A beam, or the projectiles of a strakkaker, fired through the field would receive enormous acceleration. What would happen to such a beam on leaving the field on the other side no one was sure, but as a rule attempts to get around the Special Theory of Relativity in the Einsteinian universe had either no results or cataclysmic ones. Strakkaker needles, or other projectiles emerging from the field with a kinetic energy giving them far more destructive power than artillery shells, would also not be a good thing in this confined space.
'We'll have to go over it,' Dimity said.
'How?'
She pointed. The roof above them was a complex of machinery-pipes, ducting, ladders, and gangways. 'It's too obvious. They will have booby trapped it.'
Dimity turned to Raargh.
'This field was not on when you came this way?' she asked, speaking carefully in Wunderlander. 'No.'
'I think it's been set up here in a hurry. They may not have had time to do more. If it's enough to delay us, from their point of view that's better than nothing.'
'All right. How do we get over it?'
'We have ropes in the caving gear,' said Leonie. 'If that would help.'
'It might. If we could get up there and attach them.'
'Can the kzin do it?' asked Dimity.
'Can you, Raargh?'
'Raargh can try,' he answered. 'But Raargh cannot jump like kitten. Raargh is old and has wounds in legs.'
'You are still quick,' said Leonie. 'Still have strength of Hero.'
He screamed and leaped, straight upwards, claws scrabbling. The claws of his natural hand cut grooves in the paneling, deep but not deep enough to hold him. The claws of his prosthetic hand smashed through it, found a hold. His hind claws dug in. He pulled himself vertically upright, seized at the overhead ducting and struggled onto it.
'Useful to have a kzin along,' said Leonie.
The glowing domes of the Sinclair fields below them reminded Cumpston a little of giant jellyfish stranded on an Earth beach. But they would, he knew, be considerably more deadly to touch than the worst jellyfish. They were crawling along a high gantry, and he felt hopelessly exposed to any hunter with modern tracking or sensory devices.
The red dot of a laser-site appeared on his chest. Fight or flight, he knew, would be useless. He raised his hands in surrender, signaling to Vaemar to do the same. A group of the armed humans from the fortress appeared at the end of the gantry, McGlue in their lead.
'You had better come out quietly,' said McGlue. There were six of them, with strakkakers and nerve disrupters. Vaemar and Cumpston obeyed.
'Put your hands on top of your heads. Do not make any sudden moves. Dead, neither of you are any use. But we will shoot if we have to. You cannot beat six of us. But I do not want to treat you as prisoners. We are on the same side.'
'And whose pride are you?' asked Cumpston. 'The mad one or the even madder one?'
Ostensibly, we side with Emma,' said the man. 'Actually, we have our own agenda. One which you, Colonel, are obliged to support.'
'I suppose you'll explain?'
'I need to. We seem to be alone at present. All other kzinti and humans are off wiping out your little rescue party in the caves. Does this mean anything to you?' He held up a small plastic cube, projecting a holo.
'An ARM ident.'
'Genuine, as you well know. Specifically coded to my DNA and impossible to counterfeit. We have the same employer, Colonel. Or ultimately the same employer.'
'Go on.'
'Your job has been to watch this young kzin. To adjust him to living on a human world. To become his friend.'
'I am his friend! And I have never concealed my ARM status from him.'
'I congratulate you. You have carried out your instructions cleverly. But it has been my part to play a more covert role. ARM is, as you have perhaps guessed, the instrument of a higher power.'
So even Chuut-Riit guessed. Not a very effective secret if it can be worked out by an alien being four and a half light-years from Earth.'
'Suppose Emma's plans-though I will be frank with you and say our plans, for you know the way we must operate-for a revolt of the Wunderland kzin go ahead. As any practical military man such as yourself understands, it will almost certainly fail. The kzin are relatively few, disorganized and disarmed. On the other hand, given the heavy weapons stockpiled here, and kzin courage and fighting ability, and given a few lucky breaks, an uprising could do great damage and cause considerable loss of human life. As you have eloquently put it, the kzin on Wunderland and Tiamat would then probably be wiped out to the last kzinrett and the last kitten-if events followed an undirected course.'
But they will not follow an undirected course, and in any case you are wrong is thinking that the kzin of the Patriarchy would care particularly in a moral sense. We would be doing no more than they expect of monkeys. Kzin culture does not have much of the human concept of hostages. The kzinti of the Alpha Centauri system have surrendered. They are disgraced anyway. Their lives mean nothing. That they tried to fight back when the situation was hopeless meant they did no more than Heroes are expected to do. Perhaps it would make their dishonor a little less. Certainly, it will mean other kzin worlds and other individual kzinti will be even less willing to surrender when all their hope is gone than they are now. Certainly, the war will be prolonged, not forever, but enough to give us time.'
'I still don't understand,' said Cumpston. 'At the very least, a lot more humans will die, directly and indirectly. And we know the kzinti have other slave races. Some would say, even setting everything else aside, we have a moral duty to help them. Prolonging the war will not do that. A peace has been possible here so far. It may be possible with whole planets.'
'I suggest you look at the long view,' McGlue replied. 'The hyperdrive is the greatest threat to the stability of the human species-indeed to all species. Given the absence of war and easy interstellar travel, sooner or later our control is gone. Not this year, not this decade, perhaps not this century. But eventually.
'In the three centuries between the first settlement of Wunderland, followed by the other interstellar colonies, and the development of the hyperdrive we-ARM-lost a great deal of control. 'That was inevitable. Interstellar travel was rare and one-way, with many years spent in hibernation. Even message communication was restricted to the speed of light. Now the hyperdrive threatens chaos for the human race in the long term. Why do you think ARM discouraged research into FTL for so long? But FTL is a two-edged sword, and one edge fights for us: for it also gives us the chance to reassert order and communication throughout the human worlds if we act quickly, and reestablish a controlling presence throughout the human species before the inevitable human diaspora. Prolonging the war with the Kzin will give us time for that, both for the colonies in general and for Wunderland in particular. It will unite the human worlds under ordinary military discipline and organization long enough for us to establish ourselves once again in place on every one of them.
'Can you, an ARM officer of your rank, seriously doubt the worth of our cause? You, a war veteran who has seen so much chaos and destruction? Before the war ARM was a technological police. That is what it remains. Those who fretted under the stability we imposed could not imagine the consequences of destability, or the immeasurably worse consequences we face if we falter now! Would you see wars between human worlds? Perhaps at last a whole galaxy filled with wars? You are more humane than that, Colonel!
'As for the kzin of Wunderland, certain selected individuals will be saved. You, I think, hope for the Kzin to be civilized in the course of time. That is among our goals also.
'We helped that old kzin to escape-or rather turned a blind eye to it-expecting him to die in the caves. Alive here, he was a constant potential nuisance to our plans and a reminder to Vaemar and perhaps some of the other kzin and humans of a false complexity of loyalties. We wanted him permanently out of the way without risking the wrath of Henrietta, Emma, and indeed Vaemar by killing him. We underestimated him-or perhaps kzin military prostheses are better than we thought. Anyway, we did not know there was a human expedition within reach.
