London Wild (35 page)

So it was that the clock display on the
newspaper slowly ticked its way toward eight o’clock. Then at a quarter after, the front doorbell rang.

He almost jumped off the couch at the noise. He rarely had unannounced visitors to the door
. He never had them after night had fallen, and it had been dark out for many hours. No one called on people after dark, no one except perhaps cats. Yes, a cat might call at night if they thought they might be able to trick the householder into opening the door.

There was a monitor in the hallway that he turned on when he got there. This showed him the image of
the person who had rung the doorbell. It was a young redheaded woman, maybe seventeen years of age, and she had a smile on her face as she looked up into the camera.

Well, she didn’t look like a cat, but he knew the cats had all sorts of clever disguises. He was safe so long as he kept the door closed. Hopefully if she
was human she would get away before the cats found her. If she was found mauled to death on his doorstep in the morning he would have a lot more explaining to do than he felt he could face right now.

‘Can I help you?’
he said to the stranger. He kept his voice cold and unwelcoming. He wasn’t going to open the door to her, and he wanted her to leave as soon as he could convince her to go.

‘Are you Mister George Lomax?’
she asked simply, her head tilted gently to one side in a way that only served to unnerve George more.

‘Yes,’
he said, his voice still cold. The fact that she had used his name surprised him a little, though that wouldn’t have been hard for her to find out. ‘Can I help you?’

‘Would you open the door so we can talk face to face?’
she asked and gave him a cute smile.

‘I don’t think so,’ he replied
, ignoring the smile. ‘I don’t know you well enough.’ Even had it been light out, he would have thought twice about opening the door. Just because the cats were known to hunt at night didn’t mean that would stop them from trying to take advantage of a situation during the day. Cats hunted at night because their night sight was better than that of humans and they could stalk their prey more easily at night.

‘Fair enough,’ she said
. Her face suggested she understood. ‘I represent HIDD, Humans In Defense of the Domesticated.’

‘Oh yes,’ said George
. His voice was still cold, and he sounded non-committal. He remained wary that the figure on the other side of his front door could easily be a wild cat. She couldn’t get in without his opening the door for her, though; the door was laser proof, and the lock was computer controlled and couldn’t be picked. ‘So what can I help you with?’

‘Well,’ she said
, ‘the group I represent is trying to build up support among the many pet owners in the area to march on the government and force them to return our pets to us. Our records show that you own a pet by the name of Kitty, and we were wondering if you would be willing to help us.’

Well, that sounded legitimate enough
. There were always people protesting against this and that, especially against the government. It was like spaceports: everyone wanted to use them, but no one wanted to have one at the end of their street. ‘What would I have to do?’

‘Nothing you don’t want to,’ she said
, smiling. It was a very fake smile. ‘A donation. I could even take it now if you were willing to open the door. Or you could march with us on the day, or you could just sign our petition. It’s the names we deliver that we hope will be the biggest blow. Maybe you could help out in two or even all three areas; that would be great.’

That was the second attempt to get him to open the door. George was feeling very suspicious about the woman. ‘Well, I support your stand, but I’m not going to open the door to anyone I don’t know at this time of night. If you could give me an address where I could send a donation, and perhaps the date of the march and where it’s starting from
, then I’ll be there on the day.’ Actually, he couldn’t afford a donation. He had another mortgage payment to make soon, and with him not having a job it would have to come out of his savings. He had enough for just one more payment after this, assuming he didn’t have to pay for things like food and heating, which was also beginning to become an issue now that it was late autumn.

‘That’s fine,’ the girl on the step said. She smiled again into the camera
, and then she turned to walk away.

George watched her go, a little confused. Well
, he had wanted her to leave before she became someone’s dinner on his doorstep, but what had he said to make her go? He turned off the outside camera and returned to the couch, where before too long he was asleep again.

Day Four

Meetings

It is thought that something like 73 percent of the people
who play ‘The Game’ are below eighteen years of age. People from all walks of life seem to be aficionados, including at least one world leader and, though they don’t openly advertise the fact, several wild Herbaht.

Interrogation

The sound of the early morning alarm woke Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Norton from his nighttime slumber. It was time for him to get out of bed and get ready to face the day before him. As was normal
, he lay there for a few minutes as if hoping the new morning were only an illusion and that maybe he could go back to sleep for another hour or two.

Colonel Norton had pretty much reached his current rank more through the nepotism of his father than
through any actual ability of his own. Nevertheless, he was the man in charge at the Cattery,
and he had made it his business to learn every aspect of the goings-on there to the best of what ability he did have.

The gentle pitter-patter on the roof told him that sometime during the night
, it had started to rain and was continuing to do so. The sound of the rain was hypnotic, and it threatened to send him back to sleep. It would have succeeded were it not for the sound of the alarm that was still being emitted by the household computer.

After a few minutes of fighting the desire to go back to sleep, he threw back the bedclothes and got up. He stood there
, swaying slightly, his bare feet acclimatizing to the cold floor before he headed into the shower room.

He would take around an hour or so, showering, eating, getting dressed and so on, preparing himself for the rigors of the day before him. As he did so his mind was always working
, thinking about the things he had to do that day or even about how well the men under his command had coped this last week. In the last few days especially there had been a lot of pressure on them. Cats had been piled into cells thirty or more deep. Cats had been arriving quicker than they could be destroyed, and it didn’t help that they had now run out of the drug used to destroy the creatures. He had to admit, the men had handled the extra workload admirably, considering the pressure they were suddenly under. There had been complaints, of course (there always were), but nothing that had put much of a strain between him and the men. He was proud of the way they had acted, considering the circumstances.

The only man who really seemed unhappy was Major Musgrove
, and he always seemed unhappy. It was understandable; the Major would probably have been the man in charge of the Cattery by now had not Colonel Norton’s father intervened and gotten him the promotion that had made him what he was.

He checked himself in the full-length mirror to make sure he was smart enough to be seen in front of the men. He needed to realign his tie
, but he was pretty happy with the rest of his appearance. His batman, Collins, had done a good job in getting out the oil stain that he had somehow picked up two days ago. There was a truck arriving every day for the disposal of the dead cats, and he had probably brushed past one of the arms of the lifting mechanism on one of them sometime or other. He couldn’t remember doing so, but the oil patch had just suddenly appeared on his uniform, and now it was gone.

He opened the door to the world beyond his small apartment and breathed in deeply
. The smell of fresh air was mixed a little with the smell of the cats in their prison blocks. There were so many cats being held prisoner that you really didn’t need a super sensitive sense of smell to notice it, and it stank. The cats weren’t washed, and they were never exercised.

He breathed in a few more times and then ventured out into the rain, not moving any faster because it was raining than if it hadn’t been raining
. He wasn’t about to surrender his dignity for the sake of a little rain.

There were five apartment houses in the
Cattery, and they had been placed as far away from the actual prison blocks as they could while still being inside the stockade. There was a line of barrack houses, a canteen, and a small car park used for official army vehicles between the two. But the Cattery was only so large, and most of it was dedicated to the twenty long, thin prison blocks. The apartments could only be just so far away. Besides, if they were too far away, he’d just have that much further to walk each morning.

Major Musgrove
stood waiting just inside the prison block that the Colonel was heading towards, positioned so that he was just out of the rain but could still see a good part of the compound. He saluted as the Colonel entered and stepped back to give him room to do so.

Colonel Norton returned the salute. He was dripping a little on the floor of this building, but he refused to notice.

Every one of the twenty prison blocks in the Cattery had a room at the end for the guards, usually a group of three, to spend their on-duty hours when they weren’t keeping a watch on their inmates. It was in one of these rooms that the Colonel was now standing. It was a nice-looking room. The guards seemed to like to pick a theme for their room, and they competed with each other to give their room that illusion. It was harmless enough, so Major Musgrove had allowed them to carry on. As a result, some of the decorations could be quite outrageous. This was the prison block where the wild cats were kept and, as an intended irony, it had been decorated as hunting lodge.

‘Ok, I’m here. Now, what’s all this about?’ The Colonel looked sternly at Major Musgrove
, trying to make him nervous. Three times yesterday the Major had called him to ask for his presence with something urgent. Three times the Colonel had replied that he was too busy and that Major Musgrove should be quite capable of sorting it out himself. In the end he had agreed to come over this morning, if only to stop the Major from calling him.

‘Sir, we have a prisoner whom we felt you should be present while we question him
,’ the Major replied in his best parade ground voice.

‘You conduct many interrogations a day, Major
,’ the Colonel said, unimpressed. ‘Why do you need me at this one?’

‘Well, sir,’ Major Musgrove said
, ‘to begin with, this one walked in through the front gate. He also used your name on some forged orders. Some might think that that would be enough to catch your attention. However, even if that wasn’t enough, the name of the prisoner is Myajes Conjah.’

The Colonel nodded slowly
, a little surprised, but refusing to show it and give the Major any leverage. ‘I’ve heard that name somewhere before. What about him; who is he?’

‘He’s one of the
Matriarch’s Bodyguards, sir. He was sixth on the most wanted list at the time of his capture. The point is that they wouldn’t send someone like him in here alone unless they had a very good reason. We think he came here to rescue one of the other inmates. We aren’t sure exactly how he planned to do that, but when he arrived he asked to see one of the inmates.’

‘I see,’
the Colonel commented. He looked around the room; with the Major were the three other Guardsmen who were normally stationed in this building. They seemed to be purposely ignoring the conversation between the two officers. ‘Do you have any idea who he wanted?’

‘He led us to a cell that currently contains eleven female inmates. Two of them are wild, the other nine domesticated. One of the wild ones was the cat that was caught off that shuttle the other night. We asked him if it was she, before he realized he had been uncovered
, and he told us it wasn’t. Of the nine domesticated cats, we can only find records and documentation concerning eight of them. That leaves two that he might have been after, Amba and Roberta. Considering how important Myajes is to them, though, speculation is that whichever one he was after might even be the Matriarch herself.’

‘We mustn’t assume that is so,’
the Colonel replied, ‘but it is good reasoning. I doubt the Matriarch would get herself into such a predicament, but you never know. It is clear that she is someone important to them, though.’

‘Doctor Kade and Technician Williams are already in the interrogation room. If you will follow me, Colonel,’ Major Musgrove requested. Then
, without waiting to check that the Colonel was following, the Major stepped through the door into the part of the prison block that housed the cells.