Norton, Andre - Anthology (40 page)

 
          
 
But the track they followed took a winding
turn away from the right direction. Noble Warrior jumped from his vantage point
and flashed into the woods making a thick wall on that side of the road.

 
          
 
He sped on, leaping here a downed tree, there
weaving a way around some mossy stones. There was the sound of water ahead. But
there was another sound also—the crying of a child.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior's speed slackened. He was being
pulled in two directions, but the crying won. Emmy? Could it be Emmy? No, the
voice was too young for her.

 
          
 
He came out on the bank of the small stream.
There was a child there right enough, much younger than Emmy. His face, swollen
from crying, had also been harshly scratched by briars in one place and he
rocked back and forth in his pain and fear, his clothing muddied and torn.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior advanced with his usual caution
when facing the unknown. The child let out a wail and then suddenly caught
sight of the cat. His mouth fell a little open.

 
          
 
"K-k-kitty?" he stammered.

 
          
 
Plainly, Noble Warrior decided, this kitten
had been lost. Where was his mother that she allowed him to stray so?

 
          
 
"Lissy—Lissy branged you—k-k-kitty? She
told Tod-die wait, there would be a 'prise. You the 'prise, k-k-kitty?"

 
          
 
He held out a badly scratched and mud grimed
hand. "Where Lissy—Toddie go home!" His face was puckering again for
further crying.

 
          
 
Noble Warrior advanced until the small hand
fell on his head. It was sticky on his fur, but he resigned himself to that.
For a moment he stood and let the child pat him, then backed away.

 
          
 
As he had hoped, the little boy scrambled up
and followed, as the cat slowly withdrew. But which way would they go? Back-to
t&e village—or on to that still far place to which his need'called him?

 
          
 
Best the village, he decided. Their journey
was a slow one and Noble Warrior had to submit to a great deal of patting, and
even once to the shame of a hand closing on his glossy tail. But they did come
out at last on the track where he had left the caravan. There was no sign of
that. Perhaps the gypsy instinct to get away from danger had taken them well
ahead. But the village lay in the other direction.

 
          
 
Toddie sat down much more often now and had to
be coaxed to follow. But before they reached the first cottages there was the
thud of horse hooves on the road. The man in the lead was mounted on a tall
black horse which overran the spot where Toddie had taken his last rest, but he
reined back, jumped from the saddle and caught up the child almost firmly.

 
          
 
Toddie wrapped arms around the man's neck.

 
          
 
'Toddie!" The man hugged him so tightly
that the child squirmed.

 
          
 
"Dada!" yelled the little boy.

 
          
 
"Jus' like Miss Elizabeth said. Squire,
them there gypsies had him—dropped him off when they got to know as they were
being followed!"

 
          
 
"Lissy?" Toddie pushed a little away
from his father to look up into the man's face. "Lissy said Toddie— come
to woods—show him big 'prise. Then Lissy ranned away—Toddie no find her—only
K-k-kitty! K-k-kitty good—brang Toddie to Dada. Lissy, she losted Toddie!"

 
          
 
He had flung out an arm to indicate Noble
Warrior who was preparing to edge back into the bushes.

 
          
 
"Why—that there's the gypsy cat—"
said one of the men.

 
          
 
But another approached Noble Warrior more
closely, going down on one knee to survey him with care.

 
          
 
"Squire—this here's that strange cat
Captain Ashley brought 'ome from foreign parts for 'is little girl. Stolen it
was when they went to London to take th' train to th' seashore. The Captain,
e's near been crazy trying to find it—e's offered a reward an' all."

 
          
 
Now the speaker turned his attention to the
cat. "Noble Warrior, you knows me—Tom Jenkins as is second groom. Time yqu
get back home—Miss Emmy now, she's near cried herself sick and th' whole place
is not th' same without you walkin' out in th' mornin' to take th’ air."

 
          
 
Noble Warrior all at once felt very tired,
tired but at peace. He might not have won home all by himself, but he was
certainly not far away. Willingly, he allowed Tom to pick him up carefully. For
a fleeting moment he thought of Jankos and the caravan—but that was not meant
to be the life of a guardian cat—no, not at all.

            
Elizabeth Ann
Scarborough won a Nebula award in 1989 for her novel The Healer's War, which
was based on her experiences as an Army nurse in
Vietnam
. She has collaborated on three books with
Anne McCaffrey, with the most recent being the anthology Space Opera. She lives
in
Washington
with three cats, Mustard, Popsicle, and
Kittibits. This story is dedicated to the late Peaches, who was her office cat-best
friend for twenty years.

            
He had never been the
kind of cat to have adventures. Timid, he had spent much of his early life
hiding under couches and beds and behind bookshelves when company called.
Peaceful by nature, he did not hunt and thought the dry food his. friend placed
in the communal dish the best of all possible foods. Contemplative and spiritual,
he was relieved to take his surgical vows and live the life of brother, son,
and companion.

            
The wilder pleasures
he had always found frightening. Lying under the garden bench on a sunny day,
or beside the heater in the office while his friend worked, indulging himself
when the occasion presented itself with a bit of catnip; these were his quiet
enjoyments.

 
          
 
Some might have found it dull; indeed, the
other cats in the household chided him that he had always been an old man, but
he found his life deeply fulfilling, and had mourned to leave it almost as much
as he was mourned.

 
          
 
He had outlived all of the cats he was once
young with, and was nearly twenty when the illness fell upon him. He had
thought that after all those years of friendship he would have to die alone,
but in the end, he was in her arms and she was weeping into his grizzled fur,
singing him lullabies and crooning the words that baffled him now. Even though
there were no fleas on this plane, he sat down and had a scratch, as was his
habit when he was troubled, and considered his options.

 
          
 
All around him different colored lights zoomed
in and out, but it was just light, nothing to worry about. Strange-looking
figures would hiss at him, and he'd hiss back. Kindly, beautiful figures would
offer him tasty-looking dishes, but the delicacies had no smell, and besides,
he wasn't hungry. He just sat there, wondering how he was supposed to find his
way home.

 
          
 
After a while, he expressed his displeasure.
To his surprise, his voice was strong and plaintive, not the whiney, old-man's
meow it had been during the last few months of his life. If help for a stranded
cat was available in this neighborhood, that mew ought to bring it running.

 
          
 
Running was not all it did. It pounced, rolled
him over three times, and gave his tail a swat before he squared off with it.
"It" was another cat, a long-haired type with a gray face, paws, and
tail. Probably thought he was hot stuff because his tail was high and plumey,
and a golden glow shone all around him. Golden glows were all right, but some
cats, superior cats, were already golden enough and always had been, so what
was so wonderful about a little yellow light?

 
          
 
"What in the name of the Buddha are you
doing here?" the long-haired newcomer demanded.

 
          
 
"I'd like to know that myself. Who're
you?"

 
          
 
"I'm Mu Mao the Magnificent, of course,
formerly the Last Cat in the World—well, almost, and Decanter of the Damned.
But that's another story. I know what you

 
          
 
are, obviously, from your aura, you're a
bodhisattva such as myself, though not as highly evolved, of course. But who
are you and what are you doing in the Bardo?"

 
          
 
'The what?"

 
          
 
"The Bardo. The Isles of the Dead."

 
          
 
"Is that so? What kinds of dead things
are there?" he asked with interest. Some of them might be tasty.

 
          
 
"You, for one. But you're in the wrong
place. Someone with your aura should be in Nirvana. I haven't had to come here
for generations, myself, but I couldn't help hearing you yowling, and you
spoiled my nap. I'm between lives at present and thought I'd see what the fuss
was about. So I repeat, who are you? I know all of the cats still existing. I'm
the father of most of them."

 
          
 
"You're not my father. And I am Peaches,
Mr. Peaches to you."

 
          
 
"Peaches? As in canned peaches? What a
curious name."

 
          
 
"It's an excellent name. My friend gave
it to me when I was a kitten and she observed that the peach ice cream she was
eating when she first saw me in my incarcerated state matched the color of my
baby fur. She claimed me and we were inseparable until recently. Now I can't
find my way back to her."

 
          
 
"You're not supposed to go back, my
friend. You're dead."

 
          
 
"That has nothing to do with anything.
She's my friend, and she said I could go back if I wanted. And I want."

 
          
 
The other cat licked his long chest fur
contemplatively, "Just—er—how long have you been here, entertaining this
desire, Peachfcs my friend?"

 
          
 
"I've no idea. I hadn't been well, you
see, and things have all been a little muddled."

 
          
 
"This may come as a shock to you, but
it's been longer than you think. A lot longer. A lot has happened in the world
in the meantime. It has, I'm sorry to tell you, ceased to be as you once knew
it. I hope this friend you're looking for was a very good woman."

 
          
 
"We suited each other," Peaches
replied with a lick to his tail tip.

 
          
 
"That means little," Mu Mao said.
"Sometimes one chooses a companion because of the needs they can fill
rather than for virtue. If your friend was of your caliber, she should be in
Nirvana. Otherwise, she's no doubt wandering the Bardo, as you so mistakenly do
now, looking for some life form to become."

 
          
 
"You mean she's dead?" Peaches cried.
That had never occurred to him. Companions usually outlived cats, even very old
cats, by many years. And she had been a fairly young woman when he saw her
last.

 
          
 
"Most people are," Mu Mao said,
giving his right front paw a discreet swipe. "As I mentioned, the world as
you knew it ended some time ago."

 
          
 
"So you think she's in this Nirvana
place?"

 
          
 
"Perhaps. It's certainly where you
belong. You've lived nine lives of devotion to imparting to human beings the
wisdoms of calm, patience, detachment and humor. You belong in the highest
place now."

 
          
 
"Is that the place where you become an
angel, with wings and a halo?" Peaches asked. "My friend and I
watched some vids about those, but I thought they only concerned humans."

 
          
 
Mu Mao sat down and folded his paws and
explained with only slightly exasperated patience, "Angels are just the
way one religion interpreted auras and the gift of astral travel. All beings
are one in a sense, and all achieve enlightenment according to their merits.
You've been a very meritorious kitty indeed, Mr. Peaches. Now let's scat out of
here and achieve Nirvana, shall we, hmm?"

 
          
 
"Not without my friend," Peaches
said, planting his paws as firmly as they'd plant on relative nothingness.

 
          
 
"She's probably waiting for you there,"
Mu Mao wheedled. "It's the best place she could be."

 
          
 
"Not unless Nirvana is our office, with
my cushion by the heater." Peaches grumbled, or tried to. Lights and
clouds swirled around him and nothing was familiar except the mocking, knowing
eyes of Mu Mao. He was very glad when everything settled down again. The whole
experience made him feel like he wanted to toss a hairball.

 
          
 
Nirvana was nice enough. There were fluttering
things and dangling things, things to chase and places to lie high up and warm.
All the people there seemed to like cats. But none of them was his particular
friend.

 
          
 
It didn't take him very long to start meowing
and clawing at insubstantial things until they kicked him out, along with Mu
Mao for bringing him.

 
          
 
"Now look what you've done," Mu Mao
said.

 
          
 
Peaches groomed himself with a certain grim
self-satisfaction. "I know perfectly well what I've done. I meant to do
that. She wasn't there and I had no intention of staying. I told you I
wouldn't. Where else can we look?"

 
          
 
Mu Mao meditated on the matter for a moment.
He looked very wise but Peaches felt that wise was as wise did and he wanted no
cheap philosophy. He wanted to be back with his friend, period. He switched his
tail impatiently while the other cat seemed to be dozing with his eyes open.

 
          
 
"If she's not here," Mu Mao said
finally, "and she's not in the Bardo, then she may have reincarnated
already. Do you still want her if she's a gekko lizard, say, or a mouse?"

 
          
 
Peaches had to give that some thought but he
finally concluded, "I'd want to be with her if she was a junkyard dog. She
won't hurt me. She'll know me. She said she would."

 
          
 
"No wonder you're a bodhisattva," Mu
Mao said. "That's what I call faith."

 
          
 
"But she won't be a dog," Peaches
continued, "and she won't be a gekko or a mouse either. She's too big.
She'll be herself, a human-being, as sure as I'm a cat."

 
          
 
Mu Mao did not appear as enlightened by this
statement as Peaches had expected. "The life you lived with
this—friend—was your ninth life, right?"

 
          
 
"It was my life," Peaches replied
simply.

 
          
 
"You do know there were others?"

 
          
 
"I'm not much for theology," Peaches
replied, "but the place I was at first—the Bardo, you called it?— seemed
familiar, as if I'd dreamed about it."

 
          
 
"And you only remember being a cat,
then."

 
          
 
"What else should I remember?"

 
          
 
Mu Mao blinked at him, the wide blue-gray eyes
closing and opening as if to pull him in. "How one with such an
enlightened aura can be so ignorant and steeped in samsara—"

 
          
 
"What's that?" Peaches demanded,
pouncing on the term. "Could my friend be there?"

 
          
 
"Samsara is the painful cycle of life and
rebirth from which most of us escape when we attain enlightenment but which you
seem determined to cling to with all claws and teeth."

 
          
 
"You bet your tail I do," Peaches
said grimly. "And you didn't answer my question. Could she be there? My
friend?"