The Man-Kzin Wars 10 - The Wunder War by Larry Niven

Author:Larry Niven
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: kzin
ISBN: 9780743498944
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2005-03-01T03:00:00+00:00

Music Box

"I do not know whether you are my friend or my foe, but I should count it my honour to have you as either. Has not one of the poets said that a noble friend is the best gift and a noble enemy the next best?"

—C. S. Lewis

"A promise made under duress doesn't count, that's the law."

But this is East and South of Suez, where there is no law."

—The Katzenjammer Kids

"Is it not joyful to have friends come from a far land?"

—Confucius

Chapter 1

2425 a.d.

The kzin screamed and leaped. The gagrumpher was a young one, lagging a little behind the herd, half-asleep on its feet in the warm forenoon. The kzin landed on its back, above its middle pair of legs. The centauroid reared up, shrieking. The gagrumpher herd wheeled, the males charging back.

But the gagrumphers rearing had brought its throat in range of the feline's razor fangs. The kzin swung its jaws, slashing. There was time for one crushing bite at the neck bones, and it was down, racing for the trees like an orange shadow a second before the gagrumpher bull-males arrived.

The wounded gagrumpher stood for a moment, blood jetting, then it collapsed, its oxygen-starved brain already dying, though its rear legs kicked for some time under the instinctual commands of the dorsal ganglia knot.

The males could not pursue the predator into the trees, and as they stood in a bellowing group, the snarl of another kzin tore the air on the opposite side of the clearing, between them and the rest of the herd. They could not leave the females and the other juveniles unguarded. They hastened back, and the herd moved on.

The body of the adolescent became still in its pool of blood as the dorsal ganglia died. A colony of leather-flappers that had risen shrieking into the sky returned to their trees, and the forest settled down again to its own affairs.

Warily, two kzin approached the kill. The killer, like its prey, was a youngster, showing a mixture of kitten spots and adolescent stripes against its bright orange fur. The other was older—much older. There was gray at its muzzle, one eye and one arm were artificial, its ears were torn shreds and the fur at its neck and shoulders grew raggedly over a complex of scar tissue. The youngster kept watch as the elder kzin lowered its great head and lapped the blood, then crouched and lapped in turn.

The forest was quiet again. They ate undisturbed.

"That was a good kill, Vaemar," the elder kzin said. He gave the youngster a grooming lick. "Thank you, Raargh-Hero. But I doubt I could handle an adult yet. And it was a stupid one to lag behind the herd in this close country."

"Then you have seen the fate of the stupid. You feel nothing in the ground?"

"Feet. Distant enough."

"Gagrumpher feet?"

"Yes. I think so." The pattern of the gagrumpher's centauroid footfalls could never be mistaken for those of a quadruped, but many of Wunderland's native life-forms were centauroid.

"Are they approaching or receding?

"I think.

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