He smelled or sensed a sort of change in her.
“Perhaps that one may stay. The rest go now!” She rapped out human orders. The waiters and two of her guards gathered the human trophies and carried them away. “Now,” she said, “the traitor. He comes with us.”
“You did not call him traitor a few hours ago. He was your dominant one. Are you not traitor to him?”
“It has been said that treason is largely a matter of timing. But treason it is.”
“He is loyal to the Patriarchy.”
“And I am loyal to humanity.”
“If we had put a Telepath on you a month ago, I think you would have gone to the public hunting arena.”
“No. I knew it might happen. I have carried the means of suicide for years.” She felt in the pocket of her garment and produced a white capsule. She spoke for a moment in a different voice, as though surprised at a thought.
“Now I can throw it away. We were taught other techniques—how to make ourselves die of shock quickly when we were tortured. Now… I cannot quite believe it yet… we may forget them. The whole ghastliness is departing from us. We may live as… as humans again.”
Suddenly she whirled on him: “Some may say it was the humiliation and helpless anger of our slave status that hurt us most. Well, they lie. It is possible, easy for some, to be a certain kind of slave. No, those things were bad enough but it was not humiliation or anger that we felt worst but naked terror, terror of our lives and our people in every waking moment and in our dreams as well! How many humans took to wandering mad—mad from sheer terror—before the ratcats or the collabo government tidied them up in their different ways? There is not a human family on Wunderland that has not dead to mourn!”
“Nor a kzin family.”
“You started the war. Is war too hard for you?”
She opened her hand and let the thing drop to the floor. He saw liquid run out of her eyes which she quickly wiped away. “And my people, who I, to keep sane, had thought of as having gone away for a time, who I told myself, in the night, that I would meet again when I chose, I can mourn now as dead.” He was no Telepath but all kzin had a rudimentary ability to detect emotional emanations at short range if they cared to use it. The terror of prey was a powerful stimulant as well as a guide when hunting in darkness or tall grass. Now he felt this creature's rage and hatred giving way to a greater degree of calm. The liquid ran more freely. Did it discharge emotions with it? You can learn something new every day, he thought.
“And now, Raargh-Sergeant, we come to the meat. Hand over Jorg von Thoma and the weapons. I will place you under my personal protection.”
“Jocelyn-human, I will not.”
“Then you will die. I speak not in challenge. I but state a fact. Kill me on this spot and the result will be the same. You see my people at the gate.”
“The Patriarch's Honor is involved. And mine.”
The six-foot human female and the scarred eight-foot felinoid carnivore stared at each other. Raargh-Sergeant knew all eyes in the room were upon them. “The live humans are your people. I see I have no right to detain them now. Also I accept that with the human victory you have a right to the trophies. It comes to my mind that were I the victor I would wish to see what had been the bodies of Heroes disposed of according to the customs of our kind. So be it. But the Jorg-human is under my protection, and so are all these of my kind. I will not give up the Jorg-human and I will not give up the means of protecting my charges.”
“I offer you my protection. I… I will give you my Name as my word.”
“I do not mean to insult you, but I know that humans lie. Honor does not hang on human names. I do not say it to condemn you. You are made so. You yourself have already turned against your profession of loyalty to the Patriarchy.”
“We took oaths to you kzin in order to save our lives. A promise made under threat of death does not bind.”
“All promises bind. There is no exception, ever, ever! How could it be otherwise when Honor is real? Were I to give my word under threat my word would still be my word though the stars fell and till the Fanged God took me. But I will not leave my folk defenseless. And you do not offer the Jorg-human your protection.”
“No, I do not offer it to him. We have waited too long, endured too much. The collaborators will pay for their treachery and for what we have suffered. We hate them even more than we hate you!” She controlled herself with an effort.
“So I have seen.”
“In return I offer you and these kzin safe conduct to… wherever you wish to go.”
“And where would that be?”
“The UNSN has set up holding camps. You can see it is caring for the surrendered kzin—giving them food, medical care even. I… I will go further: safe conduct to the hills, if you give me your Name as your word that you will harm no humans. You see I do not believe that you lie. You can stay there till things… settle down.”
You have won one planet. Do you think you have won the war? What when the Patriarch's forces return? No, I must not be too provocative. Yet where else is there for me to go? Perhaps, false arm and wounded legs and all, I could live like a hunter, as Sire once said the Fanged God meant kzintosh to live… free in the hills of Ka'ashi, with kzinretti, perhaps, get more kits, ensure my line. Jocelyn watched him as though reading his thoughts.
“I never believed I would say this to a ratcat, but this is your home, too, isn't it?”
“Ratcat? What is ratcat?”
“The name we always called you kzin out of your hearing.”
“You mean to insult me?” His w'tsai was in his hand, his body in the fighting crouch. Fast for a human, a ratchet-knife was in one of her hands, the outline of its blade extended, its high wailing sound filling the room, a pistol in the other. Humans and kzinti raised their weapons.
There was a sudden cry. A nightmarish parody of a human was moving towards them. A thing long dead, with vast staring eye sockets empty save for fragments of dried matter, and yellow fangs. As Jocelyn turned to it with a cry of her own he struck with the w'tsai, twice, but to disarm, not to kill, knocking her weapons to the floor. Then they saw what the thing was. A dried Morlock head and hide from the trophy hoard, carried by the kzin kitten. At any instant the situation could have exploded. Then some human of the guard laughed, and others joined in. Quickly Jocelyn laughed as well, though the laughter to human ears would have sounded forced and mechanical. There was even kzin laughter. She picked up the weapons carefully, offering no aggression, switched off the knife and replaced them in her belt. Then she ostentatiously buttoned the flaps that covered them. It had been a very near thing.
“You mean to insult me?” he asked again.
“Not necessarily… I don't know.” Then: “I apologize. No insult was intended. My words cannot affect your Honor.”
“I have never insulted you!”
“Insulted! Insulted! Didn't you ever understand how much we hated you! You terrified us and enslaved us and killed us in tens of thousands. Killed us in millions, not only by direct murder but by starvation and by smashing our civilization into chaos!”
“At first, yes. There was much to be done, much trouble for monk—for humans who did not show respect. But things were becoming orderly with time. You learned decorum… most of you.”
“We learnt not to show our teeth when we smiled, if we ever smiled. We learnt not to hunt in the woods even with sharpened sticks unless you had deigned to tell us you would not be there that day, not to let our children cuddle pet kittens, not to show possessions that a kzin kit or kzinrett might fancy, not to shout or to pass kzin or kzinretti without prostration or with alcohol or tobacco on our breaths. Death could follow all such even if you did not need us or our children for experiments or hunts. To toil in your war factories so other humans might be killed and enslaved. All slaves, and any runaway slave was monkeymeat, fair game for all kzint—” She corrected herself deliberately. “For all ratcats. Our population is half what it was before you came—as far as statistics can be kept to tell us. And we aged and died and saw our loved ones age and die before their time because there were no more modern medicines or geriatric drugs except for the privileged few—for people like him.”