Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIV

The camera facing the senator showed a green light, and he looked into its lens rather than at his interrogator. “Well, Stan, you know that I am only the chairman, I don’t make these decisions all on my own.” The senator was genial.

Stan the Man smiled in the way that, his admirers had suggested, would make a kzin warrior nervous. He wore a casual shirt with his monogram, a small stylized eagle in black, over the pocket holding his phone. Cell phones had been back in the city for less than six months, so it was something of a status symbol.

“But I hear that your voice was the strongest in opposition to it. In fact, it was taken for granted that it would go through unopposed. It was only at the last moment that your supporters came out against it. And you got the casting vote. That was the first passage. And things aren’t very different now you have it back from the lower house.”

“You have to understand, Stan, that we cannot spend the taxpayers’ money just the way we would like. It is a matter of priorities. Of course we would all like to know exactly what happened, and someday we shall. But it is hardly urgent. The wreck has been there for many years, a few more will hardly make much difference.”

“But you funded the building of a new Arts Complex costing over ten million dollars. Many people could give you long lists of things they would say were needed more urgently. From orphanages to prostheses to pharmaceutical factories. Not many on Wunderland are interested in arts today. Poetry and painting were not really survival skills. Dancing a ballet for a hungry kzin would be like playing a lure for a hungry fish. Not to mention rebuilding our space navy instead of relying on Sol forces. And what about the very controversial plan to drain much of Grossgeister Swamp at a much bigger cost? Even if one accepts that both of these are worthwhile projects, which I don’t, they are hardly more urgent. The longer the wreck is underwater, the less information we shall be able to recover. I can hardly take it that that is what you want, Senator?”

“On the subject of the Arts Complex…” von Höhenheim began.

“Perhaps it would be better if we remained with the subject at hand at the moment, Senator. The question was, why do you want to delay getting any information about what downed the Valiant ?”

“I want nothing of the kind. After all, what mystery is there? We are certain to discover that a kzin warship crippled it somewhere in space, as happened to countless others,” said von Höhenheim.

“Not according to the kzin leader, Vaemar, who is in the process of getting a couple of doctoral degrees in mathematics and history, and who had a look at the kzin records.”

“A kzin!” The senator’s scorn was virtually palpable.

“A kzin, may I remind you, Senator, who has proved his loyalty to the ideal of kzin-human cooperation on more than one occasion. You will recall that it is only a few years since he saved an entire expedition into Grossgeister Swamp, and was instrumental in obtaining our first live specimens of Jotok. Before that, he helped thwart a plan by former collaborators to kidnap him and use him against humanity. ARM, which is not renowned for being over-trustful, has allowed him to accept a commission in the Reserve Officer Training Corps at Munchen University. He works with Nils and Leonie Rykermann, not only two of the most heroic leaders of the Resistance, but also two of the most respected leaders on Wunderland today. He is a friend of Dimity Carmody.”

“Quite a paragon of felinoid virtue, in fact!” The sneer would play well with a big part of the audience, the senator thought. “Perhaps you’d like to remind your audience of his family connections, also! And the humans his sire sent to the public hunts!”

Stan the Man’s body language projected confidence and relaxation. It was a tool of his trade that he he’d worked on for a long time, and modern fabrics dealt with the sweat. “Yes, it is true that Chuut-Riit was his sire. Personally, I don’t think that that should be held against him in this context. Quite the reverse, if anything: the values of the high kzin nobility may differ from ours in many ways, but their sense of honor is almost physically real. Unless there is a very strong reason for supposing otherwise, I think it likely that he is telling the truth.”

“High nobility…Assuming what you say is true, the kzin still fighting us in space-and many of those who have grudgingly accepted a peace with us here on Wunderland-regard him as a quisling.”

“Sometimes it takes courage to accept the name of quisling. Vaemar has mixed with humans-on equal terms-since he was a kit…But tell me, Senator, why are you so hostile to Vaemar-Riit?”

“Apart from the fact that the idea of quislings-of any species-disgusts me, I am hostile to all kzin-I suppose it is no longer politically correct to call them ratcats . It you want a reason, doesn’t my record in the Resistance speak for itself? Of my guerrilla group, only I and one other survived to see the Liberation. I am a lawmaker and a law-abiding citizen, but I don’t mind telling you and the people of Wunderland that I have some sympathy for the exterminationist position. Wipe them out while we still have a chance! Before they get the hyperdrive!” Careful, he thought, don’t go overboard here. “Or so many say.” He caught himself up quickly. “I’m not saying that is exactly how I feel, I appreciate the necessity for peace, but I do understand how the exterminationists feel.”

Stan fired back. “But if we attack the surrendered kzinti here, the war in space will have no chance of a settlement. Surely it would mean a fight to the finish, with one race or the other annihilated-and they might very well be the ones doing the annihilating. The Kzin Empire is big. We don’t even know its full size. There is no guarantee we would win, hyperdrive or not.”

“Exactly, Stan. That is why I have used my influence, when I can, to try to restrain the exterminationists as a movement. We must have peace with the kzin of this planet at least, but let it be a firm and watchful peace. Anyway,” he continued, “although I am opposed to this expedition, if I should be overridden by the lower house, I intend to accompany it personally. I will pay my own expenses, and will be able to ensure that there is no more wastage than necessary.”

“Don’t you have to be invited?” Stan asked quizzically.

“Professor Rykermann and his wife will no doubt be organizing it, and they are old colleagues of mine, both politically since Liberation, albeit on opposing sides, and before that in the Resistance, though we were in different groups. I shall have no trouble arranging it with them.”

Senator von Höhenheim was thinking he had diverted the interview satisfactorily, when Stan the Man returned to the attack like a barracuda.

“And now, we come back to Vaemar-Riit. I talked to him earlier today, and here is what he said.”

Stan the Man turned to a screen, which took up most of a wall, and still showed Vaemar at reduced size. The young kzin was standing in the garden of his palace, and Stan, seen from the back, held up a microphone.

“Lord Vaemar, I gather you have seen the video we showed last week of the wreck of the Valiant ?”

“Yes, I saw it nearly two weeks ago.” The kzin was a long way from the microphone, but his voice was unmistakably clear.

“How come you saw it before we broadcast it?” Stan appeared miffed.

“The two humans who took it came to see me and showed it to me.”

“Why did they show it to you?”

To those who knew how to tell, Vaemar looked slightly uncomfortable. “They wanted to know if I thought it should be made public out of fear that it might damage man-kzin relations.”