The others had their w'tsais, but that was all, apart from some trophy blades on the wall. Now the naked defenselessness of the place, their lack of weapons, hit him like a physical blow.
A normal kzin would take on any number of humans in hand-to-hand fighting and tear them to pieces until his strength gave out, which would normally not be before the last tree-swinger had been dismantled, but these were wounded crocks, and the monkeys had heavy weapons. A long-silent television the humans had kept behind the bar suddenly blared into life. It could only receive human channels and he had forgotten it. Deliberately, he smashed it with a stroke of his claws. He did not want scenes of monkey triumphs to inflame and provoke what for want of better he must call his "garrison." He placed the newcomers at side windows, instructing them to keep watch. A fine addition to our strength, he thought. A kitten and a trained monkey. Though the temple bells were still ringing in the distance and once he heard the whirr of a strakkaker and a scream, it sounded as if things were becoming quieter outside. He could hear human voices gathering. "What is happening?" asked Bursar in his high, cracked voice.
"Be silent, old fool!" A scream from Orderly, whose nerves had, it seemed, become unequal to the strain. "Sthondat-begotten!" (One, and especially if one was Nameless, did not insult any Conservor, ever.) "Let us strive to hear!" "Insolence!" Conservors were awesome in their self-control, but such words from such a being were too much. Bursar reared up as if he had been struck a physical blow.
Orderly screamed and leapt. But if Bursar was ancient and nearly blind, his w'tsai was swift. The two orange bodies rolled across the floor, slashing and shrieking. The terrified human servants leapt (creditable leaps for humans) onto the top of the refrigeration unit and clung there as the claws and monomolecular-edged steel blades whirled. One of the kzinti Computer Experts, abstracted and slow of reflex for a kzin, was struck. He grabbed his w'tsai with a scream and leapt into the fray.
Raargh-Sergeant would not normally have interfered in a duel-kzintosh traded insults knowing the consequences-but this was pointless madness, and triggered by no real injury but by an explosion of unbearable tension. And every Hero was needed at his post. He kicked at the great bulks, knocking them apart. Bleeding from several deep gashes (kzinti arterial and venous blood varied in color between purple and orange), they staggered apart. Computer Expert was down, curled round a belly wound that Raargh-Sergeant saw at once was too deep. Still, as a fighter he was little loss.
Two hard swift blows of his prosthetic arm knocked the w'tsais from the grips of the other two. He was aware of Lesser-Sergeant and First-Corporal at his side, their own w'tsais leveled. Discipline is still holding, he thought. Once I would have swum into that fight with a scream and leap of my own. Or am I getting too old on top of everything else?
"No more. I decree Honor is satisfied. There are enemies enough for us all outside the gate without Heroes killing Heroes today."
They glared at him for a moment and then their eyes seemed to clear. Perhaps the sheer physical weakness and general exhaustion of all those present were what saved the situation. He felt Lesser-Sergeant and Corporal relax at his side as the tension ebbed. They too lowered their w'tsais. Lesser-Sergeant, with two human bullets and a half-heeled ratchet-knife wound in one knee, still shedding bone, had made a standing leap the entire length of the Mess to attend him. A useful companion, Lesser-Sergeant, he thought, he moves fast and keeps his head. May I call him friend? Corporal too. I need kzintosh like that now, and so do all our kind need them on this God-forsaken day. He remembered them both in the Battle of the Hohe Kalkstein, and was grateful now, as he had been then, that he had them at his side. He saw too that the youngster was there. He had placed himself before Raargh-Sergeant's right leg, where he would have been a nuisance and hindrance if Raargh-Sergeant had had to leap, but which was also the place a warrior-son traditionally stood to defend an Honored Sire in closed-room combat. Where my own son would have stood, he thought. Had he survived he would have been old enough to be a useful warrior now.
"Junior Doctor, attend to them."
That would be a challenging task for Junior Doctor in his present condition, but he could contrive something. Computer Expert at least knew enough of Duty to die quietly, without sound effects to further demoralize or inflame the others or appeals for painkillers or medication from their limited stock to be wasted on him. Conservor was chanting the rites over him.
"Humans!" He ordered the shivering slaves, "Clean!" The sooner the smell of kzinti blood was out of the air the better. The air was filled with the frustrated emotions of a duel cut short. He saw that one of Bursar's fangs was snapped, and Orderly's arm hung useless, a tendon cut. One dead and one less sound limb between us, when we have too few to go around already. At this rate the monkeys need but hold back and let us finish ourselves off. I wonder what they mean to do?
If I were a monkey, what would I do now? he thought, and the answer came instantly: Kill us. It was so obvious as not to need debate. But the monkeys were strange. Even after two generations plus of occupation and after Chuut-Riit had ordered a systematic study of them, late in the war, they had remained full of oddities. The few kzin on Wunderland who had developed relationships with monk-with humans, as games partners, as co-investigators of scientific or technological problems, or computer experts, had tended to be oddities themselves. The sort who died young unless some special talent made them worth preserving. Some kzin had complained of the increasing survival and even rudimentary prestige of those whom the monkeys described as komputerr-nirrrds, itself yet another monkey loan-phrase which on Ka'ashi had entered the Heroes' Tongue.
Now the humans, instead of proceeding to extermination, had offered a ceasefire.
Well, he thought again, we, or rather our grandfathers, offered them a ceasefire when we conquered this planet. Let a lot of them go, to carry the news of us back to Sol System. We wanted slaves and food, and we didn't want to smash up an industrialized infrastructure. Is that how they think of us now? Slaves and food?
He remembered that some feral humans had made a point of eating kzin flesh, but when captured and examined had revealed that they had done it as a gesture only and did not really like the taste.
Apparently we mistook things from the first. We wanted Sol to know the terror of our Name and thought the news of us would terrify the human homeworlds. Sire told me of Grandsire's tales, and how as the First Fleet approached Sol System and the monkey ships rose to meet it, it was thought they were bearing tribute. Those First Fleet Heroes were, amid the satisfaction and the anticipation of easy wealth, disappointed to be deprived of a fight. Then came the giant laser beams, the blizzards of slag from the mass-drivers, the bomb-missiles and the reaction-drive cannon… There was rejoicing, Grandsire said, when it was realized the monkeys were actually going to give us a fight!… Rejoicing, for a long time…
He paced to the door, looked out. There were six humans posted at the gate still. They were carrying weapons in stiff, unnatural positions. The feral humans will probably have those guns off them quickly, he thought, and remembering the monitor screen, and then the heads off them too. He wondered how kzin would react to other kzin who had acted as agents of conquering aliens. But the situation was too far outside kzinti experience to imagine. At least it has been so far, he thought with bitter pessimism, it may not be for much longer. Time to act. There was the human.
"Jorg, those trained monk-human-soldiers are under your command, are they not? H'rr."
"Yes, Raargh-Sergeant, for the moment."
"Do you think their weapons should be inspected?"
"Oh… I see. Yes, Raargh-Sergeant! As you think best!"
"Lesser-Sergeant!" He barked in the imperative tense.
Lesser-Sergeant had been badly burnt in a falling aircar. Kzinti military medicine, functioning well until recently, had saved him and though after weeks in a doc his fur has not all regrown and his tail was a twisted stump, apart from his leg wounds more recently acquired, he was now one of the fitter and more complete Heroes present. He was also one of the more impressive-looking. "Command me, Raargh-Sergeant!"
"Those loyal monk-humans at the gate are under our Jorg-human's command. It is time they were inspected. We may have to show them how to maintain their weapons. Come!"
There were now five loyal humans at the gate. They were trembling as the kzin approached. We do terrify them, thought Raargh-Sergeant. He had always known, in a sense, that he terrified humans. That was as it should be, part of the natural order of things. Yet this realization had a novel taste to it.
There had been no non-feral human on Wunderland, whatever its position in the monkey hierarchy, but abased itself before the humblest kzin. He had hunted humans, ferals and criminals in the public hunts, and seen their eyes roll up and their bodies collapse in terror when he had run them down. He had all his life taken human slaves and monkeymeat for granted. But now the thought, so long a taken-for-granted fact of life, was somehow new and uncomfortable. If we terrify them, what will they do to us?
"Weapons inspection!" he growled.
They handed over the guns quickly enough. This was still a place where a human would not disobey a kzin, let alone a kzin like Raargh-Sergeant with his size and scars and a large collection of kzinti and human ears dried and hanging at his belt.
Kzinti side arms, heavy for humans. Even with one arm and a basic prosthesis, Raargh-Sergeant could heft one easily. Full charge. Lesser-Sergeant and Jorg collected the others. In the small gatehouse were a pair of heavier squad weapons mounted on tripods and some spare charges.
"Filthy!" He spat, as he had so often spat at kzinti troopers. "Disgracefully neglected! These weapons are the property of the Patriarchy! There should be disciplinary action!"
Jorg stepped forward.
"Your punishment is a severe one," he told the other humans. "You are dismissed from the forces of the Wunderland Government! Get rid of those uniforms! Get away while you can!"
"Perhaps you should join them," said Raargh-Sergeant, as they watched the five humans racing off into the smoke, struggling out of their costumes even as they ran.
"No, my face is too well-known. And besides, I have responsibilities." "Responsibilities?"
"I am still part of the human government that has tried to hold things together. I speak and understand the Heroes' Tongue well for a human and I know some Heroes. I still might be able to do something to help reduce the chaos and violence."
Somewhere off in the drifting smoke, down the alleyway where the humans had disappeared, came a confused shouting.
"We had better get back under cover, anyway, before the ferals return. I am happier with some strong weapons."
Something flashed across the sky, an arrow-head formation of aircraft in pursuit of a single fugitive. Kzin or loyal human? Whoever it was would have few places to hide, unless they somehow got into space and the dust and planetoids of the Serpent Swarm. A fugitive on the ground would have more chance.
In theory it should be possible for kzin in their turn to carry on a "guerrilla" (or "gorilla"?) war as the humans had done, save that the surviving kzin were so thoroughly shattered in their minds by an almost incomprehensible defeat, and so many of their military units had fought to the death, that on the whole planet there could be few left but civilians and crocks like those here. There were rumors that after the first great UNSN raid Traat-Admiral had begun the planning of a secret redoubt, a fallback position in the event of an attack and invasion backed by relativity weapons, but as far as Raargh-Sergeant knew these remained rumors only.
Most of their last attacks-like the attack he himself had been planning and preparing, he realized-had been no more than thinly-rationalized suicides. But how could you fight an enemy with a faster-than-light space drive? How could you fight an enemy that did not scruple to use relativity weapons to smash whole cities and asteroids with their kzinti and human populations?
The door of the Sergeant's Mess seemed a frail protection as he slammed it behind them and dumped the weapons in a heap, yet the Mess, makeshift and ruinous as it was, was still a world he knew. There was something comforting about the trophies, the hides, even about this small but fearless band of crippled Heroes and their charges.
An eight of eager Heroes fell upon the weapons. Raargh-Sergeant had to snarl to stop them fighting over them. Disposition was simple enough. The two heavier weapons covered the door, a Hero-his groom-with a side arm was dispatched to watch the rear. Raargh-Sergeant allocated three of the remaining side arms to himself, Lesser-Sergeant and the senior Corporal.
He turned to the civilian Trader, the only unwounded kzintosh. He put out his claw and touched the scars of the civilian's nose that told he had once given military salutes.
"You have served the Patriarch, of course?"
"Indeed, Raargh-Sergeant. Gunner in the Third Fleet."
"Few came back sound from that."
"My ship was fortunate. Hero's Blood-Soaked Mane. And blood-soaked we were. We dueled and beat the human dreadnought"-his throat and vocal cords did something very difficult-"Blloo-Baboon."
"I recall the name," said Raargh-Sergeant. He did not wipe away the spit. This one was a Hero too. He was not quite sure he remembered the human ship being classified as a dreadnought, like the great Kzinti Conquest Fang-class. Human dreadnoughts tended to be named after their ancient sea dreadnoughts. Many of them were large and powerful enough for kzinti to give their names a recognition and respect they denied the names of individual humans, and they tended to fight in squadrons. Further, while they could be killed, they were very seldom boardable while their weapons functioned. But Heroes were entitled to a little boasting. It was good to remember old triumphs now, whatever the Blloo-Baboon had been.
"We destroyed his drive and weapon turrets and boarded him and took loot. Fought the monkeys cabin by cabin, through ducts and corridors. Cherrg-Captain died beside me. Sections we cut off but they still fought. It went on for days. In one section they had a tank filled with a weak solution of sodium chloride as a habitat for those thinking sea beasts they sometimes carry, and with it they made chlorine gas.
"It was I who first reached the human bridge with no weapons left but my claws and a sprayer of hydrofluoric acid. When we had settled the men and manretts we leapt into the tank and fought the sea beasts.
"It was good to fight creatures with teeth for once, though when we got into the deep end of the tank, some Heroes died. Then the gravity failed and sea beasts, liquid and Heroes all went into free fall together. The strangest battle I have ever fought. They had no ears to take but I took this." From a pouch that hung from his belt he brought forth the dried, withered half of a dolphin jaw. "It was red when we waded out. Good eating, men and sea beasts both. They had been using the sea beasts as strategic matrix theorists, so we counted them as warriors.
"We brought the ship home as a prize. One of the few that the fleet took. We were well rewarded. There was much loot to share and few left to share it among when the Blloo-Baboon was dismantled at Tiamat. So I became Trader." "What is going to happen?" asked the kit, who had moved beside them. Its eyes were glowing at this talk, despite the story's unHeroic end.
"We wait," said Raargh-Sergeant.
"Will there be fighting?"
"I hope not." Then, as he saw the shock on the kit's face at such a near blasphemy, Raargh-Sergeant added quickly: "Not yet. We must wait until we are stronger. Heroes must often lurk long in the tall grass. Such was the wisdom of your Great and Honored Sire." He bent and gave the kit a quick grooming lick. Then to Trader: "You came away unwounded?"
"No, Raargh-Sergeant, but the wounds do not show now." Trader's breath caught suddenly and he began to cough again.
Raargh-Sergeant could not ask more. That could imply anything. Some boarding battles had been fought with nerve agents that did strange things. Now that he observed Trader closely for the first time, he saw that he was older than he looked, or looked older than he was. At any rate his age was wrong, and in his spittle was a fleck of purple blood. Yes, beneath regrown fur there were more substantial scars.
"You still have your fighter's reflexes?"
"Command me, Raargh-Sergeant! It is long since I have fought, but if they have become slow, yet I will discipline them once again with the hot needles of Honor and Vengeance!"
To admit so much must mean he was in a bad way. Still, the others were patently worse.
"I will give you this side arm. Stand guard at this window for now. You are Gunner again."
Computer Expert who had fought was dead now. Raargh-Sergeant dragged his body away to an annex and closed the door. A stupid, futile death, though the Fanged God would know that he had at least died in battle. He hoped the air conditioner would clear the odors of battle from the room quickly. There were sounds of human voices without.
There were humans back at the gates now, approaching cautiously, wearing different clothes. A light human vehicle drew up. The female human called Jocelyn, Jorg's deputy, alighted from it. She strode across the rubble-littered courtyard with barely a glance at the now-wrecked kzinti battle-car. "Do you know what she wants?" He asked Jorg.
"I think I can guess. You notice she is no longer wearing the Government's uniform."
"I saw her decorations were different."
"She is also wearing a trophy belt, I see," said Jorg.
"With kzinti ears on it!" Raargh-Sergeant noticed that his remaining claws had unsheathed. He tried to retract them and found that he could not. But beyond the shock and outrage, he realized that the female human had done this thing deliberately. He strangled a snarl in his throat that would have unleashed the others.
"Also human ears," said Jorg. "Fresh ones. There are also more humans behind her."
Jocelyn knocked with her fist on the door. Since the kzinti had requisitioned the buildings, no human female had entered the Sergeants' Mess except perhaps for dinner. The other kzinti trained their weapons on the doorway. We could wipe these out quickly enough, but there will be others. Already humans must be surrounding the monastery. And the UNSN would be arriving with heavy weapons soon. His every instinct screamed to him to order the others to cut loose with everything they had, then fall upon the monkeys beyond in one last, Heroic charge. For Sire and Grandsire there would have been no question. Which may be why they are dead, and I am alive, for the moment. I would like to see another sunrise, but they must have wished that too… and… and… "Shall I let her in?"
"Yes."
Six other humans accompanied Jocelyn as she entered. All were dressed alike and all held weapons. Knocked up as we are, we could still make short work of them, thought Raargh-Sergeant. The omnivores were slow-moving and fragile, their muscles, teeth and claws were as much jokes as their vestigial sense of smell. Such weak, spindly little creatures! What can you say for them?-apart from the fact that they are the only race that has ever met the kzin in war and beaten us.
"Take off your trophy belt," he said. Then he added: "Or cover it." The six humans behind did not seem to know the Heroes' Tongue.
"Why?" said Jocelyn. He ignored the insolence of the question, telling himself as rage welled up that a human female was beneath being able to insult him. "It is the custom of the Mess. This Mess is our club, our dining area. Only Sergeants-Kzin Sergeants-and Ptrr-Brunurn may wear trophy belts here. It is a tradition."
"You seek to humiliate me, to establish dominance."
She had answered in the Heroes' Tongue, or as near to it as a human voice could reach. That was almost as much a jolt as the trophy belt had been. A few days previously any human, let alone a female, so speaking to a kzin would have lost its own tongue on the spot for such impudence (the idea of one other than Ptrr-Brunurn wearing a trophy belt and standing before a kzin with it would not have existed). The Heroes' Tongue was hard for most humans to understand and far harder for them to speak even badly. Yet if her accent and inflections were weird and alien, the grammar and tense were nearly correct. So they have been studying our language. Probably for years. I suppose their computers helped them. What fools we were not to attend more to what they did! What else do they know about us? Enough to defeat us, plainly.
"I do not seek to dominate," he told her. Though if I do dominate you, so much the better. "You will show respect for our Mess. This is our place." The humans were not presenting their arms to the firing position yet. The kzinti were standing by theirs, but Raargh-Sergeant remained sure that even more-or-less wounded as they all were, they could bring them into action faster than the human eye could follow. Then Jocelyn removed the belt and signed for a human to take it.
"There have been some changes in command structure," she said. "The individual formerly known as Captain Jorg von Thoma has been relieved of his duties and all titles of rank. The so-called Wunderland Security Police no longer exists and has been declared a collaborationist organization by the Provisional Free Wunderland Government."
"What is collaborationist?" He pronounced the word more or less understandably. "It is a word that a lot of people will hear soon. Traitors to humanity who will be dealt with."
"Did not the UNSN kill enough humans in its raids? You are quick to kill your own kind when you can."
"Oh? Do you reproach us for that? How many Heroes die in death-duels? Did not the UNSN fleet win its first battles in Wunderland Space because your own forces were in the midst of a civil war when it arrived?"
"If this is a word-duel you have made a good stroke. Yes, we fight among ourselves. Too much, even, I will say who am old and wounded. But we are warriors. Battle is necessary to keep the warriors' claws sharp, to see that only the most Heroic survive and breed. But this… killing your own kind in the moment of, of… your victory"-that was a hard phrase to get out-"what Honor is there here? And what point in a word-duel now?"
"There is Honor," she said. He had not realized that humans attached large significance to the word before. Perhaps Honor comes more easily when you are winning, he thought. But in that case it is not Honor at all.
"They are part of the forces of the Patriarchy," he told her. "I am responsible for the forces of the Patriarchy here in the absence of superior officers. Hroarh-Captain has charged me. This human is under the Patriarch's protection, and until I am relieved of the charge, the Patriarch's Honor is on my head." "I will speak of that in a moment. Those humans"-she pointed to the two Messwaiters-"are to leave. No harm will come to them. They were constrained and enslaved and have committed no willful offense."
Raargh-Sergeant nodded. She spoke to the humans in their own language. They edged towards the door, plainly readying themselves to run. Then she halted them.
"They are to take those with them." She gestured to the stuffed human trophies. "They will be disposed of with decorum." Then she pointed: "Why is that one so mounted?"
The figure she indicated stood in a translucent cube, its arms folded and eyes closed. It was a ragged, shabby thing, torn and gaping with innumerable wounds. There was a complication at what had been its waist.
"That one is disposed of with decorum already," said Raargh-Sergeant. “That is” he pronounced the human syllables with care-"Ptrr-Brunurn."
Jocelyn stepped over to the plinth and read the name.
"Peter Brennan."
"A great fighter. Once he led a feral band against us in the hills that did much damage. When he was cut off at last, he killed an eight plus one of Heroes though armed with only a ratchet-knife while the others of his troop escaped. We did not eat him but honor him and honor Kzarl-Sergeant who killed him at last. I cannot give you Ptrr-Brunurn."
"You say his full name. I thought kzinti never said the full names of humans." "We say his. It is a Mess tradition. Before setting out on a hunt for ferals, we have toasted Ptrr-Brunurn and Kzarl-Sergeant for many years. Since before I became Raargh-Sergeant."
"I never heard of him."
"It was many years ago. Soon after the first landings, in the time of my Grand-Sire."
"We have lost so much even of our own history. But we will find it again! We are not like the wretched Jotok."
"No. It may have been our mistake to think you were. Jotok are faithful slaves when they have been trained."
She peered more closely at the trophy.
"He still has kzinti ears on his belt!"
"Yes. We did him Honor. We left him his own trophies."
He smelled or sensed a sort of change in her.
"Perhaps that one may stay. The rest go now!" She rapped out human orders. The waiters and two of her guards gathered the human trophies and carried them away. "Now," she said, "the traitor. He comes with us."
"You did not call him traitor a few hours ago. He was your dominant one. Are you not traitor to him?"
"It has been said that treason is largely a matter of timing. But treason it is."
"He is loyal to the Patriarchy."
"And I am loyal to humanity."
"If we had put a Telepath on you a month ago, I think you would have gone to the public hunting arena."
"No. I knew it might happen. I have carried the means of suicide for years." She felt in the pocket of her garment and produced a white capsule. She spoke for a moment in a different voice, as though surprised at a thought.
"Now I can throw it away. We were taught other techniques-how to make ourselves die of shock quickly when we were tortured. Now… I cannot quite believe it yet… we may forget them. The whole ghastliness is departing from us. We may live as… as humans again."
Suddenly she whirled on him: "Some may say it was the humiliation and helpless anger of our slave status that hurt us most. Well, they lie. It is possible, easy for some, to be a certain kind of slave. No, those things were bad enough but it was not humiliation or anger that we felt worst but naked terror, terror of our lives and our people in every waking moment and in our dreams as well! How many humans took to wandering mad-mad from sheer terror-before the ratcats or the collabo government tidied them up in their different ways? There is not a human family on Wunderland that has not dead to mourn!"
"Nor a kzin family."
"You started the war. Is war too hard for you?"
She opened her hand and let the thing drop to the floor. He saw liquid run out of her eyes which she quickly wiped away. "And my people, who I, to keep sane, had thought of as having gone away for a time, who I told myself, in the night, that I would meet again when I chose, I can mourn now as dead." He was no Telepath but all kzin had a rudimentary ability to detect emotional emanations at short range if they cared to use it. The terror of prey was a powerful stimulant as well as a guide when hunting in darkness or tall grass. Now he felt this creature's rage and hatred giving way to a greater degree of calm. The liquid ran more freely. Did it discharge emotions with it? You can learn something new every day, he thought.
"And now, Raargh-Sergeant, we come to the meat. Hand over Jorg von Thoma and the weapons. I will place you under my personal protection."
"Jocelyn-human, I will not."
"Then you will die. I speak not in challenge. I but state a fact. Kill me on this spot and the result will be the same. You see my people at the gate." "The Patriarch's Honor is involved. And mine."
The six-foot human female and the scarred eight-foot felinoid carnivore stared at each other. Raargh-Sergeant knew all eyes in the room were upon them. "The live humans are your people. I see I have no right to detain them now. Also I accept that with the human victory you have a right to the trophies. It comes to my mind that were I the victor I would wish to see what had been the bodies of Heroes disposed of according to the customs of our kind. So be it. But the Jorg-human is under my protection, and so are all these of my kind. I will not give up the Jorg-human and I will not give up the means of protecting my charges."
"I offer you my protection. I… I will give you my Name as my word." "I do not mean to insult you, but I know that humans lie. Honor does not hang on human names. I do not say it to condemn you. You are made so. You yourself have already turned against your profession of loyalty to the Patriarchy." "We took oaths to you kzin in order to save our lives. A promise made under threat of death does not bind."
"All promises bind. There is no exception, ever, ever! How could it be otherwise when Honor is real? Were I to give my word under threat my word would still be my word though the stars fell and till the Fanged God took me. But I will not leave my folk defenseless. And you do not offer the Jorg-human your protection." "No, I do not offer it to him. We have waited too long, endured too much. The collaborators will pay for their treachery and for what we have suffered. We hate them even more than we hate you!" She controlled herself with an effort. "So I have seen."
"In return I offer you and these kzin safe conduct to… wherever you wish to go."
"And where would that be?"
"The UNSN has set up holding camps. You can see it is caring for the surrendered kzin-giving them food, medical care even. I… I will go further: safe conduct to the hills, if you give me your Name as your word that you will harm no humans. You see I do not believe that you lie. You can stay there till things… settle down."
You have won one planet. Do you think you have won the war? What when the Patriarch's forces return? No, I must not be too provocative. Yet where else is there for me to go? Perhaps, false arm and wounded legs and all, I could live like a hunter, as Sire once said the Fanged God meant kzintosh to live… free in the hills of Ka'ashi, with kzinretti, perhaps, get more kits, ensure my line. Jocelyn watched him as though reading his thoughts.
"I never believed I would say this to a ratcat, but this is your home, too, isn't it?"
"Ratcat? What is ratcat?"
"The name we always called you kzin out of your hearing."
"You mean to insult me?" His w'tsai was in his hand, his body in the fighting crouch. Fast for a human, a ratchet-knife was in one of her hands, the outline of its blade extended, its high wailing sound filling the room, a pistol in the other. Humans and kzinti raised their weapons.
There was a sudden cry. A nightmarish parody of a human was moving towards them. A thing long dead, with vast staring eye sockets empty save for fragments of dried matter, and yellow fangs. As Jocelyn turned to it with a cry of her own he struck with the w'tsai, twice, but to disarm, not to kill, knocking her weapons to the floor. Then they saw what the thing was. A dried Morlock head and hide from the trophy hoard, carried by the kzin kitten. At any instant the situation could have exploded. Then some human of the guard laughed, and others joined in. Quickly Jocelyn laughed as well, though the laughter to human ears would have sounded forced and mechanical. There was even kzin laughter. She picked up the weapons carefully, offering no aggression, switched off the knife and replaced them in her belt. Then she ostentatiously buttoned the flaps that covered them. It had been a very near thing.
"You mean to insult me?" he asked again.
"Not necessarily… I don't know." Then: "I apologize. No insult was intended. My words cannot affect your Honor."
"I have never insulted you!"
"Insulted! Insulted! Didn't you ever understand how much we hated you! You terrified us and enslaved us and killed us in tens of thousands. Killed us in millions, not only by direct murder but by starvation and by smashing our civilization into chaos!"
"At first, yes. There was much to be done, much trouble for monk-for humans who did not show respect. But things were becoming orderly with time. You learned decorum… most of you."
"We learnt not to show our teeth when we smiled, if we ever smiled. We learnt not to hunt in the woods even with sharpened sticks unless you had deigned to tell us you would not be there that day, not to let our children cuddle pet kittens, not to show possessions that a kzin kit or kzinrett might fancy, not to shout or to pass kzin or kzinretti without prostration or with alcohol or tobacco on our breaths. Death could follow all such even if you did not need us or our children for experiments or hunts. To toil in your war factories so other humans might be killed and enslaved. All slaves, and any runaway slave was monkeymeat, fair game for all kzint-" She corrected herself deliberately. "For all ratcats. Our population is half what it was before you came-as far as statistics can be kept to tell us. And we aged and died and saw our loved ones age and die before their time because there were no more modern medicines or geriatric drugs except for the privileged few-for people like him." "And you."
"Yes. God forgive me! I have a family too… I compromised to stay alive…
"Oh, a few humans, Jorg was one-damaged goods, that creature-may have dreamed that they or their descendants might somehow rise-the eternal dream of the deluded slave-and some tried to snuggle into your fur like parasites, and some used you for revenge against their own kind, but most of us who worked for you hated you even more than those who fought openly against you. Wasn't that obvious to you?"
"No. Till Chuut-Riit instituted human studies we never cared what monkeys thought so long as they obeyed and were decorous slaves. Why should we? Oh, I look into the sky and see now why we should have cared… But some humans rose to high places. Life for some humans slaves was good and seemly. Look at your Henrietta-human, a female but executive secretary to the great Chuut-Riit himself."
"There is a special price on that one's head! The UNSN will not protect that one! We will have that head if we must cut down our own liberators to get it! We have prayed to the God to spare her life so we may take it!"
"Some of your monkey lawyers then, have made most useful slaves. Your book Law of Contracts stopped several death-duels."
"Should I be glad of that? More kzin dead in duels meant less terror for us, less human land taken, fewer fangs and claws on Wunderland or in space." "But right at the start we offered you amnesty," he replied. "As the war drew on we… some of us… came to respect your kind in a way… The feral leader Markham… I heard an officer say once: 'That one is almost a kzin.' "A lost human kit, if it or its parents had not offended and it was decorous, could probably walk with safety past a pride of kzintosh. Will a lost kzin kit be able to walk with safety among humans now?"
"Perhaps you do not know all that happened to human children. Certainly many of them were lost. But I do not wish to word-duel now."
"And some thought the Fanged God had sent you to teach us various lessons. I am only Raargh-Sergeant but I know there were officers who thought that way… as the war went on."
"Strange. Some thought our God had sent you to teach us lessons." "You think that makes a bond between us, Monkey?… Ratcats… You always called us ratcats? But you say Ka'ashi is my home. So it is. I have lived nowhere else."
"We call it Wunderland, remember. Some of us see you kzinti who were born here as a little… different… to the first Conquest Warriors." Her voice changed and he perceived some other shift in her chemistry since she had made herself laugh at the kit. "We sometimes call you Wunderkzin. You are changed physically. Already in this light gravity you are taller and more lightly built. It has changed us in the same way, but for you the difference is even greater for Kzinhome was heavier than Earth. I think perhaps you are changed mentally more. May I drink? The Heroes' Tongue is not easy for human throats." "Yes. I concede that life on Ka'ashi was changing us. Who could live with you daffy monkeys and not be changed?"
"Chuut-Riit nearly began to understand us. And unlike most of your geniuses-" "Chuut-Riit was a warrior! A great Hero!"
"For us 'genius' is not an insult… Chuut-Riit, and perhaps Traat-Admiral, were the first high-ranking kzintosh to try to understand us… and all the more dangerous enemies for it. And yet I have wondered once or twice if it were not possible that… a son of Chuut-Riit, brought up on Wunderland with humans, might… No! No! And again, no! Have you kzin driven us mad?" There was liquid on her face again. He smelled its salt.
"There could still be a life here for you and yours," she went on. "Sometimes, just lately, when it seemed we would be slaves and prey no longer, I wondered if the children of our two kinds might work together on this world." She gestured at the sleeping youngster and at the kit, who had been watching them with his huge eyes. "Would you not save those at least? Is one of them not as your son might have been, Raargh-Sergeant?"
This monkey is a female and knows female wiles. Does she try to wheedle me? She cannot know my son and his mother died in the UNSN ramscoop raid. But Chuut-Riit’s son! How has the God devised it that I am caught in this vise! The life of a monkey or blood of the Riit is spilt and Chuut-Riit's seed is lost! A monkey under my protection. Raargh-Sergeant's eye fell upon the poison pill. He wondered if it would be deadly for kzinti as well as humans. Probably. After all, their biochemistry was patently alike enough for them to eat one another. He picked it up, then threw it with all his strength out the open door. A dead Hero was no use. Responsibility could not be abrogated that way. And if he died, he would die as a kzin should, in battle, on the attack.
"You spoke of terror. You are not so terrified of this old kzintosh now, with one arm and eye gone and holes in his legs?"
"I have the weapons now. Except for those which you are about to hand over along with Jorg the traitor. There is not a kzin formation left fighting on the surface of the planet or a kzin warcraft left in the space of Alpha Centauri! No, ratcat, I am not terrified now! I am offering you life and freedom if you surrender the traitor and the weapons at once. Death for all otherwise. Your deaths will cause me no loss of sleep nor tears."
"I cannot… I will not hand over the Jorg-human or the weapons without authority from Hroarh-Captain or higher Patriarchal orders," he said. "I will return in one hour," she said. "Then there will be no further argument." She spoke the last words in the Heroes' Tongue's tense of ultimatum. She turned and left, her escort following.