Larry Niven: The Wunder War

We have established the thrint Power was not a physical event," said Gatley Ivor. "Its speed was not limited by relativity or even by hyperspace: It was instantaneous or close to it. Look at two stars, countless light-years apart. Look through a telescope at two galaxies or see them in a photograph. How long does it take your attention to cross the gap between them? It has been suggested that is an analogy to the Slaver power: swift as thought and awareness. The tnuctipun couldn't outrun it. It was not limited by distance. Indeed, to blanket the galaxy it can have neither increased nor diminished with distance. It was apparently not blocked by even the densest physical objects: suns, neutron stars, and other bodies did not eclipse it. It cannot have worked like that. So why does it need these huge energy sources?"

Possibly to set up the preconditions for amplification, rather than directly firing up the Power itself," said Gay. "As for not being limited by distance, I hate to think the suicide command might have reached across the galaxy to… to the Clouds of Magellan… My God!… To other galaxies! Where did it stop?"

"Did it radiate a command, or cast it in a beam, I wonder?" said Richard.

"There is no proper answer," said Gatley Ivor. "We know that at times the Slaver Power was applied directionally. Otherwise when a thrint sent out a command like 'Bring me food!' there would be thirty or so slaves with dishes falling over each other to get it to him. On the other hand, we know that a 'shout,' as it were, could radiate. Both happened when the thrint was accidentally released on Earth. "This artifact must have been capable of both. If that is conceiving of it in the right terms. The attitude jets make sense only if it was to be maneuvered to vary the direction of a beam.

"Further, the smaller amplifier helmets the Thrintun used must have been capable of direction, otherwise they too would have had global commands which would go to inappropriate slaves. But they too radiated commands. If on Suicide Night they relied solely on a beam, even a spreading one, some sapient life, in particular tnuctipun, might have dodged it. It was in that case simply a command addressed to all… What do we do now?" It was Peter Robinson he turned to.

"I don't know what to do. I am a telepath." The Wunderkzin looked strangely shrunken, bent, miserable and lost. He could at that moment have passed for a telepath of the Patriarchy.

Destroy it! Richard thought. He moved to say so-to move to the main weapons console-and found he could not. It was not a matter of irresolution or doubt as to the right thing to do. He was incapable of moving or speaking the words. His hand groped to his mouth.

"I know what to do!" snarled Charrgh-Captain. He was standing at the weapons console, and he held not a w'tsai but a modern laser pistol that must have been in his diplomatic baggage. "This is the true Ultimate Weapon at last! I am a kzin of the Patriarchy, charged by the Patriarch himself! This weapon is ours! Never shall it fall into the hands of monkeys or abominations!"

"What do you mean to do?" asked Richard. Suddenly he could speak, but when he again tried to say "destroy it" something seemed to go wrong in his head.

"Your lives are not at risk," said Charrgh-Captain. "We are, as you have said, companions. I will lock you in your cabins, then call the Patriarchy. With the Amplifier in our hands and power to direct the command, nothing can withstand us. The Human Empire will surrender. We will not even need to use it, as you without warning used that beam on Warhead in the Third War and relativity-weapons against Ka'ashi in the First! The threat will be enough! The kzinti race shall leap again across the stars! Wiser now, more cunning and hard-schooled, and with the weapon beyond all weapons!"

Is he mad? wondered Richard. Or have I forgotten that a kzin is not simply a human in a fur coat? Is this thing somehow scrambling his brain? And mine? What is happening to me? He saw a gauge on the instrument panel. Energy discharge from the artifact had definitely increased. Keep him talking, he thought.

"What of the treaties your Patriarch has signed?"

"What of my species? Would humans not have used it if they had had it earlier? Might they not use it now?"

"I… I don't know."

"In the ultimate need of war?"

"No. I can't answer."

"I think again of the ramscoop raid on Ka'ashi. You killed tens of thousands of your own kind to kill a few thousand kzinti… and kzinretti and kittens. And then you attacked the rescue operations."

We were desperate. We were about to be destroyed. Enslaved or eaten. We had been a peaceful civilization and we were attacked by ferocious aliens whose very appearance filled us with dread and horror! In any case you do not speak of me and mine, nor of your own kind. That was our ancestors' war!"

"And the Wunderland Treaty-Maker, that melted the surface of Warhead down to magma? Desperate? But I agree. You monkeys with your hairless faces like flayed corpses might be desperate again! And attacked again by those same aliens! Urrr!"

"No! You have changed!" What is happening? Kzin or not, he should not be behaving like this. Is there some contamination of the air scrubbers? It is suddenly hard to think. It is not subjective… There is…

"There is some kind of static coming from the artifact," shouted Peter Robinson. "It is affecting us. Move the ship! I must shield! I must shield! Take me out of its range!" He began to howl. Charrgh-Captain ignored him. None of the humans seemed able to move.

"You think so?" Charrgh-Captain roared back at Richard. "Then perhaps in the next war we will be the desperate ones. We have little of our Empire left to lose now."

"We have had you at our mercy many times, and held back," said Richard. This is crazy, he knew. Are we all suddenly crazy? What is happening? "After you lost all the wars you started, you still have your own civilization."

"We held back, too. When we conquered Wunderl-No! When we conquered Ka'ashi!-we gave humans a cease-fire, let them keep their lives."

"As slaves. And as monkeymeat if they committed the slightest infraction. We landed on Wunderland to find it in ruins."

"Yes! Thanks to your relativity weapons! And I know your so-called scientific name for us: Pseudofelis sapiens ferox. Did not one of your own writers dub your own species Homo necans?-Man the DeathGiver!"

"A pity you did not know that before you attacked us, perhaps. We never sought war and we never waged a total war of extermination against you. It may yet come!"

"Nor we! But now I have looked in the mirror," said Charrgh-Captain, "and I have seen a human face." His voice, which had been held under control, was rising in volume now. "And yes, the war of extermination may yet come!"

"FOOLS!" Peter Robinson's roar shook the air and drowned out human and kzin alike. "You stand here bickering! Do you not see?

"IT IS ABOUT TO GIVE THE SUICIDE COMMAND AGAIN!"

The words paralyzed them for a second. The gauge that had been registering a faint trickle of energy from the artifact had gone off the scale. It was pouring out radiation that would have been already lethal had they not been within a General Products hull. On the radar image the great disk of the thrintun eye was pulsating.

Dimly Richard heard a clatter as the pistol fell from Charrgh-Captain's grasp. The fuzz and crackling and sudden blocks that had been in the human minds, the bloody, maniacal swirlings in Charrgh-Captain's mind, were gone. There was only a great voice, calm, confident, imperturbable, speaking to them, speaking at that same instant to every sophont in the galaxy.

Slaves of the thrint! Adore!

Adore! Adoration flooded through them. In the mind of each was the gigantic image of a thrint, vast, majestic, benign.