London Wild (37 page)

Colonel Norton nodded slowly
. ‘Okay, I’ll want a doctor to go with him in order to administer a lethal injection and ensure Myajes is dead after this Doctor Foster has finished his little experiment.’

‘I’d be delighted…’ Doctor Kade started.

‘Not you, you’re too friendly with this Doctor. Send, hmm…’ He thought for a moment.

‘How about Doctor Benjamin, sir?’ The Major suggested.

‘Doctor Benjamin, an ideal choice,’ the Colonel responded. ‘See to it, would you, Major? And make sure the prisoner is properly guarded for his journey and for the time he’s up there.’ The Colonel turned back to the Doctor and said, ‘Your friend better have a good holding facility ready for him up there. If he gets out I shall hold both you and this Doctor Foster directly to blame.’

‘Yes sir,’ the Doctor saluted.

‘Major Musgrove, I want you to think carefully on every security measure that you can. Myajes is our prisoner, and he isn’t to be allowed even the smallest possibility of escape. You understand…’ the Colonel started.

‘Yes
, sir.’

‘…Look at this from every angle, and if anything seems wrong
, we don’t do it. Otherwise your colleague has my permission to use this cat as a guinea pig, Doctor.’

‘Thank you, sir
,’ the Doctor replied.

Reporting The War

It had been a long morning. Kitty had been practicing with various disguises over and over, mixing flesh tones, and comparing them to her previous efforts. There might be a time when she and February might be parted and she would have to fend for herself.

February had lain on the bed during the morning, watching Kitty mix and apply, giving her advice only when asked, whilst otherwise listening to the sound of the rain on the roof and the hissing it made as it hit the security shields on the windows.

She felt she had been very patient, supervising her domesticated friend
, especially when, after constant egging from Kitty, February had agreed to assist in the making of a mask. A mask was a better variant of disguise than just covering up stripes with makeup, but it was a lot more arduous to create, as it needed to be molded to the shape of the face as well as other parts of the body that Kitty might want to cover.

They would work on that this afternoon after February had had something to eat and Kitty had taken a bath and washed off all the makeup she had spent that morning applying. February had suggested a shower. It would’ve been quick and easy and would’ve allowed them to have lunch together. Kitty preferred a bath
, though; she could relax better in a bath. If making a mask was going to be as tough as February had warned her, then she needed to loosen her muscles up for the ordeal.

February descended the stairs and entered her living room. The house was a little too quiet down here for her liking, and the sound of rain on the roof by itself was a little unnerving. She felt she needed something to keep her company while she prepared lunch. She picked up the small remote device for the newspaper and was about to use it when she remembered that it had recently been switched to receive voice commands instead of commands from the remote. She returned the remote to the small table positioned to the side of the couch
from which she had gotten it.

‘Paper on!’ she said and left the room
, assuming her command would be carried out. It wasn’t until she was in the kitchen and had started to prepare herself something for lunch that she realized that the newspaper was still off.

‘On!’
she yelled at the newspaper. The newspaper sprang to life, as did the holoviewa, her computer, and the micro-powered kettle that had been sitting on the kitchen’s island. She flipped the kettle off manually and then yelled at both the computer and the holoviewa in turn, naming them and then ordering them off.

Shortly after
wards she returned to the living room with lunch in hand and made herself comfortable on the couch. She picked up the remote control from the small table again and said, ‘Switch to remote!’ in the direction of the newspaper. There was no perceptible change. The list of headlines on the screen appeared much as they had before. Even the cursor that currently highlighted the top headline looked no different, though it might have blinked one extra time as the newspaper switched its input.

One at a time she read the headlines, looking for something to occupy her whilst she had lunch, something other than the mindless pap that they tended to play on the
holoviewa channels during weekday lunchtimes.

The fifth headline was the first to catch her eye
: ‘
Assassination attempt on the Greater Matriarch foiled.’
  She moved the little floating cursor down until it highlighted the headline in question, moved it across to the verbatim column, and pressed the confirm button.

The screen with the headlines was replaced by a man facing towards the viewer. Behind him was what appeared to be
a normal city street with perhaps a few subtle differences from those that were found in London. Walking towards the reporter amidst a number of other denizens of the city was a male Herbaht in full display of his stripes. The humans in the crowd seemed to ignore him as if such an occurrence was commonplace. This must be Florida, which part of America to which the Greater Matriarch and her husband and a number of other Herbaht had gone in the hope of finding a peaceful coexistence with humanity. The striped figure seemed to notice the broadcast unit and turned to cross the road and avoid them. Not everything was different over there.

It was evident from the way the crowds seemed to be slowing down as they approached the screen that the broadcast
unit was in the way. More so because there were a fair number of people stopping to watch what was going on and hoping to be seen.

The speaker started, ‘This was the scene last night when the
Greater Matriarch and her husband were leaving a local restaurant after dinner when they were ambushed by someone that witnesses, also dining in the restaurant at the time, claim bore a striking resemblance to one of their own.’

February noticed that one of the nearby buildings was a restaurant and the camera was pointing more or less towards it.

‘Exactly what happened seems to be the source of some confusion. Some say he pulled out a laser pistol and it didn’t work, and that he then pulled out some sort of dagger. Others say he went straight for the dagger and attacked the pair. It is said the Patriarch
stepped between his wife and their would-be assailant. No one really seems too clear on the matter. Some witnesses claim that the assailant was moving faster than the eye could see and that somehow he stepped around the Patriarch and lunged at his intended victim. Witnesses here agree that the Matriarch seemed to do nothing; indeed, the assailant was moving so fast she probably couldn’t have defended herself had she tried. But then a strange twist happened. The assailant just collapsed dead mid-lunge. Those who arrived on the scene first and examined the body say that he had recently ingested some sort of drug and it had proved too much for his heart.’

‘The cats claim they have no idea who the assailant was, or why someone would want to assassinate the Greater Matriarch. Some people think that the
Lesser Matriarch
might’ve sent the assassin, but no one can think of what motive she might have for wanting her sister dead. The Greater Matriarch refuses to entertain such a notion.’

‘But it didn’t end there
.’ The voice took on a more sinister tone and continued, ‘The ambulance used to transport the body back to the morgue vanished. There was no trace of the ambulance or any of the medics involved. The hospital that they had claimed they had come from even refuted….’

February had heard enough. She angrily turned off what sounded very much like propaganda to her. Oh, of course a Herbaht had tried to murder the
Greater Matriarch; it couldn’t have been a herd, oh no, no way, never. After all, every Herbaht in the country would just jump at the chance to kill their leaders, she thought sarcastically to herself. It must look good to the herd. Those Herbaht are turning on themselves. How could they begin to imagine that they could get away with blaming it on the Herbaht? No doubt among the herd they would probably succeed. Had anything like it actually happened? Well, they didn’t even call on one Herbaht witness to back up their claim. The whole thing had to be a fabrication.

The reporter and his city street background were replaced with the list of headlines
, and February, still fuming as she tore the previous report apart in her head, continued to read down the list. Nothing jumped out at her until she got to the ninth item. ‘
Invasion of Sou’nd set for tomorrow.
’ The ninth item, as if they didn’t consider such a battle important enough for the top spot. She glanced at the top item on the list for comparison. ‘
David Knoult on Holiday in Vienna.’
Oh, yes, like that was much more important. David Knoult, some holomovie actor, being on holiday.

February
had been born in Sou’nd and had many happy memories of the place. She remembered walking along the pier on the sea front. There were two flagpoles near the pier entrance, though the flags themselves had long since worn away to nothing. It was a long pier. Her father had claimed that it had once been the longest pleasure pier in the world. She remembered that on that day there had been a couple of humans at the very end of it trying to do a little bit of fishing. February and her father had not been in disguise. Herbaht didn’t always bother with disguises in Sou’nd, but the humans hadn’t been scared of them, and that had felt liberating somehow. The humans had lived so long with their Herbaht neighbors that they knew their habits and had known February and her father hadn’t been hunting without having to think about it. Not that the two races could ever be friends, but they seemed to understand each other.

It was a happy memory, but it brought with it the memory of her parents
, both of whom went hunting one night when she was ten and never returned. She had lost both parents and three of her four siblings to the authorities over the last few years. Liykl still lived in Sou’nd; tomorrow she might lose her last brother. She would have to call him, warn him of what was happening.

The happy sounds of splashing from the upstairs bathroom contrast
ed sharply with the feelings February had just from reading the headline. Perhaps she should wait a while before seeing the story. Maybe Kitty ought to see it too?

Almost without intent she pressed the confirm button and the story started.

A figure in a long white raincoat was trying to shelter as best he could from the downpour. He was standing on a muddy-looking green in front of a large building that appeared blurred in a fog that had also hit the area. To one side a small table was being set up beside an army truck. The table had a banner flying above it that read
Check-In.
The man shivered as he spoke, ‘I’m standing on the green verge just outside the Houses of Parliament Museum and in the shadow of the great clock tower known as Big Ben, possibly one of the greatest symbols of the war against the cats. Big Ben was virtually destroyed back in the twenty-sixth century when a group of cats broke into the houses of parliament. It’s thought that they did so with the intention of assassinating the then Prime Minister, Mr. Hugo Jones. As history denotes, the cats failed, and when they tried to escape they found that our brave soldiers had thrown a cordon around the parliament buildings. A few of the cats made it to the top of the clock tower, where they held out for three days. It is said that they had rigged a number of explosives to the clock face and triggered these as soldiers stormed the tower. The top of the tower was destroyed, but somehow the bell, Big Ben
itself, survived and is now housed in the rebuilt tower seen behind me.’

‘It was soon after this and possibly as a direct result of this assault that the houses of parliament were vacated and turned into a museum. The security forces claimed they could no longer protect the occupants from such future assaults without drastically altering the historic structure. They would have needed to reinforce the walls and implement new security measures which would have required the widening of parts of the building. It was considered best for all concerned to build a new parliament house and design it with the security measures already in place rather than try to adapt the old one.’

The man seemed to pause for effect and pull himself even more tightly, if that were possible, into his raincoat. ‘So a good landmark from which to launch the attack on Sou’nd. No doubt that was part of what Slim Dorris, the great cat hunter, was thinking when he chose this location as the jump off point for his attack tomorrow.’

‘Slim Dorris
, as you are no doubt aware, became the great cat hunter when he…’

February yawned and sighed as the story of how Slim Dorris became the great hunter was played out on the screen in front of her. This man really didn’t seem to have a lot to say about the attack. It all seemed to be anti-Herbaht propaganda. She was also getting a little tired of his usage of the word cat. After talking about Slim Dorris, the man continued.

‘…Already a few items are being brought here in readiness for tomorrow’s assault. A simple table…’ He pointed to the table behind him and quickly withdrew his hand again to stop it getting too wet, ‘…has been set up on one side of the green. That is where all civilians who wish to join in the attack will have to sign up. If you wish to go along, they prefer it if you have your own weapon but will supply you with a standard issue laser rifle for the duration of the battle if you need it.’