Larry Niven - Footfall

Dawson dare to interrupt. “Fathisteh-tulk knew me. I see that now. I want the solar system. If I’m crazy, that’s partly your doing.”

“You are mad indeed. When we have destroyed the intruder, we will visit Winterhome with destruction. That ship was built under the sign of peace. Never again will we honor that. We will trample every place, large or small, that ever displayed that sign.”

Dawson said nothing.

As I thought.

Takpusseh-yamp was finished with his call. He looked smug. It is his thuktun. He deserves one last play. “Breaker-Two. Speak to this rogue.”

Takpusseh-yamp turned. “Dawson! We have captured your mate. Paykurtank, the priest’s acolyte, found her after she left an air duct.”

“My mate is on earth,” Dawson said.

“Untrue. We know she is your mate because we watched you mating in the ducts.”

Dawson flushed. “So? We watched you mating in your rooms.”

“We do not speak to amuse ourselves, Dawson! You pretend to be a rogue, but you have a mate. A fi’s mate is clearly responsible for him! Your pretense is done.”

“Hell. If we’d known… wait a minute. You captured Alice?”

The Herdmaster was in a towering fury. “I would kill you this instant, Dawson, did you not represent your fithp in council. Will you transmit our terms and let your … Breaker-Two?”

“Your President. Dawson, your President surely has the rig to hear such an offer.”

Dawson said nothing.

I have him!

“You have a point,” Dawson said. “But … you had to capture Alice? She was loose! They’re all loose, aren’t they? Where?”

“We will leave your world to heal,” the Herdmaster pressed. He had not really believed this would work. Negotiated loss status, indeed! “There will be none of us on Earth, but there will be humans among our fithp. Surely your flthp and ours can survive alongside one another,” he said, not believing a word of it. “Humans will travel as passengers in our ships. From us you will eventually learn to build your own.” But the losing fithp become part of the winner’s. It had never been different.

Dawson’s objection fell very wide of tradition. “Let you leave, huh? And go to Saturn, and repair your ship? And what then?”

“Then… I don’t understand. Breaker-Two?” Takpusseh-yamp said, “We fail to taste your problem.” “What’s to stop you from coming back with another Foot?” “Our surrender, you brain-damaged rogue!”

“Are you telling me that a negotiated…” Dawson fell silent.

Now what stops him? Ah. The red-haired female had reached the bridge. The frail human was nested in Paykurtank’s digits. She’d been hurt; she was hugging her right foreleg. She writhed at the sight of her mate.

“Wes! The Russians are loose. I killed a snout!”

“Good! Alice, we’re hurting them, we really are. The Herdmaster wants me to transmit a conditional surrender. Trouble is we can’t trust it.”

Alice looked from Dawson to the array of screens.

A female. We know too little. Will she be able to hold him calm? What counsel will she give? Was it an error to bring her here?

The Herdmaster listened as Dawson explained to Alice. Her alien face was unreadable, but the Herdmaster could guess at the bloodthirsty joy as she watched the sparkling intruder come near. When Dawson finished speaking, she said, “They’ll come back.”

“Yeah. Herdmaster, Takpusseh, have you been trying to tell me that a ‘negotiated loss of status’ is the same as a surrender?”

The Herdmaster couldn’t speak. Takpusseh-yamp said, “We give our surrender forever. You know us that well.”

“I have not been offered a surrender,” Dawson said.

“What is it you want?” But the Herdmaster knew, and he was trumpeting in agony now. “Wish you my chest under your foot? You shall not have that!”

And every fi’ in earshot was staring at him. “Fight your ship!” he trumpeted. “This battle is not concluded! We waste time. Kill that enemy. Signal the moon base. Trample that planet until its leaders roll on their backs. Dawson, we do not kill without reason. You have given us reason enough!”

“Hey, wait—”

“If we wait, that ship will harm us. When it is close enough, we kill it. Then there will be nothing to discuss. Speak to your President, or return to your cell.”

“Your offer isn’t good enough!”

“I have made my last offer. Choose.”

If man and fi’ had anything in common, then Dawson was in agony. The muscles of his face looked like digits in knots. His teeth were bared; they ground together.

The female ruined it. “Wes! Look!”

“My God!”

“Your—” Predecessor? But Dawson and Alice were gaping past the Herdmaster’s shoulder. The Herdmaster turned. Four screens showed four views of the engine room. The floor was awash in blood. The air itself was pink with spray. Nine corpses lay chewed as if by predators: eight fithp warriors and the legless Soviet in his curious legless suit. The remaining three humans were tearing the place apart.

Wes was in agony.

It was Coffey’s department — Coffey’s thuktun, and the Stud Bull had him dead to rights there. But Coffey would take the offer. Coffey would give away the solar system!

Or Dawson was about to give away the Earth. Could that weird device smash Message Bearer? Or was it only coming close enough to die? Would the fithp honor a conditional surrender? We taught them conditional surrender. Have we also taught them to break their parole?

“Wes, look!”

Not now, dammit died in his throat.

He’d never seen this room before, but it had that look. Machinery took its orders from here. Screens, dials, keyboards with keys the size of a child’s fist; and flthp corpses, and blood, amazingly red, hemoglobin for sure, like some madman had bombed a Red Cross blood bank. Nikolai was dead, suit and man shredded by the huge fithp bullets.

Arvid was in a pressure suit. His faceplate was open, showing a Cossack’s grin that would have frightened children. He had braced a fithp rifle against a console and was firing bullets into randi controls.

Dmitri wandered about, examining the paraphernalia that made the ship go, shying minimally when Arvid blasted something, as if Arvid were a child at play, and Dmitri, the adult, were trying to learn something. He stopped, examined a console; pried the cover off with a piece of steel bar. He began tearing at wiring.

Arvid’s rifle ran empty. Arvid grimaced, then smiled toothily into the camera.

Jeri Wilson studied the scene judiciously. Wes wondered if she was in shock. She climbed onto a console to bring her face close to a camera. She shouted soundlessly.

“Put the sound on,” the Defensemaster commanded.

“Negative,” said the Herdmaster. “Dawson, your response?”

What was the Herdmaster afraid of hearing?… Afraid that Dawson might hear? It didn’t matter. Wes grinned at the fi’. “They were in the ducts, weren’t they? And they’ll be there again, wandering through your air supply. There’s a great gaping hole in Thuktun Flishithy, isn’t there? Maybe they can open more locks. Random death in the life support system!”

The ship hummed like a smashed banjo, twice in quick succesion.

The Herdmaster said, “Dawson. We will leave Africa, we will leave your Earth. You will have your solar system. We will go another star.”

“You can’t.”

“With time and your aid, of course we can. We will repair Message Bearer and build a new siskyissputh. You will assist. When we depart your system, you will have your own.”

“That word …?”

“The siskyissputh is the device we used to cross from Homeworld to Saturn. It takes energy from the main drive and uses that energy to push against interstellar matter. The siskyissputh is the door, not to your own planets, but to the worlds of other stars. Dawson, why did you think we discarded it?”