The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (26 page)

I said to Gwen, “Wait a moment, dear; this has got to be settled. We may have to eliminate Bill just to keep him happy. Let’s stand right here till we straighten this out. Bill, I paid for air for you to breathe because you have no money. Correct?”

He did not answer at once. Gwen said quietly, “I let him have pocket money. Do you object?”

I looked at her thoughtfully. “I think I should have been told. My love, if I am to be responsible for this family, I must know what is going on in it.” I turned to Bill. “When I paid for your air back there, why didn’t you offer to pay your share out of the money you had in your pocket?”

“But
she
gave it to me. Not you.”

“So? Give it back to her.”

Bill looked startled; Gwen said, “Richard, is this necessary?”

“I think it is.”

“But I don’t think it is.”

Bill kept quiet, did nothing, watched. I turned my back on him to face Gwen privately, said softly, for her ears only: “Gwen, I need your backing.”

“Richard, you’re making an issue out of nothing!”

“I don’t see it as ‘nothing,’ dear. On the contrary, it’s a key matter and I need your help. So back me up. Or else.”

“‘Or else’ what, dear?”

“You know what ‘or else’ means. Make up your mind. Are you going to back me up?”

“Richard, this is ridiculous! I see no reason to cater to it.”

“Gwen, I’m asking you to back me up.” I waited an endless time, then sighed. “Or start walking and don’t look back.”

Her head jerked as if I had slapped her. Then she picked up her case and started walking.

Bill’s jaw dropped, then he hurried after her, still carrying Tree-San.

“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

OSCAR WILDE
1854-1900

I watched them out of sight, then started walking slowly. It was easier to walk than to stand still and there was no place near to sit down. My stump ached and all the weariness of the past few days hit me. My mind was numb. I continued to move toward the Raffles Hotel because I was headed that way, programmed.

The Raffles was even seedier than I had recalled. But I suspected that Rabbi Ezra knew what he was talking about—this, or nothing. In any case I wanted to get out of the public eye; I would have accepted a much poorer hostelry as long as it enabled me to get behind a closed door.

I told the man at the desk that Rabbi Ezra had sent me and asked what he had. I think he offered me his most expensive room still vacant: eighteen crowns.

I ran through the ritual dicker but my heart wasn’t in it. I settled for fourteen crowns, paid it, accepted a key; the clerk turned a large book toward me. “Sign here. And show me your air receipt.”

“Eh? When did this kaka start?”

“With the new administration, chum. I don’t like it any more than you do but either I comply or they shut me down.”

I thought about it. Was I “Richard Ames”? Why cause a cop to salivate at the thought of a reward? Colin Campbell? Someone with a long memory might recognize that name—and think of Walker Evans.

I wrote, “Richard Campbell, Novylen.”

“Thank you, gospodin. Room L is at the end of this passage on the left. There’s no dining room but our kitchen has dumbwaiter service to the rooms. If you want dinner here, please note that the kitchen shuts down at twenty-one o’clock. Except for liquor and ice, dumbwaiter service ends at the same time. But there is an all-night Sloppy Joe across the corridor and north about fifty meters. No cooking in the rooms.”

“Thank you.”

“Do you want company? Straight arrow, left-hand drive, or versatile, all ages and sexes and catering only to high-class clientele.”

“Thanks again. I’m very tired.”

It was a room adequate for my needs; I didn’t mind its shabbiness. There was a single bed and a couch that opened out, and a refresher, small but with all the usual offices, and no water restriction—I promised myself a hot bath…later, later! A shelf bracket in the bed-sitting room seemed to have been intended for a communication terminal; now it was empty. Near it, let into the rock, was a brass plate:

In This Room on Tuesday 14 May 2075
Adam Selene, Bernardo de la Paz, Manuel Davis, and Wyoming Knott
Created the Plan That Gave Rise to Free Luna.
Here They Declared the Revolution!

I was not impressed. Yes, those four were heroes of the Revolution but in the year in which I buried Colin Campbell and created Richard Ames I had stayed in a dozen-odd hotel rooms in L-City; most of them had sported a similar sign. It was like the “Washington Slept Here” signs back in my native country: bait for tourists, any resemblance to truth a happy accident.

Not that I cared. I took off my foot, lay down on the couch, and tried to make my mind blank.

Gwen! Oh, damn, damn,
damn!

Had I been a stiff-necked fool? Perhaps. But, damn it all, there is a limit. I didn’t mind indulging Gwen in most things. It was all right to let her make decisions for both of us and I hadn’t squawked even when she did so without consulting me. But she should not encourage this pensioner to defy me—now should she? I should not have to put up with that. A man can’t live that way.

But I can’t live without her!

Not true, not true! Up until this week—hardly more than three days ago—you lived without her…and you can do without her now.

I can do without my missing foot, too. But I don’t like not having both feet and I’ll never get used to the loss. Sure, you can do without Gwen; you won’t die without her—but admit it, stupid: In the past thirty years you’ve been happy just this brief time, the hours since Gwen moved in and married you. Hours loaded with danger and blatant injustice and fighting and hardship, and it all mattered not a whit; you’ve been bubbling over with happiness simply because she was at your side.

And now you’ve sent her away.

Put on your stupid hat. Fasten it with rivets; you’ll never need to take it off again.

But I was
right!

So? What has being “right” got to do with staying married?

I must have slept (I was mortal tired), as I remember things that did not happen, nightmares—e.g., Gwen had been raped and killed in Bottom Alley. But rape is as scarce in Luna City as it is commonplace in San Francisco. Over eighty years since the last one and the groundhog who committed it didn’t last long enough to be eliminated; the men who responded to her screams tore him to pieces.

Later it was learned that she had screamed because he hadn’t paid her. This made no difference. To a Loonie a hooker is just as sacred in her person as is the Virgin Mary. I am a Loonie only by adoption but I agree deep in my heart. The
only
proper punishment for rape is death, forthwith, no appeal.

There used to be, dirtside, legal defenses called “diminished capacity” and “not guilty by reason of insanity.” These concepts would bewilder a Loonie. In Luna City a man would necessarily be of diminished mental capacity even to think about rape; to carry one out would be the strongest possible proof of insanity—but among Loonies such mental disorders would not gain a rapist any sympathy. Loonies do not psychoanalyze a rapist; they
kill
him. Now. Fast. Brutally.

San Francisco should learn from Loonies. So should every city where it is not safe for a woman to walk alone. In Luna our ladies are never afraid of men, be they family, friends, or strangers; in Luna men do not harm women—or they
die!

I had awakened sobbing in grief uncontrollable. Gwen was dead, Gwen had been raped and murdered and it was my fault!

Even when I had wakened wide enough to fit back into my proper continuity I was still bawling—I knew that it had been just a dream, a nasty nightmare…but my guilt feelings were undiminished. I had indeed failed to protect my darling. I had told her to leave me. “—start walking and don’t look back.” Oh, folly unplumbable!

What can I do about it?

Find her! Maybe she’ll forgive me. Women seem to have almost unlimited capacity for forgiveness. (Since it is usually a man who needs forgiveness, this must be a racial survival trait.)

But first I had to find her.

I felt overpowering need to go out and start searching—jump on my horse and gallop in all directions. But that is the classic case given in mathematics textbooks of how
not
to find someone who is lost. I had no idea of where to look for Gwen, but she just possibly might look for me by checking the Raffles—if she had second thoughts. If she did, I must be
here
, not out searching at random.

But I could improve the odds. Call the
Daily Lunatic
; place an advertisement—place more than one sort: a classified ad, a box ad, and—best!—a commercial spiel to go out on every terminal with the
Lunatic
’s hourly news bulletins.

If that doesn’t work, what will you do?

Oh, shut up and write the ad!

Gwen, Call me at the Raffles. Richard.

Gwen,
Please
call me! I’m at the Raffles. Love, Richard.

Dearest Gwen, For the sake of what we had,
please
call me. I’m at the Raffles. Love always, Richard.

Gwen, I was wrong. Let me try again. I’m at the Raffles. All my love, Richard.

I jittered over it, finally decided that number two was best—changed my mind; number four held more appeal. Changed it again—the simplicity of number two was better. Or even number one. Oh, hell, stupid, just place an ad! Ask her to call; if you have any chance of getting her back, she won’t boggle at how you word it.

Call it in from the hotel office? No, leave a note there, telling Gwen where you are going and why and what time you’ll be back and
please
wait…then hurry to the newspaper’s office and get it on the terminals at once—and into their next edition. Then hurry back.

So I put on my false foot, wrote out the note to leave at the desk, and grabbed my cane—and that split-second timing I have noticed too many times in my life again took place, a timing that impels me more than anything else to think that this crazy world is somehow planned, not chaos.

A knock at my door—

I hurried to open it. It was
she!
Glory hallelujah!

She seemed even smaller than I knew her to be, and all big round solemn eyes. She was carrying the little potted maple as if it were a love offering—perhaps it was. “Richard, will you let me come back? Please?”

All happening at once I took the little tree and put it on the floor and picked her up and closed the door and sat her on the couch myself beside her and we were crying sobs and tears and talking all mixed up together.

After a while we slowed and I shut up enough that I heard what she was saying: “I’m sorry Richard I was wrong I should have backed you but I was hurt and angry and too stinking proud to turn back and tell you so and when I did you were gone and I didn’t know
what
to do. Oh, God, darling, don’t ever let me leave you again; make me stay! You’re bigger than I am; if I ever get angry again and try to leave, pick me up and turn me around but
don’t
let me leave!”

“I won’t let you leave again, ever. I was wrong, dear; I should not have made an issue of it; that’s no way to love and cherish. I surrender, horse and foot. Make a pet out of Bill any way you like; I won’t say a word. Go ahead, spoil him rotten.”

“No, Richard, no! I was wrong. Bill needed a stem lesson and I should have backed you up and let you straighten him out. However—” Gwen unwound herself a little, reached for her purse, opened it. I said,

“Mind the alligator! Careful.”

She smiled for the first time. “Adele certainly took that hook, line and sinker.”

“Do you mean that there is
not
an alligator in there?”

“Goodness, sweetheart, do you think I’m eccentric?”

“Oh, Heaven forbid!”

“Just a mousetrap and her imagination. Here—” Gwen placed a wad of money, paper and metal, beside her on the couch. “I made Bill give it back. What he had left, I mean; he should have had three times as much. I’m afraid Bill is one of those weaklings who can’t carry money without spending it. I must figure out how to spank him for it till he learns better. In the meantime he can’t have
any
cash until he earns it.”

“As soon as he earns any money he should pay me ninety days’ air fee,” I put in. “Gwen, I really am vexed about that. Vexed at him, not at you. His attitude about paying for air. But I’m sorry as can be that I let it slop over onto you.”

“But you were
right
, dear. Bill’s attitude about paying for air reflects his wrong-headedness in general. So I’ve discovered. We sat in Old Dome and discussed many things. Richard, Bill has the socialist disease in its worst form; he thinks the world owes him a living. He told me sincerely—smugly!—that
of course
everyone was entitled to the best possible medical and hospital service—free of course, unlimited of course, and of course the government should pay for it. He couldn’t even understand the mathematical impossibility of what he was demanding. But it’s not just free air and free therapy, Bill honestly believes that anything
he
wants must be possible…and should be free.” She shivered. “I couldn’t shake his opinion on
anything
.”

“‘The Road Song of the Bandar-Log
.
’”

“Excuse me?”

“From a poet a couple of centuries back, Rudyard Kipling. The bandar-log—apes, they were—believed that anything was possible just by wishing it so.”

“Yes, that’s Bill. In all seriousness he explains how things
should
be…then it’s up to the government to make it happen. Just pass a law. Richard, he thinks of ‘the government’ the way a savage thinks of idols. Or—No, I don’t know, I don’t understand how his mind works. We talked at each other but we didn’t reach each other. He
believes
his nonsense. Richard, we made a mistake—or I did. We should not have rescued Bill.”

“Wrong, honey girl.”

“No, dear. I thought I could rehabilitate him. I was wrong.”

“That’s not how I meant you were wrong. Remember the rats?”

“Oh.”

“Don’t sound so miserable. We took Bill with us because each of us was afraid that, if we didn’t, he would be killed, possibly eaten alive by rats. Gwen, we both knew the hazards of picking up stray kittens, we both understood the concept ‘Chinese obligation.’ We did it anyhow.” I tilted up her chin, kissed her. “And we would again, this very minute. Knowing the price.”