The Man-Kzin Wars 09

Chapter 1

“There is a 'cease-fire.' ”

The word was not new to kzin military terminology, though used rarely. The kzinti’s' forebears had offered a cease-fire to the remnant of human resistance on Wunderland once.

The smoke stung Raargh-Sergeant's eye and nose but he held himself rigidly alert.

There were black commas with dangling limbs drifting high in the air with the smoke, he saw: a group of dead kzin and human fighters still held aloft by liftbelts, debris of the previous weeks of fighting. The wind brought the sound of bells pealing from the monkey temple as well as drifting smoke from the burning city and from the straggle of huts beyond the monastery gates. A gust of wind drove two of the floating bodies together. A side arm that one of them still clasped fired a few random bolts into air and ground, throwing up rock and flame. Neither kzin moved.

“We have our orders,” Hroarh-Captain said again. “You are not permitted to die heroically. Go to barracks and remain there until you hear further, either from me or another proper authority. I go to seek Hroth-Staff Officer.

“You are, as you know, the senior surviving Sergeant,” he added. “I look to you to help preserve what order and discipline there may be in the Patriarch's armed forces… all that is left of them. We are Regulars. We are professionals, not wild outland barbarians, and our Honor is in that. We have taken oaths and our Honor is in obedience. Remember that a dead Hero is useless to the Patriarch.”

He moved to the half-repaired battle car which Raargh-Sergeant had been loading with weapons for the last attack and killed the engine. It sank to the ground, a visibly dead, defeated thing. Junk.

“You have kits, Raargh-Sergeant?”

“No longer, Hroarh-Captain.” At least I know mine is dead. I need not tear my liver wondering if he somehow escaped.

A kzin of the old type would have affected indifference to the fate of his male kits once they reached some maturity and did not dishonor him, but times had changed with the extinction of so many bloodlines. Heroes and indeed bloodlines had perished wholesale as one fleet after another attacked Sol System and limped back with its dead and its wreckage. More recently the UNSN's raids had devastated much of the system's infrastructure. Then, like lightning falling from a clear sky, had come the bizarre, unexpected war of kzin against kzin, between the followers of Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, and finally, with much of the kzin fleet destroyed in space in fratricidal combat and the ground war beginning to escalate beyond the nuclear threshold, the UNSN's Hyperdrive Armada had swept in with its bombardment from the skies and then infantry landings, coupled with widespread—in fact almost universal—uprisings among the human population of both Wunderland and the Serpent Swarm. There would be many lost kits…

“Nor I,” said Hroarh-Captain. He looked as if he was in no shape to get more offspring even if chance permitted, but obviously Raargh-Sergeant could hardly broach that topic.

“A dead Hero is also useless to all others who look to him for protection.” A ball of orange fire was rising into the sky from the old human ruins on the plains a few miles away. Some band of Heroes had made a stand there, to be blasted to the Fanged God by attack from the skies which the humans now ruled. The kzinti’s' sensitive hearing filtered out a chaos of distant explosions and the supersonic booms of aircraft.

“There are moments,” said Hroarh-Captain, “when self-control is the only weapon a warrior has. There is no shame…” He twitched convulsively; the groundeffect cart that took the place of his legs lurched, spitting pebbles from the dirt. He had no tail to signal his emotions and the torn remnants of his ears were held steady but his mane was flat as Raargh-Sergeant's. Both felt shame beyond measure.

“I have been summoned,” Hroarh-Captain went on. “I will return as soon as possible. Maintain discipline and await further orders. Remember that the situation may change quickly.

“Remember always, a warrior has a duty to all those under his care.” He gestured with his remaining arm to the Speaker-for-Humans who, with its female deputy, stood between them. Moisture was running down its pale face and it was shaking. The deputy's expression was hard to read.

“This human has been loyal to the Patriarchy and will remain in charge of human affairs here,” the officer went on. “It—he—and those under him are under the Patriarchy's protection still. You will exert that protection. But humans in general are no longer slaves or prey…” He folded and unfolded what were left of his ears thoughtfully, almost as if he were groping for words. “You are old, Raargh-Sergeant. You are a good soldier, and it was my pleasure to recommend that you be honored with a partial name for your valor and bloodlust in the Hohe Kalkstein…”

The name called up memories for both of them. “There was good hunting in the forest and the caves there. I can smell the limestone now. War in the great caves has pleasures all its own…” Raargh-Sergeant tried to cheer his captain. He remembered the great caves of the high limestone, and the strange, three-sided war a few lucky Heroes had fought in the depths with the feral humans and the brainless but savage creatures the humans called Morlocks. Happy days. Once they had placed Morlock skins over their heads and waded through a cold shallow underground stream to come upon a human position… “So I recall. But I recommended you too because I know you have the cunning of a lurker in tall grass, and are no fool who is burnt to death by the passion for glory in his over-hot liver. There are few old and foolish soldiers. You are a survivor and more than ever do we need our survivors of guile now. Continue to survive. That also is an order.”

The wind brought a renewed sound of fighting. The sergeant flicked his own torn ears. “The cease-fire does not seem to be very effective, Hroarh-Captain,” he said.

“The humans are also fighting among themselves. That is no business of ours now… unless the Patriarchy's honor is involved.”

Raargh-Sergeant brought his own remaining natural arm up in a claws-across-the-face salute as Hroarh-Captain headed away, holding up a white cloth. Hroarh-Captain was a good officer, he thought, although he is still alive. Or because he is still alive? Then he turned to the human.

“Do I give you a name now?” he asked.

He spoke in the slaves' patois. His was the third generation on the planet and though his sire had been but a sergeant also he had been raised by human houseslaves. He understood Wunderlander well but it was still difficult to pronounce. Raargh-Sergeant had dealt with this human frequently before when it had been in charge of maintaining order and discipline among the local slaves and taxpayers, and it had been in charge of a force of armed human auxiliaries for some time, but its rank description seemed inappropriate now.

It—he, as Hroarh-Captain had said—replied in a sort of Wunderlander in which the slaves' patois and a few Kzinti or Kzinti-derived words were making encroachments. A Hero could certainly use such a language to a slave since matters of dealing with slaves were beneath most considerations of dignity. “I am called Jorg, Raargh-Sergeant Noble Hero,” the human told him. “My deputy is called Jocelyn. If you will give us leave, I will go and try to keep order as I may. I am leaving a guard of twelve of my men at the gate under my orders. They are armed and are instructed to keep other humans out.”

Raargh-Sergeant did not know if it was competent for him to give the humans leave now, but it hardly mattered. He made a dismissive sign with his tail, and the humans withdrew, Jorg with many an uneasy glance over its—his—shoulder. It is easier if you think of it as “him.” Raargh-Sergeant watched the human out of sight, and the human “guard” deploy, then he turned and limped stiffly across the parade ground to the barracks.

Circle Bay Monastery had been taken over by the kzin forces in the last days of the war. Most of its humans had fled and though a few “monks” lurked in cellars and remote rooms, it would have been a rash human who without authorization had shown himself before a kzin there in the last few days.

But few remained of the kzin garrison now, and all of these were more or less seriously wounded or disabled, clustered into what had been the Sergeants' Mess. He reviewed them as he entered.

Lesser-Sergeant, the closest thing to a friend that one in his position could allow himself; First and Second Section-Corporals, both badly shot up; Trainer-of-Strong-Muscles; Guardian-of-Stores/Fixer-of-Small-Weapons; a junior doctor, almost helpless without either his equipment or his natural forelimbs; an orderly; and two infantry troopers—one of them his personal servant and groom, an old sweat whose reflexes had long ago slowed too much for front-fighting—the other half-conscious, leaking blood and serum and twitching from some head wound that would be fatal soon if he could not be taken to a fully-equipped military doc.

The place resembled a hospital save that in normal times a hospital would have had proper medicines, treatment facilities and better prostheses as well as regeneration tanks and machine-doctors. As it was, it looked like a first-time soldier's bad dream of what might happen to him. As well as what were mainly crude and temporary field prostheses, meant to be fitted in actual battle conditions to keep Heroes in action, Junior Doctor had a few primitive salves and dressings, some commandeered from the human monks' “infirmary.” Presumably the salves were effective for Heroes. Perhaps Junior Doctor had tried them on himself. His eyes were violet with pain.

The nine fully-conscious military kzin had fourteen eyes and twenty-five natural limbs remaining between them. But they stood like Heroes, as poised for action as might be. Whiskers were keen and quivering and some even managed to hold their tails jauntily.

There were also a pawful of kzinti civilians: a trainer of kzinretti, a couple of Computer Experts, a Trader with an annoying cough, a very young and evidently orphaned kitten, still spotted and milk-feeding, that Junior Doctor had managed to sedate and was now sleeping on a nest of cushions, the ancient, near-blind Bursar of the Order of Conservors—flotsam of war. The place had been designated an assembly area for civilians as things had fallen apart elsewhere but few had made it: kzin fighting spirit and poor administrative ability had seen to that between them.

In no kzinti eye was there a trace of fear, and every one of them, soldier and civilian, still had his w'tsai. All looked mature enough to preserve self-control, though all, he knew, would fling themselves against the humans at his order. But the battle car would not have taken us far into the monkey lines if we had ridden it into a last attack, Raargh-Sergeant thought, looking at them. The insurgent humans were no longer fighting, as the ferals had in the old hill campaigns, with an assortment of makeshift and captured weapons. Though the Wunderlanders were increasingly running riot, and Markham and other feral leaders were said to have landed from space, more and more of the human infantry were regular UNSN troops with heavy battlefield weapons, armored vehicles and plentiful air support.

In its last major battle, their own regiment had gone in almost entirely on foot, its transport destroyed by air attacks. These few had survived by chance, and by Hroarh-Captain's decision, when command had recently devolved upon him, to keep a small garrison of the least battle-fit at the monastery to protect what civilians and loyal humans they might. Hroarh-Captain was probably the regiment's last surviving officer: kzinti officers always led their Heroes into attack, and the UNSN had been pouring in supplies of precision-guided weapons. A few traces of the room's brief service as a Mess were still to be seen. There were the accumulated battle trophies of years—rings of dried kzinti and human ears donated by famous Heroes, stuffed humans and pieces of humans who had put up memorable fights, and bits of armor and weapons, various skins, the w'tsai of old Krawth-Sergeant mounted in a translucent block, a silver-inlaid jar of Chuut-Riit's urine, presented after the second battle of the Hohe Kalkstein, the drum. Dried Morlock heads from the great caves like fanged brainless parodies of men. A mural on one wall showed a Hero rampant, locked in battle with a troop of humanoid monsters, hind claws dug into a heap of simian corpses. There were even two live humans—the Mess-slaves, shivering and terrified. There were still distant sounds of bells and battle here. No business of ours, Hroarh-Captain had said. The ancient walls of the monastery were thick, but pierced as they were by many doors and windows, and damaged further in the recent fighting, they made a poor defensive position. There was no point in thinking about that. There was, Raargh-Sergeant thought, little point in thinking about anything. Thought might too easily lead to despair, madness and the neglect of Duty.

He signaled a slave—a servant—to bring him his usual bourbon-and-tuna ice cream, but knew he must resist the temptation to drink himself into oblivion. There was no power for the Mess television—not that many had wanted electronic entertainment there anyway—and the official communications channels seemed to be blocked or disabled, but he felt he should see what was happening. He crossed the courtyard, signing to the human guards that they need not prostrate, and headed down the crooked alley running between the straggle of huts outside, one of which advertised itself as an internet cafe. The monastery was situated in rolling meadowland, high on the lip of an ancient meteor crater. Once the humans had raised herbivorous animals on its pastures and vegetables in its gardens, but in recent years, until the Patriarchy had commandeered it, a great straggle of refugee huts had grown up about its walls and fences. These were burning in several places now, and with the heaps of wreckage and refuse and with the smoke of their burning mingling with the smoke drifting from the burning city it was hard to see far.

Any live humans around kept well out of sight. A pair of dead ones lay by a stoop, fluffy white Beam's Beasts already cuddling into them. The blue-eyed, poisoned-fanged vermin had been multiplying in and under the maze of human shanties. Greasy patches nearby littered with acid-corroded bone fragments showed they had been busy for more time.

The internet cafe itself was an older, more substantial and cleaner building, one of the original monastery outbuildings, standing on a slight rise of ground. As he entered the cafe he was glad, not for the first time, that the mealy smell of humans was odd rather than repulsive, for it was strong here, but in any case he took it for granted now.

The cafe, he noticed with some surprise, for he had not entered it before, had both human and kzin-sized chairs and keyboards which combined human letters and the claw-mark-derived Kzinti alphabet, with layouts for either five small thin or four short massive fingers, though several of the chairs were overturned and the building itself was empty.

Kzin warriors and Heroes would never deign to mix with monkeys on such terms, even if they made pets of certain individuals, but not all kzinti were warriors and Heroes, especially not some of those who cared for thinking machines. Perhaps, he realized, some kzin Nirrrds had come here and mixed with monkeys to escape the casual persecution (which could be lethal) of fighting Kzin. The Net itself could not be knocked out by any single blow and there were evidently either cables or some satellites left operating, for some screens still displayed. He sniffed warily for booby traps, and used the basic energy and poison detectors from his belt, but could find nothing. Even a one-eyed kzin's sight was sharp for monkey tricks, but who could tell how a computer was wired? Live in fear of booby traps and you'll do nothing now, he thought. Danger could never be allowed to deter a Hero.

He took a kzin chair, positioning himself to face the door, and keyed in “News.” It was slow and there were few television channels functioning. One showed a ruined kzin security headquarters. Humans in the headdresses of their “police” were dancing before the camera. No, not dancing, he saw. The heads had been removed from the bodies and other humans were waving them on poles. Another site showed humans, pink-naked, some leaking red circulatory fluid, cast by other humans into a cage at the München Zoological Gardens. Then a vehicle drove up, doors were opened, and panic-stricken, yammering kzinretti were pushed in amongst them, slashing to left and right. Otherwise there was fire, death, buildings falling. On one television channel a short column of wounded kzin, some carrying others, shuffled away under a guard of human armored vehicles and troopers. On another were charred creatures of indeterminate species that had been too near a flash, laid out in a silent row. Other official sites and television channels simply showed the last official word, beneath a hologram of Hroth-Staff Officer and the sigil of the Patriarch: for troops, to rally and fight; for humans (programmed by loyal humans) to be calm, await instructions and do nothing to hamper the movements of defending Heroes. Cameras in the Serpent Swarm and on Tiamat told much the same story.

Some other netcams filmed gaping vacuum, one a room opening to space where Heroes floated dead, branching trachea of their lungs protruding from gaping mouths. Monkey had a term for that, he remembered: they called it eeeting a Krisstmus-trreee. There was a scene of the wreckage of what had once been a spaceship's bridge, evidently a major warship, with more dead and decompressed Heroes drifting and tumbling. Was one in the ceremonial garb of Traat-Admiral? Another in that of the Chief Conservator? A monkey trick?

He keyed in various other sites: most were inoperable, or cameras showed signs of desolation, carnage or monkey celebrations. Another camera was transmitting from the bridge of a UNSN warship, clean, well-lit and fitted out, with uniformly-clad humans and bulging weapon pods visible beyond the ports. More monkey clamor outside. He rose and advanced to the door, his hand not on his w'tsai but not too far from it. If the monkeys were hostile and had guns, the w'tsai would make little difference. He flexed his claws, natural and artificial. If they were hostile and did not have guns, it would make little difference either.

The Jorg-human and the chief of the monkey priests were backing slowly up the alley. Jorg had a gun in his hands. A crowd of feral humans was advancing upon them. They appeared to have no modern weapons but were carrying clubs and stone missiles, some in a half-crouching position that suggested to him how their ancestors might have looked when they hunted on Earth's plains before some demon gave them lasers and reaction drives.

They set up a howling at the sight of him. He wondered if they might throw missiles. If so, anything other than a claw-swinging charge into them would be unthinkable. Nor, he thought, looking at them, would it necessarily be suicidal. One Hero, even knocked about, could take on more humans than this. Then he saw two or three humans in the first and second ranks of the troop were carrying half-concealed strakkakers. So it would be suicidal. Well, that made little difference where honour was concerned.

He dug his hind claws into the dirt, ready to scream and leap. They sensed his poise—humans of the third generation of the occupation of Wunderland tended to be able to read kzin body language—and became still. One human at the rear, who had been holding up something on a pole, lowered it very quickly, too quickly even for Raargh-Sergeant to be quite sure what it was in the smoke-filled air. Then Jorg moved and the human growling began again.

The monkey priest (“abbot” was the human word though like many human words easier to visualize than pronounce), whom he knew and had played games with, was speaking to them, ordering them to disperse. As far as Raargh-Sergeant could gather, he was telling them to let things take their course, and not let violence now imperil the cease-fire or cause more humans to be killed. “Do you think I am a collaborator?” he was shouting. He had thrown back his dusty cloak to reveal some sort of ceremonial costume beneath, hung with monkey ornaments. “No! And well you should not! But I place these under my protection now!”

“You have no power!” shouted one human.

“I do not believe your memory is so short, your gratitude so small, that you do not remember what the monastery and my brothers did for you so recently. You took its protection for yourselves willingly enough a little while ago. I extend its protection, and mine, to these, I say!”

That evidently had some effect. Two other humans began to jabber urgently with the one who had shouted. He finally made a head-nodding gesture. There was silence again for a few moments. Then the troop began to disperse. “We'll be back!” shouted one. Raargh-Sergeant felt his dignity demanded he ignore the whole event. He walked to the abbot and Jorg as casually as the state of his legs would allow, aware of human eyes watching them from the shanties and alleyways. His spine crawled as he waited for the blast of a strakkaker. But “Cease-fire,” Hroarh-Captain had said. Where was Hroarh-Captain now? “Things are getting uglier,” said Jorg. It seemed an odd statement to Raargh-Sergeant, to whom no humans were beautiful. “Things are starting to break up fast.”

“Time,” said the abbot, “time may let tempers cool. It would hardly help to lose either of you now.”

“They could have gone for you, too,” said Jorg. “Whatever you did for them in the past—and I think I know more of that than I should!”

“I was aware of that,” said the abbot. He turned to Raargh-Sergeant and made a gesture that was somehow an acknowledgement of respect without being a prostration, not good enough for a few days ago. “Neither of you may know,” he went on, “but my predecessor enacted a scene very much like that in reverse, many years ago. Perhaps I had the easier part. But we might do well to get you behind some high walls. The next mob may not be refugees whom the monastery sheltered.”

Jorg spoke urgently into his wristcomp as they walked. As they reached the monastery gates, a dun-painted groundcar with the insignia of the human police daubed on it appeared out of the smoke. The human driver got out, handed Jorg the keys and, before anything could be said to him, was gone, pelting off and disappearing down the alley.

“Another loyal servant of the Patriarchy and government,” Jorg said, though it seemed to Raargh-Sergeant that his behavior could bear the opposite interpretation. “I'll do a patrol, round up those I can and bring them here. Thanks to you it's probably safer than anywhere else.”

“You should be careful,” said the abbot.

“I think it's a little too late for that,” said Jorg, “and even a collaborator can have a sense of duty.”

Three of the twelve humans who had been posted at the gate appeared to have gone, Raargh-Sergeant saw as they approached, but the remainder were still fallen in with weapons. They made the stiff, unnatural movements with them as the three approached which he realized were meant to be salutes. At least some of them did.

“Will you join us?” he asked the abbot. “We could play chess.”

“Thank you, Raargh-Sergeant, but I think I would do better doing what I can to calm things here, while I still have a little credit.”

Raargh-Sergeant lashed his tail in puzzlement. He thought he more or less understood the abbot's position in the human hierarchy—the kzin had their own priests although the military tended to respect the old warriors of the Conservor caste rather more. But he did not fully understand the ebb and flow of human authority. The abbot looked too old and frail, even by human standards, to make his authority stick, and he had no weapons, especially now when the human government seemed to be melting away. And how many loyal humans remained at the gatehouse? Nine? Or had another slipped away even in the last few moments? He reentered the Mess and turned on the strategic tank-display. A specialized idiot savant, it was little more informative than the internet: a few orange patches of kzinti units surrounded by the green of human. But the human-kzin fighting seemed to be almost over.

Tail twitching, he paced and waited, watching the last of the orange lights die one by one, trying to remain coolly alert while closing his ears to the more distant sounds. He erased the Mess records, though they held little in the way of military secrets, and smashed the Mess computer, the only possible military asset in the place.

He passed out the last meat from the refrigeration unit, telling the others to make sure that the larger bones went into the excrement turbines. A last luxury, he thought, and better disposed of before the monkeys see it.

He heard a vehicle in the parade ground and wondered if it was Hroarh-Captain back already. But it was Jorg, the human. He brought the car to a stop near the Mess door and scurried in, going down in a quick reflex prostration under the eyes of the kzin. A kzinrett and a male kit, a little older than the one already in his care, were squalling in the armored rear section of the car. “Raargh-Sergeant Noble Hero, I have brought two who may be sheltered here. I think the humans will kill them otherwise. I found them wandering. You have seen that there are gangs of feral humans…”

There was little to be done with the terrified female until she could be settled down. The kit was evidently not hers, since she let it be taken without much protest. Raargh-Sergeant's prosthetic arm allowed him to extract the youngster without mauling, and, held in a familiar grip by the scruff of the neck, it soon quieted to a low mewling sound, arms wrapped round Raargh-Sergeant's chest. “They came from the direction of München with a wounded Hero. The Hero placed them in the car,” Jorg told him, “then a troop of armed feral humans swept down upon us. He placed these in my charge and went to delay the ferals while I got the car away. I did not see what happened to him.”

But you can guess, Raargh-Sergeant thought. As I can. “Why should the feral humans not follow them here?” he asked.

“I thought they would be safer here than anywhere else. The humans still fear to approach this garrison. And behold!” He pointed to the kit's markings, to the distinctive red-orange blazon showing through the juvenile rosette pattern on the chest and to the ear tattoos.

One of Chuut-Riit's! Raargh-Sergeant realized with a new shock. Not one of those who, so he had heard, had been involved in his terrible death, but one of a younger generation. Perhaps the last of the Riit blood on the planet! And in my care!

“Say nothing of this,” he told Jorg. “Get the car indoors and under cover.” It was venting a cloud of fumes from a ruptured fuel line and would go no further without repairs. The kzinrett would have to be calmed. The Trainer could do that. Perhaps when she was settled she could be placed with the sleeping suckling. If she did not kill it, her nurturing instinct might take over. “Courage, my brave one,” he told the kit. “The Patriarch is watching you. Have you yet a name?”

The kit hiccuped and whimpered. “Vaemar,” it said at last, staring up at him with huge eyes.

A nursery name, given by its mother and pronounced in the Female Tongue. “Vaemar-Riit!” he told it. He had no right to confer even partial names, let alone promote anyone to Royalty. But this reminder of its ancestry seemed to steady the kit.

“I can walk, Honored Soldier,” it said, plainly unsure how to address the gaunt, scarred giant who held it.

“Thank the human who saved you,” said Raargh-Sergeant. He had better start getting on good terms with the monkeys quickly. “He is called Jorg.”

“Is that its name? Does the human have a name?”

“That is what he is called.” Jorg looked unhappy. A human who insisted it had a name, except for the convenience of telling it apart from other humans, would have had a short life and an unpleasant one a few days before. Raargh-Sergeant realized that in their last few words, Jorg had indeed omitted to address him by his own partial Name, which a few days previously would have been an equally fatal breach of human-to-kzin etiquette.

“Thank you, Jorg, for saving me,” said the kitten in its still high, warbling voice. “I shall not forget,” it added with some memory of regal manner. Jorg made the prostration again.

Dust particles flashed and fell in a shower of tiny jewels. A bar of green lit a cloud of drifting smoke. A laser blast shattered one of the pinnacles on the chapel tower. The brickwork of the wall erupted as shells struck it. Raargh-Sergeant recognized the coughing of one of the super-Bofors guns that the feral humans had secretly fabricated in the hills.

A section of the wall bulged and collapsed with a roar, burying the two abandoned cars. No strakkakers yet, and possibly not even aimed at us, he thought, as chunks of rubble bounced past. “Inside! Quick!” he ordered. As he herded them under the archway and into the building, the kzinti attack car, its molecular-distortion battery's containment field apparently ruptured, went up in white light behind them, scattering stone. He thanked the Fanged God that there had been almost no charge left. The whole monastery might have been levelled otherwise.

And then he realized: Our weapons were in that! He was in command. He should have seen to it that they were returned to the Mess, in the absence of an officer. Another thought came to him, distorted by bitterness: No wonder the monkeys have won this war.

Above, a formation of human aircraft hurtled by in victory rolls. Nothing remained in the sky to challenge them.

Chapter 2

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.

Chapter 3

The tank display showed almost no orange lights now, only the green of human, moving and deploying without interruption.

“Those manretts can be trouble,” said Trader-Gunner. “It was a manrett that killed Cherrg-Captain.”

A last orange light grew into a globe, flashed and disappeared in a sea of green. It appeared that kzin resistance had ceased everywhere. He clicked to erase the tank's memory. Around the room, the kzinti remained crouched behind their scanty collection of weapons.

“What is happening, Raargh-Sergeant?” Lesser-Sergeant asked him.

“I think there is tension between the two human bands. The UNSN dominates the locals, who have all or almost all turned feral, even many of those who swore to serve the Patriarchy.”

“They are not attacking because they fear our weapons?”

“I think they are not attacking because the UNSN wants us alive.”

“Why?”

“I do not know. If it is a matter of dishonor we may still die heroically. But I have Hroarh-Captain's orders.” He dialed some food. There was almost nothing left now but basic infantry rations. He sloshed bourbon-and-prawn ice cream on one of the unappetizing blocks of protein and carbohydrate and passed it to the kit.

“Now you may say you have eaten Sergeant's food, Vaemar-Riit,” he told it. “Soon you will make a soldier!” The kit looked dubious but took determined bites at the brick-like material. Not what you would have got at the palace, the Sergeant thought. Still, none could accuse Chuut-Riit of softness, even to his own. You have missed training by the most lethal combat master on the planet, little one. Some had accused Chuut-Riit of certain other things, of course, though not within his hearing if they wished to live. According to Lord Ktrodni-Stkaa's faction he had been a human-lover, altogether too interested in the behavior of the slave species (the former slave species).

Raargh-Sergeant had attended a couple of Chuut-Riit's lectures on the subject of how valuable, with a few more generations of culling, humans might be. He was on the right track to be interested, he thought, even if, to use a human term, he didn't know the half of it. He remembered something of those lectures now. Humans, according to Chuut-Riit, had originally hunted in larger groups than had kzin. This both gave them greater social cohesion and meant the greater growth of power diversity. In the Kzinti Empire, power had diversified because, with the slowness of the speed of light, communications took many years. In the Alpha Centauri system humans had diversified more rapidly and spontaneously. Those who lived among the asteroids were in many ways not the same as those on-planet, tending to be descended from space-born stock in the Man-Sun system, and all the humans in this system were different to those who lived on their home-world. Humans could be the most valuable slaves ever encountered. And yet, Chuut-Riit had said in his last lecture, there were things beyond this: the new kzinti study of humans was indicating secret spoor.

Until the war had disrupted communications between them, the humans of their homeworld had set out to subtly and secretly control and influence the humans of the Ka'ashi System. The UNSN, or Yarooensssn, the Sol-humans' chief space and military force, the simian equivalent of the Patriarch's Navy (only Chuut-Riit could get away with saying there was a simian equivalent to the Patriarch's Navy) was not the ultimate human power.

There was something called Arrum, itself apparently the tool of something else that had no name. There was a system known as konspirruussee, which, Chuut-Riit has said, subtly sought to control not only the monkeys, but might in some way come to threaten the Heroic Race itself. Its invisible tentacles reached far. Individuals on Ka'ashi, kzintosh who had had dealings with humans, had already touched the edges of it…

Well, there was meat in all this. It seemed the Ka'ashi humans—the Wunderland humans now—were not the ultimate masters of the situation on this world. The Yarooensssn—it was easier to visualize the symbols UNSN—had some claw upon them. And, it seemed, there might be something else beyond that… That was, no doubt, what restrained the Jocelyn-human at present and why he and his charges were still alive. The UNSN wanted them.

For what? Slaves? They must know no kzin would live long as a prisoner or live at all as a slave. Interrogation? There were dark stories of monkey tortures and chemicals for any kzin unHeroic enough to be taken alive, but what could sergeants and rankers tell the UNSN that it did not know? Sport in some human Public Hunt? Most of those here were too shot up to run well, though monkeys might like tormenting cripples (well, monkeys who had refused to run in the Hunt had gained nothing from it).

Hostages? The kzin had occasionally taken human hostages when wishing to compel cooperation or the surrender of ferals but for a Hero, a kit of the Fanged God, the fate of a hostage of his own kind would not deflect his feet from the path of Heroism in dealing with an Enemy. A Hero taken hostage would be expected to die like a Hero… They must not know of Chuut-Riit's son!

A darker possibility crossed his mind. Earlier in the war a human female had appeared briefly on television screens promising them roomy cages in the München zoo with a diet of carrots and cabbages to pasture on, should they surrender, but this had apparently been a trick to madden senior officers into losing control and had not been seen for some time. He told himself it was not true. Rather, the UNSN and now Jocelyn had been promising honorable treatment. But which was the lie? Do not think of it. That way leads to madness, to clouded thoughts and inappropriate actions. That had been the subject of another lecture from the Great One: “They learnt early to make us lose control of our emotions. They exploited this ability in the earliest space battles for this system, almost instinctively, before they had seen us. It is a variation of the old story of the kz'eerkti teasing Heroes into frenzy in the forests of Homeworld.” That reminded him of something. He beckoned to the kitten.

“That was a strange thing you did, Vaemar-Riit,” he told it.

“I could think of nothing else, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. The man had to be diverted.”

Kits of this one's age spent their time chasing their own tails and flutterbys in the meadow grass. “You mean”—he felt stunned for a moment—“that was what you planned?”

“Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I wished to scream and leap when she drew weapons but I knew I was too little.”

“There was danger. You know she might have shot you where you stood. Or flung the ratchet-knife into you.”

“Yes, Raargh-Sergeant Hero. I knew. But here your life is more important than mine.”

“I see… You do not need your blazon or your ear tattoos, Vaemar-Riit… not for all to see that you are truly Chuut-Riit's son. And here no life is more important than yours. The kzin of Ka'ashi will have need of you.” He bent and licked the kitten's head.

Jorg came forward: “Raargh-Sergeant, your pardon, may I speak?”

“Yes. Speak on.”

“They demand my life, don't they?”

“Yes.”

“Perhaps I should go to them. It would save you.”

“You would give your life for us?”

“I think I am a dead man one way or another.”

“You want your head on a pole like those others?”

“When you are dead, it hardly matters where your head is.”

“We think differently. Look at Ptrr-Brunurn. He is honored.”

“If I or my kind deserve any Honor, history may honor us.”

“I do not understand.”

“Passions may cool in a generation or so. They will come to see that we collaborators did what we did partly for them. Yes, for them. Without us to intercede between the mass of humans and the Heroes, things would have been worse for them than they were.

“I do not say this to sound heroic—to sound better than I am. But where would they have been without us to run some sort of government, to arrange some system of food and shelter as poverty and breakdown spread, to police our towns, to keep our farms and mines and factories working as well as we might, yes, to control lawless humans who might have attacked their own kind or brought terrible reprisals for attacking Heroes, to remove litter and maintain orphanages and see the dead were buried, to keep at least a few factories manufacturing the geriatric drugs?”

“Is that why you became chief of the monkey police? To be useful to your own kind?”

“This is no time for lying. I did it partly for those reasons but also to protect myself, my mate, my kits. But I am not innocent. I delivered resistance fighters to the Public Hunt. At first with sickness and shame and loathing and because I told myself I was serving a greater good, later more because it was my job and my nerves were deadened—trained monkey indeed. I and my people ate well when each day more starved. We drafted people to your war factories and shipyards and constructions, yes, and to serve in the Kzin fleets that attacked Earth. Later we helped hunt down Earth and UNSN agents and infiltrators. Some of us did a little sabotage of the administration when it was safe, or turned a blind eye to some resistance, at least before the Telepaths' checks began. We walked a tightrope. I am no human hero, like the abbot of this monastery. I am neither innocent nor wicked. I am guilty.”

“The abbot? The Head of the Three Monkey-Gods cult? I have played chesss with him”—that human word was easy to pronounce. Indeed it had entered the Heroes' Tongue. “Why do you say 'human hero'?”

“He fed and clothed many refugees here. Also, he sheltered human resistance fighters. I half knew. God help me, perhaps I would have handed him over long ago or pointed a Telepath towards him, for he was helping prolong the whole agony, but he was too popular with humans. And too many monks had been too brave. To send him to the Hunt would have meant more feral activity, more sabotage, more throats cut, more hydrofluoric acid thrown over Heroes in city alleyways at night, and more humans killed in reprisals, too, more human land expropriated. My lot was not to steer the ship of human destiny to some fair harbor, just to help keep it more or less afloat.”

“He lied to me, then. I spoke to him at times. I thought he showed his mind to me at chesss, and when we drank bourbon and ice cream together after a long game. Is there no end to monkey trickery?”

“I did not wholly lie to you. Neither, I think, did he. Once when we spoke he—I mean no insult and nor did he—likened you Raargh-Sergeant to a figure in his holy book, a centurion…

“There is much about kzinti I admire—your strength, your honor, your courage. Many humans, even your greatest enemies like Markham, admire you, more perhaps than those who merely tried to endure kzinti rule… As to an end to monkey trickery, I don't know. You have a low opinion of humans.”

“You are omnivores. You are beneath opinion. We acknowledge some monkeys—like your Ptrr-Brunurn—may be entitled to fighters' privileges and honors. I suppose you hated us too. Strange, a few weeks ago nothing in the world would have mattered to me less than how a human felt about me.”

“Does it matter now? Yes, very nearly all of us hated you. For a very few lucky privileged ones perhaps admiration overcame hatred.”

“H'rr. So my Honor is bound up with protecting a monkey who hates me? Will you kill me, monkey?”

“Did you not just say it did not matter how we felt? I will not lie to you now. How could we love the kzinti? As for killing you, until lately I was not one to think of such things much, save as a dream sometimes… Still, there were other things which some of us looked to,” said Jorg. “We collaborators took them as signs of justification for our lives, of hope. Future generations might have invoked the wisdom and statesmanship of Jorg von Thoma. I am not a Markham who fights for humanity like a steel blade… Sometimes I have felt that Judas also had a necessary part to play and knew exactly what he was doing and the price that he would have to pay…

“Some of the younger generations of both kinds were cooperating more easily. You know that kzinti and human computer nerds would talk together. Some had begun to meet regularly. Each kind shared insights with the other, even unintentionally, and there was talk of forming something that might have developed into a club. Oh, I know kzinti computer nerds are despised by normal kzin as freaks and geniuses, but it might have been a start.

“And some, a very few, human and kzin poets had talked together, too. There was the story of Gunga Din, a dutiful monkey. I know one kzin poet was moved to describe 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' as pedestrian but showing that some monkeys at least had understandable military common sense and could celebrate a demonstration of it.”

“If it comforts you,” said Raargh-Sergeant, “know we have gradually come to refer to the most useful and obedient of you by your own monkey rank-titles more, and as sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti less… or some like Markham as Ya-nar Kzinti…”

“Sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti… that means 'trained monkeys,' doesn't it? and the other”—he struggled to pronounce it—“the 'defiers of kzin'? ”

“I know some of our kind were interested in humans. But as you say, they tended to be freaks.”

“Perhaps they were freaks your people needed. I mean no disrespect, but was there not a little of that feeling in you personally? No, sheath your claws, Raargh-Sergeant, remember, was not the great Chuut-Riit among those who thought humans were worth systematic study?”

“That took mainly the form of dissection of their nervous systems, as far as I know. I do not think that is what you monkeys who looked to 'cooperation' had in mind. But there was some monkey history, too. And that brought back memories for me… When I was a kit a house-slave read me a human poem, 'The Ballad of the White Horse.' I like bits of that, though I do not know why:

“There were other lines: 'are slavery and starvation flowers/that you should pluck them so…' Yes, it comes back to me:

Jorg nodded as the great felinoid's voice trailed off: “I know that poem too:

He went on: “We each worship a single all-powerful God, a jealous God. Is that not also a bond between us? That we see something of the same truth behind the universe.”

“That is for Priests and Conservors to say. A Priest of the Dark Pelt once said to me that with your bearded Jova you may have a little glimmering of the truth. Your Bearded God and the Fanged God had their own respective kingdoms, perhaps. Mark you, he was very old and had been drinking bourbon at the time. He thought that though you are irritatingly between herd animals and hunters, yours is a god of the herd animals you partly resemble. You seek this thing lurve instead of Heroes' Respect for you are partial herd creatures.

“But I know we Heroes are the only pure carnivores to whom the Fanged God has granted the power to leap from star to star. We have encountered no others in hundreds of years of the Eternal Hunt, only a few herbivores or omnivores at best creeping between their own planets… until now. Assuredly the Fanged God decreed that we dominate you omnivores as you dominate herbivores and as herbivores dominate vegetables.”

“With due respect, Raargh-Sergeant, it has not worked out like that.”

“Who could have foreseen the hyperdrive?”

“Not I. I might have cut my cloak differently otherwise.”

“Chuut-Riit thought human inventiveness was valuable: dental floss, blow dryers, toilet paper… You are amused?”

“That is what you valued in our culture?”

“We would never have thought of such things for ourselves… but many other things: chess, using reaction drives and ramscoop fields as weapons, ice cream, catnip, some of your liquors, h'rr…”

“See. Our words have entered the Heroes' Tongue. You pronounce them without thinking. Could we have worked together?”

“I am Raargh-Sergeant. It is not for me to say.”

“There may be many things it is for you to say now. Hroarh-Captain has not returned.”

“What do you mean, monkey?” Claws to w'tsai.

“I respectfully ask you to be calm. Perhaps he is not returning. Perhaps misfortune has befallen him. What if there is no one left higher in the chain of command than you?”

“If so, I will be guided by Honor. And that answers your question. You shall not go to the humans. Honor states that you shall continue to be protected by the Patriarchy. A little while ago I thought of this time as forsaken by the Fanged God. But is that not the point of it: is it not Honor to look at a universe in which your God has forsaken you, and still obey as He commands? What good is fair-weather Honor?”

“Very well. If you are content, so am I.”

“Raargh-Sergeant!” Lesser-Sergeant's cry took him to the window at a painful bound.

A human groundcar entered the gates and stopped in the courtyard. It had been an ordinary car such as until lately privileged humans had still occasionally been permitted to use: powered by hydrogen fuel rather than the molecular-distortion batteries which were rather too easily adaptable into bombs. More recently a medium field laser cannon had been mounted on it behind a hemispherical shield. It came to a halt with the cannon pointed at the Sergeants' Mess. Jocelyn crossed the courtyard, alone and on foot as the kzin crouched at their weapons. She is brave, thought Raargh-Sergeant. A worthy enemy. Her head would make an acceptable trophy for the Mess. And then, in one of those dangerous and distracting tangents in which he found his mind had begun to run: So long, so eagerly, did our ancestors search space for worthy enemies!

“Raargh-Sergeant!”

“I hear you.”

“You now have twenty minutes. After that time I will use this cannon to destroy this building and every kzin in it as well as the human traitor. I ask you not to force me to do it.”

He made no answer. Among kzin infantry gear were antilaser smoke and dust-cloud generators and mirrors that could, in theory, deflect small lasers for a short time until they boiled or burned away. Nothing that would stop a military laser of that size for an eye blink. Jocelyn turned away after a time and walked back across the courtyard. He saw her addressing a gathering of humans at the gates. With that cannon she can make it all look like a regrettable accident when her UNSN masters arrive, he thought. It will be easily explained by monkey lies as a beam that went astray in the final stages of the battle. No monkey to bear responsibility or be disciplined. At such a range, the degree of spread of the laser will be so small as to tell them nothing, and in any case would they bother to examine it closely? Without that cannon we could hold them off, or at least put up a fight such as they could not disguise, even we pawful of cripples. She is probably expecting me to lead all these out in a last charge into the laser canon, as many Heroes have done lately. That would solve her problems. And mine.

Without that cannon!

Think like a monkey.

There was something forcing itself up from deep in his memory, something sparked by his words with Jorg about monkey poetry, and the monkey studies that Chuut-Riit had begun to put on a systematic basis shortly before his murder. In the old monkey libraries of München there had been other records of Earth, fragmentary and disordered after the burnings and bombings of the initial landings, included primitive moving pictures. One had been shown to his group of NCOs, called Guns at Batasi, showing the way a monkey sergeant thought. Yes, and the situation of that monkey had not been unlike the one he now found himself in…

“Lesser-Sergeant! Kzintosh!” It was spat in the battle imperative tense. They snapped to the attention position.

“Lead us, Raargh-Sergeant!”

“Lesser-Sergeant, we have still the battle drum?”

“Yes, Raargh-Sergeant. The monkeys were so busy with the other trophies they did not take it. In any case, it is in its shrouding.”

Puzzlement in the others' eyes for a moment. Quickly he told them his plan. “Unshroud the drum, and bring it here. All of you! Junior Doctor, Corporals, Old One, kzintosh all! Can you sing?”

“Sing?”

“Our battle songs! You know them!”

“Yes, Raargh-Sergeant!” from every throat.

“Then sing. Strike the drum! Sing and strike loud! First Corporal, you shall lead!”

Their voices rang out as though in triumph, though it was actually a bawdy song about the mating habits of manretts. The Sthondat-hide chambers of the drum reverberated as Orderly leapt upon it.

The humans had not thought of Heroes retreating. The rear of the building was unwatched as Raargh-Sergeant, Lesser-Sergeant, Trainer and Trader-Gunner made their hobbling run from it into what had been the Abbot's apartments. They crossed the cloister and chapel. A human, one of their priest kind, saw them and fled with a cry down a narrow flight of stairs. The kzin had no time or inclination to pursue but dragged a door shut behind the human and wedged it roughly shut. Raargh-Sergeant with his wounded legs and prosthetic arm, and carrying the sidearm, could not scale the rear wall at a bound, and Lesser-Sergeant and Trainer were partly crippled also, but they dragged a large piece of fallen rubble to it to make a step.

Then they were over the wall and in the outer ditch that circled the monastery. The roaring song from the Mess and the drum's booming had apparently masked any noise, and distracted the humans. They crawled forward.

“Look!” Lesser-Sergeant gripped his shoulder and hissed.

Two cars were approaching in the smoky sky. One seemed to be gathering the drifting bodies, which the wind was now blowing beyond the monastery and towards Grossgeister Swamp. The other seemed to be heading for the main gate. They were military vehicles, of course, drab-painted and snouted with weapons. Get into tall grass! Instinct shrieked. There was none. The monastery had been built in meadowland but the human refugees had taken all the vegetation long since to boil or as fuel for their cooking fires. Only hard bare earth and mud remained, almost black, with a scattering of bones and rubbish. Raargh-Sergeant had no time to curse the lack of camouflage gear: against that ground the kzins' orange fur blazed like a flare.

“Run!”

Crouching low, pain driving wounded limbs, in the partial shelter of the ditch. The drum booming. One of the aircars descending towards the monastery gate. The groundcar, its gun still trained on the Mess building, humans still craning at the sounds of revelry within, but a number of humans moving to the pad where the cars would land. Up and aim.

“Fire!”

Converging beams from the four weapons, fast, but not quite fast enough. Whatever human operated the gun car had been alert. Power-operated, the laser cannon had spun towards them even as they raised the weapons. The beams hit not the gun but the armored shielding.

“Down! Down into the ditch!”

Too late for Trainer, a blizzard of glass needles from one of the human strakkaker guns turning his chest cavity into an instant skeleton, his weapon spinning away, Trainer standing grotesque for a second like one of his own lecturer's diagram before collapsing in pink bones and disarticulated limbs. There was other firing, presumably the squad weapons in the Mess. There was a high-pitched squalling from the humans. He recognized the words of some human calling for medical assistance. The gun car's driver was probably shaken by the impacts, but after a moment it fired too, the awful blue-green light burning the smoke and dust just above.

The beam from the car lowered, hitting the far lip of the ditch in a line of live steam and melting slag. Too near and they will boil us. But they have not hit us yet. Still, such a laser could only have a short firing time. Getting rid of heat at the source without large and elaborate cooling units was a perennial problem.

And someone was still beating the battle drum, in true defiance now. And the Kzinti voices were raised in no bawdy barrack-room ballad but in the cadences of Lord Chmeee's last battle hymn.

Second Corporal, Junior Doctor and Groom bursting out in a diversionary run, whirling to drive straight at the mass of humans. Second Corporal raising the last side arm, a storm of fire cutting them down. The squad weapons firing from the Mess, their beams keeping the humans down, scattered and behind the walls. But it was a short, professional burst. If the Heroes who had fired remembered their training and his orders they were down quickly and under cover. Trader-Gunner was bobbling up and down, firing from the lip of the ditch, though still, as ordered, firing only at the car.

Beside him was Lesser-Sergeant, moving with battle-quickness, exposing himself for an instant to fire and dropping back. Firing again, jerking and falling into the bottom of the ditch. Raargh-Sergeant crawled to him.

Lesser-Sergeant's skull and jaws had been seared by a beam. He was unable to speak but Raargh-Sergeant held his paw and groomed him with his tongue until he could not see his chest rise and fall. He buried Lesser-Sergeant's trophy belt quickly, hoping it would not be found and dishonored. He took Trainer's rifle—there was hardly enough of Trainer left to honor—but left Lesser Sergeant's beside him. He hissed orders to Trader-Gunner.

A few bolts sizzled past over his head but no monkey dared approach yet. His fur, covered with blood and the mud from the ditch's sides and bottom, glowed orange no more. He backed away down the ditch, pausing momentarily only to plaster more mud over himself. Trader-Gunner ahead of him was equally covered in dark mud and slime. The big laser had passed through a group of the human huts and they were now burning fiercely, more smoke in the air. He crawled on. A sound of mud on mud behind made him pause and turn. Lesser Sergeant was not quite dead, he saw. He was crawling up to the lip of the ditch, somehow still holding the rifle. He saw him raise it and fire again. He was burnt so that he no longer looked like a kzin, but even as he was, plainly dying, by rights already dead, he had a warrior's quickness still. Humans fired back. Raargh-Sergeant crawled on, round a curve that hid Lesser-Sergeant's stand from sight, and on. He knew that to go to his companion's support now would be the ultimate betrayal of him, though his liver was sickened and his mane flattened itself against his neck. He heard firing from him for a little longer, and then answering fire. Then it stopped.

Now they were up and running, dark shapes almost invisible in rolling clouds of dark smoke, through the burning wreckage of the monkey houses, Trader-Gunner breathing in tearing gasps and spitting blood, the mud that covered them shielding them from the flames as well as camouflaging.

Then into an alley where the houses were not burning. Back into the deserted internet cafe. A Beam's Beast leapt at him from a computer console, fangs dripping venom. Trader-Gunner shot it in mid-spring, and it carried across the room like a small fiery comet to crash against the wall. He stamped on the burning white fur.

“You know the net?” he asked Trader-Gunner. It took the coughing kzin a few moments to reply.

“Yes, Raargh-Sergeant. I use it every day in my craft.”

“You are probably more expert than I. Activate it! Hurry!”

Trader-Gunner threw himself into one of the kzin-sized seats, claws to the keyboard. There was an arc of blue fire, and he leapt up screaming, fingers fused to the keys, vomiting sparks and fire, falling forward dead and burning, smoke pouring from mouth, ears and eyes.

So there had been a booby trap after all. Perhaps his fighter's instincts had atrophied with sickness as he feared. He should have seen it. Well, Trader-Gunner had at least had the luck to die in battle, of a sort.

Still, there was the computer Raargh-Sergeant had used earlier that day. That had been safe then and perhaps still was. He would soon see.

He keyed in his military code. With that code any kzin could, in theory, dominate human passwords. He hoped that was still the case. He keyed in human government vehicles, and the number of the gun car.

Yes. It was still working. A netcam gave him a view of the car's cabin, and beyond, of humans standing about and hunting cautiously along the ditch. He called up the car's controls. A car in human use was programmed to have the sensor and receptor cells in its brain overridden by several Kzin keywords. But the cannon was newly installed by the humans and not connected to the car's brain. Could he drive it forward into the ditch? He keyed in a command and spat curses. The humans had, of course, disabled the key motor-response cells, leaving it under purely mechanical control. Only the brainless netcam was not affected. He could start the car and kick it forward in a straight line, but that was all. It would run into the monastery wall.

Better than nothing, if it squashed a monkey or two, he thought. Indeed, a human stood directly in front of it. He moved to kick in its starter, when he recognized that the monkey wore the robes of the abbot.

That one took me under his protection, he thought. To run the car over that one would be dishonorable now. Could it not have been any other? Fate is playing some bitter tricks today.

No matter. He had got behind the car anyway. Clutching the two beam rifles, he doubled himself into the crouching attack run.

Out of the hut. Straight down the alley, propping the two weapons steady on a wedge of timber, aiming, firing.

Hitting the laser cannon behind its shield. The car suddenly airborne on a wall of roiling fire, the air hammer of the explosion, a ball of fire leaping skywards from a ruptured fuel-tank, the car turning over, the cannon cycling laser bolts skyward, into the walls, into the ground in gouts of flame, the car crashing back upside-down between the shattered gates. Humans dropping, firing. He dropped and rolled. He thought that if he kept low he could lose himself for quite a time in the huddle of huts and alleys—until they began strafing them from the air, in fact. It would be a bold human who followed him. He raised his head cautiously, fairly sure that he was unseen still in smoke and shadows. He heard Jocelyn's voice: “Come out, you one-eyed ratcat bastard! Come out and die!”

“Sun ov a beetch!” he called back in his best human accent, wondering if the human insult was appropriate. He had several spare charges for the rifles in his belt, and could kill a lot of monkeys yet. Lesser-Sergeant, and Trader too, would be avenged. Let him get his claws on the Jocelyn-human, and she might be sorry she had thrown her suicide pill away!

Then he heard the aircars landing.

It was obvious what would happen next. The monkeys in the cars would be informed of the situation and would saturate the whole area with fire from the air. How much harm could he do them with the two remaining beam rifles? Not enough, not before they used their beams and missiles. Some of the monkey buildings were already on fire, and they would all burn fiercely with the help of beam weapons. He saw the snouts of the squad weapons reappear at the door and main window of the Mess. But it seemed no human intended to initiate a duel with them yet, and the discipline that he had ordered held: they kept behind the monastery wall, and the humans remained sheltered from them. The gun car and scattered debris flamed and crackled and smoked.

He raised the two side arms, one in his own hand and one in the prosthetic one, and poised himself. There was nothing for it now but a charge into the monkey lines.

He thought of Lord Dragga-Skrull's great final order, Lord Dragga-Skrull who like him had lost arm and eye in battle: “The Patriarch knows every Hero will kill eights of times before dying heroically!” He braced his legs to spring. “Raargh-Sergeant!” A kzinti voice, not a human, carrying effortlessly across the monkey clamor.

“Stand up and come forward!”

He stood slowly. There was Hroarh-Captain, disembarking with some difficulty from one of the aircars. A male human accompanied him: short, stocky for a human, wearing the UNSN costume.

He advanced, still carrying the beam rifles. The lights on their stocks indicated they were still charged. Humans whom he assumed had a medical function were busy with the human casualties now. Second Corporal and Junior Doctor were obviously dead. Groom was still moving, but as Raargh-Sergeant watched he howled and died. They had died as kzintosh should die, on the attack.

He stopped a few feet from the group and let them come forward. They were now covered by the cone of fire of the squad weapons held by the remaining kzin in the Mess.

“This is Staff Colonel Cumpston of the UNSN. What has been happening here?”

“You may speak in the Heroes' Tongue,” said the stocky human. “I understand it.”

“The Jocelyn-human demanded I hand over the Jorg-human to her. I refused. She brought up the cannon and said she would destroy us if I did not comply. I therefore acted to disable the cannon.”

“I see.”

“I thought it might be something like that,” said the stocky human. “A pity we didn't get here earlier.”

“Pity?” The kzin did not understand the word.

“I mean, it is unfortunate. In any event,” he went on, “all Wunderland humans have now been placed under the jurisdiction of the Free Wunderland Forces. Captain Jocelyn van der Stratt anticipated her authority slightly, but it is now a lawful request.”

“And we? The kzinti of Ka'ashi… the… the Wunderkzin?”

“You will not be mistreated. You are under joint UNSN-Free Wunderland jurisdiction.”

The abbot had been very near the car when the beams hit it. He was pale and shaking and bleeding around the head and mouth, he had lost his shoes and showed bare monkey feet at the ends of thin pale legs and his garment was scorched, but he was still capable of speech. “I have also made a request that there be proper treatment,” he said. His voice shook as much as his hands.

“Hroarh-Captain? I obey your orders!”

“I am no longer in a position to give orders here, Raargh-Sergeant. It appears the Patriarch's armed forces here are dissolved. As one individual kzintosh to another, you are the stronger male now, or the less disabled, so perhaps if anything I am under your dominance.

“We have accepted terms of unconditional surrender,” he continued, “in return for a monkey promise that all surviving members of our kind in this system will be spared. The alternative was to see us exterminated to the last kzinrett and the last kitten. The Patriarch's Forces are officially dissolved on this planet. I am now nothing.”

Raargh-Sergeant slipped into the imperative tense as he replied. Humans would recognize that. What they perhaps would not recognize was the other constructions which he was inserting, in the rarely-heard ultimate imperative tense, generally used only by Royalty or in a situation where the Honor of the whole kzin species was at stake.

“We have Chuut-Riit's urine. May we keep it?”

Hroarh-Captain looked startled at the tense, but having virtually conceded dominance, he was slow to protest. Then, it seemed, the Sergeant's motive occurred to him.

“It is not valuable to humans,” he replied. The concealed meaning was: “Animals have no conception of its value/sacredness.”

“And Chuut-Riit's blood? That is there also.” He gave a grooming lick to the air. To another kzin that could indicate a kitten.

“It is not valuable to humans,” Hroarh-Captain repeated in the same tense. “We may prevent dishonor coming to Chuut-Riit's blood.”

“I bid you speak in the tense of equals,” said Staff Colonel Cumpston in an approximation of the dominant tense of the Heroes' Tongue. “I do not mean to humiliate you, but it is my duty to understand what you say.”

Jocelyn strode forward, cradling a strakkaker. Raargh-Sergeant was suddenly aware that he still held two beam rifles. Her face was white and there was red human blood on her costume. The heady smell of it took his memory back for a moment.

“This ratcat has killed another four of my people and injured eight more! After the cease-fire!” She raised the strakkaker. Raargh-Sergeant raised his beam rifles. It was hard to steady his prosthetic arm but a steady aim would hardly be needed. Staff Colonel Cumpston stepped quickly forward and raised a hand. Hroarh-Captain leaned forward into the path of the strakkaker. The abbot also stepped forward. “No,” he said. “I gave my protection. It must stand even now or it is nothing.”

“It appears there was a factor of provocation,” the UNSN colonel said. “I see that kzinti have died too.” Raargh-Sergeant saw that though his face was impassive, Hroarh-Captain was trembling almost as much as the abbot. Lights flashed on the control panel of the thing that took the place of his legs as it sought to compensate for the movements.

“There are major considerations of policy here,” the colonel went on. “It has been decided for various reasons that those of the kzinti who wish to remain on Wunderland may do so. In any case, we can hardly repatriate them. The war goes on.”

“It is not repatriation that I was thinking of.”

“I can assure you, Captain van der Stratt, that this was decided for a number of carefully considered reasons.”

“So you want hostages. You can do without this one. How many of the Teufels do you think you need?”

“It is not only that. The Wunderkzin who have grown up with humans are an important asset to us!”

“Grown up with humans! As tyrants and predators! Not a family on Wunderland is not maimed by what they have done! Not one of us does not mourn dead! Apart from those who fought and died, two kinds of humans have lived on Wunderland for the last two generations: slaves and unassigned slaves! Not one of us, not even the human traitors in the house of Chuut-Riit himself, had an hour's security for our lives or our family's lives. Can you comprehend that, Staff Colonel? Have you lived and grown old knowing there was nothing—nothing—to prevent you, your wife, your parents, your children, your lover, your closest friend, from dying in the Public Hunt, or conscripted to die manning kzinti auxiliaries in space battles? To know that whatever day's life you gained, the only future for you and yours was as kzinti slaves? And you ask us to have mercy on these monsters?

“You know the new München Space Port? We call it the Himmelfährte, the Heaven Way, not because it leads to the Heavens, but because so many of us died in the building of it, under the lashes and fangs of their 'Supervisors-of-animals' when fleet facilities had to be expanded quickly. Children, old ones, sick! A child would take food to its parent conscripted to slave there in the morning, and itself be dead under the lash by the time the First Sun had set!

“Orphanages raided, humans taken from the streets, casually, to provide specimens for neurological dissection when the Great Chuut-Riit, the Enlightened Chuut-Riit, the kindly planetary governor the collaborators flattered as a 'good master,' decided we should be studied! Humans taken to Kzin and its other colony worlds who are there still, lost souls in Hell. And we police, who licked the boots of our chief Montferrat-Palme in terror even as he prostrated himself before his Master, who might be a kzin trainer-of-humans too lowly to have a kzin name! Shall we forgive and forget those things?”

“You have had revenge on Chuut-Riit,” said Hroarh-Captain. “He died terribly. And your vengeance is widespread. Few of full or partial name survive, and none of the best save Hroth who was Staff Officer. Where is Traat-Admiral who tried to be a benign master to you humans? Where are all those I knew? Indeed, even few of the nameless survive. I have sought to save a few kzinretti, and kits and wounded… You seek further vengeance on kzinti? Look at me, man. Would you be as I am?”

Jocelyn stared at the wreck of the kzin officer in its hovering craft as though seeing it for the first time.

“No,” she said at last.

“Or Raargh-Sergeant? Is it a crime for a soldier to abide by his duty?”

“We never denied your strength and courage. Hell seeks always the worst ways to torment us, and it was one of the cruelest tricks of Hell that demons should be so magnificent. We could not—we cannot—afford to think of your suffering.”

“I would not expect you to. We enjoy the smell of a prey's terror, but humans might as well have no noses. I remember in the Hohe Kalkstein, I smelt a group of ferals lying in ambush. I kept downwind and they never smelled me till I was a dozen bounds from them… Then one jumped up and leaped to heft his strakkaker… too late. And underground…” Hroarh-Captain's ragged ears folded and unfolded in a kzinti laugh. Some memories were still good.

“Our fathers tried to negotiate with you when your ships first appeared in our system,” she replied. “Some of us tried to empathize with you. Your answer was beams and bombs and enslavement. We were a peaceful culture then and nightmare fell upon us. Well, we have learnt better now, half-ratcat!”

“Let us all put down our weapons,” said the colonel. “There is no need for more to die here, human or kzin. Enough have died in this war. And I see the guns in the monastery are still trained upon us. We have won, Captain van der Stratt, we do not need heroic rhetoric.”

“But we have needed heroic rhetoric, Earthman. Flatlander! We who lived and died under the ratcats needed to rediscover heroism! And we did!”

“So did we,” the colonel replied. “It was we who built the Space Navy.”

“I can no longer order you to sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant,” said Hroarh-Captain. It was a difficult word to pronounce, a new word that had crept into the Kzinti vocabulary on Wunderland over the last few months, and until very recently, on the occasions it had been used, it had been prefixed by the modifier “nevirr.” He went on: “I can no longer take the burden from you. Who is in the Mess?”

“Wounded. A kzinrett. A very old Conservor. A few others… a suckling infant.” He paused. “And a/the kit.” He wondered if the humans would catch the blurring of the article. “And the Jorg. The human who has been under my protection.”

“If they die, they will die uselessly, and there will be fewer of us left on Wunderland. We had better go to them.”

“I shall come,” said Staff Colonel Cumpston.

“A UNSN human enter a den of armed kzintosh?”

“I have not always been a staff officer. Jocelyn, you should perhaps wait here.”

“Why? Do you think I fear a few shot-up ratcats, Flatlander? When we Wunderlanders have fought them face-to-face these years?”

“I am thinking of Jorg. I wish to negotiate with him.”

“He is mine lawfully! As are all the human traitors lawfully in the power of the Free Wunderland Forces to deal with! You have agreed to that!”

“Nevertheless, I think it would be best.”

“No.”

“Please do not forget our respective ranks.”

How strange! thought Raargh-Sergeant. To the kzin, human discipline seemed both soft with its feeble punishments and unyielding in its hierarchy. Kzinti discipline was ferocious but admitted a streak of anarchy as well. He who gave an order was expected to be able to enforce it physically at once. It is almost a parody of kzin dominance establishment, without death-duels. How much did they learn from us?

“You may answer to Markham!”

“I answer to the UNSN alone.”

“And do you think I do not know who the UNSN's real masters are? You have revealed more of yourselves than you think these last few days! This is our planet, our system!”

“Which we have just liberated for you! A few days ago you were still weeping at the wonder and glory of the Hyperdrive Armada… Let the dust of this last battle at least settle before we quarrel among ourselves. Jocelyn, I ask you, let me handle this my way… and let us not be shamed before Heroes. Very well. Come.”

“Do you sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant?”

“Hroarh-Captain, it seems there is no choice. H'rr.”

“Let the monkeys settle with the monkeys then. I will tell our Heroes to fire no more. Our task is to save what we can of our own.”

Chapter 4

The two kzin and eight humans, six of the latter armed troopers, crossed the compound, past the smouldering wreck of the gun car. Raargh-Sergeant still carried his guns, for no human had seemed disposed to take them from him, but their barrels pointed to the ground.

“It is finished,” he said, as he entered the Mess—Hroarh-Captain could no longer negotiate the steps. “I shall report that you have accomplished your duties satisfactorily,” he added in the old formula, though he did not know whom he would report to. The Fanged God, perhaps? He saw that the Staff Colonel removed his headdress as he entered. Jocelyn-Captain did not.

The remnants of his “garrison” fell back from the weapons. The head-wounded Hero was in a twitching coma; the kzinrett, thankfully, now seemed engrossed in the suckling kitten and needed no restraints. The great drum was broken, he saw. They must have struck it too hard in their efforts. It hardly matters. We have no more Sergeants' Mess.

“So you hand me over,” said Jorg. He spoke not to Raargh-Sergeant but to the human male.

“I will make diplomatic representations,” Staff Colonel Cumpston replied. “A fair trial, at least. I want to see no more undeserving dead. No more human dead, even no more kzinti dead.”

“Hear the Flatlander,” muttered one of the human troopers. “Merciful to ratcats he never fought against or suffered under.”

Jocelyn said no word of rebuke. The colonel turned to the trooper and began to raise a hand, then dropped it. It might have been simply an aborted gesture, but it might have served the purpose of calling attention to the row of decorations that he wore.

“A fair trial! What farce is this!”

“What trial did you give the humans in your power?” flared Jocelyn. “A one-way ticket to the Public Hunt! 'Our masters tell us there is a continuing demand for monkeymeat, a quota to be met!' Do you think I have forgotten those words?”

“A quota you helped supply. And if we had not, things would have been worse. We had a civilization. We lost it. Do you think by these methods you will build it again?”

“Yes, plead for your life! You should do it well. You have heard plenty of your victims' pleadings. Take all their best phrases!”

“What is happening?” asked Bursar. “If there is a crisis, we must be calm. What is this monkey chatter?”

The kit ran to Raargh-Sergeant. “Yes, what is happening? May we fight now? The shooting was over very quickly.”

“Not now,” said the colonel. The soft syllables of the Female Tongue which the kit was used to were relatively easy for a human to pronounce, yet he could place in it a churr of authority as well: “Your Raargh-Sergeant Hero will tell you no more fighting.” He strode around the room, nodding at what he saw. At the block encasing Peter Brennan, he made a peculiar gesture. Raargh-Sergeant realized he was beckoning to him.

“More should see this,” he said.

“I do not think more will. There will be no more Sergeants' Mess.”

“No. Tell me, Raargh-Sergeant, have you ever been on furlough in the hills?”

“A few times, when things were quiet. And I have hunted ferals there.”

“I see. Captain Jocelyn wants you dead.”

“I would like that tree-swinger dead too.”

“She has reasons. Her family… H'rr.”

“I have reasons too. She lied to us, and because of her, Lesser-Sergeant and the others are dead and my Honor is in the mud with monkey dung.”

“Let us be calm. It would be too easy for a war of extermination to flare up again, and it is your kind that would perish on this planet. I and some others have tried hard to prevent that. So has Hroarh-Captain and Hroth-Staff Officer, and he is the last of Traat-Admiral's own Pride to survive.”

“And when our Patriarchal Navy returns in force? What of you monkeys then?”

“They will find it hard to fight a space war against the hyperdrive, I think. But we look to a cease-fire not on Wunderland only, but between the planets. Perhaps you will go home to Kzin.”

The concepts were largely too alien to take in. He grasped what he could. “Home to Kzin? I was born here, as was my Honored Sire. Somewhere here lie my kit's bones. And why should Kzinhome receive us, who are defeated and disgraced and should have died if we could not conquer? Ka'ashi is my home.”

“Yes. Have you seen much of this home of yours, Raargh-Sergeant?”

“I have been in the Patriarch's Forces since I was a youngster. I have gone where I was sent.”

“The mountains?”

“Yes, of course, as I said. I was made Sergeant and Raargh-Sergeant in campaigning.”

“There could be good hunting there, for man or kzin.”

“Yes.”

“There still can be.”

“I do not understand.”

“No place for you here now. No place for you on Kzinhome. The hills are wide.”

“And what of Hroarh-Captain?”

“The UNSN will need him, and all the very few kzin officers who have survived, to administer the kzin population. Montferrat-Palme has made arrangements.”

“As the Jorg-human was needed by us?” So the humans' highest controller had been a secret feral too.

“No. Come a proper peace settlement, the kzin will not be enslaved. In any event, they could not be… That kitten, is he your son?”

“No. A war orphan.”

“So he will die?”

“Male kits who lose their fathers too soon usually die, unless a kzintosh without get of his own adopts them.”

“There must be many orphans on this planet now.”

“Many indeed.”

“I suppose the UNSN will be sitting up orphanages for kittens as well as children. It will be interesting to see the results in a generation or so.”

“You would turn our children into monkeys?”

“No. Take your hand from your w'tsai. It would be futile to even try. But you asked of Hroarh-Captain. I see a place for him.”

“And the Jorg?”

“A traitor. He goes to the Free Wunderlanders.”

“He dies.”

“I will not kill him. But I will shed no tears for him. How would you feel about a kzin who did what he has done?”

“I do not know tears. But you monkeys are hard to understand. No Hero would do what he has done.”

“Raargh-Sergeant…”

“Raargh-Sergeant no more. There is no force for me to be Sergeant.”

“Raargh, then.”

The single, rankless Name hung for a moment in the air as the kzin tasted it. “Raargh, I cannot allow you to spill more human blood. You understand that.” Jocelyn strode to them.

“Raargh-Sergeant! There can be no further delay. It is time for your kzin to hand over their weapons now! We have two gun cars outside now. And there are more humans all round the monastery, armed. If you refuse I will take it as an act of war, and one UNSN officer and one geriatric priest will not interfere.”

Think quickly, he told himself.

Then: “Very well.”

He spoke to the others in the Heroes' Tongue, using the ordinary dominant tense in which military orders were given.

“Step back from the weapons.”

“And your own, Raargh-Sergeant!”

He set down the beam rifles.

“I suppose you had better stay here for the time being. I have no facilities for these wounded. You may be moved to a holding camp later.”

“Jocelyn-Captain… the Ptrr-Brunurn. He is a trophy of the Sergeants' Mess.”

“I said he could remain. I will abide by my word.”

“But there is no Sergeants' Mess now, only a few wounded kzinti who will soon be gone I know not where. We can no longer toast him with ritual and honor him and Kzarl-Sergeant. I give him back to you, so humans at least may honor him as he deserves. He is at risk of being dishonored otherwise.”

“Very well.”

“There is another matter. Chuut-Riit's urine.” He indicated the ceremonial jar.

“What do I want with cat piss? We will clear that stink away from this world.”

“It was a great gift to the Mess, presented in token of our Honor and Valor. Again there is no Mess. You are the conqueror. Do with it what you will, but it is a great trophy and thing of pride for us. A great night it was.” Of feasting, too, though I should not say that, lest she think upon that feast. But, oh, my Sire, and O Honored Chuut-Riit, it tears my liver and shaves my mane to do this thing! Know that I pick my way as best I can along trails of Honor that have grown twisted. “A gift from an old ratcat who tried to fight with Honor.”

“Very well.” She passed her beam rifle to a trooper and took the jar, noting, perhaps, its intricate carvings and inlays. She gestured at Jorg von Thoma. “Come.”

The human party turned and walked towards the car. Staff Colonel Cumpston lingered, looking back at the collection of wounded kzinti.

“I will carry the Ptrr-Brunurn,” said Raargh. He beckoned to the kit. “Vaemar,” he said, “give me good help to move this honored human. For you see my arm and legs are little use.” To the colonel he said, “There is a debt.” The human nodded just perceptibly. “I know that Heroes are honorable in their debts,” he said, “for good or ill. I may collect this debt one day… In the meantime, your Name as your word that you will harm no more humans?”

“My Name as my word. Save in defense.”

“I have been a sergeant myself. If I may say so, perhaps old sergeants of all kinds tend to understand one another. It is a thankless job.”

“Thankless? We of the Patriarch's forces do not serve for thanks but for knowledge of Honor upheld.”

“I know.”

“And sometimes for the loot, of course… Centurion.”

“You know that word? Yes. I see the jar is heavy.”

They followed the other humans to the cars. The rear part of the second was already filled with the human and kzin remains that had been retrieved from the aerial combat, scorched, smoking, smelling like… a smell that Raargh realized he had had too much of, in the last few weeks and the last few years. I have had enough, he realized with amazement. He and Vaemar-Riit worked Peter Brennan's block into the small area that was left. He turned to the colonel. “I ask you, one more thing. Not for myself, but for him: he has no colored ribbons for bravery like you but see that he is not buried as you bury humans under white stones.”

“I will speak to the abbot. He will be reopening the monastery as it was. It will be up to him, I think. You know that you kzinti made us religious again.”

“Farewell.”

His w'tsai was out in a blur of light. He flung it with inhuman accuracy into the small intake port of the car. He seized the kit in one arm, Jorg in the other. A standing leap took him into the cockpit of the other car. He slammed the canopy closed, struck at the switches with claws and prosthetic hand that moved too fast for a human eye to follow. The glass and Teflon needles of a strakkaker sizzled into the car, turning half the canopy behind him opaque. From the corner of his eye, he saw Jocelyn drop the precious jar and snatch for a beam rifle. But the second's delay was enough. The car was already airborne, accelerating away at full thrust.

He dived, pulling out centimeters above the roofs of the human shanties. A couple of bolts came after him, but the buildings and then the smoke blinded the shooters. He banked away from an approaching human ground vehicle with red crosses on its sides and, hugging the ground, zoomed towards Grossgeister Swamp, swerving to left and right as they passed the first surviving trees. The car buffeted and boomed into supersonic, reached full acceleration.

The monastery left behind, he climbed fast, eye flickering to the fuel gauge. They could travel a long way yet. The landscape opening up below was pockmarked with craters, and there were scattered fires and drifting smoke, but the smoke was lit by the passage of no lasers and there were no new explosions. Across Wunderland the cease-fire seemed to be holding.

The UNSN would be sending radio warnings about him, but as long as he headed away from militarily sensitive areas, they would probably not shoot him down. They would have much else to do and a crippled sergeant and a human would hardly be worth the effort. Still, he stealthed the car.

The silver water and dark vegetation of the swamp flashed below, then open parklike land again, in the Wunderland multicolor of plants, the local red, the green of Earth and the orange of Kzin. A purplish tinge of night was beginning to appear in the sky and Alpha Centauri B stood forth in its glory. He turned to his passengers.

“By the time they have got the other car airworthy, we will be well away,” he told them. “I do not think we need fear pursuit.”

“There is nowhere for me to hide on this planet,” said Jorg, “I am a dead man. But I thank you for your efforts.”

“I find I cannot protect you forever, as I was charged,” the kzin replied. “And I see that to die defending you would not save your life. But I can give you a chance, and be as faithful to my Honor as I may. I will put you down in wooded country. You can hide there for a time and perhaps with time the monkeys will hate you less. You will have monkey justice but perhaps not given to you while their livers are still burning.”

“And is monkey justice right, do you think? You with your Honor may have some power to ease my mind if you think I am not wholly traitor to my kind. What do you think?”

“I am not a monkey. It is not for me to say.”

“And you? You cannot go back now?”

“I could not hand over Vaemar, Vaemar-Riit, could I? Not to a monkey orphanage or perhaps to the Arrum. A hostage of the Patriarch's blood and last kit of Chuut-Riit's line?… And I am Sergeant no more… He and I are heading for the hills beyond the Hohe Kalkstein. The country is open and empty but for game, and we will see how the Fanged God meant kzintosh to live!”