The Man-Kzin Wars 04

Halloran slumped down on the mat in his quarters, head cradled in his hands, fighting to control his nausea. Murphy, don't tell me I'm developing an allergy to kzin, he thought, holding his shaking hands out before him. The mottled spots were probably some deficiency disease, or his immune system might be giving up under the strain of ingesting all these not-quite-earthlike proteins. He belched acid, swallowed past a painfully dry throat, remembering his last meeting with his father. A kzin ship was like the real Arizona desert, and it was sucking the moisture out of his tissues, no matter how much he drank. A dry cold, though. It held down the soupy smell of dried rancid sweat that surrounded him; that had nearly given him away half a dozen times.

A sharp pain thrilled up one finger. Halloran looked down and found he had been absently stropping nonexistent claws on the panel of corklike material set next to the pallet. A broken fingernail was bent back halfway. He prodded it back into place, shuddering, tied one of the antiseptic pads around it and secured it with a strip of cloth before he lowered himself with painful slowness to his back. Slow salt-heavy tears filled the corners of his eyes and ran painfully down the chapped skin of his face.

It was easier to be Fixer. Fixer did not hurt. Fixer was not lonely. Fixer did not feel guilt; shame, perhaps, but never guilt.

Fixer doesn't exist. I am Lawrence Halloran Jr. He closed his eyes and tried to let his breathing sink into a regular rhythm. It was difficult for more reasons than the pain; every time he began to drop off, he would jerk awake again with unreasoning dread. Not of the nightmares, just dread of something.

Intuition. Halloran had always believed in intuition. Or maybe just the trickle of fear from the crew, but he should not be that sensitive, even with fatigue and weakness wearing down his shields. His talent should be weaker, not stronger.

Enough. “My status is that of a complete shit, but my health is important to the mission,” he mumbled sardonically to himself. Sleep was like falling—

—and the others were chasing him again, through the corridors of the crèche. Pain shot in under his ribs as he bounded along four-footed, and his tongue lolled dry and grainy. They were all bigger than him, and there were a double handful of them! Bright light stabbed at his eyes as he ran out into the exercise yard, up the tumbled rocks of the pile in the center, gritty ocher sandstone under his hands and feet. Nowhere to run but the highest…

Fear cut through his fatigue as he came erect on the central spire. He was above them! The high-status kits would think he was challenging them!

Squalls of rage confirmed it as the orange-and-spotted tide boiled out of the doorway and into the vast quadrangle of scrub and sand. Tails went rigid, claws raked toward him; he stood and screamed back, but he could hear the quaver in it, and the impulse to grovel and spread his ears was almost irresistible. Hate flowed over him with the scent of burning ginger, varied only by the individual smells of the other children.

Rocks flew around him as they poured up the miniature crags; something struck him over one eye. Vision blurred as the nictitating membranes swept down, and blood poured over one. The smell of it was like death, but the others screeched louder as they caught the waft.

Hands and feet gripped him as he slumped down on the hard rock, clawing and yanking hair and lifting, and then he was flying. Instinct rotated his head down, but he was already too stunned to get his hands and feet well under him; he landed sprawling across an edge of sandstone and felt ribs crack. Then the others were on him, mauling, and he curled into a protective ball but two of them had his tail, they were stretching it out and raising rocks in their free hands and crack and crack—

Halloran woke, shuddering and wincing at pain in an organ he did not possess. Several corridors away, Telepath screamed until the ratings dosed near him lost all patience and broke open an arms locker to get a stunner.

“Dreams? Explain yourself”, Kfraksha-Admiral growled.

Telepath ventured a nervous lick of his nose, eyes darting around, too genuinely terrified to resent being called the kzin equivalent of a rabbit.

“Nothing. I said nothing of dreams,” he said, then shrieked as the commander's claws raked along the side of his muzzle.

“You dare to contradict me?”

“I abase myself—”

“Silence! You distinctly said 'dreams' when I asked you to determine the leakage of secret information.”

“Leaks. First Fixer-of-Weapons was leaking. He is strong. He leaks. I run from him but I cannot hide in sleep. Such shame. Now more are leaking. The officers dream of the Ghost Star. Ancestors who died without honor haunt it… their hands reach up to drag us down to nameless rot. One feels it. All feel it—”

“Silence! Silence!” Kfraksha-Admiral roared, striking open-handed. Even then he retained enough control not to use his claws; this thing was the last Telepath in the fleet, after all, even if insanity was reducing its usefulness.

And even such a sorry excuse for a kzin shouldn't be much harmed by being beaten unconscious.

“You find time to groom?” Kfraksha-Admiral asked sullenly.

Finagle, Halloran swore inwardly, drawing the Fixer persona more tightly around him. The last sleep-cycle had seen a drastic deterioration in everyone's grooming, except his memorized projection. The commander's pelt was not quite matted; it would be a long time before he looked as miserable as Telepath—Finagle alone knew what Telepath looked like now, he seemed to have vanished—but he was definitely scruffy. The entire bridge crew looked peaked, and several were absent, their places taken by younger, less-scarred understudies. Some of those understudies had new bandages, evidence that their superiors' usefulness had deteriorated to the point where the commander would allow self-promotion. The human's talent told him the dark cavern of the command deck smelled of fear and throttled rage and bewilderment; the skin crawled down his spine as he sensed it.

Kzinti did not respond well to frustration. They also did not expect answers to rhetorical questions.

Kfraksha-Admiral turned to Chrung-Fleet-Communications Officer. “Summarize.”

“Hero's Lair still does not report,” that kzin said dully.

That was the first of the troop-transports, going in on a trajectory that would leave them 'behind' the cruisers, dreadnoughts, and stingship carriers when the fleet finally made its out-of-elliptic slingshot approach to Earth. Kfraksha-Admiral had calculated that Earth was probably the softest major human target, and less likely to be alert. Go in undetected, take out major defenses and space-industrial centers, land the surface-troops; the witless hordes of humankind's fifteen billions would be hostages against counterattack.

If things go well, Halloran thought, easing a delicate tendril into the commander's consciousness. Murphy rules the kzin, as well as humans. Wearily: When do things ever go well?

—and the long silky grass blew in the dry cool wind that was infinitely clean and empty. His Sire and the other grown males were grouped around the carcass, replete, lapping at drinks in shallow, beautifully fashioned silver cups. He and the other kits were round stomached and content, play-sparring lazily, and he lay on his back batting at the bright-winged insect that hovered over his nose, until Sire put a hand on his chest and leaned over to rasp a roughly loving tongue across his ears—

“It is well, it is well,” Kfraksha-Admiral crooned softly, almost inaudibly. Then he came to himself with a start, looking around as heads turned toward him.

Finagle, I set him off on a memory-fugue! Halloran thought, feeling the kzin's panic and rising anger, the tinge of suspicion beneath that.

“All must admire Kfraksha-Admiral's strategic sense,” Halloran-Fixer said hastily. “Light losses, for a strategic gain of the size this operation promises.”

Kfraksha-Admiral signed curt assent, turning his attention from the worthless sycophant. Behind Fixer's mask, Halloran's human face contorted in a savage grin. Manipulating Kfraksha-Admiral's subconscious was more fun than haunting the other kzin. Even for a ratcat, he's a son-of-a… pussy, I suppose. Single-minded, too. Relatively easy to keep from wondering what was causing all this—I wish I