Some people do. We had cats at home."
"I mean kzin kittens! She's always believed in some kind of eventual… reconciliation."
And you don't?"
"No! First, it's impossible and suicidal, and second… I cannot forgive."
"Nor I. And yet… "
"Yes?"
"I have heard that you had dealings with the kzinti and survived."
"That was in the caves. A kzin and I found ourselves in a sort of temporary alliance against the morlocks-the big carnivores that live at the top of the food chain there. We thought we were going to die together. Then, when the other kzinti came, this one got them to sew me up, and they let me go with a branding and another implant in my skin-kzin-sized and a good deal less comfortable than human ones-and my word not to fight against Heroes again."
"And did you?"
"Is one's word to a ratcat binding? But there were other ways of helping the human cause by then. I think I kept to the letter of my promise, shall we say, though I exploited some loopholes in it."
Scrupulous of you."
"Partly pride. Whatever you say about the ratcats, they keep their word, and I wanted to show that a human could do so, too. Partly Leonie made me. The kzin in question had saved her life, too. Though I think she would have had me keep my word anyway. Partly fear. Break your word to the Kzin and you fare much worse than an ordinary monkey if you fall into their claws subsequently… I was still valuable to the human cause. There was plenty of work to be done in backwoods biochemistry that didn't require one to be a direct fighter.
"Anyway, my motives were mixed. I'm human, aren't I? Mixed motives are our nature. I think my nerve was starting to go then and I'd had enough of tangling with kzinti. I thought of their tortures." He paused again, steepling his fingers in thought.
"The Masonic orders kept some of Kipling's poetry alive on Wunderland when it had been banned on Earth for militarism," he said. "We used to recite it in our camps before battle sometimes:
"Our world is passed away In wantonness o'erthrown. There is nothing left to-day But steel and fire and stone.
"Though all we knew depart The old commandments stand: 'In courage keep your heart, In strength lift up your hand!"
"But I recall another poem of his I found that is not particularly militaristic. It went something like this:
"What with noise, and fear of death, Waking, and wounds and cold,
They filled the cup for My Mother's Son Fuller than it could hold.
"That was the point that my mother's son had reached, too."
Jocelyn van der Stratt nodded. "We understood that," she said. "Few could have done more than you."
In any case again," Rykermann went on, "The kzinti weren't fools. They could track me with the implant, and any attempt to remove it would have killed me and anyone helping. Thing called a zzrou in their charming language. Full of poison and explosive. Still, I made myself useful enough to find, rather to my surprise, that I had a political base after the liberation. So here I am."
"Markham has talked of a just settlement with them," Guthlac said. Jocelyn made a feral noise in her throat. Rykermann shook his head.
"Justice isn't possible! Recently I've looked at the history of war crimes trials on Earth in ancient times. But war crimes trials for kzinti make no sense. How can you try members of an alien species whose concepts are so different from our own and who thought of us as slaves and prey animals? There was some rough and ready approximation of justice after the liberation, of course: a lot of the most brutal kzin individuals who survived were hunted down and killed-taking a lot of humans with them, often enough. The followers of Ktrodni-Stkaa, who had been especially savage and saw humans as nothing but monkey-meat, in particular. Those who'd treated humans better often got a better shake-often, that is, not always. The human collaborators… that was another matter. They'd done what they'd done knowingly.
"The fighting didn't all stop at once, but when it did stop, there was very little in the way of an organized resistance-largely because so much of the kzin military had fought to the death before the cease-fire, also because they just don't think as we do. Some of the survivors went berserk, but there was no equivalent to the human Resistance after the kzinti invasion, no organized sabotage or uprisings. Also, of course, they'd destroyed all of their military assets that they could.
"And it wasn't long before we put the kzinti to work: doing a lot of dirty, dangerous jobs like disarming explosive devices where there was no point in risking human lives. Advising on dismantling the hulked kzin warships. Telepaths were useful from Day One, and many telepaths were not particularly loyal to the Patriarchy anyway. But soon others were showing they could be useful too.
"So much of Wunderland's infrastructure was wrecked that there were real fears of chaos. We had generations of lawless feral humans, including children-ever heard of the Wascal Wabbits? Kzin security guards made a difference there… With so much machinery destroyed, muscles were needed, too. Any muscles. They still are."
"That's the peril!" Jocelyn exclaimed. "We are accommodating them! Giving them a place in our hierarchy! Getting used to them there. There are even some sick-"
"I have heard some humans refer to Chuut-Riit and some of his pride, like Traat-Admiral, or Hroth, as relatively enlightened, at least compared to a Ktrodni-Stkaa," said Rykermann. Jocelyn gave another, louder snarl that had something feline and feral in it.
"So have I," said Guthlac. "Mainly humans from Earth of the post-war generation. On behalf of us Flatlanders I apologize for them. They never had to endure the horror here."
"Exactly. In a few years, if things go on as they are, we will have a generation growing up who see kzin in the streets and think they know them, but who never experienced the war or kzinti rule," said Rykermann. "What are ruined and exterminated generations to them? Perhaps torn photographs of people they never met. Our stories and histories will become the boring-perhaps to them even comic-tales of grandparents: 'Oh, yes, the Public Hunts and all that.' The photographs of our dead will be rubbish to be burned in the general house-cleaning by our heirs when we die. Until the Kzin return! "I can honor a kzin," Rykermann went on. "I can respect individual kzinti, but never, never, will I forget watching the kzin laser burn into Dimity's ship. I understand ARM's plan for the Wunderkzin-to create a kzin caste who can be partners with humans on a human world, perhaps even allies one day, not to mention hostages. I understand it, but I will destroy it."
"Does this come between you and your wife?" asked Guthlac. "That you seek vengeance so for the death of another woman?"
"The answer for me is: 'Why burden Leonie with it?' I don't."
"You put a lot of time into building a memorial to her. Doesn't Leonie think it's a bit… " Guthlac made an eloquent gesture.
"Jocelyn and every Wunderlander knows the answer to that," said Rykermann. "Dimity Carmody would have been worth a memorial if she had been as sexless as a bumblebee. She was a child when she discovered Carmody's Transform which gave our technology the greatest independent boost its ever had. Given a few more years and we might have… Just before the Kzin arrived she'd been working on what she called a 'shunt' that she thought could break the light barrier. If anyone could have done it, it would have been she. She showed me some of her calculations, but they meant nothing to me. The famous Professor Rykermann couldn't even understand the symbols she used. But isn't 'shunt' how the scientists on We Made It describe the principle of the Outsiders' hyperdrive? My guess, my belief rather, is that she was working on the right lines.