“Shouldn’t never have fought at all,” he retorted. “Warn’t our fight. Not worth it. It was outsider doings, an outsider war. We coulda waited until-”
“Until someone came to save you, or the kzinti owned the world so completely that they decided that even the Sumpfrinne had to be forced to bow down before them.” Smith’s voice wasn’t exactly harsh, but it certainly wasn’t gentle. “There are no outsiders anymore, Maurice. Flatlanders, Belters, herrenmanner, ’Runners: we’re all fighting the kzinti, fighting for our lives, for our species. And sometimes, in order to keep doing that-to survive to fight not just another day, but throughout all the years that might follow-we have to leave things behind. Our families, our lives, our homes. I came from around here, too, and I don’t know if any of my family is left alive. I don’t even know if I’ll ever see them, or my home, again. But I cope and keep fighting.”
Smith looked back at the Susser Tal; the mists thinned, thickened, and roiled in futile bids to escape. “That valley made you ’Runners tough. Tougher than drylanders, I used to hear your relatives tell my dad. So now you tell me: are you tough enough to do what I’m doing? To leave your home to fight the kzin? At least this way, you get to stay together with your families.” Smith waved to take in the winding stream of refugees, making their way slowly through the passes, some being carried on litters. “Because you know what would have happened if you had stayed behind. Instead of watching your young and your old and your wives and children taking a hard passage over hard mountains, you’d be watching them-one by one-fleeing through the bushes, through the meadows, flitting among the trees, before the kzin coursers finally catch them and rip them limb from bloody limb. For sport, mind you: for sport, practice, and a little ratcat thrill. So tell me: is living in your valley worth that? Is that what you want to stick around and see, just so you can hang on to that piece of land a few weeks more?”
Maurice looked back toward the Susser Tal. “My gros’vati, he was willing to fight and die to keep that patch of swamp.” The mists thinned, revealing the festering Sumpfrinne. Maurice shrugged. “I guess he wuz the hot-headed type.” He tilted a cracked smile at Smith, patted Hilda on the arm, and then resumed trudging up the path.
Hilda turned to look after Maurice, let her eyes slip over to Smith. “So, about that secret weapon-”
“C’mon, you’ve figured that out already.”
“The basics, ja. It altered the kzinti’s behavior, but in such a way that it must have felt-well, normal to them. So I’m guessing it was a pheromone or a hormone.”
Smith nodded. “Both, actually. Specifically, a pheromone that activates their rut-aggression hormone.”
“Rut-aggression? Is that any different than plain old aggression?”
“Actually, yes, it’s very different. Whereas we human males have pretty much just one main aggression hormone-testosterone-the kzinti have several. And unlike testosterone, which performs a lot of other functions in the body-like growth regulation and muscle development-kzin hormones tend to be one-purpose compounds.”
“That must make for a much more complicated system.”
“I’m no biologist, but it’s a very different system, certainly. Rather than relying upon a single big gland secreting a single hormone that handles a bunch of related functions, the kzin physiology separates the same functions into many smaller glands. In addition to better loss-resistance through organ redundancy, this also gives their bodies the opportunity to employ a lot of finely tuned hormonal effects.”
“And that’s where all their various aggression hormones come in?”
“Right. When our scientists started doing comparative studies linking kzin biochemistry to kzin behavior, they started wondering: if kzin males will unthinkingly and often uncontrollably fight to the death over females because of a surge in aggression hormones, then how do they exert the self-control they show during military operations, when their aggression hormones are also at high tide? So the researchers started looking very closely at the kzin aggression hormone and discovered that what looked at first like one compound was actually a family of related compounds, each of which evinced subtle differences from the others. What they identified as the ‘rut-aggression hormone’ was by far the most powerful of them all. But it was also the one that was most selectively and rarely secreted, since it is only released when a male is exposed to the pheromones of a female in estrus.”
Hilda nodded. “So the other aggression hormones still permit some measure of flight-or-fight discretion, whereas the rut-aggression hormone is, essentially, a berserker drug.”
“Exactly. And because of its evolutionary connection with mating, their brains find it an especially thrilling high, so much so that they don’t really care if they live or die.”
“I guess that was pretty much an evolutionary necessity, given how deadly kzinti are, even to other kzinti.”
“Ja: they needed something that was going to trump common sense during the mating season if natural selection was going to favor maximum combat power and aggressiveness. The weaker ones had to fight-and die-in order to maintain an optimal breeding population.”
“That’s a grim picture,” commented Hilda.
“Yes, but it turned out to be a very pretty picture for us. Once the researchers had isolated this hormone, they started to realize that it had extraordinary weapons potential. Yes, it made the kzinti extremely aggressive, but it also made them more impetuous, harder to control, incapable of self-restraint, and too impatient to formulate or follow complicated plans.”
“In short, you reduced them to the kzin equivalent of cavemen.”
“Right.”
“And so where does your little silver case come in? Were you spraying the female estrus pheromone in the places you expected them to be? That doesn’t seem very effective.”
“You’re right; that wouldn’t be effective at all. And that was the real challenge of the research project: to design an effective delivery system.”
“Which was?”
“Which was not to deliver the estrus pheromone like a weapon, all at once, but more like slow poisoning: something that increased slowly over time.”
Hilda shuddered. “So what did they come up with?”
Smith smiled and opened the case. Inside was a canister for compressed gases, a temperature-control system, sensors, and a small data-reader.
Hilda gawked. “And that’s it?”
“That’s it. The trick is that the canister doesn’t contain the estrus pheromone: it contains a geneered mold that remains inert when at or near zero Celsius. However, when it is released into a warmer environment, it quickly activates. When it reaches maturity it releases several different chemicals into the air, one of which is a slightly denatured form of the pheromone that the kzinti females release during estrus. When it comes into contact with a kzin male’s mucosa, it is too weak to generate the smell they associate with the female, but it is still potent enough to trigger the hormone production cascade that results in the release of the rut-aggression hormone.”
“You mean, they’re running around angry and horny?”
Smith laughed; it was a pleasant sound. She’d only heard it a few times before, and very much looked forward to hearing more of it in the months to come. “No, they’re not horny. Not exactly. It’s more like they’re…well, on edge.”
Hilda raised an eyebrow. “As you have now learned, I’m not a prude. I believe the common term you’re looking for is ‘blue balls.’” And to her utter delight, the redoubtable Captain Smith actually blushed: very slightly, but the glow was there. Hilda, even your mother would like this one-