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

sick to know what's under my trousers? she thought. And then: Let me get all that boiling black stuff out of my head, anyway. Nils and I are lucky, compared to so many.

"I can never get used to it," he said. "I don't mean agoraphobia—I've had treatment for that—but still it all takes my breath away. Living on the surface like this . . .And"—he pointed to the horizon—"And those mountains—like needles."

"We've had to live in some odd places," said Leonie. "Sometimes during the war it seemed we were underground more often than on the surface. There were children born in the caves who knew stalactites better than stars or mountains."

"Your children?"

"None of my own. Others had their own lives and priorities, but for us, then, it seemed children were not exactly a good idea," Leonie said. "Pregnancy would have kept me out of action for a long time, with medical care the state it was in, and . . . what sort of a world would it have been to bring a child into? Of course, it was fortunate not everyone on Wunderland had the same policy—the population was dropping fast as it was.

"I was going to broach the subject with Nils after the war. I'd been important enough to have geriatric drugs throughout and I still had an apparently young body, as he did. I would have run out of natural ova sooner or later, but that didn't worry me—stimulating stem cells to produce new ova is an elementary procedure. Then, you know, I lost the lot."

"That shouldn't be a problem," Patrick said. "I know that on Earth creating ova from other tissue isn't unusual. I think it's been done since the twenty-first century, at least."

"I don't think I could do that. We've been very cautious about biotech for humans here. Quite a deep cultural inhibition. The first colonists got a bit carried away and there were some—unfortunate incidents. We're lucky the only inheritance was mobile ears for some of us, which are harmless and sometimes useful even if it does encourage snobbery. But I haven't told you all the details of what I am. Perhaps I'm a bit mixed up. In my emotions as well as"—a bitter laugh—"literally. The lower body I have now is ovulating all right . . . whoever she was, she was young. But you'll understand I don't exactly consider it a problem solved . . ."

There was an awkward silence.

"Look at that!" Patrick pointed excitedly again. A smile returned to Leonie's eyes as she watched the Crashlander's excitement. Much remained park-like—woodlands, glades, small streams. Herds of gagrumphers and other creatures could be seen. There was also a scattering of human farms and hamlets. Fruit trees, and even a few vineyards for small bottlings of wine grown in the old natural way. Leonie had flown over this landscape many times, but she could still appreciate its loveliness. Humans had become human in a landscape not too unlike this. For both of them there was some touch of Eden about it.

"I can't get over it!" said Patrick. Then: "Where are the caves?"

"Underneath us. Underneath all this country. You can trace them on the deep radar."

"I'd rather just watch all this," His face was alight with wonderment. "I feel so lucky to have seen it! When this is all over I want to walk through this country. I don't think I'd get agoraphobia again, the treatments were good. I'd love to live under a sky for a while!"

"We'll be down in it shortly," Leonie said. "I hope it comes up to expectations."

Chapter 8

The tunnel was roofed over, but the grey light of the sky penetrated. There was a room at the end of the tunnel, entered through what looked like a spaceship's airlock. Power cables snaked about. There were familiar computer-screens and consoles, mostly kzin-sized and of more-or-less kzin military pattern, as well as instruments and machinery whose function neither Vaemar nor Dimity could guess at. Vaemar and Dimity were deposited there, weaponless but unharmed. As Chorth-Captain covered them with a beam rifle, the Protector removed their garments, searching them thoroughly and ripping Dimity's apart in the process—Vaemar beneath his coverall wore much less, mainly straps and pouches. It ran police tape over their hands and feet. This was specially made to restrain kzinti from using their claws, and far stronger than was necessary to immobilize a human. Then the Protector surveyed them.

So far, things had moved too fast for Vaemar or Dimity to see the Protector properly. Guthlac had surmised that it would be close to the original Pak form. For all its immense strength it was smaller than Dimity and barely half the height of either kzin, with a protruding muzzle hardened into a horny beak, a bulging, lobed, melon-like cranium, with large bulging eyes, and exaggerated ears and nostrils, part of its Morlock heritage, in a parody of a human face even more bizarre than the face of a Pak or human Protector, joints like huge balls of bone and muscle rolling below a skin like leather armor. Chorth-Captain stood beside it.

"Traitor!" Vaemar snarled at the other kzin. "You hand your own kind to alien monsters! I challenge you—to the death and the generations!"

"Traitor? Handing our kind to alien monsters? Who speaks?" Chorth-Captain replied in the Mocking Tense. "Do I speak to Vaemar, sometimes called Riit, chief kollabrratorr on Ka'ashi? Holder of a commission in the Human Reserve Officer Training Corps? Who would join our kind with the vermin of the Universe? Yes, kollabrratorr, I call you, kollabrratorr and kwizzliing, perversions that only the vermin had words for till they infected our tongue! As for your challenge, it is nothing. The mere jabbering of a Kz'eerkt-chrowler." Kz'eerkt meant "ape," "monkey" or "human." "Chrowl" depending on who used it and when, was an either intimate or obscene term among kzinti for sexual intercourse. In normal kzin society such as had existed pre-Liberation, a death-duel would inevitably have followed such an insult. Dimity