Chapter Four: Capture and Escape
“We gotta problem, Kharn,” Mary Ellen told him. She either couldn’t or wouldn’t pronounce his name better, but he didn’t care much. It wasn’t as if there was anybody else around to confuse him.
“What is that, Mary Ellen?” he asked.
“It’s my daughter and son-in-law. They always come around and call for my birthday to give me a birthday present, and stay a few days. My daughter’s okay, but her husband’s an idiot. And maybe the kid would prattle at school and give you away. So we gotta hide ya somewhere they won’t see you. They’ll be here in a few days.”
“I have been here much longer than I intended, Mary Ellen. I have enjoyed it greatly and learned much. I enjoyed the Henry V video. Also the Richard III. I did not understand quite a lot, but I got something from them both. Not perhaps what was intended by Laurence Olivier or William Shakespeare, but something. But now I think it is time to move on. The maps you have shown me have helped too.”
He still didn’t like coffee much, but he was still trying to acquire the taste. Mary Ellen was sitting at her kitchen table and he was sitting on the kitchen floor with a soup bowl in his two paws.
“It will be lonely without you, Kharn. I’ve enjoyed your company; it has been fun teaching you stuff. You learn fast. And I’ve learnt a whole lot of things from you.”
Somehow, the question of calling the soldiers had never arisen. Mary Ellen had shown him pictures of her son and cried as the young man spoke to her from the video, and H’char’n had tried to comfort her. It felt very strange talking to a female man.
“I would have liked to meet him. Not as an enemy. Just to talk to him, as one intelligent being to another,” he had said awkwardly. “If he is like you, he would be a very fine person. I would have admired him. Someday we may meet in the fields of the brave if I do my duty as he did his. Our Fanged God rewards those who die bravely with a long time in the fields, where there is fine hunting. Perhaps in the hereafter, he and I may hunt together in the fields of the brave.”
She had put her frail arms around him and hugged him, getting tears in his fur, and he had very gently put a paw on her thin back and pressed very, very lightly. And licked the top of her head, as one did with a kit or a mate.
“You have honored me with your confidence,” H’char’n told her. “I am very proud that you trust me and let me help you. When people can repay their debts without pain or pressure, knowing the other will understand, it is very good.”
Mary Ellen stood back and looked up at him. “Well you helped enormously with the plowing; it’s never before been plowed so well as we managed this year,” Mary Ellen told him. “But I see you can’t stay here. One day someone has to find out about you. We’ve been lucky so far. I shall miss you, though. I have managed without company for a long time; little more than an occasional visit from my daughter and grandson, and the odd trip into town since the day my husband died. And to tell the truth, when he did eventually die, I felt relief as much as anything. He’d been sick for a long time and it was like both of us being let out of jail when he went. But you’re something like another grandchild, and a damned sight better behaved than the real one. My idiot son-in-law believes punishing kids is wicked, so the kid is the nastiest, most self-indulgent little shit I’ve met. Gonna grow up like his pa. So I wish I could tell them to stay home this year, but I just can’t.”
“Let us think of this as a happy time in between duties that are not congenial,” H’char’n said.
“Like most duties, I guess,” Mary Ellen said with a sigh. “Yeah, I guess this couldn’t last long, could it? Still, it was good while it did. Now, is there anything you are gonna carry with ya?”
“No thank you, Mary Ellen. I will carry some meat away, with your leave. Otherwise only pleasant memories. And they do not weigh anything. Indeed they lighten the heart.”
“When are you off?”
“Tonight just after dark.”
“Right. Then I’m damn well gonna give ya a big goodbye hug, ya hear me?”
“That will be very enjoyable,” H’char’n told her gravely.
* * *
And indeed it was, in an odd way he didn’t understand at all.
* * *
H’char’n crossed the Cowanesque in a single leap, although it was necessary to find a clear space where he could see it; the vegetation on the sides was rank. But he could smell it well enough and trace back to where it was easy to jump it. After the river there was a long highway, but only two lanes, and nothing coming for miles. So he leapt across that too and went like the wind for a while, enjoying the action of his muscles. He hadn’t done any running for a week, but he was now well fed and had drunk his fill from Mary Ellen’s biggest bowl, filled from the faucet many times.
Mary Ellen had asked him to come back if he ever had the chance, and he had promised. As with his promise to Dawn, he had made it conditional on having the choice, and he doubted he ever would, but he regretted that it would surely be impossible to keep in both cases. Dawn was only a child, and would forget him in time, no doubt. But promises to the young are even more sacred than promises to adults. It had been a joy to him to discover that Mary Ellen understood that too. The gulf between two different species seemed huge at times, and at other times quite small. It made humans endlessly fascinating.
* * *
“We’ve got him. Sure of it,” the technical officer exulted. “Wow, see him jump! There’s nothing on Earth like that apart from a free kzin, for sure.”
The news got up to Dillon inside three minutes and he confirmed it himself.
“God knows where he holed up, but at last we’ve got him again,” he said in relief. “We have to get him before Niagara if possible.”
“He’s in New York State now,” an aide pointed out. “And there’s nothing like the tree cover for him to hide in. And unless he’s planning to swim the Great Lakes, he’s almost bound to go through Niagara. It’s a beautiful, beautiful bottleneck.”
“This guy is smart; don’t underestimate him. He can’t know the terrain, but he’ll be wary.”
If Elain had been there she’d have suspected that the kzin might actually have a very fair idea of the terrain, and she might even have warned of it. But she wasn’t. This was perhaps just as well. Her opportunity to voice her suspicions that the kzin had made another friend or friends had come and gone. She had the odd twinge about it for a while and then forgot.
* * *
Mary Ellen looked at the pictures of her son.
“Did I do the right thing, David?” she asked him. “Oh, I expect I broke a law or two, but the good lord knows there’s so many of those, that every breath you take you break a dozen of them. Should I have handed him over to the feds? Well, no, not that, it would have been treachery. But should I have called them the next day after he went and told them he had been here? Or never had him in the house and called them as soon as I had the chance? Am I a traitor to the human race, David?”
She looked at her boy, who smiled back at her. She took a deep breath. “Well, if I am, then I am. But he was a lot like you in some ways, David. Proud and honest. And I felt more affection for him as a person than I ever could for Jim Chang, Lizzie’s husband. It’s strange that one can feel affection for another species, don’t you think? Though perhaps not; I’m fond enough of Dobbo. Fonder than I am of Jim Chang, that’s for sure. And if Dobbo could talk and ask intelligent questions about…well, about everything I guess, then it could be rather a lot of affection. And somehow, handing someone you really like over to people you don’t know and would likely loathe if you did, how could that be right?”
The pictures couldn’t answer her, so she thought about it late at night when old bones delayed sleep. She could see that what Kharn might do in the future could harm humanity, in which case she had sinned against her people. But she thought not. Somehow, she could believe that what she had done might well be returned one day in some sort of charity from Kharn to human beings. Doing something, however small, to build trust between two savage species might be important. The kzin would understand the notion of an honor obligation, none better. If he’d given her protection, she’d have felt the obligation to his species, fierce though they were. No, she’d never had much of a problem doing what was right, even when the crowd had tried to persuade her it was wrong. God lets you know inside you somehow.
She fell asleep at last, and there was a smile on her lips.
* * *
One problem with a strange planet is learning what is safe to eat, H’char’n concluded. The venison he had brought with him hadn’t lasted long.
He was loping through light woods; the cover was not great, but it was better than being in the open. The idea of a satellite looking down had never occurred to the kzin. So H’char’n was more concerned with aircraft, possibly high overhead. He made good progress therefore. Rabbits kept him alive, but he was bored with them. So he picked up other creatures on the run, even snapping a few careless birds out of the air.
So when he observed a small animal with a prominent white stripe down its back, he had no hesitation in grabbing it and biting its head off. It was a mistake. As soon as he picked it up, it reacted by spraying his arm with some disgusting fluid. The stench was unbelievable. He threw away the corpse, but it was too late; he stank. He now understood the arrogant waddle of an animal that believed it was immune from predators. He decided to be more careful, while searching for water that he could use to get rid of the stench.
He found a pool, and tried to get rid of the ghastly stink, with limited success. He needed cleansing oils, and he had nothing like them. Even the shampoo he had been given by Mary Ellen, which also smelled awful, would have been better than this.
Kzin, like all felinoids, was usually meticulous about his grooming, but he wasn’t game to lick himself clean, so he tried scrubbing himself with twigs, but if anything it merely spread the area of contamination. At length he gave up, and emerged from the pool.
A little later, a wriggling creature made a sound in the undergrowth, and he grabbed it by reflex, and then threw it away quickly. As it happened, it was a harmless lizard.
Later, when he came across a snake with a bright yellow tip to its tail and a pleasing colored pattern of scales, he decided to try eating it. The question was, Which end was the dangerous bit? The yellow part looked like a warning, so he was careful. The other end bit him. He bit it back, spat out the head and tried eating the rest. It wasn’t bad, but too small. The bite of the snake hurt him, and he ignored it, making a note to keep the other end firmly gripped next time.
* * *
They came for him again, a line of soldiers, a pace apart, armed with dart guns. It was early morning and H’char’n hadn’t seen anywhere that might serve to lie up for the day yet. The tree cover had thinned out, and they had seen him somehow from afar. And were waiting for him. He could smell them before he could see them, a strange mixture of metal, oil and human. Then an aircraft flew low almost over him. He was crouching behind a bush which grew close to a tree. The cover it gave was not great. Another deception was in order…
* * *
The corp advanced. These were seasoned troops from Dillon’s brigade, and they were wary. Some of them had served against kzin before, and they had amplified to the rest the warning Dillon had given them: kzin are smart. Some of them, including this one, very smart. Do not underestimate this one’s capacity for surprises, they had been told. And kzin are deadly, they had seen the results of kzin attacks. So they kept their eyes peeled and their senses alert.
They had no clear idea of where he was, but they were closing a circle that they were sure had the kzin inside it. Outside the first circle was another, with a gap of a hundred yards between.
They also knew the kzin was fierce, fast and very big. Everyone knew this. Even those who had not seen kzin in action had seen the training videos, and the thought of meeting one in this lightly wooded country was enough to make any human cautious and careful. These were some of the best troops on Earth, and they fingered their dart guns and held them ready. With a mind on their holstered blasters, just in case.
The bushes were eyed with deep suspicion and anything big enough to conceal a kzin was encircled and then shot at. Then inspected by men with drawn blasters.
Slowly they made their way forward, checking out everything.
Dillon was worried. There wasn’t a lot of the area left to investigate. Maybe the kzin was retreating, and maybe he had fooled them somehow. He ordered the second outer circle to fall back. If the first circle missed the kzin, the second one would too.
One of the men dropped out briefly to take a piss against the bole of a tree; hunting a kzin made you nervous. He held his dart gun in the crook of an elbow, and sighed with relief as he rezipped his pants. At that moment, rising out of a hole in the ground, a great orange form towered over him. A bladed paw slashed and took off half his head. Then H’char’n ran for it.
He roared in challenge as he ran, and it ended in dismay as he saw the second line ahead of him. He jumped. He went over the top of them but took three darts in the belly. He twisted and saw there were others running from all sides. He landed and roared defiance, estimating the odds. Another dart hit him in the shoulder. He could feel something nasty coursing through his body.
Then he collapsed.
* * *
“We’ve got him!” An aide said triumphantly. They didn’t cheer, but they all looked a good deal happier.
Dillon nodded. “Secure him. Very, very carefully, and keep him somewhere safe. It’s too late to transfer him tonight, but get a suitable vehicle there first thing in the morning. And keep him under constant observation all night.”
“Yes sir. We’ll have him at the island before noon tomorrow.”
Dillon grunted. “Don’t count your chickens. I hope you’re right, but this one is smart as well as fast. And damned tough.”
The aides accepted the warning, but it didn’t stop them looking happy.
* * *
Goddard read the report and got himself a flier. He wanted to make sure the kzin was dead. Killed while trying to escape should do it, he thought.
* * *
A great violet eye opened a fraction, then wider. He had felt himself bound with ropes of some metallic fiber and lifted and placed on a metal surface. He felt very relaxed, but not the least bit sleepy.
When they had bound him, H’char’n had tensed his muscles to make himself as big as possible. Now he relaxed and listened. He had reasoned that they had shown they wanted to capture, not kill him. Making it look easy for them to incapacitate him with the darts might deceive them into underestimating him, so he had feigned torpor. Getting away from them would have been difficult if not impossible, but by pretending to be drugged insensible, he might improve his chances of escape later.
There was a lot of noise coming from about fifty paces away, and a lot less noise coming from closer. Also the smell of human sweat came from two nearby sources, and the more mixed scent from where the noise was. So he had two guards, within two paces, but they were not watching him constantly. A serious mistake on their part.
He tested the metallic rope. He could escape from it, he thought. If he could reach his wtsai it would be easy, but they had removed it. Prudent of them. He wondered where it was kept; a kzin without his wtsai feels naked.
He made his right paw go very small and with only a small amount of pain, and the loss of some fur and skin, he withdrew it from the rope. This gave him much more slackness to work with, and removing his left paw from the coil was easy. The damned stuff bonded to itself, so it took him longer to get the rest of it off, with the loss of more fur and skin. He did it very quietly so as not to alert the guards. Then he waited to see if they would check him. If they did they would surely notice the missing bindings, and he would have to kill them quickly and silently.
His eyes darted over the thing he was in. It was a sort of big rectangular bucket. It had conveyed other things than kzin, he thought, and the other things had left dust. It was very undignified, but then, he had been a prisoner, and they would naturally think humiliating him a proper move to make. He turned and peered over the edge of the bucket. It was attached to a machine with wheels, some sort of earthmover, he guessed. In the other direction, he could see a campfire and the shapes of men around it, talking and drinking. That left the other two directions, where the guards were stationed. Doubtless they were armed, perhaps with dart guns, perhaps not. With reasonable luck, they would consider four darts disabling; he noted that they had removed the darts they had shot into him. They had slowed him down a little perhaps, but he had never lost consciousness and had, he thought, metabolized whatever poison had been in the darts half an hour since. Except for the sense of being pleasantly relaxed, which was not going to make any difference.
He needed to look over the sides and if the guards were close enough, kill them. Then he could try to escape. It did not look to be difficult, but the guards could give the alarm if he were not quick.
He looked over the left side, sticking his head up fast. The guard there was looking over to where the party was going on, celebrating his capture, no doubt, and he was close. Too close for his safety, which was very foolish. Soundlessly, H’char’n reared up, leaned over the bucket, and brought one paw down hard on the head of the guard, who started turning, seeing the movement out of the corner of his eye, but was too late. He folded without a sound. Whether the blow had killed him or not, H’char’n was unsure, but it had certainly silenced him.
Soundlessly, he moved to the other side of the bucket. This guard was further away, too far to reach from the bucket, so H’char’n flowed over the edge and was upon him. There was a hiss as the dart gun fired into empty air, but by then the guard was down.
H’char’n looked toward the rest of the party, but nobody had seen him.
He could disappear into the darkness now, but that would mean his wtsai would be left behind. He couldn’t do that; it would be dishonorable to leave it in the hands of the enemy. He had to find it.
He threw himself down, prone on the turf. Then he wriggled slowly and silently toward the group. He counted them. Only twenty, and not expecting anything. But there would surely be plenty of others within call. Killing them all would be easy enough, he thought, but there was a good chance someone would have time to sound an alarm, a howl or roar, or whatever these warriors used as a substitute. And then things would get difficult. He was, after all, rather outnumbered; there must be thousands of them. And he without his wtsai.
He didn’t aim directly for the fire, but off to one side, where a smaller group, of five, were doing something that made him suspicious. As he got closer, he saw that his suspicions were correct. They were playing with his wtsai. One of them would hold it in two hands and sweep it around as if slaying many enemies. He needed two hands to hold it, the grip was far too big for him to hold it in one. He made the laughing noise, and gave it to another, who used it to hack a chunk out of a tree. It took him three cuts, but a chunk of wood fell from the bole of the tree the others had been leaning against. They laughed and went back and one picked up the chunk of wood in both hands.
“Jeez it’s sharp,” he said in admiration. “Lookut that! Smooth as silk.”
It was well they appreciated the weapon, H’char’n thought. Yes, it had been made by a master of the craft. It had been a present from his sire.
The one who had made the cuts in the tree put the wtsai into the earth carelessly, which made H’char’n wince a bit. It might have come against some buried stone and damaged the blade.
Then the five rejoined the larger group, and that was his opportunity. He flowed silently across the turf and reclaimed the weapon. Nobody looked back, or they’d have seen a sword sticking out of the ground suddenly vanish.
H’char’n considered. Killing the lot of them would be easy enough, he thought, but again it might alert others. He judged that these were more seasoned warriors than those he had encountered earlier, with better battle reflexes perhaps. Not enough to threaten him personally, but enough to summon aid.
He wriggled back again, the wtsai at his side where it belonged. He checked in the distance. Nobody was likely to see him unless they had those vision enhancement goggles he had heard about, and he hadn’t seen anything like those that had been illustrated in his various briefing notes. So he lifted up the two bodies of his former guards and dumped them in the bucket. They made only the softest sound as they hit the bottom.
Then he set off to the east. A huge crescent moon, horns up, was rising; the black trees were waving gently in a soft wind… The extra light was a nuisance, but at least he didn’t need to tell directions from the stars, which would have been difficult for him. The great sky river was the only thing he recognized. The other stars were as alien as the planet he was on. He walked under alien skies, night and day. His fur fluffed up, a fear reflex, as he looked up at those strange stars.
He ghosted silently toward the rising moon, moving very carefully lest he disturb other groups of soldiers.
* * *
After a while he turned north again. He seemed to have bypassed the soldiers. Then he turned left and made for the West. He kept a steady lope, a little slower than usual, perhaps.
* * *
“Damned fools didn’t keep a close enough watch on him,” one of the aides told Dillon. Dillon just looked at him.
“Their orders were to keep a close watch on him,” the aide said defensively. “I assumed they would know better than to leave him out of the way with only two guards. And the guards only checked on him sporadically.”
“Perhaps you should have been more explicit in your orders, Captain,” Dillon told him.
The aide blenched. His career had just taken a hit, he realized. A terminal hit, he began to suspect.
* * *
Goddard got the report that the kzin had escaped. He gave a wolfish grin to himself as he came to rest over the now empty bucket, half a kilometer up. He had IR equipment in his flier. All he had to do was find the alien. There was going to be no nonsense about holding it prisoner.
* * *
“We have something headed west on the IR satellite. It’s at the edge of its view, but there can’t be much else except him. Not at the speed he’s going.”
“Hell,” Dillon swore. “He’s headed for Lake Erie.”
“Can kzin swim?” someone asked.
“Sure they can. They don’t like it, but they do a sort of doggie paddle, and they can go for a long time. They can’t do an overarm motion; their arms don’t work that way. Can’t throw a ball either, or not overarm. Can throw a knife underarm though. They’ll never take up baseball.”
“They’d be good at football though,” someone grinned. “Imagine having to stop one of them by standing in his way.”
Dillon ignored this.
“We have to stop him crossing Erie. I want some liaison with the sailors on this.”
He made some telephone calls.
* * *
The moon was higher in the sky. Shadows were everywhere, but behind him the sky was getting lighter. H’char’n felt a little odd, the results of the darts injecting their filthy chemicals into his body, he thought. In the shadows he imagined he saw things, and they seemed to move out of the corner of his eye. He saw the pale shape of a manrett standing there, naked, but when he looked it was only the moonlight on branches. He shuddered.
There were no humans about; he could have smelled them if they were upwind, and heard them. They made an awful lot of noise. Why those soldiers wore those heavy boots he could not understand; why didn’t they wear something soft that would make less sound? Perhaps they found the stamp of the boots of others comforting, he supposed. They were an odd species altogether, halfway between predators and those herd animals that always followed each other, even into danger. There were certainly some humans who did not work that way; Mary Ellen chose to do her own thinking and evaluating, and Timmo Flahrty had a quite distinctive way of looking at the world. H’char’n thought he had been lucky in coming across such humans; they certainly didn’t seem much like the soldiers he had killed. They were a familiar type, the soldiers, they were part of a hierarchy, and did what they were ordered to do. His training had led him to expect that all human beings were like this, but not so. And yet the kzin hierarchies were very much based on the power of the leader to kill any who argued with him, and it seemed that the humans were much more docile than the kzin. How in the universe did they manage to beat the kzin in battle? H’char’n had seen sheep while staying with Mary Ellen, and they were very much herd animals, and consequently natural prey. To be fought by humans was as if a flock of sheep were to attack a predator. H’char’n had seen a single dog herd sheep, and they ran from it in panic, although the dog never attacked the sheep, only barked at them. Of course, sheep were stupid. Perhaps intelligent sheep would be able to see that the dog was not a threat. And if a wild dog was a threat, perhaps they could see that attacking it would save them. But an intelligent sheep was hard to imagine. Then, intelligent human beings were hard to imagine, but some certainly existed. It was all very strange.
H’char’n shook himself. Thoughts such as this only came to him normally just before sleep. He had found that other kzin regarded them as some sort of mental sickness, and maybe they were right. Yet he had found himself able to discuss things with Mary Ellen that were similar, and she seemed to have no trouble thinking such thoughts, nor any idea that there was anything wrong with doing so. Could it be that there was some sort of strength in this? Something that explained why human beings were so much harder to defeat than any ordinary kzin would expect? Perhaps it was not a mental disease at all; perhaps it was something that opened the eyes to possibilities that others did not think of. What had the poet said?
The heritage is yours to keep
Of the Heroes’ mighty race,
But never cease to know your place,
Measure your foe before you leap…
Drink blood with each new conquest, yes,
Seize every chance that space provides,
But space is great, and maybe hides
Things waiting that you cannot guess.
It was the “Things waiting that you cannot guess” that had made some kzin think it was a foretelling of their finding man, but there might be other, worse things than man to be met in the universe. And these strange methods of humans might succeed against threats that kzin would fall before. It was something to do with what Mary Ellen had called “imagination,” and she seemed to prize it. The kzin were inclined to write this off as monkey curiosity and they despised it. That might, he thought, be very unwise.
It was the moonlight, perhaps, and those foul chemicals he had been injected with that led to such thoughts. He shook his head to clear it. He was starting to acquire unkzin habits from exposure to these humans. Such was surely wrong. And yet…
He had more important matters to ensure his survival than dreaming over whether one should try to learn from another species—instead of simply despising them as unHeroic.