little voice she had… Then somebody told me: 'Mathematics and astrometaphysics,' they said. I was taken aback and saw that the universe was that unfair. But… ' She gave an uneven laugh. 'They didn't let me have it all at once. Even then, in my teenage jealousy, I thought she was just a particularly bright student. You can't blame me: She was no older than I. She must be brilliant to be studying Carmody's Transform, I thought. And then I found out… What we put ourselves through as students!
'Then, of course,' she went on, 'we found out what an unfair universe was really like.'
Yes, love, we certainly found that out.'
'After the kzin destroyed her ship, I saw what happened to you… You told me something about it as we set up the first clinic at the refugee camp… Remember?'
'I remember,' he said. 'I thought at the time that only you would have thought in all that death and terror and chaos to bring low-tech medical supplies away, would have realized our autodocs would be useless without our civilization. But I was a walking dead man then.'
'I saw the music box, that the kzin left for you. I knew it was hers. I'd seen her playing it at the Lindenbaum when you and she had coffee there together. I'd… I'd even thought of collecting music boxes, too, so you might notice me. I joined the chess club, too, for an excuse to hang around there, hoping you might one day come alone and notice me. But you never played chess.'
'Because she didn't. It showed up her abnormality too much. She wanted to be normal. Do you know the last thing she said to me?'
'I'd like you to tell me.'
'She said-sh-she'd already been injured then: 'It was hard, I know, for you to be in love with a freak. Know, at least, that the freak loves you.' '
'You've got a good memory.'
'Too good.'
'I love you, Nils. I loved you at the university and in the refugee camp and in the hills. That night in the hills when I told you I'd always loved you, I was telling the truth. It wasn't a student with a crush on her teacher. I'd been there and I knew the difference. And I saw you were falling apart. Don't forget, either, that I've been in bed beside you through a lot of nightmares. Or rather the same one. Oh, my darling, of course I've always known… I had to accept that she'd always be with you. What choice did I have? You can't fight the dead, you can only live with them.
'There's something else,' she went on, and her voice was stronger, almost exultant. 'I was there, remember, when the kzin came to the refugee camp. Very few of us had actually seen them then, and I saw you face a creature that made the brave man beside you fall dead of sheer terror. I was there in the days that followed, when it seemed the whole weight of the Resistance, the whole war, rested on your shoulders alone. Not for a day, a week, or a month, but year after year, and the years became decades and there was no hope and you never faltered. You are not only the man I love, you are my hero!'
I couldn't have done it, Leonie, without you. Not for a year, or a month or a week. Truly, you were beside me… love.'
'I'm afraid I opened a bit of a flood-gate there,' Leonie said after a pause. 'For us both. I've been damming that up for a long time too, you know.'
'I'm glad you did open it, my love. So glad!… But Raargh's story? And Henrietta?'
She escaped. You know. Disappeared.'
'I know,' Nils Rykermann said. 'Jocelyn has a particular hatred of her. Her business. I have other fish to fry.'
'Until now I thought she was probably dead.'
'So did I. But it's a whole planet she's got to hide in. A whole system for that matter. And there are plastic surgeons and organlegger’s. She might look quite different. New handprints. New lungs to confuse breath analysis. New eyes and new retinas.'
'But the main reason I think Raargh's story is true,' said Leonie, 'is obvious: A kzin both wouldn't and couldn't make it up. A mad monkey devoted to Chuut-Riit's memory trying to lead a kzin revolt! It's so crazy it has to be true!'
'I'm inclined to agree with you.'
'And he said he was making his way here to see you anyway, as Cumpston said.'
'Yes. But why me?'
'Isn't it obvious? He trusts you.'
'Why should he? I hate ratcats!'
'Obviously, he doesn't think you hate him,' said Leonie. 'Fighting together in the caves may have something to do with that… perhaps even the fact that he saved my life. And you left the key in the module door.'
'I forgot it! And… and there was no danger around. Morlocks-if there are any left-don't understand keys.'
'But kzin do.' She quoted, 'How brilliantly lit the chambers of the subconscious would be if we could see into them!'
'Who said that?'
'She did. I went to one of her public lectures-on the inspiration of scientific discovery. I knew you'd be there.'
'I've tried, you know, I've tried very hard, never to let her memory come between us.'
I know.'
'I'll call Jocelyn,' Rykermann said after an uncomfortable moment. He keyed a number on the desk and spoke rapidly. 'Well,' he said a few moments later, 'talk about serendipity. She's on her way here already. She's about to leave Munchen with Arthur Guthlac and a party they think I might be interested to meet.'
'What's that mean?'
Nils Rykermann shrugged. 'No doubt we'll find out. She says Early's had some sort of alarm too.' He shrugged out of his robe and stepped into the shower cabinet. 'Freshen up, anyway,' he remarked, turning on the water.
She dropped her own robe and followed him. 'Make love to me,' she breathed, winding her arms round him. 'I need you.'
Their faces were nearly on a level. He did not need to bend to kiss her.
'I need you too. I always need you.'
Chapter 8
'Patrick's too flattering,' said Dimity, as the outlying farmlands flashed away below the car. 'I'm not a key member of our group. I'm largely a theoretician and the original work I did on the hyperdrive has been done. I got myself on this party because I wanted to see Wunderland again.'
'Again?' Arthur Guthlac raised his eyebrows. It was on the face of it such an obviously bizarre thing to say. Before the hyperdrive, interstellar travel had involved decades-long flights in hibernation, had been extremely costly and invariably one-way.
'To find out what had happened. I was born here, grew up here… You think that's impossible?'
You're saying you are the Dimity Carmody? Go on. Possibly I know what may have happened.'
The Crashlanders pulled me out of a ship that reached Procyon flying on automatic pilot, its life systems destroyed by a laser blast and everyone else on board dead. I was in a tank. But I couldn't remember much of my life. Not who I was apart from my name or what had happened to us. A title that I didn't understand. I only remembered that something terrible had happened. Images of great ravening cat-beasts, and a man with a yellow beard… and later, when I started reading again, of mathematical symbols… You don't look too surprised.'
'I'm not. Not after something I heard a couple of nights ago, added to what I've seen of you… but now, I wonder.'
'About me?'
'No, whether this trip today was an entirely good idea,' he glanced rather guiltily at Jocelyn, sitting in a blister in the forward part of the car and out of hearing. 'Still, we're on our way now.' Below them the farmlands were
