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

around to get a good fire going. Soon a puff of white smoke rose out of the canopy and blew raggedly away on the breeze.

He divided his time between watching that and looking out for any fires Krater might have set.

Nothing. "Captain," from the radio again, softly. "I think I see smoke—or haze—about half a klick away. Try again."

He burned a fresh patch upwind of the first.

"Got you. Be there in a bit." Then the radio went dead.

Cuiller climbed back down to Jook's level.

In half an hour, they heard her winder motor, coming through the trees. At the end of a long swing, Krater burst through a fan of leaves and settled on the branch next to Jook. She was strangely encumbered.

"Daff didn't make it?" the commander asked gently.

She shook her head. "We were followed by a kzin, who climbed up into the canopy. Daff fought a delaying action—and bought me time to get away."

"Dead?" Jook asked.

"If he were alive, I wouldn't have left," she said defiantly.

"Sorry. I meant the kzin."

"Daff hurt him badly, knocked him out of the trees. But he was still moving."

After a pause, Cuiller asked, "Where is the stasis-box?"

"This is it." Krater lifted the dog out of its curled-up position, snuggled in the crook of her arm, and held it out with her fingers under its chest and around its forelegs. "Daff opened the box and found this—we call him Fellah—plus a flute-thing and some dried rations."

"I asked where the box was."

"Back along our path. It was empty, and we couldn't carry everything."

"Why did you open it in the first place?"

"Daff opened it. The kzinti were tracking on the stasis field."

"Oh . . . right." Cuiller put a hand to his chin.

Hugh Jook had taken the animal from Krater and was examining it while Cuiller absorbed her report. The commander watched his navigator move the animal's legs, feel around its eyes, look into its ears.

"Remarkably mammalian structure," Jook murmured.

"I noticed that," Krater said.

The Wunderlander felt the animal's hindquarters and lifted its tail.

"Do not . . . touch," the creature said in a halting approximation of Interworld. The sounds were thick as they wrapped around its long, pink tongue.

Jook dropped the dog. It landed on its feet amid the vines and glared over its shoulder at the startled navigator.

The three humans looked down at the animal, dumbstruck.

"You . . . you can talk?" Krater asked.

"Yes. You-you can talk," it replied—and waited expectantly.

Cuiller tried to decide if he was hearing a ventriloquist's trick or just some kind of mimicry, a parrot's mindless repetition. But then, he thought back, the dog's first fragmented sentence hadn't just repeated their own words. It had been wholly unprompted, arising out of nothing the humans were saying. And the words had fit the physical circumstances. So Cuiller had to accept that the "dog" was reacting to its environment, verbally, in Interworld.

"Of course, we can talk," Sally Krater went on patiently. "I was asking about you." And she pointed at the creature.

"You?" it asked. "Ah . . . 'You' means this—?" The animal swiveled its broad head around, including its own body in the gesture. "Fellah?"

"That's right. You're Fellah, and I'm Sally."

"Sal-lee. Daff. Yowryargawsh. Fellah."

"Yowr—?" Krater began, then shook her head.

"Other . . . that deaded the Daff. Yowryargawsh named itself."

"Oh, the kzin warrior."

"Yes, kzin. Dead itself now. But other still to come. Find you-Sallee." Fellah seemed to grow agitated. "Find you-human. Make dead too."

"Excuse me," Jook interrupted. "But what the hell are you?"

The creature paused. "You-Fellah means, is one, of-class Pruntaquilun. Named itself Coquaturia."

"But what are you?" Jook insisted.

"You-Fellah is . . . sing-maker?" it answered, unsatisfied with the result. "Song-maker. You-Fellah is owned-thing of Thrint named itself Guerdoth. You-Sallee, you-human, are not owned-thing? Yes. You have no . . . no Discipline?"

"Of course we have discipline," Cuiller responded quickly. "We're a Navy survey team, after all. Without discipline we couldn't perform—"

"Captain," Sally Krater said quietly, putting a hand on his arm. "You're going too fast. And I don't think that it's—that Fellah is questioning your authority."

"Of course not," Cuiller said stiffly.

The dog was staring hard at him. "You-Captain are Thrint?"

"Thrint? Are you calling me a Slaver?"

"You-Captain . . . you impose Discipline." The creature exhibited a rippling motion that might have been a shrug. "Thrint."

"There are no Thrintun anymore," Krater said. "They died out—oh, along, long time ago, while you were in the stasis-box that Daff opened."

Fellah turned its head patiently and watched her speak, studied the way her mouth moved, as if trying hard to understand.

"Many Thrintun," Fellah said gravely. "Too many to be deaded, to die soon. . . . What means 'long, long time'?"

"That's an approximation of age," Jook interposed. "Consider it to be a large part of the age of the universe itself. About one-fifteenth of that age." Jook had to explain this using his hands. He waved his free hand all around, to indicate the universe at large. Then he flashed his spread fingers three times, curling them off each time with his other hand.

The animal seemed to absorb this, to think about it, and then looked stunned. "No Thrintun anymore. No Pruntaquila anymore. No universe anymore." Fellah made a noise back in the throat that might have been a whimper or a moan.

"The universe is still here," Sally said easily.

The creature just stared at her.

"Hey, are you hungry?" Krater suddenly asked. She pulled out of her pocket some plastic-wrapped patties, which looked to Cuiller like some kind of dried meat. "We found these in the stasis-box," she explained to the commander. "Daff tried them but he thought the taste was pretty bland." She offered part of one patty to Fellah.

The animal backed away.

"Tnuctipun," it growled. "Head-stuff. Made dead, made cold, dry."

"What?" Krater dropped the fragment, and it slid between the leaves. "Why were the Tnuctipun killed?"

"Secret." Fellah turned away. "Big secret."

"Kill them and freeze-dry their brains?" Cuiller wondered. "Why would a Slaver want to do that? It's barbaric!"

"Maybe the Thrint wanted to preserve them,"