“Our fathers tried to negotiate with you when your ships first appeared in our system,” she replied. “Some of us tried to empathize with you. Your answer was beams and bombs and enslavement. We were a peaceful culture then and nightmare fell upon us. Well, we have learnt better now, half-ratcat!”
“Let us all put down our weapons,” said the colonel. “There is no need for more to die here, human or kzin. Enough have died in this war. And I see the guns in the monastery are still trained upon us. We have won, Captain van der Stratt, we do not need heroic rhetoric.”
“But we have needed heroic rhetoric, Earthman. Flatlander! We who lived and died under the ratcats needed to rediscover heroism! And we did!”
“So did we,” the colonel replied. “It was we who built the Space Navy.”
“I can no longer order you to sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant,” said Hroarh-Captain. It was a difficult word to pronounce, a new word that had crept into the Kzinti vocabulary on Wunderland over the last few months, and until very recently, on the occasions it had been used, it had been prefixed by the modifier “nevirr.” He went on: “I can no longer take the burden from you. Who is in the Mess?”
“Wounded. A kzinrett. A very old Conservor. A few others… a suckling infant.” He paused. “And a/the kit.” He wondered if the humans would catch the blurring of the article. “And the Jorg. The human who has been under my protection.”
“If they die, they will die uselessly, and there will be fewer of us left on Wunderland. We had better go to them.”
“I shall come,” said Staff Colonel Cumpston.
“A UNSN human enter a den of armed kzintosh?”
“I have not always been a staff officer. Jocelyn, you should perhaps wait here.”
“Why? Do you think I fear a few shot-up ratcats, Flatlander? When we Wunderlanders have fought them face-to-face these years?”
“I am thinking of Jorg. I wish to negotiate with him.”
“He is mine lawfully! As are all the human traitors lawfully in the power of the Free Wunderland Forces to deal with! You have agreed to that!”
“Nevertheless, I think it would be best.”
“No.”
“Please do not forget our respective ranks.”
How strange! thought Raargh-Sergeant. To the kzin, human discipline seemed both soft with its feeble punishments and unyielding in its hierarchy. Kzinti discipline was ferocious but admitted a streak of anarchy as well. He who gave an order was expected to be able to enforce it physically at once. It is almost a parody of kzin dominance establishment, without death-duels. How much did they learn from us?
“You may answer to Markham!”
“I answer to the UNSN alone.”
“And do you think I do not know who the UNSN's real masters are? You have revealed more of yourselves than you think these last few days! This is our planet, our system!”
“Which we have just liberated for you! A few days ago you were still weeping at the wonder and glory of the Hyperdrive Armada… Let the dust of this last battle at least settle before we quarrel among ourselves. Jocelyn, I ask you, let me handle this my way… and let us not be shamed before Heroes. Very well. Come.”
“Do you sssurindir, Raargh-Sergeant?”
“Hroarh-Captain, it seems there is no choice. H'rr.”
“Let the monkeys settle with the monkeys then. I will tell our Heroes to fire no more. Our task is to save what we can of our own.”
Chapter 4
The two kzin and eight humans, six of the latter armed troopers, crossed the compound, past the smouldering wreck of the gun car. Raargh-Sergeant still carried his guns, for no human had seemed disposed to take them from him, but their barrels pointed to the ground.
“It is finished,” he said, as he entered the Mess—Hroarh-Captain could no longer negotiate the steps. “I shall report that you have accomplished your duties satisfactorily,” he added in the old formula, though he did not know whom he would report to. The Fanged God, perhaps? He saw that the Staff Colonel removed his headdress as he entered. Jocelyn-Captain did not.
The remnants of his “garrison” fell back from the weapons. The head-wounded Hero was in a twitching coma; the kzinrett, thankfully, now seemed engrossed in the suckling kitten and needed no restraints. The great drum was broken, he saw. They must have struck it too hard in their efforts. It hardly matters. We have no more Sergeants' Mess.
“So you hand me over,” said Jorg. He spoke not to Raargh-Sergeant but to the human male.
“I will make diplomatic representations,” Staff Colonel Cumpston replied. “A fair trial, at least. I want to see no more undeserving dead. No more human dead, even no more kzinti dead.”
“Hear the Flatlander,” muttered one of the human troopers. “Merciful to ratcats he never fought against or suffered under.”
Jocelyn said no word of rebuke. The colonel turned to the trooper and began to raise a hand, then dropped it. It might have been simply an aborted gesture, but it might have served the purpose of calling attention to the row of decorations that he wore.
“A fair trial! What farce is this!”
“What trial did you give the humans in your power?” flared Jocelyn. “A one-way ticket to the Public Hunt! 'Our masters tell us there is a continuing demand for monkeymeat, a quota to be met!' Do you think I have forgotten those words?”
“A quota you helped supply. And if we had not, things would have been worse. We had a civilization. We lost it. Do you think by these methods you will build it again?”
“Yes, plead for your life! You should do it well. You have heard plenty of your victims' pleadings. Take all their best phrases!”
“What is happening?” asked Bursar. “If there is a crisis, we must be calm. What is this monkey chatter?”
The kit ran to Raargh-Sergeant. “Yes, what is happening? May we fight now? The shooting was over very quickly.”
“Not now,” said the colonel. The soft syllables of the Female Tongue which the kit was used to were relatively easy for a human to pronounce, yet he could place in it a churr of authority as welclass="underline" “Your Raargh-Sergeant Hero will tell you no more fighting.” He strode around the room, nodding at what he saw. At the block encasing Peter Brennan, he made a peculiar gesture. Raargh-Sergeant realized he was beckoning to him.
“More should see this,” he said.
“I do not think more will. There will be no more Sergeants' Mess.”
“No. Tell me, Raargh-Sergeant, have you ever been on furlough in the hills?”
“A few times, when things were quiet. And I have hunted ferals there.”
“I see. Captain Jocelyn wants you dead.”
“I would like that tree-swinger dead too.”
“She has reasons. Her family… H'rr.”
“I have reasons too. She lied to us, and because of her, Lesser-Sergeant and the others are dead and my Honor is in the mud with monkey dung.”
“Let us be calm. It would be too easy for a war of extermination to flare up again, and it is your kind that would perish on this planet. I and some others have tried hard to prevent that. So has Hroarh-Captain and Hroth-Staff Officer, and he is the last of Traat-Admiral's own Pride to survive.”
“And when our Patriarchal Navy returns in force? What of you monkeys then?”
“They will find it hard to fight a space war against the hyperdrive, I think. But we look to a cease-fire not on Wunderland only, but between the planets. Perhaps you will go home to Kzin.”
The concepts were largely too alien to take in. He grasped what he could. “Home to Kzin? I was born here, as was my Honored Sire. Somewhere here lie my kit's bones. And why should Kzinhome receive us, who are defeated and disgraced and should have died if we could not conquer? Ka'ashi is my home.”