Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

“It’s necessary,” Selena blurted, reaching to turn off the camera on the hoverbots which followed Hap. The three more distant bots-which completed the irregular, changing tetrahedral pattern around him-mercifully did not provide the gory details of the kill. “Without these instincts and these capabilities, any genuine kzin would reject him.”

Dieter nodded. “They still might.”

Boroshinsky looked sideways at the Wunderlander. “Why do you say this, Captain?”

“Just Dieter, please. Hunting is just the opening ante for being accepted as a Hero. If he is to have any standing among them-if he is to be a liaison who is respected, rather than scorned-he will need to know how to fight. Not hunt: fight.”

The air suddenly felt colder to Selena; she rubbed her arms vigorously.

Boroshinsky looked puzzled by Dieter’s assertion. “ Shto ? Maybe they have some form of martial art?”

Dieter shrugged. “Maybe; we don’t have any intel on that. Most of their combat moves seem to be a direct inheritance from inborn instinct. I suspect they spar, to hone those moves and improve their reaction time. But there’s no evidence that they have a special discipline for personal combat.” Dieter looked at the almost-vanished dust smudge. “Can’t say they seem to need one, either.”

“No,” said Selena. “They don’t. And he doesn’t. What he needs is competition.”

Dieter looked at her. “What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Hap has been asking questions about new additions to the preserve.”

Boroshinsky looked at her closely. “You mean like water buffalo? Rhinos? Maybe elephants?” He laughed.

Selena did not. “Yes. And more.”

Boroshinsky’s eyes widened. “What kind of more ?”

Selena looked away. “Lions. Tigers. Bears. Oh my.”

Dieter nodded. “Now I know why he was asking me about the new breakthroughs in archeogenetics.”

Boroshinsky reared back. “ Bozhemoie ! No! Even if you get clearance for it, some of those creatures are too dangerous. Even for him.”

Dieter kept looking at the defile. “Too dangerous for him now, yes. Later? I wonder.”

Selena stared at the man who was in and out of her life, along with whispers about the special detachment that he was assigned to: it had no address, no known permanent base, no official name. He got a month Earthside every year. Usually. So she knew him, or at least she thought so. “Well, this is new. A week ago you were worried about us bringing in the caribou. Now you’re okay with him taking on raptors?”

Dieter’s lip twitched. “They don’t have a gene code on raptors. No dinosaurs other than the pieces they can pull from current reptiles.”

“Okay; a cave bear, then. Those they’ve got.”

Boroshinsky stared narrowly at her. “And how do you know that?”

“Same way you do, Mikhail. Insatiable curiosity coupled with inappropriate use of my clearance rating.”

Which made the older man laugh thinly. “Okay. You win.”

Selena kept staring at Dieter. “Well? What made you change your mind?”

Dieter nodded off in the direction of the ravine. “Him.”

“Hap?”

“Yes. He spoke to me today.”

“He spoke to you ? After all this time?”

Dieter nodded. “Yes. It was nice. But very strange.”

“I’ll bet,” Selena concurred.

Boroshinsky frowned. “I know I’m not supposed to know anything about this, but I do. I know he stopped talking to you about a year ago. Why?”

Dieter turned to face him. “Because I told him about what I did on the kzin ship. How I snatched him. How I killed his mother.”

Boroshinsky stared at Selena. “And you-and the director-approved that?”

Dieter looked off in the distance. “I didn’t ask permission. No time, anyway. He’d mostly figured it out on his own, asked me questions that put me in a position where I’d have to lie, avoid the topic, or tell him the truth. So I chose the truth. And he ran off.”

“To grieve.”

“That. And maybe to keep from killing me.”

Selena stood slightly closer to Dieter. “Or maybe because he couldn’t bear knowing that the person he’s always trusted, even loved, had been the cause of all his misfortunes.”

Dieter blinked. “Maybe. Anyhow, today he seemed to have all those emotions well in hand. He was really very frank about it: ‘you killed the kzinti who were supposed to raise me. So I would appreciate it if you could help me get what I need in order to truly grow up.’”

Selena wished she had been there for that conversation and was simultaneously grateful that that bitter cup had passed her by. “And so what he asked for were…monsters?”

“Pretty much, yes. Prehistoric monsters. I agreed to support his request.”

“Out of guilt?”

“Out of common sense. Let’s face it, Selena: if he’s going to survive among natural kzinti, he has to know how to fight back, how to respond to a challenge. He knows it, feels it in his bones. It has to happen, and it has to start soon. Not with the big creatures, but at least some smaller ones.”

Selena found herself wondering how one went about procuring dangerous animals for slaughter: “ Hello, Dial-a-Beast? I would like to order one each of the following creatures for next month: one hyena, one wolf, one cougar, one black bear, one-yes, that’s right. I’m interested in an ascending lethality rating… ”

Dieter hadn’t stopped. “But I told him I would not support his other request.”

Selena felt her brain slide to a halt. “What other request?”

“Can’t you guess?”

They stared at each other for a long time. Then she got it: “Females?”

“Of course.”

Boroshinsky snickered. “What else?”

Selena shot him a look that she hoped would scald the old man’s conscience; he seemed serenely unperturbed by it. “Well, at least you didn’t promise him the start of his own harem.”

Dieter sighed. “Look, Selena, just because I’m not a scientist doesn’t mean I’m stupid. He’s six, so in his natural environment he’d be tussling with other male kzinti, and maybe some of the fights would even be getting serious. But there’s no way he’d have access to a female of his own for another fifteen or twenty years, minimum. He has to earn a Name first; at the very earliest, that means age twenty. Right?”

“Okay, so you’ve read the reports. But that doesn’t mean you should have-”

“Enough!” Boroshinsky was both frowning and smiling at them. “You argue like old married people. So why don’t you make it official and be done with it?”

Boroshinsky’s glee at playing matchmaker faded quickly; he saw the uncomfortable look on Dieter’s face, saw what was no doubt a similar expression on Selena’s. He had the good sense not to say anything else. Maybe later, Selena would reassure him that he’d done no harm, had no way of knowing that the two of them had been over it many times, but could not find a way to turn what they did have into a marriage. They were apart too much and had profoundly different lives, particularly since his was founded on the principle that, at any second, he might get called to defend the system, and die doing so.

Dieter pointed down into the defile. “Hap’s moving again.”

And so he was: there was a brief flash of black and orange which shot across the valley floor and disappeared into a dense cluster of Mediterranean pines. “He says that when he dreams, he can actually smell females, more clearly than he sees them.”

Selena nodded. “That’s my doing.”

“What?”

“We’ve been piping in a small amount of their scent into the paddock at night.”

“Good grief, why?”