Cat Country (31 page)

I couldn’t guard them any more, for I suddenly realised that if I watched over them much longer I would go out of my mind. Should I leave them? The thought of this possibility caused those tears I had not yet shed to fall like rain. Alone on this vast planet, where was I to go? It was much more painful to have to give up two friends and go off wandering alone than it had been to leave Earth on my voyage to Mars. The loneliness of being a stranger in a foreign land is always difficult to bear at best, but how much more painful it would be now that my departure from Cat Country would be caused by the death of two good friends! Their death would pursue me wherever I went. After crying for I don’t know how long, I clasped them in my arms and sobbed, ‘Revery, Young Scorpion, goodbye!’

I didn’t have the time to bury them. I felt that if I wasted another second I would never be able to leave. Gritting my teeth, I picked up my revolver and ran out. After I was some distance from the dilapidated little house, I turned and looked back. I decided not to return; even though their corpses would rot, I could not go back. Then I began castigating myself. What a jinx I was! The friend who had come with me from Earth had died here, and now I had to see my two Martian friends end like this. I ought never to make another friend!

Where would I go? Back to Cat City, of course; that was my only home. I didn’t see anyone along the way. Everything was shrouded in death. The sky was grey, and several soldiers lay stretched out along the grey-yellow road, white-tailed hawks devouring their bodies. The scavengers flew up and down like graceful dancers, punctuating their movements with shrill shrieks. Revery’s smile was suddenly before my eyes, and Young Scorpion’s favourite words and phrases began to echo in my ears. I started running – they were still pursuing me!

My heart was beating furiously as I neared Cat City. Was it from hope or fear? I couldn’t have said. There was no one around when I arrived. On the street, one here another there, lay the bodies of several women, mute reminders that the soldiers had come through. ‘The flowers have all run away!’ It was almost as though I heard Revery’s voice in my ear telling me of the fate of the rest of Young Scorpion’s women. Yes, they must have indeed run off; otherwise, they would have been killed by the soldiers and I would have discovered their bodies among the others. I didn’t have time to look things over too carefully, but just kept on running straight ahead until I reached the spot where Hawk’s head was displayed. He was still there guarding the empty city! The flesh on the head had already been completely pecked away by the birds, and now he had become the soul of this dead city. Next I went to Young Scorpion’s place. There was nothing there. Even the walls had been broken through in two places. I wanted something, no matter how small, as a souvenir of Young Scorpion, but the soldiers had not left any of his possessions. There was nothing left, and the empty shell of the place was enough to move me to tears. I just had to leave.

I went off to the east, for I knew the refugees must have fled in that direction. I turned around for a last look at a dead city standing alone in a vast expanse of grey. I went in the direction of Old Scorpion’s reverie forest, for this was the route I was most familiar with. The little village that I remembered from the last time I had passed through was completely empty now – another mute reminder of the passage of soldiers.

There was no one in the reverie forest when I arrived. I sat under a tree and rested for a while, and then I felt I had to go on, forced by loneliness to keep moving. I went down to the sandy beach where I had so often bathed. Through the mists I saw a man walking towards me from the west. I guessed that perhaps a turning point in the struggle had arrived so that the people were now returning to Cat City. Every little while another person appeared. Gradually I made out that they were rich people accompanied by soldiers. As I sat resting and watching on the bank of the river, more and more people began to appear. The people who had soldiers under them seemed to be racing each other as if there were some reward to be gained once they reached their goal.

It went on like this for a while, and then before I realised what was happening, the soldiers started fighting on the road. The rich people started giving instructions to their troops, and the whole thing took on the aspect of a formal battle, leaving me even more bewildered than before. Furthermore, when the Cat People fought, it was never very easy to distinguish between victor and vanquished. They simply set upon each other with wooden clubs, but it was only very seldom that one of them would be knocked down, for they spent much more time in circling around each other than they did in swinging their clubs. A ducks B, and B ducks A so that unless A or B becomes careless, there is little chance of one of the clubs finding its mark. As time dragged on, they still circled each other in an increasingly chaotic mass. Moreover, the distance between opponents became greater and greater. One of the groups, however, seemed to be moving forward at the same time that it was circling. Their leader probably wanted to take advantage of the confusion to move his troops forward a bit and thus gain an edge over his competitors so that he would be closer to his goal when the battle was all over. As this group neared the river, I recognised their leader: Old Scorpion! I should have known, for Old Scorpion was, after all, the master strategist of Cat Country. Before long he had circled his troops around until they were all up front. And just as I had anticipated, when they were all clear of the melee, they bolted off towards Cat City.

My opportunity had arrived. I took off towards Old Scorpion like an arrow and actually succeeded in catching up with him. He seemed very pleased to see me, but at the same time he didn’t seem too anxious to talk. He was too busy galloping towards Cat City. Panting for all I was worth, I ran beside him and asked him what he was up to.

‘Follow me! Please follow me!’ He panted in the most sincere and imploring of tones. ‘The enemy is approaching Cat City. Perhaps they’ve already gone through. I’m not sure!’

I was most pleased with his words, for I thought that he and his men were probably rushing to the defence of Cat City now they were utterly convinced that there was no alternative but to fight. And yet I couldn’t help wondering why, if they were all uniting to meet the enemy, they had staged a civil war along the way? There must be something more to it. I told Old Scorpion that unless he told me what he was up to, I wouldn’t go with him.

He seemed unwilling to let the cat out of the bag, but at the same time he desperately wanted my help. Since he was familiar with my disposition, he had no choice but to tell me the truth.

‘We’re going to surrender. Whoever gets to Cat City first will have the honour of turning it over to the enemy, and you can be sure that there’ll be no shortage of official positions for whoever gets to do that!’

I pointed towards the city and said, ‘Go right ahead, but I’ll be damned if I have any time to waste on helping you surrender!’ Not taking the time to say another word to him, I turned and headed back towards the reverie forest.

The soldiers to the rear, having apparently profited by Old Scorpion’s example, also began jockeying forward as they fought. Among them I recognised the leader of the Red Cord Corps. An exceedingly thick red cord still tied about his neck, he was struggling forward with phenomenal energy in order to be the first to surrender.

Just at that point, all activity came to a sudden halt up front. I turned around and saw that the enemy had arrived, and were in direct confrontation with Old Scorpion. Now that really did capture my interest, for I wanted to see exactly how he would surrender. I ran towards Old Scorpion’s troops.

All of the leaders behind me dashed forward too. The leader of the Red Cord Corps was especially fast and even got ahead of Old Scorpion to kneel at the feet of the enemy. Then, one after another, all of the leaders knelt down in submission. It reminded me very much of a group of filial sons and duteous grandsons kneeling before a coffin in an extended family back home in the old days.

This was the first time that I had seen the enemy army. In stature, most of them were a bit shorter than the Cat People, and judging from their facial expressions, they weren’t too bright. They all looked mean and vicious. Since I knew nothing of their history or national character, I had no real basis upon which to judge them, but my first impression was that they were stupid, mean and cruel. Each of them carried a short stick that looked as though it were made of steel, but I couldn’t see clearly enough to tell what these sticks were intended for.

When all of the cat-leaders were kneeling, one of the short enemy who was obviously an officer gave a signal, and a row of soldiers sprang forward with great dexterity from the rear of the enemy ranks. They tapped the cat-leaders on the heads with their short clubs. The latter immediately lowered their heads, shivered, and then collapsed, lifeless on the ground. Were the clubs electrified? I couldn’t tell. The cat-soldiers to the rear, upon seeing their surrendered leaders all killed, let out a cry. It was a cry that sounded as though it had come from ten million roosters each of which had felt the cold steel of the butcher’s knife against his neck. They ran to the rear almost faster, it seemed, than the sound of the cry that they had just issued. A great number of them lost their footing in the press and were trampled to death. The enemy did not even bother to pursue them. They merely kicked aside the bodies of the leaders they had just killed and continued advancing.

I thought of what Young Scorpion had said, ‘The enemy won’t be satisfied until they have killed every last one of us!’

But I still cherished one last scrap of hope for the Cat People. The circumstances were, in a way, now favourable for their salvation, for they had never before faced the situation in which they now found themselves: they would be murdered whether they resisted or not. Could that situation fail to stir them to a united resistance? If they banded together, I thought it unlikely that the enemy would be able to destroy them. I, myself, am a pacifist, but my reading of history has taught me that war is sometimes the only means of self preservation. When there is no other way, it becomes the duty of every individual to go to the front and, if need be, die. Chauvinism is a despicable thing, but self-preservation is a duty of nature.

I began to convince myself that after suffering this latest horror, the Cat People would certainly be shocked into putting their backs to the wall and fighting until the last man. And if they actually did so, I didn’t think the enemy would necessarily be able to defeat them. I began to follow the enemy army. I noticed that as they advanced, they were finishing off those cat-soldiers who were too wounded to get away. One touch of that short club and it was all over. As far as I could see, these short enemy soldiers were not people of high cultural accomplishment, though perhaps they were ever so slightly in advance of the Cat People. If nothing else, they had one thing over the Cat People – a sense of national consciousness. Of course, national consciousness is only an enlargement of individual selfishness, but an enlargement all the same. The Cat People, on the other hand, had never been aware of anything beyond their petty individual existences.

Fortunately, when I had set out for the front with Young Scorpion, I had taken along a supply of reverie leaves, otherwise I certainly would have starved, for begging food of the enemy was unthinkable. I followed the main body of the short enemy troops at a distance. I didn’t dare get too close to them, for they might well have captured me as a spy. They continued marching until they came to the spot where my spacecraft had crashed. Then they fell out for a rest. I kept an eye on them from a distance. The craft seemed to have aroused their interest. That was another point of difference between them and the Cat People: at least they had cultivated the habit of being curious about new things. I thought once more of my childhood friend. His unburied bones were doubtless being trampled to splinters by the enemy host.

After they had rested for a while, a group of them began digging, working with amazing speed. In appearance they were stupid and clumsy, but when they had set their minds to do something, apparently they got right to it with no sign of hesitation or torpor. Nor was there anything slipshod about the way they approached their task. Before long they had completed digging a deep, broad pit. A bit later, a group of Cat People appeared from the east. Several of the short enemy soldiers were behind them, driving them forward like a flock of sheep. When they neared the pit, the soldiers who had been resting after the dig stood and surrounded them. The enemy crowded the Cat People into the pit. The shrieks and cries of the Cat People were enough to shatter a heart made of steel. But the hearts of the enemy must have been even harder than that, for they went right on prodding the Cat People into the pit with their steel clubs.

Among the Cat People were men, women and even mothers clasping babies to their breasts. The pain which such a sight occasioned in me defies all description, and yet there was absolutely nothing I could do to save them. I closed my eyes, but I shall always remember those heart-rending shrieks. I can hear them even now. The screaming died away abruptly, and when I opened my eyes, I saw those short little enemy beasts busily throwing earth into the hole. The Cat People buried alive! This then was their punishment for failing to make themselves strong. I didn’t know upon what object I ought to vent my hatred. And yet I had learned something from all of this, whatever consolation that was worth. People who don’t consider themselves as people will not be treated as people by others. The unchecked selfish desires of each individual are enough to cause countless compatriots to suffer the barbarous punishment of being buried alive!

If I were to describe everything that I saw that day, I would weep myself blind, for those short enemy soldiers were the cruellest people I had ever seen. The destruction of Cat Country was now complete, I even doubt that very many of their flies were left.