Below him the night water roiled when great beasts fought and tore. The froggolinas resumed their strange song.
Dawn was a noisy business in this part of the swamp. They breakfasted, and compared the lists of life-forms noted and recorded. It was agreed to approach the University to establish a permanent observation post here.
They made a quick biological survey of the island identifying and recording signatures electronically, and replotted its position on the chart. Then they pressed on. The current in the channel was flowing strongly here and they were content for a while to drift with it. The rings worn by each member of the party allowed them to fire any of the party’s weapons. Two armed lookouts were posted at all times and, as a further precaution against unwelcome visitors climbing aboard, they rigged a temporary bulwark around the center section.
They came upon another island dwelling, but when they landed at the small pier they found it was empty. It was not marked on their charts, but nor were many such. It had plainly been a human habitation, and Anne pointed out that a family seemed to have lived there: there were children’s clothes and toys. But the vegetable and small animal life that had established itself in the house indicated it had been empty for some time. Re-embarking, Vaemar noticed a small boat moored on the other side of the pier. The unsinkable materials of its hull kept it afloat, but it was full of water. There had been rainstorms some weeks before, and the variety of life swarming and splashing in the hull showed it had been water-logged for a long time. It had a sophisticated and, on present-day Wunderland, still expensive, neuronetic lattice for a brain, but that was still in place.
“I don’t like that,” said Hugo. “Whoever left here should have taken the boat with them.”
“Perhaps they had another,” said Toby.
Swirl-Stripes took out two heavy kzin ex-military beam rifles, University property which, strictly speaking, were not allowed to private kzinti on Wunderland. He slung one and passed the other to Vaemar.
“We’ll use the motor now,” said Vaemar. “I think we ought to have steerage way.” Many of the channels were wider here and silence was less important for observation than it had been when they were slipping between narrow banks. In any case, the deserted dwelling was not entirely reassuring and steerage-way, they tacitly agreed, could be a useful thing to have.
GPS satellites provided them with a moving map that had at least reasonable accuracy, though they soon learnt to treat it with caution. A translucent panel and a camera below the water-line in the bow showed an endless parade of living things. Cruising on minimum power they had some groundings on soft mud, but these were no more than a nuisance. There were things like horseshoe crabs and things like giant centipedes, mud-colored things and things whose bright colors shouted poison. The life they stirred up getting the canoe off reminded the students that the mud-banks were a whole new ecosystem waiting to be explored.
After about three more hours they came to the fish-processing business Marshy had spoken of. The buildings—high, strong-walled and windowless in the lower part—and the boat tied up there were kzin-sized, not human. There were a multi-purpose radar dish, fences, and a security watch-tower. Kzinti living away from human supervision were allowed only light and basic hunting weapons, but the place had a secure look about it. There was a sign-board giving the name of the business in both kzin and almost correct human scripts—still a slightly odd sight on Wunderland, but much less so than it would have been ten years previously. There was also a large air-car, disarmed but plainly ex-military, parked on a landing-pad. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes called a greeting in the Heroes’ Tongue as they approached. There was no answer.
“This,” said Hugo, “is getting monotonous.”
Vaemar steered the canoe away from the island and into a sheltered creek out of sight of it. They erected bulwarks and metal mesh-screens covering the benches and steering position. They rechecked and cocked their weapons, and approached the island again. Motion detectors and infrared sensors keyed to pick up the body-heat of large life-forms told them nothing in the jumble of land and water and what was virtually a broth of small quick lives. Scanning and filming, they cautiously circumnavigated the island, and a couple of surrounding ones. Apart from the absence of the kzinti, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There were a couple of big crocodilians working the channels, but even if they were a threat to adult kzinti, the electronic and physical defenses of the place should have kept them out with ease—it was what they were designed for. There were a cloud of flying creatures round the fish-drying sheds and the smell from these was almost overpowering.
Weapons ready, they landed. Movement near the water. The snout of an automatic gun—illegal for outdwelling kzinti—was tracking them. In the instant it took Vaemar to identify it he knew that, had it been set to fire, they would have been already dead. On examination it had no ammunition. Fences carried lethal electric current but the gate was open. The main door was not merely unlocked but part open as well. Vaemar’s fur bristled. This was an unheard-of thing among kzinti, save when a great one wished to show either his overwhelming security or to be extravagantly hospitable.
The racks of drying fish, some glowing brightly in decay, had attracted a multitude of small creatures apart from those circling and fighting in the air. The operating log of the processing machinery which converted the fish into highly flavored bricks much enjoyed by some kzinti, both by themselves and as a relish to ice creams and other foods, showed it had not been in use for several days.
“I estimate this operation was run by about five kzintosh,” said Vaemar, when they assembled in the main building. “In addition there were kzinrretti and kittens.”
That would not have been the case before Liberation. High kzin nobles had extensive harems. Kzin kittens were usually born as male and female twins and the daughters were a valuable commodity for their fathers, negotiable instruments and presents to both superiors and clients. A mid-ranking officer of partial Name might have a clawful of females, including some from the harems of any rivals he might have quarrelled with successfully. The military hierarchy had its own system of allocations. What one human student had called “honored upper lower middle-class” kzinti—NCOs of partial name, for example—might be allotted a single female each. Naturally these tended to be both less attractive and less fertile than those the nobles kept for themselves. But since the Liberation things had become very different—so many high kzin nobles, officers, and indeed kzin males in general, were dead that there were enough kzinrretti for even kzinti in trade, like these fishermen. The human government had encouraged this change in customs for several reasons, partly on the theory that females and offspring of their own would tend to give more kzintosh a vested interest in stability. Anyway, the small factory and the attached dwellings were empty.
“We stay together and search,” said Vaemar. As Marshy had told him that some of the swamp folk were inclined to blame the human disappearances on the kzinti, it had occurred to him that humans, Exterminationists or vigilantes, might very well be responsible for the disappearance of the kzinti. But humans could not fight kzinti without weapons, and there was no obvious sign that weapons had been used here—no sign of blast damage or burning from beams or plasma-guns. No lingering molecules of poison gas were detected, though their safety equipment included a highly sensitive analyzer. The empty gun was a puzzle. Had it been put there by the kzinti as a bluff, or had it in fact fired off its charges in battle?
Within the main building there was a computer, a standard kzinti Naval model with an interface to human hardware, but it was dead. In fact, upon examination it seemed to have been deliberately wrecked by someone who knew what they were doing. Otherwise there was nothing like gross damage or blast craters to suggest a violent attack. Here and there in walls and in the windows of some outbuildings were small round holes, but they did not look like the effect of any modern weapon. He took the computer’s memory-bricks. They also found a telephone, but no relevan
t calls were logged on it. There was a kind of odd, unhealthy peace about the place. He even wondered if the whole group had simply abandoned the enterprise and moved somewhere else. But why had they left their possessions, including the costly car?
Swirl-Stripes called him. There, in a small puddle, were the bones of a very young kitten. Proof of violence and killing at last. But with no other information. The bones had been covered with small carrion-eating animals which had entirely destroyed the soft tissue and had made considerable headway in destroying the bones themselves. He put them, with a sample of the muddy ground they lay on, in a collecting-box for police attention when they returned to Munchen. Only a small box was needed. The humans seemed saddened by the fact the kitten had still been clutching a toy prey in its hand—both Rosalind and Hugo had remarked on it.
Here and there amid the marks of various swamp-creatures there were a few old kzin tracks discernible to a trained hunter but no other recognizable tracks or footprints to give a clue what had happened. Toby suggested flying the air-car to Munchen at once, but there was no key for it, and kzin cars were generally left in such a state as to very definitely not be vulnerable to theft or tampering.
“There appears to be ssome dangerrous enemy,” said Vaemar. His kzin accent was a little stronger now. “Swirl-sstripes and I know our duty is to hunt down this killerr of kzinti and kittens. But as Marshy hass reminded me, I am in charge of the human lives here as well. Do the humans wish to rreturn to summon help?”
“I cannot speak for the others,” said Hugo, “but I do not think I should care to have it said of me that I refused to follow where a Hero led because I was afraid.” The other humans made a nodding gesture of agreement.
“This killer of kzinti might be human,” said Vaemar.
“That is another reason we should be there,” said Hugo.
“Or send a message?”
“Let us wait and see what message we have to send.”
Rosalind appeared poised to say something, but looked at the grim, set faces of the others and evidently decided that any comment would be redundant.
“Let us move!” said Swirl-Stripes. “Every moment we stand speaking our prey may be escaping us.”
They headed deeper into the swamp. They saw no more dwellings. There were countless wild creatures, large and small, but none that presented an obvious threat to them in their strong-hulled boat, armed and alert. They saw no kzinti or humans.
The swamp changed. Channels grew wider and deeper, but the life about them grew less abundant. They were approaching the dead heart of Grossgeister. When the kzinti had concentrated the heat-induction ray on it, most of the vegetation had been too wet to burn quickly, but the waters had boiled, including the liquid that made up a good part of the internal volumes of the typical Wunderland swamp-plants. Tides and currents since then had washed away most of the masses of dead animal and vegetable organic matter, and some life-forms had begun to recolonize the area.
With the channels generally wider here, the water was clear and empty down to a pale sandy bottom, though processions of large fish could now at times be seen swimming in from other areas. The stands of vegetation on the islands were mostly dead and crumbling. Among the grey of the dead plants on the islands some new red shoots were now beginning to appear. Crocodilians and other large animal life-forms which had scrambled or somehow flung themselves ashore in an attempt to avoid the boiling water were skeletons lining the island banks. There were human skeletons among them, too. It had, after all, been humans the kzinti had been after. Once they saw sunlight gleaming on metal among the bones: a pair of dolphin hands. Apart from the sound of the waters this part of the swamp was still very silent. The flying things stayed where there was more food.
They picked an island with relatively few bones and dead vegetation for their camp that night, where a sparse fringe of reeds was beginning to grow back in the clear shallows, and had their electronic defenses set up well before Alpha Centauri A began to sink. The boat was too stupid to defend itself but they hoped that would not be necessary. It was agreed one kzin and one human would be on watch at all times. Vaemar telephoned Marshy, the abbot and the University giving the basic details of the disappearances and saying that they required no assistance as yet. The long war had made the humans of Wunderland, as well as the kzinti, a fiercely independent and self-reliant culture. They would get no help unless they asked for it. Vaemar tried to open the bricks he had taken, using the boat’s computer, but they made no sense and appeared to have been deliberately scrambled.
As the night deepened, so did the sadness of the scene: apart from a few swimmers there were almost none of the spectacular bioluminescent displays of the outer marches. Instead of the swamp growing noisier as it took up the business of the night, it grew even quieter.
“It feels as if Zeitungers were around,” said Anne. Zeitungers were shuffling, gluttonous vermin related to Advokats, carrion-eaters who outdid Advokats by possessing a limited psi ability to broadcast mental depression and nausea. Humans and kzinti alike hated them even worse than they did Advokats or the fluffy white, blue-eyed, poisoned-fanged Beam’s Beasts. They were, however, not known as swamp creatures.
“I don’t think they are necessary here,” said Vaemar. “This scenery is sad.”
“You feel it too?”
“Of course.” Then he added: “You were sorry when we found the dead kitten.”
“Of course. We all were.”
“I thought so. Our kinds are still killing one another in space, you know, and on other planets.”
“But not here.”
“So it seems. I hope you are right…You do not hate kzinti?”
“The abbot says we should be grateful to you for a number of things. He said it was thanks to you that we rediscovered the whole moral universe that we had been in danger of forgetting—courage, sacrifice, faith…And you know I do not hate you, Vaemar.”
“Fear us, then?”
“Why do you ask? Are you trying to understand us?”
“Yes. I think I make some progress.”
“Should I help you understand humans? I think of a human politician I once heard of: ‘He worked tirelessly to promote greater understanding between nations that understood one another only too well already.’”
“That seems to me a very human thought…And you can think a little like one of my kind…But I am your fellow-student accepted into the university. I am also your superior officer in the ROTC. Further, I am younger than you. Is it not seemly to instruct the young?”
She might laugh, but she did not smile at him. Not smiling at kzinti, not showing the teeth in the kzin challenge for battle, was still, ten years after Liberation, a conditioned reflex for humans.
“I was ten years old at Liberation. By then my family farmed in the high country northeast of the Hohe Kalkstein. We seldom saw kzinti. I, for myself, as a child, did not really understand hate. Kzinti were above and beyond my hate. But fear, yes, and yes. A lucky human family was one with but a few dead to mourn. My family were unusually lucky, I know now, or rather my grandfather was foresighted to get us away. Near the towns, even in Gerning, things were very different. We paid our taxes, and the local Herrenmann had the task of representing us to the kzinti. We had strong rules for survival by then. I knew no different life.
“One thing I remember. Kzin words were starting to creep into our language from the slaves’ patois. Once, my parents caught me using some new kzin word, or a word derived from the Heroes’ Tongue. My mother wanted to punish me, but my father said: ‘No, she must learn it. That is the future.’ That day I ran away. I was in the forest for a day and a night until a search party found me. My father’s words were echoing in my mind. ‘That is the future.’”
“There are plenty of human words invading the kzin tongues on Wunderland now,” Vaemar said.
“Our little farm was not much,” Anne went on. “There were few of our old possessions left—a few pieces of china and cryst
al from old Neue Dresden, a few old paper books. Things like that. An old woman taught us children in a one-roomed school, and her work was increasing, for there was no way to repair our computers. Our robots had begun to fail and some of the farms near us were ploughing again with animals. Our culture was little enough, but I knew fear then, for somehow I was old enough to understand what my father meant. To see it all going, soon all gone. All, all, all…”
“I see,” said Vaemar. “Like the Jotok. Like most conquered races…I would have said like all conquered races, if I had not begun studying Earth history, and…if I had not certain thoughts…”
“I know little of the Jotok but the name. A name that was an omen of fear for some among us, as I discovered later when I began higher studies. An indication of what we would become. Once your allies?”
“Once our…employers. How could a culture like ours have developed a science of spaceflight? When we reached the stars we found we were the only culture of warrior carnivores that leapt and hunted there. We did find a few other sapient carnivores, some of which had got up to knives and spears, and they gave us good sport on their own planets. We found alien spacefaring races, but they were scientific and civilized and cooperative, and when we met them and enslaved them as the Fanged God had decreed they could hardly put up the ghost of a fight…All but the last one, of course…