Larry Niven - The Man-Kzin Wars 02

The franchise universe lives!

When I first began sneaking into the playgrounds of other authors, I had my doubts. Still, Phil Farmer seemed to be having a lovely time reshaping the worlds he'd played in as a child. So I wrote a Dunsany story and an extrapolation of Lovecraft and an attempt at a Black Cat detective story and a study of Superman's sex life.

Fred Saberhagen invited me to write a Berserker story, and I found it indecently easy.

MEDEA: Harlan's World was a collaboration universe. Slow to become a book, it ultimately became a classic study of how creative minds may build and populate a solar system.

So Jim Baen and I invited selected authors to write stories set 14,000 years ago, when magic still worked. We filled two books with tales of the Warlock's era. (We also drove Niven half nuts. The idea was for Jim to do all the work and me to take all the credit. But Jim parted company with Ace Books, and I had to learn more than I ever wanted to know about being an editor!)

I entered a universe infested with lizard-like pirate slavers, because of David Drake's urging, and because of a notion I found irresistible: the murder of Halley's Comet. When Susan Shwartz asked several of us to write new tales of the Thousand and One Nights, I rapidly realized that Scheherazade had overlooked a serious threat. I stayed out of Thieves World-too busy-but I was tempted.

Still, would readers and the publishing industry continue to support this kind of thing? It seemed like too much fun.

And now DC Comics has me reworking the background universe of Green Lantern! Green Lantern is almost as old as I am! But his mythos will be mine, for the next few years at least.

I'm having a wonderful time. I've got to say, being paid for this stuff feels like cheating.

What began with "The Warriors" has evolved further than my own ambitions would have carried it.

Jim Baen and I decided to open up the Man-Kzin Wars period of known space, because I don't have the background to tell war stories. Still, I had my doubts. I have friends who can write of war; but any writer good enough to be invited to play in my universe will have demonstrated that he can make his own. Would anyone accept my offer? I worried also that intruders might mess up the playground, by violating my background assumptions.

But the kzinti have been well treated, and I'm learning more about them than I ever expected. You too will be charmed and fascinated by kzinti family life as shown in "The Children's Hour," not to mention Pournelle’s and Stirling’s innovative use of stasis fields. Likewise there is Dean Ing's look at intelligent stone-age kzinti females: Ing finished his story for the first volume, then just kept writing. Now Pournelle and Stirling are talking about doing the same.

I too have found that known space stories keep getting longer. It's a fun universe, easier to enter than to leave.

One thing I hoped for when I opened up the Warlock's universe to other writers. I had run out of ideas. I hoped to be re-inspired. My wish was granted, and I have written several Warlock's-era stories since. If the same doesn't hold for the era of the Man-Kzin Wars, it won't be the fault of the authors represented here. I'm having a wonderful time reading known space stories that I didn't have to write. If I do find myself re-inspired, these stories will have done it.

– Larry Niven

If Locklear had been thinking straight, he never would have stayed in the god business. But when a man has been thrust into the Fourth Man-Kzin War, won peace with honor from the tigerlike Kzinti on a synthetic zoo planet, and released long-stored specimens so that his vast prison compound resembles the Kzin homeworld, it's hard for that man to keep his sense of mortality.

It's hard, that is, until someone decides to kill him. His first mistake was lust, impure and simple. A week after he paroled Scarface, the one surviving Kzin warrior, Locklear admitted his problem during supper. "All that caterwauling in the ravine," he said, refilling his bowl from the hearth stewpot, "is driving me nuts. Good thing you haven't let the rest of those Kzinti out of stasis; the racket would be unbelievable!"

Scarface Ariped his muzzle with a brawny forearm and handed his own bowl to Kit, his new mate. The darkness of the huge Kzersatz region was tempered only by coals, but Locklear saw those coals flicker in Scarface's cat eyes. "A condition of my surrender was that you release Kit to me," the big Kzin growled. "And besides; do humans mate so quietly?"

Because they were speaking Kzin, the word Scarface had used was actually "ch’rowl!”-itself a sexual goad. Kit, who was refilling the bowl, let slip a tiny mew of surprise and pleasure. "Please, milord," she said, offering the bowl to Scarface. "Poor Rockear is already over stimulated. Is it not so?" Her huge eyes flicked to Locklear, whom she had grown to know quite well after Locklear waked her from age-long sleep.

"Dead right," Locklear agreed with a morose glance. "Not by the word; by the goddamn deed!"

"She is mine," Scarface grinned; a Kzin grin, the kind with big fangs and no amusement.

"Calm down. I may have been an animal psychologist, but I only have letches for human females," Locklear gloomed toward his Kzin companions. "And every night when I hear you two flattening the grass out there," he nodded past the half-built walls of the hut, I get, uh,…" He did not know how to translate "horny" into Kzin.

"You get the urge to travel!”, Scarface finished, making it not quite a suggestion. The massive Kzin stared into darkness as if peering across the force walls surrounding Kzersatz. Those towering invisible walls separated the air, and lifeforms, of Kzersatz from other synthetic compounds of this incredible planet, Zoo. I can see the treetops in the next compound as easily as you, Locklear. But I see no monkeys in them." Before his defeat, Scarface had been "Tzak-Commander. " The same strict Kzin honor that bound him to his surrender, forbade him to curse his captor as a monkey. But he could still sharpen the barb of his wit. Kit, with real affection for Locklear, did not approve. "Be nice," she hissed to her mate. "Forget it," Locklear told her, stabbing with his Kzin w'tsai blade for a hunk of meat in his stew. "Kit, he's stuck with his military code, and it won't let him insist that his captor get the hell out of here. But he's right. I still don't know if that next compound I call Newduvai is really Earthlike." He smiled at Scarface, remembering not to show his teeth, and added, "Or whether it has my kind of monkey."

"And we must not try to find out until your war wounds have completely healed," Kit replied.

The eyes of man and Kzin warrior met. "Whoa," Locklear said quickly, sparing Scarface the trouble. "We won't be scouting over there; I will, but you won't. I'm an ethologist," he went on, holding up a hand to bar Kit's interruption. "If Newduvai is as completely stocked as Kzersatz, somebody-maybe the Outsiders, maybe not, but damn' certain a long time ago-somebody intended all these compounds to be kept separate. Now, I won't say I haven't played god here a little… "

"And intend to play it over there a lot," said Kit, who had never yet surrendered to anyone.

"Hear me out. I'm not going to start mixing species from Kzersatz and Newduvai any more than I already have, and that's final." He pried experimentally at the scab running down his knife arm. "But I'm pretty much healed, thanks to your medkit, Scarface. And I meant it when I said you'd have free run of this place. It's intended for Kzinti, not humans. High time I took your lifeboat over those force walls to Newduvai.