Man-Kzin Wars XI
Table of Contents
THREE AT TABLE

GROSSGEISTER SWAMP

CATSPAWS

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
TEACHER'S PET

I
II
III
WAR AND PEACE

THE HUNTING PARK




MAN-KZIN WARS XI
HAL COLEBATCH
AND
MATTHEW HARRINGTON
CREATED BY
LARRY NIVEN
 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.

Three at Tablecopyright © 2005 by Hal Colebatch;Grossgeister Swamp by Hal Colebatch;Catspaws
copyright © 2005 by Hal Colebatch;Teacher's Pet copyright © 2005 by Matthew Harrington,War and
Peace copyright © 2005 by Matthew Harrington;The Hunting Park copyright © 2005 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-13: 978-1-4165-0906-6
ISBN-10: 1-4165-0906-2

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, October 2005

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Man-Kzin wars XI / Hal Colebatch and Matthew Harrington ; created by Larry Niven.

 p. cm.
Three at table / Hal Colebatch — Grossgeister Swamp / Hal Colebatch — Catspaws / Hal Colebatch
— Teacher's pet / Matthew J. Harrington — War and peace / Matthew J. Harrington — The hunting
park / Larry Niven.
ISBN 1-4165-0906-2 (hc)
1. Science fiction, American. 2. Kzin (Imaginary place)—Fiction. 3. Science fiction, Australian. 4. Space
warfare—Fiction. 5. War stories, Australian. 6. War stories, American. I. Title: Man-Kzin wars 11. II.
Title: Man-Kzin wars eleven. III. Colebatch, Hal, 1945- IV. Harrington, Matthew J. V. Niven, Larry.

 PS648.S3M3753 2005
813'.0876208—dc22
2005019121

Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Produced & designed by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH (www.windhaven.com)
Printed in the United States of America
 THE MAN-KZIN WARS SERIES
                                         Created by Larry Niven

                                         The Man-Kzin Wars
                                       The Houses of the Kzinti
                                          Man-Kzin Wars V
                                          Man-Kzin Wars VI
                                         Man-Kzin Wars VII
                                 Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII
                                          Man-Kzin Wars IX
                                  Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War
                                          Man-Kzin Wars XI
                                    The Best of All Possible Wars

                                           Also by Larry Niven

                           Fallen Angels(with Jerry Pournelle & Michael Flynn)




  Three At Table
Hal Colebatch
 To the memory of W. W. Jacobs
Arthur Guthlac, Wunderland, 2427 a.d.


I've been stupid, I thought. Being stupid on a strange planet is very often an effective way to be dead.
Even a planet as friendly to Man as Wunderland.

Stupid to go through fifty-three years of desperate war to die on Wunderland seven years after
Liberation in a bad storm, on a leave I've spent a long time looking forward to.

 But maybe I won't die, I told myself then as the mud fell and slid about me.Maybe I'll look back on all
this one day and laugh. I've been in far worse places and survived. Keep climbing, disregard my
ankle and get above the flood-mark. Then climb higher. I didn't know then what I was climbing into.
                                                  ***

I had set out from Gerning in an air-car for a day's lone hunting in the wilder country to the east. I hadn't
brought much in the way of food or clothes or even weapons. What's the point of a hunt with modern
gear that gives the game animals no chance? You might as well zap them by laser with the aid of a
satellite camera. I had an antique .22 rifle and a box of bullets and a handy little device copied from the
kzin trophy-drier for anything I wanted to freeze-dry and bring home.
There was a good autodoc in the air-car, of course, and a modern communication system. My
headquarters could get in touch with me, and I with them, at any time. I hoped they wouldn't.

 A long, long time ago, I had been a museum guard on Earth. I had worn a quaint uniform and collected
banned scraps of militaria and had also dreamed of exploring distant worlds—had hoped more
realistically that with some saving and luck I might one day get a budget package holiday to the Moon to
remember for the rest of my life like some of my lucky fellows on the museum general staff. There had
been notions of glory and heroism, too remote, too impossible even to be called dreams, barely possible
to hint at even to my sister, the one human with whom I had in those days confided. Now, if I wore
uniform, it was different and had a star on the collar. But, more importantly for me at that moment, I had
humanity's first interstellar colony to make free with as a conqueror—well, as a Liberator, certainly—and
I didn't want to waste the experience.

 A pity nobody at Gerning had told me about the weather. Apparently—that is the most charitable
explanation—it had never occurred to them that even a holidaying flatlander would be so ignorant or
stupid as not to know what those black-and-silver clouds building up in the west meant. The ramscoop
raid from Sol by the UNSN seven or eight years ago, shortly before the Liberation, had, it was said, as
well as causing terrible damage, upset the patterns of the weather. Storms in the storm-belt came earlier
and stronger. Something to do with the cooling and droplet-suspension effects of dust in the air. It was
expected that things would return to normal eventually. As I had been preparing to depart my hosts had
been more interested in laughing at a funny little thing called a Protean that had turned up in the
meeting-hall, a quaint and harmless Wunderland animal which had evolved limited powers of psi
projection and mimicry. That there were less harmless ones with psi powers I was to find out shortly.

 Anyway, the clouds built slowly, and, like a cunning enemy, they gathered out of the west, behind me. I
took off near noon and three-quarters of the sky was clear. I flew low, not at even near full speed, over
the farmlands and woods, fascinated as always by what I saw below. Much of the time I left the car on
auto-pilot, and enjoyed being a rubber-necking tourist. With the kzin-derived gravity-motor, so much
more efficient than our old ground-effect lifts, I could vary the speed and height with the touch of a finger
on the controls. The car gave me a meal, and the day turned into afternoon.

 I passed over human farms and little scattered villages and hamlets. The simple dwellings of people living
simple lives, far away from much government and from much of the twenty-fifth century. I knew many of
these people had originally settled here with the simple life in mind, but then the war and kzin occupation
had knocked their technology way back into the past anyway. Some of these settlements were again
prosperous, pleasant-looking places from the air, but there were some desolate ruins, relics of the war
and the occupation that had halved the human population of this planet. I passed over the scattered
wreckage of destroyed war-machines and the kzin base, and the great tracts that the kzinti had had go
back to wilderness as hunting preserves. Humans had often enough been the victims set running
hopelessly in those hunts . . . Many more had died under the kzinti in other ways.

 But ghastliness was relative. The Gerning district had largely survived. After the first hideous butcheries
the local humans had learnt kzin ways, and their survival-rate had increased. They humbly avoided
contact with their overlords, abased themselves when they encountered them, and sweated on
diminishing land with deteriorating equipment to raise the various taxes that were the price of life. The
local kzinti, many attached to the big military base, had, apparently, not been quite like the creatures of
the dreadful Lord Ktrodni-Stkaa, and the local Herrenmann had been able to intercede with their
commanding officer occasionally. I had gathered that there were a few kzinti still living in remote bits of
the black-blocks around the area now, as well as solitude-seeking, eccentric or misfit humans.
Wunderland was sparsely enough populated that anyone who wished to be left alone could be.
 There were herds of cows and sheep passing below. On Earth I'd never seen them free-ranging like this.
Wunderland creatures, too. There were a herd of gagrumphers, the big, six-legged things that occupied
an ecological niche similar to that of bison or elephants on Earth, moving in and out of the marvellous
multicolored foliage, red and orange and green. Then the human settlements thinned out, and I was
passing over forest again, and uneven ground with a pattern of gullies and water-courses below me, small
rivers low at the end of summer like silver ribbons. The roads were few and narrow.

 This was what I had once dreamed of: the landscape below me could never be taken for Earth. Every
color and contour was different, some things slightly and subtly off, some grossly strange. And ahead of
me as I flew, on the eastern horizon, were the tall spires and pinnacles of great mountains,
low-gravity-planet mountains sharper and higher than anything Earth had to show, pale and almost surreal
against the blue and pink tints of the eastern sky.

 I should have noticed how quickly it was getting dark. But there, below me, was something else: a
tigripard, the biggest felinoid—the biggestnative felinoid—predator in this part of Wunderland. Their
numbers had built up during the kzin occupation, partly because of the general chaos and desolation, and
also because the kzinti found their fellow-felinoids rather good sport in the hunt and encouraged them,
and they remained a nuisance for these backwoods farmers with their still relatively primitive appliances
and equipment. What modern machinery the kzinti had not smashed or confiscated during the war had
largely become inoperative through lack of maintenance and the farmers were in many cases beginning
again from Square One. I saw some ancient farming robots sprawled broken like the corpses of living
things or, on one long-abandoned farmstead, jerking and grubbing uselessly through degraded
programmes that no longer made sense. The further one got from Gerning the fewer the little farms and
cottages were and the more backward they looked. Nothing like Earth farms.

 The tigripard was a big one, worth a hunter's attention. But there was no sport or achievement in
shooting it from above. I followed it for a time, not approaching close enough to alarm it. That was
difficult. I guessed that in the last few decades all Wunderland creatures had become only too alert to
terror and destruction from the air. The tigripard was running down a long slope to lower-lying,
river-dissected, territory. A moving map on the instrument-panel gave me a general picture. I saw it leap
a river—a big leap, but the river was low. The human settlements were much sparser in this area but
there were still a few and there was still quite good grazing for animals. The locals should thank me for
ridding them of a dangerous piece of vermin, I thought. There was very little legal hunting on Earth—even
a UNSN general would find it hard to get a permit there—and I was a completely inexperienced hunter.
At least of things like this.

 We were approaching a more deeply gullied, poorly vegetated area like a small badlands. The tigripard
turned into a gully and tracking it became more difficult. After a time I landed and, hefting my little rifle,
followed on foot.

 That was the first first stupid thing: I was so used to military sidearms that could bring down a kzin or a
building, that sought their own targets, and could be used like hoses against kzin infantry if necessary, that
I took it for granted the .22 was all I needed. Another stupid thing: I was so used to thinking of my alien
enemies as eight-to-ten-feet-tall bipedal felines or blips on a radar screen that I found it hard to think of a
feline the size of a tigripard—even a big tigripard—as dangerous to me personally. It was quite a long
descent to the watercourse at the bottom. There was a small game-track at first but that petered out. The
gully's walls gradually rose above me, reducing my view of the sky.

 I scrambled down to the bed of the watercourse, jumping easily further and further down in the low
gravity, looking for tracks in the damp sand and mud beside the stream. There were none. I pressed on,
into the next gully, almost like a small canyon. It wound and twisted and still the mud yielded nothing. I
was practicing my tracking skills when two things happened: the tigripard leapt up onto a rock in front of
me, snarling, and the sky turned black.

 I've had plenty of infantry training, even if quite a while ago. I brought the gun up fast and fired. In that
space its report was ridiculously small, swallowed up by the air around. The tigripard was faster. If it had
gone for me I should probably have died under its claws then and there. But evidently it was experienced
enough to be wary of Man, or at least of Man plus weapons. It leapt sideways and disappeared behind
the gully slope. Whether I hit it or not I had no idea. And at that second I had other things on my mind.

I had never seen a daytime sky turn midnight black before, and the light die in an instant. Who has?
Wunderlanders who live in the storm-belt have, I discovered.

 Then the rain and lightning came, the rain in solid sheets, the lightning hardly less unbroken. Thunder filled
and shook the sky. I had seen the sky of Wunderland purple in the light of Alpha Centauri B, one of the
great sights of Human Space. This flaring, vivid purple light was a different thing. In an instant I was
soaked with freezing rain, my head was ringing and I was almost blinded. That's when I heard the tigripad
again.

 The tigripard knew Wunderland better than I. But it made the mistake of snarling its challenge before it
leapt. I dropped flat as I fired again and its leap carried it over me. It was a very near thing, though: a
hind-claw shredded the light shirt I was wearing. Below me the ground gave way, and I rolled down a
steep incline. I fetched up bruised and dazed at the bottom. Had it not been for Wunderland's light
gravity I would have been a lot worse off. And the tigripard and the fall had saved my life. As I got
groggily to my feet again a bolt of lightning struck the place I been standing a few moments before. I saw
rocks and earth hurled into the air, and then for a while I might have been blinded.

 I could only hope the tigripard was at least temporarily blinded too, but I heard it snarling somewhere
not far away. The skyline had become near and narrow and lightning was trickling all around it. There
were the lashing hailstones, too. Any bigger and they would do real damage. Flicking my rifle back and
forth, trying to cover all directions at once, I ran, still part blind, running straight into cliff faces, stumbling
and falling to a ground that the cloudburst had already churned to mud, boiling up like soup. Live soup,
too. I saw creatures like the froggolinas and kermitoids, I supposed long encased in it, springing to life
and away. Three times I thought I saw movement that might have been the tigripard and fired at it. The
fourth time I heard a snarling, very close, and knew there could be no mistake. But my rifle was so slick
with water and mud, and my hands so cold in the sudden rain and hail, that the selector must have moved
to automatic setting. I fired off all the rest of the magazine in an instant.

 I groped for the box of cartridges. Had I brought it with me or left it in the car? I couldn't remember, but
a frantic search showed I didn't have it now. If it had been in my pocket I had lost it in the fall.

 I've studied many disasters. I know the worst of them usually don't have a single cause. They are an
accumulation of small things, too small to guard against: a weather or meteor report misfiled by a tired
duty officer, an alarm system not checked one day as it has been every day for years, a faucet blocked
by paint, a decimal point shifted one place in a computer's instructions, a fleck of dust working its way
into an old keyboard . . . I had got where I was in those gullies by an accumulation of small things, and, I
realized quite suddenly, my life was in danger.

 So far I had been excited, keyed-up, furious. Suddenly I felt cold and frightened: not the fear of battle,
but another kind of dread. Not only from the tigripard, which seemed to have gone, perhaps hit, though I
doubted that, perhaps to stalk me from cover, but from this rain. Great chunks of earth turned suddenly
to mud were falling from the gully banks and I realized I could end up underneath one. But there was a
more inevitable peril. One thing I know something about is the theory of terrain, and recalling what I had
seen from the air, I knew these canyons must flash-flood in rain like this. I realized that I had seen
high-water-marks in them, all well above where I was now. In fact, I thought, that was probably why the
tigripard was gone. It was climbing, and if I was to remain alive I had better do the same fast.

 I slung the rifle over my shoulder and started up the slope. It was hard to make much out in the
ceaselessly-rolling thunder and the constant beating of the hailstones but I thought I could feel the ground
as well as the air shaking. I was so covered in the mud I squirmed through, and in ice from the hailstones,
that perhaps even the superb sensory equipment of the tigripard was confused and could not find me.

 There was another thing I remembered: tigripards, though among the most obvious, were by no means
the only Wunderland animals I had to fear. Among other things, very relevant at this moment, there was
the mud-sucker, a thing vaguely like a giant leech, which, I had been told on the orientation course I was
now remembering, could lie dormant in mud, like this, for a long time and then come to life in rain, like
this rain. Apparently its prey included large animals, perhaps up to human size. "No one knows how big
they can grow," the instructor had said. "But don't be the one to find out." Rykermann had also told me
that, like much other Wunderland fauna, little was known about them. They gave cryptic hints of some
kind of dim psi ability, and he too was definite that it was best to keep out of their way.

Another nasty thought: some of the wrecked war-craft which I had flown over on my way here had had
nuclear engines. Could spilled radioactives have worked their way into this mud over the last seven
years? Of course the car had instruments that could have told me at once.

 Then the real floods came. Out of the west, and concentrating my mind. The rain must have been falling
there and filling these water-courses long before the storm reached me. A real roaring and shaking of the
ground and white-foam-fronted black water below me advancing like a wall. Hydraulic damming—I
remembered the phrase from somewhere as I scrabbled upwards for my life in the slipping mud. I slipped
and rolled again, ending up caught in a clump of sharp black rocks just above the rising water. I had
damaged my leg some months before in the caves, but it had been healed. Now I felt it was gone again,
in a different place, near the ankle. Maybe (I prayed) not broken this time. One small mercy: crawling,
almost swimming vertically, up the mud-slope in the hail, an ankle was perhaps less crucial than when
walking or running. Another mercy was the low gravity. But progressing up was very different from my
carefree jumping downwards. Anyway, I got to a ridge. I tried to stand then, and found I couldn't. The
.22 made a sort of crutch, not very handy for it was the wrong length and either barrel or stock sank into
the mud when I leaned on it. I more-or-less hopped a few yards.

I had to get back to the car. And then I realized I had not the faintest idea in which direction the car was.

 I sat down in the mud and hail then, cursing feebly that I hadn't had the sense even to slip a modern
cover-all into one of my pockets. It would have weighed next to nothing, taken up no space and would, if
I had needed it, kept me as dry and warm as toast. It would even have been strong enough to protect me
in a fight. I had put on locally made clothes for the sake of fresh air and ventilation on a warm morning, as
well as because it was one of the things tourists do.

 There were a lot of other things, which, if not misled by the benign appearance of the morning and my
own excitement and inexperience of this world, I might also have brought: a gyro-compass, a locator, a
beacon, even an ordinary mobile telephone, not to mention real weapons. I had plenty of navigation
instruments and communications equipment, as I had a good autodoc and almost everything else I might
need, but they were all in the car. I had an implant by which I could be traced if necessary, but there was
no reason for anyone to think I was in great distress. If anyone was interested and they assumed I had
enough sense to remain with the car and its equipment, then even a storm like this should have been no
problem: a matter of touching a button and closing the canopy.

 It took me a long time to make progress, and it horrified me how quickly what little daylight there was
failed.

 And the river was still rising. Chunks of mud were sliding and dropping into it from the sides of my ridge.
And the ridge itself was shrinking. Soon it would be an island, and soon after that it would be covered
completely. I would have to climb again. It was then that I fully realized how much my life was in real
danger.

 I was alone, lost, injured. And this was not my world. I knew something of its weather and its wild-life in
theory, but I knew that in some ways, simply not having grown up here made me blind and vulnerable to
dangers that others instinctively avoided, blind as a village yokel of the fifteenth century on Earth suddenly
time-transported into a modern city or a modern transport complex. Where was the tigripard? I hardly
dared move now, lest it sense from the pattern of my foot-falls that I was injured and come circling back.
Indeed I feared I was already projecting psi waves to tell it I had changed from hunter to prey. But move
I must. Before I had made much more progress it was full night, or at least the storm's equivalent of it. I
had not appreciated what night was like in the unpeopled country where there was no artificial source of
lighting. The clouds obscured everything in the Wunderland sky above, though far away in the West was
a dim glow that might have been the lights of Gerning reflected against them. Far to the East it was lighter
for a while, but then the clouds covered that as well. The almost incessant lightning was a danger, but
soon it seemed to be my major source of light. It was not full night yet, and when I climbed higher I saw a
distant ribbon of paler sky far to the east still, but full night was coming.
                                                         ***

I climbed again. Glancing back once I saw the black rushing water tear away the last of the ridge where I
had rested. The hailstones tore at its surface and lumped together into chunks of ice.

 I knew that I was on what was technically a big island between two rivers, low and narrow when I had
seen them from the air, now both grossly swollen and rising all the time. I recalled seeing houses not far
away. I toiled further up the next sliding muddy slope, again using my weapon as a sort of crutch. It took
me a long time, and my skin crawled as I waited for the impact of the tigripard on my back, and thought
of the irony of dying under the claws of a feline after all. Then at some point the sliding mud became more
stable and solid. My ankle was badly swollen but massaging it seemed to help, and out of the mud I
could walk, slowly and cautiously. The rifle was some more use as a prop here, but I wished it had been
a couple of feet longer. Again I was thankful for Wunderland's light gravity.

 Below me, something writhed through the mud up the track I had left. For a moment I thought it was the
tigripard. But as it came closer I saw it was a shapeless thing with a trumpet-like suctorial disk, the orifice
ringed with small fangs and tentacles—a mud-sucker, a big one. I was feeling too battered and numbed
to react for a few seconds, then fear and revulsion set me moving a good deal faster than I would have
thought possible. It didn't like the firmer ground though, and after waving its trumpet in my direction for a
time turned back, vacuuming up some of the newly active froggolinas as it went. I hoped it would find the
tigripard—or did I? The tigripard was a brother compared to this thing, and deserved a cleaner fate.

 You can imagine my delight when, as I gained some even higher ground, a burst of lightning showed me
a road at my feet. More importantly, after I had followed this for a while, another burst showed the
unmistakable straight lines of man-made walls and structures some way off. Another two or three flashes
and I made out that there was a small village, a hamlet, I suppose it should be called. A single street and
a few one-story houses. Shelter, warmth, food, help, safety. I hobbled on as fast as I could.
 Realization didn't all come at once. First I noticed there were no lights burning. Then in the lightning
flashes I saw roofless skies through gaping holes where windows had been. The hamlet was a deserted
ruin.

 If I was bitterly disappointed, I saw that it was still shelter of a sort. I know now why you should keep
out of deserted ruins in this part of Wunderland if you're alone and can't see well, and if you're effectively
unarmed. At that time what I wanted was to get out of the cold driving rain and hailstones at least. And I
wanted a door to keep the tigripard out should it return, or even the sucker-thing whose hunting-patterns
I knew nothing of. I found one building, the only two-story one, that not only had a door but also still had
a bit of roof on it, and hunkered down in the driest corner I could find. I took off my clothes and shook
as much water from them as I could, badly missing modern tough and water-repellant fabrics, dressed
again, though the warmth they gave was largely imaginary, then curled myself into a ball in an effort to
keep as much of that warmth as possible, and waited for the night and storm to pass. If the flash floods
came quickly they should fall equally quickly. I was still worried that the tigripard was tracking me, but
could see no sign of it.

 In fact I fell asleep almost at once, without meaning to, but when I awoke nothing had changed.
Certainly it was now full dark night even without the piled-up storm-clouds. But getting to sleep a second
time was impossible.

One good thing had happened—like all UNSN troops I have had my night-vision enhanced by
nanosurgery and now my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark. It wasn't perfect but I made the most
of what light there was and in all but the darkest patches of night I was no longer completely blind and
helpless.

 I've had my skin toughened a bit too, but despite that it was still very cold and miserably uncomfortable.
The sites of the injuries I had had in the battle with the mad ones in the caves a few months before were
aching in concert with the pain in my ankle despite all the miracles of modern medicine, and something, I
didn't then know what, was making me both more anxious and unhappy than I should have been.

 I got up and set out to explore a little. Black as the night was, the almost continual lightning showed me
the empty rooms, long ago stripped of furnishings, miniature waterfalls from the gaps in the remnants of
roof and ceiling, and a broken staircase leading down into a cellar or shelter which I had no inclination to
enter. I could hear water down there splashing into mud, and I had no desire to get involved with more
mud or what might live there. In other rooms some small creatures that I could not make out clearly
scuttled away as I entered. I remembered the poison-fanged Beam's Beasts and gave them as wide a
berth as they gave me. As I expected, I found nothing useful. The house had been thoroughly stripped
long before.

 Was that a light I could see out the window? The hail slackened for a while. With that bit of clearing I
could see further, and suddenly my spirits rose again. For there was, I saw between the lightning flashes,
indeed a dim orange square of light some way off.

 The tigripard must be far away. Surely if it was nearby I would know by now. Perhaps it recognized the
.22 as a weapon. Perhaps like so many larger wild creatures it avoided even the ruins of Man. I didn't
know then that it had another good reason for keeping away from the house.

I wrenched down a splintered door lintel. A piece of it made a better crutch than my empty gun. Leaning
heavily on it, I set off up what had been that hamlet's only street. A black silhouette grew around that
orange square as I drew nearer: a bigger house standing by itself on a rise of ground. The light was an
upper window.
 There was a path leading to the door, but as I approached it more closely I realized things: the house
was too big, the upper windows too high and small, while the ground-floor windows, where they
occurred at all, were mere slits, and dark. The door was too high and wide. And, as I said, the light in
that window was orange. There were other things about the architecture. This was not a human house but
a kzin one. I looked back and saw how on its rise of ground it dominated the hamlet and gave a view of
all the surrounding lands. This had been the mansion of the local kzin overseer of human slaves.

 Plainly it had been slighted during the Liberation. I could make out, now that I looked, where the high
walls and towers that must have surrounded it in the old kzin architectural style would have stood. Their
rubble filled what must once have been a moat or ditch. I saw stumps of concrete and metal where
defense and security installations must have been torn down. Behind the house were some large storage
tanks, though I could not see whether or not they were intact. On the roof silhouetted against the sky in
the lightning there was no sign of the dishes or antennas of modern communications equipment.

 But that light burning now was ruddy orange. Not white or yellow. Only kzinti liked that orange light.
Were there kzinti here still? It was quite possible. I knew that some of them still lived in the depopulated
districts, shunning humans for obvious reasons, and this place, purpose-built and to their size, still
relatively defensible, would be far more suitable for them than any others around. As I stood looking up
at it I saw the silhouette of someone or something cross the lighted window.

 Well, I would ask no shelter or favors from kzinti. Both pride and prudence said that. I was a soldier
and I could stand an uncomfortable night in the ruins if necessary.

 Trying to distance myself from the pain in my ankle, I hobbled back through the mud to the
ghost-hamlet. For no particular reason I knew, save that it seemed the best-roofed and I had left the .22
there, I returned to the first house I had entered and curled up in my former place.

Then the zeitungers came.

 I didn't know then that's what it was. I had heard of the zeitungers, originally called the
zeitung-schreibers, of course, but I had never encountered them. And what I had heard of them had
given me no true idea of them or of what encountering a pack of them when alone at night and physically
spent was like.

 Humans and kzinti alike on Wunderland loathed them and would stop at nothing to exterminate them.
Like the Advokats and the Beam's Beasts, however, they liked the ample food which they associated
with human activity. No one had told me they were often to be found in the ruins of human buildings here,
presumably because nobody thought I would be spending a night in such ruins. They were carrion-eating
vermin like the disgusting Advokats but with, in addition, an ability to project psychic damage and
distress which they used as a weapon, an especially potent one when they were packing. They didn't limit
themselves to carrion. The zeitungers' mental emanations could make a small-brained animal—an Earth
rabbit or dog, say—lie down and scream, waiting for them to mob it and tear it to pieces alive.

 On a big-brained animal and especially on a sophont the effect was more complex. Cognitive
dissonance, a combination of pathological anxiety, hallucination, hypertension and, above and beneath
and overarching all, black, disabling, even killing, clinical depression—if "depression" is an adequate
word. Wunderland creatures had evolved a certain resistance to the zeitunger power. Earth animals, and
humans, had not. The creatures could apparently do nothing else mentally. They might be able to
communicate among themselves—every member of a shoal of fish or flock of birds on Earth can turn in
the same direction in an instant—but they were not telepaths. The only power their dim minds had was
destruction.

 All the meanings of darkness. There are two kinds of memories which, if you let your mind dwell on
them too intensely in the wrong circumstances, can destroy your reason and you. We all have a store of
them and they are in a sense opposites. Normally we can erect a kind of cordon sanitaire around them
most of the time: one kind is of horror, trauma, tragedy present again and unbearable; the other is of joy,
happiness, innocence, destroyed, violated and lost forever. They can combine. The zeitungers give you
both, with a quantum jump in emotional intensity and immediacy. That happened.

It began like a dream. Word-salads. A brain beginning to race, like a vehicle going out of control. And a
high, thin monotonous threnody wailing in my brain to the strings of a harp:



 Till a man shall read what is written,
So plain in clouds and clods;
Till a man shall hunger without hope
Even for evil gods . . .



 Then very early memories of gardens—lost gardens. Myself a baby with toys in a nursery, laughing on
my mother's knee—never had memory been so sharp and clear. Then reliving the death of my parents,
that blow that came too soon and that I now knew had maimed me. Then like a bad, silly dream, I was
reliving with a feeling of black regret my last day at school, the school I had hated, the realization
that—all my own fault—I was leaving unqualified for anything but a life in a menial, dead-end job if I was
very lucky, a lifetime on the dole more likely: there were far more people than jobs in the peaceful,
prosperous, Golden-Age world I grew up in, long before ARM took notice of certain desperate
messages coming in from lonely ships in space. I relived walking up the stairs to the assembly-hall and the
class-rooms one last time that day, rooms and halls and passageways almost empty as the last of the
others were leaving, wishing I'd worked harder, and thinking "It's too late now." As I say, silly memories
to cast one into a black depression. But the zeitungers were just getting down to business. All the bad
memories of adolescence and my young manhood . . . it went on.

 Then it became waves of futile anger at everything: at myself, at the storm and at the people at Gerning
who had not warned me of it. Then memories of every sad thing that had ever happened to me: my futile,
dead-end, prewar job at the museum, my timidity and failures with women—allthose latter came back in
detail, from teenage onwards, until the time I finally retreated into an emotional shell with my sister Selina
and some dreams as my only friends—my farewell to Selina before she went into space and the kzinti
took her, my pathetic, childishly caressed, dreams of glory and success, the terror when my forbidden
military studies were discovered by the museum authorities. More recently the loss of Jocelyn van der
Straat. My one sibling dead, like my parents but infinitely more horribly, my one brief lover lost,
disappeared.

 As far as I felt anything beyond pain and pity for myself, and that falling, falling, it was a kind of huge,
sick disgust for the human race, its murderousness, its greed, ingratitude, disloyalty and viciousness. Its
self-importance and delusions of spirituality. The kzinti gave us the true measure of the universe: pure
carnivores, with no concept of altruism or mercy. How could any of us, even me in moments of
weakness, have thought differently? I found my mind running back to images of what must have
happened to Selina when they got theHappy Gatherer . I thought of what had happened here on
Wunderland when the kzinti invaded, and for a time my mind filled with lines from the "Dirge of Neue
Dresden":



 Oxygen supports combustion.
Big fires need draughts to last.
Hot air rises. Heated enough
It rises very fast.

There would be vacuum at the fire,
except then, from every side
the atmosphere implodes to fill it,
and the draught is thus supplied.

The heat increases, the wind increases,
carries its fuel like a tide,
travels at hundreds of miles an hour
and topples walls in its stride . . .



 There were other things I thought about. The decades of war had given my mind all manner of horrors to
settle on. How stupid, I now saw, were the hopes that some humans caressed of some kind of eventual
reconciliation between Man and Kzin! Even I, thanks to my association with the kzinti called Raargh and
Vaemar, and Cumpston and some of the other humans I had worked with, had been wavering in that
direction. It was all foredoomed wishful thinking.

 Some humans talked of, praised, the kzinti's courage and honor, but that courage and honor, if those
were not mere names we humans had projected onto the minds of aliens we could never understand,
only made them more dangerous. I had seen in their military what looked like their devotion to duty, and
their strength and resolution, more than I needed to: those qualities were as terrifying as anything else
about them. Honor? What did that mean? There was nothing ahead but war to the knife, pain, bloody,
terrifying death, till all were dead. Like the Slaver War of the ancient past. That was how life and the
Universe were made.

 Then it got worse. If you have experienced bad clinical depression you may know what I mean.
Different in each person's case, and yet the same. A black dog ravaging. Black sea-weed in the brain.
Poisoned ice. Something wrong at heart and lungs. It did not stabilize on one beach of desolation. It was
like falling from ledge to ledge, each lower and narrower than the next, and a knowledge that quite
inevitably a ledge was coming that would be the last and narrowest, and that after that there would be
nothing but a pit below. No safety-net, no survival. And with physical nausea thrown in: they didn't miss
that trick. There was plenty on my conscience, and I got it all. Those who had died because I gave the
wrong orders, those who had died because I gave the right orders, those who had died . . . I have never
actually heard myself moaning in mental anguish before.

 Then three beings entered the room: two of them were kzinti I knew—Raargh, the tough old
ex-sergeant, and young Vaemar. They must have come from the big house, I guessed. I had no idea they
were in the Gerning district. But then, between them, was Jocelyn.

"Get up, silly monkey," said Raargh. "Come with us."
"There is no need for alarm," said Vaemar, in his precise, almost pedantic, English. "The situation is
under control."

 "Arthur," said Jocelyn. She stepped towards me, arms wide to embrace me. She was naked, and for a
moment I thought she must be cold. Then I felt myself standing (or was I?) moving forward into her
embrace, while the knowledge of the miracle of her existance and return to me began to flood into my
mind. I cried out in wonder and joy. Then the two kzinti leapt at her, teeth flashing, ripping at her flesh.
Jocelyn became Selina, dying when the kzinti took theHappy Gatherer .

They all turned into white skeletons and fell in clattering heaps of bone to the floor. They disappeared.

Then I lost all rational thought. There was only darkness and fear. The pit. A sense of suffocation.
Darkness visible, despair physical, a dagger of poisoned ice in my chest.

 I was sitting with my head buried in my hands, shaking, thinking of suicide—the idea had a tangible
shape, something that entered my mind on spider-legs and squatted there—when I heard the distant snarl
of the tigripard again. I raised my head from my hands.

 The zeitungers were round me in a ring on the damp, dusty floor, eyes bright. They looked like very
large Earth rats. There was the .22 where I had abandoned it. I reached out, and the feel of the weapon
in my hands, even though I knew it was useless, gave my mind a moment's revival. The zeitungers
seemed to sense it, and retreated a couple of paces. Then the uselessness of it overcame me and I
dropped the thing. They came forward again, and I saw their mouths opening in snarls that revealed their
little fangs. In a moment, I knew, they would spring. There was nothing I could do about it. My brain was
in such a state I would have welcomed them, as I was meant to.

 The door flew open. A human figure leapt into the room. A red siting spot appeared on one of the
creatures' heads, and an instant later a laser cooked its brain. I don't know if the scream from it and the
others was a physical or mental event or both. The horror they had filled my brain with was jerked about.
Some of them sprang at the human, and the beam rifle cut them to pieces in mid-air. The others made for
the cellar, and a good number died on the way. Then the survivors wheeled in a mass and made for the
main door and the street. Few reached either. The human leapt after them. In the dim light from the
doorway I recognized the contours of a kzin infantry beam rifle. It fired again, this time on another setting.
A thin, incandescent jet of plasma-gas followed them.

 I leapt back, bad ankle or not, from the blast of heat on my face, and came down on that bad ankle
heavily, screaming and cursing. Good honest physical pain, good honest screaming and cursing. This was
real. There were flames flickering now where the beam had hit inflammable material, and thick steam and
smoke, but in that light I saw that my deliverer was a woman.

 She dialed another setting on the rifle, and a jet of foam from it smothered the flames—the kzinti who
had made it had learnt about house-to-house fighting. She came to me and put out her hand. I took it,
and for a moment could only cling to it, babbling incoherently. Her hand was real, firm and solid. Then
my brain seemed to clear. I apologized. The feelings of the last—how long had it been?—suddenly
seemed largely unreal, as the nausea of sea-sickness suddenly seems unreal to a passenger ashore on dry
land, or as a spacer leaving hyperspace forgets the blind spot. She lit a lamp, and shone it round the
corners of the room. In its light I saw her properly for the first time. I vomited, and got to my feet. Like
the recently sea-sick passenger, I was very unsteady.

She was tall like nearly all Wunderlanders, and handsome, or more than handsome, in a hard sort of
way. The way she handled the heavy weapon—heavy for a human even in this gravity—told me she was
strong. Her clothes were plain, and in the city would have been called drab, the everyday garb of the
women I had seen on the farms of Gerning. They evidently repelled the rain, though, unlike mine.

 "My name is Arthur Guthlac," I told her. "I'm from Earth. I've hurt my leg and I'm lost." Her face in
repose looked strangely sad. Well, perhaps not strangely. On a large part of the population of
Wunderland the tragic past lay heavily.

 "My name is Gale. Do not be afraid. Or ashamed." She spoke a dialect of rural Wunderland, with some
slightly old-fashioned constructions. "There were many zeitung-schreibers. I know what they can do.
Now you had better come with me."

"Must I walk far?" I remembered my manners and made some sort of speech of thanks, still finding my
voice hard to control.

"You're not free of it yet," she said. "It takes a while. I live at the big house. Not far."

 The house with the orange light. That was the only big house and the only habitable-looking one. Well, if
this woman lived there my previous thoughts about it being inhabited by kzinti were apparently
groundless. Now that she had identified the zeitungers, and I realized the nature of the attack that had
been made on me, I wondered if my previous fears of the place had simply been a product of their first
mind-probes when they began gathering around me.

"The sooner you are warm and dry the better," she said.

 That was certainly true. We stepped out of the ruin into the spectral street. Gale swept the rifle-barrel,
firing once at an errant zeitunger I did not see and blowing it apart. Then she "broke" the butt open to
replace the charge, extracting the old charge-pack.

 The tigripard leapt out of the night as the lightning dribbled about us. Thunder drowned its snarl. Gale
leapt sideways, a hand to her belt, something flashing in her hand. I had not seen a human move so fast.
The tigripard's charge carried past her, past the spot where she had been an instant before. She struck as
she leapt. It gave a scream of pain and rounded back on us, creeping towards us, belly close to the
ground. Then she had the beam rifle together, one-handed, somehow, up and firing. The tigripard died in
mid-spring. I saw that in her other hand she held an oversized knife, and as she wiped the tigripard's
blood from it and returned it to her belt I saw it was a monomolecular-edged kzinw'tsai . I thought that I
would not like her for an enemy, and I have been in some hand-to-hand combat.

She passed me the lamp and dialed the laser setting on the rifle down to provide an additional flashlight.
The rain and hail were back in full force again, the visibility closing in.

 I leant on her a little as I hobbled up the path to the house again. It had been, I guessed now, her
silhouette I had seen crossing the window. But why that kzin-ish, murky orange light?

"How did you know I was out here?" I asked.

"I did not know that you particularly were here, but I sensed the zeitungers packing. A kind of psychic
backwash reaches all minds around when that happens. Then the only thing is to go out and kill them all.
Follow your thoughts, as it were, and they are easy enough to find."

This lady was mentally as well as physically tough, I thought. I did not know if I could have done that.
She opened the door with a large electronic key. It looked too modern and hi-tech for this place. It also
looked as if it had been made for larger hands than hers. kzin claws. I followed her in.

 "Are you alone?" I asked. A stupid, perhaps lethally tactless, thing to say at a time and in a place like
that, but I was not thinking clearly.

 "I am a widow," she said. That was not remarkable. After fifty-three years of war and kzin occupation
there were plenty of widows—and widowers and orphans too—on Wunderland. "But I am not alone,"
she went on. "There is a kzin in the house."

 I was sure she was not bluffing about that as I stepped across the door. Not just the light, the smells. On
Earth and in space I had been used to dwelling-spaces that cleaned themselves. On liberated
Wunderland I had become used to more primitive standards. But this place smelt strange and disturbing.
Not dirty, but not right. Partly it was the smell of poverty, which, once you have smelt it, you cannot
mistake and cannot forget. There was also a smell like a field-hospital, a very primitive one, that did not
have pleasant associations for me. But it also smelt of kzin. And that smell you cannot mistake or forget
either. Perhaps, I had a wayward thought, she manufactured that smell artificially to keep human and
animal intruders away more effectively than any pack of ban-dogs. But if I had had designs on her or on
the house, and even if she had not been carrying the kzin weapons, absence of kzinti was not the way I
would have been inclined to bet. But at that moment the absence of wind, rain and hail made up for a lot.

 The entrance hall, when she operated a switch, was lit by the same ruddy orange light. The light of
Kzinhome, perhaps, but dimmer. This kzin evidently did not like the lights bright. I sat down on an
uncomfortable wooden seat. When the kzinti walked Wunderland as conquerers, I knew, their dwellings
had been decorated with preserved bodies or parts of humans or other kzinti they had killed. There was
none of that here, though there were some slightly discolored or unfaded patches on the high walls where
such trophies might once have been mounted. The place was furnished with old Wunderland farmhouse
furniture, too little for the room's more-than-human size, and with one of the kzin-sized couches they
called fooches. There were a couple of pictures, old Wunderland rural scenes mainly, not unlike those I
had seen for sale at Gerning, or in the tourist shops at Munchen. One, however, was turned to the wall.

"Wait here," she said, and went up the stairs.

 I waited. Despite the almost euphoric feeling of relative physical comfort and of relief from the zeitunger
attack, my mental state was still pretty wretched—bruised, as it were—and I was fearful of being alone. I
was also fearful of the unknown kzin. There were no distractions. To give myself something to do, I went
to the picture turned to the wall and examined it. Then I wished I hadn't. For it was not a picture but a
mirror. I did not know why a mirror should be turned like that, but it did not seem reassuring. I began to
think of ghouls and vampires. Did this woman wish to hide the fact that she had no reflection? A stupid,
irrational thought for a modern man, a space-traveller come to that, but in my circumstances it got a
toe-hold in my mind. Or could she not bear to look at herself?

 Then she returned. She looked ordinarily human. Real, solid, and, I saw now, beautiful. I already knew
that for a Wunderlander she was muscular. Her body was what I would once have called splendidly put
together, though that seemed a suddenly crude and insulting way to express what I felt. She had changed
into something less peasant-like: a multicolored robe of modern, or at least prewar, fabric. And though
there was a hardness and strength in her face, there was also, I saw now, another quality, a tenderness,
that I had never seen in Jocelyn's.

"You can stay," she said. "I would not turn you out tonight for the zeitungers anyway. You have already
got a mind full of their poison, though it has not worked its way in too deeply yet. And there may be
more of them out there. I have seen what happens before when they come in a pack across lone
travellers, especially at night. And there may be other things. Come."

 Cautiously, I followed her into a ground-floor pantry-like place. I made myself not think about the
nonhuman size of the rooms and many of the other things, like the pantry's great meat-hooks. She gave
me some food from a fairly modern automatic unit and we talked about a few inconsequential things. I
suppose I babbled a bit, laughed at some things that were not really funny. I noticed some things about
her of the sort that snag in the mind at such times. I may have paid her some silly, clumsy compliments.
After a little such she laughed too.

 Then there was a bathroom, where she left me for a while, with an adequate range of both human and
kzin-sized fittings, and a wonderful hot shower and soap, neither of which were things kzinti used, along
with a modern dryer and human-sized basin and toilet. No mirrors, again, though, and that absence
seemed odder here and uncomfortable once more. While I was cleaning myself up she must have been
preparing a bed for me in one of the adjoining rooms. It was primitive enough—in space and even on
Earth I was used to sleeping-plates—but when she led me to it the fabrics looked warm and clean and
inexpressibly inviting. She massaged my ankle and put some dark ointment on it that felt hot but relieved
the pain and a tight bandage that relieved it further. Not like modern medicine but it all moved me to
another small speech of thanks.

 "Rest now," she said. "I have things to do." She spread a cover over me and turned down the light. She
closed the door firmly as she left.

 I should have been alert to possible danger. But I simply lay there, savoring the warmth and dryness and
comfort, watching through the high window-slits the rain, hail and lightning that could no longer reach me.
I had no temptation to go exploring on my own at night in a kzin-inhabited house.

 It would have been nice, I thought, in the sort of sexual fantasy perhaps to be expected of a man in my
condition, suddenly brought from the worst mental anguish imaginable, from great physical discomfort,
pain and danger, to comfort and warmth, and a deeply lonely man in any case, if my hostess would open
the door, enter wearing nothing but the robe I had last seen her in, shed it, and climb into the bed beside
me.

 It was different to most sexual fantasies however, because a few minutes later she did precisely that. She
climbed into the bed beside me, and wrapped her limbs about me, naked, warm and willing. I had known
nothing like her since . . . since Jocelyn. I did not believe she was real till I felt her full, heavy breasts
against my face, the smooth, warm skin, the roughness and strength of her thighs, her lips moving over
mine and whispering in my ear. She was a strong, beautiful, lover. And I turned to her not only with lust
and passion but a desperate need. Whatever it was, she understood. She was erotically inventive as well
as tender and sweet to me then. Save for her sounds of passion, and a command once, at the
beginning:—"Lie still! Let me do it!"—she said little at first. At last, as I lay with my head on her chest,
savoring the warmth and fullness of her breasts about my face, she spoke again.

"You'll not be good for much tomorrow," she told me.

 "You are so energetic, then?" I had no intention of finishing our night at that point. She sat up in the bed,
and I saw her in the dim light, a naked shape that was inexpressibly beautiful to me at that moment,
surrendered to me, yet I saw the strength in every line of her body. I raised my hands to caress her.

 "Whether I am or not, I speak of the zeitunger attack," she said when we paused. "I have seen the
effects before. Believe me, this is therapy for you, though believe me also, that is not all it is. It has been a
long time for me."
 Her estimates of our demands for energy were not misplaced. Later we talked a little more, about the
usual things in such circumstances, very quietly and gently, a lot of it not quite vocal, throat and lip noises.
At last sometime during the night I fell asleep, holding her warmth, her softness, her loveliness and
comfort, to me. But when I awoke she was gone.

 When the next day came, black and stormy as the previous evening, I hardly noticed it. The aftermath of
a zeitunger mind-attack, if you shake off the depression and don't let it drag you down into a sort of
catatonia, is, after a delay which can vary from minutes to a day, an extremity of weakness and lethargy. I
was grateful that for me the time-lag before it struck had been considerable

 Gale's therapy, if that was what if was, had saved me from the worst of it, I think: at least a lot of the
zeitunger poison she had purged away. I was simply drained of everything. But if she had saved me from
the worst after-effects of the zeitungers, she had been right about what would be left for me, once the
delayed effect of what they had done hit home.

 If the bed I was lying in had somehow caught fire Imight have been able to roll myself away from it by a
supreme effort but again I'd not necessarily bet that way. I lay there as though drugged through the brief
dark day, dozing, listening numbly to the thunder and the rain pounding outside, the water gushing from
the eaves in thick torrents. I heard Gale's voice beyond the door, talking to the kzin, I supposed, though I
heard no kzin voice in reply: those harsh hiss-spit nonhuman tones are unmistakable. In those hours I felt
too mentally as well as physically weak to care about this whole bizarre set-up. If she wanted to act as
housekeeper or whatever it was to a ratcat, it was altogether too odd for me to care or worry about
then. She looked in on me at times, saw there was a blanket covering me and did the other usual things.
She seemed to have done such things before, and be used to lifting. Well, many people on Wunderland
had become experienced nurses. She held me for a while, but even while feeling her warm against me I
was too weak to move.

 By evening, though, I felt livelier. In fact I was feeling hungry. And I wanted her again. The sick, killing
depression and feeling of mental anguish seemed largely gone even as a memory. But zeitunger influence
on my central nervous system or not, I quite rationally didn't want to go venturing about the house alone.
The resident kzin might not take kindly to meeting a strange monkey wandering loose in its own lair
without a proper introduction, and I was certainly in no shape for a dispute. I found Gale had repaired
my torn shirt and trousers with sealant and added a local man's blouse which, if not modern fabric, at
least did a little to keep the cold out. If it was inadaquate it was more than I expected, and a far more
generous gift than it might appear: I had been briefed on the fact that after the decades of war and
desperate shortages these rural Wunderlanders had powerful cultural and psychological inhibitions against
giving away any possessions. I dressed and padded cautiously about the room. There was a picture on
the wall of a man, bordered in black, and another picture of the same man with Gale and two small
children. I remembered she said she was a widow.

 Anxiety beginning to surface again. And questions without answers. Too many of them, I now thought.I
had learnt again the previous day the old lesson that ignorance could be fatal. Anything to do with kzinti
was dangerous. But there seemed to be no answers in this dimly-lit room. My thoughts started to run as if
in a squirrel-cage.

 There was a large cupboard standing by one wall—Wunderland rural, made from the local wood. Such
a thing would have been worth a fortune on Earth, and it occurred to me that once the hyperdrive
became economical and used for more than military purposes there would be new intersteller trades set
up. Perhaps I could board that rocket while it was still on its launching-pad. That was a happy enough
thought, but I had plenty of other thoughts not far beneath the surface still. After a few moments
contemplation I discovered that the cupboard looked somehow sinister. That old phrase "skeleton in the
cupboard." Whoever first coined it had a poetic talent of a sort, packing a story with a lot of very
unpleasant, immediate and persistent imagery into four words. I opened the cupboard.

 No skeleton. But other things. I knew these backwoods places often did not have autodocs, but this
stuff seemed very strange. Bandages, like the bandage Gale had put on my ankle (bandages that could be
used as restraints, perhaps?). Rolls of that old substance cotton-wool, which, like other things I had seen
in this part of Wunderland, recalled my days at the museum and displays there of houses of the past.

 There were a few old-fashioned medicines and applicators, including sprayers and tubes of fungicide. I
didn't like that, but at least when I looked at them more closely they proved to be old kzin miltary
medical supplies—kzin-specific, not human. They bore the dots-and-commas kzin script which I could
read somewhat and the winged-claw sign of the equipment of Chuut-Riit's regular armed forces. The sort
of thing kzinti used in campaigning when there was no doc handy. Presumably they had been there since
before the Liberation. There was a relatively modern garbage-disposal unit on the cupboard floor. It was
a small, free-standing device and I guessed Gale had tidied it in there when she cleared the room for me.
Its power had been turned off.

 You can learn a lot about people from their garbage. But not this time. When I opened it, I saw a
number of stained cotton-wool swabs. They appeared to be stained with blood. Of what type I couldn't
tell in that light. Had I seen the same sort of things in the pantry? There were a few other odds and ends
in the cupboard, which I thought had been made originally to hold clothes. The cupboard door had a
black panel on its inside, which faced me when I opened it. It wasn't wood like the rest, and there
seemed to be something odd about it. When I looked closely I found it was another mirror, painted over.

 So much for the cupboard. I found it vaguely unsettling, and with no answers. No skeleton, anyway. I
lay down again and waited till Gale reappeared. She was dressed in another colorful gown, a semi-formal
one of clearly prewar style, a little more revealing than the last. Beautiful Gale.

"You're better, I know," she said after we had kissed. "But wait till later. We'll be dining shortly."

 "I'm more than ready," I told her. And then, again rather clumsily, "And I thank you once more. If there
is any way I can repay you for what you have done for me . . ." I was trying to convey several things and
probably didn't do any of them properly. I raised my hands and caressed her. She responded, but there
was something abstracted in her response. I asked her about the resident kzin.

 "He wants to see you," she said. I did not want to see him. I wanted to leave the first moment I could,
preferably perhaps the next morning after another night warmed by her without having anything to do with
any kzinti, to find my car or otherwise call for help—I supposed even this place had some sort of
communications—get back to Gerning and have my ankle seen to, and get on with my life.

 Thinking about another night with her though, and the previous night, made me wonder if this should be
the end of the affair. I very definitely did not want it to be the end. Perhaps she would come too?

But one thing I had learned about backwoods Wunderlanders. They were sticklers for their own codes
of hospitality. If this kzin wanted to see me, as courtesy, and more, to Gale, I could not refuse. Indeed to
have refused could have caused more than offence to her. I thought it might well have been enough to
provoke the creature's hair-trigger anger, and perhaps against her as well as me. Did he still consider her
his slave? And was he resentful about my handling of his property?

Anyway, I consented to his desire to see me. There seemed no alternative.
 "Does he speak English or Wunderlander?" I asked. "I know something of the slaves' patois, and the
script, but I cannot manage the Heroes' Tongue." In any case, I knew, it was an insult for a monkey to
use the Heroes' Tongue to a kzintosh. During the Occupation it was a fatal insult.

 "Conversation will not be required," she said. "He is not meeting you to converse." A few moments
before, with the touch of her on my hands, and her lips on mine, I had felt positive and happy enough.
Suddenly, things seemed abnormal and disturbing again. There was, I realized, strain in every line of her
face and stance now, in every tone of her voice. This kzin—or something—was making her do something
against her will. No, I didn't like any of this at all.

"We will dine together," she said.

 I didn't like that either. Not one bit. It was abnormal. Kzinti did not eat with humans. Monkey
eating-habits disgusted them as theirs disgusted us. They tore and gulped at raw meat, often enough live
meat. Those fangs could sheer the biggest bones.

 A sudden hideous chill in my spine: kzintidid eat with humans, of course, when humans were the meal.
Was that what this was all about? A trap to supply the kzin with monkey-meat? Was I to be a course
rather than a guest at the dinner? Was Gale some sort of bait for unwary travellers? Kzinti had
sometimes—often—taken hostages to force humans to act against their wills. Those children?

 I told myself I was being stupid, but a doubt remained. The main point with which I reassured myself
was that if this kzin was determined to eat me it could have done so the previous night, or at any time
during the day just finished when I was virtually helpless. Or did they like their meat conscious and
terrorized? They did when they ate a zianya, I knew. The glandular secretions of its terror and pain
added flavor to the meat, and it was said they considered that flesh ripped from a zianya's body before it
died to be especially delicious. Did they consider attacking a human recovering from a zeitunger
pack-attack unsporting, as I had considered it unsporting to beam or shoot the tigripard from the air?

 Should I run now? Bad ankle and all? Stupid. A human even with two sound legs could not hope to
outrun a kzin—many had tried. And to attempt to flee is guaranteed to provoke the attack reaction in
them. Even Cumpston, who knew some individual kzinti far better than I did, had warned me that never,
even in games with those he knew, would he make a feint of running from them. And Gale had the beam
rifle. I could not outrun that.

Yet I could not believe anything so hideous.

 Or could I? What good explanation for any of this could there be? And why,why was this woman living
so, serving a kzin as if humans were still their slaves on Wunderland? What hold did it have on her? I
hadn't cared a little time before, but suddenly, as my mind came back towards normal, that question did
matter. I remembered a horrible old story about the aftermath of an ancient human war and a surviving
death-camp victim found protecting and serving his old torturer, hiding him from the vengeance of the
liberators: "He promised to treat me better next time." Was there something like that here?

 Or was there some explanation even worse? That Gale was acting as awilling bait in a trap? Acting
from some perverted hatred of her own kind like Emma, or getting a share of the meat and a kick out of
cannibalism? I had encountered crazy humans on Wunderland before—not very long before. Indeed it
was they who had, I now realized, killed my love, my Jocelyn. Humans steeped in more tragedy than
their minds could cope with, humans raised as privileged kzin collaborators, humans twistedly pro-kzinti
or simply wicked for wickedness' sake. That there were human cannibals on Wunderland I knew. There
was not a sick perversion but some human would indulge in it. After decades of war and occupation
madness was abroad on this planet. There was a rigid control about Gale, something damming and
stopping her emotions, something desperately abnormal. She seemed to wish not to speak, to betray
nothing, and yet was clearly under some terrible pressure.

Then Gale said something else. Defensively, as if she expected protest:

"His eyes are not . . . he does not like strong light. We will be dining in the dark."

I would be insane to agree to that. I had my suspicions about this kzin and his meat-appetites already.

 And yet . . . My sister Selina was said to have had latent telepathic abilities. I had never been tested but
I had at least something—an erratic and occasional intuition about others—which, when I had felt it in the
past, had stood me in good stead. I felt it now and it told me Gale was not lying about that half-stated
fact of the creature's eyes, at least. Not exactly. But I was equally sure that she was keeping something
back.

And I felt her care for me, her tenderness, was genuine. Or had she used sex to, among other things,
deliberately confuse my perceptions?

 I would be at every sort of disadvantage. Kzinti were happy to be night-hunters. Further, darkness
enhanced the rudimentary sense they possessed which, in a few individuals, was developed into the
power of the telepaths. If they were physically close to one in the dark, I had been told—and when I was
told it, by a human under a bright sky, the idea of being physically close to one in the dark had made me
shudder inwardly—even the nontelepaths could read something of one's state of mind. It was an ability
evolved to help them to hunt out game that attempted to hide at night and in caves and other darknesses.
Not that they often deigned to read monkeys' states of mind when they strode Wunderland as
conquerors . . .

 I should have refused absolutely. But something prevented me. Was it the fear and sadness in Gale's
eyes? Was it some dawning feeling of love for her, that great destroyer of survival-instincts? The
tenderness in her that I felt? Was it that the zeitunger attack had simply left me in no mental state to put
up any resistance? Perhaps the desire not to appear a coward to her? And besides, if the kzin wanted me
dead, then I, alone, unarmed, and unable to run, was dead anyway. I allowed Gale to lead me towards
whatever lay at the top of the stairs.

 The dim orange light was still burning, and I quickly memorized the details and layout of the place as well
as I could, noting thankfully that the dark would not be quite total and the kzin would not, it seemed, be
too close to me. There was a fire behind a screen near the place where I would evidently sit. That
warmth was out of consideration for my too-light clothes, I supposed, and so I could see the food and
cutlery in front of me at least. It was a very tiny fire, shielded by the screen, and looking at it I
remembered something Rykermann had told me, one of those wayward thoughts which a mind seeking
distraction from what is before it flees to: Rykermann believed that, possibly because of their flammable
fur, kzinti without armor, in battle and house-to-house fighting, in the rare event that they were afraid of
anything, were afraid to be with out-of-control fire in confined spaces. Hence the foam attachment on
Gale's rifle. Sometimes, occasionally, that fact could be used.

 There was one big central table, with another human-sized chair, plainly for Gale, about two-thirds of the
way up, and a kzin-sized chair—not one of their usual fooch recliners, I noticed—at the other end. I
thought, with more unease that contained a great deal of real fear, that it would be easier for the kzin to
spring at me across the table from a sitting than a reclining position.
 In my military studies of the kzinti I had come across a little about their dining habits. "But if you go into a
kzin dining-room you're in a lot of trouble anyway. If they've left you a weapon or you can improvise
one, try to take as many of them with you as you can. Go for the eyes and tendons," had been one
manual's advice on the correct etiquette for the situation. The table was standard enough, from what I
had read, with its central notched runnel and ditch for blood, although I also noticed that runnel had no
bloodstains, or at least no fresh ones. But the smell of blood was thick enough now. Kzinti loved the
smell of blood. And there was no kzin food here. Or not on the table.

 Gale turned down the lights, leaving only the dimmest glow of the screened fire. True, there were still
occasional lightning flashes outside the window, and a near one might light up the room, but I said nothing
about that, or of my enhanced night-vision. But thanks to that little glow of the fire behind me, I would be
looking from dim light into darkness, so my night-vision would be effectively nullified. Had she planned it
that way?There is something horrible here ! But it was too late to flee. I knew I would not make it
even down the stairs.

 She brought some bowls, placing one before me, and one before her own place. Then she brought
another for the kzin's place. I smelt blood even more strongly then. I think she may have seen how pale in
the dim light my face was, or heard my hard breathing. She kissed me quickly on the cheek.

"Wait," she said.

 She left me alone for a moment. I heard something heavy advancing. The kzin was only a blot of
darkness as it entered the room. I saw/sensed it moving into the great chair. Its progress seemed to take
a long time. But kzinti are much faster than humans on their feet. Its footfalls were strange. It said nothing.
Why did it say nothing? There was no explanation for any of this. I strained every bit of the poor mental
faculty I had to sense something beyond sight. Gale was sitting towards the other end of the table, closer
in the darkness to the kzin than to me, but I sensed she was quivering with tension. Why a bowl? Kzinti
tore meat. They did not eat out of bowls. Come to that, why had the kzin not come out with Gale to hunt
the zeitungers? Their night-vision was better than any human's, their reflexes faster, they hated zeitungers,
and they loved hunting for its own sake.

"Eat," she said, and her voice was cracked with strain. Somehow I got a piece of food to my mouth.
And then, "Let us be thankful for what has been provided."

 Or was it a kzin at all?There was the kzin's gingery smell, unmistakable (or was it—that idea that had
first crossed my mind when I entered this place!— a counterfeit of kzin smell? I remembered that I had
heard no kzin voice in this house). The thing was big like a kzin, bigger than a man. I could sense that
unmistakably.

 But its breathing was a shrill whistle, nothing like that of a kzin, with a bubbling like nothing I knew, and
the strange sucking noise it also made was not the noise of a kzin eating. No kzin sucked its food!

The lightning flared.

The head I saw in dim, momentary silhouette was not like a kzin's head. Was that a trumpet-shaped
protuberance? The lightning flared again, longer and brighter.

The thing I saw was not a kzin.

I gave a roar of panic and terror from the bottom of my diaphragm, worse, more tearing, than a scream.
Not a very courageous reaction from a decorated brigadier, but I tell myself now that my brain still had
some zeitunger-poison in it. I leapt backwards in horror, knocking over the fire-screen, hitting the wall.
The firelight flared brighter and the hideous thing seemed to leap at me. The walls were thick, as in any
kzin-built structure, and the small window deeply recessed. I jumped onto the window sill, gibbering like
a monkey. Then Gale turned on the light.

The ghoul, the thing, the obscenity, stared back at me.

I saw I was wrong. Itwas a kzin. Or it had been one, once.

 Both ears were completely gone—not merely ears but hair and skin and flesh. Much of the head was
naked bone, veins led across it by some makeshift, ghastly amateur medical procedure. One eye was an
empty, bony socket, the other partly occluded by a projecting keloid-scar. The nose and muzzle were
gone, leaving only a red cavity. So too was the whole lower jaw gone, and the fangs of the upper jaw.
There was only a wobbling fragment of tongue dripping blood and slaver and the hole of a gullet. I saw it
had been feeding by sucking bloody liquid through a tube. There were stained lumps of cotton-wool lying
near.

The kzin raised its paws as if to hide its mutilated head. Paws, I saw, not hands. The fingers and claws
were gone as well, and its fore-limbs were asymmetrical, the right one withered and twisted. Burns.
Attached to the left one was a metal rod. I guessed it communicated by using this on a keyboard.

 I had been aware of Gale's muscles when I saw her handle the rifle and then when we held each other in
the night. Wunderlander or not, she had lived a strenuous life. She went to the kzin now and helped it
stand. I saw that for a kzin it was a small one, the smallest male I had seen except for a telepath. It gazed
at me from between its mutilated paws with its single half-eye. She said something to it I could not follow,
then led it away. Again it took a long time, for it shuffled very slowly. There was something wrong with its
legs and feet as well, and it was hunched and bent as if its spine was damaged.

 I was left alone on the window ledge. I climbed down and returned to the table, breathing hard and
trying to control myself and to retain my food. I was still sitting there when she returned

"He was in the ramscoop raid," she said. "He had run into a burning building and it collapsed while he
was inside it. Now I keep him alive. He is ashamed to be seen. But after last night he wished to see you."

 "You seek to torture him?" I understood very well how many on Wunderland hated the kzinti. Well, who
could understand that better than I? But still I disliked torture for its own sake. And the state of this
creature could inspire horror and revulsion but not, in a sane being, hatred.

 "No, no!" There were tears on her cheeks. "But he wanted to feel if you were . . . if you were . . ." More
tears, almost uncontrollable, like a dam breaking. After a time she calmed down.

"Then, if you wish to be kind, is it kind to let him live?" I asked. "I would have thought most kzinti would
prefer to die and go their God rather than drag out life so reduced."

"He fears death because he is no Hero," she replied. "He believes that if he meets the Fanged God he
will meet him as a coward and the God will regurgitate his soul into nothingness. For he did not get his
wounds in battle. He was not a warrior kzintosh, you see. He never saw battle. His rank-title was
Groom/Assistant-To-Healers. A medical orderly, a corpsman, a stretcher-bearer. Despised by other
kzinti always. A humble, lowly semi-civilian. No Fighter's Privileges. If he had died in that burning
building, or died of his injuries afterwards, he would not have died acceptably, in battle, on the attack. He
had his injuries in a shameful manner. He fears to die now. I help him live."

"And for the same reason, I suppose, he hides away?" I asked.

 "Yes. And so he did not want me to tell you. He wanted you to think he was a fearsome warrior . . . a
Hero. It left him a little . . . pride. A little less shame. He is . . . often confused. I tried to tell him . . . that .
. . that even as his own kind count such things, he would be . . ." She made a sound of helplessness.

I made some gesture, some sound, of non-understanding. "I have not heard of a kzin who was ashamed
of scars before," I said. "Quite the reverse."

 She gave a peculiar, tearful smile. "No Hero," she said. "But there was more to it than that. After the
building collapsed he was under the burning, smoldering, wreckage for a long time. There were other
priorities in damage-control and rescue. While he was there the zeitungers got to him. They had been in
the cellarage there, too, like your rats. Whether they could reach him physically to tear what was left of
his flesh I don't know. But they tore his mind, for days.You can imagine that, now."

 I could. Not the cruelest human being, I thought, who had experienced the zeitungers could but feel a
throb of pity for this creature of a pitiless species. This wreck of a kzin and I had something in common, I
thought.

"The effect, as far as I can tell, on human and kzin minds is parallel," Gale said. "What do kzinti fear?
Many things, secretly. But to fail as Heroes perhaps most of all."

Even, perhaps, those far-off dreams of glory were something this lowly kzin and Arthur Guthlac the
museum guard had shared.

 "They lodged their poison deep in his mind," she went on. "He was there with them too long. And you
see the state he was already in." Kzinti, even nontelepaths, had that rudimentary telepathic sense more
acute than that of nearly all humans. More receptive. I had no difficulty understanding that a prolonged
zeitunger attack, setting up patterns and paths in the brain, would be a different matter to the brief one I
had endured. And the zeitungers themselves would presumably then have been filled with animal fear and
panic. I tried briefly to imagine an unremitting zeitunger attack if one was already desperately injured and
mutilated, blind, trapped, alone, helpless, in agony, hour after hour as fire crept closer. After a very short
time I stopped doing that. Again, as I stopped shaking, the wan ghost of a smile crossed her strained
face. This Wunderland woman was at least as tall as me, and our eyes were level. "Unlike your case,"
she said, "there was no treatment." Our faces moved together and I found myself kissing her again,
gently, tenderly.

 "Yet that," she went on after a moment, "may be another reason he struggles to live. To die of such
shame and despair would be a victory for the zeitungers."

"Why has he had no modern treatment since?" I asked. "For anything? Body or mind?"

"Treatment? How?"

 I did not understand everything yet, but I wanted to be gentle with her. At least some of my ghastlier and
more grotesque fears and suspicions about her and this kzin seemed wrong. I put my arms around her
and stroked her hair and after a moment she rested her head on my shoulder, hiding her face against me.

"I know an old kzintosh warrior, Raargh, who has many wounds from the war," I told her. "One arm and
one eye are not his own, and his knees are metal. His scars are honored and honorable among the kzinti.
There are kzintoshi with sons"—was I babbling a little now?—"who point them to the likes of Raargh as
Heroes to emulate. But he had his wounds in battle."

"Then he is fortunate among the kzinti. This one they would despise. Or so he believes."

"But your kzin could have a better life," I told her. "Far better. There is good surgery. Transplants,
prostheses, quick nerve, bone and tissue-growth are available now. For kzinti as well as humans. His
mind, too, perhaps. There are facilities . . .

 "Raargh lives well enough, even as kzinti count such things," I went on. "In hunts he pulls down game
with his prosthetic arm and his artificial eye allows him to see in the dark." When I thought of Raargh I
knew again that I felt rather more warmly to him than to most of the creatures. I remembered certain
things that had happened in the caves. "He has adopted a youngster who is his pride and joy and I think
he is getting more sons of his own."

 "In the city hospitals, perhaps, and for the Herrenmanner and their clients, there is such treatment," she
replied, raising her eyes. "What money do we have for that?" I remembered what a backwoods part of
Wunderland this was.

"And who would help a kzin?" she added after a moment, with genuine puzzlement in her voice. "The
kzinti have no power. On this planet they are destroyed. And I was no collaborator. I did my part to
destroy them."

 "It costs nothing," I said. "Part of the terms we offered the kzinti on this planet when we made peace was
that their wounded would be treated."

I saw her face change.

"I did not know that!" Her face lit so that she looked a different person. Then it fell again. "But how
would we get there?"

 Explaining the new political situation in the cities would have taken a long time. I owed this deformed
kzin little enough, thinking of what the kzinti had done to me and mine. But I owed Gale. If she had done
nothing but save me from the zeitungers, I would have owed her. Anyway, she was a beautiful and
desirable woman and, it seemed, an innocent one. And if I felt dawning love for her, along with desire, I
suppose I also wanted to impress her. I took the identity-disk from my neck and passed it to her, my
fingers twining round hers as I did so—a strange situation for lovers to be courting!

"You see my rank? I am a brigadier general attached to the UNSN general staff. At present on leave.
But I can arrange transport for him . . . and you."

 I had become embarassed by my earlier behavior. Now I was embarrassed by her reaction to my
words. She went down on her knees and clasped my own. She kissed my hands, where the previous
night she had kissed my lips. Her face was like a light of joy. I raised her to her feet and, holding her,
walked with her to the window. Together we looked out. The lightning flashes were definitely further
away now, the rain was thinning and, I guessed, the floods would subside quickly. I accepted all that she
said, but one question remained.

 "I still don't understand," I told her. "A kzin. An enemy. An invader of this planet who would have
enslaved and destroyed us all. Yes, his burns and injuries are terrible. But why do you care for him so?"
 There were sounds behind us. The mutilated kzin shuffled slowly into the room again. Evidently it had
decided to face me, with courage of a kind that I hoped I would never need, though it still held its paws
as if to try to hide what was left of its head from my sight. But it looked less horrible now. It made some
gestures to Gale that she plainly understood.

 She went to a dresser and took a bottle that I recognized: bourbon, something both species drank. She
took two glasses for us and another bowl that she put in front of the kzin, pouring a little into each.

"I will explain to him," she said. "Things must be explained to him carefully."

"But first," she said, "we usually drink a toast each night." And then, raising her glass, "To my children."

Following her example, I drank. The kzin, manipulating its trumpet with difficulty between its paws,
dipped it into its bowl and sucked.

Without words I understood, and I saw that she knew I understood.

"Yes," she said. "He held up the building while they escaped."




  Grossgeister Swamp
Hal Colebatch
 Wunderland, 2430 a.d.


 The kzin lapped noisily, then raised its head and looked into the eyes of the Abbot of Circle Bay
Monastery. The kzin was young and its ear tattoos betokened the highest nobility. The abbot was small
and elderly.

 "This is excellent brandy, Father," the kzin remarked. His Wunderlander had only intermittent nonhuman
accent. "My Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero told me not to miss it."

 "I am glad, Vaemar, My Son-within-these-walls. We try to mitigate the austerities of the field-naturalist's
life."

"I don't know if I'm really entitled to be called that," Vaemar said, putting down the empty bowl. "I'm
only a student."

 "These are the statistics we've compiled," said the abbot, extracting a memory brick from his computer
and passing it to Vaemar. "What we know of human use of the swamp since the first landings on this
planet. I hope it's helpful."
 They crossed the garth to the car parked in the meadow just beyond the monastery gates. A few
crumbling fragments of walls, overgrown with multicolored vegetation, were the only traces of the refugee
camp that had stood there at the time of Liberation ten years before. What had been a refuse-filled ditch
then was now an ornamental moat with floating plants. A couple of monks were tending the fish-ponds
that joined with it. "There are the monkeys!" remarked the abbot. It was an old joke between then,
dating from Vaemar's confusion over nomenclature on his second visit to the monastery. A grazing pony
caught the odor of the kzin and fled.

 "I feel a little foolish telling you to be careful," said the abbot, looking up at Vaemar who stood beside
him like a tower of teeth, claws and muscle. "And I hope I'm not insulting. But nonetheless, I will tell you.
Again. We've never known everything that's in the swamp, but we've always known a lot of the life there
is highly dangerous, certainly to humans. Overly inquisitive or incautious people have long had a habit of
disappearing there. Of course, if you go in a small canoe alone up a waterway inhabited by big
crocodilians that's perhaps not overly surprising, but . . . Marshy can tell you more."

 "Our canoe should be bite-proof," said Vaemar. "And it's a good deal harder to upset than a one-man
job."

 "I know. But some of those who have disappeared ought to have known their business. There was a
sailors' rhyme on Earth, once:


Take care and beware of the Bight of Benin
Where one comes out and forty go in.



I'll not nag further. But I want your expedition to be a success. And no more disappearances."

 They boarded the car for the short flight over the rolling, flower-bright meadowland and down to the
creek, last reach of Grossgeister Swamp, where the big canoe and the rest of the expedition waited.

 Vaemar checked the loading of the canoe and its outriggers as the abbot chatted with the other five
expedition members. It was a primitive and stupid craft compared to those which had been generally
available on Wunderland before the invasion and the following decades of occupation and war, but it was
the best the university had available for student expeditions now, and in some ways its very low-tech
nature could be an advantage. They moved out of the creek under the engine, then took up their paddles.
                                                    ***

The canoe travelled almost silently under the thrust of the six paddles, two of them worked by the
muscles of kzinti.

 Water-dwellers, amphibians, land-dwellers occupying the ecological niches that on Earth would be filled
by swamp-deer, peccaries and the like, were plentiful, as were flyers. Creatures of all sizes that would
have fled at the sound of the engine presented themselves for the expedition's cameras. But this part of
Grossgeister Swamp was never quite silent. Water lapped in the channels between the islands and the
stands of trees, insectoids and amphibians sang in ceaseless choirs and choruses, and from time to time
there came the splash of some larger creature breaking the surface.

The land varied from rises of mud supporting reed-clumps and a few drowning bushes to substantial
sandy islands with game trails and occasional dwellings, some occupied, some plainly abandoned and
going back to the swamp. Occasional floats in the channels marked fishermen's nets. The vegetation was
almost entirely the red of Wunderland: neither the green plants of Earth nor the orange of Kzin had been
able to colonize this place.

 After an hour of paddling they reached one of these substantial islands with more obvious signs of
long-term occupation. The house on it was a solid structure, with the vegetation before and about it
clipped and trimmed like a lush red lawn and hedge. There was a dock and a moored boat spiky with
electronics. Marshy, the occupant, a lean old man who reminded Vaemar of a farmer in the backblocks
beyond the Hohe Kalkstein, greeted them warily, taking no trouble to disguise the fact that both he and
the house were armed, even though ten years after the end of the war on Wunderland a party of four
young humans, two of them girls, and two young kzinti, did not look particularly threatening. The human
students had a couple of slung strakkakers as well as their collecting guns (unusual strakkakers on
Wunderland in that they had large trigger-guards and given the right personalized coding could be
operated by kzin as well as human hands) but Vaemar and the other kzin, Swirl-Stripes, carried only
theirw'tsais here. Vaemar presented the abbot's letter of introduction.

 Marshy ushered them in. One large room, lined with shelves on which curious odds and ends were
interspersed with old books, had as its dominating feature a great sweep of curved window, once plainly
the main viewport of a spaceship's bridge. Its upper part gave a panoramic view of a maze of islands,
channels and sloughs, with here and there in the distance open water rippling and sparkling in the sun. Its
lower part extended below the water-line, giving a view like a great aquarium. Some of the life-forms
they saw would have been recognizable to a terrestrial biologist as examples of parallel evolution. Some,
a few, were introduced creatures from Earth. Some were familiar Wunderland creatures. Some were still
utterly strange. There were comfortable viewing arrangements, even a kzin-sized indoor fooch as well as
human couches in front of the great window. Vaemar wandered over to it as Swirl-Stripes and the human
students appropriated the seating. Rosalind MacGowan came to the window beside him. Marshy dialed
them refreshments.

 "He told me you were coming," he said. "Asked me to keep an eye on you. Don't know if I can do much
in that direction. And you appear capable of looking after yourselves. What do you know about the
Great Ghost? Have you been here before?"

"Only round the edges," said Rosalind, "with Professor Rykermann, as Hon . . . as Vaemar will tell you."

"Most of us only know it round the edges," Marshy said. "Do you know what you're looking for?"

 "Life in the center. New life," said Vaemar. "And anything else worth studying. New ecological
relationships, for example. Urrr." His ears betrayed the equivalent of a human frown of concentration as
he spoke.

"You are . . . abstractly curious?"

"Yes."

 "Umm . . . I see." There was a flicker of a new expression in the man's bleak old face. "I was there just
after the Liberation. Everything dead. The water still covered with floating carrion. It made me sick and
I've seldom been back. But I suppose nature's tidied the place up in its own way now."

 "That's what we want to measure," said Anne von Lufft, her face and voice full of eagerness. "The extent
to which the center is being re-colonized."
"Can't you do it with satellites?"

"Not in enough detail," said Hugo Muller. "Some of the life-forms are small. And satellites are expensive.
There's no substitute for being on the ground."

 "That's the right answer," said Marshy. "Also, I suppose, there's not much thesis-fodder to be had from
satellite readings."

"We're only third-years," said Toby Hill. "They're not big theses."

"But they might lead to big theses," said Marshy. "What do you want an old swamp-hermit to do for
you?"

"Tell us about Grossgeister," said Swirl-Stripes.

 "That would take eight minutes or eight lifetimes." He touched a button and a map was thrown up on one
wall. "You know its center is an ancient meteor crater, like Circle Bay itself. Or in this case, more than
one crater. The bigger islands are mainly remnants of ancient ring-walls. It's big. No one knows it all.
You can't even map it by satellite because satellites can't tell all that's land and all that's shallow water, or
see through overhanging forest. Peat burns under the surface in places and makes smoke and steam. A
lot of the boundaries between land and water can't be defined, anyway. Many of the channels and
marshlands and smaller islands change. In the wider waters the currents build up sand bars and tear them
down.

 "There are stretches like a great river of vegetation, miles wide and a couple of inches deep. It's fed by
rivers and by the sea and by underground springs. Part of it's shallow, part of it's fresh, part of it's deep,
part of it's salty from the sea. There are wide stretches of open water. Men who have lived in it longer
than I have perished, without modern navigation aids or smart boats, only a short way from home, lost in
channels and islands that all look exactly like each other. Nobody's ever known everything that lives—or
lived—in it.

 "Humans have always fossicked round the edge of Grossgeister, but in the three hundred years we've
been on this planet, we've never tamed it. We've hunted in its margins and its creeks ever since the first
explorations—but from the first day we've had a feeling it was also hunting us. Your kzin Sires"—he told
Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes—"never took much interest apart from the military aspects—of course you
like to hunt dry-footed."

"We can conquer water," said Swirl-Stripes.

"You know that the heart was cooked out of it. The kzinti used the heat-induction ray when a
particularly troublesome gang of Wascal Wabbits took refuge there. Then, during the Liberation, a big
kzin cruiser was shot down. It came down slowly, and there were survivors who went on fighting for a
while. The hulk's still there, as far as I know. I suggest you leave it alone. I take it you've had basic
ROTC training and know better than to monkey with any weapons or propulsion systems . . . I see you
have your own weapons."

"Of course. We know there are many dangerous life-forms. We have had instructions."

 "Never forget it. When the kzin ship went down, the crew abandoned it when they had fired the last of
the ready-use ammunition that they could reach at the circling fighters and took to the swamp. They were
a big crew, even after their battle losses, but their number was smaller by the time they got to this island.
I'm talking about fighting kzinti, well-armed. You have maps, compasses, GPS?"

"Yes, and motion-detectors and autoguards for our camp. And a field autodoc. Telephones, of course."

 "Don't rely on autoguards. And see here—" He showed the skull of a crocodilian on the shelving. "See
those teeth? Bigger than yours, young kzinti, and a lot bigger than the rest of you can muster. Doc or no
doc, you'll be a long way from help if you strike trouble."

"We've got telephones and rockets," said Rosalind.

"If you have problems, don't be backward about using them! I'll come if I pick anything up."

"Thank you."

"We all help each other in the Swamp. And the abbot is an old friend of mine. He says to help you, and I
owe him . . . Look there."

 They stared down at a thing like a Persian carpet of lights moving through the water beyond the window,
a couple of feet below the surface.

"It's beautiful," said Anne.

 "There are a lot of bioluminescent forms. That's something fairly special to show up in daylight. There are
still endless wonderful things in Grossgeister, as well as dangerous ones. Night in the swamp can be
something to see. If there are no natural lights I have my own." He touched a switch and submerged
lamps illuminated the water beyond the window. "As you know, the biodiversity of this planet is thought
to owe a great deal to the frequency of meteor-strikes. One can watch the life-forms passing down there
for hours, and always something new. I'd make a feeding-station there, but I'm afraid the big carnivores
would take it over.

 "But to return to the danger, which I think is what the good Father wished me to impress upon you: there
are about three hundred humans living in the margins of this swamp. People who know it relatively well.
Some are second- or third-generation swamp-folk. In the last year at least fifteen have disappeared. And
others in previous years. One here, one there. Don't ask me how, or why. Just watch out."

"Were they wearing locators?" asked Rosalind

 "No. These are swamp-folk, not ROTC. They live in the marshes because there they are left alone. A lot
of people don't like government, and if you suggested they carry an implant so government could track
them they'd not take kindly to the idea. Even for their own good. We're a contrary bunch who hang on
the skirts of the Great Ghost. . . .

"Don't forget," he went on, "we're relatively close to well-populated areas here. But a lot of this planet is
wild. And things can come in from the wild."

"Then why do you live here?" asked Anne. "There's plenty of drier land available."

"Very simple. I love it. Like the other swamp-folk, perhaps I'm not too partial to government. And with
modern medicine available again I needn't fear damp in my joints."
 Not to mention the retainer you get for keeping an eye on things, thought Vaemar.Including things
like me .I think your antipathy to government may be a little selective. Yet he also felt that, at one
level, the old human was telling the truth.

"The dangers?"

"My Hero, young as you are, I see you have a few scars and ears already. What is life without danger?
Even some of us monkeys know that as a question."

 "Have these disappearances been plotted?" asked Vaemar. He was grinning, the reflex to bare the teeth
for battle.

 "Of course. Here." Marshy printed out several sheets of maps. "This is what the abbot meant you to
have. Of course these are approximate areas only. Some of the times are only approximate, too. If you
can see a pattern to it, good luck to you."

"One here, one there."

"Yes."

"But in the deeps rather than the edges . . ."

"Yes, as far as we can tell."

"Not a plague, then. A plague would be less discriminating."

 "Quite. But in the swamp there are always plenty of things ready to eat you. It may be people have
simply grown careless with peace. Neglected to set their locks and fences because there's no threat in the
sky. Never mind the threat in the water. We're not a strictly logical species."

 They thanked him and walked back to the canoe. Marshy gestured to Vaemar and drew him back, a
little behind the rest.

"You are in charge?" he said. It was both statement and question.

"Yes. I'm the senior student . . . although I'm actually younger in years, of course. We mature faster."

 "I know the University policy: no discrimination for kzinti, no discrimination against kzinti. I agree with it.
You must earn your successes fair and square. And the abbot told me about you, too. His
recommendation I trust.

"But what I did not, perhaps, wish to say in front of the others, is that with these disappearances . . .
Kzin revanchists are suspected."

"I suppose that's inevitable. Perhaps it's even true."

"Do you think it's true? Kzin defiance? It would be counter-productive. . . ."

 "We are not very skilled at defiance," said Vaemar. "We never had to defy enemies before. We just ate
them up." He licked his fangs. "I suppose some kzinti might do counter-productive things."
 "Satellites and radar would show up anybig movements—air-cars flying, for example, or the discharge
of heavy weapons," Marshy said. "And they're monitored by machines and alarms that don't nod off in
the small hours. Something killing clandestinely sounds to some like kzin stalking behavior."

"Humans stalk, too," said Vaemar.

"There were a lot of feral children running wild on this planet by the time the war ended," said Marshy. "I
doubt they've all been rounded up. Untameable. Savage. Good at killing."

"Children of which kind?"

"Both. They won't be children now, though."

 "I suppose I was nearly one of them," said Vaemar. "I could have been left to run wild—or die—given
that a few things had happened a little differently." They were silent for a moment save for the sand
crunching under their feet as they walked.

 "A couple of kzinti have set up a fishing business on Widows' Island," said Marshy. "Largely supplying
fish products to other kzinti, I'm told, but some human trade too. It's marked on the map I gave you."

"I'll have a look . . . I assume you are suspicious of me?"

"I'm a swamp creature of a sort. I'm suspicious of many things."

"So you've probably recorded our meeting."

"Why do you say that?"

"If there are kzinti revanchists, and I join them, and come back and eat you, ARM would know what
had been happening?"

 "My dear young fellow! You don't suppose . . ." Marshy threw up his hands as if in indignation. Then he
looked straight up into Vaemar's eyes. "You will see the wonder of the place. I've told you of the danger.
I know that it is insulting to stress danger to a Hero and that I have trespassed to the limit of acceptable
manners in saying as much as I have. But remember, young Hero, the fact you are in charge means you
are responsible for young lives besides your own." He paused a moment.

"I've a fair nose, for a monkey. You use toothpaste on your fangs."

 "Yes. I spend a lot of time among humans, like my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero. It seems a good
idea. But we call it fang-paste. I will care for those in my charge."

"Yes," said Marshy, "I think you will." Then in a fair rendering of the Heroes' Tongue, he added:

"Snarr' grarrch."

"Urrr."
                                                   ***

The shadows of Alpha Centauri A were lengthening as they made camp on a large island. Wide stretches
of open water gave a clear field of view all round. By the time the defenses and sleeping accommodation
were set up it was nearly dark. Alpha Centaruri B rose early at this time of year, in a blaze of purple with
a silver core.

 The sky, however, was always brilliant with the light of the Serpent Swarm and Wunderland's satellites,
natural and artificial, that had survived the war and been supplemented since, hung like multi-tinted
glow-globes. Even the dust of war had contributed a legacy of brilliant sunsets and a diffusion of
luminescence at night. The high sliding lights that were satellites and spacecraft made a strange contrast to
the primordial feeling of the swamp about them. The swamp had lights of its own—will-o'-the-wisps of
incandescent marsh-gas, light-dragons—living beings but barely more substantial—and the more solid
shapes of luminescent plants and animals, above, on and below the water.

 The humans and kzinti ate and slept separately, though Swirl-Stripes and Toby played banjos together
briefly. The kzinti, more silent than the humans when they chose though far bulkier, would patrol the
perimeter of the camp at irregular intervals during the night. Their own weapons, though far less
devastating than most of the military weapons both sides had been employing by the time fighting on
Wunderland ended, were judged more than adequate to handle any known swamp-creature. Vaemar
made the first patrol. The oscilloscope on the motion-detector, an invaluable tool on biological
expeditions like this, was in a constant frenzied dance and small creatures were to be seen in plenty.
Vaemar made field-notes of these, and relaxed enough to snap up one or two of them, but there was
nothing obviously threatening.

 Drifting in the channel with leaves and other small pieces of debris were the paired berry or
bubble-shapes that he knew were the eyes and nostrils of crocodilians. Some of these pairs had enough
distance between them to indicate formidable size, but the camp's defenses, both physical and electronic,
were effective, and the drifting eyes caused him no concern. He settled for a while into a stand of
vegetation, still as another piece of wood as his fur rose and fell minutely to compensate for the
movement of his breathing. Only the lights reflected in his great eyes or a gleam of the tips of his shearing
fangs would have betrayed his presence to the unwary. He made some mental notes for essays he had
due on other subjects—Caesar's use of fortifications as defensive anchors in his campaign against the
Helveti, the adaptation of gravity-fields as dust-deflectors for spacecraft passing through Trojan
positions, possibilities of hyper-connectivity in neuronetic logic-lattices. There was also a long essay on
the Normans—their ability to combine Roman and Viking cultures in medieval chivalry, marrying order
and achievement to barbarian freedom and vigor. He had selected this as his major psychohistorical
topic. He allowed himself a single move in the chess game he had been playing in his mind for some
weeks, and settled into reflection.

 Given another turn of the wheel, he thought,and these humans would have been my slaves and
prey animals, and I might have been a princeling in a Royal Palace. And then he thought,Yes, and
with an eight-squared of ambitious elder brothers between me and my Honored Sire or any
throne, not to mention Combat Master who trained, by all accounts, a great deal more lethally
than does the ROTC. Very likely I would be dead. Certainly, I would not have been given a clean
slate on which to write, perhaps, part of the destiny of my species on this planet.A colony of tubes,
which might have been plant or animal, springing from the submerged roots of a tree at the water's edge,
pulsed with slow rings of light as it siphoned the water for small organisms. There was a fascination in
watching it, though such a sessile thing, even if biologically an animal, would be beneath a traditional
hunter's notice.

 I am free to appreciate the forms and colors of life, thought Vaemar,free to see a strange beauty in
all of this, and speak of it, free to pursue knowledge for its own sake, without my siblings killing
me as an oddity . The thought should have been a comfortable one, but there was something about it
that did not make for ease.Free to be a freak? Like Dimity-Manrret? Free not to be a kzin? That
has a bad taste .

 There was a rushing in the water of a multitude of fish-like things, galvanized, it seemed, by a single mind
and purpose. The bubbles of the crocodilians vanished abruptly. Something vast and dark heaved in the
water before him.Phosphorescence deep below the surface showed rhomboid paddles and tapering,
serpiform neck and tails. He resisted a brief and atavistic but, he knew, irrational, urge to leap down the
bank and into the dark water after such prey.Certainly, I would have missed seeing this. Perhaps I
am realizing what all royalty realizes sooner or later—high destiny is the tastiest of meat but it
kills. Still, I have destiny of my own and cannot flee from it. Nor do I wish to. What does my
Honored Sire Chuut-Riit think of me as he watches me from the Afterlife? That I have become
half-human? Yet his own last words, found by Zroght-Guard Captain, written of his killers, my
brothers, with his claw in his own blood: FORGIVE THEM. He meant allow them an honorable
death, perhaps. But even so, many would think, that was an un-Kzinlike ending to his story here.
And elder brother, who did not go mad with the rest, but who died saving me and the other
new-born in the kittens' nursery?

 One of my few memories of Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, my very last memory of him alive, is when I
cried out to him how hungry we were. There was patience in his voice, even gentleness, as he told
me: "Something very bad has happened." Then he bade me wedge the door again and wait, as he
went, knowingly, to foul and shameful death. We are more complex than we let ourselves believe.


 My destiny? I owe my life to many—to elder brother whose sense of duty over-rode the
hunger-madness, to the unknown, probably Nameless and now almost certainly dead Hero who
brought me to Raargh as he held the last kzin fort on Surrender Day, to Raargh himself a dozen
times for his training, yes, and to the humans who fought at our side in the caves against the mad
ones—against Henrietta, Honored Sire's old Executive Secretary, and her madder daughter,
Emma. There is some pattern behind it all.A kermitoid hopped onto his muzzle, then, realizing its
mistake, attempted flight. He disposed of it with a swipe and snap. There was another dark wave in the
water, vee-shaped, moving up the channel.

 My Honored Sire Chuut-Riit wished to understand humans, even if that began with dissection,
and my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero has impressed on me my duty to do so now. Perhaps I
begin to understand a little. The humans can be as destructive and barbaric as the kzinti, or much
more so—I think of the Ramscoop raid, of humans running wild in the Liberation, of the mad ones
in the caves—but humans can erect mental barriers against barbarism. Some of them are small,
like the fang-paste that old human remarked on. Some are greater, like religious commands, or
the human idea of the Knight. But those barriers are created, artificial, unnatural things. Kzinti
can erect mental barriers against barbarism, too—where would we be without Honor, or without
the wisdom and control of the Conservers?—but it strikes me, also, that there are things the
civilized mind cannot cope with. Things like us, perhaps? Our ancestors came across civilized
races and enslaved them with hardly a decent fight. We must change, but we must not change too
much. I must study the limits of the civilized mind.

 Below him the night water roiled when great beasts fought and tore. The froggolinas resumed their
strange song.
                                                 ***

Dawn was a noisy business in this part of the swamp. They breakfasted, and compared the lists of
life-forms noted and recorded. It was agreed to approach the University to establish a permanent
observation post here.
 They made a quick biological survey of the island identifying and recording signatures electronically, and
replotted its position on the chart. Then they pressed on. The current in the channel was flowing strongly
here and they were content for a while to drift with it. The rings worn by each member of the party
allowed them to fire any of the party's weapons. Two armed lookouts were posted at all times and, as a
further precaution against unwelcome visitors climbing aboard, they rigged a temporary bulwark around
the center section.

 They came upon another island dwelling, but when they landed at the small pier they found it was empty.
It was not marked on their charts, but nor were many such. It had plainly been a human habitation, and
Anne pointed out that a family seemed to have lived there: there were children's clothes and toys. But the
vegetable and small animal life that had established itself in the house indicated it had been empty for
some time. Re-embarking, Vaemar noticed a small boat moored on the other side of the pier. The
unsinkable materials of its hull kept it afloat, but it was full of water. There had been rainstorms some
weeks before, and the variety of life swarming and splashing in the hull showed it had been water-logged
for a long time. It had a sophisticated and, on present-day Wunderland, still expensive, neuronetic lattice
for a brain, but that was still in place.

"I don't like that," said Hugo. "Whoever left here should have taken the boat with them."

"Perhaps they had another," said Toby.

 Swirl-Stripes took out two heavy kzin ex-military beam rifles, University property which, strictly
speaking, were not allowed to private kzinti on Wunderland. He slung one and passed the other to
Vaemar.

 "We'll use the motor now," said Vaemar. "I think we ought to have steerage way." Many of the channels
were wider here and silence was less important for observation than it had been when they were slipping
between narrow banks. In any case, the deserted dwelling was not entirely reassuring and steerage-way,
they tacitly agreed, could be a useful thing to have.

 GPS satellites provided them with a moving map that had at least reasonable accuracy, though they soon
learnt to treat it with caution. A translucent panel and a camera below the water-line in the bow showed
an endless parade of living things. Cruising on minimum power they had some groundings on soft mud,
but these were no more than a nuisance. There were things like horseshoe crabs and things like giant
centipedes, mud-colored things and things whose bright colors shouted poison. The life they stirred up
getting the canoe off reminded the students that the mud-banks were a whole new ecosystem waiting to
be explored.

 After about three more hours they came to the fish-processing business Marshy had spoken of. The
buildings—high, strong-walled and windowless in the lower part—and the boat tied up there were
kzin-sized, not human. There were a multi-purpose radar dish, fences, and a security watch-tower. Kzinti
living away from human supervision were allowed only light and basic hunting weapons, but the place had
a secure look about it. There was a sign-board giving the name of the business in both kzin and almost
correct human scripts—still a slightly odd sight on Wunderland, but much less so than it would have been
ten years previously. There was also a large air-car, disarmed but plainly ex-military, parked on a
landing-pad. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes called a greeting in the Heroes' Tongue as they approached.
There was no answer.

"This," said Hugo, "is getting monotonous."
 Vaemar steered the canoe away from the island and into a sheltered creek out of sight of it. They
erected bulwarks and metal mesh-screens covering the benches and steering position. They rechecked
and cocked their weapons, and approached the island again. Motion detectors and infrared sensors
keyed to pick up the body-heat of large life-forms told them nothing in the jumble of land and water and
what was virtually a broth of small quick lives. Scanning and filming, they cautiously circumnavigated the
island, and a couple of surrounding ones. Apart from the absence of the kzinti, nothing seemed out of the
ordinary. There were a couple of big crocodilians working the channels, but even if they were a threat to
adult kzinti, the electronic and physical defenses of the place should have kept them out with ease—it
was what they were designed for. There were a cloud of flying creatures round the fish-drying sheds and
the smell from these was almost overpowering.

 Weapons ready, they landed. Movement near the water. The snout of an automatic gun—illegal for
outdwelling kzinti—was tracking them. In the instant it took Vaemar to identify it he knew that, had it
been set to fire, they would have been already dead. On examination it had no ammunition. Fences
carried lethal electric current but the gate was open. The main door was not merely unlocked but part
open as well. Vaemar's fur bristled. This was an unheard-of thing among kzinti, save when a great one
wished to show either his overwhelming security or to be extravagantly hospitable.

 The racks of drying fish, some glowing brightly in decay, had attracted a multitude of small creatures
apart from those circling and fighting in the air. The operating log of the processing machinery which
converted the fish into highly flavored bricks much enjoyed by some kzinti, both by themselves and as a
relish to ice creams and other foods, showed it had not been in use for several days.

"I estimate this operation was run by about five kzintosh," said Vaemar, when they assembled in the main
building. "In addition there were kzinrretti and kittens."

 That would not have been the case before Liberation. High kzin nobles had extensive harems. Kzin
kittens were usually born as male and female twins and the daughters were a valuable commodity for
their fathers, negotiable instruments and presents to both superiors and clients. A mid-ranking officer of
partial Name might have a clawful of females, including some from the harems of any rivals he might have
quarrelled with successfully. The military hierarchy had its own system of allocations. What one human
student had called "honored upper lower middle-class" kzinti—NCOs of partial name, for
example—might be allotted a single female each. Naturally these tended to be both less attractive and
less fertile than those the nobles kept for themselves. But since the Liberation things had become very
different—so many high kzin nobles, officers, and indeed kzin males in general, were dead that there
were enough kzinrretti for even kzinti in trade, like these fishermen. The human government had
encouraged this change in customs for several reasons, partly on the theory that females and offspring of
their own would tend to give more kzintosh a vested interest in stability. Anyway, the small factory and
the attached dwellings were empty.

 "We stay together and search," said Vaemar. As Marshy had told him that some of the swamp folk were
inclined to blame the human disappearances on the kzinti, it had occurred to him that humans,
Exterminationists or vigilantes, might very well be responsible for the disappearance of the kzinti. But
humans could not fight kzinti without weapons, and there was no obvious sign that weapons had been
used here—no sign of blast damage or burning from beams or plasma-guns. No lingering molecules of
poison gas were detected, though their safety equipment included a highly sensitive analyser. The empty
gun was a puzzle. Had it been put there by the kzinti as a bluff, or had it in fact fired off its charges in
battle?

Within the main building there was a computer, a standard kzinti Naval model with an interface to human
hardware, but it was dead. In fact, upon examination it seemed to have been deliberately wrecked by
someone who knew what they were doing. Otherwise there was nothing like gross damage or blast
craters to suggest a violent attack. Here and there in walls and in the windows of some outbuildings were
small round holes, but they did not look like the effect of any modern weapon. He took the computer's
memory-bricks. They also found a telephone, but no relevant calls were logged on it. There was a kind
of odd, unhealthy peace about the place. He even wondered if the whole group had simply abandoned
the enterprise and moved somewhere else. But why had they left their possessions, including the costly
car?

 Swirl-Stripes called him. There, in a small puddle, were the bones of a very young kitten. Proof of
violence and killing at last. But with no other information. The bones had been covered with small
carrion-eating animals which had entirely destroyed the soft tissue and had made considerable headway
in destroying the bones themselves. He put them, with a sample of the muddy ground they lay on, in a
collecting-box for police attention when they returned to Munchen. Only a small box was needed. The
humans seemed saddened by the fact the kitten had still been clutching a toy prey in its hand—both
Rosalind and Hugo had remarked on it.

 Here and there amid the marks of various swamp-creatures there were a few old kzin tracks discernible
to a trained hunter but no other recognizable tracks or footprints to give a clue what had happened. Toby
suggested flying the air-car to Munchen at once, but there was no key for it, and kzin cars were generally
left in such a state as to very definitely not be vulnerable to theft or tampering.

 "There appears to be ssome dangerrous enemy," said Vaemar. His kzin accent was a little stronger now.
"Swirl-sstripes and I know our duty is to hunt down this killerr of kzinti and kittens. But as Marshy hass
reminded me, I am in charge of the human lives here as well. Do the humans wish to rreturn to summon
help?"

 "I cannot speak for the others," said Hugo, "but I do not think I should care to have it said of me that I
refused to follow where a Hero led because I was afraid." The other humans made a nodding gesture of
agreement.

"This killer of kzinti might be human," said Vaemar.

"That is another reason we should be there," said Hugo.

"Or send a message?"

"Let us wait and see what message we have to send."

Rosalind appeared poised to say something, but looked at the grim, set faces of the others and evidently
decided that any comment would be redundant.

"Let us move!" said Swirl-Stripes. "Every moment we stand speaking our prey may be escaping us."
                                               ***

They headed deeper into the swamp. They saw no more dwellings. There were countless wild creatures,
large and small, but none that presented an obvious threat to them in their strong-hulled boat, armed and
alert. They saw no kzinti or humans.

The swamp changed. Channels grew wider and deeper, but the life about them grew less abundant.
They were approaching the dead heart of Grossgeister. When the kzinti had concentrated the
heat-induction ray on it, most of the vegetation had been too wet to burn quickly, but the waters had
boiled, including the liquid that made up a good part of the internal volumes of the typical Wunderland
swamp-plants. Tides and currents since then had washed away most of the masses of dead animal and
vegetable organic matter, and some life-forms had begun to recolonize the area.

 With the channels generally wider here, the water was clear and empty down to a pale sandy bottom,
though processions of large fish could now at times be seen swimming in from other areas. The stands of
vegetation on the islands were mostly dead and crumbling. Among the grey of the dead plants on the
islands some new red shoots were now beginning to appear. Crocodilians and other large animal
life-forms which had scrambled or somehow flung themselves ashore in an attempt to avoid the boiling
water were skeletons lining the island banks. There were human skeletons among them, too. It had, after
all, been humans the kzinti had been after. Once they saw sunlight gleaming on metal among the bones: a
pair of dolphin hands. Apart from the sound of the waters this part of the swamp was still very silent. The
flying things stayed where there was more food.

 They picked an island with relatively few bones and dead vegetation for their camp that night, where a
sparse fringe of reeds was beginning to grow back in the clear shallows, and had their electronic defenses
set up well before Alpha Centauri A began to sink. The boat was too stupid to defend itself but they
hoped that would not be necessary. It was agreed one kzin and one human would be on watch at all
times. Vaemar telephoned Marshy, the abbot and the University giving the basic details of the
disappearances and saying that they required no assistance as yet. The long war had made the humans of
Wunderland, as well as the kzinti, a fiercely independent and self-reliant culture. They would get no help
unless they asked for it. Vaemar tried to open the bricks he had taken, using the boat's computer, but
they made no sense and appeared to have been deliberately scrambled.

As the night deepened, so did the sadness of the scene: apart from a few swimmers there were almost
none of the spectacular bioluminesent displays of the outer marches. Instead of the swamp growing
noisier as it took up the business of the night, it grew even quieter.

 "It feels as if Zeitungers were around," said Anne. Zeitungers were shuffling, gluttonous vermin related to
Advokats, carrion-eaters who outdid Advokats by possessing a limited psi ability to broadcast mental
depression and nausea. Humans and kzinti alike hated them even worse than they did Advokats or the
fluffy white, blue-eyed, poisoned-fanged Beam's Beasts. They were, however, not known as swamp
creatures.

"I don't think they are necessary here," said Vaemar. "This scenery is sad."

"You feel it too?"

"Of course." Then he added: "You were sorry when we found the dead kitten."

"Of course. We all were."

"I thought so. Our kinds are still killing one another in space, you know, and on other planets."

"But not here."

"So it seems. I hope you are right . . . You do not hate kzinti?"

 "The abbot says we should be grateful to you for a number of things. He said it was thanks to you that
we rediscovered the whole moral universe that we had been in danger of forgetting—courage, sacrifice,
faith . . . And you know I do not hate you, Vaemar."
"Fear us, then?"

"Why do you ask? Are you trying to understand us?"

"Yes. I think I make some progress."

 "ShouldI help you understand humans? I think of a human politician I once heard of: 'He worked
tirelessly to promote greater understanding between nations that understood one another only too well
already.'"

 "That seems to me a very human thought . . . And you can think a little like one of my kind . . . But I am
your fellow-student accepted into the university. I am also your superior officer in the ROTC. Further, I
am younger than you. Is it not seemly to instruct the young?"

 She might laugh, but she did not smile at him. Not smiling at kzinti, not showing the teeth in the kzin
challenge for battle, was still, ten years after Liberation, a conditioned reflex for humans.

 "I was ten years old at Liberation. By then my family farmed in the high country northeast of the Hohe
Kalkstein. We seldom saw kzinti. I, for myself, as a child, did not really understand hate. Kzinti were
above and beyond my hate. But fear, yes, and yes. A lucky human family was one with but a few dead to
mourn. My family were unusually lucky, I know now, or rather my grandfather was foresighted to get us
away. Near the towns, even in Gerning, things were very different. We paid our taxes, and the local
Herrenman had the task of representing us to the kzinti. We had strong rules for survival by then. I knew
no different life.

 "One thing I remember. Kzin words were starting to creep into our language from the slaves' patois.
Once, my parents caught me using some new kzin word, or a word derived from the Heroes' Tongue.
My mother wanted to punish me, but my father said: 'No, she must learn it. That is the future.' That day I
ran away. I was in the forest for a day and a night until a search party found me. My father's words were
echoing in my mind. 'That is the future.'"

"There are plenty of human words invading the kzin tongues on Wunderland now," Vaemar said.

 "Our little farm was not much," Anne went on. "There were few of our old possessions left—a few
pieces of china and crystal from old Neue Dresden, a few old paper books. Things like that. An old
woman taught us children in a one-roomed school, and her work was increasing, for there was no way to
repair our computers. Our robots had begun to fail and some of the farms near us were ploughing again
with animals. Our culture was little enough, but I knew fear then, for somehow I was old enough to
understand what my father meant. To see it all going, soon all gone. All, all, all . . ."

 "I see," said Vaemar. "Like the Jotok. Like most conquered races . . . I would have said like all
conquered races, if I had not begun studying Earth history, and . . . if I had not certain thoughts . . ."

 "I know little of the Jotok but the name. A name that was an omen of fear for some among us, as I
discovered later when I began higher studies. An indication of what we would become. Once your
allies?"

 "Once our . . . employers. How could a culture like ours have developed a science of spaceflight? When
we reached the stars we found we were the only culture of warrior carnivores that leapt and hunted
there. We did find a few other sapient carnivores, some of which had got up to knives and spears, and
they gave us good sport on their own planets. We found alien spacefaring races, but they were scientific
and civilized and cooperative, and when we met them and enslaved them as the Fanged God had
decreed they could hardly put up the ghost of a fight . . . All but the last one, of course . . .

 "The Jotok had hired us as mercenaries and security guards for their trade empire . . . I do not know
how many powers of eights of years ago. On the worlds of the Kzin Patriarchy they are our slaves and
prey, and hardly a trace of their civilization remains except in our naval equipment—and words like
'navy,' I suppose. You must have noticed that for cats our spacefaring has an incongruously nautical
vocabulary: we had little to do with the sea on our Homeworld. I guess the Jotok began as seafarers.
They live in water when they are young. There is a legend that a few of them escaped at the end of that
war when our long-sires turned on them and removed their flesh, a legend of a Free Jotok Fleet, waiting
and vengeful somewhere in space, but I do not believe it feasible. Too much time has passed and we
have seen no sign of it. It may be one of those . . . urrr . . . necessary legends, like the old prophecies of
Kdarka-Riit. You know of them?"

"A little."

 "There is one he composed when relaxing replete with the rest of his pride after a successfulkz'eerkti
-hunt on Homeworld." Vaemar quoted:


"Oh, Race of Heroes, have a care.
Tree-swinging monkeys are not all
That wait. Pride may precede a fall
When under distant stars you fare.

"Your claws pull down each alien race.
Each is your prey, and our God's laws
Deliver them into your jaws.
So thought the Jotok in your place . . .



 "But of course you know how hard it is to preserve the nuances when translating rhyme into rhyme . . .
some think there is a hint of an emotion in that stanza which we have no word for, but which has a human
name . . ." His voice trailed off. The priesthood, then as now, had not liked prophets outside their own
prides, and a prophet whose Full Name had included any suffix other than Riit would not have got away
with it. Unspoken, another verse from the sage's ancient chant, recently resurrected by a few Conservors
of the Ancestral Past, ran through his mind:


Death then for many. For some few
Another, stranger fate will be:
Tree-swingers who have left the tree
Will turn kzinti into something new . . .



"Are you happy, Vaemar?" Anne asked suddenly. "I mean, with your life?"

"Happy? I don't perhaps quite understand . . . to a kzin warrior of the old school the question would
hardly make sense. Heroism and Conquest are—were—what were meant to matter, not happiness.
Except, perhaps, a noble death in battle, a worship-shrine where your descendents might honor your
bones, honor and esteem during your life as well, your Heroism recognized and wide estates and hunting
territories and of course a large harem siezed while you lived . . . I had a privileged background originally,
you know, which would have made things easier in some ways if not in others. I suppose happiness
entered into it incidentally. I must reflect on that."

"Does the question make sense to you?"

 "I'm not sure . . . I have enjoyed much of my life so far . . . hunting with Honored Step-Sire Raargh
Hero, the mental achievements of my studies . . . collecting a few ears. Many things—university, our
projects in the caves, smelling the hunter's winds, even writing for the review, even watching the
swamp-creatures here as a kind of student of life, not just as a hunter after sport or prey . . . and now,
we have a real Hunt again to give it meaning. Yes, Anne, I have much to be content with in my life."

"Even the university, then?"

 "I am told," Vaemar said, stretching to his nearly three-meter length and ripping a thick dead branch
effortlessly to pieces in a muscle-rippling gesture that might recall a house-cat idly sharpening its claws,
"that some . . . outsiders . . . at University, in fraternities especially, members of ethnic minorities who
were reputed to have collaborated unduly during the Occuption, for example, have had to put up with
unfair bullying and hazing. That never happened to me. Certainly my family could not be called
collaborators. But perhaps it was because of my early victories for the Chess Club."

 Anne laughed, "You say that so innocently! . . . I actually think you mean it!" Her voice became more
serious again: "But you speak of the real Hunt we are engaged on. What animal is big enough and fierce
enough to predate upon kzinti? Dragons?"

"Humans, perhaps."

"But humans have disappeared too."

"What do the other humans think?"

 Vaemar settled himself onto the sand, forelimbs before him, head raised, hindlimbs tucked ready to
spring, his tail curled out of the way but ready to give that spring extra power. He looked like a sphinx.
Anne sat before him, almost between his great forepaws, arms wrapped around her knees.

 "Hugo and Toby, like you and Swirl-Stripes if I may say so, like the adventure of the hunt," she said.
"Simian curiosity, feline inquisitiveness . . . they're not so far apart. And hunters' pride. Rosalind never
says much."

"No. But in some ways she is a little like a cat, that one. Or she has spent time with cats."

"She wanted to share this watch with you. But so did I."

"Indeed? Am I to be flattered by such attentions?"

"I asked her why, and she changed the subject."

"There will be other watches."
"So I said. She has always been nice to me. I think she is lonely. I gather she grew up in Munchen,
without family."Delicate ground to tread on when talking to a kzin , thought Vaemar.But there are
many kzinti on Wunderland without families also . Thoughts ran on:Zroght-Guard Captain carrying
me out of the Keep, pausing at the bloody litter of my Honored Sire's bones so I might remember.
Old Traat-Admiral comforting me with a few grooming licks and a spray of his urine . . .

 "Perhaps she saw more of kzinti than I did during the Occupation," Anne went on. "They say the human
city-bred and farm-bred are different on this planet now."

"She does not move like you," said Vaemar. "And there is something strange about her hair."

"I hadn't noticed."

"I have to watch humans."

 "None of them have any theories about a predator here. Obviously," she laughed again, "it can hardly be
an alien from space!"

 "It is an ecological mystery," said Vaemar seriously. "From what we saw at the island I have a puzzling
feeling—it is not more than a feeling—that our prey . . . our enemy . . . behaves like both a sapient and a
nonsapient. It does not seem to use weapons, yet it disables computers."

"And it appears to attack kzinti," said Anne. "When there is so much food in the swamp, is it sapient
behavior to select the most fearsome warriors in the Galaxy for prey?"

 "As you have reminded me," said Vaemar, "it also appears to hunt humans. You speak of the most
fearsome warriors. But you are the species that have defeated the kzinti on this planet."

 "I am not sure what my point is," she replied, "but, whatever it is, does that not tend to prove it further?
If there is indeed something predating upon kzinti and humans, it is either very stupid, or very, very
dangerous. If it was stupid, it would be dead."

"What predators hunt lions and tigers on Earth?"

"Apart from humans in the past, nothing. There are biological laws. A tiger-predator—a dragon,
perhaps—would have to be too big to survive."

"And the same here. Unless such a predator lived in water."

"And there is plenty of water here. Or unless it was very cunning and well armed."

"Or unless it was small. Microbes and bacteria kill as well."

"Generally not quickly," said Anne.

 "No, but my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero told me once of campaigning in the great caves. A Hero
who had been curled asleep with his head on the ground awoke mad and died screaming. They found
insectile predators had crawled into his ears and eaten his brain from within. And there are plants on Kzin
that herbivores have learnt never to touch. Should they eat them the seeds grow claws in their bellies and
devour . . ."
 "There were great reptiles on Earth once—dinosaurs," said Anne. "And similar creatures on Kzin. They
were very successful and lasted many millions of years. And we have found big fossils here. As well as
the giant birds still living in Southland, and big things in the Equatoria forests. We don't know them all."

"That is a long way away."

 "Big water-dwellers too . . . Could there be something like a Plesiosaur with a long flexible neck and a
mouth full of teeth, lifting silently out of the water and descending silently to seize us from above." She
looked up and gave a slightly nervous laugh. "I'd better stop before I scare myself. This isn't the best time
or place to imagine monsters. It's good to see fangs gleam in the dark and know that they are yours,
Vaemar."

 "Yes. There have been . . . there are . . . big creatures and water tends to support bigger ones," said
Vaemar. "But I don't see any dinosaurs or thunderbirds around at the moment. Nor do any satellites see
them . . . But I see something there!"

 Something large and dark was moving up the channel. Vaemar and Anne whipped out infrared glasses,
their weapons cocked. But the swimmer, somewhat reptilian, showed the small jaws and teeth of a
herbivore. It turned into the thin fringe of vegetation and began to browse. Vaemar stretched again.

"What was that!" He was instantly poised for battle, ears flat, claws extended, jaws gaping, strakkaker
poised. Anne dropped into a crouch over her weapon, her own ears—the mobile ears of the
Wunderland aristocracy—swivelling towards the sound. There were long moments of silence.

"I heard something," she said. "Nothing clear. Just swamp-noises, perhaps . . . but . . ."

"It sounded like the cry of a kzin . . . a long way away."

"My ears aren't as good as yours."

"I barely heard it." Vaemar bent to the recorder, and played it back, amplified. He filtered out the
water-noises.

"Yes, I hear it now."

"One burst of cries, and then silence. Nothing more," said Vaemar.

"Are you sure it was a kzin?"

 "No. I am not even sure it was something imitating a kzin. There are many voices in this swamp . . . but .
. . it reminded me of a kzinrret . . .

"I shouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of rational explanation for all this," he added. "But that
doesn't mean it's necessarily a comfortable one."

 The browsing creature vanished suddenly. The two took a few steps beyond the defenses towards the
dark, star-spangled water. It exploded at them. The crocodilian was medium-sized but more than twice
the length of the human. More than two meters clear of the ground in its leap, its movement was too fast
for a human eye to follow. The boat shrieked a belated and futile warning. The fence flared. Anne was
knocked sprawling, but before the jaws could seize her, Vaemar had leapt screaming, fangs, claws and
w'tsai flashing. He did not need the beam rifle. Two slashes severed the monster's head, though one set
of its claws ripped his shoulder. Not deeply, but enough to make admirable scars.How fragile they are!
he thought, as he helped Anne to her feet and helped her dress his wounds and her own cuts with the
small medical kits they all carried.How did they ever win? It was not a new question.Foolish. We
should have stayed within the defenses and not allowed the quiet of the night to lull us. I am glad
Honored Step-Sire Raargh was not with us to see that.

 Anne was relieved by Hugo, and at midnight he and Vaemar handed over to Toby and Swirl-Stripes.
Cameras and monitors recorded the sparse life that showed itself in the vicinity of the island, but by the
time they had breakfasted, with Alpha Centauri A standing well above the horizon, they had noted
nothing significant. Rosalind collected some small transparent creatures which had gathered in the muddy
depressions of the kzinti's footprints at the water's edge. Vaemar removed the crocodilian's jaws for a
trophy and bagged them to contain the smell. They broke camp and pressed on. Rosalind raised the
matter of returning again, but the other humans outvoted her without the kzinti needing to express any
further opinion.

 They saw nothing but the unchanging, ever-changing, swamp for several hours, largely clear water and
islands where a little new life struggled to establish itself. The channels widened again. With the wider
water came gentle, rippling wind and the boat hoisted a small sail. They moved quietly on. Virtually at
water-level, they could not see far. Then a great curved shape loomed over the near horizon.
                                                      ***

Half-submerged, water lapping at its ports and open air-locks, many of the blisters of its weapons-turrets
empty and broken, a couple of massive electro-magnetic rail-guns shattered and pointing uselessly at the
sky, the great wedge-and-ovoid of the kzin cruiser was still an impressive sight.

Life seemed to be returning a little quicker here, perhaps because organic compounds in the wreck
provided a food-source, or perhaps because its many compartments provided a nursery for juveniles.

 It was so obviously a dead and broken thing, however, that there was little air of menace about it. This,
Vaemar and the others knew, might be deceptive. With derelict kzin warships all over the planet, and
huge dumps of them being slowly demolished at Munchen and elsewhere, this one had not been worth
attention and had been left to the swamp since its crew abandoned it. There was no reason to suppose
some of its various engine-systems were not still fuelled and much of its war-load not still aboard.

Keeping their distance, they cruised around the wreck.

"No sign of life," said Hugo.

 "Yet it will be full of hiding places," said Swirl-Stripes, "for both predators and prey. We should
approach silently."

 They cast off the outriggers—convenient for cargo but unnecessary for stability—and secured them on a
sandbar. As they approached the hulk they stopped the engine and took to their paddles again. The
humans stood to their guns at bows and stern as the kzinti's muscles drove the boat almost silently
through the water.

"Skraii rar kzintoshi!"The words had been shrieked under many stars, but as the great hull loomed
over them, only Swirl-Stripes and Anne, sitting immediately by Vaemar, heard him utter the ancient
battle-cry: "I lead my Heroes!"
 They passed through the gaping airlock into the hulk. Sunlight through the airlock and from holes below
the surface refracted upwards through the rippling water, casting dancing patterns of light in the
cavernous gloom. There was much more life here: molds, insectoids, many things that found the great
wreck a shelter and nursery. In the bars of green-gold sunlight that shot the water below them tiny
minnowlike creatures could be seen swarming. It would be an excellent place for crocodilians to be
lurking, but they saw none.

 Vaemar, remembering his battle with Raargh Hero and their human allies against the Mad Ones in the
caves six years before, paid particular attention to what was, or might be, above them. The minnows
obviously did not matter. His eyes were capable of seeing in the dimmest light, and were reinforced by
other senses and sensors, but in the chaos of wires, ducting, unidentifiable wreckage and swarming small
life neither his eyes nor the artificial biological sensors made out major life-forms. The water lapping
through the whole chamber made it impossible to tell anything meaningful from motion detectors. The
ceaseless lapping also provided a background noise, enough to defeat kzin ears that could normally pick
up the heartbeats of a hiding prey or enemy. Nor were the kzinti's noses much use in the overwhelming
smell of dampness and decay. Here and there as they proceeded further into the dimness a few lamps still
glowed above and below the water on dials and meters but they revealed little. Vaemar called up the
plans for this class of cruiser on the boat's internet terminal, but they lacked detail. Like all spaceships,
but especially large kzin warships, it was intricately subdivided. His Ziirgah sense—evolved to aid a kzin
on a solitary hunt—detected principally the keyed-up nervous tension of Swirl-Stripes and the humans
around him. That was not quite all, but he was unable yet to identify the added factor.

 They passed through a door, and paddled up a narrow companionway. It was much darker here and
two of the humans had to put down their guns and operate lights. Had the ship been human-sized the
boat would have been unlikely to get into such a passage and as it was the lack of room on either side
would have brought on claustrophobia for any sufferer.

 They passed one open door leading into a room whose ruined finery suggested it had once been a senior
officer's cabin. There were trophies fixed on the bulkhead above the lapping water, rotted in the living
damp into bare black skulls that startled them until they realized their age, and the remains of a
ceremonialhsakh cloak that would never be worn again. There were kzin bones on the bunk, laid out to
suggest someone had taken a moment to arrange the occupant's body with decorum before the survivors
abandoned the ship. He must have been a respected officer.

 As they went on something dark and swift flashed ahead of them and out of sight. It was hard to tell its
size, but it was not small, and its movements did not seem to be like either man or kzin. At the end of the
companion was another door, open but with a sill at its foot that prevented further passage in the boat.

"Toby will remain and guard the boat," said Vaemar. "The rest of us will proceed on foot. It will give us
more hands for the guns and lights. Rosalind, you will bring up the rear." Heroes should go first, and
Rosalind struck him as the least clumsy human.

 Wading through opaque water that came at least knee-deep on the kzinti and considerably higher on the
humans was not an appealing prospect. There was, however, a vertical ladder that led upwards to what
would obviously be drier areas. Rosalind lagged behind, doing something with the flasks she carried on
her belt. Collecting samples of the water, he supposed, though he could not see the point of such activity.
He growled and gestured. This was no time for undirected monkey inquisitiveness. He gathered them
around the foot of the ladder, guns still facing outwards.

In an emergency a kzin could have scrabbled up it in a single leap. That was not necessary now. They
went cautiously. Vaemar, remembering again the caves, making a mental map of the way they had come.
As he did so, a smell hit him that knocked away all the conflicting smells of wetness, mold, humans and
plant and animal life. It was a smell of pure death. The humans had never heard Vaemar's battle-snarl
before. He went up the last rungs in one bound, Swirl-Stripes and the humans crowding behind.

They swung the beams of their lights round the chamber. The humans cried out. Vaemar and
Swirl-Stripes roared.

 Hanging upside down from the deckhead were the flayed corpses of several kzinti. Though the skin and
several of the limbs were missing and the bodies otherwise damaged, it was plain from the sizes that they
were both males and females. There were five males. There had been five males at the little
fish-processing business.

 Guns ready, instinctively moving again into a circle with their eyes and weapons facing outwards, they
approached the bodies.

They had been dead for days, but not many days. Vaemar exerted his self-control. A kzintosh warrior
must not lose judgement in the presence of death, however much the dishonoring of Heroes' bodies might
provoke it: rage and blood-lust should be channelled into the worthwhile and efficient vengeful slaughter
of enemies. Such, he thought at that moment, had been the teaching of his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit,
whose military writings he had studied, and the lessons drilled into him by Honored Step-Sire Raargh
Hero.

 There did not seem to be marks of beam-weapons, blades, or projectile weapons on what was left of
the bodies, though the heads were much damaged. He heard a high-pitched whirring sound behind him,
and spun round, claws extended to strike, but it was only Rosalind, with a high-speed camera, filming the
scene. For a moment he was doubly infuriated by this insult to the dead and raised his claws to strike it
away. Then reason returned: a film of the scene would be useful as evidence. She was behaving
correctly. Still, orders should be formerly given.

 "This is now a military situation," he said. "As holder of the senior ROTC commission, I am taking formal
command. Hugo, you are second in seniority and will be second-in-command. We press on. Any
questions?"

 There were none. He was the youngest present but kzin matured faster than humans. It would have been
a bold or foolish human on Wunderland who questioned a kzin standing as Vaemar stood, claws
extended, beam rifle cocked, ears flat in his head and his jaws salivating and wide in a killing gape.

Something moved in the darkness overhead. It was hard to tell its size or shape, but it was fast, and it
disappeared before they could focus on it. A quick shot after it produced no result but a fall of sparks
where some still-live power-line ruptured.

Lights played over the deckhead showed a few small ventilation ducts. But humans had used the ducting
of kzin ships in the war, hiding in and crawling along passages where the great felinoids could not follow.
Nerve-gas was the prescribed kzin treatment for the problem . . .

 "Humans would have used weapons," said Anne cautiously. Vaemar growled in his throat but said
nothing. Whoever or whatever had hung up those kzin bodies like animals, it was plainly the work of
intelligence, not any predatory swamp creature.

"These appear to have been eaten," said Anne. "Humans never eat kzinti."
"Never?"

"Well, hardly ever."

 Then something pale caught Anne's eye. She pointed. Vaemar recognized the bones at once as a pair of
human femurs, still joined to a human pelvis. Hugo was cursing softly and incessantly, jerking the snout of
his weapon about, aiming futilely at one dark, silent opening after another. Anne's chest was heaving as
she took deep, deliberate breaths.

 Humans eat other humans? Vaemar had heard of it happening in famines during the Occupation,
though it was rare. That kzinti could eat other kzinti he of all the kzintosh on Wunderland, last son of
Chuut-Riit, had the direst reason to know. But that was a matter of hunger-frenzy when, in adolescents,
mind and control went together. This was systematic butchery.

 From the compartment below them the boat suddenly screamed. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes leapt back
down the steps. Their beam rifles fired, but for an instant only. Their reflected beams hit the water,
flashing it into live steam. Had they depressed the triggers an instant longer, the kzinti would have broiled
themselves. There were two explosions, ear-crackingly loud in that confined space. Something hit
Vaemar and knocked him backwards across the door-sill. Swirl-Stripes screamed and charged through
the water. Then whatever it was had gone.

 Vaemar rose cautiously. The rifle had been torn from his claws and he was, he knew, lucky not to have
lost digits as well. Its bulk had saved him, but its charge-regulator was smashed. Something had hit it
hard. One rifle was useless.

 Not only one rifle. Hugo's strakkaker was in two pieces, and one of his arms hung broken. Anne
strapped the arm with an expanding mini-splint and applied a pain-killer, but he was plainly out of any
fighting for a time.

 The others covering him, Vaemar examined the companionway. The bulkhead some distance behind him
gleamed raw with the impact of a new missile. The missile itself was still sizzling in the water. It was
nothing but a blob of metal, but could have been—must have been—a bullet from a real "rifle"—a hunting
rifle such as both kzin and humans used both to practice marksmanship and to kill game without the
disintegrating effects of a strakkaker or a military beamer.

 Toby was gone and the boat's brain and computer terminal had been smashed. The brain, Vaemar
thought, was not much loss, but the computer would have been valuable. Other gear was gone too,
including food, spare ammunition, the telephones and the motion-detector.

 "It wasn't Toby," said Hugo. "I'm sure it wasn't Toby." He looked up at Vaemar with drugged, still
pain-filled eyes. "Upon my name as my word, I pledge, it was not him. Whatever it was has taken him . .
."

 "We go on," said Vaemar. No human, whatever their knowledge of kzin body-language, would have
argued with him. They returned to the chamber of dead kzinti.

 There were open doors leading to dark companionways. Beams of light down them showed nothing.
There were also closed doors. Molds and plants growing on them suggested they had been shut a long
time, presumably ever since the ship had come down.

Hugo pointed to one: around the handle it was clean and shining. A panel of colored lights beside the
handle showed its lock was alive.

"Open it!" ordered Vaemar. There was a chance the lock was not actually engaged.

 Anne pulled on the handle, uselessly. Swirl-Stripes tried, also without result. Without the code for the
lock neither human nor kzin muscular strength was going to move it.

 They had the beam-guns, but Vaemar thought their lasers would have no effect on the door before their
charges burnt out. It would be stupid to fire them at the wall. Partly to give himself time to think, but
largely because decorum demanded it, he ordered the kzinti's bodies cut down and their remaining limbs
suitably composed. Briefly but pointedly, he urinated on them, offering them the mark of one who bore
the blood of Chuut-Riit and the Patriarch. No need to carry their mutilated bodies into the light of day.
They would lie with the bones of other kzinti here, in this brave ship. It was not too bad a spot. Or it
would not be once they had been most comprehensively avenged, of course. He remembered a stanza
from one of his favorite human poems, "The Ballad of the White Horse":


Lift not my head from bloody ground,
Bear not my body home;
For all the Earth is Roman Earth,
And I shall die in Rome.



 They had been hung on meat-hooks such as were common in any kzinti dead-meat locker. There were
other hooks with strips of dried stuff hanging from them. Rosalind collected some samples for further
analysis. He wondered whether to leave a couple to watch the door while he led the rest on to investigate
the other companionways. No, all military training spoke against dividing a small force, especially in the
face of an enemy whose deadliness was now plain.

 Brief, cautious forays into the other companionways revealed nothing. His companions might be his
soldiers, but they were also his fellow-students, and he had a consciousness of his responsibility to them
along with his lust for vengeance and battle. To go, leaving some unknown behind that locked door,
seemed a bad idea, as well as violating all kzin instincts and precepts of honor. To sit tight and wait upon
the enemy to make the next move seemed a bad idea also. Anyway, it was a good idea to eat, but not in
the presence of these dead. Off one of the companionways was another room, empty and relatively dry.
They retired there and ate and drank. The small blocks of compressed food from their belt-pouches did
not need preparation and in a situation like this humans and kzinti could eat together. It was, however, a
very unsatisfying meal. It provided energy but would hardly assuage kzin hunger-pangs much. They
should, Vaemar thought, have made sure they had a proper meal earlier. He filed the thought away for
next time.

 What would Honored Sire do?Vaemar wondered.Or Honored Step-Sire? He also thought of the
cleverest humans he knew—Colonel Cumpston, or Professor Rykermann, or Brigadier Guthlac, or the
abbot. Even the manrretti—Dimity with whom he talked long and who beat him at chess, or Leonie,
whose adventures in the caves with Honored Step-Sire Raargh when he received his rank and Name he
had often been told about. This compartment seemed at first a good place to wait. It had but a single
door. But it would be dark eventually. That meant less to the night-eyed kzinti than to the humans, but it
would still be a disadvantage in dealing with the unknown. And the single door meant there was no line of
retreat.
Vaemar's ears twitched violently at a sound. Motioning the others to stillness, he moved silently to the
door and into the companionway, in a stalking crouch with his stomach-fur brushing the deck. He leapt.
There was the sound of a hissing, spitting struggle. The others burst out behind him, weapons levelled.
Vaemar was holding a kzinrret.

"Be still!" he hissed at her in the Female Tongue.

 "Be still yourself!" she replied, and not in the Female Tongue, but in the Heroes' Tongue, in the tense of
equals. "Release me! I am not an enemy."

 Vaemar was nonplussed. The Heroes' Tongue, with its complex tenses and extensive technical
vocabulary, was far beyond females' comprehension. And what female, even if she had the intellectual
equipment to do so, would speak to any kzintosh in the tense of equals?

 His surprise made him forget for a moment their whole position. Then he saw how thin she was, how
tensely she held her body. Her great eyes were violent-edged and wild. But one kzinrret, alone, could
hardly be a threat. He released his hold on her. She stood poised to run or fight. He gestured to
Swirl-Stripes and the humans. "These . . . companions," he said. He gestured more explicitly: "Humans,"
he said, "you know?"

"Yes," she said. "I know."

 He saw that she was older than he, but not old. She would have been at the end of adolescence when
the human hyperdrive armada swept in to reconquer Wunderland a decade before. She would have
spent her formative years with humans as her slaves and prey. If she was the daughter of a noble—and
most kzinti had been the sons and daughters of nobles—she might have been cared for by a gloved,
padded and otherwise protected human nurse. But her vestigial female mind was unlikely to see humans
today as sapients and companions. He would have to be careful.

 "My name is Karan," she said. She looked at him as if the information might convey something
significant.

 A quite common female name. What was not common was for a female to enunciate it in a clear and
grammatical sentence. There were things about her eyes, her whole posture, that were not normal. Then
her eyes narrowed. Vaemar knew that she was seeing his ear-tattoos. A kzinrret of upper-normal female
intelligence might dimly know them as betokening Quality.

 "Riit!" she said. Swirl-Stripes, he saw, jumped a little at the word. Even the humans, whose childhood
had been under the kzin Occupation, knew it. He picked up the glandular responses. But there was no
awe or reverence in her voice. She spoke, and all his senses reinforced this impression, like one
recognizing and challenging an enemy.

 "My name is Vaemar," he said. It was "name," not "Name." Some odd scrap of memory recalled to him
a sentence from a literature course: "His sensitive ear detected the capitals." Then he added: "I am a
student." He realized as he said it that such a word could have no meaning to her. Or could it? She had
recognized the ear-tattoos.

"I also hunt killers of kzinti," he told her, still in the soft, simple syllables of the Female Tongue. "Who has
killed Heroes and kzinrretti here?"

"You do not know? You are bold to stick your nose into a cave where you know nothing."
Clear, grammatical sentences. Imagery. Abstract conceptualization.

 A kzinrret telling a Hero he knew nothing! Vaemar felt bewilderment and rage in almost equal
proportions. He fought both down. Living with Raargh and among humans had taught him self-control. It
had also instilled in him a determination that, however he died, it would not be of culture-shock. But this
was something he felt he must handle alone as far as he could. He ordered Swirl-Stripes and the humans
to guard the entrances to the corridors. Then he turned back to her.

 "No," he said, and not in the Female Tongue this time. "I do not know. But that is why we are here in
arms."

"'We' . . ." she repeated. She looked the kzinti and the backs of humans up and down. She seemed,
whatever else, to take this in without surprise.

"We are no longer at war with humans on this world," he told her, slipping into a more complicated
vocabulary before he realized it. "And they are no longer our slaves. We work together."

 "I worked with humans before you were born," she replied. Then she added, "I am small enough to hide
in the ducting. You kzintosh are not. If you do not wish to be like those"—she gestured in the direction of
the flayed corpses—"by the time the sun goes down, I suggest we are far away. You will take me with
you."

 How exactly we are going to get away is another matter, he thought. Aloud he said:"You tell me
nothing. Who are the enemies we have come to destroy?"

"Enemies you kzintosh have destroyed already. The Jotok."

"I do not understand. Say on!"

 "There were adult Jotok in this ship when it came down, serving as slave-mechanics. Most died. But
enough survived to breed. The whole ship here in the swamp could have been designed as a giant nursery
for Jotok—full of sheltered, water-filled compartments and with unlimited food that could be fetched
from close by."

"But adult Jotok were decorous slaves!"

"Only to their trainers, and those to whom they bonded when young."

 Vaemar had read and been told of the Jotok but, except perhaps in those barely-remembered days as a
kitten at the palace, he had never seen a live one. Many kzinti had had Jotok slaves, but those that
survived the fighting on Wunderland had been killed by their masters at the time of the Liberation as part
of the general destruction of military assets. Kzin Heroes going out to die would not leave their slaves for
victorious humans. He knew, however, that wild Jotok could be savage. Hunting them was a favorite
sport on kzin worlds—they were generally a far better challenge than unarmed humans and other
monkeys—and even relatively small artificial habitats had boasted Jotok-runs.

 "These Jotoks' masters had died or abandoned them," Karan went on, "and the new generation had
known no masters. They had no teachers but their own masterless adults, who had no loyalties to any
living kzintosh. Kzinti had eaten their kind, without a thought. Now they eat kzinti. And humans, and any
other prey, large or small."
"Then why are you alive?" asked Vaemar. The question of how she, with her female mind, could
understand these things and speak of them clearly and fluently was another matter.

 "I have burrows here. Compartments with no openings for a large Jotok to enter, save doors I can close
and guard. I keep ahead of them and so far I have survived."

"How did you get here?"

"Does it matter now?"

"Yes. I am dealing with the unknown, and if possible I must see the background of events before I
move. I take it we are in no immediate danger."

"Not for a short time. Most of the big Jotok swim far when hunting. The smaller ones are hiding from us
now, apart from the guards they have to keep us in. But when the others return . . ."

"There is another thing I do not understand," said Vaemar.

"I know."

"Yes, you know. You are not an ordinary kzinrret."

"I told you my name is Karan," she replied.

"Yes."

"Were we on a world of the Patriarch, young Riit, I would die under torture before I said more. And I
will say no more of that now."

"You are a sapient female. That is plain."

 She glared at him silently, teeth bared and claws extended. But all the kzinti had claws extended here.
"For some, a few, who bear that name . . ." She stopped. "I have said too much," she hissed at length.

"Or not enough."

"My mother taught me a little of our secrets before she died in fighting. I ran from my Sire's house. I was
a feral kitten. I met feral human kittens. There were caves."

I am remembering, thought Vaemar.Raargh's story of how he got his Name.

 "We lived in the great caves, until the night-stalkers killed most of us and captured me. They killed the
human who was with me, and they broke my legs and left me for meat."

"And a Hero with a human female freed you?"

"Yes! How do you know?"

"That Hero is my Honored Step-Sire, Raargh. I have heard his stories. The female human was Leonie."
This kzinrret would have been hardly out of childhood then. Had she been any older he doubted any
human kit would have survived her company long, sapient or not. Adolescent kzinti of both sexes, on
kzin-colonizedKa'ashi , had not been notable for their tolerance of humans or for interspecies diplomatic
skills.

"Yes, Leonie-human. Heroes came then, and I was taken into the household of Hroarh-Officer."

"Hroarh-Officer! My Honored Step-Sire Raargh's old commander! I have met him."

"He lives?"

"Yes."

Her ears moved in a strange expression. "When my legs were mended, he was gracious enough to take
me into his household, and then into his harem."

"He has no use for a harem now," said Vaemar.

 "That I know. I was with him while he lay shattered. I stanched the bleeding though he screamed at me
to let him die. I told him it was his duty to live, his duty to our kind. I had never spoken to him in the
Heroes' Tongue before, let alone given him commands . . .

 "It was a strange time. We lay together in the wreckage and I comforted him and talked with him. It was
not humans that had maimed him so, you know. It was in the fighting between the followers of
Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, before the humans landed. And I revealed to him the secret that I was
tired of keeping. That some on this world knew already. That I was one of the Secret Others . . . the
females whose brains were not killed."

"I knew nothing of this," said Vaemar.

"No, Riit. And perhaps I should kill you now to keep that secret. But this is no longer a kzinti world.
And I am hungry to speak."

 Vaemar called to the others, "Any movement?" There seemed to be nothing. All were alert. The sighting
dots of the weapons moved back and forth in the darkness of the corridors, running over mold, dark
metal, and, farther down some passages, rippling water that might conceal an armed, approaching
enemy. Swirl-Stripes fired the beam rifle at this, flashing it into steam, but it was a precaution only and he
could not keep the trigger depressed for more than an instant. Vaemar told him to cease. More, or
closer, live steam would broil them, and as it was the clouds from these momentary bursts were highly
inconvenient, especially when they were striving to see.This closes about me , thought Vaemar. And
then again:What would honored Sire, and Honored Step-Sire do ? And then:Seek knowledge. Seek
more knowledge . He waited for the air to clear and returned to the kzinrret.

"Tell me more."

 "I kept Hroarh-Officer alive, and stopped him killing himself until aid arrived. The other kzinrretti had
yammered and fled when the fighting started. I stayed with him while they gave him some sort of
field-surgery. It gave him help, I think, to hold my fingers then. We talked long in that time. He became
the first kzintosh I did not hate.

 "And later I stayed to make sure he did not die. Then there were the human landings, and he
commanded his troops from a cart in the battles that followed until few were left alive. Wounded and
maimed, nearly all, kept for garrison duties, though there were fewer garrisons each hour. He even taught
me a little skill with weapons then, for we did not know what the days might bring, and he had accepted
what I was. Finally he told me: 'Go, Karan, I know now my duty is to live. Let me be an example: if I can
live, so can Raargh-Sergeant with his one arm and eye and these other half-Heroes of mine. But we must
let the monkeys give us every chance to die in battle first, taking as many of them as we may with us to
present to the Fanged God. You must hide yourself and survive. I will keep your secret. You are free,"
he said, "No longer the property of this useless half-kzintosh. But remember the Hero I once was."

"You were loyal to your Hero," said Vaemar. Strange linkings of fate. If she saved Hroarh-Officer
and he in turn did not let Raargh Hero die, then I owe this strange kzinrret Raargh Hero's life.
Which means I owe her my own life too. Well, let us see how long we shall keep our lives.

 "I hardly know what I was loyal to," she told him. "Many memories. Warring drives. Why should I love
the patriarchy that enslaved all females and blanked the minds of nearly all? Robbed them of more than
life? Oh, we of the Secret Others know how it was done, more or less. The stories have been handed
down. There were humans I had met—the Leonie Manrret in the caves was one—who were more kind
to me than my own kind. Yet Hroarh-Officer was truly my Hero, and I am kzinti too. He lives, you say?"

"Yes, and he is honored."

 "I am glad. But I do not think he would wish to see me again as he is now . . . Anyway, I left
Hroarh-Officer at his command. I evaded the fighting and the hunting humans, and made my way at last
to the swamp. I learnt to swim and to catch fish and other prey. There is hunting in plenty at the edges of
the swamp.

 "One day, I saw other kzinti in a boat. I was tired of living alone and I went to them. They took me to
their island. I helped with the fishing there, and watched and thought. I was but a kzinrret again, a
brainless worker and breeder, but things were not quite the same. I showed initiative. I spoke, a little, in
the Heroes' Tongue. I gave directions to the other females, and, if I did not do or dare too much, I found
that in time this was accepted by the kzintoshi. You know it would not have been before . . ."

 I can see the kzintoshi would have accepted you, Vaemar thought.If you were well fed you would
be rather a beauty. One part of his mind felt he was wasting time, but still he returned his attention to
what she was saying. Until he knew more there was nothing he could do to give targets to the wandering
sighting dots of their weapons.

"I saw that something was happening to our kind on this planet under human rule. Something too big for
me to understand. There was opportunity here, but also the chance of disaster.What would we become?
Have you ever asked yourself that question?"

"There have been a few occasions, sometimes as long as whole minutes together, when I have thought of
other things," said Vaemar.

 "I wished to think," she went on, ears twitching in appreciation of the sarcasm. "Alone. I took to solitary
hunts. I swam in the clear water. Sometimes at night, when the others slept, I watched the internet, the
human sites as well as the kzin ones at Arhus and Tiamat. I saw humans and kzinti beginning to work
together here, even as I saw the great battles between them in space."

 Vaemar tried to imagine a kzinrret following space-battles. He could not. The notion was simply too
alien.Think of her as a human in a fur-coat and it might be easier , he thought.The way humans are
warned not to think about us . No. Those great eyes were not human, however weird and disturbing
the light of intelligence in them was.

"And what did you conclude?"

 "Both kinds are incomplete. But the strengths of the humans and the kzinti may complement one another
one day. I think no kzintosh of the Patriarchy could understand that. They could not conceive of hairless
monkeys on equal terms. But I, a female raised to be a slave and grown as a kitten among both kinds,
can see it."

"I have human companions," said Vaemar. "These with me here, and others."

"In the depths of your liver, can you truly say before the Fanged God that they are partners, you who
bear the ear-tattoos of the Riit? You cannot answer."

"No, I cannot answer that," said Vaemar after a moment. "I have tried. . . ."

"Even as you could not truly think of me as the equal of a kzintosh, of your companion there?"

"Enough!"

"That is your answer? To use the Ulimate Imperative Tense? You would have been a kit when royalty
on this planet ended."

"Chuut-Riit was my Sire!"

 "As he was of an eight-cubed or so of other kittens. But we waste time. The Jotok attacked the camp
while I was hunting alone. I returned and saw it from a distance. They evaded the defenses—there are
old Jotok among them who know kzin technology well in their way—surprised and killed the kzinti and
bore their bodies away. I followed them. They led me here. They came originally from this ship and it is
still their headquarters and nursery."

"Why did you not take down the bodies of the dead kzinti and kzinrretti?"

 "I hoped the Jotok—the adult Jotok—would return if I left them undisturbed, thinking I had gone, and
that I might take them by surprise. But I think they know I wait."

Still nothing in the corridors. None of the others, when he asked them, knew even as much of Jotok as
he. Swirl-Stripes had vague memories of Jotok slaves and being taken as a kitten on a Jotok-hunt with
his Sire. He had been given a Jotok arm to eat at the end of it. No memories or knowledge tactically
useful.

"Why do you stay?" he asked Karan.

 "I survived to get here by luck and by surprising them. I was able to swim here, even through the wide
channels, when they did not know of me. But I trapped myself. I could not survive if I tried to swim back
with them in pursuit. And they have watchers here. Old Jotok who know kzinti weapons. Such a one
fired at you and wounded the male human just now. Even with your boat we will be hard put to escape."

"How many of them are there?"

"Eights-cubed now. Mostly young and completely feral but, as I say, with a few oldsters. They have
been breeding unchecked for eight plus two years. Unchecked and unsupervised. How many there are in
this ship now I do not know. I venture along the ducts and corridors to hunt and kill as I may. The
smallest ducts that I can enter are too small for at least the biggest Jotok to travese easily."

"Why do they not hunt you down? They must know of you."

 "I keep moving. I survive because they do not know the codes I use to set the door-locks. I stay away
from large openings. I have slept briefly, and in a different place each time lest they decode my settings or
activate some tool to break the locks. Also do not forget I am kzin and my claws are sharp. Sometimes
at night I scream and yammer. That seems to make the old ones fear. Fortunately, before the kzinti
abandoned the ship they destroyed nearly all of the weapons and tools that they could not carry away.
After eight plus two years in the water and damp most weapons that are left no longer live."

"The Jotok did not maintain them?"

 "Many of the Jotok, including their maintainers-of-weapons, had died in the fighting. The survivors were
a group chosen randomly by Fate. I think that most of those that remained had almost no habit of doing
such things without the orders of kzinti. As for the few that did, they had no structure of obedience by
which they could enforce discipline on the rest. But I think that is starting to change. They are beginning
to acomplish new things. I had seen Jotok slaves in the harem and thought I knew something of their
ways. Even then they could surprise sometimes. Like humans. Like some kzinrretti, also, Riit! Be thankful
they have neither beam-weapons nor plasma-weapons. The solid-bullet rifles were the simplest and they
are the last. The doors and walls of this ship can withstand those. When they over-ran the kzinti on the
island they used rifles, but mainly they used stealth and numbers. They carried their dead away, as they
carried away the dead kzinti. Their dead were many, for the kzinti fought as Heroes. The kzinrretti too."

"But you did not?"

 "One kzinrret wade into a fight against eights-squared of enemy—a fight already lost? What intelligence
is that?"

 Strange,thought Vaemar.That question she asks shows the cusp we are on. I take it for granted our
kind would fight so. Such is all our history. Yet I would not, as she did not. Nor would the best
fighters I know. What are we becoming? And then:Fool! Discipline your mind! What of nerve-gas?
No, even if they have any, they could not use it here without destroying themselves.

 "The fact the open water about here is still so lifeless should have warned us of something," said Vaemar
aloud. "The kzin heat-induction ray may have killed everything but after eight plus four years large aquatic
life-forms should have reestablished themselves more abundantly—how long does it take a fish to swim
up a channel? They have even cleared out the crocodilians, and in the water those are not easy meat."

 "Yes. But you had as well bend your mind to getting us out of this place, Hero. They have used it as a
trap before: large animals and humans have come in through that opening previously, the opening you
used. They have not gone out again. There are Jotoki there now, watching and waiting for us, Jotoki with
guns. When the sun begins to descend in the sky, well before nightfall, the hunting Jotok will return in
eights-cubed."

"You have evaded them. So will we."

"I was not a great threat to the big sentient adults. They tend to stay in groups and narrow passages that
protect me from them also protect them from me. And they know I cannot escape. Some time soon my
fortune will desert me and they will overwhelm me or I will grow weak and starve here. So, I think, they
have reasoned, as far as I can understand the way their brains work. They will hunt you with more
determination. But more importantly, they will destroy your boat. Without that we are all trapped here. I
do not think you or the humans can swim all the way out of this swamp to the land, least of all with the
Jotok in pursuit. I know that I cannot."

 "They are no threat against modern weapons," Vaemar began to say. But the words died in his throat. In
these corridors and compartments, firing a strakkaker would probably be as lethal to everyone around as
it would be to the target: its blizzard of Teflon-glass needles would ricochet off the walls. They had no
battle-armor.

They had already seen that the heat-effect of the remaining beam rifle in such confined spaces would
probably be even more dangerous to its users if it was fired for more than an instant. This was a warship,
built to reflect beams fired from great laser-cannon in space: under the skin of the walls there would be
mirror-layers. With care they might get off a few aimed shots, but their weapons were by no means the
decisive edge they might at first seem.

"What other machinery is working?" he asked.

"How should I know? The machinery of a spaceship was not part of a kzinrret's education, even in the
harem of Hroarh-Officer."

"Can we get to the command bridge?"

"What is that?"

"The place from which the ship was flown and fought."

"I do not know . . . What does it look like?"

 "It probably has many lights and screens. Globes in which there may still be pictures. And semicircles of
screens surrounding seats. A fooch for the captain."

"There are several places like that."

Inspiration. "There should be a battle-drum. A great drum of sthondat hide. Or probably human hide."

"Yes, I know of such a place. But the drum is rotted."

"That does not matter."

"There are also often many Jotok there."

 There would be, he thought.Commanders in action often kept a few Jotok to hand on the bridge in
case a damage-control party had to be dispatched quickly. Trained Jotok, fiercely loyal to their
trainer alone . . .Jotok were creatures of habit and would probably seek the same habitats for
generations. Why had the kzinti not triggered the ship's self-destruct when they abandoned it?
Presumably because they wanted to live to fight another day. The self-destruct of a kzin
space-cruiser would be in the multi-megaton range. In space it mightjust be possible to get away in
boats before it blew, but not splashing through a swamp on the ground.
"Vaemar! Swirl-Stripes!" Anne called. "There is some sort of movement in the corridor."

 They dashed back to her. The Jotok moved fast. They had an impression of writhing limbs. She fired the
strakkaker straight down the hatch. Then they were gone.

 They stared down. Toby's dead body lay at the bottom of the ladder. It was identifiable by some of the
clothing. The Jotok had thrown it up into the strakkaker blast.

"Why did they do that?"

"Psychwar. Just because they look strange, they are not stupid," said Vaemar. "They seek to terrify us. I
mourn for our dead companion. But now we need not embark on a hopeless quest to find him. He will
be avenged."

 "Urrr." It was a kzin expression of many things, including agreement, which had entered the human
tongue on Wunderland. Vaemar peered down at what was left of the body. There was a volley of rifle
fire and he jumped back from the aperture. The Jotok were there in some force, and well armed. But
something black with winking lights lay in the water below among the shreds and glistening bone. A
telephone. The mangled thing it rested in was sinking.What would Honored Sire Chuut-Riit and
Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero do? They would not, he thought, attack with such a small force
against such difficult odds, unless there was no other way to win through, however much his instinct
shrieked "Attack!" Himself, Swirl-Stripes, a kzinrret, an injured human male, two human females. Not
much of an army. It would not be shameful to summon help. All, human and kzinti, except Karan, had
small locator implants under their skins, but these would tell no more than their position. The telephone
was now a prime objective.

Vaemar turned to Hugo.

"You can descend the ladder? You may need your hand to fire your weapon."

"I can jump. But aiming will be difficult, I think."

"Anne?"

"I can try."

 "I go," said Swirl-Stripes. Hefting the undamaged beam rifle, he leapt through the hatchway, firing as he
leapt. The sill at the companion door gave him a moment's protection as he grabbed the telephone and
flung it up to Vaemar, then leapt back through a hail of bullets from the Jotok. Vaemar saw him lurch
convulsively in mid-air as bullets hit, though the momentum of his leap carried him back up the hatchway.
He fell and lay flat. From the time he had spoken only seconds had elapsed.

 Vaemar thought for a moment that Swirl-Stripes was dead, but then he gave a scream, the kzin scream
of agony that few humans had ever heard and none ever forgot. Vaemar held his threshing claws still
while Anne and Karan, coming together without words, examined him. The examination was not lengthy.
The slow heavy slug of the Jotok hunting rifle had smashed a hole the size of a man's hand in his back.
They sprayed it with broad-spectrum disinfectant, coagulants, and anaesthetic agents and stuffed
expanding bandages into the wound to stop the broad flow of purple and orange blood. The lower part
of his body and his hind legs were paralyzed. With modern medical procedures the shattered nerves,
bones and muscles could be regrown, if Swirl-Stripes could be got to a modern hospital. If he could not
be got to a modern hospital fast he would be dead anyway and paralysis would not be a problem for
him.

The telephone's main battery was damaged, but a small back-up battery seemed to be working. Vaemar
passed it to Anne, hoping it was not keyed to Toby's voice alone.

"I can't get through," she said after a several attempts.

 "We have layers of every kind of armor all round us," said Hugo. Like a lot of the technology available
on post-Liberation Wunderland the telephone was primitive, produced when human factories had been
running down during the kzin occupation, and modern molecular-distortion batteries had largely been
banned because they made overly handy bombs. Its signals could not travel through the armor of the
cruiser. With kzin gravity-control technology, weight had been of relatively little consequence in building
kzin warships. Battle-damage meant holes in the outer hull—indeed he had seen several when they first
approached the cruiser, but here they were deep in the labyrinthine subdivisions, probably with several
sealed compartments between them and the sky.

He turned to Karan. "The bridge, the place with the drum. Is it near the top of the ship?"

"Yes."

"Can you see the sky there? Is there a window?"

"I did not see one. There are still lights burning there. But I think there is sky . . ."

 There might be a window. Kzinti hated being confined or being completely dependent on artificial
senses, and it was normal to have a window on the bridge that the captain could see through at least
when the ship was at cruising stations. It would of course be closed and shielded in battle. Could he open
it? Better to try that than try to force their way back up the corridor where the boat waited, especially
now. And "sky" sounded hopeful.

"Can you lead us there?"

"Yes. But there are Jotok. And we must go through corridors. A Hero cannot crawl through the ducts.
Many of them are too small even for me."

 Especially, thought Vaemar, a Hero carrying Swirl-Stripes. He obviously could not leave the disabled
kzin to the Jotok, and even in Wunderland's gravity he was far too heavy for the others to think of lifting.
Another grim thought: carrying Swirl-Stripes he would not be able to fight either. Would the humans have
the speed of reflex and marksmanship to beat the Jotok? Then the grimly amused thought:Why do I ask?
They beat us . Swirl-Stripes was too weak or too responsible to protest as Vaemer taped his claws with
the special tape the medical kit contained for that purpose. An injured kzin lashing out in agony or in a
half-conscious delirium was not something even another kzin wanted to be carrying.

 No point in delay. He bent and hoisted Swirl-Stripes on his back. Karan and Anne went ahead, with the
beam rifle and one strakkaker. Karan, Vaemar saw, ported the heavy kzin weapon as if she knew how
to use it. Rosalind and Hugo brought up the rear with the other strakkakers. Swirl-Stripes, drifting in and
out of consciousness, asked to be left, as a Hero would. Vaemar ignored him, as a Hero would.

 The emergency lights were few and random in the upper corridor through which Karan led them, but at
least it was dry underfoot, and dry enough to use, if necessary, the beam rifle in a brief burst with relative
safety. Once or twice the floor beneath their feet swayed. Kzin warships seldom died easily and there
must be a great deal of structural damage in the lower part of the cruiser, under water and gradually
sinking under its own weight into the mud. More holes in the armor on the upper part of the hulk might
have been useful.

 For some way even the kzinti's ears detected no movement by any large bodies ahead: apparently the
armed Jotok had concentrated below to cut them off from the boat. Then the lights became a little
brighter and more frequent, a proper supplement to their own lamps. They passed a fire-control point lit
by a bank of small globes that seemed to have been put there recently. It made progress a little faster.

"Your work?" Vaemar asked Karan.

 "No. The Jotoks' work. I told you they were beginning to accomplish things. They are beginning to make
repairs."

 A little while before it had been he who had reminded the others that the Jotok were not stupid. But it
was hard to remember the weird creatures had originally been on this ship as technicians and the trained,
loyal slaves of Heroes. The ship was obviously wrecked beyond hope of ever flying again. Why were
they repairing it? Habit? To make a fortress? Who knew how those joined brains worked, or were
coming to work now? Vaemar though that he was probably the first kzintosh for generations, apart from
the professional trainers-of-slaves, to care how or why Jotok thought. Until recently very few kzinti had
been interested in the thought processes of any of the other species which the Fanged God had placed in
the Universe for them to dominate.

 There was a Jotok scuttling up a pipe. A young one, its five segments not long joined. An Earth marine
biologist would have thought it an impossible mixture of phyla: echinoderm and mollusc, starfish with a
large dash of octopus giving the arms length and flexibility. Then they saw others on the pipes and
bulkheads, miniatures of the adults that could hold and fire kzin weapons and, given sufficient numbers,
even overwhelm kzinti in close fighting.I wonder if their ancestors designed our guns for us ? Vaemar
thought. The color of the bulkheads here was orange, and the passage was wider. This had been senior
officers' country. The bridge must be near.

 Anne shouted and pointed. Ahead was brighter light. The corridor opened onto the bridge. Hope against
hope, there was a broad shaft of daylight. The captain's window and more was gone. Battle damage. Of
course the ship's attackers would have concentrated on the bridge. Vaemar smelt the air blowing in from
the wide channels and the salt of the not-so-distant sea. Swirl-Stripes had lost consciousness. Vaemar
laid him down, and punched in the telephone's distress call, holding the key down for a continuous send.
The others had needed no orders to check the doors and hatchways and close those that could be
closed.

 No large Jotok to be seen, though there were a few small ones climbing about the walls. Vaemar strode
to the captain's fooch, kicking a couple of smelly, disintegrating trophies aside. Before him was the
semicircle of screens which the bridge team would monitor in combat, the keyboards and touchpads they
would operate.

 There were still some panels glowing as if with life. Light pulsed aimlessly across several screens. The
ship was not yet entirely dead. An image came to Vaemar of commanding a ship like this in its pride.

 There had been the power here to lay worlds waste. Vaemar had been in wrecked kzin warships
before—there were plenty of them on Wunderland—and even in their ruin they could not but remind him:
My Sire was Planetary Governor. I might have been Planetary Governor, too. Not merely to
command such a ship, or a dreadnought that would dwarf it, but to lead a fleet of thousands, to order
their building and their loosing upon the enemy with a wave of his hand . . . The thought was
instantaneous, fleeting, ravenous. He closed his jaws with an effort, but did not retract his claws. He
might need them at any moment. He remembered the words of Colonel Cumpston, his old chess-partner:
"You know you are a genius, Vaemar. By kzin or human standards. More than the kzinti of this world
will have need of you."Make my own destiny , he whispered to himself, tearing his eyes from the
fascinating weapons consoles.I am Riit and I can afford to adapt. It is easier for me than for one
who needs to prove something each day . . . But I do need to prove something each day. It is just
that I am not quite sure what. But my challenge is here. His disciplined his thoughts. The human
Henrietta had demonstrated to him the madness which dreams of a reconquest could lead into. And at
this moment he had a real enough task for a Hero before him.

He had done all he could to summon help. Now they would have to help themselves. He stood rampant.

 "Show yourselves, Jotok Slaves!" he roared in the Ulimate Imperative Tense of the Heroes' Tongue, the
tense that normally only one of the Riit's blood-line or a guardian of the kzin species's honor might use.

No response.

"Show yourselves, Jotok!" He roared again, this time in the normal Imperative Tense, which simply
meant: "Obey instantly or be torn to pieces."

"More humble, kzin!" came a voice from nowhere.

"Who spoke?"

"We show ourselves." One of the meaninglessly flickering screens, a large one set high, cleared.
Swirl-Stripes, drifting back into consciousness, yelled and scrabbled with his forelimbs. The huge image
of a Jotok stared down at them.

 The thing's real size was hard to judge, but the juveniles they had seen so far looked tiny, spindly copies.
The thing had age and bulk. More, Vaemar and the staring humans recognized, it had power . . .
Authority . Vaemar had little memory of Chuut-Riit's palaces. But he knew Authority. And this
thing—these things, he remembered they were colonial animals—had none of the air of a slave. Even
through the medium of the viewing screen that was obvious. He raised his ears and flexed them, so the
tattoos might be seen. He had no doubt they were in the deadliest peril. These killers-of-kzinti would not
have revealed itself/themselves were they not confident that they were complete master of the situation.
They could hardly intend that he should live or escape to give warning of their existence. And even as
these thoughts flashed through his head he was conscious of Karan's eyes upon him.

"More humble!" came the voice.

 "I speak to you in the Tense of Equals," said Vaemar. He fought down a plainly futile urge to leap at the
screen and destroy it. "And I am Riit. What do you wish?"

 "That you should know us. There are still some Jotoki left," said the old Jotok, "who lived on this ship as
slaves of the smelly-furred kzinti. We"—one of its arms gestured towards itselves—"rose to the position
of fuse-setter and maintainer of secondary gravity motors. Scuttling to do our master's bidding before we
roused its wrath. Waiting to be torn apart and eaten when we became too old to serve. But that was not
to be . . .

"Many of us died when the ship came down in this swamp, and our kzin masters were killed. The other
kzinti abandoned the ship. They cared nothing for us, of course. Had they been in less haste they might
well have taken us with them as a dependable food source.

 "We were alone. Time passed. We hunted and survived. Those of us who could operate the ship's
radios listened for orders from our masters, for words of others of our kind, but we heard nothing.

 "Many more Jotoki died then of masterlessness. We, and some like us, did not. We knew we had no
living masters. And we and those who are like us prepared to strike back.

"We have journeyed far from the ship. We have killed thekz'eerkti and the kzinti. We feast on them and
on the swimming creatures. This realm we make our own.

"We see the pictures that thekz'eerkti transmit. We have learnt from them a little of what was taken from
us. We, and the Jotoki species, have learnt of revenge!"

 Swirl-Stripes moaned again. Vaemar was suddenly aware of Anne beside him. "Keep him talking," she
mouthed. His acute hearing just picked up the words. He wondered if the Jotok could lip-read human
speech. It seemed highly unlikely. Everything so far had been said by it—by them?—in an odd blend of
the slave's patois with additional odd and insolent importations from the Heroes' Tongue.

 "This realm we make our own . . ." Hardly. And perhaps he could do worse than point that out right
away.

 "The disappearances in Grossgeister Swamp are already starting to attract attention," he said. He spoke
straight up at the image, though he did not know from where he was actually being observed. "That is
partly why we are here. If we do not return without further harm, more will come in greater force. Your
realm will not last long."

 "I see you havekz'eerki slaves working for you now that you have abandoned us," said the Jotok.
Vaemar disentangled resentment in the scrambled tenses.Have these Jotok become jealous of humans
? Certainly, it was plain they had no idea how things really stood on Wunderland.I can hardly expect
them to think like us . And then he thought:They have only seen the world from the point-of-view of
kzinti techno-slaves. They know nothing of how things really are. And almost like us when we
collided with the humans, no real experience of war except the old style of kzin wars of conquest.
Ambushing paddlers in the swamp is not war. Even at the very first, they were traders, not
warriors . . . And that led to another thought.

"Do you seek to trade?" he asked.

"Trade?"

"Your ancestors traded."

"We seek revenge for our ancestors. We are angry. We have much to avenge."

"So do we!" He thought of the flayed kzinti corpses in the compartment below. But vengefulness was the
most dangerous of all emotions for a kzin on Wunderland. There was a lost war to avenge, and for all
kzinti that was a demon living in their minds that needed strong caging. It sometimes escaped.

"Our vengeance has begun," the Jotok replied. "As we begin to understand what we have lost."
 "Your ancestors were traders. We offer you trade again."So, I must become an instant expert on
another alien psychohistory , he thought.As if having to learn to live among humans as an equal
was not enough. Yet perhaps what he had learned among humans was a help. He was practiced in
thinking the unthinkable, in saying the unsayable, indealing with members of an alien species rather than
taking them automatically as slaves and prey. He could at least talk to the Jotok. The creatures were
silent for a moment, as if in thought. Then they asked: "What have you to trade?"

"The oldest trade there is. Our lives for yours."

"Say on, kzin."

 "Kill us, and others will follow us to this ship. Next time they will be shooting as they come. Release us,
and you may live."

"Zrrch!So a kzin begs for its life!" Could there be a deadlier insult? Vaemar felt his ears knotting with the
effort as he again fought down the urge to scream and leap at the image.I am Vaemar! I am
Vaemar-Riit! I am Son of Chuut-Riit! I can control my emotions!

"For the lives of others!"

The Jotok seemed to hesitate. Presumably its brains were conferring among themselves.

"We have killed kzinti," it/they replied. "We know kzinti. Kzinti will not forgive!"

That was true.

"Also we have killedkz'eerkti , kzinti's new favorite slaves. Kzinti will not forgive."

 A certain information gap there, thought Vaemar.But basically this monstrosity is right. They have
done too much to be allowed to live. Besides, I have no authority to make a binding deal with
them. And the monkey-trick of lying is not available to me.

 "And I have no authority to deal," added the Jotok, as if echoing Vaemar's own thoughts. Was that
some dim race-memory of a civilization that had had organization, consultation, hierarchy? "Only to kill."
This was in the Heroes' Tongue, nearly pure. "And to tell you, kzinti, before you die, of the wrath and
vengeance of the Jotoki, whom you have twice betrayed! Take that message to your Fanged God! You
will die, kzinti, but you will know your killers."

Its mouths struggled with an untranslatable alien word: "Rrrzld . . .stand clear!"

"There!" Anne pointed.

 The Jotok was on a small gantry near the deckhead, largely concealed in the shadows cast from the
patch of sky. A Jotok band might once have played there for the pleasure of the Captain. Vaemar
jumped and fired the beam rifle with kzin speed an instant before the Jotok could operate its own
weapons. The Jotok, hit in its center by the beam, staggered to the edge of the balcony, drew itself up,
and fell. In a convulsive spasm its toroidal neurochord ruptured, its five arms separating themselves into
the individuals they had originally been. Vaemar's Ziirgah sense reeled for a moment under the psychic
blast of their agony. For a hideous second he almost understood what it was like to be a colonial animal
torn apart, and not for the first time gave an instant's thanks he was not a telepath. Other Jotok—large,
mature Jotok—appeared, running for the balcony which, they saw, carried a set of heavy rifles, mounted
in quad. Anne and Hugo shot them down with the strakkakers. Karan screamed and leapt. Vaemar spun
on his hind-legs. Three more Jotoki rushed out of the darkness at them, kzinw'tsais whirling in their
hands. Vaemar leapt after Karan. Together they dismantled them.

 There was silence on the bridge for a moment, save for rustling like forest leaves as the small Jotok fled,
and thrashing of severed Jotok arms and brains, their voices diminishing into death. Behind and below
them were more purposeful sounds.

"We must get out now!"

 The hole in the deckhead was not an impossible leap for a kzin in Wunderland's gravity, but it was far
too high for a human, even if Hugo had been unwounded, and there was the dead weight of
Swirl-Stripes. The tough sinews and central nerve-toroids of the dead Jotok, however, when separated
by Vaemar'sw'tsai and razor-like claws, plus the expedition-members' belts, plus the humans' clothes
knotted together, made a sling. Modern fabrics could stand huge stresses without tearing. While the
humans held the Jotok back with short bursts from their weapons, Vaemar and Karan scrambled to the
gantry, and leapt to the opening. They hoisted the others out one by one.

 Coming into the bright sunlight, with the wide rippling blue-green water and the wind from the sea, was
for a moment like leaping into a new world. But it was, Vaemar thought, as he hefted the rifle again and
surveyed the situation, a world they might not enjoy long.

 They were on the upper part of the kzin cruiser's ovoid hull, which curved down to the water a dozen
yards away. The surface would hardly have afforded a purchase for feet or claws were it in pristine
condition, but it was pitted by minor damage and there was a build-up of molds and other biological
debris.

 A movement caught the corner of Vaemar's vision. With faster-than-human reflexes he spun and fired.
Another large Jotok, carrying a rifle in two of their arms, a knife in another, leapt out of a turret. Mortally
wounded, they staggered on two of their arms towards the group, shrieking with all their mouths, and
collapsed. Vaemar retrieved the rifle before it slid into the water.

 There were, they now saw, many other openings in the hull, including the empty or damaged blisters of
weapons-turrets and mountings. There were a score or more of places from which the Jotok could fire at
them from behind cover. They themselves had no cover, and charges and ammunition for their weapons
were running low. They had escaped from one trap into another.

"Can you swim?" Karan asked him.

 "It appears I shall have to." The nearest island, the sandbar where they had left the outriggers and a good
deal of equipment, was considerably more than a mile away. He could even see the outriggers drawn up
on the bank there, tauntingly near yet hopelessly out of reach. Vaemar had had swimming lessons as part
of his ROTC training but had not liked it. Rosalind and Anne could perhaps swim to it, Vaemar thought,
and Karan said she could swim, but Hugo's arm was still useless, there was the dead-weight of
Swirl-Stripes, and he was by no means sure that he could do it himself.

 Not all of us, not without help, he thought. Let the females save themselves, and he and Hugo would
hold the Jotok off as long as they could. These females, after all, were sentient, and to die protecting
them would not be pointless. Should they escape, they would be able to summon vengeance. He thought
of his debt to Karan. In any case, it did not appear there was any choice.
 On the other claw, making such a stand would not achieve much. The Jotok could probably dispose of
him and Hugo quickly, then pick off the females in the water at their leisure, either with guns or by
swimming after them in numbers. It would be a bad death to be pulled under water by Jotok. There was
no way to summon the outriggers. And, he thought, very little time. Drowning was a most unattractive
death, but being eaten by Jotok in this decaying ruin of a proud kzin vessel even more so.

 "Vaemar! See!" Rosalind pointed. In the water, caught against the bulge of a half-submerged turret, was
a large dead bush, a small tree. Vaemar stared at it, then at her. He didn't see the relevance in their
present situation.

"That can make a boat for us!"

 I would never have thought of that, Vaemar realized.Honored Sire Chuut-Riit should have begun
studying humans earlier. He could calculate the physics quickly. The wayward thought came to him
that if kzinti had cared for water they might have been more notable seafarers themselves. He had heard
that on some planets . . . He also knew there was a temptation for thought to flee in all directions from
imminent death and focused his mind sharply. It was a bad day to die, with the sun, the breeze filled with
the scents of life and wide spaces, and the sparkling water, but any day was a good day to die heroically.

 "It will not take the weight of Swirl-Stripes," he told her. "And I am not leaving him. The rest of you take
it, and go. Hurry! Avenge me. And the others." The tree might support them and leave their hands free to
fire their weapons. He noticed as he spoke that Swirl-Stripes's eyes were open again, and though violet
with pain, seemed clear.I will put a weapon in his claws , Vaemar thought.He will have a warrior's
death .

 "We can take Swirl-Stripes," Rosalind said, "if we can give him a little more buoyancy. What have we
that will float?"

 They had very little equipment of any kind. Swirl-Stripes raised his head weakly and pointed at the dead
Jotok.

 "Conquer water," he muttered. It was an echo of something he had said in Marshy's house. Vaemar
recalled the swimming creatures they had seem. Jotoki swam. That was, of course a large part of the
problem. And Jotok must swim very well to have conquered and devoured so many of the native
swimmers of Wunderland in their own element. The Jotok they had just dissembled had massive sinews
and muscles.W'tsai in one hand, razor claws of the other extended, he sprang to the Jotok's body.

 Cleaning the entrails and pulling the muscles and sinews of the arms through the hole the rifle had blasted
through it was harder than he had expected. But with the last field-dressing from their belt medikits
sealing the hole at entry and exit, the empty, inflated body made a kind of float. The sinews, along with
those Jotok pieces and the clothes they had already used for the sling, tied the float to Swirl-Stripes, and
Swirl-Stripes to the tree. The rest of them, naked, seized various branches and pushed and kicked the
tree clear, into open water and the deep channel. Vaemar took one of the strakkakers. It was lighter than
the rifle and would be easier to manage single-handed.

 The bulk of the cruiser still loomed over them. The first Jotok to appear on the upper curvature of the
hull were silhouetted perfectly against the skyline, and Vaemar, holding the strakkaker in his free hand,
shot them before they could draw a bead on the tree with their rifles. Anne, swimming clear and using
both hands to aim her strakkaker, accounted for two more.

There was no more firing for a while. There had not been many adult Jotoki in the ship, and they had not
many functioning weapons. Vaemar, looking down through the green water at the white sand that seemed
very far below, was glad he could use at least one, and generally both, hands to cling to the branches. He
also found his claws could not retract, and tried to avoid ripping his flimsy handholds to pieces. He
remembered from his historical studies a statement made by a human sage named Francis Bacon who
had lived on Earth nearly twice eight-cubed years before; "A catt will never drowne if it sees the shore."
He hoped it was true. The water was cold and repellent on his fur at first, but became less so as time
passed. He was glad that Wunderland's orbit and inclination meant the weather was warm.

 Jotok were not the only enemy, he remembered, and felt his hind-limbs kicking harder at the thought of
what might be beneath them. He told himself that when the Jotok had cleaned out so many
prey-swimmers, big swimming carnivores had no good reason to be in the area. Watching for Jotok, and
anything else swimming on the surface, holding his weapon cocked and above water, clinging to the
branches and keeping an eye on Swirl-Stripes and the rest, his mind was too busy to panic at the feeling
of void below him, especially if he did not look down. Anyway, he told himself, he had been in space,
and this was not much different. He hoped the Jotoki on the ship did not have the means of calling the
adults who were away hunting, and he hoped the hunters did not choose this time or this route to return.
His eyes met Karan's, paddling beside him, and he forced himself to raise his ears in a smile. There was a
wide expanse of blue-green water between them and the wreck of the cruiser now, and Vaemar felt a
sudden small surge of pride that he had conquered it. They swam on.

 Something touched his foot. He kicked frantically, hoping to damage it before it struck, but it was the
upward-sloping sandy bottom. The current, once they were into it, had helped them more than they
realized, but it had almost carried them past their sandbar, and already they were on the far side of it,
away from the wreck.Just as well , Vaemar thought, kicking now with full, purposeful, disciplined
strength.No point in letting the Jotok see what we're doing. In a few moments the tree was aground,
and they waded ashore, Vaemar carrying Swirl-Stripes again. There, on the other side of the island's low
central ridge, were the outriggers as they had left them. All were tired, and both the kzinti and the naked
humans found themselves shivering. Hugo looked very weak, bent over cradling his injured arm.

"Are you able to carry on?" Vaemar asked him.

 "We are soldiers now," said Hugo.And you win wars , Vaemar thought, looking at the frail creature
striving to stand rampant with his weapon.Well, this is a war for me to win now.

 Vaemar realized that despite the meager compressed rations they had had in the ship, he was beginning
to get hungry again. They faced a long and difficult journey to safety, but . . .

 We have won, thought Vaemar. Land under their feet and the outriggers, proper boats and with a good
deal of their equipment, changed the whole situation.

 But the situation was changing again. He looked back to the hulk. The water round it was seething, now,
and the kzin's keen eyes could see Jotok—large, mature Jotok—climbing out of the water back into the
hull. The hunters returning. There were eights-squared of them already. It would not be a good idea to
wait till the returned Jotok attacked them here in force. Best to head back to Marshy's island at once,
and hope to escape them by hard paddling and straight shooting. Hope too, that the signal for help had
got through and help would arrive in time. He remembered what the old hermit had told them:the kzin
crew's number was smaller by the time they got to this island. And they had not had armed Jotok
swimmers pursing them. But the outriggers made all the difference. They could also make a proper call
for help now.

The outriggers exploded in boiling orange mushrooms of flame. Humans and kzinti flung themselves flat.
Explosion reflex had been drilled and engrained into them all. The ridge running along the axis of the
sandbar saved them.

 Hugo had landed on his broken arm but Vaemar could pay no attention to his noises as he crawled to
the crest of the ridge. The bushes overtopping the crest of the ridge flashed into fire. Behind him, another
half-mile away, the vegetation on the next island was also burning—and in no ordinary fire. The
long-dead, tinder-dry stuff was exploding. Pushing a small "V" in the sand with his claws he risked a
quick view of the cruiser.

 One of the weapons-turrets on the hulk was pointing at them. Already there was enough drifting smoke
to show the ghost of a beam passing back and forth. From somewhere near the burning island behind him
came a vast explosion, not of flame, this time, but of steam. More steam, he saw, was beginning to rise
around the derelict.

 The Jotok were firing a battle laser. Not one of the cruiser's main weapons—those, if they had been
serviceable, would have melted the island to slag—but still something designed to knock out armored
ships in space-battles. It was mounted in a functioning, armored turret which their own weapons could
never damage. He backed away down the slope of sand that was their only protection. As he did so the
low coarse vegetation on the top of the ridge, analogous to marram on Earth, flashed into flame. A trickle
of melted silica ran down the slope behind him.

 The laser played back and forth. The heart of Grossgeister was burning as well as boiling for the second
time. A great semicircle of the dead islands were ablaze. Mighty rolling clouds of smoke and steam
billowed up.

 Good, thought Vaemar.A bit more of that and we will be hidden. Also, it will have to be noticed
soon, if our signal did not get through. He realized satellites must have already registered that a heavy
kzin military laser was firing in Grossgeister. He hoped the response would be an investigation, rather
than a nuke from the Strategic Defense Command.

 For the moment they were sheltered in the lee of the sand ridge, though the laser was sweeping just
above their heads, lighting the smoke cloud more brightly as the smoke thickened.

 He realized Rosalind was beside him. The others were huddled down some distance away. Dust and
soot particles, suddenly incandescent in the beam, flared and sparkled in the air above them. Vaemar
slapped out a burning spot on his fur and worked himself further down into shelter.

"Can't you stop them?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

 "You know what I mean." He grinned at her, the fanged grin that humans on Wunderland has learned
long before to dread. There was saliva in reflex and his fangs dripped. Humans had learned to dread that
also. "You have been in contact with them, haven't you?" He would have lashed his tail if it had not meant
a risk of losing it.

"I don't understand you."

 "This is no time for monkey lies!" Naked as she was, she looked very Simian to him. "The old Jotok
knew you! They were crying out to you, weren't they, trying to say your . . . name"—suddenly, for the
first time since he had been a kit, it was hard for the kzin to acknowledge a human name—"'Rrrzld . . .
stand clear!' And in the fighting, you were the only one whose shots hit no Jotok. You were firing to miss.
I saw."

"You see a great deal, young Riit. But not everything," she replied. "You do not see that we have met
before."

 "Go on!" His claws and teeth were very close to her now. "Speak or die!" The razor-tip of a black claw
touched her naked skin. There was a small trickle of blood.

"We met in the caves," she said. "You were my prisoner once. I was Henrietta."

 She was a third-year university student. About twenty Earth-human years old. Henrietta had been his
Sire Chuut-Riit's executive secretary, the highest-ranking human slave under the kzinti occupation, the
collaborator with the highest price on her head after Liberation. When, six years before, she had held him
and Raargh captive in Chuut-Riit's secret redoubt, he had seen her closely. She had had an adult
daughter, Emma. Emma whose crazy plan had been to lead a kzin rebellion. This dark-haired young
manrret could not be Henrietta. There was no similarity in voice, in eyes, in anything. And then he realized
that she could be. Henrietta had had many contacts. She could have had transplant surgery. New eyes to
thwart retinal pattern analysis, new skull-shape, new lungs to thwart breath-particle analysis. Something
odd about the hair . . . Sufficient new parts would make DNA testing useless. He could see no scars, but
with sophisticated surgery and regrowth techniques they could be made invisible anyway.

 What had Anne said of her? That she kept to herself. And she did not move like a human? Did that
mean not like a young human? Not like a human with its own legs? He remembered something else. In
Marshy's house, the last time they had been together in formal circumstances, she had not sat while he
remained standing. And she had begun to call him "Honored" before biting off her words.

"In the Name of my Honored Sire, Chuut-Riit, I command you!" he snarled in the Ultimate Imperative
Tense. "Speak truth!"

 "I escaped when the ARM stormed the secret redoubt," she told him. "Another body was taken for
Henrietta's. Its head was completely destroyed and it had spent some time in a Sinclair field. ARM and
the Resistance had the body they wanted. No one had an interest in looking or testing too closely.
Markham had the body destroyed."

"I rremember."

 "I hid. I changed my appearance. At length I got to the swamp. A lot of fugitives have come here at one
time or another. Yes, I made contact with the Jotok, fairly recently. Then I returned to Munchen. I took
the identity of a student. Largely to be near you."

 "Why? Why did you deal with the Jotok? Was dealing in conspiracy with kzinti and humans not enough
for you?"

 "No. You know what your Honored Sire came to believe—that kzinti and humans both are threatened
by a conspiracy of which the human ARM is but one aspect—one tentacle. He warned Henrietta of
such. I saw that it could manipulate well-meaning humans. More, that it could manipulate kzinti—and
would. It had tricked your Honored Sire into shameful death."

"His death was not shameful! He died saving me and the other kits! I rremember his last day."
 "There was no kzintosh nobler and braver. The shame was upon others. I was desperate to secure you
as an ally. But . . . you saw how Henrietta's plans failed. Several of those around me were ARM agents.
Humans are easily manipulated by them. Kzinti they have experience in manipulating, too. They have
selected and seek to breed what some callWunderkzin , kzinti who are like men. You are the first among
those who their eyes and hopes are fixed upon."

 "I musst be a leaderr to the kzinti of Wunderland!" He was speaking in Wunderlander again. "Many have
ssaid sso. I am of Chuut-Riit's blood!"

 "Few know that better than I. Few would grudge you your destiny less or hope more for its fulfilment.
But humans and kzinti together are not enough. To defeat the ARM we must add the Jotok to the
equation. Another set of alien brains, I thought. Those linked brains perceive things differently to either of
ours. A great potential asset. I thought I had reached them. But they have been masterless too long. The
older ones will never reenter servitude."

"You are hardly in a position to persuade them to." He was able to get his accent under control again.

 "I tried. I spoke with them. Living with the kzinti, Henrietta had seen what the Jotok were capable of.
Their brains were not destroyed. Gaining their confidence was slow and dangerous, but I managed it in
the end. I have made many secret trips here in the last three years. Easily done. There are many places
one can enter and leave this swamp unobserved, and what was left of Henrietta's organization could at
least get me a small, stealthed boat. I told them what I could of . . . recent developments on Wunderland,
but the old one's minds were too set for them to properly take it in, the young one's minds were too
unformed. But I was making progress! They came to acknowledge me as an entity, a non-Kzin, and
would not willingly harm me. At least"—bitterly—"that old Jotok entity we have killed would not. Does
that not tell you something about them? They are not naturally savage. Well, we have repaid his trust in
the way humans so often do!"

"Stand up then. See if their laser will not willingly harm you. And what of the dead humans? The dead
kzinti who sought but to fish? How do we repaythem ! Urrr!"

 "The Jotok are not like humans. They are not like kzinti. That is the whole point. But within them still is
the remnant of something high and great. The universe needs them. To unite the best of the three species
against ARM."

"I do not see how . . ."

 "It is all spoilt now. Even if they would listen to me, I have no way of reaching them. I wished to stay
with you, Honored One, to speak with you when we might, to have you see . . . things . . . It was foolish
of me to come on this expedition, but I thought I could control it. I should have realized that I as one of
six could do little. I have made bad judgements, mistakes."

 Her eyes looked into Vaemar's eyes.How could I ever have taken her for young? he thought as he
saw the weariness there. "I have tried to do my best . . . for all . . . I have paid somewhat of a price . . ."
There was liquid running out of her eyes now, the human sign of grief. "But now there is another plan,
another chance. If I can live . . . If I can but reach the abbot. He may shelter me, I think. And then, and
then . . ." Something else came into her eyes, making her look like the young Rosalind again, and then
faded.

"I am confused often, Vaemar-Riit . . . and you see how I look. I have had much surgery. My skull is not
my own . . ."
 And you weren't excessively sane last time I saw you, Vaemar thought. The ghostly beam sweeping
through the smoky air above them suddenly ceased. Cautiously they raised their heads. The turret on the
hulk was not moving, as far as they could see, though it was hard to make out in the huge bank of white
steam boiling around it. The laser had not been cooling efficiently. Either it had burnt out—not unlikely
given that it had probably not been systematically serviced for the last ten years, and its cooling system
was designed for firing in space anyway—or the Jotok thought them dead.

 Meanwhile, thought Vaemar, the outriggers that would have been their means of escape were gone.
Even the dead tree that had carried them here was burning fiercely. Alpha Centauri A had fallen far
towards the horizon and night would be only a few hours away. There was no point in thinking about
what to do with Rosalind/Henrietta now. He summoned the others.

 "We will wait until it begins to grow dark," he told them. "Then we must set out to swim to the next
island. And the next after that."

 They would have to try to keep Swirl-Stripes afloat with the aid of his inflated Jotok, but Vaemar did
not feel optimistic. If the returning Jotok adults pursued them they would have no chance. And even
without the Jotok there would be dire problems for swimmers. The further they got away from the dead
area and the Jotok, the more numerous the crocodilians and other predators would become.

 Vaemar was confident that his, and Karan's, teeth and claws would see him and her through, and in
other circumstances he would have reveled in such a chance to hunt and kill, especially as the channels
got narrower and the water shallower towards the edges of the swamp, but he had other charges. "Do
not show yourselves on the skyline!" he ordered. There was no point in letting the Jotok know they were
alive. Swirl-Stripes was still drifting in and out of consciousness, but seemed to be slowly sinking. They
fed him a little water when he could take it, and some compressed food from their last remaining ration
pack. That reminded Vaemar of another problem. He himself was beginning to get hungry. So, he
imagined, was Karan. He knew he could control his own hunger for a while yet, but in an extremity of
hunger a kzin, especially, and sooner, a young kzin, could lose control and mind and attack any living
thing in a mad frenzy. As Chuut-Riit's last surviving kit he had especial reason to be reminded of that.Let
me not forget I am a Hero , he asked the Fanged God. Time passed.

 The fires on the islands beyond them were beginning to die down now. The dry dead plant-stuff had not
lasted long. Then in the distance he heard, or rather felt, the drumming of an engine. Marshy's boat
partially surfaced in the wide channel between two of the smoldering islands. Weapons pods and sensors
were extended on it.

 Vaemar knew their body-heat would not show up in infrared—not with half the land masses around
them still red-hot. Though the fur on his back crawled with the expectation of a laser-blast, he leapt to the
highest point of the ridge, waving his arms and roaring, the tightly-focused kzin roar that can carry for
miles across land or water. He saw the boat alter course towards them and dropped again. It
approached and grounded in the shallows. Marshy, wearing a battle exoskeleton and carrying a beam
rifle of a pattern forbidden to civilians on Wunderland of either species, leapt through the water and
dropped down beside them. Vaemar, Hugo and Anne began to tell him what had happened. Then
Rosalind/Henrietta screamed.

 It was a scream of pain that almost shocked the kzin as his glands reacted. She was thrashing in the
sand, clutching her head. A convulsive lurch took her whole body clear of the ground, then she fell back
limply. She was plainly dead.
 Vaemar turned to Marshy, seeking some explanation. Then he saw the old human's face was also
contorted with pain. He was struggling desperately out of the exoskeleton. He flung it aside and leapt
away from it, almost naked now like the rest of them.

"Heat!" he cried.

 At the same moment Vaemar felt a burning against his skin, on his hands and between his shoulders. The
metal fastenings of his belt, the only substantial thing he was now wearing, were hot, as were the rings
keyed to the guns. He smelt a new burning smell, one that reminded him of the battle in the redoubt:
burning kzin-hair. They had just now burnt through his fur. There was also smoke raising from
Swirl-Stripes, but with his nerve-damage he would be unable to feel anything except his hands, which
were tearing at each other. Vaemar stripped the belt from him, with no time for gentleness, and felt its
metal components and compartments burn his hands. The rings followed. He tore off his own belt and
rings. The humans were doing the same, Hugo with one arm having a difficult time of it. Between
Vaemar's shoulders was a point of agony as if a rusty nail was being driven into a nerve-trunk.

"Heat-induction!" cried Marshy. "It's the heat-induction ray!"

 The Jotok in the hulk must have been playing it on the islands and the surrounding water for some time.
It heated metal first, nonmetallic substances and living tissue much more slowly. Some ceramics were
nearly proof against it and the weapon's own containment chamber was ceramic. But it heated everything
in the end. It was too slow to be useful in space-battles, but it was standard equipment on kzin warships
also outfitted for ground-attack, and a terrible weapon in the right circumstances, like these. The kzinti
had developed it to boil the seas of Chunquen, when the natives of that watery planet had tried to resist
their invasion from primitive missile-armed undersea ships. It was the weapon that had boiled the heart
out of Grossgeister before.

 Vaemar yelled to Karan, explaining through clenched fangs what had to be done. Her claws made quick
work of slicing through the loose skin between his shoulders and removing the locator. Then they did the
same for the others, Vaemar having to hold them as Karan worked. Fortunately the locators were
intended to be removeable, but not like this and it was painful work. Human and kzin blood spilt and ran
together in the sand. No doubt with the heat and change in chemical environment the devices would be
transmitting emergency signals before they cooked. Rosalind/Henrietta's head was smoldering now.
Much of the skin and flesh had burnt or peeled away to reveal a metal skull.

 Get in the water!His instinct shrieked, and he knew his instinct was wrong. The water would soon be
boiling, as it had boiled before. He had seen pictures of the original kzin landings on Wunderland, and of
what had happened when, at both Munchen and Neue Dresden, humans had tried to take refuge from
fires in pools and fountains. Last time it had happened in the swamp, the creatures in the water had flung
themselves ashore before the end . . . Already the water around Marshy's boat was boiling, stream
beginning to rise again in a white curtain. And Vaemar realized the boat's brains and electronics were
probably already cooking. As he watched, one of its guns began to fire, cycling a stream of bolts in
random arcs high into the sky.

 Another thought: the boat's power-source was probably a molecular-distortion battery. That would
cook off also. In the war, human guerrilla forces had used MD batteries as bombs. The boat was far too
close. Desperately, Vaemar wondered if he might leap into the water and push it away. The boat was
firing other weapons now, as well as flares. Its siren began a screaming noise that sounded like its brain
crying out.

A green bar of light slammed downwards through the smoke-obscured sky. None of those huddled on
the sandbar had ever seen anything like it: a heavy naval battle-laser, mounted as either the major
armament of a capital warship or in a military satellite. There was another beam, and another, converging
on the hulk. The water around it was boiling in earnest now. Gun turrets on the hulk were firing again, but
randomly, as ready-use ammunition cooked off. A hatch opened and it launched a
Scream-of-Vengeance fighter. But it was either uncrewed or crewed by half-dead Jotok and simply flew
in a crazy parabola before crashing in the swamp and exploding. A weird combination of flames and
steam was jetting out of the holes in the great hulk.

"Cover your eyes!" cried Marshy.

Even with eyes covered and faces pressed into the sand, they saw the white flash as a bank of MD
batteries in the hulk exploded. There were more explosions. Then the green beams cut off.

 "They would have detected the kzin heat-induction ray at once," said Marshy. "We will have to tell them
it wasn't kzinti using it." He pulled a com-link from the discarded exoskeleton and spoke urgently into it.
A wave hit the sandbank, slopped over the fused glass of the ridge and splashed them. It was hot, just
short of unbearable.

 The secondary explosions became less frequent, then stopped. The clouds of steam drifted away and
they saw the hulk clearly again. Where it had previously plainly been a derelict kzin warship, it was now a
twisted, shattered, unrecognizable mass of blackened wreckage and slag, the water about it still bubbling
and boiling. No living thing could be seen on or in it. They stood staring at it in silence for some time.
Marshy worked on Swirl-Stripes with a small, portable doc. Its lights at length pronounced his condition
stabilized. Then Karan pointed: Kzin eyes could make out that dead Jotok of all sizes were floating out of
the wreckage. Already, from nowhere, a few carrion-eating flying things had appeared in the sky.

 "Nothing could have survived that," said Marshy. "But perhaps we should go and look." He splashed to
his boat. "The brain's not quite cooked," he said as he returned. "But it was a near thing. Most of the
electronics are out, but we've got a ride home." He was carrying lightweight ABC suits, protection
against atomic, biological or chemical contamination, and passed these to the other humans.

 "I'll take Anne and Hugo," he went on, helping Hugo into one. "I've none to fit kzinti. You had better stay
and look after your companion till we return." He looked down at Rosalind/Henrietta's body. "That had
better be disposed of," he added, tactfully. "Does she have a family?"

 Anne tore her eyes away from the bare metallic skull and the hands stilled in the act of trying to claw it
open. Her own face was very white. "She told me she was an orphan," she said in a somewhat shaky
voice. That was not surprising. There were, after all, many orphans on Wunderland. "Forgive me . . . it's .
. . it's nothing."

 Hugo placed his uninjured arm round Anne's shoulder and guided her to the water's edge where she too
donned a suit. Vaemar, watching, though again how strange and simian the naked humans looked, with
their odd tufts of hair, sexual characteristics and ungraceful taillessness.And yet companions , he thought.
Hugo and Anne splashed out to the boat. Msrshy retrieved a decontamination kit from it and sprayed
them all.

"You seek to finish the Jotok?" Vaemar asked Marshy.

"No. To preserve any we can, though I have little hope of that."

"For what? A new generation of slaves for the Wunderkzin? Perhaps there are still a few skilled
Trainers-of-Jotok among the kzinti here."

"No."

"Or for the humans?"

 "No. Unless they are trained very early they cannot live as slaves. In any case enslavement, even of
another species, is contrary to all human law, and Wunderland, I need hardly remind you, is part of
human space again . . . But I shall have to search thoroughly. We shall be gone a little while," he added as
the boat moved away.

 Vaemar turned to the body again. Henrietta. His Honored Sire's slave, who his Honored Sire had at last
addressed as "Friend." Who had mourned his Honored Sire and tried in her way to be faithful to his
memory, as well as to bring some sort of settlement between kzinti and men. She had done him no real
harm, indeed had given good advice in their escape, and her remains deserved dignified disposal.
Besides, he was getting very hungry now, and not only because of the relaxation that followed release
from deadly danger. Karan, he could see, was hungry, too.

 Another thought passed through his mind: after he had commanded her in the Ultimate Imperative Tense
to speak truth, she had suddenly ceased to claim that she was Henrietta, and had begun to speak of
Henrietta in the third person. Did that mean anything? Was she not the real Henrietta? There had been a
number of human females among the followers of Henrietta and Emma in the redoubt. Perhaps it didn't
matter. A pair of aircraft flashed into the sky above, hovered for a moment over the wreckage,
barrel-rolled and were gone.
                                                    ***

He had finished tidying the scene when Marshy and the others returned. Swirl-Stripes had also taken a
little nourishment and the lights on the doc remained steady.

"Nothing," the old man said. "As I thought. They were all cooked."

"Is that such a disaster?"

 "It is a . . . misfortune. And a cause of sadness. They were a great civilization once. Not only great, but
benevolent. They raised many worlds to civilization and prosperity in the days of their greatness. Oh, they
did it for their own ends, partly, realizing that successful traders need wealthy customers. But perhaps
there was more to it than that . . .

 "We had better get out of here," he went on. "There are some liberated radioactives in that wreckage.
This place will soon be deadly for all who go near, and remain deadly until it's cleaned up. Another
reason there will be no Jotok. Any more distant foragers who return now will die. And your companion
needs more than first aid or the boat's doctor. We can't stay around and we can't help them anyway."

 He turned again to the battle-exoskeleton. Rosalind/Henrietta's belt and its utility-pouches lay on the
sand nearby. He picked them up together, and began to close the exoskeleton down. "Odd," he said
after a moment.

"What is odd?"

 Marshy pointed to the console. The sensory equipment on the battle armor included a broad-spectrum
life-form scanner. Its oscilloscope, which had been flat-lining, was now recording small waves. He put
the belt down to examine the screen more closely. As he did so the waves stopped. He raised the belt
again, holding the two together for a moment, and then opened the ceramic containers that hung from the
belt. He drew a light from the exoskeleton.

"Look."

"What are they?"

"Jotok tadpoles. Free-swimmers, still unjoined. She must have collected them in the hulk."

 "Yes," said Vaemar. He remembered now how she had dropped behind them as they waded up the
flooded corridor. That water must have been alive with larval Jotok. They were the minnowlike things he
had seen in the first chamber.

"No ordinary swimming creature has a brainwave like that," said Marshy.

"So what happens to them?" asked Vaemar. "You say they cannot be enslaved. Will you kill them?"

"No."

 "I know humans are sentimental at times. Will you set them free to starve? Or to live feral in the wilds
and the swamps, the last of their kind on this world? As zoo specimens, perhaps?"

 "None of those things. The abbot and . . . others . . . gave me several missions a long time ago: one was
to find Jotok, if any still survived. The ponds at Circle Bay Monastery can be nurturing-places for them.
And they can be taught to be both intelligent and free. It will take a long time. But perhaps we can make
them traders once more. A highly honorable calling for Jotoki. I said they helped many species to
civilization once. Now we can help them to civilization again."

 Vaemar felt a snarl rising in his throat. Free Jotok! A planned outrage to the kzin species, to the
Patriarch whose blood flowed in his veins! His jaws began to gape and he felt his claws sliding from their
sheaths. One sweep of those claws would end that possibility once and for all. The man, like all its kind,
was, he knew, contemptibly slow. He began to raise one arm, hind-claws digging into the ground to give
his stroke purchase, muscles without conscious thought twisting to give his body added torque as he
struck . . . He felt Karan's eyes on him, and something made him pause. He felt the surge of fury recede.
Was he still a kzin of the Patriarchy? He stood puzzled for a moment, tail twitching.

 Henrietta had been his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit's faithful slave. Free Jotok would be a memorial to her.
In an indirect way, they might carry on her work. In a strange, unforseen way, they might be a memorial
to Chuut-Riit too.Perhaps, he thought,our memorials are always unforseen .My Honored Sire was a
great enough master to inspire loyalty in some humans, and as a result I live and a race may live
again. He lowered his arm. He did not know if Marshy had noticed, or noticed the effort with which he
spoke.

"I ssee . . . Sshee ssaid the univerrse needed them."

"Whoever you mean, she was right. They were a rare thing, too precious to lose . . ."

 They boarded the boat. Minor injuries and scorches were treated. Swirl-Stripes was taken below, and
they headed up-channel on the surface. They drew away from the drifting clouds of smoke and steam,
the islands of crackling flames.
                                                   ***

The slanting rays of Alpha Centauri A lit the clear water a delicate blue-green that deepened as the sun
sank further. The islands they passed were living again. Vaemar, his fur dry, settled into the broad, almost
fooch-like, bench that ran around the aft cockpit, watching the colors changing in the water and sky, the
first stars and sliding satellites appearing as Alpha Centauri A set. A few hours before, he though, he had
not expected to see the stars again. Life was good. Karan sat in the opposite corner. He felt a sudden
tickling and looked down. The tip of her tail was twined around his. Their eyes met again and this time it
was she who raised her ears in a smile.




  Catspaws
Hal Colebatch

 Chapter 1
That an ape has hands is far less interesting to a philosopher than the fact that having hands he
does next to nothing with them.

—G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1908.




Occupied Wunderland,
2406 a.d.


 The human freighter from Tiamat and the Serpent Swarm landed at a corner of the old Munchen
spaceport not needed at that moment by the warships of the Patriarch's Navy.

 Humans, however, inconvenienced their conquerors even potentially only at their peril. Under the guns of
security guards of the Wunderland government the freighter was unloaded with feverish haste, largely by
sweating human muscle.

 The guards took their bribes, ran checks over the piles of cargo seeking for weapons, explosives or
other contraband, checked the manifests with their counterparts at Tiamat, took more bribes, and saw
the cargo into a bonded warehouse. Few humans served either the kzinti or the collaborationist human
government with fanatical zeal, but terror, desperation and poverty made workable substitutes for
devotion. The ship took off again for Alpha Centauri A's asteroids before the kzinti decided they needed
its landing area.

With the area cleared there was time for another, more thorough check. Part of the cargo, 50- and
100-liter liquid containers, was shown to be medical and agricultural chemicals, as the manifest
described. Raw material for geriatric and other drugs, plus a few agricultural trace-elements in solution.
There were also the usual vacuum and zero-gravity products that were a mainstay of Serpent Swarm
export, manufactured in space and on asteroids where there were still relatively few kzinti and more
working human factories. There were sealed containers with the warning symbol for radioactive
substances, but these were elaborately certified from Tiamat's medical laboratories and the government
as vital isotopes for nuclear medicine and without potential weapons use.

 The chemical containers and some of the other cargo were loaded into primitive but well-armed wheeled
vehicles. The kzinti allowed few humans to use flyers, even the clumsy human ground-effect cars. The
vehicles' signatures were transmitted continually to the kzinti and Wunderland government satellites
monitoring traffic and they were allowed to proceed by road along a predetermined route to a processing
plant. That road had, long before, been made in a few hours by the flame of a hovering ship's
reaction-drive fusing the ground. Now it was kept more-or-less in repair by gangs of human serfs with
picks and shovels.

 The geriatric chemicals needed processing but, even without the remainder of the consignments, they, far
more than the nuclear material, would still have made a prize almost beyond price for any highjacker.
There were few geriatric drugs or facilities on the ground for making them with the Wunderland economy
shattered by the war and the kzin occupation. People were ageing and dying. Few human criminals,
however, now had the resources for a highjacking. Crime was largely a matter of solitary muggings or
Government-level corruption.

 The processing plant where the vehicles stopped stood in a semi-ruined area on the outskirts of the city.
There had been a battle there in the few days of organized human ground resistance around Munchen
after the kzinti landings, and much of the area had been flattened, but some factories were now providing
a thin stream of necessities. TheTrummerfrauen (that archaic term recently revived on Wunderland) had
been and gone. The repaired and gimcrack new buildings—factories, workers' huts, a few small bars and
shops—stood here and there like islands.

 The streets wandering through this semi-wasteland were bleak and empty, though the reddish
Wunderland vegetation was growing back on the wide stretches where nothing had been rebuilt and
there were some Wunderland scavenging creatures, bolder than they had once been. Beam's Beasts,
Advokats and even a few of the foul zeitungers were breeding up again as sanitary services broke down
in these districts, and attempts at preserving something of civic culture gave way to apathy and despair.
However, some humans kept minimal services going. Kzinti did not like dogs barking, and the dogs
rounded up to help produce that primitive, now near-priceless chemical, insulin, were muzzled or without
vocal chords in their cages under the plant, the plant itself sheltered behind heaps of rusty razor-wire.
Kzinti seldom deigned to visit these parts but there were a few robot and human sentries, the robots the
better armed.

 The containers were unloaded, checked off again, and stored in secure areas. The contents of most of
them were made into desperately needed drugs. Some people involved got rich, though in rapidly inflating
occupation money. Some made enough to get to the Serpent Swarm or into the hills. Some of the nuclear
material found its way to hospitals where painful and primitive treatments and procedures had been
revived, often for long-forgotten but now also revived diseases. Many people who would otherwise have
died, lived, at least for a time.

 However not all the containers were opened. Some few were removed and dummies substituted. These
containers were eventually loaded onto other primitive vehicles, or onto horses and mules, and, with
other traffic, taken northeast in cautious stages to the great limestone escarpment of the Hohe Kalkstein
and the sparsely-settled country beyond. A few days after they left the warehouse the collaborationist
government on orders from the local kzin supervisor-of-animals brought in a kzin telepath to sweep the
minds of key personnel working in the plant. The resistance was alerted beforehand and several fled. The
alert was not perfect, however, and so several others died, but they died before the telepath could reach
them.




Occupied Wunderland
2407 a.d.


 The convoy arrived in the little valley at nightfall. Nils and Leonie Rykermann and a dozen others
emerged from hiding and greeted it. More remained hidden.

 "Our instructions," said the guerrilla courier in charge of the convoy, "are to get this stuff to you, and you
are to get it under cover. Bury it in the caves—caves that aren't used—and forget it until you hear
further." He passed Rykermann a sealed copy of orders.

"What is it?"

 "I don't know." That was hardly surprising. "Need to know" was enforced with religious zeal in the
Resistance. Kzin interrogation of prisoners very often included telepathic probing, and even without this
kzin tortures were very persuasive. "Markham's ships picked it up off Acheron." He gestured to the
nuclear-material warning which some of the containers bore. That seemed self-explanatory even if the
rest did not. "It was landed with false certifications. I know there was a lot of effort put into getting it
here."

Rykermann nodded. "If it's something that kills ratcats, that's all that matters for now," he said. Hatred
glittered in his eyes. "Dead ratcats. That's all that matters," he repeated to himself. It was probably an
unnecessary statement. None of the humans present felt differently.

"I don't think Sol would go to this much trouble to send us strawberry ice cream," the courier said.

 Their infrared signatures, diffused through the canopy of leaves, and further by the cloaks which they and
their mounts wore, might be indistinguishable from those of a herd of gagrumpher or other large
Wunderland animals to kzin or government surveillance satellites. But it would be foolish to bet that way
for too long and they wasted little time in talking.

 Rykermann, the Resistance's chief biochemist and Wunderland's major expert on the great cave systems
of the Hohe Kalkstein, supervised the rapid unloading of the animals. The containers were stacked inside
one of the many cave entrances in the area. Some of these caves joined the huge main system, but even
those that did not could be prodigious in themselves. Mapping the great caves and their connecting
passages—many times the size of the Carlsbad Caverns of Earth—had been barely begun when the
kzinti landed forty years before, and after decades of use by human guerrillas it was still very far from
complete. A quick prior inspection had shown these chambers at least to be free of recent signs of
Morlocks, the large, quasi-humanoid but near-brainless predators that had ruled in the deep caves. The
two parties hurriedly began covering the containers.
"I'm sorry I can't stay and socialize," said the courier.

"Don't apologize," said Rykermann. "Whatever this stuff is, we'd better not linger too near it. And I've
got an honest job to get back to."

 "Kzin!" screamed Leonie as the two gravity-cars rose over the valley-wall. Her beam rifle was firing
before she finished the word. Attached to her rifle was a small surface-to-air missile. It just missed one of
the sledges, but the kzinti did not know it was the only one the guerrillas had—given the threat of such
missiles, they could not circle firing from the air. They needed no other encouragement for
ground-combat. Other guerrillas, previously posted, fired from hiding-places around. Some of the
weapons were primitive makeshifts, others were more modern and effective.

 The kzin cars were sledges for light scouts and hunting-parties, not for full-scale war, but they carried a
couple of heavy beam-weapons mounted at the noses and the great felinoids had sidearms. The beam
from one smashed into the part-buried heap of containers before the housing of the car's gravity-planer
was hit and it turned over, the screaming kzinti leaping clear, firing their own weapons as they came. The
main human party was down too, firing into them.

 One of the human party's horses provided a diversion. Maddened by the smell of kzinti it broke its tether
and ran screaming. Uncontrollable reflexes triggered by the sight and by the smell of its terror, two kzinti
leapt at it, razor claws slashing through saddle, hide, muscle and ribs, the kzinti themselves presenting a
target the human marksmen were quick to find. The shrieking animal ran in a semicircle, crashing into a
group of kzin as it collapsed in its death-agony. The humans had time to begin firing at the grounded kzin
troops in earnest before they leapt.

 The ground combat was short and bloody. No human could hope to match a kzin in speed or strength,
but if the human was trained and experienced and could get in or under shelter with a modern weapon,
the odds were evened a good deal. The members of the guerrilla supply column obeyed their instincts
and went down in a circle, firing outwards. The kzinti obeyed their instincts and tactical doctrine: they
leapt and charged, screaming and firing as they came. Kzinti died in the charge, but the circle of guerrillas
was overrun and shattered. Their heavy weapons apart, the kzinti's speed and agility were as terrible in
battle as were their claws, teeth, strength and merciless fury.

 Leonie leapt to one of the abandoned kzin sledges and swung its heavier gun onto the main kzin body.
More kzinti died, the survivors scattered, regrouped and counterattacked. Leonie and the gun were their
main target for a moment. A laser blast hit her squarely in the chest, but she was wearing one of the
guerrillas' few high-tech light-weight flak-jackets with layers of mirror. She went down in a diving
somersault and crawled away as the guerrillas—Rykermann's group and the few survivors of the supply
party—gave covering fire. The kzinti again charged the main human position. Again kzinti died, and so
did a large number of humans, then, but thanks largely to Leonie and the gun, the humans now
outnumbered the kzin enough to take losses and keep fighting.

 The leader of the guerrilla convoy was torn apart by the claws of one kzin slow to die of wounds, who
plunged on to wreak havoc with rest of the convoy party. The surviving kzinti scattered after their first
slashing leaps, but humans followed them, screaming their own battle-cries. The kzinti, instead of
disappearing into the darkening forest, regrouped and leapt back. Strakkakers, Lewis-guns and beam
and bullet rifles met them. The kill-ratio was better this time, almost one kzinti for every two humans
dead. Four kzinti made it into the cave, where the fight ended. The humans had bombs of nitrate-based
explosives.

Nils and Leonie Rykermann, highly-experienced fighters, and protected as major assets by their own
people, survived, as did some of their fighters. None of the convoy party did.

The last fighting kzin, staggering bloody and maimed from the cave to die on the attack, fell screaming in
a storm of converging bullets and beams. The few surviving humans moved fast, killing the wounded
kzinti and those of their own too badly wounded to move.

"Let's go!" Tasso von Lufft, the second-in-command, grabbed Rykermann's arm.

 The dying kzin commander had been playing possum, hoping to lure a human within reach of his claws.
Rykermann finished shooting him between the eyes. Some kzinti were terrified of going to the Fanged
God without ears or noses. In case this kzin should be one such, Rykermann paid his respects to the
details of this belief by slashing the nose off with his ratchet-knife. Two more slashes secured the tattooed
ears, which would go to his belt—a kzin custom which the guerrillas had adopted. With practiced fingers
he rifled the ammunition pouches.

"We can't leave this stuff!" Leonie protested. Half the containers were unburied still, a number scarred
by the kzin beam. The damp ground around them steamed.

"There'll be more ratcats here any minute," von Lufft objected.

 "Not quite yet," said Leonie. "If that was a set ambush they'd have had follow-up on top of us now. I
think it was just a hunting party or a random patrol."

 "But the cars will probably have signalled," said von Lufft. "And satellites will have picked up the beams.
We've got to get out of here fast! There will be more kzin forces on the way here now. That's if they're in
the mood for a hunt and don't just hit us from space."

 "They died to get that stuff here," said Nils Rykermann, gesturing at the dead leader of the couriers.
"Whatever it is, it's important."

 "And if it's dangerous, and leaking? Those drums took a fair hit. Like the man said, I don't think it's
strawberry ice cream."

 "If they're leaking virulent radioactives we're dead already. But"—a quick examination—"I don't see my
meter moving. I'm hoping they were made with strong linings. Come on! The sooner we get them
covered the sooner we're out of here."

 The containers were quickly buried in the caves, invisible to any human in the entrance or the main
passage. Decades of war had made these resistance fighters instinctively expert at camouflage. The
scattered bodies, human and kzin, were stripped of equipment and weapons. Some of the humans
carved pieces of flesh from the dead kzinti for ritual cooking and eating later.

 There were too few survivors to carry everything away, and what could not be moved was smashed.
They turned to the kzin cars and wrecked them as thoroughly as they could. Flying them was out of the
question. It had been, Rykermann thought, counting the survivors, a Pyhrric victory—in fact no victory at
all. The kzinti could afford to lose a couple of carloads of troops more than the guerrillas could afford to
lose so many proven fighters—and friends. Friends who had died for he knew not what. He hoped it was
worth it to whoever in Sol System was responsible. The courier group would have to be rebuilt from
scratch with a fresh draft of doomed humans. Most guerrilla formations had already had casualty rates of
several times one hundred percent of their original numbers. With that thought Rykermann, not for the
first time, fought down a sense of hopelessness that at times threatened to overwhelm him.How much
longer will recruits come forward for the fight? he thought. And answered himself:As long as the
kzinti remain terrible and unendurable. And that will be until we are all dead, and forever beyond
that . He scattered a few pressure-mines about the site, and sacrificed a precious strand of Sinclair wire,
stretching it between two trees at a height where it might, with luck, decapitate or bisect any kzinti
charging in pursuit, though it was fiendishly dangerous and difficult to handle in the dark.

 The surviving guerrillas scattered into the forest, to where the rest of their horses and ponies were
waiting hobbled under a limestone overhang at the entrance of another cave. They were not ideal
transport between the trees but they were the fastest things reasonably safe from mechanical detection,
and horses needed no urging to flee from the smell of kzinti. There were many horses without riders now,
and the surviving guerrillas turned some of these loose in the hope they would be a decoy.

 Then they rode, the woods dark around and above them. Behind them after a little while were the
flashes and reports of kzin missiles hitting the site of the fighting. Lights in the sky were kzin gravity-cars
flashing towards the scene, loaded with troops.

 Branches whipped by them. The fleeing guerrillas smashed through a glade where a small herd of
gagrumphers were sleeping, the creatures lurching bellowing to their feet in the dark around them. Good,
thought Rykermann, as he realized what they were. The infrared signatures of the big beasts milling about
might help confuse kzin spy-satellites as well as ground troops. At his command they hauled their horses
round and headed northwest, at right-angles to their previous path.

They splashed through a wide, shallow stream, dropping powerful olfactory agents that might confuse
kzinti tracking them by unaided scent. Rykermann turned to glance at Leonie, bent low over her pony's
neck, urging it on, and the other survivors about, counting them again. He dug in his own spurs. It would
be a near thing. It was one of the rare nights when, with neither Alpha Centauri B nor Wunderland's
moons yet risen, the sky would be relatively dark for some time. He hoped that would help the fleeing
humans more than the kzinti.

 The kzinti bombarded the area behind them, though only with ordinary weapons, then their troopers
landed and swept it, snarling over their dead. One triggered a pressure-mine, adding to the rage and
confusion. With their eyes' superb sensitivity to movement and their keyed-up, hair-trigger reflexes, they
blasted a number of small animals, both in the limestone glades and hollows and when they fired at dim
movements in the dark of the caves. They found one badly-wounded human alive whom Rykermann's
party in its haste had missed and took him for terminal interrogation. They removed their own dead and
threw the burnt human dead into the caves, after removing ears and other trophies in their turn. The
unburnt human dead were stacked in the cars—monkeymeat.

 Then they left, searching for humans, some running on all fours and leaping into the dark of the forest like
the great hunting cats they were. One of the sledges was salvaged, the other, wrecked beyond possibility
of further use, was abandoned. The slave-worked factories produced them for the kzin armed forces in
thousands. One flying car hit the Sinclair wire, with spectacular and bloody results. They left. As
Rykermann had hoped, the noisy gagrumphers delayed them a little.

 Silence returned to the valley and the caves. Then the flying cave-creatures that the humans called
mynocks returned from the deeper caverns to their perches, hissing, squawking, their droppings, rich in
nitrates and concentrated uric acid, falling to add to the deep layers already forming the cave floor: food
for the vermiforms and other scavengers. More acidic compounds, burying the containers a little deeper.

After a time a party of Morlocks from the deeper caves approached the place where the noise and lights
had been. The mynocks rose in a shrieking cloud, some snapping at the Morlocks with their horny
toothed beaks and beating at them with barbed leathery wings. The Morlocks leapt and tore at them with
slavering, baboonlike muzzles, dragging those they could out of the air to tear apart and eat alive. The
main cloud of mynocks divided and flapped away, some into the night sky outside, some down the
tunnels and into the labyrinth's deeper darkness. The Morlocks were savage and hungry. With the
mynocks gone the smell of burnt human flesh drew them, heads down and bulging eyes running with tears
and squinting against the little starlight that filtered into the cave's crepuscular zone.

 One, climbing over the new mound of soil and rock, exposed one of the containers. It grasped it with
splayed, five-fingered hands and worked it partly loose. The container's hard ceramic outer casing had
been damaged, as had some of the metal of the inner casing beneath, but not completely penetrated. The
Morlock shrieked and spat as it touched a jagged metal surface still hot. It knew only that it had no smell
about it of food. It abandoned the container and joined the others tearing at the mynock and human
corpses.

 When all was eaten the Morlocks left again. Later the mynocks came back. The life-cycles and the
chemical processes of the cave ecology resumed.



  Chapter 2
Liberated Wunderland,
2433 a.d.


 Again, Alpha Centauri A was setting, though at this time of year Alpha Centauri B rose early, filling the
sky with wondrous purple light, silver-cored. Two watchers took their ease on the scarp of the Hohe
Kalkstein, admiring the splendour of evening as their system's twin star cleared the horizon in its
diamond-brilliant glory, offset by the ruby point of Proxima. There were satellites in the near sky, and the
frequent sliding and flash of meteors: the wonder-filled evening of Wunderland. Before them, the
escarpment swept down into a great plain, with a view of distant mesas to the south-east and a few far
scattered lights. From certain cave mouths in the cliffs below them flying creatures issued into the
twilight—great leather-flappers, species of mynocks, and little flittermyce in clouds like smoke.

 Nils Rykermann, Professor of Field Biology at Munchen University, lay back on a portable couch,
punching a notebook's keys in a leisurely manner. His colleague and pupil Vaemar, sometimes known as
Vaemar-Riit, Master of Arts and Science, doctoral student in several disciplines and son of the late
Planetary Governor Chuut-Riit, recent injuries at his neck and shoulders sutured, disinfected and dressed,
reclined on another.

 "I think we've done all we can for the moment," Rykermann remarked. "Back to the city tomorrow." He
had recently taken to smoking Wunderland chew-bacca and now he looked into his pipe's glowing bowl
as an aid to thought. The pipe, an intricately-worked thing of wood and metal, was a gift from his pupil,
who did not himself smoke.

"I suppose it has to be." Vaemar lashed his tail meditatively. "I enjoy the High Limestone."

"Even with your Morlock bites?"
 "Yes. Stupid creatures to attack me at odds of only eight to one. And it's a few more ears for my
trophy-belt. Honored Step-Sire Raargh will bawl me out about the scars but he'll approve
none-too-secretly. So will Karan. And young Step-Siblings will admire. And Orlando."

 "Raargh's got plenty of scars himself, and a lot of them from the same creatures," said Rykermann. "I got
some with him. Anyway, it looks as if we won't have to breed a new Morlock population in test-tubes.
We know now that they're living and breeding in the deep caves all by themselves. Lots of them, it
seems. We'll have to improve security for our expeditions, though. And you've got other work to do."

 "Yes, I'm afraid I tend to let my enthusiasm for field-trips bias me too much towards my biological
studies."

"I'd noticed. But as the greeting goes, The Kzin is a Mighty Hunter. I don't want to discourage you. And
your other grades and projects leave nothing to be desired. The physics, mathematicsand history prizes
were a good trio. And up here the formations grow well. You positioned the Sinclair Fields and the
pumps cleverly."

 The two were silent again for a time, contemplating the night and the majestic view. Vaemar pointed.
"Visitors," he said.

 Rykermann squinted in the direction of Vaemar's extended claw. A few moments later his eyes too
made out the lights of an approaching car. Vaemar gave a churr of delight as it landed and his old friend
and chess partner, Colonel Michael Cumpston, alighted.

 Cumpston greeted them briefly, giving Vaemar a scratch under the chin in response to his grooming lick,
but in a half-crouching position: in the past Vaemar's enthusiastic welcome had knocked him over more
than once.

 "I've got a message from Arthur Guthlac," he told Rykermann. "He would take it as a personal favor if
you could meet him at your first convenience." He paused and went on in a different tone. "Early's
involved."

"Why didn't Arthur just send me an e-mail? We're seeing him in a few days anyway, aren't we?"

"This isn't social, I'm afraid. Security," said Cumpston.

"Why couldn't he come himself?"

 "Give him a break! He's been working round the clock trying to get his desk cleared before the big
event. There's some secret business."

"What?"

"As I said, secret. He didn't confide in a humble colonel. Anyway, you're wanted back at the ranch.
Now."

"I'm not a soldier any more. He can't order me round. In fact, since I'm a Member of Parliament, it could
be a breach of Parliamentary privilege to do so."

"Nils, Arthur may be a friend of ours, but don't mess with Early. You know better."
"I thought he'd left Wunderland. That Montferrat-Palme or someone had put pressure on him to go—to
get out of the system."

"He went—physically. Some have said it would be better if he was still under our noses."

"We're just about finished here for the time being, anyway," Rykermann said. "Vaemar can take charge
of packing things up."

 Cumpston nodded. Though he kept his expression blank, the former exterminationist's friendship for and
trust in the young kzin pleased and amused him. "Another thing. Arthur says you should upgrade your
security. He was vague about the details, but I gather there have been a few . . . problems in this area."

 "I suppose we have let things get a bit lax." There were farms and hamlets dotted about the fertile
tableland beyond the great escarpment and things seemed very peaceful.

 They were silent for a moment. Then Cumpston stretched his arms and cracked his knuckles in a
leisurely way. It had the effect of showing him the instruments on the forearm of his jacket.

 "Don't look now," he said slowly, making an gesture that took in a heap of boulders to his left, and
raising his hand to pinch his lower lip, "but I am getting a signal from the motion detector from behind that
rock-pile. Something quite large and bipedal. The high probability is human."

 Rykermann nodded thoughtfully, as if agreeing with the point Cumpston had made. He did not have a
laser-ring like the ARM officer, but the ring on the hand that brushed his thigh activated his pistol.
Vaemar yawned and also stretched, a feline's extravagant stretch that arched his back and dug his claws
into the ground. He pulled up one forearm and then the other, in a lazy, breadmaking gesture. Then he
leapt over the rock.

There was a human scream, and an angry spitting from Vaemar. He reappeared holding a human child
or adolescent. Thrust into his belt was a gun it had evidently been carrying.

"Feral," he said, though the clothes it was wearing made it obvious. "And clever. Look at this." His hand
with retracted claws touched his captive's cheek with surprising gentleness. "Rarctha fat. That's why I
didn't smell him. No weapons."

"Who are you?" asked Rykermann. The youngster struggled and spat.

"Not a Wabbit," said Cumpstom. The Wascal Wabbits were the most sociopathic gang of ferals on
Liberated Wunderland. Their facial tattoos were easy identifiers.

"Turn him round," said Guthlac, though the young feral's sex was not in fact obvious. With a single
practiced movement he brought a tranquilizer-gun from his belt and fired a Teflon dart into its shoulder.
The feral went limp.

"They don't hunt alone," said Cumpston, as the feral was put into his car.

"I know," said Guthlac.

 "A gang of them, armed, can be a real danger," said Cumpston. "I'll report to security, of course, and get
some proper people out here after them, but in the meantime, it wouldn't be a good idea for any of your
students to be wandering about unsupervised or unarmed."
 "Not all my students are helpless," said Rykermann. "And none of us are ever quite unarmed. All the
same, I don't want anyone using weapons on children. I hope we have the resources to bring them all in
soon."

 "That's up to you. You're the politician," said Cumpston. "But as I say, I gather Arthur's had . . . reports.
Disappearances. Within a few miles of here. Maybe this lot are to blame." He turned to Vaemar. "Don't
leave your students here alone. I'd suggest, if I may, that you call them up now. Get them back to town
as soon as you can."



  Chapter 3
 "You sent Earth a message a couple of years ago, asking us if a consignment of radioactives or biological
weapons had been sent to Wunderland at a certain time during the war," said Brigadier Arthur Guthlac.
"Why?" He spoke with the indefinable awkwardness of a friend suddenly turned official.

"Two years ago?" Rykermann frowned. "Yes, of course I did. But why bring that up now? I assume it's
been dealt with."

 "No. Thanks to our bureaucracy it has only reached the relevant desk recently. And that by chance. One
of Early's subordinates with a long memory happened to see it on its way to the files. It was, of course a
secret job, and very few ever knew about it. Normally we, or the Wunderland Government, would have
sent out a team to clean it up in due course—when a mountain of higher priorities had been disposed of."

"So?"

"Why did you send it?" Guthlac repeated. "When you did?"

 "A routine part of tidying up," Rykermann told him. "We buried some stuff during the war, stuff we were
told had been sent from Earth, and I thought the UNSN should remove it. It was obviously something
secret and military. Therefore something dangerous. I won't apologize that it took us a long time to get
round to it. We've also had one or two other things on our hands, you know."

"You're sure it was stuff sent from Earth."

"That was what we were told," said Rykermann. "From Earth via the Serpent Swarm belt. The courier
who delivered it to us was killed. I don't know any more than that."

"When did it happen?"

 "It was about a year before the kzinti captured me in the caves. About fourteen Earth-years before
liberation."

"So it got through," Guthlac said. "We thought it had been lost in space."

"What was it? . . . Don't pull that stone face on me. We took risks for it," Rykermann told him. "A
number of people died for it. Answer my question, please, Arthur. Also, I happen to be not only the chief
biologist for the cave complexes, I'm very close to the Minister for Environmental Protection. Do you
want me to tell him there's an unknown bioweapon from Earth at large and Earth won't tell us anything
about it? That is my duty as a Wunderlander and a member of the Government. And there was nuclear
stuff, too."

"Nils, I know well enough you are a politician," said Guthlac. "In any case I suppose you'll need to
know. It's Pak tree-of-life. And, Nils, I'm ordering you to say nothing about it."

 Rykermann drew in his breath sharply. He looked as if he was about to burst out with something, but
then said only: "Why?"

"I'll tell you. But I'll trade you information. Tell me more. Everything that happened then."

 "We were in the wild country beyond the Hohe Kalkstein. There was a fight." Rykermann told him the
story.

 "We hid the stuff and cleared out," he concluded. "After that we had plenty of other things to do,
beginning with getting away. If I thought about it at all later, I wondered if it might be a radioactive agent
we were meant to smuggle into kzin ships or areas and then open. Enriched uranium for detonators,
perhaps. Initiators for simple fission bombs. Plutonium. Caesium. Or some biological plague that the Sol
Laboratories had developed to use on ratcats. But I had other things on my mind. We'd done as Sol
instructed, at big risk all along the way. In the day-to-day matters of staying alive I didn't give it too much
thought.

 "The resistance was getting into a bad way then. Not just because attrition was wearing us down and
more and more humans were either giving up and accepting their lot or just dead. Chuut-Riit had begun
studying humans and that was making life harder for us all. Some kzinti were investigating monkey
stuff—it had been beneath their dignity before—and some were also getting all too interested in what
they found. They were learning more about us and it was getting harder to hide.

 "Then I was captured by the kzinti," Rykermann went on. "Thanks to Raargh-Sergeant and because
we'd fought together against the Morlocks, and Leonie had soft-heartedly saved his life, I was awarded
fighters' privileges and paroled. That changed my lifestyle. I wouldn't risk front-fighting and then falling
into kzin claws again after breaking my word to them—there are some things you can't ask of a man and
that's one of them. I was exhausted anyway. Plus they had azzrou implant in me, not being overly trusting
of any monkey. I became more a back-room boy for a long time. There was plenty for a backroom boy
to do."

Guthlac nodded. Rykermann went on.

 "Time passed. We did what we could, growing a little weaker and more hopeless each year. Then came
other things, it seemed on top of one another, hard and fast: the ramscoop raid and the death of
Chuut-Riit, followed by the kzinti's civil war and the Liberation. That didn't mean the end of work for us.
In many ways we were busier than ever.

 "I thought thezzrou would kill me come Liberation. But a human doctor managed to hack it out. He died
instead of me when it exploded. Thanks to Leonie, some of my people found me in the wreckage just
before I bled to death. But without fancy surgery I spent the Liberation with a hole the size of your fist
where my right scapula had been, and not, as you can imagine, taking a very active part. Finally they got
me to the UNSN forces and one of the military regeneration tanks. Other wounded had to make do with
organ banks. I was fortunate enough to be spared that."

Rykermann was telling Guthlac things he knew already, but Guthlac let him speak on. He knew one
terrible thing Rykermann might be referring to when he spoke of organ banks and apparently it still
helped him to talk.

 "Later, when things had settled down, and I was generally tidying up loose ends, I asked the authorities if
they had sent us any dangerous radioactive material. I didn't hear anything more. That was the last I
thought about it until now. I love my biological work and that's what I'd rather concentrate on. And . . .
well, there were other things on my mind, too."

"Dangerous, to leave radioactives around."

 "Cleaning up Wunderland will be a long job, Arthur," Rykermann said. "There are lots of crashed ships,
lots of spilled radioactives, lots of munitions, half-made experimental bioweapons, lots of hot dumps still.
Our granite's generally a lot hotter than Earth's as well, which can make detection more difficult. I guess
we'll have to wait till the war's over in space before we can even think of seeing the resources to do the
job properly. But now you say . . ." Again he stopped as if biting off words.

 "Anyway, you were right," Guthlac said. "There were some nukes in it, along with triggers—bombs
ready to go. Some of them very dirty and with a big bang for their size."

 "That's not very nice to have loose on Wunderland," said Rykermann. "There are still kzin revanchists
around, not to mention some humans who could be even more dangerous. Apart from—the other thing.
We must bring it in now. I suppose you have the signatures of the nukes?"

 "Yes. Here." Guthlac gestured to a computer-brick. "They shouldn't be too hard to find—in fact they
were designed to leave signatures so they could be retrieved from hiding-places easily. We also had
transmitters broadcasting those signatures. They are so miniaturized they aren't very effective, but they
might help. We also have triggering codes. But you want the full story?"

"To Hell with the nukes! Pak tree-of-life. Why?"

 "One of the greatest services Markham and the Alpha Centauri resistance did for humanity was to set up
a maser facility on Nifelheim," Guthlac said. "They were able to send Sol a lot of information about the
kzinti and in particular their fleets.

 "Markham? He knocked down a lot of the kzin surveillance satellites," said Rykermann. "And his people
jinxed others to send misleading information. The resistance would never have survived otherwise. That's
what we owe him for. But what's Markham got to do with tree-of-life?"

 "For us it was the intelligence he sent that mattered. Keeping that secret channel open was priceless. We
were also masering them, but at both ends we kept our messages short and few. For the kzinti to have
intercepted them would have been disastrous. But as you say, until Chuut-Riit settled firmly into
command they didn't take much interest in what monkeys did so long as they were decorous slaves. We,
like you, took advantage of that.

 "The message we sent with the special consignment was deliberately cryptic. Decoded it said only: 'Hide
it. You'll get further instructions if and when the time comes.'

"When things were going from bad to worse in the war, about the time of the third big kzin fleet attack
on Sol," Guthlac went on, "Early's people launched Operation Cherubim."

"I've never heard of it."
 "Very few did. By that time we were beginning to fear sabotage of the war effort by pacifists and
would-be quislings in Sol system. Thanks to Markham's masers we knew that in the Centauri system
humans had not been exterminated but were living under a collaborationist government. We made that
public knowledge, thinking it might be good for morale—Sol people would have grounds to hope their
families and so forth here might still be alive. Anyway, we only rediscovered the need for any censorship
slowly. It was a mistake. It meant there was a temptation to some Sol people, when they knew they
might go on living under the kzinti, to settle for something like the same, rather than endless, grinding,
hopeless war and increasing poverty, hardship and coercion for all."

"If you can call it living," said Rykermann. "The worst that Sol people endured was paradise beyond
dreams compared to what we had here."

 "I know. But the possibility of a negotiated surrender for Sol was an inducement to defeatists and others:
People worked out that those who did services for the kzinti—assisted them in their conquest—might
expect to be rewarded by them. They worked out there were probably people like that on Wunderland."

"There were," said Rykermann. "Since I was out of things at the Liberation I missed seeing most of what
was done to them then."

 "At first we hadn't bothered with security much, discounting any possibility of kzin spies or agents," said
Guthlac. "No human would spy or do sabotage for the kzinti, we assumed. But we learnt better as time
went on. Humanitywasn't united. Secretsdid matter. Operation Cherubim was deadly secret: To send a
ship to Alpha Centauri with human volunteers—childless, of course—who would be converted into Pak
Protectors. They carried tree-of-life agent in a sealed compartment. Something went wrong. They never
arrived. Perhaps they ran into kzin ships. Perhaps just one of the accidents of spaceflight.

"But there was another operation on the same lines: To send tree-of-life agent in an unmanned ship."

"Why?"

 "It was the emergency backup. There were many advantages from the covert operation point of view:
simpler, quicker, a ship able to accelerate and decelerate faster and, without life-systems, smaller, harder
to detect or intercept. Plus, we weren't over-supplied with suitable Protector volunteers. The resistance
had instructions to pick it up at the edge of the system and smuggle it to Wunderland."

"As geriatric drugs and trace elements."

 "Yes. Not a complete lie, of course. Itis a geriatric drug—and how! Always make your cover story as
close to the truth as possible. The idea was, even if someone at the Alpha Centauri end who had an idea
of what it was fell into kzin hands and was probed by a telepath, he or she could fix on the idea of a
geriatric drug and medicine, just possibly the telepath would not detect an actual lie. That was the idea,
anyway. Whether or not it would have worked is another matter. But anyway nothing was said in our
maser as to what it really was. Then, of course, when it arrived it was to be hidden.

 "If Sol system had been plainly falling, instructions would have been masered to open the containers and
make Protectors. From there it would, we hoped, go as Operation Cherubim had been meant to go. Of
course, we would give instructions then to try to ensure that the Protectors created would be suitable
individuals—volunteers, with high ethical standards and records—goodpeople, in short—and childless.
We would have wanted trained scientists and fighters, of course, so they'd have as big a start as possible
in knowledge and experience.
 "We would do the same on Earth. The kzinti would find themselves attacked by Protectors in both
systems simultaneously. We sent the nukes as well so the Protectors would have powerful weapons
ready to hand right away, either as bombs or pumps for lasers. Even Protectors couldn't build nuclear
processing-plants and factories in a kzin-occupied system overnight. But it was a desperate ploy, only to
be used if all else was lost. We wouldn't have control over the process, or over who the human
Protectors in this system would be. You know Protectors, once they are used to their state, are more or
less indestructible, smarter than human geniuses, and unless they're killed they live for thousands of years.
One can't imagine they would ever have handed power back to breeders, or even agreed not to make
more Protectors. They could produce their own tree-of-life, given time. There was fear that we were
exchanging one demonic enemy for a worse. But even if they had been universally benevolent, even if
they defeated the kzinti, it would have changed our society utterly and probably forever . . .

"Anyway, the plan never had to be used, for which we may give thanks. The ramscoop raid and the
death of Chuut-Riit gave us a breathing space, and instead of Protectors the hyperdrive saved us. We
were lucky.

 "As for Operation Cherubim, it seems that all those in the need-to-know circle in the Centauri system
died. The kzinti found the maser transceiver in due course and they didn't stop at half-measures in
blasting Nifelheim out of the sky with all its personnel. Also, quite a lot of ARM intelligence people from
Sol died in the war, you know. We had gaps in our own records and knowledge. We didn't keep a lot of
things electronically at all, for fear of kzinti or their agents hacking into our files. We lost both hard copy
and computers when the kzin hit assets on Earth, which happened more often than most people know.
Anyway ARM decided the consignment had never arrived and wrote it off . . . And you say the
containers were hit in the fight."

"Yes."

"Well, at least they can't have been breached," Guthlac said. "If any tree-of-life agent had escaped you'd
have known all about it at the time. How old are you, Nils?"

"A hundred and one last birthday."

 "Even twenty-six years ago, you would have been too old to make the change. Exposure to tree-of-life
would have killed you. But you're still here. And none of the rest of your party was affected either. I
think—I hope—we can assume the integrity of the containers. They were made strong, after all . . .
Although no stronger than the ordinary hospital containers they were supposed to be. We expected them
to be inspected and x-rayed by the collabos at least, and we didn't want to arouse suspicion by making
them anything special."

 "They may have been damaged, though," said Rykermann. "I remember seeing them take hits. And
twenty-six years buried wouldn't have improved them. There can be some powerful microorganisms and
compounds in Wunderland soil, in the caves in particular. I'd suggest they be removed at once."

 "Obviously. That's why I sent for you as soon as I realized what your report was about. Can you find
them?"

"With deep-radar it should be easy enough," Rykermann said. "I remember the locality."

 "We want to be discreet about this," Guthlac said. "We also don't want humans being put at risk of
exposure to tree-of-life. Trustworthy—verytrustworthy—kzinti would be useful on a job like this. The
stuff's no danger and no value to them. I say that because I think of Vaemar. Can Vaemar destroy
them?"

"He's still up at the caves. He's due to return in the next day or two. You know why."

 "This is tricky," said Guthlac. "We don't want humans approaching those containers, not given the state
they might be in, but I'm not happy about any kzinti, not even your young paragon of virtue, finding out
too much about them. It might be best to simply clear the whole area and nuke it."

"It might be best," said Rykermann, "to make sure the containers are still there first."

"Why shouldn't they be?"

 "There were several people in our own party—the party that met the couriers when they were
buried—who survived. I've lost touch with some of them. I'm not saying any of them would necessarily
steal such things or have any motive to, but who knows who they might have talked to since then? The
fighting's been over on this planet for thirteen years. Barroom reminiscences about some buried
containers of weapons might have tempted some crook or adventurer to go on a private treasure-hunt for
all we know."

"If such a crook had opened them he or she would have had a surprise. And I think we would have
known about it by now."

"Even so, surely they should be counted and inventoried before they're destroyed?"

"I take your point. Can Vaemar do that?"

"Yes."

"Get him onto it then. I don't need to tell you to stay well away from the area yourself. It shouldn't be too
dangerous for him."

 "May I tell Vaemar what he's doing? He knows about the Pak, by the way. He searched old Earth
records for another project."

 "I didn't know that. Act at your discretion. If he knows about the Pak there doesn't seem much point in
concealing this from him. It'll give him an incentive, in fact."



  Chapter 4
 Circle Bay Monastery, despite being home to an order of celibate male monks, had detached guest
houses for lay visitors, including females. With a wedding planned to be held there shortly the bride, Gale,
and her guests Leonie Rykermann and Karan, who had arrived early by air-car, were experimenting with
clothes and cosmetics in front of a mirror. Twenty-fifth-century cosmetics, including skin-coloring agents
as permanent as tattoos until one wanted to remove them, gave plenty of scope for experiment.

"You think headband suits me?" Karan asked.

"Not one like mine," Leonie told her. "Try a white one. Or better, the one holding the jewel."
Karan surveyed the result from several angles. "Little cape?" she asked. "Like this?" She demonstrated.

"That ought to turn a few heads," said Leonie. "Including Vaemar's." She herself wore a long skirt that
hid her legs, legs that she still moved awkwardly.

 The telephone on Karan's belt beeped. As she listened to its message her eyes lit and her whiskers
twitched. She bared her teeth and raised her ears.

 "From Nurse and Orlando!" she told the others. "Tabitha looking at pages of picture-book! Not eating
it!" Life with Vaemar had improved her Wunderlander grammar and vocabulary.

 "That's wonderful!" said Leonie. "Wonderful for us all! Wonderful for history!" They had all been hanging
upon evidence that the first daughter of one of the Secret Others—the thin, hidden line of intelligent
kzinrretti—had bred true. It didn't always happen. The Secret Others had been few to begin with, and
they were very few now. Karan on human-liberated Wunderland was perhaps the first intelligent kzinrret
in millennia who did not have to hide her sapience.

"Hurrah for history!" said Gale. "Bring them to the wedding!"

 "Yes, now I can. And rate Nurse charges can't leave them alone with him too long." Karan's ears
swivelled. "Car coming," she said.

Leonie's ears also twitched slightly—she had a little Families blood. She stepped to the door. "If that's
Arthur, I won't let him in. It's unlucky for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."

 "If Vaemar," said Karan, "I'll not see him till finished here." She applied a little nontoxic gold paint to the
tips of her fangs and surveyed the result thoughtfully.

"And Tabitha?"

 "News will keep," Karan told her. "Want to break not all at once. Better still, perhaps, let him find out
for self. Proud quicker if his discovery, I think. He's got lot to adjust to."

"He's a genius," said Leonie. "He'll adjust." Her voice trailed off. The word "genius" was haunted for her.
She thought of another genius trying to adjust. Then, a moment later: "It's not Vaemar. It's Nils."

"Is he all right?" asked Gale. "None of them were due yet."
                                                 ***

"Why didn't you tell Arthur about Morlocks?" Vaemar asked. It was night and Rykermann, bringing
Leonie back to Munchen, had summoned him. Rykermann had told him in private code that there were
secret matters to discuss.

"I was about to," Rykermann told him. "Then I remembered Early. And Arthur reports to Early,
wherever he may be now. I'm not sure that I wanted Early nipping trouble in the bud by sending a comet
or asteroid into the Hohe Kalkstein. Or worse. Never forget what a totally ruthless swine Early is. I
believe there's more unevolved Pak in him than in most of us . . .

 "I'd like to be able to go back to Arthur and report the stuff is safe or destroyed before I give either of
them the happy news that we spent so much toil and blood to deposit tree-of-life with a colony of Pak
breeders who arereally unevolved. Let's destroy the stuff first. Or make sure it is destroyed."

"Unevolved? Or evolved differently?" asked Vaemar.

 "Leonie and I were discussing that a very long time ago. When she was a student, before the first reports
of the kzinti began coming in. TheAngel's Pencil warnings, the disappearing ships . . . It seems like
another age. But plainly the Morlocks have remained far closer to the original Pak breeders than humans
have . . . And itwas another age. It was a good post-graduate class I had. She's the only survivor of it."

 "I raised the question then," said Leonie. "Why, after coming so far from the direction of the Core, hadn't
the Pak gone one small and logical step further and planted a second colony a mere four light-years away
on Wunderland? And we found the answer: they did. I remember spooning a fossil out of the cave floor,
cleaning it with sonics, inch by inch, day by day, finding the analogues of human bones and organs that no
alien life-form had any right to possess. DNA from live specimens confirmed it. It was going to be my
doctoral thesis. I even began wondering about plans to somehow . . . rehabilitate . . . them when my
work had made me famous. Then, er . . . no offence . . . our studies were rudely interrupted. . . . Nils set
me and the other post-grads to work analyzing an orange hair he'd found . . ."

 "In any case, it seemedinteresting and evenexciting before the invasion, but notimportant , the way
our priorities were after that," said Rykermann. "If there was any reason to worry about potential Pak
Protectors, there were several million around in the form of humans anyway, even if we hadn't suddenly
found ourselves with other things on our minds."

"I'd asked Earth to send us everything known about the Pak, although the university had the basic texts
here. Not much more had arrived before the invasion. Partly caution at the Earth end, I suppose. The
Pak story was like the knowledge in the early Middle Ages of the Earth being a spheroid. Scientists
knew about it and it wasn't exactly secret, but people didn't talk about it much. Partly, there simply
wasn't much known. Besides, the university had a limited budget for buying interstellar maser time. . . .

"Presumably tree-of-life failed here for the same reason it failed on Earth and the Protectors eventually
died. As on Earth, some breeders survived."

 "But there were differences," Leonie told Vaemar. "You know because of Wunderland's lighter gravity
the caves are much bigger here than on Earth or Kzinhome. Big enough to be inhabited by large
life-forms on a permanent basis. There are fewer roof-collapses and the slower flow of water means
larger volumes of limestone are dissolved in ballroom chambers and honeycombs rather than along the
narrow lines of stream-courses. With the mynocks and other flying things there is a lot more protein being
brought into the caves than is usually the case on Earth. The breeders moved into the caves—possibly to
escape tigripards or other predators—and found themselves on top of the food chains there.

 "Without many predators or competitors in the caves and without weather or any need to devise shelter
or protection from it—without rain or heat or ice-ages—they were under far less evolutionary pressure
than were the breeders on Earth.Those grew up fighting leopards on the savannah."

"Leopards?" asked Vaemar. "I remember, they are . . ."

"Big cats. Fighting such creatures is a good way to sort out the cleverest as survivors."

"I see."

"The caves were like a great womb they never had to leave, and in which they had almost no need to
develop. Possibly the radiation from the Pak ships and engines on Earth also caused mutations that didn't
occur here. Anyway, these breeders on Wunderland didn't need many brains. They also escaped the
worst of the meteor impacts that have obviously affected evolution on the surface here. In fact the
meteor-impacts would probably have helped them by changing water-levels and giving the caves more
suspended tables and more habitable layers of chambers.

 "In this gravity they were well-muscled and already well suited for leaping and clinging to stalactites and
so forth. Once their eyes and other senses adapted to the dark, their evolution must have almost ceased,
as it has with many life-forms in Earth caves. On Earth there is a species of crustacean found in caves in
Australia whose close relatives live in caves in the Canary Islands and the Carribean. They hardly
changed in the time continental drift separated them so far."

Rykermann nodded.

 "Earth scientists thinkHomo sapiens is notall Pak in its inheritance," he said. "The theory is that the
original Pak Protectors probably modified the breeder population to better fit the Earth ecosystem and
biochemistry. Sewed in the genetic material of Earth primates. That is why humans seem to fit well into
the Earth animal kingdom. . . . It also raises the possibility that the breeders on Wunderland were not so
modified, or modified differently. It's patently obvious that they have never developed anything
resembling a civilization. We three know that all too well. Predatory bands, with rudimentary stone
weapons, almost entirely carnivorous . . ."

Rykermann went to a collecting pannier.

"And there is your latest specimen, Vaemar." He produced a translucent container and handed it to his
pupil. "It is dry and withered, but . . ."

Vaemar turned the thing over. "A Morlock infant or late-term fetus. A mummy."

"Or a human infant or fetus, perhaps?"

"It could be, I suppose," said Leonie. "There were children who took refuge in the caves during the war.
Maybe this was a stillbirth. Or an abortion by some poor child. They had no birth control."

 "Damaged as it is," said Rykermann, "it has sufficient characteristics of both species to puzzle us as to its
identification, does it not? I think it may be a hybrid. A human-Morlock hybrid, not carried to term. And
humans and Morlocks are meant to have evolved under different stars. It should be as impossible as . . .
as a human-Kzin hybrid. Add that to the DNA profiles. Anyway, Vaemar, just let me know if the stuff's
still there, and sealed. Obviously, take all precautions for dealing with dangerous material. And don't
forget there's radioactive material there as well."

"What you say about Early—" said Vaemar. "Are the Protectors so dangerous? I would have thought
we had the power to conquer them."

 "Yes," said Rykermann. "They are so dangerous. Arthur's told me quite a lot, apart from what Earth sent
us. The one human Protector we know of, Brennan, was a Sol Belter, an evolved, modern man, the
product of many generations of civilization and science and imbued with the values of benevolence and
cooperation that are part of all the great human religious and ethical systems. Also, fortunately, he was a
good man.

"When he became a Protector he adopted the entire human race and his interventions in human affairs
were benevolent as well as secret. He probably saved Earth from perishing in war, over-population and
pollution, even if he then nearly killed us with kindness by making us almost too gentle and pacifist to
resist when your lot came calling. Morlock Protectors, it's safe to bet, wouldn't be like that."

Leonie gave a sort of jerk, and nearly fell. Her legs were not what they had been and sudden emotion
now made her even more clumsy. Both Rykermann and Vaemar reached out to help her.

"What is it, Lion-cub?"

"Protectors with hyperdrive!"

Rykermann thought. Leonie saw his face grow pale in turn. Vaemar made a questioning sound.

 "The kzinti didn't want to destroy the human worlds," Leonie said. "They wanted them intact for
themselves, and they wanted to keep the human race like the Jotok. However merciless they are in battle
kzinti have a kind of conservationist sense towards other species—according to traditional kzinti's
cosmology, other intelligent species have a place in the great hierarchy ordained by the Fanged God. It
just happens to be a very long way below their own. Isn't that right, Vaemar?"

"The Fanged God gave us other species to serve us and for us to prey upon, not to exterminate except
when we had no other choice," said Vaemar. "At least that is the traditional teaching. Remember the
kzinti offered the humans ofKa'ashi —excuse me, I mean of Wunderland—a cease-fire as soon as the
Conquest Landing was complete."

 Rykermann took up the thought. "But the Protectors would have only one aim: Destroy all possible
competitors. First to exterminate the human species, and if necessary destroy the human worlds and all
other life on them—they'd useanything : relativity weapons, anti-matter weapons, the dirtiest possible
thermo-nukes and ramscoops in atmospheres, killer hypersonics, geological disrupters. They'd make
missiles of comets and asteroids, trigger solar flares. No possibility of treaty or negotiation. All other
species, especially all other sapient species, regarded as vermin-to-be-exterminated by definition. Not
only would they be more totally focused on destruction than would kzinti, they are far more intelligent
than nearly all individuals of either of our species, and far tougher . . .

 "There's a theory, you know, that Venus's tectonic plates were somehow turned over a couple of million
years ago. It makes no physical sense. We can't see how such a thing could have happened, except by
artificial disruptors greater than any we've even conceived of. But what if, when the original Protectors
reached Earth, they found some sort of life on Venus, some sort of potential threat or competitor? Well, I
suppose we'll never know . . ."

"Impossible, surely!"

 "I hope so . . . I suppose we would still make more human Protectors in response, if we had tree-of-life
and they gave us time. But it's far harder to defend against an enemy that wants to do nothing but kill you
than against one that merely wants to conquer you."

"They'd like to take Earth and Wunderland as breeding-space, of course, but anempty Earth and
Wunderland," Leonie said. "Taking them would be secondary to getting totally rid of the human race, a
dangerous rival and a mutated deviation from the Pak form.

"Perhaps they wouldn't even care much about preserving Earth or Wunderland or the Asteroids if they
had Mars and Venus to terraform, not to mention the colonies we've established in other systems and all
the various moons and planetoids available. Given what we know of Protector toughness and engineering
intelligence, they might consider several possible worlds that are too tough for us as ripe for transforming
and could write Earth and Wunderland off.

"Of course, once they'd removed the human race, they'd take on the kzinti without pausing to draw
breath. Then they'd wipe out any and every other sapient or potentially sapient race they found.
According to what Brennan learnt, there weren't even other animals on the Pak homeworld. As well as
human hyperdrive technology, they'd get kzin gravity technology—giving them even more worlds and
weapons."

Vaemar's eyes gleamed and more of his fangs showed.

"You think they could beat Heroes? The Patriarch's Navy?" he asked.

 "Vaemar, my friend," Rykermann said, "humans are, in fighting ability, a crude, feeble, slow, stupid,
fragile, soft, merciful, pacifist and rudimentary version of Protectors. I do not mean to insult, but need I
say more?"

"No," said Vaemar. "I see."

 "And even Brennan, evolved and benevolent as he was, was utterly ruthless," Rykermann went on. "One
reason it took a long time to establish a proper human presence on Mars was that creatures there
attacked the early bases. I don't know much about them, but apparently Brennan just wiped them out.
No interest in preserving them, not even any curiosity about them—Protectors seem to have very little
abstract curiosity.

 "Look back to the Slaver War for a precedent for a Pak Space-War, perhaps. Or worse: even at the
end the Slavers didn't kill the nonsapient life-forms. Look to a war of extermination throughout the
galaxy. A war against alllife . The war of humans and kzinti would seem a quaint, friendly affair by
comparison, a skirmish or two, a sort of neighborly disagreement. Pak without the hyperdrive would be
more than bad enough. Pak with the hyperdrive . . . well, my imagination's limited, I suppose, but I think
they would just go on destroying intelligence or potential intelligence wherever they found it, on and on up
the spiral arm, out to the other arms, back towards the Core, until they had all the galaxy or until they
came up against something worse than themselves. If there is such a thing."

Rykermann paused and collected his thoughts.

 "This is very scary," he said. "Or rather, it could be. But consider: These Morlock Protectors, if they did
exist, wouldn'tknow anything. However clever they may be potentially, they have no teachers.
Knowledge must have a source."

 "I've thought of that," said Leonie. "They could get teachers. I've tried just now to put myself inside the
skull of a newly-awakened Morlock Protector from the great caves. Such a Protector would, I guess,
have memories of the Breeder stage. That could mean memories of the existence of humans and
kzinti—probably of fighting against humans and kzinti in the caves—memories of aliens, of weapons, of
war.And a knowledge of its own ignorance . If I were such a Protector, now suddenly a
super-genius—the first thing I would set out to do would be to acquire knowledge.

 "There could be several ways to begin that. We've cleared a lot of the old human and kzinti weapons
and equipment from the war out of the great caves but there are probably still a lot left. Who knows what
remote chambers and tunnels some of our people ended up fighting to the death in? Our Protector could
take them apart and find out how they worked. But more importantly, if I were such a Protector, before I
showed my hand more obviously, I'd capture humans and kzinti and find out everything they knew."

"How?"

"Raids on the surface. They'd talk under torture."

"Kzinti? Heroes?"

"Yes, Vaemar. As far as I know any sapient will talk under torture eventually. Isn't one of your—the
kzinti's—own instruments of torture called 'Hot Needle of Inquiry?' They wouldn't have developed it if it
didn't work . . .

 "But Pak Protectors would use anything, and unlike either of our species, would feel no particle of
distaste at having to do so. Normal kzinti, I know, regard torture as something not admirable or heroic,
to be resorted to only from necessity, though that doesn't stop them once the necessity has been
established. Those of both our kinds who enjoy torture for its own sake are abnormal individuals,
shunned and despised by the normal. For a Pak Protector such scruples would be without meaning.

 "As the Protectors' knowledge grew, interrogation would get easier. They could alter prisoners' brain or
body chemistry, for example, so even the bravest could not but tell everything they knew at once. They'd
find out about computers quickly and hack into them. They might capture kzinti telepaths and use them.
Can you imagine a Pak Protector with access to the internet? There are certain to be computers with
internet linkage lying in the caves among the bones and weapons.

 "There is another thing. You know, Vaemar, that the great weakness of the kzinti is that they are
impatient. They attack before they are ready. Time and again, that was the only reason we won, both
strategically and tactically."

"So Raargh-Hero drilled into me in our earliest hunts. And so wrote my Honored Sire Chuut-Riit."

 "Pak, as far as we know, are enormously patient. After all, they are very long-lived. That is probably
one reason why, though they had spaceflight for a long time, they never, as far as we know, bothered
with any space-drives beyond fairly simple interstellar ramjets. Also, of course, after a certain level,
perpetual war may militate against technological progress. The original Pak colonization project took tens
of thousands of years just to get to these systems. They didn't mind. They don't have the weakness of
impatience . . .

 "Perhaps Morlock Protectors would not be as smart as either Pak or human Protectors. They are
starting from a much lower pre-change base-level of intelligence than human Protectors, certainly. Living
in a largely risk-free, challenge-free environment in the caves for tens of thousands of years they might
have devolved. They might. But that they've devolved enough is not the way to bet.

"But they might get the hyperdrive."
                                                     ***

"You're trusting him with a lot," Leonie said, as Vaemar's car dwindled in the northeastern sky.

 "He'd have worked out the Morlock-Pak relationship for himself. In fact, I mentioned it to him a long
time ago, when it didn't seem important in the way it does now. Don't forget, he'd also done work on the
Hollow Moon as part of his space-engineering units." The Hollow Moon was one of Wunderland's many
small moons, further away than most. About four miles across, with a space at its core, so deep radar
said, apparently about a mile in diameter, it orbited Wunderland at a distance of about 60,000 miles.
Apart from being hollow, its other oddities included a near-spherical shape, usually only associated with
objects of far more mass and gravity. Humans had begun to study it before the kzin invasion, but that
study had been dropped during the war and the Occupation. What human spacecraft the kzinti had
permitted to fly then were needed to keep the shattered economy turning over, not for abstract research
or flights into areas that the kzinti might disapprove of. There were what appeared to be ancient tunnels
leading, presumably, to its core, but they were blocked. Its metal content was quite high, but that of many
other moons and asteroids was higher and these were more worth mining. There were entrances to its
tunnels of some depth, but during the war neither side had used these much as hiding-places, simply
because they were too obvious.

 After Liberation abstract and academic scientific projects had resumed slowly, the cheaper ones first.
There was plenty to do on the surface of the planet and on the inhabited asteroids and little money for
space exploration. Policy had been to leave the anomalous moon alone until there were again resources
available for a proper, long-term expedition. It had been thought at one time that it was an ancient artifact
of the Slaver Empire, but its orbit was receding gradually from Wunderland (one reason it had not been
demolished as a danger by the first colonists), and if it had dated from the Slavers' time it would have
disappeared into space long ago.

 "I stick to my old idea. What could it be but the original spaceship the Pak used for the journey from
Sol?" Rykermann said. "In any case if I can't trust Vaemar after what we've been through, who can I
trust? Yes, laugh if you like."

 "You know, don't you," Leonie said, "that seeing you and Vaemar together—like the fulfilment of
everything I'd been working for—was important in helping me live. I think I'm entitled to laugh.
Sometimes it seemed it was your hand I was holding, and sometimes a kzin's."

 Rykermann nodded. No need to ask what she referred to. After she had partially come out of the tank,
Vaemar and Raargh had spelled him, sitting at her side while he slept. The hospital staff hadn't liked it at
first, but the kzinti had been very insistent, and he had cooperated with them.

"I wish . . . I wish Brennan had been right, and we could have kept the gentle society we had," said
Leonie. "There is nothing good about becoming warlike."

 "We had no choice," said Rykermann. "But you know I'm a convert now. I'll work for peace and
reconciliation. Work with Vaemar and the Wunderkzin."

 "I know. It's stupid of me, perhaps, but I feel I must say it. We have been at war for sixty-six Earth
years. The war goes on in space. One gets weary. Gorillas settled their quarrels with gestures and
rituals."

"But kzinti didn't. Or Pak . . ."

 "I suppose so," said Leonie, shedding her clothes. "Let's go to bed." But her eyes were full of
apprehension.

 Rykermann still found it disturbing to look at his wife as she stood there naked. There were no scars
marring her body, but when she was seen from a few feet away certain things became more apparent:
below the waist that smooth skin was a little darker than it had been, the hair was a different color, and
there was a difference in the vase of her hips and thighs. The pubis was more prominent, and the
buttocks a little flatter above and fuller below.

 Those were among the external differences. Her body was beautiful, as were the bodies of most men
and women on a light-gravity world where modern medicine and cosmetic techniques were again
available, but much of the lower half of that body had once been someone else. That and much more had
left them both emotionally bruised and vulnerable. Leonie had lost consciousness as they were carrying
her out of the cave, and had not known until a long time after the operation what had been done to
her—Rykermann did not know if she would knowingly have accepted such a transplant even to save her
life—and telling her had taken some time. Now they lived with it, and other things.

 When she looked at him now he saw again the expression that had been on her face the first time he had
seen her conscious after the operations and the long regeneration processes.

 He also remembered her as she had been carried out of the cave, apparently dead or dying from the
laser-wound, and his entreaties to her to live, shouted until they sedated him.But she lives, he thought.
Thanks to Dimity and to a couple of kzinti, she lives . . . And thanks to a donor, too, whoever she
may once have been. Collaborator? War criminal? Accident victim? Best not to think. What does
she fear? The idea of yet more monsters unleashed on our world . . . our worlds! . . . or the
stranger's body sewn onto her?Or that I am still desperately in love with a beautiful super-genius
who saved her life and about whom we can never speak? Oh my poor, dear wife! He stepped
forward and took her in his arms. He began to run his fingers down the familiar curve of her spine, then
stopped. Once his hands would have known by instinct how to caress her. The first times they had made
love when she returned from hospital had been bizarre, and in a real sense frightening, for them both. It
had more of comfort and release now, but still . . . Her breasts were still the same firm-tipped softness
against him that he knew so perfectly. He felt the body that was not entirely her body respond to him,
and the sudden wetness of her tears on the skin of his chest. There was the saltiness of them in his
nostrils, more a taste than a smell, the fluttering of her eyelashes' attempt to brush them away. When he
bent to kiss her, the part of her skin that touched his lips tasted as it had always done. Much of the rest,
he knew, would not.

 My dear, dear wife, he thought.Life has not exactly been kind to you. You deserved better. We are
casualties of war, we in our way as much as the millions whose bones lie bleaching about this
planet. Nothing to do but press on. Kipling had the words for it: "Be thankful you're living, and
trust to your luck, and march to your front like a soldier." And you are the bravest soldier I know.
But what would I not give to make the world kinder for you?



  Chapter 5
 Vaemar landed his car in the High Limestone country, the Hohe Kalkstein, in an overgrown glade
formed by an ancient cave roof collapse, near the twisted wreckage of an old kzin military sledge, partly
covered with reddish vegetation and sunk into the soil. There was also a scattering of bones, gnawed by
large and small teeth, bleached and fading into the ground. The Wunderland War Graves Authority had
much to do and few people to do it with.

 Kzinti loved exploring caves, but unless charging in the heat of battle, no kzin was capable of entering
one recklessly. Vaemar had lights and a handgun as well as hisw'tsai , and a tough helmet which now had
the addition of a lobster-tail neck-guard at the back and epaulettes covering his shoulders—the favorite
initial tactic of Morlocks was to drop both rocks and themselves onto the heads of intruders. He checked
his radiation detector, very much standard procedure for all who ventured into the great caves of
Wunderland, littered with the debris of more than five decades of war. As he crossed the threshold, there
was a sharp jump in the gauge and a whirring from its miniaturized descendent of a Geiger counter.
Vaemar leapt back. The radiation was not huge, but he saw no reason to expose himself to it. He
climbed into a tough, lightweight suit, also standard equipment, and resumed his exploration, keeping a
wary eye on the detector.

 He moved further into the cave, lights and his own superb eyes sweeping the darkness for any signs of
activity. There was nothing on the cave floor, not even the normally ubiquitous vermiform scavengers.

 There was little, without major surgery, which they disliked, that could be done to kzinti's eyes to make
them more efficient light collectors, but Vaemar did carry a pair of goggles that extended his visual range
further. Such simple and lightweight aids were quite new, and humans had reason to be thankful that the
kzinti had not possessed them during the war.

 There, as Rykermann had described it, was the embankment of earth that covered the containers. Deep
layers of mynock droppings showed it had been undisturbed for a long time. Evidently the transitory
creatures did not remain long enough for the radiation to affect them.

 He set up a motion detector focused into the cave beyond, unfolded a small robot digging tool, and
stepped well back as it went to work.

The robot struck solid material after only a few moments. Vaemar deactivated it and stepped forward.
One glance was really enough, but he pushed more earth aside to be sure. Beneath the earth was rock.
Not only had the containers been removed, the removal had been disguised. The Geiger counter whirred
merrily.

 Vaemar searched the immediate area thoroughly, but there was no other reasonably possible hiding
place. Weapon at the ready, he ventured down the tunnel a long way, out of sight of the daylit mouth and
into the beginning of a branching labyrinth of chambers, but again without result. He had compasses,
motion detectors and miniaturized sensory devices, all specially developed for such expeditions. Infrared
beams in his helmet gradually created a three-dimensional picture of the cave that could be retrieved in
several ways, including a hologram.

 He found and killed a couple of Morlocks, pausing to note with scientific detachment their body weights
and general state of nutrition. He knew better than to try eating the foul-smelling, foul-tasting things. Each
tunnel ended at last either in a blank wall, a stream diving under rock, or some passage too small for a
kzin to easily enter, though plainly Morlocks had ways of coming and going from the bigger cave
systems. The radiation level was falling now. Making a really comprehensive map would take some time.
Vaemar felt it would be foolish to go further, especially when he had hardly room to move. His instincts
screamed for him to press on, but he had become used to disciplining those instincts. Placing himself in a
situation where enemies might come upon him at total disadvantage was not Heroic behavior. He
returned to the car, and sent Rykermann and Arthur Guthlac a report, along with a copy of his recorded
data. He searched some other small caves in the limestone glens and valleys nearby, without result. He
surveyed the whole area with instruments from the air, recording radiation traces and signatures. Then he
headed for home.
                                                     ***

Below Vaemar's car were the fields and buildings of a human farm. His eye flickered across the
instrument console. Since Cumpston's warning of trouble with the feral gangs, most farms in the area had
gone onto at least a minimal state of defense alert, which included transmitting a signal identifying
themselves and indicating their electronics were functioning normally. This one was not transmitting.
 Vaemar made a leisurely pass low over the farm, sending out an interrogatory. He saw the movement of
some animals. Nothing else. He decided that an examination of the situation was within the ambit of his
task, and landed outside the main building.

 No one greeted him, and the wandering animals fled. He saw many human footprints on the ground,
some bare. There was not much smell, which was in itself suspicious—it suggested scent-deadening
Rarctha fat. The main door was open. The human height of it did not bother Vaemar—kzinti were
comfortable going on all fours and preferred to do so when stalking or running any distance—but it was
hardly wide enough to admit his shoulders. Looking in, he could see some brightly colored toys of human
children scattered about. He called out, but there was no answer. His Ziirgah sense told him nothing apart
from confirming that the place was empty, but it picked up desperate hunger from somewhere else.

 A white object like an oversized fluffy ball with blue eyes bounced up from the ground and through the
air towards him. He hurled himself backwards, almost faster than a human eye could have followed,
w'tsai flashing. The Beam's Beast fell in two pieces, fangs squirting venom. Further evidence that the
place had been deserted for some time.

 Stepping back into the courtyard, he noticed a limestone outcrop that had been fenced off for no
obvious reason. Examining it more closely, he discovered a sink-hole at its center, covered by a metal
grating, with no bottom to be seen. He tied a light to a fine cable and lowered it through the bars into the
hole. It twirled around, showing blackness and stalactites. His sensitive nose and whiskers tasted the air
from it. He could hear the cave-sounds of dripping and running water. So, the great caves touched the
surface here, as they did in many places.

He sensed game animals watching him fearfully from the cover of the trees.I would like to bring
Orlando hunting here , he thought. And then, remembering the new state of things:And Tabitha, too,
and Karan. Make it what the humans call a family picnic. Dimity, too, perhaps.

 Looking further at the main farm building, he saw indeed that stairs at one side led down to an
underground cellar, where wooden containers were kept. Further on, the artificially shaped and lined
walls gave way to living rock with cave formations, that seemed to go on down into darkness.
"Monkey-daffy, monkey-lucky" was an old kzin maxim on Wunderland, but he could hardly believe
anyone capable of such mad folly. There was certainly a stout steel-barred gate at the end of the cellar,
but that, he saw had been opened. There were also footprints on the damp floor. Vaemar was a good
tracker, but the prints were too confused and overlaid for him to make much out, save that several were
human-sized and had five toes. They did not seem quite human shaped. There was a smell of blood, not
new.

 He returned to the surface and moved on to another building. Opening the door of this he stepped into a
considerably hotter climate. Vegetation grew thickly. It smelt of death. No Rarctha fat here.

 A couple of small bodies lay dead at his feet. Lemurs. Under the kzin occupation there had been a minor
human industry—evidently there still was—growing them as playthings for very young kzin kittens, who
loved them. They had no fighting abilities when caught, but like all primates they tasted good and chasing
them through trees was a good exercise in training kittens to judge the strength of branches. A nursery
game. The next step for the kits had been chasing baboons, which were much more dangerous, and then
the real thing, which was much more dangerous again. These appeared to have starved. He saw the
sharp faces of other lemurs peering at him from above. There were feeding-trays without food. Vaemar
thought of releasing the lemurs, but did not know if they would survive in such a climate and with strange
vegetable matter to eat. He had seen some food containers outside, and scattered some of the vegetable
matter from one on the ground. The lemurs, starvation evidently overcoming even their terror of the kzin,
leapt down to it.

No humans anywhere. What was the human term?Déjà vu . This had happened before, in Grossgeister
Swamp, when his small expedition had found human and kzin dwellings deserted.

His detector showed no trace of the missing radioactives. A check with deep radar showed nothing
moving underground in the immediate vicinity. He made a report and flew on. He passed over several
more farms. Some responded to his interrogatories, a couple did not. There were also some plainly long
deserted.
                                                 ***

Vaemar had rooms at the University, but he also had another residence, a considerable distance from
most human habitation: a few buildings on the wooded lower slopes of the Valkyrieheim Hills, smaller
sisters of the Jotun Mountains, northeast of the Hohe Kalkstein. It was not far from the country where he
had grown up with Raargh in the years immediately after the Liberation, the country which he still to some
extent regarded as his home territory.

 During the occupation the largest of these buildings had been a small palace for a kzin noble with, like
almost all kzinti, a consuming love of hunting. Post-war, as was frequently the case on Wunderland, the
original human owners of the land were no longer around. Normally the estate would have been
redistributed back to other humans, but ARM and others had quietly decided that Vaemar-Riit, potential
leader of what were coming to be more widely called the "Wunderkzin," should be housed in some
dignity.

 Unlike many surviving kzin buildings, the high outer walls were intact. What had once been an eight-fold
hedgehog of concentric defenses was much reduced, though not eliminated. Vaemar the postgraduate
student did not deign to notice openly the possibility of assassination from either human exterminationists
or from kzinti who regarded him as what they called—another new term for the Heroes' Tongue—a
kwizzliing , but Vaemar-Riit the leader of theWunderkzin was obliged to take certain precautions.

 There was a small community on the estate. His Step-Sire Raargh and both their respective families lived
there, as well as occupants of the old servant's quarters, guard and guest-rooms. Raargh had his own
buildings and enjoyed a reasonable-sized harem of traditional kzinrretti now, but Vaemar remained
monogamous.

 This was partly by reason of policy. A first mate several years older then he, as Karan was, would have
been by no means unusual previously. To stop so long at one would have been very unusual, when he
had almost every kzinrret on the planet for the taking. But Vaemar understood and accepted the
arguments put to him by Cumpston and others that the old ways could not continue. He had put them to
other kzinti and fought more than one death-duel over them: smaller households and harems with females
for every male kzin—"families"—would help ensure a more stableWunderkzin society than the old way
of vast harems for the nobles and little or nothing for the rest.

 Further, and more important than policy, Karan had let him know in no uncertain terms that other
females in his harem would have to be approved by her. So far none had been. He had, of course, a
number of kits by various other females but they generally mixed with Raargh's. None save Orlando, his
first, and so far only, son by Karan, had been born with the Riit blazon of red on the chest. He accepted
fairly philosophically the fact that having a sapient mate brought some restrictions along with advantages.

There was good hunting territory nearby, with tigripards as well as gagrumphers and other large beasts.
Here he was much less the graduate student, and much more the kzin prince, though a modern,
Wunderkzin prince.

 Vaemar landed in his inner courtyard, acknowledged the greetings of his servants (servants, not slaves,
and the greetings less than a full prostration in these times), including the hired human Nurse in heavy,
Teflon-reinforced apron and gloves, and fended off a mock attack from an excited Orlando. His banner
was broken out from a high turret with a blast of horns and roll of drums.

 Raargh made his report on the doings of the estates and, as Vaemar had forecast, made pointed
comments about the Morlock bites. Vaemar remembered that the human he had studied with much
interest called C. Northcote Parkinson had said the motto of retired senior sergeants was: "There are no
excuses for anything!" That, he thought, as the grizzled old veteran gave him a quick grooming lick,
summed Raargh up well. Big John, the kzin medical orderly whom Gale had cared for, stumped out. His
head, face, hands, feet and spine were largely a complex of metal and regrown tissue, but his new ears
were smiling. Raargh and Vaemar—Vaemar-Riit!—had called him "Hero," and at Arthur Guthlac's
request Vaemar had taken him in. Raargh's now-numerous kittens, and Orlando too, looked upon his
extravagant scars and prostheses with respect. His burden of cowardice had been taken from him. He
had a mate of his own, for that matter, and a couple of kittens as well, all of which would have been quite
beyond his dreams had he lived out his life, even unmutilated, in the old order of things.

 Vaemar made a prostration before the worship shrine holding a ceremonial jar, liberated from the
quarters of the late Jocelyn van der Straat, which still contained at least a few molecules of the urine of his
Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, and a few fragments of bone and hair identified by DNA testing as those of
Elder Brother who had died protecting him as a kitten. He killed a yearling bull from the holding pens and
ate quickly. Groom plied his blowdryer and talcum powder. Then Vaemar carried the recording brick to
his laboratory, and called Arthur Guthlac's headquarters again.
                                                    ***

A large hologram of Wunderland stood on the center of Guthlac's control console, a duplicate on
Vaemar's. Circular marks on it, like old sores on a body, marked the sites of nuclear explosions. Some
were fairly recent, from the Liberation or the intra-Kzin civil war that had so aided the human reconquest,
some dated back to the original kzin landings. The oldest sites were quite faded now: the kzinti had
blasted any human resistance that became too prolonged, but they had used fairly clean bombs. They
were ecologists in their way, and anyway had not wished to destroy the infrastructure of the planet. But
the monitors that built up the picture of Wunderland's radioactivity were sensitive. A myriad of lines
crossed the northern hemisphere. A far smaller number crossed the less-settled southern hemisphere.

 "These are the traces of highly radioactive substances which satellites have recorded in the last year,"
Guthlac said. "From the state of the ground we don't think the stuff's been gone longer than that.
Fortunately we can narrow it down further. The signatures you recorded match these—" he pointed to a
long lonely line that crossed the Wunderland equator and continued down the globe. "They've gone to
Little Southland. A couple of them have, anyway. As far as we can make out, the bulk of them can't have
been moved far, though. You did a good job, Vaemar."

"The University has routine trips to Little Southland," said Nils Rykermann. "Mainly instrument checks.
Vaemar can be rostered to do it. If we want to keep this matter quiet . . ."

"We do. For the moment certainly."

"Vaemar had better take a look, then. A look and back. He shouldn't be away more than a couple of
days at most."
"What do you have in mind?" asked Cumpston.

 "If what you say is on the loose," said Rykermann, "then for obvious reasons we don't want humans
going after it blindly. Vaemar is better able to look after himself than almost any human and if he can tell
us what he sees, then we can at least make our next move with knowledge. Anyway, if all the containers
are together, we can at least say they've been gotten away from the Morlocks. Setting aside the question
of who took them."

"It might be—" Cumpston bit off the words. To suggest in Vaemar's electronic presence that it might be
dangerous for him would be an insult to test even Vaemar's exceptional self-control.

"The deserted farms?"

"That's bad. We thought the feral gangs were falling apart, but maybe this is their doing."

"If nothing worse. The thing we fear. We can't keep this secret much longer."

"The police have some ready-reaction teams," said Rykermann. "They're small but they've got good
weapons. I'll get them up there now!"

"What about ARM?"

"They're Wunderland police, not ARM, and what they do is not ARM's business. Why do you think we
have a police bagpipe band?"

"I always assumed it was to torture kzin prisoners. Or maybe flatlanders."

 "I'll take that up with you later. Our pipers are actually part of an elite reaction force that doesn't care to
advertise its presence as such. Band-practice covers a multitude of sins. I've still got plenty of rank in the
Wunderland armed forces and I'll get them up to the Hohe Kalkstein now."

"Are you going to warn them about what they've really got to look out for?"

"Yes, there seems no choice about that now. But they are our best."

"Do you really think your best is good enough?"

"At the moment we've got no choice, with so much of our forces still tied up in the space war."

 "I will give you full discretion," Guthlac told Vaemar. "Take any companions you wish, but lead. Lurk
cunningly in the tall grass, scent out the spoor, do not scream and leap at the prey, but return. Knowledge
is the prize."

 "Ihave done the ROTC intelligence course," Vaemar reminded him, with the barest hint of something
else in his voice, and adding after a moment, "sir."

"And that, my young Hero, is another reason you are chosen," Guthlac told him. "Act at discretion."
                                                ***

Kzaargh-Commodore paced.Night-Lurker 's bridge did not allow him much space, a dozen strides one
way, a dozen the other. But Captain, Navigator and the rest of the bridge team kept well out of his way.

One kzin heavy cruiser. With repairs of less than naval dockyard standard. But with claws still capable
of seizing Glory on an epic scale. Still with claws capable of devastating a planet or a system.

 Eight-and-four Earth-years had passed since, returning with some damage from a tip-and-run raid on the
human bases in Sol system, his ship had received news of the death of great Chuut-Riit, of fratricidal war
between Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, and, far worse and more unbelievable, disaster on disaster,
the shattering news of the human reconquest ofKa'ashi , and of the humans' possession of a superluminal
drive against which no kzin strategy could prevail.

 Kzaargh-Commodore had turned tail and fled. A commander less sure of his own courage or of his
crew would have leapt into the battle, however hopeless, but his veterans trusted him unwaveringly, and
he had long since passed the point of needing to prove his courage to himself. He had guessed from other
experiences that the apes had developed a means of detecting the monopoles that powered the big kzin
gravity-motors, but like all modern warships,Night-Lurker had a reaction-drive as well.

 Evading detection in such circumstances was not difficult. In the vastness of space it was surprising that
ships, even with detection equipment, encountered one another as often as they did, and he had more
delta-V than he needed. He slowed the ship and headed in a long, elliptical orbit out of the Alpha
Centauri system, well above the plane of the ecliptic, to further reduce chances of detection.

 But he did not entirely flee. He dispatched Chorth-Captain, one of his best officers, once
"Hider-and-Whisperer," a specialist in cloaking and communications technology, now promoted to
Partial Name and Ship-Command rank, in a cloakedRending Fang heavy fighter craft to spy out the
situation. They would rendezvous later.

Strictly speaking, his duty as a commander in the Patriarch's Navy, if not to die on the attack, would
have been to get his ship back to the nearest kzin world, or to Kzinhome itself.

 But who knew which were the kzin-held worlds now? Further, he knew, his one ship, added to
whatever kzin fleet was still in the area, would make no real difference to the situation. On the other hand,
lurking in the Centauri system, it could still inflict terrible slashes if it could leap from hiding. His
experience of humans was that, like other monkeys, they lacked persistence. No doubt the skies over
Ka'ashi would be guarded and patrolled by human ships in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. But
given a quiet time, that guard would grow slacker and more perfunctory. Then he would fall on them out
of those skies like the vengeance of the Fanged God. The greatest shame that the Patriarchy and the
Heroes' Race had ever suffered would be blotted out in the blood of the insolent omnivorous apes. Given
the element of surprise, the arsenals of his ship were more than enough to lay the planet to waste.
Surprise would be impossible at first, but given time . . . And he carried several battalions of infantry in
hibernation for landings when the monkey-cities and bases had gone down in nuclear fire.

 Later, with new data passively collected and after thought and discussion with Captain, he modified his
plan. Knock out the defenses of population centers of Wunderland from the sky, certainly, but use the
troops to seize Tiamat. The shipyards there, they had learned, were converting to hyperdrive technology.
To capturethat for the Patriarch would be a feat to eclipse merely burning a world in vengeance!

Meanwhile, he would repair his ship's damage as a Hero might lick his wounds, and wait for the monkey
guard to slacken and become distracted. A simple enough plan, but as time went by he came to realize it
might not be an easy one. As was so often the case, the kzinti's worst enemy was themselves. The
monkey-prisoners in the live-meat cages were eaten faster than they bred and with manufactured food
life became less pleasant. Telepath went mad. With boredom, tension and unappetizing food there were
several death-duels until he put a stop to it. SinceNight-Lurker had set out on a battle-mission, and he
was not yet a full admiral, there were not even females of his harem aboard. He made rousing speeches
to the crew, promising them inglorious death and their ears on his belt if they crossed him, glorious death
or perhaps just plain glory, if they obeyed as Heroes.

His ship had drifted beyond the outer Comet halo. He had watched the broadcasts fromKa'ashi , and
had seen the reassertion of monkey government and authority. A few messages passed back and forth
with Chorth-Captain, pulses too fast to be detected except by a dedicated receiver. Then
Chorth-Captain's replies stopped. Perhaps he was laying low in deep grass, waiting his chance to leap.
Perhaps the monkeys had found him.

He thought now and then of the full Name that would undoubtedly be his: Kzaargh-Chmeee, perhaps?
Or perhaps—for given such a feat and such a service it was not quite impossible—Kzaargh-Riit?

 Kzaargh-Commodore had learnt the superluminal drive could only be engaged outside the gravitational
singularity of a star system, and the double-star of Alpha Centauri A and B gave a huge volume of space
in which it could not operate.

 He had seen on various screens, too, something of the so-calledWunderkzin . Many of the kzinti of
human-recaptured Wunderland lived lives at least as independent of their simian conquerors as any such
defeated creatures might, and clung to some poor rags of honor. They were hardly pleasant to look
upon. But a few had gone further and actively sought a partnership with the apes. It was sickening and at
first unbelievable. Indeed, Kzaargh-Commodore was by no means convinced that the broadcasts
featuring these creatures were anything more than monkey propaganda. He cut off even the passive
reception of messages, lest the apes had some method of detecting this, and also lest this propaganda
should somehow reach his Heroes. The longer the wait the better.
                                                  ***

Orlando, Vaemar noticed as he entered the nursery, had finished his jigsaw puzzle, a five-thousand-piece
picture of Lord Chmeee locked in slashing battle with a herd ofsthondat -like monsters. Good.
Human-derived jigsaw puzzles were not in the same league as the puzzles of the kzinti priesthood, but
they were useful for schooling infants in patience and persistence. And he had finished it very quickly.

 Orlando was lying on his back, holding a large ball of fiber in his front claws while ripping at it with his
back ones. Vaemar remembered for a moment the first time he himself had leapt on such a ball, the day
his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit had brought him to the Naming Day of Inga, one of Henrietta's children. He
did not know what had happened to Inga, and twice he thought he had seen Henrietta dead, though each
time he had been left with suspicions that it had not really been her. . . . A lot of blood down the runnel.
But he remembered well leaping onto the fiber ball, running and tumbling with the squealing human
infants, and gorging on sugary cake.

 The cake had made him sick afterwards, as he was held by an unfortunate Guard Trooper in the car
flying back to Honored Sire's Palace, but a taste for it had remained a small secret pleasure with him, one
to which he had recently introduced Karan. The abbot at Circle Bay Monastery, with whom he
sometimes discussed ethics, said it could hardly count as a vice. Indeed, since the ova of birds and the
mammary secretions of cattle had gone into its making, it did not have the connotations of beingentirely
vegetable matter (in any case kzinti, despite their boasting, had never been complete and total
carnivores). The ball shrieked as Orlando tore at it. His claws reached the center, slicing through the last
tough envelope. Tuna-flavored ice cream poured out, drenching the kitten. He jumped and spat, then
when he realized what it was, settled down to licking it from his fur and the floor, purring like a small
gravity-motor. Vaemar smiled indulgently and contributed a lick of his own. "The kzin is a mighty hunter,"
he told his son. Those fiber balls were juggled high in the air by a robot, and it took some leaping for the
kitten to capture one—with the penalty of a very painful electric shock if it misjudged timing and distance.
A possibly lethal shock in the most advanced mode.

"Tabitha caught two, Daddy," Orlando told him.

"Did she? Did she indeed? Where is Tabitha now?"

"Upstairs. She took them with her. She caught the first ball and then one after I caught mine."

 Each time a ball was caught, the robot increased its speed, the complexity of its juggling and its shock.
The third ball was by no means easy even for a kitten older than Orlando with fast reflexes and a
powerful leap to catch. It required, and was meant to require, some planning ability as well as strength
and dexterity. kzin kittens matured at somewhat variable rates, but Orlando—still younger than Vaemar
had been when his Honored Sire perished and Raargh adopted him—had done very well to catch the
second.

"How did she do that?"

"She climbed into the roof and jumped down."

Vaemar thought for a moment.

"Have you ever caught a fourth ball, Orlando?" he asked.

 "No, Daddy." Then, realizing that this was said as a challenge, Orlando's posture changed. "Program the
robot, Honored Sire! I will catch the fourth ball now!"

Vaemar watched while he did so, then groomed his son and soothed his scorches, both proud.
                                             ***

Alpha Centauri B had risen when Vaemar strode up the steep winding track above his mansion to the
small guest house in the wood. The forest, normally full of stir at this time as the nocturnal creatures took
over their shift, fell almost silent about him. There was game to be flushed here, but he was not hunting.

 Like all kzin buildings, the guest house was large and thick-walled. But unlike most it had windows of
some size close to the ground and a human-sized as well as a kzin-sized door. Its roof sprouted
electronics. His presence was signalled as he drew near, and the kzin-sized door opened.

 There was a fooch for him in the main room. He reclined in it as Dimity Carmody dialed him bourbon
and another tuna ice cream. Although he had eaten already custom and politeness demanded he take a
little (in any case, as he told himself, no kzin is ever entirely full).

 She had been watching an ancient classic film from Earth, Peter Jackson's original ofThe Two Towers .
She turned the set down. Vaemar read a sampler Dimity had put on the wall, a quotation from a human
writer who had lived on Earth more than five hundred years earlier: "Man is an exception, whatever else
he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell,
then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head."

"Chesterton," Vaemar remarked.
"Yes."

 "I have taken some notes of his writing. 'It is constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies,
that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and
imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating
the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?'"

"I know you have a good memory," said Dimity. "You have that word perfect."

 "Yes, don't I? Which may suggest that particular passage has been important to me. Perhaps there is
some reason for that."

"Your sense of humor means more to me than you may know, Vaemar."

"When will you be ready for the Little Southland trip?" Vaemar asked.

"Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. As soon as you like," she told him.

"I have some new instructions," he told her. "Looking for stolen radioactives. It's not quite what was
planned."

"It doesn't matter. I'm ready to go. You'll take me with you, won't you, Vaemar?"

"So we agreed," He looked at her with great eyes for a silent moment. "Dimity . . ." He paused again.

"Yes, Vaemar?"

 Vaemar knotted and unknotted his ears for a moment. He lashed his tail. He rose and walked across to
their chess-game set up on a table, making a single move. Then he spoke slowly.

 "Dimity, you know that I am one of the first kzinti to have been brought up, almost from kittenhood, with
a good degree of human contact on more or less equal terms, with human companions and . . . friends.
Among my very earliest memories are running with the human infants and leaping on a ball of fiber that
Henrietta prepared for me. Much later I learned where she got that idea . . . After the Liberation I helped
Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero when he worked on human farms. I have learnt Wunderlander and
English from the best of sleep-tapes. I am a postgraduate at the University and a commissioned member
of the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, with even a limited access to lesser military secrets. Human
students whom I tutor prepare assignments for me diligently. I have led expeditions and fought against
dangers with humans as allies. I have talked late into the night with human companions and shared many
thoughts with them. I take part in many human, and encourage to the best of my ability many mixed,
social activities. In chess I am a system master and aspire to interstellar master. Soon I hope I will be the
first kzin to add the post-nominals PhD, DLitt and DSc to my Name. I am the leader of theWunderkzin ,
and, slowly, our numbers among the whole kzin population of Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri A
System grow. I recite all this to emphasise the fact that no kzin knows humans better than I. I know
humans better than I know the kzinti of the Patriarchy."

"Yes."

 "I am also, like my Honored Sire, a genius. That is a fact. In the society of the Patriarchy "genius" is an
insult rather than a compliment. Geniuses may live on sufferance if they have useful skills. Otherwise they
are generally killed by their fellow kittens, the warriors, in their nursery games and first combat training.
Honored Sire lived because he was a great fighter as well, as befits one of Riit blood. You are . . . a
super-genius. Even if we had not fought as allies in the caves against the Mad Ones, that would be a
bond between us. We genii must stick together. Yours is a deeper mind than mine. It is hard work for me
to read your papers—even those I am allowed to. Dimly I grasp the implications of Carmody's
Transform, which you discovered so young! Do not worry, if I were allowed to see your hyperdrive
work I doubt that I could steal it, Dimity friend, even if I were so inclined. But perhaps my talents spread
wider."

"Vaemar scatter-brain! Everything from astrophysicist to warrior to song-writer! Mine are so narrow!"

 Vaemar shifted uneasily. His tail lashed again. If a sinuous felinoid like a nine-foot tower of claws, fangs
and muscle could look awkward, Vaemar did so. He licked his lips once or twice. "I . . . care about you,
Dimity. We are alike."

"You have been good to me. I do not know what I would have done without you."

"You said song-writer? The university review, you mean?"

"Yes!"

They sang together, laughing:


 "Frightened monkeys yell, when our fangs
gleam bright!
"What fun it is to yowl and scream a slaying
song tonight!

"We are the monkey boys and girls, going
for a spin!
"If pussy gives us trouble, we will take off
pussy's skin!"



 "I thought it was important to get the students laughing at that one," Vaemar said. "Our 'Cat in the Hat'
really laid them in the aisles, too, didn't it? I'm afraid Orlando and Tabitha got hold of the hat, though.
There wasn't enough left of it to keep when those two had finished."

 He paused, again washing his black lips with his great tongue, and then continued, looking down into
Dimity's eyes: "Honored Step-Sire Raargh also taught me never to be ashamed of using my Ziirgah sense,
or to hide it as though fearing someone would come and make me into a Telepath. I know some humans
fairly well, I think, and I read emotions. And in you I read desperation. . . . How do you see the future,
Dimity?"

 "It could be full of hope. We are still digesting the implications of what the hyperdrive means. Planets for
all? And one day, after the eventual peace in Space, the kzin worlds will get it too."

"You think so? So do I. It is among a number of reasons why I have felt no inclination to try and steal it.
Such action would be counter-productive."
"Of course," she said. "They may have it already. At least one hyperdrive ship went missing when the
Armada swept in. It may have been captured. But anyway knowledge leaks, and some humans would be
prepared to spy for the Patriarchy, and kzinti students-of-particles are clever."

"The war will go on, you think? A hyperdrive war?"

 "It may or it may not," she said. "There is nothing I can do about it. I try to school myself not to brood
upon things I cannot change. But there is another thing which is less dramatic but whose implications may
be at least as important—humans now have the technology of kzin gravity-control. That will give us new
planets, too. In the early days of human exploration of Sol system, terraforming even the nearer planets
had low priority because the asteroids had lighter gravity. A little slow work done on Mars. Nothing on
Venus, though Earth in theory at least had the biology to start transforming its atmosphere cheaply since
the twentieth or twenty-first century. Such things will matter much less now. And there need be less
competition for territory.

 "We can have the stars, humans and kzinti, too. If we can live together here, Vaemar-Riit, then we can
share a universe in peace. It may take several centuries, of course. It may never happen. There is a
chance, more than a chance, even if we can achieve a peace now, of more wars before it really happens.
I have heard rumors that peace negotiations drag on, but so does the war in space."

 "Those are my thoughts also," said Vaemar. "Stars and planets for all, one day. And a pair of species
that nothing can challenge. Soon I must begin teaching Orlando to share this purpose. Today I found
something important: he has the patience to solve puzzles. Many kittens do not. But, Dimity, how do you
seeyour future?"

"You have been good to me Vaemar," Dimity said again. "You don't hate me?"

"Hate you? Why should I?"

"One great reason. I made building the hyperdrive possible. In time to win the war for humans. I could
be seen as the greatest enemy the kzin species has ever had."

 "I could answer that several ways," said Vaemar. "When you translated and applied the manual for the
hyperdrive I understand you did not even know of the war. And whether that was so or not, you did
what you did for your kind. Any kzin who could have done the same would have done so. It would be
irrational to hate you for that.

 "Further, I think now that we needed to lose a war. As a race, we were becoming more than foolish with
victory. We were becoming permanently intoxicated with it. We were so used to swallowing up feeble,
peaceful races that we took for granted that was the only way things could be in the Universe. But the
God was more subtle and more generous than we had come to assume. Our ancestors had prayed for
enemies worth the fighting. They were given to us just before our own arrogance and savagery ate us up.

 "There are other things. We were lucky, I think, to have met humans when we did and not just gone on
expanding unopposed until we ran into something worse. We had missed, or deprived ourselves of, a
great deal. I have read Honored Sire's meditations and have come to see how right he was when he
perceived that humans have talents and abilities we lack—or have deprived ourselves of. I enjoy biology
and mathematics, for instance, and reading of historical events, human as well as kzin. I sang 'Lord
Chmeee's Last Anthem' for sheer joy in the words as well as Heroic blood-lust. It excited me—actually
excited me!—to discover how the Normans of Earth combined barbarian vigor with Roman order and
discipline to conquer so much from so tiny a base. Could I have enjoyed these things as a princeling in
Honored Sire's palace? I would have been killed by my brothers or by Combat Trainer as a freak. Who
knows how many other young kzinti died like that—intellectual misfits in a warrior culture? My brothers
would have had to gang up on me, though, and there would have been fewer of them at the end of it, for
in single combat I . . ." He trailed off.

 "But there is another thing. As I grew up with Raargh after the human victory, mixing with humans, I
thought long and hard on the future of my kind. And its future not here on Wunderland only. I believe that
in the long run the best future for us is as partners with humans. When I say I believe in an eventual
partnership of our kinds I do not just use words. What might we not do together! You have said it will
take centuries and I agree, but perhaps I can do something to bring it about a little quicker here on this
world at least. Hatred is not a good way to begin. And nor do I dislike you, Dimity. Dislike is more
destructive than hatred, more long-lasting. . . .

 "And there is a further thing again. Not in this case a completely rational or utilitarian consideration. Your
presence is more agreeable to me than your absence. There are bonds between you and me. When I am
near you I feel I am near a like mind. Almost I could wish I was a Telepath at such moments—though
say that to no other kzin! Almost I have wished I was a . . . no, that thought is not even for you! What
could I do but take you in? Raargh knew what he was doing when he ran through fire to save you in the
battle in the caves."

Dimity reached out a hand, and scratched the kzin at the base of his ears. Vaemar permitted himself to
purr.

"And if we are both genii, we are both misfits," he went on. "I have mixed with humans too long to be a
kzintosh of the Patriarchy, even though I bear this." He tapped the red fur on his chest. "And you . . ."

 "I should be teaching," said Dimity. "When I was a professor I was not a good teacher, but I think I
communicate better now. I should have the ordinary domestic life that should be any human's lot: my own
people, my own mate and children. Instead . . ."

"I know that by human standards you are beautiful," said Vaemar. "Even I can see that. Some have said
you could have any mate you wanted. If he is not afraid of your mind."

 "What I want now," said Dimity, "is to know that for the moment I may stay here if I wish. I need a
refuge."

Vaemar sprayed a very little—a couple of drops—of urine on the fabric of her trouser leg. It reinforced
his mark for all kzinti to know.

"Of course," he said. "You are my guest and chess partner as long as you wish. But you care to come to
Little Southland."

"Yes, I also need to run."

"From what?"

"Everything.


"Footfalls echo in the memory
"Down the passage which we did not take
"Towards the door we never opened
"Into the rose-garden . . ."



"T.S. Eliot?" said Vaemar.

"Do not kzinti feel like that sometimes?"

"When we do, we usually go out and kill things. Or fight each other. You are free to hunt in my
preserves if you wish. I have human-size weapons you may use."

"Thank you, Vaemar, but I do not think that would help. I am looking forward to Little Southland. What
of Karan?"

 "Like me, she must learn to live with humans. It is harder for her in some ways, perhaps, easier in others.
She is not Riit. But I think she has bred true. Tabitha has intelligence! I thought that was the case when I
realized her vocabulary was far beyond that of a normal female kitten of her age—or normal kzinrret of
any age, to be sure—but now I know. She reads! She plans!"

"Are you glad, Vaemar? You and I know abnormal intelligence may be a curse as well as a blessing."

Vaemar paced for a while before answering. His gait betrayed troubled thought.

"I am mortal," said a voice on the screen. "You are Elfkind. It was a beautiful dream, nothing more."

 "Yes, I think I am glad," Vaemar said at last. "It is a new thing, and like many new things I must accept
it. She will not need to live her life as Karan did for so long, pretending to be a moron. You will help
teach her, perhaps?"

"If I can. I would like to repay your hospitality to me somehow."

"Are you sure you do not wish to kill something? My hunting preserve is free to you."

"When do we leave?"

"Pack your equipment."

"I already have."



  Chapter 6
"He took Dimity with him? Does Nils know?" Cumpston pinched his lip in a worried gesture.

 "I didn't feel it was my business to tell him," Arthur Guthlac said. "I don't want to go dancing into that
minefield. It was a difficult decision to allow Dimity to go off to him at all. You can imagine the opposition
and the arguments we faced. But once we decided we had no right to interfere with her we stuck by that
decision. You can't put that mind in a cage. And there had to be a demonstration of trust in Vaemar. A
big one . . ."

"No," said Cumpston, "not our business to tell Nils. Especially not now, Arthur. We can't be their
keepers. Anyway, you have other things to think about at the moment than raising taboo subjects."

"And yet, I can't forget we're all bound together in funny ways."

"How do you feel about the safety of those two misfits off together?"

 "Let's not forget, those two misfits are probably the two most intelligent members on this planet of the
two most deadly species known. I'm not overly concerned about them."

"More deadly than Protectors?"

"That's something I hope we don't have to find out."

"And Patrick Quickenden. He won't be too pleased."

"That's not my problem. He's not a Wunderlander."

"He loves Dimity too, you know."

"I know. But we've got enough things to sort out without lovesick Crashlanders as well."

"How do you feel, General?" Cumpston asked. "About the wedding, I mean."

 "As I should feel, I guess," Guthlac told him. "Scared. Happy. I've never been married before. I want to
be with Gale for the rest of my life. I want lots of children and I want them to live here on Wunderland.
I'd like to get her farm back into proper production. Big John can help now he's been patched up. Earth's
been too crowded and conformist for a long time. I don't particularly care if I never see it again. I'd like
my children here. And none of those damned birth restrictions!"

"We had to have them. It's the only reason we've been able to keep the crowding down a bit."

 "Yes, but Earth hasn't kept the blandness down. Or the conformity and police control, more than a little
of which I had a hand in making. As somebody said: 'I've seen some terrible things and a lot of them I
caused.' But I see what I've been missing now. Wunderland is full of surprises still. Gale was the best of
them."

The red telephone on Guthlac's desk called him, then went into battle-secret mode, vibrations keyed to
his personal implant. He listened to it, then stared at it with curious expression.

"That was Defense Headquarters," he said at length. "A message has just come in on the hyperwave."

 "I gather it's something important. Are you going to tell me?" There was something like consternation
behind Cumpston's voice as he stared at Guthlac. The brigadier had raised a hand and was wiping away
tears.

"Oh, yes, it's important. And I'm going to tell you. Everybody will know soon enough anyway.
McDonald and the Patriarch's negotiator have signed a treaty. Humanity and the Kzin Empire are at
peace. Sixty-six years after first contact. It's a funny feeling." He looked at the wetness of the tears on his
hand with surprise.

"Peace. It's a funny word, Arthur."

 "It's going to take some getting used to . . . For the kzinti, too. I doubt they've ever been at peace with
anyone before."

"Some geneticists have speculated," said Cumpston, "that the war has changed the kzinti. Killed off their
most aggressive individuals, made the species less dangerous."

 "And some," said Guthlac, "have speculated that the war has changed them by killing off their most
stupid and reckless individuals, and made the species more cunning and more dangerous."

"I know. What do we believe?"

"After sixty-six years of war, there must still be a place for optimism, for hope . . . for ideals. Otherwise
we are indeed no better than animals."

"Yes." Cumpstom raised his eyes to the window. "Does the sky look different to you."

 They both stared at it for a long time. "Yes. Or I think it will soon. Do you believe death is not going to
fall out of it again?"

 "I'm trying to . . ." Cumpston said. "I hope our kzin friends here will be pleased . . . I mean our real kzin
friends . . .Vaemar, Raargh, Karan . . . Big John."

"You think of them first? You're a funny bird, Michael."

"Vaemar's always been vulnerable to a certain stain: quisling, collaborator. Maybe that's gone now."

 "Vaemar was only a kitten when the kzin forces on Wunderland surrendered. A lost, orphaned kitten,
when Rarrgh took him in. Should he have fought to the death against us with his milk-teeth? Anyway,
even if there's now a cease-fire in space, I doubt it means the likes of Vaemar can come and go between
here and the Patriarchy just like that."

"Perhaps he can one day. Another thing I'm realizing: we don't have to use Baphomet."

 "No." Baphomet was something very new, which the two officers had been briefed on shortly before. It
was an update of the old idea of a disrupter bomb. A complex carrier designed to penetrate deep into
the crust of a suitable planet, and set off explosions which, it was calculated, could turn over a tectonic
plate. It had been tried on a lifeless world orbiting Proxima Centauri and had worked. Had the target's
geology been a little different, Proxima would have become a twin star sub-system.

"Sorry, Arthur, I'm still trying to get my mind around it all. There's a lot to think about. It's going to take
a while to digest. But your children, and Gale's, can maybe grow up in a better time."

"Give me a chance to get some first!"

"Me too, perhaps."

They both laughed, and Guthlac poured celebratory drinks.
                                                    ***

There had been a resumption of brief and cryptic messages from Chorth-Captain. He had established
himself onKa'ashi . He had discovered an arms depot, and a mighty ally. It was time to leap.

Kzaargh-Commodore had broken his rule of maximum possible silence. He sent back interrogatories.
The replies remained cryptic. Things were going better than expected. The ally was unexpected but
potent. Attack!

The kzinti had no allies. Other races were enemies, prey or slaves. It was inconceivable that the kzinti
needed allies. Or rather, Kzaargh-commodore thought, struggling like so many kzinti to fathom an utterly
new situation, it had been inconceivable that the kzinti needed allies. His crew trod softly for he was
puzzled and angry. He had sent more interrogatories, but Chorth-Captain had fallen silent again.

Fury, puzzlement, impatience . . . and hope. He had become capable of waiting no longer.

 There was a comet which he had marked out, a large and highly volatile one, plainly destined to a short
life. Hiding as he might in its tail, he turned his ship and plunged back towardsKa'ashi .
                                                        ***

A pod of dolphins broke surface in the car's flying shadow as the Ocean rolled away below. Dimity
called them. The communicator was programmed to translate into Dolphin, and Dimity had picked up
some of their concepts long ago.

 They exchanged pleasantries, but with difficulty. During the decades of war many dolphins had come to
maturity in the oceans of Wunderland with little knowledge of the human partners who had brought them
as fellow enthusiastic colonists across interstellar space. Cooperation was being rebuilt slowly, and
though the humans of Earth had employed some dolphins in their war-fleets as strategists it was hard to
know how much these Wunderland dolphins knew—or cared—of the kzinti or current events. Still, they
were friendly to the human walkers, and asked if, like their fathers, they might trade for hands. Dimity
recorded their identities.

 Little Southland was not very little. It was a detachment of Wunderland's southern continent, a
knife-shaped triangle of land stabbing towards the South Pole, with a total area of 17,000 square miles,
much of it cool to cold desert like Patagonia. With the temperate areas of Wunderland still empty or only
sparsely settled, there was no need to cultivate it. There were some military installations and a few
scientific ones.

 Its population of avianoids was its main macrobiological interest. Varieties of creatures with vast striking
beaks resembling the diatrymas of Earth's Eocene roamed it, and there were some introduced Earth
birds, too: The "banana belt" of the northern coastal regions had a climate not unlike the south of New
Zealand and there were a few ranches for reconstituted and slightly modified moas, strongly fenced in
and over to protect them from the savage and powerful locals.

 The car climbed. Vaemar and Dimity approached the land at about ten miles' height, searching with
instruments.

"There!" A fuzzy radiation signature, but one that matched the record in the brick. Dimity tracked an
optical telescope in.

"Nothing that shows on the surface," said Vaemar. "It would be hidden, of course."
"Granite everywhere. Hot granite. That won't make following a radiation trail easier."

 They deployed a deep-radar scanner. A faint but unnatural grid of lines became visible. Vaemar grinned
and his claws slid from their sheaths. "Prey," he said, and then: "We must give no cause for suspicion.
Dimity, take over flying. If anyone contacts us, better that they see your face than mine."

 There were interrogatory signals coming in from the scientific and military stations on the ground, but the
car answered them automatically with the University's code and signature. They descended. Vaemar and
then Dimity could make out the movement of life-forms on the surface. They changed into lightweight
combat/utility suits, Vaemar's leaving his claws free, and Dimity adding a helmet with breathing mask, and
landed.

 Vaemar, followed by Dimity, stepped out into a landscape of grey, under a swirling grey sky, punctuated
by rocks, and surrounded by rock walls and pillars, wind and rain-eroded into fantastic shapes
reminiscent of dragons, sthondats and other great beasts of legend and fact. There was a thunderstorm
dribbling lightning on the horizon. Distant hills were speckled with snow. Hardy, spiky vegetation grew
about them. This was a cool wet plain, and days like this without high winds were rare. But life seemed
reasonably abundant. Vaemar's eyes and the infrared detector in Dimity's face-mask found a number of
small animals watching them from concealment, or in some cases burrowing frantically.

 Dimity saw what she thought at first was a man approaching them, although the motion was wrong. She
activated the binoculars in her helmet and pointed to the biped. An avian, or an avianoid creature, high,
with great legs, atrophied wings and a mighty striking head and beak, standing, they could see, higher
than Vaemar. To Dimity it resembled a holo of a carnivorous Earth dinosaur. It was making a
high-pitched scream.

 "Thunderbird," said Vaemar. "They must have good eyes. We have evidently invaded this one's
territory." It was fast, and in Wunderland's gravity even those small wings could help it make great hops.
Suddenly it was very close.

 Dimity brought up her rifle, but Vaemar was quicker, and he gestured to her to leave it to him. He
waited a few moments more, then fired as the thing leapt again. Its huge head shattered and its body slid
towards them in a kicking ruin.

 Almost on top of them, a second thunderbird erupted from concealment behind a rock wall. Vaemar's
stride became a vertical leap. The thunderbird's huge hind-claws barely touched the ground, and it too
leapt again, wings extended to show barbed claws, its colossal armored beak snapping and clashing at
the kzin. Vaemar twisted in mid-air, avoiding the beak in a blur too fast for Dimity to follow, and landed
on the creature's back. As they crashed to the ground together his jaws severed its neck in a single bite.
The second thunderbird ran headless for a distance, wings flapping, before it collapsed.

 "Perhaps those screams will call others," said Vaemar. "From what we know about them they are
cooperative to some extent. However, we have no time to waste on game. Where is our real quarry?"

They surveyed the wilderness of rock.

"Caves are the best hiding-place from an aerial search," said Dimity. "But they have to be a certain size.
There are no caves of such magnitude here."

"Caves are alsoobvious hiding places," said Vaemar. "If you have technology there are other ways of
hiding."

"Bending light?"

"Or radar pulses. You see how much we think alike, Dimity? I do not need to explain things to you."

"Not a technology we've mastered. Not without a lot of bulky and obvious equipment."

"No.We haven't."

 The portable deep-radar showed a maze of granite. The radiation signature they had been following was
lost.

 There was a quick movement in the shadows of the rocks. Vaemar and Dimity spun to face it, weapons
ready. Sight, smell and Ziirgah sense all told Vaemar of another kzin. He called a challenge/greeting in the
Heroes' Tongue.

 It came forward slowly. It was an adult male, with a good collection of human and kzin ears on its
belt-ring. Vaemar stood rampant, staring, but with most of his fangs not yet showing. In that posture his
chest was thrust forward somewhat, throwing into prominence the red splash that marked him as Riit.
There was his own belt-collection as well. Both kzinti had their ears folded, and it was impossible to see
their ear-tattoos in detail.

 The other kzin did not challenge or bare fangs, indeed the slightly bowed attitude of its head might
indicate that it conceded Vaemar's dominance, although, Vaemar thought, the gesture might have been
made less ambiguous.

 "Who are you?" he asked in the Neutral Tense, though as Riit he might have used a far higher one.
Dimity, he knew, now understood something of the Heroes' Tongue. She had had sleep-lessons since
returning to Wunderland and was a good natural linguist.

"Chorth-Captain," replied the other kzin. "Of the Patriarch's Navy and the Patriarch's Claws."

 The Patriarch's Armed forces had been disbanded on this planet when the kzinti accepted the human
cease-fire, the day when Raargh, who had been Raargh-Sergeant, had fled with Vaemar in a stolen
air-car to the backwoods country beyond the Hohe Kalkstein.

 "There are no other Patriarch's Claws on Wunderland," said Vaemar, deliberately using the human name
forKa'ashi . Let Chorth-Captain make what he would of the qualifier "other." He added, "I have not met
you before."

 Chorth-Captain was plainly much older than Vaemar, and he looked a great deal more experienced,
strong, tough and battle-scarred. But Vaemar was Riit.

 That put him in an anomalous position on Wunderland. Some humans, he knew, wished to groom him to
lead the kzin who had remained on post-Liberation Wunderland to take a place as partners with
humanity. The reasons had been put to him openly, and, as he had told Dimity truthfully, he had agreed
with them. He had felt no—well, little—conflict of loyalties once he concluded that what he was doing
was for the long-term good of the kzin species. Indeed it was a project he had firmly committed himself
to. Some humans he had dismembered in battle in the great caves. Some he had eaten. Regarding some
like Rykermann, Cumpston, Leonie, the abbot, Dimity, or Anne von Lufft who had been one of his
companions on a hazardous biological excursion, honor and companionship alike demanded that he die
protecting them if necessary, as much as if they had been his Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero or Karan.

 And yet with this he was Riit. The Riit had ruled the kzinti since before the Heroic Race first leapt into
the stars. A large number of the kzinti of Wunderland respected him and, when necessary, obeyed him. It
was left to other, older kzintosh, including some of the few surviving professional officers like Hroth and
Hroarh and the old warriors on Tiamat to link with the human authorities and guide relations between the
kzin and human communities in detail, but it was he who performed many ceremonial duties like opening
Veterans' Hospitals and other projects and presenting the State of theWunderkzin Address to the human
Parliament. He knew he was being groomed even in his academic courses. It did no harm that he was
tall, strong and fast even by kzin standards, as one would expect of Riit, and had been trained and was
backed by Raargh-Hero, one of the toughest old kzintoshi on the planet. At the moment he could afford
to find out more about this Chorth-Captain and not put his dominance to the test.

"I still do not see how you got through the defenses," he said.

"I landed here recently," said Chorth-Captain.

 Vaemar found it hard to believe him. Wunderland, and the whole Alpha Centauri system, was
ceaselessly monitored by live and electronic sentinels against another kzinti raid or invasion. kzin ships
had come, certainly, in the last few years—from kzin worlds that had no knowledge of the human
hyperdrive or the human victory, freebooters whose livers had been maddened by old rumors, hungry for
loot and glory, or regular Naval vessels returning from distant missions. Part of his duties was to help
negotiate with them. Those that had not surrendered when informed of the true situation had not lasted
long.

 "I hid long on the Hollow Moon," said Chorth-Captain, as though detecting his thoughts. "Since the
battle between the fleets of Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, and the human invasion I have lain in wait.
I had help. There is much traffic. I left my fighter there and came back toKa'ashi in a gig. It was small
and undetected."

 Of course, Vaemar knew, not all the kzinti on Wunderland were entirely sane. Defeat had unhinged
many, especially fighting kzin to whom defeat at the hands of weed-eating apes was unthinkable.
Delusions among them that they were officers of the victorious Patriarchy, generally complete with
Patriarchy-bestowed Names, were not uncommon, with pathetic and tragic consequences. There were
also the crazed kdaptists, already splitting into murderously-quarrelling sects. Chorth-Captain, at least in
this poor light, did not look insane or deluded, but not all of them did. He smelt a little strange, but that
was not surprising. Also, it was a point of honor for kzinti not to lie outright, but many had developed
great ingenuity in bending the truth. Association with humans had done nothing to diminish that skill.
Vaemar wondered whose side Chorth-Captain had fought on in the final civil war of kzin that had killed
his own first protector, old Traat-Admiral, and which had made the human hyperdrive Armada's
reconquest so much easier.

"What are you doing here? What do you want?" Vaemar asked. His mind framed the question: "Do you
know who I am?" but he decided it was better not to force that issue at present. He did not particularly
want to get into a fight in this situation.

"I know what you seek. Come with me, and I will show you."

 Vaemar and Dimity paused. Similar thoughts raced through both their minds. "I know what you seek." A
statement like that contained a challenge. How did Chorth-Captain know? Whatexactly did
Chorth-Captain know? That someone—or something—had made a covert landing here? And why
should he show them? He had not acknowledged himself as being under Vaemar's dominance, indeed
calling himself a member of the Patriarch's Claws might be taken as defying that dominance. He had
offered no hostility, and had voluntarily revealed himself to them, so he did not appear to be intending an
attack. He seemed to accept the presence of Dimity at Vaemar's side without comment. Chorth-Captain
turned away—which might be a gesture of trust—and started along the tunnel. Vaemar hesitated a
moment, then moved to follow him.

He saw the Protector too late. Its leap carried it outside the swing of his flashing claws. It landed behind
him and before he could turn it had seized and secured his arms.

 Vaemar kicked backwards with his hind legs, steel-hard, razor-edged claws extended. Kicks, again too
fast for a human eye, that would have disembowelled a Man or a Kzin. The Protector avoided them
effortlessly and caught his feet in its free hand. Vaemar's claws could not reach the hand's leathery skin,
but the Protector pressed with a fingertip on Vaemar's feet so his hind-claws involuntarily retracted.
From the corner of his eye he saw Chorth-Captain leap in the same instant, run up a wall on his hind legs
and somersault to land beside Dimity, seizing her weapons and tucking her under one arm. Vaemar
twisted his head violently, dagger fangs in bolt-cutter jaws crashing together where the Protector's head
had been an instant before. The Protector shifted its grip to hold him paralyzed and taped his hands and
feet securely. Though it stood little more than half Vaemar's height, it lifted him onto its shoulders.



  Chapter 7
"I called Dimity," Patrick Quickenden told Nils Rykermann. "She wasn't answering. Then I called
Vaemar's household. It took me a while to get put through to a human but the kittens' nurse was there.
Apparently Dimity and Vaemar flew south. But they've stopped reporting."

 "As far as I know," said Rykermann, "there was a trip to Little Southland due. Routine check of some
automated experiments." He did not speak particularly warmly to Quickenden, his coolness not all due to
security considerations. He knew the Crashlander's protectiveness of Dimity stemmed from a love similar
to that which he was trying to kill in himself.

 "Their car is down," said Quickenden. "It was sending out a normal carrier wave. No answer when we
interrogated it. Then that cut off."

 Rykermann tried to keep his face impassive. He knew and disliked his own jealousy and possessiveness
towards Dimity, and knew its irrationality, but could do nothing about it except try to switch his thoughts
in other directions, and keep Dimity at a distance. He guessed now that he was always to be torn in two.

 Is Dimity in danger? Yes, stupid! We are all in danger! Tree-of-life? Protectors? Dimity doesn't
merely look younger than her years like us, thanks to geriatric treatments. Because of those years
in Coldsleep sheisyoung. She could survive the change to Protector if she got a whiff of
tree-of-life. And she is with Vaemar, who would tend to think it disgraceful to notice danger
because he's not a human in a fur coat but a young male kzin. And Dimity, just because she is a
super-genius, isn't assured of common sense. The reverse if anything. I don't want her to go
chasing after hidden tree-of-life, and possibly finding it.

 He looked at Leonie. A sudden thought ofher exposed to tree-of-life gave rise to a peculiarly horrible
image: her lower body was much younger than her upper. Mad and impossible. Still, Leonie's presence
gave the situation between him and Quickenden at least a superficial feeling of normalcy.

"What happened then?" he asked after an awkward silence.

"I told Guthlac and Cumpston. They've gone to find them. Karan went with them."

"Karan?"

"Would you like to try and stop her, when she's made her mind up? They suggested she go back to
Vaemar's palace and wait. She thought Vaemar might need her."

"So what do we do now? Go after them?"

 Rykermann touched his desk. A hologram globe of Wunderland sprang into existence above it. He
touched an icon and the scattering of human settlements on Little Southland was displayed.

"If those three can't take care of any problems our presence may not make much difference,"
Rykermann said at length, reluctantly.It's no business of his that I can't let myself see Dimity again .

"Vaemar only spent a short time at the caves," he went on. "He only looked at a few of the nearest
passages. I'm worried about what may be happening there. We've left no one on guard."

"I'll take a look, if you like."

"You're not a Wunderlander. I'd rather go myself or, no offence, send someone who knew the ground
better. That isn't Procyon in the sky, you know."

"Someone should be here to coordinate the others or call for help if we need it. That seems to be you or
Leonie. She says she'll go with me."

 "I'll organize a car for you," said Rykermann.No point in protesting. When Leonie's made her mind
up, I think I'd rather try to stop Karan. Anyway, I'd like to let you see the caliber of my mate. "Go
well-armed, keep your com-link open to me, and wear pressure-suits with the helmets on and the
faceplates closed at all, I meanall , times you're on the ground. Don't land at all if you can help it. Just use
the car's deep-radar to monitor movement in the caves. If it's bipedal and within certain size parameters,
we've got a pattern-recognition program that can tell you if it's human or Morlock. Or kzinti, for that
matter. If it's none of those things, well . . ."

"What chances of other humans there?"

 "I hope there won't be any. But even this long after the war, there are too many Ferals about. Leonie
and some others have been trying to bring them in, particularly the children, but it's a slow process.
They're cunning and wild, and, incidentally, can be very dangerous. There are still weapons lying about
for anyone to pick up. I don't know if you understand danger sufficiently, Patrick. Obey Leonie's
instructions at all,all times."

 "We Made It isn't exactly a garden world, you know," Patrick said. "And I was a spacer before I got
involved in hyperdrive engineering. My life hasn't been completely sheltered."

 "Those are natural dangers. Not like thinking beings, highly-intelligent beings, consciously out to get you .
. . A spacer, yes, of course you were . . .
"I never asked you . . . " Rykermann went on after a pause. "But were you—"

"Yes. I was flying the first ship that helped stop the derelict, and the first to board it. I found Dimity."

"And without you?"

"It was heading straight for one of the gas-giants. We had quite a race to catch it and deploy the
grapnels before it went too deep into the gravity-well. We kept signalling, and there was no answer . . ."

"You found Dimity . . ."

 "I'll not forget going aboard, pushing through those floating eyeless corpses with their lungs going before
them, those monks with their shaven heads, and my light falling on that black medical coffin, with the last
lights of its emergency power blinking red. There was a translucent panel. When I saw her face I thought
at first that she was dead, too, of course, but she looked so . . ."

"So we owe you Dimity's life."

 "There were several ships and crews involved. They were all needed before we saved the ship. It wasn't
just me. Others actually got her out."

"But without you she'd be dead."

"That's true."

"And without Dimity, no working hyperdrive. Not for decades at least. Not until too late."

 "No. We were making slow progress translating the manual. Dimity was still in rehabilitation therapy
when we got it—they were wondering what to do with her, in fact. Then she got word of what was
happening somehow and forced her way onto the project. How she broke out of the hospital, evaded the
medics, got into the project headquarters—all underground on a strange planet—and forced the
team-leaders to give her a hearingand authority was an epic in itself. As you say, she saved us decades.
Without her, we might easily be working on it still."

"And without the hyperdrive, Leonie and I would surely be dead by now, and unless we'd made
Protectors Wunderland and probably Earth would be kzin hunting-grounds."

"Not to mention my own world. I was wrong to say we might be working on it still. They'd have got to
We Made it, sooner or later. Probably sooner. We were behind kzin lines though we didn't know it."

"If we need to land and search for tree-of-life," said Leonie, "Or do any fighting, it might be handy to
have a kzin with us."

 "Apart from Vaemar there aren't that many kzinti available who we know well enough to use, not at
short notice," said Rykermann. "And even on this planet, most of them still have no love for monkeys.
Don't ever make the mistake of thinking the handful ofWunderkzin like Vaemar and Raargh are typical,
Patrick. I know we're civilizing them, but it's a slow business . . ."

 "I was thinking of Raargh. He knows the caves, too, and that eye of his could be useful," said Leonie. "I
think thealte Teufel's bored with peace, anyway. Promise him the chance of battle, and he'd be with us.
I'll call him and brief him now."

"Take care, Lion-cub." He kissed her.
                                                    ***

"It's all so . . . " Patrick Quickenden waved his hands at the landscape below them, another part of the
great limestone plateau which Vaemar had flown over a few days before. The sight of a herd of
gagrumphers that Leonie pointed out filled him with excitement.

 He's like a kid, Leonie thought.Hard to feel objectively about him. I know he loves Dimity, which
makes him a sort of ally of mine—"The lover of my rival is my friend?" That's a new one. Does
she love hm? Dimity, who I've competed against hopelessly since I was 18, who saved my life,
apart from saving our species. Paddy, if she could love you, and you could take her back to
Procyon, it would make things . . . And I know someone else who's in love with her, too. I wonder
if he knows he is . . . One other, at least. That's if you don't count . . . Well, let's not get too
complicated . . . Paddy, sparkle-eyed at the streams running under the sky and the gagrumphers
plunging away through the trees, there's a lot riding on you . . .

 The great problem, once you've been any sort of leader, which means once you've been any sort
of manipulator: Can you again come to value people for what they are, rather than for how they
might be able to serve your own ends? We forget that between men and women sexual
exploitation isn't the only kind of exploitation there is. At least we do as soon as a war's over. . . .
Now if you and Dimity . . . What am I thinking about? Dimity may well be dead. Patrick, you seem
a happy, decent man, the product of a world less tortured than this one. Can I leave you an
innocent man, not try to make you my catspaw?She caught his eyes. In love with Dimity he might be,
but Leonie saw he was admiring her at least as much as the landscape.I wonder if it would turn him
sick to know what's under my trousers?she thought. And then:Let me get all that boiling black stuff
out of my head, anyway. Nils and I are lucky, compared to so many.

 "I can never get used to it," he said. "I don't mean agoraphobia—I've had treatment for that—but still it
all takes my breath away. Living on the surface like this . . .And"—he pointed to the horizon—"And
those mountains—like needles."

"We've had to live in some odd places," said Leonie. "Sometimes during the war it seemed we were
underground more often than on the surface. There were children born in the caves who knew stalactites
better than stars or mountains."

"Your children?"

 "None of my own. Others had their own lives and priorities, but for us, then, it seemed children were not
exactly a good idea," Leonie said. "Pregnancy would have kept me out of action for a long time, with
medical care the state it was in, and . . . what sort of a world would it have been to bring a child into? Of
course, it was fortunate not everyone on Wunderland had the same policy—the population was dropping
fast as it was.

 "I was going to broach the subject with Nils after the war. I'd been important enough to have geriatric
drugs throughout and I still had an apparently young body, as he did. I would have run out of natural ova
sooner or later, but that didn't worry me—stimulating stem cells to produce new ova is an elementary
procedure. Then, you know, I lost the lot."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Patrick said. "I know that on Earth creating ova from other tissue isn't
unusual. I think it's been done since the twenty-first century, at least."

 "I don't think I could do that. We've been very cautious about biotech for humans here. Quite a deep
cultural inhibition. The first colonists got a bit carried away and there were some—unfortunate incidents.
We're lucky the only inheritance was mobile ears for some of us, which are harmless and sometimes
useful even if it does encourage snobbery. But I haven't told you all the details of what I am. Perhaps I'm
a bit mixed up. In my emotions as well as"—a bitter laugh—"literally. The lower body I have now is
ovulating all right . . . whoever she was, she was young. But you'll understand I don't exactly consider it a
problem solved . . ."

There was an awkward silence.

 "Look at that!" Patrick pointed excitedly again. A smile returned to Leonie's eyes as she watched the
Crashlander's excitement. Much remained park-like—woodlands, glades, small streams. Herds of
gagrumphers and other creatures could be seen. There was also a scattering of human farms and hamlets.
Fruit trees, and even a few vineyards for small bottlings of wine grown in the old natural way. Leonie had
flown over this landscape many times, but she could still appreciate its loveliness. Humans had become
human in a landscape not too unlike this. For both of them there was some touch of Eden about it.

"I can't get over it!" said Patrick. Then: "Where are the caves?"

"Underneath us. Underneath all this country. You can trace them on the deep radar."

 "I'd rather just watch all this," His face was alight with wonderment. "I feel so lucky to have seen it!
When this is all over I want to walk through this country. I don't think I'd get agoraphobia again, the
treatments were good. I'd love to live under a sky for a while!"

"We'll be down in it shortly," Leonie said. "I hope it comes up to expectations."




  Chapter 8
 The tunnel was roofed over, but the grey light of the sky penetrated. There was a room at the end of the
tunnel, entered through what looked like a spaceship's airlock. Power cables snaked about. There were
familiar computer-screens and consoles, mostly kzin-sized and of more-or-less kzin military pattern, as
well as instruments and machinery whose function neither Vaemar nor Dimity could guess at. Vaemar and
Dimity were deposited there, weaponless but unharmed. As Chorth-Captain covered them with a beam
rifle, the Protector removed their garments, searching them thoroughly and ripping Dimity's apart in the
process—Vaemar beneath his coverall wore much less, mainly straps and pouches. It ran police tape
over their hands and feet. This was specially made to restrain kzinti from using their claws, and far
stronger than was necessary to immobilize a human. Then the Protector surveyed them.

 So far, things had moved too fast for Vaemar or Dimity to see the Protector properly. Guthlac had
surmised that it would be close to the original Pak form. For all its immense strength it was smaller than
Dimity and barely half the height of either kzin, with a protruding muzzle hardened into a horny beak, a
bulging, lobed, melon-like cranium, with large bulging eyes, and exaggerated ears and nostrils, part of its
Morlock heritage, in a parody of a human face even more bizarre than the face of a Pak or human
Protector, joints like huge balls of bone and muscle rolling below a skin like leather armor.
Chorth-Captain stood beside it.

"Traitor!" Vaemar snarled at the other kzin. "You hand your own kind to alien monsters! I challenge
you—to the death and the generations!"

 "Traitor? Handing our kind to alien monsters? Who speaks?" Chorth-Captain replied in the Mocking
Tense. "Do I speak to Vaemar, sometimes called Riit, chiefkollabrratorr onKa'ashi ? Holder of a
commission in the Human Reserve Officer Training Corps? Who would join our kind with the vermin of
the Universe? Yes,kollabrratorr , I call you,kollabrratorr andkwizzliing, perversions that only the
vermin had words for till they infected our tongue! As for your challenge, it is nothing. The mere jabbering
of aKz'eerkt -chrowler."Kz'eerkt meant "ape," "monkey" or "human." "Chrowl" depending on who used
it and when, was an either intimate or obscene term among kzinti for sexual intercourse. In normal kzin
society such as had existed pre-Liberation, a death-duel would inevitably have followed such an insult.
Dimity thought she could feel the effort with which Vaemar controlled both his voice and his body
language to reply calmly.At least he has had good training at that , she thought.Growing up among
humans, learning to follow human rules—like me.

 "You are brave when your monster has tied my claws," said Vaemar. "If you had wished to know why I
have done as I have, and spoken with me, I could have told you my reasons. But you are one of those
who weary me with your stupidity, who think with hot livers instead of brains. Who may yet be the
destruction of our kind. What do you think you have done?" He gestured with his tail and ears at the
Protector. "You are the slave of this thing?"

 "He is an ally," replied Chorth-Captain. "It is not I who am the slave of aliens. We have watched you
long, Vaemar-sometimes-called-Riit.Ka'ashi has Heroes still who do not crawl like bugs into your fur as
you abase yourself before the monkeys."

 The Protector gestured. Chorth-Captain disappeared for a few moments while the Protector watched
them. They guessed he was attending to their car. The Protector's voice when it spoke was a series of
clicks and poppings. But it spoke slowly, taking trouble, and it used what had once been called the
Slave's Patois, but which was now becoming a common, value-neutral,lingua franca between humans
and kzinti on Wunderland.

"Obey and you will live," it said. Its strange eyes travelled from Dimity to Vaemar and back. It was
Dimity who replied.

"What do you want?"

 "Teach." It touched a keyboard and a bank of screens sprang into life. Wunderland television channels
and internet sites. One of them, Dimity and Vaemar saw, showed Vaemar's palace and its surroundings
and outbuildings, including the guest house Dimity used. A camera somewhere in the woods. Others
showed Munchen University, including the Dimity Carmody Physics Building with its inscription.

"Teach . . . what?"

"Everything. You I know." It touched another keyboard. An old newsreel, showing Dimity and a group
of scientists.Patrick was right , thought Dimity.It was stupid to broadcast the fact of my return to
Wunderland. But too many people knew anyway .

 "We have been watching you for a long time," said Chorth-Captain, returning to the room. "I supplied
the original equipment, which has been improved upon. The Patriarchy will be grateful to Chorth-Captain
when those improvements are incorporated into the standard equipment of our Navy. We improved
surveillance and stealthing among many other things. We know much. But my ally wishes to learn more.
You two are . . . associates"—he cast another look of loathing and contempt at Vaemar, black lips
curling—"with one another. We have known for some time, and considered it advantageous for all its
loathsomeness and indignity, monkey-dirt scratched upon the Name of Riit. Did you think we were
careless with the trail of radioactives? We laid a trail to bring you here."

"We will need to know more," said Dimity. "Teach? Teach what?"

 "Context," said the Protector. Its beak clacked over the word. "Teach about humans. About kzinti on
this planet. About space." It paused. "Gods," it said, surprisingly. Then it said the word Dimity and
Vaemar had hoped against their reason not to hear. "Hyperdrive."

"I haven't the tools," said Dimity. She knew it would be pointless to play dumb. The Protector knew.
Vaemar and I set ourselves up , she thought.

 "Make tools," said the Protector. And then: "We have begun." It turned its back, leaving Chorth-Captain
to guard them. Its fingers blurred with speed on the keyboard. Doors flashed shut almost soundlessly
around them. For a moment there was a hint of G-force, gone almost instantly, and a purring noise. Both
Dimity and Vaemar recognized it. They had flown in ships with kzin gravity-motors before. The panel of
grey sky above was suddenly swirling with indescribable colors.

 "Yes," said Chorth-Captain. "A gravity-planer. Much improved. And shielding devices, also much
improved. Good enough to get us past the monkeyships and the monkeys' machine-sentinals. Again I
supplied the basic equipment from kzin stores. Once I had demonstrated them to my ally he was able to
make advances with them. Hear how quiet the planer has become."

"How did you meet your ally?" asked Vaemar, with a mildness, almost a casualness, in his voice that
Dimity had heard once or twice before. She felt a shiver run up her spine.

 "In the caves. When the traitors struck in the great battle before the humans attacked"—You don't say
which side you consider the traitors, Vaemar thought—" I took aScream of Vengeance fighter we
carried and flew to the Hollow Moon. In the confusion it was not noticed there."

 So, thought Vaemar.Are you a coward, Chorth-Captain, and has your knowledge of cowardice
driven you mad? Or is this all a lie? The latter, he thought. Chorth-Captain's body-language suggested
lying. So, he saw, did the instrumentation numbers on the bulkhead. This craft was not from a ship of one
of theKa'ashi -based squadrons. He said nothing.

 "Watching with its instruments," Chorth-Captain continued. "I saw the apes were gaining the upper hand,
and before they had gained all air- and space-superiority aboutKa'ashi I took this gig and, leaving the
fighter as hidden as might be, I flew back toKa'ashi , evading the apes' clumsy, noseless searchers, back
to the wild country and the great caves. I lurked there when the war ended, hoping to find some way
back to Kzinhome so I might fight on, or some way to die gloriously in battle, killing monkeys
eights-squared times as Lord Dragga-Skrull killed Jotok. I made occasional raids on the surface. I learnt
of Chuut-Riit's hidden redoubt which the monkeys had found. It was abandoned and sealed when I
reached it but I broke the seals and took equipment from it. Years passed. Monkeys died at my claws,
when they were foolish enough to wander alone or in small troops. In the caves I met my ally. He alone
had been exposed to the chemical and made the change. He had memories of his previous life, and of the
war. Of Heroes and monkeys, of weapons and fighting, which he was soon able to understand. His
intelligence had, of course, become very high, though he had been barely sentient before. He did not kill
me, but showed me that an alliance against the apes would be in the interest of both our kinds."He lied a
moment ago, but he's not lying now , Vaemar thought. Chorth-Captain went on.

 "He demonstrated his intelligence to me, and together we modified this craft, and built other things. I
contacted Heroes the apes had not corrupted and they too supplied us with knowledge and equipment.
We tested his improvements to cloaking devices and they worked. We flew to the southern island
undetected and carried out much work there, free from the attention of monkeys or . . . other things.
Under his direction we studied what we could of the plight ofKa'ashi . I told him what I knew of space
and the war. We agreed the monkeys were the most noxious vermin of the universe . . ."

 Dimity caught it vaguely, Vaemar much more clearly. There was a great deal wrong with
Chorth-Captain. There was a strange kind of buzzing in his voice. But there was more than that. Most
kzinti of the officer class, used to framing orders, did not commonly in such a situation deliver themselves
of prolix monologues like this, least of all to monkeys or prisoners. And Vaemar's Ziirgah sense picked
up a fuzziness, something off-key, in Chorth-Captain's emotions as well as in his voice and
body-language.His brain has been tampered with , thought Vaemar.By the Protector, obviously.The
thing that was a brainless Morlock .Rykermann is right. They are a peril indeed .

"Where are we going?"

 Chorth-Captain gestured at another screen. Wunderland was a great sphere. Vaemar saw they were
already several hundred miles up, and still accelerating. There was no interference from the guardships,
manned and automated, that patrolled the space above the planet.

"The Hollow Moon. There we will be undisturbed."

 I don't think so, thought Vaemar.Our disappearance will be noted . But then he thought that, thought
they might be searched for, there would be no particular reason to include the Hollow Moon in the
search, especially if this craft's cloaking was truly good. There would be no reason to think they were in
space at all.

Dimity had thought of no way to remind him of the locators.

"Where is the tree-of-life?" asked Dimity.

 "Most of it is still in the caves, along with most of the warheads. It is safe. There was a little we took to
the Hollow Moon but it is now being used. You will not be exposed to it."

There was something else Dimity and Vaemar could hardly help noticing. Chorth-Captain would hardly
be talking to them so frankly if he expected them to live to tell the tale, whatever the Protector said.The
Protector may be smarter than most human geniuses , thought Dimity,as, by our IQ tests, are
Vaemar and I. But Chorth-Captain sure isn't.

 Wunderland continued to shrink on the screen. Now it was a great, multicolored disk in space. The
Protector had been sitting calmly in a lotus-position. Its oversized eyes appeared almost dreamy. But
both the captives sensed it was absorbing every word. Both knew that in an instant it could spring. After
a time it spoke into what appeared to be the mutated descendant of a standard kzin-pattern com-link.
When Dimity asked who it was speaking to she was ignored. There were flexible tubes for food and
waste-disposal, and human and kzin were evidently expected to use them together, in each other's sight.
On Wunderland members of the two species who had ties with one another might sometimes drink
together, or eat small delicacies like ice cream, but there were usually powerful taboos beyond more than
that. Evidently there had been captives on this vessel before.

Chorth-Captain told them of how he had made contact with a number of the kzinti who had been in
Chuut-Riit/Henrietta's Redoubt and escaped or survived its storming. Through them he had begun to
build up a knowledge-base for the Protector about Dimity and Vaemar.

 The kzinti had been masters of gravity control for millennia—the gravity-planer was their principal
space-drive—and normal Wunderland gravity was maintained in the chamber. Chorth-Captain fitted
caps on their heads and they slept.
                                                    ***

Leonie, after asking permission and giving certain passwords, landed her car in the courtyard of
Vaemar's palace. Patrick Quickenden remained in the car, keeping out of sight as much as possible.

 Raargh, Seneschal in charge in Vaemar's absence, greeted her. One of his kittens, folicking in the long
grasses nearby, leapt to join his sire, going down into a mock-attacking crouch at the sight of the human.
He was about as big as, and somewhat more powerful than, an Earth leopard. Leonie had once beaten
such a kitten to death with a metal bar in a prolonged and desperate fight. Her old legs and thighs had
borne the scars of that fight for a long time.Rarrgh looked at him, gave a single growl in an unmistakable
tense, and the kitten fled.

Twenty-five years earlier Rarrgh and Leonie had seen each other for the first time, across the sights of a
beam rifle, as Raargh lay pinned under rocks in a Morlock-infested cave. Each owed the other at least
one life. Raargh raised his remaining natural arm and touched her shoulder.

 "Got message, urrr!" he said. "Trouble!" He gave a purr of satisfaction and anticipation. He passed Big
John thew'tsai of the Seneschal's office, in its ornately-engraved gold and purple sheath. "Care for this,
Hero, till I return." He slapped his belt where his own oldw'tsai hung. "Urrr!" he repeated, snapping his
teeth and flexing his claws.




  Chapter 9
"The Hollow Moon," said Chorth-Captain, waking them.

 The purring of the gravity-planer had ceased. The panels opened. Chorth-Captain gestured and they
followed him out. The Protector came behind them.

 Gravity changed abruptly. This was less disorienting for Dimity and Vaemar than it would have been had
they not spent years with kzin gravity-technology. Since both knew something of the Hollow Moon it was
easy to work out their situation.

 They were in a compartment on the inner surface. There was a great concave roof above them,
vanishing into blackness overhead, and a concave floor at their feet, but so partitioned and divided that it
was impossible to see far. There was a diffuse light. The ship they had travelled in now looked like a
stony spheroid. Its surface sparkled here and there with quartz-like chips that they guessed were
miniaturized cloaking-generators. Held by gravity anchors, it stood within a translucent tube, one of
several, on a landing pad such as was more-or-less standard for small spacecraft in the Serpent Swarm
Asteroids. Above it was a hatch, now closed, obviously leading to the surface and space. There, too,
was the glowing blue dome of a Sinclair time-acceleration field.

 Some of the machinery around had, for both human and kzin, an alien look. But much of it appeared to
be kzin military and naval equipment, either standard or modified. There were kzinti control consoles,
close to standard naval models, and banks of screens, some blank, some with idly moving data. To
Vaemar, they might almost be inside a kzin space station, though he knew more about this from Reserve
Officers' intelligence courses than from his own experience. There was a nest of gravity-sleds, the kzin
all-purpose transporters, which he had used often. Both took it all in fast.Gravity technology, Sinclair
technology, Cloaking technology already better, or more compact, than anything we have. And
now they are after the Hyperdrive! Chorth-Captain led them into another compartment.

 A smell of Morlock struck Dimity, repellent even to her weak human nostrils. What she saw reminded
for a moment of a hospital ward. A row of creatures lay on beds. Quasi-humanoids with swollen bellies.
Morlocks, gorged on tree-of-life, beginning the change into Protectors. Dimity felt a stab of panic. She
clutched at Vaemar's arm. "There is tree-of-life here!"

 "You do not need to fear, monkey," said Chorth-Captain. "It is gone. It has been ingested. Before we
flew we signalled to those here that we had you, and for the process to begin. These will have teachers
when they awake. And there will be builders for the superluminal drive."

 "Those here." Plural,thought Dimity.We have at least four enemies. The odds are against us
anyway, and they will be worse soon. I can make sense of things in that realm where mathematics
and metaphysics come together, but I cannot fight a kzin, let alone a Protector. And there are
forty more here, beginning to change.

 There, under a cold blue light in the corner, were other still silent forms: dead, dissected humans and
kzinti.So, thought Dimity, the process of learning about other species has already begun in a
practical way.She indicated it to Vaemar with a roll of her eyes and twitch of her Wunderlander
aristocrat's ears.

Four more Protectors entered. They glanced briefly at Vaemar and Dimity and turned to the changing
Morlocks. Dimity noticed again that they were laid out in four rows.

"Are they their children?" she asked Chorth-Captain.

The big kzin raised his ears in a gesture of assent. "Each cares for his own children."

"And the other Protector? Your ally?"

 "He is childless. He came upon the tree-of-life first, and later we exposed others. They brought their
children here, and waited. Why do you wish to know?"

 Dimity began a retort, and bit it off. Her relationship with the untypical Vaemar had almost made her
forget the hair-trigger temper of kzintosh in what she supposed must be called their natural state,
particularly in their dealings with humans. She had never lived on kzin-occupied Wunderland, but knew
that a human there who answered a question from a kzin with another, rhetorical, question, or in a
formulation that smacked of sarcasm or irony, would have been lucky to keep tongue, face or life.
"I will be a more effective teacher, if I know the beings I am teaching."

Chorth-Captain inclined his own ears again. Apparently he accepted her explanation.

"And if I am to teach, I must have access to a knowledge base."

"That is anticipated. Come," Chorth-Captain said.

 He led Dimity and Vaemar into another chamber nearby. They passed a couple of sealed passages, and
dark tunnels with an old look about them. Only a small part of the hollow moon seemed to have been
restored as living space. There was a chair for each of them, and two computers, based on kzin military
models, but with what they guessed were Protectors' improvements, each with a keyboard adapted for
their respective hands. "You may prepare your lessons," said Chorth-Captain. He was also carrying the
suit, much ripped and of questionable use now as a garment, which he had taken off Dimity, and her
boots. He dropped these on the floor and then gestured at Vaemar. "When the door is closed you may
free him," he added.

He passed Dimity a tube, like an old-fashioned tube of toothpaste, and backed out. A door flashed shut
behind him.

Dimity squeezed the contents of the tube over Vaemar's bonds. They foamed and dissolved.

Dimity looked desperately for a writing instrument. There was nothing. She took Vaemar's hand and
pressed out one of his razor claws. She scratched on her arm. "They listen." Like most humans on
Wunderland she had anticoagulants added to her blood and it dried quickly.

 Vaemar raised his great eyes to the ceiling, then pointed to the tiny eyes of cameras. "They watch," he
said. "They must hear what we say. Unless we do or say nothing, we must accept that fact."

"If they have been watching Wunderland television," said Dimity, "they probably know all the languages
we do."

"I studied the history of Human International Law," said Vaemar. He added casually "Loquorisne
Latinum?"

"Yes," said Dimity in the same language. "But it won't frustrate them long. Too logical and consistent.
They'll translate. And they are bound to be recording us now."

"All the same, we have a little time to talk," said Vaemar. "Time is against us anyway for other reasons as
well. How long will it take those Morlocks to change?"

 "I don't know. No one knows much about the Pak. In a Sinclair field they could speed it up. But the fact
that they are not using Sinclair fields for that purpose suggests the time may be variable."

"How do we stop them? How do you anticipate what they will do?"

"Wunderland has war-geared defenses," Dimity said. "If you were a Protector, what would you do?"

"I cannot think like a Protector, but here is one scenario: seize Tiamat. You agree that would be
possible."
 Tiamat was a roughly cylindrical asteroid of the Serpent Swarm, about fifty kilometers by twenty. It was
an administrative center and military base of the Swarm and was heavily industrialized for space industries
as well as a major production center for weapons and IT. It was also a research center for the Swarm.
As the main site of the Swarm's experiment in commensualism it had a kzin community with a limited
degree of self-government at "Tigertown" and some kzinti working with humans. Both Dimity and
Vaemar had been there several times.

"For forty and more trained Protectors? Easy!"

"That would give them factories tooled up for hyperdrive technology, and working hyperdrive ships,"
Vaemar said. "And all the gravity-control industries. It would also give them very heavy battle lasers and
other military weapons installations. Tiamat is well-defended."

"Yes."

 "But not well-defended against the kind of surprise attack Protectors could mount. Then, if I were
directing their strategy, I would attack Wunderland and the other settled asteroids of the Serpent Swarm
from Tiamat. And while Wunderland's defenses are busy, crash this moon or another into it.

 "Morlocks fight by dropping on their enemies and hurling rocks down on them. This would be the same
thing on a bigger scale.

 "The Protectors could break the moon up on its way by controlled explosions so that the fragments
would impact in a predetermined pattern and with predetermined force. That would be the end of
human—and kzin—life on Wunderland. If all was not destroyed by the first impacts, it would be so
shattered that the Protectors could finish off any remnants at leisure. But the Morlocks in the great caves
could survive. With Tiamat, they would not need Wunderland's industrial centers. They could destroy the
other asteroid settlements one by one. Many are still reduced by war-damage anyway. I do not think
their defenses would last long against Protectors."

"I cannot fault your reasoning," said Dimity. "And then . . . how many breeders would they get from the
Morlocks of Wunderland?"

 "Their numbers were thinned in the war, but they are breeding up again, as I know from personal
experience," said Vaemar. "Hundreds, at least. Thousands, I am sure. We do not yet know how far the
cave systems go."

"The Sinclair fields! That is why they have them here!"

"Yes, of course! I should have seen at once! They can use the Sinclair fields to accelerate breeding!
They could have thousands more breeders and thousands of Protectors."

"That would also give them the numbers for genetic diversity."

 "It would give them the numbers for a double leap into human and kzin space," said Vaemar. "And
another bad thing strikes me, one which this Protector has perhaps not realized yet but sooner or later
must: you humans have put much effort into developing reproductive technology, though you do not
exploit its full potential. A Protector with access to that would not need to have got all its children before
the change. It could clone as many as it wished from its own cell structure. There would be no limit to
their numbers!
 "We kzinti have experimented with cloning. A band of celibate warriors, who had dedicated themselves
to the Eternal Hunt, tried to breed without females once. Each cloned his own kittens. But the kittens
were incurably savage and aggressive . . . Is that so amusing?"

 "If a kzin hero calls them incurably savage and aggressive," said Dimity, "they must have been a problem
indeed!"

 "They were. But the point is that the inhibitions of your culture or mine about cloning would mean nothing
to a Protector. Dimity, we must stop them now. The cost of our own lives is nothing in these
circumstances."

"I know," said Dimity.

"Unfortunately, at this moment I cannot see how."

"Nor I."

"Why didn't the original Pak Protectors simply clone themselves?" said Vaemar.

 "Perhaps they had no need to think in such directions," said Dimity. "Their mature bodies were so strong,
long-lived and perfect that they did little to develop biological sciences. They didn't need to improve on
what they had. All that we know of the Pak species' thinking was what Brennan picked up while he was
a Pak's prisoner and told to the humans who he met later. But there seem to be some gaps in Pak
thinking. Humans are more creative. And, from what little I know about them, Protectors are unable to
cooperate with one another beyond the briefest temporary alliances. Further, our own science showed us
long ago that cloning sapient beings is fraught with risks. It seemed to promise everything at first, but then
we discovered the pitfalls.

 "The Protectors' science as far as we know is exclusively military-oriented. Each cares only for his own
blood-line. It seems their only stimulation and excitement is war. They could have been the greatest race
in the galaxy, but their intelligence and instincts together locked them into a dead-end. Their
single-mindedness virtually robbed them of free will. Even their spaceflight was stimulated by nothing but
a desire to find new breeding grounds. No curiosity, no sense of wonder. No sense of anything beyond
themselves. The kind of creature I yearn desperately not to be. When I had to read of them it horrified
me, because I saw so much of myself in them."

 "It is something to be horrified," said Vaemar. "Raargh told me that to be aware of horror is an early step
to knowledge. Know horror and you know glory. Know fear and you know courage."

"You understand the human idea of the knight, Vaemar? The ideal, I mean."

 "I trust so. I have read much human history. It fascinates me that the knight should emerge from the dark
ages, as it fascinates me that Roman order, Greek art and thought, could combine with barbarian vigor to
build an order that would take you to the stars. Was it like that with other star-faring races, I wonder,
races that did not have the Jotok as we did? But yes, I know of human knights. Some kzinti are like that
too, but not many, and as you would expect, not quite the same."

 "Can you imagine Pak knights, crusaders, chivalrous champions of some cause beyond ensuring more
breeders?" said Dimity. "I cannot. I loved Nils because he, for all his lack of self-awareness, had
something of the knight in him. I never saw what he did in the war, of course, Leonie had all of that. . . .
The Pak were—it seems are—little more than gene-carrying machines, breeding and fighting and
crossing between the stars for no end but reproduction. Trapped by their own brain structure. Trapped,
as I fear most of all to be trapped."

"Can we use that, I wonder? There are at least four blood-lines here."

"With the childless Protector to keep them in order."

"Yes. He is our prime target."

"Target? You have high hopes, Vaemar-Hero."

"A Hero does not need hope, Dimity-Human."

 They logged onto the internet with the computers supplied. As they had guessed, they could receive but
not send data. Dimity and Vaemar were both clever with computers, and they spent a lot of time trying to
circumvent this.



  Chapter 10
 The well-armed car carrying Arthur Guthlac, Colonel Cumpston and Karan touched down beside
Vaemar's empty vehicle. Apart from its turret-mounted weapons, Cumpston had a strakkaker and
Guthlac a heavy, powerful beam rifle, a great cannon of a thing based on a kzin sidearm, and with
mini-waldos for human use. Karan had a kzinrret's knife, the new and improved female version of aw'tsai
, and another strakkaker. Weapons ready, the occupants alighted, the humans wearing breathing filters as
Dimity had. In case they needed the car quickly, the engine was left idling and the doors unlocked. There
was no sign of any live friend or enemy.

 Karan pointed and bounded to the dead thunderbirds, the humans hurrying behind. Small scavengers
scattered.

"Beam rifle, close range," said Cumpston. "And the other looks like a kzin bite."

"They stood here," said Karan, pointing. Looking closely, Guthlac and Cumpston could make out two
very different-sized sets of footprints, the larger tipped with claw points. "It didn't get near them."

"The car has been tampered with," said Cumpston. "Look! Its antennas are gone." He also tried the
door.

"Dimity and Vaemar, according to the ways we can measure IQs, are possibly the two cleverest beings
on Wunderland," said Guthlac. "I hope they can look after themselves."

 "Clever doesn't necessarily mean survivor," said Cumpston. "There's more than a touch of the idiot
savant in Dimity. Super-genius she may be, but she's narrowly focused. Just because she shatters the old
sexist stereotype of the beautiful blonde doesn't mean she . . . More common sense, better instincts and
reflexes, may mean survival in a place like this. Vaemar, I can't pronounce on. But he's an intellectual,
too, however sharp his claws are. I wish old Raargh was with them, or some human sergeant-major."

Guthlac thought he detected something in his friend's voice when he spoke of Dimity. There could hardly
be a less appropriate time or place for him to comment. "Karan, can you follow their trail?" he asked
 Karan was already moving down one of the rock-tunnels, almost on all fours, a barred orange shadow
in the shifting and flickering grey light.

"We might do better to search from the air," Guthlac said. "This is another labyrinth."

 "If there was anything to see from the air I think we'd have seen it," said Cumpston. "Come on! We're
lucky to have her, but I don't want her getting too far ahead on her own. If anything happened to her,
would you want to be the one to tell Vaemar?"

"Trail stops," said Karan a few minutes later.

They caught up to her. They were standing in a circular space in the rock-maze.

"Do you smell anything?" Guthlac asked her.

"Sand and rock turned over." Karan said. "Not a long time past. And kzintosh. There has been another
male kzin here. And at the car. And something else. A bad smell."

Cumpston pointed to the edge of the rock wall. "Sand and rock turned over there?" he asked her.

"Yes."

"A gravity motor."

"But all gravity motors are monitored," said Guthlac.

 "Get through to the monitoring stations," said Cumpston. "Pull your rank, Arthur! Hurry! They must have
recorded something."

Guthlac sent the message. His face was dark. "I'm getting a very ugly thought," he said.

"So am I. But tell me yours first."

Guthlac made sure Karan was out of earshot, still hunting along the rock wall. He spoke softly and
quickly.

"Vaemar has taken Dimity into space. He's a kzin. It looks as if he's taking her to the Patriarchy. Our
pioneering hyperdrive expert!"

"Any ship that took off from here would be too small for interstellar travel."

"But it could meet a bigger one."

 "We've monitored Vaemar pretty carefully. And taken other precautions. There's been no hint of
anything like that."

 "Apart from reversing the kzinti's whole military position, it would get him back his place beside the Riit
throne. Perhaps position him for a bid for the Patriarchy! Why should we trust him to be more loyal to us
than to his own species? Especially when the reward could be so enormous? I know policy was to trust
him as much as possible, but perhaps we've put too much temptation in his way. Or perhaps it was just a
mistake to trust a ratcat!"

 "That hangs together very nastily," said Cumpston. "I have just one small ray of hope that you're wrong.
It was we who sent him here. He couldn't have planned a secret rendezvous with a spacecraft . . . unless
it had been waiting for a long time."

"And unless he manipulated us into sending him. He knew he'd be coming this way sooner or later. I've
given Defense Headquarters an emergency alert. The next thing is to get after them, anyway. But Vaemar
doesn'tfeel like that to me."

"I put some trust in someone when all appearances were against her a little while ago," said Guthlac. "In
a ruined hamlet beyond Gerning in a storm. I haven't regretted it. I'll try to believe the best of Vaemar yet,
but I'm putting out an emergency alert to Defense HQ all the same."

"We should have stopped her associating with him so. That's obvious enough with hindsight."

 "Dimity is an Asperger's. A superlatively high-functioning one. When she makes up her mind to do a
thing the only way you can stop her is by breaking that mind.

"She can be killed any time," Guthlac went on. "There's an implant in her that can be activated remotely.
An idea we got from the kzinzzrou . ARM insisted on it."

"Arthur! We've got to get her back!"

"I know!"

"You mustn't let ARM know what's happened! Not yet!"

"Michael, there are a lot of things neither of us let ARM know about. And I don't mean your
peculiarly-colored bird or a certain Earth flower with green petals. Try to hang onto hope."

"Does she know?"

"I don't know. ARM was subtler than the kzinti about such things. Nanobots in the food. But Vaemar's
got one too. ARM isnot trusting. It wasn't my idea or orders, but . . ." Guthlac suddenly smacked his
own head. "Idiot! How do we win wars with generals like me? I had completely forgotten! They both
have locators in them anyway! Standard VIP models. We can read them from the car!"

"Come on!"

 Calling Karan, they turned and headed back out of the granite maze. The thunderbird launched itself at
them from the rock wall. Half as big again as the ones Dimity and Vaemar had killed, its vast striking
beak knocked Guthlac sprawling. The tough fabric of his coverall saved him from being torn apart, but
had the thing snapped its beak it would have crushed his bones in an instant. Karan was a blur of rippling
orange muscle as she leapt at it. Screaming, two more thunderbirds launched themselves from the rock
wall.

 Karan severed the first thunderbird's neck with her fangs and claws before the beak could seize her.
Cumpston, getting his beamer up just in time, shot another in the chest. The third sprang into the air again,
and came down on their car. Guthlac fired at the bird and hit the car. Its tough materials could normally
have withstood far worse hits, but the unlocked door flew open. Either the beamor the avian's great
kicking legs activated the controls, and car and avian tangled together shot fifty feet into the air, rolled,
dived, and crashed into the rock wall.

 Guthlac struggled free of the dead weight of the first thunderbird. Cumpston ran to them. Karan got to
her feet, staggered and fell again, pumping gouts of purple and orange blood from gaping lacerations in
her thighs. Guthlac found the end of a severed blood-vessel and held it shut while Cumpston raced for
the crashed car and its medical kit, killing the broken-limbed avian as it struggled and snapped at him.
The car's fuel lines had ruptured, and as Cumpston turned and ran back to Karan a spark ignited the
clouds of hydrogen billowing from it. Automatically released jets of inert gas quickly smothered the
flames, but the cabin and control console were wrecked.

Frantic work with a kzin military chemical bandage stabilized the wound, but it took time. Karan was
weak and barely conscious.

 The car, it was soon obvious, was not going to fly again without major repairs, and the lock on the car
which Vaemar and Dimity had used was keyed to open to the patterns of Vaemar's and Dimity's hand or
theirtappetumor retina respectively. It was centuries since the last manually pickable lock had been made
for anything as expensive as a car. Any attempt to burn the doors open, if it did not ruin the car's delicate
mechanisms, would probably exhaust their weapon first. They carried Karan into the meager shelter of an
overhang as rain began to fall from the grey sky. Mobile telephones were a standard part of their
equipment. They called for help, and waited. After a time the rain gave way to sleet and snow. More
thunderbirds came.
                                                   ***

The comet-debris had served them well, Kzaargh-Commodore thought.Night-Lurker had passed
undetected into the thick asteroid belt the humans called the Serpent Swarm.

 The long descent back towards the sun had not been spent in idleness. Heroes had worked to disguise
the ship.

 At first Kzaargh-Commodore had thought to disguise it as a derelict, but had changed his mind after
coming across a genuine kzin derelict warship. After stripping it of all that might be useful and giving the
dead Heroes aboard space burial, he had sent it sunward for a test, cold, tumbling, patently helpless and
dead. Human instruments had identified it, and interrogated it, and when it did not respond batteries of
laser-cannon had vaporized it. The same happened when he sent in a stealthed ship's boat, manned by a
crew of Hero volunteers. Stealth technology took them quite a long way, but it was plainly not the whole
answer. Rocks did better, if they were not identified as being on a collision course withKa'ashi or some
other large body—there were too many rocks for the human defenses to vaporize them all, and in any
case many contained valuable ores.

The apes seemed arrogantly confident of their mathematics and of their meteor defenses. Any large
meteor whose path missedKa'ashi by more than 50,000 miles was generally not intercepted.

 Night-Lurkerbecame a lurker indeed. Like Lord Hrras-Charr of legend, who had cut off his own ears
to fool his enemy, the cruiser had lost external parts. So altering something as complex as a spaceship
without dockyard facilities was a mighty task, but his Heroes were skillful. Most of the removed parts
had been stored inboard or put into orbits from which they might one day be retrieved, but one way and
another it had changed shape and shrunk. Its sleek lines and mirror-finished surface had disappeared
under stony plating and rubble. The ports of its great rail-guns and laser-cannon were hidden by lids. Its
gravity-engines were never used. There was sufficient delta-V for it to maneuver with short bursts of
low-powered chemical rockets, inefficient but far harder to detect in space.
                                                   ***

"What do you think of Chorth-Captain?" asked Dimity.

 "He is not his own master. I do not only say that because it is unbelievable that a Hero would voluntarily
serve such monsters. He appears to have no power to correlate. And there is a spot on the back of his
neck that is not a battle-scar. It is metallic. I saw it gleam. I think it is some kind of Protector-made
descendent of azzrou ."

"Could a Protector have learnt of such things?"

 "The caves contained abandoned equipment of all kinds. The Protector could have found azzrou and
improved on it. Chorth-Captain is likely not the first Hero it captured. It could have experimented on
others until it perfected what was necessary for a reliable . . . slave . . . servant . . .?"

"Catspaw?"

 "It is not a term I would choose. But an enslaved Hero—or a succession of them—would have been
very useful to the Protector at first. I imagine less so now. But I do not know why it did not simply create
an army of Protectors on Wunderland as soon as it knew how."

 "I think I know why," said Dimity. "The first Protector wanted a force of Protectors it could control.
These are not quite the same as the original Pak Protectors and it had become aware of how limited and
temporary Protectors' ability to cooperate is. That is why it worked gradually, in an environment where it
set the parameters of existence.

 "Here it is in control of the others far more completely than it would be in the caves, where suddenly
aware new Protectors might remember hiding places and so forth of their own. But there is another thing.
As soon as it could, I am sure the first Protector began keying into the internet. Remember the old saying
that the net is the most two-edged of all swords? A power to one's own side but the greatest gift
imaginable to an enemy? There is material about Protectors on the internet, and although most of it is
under security closure a Protector's intelligence would crack that open quickly.

"The Protector would try to learn about creatures like itself, and I am sure it would come upon scientific
papers about the Hollow Moon. The theory is that this is an ancient Pak ship. If that is so, there may be
Pak machines here, Pak books . . . manuals . . . Surely for the Pak teaching newly-changed breeders
must have always been a high-priority use for resources."

"It would not know the language of such manuals."

"It could learn. You and I learn languages very quickly by the standards of our kinds."
                                                  ***

A dark spot grew in the lightning-streaked grey of the sky. A car from one of the monitoring stations. It
landed near the overhang and six well-armed humans alighted. They were dressed in the tough uniform
overalls of the Wunderland security forces.

Guthlac and Cumpston went forward to meet them, stepping between dead thunderbirds. The creatures
had been attacking in increasing numbers. Guthlac had begun to worry about their ammunition some time
before. He had brought the big rifle thinking to deal with Morlock Protectors if he had to. But its size and
weight, even with the mini-waldos, were a disadvantage, and even without considering that he had
managed to wreck the car with it. Thunderbirds moved fast. He realized it was as well he had not had to
deal with Protectors, who evidently moved much faster.Last time I was in this sort of trouble was
because I went hunting with a .22 , he thought,thinking Wunderland game was all sport after
kzin-hunting.

 The leader of the rescue party stepped ahead of the rest to meet them. At the sight of Karan, lying
unconscious, his strakkaker swept up. He cocked it with a fluid, infinitely practiced movement and
trained it on her.

"What are you doing?" Guthlac jumped forward in front of the man.

"What areyou doing? That's a ratcat, isn't it? A friend of yours?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact she is. She was wounded a little while ago defending us."

"We believe in dead ratcats here."

"Not this one."

"I'm the one who decides that around here."

"Do you know who I am?" Asked Guthlac.

"Yes. Someone who owes their life to our responding to your call. Stand aside!"

"The war has been over on this planet for more than ten years! Put that weapon in its proper place!"

"I know the proper use for a weapon when there's a live ratcat around."

"I repeat! The war is over on this planet. There is a peace treaty. I will not repeat that again!"

 "I look quite pretty now, don't I," the man said. "Thanks to our Liberators. But see my skin. Look at my
face a little closely. A little pink here and there. I spent years with a metal jaw and half a metal face,
thanks to one of thoseTeufel's claws."

"Well, you don't have to now," said Guthlac.

 "Yes, I'm lucky, aren't I? My wife, my son, my two brothers, and my uncle, had no such luck as metal
replacement parts. Just a quick, short ride down the kzin alimentary canal. Oh, I'm a lucky man, all right!
A little micro-surgery to deaden the nerve ends before our Liberators' arrived would have helped. All the
nerve ends. I could have gone to my cousins perhaps—maybe after a while they could have looked at
me without vomiting. Oh, I forgot! They were in Neue Dresden. You ask me to be a ratcat lover?"

 "We are a brigadier and a colonel of the UNSN," said Guthlac. "We happen to be the Liberators you
just thanked. The kzinti ate my only family before you were born. I have fought them for more than fifty
years. But here on Wunderland things must change. And this particular ratcat was instrumental in saving
the lives of two humans, not long ago. She was young when the war ended, and took no part in it. In
addition she is"—not really a recommendation to tell this character she is the mate of the leading
kzin on the Planet—"our friend."Dear God! he thought.Let this character kill Karan and we can say
goodbye to any hope of Man-Kzin cooperation on this planet—our best chance of building
eventual peace between the species—forever.
 He saw Cumpston raise his right hand and pinch his lower lip between forefinger and thumb in a nervous
or thoughtful gesture he sometimes had. It also had the effect of pointing the table-facet of the jewel in the
ring on his index finger at the man.Not yet, Michael , he thought.But if necessary . . .

 "You lie," the man answered. "God knows why you should bother. But female ratcats can't think. After
Liberation we kept some in zoo cages and fed collaborators to them. They didn't stop to ask them their
political opinions before they sat down to dine."

"This one thinks," said Guthlac. "A few have always done so, secretly. If you are opposed to the Kzin
Patriarchy and Empire you should see what an asset to humanity intelligent kzinrretti may be.

 "All of which," he added, "is irrelevant to the fact that I am giving you a direct military order. I am not
debating. She comes with us. And she will be given the best of treatment. That is more than because she
is our companion and was wounded fighting in our defense, and has been beside other humans in peril
before. There are high reasons of policy. Harm her, and you will regret it more keenly than I can say."

"Wunderland is independent! I do not need to take orders from the UNSN."

"I tell you of my certain knowledge that if you give that reason at your court-martial it will do you little
good."

Cumpston intervened. "Do you know Nils Rykermann?" he asked.

"Yes," said the man.

 "One of the resistance's greatest leaders in the war, and now a close friend of ours. Harm that kzinrret,
and you will answer not only to the kzin who is her mate, but to him. In your place I would prefer the
kzin."

 He could kill us all and make it look an accident, Cumpston thought.By the time anyone else
arrived, the thunderbirds wouldn't have left enough of our bodies to investigate. I doubt he has
too much inhibition against killing humans. Best get him now, perhaps, and as many of the others
as I can with the ring, then draw and fight it out with the rest. But they have beam rifles and
they're ready and they look like fighters. . . .

"Rykermann was my commander," the man said at length. "For him I will do this. Get it into the car."

 Getting Karan into the car was not easy. If much smaller than a male kzin, she was still the size and
weight of a tigress. But she was partly conscious and did her best to help. The car carried them to a
dome that rose out of the near-tundra landscape. There were other buildings with the dishes of
heavy-duty com-links, all surrounded and covered by strong fencing. Karan was put into shelter.
Guthlac, using all the psychological dominance at his command, and his brigadier's identity and electronic
passes, demanded a desk and called his headquarters and then Rykermann. He summoned his modified
Wolverine -class command ship, theTractate Middoth . It was well-armed for its size, and its small
permanent crew were his own picked men. It was a vast relief to see its familiar shape appear and grow
in the gray sky and swoop to the landing-pad.



  Chapter 11
"First, I wish to know more about your gods," said the Protector. "The internet has told me something,
but not enough." Despite the squeaking and popping of its beaklike muzzle, the words were
understandable. Its grammar was good.

 Pain. Dimity sensed it dimly. Vaemar with his hunting instincts sensed it more acutely but all his training
was to ignore and despise pain save when it was a useful alarm signal.Not surprising it is in pain after
such a transformation , thought Dimity.Thank you, Herr Doktor Asperger. I think I understand
something of it. Doubtless we owe Asperger's Syndrome to our own Protector inheritance.

 "You"—it fixed its gaze on Dimity—"have a god that is everywhere and all-powerful. It can never know
achievement, striving, the conquest against odds, triumph. Because itis , it can onlybe , and never know
becoming . Do you agree?"

 "Up to a point," said Dimity. "I'm not a theologian. I think there is an idea that our God can know such
things through us, His creatures. Perhaps that is one of the purposes of our creation. To know
becoming."

 "'Perhaps'? What kind of a concept is that? And you"—its bulging Morlock eyes swivelled to
Vaemar—"You have a god like yourself, only bigger. A fanged beast that needs courage and fights
against Infinity and something called Fate that will one day overcome it. You are both promised a life
beyond death, but given only barest hints of what that will actually be like. Somehow humans will be
given worlds to rule, somehow kzinti will be hunted and devoured by the Fanged God, yet somehow live
again in him if they defy him and fight so that they become worthy. Their identities will survive, for if they
fight nobly the Fanged God will give them a new and greater life. Have I simplified your theology?"

"Yes," said Dimity and Vaemar together.

 "I had no idea of a god," said the Protector. "In the caves there wasHunger. Eating. Hatred. Fear.
Mating. Enemy-prey. Thoughts moved sluggishly but emotions surged. Then enemy-preys. All danger.
All food. Old preys. The flyers and the runners. New enemy-preys. Things like you and you, that killed
and killed. Killed like the water flooding the lower tunnels, with things that blinded and burnt. The big
ones were hard to kill, the small ones were hard to kill too. I survived. I knew almost nothing but survival
and breeding. Those about me died, for your kinds killed them and then you killed the flyers and other
things that were our food. That was all. That, and a dim idea that something had sent our food to us, and
made the waters flow.

 "Then, after the Change, I began to wonder who had made the caves—the caves that I thought then
were the world. Then, when the light burnt less outside, I left the caves. I saw what I now know is the
scarp, sweeping down to the great valley. The sound of what I know is wind. Smells I had never
imagined. I saw what I now know are the stars. Something had made this. It could not exist without a
cause. Since then I have come to understand other concepts. Worship . . . I need to know much more . .
. so much more."

 It went on for a long time. It spoke with them of the creation of stars, and the physics of the Big Bang
and the Monobloc, theories discarded with new knowledge in the twenty-second century, and
resurrected with newer knowledge in the twenty-fourth. They tried to divert it. Finally it left them.
                                                    ***

"No time to get her to kzin facilities. She'll have to stay with us," Guthlac said. "I'm not leaving her here
with these gonzos." There had been tense hours while they waited for the ship to arrive.
"I agree," said Cumpston. "But will she make it?"

"She's a kzinrret. She's tough."

"We don't have a kzin autodoc."

"Her main problem's loss of blood. We've got some universal plasma. It won't carry oxygen but it'll give
her heart something to work on and stop her blood vessels collapsing."

"Can you give it to her?"

"I had infantry combat training, a long time ago, including first aid. Never thought then that I'd be using it
on a kzin, though. And my men are versatile. Wait till you try Albert's recipe for the wedding punch!
Looking after a very important kzinrret shouldn't be too much for them."

"Now to find our missing pair."

Guthlac wiped his forehead. "They're alive," he said at last.

 He pointed to the screen before him. A ship could be stealthed, but, at least for a time, its passage
through atmosphere could not. "That could be the trace of the ship."

"It could be." The instrumentation showed a faint trail of atmospheric disturbance, dissipating as they
watched.

 "If that's a ship, it's got the best cloaking I've ever seen. Beyond the atmosphere there will be no way to
follow it."

"We are looking for Protectors. Rykermann thinks the Hollow Moon was the original Protector ship.
Could they be heading for it?"

Guthlac punched numbers. "It gives us somewhere to start looking," he said.

 "I've got them," he said at last. "Extreme range, and there's interference, but that's where they are." He
turned to Albert Manteufel, his pilot. "Take her up!"
                                                    ***

"Gnosticism . . ." said Vaemar thoughtfully. "You said it is the idea of man becoming a god through his
own inner efforts, or having a secret piece of god-ness inside him . . ." The Protector had gone, leaving
them together in what they were coming to think of as "their" room.

 "I think that's what it means," said Dimity. "Salvation by knowledge. Gnostics were 'people who knew,'
and therefore spiritually superior beings. Perhaps a sort of race-memory of the Breeder-Protector cycle.
But as I said, I'm not a theologian. The abbot once told me that almost all serious heresies are forms of
gnosticism. He also said that, given that the universe had been created, it didn't matter much in religious
terms where Man came from biologically, what mattered was where we were going spiritually."

"That Protector would seem to justify this gnosticism," said Vaemar. "A being turning into a god."

"I don't think so," said Dimity. "The kzinti wouldn't say that, would they?"
"No. Our souls go to the Fanged God, and are devoured by Him after a good hunt."

"And that's the end? It sounds rather bleak to a human."

"No. The souls of cowards are regurgitated into . . . well, the human word is Hell. The souls of Heroes
go on somehow, but as it said we have only hints about that. It is a Mystery. But the hints are enough for
us to have fought wars over them."

 "And I don't think the abbot would say this is a case of beings turning into gods," said Dimity. "That thing
is not a god, it is just a fast calculating machine . . . less human than a human, almost incapable of choice,
almost without the advantages of limitation and imperfection. Mentally like me, only more so. As impaired
as I am."

"No, Dimity, not like you."

"You are a chess master, Vaemar. Is it not true for you as for me that you come to some point in chess
where you no longer seem to be moving the pieces, but rather watching them move."

"Yes, the moves become inevitable."

"Choice disappears. My life has been like that—watching equations become inevitable. As I think a
Protector sees the world. I do not think this Protector sees it in such terms yet. But it will soon."

"Was it like that even when you were a cub . . . a child?"

 "I got a lot of my memories back with being on Wunderland and with the treatments . . . I can say:
especially when I was a cub. I did not speak for the first few years of my life, because there seemed
nothing worth saying. Why state the obvious?"

"Humans often do. And I think it is another habit we are catching from them. I have noticed we
Wunderkzin tend to talk more even when we do not need to."

 "Yes, humans often do. I didn't. I watched it all happen. The tests, the brain scans. I recorded my
parents weeping over me as I looked up at them without expression because there was nothing to
express, their whispers about 'abnormal alpha waves,' 'Asperger's Syndrome,' 'moron . . .' 'there are
special schools . . .' 'Love and cherish her . . .' It was the fritinancy of insects.

 "I sat in a playpen in my father's study while he worked, watching him at his keyboard, the equations
crawling across his computer screen. They put in swings, and made little tunnels for me to explore and
there were all sorts of books and toys that lay on the floor. I sat there and heard Father talk with his
colleagues. One of them had a son, a very bright little boy to whom Father gave lessons in calculus.
Postgraduate students, too—he took some tutorials with the cleverest of them in his house. I listened in
my playpen, and later, sitting on my chair. I didn't do much. I did not speak much but I was puzzled, and
eventually angry—why were they so slow? Why did they use such clumsy and incomplete symbols? Why
did they not bring down their quarry—tidily, simply, beautifully? At length I decided to find out. That
curiousity I had about humanity was the little, vestigial thread I had connecting me to it.

"One day, when I was seven, Father came in and found me at the keyboard. I remember how his face lit
up. That was the first time a human's emotions had touched me. "Who's aclever little girl then?" he cried.
Then he shouted to Mother: "Moira! Moira! Come and look! She's playing!" Then I saw him lift his eyes.
He saw what was on the screen, and I saw his face change. His mouth began to twist, his hands went up
to his mouth, and I knew he was fighting back a scream. By the time Mother arrived, he had stopped
shaking.

 "'Wedo have a clever little . . . girl,' he said, taking Mother's arm, and pointing. And already I heard him
stumble over that word 'girl.' Girls are human, you see. They both stared at it for a long time.

 "'Can it be what I think it is?' But Mother was no longer looking at the screen when she said that. She
was looking at me. It must be hard to have the realization hit you in a second that you have given birth to
a monster, a freak. Father printed everything off and looked at it for a long time.

"'I think I understand the implications of the simpler equations,' he said. 'I think it shatters a principal
paradigm of our knowledge of paraphysical forces . . . One of the paradigms . . . At least one . . .' Then
he began to laugh, a strange laugh such as I had never heard before.

 "I was getting bored again by that time, so I gave them a lecture. Rebuked Father for his slowness and
stupidity. Told him I was angry at the limitations of the symbols he used. It was hard on my vocal chords
because I'd used them so little before and that made me angry, too. Wondered at their tears. Thus began
the career of Dimity Carmody. More tests, more brain-scans. The special schools—I told you I'd heard
them speak of special schools—and everything else. Lessons in how to choose good clothes, for
example. How to do my hair. Looking normal is a big part of being normal. Efforts to socialize the
machine, the monster, with chess and music, to teach it to relate to human beings. They strengthened the
little, little thread that connected me to normal humanity."

"You laugh. You weep, Dimity," said Vaemar. "I have seen your eyes when you behold a sunrise. I saw
you toiling in the cave to keep Leonie alive as shots and flame flew about you. Never say you are a
machine. As for a monster . . . do I look like a monster to you?"

"No. You are splendidly evolved to be what you are."

"A killing machine?"

 "Of course not! Or that is the start. You are a carnivore, a great carnivore, a mighty hunter, top of your
food chain. But you, Vaemar, are so much else as well."

 "Yes. I am, thanks to the successful human reconquest of Wunderland, one of the few surviving
examples under any star of an introspective kzin. Monstrous to normal members of my own kind, like
Chorth-Captain. But we must not be sorry for ourselves. Would you, Dimity, really be different if you
had the choice?"

"It is difficult to say. But I think not."

"Nor I."

"The only kzinti I know well are you and your Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero," said Dimity. "And I
know that Raargh, too, in his gruff old way, is not merely valiant. He can be thoughtful, and chivalrous, as
well. I do not forget that I owe him my life, or the pain he got saving me. We are both of species that
have a great potential, and a paltry expression of it. But sometimes something shines through."

"I know you and I are not machines, merely because we can think, or because we are different to the
norm of our respective kinds," said Vaemar.
"You have all the abilities of a young male kzin, and something else," said Dimity. "You are more than
kzin. But in some ways I am less than human."

"You are no Protector," said Vaemar. "You have free will. You can choose. You have morality."

"In some things. Not when I dance with the equations."

 Chorth-Captain entered. He carried more restraining tape, and made them bind one another again. Then
he removed the locator implants from under the skin of Dimity's inner arm and from between Vaemar's
shoulders. The size of rice grains, the locators were meant to be removed without too much trouble. His
claws were too sharp to cause Dimity much pain, and Vaemar simply looked contemptuous. It was
obvious from Chorth-Captain's manner that he was doing something he should have done some time
previously.He's hoping the Protector won't realize he's neglected to do this before, Dimity thought.
And I'm hoping somebody's already traced them and is on their way. But the signal will be very
weak. We've got a lot of rock around us, and 60,000 miles of space. But Chorth-Captain,
whatever he's been before, has become one inefficient kzin now.He made some show of smashing
the locators. Then he released Dimity and left her to release Vaemar.

Time passed. They had few ways of measuring it.

"You are crouched in as small a space as possible. Your limbs seem to vibrate spasmodically," said
Vaemar. "Are you sick? You were not hurt badly? You did not bleed for long. But I observe other
differences about your body, too."

"I'm cold," said Dimity.

"You will burn energy with that vibration. You should rest and conserve your energy."

"I can't. I have done so for as long as I can. But this is cave temperature. Deep-cave. I need clothes.
These torn things are quite useless. My boots are all right—" she laughed "—but they don't keep the rest
of me warm."

 "You may lie against me, if you wish," said Vaemar. "I will try to warm you. But I warn you seriously not
to make any sudden moves. I cannot always control my reflexes."

She snuggled against his fur. He wrapped one great arm around her and presently she slept. Vaemar had
not moved when the door opened again and Chorth-Captain entered. He looked down at the young kzin
with disgust.

"Are youchrowling that monkey? I expected little enough of you, but this . . ."

 He turned away. For a male kzin to turn his back on another so might be an expression of trust. But it
could also be an expression of fathomless contempt. Vaemar leapt, claws extended, slashing at
Chorth-Captain's neck, then striking with an elbow. His claw came away with blood and orange fur, and
a short silver tube.

 Chorth-Captain did not whirl into the counterattack. He staggered dazedly and sat down, hind legs
splayed out before him, as old, mad bears that had spent too many years in zoo cages had once looked.
Then he slumped on his side. Vaemar went to Dimity and set her on her feet.
 "We were right," he said. "Azzrou , or its descendant, but capable of controlling behavior as well as
action. I have removed it."

"Is he dead?"

 "Probably not. Kzinti are much tougher than humans, and this thing has no wires or roots to suggest it
was deep in his nerves or spine. As to the quality of life he may expect, that is another matter. He must
live with knowledge of what he has allowed himself to become. The door is open. The catspaw is out of
action. Now, perhaps, we only have five Protectors to deal with. Or perhaps more." He picked up
Chorth-Captain'sw'tsai . "I feel less naked with this," he said. Then he dropped it again. "But what use
would it be against a Protector? Let him keep it. I will take this, though." He hefted the beam-weapon.
"Now, Dimity-Human," he said, "you and I have a chance to do deeds fit for a song!"

"Lead, Hero!" she told him.

"Obviously, if we can get control of the ship, we should take it. But I do not think we will be allowed.
They are surely monitoring us. But come!"

 There was the "ward" with the rows of transforming Morlocks. There were no Protectors to be seen.
"Why don't they try to stop us?" Vaemar asked.

"They are probably interested in seeing what we do. A practical lesson in our tactics."

"That Sinclair field could be a weapon, perhaps. Urrr."

"What are they doing with it? Growing more Protectors?"

 "Chorth-Captain said the rest of the tree-of-life agent was still on Wunderland." Vaemar peered into the
field. "It looks like some small-scale industrial process. Some super-strong materials take a long time to
grow, and they could be speeding them up. Mountings for hyper-drive motors need super-strong
materials. That is what it looks like to me. Getting ready. But you know more of building the hyperdrive
than I."

"They know of the hyperdrive already?"

 "If our knowledge of Protectors is true they have immense ability to correlate. They could learn from the
internet. Not everything, but enough to start work."

Dimity too examined what could be seen through the blue radiance of the field. She nodded after a long
pause. "Yes. That's what it looks like."

"I agree."

"They don't have the hyperdrive . . . yet."

"Anticipation. They believe they will get it out of your mind. Or if not from you, from another."

"You will ensure I do not live to tell them, Vaemar."

"If it must be. But it has not come to that yet."
 Two Protectors leapt out of a passage. Possibly the sight of the naked human female breeder halted the
first one for a moment. Too fast for Dimity to follow, Vaemar swung up the beam-weapon and fired. The
cantaloupe-head of the Protector exploded, hit between the eyes. The other, far faster than even the
young kzin, dodged behind the Sinclair field. Vaemar, keeping his claws retracted, seized Dimity with his
free hand and dragged her behind the cover of a metal partition. He raised the beam rifle again, waiting
for the Protector to show itself. Then he had a better idea. Firing straight into the Sinclair field, he
thought, might well have most spectacular results. It might even wreck the hatch cover and open the
compartment to space, which would solve everyone's problems. Orlando would carry on his line. As he
depressed the beamer's trigger, the lights on its stock died. He pulled the trigger again, harder. Nothing
happened. Obviously it was under remote control and had now been deactivated.

 The Protector knew it was safe. It stood up, then leapt, so effortlessly that it seemed to fly, onto what
appeared to be the housing of the Sinclair field's generator.

 Chorth-Captain hit it from behind like a bolt of orange lightning. They fell forward together. Screaming,
Chorth-Captain went headfirst into the Sinclair field. His lower body and hind legs, protruding for a
moment, convulsed wildly and then went into the blue glow. But the Protector, too, had staggered
forward into the field, standing in it up to its thighs.

 The Protector did not seem to accept immediately what had happened. It stayed where it was for a long
moment, looking down. It was not their kidnapper but one of the more recently changed ones.Stay
there! Stay there ! Dimity implored silently. It reached up and touched its ears, as though puzzled. It
even pushed a hand down into the field as if testing it. Dimity realized the Protector's armored skin and
relative lack of pain sensitivity could be a handicap to it. Nerve couriers could not tell it so much about its
environment.They're so tough they don't need pain for an alarm signal . Then it gathered itself and
sprang out of the field. It should have sprung precisely on top of them. But tough as the Protector was, it
still had a circulatory system. In the field its lower limbs and feet had been deprived of blood, died and
had been dead for some time. Its lower leg muscles were gone and it fell short. It landed on its feet, but
collapsed as it landed, the bones of lower limbs and feet splintering.

 As the Protector tried to leap again, both legs and one hand dead, Vaemar closed with it, jaws gaping,
slashing with his claws. The swing of its remaining hand was still too fast for Dimity to follow, but this time
Vaemar caught it, slashed and bit. Dimity heard his fangs clash on bone. He leapt back, out of reach of
the Protector's snapping muzzle. It had two hearts, but its powerful circulatory system was carrying dead
and decayed matter into both of them. It continued to stagger towards them on the bony, disintegrating
stumps of its legs, its smell alone almost enough to knock a human down as Vaemar grabbed Dimity and
dragged her back, springing up and out of the thing's reach. It made another leap after them, fell again,
crawled, collapsed and died.

Vaemar turned off the field. He and Dimity looked down for a moment at what remained of
Chorth-Captain.

"At least he died a Hero," said Dimity. "And look! There was more of that control device in him than we
knew."

 "No Hero should have allowed such a thing to happen to him," said Vaemar. "But I will take hisw'tsai
now. Perhaps I can do him the service of gaining it new honor. And look further! Here is the key to the
ship! But there is something to be done before anything else." He leapt to the doors, closing them one
after another. "We may be thankful this is kzin-derived architecture," he said. "I think we have locked
them out for a time. But they will bypass those locks soon." He turned to the lines of transforming
Morlocks and began rapidly but methodically slashing their throats with his claws and thew'tsai . Already
the skin was turning into a leathery armor and it was hard work, but Vaemar was quick and strong.

Vaemar saw the horror in Dimity's eyes as he returned to her. He took her hand and touched it against
his forearm.

"Remember," he said. "Fur, not skin."

"I know," she said.

 "Now we have Protectors whose children I have killed," he said. "They will not be pleased with us. I
think they will be coming soon. I see no escape. Can you think of a solution?"

"To escape in the ship that brought us. You have the key now."

"Yes. Unfortunately the hatch above it is closed. I can perhaps work out how to open it if the Protectors
do not override the ship's controls, but it will take a little time. Unless you can help me?"

 "I have not your practical ability with machinery, kzin-based or otherwise. But there is something." She
took him back to the housing of the Sinclair Field controls. "Can you turn on the field again?"

"Yes, it is simple. Why?"

"I think we have a chance of reducing the odds against us. The Protectors are still inexperienced. I am
going to stand in the area of the field. When I give the word, turn it on around me."

 "You will die! You will exhaust the oxygen! One can only live in a Sinclair field with special air supplies,
to say nothing of food and water. Urrr."

"I can live for a short time, that is why I say . . ."

Two Protectors leapt out of the passage. Dimity jumped into the field-area, and screamed, "Now,
Vaemar! Now!"

Vaemar threw the switch. Dimity became a shimmering shape inside the blue dome.

 Whether the Protectors meant to kill or recapture them, Vaemar was unsure. But they meant business.
Their expressionless leathery faces with the Morlock eyes now strangely alight with intelligence were also
lit with fury. Vaemar wondered if they were keeping him alive for torture. But the reactivated Sinclair field
was between him and them. As they advanced, he saw Dimity in the field flashing almost too fast for his
superb eyes to follow. Vaemar crouched, waiting a chance to spring, a chance he knew he would not
get.

 There were two shattering explosions, so close together they seemed one. One Protector's upper body
disintegrated, then the other. Vaemar, head ringing, jumped back to his feet. He seemed uninjured. He
stared in amazement for a second, then saw Dimity halt in her meteor-fast movements, fall and lie still. He
leapt to the controls and killed the field. Gently, keeping his claws sheathed, he tried to give her artificial
respiration, fearful that he should crush her fragile ribs, fearful she was dead.I care so for a human! The
surprised realization flashed through his mind.

"Look at me! Look at me! Look at me now!" he sang at her from their old song. She stirred and sat up,
gasping.
 "It is fun to have fun, but you have to know how," she completed the quotation with a weak smile at
length.

 "Are you all right? I learnt the theory of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation in the ROTC, but I believe giving it
to you would be difficult for me."

 "There were still a few breaths of air," she said. "There was an emergency tank inside. And some water.
They must have had Protectors spending time in there controlling the processes. But it was a pretty near
thing!"

"It was you killed the Protectors?"

"Yes."

"How?"

 She pointed to her feet. "I threw my boots at them. I had plenty of time to take aim and work out the
trajectories and kinetic energies. They were moving like slugs. And Ido still have quite a good
mathematical brain."

"You are a Hero," said Vaemar. "There may, with good fortune, now be only one Protector left."

"Yes. Why didn't it attack as well?"

 "I suspect the answer is that those Protectors were the last parents of the Morlocks I just killed," said
Vaemar. "Despite the increase in their sapience, they were still Morlocks, still fairly newly changed, and
mad with rage. The remaining Protector is the original, the one that brought us here. It has no children of
its own, so it can make more Protectors without prejudice to its plans, and, at least until it comes to
understand that human reproductive technology could still give it children, its behavior is not unclouded
by parental emotion and anticipations. It is the one mature and partly experienced and educated Morlock
Protector, obviously by far the most dangerous, and if we do not kill it we will be no better off than
before. If it does not come to us, we must hunt it down."

 "That would be quite hopeless, even if we had a functioning weapon. You saw how swift and strong it is,
and it is armed too."

"You would have usssurrendirr , Dimity-Hero?" Vaemar's human speech slipped as he pronounced the
hated word. "Or flee? Urrr."

"I think we have no choice but to press on. Explore!"

"Hero! Well said!"

"With caution. You have Chorth-Captain'sw'tsai ?"

"Yes! Let it regain honor in my hands!"

Dimity clicked the trigger of the beam rifle experimentally. It was still dead. "We will have to hope a
Hero'sw'tsai is enough," she said.
"I had better lead," said Vaemar.




  Chapter 12
 Mechanisms towered about Dimity and Vaemar. Dimity had, with Vaemar's help, improvised a
breathing mask, which she hoped would keep out the smell of any tree-of-life, from the tatters of what
had been the top part of her suit, and sealed the rents in the rest as well as she might with an all-purpose
repair gel from Chorth-Captain's belt. They had obtained a light from the same source. Tracking the
Protector by the pain it was radiating had brought them this far.

"Fusion toroids," she said, pointing. "The energy needed to move this between stars must have been
vast."

"I am glad our kinds did not know too much about such energies in the past," said Vaemar. "Think of a
war fought with bodies like this as missiles."

Something, too fast for human eyes to see clearly, scuttled away in the dark above them. "The
Protector," said Dimity. "Why doesn't it attack?"

 "It wasa Protector," said Vaemar, "but I do not think it was the same one. Dimity, we have been too
optimistic, I think. I do not think we have accounted for all the newly awakened Protectors. Perhaps its
task is to watch us and report."

They came to an opening into a vast cavern, filled with machinery.

 Vaemar stood unmoving for a moment, then he said, "There are . . . vibrations in the air . . . perhaps you
cannot sense them . . . which tells me these motors may not be dead."

"After scores or hundreds of thousands of years? Surely not?"

"Look at the cavities in the roof," said Vaemar. "They appear to have been artificially dug."

"Yes."

"Except during brief eclipses, half the external surface of this body is always in sunlight, half in the
darkness and cold of space. The temperature differentials on the surface must be very large. It is a
problem and an opportunity in all space-engineering."

 "Yes. I see what you mean. That would give unlimited electrical power for tunnelling robots. They could
extract and refine fuel."

"It would not, perhaps, take much to keep the engines simply ticking over."

"Would Protectors think like that?"

"I cannot know how Protectors would think. They are more like you than me. But I sense there is power
here. This asteroid was overlooked for mining because its metallic content is relatively low. But I would
guess it was metal-rich when the Protectors chose to make it a spaceship. I guess some automated or
natural variety of mining worm has been tunnelling and mining in it for a long time."

 "A machine refining its own ore and making its own replacement parts," said Dimity. "We have nothing
outside fiction that can do that for so long or on such a scale. Self-sustaining machinery, processes still
carrying on after a million years. And we have no information that Cybernetics was a Protector talent."

 "Obviously, they could have set themselves to acquire such a talent. Dimity, this gives us a glimpse of
what mature Protector technology can do! I do not like it. . . . And look! There are lights. They could be
solar-powered engines ticking over. Or powered by long-lived fission or fusion processes. Doing
essential maintenance, ready to set off a fusion reaction when needed. There are many ways hydrogen
could be collected and stored, for example. Or perhaps it has been completely closed down and our
Protector and Chorth-Captain have reactivated it."

"It is as well, as you say," said Dimity, "that this moon was not properly explored before the end of the
war. It could have been a super-weapon."

 "It still could be. I do not know if we should approach anything critical too closely. It may provoke a
response."

"I think we have to provoke a response. The status quo does not favor us."

 Dimity stepped forward cautiously. She gave a cry of fear and surprise. Vaemar leapt, grabbed her with
one arm and pulled her back. Then he advanced cautiously and pointed. "Nothing to fear too much. An
active kzin gravity-sled. Heavy-duty Naval model. Chorth-captain must have brought it here. We can
avoid its field."

"I am sorry. I am a little rattled. You can handle one, Vaemar?"

"Of course. I have flown one since I was a kit. It was one of the first things Honored Step-Sire Raargh
bought when we were living in the farm country."

"Then let us not avoid it. Let us use it."

"To fly on? There is not much space for that."

 "To fly on and to fight with. Do you think the Protectors would let us use it? We could do great damage
if we could fly. I am sure they would try to stop us."

 "Dimity, I think the God, whichever one has dominion here, has been good to us. You will have to move
very quickly. I will board the sled. You will take the copilot's seat and hang on for your life, and pray that
these Protectors still think like Morlock Breeders, jumping down on their enemies when they see us
escaping. Now!"

 Vaemar and Dimity leapt into the sled. From above, two Protectors sprang. As they did so, Vaemar's
claws flashed at the sled's controls, flinging its motor into maximum reverse flux. The Protectors, directly
above it, were flung straight up. One smashed into the machinery above them, and stuck among it, the
other, as though swimming through air, reached the edge of the field and fell onto the sled. It clung with
one hand. Vaemar had time for one slash at the hand, removing three fingers and reducing its power of
purchase. Desperately he continued to slash at the leathery arm and snapping beak with thew'tsai and his
claws. Dimity grabbed the flight-controls of the sled. They skimmed back along the corridor as Vaemar
finally cut the Protector's grip. It changed hands. Vaemar grabbed the controls and stopped the sled,
keeping the field focused on the Protector. Dimity screamed in its ear and it let go. It flew upwards,
seemed to grow smaller and vanished into the blackness above.

 "I hope it ends up at the center of the moon," said Vaemar as they flew back into the first chamber. "Half
a mile from any surface. I don't think I killed it, but that will give us time, I hope, to do some real damage.
If it was the last Protector. We will have to hope it was. But we cannot continue sticking our noses into
the cave, unarmed, in the hope more will come out. We have been lucky so far."

Then he asked: "Why did you make that noise? Were you what humans call terrified? Panicked?"

 "In the caves the Morlocks must have evolved and enhanced every nonvisual sense," Dimity said.
"Particularly hearing. I thought its hearing would be specially sensitive. Sensitive enough to use against it. I
wondered why the other Protector did not leap out of the Sinclair field instantly instead of pausing while
the field killed it. Chorth-Captain had screamed as he pushed it in, and I think that stunned it
momentarily. They must have evolved in the caves to hear the slightest sound—the rustling of insectoids,
the tiny bubbling of water's meniscus rising in grains of mud. Evolution towards hearing microsounds. But
with never a need to evolve a defense against too much sound. I realized that just now."

"Dimity, you do not disappoint. Now what?"

"We can get away and do real damage at the same time."

"How?"

"The gig has a gravity-motor."

"Yes.

"And a reaction drive."

"So I saw when we came here."

"I do not need to draw you a diagram, then?"

 Humans who had spoken so to kzinti before had not lived long to regret their insolence. But Vaemar
sprang to the ship, Dimity following.

"We still cannot get out," said Vaemar, as the door closed behind them. Chorth-Captain's key had
worked but he punched in an electronic lock as well. Both Vaemar and Dimity had noted the locking and
unlocking sequence earlier. "You must bear with me with patience here," said Vaemar. "No
monkey-rattling . . . Dimity is not rattled any more?"

"At least we have a weapon," said Dimity. "Let us use it."

"Danger?"

"Hero!"

"Urrr!"
 The controls were built in duplicate, in sizes to be used by either Protector or kzinti hands, and Protector
hands were very similar to human. As Dimity cut in the gravity-motor, thrusting it downwards, Vaemar
fired the reaction-drive. Incandescent plasma gas roared out. The ship shook, but remained balanced
between the two forces.

 A second was enough. At a gesture from Vaemar they killed the two drives together. Cautiously, they
cleared a viewport. Nothing could be seen but blackness, with flames and points and bars of red-hot
wreckage fading in it. Even with a powerful searchlight they could make out no more through the smoke
for some time. When it cleared somewhat, all that they could see of the inside of the Hollow Moon about
them was a charred, melted, ruin.

"We have done it, Dimity!" said Vaemar. "We have killed at least five Protectors, though they took our
weapons! Urrr!" A snarl of triumph rose in his throat.

 Dimity knew instinctively not to interrupt the young kzin's rejoicing too soon. Analyzing this knowledge,
as she always analyzed her reactions, she realized they could not have done what they did had there not
been a psi bond of some sort between them. It did not surprise her greatly. Vaemar's Ziirgah sense was a
rudimentary form of proto-telepathy which most male kzinti possessed and she knew her own
brainwaves were abnormal in several ways. They had acted and planned together almost instantaneously
and partly without being aware of the fact.

"Now it is a matter of getting out," she said at length. "The hatch above us is still closed."

Vaemar turned to the control panel again.

 "In the absence of Protectors I think I can open it from here," he said. "I need but a little time to study
the controls. Normal procedure for a ship like this when leaving a space station is to rise on the gravity
motor when the lower hatch is opened, have that close behind us and then open the upper hatch. For
obvious reasons both hatches cannot be opened together."

"We can do that from here?"

Vaemar operated a set of switches, watching lights sliding across a screen

 "Yes," he said. "And I find that disturbing. It suggests the mechanisms of this installation are less
damaged than they might be. I hoped to blast our way out with lasers or armor-piercing shells." He
gestured at another control panel. "I should have realized a Protector would have built strong. But it
raises a thought in my mind that the Protector may have survived. Or there may be more Protectors than
we knew. This place is complex. I am sure now that there are control centers we have not touched. They
must have built many redundancies."

 "Well, let us run the reaction motor again as we leave, however we get out," said Dimity. "That will leave
their possible survival, trapped in this damage, an academic matter until we summon security forces to
make sure. Even a Protector can hardly cross space without a ship or a functioning motor. Vaemar, I
hope we have done both our kinds a service this day."

"The hatch is opening," said Vaemar a few minutes later. "I think we should go as destructively as
possible."

 Dimity slid into the couch beside him. Again, one operated the gravity motor and the other the
reaction-drive. On a pillar of incandescent plasma-gas the ship rose, slowly, out of the tube which led to
the surface.

"I can't hold it!" Dimity cried. "We're in a gun-barrel. The ship will implode!"

"All right! Let it go. I think we have done what we can."

A dark tunnel, a growing circle of light. Space suddenly infinite about them, the disk of Wunderland
hanging huge in the meteor-streaked blackness. Behind them, fire venting from the hole in the hollow
moon, fire which they hoped had burnt out its core and everything in it.

"Home!"

"Home!"

A green light blinking on the control panel—the kzin color for danger. Vaemar's claws flashing on the
keyboard.

 "The ship identifies another engine starting," he said. "The signature is that of a kzinRending Fang -class
fighter. It is behind us."

"The Protector!"

"I suspect so. In Chorth-Captain's ship."

"Use the shielding!"

"Dimity, I am trying to discover how. I know how to pilot kzin craft, but the Protector's innovations are
new to me. Throw the gravity motor into parallel with the reaction-drive. We need speed!"

"Can we fight?"

 "This is a naval gig. It has stealth if I can find it, but it is not built for speed. Nor has it adequate weapons
to take on a fighter. We cannot ram. We must run. Fly the ship, Dimity, while I track the stealthing
commands . . . you must dodge."

 They flew, firing missiles and decoys behind them. Vaemar gave a snarl of rage and stabbed with one
claw point at a dial in front of Dimity in the pilot's seat.

 "Another source of neutrino emissions! Another engine starting! Not a gravity engine. Nothing this boat's
brain recognizes. Dimity, I think we have been over-optimistic about the number of Protectors on the
Hollow Moon and the damage we did. It is still under control and I think it is either moving or preparing
to fire at us. I guess there are several Protectors still alive in it. I will launch more decoys."

 He stabbed at another switch. "The God be thanked that the mechanisms on this vessel have not been
altered from Navy standard too much. The decoys operate. Now, Dimity, fly as you have never flown
before! Use that brain of yours to fly in random variations a Protector cannot anticipate."
  Chapter 13
 "That must have been one of the shortest peaces in history," Arthur Guthlac said. "At least two kzinti
ships are barrelling in. The defense satellites are preparing to fire. But I've asked them to hold off for the
moment. They won't hold long though. They could be chock-full of multi-megatonners, or something
worse."

"Why hold, then?" Cumpston asked.

 "They appeared on the screens out of nowhere. Or rather from the vicinity of the Hollow Moon. I hope
they might not be an officially-sanctioned attack by the Patriarchy. Why would the Patriarchy attack with
only two small ships?"

"Maybe they're freebooters, or fanatics defying orders. Maybe they don't know of the treaty."

 "And maybe that's what we're meant to think," Guthlac said. "They've only attacked with two ships to
make it look like it's unsanctioned. To make it deniable. You know how much destruction two ships
could cause. Then, while they're saying it was nothing to do with them, they attack with everything they've
got. The fact they were only just picked up suggests they've got a cloaking technology we haven't. What
if they've got a whole cloaked fleet past our outer defenses? What if there are a few hundred cloaked
battle-wagons ready to follow them?"

 "That doesn't sound like the kzin Navy," said Cumpston. "If they'd got a cloaked fleet in close, I think
they'd attack with everything they had. In any case, I don't want to start the war again if there's the
slightest chance of preventing it." New data crawled across the screen. "A gig and a fighter. That's an
odd combination for a fleet attack. The signatures of both are funny, thought. And the maneuvering
doesn't make any sense."

"You're making it sound more and more like a diversion."

"It looks to me as if the gig is taking evasive action."

 "At least let's find out who they are. Kzinti on the attack like to tell their enemies their Names, if they've
got them. I'm going to call them up. That can't do any harm. And in the meantime we're closing with
them. Stand by to help Hawkins at the main guns, Michael. "

 "There! There!" Cumpston's finger stabbed at a new light on the screen, a light that triggered a howling
audio alarm-system. "That's the signature of a kzinti warship all right. A big one. Coming in fast . . . a
heavy cruiser at least."

"Got it!"

"It still doesn't make sense," Cumpston said. "It's not acoherent attack. A cruiser, a fighter, a boat . . ."

"Who knows why the pussies do anything? I thought I knew them, but this . . ."

"I thought I knew them, too. Some of them, anyway."

Both men looked at the clock. At the rate they were closing, both knew they probably had very little
time to live. Waiting for reinforcements was not an option. They had alerted the ground and orbital
defenses. Now all they could do was cause as much damage as possible to the kzinti strike-force before
it hit the planet. Both had seen the silent annihilation of space-battles many times before. Small craft were
dropping from theTractate Middoth : flying bombs to either destroy by detonation or to pump X-ray
lasers.

"I'm getting another signature!" Guthlac's voice was tense but controlled. "Another ship!" Then he
gasped, spat a curse. "The bastard is HUGE!

"My God! It's the first attack on Wunderland all over again! A single giant carrier."

"Better cloaked."

 "It would be. They've had sixty-six years to improve the technology. Well, it looks like the war's on
again for young and old, as they say. I'm sorry, Arthur."

"I'm sorry too." Then, "Michael . . ."

"Yes?"

"Gale's down there."

"I know. Arthur, do what you have to do. We're soldiers."

"How does a Hero's Death appeal to you?"

 "I don't think we've got much choice. It's been on the cards a long time." His finger ran down rows of
switches. The lights of armed firing-circuits glowed. The leading kzin craft, the smallest, was getting close.
It was already in range. Small, but capable of carrying a stick of multi-megatonners of its own. Deal with
it, then turn to the great carrier. IfTractate Middoth survived that—and it would not—the cruiser next.

 "Ssstop!" Karan's nonhuman voice jolted them. She was standing, trembling. She had pulled out the
plasma injector. She appeared to be holding herself upright by her extended claws dug into the fabric of a
seat-cover. Her eyes had a strange, unfocused look. She appeared still half conscious, possibly delirious.
Just what we need, thought Guthlac,going into battle against hopeless odds with a delirious kzinrret
loose in the ship.

"Vaemar! Vaemar is there!"

"How do you know?"

"Karan knows! I know."

 A delirious kzinrret. Was oxygen-starvation affecting her brain? But all kzinti had a sense from which the
talent of the telepaths was made. Among nontelepaths it was extremely limited and did not work to cross
the distances of space. But . . . Karan was Karan. And, Guthlac thought, Vaemar was Vaemar. Neither
of them were ordinary kzinti.

 "The locators are dead," said Guthlac. "They say nothing. But this is close to the last position we had
from them!"
"That's not a ship! It's a moving moon!"

"Vaemar is there! He comes!" Karan screamed.

 "The boat must have picked us up," said Cumpston, "but it's not firing at us. It's taking evasive action, all
right, but it seems to be evading the fighter."

"Shall we try a com-link?"

"Yesss!" Karan leapt as she spoke. Not a great leap for a kzin, at least not one in good shape, but she
was between the two men at the command console. Albert Manteufel sprang from his chair, drawing a
pistol, but Guthlac motioned him back. In any event, gunplay within a spaceship was seldom a good idea.
Karan spun to face them, claws out and jaws in the killing gape. Her knife was out, though the hand she
held it in was trembling.

 Cumpston and Guthlac were veterans of many battles in space as well as on the ground, battles often
faster than thought, in a realm where only certain instincts and intuitions given to a few could offer hope of
survival, controlling machine-enhanced reflexes beyond the frontiers of the purely physical, swifter and
more subtle than any dance of bodies or equations. Both knew, too, the potential treachery of instinct.
They stayed their hands now, as Karan operated the com-link to the flying, twisting speck on the screen.
Weak as she was, her claws flashed too fast for the humans to follow, and much too fast for them to
interfere with.

There on a screen was the cockpit of the gig. Flying it were Vaemar and Dimity. Karan collapsed.
                                                  ***

"A dreadnought!" With shriek of ecstasy and blood lust Kzaargh-Commodore leapt onto the great
kz'eerkt -hide battle-drum, sending its call booming throughout the ship. Was this what Chorth-Captain
had somehow achieved? AlreadyNight-Lurker had identified Chorth-Captain's fighter and gig. How had
he done it? And what were the fighter and gig doing? Distracting the monkeys before the dreadnought's
terrible slash ripped the guts out of their planet? But it mattered not. "The Patriarch's battle-fleet has
joined us!" This was no time for thoughts of how so mighty a consort might have penetrated so deep into
the Centauri system and so close to Wunderland undetected, nor for the unworthy thought that so mighty
a consort would take most of the glory from a mission that a moment before had been a matter of lone
heroism. His crew of Heroes roared an equally enthusiastic response. That they might be perhaps less
concerned with Kzaargh-Commodore's glory and more with their own suddenly enhanced chances of
survival was not a thought for that moment either.Night-Lurker barrelled in, closing with the strange
gigantic vessel.

Bigger than all but the biggest dreadnoughts. And camouflaged asNight-Lurker itself had been. The
minds of the great strategists of the Patriarch's General Staff had thought like his own.

 There was no further need for radio silence. It would be sensible to co-ordinate plans with the great
carrier. "Call them!" he ordered Captain. He stood posed before the com-screen, Captain at a respectful
distance behind him.

 Com-screens onNight-Lurker 's bridge and in the Hollow Moon blizzarded briefly with light and
cleared. Kzinti and Protectors saw one another. Each lunged instantly at the firing-buttons on their
consoles.

Night-Lurkerflung itself into evasive action, firing as it turned. Its heaviest punches included disrupter
bomb-missiles. They were not in the class of Baphomet but powerful enough. Kzaargh-Commodore had
taken the decision to fire, and fired, almost as fast as it was physically possible for a living being, even
with motor-neurone enhancement. However the Protectors in the Hollow Moon were slightly faster.

 Night-Lurkerglared fantastically in the heat of beams for seconds as its layers of mirror-shielding boiled
away, a red, then blue, outline of a kzin heavy cruiser. Its disrupters hit the Hollow Moon, burrowed
through its shell and exploded. The Hollow Moon vented gigantic plugs of rock and blew apart.
Night-Lurker exploded simultaneously.

 The gig was perilously near the second explosion. Impact at such speeds with practically any piece of
debris, however small, would be the end of it. Guthlac in theTractate Middoth spread the lasers as far
as possible and fired them to sweep between the blue-white sphere of the explosion and the little craft,
hoping to at least reduce the flying wreckage. Smaller explosions sparkled and flared. The gig remained.
Flying like a wounded bug, it turned and headed towards them. TheRending Fang fighter had
disappeared again.




  Chapter 14
Paddy Quickenden looked up from the deep-radar screen.

"It looks like an ants' nest," he said "Things are boiling in there."

"There's usually a lot of activity in the caves," said Leonie. "Let me see . . . But yes, things are boiling.
There are sizeable creatures moving—bipeds."

"Humans . . . Morlocks," said Raargh. His claws extended.

"We can't see much more from here," said Leonie. "We'd better land and take a look."

"What, go into the caves?"

"With modern motion-detectors and Rarrgh's eye we should be able to see anything long before it gets
near us. We both know the caves."

"I don't," said Paddy. "But I've lived underground most of my life."

 "I'm not letting you near these caves," said Leonie. "And there's no way I'd leave the car and the
com-link unattended. You'll stay in this car, with the canopy closed and weapons cocked. But be ready
to let us in if we have to get back in a big hurry." She opened the com-link and spoke to Nils Rykermann
briefly. She was already suited up as she landed the car in a small limestone-sided valley. She and Rarrgh
leapt down and disappeared into one of the cave mouths.
 Paddy settled himself before the console. The car's weapons were ready. Like all spacers, he was
experienced in waiting. The broken limestone walls and pinnacles, "honeycombed, honey-colored" with
small red Wunderland trees on the valley floor, and sprays and creepers of other red Wunderland
vegetation, made the place seem like a wild, dishevelled garden, peaceful and, from within the car, silent,
though instruments picked up the sounds of small animals and the murmuring of a tiny stream.This is a
lovely place, he thought.Let me help Dimity find peace, let me cure her of what is torturing her,
and she and I—and our children—could live on this world forever. They need spacers here, more
than We Made It does. There could be a place for me here in paradise with the woman I love. He
thought of Leonie, heading fearlessly into the cave with the great kzin. He could see them now on the
deep radar, a large and a small figure, moving down the tunnel into the darkness and what lay beyond.
How lucky Rykermann is to have such a wife! Well, this is paradise around me. Let me enjoy it for
the moment.
                                                   ***

Leonie and Raargh were both veteran cave fighters. Their checks of weapons, lights and other gear were
fast, automatic and thorough. Both could read the ghostly, ambiguous shapes of tunnels and cavities on
the screen of their small deep-radar as easily as a road-map. Raargh touched the lower right quadrant of
the screen with a massive claw. There was movement, a lot of movement.

 "Looks like battle," he said. His infrared-capable artificial eye was ceaselessly scanning the cavern,
especially the roof, as he spoke. They set off into the darkness. Raargh's artificial eye, seeing deep into
infrared, guided them, but there were faint patches of luminosity here and there as well. Possibly Ferals'
work, Leonie thought. They had learnt to crush and treat the shells of small crustaceanoids from the
streams so as to make a ghostly radiance.

"Smell strange," Raargh said after a while. They were passing a complex of tunnel mouths.

 "Tree-of-life?" Leonie wondered. The faceplate of her helmet was firmly closed. No point in asking
Raargh, but the old kzin knew the ordinary smells of the caves. Something strange was almost certainly
something new. She did not want reports of any new smells. All she could do was check her mask again.
If even a few molecules got in . . . But, whatever it was, it was evidently limeted to a single tunnel, and
later Raargh reported it gone.

The com-links allowed them to pick up one another's voices, but no natural sounds reached them. In the
darkness of the caves, even with artificial aids, it was a claustrophobic experience. Leonie ordered
Raargh to take hold of her.

"I am going to take my helmet off," she said. "If I smell tree-of-life I will become mad. You must disarm
me, restrain me, and carry me back to the car."

 She removed the helmet slowly. No new smell assailed her. There was nothing but the cave smells she
knew so well, mainly limestone and biological processes of decay, and the wild, gingery smell of the kzin
keyed up for battle. An instantaneous flashback: that strange, exciting, terrifying smell on Raargh the first
time they had met, when in these very caves she, as she had obeyed an impulse she hardly understood to
help the broken-legged kitten that had grown into Karan, had dug Raargh out of a rockfall with her beam
rifle instead of killing him.

 A flashback gone in an instant. Evidently no tree-of-life here. But ahead, sounds of battle. Ahead, dim
tunnels, lit distantly by the reflected flashes of explosions. Screams. The rattle of a Lewis-gun, cut off
abruptly.
Raargh leading, holding his prosthetic arm before him in case of Sinclair wire, they hurried on.
                                                  ***

Tractate Middoth's com-screen cleared again, restoring communication with Dimity and Vaemar in the
gig's cabin. Karan yowled. A sweep of Arthur Guthlac's hand killed the row of firing switches.

 The gig steadied in its flight and approached theTractate Middoth , matching its course and its now
reducing velocity easily. Dimity explained to Guthlac and Cumpston what had happened. There was
damage to the gig, damage its meteor-patches could not cope with. It was losing air. They would have to
be quick.

 Even without its Protector-built improvements, ship-to-ship transfer in space was one of the primary
roles the gig had been designed for. A tube was extended between the two airlocks. Still, with
safety-checks on the two sets of drive emissions, the transfer took some time. There was a kzin-sized
spacesuit in the pilot's place on board the gig, but the Protectors' were in a locked compartment. Vaemar
made Dimity put on the kzin suit as the air-loss got worse, though she could only just move its vast,
semi-rigid limbs.

 Dimity and Vaemar crossed, Vaemar greeting the crew of theTractate Middoth and Karan with the
restrained dignity the situation demanded. Dimity sought wearable clothes. Guthlac indicated somewhat
nervously to Vaemar that Karan was there very much as a result of her own insistence, and told of the
part she had played. "She has saved my life before," Vaemar said. Karan, now somewhat recovered but
shaky and mentally as well as physically weary, greeted Vaemar with a mixture of pride and shyness and
a good deal of mutual grooming. Cumpston sent a message to Wunderland suggesting the defenses be
reduced from red to orange alert. They gathered around the control console. There was no trace of the
Protector's fighter.

"The beam was only on it a moment," Guthlac said. "Then it disappeared. Not exploded, I fear. The
Protector must have deployed a cloaking device."

"Why didn't it continue attacking the gig from the cloak, then?—I guess that would have betrayed its
position."

 "I guess. The energy required for cloaking like that must be prodigious, anyway. Maybe too much to
cloak and fight at the same time. At least for now. I expect given time a Protector could improve such
things. And there would be no point in such an attack now. If it thought the gig had broadcast to the
system, destroying it would be a waste of time."

 "What matters is that it's still out there somewhere. A Pak Protector with a spacecraft, knowing there
are hyperdrive ships in this system for the taking. We've alerted Tiamat and the Swarm, but given a
Protector's cunning and resourcefulness, I doubt that's enough. And we don't know what surprises it may
have prepared for us."

 "The Protector has to get back to the Morlock colonies sooner or later," said Dimity. "That's the only
source of breeders, and where the remaining tree-of-life is. Now that we're hunting it, and the system's
alerted, I don't think it's got too much chance of pulling off a successful surprise attack on its own
anywhere else. Not till it makes and organizes more Protectors."

"It's also, as far as we know, where most of the nukes are. And theRending Fang class are aircraft as
well as spaceships."
"What have we got at the caves now?" asked Vaemar.

"Paddy and Leonie," said Guthlac. "And Raargh."

"Get after it!"

"What craft do they have?" asked Dimity.

"A car. An ordinary flyer."

"Not much to stop aRending Fang ."

"I'm ordering them to try." Guthlac touched the com-link's face again. "At all costs."
                                                  ***

A pair of humans blundered up the passage towards Leonie and Raargh. They stumbled and fell as they
approached. Young ferals, streaming blood, heads and shoulders covered in the lacerations and bites of
Morlock attacks. A group of Morlocks followed them. Before Leonie could speak, Raargh shot the
Morlocks down. The humans regained their feet and continued on at a staggering run, ignoring Leonie's
shouts to them. She did not know if they saw Raargh or not, but she guessed that to them kzinti were far
more terrifying than Morlocks. There was no time to try any other communication. Rarrgh and Leonie
advanced cautiously. They went down, crawling and wriggling forward on the muddy cave floor, old
instincts hiding them in the shadows of pillars and columns. The sounds of fighting stopped.

The tunnel led to a great "ballroom" cave. White and crystal rock reflected fantastically a few smoky,
primitive lights. By these lights and their infrared, Raargh and Leonie saw where the fight had been.

Both could read a recent battlefield as easily as a book. This one, they saw, had been short and
one-sided. Dead humans lay everywhere, along with some smashed weapons, including modern
beamers. They were young, dressed in dirt-colored rags. Ferals. That would have been obvious even
without the primitive facial tattoos.

 Weapons ready, they examined the bodies as they might. Most of the ferals had been killed quickly and
efficiently with broken necks. Few had the characteristic head-and-shoulder wounds of Morlock attacks.
There were twisting, random trails of blackened or melted rock cutting into walls and columns that
suggested weapons fired unaimed and with their triggers held down by dead hands. Raargh and Leonie
had seen such things before, but here it seemed an unusually large number had died without getting off an
aimed shot. Among the bodies were several wearing the grey uniforms of Wunderland police. They had
died with their hands tied. Prisoners. And others whose clothes suggested they were farmers. There was
also a much larger bulk: a dead kzin, killed the same way. His scars, greying fur and a prosthetic
leg-brace suggested an old soldier. He too had died with his hands and claws tied with tape like a
prisoner.

"This one worked on a farm with humans," said Rarrgh. "I suggested it to him. Told him we must make
new lives. Now I must meet those who have done this. Honor demands it."

"Protector's work," said Leonie.

"There!" Raargh pointed.
 Not all the ferals had been killed with such quick and smart thoroughness. And one, Leonie saw, was
still alive. She ran to it.

"Keep watch!" she told Raargh.

 The feral would not live long, she saw at once. But it was conscious. It had some sort of unfamiliar bite,
perhaps a Protector's horny beak. There would be little time for words. She squatted by it. Byhim. A
male. She stanched the bleeding as well as she might. Her own clothes were of modern fabric, too strong
to tear, but the feral's own rags made bandages of a sort. They were impregnated with virulent cave dirt,
scent-deadening Rarctha fat and who knew what else. She sprayed them with coagulant, knowing it was
useless, and administered an anaesthetic. There was no point in breaking out more of her small medical
kit, and her years of guerrilla fighting had conditioned her powerfully against using such resources on the
dying.

"What happened?"

 He did not speak. She knew well enough that these ferals tended to regard all other humans, let alone
any in the company of kzinti, as enemies. Savage, worse than sociopathic, there was ample evidence that
they were often cannibals. And she would have little time to try and reach him.

 "We will avenge you!" That might do it. Deliberately she made her voice as soft and feminine as possible,
leaning forward so he might see the curve of her breasts. Intuitive, instantaneous psychology, perhaps
totally wrong. But these ferals had had mothers.

"Creatures you could not fight?" she asked. "Too strong, too fast?"

That reached him. He nodded, raised a feeble hand to touch her.

He spoke. "Like Morlocks, but not."

"Creatures you had not seen before?" Another nod. "You said not Morlocks? Not ratcats?"

 A gesture. Leonie saw the body of a dead Protector lying in the shadow of a stalagmite column. Though
it was instantly recognizable its head was shattered. It must have leapt or run into a blast or beam from
one of the ferals' weapons.

"There were more like that?"

"Yes."

"The containers? What happened to the containers?"

"Hold me."

Leonie put her arms around him.

"They took them."

"Down there?"

"Yes . . . prisoners, too . . . We killed as many of the prisoners as we could before the Morlocks and
the other things took them. But there were many prisoners."

Leonie wondered what Morlock Protectors would want with human prisoners. But she remembered the
need they would have for teachers. Prisoners would be almost as crucial as tree-of-life. And both
Protectors and Breeders would need food.

He stroked her, whispered "Mother," and died. Leonie moved to close his eyes.

 From the darkness behind them a group of Morlocks leapt. Raargh turned on them as they struck,
slashing and roaring. At such close quarters neither Raargh nor Leonie could use their rifles, but Raargh's
prosthetic arm did service as a bite-proof club, quite apart from his own flashing teeth and claws. They
were armed with their usual pointed crystal rocks, but a few more modern weapons as well. Rolling
away from their attack as she had learned long ago, Leonie saw other shapes, the quasi-human shapes of
two Protectors, the cantaloupe heads and swollen joints unmistakable. They were crouched atop a low
rock, poised as if to spring on Raargh and her. Raargh's leap at one Protector, Morlocks still clinging to
him, was heroic. The Protector bit at his arm, not realizing it was metal. Its beaklike jaws jammed for a
moment in the wiring, current from its power-enhancement crackling, sparks arching and dripping. There
was no time for Leonie to take aim at the second Protector. She held the trigger of the beam rifle down,
swinging it in a scything arc, cutting the Protector off at the thighs. Raargh was still fighting the first
Protector. The old kzin roared with rage, almost deafening her in the confined space. Hisw'tsai flashed.
The Protector's leathery skin could turn most blades, but Raargh'sw'tsai was monomolecular-edged and
was wielded by a master. He drove it into the Protector's ear and worked it about. The Protector kicked
and fell away.

 The Morlock attack broke up. Those that had survived Raargh fled, leaping up into the suspended forest
of stalactites. A few flung their traditional missiles of rocks and crystal shards, but Leonie was fast enough
with the beam rifle to zap these in mid-air.Upper-body's still got some dexterity when it needs it , she
thought. She also hit a Morlock as it was fumbling with a rifle retrieved from some old battleground in the
caves. It was, Leonie thought, strange that these Protectors should use breeders as fighters. It was not
the impression Brennan had given of Protector behavior and drives. But Morlock Protectors were not
Brennan, and perhaps these Protectors were so thin on the ground they had no choice but use their
children. A few Morlocks rallied and counterattacked, but were still unskillful with the few modern
weapons they had and could do little as she and Raargh killed them. On the other hand, she could see
they were learning unpleasantly fast, already becoming acquainted with covering fire. Even without
Protectors, up against less experienced enemies, and in any case with the passage of a little more time,
they would be formidible. Then they were gone, bounding away between the shadows and rock pillars
into the darkness. She finished off the second Protector, which was still pulling the upper half of its body
along the ground towards Raargh with its arms.

 Wary of what might still be in the darkness, she leopard-crawled to Raargh. The old kzin was spitting
and cursing. His prosthetic arm was badly damaged, she saw, and when he tried to stand his right knee
gave way and he fell forward. Leonie remembered he had been wounded in his knees long before. Her
light showed blood and a gleam of bone. She applied her last field-dressing. There were sounds
diminishing in distant tunnels.

"Leonie," said Raargh, "I cannot run. You must go on alone."

"There is no need. Our mission was reconnaissance. We know what is here and what is happening here.
Our job now is to tell the others, not for one or two of us to fight Protectors and Morlock bands alone."

"We attack!" Raargh cried. Leonie knew the kzin attack-reflex well. A kzin, like the Protector she had
just killed, would crawl to its enemies if that was the only chance of a final slash or bite. But Raargh could
inhibit that reflex when his wits were about him. It was why he had grown old. He was not going to be
much use crawling into battle on two functioning limbs.

"Is that what you would tell Vaemar, were he here?" she asked him.

 Raargh was silent for a moment. Then "You are bleeding," he said. "Still you must leave me. Go and
report. Urrr."

 Leonie touched the leg and felt it give. The webs of interlocking and reinforcing cartilage might help it a
bit, but the bone was gone. She saw something too she had never seen before—a spasm in the old kzin's
arm and face that could only be unbearable pain.

"We have both had worse wounds," she told him. "Use the rifle as a crutch. Let us get back to the car."

"No! Dishonor! I stay and cover your retreat from Morlocks."

 "You have done that once before in these caves. But there is no need this time. Come! Or we stay
together here till Morlocks and Protectors return!"

 Leonie's years as a guerrilla leader had taught her kzin as well as human psychology. She allowed the old
kzin to lurch and hobble painfully around to collect the ears of the Morlocks he had killed. He tried to cut
or wrench off some part of the Protector he had killed as a trophy additional to the conveniently large
ears but she did not see the details. Then grumbling, sometimes mewing involuntarily like a cat in agony,
leaning on his rifle, Raargh limped slowly with her back towards the daylight. She resumed the helmet
briefly as they passed the tunnels where, she guessed, tree-of-life had been stored. She supposed the
Protectors had taken it, along with all the weapons and other assets they could gather, deep into the great
cavern system. They would be back soon.

 There was no sign of the young ferals who had gone before them, and who, Leonie knew, might regard
either a uniformed human or a kzin as equally their enemy. She told Patrick they were coming and to be
ready for take-off.

 Rarrgh moved with more difficulty as they went on. Leonie's suit had enhanced power joints, or it would
have been quite impossible, but even so she could barely support part of his huge weight.Work, legs! she
commanded silently.You are Leonie now! She knew kzinti could discipline their bodies to a literally
superhuman degree and if they slowed down in a combat situation they were in a dire way indeed. She
was surprised at what her new legs could do, and thought briefly that her old legs, injured by kzin claws
and repaired by primitive surgery, could not have done it.I wonder if she was an athlete? Then:Not a
really useful thought at the moment! Get a life! But the tunnel, which they had descended so easily,
was a different matter to ascend with Raargh in such a condition. A desperate call from Patrick to hurry
did not help. Finally they had to stop.

"Raargh legs no good," the old kzin muttered disgustedly.

"Legs heal." Leonie told him.

"Raargh finish. Raargh die."

 His leg injuries were not fatal. But Leonie knew that kzinti, who preferred to die on the attack, could
also die of shame.
"No, Raargh not coward! Urrr!"

"Raargh might as well be dead. Cannot attack! Cannot support Leonie-Comrade. Go to Fanged God
now before shame deeper."

Raargh's natural eye was turning a peculiar violet color. The pattern of his respiration was changing in a
way Leonie had never heard in him before. But self-induced death for a kzin could be very quick. Leonie
had seen it during the Liberation.

 "Did Leonie dig Raargh out of rockfall for nothing?" she asked in the Mocking Tense that it would once
have been instant death for any human on Wunderland to use towards a kzin. "Did Leonie trust Raargh
for nothing? Does Vaemar wish Raargh to die? Do Raargh's kits not wish to have Rarrgh hunt with them
again? Will others rear Raargh's kits andchrowl Raargh's harem? Urrr!" She saw the fury and agony in
his eye, but he made another effort.

"Legs can be repaired," she told him. And then: "Remember it is Leonie who speaks. Remember what
happened to Leonie's legs in cave! Leonie, manrret, lived with Raargh's help! Leonie walks again!"

 There were times when she had scratched the old kzin's ragged ears in a gesture of comradeship. But
she knew better than to touch him in such a manner now. Then, greatly daring, she stood before him and
placed her hands on his shoulders."You will not desert Leonie!" The Tense of Military Command.My
instinct was to use the Imploring Tense , she thought. Slowly his breathing changed again.

 "Leonie survived worse than Raargh," he admitted at length. "Raargh will not be shamed," he added in a
different tone of voice. Slowly and painfully he stood and hobbled on. Leonie let him lead.Was that what
it was for? She wondered.So I could talk a kzin into living? And then she thought:But Raargh is a
special kzin. It took a long time, and there were more calls from Patrick.

 Patrick opened the car's canopy as they emerged from the cave mouth into the daylit glade. He stood up
in his seat and jumped down, hastening towards them.

"Get back in the car!" Leonie cried out. "Stay in the car!"

 The rock hit him on the side of the head. The blow could have shattered his skull had he not been
wearing earphones. He staggered and fell. Leonie fired at the rock's point of origin, a stand of tall grasses
by the little stream. Patrick, streaming blood, began to crawl back towards the car as the grass flashed
into flame. A dozen ferals burst out of the grass. They were armed with at least one strakkaker as well as
rocks and an ancient Lewis-gun. They converged on the injured Crashlander.

 Patrick bought up a handgun and fired, hitting the feral with the strakkaker.I forgot he was a Spacer
flashed through Leonie's mind faster than she recognized the thought. Raargh swung upon the rifle-crutch
and fired in a blur of speed. Leonie knew what his marksmanship was like. His first shot shattered the
Lewis-gun, probably killing the gunner, but his second he fired not into the ferals but ahead of them. They
went down, out of sight behind the bank of the stream. Patrick stumbled back to the car and pulled
himself into the cabin as Raargh and Leonie laid down covering fire.

Something was happening in the sky to the southwest, a ball of purple radiance travelling like a meteor,
heading towards them. Patrick was taking the car straight up.

The thing in the sky—a purple spider, a retinal disorder, a chip of cauliflower—expanded, shimmered to
a shape Raargh and Leonie knew well. A kzinRending Fang -class heavy fighter, heading towards them,
landing gear down.

 The car dodged and swerved in the sky. It was above the big fighter, which was now coming down for a
landing on its gravity-motor. The car hovered for a moment. Then it dived vertically. At seven hundred
feet car and fighter collided with a shattering explosion. With strength she never dreamed she had, Leonie
flung herself at the bulk of the kzin, pushing him back into the shelter of the cave mouth as fragments of
white-hot wreckage rained down about them.

 Amid the falling wreckage was the dark shape of an escape capsule. It hit the ground and opened. The
Protector sprang out and rushed towards the cave mouth. Raargh and Leonie had both dropped their
rifles, but Raargh had hisw'tsai out. The Protector snatched them up and, straightening, and ran straight
at thew'tsai , but at the last instant twisted in its stride, dodging so that Raargh's slashes with blade and
claws slid off its leathery skin, doing little damage. Raargh tried to strike as he had struck in the cave, but
missed, and he could no longer leap. At the same time the Protector struck out at them, knocking them
both against the cave wall. Then it was past them, a leaping spider-shape disappearing down the passage
into the darkness.

"Now ribs broken," said Raargh. "It will not stop Raargh fighting!"

"I think I may have broken a couple, too," said Leonie. "Why did it not kill us?"

"Hands full. It had our weapons."

"Why did it not kill us?" she asked again.

Raargh voice was different when he answered. He was the senior sergeant contemplating a military
problem again.

"I think, Leonie, it believes it does not need to kill us."

 "A foolish thing to think of Raargh and Leonie!" she told him ringingly. Raargh had little more than torn
stumps of ears projecting from a complex of scar tissue, but he raised them in a signal that to her was
eloquent enough.

"Feral humans return," said Raargh.

The surviving ferals were approaching the cave mouth in a semicircle. Their major weapons were gone,
but they were still armed with rocks, which Leonie knew they could throw as accurately as Morlocks.
Several new fires were burning where the wreckage had fallen in the vegetation, and a pall of dark smoke
was rising to cover the sky above the glade. Raargh scrabbled across the ground and retrieved thew'tsai
knocked out of his hand.

 He should have killed them when we had the chance, thought Leonie.But he seemed to be trying
not to kill humans . It was as if the shadowed walls of the cave and the sky beyond were turning a
uniform white with the agony in her chest. Thinking was difficult.I don't think I can fight at all. They are
not going to have mercy on me or a kzin. One human knife, one w'tsai, and one old kzin to wield it
who's now very knocked about. This is real trouble. To survive more than fifty years of war to die
at the hands of human children . . .

"Friends!" she managed to call. The ferals continued their cautious advance. She called again, without
response. She had a knife. They had knives as well as rocks.

 Suddenly they stopped, and fled, scattering into the vegetation in all directions. A moment later she too
heard the sound of a ship in the sky. There it was, not shielded like the Protector's fighter. Arthur
Guthlac'sTractate Middoth . It touched down, jets of foam smothering the burning vegetation, and
armed figures leapt from it. Hunched over her broken ribs, she staggered out to meet them.
                                                    ***

"So we have tree-of-life, Breeders and Protectors all together again in the caves," said Cumpston.
"Along with who knows how many prisoners. There are people missing from some of the tableland
farms, and most of the feral gangs round here have vanished." They were hovering, looking down at the
great escarpment from several hundred feet.

Arthur Guthlac took a deep breath. The faces of the humans were grey. Strain, exhaustion, defeat.

"Only one thing to do if we're to keep the chain of command intact," said Guthlac. "We report to Early.
He and ARM were pretty definite that he was to be informed before any major decisions are made."

 "Not a good idea, when dealing with Protectors. We can't afford the time lag. Every minute we waste is
giving the Protectors more of the time they need to learn and organize and make defenses and multiply
themselves. And they've Number One back with them now."

 "We're stuck with it. ARM has become desperate about losing control of the situation . . . of all
situations. And they've made pretty unambiguous threats about what will happen if we break the chain."

"I'd like to see them threatening Protectors. How long will reporting take?"

"You know Early has left the system. I can't tell you where he is. We can send him a signal via a
hyperwave buoy. That will take several days. Several more for orders to return."

"Have we got several days?"

"I think not. The alternative is to send in an infantry force to clean them out."

"It would be fighting Protectors. Protectors with weapons. They may be newly changed, but they learn
very, very fast. And during decades of war the kzinti were never able to quite clear out the caves.
Neither were we. Nils and his students haven't got them all mapped even yet, I believe, Leonie?"

Leonie nodded. The pressure bandages helped greatly, but it was still painful to talk.

"And hostages. They've got hostages. We're only just starting to learn how many."

 "I've got all the forces I can muster on the way," said Guthlac, "and Nils has been onto the Wunderland
authorities for their troops. There are local militias organized, too, and they're heading for the caves."

"Lambs to the slaughter," said Leonie.

"There are weapons," said Cumpston. "Dimity says sound affects them. Fly over a sonic drone."

"It wouldn't penetrate."
"Our people have police sonics."

 "So did the police they grabbed. Protectors aretough . Sonics may discomfort them but I don't think
they'll stop them for more than seconds. We might render them unconscious with directed sonics if we
knew their brainwaves. Unfortunately we don't know and haven't time to find out. Shouting at them won't
be good enough."

"There are a lot of other things. Nerve gas. Spectrum radiation."

 "They're coming with the troops. Unfortunately a lot of our nerve gas supplies are kzin-specific and as
for the rest—well, there are the human hostages."

"If they have intelligence—and they do—they'll be dispersing now."

"You've got weapons here."

 "Most of them are for use in space. We can blast away at the limestone while they organize. It won't be
long before they're shooting back at us."

 Dimity Carmody's fingers had been running over a keyboard on the main control console. "Arthur," she
said. "Take us up higher. Fast. Put some southwest in it."

"How high?"

"Just keep going."

"Why?"

"I'll explain in a minute."

TheTractate Middoth rose, drawing away from the caves. Higher.

 Below them, from first one and then scores of openings, smoke and fire jetted from the escarpment and
the limestone plain above it. The profile of the ground seemed to bulge. A fireball erupted, and another,
and as they watched the whole scarp of the Hohe Kalkstein went sliding down into ruin.

"Fly!" roared Guthlac. TheTractate Middoth flashed away.

 There was another explosion and a greater fireball, incandescent, blue-and-white-cored, burst from the
seething ruin. It boiled into the sky, transforming into an orange-and-black cumulus, hideous and obscene
to the watchers in theTractate Middoth as they raced desperately upward into the clean stratosphere
and away. Other fireballs followed.

 "I kept the code numbers and detonation keying for the nukes," said Dimity. "They were in Vaemar's
computer. It's all over now. There was nothing else to do."

 "I'll call defense HQ," said Guthlac. "They'll need to get decontamination teams to work fast. And before
they signal a retaliatory strike on every kzin ship and world in reach."

"But why didn't you say what you were going to do?" asked Vaemar.
 "I didn't see why you should all have the responsibility. It's all gone now. Protectors, Morlock, ferals,
hostages, the whole cave system and countless species. A swathe of human farms and hamlets. Your
rapid reaction teams. Your militia. A bewildered Protector who wondered about God. Did you want to
live with that?"

Dimity looked up into Vaemar's eyes and read his expression.

"I am very close to being a Protector," she told him.

She put his great hand with its terrible razor claws on her forearm.

"Skin," she said. "Not fur."



  Chapter 15
"I pronounce you man and wife," said the abbot. "You may kiss the bride."

 Hand in hand, Arthur and Gale Guthlac walked from the monastery chapel, surrounded by their friends.
Each in turn came to them and laid a wreath around their necks, the three intertwined colors of vegetation
from three worlds that grew on Wunderland now: red, green and orange. Gale's children had arrived
from the Serpent Swarm. Guthlac's crew had no swords as would once have been ceremonially drawn to
make an arch for the couple to pass under, but they presented arms.

"Have you heard from Early?" Rykermann asked Cumpston as they crossed the garth.

"Yes. He didn't betray much emotion about what happened. It's afait accompli , anyway. And the
Protectors are gone. ARM is busy with other things. I imagine they are things that include us, and the
Wunderkzin . But I'm tired of being one of ARM's catspaws."

"I should think there have been worse jobs than becoming Vaemar's friend," said Rykermann. "Even if
he does thrash you on the chessboard."

 "I hope I'll always be Vaemar's friend," said Cumpston. "But I feel a change in the whole course of my
life is coming upon me."

"For what reason."

"I don't know. Just a feeling. Something very new."

"I didn't know you were foresighted."

"Neither did I."

 "I sense certain things too," said Rykermann. "Dimity . . . Vaemar . . . whatever bond is between those
two will not be broken."

 Arthur Guthlac, Gale, the abbot and two of the monks were laughing together at something. Orlando and
Tabitha had lost little time after the ceremony in wriggling and clawing out of their ornate formal garments
and were leaping through the long grass together after flutterbyes. Nurse, who, it had been decided, was
indispensible whatever he charged, carried a bag of buttons for their claws.

 "So it begins, perhaps," said Rykermann. Now, with Leonie's hand in his, he realized that he was looking
at Dimity without hopeless pain and longing. Not because of what she had done, nor indeed because he
loved her any the less, but because his love for Leonie filled his heart, suddenly, strangely, and with a
depth and fullness he had never known before. She had been near death with him many times, but this
time, watching her enter the Protectors' caves with only Raargh, as he himself prayed desperately over a
console of screens, had been different.

 "Strange," he said. "This was where it all began so many years ago. I had flown out here because the
monks had sighted a strange creature, a big catlike thing that didn't fit into the ecology." He remembered
giving the strange orange hair he had found to Leonie, his graduate student, to dissect. Thinking of her as
she had been in those days, he realized something else. Her walk was as it had been then, no longer
clumsy.

 "So it begins," echoed Colonel Cumpston, as he followed, escorting Dimity. His gaze wandered to
Vaemar, resplendent in gold armor and shimmering cloak and sash of Earth silk, who, with Karan,
Raargh and Big John, was pointing to one of the monastery fishponds. The juvenile Jotok he had helped
save in Grossgeister Swamp were growing and joining. Orlando had fished one from a pond and was
waving it playfully at Albert Manteufel.Don't pretend to be scared, Albert! Cumpston tried to telepath
him.Don't pretend to run! But Guthlac's pilot was a veteran and knew better than to do any such thing.
A growl from Raargh and a gesture at his proud new possession—a second ear-ring for his belt, there
being no room for more ears left on the first—and the kitten snapped to attention. Another growl and
warning cuff from Karan and the Jotock was restored to the water.

 "Hope. Perhaps joy. Perhaps, truly . . . peace. For this little world at least," Cumpston said. As with
Guthlac and Rykermann, many lines of strain and weariness seemed to have gone from his face. Reports
from far-flung ships and bases were that the peace was holding. At this moment,for this moment at least,
humans and the kzinti Empire were sharing a universe.

The group of friends drew together. Vaemar drew Rykermann aside for a moment.

"You love her, I know," he said.

"Yes," said Rykermann. He had never heard a kzin use the word "love" before, and wondered what
Vaemar's conception of it was. But he knew who he meant.

"I think I understand," said Vaemar. "I say that to you alone. Speak it to no other human. She has taught
me a little of that . . . but she must go her own way."

"I know," said Rykermann. They drifted apart in the flow of the company.

 Dimity had known Cumpston since her return to Wunderland eight Earth-years previously. He and
Vaemar had made the counterattack that had relieved their desperately outnumbered group in the fight
against the mad ones. But now it was as if she saw him for the first time: a hardened warrior and leader,
yet a man whose kindness and patience had done as much as any to bring peace to this tortured planet.
That unnatural blend of human qualities that made up the knight.

 The wedding party drifted through the monastery gates into the meadow spangled and starred with its
multicolored flowers. Brightly-colored creepers covered the last few outlines of what had once been a
refugee shantytown. Two pavilions had been set up, food laid out for two different feasts, and a couple of
great kzin drums. There would be dancing later. Orlando and Tabitha were looking forward to that.

Vaemar again approached Rykermann and Leonie as they walked. His eyes followed Rykermann's to
Dimity, her hand moving to take the colonel's.

"I know she had to do what she did," he said. "I know more about the Pak, the Protectors, now. There
was no choice." He muttered something about a dream that Rykermann did not hear clearly.

"We humans have come a long way from the Pak," said Rykermann. "How far will we go? What will we
become?"

And then: "What will we all become."

"That, I think," said Vaemar, "is a very good question."




 TEACHER'S PET
Matthew Joseph Harrington

 I
 PLEASANCE: 70 Ophiuchi AB-I (A-II/B-V), located in Trojan relationship to its binary suns,
Topaz and Amethyst. Orbital distance from either star 20.8 A.U. Principal source of heat
geothermal. Gravity: .93. Diameter: 6510 miles. Rotation: 27 hours 55 minutes. Year: 12263
standard days. Axial inclination<1°. Atmosphere: 39% oxygen, 57% nitrogen, 3% helium, 1%
argon. Sea level pressure 7.9 pounds/square inch. No moons. Discovery by ramrobot reported
2136, but existence concealed and colonization limited to families of UN officials until corruption
trials of 2342-2355.


Pleasance's crops are grown under artificial lighting, as natural illumination comes to about
0.5% of Earth's. The climate does not vary with latitude, and qualifies as warm temperate.
Constant low-level vulcanism is found everywhere on the planet, both land and sea. Almost all of
Pleasance's warmth is due to release of massive fossil heat by outgassing of carbon dioxide and
helium; the carbon dioxide is taken up by native oceanic life with great efficiency. Local lifeforms
are killed by excess light, however.


 The planet has the distinction of being the only known habitable world whose orbit is outside its
system's singularity, so that ships may reach it within minutes after leaving hyperspace.
As a result of its founders' propensities, Pleasance's culture is legalistic to a possibly excessive
degree . . .



Peace Corben's mother was this old: she had met Lucas Garner.

The name had not been Corben, then, and the real name wasn't in the records Peace had found in
Cockroach 's computer. Possibly the old woman hadn't seen any reason to include it; more likely, given
her paranoia, she'd feared its discovery by hostile parties.

 Like everything else she'd tried to be, Jan Corben had been agreat paranoid. The ship was a fine
example.

 It looked like a mining ship designed by a cube director. An old Belter drive guide protruded from a
wallowing hog of a hull. The lifesystem seemed to be mostly windows. The cardinal points bristled with
important-looking, redundant instruments. Some of the windows hadcurtains . It was ludicrous. It was
all a lie.

 The "windows" were viewscreens, showing the universe whatever the pilot pleased. Most of the
"instruments" were antipersonnel weapons with proximity triggers. The "drive guide" was a gamma-ray
laser; the actual drive had come with the hull, which was that of a First War kzin courier ship. The gravity
planer developed six hundred gravities—twenty times the limit now allowed by treaty. A little bubble in
the nose and three behind the central bulge were all that showed of the real instrument packages, which
were in four General Products #1 hulls to enable them to survive events that required the rest of the ship
to use one or more stasis fields. Therewas a fusion drive, but it was for the oversized attitude jets. When
acting in concert with the gyros, which were also oversized, they could turn the ship a full 360 degrees in
any plane in 1.2 seconds, coming to a dead stop; faster for smaller adjustments, of course. This aimed
the laser anywhere. There was a suitfitter in the autodoc; what the suit locker held was powered armor.
All this had been accumulated over the course of three Wars' time, and consistently upgraded as
technology progressed. The latest addition, barely older than Peace herself, was a top-of-the-line
hyperdrive motor, custom-built by Cornelius Industries of We Made It.

 That last may have been a mistake. There were laws about product safety, and since you could more or
less smooth out the convolutions in your brain thinking of what could result from a faulty hyperdrive, there
was a strict schedule of warranty inspections. During one of these, some Helpful Citizen had apparently
noticed one of the other features. The old woman had still been in Rehab when the kzinti bombed
Pleasance.

 When Peace had stolen the ship—trivially easy, in the panic—her first act had been to go after her
mother. Rehabilitation included work therapy, to the point where there were economically vital
companies that would go broke if every law were obeyed. The camps were guarded and organized as
thoroughly as bases for conscript troop training.

Doubtless that was why the kzinti had bombed them so heavily.

 Peace was circling over Camp Fourteen for the fourth time, scanning for any rubble that might be loose
enough to hold survivors, when it became apparent that the invaders had realized that their
order-of-battle included no antiques. (The hull display had been altered to Heroes' Script that translated
as something likeUnthinking Lunge , a not-atypical ship's name. Probably curtained windows would
have attracted attention sooner.)Cockroach 's hull was coated with superconductor under the screen
layer, but the lasers aimed at it were designed for planetary assault. It got very warm inside before Peace
found the panic button.

 It was agood panic button. It had a routine for almost anything. Inundation by laser fire didn't even call
up lesser subroutines.

 Cockroachturned on its head, the lifesystem went into stasis, and the hull became a perfect reflector. It
was textured with optical corners. Most of the kzinti ships lost their paint and a little hullmetal before their
lasers switched off, but the one nearest the azimuth was lined up withCockroach 's drive guide. The
planer held the ship immobile while the stinger fired, and a stream of ultrahard gamma rays ran back up
the beam coming from the orbiting flagship. All the oscillating electrons in the flagship laser's pulse
chamber suddenly left it at relativistic speeds. Kzin weaponcraft was amazing, but it wasn't magic: the
insulators blew, and dense random currents scrambled every circuit they touched—a category which
included nervous systems. Survivors didn't suffer, as the effect opened the circuit of the stasis on the
mirror at the back of the laser, and the gamma beam punched through into a fuel preheater. This opened
a channel between the main fusion plant and a deuterium tank. After that—

Well, there wasn't really a flagship after that.

 Peace didn't learn of the flagship's destruction until days later. She merely saw the ground leap up at her,
then saw it further off and receding, then saw itmuch further off and receding a lot faster, obscured by a
glowing smoke ring. (Cockroachhad gone back into stasis to pass through the fireball.) More trouble
followed, figuratively and literally.

 The portmaster at Arcadia had been unwilling to keep a fully-fueled warship at her field, and had had
Cockroach 's tanks drained. The ship could and did extract deuterium from ambient water vapor, but
there wasn't much built up by the time of the attack, and the gravity planer was using that up right smartly.
Fortunately—from the computer's viewpoint—there was an excellent source of very pure hydrogen
barely a quarter-radian off the ship's present course. Unfortunately—for Peace's nerves—it was Lucifer:
70 Ophiuchi B-IV, a gas giant larger but less massive than Jupiter.Cockroach accelerated toward it for
slightly over half an hour, leaving a fuel reserve that would have fit inside a coffee urn, and spent the next
twenty-six hours and change in free flight.

 Torpedoes could have been upgraded to catch the ship; this was not even contemplated. The invasion's
flag officer, who was now interacting with Pleasance's magnetic field, had been Hthht'-Riit, bravest son of
the Patriarch. It was he who had come up with the plan of taking over remote human worlds first and
working their way in, a strategy which might actually have succeeded if he'd remained alive to keep the
fleet from making sudden lunges. As it was, the rest of the shipmasters didn't want the human pilot
vaporized: they wanted "him" kept alive for as long as possible, while they expressed their extreme
disappointment.

 It took seven hours of screaming and spitting to cram a fuel tank large enough into a 25G assault boat;
kzinti do not work and play well with others. They were not stupid—less so with every War they
lost—and they knew it had to be done if they wanted to flyby and yoke before the human could refuel. A
20G destroyer, say, could never have done it in time.

 The assault boat was closing the gap at three thousand miles per second when it finally got close enough
to throw on a gravity yoke. The boat's radiator blossom instantly turned sheer white.Cockroach 's
gamma cannon was detected starting up, but this was deemed of far less concern than the heat-exchange
situation: hitting at this range would have required a miracle, and not a small one. Humans simply weren't
that good.

 Theywere notoriously demented. This one was no exception. The human ship wasn't on an
atmosphere-skimming path, it was aimed for the center of the disk. By the time their velocities were
matched, slowing the pursuer and speeding up the prey, no further effort could be spared to bring them
together yet, as the boat was engaged in hauling them both aside to save the human ship's crew.

 Cockroach, aboard which Peace Corben had finished having conniptions hours ago, fired its gamma
laser into Lucifer's atmosphere and went immediately into stasis. The shot heated a large volume to
electrons and stripped nuclei, but did not suffice to ignite fusion. It took the impact, a few milliseconds
later, of the relativistic byproducts of the gamma-generating blast to do that. The atmospheric fusion blast
was brief, and didn't do much more than UV-ionize a tremendous volume of hydrogen around it, which
expanded until it was cool enough to recombine. This created, then uncreated, a discontinuity about the
size of Earth's Moon in Lucifer's magnetic field.

 When the electromagnetic pulse hit the assault boat, the superconductive pulse shielding expanded by
internal repulsion until hull members tore it apart; then the overloaded gravity planer collapsed the boat to
a point, which evaporated in Hawking radiation at once. The blast was seen on Pleasance.

 It was followed by the flare of Lucifer, in visible light, asCockroach plowed into the contracting remains
of the atmospheric fireball. The ship's fuel intakes were in stasis, as were the tanks themselves, and the
local material was now heavily enriched in deuterium; when inertial sensors in the instrument bubbles
detected a halt, indicating that the ship was as deep as it was going to get, the field on the tank intakes
was flickered for just long enough for the pressure to slam them shut. The tanks' contents would be
cooled and separated when things were less exciting.
                                                       ***

A destroyer had set out immediately after the destruction of the flagship, had refused to acknowledge
transmissions, and had been declared outlaw—largely as a matter of form, as its intentions were obvious.
Gnyr-Captain and his crew wouldn't have cared if they weren't. They had sworn personal fealty to
Hthht'-Riit, and considered their own lives to be over. All that remained was to finish dying, and they
would do it like kzinti.

 They were still two hours from Lucifer when the human ship recoiled out of the atmosphere. Much of it
came out of stasis, and the ship presently stopped tumbling. It cast about as if purblind (which it was, as
three of the four instrument packages were now condensing metal vapor inside their shells), picked a
direction, and shot away at six hundred gees.

 The outlaw destroyer could not spare the time for much of a ceremony: a minute or so to contemplate
the ship's new name. This was less precisely transliteratable into a human language than most kzinti
concepts, as it was less a word than an expression of feeling, sounding like some primordial red scream.
It did have a meaning as a noun—it was the title of an ancient (pre-industrial!) mythical being, whom the
gods sent to punish cannibals and those who claimed Names they had not earned. According to legend,
the creature had been a kzin who had contradicted some god, and had been flayed alive and boiled in
vinegar—but only after being made immortal, so he couldn't escape by dying. After torture he stuck to
his assertions, so impressing the ruler of the gods with his courage and principles that they made him their
instrument, granting him perfection of movement in battle.

It may or may not have been a coincidence of etymology that led the ancient Greeks to give the name
Eumenides, "perfect in grace," to three figures of similar function, more properly known as Erinyes. The
Romans, however, gave them the name by which they were most familiarly known.
TheFury continued its pursuit.
                                                     ***

Peace Corben knew nothing of this. The ship's computer hadn't noticed the destroyer, and hadn't been
informative with her anyway. She did finally manage to get out of it the origin of the nameCockroach : it
was an ugly little Earth insect, notorious for its ubiquity and its capacity to survive attempts to kill it. It
didn't please her to be in a vessel with such a name, particularly one that acted like this one did.

Peace would have been less pleased, if that were possible, to learn that the things were extinct.



  II
 Peace had been offplanet about twenty standard years back, to the research base orbiting Amethyst
(which star still obstinately kept secret its reason for being a brilliant shade of theoretically-impossible
purple). Supposedly she was there to gather material for her sociobiology dissertation on isolated
communities; in fact, she was a rich kid playing tourist, and the staff had promptly put her to work
programming the kitchen—which she became so unexpectedly good at (she'd never done it before) that
the base autodoc had to constantly fiddle with everybody's thyroids to keep their weight down. She'd
never been in hyperspace, though. Naturally she'd heard about its peculiarities, but now she still didn't get
to experience them. A viewscreen will not display the Blind Spot. Consequently it wasn't the eerie
experience she'd been expecting.

 As the ship was badly damaged, the computer was heading for We Made It. Once Peace had gotten it
to tell her anything, she discovered that this was because crashlanders: A) knew everything any human
being knew about repairing spaceships; and, B) were still paying the Outsiders installments on the
purchase of hyperdrive, and could thus be reasonably expected to possess a certain moral flexibility
about reporting cash customers to ARM agents. So the trip wasn't all that mysterious in itself, either.
However, Peace had plenty to occupy her mind, because she'd gotten these tidbits by locating and
decrypting the ship's log. It was a long read, but better than the first week of the trip—the autodoc had
been treating her for cataract formation, triggered by the sharp transient acceleration the kzinti grav lock
had caused before the ship compensated. (It had been terrifying. She'd neverheard of cataracts
before—the genes for them had been on the UN Fertility Board's list from the day it was started.)

 Slightly before arrival, she got through the password system, and thus was able to use the hyperwave, to
warn humanity of the onset of the Fourth Kzinti War. She then discovered that the panic program was
still active.Cockroach responded to the content of the messages by turning around and heading for a
place to sit out the war unobserved, incidentally adding two months to the voyage.

Interstellar travel was turning out to be principally a pain in the ass.

 The autodoc was amazingly old, programmed for her rather hyperactive mother, built into the kitchen,
and stubborn as gravity. Peace put on close to three pounds a week. She had to turn up the cabin gravity
just to keep it from all turning to fat. And she couldn't keep it above twelve meters or the autodoc just
turned down her thyroid.

IfCockroach ended up picking a third destination, Peace was going to have no more contours than a
bandersnatch by the time she arrived.
                                                ***
TheFury dropped out of hyperspace outside the Procyon singularity about forty-five hours after
Cockroach had done so. There was a fleet.Fury returned to hyperspace for a few minutes of direction
changes, then returned to normal space on a very different side of the gravity well.

Gnyr-Captain growled wordlessly to himself for a while. The habit was probably annoying, but so far no
one had had the blood to say so. Then he said, "Technology Officer, was our prey in that fleet?"

 "I believe not, Gnyr-Captain, but I am having the computer check my observation. . . . All craft in that
fleet are of human manufacture."

 Gnyr-Captain growled some more. "Strategy Officer, do you judge that humans would include such a
ship in a war fleet if it were available?"

"Yes, sir," was the immediate reply. "Anyone would. Should I expound?"

"No." The ranking of Strategy Officer was a recent innovation, and this one was always trying to
demonstrate his worth. Gnyr-Captain wished for about the 512th time that he had a Telepath, then
opened a channel. "Manexpert to the bridge."

 When Manexpert had buzzed, been admitted, and come to attention, Gnyr-Captain looked him over.
That was about all the examining anyone could do. Manexpert habitually breathed through his mouth to
control his expression, and groomed with some kind of fabric cleaner to minimize his scent. It was
enough to thin your blood sometimes—it was very like talking to a holo of a kzin, but a holo that could
smellyou . Manexpert had explained, when ordered, that he had adopted the appearance of
harmlessness from the humans he studied, on the grounds that it made it possible to surprise and defeat a
superior warrior. His dueling record supported this theory.

"Manexpert," said Gnyr-Captain, "our prey is not in this system. Could he have been less damaged than
he seemed, and changed course in hyperspace?" Then he waited; such questions always took time.

 Manexpert's pupils dilated, his ears cupped, and his tail lashed. He stared at a spot on the
bulkhead—which was in fact in about the same direction as the nearby star—and thought very hard for
about two minutes, trying to think like a human. Then he resumed a more normal attitude and said,
"Gnyr-Captain, regardless of his damage he did not know of our pursuit. If he had, by then he would
have been terrified, so he would have attacked, taking advantage of his Red Age ship's superior
acceleration."

"A reasoned response, made out of panic?" said Strategy Officer scornfully.

"Humans do it often," Manexpert replied, apparently unoffended. But then, who could know?

"Why?" said Gnyr-Captain, startled.

"I don't know, sir. I'm not sure even they know. My own theory is it's a way to be rid of the fear."

"Reflexively?" Gnyr-Captain said in disbelief.

"It isn't a widely-accepted theory, sir," Manexpert admitted.

"Good—Why wouldn't he stay in their primary shipbuilding system, if he wasn't aware of pursuit?"
 "Because it's a very sensible place to go, sir," Manexpert replied. Close study of human thought had
gotten him a reputation for strange comments, but this one stood out. He saw his commander's
expression and hastily added, "He would realize that a hunter would expect him to go to the safest place
possible, and he would expect a hunter to arrive there whether he saw pursuit or not, and therefore
would avoid that place. You see, sir, humans seem to have evolved intelligence in order tobecome
predators, which gives them—"

"If I want a lecture I'll catch a pierin!" Gnyr-Captain roared. "Where would he go instead?"

"By this reasoning, the last place a human with his fur straight—urr, hmf—who wasn't mad, I mean,
would want to go."

"What, Kzin?"

 "They're mad, sir, not idiots. Mostly. —I'm going to have to check my library to figure out just where
that would be, Gnyr-Captain. Certainly someplace humans would consider dangerous."

"Go do it. Dismissed."

"Sir."
                                                   ***

Peace watched the line in the middle of the mass detector lengthen to nearly the edge of the globe before
droppingCockroach into normal space. It was her second approach to the system; her first had only
been to use the gravity drag, since she'd been moving at over three percent of lightspeed when she
dropped out. She didn't want to run low on fuel again. She didn't know how she was going to restore the
ruined instruments, as the apertures for the shells were about a fifth of an inch across. The old woman
must have made models in bottles for fun, sometime in the past.

She switched on the instruction mike, and when the indicator lit told the computer, "We're there."

CONFIRMED, it replied. She had it use visual replies only, on a screen for one of the ruined instrument
pods. It was less unnerving that way. Its voice sounded like her mother.

"Great. Now where the puke are we?"

EPSILON INDI SYSTEM, it replied.

Peace growled, then muttered, "Howam I supposed to find out what I'mdoing here?"

REQUEST THE REASON FOR THE CHOSEN DESTINATION, it told her.

 Peace stared at the screen for a long moment, intensely annoyed. If she'd been in the habit of thinking
aloud, she could long since have . . .rrrgh! "Why was this destination chosen?" she finally said.

EPSILON INDI SYSTEM WAS ABANDONED DUE TO FAILURE OF THE COLONY WORLD
HOME , AND IS TOO DEEP IN HUMAN SPACE TO BE PRACTICAL FOR OTHER RACES.
MATERIALS FROM COLONY STRUCTURES SHOULD BE MORE THAN SUFFICIENT FOR
REPAIRS, AND TRACE ELEMENTS FOR SUPPLIES CAN BE ACQUIRED FROM THE
ENVIRONMENT.
"Why did the colony fail?"

PLAGUE, ETIOLOGY UNKNOWN, BUT RAPID IN EFFECT. ONLY A PARTIAL WARNING
WAS SENT BEFORE COMMUNICATIONS CEASED.

"Nobody's tried to find a cure?" To obtain a wholeplanet?

 FIVE EXPEDITIONS ARE RECORDED SINCE 2360. THREE WERE UN ARM, ONE JINX
INSTITUTE OF KNOWLEDGE, ONE WUNDERLAND INDEPENDENCE SOCIETY. NO
SURVIVORS ARE RECORDED.

"Didn't anybody think to leave someone in orbit?"

ALL FIVE MISSION PLANS INCLUDED ISOLATED OBSERVERS.

"Piles," Peace murmured. Then she yelled, "So what's the point of being here if I can't go outside?"

REPAIRS MUST BE PERFORMED IN A PRESSURE SUIT.

"Pus."
                                                    ***

Epsilon Indi system had been colonized by flatlanders and Belters, but the Belters must have been
malcontents or something: there wasn't a trace of asteroid industry. There were hardly any asteroids,
contrary to what the ship's records said. Home itself had been named by consensus, but the right to name
the other major bodies had been distributed by lot, and the first settlers must have been an odd bunch.
From inmost to outermost, the planets were: Monongahela, Home, Bullwinkle, Rapunzel, and Godzilla.
Peace was unable to find any explanations for these choices inCockroach 's memory.

 Home itself was . . . strange. The icecaps were a lot bigger than the computer's maps showed, and the
coastlines were all screwed up. Why would there be an ice age? The primary wasn't contracting, the way
that, for instance, Sol was. In the putative tropics, the coastlines were thick with jungle showing no sign of
habitation, but this cut off sharply—about where the old coastlines used to be, in fact. The interior was all
but sterile—but well supplied with highways. There were circular lakes, ranging in size from big to
absurd, sprinkled over the continents, and all of them had several big roads leading right up to their rims,
connecting them to others. Some intersecting lake patterns had dozens of those leading away from them.
What it looked like was, there had been a bunch of cities all over, and they'd exploded.

 Maybe they'd tried to stop the plague with fusion blasts? But then why was there an ice age? All that
soot would reduce the planet's albedo andmelt the icecaps. Anyone who went to school on Pleasance
knewall about light absorption.

Rot it. Peace deep-radared the crust, looking for refined metal she could land near.

Then, incredulous, she did it again.

 There was no piece of refined metal larger than her fist within a quarter-mile of the surface. Whatever the
research ships had landed with was gone, which was at least plausible if you assumed they'd taken off
and died on the way back; but the residues of industry were absent too. There wasn't so much as a
bearing from a groundcar down there, not even where city sites were under the ice. Outside the
newly-exposed coastal areas there weren't even ore concentrations. Records said Home was supposed
to be poor in ferrous ores, but they couldn't have builteverything out of aluminum and brick, could they?
And there was no refined aluminum, which meant either somebody had used it all for something, or there
had been some amazingly corrosive rainfall here—like hydrofluoric acid, or a strong lye solution.
Aluminum didn't break down by itself.

There were no satellites in orbit.

 Nothing manmade on the moon, Indigo. (It wasn't. Whonamed these things?) No useful concentrations,
either, which would have sidestepped the risks involved in landing on the planet.

 Peace grumbled and set the surviving instruments to performing a spectroscopic assay. If nothing else,
there would be mine tailings. The last visitors had been two or three centuries back; metal reclamation
technology had been stimulated considerably by the three intervening Kzinti Wars. She told the computer
to map incidence levels of the elements needed forCockroach 's repairs, then had a nap—after it nagged
her into taking another meal she didn't want, of course.

When she got up, her first impression was that she'd instructed the computer wrong. She hadn't.
According to the scan, the nine most essential elements—the Group VIII set—were distributed in three
ways:

 First, there was a light dusting of them, all over the planet—except in the lakes, where there were only
traces.

Second, there were massive deposits in all river deltas—pre-glacial ones—and deep ocean trenches.
Massive as in, kilotons.

 Third, there were five concentrations, of all nine elements, in the immediate vicinity of the former location
of Claytown, where the spaceport had been. This was on a former river delta, so Peace decided to set
down there—after wondering briefly why anybody would put a spaceport next to an ocean, which could
potentially wreck it in minutes. (She dismissed the question, on the grounds that people who would blow
up cities would do anything at all.) The five spots there also held concentrations of niobium and
chromium—where five large supplies of hullmetal had been chemically separated, then scattered.

She decided to be especially careful. The plague clearly did something to your brain.
                                                  ***

In forty days of inactivity, morale aboard theFury had plummeted. The crew slept a lot off duty. Some
began grooming compulsively. Dueling had fallen off, and Power Officer had reported hearing one of his
crewkzin apologize to another of equal rank. Gnyr-Captain didn't even have the comfort of nagging
Manexpert, for he knew intuition was a hairless thing, curling up under pressure.

 Gnyr-Captain was exercising in his cabin, leaping across it with the gravity turned low. He didn't need
that much exercise, but it ate time—and he'd caught himself wondering if his tail would look good
tattooed. . . . Someone buzzed, and he poised, turned the gravity back up, and grabbed a
variable-sword in one combined movement. Could have been smoother, he noted. Getting soft. "Enter,"
he said.

 Manexpert opened the door. "If I entered you might get ill, sir," he said. It was a good bet; he wasn't
clean. He was matted, too, and missing chin hairs where he'd been tugging on them. One of his ears was
half-curled, and had a persistent twitch; and he—
"Whatare you doing?" Gnyr-Captain exclaimed.

"Sir? Oh, the tail. I thought fiddling with the end of it would help me think more like a human, sir."

"Humans don'thave tails," said Gnyr-Captain distractedly, disturbed at the sight.

"I know, sir, but if they did they'd fiddle with the tuft."

"Why?"

"They fiddle witheverything , sir. —I have five possible destinations, Gnyr-Captain."

This was simultaneously annoying and a relief; he'd expected thirty-two or forty. "Name them."

"From most to least dangerous: first, he could return to his own system."

"Suicide."

"Just being thorough, sir. Next, the asteroid belt of Gunpoint."

"How is that dangerous?"

 "As the system nearest Sol it's ruled from Earth. There are rebels in the asteroids who want to overthrow
the governors, and they'd want the ship, but they might save money by killing him and taking it."

 That sounded remarkably sensible. "Humans would do that? They're usually so scrupulous in matters of
trade."

"Not with each other, sir. In fact, the humans most concerned with dealing honorably with other species
often treat their fellow humans like sthondats."

"Why?"

"I've never even heard a theory, sir. It's one of those human things."

"Ftah. Proceed."

 "Third is Fuzz. Fourth is Warhead. I judge them nearly equal in danger. I don't know whetherhuman
telepaths go insane on Fuzz; on the other hand, though Warhead is closer to Kzin, it presents logistical
difficulties for invasion—"

 "I know about Warhead," Gnyr-Captain said sharply. He had had ancestors there—might still have, in
stasis. "Fifth?"

"Home," Manexpert said in human speech.

"Never heard of it."

 "A colony destroyed by an unidentified disease, which was still active during later visits. We may assume
the prey has a pressure suit, and colony relics would include repair materials—"
"He's there," Gnyr-Captain said with certainty.

"It is least likely, sir—I see, playing a double game?"

Gnyr-Captain's ears cupped.

"Human phrase, sir. Their strategies often—"

 "Manexpert," Gnyr-Captain interrupted, surprising himself with his mildness, "go groom, and get some
rest, and rinse yourself with that polymer solvent or whatever it is you like so much. But first tell
Navigator where to findHuwwng —that world."

"Home, sir?" Manexpert enunciated.

"Yes. I don't know how you can reproduce that monkey howling. Dismissed."

"Yes, sir. You get used to the taste after a few years, sir," Manexpert said, and saluted, and closed the
door.

Gnyr-Captain squinted at the closed door for a full minute, trying to make sense of that.



  III
 Within a week of landing, Peace was sick. Not with the plague; with rage. She'd done the first repairs
with parts in storage, then done a full rundown on ship's systems to see about cannibalizing anything
redundant.

 The autodoc had a telomerizing subsystem—it could restore one cell's chromosomes to a youthful
condition. It also had the capacity for full brain transplant. Which had been used. Repeatedly.

 She should have realized. Boosterspice will not restore fertility; Peace had "never met" her father
because she never had one. She'd been gestated as a supply of spare parts. Her thyroid had been kept
low to make her easy to catch. And what afunny pun hername was!

 Jan had been sentenced to twelve years, and had been due out . . . about now, in fact. Peace was
nearing the end of her fertility; Jan would have had to hurry to get her brain put into thespare in time to
bear a replacement. Thespare brain would be thrown away, of course, and Jan Corben would be
reported as suffering a sad accident.

It came to Peace suddenly that the kzinti invasion had saved her life.

When she finally got her hysterical laughter under control, she was very calm.

She thought.

 She called up the manual-operations checklist on the computer, started a test run, and while it was fully
occupied did a physical disconnect between the overseer system and the airlock, the gravity planer, the
fusion tube, and the autodoc. She resisted temptation: she used a cutting laser. An axe would have been
less accurate.

 This done, she used a handheld computer to check the autodoc programs, and found that they were
indeed not what the ship's computer had said they were. She found the programs used on Jan, copied
them to crystal storage, and simply replaced the old crystals with the new ones. She traced circuit paths,
found other storage media with programs inside, and destroyed them. Then she used the autodoc.

When she awoke, the first thing she realized was that the kzinti would come looking for her.

 Repairs would have to wait. She needed weaponry. The computer would know everything that could be
made from materials on hand; it could make a list while the autodoc made up a pressure suit. She'd have
to get the parts fabricators outside.
                                                  ***

It happened this way:

 She was out rigging a sluice for the refiner's waste dust—it ate the local soil, but needed a lot of
it—when she began wondering what was wrong with the trees, just past where the original shoreline had
been. Ship's equipment included two crawlers; Jan, of course, had believed in having a spare. Peace
drove out to the treeline to cut samples, then brought them back only to realize that the analysis had to be
done by the autodoc. She thought, then had the computer isolate everything not needed in stasis. Each
system and each compartment had its own field generator. Jan must have been really rich at some point.
Then she took the samples in, staying in her suit the whole time as she couldn't very well decontaminate
without destroying the samples, and ran them through the doc. It might just be some local blight, but if not
...

 It wasn't. The trees had been tailored to take up useful elements—not well enough to kill the trees, but
well enough to make it worthwhile to use their ashes instead of the local soil. Peace could have done it
withCockroach 's facilities, but it would have taken too long for the trees to grow. One of the previous
expeditions must have been badly wrecked, and done the work before the plague killed them.

 Cheerfully, Peace had the computer sterilize the ship's interior while she was still in it; of course she wore
her pressure suit. When the cycle was completed she left, of course to load equipment before moving the
ship.

And the computer of course no longer had any control over the interior of the airlock.

A trace of dust got into the ship from the airlock.

 When she came back, of course she had the airlock clean off her suit before she went in to the control
cone. She moved the ship over to the trees, then went back out to set things up—instead of soil being
dug up, trees would have to be cut and burned. She used a few pounds of metal foil to make up a huge
funnel on legs, then put it in stasis and set it over the intake hopper. The machinery she set to cutting up
trees and dumping the chunks in the funnel, and she used a laser at wide aperture to char some from
underneath, through the hole, to get them burning. It took some time; they were green, and kept going
out. Finally the fire was going, though, and ashes started falling into the hopper. Burning wood, too, but
the mechanism of the refiner was built to do worse than that itself.

And when she came in, of course it was only natural that she felt hot, and wanted to sleep.

Before she drifted off, it occurred to her that the fat was just going to be replaced by muscle if she had
to work like this. She'd be awfully strong by the time the kzinti showed up.

 Pleased, she settled into the sleep of the despicable. (It is of course the innocent whose rest is uneasy;
true villains slumber undisturbed by anything but an occasional chuckle.)



 The gas giant had the usual litter of moons.Fury landed on one, refueled, and took off immediately. The
prey ship had been found within hours, in stasis—perfect reflection, no neutrino output. What
Gnyr-Captain had wanted to do was plunge in, grab the crew (probably only one, but they could be
lucky), return to Kzinat once , see to it Manexpert got a Name, and if permitted make helpful
suggestions to the prey's torturers before being executed for disobedience. Fathers would wean their
sons on the tale of Gnyr-Avenger for 512s of years. It was a proud and public thing, to be a kzin.

 Unfortunately, records of its departure indicated the old courier ship was just a touch too big to fit into
the destroyer's hold. They would have to land, wrap it in a net, disable its stasis, and take it home. And
the prey might not even be inside! Bringing back the ship, with its useful arms features, would be
honorable enough to save his crewkzin from execution along with Gnyr-Captain, but Manexpert would
probably never get his Name. The thought shamed Gnyr-Captain. "Take us near the prey, planer only,
and hover," he told First Flyer.

 Approaching the planet was disturbing. Clearly it had undergone asteroid bombardment, but the targets
had obviously been cities (and oceans, judging by the oversized icecaps), in what must have been a
deliberate attempt to destroy the population. Industrial areas, certainly, but what kind of monster would a
conqueror have to be to incinerate a potential labor force?

 The prey had landed near the only remaining town, some kind of coastal industrial facility. It couldn't
have housed more than two or three 512s of humans from the size of it, but parts of it were warm.
Somebody must indeed have been using colony facilities to try to repair the ship, an excellent sign. They
couldn't have had much success, judging by the amount of equipment that was lying around in pieces.

"Find them," Gnyr-Captain told Strategy Officer.

 "Yes, sir. —Look for pressure suits," he told Second Tactician. (Naturally First Tactician was standing
by with the landing party.) "Batteries may be chemical instead of electronic. Also look for gaps or rings in
the neutrino background; someone may have put a conical reflector into stasis."

"There's a human-sized warm spot among those leafless trees, sir," said Second Tactician.

"No, their suits are well-insulated, and would show up as a small very hot spot. Must be an animal."

"Yes, sir. It's just that it was moving from one metallic object to another—"

"Animals mark things."

 Gnyr-Captain looked properly impatient, though privately he agreed; he'd once seen a ftheer do that to
an electric fence. It was surprised.

Unexpectedly, Power Officer signaled. "Gnyr-Captain, the feeder lines to the fusion tubes will not
operate."
Gnyr-Captain grumbled, then said, "Is our storage fully charged?"

"Yes, sir, but as I cannot find a cause I thought it might be some form of—"

And the lights went out.

The next word would have been "attack."
                                                     ***

Manexpert had been seething.He had found the prey,he should be in the assault party! Instead he was
bound in his crash fooch, protected like a kitten. The explanation, that he was too valuable to become a
target, just made him feel worse. Kittens got explanations; warriors took orders.

It didn't occur to him that the landing party didn'twant him—his fellow kzinti were afraid of his
unpredictability. If it had, he would have been much happier. As it was, he was merely bitter about
missing all the excitement.

 Suddenly the cabin gravity went to free fall. What was Gnyr-Captain doing? And if the lights were out to
save power for whatever it was, shouldn't the gravity be shut off, to local ambient?

 It occurred to him that he couldn't hear the ripping of the gravity planer. The significance of this hit him
just before the planet did.
                                                     ***

The kzinti ship fell perhaps a hundred feet, at first. (The ground sloped.) A human ship would have been
less damaged, for the counterintuitive reason that it would have had a thinner hull: the hull would have
done some crumpling, taking up the shock of impact. The kzinti ship had over half an inch of hullmetal,
which is held together by both covalent and metallic bonding, and is as resilient as unmodified matter can
get. In vacuum this is a good thing.

 A hundred feet up, it is a very bad thing indeed, at least when all failsafes have suddenly lost power. The
ship bounced, repeatedly. Interior partitions and supports of hullmetal have their critics at such times as
well.
                                                     ***

Manexpert could hear other kzinti moving about. They must have been the landing party, which would
have been padded in their armor; there was no reason to think anyone else's crash field had worked
either. He couldn't see out his right eye, and that side of his head felt huge and hot. He couldn't feel
anything below his shoulders, either.

 There was a little bit of light coming from somewhere to the right. Either the hull had finally
cracked—unlikely—or the assault party had cut their way out of the bay when the airlock didn't work.
For some unknown but long time, there were extended periods of silence, interrupted by bursts of
warcries blended with multiple stutters of slug gunfire. Eventually Manexpert's head began to hurt, and he
ignored everything else in his efforts to keep from screaming.

 When the pain suddenly faded, he noticed the light had grown brighter. He was also humiliated to realize
that for at least several minutes he had been uttering milkmews, like an infant whose mother has left him
alone.

He could smell something living nearby. It smelled something like a human, but more acidic, and lacking
any trace of fear or anger. "Do you speak Wunderlander?" said a voice with an unidentifiable accent, in
that language. Manexpert managed to turn his head a little. The owner of the voice moved courteously
into Manexpert's field of vision.

 Superstitious fears, whose existence he had never suspected, choked him. This was a monster out of
legend. Enormous joints and hard fatless flesh, like someone skinned and rendered down; big ears,
permanently cupped to detect the slightest footstep; huge nose for sniffing prey; complete lack of hair or
teeth; a hide mottled in shades of brown, with dark-brown speckles, ideal grassland camouflage; and, for
all its swollen, deformed head and freakish face, the casual precision and lack of waste motion of the
perfect hunter.

"Do you speak English?" it tried. That ragged beak was responsible for the accent.

 Kzinti do not go into physical shock when injured, so Manexpert had nothing to compare his mental
state with; but the fact was, he was suffering from such a bad case of shock that he couldn't have recalled
how to speak Hero if the Patriarch had offered him a daughter to ch'rowl.

 "Too bad," it said, and raised Gnyr-Captain's treasured antique machine gun into view. It had once been
carried into battle by a Patriarch's Companion, and Manexpert knew himself to be the ship's last
survivor.

"You're—" Manexpert tried to translate a word into English, then gave up and said the word in Hero—"
Fury, aren't you?" He said it badly, being unable to get out that much volume.

It lowered the sidearm and said, "My name is Peace."

 Kzinti had learned that word from humans, but there was a certain conceptual gap. Almost no kzin could
have grasped the notion of "a situation wherein nobody wants to fight," and Manexpert was not among
that minority. He understood the word as most did, as referring to the condition that was being described
whenever the term was applied: "human victory."

"We only wanted slaves this time," Manexpert said, despairing.

Peace blinked. And blinked a second time. Then it said, "Your skull is fractured and your neck is
broken, and your body is only kept from bleeding out by the wreckage crushing it. I'm going to take the
whole mass and put you in stasis until I get your ship's autodoc fixed."

"How will you get the equipment in here?" Manexpert wondered.

 "I have it already," Peace said, and picked up a slightly-wrinkled but perfectly reflective shield. It
adjusted something, and the shield was just aluminum foil, barely thick enough to support its own weight.
So simple. "I brought more foil just in case," it added, then gave him another injection.
                                                     ***

Peace had had an enormous amount of time to think, even without considering her new speed of thought
and ability to sleep in sectors—like a dolphin, but better.

The amount of manipulation that had been going on vastly exceeded anyone's wildest suspicions.

She had awakened with her memory fully organized, and her first thought was:I was right all along.
Peace woke dehydrated, and weak with lack of food, but not hungry. She had eaten anyway. A lifetime
of subjugation and thyroid deficiency had kept her depressed and overweight; she was accustomed to
eating whether she was hungry or not. While she ate, she called up the excessively long intron sequences
recorded from the mining trees, decrypted them, and read the Truesdale account, learning all that was
known about Protectors.

Or rather, all that was believed about Protectors. Some of it was obviously wrong.

 A couple of million years back, according to Jack Brennan, a Belter who'd become a Protector, a race
called the Pak had sent a colony ship to Earth from the galactic core. The Pak became sentient only after
years of reproductive maturity, as a result of eating a root that started smelling good to them when their
hormone balance began to screw up. This root did not grow right on Earth, so the Pak protectors died
out. Brennan said it was of starvation.

And that was a lie.

 The Pak breeders wereHomo habilis , and they were ancestors of the human race, which could eat
things that would make a dog go blind. They could eat dogs, for that matter. Protectors weren't limited to
eating tree-of-life, as Brennan called it; it was just what they needed to keep regenerating, and digesting
disease germs, and so forth. Some of them must have lasted centuries.

 When Brennan had been telling this fable, he had already made his plans to steal a Pak Protector's
ramship and convince the UN ARM that he was doomed. They wouldn't interfere with his manipulation
of human society if they didn't believe he existed. On the trip back to Brennan's ship, from which
Phssthpok had kidnapped him before realizing he was family, Brennan had refused to allow one of his
companions, Lucas Garner, to smoke, on the grounds that he, Brennan,had to act to keep the man
healthy. This was well after the time of Pasteur, so it was known by then that a viral disease such as
cancer could not be contracted by smelling burning leaves; Brennan had been ensuring that the
184-year-old paranoid would be too exasperated to think things through.

Peace deduced the rest.

 The Protectors had gone out in fission-powered ion-drive ships, looking for planets where tree-of-life
would grow properly. They had found none; there were few planets that were at all habitable. However,
the original expedition would have been equipped for terraforming. Planets had water added, were
seeded with algae, were even smashed with small moons to create high ground on the far side, above the
thick atmosphere. Meanwhile, the few Protectors that remained on Earth were cultivating mutations, so
that a species would eventually arise which would be able to use the terraformed planets.

And some explorers must have met the puppeteers.

 Two and a half million years back, the puppeteers must have already had spaceflight—not manned, to
be sure, but effective at searching for threats. The Protectors would have realized that their limited
numbers could never exterminate the puppeteers before Earth's breeder population was found and
slaughtered. The Protectors wouldn't have returned to Earth, and they would have killed themselves
rather than risk giving away its location. At least one must have made sure of being undiscovered, though,
and returned to Earth to warn the Protectors there; and they in turn would have methodically destroyed
all signs of technological development. Except the plants they'd modified to produce a multipurpose raw
material, unnecessary to the plants' survival, in their secretions; there were too many of those, intended
for availability in all climates, to hunt them all down. The best-known was the rubber tree, so useful it was
still cultivated on Earth.
 The puppeteers had eventually found Earth, and Kzin, and a lot of less interesting inhabited planets. They
had manipulated the two dangerous races' development. When Phssthpok, another Pak protector, had
come from the Core, they'd let him through, to stimulate Earth's technology to catch up with Kzin's.

But, thanks to a couple of centuries of Brennan's interference, Earth developed wrong, becoming too
peaceful to survive the discovery of the planet by the kzinti. So the puppeteers had arranged to let kzinti
warcraft find human colony ships in interstellar space—something that had happened half a dozen times.
Twice, human ships had survived long enough to send home messages about the contacts.

And humans and kzinti alike thought of it as coincidence!

 Picture a globe six million miles across, full of air but unilluminated. Add hundreds of floating bonfires,
each with a surface area of at least an acre, in all colors, well-scattered. Imagine air jets to push you from
one bonfire to another, in straight lines. Now picture other people, all coming from one bonfire you
haven't been to, traveling to various others you haven't been to, propelled by butane-jet cigarette lighters.
You know nothing of cigarette lighters and do not use instruments designed to seek them out. How close
do you have to get to one to notice it against the background of bonfires? The closest that two of these
skew paths get to each other is in excess of a thousand miles. Now multiply the distances by 40 million,
and the bonfire surfaces by 1.6 quadrillion, and ask yourself how the kzinti found human ships in
interstellar spacesix times .

Oncewould be a miracle to stupefy an atheist. Twice is enemy action. Six times is policy.

 The puppeteers had arranged beacons, not recognizable as such, to attract kzinti ships. (Possibly
telepathic; the kzinti had the capability far more often than humans, which implied it was latent in the
whole species—which would explain why they were so hostile:noise .) Once the First War began, the
puppeteers had quickly realized that the human ability to kill anything had been all but bred out of the
race, and the humans would lose; so they arranged for the Outsiders to go to We Made It, outside the
war zone, and sell hyperdrive to the crashlanders. Probably without telling the Outsiders why.
Conceivably without telling them at all—Outsiders followed starseeds, and it would be a simple matter to
dump trace elements a starseed needed into a star's chromosphere.

 And while the Outsiders were ambling along at sublight speeds, Wunderland's population was
conquered, enslaved, and eaten.

 The puppeteers were powerful and arrogant, which was understandable, but also shortsighted in their
meddling, which was intolerable. It might be necessary to exterminate them. If so, it would first be
necessary to get them far from human space, as they would doubtless panic and slaughter everything in
sight once the procedure began. Doubtless they were aware of the possibility of higher levels of
hyperdrive, the next of which was at (if the drive's manual of operation was based on the assumptions it
seemed to be) 6!x4!x2!/10=3456 times the speed of the first level, or near enough to .8 lightyears per
minute. It was always profitable to go faster, so they would be doing research already, so she would only
have to have a few algorithms published in technical journals to get them out of the blind alleys. A
publicity trip to the Core would give them a look at whatever the Pak migration had been fleeing, and
they'd run immediately. That would give Peace a few centuries to decide what to do with them.

The kzinti could be disposed of more promptly.

 When Peace was too full to eat any more, she reprogrammed and partly rebuilt the autodoc, then got in
for a full scan. Brennan had created a human-infecting form of the virus that changed the Pak (or their
relatives) into Protectors, and he and his descendant Truesdale had brought it to Home, to prepare a
surprise for the Pak Protector scouts they'd lured away from Earth. Peace needed to find out what it did.
The results showed there were things Brennan hadn't mentioned, and that Truesdale most likely hadn't
known.

 Each lung had an extra lobe, now, so the right had four and the left three. The lobes were now separated
by membranes, so that puncturing one wouldn't collapse the rest of the lung. Ribs had thickened and
spread to accommodate the change. There was now a two-chamber iliac heart in the groin, drawing
blood from the lower body. It pumped it directly into the new lung lobes, which oxygenated it and added
it to the blood returning from the rest of the body. Running this mix through the original lungs produced
blood supersaturated with oxygen, which the expanded brain needed desperately. The original heart
developed thicker muscle and redundant feeder vessels, and the extra oxygen kept it from strain. The
extra pass through the lungs would also allow her to function when the partial pressure of oxygen in local
air was too low to keep an unchanged human conscious.

 The lymphatic system had developed one-way valves, such as veins had, so that the fluid was kept
circulating by changes in pressure as muscles were used. The spleen had developed into an organ much
like the liver in texture, and its new function seemed to be scavenging trace minerals.

 The end joint of each finger was now able to move independently of the rest of the finger, like the end of
a human thumb.

 There was a hard shell contained within each eyelid. The shell was resilient, and opaque. The eye itself
had a second lens behind the original. The new lens was normally flat, but could be made concave
enough for work as close as an inch from the pupil. The original lens was saturated with a substance
which responded to chemical cues in milliseconds, to become tinted (the usual state), polarized, or clear.
Without the Protector additives, this chemical turned the lens white, producing cataracts. (Brennan and
Truesdale, products of Fertility Board selection, would have known nothing of this, and would sometimes
have needed sunglasses.) The pupil could now open all the way to the edge of the iris, gathering far more
light, and the retina had grown a tapetum, like a cat's eye, to give the receptors a second try at the
photons. The progressive die-off of the retina's color-detecting rods was compensated by the trick of
tinting the lenses different colors, providing strong contrast. It occurred to her that the instinctive attempt
to see this degree of contrast, by unaltered elderly humans, finally explained gingham. The preprocessing
layer of the retina was thicker, too; and as a huge amount of new brain growth had been in the optic
center, image persistence was longer. A Protector could read a newspaper page held up twenty feet
away if the light was good.

 The olfactory region of the brain was now almost half as big as the optic center used to be. This, like the
finger change, was implicit in Brennan's assertions; a Protector had to be able to distinguish one protein
molecule from another when they differed by only one amino acid in one place. The processing involved
was tremendous.

 The brain had more than tripled in size. The new material at the back of the head was mostly three big
lobes of cortex, each one a bigger processing net than one of the human brain's cortex hemispheres; and
the hemispheres she'd started out with had grown as well.One of these five lobes sufficed for routine
activity, allowing the rest to sleep when not needed. Processing networks required something akin to a
dream state from time to time, or they began giving aberrant results; a Protector must have at least one
cortical lobe in dream state just about all the time. A human Protector could have two in dream state, and
still be smarter than a Pak Protector going full out.

 There had been nerves dealing with facial muscles and genital response, and those nerves were dead and
resorbed in metamorphosis. The brain centers formerly connected to them were now sensing with, and
sending commands to, new nerves in the improved fingertips. Small wonder if Protectors enjoyed making
things.

 The lining of the small intestine was thick, and dense with blood vessels. Intestinal tissue was being
constantly converted to embryonic cells, and those were entering the bloodstream, attaching themselves
to cells that were functioning improperly. Once there, a new cell wrapped completely around the target
cell, took up the cell's proper function, and ate it, digesting its proteins and nucleic acids into individual
amino acids and nucleotides. Most of these were released into the blood plasma. The new cells also ate
any foreign material, and dead or mutated cells. Bone marrow now produced only red cells—which were
some twenty percent more numerous than before, and now had wrinkly surfaces to maximize the
O2/CO2exchange rate.

 The virus that was present in the small intestine showed no sign of havingever been capable of infecting a
plant. It didn't do that much to the small intestine, for that matter; but the genes it added produced some
really astonishing prions—multifunctional enzymes which, among other things, reshaped other proteins, of
similar but not identical sequence, into the same shape as the prion. Back in biochemistry classes she'd
been taught that twenty-first-century Earth had waged desperate battles in the lab to wipe out just a few
types of prions that had gotten into the food supply. Seeing them at work, this was plausible.

 Tree-of-life virus must have infected the plants alone, and turned their proteins into prions. Jack Brennan
had developedthis virus by reverse-engineering the prions and creating the thing from first principles, and
must have been planning to do so from the moment he killed Phssthpok. (That part of his story she
believed. The Pak Protector would have sterilized Earth if he'd evensuspected humans would turn down
tree-of-life.) The prions only worked right on cells that had undergone a certain number of
divisions—one of them converted telomerase to a new formulation, and too much of the new stuff—a
regulating enzyme—would melt you to a blob, while too little would allow your cellular metabolism to
speed up until it cooked your brain. The latter had actually happened to one of the Belters who'd
inspected Phssthpok's cargo.

 There were more mitochondria per cell, too. There seemed little purpose in this until Peace made the
connection with a genetic disease she'd read about, now absent from the species, that caused
mitochondria to accumulate calcium phosphate. In a Protector, it was a storehouse of material for
regenerating bone; in breeders, it sapped strength in all tissues on a cellular level by limiting the size of the
ATP reserve. It must have been universal at one time—Pak breeders didn'tneed stamina, clear heads, or
motivation: they had Protectors. Peace recalled that salicylic acid, and its salts and esters, caused
mitochondria to store inorganic phosphates, and she determined to stockpile the stuff.

 She had used up most of a day getting acquainted with her new condition. Time to get to work. It would
be tedious; the annihilation of technological artifacts was so thorough it must have taken some earlier
expedition's protectors weeks, and Truesdale and the Home Protectors had stripped out all ore deposits
for their arsenals before the asteroid bombardment, sensibly enough. (The mining trees were a splendid
bit of misdirection: the Brennan virus had an affinity for the bark, which was crumbly.)

She went through the hidden parts of the computer's memory and found references to inventions the UN
ARM had suppressed. Some sounded useful. There were no technical details, but a general outline of
principles was usually given, and that was enough.

 The third day she gave in to her impatience and built an automaton that could perform simple routine
tasks, like cleaning rooms or repairing scanners. For the latter task she had to include a device that
distorted the force binding the instrument shells, making them pliable enough to reach through; it had been
obvious that the puppeteers must have some means of softening GP hulls, as they would never have sold
invulnerable warship hulls to aliens. This done, she had the idea of building automata to fabricate parts
usable in a variety of items, and judged it worth the time. (Technology doesn't save labor: it invests it.)
Pure elements could be had via the expedient of a conveyor belt, a disintegrator, and a tapered wind
tunnel. She dedicated five days to these tasks, then one more for a device that assembled parts to order,
and was able to begin work on parts for the exotic stuff. She arranged a foil shell in stasis for workshop
housing—some of the mechanisms would absorb stray neutrinos otherwise—and began building various
specialized components for weapons of short, middle, and long ranges. Middle range being the horizon.

 When the kzinti showed up, she was pleasantly surprised (and just a bit embarrassed for them) to find
that she could easily break into their ship's command codes, which raised the possibility of interrogating
prisoners. She shut off the fuel feed to their fusion source, then found mechanical cutouts that prevented
total shutdown of key systems, so she broke out something she'd built as a battery charger. It was faster
than laying cables everywhere: it drew power out of all nearby sources, or a source it was aimed at, all
without the need for broadcasting. It was just the thing to make a ship fall down.

 Most of the survivors were an armored infantry group, and the ones who saw her didn't fight the way
she'd expected kzinti to fight; they seemed desperate, rather than fanatical. It dawned on her that a Pak
Protector must have landed on Kzin two and a half million years back, and made a really lasting
impression. They would have been intelligent by then, but not civilized. Oral tradition would have
distorted with every generation, but drawings would be kept up. Some of these troops blew themselves
up when it was clear she'd be able to capture them; it was like they expected her to drag them,
screaming, back to Hell.

 The last survivor was pinned in the wreck; he'd been pretty well-protected, but he was still nearly torn in
half. She found the medical supplies and dosed him with things whose labels showed a kzin bleeding, a
kzin thrashing around, and a kzin in pain. (Arrows pointing in, instead of stars flying out. Fifty thousand
generations of mortal combat for mates had evidently selected for kzinti so healthy that pain was
regarded as an unnatural, external phenomenon.) When he became coherent, he asked if her name was
[outraged wrathful snarl]. She told him her name, and he did a very strange thing: he pleaded with her.
"We only wanted slaves this time," he said.

 She immediately realized, with some amusement, what he understood the wordpeace to mean, and saw
that he too regarded her as some sort of divine avenger; come to slay them all for eating humans, most
likely. The wordslaves , however, called up old information she hadn't thought of since college; and
everything suddenly fell into place.

How could a species that exterminates all mutated offspring haveevolved ?
                                                 ***

The Slavers had ruled the Galaxy a couple of billion years back, according to Larry Greenberg, a human
telepath who'd spent several weeks more or less possessed by one. (It had been released from stasis,
due to a level of carelessness that Peace would have found appalling even when she was a
heavily-medicated breeder. Paranoia was more common then, and had such a bad reputation that caution
was treated as some kind of vice.) They used telepathic control to command other species (the Grogs of
Down were their incredibly remote and wildly mutated descendants) and enslave them—hence the term.
Their name for themselves wasthrintun . (It was pronounced without the tongue ever touching the
teeth—a thrint's teeth were metallic, and razorlike—and for a human it was a fine way to try to strangle
yourself without using your hands.) Their principal slaves had been the tnuctipun, who were miracle
workers at genetic design. The tnuctipun had produced the bandersnatch, still found on Jinx—they didn't
mutate. The bandersnatch was intelligent, and immune to thrintun Power, and created as a food
animal—the big brain was justified by making it very tasty. Bandersnatchi were made to be spies on the
thrintun. The tnuctipun had spent centuries developing ways to screw up the thrintun while ostensibly
being helpful, and when war finally became open the only counterweapon the thrintun had that worked
was amplified Power: they had commanded everything in the Galaxy to commit suicide. Everything that
wasn't immune, in stasis, or too stupid to understand, obeyed.

 Greenberg had said there were seventeen other intelligent races—eighteen if you stretched the definition
a little. Implicitly, the eighteenth race must have sometimes gotten even clear telepathic orders wrong. The
tnuctipun would have been assigned to make them smarter.

 They had. It must have been one of their first successes. They came up with a virus that turned vegetable
protein into the most amazing prions, and altered the species to start finding it irresistible—but only after
reproducing. The desexing wasn't necessary, and from an evolutionary viewpoint was actually
undesirable; selection would work better if reproduction occurredafter the development of intelligence.
The killing of mutated descendants was another deliberate effort to prevent evolution, and it had worked
for two billion years. The loss of appetite when there were no descendants was just a safety feature to
keep their numbers down, and the virus' thallium requirement was a way of limiting their mobility. The
breeders' genes had evidently also been altered so that their brains were hardwired to sympathize with
rebels and underdogs. Even today, humans hearing about the Slaver era tended to side with the
tnuctipun—who by any reasonable standard were as coldly evil a race as had ever existed. (Kzinti ate
intelligent lifeforms because hunting them was such a good challenge, and this was as horrifying a practice
as you could find nowadays; but even they would recoil at the thought ofcreating an intelligent race for
use as food.)

 The parent species must have averaged a good deal brighter thanHomo habilis . The Protectors that
worked for the tnuctipun had undoubtedly produced many of the wonders that the tnuctipun were
credited with—possibly all of the nongenetic ones, such as the Slaver hyperspace jump, disintegrators,
stasis fields, and gravity control.

 And the Slavers would have considered them perfectly harmless, because the Power would have
seemed to work just fine on them. The compartmentalization of the Protector brain, however, would
have meant that a Slaver could complacently hold a full lobe under complete control, unaware that that
lobe was being left out of the control loop and the Protector was coming to kill him. Which would have
been their job, during the war. A Protector was an ideal field commando—eat anything, hard to see,
hard to hurt, powerful senses, able to improvise anything needed from what was on hand.

 When the Slavers gave the suicide command, the Protectors hadn't been affected; but the breeders had.
The only survivors of that would have been mental subnormals, mutants that hadn't been killed because
their Protectors had gone off to war. (The mutation rate in the Core would have been incredible.) They
would have been the ones too stupid to understand the order. The rest of the breeders would have died,
and the Protectors would have stopped eating. Later, the mutants became Protectors themselves, and the
ones able to produce viable offspring had kept on eating, developed a language, and called themselves
Pak. When the breeder population rose high enough, they had fought for living space.

For two billion years.
                                                    ***

Protectors do not normally examine their motives.

But there had never been a paranoid Protector before.

Peace Corben, ready to question and then kill the last survivor, realized that the tnuctipun had created
her condition for much the same reason that her mother had createdher : to be used. Her face was hard
as horn; her holocaustic wrath never showed.

She wasnot a tool.

She told the kzin some reassuring lies about his condition, then began doing everything she could to save
him. That turned out to be a great deal.
                                                   ***

Manexpert woke in a big soft swaddle inside a box, which turned out to be an autodoc. It opened when
he moved. The lining smelled like some kind of plant fiber, woven, cleaned, and bundled up to serve as
padding. Though the experience was unfamiliar, it was comfortable, and felt very natural somehow.

 He looked around warily, and saw he was under shelter but not in the . . . entity's . . . ship. He must
have been kept in stasis foryears before the autodoc was working; a good-sized city had grown up.
There were buildings of assorted sizes, all more or less hemispherical, all made of foil in stasis. Broad
concrete walkways around and between them had rain canopies overhead. They were shaped to channel
the rain into troughs, which was apparent because there was a fine spray falling now.

He realized he was panting, and that it wasn't any kind of threat response; the air was—not thick, no,
but sort ofused . Something must be producing a lot of carbon dioxide: each breath he took felt like he'd
been holding it for some time.

The shelter he was under was the open one. He couldn't see a ship, or tell what any buildings were for.
There were horizontal ridges on the buildings, far enough apart to serve as steps—for a kzin; they'd been
put therefor him , so he could look around.

 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, hecould 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'thave . . . you mean, youwant 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 'scomputer 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.
"It makes a loud noise that carries a long way."

"I know that. Why would I need to?"

 "Who knows? But if you did, and you didn't have a whistle, wouldn't you feel foolish?" Peace said
reasonably.

 He completed his inspection in silence, less disturbed by this logic than by his agreement with it. After
closing the kit, he said, "That tasted surprised."

"That's what I was trying for. I like meat to taste more exhausted, but then I used to be human."

 "I thought so," he said sadly. "Should I have a Name?" he added, which would have given some people
the impression he was changing the subject.

"Without a doubt," she replied. "Humans get them at birth, and you're practically human in some ways.
You don't attack when there's no chance of success, for example. And you make conversation, which is
how humans keep constantly apprised of everything."

 The kzin needed time to get the implications of this, so Peace rose and ran to the next job. It wasn't
immediately urgent, but nothing was at the moment, and it was important in the long run: producing a
noncontagious Protector virus—that is, one that infected plants but not people—whose shell binding used
a porphyrin nexus other than thallium. Cobalt looked good. According to Brennan, there had been cases
of Pak Protectors dying of old age at 28,000 or so, but given the constant regeneration of tissues and
reconstruction of the DNA therein this was obviously the result of cumulative trace thallium poisoning.
Another tnuctip safety feature.
                                                   ***

Manexpert had taken a lot of time to think, and the next morning he located Peace in yet another dome.
It was a big dome, and it held an assembly that looked like an immense balloon tire, made of metal and
lying on its side. The thing floated several feet off the ground, and Peace wore a harness that adjusted
gravity so as to reach any part of the assembly. Manexpert was vaguely aware of the infeasibility of
making a gravity planer that small, but by this point was so far beyond surprise at anything Peace could
do that he would have accepted it without question if he'd been shown a groundcar and told that it was
powered by its driver's sense of propriety. "Good morning," Peace called to him. "Come up on a cargo
plate."

 He saw what it meant, found the controls obvious, and went up to join it where it was working at an
access panel. "You're defying your Maker," he said without preamble.

"Sure am."

"How is that possible?"

 "It's called free will," Peace said, still looking into the aperture its hands were in. "It's why you can talk to
me instead of attacking, for example, which is what you were made for. It does help that you're more
intelligent than your forerunners. They attacked humans without even wondering why. Died without
reproducing, of course. Humans and kzinti have been very helpful to each other that way."

"I don't follow you." It would have shamed him to just admit that to a mortal being, but this was different.
 "All the kzinti stupid enough to attack humans, and all the humans stupid enough to try to talk their way
out of a fight with kzinti, have been removed from their respective species' gene pools. Both races
average a little smarter with every War. If you people learn to tell tactful lies and pretend not to
understand what you hear, you'll actually be able to engage in diplomacy."

"I've heard the word before, but it didn't make sense until now."

"You've heard diplomatic definitions, from humans. Most humans have a natural tendency toward
diplomacy, to the point of believing their own reassurances."

"Delusion?" Manexpert said.

"Of course. But usually ones that can be lived with. Kzinti have their own comforting delusions."

Manexpert didn't say anything, experimenting with diplomacy.

After a moment, Peace asked, "If you had vastly superior weapons, perfect troop discipline, and
overwhelming numbers, could you conquer humanity?"

"Of course."

 "With me on the human side? Look around you. How long do you think you've been in stasis and the
autodoc?"

Manexpert halved his first guess, then halved it again. "Four years?"

 "Forty-one days. I'd have made a lot more progress if I hadn't had to do all that medical research. . . .
Nobody is entirely in his right mind, kzin or human. Delusions keep people from going any crazier.
Perfect sanity is a burden far too vast for a mortal mind to bear. The nearest humans ever get to it is a
condition called paranoia, and that generally just decays into a more plausible set of delusions than is
usual. Kzinti Telepaths are constantly on the verge of complete sanity, and it turns them into terrified
wrecks. You would do well to avoid any mention of me when you get back to Kzin. Too close to
absolute reality." Peace was silent for a few moments, squinting as it worked, and said, "That'll have to
do. Don't try to fly this thing through a star, though."

"I'm not a fool."

 "But you're a kzin, and therefore fearless, right? That was irony. Follow me, we can see if your pressure
suit needs improvements." She led him to an entry hatch.
                                                     ***

He had things on his mind, and couldn't choose between them. Peace took over the conversation to take
the pressure off, so anything that really mattered to him would work its way out on its own. She took the
time to show him such consideration. She liked him. He had a kind of feral innocence to him, and was
sufficiently alien that she actually had to think a little to predict what he would do. He was smarter than
the rest of his ship's company put together, as well—he kept thinking of surprise attacks, which was
merely brighter than average, but he kept figuring out why each one wouldn't work, too, which was
unique.

Also, he was fluffy and smelled like gingerbread.
 "I made the sleeves and leggings short so the gloves and boots would stay on by themselves, the way the
short torso keeps the helmet seated," she showed him. "I noticed the combat team were all chafed bald
where the straps went around their wrists and ankles. Your tools and fittings are all in front. The recyclers
they had were really poor, not even as good as humans use, so I put this together. The backpack
unstraps to swing around for access during use. That articulated hullmetal mail was pretty heavy, so I've
just used layers of interacting polymers, which are actually better because hullmetal won't seal itself after
a meteor puncture. I'm afraid the foodmaker is only one flavor; I didn't want to take chances on the
cultures mutating. You can override the filters in the helmet to let in more light, but what gets in through
the rest of the suit can't be increased. I didn't know your tastes in entertainment, but there's a crystal
player, and some things I was able to salvage from your ship. These are for grooming, during extended
stays in the suit—this paddle draws them along from outside, and as you see they return. There won't be
nutritional deficiencies, but the suit's doc isn't up to much more than gluing broken bones and maintaining
circulation in a crushed limb while it heals. If you stay out of trouble, though, the suit should be good
indefinitely. Try it on."

 She waited for him to go through the checklist, even though she could see everything was right. She
wasn't the one who needed to know it was right, in order for the suit to have any purpose. While he was
doing that, she again speculated on the possibility that starseeds had been created as a genetic lifeboat for
the tnuctipun, with Outsiders a machine lifeform created to guard them, immune like all machines to
Slaver power. It was possible, but couldn't be checked without taking apart a starseed, and she still
hadn't come up with a way to be safe from Outsiders if she did that. (Though if she cut into a starseed
without being shot, sliced, blown up, neatly sorted out by isotopic weight, or accelerated off the edge of
the visible universe, itwould indicate that the theory was probably flawed. It was not an immediate
concern.)

 It would have been good to be able to get more direct information about the tnuctipun, but Larry
Greenberg had been the nearest thing to an expert, and his slowboat had never made turnaround on the
trip to Jinx. That had been just barely too early to be Brennan's work, so the sabotage must have been
by puppeteers. She couldn't fault their decision—a telepathic human breeder with a Slaver's memories
wasdangerous .

"It smells good," was the first thing he said. He was surprised, as well he might be.

"Yes, this has agood recycler. Let's get you familiarized with the ship's controls."

"Now?"

"You surely don't want to be around when I start scattering radioactive thallium. And this area's going to
be submerged by then anyway, because I have to melt the icecaps. Now, move along before I have to
get the broom."

He didn't understand that, fortunately for his dignity, but he moved along.

 "The planer will develop two and twenty sixty-fourths 512s of a Kzin gravity. I've made up some
wargame programs to add to the entertainment supplies, and the ship's autodoc is a lot better than your
ship had. Tell the Patriarch you stole it from human experimenters, and he'll have to give you at least a
partial Name. Damaged data files in the computer will support your claim. Don't go anywhere but Kzin
with this ship. If this ship attacks any human settlement I will blow up Kzin's sun."

"How?" he demanded, incredulous at last.
 Peace looked at him. "I am not about to tell a kzin how to blow up a sun," she said. A porous tube of a
ton of lithium, extruded through the hilt of a variable-sword to half a million miles' length, filled with
another ton of lithium, to be placed in stasis in its turn. The end of the wire thrust into a star's core, the
central wire's stasis shut down, and fusion propagates violently up the tube to the hilt, spraying fusing
plasma out the pores. The shock disconnects the tube's stasis power supply, and a channel of fusion
convects heat out of the core and fuel in. Until he asked, she'd been bluffing. "This panel controls the
ionizing laser for the ram's fuel—" she continued.
                                                       ***

Something had beenwrong with him. Possibly all his life. He had accepted the word of his father, his clan
priest, and the Patriarch's Voice without ever questioning them; and now thisthing , this Fury called
Human Victory, that had shown them all to be fools merely by existing, was telling him to accept its word
without question too. Ftah.

From now on he would question what he'd been taught. That, at least, Peace had taught him correctly.
No doubt that was against the God's orders, Peace having been created to protect humans. Well,eat
God.

 Come to think of it, there was a human religion that claimed to do just that. If there was anything to
human religion—and, giventhis creature's existence, it should at least be considered—God didn't sound
too bright. There was the tuft of an idea there.

 A hand like a knotted branch took hold of his muzzle and turned his head. "What was the last thing I
said?" Peace asked him.

 Manexpert glared at the liberty, then said, "If I shut down the synchrotron oscillation in the fusion pinch
for more than a few minutes of my subjective time, the ship will stop generating the ultraviolet laser beam
for long enough to begin encountering nonionized matter, and the ram field may not deflect all of it quickly
enough. That's probably what happened to theEvita Peron on the way to Wunderland. Am I listening to
you."

Peace nodded once, said, "All right," and continued the instructions.

It finally said, "Any questions?"

"Is all this knowledge in the computer too?" Manexpert asked.

"Yes."

"Good. What would be a good Name?"

 Peace's hands, almost incessantly busy, dropped to its sides. It blinked and said, "I have no idea. You
could take the Name of somebody famous, that you'd like people to associate you with."

After considering what he'd learned here, and what he'd already known of human practices, Manexpert
decided to say, "Thank you."
                                                ***

After the ship was out of the atmosphere, Peace contacted her assistants and said, "Okay, he's been
released back into the wild, you can knock it off."
 "He didn't even get tosee me," complained Technology Officer over the channel. "I had a squeak and
everything."

 "You wouldn't have had much effect after Gnyr-Captain's performance," said Power Officer. "He
sounded like Hroft-Riit's haunted axe!" He laughed softly.

"I always liked that play," Gnyr-Captain admitted, pleased.

 "Okay, you guys, I didn't splice your brains back together so you could do dramatic reviews. I need that
free-association on kzinti life more than ever now: the altered body chemistry works, and his paranoia is
developing nicely. He's already got a plan, so the next Kzinti War is going to be kzinti fighting each other,
and it should be the last. But I'll have to understand kzinti culture better than I do to keep the civil war
from sterilizing the planet," Peace said.

 "We're on it, we're on it," said Gnyr-Captain. "You just work on restoring us to normal appearance,
stealing some females, and finding a planet where we can settle down."

"And terraforming this onejust a trifle," Peace said in dry tones.

"In your free time," Gnyr-Captain replied, magnanimous and deadpan.

 "Ftah," said Peace, quite well for somebody with no lips. In fact she was amused; she was undoubtedly
the first to discover that the slavering predators who'd been humanity's bogeymen for centuries were, in
fact, a race of utterly stagestruck hams. The gaslighting wouldn't have gone nearly so well without
them—it had been a chance remark by Gnyr-Captain about Manexpert deserving a Name that had
inspired it in the first place. She congratulated herself yet again for the idea of reviving their brains with the
telepathic region removed; they were remarkably reasonable without it.
                                                      ***

Manexpert's brain seethed with growing convictions. Kzinti were losing their will to fight, but they'd fight
one more War if there was a real chance of winning. He thought he knew how to gain that chance: trick
God into supporting them.

 It would involve remaking the basis of Kzin's culture. So be it. He would have to work with great care,
to avoid rousing suspicion. It would be unwise to take the Name of a great leader or philosopher; he
needed something innocuous, even ridiculous. Who was that Hero who'd come back from the First War,
driven to madness and advocating an end to warfare? Ah, yes.

Kdapt.




  WAR AND PEACE
Matthew Joseph Harrington
Attention Outsider vessel. Please hold your fire. I have been able to override my genetic
programming.
My name is Peace Corben, and I am a Protector of human origin. I wish to engage in commerce.

                                                      ***

It came to her, as she awaited a reply through the relay, that for the first time in almost thirty years she
was afraid. It would have been interesting, if it hadn't been so unpleasant. She found herself constantly
formulating contingency plans whenever her mind wandered, and it wasdesigned to wander, and none of
the plans were worth a thing.

 Her plan to lie dead in space and use passive instruments to monitor the relay's fate was no good either.
A maypole of metal ribbons, seemingly billowing around its central shaft, suddenly manifested nearby,
appallingly huge, having decelerated at what instruments said was a couple of hundred thousand gees. As
this was over 170 times what Peace could get out of a gravity planer before it became unable to
compensate for anything outside its housing, she was at least reassured that she wasn't wasting her time.

Whether she was wasting her life remained to be seen.
                                                ***

The being that would eventually be known as Outsider Ship Twelve had been carrying its children
exposed to space, as was usual, its maturity limbs arranged to maximize shadow borders in the
illumination it provided for them. At .9c, with Doppler effects bringing gamma bursters into their spectral
range aft, and the microwave background just visible forward with a starseed silhouetted against it, life
was pleasant. The youngest and oldest enjoyed watching things change color as they went by, too,
though the ones in between preferred to watch the starseed.

 They had been moving into a region of considerable modulated radio noise, its largest source about
eighteen light-years away. Trade was good in such areas. It took time to be noticed, though, so things
were quiet—until a hyperwave message came in, using a chord that should have been known only to
Outsiders. The content of the message explained why it wasn't, but raised other issues of interest. The
Outsider saw that the transmission came from a relay, looked around, and spotted an inactive hyperdrive
motor. The Outsider ability to do this was not advertised. Some species tried to erase debts by erasing
creditors. It moved over there for a better look.

 There was a well-made ship, and its sole occupant was indeed a Protector. If it had made the ship, it
was much smarter than a Pak. Not attacking the Outsider was also evidence of this. The ship had lots of
mountings for weaponry, as was to be expected, but the equipment that fitted them had been not merely
dismantled, but distributed, so that it would take at least half a minute to assemble the easiest
items—plenty of time for an Outsider to do practically anything. This Peace Corben was displaying what
must have been, to a Protector, near-suicidal good faith.

Of course, it might still be up to something. Protectors were like that.

The Protector sent power through a radio receiver, and the Outsider said, "Greetings. What did you
wish to purchase?"

"I have information to sell first, to establish a credit balance."

"We do not normally purchase information. We sell it, and use the proceeds to pay for supplies."
 "I doubt you possess this information, and you'd be able to sell it to customers you trusted for amazing
sums."

Interesting. "What price do you set on it?"

"I'll trust you to be fair."

"We may not be able to afford a fair price."

 "I'll stipulate that my credit balance will not be drawn on if you show me that the matter and/or
circumstances of a request would work a hardship on you."

More interesting. "How would a hardship be defined?"

"Inability to meet your other bills, or worse."

"Agreed. What is the item?"

"Direct conversion of mass to photons, via suppression of the spin on the neutron."



Peace waited.

It was almost half a minute before the Outsider replied. "Is there a working model?"

 "Yes. Not nearby; it was too obviously usable as a weapon. About a light-hour away, in stasis. If you
examine my ship, you'll see there's a vacant space near the fusion tube. The converter fits in there." Peace
waited a couple of minutes for a response—a huge interval for an Outsider—and finally said, "Are you
okay?"

"There is some difficulty in calculating your credit balance," the Outsider said. Its voice, which had been
pleasantly sociable, was now a clearly-synthetic monotone.

 "Enact an upper limit of the total value of information available, excluding personal questions," Peace said
at once.

"Thank you," said the Outsider in its usual tones. "What do you wish to know?"

 "I need my math checked," Peace replied. "I'm trying to design a ship that can travel at the second
quantum of hyperdrive, but the parts interactions are too complex for me to be sure I've worked them
out right, and whenever I build a computer big enough to do the work it promptly goes into a state of
solipsistic bliss."

"Transmit the converter design and the equations."

 "Right. . . . I had to invent 3-D matrices for the equations; I hope the notation is implicit enough." Peace
sent the data.

"It is," the Outsider said. "Interesting approach," it added.
Peace waited, and watched the Outsiders.

They were linking their tendrils together, as she expected.



 It was a difficult problem, requiring network processing. Technically, doing this before a customer
qualified as giving away personal information; but the Protector wouldn't havecome here if it hadn't
figured out that Outsider families linked up mentally sometimes.

 The technique of cubic matrices would have paid for that knowledge anyway. It simplified problems that
normally required vast computations. However, it in turn was being unavoidably given away. Information
exchange of this value normally occurred only during prenuptial adoptions—Peace Corben was sparing
no pains to ingratiate itself. The possibility that a Protector would not have worked these concepts out in
advance was considered only in order to dismiss it, for the sake of thoroughness.

 The motor design was unusually compact for what it was meant to do—it would fit into a prolate
spheroid 150 feet wide by 200 long. This was accomplished by using hyperwave pulses instead of
electronic ones to regulate it, so there was a failsafe of sorts: if it was switched on in a region where
space was excessively curved, it wouldn't make the ship disappear into a tangent continuum—it would
simply blow all its circuits and destroy the motor. The really tricky part of the design was the throttle: an
interrupter that flickered the field state between the first and second hyperdrive levels, allowing speed to
vary from 120 to 414,720 times the speed of light. There was a risk of affecting the hyperwave control
pulses with the changes in field state, so the signal generators were fed power in inverted rhythm, to
exactly counter this. The question was whether the transition waveforms could be precisely matched and
simultaneous. The whole concept of simultaneity was an uncomfortable one to Outsiders, which was
another reason for preferring travel at sublight speeds; but other races seemed to like it a lot.

 After long minutes of work, the network disassembled, and the Outsider told Peace Corben, "Your
reckoning is correct. However, the mechanism will need retuning at regular intervals, as natural
radioactive decay will alter compositions unpredictably."

"Thanks, I was planning on using isotopically pure materials."

"The incidence of quantum miracles in such is anomalously high," the Outsider warned.

"Isit. That's interesting. Any idea why?"

 "Many theories, none capable of accurate prediction. There is considerable documentation of the effect
in all isotopes, however. Do you want it?"

"I do, but I'd better not take it. It sounds like something that would occupy all my unused attention.
Thanks for the warning. What's the charge?"

 "None. It is not personal, and therefore you are entitled to it. Neutron conversion offers a means of
rejuvenating stars and thus extending the life of the Universe, and potentially that of all species living here.
Volunteering information you might find useful merely simplifies the process of paying a fair price, within
the ceiling you set."

 There was a pause as the Protector absorbed this. "I see. . . . In a similar spirit of courtesy I suggest that
any information you provide me that you hope to sell within, say, sixty light-years from here, be tagged as
such, so I don't spread it around and screw up your market."

"Many thanks. Do you need any other information?"

 "Undoubtedly," the Protector replied, "but I don't know what yet. I can find this starseed again when I
do know. You can keep the relay, in case you have to leave the starseed's vicinity—you can mark it with
an encrypted message saying where you've gone."

"Why would we have to leave?" the Outsider said, unable to think of a compelling reason.

"If I knew that, I wouldn't have to leave you the relay."

 That was reasonable. "Very well. Are you aware that your converter could be adapted to suppress the
spin on the proton?"

 "Certainly, but I don't need yet another kind of large bomb. It'd annihilate the generator. Unless I
beamed two partial fields and had them intersect—which seems like a lot of trouble, for not much more
result. Here are the coordinates for the working model."

"Thank you."

Neither of them saw any necessity for formal goodbyes.
                                                ***

Peace hadn't eventhought of rejuvenating stars. The converter beam was a statistical effect, and beyond
a certain dispersion of the cone it simply didn't work; but partial fields intersecting in a star's core would
do a decent enough job of cleaning it out, as slowly as you liked. Warming the core would expand it, and
since it would be ridiculously difficult to do so symmetrically there would be massive convection,
extracting trapped fossil heat and delaying helium ignition. Sol could be restored to full luminosity in time
to keep it from turning red giant. The star was plainly older than current theory supposed; but then, so
was the Universe.

She moved off a ways in hyperspace, dropped out and put her arsenal back together, then continued to
her primary base at 70 Ophiuchi. The old homestead.

 It was a binary star, and her birthworld, Pleasance, was at one of the system's Trojan points. By rights it
should have been a frozen ball of rock, but evidently some 25,000 centuries or so back a Pak Protector
had added most of the system's asteroidal thorium and uranium, and they'd been soaking in and giving off
heat and helium ever since.

 Her base was in the dustcloud at the other Trojan point. At 36 A.U. from Pleasance, it was never visited
after the first colonists' survey—nothing there worth the trip. Peace found it especially handy because it
was easy to reach from hyperspace—it was outside the system's deflection curvature. It was also handy
for spotting arriving Outsiders, as it was the human system closest to the galaxy's center.

 There was a human intruder when she got there. A kzin would have used a gravity planer, which would
have roiled up the dust. Other species wouldn't have come here. The ship was hidden in one of the
shelters, but the heat of its exhaust was all through the dust. Not a roomy ship; the heat patterns indicated
sluggish maneuvering.

Peace had a look inside the main habitat before docking. Buckminster—a cyborg kzin once known as
Technology Officer, who had enjoyed her unending stream of gadgets so much he'd stuck with her when
she relocated his companions—was in his suite, whose visible entrance was sealed from the outside. He
had evidently been coming out to raid the kitchen while his putative captor was asleep, as he had put on
some weight. At the moment he was reading a spool and having a good scratch. The intruder was at a
control console in the observatory, monitoring her arrival. He had a largely mundane but decent arsenal,
including a pretty good bomb.

 Peace took over the monitor system, told it lies, suited up, had her ship dock on its own, and used the
softener to step through the hull. She jumped to the observatory, came through the wall, reached over his
shoulder to pluck the dead-man detonator out of his hand, and stunned him. It was a good detonator: it
took her a couple of seconds of real thought to figure out the disarm.

When she opened her suit, the man's smell was severe. She'd been away for a couple of weeks, and that
wasn't long enough for him to get into this condition, so he'd arrived filthy. He must be deranged.

She restored the console, then called her associate. "Hi, Buckminster, I'm home. You leave me any
butter?"

 His reply began with a chuckle. With the telepathic region removed from the brain, a kzin was
remarkably easygoing. "I only had a few pounds. Is our guest still alive?"

"By the smell he could be a zombie, but I'll take a chance and say yes. How come you didn't disarm
him?" she asked, though she knew; she also knew Buckminster would want to say it, though.

 "I didn't want totouch him," Buckminster confirmed. "Besides, I didn't think it would make him stop
fighting, and I didn't want to have to explain bite marks on a human corpse."

"Difficult to do when you're swollen up with ptomaine, too. Come to the observatory and sort through
his stuff. I'll be cleaning him up."

"You humans show the most unexpected reserves of courage," Buckminster remarked.

 As she stripped, washed, and depilated the man, the remark seemed progressively less likely to have
been a joke. There was a significant layer of dead skin, and the smell of him underneath it was actually
somewhat worse. He must not have bathed in months, if not years.

Getting the hair off his face confirmed an impression: she'd seen him before. He'd been one of the
psychists at her mother's prison. Peace hadn't actually met him, and Jan Corben hadn't given his
name—she'd called him Corky. He was evidently a survivor of the kzinti occupation of Pleasance, and
had probably witnessed some awful things. Peace didn't spend much pity on him—she'd been her
mother's clone, created to be the recipient in a brain transplant like many before her, and she had yet to
hear a worse story.

Once he was clean, he was also pretty raw in spots, so Peace had to spray some skinfilm on, to hold
him while she programmed the autodoc. This took her almost half an hour, as she'd never expected to
have a human breeder here, and she had to start from scratch. When she was done she stuck him in, then
washed herself and went to see how Buckminster was doing.

He was having a great time. He'd taken Corky's arms to the small firing range (the big one was
necessarily outside), where he had laid them out in a long row and was methodically using them to
perforate targets of various compositions. "Interesting viewpoint he has," Buckminster told her. "No
nonlethal weapons, but not many random-effect ones. This man wants to kill in a very personal way."

"He talk to you much?"

 "Nothing informative. 'Go there, do that, you baby-eater.' Made eye contact and grinned a lot. Seemed
to bother him that I didn't get hostile."

"I expect so. Did you explain?" Peace said, amused.

"No, the baby-eater remark offended me, so I just let him pant."

"Sweat."

"Sweat? Yes, that would mean the same thing, wouldn't it?"

 "Not quite. A human letting someone else work off his foul mood on his own doesn't need as much
self-control," Peace pointed out. "So there's less satisfaction involved for us. Well, I'd better check his
ship. Want to come along?"

"If it's as big a mess as he was I'll need my suit."

"I'll put mine back on too," Peace agreed.

 There was only one boobytrap; it was in the airlock, and Buckminster spotted it too. The ship only had
deck gravity in the exercise room, and that was turned off. There wasn't any debris floating about, but
surfaces were dirty and smeared, and the air plant wasin extremis . The ship's arms looked like he'd
tried for the greatest lethality for the money: there was a turret with two disintegrators, plus and minus, to
slice targets open with bars of lightning; and torpedo tubes that fired Silver Bullets, a weapon the
Wunderlanders had devised at the end of the Third War but never got to use. These were
all-but-invisible pellets of stasis-held antihydrogen, stasis shutting down on impact—the blast would
punch through thick hullmetal, and the surplus neutrons from the destroyed atoms would flood a ship's
interior. "What a stupid concept," Buckminster said. "That'd ruin everything but the hull. You'd have to
rebuild the ship almost completely for any sort of prize."

"Though it is an excellent killing device," Peace said.

"If that's all you want."

"It's allhe wants, and it's his ship."

"It's still stupid. What if he had a chance at a better ship?"

Peace shrugged—which, given the swollen joints of a Protector's shoulders, was a very emphatic
gesture—and said, "I doubt he intends to live long enough for it to matter."

"Urr," Buckminster growled, which from a kzin qualified as tactful acknowledgment.

"I agree it's unusually stupid," Peace added, aware that he might not have understood that.

 They searched the ship without finding further portable weapons, which made some sense if he was on a
suicide mission—he'd hardly go back for more. The only question was, what was he doinghere ? "Did he
say what he was doing here?" she said, realizing Buckminster wouldn't mention it unless it came
up—small talk was "monkey chatter" to kzinti, and Peace judged this was not an unfair assessment. It
probablydid derive from primate chattering.

"No, he wanted to know whatI was doing here."

"What did you tell him?"

"That I was a deserter."

 Peace, who had never thought of it in exactly that phrasing, blinked once. Then she said, "What did he
say to that?"

"Eventually, 'Oh.' Then he locked me away in my dank and lonely prison."

 "Uh huh," said Peace, who judged that if a delay in her trip had extended Buckminster's durance vile to
six months he'd have gotten too fat to sneak back into his cell. "Okay, let's see what's behind the fake
bulkhead."

 Buckminster did a good job of hiding his surprise when she opened the wall, though it took him a while
to realize that that partition had had no fixtures, fittings, or access panels on either side, and therefore had
no reason for existing in a one-man ship.

 The interior was a shrine. Correction: a monument. There were pictures of three women, two men, and
several children at progressing ages, but there were also single pictures of 51 other humans, almost all
male, each with a neat black X inked onto the forehead. Peace recognized 22 of them as officials during
the kzinti occupation, and had seen news stories about two of those and four of the other 29, reporting
their accidental deaths. All six had struck her as being well-concealed homicides. It seemed probable that
the entire 51 were dead collaborators, who had all contributed in some way to the deaths of the
psychist's spouses and children.

Buckminster got it almost as soon as she did. "I'm impressed," he said. "It's hard to killone human being
without being found out. I still can't understand how you can tolerate the constant monitoring."

He didn't mind her monitoring him, so she said, "With humans it's actuallyless unpleasant if it's a stranger
doing it."

"Oh, thanks, now it makes perfect sense."

"Glad I could help."

 They blinked at each other—a grin was inappropriate for him, and impossible for her, though the broad
gash of her beak partook of a certain cheerful senile vacuity—and closed the place back up before
leaving. "Cleaning robot?" Buckminster said as they passed through the airlock.

"Sure. Have to tweak the programming."

"I'll do that. You can get to work on your new ship."

 Peace nodded, pleased with his intelligence. Obviously, things had gone well with the Outsider: she'd
come back. "Have you decided what to do after I leave?"
 "Go to Home and make a fortune as a consulting ecologist with what you've taught me, then start a
family somewhere else. Sårng would be good."

"Don't know it," she was startled to realize.

 "No reason to, it's at the far end of kzinti space. Atmosphere's a couple of tons per square inch, they've
been trying to kzinform it from floating habitats for about a thousand years, I think it was. I thought I
could move things along."

Peace shook her head. "That'll mostly be carbon dioxide. Even without the impact and combustion of
hydrogen for oceans, there's millennia of red heat latent in carbonate formation."

Removing his suit, Buckminster was nodding. "I had an idea from Earth news. Transfer booths are
getting cheap enough for something besides emergencies, so I thought: refrigeration." He looked at her
quizzically. "I don't think I've ever mentioned this, but are you aware that you hop up and down when
you hear a new idea you really like?"

"Yes. Were you thinking convection, or Maxwell's Demon?"

 "Both in one step. Transmitter in the atmosphere, receiver in orbit. Only the fast molecules get
transmitted, the rest are pushed out and fresh let in. Dry ice comes out near true zero, slower than orbital
speed, and falls in eccentric orbit to make a shiny ring. Less heat arriving, and the gas returns to the
atmosphere very gradually for slow heat release. You're doing it again."

 "I know. Suggestion: sendall the molecules in the transmitter, and draw the momentum shortage from the
adjacent atmosphere. Faster turnover, massive downdraft, more hot air comes in from the sides."

 Buckminster thought about it. Then he carefully hung up his suit, turned back to her—and hopped up
and down.
                                                  ***

Buckminster had the cleaner on monitor when Peace came up and said, "He's ready to come out. Want
to be there?"

"No."

"Okay," she said, and went off to the autodoc.

She'd naturally set it so Corky didn't wake up until it was opened, so the first thing he saw was a
Protector. He stared, appalled—shewas something of a warning notice for "Don't Eat Spicy Foods At
Bedtime"—and then, astoundingly, said, "You're Jan Corben's little girl?"

 Widening her eyes was just about her only option in facial expressions. "Now how did you arrive atthat
?" she exclaimed.

"You have her eyes," he said.

"It didn't actually work out that way," she said.

"Excuse me?"
"Not unless you can come up with a really good reason for breaking into my home."

 She watched him catch up. "Protector," he said to himself, just grasping it. Then he said, "Where were
you during the War?"

She scooped him out of the autodoc, shut it, and plunked his bare behind down on the lid, stingingly
hard. "You are an invader in my home," she said, looking up at him. "You may now explain yourself to
my full satisfaction."

"You can't kill a human breeder," he said skeptically.

"You're not a relative. Even if you were, invasive brain readout wouldn't damage your testicles."

For the first time he looked worried. "I thought it was a kzinti base. I wanted to steal a ship."

Peace blinked, then said, "Buying a ship would be recorded. You wanted to attack their home planet."

"To land. And kill the Patriarch."

Peace blinked again, then touched her caller and said, "Buckminster, come to the kitchen. You have to
hear this."

"Four minutes," came the reply.

 She hauled Corky off the 'doc by his elbow, and walked to the kitchen still holding his arm. He stumbled
a few times, then got his feet under him. She was exasperated enough to contemplate changing step just
to louse him up, but refrained, as it would be waste work to haul him the rest of the way. She had the
floor produce a seat, stuck him in it, and dispensed a few small dishes. "Eat," she said.

"What is this stuff?" he said suspiciously.

"Stewed rat heads, giant insect larvae, and assorted poisonous plants."

He scowled, but got the message—don't be ridiculous—and began eating. Presently he said, "This is
wonderful."

"Good, that'll be the neurotoxins kicking in."

He scowled again, shut up, and ate.

Buckminster came in soon, got something hot with alcohol in it, took a good gulp, and said, "What is it I
have to hear?"

"This fellow came to this kzinti base, that we're in, here, to steal a ship, to take to Kzin. Guess what he
wanted to do there?"

Buckminster shrugged. "Assassinate the Patriarch?"

"Right."
Buckminster took another gulp and said, "No, really."

"Really."

 Kzinti rarely laugh, and it is even rarer for a human to be present when it happens; but the sound was
similar enough to human laughter for Corky to stop eating and scowl. "What's so funny about it?"

 Buckminster had an analytical mind, for an evolved creature, so he sat down and made a serious attempt
to answer. "Many years ago," he said, "when I was first allowed out, still almost a kitten, I used to hunt . .
. birds, sort of . . . out on the grounds. I was very good at it. Some were bigger than I was, andall of
them wanted their meat even more than I did, but I devised snares and weapons and brought them down.
All but one. It was big, and kept going by higher than I could shoot an arrow, and I was never able to
find the right bait to lure it down. However, it had very regular habits, so I built a sort of giant crossbow
thing—"

"Ballista," said Peace.

 "Thanks. A ballista, to shoot at it. Just to get the range, at first. As it turned out, I only got to fire it once.
The shot landed in a neighbor's grounds, stampeding some game. I was too little to know yet that there
was a world outside my sire's estate, which included things like other estates. And orbital landing
shuttles."

It took Corky a few moments to realize: "You were trying to shoot down a spaceship."

"With a crossbow. Yes."

"And my plan reminds you of that."

"Vividly. Almost perfectly." Buckminster was chuckling again.

Corky had been getting himself carefully poised for the last couple of minutes. Now he launched himself
over the edge of the table at Buckminster.

Buckminster threw the rest of his drink on the table.

 Corky's right foot came down in the liquid, and he spun sideways and tumbled the rest of the way.
Buckminster swung his mug into Corky's hip, knocking him aside, and Corky slid past him off the edge of
the table. He hit the ground about four feet away—then six feet away—then seven—then he rolled a few
more feet. After that he tried to get up a few times, but kept slipping.

 Buckminster got up and dispensed himself a towel, refilled his mug, and said, "You want a drink? It'll
reduce bruising." The reply he got wasn't articulate enough to be obscene. The kzin flapped one ear, and
went to mop up his first drink.

 When Corky had finally managed to get as far as sitting upright on the floor, Peace—who'd seen it
coming and known she didn't need to move—said, "Buckminster and I have been working together, and
workingout together, for years. He's a strategic minimalist, and he's got enough cyborg enhancements
that I hardly have to hold back. If he'd been holding your previous rude remarks against you, he might
have been mean enough to let you actuallyuse that Hellflare nonsense on him, and shatter your bones in
the process."
 Buckminster tossed the towel at the trash and told Corky, "What's on you is your problem. Likely to
remain so, judging from your past habits. Do you use a name, or just mark things?"

Corky scowled again, evidently his default expression, but said, "Doctor Harvey Mossbauer."

"Doctor?"Buckminster exclaimed in disbelief. "What kind of a doctor are you supposed to be?"

"I'm a psychist."

Buckminster was speechless for the fifth time in the twenty-eight years Peace had known him, and that
was counting when she'd first met him and shot him in the head. "He really is," Peace confirmed. "My
mother was one of his inmates. She called him Corky. One of her puns." Buckminster looked
unenlightened, so she added, "Moss grows on trees. 'Bauer' is Wunderlander for 'farmer.' A moss farmer
wouldbe a tree. Cork is a kind of tree bark."

An appalled exclamation from the floor indicated that Corky had just gotten it, after something like forty
years since he'd first heard it. The wordless exclamations went on for a while.

Buckminster put up with a couple of minutes of it, then went to the dispenser and got some Irish coffee.
He handed it to Corky, who said, "I don't drink," and took a swig.

"Do you know how many assassins try to kill the Patriarch each year?" Buckminster said, beginning to
be amused again.

"No," Corky grumped.

 "Neither does he. Most don't get as close as the horizon. I did security contracting before I joined the
military. There have been two Patriarchs assassinated in the history of the Patriarchy. The more recent
was about twelve hundred years ago, and it was done with a thermonuclear warhead, arriving at
relativistic speed to overload the palace shielding. The design defect was corrected during repairs to that
wing, by the way."

"For a fearless leader of 'Heroes,' he sure puts a lot of defenses around him," Corky said.

Buckminster looked at Peace. "Was that supposed to offend me?"

"Yes," she said. "You can scream and leap anytime."

 "I'll make a note on my watch. The Patriarch doesn't put the defenses around himself. The rest of us do
that. This leaves him free to deal with serious matters, like settling disputes or conquering the universe."

"Or discrediting religious cults," Peace said cheerfully.

Buckminster's tail lashed, and his ears closed up for a moment. Then he reopened them and said, "I
never really understood that you were going to make himthat crazy."

"The Patriarch?" said Corky, startled.

"No, Kdapt-Preacher," Buckminster said.

"But—"
"Not the original, a crewmate of mine. Before he was Named, his title would have translated as
Manexpert. He took the pacifist's Name to make people think he was a harmless lunatic."

Corky looked interested. "You know, I don't believe I've ever heard a kzin title of Expert before."

 "Usually a kzin who's that good at something already has a partial Name. Manexpert was a little too
weird. He identified with his subject matter—to the point where he tried to confuse the God by praying in
a disguise made of human skin."

"What?"

"He thought Peace was a divine avenger who'd mutinied, and decided the Fanged God was on your side
but could be gotten around. He had some technology Peace had built him, so he convinced a lot of kzinti.
The Patriarch had to kill him personally, and barely managed before Kdapt-Preacher could killhim ."

"Too bad," said Corky.

 Peace spoke up. "If he'd won the duel, the first the human race would have heard of it would have been
a simultaneous attack on every star with humans on its planets. Flares from relativistic impacts would
keep everyone busy coping with heat, and they could pick off worlds one by one."

"And where would you bethis time?" Corky said, repressing fury.

 "For the Patriarch to lose that duel I would have had to be years dead," she said. "I spent a lot of
effort—more than you're equipped to comprehend—making changes in kzinti society, opening minds,
getting precedence for some cultures and taking it from others. There won't be another attack on
humanity, by this Patriarch at least."

"'Cultures,' plural?" Corky said.

Buckminster looked at Peace. "I should have bit him," he said.

"You'd have expired in convulsions."

"I may anyway. —Have you bothered to learnanything about the enemy you're planning to kill? What
do you think the Patriarchy isfor ?"

"'The purpose of power is power,'" Corky quoted.

 Buckminster's ears cupped. Then they curled tight, and reopened with a snap that must have been like
thunder to him, and cupped again. Then he said, "I think that may literally be the stupidest thing I've ever
heard."

"People who have power want to keep it and try to get more," Corky said.

 "I understood you. The purpose of power isaction . They try to get more because they keep seeing
more things they can almost do. Kzinti are not a tribal people, which is one thing that worked in your
favor in the Wars. We argue a lot, and fight almost as much. We wouldnever have entrusted the
Patriarchy with power over the rest of us if there was any alternative."
Corky narrowed his eyes. "'Entrusted'? It's a hereditary monarchy," he said suspiciously.

 Buckminster blinked. "And before a human is sworn in as a government official, he has to give homage
to a flag. Tell me, before you became a psychist, did you have to actuallylearn anything, say about
symbolism and rituals for example?" Peace kept an eye on him—sarcasm was one thing, but when
Buckminster got rhetorical it meant he was really angry—but when Corky didn't answer, he just went on,
"You seem to be under the impression that the Patriarch is someone whose primary qualification is the
ability to beat up everybody else, like a medieval human king. The Patriarch is called that because he has
a lot of sons. The firstborn isn't automatically the heir—less than half the time, I believe—"

"Thirty sixty-fourths and a little," Peace said.

 "Thanks. The heir is chosen to be the best available leader at the time. A good deal of medicine is the
result of many occasions of trying to keep an aged Patriarch alive long enough for a really smart son to
come of age. The principal attribute of a good leader is stopping fights."

That finally got through Corky's skull. "Stopping fights? It's not divide and rule?"

"In a civilization with fusion weapons?" Buckminster exclaimed.

"Aren't they all under government control? Human weapons are."

 "Of course they're not! Neither are human weapons. Humans must have half a million private
spaceships—" He paused, and both of them looked at Peace.

"Close enough," she said, amused, "carry on."

 "Each has a fusion drive that can carve up a city. And the weapons supposedly under government
control are each controlled by some individual."

"Very few people have the authority to use them," Corky protested.

"An enormous number have theability to useone . Look at your own ship's arsenal. The Patriarchy is a
means of preserving civilization, by giving us an absolute arbiter we can't help but respect."

"What happens to kzinti who won't listen to reason? Organ banks?" Corky said curiously.

 "Very few kzin cultures have tolerated cannibalism in any form," Buckminster said with frost in his voice.
"Organ banks and property taxation are major reasons why human slaves were regarded with such
contempt. Normally we establish degrees of rank and the rights of each rank—we do have thousands of
generations of experience dealing with slave species."

Corky scowled again, but said, "So are they executed?"

"No, they're sent out with the conquest troops."

Corky became very still. "My family was eaten to make the Patriarch's job easier?" he said quietly.

"Oh, no," Buckminster assured him. "People were getting frantic for revenge. We'd neverlost before.
We didn't know the routine, either. The first treaty was seen as an incredibly naïve act by humanity, giving
us the opportunity to rearm and prepare another attack. Of course, you were familiar with the concept,"
he added dryly. "The first three treaties were also disastrous in terms of reparations. By your standards,
our emissaries had no concept of negotiation. In fights between kzinti cultures, negotiations tend to
consist of demonstrating to your opponent that you can destroy him, then getting whatever tribute you
demand. The fourth treaty was much better, but that was Peace's doing, directly and indirectly."

 Corky looked at her, scowling again, and before he could speak Peace said, "Get up, go wash, and
return to eat."

Once Corky was out of the room, Buckminster said, "If you keep him I'm not cleaning up after him."

"Hm!" said Peace, a one-beat chuckle, which qualified, for her, as uproarious laughter. "No, no more
pets."

"Good. Since you sent him out, am I correct in supposing you don't want him told why the Fourth War
was so short?"

"Yes. He demanded an explanation of why I hadn't come and killed all the kzinti on Pleasance."

 "Ah." Buckminster had occasion to know that Peace didn't take orders. "What are you going to do with
him?"

"Clarify his thinking," she decided, and rose. "You should eat, too."

"Where are you going?"

"To get him away from the airlock."

 "Good," Buckminster said. "If you don't catch him in the act he won't learn." When she gave him a
sidelong look he just waggled his ears at her.

 The brain of a Protector is interconnected well enough that there is no need to talk to oneself to keep all
the regions clearly informed. This didn't keep Peace from feeling the urge, though. She did shake her
head as she walked.

 Corky, still sticky, had the lock panel open, the links right, and the dogs back, and was pulling up the
release lever without result, muttering, "Why won't it open?"

 "It weighs about a ton," Peace said, and allowed him to hit her five times before giving him a fingertip in
the ganglion below the left ear. While he attempted to curl up around that, sideways, she restored the
panel and replaced the dog lever, then got out an injector she'd scaled down for breeder skin and gave
him a local. When he relaxed, she said, "The power assist is disabled. Buckminster and I can use it, but
you're too weak."

That word shocked him, as well it might—his ship's exercise room was set at three gees. "What are you
going to do?" he said.

"In a few months I'm going out to assist the Titanomachia Fleet."

"I mean—the what fleet?"

"Titanomachia. Classical reference. Depending on genes, demographics, and the incidence of adequate
body fat, somewhere between one hundred thousand and five hundred thousand human Protectors left
the colony world Home about two and a half centuries back, in ramships, to fight an invasion of probably
fifty million Pak Protectors."

 Corky's eyes grew huge, and the rest of his face got yellowish and blotchy, so she gave him an injection
for shock. His lips moved silently, to the wordsfifty million , just once before his circulation evened out
again.

 Peace decided not to mention that that was the lower limit, assuming the Pak population to assay out at
no more than 72 percent Protectors—the other metastable ratio for the Pak homeworld was with a bit
over 94 percent Protectors, breeders numbering about twenty million in either case, giving an upper limit
of about three hundred million. As she didn't want him visualizing the entire population of Jinx, turned into
superintelligent homicidal maniacs, and coming to get him, she lectured, "Titanomachia is a term from
Greek mythology. It refers to the war in which the gods overthrew their ancient and powerful but less
competent Titan ancestors. As one human Protector with advance notice can outproduce several
thousand Pak Protectors, this title is entirely appropriate. Which is unfortunate, as I have some cause to
detest puns."

"Puns?" said Corky, lost.

 "The principal means by which Greek mythology, such as the Titanomachia, is known to modern people
is through the works of the poet, Homer. The Titanomachia Fleet is made up of thousands of Homers."

He winced. "You and your mother."

Peace picked him up by his neck, one-handed, and held him at arm's length for a moment; then she set
his feet on the deck and said, "If at some time you believe I have more than usual on my mind, that would
be a good time not to compare me to Jan Corben. As I have pointed out, massive brain damage will not
harm your genes." She let go his neck.

 He gasped and held it, coughing—and got over his fear, and the resulting intelligence, almost
immediately. "Her real name was Charlotte," he said, attempting dominance again.

"Charlotte Chambers," Peace said, nodding.

He hadn't known the last name. "Oh, she told you."

"No," she said. "All it took was logic and persistence and a ten-pound brain."
                                                   ***

Charlotte Chambers' name hadn't been in the historical database of Jan Corben's ship,Cockroach , but
had been included in the classified UN ARM records Peace had gotten on Earth—for a shockingly
cheap bribe, considering it was wartime. Peace had simply compared the two and found the only very
rich person her mother had chosen to delete.

There was corroborative evidence, too.

 Charlotte Chambers had been a latent paranoid with a generous trust fund, which was drained for
ransom when she was kidnapped. The kidnapper had been an organlegger, strapped for cash when the
Freezer Bill of 2118 filled the public organ banks to capacity. He had brainwashed her to keep her from
testifying against him, but had been caught when a highly original money-laundering scheme was exposed.
Once the means of brainwashing had been revealed, Charlotte had responded to treatment and begun to
function—and sued the organlegger. An outraged and horrified jury had awarded her a staggering sum,
which she invested with all the care her now-manifesting paranoia could provide.

She'd gotten around the Fertility Laws of the time by emigrating to Luna and bearing her own clone.

 The records had it that she died when her daughter was just short of voting age, in an accident that
required her body to be identified by its DNA. Her daughter had taken over her investments like she'd
been doing it for years, and presently moved to the Belt to raise her own clone. The fifth in this sequence
had bought a ramship and gone to live on Mount Lookitthat after her mother's tragic demise, and as
mountaineers had by then developed a society that tolerated very little government intrusion the trail was
lost.

 In the course of four and a half centuries, she'd have borne, and murdered, anywhere from twelve to
twenty daughters.Cockroach had had facilities for restoring a cell to a youthful state, and prepared eggs
in stasis.

 A curious corollary was that Peace Corben owed her existence—and the human race thereby owed
many millions, possibly billions, of lives—to some nameless twenty-second-century organlegger, who'd
provided money, idea, and madness to the woman who'd finally been known as Jan Corben. Human
history wasfilled with flukes like that: like the discovery of beer, so people would grow grain instead of
starving, once overgrazing had turned the forests of Southwest Asia and North Africa to desert; or the
introduction of fossil fuels and electricity right as the latest Ice Age was reaching its peak, keeping the
planet insulated with carbon dioxide just long enough for fusion and superconductors to take up the
slack. If there was some outside influence arranging these breaks, it was beyond Peace's power to
locate—beer had assuredly been discovered when stale bread was left in water too long, a bizarre error
when people were hungry, and steam engines and generators were made possible by the work of a
couple of young men who tinkered because they were too socially inept to find dates, in a culture and era
where women were prepared to marryanybody . There were plenty of other examples, equally
counterintuitive.
                                                       ***

"You'd make a fascinating monograph," Corky tried again.

"You wouldn't make a decent pair of knee boots. Too leaky. You had enough pimples to supply a
middle school."

"I was too busy to bother washing."

 "How about half a minute to tell the computer run the pressure down to two hundred millibars of pure
oxygen? Decompression breaks the pimples and cleans them out, and pure oxygen kills the bacteria. Sol
Belter trick, close to six centuries old. Of course, their singleships just lacked bathing facilities—they did
want to be clean. Speaking of which—" Peace hauled him along by the arm again, this time to the
shower. "Scrub all over."

"Why should I?" he demanded.

"Buckminster and I will both know if you don't," she replied.

"So what?"
 "Ever seen the body cleaner in an autodoc at work? It uses an elegant feedback system, doesn't miss a
speck, beat everything else off the market. There's thirty-one companies that make autodocs, but only
one subcontractor for the body cleaner: Snark Limited. I own it. I invented the cleaner. I can whip one
together in about ten minutes. It won't have a sleep inducer attached. Scrub all over."
                                                    ***

Buckminster was almost done eating when Corky got back to the kitchen, and watched him curiously as
Corky puzzled over the dispenser settings. Finally, with enormous reluctance and a veneer of
condescension, Corky turned and said, "How is clothing acquired?"

The kzin thought for a moment. "My sire used to skin and cure a ftheer for a new ammo belt every year,
but of course most people just go to an arms shop. Why?" he asked innocently.

"I mean, how is it acquired here?"

"It isn't. What would we do with it?"

"I want to get something to wear!" Corky said, façade cracking.

"Ah. You should have said. I can understand that; that thing must get caught in stuff all the time." He got
up and punched for a few hand towels. "These should be easy to tie together."

 Corky was now standing in a peculiar, slightly-hunched posture. "Aren't there settings for garments?" he
said.

"I can turn up the heat. Peace won't mind."

"It's warm enough. Something to protect skin."

 Buckminster also got him some ship's slippers and a hardhat. "You want knee or elbow pads?" he said,
but Corky didn't say anything. After some thought, Buckminster found a setting for a sewing needle and
some thread. Corky took these, nodded, and left.

Buckminster looked after him, blinking. Presently his ears waggled a bit.



 Peace was in the second biochemistry lab when Corky found her. She'd spent what added up to a
couple of thousand hours there since it was built, investigating her own body chemistry and duplicating
the useful compounds. "Don't touch anything, and especially don't open anything," she told him without
looking his way.

"Iam capable of functioning in a laboratory," he said.

Peace glanced at him. Slippers, hardhat, diaper. "Hm!" she said, blinking—Buckminster had obviously
been having some fun. "Since you know what a Protector is, you know what happened to Jack Brennan.
Do you know what happened to Einar Nilsson?"

"Smelled the roots and ate until his stomach burst," Corky said.

"He smelled one root, freeze-dried by vacuum, and gnawed one bite off before he could be subdued,
and aged to death in an hour. Nilsson was a good deal younger than you. Boosterspice doesn't correct
genetic age; it just overrides it. He cooked his brain; you could conceivably catch fire and burn to the
ground. Don't touch anything. Don't open anything. What do you want?"

In what would normally have been a good imitation of firmness, he said, "What are your intentions?"

"I'm not going to tell you."

"Why not?" he said in reasonable tones.

"That either."

"I'm entitled to knowsomething ," he insisted.

 "Why? What have you done with your knowledge since you killed the last collaborator? It was easy to
look them up, and the last died two years ago. Lose your nerve?"

As expected, that cracked him right down the middle. He staggered, righted himself, then looked around
helplessly. "I—" he said, then ran out of the room.

 He was coming along. Peace adjusted the proportions of what she was mixing, based on new
information.
                                                ***

Buckminster smelled him on the way into the observatory: very upset. It wasn't an ambush, though,
because Corky promptly said, "I can leave."

"No need. Need any help with the controls? Peace does tend to build for her own level of precision."

"I worked that out. I was just looking at Pleasance. What do you want to look at?"

 "The fourth Pak fleet," Buckminster said. "The human Protectors are just getting to it. Judging from the
debrís of the first three, the battle shouldn't be all that interesting, but the Pak may have worked out
something they can do."

"Fourth? How censored manyare there?"

 Buckminster cocked an ear at this archaism, but said, "Nineteen. Sixteen, now. The six furthest off show
some design innovations, like carbon-catalyst fusion—pure helium exhaust, thin and very fast—which
Peace says suggests the Pak have allowed the breeders to evolve a little more brainpower. They must
have been dismantling planets by then." He made a series of adjustments and displayed a view that was
between Orion's hypothetical feet. There were hundreds of dim red specks, no longer quite in hexagonal
array. "That's the second fleet. Passed us about thirty years ago. That glow is friction with interstellar gas.
Peace says the Homers must have sprayed boron vapor into its path and blown up the ram engines. That
would have been sometime during the Second War. Otherwise somebody around here would have
wondered about it." He switched the view toward Sagittarius—Peace would just have rotated it, but
humans had appallingly little trouble with wildly swooping views—and said, "The wreckage of the third
fleet's almost invisible in front of a nebula, and further from us anyway. Here's the fourth." Hundreds of
white specks, in nothing like hexagonal array. "They saw the first three go and tried to scatter, but the
lateral vector component is still tiny. Loosened up the fusion constriction—they should be blue—but they
don't know about the boron. Peace says the change won't save them. The rams won't all blow up, but
the gamma rays will roast the pilots. The fifth wave will have to be hunted. Isbeing hunted by now, and
may be gone—this view is about a hundred and twenty years old. Here, look!" he said, making Corky
jump. "Sorry," he said. "But look here. See that red dot? That's a human Protector's ship. They're
redshifted, so they don't show up well, but this one's right in front of a dark region. Not many of those
out that way."

"Am I a coward?" Corky asked abruptly.

It occurred to Buckminster, after he'd been staring for about half a minute, that if that had been a ruse, it
would have been a good one—Corky could have gotten in a couple of pretty solid licks with an ax
before he could have responded. "No, of course not."Though you may be the silliestperson I've ever
met, he reflected.

"It's been a couple of years since I did anything. Toward justice."

 Buckminster was certain he was expected to say something at this point, but couldn't think of anything
relevant. He attempted, "One of the things that used to confuse officials in treaty discussions is how some
of your terms have multiple and contradictory meanings. 'Justice' is a good example. What you've been
doing isn't what humans usually call justice—that tends to be more like Patriarchal arbitration. Killing the
humans who got your family killed is more like kzinti justice—though we'd want it to be publicly known.
Part of it is the idea that anyone else who considers duplicating the offense should feel very reluctant."

"Deterrence," Corky said. He was looking very intently at Buckminster.

"I think so. I've mostly encountered the human term in a political context, but it sounds appropriate."

Corky spoke slowly. "You claim I can't kill the Patriarch—"

"I'm not making any special claims. It just so happens."

"Right. . . . You're a kzin."

 Buckminster didn't see any reason to deny it. He'd watched transmissions of human gatherings, and
noticed that most of the attendees didn't look comfortable until someone had stood up and told them
things they already knew. It was a habit he suspected was related to why they kept defeating better
warriors. It made sure everybody did know. It was awfully tedious, though. He waited for Corky to go
on, then realized Corky was also waiting for something. He nodded. That seemed to do.

"What would you do to someone that killed your family?"

"I don't have a family."

"Supposing you did."

"I wouldn't let him."

 Corky was getting angry, though he kept his face and voice from showing it. "Suppose you couldn't be
there when he attacked."

"I'd have no business starting a family if I was going away," Buckminster said. Abruptly he realized that
Corky was taking his hypothetical reasoning as personal criticism, and said, "Kzinti females are nearly
helpless outside of childrearing."

That worked: Corky calmed down at once. "Oh yeah," he said. "Bad example. Suppose—"

"Are you trying to ask me what you should do to the Patriarch?" Buckminster interrupted.

" . . . I guess I am."

 "Nothing. You can't even get near the palace if he's in residence. And you can't get near him on visits of
state, either—his security force is much tougher than the fleet that invaded Pleasance."

 That fleet had crushed the planetary defenses in a couple of hours. "I see," said Corky, who seemed to
lose track of his surroundings after that.

Buckminster waited a little, then started zooming the view for the more distant fleets.
                                                   ***

Peace found Corky sleeping under a table in the kitchen, on top of seventy hand towels. She got herself
corn muffins and a crock of stew, brought up a seat, and began eating. Presently Corky said, "Why don't
you wear clothes?" irritably.

"Why don't you wear chain mail?" she replied.

"Chain mail isn't about keeping your organs of excretion out of sight," he said.

"No, it's about keeping the rest of your organs from coming into sight," she said.

 Evidently he understood the implicit comment:That's usually irrelevant, too. After a moment he said,
"Are those muffins?"

"Yes."

"They smell unusual."

 "It's maize. Didn't get sent out with any first-wave colony ships—lacks some amino acids. So it's sort of
an Earth specialty. Try one."

 She was handing it under the table when Buckminster came in. The kzin's tail lashed once, his ears
curled tight, and he blinked rapidly a few times and fled the room.

"What just happened?" Corky said indistinctly, around a muffin.

Peace waited until he swallowed the first bite. "He's been kidding me about keeping pets," she replied.

After a few seconds Corky burst out laughing.

The laughter went on too long, and when she moved the table and saw him weeping hysterically it was
no surprise—he was long overdue. When it started to exhaust him she got him a mirror and some more
muffins, these with honey.

His reflection calmed him in seconds, and he wiped his face and bit into a muffin. Once he'd swallowed
he said, "That's good. What's on it?"

Honey was unknown on Pleasance—bees steer by the sun. "Bug vomit," she said.

 He made a brief scowl and went on eating. Presently he got up and tossed the towels out, then worked
the dispenser. "How do I get a chair?" he said. She brought one up, and he said, "Why not just tell me?"
as he sat.

 "I don't want the place filled up with brooms," she said. It went right by him, as he hadn't gotten
acquainted with the entire seven centuries of recorded visual entertainment history. "You're not a coward,
you know," she added.

He stopped chewing. Then he resumed, swallowed, and said, "I didn't expect him to tell you."

 Another expression Peace had on tap was rolling her eyes. "Because it was between guys? I'd give a lot
to learn how to inhibit the human tendency to Identify With Everything. You're analien . It wasn't
important enough for him to tell me. This place is fully monitored. What else would you expect?"

" . . . I hadn't thought about it."

 Peace refrained from saying,Miraculously I conceal my astonishment . "What's happened is, you've
worked very hard, and you're tired enough that you're not completely crazy any more. So now you care
if you live or die."

"We don't like the wordcrazy ," Corky said.

 Peace paused, then leaned right, then left, to look carefully past him on either side. Then she sat straight
and laced her fingers. "Do your friends have any messages for me?" she said interestedly. "Or do they
only talk to you?"

Corky looked annoyed, which was a more participatory expression than the usual scowl. "Psychists," he
grumbled.

"Yes, I know that," she said patiently. "And I do like the word. It's to the point. You're not as crazy as
you were twenty-two years ago."

"I'm forgetting them," he whispered, haunted.

Peace shot him.

 The dart hit the thick pad of his left pectoral muscle, hard, and he screamed and went over backwards
out the right side of the chair, which of course didn't go with him. He came to his feet with dart in hand,
face bright red, and screamed, "What the hell was that for?"

"Memory," she replied.

 He stood glaring and panting for a long moment, then looked down at the dart. Then he threw it on the
floor. "Why didn't you justtell me and give me the shot?"

"Seeing as how you're so cooperative and such a good listener, you mean?"
Corky scowled. "So what happens now?" he said eventually.

"Now you eat," she said, and got up to toss out her dishes.

"I want some answers!" he roared.

"Emulating Richard Sakakida," she said, and left.

He was too baffled to follow her at once, and naturally after that there was no catching her.
                                                  ***

"Buckminster, is there—what are you doing?"

"Cleaning your ship."

Corky clearly had a lot of thoughts about that, most of them disagreeable. Finally he said, more or less
humbly, "Thank you."

"It'll all be on the bill," Buckminster said.

"Bill?" Corky said blankly.

"Joke. What were you asking?"

Corky shook his head a little. He seemed easily confused. "Can I get into the databank here?"

"You can't be serious."

"Just to look something up."

"Oh. Certainly. Let me shut this down." The cleaning robot was in an air duct at the moment, which
meant it could just be shut off—it wouldn't drift. "What did you need?" Buckminster said, fingers poised
over the screen.

"Richard Sakakida," Corky said.

Buckminster thought about it. Then he sent some commands, and handed Corky the screen. "You'd
better do it. Too many ways to spell 'Richard' in Hero."
                                                   ***

Richard Sakakidawas the name of an intelligence academy-ship in the Third War, and a
singleship-infiltration carrier in the Second—the same vessel. The name had been held by various people
over previous years, but the search for relevance went all the way back to the 20th century, to the war
that had established the UN's existence.

 Richard Sakakida, an American of Japanese ancestry, had washed ashore in Japanese-held territory
during the war and explained that he was a defector. After some torture to make certain that he wasn't
lying, he was accepted as a civilian servant. His work as a servant was exemplary, and he was soon
taken into the service of the local commanding officer. He was a fine valet, though not much of an
aide—when told to clean the CO's sidearm, he displayed a thorough ignorance of military matters by
polishing the exterior to a high shine, without taking it apart.
 In the course of his duties as a servant, he also acquired, and delivered to US Army Intelligence, the
entire Imperial Japanese order of battle: name and function of every division, where the men in each were
from, who their officers were, organization of the chain of command, and the overall war plan. That is,
what places would be attacked, what size and type of force would be used to do it, what contingencies
had been anticipated, and how they would be responded to. Once this was in American hands, the
Japanese never won another battle.

 In the Fourth War, the kzinti had won exactly one battle: the surprise attack on Pleasance. After that,
every attack force they sent anywhere had been ambushed by human fleets, usually within minutes of
entering a region where they couldn't use hyperdrive to escape. The forces guarding Kzin itself had
ultimately been drawn off by diversions, allowing individual stasis capsules of Hellflare troops to hit the
planet at hundreds of miles per second, unmolested. The Fourth War had lasted less than six years, from
the invasion of Pleasance to acceptance of the terms of surrender. The Patriarch had called for armistice
about a week after the arrival of the human commandos, who displayed an understanding of kzinti
anatomy rather better than that of most kzinti field surgeons. Peace Corben must have gone to Kzin at the
start of the War, gotten into their toughest security areas, and walked out with the entire military
database.

 A childless Protector could adopt the entire species; Peace Corben had done a fine job indeed of caring
for her wards. Decidedly better than a certain psychist.
                                                   ***

Buckminster flinched as Corky burst—almost exploded, really—into tears. He said, "You want me to
take that?" and reached for the screen.

Corky looked at him.

 Buckminster carefully drew back his hand. Corky was taut as a bowstring, and his face bore an
expression of kzinlike wrath. "I'll just go get a drink," Buckminster said, and kept his movements slow as
he got up and left.

Buckminster called Peace as soon as he was clear. "Corky's in death-seek," he said.

"That was quick."

"Oh. What did you do?"

 "Injected him with one of my witch's brews. He thought he was forgetting his family, so I put together
some stuff that'll let him call up old memories without swamping them with irrelevant associations."

"How did you managethat ?"

"I synthesized the things that let me do it," she said. "Do you want details, or did you have plans for the
next month?"

"I was thinking of eating and sleeping, which I'm sure would slow things down. What do we do now?"

"Have you gotten the Silver Bullets out of his ship?"

"Oh yes." He'd done that before starting the cleanup.
"Then you keep out of sight, and we wait for him to come see me."
                                                 ***

Corky was waiting for her in the kitchen when she went in for a scheduled meal. (As a breeder she'd
suffered from depression and hypothyroidism, so she was accustomed to eating whether she felt hungry
or not—yet another lucky break for humanity, since there was no tree-of-life growing where she made
the change to Protector.) He said, "I need to leave." Then he actually looked at her.

 Peace was wearing a knee-length singlet, in white, with the usual array of pockets down both sides to
the knees. There were black letters on the chest:




BECAUSE I'M THE
PROTECTOR,
THAT'S WHY!


 His fierce expression went blank with surprise, then developed into amusement and dismay—the latter
largely at the amusement. He cleared his throat superfluously, then said, "I need a pressure suit and a
schedule of the Patriarch's movements—I want to know when he'll be away from his palace."

"You've given up on assassination."

"Yes," he confirmed unnecessarily. "I still don't think it's a bad idea, but his successor wouldn't
understand. The trouble with kzinti is they're still too much in shock over losing. They don't take it
personally ."

"True," she realized, suddenly admiring his plan. "He won't be traveling for a few months yet."

"I have to get back in condition anyway, and practice with my lift belt, so the pressure suit first, I think."

"First we eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Don't make me cut up your meat for you."

That look of dismayed amusement returned. Corky shut up.
                                              ***

Less than a day later he was gone. Peace had gotten a tissue sample in the course of fitting the suit, and
was telomerizing some cells when Buckminster found her. "You let him go," the kzin said.

"Had to."

"Are those his cells? Are you cloning him?"
"Yes and no."

"What doesthat mean?"

 "Yes, they are, and no, I'm not. I'd been planning to provide infertile women of good character with
viable ova containing my original gene pattern, suitably modified to meet local fertility laws, and large trust
funds. I had enough for one or two Peace Corbens per human world. Now, though, I'm adding his genes
to the recipe. The paranoia can be retained as a recessive, and there'll be more variety in their
appearance."

"You're having children with him, you mean."

"Near as I can."

"Why?"

Peace looked up at him. "Same reason I had to let him go. He's a good father, Buckminster. Whether he
believes it or not—he's a very good father."
                                                ***

Harvey Mossbauer's family had been killed and eaten during the Fourth Man-Kzin War. Many
years after the truce and after a good deal of monomaniacal preparation, Mossbauer had landed
alone and armed on Kzin. He had killed four kzinti males and set off a bomb in the harem of the
Patriarch before the guards managed to kill him. . . . The stuffed skin was so scarred that you had
to look twice to tell its species; but in the House of the Patriarch's Past it was on a tall pedestal
with a hullmetal plaque, and there was nothing around it but floor. . . .

It's safer to eat white arsenic than human meat.




  The Hunting Park
Larry Niven
 October 20, 2899 CE


"Why do they call you 'white hunter'?"

 I smiled but didn't grin. "It's anyone from somewhere else who conducts hunting for sport in Africa. I
was born in Confinement Asteroid and raised in Ceres and Tahiti." He was wondering about my skin, of
course. The parts he could see, hands and face, are jet black, from moderately black American ancestry
subjected to three decades of raw sunlight in space and in the islands.

"Odd," said the kzin, but he waved a big furry hand, claws sheathed, dismissing the subject. Waldo had
ordered hot milk with black rum; he slurped noisily. I'd ordered the same. He asked, "Why is it taking so
long to arrange a safari?"

 "First rule is, everything takes forever when you're gearing up. When you're out in the field, everything
interesting happens before you can blink. That's when you find out what you forgot to take."

 We studied each other. Waldo was big for a kzin, maybe five hundred pounds, maybe eight feet four or
five inches tall. No chairs here could hold him; he squatted in a cleared space in a corner of the
restaurant. His fur was marmalade, with a darker stripe diagonally down his chest and abdomen that
followed four long runnels of scar tissue, and a shorter scar, also darkly outlined, that just missed his left
eye and ear. A thong around his neck held a few leathery scraps: dried ears, I presumed. He kept his
claws sheathed as carefully as I kept my lips closed. You don't show your teeth to a kzin.

 I hadn't volunteered for this. What sane person would? It was October of 2899 CE; I'd hoped to
celebrate my fiftieth birthday next year, when the century turned. I planned to quit the safari business and
write.

 Then again, who could turn this down? They were paying twice the going rate in Interworld stars, but
that was nothing compared to the publicity value. I was wearing some recording gear. We'd have the
whole safari on tape, right up to my death, if it broke that way, and my daughters would hold the rights. If
I lived, I'd have a tale worth writing.

 Waldo was examining Legal Entity Bruce Bianci Bannett, a tall, long-headed black human male
forty-nine years old, with yellow tattoos around the eyes and ears that make me look just a bit like a
leopard. I guessed what else he was looking for, and I said, "I don't have any really gaudy scars except
for the tattoos. It's because I'm careful."

 "I should be glad of that. LE Bannett, our permissions still haven't come through, and I see no kind of a
caravan forming."

"We'll have our permissions." This trip I wouldn't even need bribes; the United Nations had spoken. "I'm
having trouble getting bearers."

"Offer more money?"

 "Money isn't as powerful an argument here in Nairobi. I think they've lived too long with governments
that can just snatch it away. They're all a combination of socialist and bandit. A good story, that's a lure,
but a man only needs one fortune and one good story.

"But traveling with . . . there are four of you? With four kzinti, that's bad enough. You're not using guns?"

"No, not on a hunt. On a hunt we use only thew'tsai . You, though, you'll take a gun?"

"Several."

"Do not shoot another hunter's prey," Waldo told me.

 "My point was, bearers would usually count on all of us, me or any of my clients, to shoot a, say, a
leopard before he gets to the bearers. But there's only one of me, and you—you can'tthrow aw'tsai ,
can you?"

Again Waldo waved sheathed claws: a shrug.
 "So it's not even a spear. I've hunted with natives who use spears. They have a point. A spear doesn't
jam. So my bearers would risk you not being fast enough to save them, plus anything you might do in a
rage because you missed your prey."

"But we have these," Waldo said, and I saw his claws, three or four inches long, exposed only for a
moment. "Not just thew'tsai ."

"What do you want out of this, Waldo?"

 "Wave Rider and Long Tracks and I, we are brothers," Waldo said, "part ofStarsieve 's crew.Starsieve
seeks treasures of the cosmos using ship's instruments. I operate the waldos, of course, the little
hand-and-jaw-guided robots. It can be very dull work. We seek an adventure out of the ordinary here
on Earth. Kashtiyee-First has been our teacher and First Officer under Prisst-Captain. Both would gain
honor if we three gained partial names."

Names are important to kzinti. Most bear only the names of their professions. "Would this—"

"It would help. A hero's hunt is the story that defines him."

"What do you want to kill?"

"What have you got?" he asked.

 "Not much. The Greater Africa government is solid Green. They tell me what they can spare. Some
species are grown beyond the limits of the Refuge." I fished my sectry out of my pocket and tapped at it,
summoning the current list, just in case it had changed in the past two hours. Sure enough— "Cape
buffalo is off the list. If a Cape buffalo charges you, you hope you can duck. Elephants are out, of course.
We can have a lion . . . or all the leopards we want. Crocs don't offer much of a trophy, but again—"

"Why are the, rrr, Greens so free with leopards?"

 "We used to think leopards were scarce, even endangered. They're not. They're just shy, and really well
camouflaged, and they're everywhere. If a lion turns to human prey, he's generally got a reason. Maybe
he's hurt his mouth and can't hunt anything difficult. But a leopard, he kills for fun. Antelope, zebra, man,
woman, whatever turns up," I babbled, and suddenly realized— "Of course none of that might apply to
kzinti."

"What are the rules for kzinti?"

"Nobody's got the vaguest idea. We might not catch anything. Your scent might drive them all away."
Waldo didn't smell unpleasant; just really different. "Or bring everything in from miles around. Kzinti have
never hunted on Earth."

"More's the pity," Waldo said lightly.
 October 31, 2899 CE


 Waldo is the one who speaks Interworld. The other three have translators, and I carry one built into my
sectry. In Africa everyone speaks a different language, but with kzinti involved—I'd better buy a spare.

 Wave Rider and Long Tracks bear wildly different markings from Waldo, though they're near as tall and
about as massive. Wave Rider's a darker marmalade with no noticeable scars; he keeps his sectry open
a lot, reading whenever things turn slack. It's Singapore built, with oversized keys. Long Tracks is sheer
yellow, barring minor scarring close to the eyes and a missing ear. He wears a thong with one ear on it.
Kashtiyee-First is smaller and older, brown and orange marked with a lot of white. No thong.

We've packed everything on floaters. Floaters go almost anywhere, but there are places where we'll
have to carry everything. These kzinti will be carrying their share and the bearers' too, because we've got
no bearers.

I don't worry about their stamina. Most of the kzinti-occupied worlds have Earth gravity or higher, and
my clients look tough. They can port their own weight, but will they? Will they follow orders? I always
worry about that. There's no sane limit to what a man is likely to do with a charged gun.

 But they aren't men. Should I worry about those blades? In a kzin hand aw'tsai looks like a long knife
crudely forged. In mine, it's an overbuilt sword. If they started swinging wildly—well, we'll see.

 They've brought more medical gear than I'd expected given their macho background. It looks like
equipment from a ship's infirmary. FromStarsieve , of course. Where on Earth would they get kzinti
medicines and stretchers? Kzinti forces never managed to invade Earth, not in any of the four interstellar
wars (plus "incidents") that ended more than two hundred years ago.

They carry antiallergens and diet supplements. Earthly life doesn't quite fit their evolution.

 Guns and ammunition: well, those are all mine. I can't carry everything I might need. One of the kzinti
might have to be my bearer, but first I'd better test them out a little. It can turn sticky when the bearer
runs up a tree with your gun.

Food: I've packed oranges and root vegetables and dry stuff. We'll make do with less cookware than
usual, some canned goods, sugar, flour, condiments and so forth. That's all for me. Clients eat mostly
meat, and we shoot that on the trail. Kzinti eat nothing but raw meat. I'll be doing all the cooking.

 And of course I'm carrying nine kilos of sensory equipment spotted over my head and body: cameras,
sound, somasthetic, scent.

Cape buffalo are back on the permitted list. I'll get them one before the Greens pull him off again.




 November 3, 2899 CE
Three days into the brush. We camped by a river. It's low and yellow, and we're filtering the water. The
kzinti drink a lot of it. I'm not carrying booze. It's hard on me, but I don't wantthem drinking.

Wave Rider wants to know why it's taking so long to get anywhere interesting. I waved around and told
him to pick out a transfer booth for me. Long Tracks laughed at him, teeth showing. I've never seen a
kzin's killing gape. I hope I can recognize the difference in time.

 In fairness to Wave Rider, there are a few transfer booths out here, and we white hunters tanj well know
where each of them is. They're big enough to pass a mini ambulance. We use them for medical
emergencies, including veterinary work. I usually don't tell clients about them.
                                                   ***

Waldo's been attacked by a lion.

 He was sleeping outdoors. We set up a palisade, of course. I pitched my tent not too close so that I can
cook without their complaining. Smoke my pipe, too.

 I was updating my log when I heard the yowling. I got out there, armed, and barely glimpsed the lion
smashing out through the branches of the palisade. I fired and got no joy of it.

 Wave Rider's right front claws are bloody, but so's his ear, torn half off. He swung at the lion and
scored, and the lion swung back, then kept going. But Waldo looks worse. The lion was stalking him. It
found him asleep and attacked in a lion's favorite fashion: it tried to bite through the kzin's skull. Do that
to a man, the prey barely twitches and the lion can just haul him away.

 Waldo is big and the lion may be smaller than usual, though he sure didn't look it in mid leap in the
moonlit dark. The beast's fangs didn't get through Waldo's skull. They tore off half his scalp. Waldo came
awake with a screech, and I expect Leo had never heard anything like that.

 I used antiseptic on both injured. They put up with it, but Waldo assures me that Earthly bacteria have
little interest in kzinti. Waldo's half-scalping is the subject of much merriment.




 November 5, 2899 CE


 We're looking at a herd of Cape buffalo, maybe a hundred. The buff have made a nice comeback.
"Once upon a time they were near extinction," I say.

Kashtiyee-First asks, "These are herbivores?"

"Yeah, grass eaters, but they're not rabbits and they're not puppeteers—"

"LE Bannett, we're familiar with oversized herd beasts who charge in numbers."
"How do you handle them, LE Kash?"

"Run. Hide. Climb rocks or trees. How shall we approach these? We want only one head."

"Right. Now that you've got the scent we could maybe track down a rogue. Or— How about that old
bull grazing off to the right? We get his attention—"

"Yes, approach using that channel as cover. Was that once a stream?"

"Yeah. Will be again."

 Kashtiyee-First speaks to the others. They move off on all fours and low to the ground. I'll stay where I
am, on high ground. If a gun's needed, I'll need to see why. And never shoot a kzin's prey. And while I'm
holding my sectry to make this recording, I'll just check the lists.

Tanj dammit.

 Stet. First I tap the open code. Answer, futz you! I can barely make out motion, but they've nearly
reached the old buff. Their sectries must be buzzing—

Nowthere's motion. It looks like the kzinti are fighting each other.
                                                    ***

And it's night, and Kashtiyee-First may be dying, and it's been one strange day.
                                                  ***

I ran toward the kzinfight, but I zoomed my specs too. I was clear on this: I sure didn't want to get
between two kzinti in a fight. If I saw the wrong thing I might want to run the other way. I'd already
marked the best trees.

 Too many kzinti?That wasn't a kzin! It was a she lion, and another, and a black-maned male, all dancing
with the kzinti. The lions were bigger. That dry riverbed had been good cover for lions, too. Now Waldo
and the male were in a wrestling match, rolling over in the dust. Claws andw'tsais swung. The male lion
wrenched loose and turned tail, and the old buff charged straight into the fray.

Waldo dashed after the lion.

Kashtiyee-First saw the buffalo just in time to face its charge. He swing hisw'tsai overhead and split the
bull's forehead just between the horns. The bull kept coming. I saw the kzin officer bowled over, lost to
view.

The lions were in full flight. The buffalos gathered their strength, seven or eight bulls in front of the
pattern, then cows, youngsters in the center.

Long Tracks answered my call. "We're busy."

"Don't kill any more buffalo. They're off the list."

"Repeat. The rest have to hear." He turned his volume up.
 I stopped near a mopane tree, nearly winded. "Buffalo are protected again. Kashtiyee-First, you killed in
self-defense, but it ends there—"

All seven adult bulls charged.

 At least the lions were gone. The kzinti began dodging, weaving, leaping. Wave Rider was on a bull's
back, then off again. I'd got up the mopane tree somehow, and I watched, gun ready, license forfeit if I
fired. The kzinti didn't seem to be in trouble. It was a dance, it was a wrestling match—what was
Kashtiyee-First doing? Running backward, easing out of the fray, headed toward my tree. The others
saw and imitated him, leading the angry males further and further, until in ones and twos they gave up and
rejoined the herd.

Then Kashtiyee-First collapsed.
                                                    ***

I want to call for an ambulance. The kzinti won't have it, not even Kashtiyee-First. The old bull gored him
deep on that first charge. The horn left an oozing hole in mid-torso, between Kash-First's crisscrossing
ribs, below the lung. The other kzinti are tending him. Antibiotics into the wound, a little microsurgery
around major blood vessels.

Kashtiyee-First says, "You must know better than to interrupt a hunt or battle with a cellphone call." The
others weren't even speaking to me on that point.

"The United Nations wants this hunt to go right," I tell them. "I think they put pressure on the locals to get
you a buffalo. But the locals don't like pressure, so they pushed back. I'm in the middle. Anyway, we'll
keep the heads." The male lion, too. Waldo killed it: tore its intestines out with his feet. He gets the head.
Long Tracks got a nice gouge from one of the buffs. So far so good, unless Kashtiyee-First dies.




                                                    ***

November 6, 2899 CE


Kzinti are impulsive.

Laughing at them would be bad.

Long Tracks jumped a porcupine. Just quick dumb reflexes, I guess. One of my cameras caught it.
We've spent half the afternoon pulling spines out of his face and one hand. Come dinnertime, I'll go off by
myself to cook. Laugh then. Otherwise I'm gonna die.
                                                   ***

November 8, 2899 CE
 We've been eating well. Under the Greens the veldt is in wonderful shape, much as it must have been a
thousand years ago, in Rudyard Kipling's time. Besides lion and buffalo we've found and killed impala,
capybara, some small stuff, and two hyena (which I did not eat). And leopard.

 Leopards are usually unexpected. I hadn't seen any spoor. I've been armed at all times because the gun I
carry is the only gun in the whole party.

 We were watching a wonderful sunset, all of us. I must have heard something. I turned around and a
leopard had launched itself at my throat.

 I lifted the gun and I'd probably have got it up in time, but Wave Rider leaned way out and caught the
leopard by the skin over his shoulders and swung him in an arc. I didn't fire because I would hit Wave
Rider, and then because Wave Rider was winning. Then I saw the second leopard, so I shot that one,
two for luck. What the hell, none of the kzinti had claimedhim .

 Wave Rider was juggling a yellow whirlwind; when he couldn't stop it clawing him, he just fell on it and
then bit its face off.

The twenty-gram bullets were those I'd picked for buffalo: big. My trophy is pretty badly messed up.
So's Wave Rider's. We're keeping the ears.

I didn't eat leopard; I shared it out. I didn't taste Waldo's lion either.

Wave Rider has some nasty scars. Waldo seems to like his well enough. The kzinti keep passing the
mirror around, and Long Tracks is grumpy because he hasn't been touched, barring tiny puncture
wounds like bad acne. I wish I hadn't brought the mirror.

 Kashtiyee-First shares a float plate with several heads. He can stand up but he can't walk. He doesn't
complain. The wound hasn't putrified, and he can use the great outdoor catbox without it killing him. The
wound looks clean.

The other float plate still has room for my gear and food.

They're talking about taking an elephant.
                                                     ***

November 9, 2899 CE


I showed them elephants. I didn't have much choice: they scented the spoor themselves, so we tracked a
herd of sixty. Now they've got the scent.

The kzinti killed a hippopotamus today. Fighting in water is not their thing, and there were crocs about,
but the hippo was up against kzinti mass.

They're jubilant now. The hippo fed us all. I like hippo. As usual I ate apart so they needn't smell roasted
meat.

I joined them afterward. I tried to explain that elephants werenever on the Green list. It isn't that they're
endangered, not any more. But their brains are as big as human brains, or bigger. They haven't developed
lawyers, like the cetaceans, but they've got some tool-using ability. They may well be intelligent.

 That doesn't impress Waldo. Futz, his forebears used to hunt humans. "UN law does not list killing of
elephants as murder."

 "It's the African Protectorate that can throw us out. It would end the safari. Have you hunted enough
already?"

I wish I hadn't said that. What if they decideyes ?
                                                      ***

November 11, 2899 CE


Morning, not yet dawn. They're gone, all but Kashtiyee-First. I'm surprised.

 I'm surprised that they got away without waking me. They must have gone around midnight, in silence. I
already know how well they see in the dark. I can picture them crawling off, bellies brushing the earth . . .

 Kashtiyee-First won't tell me anything. So I tell him. "Thing is, if my clients kill an elephant, they might be
exiled but not jailed. You have diplomat status. Nobody would really blame the white hunter for what
these clients might do. I might even keep my license."

"That is good. No kzin would blame us either. The lure is too great."

 "So all you'd lose is the next week or so of hunting. Still, I've got to track them. They're my clients, and
they don't know elephants."

"Are these tree eaters dangerous?"

"Beyond description. They've gotmass ."

"You're bluffing, LE Bannett. Elephants have never been on your permitted list. You never hunted them.
You only know what you read. History books. Wave Rider has a sectry, too." And he laughed, though it
hurt him.

I scouted around before I left.

 The three took only theirw'tsais and water bottles: at least I taught them that. I wonder if they expected
to sneakback ? Before I wake? On any normal safari I'd be up at four AM to prepare for the day's hunt.
These days I've been dogging it a little: kzinti don't need breakfast and don't need the day's gear set out
and explained to them.

 I found something disturbing. A lone lion lay up in the brush near us. It must have had a good view of the
camp. For a couple of hours last night I was asleep and alone but for the injured Kashtiyee-First. Where
is it now?

I offered Kash-First a rifle. His finger won't fit into the trigger guard, but his claw will.
                                                     ***

I've gotten here ahead of the hunt. It's a little past dawn.

They haven't attacked the herd. They're not that crazy, I hope. They have the scent; they tracked the
herd. They found the same traces I found later without the help of a kzinti nose. A rogue, an injured bull
has been living on the fringes of the herd.

 I'm recording him now. Somehow he's torn off a tusk right at the root. In my mag specs his face looks
infected. The pain's turned him rogue. He looks alert and nasty, and he's scented something weird, but he
might not understand the danger. Kzinti scent is nowhere in his species' memory. It's just different, and
different is dangerous. So he's backing away, sniffing the air.

Now he's heard them in the brush. They're trying to circle downwind, moving fast enough to make
mistakes, and now he's running, and here they come. He's faster than they thought—just lumbering along,
but sobig . They're sprinters, the kzinti. Maybe he'll tire them.

I don't have a hope of catching him or them. I've jogged up a hill and I'm using my mag specs.

 They're on him—two of them. Waldo didn't get there: he ran out of breath. The two are slashing,
slashing. Jumbo is bleeding. Showers of blood, tens of gallons, brilliant red in the sunlight. Long Tracks
and Wave Rider are dancing into the blood. Even lions don't play like that. I'm thinking of erasing this
tape.

 Then Jumbo's trunk catches Wave Rider and sends him spinning. Long Tracks jumps at Jumbo's neck.
Jumbo's head whips around. The one tusk catches Long Tracks and flips him over. Jumbo charges Wave
Rider. I can't see much through the grass, but it looks like Jumbo is stamping on Wave Rider. Then Long
Tracks chops at his feet with thew'tsai , and Jumbo goes after Long Tracks.

Long Tracks is running. Jumbo is spraying blood. Waldo gets there and joins the attack. One swing of
Waldo'sw'tsai and the trunk flies loose, another and Jumbo goes down. Tries to get up and fails.

 I've had my rifle sighted on Jumbo for all this time, and I haven't fired. One day I'll wonder if it's because
kzinti are mankind's old enemy. I think not. They're clients—but they're clients who positively don't want
their guide attacking their own personal prey. And I'd better get down there and look at Wave Rider.
                                                    ***

Wave Rider's heart is still beating. The elephant stamped him into fudge, breaking ribs and limbs and
internal organs. I'm not a doctor, but I know enough: Wave Rider won't live if he doesn't get to a
hospital.

 "The nearest transfer booth is forty kilometers away, if it's working. You never know with the Greens. I
can summon a mini ambulance," I tell Waldo.

 Waldo and Long Tracks are arguing about Jumbo's ears. Long Tracks just growls at me. Waldo says,
"We will not cry for help."

 "Stet, but we can take him in ourselves. We can get to the nearest transfer booth by forced march. We'll
make a stretcher out of Jumbo's hide. You do the carrying. Kash-First can meet us. Take us the rest of
the day."
 Waldo and Long Tracks agree. Nonetheless they're in no hurry. Waldo gives up his claim: he attacked
late. One big blanket of elephant ear goes to Long Tracks; from his thong it drapes like a cloak. One
goes to Wave Rider, for his funeral if it breaks that way. They eat several pounds of elephant meat and
pack a lot more. It's clear we won't reach the transfer booth today. I phone Kash-First and tell him
what's going on. He agrees to meet us with the floaters.

 The stretch of hide holds Wave Rider. He hasn't wakened, and that's both good and bad. He isn't
screaming, but his snoring sounds tortured.

 Kash-First zeroes in on our path. He's walking, not riding a float plate. The kzinti use their medical
techniques on Wave Rider. We get Wave Rider onto a float plate, giving up some of my supplies. This
will embarrass the poor kzin if he lives.
                                                   ***

Rain starts near noon. We're wading through tall grass and mud, our strongest fighters burdened with a
stretcher. If anything attacks us I'm going to shoot it, and to hell with what my clients think.

 Dark catches us twelve kilometers short of the transfer booth. I'm using my sectry's mapping system.
They're prepared to keep moving at night. Idiots. I set Waldo and Long Tracks to making a fence, over
a lot of grumbling; they've worked hard today.

I claim a slab of elephant liver and another of muscle meat. I'm famished. I flash-cook them with the
microwave. The kzinti don't complain, though we're camped together, between the float plates. They
don't want to be alone, and I don't either.
                                                   ***

November 12, 2899 CE


 It's the same lion. I barely saw it, but I know. It came out of the dark in one long leap, arced over one of
the float plates and had Waldo. He shrieked. The lion dragged him into the grass and would have been
gone if I hadn't swung a light on him. I'm trying to hold the light with one hand and pick up a gun with the
other, but Long Tracks is after him and blocking my shot. I jump on the float plate for a better view into
the grass.

The lion turns to fight. Long Tracks swings one good swipe and then the lion is on him. They're
wrestling; Long Tracks may have dropped hisw'tsai . I can't see Waldo.

The lion wrenches loose and I have a clear shot. I fire at a point just behind his shoulder.

The lion goes down.
                                                    ***

"Nothing in my sectry lists the lion as a cursorial hunter," says Kash-First.

It's dawn, and we're moving. Waldo's dead. Wave Rider is still breathing. He's swollen and discolored
over most of his body, and his ribs bend inward where they should not. Kash-First is lucid and walking.
His voice has a breathy, painful hiccup in it that doesn't get through the translator.
I'm not in the mood for a fight. I tell Kash-First, "Every hunter knows of a lion that stalked someone for
days at a time and killed him at the last."

 "Even I can't tell you that this one had a different smell. But do youknow that this is the same lion that
tore up Waldo's scalp?"

And stalked him ever since, until last night's kill. "Who else? Any other lion would take Wave Rider.
Wave Rider couldn't defend himself. Lions are lazy. Waldo could fight back."

"He didn't have the chance."

"No." This time the lion bit into his skull and dragged him forty meters before Long Tracks caught him.
My bullet tracked through one lung and his heart: a good shot.

 Of course the trophy head won't be worth any more than the rest of our heads, which are all going to be
ruined because the kzinti want the ears. We've got the holograms, though.

Long Tracks offered me one of the lion's ears. He claims the other himself. He won't talk to me.
                                                 ***

And it's over.

 We reached the transfer booth in four hours. We were at the Nairobi Spaceport just that fast, with
access toStarsieve 's lander's surgery ten minutes later. I pretended to help get Wave Rider into the
cavity, but truly, he's too heavy for me.

"Take the ear," Kash-First said through his translator. "Long Track won't forgive you if you don't. You
used your own familiar weapon in a personal hunt. He'll see that soon or late."

"How are you?" I asked.

 "I can use some medical attention." But he has to wait. He's plugged into the peripherals, but he'll need
the intensive care cavity when it's through with Wave Rider.

I said, "It was not my intention to lead you into such a disaster as this."

He shrugged, and winced. He sits bent over around the puncture wound. "A fusion bomb can kill any
number of elephants. We use thew'tsai . Killing is not the point. Kzin against the elements, that is the
point."

Truly, I agree. But maybe I've missed the point myself. There was an accident—
                                                 ***

An hour after we set out this morning, we were trekking into a gully. Kashtiyee-First was on the float
plate that held Waldo's corpse, guiding the other that carried Wave Rider, and they just floated over the
depression. Long Tracks got disgusted with my slowness and sprinted up the other side to meet his
companions. I wondered if I was hurting them by slowing them.

 They waited in a copse of trees. They were talking as I approached. They hadn't noticed me. My
translator began picking up their speech.
 Long Tracks: "It would be as easy for LE Bannett to die as for Waldo, or you. This insanely dangerous
land could take him at the last. A lion?"

Kash-First: "Your teeth don't leave the same marks as a lion's."

I stopped thinking about revealing myself. I used my mag specs to watch Long Tracks pick up the lion's
head. He clacked the jaws a couple of times. "Bite him with this."

Kash-First said, "LE Bannett has kept every promise expressed or implied."

Long Tracks was silent.

 Kash-First said, "Recall why we came. We can hunt anywhere. Have we learned more of the human
state? Can we give Prisst-Captain any hint of what our ancestors faced, to be so battered and humiliated
in war after war?"

 "Fool's errand. We have had only one human to study. He is far from typical. He kills as easily as we do,
and revels in it."

 "Yes, the human is not interesting. But the rest? What of Africa? Do we finally know the horrors this
species faced in the ages before it expanded across its world?"

"Ur?"

"And then came back to hunt."
                                               THE END


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