“There are a lot of other things. Nerve gas. Spectrum radiation.”
“They're coming with the troops. Unfortunately a lot of our nerve gas supplies are kzin-specific and as for the rest—well, there are the human hostages.”
“If they have intelligence—and they do—they'll be dispersing now.”
“You've got weapons here.”
“Most of them are for use in space. We can blast away at the limestone while they organize. It won't be long before they're shooting back at us.”
Dimity Carmody's fingers had been running over a keyboard on the main control console. “Arthur,” she said. “Take us up higher. Fast. Put some southwest in it.”
“How high?”
“Just keep going.”
“Why?”
“I'll explain in a minute.”
The Tractate Middoth rose, drawing away from the caves. Higher.
Below them, from first one and then scores of openings, smoke and fire jetted from the escarpment and the limestone plain above it. The profile of the ground seemed to bulge. A fireball erupted, and another, and as they watched the whole scarp of the Hohe Kalkstein went sliding down into ruin.
“Fly!” roared Guthlac. The Tractate Middoth flashed away.
There was another explosion and a greater fireball, incandescent, blue-and-white-cored, burst from the seething ruin. It boiled into the sky, transforming into an orange-and-black cumulus, hideous and obscene to the watchers in the Tractate Middoth as they raced desperately upward into the clean stratosphere and away. Other fireballs followed.
“I kept the code numbers and detonation keying for the nukes,” said Dimity. “They were in Vaemar's computer. It's all over now. There was nothing else to do.”
“I'll call defense HQ,” said Guthlac. “They'll need to get decontamination teams to work fast. And before they signal a retaliatory strike on every kzin ship and world in reach.”
“But why didn't you say what you were going to do?” asked Vaemar.
“I didn't see why you should all have the responsibility. It's all gone now. Protectors, Morlock, ferals, hostages, the whole cave system and countless species. A swathe of human farms and hamlets. Your rapid reaction teams. Your militia. A bewildered Protector who wondered about God. Did you want to live with that?”
Dimity looked up into Vaemar's eyes and read his expression.
“I am very close to being a Protector,” she told him.
She put his great hand with its terrible razor claws on her forearm.
“Skin,” she said. “Not fur.”
Chapter 15
“I pronounce you man and wife,” said the abbot. “You may kiss the bride.”
Hand in hand, Arthur and Gale Guthlac walked from the monastery chapel, surrounded by their friends. Each in turn came to them and laid a wreath around their necks, the three intertwined colors of vegetation from three worlds that grew on Wunderland now: red, green and orange. Gale's children had arrived from the Serpent Swarm. Guthlac's crew had no swords as would once have been ceremonially drawn to make an arch for the couple to pass under, but they presented arms.
“Have you heard from Early?” Rykermann asked Cumpston as they crossed the garth.
“Yes. He didn't betray much emotion about what happened. It's a fait accompli, anyway. And the Protectors are gone. ARM is busy with other things. I imagine they are things that include us, and the Wunderkzin. But I'm tired of being one of ARM's catspaws.”
“I should think there have been worse jobs than becoming Vaemar's friend,” said Rykermann. “Even if he does thrash you on the chessboard.”
“I hope I'll always be Vaemar's friend,” said Cumpston. “But I feel a change in the whole course of my life is coming upon me.”
“For what reason.”
“I don't know. Just a feeling. Something very new.”
“I didn't know you were foresighted.”
“Neither did I.”
“I sense certain things too,” said Rykermann. “Dimity… Vaemar… whatever bond is between those two will not be broken.”
Arthur Guthlac, Gale, the abbot and two of the monks were laughing together at something. Orlando and Tabitha had lost little time after the ceremony in wriggling and clawing out of their ornate formal garments and were leaping through the long grass together after flutterbyes. Nurse, who, it had been decided, was indispensible whatever he charged, carried a bag of buttons for their claws.
“So it begins, perhaps,” said Rykermann. Now, with Leonie's hand in his, he realized that he was looking at Dimity without hopeless pain and longing. Not because of what she had done, nor indeed because he loved her any the less, but because his love for Leonie filled his heart, suddenly, strangely, and with a depth and fullness he had never known before. She had been near death with him many times, but this time, watching her enter the Protectors' caves with only Raargh, as he himself prayed desperately over a console of screens, had been different.
“Strange,” he said. “This was where it all began so many years ago. I had flown out here because the monks had sighted a strange creature, a big catlike thing that didn't fit into the ecology.” He remembered giving the strange orange hair he had found to Leonie, his graduate student, to dissect. Thinking of her as she had been in those days, he realized something else. Her walk was as it had been then, no longer clumsy.
“So it begins,” echoed Colonel Cumpston, as he followed, escorting Dimity. His gaze wandered to Vaemar, resplendent in gold armor and shimmering cloak and sash of Earth silk, who, with Karan, Raargh and Big John, was pointing to one of the monastery fishponds. The juvenile Jotok he had helped save in Grossgeister Swamp were growing and joining. Orlando had fished one from a pond and was waving it playfully at Albert Manteufel. Don't pretend to be scared, Albert! Cumpston tried to telepath him. Don't pretend to run! But Guthlac's pilot was a veteran and knew better than to do any such thing. A growl from Raargh and a gesture at his proud new possession—a second ear-ring for his belt, there being no room for more ears left on the first—and the kitten snapped to attention. Another growl and warning cuff from Karan and the Jotock was restored to the water.
“Hope. Perhaps joy. Perhaps, truly… peace. For this little world at least,” Cumpston said. As with Guthlac and Rykermann, many lines of strain and weariness seemed to have gone from his face. Reports from far-flung ships and bases were that the peace was holding. At this moment, for this moment at least, humans and the kzinti Empire were sharing a universe.
The group of friends drew together. Vaemar drew Rykermann aside for a moment.
“You love her, I know,” he said.
“Yes,” said Rykermann. He had never heard a kzin use the word “love” before, and wondered what Vaemar's conception of it was. But he knew who he meant.
“I think I understand,” said Vaemar. “I say that to you alone. Speak it to no other human. She has taught me a little of that… but she must go her own way.”
“I know,” said Rykermann. They drifted apart in the flow of the company.
Dimity had known Cumpston since her return to Wunderland eight Earth-years previously. He and Vaemar had made the counterattack that had relieved their desperately outnumbered group in the fight against the mad ones. But now it was as if she saw him for the first time: a hardened warrior and leader, yet a man whose kindness and patience had done as much as any to bring peace to this tortured planet. That unnatural blend of human qualities that made up the knight.