“At least you have survived. We got you here in time, and they say you will make a complete recovery. You got the best treatment on Ka…Wunderland. My mate will meet all costs; it is the very least we could do to show our gratitude. I had to put up with a severe reprimand for exposing them to danger, and I did put up with it. Vaemar said I must feel very guilty indeed to be so meek, it was disturbing him. And when he gets a moment’s free time, he wants to come and thank you himself.”
“I look forward to renewing our acquaintance.” The judge separated the two kits, which were practicing fighting with each other. “I get tired rather quickly still, and these kits are cute as buttons, but they are wearing an old man out. I hope to meet them again when I have a little more bounce to the ounce myself. Although I’ll never have as much as they do.”
Karan took them back and held them firmly. “I must go back to holding down your job. And I am very glad I do not have to hold it down indefinitely. You can be sure that my hopes for your early recovery are very sincere. The matron has promised me, however, that she will hide your clothes until she is satisfied that you can be safely discharged, so don’t even think of leaving early. Know that I and my mate are forever in your debt. As are these little furballs.” Karan bowed to the judge as he lay back. Karan looked back at him as he lay there. His eyes were closed with exhaustion, but there was a trace of a smile on his lips.
“It’s coming in from the senator’s own phone,” the technician told Stan Adler. Stan was leaving for the Southland soon, and having a final check on one of his sources. “It’s crazy. He can’t be blackmailing himself.” They looked at the string of e-mails. “Calls himself Deep Throat on the e-mails, and they come from a made-up email address, but I’ve traced them and they originate on the senator’s own phone, like I said.”
“Deep Throat. Rings a faint bell. Must check on what it means,” Stan said, half to himself. “I guess it could be that the source is very close to the bastard and has access to von Höhenheim’s phone. A girlfriend maybe. But it’s a chancy business if von Höhenheim gets into the phone and finds out he’s got an account he didn’t know about. Particularly when he reads a few e-mails.”
“You don’t think he’s trying some smart bit of misdirection? Accusing himself of something so bad that when the truth comes out it doesn’t look anything much by comparison? Some charge he can easily prove false?”
“I wouldn’t put it past the bastard,” Stan admitted grudgingly. “And so far there’s been no proof. Just some insinuations that could get the writer hanged anyway. Claims to have been in the KzinDiener. That mob of scum were passed by kzin telepaths, so there’s no question they were traitors as far as humanity is concerned. They just loved the kzin, they’d do anything to show what adoring scum they were. I mean, you could make out a case for some of the collabos, they did at the trials. You know, they were doing their best to help the human race survive in the face of conquest. That sort of stuff. There may have been some truth in it in a few cases.” This was a big admission coming from Stan; he took the view that sliming up to the cats was beneath any self-respecting human. But self-respect had been one of the early casualties of the war, which was why there was so much hatred of the kzin still around. It came not from the people who had fought to the end but from the people who hadn’t. Stan could admire a formidable enemy, but he’d never doubted that they were the enemy. Now the enemy tended to be the scum who had temporized, particularly those who had found themselves on the losing side after the surrender. Oh, they had signed up mentally with the kzin, and now they felt betrayed. Those were the ones who really hated the kzin now. Those who had tried to side with the powerful and been let down.
They’d figured out that the kzin despised them and most of humanity despised them too. Well, that was what happened when you sold your soul. It was never a good deal. On the other hand, he had to admit, being eaten wasn’t a good idea either.
He remembered too, the aged, haggard survivors of some of the Resistance groups from the early days. The kzin tortures, which everyone knew of only too well, since viewing them had been compulsory. The Public Hunts. Those who had not had access, or enough access, to the suddenly rare, precious geriatric drugs. The slow deaths of the diabetics (scores of thousands of them unsuspected in the days of autodocs) for whom treatment was denied until a makeshift, primitive plant to make the crude, long-forgotten treatments was set up. The cancer patients. Those of every age who died slave-laboring on the kzinti fleet’s new spaceport. It was not simple.
“I figure he’s someone close to the senator, and he’s angling for immunity if he drops the senator into it right up to the neck. And all we know about him is that he hasn’t got a phone, or not one he’s prepared to use, but he has ready access to the senator’s. Shouldn’t be too hard, I’ll get one of the researchers onto checking out the senator’s staff. And his girlfriends, if any.”
“We can’t give him immunity, that’s a legal thing,” the technician objected.
Stan grinned wolfishly. “He may think I’ve got some sort of hold over a few judges or politicians. I’m not saying he’s altogether wrong about that. He must also think I’d use it to save him in exchange for solid information. That’s where he’s badly wrong. This guy has been a treacherous shit to everyone in sight, and he is going down. But I’m happy to let him think he’s in there with a chance; slime like this always feel they can con you into doing them some good. They’ll believe they can manipulate their way out of any mess. Let’s set him up to give us the real dope and then take them both down. So saith Stan the Man.”
“Why do you have it in for this von Höhenheim, Stan? He may have been a bastard once, but he’s not corrupt like so many of them.”
“Not so far as we know. And nailing ex-bastards is good television. Besides, I hate those kzin-worshipping creeps. Now, I gotta run.”
The car was large and well-outfitted, strongly armored and armed like the fighter-bomber it had once been, with dorsal and ventral gun-turrets as well as forward-firing guns. Only its bomb-load was missing, replaced by a variety of salvage gear, and the seats which had once held attack marines had been partly removed to provide some kzin-sized accommodation. Orlando and Tabitha, however, were kept in a suitably strengthened playpen under the eyes of Rarrgh and a well-armored human nurse. They would not be welcome tearing about the car in flight and did not take kindly to being strapped in. They were, however, contented enough, standing on their hind legs to peer out through a port at the terrain passing below.
Nils Rykermann had not been particularly happy about bringing them, but Vaemar had been insistent. He had given detailed instructions to watch for signs of intelligence on the female kit’s part. If she had inherited Karan’s intelligence, the implications could be significant. Anyway, Rarrgh came with the kits, and he would be an asset in the event of any trouble.
Just now Rarrgh was flying the car. He was remembering another flight, the day kzin resistance on the planet had ceased, and he had escaped with Vaemar and Jorg von Thoma from the remnants of the kzin garrison at Circle Bay Monastery.
“So what happened to Captain von Thoma?” Nils Rykermann asked him. “I was still recovering from having the Zrrow removed from my shoulder. Removing it killed the surgeon and nearly killed me. We still didn’t have proper autodocs deployed then. I missed all those months.”
“I swore to protect him on the last day,” said Rarrgh. “One of the last servants of the Patriarchy who remained loyal…I could not hand him over to the vengeance of your people. You shouldn’t have been able to remove the Zrrow at all. We only accepted your parole because you were wearing it,” he added.