“So you’ve come to see Dieter as having more than one role in your life, as having a multifaceted identity?”
Kzinti rolled their eyes much as humans did: Hap did it now. “No, Selena, you don’t understand at all. Dieter doesn’t have a ‘multifaceted identity.’ Eeyaach, even I understand him better than that, and I don’t mate with him.” Selena didn’t know which she found more arresting: Hap’s patronizing tone or the notion of Dieter and a kzin mating. “Dieter is a warrior: that’s a single identity, not one of many. Seeing him as having many identities is just a by-product of your culture’s squeamishness. You’re trying to excuse his violent actions by pointing to all the other, gentle parts of him. Rubbish.”
“Always nice to have another chat about the infinite failings of the human race,” Selena muttered, with a good deal less good grace than she had intended.
“Oh, your failings aren’t infinite, just very plentiful.”
“Thanks for yet another correction. It’s amazing that you consider us worthy of your improving efforts.”
“Well…I don’t; not really. But some of you are worth it.”
“Dieter, for instance?”
“Dieter. And you.”
“No one else?”
“I don’t exactly have a wide circle of friends, Selena.”
“Well, I doubt you’re missing very much, then. We humans are, as you imply, hardly worth the time. Unlike kzinti, who are sterling examples of altruism and are surely treating their human slaves on Wunderland so much better than we are treating you.”
One lip rippled away from a tooth momentarily. “The kzinti say what they mean and do what they say.”
“Ah, so honor is the only virtue worth having?”
“It is the core virtue, at any rate.”
“And so you can school us in the nuances of honor?”
Hap shrugged like a human. “It is rare that kzinti lack honor. It is rare that humans have it.”
“Which is why you’ve decided that we are your enemies.”
Hap’s ears trembled and twitched backward. “Selena, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m simply not in a rush to help the people who destroyed my life and family and who’ve been lying to me ever since. Well, most of them.”
She could see the sacred, sainted image of Dieter Armbrust almost swimming in his eyes. It was a face she was imagining a lot, too: a face she would not see for at least two years, according to his most recent orders. Something was afoot, something he either did not know or could not tell her about. He had departed this morning. Whereto? Unknown. Mission? Unknown. Time until next contact? Unknown.
When she emerged from her own brief reverie, she saw that Hap was staring at the holding paddock again. “It’s really quite large,” he commented, nodding toward the immense bear that was walking the two-hundred-meter perimeter of the enclosure. When it reached the part closest to them, the massive creature put up its nose, growled, and tried the strength of the barrier. Defeated and disgruntled, it returned to its perambulations.
“Magnificent,” purr-buzzed Hap from deep in his throat. “Arctodus simus, or the extinct short-faced bear, courtesy of Earth’s best reverse-genetics. Last specimen thought to have died about thirteen thousand years ago. Shoulder height of one point eight meters when on all fours, four meters when upright, and all muscle. Almost a full metric ton of unrelenting carnivorous fury.” He paused, drew in a deep breath. Then he exhaled: “Magnificent.”
Selena looked at Hap sideways. “Hap.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t get any smart ideas.”
“Smart ideas are the only ones I have, Selena.”
“I’m not joking, Hap. No tricks, now.”
“Tricks? What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean. For now, just leave that bear alone.”
Hap stared at her. “And just what do you think I might do? I can’t pull down the fence, and you’ve never been kind enough to give me a key to the gate. So just let me appreciate and savor my next challenge in peace, Selena.”
She looked at the bear; as big as Hap was, the bear was simply immense, larger than any mammalian predator had a right to be. “Okay, Hap. But-”
“But what?”
“That’s one big bear. And I–I worry about you, Hap.”
He looked at her, his ears like pink half-parasols, his eyes wide. One smooth ripple coursed the length of his pelt. “I know,” he said.
Selena, still in her nightshirt and sweatpants, grabbed for a siderail when the floater rushed down from thirty meters, having cleared the perimeter fence of Hap’s preserve.
“Go there-” she screamed, pointing, “there: the holding paddock.”
The pilot nodded curt understanding; the floater swerved so sharply that Selena had hold on to the siderail with both hands, partly to keep from flying out of the vehicle, partly to keep from vomiting.
“What are you seeing with thermal imaging?” she shouted above the wind.
The senior of the two security specialists shook his head. “Nothing yet.”
That was the same moment that the pilot switched on the forward floodlights, and the paddock gate jumped out of the darkness in high contrast: a sudden, vertical blue-white mesh that scalloped itself out of the surrounding black.
And it was open.
Selena saw the reason faster than she could blink her eyes: cracked wedges of stone-mostly slate, from the look of it-littered the area around the shattered lock. Hap had wedged them in, tighter and tighter until the lock had burst.
But no, that didn’t make any sense: the lock was rated for far more pounds per square inch than either Hap or the bear could generate on their own, even if they threw themselves headlong against the gate with a running start…
Yes, it was strong enough to thwart either one of them-but not both.
The monstrous genius of Hap’s plan now unfolded before her. He had baited the bear into charging against the fence repeatedly. And every time that mountain of muscles, bone, and fangs crashed into the gate, Hap had jammed a slightly wider wedge into the space between the frame and the lock until, adding his own strength, the gate was sprung.
“Damn it,” the senior security specialist snapped, “how did this happen? Where are the drones? Where are the-?”
And then Selena saw the telltale signs of the rest of Hap’s careful handiwork and planning. He had built the equivalent of a lean-to about two hundred meters away from the paddock: the semi-autonomous drones were littered about it. He had evidently watched how they operated, had discerned the one constant pattern: one was always close, three were farther off. So when he went into the lean-to, the closest drone lost access, tried following him in-and had been smashed with the discarded cudgel Selena saw in the doorway. One after another, the smart ’bots had demonstrated just how titanically stupid they really were. Why there had not been better oversight, she would inquire later: someone had evidently taken a very long coffee break. Which, now that she thought about it, was yet another pattern that Hap had probably figured out by testing the responsiveness of the drones. He had obviously learned to distinguish when they were receiving overrides from a live operator in comparison to when they were simply following the predictable commands of their expert system. Meaning that he had been able to put his plan into action when the odds were high that he was under automated, rather than live, surveillance.
“I’ve got a thermal bloom-there.” The security specialist pointed up toward the ridgeline. “Downloading coordinates.”
“ETA?” Selena demanded.
The pilot looked back; he and the security specialist exchanged glances. The latter coughed deferentially: “Dr. Navarre, the safety protocols are quite clear on this matter. When we do not have clear visual lock on any of the predators in the preserve, we are to assume-”