Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

Hap’s stare was quizzical, the same look she remembered from when he was a kit. Then, his eyes opened wide: “You weren’t allowed to tell me, were you?”

Selena had no clearance for any of this, but the situation had gone beyond concerns over clearance now. If she shut down this conversation, Hap would never trust her again. The relationship would be proven to be a sham. And suddenly, everything Selena had ever done for, or said to, Hap would become suspect; at the very least, he would know it had only occurred because it had been permitted by higher powers, that Selena’s own feelings and motivations were secondary to the dictates of others.

So Selena shook her head. “No. I was not allowed.” She smiled ruefully. “And to be honest, I’m not allowed to reveal that I was not allowed to reveal things to you.”

Hap frowned and then grinned. “That statement took me a moment to work through. Zzhreef’f! ” Which, Selena knew, was the Heroes’ Tongue equivalent of “I’ll be damned.” He looked at her for a long moment. “So you’re going to break all the rules, now?”

“Hap, I won’t. I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Hap, because if I do, there will be consequences.”

“For you?”

“For you, too.”

“Such as?”

“Well, in all probability, the same people who haven’t allowed me to speak openly to you would probably keep me from coming back here. Ever again. It would be the last time we see each other. And there’s nothing I could do about it.”

Hap’s ears had laid back tightly against his increasingly angular skull. “They’d do that? Really?”

“Really. Look, Hap: you were right when you said that nothing here is natural. But the unnaturalness goes far beyond the fenced-in range, the lack of contact with your own kind, the refusals to let you see the rest of the world, the carefully edited books about history and current events, and these insipid toys.” He smiled happily when she spat out the words “insipid toys.” Clearly, that admission of repressed fellow-feeling restored much of his confidence in her. “I can’t tell you about all of that unnaturalness, not yet. But I think that is going to start changing now.”

“Why? Why should it start changing now?”

“Because of you.”

“Me?” Hap sat up: curiosity and pride-the pride of an adolescent being told that their input has made an impact in the inscrutable world of adults-was clear in his expression. “What did I do?”

“This.” She gestured to the rank of mangled toys. “And the impatience you expressed with your current information limits. It will show the people who have resisted telling you more about yourself, and your origins, that the matter is really out of their hands, now. They can hardly counsel patience anymore, because there’s nothing to be gained by it. Your comments today show that you understand that you’re living in the middle of a stilted game, not the real world.”

Selena had the impression that Hap was trying very hard not to look smug: he was failing miserably, and didn’t much care. “Did they, whoever ‘they’ are, really think I could get to be this old and not ask myself, ‘Hey, does everyone grow up alone in a special enclosure? Why are there only two other kzinti and why do they hate me? Where does all the stuff around me come from? Why are there so many questions that never get answered?’ Perhaps they thought that since I never knew any different, I wouldn’t see anything strange in all that?” His last point rose on a note of incredulity.

At which Selena smiled, because Pyragy had insisted that Hap would remain just that ingenuous. According to him, “the subject, knowing no different, will be unable to adequately frame doubts for some time yet, and will therefore, not be distressed by the peculiarities of his condition.”

Before she could respond, Hap sat erect again, surprise writ large on his wide face. “They did! They really thought I wouldn’t notice anything wrong? I can’t believe anyone would be that stupid.”

“You’d be surprised. But Hap, I’d like to start making things better for you, less unnatural. So tell me: if you could change one thing about your life here, right now, what would it be?”

“You mean, other than having to live here at all?”

“Yes, other than that.”

“Well-” he stared at the savaged toys again “-I’d like to change all that.”

She looked at the mauled bits of pseudo fur. “You mean, you want them removed?”

“No, no.” He seemed uncertain for a second; his pelt shook with annoyance. Then he looked her square in the eyes. “I just want to know this: when can I kill something?”

Selena felt the equivalent of a snowball materialize in her gut. Two years ago, he had still been her cheery, cuddly little Hap; now he was asking her about killing as matter-of-factly as a human teen might have asked when he or she could start dating. It was as natural to him as the pelt covering his body. And just as alien as that to Selena. She felt as if, in a single second, he had dwindled into some impossible distance, an invisible speck beyond the heliopause.

Selena swallowed, and said calmly, “You want something to chase, I presume?”

“Well, of course I do!” Hap smiled, stared at her indulgently. “What do you think, that I just want to slit a throat? Like snick -?” and he demonstrated in the air with a single, suddenly unsheathed claw. “Come on, Selena; where’s the thrill in that ?”

Selena managed not to blink or retch. “Where, indeed,” she agreed.

After Selena completed her report, Pyragy looked away, sat silent for a full ten seconds. Then: “Thank you, Dr. Navarre. This is important information. And we will take your recommendations under advisement.”

Boroshinsky goggled at the director but said nothing. Poor Mikhail was starting to show his age a bit, despite the anti-senescence cocktails they had him on. He didn’t jump into fights like this one with the same alacrity that he used to.

Which left it to Selena. “Director Pyragy, I’m the one in direct contact with the subject. Who now knows that I take orders from a higher authority. If we put this off-if I am not allowed to give him certain minimal assurances about our increased forthrightness-then we will lose him. My personal relationship with him will be shattered beyond repair, and I am quite certain he will have nothing to do with anyone else. Not at this stage, and not under these conditions.”

“I was not aware your relationship with the subject had become an indispensable part of our project, Dr. Navarre.”

“This was outlined as a high-probability outcome before we even started, Director Pyragy. It has come to pass. As everyone-well, almost everyone-expected it would.”

He turned to look at her. “So what are you requesting?”

“It’s not what I’m requesting; it’s what Hap is requesting. And it is utterly reasonable.”

“What? That he be allowed to kill creatures?”

“Yes. More specifically, to hunt them down and eat them.”

Pyragy shuddered. “It is barbarous even to suggest it.”

“Director, we are not talking about a human. We are talking about a kzin. This is part of their growth process. It is only natural that he express this desire, this need. Indeed, it is a sign of our profound cultural influence upon him that he chose to wait-could force himself to wait-this long.”

Pyragy was silent for a long time; Selena watched a variety of emotions contend on his face. Stubbornness, prudence, distaste, pragmatism, willfulness, cunning. “Small animals,” he said at last. “Rodents only.”

Selena tried to think where she could find the largest, fastest rabbits. Squirrels, too. “That won’t work for long. The references we just received with the rest of Dr. Yang’s first reply all indicate that the kzinti bring down game many times their size and mass, and nearly equal to them in ferocity.”