giving way to barren, unsettled country. Flat-topped mesas, several now adorned with sensors or batteries of weapons, told of ancient erosion. Here and there was uncleared wreckage of war.
'It looks familiar,' said Dimity. The great escarpment of the Hohe Kalkstein loomed blue-gray to the northeast.
'This part can't have changed much in a long while. Not like Munchen and the university. It's never been settled,' said Jocelyn, returning to the main cabin. She dialed them drinks. Dimity toyed with hers nervously. As it approached the cliffs the car banked slightly and flew up a long canyon. There was a laden vehicle parked on the ground.
The car had a new, kzinti-derived gravity motor and settled with a quiet purring in front of the Drachenholen's mouth. There was none of the noise and stone-spitting of an old ground-effect vehicle. As they cut the engine several humans emerged from the great cave. 'Poor security,' remarked Jocelyn. 'This place isn't so pacified as not to need a lookout.'
Arthur Guthlac surveyed the scene with the car's security sensors.
'There is a lookout,' he told her. 'At least I very much hope that's what it is. Just inside the cave, partially concealed. I read the signature of a large specimen of what the monitor rather quaintly identifies as Pseudofelis sapiens ferox.'
The Munchen party descended from the car, three of Guthlac's four guards triangulating the position with professional alertness.
Nils and Leonie Rykermann and their remaining students hurried to greet the party, Raargh emerging after a moment to join them. He carried one of the salvaged kzinti weapons, a thing the size of a small human artillery piece and too heavy for any human in the group to port. Rykermann was carrying a strakkaker he had been cleaning, and Leonie had another slung over her shoulder. The students were also armed.
'Jocelyn! Arthur! I'm glad to see you!' he called, 'We've got a problem here!' With the air of one springing a surprise that might not be agreeable, he turned to Jocelyn, 'I hope you can stand a bit of a shock. As you can see, Raargh, formerly Raargh-Sergeant, is here.
'I know you are old sparring partners,' he went on, awkwardly trying to make light of the situation, 'but he has done us a service and brought us valuable information.' He counted the Munchen party. 'But we may… need… more… '
His voice died away. There was a metallic rattle as he dropped the strakkaker on the ground. He stood staring, his mouth working.
Jocelyn turned from her affectionate greeting of Leonie. 'Hullo, Nils,' she said. 'I believe you've met Dimity Carmody before. Recently arrived from We Made It.'
Dimity Carmody too was staring as if she could hardly credit her senses. In mirror-image gestures each raised a hand. Their fingertips, trembling, touched. Their fluttering fingers raised, slowly, to touch each other's faces.
Neither had eyes for Jocelyn van der Stratt as she turned abruptly away from them, her face contorted. Only Raargh saw it. He was not an expert in interpreting simian expressions, but his ziirgah sense picked up a hatred like a physical blow. For a second he gave renewed thanks he was not a telepath. He thought this sudden wave of volcanic hatred that flowed from her was directed entirely at him. But he was a Hero practiced in self-control, and the situation demanded discipline. Seeing, at long last, what sort of monkeymeat Jocelyn made would not help Vaemar. His tail lashed the ground, but he remained otherwise impassive.
'I'm sorry,' said Dimity. She was still staring at Nils Rykermann but speaking apparently to everyone. 'There is a lot I don't remember. I was hurt, you know.'
They made their way to the main camp. Dimity stared about her, touching the back of her head with a characteristic nervous gesture, keeping well away from Raargh. She seemed to recognize the module. Jocelyn and Raargh glared at one another, Jocelyn's body language almost kzinlike, with barely pent attack reflex, Raargh using his lips and tongue to cover his teeth with a conscious effort, the tips of the glistening black claws of his natural hand peeping from between the pads. Nils Rykermann walked like a man in a daze.
Leonie, blank-faced as a soldier under inspection, explained what had happened, Raargh elucidating at various points.
'Can we be sure it's Henrietta?' Jocelyn ground out. Her teeth were clenched and her eyes shining now. Her fingers ran through the ears on her belt-ring, as if counting them over and over.
'That's how she identified herself. Raargh never saw her before. But why should any impostor wish to boast falsely of being the most hated human on the planet? And she has a recording of Chuut-Riit. Raargh thinks it's probably genuine, not a VR mock-up. He saw Chuut-Riit alive.'
'I have seen Chuut-Riit alive, and I have seen her before!' said Jocelyn. 'The last time was when she accompanied Chuut-Riit to the start of a public hunt. Among the game turned loose for the kzin were some convicted humans in whom I had a… very personal interest. And I was in police uniform. I remained impassive and betrayed nothing, like a well-trained monkey. To have betrayed anything would only have achieved a place for me in the hunt as well. It was as I stood there that I vowed to kill her with my own hands. I will get her. If necessarily alone.'
Raargh raised the torn remnants of his ears in the equivalent of a human nod of understanding. Actually he was thinking of what dead Trader-Gunner had said to him the day of the cease-fire when he met Jocelyn: 'Those manretti can be trouble.' I have always wanted that tree-swinger dead, but for Vaemar's sake as well as the word I gave I must be calm, he thought again. He had schooled himself for the company of one or two humans, preferably on his own ground or in the open. Being confined in the living-module with thirteen of them was a strain, especially with several of them giving out emotions that battered at his ziirgah sense. Leonie, who, after the battle with the Morlocks he thought he knew, was throwing out an emotional shield such as he had never encountered before. He wondered why. A short time before she had seemed relaxed and calm. That had been after mating, he knew, but even allowing for what monkeys were like, what had been a radiant, almost tangible happiness seemed to have worn off very quickly.
As for the mad manrret Henrietta and her even madder get, her presumption of some kind of partnership with Chuut-Riit would have been an intolerable insult even if she had not dared to lay forcible hands on Vaemar and himself.
He noticed the Jocelyn manrret looking at his ears. Torn as they were, it seemed, she could read that simple gesture. Her body language altered and his ziirgah sense recorded the waves of hatred that flowed from her mind being modified by something like brief fellow-feeling. We both understand vengeance. And then he thought: One of us two is not going to see another sunrise.
'They must suspect Raargh has given the alarm. They will be pulling out now,' said Leonie. 'I suggest we send a blocking force back up the route Raargh took getting here, and another to watch for the main exits. It would be easier if we knew what the main exits looked like, but there you are.'
I don't like dividing our force,' said Arthur Guthlac. 'There are too few of us as it is. And we don't know how many there are.'
'We're not challenging battle. Only watching them till substantial forces arrive. They may not think Raargh went to humans. Perhaps they think he's headed to the kzin community at Arhus to bring them into the revolt. But we've got to move fast.'
'I've called for reinforcements,' said Guthlac. 'Anyway, if Cumpston failed to report to Early after a certain time, emergency procedures would be triggered automatically.'
'How much do you know of Early's schemes?'
'Not a lot nowadays. And frankly I don't want to. His work was always secretive, and it's become more so lately. Don't forget, he got to where he is not only by being a brilliant military strategist, but by being the most ferocious carnivore in ARM's internal politics. That means manipulating ARM factions against one another, never letting the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Hunting kzin with a pocketknife in a dark room is child's play compared to the games Early plays.'
'No more monkey-chatter!' said Raargh. 'Vaemar is captive. Must rescue now!'
'If Raargh says Vaemar is important, he is,' said Leonie.
'All right,' said Arthur Guthlac after a moment. 'Can you guide us back through the caves?'
Yes, trail is marked.'
'And we don't know the other entrance or entrances. It or they are presumably well hidden. Very well. This is
