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

"An Earth musician from the post-classical period, I believe," Krosp said, opening the parcel. "Weapons Officer's family has considerable interest in the arts." A Jotok picked up the wrapping as the gift was revealed: a fan of cords attached to a long frame, with a hollow box at one end. He plucked a string with a claw, and a pleasant tone came out. It was a musical instrument.

Richard suddenly laughed, getting it under control just as quickly.

Krosp didn't seem offended, just puzzled: "What's funny?"

"I was just thinking: all you need to join the Gasperik Society is a motorcycle."

"What's that?"

"An outfit established a long time ago, even before space habitats, with the stated intention of being prepared for alien invasion. It was sort of a literary club, really. Every member was theoretically supposed to own, and keep in good order, a motorcycle, a guitar, a spacesuit, and an elephant gun. A kzinti sidearm could surely stop an elephant, we've seen your suit, and that ought to qualify as a guitar."

"Yes, I know about the Gasperik Division," said Krosp. "It was part of the Hellflare Corps. What's a motorcycle?"

"Oops. It's a vehicle with two wheels in a line, with a seat in between. Very popular in rough country. Blackmail?" Richard exclaimed.

"Oh, no," Krosp assured him. "Blackmail is an insult that warrants death, being a threat to publicly claim that the victim is dishonorable. However, when the question is one of looking like a fool for the rest of one's life, solicitation of bribery is another matter entirely. I am pleased that you were here when he arrived, as it saved considerable explanation."

Gay began to laugh. Richard, thinking of the abuse they had been unable to stop, joined in. Slaverexpert came over and said, "Lord Krosp, do you want to mention the plan?"

"Oh yes. Slaverexpert has—you have a question," he said to Richard.

"I never heard the kzinti Name Krosp before," Richard said, still laughing.

"It's not a kzinti Name. It was a character from human literature, a brilliant leader who provided calm insight and perspective when no one around him could see a solution."

"What's it from?"

"I don't know. The Patriarch suggested it. Did you want to hear Slaverexpert's plan?"

"Sure."

"Most of Kzrral is disagreeably hot. We plan to put gravity-planers on its moon, after which we will gradually drag it further from its primary over the course of the next few centuries—that is, Slaverexpert and my heirs will."

The two humans goggled at him. Gay said, "That'll cost a fortune!"

"We have two. We expect to get another, as we will be able to improve the health and reliability of telepaths all over the Patriarchy."

"How?"

"We're going to raise catnip."

For Frank and Peggy,

but especially for Jim.

Peace and Freedom

Matthew Joseph Harrington

One of the less appreciated points of being the smartest organic intelligence in the known universe is that, when you find out you've screwed up, you get to feel much stupider than anyone else can.

Peace Corben switched the hyperwave to the Project Supervision channel and said, "Ling."

"Problem?" said Jennifer Ling.

"You need to divert resources and build a couple more Quantum II ships. The Outsiders have just informed me that someone's mining the Hot Spot, and I need to take Cordelia back to Known Space."

"The Outsiders called you?" The Outsiders were a life-form whose metabolism was based on the quantum effects that cropped up at superconductive temperatures. (Probably. If anyone ever tried to dissect one, he hadn't gotten back with details. Or at all.) They made their living all through the Galaxy by selling information to the races they encountered as they cruised past inhabited systems; the idea of them volunteering information was weirdness on the order of a Protector trusting a stranger's good intentions.

"They still owe me money for mass conversion and a new form of math. They're very scrupulous. Unfulfilled obligations give them bubbles in the liquid helium or something."

"Can I give you backup?"

"Wouldn't help. I've got a zip, if necessary." She could keep breeders in the zip, the Sinclair accelerator field. She could spend several years talking human breeders into becoming protectors, while a few days passed outside the field. Instant allies.

"We're on it," Jennifer said.

Peace signed off and moved Cordelia out of the main site on thrusters, to avoid dragging anything along. Of a population of almost two hundred thousand Protectors, more than half were working on the primary disintegrator array. (The region wasn't what you could call crowded, since they were spread through an area that would not quite have fitted into the orbit of Pluto, but alignment was important, and courtesy counts. Especially between people who do things like vaporizing planets for raw materials.) She paused to note that the work was going well—arrangements to disperse the oncoming particle blast from the Core explosion could be complete in a matter of decades—then went to hyperdrive.

She knew of two races that could be mining antimatter from Gregory Pelton's rogue solar system. One, human, had actually visited the Hot Spot briefly. The other species might have noticed, at closest approach to their home system, the inordinate neutrino production, from annihilation of interstellar matter, that had given it its nickname among Protectors. Both races qualified as very bad news, especially since the only way for either race to be doing it would be as a result of a massive cultural shift—greater than what a human Protector had arranged three and a half centuries back.

Therefore, somebody had done something unusually stupid. Peace never even wondered who would have to fix it.

Shleer couldn't take another minute of the horror in the harem, not one, so he went up the wall to the loops in the ceiling and used them to get across to the exhaust vent. The plastic wrapper was still in its crevice, and he put it on and squirmed out through a passage that shouldn't have held a kzintosh—was specifically designed not to, in fact; that was the whole point. It had been widened at key spots by Felix, of course.

Shleer missed