Herrenmann raised a brow and a slight, well-bred smile curved his asymmetric beard.
'Why?' she said. 'Because he's younger, healthier, better educated? Because he's a war hero? Because he's intelligent, dashing and good looking?'
Harold blinked, and she felt a rush of affection.
'Something like that,' he said.
Claude laughed. 'Women are a lot more sensible than men, aid kamerat. Also they mature faster. Correct?'
'Some of us do,' Ingrid said. 'On the other hand, a lot of us actually prefer a man with a little of the boyish romantic in him. You know, the type of idealism that looks like it has turned into cynicism, but whose owner cherishes it secretly?' Claude's face fell. 'On the other hand, your genuinely mature male is a different kettle of fish. Far too likely to be completely without illusions, and then how do you control him?'
She grinned and patted him on the cheek as she passed on the way to pour herself a glass of verguuz. 'Don't worry, Claude, you aren't that way yourself, you just act like it.' She sipped, and continued: 'Actually, it's ethnic.'
Harold made an enquiring grunt, and Claude pursed his lips. 'He's a Belter. Sol-Belter at that.'
'My dear… you are a Belter,' Claude said, genuine surprise overriding his habitual air of bored knowingness.
Harold lit a cigarette, ignoring her glare. 'Let me guess… he's too prissy?'
Ingrid sipped again at the minty liqueur. 'Nooo, not really. I'm a Belter, but I'm… a bit of a throwback.' The other two nodded. Ingrid could have passed for a pure Caucasoid. 'Look, what happens to somebody in space who's not ultra-careful about everything? Someone who isn't a detail man, someone who doesn't think checking the gear the seventh time is more important than the big picture? Someone who isn't a low-affect in-control type every day of his life?'
'They die,' Harold said flatly. Claude nodded agreement.
'What happens when you put a group through four hundreds years of that type of selection? Plus the more adventurous types have been leaving the Sol-Belt for other systems, whenever they could, so Serpent Swarm Belters are more like the past of Sol-Belters.'
'Oh.' Claude nodded in time with Harold's grunt. 'What about flatlanders?'
Ingrid shuddered and tossed back the rest of her drink. 'Oh, they're like… like… they just have no sense of survival at att. Barely human. Wunderlanders strike a happy medium—' she glanced at them roguishly out of the corners of her eyes ' — after which it comes down to individual merits.'
'So.' She shook herself, and felt the Lieutenant's persona settling down over her like a spacesuit, the tight skin-hugging permeable-membrane kind. 'This has been a very pleasant holiday, but what do we do now?'
Claude poked at the burning logs with a fire-iron and chuckled. For a moment the smile on his face made her distinctly uneasy, and she remembered that he had survived and climbed to high office in the vicious politics of the collaborationist government. For his own purposes, not all of which were unworthy, but the means…
'Well,' he said smoothly, turning back towards them. 'As you can imagine, the raid and Chuut-Riit's… elegant demise put the… pigeon among the cats with a vengeance. The factionalism among the kzinti has come to the surface again. One group wants to do minimal repairs and launch the Fifth Fleet against Earth immediately —'
'Insane,' Ingrid said, shaking her head. It was the threat of a delay in the attack, until the kzinti were truly ready, which had prompted the UN into the desperation measure of the Yamamoto raid.
'No, just ratcat,' Harold said, pouring himself another brandy. Ingrid frowned, and he halted the bottle in mid-pour.
'Exactly,' Claude nodded happily. 'The other is loyal to Chuut-Riit's memory; more complicated than that, there are cross-splits. Local-born kzinti against the immigrants who came with the late lamented kitty gover-nor, generational conflicts, eine gros teufeleshrek. For example, my esteemed former superior—'
He spoke a phrase in the Hero's Tongue, and Ingrid translated mentally: Ktriir-Supervisor-of-Animals. A minor noble with a partial name. From what she had picked up on Wunderland, the name itself was significant as well; Ktriir was common on the frontier planet of the Kzinti Empire that had launched the conquest fleets against Wunderland. Archaic on the inner planets near the kzinti homeworld.
'— was very vocal about it at a staff meeting. Incidentally, they completely swallowed our little white lie about Axelrod-Bauergartner being responsible for In-grid's escape.'
'That must have been something to see,' Harold said. Claude sighed, remembering. 'Well,'hebegan, 'since it was in our offices I managed to take a holo—'
Co-Ordinating Staff Officer was a tall kzin, well over two meters, and thin by the felinoid race's standards. Or so Claude Montferrat-Palme thought; it was difficult to say, when you were flat on your stomach on the floor, watching the furred feet pace. Ridiculous, he thought. Humans were not meant for this posture. Kzinti were; they could run on four feet as easily as two, and their skulls were on a flexible joint. This was giving him a crick in the neck… but it was obligatory for the human supervisors just below the kzinti level to attend. The consequences of disobeying the kzinti were all too plain, in the transparent block of plastic which encased the head of Munchen's former assistant chief of police, resting on the mantelpiece.
Claude's own superior was speaking, Ktriir-Supervisor-of-Animals.
'This monkey—' he jerked a claw at the head ' — was responsible for allowing the two Sol-agent humans to escape the hunt.' He was in the half-crouched posture Claude recognized as proper for reporting to one higher in rank but lower in social status, although the set of ears and tail was insufficiently respectful. 'I can read kzinti body language that well.
This was Security H.Q., the old Herrenhaus where the Nineteen Families had met before the kzinti came. It was broad and gracious, floored in tile, walled in lacy white stone fretwork and roofed in Wunderland ebony that was veined with natural silver. Outside fountains were splashing in the gardens, and he could smell the oleanders that blossomed there. The gingery scent of kzinti anger was louder, as Staff Officer stopped and prodded at his flank. The foot was encased in a sort of openwork leather-and-metal boot, with slits for the claws. Those were out slightly, probably unconscious reflex, and he could feel the razor tips prickle slightly through the sweat-wet fabric of his uniform.
'Dominant one, this slave—' he began.
'Dispense with the formalities, human,' the kzin said. It spoke Wunderlander and was politer than most; Claude's own superior habitually referred to humans as kz'eerkt, monkey. That was a quasi-primate on the kzinti homeworld. A tree-dwelling mammal-analog, as much like a monkey as a kzin was like a tiger, which was not much. 'Tell me what occurred.'
'Dominant one… Co-Ordinating Staff Officer,' Claude continued, craning his neck. Don't make eye contact, he reminded himself. A kzinti stare was a dominance-gesture or a preparation to attack. 'Honored Ktriir- Supervisor-of-Animals decided that…' don't use her name 'the former assistant chief of Munchen Polizei was more zealous than I in the tracking-down of the two UN agents, and should therefore be in charge of disposing of them in the hunt.'
Staff Officer stopped pacing and gazed directly at Ktriir-Supervisor; Claude could see the pink tip of the slimmer kzin's tail twitching before him, naked save for a few briskly orange hairs.
'So not only did your interrogators fail to determine that the humans had successfully sabotaged Chuut-Riit's palace-defense computers, you appointed a traitor to arrange for their disposal. The feral humans laugh at us!
Our leader is killed and the assassins go free from under our very claws!'
Ktriir-Supervisor rose from his couch. He pointed at another kzin who huddled in one corner; a telepath, with the characteristic hangdog air and unkempt fur.
'Your tame sthondat there didn't detect it either,' he snarled. Literally snarled, Claude reflected. It was educational; after seeing a kzin you never referred to a human expression by that term again.
Staff Officer wuffled, snorting open his wet black nostrils and working his whiskers. It should have been a comical expression, but on four hundred pounds of alien carnivore it was not in the least funny. 'You hide behind the failures of others,' he said, hissing. 'Traat-Admiral directs me to inform you that your request for reassignment to the Swarm flotillas has been denied. Neither unit will accept you.'
'Traat-Admiral!' Ktriir-Supervisor rasped. 'He is like a kit who has climbed a tree and can't get down, mewling for its dam. This talk of a 'secret menace' among the asteroids is a scentless trail to divert attention from
