Hal Colebatch - The Wunder War

“But they didn't,” said Gay.

“We have found ancient artifacts estimated at much less than three billion Earth years old. That suggests arks or colonies emerged from stasis from time to time,” said Gatley Ivor. “For some reason they didn't survive, but they might be connected to the attack on this ark's control center. Perhaps some late-emerging tnuctipun came on it and attacked it but didn't survive to finish the job, disabling it without destroying it. If there was fighting in spaceships or on the surface of the big field, there would be no trace of that fighting now. Perhaps gun turrets or other weapons mounted on the surface were destroyed in the fighting or have disintegrated under meteor and dust bombardment since.”

“Yes, for some reason they didn't survive,” said Gay.

“Too much of the infrastructure of their—well, I suppose you have to call it their 'civilization,' for want of a better word—was gone.”

“Yet at least tnuctipun emerging from stasis should have survived,” said Charrgh-Captain. “They were masters of science and technology. Not even clever races like the Jotok or the Pak—yes, humans, I know about the Pak—discovered a hyperdrive. Modern stasis fields are mere copies of the tnuctipun originals. Their biological engineering has survived on many worlds. They knew all the mechanisms of genetics and cloning. Surely any tnuctipun arrk would have carried copious genetic material so they could repopulate the universe with their own kind. Without the Slavers they could have rebuilt their civilization in a single generation, perhaps. What happened to them ? Anyway, this is not a tnuctipun arrk , whatever it is… Urrr,” he growled. Normally kzintosh would no more betray bewilderment by thinking aloud, least of all in front of aliens, than they would betray fear. “The shape is not optimal for any utilitarian purpose. It has no warlike purpose. It is not a weapon or a weapons system. It is not a dreadnaught. There are no gun-ports, no missiles, no weapons of any kind. It has no room to carry fighter-craft or infantry.”

“Greenberg drew all he remembered of thrintun artifacts,” said Gatley Ivor. “But I don't recall anything like this.”

“Grrinberrg?” asked Charrgh-Captain. “I remember the name from my human Studies. Was Grrinberrg not a human who somehow defeated a Thrint?”

“Yes, a human telepath. He learned something of its mind.”

“A Slaver was released from stasis on a world of the Patriarchy,” said Charrgh-Captain. “Fortunately, it could control only a limited number of minds at one time. A Hero employed guile to escape and give warning. We destroyed the relevant continent with missiles from space. Many Heroes died—some of them undignified, dishonored deaths, still slaves of an alien mind, and we destroyed most of the habitable land on the planet and made species extinct.”

“Was that a grief to you?” asked Gay.

“The Fanged God set us to dominate and prey upon other species, not to exterminate them unless we must. Even when we boiled the Chunquens' seas, we did it selectively. Otherwise the humans of Wunderland might have fared differently… And the shape… Gay, you are right to be puzzled. Almost it reminds me of something, but I cannot think what.”

“I have a similar feeling,” said Peter Robinson. “Also, I have an intuition that the shape is of importance. My intuition,” he added, staring defiantly at Charrgh-Captain again, “is a trained one. It is connected to my talent. May I experiment?” He sat at the controls and rotated the holo through different planes. “I had something there,” he said after a moment. “One great difficulty is arbitrarily assigning an up or down to this thing. But here, with the control chamber at the bottom, a South Pole, as it were, it appears to have at least bilateral symmetry.

“Now let me project thrint artifacts we know.” His claws clicked on the keyboard's kzin-sized track-ball. “No, nothing. What of thrint body shapes?”

Two clicks were enough. The holo of the gigantic artifact and a holo of a thrint head were projected side by side.

“A thrint head! The circle is the eye! The protuberances below it are jaws! The protuberance at the rear is the Power-organ. A statue .”

“On Kzin we have statues of Heroes in plenty,” said Charrgh-Captain. “There is a great one of Lord Chmee in orbit that all may see while the stars stand. But who would spend resources in a war to build one on this scale?”

“Perhaps it predates the war?”

“Unlikely. There would be signs of tnuctipun work in the control chamber at least.”

“On Wunderland,” said Peter Robinson, staring defiantly again at Charrgh-Captain, “we have put up statues to notable kzinti recently. There is one of Chuut-Riit, the old Governor, who was wise, and Vaemar, and Raargh, who raised Vaemar when he was young, and others. There is a grove of them in the Arhus Hunting Preserve.”

“Do you seek to provoke me?” asked Charrgh-Captain, grinning so all his teeth showed. His tail lashed, and one hand was on his w'tsai again.

“I simply point out that honoring great ones by statues is common in many cultures,” Peter Robinson replied. The claws of his right hand brushed the tip of his own w'tsai 's hilt. The two glared at one another until, with an obvious effort, Charrgh-Captain backed down. He wiped Slaver from his fangs.

“Let us review what we know,” said Gay. “When the war began the thri…” Her eyes widened, her mouth contorted. She began to choke, and fell to the floor writing, clutching at her throat, strangling on a scream.

Richard grabbed her, tearing futility at the fabric round her neck. Peter Robinson tried, and then Charrgh-Captain, but the suit defeated even kzinti strength. Peter Robinson hit the panic-button that opened the fastenings. She vomited, rolled onto her hands and knees and began to cry hysterically. Peter Robinson picked her up and carried her to a couch. She curled into a fetal position, then slowly straightened. She looked up at them, her face like dirty chalk.

“No need for a doc,” she said. “Conditioned reflex. I can't vomit while I'm wearing a spacesuit. Choke rather.”

“The floor can deal with it. But—”

“I know what this is. It's the Suicide Amplifier.”

“Yes,” said Charrgh-Captain. Peter Robinson made a howling noise that might have reminded a listener his vocal cords were not, after all, human. There was silence for a moment. Gay went on.

“Built to repeat the message. They weren't just going take all existing sapient minds into death with them, they were going to ensure, for as long as they could, that any newly evolving sophonts would be obliterated as well. And they did… It's hard to conceive of creatures so evil… and so… so… petty. But perhaps by that time they didn't know what they were doing.”

“The thrint thought they were good masters,” said Gatley Ivor.

“I feel strange,” said Charrgh-Captain. “Some have spoken of what kzin and human have in common. Kzinti, even kzinti like me who have traveled on your worlds with pleasure, always thought of humans as the ancient enemy of our kind, and cursed the day we met you, the destroyers of our Empire, the killers of our Sires, the liberators of our slave-races, who used relativity weapons to smash whole planetary systems. Yet compared to the race that could do this…”

“Maybe they thought of fresh drafts of slaves from newly sapient races coming to serve them in some afterlife,” said Richard. “Probably they feared some of the tnuctipun had ways of surviving the first blast… Perhaps the tnuctipun were anticipating something like a great suicide command—they should have, given their cleverness and knowledge of thrint ways of thinking—and kept some of their kind in stasis as a precaution. When they emerged they would get on with rebuilding, thinking it was all over. But it wasn't. The thrintun had left a little surprise for them. That's what must have happened…”