Man-Kzin Wars IX, Larry Niven [leveled readers TXT] 📗

knew it wasn't the scars she was bitter about. I kissed the uphill end of the line.

"Flattery will get you nowhere," she growled, then pulled me up and kissed me hard. I would have begged to differ, but I was otherwise occupied.

Later I found other scars on her thighs, arms, chest and belly. One ran from her forehead to the side of her nose and across her cheek. They were all nearly invisible, just tiny misalignments in the texture of her skin. My detective's eye couldn't help reconstructing the accident. From the pattern of the tracery she'd been kneeling and bent forward slightly—likely setting the time dial on top of the charge. That saved her life. Boosters are shaped to explode downwards and the main detonation cone would have killed her on the spot. Instead she'd taken the backblast in the chest with spillover onto her belly and face. The scars came from agonized weeks spent bathed in Nutrol and breathing through a tube in an autodoc because real treatment wasn't available—proper clonal reconstructive surgery would have left no marks. I felt a cold wind brush against my back. Such a near thing. A little more pressure on the lever of fate and I would never have known what I missed. I didn't say anything more, I just held her tighter.

* * *

I arrived late the next morning. Hunter was on his way out. He rippled his ears knowingly but mercifully didn't ask any questions. Johansen was logged out checking alibis. First Tracker was doing something with the Conservors, probably playing poetry games. The usual backlog was waiting for me when I got to my desk. I scanned my messages first, prioritizing—coroner first. Johansen had delivered five blood samples. All five showed my schitzies had the right dosages.

Well, it had been a good hunch anyway.

I scanned down. There was the usual assortment from 'casters, looking for information on the killing. I forwarded them to the PR desk for the official brush-off. The rest were routine, half an hour of dull but essential paperwork. I buckled down to it; I wanted my desk clear when I started setting up the movement trace.

I was almost done when Hunter came in without knocking. "We have captured the kzin who killed the human Miranda Holtzman." His voice had more than the usual snarl to it. He turned on his heel and strode out again.

I sighed, picturing riots in the tunnels when the news broke. Be careful what you wish for, it might come true. I followed him out.

Work in the outer office was stopped dead with everyone staring at First Tracker. The big kzin was standing with his foot in the small of another kzin's back. The prisoner was lying spreadeagled and bleeding from numerous minor cuts. Hunter stooped over, grabbed the hapless captive by the scruff of the neck and turned his face to the gaping office staff. "This sthondat," he snarled "is known as Slave-of-Kdapt!" He screamed something into the prisoner's ear and dragged him into his office, nearly overbalancing First Tracker in the process.

Tracker spoke little English. He gestured towards the door as Hunter slammed it and said "Dominance." He looked around the room, lips twitching over razor teeth. Everyone was suddenly diligently at work again. When he was satisfied that he'd quelled the gawkers, the kzin picked up a box, handed it to me and said, "Evidence." Then he curled up on a visitors' couch, cozy as a kitten. He fixed his golden eyes on the door to Hunter's office, ears up and swivelled forward. For the first time I saw that he too was suffering from various cuts and contusions. The first scream came through and his mouth relaxed into a fanged smile.

I opened the box. Inside was a large, misshapen hunk of fine leather, crudely tanned. I didn't need DNA analysis to tell me it was Miranda Holtzman's skin.

A crash and another scream came through the door. First Tracker licked his chops. I took refuge in my office.

It wasn't much of a refuge. My office is right next door to Hunter's. Goldskin headquarters was once a factory process floor. It was converted to offices by installing inch thick sprayfoam walls. They were adequately soundproof for normal conversation, but that wasn't what was going on now. The modulated snarls came through almost unimpeded by the barrier, punctuated by crashes, thuds and shrieks of rage and pain. At least I was away from Tracker and his intent satisfaction at the mayhem.

Sprayfoam is a mass-saving necessity on ships and a handy convenience on Tiamat. Its strength-to-mass ratio is very high but you can put your foot through it with a solid kick. I expected half a tonne of clawing, raging carnivores to land in my lap at any moment. Someday I'll have the budget to install privacy fields. I've seen a lot of violence, but brutalizing a prisoner like this ran against my grain. Slave-of-Kdapt, or whatever he'd been before Hunter renamed him, was a killer but he was still a human being.

No, I corrected myself, he wasn't a human being, he was a kzin, an alien carnivore whose species was dedicated to the enslavement of mine. Did that make a difference? Perhaps it did. After all, it was his own species working him over. Why did it disturb me then?

Because I'm a cop and so was Hunter-of-Outlaws and cops don't beat up prisoners to extract confessions—not where I come from.

Not on Earth, but they did on Wunderland and kzinti still weren't human. It wasn't for me to tell them how to run their internal affairs. I didn't even know if a kzin would respond to a nonviolent interrogation; maybe this was the only way that worked.

I still didn't like it.

I pushed the unease away. We had the evidence, we had the murderer, soon we would have the confession.

Except . . . The hyperdrive question kept buzzing around in the back of my head. If Miranda's death was connected with a spy ring that