London Wild (34 page)

Another delay, thought Jhosatl to himself. Well
, at least Sult was willing to help, but what good would that do if all this delaying cost him his wife? There was nothing else he could do, though, except hope and pray.

‘If the Elite Guard can spot a cat in disguise at three hundred paces,’ Judith asked suddenly, ‘then why didn’t they
take Joseph with them when they took Amba? Come to think of it, why didn’t they recognize him last night in the pub?’

‘Well,’ Sult relaxed back into the chair again, ‘as I said
, only one in a thousand actually gets through the training, and identifying cats in disguise is what trips most up and…’

‘They were wearing the uniforms of trainees,’ Jhosatl suggested
.

‘Exactly,’ Sult replied calmly.

‘And the Elite Guard, mate. Can they be bought?’ Jhosatl licked his lips at the thought.

‘You can buy some of them, especially if you know them and are asking a favor
,’ Sult commented without a moment’s thought. ‘It’s unlikely any of them would react well if they were approached by a cat wanting to release all the inmates, even if they were offered all the wealth of the nation. But a friend, asking for the release of a friend as a favor, backed up with a little cash for his trouble…well, that’s slightly different.’

‘One is all I want,’ Jhosatl agreed, ‘but you can’t promise even that.’

‘I promise nothing,’ Sult stated, ‘but we can hope. I’d like to see Amba back with us well too. Admittedly, though, if everything goes according to plan and we do get Amba back from the Cattery, then we’ll probably have to go into hiding.’

‘Do you think we should contact Colin? Let him know what we’re doing and ask for his help?’ Judith asked suddenly.

Sult looked at her for a moment as if collecting his thoughts. ‘Let’s just say that Joseph is lucky to find two friends amongst humanity. Let’s not try to push that luck too far.’

‘In other words
, mate…no.’ Jhosatl said.

‘Exactly,’ Sult added. ‘I don’t think anything bad of Colin
; he’s a good man. But let’s not risk what we don’t need to risk. It only takes one loose tongue to scupper us.’ He rose from his chair, seemingly making it more of an effort than it should have been. ‘Now unless there is anything else we need to talk about first, can I offer either of you a drink?’

Callers

Since the early evening of two nights previous, George Lomax had spent nearly all his time watching the headlines on the newspaper as they were gradually updated. Even now he was stretched out on the couch in his sitting room, his feet resting on a cushion at the far end. He had the lights dimmed and gentle
, relaxing music playing through the hidden speakers in the ceiling.

He checked
the list every other minute in case he had missed something. The more news he read the more certain he was that a war was on the way, a war between the cats and the humans. He found it hard to believe anyone couldn’t see it coming, especially the cats themselves. They were probably making all sorts of preparations for it, short of striking first. Why the government would want to force this war he couldn’t say; perhaps the man in charge was finally fed up with the cats’ eating habits. Perhaps a better question might be why hadn’t war broken out long ago between the two races?

However, it wasn’t for news of war that George watched the newspapers. He was looking for something about his pet Kitty
, expecting to see that she had been caught or perhaps had died in a gun battle trying to defend herself. Not that he could see her using a gun even if her life did depend on it. He waited, both expecting to see it and hoping he wouldn’t, yet also knowing he wouldn’t because the capture or killing of a domesticated cat was hardly the stuff news was made of. Nevertheless, he was there nearly every minute, breaking only to eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. He was like a man obsessed.

Sleep? Well
, if you could call it that. He had had less than two hours last night and less than that the night before, the night Kitty had left. He felt guilty over the whole thing, and that was as much the problem as anything. Two nights ago when he had told Kitty she should leave, he had panicked. Had he waited until yesterday or even today before letting her go, she might have been better prepared for the world. As it was, he had sent her off with no more than her pet rags, a hooded coat and some pills. Anyone she met would have recognized her instantly because of her stripes, and that would be it for her.

There was always the possibility that somehow, somewhere
, she was still alive, but George didn’t think so. ‘
Remember to call every day,
’ he had told her, and she was the type of girl who would have done just that if she had been able to. After two days, however, he hadn’t heard a word from her. All he could assume was that she was either dead or in the Cattery. Dead was more likely; had she been taken to the Cattery, they would have questioned her and then come to get him for letting her free in the first place. No, she had to be dead.

Just the prospect of her being dead was worse than when his wife
had died. Maybe it was because he’d had no power over the situation when his wife had died, while he had instigated his pet’s death.

It was true that there were patrols of soldiers
, Elite Guardsmen, out collecting pets already. This was apparently to ease the pressure expected at the Cattery on the last day of the grace period, when all those who had kept hold of their pets until the last possible hour would hand them all in at once. According to the news reports he had read, the soldiers were expecting five to ten times the influx of the first day, and that was despite the patrols. A spokesman for the Elite Guard had even claimed that they just didn’t have the facilities for all of them on the last day and that they were trying to get the grace period extended to ease the pressure. But the Government wasn’t buying it; they had set the deadline, and they expected it to be met.

George had considered several times that if they were overcrowded now and they were still receiving more prisoners daily, then they must be easing the pressure somehow. If the original news statement had been true
, then people should already be getting their pets back with a clean bill of health and a document stating the pet had been checked. So far he had heard of none. Not that he had too many friends who had owned pet cats, but those few he did and who had already handed their pets in had heard nothing back yet.

He had seen none of the patrols around his way,
and if they had called on him he might have had some difficulty describing what had happened to his pet. The fact was, though, that they could call at any time. The Elite Guard didn’t fear the night; they knew how to handle cats, and the hunters avoided them because of it. Had they called when Kitty was here, he would have had no choice but to let her go with them, so perhaps he had done the right thing by letting her go already. But they hadn’t called, they hadn’t come looking for her, and there was a good chance they wouldn’t. He could have given her an extra seven days of life by keeping her until the end. No wonder he couldn’t sleep. No wonder his head throbbed in pain and all he could do was sit in the virtual darkness with nothing more than soothing music and the newspaper on.

Assassination attempt on the Greater Matriarch fails.
There had been a time that a headline like that would have caught his imagination. The Greater Matriarch
lived in America, in Florida, in a fragile peace with the human population. Who would want to assassinate her and maybe upset that peace? Was the would-be assassin caught in the attempt, or did he or she escape? How many were there? Had the Greater Matriarch
or her husband made a statement to any of the networks about the incident? There were more questions to be answered, yet all he could think about as he read the headline was that it had nothing to do with Kitty.

A little further down the list of headlines, ignoring titles like ‘
Carson achieves new world record for mile,’
‘
Cats break into Army Armory,’
and
‘Iteck to send team to remains of Pluto for investigation,’
George found something else that would’ve caught his attention on any day but this. ‘
Samuel F Goldberg and crew still on the moon!
’ This was the eighth exploration ship to return to Earth since they had been launched, and people had a lot of experience with what to expect. Each crew member became a celebrity in their own right. They would appear on chat shows and write their memoirs and the like. They would tell people of their experiences on the strange world they had visited, the arguments, the jokes, the geographic anomalies, and so on. Although they had a habit of fading from the public eye after two or three years, once the novelty had worn off, never before had a crew effectively vanished from the public eye before being in it. Then there was the moon. Every other crew had landed back where they had launched from. None of them had ever landed on the moon before. It could simply be a new directive, but it was strange, to say the least. Again, though, he paid it no heed. He knew Kitty wasn’t on the moon, nor had she been part of Samuel F Goldberg’s crew, and that was really all he cared about today.

George didn’t know when he had fallen asleep or how long he had been asleep when the soothing music was replaced by the computer inquiring
, ‘I have an incoming call for you. Would you like to receive it?’

His first thought as he sat up was that Kitty had finally decided to call
. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘put it through.’

‘Please confirm,’ the computer asked in its usual monotone voice.

‘Confirmed, confirmed, put it through!’ George almost yelled at it. For days he had been hoping to hear from his pet cat, fearing she was dead, and when she did call the computer tried to delay him with its petty requests.

The face that appeared on the monitor attached to the wall next to the drinks bar was not that of Kitty
, though, and his heart sank when he saw it. It wasn’t that he had anything against his brother, whose face it was, just that he had been so hopeful that it was Kitty. Stanley Lomax was a construction and maintenance engineer posted on the moon. Moonbase had been built nearly nine hundred years earlier, and it had the sort of layout that looked as if bits had been added as they had gone along. It needed a lot of work just to keep the structure from falling in on itself. Mars base was much different; they had planned the layout of it before they’d even started building, and though it too needed maintenance work occasionally, the base layout made a lot more sense.

‘Hello
, Stanley,’ George said. He tried to suppress a yawn and failed.

‘Hi,’ his brother replied, ‘are you there? I don’t see you in my monitor. Why’s it so dark there?’

‘Hold on a second.’ George got off the couch and walked round to face the monitor so his brother could see him on his side of the link. ‘That’s better.’

‘Yeah, I can see you now. Why the darkness?’

‘I was just taking a nap on the couch,’ George explained. ‘Afraid you woke me up. Can’t be helped, though; what’s the call for?’

‘I thought you’d like to hear the news. I’ve been promoted to head of my team. I’m also getting a transfer to the base on Mars, but I think we can talk more about this tomorrow. Maureen and I are on our way, if you can put us up for a day
or two. We’ll give you all of our news then. Calling from the Moon is very expensive. Besides, everything up here is suddenly so par—’ Here there was interference on the line for a moment. ‘…into the same small area. I don’t know when we’ll get a flight; it’s as if everyone on t—’ More interference. ‘…at the same time. How they intend to k—’ Again, interference hit and continued for a while until Stanley’s voice came through again, ‘…lo, are you there? George, can you hear me? Hello, George, can you…’

‘Yep, I’m here,
’ George interrupted. ‘You keep getting interference. Perhaps it’s best if you wait until you see me. I think I can put you up for a day or two; how long are you on leave?’

‘About a week, though my leave started yesterday. I’m supposed to take up my new post on Mars in six days
,’ Stanley told him. ‘We’ll be leaving as soon as we can get on a flight, but I also intend to call on an old friend before we join you. We’ll probably be there just after dark tomorrow.’

‘Ok,’ George affirmed, ‘but try and make it before dark
; it’s not safe to wander around the streets at night.’

‘If we can get away quickly enough,’ Stanley replied, ‘I’ll do what I can.’

‘Good, I look forward to seeing you. Will you have all your stuff, or are you having it transferred directly to your new quarters on Mars? You’ll probably want to get back a little early so you can sort your quarters out. If you need any help, I’m available for the foreseeable future.’

‘Yes,’ Stan commented, ‘I heard about your job, but we can talk about that tomorrow. Tell that cute little moggy of yours that we miss her and we’ll see you both tomorrow.’

‘Moggy? Oh yes,’ said George hesitantly. ‘I, er…yes, okay, I’ll see you tomorrow. Have a great trip.’

He sighed as he returned to his position on the couch. How was he going to explain to Stanley what he had done with Kitty? He still found it an effort to explain it to himself
, and though Kitty wasn’t Stan’s pet, Stan was nevertheless very fond of her. Well, he had been very fond of both her and Jojo. It might be because his employers hadn’t allowed Stanley or Maureen to have any pets of their own.