Man-Kzin Wars IV by Larry Niven (best novels to read for students txt) 📕

outgrown such questions. Nevertheless, Trainer-of-Slaves gave up an interesting card game to examine the matter. His data-link surprised him. It asked him to rephrase his inquiry several times, then produced the answer which had been known for some octal-squared generations. It was a theorem named after Stkaa-Mathematician-to-S’Rawl.

Stkaa, of course, was one of those kzin who wrote the commas and dots of the Hero’s Tongue in the blood of martyrs. For the return price of an equal amount of blood, he made himself clear. On the datalink screen Trainer had to run the theorem’s equations with different boundary values. He had to call up the definitions of words he’d never seen—sometimes because unified field theory was an arcane subject with its own hisses and snarls, and sometimes just because the language had mutated since the time of Stkaa. As often as not the definitions required that he run even more equations before he could make sense of the definition.

Three days later…

It was an easy enough theorem to declare. “A universe cannot contract beyond its lowest state of information.” But it required a hackles-raising use of the uncertainty principle to find the temperature at which every particle in the contracting universe had an equal probability of being anywhere in the fireball—the required lowest state. But once you did that: out-popped the minimum radius. Very neat.

Trainer-of-Slaves dutifully lectured his four “sons.” He set up the unified field equations. He contracted to the essentials. He pulled a trick out of his ears that allowed him to apply the uncertainty principle to eliminate all the singularities.

If you knew the velocity of a particle you didn’t know its position. Was it still approaching the central point or had it already passed through? If you fixed the position of a particle you no longer knew its velocity. Was it inward or outward bound? All information about whether the universe was contracting or expanding had been lost.

Presto! A minimum radius for the universe. (Thanks to Stkaa-Mathematician-to-S’Rawl, but don’t tell them that.)

You knew you had the attention of a Jotok when three eyes were focused on you—when you commanded all five eyes you were a sensation. Big-Undermouth skittered off to bring him some squealing Grashi-burrowers in a bowl, which he munched while other arms curried his fur. Why couldn’t kzin sons be like this?

He was beginning to understand his success as a Jotok trainer. At the onset of intelligence a Jotok bonded to anything that gave the basic verbal cues. He’d seen a machine-bonded-Jotok cripple its mind trying to be the son of a machine. The bonding moment was critical—but it wasn’t enough. The Jotok was looking for a father, and you had to be a father if you wanted a reliable Jotok slave.

This was a confusing concept for Trainer-of-Slaves. He couldn’t be a real father to his Jotoki because he couldn’t give them combat training. They were herbivores, not Heroes. Only a father who was a coward would sire sons who were unable to fight. (Did Trainer still remember the murder of Puller-of-Noses? Perhaps. As an inexplicable aberration.)

Trainer-of-Slaves liked his isolation, mostly because it kept him out of fights. He had to maintain a delicate balance between dueling and not dueling. He preferred to be obsequious—older warriors appreciated subservience because it allowed them to delegate duties—but younger Heroes tended to mark a deferential kzin as potential prey.

To keep that nuisance at bay he had to maintain a reputation in the tournament ring. That he was Grraf-Hromfi’s favorite opponent was enormously useful to him. The proud warriors of the Third Black Pride, awed by their Commandant, didn’t see that Hromfi would never have hurt or humiliate Trainer, that the old warrior was only interested in providing an able disciplinarian for his sons. He was training Trainer-of-Slaves as proxy to cull his sons, a fatherly duty for which he had no liver.

A warrior who smelled Trainer’s fear was restrained by the ear of the Commandant’s son he wore on his belt, and by the many scars Trainer carried on his arm and body from contests with those same sons. The scars were a badge of sorts which Trainer appreciated, however painful had been their healing, because they warned others to keep their irritation in check.

Nevertheless, despite his growing skill as a combatant, he preferred his isolation. In the old days he would have hunted the savannas of Kzin-home alone.

CHAPTER 18

(2410–2413 A.D.)

Isolation can never be complete within a military machine, no matter how remote the posting. Trainer-of-Slaves might hide behind his work, but his superiors always found him because they needed him. In time, Chuut-Riit came out for an inspection. The Black Prides were the bones of his Fifth Fleet, and he liked to keep his tail around developments. While his officers were with him in the maintenance hold of the Pride’s floating drydock, the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch, and looking out over a dismantled Scream-of-Vengeance from a catwalk, Chuut-Riit turned to Trainer-of-Slaves.

“I recall our conversation at that hunt on Hssin.”

“Sire, I was young then, of shrunken liver and rattle-brain.”

“But you showed the talents of a fine captain, a gift for feint and kill,” Chuut-Riit replied diplomatically. “Let me refresh your memory about the topic which intrigued me. You had a theory that male humans might be domesticated through their biochemistry. I recollect that you talked about a trigger to control the pace of their learning, then a block to freeze that plasticity once they had attained the desired slave behaviors.”

“Sire, I have speculated thus—but never with any experimental animals upon which I could test my ideas. Mental physiology can take strange twists. The turns cannot be followed without sniffing the trail. Nor can the males be domesticated without providing the proper kind of breeding female.”

“I have a partial-name for you if you succeed in this venture.”

“Sire!”

“Too many of our humans go feral. I suspect that on Earth, with its very large population, the problem will be worse. Hunting those humans who can’t adapt to slavery is a limited solution. The