. At last, when she pretended to cut her throat with his wtsai knife, he understood, and added the word “kill” to her vocabulary. Men hunted and killed.

  Dry-mouthed, he asked, “Man like kill Locklear?”

  Now it was her turn to be mystified. “No kill. Why kill magic man?”

  Because, he replied, “Locklear like Ruth, one-two other men like Ruth. Kill Locklear for Ruth?”

  He had never seen her laugh aloud, but he saw it now, the big teeth gleaming, breasts shaking with merriment. “Locklear like Ruth, good. Many man like Ruth, good.”

  He was silent for a long time, fighting the temptation to tell her that many men liking Ruth was not good. Then: “Ruth like many man?”

  She had learned to nod by now, and did it happily.

  The next five minutes were troubled ones for Locklear. Ruth did not seem to understand monogamy in any form. Apparently, everybody took pot luck in the sex department and was free to accept or reject. Some people were simply more popular than others. “Many man like Ruth,” she said. “Many, many, many…”

  “Okay, for Christ’s sake, I get the idea,” he exploded, and again he saw that look of sadness—or perhaps pain. “Locklear see, Ruth popular with man.” It seemed to be their first quarrel. Tentatively, he said, “Locklear little popular with woman.”

  “Much popular with Ruth,” she said, and began to rub his shoulders. That was the day she asked him about her appearance, and he responded the best way he could. She thought it silly to trim her strong, useful nails; sillier to wash her hair. Still, she did it, and he claimed she was pretty, and she knew he lied.

  When it occurred to him to ask how he could look nice for her, Ruth said, “Locklear pretty now.” But he never thought to wonder if she might be lying.

  Whatever Ruth said about women and hunting, it did not seem to apply to Loli. While aloft in the scooter one day to study distribution of the animals, Locklear saw the girl chasing a hare across a meadow. She was no slouch with a short spear and nailed the hare on her second toss, dispatching it with a stone after a brief struggle. He lowered the scooter very, very slowly, watching her tear at the animal, disgusted when he realized she was eating it raw.

  She saw his shadow when the scooter was hovering very near, and sat there blushing, looking at him with the innards of the hare across her lap.

  She understood few of his words—or seemed to, at the cabin—but his tone was clear enough. “You couldn’t share it, you little bastard. No, you sneak out here and stuff yourself.” She began to suck her thumb, pouting. Then perhaps Loli realized the boss must be placated; she tried a smile on her blood-streaked face and held her grisly trophy out.

  “No. Ruth. Give to Ruth,” he scowled, pointing toward the cabin. She elevated her chin and smiled, and he flew off grumbling. He couldn’t much blame the kid; Kzin rations and fruit were getting pretty tiresome, and the gruel Ruth made from grain wasn’t all that exciting without bits of meat. It was going to be rougher on the animals when he woke the men.

  And why wake them at all? You’ve got it good here, he reminded himself in Sequence Umpteen of his private dialogue. You have your own little world and a harem of one, and you know when her period comes so you know when not to play. And one of these days, Loli will be a knockout, I suspect. A much niftier dish than poor Ruth, who doesn’t know what a skag she’d be in modern society, thank God.

  Moments like this made him squirm. Setting Ruth’s looks aside, he had no complaint, not even about the country itself. Not much seasonal change, no dangerous animals unless you want to release them, certainly none of the most dangerous animal of all. Except for Kzinti, of course. One on one, they were meaner predators than men—even Neanderthal savages.

  “That’s why I have to release ’em,” he said to the wind. “If a fully-manned Kzin ship comes, I’ll need an army.” He no longer kidded himself about scholarship and the sociology of homo neanderthalensis, which was strictly a secondary item. It was sobering to look yourself over and see self-interest riding you like a hunchback. So
he flew directly to the crypt and spent the balance of the day releasing the whoppers: aurochs and bison, which didn’t make him sweat much, and a half-dozen mammoths, which did.

  A mammoth, he found, was a flighty beast not given to confrontations. He could set one shambling off with a shout, its trunk high like a periscope tasting the breeze. Every one of them turned into the wind and disappeared toward the frostline, and now the crypt held only its most dangerous creatures.

  He returned to the cabin perilously late, the sun of Newduvai dying while he was still a hundred meters from the wisp of smoke rising from the cabin. He landed blind near the cabin, very slowly but with a jolt, and saw the faint gleam of the Kzin light leap from the cabin window. Ruth might not have a head for figures, but she’d seen him snap that light on fifty times. And she must’ve sensed my panic. I wonder how far off she can do that…

  Ruth already had succulent broiled haunches of Loli’s hare, keeping them warm over coals, and it wrenched his heart as he saw she was drooling as she waited for him. He wiped the corner of her mouth, kissed her anyhow, and sat at the rough pole table while she brought his supper. Loli had obviously eaten, and watched him as if fearful that he would order her outside.

  Hauling mammoths, even with a grav polarizer, is exhausting work. After finishing off a leg of hare, and falling asleep at the table, Locklear was only half-aware when Ruth picked him up and carried him to their pallet as easily as she would have carried a child.

  The next day, he had Ruth convey to Loli that she was not to hunt without permission. Then, with less difficulty than he’d expected, he sketched and quizzed her about the food of a Neanderthal tribe. Yes, they hunted everything: bugs to mammoths, it was all protein, but chiefly they gathered roots, grains, and fruits.