The Man-Kzin Wars 02

prepare for us at those speeds.” The ship would be on the heels of the wave-front announcing its arrival.

“Great,” he said sarcastically. “And just how are we supposed to stop?”

“Oh, that's simple,” Raines said. For the first time in their brief acquaintance, she smiled. Damn, she's good looking, Jonah thought with mild surprise. Better than good. How could I not notice?

“We ram ourselves into the sun.”

Several billion years before, there had been a species of sophonts with a peculiar ability. They called themselves (as nearly as humans could reproduce the sound) the Thrint; others knew them as Slavers. The ability amounted to an absolutely irresistible form of telepathic hypnosis, evolved as a hunting aid in an ecosystem where most animals advanced enough to have a spinal cord were at least mildly telepathic. This was a low-probability development, but in a universe as large as ours anything possible will occur sooner or later. On their native world, Thrintun could give a subtle prod to a prey-animal, enough to tip its decision to come down to the waterhole. The Thrint evolved intelligence as an additional advantage. After all, their prey had millions of years to develop resistance.

Then a spaceship landed on the Thrint homeworld. Its crew immediately became slaves. Absolutely obedient, absolutely trustworthy, willing and enthusiastic slaves. Operating on nervous systems that had not evolved in an environment saturated with the Power, any Thrint could control dozens of sophonts. With the amplifiers that slave- technicians developed, a Thrint could control an entire planet. Slaves industrialized a culture in the hunting-band stage in a single generation; controlled by the Power, in a few generations more slaves built an interstellar empire covering most of a galaxy.

Slaves did everything, because the Thrint had never been a very intelligent species, and once loose with the Power they had no need to think. Eventually they met, and thought they had enslaved, a very clever race indeed, the tnuctipun. The revolt that eventually followed resulted in the extermination of every tool-using sentient in the Galaxy, but before it did the tnuctipun made some remarkable things…

“A Slaver stasis field?” he said. Despite himself, awe showed in his voice. One such field had been discovered on Earth, then lost. Later, one more on a human-explored world. Three centuries of study had found no slightest clue concerning their operating principles; they were as incomprehensible as a molecular-distortion battery would have been to Thomas Edison. Monkey-see monkey-do copies had been made, each taking more time and expense than the Gibraltar. So far exactly two had functioned.

“Uh-mmm, give the captain a big cigar; right first time.”

Jonah shuddered, remembering the flatlander's smoke. “No, thanks.”

“Too right, Captain. Just a figure of speech.”

“Call me Jonah, we're going to be cramped enough on this trip without poking rank-elbows in each other's ribs.”

“Jonah. The Yamamoto skims through the system, throwing rocks.” At .999 of C, missiles needed no warheads. The kinetic energies involved made the impacts as destructive as antimatter. “We go in as an off course rock. Course corrections, then on with the stasis field, go ballistic, use the outer layer of the sun for breaking down to orbital speeds.”

Nothing outside its surface could affect the contents of a Slaver field; let the path of the Catskinner stray too far inward and they would spend the rest of the lifespan of the universe at the center of Alpha Centauri's sun, in a single instant of frozen time. For that matter, the stasis field would probably survive the re-contraction of the primal monobloc and its explosion into a new cosmic cycle… he forced his mind away from the prospect.

“And we're putting in a Class-VII computer system.”

Jonah raised a brow. Class-VII systems were consciousness-level; they also went irredeemably insane sometime between six months and a year after activation, as did any artificial entity complex enough to be aware of being aware.

“Our… mission won't take any longer than that, and it's worth it.” A shrug. “Look, why don't we hit a cafeteria and talk some more — really talk. You're going to have briefings running out of every orifice before long, but that isn't the same.”

Jonah sighed, and stopped thinking of ways out of the role for which he had been “volunteered.” This was too big to be dodged, far and away too big. Two stasis fields in the whole Sol system; one guarding United Nations Space Navy H.Q., the other on his ship. His ship, a Dart-Commander like ten thousand or so others, until this week. How many Class-VII computers? Nobody built consciousness-level systems any more, except occasionally for research; it simply wasn't cost-effective. And if you built them to be more intelligent than genius humans they went noncomp so quickly you couldn't prove they had ever been aware. A human-level machine gave you a sentient entity with a six-month lifespan that could do arithmetic in its head. Ordinary computers could do more — and for thinking people were much cheaper. It was a dead-end technology, like direct interfacing between human neural systems and computers. And they had revived it, for a special-purpose mission.

“Shit,” Jonah mumbled, as they came to a lock and reoriented themselves feet-down. There was a gravity warning strobing beside it; they pushed through the airscreen curtain and into the dragging acceleration of a one-G field. The crewfolk about them were mostly flatlander now, relaxed in the murderous weight that crushed their frames lifelong.

“Naacht wh'r?” Ingrid asked. In Wunderlander, but the Sol-Belter did not have to know that bastard offspring of Danish and Plattdeutsch to sense the meaning.

“I just realized… hell, I just realized how important this must all be. If the high command were willing to put that much effort into this, willing to sacrifice half of our most precious military asset, throw in a computer that costs more than this base complete with crew… then they must have put at least equal effort into searching for just the right pilot. There's simply no point in trying to get out of it. Tanj. I need a drink.”

“Take your grass-eater stink out of my air!” Chuut-Riit shrieked. He was standing, looking twice his size as his orange-red pelt bottled out, teeth exposed in what an uninformed human might have mistaken for a grin, naked pink tail lashing. The reference to smell was purely metaphorical, since the conversation was 'cast. Which was as well; he was pouring aggression-pheromones into the air at a rate that would have made a roomful of adult male Kzinti nervous to the point of lost control.

The holo images on the wall before him laid themselves belly-down on the decking of their ship and crinkled their ears, their fur lying flat in propitiation.

“Leave the recordings and flee, devourers of your own kittens!” screamed the Kzinti governor of the Alpha Centauri system. The Hero's Tongue is remarkably rich in expressive insults. “Roll in your own shit and mate with sthondats!” The wall blanked, and a light blinked in one corner as the data was packed through the link into his private files.

Chuut-Riit's fur smoothed as he strode around the great chamber. It stood open to the sky, beneath a near- invisible dome that kept the scant rain of this area off the kudlotlin-hide rugs. They were priceless imports from the home world. The stuffed matched pair of Chunquen on a granite pedestal were souvenirs acquired during the pacification of that world. He looked at them, soothing his eyes with the memory-taste of a successful hunt, then at other mementos. Wild smells drifted in over thin walls that were crystal-enclosed sandwiches of circuitry. In the distance something squalled hungrily. The palace-preserve-fortress of a planetary governor, governor of the richest world to be conquered by Kzinti in living memory. Richest in wealth, richest in honor… if the next attack on the human homeworld was something more than a fifth disaster.

“Secretariat,” he rasped. The wall lit.

A human looked up from a desk, stood and came to attention. “Henrietta,” the Kzin began, “hold my calls for the rest of the day. I've just gotten the final download on the Fourth Fleet fiasco, and I'm a little upset. Run it against my projections, will you?”

“Yes, Chuut-Riit,” he said — no, God devour it, she, I've got to start remembering human females are sentient. At least he could tell them apart without smelling them, now. Even distinguish between individuals of the same subspecies. There are so many types of them!

“I don't think you'll find major discrepancies.”