The Wunder War

Chapter 3

Jocelyn van der Stratt, like many of Wunderland's top administration, had a spacious apartment, once the property of a wealthy collaborationist, located, like Rykermann's Parliamentary office, in a tower high over the city.

Its decorations included the body of Peter Brennan, a fighter in the early days of the Invasion who even the Kzinti had referred to by full name, enclosed in a translucent block. Jocelyn had liberated it on the day of the Kzin surrender. The Kzin had let him keep his trophy-belt of kzinti ears, and this could still be seen on him, along with, on the remains of his jacket, the small cogged wheel of the Rotary Club badge he had worn in memory of peaceful days. There were also, about the walls, the earless heads of various kzinti and of human collaborators, weapons, photographs and holos of certain other dead humans, china from old Neue Dresden, and, in a niche, an inlaid jar of kzinti workmanship which had once held Planetary Governor Chuut-Riit's urine, kzinti symbol of Conquest and once gift to a sergeants' mess of Heroes.

Jocelyn reclined at ease on a couch covered in kzin fur. She was smoking a cigarette of mildly narcotic Wunderland chew-bacca and she had chosen the details of her dress with great care. Ulf Reichstein Markham sat upright on a chair with the same material. He smoked nothing.

"Privately," she was saying, "I'm on your side. The Kzin were honorable enemies. Many like Traat-Admiral and Hroth could acknowledge and respect human courage. And could be reasoned with. 'Enlightenment' is no empty word. Chuut-Riit wished to understand us. Perhaps the passage of a little time was necessary for us to see their more positive qualities. Thanks to the hyperdrive we are secure militarily and can afford to be more active in exploring avenues to a lasting peace."

"It is time to become friends," said Markham. His English was still careful, and Wunderland sentence structure came and went awkwardly in it. "I do not pretend it will be easy. Sacrifices we may have to make. They must be convinced of our good intentions. But infinitely worthwhile the effort. At the end of the journey ennobled may both races be. I did not, however, think that you shared my views."

I must tread warily," said Jocelyn. "You should know, for example, that Rykermann is a secret Exterminationist. I cannot break openly with him yet."

"He was a brave fighter," said Markham. "He has much-deserved prestige. It would be a good thing if he could be shown the longer view."

And you have chivalrous instincts, thought Jocelyn. I could love you very easily if fate had not made me love Rykermann. But Rykermann has your courage and leadership combined with a wound, a vulnerability, that together make women love him easily. He is not of your hollow-ground steel. Still, you are physically attractive and I will, I think, have no problems about seducing you. Rykermann may have called you a cold, sexless creature, but I know men better than any man does. You are not sexless, you are just frightened of losing control, and of an instinct that makes you lose control.

"A pity about his wife," she said.

"What do you mean? Leonie I know quite well. We have worked together."

"Then you know what I mean. She shares our feelings that it is-or soon will be-time to be friends. But married to an influential man like Rykermann… And she a Resistance hero in her own right as important as he-if not as great as you… "

"No," said Markham. "We all served as we might. I was fortunate to have wealth and connection, and the valiant spirit of my mother to inspire me. I got into space, where many born planetside had no such opportunity. You are flattering, but I cannot rank myself ahead of those whose part it was to fight here in such difficulty and danger."

"I have the honor to know, humbly and afar, of your mother's greatness," she told him. "Humanity's greatest heroine in this war, whose name, with your own, will never be forgotten. But you speak of danger? You, whose name even Chuut-Riit took cognizance of? But it would be good if she could be detached from him somehow. Good for her, I mean. She is a great and good woman."

To interfere between man and wife is unscrupulous, surely?"

"Unscrupulous? Did we not all learn to dispense with scruples? What had Nietzsche to say of scruples?"

You know Nietzsche? He kept my spirit aflame for Men during the darkest days!"

"Another bond between us!" Of course, the little facts that I have studied your profile in every detail, or that you called your so-called flagship Nietzsche are not relevant to the spontaneous nature of this happy coincidence, she thought.

"Nietzsche knew scruples-all scruples-as weakness, as unworthy of the Overman," she went on. "And you, I know, have no weakness." That may help fix the ratcat-loving bitch's wagon. Detached from Nils Rykermann, Leonie could be picked off. The details of how would present themselves in due course. Kzin-lovers might, with a little discreet prodding, shed their ideas on one another, each find justification with the other, each push the other into a more extreme position. Give him the ego gratification she knew he needed desperately, and Markham could be made into an instrument as pliable as it was useful. She had been moving toward him as she spoke. Now she sank on her knees and kissed him, projecting humility, adoration, worship. The band of kzin-leather about her neck she had chosen for associations with a dog or kzinrett collar. Her perfume had the smallest hint of kzinrett-derived pheromones. There was a carefully chosen hint of kzinrett too, in the watered-silk pattern of her skin-tight trousers (there were costumes available with hints of tails, but that, she had decided, would have been definitely overegging the pudding). Even for a mother-fixated man she did not think her breasts needed enhancement, but she made sure her posture, as she had previously made sure her costume, presented the best view of them. The circles of non-toxic luminous paint round her nipples did no harm as she dimmed the lights. "Hero," she whispered, feeling him respond.

Colonel Cumpston, Raargh thought, should be told what he was doing. For him to return and find both Raargh and Vaemar gone without notice would certainly cause him to alert the human authorities prematurely, and perhaps drastically diminish Raargh's freedom of action.

He called him on the car's Internet but was unable to reach him. The car's IT facilities were fairly basic, lacking access to a translator, and he was not sure if a human mailbox would store his voice message understandably. To back it up he typed a message with Vaemar's and the spellcheck's help in the odd human script.

I GO WITH VAEMAR. SEEK RYKERMANN ADVICE.

RYKERMANN DOMINANT HUMAN. I KNOW. SAVE IN WAR. HELP VAEMAR.

He hoped that was clear. He added:

HAVE LUCKY HUNTING GOOD CHESS COMPANION