Man-Kzin Wars XIV by Larry Niven Page A

who want it, and they can make our lives a misery. So every so often, the intelligent must take control, however little they like the idea. And now is one of those times, I suspect. If the abbot thinks so, he is likely right. He has a lovely, simple mind, does Boniface. In a better world, he’d have been a mathematician. He has that hunger for the transcendent which is the mark of the best scientists and mathematicians.”
    “Will I ever be able to go back to it, do you think?”
    “Given that we can stop getting old in these times, I am sure you will, one day. As long as you stay playful, Vaemar. All the best work is play. And you may find enough in politics to stop you getting stodgy.
    “The times constrain us, Vaemar, my love. How you put your mind to work is not a matter of personal preference. No man is an island, nor a kzin either. Mathematicians are ultimately the most practical of people; once you see things clearly there are no choices.”
    Vaemar considered. He recalled that she had once pulled his tail playfully. Very few other beings could have done that and lived. But she saw everything with a terrible clarity and she saw his mind. She saw him as a mind; the outer form was not important to Dimity, just something to be played with. What Dimity said was right. There were no choices.
    “Thank you, Dimity. You have opened doors for me into strange and wonderful worlds. And now the abbot has opened another, and I must pass through. But I will not forget the other worlds. Nor the joy of exploring them.”
    “Come and see me when the need arises, Vaemar. When the squalor of engaging with mental and moral pygmies becomes too much to bear; when the pain of not being able to say what you think becomes intolerable, for fear of its effect on fools, I shall be here for you.”

    “Where does it all come from?”
    “There’s this little village, out in the boondocks. East of the range. Started off just after the kzin surrender, lots of people realized they’d starve to death without a government to organize bringing stuff into the city, and we hanged or shot most of the collabos. So some smart folk went out to do some farming and keep themselves in food. And some were already out there. Seems to have worked, there’s a whole collection of villages out there now, and the land around gets farmed and hunted.”
    “But gold? And other stones?”
    The trader shrugged. “There’s other stuff besides farming land. There’s a whole lot of country out there, some people just upped and grabbed their share of it. Like the Wild West in some of those old movies. Someone found the gold. There’s big seams of the stuff in quartz sometimes. And there are things pushed up from the deeps by volcanoes, plenty of those around. The abbey’s built on one.”
    “And this comes from the other side of the abbey?”
    “So they tell me.”
    “Don’t you want to go off and get yourself some of that there gold?” The man was hungry. You could see it in his eyes.
    “Nope. There’s other things out there besides gold. Like kzin hunters, who went out too, wanting to stay away from the conquerors, and with a mighty big grudge against humans, some of them. And other things, some of them as murderous as a kzin. The tigrepards and the lesslocks are bad enough, and the Morlocks, when they come out onto the surface at night, are worse. Me, I’m a city boy. Don’t fancy getting ate.”
    “Still, if a bunch of guys, say a dozen of us with guns, was to go and find this place, we could get us our hands on some of the gold, maybe?”
    “Maybe. And then again, maybe not. One of they kzin could take out a dozen men with his bare claws ’n’ fangs afore they could work out where to point the guns. Believe me, I’ve seen it. Thirty of us jumped a kzin during the war. I got away.”
    “Can’t be much kind of law out there, yet,” the man argued. The trader could read him like a picture book, one with really dirty pictures. Yes, and a dozen