Man-Kzin Wars V by Larry Niven (people reading books txt) 📕

"Look behind you," Jonah suggested helpfully, flexing his arms to try and work the feeling back into them. Eldasson snorted contempt and bored in, holding the ratchet knife before her like a ribbon saber and lunging as he skipped away. She was breathing more normally now, and the twin red spots on her cheekbones might have been anger as much as the aftereffects of being gut-kicked. A grunt of triumph as he dodged to the side and went down on the pavement; the ratchet knife went up for a slash, night air peeling back from its buzzing wire edge. There was a yawp of sound; the woman's eyes rolled up in their sockets, and the knife went silent as fingers released it. She crumpled bonelessly to the ground, her head going thock on the asphalt.

Bigs clipped the stunner to his belt. Spots unlocked his jaws from the knife-man's right shoulder and threw him a dozen paces to crumple bonelessly on the soft turf of a lawn. Jonah swept up the ratchet knife and flipped the hilt in his hand, the molecular-distortion battery making it heavy even in the .61-G field of Wunderland. The contractor's eyes were open; Bigs had taken time to reset the stunner's field to light. That meant that Eldasson could feel and see, although not move the main voluntary muscles. The Sol-Belter drove his heel into her ribs with judiciously calculated force.

"Paytime, Fra Eldasson," he said. "Payback time."

Her lips worked, trying to spit at him. Bigs picked her up by the back of her tunic and shook her at arm's length, as effortlessly as he might have a rag doll. When he was finished he brought her close and smiled in her face, tongue dangling and carnivore breath hot.

"How . . . how much?" she croaked.

"Just what you owe us," Jonah said. "Not one fennig more . . . in money."

* * *

General Buford Early looked a little less out of place in Munchen than he did in his native Sol System, these days; men as black as he were rare on Wunderland, and mostly from the Krio enclaves. They were even rarer in the polyglot genetic stew of Earth. That was not true at the time of his birth. He had been born while there were still distinct human sub-races, a fact he took some care to disguise. Not least by keeping a careful ear for the changes in language, and by muting the inhuman gracefulness learned through the centuries. Other things he hid more deeply; but the power he held from his rank in the UN Space Navy, from his role in the ARM, and from his own force of personality, he did not bother to conceal. Heldja Eldasson looked a little intimidated, sitting across the wide oak desk in the upper offices of the Ritterhaus, once more headquarters of Wunderland's government.

"What else could I do?" she said sullenly. The autodoc had healed the worst of her injuries, but she had not been allowed enough time to clear up the bruises that marked her face with red and blue splotches. "The ratcat-lover had his tame kzin grin at me until I transferred the funds and authenticated the contract."

"You could have gone to the police," he pointed out, lighting a cigar. That was also more common here on Wunderland than on Earth, among the many archaisms he found rather pleasant.

"Teufelheim! They had the contracts—and would the police believe me, with my record? I wouldn't have chanced stiffing them, if you hadn't suggested it."

He stared at her for a moment, and she dropped her eyes before the steady yellowish glare of his.

"Excellency," she finished sullenly.

"It should have occurred to you that—" Early stopped. That I have influence with the courts, and the police. Both quite true, although not to the extent he would on Earth. There, opponents of the ARM—or the Brotherhood, if they were unlucky enough to learn of its existence—could be ignored so completely that they found nobody even acknowledged their existence any longer. Harsher measures were rarely necessary; overt fear was a crude tool. The Secret Reign had survived the centuries by manipulating men, not by trying to rule them directly. It was already far older than any mere state in the year Buford Early was born . . .

"Never mind," he continued. "You'll be compensated for your loss." Loss of stolen money, he thought ironically. "And keep me informed of anything to do with Matthieson. Understood?"

"Jawul," she replied.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Jonah pulled his head out of the fountain and shook it; the two kzin looked up from tending their wounds and complained with yeowls as drops hit their fur. The human restrained an impulse to grin at them; from the way they were wagging their ears back at him, they felt the same way.

"Well, we're rich," he said. "Comparatively speaking. Rich in spirit, too—I never did like being cheated." And this time I got to do something about it, he added silently. Finagle, but I feel good! Better than he had in a year. Better than he had since the psychists released him and Early began his campaign of persecution.

Bigs grunt-snarled. Spots answered aloud: "We have fought side by side," he said. His whiskers drooped. "Although there will be little enough left of this money when our debts are paid and supplies laid in for our households."

"Considering that you were contemplating suicide the night I met you, that's not bad," Jonah observed dryly, turning and sitting on the cornice of the fountain. "How much will you have left?"

"If we pay no more than the most pressing of our debts . . ." Spots turned and consulted with his sibling in the Hero's Tongue; kzin felt uneasy with a language as verbal as English. "A thousand each."

"Hmmm. The idea is to let money make money," Jonah replied. "You ought to invest it."

Bigs folded his ears in anger, and the pelt laid itself flat on his face,