"The human drugs are incomparably kinder than the sthondat drugs of the Patriarchy, but they are not perfect, nor do they armor us against all the ordinary neuroses of telepathy, which even human telepaths-such as they are-are subject to. We fight battles always against too much empathy, against losing ourselves in other minds-with the glands of hunting carnivores who can never enjoy the chase and kill of our prey as even an ordinary nontelepathic Wunderkzin of Arhus or the Hohe Kalkstein may. Have you seen what we eat? Either animals too mindless to know terror, or meat made to move artificially, or dead meat. The one time I tried to eat Zianya was terrible for me… Still, it is a small price to pay. But sometimes I have waves of fear."
"What do you do?"
"What can I do? I shield and carry on… Everyone I touch leaks a little. One human aboard this ship is keeping a secret of which I sense enough to guess the rest without probing. I will say no more of that. I do not think it has a vital bearing on the success of this mission, and we have vows not to divulge any such secrets we may stumble on save in direst emergency. Better for me to keep my shield strong… "At least, my friend, I know that you do not dislike me. Nor Gay. I have not tried to probe the minds of any aboard here, but all give forth a general… coloration, an aura. Hers is one mind whose aura I enjoy. I do not mind if you and Gay call me by my first Name alone."
Richard said, "Gay dislikes very little that lives. She found me when I was broken and unlovable, and rebuilt me… You are a telepath on a human world. You must know the darknesses in which humans can live."
"Yes. And once or twice in my work I have found myself screaming and leaping as a result. Angry enough to use my claws and fangs as well as the Telepath's Weapon. Some human poetry is dangerous for the likes of me to read, you know. Chuut-Riit set 'The Ballad of the White Horse' as a text for the human-students of his day:
"While there is one tall shrine to shake Or one live man to rend;
For the wrath of the gods behind the gods Who are weary to make an end.
"There lives one moment for a man When the door at his shoulder shakes, When the taut rope parts under the pull, And the barest branch is beautiful One moment, while it breaks.
"So rides my soul upon the sea That drinks the howling ships, Though in black jest it bows and nods Under the moon with silver rods, I know it is roaring at the gods, Waiting the last eclipse…
" 'Think on, of those who write so,' he said. But there is other:
"The world is so full of a number of things, I am sure we should all be as happy as kings.
"I think, if I may say so to you, that Gay thinks like that latter. But I know the darknesses in which kzin can live, too. I know it well. Charrgh-Captain…"
To a knowledgeable observer, his body language said more than his words.
"Does he distress you so much?"
"Yes. Like many kzintosh of his generation, he has no religious faith. Why believe in the Fanged God who gave kzinti the Universe and domination of all life when humans keep winning the wars? But that does not modify his loathing of me. On the contrary, it increases it. When you have lost anything to worship, it is a comfort to find something to despise. Thank the God I am good at shielding. I work at it."
And how do you feel about the Fanged God, Peter?" It was one of those questions spacers on watch could ask one another.
"We high Wunderkzin are not low Kdaptists. Some of us believe Fanged God and Bearded God have their own kingdoms. Others have conceptions more subtle: that the Fanged God is the heroic aspect of the Bearded God, who being omnipotent has no need for heroism."
"In Christianity the Incarnation is meant to solve that problem: God had to know by experience everything human, including courage and even despair: 'My God! my God! Why have You forsaken me?' "
"We never despair. In any case, I do not necessarily speak for myself. And there are other things. For the relatively few of us on Wunderland there are many sects. Be assured we do not dress in human skins for our services or make chalices and candlesticks of human bones, as the low Kdaptists do. But Charrgh-Captain believes in nothing beyond the material. Or so he thinks. Yet he also thinks his values are those of the old Kzin culture. Like so many adult kzintosh of the Patriarchy today, there is great confusion in him. Once there was a haunting fear, never, never admitted, that the fabled Free Jotok Fleet would return with vengeance. More lately humans have been seen by a few as avatars of the Free Jotok-who probably do not exist. My own fears are different, perhaps a little more human: to have some great task, some great test, and fail-that fear comes to me sometimes at a late hour. Fear of being proven to be a Nothing, a creature of neither world. Charrgh-Captain would never think of failure. He would conquer or die."
"Is he dangerous, do you think?"
Peter Robinson extended one set of black-tipped claws whose curvature shone like steel, claws that could have torn a man apart with a single leisurely pass, and a tiger with a couple more. "He is a kzin." He paused and added: "As I am not."
"I don't know whether you say that as boast or complaint, my friend."
"I don't know either. But as I have paced the silent corridors of this ship, while I have enjoyed the silence, I have been glad my friends were sleeping near me. Is that foolish?"
"No."
"The founder of our line was raised by humans when he was a war-orphaned kitten, found blind and starving for his mother's milk. But when he was old enough he made a conscious choice. "And you gave us a chance to rise… more than we would have given you. Great-Grandsire was proud, proud, when he became the first Wunderland Kzin elected to an office by humans. The old fellow still talks about that day. When he made a speech to the Wunderland Assembly-'Let us grow together: not an imitation cat but a better human,' he said, thinking of Markham and what had happened to him, 'not an imitation human but a better cat'-and they applauded, he recorded the applause and laid down the recording in the new family shrine. He said we had found our own Honor."
"He knew about Markham? I only learned of that when I gained the security clearance for this work."
One of many secrets we had."
"The first of my family to set foot on Wunderland," said Richard, "was a staff officer with the Liberation forces. On one leave after the cease-fire he was hunting in Gerning and came across a cottage in the forest.
"It was occupied by an old lady, a proud, impoverished aristocrat, pure Nineteen Families blood, long since come down in the world, living alone with a couple of animals and with a little charity from the nearby farmers. Post-Liberation Wunderland had a lot of rather queer fish, of course. I suppose it still does…
"The place was dilapidated, and he did a few chores and repairs for her. She gave him tea in an ornate old service of genuine Neue Dresden china, apologizing for the lack of servants. Not unexpectedly, she came to talk of the 'Good Old Days,' and how much better things were then. She missed her lost boys. Arthur was always interested in history-he'd worked in a museum before the war-and he took notes. "It took him quite a long time-plus a reference by her to 'those nice big pussycats'-to realize that she was actually talking about the Occupation, and her 'boys' were a couple of kzin officers of the local garrison who for some reason had made a pet of her-if they were in the vicinity and wanted to sharpen their claws, they might do it by tearing a pile of wood into kindling for her. If they were hunting in the forest and had made a kill, they might throw her a haunch of meat as they passed. I suppose that meant non-monkey meat. She gave them bowls of cream. I doubt they realized how she thought of them… She was quite mad, of course. But that, coming on top of a couple of things that had happened to him on Wunderland earlier and later, influenced old Arthur's thinking. His story, "Three at a Table," has become a family legend. He'd been an Exterminationist, but he ended up patron of the first official mixed chess club."