To their surprise, the humans felt their headaches subsiding. From one of the corridors a kzin emerged: small, bedraggled, a typical specimen of the kzin telepaths taken under the Patriarchial regime at birth and forcibly addicted to the sthondat-lymph drug, though perhaps looking somewhat better than the typical telepath that kzin commanders tended to use to destruction. Like all telepaths, language was no trouble for it. Its Wunderlander was fluent and colloquial and it spoke as close an approximation of human speech as its vocal arrangements would allow it.
“Don’t hurt me!” it cried, falling face-downward in the posture of total submission.
“You have nothing to fear from us. Who are you and what are you doing here?” asked Nils, keeping the creature covered. This telepath was indeed small for a kzin, and plainly no fighter, but even so unwarlike an example of the kzin species would be able to dismantle a tiger-or a human-faster than the eye could follow. And their ability to inflict instant, paralyzing pain on the brain’s receptor centers gave them an additional weapon.
“I was telepath aboard the cruiser Man’s Bone-Shredder,” the telepath told them, rising slowly. “Dominant One, there was a battle and I was taken prisoner. I was put aboard this ship.”
That made sense, Nils thought. Telepaths were too useful to waste. They could be a mighty asset and it had been found that many had no cause to be loyal to the Patriarchy.
“Approaching Ka’ashi, we were pursued by ships of the Patriarchy, but evaded them. Then this ship was hit by a missile fired from the ground, and crashed. I had been placed in a restraining web so I was the only survivor of the impact.”
“How did you know the missile came from the ground?”
“I read the captain’s mind.”
“Where are the bodies of the captain and crew?”
“I ate them. The bones are in there.” He gestured to a closed door. “I arranged them according to rank and dressed them in their uniforms. Do you wish to see them?”
The humans shuddered.
“It was all I could do to show my respect and gratitude,” the telepath went on. “Apart from that there is a supply of rations. But I am glad that I have been found. I knew I was under water, but not how deep.”
“Have any records survived?”
“I did not touch the computer’s records. I am not familiar with human mechanisms and there were no survivors to teach me. I feared to touch the wrong controls. I read from your minds that the war is over on this planet, and the Patriarchy has been defeated. I am glad. My kind warred in secret against the Patriarchy as we might. I hope you will take me to be with others of my kind.”
“It’s a wonder you survived all that time, and a greater wonder you are still sane,” Leonie told him.
“My caste has had long experience of living on the edge of sanity,” the telepath told her drily. “And I have less than six months’ food left. I should have had to take a chance on surviving the airlock naked before long. I have found comfort in isolation, but I should have been obliged to forsake this place soon.”
The ship must have been retrofitted with the hyperdrive, Nils realized, and prudence would have made them provide food for a full crew for several years in case it failed. And two years of food for a full crew would have enabled a single individual to survive this time. And yes, solitude would have been better than company for a telepath. The pain of other minds would have been far worse.
“We will need to get a kzin-sized suit down to you,” Leonie said.
The telepath nodded. Kzin did not easily show emotion in front of humans.
“Tell us,” said Stan. “You read the captain’s thoughts at the end?” Leonie was prying out the bridge recorder.
“Only in flashes. I dared not distract him or the other humans. For the ship to lose all control and crash, I thought I would be lost too. I huddled in the restraining web. We ran long and far before the missile caught us, with many evasions. The captain was clever, but not clever enough.”
“But you picked up something.”
“Of course.”
“Say on. Tell us all you know.”
“The missile’s signature identified it as a Hero’s Slashing Claw.”
A short-range ground-to-air missile, barely capable of reaching the fringes of space. Though they could not be sure, Nils and Leonie thought they had been issued by the Patriarchy to KzinDiener forces. To prevent their misuse by humans, the later models had had identifiable radiation signatures, though whether the keys identifying these still existed was another matter.
Greg and Sarah returned to the surface and brought down a kzin spacesuit from the car. It was far too big to fit the telepath well, but it was adequate for a short, one-way trip.
“I don’t trust von Höhenheim,” said Nils. “If he is not entirely kosher, the recorder might be proof of that. I think I’ll keep it out of his way until we’re all snugged down and ready to leave. And don’t let him know this kzin is a telepath.”
“He looks like a telepath.”
“If von Höhenheim asks, tell him the kzin has been eating badly lately. Also, he looks too well-groomed for a telepath. I suppose because he hasn’t had to use the telepath sense for a while.”
Feeling there was nothing to be gained by alienating the telepath, they asked him if there were any possessions he wished to take with him, but there were none. Nils and Leonie had by this time made a watertight bundle of all the bridge recorders, and they returned to the surface. Rarrgh, who was trying to follow Vaemar in being a modern Wunderkzin, tried not to treat the telepath too contemptuously.
“You had better collect the kits,” Nils told Rarrgh. Orlando and Tabitha, under Nurse’s anxious eyes, had been playing in the sandhills above the beach.
“We must come back when we have time and examine this place,” said Leonie. Storms had piled the margin of the sea with all manner of flotsam and jetsam, including the carapace of some large crustacean.
Nils also walked down to the tidal zone. It was hard to remember that he had been a professor of biology once. No one paid attention to Senator von Höhenheim. He quietly reentered the car. A shot from its dorsal gun-turret fused the sand to glass, barely in front of the human party’s feet.
Nils wasted no time in demanding to know what was the meaning of this. He brought Leonie down with a flying tackle and rolled with her down the side of the dune. The others did the same.
“Bring out the kittens,” von Höhenheim ordered through the loud-hailer as the car rose and hovered above them.
“What do you want with them?” asked Nils into his com-link.
“Hostages. They are two of the most valuable beings on this planet. Can you imagine the consequences if their Sire were presented with their fried carcasses?”
“I can imagine what the kzin would do to you. And the human government wouldn’t stop them.”
“I saw you bury something when you came ashore. It may have been the bridge-recorder. I will trade it for the kits’ lives.”
“And what about our lives?”
“Killing you would not be useful to me.”
“I’m glad you have enough sense to see that.”
“I have a private island with a laboratory and autodocs. It is equipped with memory-editing facilities. Agree to have your memories of what has happened here wiped, and you will be returned to Munchen unharmed.”
Nils did not believe him for a second. But his head was buzzing. It was not the full tiger-headache of a telepath’s probe against resistance, but he recognized it. He thought at the telepath, “Do you understand what has happened? Make a circle in the sand if you do.”
The telepath made a circle.
“Help us, and Chuut-Riit’s son will be under a life-debt to you. Use the Telepath’s Weapon.”