Niven, Larry - Man Kzin Wars 08 - Windows of the Soul

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Windows Of The Soul
Paul Chafe
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and
events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any
resemblance to real people or incidents is purely
coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2002 by Larry Niven
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce
this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 0-671-31838-1
Cover art by Stephen Hickman
First printing, January 2002
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Niven, Larry.
Man-Kzin wars IX / created by Larry Niven.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-671-31838-1
1. Life on other planets-Fiction. 2. Space
warefare-Fiction. 3. Animals-
Fiction. I. Title: Man-Kzin wars 9. II. Man-Kzin wars
Nine.
PS3564.I9 M36 2002
813'.54-dc21 2001043635
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH
Printed in the United States of America
Windows Of The Soul
Paul Chafe
For Christian, with love
Transport tunnel nineteen is one of thirty-two that
run the fifty-kilometer length of Tiamat's axis to
link the docking hubs. Normally it's full of
twenty-meter cargo containers, gliding in virtual
weightlessness. Last night a roller jammed in section
A near the down-axis hub. The Port Authority shut the
tunnel down and sent in a tech. The problem was a
body. That's when I got involved. Pathology said it
had been there nine days and the Scene Team had all
the evidence. There was no reason to go down there
myself, but I did. You can't get a handle on a crime
if you don't get on the scene. I wished I hadn't.
The body was M18JSK98-Miranda Holtzman, nineteen
standard years old, engineering student at the
Centaurus Center for Advanced Studies. Her dossier
holo showed sparkling blue eyes and brown-gold hair.
She was a Wunderlander, just arrived in the Swarm on
a work-study deal with a spun metal fabricator called
Trist Materials. Good looking, smart and last seen
alive at a bounce-bar called the Inferno. She'd
arrived with friends and left with a stranger. The
witnesses agreed on dark hair and a Wunderlander
build but little else. A movement trace came up
blank. After she left the Inferno, she hadn't thumbed
a single scanner-and on Tiamat that takes some
effort. That was nine days ago. Pathology had it
right on the money.
We identified her through her on-file gene scans so
her next of kin didn't have to. That was a good
thing. She'd been badly mauled in jamming the track
rollers, but that wasn't the worst of it. She was
slashed open from throat to groin and eviscerated,
her skin was flayed off and her limbs were missing.
Her empty eye sockets stared at nothing. The coroner
listed cause of death as "unknown." There wasn't
enough left to tell.
Now you know why I wished I hadn't looked.
* * *
I tubed over to Trist Materials. They were closing
down early, hampered by a swarm of Goldskin
investigators. I grabbed the top cop. "Captain
Allson, ARM."
"How can I help you?" He looked harried.
"I'm looking for the primary witnesses."
He pointed out the couple to me. They were sitting on
a couch in the reception area holding each other.
Tanya's face was drawn and pale, she'd been crying
recently. Jayce looked sombre.
"You got somewhere I can hold an interview?"
"We have their statements."
"That's not what I asked." He looked sour. ARM
outranks the Goldskins, but they don't like it. He
beckoned over a uniform to set me up with some cubic.
I called up their dossiers on my beltcomp. It helps
to know who you're talking to.
PCL9C3N4-Koffman, Tanya C., 24. Born Tiamat Station.
Graduate Serpent Swarm Technical Institute. Physical
engineer for Trist. Unmarried. Holder of a
non-current belt navigation certificate rated for
polarizers and fusion. No outstanding warrants, no
criminal record.
BG309003-Vorden, Jayce I. F., 23. Born Tiamat
Station. Also an SSTI graduate and Trist's Compsys
specialist. Unmarried. No warrants but he had a
record, two hits, public mischief. I tabbed the entry
for the details. University pranks. He'd hacked in to
the scoreboard during a championship skyball game and
displayed insults for the rival team. Acquitted with
a warning. Another time he'd gained access to the
transit system and given himself priority routing and
children's fare. Charged double back payments on his
fares and five hundred hours community service. That
was three years ago-he'd been clean ever since.
On a hunch, I punched up my desk from the beltcomp
and did quick movement trace. Multiple hits-the
pattern was clear. Jayce and Tanya traveled as a
couple, starting three months ago. I scanned forward
and found trouble in paradise-ten days with no
visits. I called up the comm logs for the period. A
few calls, all very short, then a long one. Right
after that, the visits started again. They'd fought
and made up. The fight started a week after Miranda
arrived and she'd gone missing the day they got
together again. I called up her comm logs and found
long calls to both of them, starting her first day on
station.
The facts suggested a scenario. Jayce and Tanya have
a good thing going, then pretty Miranda shows up and
gets in the middle. A week later they sort out the
triangle and go out for a no-hard-feelings party,
which goes bad. Someone kills Miranda and the other
gets involved. They make up the dark Wunderlander as
cover. It wasn't a perfect theory, but it was a start.
I stuck my head out the door and called Jayce over.
He was tall and slender with dark hair and eyes and a
Flatlander's blended facial features. I tapped record
on my beltcomp and began.
"What can you tell me about the night Miranda
disappeared?"
He shrugged. "There just isn't that much to tell. We
went to the Inferno after work like we always did.
She was dancing with this Wunderlander. After a while
they left together."
"By 'we' you mean Miranda and you?"
"Miranda, Tay and I." He was perfectly comfortable
with his answer.
"You and Miss Koffman have been seeing each other for
some time, is that correct?"
"Yes."
"I understand you and she had a serious argument a
couple of weeks ago." I stated it as a fact.
He was taken aback. "What do you mean?
I kept pushing. "I mean that Miranda Holtzman
precipitated a rift in your relationship. That gives
you a motive for murder."
The shock he displayed was genuine. I just didn't
know if it was due to hidden guilt or injured
innocence.
"What was your relationship with her?"
"She was our friend, that's all."
"You didn't have an affair with Miranda which brought
on a fight with Tay?"
"No."
"Why did you go to the Inferno that night?"
"We just did. It wasn't unusual, we went fairly
often."
"The three of you."
"Yes."
"Did anyone else go with you?"
"There's a bunch of us who sometimes go out, friends
of ours, but they didn't come that night."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, just busy I guess." He looked stricken
as he said it. He felt he was digging himself in
deeper with every word.
"So there's no one who can corroborate your story
that she left before you."
"Tanya can."
I waved a hand dismissively. "Anyone else?"
"Maybe the bartender."
"But you don't know for sure."
He put his head in his hands. "No."
I changed tack. "What about this man she left with?"
He seized the question like a drowning man grabbing a
straw. If I was asking it, I must believe his story.
"He was a Wunderlander, thick dark hair. He had a
glowflow bodysuit, set to rainbow smears."
"Had you seen him before?"
"Not that I recall."
"Do you think he knew Miranda or that she knew him?"
He was anguished. "I don't know, I wish I did. We
just didn't know what was happening." Then, almost to
himself, he repeated, "We just didn't know."
He was devastated by the sudden loss. Perhaps he
hadn't known Miranda that well but he'd been with her
the night she was killed. It wasn't his fault but he
felt responsible anyway. Survivor's guilt-or simple
guilt. Either way, I wasn't going to learn anything
more. The Goldskins would go over his statement and
cross-check for inconsistencies. I just wanted a read
on the first-pass prime suspects.
"You can go now, Mr. Vorden."
"What?" He'd sunken into a reverie while I pondered.
"You're done. Thank you for your help."
"Oh." He seemed bemused for a couple of seconds, then
gathered himself. "Good luck, Captain."
"Thanks," I said, and I meant it. I hoped he did too.
After he left, I punched my beltcomp's audio log
through to my desk. I've got a program that analyzes
voice microtremors-sometimes it even works. My system
told me that Jayce was telling the truth-mostly. He
was hiding something about his relationship with
Miranda. That concurred with my theory. There had
been infidelity, a fight, a murder. I just needed the
link.
I had Tanya sent in. She was petite for a Belter-my
height. Her eyes were red and she dabbed at them with
a handkerchief. In other circumstances she would be
pretty.
"Come in, Miss Koffman. Please sit down," I said in
my best good-cop manner.
She sat, giving me a forced, trembling smile. She was
barely holding herself together. If I pushed her,
she'd go over the edge. At times like this it's a
judgement call. Sometimes a little nudge brings an
easy confession, sometimes it catalyzes uncrackable
resolve.
And sometimes you're just adding pressure to a
bystander already under emotional overload. Maintien
le droit, the ARM motto cuts both ways. Tanya was a
prime suspect. I would step softly, but I would find
out what I needed to know.
"Look, I know you're upset. I just have a couple of
questions for you, and then you can go." I said it
gently, coaxing. She nodded in response.
"Were you jealous of Miranda and Jayce?"
She didn't answer; she just shook her head, biting
her lip.
"But they did . . . did sleep together?" I couldn't
think of a more delicate way to put it."
She nodded. Paydirt.
"That didn't make you jealous?"
She shook her head. "We had a . . . you know . . .
all three of us . . ." She collapsed into tears.
I hadn't been expecting that. I sat back,
implications running through my brain while Tanya
wept. No use questioning her further now, my theory
was shot. I needed to reassess.
I sent her out and pulled up the transit logs again
and cross-matched all three of them for Miranda's
tube station. They'd both been spending nights in her
apt. Far from causing a breakup, she'd been the
hingepoint of a menage. Tanya and Jayce's transit
pattern changed because they'd been spending their
time at Miranda's. That didn't clear them but it
reopened the question of motive. Miranda's file
yielded another link. This was her second time on
Tiamat. At sixteen she'd been on a six-month school
exchange with FRCK1798-Koffman, Bris, Tanya's younger
sister. That explained why Tanya was more upset than
Jayce and where the spark for the expansion of their
relationship had come from. And it told me what Jayce
had been covering up about his relationship with
Miranda. At least part of what he'd been covering up.
The information also offered some good motive
possibilities-jealousy now for Jayce instead of Tanya
or an old grudge rekindled for her. Even so, my
instincts were telling me that they weren't the
culprits. I needed another angle.
After a while I got up and grabbed the tube back to
my office. On the way, I thought about dossiers.
* * *
C137PUDV-Allson, Joel K., ARM Captain. 33 standard
years old. Born: Constantinople, Earth. Current
assignment: Chief of Investigation-Tiamat Station,
Alpha Centauri. Fingerprints, retina prints, gene
scan. A holo of a man with a Flatlander face, Arab,
African, Slav, Balt and Mongol-boringly nondescript
on Earth, noticeably different on Wunderland. Date of
birth, date of marriage, date of divorce. Medical
history, educational records, details of promotion.
Case reports from Bangkok, New Delhi and Berlin.
Commendations for service and commendations for
bravery. Date of transfer outsystem.
A good record, I was proud of it. What's the measure
of a man? Nowadays it's his data file. Dossiers are
the tools of my trade. They give me a skeleton-my job
is putting flesh on the bones.
The best cops are just one step this side of the
law-that's how you get into a criminal's mind. I was
one of the best. In deep-cover work, the line gets
blurry. You make so many sacrifices you start to feel
entitled to fringe benefits your cover requires you
to take anyway. The Brandywine case cost me my
marriage. When it blew up, my position was-confused.
The Conduct Review Board said, "Captain Allson's
actions were directly related to his assignment and
he did not act with criminal intent." They must have
known more than I did. Prakit believed them because
he believed in me but when the slot on Wunderland
came up, he offered it, firmly. After Brandywine I'd
never be safe undercover again, not on the
Organization cases I'd made into my life. He never
mentioned Holly, but it wasn't my cover that worried
him. I took the assignment. What else was I going to
do?
Wunderland-the name says it all. The colonists found
a virgin paradise of mountains and forests, clear air
and low gravity. They turned it into the jewel of
Known Space, but the world they'd built was gone now.
First the kzinti had invaded taking the land and
turning the citizens into slaves-or dinner. Some
fought, some fled, some tried to save what they
could. Most just survived and carried on in a grimmer
world.
Forty years later, Earth attacked with lightspeed
missiles, twelve thousand gigatonne impacts that
punched to the planet's core and blotted the suns
from the sky. The UN wrecked the kzinti industrial
base and much of Wunderland in the process. The
survivors cheered anyway, and dreamed of liberation.
And it came, faster than anyone could imagine, in an
Earth armada with We Made It hyperdrives. The
Provisional Government was formed and the
Wunderlanders began to heal the scars of conquest.
The rebels came out of the mountains and the pirates
came in from the Swarm. The few kzinti left insystem
adapted, disappeared into the forest, or died.
But liberation didn't end the war. Alpha Centauri
became the UN advance base. The Provo Government was
controlled by UN advisors and the Serpent Swarm made
a UN territory outright. The economy went to full war
production. The liberators quartered thousands of
troops in Munchen in case the kzinti came back-and in
case the Wunderlanders objected to the UN plan. Maybe
the breakdown was inevitable. The kzinti were no
harsher than the Provos and a lot less corrupt. A
political party called the Isolationists emerged with
a simple solution-Wunderland for Wunderlanders. The
kzinti were gone, the Flatlanders could go too. By
the time I arrived in Munchen, they were no longer a
political party, they were a terrorist group. The
Provisional Government's anti-collaborator campaign
had become a random witch hunt. The whole
infrastructure was falling apart-transportation,
medical support, civil services, even basic
maintenance stripped to feed the UN war machine. The
black market thrived on everything from pleasure
drugs to biochips and a dozen crime webs warred over
the spoils. Whole outland regions rejected the Provos
and UN troops were used to impose control.
I should have thrived in that environment-it was my
kind of work, but the rot had spread to the ARM.
Certain individuals, certain groups had immunity.
Investigations that got too close were closed down.
Critical evidence simply disappeared. I fought a
losing battle to clean up the agency and made a lot
of high-powered enemies. When they discovered they
couldn't shut me up, they kicked me upstairs, big
time. I wound up with the top job on Tiamat, half a
billion kilometers skyward.
It was better on station. There was smuggling, theft,
even murder-but no bombings, no assassinations, no
gang wars. More importantly, the taint of corruption
was gone. I needed that change most of all. It didn't
tempt me, but it disturbed too many sleeping ghosts
for comfort.
The tube stopped and I climbed out and hurried back
to my office. I wanted to catch up to
Hunter-of-Outlaws. One of the few wise decisions the
UN made was to let the kzinti left in-system run
their internal affairs as long as they toed the UN
line when dealing with humans. Tiamat has a lot of
kzinti, most in the Tigertown high-G section. They
were surprisingly good citizens, considering, but
keeping relations smooth was a balancing act. Hunter
was my high-wire partner.
He was on his way out when I got back. I grabbed him
before he could leave and outlined my findings.
"What do you think?" I asked when I was done.
"Hrrr . . . If Koffman and Vorden are to be believed
the prime suspect must be the human she left with, on
evidence of contacts. Since she left no transit log,
it is probable she traveled on her companion's ident
to the transport tunnel where she was killed. However
. . ." he trailed off.
"Go on," I prompted.
He continued reluctantly. "The body was found near
the kzinti sector. The corpse looks like a butchered
prey animal. On the basis of these facts I would
suspect a kzin."
I nearly laughed but he was dead serious. "You don't
think a human would do that?"
"I have seen humans kill each other but I have never
seen them strip a carcass so. It is the act of a
carnivore."
"Never underestimate humanity, my friend." I grinned,
but didn't let my teeth show.
He ignored the barb. "If it is possible, then we must
consider it. It is conceivable the culprit was
cutting the body up into manageable pieces and was
disturbed before the task could be completed. Perhaps
Miranda Holtzman held dangerous information and was
killed to preserve its secrecy."
"I hadn't considered that, but you're right." I
didn't go on.
Hunter considered, pupils narrowing. "Your manner
tells me you have another thought." He knew humans
well.
"Perhaps she was killed by a schitz." It was a wild
idea, but it fit.
The kzin looked baffled. Maybe he didn't know humans
so well after all. "What is a schitz?"
"It's a blanket term for someone who isn't wired
properly. They respond to hallucinations, become
paranoid or megalomaniacal. Specifics vary but they
can be homicidal."
He knew what hallucinations were but-"What is
paranoid and megalomaniacal?" He pronounced the words
awkwardly.
"Paranoia is when you feel that the entire world is
摘要：

WindowsOfTheSoulPaulChafeThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresemblancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.Copyright(c)2002byLarryNivenAllrightsreserved,includingtherighttoreproducethisbookorportionsthereofinanyform.ABaenBooksOriginalBaenPubli...

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