develop their ancestors' claws into hands. Game ran from them, but, when they wished to hunt, did not run fast enough.
They ate well the first night. They had killed again as it was fitting for kzintosh to kill, with fangs and claws. They had also built a small fire. They did not need it for cooking, warmth or light, but Raargh knew there were humans in the forest also and he wished to advertise their presence: A fire would not be made by stalking Kzin and was, he hoped, a sign of innocent intent.
They heard the human's footfalls long before it came in sight. Raargh had Vaemar take the rifle and his bow and hide from the night-blind creature beyond the circle of firelight in tall grass. He himself sat by the fire, w'tsai to hand but not obviously so, until the human appeared.
He relaxed when it did so. It was Emma, the human female whom he and Vaemar had encountered on hunts before. She appeared to live alone somewhere in the vicinity, presumably in one of the forest glades that dotted this rolling, largely open country. She was dressed warmly against the night air, even her hands covered in bulky gloves.
'Friend!' she called. Raargh took no particular notice of the fact that she called it in the Female Tongue of the Kzin (the Heroes' Tongue used the term 'friend' very sparingly and with complex connotations) and pronounced it as correctly as a human throat might.
Raargh watched her unspeaking, save for an ambiguous 'Urrr' in his throat as she approached. As she strode into the firelight before him she went down in the prostration of a human slave before its master. It was not something he had seen for five years.
'What do you want?' Raargh was certainly on speaking terms with some humans, and for Vaemar's sake as well as for the jobs he picked up he made an effort to be more outgoing in that direction than most, but very few Kzinti admitted humans to conversation easily. Since she had spoken in the Female Tongue he replied in the Heroes' Tongue. Naturally and without thought he employed the Dominant Tense. She switched to Wunderlander- the Female Tongue was not good for complicated conversation, but her posture, and, as he could now tell, her voice, remained humble.
'Noble Hero, please call your companion out.'
'Companion?'
She raised a nitesite.
'Noble Hero, I am aware from this device that there is another Hero ensconced in the tall grass not far away. I think it is Vaemar. I mean you no harm. And what harm could a single manrret do to two Heroes?'
She had a point there. And she seemed truly alone. Raargh had heard no other footsteps or mechanisms. He called and Vaemar bounded back towards the light.
'What do you want?' he said again.
'You!' She opened her gloved hands and fired the guns they concealed, spinning on her heel from Raargh to Vaemar. Kzin are inhumanly fast in battle, and it was a very near thing, but with the guns already in her hands she was fractionally faster. When they fell and had ceased to move she called an eight of Kzinti out of hiding and loaded them onto a sled.
Leonie emerged from the great mouth of the Drachenholen as Nils Rykermann landed. She was smeared with mud and had a strakkaker slung over her shoulder. They embraced.
'Another dirty day for you.' Nils Rykermann was wearing a modern fabric jacket. The wet soil fell from it.
'We've penetrated the old 19-K tunnel complex,' she answered. 'Plenty of mess to clean up.' They walked together under the scarred and blasted cliffs through the cave entrance and into the great ballroom of the Drachenholen's twilight zone. Rykermann cast an odd look for a moment at an old habitat module, stripped and plundered long ago by the desperate scavengers of the Resistance, now refitted. He seldom passed it without making a small gesture which Leonie never commented on. The limestone formations, once an incredible fantasy of flowering stone, were blackened and broken above them. The cave floors had been cleared down to bedrock. Bright lights had been strung here and there. There seemed to be no crepuscular life left to disturb.
'Remember our first trips here?' asked Leonie.
'Yes. And the others.'
'We thought the caves would be here forever, unchanged. A great biological treasure house. I remember the weeks I took to excavate my first fossil… then we chucked fossils aside as we shoveled out the guano.'
'Guano meant bombs,' said Rykermann. 'Bombs meant dead kzin. Water under the bridge. We'll restore it. What have you done with the students?'
She gestured to lights emerging from one of the tunnels beyond. Several young men and women, wearing masks and breathing apparatus, were trooping out of the cave carrying litters. They bore loads of bones and rags and a few partly mummified bodies and body-parts, human and kzin. 'Decent burial,' she said. 'I've wanted to give it to them for a long time.'
'One might say they had decent burial already,' said Rykermann.
'They were our comrades. I think some would have wanted their bodies to go home. I found Argyle von Saar. He loved the caves, of course. I left him where he was. He'd be happy his body went into the Drachenholen's food-chain. But some of the others… they'd like prayers and headstones, I think, and grass and sun and the flutterbys.'
'You speak as if they were still alive.'
'Of course. This ugly rubbish isn't the people we knew. What about these?' She gestured. Another group of students was emerging around a small sledge, purring loudly as it was lifted by a Kzin-derived gravity-motor. It was piled with weapons: kzinti beam rifles and plasma guns, heavier tripod-mounted squad weapons, gas canisters, old human Lewis guns and smart guns, all manner of detritus. Someone had set another mummified kzin on top of the pile, in parody of a conqueror's triumph. 'Some of those may still be charged. Get them into one of the outside modules and lock it. I'll keep the key. We'll have to take them to the city as soon as possible. I don't want to lose any more students… Come to think of it,' Rykermann went on, 'I was talking to a fellow yesterday who began as a museum guard on Earth. UNSN Brigadier now. There should be a museum of the Resistance. He might be able to give us advice in setting it up. Let future generations look at those Lewis guns and wonder at what we were forced to fight with.'
'I don't like all these mummies,' Leonie said.
'They're hardly very aesthetically pleasant. But they're not the people we knew. Just organic matter going back to nature a bit more slowly. As you say, ugly rubbish.'
'I mean, if the skin and tissues haven't been eaten, it shows how little life is left in the caves, where they once crawled with scavengers.'
'I knew those scavengers well.' They leaned together and he slipped his arm around her. 'So did I. So much of the biosystems have been destroyed.'
'It was to be expected,' said Rykermann. 'Plasma guns, gas, biologicals… There are other caves. We'll find the lost species and reintroduce them here.'
'No sign of live morlocks yet. I think we and the kzinti may have killed them all between us.'
Then be sure to get all the dead material you can. It might make a good graduate student project to clone them.'
'I feel guilty about them,' said Leonie.
'You killed a good few yourself, my dear. You and me and our furry friend together at one stage.'
I know. But we invaded their habitat. And… we have no right to wipe out species.'
Not even near-brainless predators of atrocious habits?'
She was silent a moment before replying. Then she answered:
'Not even them… Not even, I think, predators of atrocious habits whose brains are comparable to our own.'
'I don't know any creatures whose brains are comparable to our own,' he said.
There was a slight stiffening of her body, imperceptible to a casual observer.
'Not even one who saved our lives?'
An edge of iron entered his voice. 'I paid that debt in a currency that was understood.' Leonie had known terror in these caves during the wars. The Resistance had decorated her and the Free Wunderland government had rewarded her for heroism. She had fought monsters and horrors in the hills of Wunderland and in this stone jungle and beaten them. But now she looked at her husband with a new kind of fear in her eyes.
