SALVE ROMA! A Felidae Novel - U.S. Edition (23 page)

There was something encouraging after all. Next to the bottom of the left arch of the bridge’s remains and partially hidden in dense undergrowth a pale light shimmered from a window of a box-like building. On the shore a gray rubber raft with outboard engine was moored. It was a little suicidal to visit a killer in his slaughterhouse. But I hadn’t endured all this madness for two days, just to crawfish out now. That I was put Antonio at risk because auf my mad curiosity did bother me though. But hadn’t he said just two days ago »I want to apprentice to you, yes, I want to be your Dr. Watson«? Life’s not easy at the bottom!

»And you’re absolutely sure that there are no floaties lying around somewhere?« I yelled at An
tonio through the howling gale.

He shrugged.

»Scary area«, he said. »Looks a lot like a freaking test of courage for real men.«

»But,
il mio amico
, you are a real man. Above all, in contrary to us boring straight guys you are actually able to judge a real man!«

Despite the omnipresent coldness, which gripped me to the marrow,
I was capable of a cocky smile.

»You will excuse me though, when I dare a jump in good old broads’ way ...« the black Oriental replied, and in the next moment he was in the water at a clumsy
bound.
 
(
6
)
I believe I even saw him hold his nose with his front paws. Now it was my turn to give proof of my masculinity, which could hardly mean that I cautiously dipped one paw into the
water to guess the temperature.

Just like Antonio I eventually made an effort and jumped into the boisterous waves. My worries about the water temperature immediately proved well-founded. Had I been pretty cold on the shore, I now believed to instantly die from freezing. Even the warmth of spring hadn’t been enough to heat up the river a little bit. The winter frost was still snoozing in its black bowels. But that was the smaller problem, the other and bigger one was the struggle against drowning. In the boisterous waves Antonio and I paddled as panic-fuelled as if we were begging for mercy in sped up sign language. While we performed water gymnastics with four paws, we tried to hold our heads or at least our noses up just as desperately. But the waves weren’t considerate of us and kept splashing on us with roaring screams. We swallowed so much Tiber water that, if we didn’t drown, we would probably die from the countless poisons
in this sludge.

But the pathetic paddling was rewarded. The shore, which consisted of cobbles at this spot, got closer, and after some more paw-rowing we were finally able to escape to the mossy stones. Due to the different water temperatures the rain suddenly felt like a warm shower. While we threw up the Tiber’s overabundant gift, we also en
joyed our heroic deed a little.

In the twilight of the streetlights the Tiber Island from here looked romantic, even behind the rain curtain. Antonio and I turned towards the box-shaped cabin in the shrubs. Compared with the bridge element of the Ponto Rotto, which was decorated with fish bodies, the smudgy, wooden little rat-shop reminded of illegally disposed bulk garbage. Antonio jumped on the sill of the only window that was enlightened. He made his head spring back and forth in rapid succession to gain better eyesight. Then he stood on his hind legs and pressed his whole body against the window frame. After a couple of times it yielded with a squeaky sound, and t
he window was open.

»Let’s go, come up here! The going seems to be
good«, he whispered from above.

»Slow down«, I warned. »Maybe the guy’s in there.«

»Even better. Then he can immediately be part of a scientific experiment, which documents the effect of twenty claws on a human face!«

He didn’t wait for an answer but jumped inside. I hesitated for a couple of moments, while I eyed the surroundings. Inside the rubber raft, which was tied to a stone, four longish wooden boxes peeped from underneath a rain blanket. Maybe these contained oxygen bottles for diving, I guessed. And maybe we did wrong by Umberto, and he wasn’t more than an obsessed nerd, who wanted to pursue his bizarre projects in complete isolation and who also enjoyed some water sports. Just a lovable weird guy. A little like Gustav. Hadn’t Sancta mentioned that he loved our kind to death? Why would he perform such bestial things? I had to follow Antonio if I wanted to find out why. In a moment of extraterrestrial braveness I did just that. I jumped onto the windows
ill and rushed into the cabin.

The first impression turned out to be like expected. I stood in the workshop of some Gyro Gearloose, where there was no hint on humane living except for a sleeper and a fridge at the age of Noah. An old-fashioned black reading light illuminated the right side of the room, which was dominated by two pasting tables. On top of these there was a sheer unbelievable clutter of electronic parts, cable reels with different colors, indefinable devices, soldering irons, meters with small black and white monitors, a real screwdriver pick-a-stick and countless manuals. Next to that gobs of boards, microprocessors, gutted video eyes and small gas bottles, everything looked like exploded and spread in chaos. Some parts cast long shadows on the wall, which even inten
sified the effect of this mess.

Cautiously, I dared to enter this battlefield, always anxious to not step on something sharp with the sensitive pads of my paws. Then I jumped onto the tables and sniffed at every single exhibit. Although the first impression totally matched Sancta’s picture of a obsessed married technical nerd, and although there were no hints of bloody excesses, little by little ir
ritating details came to light.

Yellowed clippings, torn-out pages from pictures books and private photos were crooked at the wall with duct tape. The topic, which combined the single parts of this collage, slowly filtered through. They were shots from old paintings, which heroized the invasion of the crusaders in Jerusalem or the garden of paradise; press photos of the disastrous attack on the twin towers in New York: the hell explosion of the glass facades, people, who fell into death with struggling limbs, the crashing cathedrals of the Western world and next to that the mildly smiling faces of Osama bin Laden and other Arabian terrorists. Then again pictures with family motives: a young family with three little children in the backyard of a house with the unique Tuscan landscape of broad vineyards behind it. The same family at the beach, the kids looked a little older now, or at the fun fair. And an Italian funeral parade with a lot of pomp – and three children’s caskets. Although the unhappy father of these kids looked very young in all of these pictures and he must have aged since they were shot, I believed to know him from somewhere. I could have sworn that I had run into this man just a couple of days ago. A moment later it got happy again. An almost endless photo series showed Sancta in the most stunning poses. Sancta on pillar rudiments at the Forum Romanum, Sancta sleeping on the giant head of a statue, Sancta in f
ront of the Temple of Saturn ...

Suddenly I spotted a rather crinkled and brownish picture, which struck me with horror. If a lightning had shot through the window and hit me directly at the head, the effect couldn’t have been more devastating: The medical illustration showed a perfect profile of a feline inner ear. Worst of all was the
many blood drops on the paper!

»Francis!«

I hastily turned around and tried to trace Antonio’s voice while my heart beat like a drum. At that I noticed how much had been unrevealed due to the pale light. The left part of the room was totally dark, and hadn’t I had the guiding green eyes in the distance, I would probably been lost. I jumped down the table and went to Antonio. He was also standing on a table, a table with a single broad base in the middle. T
he thing seemed to be metallic.

After I had jumped on it in a single bound, I made the second terrible discovery. Underneath our paws was a little operation table with straps on its sides, which was used for operating animals. Swiveling operating lights hung above us. Next to us anesthesia
–
and ventilator machines, inhalation masks and a wheeled table on which several surgical instruments were lined up. There was no doubt that the reprehensible amputations had been performed here and that the obtained organs then had been manufactured into high tech products in the »electrical goods department« a few steps away. It was incredible, we had found the monster’s cave!

But the most terrifying still waited for its discovery. Directly in front of our paws a green surgery drape seemed to cover a congener. Anxiously, I looked into Antonio’s eyes. Given this horror, these were frozen. The Oriental’s facial expression was totally numb, he didn’t even try to cover up his fright with an ironic remark like he usually did. Also, he made no move to remove the drape. In the darkness he simply sat there and breathed like someone who had shaken off worry. He even purred!

I bit in one corner of the cloth and ripped it off ...

Revealed was ... it was insane ... it was ridiculous ...

There was a toy missile lying on the table! The anthracite-colored thing was only about 1.5 feet long. On its front were two tiny video eyes in the dedicated orbits, on side of the fuselage it had short, stable wings and tillers, and there were fins fixed to its rear. The whole construction looked like a military missile had shrunk to the size of children’s hands. Yet, the »brain«, which could be seen through an opened little door at the front, revealed a totally different function. This part was full of electronics. A staggering arabesque of boards, microprocessors, ultra-thin cables and blinking electroluminescent diodes hinted at the weapon’s intelligence. In all this technical clutter a feline vestibular organ was placed, which swam into a little glass ball full of nutrient solution and exchanged information with the rest of the electronics through subtle connecting
wires!

»Have you seen Sancta in the pictures, Francis?« Antonio said in a quiet voice that was almost lost in dreams and sounded like a cal
l from a very far galaxy to me.

»Sure«, I said. »She is in cahoots with this Umberto. She killed Samantha, so that I ...«

»She’s so gorgeous, isn’t she? What a perfect symbol of harmony she is. The picture of Sancta has always been our ideal, when we thought about the future world. Beauty, dovishness, justice, love for life and tolerance. The ideals of ancient philosophy. The TV news speak another language though. All this scum, which they show, all the evil and the pain. During the last centuries our world has dramatically changed, Francis, and society rules – like the discrimination of race, sex and breed – are not accepted anymore. The bad genie from the bottle has vanished. The monsters of intolerance, mutual suspicion and polarization march through our streets. Dialogue is nothing more than a poor relative or terror and intimidation. These prosimians with their primitive religion, which only preaches murder, with their freaking ape culture, which only issues prohibitions and only allows being a dead man walking! Intolerance against dissidents, against women, against homosexuals and against animals. They let sheep and cattle bleed out through a cut at their throats before they eat them, did you know that? They buckle dynamite belts on donkeys, just to fire them from distance. They shit on animal rights, Francis. Samantha knew this and was pleased to offer help. And Sancta shines, she resembles our culture of soulfulness
.
«

Although my fur was still soaked in the cold Tiber water, I suddenly was so hot as if someone had put me into a microwave for a moment. This whole damn workshop seemed to expand like a gum in front of my eyes, and I felt how I gradually got weak in the knees. Yet, I had the strength to remember something Sancta had mentioned casually: »... Umberto is obsessed with our kind, and besides me he also keeps some black rascal on this site, who runs away pretty frequently though. At least, I don’t see him very often ...« The black rascal stood in front of me.

»Whom do you mean by ›we‹, Antonio«, I wanted to know.

»If I were George W. Bush, I’d say Western civilization,
il mio amico
. But I’m not George W. Bush, only a little fag who doesn’t want anything but to clear the world of intolerance once and for all.«

»Why did you bring me here?«

Tears flooded out of my eyes and dripped on the operating table. The world was a cesspool!

»So that you will bring the last sacrifice, Francis. As you can imagine that such an important thing like world peace can hardly be achieved by droning Urbi et Orbi down from the benediction loggia at
Easter.
«

Suddenly I felt an unyielding grasp in my neck! A hand had grabbed me and had me immobilized now. Then I was slowly picked up and got turned around in the air. I faced an old acquaintance’s flawless visage. It was the very young man of God, in whose bag I slipped in my distress at the airport, when I started on my journey to Rome. Although I really wasn’t in the mood, I couldn’t help but admire the stunning looks of this angel of death in his long cassock. The elegant hair, which was combed backwards in shiny thin flicks, the sharp facial outlines which reminded of a master painting, the delicate hands, everything on this guy redounded to heavenly perfection. He paid close attention to me though his golden glasses, and the reflexion of the silver cross around his neck blinded me so much that seemed to translucently shine at me through a ha
lo.