The Man-Kzin Wars 06

Chapter Three Catspaw Gambit

Lies. They made a sour lump in my chest as I stood waiting in Feynman’s airlock.

Control was everything at this point, but it was difficult to stay focused. I thought of my children. My wife. I thought of the cryobox on that huge table back at Blackjack. I thought of Kraach-Captain’s oath, delivered four light-years away. My children’s faces swam in my memory Did little Gretha remember me? She was not so little now, it occurred to me suddenly; it had been four years in absolute time, a few weeks to me.

The damned holocube seemed a massive weight in my inner pocket, reminding me of what was at stake. I could not let any of my children become a plaything in a kzin hunting park. Not even to save elitist, cowardly Herrenmann lives. No choice. So I swallowed my bile and looked at the opening inner lock with false calm.

The hatch to Feynman finished sliding open with a metallic grinding and a blast of compressed air. My little Herrenmann friend stood just inside the lock, a welding laser held meaningfully in his hands. Not much of a weapon, but one that would do the job, yes. His eyes flicked swiftly from side to side, scanning the airlock behind me. A young Herrenmann woman stood near a doorway about ten meters away and watched us intently.

“Ah, Herr Bergen, I presume,” I said, forcing a smile to my lips and tone. Hard to do, but what choice did I have?

Act like Jacobi, yes, perhaps-but don’t become like him.

Bergen pointed the big laser at my chest and waved me inside with his free hand “You are to please keep your hands away from your body where I might see them.” The little dyed tufts of his asymmetric beard made Bergen look like a goat I had once seen at a zoo in Tiamat.

“I understand your caution,” I said. Reassuring tone, bland face. All the while, my wife’s voice and children’s faces were in my heart like a knife. I spread my hands carefully and stepped inside the slowboat. The airlock cycled shut behind me, sealing with a hiss like an angry kzin.

Bergen watched me and took a few steps backward. He handed the welding laser to the woman. She braced herself in marksman position, trim and efficient. He whispered to her, then came toward me again, magnetic soles of his shipshoes clicking on the deck. He reached into a toolpouch on his belt.

“It is good to see you again, my friend,” I said easily Too friendly? Got to get the right tone.

Bergen ran a small box with blinking lights over the outlines of my shipsuit and carryall, looking for energy weapons or inappropriate electronics. He grunted approval and put the box away. The woman with the welding laser did not relax.

“Trust is a wonderful thing,” I observed. Ironic? Witty? What character was I playing here? No one replied.

I popped my helmet and left it on a Velcro patch near the airlock I picked up my carryall and raised an eyebrow at Bergen in question. A nod. He escorted me toward the doorway. The silent woman came behind us. I could feel the itch of a laser sight in the small of my back. The shot would flash-boil the water in me like a steam jet.

Suspicious elitists, yes. But then, they would soon discover that they had reason to be suspicious. Not that the fact made me feel any better.

Feynman had been designed to run nearly automatically. Crew of three to five, carrying well over three hundred coldsleepers, with a sizable cargo bay. The life support sections we walked through were therefore small and cramped. Huge slowboat, tiny lifebubble. Well kept, though, even neat. Large wallscreens with complex automated monitoring readouts caught my eye as we passed.

The 0.1 g was enough for a strong up-and-down orientation. Magnetic shipboots kept us from leaping like Wunderland zithraras down the hallways. Soon, I could see the slight curve to the main ring corridor, which gave true perspective to the size and bulk of Feynman.

It felt huge, empty lonely. Dim corridor lights, chilly echoing halls. Walls stained by time, stinks flavoring the air, aromas both biological and mechanical. Only a few crew could be awake on Feynman; life support systems couldn’t handle more. Many doors and hatches were closed along the main ring corridor, some with oxidized seals. Some led to the cargo bay, I knew, and others to ship function areas. A few would lead to the liquid nitrogen chambers.

Coldsleep. There had to be a passenger manifest somewhere. I had sworn to myself that I would have a little talk with my cryogenically suspended mother at some point soon. I wanted her to see where her cowardice had led.

We stooped through one low hatchway and down a short corridor. It opened to the small control room for the slowboat. An old woman sat in front of a console, her face dimly lit from the control boards. On one of her screens I could see a wide spectrum scan of Victrix running. The old woman looked up, eyes tired.

“You are Hochte?” she snapped. A voice cracked and brittle. Her hair was ice-white and thin. This woman had taken no anti-aging drugs. Time had carved deep lines into her face, which was dark and leathery with a fusion drive tan. She must have spent too much time at the core of Feynman, monitoring the fire fed by the ramscoop fields. But her eyes were bright and alive.

I kept my smile intact. “That is correct, Madame. And to whom have I the pleasure to speak?” She carried herself like an old-school Herrenmann women, like the great aunts I met while my parents were alive, or some of the collaborationist doyennes I had seen in Munchen. No jewelry, a wiry frame in a simple shipsuit. Her expression was more than merely haughty, though. There was another quality to it, one I could not quite name. Disturbing.

She stared at me coolly for a moment, then chuckled low in her throat. “I am Freya Svensdottir. I command on this shift. You have met Klaus Bergen, and his silent but efficient wife, Madchen Franke.”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” Murmured pseudo-formalities took a moment while our eyes assessed each other. There could only be one or two more crew awake, if that. The lifesystem capacity was small. This would be simpler than I had planned. But something about the woman made me edgy, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Her expression did not change. “And you bring us news that the ratcat kzinti have been defeated? Driven from Wunderland?”

I nodded. “It is my distinct pleasure to tell you so.” Gesture with the carryall. “May I?”

She nodded. I opened it and removed the items that Jacobi and Kraach-Captain had so carefully prepared during the voyage out to Feynman. Holocubes. False historical records. Even the loop of kzinti ears I had shown Bergen earlier over tightbeam. Kraach-Captain had earned those himself, dueling for authorization to form his expedition to the slowboat.

For the next hour, I explained about the mythical Free Wunderland Navy and its equally mythical victories. About driving the ratcats out of Wunderlander space. Great stories. I had spent plenty of time on them.

If only they had been true.

The crew had no way of knowing the truth, after all. There had been no attempt by the slowboats to contact Wunderland. Sol had not been in contact either, so far as any human knew. Hard to do, through the plasma plume and the forward bow shock.

We Wunderlanders had been left on our own by our so-wise Solar brethren. This slowboat was in the same predicament.

Bergen grew slowly enthusiastic as I told my stories. His wife simply stared at me. Maybe the isolation of the slowboat crew shift did not agree with her psyche. Svensdottir stared at me, too, but with a weighing gaze; she was clearly in command, the one to convince.

I told my hosts about the vessel some distance out from Feynman that had carried me here. I explained how it would retrofit Feynman with a gravitic polarizer drive, allowing the slowboat to make it the rest of the way to Sol in a matter of weeks.

Bergen stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So we would need to deactivate the ramscoop fields, yes?”

I nodded agreement. “The tender vessel is large. I don’t think that it could work its way through the fluxlines, even with the protective field from the gravitic polarizers.”

“This would take time,” Svensdottir said. ‘We must avoid instability of the field as it is being shut down. The fusion drive is most delicately balanced.” She stood. “I will go below and begin programming the shutdown mode.”

I blinked. I had anticipated some more doubt, maybe even opposition, debate. But then, they were desperate in here. The long years had worn them. Then I knocked on their door, bringing safety freedom, hope.

I swallowed what I was feeling. Concentrated on images of innocent faces, a woman’s severed hand.

After the old gray woman left I looked over at Bergen. “She seems a bit hard edged.”

That is true. But she has kept Feynman going, all this time.” He smiled a bit, against his innate Herrenmann sobriety.

“You mean she’s been on duty the entire trip?”

He nodded. “From the time we boosted away from Wunderland, just ahead of the kzin. She took one look at the destruction of the Serpent Swarmer fleet behind her, and refused coldsleep.” Bergen looked pensive. “Since the lifesystems on board don’t work terribly well, we take frequent shifts. But the old woman… well, she has stayed on shift for nearly forty years.”

“Odd,” I replied.

“Space is deep, Herr Hochte. We are the same age, she and I,” Bergen said. “I slept most of the time.”

“Could you have not talked her into shifts? After all, spending one’s life this way… “I pursed my lips, gestured around me at the slowboat.

He shrugged. “She insists.”

Typical Herrenmannen behavior.

I nodded. “A formidable woman. You have all been brave. Earth will hail you.” Might as well hand out the compliments. It relaxed people. Madchen Franke smiled, clearly a rare expression for her.

I shrugged. “Well, while your estimable leader is looking over the fusion drive shutdown parameters, we have one more order of business.” I reached into my carryall and very casually removed a stylus. I wanted to take care of this as quickly as possible, just in case there were further complications. I did not want anyone doing anything to ship systems without my supervision. Too much risk.

Careful to breathe through my nose I twisted at the cylinder I was holding. An invisible, inaudible puff complete surprise. An incipient shock on Bergen’s face glazed to a sleeping mask. The welding laser thumped uselessly on the floor below Franke’s nerveless fingers. Her expression was little different, awake or asleep.

Quick and neat.

Invisible nose filters no longer needed-the gas degraded to harmlessness in less than thirty seconds-I heaved a great gasp of the ship’s pungent air. Pocketing the stylus, I carefully laid them out flat on the control room floor. Then I reached for the welding laser. Time to do a little hunting.

“I knew it.” Suddenly I realized that I had half expected the voice from the hatchway-but why? I turned around to face the fragile old woman. The laser would not be necessary. Svensdottir, unarmed, ignored me completely. She was looking at the bodies of Bergen and Franke.

I said nothing. She ignored it.

Her eyes finally raised to mine. “Are they alive?”

“Yes,” I told her calmly. Soothing. “A simple nerve gas. It will wear off in a few hours.”

“You are working for the kzin.” Not a question.

I nodded again, removing the nose filters and stuffing them into a pocket. I didn’t want to insult her or myself by explaining my actions. How could she possibly understand?

“I suppose that you will put me down now, like some kind of inconvenient pet.” I could see the harsh lines deepen around Svensdottir’s mouth in the control-room light. Disapproval carved those features, like a great-aunt surveying some broken dishes left by a clumsy toddler on an unwanted visit.

“Hardly,” I told her. “My… employers… will need you left alive, as guides and teachers.”

Her eyes narrowed, then widened. She seemed to instantly grasp the Trojan Cat gambit. “Never.”

“That is what I said,” I said softly, almost kindly. “Now look at me.”

“Well, what is next, traitor?” I couldn’t look at her eyes. Didn’t want to see the accusation peering from that old face.

I paused, wet my lips. The words were difficult. “There is something you can do for me.”

The old woman said nothing, stony-faced. I could see that she was a hard woman, had always been a hard woman. She fairly vibrated with her hatred at my betrayal.

“Tante,” I said soffly.

She looked up at me sharply, face gone rigid. Her pale eyes stared into mine, studying, studying. Her wrinkles seemed etched deep by pain and loss. I knew how she felt. She raised a wisp of an eyebrow, her Herrenmann ears long and incongruous on her thin face. “You shouldn’t call me your auntie,” the old woman said at last, her tone almost gentle. “You are a traitor.”

“Did you know Helga Schleisser?” I finally asked, ignoring her insult.

Another long silence, then she sighed. “Ja. She was a proud woman; perhaps too proud.” Dry crackling precision. “She had her duty and honor to carry out. It was a heavy burden for her to bear.” Svensdottir considered it for a moment. “Perhaps too heavy.”

I snorted in derision.

The old woman poked me hard with a gnarled, fearless finger. “Do not make light of honor and duty nor their weight, Herr Hochte. They are qualities that set us apart from the beasts.” A frown deepened her wrinkles. “Yet too much attention to those qualities makes us little different than the ratcat teufels, is it not so?”

I nodded. I couldn’t stand much more of this. The stylus was a burning weight in my pocket. I suddenly remembered Sharna’s bell-like laugh in the welcoming darkness of our compartment.

“What happened to Helga Schleisser?” I persisted.

“I’ll show you,” the old woman replied, and motioned me toward the corridor. I let Svensdottir lead the way. She was unarmed. My micrograv reflexes were better than hers. I had nothing to fear.

The curving corridor finally led to a sealed hatch, which the old woman unlocked with an identikey from around her neck. The hatch sighed and slid aside, releasing foggy, bitterly cold air into the corridor. I shivered. A chilly brush of the liquid nitrogen at 77 degrees Absolute. A touch of the grave-though a temporary one. Dim lights flickered on inside the ceramic chamber.

I followed her into a connected series of cargo holds, filled from floor to ceiling with row after row of identical cryosuspension bunks. Svensdottir seemed to know exactly where she was going as she passed the stacked ranks of coffinlike containers. Finally, she stood in front of one lower-tier coldsleep bunk, gestured. I could see the name illuminated by glowing lights on the case: HELGA YAKOBSON SCHLEISSER.

The coldsleep bunk was empty.

I looked back at Svensdottir in confusion. Just in time for the magneto wrench to catch me in the pit of my stomach.

I drifted to my knees in the low gravity gasping, grabbed for her legs-and she clubbed me again, behind the ear this time. Sharp pain. Contracting vision.

“I couldn’t do it, my son,” she told me sadly. When I could open my eyes, bright lights swam before them. Somehow she had gotten a welding laser and was pointing it at me. Cool, stern. She had set all of this up. Set me up, smooth as water ice. “Uh, I-”

“I thought that it was wrong to sleep away the decades, to let others bear my burdens. I had lost Henry, you… everything. All I had left was keeping Feynman going, and reaching Sol. Just honor and duty.” She gestured at the stacks of coldsleep bunks. “These are all the experts we could find on the kzin, people who knew what little we had learned about fighting them. We even have some kzinti warship wreckage as cargo. Maybe the Earthers can do a better job at understanding the ratcat tech.”

I tried hard to catch my breath, my mind racing. “You knew it was me all along.” The laser did not waver.

My mother nodded. “The years have not been kind to me, watching the fusion fires of Feynman bum, and keeping the systems functioning. Useful work but it had its price. But you, Kenneth, have become the image of your father; how could I not know you?”

She stared at me for a long time. Her eyes were deep, unyielding. Yet I could remember them now from other, ancient days. An imperious weight on me.

I did nothing. What was there to say?

“We have a few coldsleep bunks open. I will put you into one, and deal with this trouble at Sol.” She gestured with the laser for me to get up. “The kzin can kill us, but they will not board us.” I believed her utterly.

“Don’t you want to know why?” I asked her.

She shook her head, bird-quick. “Not particularity. I had expected a possibility like this one. Just not a son of mine leading the betrayal. We can sort all of that out in six months or so. There is no time now. I have preparations to make, to deal with your masters.”

My mother paused for a beat, then continued. “The signal laser has been down since the kzin near-miss when Feynman left Wunderland. We don’t have the spare parts to fix it. So I cannot tell the status of Sol, Wunderland, or the kzin. I had to be careful. It was well I had prepared.”

I started to get to my feet, reaching out a hand for support.

“Easy no” she warned, backing away from me.

“Without the signal laser, you couldn’t have stopped the kzin from boarding Feynman.” I was angry, suddenly. My sacrifice was not even needed. All of this, for nothing!

A cold smile. “Perhaps it would be worth trying for the kzin, but with the ramscoop fields and fusion drive, I think we could keep the ratcats at bay.” She gestured more insistently with the laser. “Get up.”

“You don’t understand,” I told her, standing upright. “I had no choice.”

The lines in her face deepened. I could see her flush beneath her fusion tan. She snorted, features sharpening in a sneer. “You were only following orders, I suppose?”

“Hardly.”

She gestured at me once more with the welding laser, toward one of the coldsleep chambers. Once inside, the autodoc routines would sedate me and start the chill-down cycle. I didn’t have long to think of something. Her right hand covering me with the laser, my mother’s left danced across the keypad. She stood out of the way as the readouts beeped musically.

The panel in front of me hissed as a series of lights blinked green across its diagnostic readout display. The coldsleep bunk access opened, like a sideways coffin lid. I paused.

“Mother. Please listen.” I met her icy gaze sideways. It was my last chance.

She said nothing, but neither did she shoot me. If I failed, Kraach-Captain would send his message back to Wunderland, and my family would die. An image of sharp white teeth, designed to shear through living flesh, came into my head unbidden.

“This means nothing to you, perhaps,” I found myself saying urgently. “The ratcats have my family. Your grandchildren. I had no choice.”

It was time. Bet a little, bet it all.

I leaped backward. The laser spat a high-energy pulse where I had been a moment before. Where it hit the coldsleep bunk electronics fried and sputtered. An alarm shrieked.

I swept the welding laser from my mother’s grasp. It pinwheeled across the chamber. I ducked with Belter reflexes, rolled, and came up with the gas stylus in my hand.

“Sorry,” I said, the words out of my mouth a surprise. My mother looked at me, shock and resignation tightening her face. She didn’t beg. I’ll give her that.

“Is it true?” she asked.

“What?”

“About your family?”

Her question surprised me. “Of course. Any other threat I could have answered with suicide.” I reached into my shipsuit pocket and pulled out the nose filters, pushed them in, breathed deeply-and the stylus hissed. The gas puff cloaked her face instantly.

She shook her head as if to clear it of cobwebs, and slowly slid to the deck “Not your fault,” she muttered. “Never had the chance… to raise you as… a Herrenmann.” Her eyes flickered, closed. The lined mummy face smoothed with unconsciousness.

I recovered the welding laser and slung it over my shoulder. I picked her up and carried her to the control room. She was feather-light in the microgravity.

Around me the ship hummed on. Anybody home? It would be like her to hide backup crew member, or booby traps. I was angry, jittery with reaction.

I kept the laser ready but the corridors stayed empty. In the control room I put her on the floor with the other two and did some quick analysis with the shipboard computers. They were little different from the computers in the Swann; the kzin discouraged innovation.

INTERNAL INVENTORY: ACTIVE: IR. No other infrared radiators at 37° C in Feynman. No movement other than small cleaning and maintenance autobots. Good. I’d had enough surprises for one watch.

Time to complete my job. I looked at the three bodies at my feet and breathed heavily. It had been a very near thing. I checked them over quickly again. Vital signs were all strong and steady, even my mother’s. Jacobi had not lied about the nerve gas. The three of them would be needed in good health by my ratcat masters, to explain the operation of Feynman.

I hated the way those thoughts sounded in my head. The deck thrummed under my feet. It was very quiet in the control room. Was this triumph? I thought of what my treachery had bought. I was different from Jacobi; I did what I had to for my wife and my children. My mother’s stem, weathered face accused me even while unconscious.

Jacobi was buying legs and a face. What had I bought? I was delivering my children’s children, and their children, into slavery to the kzin. But at least they would be alive. There comes a time, I realized, to do what is right. Not what is best, actually. Nor what one would prefer to do.

What is right.

I thought of slavery and defeat and my family. Of honor. Of empty platitudes about freedom versus the harsh reality of a frost-rimed severed hand in a cryobox. I thought of orange striped shapes flashing through a forest, pursuing human children.

My children.

It was time to send for Kraach-Captain and his Heroes, to turn Feynman into a Trojan Cat full of kzin hardware, soldiers, and weapons. To help that Trojan Cat prepare to break the back of the defense perimeter around Sol, to allow the next kzin fleet to destroy and conquer as they had at Wunderland. But at least I was not helping the aliens in exchange for a new pair of legs, no.

I was better than Jacobi… yet a tiny voice jibed in my head. Nicht wahr? How, exactly?

My body seemed on autopilot as I walked away from the sleeping bodies, down the main ring corridor. The holocube felt very heavy in my inner pocket as I walked back to the airlock and I re-entered the singleship. My fingers automatically went so far as to orient Victrix’s signal laser correctly. I could tightbeam the message directly.

My fingers paused. First, it would take me some time to unravel the shipboard instructions for shutting down the ramscoop fields and fusion drive.

In my mind’s eye, I could see the kzin armada breaking the back of Sol. Tightening their grip over all of human space like a clenching fist. I could see my great-great-grandchildren, close-mouthed slaves in some kzin household, wielding blowdriers and brushes on their indolent predator masters.

Just another slave race, eventually no better than a degenerate Jotok.

The image sickened me. I could imagine those future generations reviling my name in private, slaves whispering to other slaves in low voices while their masters slept. Tiny humans scurrying around huge kzin households, secretly cursing the names of the humans who had sold their birthright, their future. My descendants would not remember them. But I did. The hated names flowed easily over the tongue, echoing in my mind.

Arnold.

Quisling.

Chien.

Easterhouse.

Upton-Schleisser.

I turned away from the commset. Quickly, not thinking any more, I left my singleship. Back into Feynman. I walked to the three lying in a drugged stupor. I looked down at them, emotions warring within me.

My wife, my children: they would die if I failed, yes. All life’s sweetness, gone.

But they would at least know that I, husband and father-and most of all, human-finally believed in things larger than myself.

One human can make a difference, no matter what people like Jacobi said.

And perhaps it was not too late.

I made my decision. Swearing gently, I reached into my pouch for the antidote ampoules to the nerve gas. My fingers shook a little, but I ignored it. I stabbed my mother’s wrinkled neck with the drug and waited for her to wake up.

This was going to be hard. Owning up to who you are usually is.

My mother had been right, damn her stern soul. Once a Herrenmann, always a Herrenmann.

She coughed once, her eyes fluttering, and tried to sit up.

When she finally became coherent, I told her every- thing.