Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

We wish to learn from you, Daneel Guthlac. Your patchwork psyche is fascinating to us, but you are an uncontrollable variable. Your own thoughts reveal you to be dangerous.

Fear and urgency cleared his mind, and in one perfect zen moment, he knew the alien minds were coming from the island. The ketosaurus was only a weapon. Then, encroaching hypothermia forced him back to his immediate situation, and he tried to swim back to the boat in an achingly slow and desperate doggie-paddle.

After what felt like an eternity, something sharp, like knives, sank into his left arm and hauled him out of the water, where the wind-chill made him shake wildly. Dan was distantly aware of Schro licking his face and the same knives slapping a thermal patch on his back. Warmth slowly crept into his bones, and with it came rational thought.

“What happened?” Dan asked feebly. He realized he was draped over the side of the starboard hull on his belly and facing the sail, which lay in the water.

“The heavily reinforced port hull held, but the Nautical Devastation still capsized dishonorably,” was all Dan understood of Fraaf’kur’s howling. The rest was cursing in the bloodcurdling dialect of Shasht.

“The boat’s on its side…Schro, are you okay?” He could sense his son’s terror and fury; the kit’s dormant telepathic power had sharpened like a spike by the unexpected attack.

“Yes, I still have my harpoon!” He had held onto it with his prehensile tail. “Are you all right, father? I thought you were dead!”

“I’m just cold-and surprised the thing didn’t go for me when I was in the water.”

“You’re nothing to it. The ketosaurus is treating us like a wounded longneck. Soon it’s going to strike the mast.”

As if on cue, the leviathan slammed its jaws shut on the mast and thrashed violently, testing the boat’s tolerances to the brink. Dan held on with all his might, and through the ferocious quake, Schro’s piercing cry got his attention. The kit had climbed down the now vertical trampoline and impaled the ketosaurus with two harpoons; one psychic, which bewildered its rudimentary mind, and the other, the steel projectile embedded within the creature’s left eye and driven through his brain. The jerking crescendoed into death throes, and then everything stilled.

Long moments passed. The three worn sailors just watched their monstrous kill bob in the water as if waiting for it to spring to life and pummel them once more.

An hour passed. It was clear that the sea monster was never going to move again, so Fraaf’kur carefully pried back a large scale on the ketosaurus’ side and tore off chunks of its flesh. He ceremoniously offered the first bite to the proud and still-shaky Schro, and they ate their terrible sashimi perched on the starboard hull as it jutted out of the water. The stony island loomed large in the horizon. It was close, about a kilometer away.

Dan had tried contacting his gravcar, but his wristcomp was damaged from the salt water. “We need to get to the island somehow. The telepathic voices are coming from there.”

“I can swim it, but then what? Without protective fur, you’ll freeze to death in minutes, and Schro here can’t swim. We need to right the ship. You’re an engineer, human, got any ideas?”

“I have an idea,” Schro volunteered to their surprise. “The industrial gravbelt, we can use it to lift the ship out of the water, enough to get it straight.”

That would work. “What about the trophy? We brought that to tow the ketosaurus back. What about your crèche mates?”

The kit-no, he was no longer a kit, he was an adolescent kzin now, a kzinchao -radiated confidence. “I don’t need to prove I killed the top predator on the planet. It’s enough that I know I killed it.”

Fraaf’kur slapped Schro’s back. “Not a bad idea, runt! We stowed it in the port hull. I can dive down and retrieve it.” Without another word the Hero plunged into the ocean, and, with expansive paw strokes and a rhythmic swish of his powerful tail, Fraaf’kur disappeared beneath the surface. Dan was instantly reminded of how cold the water really was.

“I didn’t know kzinti could swim,” Schro said, using his ziirgrah on Fraaf’kur. “He’s actually enjoying it.”

“Where he’s from, Kzinti have learned to swim, and on Sheathclaws, the lighter gravity and saltier oceans help buoy a kzin’s heavier frame,” Dan said, but he could tell something was wrong. Schro had crossed the link they had easily shared since he was a newborn kit and was now rummaging in Dan’s mind, which shouldn’t have been possible without the sthondat drug that boosted a talented kzin’s natural ziirgrah into true telepathy.

“What are you doing?” For the first time ever, Dan shut his mind to his son.

“What is a Schrodinger’s cat, father? Why did you name me after it?”

Dan signed heavily. He was unbearably thirsty and didn’t want to talk; he especially didn’t want to have this conversation here, now. “I had been unsuccessfully working on the captured Righteous Manslaughter ’s hyperdrive for years before you came along. Honestly, I had quantum mechanics on the brain when I named you. It was only a crèche name, so I figured, what the hell, you would earn your own Name in time.”

“Are you sure that’s it? I get the sense it means something like being both alive and dead at the same time. The feeling is very strong.”

To Dan’s infinite relief, Fraaf’kur’s orange head popped out of the water. His fur was slicked back and he did indeed look like a marine mammal, like an actual sea lion. “I got it! Someone help me hoist it up.” He panted hungrily as he hefted the sealed crate.

In silence they affixed the gravbelt to the catamaran, where the mast intersected with the hull connectors. Dan activated the powerful motor and dialed up the artificial gravity field until it encompassed the entire ship, while Fraaf’kur poured his weight onto the starboard hull so that the sail swung up, perpendicular to the water, and the port hull surfaced.

“The rudder is completely gone and the sail is torn, but not tattered. If you increase the gravity motor’s strength and lift us up off the surface, only a few centimeters, just enough to remove the friction of cutting through the water, I can use the sail to steer.”

Dan complied and they were off. The airborne ride was rougher than being on the raging sea as they were now susceptible to the rapid, intense winds that hit them at odd angles. Nobody spoke. Fraaf’kur fought with the disobedient catamaran, his hunter’s concentration totally absorbed.

Schro sulked by himself in the bow of the port hull; something clearly bothered him, something he had seen in Dan’s mind. For the first time, Dan noticed the kit looked half-formed somehow, as if the Maned God ran out of kzin stuff and added a bit of human to finish the job. His body language and mannerisms were all too primate. Dan had always been accused of being too kzin, but Schro wasn’t kzin enough. It’s what his crèche mates picked up and instantly pounced on-his humanity. Dan couldn’t help but feel responsible for that, so he sat on the trampoline and focused on increasing or decreasing the output of the motor to the tempo of the surging waves.

The Nautical Devastation skidded onto the rocky shoal of the desolate island. Dan noticed a big, unmarked gravtruck abandoned on the shore, now a roost for several pteranobats; the leathery fliers eyed them as potential carrion. They disembarked quietly as if to avoid disturbing the death-like serenity of the beach. The only sound was the chill wind and pervasive screeching of immature pteranobats up in the guano-coated hills.