"Impossible, surely!"
"I hope so . . . I suppose we would still make more human Protectors in response, if we had tree-of-life and they gave us time. But it's far harder to defend against an enemy that wants to do nothing but kill you than against one that merely wants to conquer you."
"They'd like to take Earth and Wunderland as breeding-space, of course, but an empty Earth and Wunderland," Leonie said. "Taking them would be secondary to getting totally rid of the human race, a dangerous rival and a mutated deviation from the Pak form.
"Perhaps they wouldn't even care much about preserving Earth or Wunderland or the Asteroids if they had Mars and Venus to terraform, not to mention the colonies we've established in other systems and all the various moons and planetoids available. Given what we know of Protector toughness and engineering intelligence, they might consider several possible worlds that are too tough for us as ripe for transforming and could write Earth and Wunderland off.
"Of course, once they'd removed the human race, they'd take on the kzinti without pausing to draw breath. Then they'd wipe out any and every other sapient or potentially sapient race they found. According to what Brennan learnt, there weren't even other animals on the Pak homeworld. As well as human hyperdrive technology, they'd get kzin gravity technology—giving them even more worlds and weapons."
Vaemar's eyes gleamed and more of his fangs showed.
"You think they could beat Heroes? The Patriarch's Navy?" he asked.
"Vaemar, my friend," Rykermann said, "humans are, in fighting ability, a crude, feeble, slow, stupid, fragile, soft, merciful, pacifist and rudimentary version of Protectors. I do not mean to insult, but need I say more?"
"No," said Vaemar. "I see."
"And even Brennan, evolved and benevolent as he was, was utterly ruthless," Rykermann went on. "One reason it took a long time to establish a proper human presence on Mars was that creatures there attacked the early bases. I don't know much about them, but apparently Brennan just wiped them out. No interest in preserving them, not even any curiosity about them—Protectors seem to have very little abstract curiosity.
"Look back to the Slaver War for a precedent for a Pak Space-War, perhaps. Or worse: even at the end the Slavers didn't kill the nonsapient life-forms. Look to a war of extermination throughout the galaxy. A war against all life. The war of humans and kzinti would seem a quaint, friendly affair by comparison, a skirmish or two, a sort of neighborly disagreement. Pak without the hyperdrive would be more than bad enough. Pak with the hyperdrive . . . well, my imagination's limited, I suppose, but I think they would just go on destroying intelligence or potential intelligence wherever they found it, on and on up the spiral arm, out to the other arms, back towards the Core, until they had all the galaxy or until they came up against something worse than themselves. If there is such a thing."
Rykermann paused and collected his thoughts.
"This is very scary," he said. "Or rather, it could be. But consider: These Morlock Protectors, if they did exist, wouldn't know anything. However clever they may be potentially, they have no teachers. Knowledge must have a source."
"I've thought of that," said Leonie. "They could get teachers. I've tried just now to put myself inside the skull of a newly-awakened Morlock Protector from the great caves. Such a Protector would, I guess, have memories of the Breeder stage. That could mean memories of the existence of humans and kzinti—probably of fighting against humans and kzinti in the caves—memories of aliens, of weapons, of war. And a knowledge of its own ignorance. If I were such a Protector, now suddenly a super-genius—the first thing I would set out to do would be to acquire knowledge.
"There could be several ways to begin that. We've cleared a lot of the old human and kzinti weapons and equipment from the war out of the great caves but there are probably still a lot left. Who knows what remote chambers and tunnels some of our people ended up fighting to the death in? Our Protector could take them apart and find out how they worked. But more importantly, if I were such a Protector, before I showed my hand more obviously, I'd capture humans and kzinti and find out everything they knew."
"How?"
"Raids on the surface. They'd talk under torture."
"Kzinti? Heroes?"
"Yes, Vaemar. As far as I know any sapient will talk under torture eventually. Isn't one of your—the kzinti's—own instruments of torture called 'Hot Needle of Inquiry?' They wouldn't have developed it if it didn't work . . .
"But Pak Protectors would use anything, and unlike either of our species, would feel no particle of distaste at having to do so. Normal kzinti, I know, regard torture as something not admirable or heroic, to be resorted to only from necessity, though that doesn't stop them once the necessity has been established. Those of both our kinds who enjoy torture for its own sake are abnormal individuals, shunned and despised by the normal. For a Pak Protector such scruples would be without meaning.
"As the Protectors' knowledge grew, interrogation would get easier. They could alter prisoners' brain or body chemistry, for example, so even the bravest could not but tell everything they knew at once. They'd find out about computers quickly and hack into them. They might capture kzinti telepaths and use them. Can you imagine a Pak Protector with access to the internet? There are certain to be computers with internet linkage lying in the caves among the bones and weapons.
"There is another thing. You know, Vaemar, that the great weakness of the kzinti is that they are impatient. They attack before they are ready. Time and
