London Wild (56 page)

‘The whole thing looks like a setup,’ Kitty offered quickly
. ‘The heavily advertised attack on Sou’nd could only have one reason that I could see. But because of that the whole situation feels…well, it feels like we’re just following a script written by the government. It’s almost as if they want the cats to attack. After all, it’s easier to hunt down an active enemy than one that is hiding.’

‘What reason?’ George asked
. ‘I was wondering about that myself. Why didn’t the authorities stop him placing that advert when they decided to allow his use of soldiers in his strike force? You say you think he had a legitimate reason for doing it?’

‘Kitty believes the intent was to let the Herbaht in London know about the assault so that we’d all get on the links and contact our relatives in Sou’nd and thus reveal where we all live
,’ February explained. ‘I think she’s right. And they must’ve known the attack on Sou’nd would create this reaction. Although why they might be willing to sacrifice those living in London to get us, I can’t begin to guess.’

‘Makes sense,’ George replied after a moment
. ‘I wish I’d seen through it. Someone seems to have taken it into their heads to exterminate your entire race. Even though I can understand the desire to stop the killing, there has to be an alternative to genocide. I mean, take the pills that were fed to those that were domesticated. Why would all the pets have been placed on the death list too?’

‘And why couldn’t your race just live on the pills?’ This was from Maureen
. ‘Why eat humans when there is a decent alternative available?’

‘The pills contain a drug that makes us docile. I don’t mean sleepy, but definitely less prone to exercising our free will. Most of my race would not be willing to even consider a life like that
,’ February said; she actually felt she sounded a little defensive. ‘According to our history, we already tried that path once; the result was that most of our race ended up as pets to humans. It felt like a betrayal at the time. It will be a long time before we’d be willing to trust anything similar.’

George then said, ‘
Do you know why there seems to be a great discrepancy between the number of wild cats that seemed to be on…’ he stopped as Stanley was waving madly at him, ‘…what’s up?’

‘Herbaht,’ Stanley said. ‘She doesn’t like the word cat.’ He glanced
at February and she nodded her agreement at him.

‘Sorry,’ George replied
. ‘Er, where was I? Oh yes. Do you know why there seems to be a discrepancy between the number of wild Herbaht and the number of deaths per month? I understood your race needs to eat human flesh at a rate of one per month, or thereabouts, but the fifteen thousand or so wilder members of your family in the London area killed no more than about five hundred people in the last month.’

‘I have no idea,’ February replied
, blinking. ‘I’ve heard those numbers myself, never thought anything of them. Propaganda perhaps, I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think it’s possible to cover up so many deaths without someone noticing.’ George commented.

February shrugged her shoulders. ‘I really don’t know.’

George shook his head
. ‘I was just wondering if maybe this requirement of one a month was wrong. It could be less. I’ve heard that if your race goes without human flesh for more than three months they start to suffer as badly as if they haven’t eaten at all for several months, and that after five months without it, they die. But I’ve not actually seen evidence of the claims. There’s nothing about any experiments or anything like that. I often wondered how true it was. I mean, it could just be a rumor that has made its way into folklore, claiming to be fact.’

‘I don’t know what you’re expecting me to say!’ February told him.

‘Yes, of course,’ George said, disappointed. ‘I guess I was hoping, because you were a wild cat, that you might have a few of the answers.’

February shook her head as George spoke the word ‘cat’ again
, and she saw Stanley close his eyes with a pained expression on his face. It seemed Stanley had noticed the slip too and it had struck him in the same way as it might one of her own race. Of the two, she did feel herself drawn more to Stanley, though to be honest she’d rather not get stuck with herd at all. She needed them, though. For some reason she felt drawn to Mars; perhaps it was her destiny to visit there.

‘If we don’t let you come with us to Mars,’ Maureen said
, filling the gap in the conversation, ‘then you intend to head north and get out of London anyway?’

‘I do,’ February replied
. Yes, she liked Stanley. She wasn’t sure about Maureen, though. There was something untrustworthy about Maureen, possibly because her scent was filled with a mixture of fear and worry. Maureen obviously wasn’t willing to trust her either. ‘I want to get out of London until all this hassle is over.’

‘I’m not sure I want you along. Other than the fact that you
r presence could be awkward at the best of times, what about your eating habits? I’m not going to travel with anyone who might be looking at me as if I’m a hors d’oeuvres,’ Maureen insisted.

‘That’s a fair thought,’ Stanley put in, ‘and how do we know that the second we reach Mars you aren’t going to munch your way through half the population
?’

‘We welcome Kitty with us,’ Maureen added, ‘but I’m really doubtful about the wisdom of including you.’

‘I understand your concerns,’ February told them. ‘I can promise you that I won’t eat anything human while I’m living as your guest. Of course that means I will have to find my own place or return to earth after a month or so, but with any luck everything will be sorted out by then and I can move back to the city anyway.’

‘Can’t say fairer than that,’ Stanley offered
. He seemed to be trying to act as an adjudicator.

‘Perhaps we should ask Kitty what she thinks,’ George offered. ‘Kitty, if we were to tell your new friend February to go
, what would you do? Would you be willing to come with us or would you leave with her?’

Kitty seemed to hesitate before answering. She seemed somehow a lot more humble than she had of late
, as if being back in the presence of her old master somehow made her feel like a pet again. ‘I love you all. I have lived most of my life under George’s roof, and I would hate to leave him again after the last few days without him. However, February is my friend. She’s the only real friend I have of my own race, and I won’t betray her. If you aren’t willing to take her along, then I will head to the north with her instead.’

‘Well, good
-bye then,’ Maureen said gruffly.

Kitty seemed a little upset by Maureen’s attitude. She turned her head away as if to hide her face from them.

‘No,’ Stanley put in, ‘Kitty is coming with us, and as she wants to stay with her friend February, then February is coming with us also. If she still wishes.’

‘And when February has to leave?’ Maureen asked angrily. ‘When she gets hungry and has to return to Earth to eat? To eat human
, what’s more, and then what? Do we allow her to just leave us and go commit a murder? They eat human, in case you missed it. What of Kitty then; will she accompany her new friend or stay with us?’

‘Perhaps we can sort something out when the time comes,’ Stanley suggested calmly. ‘However
, I would suggest that we allow February to visit us whenever she wishes with no fear of us handing her over to the authorities. That way Kitty will still get to see her and everyone will be happy.’

‘You’re missing my point,’ Maureen hissed
. ‘She eats humans.’

‘And there’s nothing we can do about that at the moment,’ Stanley replied calmly
. ‘If we let her go north she’ll still be killing at the rate of at least one a month, possibly more. At least while she’s with us, we can be sure no one will be getting hurt.’

‘It’ll give me a chance to look into the discrepancy between the numbers of wild cats and the numbers of cat
-related deaths. If I can find some correlation, if I can work out how these numbers work, perhaps she won’t have to eat human flesh again,’ George offered.

‘I like the taste of human meat, professor
,’ February commented offhandedly, ‘but I’d willingly give it up if it meant I could live in peace. But I won’t live off those pills. I won’t allow myself to succumb to any sort of drug. If you find something else, though, maybe another animal that contains whatever it is that I have to eat to stay alive, I’ll be more than willing to move to it.’

‘That’s settled
, then,’ George said. ‘February is with us, for a while, anyway.’

Maureen huffed noisily.

‘We need to work out a plan of action. London is under threat from February’s people, and if what I’m hearing is right the whole of the city is likely to be shut down very shortly. The authorities will want to stop her people from being able to spread too easily. The most likely result is that they’ll close down the spaceports around here and put roadblocks on all the major roads to the north and west. I expect rails will also be closed down for the duration, and any other way out of the city will be closed or carefully watched,’ George added.

Stanley looked at the two
sitting at the bar. To February he said, ‘Your disguise is very good, but I’ve heard the Elite can tell your true race no matter how good your disguise is. But what about Kitty; what’s she like with disguising herself?’

February smiled
. ‘For a start, just because the Elite claim they can spot any Herbaht in disguise doesn’t necessarily make it true. It is true that they are very good and you have to be very careful around them, but I don’t think they’re infallible. After all, if they miss someone, that someone is hardly likely to point it out to them, are they? As for Kitty, I’ve taught her the fundamentals of makeup, and she’s getting quite good. She still has a little trouble with allowing the contact lenses anywhere near her eyes. She’ll learn. She has to. Why?’

‘I was just thinking how hard this is going to be,’ Stanley said calmly. ‘I had thought that it would be a simple deed to go the spaceport and leave for Mars. The thought didn’t occur to me until George mentioned it that the spaceports might be watched, even closed. And even if they are open
, they might well have Elite or even sniffer dogs there. The Elite might miss you, but the sniffer dogs won’t.’

‘I can deal with sniffer dogs,’ February replied after a moment
’s contemplation. ‘I can confuse their nasal passages long enough to get us past them. I’m not sure I want to tangle with the Elite, though. I’m not that confident about my disguise, and if it came to a shoot-out, I’d lose. Besides, I don’t actually have a weapon.’

‘So we head north,’ Kitty commented after a moment.

‘I guess so,’ February agreed reluctantly. ‘We’ll go north and leave you to get to Mars.’

‘Good
.’ This came from Maureen.

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Kitty put in
. ‘I meant we all go north and catch a shuttle from one of the spaceports up there. The humans won’t think to guard those spaceports as well as the ones in London because the bulk of the cat army will be in London.’

Stanley looked towards George and they nodded.

‘Okay,’ said George, ‘what do we need to decide next?’

‘Well,’ Maureen offered, ‘I’m not happy that we have a man-eating cat with us, but if I’m outvoted then I’d suggest we need to work out what we’re taking and how. If we’re catching a shuttle from a spaceport in the north
, then obviously we have to go to a city with a spaceport.’

‘My chit will work from any of them, and it’s good for four people. We’ll still have to pay for one fare
, though,’ Stanley replied. ‘Let’s just go north until we’re clear of the city and then find a spaceport as soon as we can. No mucking about.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ February commented.

‘Now whose car or cars do we take?’ Stanley asked. ‘Mine is only a hire car, and I should take it back, so that leaves it to you and February.’

‘A hire car?’ George seemed a little surprised.

‘Yes,’ offered Maureen, ‘you’d be surprised how little you need a car when you live on the moon.’

‘I thought you had kept your car in storage for when you visited earth,’
This was from George again.

‘We did at first,’ Stanley agreed, ‘but after three years I realized that we needed a car so little. And the cost of keeping it in storage as well as the fees for keeping it running was so much more than the price of just hiring a car occasionally
that I sold it.’

‘I’m afraid it means we take your car, professor
,’ February then put in.

‘Why my car?’ George asked
. ‘What’s wrong with your car?’

‘I called my brother the other day to warn him of the impending attack on Sou’nd. This was just before Kitty told me her theory as to why the assault was being advertised in the first place. Presumably the authorities know where I live now, assuming they didn’t before. As soon as they realize I’m not there anymore
, they’ll probably try to track me down by my vehicle. I shall have to dump it, because if they see it parked outside your house they might well assume that I’ve gone with you, and that’ll put everyone in danger,’ she explained.