Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

DEADLY KNOWLEDGE

by Hal Colebatch

Occupied Wunderland, 2419

“The monkey is telling the truth,” the telepath reported. “It does not know why the other monkeys died.”

I knew enough of the Heroes’ Tongue to follow what it said. I had not tried to resist it or make its task more difficult, so we were both feeling in better shape than would otherwise be the case. And I had told the truth. The telepath was bewildered, and so was I.

Slave Supervisor nodded, a mannerism he must have unconsciously picked up from humans. Anyway, it seemed I was off the hook.

“Resume your duties,” he growled at me.

I made a prostration of obedience-not gratitude, kzin would not appreciate that-and gathered my books and left. The telepath followed me. I gave silent thanks that Krar-Skrei and his pride had not been present. To Krar-Skrei, a dead monkey was a good thing on principle.

An apparently motiveless murder and a suicide. The kzin would not have cared, except we three had been tasked with teaching a class of kzin about human culture, on Chuut-Riit’s orders. I could guess why, after killing von Kleist, Thompson had opened his own veins-the kzin punishment for destroying the Patriarch’s property and spoiling Chuut-Riit’s schemes would have been a great deal worse than a largely painless death in a hot bath. It was an end that befitted a classical scholar devoted to Petronius, who had died similarly on Nero’s orders. But why had he killed von Kleist in the first place?

We still had wills, or some of us did, part of the fast-vanishing remnants of legality. Thompson, we discovered, had left everything to his wife, to whom, for all his faults, I knew him to be devoted. Had there been a love triangle there?

Another document had been left by Thompson, apparently meant to be attached to his will like a codicil, and made apparently just before he committed suicide. In it he claimed von Kleist had been a member of the Resistance. This stopped kzin reprisals against Thompson’s family-he was written off as a monkey who, by killing a feral monkey, had tried to do his duty to the Patriarchy, even if in a typically monkey-daffy way. Yet as far as I could tell, it was untrue. To a human it made no sense. Anyway, we lived and worked too closely together to have secrets of that magnitude from one another. More, it would have been impossible. The Resistance in Neu Munchen had finished long ago. The humans still carrying on were holed up in the wild country, apart from occasional furtive trips to the city to pick up what supplies they could.

Well, I was too busy staying alive myself to worry overmuch. Suicides, and, for that matter, murders, on occupied Wunderland were by no means uncommon. As I returned to my quarters that night, it seemed to me, not for the first time, that suicide made a good deal of sense for us all. Even if I had had two good arms, I would not have dared even think about escaping to join the Resistance: my mind might easily be swept by a telepath again, perhaps a more thorough and more viciously hostile one.

There had not been much left of the Munchen University. The kzin had forbidden human research into any branches of science that might have military application, and as for the fine arts-well, what was the point of a BA now? The University had some endowment lands, and the collaborationist government allowed it to collect a little, diminishing, rent from these, I presumed to help prop up an appearance of normality, though some of the collabos might have their own games and rationalizations. That kept some of us alive, until the tenants died or walked off, or the kzin took over rent-collecting for themselves. Some of us, yes. There were few humans more helpless on Wunderland-on Ka’ashi, rather, than an academic whose department fell apart. Most of the University’s remaining productive farmland was worked by robots who didn’t care who their masters were.

We had almost nothing to do, apart from competing with the hedge-teachers who gained a pittance from teaching children the basics of reading and writing. We spent our days in the common room, drinking foul ersatz coffee, and wondering how long our lucky position as unassigned slaves would endure. To venture out of doors meant the risk of being robbed as the last of law and order gradually broke down, or worse, being conscripted by the kzin for slave-labor. The braver members of the faculty who had joined the Resistance were gone and mostly dead.

We all knew what might happen. Shortly after the cease-fire we had been summoned to watch the University’s vice-chancellor and his family die in one of the Public Hunts, the first we had seen. Captain von Rathenau of the collabo police force had set it up. The vice-chancellor and his family had not made good sport, however-they had been too old, too young, too out of shape, or too paralyzed with fear to run, let alone fight. So as not to disappoint the kzin youngsters who had turned up for the hunt, von Rathenau, under Krar-Skrei’s orders, had then drafted a number of the human spectators to replace them.

The vice-chancellor had not even died for a great cause, just for misdirecting the collabo government, possibly unintentionally, in the hunt for Nils and Leonie Rykermann. The collabos had learned of the Rykermanns’ work in organizing the Resistance, and Krar-Skrei, the area governor, had put a price on their heads. The Rykermanns, when they heard about this, had insolently retaliated by putting a price on Krar-Skrei’s head-a supply of the geriatric drugs which had suddenly become worth far more than gold, and double that for von Rathenau, who was a more possible target. Krar-Skrei was a terrifying piece of work, even as kzin nobles went.

Our position was similar to that of the purveyors of luxuries in any depression in Earth’s history, only immeasurably worse than most. We offered classes to children of the officials of the collabo Government, with an almost total lack of success. Apart from the basics of reading, writing and counting, what was the point of learning anything? And how could we discipline or examine them? If the child of a collabo official wanted a degree, he or she got one without more ado.

This more-or-less wretched existence had been interrupted by a visit from the collabo security forces. They rounded us up and began checking off our specialties against lists they carried.

Finally they selected three of us: von Kleist, Thompson and me. I did not like either of the others much. Too cowardly or insufficiently patriotic to join the Resistance themselves, I had the feeling that they despised those quaint enough to do so (at least I had an excuse). But when our names were first called, there was little room to think of anything save to not let oneself be overmastered by terror. Something told me to put on a good front.

We were taken to one of the empty buildings and told to wait. The waiting was not pleasant. There was no point in running or speculating on the future. Finally a collabo security guard returned, accompanied by a kzin whose title, we were told, was Slave Supervisor, prefixed by some distinguishing number, and a telepath. The telepath ran over our minds quickly, not very thoroughly, as far as I could tell, merely establishing that there were no feral monkeys among us. Then we were taken into another room. There were a couple of dozen kzin reclining on footches. By this time I was on the verge of fouling myself with terror, and nearly fainted, but it passed, and I began to notice things.

A large number of these kzin looked like cripples, with missing limbs or eyes. Also, to judge from the white fur, a number were old. A couple were overweight, and some were small and scrawny. Three were completely black-furred, the color of their priesthood. Not many, apart from a few who were clearly disabled veterans, had impressive collections of ears on their ear-rings. Most of them, in short, did not look like fighting kzin. Also most of them, as far as I could tell, had a sour look, although that was difficult to tell. And they were carrying, incongruously, what I realized were electronic notebooks. The telepath joined us. Even for a telepath, he looked in bad shape, violet-eyed, hunched and bent, and generally very near the end of the road.

Then the collabo security man explained.

Chuut-Riit, he said, had ordered the study of humans. Some humans had been turned over to a specially designated kzin unit for medical experiments. However, we were more fortunate. Our job would be to teach these kzin about human society. Von Kleist would teach literature, Thompson would teach history, and I would teach politics. That explained the curious composition of this group. They were the kzin equivalent of academics or intellectuals, or poor fighters, and, apart from the priests, whose position was anomalous, and the honorably crippled, lowly and despised in their own society. Even so, to us they were threatening enough. Still, the class was orderly. Kzin were bad administrators. But they enforced their orders with ruthless discipline.

Von Kleist was a haughty aristocrat, with the asymmetrical beard and mobile ears of a true Herrenmann. He left no one in any doubt that he considered himself several cuts above other members of the faculty and considered teaching at a university to be beneath him. Thompson was a little cock-sparrow of a man, also with a gift for rubbing people up the wrong way. I wondered how long their very limited diplomatic skills would keep them alive among the kzin. Both of them, I felt, regarded the war as vulgar, and human patriotism as the greatest vulgarity of all. Well, their meals were still being delivered three times a day, and they had not become meals yet.

The teaching, conducted in the slaves’ patois, was not terribly difficult, but hideously stressful. The kzinti had been ordered to learn, and they learned. After a few days, when my terror had subsided somewhat, I even found it interesting to explain voting and parties and majorities. Inevitably, our teaching overlapped somewhat (another possible pitfall-don’t bore them!). Otherwise, I knew I was fairly safe, so long as I did not insult them, and there was no call to do that. The main thing was not to imply that monkey social organization was in any way superior to that of the Heroes. A major difficulty was that I dared not give them tests, which they might possibly fail. I became adept, I think, at the use of various psychological tricks for having the cleverer ones discipline the stupid and lazy. If I dared not sneer at their work, another kzin might, and the resultant death-duel did not displease me. I could not be blamed for it.

I kept in mind H. G. Wells’s ancient story The First Men on the Moon, in which the foolish scientist, Cavor, marooned on Earth’s Moon, was killed by the inhabitants after telling them too much about human society. We got some help: Morris, a shy little man, was drafted to assist us. He had had some family on Wunderl-on Ka’ashi-but had none now, and the experience had broken his spirit. Someone told me he had suffered from hysterical blindness for many months afterwards. Anyway, he fetched and carried for us, did our research, cowered at the sight of even an old or crippled kzin, and generally made no trouble.

I found a digest of Nietzsche’s aphorisms, presumably brought from Earth by one of the nineteen Herrenmanner families, and destroyed it. “The weak and the botched must perish…I tell you that a good war hallows every cause.” I thought they had rather too much of that doctrine already. Markham, the guerrilla leader was, I knew, devoted to Nietzsche.

At least my conscience was clear. I could not see how teaching them the basics of human civics could harm the human war effort. As time went on, the idea even came to me that I might be importing some civilized values into their minds-but perhaps that was self-deception.

I taught them the theories of Adam Smith, and, straying out of my area somewhat dangerously, of James Watt and the generations-long endeavors which had led to the harnessing of steam, and then of electricity. I found that some of them, including the telepath, had a surprising interest in religion and its role in the history of science. I quoted to them an epigram I remembered from Einstein: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” I told them of the troubles Columbus had had in gaining finance for his voyages, and the parallel troubles that had nearly destroyed the early American space program. Some of my students, it seemed to me, were coming to comment upon human institutions with less that total disgust. This, I thought, was not uncommon among certain people who studied any subject. Students of some of the vilest societies on Earth, assigned to study them only for the purpose of defeating them, had come to admire them. This also made me feel better about what I was doing. Further, I was learning about them. There was little they bothered to hide from a monkey.

Although literature was not my subject, I learned a little about their own. They had some works I would call “thrillers,” but reading or viewing them was considered somewhat shameful, like watching pornography. Their respectable literature dealt with Lord Chmeee and other ancient Heroes, and was embellished with as many stylistic conventions as a Japanese Noh drama or an American Western. When the conventions were not observed, they often had difficulty in telling fact from fiction (I had to be very careful not to humiliate them here). I did not envy my colleagues, scrabbling in their little free time in the archives of the University for books and fragments which had been brought from Earth and forgotten in the excitement of settling a new planet in order to put inoffensive courses together.

I did not see as much of the other three humans as you might expect. By the end of the day we were all too mentally exhausted to socialize. Two or three of my kzin students, mainly the telepath, who, I gathered, was regarded as having become almost useless for real work (which was reassuring) took to seeking me out after hours with questions. Though my free time was limited and precious, I came to find this flattering. I talked some geriatric treatments out of the collabo Government, not exactly telling them, or myself, that I was civilizing the kzin (those telepath sweeps! Always a haunting dread!), but allowing them to draw that conclusion for themselves. The ubiquitous threat of telepaths was subtly changing the ways all humans thought and communicated. Fortunately for us, telepaths were rare, and were assigned to military duties nearly all the time. Even luckier, our telepath, who, I guessed, was assigned to the class to keep a more-or-less watching brief over us all, human and kzin, was of relatively mild nature. When I saw him he did not inject himself with the sthondat-lymph drug which heightened his powers, and I did not feel the headache which would have indicated that he was reading my mind. The telepath and I played chess occasionally. Most kzin adore chess, regarding it along with blow-dryers, talcum powder and toilet paper as the finest fruit of human civilization. I had an ulterior motive in this: there was no point in the telepath playing chess if he read my mind: that would have made it no game. So I was, I felt, subtly conditioning him to interact with me but to leave my mind alone. Even so, I dared not insult him by letting him win. He played like a typical kzin-fast and aggressive. He generally lost the first few games in short order, coming dangerously close to losing his temper-he could crush a solid metal chessman in his claws in a rage-but would then improve. I caught no trace of him probing my mind; it was just the way he worked. Of course, no other kzin would play with him. It was also a chance to pick up scraps of gossip from him-the kzin, or Telepath at least, cared little about military security. I gathered some details of the humans who were still fighting in the great caves, in Grossgeister Swamp, in the eastern hills and on the other, sparsely settled land masses. Battles were going on in space, and Sol System was still putting up fleets.

I noticed Thompson seemed to have formed a queer association with the telepath, rather as I had done. A case of uttermost underlings coming together. All of us, in our different ways, were protected a little by our value to Chuut-Riit from the casual savagery of kzin society. Much to my surprise, the telepath asked me to read aloud to him. I gathered it helped him relax, or gave him some relief from the mental noise that constantly surrounded him. I had heard rumors of telepaths with prohuman leanings, and perhaps that was what saved me at the time of the meat incident.

I dropped some meat, the food of another kzin (I had had a shock when I recognized the human bones). I was terrified the owner of the meat would attack me. Telepath, to my surprise, stopped him, as slavering, claws extended, he gathered himself to spring.

“Do not harm the Patriarch’s property!” Telepath said, and there had been something like a command in his voice.

The angry kzin, one who plainly had been drafted into the class to rid some fighting unit of his stupidity, growled and snarled. Even he, however, could realize that damaging the Patriarch’s property and Chuut-Riit’s was not a wise move. He snarled some threats about me losing my other arm, and resumed his seat. I gave the telepath some books, and tried to broadcast feelings of friendship to him-with how much success I did not know. But from that time there seemed, though I dared not have presumed upon it, to be some sort of unspoken understanding between the telepath and myself. He was, I guessed, like many telepaths, a secret intellectual, desperately lonely, and as frightened as I was, secretly not only terrified of the strutting Heroes, but also despising them.

Gradually, I began to realize the politics of the situation. I knew Chuut-Riit’s interest in humans was not universally approved of among senior kzinti. Some considered it disgusting, virtually a perversion. Others thought it a waste of time. Instead of building up the elite corps that Chuut-Riit had envisioned, many commanders had used the unit as a dumping-ground to get rid of unwanted personnel. Apart from those who were simply old or physically disabled, some of these were misfits because they were stupid, and some were misfits because they were intelligent.

I was, however, beginning to worry about graduating the class. I could not fail any, but if I passed them all as qualified “human experts,” the more stupid ones might well let me down in the field. Certainly the consequences would be unpleasant for them, but they would be a great deal more unpleasant for me. I realized that all I could do was try to teach well, keep the content of my classes innocuous, and emphasize my position as the property of the Patriarch. Also, another worry came to me: the obviously bright ones would resent being marked no higher than the obvious thick-heads.

One day, the telepath approached me.

“This Moby Dick that Kleist-human speaks of?”

“Yes, Dominant One, have you completed it?”

“We are not far advanced with it yet. But I have a question…What became of the cetaceans?”

“The whales? Their killing was stopped by law eventually, Dominant One. It was feared that they would become extinct, and better sources of oil were found…petroleum: ‘Rock-oil.’”

“Yes, you have Cetacean allies now.”

“Yes, the dolphins. We brought them to Ka’ashi.”

“But Moby Dick was not your ally.”

“No, Dominant One. A different species. Larger and more fearsome. Ahab believed he had to be destroyed, partly in vengeance for having taken his leg, partly because” (Careful, now!) “he was an enemy of Man.”

“I see.” Yes, I thought, a Kzin would see that. “I meant to speak to Thompson-human about it, but I sensed he did not wish to discuss the matter. I could have pressed him, of course.”

Of course.

“But I did not wish to. Such things are painful to me.” No kzin normally admitted pain in any circumstances, least of all to a human, but telepaths were different. It was, I thought, a sign of the delicate empathy between us. It also, I thought, tended to confirm my guess that this one was reaching the end of the line.

“It shows Ahab’s obsession,” I said. I did not know the deeper literary criticism of Moby Dick; in fact, I had forgotten most of the story, but a kzin would not need to know it either. “He must kill the whale at all costs.” Something made me add, “Humans are like that, Dominant One.” No fearsome headache. He was not trying to read my mind. Then he said, “Like our Morris-monkey.”

Morris? Had he read Morris’s mind? But if he had discovered anything there, why had he not reported it? I found it difficult to imagine. Morris was the quietest and most self-effacing of us all. And that phrase, “our Morris-Monkey,” was odd.

Seeing that he had no more questions, I made the prostration and he left, with me wondering what had sparked his curiosity. It was then that, returning to our quarters, I found von Kleist and Thompson dead, von Kleist with his throat cut, Thompson with the veins of his wrists opened in a bath of bloodstained water. I called security. As I said, the telepath cleared me. Not merely because of that frail empathy between us downtrodden beings either. I truly did not know any more. The fact that I had been with him was, of course, an additional alibi.

No motive for the murder-suicide. Thompson, as far as we knew, was happily married-as happily, that is, as anyone could be in those ghastly days-with three children. He seemed to have a great deal to live for. But madness was thick in the air of occupied Wunderland.

The telepath did ask me about it several times, not probing my mind, or not much. I gathered the kzin were as puzzled about the murder-suicide as I was. “Why,” Telepath asked, “did the Professor Thompson not simply denounce the Professor von Kleist if he knew him to be in contact with the feral monkeys?”

“Perhaps, Dominant One, he wished to spare him disciplining.” The cruellest and most vengeful human that ever lived might wish to spare another kzin torture. “But I do not understand.” It was true, and he knew it. I didn’t understand.

“Slave Supervisor wishes to know,” he said. I detected fear buried in his voice.

An answer even smacking distantly of smart-aleckry, such as “I wish to know too” was not advisable. “I will inform you, at once, Dominant One, should I learn anything,” I told him.

Suddenly a great howling filled the air. Meteor strikes had increased dramatically since the kzin invasion. Before that, Wunderland had had a meteor-guard service. This had held off the kzin force for some time while our hastily convened defense council tried to think of something to do. Now it was gone and we had meteors to add to everything else. The only defense the kzin permitted us was a system of sirens.

I knew nothing about the ramscoop raid then, only saw a glaring light in the sky, from which streamed molten matter, travelling hellishly fast, and on a nearly constant bearing. Telepath didn’t need to read my mind. We ran. I was a poor runner. My arm unbalanced me. Telepath grabbed my other arm and pulled me. We reached a shelter-an abandoned storage tank-just before impact, climbed a short ladder and fell in just as the blast-wave hit us. The tank rang like a bell as something fell on it. The blast lifted it off its mountings.

A white streak-a Beam’s Beast that had been in the tank-leaped through the air and fastened its jaws on Telepath’s shoulder. I was badly shaken up, but still had my flashlight-we, or those of us trusted by the kzin, carried them with Beam’s Beasts, Advokats and Zeitungers specifically in mind. After all, it suited them also if we killed the dangerous vermin, and you would have to be lucky and very, very quick to do a kzin much harm with one of the small devices. At the time I was not thinking of Telepath. It was purely a reflex action: if you saw a Beam’s Beast, you fired. It was a difficult shot, but the close range compensated for that. I burned its head free of its body, and, using the flashlight as a lever pried the locked jaws apart. The skin was broken, but Telepath’s fur seemed to have protected him from worst of the venom. I opened the lid of the tank and slammed it shut again. We were in the middle of a puddle of fire. Many kzin, I knew, if they were frightened of anything, were frightened of fire-I suppose because their fur was inflammable. We sat together in the tank for what seemed a long time, as the air grew hotter and fouler. At last the sound of the flames died.

“I can’t move my arm,” he said after a time.

There was only one thing for it. It was a highly distasteful idea, but it was a chance to win some brownie points with my masters. Anyway, I owed him. After explaining what I was going to do, I sucked some of the venom out of the wound.

“If you had had a cut on your mouth, you would be dead too by now,” Telepath said when I had finished and was spitting and retching, with a finger down my throat.

“That did occur to me,” I said when I could. Somehow I knew it was safe now to say something mildly sarcastic to him. We seemed to have moved away from “Dominant One.”

“Did it? You saved my life? A monkey saved a kzin?”

“You saved mine,” I told him. “I would never have reached this place without you.”

He took a spray from his belt, and looked as if he was preparing to apply it. Then he returned it, unused.

“It would dishonorable to read your mind in this situation,” he said. “I must assume you are telling me the truth.”

I climbed out of the tank, but the rusty ladder would not bear telepath’s weight. With my arm there was not much I could do to help him, and in that confined space he could not leap. There was fire and death in the streets all around us. Fortunately, as we later learned, the missiles used in the Ramscoop Raid had been inert dumb bombs, their destructive force coming only from their colossal kinetic energy. There was no radioactivity. Eventually I found an old-fashioned fire engine, one of the museum pieces the kzin allowed us to use. The firemen were unimpressed when I told them I wanted to rescue a kzin, but of course they were part of the collabo government themselves. I could see a couple debating whether to quietly kill me and say nothing about it. I pointed out that they could expect a reward, and that swayed them. I also lied to the effect that the kzin command knew where I was. I don’t think they were greedy men-on occupied Wunderland, a small reward from the kzin might well be the difference between life and death for oneself and one’s family.

The “meteor” had struck well beyond the outer fringes of Munchen. A direct hit would have levelled the city. We got Telepath out, though his arm was still stiff. Since it did not interfere with his mind-reading abilities, I doubted the kzin authorities would care about that much. We somehow agreed without words to say nothing of who had saved whom.

Somewhat to my surprise, Krar-Skrei supervised some of the rescue operations. Although he looked askance at Chuut-Riit’s whole human project and regarded humans as vermin, they were vermin who belonged to the Patriarch, and he did his duty to them as effectively as he might. I saw the burning ruins of a schoolroom cleared, and a badly injured kzin who had been inside taken away.

I also saw Krar-Skrei supervising the lifting of a fallen beam, which had blocked the entrance to a meteor-shelter. The firemen descended into it. I stood, with Telepath beside me, feeling shocked and useless. Telepath caught my arm, thankfully remembering to retract his claws, and pointed.

“The Morris-human,” he said.

It was Morris, all right, heading for the unattended fire engine. Telepath was getting out his injector now. Why? Something in Morris’s walk? Something Telepath picked up even with his unheightened powers?

It happened very quickly. Morris flung the fire engine into gear and drove it forward over Krar-Skrei and von Rathenau, killing them both instantly, if the bump it made going over them was anything to go by. Morris was screaming something, and I picked up the last words “…but I’ll slay him yet!” Half a dozen guns turned on the fire engine from a group of kzinti beside a burning wall, and melted it to slag almost instantaneously.

Lucky Telepath. The burning wall collapsed on them. He turned and stared at me. There was no one else in sight alive. I knew what he was thinking, and he knew I knew: The human firemen were all working down in the shelter. I was the only witness to his negligence. He began to raise one arm. I reached, as furtively as I could, for my flashlight, a pea-shooter wielded by a cripple against a saber-tooth. Then he lowered his arm. “A bad accident,” he said.

I agreed. “Not even the usual suspects to round up,” he continued. I started laughing hysterically.

I am no telepath, but even I picked up the wave of Telepath’s relief and joy. Krar-Skrei was dead.

Since the course was nearly completed, the first class of Chuut-Riit’s human experts was pronounced graduated, and its members posted to the fleet and elsewhere. That solved a problem for me. I presented them all with diplomas, written on parchment made of the finest human skin, each illustrated by a picture of a Hero standing rampant atop a pile of slain simians.

I felt as if my teaching had been a furlough in the cool First Circle of Hell, but that I could not take any more teaching, and contemplated escaping into the eastern mountains before the next class, which would presumably also include a telepath with a watching brief. Perhaps the Resistance would have me in spite of my arm. They must be running very short of personnel. Perhaps I could even survive on my own. If not, so be it.

But that was to be the only one of Chuut-Riit’s human classes. In quick succession, Chuut-Riit was killed as a result of techno-sabotage, civil war broke out between the followers of Traat-Admiral and Ktrodni-Stkaa, and the UNSN Hyperdrive Armada arrived. The sky was suddenly filled with fighters, and humans in battle-armor descending with lift-belts.

Escaping to the wild was not necessary. The kzin lost interest in me and I was able to keep alive, cowering with a few other academics in a sub-basement while the battle raged above us. Since then I have seen some rediscovered film of the fall of Berlin in 1945 (our civics classes had become more realistic by then). It was like that, only worse. Once a lost kzin kitten blundered down among us, and, moved by some impulse I still do not understand, I took him up into the street and found a kzin warrior and handed him over-the only really brave thing I have ever done. The kitten, I remember, had a curious red patch on the fur of its chest, and specially elaborate ear-tattoos, and the kzin who received it prostrated himself before it, before snatching it up and vanishing with it into the smoke.

The fighting moved on. I talked my way past the vengeful humans, and fortunately, when he was recovered, my old colleague Nils Rykermann spoke up for me. There was no telepath this time to defend me, and I had some hairy moments-my former head of department was beheaded, and his deputy taken to Munchen Zoo and fed to the kzinretti-but once again my arm served as an excuse, and perhaps I was lucky in the composition of the panel I faced. I found the firemen who had helped Telepath and me, and expended my credit, such as it was, pleading for them, pointing to the lives they had saved in the Ramscoop Raid.

Had von Kleist and Thompson survived, the Resistance would have made short work of them, I mused-dirty KzinDiener. At least I, heart in my mouth, had occasionally towards the end left food parcels where the Resistance might find them. It wasn’t much, but it had, just, passed under the telepath’s radar, and some humans remembered it.

Liberated Wunderland, 2420

THERE WAS PLENTY for all of us to do in the months that followed. The kzin who remained on Wunderland were no longer our dreaded conquerors. Many of those who remained had formed some sort of relationship with humans. There was modern medicine available again, and my arm was repaired.

I was walking back to my apartment one evening when a voice hailed me out of the shadows of an alley: “Professor!”

Not a voice produced from a human voice-box. I spun round. A dark shape, too big for a man, but small for a kzin. Well, we were officially at peace on Wunderland now, and I knew it was no use running from a kzin-many had tried. I waited until it emerged into the bright light of the main street.

It was Telepath. He looked bad, but telepaths usually did. He stumbled as he walked, and almost fell at my feet.

Did I owe him anything? Thinking it over, I decided that perhaps I did. He could have made my life a lot more uncomfortable, and a lot shorter, if he had tried. I remembered the incident of the meat, the time in the tank, and the risk he rook letting me live at the end. And, well, even in this case, I felt as a teacher I owed a former student something. I called up an aircar and, lifting him with considerable difficulty (lifting a normal male kzin would have been out of the question, but my repaired arm with its metal bones was now stronger than a natural one), carried him home.

I had thought he was starving, but he appeared no more emaciated than before. A large bowl of hot milk and a couple of raw chops and sausages did seem to do him good.

“Remember the meat?” he asked me. Like all telepaths, his command of the language was perfect, though his accent was strange. What was wrong with him, I learned as he talked, was that he was suffering from a near-terminal case of uselessness. He was shunned by other kzin, humans fled from him. ARM had assessed him, like all telepaths they had captured, and found him so nearly burnt-out as not to be worth recruiting. He was in a kind of passive state, which was a recognized clinical symptom indicating that the end was near. Like practically all telepaths, the drug had left him a wreck, and he had not been physically able to handle the effects of sudden, brutal, total withdrawal, though mentally he seemed clear enough.

I called Leonie Rykermann, who had been a student at the University at the time of the invasion. Kept young with unlimited geriatric drugs, she and her husband, Nils, had been among the most respected of the Resistance leaders, and were now political powers. Further, like a surprising number of other Resistance leaders, she got on well with kzin and was running an orphanage for some of the many parentless kzin kittens, as well as human children, on the planet. She came and spoke to the telepath for a time. I gathered she could find him a job at the orphanage, where he might feel useful.

As they were preparing to leave, he asked me: “Do you remember the poem, ‘Spanish Waters,’ that Herr von Kleist used to say for us?” I didn’t, but I remembered von Kleist had been interested in sea stories. He piped up:

I’m the last alive that knows it, all the rest have gone their ways.

Killed, or died, or come to anchor in the old Mulatas Cays

And I go singing, fiddling, old and starved and in despair,

And I know where all that gold is hid, if only I were there…

“But,” he went on, “I don’t know of much gold.”

Liberated Wunderland, 2425

Five years or more passed before I saw him again. The UNSN had taken the telepaths in hand and were well on the way to developing nondestructive drugs for them. Apparently the kzin Patriarchy had always known that the sthondat lymph-derived drug burned out the telepaths’ brains, leaving them not merely mindless, but, unless someone mercifully euthanized them, in a state of endless, screaming horror. Under the Patriarch, they were generally euthanized, not from mercy, but merely to stop the noise and because they were now useless (we heard that better drugs were produced in small quantities on Kzin and reserved for the Patriarch’s own telepaths, the highest masters of the art, who were treated as nobles in their own right). The Patriarchy needed the telepaths, but feared them for many reasons. The solution they had arrived at resulted in short, down-trodden neurotic lives for them.

Even with the incongruous wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses, giving him an appearance something like a tiger that had eaten an old-time gangster, he was looking a great deal better. In fact, apart from his small size, he looked like a healthy kzin. Indeed, I did not recognize him at first. He was leading a well-grown kit with buttons on its claws. One of the orphans, I guessed. I remarked that I was pleased to see him looking so well.

“It is the new drugs, the human drugs,” he said. “I am under a life-debt to you and your kind, Professor.”

“If that is so, I am under one to you,” I told him. “Let us say the scales balance.”

“Have you got a few moments?” he asked me. “There is something I would share with you.”

The Lindenbaum café was not far away. It had footch couches for kzin now. I wondered what the prewar students would have made of it. Not a good idea to think that way. It raised too many ghosts.

“As a matter of fact, it was to see you that I came here,” he said. “You remember Herr von Kleist?”

“Yes.” I nearly said “Of course,” but one who is powerfully conditioned never says anything that might be interpreted as rudeness to a kzin, even a small and apparently friendly one. Feeble telepath or not, he could have dismantled a tiger without undue trouble.

“And Herr Thompson?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“Would you be interested in knowing why they died? And Herr Morris?”

“Certainly. I have often wondered.”

“Herr Thompson, before he died, prepared a package,” he said. “It was star-locked.”

That meant it could only be opened when the stars had moved to a certain position in the sky. Generally an attempt to force it resulted in the destruction of its contents. The kzinti had got the technology, like many others, from one of the scientific races they had conquered in the past. They had invented very little of their own.

“He gave it to you?”

“No indeed, to another monk…human. He, in turn, fled Munchen to join the Resistance and left it with a third human, what you call an ‘attorney.’ I remember you explaining those terms to us.”

“Yes.”

“I could follow all this easily enough. I had read Herr Thompson’s mind, and from that I read the minds of the other human and the attorney.”

“Did you tell the Patriarch’s authorities?”

“No.”

“May I ask why?” I would not have dared put such a question, save that I felt he was inviting it.

“What have they ever done for me, except make me a wreck and rob me of my strength and pride? But I bided my time. When the Ramscoop Raid came, the attorney’s offices were in one of many buildings reduced to rubble. I let Herr Morris wreak part of my vengeance for me. He did more than I expected. Much later, after I was released from the assessment camp, after I had seen you, I found the package-I had read the attorney’s mind and knew where it was stored. He was dead and had no further use for it. I took it and kept it.

“I did not know how long it would be before the star-lock allowed the package to be opened-centuries, perhaps. At last I had an idea, a very simple one, which the ingenious beings who invented the star-lock could not have anticipated, though perhaps Herr Thompson should have. I took it to the planetarium.”

“As simple as that!”

“As simple as that. I opened it. It contained, as I had suspected, a message, which I read. By then, the kzin were overthrown on this planet. I kept it for some time, unsure what to do with it. Recently I decided to give it to you…”

“Thank you.”

“I had thought it might contain a treasure, or the guide to one. I warn you, it does not.”

There must be something about humans and locked boxes. I felt an absurd sense of disappointment.

He was wearing a garment over his fur like a vest with pockets-purely utility. From one of these he produced some sheets of paper.

“This is what it contained,” he said.

I read:

There is not much time to explain. I wish it to be known, by my descendants at least, that I am not a maniacal killer. And I am not a traitor. I have killed von Kleist for the benefit of the human race. Now I must kill myself, to avoid the Telepath’s probing and Kzin torture, both of which would reveal the truth and make what I have done pointless. By the time this is opened it should not matter. Things will have been settled one way or another. I hope it will allow my name to be restored.

I tried to subvert the Kzin with stories of human prowess.

I begged von Kleist to see reason, but he dug in his heels through sheer stubbornness. He was determined to put Moby Dick on the kzin reading list. An academic dedicated to his studies.

He claimed, when I pressed him, it would give them a better understanding of human courage and determination. I told him that many of them might have trouble telling fact from fiction, but it made no impression. He called it a great classic.

Yes, a great classic that might destroy us all. For what is its message, to a kzin reader? That the whale wins in the end, in spite of all Ahab’s effort and sacrifice. THAT HUMANS CAN BE DEFEATED, THAT HUMAN BRAVERY AND DETERMINATION ARE NOT ENOUGH FOR SUCCESS, that we are but monkeys that batter our lives away in a futile quest for vengeance upon a brainless fish. And the fish wins. Its message of human despair and nihilism would work its way through the kzin fleet. It would hearten the enemy.

That is what, even now, the von Kleists will never understand. For them, ideas and consequences exist in different universes. The power of words to create or destroy. I suggested Churchill’s wartime speeches. He said they were not literature, which it was his job to teach. He would have spread poison through the Patriarch’s weapons, made the death of every human who had died fighting the kzin seem as meaningless as Ahab’s, for the sake of teaching literature. If they understood it was fiction, that would be worse, for the very knowledge that a human would write such a fiction would increase their contempt for the human race, and their confidence in themselves.

My motive has been to help the human race survive. Care for my family.

I dialed my flashlight to high power and focused it on the paper. As it crumbled to ashes I asked: “Do you know what happened to his family?”

“No,” he said. We both knew there was a good chance they were dead. But I could advertise for them.

“So what are you doing now?”

“I am still at the orphanage. I teach the orphans reading and writing. What you and the other professors taught me.”

“Not Moby Dick, I trust.”

“No, that would contain quite the wrong lesson. My favorite is called The Magic Pudding: ‘We much prefer to chew / the steak and kidney stew…’ Giving you this has rid me of a burden. There was another page, giving details of where he had hidden a cache of diamonds, industrial diamonds, that he had salvaged from a bombed factory at the time of the first kzin landings. Leonie will be able to use them, for the orphanage is always short of funds. There are young kzin in it who might have grown up like me. Farewell, Professor. Drink blood and tear cattle into gobbets!”

He left. Seeing me alone, the human waiter sought my order. I drank a glass of wine to Thompson’s memory.