Man-Kzin Wars IV by Larry Niven (graded readers .txt) 📗

feral human is covert and has the ability to pose as a slave. When he strikes he can be deadly. There was a recent massacre of kzinrretti and their kits. It reminded me of your proposal. If you have the time to pursue the subject I can send you all the experimental animals you can use. I should like to take such knowledge with the Fifth Fleet.”

“I am eager to accept!”

“You have the space out here?”

“I can set up feeding cages.”

“Good.”

Trainer-of-Slaves had a wall of clean cages erected in a munitions area that was unused—they were not on a war mission yet. The cages were small by kzin standards but quite adequate for a man-beast who wished to stand erect or lie down, and more than adequate for children. When the first group of experimental animals arrived, he established a fixed regime. They received five-eighths of the water and food they needed simply for keeping their cages clean. The remaining rations were given for appropriate cooperation. No other pressure was placed on the animals for refusal to cooperate.

They were very noisy.

Included with the first shipment was the best human-tech autodoc that Chuut-Riit’s officers had been able to locate, complete with instructions in German, English, and Japanese. Its computer was essentially a full compendium of human biochemistry, though not in an easily decipherable form. The autodoc had been supplied so that he could recycle animals damaged in experiments.

First he tackled the autodoc’s exotic computer and set up a program to translate its records of human biochemistry into kzin-symbolics so that they could be transferred to his data-link and integrated with the generalized model of all known organic alien brains. He was amazed to recognize one of the human neuro-transmitters as similar to a kzin neuro-transmitter. Its peculiar chemical form gave him a clue as to why kzin reflexes were so much faster than human reflexes.

Within weeks Trainer-of-Slaves had his first experiments running. Long-Reach was proving to be a talented surgical student. His initial try at removing the top of a male’s skull had provoked massive hemorrhaging—a mistake that was being repaired in the autodoc. Long-Reach’s second attempt was a success. His animal was restrained in a comfortable chair, the dome of her cranial bone sliced off at the top to expose the brain, her human head cramped rigidly to prevent her from hurting herself.

Trainer had upped the room temperature in deference to the female’s furless skin. He had tattooed a dots and comma identification on her arm so that he wouldn’t mix her up with the other animals. Delicate probes were already embedded in her brain, measuring transmitter chemical activity, mapping the neural circuits involved in sensory input, monitoring blood flow, measuring neural activity changes as basic emotions were chemically switched on and off. He needed to get a paws-on feel for the brain structures he had extracted from the autodoc.

But he hovered around his experiment nervously. He didn’t want her to die of shock while he was still so unsure of the human performance envelope. He had special catfish ice cream to give her when the data gathering was over in appreciation for her discomfort.

In time he would learn how to erase her inquiring mind while retaining her ability to bear children and perform her sexual functions. He wasn’t yet quite sure what would be the best use for the males. If he was to domesticate them as work animals, he would need a different approach than if they were to be domesticated for food.

Thus the years went by uneventfully. Experiments on slaves. Biochemistry studies. Neural map deciphering. Polarizer maintenance. A bit of fighter acrobatics in exchange for a fast repair job. Another lethal fight with one of Hromfi’s sons; another ear for his belt. More lectures on strategy. An embarrassing incident with one of Hromfi’s coy daughters, fortunately in the dark. Gunnery practice. More Jotoki to train. More questions to answer. Another round of brain experiments.

His most productive line of research came after he deciphered the autodoc records which gave him the switching codes that turned neural growth on and off. He found it useful to know under what conditions human neurons could be made to reproduce or to bud-off new neurons. It fascinated him when he found that he could cause dendritic sprouting.

That was only one of the enthusiasms for which his kzin impatience got him into trouble. He was wildly hoping to astonish his peers by fabricating a genius slave—but when he increased the number of neural connections in a man-male’s brain by an order of magnitude he succeeded merely in killing off his animal. Depressing.

Occasionally excitement broke through the drudgery of incremental scientific advance. Yiao-Captain visited, his fervor so persuasive that the Pride actually moved their great antenna forty degrees away from Man-sun to observe some sort of freak gamma source.

The wonder never lasted. Always they returned to the monotony. Yes, he was having solid if exasperatingly slow success with his experiments—but the work was so tedious! Yes, he was getting so expert that he could recycle most of his man-animals through many brain operations before they died—but the finicky detail work constantly left him on the edge of rage. He wasn’t sure that he could have gone through it all if it wasn’t for Chuut-Riit’s promise of a name. Thank the Fanged God for the high spots that broke the ennui.

There was that second vacation on Wunderland when he was able to set up steady arrangements to restock his cages from an orphanage—he couldn’t just pirate experimental animals out of the war factories without the risk of a duel with some touchy kzin manager. Criminals and political prisoners were too much in demand for the hunts.

His Jotoki kept his mind busy. Sometimes it was a racy card game. One of his Jotok discovered a mathematical theorem that was not in any data-link. Another of his slaves did an excellent project on the biochemistry of pain-accelerated learning in humans. That cleared up a whole lot of