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

was a great fighter as well, as befits one of Riit blood. You are . . . a super-genius. Even if we had not fought as allies in the caves against the Mad Ones, that would be a bond between us. We genii must stick together. Yours is a deeper mind than mine. It is hard work for me to read your papers—even those I am allowed to. Dimly I grasp the implications of Carmody's Transform, which you discovered so young! Do not worry, if I were allowed to see your hyperdrive work I doubt that I could steal it, Dimity friend, even if I were so inclined. But perhaps my talents spread wider."

"Vaemar scatter-brain! Everything from astrophysicist to warrior to song-writer! Mine are so narrow!"

Vaemar shifted uneasily. His tail lashed again. If a sinuous felinoid like a nine-foot tower of claws, fangs and muscle could look awkward, Vaemar did so. He licked his lips once or twice. "I . . . care about you, Dimity. We are alike."

"You have been good to me. I do not know what I would have done without you."

"You said song-writer? The university review, you mean?"

"Yes!"

They sang together, laughing:

"Frightened monkeys yell, when our fangs

gleam bright!

"What fun it is to yowl and scream a slaying

song tonight!

"We are the monkey boys and girls, going

for a spin!

"If pussy gives us trouble, we will take off

pussy's skin!"

"I thought it was important to get the students laughing at that one," Vaemar said. "Our 'Cat in the Hat' really laid them in the aisles, too, didn't it? I'm afraid Orlando and Tabitha got hold of the hat, though. There wasn't enough left of it to keep when those two had finished."

He paused, again washing his black lips with his great tongue, and then continued, looking down into Dimity's eyes: "Honored Step-Sire Raargh also taught me never to be ashamed of using my Ziirgah sense, or to hide it as though fearing someone would come and make me into a Telepath. I know some humans fairly well, I think, and I read emotions. And in you I read desperation. . . . How do you see the future, Dimity?"

"It could be full of hope. We are still digesting the implications of what the hyperdrive means. Planets for all? And one day, after the eventual peace in Space, the kzin worlds will get it too."

"You think so? So do I. It is among a number of reasons why I have felt no inclination to try and steal it. Such action would be counter-productive."

"Of course," she said. "They may have it already. At least one hyperdrive ship went missing when the Armada swept in. It may have been captured. But anyway knowledge leaks, and some humans would be prepared to spy for the Patriarchy, and kzinti students-of-particles are clever."

"The war will go on, you think? A hyperdrive war?"

"It may or it may not," she said. "There is nothing I can do about it. I try to school myself not to brood upon things I cannot change. But there is another thing which is less dramatic but whose implications may be at least as important—humans now have the technology of kzin gravity-control. That will give us new planets, too. In the early days of human exploration of Sol system, terraforming even the nearer planets had low priority because the asteroids had lighter gravity. A little slow work done on Mars. Nothing on Venus, though Earth in theory at least had the biology to start transforming its atmosphere cheaply since the twentieth or twenty-first century. Such things will matter much less now. And there need be less competition for territory.

"We can have the stars, humans and kzinti, too. If we can live together here, Vaemar-Riit, then we can share a universe in peace. It may take several centuries, of course. It may never happen. There is a chance, more than a chance, even if we can achieve a peace now, of more wars before it really happens. I have heard rumors that peace negotiations drag on, but so does the war in space."

"Those are my thoughts also," said Vaemar. "Stars and planets for all, one day. And a pair of species that nothing can challenge. Soon I must begin teaching Orlando to share this purpose. Today I found something important: he has the patience to solve puzzles. Many kittens do not. But, Dimity, how do you see your future?"

"You have been good to me Vaemar," Dimity said again. "You don't hate me?"

"Hate you? Why should I?"

"One great reason. I made building the hyperdrive possible. In time to win the war for humans. I could be seen as the greatest enemy the kzin species has ever had."

"I could answer that several ways," said Vaemar. "When you translated and applied the manual for the hyperdrive I understand you did not even know of the war. And whether that was so or not, you did what you did for your kind. Any kzin who could have done the same would have done so. It would be irrational to hate you for that.

"Further, I think now that we needed to lose a war. As a race, we were becoming more than foolish with victory. We were becoming permanently intoxicated with it. We were so used to swallowing up feeble, peaceful races that we took for granted that was the only way things could be in the Universe. But the God was more subtle and more generous than we had come to assume. Our ancestors had prayed for enemies worth the fighting. They were given to us just before our own arrogance and savagery ate us up.

"There are other things. We were lucky, I think, to have met humans when we did and not just gone on expanding unopposed until we ran into something worse. We had missed, or deprived ourselves of, a great deal. I have read Honored Sire's meditations and have come to see how