body changed its very structure under the imperious genetic commands of the ancient virus. Since Bruno's brain was studded with implanted electronics, those changes would certainly be fatal.
Carol and her virus-exposed crewmates, on the other hand, would fall into developmental comas, tended by autodocs as their bodies underwent the metamorphosis described in the UN reports. They would emerge as something more than human – in ironic biological counterpoint to Bruno's Linkage.
Protector-stage humans. Smarter, stronger, and faster than any human born.
During the pre-mission training, Buford Early had reluctantly shown them the holos and heavily censored summary sheets. Once an ARM, always a goldskinning ARM, so far as Carol was concerned. Early would restrict the wheel if he could.
Bruno had forced Early's hand, insisting that he brief the crew of Sun-Tzu. Early had been shocked that his loyal Bruno would do such a thing. It was Carol's first sign that the mission had a slim chance.
The data was both tantalizing and frightening. Carol could see why the UN kept the information under such restriction. Phssthpok, the alien who came after the failed Pak colony on Earth that had evolved into Homo sapiens, and whose dried body lay in the Smithsonian. The Belter, Jack Brennan, first modern human to be converted by Tree-of-Life. He had become the Brennan-monster or Vandervecken, and had perhaps saved humanity from itself during the Long Peace, with gifts of technological improvements even the ARM couldn't restrict.
And, according to Early, perhaps saved the human race from Pak fleets out near the failed human colony at Epsilon Indi, Home. Home had failed due to Tree-of-Life, but Brennan's plan had created an army to fend off the Pak fleets.
When the kzin fleets arrived at Sol, and seemed to be winning, the story of Home gave Early an idea. Project Cherubim would use Protector-stage humans against the kzin.
The human-Protector crew, piloted by the fully Linked Bruno, would enter Wunderlander space and fight the kzin. The vast power of the decelerating Dolittle would power enormous laser and particle-beam weapons. Eventually, the crew would join with the human resistance forces in the Serpent Swarm asteroid belt.
But the crew would arrive dying from radiation poisoning, unable to create more Protector-stage humans.
The plan was to limit the 'infection', as Protectors – even human-Protectors – savagery fought anything to protect their own bloodline. This would rapidly become chaos on crowded human worlds. Tree-of-Life virus made intelligence and strength the uncritical servant of emotion and instinct.
Brennan's records had warned of this.
Carol increased deceleration, and watched Sun-Tzu vanish from her screen. She bled off the energy by powering up one of the huge gas lasers, firing randomly in different directions, hoping that no nearby dust cloud fluoresced, alerting the kzin to Dolittle's escape.
The chronometer readout hung in midair, holographically. Carol tried not to look at it too often, and failed. From her own space-battle experience, Carol knew that waiting was the hardest part. But when the time for action arrived, she would pray to live long enough to wait once again.
Thirty-five minutes.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Rrowl-Captain paced the command bridge of Belly-Slasher and watched the forward thinplate screen closely, his hairless tail slashing the air with impatience. He growled low in his throat as he stalked the bridge, taloned boots silent on the tapestry-covered deck. The bridge crew remained both respectful and silent, eyes averted and ears folded tightly against orange-furred skulls. Clawed fingers hung expectantly over keypads, waiting for the captain of Belly-Slasher to shriek an impatiently angry command.
It had taken half of a watch-interval for Belly-Slasher to cautiously maneuver close to the monkeyship. The wariness had worn poorly on Rrowl-Captain and his crew so soon after the monopole bomb from Spine-Cruncher had silenced the human vessel. Triumph tasted like leafy defeat in their jaws, as Belly-Slasher moved slowly toward the iceball of a spacecraft.
To skulk toward the carcass of the monkeyship denied the Octal-and-Two Truths in the Warrior Heart. Rrowl-Captain snarled wetly to himself in frustration, his jaws snapping on nothingness.
It was a tense time aboard the sole surviving kzin warship.
The waiting was taking a toll on him and the crew of Belly-Slasher. Ventilators poured out dry-conditioned air in a stiff, cold breeze, attempting to dilute the scream-and-leap pheromones that every crewkzin was emitting in quantity. Intellect remained locked in battle with instinct and kzinti hormones. At least until there were actual enemies to battle with wit and claws.
Agitated and filled with frustration, many of the crewkzin had begun to lose discipline. So far Rrowl-Captain had only riffle his new and significantly larger trophy belt loop as reminder. He bared teeth in satisfied memory of his reinforced dominance.
Rrowl-Captain had then lightly reminded his impatient crew of the clever p'charth of Kzin-home. The beast feigned death as a technique for luring its prey close enough to spit swift-acting neurotoxin into surprised scavenger faces. The Teachings of the One Fanged God used the p'charth as a parable of the dangers of certitude in battle: 'The Wise Hero ensures that Prey is not Predator cloaked by the Long Grass of Wit or Trickery; some claws can slash deeply as well as run swiftly.”
In so calming his crew, he calmed himself. 'Navigator,' Rrowl-Captain snarled. The kzin in question looked up from his console and thinscreen, facial fur matted from intense concentration. Rrowl-Captain chose to overlook the other kzin's lack of grooming for the moment.
'Dominant One!' Navigator replied with only a trace of distraction present in his hiss-and-spit syllables. 'Report on progress,' the captain rasped, gentling his tone slightly. It must be frustrating, he reflected, for a Hero to stalk numbers within bloodless computer memory. Like leaping, fangs agape, into enemies composed of mere fog and shadow.
'Leader,' the other kzin rumbled in low respectful tones, 'look to the forward thinscreen.' A schematic of the monkey spacecraft, huge and rounded like an icy asteroid, appeared. Magnetic lines of force, which swept the interstellar medium from the alien ship's path, were added to the diagram. The route of Belly-Slasher was a circuitous line threading the deadly tongues of magnetic force toward the bow of the monkeyship. 'Hrrr… ' Rrowl-Captain growled, musingly. 'Your attention to careful and precise duty is duly noted and will be well rewarded. We cannot afford to lose this prize to monkey tricks or treachery, despite our impetus to complete your conquest and celebrate a successful hunt.”
The other kzin's orange-and-black ruff lifted with pride at Rrowl-Captain's words of praise. 'It would not have been possible, Dominant One, without the aid of Alien Technologist.' He paused, scratching with a careless claw beneath his whiskers reflectively. 'The monkeys do not make sense, Leader. It is difficult to understand their design philosophy. If we only had a Telepath – “
Rrowl-Captain snorted dismissal. 'Indeed; we do not. Placing dream-fangs on prey does not fill a Hero's belly nor honor the Great Web of Existence.' He paused. 'These monkeys are, as you say, different from Heroes, different from Kdatlynos, different from Chunquen, different even from our loyal Jotoki. The One Fanged God made slaves in different forms to serve our different needs.”
'As you say, Leader,' Navigator agreed, obedience stiffening his spine.
'Even an unblooded kitten could set fangs in such facts.' Rrowl-Captain dismissively changed the subject as obvious He gestured at the forward thinscreen with a sharp black claw. 'Your attention to detail in adroitly taking us through the magnetic force-lines is especially noteworthy.”
Navigator put sheathed claws to face in recognition of the compliment. 'It was as you commanded, Dominant One. Alien-Technologist and I stalked fact and hypotheses in our planning. The monkeys do not use our gravitic polarizers so they do not have force shielding, as we do; they must rely on primitive magnetic fields for protection.' His tone burred contempt.
'Yet these fields are of great power,' Rrowl-Captain rumbled low in warning. 'Do not underestimate monkey tricks. They may lack honor seen in the light of the Teaching of the One Fanged God, but such strategies can still slash the most noble Hero's tail in two through overconfidence.”
