Alpha Centauri B had risen when Vaemar strode up the steep winding track above his mansion to the small guest house in the wood. The forest, normally full of stir at this time as the nocturnal creatures took over their shift, fell almost silent about him. There was game to be flushed here, but he was not hunting.
Like all kzin buildings, the guest house was large and thick-walled. But unlike most it had windows of some size close to the ground and a human-sized as well as a kzin-sized door. Its roof sprouted electronics. His presence was signalled as he drew near, and the kzin-sized door opened.
There was a fooch for him in the main room. He reclined in it as Dimity Carmody dialed him bourbon and another tuna ice cream. Although he had eaten already custom and politeness demanded he take a little (in any case, as he told himself, no kzin is ever entirely full).
She had been watching an ancient classic film from Earth, Peter Jackson's original of The Two Towers. She turned the set down. Vaemar read a sampler Dimity had put on the wall, a quotation from a human writer who had lived on Earth more than five hundred years earlier: 'Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.'
'Chesterton,' Vaemar remarked.
'Yes.'
'I have taken some notes of his writing. 'It is constantly assumed, especially in our Tolstoyan tendencies, that when the lion lies down with the lamb the lion becomes lamb-like. But that is brutal annexation and imperialism on the part of the lamb. That is simply the lamb absorbing the lion instead of the lion eating the lamb. The real problem is-Can the lion lie down with the lamb and still retain his royal ferocity?''
'I know you have a good memory,' said Dimity. 'You have that word perfect.'
'Yes, don't I? Which may suggest that particular passage has been important to me. Perhaps there is some reason for that.'
'Your sense of humor means more to me than you may know, Vaemar.'
'When will you be ready for the Little Southland trip?' Vaemar asked.
'Tomorrow. Tonight. Now. As soon as you like,' she told him.
'I have some new instructions,' he told her. 'Looking for stolen radioactives. It's not quite what was planned.'
'It doesn't matter. I'm ready to go. You'll take me with you, won't you, Vaemar?'
'So we agreed,' He looked at her with great eyes for a silent moment. 'Dimity…' He paused again.
'Yes, Vaemar?'
Vaemar knotted and unknotted his ears for a moment. He lashed his tail. He rose and walked across to their chess-game set up on a table, making a single move. Then he spoke slowly.
'Dimity, you know that I am one of the first kzinti to have been brought up, almost from kittenhood, with a good degree of human contact on more or less equal terms, with human companions and… friends. Among my very earliest memories are running with the human infants and leaping on a ball of fiber that Henrietta prepared for me. Much later I learned where she got that idea… After the Liberation I helped Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero when he worked on human farms. I have learnt Wunderlander and English from the best of sleep-tapes. I am a postgraduate at the University and a commissioned member of the Reserve Officer's Training Corps, with even a limited access to lesser military secrets. Human students whom I tutor prepare assignments for me diligently. I have led expeditions and fought against dangers with humans as allies. I have talked late into the night with human companions and shared many thoughts with them. I take part in many human, and encourage to the best of my ability many mixed, social activities. In chess I am a system master and aspire to interstellar master. Soon I hope I will be the first kzin to add the post-nominals PhD, DLitt and DSc to my Name. I am the leader of the Wunderkzin, and, slowly, our numbers among the whole kzin population of Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri A System grow. I recite all this to emphasise the fact that no kzin knows humans better than I. I know humans better than I know the kzinti of the Patriarchy.'
'Yes.'
'I am also, like my Honored Sire, a genius. That is a fact. In the society of the Patriarchy 'genius' is an insult rather than a compliment. Geniuses may live on sufferance if they have useful skills. Otherwise they are generally killed by their fellow kittens, the warriors, in their nursery games and first combat training. Honored Sire lived because he was a great fighter as well, as befits one of Riit blood. You are… a super-genius. Even if we had not fought as allies in the caves against the Mad Ones, that would be a bond between us. We genii must stick together. Yours is a deeper mind than mine. It is hard work for me to read your papers-even those I am allowed to. Dimly I grasp the implications of Carmody's Transform, which you discovered so young! Do not worry, if I were allowed to see your hyperdrive work I doubt that I could steal it, Dimity friend, even if I were so inclined. But perhaps my talents spread wider.'
'Vaemar scatter-brain! Everything from astrophysicist to warrior to song-writer! Mine are so narrow!'
Vaemar shifted uneasily. His tail lashed again. If a sinuous felinoid like a nine-foot tower of claws, fangs and muscle could look awkward, Vaemar did so. He licked his lips once or twice. 'I… care about you, Dimity. We are alike.'
'You have been good to me. I do not know what I would have done without you.'
'You said song-writer? The university review, you mean?'
'Yes!'
They sang together, laughing:
'Frightened monkeys yell, when our fangs gleam bright! 'What fun it is to yowl and scream a slaying song tonight! 'We are the monkey boys and girls, going for a spin! 'If pussy gives us trouble, we will take off pussy's skin!'
'I thought it was important to get the students laughing at that one,' Vaemar said. 'Our 'Cat in the Hat' really laid them in the aisles, too, didn't it? I'm afraid Orlando and Tabitha got hold of the hat, though. There wasn't enough left of it to keep when those two had finished.'
He paused, again washing his black lips with his great tongue, and then continued, looking down into Dimity's eyes: 'Honored Step-Sire Raargh also taught me never to be ashamed of using my Ziirgah sense, or to hide it as though fearing someone would come and make me into a Telepath. I know some humans fairly well, I think, and I read emotions. And in you I read desperation… How do you see the future, Dimity?'
'It could be full of hope. We are still digesting the implications of what the hyperdrive means. Planets for all? And one day, after the eventual peace in Space, the kzin worlds will get it too.'
'You think so? So do I. It is among a number of reasons why I have felt no inclination to try and steal it. Such action would be counter-productive.'
'Of course,' she said. 'They may have it already. At least one hyperdrive ship went missing when the Armada swept in. It may have been captured. But anyway knowledge leaks, and some humans would be prepared to spy for the Patriarchy, and kzinti students-of-particles are clever.'
'The war will go on, you think? A hyperdrive war?'
'It may or it may not,' she said. 'There is nothing I can do about it. I try to school myself not to brood upon things I cannot change. But there is another thing which is less dramatic but whose implications may be at least as important-humans now have the technology of kzin gravity-control. That will give us new planets, too. In the early days of human exploration of Sol system, terraforming even the nearer planets had low priority because the asteroids had lighter gravity. A little slow work done on Mars. Nothing on Venus, though Earth in theory at least had the biology to start transforming its atmosphere cheaply since the twentieth or twenty-first century. Such things will matter much less now. And there need be less competition for territory.
'We can have the stars, humans and kzinti, too. If we can live together here, Vaemar-Riit, then we can share a universe in peace. It may take several centuries, of course. It may never happen. There is a chance, more than a chance, even if we can achieve a peace now, of more wars before it really happens. I have heard rumors that peace negotiations drag on, but so does the war in space.'
'Those are my thoughts also,' said Vaemar. 'Stars and planets for all, one day. And a pair of species that nothing can challenge. Soon I must begin teaching Orlando to share this purpose. Today I found something important: he has the patience to solve puzzles. Many kittens do not. But, Dimity, how do you see your
