"Come forward," he said slowly. Even if she could not see or smell, she would know the kzin voice. "Monkey play false, monkey die."
"Kill me now if you wish," she said. "All is surely lost."
"You are loyal slave of Chuut-Riit," said Raargh. "Go. Hide."
"Emma will destroy everything," she said. "I do not want that… nor… nor did he."
Then go! Many kzinti on Ka'ashi. Many need advice to live with humans. No more rebellion in hopeless conditions!"
"That was never what I wanted…"
"Swear to it! Name as Word!"
"Would you trust the Name of a monkey? A slave? A female?"
"Swear on the name of Chuut-Riit!"
"Very well. No hopeless rebellion, on the Name of Chuut-Riit, I swear."
"Stop!" It was the voice of another human female, one Raargh remembered well. Jocelyn stepped onto the gangway. She carried a strakkaker in one hand and a nerve-disrupter in the other. Raargh knew he and Vaemar were quicker than any human, but she was a trained fighter, and her fingers were already on the triggers. The nerve-disrupter, a short-range pistol-sized device both agonizingly and lethally effective on human and kzinti nervous systems, broadcast impulses in a cone and did not even need to be aimed.
"So," she said, "the arch ratcat-lover and the ratcats arranging things together. How appropriate!" She waved the disrupter at Raargh and Vaemar. "You will each, one by one, take the other's weapon," she told them, "and, without placing your claws near the stock or trigger, or in any way moving quickly, drop them from the gangway. Do it now, and do it very slowly."
"Jocelyn van der Stratt," Henrietta's voice dripped contempt. "Last time I saw you was with Chuut-Riit, helping control the crowd at one of the public hunts-hunts that one day I might have had reduced! I had heard you were quick to change your pelt."
"Then you were wrong. I always worked for the Resistance. I have Kzin and collabo heads and ears to prove it in plenty, but not enough yet."
"What will you do?" That was Vaemar. His voice, Raargh thought, sounded under perfect control. As far as he could duplicate a human tone he suggested mild curiosity.
"You all have one more part to play," she told them. "Come with me."
She marched them in single file back along several galleries, compelling them to hold out their arms at different angles so all could be seen. A discharge from either weapon would have got the lot of them. There was more wreckage below them here, burning with flickering, smoky flames, and there were some regular lights. They could see bodies-human and kzin-on the ground. There were also voices. Raargh guessed the survivors on both sides could be re-forming. How many were left? Not many of his own human party, which had been too small to start with, against a much bigger formation of well-equipped kzinti as well as the other humans he had seen. At a word from Jocelyn they halted. Below them was the bluish bulge of another Sinclair field.
"Look there!" Below them and up the passage to the left, behind a small barricade of wreckage, were two humans. Raargh recognized them as Leonie and the Dimity female. Leonie was lying in an attitude that told Raargh that she was wounded near death. The Dimity female was doing something to the lower part of her body-first aid, he guessed, from the pumping movements she was making. He could not tell much more. His ziirgah sense was useful for stalking, but in battle the emotions of all around overwhelmed it.
"Leonie Rykermann, a leader of the Resistance, and Dimity Carmody, a hyperdrive scientist. In fact credited by her profile from We Made It as the hyperdrive scientist, the interpreter of the Outsider manual. Either a ratcat or a ratcat-lover would have plenty of motive to kill both of them."
You kill Leonie!"
"Carmody stopped me finishing the job. It's better this way… Actually, Henrietta, Leonie Rykermann has turned into something of a ratcat-lover herself, but living the retired life you do in this place you wouldn't have heard that. Their deaths will be blamed on you, or on the Kzin. That alone, that they killed those two heroines, will be all the Exterminationists need. And for me, it kills more than, almost literally, two birds with one stone. It also eliminates both my-"
Raargh leaped. It was a difficult leap from where he stood on the gangway behind Henrietta, and he felt his hind claws slash damagingly down on her as he cleared her body. Jocelyn swung up her weapons, but as she did so her upper body flashed into flame. The blast knocked Raargh sideways and he nearly fell off the gangway. Not perhaps a killing fall for a feline in Wunderland gravity, but there was the Sinclair field directly below. With his prosthetic arm he seized the catwalk and scrabbled back. Jocelyn was still standing, her upper body burning. Then she slowly toppled from the catwalk. "Back!" shouted a human voice. Then, in something like Heroes' Battle Imperative: "Blast alert!" Raargh's explosion reflex took him back, pushing Vaemar before him. As Jocelyn's burning body hit and passed into the field, the flames, in time-compression, flashed out like a bomb. Light scorched the walls around them. In another instant the heat would have cremated the kzinti where they stood. But the hellish glare was only a flash. The flames vanished, the fuel and oxygen in the field exhausted in an instant. Raargh's artificial eye adjusted before his natural one. He waited for Vaemar's sight to readjust, then ventured back toward the catwalk, gingerly, for his whiskers were scorched and shriveled and he felt unbalanced without them. The field was still glowing beneath them, with something black crumbing to fragments in it as he watched. The metal of the catwalk was fortunately a poor conductor. Nils Rykermann, carrying a laser pistol, stepped onto the catwalk.
"We are too exposed up here," he said. "And they need us down there. Hurry!"
"Help me!" cried Henrietta. She was sprawling, trying to rise. Raargh remembered the bones he had felt breaking as he kicked down at her. Rykermann raised the laser pistol to her, then lowered it. "Your people are here somewhere," he said. "I'll leave you to them."
"Over here!" It was Arthur Guthlac. Raargh, Vaemar, and Rykermann dragged him back behind the makeshift barricade.
"Leg gone, and a few ribs, I think," he told them. "I can shoot, but I can't walk."
"All right. We hold here."
Arthur Guthlac found little comfort in the situation. With Dimity fully occupied keeping Leonie alive after the terrible accident with Jocelyn's laser, and Jocelyn herself separated from them in the fighting (Let her be safe! he prayed) Rykermann, Raargh, and Vaemar were the only fighters left. Raargh's strength and endurance were colossal but not limitless-already he could see signs of pain and gathering exhaustion in the old kzin-and Vaemar was half-grown and inexperienced. They had gathered up the weapons about but beyond that had no way of replenishing charges or other ammunition. Enemies who certainly outnumbered them had the high ground. At this moment things seemed quiet but they could hardly resist another attack for long. Raargh and Vaemar were noisily eating a couple of the dead. Rykermann did not seem to notice. They are alien, after all, Guthlac thought. Not humans in tiger skins. And they need to keep their strength up and their heads clear for all our sakes. No point in trying to stop them. And then: My God! What is happening to me, that I think of kzin in those terms? They would have eaten Selina that way, if they didn't kill her in space.
Well, I've other things to worry about now. If they leave us alone, find some other way out or fall back into the caves, we might get out of this mess more or less alive. If they attack us again we're done for. I'd like to die on my feet, but I suppose that's too much to ask. And thank you, Jocelyn. As you said to me, I did get lucky on Wunderland. If we live, I'll show you how much I love you.