turn kzinti into something new…
'Are you happy, Vaemar?' Anne asked suddenly. 'I mean, with your life?'
'Happy? I don't perhaps quite understand… to a kzin warrior of the old school the question would hardly make sense. Heroism and Conquest are-were-what were meant to matter, not happiness. Except, perhaps, a noble death in battle, a worship-shrine where your descendents might honor your bones, honor and esteem during your life as well, your Heroism recognized and wide estates and hunting territories and of course a large harem seized while you lived… I had a privileged background originally, you know, which would have made things easier in some ways if not in others. I suppose happiness entered into it incidentally. I must reflect on that.'
'Does the question make sense to you?'
'I'm not sure… I have enjoyed much of my life so far… hunting with Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero, the mental achievements of my studies… collecting a few ears. Many things-university, our projects in the caves, smelling the hunter's winds, even writing for the review, even watching the swamp-creatures here as a kind of student of life, not just as a hunter after sport or prey… and now, we have a real Hunt again to give it meaning. Yes, Anne, I have much to be content with in my life.'
'Even the university, then?'
'I am told,' Vaemar said, stretching to his nearly three-meter length and ripping a thick dead branch effortlessly to pieces in a muscle-rippling gesture that might recall a house-cat idly sharpening its claws, 'that some… outsiders… at University, in fraternities especially, members of ethnic minorities who were reputed to have collaborated unduly during the Occupation, for example, have had to put up with unfair bullying and hazing. That never happened to me. Certainly my family could not be called collaborators. But perhaps it was because of my early victories for the Chess Club.'
Anne laughed, 'You say that so innocently!… I actually think you mean it!' Her voice became more serious again: 'But you speak of the real Hunt we are engaged on. What animal is big enough and fierce enough to predate upon kzinti? Dragons?'
'Humans, perhaps.'
'But humans have disappeared too.'
'What do the other humans think?'
Vaemar settled himself onto the sand, forelimbs before him, head raised, hindlimbs tucked ready to spring, his tail curled out of the way but ready to give that spring extra power. He looked like a sphinx. Anne sat before him, almost between his great forepaws, arms wrapped around her knees.
'Hugo and Toby, like you and Swirl-Stripes if I may say so, like the adventure of the hunt,' she said. 'Simian curiosity, feline inquisitiveness… they're not so far apart. And hunters' pride. Rosalind never says much.'
'No. But in some ways she is a little like a cat, that one. Or she has spent time with cats.'
'She wanted to share this watch with you. But so did I.'
'Indeed? Am I to be flattered by such attentions?'
'I asked her why, and she changed the subject.'
'There will be other watches.'
'So I said. She has always been nice to me. I think she is lonely. I gather she grew up in Munchen, without family.' Delicate ground to tread on when talking to a kzin, thought Vaemar. But there are many kzinti on Wunderland without families also. Thoughts ran on: Zroght-Guard Captain carrying me out of the Keep, pausing at the bloody litter of my Honored Sire's bones so I might remember. Old Traat-Admiral comforting me with a few grooming licks and a spray of his urine…
'Perhaps she saw more of kzinti than I did during the Occupation,' Anne went on. 'They say the human city- bred and farm-bred are different on this planet now.'
'She does not move like you,' said Vaemar. 'And there is something strange about her hair.'
'I hadn't noticed.'
'I have to watch humans.'
'None of them have any theories about a predator here. Obviously,' she laughed again, 'it can hardly be an alien from space!'
'It is an ecological mystery,' said Vaemar seriously. 'From what we saw at the island I have a puzzling feeling-it is not more than a feeling-that our prey… our enemy… behaves like both a sapient and a nonsapient. It does not seem to use weapons, yet it disables computers.'
'And it appears to attack kzinti,' said Anne. 'When there is so much food in the swamp, is it sapient behavior to select the most fearsome warriors in the Galaxy for prey?'
'As you have reminded me,' said Vaemar, 'it also appears to hunt humans. You speak of the most fearsome warriors. But you are the species that have defeated the kzinti on this planet.'
'I am not sure what my point is,' she replied, 'but, whatever it is, does that not tend to prove it further? If there is indeed something predating upon kzinti and humans, it is either very stupid, or very, very dangerous. If it was stupid, it would be dead.'
'What predators hunt lions and tigers on Earth?'
'Apart from humans in the past, nothing. There are biological laws. A tiger-predator-a dragon, perhaps-would have to be too big to survive.'
'And the same here. Unless such a predator lived in water.'
'And there is plenty of water here. Or unless it was very cunning and well armed.'
'Or unless it was small. Microbes and bacteria kill as well.'
'Generally not quickly,' said Anne.
'No, but my Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero told me once of campaigning in the great caves. A Hero who had been curled asleep with his head on the ground awoke mad and died screaming. They found insectile predators had crawled into his ears and eaten his brain from within. And there are plants on Kzin that herbivores have learnt never to touch. Should they eat them the seeds grow claws in their bellies and devour…'
'There were great reptiles on Earth once-dinosaurs,' said Anne. 'And similar creatures on Kzin. They were very successful and lasted many millions of years. And we have found big fossils here. As well as the giant birds still living in Southland, and big things in the Equatoria forests. We don't know them all.'
'That is a long way away.'
'Big water-dwellers too… Could there be something like a Plesiosaur with a long flexible neck and a mouth full of teeth, lifting silently out of the water and descending silently to seize us from above.' She looked up and gave a slightly nervous laugh. 'I'd better stop before I scare myself. This isn't the best time or place to imagine monsters. It's good to see fangs gleam in the dark and know that they are yours, Vaemar.'
'Yes. There have been… there are… big creatures and water tends to support bigger ones,' said Vaemar. 'But I don't see any dinosaurs or thunderbirds around at the moment. Nor do any satellites see them… But I see something there!'
Something large and dark was moving up the channel. Vaemar and Anne whipped out infrared glasses, their weapons cocked. But the swimmer, somewhat reptilian, showed the small jaws and teeth of a herbivore. It turned into the thin fringe of vegetation and began to browse. Vaemar stretched again.
'What was that!' He was instantly poised for battle, ears flat, claws extended, jaws gaping, strakkaker poised. Anne dropped into a crouch over her weapon, her own ears-the mobile ears of the Wunderland aristocracy- swivelling towards the sound. There were long moments of silence.
'I heard something,' she said. 'Nothing clear. Just swamp-noises, perhaps… but…'
'It sounded like the cry of a kzin… a long way away.'
'My ears aren't as good as yours.'
'I barely heard it.' Vaemar bent to the recorder, and played it back, amplified. He filtered out the water- noises.
'Yes, I hear it now.'
'One burst of cries, and then silence. Nothing more,' said Vaemar.
'Are you sure it was a kzin?'
'No. I am not even sure it was something imitating a kzin. There are many voices in this swamp… but… it reminded me of a kzinret…
'I shouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of rational explanation for all this,' he added. 'But that doesn't mean it's necessarily a comfortable one.'
