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

No live ones presented themselves. He was sure, however, that at least one of the remaining two was wounded. How far could they have gone? He tried to smell them out, but the scent of the kill in the immediate area was too strong and distracting, the odors of the humans too similar and confusing. Nyawk-Captain had made a shallow box search of the area, and found nothing, before he remembered his carbon-pattern detector.

He returned to the ground, retrieved it, and sighted the locator back up into the leaf layer.

No return signal from any direction.

And that should not be surprising. By this time the humans, even slowed and wounded as they were, might have gone beyond the sensitivity of his locator. Though honor demanded an accounting, there was certain danger in carrying any plan of vengeance too far.

Nyawk-Captain decided to take his prize, the Thrintun artifact, and return to Cat's Paw in order to continue his mission. Success, victory, and lasting honor were all still possible!

* * *

After a stumbling kilometer, Cuiller finally collapsed into the leaf layer, half-afraid—but only half—that his body would find its way through to the long fall. His arm throbbed now with the pain and swelling of the break. He could feel a raw heat creep up to his neck from the wounds in his chest. Was he developing a fever?

"Sally . . ."

"Wait here, Jared." Krater settled him across a solid branch and dug the remains of their autodoc out of her pack. She held up a vial of painkiller. "I'm guessing about the dosage," she said, breaking open a needle and injecting twenty cc's of clear fluid.

A few minutes after the shot, Cuiller roused himself. Already he was feeling warm and gauzy and . . . better.

"I should see to your arm," Krater said.

"What're you . . . gonna do?"

"Set it, splint it, wrap it."

"D'you ever—?"

"No."

She examined his left arm, which angled slightly outward about halfway above the elbow. Before he could offer further advice, she gently extended the arm, placed her left palm against the front of his shoulder, curled her right thumb under his elbow, wrapped her fingers over his forearm, and—pulled.

White fire boiled up in his arm and he could actually feel the ends of bone clicking together. Then Cuiller passed out.

When he came to, Krater had already cut up one of the pack-frames with a laser and made L-shaped splints with it. She had used the pack straps to bind it to his arm and tied the pack-cloth into a sling. Now she was cutting his uniform away from the puncture marks in his chest and dabbing them with an astringent.

"Sorry I've got nothing for bandages," she said. "But these holes don't look that deep."

"S'all right."

"What do you think the kzin was trying to do?"

"Kill us," he said with authority.

"Then why did it leave so suddenly? With us not dead."

"I don't . . . Just before it pushed me, I seem to remember dropping the Fiddle."

"It went through the leaves," Krater agreed, "and fell."

"And the kzin went after it—as if he knew it was valuable."

"Do you think he found it?"

The foliage around them rustled, and both humans tensed for a renewed attack. As Cuiller tried to lever himself more erect he stirred sharp pains in his arm and shoulder. Krater stilled him with her hand.

"It's Fellah," she said, pointing toward the small animal as it crept out of the leaf-cover near their feet. "The big cat must have scared him badly, too," she concluded.

"Other kzin . . . it's gone," Fellah said.

"Did you see it go?" Sally asked. "I mean, how do you know?"

The Pruntaquilun raised its head, closed its eyes, and seemed to sniff the air. But Cuiller, who was watching closely, did not see the creature's nose even twitch. Fellah's attention was focused further back, behind his eyes, inside his skull.

"Gone," Fellah confirmed.

"How does he know that?" Sally asked Cuiller.

"Well, how does he speak Interworld?" he asked in return. "Fellah must have some kind of telepathic sense, either innate or engineered. And it would certainly be a useful quality in a singer and entertainer, to read the minds, the emotional states of his audience. His language ability had improved remarkably just from being around us."

"You're saying he senses the kzin telepathically." She didn't sound convinced.

"He found his way right to us, didn't he?"

"Okay, how 'bout it, Fellah?" she asked playfully. "Do you read minds?" The Pruntaquilun looked at her seriously. "See words. Hear words." It wiggled a shrug again.

"What is the kzin going to do next?" Cuiller asked.

"Kzin is gone."

"Gone back to its ship? Gone from the planet? Where did it go?"

"Gone."

Krater shook her head. "Jared, he doesn't know anything about the ship, remember? And he probably doesn't have much conception of planets and astronavigation."

"Gone far." Fellah said with a nod. "With prize for Admiral Lehruff. Continue his mission."

"What's that?" Cuiller said, fighting the fog of painkilling drugs in his head.

"Cat's Paw . . . Mission to Margrave."

"He's reading the kzin's thoughts directly," Cuiller told Krater.

The linguist nodded. "I suppose we would, too—if we were a defenseless little dog hiding from those giant cats."

"This could prove the Navy's theories," Cuiller went on. "Cat's Paw. That's probably some kind of inciting action, a deception or a fake, like a feint against a mousehole."

"I think maybe you're reading too much—"

"And what else would an interceptor-class warship be doing this far out?"

"On patrol? Like us?"

"Not with that kzin's mission so deeply ingrained in his mind that Fellah can read it this clearly."

"Kzinti are particularly dutiful," Krater pointed out.

"And this one is dutifully heading back toward Margrave. You heard that part, didn't you, Sally?"

"Yes. That much was clear."

"Then we have to stop him. Even if we can't get off this planet ourselves, we have to keep that kzin pinned here."

"Why?" she asked.

"It has the Slaver's device, doesn't it? That's the power to control human and other minds, to make them do anything a kzin would want them to. . .