London Wild (95 page)

‘M-Maybe she did just have a heart attack,’ Kitty suggested simply.

‘Could be, but it seems unlikely for someone otherwise so fit,’ Myajes responded, looking round at her.

‘It doesn’t make any sense!’ February declared. ‘And yet it’s somehow familiar.’

Myajes just turned his head back to look at her and then shrugged his shoulders.

‘So who was she? What did she want?’ Kitty asked, her voice shaking. She was keeping her distance from the corpse
, and if anything had actually taken a few steps away from where she had been.

‘I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think she was Eschiff
,’ Myajes commented, ‘and she wanted me.’

‘Eschiff?’ Kitty replied
. She sounded unconvinced and perhaps also just a little bit worried. Her voice still shook a little with the recent fear.  ‘If she’s Eschiff, then I’m a leprechaun.’

‘What is an Eschiff?’
asked February.

‘I guess you’re not really into religion, are you?’ Myajes commented dryly.

‘Not really,’ she replied, ‘that was something I left to my brother. He was the believer in my family, until Sou’nd.’

‘Sou’nd? Myajes commented questioningly.

‘They’re like the demons of the Herbaht religion,’ Kitty explained, ignoring the other conversation that seemed to have started. ‘My master told me all about them. A long time ago the Eschiff were the servants of the Goddess and her children, but there was an uprising in paradise and they were cast out.’

‘Pretty much as she put it,’ Myajes confirmed with a patronizing smile. ‘You had a learned master.’

‘My master was a professor for one of the London Universities, and the Herbaht religion used to be a hobby of his. But she can’t be one of them; they’re supposed to be very similar to us and have stripes and tails and everything. And, well, she hasn’t,’ Kitty told them.

‘She told me she was wearing a disguise
, though I had to admit I had my doubts too, until I saw the gadgets.’ He walked over and picked up the pen device. ‘A nice little weapon, this. I didn’t actually see it in use, but the evidence of its ability is all about the room. I should take it to our boffins and see if they can be mass produced. It might make a useful little weapon for when our people are in trouble. I don’t see it being much good for hunting, though, as it seems to destroy whatever it hits.’

‘Well,’ Kitty commented, bravely mov
ing a little closer to the corpse of the supposed Eschiff, ‘let’s see if she really is wearing a disguise.’ She reached out with her hand and then hesitated, perhaps hoping someone would take over this grisly task or perhaps just regretting suggesting that someone do this in the first place. No one offered to do it for her and she found herself having to do it.

February had considered stepping in, but decided to ignore her friend’s squeamishness. She really needed to learn to handle corpses anyway
, especially if she was going to survive in Herbaht society. Instead she started to look around for a mirror so she could check her makeup and touch it up where needed. This was a laboratory with pot plants and even soft toys on the shelves; there had to be a mirror here somewhere, even if only a handheld one.

‘This isn’t a disguise,
’ Kitty called. Obviously she had finally built up enough courage to actually touch the corpse. She was still crouched by the corpse but seemed to be visibly cringing from what she had just done.

‘Are you sure?’ Myajes replied, and he was kneeling by her side within a few seconds, checking for himself. ‘This does feel like her own skin. I guess perhaps she was herd after all. But where did she get these gadgets from?’

‘You mean she’s not a supernatural entity after all?’ February replied sarcastically. She had found a mirror, but it had been on the desk that had toppled over and had been smashed under the weight of the computer monitor falling on it. The search continued.

‘I don’t know,’ Myajes commented doubtfully
. ‘Our religion is passed from mouth to mouth rather than written down in any great detail anywhere. Maybe they became striped through our stories to make them less scary. I’m pretty sure that the herd doesn’t have this sort of technology. If they did we would have seen it long before now.’

‘Maybe the gateway thing is a holographic mock-up,’ February commented simply. ‘All it would take is a little bit of imagination and the herd could have us falling over ourselves thinking that these Eschiff things had come for us.’

‘Could be.’ Myajes seemed doubtful, and he walked over to examine the frame. ‘I wonder how she would have faked getting me through it, though.’ He reached an arm into the gateway and it found no resistance. His arm seemed to have become part of the room. He pulled it out quickly. ‘If this is a fake, it’s been very cleverly done.’

February, still having failed to find a whole mirror, walked over to where Myajes was standing and looked at the gateway. She seemed a little worried as she spoke. ‘If it’s real, where do you think the other end is?’

‘Not far away,’ Myajes responded simply, ‘assuming we can trust the religion on that aspect and that the range hasn’t been improved since. The gateways are only supposed to have the range of about a planet, far enough for a friend to visit a friend, but not enough to hop across half the galaxy.’

February shook her head
. ‘You realize you’re talking about a teleport system. Scientists have long since dismissed teleportation as a dead-end technology. The only way something like that would work would be by use of an energy source greater than the sun, and even then anything alive that was sent would be divided into its component atoms and would arrive at its target location dead.’

‘You’re sure?’ Myajes commented
. He turned to look at her for a moment and then looked back at the gateway as if to suggest that this was proof enough that teleport could work.

‘You try cutting your head off and then reattaching it and see how long you live
,’ February replied simply.

‘It doesn’t work like that
.’ Kitty had been listening in and decided to offer her thoughts on the subject. ‘Myajes already hazarded his arm through the gate. At no time was it broken down into its component parts, nor did it even leave his body. This gate doesn’t move things through space; it removes the space. That room appears to be right next to us, because it is right next to us. So long as you step through the gate rather than try to check behind it, the space in between there and here simply no longer exists.’

‘That’s a good thought,’ Myajes commented
, not looking round but examining the actual frame of the gateway.

‘I still think it’s a clever mock-up of some kind,’ February replied, but she gave her friend a reassuring smile to show that she wasn’t disagreeing out of spite. And then she stated her reason for not wanting to believe Kitty’s suggestion
: ‘Otherwise we may have to come to terms with the idea that the demons from your religion have come to Earth to haunt us. Forgive me if I’m not willing to do that yet.’

‘Where do you suppose it leads?’ Kitty asked innocently.

‘Nowhere,’ February replied quickly. ‘It’s a mock-up.’

‘Somewhere local but not Earth or Mars or the moon,’ Myajes explained
. ‘There are too many people on Earth, and it would be pretty impossible for them to arrive on Mars or the moon either without someone noticing them.’

‘It wouldn’t be Pluto
; it was destroyed recently…one of the moons of Jupiter perhaps?’ Kitty offered.

Against her better judgment
, February uttered, ‘The moon.’

Myajes glanced at her
. ‘Well, no. Like I said, the moon has a colony; there’s no way they could appear there and someone not know they were there.’

‘What if they were getting help from the
governments of Earth?’ February suggested. ‘You see, I don’t know how long you’ve been a prisoner of the authorities.’

‘Me either,’ Myajes offered
. ‘They kept me drugged most of the time. I think they were scared of me. They only stopped that practice when I was brought to Mars, and even then they still filled me with other drugs to get the information they wanted.’

February nodded
. ‘Well, while you’ve been a guest of various institutions, the moon colony has been closed down to all newcomers. Except, that is, for a number of world leaders who are supposedly holding top level talks there.’

‘With the Eschiff?’ Myajes commented.

‘Perhaps,’ February commented doubtfully.

‘And that would have been about the time they ordered all domesticated cats to be handed in
,’ Kitty suggested.

Myajes and February both gave her a dirty look at her use of the word cat
. February was the first to soften. ‘That would make a lot of sense.’

‘The Eschiff are getting the governments of the world to help them finish the job they started however many years ago
,’ Myajes added; his face also softened again.

‘So what do we do?’ Kitty commented.

‘I need to get back to Earth; I need to warn the Matriarch that the Eschiff are here and…’ He hesitated before continuing, ‘I need confirmation. I can’t just go to the Matriarch and tell her I believe the Eschiff might be here; I need to prove it’s them. I need numbers, and I need a location.’

‘Well,’ February offered, ‘good luck with that.’

‘I also need clothes, makeup, and a shuttle ticket back to Earth.’ Myajes added more to himself than for the others.

February looked around
. ‘I can help you with the makeup, although I’m not sure that I have enough to disguise you properly. As for clothes, well, there are a few bodies here; I’m sure you can get something together. One of the bodies has only lost half its head; perhaps you’ll be lucky and find it’s your size.’

‘You shouldn’t try to get
past the sniffer dogs on Earth, though,’ Kitty told him. ‘We got past them with the help of some chemical, but I’m afraid we haven’t any left we can give you.’

‘Hmm,’ Myajes responded, ‘they were working on scents here
, trying to make one good enough to fool me. It didn’t work, but they told me that it was an idea they were working on because of an equivalent scent they had found designed to confuse sniffer dogs. I wonder if they have any of that about this lab.’

‘There are a couple of lockers in the corner over there,’ Kitty
told him and pointed back towards the door. They were on the far side of the first desk that she and February had used for cover. There were four lockers, one for each of the scientists that had been working here. ‘And all sorts of test tubes on the shelves.’

Myajes took the offered makeup jar and made his way over to the nearest of the bodies
. ‘Will you be all right, getting back to your apartment without repairing your own makeup?’

‘I don’t think it’s too bad, though I’d like to find a mirror to be sure
,’ February replied simply. ‘I can always wait until it gets late before I make my way back, just in case. They never turn the corridor lights off, but activity in the busiest areas does die down during the nighttime hours. Then I’ll just find an elevator to our floor and sneak carefully home. I should be all right, especially if Kitty will help and keep an eye out for me as we go.’

‘Sure I will,’ Kitty replied happily
. ‘I’d be more than happy to.’ She turned her attention back to the frame and the room beyond. ‘Still think it’s a mock-up?’

‘I don’t know,’ February confided. ‘I’m a little scared that it isn’t. Perhaps I’m just a pessimist, but I have trouble believing our race can stand against the herd in this latest attempt of theirs to remove us. If we have to fight these Eschiff creatures as well, I don’t see any way we’ll be the victors.’

Kitty’s face fell as if a shadow had passed across. Then almost too keenly she suggested, ‘Well, we could check it out quickly for him while he’s searching about for clothing and scents and the like.’ Perhaps she needed to prove for herself that the Eschiff weren’t involved.

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ February replied simply
. ‘Leave it to the expert.’ She pointed towards Myajes.

Kitty followed February’s hand to where she was pointing and then imploringly added, ‘
All we have to do is have a quick look round and then come back.’

‘What did you tell me about curiosity?’ February replied with a smile.

Kitty nodded sadly and said, ‘But if we were helping the Matriarch…’

‘The Matriarch has never done anything for us,’ February replied sharply. Mentioning of the Matriarch like that could sometimes make February angry, especially when someone
was trying to guilt her into doing something.

‘The cause
, then,’ Kitty insisted, ‘the cat people.’

February gave Kitty another dirty look
, and Kitty shrank before her friend.

‘Please,’ Kitty implored, ‘all we have to do is check whether they are the Eschiff or not, then find a window or something and confirm
whether they’re on the moon or not. How hard can that be? Wouldn’t you like to prove that they aren’t the demons from the Herbaht religion?’