generation of the occupation of Wunderland tended to be able to read kzin body language-and became still. One human at the rear, who had been holding up something on a pole, lowered it very quickly, too quickly even for Raargh-Sergeant to be quite sure what it was in the smoke-filled air. Then Jorg moved and the human growling began again.
The monkey priest ('abbot' was the human word though like many human words easier to visualize than pronounce), whom he knew and had played games with, was speaking to them, ordering them to disperse. As far as Raargh-Sergeant could gather, he was telling them to let things take their course, and not let violence now imperil the cease-fire or cause more humans to be killed. 'Do you think I am a collaborator?' he was shouting. He had thrown back his dusty cloak to reveal some sort of ceremonial costume beneath, hung with monkey ornaments. 'No! And well you should not! But I place these under my protection now!'
'You have no power!' shouted one human.
'I do not believe your memory is so short, your gratitude so small, that you do not remember what the monastery and my brothers did for you so recently. You took its protection for yourselves willingly enough a little while ago. I extend its protection, and mine, to these, I say!'
That evidently had some effect. Two other humans began to jabber urgently with the one who had shouted. He finally made a head-nodding gesture. There was silence again for a few moments. Then the troop began to disperse. 'We'll be back!' shouted one. Raargh-Sergeant felt his dignity demanded he ignore the whole event. He walked to the abbot and Jorg as casually as the state of his legs would allow, aware of human eyes watching them from the shanties and alleyways. His spine crawled as he waited for the blast of a strakkaker. But 'Cease-fire,' Hroarh-Captain had said. Where was Hroarh-Captain now? 'Things are getting uglier,' said Jorg. It seemed an odd statement to Raargh-Sergeant, to whom no humans were beautiful. 'Things are starting to break up fast.'
'Time,' said the abbot, 'time may let tempers cool. It would hardly help to lose either of you now.'
'They could have gone for you, too,' said Jorg. 'Whatever you did for them in the past-and I think I know more of that than I should!'
'I was aware of that,' said the abbot. He turned to Raargh-Sergeant and made a gesture that was somehow an acknowledgement of respect without being a prostration, not good enough for a few days ago. 'Neither of you may know,' he went on, 'but my predecessor enacted a scene very much like that in reverse, many years ago. Perhaps I had the easier part. But we might do well to get you behind some high walls. The next mob may not be refugees whom the monastery sheltered.'
Jorg spoke urgently into his wristcomp as they walked. As they reached the monastery gates, a dun-painted groundcar with the insignia of the human police daubed on it appeared out of the smoke. The human driver got out, handed Jorg the keys and, before anything could be said to him, was gone, pelting off and disappearing down the alley.
'Another loyal servant of the Patriarchy and government,' Jorg said, though it seemed to Raargh-Sergeant that his behavior could bear the opposite interpretation. 'I'll do a patrol, round up those I can and bring them here. Thanks to you it's probably safer than anywhere else.'
'You should be careful,' said the abbot.
'I think it's a little too late for that,' said Jorg, 'and even a collaborator can have a sense of duty.'
Three of the twelve humans who had been posted at the gate appeared to have gone, Raargh-Sergeant saw as they approached, but the remainder were still fallen in with weapons. They made the stiff, unnatural movements with them as the three approached which he realized were meant to be salutes. At least some of them did.
'Will you join us?' he asked the abbot. 'We could play chess.'
'Thank you, Raargh-Sergeant, but I think I would do better doing what I can to calm things here, while I still have a little credit.'
Raargh-Sergeant lashed his tail in puzzlement. He thought he more or less understood the abbot's position in the human hierarchy-the kzin had their own priests although the military tended to respect the old warriors of the Conservor caste rather more. But he did not fully understand the ebb and flow of human authority. The abbot looked too old and frail, even by human standards, to make his authority stick, and he had no weapons, especially now when the human government seemed to be melting away. And how many loyal humans remained at the gatehouse? Nine? Or had another slipped away even in the last few moments? He reentered the Mess and turned on the strategic tank-display. A specialized idiot savant, it was little more informative than the internet: a few orange patches of kzinti units surrounded by the green of human. But the human-kzin fighting seemed to be almost over.
Tail twitching, he paced and waited, watching the last of the orange lights die one by one, trying to remain coolly alert while closing his ears to the more distant sounds. He erased the Mess records, though they held little in the way of military secrets, and smashed the Mess computer, the only possible military asset in the place.
He passed out the last meat from the refrigeration unit, telling the others to make sure that the larger bones went into the excrement turbines. A last luxury, he thought, and better disposed of before the monkeys see it.
He heard a vehicle in the parade ground and wondered if it was Hroarh-Captain back already. But it was Jorg, the human. He brought the car to a stop near the Mess door and scurried in, going down in a quick reflex prostration under the eyes of the kzin. A kzinrett and a male kit, a little older than the one already in his care, were squalling in the armored rear section of the car. 'Raargh-Sergeant Noble Hero, I have brought two who may be sheltered here. I think the humans will kill them otherwise. I found them wandering. You have seen that there are gangs of feral humans…'
There was little to be done with the terrified female until she could be settled down. The kit was evidently not hers, since she let it be taken without much protest. Raargh-Sergeant's prosthetic arm allowed him to extract the youngster without mauling, and, held in a familiar grip by the scruff of the neck, it soon quieted to a low mewling sound, arms wrapped round Raargh-Sergeant's chest. 'They came from the direction of Munchen with a wounded Hero. The Hero placed them in the car,' Jorg told him, 'then a troop of armed feral humans swept down upon us. He placed these in my charge and went to delay the ferals while I got the car away. I did not see what happened to him.'
But you can guess, Raargh-Sergeant thought. As I can. 'Why should the feral humans not follow them here?' he asked.
'I thought they would be safer here than anywhere else. The humans still fear to approach this garrison. And behold!' He pointed to the kit's markings, to the distinctive red-orange blazon showing through the juvenile rosette pattern on the chest and to the ear tattoos.
One of Chuut-Riit's! Raargh-Sergeant realized with a new shock. Not one of those who, so he had heard, had been involved in his terrible death, but one of a younger generation. Perhaps the last of the Riit blood on the planet! And in my care!
'Say nothing of this,' he told Jorg. 'Get the car indoors and under cover.' It was venting a cloud of fumes from a ruptured fuel line and would go no further without repairs. The kzinrett would have to be calmed. The Trainer could do that. Perhaps when she was settled she could be placed with the sleeping suckling. If she did not kill it, her nurturing instinct might take over. 'Courage, my brave one,' he told the kit. 'The Patriarch is watching you. Have you yet a name?'
The kit hiccuped and whimpered. 'Vaemar,' it said at last, staring up at him with huge eyes.
A nursery name, given by its mother and pronounced in the Female Tongue. 'Vaemar-Riit!' he told it. He had no right to confer even partial names, let alone promote anyone to Royalty. But this reminder of its ancestry seemed to steady the kit.
'I can walk, Honored Soldier,' it said, plainly unsure how to address the gaunt, scarred giant who held it.
'Thank the human who saved you,' said Raargh-Sergeant. He had better start getting on good terms with the monkeys quickly. 'He is called Jorg' 'Is that its name? Does the human have a name?'
'That is what he is called.' Jorg looked unhappy. A human who insisted it had a name, except for the convenience of telling it apart from other humans, would have had a short life and an unpleasant one a few days before. Raargh-Sergeant realized that in their last few words, Jorg had indeed omitted to address him by his own partial Name, which a few days previously would have been an equally fatal breach of human-to-kzin etiquette.
'Thank you, Jorg, for saving me,' said the kitten in its still high, warbling voice. 'I shall not forget,' it added with some memory of regal manner. Jorg made the prostration again.
