by Larry Niven
"Leonie survived worse than Raargh," he admitted at length. "Raargh will not be shamed," he added in a different tone of voice. Slowly and painfully he stood and hobbled on. Leonie let him lead. Was that what it was for? She wondered. So I could talk a kzin into living? And then she thought: But Raargh is a special kzin. It took a long time, and there were more calls from Patrick.
Patrick opened the car's canopy as they emerged from the cave mouth into the daylit glade. He stood up in his seat and jumped down, hastening towards them.
"Get back in the car!" Leonie cried out. "Stay in the car!"
The rock hit him on the side of the head. The blow could have shattered his skull had he not been wearing earphones. He staggered and fell. Leonie fired at the rock's point of origin, a stand of tall grasses by the little stream. Patrick, streaming blood, began to crawl back towards the car as the grass flashed into flame. A dozen ferals burst out of the grass. They were armed with at least one strakkaker as well as rocks and an ancient Lewis-gun. They converged on the injured Crashlander.
Patrick bought up a handgun and fired, hitting the feral with the strakkaker. I forgot he was a Spacer flashed through Leonie's mind faster than she recognized the thought. Raargh swung upon the rifle-crutch and fired in a blur of speed. Leonie knew what his marksmanship was like. His first shot shattered the Lewis-gun, probably killing the gunner, but his second he fired not into the ferals but ahead of them. They went down, out of sight behind the bank of the stream. Patrick stumbled back to the car and pulled himself into the cabin as Raargh and Leonie laid down covering fire.
Something was happening in the sky to the southwest, a ball of purple radiance travelling like a meteor, heading towards them. Patrick was taking the car straight up.
The thing in the sky—a purple spider, a retinal disorder, a chip of cauliflower—expanded, shimmered to a shape Raargh and Leonie knew well. A kzin Rending Fang-class heavy fighter, heading towards them, landing gear down.
The car dodged and swerved in the sky. It was above the big fighter, which was now coming down for a landing on its gravity-motor. The car hovered for a moment. Then it dived vertically. At seven hundred feet car and fighter collided with a shattering explosion. With strength she never dreamed she had, Leonie flung herself at the bulk of the kzin, pushing him back into the shelter of the cave mouth as fragments of white-hot wreckage rained down about them.
Amid the falling wreckage was the dark shape of an escape capsule. It hit the ground and opened. The Protector sprang out and rushed towards the cave mouth. Raargh and Leonie had both dropped their rifles, but Raargh had his w'tsai out. The Protector snatched them up and, straightening, and ran straight at the w'tsai, but at the last instant twisted in its stride, dodging so that Raargh's slashes with blade and claws slid off its leathery skin, doing little damage. Raargh tried to strike as he had struck in the cave, but missed, and he could no longer leap. At the same time the Protector struck out at them, knocking them both against the cave wall. Then it was past them, a leaping spider-shape disappearing down the passage into the darkness.
"Now ribs broken," said Raargh. "It will not stop Raargh fighting!"
"I think I may have broken a couple, too," said Leonie. "Why did it not kill us?"
"Hands full. It had our weapons."
"Why did it not kill us?" she asked again.
Raargh voice was different when he answered. He was the senior sergeant contemplating a military problem again.
"I think, Leonie, it believes it does not need to kill us."
"A foolish thing to think of Raargh and Leonie!" she told him ringingly. Raargh had little more than torn stumps of ears projecting from a complex of scar tissue, but he raised them in a signal that to her was eloquent enough.
"Feral humans return," said Raargh.
The surviving ferals were approaching the cave mouth in a semicircle. Their major weapons were gone, but they were still armed with rocks, which Leonie knew they could throw as accurately as Morlocks. Several new fires were burning where the wreckage had fallen in the vegetation, and a pall of dark smoke was rising to cover the sky above the glade. Raargh scrabbled across the ground and retrieved the w'tsai knocked out of his hand.
He should have killed them when we had the chance, thought Leonie. But he seemed to be trying not to kill humans. It was as if the shadowed walls of the cave and the sky beyond were turning a uniform white with the agony in her chest. Thinking was difficult. I don't think I can fight at all. They are not going to have mercy on me or a kzin. One human knife, one w'tsai, and one old kzin to wield it who's now very knocked about. This is real trouble. To survive more than fifty years of war to die at the hands of human children...
"Friends!" she managed to call. The ferals continued their cautious advance. She called again, without response. She had a knife. They had knives as well as rocks.
Suddenly they stopped, and fled, scattering into the vegetation in all directions. A moment later she too heard the sound of a ship in the sky. There it was, not shielded like the Protector's fighter. Arthur Guthlac's Tractate Middoth. It touched down, jets of foam smothering the burning vegetation, and armed figures leapt from it. Hunched over her broken ribs, she staggered out to meet them.
* * *
"So we have tree-of-life, Breeders and Protectors all together again in the caves," said Cumpston. "Along with who knows how many prisoners. There are people missing from some of the tableland farms, and most of the feral gangs round here have vanished." They were hovering, looking down at the great escarpment from several hundred feet.
Arthur Guthlac took a deep breath. The faces of the humans were grey. Strain, exhaustion, defeat.
"Only one thing to do if we're to keep the chain of command intact," said Guthlac. "We report to Early. He and ARM were pretty definite that he was to be informed before any major decisions are made."
"Not a good idea, when dealing with Protectors. We can't afford the time lag. Every minute we waste is giving the Protectors more of the time they need to learn and organize and make defenses and multiply themselves. And they've Number One back with them now."
"We're stuck with it. ARM has become desperate about losing control of the situation... of all situations. And they've made pretty unambiguous threats about what will happen if we break the chain."
"I'd like to see them threatening Protectors. How long will reporting take?"
"You know Early has left the system. I can't tell you where he is. We can send him a signal via a hyperwave buoy. That will take several days. Several more for orders to return."
"Have we got several days?"
"I think not. The alternative is to send in an infantry force to clean them out."
"It would be fighting Protectors. Protectors with weapons. They may be newly changed, but they learn very, very fast. And during decades of war the kzinti were never able to quite clear out the caves. Neither were we. Nils and his students haven't got them all mapped even yet, I believe, Leonie?"
Leonie nodded. The pressure bandages helped greatly, but it was still painful to talk.
"And hostages. They've got hostages. We're only just starting to learn how many."
"I've got all the forces I can muster on the way," said Guthlac, "and Nils has been onto the Wunderland authorities for their troops. There are local militias organized, too, and they're heading for the caves."
"Lambs to the slaughter," said Leonie.
"There are weapons," said Cumpston. "Dimity says sound affects them. Fly over a sonic drone."
"It wouldn't penetrate."
"Our people have police sonics."
"So did the police they grabbed. Protectors are tough. Sonics may discomfort them but I don't think they'll stop them for more than seconds. We might render them unconscious with directed sonics if we knew their brainwaves. Unfortunately we don't know and haven't time to find out. Shouting at them won't be good enough."
"There are a lot of other things. Nerve gas. Spectrum radiation."
&n
bsp; "They're coming with the troops. Unfortunately a lot of our nerve gas supplies are kzin-specific and as for the rest—well, there are the human hostages."
"If they have intelligence—and they do—they'll be dispersing now."
"You've got weapons here."
"Most of them are for use in space. We can blast away at the limestone while they organize. It won't be long before they're shooting back at us."
Dimity Carmody's fingers had been running over a keyboard on the main control console. "Arthur," she said. "Take us up higher. Fast. Put some southwest in it."
"How high?"
"Just keep going."
"Why?"
"I'll explain in a minute."
The Tractate Middoth rose, drawing away from the caves. Higher.
Below them, from first one and then scores of openings, smoke and fire jetted from the escarpment and the limestone plain above it. The profile of the ground seemed to bulge. A fireball erupted, and another, and as they watched the whole scarp of the Hohe Kalkstein went sliding down into ruin.
"Fly!" roared Guthlac. The Tractate Middoth flashed away.
There was another explosion and a greater fireball, incandescent, blue-and-white-cored, burst from the seething ruin. It boiled into the sky, transforming into an orange-and-black cumulus, hideous and obscene to the watchers in the Tractate Middoth as they raced desperately upward into the clean stratosphere and away. Other fireballs followed.
"I kept the code numbers and detonation keying for the nukes," said Dimity. "They were in Vaemar's computer. It's all over now. There was nothing else to do."
"I'll call defense HQ," said Guthlac. "They'll need to get decontamination teams to work fast. And before they signal a retaliatory strike on every kzin ship and world in reach."
"But why didn't you say what you were going to do?" asked Vaemar.
"I didn't see why you should all have the responsibility. It's all gone now. Protectors, Morlock, ferals, hostages, the whole cave system and countless species. A swathe of human farms and hamlets. Your rapid reaction teams. Your militia. A bewildered Protector who wondered about God. Did you want to live with that?"
Dimity looked up into Vaemar's eyes and read his expression.
"I am very close to being a Protector," she told him.
She put his great hand with its terrible razor claws on her forearm.
"Skin," she said. "Not fur."
Chapter 15
"I pronounce you man and wife," said the abbot. "You may kiss the bride."
Hand in hand, Arthur and Gale Guthlac walked from the monastery chapel, surrounded by their friends. Each in turn came to them and laid a wreath around their necks, the three intertwined colors of vegetation from three worlds that grew on Wunderland now: red, green and orange. Gale's children had arrived from the Serpent Swarm. Guthlac's crew had no swords as would once have been ceremonially drawn to make an arch for the couple to pass under, but they presented arms.
"Have you heard from Early?" Rykermann asked Cumpston as they crossed the garth.
"Yes. He didn't betray much emotion about what happened. It's a fait accompli, anyway. And the Protectors are gone. ARM is busy with other things. I imagine they are things that include us, and the Wunderkzin. But I'm tired of being one of ARM's catspaws."
"I should think there have been worse jobs than becoming Vaemar's friend," said Rykermann. "Even if he does thrash you on the chessboard."
"I hope I'll always be Vaemar's friend," said Cumpston. "But I feel a change in the whole course of my life is coming upon me."
"For what reason."
"I don't know. Just a feeling. Something very new."
"I didn't know you were foresighted."
"Neither did I."
"I sense certain things too," said Rykermann. "Dimity... Vaemar... whatever bond is between those two will not be broken."
Arthur Guthlac, Gale, the abbot and two of the monks were laughing together at something. Orlando and Tabitha had lost little time after the ceremony in wriggling and clawing out of their ornate formal garments and were leaping through the long grass together after flutterbyes. Nurse, who, it had been decided, was indispensible whatever he charged, carried a bag of buttons for their claws.
"So it begins, perhaps," said Rykermann. Now, with Leonie's hand in his, he realized that he was looking at Dimity without hopeless pain and longing. Not because of what she had done, nor indeed because he loved her any the less, but because his love for Leonie filled his heart, suddenly, strangely, and with a depth and fullness he had never known before. She had been near death with him many times, but this time, watching her enter the Protectors' caves with only Raargh, as he himself prayed desperately over a console of screens, had been different.
"Strange," he said. "This was where it all began so many years ago. I had flown out here because the monks had sighted a strange creature, a big catlike thing that didn't fit into the ecology." He remembered giving the strange orange hair he had found to Leonie, his graduate student, to dissect. Thinking of her as she had been in those days, he realized something else. Her walk was as it had been then, no longer clumsy.
"So it begins," echoed Colonel Cumpston, as he followed, escorting Dimity. His gaze wandered to Vaemar, resplendent in gold armor and shimmering cloak and sash of Earth silk, who, with Karan, Raargh and Big John, was pointing to one of the monastery fishponds. The juvenile Jotok he had helped save in Grossgeister Swamp were growing and joining. Orlando had fished one from a pond and was waving it playfully at Albert Manteufel. Don't pretend to be scared, Albert! Cumpston tried to telepath him. Don't pretend to run! But Guthlac's pilot was a veteran and knew better than to do any such thing. A growl from Raargh and a gesture at his proud new possession—a second ear-ring for his belt, there being no room for more ears left on the first—and the kitten snapped to attention. Another growl and warning cuff from Karan and the Jotock was restored to the water.
"Hope. Perhaps joy. Perhaps, truly... peace. For this little world at least," Cumpston said. As with Guthlac and Rykermann, many lines of strain and weariness seemed to have gone from his face. Reports from far-flung ships and bases were that the peace was holding. At this moment, for this moment at least, humans and the kzinti Empire were sharing a universe.
The group of friends drew together. Vaemar drew Rykermann aside for a moment.
"You love her, I know," he said.
"Yes," said Rykermann. He had never heard a kzin use the word "love" before, and wondered what Vaemar's conception of it was. But he knew who he meant.
"I think I understand," said Vaemar. "I say that to you alone. Speak it to no other human. She has taught me a little of that... but she must go her own way."
"I know," said Rykermann. They drifted apart in the flow of the company.
Dimity had known Cumpston since her return to Wunderland eight Earth-years previously. He and Vaemar had made the counterattack that had relieved their desperately outnumbered group in the fight against the mad ones. But now it was as if she saw him for the first time: a hardened warrior and leader, yet a man whose kindness and patience had done as much as any to bring peace to this tortured planet. That unnatural blend of human qualities that made up the knight.
The wedding party drifted through the monastery gates into the meadow spangled and starred with its multicolored flowers. Brightly-colored creepers covered the last few outlines of what had once been a refugee shantytown. Two pavilions had been set up, food laid out for two different feasts, and a couple of great kzin drums. There would be dancing later. Orlando and Tabitha were looking forward to that.
Vaemar again approached Rykermann and Leonie as they walked. His eyes followed Rykermann's to Dimity, her hand moving to take the colonel's.
"I know she had to do what she did," he said. "I know more about the Pak, the Protectors, now. There was no choice." He muttered something about a dream that Rykermann did not hear clearly.
"We humans have come a long way from the Pak," said Rykerma
nn. "How far will we go? What will we become?"
And then: "What will we all become."
"That, I think," said Vaemar, "is a very good question."
TEACHER'S PET
Matthew Joseph Harrington
I
PLEASANCE: 70 Ophiuchi AB-I (A-II/B-V), located in Trojan relationship to its binary suns, Topaz and Amethyst.
Orbital distance from either star: 20.8 A.U.
Principal source of heat: geothermal.
Gravity: .93.
Diameter: 6510 miles.
Rotation: 27 hours 55 minutes.
Year: 12263 standard days.
Axial inclination:< 1°.
Atmosphere: 39% oxygen, 57% nitrogen, 3% helium, 1% argon.
Sea level pressure: 7.9 pounds/square inch.
No moons. Discovery by ramrobot reported 2136, but existence concealed and colonization limited to families of UN officials until corruption trials of 2342-2355.
Pleasance's crops are grown under artificial lighting, as natural illumination comes to about 0.5% of Earth's. The climate does not vary with latitude, and qualifies as warm temperate. Constant low-level vulcanism is found everywhere on the planet, both land and sea. Almost all of Pleasance's warmth is due to release of massive fossil heat by outgassing of carbon dioxide and helium; the carbon dioxide is taken up by native oceanic life with great efficiency. Local lifeforms are killed by excess light, however.
The planet has the distinction of being the only known habitable world whose orbit is outside its system's singularity, so that ships may reach it within minutes after leaving hyperspace.
As a result of its founders' propensities, Pleasance's culture is legalistic to a possibly excessive degree...
Peace Corben's mother was this old: she had met Lucas Garner.