Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (21 page)

“So the females are not merely bred for low intelligence, but for docility, as well.”

“Yes, but that creates a problem, too. Calm is the handmaiden of cooperation. And patience. And patience generally assists learning. So ironically, if the females were not cognitively suppressed, they would be likely to outperform the males in terms of education and organization.”

“Which the males would take extra steps to prevent.”

“Exactly,” affirmed Selena. “I suspect that’s why their neurochemical alteration to the female genome induces a kind of kzin ADHD syndrome.”

Dieter stared. “A kzin with ADHD? Given their normal behavior, how could you tell?”

Selena smiled. “This is even more extreme: it significantly impedes language acquisition, deductive reasoning, symbolic and abstract thought. All those tasks would simply feel like too much work to a being with this genetic trait. This pretty much predicts that the females will not only be incapable of learning complicated tasks, but ensures that they will be most adept at activities that are instinctual, and that they will derive most pleasure from sensory stimuli. And that, in turn, means that their self-awareness will be rudimentary, akin to that of a mentally sluggish three year old.”

Dieter scratched the back of his head. “Rather like me, then.”

Selena stared at him frankly. “Tell me, Captain, does that self-deprecating humor act usually work on women?” She smiled.

The smile he returned was both sheepish and genuine. “Sometimes.”

Four meters away, Hap yawned, flopped prone again, allowing his eyes to stay closed as the sun approached its zenith. He rolled slowly, presenting his belly for the bright orb to warm . . .

2398 BCE: Subject age—two years

Hap, who was at the age where his posture only rarely reverted to the quadrupedal, was literally bouncing on all fours as Selena’s team led him toward the outer paddock. Sometimes she found it hard to remember that this endearing little fur-ball would evolve into a two-and-a-half-meter apex predator that was the scourge of her species. As if in reminder, Hap’s mouth gaped open as he panted in eagerness, revealing rows of surprisingly long, densely packed, sharp teeth. No, he was a kzin all right.

Selena crouched down, face to face with him. “Are you ready, Hap?”

Hap nodded, having picked up the gesture from the humans around him. His nose was twitching eagerly; despite the supposedly hermetic seals, he could smell the natural biome beyond the paddock door. Then he stopped, looked around. “Deeder?” he asked, his ears flattening a bit in the kzin equivalent of a frown.

“Sorry, Hap. Dieter can’t be here today. He wanted to be. But he’s away.”

Hap’s nose twitched once, mightily. “No, he not. I smell him.”

“No, Hap; I’m sorry, but Dieter is not here—”

“Not here, but I smell him.” Hap pointed. “On you.”

Oh.
Each member of Selena’s staff suddenly discovered that their routine tasks and instruments now demanded unusually close scrutiny. Well, her relationship with Dieter was going to get out eventually, anyhow. Probably half her team already knew or at least suspected. But, to coin a phrase, the cat was well and truly out of the bag now. “I understand now, Hap: you can detect his scent. But Dieter had to leave a while ago; the person I work for asked him to—”

The small wet nose twitched again. “Selena, no. You wrong. Smell is new, fresh. Very Dieter.” He wrinkled his nose. “Very strong Dieter smell.” His eyes drifted down, below her waistline.

Oh good god.
“Hap, listen: Dieter couldn’t come. He wanted to but—but some other people wanted him to be somewhere else today.” Selena imagined herself punching Pyragy in his supercilious mouth. Again and again. “But Dieter will be back soon.”

The kzin cub’s fur flexed once. Was that akin to a shrug? A similar reflexive gesture had been observed in the other three cubs, and in circumstances that suggested the same social valence. “Okay,” acceded Hap. “We go now?”

Selena smiled, careful to keep her lips over her teeth as she did so, and nodded to him, then at her staff.

They opened the paddock door, and Hap looked back quickly at Selena, his eyes very wide. “No harness?”

Selena shook her head. “No harness; not today.”

Whereupon Hap performed a prompt, skittering, one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and was through the open doorway in a shot. Selena followed at a more leisurely pace.

By the time she emerged into the open air—and this time, it was truly open air, not an enclosed habitat like the others Hap had been in—the small cub was racing to and fro, moving so fast that he was a blur. He sped from bush to tree to flower to insect to rock and finally, to what was apparently an especially fragrant Mystery Groovy Spot in the middle of the grass. Where he stopped, panting, rolling in luxurious abandon.

Selena approached him slowly, carefully, mostly because she did not want to impede on his first experience of The Wild, but also because she was not quite sure what he would do next, and he was already big enough to be modestly dangerous, albeit not deadly.

Hap had evidently heard her approach. “Smells!” he purr-gasped. “Smells! All around! In my head, all over! It . . . it . . .” He stopped suddenly, sat up, a quick and terrifying gravity in his eyes: “No more walls. I want here. Always.”

Selena nodded. “Not yet, but soon.” She looked up, squinted into the distance: just a kilometer away, a high-security fence—three of them, actually—traced a dim line that paralleled the horizon. She wondered how long that restraint would be a sufficient guarantee against his already-awakening instinct for roving, for wanderlust.

“How soon?” Hap’s query was uttered in such a flat, matter-of-fact tone, that she couldn’t keep herself from glancing down at him. The cub that looked back—orange belly fur tremoring against the surrounding black of his pelt—suddenly seemed much older than two.

“I’m not sure how soon. The man I work for said that maybe, if you like the new food we have for you, you can stay here right away. Would you like that?”

Hap didn’t even nod. “Where is new food?” His eyes roved purposefully.

Selena schooled her face to impassivity as she motioned one of her staff to bring in the sealed plate. Hap’s nose was immediately hyperactive. “Meat?” he purred eagerly.

“Yes.” Selena kept her voice calm. “Try some.”

The plate was placed before Hap; the lid was removed. He started at the sudden puff of steam, the pungent smell of seared beef. “Meat,” he agreed. “But burned.”

“No: cooked. It brings out the smells, the tastes,” explained Selena, wishing she had authority in this matter. “Try it.”

Hap’s nose wrinkled dubiously, but he gamely seized and devoured a small chunk of the sirloin. He chewed for a moment—then his eyes went wide and the meat came out in a rush, propelled from behind by a veritable torrent of vomit.

* * *

Pyragy looked cross. It could have been for any one of several reasons. Rumor had it that his ongoing hormone therapy was interfering with his cardio meds. If so, his choice was between tiring easily (perhaps fatally) or verging into a cascade of implant and transplant rejections that would likely render his body alarming to all but the most open-minded of partners.

Perhaps no less distressing to him was the presence of Admiral Coelho-Chase and the ARM’s Associate Chief Executive, Maurizio Dennehy. Their presence was a clear indictment of his handling of the Kzin Research Project. And probably the recent episode involving the cooked meat had caused the long-standing official uneasiness to reify into a full-blown investigation.

But perhaps most frustrating of all to Pyragy was that his two most senior researchers—Boroshinsky and Selena herself—had been summoned by those same powers to explore a possible redirection of the program’s research goals. For a man who hungered after preeminence and prestige more than anything else, this was indeed a most annoying turn of events.

The admiral looked up from the reports and toward Boroshinsky. “So you confirm that you made these multiple recommendations against attempting to feed cooked meat to the kzin cub named Hap?”

“
Da
, Admiral. Some of our studies suggested that it might be mildly toxic to him. For kzinti, eating cooked meat would be analogous to us eating a mix of carbonized and denatured meat. Either upsets our stomach. Cooked meat has the equivalent effect upon the kzinti, causing the cub’s projectile vomiting: his system was purging itself of toxins.”

The admiral and the associate chief executive stared at Pyragy, who shrugged: “This was not known before we tried.”

“According to the collected reports and testimony, this outcome was suspected.”

“Suspected, but not known,” Pyragy persisted.

“Even if we were to concede that possibly specious point, why did you feel that it was important to attempt to get the kzin to eat cooked meat?”

Pyragy spread his hands wide. “Is it not obvious? To see if he could be weaned away from the taste of the fresh kill.”

“To what end?”

“Why, to put distance between himself and his more primal instincts. Admiral, Executive, if we are to successfully pursue our most basic mandate—to raise a kzin with whom we might have meaningful communication—we must ensure that he views us as fellow discussants, not possible entrées. If he retains a taste for raw meat, he will probably retain a taste for our own uncooked flesh, too. An independent board of animal behaviorists validated my concern that our relationship with him will remain forever compromised until and unless that association is broken. He will not see potential food creatures as fully sentient and equal to himself.”

“And do you agree with this independent review of kzin behavior, Dr. Navarre?”

“I do not know, Admiral, since I have not seen it.”

“Why?”

“Because the existence of the external review was not revealed to us until this week.”

“Very well, so you are not in possession of the particulars of the report. Given that proviso, and speaking off-the-record, Dr. Navarre, do you feel that the ability of the kzinti to conceive of creatures either as
persons
or as
prey
is as polarized as Director Pyragy is claiming?”

Selena shifted awkwardly. “It seems unlikely, Admiral.”

“Why?”

“Because there is plentiful evidence that, after defeating a fellow kzin in an honor duel, the victor will consume a least some parts of the loser. Perhaps much more. But honor duels can only be fought between Heroes, between kzin
persons
. So it seems that the kzinti can operate socially without such an absolute distinction between prey and persons.”

“I concur, and consider this further evidence that the research project must be careful not to overanthropomorphize the kzinti,” added the associate chief executive with a stern look in Pyragy’s direction.

Boroshinsky cleared his throat. “In one way, however, we have determined that the kzinti are, unfortunately, similar to us. The biology group can conclusively report that kzin biochemistry is too similar to humans’ for the safe military use of toxins or biological agents. Although some are more injurious to kzin systems than homo sapiens, the margin of difference is completely insufficient for the creation of a tailor-made toxin lethal to kzinti but harmless to humans. Insofar as bacteriological and viral agents are concerned, preliminary tests suggest that our biochemistries are close enough that some pathogens could ‘hop’ species. On the other extreme, if the organisms are dependent upon specific genetic interfaces, then of course the kzinti are immune to all of ours, just as we are immune to theirs. But so far as we can determine, the kzinti have acquired absolute immunity to all the strains we find latent in their system.”

“Even their own digestive flora?”

Boroshinsky nodded at the admiral, a faint smile suggesting he appreciated the intelligence of the question. “Even that. The kzin digestive process is far more robust than ours. The first part is almost sharklike in its capacity; the lower portion simply retrieves moisture and desiccates the wastes. Also, their digestive process is more reliant upon glandular secretions than resident bacteria.” He sat back. “I am afraid my group has failed in its primary task.”

Associate Chief Executive Dennehy shook his head emphatically. “You have not failed, and your labors are not over, Dr. Boroshinsky. In fact, we are glad to learn this so early in the research process. By removing one alternative from our suite of strategic responses, we can focus on the remaining options. And quite frankly, we considered the possibility of finding a kzin-specific bioagent a longshot.”

“You did?” Boroshinsky and Pyragy were an unintentional chorus in expressing their surprise.

Dennehy nodded. “Once we learned that the kzinti had already enslaved races possessing advanced technology, it seemed likely that they would have either genetically amplified their resistance to biological weapons, or that, during an earlier conquest, another race taught them this lesson. The hard way. As far as simple toxins are concerned, we presumed that since they can metabolize our flesh, that our biochemistries would prove too close for either of us to remain wholly immune to what was toxic to the other. But there was no way of being sure without your research.”

Boroshinsky rubbed his pointy jaw. “Then, sirs, I am afraid I do not see what you hope we might yet discover as a weapon against the kzinti.”

Dennehy smiled. “I wish we could take the credit for the answer to that, but it comes from Dr. Yang. She anticipated all these dead-ends, observing that if there was any weapon to be found in the kzin biochemistry, it would not be something as inelegant as a simple poison or disease. Rather, the key was to find some way we might be able to turn their own natural secretions against them. And since the kzinti have so many more glands than humans, she thought it possible that there might be something resident in the endocrine system that we could exploit. Do you agree, Doctor?”

But Boroshinsky had not heard the final sentence: he was already scribbling notes on his datapad.

Dennehy smiled, then returned his face to impassive neutrality. “We trust this will provide appropriate new directions for the Research Project. Dr. Navarre, you are specifically instructed to keep your group focused on establishing the cognitive, behavioral, and social objectives necessary to facilitate positive, long-term communication with your subjects. That is not your primary concern: it is your
only
concern. Is that clear?”