The Man-Kzin Wars 05

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

“What did you do?” Spots demanded, springing back and bruising his tail against a timber upright. He rubbed at it absently, eyes locked on the tnuctipun spacecraft with the same intent longing that they might have fixed on a zianya bound in the blood trough of a feasting table.

“I did nothing,” Bigs said.

Jonah grunted, and Hans whistled softly. For the better part of a week, nothing. And now the stasis field had vanished, seemingly of its own accord.

The hull had turned… translucent, as well. Much of the interior seemed to be packed solid with equipment of various sorts; none of it familiar, although he thought he recognized something like the wave-guides of a gravity polarizer. If it’s that small, arid can lift this ship, it’s better than anything we or the kzin can make, he thought. Nothing this size could make space on its own-the power-plant alone would be too large-and nothing this size could possibly mount a superluminal drive, from what little was publicly known about them. On the other hand, nothing humans or kzinti knew would stand three billion years of immersion in liquid metal, either.

“Tnuctipun,” he whispered, awed. In the center of the forward bulge was a capsule, and inside that he could dimly see the outline of a body inside a cocoon of tubes and wires.

Small, was his first thought. He knew from his time on the thrintun ship Ruling Mind that tnuctipun were small; they had built that thrintun vessel, and many of the crawlspaces were too cramped for a human to enter. Long limbs in proportion to the body, and twelve digits, longer and more jointed than human fingers. Another indication; there was a rough correlation between manual dexterity and the length of time a species had been sentient. Dolphins and bandersnatch were exceptions, of course. Overall he thought it would come to about his waist standing erect, but the arms were as long as his. A single nostril in the long snout, ahead of an even longer swelling of braincase; a pattern of holes on either side of the head that might correspond to ears, or might not; two large eyes and a smaller one set where the forehead would be if there was one. The eyelids dosed side-to-side rather than up and down.

I’m the first human ever to see a tnuctipun, Jonah thought, slightly dazed. He stepped forward, acutely conscious of the smell of his own sweat, of the ginger scent of the kzin. They were staying well back; not that they were more fearful than he, just less driven by curiosity.

“It’s hurt,” he said, peering closely with his hands on the absolute smoothness of the hull; it was an odd sensation, the palms always trying to slip away.

Whatever the tnuctipun was floating in was liquid, and reddish blood was hazing the egg-shaped chamber; it thinned and flowed away as he watched. An autodoc, he realized. Doubling as a pilot’s crash couch. Some small scoutcraft and atmosphere flyers used that arrangement, with a high-oxygen liquid for breathing. A body with open air spaces inside it was much more vulnerable to acceleration than one whose lungs were solidly filled with incompressible liquid. Why bother if they had gravity polarizers? he wondered. Then: ah. Gravity waves were detectible, and the ones from a polarizer much more so than the natural variety. A clandestine operations craft, no doubt. The tnuctipun had probably been a spy, and the ship designed to slip onto thrintun-held planets during the war of the Revolt. Jonah was willing to bet a great deal that the hull material was superlatively stealthed, as well as near-as-no-matter invulnerable.

“You realize what this means?” he said, looking at the others. “It means we four are potentially the richest beings in known space.”

“Means we could all lose our heads, hearts and testicles when the gov’mint gets its claws on us,” Hans said dourly. The kzin both snapped their jaws shut: We are meat.

“We certainly are if Markham or the ARM get hold of us,” Jonah mused.

And the bleeping ARM wouldn’t even use this stuff particularly now we’re beating the pussies. At that thought his head came up, raking his eyes across the kzin. Both returned his glance blandly, looking aside in carnivore courtesy. The Patriarchy would use it, he knew. Kzinti had never been able to afford antitech prejudice; they had less natural inventiveness than humans to begin with. Tanj. And we were ready to kill each other over gold, much less this.

A voice spoke in his ear, in the Hero’s Tongue: “What did you do?”

Jonah jumped backwards; then he noticed everyone else around the spacecraft had done likewise; the Kzinamaratsov brothers were whirling in place, trying to find whatever was speaking beside their ears.

“It’s hurt,” the voice said, in Wunderlander with a trace of Sol Belt accent. The wet sound of kzin jaws closing on air followed.

The kzin were bristling. “Haunted weapons,” Spots said, snapping twice.

“Translator program,” Jonah said. “The systems are active, if not the pilot. It’s trying to talk to us.” It was vibrating the air beside their ears somehow, not too startling compared to the rest of the technology.

“That is beyond my parameters,” the computer said. “I must consult my operator before I can make further judgments.”

Jonah opened his mouth to reply, and found himself croaking. A startled glance outside showed darkness.

“We’d better knock it off for a while,” he said. Nerve wracking work.

Especially when the translator program had spent an hour trying to find out which side they were on in the tnuctipun-thrintun war; it seemed to have a bee in its bonnet about that, understandably enough. He strongly suspected that it also had a self-destruct subroutine, and would engage it if it ‘thought’ that they were part of a thrint slave-species. The type of suicide bomb available to a culture whose basic energy source was matter conversion did not bear thinking of. You could tell a good deal about the people who designed an infosystem by talking to one of their programs, and there was a pristine ruthlessness to this one that even the kzin found chilling.

No wonder the Revolt wiped out intelligent life, he thought. They had had to take a datalink out and show the ship’s system the stars before it really seemed to believe them about the length of time that had passed. At that, it was probably fortunate that the pilot was still comatose. The computer had limited autonomy; it was very powerful, right up with the great machines that ran the UN Space Navy from Gibraltar Base in the Sol Belt, but not a true personality, as far as he could tell. Neither human nor kzinti designers had ever been able to make a really sentient system that did not go catatonic within months. Evidently the ancient world of the Slaver Empire had been no more successful. At least the Al was completely logical; Finagle alone knew what a conscious but traumatized tnuctipun would do on realizing it was the only member of its species left in a universe changed beyond recognition.

Jonah shivered again. That did not bear thinking about either. When the Yamamoto dropped him and Ingrid Raines off into the kzin-occupied Alpha Centauri system two years ago they had decelerated by using a stasis field-one of the few the UN had been able to make-and skidding through the photosphere of the star A little, little mistake and they would have spent the next several billion years in stasis themselves-until Alpha Centauri went nova, perhaps. Then the invulnerable bubble of not-time might have been flung out, eventually to land on a planet. To wait while intelligent life arose or arrived, then be opened. He swallowed, mind exploring the concept the way a tongue might probe at a sore tooth. At that, there would have been two of us, he thought. And I’d still have gone off the deep end.

Jonah was preoccupied enough not to notice the extra figure at the campfire, as he walked downslope to the tents. Spots and Bigs had better senses; he looked up sharply at their angry hisses of territorial violation.

“You all seemed to be busy,” Tyra Nordbo said, crouched by the fire. “So I thought I’d help myself to some of this coffee.”

With her free hand, she pitched something small and heavy out into the firelight. All of them recognized the material. After a moment, they recognized the shape; the hole in the rear section of the tnuctipun ship’s hull matched it exactly.

“No, of course I haven’t reported back to Herrenmann Montferrat,” Tyra said. “How could I? The government

– which means the ARM, remember- is monitoring all frequencies and all the cable and satellite links. There is still a state of military emergency on, you know.”

Jonah relaxed slightly; out of the corner of his eye, he could see Spots and Bigs doing likewise, the ruffs of fur around their throats and shoulders sinking back to the level of the rest of their pelts. Their eyes stayed locked on the young woman, ominously steady, glints of silver and red in the gathering dark against the ruddy orange of their fun Hans was imperturbable as he sucked his pipe to a glowing ember.

“You really don’t have much choice but to go through with your agreement, as far as I can see,” she went on.

“Oh?” Jonah said, softly. “We didn’t bargain to hand over the Secret of the Ages for a pat on the head and a few thousand krona.”

Bigs snorted agreement, followed by a low growl. Spots was silent, but the tip of his tongue showed as he panted slightly.

“It’s too big,” Tyra said. “The ARM would give anything to suppress this-they’ll take the tnuctipun back to Earth, put it in the museum next to the Sea Statue, that thrint they bottled up again, and that’ll be that. You know them. They have a lot of influence here on Wunderland these days. To make any use of the secret, you’d have to have a powerful patron of your own-or,” she added with a gamine chuckle that made her look twelve for a second, “you could take it and sell it to the Outsiders or the Patriarch of Kzin. No offense,” she added in the brothers’ direction.

Bigs snarled, a sound like ripping canvass, Spots snorted, a flupp sound. “None taken,” he said.

“Besides which,” she went on, “I know about it,, and it’s my duty to see that the most responsible authority takes charge of it for the benefit of Wunderland- of everyone, eventually. That means Montferrat. Of course, you could kill me and bury my body.” She leaned back against her saddle. “Up to you, mein herren.”

Blast, she had to go and say it, Jonah thought His palms were damp. I’m a-moderately-law abiding type, he mused. And normally, I’d be against offing anyone that good-looking on general principle. But Finagle there’s a lot at stake here!

Odd, how ambition struck. He had never been conscious of wealth as something he lacked, before. Enough to be comfortable, yes; the loss of that had been shocking when Early had him railroaded out of the UN Space Navy and then blacklisted. A little more of the gold, yes; independence had looked awfully desirable. The tnuctipun’s secrets were more than wealth, they were power. The problem was, they were proportionately risky.

“Ja, Fra Nordbo,” Hans said mildly. “Those look to be the alternatives, don’t they?” Tyra stiffened; she had not meant to be taken literally. “If you’d let us talk it over in private, for a minute?” He waggled his pipe towards the kzinti; it would be futile to try and run in the dark, with them ready to scent-track as accurately as hounds and with intelligence to boot.

As soon as she had withdrawn, Bigs spoke: “Kill him. I mean her.” Kzinti females were mute and subsentient, probably another consequence of genetic engineering, and kzintosh-male kzin-had trouble remembering that sexual dimorphism was not so extreme among the race of Man. The matter was academic to them, of course. “We owe the monkey-hrreaheerr, Montferrat human only money. We can pay him off with gold. The secrets in that craft will make us Patriarchs!”

“Or make us dead,” Hans said. “Killing the girl-the Provisional Gendarmerie, they don’t worry about trifles like proof. They just shoot you. Can’t spend if you’re dead. I wish we hadn’t found it, I truly do.”

“I also,” Spots said surprisingly. “But it is done.” His breed wasted little time on regrets. “My sibling is right

– in potential. Hans-human is also right-as to the risk. I scratch dirt upon the dung of risk… but there is no glory in defeat It is a difficult matter.”

“We can’t kill Tyra-the girl,” Jonah said reasonably.

The two kzin looked at each other. Bigs rolled his eyes toward Jonah and made a complex gesture, involving fingers wiggling at the muzzle, flapping ears, a ripple of the fur and an arch of the back. It meant mating frenzy; also stupidity and madness.

“Hrrrr.” Spots lay his chin on his hands and turned his eyes on Jonah. “We must agree, whatever we do. Or else fight each other.” He added kindly: “If all agree to kill the female, we will do it; you need not watch. We will even forgo eating it.”

“Bleeping hell you-“Jonah forced calm. Breath in. Breath out. Ommmm-“Look, I know it’s tempting for you, but I’ve decided; we really can’t do anything but sell to Montferrat. Wunderland’s our only market. They won’t let us get off planet! Montferrat is the only market on Wunderland that won’t slap us in a psychist’s chair. And kill you two, by the way.”

“I think Fra Nordbo should go,” Hans said. He gestured with his pipe as Jonah stared round. “Nothing against her personal. No, seems a nice enough sort Still, I’m a Wunderlander-commoner, like my parents before me. Don’t like the thought that we hand this to the new government; too cozy by half with the Earthers. Don’t like the idea of the Herrenmann getting it, either-tired of them running things, and throwing us scraps.” He smiled across at the kzin without showing his teeth. “Since you fellers’ friends back home can’t get it, that don’t come into the picture.”

Tanjit! Jonah thought. Aloud: “Look, we’ve had a long day. What say we turn in? She isn’t going anywhere. We can consider it in the morning.”

“Logic will be the same in the morning,” Spots said reasonably. “Also, you will not find the decision easier once you have mated.”

“I don’t intend to mate!” Jonah snapped. Although Finagle knows I’d like to. Aliens had trouble with the details of human social interaction. “And I say let’s think it over in the morning.”