The Starship Theseus

8. Sapient tigers purr like house cats.

Tigers purr like house cats, and for the same reasons. The uplifted ones did, at least. Well, there were differences. Tigers purrs have a resonance and volume that is alarming to the uninitiated, one that a human could feel in their chest from five feet away. To the initiated, it is a pleasant experience, and Nathan was well initiated.

The sound itself was deep, like an old but finely tuned and powerful combustion engine. Nathan had actually ridden in one of those, back on Earth, although it ran on renewable ethanol rather than fossil fuels. He let the sound and resonance wash over him as he tried to regain his perspective.

He had awoken after seven hours of sleep and, for about three minutes, he had not remembered the things that Katherine had told him the night before. The horrible, horrible knowledge that the UEOSC was suppressing for reasons that were both noble and selfish. He knew just how important the treaties that the UEOSC had brokered were to interstellar peace. Neither the Aurealians nor any of the known governments of the Jurassians were signatories of any of those treaties, and yet they were still protected by the non-aggression clauses.

Yosca had effectively tied all of humanity and its uplifted allies up in a knot where they couldn’t help the Aurealians, despite the fact that they had a moral imperative to do so. He understood it was not that the various military organizations which functioned as the UEOSC’s muscle were not unwilling to intervene in the conflict, it was that consequences of doing so would be unpredictable and potentially devastating in Yosca space as opportunists exploited the letter of the law for personal gain.

Nathan was not a lawyer, politician, or mediator. He didn’t even know why he was here! He’d washed out of the ESF marine program after a year and a half of training when he had realized that he couldn’t overcome his phobia of dying in stasis. He’d never even technically been a soldier, he’d been completing the mandatory education modules which would qualify him for basic training. Then a representative of the UEOSC had -

"That son of a bitch! I don’t know how, but he fucking planned it that way!"

"What exactly has your panties in a bunch now?" Tony asked, lifting his head and rubbing it against Nathan’s chest like the giant Death-Kitten that he was. Geneticists had never been able to alter either feline or canine vocal structures to be capable of human speech, but with brain scanning technology such things were unnecessary. Tony never stopped purring to ask his insensitive question, his synthetic voice came from a speaker in his collar which interpreted the augmented language regions of his brain for him.

"The Old Man. He – dammit, I don’t know what he did, but he set me up somehow. I’d say that I’d punch him in the face the next time I see him, but considering that his face is completely silicone and steel I’d just be hurting my hand."

"Your ‘Old Man’ is a plotter, but he is a good man. Perhaps he orchestrated certain events to lead you in the direction he wished for you to go, you will have to ask him. I do not think he will deny it if you do, and then he will explain his reasons. I suggest you listen before you take further offense."

"Fuck you, Tony, why do you have to be so reasonable?" Nathan grumbled. He continued to scratch Tony in all of the right spots to show that he didn’t really mean anything by his words. "And I’m still mad at you for your part in hiding things from me."

"We are friends, Nathan, but we see the world very differently. Honestly, in my eyes, I do not understand why you are so outraged by the things you learned last night. Those things do not bother me the way they seem to bother you, and I am a little surprised that you came to me so upset."

"Yeah, well, thanks for listening anyway," Nathan told the uplifted Siberian Tiger. "You’re a real mate."

"The last thing I want to hear is a human speak to me about mating, Nathan," Tony reminded him.

"Oh come on, Tony. Feel the yiff inside you--"

The sudden deep growl that interrupted the purring just made Nathan grin. He kept scratching his friend, and after a moment the purring resumed.

"There’s something I still don’t get, and I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while," Nathan admitted.

"I am an open holobank," the Tiger answered, leaning into Nathan’s hands.

"You uplifts, the first generation ones at least, you all pick your own names. So why Tony? I mean, you’re literally Tony the Tiger, and that’s like … I mean, it’s --"

"A giant cliché?"

"I was trying not to say that, but yeah. I mean, you could have picked anything, right? So why name yourself after an ancient advertisement cartoon?"

"I don’t really expect a human to understand, not without an explanation at least. Another uplift, perhaps, particularly one from a base species as feared as mine, would see without being told, but sometimes you humans need to have things hammered into your head. I chose to be Tony the Tiger because it’s an ancient cartoon character that is still remembered fondly in much of UEOSC space. It is meant to be reassuring. My appearance alone brings with it a hardwired response in the brains of humans and most of your allied primate races, as well as many of the other uplifts. I don’t want to be feared. Not by my friends and allies. I made my selection carefully, and it was down between Tony and that children’s cartoon character that bounces around on its tail."

"I suppose me expecting you to jump up on your back legs and emphatically declare ‘They’re Great!’ is somewhat better than expecting you to bounce around talking about how you’re the … sorry, I just got why you didn’t go with Tigger after all," Nathan said, his tone becoming somber halfway through. The elevation of great cats was still somewhat controversial. Despite the individual successes of the uplifted specimens, nobody was willing to help them establish a self-sustaining population.

"That is one of the reasons. But I would rather have you think either of those things than have you believe that I am about to pounce upon you and rip out your throat," Tony informed him. "I accept that my people will be feared for some time, that we will face prejudice that the other uplifts did not. I choose to simply be grateful that the elevation of great cats is moving forward at all, even if it is at the snail pace compared to the sprint with which primates and canines were uplifted. I understand why better than you would believe, Nathan, for at this moment I am very aware of exactly how easy it would be for me to kill you."

Tony’s words shocked Nathan a little, so much that he stopped scratching.

"I would never, of course. You are my friend, and I would die in your defense," Tony explained quickly. "I am simply stating that we both know that I could, and perhaps I am generally more aware of that fact than you are. Assuming that we are both unarmed, the physical contest between us would be a foregone and inevitable conclusion."

"Yeah, I get it," Nathan admitted. He resumed his scratching; Tony had never stopped his race-car-kitten purrs. "Honestly, it’s not that I don’t think of it sometimes. I just push it down into the back of my head. But now and then it does pop into my head that ‘hey, if he wanted to, he could just tear my arm off and there’s nothing I could do to stop him.’"

"Do you think I have not noticed? You are very easy to read, Nathan. I may be a feline, but I have studied human behavior extensively in my efforts to advance the cause of my people. And I am able to sense and smell fear by instinct, in case you have forgotten. I see it when the fear and the doubt crosses your mind, and I think no less of you for it. It is simply your instincts warning you of a danger that is, in fact, very possible, even though it will never happen. But you try to overcome it, which is why we are friends. In fact, your ‘Old Man’ is my only other visitor who comes in person. The others use holographics when they need to speak with me, and even this disturbs them. But I do not blame them for their fears. I must accept them as they are, as I accept myself and my own people."

A comfortable lapse in the conversation filled the habitation module. It was not silent, for Nathan did not stop petting, and Tony did not stop purring. Like all of the others, Tony’s module was much larger than it needed to be, designed to house dozens of great cats in comfort. While Tony lacked prehensile hands, clever use of holographics and direct brain interfaces made him a valuable crew member. An absolutely terrifying one in his combat armor with its various weapons added to his natural abilities, even if anyone who actually knew him knew that Tony was, in fact, a giant furrball.

But then again, Nathan had seen his friend eat. Vat-grown meat, true, but it was still somewhat frightening.

"Do you know what I find most amusing of the human’s fear of my people?" Tony asked after several comfortable minutes.

"What’s that, Tony?"

"Your people fear that making us more intelligent, capable of communicating with you and ourselves, will make us dangerous, an uncontrollable threat to other sapients. And it is true, I am more dangerous than a natural tiger. Perhaps much more, because I possess pattern recognition and long-term planning abilities. However, I still wouldn’t like my chances against a regular human armed with only an iron-tipped spear made of oak."

Nathan snorted. He wouldn’t want to go up against an uplifted great-cat with anything less than a full jarhead coffin, but he understood what Tony was getting at.

"Yeah, humans are fucking scary."

"I fear you do not even begin to understand exactly how scary your people really are, Nathan," Tony said seriously, lifting his head to make deliberate eye contact. "All of space is fortunate that you are also moral. With your mastery of science and the rate at which you advanced it, you could have been monsters far worse than the Jurassians could ever aspire to be. Instead of treating your uplifts as peers, you could have treated us as slaves. Rather than seeking to bring peace to the Aurealian – Deathsworn conflict, you could have simply joined the fray and conquered them both. Your ‘Old Man’ laments that man is his own worst enemy, that your internal conflicts continually hold back all of ‘Yosca’ from achieving its true purpose. But it is those very conflicts which keep humanity in check. It is those conflicts which keep the rest of the universe safe from mankind."

"It is those conflicts which are forcing us to stand idle while innocent Aurealian children are hunted for sport and pleasure," Nathan exploded.

"Less than one tenth of the population of Horthus Prime are even allowed to hunt Aurealian. Less than that indulge in the pleasure more than once. You must remember that my morality is different from yours, Nathan, although I know you well enough to understand your outrage. Would you hate me if I told you that I had killed for food and pleasure? Because I have, and I would again if the opportunity arose. And I see no difference between what I have done and the blood sport that the Horthian elite engage in. Does this make you hate me?"

Nathan stopped scratching as he considered how to respond.

"Tigers are apex predators. The geneticists weren’t trying to change that about you when they worked on elevating you and your people. Fuck, Tony, why did you have to make things complicated?"

"To my eyes, things are very simple," Tony answered. "It is you who is overthinking and over-complicating things. But you are human and cannot help it."

"So how do you see things?" Nathan demanded. "Why are you on the Theseus, Tony?"

"Because your Old Man promised to advocate for my people, and because you are my friend," came the uplifted tiger’s honest and immediate answer. "If I can help bring peace between the Aurealians and the Jurassians, that is well. But ultimately my motives are self-serving, and I have no particularly strong feelings towards either of the belligerents."

Nathan sighed. He gave Tony one last scratch under the jaw, then turned to walk away.

"This is why we make uplifts, you know? It’s not why we started, that was just playing God. But at some point we realized how much we needed to speak with others who didn’t think like us, to help us cut through our own bullshit," Nathan said. "I really hope you get your wish and your people spread throughout the UEOSC, Tony. If they’re all anything like you, then we need them."

"I am glad that my selfish worldview has helped you resolve your ethical crisis," Tony answered as Nathan walked away. The great cat continued to purr, curling up into a comfortable position as his friend walked out of sight.

"Athena, return me to my personal quarters via phase matter transmission with all safety protocols engaged," he said once he was out of sight, which was not truly necessary. The PMT relays could pick him up from almost anywhere in the Theseus and deliver it to any other component, but it felt weird to just disappear in front of his friend.

"Confirmed, user Nathan Sawyer to be transferred to personal quarters. Counting down to phase matter transmission. 10. 9."

Unlike travel with the Aurora Drive, Nathan had never been able to actually feel the PMT working. He knew the principle. It didn’t destroy and rebuild matter elsewhere – no sapient would use such a terrible device to travel if that was the case. It was something to do with quantum tunneling, but Nathan would require two decades of dedicated study to understood how it actually worked. The matter in one location was ‘tunneled’ to a new location in more or less the same state. He knew the limitations; the matter must be within a certain distance of a relay, the relay must be linked with the destination relay, and ‘spin’ was sometimes changed, especially over longer distances. Fortunately the observable difference between the matter that was phased was insignificant in terms of biological process. Quantum electronics could be damaged by PMT, but no effect on sapient life had ever been detected.

Nathan closed his eyes and bent his knees when the countdown reached "3." At zero, he fell four inches and, when he opened his eyes, he was in his quarters. He promptly made his way to the mess; he had gone to visit Tony as soon as he had woken and needed to breakfast before long.

He was eating reheated breakfast pastries and artificial sausage when the holoemitter in the table he was sitting at turned on, displaying the disembodied head of the old man.

"Good morning, Nathan. I hope that your visit to Tony helped you clear your head," the ghostly mannequin face said.

"Did you get me fucking kicked out of the Marines you asshole?" Nathan demanded immediately.

The old man chuckled. "Katherine thought you would put something like that together. No, Nathan. Your reason for washing out was entirely upon you. The ESF marine corps wanted to keep you in a different capacity, however, and I pulled some strings to convince them to release you from duty instead. Your potential was too valuable to Yosca to waste you in a dwindling military that has so many mutual defense treaties that it will never actually be called upon to even defend its own territory from anything other than stray bandits and smugglers trying to plunder earth for cultural relics."

"And never send more than a token force to any other conflict in UEOSC space."

"Just so. A single ship filled with a few squads of marines would fulfill their obligations to even their most restrictive treaties, while the moment they call for aide millions of soldiers and thousands of vessels will arrive in Sol space within days, because neither humans, nor our allies, are willing to let earth fall."

"I don’t think my mother would appreciate you taking me away from the safest military in existence and putting me into the middle of the deadliest conflict we’ve ever seen," Nathan commented.

"I think you would be surprised. Did I ever tell you that I’ve spoken with her? More than once, in fact. She confessed to me how your decision to leave your home was both the saddest and proudest moment of her life."

"Did you tell her you were pulling me into Yosca?"

"She knew who I was. She would know that if I was personally doing background and security checks on a young marine trainee, there would be significant implications to my questions. She did not know what I was recruiting you for, but she believed you would do great things. A belief that I share emphatically with her, Nathan. There were hundreds of thousands of human candidates for this mission, and you are the only one I brought with me aside from Katherine, who has been at my side since her mother was forced to retire from active service."

"What makes me so damn special, then?" Nathan demanded.

"Nothing in particular, and everything at the same time," came the old man’s infuriating answer. "Your dedication to non-human sapient rights, military background and training, ability to process and understand new information, and personal morality were all factors, but honestly, the deciding factor was that I made a judgment call. Katherine believes I should have brought veterans from a number of different militaries, but I didn’t want anyone who had actually seen combat before."

"I’m a rookie? That’s my great qualification? I’m here because I washed out?"

"No, but it’s part of the consideration. A veteran retains the loyalty they had to their previous unit, their military, their government, etc. They would view all of their actions in terms of how they are affecting the lives of the civilians they were sworn to protect, even if they have been officially release from those oaths. You, however, only joined the marines because it was the easiest way for you to leave Earth, and your parting with the ESF was amicable, if not entirely dignified. Your actions do not reflect or impact anyone but yourself and the crew of the Theseus. That is an incredibly important point which would be blurred if we had loaded the ship full of experienced veterans."

"Right. So you have a greenhorn representing Yosca instead of someone who knows what they’re doing. Great plan."

The old man’s head was silent for a pregnant moment.

"Oh fuck me," Nathan said when he realized the significance of the silence. "This isn’t even a UEOSC mission, is it? Is this you acting all on your own? That’s why the Theseus is so undermanned and filled with unaffiliated sapients."

"Yosca knows about our mission and approves. If we succeed, we will be acknowledged and rewarded for our efforts," the old man informed him seriously.

"And if we fail?"

"Disavowed. Potentially prosecuted as criminals, depending on the circumstances. It’s hard to predict the fallout when there are so many moving pieces. But that is why your unaffiliation with any established force except the ESF is so particularly important."

"Because the ESF already washed me out and won’t think twice of disavowing me either," Nathan said bitterly. "And none of its treaty partners would blink."

"I wish I could put it in better terms for you, but yes. I understand that this is an unfair position to put you in when it is too late for you to back out. Entering stasis until the completion of the Theseus’s mission is still a possible solution for you, Nathan. You would be able to claim innocence in any action you were not a direct part of."

"I can’t do that and you know it. Not because of my phobia, but because of what I learned last night. I could never look at my mother again if I didn’t try to help you … um, what exactly are we trying to do, Old Man? What can we do?"

"You haven’t figured that out yet?"

"I shipped out on this mission thinking we were just going to do a bit of espionage and bridge building. That was before I learned that intelligent beings are being raised like animals, hunted for sport, and eaten by other intelligent beings. I know what I want to do about it, but it isn’t my call to make."

"And what do you want to do about it, Nathan?"

"Stop it. Put an end to the atrocities, by any means necessary," he said without hesitation.

"Be very careful with those last four words, Nathan. They lead down very dangerous roads," the old man warned him. Then he softened as much as Nathan had ever seen the old man soften. "Since apparently this wasn’t communicated to you last night, I will inform you of the Theseus’s mission for her maiden voyage. Objective number one: observe and document the expected conflict between the Jurassians of the Horthus system and the Aurealian armada designated fleet gamma. Objective number two: make all reasonable attempts to establish a ceasefire and initiate mediation between the aforementioned parties. Objective number three: make all reasonable attempts to limit and mitigate civilian and noncombatant casualties in the aforementioned conflict."

"You really expect me to try to protect those child-eaters?" Nathan demanded, disgusted.

"Nathan – for the purpose of Theseus’s mission, all Aurealians on Horthus prime are designated civilians."

Nathan reeled at the sudden paradigm shift. Protect the Aurealian children, and the nameless who were just living their lives. That was the optimal outcome, was it not? Why had he not realized that sooner?

"How exactly do we keep the Jurassians from killing them?"

"Progress on objective three has already been made. The Rodentia corp is working to disable the cloning facilities producing the Aurealian for the Named Ones to hunt. Our very presence, along with the incoming armada, has caused Horthus to pause the killing in order to maximize the number of hostages he has available."

"Dammit, why didn’t you explain all of this to me weeks ago?" Nathan demanded, slamming his fist on the table hard enough that the hologram flickered.

"Would you have come if we had?" the old man asked, cocking his disembodied head.

"Without hesitation," Nathan insisted.

"I believe you. I struggled with the decision of what to tell you and when for a long time, Nathan. I decided to play it this way to keep your personal motivations pure. Your decisions, and your reasons behind them, will be incredibly important not only in the success of our mission, but in controlling the immense fallout that will result from either our failure, or our success. What you know, and when you knew it, may become very important in the future. There are many other things I wish I could tell you, but I have decided that it is better that you do not know. Please, respect my judgment on these matters and operate to the best of your ability with the knowledge that you have available to you."

"At least this time you’re telling me that the blinders are still on," Nathan muttered. "You don’t want me to predict the fallout of our mission, do you?"

"No. In some ways, a failure would be better than a partial success. Nathan, I know that you hold all sapient life to be sacred. All I ask is that every decision you make is to be made with the intention of the preservation of all sapient life based on the information you have available to you. If you do that, then even if things go ‘tits up,’ you will be able to hold your head high in the fallout."

"Assuming that I survive that long," Nathan argued.

"Yes, assuming we all survive," the old man agreed.

Nathan looked down at the table, at his unfinished meal. He was no longer hungry, and he pushed the unfinished food away before drinking the dregs of his coffee. "So now that I’m up to speed, what’s the real plan? You sent in the rats to destroy the cloning machines, and I agree with that decision. But the Rodentia corps can’t fight, and we don’t have the personnel to protect the Aurealians that are down there already."

"I believe, at this juncture, the best way to proceed on objective three is to begin work on objective two," the old man answered. "The lead Aurealian scout ship is expected to finish its breaking manuever in two days. The rest of the swarm will follow in approximately six days. Presumably their leaders will be in the second group. We have already launched a stealth relay to attempt to establish contact with both arrivals. In the mean time, I believe it is time for us see Horthus."

"The planet, the city, or the guy?" Nathan asked smartly.

The old man smiled, his synthetic face taking on a malevolence that, at his most feral, Tony could never match.

"All three."

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