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

“Stumpy outranked the rest. He had been Captain’s Voice, but of course he couldn’t fight with one leg gone. He thought Ear Eater might be more malleable if he could kill something that fought back. The humans served our meat dead.

“Toolmaster was dying. He had neither speech nor lucid thought. Vacuum had torn his throat and lungs. Toolmaster’s mind felt my touch and welcomed the company. He didn’t want to die without passing on a lifetime of knowledge . . . nothing of any great use, as it turned out. How a kood hides . . . a creature of a world I’ve never seen, imported to Shasht, another world I’ve never seen . . . how it is found, how it wriggles, how it dies, its taste. The ecstasy and terror of mating with a stronger male’s kzinrett, the terror and ecstasy of outrunning him. Swimming. Not one in a thousand kzinti can swim, but Toolmaster could. The attack on Sol System. I sensed what was coming and tried to pull loose.

“The gravity generator is gone and everything is falling, falling. A rolling dive across the command room while breathing—air shrieks through a ripped wall. That wonderful instant when my arms and legs close around my pressure suit. Zippers open, legs in first, keep it graceful, arms, torso zip seal, I’m going to live! The helmet is suddenly a cloud of high-velocity splinters. My neck and head are wet and chill with boiling/freezing blood, and it all fades . . . and I was curled in a ball, sweating fear, while the others watched me through the bars.

“To them I was only Telepath.

“Telepaths can’t hurt their tormentors without feeling the hurt. Every child knows what it is to win a fight, but we know only through another mind. A telepath will do anything for the Sthondat preparation. Knowing these things about me, they knew everything they cared to, just as if they could read my mind.

“White Mask didn’t wonder if I had taken the stuff. A telepath would. When the doctors netted me and took me away bound, White Mask was trying so hard not to watch that his eyes hurt.

“The doctors hooked me to their machine doctor. I smelled the other kzinti’s scent: they had been brought here before they reached the pen.

“I felt the doctors’ complacent pleasure: I was healthy, strong. They couldn’t know how my strength was growing as I recovered from Sthondat addiction. Another thing pleased them: my heart rate showed that the calming chemistry was working, too. Humans dose each other, sometimes, to keep each other docile, and they’d found similar stuff for me. It was the first time I had sensed this. For just that instant I would have killed them all.”

“Why didn’t you?”

An odd question; or was it? Telepath said, “I suppress such thoughts as a conditioned reflex. Do you think I offered to take my first dose of Sthondat lymph? I was born with a knack for reading minds, but others made me Telepath. What if I tried to kill each of them? I would have died over and over.”

“Did you get a chance to talk to the other kzinti?”

“Yes. After they examined me, the doctors asked me to do that, to reassure the other prisoners. ‘For you, the war is over,’ they said, ‘tell them that.’ Magic words to make an enemy docile. For us, no war is over,” Creditor’s Telepath said. “I was told that I would not be let into their compound. That suited me well. I did not want to be in reach of Ear Eater.

“So, back in our cages, we shouted at each other. The first thing I shouted was, ‘They don’t know the Heroes’ Tongue!’ It was almost true. Humans had learned a dozen words, and I had learned many more.

“I tried to describe how we stood. The pen, the hospital, humans on site, humans visiting. Weapons: I’d seen almost nothing. Air, water, food supplies. The great bubble of greenhouse perched above us on the crater wall. A pinprick would burst it. They saw that and believed me when I told them that humans had put away war—told each other they had outgrown war—before we came.

“I told them what the doctors knew of the war, which was little. They told me of the second attack. They knew nothing of the first; but they had come in haste, with little preparation, because word of Sol system was already flowing at lightspeed toward the Patriarchy. Larger, stronger hordes would follow.”

The interrogator asked, “Flowing from what point? Where was the ship when it sent these messages? We need their transit time. Can you show me on a star map?”

“Yes. Now?”

“No, go on.”

“Near sunset White Mask told me, ‘We need to break free. Have you given any thought to escape?’

“I said, ‘Vacuum surrounds us. Stealing pressure suits wouldn’t be useful. They’ve got some of ours, but those went off to be studied. Once free, I can’t lead you to spacecraft or a spaceport. They had me in a windowless box when they brought me.’

“ ‘They must have pressurized vehicles,’ White Mask said.

“ ‘I arrived in one,’ I said, ‘a box with rockets—’

“ ‘If we can take a ship and an alien pilot, can you read the pilot’s mind? Well enough to fly the ship?’

“I said, ‘I’ve seen their input keyboards. Our fingers aren’t small enough.’ I saw his thought, Telepath will try to talk us into sloth and cowardice. I said, ‘Take two of their writing sticks, one in each fist, and you could punch commands on their keys. But you need a pilot, not just some random prey. I’ll have to find one for you.’

“ ‘Await word,’ White Mask said.

“That night I listened to them working up an escape plan. They needn’t shout at me; I heard their thoughts. A working spacecraft would be ideal, but a damaged or empty ship might still send a message, and a mind-taster could tell them how to do that too. They