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

come down at any moment. He repeated the call in the Hero's Tongue, shouting as loud as he could, grit raw in his throat and lungs.

A sound; faint, and it could be wood collapsing as readily as a kzin moaning in pain. Spots and Hans came up behind him, and he turned urgently.

"This looks like it might go through. Get me a cutter-bar and a rope."

Spots stared at him oddly as Hans handed him the tools. Jonah tied the rope around his waist and went down on his belly.

"I'm—" he hesitated for a moment and took a deep breath. "I'm going to go in head-first. I'll tie a loop under Bigs's forelimbs, if I can, and you pull him out."

That might work with a kzin; they were so flexibly jointed that they could get through any space big enough to pass their head with a centimeter to spare on either side of the skull. That was a conscious kzin, of course.

"You are going in that hole?" Spots asked, in a low voice. His pelt was bristling in a ripple pattern, as if he tried to order it flat and his nerves rebelled. He looked over his shoulder; the entrance was a spot of light. More dirt trickled down from above. "Bigs might be dead."

"I said I'm going, didn't I?" Jonah asked, his voice rough with more than the bad air. A wave of gooseflesh ran over his own skin; he looked at the hole, and remembered the piping cry of the fuzzball. Don't try to talk me out of it. You might succeed.

"Pain does not hurt," he muttered to himself. "Death does not cause fear; fear of death causes fear."

The mantra was little protection as he squirmed into the hole. He could feel it shifting above him, and the jagged edges of broken wood clawed at his back and flanks. He could feel the blood trickling down, feel the salt sweat stinging in the wounds. One meter, then ten, infinitely cautious. Controlling his breathing helped control the overwhelming impulse to squirm backward. The glowrod was little help, in air so thick with floating dust, and his passage stirred up more.

At least it's fairly straight. After a time that could have been a minute or twenty, his outstretched hand touched something softer. Kzinti fur, that twitched under his hand. Timber creaked.

"Brother?" Bigs whispered, in the Hero's Tongue.

"Jonah," the man said, and felt the kzin start again. "Careful, it's still unstable! Can you understand me?"

"Yes," the alien rasped. The heavy scent of its fear was detectable even through the dirt; he could smell urine, too.

"Are you badly injured?"

A moment's silence, full of heavy panting. "No. I think not. There is a timber resting on my thighs, but they are only bruised, not broken. My shoulder is dislocated." That hurt a kzin less than a human, but it meant the arm was useless until the joint was set back. "I am bleeding a little, but I cannot move."

Jonah had been feeling around, raising the glowrod. Bigs was in a bubble of space, spindle-shaped with the narrow end at his feet. There was a main vertical support across his legs just down from the crotch; one jagged end of a fastening peg had driven into the flesh for a centimeter or so.

"I'm—" Jonah paused to cough. "I'm going to have to get in there with you," he said. Tanjit. There Ain't No Justice. I don't even like the bleeping pussy—never did. It was mutual, too. "I'll tie this rope under your forelimbs and then sever the timber with my cutter-bar. Then we'll slide you out on your back, I'll follow and get you past the obstacles. Understand?"

"Brother," the kzin whispered again, and something in his own language too fast and faint for Jonah to follow.

The human shook him, and barely dodged the instinctive snap that followed.

"Finagle shave you bald, do you understand me?"

"Yesss . . ." followed by a mumble.

Oh, joy. Concussed. Jonah shone the light into the big golden eyes. One pupil was slightly larger than the other, and that was a cross-species indicator. No blood from the nose or ears, though.

"Here I come," Jonah said, keeping up a flow of words to maintain Bigs's attention. And to boost my morale too. "I'm going to have to do a forwards somersault." That took an eternity, but when it was completed he was lying along the kzin's side. "Here comes the rope. Can you lift your forequarters?"

Another eternity before the dazed kzin understood, and the slipknot loop went under his armpits. He made a short convulsive sound between clenched fangs as the rope touched his dislocated shoulder, and the claws of his other hand stabbed into the dirt close to Jonah's stomach.

"Be a Hero," Jonah said sharply, in that language. Bigs twitched his whiskers affirmatively. It was not that the kzin was unable to control his fear, but the blow to the head was leaving him wavering in and out of full consciousness. A quarter-ton of kzin acting from instinct and reflex was not something you wanted to have with you in a confined space.

"Here we go," the human muttered, and reached down with the cutter bar.

This was the one with no broken teeth, and it sliced smoothly through the tough gumtree wood. Pale curls of shavings came free as he drew and pushed, with a faint shirrr-shirrr sound. His own pelvis was under the timber. If it was bearing weight, it would shift when he cut through and smash his hipbones to splinters. Not that that would be of much interest to either of them when the dirt closed 'round . . . Halfway through, and the log had not pinched shut on the cutter bar, that was a good sign. Three quarters of the way, and something went crack over his head. Man and kzin froze, peering upwards. Another crack and the sound of rock grinding on wood. Jonah's arm resumed movement, more quickly this time. He closed his eyes for the