some time. Our culture was soft, complacent, faction-ridden, our people had lost much of their pioneering heritage very quickly, and few had survival skills. You have no faction and you know something of survival. You are even a public figure. You are needed here… as a leader, now. 'There is another thing,' he went on, meeting my gaze. 'The shuttle was full. I had to have twelve people dragged off as it was to accommodate her and her medical equipment. God help me! The rest were families. Should I have broken them up to make room for one more?'
'Yes, God help you!' Then, loath as I was to ask him anything further, 'Can I… see the ship?'
Are you sure you want to?'
'I'm sure.'
'You can't see her,' he said, 'Even if you should. She's in coldsleep. But you can see she's out of this horror. She's as safe as any can hope to be. And so is whatever's in her brain. There's a camera on the ship. You can see she's getting away.'
He touched the desk. There was a framed view of Wunderland from space, already shrinking. At one corner of the screen I could see some of the stony plating that had disguised the ship, now shed and tumbling rapidly away. Then we saw something else. I think we both cried out together. The abbot had fallen on his knees and was praying loudly. Something about a cup passing.
Two points of light on the screen: A red ovoid ship, moving fast, and behind it (or I guessed behind it-such things are almost impossible to judge in space except by comparing relative sizes) a black dot with a yellow halo: a reaction-drive ship, pursuing.
I saw the hull metal around the camera port beginning to change color, volatilize. The kzin ship was holding a laser on the fleeing vessel. It seems so intent on its attack as not to see the reaction-drive ship closing. Then I saw the reaction-drive ship firing at the Kzin. There was the beginning of an explosion, and the screen went blank.
'So the Kzin did pursue them. Why did you think they would not?'
'I hoped.'
I could have killed him as he knelt there. Bare-handed, I nearly tried, but an overwhelming sense of futility prevented me. Besides, it was not his fault. He had more or less done for Dimity what I had wanted him to do.
The only ones to blame were the Kzin. And she would have died in sleep without the least knowledge. A better death than many would have on this planet… or on Earth, perhaps. I realized that perhaps taking the chance to send her to We Made It had been the right one: the Kzin would not spare Sol System, and the refugees cramming the big slowboats had probably bought themselves no more than a temporary lease of life that would be spent in coldsleep. Besides, I thought more savagely, killing him in these circumstances was too kind. The little ginger cat jumped suddenly onto his shoulder and looked at me with bright button eyes. It patted at something glittering on his fat cheek which I realized was a tear. He lifted the cat down, stroking it.
I don't know how much he read in my face. His voice was calm now.
'And now I have something else to do. Come with me.'
I followed him. He climbed a spiral staircase to a room I had not seen before, lined with old books. He threw open a window.
'You get a better view from here,' he said: 'Look!'
There were the armed monks on the walls. A small door within the large main gates was open and people were entering the garth through it. Outside was a great crowd, more streaming to join it all the time.
'You can't take them all,' I said, stating the obvious.
'That's hardly the most pressing concern.' He handed me some high-magnification binoculars and gestured to the southwest. 'Look toward Munchen.'
More refugees. The line seemed to reach to the horizon. The fueling depot for the shuttle rocket had been demolished and was a smoking crater. But there was something else. I edited out the drifting smoke and haze. Above the straggling humans was the red ovoid of a kzin war-machine.
'They're coming.' I felt some malicious satisfaction. 'The refugees are drawing them to you.'
Yes, but they aren't attacking the refugees.'
'I suppose they want to keep their meat fresh.' I saw him flinch.
'What will you do?' I pressed him. It was sheer viciousness on my part, since there was so obviously nothing to be done. 'You can't flee into the mountains or the swamp. And doesn't your church disapprove of suicide?'
'It is a great sin,' he said, but his voice seemed abstracted and far away. 'Condemned by solemn anathema from the days of the earliest councils.'
'So what will you do?'
His momentary composure was gone again. If he was no longer weeping, there were beads of sweat running down his pasty brows to his face, and his voice shook. 'What Pope Leo did.' I had no idea what Pope Leo did. I stood silent, staring with loathing at this fat, frightened little man who I had once thought of as a teacher and friend. There was an old paper-knife by one of the books. I reminded myself that was pointless for me to kill him when I doubted I could give him a worse death than the Kzin would, but I hoped that I might live long enough to see him die. He beckoned me back to his study.
He opened a standing closet and began to pull things from it. I smelled a musty whiff of aged fabric preservative and noted it somewhere even at that moment.
He pulled the colored fabrics over his head and around his shoulders, dressing himself in stranger clothes than I had seen him wear before, flowing multicolored robes with a vaguely horned-like hat. He groped in the closet again and brought forth a peculiar carved rod with an ornate, curved handle. 'I told you I am also a bishop,' he said, as though that explained everything.
'Do you expect God to intervene? He's hardly been noticeable by his presence so far.'
He did when Pope Leo stopped Attila the Hun from sacking Rome.'
'How did he do that?'
'He asked him not to.'
'You intend to ask them?'
'We have made some progress in understanding the kzin language,' he said. 'It cost my friends in the government nothing to send me the reports of its work in that direction, and several of the brothers are scholars.
'I could not try to speak the Kzin's language, but I have some words of their script.' He showed me a cloth on which strange marks had been made in bright colours. 'I have tried to keep it short and simple,' he went on. 'I was going to write: 'Spare this place!' However, if there is a word for 'spare' in that sense we haven't found it. 'We ask for mercy' has the same problem-no word for 'mercy.' I hope that what this says is: 'This place is sacred.'
'They do have a word for 'sacred'?' I said it trying to wound.
'Yes. I think so. There are some hopes riding on our translation being correct.'
'You think that will deter them?'
'Can you think of anything better?'
I said nothing.
'Come with me.'
'Why?'
'I don't think Pope Leo faced Attila alone. I've seen old pictures of that confrontation. They seem to respect courage. You have obviously been injured recently and if you are seen standing with me it may have some small effect.'
I followed him. The monks cleared the way at the gate for us and we stepped out to meet the advancing kzin.
'Are you afraid?' I asked him.
'Yes. I have never been so afraid… Rykermann, please, don't leave me to face them alone.' I hated him more than any living creature, but I stayed. I no longer cared what happened to me, and I know part of me wanted to see him die. But there was something else, too. I couldn't leave him, whitefaced, blue lips moving in prayer, as he
