The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (39 page)

“Not that long. I’ve thought it over.”

He grinned. “Good. Put up your right hand. Repeat after me—”

“No.”

“‘No’ what?”

“Just ‘No.’ I didn’t order this foot.”

“So? Your wife did. Don’t you think you ought to pay for it?”

“And since I did not order it and do not choose to be pushed around by you—” I again shoved that foot in his face, just barely missing that ugly nose. “Cut it off.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. Cut it off; put it back in stock. Teena. Are you there?”

“Sure thing, Richard.”

“Where is Hazel? How can I find her? Or will you tell her where I am?”

“I’ve told her. She says to wait.”

“Thank you, Teena.” Hubert and I sat, saying nothing, ignoring each other. Minerva had disappeared; Galahad was pretending to be alone. But in scant seconds my darting came bursting in—luckily that wall was open.

“Lazarus! God damn your lousy soul to hell! What do you
mean
by interfering?”

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears that this is true.”

JAMES BRANCH CABELL
1879-1958

“Now, Hazel—”

“‘Now, Hazel’ my tired arse! Answer me! What are you doing, messing around in my bailiwick? I told you to lay off, I warned you. I
said
that it was a delicate negotiation. But the first minute I turn my back—leaving him safe in the arms of Minerva with Galahad to back her up—I leave to run an errand…and what do I find?
You!
Butting in, thumb-fingered and ham-handed as usual, destroying my careful groundwork.”

“Now, Sadie—”

“Bloody! Lazarus, what is this compulsion that makes you lie and cheat? Why can’t you be honest most of the time? And where do you get this nasty itch to interfere? Not from Maureen; that’s certain. Answer me. God damn it!—before I tear off your head and stuff it down your throat!”

“Gwen, I was simply trying to clear the—”

My darling interrupted with such a blast of colorful and imaginative profanity that I hesitate to try to record it because I can’t do it justice; my memory is not perfect. It was somewhat like “Change the Sacred Name of Arkansas” but more lyrical. She did this in a high chant that minded me of some pagan priestess praying at sacrifice—human sacrifice with Dr. Hubert the victim.

While Hazel was sounding off, three women came in through that open wall. (More than that number of men looked in but backed away hastily; I suspect that they did not want to be present while Dr. Hubert was being scalped.) The three women were all beauties but not at all alike.

One was a blonde as tall as I am or taller, a Norse goddess so perfect as to be utterly unlikely. She listened, shook her head sorrowfully, then faded back into the garden and was gone. The next was another redhead whom I mistook at first for either Laz or Lor—then I saw that she was…not older, exactly, but more mature. She was unsmiling.

I looked at her again and felt that I had it figured out: She had to be the older sister of Laz and Lor—and Dr. Hubert was father (brother?) of all of them…which explained how Dr. Hubert was this “Lazarus” that I had heard of again and again but had not seen—except that I had, once, in Iowa.

The third was a little china doll—porcelain china, not Xia-type China—not much over a hundred and fifty centimeters of her and perhaps forty kilos, with the ageless beauty of Queen Nefertiti. My darling paused for breath and this little elf whistled loudly and clapped. “Great going. Hazel! I’m in your corner.”

Hubert-Lazarus said, “Hilda, don’t encourage her.”

“And why not? You’ve been caught with your hand in the cookie jar, or Hazel would not be so boiling; that’s certain. I know her, I know you—want to bet?”

“I did nothing. I simply tried to implement a previously settled policy that Hazel needed help on.”

The tiny woman covered her eyes and said, “Dear Lord, forgive him; he’s at it again.” The redhead said gently, “Woodrow, just what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Woodrow.”

“I tell you, I did nothing to justify her diatribe. I was having a civilized discussion with Colonel Campbell when—” He broke off.

“Well, Woodrow?”

“We disagreed.”

The computer spoke up. “Maureen, do you want to know why they disagreed? Shall I play back this soi-disant ‘civilized discussion’?”

Lazarus said, “Athene, you are not to play back. That was a private discussion.”

I said quickly, “I don’t agree. She can certainly play back what I said.”

“No. Athene, that’s an order.”

The computer answered, “Rule One: I work for Ira, not for you. You yourself settled that when I was first activated. Do I ask Ira to adjudicate this? Or do I play back that half of the discussion that belongs to my bridegroom?”

Lazarus-Hubert looked astounded. “Your
what?
”

“My fiancé, if you want to split rabbits. But in the near tomorrow when I put on my ravishingly beautiful body. Colonel Campbell will stand up in front of you and exchange vows with me for our family. So you see, Lazarus, you were trying to bully my betrothed as well as Hazel’s benedict. We can’t have that. No indeedy. You had better back down and apologize…instead of trying to bluster your way out of it. You can’t, you know; you’ve been caught cold. Not only did I hear what you said, but Hazel also heard every word.”

Lazarus looked still more annoyed. “Athene, you relayed a private conversation?”

“You did not place it under privacy. Contrariwise, Hazel did place a monitor request on Richard. All kosher, so don’t try to pull any after-the-fact rule on me. Lazarus, take the advice of the only friend you have whom you can’t cheat and who loves you in spite of your evil ways, namely me: Cut your losses, pal, and sweet-talk your way out. Make the last hundred meters on your belly and maybe Richard will let you start over. He’s not hard to get along with. Pet him, and he purrs, just like that kitten.” (I had Pixel in my lap, petting him, he having climbed my old leg, driving pitons as he went—I lost some blood but not enough to require transfusion.) “Ask Minerva. Ask Galahad. Ask Gretchen or Xia. Ask Laz or Lor. Ask
anybody
.”

(I decided to ask Teena—privately—to fill me in on gaps in my memory. Or would that be wise?) Lazarus said, “I never intended to offend you. Colonel. If I spoke too bluntly, I’m sorry.”

“Forget it.”

“Shake on it?”

“All right.” I put out my hand, he took it. He gave a good grip, with no attempt to set a bonecrusher. He looked me in the eye and I felt his warmth. The bastich is hard to dislike—when he tries.

My darling said, “Hang on to your wallet, dear; I’m still going to drag this out onto the floor.”

“Really, is it necessary?”

“It is. You’re new here, darling. Lazarus can steal the socks off your feet without taking off your shoes, sell them back to you, make you think you got a bargain—then steal your shoes when you sit down to put your socks on, and you’ll end up thanking him.”

Lazarus said, “Now, Hazel—”

“Shut up. Friends and family, Lazarus tried to coerce Richard into signing up blind for Operation Galactic Overlord by trying to make him feel guilty over that replacement foot. Lazarus implied that Richard was a deadbeat who was trying to run out on his debts.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“I told you to shut up. You did mean that. Friends and family, my new husband comes from a culture in which debts are sacred. Their national motto is ‘There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.’ TANSTAAFL is embroidered on their flag. In Luna—the Luna of Richard’s time line; not this one—a man might cut your throat but he would die before he would welch on a debt to you. Lazarus
knew
this, so he went straight for that most sensitive spot and jabbed it. Lazarus pitted his more than two thousand years of experience, his widest knowledge of cultures and human behavior, against a man of much less than a century of experience and that little only in his own solar system and time line. It was not a fair fight and Lazarus knew it. Grossly unfair. Like pitting that kitten against an old wildcat.”

I was sitting near Lazarus, having remained seated after that silly foot examination. I had my head down, ostensibly to play with the kitten, but in fact to avoid looking at Lazarus—or at anyone—as I was finding Hazel’s insistence on airing everything quite disturbing. Embarrassing.

In consequence I was looking down at my own feet and at his. Did I mention that Lazarus was barefooted? I had paid it no mind because one thing one becomes used to at once on Tertius is the absence of compelling dress customs. I don’t mean absence of dress (Boondock sells more clothes than any groundhog city of similar size—about a million people—in part because garments are usually worn once, then recycled).

I do mean that neither bare feet nor bare bodies are startling for more than five minutes. Lazarus was wearing a wrap-around, a lava-lava or it may have been a kilt; his feet I did not notice until I stared at them.

Hazel went on, “Lazarus took such cruel advantage of Richard’s weak point—his compulsive hatred of being in debt—that Richard demanded that his new foot be amputated. In desperate need to cleanse his honor he said to Lazarus, ‘Cut it off; put it back in stock’!”

Lazarus said, “Oh, come now! He did not mean that seriously, and I did not take it seriously. A figure of speech. To show that he was annoyed with me. As well he might be. I made a mistake; I admit it.”

“You did indeed make a mistake!” I interrupted. “A grave mistake. Your grave perhaps, or mine. For it was
not
a figure of speech. I want that foot amputated. I demand that you take back your foot.
Your
foot, sir! Look here, all of you, and then look there! At my right foot, then his right foot.”

Anyone who bothered to look could not fail to see what I meant. Four masculine feet—Three were clearly from the same genes: Lazarus’s two feet and my new foot. The fourth was the foot I was born with; it matched the other three only in size, not in skin color, texture, hairiness, or any detail.

When Lazarus had dunned me for the cost of that transplant, it had offended me. But this new discovery, that Lazarus himself was the anonymous donor, that I had been made the unwitting recipient of his charity for the foot itself, the very meat and bone of it, was intolerable.

I glared at Lazarus. “Doctor, behind my back and utterly without my consent you placed me under unbearable obligation.
I
will not tolerate it!
” I was shaking with anger.

“Richard, Richard! Please!” Hazel seemed about to cry.

And I, too. That red-haired older lady hurried to me, bent over me and gathered my head to her motherly breasts, cuddled me and said, “No, Richard, no! You must not feel this way.”

We left later that day. But we stayed for dinner; we did not run away angry.

Hazel and Maureen (the darling older lady who had comforted me) between them managed to convince me that hospital and surgery charges need not fret me because Hazel had plenty of the needful on deposit in a local bank—which Teena confirmed—and Hazel could and would cover my bills if it became appropriate to change the charge under which I was hospitalized. (I thought about asking my darling to reassign the charges right then, through Teena. But I decided not to crowd her about it. Damn it, “tanstaafl” is a basic truth, but “beggars can’t be choosers” is true, too—and at that moment I was a beggar. (Never a good bargaining position.)

As for the foot itself, by invariant local custom “spare parts” (hands and feet and hearts and kidneys, etc.) were not bought or sold; there was only a service and handling charge billed with the cost of surgery.

Galahad confirmed this. “We do it that way to avoid a black market. I could show you planets where there is indeed a black market, where a matching liver might mean a matching murder—but not here. Lazarus himself set up this rule, more than a century ago. We buy and sell everything else…but we don’t traffic in human beings or pieces of human beings.”

Galahad grinned at me. “But there is another reason why you should not fret. You had no say in the matter when a team of us hemstitched that foot to your stump; everybody knows that. But also everybody knows you can’t get rid of it…unless you want to tackle it with your own jackknife. Because I won’t cut it off. You won’t find a surgeon anywhere on Tertius who will. Union rules, you know, and professional courtesy.”

He added, “But if you do decide to hack it off yourself, do please invite me; I want to watch.” He said that with a straight face and Maureen scolded him for it. I’m not certain that he was joking.

Nevertheless detente involved a major change in Hazel’s plans. Lazarus was correct in saying that all he had been trying to do was to implement a previously agreed-on plan. But it had been further agreed that Hazel (not Lazarus) was to implement the plan.

Hazel could have managed it, but Lazarus could not. Lazarus could never sell it to me because I thought the whole thing was ridiculous. On the other hand, if Hazel really wants something from me, I stand about as much chance of holding out as—well, as Jinx Henderson has of refusing a request from his daughter Gretchen.

But Lazarus couldn’t see that.

I think Lazarus suffers from a compulsion to be the biggest frog in any pond. He expects to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral…while pretending that he has no ambitions—just a barefoot country boy with straw in his hair and manure between his toes.

If you think that I am not overly fond of Lazarus Long, I won’t argue.

That plan was pretty much as Lazarus had described it. Hazel had expected that I would join her in the Time Corps, and had planned for me to be rejuvenated—systemic rejuvenation to biological age eighteen; cosmetic rejuvenation, my choice. While this was going on I was to be taught Galacta, study multiverse history at least for several time lines, and, after rejuvenation, again take military training of several sorts until I became a walking angel of death, armed or unarmed.

When she judged that I was ready, she planned for us to carry out Task Adam Selene of Operation Galactic Overlord.