“The kits are growing stronger,” Ruat said. “I shall have to make them new quarters. Male and female cannot grow up together.”
The judge realized he had a point. Female kzinti, as far as he knew, were of very low intelligence. Why this was so, nobody knew, but there were theories that it was the result of some intervention long ago at the dawn of kzinti science. During the years of Occupation the human population of the Alpha Centauri System had had more pressing matters to think about.
“I suppose,” Ruat went on, “I will have to be thinking of a nursery-name at least for my son.”
“Think carefully,” said the judge. “It may be that he will grow into a major historical figure.”
“How so?”
“Who is to stop him?”
The lesslocks attacked with howls and screams. They carried bushes, which they used as scaling ladders. The human watch had grown slack after months of quiet. Had they been silent, a good number might have scrambled over the wall unobserved.
The judge had a double-barreled percussion-cap pistol. Men and women, wielding a variety of weapons, poured from the huts. The rush of the lesslocks overwhelmed the first humans. The judge realized with horror that they were outnumbered several times over. The armory contained most of their precious supply of percussion caps and most of what few modern combat weapons they possessed. Their hunting muskets had limited stopping power against the heavily-muscled anthropoids.
He fired his pistol as Ruat roared the kzin battle-cry, “I lead my Heroes!” the blade of his wtsai flashing, and tore into the thickest press of the lesslocks. The lesslocks clumped round him, allowing the humans to get to the armory. The human shots were telling now. It had been wearisome and time-consuming to beat out percussion caps from sheets of copper, but it paid off now in rapidity of fire and reliability. Someone threw a grenade. It was a homemade contraption, but the blast was effective in scattering the creatures. For a moment, before they closed in again, the judge saw Ruat standing in a heap of bodies, his roars drowning out the lesslocks’ screams.
There was the sizzling roar of a modern strakkaker, its blizzard of glass-and-Teflon needles turning lesslocks into instant anatomist’s diagrams. (The judge thought again with the detached part of his mind how human their structure was. Perhaps one day someone would find out why. Convergent evolution, he guessed. Maybe their remote ancestors had lived in trees.)
The lesslocks were armed with stones and weighted sticks. Whatever they had expected, it had not been that the defense would be led by a kzin. Ruat hurled himself into the thickest press of them. If they had anything like a chief or leader, he would be there. Between the flashes of the muskets, the judge had an impression of body parts flying. Like a streak of orange lightning, Ruat’s male kit shot into the fray. He was already the size of a leopard. Whether he had been taught or whether his warrior instincts were enough, he was effective. He swiped and snapped at the throat of one of the lesslocks, swiped at a second, and was onto another before the first hit the ground. The second blundered past, howling in agony, entrails spilling. There was a third the kit had swiped, staggering blindly, a tier of white ribs showing.
The lesslocks were retreating. Outnumbered though they were, the humans were now keeping up a disciplined fire, one file loading as the other covered it. Fresh ammunition supplies were being brought up and passed out methodically.
The lesslocks found getting out of the stockade considerably more difficult than getting into it. Not many survived to get over the wall and back to the tree cover.
Ruat was bleeding from numerous new bites and scratches, but his eyes were shining. He walked back to the humans with the kit on his shoulder and a positive swagger in his step. He contemplated his ear-ring, imagining how it would look adorned with many new ears. There would be an ear-ring for his son too. The judge would have slapped him on the back, but remembered in time never to touch an adult male kzin without permission. Still, there were plenty of cheers for him. It was hard to estimate exactly how many lesslocks had died, but it seemed unlikely that they would attack again for a long time. Wendy Cantor produced some fish-flavored ice cream that she had been secretly preparing as a treat for the kits. They purred and preened against her, already knowing enough not to press so hard as to knock her down.
“I was an infantry trooper once,” Ruat said. “I never thought it would fall to my lot to be the one to give our battle-cry-and lead.”
“You are truly a Hero now,” the judge told him. “But I think you will have the chance to lead us in battle again. That was a coordinated attack. I do not think it will be the last…We must heighten the wall, and make sure there are always sentries posted. The degree of organization behind the attack concerns me.”
“Thinking of those days,” said Ruat, “I remember the Surrender Day.”
“So do I,” said the judge. There was suddenly something very bleak in his voice. Then he laughed to cover it, but the laugh sounded forced and artificial to him.
“Our officer gave me a kzinrett from his own harem and told me I was not permitted to die nobly in battle. He said I was to make for the forest and do what I could to keep our species alive. You say you remember those days? A bad time.”
“My Hero, you do not know how bad. I was once Captain Jorg von Thoma, of the Patriarch’s human auxiliary police,” said the judge. “A kzin saved my life at the risk of his own, that day. That secret puts my life in your hands.”
“Why do you tell me this, then?”
“To seal the trust between us.”
A month later there were four kzin families living in the village and Wendy had treated them successfully with antibiotics, which they now had in large quantities for both human and kzin. One single kzin had come in, had been made healthy as far as his body was concerned, and had subsequently killed a man who had laughed at him. Ruat had broken his neck with contemptuous ease: Darwin was working on the kzinti, too. The judge approved Ruat for maintaining Law and Order, and gave him a job as a policeman-the first the village had ever had. Some of the humans had grumbled at the appointment, but a larger number felt safer. Previously there hadn’t been much by way of crime beyond the odd drunken fight, but afterwards there wasn’t any.
Wunderland, Southern Continent, 2438 AD
“Hey, what’s that?” Sarah pointed across the waves, high and roiling in Wunderland’s light gravity.
Greg focused his binoculars on the object. “Looks a bit like a monster fin, doesn’t it?”
Sarah shivered in her parka. The Southland was always cold, and with Wunderland between A and B, the biggest components of the Alpha Centauri triple star system, the planet was as far from A as it ever got. Winter on Wunderland was determined by the orbit, because the planetary axis inclination was small. And B sucked the aphelion out and made it precess. Coming here for a honeymoon was even more eccentric than the orbit.
“It’s rolling a bit. Hold on, it’s coming more upright. There’s some letters on it,” Greg turned his head sideways to read them. “It says ‘UN’ something…You look at it, and tell me I haven’t lost my marbles.”
Sarah took the binoculars and adjusted them. “I think you’re right. Can we get closer?”
“If it’s what it might be, we need to take the flyer over it. We can record it for the television studios. Hey, we might get enough to pay for the whole honeymoon! Come on, let’s get back inside. It will be warmer, too.”