After considering what he'd learned here, and what he'd already known of human practices, Manexpert decided to say, 'Thank you.'
After the ship was out of the atmosphere, Peace contacted her assistants and said, 'Okay, he's been released back into the wild, you can knock it off.'
'He didn't even get to see me,' complained Technology Officer over the channel. 'I had a squeak and everything.'
'You wouldn't have had much effect after Gnyr-Captain's performance,' said Power Officer. 'He sounded like Hroft-Riit's haunted axe!' He laughed softly.
'I always liked that play,' Gnyr-Captain admitted, pleased.
'Okay, you guys, I didn't splice your brains back together so you could do dramatic reviews. I need that free- association on kzinti life more than ever now: the altered body chemistry works, and his paranoia is developing nicely. He's already got a plan, so the next Kzinti War is going to be kzinti fighting each other, and it should be the last. But I'll have to understand kzinti culture better than I do to keep the civil war from sterilizing the planet,' Peace said.
'We're on it, we're on it,' said Gnyr-Captain. 'You just work on restoring us to normal appearance, stealing some females, and finding a planet where we can settle down.'
'And terraforming this one just a trifle,' Peace said in dry tones.
'In your free time,' Gnyr-Captain replied, magnanimous and deadpan.
'Ftah,' said Peace, quite well for somebody with no lips. In fact she was amused; she was undoubtedly the first to discover that the slavering predators who'd been humanity's bogeymen for centuries were, in fact, a race of utterly stagestruck hams. The gaslighting wouldn't have gone nearly so well without them-it had been a chance remark by Gnyr-Captain about Manexpert deserving a Name that had inspired it in the first place. She congratulated herself yet again for the idea of reviving their brains with the telepathic region removed; they were remarkably reasonable without it.
Manexpert's brain seethed with growing convictions. Kzinti were losing their will to fight, but they'd fight one more War if there was a real chance of winning. He thought he knew how to gain that chance: trick God into supporting them.
It would involve remaking the basis of Kzin's culture. So be it. He would have to work with great care, to avoid rousing suspicion. It would be unwise to take the Name of a great leader or philosopher; he needed something innocuous, even ridiculous. Who was that Hero who'd come back from the First War, driven to madness and advocating an end to warfare? Ah, yes.
Kdapt.
WAR AND PEACE
Matthew Joseph Harrington
Attention Outsider vessel. Please hold your fire. I have been able to override my genetic programming.
My name is Peace Corben, and I am a Protector of human origin. I wish to engage in commerce.
It came to her, as she awaited a reply through the relay, that for the first time in almost thirty years she was afraid. It would have been interesting, if it hadn't been so unpleasant. She found herself constantly formulating contingency plans whenever her mind wandered, and it was designed to wander, and none of the plans were worth a thing.
Her plan to lie dead in space and use passive instruments to monitor the relay's fate was no good either. A maypole of metal ribbons, seemingly billowing around its central shaft, suddenly manifested nearby, appallingly huge, having decelerated at what instruments said was a couple of hundred thousand gees. As this was over 170 times what Peace could get out of a gravity planer before it became unable to compensate for anything outside its housing, she was at least reassured that she wasn't wasting her time.
Whether she was wasting her life remained to be seen.
The being that would eventually be known as Outsider Ship Twelve had been carrying its children exposed to space, as was usual, its maturity limbs arranged to maximize shadow borders in the illumination it provided for them. At. 9c, with Doppler effects bringing gamma bursters into their spectral range aft, and the microwave background just visible forward with a starseed silhouetted against it, life was pleasant. The youngest and oldest enjoyed watching things change color as they went by, too, though the ones in between preferred to watch the starseed.
They had been moving into a region of considerable modulated radio noise, its largest source about eighteen light-years away. Trade was good in such areas. It took time to be noticed, though, so things were quiet-until a hyperwave message came in, using a chord that should have been known only to Outsiders. The content of the message explained why it wasn't, but raised other issues of interest. The Outsider saw that the transmission came from a relay, looked around, and spotted an inactive hyperdrive motor. The Outsider ability to do this was not advertised. Some species tried to erase debts by erasing creditors. It moved over there for a better look.
There was a well-made ship, and its sole occupant was indeed a Protector. If it had made the ship, it was much smarter than a Pak. Not attacking the Outsider was also evidence of this. The ship had lots of mountings for weaponry, as was to be expected, but the equipment that fitted them had been not merely dismantled, but distributed, so that it would take at least half a minute to assemble the easiest items-plenty of time for an Outsider to do practically anything. This Peace Corben was displaying what must have been, to a Protector, near-suicidal good faith.
Of course, it might still be up to something. Protectors were like that.
The Protector sent power through a radio receiver, and the Outsider said, 'Greetings. What did you wish to purchase?'
'I have information to sell first, to establish a credit balance.'
'We do not normally purchase information. We sell it, and use the proceeds to pay for supplies.'
'I doubt you possess this information, and you'd be able to sell it to customers you trusted for amazing sums.'
Interesting. 'What price do you set on it?'
'I'll trust you to be fair.'
'We may not be able to afford a fair price.'
'I'll stipulate that my credit balance will not be drawn on if you show me that the matter and/or circumstances of a request would work a hardship on you.'
More interesting. 'How would a hardship be defined?'
'Inability to meet your other bills, or worse.'
'Agreed. What is the item?'
'Direct conversion of mass to photons, via suppression of the spin on the neutron.'
Peace waited.
It was almost half a minute before the Outsider replied. 'Is there a working model?'
