“Then, of course,” she went on, “we found out what an unfair universe was really like.”
“Yes, love, we certainly found that out.”
“After the kzin destroyed her ship, I saw what happened to you… You told me something about it as we set up the first clinic at the refugee camp… Remember?”
“I remember,” he said. “I thought at the time that only you would have thought in all that death and terror and chaos to bring low-tech medical supplies away, would have realized our autodocs would be useless without our civilization. But I was a walking dead man then.”
“I saw the music box, that the kzin left for you. I knew it was hers. I'd seen her playing it at the Lindenbaum when you and she had coffee there together. I'd… I'd even thought of collecting music boxes, too, so you might notice me. I joined the chess club, too, for an excuse to hang around there, hoping you might one day come alone and notice me. But you never played chess.”
“Because she didn't. It showed up her abnormality too much. She wanted to be normal. Do you know the last thing she said to me?”
“I'd like you to tell me.”
“She said—sh-she'd already been injured then: 'It was hard, I know, for you to be in love with a freak. Know, at least, that the freak loves you.' ”
“You've got a good memory.”
“Too good.”
“I love you, Nils. I loved you at the university and in the refugee camp and in the hills. That night in the hills when I told you I'd always loved you, I was telling the truth. It wasn't a student with a crush on her teacher. I'd been there and I knew the difference. And I saw you were falling apart. Don't forget, either, that I've been in bed beside you through a lot of nightmares. Or rather the same one. Oh, my darling, of course I've always known… I had to accept that she'd always be with you. What choice did I have? You can't fight the dead, you can only live with them.
“There's something else,” she went on, and her voice was stronger, almost exultant. “I was there, remember, when the kzin came to the refugee camp. Very few of us had actually seen them then, and I saw you face a creature that made the brave man beside you fall dead of sheer terror. I was there in the days that followed, when it seemed the whole weight of the Resistance, the whole war, rested on your shoulders alone. Not for a day, a week, or a month, but year after year, and the years became decades and there was no hope and you never faltered. You are not only the man I love, you are my hero!”
“I couldn't have done it, Leonie, without you. Not for a year, or a month or a week. Truly, you were beside me… love.”
“I'm afraid I opened a bit of a flood-gate there,” Leonie said after a pause. “For us both. I've been damming that up for a long time too, you know.”
“I'm glad you did open it, my love. So glad!… But Raargh's story? And Henrietta?”
“She escaped. You know. Disappeared.”
“I know,” Nils Rykermann said. “Jocelyn has a particular hatred of her. Her business. I have other fish to fry.”
“Until now I thought she was probably dead.”
“So did I. But it's a whole planet she's got to hide in. A whole system for that matter. And there are plastic surgeons and organleggers. She might look quite different. New handprints. New lungs to confuse breath analysis. New eyes and new retinas.”
“But the main reason I think Raargh's story is true,” said Leonie, “is obvious: A kzin both wouldn't and couldn't make it up. A mad monkey devoted to Chuut-Riit's memory trying to lead a kzin revolt! It's so crazy it has to be true!”
“I'm inclined to agree with you.”
“And he said he was making his way here to see you anyway, as Cumpston said.”
“Yes. But why me?”
“Isn't it obvious? He trusts you.”
“Why should he? I hate ratcats!”
“Obviously, he doesn't think you hate him,” said Leonie. “Fighting together in the caves may have something to do with that… perhaps even the fact that he saved my life. And you left the key in the module door.”
“I forgot it! And… and there was no danger around. Morlocks—if there are any left—don't understand keys.”
“But kzin do.” She quoted, “How brilliantly lit the chambers of the subconscious would be if we could see into them!”
“Who said that?”
“She did. I went to one of her public lectures—on the inspiration of scientific discovery. I knew you'd be there.”
“I've tried, you know, I've tried very hard, never to let her memory come between us.”
“I know.”
“I'll call Jocelyn,” Rykermann said after an uncomfortable moment. He keyed a number on the desk and spoke rapidly. “Well,” he said a few moments later, “talk about serendipity. She's on her way here already. She's about to leave München with Arthur Guthlac and a party they think I might be interested to meet.”
“What's that mean?”
Nils Rykermann shrugged. “No doubt we'll find out. She says Early's had some sort of alarm too.” He shrugged out of his robe and stepped into the shower cabinet. “Freshen up, anyway,” he remarked, turning on the water.
She dropped her own robe and followed him. “Make love to me,” she breathed, winding her arms round him. “I need you.”
Their faces were nearly on a level. He did not need to bend to kiss her.
“I need you too. I always need you.”
Chapter 8
“Patrick's too flattering,” said Dimity, as the outlying farmlands flashed away below the car. “I'm not a key member of our group. I'm largely a theoretician and the original work I did on the hyperdrive has been done. I got myself on this party because I wanted to see Wunderland again.”
“Again?” Arthur Guthlac raised his eyebrows. It was on the face of it such an obviously bizarre thing to say. Before the hyperdrive, interstellar travel had involved decades-long flights in hibernation, had been extremely costly and invariably one-way.
“To find out what had happened. I was born here, grew up here… You think that's impossible?”
“You're saying you are the Dimity Carmody? Go on. Possibly I know what may have happened.”
“The Crashlanders pulled me out of a ship that reached Procyon flying on automatic pilot, its life systems destroyed by a laser blast and everyone else on board dead. I was in a tank. But I couldn't remember much of my life. Not who I was apart from my name or what had happened to us. A title that I didn't understand. I only remembered that something terrible had happened. Images of great ravening cat-beasts, and a man with a yellow beard… and later, when I started reading again, of mathematical symbols… You don't look too surprised.”
“I'm not. Not after something I heard a couple of nights ago, added to what I've seen of you… but now, I wonder.”
“About me?”
“No, whether this trip today was an entirely good idea,” he glanced rather guiltily at Jocelyn, sitting in a blister in the forward part of the car and out of hearing. “Still, we're on our way now.”
Below them the farmlands were giving way to barren, unsettled country. Flat-topped mesas, several now adorned with sensors or batteries of weapons, told of ancient erosion. Here and there was uncleared wreckage of war.
“It looks familiar,” said Dimity. The great escarpment of the Hohe Kalkstein loomed blue-gray to the northeast.
“This part can't have changed much in a long while. Not like München and the university. It's never been settled,” said Jocelyn, returning to the main cabin. She dialed them drinks. Dimity toyed with hers nervously. As it approached the cliffs the car banked slightly and flew up a long canyon. There was a laden vehicle parked on the ground.
The car had a new, kzinti-derived gravity motor and settled with a quiet purring in front of the Drachenholen's mouth. There was none of the noise and stone-spitting of an old ground-effect vehicle. As they cut the engine several humans emerged from the great cave. “Poor security,” remarked Jocelyn. “This place isn't so pacifi
ed as not to need a lookout.”
Arthur Guthlac surveyed the scene with the car's security sensors.
“There is a lookout,” he told her. “At least I very much hope that's what it is. Just inside the cave, partially concealed. I read the signature of a large specimen of what the monitor rather quaintly identifies as Pseudofelis sapiens ferox.”
The München party descended from the car, three of Guthlac's four guards triangulating the position with professional alertness.
Nils and Leonie Rykermann and their remaining students hurried to greet the party, Raargh emerging after a moment to join them. He carried one of the salvaged kzinti weapons, a thing the size of a small human artillery piece and too heavy for any human in the group to port. Rykermann was carrying a strakkaker he had been cleaning, and Leonie had another slung over her shoulder. The students were also armed.
“Jocelyn! Arthur! I'm glad to see you!” he called, “We've got a problem here!” With the air of one springing a surprise that might not be agreeable, he turned to Jocelyn, “I hope you can stand a bit of a shock. As you can see, Raargh, formerly Raargh-Sergeant, is here.
“I know you are old sparring partners,” he went on, awkwardly trying to make light of the situation, “but he has done us a service and brought us valuable information.” He counted the München party. “But we may… need… more…”
His voice died away. There was a metallic rattle as he dropped the strakkaker on the ground. He stood staring, his mouth working.
Jocelyn turned from her affectionate greeting of Leonie. “Hullo, Nils,” she said. “I believe you've met Dimity Carmody before. Recently arrived from We Made It.”
Dimity Carmody too was staring as if she could hardly credit her senses. In mirror-image gestures each raised a hand. Their fingertips, trembling, touched. Their fluttering fingers raised, slowly, to touch each other's faces.
Neither had eyes for Jocelyn van der Stratt as she turned abruptly away from them, her face contorted. Only Raargh saw it. He was not an expert in interpreting simian expressions, but his ziirgah sense picked up a hatred like a physical blow. For a second he gave renewed thanks he was not a telepath. He thought this sudden wave of volcanic hatred that flowed from her was directed entirely at him. But he was a Hero practiced in self-control, and the situation demanded discipline. Seeing, at long last, what sort of monkeymeat Jocelyn made would not help Vaemar. His tail lashed the ground, but he remained otherwise impassive.
“I'm sorry,” said Dimity. She was still staring at Nils Rykermann but speaking apparently to everyone. “There is a lot I don't remember. I was hurt, you know.”
They made their way to the main camp. Dimity stared about her, touching the back of her head with a characteristic nervous gesture, keeping well away from Raargh. She seemed to recognize the module. Jocelyn and Raargh glared at one another, Jocelyn's body language almost kzinlike, with barely pent attack reflex, Raargh using his lips and tongue to cover his teeth with a conscious effort, the tips of the glistening black claws of his natural hand peeping from between the pads. Nils Rykermann walked like a man in a daze.
Leonie, blank-faced as a soldier under inspection, explained what had happened, Raargh elucidating at various points.
“Can we be sure it's Henrietta?” Jocelyn ground out. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes shining now. Her fingers ran through the ears on her belt-ring, as if counting them over and over.
“That's how she identified herself. Raargh never saw her before. But why should any impostor wish to boast falsely of being the most hated human on the planet? And she has a recording of Chuut-Riit. Raargh thinks it's probably genuine, not a VR mock-up. He saw Chuut-Riit alive.”
“I have seen Chuut-Riit alive, and I have seen her before!” said Jocelyn. “The last time was when she accompanied Chuut-Riit to the start of a public hunt. Among the game turned loose for the kzin were some convicted humans in whom I had a… very personal interest. And I was in police uniform. I remained impassive and betrayed nothing, like a well-trained monkey. To have betrayed anything would only have achieved a place for me in the hunt as well. It was as I stood there that I vowed to kill her with my own hands. I will get her. If necessarily alone.”
Raargh raised the torn remnants of his ears in the equivalent of a human nod of understanding. Actually he was thinking of what dead Trader-Gunner had said to him the day of the cease-fire when he met Jocelyn: “Those manretti can be trouble.” I have always wanted that tree-swinger dead, but for Vaemar's sake as well as the word I gave I must be calm, he thought again. He had schooled himself for the company of one or two humans, preferably on his own ground or in the open. Being confined in the living-module with thirteen of them was a strain, especially with several of them giving out emotions that battered at his ziirgah sense. Leonie, who, after the battle with the Morlocks he thought he knew, was throwing out an emotional shield such as he had never encountered before. He wondered why. A short time before she had seemed relaxed and calm. That had been after mating, he knew, but even allowing for what monkeys were like, what had been a radiant, almost tangible happiness seemed to have worn off very quickly.
As for the mad manrret Henrietta and her even madder get, her presumption of some kind of partnership with Chuut-Riit would have been an intolerable insult even if she had not dared to lay forcible hands on Vaemar and himself.
He noticed the Jocelyn manrret looking at his ears. Torn as they were, it seemed, she could read that simple gesture. Her body language altered and his ziirgah sense recorded the waves of hatred that flowed from her mind being modified by something like brief fellow-feeling. We both understand vengeance. And then he thought: One of us two is not going to see another sunrise.
“They must suspect Raargh has given the alarm. They will be pulling out now,” said Leonie. “I suggest we send a blocking force back up the route Raargh took getting here, and another to watch for the main exits. It would be easier if we knew what the main exits looked like, but there you are.”
“I don't like dividing our force,” said Arthur Guthlac. “There are too few of us as it is. And we don't know how many there are.”
“We're not challenging battle. Only watching them till substantial forces arrive. They may not think Raargh went to humans. Perhaps they think he's headed to the kzin community at Arhus to bring them into the revolt. But we've got to move fast.”
“I've called for reinforcements,” said Guthlac. “Anyway, if Cumpston failed to report to Early after a certain time, emergency procedures would be triggered automatically.”
“How much do you know of Early's schemes?”
“Not a lot nowadays. And frankly I don't want to. His work was always secretive, and it's become more so lately. Don't forget, he got to where he is not only by being a brilliant military strategist, but by being the most ferocious carnivore in ARM's internal politics. That means manipulating ARM factions against one another, never letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Hunting kzin with a pocketknife in a dark room is child's play compared to the games Early plays.”
“No more monkey-chatter!” said Raargh. “Vaemar is captive. Must rescue now!”
“If Raargh says Vaemar is important, he is,” said Leonie.
“All right,” said Arthur Guthlac after a moment. “Can you guide us back through the caves?”
“Yes, trail is marked.”
“And we don't know the other entrance or entrances. It or they are presumably well hidden. Very well. This is my plan. It you don't like it, say so very quickly.” He turned to two of the soldiers. “Dunkerton and Collins, you will take our car and the university car and fly north. Commence a box search of the area using deep radar. Remember they may have both a human and a kzin prisoner, both important. Don't fire on them under any circumstances. Track them till reinforcements arrive. Take both cars in case they split up. The rest of us will head back through the caves. That's the only way I can think of that gives us a chance to block both ends of the burrow at on
ce.”
No one disagreed.
“Right, Nils and Leonie, I'll get you and your students to organize weapons, equipment, food, lamps for us all. You know best what we'll need. We may be underground a long time.”
The module emptied quickly under Leonie's direction. Arthur Guthlac turned to the desk and spoke to it urgently. Jocelyn alone remained with him, drawing him aside.
“Early says reinforcements are on the way,” he told her. “Markham's coming too.”
“Why not just let this revolt go ahead? It would do the Exterminationists' work for them.” Her voice had a seductive burr in it. Her fingers brushed his thigh. She bent slowly towards him and kissed his mouth, then drew away, gazing up at him catlike from under her long lashes. Her breasts heaved slightly but noticeably.
Arthur Guthlac looked at her with troubled eyes.
“Don't think the idea doesn't tempt me,” he said. “But… I began my military career—poring over fragments of old forbidden books in a museum—because I cared about the fact that honor seemed to have departed from our world… from Earth's society, anyway. We were sheeplike masses almost without volition, directed and controlled by the ARM bureaucracy, of which I myself was a tiny part. Without realizing it, we were undergoing a sort of death. I wanted to keep some threatened values alive. If it's true that humans can only have a civilization as long as less civilized humans guard it, and I am one of the guardians, then I will still try to be as civilized as possible. Otherwise the whole thing ends up kind of pointless.
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