The human introduced himself as Pieter von Pelt; the kzin was nameless, and apparently spoke neither English nor the Angdeutsch-like Wunderlander.
They had, von Pelt explained, been prospecting in the Jotun Mountains and had come across a wrecked kzin ship, shot down in the war. The wreckage was much scattered and there was little worth keeping, but they had found the ship’s logbook and, intact, the elaborately sealed metal container of the Patriarch’s urine which every kzin capital ship carried. Like any packages the Rykermanns received, it was X-rayed and found to contain liquid, with a thick, solid top and bottom. It was sealed with an elaborate seal. Leonie pointed to a design on its side. She took it and examined it closely.
“Like Marmalade’s locket.”
“Ask him if he knows what it is?”
The old prospector and the old kzin spoke together in the slaves’ patois. The Rykermanns, who often had to deal with kzin who still considered monkeys’ attempts to use the Heroes’ Tongue a deathly insult, the surrender notwithstanding, could follow it, though there was no reason to betray the fact. It was, they gathered, the sigil of the captain of the ship, scion of an ancient aristocratic kzin family, which had been attracted to Wunderland from a distant planet by rumors of the easy pickings to be had there.
How did the old kzin know this?
He had been one of the ship’s officers and had escaped in a boat, carrying the jar with him, von Pelt explained. He had attached himself to one of the local magnates. He had buried the jar on landing and had retrieved it only lately.
The war had ended shortly afterwards. He had followed the progress of the peace negotiations from a distance, and though it had taken him some time to adjust to the idea of kzin and humans living together in peace, he had adjusted. They had met when prospecting and had joined up. Such alliances were becoming less uncommon and the human authorities welcomed them.
He was also able to throw a little light in the mystery of Marmalade’s origins. Among the Admiral’s kittens there had been a small, weak one which had seemed to exhibit the telepath syndrome. As soon as he could be weaned, admiral had had him isolated to protect him from the other kits. Telepaths in the family were not anything to be proud of, but too rare to be wasted. The ship’s own telepath had been ordered to begin work on him. He was to have been sent for more advanced training when the ship was jumped by a squadron of Dart-class fighters. When the ship’s gravity planers were failing, and it was falling towards the surface, most of the crew dead and the engines about to destabilize, he had been jettisoned in one of the ship’s boats. He could have come down anywhere. When Nils Rykermann told them about the kitten, the old human prospector was moved.
“Poor little chap,” he said. “After my…partner…told me what had happened to him in the battle, I wondered what his fate had been. I was never able to hate the kzin, you know. An old desert-rat like me, living in the back-blocks. I was fortunate, I know. They left me alone and I left them alone…I hardly even saw one until after the war, though I was able to help a few humans, and I’m glad of that…I’m glad he’s been looked after.”
“He’s quite appealing, in a way,” said Leonie. “I know fear makes some creatures into bullies, but he is quite gentle.”
The pair wished to present the precious jar to Vaemar-Riit. Of course, they had been put to considerable expense travelling from the Jotuns, and if anything could be done to recompense them for their outlays, this would be appreciated. Nils Rykermann promised to speak to Vaemar about the matter, and they left, taking the jar with them. The Rykermanns, who were glad of a chance to spend a day out of the city, flew to Vaemar-Riit’s palace the following day and told him the story.
“The seals are unbroken, you say,” he put to them. “Urrr…it would go well on the mantlepiece.” No one said as much, but there was an unspoken thought in all their minds that it would do something to reinforce the legitimacy of his position and help reduce the stigma of “collaborator,” which, among some kzin, he had never entirely lost. “And this…this Marmalade?”
“A kitten,” said Leonie, “a weak kitten. A failed telepath, I think. Or rather, he was separated from other Heroes before the training began.” It was just permissible, given her relationship with Vaemar, to describe the kitten as “weak.” Some, after all, were born so, and could not help it. But for a human to describe one kzin to another, even Vaemar (and she knew Vaemar would die for her if Honor required it) as a coward…!
“It would be useful if he finished his telepath training,” said Vaemar.
“I think he is too old for that.”
“I should like to have a look at him, anyway.”
Leonie was not happy at the prospect of Vaemar-Riit meeting Marmalade, but there was no argument she could put against it. She was unhappily aware that if Marmalade disgraced himself before the greatest kzin on the planet, the consequences could be unfortunate.
The day of the presentation was cool and cloudy. The kzin did not need to wear the hats and sunglasses which sometimes gave them an odd appearance. Vaemar, with his mate Karan, Rarrgh, and other members of his household, were dressed in finery, Rarrgh with his two ear-rings on prominent display. Also present were the Rykermanns, the abbot, and several other human dignitaries. Marmalade was to be presented to Vaemar-Riit.
However, terrified of the gathering crowd, Marmalade was nowhere to be found. Leonie, the abbot and Rarrgh went in search of him while Vaemar and Nils Rykermann took refreshments.
Using Rarrgh’s ziirgrah sense and his artificial eye with its infrared vision, they eventually found Marmalade cowering in the darkest corner of the monastery’s old and disused chicken coop. Rarrgh, shocked, was in favor of tearing him to pieces then and there, as a disgrace to the Heroes’ Race, but Leonie, to whom Rarrgh also was secretly devoted, talked him out of it, saying Marmalade was under her protection. The fact that Marmalade was still young enough to have retained the juvenile spots on his fur may also have inhibited Rarrgh-though mature male kzin sometimes killed kittens, they also developed a protective reflex towards them, and Rarrgh now had new kittens of his own. Still, Rarrgh was boiling with rage and vicarious shame, perhaps, indeed, to the extent that his ziirgrah sense was affected by the effort of keeping his emotions in check.
With somewhat more difficulty, Leonie talked Marmalade out of his hiding place. “Will he hurt me?” he asked, gazing up at Rarrgh with huge, terrified eyes. In all her dealing with kzin, Leonie wore unobtrusive but very strong armor under her clothes. It was just as well, for Marmalade seized her arm for comfort, too frightened to retract his claws, now looking down with fear at a small mouse-like creature that had been eating some spilled grain. Rarrgh seized the arm and threw it off her. Marmalade’s claws had not penetrated Leonie’s shielding or drawn blood, but still Marmalade was closer to death than he had ever been in that moment.
They joined the little crowd. Fortunately, there were a number of other kzin in the gathering, and this made Marmalade a little less conspicuous, at the back of the group and partly hidden from the VIPs on the ceremonial dais by a tree-stump. He was, if anything, even more frightened of telepaths than of ordinary kzinti, and Leonie was relieved to find there were none present. Some drums, an important part of many kzin ceremonies, were produced, and Vaemar’s younger kittens danced on them.