Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - III Read online

  At the entrance, he paused. His grin going sour, he well-nigh said to hell with it and turned around. Tyra Nordbo should not have made him promise to keep this secret even from his wife, before she set the rendezvous. Nor should she have picked Harold’s. He hadn’t cared to patronize it since visit before last. Now the very sign that floated luminous before the brown brick wall had been expurgated. A World On Its Own remained below the name, but humans only was gone. Mustn’t offend potential customers or, God forbid, local idealists.

  In Saxtorph’s book, courtesy was due everyone who hadn’t forfeited the right. However, under the kzinti occupation that motto had been a tiny gesture of defiance. Since the war, no sophont that could pay was denied admittance. But onward with the bulldozer of blandness.

  He shrugged. Having come this far, let him proceed. Time enough to leave if la Nordbo turned out to be a celebrity hunter or a vibrobrain. The fact was that she had spoken calmly, and about money. Besides, he’d enjoyed watching her image. He went on in. Nowadays the door opened for anybody.

  As always, a large black man occupied the vestibule, wearing white coat and bow tie. What had once made some sense had now become mere costume. His eyes widened at the sight of the newcomer, as big as him, with the craggy features and thinning reddish hair. “Why, Captain Saxtorph!” he exclaimed in fluent English. “Welcome, sir. No, for you, no entry fee.”

  They had never met. “I’m on private business,” Saxtorph warned.

  “I understand, sir. If somebody bothers you, give me the high sign and I’ll take care of them.” Maybe the doorman could, overawing by sheer size if nothing else, or maybe his toughness was another part of the show. It wasn’t a quality much in demand any more.

  “Thanks.” Saxtorph slipped him a tip and passed through a beaded curtain which might complicate signaling for the promised help, into the main room. It was dimly lit and little smoke hung about. Customers thus far were few, and most in the rear room gambling. Nevertheless a fellow at an obsolete model of musicomp was playing something ancient. Saxtorph went around the deserted sunken dance floor to the bar, chose a stool, and ordered draft Solborg from a live servitor.

  He had swallowed a single mouthful of the half liter when he heard, at his left, “What, no akvavit with, and you a Dane?” The voice was husky and female; the words, English, bore a lilting accent and a hint of laughter.

  He turned his head and was startled. The phone at his hotel had shown him this face, strong-boned, blunt-nosed, flaxen hair in a pageboy cut. That she was tall, easily 180 centimeters, gave no surprise; she was a Wunderlander. But she lacked the ordinary low-gravity lankiness. Robust and full-bosomed, she looked and moved as if she had grown up on Earth, nearly two-thirds again as heavy as here. That meant rigorous training and vigorous sports throughout her life. And the changeable sea-blue of her slacksuit matched her eyes…

  “American, really. My family moved from Denmark when I was small. And I’d better keep a clear head, right?” His tongue was speaking for him. Angry at himself, he took control back. “How do you do.” He offered his hand. Her clasp was firm, cool, brief. At least she wasn’t playing sultry or exotic. “Uh, care for a drink?”

  “I have one yonder. Please to follow.” She must have arrived early and waited for him. He picked up his beer and accompanied her to a privacy-screened table. Murky though the corner was, he could make out fine lines at the corners of her eyes and lips; and that fair skin had known much weather. She wasn’t quite young, then. Late thirties, Earth calendar, he guessed.

  They settled down. Her glass held white wine. She had barely sipped of it. “Thank you for that you came,” she said. “I realize this is peculiar.”

  Well, shucks, he resisted admitting, I may be seven or eight years older than you and solidly married, but any wench this sightly rates a chance to make sense. “It is an odd place to meet,” he countered.

  She smiled. “I thought it would be appropriate.”

  He declined the joke. “Over-appropriate.”

  “Ja, saa?” The blond brows lifted. “How so?”

  “I never did like staginess,” he blurted. His hand waved around. “I knew this joint when it was a raffish den full of memories from the occupation and the tag-end of wartime afterward. But each time I called at Wunderland and dropped in, it’d become more of a tourist trap.”

  “Well, those old memories are romantic; and, yes, some of mine live here too,” she murmured. Turning straightforward again: “But it has an advantage, exactly because of what it now is. Few of its patrons will have heard about you. They are, as you say, mostly tourists. News like your deeds at that distant star is sensational but it takes a while to cross interstellar space and hit hard in public awareness on planets where the societies are different from yours or mine. Here, at this hour of the day, you have a good chance of not to be recognized and pestered. Also, because people here often make assignations, it is the custom to ignore other couples.”

  Saxtorph felt his cheeks heat up. What the devil! The schoolboy he had once been lay long and deeply buried. Or so he’d supposed. It would be a ghost he could well do without. “Is that why you didn’t want my wife along?” he asked roughly.

  She nodded. “You two together are especially conspicuous, no? I found that yesterday evening she would be away, and thought you would not. Then I tried calling you.”

  He couldn’t repress a chuckle. “Yah, you guessed right. Poor Dorcas, she had no escape from addressing a meeting of the Weibliche Astroverein.” He’d looked forward to several peaceful hours alone. But when the phone showed this face, he’d accepted the call, which he probably would not have done otherwise. “After she got back, I took her down to the bar for a stiff drink.” But he’d kept his promise not to mention the conversation. Half ashamed, he harshened his tone. “Why’d you do no more than talk me into a, uh, an appointment?” He hadn’t liked telling Dorcas that he meant to go for a walk, might stop in at some pub, and if he found company he enjoyed—male, she’d taken for granted—would maybe return late. But he’d done it. “Could you not have gone directly to the point? The line wasn’t tapped, was it?”

  “I did not expect so,” Tyra answered. “Yet it was possible. Perhaps a government official who is snoopish. You have legal and diplomatic complications left over, from what happened at the dwarf star.”

  Don’t I know it, Saxtorph sighed to himself.

  “There could even be undiscovered kzinti agents like Markham, trying for extra information that will help them or their masters,” she continued. “You are marked, Captain. And in a way, that am I also.”

  “Why the secrecy?” he persisted. “Understand, I am not interested in anything illegal.”

  “This is not.” She laid hold of her glass. Fingers grew white-nailed on its stem, and trembled the least bit. “It is, well, extraordinary. Perhaps dangerous.”

  “Then my wife and crew have got to know before we decide.”

  “Of course. First I ask you. If you say no, that is an end of the matter for you, and I must try elsewhere. I will have small hope. But if you agree, and your shipmates do, best that we hold secret. Otherwise certain parties—they will not want this mission, or they will want it carried out in a way that gives my cause no help. We present them a fait accompli. Do you see?”

  Likewise tense, he gulped at his beer. “Uh, mind if I smoke?”

  “Do.” The edges of her mouth dimpled. “That pipe of yours has become famous like you.”

  “Or infamous.” He fumbled briar, pouch, and lighter out of their pockets. Anxious to slack things off: “The vice is disapproved of again on Earth, did you know? As if cancer and emphysema and the rest still existed. I think Puritanism runs in cycles. One periodicity for tobacco, one for alcohol, one for—Ah, hell, I’m babbling.”

  “I believe men smoke much on Wunderland because it is a symbol,” she said. “From the occupation era. Kzinti do not smoke. They dislike the smell and seldom allowed it in their presence. I grew up used to it
on men.” She laughed. “See, I can babble too.” Lifting her glass: “Skaal.”

  He touched his mug to it, repeating the word before remembering, in surprise: “Wait, you people generally say, ‘Prosit,’ don’t you?”

  “They were mostly Scandinavians who settled in Skogarna,” Tyra explained. “We have our own dialect. Some call it a patois.”

  “Really? I’d hardly imagine that was possible in this day and age.”

  “We were always rather isolated, there in the North. Under the occupation, more than ever. Kzinti, or the collaborationist government, monitored all traffic and communications. Few people had wide contacts, and those were very guarded. They drew into their neighborhoods. Keeping language and customs alive, that was one way they reminded themselves that humans were not everywhere and forever slaves of the ratcats.” Speaking, Tyra had let somberness come upon her. “This isolation is a root of the story I must tell you.”

  Saxtorph wanted irrationally much to lighten her mood. “Well, shall we get to it? You’d like to charter the Rover, you said, for a fairly short trip. But that’s all you said, except for not blanching when I gave you a cost estimate. Which, by itself, immediately got me mighty interested.”

  Her laugh gladdened him. “I’m in luck. Is that your American folk-word? Exactly when I need a hyperdrive ship, here you come with the only one in known space that is privately owned, and you admit you are broke. I confess I am puzzled. You took damage on your expedition—” Her voice grew soft and serious. “Besides that poor man the kzinti killed. But the harm was not else too bad, was it? And surely you have insurance, and I should think that super-rich gentleman on We Made It, Brozik, is grateful that you brought his daughter back safe.”

  Saxtorph tamped his pipe. “Sure. Still, losing a boat is fairly expensive. We haven’t replaced Fido yet. Plus lesser repairs we needed, plus certain new equipment and refitting we decided have become necessary, plus the fact that insurance companies have never in history been prompt and in-full about anything except collecting their premiums. Brozik’s paid us a generous bonus on the charter, yes, but we can’t expect him to underwrite a marginal business like ours. His gratefulness has reasonable limits. After all, we were saving our own hides as well as Laurinda’s, and she had considerable to do with it herself. We aren’t really broke, but we have gone through a big sum, on top of normal overhead expenses, and meanwhile haven’t had a chance to scare up any fresh trade.” He set fire to tobacco and rolled smoke across his palate. “See, I’m being completely frank with you.” As he doubtless would not have been, this soon, were she homely or a man.

  Again she nodded, thoughtfully. “Yes, it must be difficult, operating a tramp freighter. You compete with government lines for a market that is—marginal, you said. When each planetary system contains ample raw materials, and it is cheapest to synthesize or recycle almost everything else, what actual tonnage goes between the stars?”

  “Damn little, aside from passengers, and we lack talent for catering to them.” Saxtorph smiled. “Oh, it might be fun to carry nonhumans, but outfitting for it would be a huge investment, and then we’d be locked into those rounds.”

  “You wish to travel freely, widely. Freighting is your way to make it possible.” Tyra straightened. Her voice rang. “Well, I offer you a voyage like none ever before!”

  Caution awoke. He’d hate to think her dishonest. But she might be foolish—no, already he could dismiss that idea—she might be ill-informed. Planetsiders seldom had any notion of the complications in spacefaring. Physical requirements and hazards were merely the obvious ones. In addition, you had to make your nut, and avoid running afoul of several admiralty offices and countless bureaucrats, and keep every hatch battened through which the insurers might slither. “That’s what we’re here to talk about,” Saxtorph said. “Only talk. Any promises come later.”

  The high spirits that evidently were normal to her sank back down. They must have been struggling against something stark. She raised her glass for a drink, gulp rather than swallow, and stared into the wine. “My name means nothing to you, I gather,” she began, hardly louder than the music. “I thought you would know. You have told how you are often in this system.”

  “Not that often, and I never paid much attention to your politics. I’ve got a hunch that that’s what this is about.” Her fingers strained together. “Yah. Politics, a disease of our species. Maybe someday they’ll develop a vaccine against it. Grind politicians up and centrifuge the brains. Though you’d need an awful lot of politicians per gram of brains.”

  A smile spooked momentarily over her lips. “But you must have heard a great deal lately. You are now in politics yourself.”

  “And working free as fast as we can, which involves declining to get into arguments. Look, we came to Alpha Centauri originally because this is where the Interworld Space Commission keeps headquarters, with warehouses full of stuff we’d need for Professor Tregennis’ expedition. We returned from there to here because Commissioner Markham had revealed himself to be a kzinti spy and we figured we should take that news first to the top. It plunked us into a monstrous kettle of hullaballoo. Seeing as how we couldn’t leave before the investigations and depositions and what-God-help-us-not else were finished, we got the work on our ship done meanwhile at Tiamat. At last they’ve reluctantly agreed we didn’t break any laws except justifiably, and given us leave to go. In between wading through that swamp of glue and all the mostly unwanted distractions that notoriety brought us, we kept hoping our brokers could arrange a cargo for whenever we’d be able to haul out. Understandably, no luck. We were pretty much resigned to returning empty to Sol, when you—Well, you can see why we discouraged anything, even conversation, that might possibly have gotten us mired deeper.”

  “Yes.” She tensed. “I shall explain. The Nordbos belonged to the Freuchen clan.”

  “Hm? You mean you’re of the Nineteen Families?”

  “We were,” she said in a rush, overriding the pain he heard. “Oh, of course today the special rights and obligations are mostly gone, the titles are mostly honorary, but the honor does remain. After the liberation, a court stripped his from my father and confiscated everything but his personal estate. He was not there to defend himself. The best we were able, my brother and I and a handful of loyal friends, that was to save our mother from being tried for treasonable collaboration. We resigned membership in the clan before it could meet to expel her.”

  Saxtorph drew hard on his pipe. “You believe your father was innocent?”

  “I swear he was!” Her breath went ragged. “At last I have evidence—no, a clue—A spaceship must go where he went and find the proof. Civilian hyperdrive craft are committed to their routes, and their governments control them in any case, except for yours. Our navy—My brother is an officer. He has made quiet inquiries. He actually got a naval astronomer to check that part of the sky, as a personal favor, not saying why. Nothing was found. He tells me the Navy would not dispatch a ship on the strength of a few notes that are partial at best.”

  And that could well have been forged by a person crazy-desperate for vindication, Saxtorph thought. She admits the instrumental search drew a blank.

  Tyra had won to a steely calm. “Furthermore, thinking about it, I realized that if the Navy should go, it would be entirely in hopes of discovering something worthwhile. They would not care about the honor of Peter Nordbo, who was condemned as a traitor and is most likely long dead.”

  “But you have your own reputation to rescue,” Saxtorph said gently.

  The fair head shook. “That doesn’t matter. Neither Ib, my brother, nor I was accused of anything. In fact, at the liberation, he was among those who tried to storm the Ritterhaus where the kzinti were holding out, and was wounded. I told you, he has since become a naval officer. And I…helped the underground earlier, in a very small way, for I was very young then, and during the street fighting here I worked at a first aid station. Ach, the court said how they sympathized
with us. We must have been one reason why they never formally charged my mother. That much justice got we, for she was innocent too. She could not help what happened. But except for those few real friends, only Ib and I ever again called on her, at that lonely house on Korsness.”

  The musicomp man set his instrument to violin mode with orchestral backing and played a tune that Saxtorph recognized. Antique indeed, from Earth before space-flight, sugary sentimental, yet timeless, “Du kannst nicht treu sein.” You can’t be true.

  Tyra’s gaze met his. “Yes, certainly we wish to rejoin the Freuchens, not as a favor but by birthright. And that would mean restoring us the holdings, or compensation for them; a modest fortune. But it doesn’t matter, I say. What does is my father’s good name, his honor. He was a wonderful man.” Her voice deepened. “Or is? He could maybe be alive still, somewhere yonder, after all these years. Or if not, we could—maybe avenge him.”

  The wings of her pageboy bob stirred. He realized that she had laid her ears back, like a wolf before a foe, and she was in truth of the old stock that conquered this planet for humankind.

  “Easy, there,” he said hastily. “Rover’s civilian, remember. Unarmed.”

  “She should carry weapons. Since you discovered the kzinti have the hyperdrive—”

  “Yah. Agreed. I wanted some armament installed, during this overhaul. Permission was denied, flat. Against policy. Bad enough, a hyperdrive ship operating as a free enterprise at all. Besides, I was reminded, it’s twenty years since the kzinti were driven from Alpha Centauri, ten years since the war ended, and they’ve learned their lesson and are good little kitties now, and it was nasty of us to smash their base on that planet and do in so many of them. If they threatened our lives, why, mightn’t we have provoked them? In any event, the proper thing for us to have done was to file a complaint with the proper authorities—” Saxtorph broke off. “Sorry. I feel kind of strongly about it.”