"More! There are hyperdrive ships at the spaceports and under repair and maintenance here and on Tiamat! We can seize them! Link again with the Patriarchy. We can strike Earth itself, and avenge the ramscoop raid with the one claw, present the hyperdrive to the Patriarchy with the other! We will achieve victory!"
"What you will achieve at most," said Cumpston, "is the deaths of many humans and the extermination of the kzinti in this system down to the last kzinrett and the last kitten, whether many of them joined you or not. As for Sinclair fields, how long do you think it would be before the other side used them? They were invented during the long peace on Earth but they must be in the ARM files." Don't tell her she's insane, he thought; it will only make her worse. He hoped that phrase "long peace on Earth" might have some sort of subconsciously soothing effect, though it was badly positioned next to the phrase "ARM files." Best he could do at present.
"You will also turn a terrible war-the war now being fought out in space-into a war of annihilation without any possibility of eventual peace or truce. Without the option of life after surrender one species will perish utterly and quite possibly both will. We know such things have happened before in this galaxy." He felt as he said it that to arouse such images in her mind would probably only egg her on. But he could think of nothing else to say. Was it a good idea to provoke her? Such questions had often been asked when fighting kzin, and the general answer had been that it couldn't do any harm. If they screamed and leaped prematurely, so much the better. But this was different. "Did not Sun Tzu say: 'Do not make an enemy fight with the courage of despair'?" he asked her. "That is what you will make both sides do. Think on what we know of the Slaver war."
"You cannot seduce me with words. The conspirators you worked for-the conspirators responsible for the ramscoop raid-will be brought to justice," she replied. "It will be interesting to see how much ground they can cover when they are turned loose on a kzinti hunting preserve with ten minutes' start!" She was shouting now, and paused to wipe traces of foam from her lips. I don't think you had a good Liberation, Cumpston thought. I wanted vengeance as much as anyone at the time, but this is what it leads to.
There is another thing, he thought. There are outlying parts of Wunderland and much of the Serpent Swarm where the Kzin had still not grown too oppressive. That would have changed as their numbers increased, but there are some humans who hate Sol System for the ramscoop raid worse than they hate the Kzin. Not many-most don't expect an interstellar, interspecies war of survival to be fought with kid gloves-but some. And if my dearest had been killed by humans, how might I have jumped…? Perhaps the Kzin would have human allies. Not many, but enough to do damage. On the other hand, conflicts of loyalty could work both ways. No harm in pointing that out, perhaps.
"Another thing you overlook," he said: "Many kzin on Wunderland have found they may have better lives as partners with humans than as regimented cannon fodder for the Patriarchy. And for their descendants, the future may be brighter still. Many have been persecuted and humiliated. Many individual kzin died after the surrender. But they have not been murdered wholesale or enslaved, and they know it. A nonconformist kzin will not be dueled to death. There are kzin on this planet who have discovered freedom." Futile, he knew. There was no rational argument that would reach someone so deeply insane.
"On Wunderland we have been granted a miraculous chance." He had to say it. He strove to put in into terms that might get through. "Perhaps some would say not merely species but Bearded God and Fanged God have made truce here. With the hyperdrive there are stars and worlds enough for all. We have a chance to show that humans and kzinti can share a planet. If they can do that, perhaps they can share a universe. Destroy that experiment here and all hope of that dies with it." Tired and dry-mouthed, he argued back and forth with her hopelessly, and he knew, pointlessly, for some time, bringing it back to the fact that postwar Wunderland was proving some human-kzin cooperation was possible. "There may be a few who have been turned into imitation monkeys by the priests and the secret police, or been bought with monkey gold," she replied. "The Kzin race can purge itself of such perversions. It is the strongest and noblest culture in the galaxy!" She turned her attention to the console and keyed up some holos of the redoubt and its weapons stores, others of rampant Heroes and Kzin spacedreadnaughts in triumphant battle.
"As for you," she told Cumpston, "you may be useful as a hostage in the early stages. That is just. The humans you work for intended to hold the kzinti of Wunderland hostage… Noble Hero Raargh!" But there was no answer. After a few seconds it became obvious to all that Raargh was gone. Emma stared about wildly. Then she ran to the sleeping kzin. She stared down at it, then called another kzin to waken it. It seemed to have a problem doing so, and while telepaths, computer nirrds, or other lowly ones could be kicked awake by their betters, fighting kzinti were generally wary of touching another such when it was asleep. Finally the other kzin took its shoulders and lifted it. Its head flopped backwards, revealing a broken neck. As its body rolled over, long, raw, gleaming bones arced and clattered on the floor. The skin and flesh of one of its arms was missing. There was not much blood. Cord-the cord that had bound a zianya-had been wound tightly at the shoulder to prevent bleeding. "My Noble Mentor and Stepfather, Raargh who was Sergeant, gave his Word not to harm you humans this day," said Vaemar. "He did not give his Word to remain here. And when his claws are sheathed his feet fall silently and swiftly.
"It's possible he may go to Arhus." Vaemar added.
And even now you win a few seconds for him, thought Cumpston. Vaemar was again speaking in the Ultimate Imperative Tense of the Heroes' Tongue, the tense that might be used only by Royalty or, rarely, in a situation where the honor of the Kzin species was at stake, and which, when not employed for the giving of direct orders, lent itself to poetic, circumlocutious constructions. Also, he noticed, Vaemar had caught up the idea of Arhus but he did not tell a direct lie. It took Emma some time to work out what he was saying. Then her fingers stabbed at a control console. There was a sound of doors slamming shut.
Raargh threw away the remains of the Kzinti arm he had carried to hide his own prosthetic one. The passage which promised to lead toward the surface was blocked by a hemisphere, glowing bluishly with some form of radiation. Raargh did not know it for a Sinclair field but he guessed it was not something to venture into. It would not have been put there to stop the passage if it was impotent. He turned and ran into the dimmest tunnel he could find. At first the ruddy light, replicating a winter's day on the Homeworld he had never seen, was easy enough for silent running and leaping. After a short time, however, the light sources became fewer, and then stopped.
Raargh ran on. This part of the secret redoubt was unfinished, he saw. Walls were unlined, roughly hewn living rock. Now there were no lights or other installations. Even the natural eyes of the Kzin, superbly adapted to night hunting, could not see in total darkness, and he was grateful now for having lost an eye in combat years before.
Thanks to his partial Name, his artificial eye was the best available, able to see beyond the spectrum of visible light. It was not perfect, but it was enough to keep him running on. He ran nearly on all fours, both because it was the naturally speediest position for kzin and for fear of beams, Sinclair monomolecular wires and other booby traps. His w'tsai had been taken but he held his prosthetic arm up before him, hoping it would protect his head and chest from Sinclair wire. "These chambers link to the great caves of the Hohe Kalkstein," the human had said. He was possibly headed in the right direction. He thought he was going south, and the surface rivers, he recalled, had flowed on a roughly north-south axis. Air currents at the sensitive tips of his whiskers gave him some ability to differentiate between long passages and blind alleys. His ziirgah sense picked up nothing.