Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

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Vaemar had rooms at the University, but he also had another residence, a considerable distance from most human habitation: a few buildings on the wooded lower slopes of the Valkyrieheim Hills, smaller sisters of the Jotun Mountains, northeast of the Hohe Kalkstein. It was not far from the country where he had grown up with Raargh in the years immediately after the Liberation, the country which he still to some extent regarded as his home territory.

During the occupation the largest of these buildings had been a small palace for a kzin noble with, like almost all kzinti, a consuming love of hunting. Post-war, as was frequently the case on Wunderland, the original human owners of the land were no longer around. Normally the estate would have been redistributed back to other humans, but ARM and others had quietly decided that Vaemar-Riit, potential leader of what were coming to be more widely called the "Wunderkzin," should be housed in some dignity.

Unlike many surviving kzin buildings, the high outer walls were intact. What had once been an eight-fold hedgehog of concentric defenses was much reduced, though not eliminated. Vaemar the postgraduate student did not deign to notice openly the possibility of assassination from either human exterminationists or from kzinti who regarded him as what they called—another new term for the Heroes' Tongue—a kwizzliing, but Vaemar-Riit the leader of the Wunderkzin was obliged to take certain precautions.

There was a small community on the estate. His Step-Sire Raargh and both their respective families lived there, as well as occupants of the old servant's quarters, guard and guest-rooms. Raargh had his own buildings and enjoyed a reasonable-sized harem of traditional kzinrretti now, but Vaemar remained monogamous.

This was partly by reason of policy. A first mate several years older then he, as Karan was, would have been by no means unusual previously. To stop so long at one would have been very unusual, when he had almost every kzinrret on the planet for the taking. But Vaemar understood and accepted the arguments put to him by Cumpston and others that the old ways could not continue. He had put them to other kzinti and fought more than one death-duel over them: smaller households and harems with females for every male kzin—"families"—would help ensure a more stable Wunderkzin society than the old way of vast harems for the nobles and little or nothing for the rest.

Further, and more important than policy, Karan had let him know in no uncertain terms that other females in his harem would have to be approved by her. So far none had been. He had, of course, a number of kits by various other females but they generally mixed with Raargh's. None save Orlando, his first, and so far only, son by Karan, had been born with the Riit blazon of red on the chest. He accepted fairly philosophically the fact that having a sapient mate brought some restrictions along with advantages.

There was good hunting territory nearby, with tigripards as well as gagrumphers and other large beasts. Here he was much less the graduate student, and much more the kzin prince, though a modern, Wunderkzin prince.

Vaemar landed in his inner courtyard, acknowledged the greetings of his servants (servants, not slaves, and the greetings less than a full prostration in these times), including the hired human Nurse in heavy, Teflon-reinforced apron and gloves, and fended off a mock attack from an excited Orlando. His banner was broken out from a high turret with a blast of horns and roll of drums.

Raargh made his report on the doings of the estates and, as Vaemar had forecast, made pointed comments about the Morlock bites. Vaemar remembered that the human he had studied with much interest called C. Northcote Parkinson had said the motto of retired senior sergeants was: "There are no excuses for anything!" That, he thought, as the grizzled old veteran gave him a quick grooming lick, summed Raargh up well. Big John, the kzin medical orderly whom Gale had cared for, stumped out. His head, face, hands, feet and spine were largely a complex of metal and regrown tissue, but his new ears were smiling. Raargh and Vaemar—Vaemar-Riit!—had called him "Hero," and at Arthur Guthlac's request Vaemar had taken him in. Raargh's now-numerous kittens, and Orlando too, looked upon his extravagant scars and prostheses with respect. His burden of cowardice had been taken from him. He had a mate of his own, for that matter, and a couple of kittens as well, all of which would have been quite beyond his dreams had he lived out his life, even unmutilated, in the old order of things.

Vaemar made a prostration before the worship shrine holding a ceremonial jar, liberated from the quarters of the late Jocelyn van der Straat, which still contained at least a few molecules of the urine of his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, and a few fragments of bone and hair identified by DNA testing as those of Elder Brother who had died protecting him as a kitten. He killed a yearling bull from the holding pens and ate quickly. Groom plied his blowdryer and talcum powder. Then Vaemar carried the recording brick to his laboratory, and called Arthur Guthlac's headquarters again.

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A large hologram of Wunderland stood on the center of Guthlac's control console, a duplicate on Vaemar's. Circular marks on it, like old sores on a body, marked the sites of nuclear explosions. Some were fairly recent, from the Liberation or the intra-Kzin civil war that had so aided the human reconquest, some dated back to the original kzin landings. The oldest sites were quite faded now: the kzinti had blasted any human resistance that became too prolonged, but they had used fairly clean bombs. They were ecologists in their way, and anyway had not wished to destroy the infrastructure of the planet. But the monitors that built up the picture of Wunderland's radioactivity were sensitive. A myriad of lines crossed the northern hemisphere. A far