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

it set minimum power for the target’s mass and offset the aim-point to spare the Jotok as much of the radiated energy as possible.

The turret accepted the targeting data from the AI, computed Swift-Son’s trajectory, swiveled to track him, locked on and fired. His kill-scream cut off with a gurgle as he went limp in midair. Unable to control his touchdown, he landed in a heap atop his target. Kzin and Jotok went down in a tangled pile of limbs.

* * *

Joyaselatak recovered first. Swift-Son’s shock became fear when he found he couldn’t move a muscle, then terror as his intended victim rolled him over on the sand. His horror only increased when the demon began to drag him downslope, beneath the shimmering not-mirage.

The Jotok’s spindly limbs belied its strength and it quickly hauled its prize under the filmy camouflage and tied the kzin to one of the canopy’s supports by looping a mooring cable around its ankles, securing it with a burst from the sonic welder in its tool smock. Then it retrieved its display board from upslope, sat on its undermouth, and went to work. One self section maintained a watch around three hundred and sixty degrees for more intruders, borrowing eyes around the torochord as necessary, and three more began accessing the ship’s sensor logs to find out why the AI had missed the danger. The remaining limb stripped its captive of its meager possessions.

Swift-Son felt his panic recede somewhat when he found he could weakly move his bound legs. As the weirdly shaped demon took his hunt pouch and tools, he tried to make sense of his surroundings. Only the sand beneath him was familiar; everything else was strange and intimidating. The sand pile mirage was held up on poles, like a travel-tent. It covered a huge, blunt cone, unnaturally symmetrical and thoroughly scorched. Smooth cords snaked from an opening in its belly to every one of the cache-sign things in the sand bowl and a number of larger, more oddly shaped arcana deployed beneath the canopy overhead. And that was the strangest thing of all. It no longer looked like a wavery sandhill. From underneath it was just a faintly bluish filminess, rippling like a pool in the desert breeze. He knew it was impossible, but he could see right through it into the clear and cloudless sky.

Examining the sensor log Joyaselatak carefully noted the points where the AI had registered the kzin and decided it represented no danger. Threats were too narrowly defined as weapons or weapons carriers, with an implied assumption that these involved power sources, heat production, EM emitters, or other technological fingerprints. Clearly someone at base was far too solicitous of the sensibilities of local animals. A few brief commands expanded the definition to prevent future surprises and for the local fauna. That done, the Jotok transferred all its attention to inspecting its prize.

It had never seen a live kzin before. The thing was a killing machine—all fangs and talons with a crossbraced endoskeleton and lean, powerful musculature. Its eyes and ears were large and set forward for hunting prey, and the chances were good that its nose would penetrate even a Jotok’s sophisticated scent suppression and camouflage. Its self sections compared notes on the shock of the kzin’s attack scream and the sight of the carnivore bearing down on it from nowhere, like fiercely intelligent death incarnate. The Trade Council was right to fear this race.

After retrieving Swift-Son’s kit, Joyaselatak learned that the carnivore wore nothing but leather boots with holes in the toes for its claws and a leather cape. Its only weapons were its claws and teeth. Searching through its equipment revealed a waterpouch, some skinned and dried rodents in a bag, and a large folded skin. A smaller pouch on a belt contained a flat, jagged rock, a larger, smoother rock, a small bar of crude iron, some shredded vegetation wrapped in bark, a length of sinew cord, and a number of small iron balls stored individually in a greased leather pouch—metal, but not enough to trigger the AI.

The clothing and equipment were made with obvious skill from natural materials. That suggested that it really was a primitive subsistence hunter rather than a technological sophisticate following some ancient ritual. The very existence of such a kzin was noteworthy. The reports Joyaselatak had studied indicated a homogeneous civilization profile with quite advanced technology. The evidence indicated that the kzinti had forged a single civilization between five-squared and five-cubed generations ago. Analysis indicated a highly stable social structure, though built in violent conflict. Transmission intercepts revealed a single language. Their government was based on a semi-hereditary leader who had dominion over the entire species and dynasties lasted many inheritances. Certainly their interstellar ventures indicated a unified civilization rather than parallel and competing efforts.

Of course worlds often evolved unevenly. While the highly social Jotok had unified their planetary tradeweb early in their development, it was not unusual for one part of a species to be colonizing stars while another part had only rudimentary tool use. Certainly the aggressive, asocial, and thinly populated kzinti were prime candidates for a fragmented social pattern with distinct subgroups and wildly varying technology levels. Or perhaps the primitives were suffered to exist as a sort of cultural repository, worth the small cost of the wasteland they occupied. Whatever the explanation, clearly the researchers had been seduced into unwarranted generalizations by the paradoxical stability arising from the aggressive individuality of the carnivore’s society. Primitive cultures were notoriously hard to detect, especially when they were small and masked by higher technology in operation.

Or, volunteered a self section, in this case by a sand dune. Joyaselatak’s integrated thought-chain was interrupted as its other self sections berated the hapless watcher for its carelessness.

The internal argument ended when a self section noticed the kzin moving. It had recovered motor control surprisingly quickly. It would not do to underestimate this dangerous predator. Time to begin the interrogation.

Swift-Son, still partially paralyzed, was