reasons.'
'So you want hostages. You can do without this one. How many of the Teufels do you think you need?'
'It is not only that. The Wunderkzin who have grown up with humans are an important asset to us!'
'Grown up with humans! As tyrants and predators! Not a family on Wunderland is not maimed by what they have done! Not one of us does not mourn dead! Apart from those who fought and died, two kinds of humans have lived on Wunderland for the last two generations: slaves and unassigned slaves! Not one of us, not even the human traitors in the house of Chuut-Riit himself, had an hour's security for our lives or our family's lives. Can you comprehend that, Staff Colonel! 'Have you lived and grown old knowing there was nothing-nothing-to prevent you, your wife, your parents, your children, your lover, your closest friend, from dying in the Public Hunt, or conscripted to die manning kzinti auxiliaries in space battles? To know that whatever day's life you gained, the only future for you and yours was as kzinti slaves? And you ask us to have mercy on these monsters?
'You know the new Munchen Space Port? We call it the Himmelfahrte, the Heaven Way, not because it leads to the Heavens, but because so many of us died in the building of it, under the lashes and fangs of their 'Supervisors-of-animals' when fleet facilities had to be expanded quickly. Children, old ones, sick! A child would take food to its parent conscripted to slave there in the morning, and itself be dead under the lash by the time the First Sun had set! 'Orphanages raided, humans taken from the streets, casually, to provide specimens for neurological dissection when the Great Chuut-Riit, the Enlightened Chuut-Riit, the kindly planetary governor the collaborators flattered as a 'good master,' decided we should be studied! Humans taken to Kzin and its other colony worlds who are there still, lost souls in Hell. And we police, who licked the boots of our chief Montferrat- Palme in terror even as he prostrated himself before his Master, who might be a kzin trainer-of-humans too lowly to have a kzin name! Shall we forgive and forget those things?'
'You have had revenge on Chuut-Riit,' said Hroarh-Captain. 'He died terribly. And your vengeance is widespread. Few of full or partial name survive, and none of the best save Hroth who was Staff Officer. Where is Traat-Admiral who tried to be a benign master to you humans? Where are all those I knew? Indeed, even few of the nameless survive. I have sought to save a few kzinretti, and kits and wounded… You seek further vengeance on kzinti? Look at me, man. Would you be as I am?'
Jocelyn stared at the wreck of the kzin officer in its hovering craft as though seeing it for the first time.
'No,' she said at last.
'Or Raargh-Sergeant? Is it a crime for a soldier to abide by his duty?' 'We never denied your strength and courage. Hell seeks always the worst ways to torment us, and it was one of the cruelest tricks of Hell that demons should be so magnificent. We could not-we cannot-afford to think of your suffering.' 'I would not expect you to. We enjoy the smell of a prey's terror, but humans might as well have no noses. I remember in the Hohe Kalkstein, I smelt a group of ferals lying in ambush. I kept downwind and they never smelled me till I was a dozen bounds from them… Then one jumped up and leaped to heft his strakkaker… too late. And underground…”Hroarh- Captain's ragged ears folded and unfolded in a kzinti laugh. Some memories were still good. 'Our fathers tried to negotiate with you when your ships first appeared in our system,' she replied. 'Some of us tried to empathize with you. Your answer was beams and bombs and enslavement. We were a peaceful culture then and nightmare fell upon us. Well, we have learnt better now, half-ratcat!'
'Let us all put down our weapons,' said the colonel. 'There is no need for more to die here, human or kzin. Enough have died in this war. And I see the guns in the monastery are still trained upon us. We have won, Captain van der Stratt, we do not need heroic rhetoric.'
'But we have needed heroic rhetoric, Earthman. Flatlander! We who lived and died under the ratcats needed to rediscover heroism! And we did!'
'So did we,' the colonel replied. 'It was we who built the Space Navy.' 'I can no longer order you to sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant,' said Hroarh-Captain. It was a difficult word to pronounce, a new word that had crept into the Kzinti vocabulary on Wunderland over the last few months, and until very recently, on the occasions it had been used, it had been prefixed by the modifier 'nevirr.' He went on: 'I can no longer take the burden from you. Who is in the Mess?' 'Wounded. A kzinrett. A very old Conservor. A few others… a suckling infant.' He paused. 'And a/the kit.' He wondered if the humans would catch the blurring of the article. 'And the Jorg. The human who has been under my protection.'
'If they die, they will die uselessly, and there will be fewer of us left on Wunderland. We had better go to them.'
'I shall come,' said Staff Colonel Cumpston.
'A UNSN human enter a den of armed kzintosh?'
'I have not always been a staff officer. Jocelyn, you should perhaps wait here.' 'Why? Do you think I fear a few shot-up ratcats, Flatlander? When we Wunderlanders have fought them face-to-face these years?'
'I am thinking of Jorg. I wish to negotiate with him.'
'He is mine lawfully! As are all the human traitors lawfully in the power of the Free Wunderland Forces to deal with! You have agreed to that!'
'Nevertheless, I think it would be best.'
'No.'
'Please do not forget our respective ranks.'
How strange! thought Raargh-Sergeant. To the kzin, human discipline seemed both soft with its feeble punishments and unyielding in its hierarchy. Kzinti discipline was ferocious but admitted a streak of anarchy as well. He who gave an order was expected to be able to enforce it physically at once. It is almost a parody of kzin dominance establishment, without death-duels. How much did they learn from us?
'You may answer to Markham!'
'I answer to the UNSN alone.'
'And do you think I do not know who the UNSN's real masters are? You have revealed more of yourselves than you think these last few days! This is our planet, our system!'
'Which we have just liberated for you! A few days ago you were still weeping at the wonder and glory of the Hyperdrive Armada… Let the dust of this last battle at least settle before we quarrel among ourselves. Jocelyn, I ask you, let me handle this my way… and let us not be shamed-before Heroes. Very well. Come.'
'Do you sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant?'
'Hroarh-Captain, it seems there is no choice. H'rr.'
'Let the monkeys settle with the monkeys then. I will tell our Heroes to fire no more. Our task is to save what we can of our own.'
Chapter 4
The two kzin and eight humans, six of the latter armed troopers, crossed the compound, past the smouldering wreck of the gun car. Raargh-Sergeant still carried his guns, for no human had seemed disposed to take them from him, but their barrels pointed to the ground.
'It is finished,' he said, as he entered the Mess-Hroarh-Captain could no longer negotiate the steps. 'I shall report that you have accomplished your duties satisfactorily,' he added in the old formula, though he did not know whom he would report to. The Fanged God, perhaps? He saw that the Staff Colonel removed his headdress as he entered. Jocelyn-Captain did not.
The remnants of his 'garrison' fell back from the weapons. The head-wounded Hero was in a twitching coma; the kzinrett, thankfully, now seemed engrossed in the suckling kitten and needed no restraints. The great drum was broken, he saw. They must have struck it too hard in their efforts. It hardly matters. We have no more Sergeants' Mess.
'So you hand me over,' said Jorg. He spoke not to Raargh-Sergeant but to the human male.
'I will make diplomatic representations,' Staff Colonel Cumpston replied. 'A fair trial, at least. I want to see no more undeserving dead. No more human dead, even no more kzinti dead.'
'Hear the Flatlander,' muttered one of the human troopers. 'Merciful to ratcats he never fought against or suffered under.'
Jocelyn said no word of rebuke. The colonel turned to the trooper and began to raise a hand, then dropped it.
