“I presume you are not referring to anything as simple as biological imperatives.”
“You are on the verge of redeeming yourself, half-genius.” Dr. Yang smiled; Dieter wished she hadn’t. The expression was so unsuited to her face that it looked more like a rictus. “We must learn about their psychology, about their inner lives. Not just what they will show us in the course of our normal interactions with them; we must have knowledge of their emotions and thought patterns.”
Dieter nodded. “Of course. And when they invade our homesystem, we will undoubtedly take some prisoners. And with an unlimited amount of time in which to conduct interrogations-”
“No!” Dieter was startled by the loud, sharp monosyllable that jumped out of Yang’s small mouth. “I am not referring to interrogations. That would be completely counterproductive. What we must acquire is a command of their true, seminal psychology. And to do that, we will need to observe them without the trappings of culture and training. You will be in a position to separate their nature from their nurture.”
“What?”
Yang sighed. “Let me put it this way: what we learn from our society shapes us, prepares us to live in a particular cultural milieu, but it does so by coercing us to privilege some instincts and behaviors over others. That is the nurture component of our maturation process.”
“And nature is what we get from our genetics and epigenetics.”
“Exactly. And that is where the key of the primal kzin is to be found. To put this into terms that bear upon the outcome of this war, it seems urgent to answer this question: how would a kzintosh behave, think, feel if he was not raised among his own kind?”
“Who knows? Perhaps they are more extensively ‘hard-wired’ than we are, less dependent upon cultural shaping.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Yang, “but I suspect we will find that they actually have a very carefully controlled cultural environment.”
“Why?”
“Because what little we have learned thus far suggests that the females of the species are not merely protected and hidden, but sequestered from their own male cubs within mere months of giving birth to them.”
“What’s your point?”
“Let me put it in familiar terms: if you take humans away from their parents when they are toddlers or younger, they will not develop as most other children. This would be particularly true if they are put in an environment filled with daunting physical requirements, harsh discipline, and rich rewards for properly focused violence.”
“So you’re saying that, without their current upbringing, kzinti would be just big, cuddly, housecats?”
“Nothing could be further from what I mean. They are what their evolution has made them: superb killing machines. But as in all successful societies, adult kzinti will shape their young by amplifying their optimal traits with behavioral training and encouragements.”
“Perhaps all this is true, Dr. Yang, but tell me: why do we need to know what they’d be like without the cultural shaping? It’s not like we’re ever going to meet a kzin without it.”
“No, but we might create one ourselves.”
“To use in further experiments?”
“No: to use as a political liaison. Either this will be a war of extermination, or it will eventually end, through victory or exhaustion. And when that moment comes, it would be most helpful to have a kzin who considers us its mentors, its parents, its family.”
Yang leaned forward, tilted the teapot toward Dieter’s cup: nothing came out. “And so,” she finished, putting down the pot and folding her hands in her lap, “that is why I must stay here and not flee to Sol. I must remain to perform the research that can only be performed here. And that is why you must take the details of the research agenda back to Earth: so that we may isolate and identify the key features of the kzin nature.” She looked meaningfully at the handgun that was still resting on the table.
Dieter picked it up and returned it to its holster. “It seems you are needed here after all, Dr. Yang.”
She nodded, her eyes unblinking once again. “We all serve different needs, Lieutenant. Do be so good as to help me prepare another pot of tea.” She rose, hips swaying slightly more than necessary.
Dieter, shrugging, rose and followed her.
2396 CE: Sol System, Rearguard of the Third Kzin Invasion Fleet
Thrarm-Captain panted in open-mouthed hatred: the viewscreen showed yet another spray of glittering sparks that sought out and then converged upon the dim mote that marked the location of the rearguard’s last Slaughter-class battle cruiser. After a moment of darkness, there was a flicker, a flare, and then a white-blue sphere, expanding sharply from a brief, pin-point brilliance, a radiant halo chasing outward before it.
“Thrarm-Captain, Defiant Snarl is confirmed lost. The van continues to pull ahead of us, and-”
“-And that is a good thing, zh-Sensor. The van of the Fleet is supposed to gain more distance. We are the rearguard: we are accomplishing our task.”
“Without question, Thrarm-Captain, but were we not told to detach from the rearguard and rejoin the van when it had attained a distance of thirty light-seconds from the human flotillas?”
Thrarm-Captain’s ears became more rigid but pushed downward: zh-Sensor was correct. Of course, they should never have been in the rearguard in the first place. The unexpected arrival of the second half of the human fleet, converging as scores of cannily hidden squadrons, had made a ruin of the kzinti’s penultimate attack formation. The human surprise had put them swiftly and entirely off-balance: the kzin left flank had become the front, and the front had become the far right flank. Auxiliaries were suddenly in the line of battle; dreadnaughts were occluded by their own craft, unable to bring their firepower to bear with maximum effect. The third kzin fleet to attack Sol had studied and learned the bitter lessons the monkey boys had taught them during the two prior invasions. And this time, the kzin had been on the verge of defeating the spindly leaf-eaters-or so it had seemed.
Now, in the few spare moments between coordinating anti-missile fire and swatting away single-ships equipped with crude equivalents of kzin gravitic polarizer drives, Thrarm-Captain reflected upon how the outcome of this battle recalled the human martial art known as judo. The monkeys had not defeated this third invasion of their homesystem by meeting force with force, but by using the kzinti’s offensive momentum against them. The Heroes of the Fleet had broken the first human formations and had pressed on, eager to bring their weapons to bear upon the great prize: Earth itself. But that had been a baited trap. The real human defenses-smaller, lighter, unthinkably numerous craft-had materialized from various points of the battlesphere, and in so doing, caught the kzinti off balance. The kzin firepower was all on the line, which is precisely where the humans did not strike. And by the time the Fleet’s deployment could be altered, and the weapons of its battlewagons brought to bear, the regrouped heavy elements of the human main fleet had returned, and the rout of the kzinti had begun.
Thrarm-Captain wanted to call it a retreat, but that would have merely been a self-flattering fiction. True, the kzin had been able to throw together a rearguard to cover the withdrawal of the most important Fleet assets. And true, they had inflicted horrible losses upon the humans. But there were so many of the small enemy ships, and they spent themselves so freely, that there had been no chance to reform properly. The situation was so chaotic and fluid that it was no longer a true battle: it had devolved into a scattered collection of desperate brawls.