"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 a fait 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."