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been overlooked. It would not have had a high priority by then.”
    “You mean it might have been attacked by human beings working for the kzin?” Stan sounded aghast at the thought. Today more or less the entire human population claimed to have been in the Resistance at one level or another. Known collaborators, at least the prominent ones, were either dead or hunted outlaws. Officially there was a general amnesty and reconciliation, but a number of people had commited suicide in some very strange ways, sometimes stabbing themselves in the back on dark nights, or shooting themselves in the head several times. Stan, who had been a genuine member of the Resistance, although not at any high level, had congratulated (on prime time television) the corpses who had recognized the error of their ways and atoned for their treachery to humanity with such remarkable dedication and persistence. Sniffing out collaborators and naming them was good television. Unlike kzin, most human beings enjoy feeling virtuous.
    “It is not something I can rule out,” Vaemar told him politely. Although he felt more comfortable with humans than many kzin did, he did not enjoy television interviews. However, some kzin was going to have to do it, and anybody else might make an even worse mess of it than he would. Besides, actually answering the questions, and doing so truthfully, seemed to cause the interviewers such consternation and surprise that it had its entertaining side. Perhaps the custom would spread to human ‘politicians.’ There were some kzin on Wunderland who would lose no opportunity in their considerable repertoire of psychological tricks to discomfort humans. Vaemar, who genuinely desired peace between the two species and got on well with his human friends, was not like that, but even he found it impossible to pass up the temptation to tweak the monkeys’ tails at times.
    “Thank you, Lord Vaemar, I’m very grateful for the kzin perspective.” Stan had finished. He had cut the bit where Vaemar had explained that he wasn’t a Lord exactly, and that as far as kzin were concerned, they weren’t so extensively equipped with herd genes as human beings, so there would always be in any group of kzin at least as many opinions as there were kzinti. Sometimes more than twice as many.
    The screen blanked out and Stan turned back to the Senator who was projecting a slightly bored indifference. Over the years von Höhenheim had worked as hard on his mannerisms as Stan had on his.
    “Comments, Senator?”
    “I don’t see anything much there. You would expect the kzin to try to shift the blame onto humans. Oh, he was subtle, I’ll give Vaemar that. He didn’t offer it as his first guess, it was his third, but he left the inference there for your viewers.”
    “Crap, Senator. I had to drag it out of him. And if he’d wanted to exonerate the kzin, why did he tell the kids to publish and be damned?”
    “Because he knew it would get out sooner or later. Better to try to establish that he was in favor of it being made public than that he had tried to suppress it.” The senator looked smug.
    “Then why were you trying to suppress it? Not the video, that’s out there, but the examination to see what did down the Valiant ?”
    The senator sighed. “Nothing of the kind. I have said that we need to know the truth and we will find it. I give you my word on that. I think, though, that this is ancient history. The government is always anxious to pursue the truth. But what difference could it make these days? The old bad days of private revenge are over anyway, even if, to take the most implausible case, human deviants were involved. And I simply cannot believe that many human beings would have aided the enemy in this fashion. Oh, some did, no doubt, some malcontents, traitors. And any who still live must surely be ashamed of themselves.” Von Höhenheim put on his stateman’s face.
    “The utter shame and disgrace of collaborating is now