The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (49 page)

“Keep talking.”

“One way simply uses money. Set up a front organization, an academic fakery. Funnel money into Galileo University as grants, and walk in the front door of the computer room, and take what you want. The other way is to use enough force to do a real job. Don’t send an elderly married couple to try to Watergate it. You cosmic do-gooders have not convinced me.”

“Let’s see your ticket!”

It was Little Black Sambo, the sky marshal. “What ticket?”

“The one that entitles you to unscrew the inscrutable. Show it. You are just a lily-livered coward, too yellow to do your plain duty.”

“Really? Who appointed you God? Look, boy, I’m mighty glad that your skin color matches mine.”

“Why so?”

“Because, if it didn’t, I would be called a racist for the way I despise you.”

I saw him draw his side arm, but my cane, damn it!, had slid to the floor. I was reaching for it when his bolt hit me, low on the left.

As he was hit from three sides, two to the heart, one to the head, by John Sterling, by Lazarus, by Commander Smith—three crack gunmen, where one would have sufficed.

I didn’t hurt yet. But I knew I was gut-shot—bad, final bad, if I didn’t get help fast.

But something was happening to Samuel Beaux. He leaned forward and fell off his chair, dead as King Charles—and his body began to disappear. It didn’t fade out; it disappeared in swipes, through the middle, then across the face, as if someone had taken an eraser to a chalkboard. Then he was gone completely; not even blood was left. Even his chair was gone.

And the wound in my gut was gone.

“There may come a time when the lion and the lamb will lie down together, but I am still betting on the lion.”

HENRY WHEELER SHAW
1818-1885

“Wouldn’t it be better,” I objected, “to have me pull a sword out of a stone? If you really want to sell the product? The whole plan is silly!”

We were seated at a picnic table in the east orchard, Mannie Davis, Captain John Sterling, Uncle Jock, Jubal Harshaw, and I—and a Professor Rufo, a bald-headed old coot introduced to me as an aide to Her Wisdom and (impossible!) her grandson. (But having seen with my own bloodshot eyes some of the results of Dr. Ishtar’s witchcraft, I was no longer using the word “impossible” as freely as I did a week ago.)

Pixel was with us, too, but he had long since finished his lunch and was down in the grass, trying to catch a butterfly. They were evenly matched but the butterfly was ahead on points.

The bright and cloudless sky promised a temperature of thirty-eight or forty by midafternoon; my aunts had elected to eat lunch in their air-conditioned kitchen. But there was a breeze and it was cool enough under the trees—a lovely day, just right for a picnic; it reminded me of our conference with Father Hendrik Schultz in the orchard of Old MacDonald’s Farm just a week ago (and eleven years forward).

Except that Hazel was not with me.

That groused me but I tried not to show it. When the Circle opened for lunch. Aunt Til had a message waiting for me. “Hazel left here with Lafe just a few minutes ago,” she told me. “She asked me to tell you that she will not be here for lunch but expects to see you later this afternoon…and will be here for supper without fail.”

A damned skimpy message! I needed to discuss with Hazel all the talk and happenings in the closed Circle. Damn it, how could I decide anything until I had a chance to talk it over with my wife?

Women and cats do what they do; there is nothing a man can do about it.

“I’ll sell you a sword in a stone,” said Professor Rufo, “cheap. Like new. Used just once, by King Arthur. In the long run it didn’t do him any good and I can’t guarantee that it will help you…but I don’t mind turning a profit on it.”

Uncle said, “Rufo, you would sell tickets to your own funeral.”

“Not ‘would.’ Did. Netted enough to buy a round toowitt I badly needed…because so many people wanted to be certain I was dead.”

“So you cheated them.”

“Not at all. The tickets did not state that I was dead; they simply called for ‘admit bearer’ to my funeral. And it was a nice funeral, the nicest I’ve ever had…especially the climax when I sat up in my coffin and sang the oratorio from
The Death of Jesse James
, doing all the parts myself. Nobody asked for his money back. Some even left before I reached my high note. Rude creatures. Go to your own funeral and you’ll soon learn who your real friends are.” Rufo turned to me. “You want that sword and stone? Cheap but it has to be cash. Can’t let you have credit; your life expectancy isn’t all that good. Shall we say six hundred thousand imperial dollars in small bills? No denomination higher than ten thousand.”

“Professor, I don’t want a sword in a stone; it’s just that this whole silly business sounds like the ‘true prince’ nonsense of pre-Armstrong romances. Can’t do it openly with money, can’t do it safely with enough force to hold the losses down to zero, has to be me and my wife with nothing but a scout knife. That’s a crummy plot; even a confessions book would reject it. It’s logically impossible.”

“Five hundred fifty thousand and I pick up the sales tax.”

“Richard,” Jubal Harshaw answered, “it is logic itself that is impossible. For millennia philosophers and saints have tried to reason out a logical scheme for the universe…until Hilda came along and demonstrated that the universe is not logical but whimsical, its structure depending solely on the dreams and nightmares of non-logical dreamers.” He shrugged, almost spilling his Tuborg. “If the great brains had not been so hoodwinked by their shared conviction that the universe must contain a consistent and logical structure they could find by careful analysis and synthesis, they would have spotted the glaring fact that the universe—the multiverse—contains neither of logic nor justice save where we, or others like us, impose such qualities on a world of chaos and cruelty.”

“Five hundred thousand and that’s my last offer.”

“So why should Hazel and I risk our necks?” I added, “Pixel! Leave that insect alone!”

“Butterflies are not insects,” Captain John Sterling said soberly. “They are self-propelled flowers. The Lady Hazel taught me that many years ago.” He reached down and gently picked up Pixel. “How were you getting him to drink?”

I showed him, using water and my fingertip. Then Sterling improved on it, offering the kitten a tiny puddle in the palm of his hand. The kitten licked at it, and then was lapping cat—property, curling his dainty tongue down into the spoonful of water.

Sterling bothered me. I knew his origin, or thought I did, and thus had trouble believing in him even as I spoke with him. Yet it is impossible not to believe in a man when you see him, and
hear
him, crunching celery and potato chips.

Yet he had a two-dimensional quality. He neither smiled nor laughed. He was unfailingly polite but always dead serious. I had tried to thank him for saving my life by shooting what’s-his-name; Sterling had stopped me. “My duty. He was expendable; you are not.”

“Four hundred thousand. Colonel, are there any deviled eggs down there?”

I passed the stuffed eggs to Rufo. “Shall I tell you what to do with your sword in a stone? First, pull out the sword, then—”

“Let’s not be crude. Three hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Professor, I wouldn’t have it as a door prize. I was simply making a point.”

“Better take an option, at least; you’ll need it for the boff opening when they shoot this as a stereoseries.”

“No publicity. That’s one of the conditions imposed on me. If I do it.”

“No publicity until
after
. Then there has to be publicity; it must wind up in the history books. Mannie, tell ’em why you have never published your memoirs of the Revolution.”

Mr. Davis answered, “Mike sleeping. Not have people bother him. Nyet.”

Uncle Jock said, “Manuel, you have an unpublished autobiography?”

My stepfather-in-law nodded. “Necessary. Prof dead, Wyoming dead, Mike dead maybe. Am only witness true story of Loonie Revolution. Lies, lots of lies, by cobbers not there.” He scratched his chin with his left hand, the one I knew to be artificial. Or so I heard. This hand looked just like his right hand. A transplant? “Stored with Mike before out to Asteroids. We rescue Mike—then publish maybe.” Davis looked at me. “Want to hear how I met my daughter Hazel?”

“Yes indeed!” I answered, and Sterling strongly agreed.

“Was Monday thirteen May, 2075, in L-City. Talk-talk in Stilyagi Hall, how to fight Warden. Not revolution, just sad stupid talk-talk, unhappy people. Skinny little girl sat on floor down front. Orange hair, no breasts. Ten, maybe eleven. Listens every word, claps hard, dead serious.

“Yellow Jackets, Warden’s cops, break in, start killing. Too busy to keep track of skinny redheads. Jackets kill my best friend…when see her in action. Throws self through air, rolled in ball, hits Yellow Jacket in knees, down he goes. I break his jaw with left hand—not this hand; number-two—and step over him, dragging my wife Wyoming—not wife then—with me. Skinny flametop is gone, don’t see her some weeks. But, friends, hard rock truth. Hazel as little girl fought so hard and smart that she saved her Papa Mannie and her Mama Wyoh both from Warden’s finks long before she knew she was ours.”

Manuel Davis smiled wistfully. “Did find her, Davis Family opted her—daughter, not wife. Still a baby. But not baby when counts! Worked hard to free Luna every day, every hour, every minute, danger don’ stop her never. Fourth o’ July, 2076, Hazel Meade Davis youngest comrade signing Declaration of Independence. No comrade rated it more!”

Mr. Davis had tears in his eyes. So did I.

Captain Sterling stood up. “Mr. Davis, I am humbly proud to have heard that story. Mr. Campbell, I have enjoyed your hospitality. Colonel Campbell, I hope you decide to fight with us; we need you. And now, if I may be excused, I must leave. As the Galactic Overlord does not take long lunch hours, I must not.”

Uncle Jock said, “Shucks, John, you’ve got to have some R and R now and then. Come go dinosaur hunting with me again. Time spent in the Mesozoic won’t affect your quest; the Overlord will never know you’re away. That’s the greatest beauty of timejumping.”

“
I
would know that I was away. But I do thank you. I enjoyed that hunt.” He bowed and left.

Dr. Harshaw said quietly, “There goes real nobility. When at last he destroys the Overlord, he will be erased. He knows it. It doesn’t stop him.”

“Why must he be erased?” I demanded.

“Eh? Colonel, I know that this is new to you…but you are, or have been, a fabulist yourself, have you not?”

“Still am, as far as I know. Finished a long one and sent it off to my agent just ten days ago. Must get back to work soon—got a wife to support.”

“Then you know that, for plot purposes, especially in adventure stories, heroes and villains come in complementary pairs. Each is necessary to the other.”

“Yes, but—Look, lay it on the bar. This man who just left is truly the character that Hazel—and her son, Roger Stone—created for their series
The Scourge of the Spaceways
?”

“Yes. Hazel and her son created him. Sterling knows it. Look, sir, all of us are fictions, someone’s fabulist dreams. But usually we do not know it. John Sterling knows it, and is strong enough to stand up to it. He knows his role and his destiny; he accepts it.”

“He doesn’t have to be erased.”

Dr. Harshaw looked puzzled. “But you are a writer. Uh…a literary writer perhaps? Plotless?”

“Me? I don’t know how to write literature; I write stories. For printout or three-dee or even bound books, but all sorts. Sin, suffer, and repent. Horse opera. Space opera. War. Murder. Spies. Sea stories. Whatever. Hazel and I are going to revive her classic series, with Captain Sterling in the lead role. As always. So what’s this noise about ‘erasing’ him?”

“You are not going to let him destroy the Galactic Overlord? You should, you
must
, as the Overlord is every bit as evil as Boskone.”

“Oh, certainly! First thirteen weeks. Should have happened years back.”

“But he
couldn’t
. The series was dropped with both hero and villain still alive. Sterling has been forced to fight only a holding action ever since.”

“Oh. Well, we’ll fix that.
Overlord delenda est!
”

“Then what does Sterling do?” I started to answer, suddenly realized that the question was not inquiry but Socratic. For each fine cat, a fine rat. A hero of Sterling’s stature must oppose a villain as strong as he is. If we kill off the Overlord, then we must dream up Son of Overlord, with just as many balls, teeth just as long, disposition just as vile, and steam coming out of his ears.

“I don’t know. We’ll think of something. Age him, maybe, and put him to pasture as commandant of the Star Patrol Academy. Some such. No need to kill him off. A job like that would not require a villain as horrendous as the Overlord.”

“Wouldn’t it?” Harshaw asked quietly.

“Uh—Maybe you would like to take over the series?”

“Not me. I’m semi-retired. All I have now is
The Stonebender Family
, a series strictly for laughs, no substantial villain required. Now I know the truth of the World as Myth I will never again create a real villain…and I thank Klono that I never have, not really, as I have only a limited belief in villainy.”

“Well, I can’t answer without Hazel anyhow; I’m the junior writer, in charge of punctuation and filling in weather and scenery; she controls plot. So I must change the subject. Uncle Jock, what was this you were saying to Captain Sterling about hunting dinosaurs? One of your jokes? Like the time you sawed off ten square klicks of the Ross Ice Shelf and towed it to Singapore, swimming sidestroke.”

“Not sidestroke all the way; that’s not possible.”

“Come off it. Dinosaurs.”

“What about dinosaurs? I like to hunt them. I took John Sterling with me once; he got a truly magnificent tyrannosaurus rex. Would you like to try it?”

“Are you serious? Uncle, you know I don’t hunt. I don’t like to shoot anything that can’t shoot back.”