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

To be buried that long, though. His mind knew that it had been less than an instant; inside a stasis field, the entropy gradient was disconnected from that of the universe as a whole. Less than a single second would pass inside during the entire duration of the universe, from the explosion of the primal monobloc to the final inward collapse into singularity. His mind knew that, but his gut knew otherwise.

Spots chirred. "For that matter, what of the humans here? They seem no more anxious than we to attract the government's”—he fell into Wunderlander for that; the Hero's Tongue had no precise equivalent—“attention. Yet they may be reluctant to allow us to depart with the data—they are monkeys, after all."

"We can bury their bones. They are outcasts, not dear to the livers of the monkeys in authority. Who will miss their scent?"

The smell of anger warned him; he looked up just in time to jerk his head backward, and Spots's claws fanned the air over his nose rather than raking through the sensitive flesh.

"Honorless sthondat!" the smaller kzin hissed. "Did you forget the oath we swore with Jonah-human? You are alive because of the Jonah-human! Oath-breaker! Are you without regard for the bones of your ancestors? The Fanged God will regurgitate your soul."

Bigs bristled, swelling up to a third again his size; his ears folded back.

"They are monkeys," he growled back; the sound was a steady urrreeuueeerree beneath the modulations of his words. The Menacing Tense in Imperative Mode.

"That monkey crawled into the darkness to rescue you as you lay helpless," Spots said; he stood higher, unwilling to let Bigs's height give him dominance. All eight claws on his hands were out. "Blood for blood."

They began to circle, tails rigid. "What of our duty to the Patriarch?" Bigs spat.

"Our first duty to the Patriarch is to be Heroes," Spots replied. "Heroes do not break their solemn oath!"

They both sank on their haunches for the final leap. Then Bigs let his fur fall and looked aside.

"There is a true trail among the prints of your words," he admitted with sullen reluctance. Earth rumbling and the walls closing around—“If the monkey . . . if Jonah-human refuses to let us leave with the data, I will challenge him to honorable single combat."

Spots straightened suspiciously; he sniffed with his jaw open and licked his nose for a second try.

"I smell reservations. They smell stronger than a dead kshat," he warned. "Be sure, I will not permit less. No under-the-grass killing. And if you duel Jonah-human, you must preserve his head for the Ancestral Museum of our line."

"Agreed. We shall all act as Heroes. Even the Jonah-human."

Spots's pelt rippled in a shrug. "We quarrel over the intestines of a prey that grazes yet," he said. "So far, all we have is an impenetrable mystery."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

"What did you do?" Spots demanded, springing back and bruising his tail against a timber upright. He rubbed at it absently, eyes locked on the tnuctipun spacecraft with the same intent longing that they might have fixed on a zianya bound in the blood trough of a feasting table.

"I did nothing," Bigs said.

Jonah grunted, and Hans whistled softly. For the better part of a week, nothing. And now the stasis field had vanished, seemingly of its own accord.

The hull had turned . . . translucent, as well. Much of the interior seemed to be packed solid with equipment of various sorts; none of it familiar, although he thought he recognized something like the wave-guides of a gravity polarizer. If it's that small, arid can lift this ship, it's better than anything we or the kzin can make, he thought. Nothing this size could make space on its own—the power-plant alone would be too large—and nothing this size could possibly mount a superluminal drive, from what little was publicly known about them. On the other hand, nothing humans or kzinti knew would stand three billion years of immersion in liquid metal, either.

"Tnuctipun," he whispered, awed. In the center of the forward bulge was a capsule, and inside that he could dimly see the outline of a body inside a cocoon of tubes and wires.

Small, was his first thought. He knew from his time on the thrintun ship Ruling Mind that tnuctipun were small; they had built that thrintun vessel, and many of the crawlspaces were too cramped for a human to enter. Long limbs in proportion to the body, and twelve digits, longer and more jointed than human fingers. Another indication; there was a rough correlation between manual dexterity and the length of time a species had been sentient. Dolphins and bandersnatch were exceptions, of course. Overall he thought it would come to about his waist standing erect, but the arms were as long as his. A single nostril in the long snout, ahead of an even longer swelling of braincase; a pattern of holes on either side of the head that might correspond to ears, or might not; two large eyes and a smaller one set where the forehead would be if there was one. The eyelids closed side-to-side rather than up and down.

I'm the first human ever to see a tnuctipun, Jonah thought, slightly dazed. He stepped forward, acutely conscious of the smell of his own sweat, of the ginger scent of the kzin. They were staying well back; not that they were more fearful than he, just less driven by curiosity.

"It's hurt," he said, peering closely with his hands on the absolute smoothness of the hull; it was an odd sensation, the palms always trying to slip away.

Whatever the tnuctipun was floating in was liquid, and reddish blood was hazing the egg-shaped chamber; it thinned and flowed away as he watched. An autodoc, he realized. Doubling as a pilot's crash couch. Some small scoutcraft and atmosphere flyers used that arrangement, with a high-oxygen liquid for breathing. A body with open air spaces inside it was much more vulnerable to