Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (12 page)

And Jenni had agreed. Now she lay curled in her bunk, eyes closed, breathing regular, but wide awake, listening for the sound of the klaxon that would indicate that everything had gone wrong.

* * *

At the appointed moment, the kzin opened the locked door to his cell. The guard who stood outside was awake, but his reflexes were slower than they should have been. Even at their best, they would have been no match for those of a trained kzinti warrior.

As the guard swung his weapon around, the kzin clipped him hard to one side of his neck, using a subdural stroke perfected when someone pointed out that killing slaves that bred and matured as slowly as did humans was a waste of resources.

The man crumpled. The kzin paused only long enough to use the man’s own tranquilizer gun to make certain he would not wake again for many hours. Dr. Anixter had assured him the drug meant for the kzin would also work on humans, that the concentration would not be sufficient to be fatal.

Holding the tranquilizer gun in one hand, the kzin loped down the passage. He wondered why Dr. Anixter had wanted to reassure him that he wouldn’t be killing anyone if he used the tranq gun. Did she think he cared or was she really reassuring herself?

Unerringly, he headed in the direction of the hanger. His escorts had attempted to confuse his sense of direction, but they had no idea how well he read Interworld. Moreover, in a facility where there was only one kzin, tracking his own trail was easy. As a last assurance, in a few places where he might be confused, Dr. Anixter had left a small scent marker, a tiny spritz of something floral.

Three times more he had to disable guards. Each time, he used the tranquilizer rifle. The trigger mechanism was too small for his fingers, but his index claw worked admirably. Each guard was down before he—or in one case, she—was aware someone had entered his (or her) zone.

At the door to the hanger, a human would have been stumped, for the pressure pad used to enter in the passcode was behind a section of wall. The kzin was unfazed. Extending the claws on his right hand, he inserted them into a barely visible seam, then pulled back and ripped. He’d spent a great deal of time reconditioning his arm muscles and was now rewarded for the effort. The wall material, tough stuff that would have resisted a human’s best efforts, ripped back.

He entered the keycode—the one Miffy himself used—and the door slid open, automatically closing once it sensed he was through. So far, all was going according to plan. However, as he loped over to the scout ship, he realized that something was wrong. The hatchway stood open and light was coming from within.

The kzin scented the air, isolating fresh scent traces from the older ones that eddied about. One person, male . . . The kzin’s hackles went up. He had to swallow a growl. The scent was Miffy’s!

Unfurling his ears, he listened, trying to ascertain whether Miffy was present or if he had been here recently and might return. Humans had an annoying tendency that way, always running off to use the ’fresher or grab a snack or drink bulb. What would he do if Miffy wasn’t there? It would be very inconvenient to be warming up the drive in preparation for departure and to have the man come walking in. That period of time had always provided the most uncertainties, for the kzin needed time not only to get the drive powered up, but to put various systems on line.

The kzin stood poised, listening, sniffing, then slowly prowling forward, tail lashing behind him as he fought down an urge to rush forward and end the suspense. But although kzinti were known to be impulsive, they were also descended from plains hunters. Every cell in their bodies contained the knowledge that a successful hunt began with patient stalking.

He was a few meters from the open door when he heard it, a faint clink as of a tool being set down or a panel shifted. Miffy was in there, then. What was he doing? The sound was slightly muffled, so probably he was not in the airlock, nor in the cockpit.

The kzin leapt in through the door, rifle ready. His bare feet landed soundlessly on the deck. No one. He paused and listened. Again another click and clink, this time a slight tuneless whistle. Definitely Miffy.

The kzin began to smile. He readied the rifle. Flashing around the frame of the airlock, he placed himself so that the cockpit was at his back, the short corridor that led back to the engines and life-support systems in front of him.

Miffy sat on the floor next to one of the access hatches into the engines. He had apparently been taking images, projecting them onto a small screen. The kzin could see schematic diagrams. He didn’t wait to see more. Eschewing the tranqulizer rifle, he leapt forward, his attacking scream perfectly silent and the twisting of his features all the more horrible for the self-restraint silence demanded of him.

His hand came down. Miffy crumpled. The kzin inspected the man quickly. He should come around in a few minutes, time enough to restrain him, then to make certain no one else was expected. There had been no other fresh scent, but that didn’t mean someone wasn’t coming. It was unlikely that Miffy was sending images to someone else. The kzin had learned during earlier visits that the hanger walls were thick enough to prevent broadcast communication and that the humans had not gotten around to laying cables.

The kzin stepped over the unconcious human and closed the panel into the engines. Then he moved into the cockpit and tapped in the sequence that would start the engine warm-up. Miffy was beginning to stir when the kzin returned. That didn’t stop the kzin from picking him up, dropping him into a chair, and securing him.

His own previous training, combined with careful observation during these long days of captivity, meant that he knew how to inspect Miffy for communications gear. There was surprisingly little. Apparently, the watcher did not like being watched, the one who made others talk did not care to say much himself. The kzin also shut down the small recording unit Miffy had been using.

The kzin was fastening himself into one of the spare pressure suits when Miffy came around. To the human’s credit, he did so quickly and without the usual disorientation.

“You! What . . .” he began, but the kzin cut him off.

“What are you doing here?”

Miffy pressed his lips firmly closed. The kzin pricked out the longest claw on his right hand and stroked it across Miffy’s face, raising a line of blood. A kzin would have felt this as unworthy of notice, but Miffy had all too much awareness of what he’d done to the kzin. A guilty conscience is a wonderful prod. Miffy began talking.

“You’ll never get out of here, so why shouldn’t I tell you? Something Dr. Anixter said this evening made me realize we’d been overlooking some aspects of the gravity polarizer—seeing them with human logic, rather than kzinti. I came down here to check and she just could be right . . .”

He trailed off. The kzin felt his rising growl shifting into a purr . . .
Dr. Anixter, eh? An accident? A bit of nervous babbling? He didn’t think so. What then could she have intended?

Glancing over at the piloting readouts, he saw that the engine was halfway through its warm-up routine.

“Are you alone?” he said, activating the life-support system and the back-up navigation.

“I . . .” Miffy’s words came slowly, but his sweat reeked with fear.

The kzin looked at him. “I am committed to my course of action. If you wish an honorable death, that is all one.”

Miffy swallowed hard. Like many people who deal out pain and death to other people, he never really contemplated that the same could come to him. In his little world, he was the only real person, the rest were supporting cast.

“You’re speaking,” Miffy said slowly, “very good Interworld.”

“Yes.”

“I suppose you lied about other things as well? Such as how many people it takes to fly this vessel? Perhaps only one pilot is needed?”

“Yes.”

“Then why should I talk to you?”

“I told you. You don’t need to.” The kzin turned his head and smiled slowly, showing an expanding array of teeth. “I believe the auto-kitchen is still operational, but I cannot be certain it will remain so. Living or dead, you will be of use to me.”

Miffy started talking. Fast. He had come down to the hanger alone. Dr. Anixter’s comment had been provocative and he had wanted to make certain that he was the first to confirm the accuracy of her insight. Implied in this was that he also planned to claim her insight as his own.

“And now,” the kzin said, “you are ruined.”

“Ruined?” Miffy’s voice broke. “You mean you’re going to eat me?”

“No. I would just as soon bring home a prisoner,” the kzin replied. “What I mean is that I am about to escape—or at least attempt to escape. If I am recaptured, I will explain how your carelessness—talking in front of me in Interworld although Dr. Anixter had assured you she thought I spoke the language, letting me move about the base under my own power, permitting me to see you or members of your staff enter in codes—permitted me to craft this escape attempt.”

Miffy shrank into himself, his eyes widening in horror.

The kzin twitched his ears, laughing as he had not laughed since he came semi-conscious in the wrecked kzinti war craft. Dr. Anixter had provided him with the means to send out the code that would open the hanger doors, but now he used Miffy’s own unit. If the humans could trace the device’s signature, it would further seal Miffy’s doom, further ruin his reputation.

Miffy understood. He began to keen in wordless panic.

The kzin watched as the hanger doors slid smoothly open. The navigation program read the stars and told him he was closer to a contested border than he had dared imagine. He entered in the command to launch. The scout ship slid out into the void.

Now was the time for decision. Did he wheel the scout ship around and crash into the base or did he attempt to get himself and his very interesting prisoner home again? Before he had seen no value in his continued life, but now . . . Not only did he have what he himself had learned, he had a very special prisoner. His status would go up.

The equation had changed in favor of life . . . of that strange intangible, hope.

As the kzin set his course, he knew his escape was not certain, but at least he would die free, not a prisoner, no longer a captive. Miffy had fallen silent, foam flecking his lips, his eyes wild and bloodshot as he contemplated his future.

The kzin wondered. Had Dr. Anixter all but sent Miffy to the hanger? Had she manipulated the situation so that not only would the kzin have a hostage and a prize, but also a reason to escape rather than wreck both himself and the base? He wouldn’t be surprised if she had.

Two types of teeth . . . If he survived the journey home, he would need to try and explain about humans and their two types of teeth.

* * *

Jenni napped until she was awakened by the klaxons. Without leaving her bunk, she activated a subroutine that would put some interesting information into Miffy’s files, information that indicated how deeply he had feared the kzinti, how he had contemplated changing sides if by doing so he could buy a position as a collaborator working under kzinti masters.

Miffy would not be the first human to do this. He would not be the last.

She’d had to keep this final touch until late in the game, for Miffy must not be permitted to see these interesting additions to his files in advance. Now, however, either he was dead, taken by the kzinti, or, at the very least, a base commander who had just permitted his most valuable prisoner to attempt an escape.

Miffy’s protestations of innocence would not hold up, especially since Jenni would be there to gently explain how this quite fit the psychological pattern of a man who chose to name himself Otto Bismarck.

Belting her fluffy pink robe over her flowered pajamas, Jenni moved toward the door, reacting just as she would if this was an emergency she knew nothing about. As she hurried out, she swallowed a smile, knowing that now was not the time to show her teeth.

Pick of the Litter

Charles E. Gannon

2367 CE: Proxima Centauri System, Outer Belt

With the bright red disk of Proxima Centauri growing quickly in his forward screens, hn-Pilot rose from the kzin smallship’s co-pilot seat. He stretched as much as was possible for an eight-foot felinoid in a cramped cockpit.

The second helmsman—rr-Pilot, who was currently flying the tiny craft—sniffed deeply as his nominal commander twisted his spine to work out the kinks of a long immobile watch. “Boredom has its own scent, evidently.”

hn-Pilot stopped in mid-stretch: rr-Pilot’s undeniably accurate observation was also borderline insolence. But then again, hn-Pilot’s authority was borderline as well: neither had true Names, only differentiation-prefixes, and, therefore, his superiority in rank and seniority was marginal. They were also closely matched in height, weight, and speed, so neither one could be confident of victory in a formal challenge. rr-Pilot’s oblique challenge was, therefore, quite canny: without contesting hn-Pilot’s official command status, he signaled that he would not accept any matching assumptions regarding personal dominance.

hn-Pilot’s fur rippled faintly: the kzin expression of modest mirth or amusement. rr-Pilot was stalking his objective—status—with all the canny indirection that hn-Pilot would have used, had their situations been reversed. Which was good: aggressiveness was the hallmark of any worthy Hero. But, inversely, if hn-Pilot did not effectively respond to this subtle challenge, it would mean
he
was too docile: doubly so, since he was technically the commander of the smallship dubbed
Incisor-Red.

hn-Pilot finished his interrupted stretch in a leisurely fashion and then stooped forward, resting his arms down on the back of rr-Pilot’s seat with a jarring thump. He tilted his weight forward; the seat shifted and squealed in protest.

He watched as rr-Pilot’s pink, white-ribbed, scalloped-edged ears half-folded back against this neck fur: annoyance, readiness to fight if further provoked. rr-Pilot asked, “Do you need to remain in that place?”