Man-Kzin Wars V Larry Niven (e novels to read .txt) 📖

brought in, fleeing as refugees from the first wave of kzinti conquest. There were things here that had been only names to her before: opthamalia, cataracts, club-foot, harelip. She shuddered at the thought, even as she made herself smile and accept an opened coconut from a smiling woman. At least the settlement was fairly clean. And the people walked with pride.

I thought we were badly off in Skognara during the occupation, she mused. Machinery wearing out, more and more hand labor, the kzin tribute abating not one whit. It was paradise compared to this. The thought of the labor and loneliness these people had endured was chilling. Only by cutting themselves off completely from the money economy had they been able to stay out of the kzinti sight, but that meant no machinery, no medicine, no help in the disasters of everyday life . . . They were touchingly awed at having one of the Nineteen Families here, as well. There was no mistaking what she was, of course; everything from her accent to the mobile ears that twitched forward at a sound betrayed it. It is humbling.

"Why did you stay here?" she asked the leathery old headman of the . . . village seemed inappropriate. Compared to this, Neu Friborg was like downtown Munchen. And the headman was probably only fifty or so, not even middle-aged by civilized standards.

His grandfather had been an orbital shuttle pilot.

"We are free, Fra Nordbo," the man said proudly. "Here, we pay no tribute to the enemy. None of them has ever came here—except one on a hunting trip."

He nodded proudly to a ledge above the plaited-cane doorway. The skull that grinned with yellowed fangs looked much like a cat's, or a tigripard's, until you saw the long braincase that swept back from the heavy brows. A creature that thought, and made tools, and hunted Man. Until some Men hunted it . . .

"We had the pelt," the villager went on regretfully, "but it rotted in my father's time."

"The kzinti are gone," Tyra said gently. "Gone from all this world. None remain except those who accept human rule. You have no need to hide anymore."

The man's face fell slightly. "I know," he said. "A fur hunter told us the news ten months ago." More slowly: "You are of the Herrenfolk, Fra Nordbo," he said. "Since the war is over, folk have come from the Great City. They speak of taxes, of land titles—of taking our children for schools."

"You understand," he went on, leaning closer earnestly. "We do not want to be isolated any more . . . not really. We know we have forgotten much. But we are free. Some say the folk of Munchen wish to grind us down, that they think of us as ignorant savages."

You are, poor creatures. No fault of yours, Tyra thought sadly.

"What shall we do?" he said. "We know nothing of these matters—only what the officials of the new government tell us. Some say we should move again, as our ancestors did—move back even further into the mountains, and live free. There are others like us in the Jotuns, they might help."

"Even the Jotuns are not large enough to shield you from Time and Fate," Tyra said gently. "You need a friend who can intervene for you in Munchen. I know a good man, a Herrenmann, who would be your protector. But even so, change will come. It must; your children deserve to have the world opened up to them once more. Wunderland is once more a planet of Man, and there is no reason to deny them the stars."

"Thank you," the headman said, wiping at his eyes one palm; the calluses scraped against the blond-gray stubble on his cheeks. "We will try it."

The headman's daughter came in, with a tray: slices of roast wild boar and gagrumpher, steamed plantain, sauces, the rough homemade wine. Tyra's mouth filled at the smell; her own camp-cooking had grown tiresome.

"It is good of one of the Freunchen clan to take time for our troubles," the headman went on.

"Duty," Tyra mumbled. Embarrassing. Perhaps only in a place as out-of-the-way as this, as completely isolated from the past century, could you find that sort of faith in the Nineteen Families and their tradition of stewardship.

"We must do what we can for you, who helped those who were strangers," he said.

"Murphmmhg?" she replied, then swallowed. "You've already helped me," she said. Quite sincerely; a month in the wilderness with nobody but her horse and Garm to talk to had been a chastening experience.

"There are . . . bad people in the mountains," he said. "Some of them have been here for a long time—they fought the ratcats a little, stole from us more. The real fighters, to them we gave without asking, but they went back to the towns when the liberation came. The others have become worse, and more have joined them since. They do not come this far back into the mountains often—we have little to steal, and we will fight to keep what we have, When the police chase them, then they run deep into the Jotuns. Some of the ones who were here during the war, they know their way around, a little."

"Do you help the police?"

"Yes." Flat and decisive. "The outlaws, they are advokats." That was a small, scruffy, unpleasant-smelling carrion eater common to this part of the continent; it travelled in packs, attacked sick or wounded animals, and would eat anything including dung. Eat until it puked up, then eat the vomit. The beast was almost all mouth and legs, with very little in the way of a brain, an evolutionary holdover. "If we had more guns, we would shoot them ourselves."

"Thank you," she said. "I'll be cautious."

"And . . ." he looked down at his feet in their crude leather sandals. "You said, you were looking also for unusual things?"

Tyra felt a sudden prickle of interest. Unusual could mean anything, back in here; jadeite, a meerschaum deposit,