Norton, Andre - Anthology (29 page)

 
          
 
Miko thought most of her cats were bulimic.
Professor Purr thought they ate too much.

 
          
 
"You know what happens to cat
haters?" Sorscha enjoyed tormenting David. "I've heard rumors of
their being buried alive ... in very large litter boxes. Used litter
boxes."

 
          
 
He didn't bother answering her. The cats
didn't read human thoughts (he hoped); or they at least required spoken words
to focus on the message. However the magic worked, Miko frequently admonished
him, "Be careful!"

 
          
 
"Professor Purr says I'm essential to his
work," David told Miko on this fine Monday. The sky was clear blue; and
before entering the house he'd enjoyed a cool breeze bringing with it a hint of
catnip in the air. At least he wasn't allergic to that.

 
          
 
"Sorscha likes to tease you," said
Miko, carefully extracting herself from the cat. "I must get supplies.
You'll be all right, won't you, David?" He nodded as she looked for an
exposed patch of flesh on his head she could kiss.

 
          
 
"You won't forget the shrimp?"
called out Luna.

 
          
 
"And the chicken?" added Zhadi.

 
          
 
"I won't forget the litter either,"
Miko assured them as she hurried out the door. In the good old days, David
would have plopped down on the couch right now, after dumping whatever cat was
in his way. Hell, in the good old days he'd beat a retreat out of here as fast
as his feet could carry him. But that was before cats could talk. To people.

 
          
 
Sorscha was curled up on top of a plush chair,
nose nestled in the fur of her tail as she stared at him. During the first
months, she'd hightailed it out of a room if David walked in; a habit from her
old days of being raised as a feral street cat. Now she could enjoy the New
World Order, a very big idea narrowing down to how much David Lawrence
Alexander hated to be stared at for any length of time. So she stared, and then
stared some more.

 
          
 
They hadn't completely taken his spirit yet.
He deliberately "accidentally" bumped the chair on a pass with the
vacuum cleaner, eliciting a sharp growl from Sorscha. His face mask covered a
smile of satisfaction as he mumbled a perfunctory apology.

 
          
 
"Watch it, chubby," hissed Sorscha
in reply.

 
          
 
He started to laugh and stopped himself. It
wouldn't do to laugh at them or lose his mask. But it was funny that one of
Miko's cats would comment on excess pounds on his frame when some of them could
pass for small planetoids caught in Earth's gravitational field.

 
          
 
He kept vacuuming and enjoyed the spectacle of
one of the spherical cats coming to his rescue. "Mellow out,
Sorscha," snapped Zhadi, looking to David exactly like a Dakin stuffed
toy. She gazed up at David from her seat on the couch, adoration in her round
yellow-green eyes. Her love of men made no distinctions.

 
          
 
"He did that deliberately,” said Sorscha.

 
          
 
"Don't be a paranoid twit," answered
Zhadi.

 
          
 
Meanwhile, the tortoiseshell kitten, Vootie,
leaped down from a bookshelf and began to chase after the vacuum cord as it
moved back and forth. She trilled her pleasure as she caught it time and time
again. Impervious to cute kittens, David resisted the impulse to run Vootie
over as he vacuumed.

 
          
 
Luna decided to move the conversation to a
higher plane: "I'm hungry," she said plaintively, stretching lazily
on the other side of the couch and exposing her tummy with its tuft of white
fur.

 
          
 
David refrained from telling her she could
live off her body fat for at least a week without problems and mumbled through
his breathing apparatus, "I should be finished in here soon and then Miko
will return with the groceries. I have to hurry up and get to the lab so that I
can assist Professor Purr, you know."

 
          
 
"I want!" cried Luna, in a mixture
of words and meows. "I want! I WANT! NOW!!!"

 
          
 
The other three cats joined the chorus, the
noise level rising with each passing second. David clicked off the vacuum
cleaner with an audible snap. "Fine," he said, starting to grit his
teeth. "But I do hope that when the professor asks why I'm late, you'll
explain that you needed to eat brunch as well as breakfast today."

 
          
 
He stalked into the kitchen, mumbling over why
Miko was doing a grocery run when the kitchen wasn't exactly bare. But he knew
the answer. Bast exercised special care in selecting leaders for the new cat
elite. These cats made sure there were enough humans doing the essential work
to keep the wheels turning. In some cases, survivors did jobs they never
thought would be their lot.

 
          
 
A computer programmer might find himself
fishing for most of the week; and then devote his Saturday to a program that
would facilitate swift transport of his catch! The goal was simple: provide all
the food that cats really liked. Oddly enough, little effort had been expended
to preserve traditional Cat Foods. Humans were allowed to stock all the pet
food they wanted ... for their own consumption.

 
          
 
These thoughts were creeping through David's
brain as he removed choice chicken breast tenders out of the freezer. The sound
effects gave him away. Luna, Vootie, and Zhadi dashed in and immediately
tangled themselves up in his feet—tripping him as he tried to put the chicken
on a plate and into the microwave.

 
          
 
He went sprawling and the mask came off. The
cats reverted to Old Talk as they climbed over his prostrate form. There wasn't
much they could do with the frozen chicken. Vootie batted at his shoe laces as
Sorscha watched in malicious amusement from the kitchen doorway.

 
          
 
His sneezing, coughing, wheezing and red face
added immensely to the Russian blue's amusement. She didn't even mind if she
wasn't fed today.

 
          
 
Professor Purr was having the nightmare again.
He was sure he could make himself wake up if he really wanted to. But there was
something that held him in the dream, and forced him to claw at each disturbing
detail.

 
          
 
Gray walls stretched up endlessly, dwarfing
him as he prowled restlessly through this bleak landscape, glancing uneasily
from side to side. He wanted to get away from the walls, but somehow he know
that this world was nothing but endless -halls; -and huge, barren rooms, all
with blank walls.

 
          
 
There were no trees beyond the walls. And
within the labyrinthian maze there was no furniture, no nooks and crannies, not
a staffed mouse or a scratching post in sight. Not even a piece of string.
Nothing to climb, nothing to play with, no place to hide should it become
necessary.

 
          
 
But why should it become necessary? There
didn't seem to be any other life. There were no odors! Nothing to smell meant a
world so dead it defied the feline imagination. And yet ... and yet ... there
was something following Professor Purr.

 
          
 
There were soft padding sounds creeping up
behind, but still he couldn't smell a thing. Feeling the hair rise on his back,
the wise old tabby felt as though all his intelligence didn't amount to a
thing. He'd always been a brave cat, but now he even doubted his ability to
fight.

 
          
 
So he ran. And something ran close behind him.
Ahead there was a dead end, so he had no choice but to stop, turn around and
see his pursuer.

 
          
 
It was another cat, a big, tired-looking,
stupid cat. But it didn't act like a cat. There was something dead in its eyes.
It was at this point that Professor Purr tried very, very hard to wake up. He
didn't want to see what would happen next.

 
          
 
He wasn't able to wake up until the wolflike
dog burst out from the enfolding cat body, leaving the feral remains to fall
away from its dripping, canine jaws. . . .

 
          
 
"Are you all right. Professor Purr?"
A human voice addressed the old cat who opened his green eyes to witness
bug-eyed goggles in place of eyes and a long, snakelike tube in place of a
mouth. The professor almost screeched and clawed before he realized he was
staring into David's portable oxygen mask. He'd have to do something about the
man's damned allergy.

 
          
 
"I was having a bad dream," the cat
admitted. "Sometimes I feel guilty about what happened to so many of your
kind."

 
          
 
"It's not your fault," said David,
displaying a surprising degree of perception—or else deference to the cat who
held his life in its paws.

 
          
 
"I wonder if I could have spared more of
you if I'd asked," the cat went on. "But the goddess wasn't pleased
that I asked her to spare the life of even one cat hater."

 
          
 
"But I don't hate cats," David lied.
"The problem has always been my allergy. I almost died earlier today when
my mask came off in Miko's kitchen."

 
          
 
"Are you all right now?" asked
Professor Purr with genuine concern.

 
          
 
"Yeah. But that's why I'm late. I
literally couldn't breathe."

 
          
 
Purr walked across a tabletop that was high
enough that he could place a paw on David's shoulder. "Perfectly all
right," said the cat, failing to notice how David pulled back ever so
slightly. "I slept through my alarm," the cat went on. "My dreams
and your allergy may be linked, you know."

 
          
 
"How?"

 
          
 
"Despite the important work you help me
with in the lab, I don't think the goddess would begrudge me taking the time to
solve your problem, even if I needed another human assistant during your treatments."

 
          
 
David didn't like the sound of that. "I'm
proud to be your hands, professor," he said.

 
          
 
The old cat couldn't be thrown off a perch by
a mere compliment. "Before much longer, I won't need a pair of human hands
in the lab. Look here!"

 
          
 
Professor Purr proudly strutted around the
complicated series of ramps and shelves that made his laboratory appear to be
leftovers from a Rube Goldberg game. He picked his way over pieces of metal and
glass and reached the far end of the lab where mechanical attachments for his
paws were lined up like so many gravestones over David's hopes.

 
          
 
"I've always wanted hands of my
own," he said, "even before the Great Change. I want hands as badly
as you wish to be cured of your allergy."

 
          
 
"Uh, professor, I have a more serious
problem right now," said David in a voice so low that he was surprised how
the old cat's ear§; twitched, receiving every word.

 
          
 
"What's the matter?" asked the cat,
starting back for him.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid I sort of panicked getting
out of Miko's kitchen."