However, the climate and the exotic life-forms had not made his duties lighter—cleaning barracks and equipment had been never-ending. A constant problem had been the small, white, blue-eyed things which humans at Munchen had called “Beam’s Beasts.” Despite their harmless appearance they had poisonous fangs and secreted a powerful acid which dissolved not only the body tissues of their prey but a variety of other things. They bred in large numbers in the forest and were constantly invading the base, giving him a great deal of work. He had kept out of Sergeant’s way as much as he could. Sergeant, as time went on without the chance of glory, grew increasingly ill-tempered and Corporal followed him. One day, there had been disaster.
Trooper Number Eight had been in charge of the unit’s trophy-maintenance-and-cleaning engine. The ears, kzinti and human, which successful duelists and warriors carried in rings on their belts as trophies and signs of status, could be a problem. Though freeze-dried in small units developed for the purpose, they still had a tendency to get knocked around and eventually fall apart, as well as becoming ill-smelling, unless specially preserved in clear envelopes of strong material. Further, in this warmer environment it was discovered that there were species of fungi which had a liking for the ears, causing them to turn black and eventually crumble unless they were cleaned at intervals. Several of the other troopers had a few human ears, but only Sergeant and Corporal had kzinti ears as well, and kzinti ears were what really mattered.
Sergeant had given Trooper Number Eight his earring and told him to clean the ears and renew the protective envelopes. In his nervousness, Trooper Number Eight had spoilt one of the kzinti ears—the oldest and most precious—causing it to break up into a handful of membrane and cartilage.
Trooper Number Eight tried to persuade himself that Sergeant would not punish him in such a way as to make him physically useless. Nor, he thought, would Sergeant sully his trophy ring with ears as unworthy as his own. Nor, he thought, would he scar him, since scars could be taken as a badge of honorable combat. He was correct.
He was punished with the Hot Needle of Discipline. The kzinti had refined and specialized their instruments of torture over thousands of years, and this one had been developed specially for stupid or inept soldiery. He was allowed an eight of days to recover, a time period specified in the Patriarch’s Regulations, not out of mercy, but because it had been found that a lesser period left the soldiers so punished still unfit for battle.
He was noticed by no one during this period, being regarded as unfit to be noticed. No one cared when, one night late at the end of this period of “invisibility,” when he could once again walk, or at least shuffle, he left the post and climbed a winding game path to a small, solitary hill. He sat and played the triangle there in the night.
Far above there were moving lights in the sky, shifting and winking stars, a soundless battle fought on the edge of space.
He was still recovering, though considered fit for duty, when Officer called them together for a briefing.
A transport vessel carrying military equipment to one of the outpost garrisons in the Serpent Swarm Asteroids had been attacked by feral human spacecraft as it climbed through the upper fringes of Ka’ashi’s atmosphere, Officer told them. Its gravity motors had been badly damaged. It had been able to make a soft landing in the forest not far away but could not take off again.
The pilot was defending it, but plainly its cargo would be a great prize for the local ferals. The Heroes of Sergeant’s platoon were to secure the area and assist the pilot until a heavy-lift unit arrived to retrieve it.
With the favor of the Fanged God, Officer pointed out, this unfortunate incident could be made into a positive opportunity—the downed transport could serve as a trap to draw the local ferals to their doom under the teeth and claws of Sergeant’s Heroes. Sergeant, Corporal, and their eight of troopers were being given a chance for a battle of significance. They would travel on foot, stalking, because of the nature of the terrain, and they would travel fast and light. Given the puny and contemptible nature of the enemy, the question of armor was not raised. Officer suggested in his briefing that the destruction of the feral human troop might be the key to transfers to more glorious assignments for all. He did not dwell on the consequences of failure and did not need to.
They checked their weapons and gear, were inspected by Sergeant and Officer himself, drew rations and additional ammunition, and set off.
There were dark, jungle-grown ravines and gullies where humans might wait with weapons. These they avoided. Kzinti have far better night vision than humans, even when it is not artificially enhanced, but even so they would be disadvantaged coming out of bright sunlight. They lay up in ambush for several hours during the earlier part of the first night, but heard and saw no humans. The forest creatures with sensitive smell also gave them a wide berth. After a few futile hours they pressed on.
By daybreak, they had covered much of the distance to the crash site. The pilot’s radio messages were unsatisfactory. He thought he had glimpsed humans and his movement sensors had detected large life-forms. He wished to leave the transport and hunt on foot. Sergeant tersely forbade him to leave his post. As the sun rose they saw the downed transport, its metal body gleaming in the sun on the next hill.
Morning inspection brought an explosion of rage from Sergeant. While they had lain in ambush his earring had picked up a swarm of small parasites which were burrowing into the tried tissue of the trophies and hastening their destruction. Of course, this could not divert him from his responsibilities to secure the area. He dispersed his Heroes, ordering them to approach the transport with stealth from different directions and lie up in the closest possible cover to it. Then he gave Trooper Number Eight the earring and told him to clean it. He also pointed out the route Trooper Number Eight should take and the place where he should lurk until further orders.
Trooper Number Eight, when he reached his position on the edge of a small clearing, found it quiet. Several hours passed while he waited motionless as he had been trained, in the light that filtered reddish through the vegetation. A few small creatures became used to his unmoving presence and returned. When the sun was high in the sky and nothing had happened, he remembered Sergeant’s earring and turned his attention to it.
Two small Beam’s Beasts had crept upon it as it lay on the ground beside him. They had eaten most of the trophies.
For a moment he felt merely numb, his mind too stunned and dazed to take the horror in. He had lost Sergeant’s trophies. He gave a cry of despair. A good soldier would, of course, have made no unnecessary noise. But Trooper Number Eight had found that, after the Hot Needle of Discipline, being a good soldier mattered even less to him than it had done before. Anyway, no one had said anything about the fact that Trooper Number Seven, who now had partially prosthetic feet, could no longer move in perfect silence. Panic-stricken notions chased one another through his head. To desert? To flee into the forest? He had forgotten he was lying in ambush. He rose and paced distractedly about. To desert was futile, he knew. Elsewhere on this planet it might be remotely feasible, but here there was nowhere to go. He was a city-dweller and the son of a city-dweller from another world, and knew he would not survive. He did not even know the geography of the continent they were on.
Finally he sat on a fallen tree near the edge of the clearing. To distract his mind, he took the triangle and the mallet from his belt pouch and struck it, holding it close against the ear which he knew he would not possess for much longer. Again he struck it, letting the single, silvery note drift away. Some of the local creatures resumed making their own sounds. Again. His thoughts drifted away, following the notes.
A sudden shocking, tearing pain pierced him from behind. An indescribable sensation of bursting and breaking within him. He looked down to see something protruding from his chest, his blood spurting and pumping around it in orange and purple. Then he fell forward, throwing up his hands, with an involuntary, undignified and inarticulate
cry.
All feeling was suddenly gone below the wound. His lower limbs and tail disobeyed his brain’s command that they should propel him upward, and then its command to at least kick and slash. But he was still able to feel and move above it. He turned his head. A human was standing over him, holding a bloody metal spear. The human was raising the spear to stab him again. Yet he detected something more than rage and bloodlust there. Something to do with the fact he had been engrossed in the notes of the triangle? Trooper Number Eight did not want to be stabbed again, and he did not think he would be quick enough any longer to slash at the human.
He remembered a useful phrase from his reading. He moved his hands in a gesture, and added words in the slaves’ patois: “No need. I am dying anyway.”
As he said this, a wonderful thought came to him. Because he was going to die, he would be beyond Sergeant’s reach and beyond the Hot Needle forever. The Fanged God might disapprove of him letting Sergeant’s earring be spoiled, and, for that matter, of him having a monkey take him by surprise, but his terror of the Fanged God was less than his terror of Sergeant had been. He might, it came to him, see his Sire and his mother.
He realized that the human had not stabbed him again. It had backed away, and while it continued watching him, it was also glancing down at the triangle, which he had dropped. He called to it, and it moved cautiously toward him, holding the spear ready to stab or slash. He stared up into the eyes of the human, sensing clearly the creature’s confusion, even its regret.
“Thank you,” he said, in the slaves’ patois. His voice was faint.
It was as if the creature did not understand. It made a sound of puzzlement and interrogation. Trooper Number Eight made an effort.
“Thank you,” he said again, more loudly and clearly.
Orange moving in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, silent. Trooper Number Eight realized that here was a way he could repay his benefactor with more than words. Gathering his strength he cried:
“Look out! Behind you!”
The human moved quickly for one of its kind. Sergeant leapt into the clearing, wtsai flashing. There was an explosion, then another. The monkey’s spear was evidently combined with a bullet-projector. Spent bullets fountained from it in a pretty, golden spray. Kzinti were far quicker than humans, as well as far stronger. But they were not quicker than bullets. Trooper’s sight was dimming at the edges now, but he saw the eruptions in Sergeant’s flesh as the bullets struck him. He should, Trooper thought, have used his own powerful sidearm, not charged with wtsai alone. So Sergeant was not as good a soldier as Trooper had thought, either. Then Sergeant was on the human, and his wtsai flashed. Trooper Number Eight found he could still move his arms. Though feeling below the wound was gone, he groped for the sidearm attached to his belt and worked it free. He wondered if he should let Sergeant live—he would be blamed and punished. But no, there was too great a risk that he might retrieve the situation and emerge a true Hero. Victory in a skirmish against a single monkey would not earn Sergeant a Name, but it would a good entry on his report. For the first time since he knew he was dying horror returned as he realized that he had become too weak to aim and fire the heavy weapon.
Another orange movement in the vegetation. There was Corporal, bounding in, also brandishing wtsai alone. These kzinti, with their limited combat experience, had not learned that humans often called guns “equalizers.” The human jumped back, firing as it turned. Its bullets struck Corporal on the helmet. He went down then, shaking his head, was back on his feet again, roaring. No use for the wtsai now. His sidearm seemed to flash into his hand.
Trooper had his own sidearm clear. Its bullets were kzin-sized, cored with osmium backed by Teflon needles. He fired.
Sergeant and Corporal fell together. The human stood looking at them for a moment, then dropped its weapon, stood for a moment clutching at itself, and then collapsed too. As it fell, Trooper saw that Sergeant’s wtsai had slashed it deeply. Its own blood was spurting out now in rhythmic gushes, and white things, that he took to be the severed ends of the creature’s oddly arranged bones, stood out along the wound in its chest. Then it began to crawl toward him. Somewhere, far off, there were explosions, human cries, the roars and screams of kzin.
Trooper’s vision was contracting now, and a great cold was descending upon him. The journey to the Fanged God was not unwelcome, but it would be lonely. The human was quite near now, reaching toward him.
“Thank you.”
Over Sergeant’s fallen comlink the pilot’s voice hissed and snarled, calling for support.
The surviving human guerrillas entered the clearing. They were guiding two gravity sleds from the transport, piled with kzinti arms, equipment, and supplies. They halted at the sight of three dead kzin and a dead human.
“Well, Boyd certainly did all right,” said the leader.
“I didn’t know he had it in him,” said the second-in-command. “Not bad going to take out three! I’ve never heard of such a thing. And look at his bayonet!” The weapon was dripping with purple and orange kzin blood. “That’s some use of cold steel! Three! I didn’t think it was possible.”
The leader pointed to the badges on the bodies. “More than that! Two of them are NCOs. I’d say that biggest one must been have been in charge of the section. No wonder they weren’t coordinated!”
“And I thought he was too soft for this. I wish I’d treated him better now.”
“We owe him big time,” said the leader, bending to close the dead man’s eyes. And then: “There can’t be many of them left at the base.”
“With these,” he said, patting some prize booty—the smart mortars that were sometimes misnamed plasma guns but which though they did not actually fire plasma were quite deadly enough in their own right, “and these,”—the high-tech beam-weapons—“we can take out the whole base. And be a long way away before any other ratcats realize it.”
Then he saw something else that made no sense. The human and the smallest of the kzin were lying together in a pool of mingled blood, and, bizarrely, the right hands of the two were clasped together. Between them lay a triangular piece of metal which none of the humans recognized.
But there was no time to stay and wonder. The guerrillas knew more enemy might arrive at any time. They moved quickly to add the dead kzinti’s ears and weapons to those they already possessed. The intelligence specialist stripped the bodies of comlinks, recorders, and other electronics.
The next lot of kzin, when they arrived, should see the earless bodies of the dead kzin NCOs, that was obvious and elementary psychological warfare, but they would have no monkey meat.
The humans and the sleds were already laden with as much booty as they could carry, and Boyd’s body could not be added to the load. The leader waved the beam of a newly acquired handgun over it, cremating it instantly. Then, moved by an odd impulse, waved it again, cremating the smallest kzin with him. The smoke from the two bodies drifted away, its dispersing particles to mingle above the treetops with the smoke of the burning transport.
STRING
♦ ♦ ♦
Hal Colebatch and
Matthew Joseph Harrington
2895 CE
“This will be a change from your last assignment for us,” the puppeteer said. The grizzled ARM general apparently standing beside it nodded agreement. Given modern medical techniques, not even counting whatever the ARM kept for themselves, the gray had to be pure theater, to establish dominance via human respect for elders. It wasn’t that effective—there were too many elders these days.
“It had better be,” said Richard Guthlac. “The last was not something we’d like to repeat.”
“You did well enough then, though your companion did better,” it replied. “A great menace was destroyed. That is one reason you have been chosen again. That and the fact Charrgh-Captain asked for you.”
Richard and Gay exchanged eloquent looks. Charrgh-Captain had been the Patriarchy observer assigned to acco
mpany their small human-Wunderkzin team to the last stasis box to be found.
“He evidently appreciates your resourcefulness,” the puppeteer went on. “More, by the terms of the treaty they are only obliged to accept one observer, but he said you were a mated team. Unasked concessions like that from a kzin of the Patriarchy, an officer very much of the old school, are too rare to be lightly set aside.”
Richard and Gay nodded. They and Charrgh-Captain had been through a memorable time together.
“This time,” the general said, “it’s been the kzinti’s turn to find a stasis box. You will be the human observers attached to a kzinti expedition.
“Of course you don’t have to go,” he went on. “But the pay will be good.”
“For sharing a ship with a crew of kzinti of the Patriarchy? It had better be!” Richard exclaimed.
“For sharing a ship with a crew of kzinti, and for facing a possibly very dangerous unknown at the end of it. But you know that better than I can tell you.
“Anyway,” said the general, “it appears the kzinti are abiding by the treaty like good little kitties. They have informed us of the discovery, have given you time to join them, and, of course, have agreed that you will have diplomatic status and immunity. Your reserve ranks will also be respected, so you will be entitled to fighters’ privileges, though I hope it won’t be necessary for you to invoke them.
“The box will be opened where it is, not taken to Kzin-aga. In some ways that has problems, but both sides insisted on it, neither trusting the other, and it’s written in. High Admiral Zzarrk-Skrull has given his Name as his Word that the box has not been surreptitiously opened already and then closed again for our benefit. I don’t need to tell you to try discreetly to confirm that if you can,” he said, telling them anyway. ARMs. “But I think the kzinti are genuinely wary about bringing home stasis boxes to open, and in this case I think their paranoia is justified—pretty much everybody’s had problems in that direction in the past, as you probably know. There’s no reason why it shouldn’t all go according to the protocols.”