Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

"Good. Since you sent him out, am I correct in supposing you don't want him told why the Fourth War was so short?"

"Yes. He demanded an explanation of why I hadn't come and killed all the kzinti on Pleasance."

"Ah." Buckminster had occasion to know that Peace didn't take orders. "What are you going to do with him?"

"Clarify his thinking," she decided, and rose. "You should eat, too."

"Where are you going?"

"To get him away from the airlock."

"Good," Buckminster said. "If you don't catch him in the act he won't learn." When she gave him a sidelong look he just waggled his ears at her.

The brain of a Protector is interconnected well enough that there is no need to talk to oneself to keep all the regions clearly informed. This didn't keep Peace from feeling the urge, though. She did shake her head as she walked.

Corky, still sticky, had the lock panel open, the links right, and the dogs back, and was pulling up the release lever without result, muttering, "Why won't it open?"

"It weighs about a ton," Peace said, and allowed him to hit her five times before giving him a fingertip in the ganglion below the left ear. While he attempted to curl up around that, sideways, she restored the panel and replaced the dog lever, then got out an injector she'd scaled down for breeder skin and gave him a local. When he relaxed, she said, "The power assist is disabled. Buckminster and I can use it, but you're too weak."

That word shocked him, as well it might—his ship's exercise room was set at three gees. "What are you going to do?" he said.

"In a few months I'm going out to assist the Titanomachia Fleet."

"I mean—the what fleet?"

"Titanomachia. Classical reference. Depending on genes, demographics, and the incidence of adequate body fat, somewhere between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand human Protectors left the colony world Home about two and a half centuries back, in ramships, to fight an invasion of probably fifty million Pak Protectors."

Corky's eyes grew huge, and the rest of his face got yellowish and blotchy, so she gave him an injection for shock. His lips moved silently, to the words fifty million, just once before his circulation evened out again.

Peace decided not to mention that that was the lower limit, assuming the Pak population to assay out at no more than 72 percent Protectors—the other metastable ratio for the Pak homeworld was with a bit over 94 percent Protectors, breeders numbering about twenty million in either case, giving an upper limit of about three hundred million. As she didn't want him visualizing the entire population of Jinx, turned into superintelligent homicidal maniacs, and coming to get him, she lectured, "Titanomachia is a term from Greek mythology. It refers to the war in which the gods overthrew their ancient and powerful but less competent Titan ancestors. As one human Protector with advance notice can outproduce several thousand Pak Protectors, this title is entirely appropriate. Which is unfortunate, as I have some cause to detest puns."

"Puns?" said Corky, lost.

"The principal means by which Greek mythology, such as the Titanomachia, is known to modern people is through the works of the poet, Homer. The Titanomachia Fleet is made up of thousands of Homers."

He winced. "You and your mother."

Peace picked him up by his neck, one-handed, and held him at arm's length for a moment; then she set his feet on the deck and said, "If at some time you believe I have more than usual on my mind, that would be a good time not to compare me to Jan Corben. As I have pointed out, massive brain damage will not harm your genes." She let go his neck.

He gasped and held it, coughing—and got over his fear, and the resulting intelligence, almost immediately. "Her real name was Charlotte," he said, attempting dominance again.

"Charlotte Chambers," Peace said, nodding.

He hadn't known the last name. "Oh, she told you."

"No," she said. "All it took was logic and persistence and a ten-pound brain."

* * *

Charlotte Chambers' name hadn't been in the historical database of Jan Corben's ship, Cockroach, but had been included in the classified UN ARM records Peace had gotten on Earth—for a shockingly cheap bribe, considering it was wartime. Peace had simply compared the two and found the only very rich person her mother had chosen to delete.

There was corroborative evidence, too.

Charlotte Chambers had been a latent paranoid with a generous trust fund, which was drained for ransom when she was kidnapped. The kidnapper had been an organlegger, strapped for cash when the Freezer Bill of 2118 filled the public organ banks to capacity. He had brainwashed her to keep her from testifying against him, but had been caught when a highly original money-laundering scheme was exposed. Once the means of brainwashing had been revealed, Charlotte had responded to treatment and begun to function—and sued the organlegger. An outraged and horrified jury had awarded her a staggering sum, which she invested with all the care her now-manifesting paranoia could provide.

She'd gotten around the Fertility Laws of the time by emigrating to Luna and bearing her own clone.

The records had it that she died when her daughter was just short of voting age, in an accident that required her body to be identified by its DNA. Her daughter had taken over her investments like she'd been doing it for years, and presently moved to the Belt to raise her own clone. The fifth in this sequence had bought a ramship and gone to live on Mount Lookitthat after her mother's tragic demise, and as mountaineers had by then developed a society that tolerated very little government intrusion the trail was lost.

In the course of four and a half centuries, she'd have borne, and murdered, anywhere from twelve to twenty daughters. Cockroach had had facilities for restoring a cell to a youthful state, and prepared eggs in stasis.

A curious corollary was that Peace Corben owed her