There was a rushing in the water of a multitude of fish-like things, galvanized, it seemed, by a single mind and purpose. The bubbles of the crocodilians vanished abruptly. Something vast and dark heaved in the water before him. Phosphorescence deep below the surface showed rhomboid paddles and tapering, serpiform neck and tails. He resisted a brief and atavistic but, he knew, irrational, urge to leap down the bank and into the dark water after such prey. Certainly, I would have missed seeing this. Perhaps I am realizing what all royalty realizes sooner or later—high destiny is the tastiest of meat but it kills. Still, I have destiny of my own and cannot flee from it. Nor do I wish to. What does my Honored Sire Chuut-Riit think of me as he watches me from the Afterlife? That I have become half-human? Yet his own last words, found by Zroght-Guard Captain, written of his killers, my brothers, with his claw in his own blood: FORGIVE THEM. He meant allow them an honorable death, perhaps. But even so, many would think, that was an un-Kzinlike ending to his story here. And elder brother, who did not go mad with the rest, but who died saving me and the other new-born in the kittens' nursery?
One of my few memories of Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, my very last memory of him alive, is when I cried out to him how hungry we were. There was patience in his voice, even gentleness, as he told me: "Something very bad has happened." Then he bade me wedge the door again and wait, as he went, knowingly, to foul and shameful death. We are more complex than we let ourselves believe.
My destiny? I owe my life to many—to elder brother whose sense of duty over-rode the hunger-madness, to the unknown, probably Nameless and now almost certainly dead Hero who brought me to Raargh as he held the last kzin fort on Surrender Day, to Raargh himself a dozen times for his training, yes, and to the humans who fought at our side in the caves against the mad ones—against Henrietta, Honored Sire's old Executive Secretary, and her madder daughter, Emma. There is some pattern behind it all. A kermitoid hopped onto his muzzle, then, realizing its mistake, attempted flight. He disposed of it with a swipe and snap. There was another dark wave in the water, vee-shaped, moving up the channel.
My Honored Sire Chuut-Riit wished to understand humans, even if that began with dissection, and my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero has impressed on me my duty to do so now. Perhaps I begin to understand a little. The humans can be as destructive and barbaric as the kzinti, or much more so—I think of the Ramscoop raid, of humans running wild in the Liberation, of the mad ones in the caves—but humans can erect mental barriers against barbarism. Some of them are small, like the fang-paste that old human remarked on. Some are greater, like religious commands, or the human idea of the Knight. But those barriers are created, artificial, unnatural things. Kzinti can erect mental barriers against barbarism, too—where would we be without Honor, or without the wisdom and control of the Conservers?—but it strikes me, also, that there are things the civilized mind cannot cope with. Things like us, perhaps? Our ancestors came across civilized races and enslaved them with hardly a decent fight. We must change, but we must not change too much. I must study the limits of the civilized mind.
Below him the night water roiled when great beasts fought and tore. The froggolinas resumed their strange song.
* * *
Dawn was a noisy business in this part of the swamp. They breakfasted, and compared the lists of life-forms noted and recorded. It was agreed to approach the University to establish a permanent observation post here.
They made a quick biological survey of the island identifying and recording signatures electronically, and replotted its position on the chart. Then they pressed on. The current in the channel was flowing strongly here and they were content for a while to drift with it. The rings worn by each member of the party allowed them to fire any of the party's weapons. Two armed lookouts were posted at all times and, as a further precaution against unwelcome visitors climbing aboard, they rigged a temporary bulwark around the center section.
They came upon another island dwelling, but when they landed at the small pier they found it was empty. It was not marked on their charts, but nor were many such. It had plainly been a human habitation, and Anne pointed out that a family seemed to have lived there: there were children's clothes and toys. But the vegetable and small animal life that had established itself in the house indicated it had been empty for some time. Re-embarking, Vaemar noticed a small boat moored on the other side of the pier. The unsinkable materials of its hull kept it afloat, but it was full of water. There had been rainstorms some weeks before, and the variety of life swarming and splashing in the hull showed it had been water-logged for a long time. It had a sophisticated and, on present-day Wunderland, still expensive, neuronetic lattice for a brain, but that was still in place.
"I don't like that," said Hugo. "Whoever left here should have taken the boat with them."
"Perhaps they had another," said Toby.
Swirl-Stripes took out two heavy kzin ex-military beam rifles, University property which, strictly speaking, were not allowed to
