Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“Of course I did. You can’t get into Yearrl-Captain’s head, and I can’t do it all the way from Canyon. Besides, you haven’t given me all the valuable intel you promised and my superiors would be livid otherwise.”

He dumped a heavy load of memories into the human’s mind. It felt good somehow to be relieved of his glorious past.

Varsha faltered for an instant, all the death and mayhem wrought by Devourer of Monkeys …because of Bobcat, gross violations of the Covenants of Shasht. She placed the weighty information in a sealed compartment of her mind and steadied herself. No room for doubts anymore.

“Will you be reprimanded for allowing me to escape?” Bobcat and Varsha were still linked by the provisional psychic bridge.

“Nah, think of it as extreme witness protection.”

As the two identical ARM vessels coasted along their parallel trajectories, he tried to imagine the infuriated Yearrl-Captain pacing the control deck of his ship, mulling over which prey to leap upon. “I cannot reach Yearrl-Captain! He’s skirting the limits of my telepathic reach!” Bobcat moved to tear out all the tubes and lines from the autodoc. “This machine is already scrubbing the sthondat fluid from my system!”

“Calm down.” She placed a soothing hand on his trembling shoulder. “You’ve crept in Yearrl-Captain’s inner mind many times. Show me a layout of his psyche from memory.”

The sleek and sterile command center of their ship faded around them. Varsha and Bobcat, with Jarri cradled in his good arm, stood on an ethereal bluff overlooking the wide tangerine savannah of Yearrl-Captain’s most primitive hindbrain. The illusion was so palpable that Varsha could taste the acidic aroma of the svelte rising in the morning heat. Two glowing moons hung low on the horizon, like the eyes of the Fanged God skulking behind the curve of the world. A pair of lumbering alien herbivores plodded along on their own ancient migration. A faint rustle in the grass hinted at a concealed killer.

“ Wait a minute, those beasts are us! Is this how Yearrl-Captain sees the situation? ” The level of detail astounded her. She had to remind herself this was a reconstruction and not Yearrl’s actual mind.

“ Only subconsciously, Agent Kahn. As you see, the captain is too far and well hidden for direct manipulation. ”

“ Trust me. You’ve spent your entire career trying to block out other minds. Me? I’m an expert at this. ” She studied the primordial scene much as her own simian ancestors might have.

Bobcat got visceral insight into human thinking. Where kzin brains evolved from the low, direct vantage point of the ground, humans took in the bigger picture. He also instantly recognized the Australopithecine meaning behind the name of their small ark.

“ Okay, Yearrl might be beyond telepathic tampering, but he’s not above manipulation. The captain of the Sun Wukong is close enough to mess with. ”

“ I don’t follow…You wish to sway an ally into attacking a kzinti warship? That’s madness! ”

“ No, the Sun Wukong ’s captain is already nervous. I can use that to push him to speed up just a bit. Get his ship away from the constraining mass of p Eridani and into the safety of hyperspace. ” Varsha stroked the part of Captain Garcia’s mind that informed his forebears to hide from Iberian cave lions during the last glacial maximum.

One of the elephantine creatures began a light, anxious trot and at once an almost imperceptible crackle in the grass moved in closer toward it. Sensing danger, the dumb animal picked up its pace.

“ They’re feeding off each other! ”

“ Exactly. Yearrl-Captain’s primal instincts are telling him that the animal that shows fear is the weaker prey. His logic is telling him that the ship that’s trying to run must harbor the fugitive. The closer he gets, the more Sun Wukong reacts. ”

The prehistoric scene melted away and Bobcat was still hooked up to the beeping medical machine. The little kit curled up in his lap. Varsha pointed to the display showing the Devourer of Monkeys gravitating toward the Sun Wukong , which was now ahead of them by many AU and entering the system’s heliopause.

I Love Lucy ’s own hyperspace shutters began to slide across all windows. Before the stars were completely blotted out, they saw the Sun Wukong , followed by the Devourer , wink out of Einsteinian space. Bobcat and Varsha simultaneously exhaled. Soon after, they felt their own ship slip into hyperspace.

She patted his good shoulder, where her hand had comfortably rested the entire time, then let the pontoon bridge collapse between them. “Alright, the chief engineer’s ice box is over in the second half of this ship near the hyperdrive. I’m going to sleep now before our rapport does become permanent and demonic.” She smiled slyly. “What’re you going to do when you get to where you’re going?”

“Thrust this last dose of sthondat drug into my arm and give a telepathic cry for help like no other. A planet of telepaths, even latent ones, won’t be able to ignore it.”

Unless they’ve been reduced to inbred idiots by two hundred years of isolation, she thought, but kept it to herself. Instead she picked up the slumbering kit. “Here, I’ll put this little warrior to bed next to his mother.”

“Why don’t you join us? You make a truly worthy companion.” He tried to turn, but the autodoc numbed his entire left side.

“I lack your faith. Besides, I’ve always wanted to retire on Canyon. That’s why I telepathically maneuvered my boss back on Earth to transfer me.”

He leaned back in his command chair. “Treat it better than I did.”

She left Bobcat to heal.