Man-Kzin Wars IX Part 10

"They are not attacking because they fear our weapons?"

"I think they are not attacking because the UNSN wants us alive."

"Why?"

"I do not know. If it is a matter of dishonor we may still die heroically. But I have Hroarh-Captain's orders." He dialed some food. There was almost nothing left now but basic infantry rations. He sloshed bourbon-and-prawn ice cream on one of the unappetizing blocks of protein and carbohydrate and pa.s.sed it to the kit.

"Now you may say you have eaten Sergeant's food, Vaemar-Riit," he told it. "Soon you will make a soldier!" The kit looked dubious but took determined bites at the brick-like material. Not what you would have got at the palace Not what you would have got at the palace, the Sergeant thought. Still, none could accuse Chuut-Riit of softness, even to his own. You have missed training by the most lethal combat master on the planet, little one. Still, none could accuse Chuut-Riit of softness, even to his own. You have missed training by the most lethal combat master on the planet, little one.

Some had had accused Chuut-Riit of certain other things, of course, though not within his hearing if they wished to live. According to Lord Ktrodni-Stkaa's faction he had been a human-lover, altogether too interested in the behavior of the slave species (the accused Chuut-Riit of certain other things, of course, though not within his hearing if they wished to live. According to Lord Ktrodni-Stkaa's faction he had been a human-lover, altogether too interested in the behavior of the slave species (the former former slave species). slave species).

Raargh-Sergeant had attended a couple of Chuut-Riit's lectures on the subject of how valuable, with a few more generations of culling, humans might be. He was on the right track to be interested He was on the right track to be interested, he thought, even if, to use a human term, he didn't know the half of it even if, to use a human term, he didn't know the half of it. He remembered something of those lectures now.

Humans, according to Chuut-Riit, had originally hunted in larger groups than had kzin. This both gave them greater social cohesion and meant the greater growth of power diversity. In the Kzinti Empire, power had diversified because, with the slowness of the speed of light, communications took many years. In the Alpha Centauri system humans had diversified more rapidly and spontaneously. Those who lived among the asteroids were in many ways not the same as those on-planet, tending to be descended from s.p.a.ce-born stock in the Man-Sun system, and all the humans in this system were different to those who lived on their home-world.

Humans could be the most valuable slaves ever encountered. And yet, Chuut-Riit had said in his last lecture, there were things beyond this: the new kzinti study of humans was indicating secret spoor.

Until the war had disrupted communications between them, the humans of their homeworld had set out to subtly and secretly control and influence the humans of the Ka'as.h.i.+ Ka'as.h.i.+ System. The System. The UNSN, UNSN, or or Yarooensssn Yarooensssn, the Sol-humans' chief s.p.a.ce and military force, the simian equivalent of the Patriarch's Navy (only Chuut-Riit could get away with saying there was was a simian equivalent to the Patriarch's Navy) was not the ultimate human power. a simian equivalent to the Patriarch's Navy) was not the ultimate human power.

There was something called Arrum Arrum, itself apparently the tool of something else that had no name. There was a system known as konspirruussee konspirruussee, which, Chuut-Riit has said, subtly sought to control not only the monkeys, but might in some way come to threaten the Heroic Race itself. Its invisible tentacles reached far. Individuals on Ka'as.h.i.+ Ka'as.h.i.+, kzintosh who had had dealings with humans, had already touched the edges of it . . .

Well, there was meat in all this. It seemed the Ka'as.h.i.+ Ka'as.h.i.+ humans-the humans-the Wunderland Wunderland humans now-were not the ultimate masters of the situation on this world. The humans now-were not the ultimate masters of the situation on this world. The Yarooensssn Yarooensssn-it was easier to visualise the symbols UNSN-had some claw upon them. And, it seemed, there might be something else beyond that. . . .

That was, no doubt, what restrained the Jocelyn-human at present and why he and his charges were still alive. The UNSN wanted them.

For what? Slaves? They must know no kzin would live long as a prisoner or live at all as a slave. Interrogation? There were dark stories of monkey tortures and chemicals for any kzin unHeroic enough to be taken alive, but what could sergeants and rankers tell the UNSN that it did not know? Sport in some human Public Hunt? Most of those here were too shot up to run well, though monkeys might like tormenting cripples (well, monkeys who had refused to run in the Hunt had gained nothing from it).

Hostages? The kzin had occasionally taken human hostages when wis.h.i.+ng to compel cooperation or the surrender of ferals but for a Hero, a kit of the Fanged G.o.d, the fate of a hostage of his own kind would not deflect his feet from the path of Heroism in dealing with an Enemy. A Hero taken hostage would be expected to die like a Hero. . . . They must not know of Chuut-Riit's son! They must not know of Chuut-Riit's son!

A darker possibility crossed his mind. Earlier in the war a human female had appeared briefly on television screens promising them roomy cages in the Munchen zoo with a diet of carrots and cabbages to pasture on, should they surrender, but this had apparently been a trick to madden senior officers into losing control and had not been seen for some time. He told himself it was not true. Rather, the UNSN and now Jocelyn had been promising honorable treatment. But which was the lie? Do not think of it. That way leads to madness, to clouded thoughts and inappropriate actions. Do not think of it. That way leads to madness, to clouded thoughts and inappropriate actions. That had been the subject of another lecture from the Great One: "They learnt early to make us lose control of our emotions. They exploited this ability in the earliest s.p.a.ce battles for this system, almost instinctively, before they had seen us. It is a variation of the old story of the That had been the subject of another lecture from the Great One: "They learnt early to make us lose control of our emotions. They exploited this ability in the earliest s.p.a.ce battles for this system, almost instinctively, before they had seen us. It is a variation of the old story of the kz'eerkti kz'eerkti teasing Heroes into frenzy in the forests of Homeworld." teasing Heroes into frenzy in the forests of Homeworld."

That reminded him of something. He beckoned to the kitten.

"That was a strange thing you did, Vaemar-Riit," he told it.

"I could think of nothing else, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. The man had to be diverted."

Kits of this one's age spent their time chasing their own tails and flutterbys in the meadow gra.s.s. "You mean"-he felt stunned for a moment-"that was what you planned planned?"

"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I wished to scream and leap when she drew weapons but I knew I was too little."

"There was danger. You know she might have shot you where you stood. Or flung the ratchet-knife into you."

"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I knew. But here your life is more important than mine."

"I see . . . You do not need your blazon or your ear tattoos, Vaemar-Riit . . . not for all to see that you are truly Chuut-Riit's son. And here no life is more important than yours. The kzin of Ka'as.h.i.+ Ka'as.h.i.+ will have need of you." He bent and licked the kitten's head. will have need of you." He bent and licked the kitten's head.

Jorg came forward: "Raargh-Sergeant, your pardon, may I speak?"

"Yes. Speak on."

"They demand my life, don't they?"

"Yes."

"Perhaps I should go to them. It would save you."

"You would give your life for us?"

"I think I am a dead man one way or another."

"You want your head on a pole like those others?"

"When you are dead, it hardly matters where your head is."

"We think differently. Look at Ptrr-Brunurn Ptrr-Brunurn. He is honored."

"If I or my kind deserve any Honor, history may honor us."

"I do not understand."

"Pa.s.sions may cool in a generation or so. They will come to see that we collaborators did what we did partly for them. Yes, for them. Without us to intercede between the ma.s.s of humans and the Heroes, things would have been worse for them than they were.

"I do not say this to sound heroi-to sound better than I am. But where would they have been without us to run some sort of government, to arrange some system of food and shelter as poverty and breakdown spread, to police our towns, to keep our farms and mines and factories working as well as we might, yes, to control lawless humans who might have attacked their own kind or brought terrible reprisals for attacking Heroes, to remove litter and maintain orphanages and see the dead were buried, to keep at least a few factories manufacturing the geriatric drugs?"

"Is that why you became chief of the monkey police? To be useful to your own kind?"

"This is no time for lying. I did it partly for those reasons but also to protect myself, my mate, my kits. But I am not innocent. I delivered resistance fighters to the Public Hunt. At first with sickness and shame and loathing and because I told myself I was serving a greater good, later more because it was my job and my nerves were deadened-trained monkey indeed. I and my people ate well when each day more starved. We drafted people to your war factories and s.h.i.+pyards and constructions, yes, and to serve in the Kzin fleets that attacked Earth. Later we helped hunt down Earth and UNSN agents and infiltrators. Some of us did a little sabotage of the administration when it was safe, or turned a blind eye to some resistance, at least before the Telepaths' checks began. We walked a tightrope. I am no human hero, like the abbot of this monastery. I am neither innocent nor wicked. I am guilty."

"The abbot? The Head of the Three Monkey-G.o.ds cult? I have played chesss chesss with him"-that human word was easy to p.r.o.nounce. Indeed it had entered the Heroes' Tongue. "Why do you say 'human hero'?" with him"-that human word was easy to p.r.o.nounce. Indeed it had entered the Heroes' Tongue. "Why do you say 'human hero'?"

"He fed and clothed many refugees here. Also, he sheltered human resistance fighters. I half knew. G.o.d help me, perhaps I would have handed him over long ago or pointed a Telepath towards him, for he was helping prolong the whole agony, but he was too popular with humans. And too many monks had been too brave. To send him to the Hunt would have meant more feral activity, more sabotage, more throats cut, more hydrofluoric acid thrown over Heroes in city alleyways at night, and more humans killed in reprisals, too, more human land expropriated. My lot was not to steer the s.h.i.+p of human destiny to some fair harbor, just to help keep it more or less afloat."

"He lied to me, then. I spoke to him at times. I thought he showed his mind to me at chesss chesss, and when we drank bourbon and ice cream together after a long game. Is there no end to monkey trickery?"

"I did not wholly lie to you. Neither, I think, did he. Once when we spoke he-I mean no insult and nor did he-likened you Raargh-Sergeant to a figure in his holy book, a centurion . . .

"There is much about kzinti I admire-your strength, your honor, your courage. Many humans, even your greatest enemies like Markham, admire you, more perhaps than those who merely tried to endure kzinti rule . . . As to an end to monkey trickery, I don't know. You have a low opinion of humans."

"You are omnivores. You are beneath opinion. We acknowledge some monkeys-like your Ptrr-Brunurn Ptrr-Brunurn-may be ent.i.tled to fighters' privileges and honors. I suppose you hated us too. Strange, a few weeks ago nothing in the world would have mattered to me less than how a human felt about me."

"Does it matter now? Yes, very nearly all of us hated you. For a very few lucky privileged ones perhaps admiration overcame hatred."

"H'rr. So my Honor is bound up with protecting a monkey who hates me? Will you kill me, monkey?"

"Did you not just say it did not matter how we felt? I will not lie to you now. How could we love the kzinti? As for killing you, until lately I was not one to think of such things much, save as a dream sometimes . . . Still, there were other things which some of us looked to," said Jorg. "We collaborators took them as signs of justification for our lives, of hope. Future generations might have invoked the wisdom and statesmans.h.i.+p of Jorg von Thoma. I am not a Markham who fights for humanity like a steel blade. . . . Sometimes I have felt that Judas also had a necessary part to play and knew exactly what he was doing and the price that he would have to pay. . . .

"Some of the younger generations of both kinds were cooperating more easily. You know that kzinti and human computer nerds would talk together. Some had begun to meet regularly. Each kind shared insights with the other, even unintentionally, and there was talk of forming something that might have developed into a club. Oh, I know kzinti computer nerds are despised by normal kzin as freaks and geniuses, but it might have been a start.

"And some, a very few, human and kzin poets had talked together, too. There was the story of Gunga Din, a dutiful monkey. I know one kzin poet was moved to describe 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' as pedestrian but showing that some monkeys at least had understandable military common sense and could celebrate a demonstration of it."

"If it comforts you," said Raargh-Sergeant, "know we have gradually come to refer to the most useful and obedient of you by your own monkey rank-t.i.tles more, and as sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti less . . . or some like Markham as less . . . or some like Markham as Ya-nar Ya-nar Kzinti Kzinti . . ." . . ."

"Sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti . . . that means 'trained monkeys,' doesn't it? and the other"-he struggled to p.r.o.nounce it-"the 'defiers of kzin'?'" . . . that means 'trained monkeys,' doesn't it? and the other"-he struggled to p.r.o.nounce it-"the 'defiers of kzin'?'"

"I know some of our kind were interested in humans. But as you say, they tended to be freaks."

"Perhaps they were freaks your people needed. I mean no disrespect, but was there not a little of that feeling in you personally? No, sheath your claws, Raargh-Sergeant-remember, was not the great Chuut-Riit among those who thought humans were worth systematic study?"

"That took mainly the form of dissection of their nervous systems, as far as I know. I do not think that is what you monkeys who looked to 'cooperation' had in mind. But there was some monkey history, too. And that brought back memories for me . . . When I was a kit a house-slave read me a human poem, 'The Ballad of the White Horse.' I like bits of that, though I do not know why:

Death blazes bright above the cup, And high above the Crown Yet in that Dream of battle We seem to tread it down . . .

"There were other lines: 'are slavery and starvation flowers/that you should pluck them so . . .' Yes, it comes back to me: . . .' Yes, it comes back to me:

Short time had s.h.a.ggy Ogier to swing his lance in line.

He knew King Alfred's axe on high, He heard it singing through the sky, He cowered beneath it with a cry.

It split him to the spine . . ."

Jorg nodded as the great felinoid's voice trailed off: "I know that poem too:

. . . I know The spirit with which you blindly band Has blessed destruction with his hand, But by G.o.d's death the stars still stand, And the small apples grow."

He went on: "We each wors.h.i.+p a single all-powerful G.o.d, a jealous G.o.d. Is that not also a bond between us? That we see something of the same truth behind the universe."

"That is for Priests and Conservors to say. A Priest of the Dark Pelt once said to me that with your bearded Jova Jova you may have a little glimmering of the truth. Your Bearded G.o.d and the Fanged G.o.d had their own respective kingdoms, perhaps. Mark you, he was very old and had been drinking bourbon at the time. He thought that though you are irritatingly between herd animals and hunters, yours is a G.o.d of the herd animals you partly resemble. You seek this thing you may have a little glimmering of the truth. Your Bearded G.o.d and the Fanged G.o.d had their own respective kingdoms, perhaps. Mark you, he was very old and had been drinking bourbon at the time. He thought that though you are irritatingly between herd animals and hunters, yours is a G.o.d of the herd animals you partly resemble. You seek this thing lurve lurve instead of Heroes' Respect for you are partial herd creatures. instead of Heroes' Respect for you are partial herd creatures.

"But I know we Heroes are the only pure carnivores to whom the Fanged G.o.d has granted the power to leap from star to star. We have encountered no others in hundreds of years of the Eternal Hunt, only a few herbivores or omnivores at best creeping between their own planets . . . until now. a.s.suredly the Fanged G.o.d decreed that we dominate you omnivores as you dominate herbivores and as herbivores dominate vegetables."

"With due respect, Raargh-Sergeant, it has not worked out like that."

"Who could have foreseen the hyperdrive?"

"Not I. I might have cut my cloak differently otherwise."

"Chuut-Riit thought human inventiveness was valuable: dental floss, blow dryers, toilet paper . . . You are amused?"

"That is what you valued in our culture?"

"We would never have thought of such things for ourselves . . . but many other things: chess, using reaction drives and ramscoop fields as weapons, ice cream, catnip, some of your liquors, h'rr . . ."

"See. Our words have entered the Heroes' Tongue. You p.r.o.nounce them without thinking. Could we have worked together?"

"I am Raargh-Sergeant. It is not for me to say."

"There may be many things it is for you to say now. Hroarh-Captain has not returned."

"What do you mean, monkey?" Claws to wtsai wtsai.

"I respectfully ask you to be calm. Perhaps he is not returning. Perhaps misfortune has befallen him. What if there is no one left higher in the chain of command than you?"

"If so, I will be guided by Honor. And that answers your question. You shall not go to the humans. Honor states that you shall continue to be protected by the Patriarchy. A little while ago I thought of this time as forsaken by the Fanged G.o.d. But is that not the point of it: is it not Honor to look at a universe in which your G.o.d has forsaken you, and still obey as He commands? What good is fair-weather Honor?"

"Very well. If you are content, so am I."

"Raargh-Sergeant!" Lesser-Sergeant's cry took him to the window at a painful bound.

A human groundcar entered the gates and stopped in the courtyard. It had been an ordinary car such as until lately privileged humans had still occasionally been permitted to use: powered by hydrogen fuel rather than the molecular-distortion batteries which were rather too easily adaptable into bombs. More recently a medium field laser cannon had been mounted on it behind a hemispherical s.h.i.+eld. It came to a halt with the cannon pointed at the Sergeants' Mess.

Jocelyn crossed the courtyard, alone and on foot as the kzin crouched at their weapons. She is brave, She is brave, thought Raargh-Sergeant. thought Raargh-Sergeant. A worthy enemy. Her head would make an acceptable trophy for the Mess. A worthy enemy. Her head would make an acceptable trophy for the Mess. And then, in one of those dangerous and distracting tangents in which he found his mind had begun to run: And then, in one of those dangerous and distracting tangents in which he found his mind had begun to run: So long, so eagerly, did our ancestors search s.p.a.ce for worthy enemies! So long, so eagerly, did our ancestors search s.p.a.ce for worthy enemies!

"Raargh-Sergeant!"

"I hear you."

"You now have twenty minutes. After that time I will use this cannon to destroy this building and every kzin in it as well as the human traitor. I ask you not to force me to do it."

He made no answer. Among kzin infantry gear were antilaser smoke and dust-cloud generators and mirrors that could, in theory, deflect small lasers for a short time until they boiled or burned away. Nothing that would stop a military laser of that size for an eye blink. Jocelyn turned away after a time and walked back across the courtyard. He saw her addressing a gathering of humans at the gates.

With that cannon she can make it all look like a regrettable accident when her UNSN masters arrive, he thought. It will be easily explained by monkey lies as a beam that went astray in the final stages of the battle. No monkey to bear responsibility or be disciplined. At such a range, the degree of spread of the laser will be so small as to tell them nothing, and in any case would they bother to examine it closely? Without that cannon we could hold them off, or at least put up a fight such as they could not disguise, even we pawful of cripples. She is probably expecting me to lead all these out in a last charge into the laser canon, as many Heroes have done lately. That would solve her problems. And mine. It will be easily explained by monkey lies as a beam that went astray in the final stages of the battle. No monkey to bear responsibility or be disciplined. At such a range, the degree of spread of the laser will be so small as to tell them nothing, and in any case would they bother to examine it closely? Without that cannon we could hold them off, or at least put up a fight such as they could not disguise, even we pawful of cripples. She is probably expecting me to lead all these out in a last charge into the laser canon, as many Heroes have done lately. That would solve her problems. And mine.

Without that cannon!

Think like a monkey.

There was something forcing itself up from deep in his memory, something sparked by his words with Jorg about monkey poetry, and the monkey studies that Chutt-Riit had begun to put on a systematic basis shortly before his murder. In the old monkey libraries of Munchen there had been other records of Earth, fragmentary and disordered after the burnings and bombings of the initial landings, included primitive moving pictures. One had been shown to his group of NCOs, called Guns at Batasi Guns at Batasi, showing the way a monkey sergeant thought. Yes, and the situation of that monkey had not been unlike the one he now found himself in . . .

"Lesser-Sergeant! Kzintos.h.!.+" It was spat in the battle imperative tense. They snapped to the attention position.

"Lead us, Raargh-Sergeant!"

"Lesser-Sergeant, we have still the battle drum?"

"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant. The monkeys were so busy with the other trophies they did not take it. In any case, it is in its shrouding."