Man-Kzin Wars XII, Larry Niven [readnow .TXT] 📗

looked distracted for a moment, then went on. "We had hundreds of volunteers—men and women too old or injured to fight very well or for long, but who wanted to strike one last blow."

"As did we," said Kaluseritash. "Anyone who eats them will suffer massive neural degeneration and circulatory disorders, and if lucky will die."

Perpetua was very wide-eyed. "You had that planned for three hundred years?"

" 'Use any weapon you can make, and make any weapon you can use.' Brutus Leophagus," said Marcus. "I hope it isn't much further to Wunderland. Metal walls disturb me. Are there caverns? It will be some time before we have trees growing properly."

"There are," Ginger said dubiously, "but there are dangerous native creatures in them. We thought we had killed them all, but the caverns stretched further and deeper than we knew. You might want to dig your own with disintegrators."

"Disintegrators? Are these weapons?" Marcus said, interested.

"Not very good ones. Too slow. They're used for digging and large sculpture," said Ginger. "They work by decreasing the charge of atomic particles, positive or negative depending on how they're set."

"What happens when you have one of each kind side by side?" said Marcus.

Ginger looked at Perpetua. Perpetua looked at Ginger.

"I think you'll be very welcome when the next war starts," said Perpetua.

SPQR

The Trooper and the Triangle

Hal Colebatch

Wunderland, 2382 AD

Although Trooper Number Eight knew how to lie up in ambush, he also knew that he was not a very good soldier. He knew this with special force at the most terrible moment of his life, as he stared down at the furry white creatures spurting digestive acid over long-dead kzin and human tissue, and knew that his world had ended.

Perhaps his somewhat ambiguous heritage and upbringing had been to blame for his lack of military prowess. His Sire had been a soldier in his day, but had been regarded as a mediocre one until he had saved a senior officer's life, receiving honorably incapacitating wounds in the process. He had been rewarded with a set of battle drums and also with the gift of a mate who had grown too old to be sufficiently attractive or fertile to remain in the senior officer's harem, though not quite beyond breeding, and had settled down to a life of trade, selling medicines which healers recommended. He had had a small shop in the town near the governor's palace and indeed had numbered some kzinti from the palace among his customers. Trooper Number Eight had been his only son.

Despite his spurt of valor, there had been a streak of mildness in Sire, and he had treated his kitten kindly. His mother, too, had been, for a kzinrett, of gentle disposition. Trooper Number Eight's earliest days had been sunny. Indeed, he had been somewhat indulged and, by kzin standards, spoilt.

Had he been a scion of the aristocracy, such spoiling would have been taken for granted. Further, he would have had the best of combat and physical trainers and a rich diet. As it was, he was sprung from what might possibly be called the lower middle class of kzin society, though with a military heritage which should have given him something to live up to. His Sire's wounds had prevented him giving him personal combat training.

For a time as he grew up he had been very happy. After the normal young male kitten's pursuits of chasing small game, he had come to enjoy playing his Sire's drums and even reading books, a pastime generally thought more suitable for the honorably retired than for a future Hero. Unfortunately, there were other young kzinti, and in the way of kzinti society, with most females the property of the aristocracy, they tended to be brothers and cousins. As an only male kitten he had not been well-equipped for socializing with them, and he had had no relatives with whom to ally.

The odds had been that he would not survive adolescence. Other young kzinti had a keen instinct for spotting and ganging up on such natural victims. The nickname they had given him then, "Thinker," had definite connotations of insult about it which could very, very easily have proven fatal.

He would have enjoyed having a friend, and this would also have made his position safer, but after some observation he had decided that it was not worth the risk of making overtures to anyone and being rejected. He continued his precarious position on the edge of the group of youngsters, camouflaging his constant fear. He worked desperately to stalk the delicate path between over-self-effacement and an overprominence that might be equally fatal without sufficient swinging claw to back it up. Eccentric activities like reading he learned to keep strictly to himself. Sometimes the others enjoyed his drumming, which was a good thing.

However, and fortunately for him, among his contemporaries there had been another, even more of a nonconformist, whose fate he had watched and learned from. He had become fairly adept at joining in the persecution of this one in order to deflect it from himself. By the time this other was dead and his contemporaries were casting about for a replacement, the Patriarch's army had claimed them all.

His juvenile experiences of self-protection had been good preparation for staying alive as a recruit. He had survived military training, and the army disapproved of death duels entered into lightly between troopers upon whose training resources had been expended. He had been, at different times, a toady, a clown, a butt of jokes (very dangerous), and not yet quite a victim, but it had been a near-run thing.

In any case, on the completion of his training period he had been drafted to a new unit where, he reasoned, he might make a fresh start. "You will win glory for the Patriarch!" he and his fellows had been told upon completion of training and the granting of their new rank-titles. They had been marched aboard a heavy transport, placed in hibernation tanks, and shipped to the newly conquered