“We are soldiers now,” said Hugo. And you win wars, Vaemar thought, looking at the frail creature striving to stand rampant with his weapon. Well, this is a war for me to win now.
Vaemar realized that despite the meager compressed rations they had had in the ship, he was beginning to get hungry again. They faced a long and difficult journey to safety, but…
We have won, thought Vaemar. Land under their feet and the outriggers, proper boats and with a good deal of their equipment, changed the whole situation.
But the situation was changing again. He looked back to the hulk. The water round it was seething, now, and the kzin's keen eyes could see Jotok—large, mature Jotok—climbing out of the water back into the hull. The hunters returning. There were eights-squared of them already. It would not be a good idea to wait till the returned Jotok attacked them here in force. Best to head back to Marshy's island at once, and hope to escape them by hard paddling and straight shooting. Hope too, that the signal for help had got through and help would arrive in time. He remembered what the old hermit had told them: the kzin crew's number was smaller by the time they got to this island. And they had not had armed Jotok swimmers pursing them. But the outriggers made all the difference. They could also make a proper call for help now.
The outriggers exploded in boiling orange mushrooms of flame. Humans and kzinti flung themselves flat. Explosion reflex had been drilled and engrained into them all. The ridge running along the axis of the sandbar saved them.
Hugo had landed on his broken arm but Vaemar could pay no attention to his noises as he crawled to the crest of the ridge. The bushes overtopping the crest of the ridge flashed into fire. Behind him, another half-mile away, the vegetation on the next island was also burning—and in no ordinary fire. The long-dead, tinder-dry stuff was exploding. Pushing a small “V” in the sand with his claws he risked a quick view of the cruiser.
One of the weapons-turrets on the hulk was pointing at them. Already there was enough drifting smoke to show the ghost of a beam passing back and forth. From somewhere near the burning island behind him came a vast explosion, not of flame, this time, but of steam. More steam, he saw, was beginning to rise around the derelict.
The Jotok were firing a battle laser. Not one of the cruiser's main weapons—those, if they had been serviceable, would have melted the island to slag—but still something designed to knock out armored ships in space-battles. It was mounted in a functioning, armored turret which their own weapons could never damage. He backed away down the slope of sand that was their only protection. As he did so the low coarse vegetation on the top of the ridge, analogous to marram on Earth, flashed into flame. A trickle of melted silica ran down the slope behind him.
The laser played back and forth. The heart of Grossgeister was burning as well as boiling for the second time. A great semicircle of the dead islands were ablaze. Mighty rolling clouds of smoke and steam billowed up.
Good, thought Vaemar. A bit more of that and we will be hidden. Also, it will have to be noticed soon, if our signal did not get through. He realized satellites must have already registered that a heavy kzin military laser was firing in Grossgeister. He hoped the response would be an investigation, rather than a nuke from the Strategic Defense Command.
For the moment they were sheltered in the lee of the sand ridge, though the laser was sweeping just above their heads, lighting the smoke cloud more brightly as the smoke thickened.
He realized Rosalind was beside him. The others were huddled down some distance away. Dust and soot particles, suddenly incandescent in the beam, flared and sparkled in the air above them. Vaemar slapped out a burning spot on his fur and worked himself further down into shelter.
“Can't you stop them?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean.” He grinned at her, the fanged grin that humans on Wunderland has learned long before to dread. There was saliva in reflex and his fangs dripped. Humans had learned to dread that also. “You have been in contact with them, haven't you?” He would have lashed his tail if it had not meant a risk of losing it.
“I don't understand you.”
“This is no time for monkey lies!” Naked as she was, she looked very Simian to him. “The old Jotok knew you! They were crying out to you, weren't they, trying to say your… name”—suddenly, for the first time since he had been a kit, it was hard for the kzin to acknowledge a human name—“'Rrrzld… stand clear!' And in the fighting, you were the only one whose shots hit no Jotok. You were firing to miss. I saw.”
“You see a great deal, young Riit. But not everything,” she replied. “You do not see that we have met before.”
“Go on!” His claws and teeth were very close to her now. “Speak or die!” The razor-tip of a black claw touched her naked skin. There was a small trickle of blood.
“We met in the caves,” she said. “You were my prisoner once. I was Henrietta.”
She was a third-year university student. About twenty Earth-human years old. Henrietta had been his Sire Chuut-Riit's executive secretary, the highest-ranking human slave under the kzinti occupation, the collaborator with the highest price on her head after Liberation. When, six years before, she had held him and Raargh captive in Chuut-Riit's secret redoubt, he had seen her closely. She had had an adult daughter, Emma. Emma whose crazy plan had been to lead a kzin rebellion. This dark-haired young manrret could not be Henrietta. There was no similarity in voice, in eyes, in anything. And then he realized that she could be. Henrietta had had many contacts. She could have had transplant surgery. New eyes to thwart retinal pattern analysis, new skull-shape, new lungs to thwart breath-particle analysis. Something odd about the hair… Sufficient new parts would make DNA testing useless. He could see no scars, but with sophisticated surgery and regrowth techniques they could be made invisible anyway.
What had Anne said of her? That she kept to herself. And she did not move like a human? Did that mean not like a young human? Not like a human with its own legs? He remembered something else. In Marshy's house, the last time they had been together in formal circumstances, she had not sat while he remained standing. And she had begun to call him “Honored” before biting off her words.
“In the Name of my Honored Sire, Chuut-Riit, I command you!” he snarled in the Ultimate Imperative Tense. “Speak truth!”
“I escaped when the ARM stormed the secret redoubt,” she told him. “Another body was taken for Henrietta's. Its head was completely destroyed and it had spent some time in a Sinclair field. ARM and the Resistance had the body they wanted. No one had an interest in looking or testing too closely. Markham had the body destroyed.”
“I rremember.”
“I hid. I changed my appearance. At length I got to the swamp. A lot of fugitives have come here at one time or another. Yes, I made contact with the Jotok, fairly recently. Then I returned to München. I took the identity of a student. Largely to be near you.”
“Why? Why did you deal with the Jotok? Was dealing in conspiracy with kzinti and humans not enough for you?”
“No. You know what your Honored Sire came to believe—that kzinti and humans both are threatened by a conspiracy of which the human ARM is but one aspect—one tentacle. He warned Henrietta of such. I saw that it could manipulate well-meaning humans. More, that it could manipulate kzinti—and would. It had tricked your Honored Sire into shameful death.”
“His death was not shameful! He died saving me and the other kits! I rremember his last day.”
“There was no kzintosh nobler and braver. The shame was upon others. I was desperate to secure you as an ally. But… you saw how Henrietta's plans failed. Several of those around me were ARM agents. Humans are easily manipulated by them. Kzinti they have experience in manipulating, too. They have selected and seek to breed what some call Wunderkzin, kzinti who are like men. You are the first among those who their eyes and hopes are fixed upon.”