“This is Staff Colonel Cumpston of the UNSN. What has been happening here?”
“You may speak in the Heroes' Tongue,” said the stocky human. “I understand it.”
“The Jocelyn-human demanded I hand over the Jorg-human to her. I refused. She brought up the cannon and said she would destroy us if I did not comply. I therefore acted to disable the cannon.”
“I see.”
“I thought it might be something like that,” said the stocky human. “A pity we didn't get here earlier.”
“Pity?” The kzin did not understand the word.
“I mean, it is unfortunate. In any event,” he went on, “all Wunderland humans have now been placed under the jurisdiction of the Free Wunderland Forces. Captain Jocelyn van der Stratt anticipated her authority slightly, but it is now a lawful request.”
“And we? The kzinti of Ka'ashi… the… the Wunderkzin?”
“You will not be mistreated. You are under joint UNSN-Free Wunderland jurisdiction.”
The abbot had been very near the car when the beams hit it. He was pale and shaking and bleeding around the head and mouth, he had lost his shoes and showed bare monkey feet at the ends of thin pale legs and his garment was scorched, but he was still capable of speech. “I have also made a request that there be proper treatment,” he said. His voice shook as much as his hands.
“Hroarh-Captain? I obey your orders!”
“I am no longer in a position to give orders here, Raargh-Sergeant. It appears the Patriarch's armed forces here are dissolved. As one individual kzintosh to another, you are the stronger male now, or the less disabled, so perhaps if anything I am under your dominance.
“We have accepted terms of unconditional surrender,” he continued, “in return for a monkey promise that all surviving members of our kind in this system will be spared. The alternative was to see us exterminated to the last kzinrett and the last kitten. The Patriarch's Forces are officially dissolved on this planet. I am now nothing.”
Raargh-Sergeant slipped into the imperative tense as he replied. Humans would recognize that. What they perhaps would not recognize was the other constructions which he was inserting, in the rarely-heard ultimate imperative tense, generally used only by Royalty or in a situation where the Honor of the whole kzin species was at stake.
“We have Chuut-Riit's urine. May we keep it?”
Hroarh-Captain looked startled at the tense, but having virtually conceded dominance, he was slow to protest. Then, it seemed, the Sergeant's motive occurred to him.
“It is not valuable to humans,” he replied. The concealed meaning was: “Animals have no conception of its value/sacredness.”
“And Chuut-Riit's blood? That is there also.” He gave a grooming lick to the air. To another kzin that could indicate a kitten.
“It is not valuable to humans,” Hroarh-Captain repeated in the same tense. “We may prevent dishonor coming to Chuut-Riit's blood.”
“I bid you speak in the tense of equals,” said Staff Colonel Cumpston in an approximation of the dominant tense of the Heroes' Tongue. “I do not mean to humiliate you, but it is my duty to understand what you say.”
Jocelyn strode forward, cradling a strakkaker. Raargh-Sergeant was suddenly aware that he still held two beam rifles. Her face was white and there was red human blood on her costume. The heady smell of it took his memory back for a moment.
“This ratcat has killed another four of my people and injured eight more! After the cease-fire!” She raised the strakkaker. Raargh-Sergeant raised his beam rifles. It was hard to steady his prosthetic arm but a steady aim would hardly be needed. Staff Colonel Cumpston stepped quickly forward and raised a hand. Hroarh-Captain leaned forward into the path of the strakkaker. The abbot also stepped forward. “No,” he said. “I gave my protection. It must stand even now or it is nothing.”
“It appears there was a factor of provocation,” the UNSN colonel said. “I see that kzinti have died too.” Raargh-Sergeant saw that though his face was impassive, Hroarh-Captain was trembling almost as much as the abbot. Lights flashed on the control panel of the thing that took the place of his legs as it sought to compensate for the movements.
“There are major considerations of policy here,” the colonel went on. “It has been decided for various reasons that those of the kzinti who wish to remain on Wunderland may do so. In any case, we can hardly repatriate them. The war goes on.”
“It is not repatriation that I was thinking of.”
“I can assure you, Captain van der Stratt, that this was decided for a number of carefully considered reasons.”
“So you want hostages. You can do without this one. How many of the Teufels do you think you need?”
“It is not only that. The Wunderkzin who have grown up with humans are an important asset to us!”
“Grown up with humans! As tyrants and predators! Not a family on Wunderland is not maimed by what they have done! Not one of us does not mourn dead! Apart from those who fought and died, two kinds of humans have lived on Wunderland for the last two generations: slaves and unassigned slaves! Not one of us, not even the human traitors in the house of Chuut-Riit himself, had an hour's security for our lives or our family's lives. Can you comprehend that, Staff Colonel? Have you lived and grown old knowing there was nothing—nothing—to prevent you, your wife, your parents, your children, your lover, your closest friend, from dying in the Public Hunt, or conscripted to die manning kzinti auxiliaries in space battles? To know that whatever day's life you gained, the only future for you and yours was as kzinti slaves? And you ask us to have mercy on these monsters?
“You know the new München Space Port? We call it the Himmelfährte, the Heaven Way, not because it leads to the Heavens, but because so many of us died in the building of it, under the lashes and fangs of their 'Supervisors-of-animals' when fleet facilities had to be expanded quickly. Children, old ones, sick! A child would take food to its parent conscripted to slave there in the morning, and itself be dead under the lash by the time the First Sun had set!
“Orphanages raided, humans taken from the streets, casually, to provide specimens for neurological dissection when the Great Chuut-Riit, the Enlightened Chuut-Riit, the kindly planetary governor the collaborators flattered as a 'good master,' decided we should be studied! Humans taken to Kzin and its other colony worlds who are there still, lost souls in Hell. And we police, who licked the boots of our chief Montferrat-Palme in terror even as he prostrated himself before his Master, who might be a kzin trainer-of-humans too lowly to have a kzin name! Shall we forgive and forget those things?”
“You have had revenge on Chuut-Riit,” said Hroarh-Captain. “He died terribly. And your vengeance is widespread. Few of full or partial name survive, and none of the best save Hroth who was Staff Officer. Where is Traat-Admiral who tried to be a benign master to you humans? Where are all those I knew? Indeed, even few of the nameless survive. I have sought to save a few kzinretti, and kits and wounded… You seek further vengeance on kzinti? Look at me, man. Would you be as I am?”
Jocelyn stared at the wreck of the kzin officer in its hovering craft as though seeing it for the first time.
“No,” she said at last.
“Or Raargh-Sergeant? Is it a crime for a soldier to abide by his duty?”
“We never denied your strength and courage. Hell seeks always the worst ways to torment us, and it was one of the cruelest tricks of Hell that demons should be so magnificent. We could not—we cannot—afford to think of your suffering.”
“I would not expect you to. We enjoy the smell of a prey's terror, but humans might as well have no noses. I remember in the Hohe Kalkstein, I smelt a group of ferals lying in ambush. I kept downwind and they never smelled me till I was a dozen bounds from them… Then one jumped up and leaped to heft his strakkaker… too late. And underground…” Hroarh-Captain's ragged ears folded and unfolded in a kzinti laugh. Some memories were still good.