"There's something else," she went on, and her voice was stronger, almost exultant. "I was there, remember, when the kzin came to the refugee camp. Very few of us had actually seen them then, and I saw you face a creature that made the brave man beside you fall dead of sheer terror. I was there in the days that followed, when it seemed the whole weight of the Resistance, the whole war, rested on your shoulders alone. Not for a day, a week, or a month, but year after year, and the years became decades and there was no hope and you never faltered. You are not only the man I love, you are my hero!"
I couldn't have done it, Leonie, without you. Not for a year, or a month or a week. Truly, you were beside me… love."
"I'm afraid I opened a bit of a flood-gate there," Leonie said after a pause. "For us both. I've been damming that up for a long time too, you know."
"I'm glad you did open it, my love. So glad!… But Raargh's story? And Henrietta?"
She escaped. You know. Disappeared."
"I know," Nils Rykermann said. "Jocelyn has a particular hatred of her. Her business. I have other fish to fry."
"Until now I thought she was probably dead."
"So did I. But it's a whole planet she's got to hide in. A whole system for that matter. And there are plastic surgeons and organlegger’s. She might look quite different. New handprints. New lungs to confuse breath analysis. New eyes and new retinas."
"But the main reason I think Raargh's story is true," said Leonie, "is obvious: A kzin both wouldn't and couldn't make it up. A mad monkey devoted to Chuut-Riit's memory trying to lead a kzin revolt! It's so crazy it has to be true!"
"I'm inclined to agree with you."
"And he said he was making his way here to see you anyway, as Cumpston said."
"Yes. But why me?"
"Isn't it obvious? He trusts you."
"Why should he? I hate ratcats!"
"Obviously, he doesn't think you hate him," said Leonie. "Fighting together in the caves may have something to do with that… perhaps even the fact that he saved my life. And you left the key in the module door."
"I forgot it! And… and there was no danger around. Morlocks-if there are any left-don't understand keys."
"But kzin do." She quoted, "How brilliantly lit the chambers of the subconscious would be if we could see into them!"
"Who said that?"
"She did. I went to one of her public lectures-on the inspiration of scientific discovery. I knew you'd be there."
"I've tried, you know, I've tried very hard, never to let her memory come between us."
I know."
"I'll call Jocelyn," Rykermann said after an uncomfortable moment. He keyed a number on the desk and spoke rapidly. "Well," he said a few moments later, "talk about serendipity. She's on her way here already. She's about to leave Munchen with Arthur Guthlac and a party they think I might be interested to meet."
"What's that mean?"
Nils Rykermann shrugged. "No doubt we'll find out. She says Early's had some sort of alarm too." He shrugged out of his robe and stepped into the shower cabinet. "Freshen up, anyway," he remarked, turning on the water.
She dropped her own robe and followed him. "Make love to me," she breathed, winding her arms round him. "I need you."
Their faces were nearly on a level. He did not need to bend to kiss her.
"I need you too. I always need you."
Chapter 8
"Patrick's too flattering," said Dimity, as the outlying farmlands flashed away below the car. "I'm not a key member of our group. I'm largely a theoretician and the original work I did on the hyperdrive has been done. I got myself on this party because I wanted to see Wunderland again."
"Again?" Arthur Guthlac raised his eyebrows. It was on the face of it such an obviously bizarre thing to say. Before the hyperdrive, interstellar travel had involved decades-long flights in hibernation, had been extremely costly and invariably one-way.
"To find out what had happened. I was born here, grew up here… You think that's impossible?"
You're saying you are the Dimity Carmody? Go on. Possibly I know what may have happened."
The Crashlanders pulled me out of a ship that reached Procyon flying on automatic pilot, its life systems destroyed by a laser blast and everyone else on board dead. I was in a tank. But I couldn't remember much of my life. Not who I was apart from my name or what had happened to us. A title that I didn't understand. I only remembered that something terrible had happened. Images of great ravening cat-beasts, and a man with a yellow beard… and later, when I started reading again, of mathematical symbols… You don't look too surprised."
"I'm not. Not after something I heard a couple of nights ago, added to what I've seen of you… but now, I wonder."
"About me?"
"No, whether this trip today was an entirely good idea," he glanced rather guiltily at Jocelyn, sitting in a blister in the forward part of the car and out of hearing. "Still, we're on our way now." Below them the farmlands were giving way to barren, unsettled country. Flat-topped mesas, several now adorned with sensors or batteries of weapons, told of ancient erosion. Here and there was uncleared wreckage of war.
"It looks familiar," said Dimity. The great escarpment of the Hohe Kalkstein loomed blue-gray to the northeast.
"This part can't have changed much in a long while. Not like Munchen and the university. It's never been settled," said Jocelyn, returning to the main cabin. She dialed them drinks. Dimity toyed with hers nervously. As it approached the cliffs the car banked slightly and flew up a long canyon. There was a laden vehicle parked on the ground.
The car had a new, kzinti-derived gravity motor and settled with a quiet purring in front of the Drachenholen's mouth. There was none of the noise and stone-spitting of an old ground-effect vehicle. As they cut the engine several humans emerged from the great cave. "Poor security," remarked Jocelyn. "This place isn't so pacified as not to need a lookout."
Arthur Guthlac surveyed the scene with the car's security sensors.
"There is a lookout," he told her. "At least I very much hope that's what it is. Just inside the cave, partially concealed. I read the signature of a large specimen of what the monitor rather quaintly identifies as Pseudofelis sapiens ferox."
The Munchen party descended from the car, three of Guthlac's four guards triangulating the position with professional alertness.
Nils and Leonie Rykermann and their remaining students hurried to greet the party, Raargh emerging after a moment to join them. He carried one of the salvaged kzinti weapons, a thing the size of a small human artillery piece and too heavy for any human in the group to port. Rykermann was carrying a strakkaker he had been cleaning, and Leonie had another slung over her shoulder. The students were also armed.
"Jocelyn! Arthur! I'm glad to see you!" he called, "We've got a problem here!" With the air of one springing a surprise that might not be agreeable, he turned to Jocelyn, "I hope you can stand a bit of a shock. As you can see, Raargh, formerly Raargh-Sergeant, is here.
"I know you are old sparring partners," he went on, awkwardly trying to make light of the situation, "but he has done us a service and brought us valuable information." He counted the Munchen party. "But we may… need… more… "
His voice died away. There was a metallic rattle as he dropped the strakkaker on the ground. He stood staring, his mouth working.
Jocelyn turned from her affectionate greeting of Leonie. "Hullo, Nils," she said. "I believe you've met Dimity Carmody before. Recently arrived from We Made It."
Dimity Carmody too was staring as if she could hardly credit her senses. In mirror-image gestures each raised a hand. Their fingertips, trembling, touched. Their fluttering fingers raised, slowly, to touch each other's faces.
Neither had eyes for Jocelyn van der Stratt as she turned abruptly away from them, her face contorted. Only Raargh saw it. He was not an expert in interpreting simian expressions, but his ziirgah sense picked up a hatred like a physical blow. For a second he gave renewed thanks he was not a telepath. He thought this sudden wave of volcanic hatred that flowed from her was directed entirely at him. But he was a Hero practiced in self-control, and the situation demanded discipline. Seeing, at long last, what sort of monkeymeat Jocelyn made would not help Vaemar. His tail lashed the ground, but he remained otherwise impassive.