“He lied to me, then. I spoke to him at times. I thought he showed his mind to me at chesss, and when we drank bourbon and ice cream together after a long game. Is there no end to monkey trickery?”
“I did not wholly lie to you. Neither, I think, did he. Once when we spoke he—I mean no insult and nor did he—likened you Raargh-Sergeant to a figure in his holy book, a centurion…
“There is much about kzinti I admire—your strength, your honor, your courage. Many humans, even your greatest enemies like Markham, admire you, more perhaps than those who merely tried to endure kzinti rule… As to an end to monkey trickery, I don't know. You have a low opinion of humans.”
“You are omnivores. You are beneath opinion. We acknowledge some monkeys—like your Ptrr-Brunurn—may be entitled to fighters' privileges and honors. I suppose you hated us too. Strange, a few weeks ago nothing in the world would have mattered to me less than how a human felt about me.”
“Does it matter now? Yes, very nearly all of us hated you. For a very few lucky privileged ones perhaps admiration overcame hatred.”
“H'rr. So my Honor is bound up with protecting a monkey who hates me? Will you kill me, monkey?”
“Did you not just say it did not matter how we felt? I will not lie to you now. How could we love the kzinti? As for killing you, until lately I was not one to think of such things much, save as a dream sometimes… Still, there were other things which some of us looked to,” said Jorg. “We collaborators took them as signs of justification for our lives, of hope. Future generations might have invoked the wisdom and statesmanship of Jorg von Thoma. I am not a Markham who fights for humanity like a steel blade… Sometimes I have felt that Judas also had a necessary part to play and knew exactly what he was doing and the price that he would have to pay…
“Some of the younger generations of both kinds were cooperating more easily. You know that kzinti and human computer nerds would talk together. Some had begun to meet regularly. Each kind shared insights with the other, even unintentionally, and there was talk of forming something that might have developed into a club. Oh, I know kzinti computer nerds are despised by normal kzin as freaks and geniuses, but it might have been a start.
“And some, a very few, human and kzin poets had talked together, too. There was the story of Gunga Din, a dutiful monkey. I know one kzin poet was moved to describe 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' as pedestrian but showing that some monkeys at least had understandable military common sense and could celebrate a demonstration of it.”
“If it comforts you,” said Raargh-Sergeant, “know we have gradually come to refer to the most useful and obedient of you by your own monkey rank-titles more, and as sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti less… or some like Markham as Ya-nar Kzinti…”
“Sziirrirt-Kz'eerkti… that means 'trained monkeys,' doesn't it? and the other”—he struggled to pronounce it—“the 'defiers of kzin'? ”
“I know some of our kind were interested in humans. But as you say, they tended to be freaks.”
“Perhaps they were freaks your people needed. I mean no disrespect, but was there not a little of that feeling in you personally? No, sheath your claws, Raargh-Sergeant, remember, was not the great Chuut-Riit among those who thought humans were worth systematic study?”
“That took mainly the form of dissection of their nervous systems, as far as I know. I do not think that is what you monkeys who looked to 'cooperation' had in mind. But there was some monkey history, too. And that brought back memories for me… When I was a kit a house-slave read me a human poem, 'The Ballad of the White Horse.' I like bits of that, though I do not know why:
“There were other lines: 'are slavery and starvation flowers/that you should pluck them so…' Yes, it comes back to me:
Jorg nodded as the great felinoid's voice trailed off: “I know that poem too:
He went on: “We each worship a single all-powerful God, a jealous God. Is that not also a bond between us? That we see something of the same truth behind the universe.”
“That is for Priests and Conservors to say. A Priest of the Dark Pelt once said to me that with your bearded Jova you may have a little glimmering of the truth. Your Bearded God and the Fanged God had their own respective kingdoms, perhaps. Mark you, he was very old and had been drinking bourbon at the time. He thought that though you are irritatingly between herd animals and hunters, yours is a god of the herd animals you partly resemble. You seek this thing lurve instead of Heroes' Respect for you are partial herd creatures.
“But I know we Heroes are the only pure carnivores to whom the Fanged God has granted the power to leap from star to star. We have encountered no others in hundreds of years of the Eternal Hunt, only a few herbivores or omnivores at best creeping between their own planets… until now. Assuredly the Fanged God decreed that we dominate you omnivores as you dominate herbivores and as herbivores dominate vegetables.”
“With due respect, Raargh-Sergeant, it has not worked out like that.”
“Who could have foreseen the hyperdrive?”
“Not I. I might have cut my cloak differently otherwise.”
“Chuut-Riit thought human inventiveness was valuable: dental floss, blow dryers, toilet paper… You are amused?”
“That is what you valued in our culture?”
“We would never have thought of such things for ourselves… but many other things: chess, using reaction drives and ramscoop fields as weapons, ice cream, catnip, some of your liquors, h'rr…”
“See. Our words have entered the Heroes' Tongue. You pronounce them without thinking. Could we have worked together?”
“I am Raargh-Sergeant. It is not for me to say.”
“There may be many things it is for you to say now. Hroarh-Captain has not returned.”
“What do you mean, monkey?” Claws to w'tsai.
“I respectfully ask you to be calm. Perhaps he is not returning. Perhaps misfortune has befallen him. What if there is no one left higher in the chain of command than you?”
“If so, I will be guided by Honor. And that answers your question. You shall not go to the humans. Honor states that you shall continue to be protected by the Patriarchy. A little while ago I thought of this time as forsaken by the Fanged God. But is that not the point of it: is it not Honor to look at a universe in which your God has forsaken you, and still obey as He commands? What good is fair-weather Honor?”
“Very well. If you are content, so am I.”
“Raargh-Sergeant!” Lesser-Sergeant's cry took him to the window at a painful bound.