Paul Chafe - Man-kzin Wars - Destinys Forge

Destiny's Forge-A Man-Kzin

War Novel

Table of Contents

The Tyger

The Roots Of Kzinti Culture,

Language And History.

THE ANVIL

WISDOM OF THE CONSERVERS

THE HAMMER

WISDOM OF THE CONSERVERS

THE FURNACE

Destiny's Forge

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.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN 10: 1-4165-2071-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-4165-2071-9

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, July 2006

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

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New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chafe, Paul, 1965-

Destiny's forge / Paul Chafe.

p. cm.

Based on The Man-Kzin wars series created by Larry Niven.

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-2071-9

ISBN-10: 1-4165-2071-6

1. Kzin (Imaginary place)--Fiction. I. Title.

PR9199.4.C44D47 2006

823'.92--dc22

2006007462

Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)

Printed in the United States of America

For Maggie, my mom.

The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

When thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

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What the hammer? What the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears

And water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile his work to see?

Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

—William Blake

The Roots Of Kzinti Culture,

Language And History.

The kzinti culture is both more homogenous and richer than human culture. In a very real sense there are

not one but many human cultures, since civilization arose not once but several times on Earth, each time in

complete isolation and independence, separated by insurmountable geographic barriers. By contrast,

both linguistic, historical and (where available) genetic evidence indicate that civilization arose on

Kzinhome only once. In geocultural terms, this can be explained by Kzinhome's relatively small (~50%)

percentage of water cover and proportionally larger contiguous continental area, combined with the

smaller range of climatic conditions over the non-polar regions of the planet. This is caused by the denser

atmosphere and the tropical wind belt phenomenon, which acts to pump heat from the equator to the

mid-latitudes. This arrangement can be expected to have facilitated the movement of trade and

technology over isoclimatic lines with relative rapidity. At some point relatively early in the civilization

cycle the primary kzinti culture was established and thriving planetwide. On genetic evidence it is certain

that the kzinti species passed through a population bottleneck approximately ten thousand generations

ago for unknown reasons.

Given the evidence of a single start point for kzinti civilization, we can argue that an evolutionary stress

caused the bottleneck and triggered runaway sexual selection of intelligence with resultant rapid and

concurrent development of bi-quadrupedal posture, language, and tool use as species traits. It seems

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likely this stress was a massive climatic shift brought about by the slight eccentricity in Kzinhome's orbit

caused by gravitational interactions with the gas giant Hgrall. This posited orbital shift, occurring

approximately 200,000 years ago, would have increased average solar flux, in turn increasing the average

surface temperature as much as 3 degrees Celsius, extending growing seasons and accelerating the rate

of water circulation through the atmosphere and hydrosphere. The combination of these effects formed

extensive rainforests throughout the tropical and temperate zones. Simultaneously large sections of the

continental interiors were reduced to desert. The higher rate of photosynthesis has led directly to the high

(~30%) oxygen levels seen in Kzinhome's atmosphere today. A general rule of planetary evolution states

that the average mass of animal species increases with increased solar energy flux. This is due to both the

greater availability of food through increased plant growth, which supports a heavier food chain, and the

greater availability of oxygen due to increased photosynthesis, which allows the high metabolic rates

necessary for large, active animals to exist.

Although humans are accustomed to seeing the two-meter kzinti as large predators, in their native

ecosystems they are small in relation to most high order fauna in their ecological range, small with respect

to their primary prey species and small with respect to other predators with which they compete.

Typically, large land predators take prey no more than twice their weight, and usually less than their

weight. By contrast, lone kzinti will stalk and killzerkitz up to ten times their weight, and hunting parties

will takea'kdzrow of up to twenty-five metric tons. In most cases where evolutionary forces lead to an

increase in prey species size we expect to see the predator species increase along with them. However,

in the case of the kzinti the large predator niches remained occupied by competitors such as thev'speel

stalker and the pack huntinggrlor .

This suggests that the kzinti were forced into the intelligence niche because their customary prey animals

increased in size with the climate change but they themselves could not because the large predator niches

were already occupied. As their prey grew larger the large predators flourished at the expense of the

smaller early pre-kzin, driving them to the edge of extinction. This would have pushed the pre-kzin

toward the cooperative hunter niche, which requires the development of complex signaling and a basic

social structure. These developments set the stage for the evolution of intelligence. This picture is

plausible but incomplete, and it is important to understand that while the individual links in this chain of

reasoning have all been verified, to the extent possible through kzinti documentation, the actual proof of

the cause and effect relationships asserted will have to await detailed research on Kzinhome itself.

Regardless of the root causes of the genetic bottleneck event, the effects on kzinti development are

clear. The kzinti speak a single language, although there are many dialects, and extremely separated

dialects have difficulty communicating. Given the limits imposed by speed-of-light communications in an

interstellar empire, identical linguistic groups have had ample time to diverge but have not. It could be

argued that this lack of linguistic flexibility is evidence of a more instinctive, less flexible language facility,

hinting that kzinti are less intelligent than humans. However the Hero's Tongue is a fully combinatorial

language in the sense of Gödel, i.e., a formal system capable of making statements of arbitrary

complexity. There is therefore no thought that cannot be expressed in the Hero's Tongue. Further, kzinti

are gifted mathematicians, which again requires thought processes capable of handling problems of

arbitrary complexity. In addition, both the language areas and visual cortex in the kzin brain are highly

developed and both larger and more finely structured than in humans.

This last fact may provide an answer to the puzzle of the Hero's Tongue's strange cohesion. It is known

that the kzin population is richer in telepathic adepts than the human population, and it is known that the

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brain processes used in telepathy make extensive use of both language and visual circuits in humans. In

the visual system this is known to correspond to the high demands of the active predator ecological niche.

The low genetic diversity of the kzin race may have facilitated the emergence of a telempathic sense due

to the high degree of correlation of thought and emotional processes between individuals. There is then a

natural evolutionary pathway toward making use of the processing power of both visual and language

brain circuits in order to extract increasingly detailed information from the telempathic sense. This

development can in turn havelocked in those brain circuits to the demands of telempathic processing. In

the visual cortex these effects may not be noticeable, since the visual cortex is also locked into processing

patterns that correspond to a verifiable external reality; however, there is no single "correct"

combinatorial language system, which leaves the language centers of the brain free to select any of an

infinite number of equally valid symbol systems.

This is the case in humans, and human languages drift and evolve rapidly. However, in kzinti we may

conjecture that the telempathic sense has effectively locked in the language centers to its (still poorly

understood) demands, which would go far toward explaining both kzin linguistic homogeneity and

telepathic prowess. As a side note, hallucinatory experiences are common in human telepathic adepts,

which may be due to the telempathic and other senses competing for the same brain processor resources.

Kzinti telepaths also suffer from numerous cognitive difficulties, and this may explain why telepathy

evolves rarely and is seldom a highly developed sense in any species despite its obvious evolutionary

advantages: Its cognitive costs simply outweigh its survival benefits. The largest exceptions to this rule, the

now extinct Slavers and the sessile Grogs, both show clearly the cognitive drawbacks of a highly

developed telempathic sense.

Kzinti share with humans the ability to form hierarchical mass societies, but they are orders of magnitude

less social. Any society can be seen as a series of opportunities to cooperate or compete, and in kzinti

the balance falls more heavily on competition than in human society. This fact imposes strict limits on the

forms of society that the kzinti can successfully use, and in fact we can see that kzinti culture shows much

less variation than human culture does in terms of structure. The reasons for this are complex, but

ultimately, for any evolved organism, the final measure of success is the number of offspring injected into

future generationsin relation to the number of offspring injected by competitors. There are two basic

strategies available to achieve this, and we may categorize species asK (named because the population

total is characterized byK, the carrying capacity of the environment) andr (named because the population

total is characterized byr, the reproductive rate).K species are characterized by a small number of large

offspring, long lifetimes with late maturity, and high levels of parental care. Typer species have a large

number of small offspring, short lifetimes with early maturity, and low or no parental care.

In species with sexual reproduction we see two strategies, individuals who produce a small number of

large gametes (females) and those who produce a large number of small gametes (males). This tendency

usually generalizes so that we see females invest a large amount to ensure the success of a small number

of offspring, and males invest a small amount in any given offspring in order to maximize the total number

of offspring. Since the child-bearing capacity of females is the ultimate limit on the reproductive potential

of any given generation, we usually see a situation in which males compete for females. In a species like

the Wunderland gagrumpher, males invest no parental care in their offspring, and as a result we see a

large sexual dimorphism, with males averaging five times the weight of a female and possessing

specialized neck dewlaps, which serve both as an intimidation mechanism in male/male conflicts and as a

sexually selected attractant to females. There are exceptions to this rule. In some bird species the male

and female form long-term pair bonds and there is very little (although not zero) mate competition. As a

result males and females are nearly identical in body plan and require an expert (or a con specific) to

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differentiate them. In a few fish species the technical details of reproduction dictate that males provide all

or the bulk of parental care, and in these cases females compete aggressively for access to males,

reversing the normal pattern.

In almost all mammalian species, males compete for females, but humans are an extreme case of theK

strategy and this changes the equation. Due to the limitations of the female pelvis and the human

specialization of large brain size, human infants are born almost completely helpless and require two

decades to reach full maturity. This tremendous reproductive burden requires the dedicated assistance of

the male to ensure the survival of the offspring in a primitive environment, and the males best able to

provide this assistance then become objects of competition for females. Because of this almost

unheard-of female competition, the degree of male competition is reduced. As a result male humans mass

only about 50 percent more than females and females possess secondary sexual attractant displays that

are almost universally confined to males in other mammals. Under these conditions cooperative,

coalitional behaviors in both sexes are cost effective, and it is these behaviors that make human society

possible. Through this process intelligence itself has become a sexually selected characteristic as well as a

naturally selected characteristic. At this point in human evolutionary history it seems likely that sexual

selection has become the dominant driving force behind the development of human intelligence, as

witnessed by the tremendous costs involved in bearing large-brained infants (including a significant

death-in-labor and infant mortality rate under primitive conditions) and rearing them to adulthood. Such

high-cost evolutionary features, like peacock tails and moose antlers, are generally only seen in cases of

runaway sexual selection, where a trait evolves until the evolutionary cost of displaying it counterbalances

the tremendous reproductive advantage it confers.

The kzinti are even more extremeK strategists than humans. Kzinti kits are normally born as

brother/sister twins from a single egg, although there are rare cases of quadruplets or single births, and

are typically nursed for eight to twelve (standard) years, during which time the female remains infertile. A

fertile female kzin may have only three or four estrus cycles in her lifetime. As a result kzin population

growth is extremely slow and kzin males compete strenuously both for females and for the resources to

support them. A high proportion of kzin male deaths are due to challenge duels resulting from this

competition, and in the adult population females outnumber males in a ratio of between two to one and

three to one. In other words, between 50 and 75 percent of male kzin kits can expect to die in combat.

Of these, most can expect to die at the hands of older and more established kzin, although among those

Great Prides involved directly in the Man/Kzin wars almost 50 percent are killed in combat with humans

or other species. Combat death among males begins in late adolescence and rises to a peak in young

adulthood, declining steadily thereafter. This single fact dominates the entire kzinti social structure, and in

fact the entire Patriarchy is built around the requirement to redirect the aggression of young males

outward to prevent them from completely destabilizing the hierarchy. It is this high death rate that allows

the extended polygamous mating structure that is the core of kzinti social life. Paradoxically this system

has given the kzinti 50,000 years of cultural stability and an interstellar empire unmatched in Known

Space. Unfortunately these achievements are little comfort to any particular adolescent kzin who,

regardless of station of birth, can only look forward to a lifetime of status-driven combat with a better

than even chance of violent death.

Kefan Brasseur

Senior Fellow for Nonhuman Studies

Kardish University

Alpha Plateau

Plateau

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THE ANVIL

We are Kzin-ti because we are wild, born of Savannah and Jungle. We are Kzin-ti because we are

hunters swift and silent, cunning and strong. We are Kzin-ti because we are warriors, with honor

won in battle and proved in blood. We are Kzin-ti, we are the hunters, we are Kzin-ti.

—Saga of the Fanged God

Thezitragor paused, head coming up to scan the area, delicate nose sniffing inquisitively. The beast

seemed nervous, as though it sensed something wrong, but after a long moment it lowered its head to the

rivulet to drink.

Watching from his concealment on a rock behind a spreading burstflower bush, Pouncer twitched his tail

unconsciously, eyes locked on his prey. It was a good four leaps away, drinking where the little stream

narrowed and speeded up before disappearing around a bend in the canyon. It wasn't the easiest place

for thezitragor to drink, but it was safer by far than the larger pool where Pouncer was waiting.

Had it scented him? No, the light breeze was still in his face, and it would not have stayed if it knew a

predator was in the area. Its nervousness was just well applied caution. Would it come closer? The air

smelled of ozone, alive with the promise of a gathering storm, but overhead the sun burned hot in clear

blue sky flecked with a few white clouds. Somewhere nearby a charge suppressor was neutralizing

high-altitude ions to prevent the clouds from building up to thunderheads. That allowed the wind to carry

the uncondensed moisture over the high Long Range mountains to moisten the Plain of Stgrat beyond

them, but the ground here in the foothills was parched as a result. Thezitragor was feeling the effects of

the drought, and it was thirsty, very thirsty. Pouncer settled lower on his rock, his hunt-cloak blending

with the vegetation around him. He waited. It needed to come closer. Av'pren blurred past, its wings a

high keening note. Pouncer looked up sharply, ready to run, but it was alone. A singlev'pren bite was a

trivial annoyance, but when they swarmed they were lethal.

Thezitragor looked up again and seemed to hesitate. Had it heard thev'pren ? Had it seen his motion?

Four leaps was a long way to go if he wanted to ensure his kill. Azitragor could outrun a kzin with a

four-leap head start, seven times in eight. It looked around, flicking its ears, then bent to drink again.

Pouncer gathered himself for the leap and willed the beast to come closer. It swallowed in quick gulps,

looked up, twisting its long neck around to scan behind it. A swiftwing rustled in the bushes behind it, and

it started, half turning. This was it! But thezitragor didn't run and Pouncer didn't leap. It scanned the area

again, scenting the air, then returned to drink again. It was agitated, but its thirst was stronger than its

fear. Perhaps it had scented the rest of the hunting party on the plateau above the canyon. His father and

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brother and the others were hunting as a group, but Pouncer preferred his own company. He might not

gain as many kills by himself, but they were his own, and that was important. Politics claimed more

attention than prey when the Patriarch led a hunt, and Pouncer had little liver for the toadying of courtiers

trying to gain his father's favor. In two days the Great Pride Circle of all the Patriarchy met, and

Great-Pride-Patriarchs and double-named Emissaries had been arriving from beyond the singularity for

the last Hunter's Moon. Many of them had never been to Kzinhome before, and they came with strange

foods and stranger customs, retinues of retainers, trains of slaves, and any number of demands,

pronouncements, propositions, and intrigues. And all of them wanted nothing more than to share a hunt

with the Patriarch, or failing that, his oldest heir. When Younger-Brother mentioned this water-hole,

Pouncer had leapt at the chance to lead himself on his own private hunt.

Thezitragor looked up nervously, then went back to drinking. If only it would come closer!

Unconsciously Pouncer's lips curled back from his fangs. Not that Younger-Brother's suggestion was

free of intrigue itself. He knew Pouncer's preference for solitude, and with First-Son-of-Meerz-Rrit away

by himself, the attention would fall to Second-Son. Pouncer licked his chops, concentrating on the

zitragor . Let him play his palace games ofstrakh and precedence. Today was a day for the chase.

Thezitragor turned and jumped into the bushes. Pouncer screamed and leapt. The kill scream was

meant to paralyze prey, but this victim was simply galvanized into full flight. Four leaps later it had a

five-leap lead, clearing a fallen tangletree and dodging sideways. Pouncer kept his eyes focused on its

hindquarters, running on all fours, putting every sinew into every stride. He managed to close the distance

to three leaps, gulping air in deep pants, and then his quarry dodged sideways and the distance widened

as his claws dug into the dirt to make the turn. No! It would not get away! His muscles were already

screaming with fatigue, but Pouncer drove his legs forward, gained back a leap when it half-stumbled

over a boulder, gained another when he anticipated a dodge and cut the corner as it tried to shake him.It

is tiring too , he told himself. He could almost taste it, fresh meat in his fangs, blood squirting warm and

rich down his throat. His kill! A single leap in front of him. It would not get away. Half a leap!

Thezitragor burst through a line of shrubs and Pouncer followed, fangs extended for the kill. A gray wall

loomed in front of him, ivory tusks gleaming, huge bodies milling aimlessly as they grazed.

Tuskvor!

Pouncer skidded to a stop, nearly falling. The exhaustedzitragor dodged between two of the hulking

beasts. Agitated by its passage, one of the herd-mothers bellowed. Pouncer dropped to the ground, still

as death, letting his hunt cloak settle over him.Tuskvor rarely came so high out of the jungle below, but it

was late summer, fodder was scarce, and they would be migrating soon. Farther back in the herd another

bellow answered the first, and the herd began to stir. Pouncer's heart pounded. If they charged he would

die, it was that simple. Atuskvor 's lumbering walk was not much slower than a kzin could run, and they

could walk all day. A herd charge mowed down all before it. He slowly adjusted his hunt cloak around

his body to conceal himself better.

In front of him a vast herd-grandmother turned ponderously, tossing the air with her tusks. She must

have outweighed him eight-cubed to one, big as a scout craft from her long neck to her armored tail. The

great beast turned slowly to face him, her huge eyes staring. The gentle breeze carried her heavy musk to

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his nostrils. She snorted, thrusting her tusks in threat display.Tuskvor had good vision, but hunt cloaks

were nearly perfect camouflage. Had she seen him? Pouncer began to back slowly away, seeking the

cover of the bushes behind him. A smaller herd-mother bellowed, and her young crowded close behind

her for safety. The beasts stirred restlessly, and the grandmother angrily uprooted a bramblebush. She

knew something was wrong, but she hadn't seen him. Not yet.

Slowly he raised himself to all fours and carefully, paw by paw, crawled backward, keeping low, using

what cover he could. The grandmother flapped her ears and seemed to settle down. One of the young

began to drink from its mother's teats, and Pouncer allowed himself to relax slightly. Behind him a

swiftwing called as it launched itself into the air. It banked overhead, riding the rising air currents out of

the mouth of the canyon. The clouds were piling up in the sky overhead, converging into pillars that

climbed for the top of the atmosphere, and the scent of ozone was stronger now. Despite the charge

suppressors there would be a storm in the afternoon, a big one. The swiftwing banked again as the wind

changed, rippling through Pouncer's fur.

The wind! It would carry his scent . . . Even as he thought it, the herd grandmother snorted, head coming

back around to peer at him. She snorted again at the rank scent of carnivore and bellowed, the booming

cry echoing from the canyon walls. The others in the herd answered. Ponderously the beast started

toward him, her momentum building. Others moved with it; the herd was charging. Pouncer turned and

sprang into a run. Fire burned in his legs, already spent from thezitragor chase, but the growing rumble

behind him was reason enough to ignore it. Bellow after bellow shook the air. He leapt over the same

trunk thezitragor had in its flight, breath coming now in gasps. Behind him the rumble grew to thunder.

He risked a glance backward and saw the herd bearing down on him like a living avalanche, half

obscured in its own dust. He had enough of a lead to escape, perhaps, if he could run until the charge ran

out of momentum. Ahead of him the canyon narrowed and the vegetation thickened. That would slow

him down but not the herd. Exhaustion weighed on his legs, but he drove himself forward, angling toward

a clearer corridor. Behind him the pounding feet drew nearer, the herd grandmother bellowing in rage.

They had his scent, and they weren't going to stop until they overran him. At the head of the canyon large

rocks had fallen from the cliffface, too big for atuskvor to tumble, too high for them to gore him. If he

could get on top of one of those he would be safe, if he reached them with enough strength to leap to the

top.

He risked another look back, saw the herd-grandmother's narrowed eyes fixed on him. If he reached

them at all . . . The herd had noticeably narrowed the gap. Saplings snapped like twigs as they came to

the heavier vegetation, and thick bramblebushes were pounded into the dirt.

Nothing survived a herd charge, it was common knowledge. Nothing a kzin could carry could take

down atuskvor , save for a lucky head shot, and a herd held eight-cubed of the beasts.

The body follows where the mind leads.Guardmaster's training ran through his brain. Pouncer's legs

were spent but he ran on, inexorably slowing. He came on the stream where he'd waited so patiently for

thezitragor and leapt it without hesitation, putting everything he had into it. On the far side a rock rolled

under his foot and he tumbled, slamming hard against the rocks as he fell, just as the herd-grandmother

bellowed in rage. Pain flared in his hip as he came to his feet. They were almost on him and he could run

no farther.

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"Sire!"

His head snapped around at the shout. A gravcar! Guardmaster! It swooped down ten leaps ahead of

him and he put every sinew into one last burst of speed, ignoring the pain, feeling the ground trembling

under the herd behind him as they splashed into the stream. He leapt for the car's open back,

Guardmaster's paws pulling him inboard even as the pilot lifted out. The car jolted sideways as the

herd-grandmother's tusks slammed into it in a vain attempt to wrench her quarry from the sky. One paw

slipped free and for a moment he dangled, not enough strength left to keep himself from falling into the

churning mass of flesh below, then he was grabbed again, hauled bodily into the vehicle to lie panting on

the floor. Concerned eyes looked down into his.

"Myowr-Guardmaster!" He could barely get the words out. "Thank the Fanged God!"

"Sire! Are you injured?" His mentor's worry was clear.

"Only my pride." Pouncer panted, recovering himself. He ran a paw down his side to his hip. Pain flared

again but nothing seemed broken.

"Only a fool stalkstuskvor ."

"It was azitragor , but it knew where to run for safety." Pouncer breathed in heavy gasps. "I owe you

my life."

"Meerz-Rrit would end my line if I let his eldest son be trampled."

"Where is my father?"

"He made his kill. He's returning to the Citadel. I was coming to let you know that."

"Fortune is with me in your presence."

"You shouldn't hunt alone. Not even here, much less the jungle."

"You know about that?" Pouncer had thought his private expeditions to the dangerous jungle verge were

his own secret.

Guardmaster rippled his ears in amusement. "I know everything. I was once my father's eldest."

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Paul Chafe - Man-kzin Wars - Destinys Forge

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