The Man-Kzin Wars 04

Killers.”

“So we're too ashamed to speak to each other?”

“We didn't know you wanted to talk,” Olsen said.

Throughout his life, even as insensitive as he had tried to become, he had been amazed at how others, especially women, could be so ignorant of their fellows. “I'll probably be dead in a month,” he said.

“So you want sympathy?” Olsen said, wide-eyed. “The Man Who Would be Kzin wants sympathy? Such bad technique…”

“Forget it,” Halloran said, feeling his stomach twist.

“We learned a lot about you,” Ysyvry continued. “What you might do in a moment of weakness, how you had once been a troublemaker, using your abilities to fool people… Belters value ingenuity and independence, but we also value respect. Simple politeness.”

Halloran felt a deep void open up beneath him. “I was young when I did those things.” His eyes filled with tears. “Tanj it, I'm sacrificing myself for my people, and you treat me as if I'm a bleeping dog turd!”

“Yeah,” Olsen said, turning away. “We don't like flatlanders, anyway, and… I suppose we're not used to this whole war thing. We've had friends die. We'd just as soon it all went away. Even you.”

“So,” Ysyvry said, taking a deep breath. “Tell us about yourself. You studied music?”

The turnabout startled him. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “Yes. Concentrating on Josef Haydn.”

“Play us something,” Olsen suggested, reaching into a hidden corner slot to pull out a portable music keyboard he hadn't known the ship carried. “Haydn, Glenn Miller, Sting, anything classical.”

For the merest instant, he had the impulse to become Halloran-Kzin. Instead, he took the keyboard and stared at the black and white arrangement. Then he played the first movement of Sonata Number 40 in E Flat, a familiar piece for him. Ysyvry and Olsen listened intently.

As he lightly completed the last few bars, Halloran closed his eyes and imagined the portraits of Haydn, powdered wig and all. He glanced at the Belter pilots from the corners of his eyes.

Ysyvry flinched and Olsen released a small squeak of surprise. He lifted his fingers from the keyboard and rotated to face them.

“Stop that,” Olsen requested, obviously impressed.

Halloran dropped the illusion.

“That was beautiful,” Ysyvry said.

“I'm human after all, even if I am a flatlander, no?”

“We'll give you that much,” Olsen said. “You can look like anything you want to?”

“I'd rather talk about the music,” Halloran said, adjusting tones on the musicomp to mimic harpsichord.

“We've never seen a kzin up close, for real,” Ysyvry said. The expression on their faces was grimly anticipatory: Come on, scare us.

“I'm not a freak.”

“So we've already established that much,” Olsen said. “But you're a bit of a show-off, aren't you?”

“And a mind-reader,” Ysyvry said.

He had deliberately avoided looking into their thoughts. Nobility of purpose.

“Perfect companion for a long voyage,” Olsen added. “You can be whatever, whomever you want to be.” Their expressions had become almost salacious. Now Halloran was sorry he had ever initiated conversation. How much of this was teasing, how much—actual cruelty?

Or were they simply testing his stability before insertion?

“You'd like to see a kzin?” he asked quietly.

“We'd like to see Fixer-of-Weapons,” Ysyvry affirmed. “We were told you'd need to test the illusion before we release the hulk and your lifeship.”

“It's a bit early—we still have two hundred hours.”

“All the more time to turn back if you don't convince us,” Olsen said.

“It's not just a hat I can put on and take off.”

He glanced between them, finding little apparent sympathy. Belters were polite, individualistic, but not the most socially adept of people. No wonder their mainstay on long voyages was silence. “I won't wear Fixer-of- Weapons unless I become him.”

“You won't consciously know you're human?”

Halloran shook his head. “I'd rather not have the dichotomy to deal with. I'll be too busy with other activities.”

“So the kzinti will think you're one of them, and… will you?”

“I will be Fixer-of-Weapons, or as close as I can become,” Halloran said.

“Then you're worse than the fake soldiers in World War II,” Olsen commented dryly.

“Show us,” Ysyvry said, over her companion's words.

Halloran tapped his fingers on the edge of the keyboard for a few seconds. He could show them Halloran- Kzin—the generic kzin he had manufactured from Fixer-of-Weapons’ memories. That would not be difficult.

“No,” he said. “You've implied that there's something wrong, somehow, in what I'm going to do. And you're right. I only volunteered to do this sort of thing because we're desperate. But it's not a game. I'm no freak, and I'm not going to provide a sideshow for a couple of bored and crass Belters.”

He tapped out the serenade from Haydn's string quartet Opus 3 number 5.

Ysyvry smiled: “All right, Mr. Halloran. Looks like the UNSN made a good choice—not that they had much choice.”

“I don't need your respect, either,” Halloran said, a little surprised at how deeply he had been hurt. I thought I was way beyond that.

“What she's saying,” Olsen elaborated, “is that we were asked to isolate you, and harass you a little. See if you're as much of a show-off as your records indicate you might be.”

“Fine,” Halloran said. “Now it's back to the silence?”

“No,” Ysyvry said. “The music is beautiful. We'd appreciate your playing more for us.”

Halloran swore under his breath and shook his head.

“Nobody said it would be easy, being a hero… did they?” Ysyvry asked.

“I'm no hero,” Halloran said.

“I think you have the makings for one,” Olsen told him, regarding him steadily with her clear green eyes. “Whatever kind of bastard you were on Earth. Really.”

Will a flatlander ever understand Belters? They were so mercurial, strong, and more than a little arrogant. Perhaps that was because space left so little room for niceties.

“If you accept it,” Ysyvry said, “we've decided we'll make you an honorary Belter.”

Halloran stopped playing.

“Please accept,” Olsen said, not wheedling or even trying to placate; a simple, polite request.

“Okay,” Halloran said.

“Good,” Ysyvry said. “I think you'll like the ceremony.”

He did, though it made him realize even more deeply how much he had to lose…

And why do I have to die before people start treating me decently?

The Belter pilots dropped the hulk a hundred and three hours after his induction into the ranks. They cut loose the kzin lifeship, with Halloran inside, five hours later, and then turned a shielded ion drive against their orbital path to drop inward and lose themselves in the Belt.

There were beacons on the lifeship, but no sensors. In the kzinti fleet, rescue of survivors was strictly at the discretion of the commanding officers. Halloran entered the digitized odor-signature and serial number of Fixer-of- Weapons into the beacon's transmitter and sat back to wait.

The lifeship had a month's supplies for an individual kzin. What few supplements he dared to carry, all consumable, would be gone in a week, and his time would start running out from that moment.

Still, Halloran half hoped he would not be found. He almost preferred the thought of failure to the prospect of carrying out his mission. It would be an ordeal. The worst thing that had ever happened to him. His greatest challenge in a relatively peaceful lifetime.

For a few days, he nursed dark thoughts about manifest destiny, the possibility that the kzinti really were the