The Land Beyond All Dreams (2 page)

There all the year the fruit is on the tree,

And all the year the bloom is on the flower.”

“There with wild honey drip the forest trees;

The stores of wine and mead shall never fail.

Not pain nor sickness knows the dweller there,

Death and decay come near him never more.”

“The feast shall cloy not, nor the chase shall tire,

Nor music cease forever through the hall;

The gold and jewels of the Land of Youth

Outshine all splendors ever dreamed by man.”

“Thou shalt have horses of the fairy breed,

Thou shalt have hounds that can outrun the wind;

A hundred chiefs shall follow thee in war,

A hundred maidens sing thee to thy sleep.”

“A crown of sovereignty thy brow shall wear,

And by thy side a magic blade shall hang.

Thou shalt be lord of all the Land of Youth,

And lord of Niamh of the Head of Gold.”

When she finished, the applause was subdued, but few eyes in the room were dry. The fellow who had asked for the song had a faraway look in his eyes as he looked at the menus on his phone. “Have to have my daughter help me put this on the Intertubes. Want my grandson to see it.” He set a twenty on the table and said, “I can’t thank you enough, miss, but I can buy you breakfast. Thank you again.” He shrugged into his coat and donned a sweat-marked Stetson before heading out into the morning cold.

I didn’t notice at first, but during Vicki’s song, the cat started pawing at the fogged-over glass. I glanced over, but it looked to me like any of the “finger-painting cat” videos you can find on the Internet. He finally got tired of it and sat down, leaving the window covered with lines and whorls.

“That’s pretty cool,” Ember said. “Think he’ll hold still while I get a picture of it?”

“You know cats,” I said. “Give it a shot. Are random paw marks classed as art now?”

“They’re not random,” Ember said. “It’s a dog.”

It took me looking at it from a new angle to see it, but, damn, she was right. It was recognizably a German Shepherd.

Ember skipped the usual cell phone camera and pulled her digital out of her purse. She took half a dozen shots and the damn cat posed like a furry Van Gogh for all of them. She scratched the cat under his jaw and asked, “What are you going to call him?”

Rose said, “Lunch.”

“Don’t be mean,” Ember said. “Was there anything on his collar?”

“Just the number thirteen.” I looked at the cat again and shrugged. “It’s not the greatest name in the world, but it’s better than nothing. What do you think, cat? Once for yes, twice for no.”

The cat looked at Rose and then back to me. “
Mrow
.”

I nodded. “Thirteen it is, then.”

Ember leaned forward, studying Thirteen’s paws. “Oh, wow—look at his feet. He’s a Hemingway.”

I looked at his feet and then back at Ember. “Um, what?” I asked, with as much dignity as I could muster.

“Ernest Hemingway got a six-toed cat named Snowball when he was living in Key West, and that cat’s descendants still live at the museum there.” Ember pointed to Thirteen’s paws again. “He’s got six toes on each foot, just like the Hemingway cats.”

“Really? I’ve never seen one before.” Miriam brought her phone over to the table and took a few pictures. She used some bits of sausage to keep Thirteen bribed as she turned his paws over. Her eyebrows went up and I heard a sharp intake of breath. “Oh, my…” she said. She picked up her phone again and took more pictures.

“Find something interesting?” I asked.

“His bone structure is wrong,” she said. “It’s more than polydactylism. His rear paws are feline, but his front paws are closer to a raccoon’s bone structure than a cat’s. I’m not an expert, but I think this is more than a random mutation. Hell, it’s got to be more than selective breeding.”

I smiled. “Cool. I’ve always wanted some mad scientist’s genetic experiment for a pet.”

Miriam sat back. “A creature with this much time invested in him isn’t going to be anyone’s pet. I think the smart money is on someone looking for him.”

“Let’s find out,” I said. I looked over at Thirteen and asked, “Is anyone looking for you? Big, scary aliens? Exotic princesses? Pirate babe with a heart of gold? Evil overlord hell-bent on taking over the world?”

Thirteen yawned.

Frakking cat.

Rose said, “What are you asking him for? If he is a fugitive, he’s not going to tell you the truth anyway.”

“He is if he wants to come home with us.” I wagged my finger at Thirteen and said, “You listen to me, mister. You be straight with us, and you get three hots and a cot. You don’t, you’re off to do hard time at the Dumb Friends League.
Wakarimasu ka, neko-san
?”

Miriam said, “What are you doing? Cats don’t understand Japanese.”

“I suppose next you’ll be telling me deer don’t read deer-crossing signs.” I sighed. “Do we have a deal, cat?”

He yawned.

Typical. No cat, anywhere, ever gave anyone a straight answer.

“All right,” I said. “There’s a twenty-four-hour vet hospital near our house. You get a ride that far, and then you’re someone else’s problem.”

Thirteen swished his tail. “
Mrowr-urr
.”

Frakking cat.

He’s Only Mostly Dead

The vet tech’s name tag said,
Robin
. She took her stethoscope out of her ears and said, “Mr. Fraser, this cat shouldn’t be alive.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “If he’s dead, I don’t have to pay for shots, right?” I gave her the most obnoxious used-car-salesman smile I could muster. “Do you think a zombie cat would be enough to get me on Letterman?”

“He’s not actually dead,” Robin replied. “Not completely, anyway.”

“So he’s only mostly dead.” I shrugged. “Well, that’s good, because otherwise I’d be stuck with going through his pockets for loose change, and he doesn’t have any pockets.”

The tech put her stethoscope away and backed out the staff door to the exam room. “Please stay here,” she said. “I’ll get Dr. Byers to come in and talk to you.” She pulled the door closed behind her, leaving Rose and I alone with our temporary—and only mostly-dead—cat. For his part, Thirteen folded his paws under himself and began doing a great impression of a meatloaf.

“Why are you teasing that poor child?” Rose asked. “She’s already terrified of Thirteen.”

“I don’t like doctors who think they know everything,” I said. “I had to deal with people like that over and over again when Mom first got her diagnosis. All these doctors telling her what she was doing wrong and how long she was going to live, talking about treatment protocols as though she were a small variable in a huge static equation. It took her a year to get the team she has now together. It may just be for pain management, but they treat her like a person instead of a case number. They don’t agree with her decision, but they respect it and take care of her.”

A middle-aged woman wearing Hawaiian scrubs with a red bow tie, and mismatched suspenders festooned with buttons came through the staff door. She smiled and said, “Hello. I’m the doctor. I hear we have a zombie cat today. That’s just fab, I’ve got to see this.”

I smiled—for real, this time—and asked, “Just, ‘the Doctor’?”

“The one, the only, and the best,” she replied. “At least until Dr. Warren gets here at noon. Then I’m the best but not the only. So, let’s see this big fella.” She coaxed Thirteen into a sitting position and listened to his chest. She pressed on his hips, shoulders, and stomach, looked at his teeth, and waved a light in his eyes. She did a double take looking at his paws and pulled one up to get a better look. Thirteen grabbed her finger, but she didn’t jump or pull away. She got a closer look and shook her head. “I hope your friend here is fixed, because we are in for a world of pain if his physical characteristics enter the general feline population.”

That got a response. Thirteen backed away from Dr. Byers, giving a wailing, full-throated battle cry. His claws came out with an audible
snickt
, poised and ready for slashing.

Rose snickered. “I think that’s a
no
on becoming a eunuch. Can’t say I blame him.”

“Doc, I doubt your liability insurance is up to the damage he’ll do to this place if we try to have him snipped. How about a general wellness check and nothing else?” I looked at Thirteen and asked, “Will that work for you?”

He retracted his claws and settled down, but his tail was still lashing and his eyes were locked on the doctor’s hands.

Dr. Byers held her hands up in surrender. “We don’t do anything without the customer’s consent. Just a wellness check it is. Let’s start by checking for a microchip.” She took a hand-held scanner out of a drawer and passed it over Thirteen’s back. She paused, tapped a few buttons, and shook her head before smacking the side of the scanner.

I said, “You know, Doc, percussive maintenance is something best left to tech support professionals. You have an IT person around somewhere?”

“No, but we have Lisa.” Dr. Byers opened the staff door and called out, “Lisa, could you come here a minute? The chip scanner is on strike again.”

A redhead with sleek, narrow-framed glasses and more hair than Rose and I combined leaned into the room. “Are you using the AVID or the Trovan? The AVID has issues with the old Home Again chips.”

“The Trovan, and that’s not the issue. I’m getting a signal. Have a look.” Byers handed the reader to Lisa and stood back.

“Hmm…” Lisa flipped a few switches, tapped a button, and said, “I think I’ve got it. The chip may just be really slow to power up. Let’s see what we’ve got.” She studied the readout for a few seconds more before shaking her head. “The coil is powered up, but the chip itself is fried. All I’m getting off of it is garbage.”

Byers asked, “What would cause that?”

“Physical damage to the integrated circuit, but anything that could damage the chip would leave scars on the animal.” Lisa set the scanner down and donned latex gloves. “Let’s see if we can find anything.”

She reached for Thirteen and a small key fob dangling from her watch started shrieking. Lisa pulled her hand back, muttering, “That’s not good.” She took her watch off and pulled a leather case out of one of the pockets on her lab coat.

“Angry cat detector?” I asked.

“No,” she replied. “Personal radiation detector.” She took a device the size of a box of breath mints out of the case and plugged it into her phone. “And this is an analyzer/dosimeter that came out in Japan after the Fukushima release. Yeah, there’s an app for that.”

Lisa placed the detector next to Thirteen and the radiation graph on her phone display started spiking up. She watched it until it settled down to a steady range and tapped the median line. “Your friend is giving off about two millisieverts an hour. That’s about as much as getting a mammogram every fifteen minutes.”

“No wonder he felt odd,” Rose muttered. She cleared her throat and asked, “Is that level dangerous to us?”

“The annual safety limit for people who work with radioactive materials on a daily basis is five hundred millisieverts. A year living with him will put you over three times that. If you want him as a pet, I suggest you buy some lead underwear.” Lisa brushed some of the dust and grit out of the fur between Thirteen’s shoulders. She ran the detector over the dirt and watched the numbers spike. “He’s covered with radioactive material. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s a survivor of the Fukushima event itself, probably left homeless by the tsunami and exposed to the material released from the reactor. We should decontaminate him and see if that reading drops any.”

“We’re a long way from Japan, doc.” I pointed to the west, toward the foothills. “Could he have grown up out at Rocky Flats?”

“Other than the few areas where they actually handled plutonium, Rocky Flats had nowhere near his level of radioactive contamination. With his physical mutations, he could be from Chernobyl. The reactor and the entire city are overrun by cats.” Lisa rubbed her fingers over Thirteen’s back and shook her head. “I don’t feel any kind of scarring, but his skin feels wrong. It’s almost like cowhide. His muscles feel strange as well.”

“I noticed that,” Dr. Byers said. “If the chip wasn’t damaged as part of him being injured, what else could have done it?”

“Hmm.” Lisa thought for a moment and said, “I suppose radiation exposure could have done it, but the only thing I know would be capable of it is an electromagnetic pulse.”

“A nuclear bomb would give you both radiation and an EMP,” I said. “However, I don’t remember anything like that happening recently. What did you mean by his skin feeling strange?”

Dr. Byers said, “His skin feels thicker or stiffer than usual for a cat his size. His muscle tissue has the same feel. If that weren’t enough, his heart rate and respiration are about one-fifth that of a normal house cat. Those findings were what upset poor Robin so much. I’d like to get a blood sample, if we can get him to cooperate.”

“We can ask him.” I turned to Thirteen. “Well?”

The cat seemed to shrug and extended his right foreleg toward Dr. Byers. “
Mrow
,” he added.

Byers smiled and said, “Thanks, but I don’t use legs. Hold still and we’ll be done in a second.” She held his head to the side and deftly slipped the needle into his neck. The blood crept into the vial, and even to my eyes it didn’t look healthy. Byers got half the sample size she wanted before calling it good. She added an extra set of caution stickers to the vial and gave it to Lisa to process.

Byers turned back to us and said, “I’m glad you two brought him in rather than risking additional exposure. I have never seen any animal in a condition like this. I’m going to have to quarantine him for public safety until his blood work comes back. We’re going to try to get some food, water, and vitamins into him and see if we can perk him up a little. You can call back to ask for a status update on him in a few days. He will not be going to a shelter, nor will he be euthanized for non-medical reasons. If he gets cleared for adoption, I’ll call you first and ask if you’ve reconsidered. Any questions?”