"Tabitha caught two, Daddy," Orlando told him.
"Did she? Did she indeed? Where is Tabitha now?"
"Upstairs. She took them with her. She caught the first ball and then one after I caught mine."
Each time a ball was caught, the robot increased its speed, the complexity of its juggling and its shock. The third ball was by no means easy even for a kitten older than Orlando with fast reflexes and a powerful leap to catch. It required, and was meant to require, some planning ability as well as strength and dexterity. kzin kittens matured at somewhat variable rates, but Orlando—still younger than Vaemar had been when his Honored Sire perished and Raargh adopted him—had done very well to catch the second.
"How did she do that?"
"She climbed into the roof and jumped down."
Vaemar thought for a moment.
"Have you ever caught a fourth ball, Orlando?" he asked.
"No, Daddy." Then, realizing that this was said as a challenge, Orlando's posture changed. "Program the robot, Honored Sire! I will catch the fourth ball now!"
Vaemar watched while he did so, then groomed his son and soothed his scorches, both proud.
* * *
Alpha Centauri B had risen when Vaemar strode up the steep winding track above his mansion to the small guest house in the wood. The forest, normally full of stir at this time as the nocturnal creatures took over their shift, fell almost silent about him. There was game to be flushed here, but he was not hunting.
Like all kzin buildings, the guest house was large and thick-walled. But unlike most it had windows of some size close to the ground and a human-sized as well as a kzin-sized door. Its roof sprouted electronics. His presence was signalled as he drew near, and the kzin-sized door opened.
There was a fooch for him in the main room. He reclined in it as Dimity Carmody dialed him bourbon and another tuna ice cream. Although he had eaten already custom and politeness demanded he take a little (in any case, as he told himself, no kzin is ever entirely full).
She had been watching an ancient classic film from Earth, Peter Jackson's original of The Two Towers. She turned the set down. Vaemar read a sampler Dimity had put on the wall, a quotation from a human writer who had lived on Earth more than five hundred years earlier: "Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head."
"Chesterton," Vaemar remarked.
"Yes."
"I have taken some notes of his writing. 'It is constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is—Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?'"
"I know you have a good memory," said Dimity. "You have that word perfect."
"Yes, don't I? Which may suggest that particular passage has been important to me. Perhaps there is some reason for that."
"Your sense of humor means more to me than you may know, Vaemar."
"When will you be ready for the Little Southland trip?" Vaemar asked.
"Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. As soon as you like," she told him.
"I have some new instructions," he told her. "Looking for stolen radioactives. It's not quite what was planned."
"It doesn't matter. I'm ready to go. You'll take me with you, won't you, Vaemar?"
"So we agreed," He looked at her with great eyes for a silent moment. "Dimity . . ." He paused again.
"Yes, Vaemar?"
Vaemar knotted and unknotted his ears for a moment. He lashed his tail. He rose and walked across to their chess-game set up on a table, making a single move. Then he spoke slowly.
"Dimity, you know that I am one of the first kzinti to have been brought up, almost from kittenhood, with a good degree of human contact on more or less equal terms, with human companions and . . . friends. Among my very earliest memories are running with the human infants and leaping on a ball of fiber that Henrietta prepared for me. Much later I learned where she got that idea . . . After the Liberation I helped Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero when he worked on human farms. I have learnt Wunderlander and English from the best of sleep-tapes. I am a postgraduate at the University and a commissioned member of the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, with even a limited access to lesser military secrets. Human students whom I tutor prepare assignments for me diligently. I have led expeditions and fought against dangers with humans as allies. I have talked late into the night with human companions and shared many thoughts with them. I take part in many human, and encourage to the best of my ability many mixed, social activities. In chess I am a system master and aspire to interstellar master. Soon I hope I will be the first kzin to add the post-nominals PhD, DLitt and DSc to my Name. I am the leader of the Wunderkzin, and, slowly, our numbers among the whole kzin population of Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri A System grow. I recite all this to emphasise the fact that no kzin knows humans better than I. I know humans better than I know the kzinti of the Patriarchy."
"Yes."
"I am also, like my Honored Sire, a genius. That is a fact. In the society of the Patriarchy "genius" is an insult rather than a compliment. Geniuses may live on sufferance if they have useful skills. Otherwise they are generally killed by their fellow kittens, the warriors, in their nursery games and first combat training. Honored Sire lived because he
