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

were told had been sent from Earth, and I thought the UNSN should remove it. It was obviously something secret and military. Therefore something dangerous. I won't apologize that it took us a long time to get round to it. We've also had one or two other things on our hands, you know."

"You're sure it was stuff sent from Earth."

"That was what we were told," said Rykermann. "From Earth via the Serpent Swarm belt. The courier who delivered it to us was killed. I don't know any more than that."

"When did it happen?"

"It was about a year before the kzinti captured me in the caves. About fourteen Earth-years before liberation."

"So it got through," Guthlac said. "We thought it had been lost in space."

"What was it? . . . Don't pull that stone face on me. We took risks for it," Rykermann told him. "A number of people died for it. Answer my question, please, Arthur. Also, I happen to be not only the chief biologist for the cave complexes, I'm very close to the Minister for Environmental Protection. Do you want me to tell him there's an unknown bioweapon from Earth at large and Earth won't tell us anything about it? That is my duty as a Wunderlander and a member of the Government. And there was nuclear stuff, too."

"Nils, I know well enough you are a politician," said Guthlac. "In any case I suppose you'll need to know. It's Pak tree-of-life. And, Nils, I'm ordering you to say nothing about it."

Rykermann drew in his breath sharply. He looked as if he was about to burst out with something, but then said only: "Why?"

"I'll tell you. But I'll trade you information. Tell me more. Everything that happened then."

"We were in the wild country beyond the Hohe Kalkstein. There was a fight." Rykermann told him the story.

"We hid the stuff and cleared out," he concluded. "After that we had plenty of other things to do, beginning with getting away. If I thought about it at all later, I wondered if it might be a radioactive agent we were meant to smuggle into kzin ships or areas and then open. Enriched uranium for detonators, perhaps. Initiators for simple fission bombs. Plutonium. Caesium. Or some biological plague that the Sol Laboratories had developed to use on ratcats. But I had other things on my mind. We'd done as Sol instructed, at big risk all along the way. In the day-to-day matters of staying alive I didn't give it too much thought.

"The resistance was getting into a bad way then. Not just because attrition was wearing us down and more and more humans were either giving up and accepting their lot or just dead. Chuut-Riit had begun studying humans and that was making life harder for us all. Some kzinti were investigating monkey stuff—it had been beneath their dignity before—and some were also getting all too interested in what they found. They were learning more about us and it was getting harder to hide.

"Then I was captured by the kzinti," Rykermann went on. "Thanks to Raargh-Sergeant and because we'd fought together against the Morlocks, and Leonie had soft-heartedly saved his life, I was awarded fighters' privileges and paroled. That changed my lifestyle. I wouldn't risk front-fighting and then falling into kzin claws again after breaking my word to them—there are some things you can't ask of a man and that's one of them. I was exhausted anyway. Plus they had a zzrou implant in me, not being overly trusting of any monkey. I became more a back-room boy for a long time. There was plenty for a backroom boy to do."

Guthlac nodded. Rykermann went on.

"Time passed. We did what we could, growing a little weaker and more hopeless each year. Then came other things, it seemed on top of one another, hard and fast: the ramscoop raid and the death of Chuut-Riit, followed by the kzinti's civil war and the Liberation. That didn't mean the end of work for us. In many ways we were busier than ever.

"I thought the zzrou would kill me come Liberation. But a human doctor managed to hack it out. He died instead of me when it exploded. Thanks to Leonie, some of my people found me in the wreckage just before I bled to death. But without fancy surgery I spent the Liberation with a hole the size of your fist where my right scapula had been, and not, as you can imagine, taking a very active part. Finally they got me to the UNSN forces and one of the military regeneration tanks. Other wounded had to make do with organ banks. I was fortunate enough to be spared that."

Rykermann was telling Guthlac things he knew already, but Guthlac let him speak on. He knew one terrible thing Rykermann might be referring to when he spoke of organ banks and apparently it still helped him to talk.

"Later, when things had settled down, and I was generally tidying up loose ends, I asked the authorities if they had sent us any dangerous radioactive material. I didn't hear anything more. That was the last I thought about it until now. I love my biological work and that's what I'd rather concentrate on. And . . . well, there were other things on my mind, too."

"Dangerous, to leave radioactives around."

"Cleaning up Wunderland will be a long job, Arthur," Rykermann said. "There are lots of crashed ships, lots of spilled radioactives, lots of munitions, half-made experimental bioweapons, lots of hot dumps still. Our granite's generally a lot hotter than Earth's as well, which can make detection more difficult. I guess we'll have to wait till the war's over in space before we can even think of seeing the resources to do the job properly. But now you say . . ." Again he stopped as if biting off words.

"Anyway, you were right," Guthlac said. "There were some nukes in it, along with triggers—bombs ready to go. Some of them very dirty and