"Put your hands on top of your heads. Do not make any sudden moves. Dead, neither of you are any use. But we will shoot if we have to. You cannot beat six of us. But I do not want to treat you as prisoners. We are on the same side."
"And whose pride are you?" asked Cumpston. "The mad one or the even madder one?"
Ostensibly, we side with Emma," said the man. "Actually, we have our own agenda. One which you, Colonel, are obliged to support."
"I suppose you'll explain?"
"I need to. We seem to be alone at present. All other kzinti and humans are off wiping out your little rescue party in the caves. Does this mean anything to you?" He held up a small plastic cube, projecting a holo.
"An ARM ident."
"Genuine, as you well know. Specifically coded to my DNA and impossible to counterfeit. We have the same employer, Colonel. Or ultimately the same employer."
"Go on."
"Your job has been to watch this young kzin. To adjust him to living on a human world. To become his friend."
"I am his friend! And I have never concealed my ARM status from him."
"I congratulate you. You have carried out your instructions cleverly. But it has been my part to play a more covert role. ARM is, as you have perhaps guessed, the instrument of a higher power."
So even Chuut-Riit guessed. Not a very effective secret if it can be worked out by an alien being four and a half light-years from Earth."
"Suppose Emma's plans-though I will be frank with you and say our plans, for you know the way we must operate-for a revolt of the Wunderland kzin go ahead. As any practical military man such as yourself understands, it will almost certainly fail. The kzin are relatively few, disorganized and disarmed. On the other hand, given the heavy weapons stockpiled here, and kzin courage and fighting ability, and given a few lucky breaks, an uprising could do great damage and cause considerable loss of human life. As you have eloquently put it, the kzin on Wunderland and Tiamat would then probably be wiped out to the last kzinrett and the last kitten-if events followed an undirected course."
But they will not follow an undirected course, and in any case you are wrong is thinking that the kzin of the Patriarchy would care particularly in a moral sense. We would be doing no more than they expect of monkeys. Kzin culture does not have much of the human concept of hostages. The kzinti of the Alpha Centauri system have surrendered. They are disgraced anyway. Their lives mean nothing. That they tried to fight back when the situation was hopeless meant they did no more than Heroes are expected to do. Perhaps it would make their dishonor a little less. Certainly, it will mean other kzin worlds and other individual kzinti will be even less willing to surrender when all their hope is gone than they are now. Certainly, the war will be prolonged, not forever, but enough to give us time."
"I still don't understand," said Cumpston. "At the very least, a lot more humans will die, directly and indirectly. And we know the kzinti have other slave races. Some would say, even setting everything else aside, we have a moral duty to help them. Prolonging the war will not do that. A peace has been possible here so far. It may be possible with whole planets."
"I suggest you look at the long view," McGlue replied. "The hyperdrive is the greatest threat to the stability of the human species-indeed to all species. Given the absence of war and easy interstellar travel, sooner or later our control is gone. Not this year, not this decade, perhaps not this century. But eventually.
"In the three centuries between the first settlement of Wunderland, followed by the other interstellar colonies, and the development of the hyperdrive we-ARM-lost a great deal of control. "That was inevitable. Interstellar travel was rare and one-way, with many years spent in hibernation. Even message communication was restricted to the speed of light. Now the hyperdrive threatens chaos for the human race in the long term. Why do you think ARM discouraged research into FTL for so long? But FTL is a two-edged sword, and one edge fights for us: for it also gives us the chance to reassert order and communication throughout the human worlds if we act quickly, and reestablish a controlling presence throughout the human species before the inevitable human diaspora. Prolonging the war with the Kzin will give us time for that, both for the colonies in general and for Wunderland in particular. It will unite the human worlds under ordinary military discipline and organization long enough for us to establish ourselves once again in place on every one of them.
"Can you, an ARM officer of your rank, seriously doubt the worth of our cause? You, a war veteran who has seen so much chaos and destruction? Before the war ARM was a technological police. That is what it remains. Those who fretted under the stability we imposed could not imagine the consequences of destability, or the immeasurably worse consequences we face if we falter now! Would you see wars between human worlds? Perhaps at last a whole galaxy filled with wars? You are more humane than that, Colonel!
"As for the kzin of Wunderland, certain selected individuals will be saved. You, I think, hope for the Kzin to be civilized in the course of time. That is among our goals also.
"We helped that old kzin to escape-or rather turned a blind eye to it-expecting him to die in the caves. Alive here, he was a constant potential nuisance to our plans and a reminder to Vaemar and perhaps some of the other kzin and humans of a false complexity of loyalties. We wanted him permanently out of the way without risking the wrath of Henrietta, Emma, and indeed Vaemar by killing him. We underestimated him-or perhaps kzin military prostheses are better than we thought. Anyway, we did not know there was a human expedition within reach. Well, Vaemar, if he survives this battle we will see he is safe for you now. You will not lose your friend. There are kzinti on Wunderland we shall need. You, Vaemar, will have the highest of places among them, the place to which your royal blood entitles you.
"Vaemar, what we do is for the Heroic race as well. You know chaos would be at least as destructive for your kind as for ours. Sooner or later your kind will have the hyperdrive too. Your role may be to help hold chaos at bay. You are correct, Colonel, that Chuut-Riit's blood may be especially important. "Already before the Liberation our people here-the trained heirs of those who came with the original colonists-had made contact with certain kzin-kzin who we made sure as well as we could survived the Liberation. We will contact the slave races, in good time. Already we seek among the kzin for a jotok-trainer. Our ultimate masters-and I say 'our' because they are yours as well as mine-do not think in the short term or on a small scale. We do what we do for the longest-term good of all. And I mean all, kzinti included."
"All right," said Cumpston. "I accept who you are. What do you want me to do?"
"For the moment, nothing. Things are developing satisfactorily. The best thing we can do now is keep out of the way and not intervene unless we need to."
Colonel Cumpston nodded, raising his hand to pinch his lower lip thoughtfully. The narrow gangway meant they were standing in a line. The laser in his ring had a single charge only, but given their position it was enough.
"Now," he said to Vaemar as they stepped over the bodies, "we should move cautiously to find our friends."
"What about these?"
"I would not suggest you eat them. The meat of such would be distasteful. Drop them into the Sinclair field and it will take care of them in good time. It is useful to have weapons again."
As they pushed the bodies off the catwalk into the field glowing below, Cumpston took from one of his pockets a small black emblem in the shape of a swan and dropped it after them. They heard, along the passages ahead, explosions and the screech of a strakkaker. Human shouts and kzin snarls and screams. Mechanical voices shouting orders.
"Where now?" asked Vaemar.
"To the sound of the guns, my young Hero!"