He wasn't about to try to climb an inflexible surface in the rain. Instead he followed the flow of water alongside the walkways. Men liked water, to the point where, even as careful as they were, some of them still drowned now and then. This thing seemed to like men; it might like water.
Manexpert had no idea what he would do when he found the creature—or what, in fact, he could do to something that bore an appalling resemblance, in both form and capability, to the God's Appointed Enforcer. The only alternative, though, seemed to be climbing back into the autodoc.
He paused by one of the domes that had a flat patch, to look at his right eye.
The socket was at the intersection of three really impressive scars, which extended well back on his head.
The eye itself was artificial.
The iris was of fixed diameter, so it must adjust to light electronically. He tried bringing up his inner lid, and the character of the light altered in a way that indicated polarization. It tracked like his other eye; but after he'd stared at the reflection for a while, the image he saw with it began to magnify.
Astonished, Manexpert used the eye to study his fingerprints in detail. After looking at the patterns of intersecting circles for a few minutes, he realized to his further astonishment that much of the hand was new. He looked over as much of his body as he readily could, and saw that a lot of his scars were gone. He stopped wasting time and went to look for his captor.
This turned out to be easier than it had seemed. Most of the domes had open apertures, with no doors, and regardless of activity they were unlit inside. A few domes did have doors, and those were very solid ones. Manexpert didn't see a locking mechanism, but they evidently slid upward, and sheer weight would have held any of them shut against as many kzinti as could have gotten a grip. One dome did have light inside, and Manexpert found the creature there.
Gnyr-Captain and Power Officer were also there, watching control panels. They didn't look toward him as he entered. Both were considerably scarred, and short of fat. Manexpert took a step toward Power Officer, away from the doorway, and Peace called out to him, “They're dead.”
Manexpert stared at Peace for a moment. He thought he'd been good at covering his thoughts, but Peace's face had no more expression than a tree trunk—which in fact it resembled, in both flexibility and texture. Then he went to each scarred kzin, to look them over. There were visible artificial parts to both of them. Each breathed in an absolutely regular rhythm. Their blinking was equally regular. Both had had extensive cranial surgery. Neither took any notice of him. He went to the creature and said, “What did you do?”
Peace wore a knee-length vest, well-strapped-on and more or less made out of pockets. It was remote-manipulating something behind a wall of what looked like General Products hull material—it was too clear for glass—and never looked away from its work as it said, “They were the most nearly intact corpses. Your ship's autodoc wouldn't regrow complex tissues, so I had to do some experiments before I could fix you up. Afterwards I had these empty kzinti, so I put some circuitry in their skulls to make up for the brain tissue they lost. There's a third, on rest shift, eating and grooming and sleeping. He's got dark patches along his back.”
Technology Officer. “Why did you save me?”
“It was an act of defiance. I was created to protect human beings and destroy everything else—except my creators—and I just refuse to be used any longer. I tried to match the eye's signal pattern to the one the other eye was using; is it useful?”
“It's better than the other.”
“It'll repair itself if no more than twenty sixty-fourths is lost or wrecked. Uses something I call programmable matter. It can operate using your metabolism for power, but it'll work better if you stay near an electrical source. I'm sending you back to Kzin.”
Manexpert was having trouble keeping up. “I can't fly our ship alone,” he said, to gain time for thought.
This failed. “I'm making a new ship. Took yours apart. It wasn't very good. You'll be using a ram to fuel the gravity planer. No hyperdrive.”
“Why not?”
“I want you to live through the war. It'll be over by the time you reach Kzin. Just a few weeks from your viewpoint, of course. There we go.” Peace let go the manipulator and switched it off, and a violet glow developed behind the barrier.
Manexpert stared in puzzlement. The equipment in there looked like an awful lot of effort to make a big mercury lamp. “What are you doing?” he said.
“Turning mercury-204 into thallium-204. The plague that ruined this place has an affinity for thallium, and will absorb twenty atoms of it into its viral shell. This will render it incapable of infecting anything but plants. It could still be remade into something lethal, but the thallium isotope is unstable and gradually turns back into mercury, which poisons the virus it's attached to. Some is turning back already, hence the glow. I have to start up your foodmaker now,” Peace said, and ran out. Fast.
Manexpert was taken by surprise, and didn't follow for a moment, by which time Peace was out of sight. He went back in and looked at the kzinti again, and said softly in Hero, “Gnyr-Captain, what do I do?”
And then his fur stood straight out, as Gnyr-Captain's relict slowly turned to face him. After a few seconds Gnyr-Captain's face took on an expression, as of someone trying to recall the right word, and twice he opened his mouth and closed it again. He opened it a third time, made eye contact, pointed at Manexpert, and said, “Name.”
“I'm Manexpert,” he whispered.
Gnyr-Captain flicked his ears wide and relaxed them, a dismissive gesture, and made two poking motions and said, “Name.”
“I don't have… you mean, you want me to have a Name?”
Gnyr-Captain let out a little sigh, relaxed, and turned back to the instruments he was monitoring. He made no further response to Manexpert, not even when touched. It was apparently the last thing his brain had been able to manage.
Manexpert went outside and wandered in whatever direction his feet took him, until it got dark; then he lay down wherever it was he happened to be.
Peace found him when she had a few free minutes, and went to fetch him a haunch of what the Cockroach's computer claimed was gazelle—at least, that was what the genes were supposed to be. (Jan Corben had absconded with a very large database.) He woke when she returned with it, as she was coming from upwind to be polite. He came up to a combat stance at once, fur bristling, eyes and ears wide in the darkness. He looked adorable. “Here,” she said, and waved the leg to be smelled, then tossed it. He snagged it out of the air, and grunted at the unexpected weight. “There are no animals worth hunting here,” she added. “Plague victims ate them all. I made you a knife.” She handed that over. “Don't touch the edge, those fingers are brand new.”
“W'tsai,” said the kzin, inspecting the blade appreciatively by starlight. He carved off chunks and gulped without much chewing; there was a respectable chemical plant inside a kzinti abdomen, as Peace had cause to know, but it still looked funny. He cracked the bone reflexively, licked his fingers in embarrassment, and then noticed that there was indeed marrow. The ripple in the littlest claw on the hand was just the right shape to scoop in the very last scraps of marrow; that Pak Protector must have just about wiped out Kzin's supply of prey for that trait to have become standard. Killing off a major prey species with a tailored disease that the kzinti could contract would explain their inability to tolerate the taste of carrion, too—it would kill off the kzinti that ate food that they'd found, rather than killed themselves. When he had the bone fragments clean, Peace handed over a parcel she'd made up. It included grooming supplies, a knife (w'tsai) sheath, and a toolkit of useful articles, such as string and bandages and an oxygen mask and so forth. The kit had a light, and the kzin looked over the contents with growing perplexity. “What's this for?” he said, holding up the whistle.