Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (26 page)

“Then allow your world to come in here.”

Selena opened her eyes. “What did you have in mind?”

“Give me free and unrestricted access to your public records, your library, your news: all of it.”

Selena smiled. “Relying on any one of those sources could give you a very distorted view of our world.”

“That is why I want—why I
need
—to see all of it. I presume no one voice will speak a complete truth. So I will get to know your world in the same way I get the full measure of each new prey animal you provide: by studying it from all perspectives.” Hap’s fur rippled slowly in a show of good-natured amicability. “Is it not a reasonable request?”

Selena stared at him. “It is. Quite unreasonable.”

* * *

Pyragy was putting on a good show in front of the admiral and the associate executive chair: to watch and listen to him, you’d never have guessed that he was doing everything he could to get Selena discredited and drummed out of the scientific community. “This is an excellent turn of events. You might even say that this has produced a silver lining greater than the darkness which started it: the unfortunate death of the female.”

Admiral Coelho-Chase shrugged, suppressing disgust at Pyragy’s increasingly obsequious mannerisms. “Dr. Navarre, much as I regret admitting it, the director does make a good point: it seems that Hap is now interested in the mission for which we’ve been grooming him, and that he’s coming back around to us in general. By any objective standards, those are excellent changes in him.”

“Yes, Admiral, they are quite excellent. But I’m afraid you are dead wrong about him becoming interested in his mission. Or rather, yes, he’s interested now—but not for the reasons you think.”

“Oh?”

“Admiral, Hap intends to betray us. At the very first opportunity he has to do so.”

“What? You mean this is all a conceit?”

Pyragy seemed ready to rub the admiral’s arm soothingly. “Dr. Navarre is exaggerating, at best, or prevaricating, at worst. She is just trying to diminish the new opportunities which have arisen from the unfortunate incident involving the female—”

“No, I’m quite serious. And I know my subject: Hap means to betray us.”

In the nine years she had known him, this was the first time Admiral Coelho-Chase had ever sputtered. “This is outrageous, if it’s true. After we’ve cared for him all these years—why, if he wasn’t a kzin, it would be treason, pure and simple.”

“But,” Selena explained levelly, “he is a kzin and therefore it is not treason. In fact, it is probably not as much a political action as it a developmental action.”

“What?”

“Admiral, look at his age. At this point in his growth phase, it is entirely natural for kzinti, like humans, to buck authority. Buck it hard. In the case of young kzinti, this takes the shape of suiting their actions to their words: when they start to talk the talk, they expect that they will be called upon to walk the walk. It is a phase of high aggression and a need to distinguish themselves from their parental and mentor figures by pursuing opposed paths, by separation, and frequently, by turning upon those who supported them.”

“And that’s natural?”

“Yes, just like rebelliousness in a teenager.”

“But he is almost full-grown and is now, according to you, determined to work as a confidential agent for the natural kzinti.”

Pyragy squared his shoulders dramatically. “Then, if this is true, we must euthanize him. Immediately.”

Selena surprised herself with the speed and vociferousness of her rebuttal. “Why? Because he won’t join hands and sing
kumbayah
with us? Damn it, he
has
to go through this if he’s to become an adult. Our own human children do. Or did, until lotus-eating idealists neutered them. But at least that’s over with.”

Pyragy’s upper lip contracted as though he had caught a whiff of dung. “Yes. The Golden Age of Peace is indeed behind us, and we have allowed our children to be raised with the knowledge of war and violence. With terrible results.”

“If speciate survival is a terrible result, then I guess you’re right, Director Pyragy. But this new generation has—thank god—the gumption and aggressiveness that comes from having a few fistfights growing up, and trying cases with their parents.”

“Yes,” Pyragy retorted, “and in all probability, by the time those children are as old as I am, they will no longer need to fight the kzinti, because they will have become as kzinti, themselves.” Pyragy looked as though he might spit. “It is horrific, barbaric.”

“A lot of real-life situations are, Director—horrific and barbaric. And having some familiarity with those realities is necessary if you’re going to have a reasonable chance of surviving a serious encounter with any of them. That’s part of the advantage of having kids, human or kzin, grow up in contention with their own parents, as well as their peers. It teaches kids not only about the limits of change, but also about conflict itself. They learn when its appropriate and when it’s not. Which battles to fight, which to avoid, which warrant biding one’s time. And every scrap of evidence we have says that the kzinti need that experience more than humans, much more. So before we declare Hap an irreclaimable turncoat, let’s remember this: we’re all he’s got, which means we’re his only scratching post. So, of course, he’s going to go through this phase. And a valid point of contention like this one—to whom he owes his first loyalties—is a natural lightning rod for those impulses and emotions.”

Associate Executive Chair Dennehy was studying Selena closely, as if he were making several decisions at once. “And what if this isn’t just a teenage phase, Dr. Navarre? After all, Hap has more reason to rebel against authority than any teen ever born.”

Selena nodded soberly. “Now that’s truth, plain and simple, Executive Dennehy. And yes, in turning away from us now, he could be starting down a path that ultimately makes him our permanent, sworn enemy. It might be that he never turns back toward us the way most human kids do when they overcome the tempests of their social and hormonal storm season that we call adolescence. And that’s too bad.

“But it was always a risk, one we knew and articulated right at the outset of this project. And after all, he’s right to feel the way he does. He’s been brought up to be a traitor to his own people, insofar as he is a creature of our making and interests. So we can only hope that, when his wisdom catches up with his intelligence, he will also realize that we were as honest as we could be throughout, eschewed the tactics of coercion, and have always worked not just for own best interests, but for his, and his people’s, as well.”

Pyragy snorted. “You give him entirely too much credit. He will not stop to think about these things. This is why he had to be civilized—fully and effectively civilized—first: by remaining a creature driven by his primal drives rather than thought, he will remain insensate to these higher appeals.”

“Then, Director Pyragy, you should be glad that he is turning away from us, here and now. Because if he’s not smart enough on his
own
to reflect upon his upbringing in the years to come, then he’s not the right person for the job of being our voice to the kzinti. A person incapable of autonomous reflection or insight would be disastrous to our diplomatic efforts, whatever their end.”

Pyragy grumbled but said nothing loud enough for anyone to hear.

Dennehy was nodding, though. “Dr. Navarre, however else these events might play out, I think you’re absolutely right about one thing: we can’t make a being what he is not. If a kzin, or at least this kzin, is capable—as you posit—of one day seeing our actions in perspective, then this is just a bump in the road, and possibly a necessary one. But if he is not, then you’re right again: he never would have been any good to us as a liaison.”

Selena nodded. “So does this mean that we can start giving Hap increased access to news, to libraries, to—?”

Dennehy nodded back. “Show him our world, Dr. Navarre. Starting today.”

2406 BCE: Subject age—ten years

Selena twisted the strand of silver-grey hair around her finger again and again and again.

“What is that?” Hap’s voice was throaty and deep.

“This? Oh, nothing. This is nothing.”

“You don’t toy obsessively with nothings, Selena.” He sniffed speculatively. “It’s a lock of Dieter’s hair, isn’t it?”

She felt a hot blush rise high on her cheeks, looked away:
schoolgirl-stupid, that’s what I am
.

Hap’s fur pulsed once, slowly. “Don’t be ashamed. I wish they still allowed Dieter to come in to see me. I miss him, too. A lot.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because Dieter had true
strakh
, honor.”

“There was a time you couldn’t abide the sight or smell of him.”

Hap swung his head slightly from side to side; an instinctual gesture, not learned, that was the kzin equivalent of a shrug. “It wasn’t as straightforward as that, Selena. I just didn’t know how to deal with what he had done.”

“And now you do?”

Hap’s eyes partially narrowed in easy acquiescence. “Yes. He was a warrior, doing a warrior’s work. But when I was no longer part of his warrior work, he became a friend. He watched over me, even when your rules said he wasn’t supposed to.” And Selena could feel, or at least imagined, the unuttered rebuke:
which was more than
you
ever did for me.
Which was, sadly, bitterly, true.

“So you’ve come to see Dieter as having more than one role in your life, as having a multifaceted identity?”

Kzinti rolled their eyes much as humans did: Hap did it now. “No, Selena, you don’t understand at all. Dieter doesn’t have a ‘multifaceted identity.’
Eeyaach,
even I understand him better than that, and I don’t mate with him.” Selena didn’t know which she found more arresting: Hap’s patronizing tone or the notion of Dieter and a kzin mating. “Dieter is a warrior: that’s a single identity, not one of many. Seeing him as having many identities is just a by-product of your culture’s squeamishness. You’re trying to excuse his violent actions by pointing to all the other, gentle parts of him. Rubbish.”

“Always nice to have another chat about the infinite failings of the human race,” Selena muttered, with a good deal less good grace than she had intended.

“Oh, your failings aren’t infinite, just very plentiful.”

“Thanks for yet another correction. It’s amazing that you consider us worthy of your improving efforts.”

“Well . . . I don’t; not really. But some of you are worth it.”

“Dieter, for instance?”

“Dieter. And you.”

“No one else?”

“I don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends, Selena.”

“Well, I doubt you’re missing very much, then. We humans are, as you imply, hardly worth the time. Unlike kzinti, who are sterling examples of altruism and are surely treating their human slaves on Wunderland so much better than we are treating you.”

One lip rippled away from a tooth momentarily. “The kzinti say what they mean and do what they say.”

“Ah, so honor is the only virtue worth having?”

“It is the core virtue, at any rate.”

“And so you can school us in the nuances of honor?”

Hap shrugged like a human. “It is rare that kzinti lack honor. It is rare that humans have it.”

“Which is why you’ve decided that we are your enemies.”

Hap’s ears trembled and twitched backward. “Selena, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m simply not in a rush to help the people who destroyed my life and family and who’ve been lying to me ever since. Well, most of them.”

She could see the sacred, sainted image of Dieter Armbrust almost swimming in his eyes. It was a face she was imagining a lot, too: a face she would not see for at least two years, according to his most recent orders. Something was afoot, something he either did not know or could not tell her about. He had departed this morning. Whereto? Unknown. Mission? Unknown. Time until next contact? Unknown.

When she emerged from her own brief reverie, she saw that Hap was staring at the holding paddock again. “It’s really quite large,” he commented, nodding toward the immense bear that was walking the two-hundred-meter perimeter of the enclosure. When it reached the part closest to them, the massive creature put up its nose, growled, and tried the strength of the barrier. Defeated and disgruntled, it returned to its perambulations.

“Magnificent,” purr-buzzed Hap from deep in his throat. “
Arctodus simus
, or the extinct short-faced bear, courtesy of Earth’s best reverse-genetics. Last specimen thought to have died about thirteen thousand years ago. Shoulder height of one point eight meters when on all fours, four meters when upright, and all muscle. Almost a full metric ton of unrelenting carnivorous fury.” He paused, drew in a deep breath. Then he exhaled: “Magnificent.”

Selena looked at Hap sideways. “Hap.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t get any smart ideas.”

“Smart ideas are the only ones I have, Selena.”

“I’m not joking, Hap. No tricks, now.”

“Tricks? What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. For now, just leave that bear alone.”

Hap stared at her. “And just what do you think I might do? I can’t pull down the fence, and you’ve never been kind enough to give me a key to the gate. So just let me appreciate and savor my next challenge in peace, Selena.”

She looked at the bear; as big as Hap was, the bear was simply immense, larger than any mammalian predator had a right to be. “Okay, Hap. But—”

“But what?”

“That’s one big bear. And I—I worry about you, Hap.”

He looked at her, his ears like pink half-parasols, his eyes wide. One smooth ripple coursed the length of his pelt. “I know,” he said.

* * *

Selena, still in her nightshirt and sweatpants, grabbed for a siderail when the floater rushed down from thirty meters, having cleared the perimeter fence of Hap’s preserve.

“Go there—” she screamed, pointing, “there: the holding paddock.”

The pilot nodded curt understanding; the floater swerved so sharply that Selena had hold on to the siderail with both hands, partly to keep from flying out of the vehicle, partly to keep from vomiting.