Man-Kzin Wars XII by Larry Niven (books you have to read .TXT) 📕

"Urr. Good for them."

They sorted things out into weapons, probable weapons, probable nonweapons, and who-knows-what. The last category included an elaborately sealed box of what was labeled as ordinary candy, three packages Perpetua thought looked like inflatable boats, a first-aid kit that included a small electric drill, and a sculpting rig that included an amazingly elaborate set of vibratory controls for one standard cutting bit, plus a headband with a heavy cable attaching it to the controls.

They were still puzzling over that one when Smith came out and said, "That's a touch-sculpting rig. You got some odd controls on your dispenser. What's with the sorting arrangement?" He was wearing clothes he certainly hadn't had under his suit.

"Weapons, possible, likely not, unknown," said Ginger, pointing.

"Oh, put everything in weapons," he said. "The Outfit makes a big deal over being able to kill anybody with anything. Except the candy; I got that from a woman when I said I was leaving . . . maybe you should just put that out the lock."

Perpetua and Ginger exchanged a glance, and Perpetua said, "Um, are you a paranoid?"

"No. But she is."

"Wish we had a stasis box," Ginger muttered in Wunderlander.

"Three right there," Smith replied, with a horrible accent. He pointed at the "boats" and said, in Flatlander again, "So what did you want to talk to an ARM for?"

"Ah," said Perpetua. "We're engaged in rescuing humans in kzinti custody. A couple of thousand years ago, the Jotoki recruited some Romans as mercenaries, north of Hadrian's Wall—"

"The Ninth Legion was abducted by aliens?" Smith exclaimed, then burst out laughing.

It took him some time to calm down. While he was wiping his eyes, Perpetua said, "You just happen to know all about the Ninth Legion?"

"Well, I guess I do now," he said, chuckling.

"Why is that funny?" Ginger said.

"Kind of a personal joke. Fission Era mythology was full of stories of people being abducted by aliens, and I got exposed to a lot of it as a kid. I gather you've found their descendants?"

"Yes . . . this seems like a funny coincidence. It's kind of obscure," Perpetua said warily.

"No coincidence at all. I told you, I'm in Propaganda. Most of it's historical work. You have to know what you're lying about."

"Oh."

"So where do I come in?"

"Well, there's thousands of them, and the planet they're on has two old kzinti troop carriers in orbit, so we've put together a plan to steal those, load up the humans and Jotoki, and escape. The thing is, they're slow ships. We needed an excuse to get to them, though, so we've gotten the owner to hire us to install hyperdrives in them. So we need phase initiators—everything else can be made there."

"It takes about a thousand man-hours to shake down a new phase initiator," Smith said, "and that's in a drive whose other parts are known to work together. You need two complete hyperdrives. No way I can make those just disappear; what have you got to trade?"

"Gold. You'll do it?" Perpetua said, astonished.

"Oh, absolutely, I love the idea. Gold, huh? Not many people . . . hm. I may know somebody on Mars."

"Mars?"

"Mars. Fourth planet. It's on the other side of the sun just now, so it'll be, oh, three days to get there with this rig."

"More like two," Ginger said, getting up.

"Not unless you plan to skim the sun."

"Three," Ginger agreed.

"How did you decide to believe us so quickly?" Perpetua said at their first meal.

"VSA implant," Smith replied. "Voice stress analysis. Lie detector. I don't have the kind of brain chemistry that can be tweaked into continuous heavy-duty intuition, which is what most ARMs rely on."

"I thought they were paranoid," she said.

"That's the term for public consumption," he agreed. "Keeps 'em nervous. The ARM doesn't have the omnipotence it had before the wars, so we take any advantage we can get. Untrained, unchanneled paranoids did a lot of damage in the past. People remember that." He grinned. "We remind them regularly."

"Oh," she said uneasily. "What's Mars like?"

"Cold," he said. "Dry. Less of both with each generation, though. The residents are gradually terraforming it. Before the wars it was a real hole. We used it as a dumping ground for troublemakers—writers, roleplayers, history buffs."

"Who lives there now?"

"Same people. Just not brainwashed. They like it. Don't ask me why. Part of the whole fantasist culture." He took a bite, chewed, swallowed, and added, "Not brainwashed by us, anyway."

He grew gloomy and avoided conversation for a day or so.

* * *

In the middle of the third day he suddenly told Ginger, "There's people on Earth who think the ARM made the wars up."

This was apropos of nothing whatsoever, and ridiculous to boot; Ginger said, "What?"

"There are people who earnestly believe the whole interstellar war story is just a huge juice job. That is, all the death on Wunderland was something we caused ourselves, and we're blaming you to discredit you so you can't expose us."

Ginger thought about that, then said, "That's crazy."

"True. With eighteen billion people on Earth you get all kinds. At the other end of the spectrum of insanity you get the tweeties—that is, people who think the kzinti are responsible for everything that goes wrong, and this literally includes poor weather."

"What do you do with people like that?" Perpetua wondered, and Ginger realized it was a good question—they wouldn't simply get killed in the course of their daily affairs.

"Unless they're really deranged, ignore them. They're not that numerous."

"And the extreme cases?" she said.

"We recruit them into Technology Restriction."

Her initial laughter died down as she realized he wasn't smiling.

"There's a placement test after you qualify for the ARMs," he said. "They give you a little sliver of soap and a sheet of paper, and you're supposed to write down five fundamentally different ways to kill someone with the soap. There are only four. You can poison him, lubricate something to cause an accident, use it as fuel for combustion or explosive, or stuff it down his throat to strangle him."

"Bludgeon," said Ginger.

"It's too small. If