The Man-Kzin Wars 04

father murdered a youngling half-brother on a point of discipline.

Poor doomed Louis. I saved him and then I fed him back to the lion's den. She felt horrible that all she felt was relief. Maybe with her pelt of chimpanzee/kzinrett fur she really was turning into a kzin.

CHAPTER 27

(2423-2435 A.D.)

Selected excerpts from the journal of UNSN Lieutenant Nora Argamentine found in the ruins of a kzin border fortress.

Day 1

The Jotoki have cleaned out and refurbished an old kzinrett palazzo among the rubble left by the UNSN attack, admittedly in one of the least damaged areas of the city. It is, of course, only for the use of me and the two girls. His Royal Male Highness will take up appropriately masculine quarters, I think the domicile once used by the late lamented Grand Panjandrum himself. The Jotoki have sealed our unit and arranged for water and air. What about food? My Hero says this will be no problem but I expect pretty awful fare.

I have found a hiding place for my journal! It seems the kzinretti keep secrets from their masters! The cache is cunningly clever, crudely constructed and invisible to curious eyes. I don't know what to make of its contents. Found trinkets, I would call them. What kind of a mind would think such things beautiful enough to cherish? Dare I make the analogy of a dog hiding precious bones from his master?

I was touched as I stared at the trinkets. Is that what I am to become, a mind who values such simple things and knows somewhere in her soul that her master will not let her keep such junk?

I am living a nightmare. I can't kill myself because of the girls, who are pathetic in their need for me, and I can't escape. My brain is dissolving slowly and I don't know enough about the human mind to know what parts of it he's going to leave me. I can't feel the difference from day to day except for the temporary rushes and blackouts he triggers with his gizmo but I can tell the difference from last year and I fear the future. For instance, I'm not sure I'm qualified anymore to lead a mutiny.

Sometimes I don't believe that My Hero is doing this to me, and then I stroke the soft auburn fur on my body and know that, yes, he is. I can't argue with him. I've tried. He is like some men I know. He listens. I feel his kindness, even his love but he doesn't listen!

Brunhilde is dying of some malady of perception that has grown markedly worse in the last year. Some days she can't take care of herself or eat. Brun is thin, chronically insecure, and epileptic. I expect neither of them to live, but I try. Louis was beyond my meager skills—poor abandoned, caged, brutalized child!

Once, back on the ship, when I was going out of my mind with worry, I asked My Hero for help with the children's health. He had the practical suggestion that they be destroyed. Yet he surprised me. He actually read my horror at his suggestion and came back a day later with an experimental program of damage control. Wetware revision and editing. He couldn't promise results.

How can I bear this lily to let my girls die, perhaps like Louis, or to ask My Hero to experiment on them again to fix what he has botched? Would anyone trust him with girls?

Day 4

The kzin use an octal clock and a hopelessly complicated dating system. I really have lost track of what time it is, what day it is, what month it is. Females aren't supposed to care about such things. The year, I think, is 2423. I have periods of blankness, where whole days are missing. Of these I remember nothing. That makes keeping track of time even harder. I could put X's on my prison wall. Would that mean anything? How do I know when it is a new day? I'm arbitrarily assigning this day the number four, counting from the day of planetfall.

Writing is easier than talking for me now. When I write I have time to remember the words, to pause and rebuild what I've lost or to think my way around any mental block. Nora From-My-Future, if you are reading this over and do not understand it, I am writing it because my memory is going. The loss is subtle. But I have noticed that if I practice remembering, I can hold on to things. It is when I forget to remember, that I forget how to remember what I want to remember.

Practice. Practice. Practice. Remember that.

THIS IS MY MEMORY. If you've forgotten something, Nora, maybe you'll find it here. Maybe. My ability to learn doesn't seem to be impaired, except during the blanks. My Hero has told me that I'll always be able to learn as well as I do now, I just won't be able to talk or think with words. He's phasing out English and phasing in Heroic patois. Then he's going to phase out the patois. Thanks a lot, buster!

He's also phasing out the Earth. All the early parts of my life.

I try to remember Earth. I do not want to forget Earth. I remember my home town and the cornfields. I can see the afternoon sun on the church steeple. I know where I went to high school. I remember holding Benny's wrist when he was trying to kiss me and fondle my breasts at the same time. It was in the gazebo behind the lilacs in the backyard of the Yankovich place. But I can't for the life of me remember the name of my home town. How could I forget that?

Day 5

Sin is a wonderful moniker for this planet. That is as close as I can come to the hiss-rumblings that pass for its name in the Hero's Tongue. It is an awful place.

I no longer have a hope of getting to the Shark. I can only pray that the UNSN finds it like they found Sin, then blows it to hell. Maybe My Hero will never fix the hyperdrive engine, but don't count on that. He is obsessive about his work and the hyperdrive is always on his mind. Those five-armed mechanics of his are good. I think kzin science is much better than we supposed back on… dammit, I can't even remember the name of my base. It begins with a J. I'm sure. It has the same name as the rock at the head of the Mediterranean Sea.

Tomorrow I'll remember.

I have no idea whether My Hero is a great scientist or only a mediocre one. I do know that the aids he has available to him terrify me. I've seen him tackle problems that make me chuckle. I relish the decade he's going to spend beating his brains out and then he just looks up the answer in that ding-bat of his, tailors the answer to his needs and zips on to the next problem. An answer might be buried in the work of some obscure kzin scholar who lived when the Romans were raping the… whoever the hell they were… and he can zero in on that answer faster than I can slurp a bowl of soup even if he starts with the wrong question. The ease with which he can search makes up for his lack of curiosity. God help us if they get the hyperdrive!

And then again maybe it doesn't matter about the Shark. Nobody has a monopoly on science. My grandfather used to say that you can't build a dike with a single brick. There… I should remember the name of my grandfather and I can't. He had a white beard and a silver handled cane. Grandmother? Should I remember a grandmother? It is gaps like that which drive me build.

Day 12

I've been neglecting my journal. Brunhilde has been sick. My Hero surprised me and ran off a simulation on his ding-bat's human brain model and came up with some medicine that helps. He says it won't work for long. Brunhilde doesn't have a normal human brain anymore (he says). Something is running amok in there and doing irreversible haywiring. A side effect of the long ago experiment.

Day 17

I never thought a ratcat had a sense of beauty. But when My Hero looks at me I know he is seeing beauty. He didn't used to see me as beautiful. On Earth, I remember Earth, they have stories about what happens to sailors who spend so much time away from their women. Am I starting to think My Hero is beautiful? He's graceful. But I go cross-eyed when I look at him. After all these years, he still scares the shit out of me. I'm living in a palazzo for