“Yes, that was one of the reasons. Also, I had to measure the type and intensity of kzin behavioral change at different levels of exposure. The experimental data are guesstimates at best: there was no way to control for continuous versus intermittent exposure, or for the effects of exposure incidents of different duration. But what we did learn is that it works, that the kzinti don’t feel the onset, and that their sensors don’t detect it as a toxin or biohazard. And why should they? It’s a natural product of their bodies, and one that they seem to consider a positive hormone.”
“So now what? Grow the mold and share the joy with our kzin visitors all over Wunderland?”
Smith shook his head. “Nei. That’s the last thing we want. One of the other reasons that the brass chose the Susser Tal is because of the spring flooding from the mountain runoffs. Sustained immersion in water kills the mold, and we don’t want to leave any long-term evidence behind, or worse yet, have started a crèche from which the stuff can spread naturally.”
“I don’t get that; so how—or more to the point, when—do we get to use this as a weapon?”
Smith reached out and held both her hands in his. “As soon as we get the coded signal confirming that the counter-invasion fleet from Earth is in the system. We, or whoever is around to use it, will spread the mold, ensuring the highest possible densities in the landing areas.”
Hilda nodded. “Makes sense to keep it as a surprise weapon for when all the cards are on the table. Once we release it broadly on the planet, it will not only help our forces retake Wunderland, but will be a permanent planetary defense. And I am presuming, of course, that the mold will be seeded on Earth, itself?”
Smith shrugged. “That’s supposed to remain classified, but given what you’ve seen here, I don’t think it’s much of a secret.”
“No, it isn’t. In fact, as far as I can tell, there’s only one more secret that needs revealing.”
“Oh?” Smith looked genuinely perplexed.
Could he be so smart—and so dumb—all at the same time? She pulled her hands out of his, put them on her hips, smiled up into his still-wondering face: “How about your name? What’s your real name, Captain Smith?”
“Oh, that.” He smiled. “I’m Wulf. Wulf Armbrust.”
She put her hands on his chest and stood on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “Nice to meet you, Captain Wulf Armbrust. Now, let’s catch up with the logistics staff: we’re going to need to rework the portage roster to redistribute the food and water.”
Together, they turned their backs on the mist-filled Susser Tal and resumed the long trek between the snow covered peaks of the Grosse Felsbank, so impossibly high above them.
AT THE GATES
♦ ♦ ♦
Alex Hernandez
Righteous Manslaughter
Righteous Manslaughter dived into the dust and asteroidal grit of an aborted solar system choking a brown dwarf star with only a string of cryptic numbers for a name. There was no escape. The human dreadnaught, Pick of the Litter Alaric, pounded them with lasers, missiles and, as the telepath felt, blazing hatred. Humans had come a long way in the three wars and kzinti were dying—courageously as always, but dying.
“The humans are going to exploit a slowly spreading hairline fracture on our starboard hull,” Righteous Manslaughter’s Telepath screamed in terror. “We have to leap into hyperspace!”
“Silence, you subkzintosh, I am in command of this ship! Our orders are to hold this Fanged God-forsaken system even if the molecules of our ship join the thick orbiting haze,” Fnar-Ritt roared at the Telepath, trying to maintain some semblance of dominance in this insane situation. Telepath, like all his kind, had no dignity to forget, but his abject fear could not be allowed to infect the remainder of the crew.
All surviving warriors had come together on the bridge as other sections of the ship were abandoned to the devouring vacuum. Manslaughter’s Telepath, pumped full of the sthondat drug, tried to push out of his mind the young Heroes’ panic and focus on the savage cunning of the humans. One more well-placed missile and the Manslaughter would be slag.
He knew that the incompetent Fnar-Ritt had no intention of withdrawing and no skill for a fight. He had been handed the captaincy of this ill-fated vessel only because he was of the Patriarchy’s line and had been bred with the rare ability to navigate in hyperspace.
The mind of Tdakar-Commander, a battle-weary veteran who had no particular fear of attempting the impossible, brimmed with stratagems, but he knew his place and held his muzzle shut.
As the humans launched the killing missile at the dying ship, Manslaughter’s Telepath felt Fnar-Ritt’s fear swell almost beyond reason. This was the telepath’s only chance for survival. With the speed of thought he tore at the stretched-thin film of duty and honor that barely held back the vestigial flight response and let the captain’s own overriding terror spill over him. In a last act of cowardice, Fnar-Ritt threw himself onto the crackling console and activated the hyperdrive.
The missile hit and everything flooded with blinding pink light.
The Raoneer Wilderness
The plains of Raoneer were chill under the shifting light of the aurora. A heavily muscled kzintosh watched as a small pride of hunters waded through the feathery, lavender grass. They approach the black-furred dome that had been his home for several years as he had roamed the savage land. Healer-of-Hunters had stalked and killed the hefty animals that early human explorers had named wombadons for their supposed resemblance to an Earth animal called a wombat and made their thick hides into a shelter. He had studied wombats when he was still at crèche and found very little similarity between those cute little creatures and these fiercely territorial monsters. Also, these beasts were no marsupials: like all higher life forms on Sheathclaws, they were neither mammals nor reptiles, but a deadly synthesis of the two. The planet was at an evolutionary stage roughly equivalent to the Permian period on Earth. The advancing pride dragged the heavy carcass of one behind them. Healer thought that he would eat well tonight.
“Are you Healer-of-Hunters?” The leader of the small band asked in Interworld. Three cautious females, one clearly his daughter, circled closely around the male. They kept their distance from the wild-looking young kzintosh. These hunters were too well-groomed to have been living wild for long. They were recent arrivals from Shrawl’ta.
“Yes,” he growled.
“I am Maintainer-of-Communications; at least, I was back in Shrawl’ta. My idiot son has been attacked by a pack of alliogs while on a hunt. One of them took a chunk clean out of his side,” the father said, pulling back the obsidianlike hide of the wombadon, revealing a mutilated kit, almost a kzintosh. The adolescent stoically bore the pain as a kzin should.
“Take him into my hut. I’ll see what I can do.”
Inside the structure of animal bone and rawhide was an impressive array of chirping diagnostic equipment and a blinking new autodoc. “You’ve got a field hospital here,” said the father, sniffing the antiseptic chemicals in the hut.
“You’d be surprised how many kzinti injure themselves on the hunt or in duels in these backwoods.” Healer examined the kit sprawled out on the pallet. “Well, perhaps it would no longer surprise you. Please wait outside.”
Healer connected the juvenile to the doc and immediately administered a strong painkiller. The kit’s writhings ceased. He sighed through clenched teeth in instant relief. The kit was missing a U-shaped chunk of flesh under his right arm. Luckily, the bite hadn’t penetrated through the boney mesh of the kzinti skeleton. Healer sprayed synthetic skin, cultured from the adolescent’s own DNA, onto the bloody hole. “You’re going to be fine. It was a small alliog.” He wrapped the kit’s torso in a tight bandage.
“It didn’t feel like a small alliog.”
“Why did you leave Shrawl’ta? Your father held an important position there.”
“Everyone is saying a kzinti warship has entered our system. My father had always dreamed of living
free in the Raoneer country. He said now was his chance before the Patriarchy exterminated us all for breeding like vermin.”
A kzinti warship? Surely, thought Healer, we would all be dead by now. This thriving amethyst planet would be reduced to a dusty disc of debris, but being Maintainer-of-Communications, this kit’s father would be privy to the truth of such information.
He adjusted the flow of anesthesia and sedated the kit. He called for the waiting kzintosh to return to the hut. The former Maintainer-of-Communications entered and made appreciative prostration. “Is the stupid kit going to survive?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you and the Maned God!” He prostrated himself a little lower. “Please, Healer-of-Hunters, take my daughter into your harem. We are of praiseworthy stock, sired of Shadow.”
Healer had instinctively breathed in the young, attractive kzinrett as she approached his hut, but her pheromones carried the uncomfortable tinge of the incestuous.
“Thank you, brave Hunter, that is a most generous offer, but I do not wish to complicate my life in these uncertain times.” He scratched his scruffy neck, hoping the excuse and change of subject were not too obvious. “If what I’ve heard is true, this small hut will be swollen with the bodies of wounded Raoneers.”
The kzintosh rose quickly. “You know of the ship?”
“Your son purred about it while under the influence of the autodoc. Is it true, a warship?”
“Yes, it’s true. Ceezarr himself met with the human Triumvirate about the matter. According to their analysis, and ours, the ship is unresponsive, probably wrecked.”
“That is somewhat of a relief.”
“Yes, still the threat was enough for me to reevaluate my life.”
“Indeed.” Healer was no longer listening to the other kzintosh. He pawed at the possibilities this ship presented. Were there survivors? Perhaps frozen in coldsleep caskets, unaware that their ship had been attacked? He grabbed his wristcomp and moved toward the flap in the tent. “You can sit with your son until he wakes. I am going on a hunt.”
Healer-of-Hunters dashed through the wispy purple reeds as though in hot pursuit of quick and cunning prey. “Get me Daneel Guthlac,” he hissed into his wristcomp and kept running until he had reached the gravcar he’d tucked away beneath blood-colored brush.
The image of a human male with a mane of sandy, wavy hair, a close-trimmed beard and strong jaw line winked over Healer’s wrist.
Harp, Angel’s Tome
Dan lay on the floor of his lab calibrating the compact gravity motor of his car for the eighth time. Its hum was so perfectly pitched that it purred like newborn kit. He had reached the limits of what he could squeeze out of this ancient kzin-derived technology and he was becoming bored with it.
His wristcomp pinged and he pushed himself from under the triangular gravcar. The grainy hologram of a kzin with black markings lost in dark orange, almost chocolate, fur, beamed out of his wristcomp. Its piercing amber eyes scrutinized him for a long second.
It took just as long for Dan to place this savage-looking face. “My God, I haven’t heard from you in ages! Where the tanj have you been?”
“I’m out in the Raoneer wilderness, hunting and providing medical care for other kzinti out here.”
“All that academic excellence back at the crèche and you’ve gone bushcat!” Dan couldn’t suppress a smile.
“I need your help. I’ve just got word that a kzinti warship was sighted in our neighborhood. Can you verify that claim?”
“Yeah, there are media rumors circulating that a scout ship was detected in our system. Anyone with any sense knows that’s got to be false because our planet is not a cinder.”
“Agreed.”
Dan could hear his old friend panting like a thirsty dog. “But something’s got the A.T. Triumvirate all in a huff.”
“Word from Ceezarr’s mansion says the ship is incapacitated.”
“Is this why you called me?”
“I want to pounce on it, but I’m going to need your help. I need all the information the Triumvirate has on the ship and I need an engineer once I get to it.”
“Whoa, I’d love to get my hands on a modern warship with technology one hundred years ahead of anything we’ve got in this miserable marooned colony, but the risks seem a bit too high. I’d hate to be the guy that points the Patriarchy to our doorstep.”
“I believe the risk is acceptable. I plan to fly the barge my father has set up as a useless museum piece and tow the derelict back here. Will you join me?”
“Come on, I haven’t see you in years. I don’t even know what you’re called now! And you drop this on my lap all of a sudden?”
“My provisional name is Healer-of-Hunters. I don’t have any other friends. You’re an engineer and you have poor judgment. I figured you’d leap at the chance to sink your blunt little nails into state-of-the-art technology.”
“Nice to meet you, Healer-of-Hunters. What do bushcats care about advanced technology?”
“Absolutely nothing. You can have the ship and open it up like a fresh kill.”
“So why are you so interested in this ship?”
“Do not worry about that.”
“Dishonesty comes across as stiff and unnatural on kzinti. You lack the neurological architecture to shamelessly lie.”
“I’m sorry. I was informed you worked at Harp University’s engineering department, not in neural science.” Healer’s ears rippled at his own joke and Dan imagined his tail whipping around. “Besides, I’m not lying. I’m withholding information.”
“Sarcasm? Humans are ruining a proud and unflappable species!”
“Will you help me? If not, I’ll do it alone, but the odds of success will be greatly reduced.”
“I don’t know, you’re not exactly convincing me to give up my cushy life as a researcher to go on a potentially world-devastating endeavor.”
“Remember back when we were kits and you used your monkey wiles to talk me into eating Mrs. Davis’ pug. I didn’t question you, I simply attacked. I need you to attack.”
“I remember your dad tore you up when she showed up at his mansion blubbering. Was it really worth it?”
He absently licked his lips. “Oh yes, that plump little dog was utterly delicious.”
“Alright, who am I to argue with a million years of kzinti killer instinct?”
“Can you get an audience with the Triumvirate?”
“With a name like Guthlac? I’ll be sipping tea with them by noon.”
“How much time do you need to get the information and get to Shrawl’ta?”
“Give me four hours.”
“That fast?”
“I have a very fast car.”
The bushcat abruptly cut off the transmission.
Dan’s arrowhead of a car shot around the city of Harp in a wide arch. He saw the gleaning white skyscrapers topped with radiant blue domes that tastefully hid beam cannons and rocket launchers, all pointed toward the sky. The coastal metropolis was a Byzantine sprawl of culture and commerce. Its wide and bustling walkways were lined with plants like black orchids the size of grand palms. Of the three human settlements in Angel’s Tome, Harp had become the richest and largest. It imported meat from Raoneer and exported seafood which the kzinti loved. The University of Harp had finally unraveled the captured alien technology and churned out lucrative spin-offs, like his gravcar. He circled the extravagant Triumvirate House and remembered one of its architects deliriously describing it as what the Hagia Sophia would have looked like if they’d had ultra-light building materials with the tensile strength of carbon nanotubes.
“Triumvirate House accepts your request to land. Please direct your vehicle to the south parking garage,” his onboard computer chimed.
A security officer marched him toward a private elevator. When he finally entered the massive indoor amphitheater, its grandeur floored him. The underside of the luminous blue dome displayed a high-resolution image of what Earth’
s sky would have looked like on a sunny spring day. Its clarity had a charm Sheathclaws’ complex sky lacked. The vast space was empty but for three stern humans. They radiated a haughty annoyance.
He sat in a central chair surrounded by an azure, half-moon desk. Facing the three politicians, he quickly scanned them with his weak empathic powers. “Thank you for granting me the honor.”
“The Triumvirate has a tough decision to make and since you called us about this mysterious ship, we thought it natural the only native of Raoneer in Harp should partake in the discussion,” Jibunoh, the spokeswoman told him. “We might benefit from your unique input. Your heritage was also a factor, of course.”
“Thank you again, Triumvir, but there are quite a few people from Raoneer here.”
“Correction, as the only human.” She looked at the unruly specimen before her, as if she didn’t quite believe in his humanity. “What do you know of the matter at hand?”
“Only that what appears to be a damaged kzinti ship penetrated our sensor swarm not too long ago.” Dan’s mind prowled around the three heads-of-state like a predator trying to pick out the lame prey.
“A month ago, to be exact, every sensor in the system began screaming when a Patriarchy warship suddenly appeared in our system’s heliosphere. The three of us and Apex Leader of Raoneer quickly gathered to strategize and ready our defenses, but all subsequent scans show that the ship is indeed badly damaged and currently tumbling toward the sun. Ceezarr lost interest when the chance for battle became remote and returned to Shrawl’ta.”
“You attempted to communicate with it?”
“No. This meeting is precisely to determine our next step. Images of the ship indicate that it’s far more advanced than the ships our founders confronted.”
“They’ve had about a hundred years to improve.”
“Exactly. The question is, do we want those upgrades or do we let the derelict go on its way.”
“There are barbarians at the gates and you talk of trinkets?” murmured Triumvir Bhang. The woman had aged rather well, but her dark almond-shaped eyes were filled with fear. She wanted nothing to do with kzinti, local or otherwise.