"Good," said Arthur Guthlac.
"You're not getting fond of the old ratcat, are you?"
"No!" A slightly sheepish smile, and a laugh Guthlac cut off as his ribs pained him. "Well, to tell the truth, he did show up pretty well. I'm no kzin-lover yet, but perhaps my attitude's been a bit simplistic. I need to think. I've accumulated quite a lot of leave in the course of this war, and the time might be coming to take it. Probably take a couple of years to get my application through the bureaucracy, though. Leave would be good. Not alone, perhaps… Where's Jocelyn?"
Chapter 11
2428 a.d.
The walls of the dean's interview room were heavy with antique books. A couple of ancient computers were preserved under transparent domes. There were paintings and even some marble busts of previous eminent members of the faculty. In another of its efforts toward reestablishing a milieu of scholastic tranquility after decades of chaos and war, Munchen University had recently introduced gowns and mortarboards for both staff and students to wear for major interviews and other important occasions. Nils Rykermann, his robe emblazoned with the esoteric colors and heraldry of his position, looked up from the application and assessment form.
"You're taking a big spread of subjects," he said. "Literature, history, political theory, physics and astrophysics, economics, chemical engineering, space mechanics, pure philosophy… and you want to do a unit of biology too. That's quite a load for a first-year student! We're going to have to bend the rules. Still, that's been done before for certain… exceptional cases."
"I hope to specialize eventually, Professor, but I feel I should get a good general background first."
Joining the chess club, too, I see. Arthur Guthlac's become the patron, you know. When he came back from his leave at Gerning he decided to extend his posting on Wunderland. And the Drama Society! Are you sure you can manage it, Vaemar?"
"Oh yes, Professor!"
"Well, you must tell me if you find it too much. As dean of studies this year I will be responsible for your entire performance beyond my own subject… Your test scores are encouraging… And your… er… Honored Sire Chuut-Riit… was clever enough."
"Yes, sir. I will not shame you. Nor him. Nor Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero."
"I'm sure you won't. But prove yourself here, Vaemar, and you will win a greater victory than many… We have our first-semester field trip to the caves next month. You have some acquaintance with them already, and I'm sure you'll be an asset to us. We may regrow some of the smashed formations with Sinclair fields… How does your Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero fare?"
"He prospers, Professor. But my infant step-siblings can make it difficult to study. It can be noisy at home. Sometimes when I read they leap at my tail and bite it. My Honored Step-Sire Raargh-Hero counsels patience and self-control."
"Good training, Vaemar, and good counsel. You will need both."
Larry Niven
The Man-Kzin Wars 10 – The Wunder War
Peter Robinson
2892 a.d.
A flock of big leather-flappers passed over the tent, filling the air with their cries. Gay Guthlac stirred against her husband, her head on his right shoulder, lips brushing his ear. "Noisy things," she murmured. He stroked her hair and she snuggled closer against him before drifting back to sleep. Sleeping plates were fine in space, but camping out in Wunderland's gravity they enjoyed the primitive novelty of a bed. They were falling in love with this multicolored world, and both had remarked the previous day that, long-settled as it was, it still had vast areas of vacant land.
Richard Guthlac turned his head to kiss his wife's sleeping face. His right arm lay along her back, his hand moving to caress the warm curved smoothness of her skin. The night beyond their tent's window was flooded with a shifting purple light: Alpha Centauri B rising with its glorious heralding of the true dawn. He found it harder than she to return to sleep immediately.
I am taking her into danger, he thought. Each time we violate the tomb of an ancient horror, we risk unleashing monsters.
And then he thought: Well, it cuts two ways. Danger is part of our lives. We're spacefarers. We knew what went with the job when we started. It's better than living like flatlanders.
The splinter of anxiety withdrew a little. He felt his thoughts beginning to wander as sleep claimed him again: Our race can fight monsters now, and win. We were sheep once. If that ancient collision with the Kzin and all the centuries of war that followed taught us anything, it's that the sheep option isn't available.
But that was not the only lesson it taught. Had there been other, subtler ones? Had it taught the Kzin anything?
Some of them, anyway.
The splinter of fear again: But this is not about abstract concepts of the human race. This is about me and the woman I love as life itself.
Gay stirred sleepily again, throwing one leg over his body, her hand caressing his chest. He turned into her embrace.
"I have a potentially difficult task for you, Charrgh-Captain," said Zzarrk-Skrull. He stood gazing out through the arrogantly wide castle window across the Hrungn Valley. His body was as motionless as if he were lying in wait for prey, and his right hand, claws half-extended, rested calmly on the periscope stand of an ancient Chunquen undersea ship, memento of an easy ancestral conquest, but his tail lashed, betraying disquiet.
"Command me, Sire!" Charrgh-Captain's own tail and ears stood erect with eagerness, and his whiskers bristled. If he had any private thought to the effect that a task which the Fleet Admiral described as potentially difficult must be daunting indeed, he kept it well hidden.
Zzarrk-Skrull paced a moment in the audience chamber before continuing. "I do not mean merely dangerous," he said, wrinkling his nose as if at a distasteful suggestion. "You may be called upon to exercise other qualities besides courage. Diplomacy… judgment. You will have to deal with humans in this task… and worse than humans."
"Puppeteers? I will do it, Sire! I serve the Patriarchy as ordered!" Things had changed since the old days. Kzinti dealt with alien races-some alien races-with diplomats and words and even contracts now instead of attack fleets. There was a growing number of kzinti turrrissti visiting alien worlds, often to ponder upon their ancestors' ancient battlefields, kzinti as employees and partners of various alien enterprises, even as employers of free aliens… The Puppeteers were contemptible herbivores, but their trade empire had brought benefits. Most of them had left Known Space, and in their absence some kzinti were beginning to appreciate their value.
Zzarrk-Skrull's face took on a strange expression as he stood proud in his golden hsakh cloak and sash of Earth silk. It was also, for Charrgh-Captain, a secretly alarming one: High Kzinti officers are not easily disgusted.
"Urrr. Worse than Puppeteers. Hear me, Charrgh-Captain." Fleet Admiral Zzarrk-Skrull composed his face and ears, and continued:
"You may be aware of an unfortunate incident many years ago on the planet of Beta Lyrae that the humans name Kuuborl. We lost a ship called Traitor's Claw and a specialist crew under one Chuft-Captain. They had found a small stasis box used by tnuctipun, not Slavers."
Billions of years previously, depending on how various planets measured years, the ancient races of the thrint, the stupid but ruthless Slavers with their compulsive telepathic hypnosis, and the highly intelligent but at least equally ruthless tnuctipun, had fought a war that ended in omnicide: the thrintun, losing the war and about to be finally exterminated by their vengeful former slaves, had sent an amplified suicide command throughout the galaxy. Sentient life had ended, to evolve again only recently in galactic time.
Some Slaver and tnuctipun artifacts had been found: more-or-less mutated life-forms on various planets and in space, other things preserved unchanged in stasis boxes, one of the great feats of tnuctipun technology. Some stasis boxes had been highly dangerous. The danger most feared was that when stasis boxes were opened they might be found to contain live Slavers as well as artifacts. It had happened on a few occasions, in both kzinti and human space. The results had been fearful. But the contents of some stasis boxes had been priceless. Zzarrk-Skrull allowed himself a few lashes of his tail, and went on: "There was a confrontation with humans. There was an explosion. One kzin survived: a telepath. Unfortunately he was injured early in events and could tell us little more, save that Chuft-Captain had opened the box and was performing various tests on the artifact it contained. Then, bang. "That was all, but our agents learned other facts later. Of course the humans and the Puppeteer made their own reports."