Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII by Larry Niven (novels to read for beginners txt) 📕

not names. They gave them to objects, to ships, as we gave names to the vessels of our own Space-fleets.

Names in such a context mattered to Heroes. If not a fine and splendid description of function and purpose, full of poetry, like Rampant Slayer or Conqueror’s Fang, the names of Kzinti ships commemorated the names of great Heroes of the past like Chmeee or the Lord Dragga-Skrull who lost a forelimb, nostrils and eye before leading his force to death and imperishable glory gutting a superior fleet of the Jotok when Heroes rose against them and leapt into Space at the dawn of the Eternal Hunt.

All this passed through my mind in a moment or so. These creatures were not utterly unlike us in some ways, though in others strange beyond comprehension. Selina had swum in those cold salt waves for pleasure! I thought of how much I hated the feel of water on my fur and tail.

I thought at first that Selina would be impressed by the fact that, as soon as I had catalogued the various monkeys’ mental capabilities, I had had others rather than her served up to Feared Zraar-Admiral and the officers. But I now suspected this would not increase her trust of me. There was nothing except truth, however, in what I said next:

“But there is another reason I want you, for me compelling. In your mind is a story of curing addiction. I am an addict. I am going to need that story to have any chance of curing myself even with Admiral’s medicine. I will need to cure myself or perish, and in this I will need the example of a monkey. Yes, I foresee I will need to return to that example in what lies ahead. Can a Kzin—even a Kzin such as I—not equal one of your kind in endurance and Will?”

I sat on the floor of the cabin beside her, deliberately relinquishing my advantage in height. Then I continued:

“Those are the principal reasons but there is also another faint, dim spoor. But perhaps a further reason, a . . . sentimental . . . one” (that was the word I took with some difficulty from the monkey’s mind. I was not sure it was the real equivalent of any Kzinti concept but it would suffice). “Part of the reason I was selected for my talent to be developed is that I have a relatively high but undirected intelligence.

“There is no other role for one like me. I am not a warrior and even before I was made what I am I lacked long concentration, intellectual rigor or even creative flair which would have made me useful in other areas. Yet in your mind I have seen pictures of a world which tolerates the likes of Telepath . . . the likes of you.”

“Of me?”

“Yes, the minds of we two are alike at one level, you know.” It seemed to me I was stating the obvious, even if it was nothing for me to be proud of. And I felt her accept this fact more easily than I might have expected. “I feel . . . gratitude . . . that such a society has existed even if its future is to be short.

“There is another thing, too, beyond that,” I went on, “The thing that gives rise to all my plans, small though their hope is.

“This is a difficult thought, an even fainter spoor, a wandering track in a mind-tunnel not ventured before. Alien Technologies Officer reached the first prints, and Feared Zraar-Admiral has gone a little further, but only Telepath has really followed the trail. If your race now has no knowledge of weapons or warfare—less than any sapient race we have conquered—yet at some time in the past you learnt to throw missiles so powerfully that today you travel between stars, can it be that, instead of never having had such knowledge, your race has actually suppressed it to a unique degree?

“If I had not had long times alone and without duties in which to think I would not have seen this. But you have names of a sort. You have ranks. On your Spaceship you divided time into ‘watches’ much as we do. What did you once watch for? Where did those things come from? And I know from your mind that there are areas of your past that few of your kind are allowed to study. Why? I know from your mind of the ARM: you even have a . . . police of knowledge.”

“I’m no historian,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“You speak truth here,” I replied, “You do not know. But you do not tell Telepath in words all that you think. There is something you suspect, though even to you the spoor is dim. I have read in your mind that there is another monkey, some litter-mate of yours—yes, it is the brother who gave you the small mimicry of the sea-ship—who also hides in its own lair thoughts that it . . . But if what I suggest is true, that knowledge was suppressed for some reason.”

“I suppose so. Does it matter.”

“It may matter a very great deal. For I can think of only one possible reason that a race—a race whose ships are powered by the fusion of hydrogen atoms—should suppress knowledge of weapons and war, and I am the only one of my species it has occurred to.”

“I see,” she said. And then: “I think I understand. But I do not know if my thoughts are true.”

“You do not know of RRizzinr . . . of Tracker.”

“What is that?”

“None in your ship knew of it. I searched for that first of all. But I think of the Eternal Hunt and I wonder if we may at last have stuck our noses into one cave too many. It is only a slight possibility; mind you.” I turned from this spoor then, but spoke more of my thoughts, which had grown in the last days. I told of Tracker, and of Gutting Claw’s present vengeance quest.

“When we have killed