London Wild (23 page)

‘Where are we meeting?’ Charles sighed, ‘
And when?’

‘Six in the morning ought to be early enough to keep down the number of civilians that do join you. And I thought some
sort of monument would be a good meeting place. In the end I think the best known landmark is the old houses of Parliament museum. It’ll be busy, but we’ll seal off the roads to the public. Even those wanting to join you will have to walk a bit to reach the assembly point.

Charles stood quietly
, sighing. He didn’t see that there was a lot he could do. If he resigned, the army would be damaged by the setup, but no one would ever forgive him. He wished he could go home and ask his pets for advice, but they were probably at the Cattery by now, assuming they were even still alive. 

Charles saluted again and turned to leave the office
. The gung ho type civilian was more likely to be a danger to his force than an asset, and they wouldn’t have any training. Well, some of them might be ex-servicemen as the Colonel had suggested. He supposed the Colonel sort of had a point; the type of hero he was supposed to be might well try to offer that status to other civilians. He just wished he didn’t feel a sense of impending doom.

‘See you in three days,’
the Colonel shouted after him.

The
Wild Life

It was nearly ten in the morning before Kitty began to wake up. As was normal for someone waking in a strange place for the first time, she was feeling more than a little disoriented. This wasn’t her bed; this wasn’t a bed at all! Where was she? She sat up and found she had spent the night on someone’s couch. What was she doing here? She yawned as the memory of yesterday’s car chase through the streets of London and the strange cat who had saved her from a possible fate worse than death came back to her. One of those evil cats who preyed on humankind had rescued her. She remembered the body she had been carrying over her back, and she shuddered uncontrollably.

She moved to a more comfortable position
; every muscle in her body seemed to ache as she did so. She glanced at the clock display on the holoviewa. It was a little blurred, since she had just woken up, but after a moment the numbers came into focus. Ten o’clock wasn’t really all that late. She’d lain in for longer occasionally when she had been under George’s roof. Not often, but it did happen.

She moved stiffly. Her head had been resting on one of her own shoulders all night
, and her neck felt stiff because of it. A minute or two at the right angle, though, she hoped, and she’d be fine again.

She rubbed her eyes to clear the cobwebs and breathed in deeply
, trying to get a feel for where she was. She was glad to be safe after the adventures of last night, but she wasn’t looking forward to the life that was presenting itself to her. Here she was in a strange house, with a strange cat, and a strange lifestyle and no Master. She shuddered again. For now, at least, there seemed to be no going back, but one day maybe she would see her Master again, one day.

She looked about her surroundings
, wondering where February had gotten to. Was she still in bed? February didn’t strike her as the type of cat who would lie in in the mornings, not when there were things to be done.

Kitty started to feel the need to visit the bathroom. She didn’t want to start opening doors randomly, searching for
it, as there might be things February didn’t want her to see. She couldn’t think what, but this was February’s house and Kitty felt the need to respect the queen’s privacy. The main reason, though she refused to admit it to herself, was that she didn’t want to stumble upon the larder by accident. There was at least one dead body in there, the one she had carried last night. And she really didn’t want to come face to face with it. Besides, who knew how February might’ve prepared the corpse? The sight of a complete corpse she could perhaps handle, but one that had been cut up, ready for eating! The mere thought made Kitty want to retch.

She reached into the pocket of her pet rags and felt the reassuring shape of the pill bottle. Well, she ought to have one, and now while February wasn’t around to see she had them might be the best time. Not that she thought February might take them away. She really had no idea how the queen might react to seeing them. There had always been antipathy between domesticated and wild cats
, though, and to her the pills were definitely a symbol that Kitty had been domesticated.

She popped open the bottle and dropped one of the pills out into her other hand. She then snapped the bottle shut. She looked at it for a moment
, both calculating what she had left and regretting the need to take one, hence lowering the number remaining. Then she returned the bottle to the pocket in her rags with an almost inaudible sigh.

‘Do you have many of those things?’
The voice was that of February, her last word clearly suggesting disgust. She had chosen the moment that Kitty closed the bottle to enter the room. She was dressed, but she was wearing clothes designed for moving about the house. She had applied a little makeup to her face to hide the darker of her stripes, but that was all. Her eyes shone yellow without her contact lenses, and her tail was protruding from a hole in some specially altered leggings.

Kitty looked round
, shocked, as if she’d been caught with her hand in the biscuits tin. She tried to think of an excuse, but all that came out of her mouth was, ‘er.’

February stood there quietly
, waiting for an answer and ignoring the apparent panic on Kitty’s face. She didn’t look stern or angry as Kitty had expected, simply inquisitive. She had sounded disgusted at mentioning them, but then Kitty was disgusted by February eating human meat. On the other hand, she understood it. Perhaps February would understand the need Kitty had for the pills.

‘About a month’s worth,’ she said finally.

February nodded. She sounded unhappy about Kitty taking the pills, yet her words suggested otherwise. ‘That’s good; you’ll have a month before you have to start getting used to the taste of herd meat.’ She crossed the room to her computer and turned it on. It buzzed gently and started going through its standard self-diagnostic checks as it booted up.

‘I could never eat human!’ Kitty exclaimed worriedly. She fingered the pill nervously
, as if wondering if it was all right to take it.

‘I know,’ February replied simply. She watched her computer run through its machinations, turning her head back to Kitty when she saw it wasn’t done yet. ‘At the moment you’re still domesticated. You’ve lived with humans. The idea of feeding off them must seem an anathema to you. But…’

‘Anawhata?’ asked Kitty.

‘Anathema,’ February said
. She sighed. Kitty seemed to be quite intelligent, but she probably hadn’t even had a simple education. ‘Er, it would be against your very nature.’

Kitty nodded. ‘You’re right; I couldn’t bring myself to eat anything that had been human.’

February tried to re-find her train of thought, and after a short pause she continued, ‘The pills help to reinforce this. They make you docile. I don’t mean docile in that you spend most of the day sleeping, but docile in that the thought of attacking anyone, especially humans, is…’

‘Anathema,’ Kitty agreed, trying out the word.

‘I’ve heard the pills can also affect your mind so that the mere thought of eating the meat of a human makes you nauseous. Although I have to admit that personally, I think they’re just scary stories put out by those who don’t really know. After all, if you’ve lived with and loved humans all your life, that too would make hurting them, let alone eating them, against your very nature.’

‘Might be true,’ Kitty replied calmly. 
‘The mere thought of eating human meat does make me nausous at times. Though as you say, it might just be because I’ve spent all my life among humans.’

‘Well, anyway, when the pills run out, when all that is left to eat is herd, then you will come round to eating herd meat. You will or you will die.’

‘Die?’ Kitty seemed very shocked.

‘You
r instinct for survival will cut in before that happens, though, I assure you.’ February seemed confident in her statement, but Kitty was sure she was just making assumptions.

‘I’m not sure I like being assured of that,’ Kitty replied bluntly. She decided to put the pill in her mouth and swallow it.

February shrugged and sat down on the stool at the computer.  ‘First thing is to find you a bed. I hope they’ll deliver today, but I think it’s unlikely. You may have to spend the next night or two on the couch.’

‘You don’t mind paying out for me for a bed?’ Kitty asked. She massaged her neck where it still hurt. It seemed a lot for someone she had known less than a whole day to do.

‘The computer firm pays me well enough, and I don’t want you spending the rest of your life on the couch. It’s for sitting on, not sleeping on.’

‘It’s comfortable enough,’ Kitty commented.  It was true
that she had missed the cot back at her master’s house, but this seemed far too much for her new friend to spend out on. She massaged her neck some more. In truth, she’d love to have a bed to sleep on, but she didn’t want to be a hassle.

‘Maybe,’ February replied, ‘but it’s not designed for it. You might wear it out before its time,
and these things don’t last long enough as it is. The herd have this irritating habit of building obsolescence into everything they make, forcing people to buy more than they should really need.’

February started tap
ping a light pen against the screen of her computer. Before long it put her in contact with a bed store. ‘Want to come and pick a bed?’

‘Well,’ Kitty replied, ‘I can’t really admit to knowing what would be a good buy. I was a human’s pet
, remember? You don’t get many opportunities to make choices. I’ll be happy with whatever you choose.’ Actually, she had made a number of decisions every day when she had been with her master, but none of them had involved the spending of money and it was that aspect that made her hesitate to put herself forward now.

February nodded and sighed. She made some more movements with her pen and seemed to be reading things off the screen and speaking at the same time. ‘I wonder why your master had you leave. If he
was fed up with you, it’d have been normal and easy to place you in the care of the Cattery. Not release you on the streets where you might turn wild, with just enough pills to last you a month.’

‘It was something he saw on the newspaper, something about some new government policy. He assumed the government was lying and let me go. He seemed to think that I had
a better chance on the streets than in the hands of the authorities.’

‘Doesn’t trust the government?’ February repeated
, almost to herself. ‘He sounds like a good judge of character. Not usual that you get herd like that.’

‘Actually they’re quite common,’ Kitty told her
. ‘If you watch some of the holomovies, it seems that suspicion of the government’s motives is very high at the moment.’

February seemed only a little surprised at her comment. ‘The newspaper
, you say… Maybe I should take a look after I’ve gotten you a bed. See what it’s all about.’

Kitty smiled. ‘Is there somewhere I can shower? I’ve been wearing these clothes since before I left my master
. I’ve even slept in these clothes, and I have to admit, I’m feeling a little icky.’

February grinned
. ‘Of course; go out this door, second door on the right. You’ll find a lavatory in there too, if you need it.’

Kitty seemed more than a little relieved
; she was feeling in desperate need of the lavatory but really hadn’t known how to ask about that. She got up and hurried out of the room, leaving February with the screen and her pen.

She emerged from the bathroom nearly a full forty-five minutes later
. She was wearing only a towel wrapped around her and another wrapped about her hair. She found February in the kitchen preparing breakfast.

‘The best I could do was a week,’ February said as she entered
. ‘Every bed supplier I could find has to order any bed from their wholesaler. And even then, it’s not guaranteed that they can get it to us inside a week. Anyway, I’ve ordered one, but I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with that couch until it arrives.’ She looked at the towels Kitty was wearing and added, ‘You don’t want to put those rags back on. I’ll get you some of my clothes to wear for now and we can go out and buy you a wardrobe of your own a little later. Then we can burn those rags and remove the evidence that you were ever a pet.’

Kitty nodded slowly
; she seemed to be thinking. She was carrying the jar of pills and a small piece of paper that she had forgotten about until she had stripped for her shower. ‘A week is fine. You’re already doing a lot more than I ever expected anyone would for me. Especially after all I’d heard about how wild cats, er, sorry, wild Herbaht treat those who have been domesticated. As for clothes, I will need some nice new ones, but I don’t want to be a pain.’

February smiled. ‘Don’t be silly. How would you like your eggs?’

‘Eggs? Er, as they come,’ Kitty replied, a little confused. Didn’t the wild ones only eat humans? And yet, that was bacon she could smell and hear. Kitty would have had to admit that she liked the taste of bacon.