Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 07

But she would. And – maybe – she would do so with Bruno by her side. "Yes," Carol said simply. "I accept." She could hear Bruno's voice sigh. "Excellent," replied Diplomat. Carol held out a hand. It couldn't have all been for nothing. "There is one more thing, Diplomat.”

"What is it, Captain Faulk?”

Carol's eyes jogged back and forth, trying to hold the gaze of the two weaving heads. "We can't leave humanity to be kzin bait.”

"We will not obliterate the kzinti," Diplomat sang firmly. "They are aggressive, but may someday be useful. You know this, surely.”

"Fine," Carol replied. "But they have too much of a technological edge. How can we humans hold our own long enough to learn to live with the ratcats?”

The two snake-heads of the puppeteer again flipped up and stared one another in the eyes. "Captain Faulk, I have an excellent idea regarding that concern of yours.”

"Do tell," Carol drawled. She would have to play this one carefully. Maybe it was possible to salvage something from this debacle, after all.

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast, Carol thought to herself. The phrase did, she decided, have a certain ring to it. A good antidote for her becoming too dogmatic, he had told her. Carol had always wondered where Bruno had dug up that phrase.

Perhaps she could ask him soon. In the flesh.

In the scented meditation chamber the Dissonants had constructed for him, Diplomat sat with folded legs before a holoscreen.

The image showed a grassy sward, beautifully crimson red with lolaloo foliage, simply made for a long, hard gallop. It was the estate that the Hindmost had promised Diplomat upon his retirement.

He whistled a sad melody, thinking of the work before him. A terrifying trip to the holiest of places for the Outsiders, the region where both Radiant and Outsider were born…

If only another puppeteer were present, even Guardian.

At least Diplomat would have some help. These humans were so unlike most of the Pak variants produced by the Dissonants. The titanic ring of a world that the Outsiders had constructed so long ago was home to many diverse humanoid species – all with different outlooks, different skills. Art, technology, philosophy – to the Dissonant Outsiders, it was all trade goods, and could be used as tender for information across an entire galaxy.

Perhaps even beyond.

And – perhaps – the Outsiders kept Diplomat's people in zoos, as well. It was impossible to know.

A low tone filled the chamber with music. Diplomat fluted an acknowledgment.

"The re-creation of the Bruno-human has begun," sang the Outsider puppeteer translation program. "We have learned much about the physiology of this variant species.”

The little puppeteer shook his right head up and down twice – the gesture the humans called 'nodding'. It was an agreement or acceptance signal between them, one he knew he should learn.

"They have agreed to aid us?" persisted the synthesized voice.

"Of course," Diplomat sang in reply. "The one named Carol had no choice." "Why? Her coding partner – " "… mate… " Diplomat whistled in correction. "… mate, then, was enough of a impetus?" "Indeed. Also, the promise of help for her species." The Outsider voice sounded a bit confused. "We would have done that in any event. The hominids are special interests of ours, and this species has even more generality than the other variant forms under study." "They do not know that," Diplomat reminded his host.

Still, it was good that the Dissonants had decided to aid the humans. The Outsiders said nothing for a time. Diplomat knew from his dealings with the coldlife traders that they would speak when ready, and not before.

"We were not," stated the Outsider program, "responsible for these Pak variants, despite our intense interest in them. They are escaped ferals. There is no violation of Treaty of Pact." "I gathered as much." Were the Outsiders just as driven by self-justification as a puppeteer? Even with circulator fluid a few degrees above Absolute Zero? Diplomat's neck flipped up and looked at one another in a chuckle.

The synthesized voice became stern. "A new Pact must be drawn, at the Oracle." Diplomat ran a forked tongue over lips. The Outsiders needed to travel to a great cosmic string, and the colony of Radiants that kept watch over it. There, they would plead the case for another treaty between Zealot and Dissonant. "Have I – and the humans – not agreed to help?" Diplomat was not surprised at the humans' offer; they were grateful. The Outsiders were to provide a new balance of power against the kzin, by providing human space – seemingly by accident – with access to primitive hyperdrive capacity. Which would not incidentally halt the humans from using large-scale reaction drives in deep space. That would please the uncommitted Outsider factions.

"They will be useful to our common goals, then?" Diplomat nodded again. "They are marvelously complex, and well worth preserving from the kzin and the Zealots." He thought a moment, then offered the highest praise he could. "I grow less frightened of them with each watch." Though he always kept force-shields ready, of course. "It is good," responded the idealized puppeteer voice. "You have a duty to perform, as do the humans.

Will you guide them?" "Of course." Diplomat tried to laugh in the human fashion. The choking gurgles he emitted did not sound humorous, but like an animal in pain. Were all human utterances devoid of a sense of tone and pitch?

He considered duty. Was it so very different for Outsider and puppeteer, kzinti and human? His left mouth snaked into the ornately carved box on the low platform. He picked up the Sigil of the Hindmost. Guardian had left it for him before she died fighting the Zealots.

"Perhaps this thing called duty is common to all thinking beings," Diplomat hummed meditatively.

"One is a portion of the All, you have tried to tell me before. Does not one reflect the other?" asked the Outsider translator program.

"Perhaps," Diplomat replied, and hung the medallion around his own left neck. It felt warm there.

He had caught threads of thought from the Outsiders, slippery contemplations that were truly unsettling. To them, kzin and primates and the Herd were all the same, finally – warmlife. To Outsiders, the true basis of all things was, well, objects – dusty plasmas and topological fractures of space-time, names like Radiants and Those Who Pass. Those were more important than the fleeting forms of sun-baked creatures.

He shivered. Duty. Perhaps such an idea could bind the many factions of warmlife together. He suspected that they would need it, for what lay ahead. Strangeness awaited. Forces that, worse than merely killing, could make a being irrelevant, meaningless.

Duty. He began reviewing data for the jump they would soon make. Across the yawning geometries of hyperspace, to the ancient menace called the Oracle.

The kzin ship dropped out of hyperdrive and drifted. Jupiter's bulk stood between Earth and the telltale spoor of her re-emergence. Course and speed had been carefully calculated to swing through the Solar system with no maneuvering. All nonessential systems had been shut down. Her crew hoped that any casual observer would take them for a chunk of fast-moving cometary debris.

It was already too late for that.

A couple of hours later a civilian observation station in the Belt picked up an anomalous radiation burst. It corresponded to a hyperspace emergence but it was outside the arrival zones designated for human ships. Powerful scanners swept the space around Jupiter. More hours passed before their echoes highlighted perhaps a thousand likely objects. Only two had been in the emergence zone, only one had a course that would fly past Earth. The analysts took their time verifying the contact. It didn't matter: war in space is slow.