'Yes, I'm lucky, aren't I? My wife, my son, my two brothers, and my uncle, had no such luck as metal replacement parts. Just a quick, short ride down the kzin alimentary canal. Oh, I'm a lucky man, all right! A little micro-surgery to deaden the nerve ends before our Liberators' arrived would have helped. All the nerve ends. I could have gone to my cousins perhaps-maybe after a while they could have looked at me without vomiting. Oh, I forgot! They were in Neue Dresden. You ask me to be a ratcat lover?'
'We are a brigadier and a colonel of the UNSN,' said Guthlac. 'We happen to be the Liberators you just thanked. The kzinti ate my only family before you were born. I have fought them for more than fifty years. But here on Wunderland things must change. And this particular ratcat was instrumental in saving the lives of two humans, not long ago. She was young when the war ended, and took no part in it. In addition she is'-not really a recommendation to tell this character she is the mate of the leading kzin on the Planet-'our friend.' Dear God! he thought. Let this character kill Karan and we can say goodbye to any hope of Man-Kzin cooperation on this planet- our best chance of building eventual peace between the species-forever.
He saw Cumpston raise his right hand and pinch his lower lip between forefinger and thumb in a nervous or thoughtful gesture he sometimes had. It also had the effect of pointing the table-facet of the jewel in the ring on his index finger at the man. Not yet, Michael, he thought. But if necessary…
'You lie,' the man answered. 'God knows why you should bother. But female ratcats can't think. After Liberation we kept some in zoo cages and fed collaborators to them. They didn't stop to ask them their political opinions before they sat down to dine.'
'This one thinks,' said Guthlac. 'A few have always done so, secretly. If you are opposed to the Kzin Patriarchy and Empire you should see what an asset to humanity intelligent kzinretti may be.
'All of which,' he added, 'is irrelevant to the fact that I am giving you a direct military order. I am not debating. She comes with us. And she will be given the best of treatment. That is more than because she is our companion and was wounded fighting in our defense, and has been beside other humans in peril before. There are high reasons of policy. Harm her, and you will regret it more keenly than I can say.'
'Wunderland is independent! I do not need to take orders from the UNSN.'
'I tell you of my certain knowledge that if you give that reason at your court-martial it will do you little good.'
Cumpston intervened. 'Do you know Nils Rykermann?' he asked.
'Yes,' said the man.
'One of the resistance's greatest leaders in the war, and now a close friend of ours. Harm that kzinret, and you will answer not only to the kzin who is her mate, but to him. In your place I would prefer the kzin.'
He could kill us all and make it look an accident, Cumpston thought. By the time anyone else arrived, the thunderbirds wouldn't have left enough of our bodies to investigate. I doubt he has too much inhibition against killing humans. Best get him now, perhaps, and as many of the others as I can with the ring, then draw and fight it out with the rest. But they have beam rifles and they're ready and they look like fighters…
'Rykermann was my commander,' the man said at length. 'For him I will do this. Get it into the car.'
Getting Karan into the car was not easy. If much smaller than a male kzin, she was still the size and weight of a tigress. But she was partly conscious and did her best to help. The car carried them to a dome that rose out of the near-tundra landscape. There were other buildings with the dishes of heavy-duty com-links, all surrounded and covered by strong fencing. Karan was put into shelter. Guthlac, using all the psychological dominance at his command, and his brigadier's identity and electronic passes, demanded a desk and called his headquarters and then Rykermann. He summoned his modified Wolverine-class command ship, the Tractate Middoth. It was well- armed for its size, and its small permanent crew were his own picked men. It was a vast relief to see its familiar shape appear and grow in the gray sky and swoop to the landing-pad.
Chapter 11
'First, I wish to know more about your gods,' said the Protector. 'The internet has told me something, but not enough.' Despite the squeaking and popping of its beaklike muzzle, the words were understandable. Its grammar was good.
Pain. Dimity sensed it dimly. Vaemar with his hunting instincts sensed it more acutely but all his training was to ignore and despise pain save when it was a useful alarm signal. Not surprising it is in pain after such a transformation, thought Dimity. Thank you, Herr Doktor Asperger. I think I understand something of it. Doubtless we owe Asperger's Syndrome to our own Protector inheritance.
'You'-it fixed its gaze on Dimity-'have a god that is everywhere and all-powerful. It can never know achievement, striving, the conquest against odds, triumph. Because it is, it can only be, and never know becoming. Do you agree?'
'Up to a point,' said Dimity. 'I'm not a theologian. I think there is an idea that our God can know such things through us, His creatures. Perhaps that is one of the purposes of our creation. To know becoming.'
''Perhaps'? What kind of a concept is that? And you'-its bulging Morlock eyes swivelled to Vaemar-'You have a god like yourself, only bigger. A fanged beast that needs courage and fights against Infinity and something called Fate that will one day overcome it. You are both promised a life beyond death, but given only barest hints of what that will actually be like. Somehow humans will be given worlds to rule, somehow kzinti will be hunted and devoured by the Fanged God, yet somehow live again in him if they defy him and fight so that they become worthy. Their identities will survive, for if they fight nobly the Fanged God will give them a new and greater life. Have I simplified your theology?'
'Yes,' said Dimity and Vaemar together.
'I had no idea of a god,' said the Protector. 'In the caves there was Hunger. Eating. Hatred. Fear. Mating. Enemy-prey. Thoughts moved sluggishly but emotions surged. Then enemy-preys. All danger. All food. Old preys. The flyers and the runners. New enemy-preys. Things like you and you, that killed and killed. Killed like the water flooding the lower tunnels, with things that blinded and burnt. The big ones were hard to kill, the small ones were hard to kill too. I survived. I knew almost nothing but survival and breeding. Those about me died, for your kinds killed them and then you killed the flyers and other things that were our food. That was all. That, and a dim idea that something had sent our food to us, and made the waters flow.
'Then, after the Change, I began to wonder who had made the caves-the caves that I thought then were the world. Then, when the light burnt less outside, I left the caves. I saw what I now know is the scarp, sweeping down to the great valley. The sound of what I know is wind. Smells I had never imagined. I saw what I now know are the stars. Something had made this. It could not exist without a cause. Since then I have come to understand other concepts. Worship… I need to know much more… so much more.'
It went on for a long time. It spoke with them of the creation of stars, and the physics of the Big Bang and the Monobloc, theories discarded with new knowledge in the twenty-second century, and resurrected with newer knowledge in the twenty-fourth. They tried to divert it. Finally it left them.
'No time to get her to kzin facilities. She'll have to stay with us,' Guthlac said. 'I'm not leaving her here with these gonzos.' There had been tense hours while they waited for the ship to arrive.
'I agree,' said Cumpston. 'But will she make it?'
'She's a kzinret. She's tough.'
'We don't have a kzin autodoc.'
'Her main problem's loss of blood. We've got some universal plasma. It won't carry oxygen but it'll give her heart something to work on and stop her blood vessels collapsing.'
'Can you give it to her?'
'I had infantry combat training, a long time ago, including first aid. Never thought then that I'd be using it on a kzin, though. And my men are versatile. Wait till you try Albert's recipe for the wedding punch! Looking after a very important kzinret shouldn't be too much for them.'
