“How did you do that with the variable knife?” Shleer said.
“One time-alteration field won't work inside another. The wire was too thin to support the weight of the ball when it wasn't in stasis. Sorry, I'm being rude. I'm Judy Greenberg.”
“Who?” said Shleer, utterly surprised.
When he'd come out of it, Larry had abruptly sat up in his rinse tank and said, “Why the hell do kzinti dislike eye contact?”
They were felines, after all. “Good question,” said Peace. “That's Judy there. She insisted. She'll be out tomorrow.”
“What about the girls?” They had four daughters, Gail, Leslie, Joy, and Carolyn. Carolyn was four. (All had blond hair the young Peace Corben would have given up three fingers for.)
“Old Granny Corben explained everything, and they're all proud of you two.” The colonists' children, at least, trusted her, not least because kids usually know a pushover when they see one. (It is a protector's duty to spoil children absolutely rotten.)
Larry had then said, “Oh god damn. Telepath in orbit to be sure the situation is resolved.” So Judy had to be the one going in with the amplifier.
“At least she's a precog.” So she'd duck before being shot at.
“Thanks.” That had helped. Larry picked up a pack of cigarettes, left thoughtfully nearby, and lit one. “Gaahhh!” he bellowed, and threw it into the rinse tank he'd just left. “What did you put in that?”
“Tobacco,” Peace said.
He looked her over. “They've always smelled like that to you?”
“Yes, but you seemed to enjoy them.”
He spent almost a full second thinking this over. Then he said, “Thanks.”
When the globe had inflated, it split open, and another Protector came out. Shleer goggled for a moment, then realized the globe had been a portable transfer booth.
The new Protector looked at the red ball, then at Judy Greenberg, and said, “Aristocrat.” Judy snorted.
“What?” said Shleer.
“Sorry, ancient Earth joke,” said the new one. “At a gunfight, how do you recognize an aristocrat—that is, a noble who inherited his rank? He's the one with the sword.”
Shleer began laughing and found it hard to stop. He'd been through a lot lately. The new arrival got out a brush and did Shleer's back a little, which calmed him down. “Thanks,” he said.
“You would have done this yourself if we hadn't shown up, wouldn't you?”
“Not as fast.”
“Details. I'm Peace Corben.”
“Felix Buckminster told me about you.”
“Felix? Hm! He did love gadgets. What's your Name?”
Shleer got self-conscious. “It's a milkname. I'm only four. Shleer.” He took a deep breath, and said, “Can you help the harem?”
It was interesting to see that Protectors had claws that came out when they were upset too. Peace looked at Judy and said, “Doc.”
“Larry's on it,” said Judy, who had begun inflating a bigger receiver.
Peace was shaking her head. “The thing that gets me,” she said, “is why the hell someone who can do this didn't just tailor a disease to exterminate the Thrintun?”
“Against their religion,” Shleer said.
Peace looked at him. “You're a telepath.”
“Uh—”
“You have to have gotten that from a Tnuctip, because no kzin who ever lived could possibly have come up with a reason that stupid.”
They were making eye contact. Shleer gave it a try.
Peace shook her head. “I realize you're distressed,” she said, “but if you ever give me another headache this bad, the slap you get is gonna give you an ear like a grapefruit. You're looking at it from the wrong end. This doesn't discredit you; it makes telepaths respectable. Are you aware that you've single-handedly saved civilization? Everybody's civilization? I intend to make damn sure everyone else is.”
Judy was loading kzinretti into the autodoc that had arrived, and Peace joined in.
Notwithstanding their removal of the Thrintun—and Tnuctipun—embryos, and restoration of the kzinretti to health, the Patriarch had clearly been glad to see the Protectors go. While the Greenbergs had been tailoring plagues for kzinti ships to spread, to kill off any Thrint or Tnuctip that got loose in Known Space thereafter, Peace had spent some time interviewing survivors about the chain of events, and it had evidently upset her. Nobody really welcomes a cranky Protector.
She piloted Cordelia out to the local Oort cloud, then got on the hyperwave and said, “We need to talk.”
Such was the seriousness in which she was held that the Outsider came via hyperdrive, which they normally didn't use. “It is good to see you were successful.”
“Yeah, you don't have to blow up their sun or whatever. You're in contact with the puppeteer migration.”
“That information is not available for sale.”
“It wasn't a question. I have a message for you to relay to them, to be paid for out of my credit balance.”
“Proceed.”
“Keep going.”
There was a pause. “Is that all?”
“If they don't seem to respond appropriately, add this:
“The kzinti found a stasis box you had neither opened nor destroyed, in the debris you abandoned in your system when you left Known Space. It held a Slaver and several Tnuctipun genetic engineers. They were found by the kzinti. The Slaver had the Tnuctipun growing Slaver females by the time they were stopped, and had the kzinti fleet preparing antimatter weapons. All you had to do was drop the thing into a quantum black hole. Your interference is offensive, but your irresponsibility is toxic. In the event that you inflict either upon humans, or their associates, ever again, you will be rendered extinct. Message ends.”
“Peace Corben, you should be aware that we have contractual agreements with the puppeteers for their well-being. Whatever you have planned, we would have to stop it.”
“Planned? What am I, Ming the Merciless?” she exclaimed. “I'm not going to warn someone about something I haven't done yet! I set up my arrangements over three hundred years ago.”
“What arrangements?”
“It's the bald head, isn't it? I don't know. I expected to have this conversation someday, and I knew you could do a brain readout, so I erased it from my memory. If you're bound by an obligation to look out for their safety, the best help you can give is to have them get out of our lives and stay out.
“And as regards debts and contracts, diffidently I point out that I have just taken action to clean up the leftover results of your big mistake. Nobody will hear about that but Protectors, by the way.”
“Thank you.” And the Outsider was gone.
“Damn, I didn't mean to humiliate them,” she said.
“Hm?” said Larry.
She glanced at him. “They—What are you doing?”
He took the tennis ball he'd been chewing out of his beak. “I just ate. Flossing.”
The true tragedy of the Pak had been their utter lack of humor. Conversely, every human Protector was an Olympic-class smartass.
“Hm!” she said, and shook her head. “We got the name 'starseed' from the Outsiders, and nobody ever questioned it in spite of the fact that the damn things never sprout. The Outsiders made them. Starseeds go around sowing planets with microorganisms that are meant to evolve into customers. Outsiders keep track of what worlds are seeded and monitor development to make sure nothing really horrible happens. Three billion years ago they were lax in this, and two billion years ago a species they'd missed exterminated all organic intelligence in the Galaxy. They charge high for questions about starseeds because they're ashamed. So what's the verdict?”
“The kids all wanted to name whatever planet we settle everybody on Peace. I persuaded them it was against your religion.”