Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 02

"This doesn't make sense," Grimbardsun said. He was Economic Regulation, older than Axelrod-Bauergartner and fatter; less ambitious, except for the bank account he was so excellently placed to feed. Complications with the kzin made him sweat, and there were dark patches under the armpits of his uniform tunic. "You said she was young."

"Biological," Axelrod-Bauergartner said triumphantly. "The forensics people counted how many ticks she had on her biological clock. But the Scholarium file records her as…"

A picture flashed across the data, and Montferrat coughed to hide his reaction. He was grateful for the beard and the tan that hid the cold waxy pallor of his skin as the capillaries shrank and sent the blood back to the veins and heart. It felt as if a huge hand had grasped his innards and was squeezing.

"Ingrid Raines," Axelrod-Bauergartner said. "Chronological age, better than sixty. Qualified pilot and software wizard, and a possible alternate slotter on one of the slowboats that was launched just before the end." "I was a possible alternate myself, if I hadn't been taken prisoner," Montferrat said, and even then felt a slight pleasure at Axelrod-Bauergartner's wince. She hadn't been born then, and it was a reminder that at least he had fought the kzin once, not spent his adolescence scheming to enter their service. "There were thousands of us, and most didn't make it anywhere near the collection points. It was all pretty chaotic, toward the end." His hand did not tremble as he laid the cigarette in the ashtray, and his eyes were not fixed on the oval face with its long Belter strip that turned into an auburn fountain at the back.

"Which was why the ordinary student files were lost,"

Axelrod-Bauergartner said, nodding so that her incipient jowls swayed. "Yah. All we got from the genetics survey was a name and a student number that doesn't correlate to anything existing. But the DNA's a one-to-one, no doubt about it at all. Raines went out on that slowboat, and somehow Raines came back, still young."

Still young, Montferrat thought. Still young… and I sit here, my soul older than Satan's. "Came back. Dropped off from a ship going. 999 lightspeed?"

A shrug. "The genes don't lie."

"Computer," Montferrat said steadily. "All points, maximum priority. Pictures and idents to be distributed to all sources; capture alive at all costs, we need the information they have."

To his second. "My congratulations, Herrenfrau Axelrod-Bauergartner, on a job well done. We'll catch these revenants, and when we do all the summer soldiers who've been flocking to those Resistance idiots since the attack will feel a distinct chill. I think that's all for today?"

They rose with the usual round of handshakes, Grimbardsun's hand wet, Axelrod-Bauergartner's soft and cold as her eyes. Montferrat felt like someone smiling with his face, talking with his mouth. Impeccable, until he was in the privacy of his office, and staring down at the holo in his desk. Matching it with the one from his locked and sealed files, matching the reality with forensics projection. Feeling the moisture spilling from his eyes, down onto the imperishable synthetic, into the face he had seen with the eye of the mind every day for the last forty years. The face he would arrest and turn over to the interrogators and the kzin, along with the last of his soul.

"Why did you come back?" he whispered. "Why did you come back, to torment us here in hell?"

"Right, now download," Jonah said. The interfacer bleeped quietly and opened to extrude the biochip.

"Well, this ought to be useful, if we can get the information back," Ingrid said dully, handing him the piece of curved transparent quasi-tissue.

He unwrapped his hand gingerly and slid the fingernail home, into the implanted flexible gasket beneath the cuticle. "Provided we can get ourselves, this, or a datalink to the ship."

Useful was an understatement; intelligence-gathering was not their primary job, but this was a priceless load. The complete specs on the most important infosystem on Wunderland, and strategic sampling of the data in its banks. Ships, deployments, capacities. Kzin psychology and history and politics, command profiles, strategic planning and kriegspiel-wargames played by the pussy General Staff for decades. AD the back doors, from the human systems, then, through them, into the kzin system. UN Naval Intelligence would willingly sacrifice half a fleet for this…

"That's it, then," Jonah said. "It's not what we came for, but it can make a difference. And there-”

Ingrid was not listening. "Hold on! Look!” Eh?"

"An alert subroutine." Her fingers moved across her interfacer. "Gottdamn, that is an alert! Murphy, it's about us, those are our cover-idents it's broadcasting. We're blown."

"Block it, quick." They worked in silence for a moment. Jonah scrubbed a hand across his face. "That'll hold it for a half-hour."

"We'll never make it back to Munchen before the next call gets through," she said. "Not without putting up a holosign that this system's been subverted down to the config."

"We don't have to," Jonah said. He squeezed eyes shut, pressed his fingers to his forehead. "Finagle, why now… the transfer booth. Computer," he continued. "Is the civilian system still online? Slaved to the core-system here?"

"Affirmative, to both."

"That's it, then. What's the closest functional booth to the Ba'hai quarter? Right. Key the internal link to that one. Code, full-wipe after execution, purge. Ingrid, let's go."

"Is the system compromised?" Chuut-Riit asked. He paced through the central control room of his estate. His nostrils flared: yes, the scent of two of the monkeys, a male and… He snuffled further. Yes, the female was bearing. Grimly" he filed the smell away, for possible future reference. It was unlikely that he would ever encounter either of them in person, but one could hope.

One of the kzin technicians was so involved with following the symbols scrolling by on the walls that he swept his hand behind him with claws extended in an exasperated protest at being interrupted. The governor bristled and then relaxed; it helped that he came from the hunt. Had killed and fed well, mated and washed his glands and tissues clear of hormones freeing the reasoning brain. Even more that he had spent most of his lifespan cooling a temper that had originally been hasty even by kzin standards. He controlled breath and motion, the desire to lash his tail and pace; it ran through him that perhaps it was his temper that had set him on the road to mastery, that never-to-be-forgotten moment in the nursery so many years ago. The realization that his rage could kill, and in time would kill him as dead as the sibling beneath his claws. The guards behind him had snarled at the infotech's insolence, a low subliminal rumbling and the dryspicy scent of anger. An expressive ripple of Chuut-Riit's fur, ears, tail quieted them.

"These specialists are all mad," he whispered aside. "One must humor them, like a cub that bites your ears. " They were sorry specimens in truth: one scrubby and undersized, with knots in his fur; the other a giant, but clumsy, slow, actually fat. Heroes, indeed! Any Hero seeing them would know their brilliance, since such disgusting examples of bad inheritance would only be kept alive for the most pressing of needs.

The governor schooled himself to wait, shifting only enough to keep his heated muscles from stiffening. The big technician mumbled to himself, occasionally taking out a brick of dull-red dried meat from his equipment apron and stuffing it into his mouth. Chuut-Riit caught a wiff of it and gagged, as much at the thought of someone eating infantry rations for pleasure as at the well-remembered smell. The other one muttered as well, but he chewed on the ends of his claws. Those on his right hand were actually frayed at the tips, useless for anything but scratching its doubtless completely ungroomed and verminous pelt.