Norton, Andre - Anthology (10 page)

 
          
 
"Try leaving out a saucer of milk."

 
          
 
In the Lands of Men the moon is full each
month. And each month for many years Tybalt was to walk soft-pawed down the
ways to the room where Cathy waited for him in the moonlight. For Cathy never
forgot, and Tybalt honored his promise, although, as he would say if
questioned, he was not overfond of milk.

 
          
 
As for why he went at all, Tybalt had a cat's
answer.

 
          
 
"I am a cat and all places are alike to
me," said Tybalt, Prince of Cats. "But some places are more alike
than others.

 
          
 
"And she was kind to cats," he would
always add with a cat's smile, which may mean much or little. "She was
very kind to cats."

            
Heather Gladney is
the author of the Teot's War series. She has a degree in pomology, which
enables her to work in menial jobs to help support her writing career. When not
around a nursery, she is likely to be found in the company of wild and exciting
men, but still finds time to write. She lives with two cats, a blue-eyed
Siamese and a 22-pound Maine Coon.

            
Don Clayton is a
native Southern Californian, but is not holistic, vegetarian, nor does he own a
hot tub. The bulk of his writing can be found in legal documents, but he enjoys
very much the opportunity to indulge in his love of science fiction and fantasy
with his friends. He rooms with a humanoid, Theresa Brooks, and currently six
felinoids: Vicious, Demon, Black and Blue, R. K., and Anastasia (who named
herself).

Alan Rice Osborn is a Ph.D candidate in geography at the
University
of
Oregon
. He has published short stories and poetry,
as well as articles on fungal disease and alternative

medicine. He was
nominated for the 1995 Rhysling Award
 
for science fiction poetry. His primary
felines are Gilbert, who sings, Sullivan, who is going bald, and Tigerlil,
a.k.a. "The Mad Rabbit.”

 
          
 
Impossible fingers extended, bent, and moved
forward into the chest cavity. "The heart muscle is exposed." The
voice was authoritative, each syllable clipped. "At this point the patient
would normally be on full support." Fingernails sharpened, narrowed,
spread, and gripped.

 
          
 
Doctor Mary Rose Henderly had a reputation.
With the coming of VR operating theaters, a new class of surgeons had invented
themselves, a fusion of miniaturist, mechanic, programmer, surfer, and
lacemaker. Getting respect in this company said something about surgical style.
Mary had fans in the industry.

 
          
 
Rather than using the usual armamentarium,
Mary created a cartoonlike environment where the parts of her virtual body
could become bone saws, catheters, suction tubes, syringes, and clamps. It led
her to demand new tools and reinvent old ones. On one memorable occasion she
startled her coworkers when she appeared to become a Chinese pagoda. Flying
buttresses became ornate spiderlike arms wielding scalpels and clamps, while
miniature bath attendants, clothed in surgical greens, sponged during a lengthy
artery rebuilding.

 
          
 
In a real-time operation, banks of microtools
would be delicately deployed. They were idle now. This latest simulation was an
operation she'd performed many times. As usual, biotelemetry and commentary
were recorded for use by the tech staff. She hated that—her tapes tended to get
pirated and played at inappropriate times. Bootlegs of her comments during a
reconstruction on the C4 and C5 vertebrae, which contained the spinal nerves to
the groin, had enlivened a number of parties, and caused intense speculation on
which elected official had such interesting problems. She'd created tapeworms
to search and destroy that one, but there were still encrypted copies
circulating on the Nets.

 
          
 
She caught a sudden motion out of the corner
of her eye. ''We've got company," she snapped. She shifted her frame of
reference, but it was gone. What she did see was dreadfully familiar.
"Vicious little—no, we're losing it." Snow blurred the edges of her
imposed reality, and white-noise interference reached inward. "Too late.
Nice new cage, guys—that's definitely a Mouse. Just like every other damn time.
The edges of the imagery are collapsing." Her visuals grayed and faded.

 
          
 
A disembodied voice came from the ceiling, and
through Mary's headset, "Can you advise as to the cause of system
failure?"

 
          
 
She resisted the impulse to hurl the VR helmet
away. Her equipment wasn't the problem. She had little patience left for stupid
questions. Or the tech staff's deadend simulations. “Tighter cages," she
growled, "and smarter Mice."

 
          
 
Slamming the lab door didn't help. She stormed
down the corridor, avoided the elevator, and took the stairs a stomp at a time
up to her office on the second floor. She thumped down on her office's VR couch
and threw herself into her favorite aggression-release environment: A dimly-lit
place where each skittering, scattering, skulking, furry thing made a
satisfying crunch under her cleats. She'd created the place especially for
times like this.

 
          
 
Her breathing became more relaxed. She shifted
to monitor the lab techs' most recent variant of her simulation. Sometimes a
Mouse showed up during a test, sometimes it didn't. As usual, there was no
pattern. Despite the exaggerated promises from downstairs, their stats were
dismal. Their latest cage was no more effective. Depressing.

 
          
 
When she finally dropped out of the Nets, it
was late. The building was dark; everybody had left but the lab staff. They
were still downstairs with Lenny Houge, the operations director, trying vainly
to justify their existence. Mary was starving, but she didn't want fast food.
She knew where to get real cooking, and a sympathetic ear.

 
          
 
"Bev? Mary. I'm sorry, it's been a while,
but listen, have you eaten yet? I've had a day that could etch glass.

 
          
 
Can I come over? I can bring something or .. .
Thanks. I need to talk to somebody. Somebody who doesn't have a cunning plan to
waste my time on."

 
          
 
Mary's opinion of her sister's neighborhood
hadn't changed: call a SWAT team and get out the body armor. Even the junkies
moved out, she thought. Find a better street, Bev. She knew that wouldn't
happen. The house had belonged to their parents. It was big, it was cheap, and
it was comfortable. Mary was just afraid the place was going to end up a
statistic.

 
          
 
Beverly
had learned to be frugal after their
parents died. She'd left school to keep them going after the insurance money
ran out. She'd made Mary's education possible. Mary felt guilty about it, which
annoyed
Beverly
. She'd been trying to convince Mary for
years that she wasn't a martyr—she made fun of it. Mary knew better. Whenever
she came back to her parents' house, she remembered it all too well. She hated
coming back. Surgeons hate places where things have died.

 
          
 
At least the inside was different now. Off the
street and up the cracked concrete steps, the door opened into what was
definitely the home of an accountant. No other profession breeds such
obsessively organized rooms.
Beverly
's rooms were always ready to act as
gracious vid backdrops for her professional consultations. Even during lean
times, she would go without lunch for a week to buy a vase "a shelf just
cried out for." These days she had expanding collections of curios. They
were all meticulously labeled and cased against the careless depredations of
various interested cats.

 
          
 
Mary's own apartment contained three pieces of
furniture, bare walls and t>are-floors. She liked it that way.

 
          
 
"Let me punt Dickens,"
Beverly
said at the door, doing a reflexive foot
slide to contain the cat. It wasn't working.

 
          
 
'Thanks for having me over." Mary helped
her form part of a human wall to block the door. "I don't know what I'd
have done if I had to go thaw dinner alone."

 
          
 
Beverly
finally scooped up the cat. "I've been
meaning to have you over for a while anyway. I found a new way to torture
Dickens while I cook. Found an old incubator in a thrift store—you know, the
clear polymer containers with the rubber-sleeved holes on the side for your
arms to go in? I've taken to cutting meat inside while Dickens dances around on
top trying to find a way in,"

 
          
 
Mary smiled. "So I'm not the only one
with the experimental spirit." Mary enjoyed watching her sister's
relationship with a furry roommate, but she knew her own schedule would never
allow her to adopt one of her own.

 
          
 
"Dickens is such an inventive
beast."
Beverly
draped the cat over her shoulder. He looked perfectly harmless, except
for the rakish tilt of his whiskers. Purring, he squinted his eyes nearly shut,
looking at Mary. Mary often brought crab puffs and shrimp bits and other feline
delectables. "The little brat reminded me of it. I originally thought it
up back when I was taking care of six of them—the brutes were stealing from my
cutting board fore and aft. But I couldn't find a box like this until now!
Think of it—a cow aquarium."

 
          
 
"Steak-in-the-box," Mary said
solemnly. The cat blinked at her, and yawned widely, stretching and sprawling
in
Beverly
's grip. His pink paw bobbed in the air as
she walked away from Mary.

 
          
 
"Now," said
Beverly
, "How badly do you need something to
drink? Wine? Or something heavier? Something with paper umbrellas? I think I
have a hollowed-out coconut somewhere . . . Paper hats, helium balloons? No?
Martini, shaken, not stirred? Hey, I've got a bottle of Sambucco that creates
its own gravity .." she trailed off.

 
          
 
Mary settled heavily into an overstuffed sofa.
"Scotch will do. I'm free for a couple of days until they can reprogram
the simulator, and I have every intention of getting a decent night's sleep.
Even if it's passed out on your floor."

 
          
 
"Oh, nooo, you can't!" said
Beverly
in mock horror. "I haven't mopped it
yet!" She put Dickens down on the shining parquet, brought Mary her drink,
and sat down, elbows on knees, on the ottoman across from her. "You sound
dreadful. Can you tell me what happened?"

 
          
 
Mary stared absently at a print
Beverly
knew she hated. Her tone was flat. "We
tried something today. I thought it might finally work. It didn't. If it'd been
for real, I'd have lost a patient."

 
          
 
"Do you know yet what went wrong?"

 
          
 
"Mice." Enunciating deliberately,
Mary said, "They're called Mice. We have the most sophisticated equipment
in medical history, decades of research, countless billions of credits, and
Mice come along and degrade the code. They can destroy even the most secured
realities. Stupid, repulsive, little make-believe Mice."

 
          
 
Beverly
shook her head. "Shocking attitude—I
can hear Walt Disney spinning in his grave. I've never heard about Mice."

 
          
 
Mary snorted. "I'm not surprised. Not
really a feature they want advertised. Bureaucrats." Both of them were
silent for a moment. Mary went on, "Did you ever use a PC?"

 
          
 
"A what?"

 
          
 
"A 'personal computer.' You remember from
science class? No Net, no VR, just a box with a little flat info-screen and
wiggly lines and stuff? Okay, well, they used a pointing device to move around
the screen. It was small, it was gray, it had a cable like a tail, so they
called it a 'mouse.' You used to see them up until twenty years ago. They were
used in the initial setup of the Nets."