The Last Free Cat (21 page)

Amongst the new friends I made was Chloe, who had responsibility for stocking the prison library. The warders trusted Chloe because she had a mild, inoffensive smile and never put a foot wrong. They'd made a big mistake, however. Beneath her obliging exterior, Chloe was the biggest rebel in Cold Knap. She put me on to all kinds of books, some of them hundreds of years old, which nevertheless spoke to me as if they'd been written yesterday. I read dozens of them, from
The World Turned Upside Down
to the poems of Blake, from
Gulliver's Travels
to
Ten Days That Shook the World.
I began to see myself not as a lonely and isolated individual, but as part of a tradition of revolt which stretched back centuries. I was not the first person to find themselves in prison for doing what was right, and knowing this gave me a new strength, the strength to carry on.

Another friend I made was Rowan. Rowan had been in Cold Knap for five years and knew everything there was to know about the place—in particular, which guards were up for a bribe. Rowan claimed to have lots of contacts in the outside world, people who could get anything and everything and smuggle it into the jail. When I told her about Kris and Feela, she listened with interest, even though she hated cats and wasn't much more fond of boys. Rowan said she'd pull some strings for me, but I didn't count any chickens. Most people in Cold Knap liked to brag and bullshit—it was part and parcel of being powerless.

Then, one day, as we sat in citizenship class, Rowan pressed a small disc into my palm beneath the table, giving me a quick wink as she did so. I pocketed the disc, and with heart thumping, returned to my cell to secretly examine it.

The disc was about five centimeters in diameter and as thick as a finger. Around the side was a glass aperture and on the other side basic play, stop, and rewind buttons. Although I had never seen one before, I was sure this was one of the new palm projectors everyone was talking about. They held about five minutes of silent DT-format visual, which could be displayed on any small, white space.

I wasn't short of white space in my cell—I had four walls of it. But I had to wait seven agonizing hours till lock-up and lights-out till I could dare to try out the projector. Building myself a little barricade with my desk, chair, and bedding, I set up a tiny secret cinema in the corner of the room.

I had to prepare myself before I pressed that on switch. I had no idea who this visual came from, what was on it, and what effect it might have on me. In some ways, despite all I'd been through, pressing the switch was the hardest thing I'd had to do. But press it I did, and sure enough a small blue square appeared on the wall, followed by the maker's logo, some warnings about copyright, and finally a fuzzy picture of a foreign city taken by a shaking hand. It was raining in this city, but full of life, people going about their business with energy and a smile. The picture jumped to a tank, its gun barrel being used as a climbing frame by cheering youths. Then another group of young people, carrying off a massive sign which I recognized as belonging to the Cityline Bank—except it obviously wasn't attached to the Cityline Bank anymore.

Into the picture came an out-of-focus hand, giving a slightly comical thumbs-up sign. Then, suddenly, like a punch in the guts, Kris's face appeared. He'd grown his hair again and also a wispy, bumfluff beard, which looked appalling. But that didn't matter. It was Kris, he was alive, and the reality of his life was such a shock to my system I almost had to stop the visual.

The next moment, however, was a different kind of shock, another one I was unprepared for. The camera pulled back to show Amelie next to Kris. He put his arm around her and they both grinned. Then, just to confuse matters even more, Raff appeared on the other side of Amelie, and also put his arm around her.

By now I really wasn't sure what I was watching. As I had no idea who'd sent the palm projector, I could have been seeing something posted on the freeweb, something maybe Kris had not wanted me to see. The fact that there was no sign of Feela was also ominous.

I began to prepare myself for the worst.

The picture changed. It was a sunny day now. Kris was in shot again, his face deadly serious. He beckoned to the camera, which followed him down what looked like a country lane, a hedge to one side, a ditch to the other.

Kris crossed over to the ditch. He said something to the cameraperson—which of course I couldn't hear—and the camera momentarily pointed down into the dank water at the bottom of the ditch. When it came up again, Kris had crossed the ditch and was heading through a gate into a field of waving yellow corn, glancing back with a frown which could either have been anxiety or the effect of the blinding sun.

Then Kris stopped. He looked down. The camera caught up with him and followed his eyeline, first going out of focus then zooming in on a black shape in the corn.

At first I thought it was a discarded piece of clothing—a jumper or a jacket. Then, suddenly, miraculously, two unmistakable eyes appeared above it, black-lined like an Egyptian pharaoh, profound as the sun.

Feela!

It was only now that I realized that the black shape was actually Feela's back. From that angle it was impossible to see her other colors, but as the camera moved around her, the warm orange and brilliant white appeared as well—healthy, undamaged, immaculate.

But the revelation was not over yet. As the camera moved right around to the opposite side, it became clear that Feela was not alone in her oasis in the corn. Four wriggling kittens fought for position at her belly, their tiny paws pumping her for her milk. My spirit soared as I witnessed their struggle for life, the life that I had made possible, the life I had refused to surrender to the soulless profiteers of the Viafara Corporation. Those kittens affirmed everything I had done and made any amount of suffering worthwhile. Those kittens were the continuation of Feela's short life into a boundless future. Those kittens were hope itself.

The camera tracked back up to Kris's face. He was smiling now, showing off those gruesome teeth which I had once found so repulsive, but now saw as a part of an ugly beauty I would not change for all the world.

But the visual was still not over. There was one more jump, to Kris again, this time standing in an alley, with a look on his face I'd never seen before—sheepish; shy, even. In his hands he held a sign on which was scrawled the letter
I
. As I pondered this mysterious symbol, however, he tossed the card away, to reveal another beneath, this one reading “WILL,” though it wasn't that easy to read, due to the atrocious handwriting.

Now there was a pause as Kris seemed to fight to pluck up courage, before finally flinging the second card away, to reveal a third and, as it turned out, final card.

The card read, “WAIT 4 U.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2008 by Jon Blake

978-1-4804-6181-9

Published by Albert Whitman & Company

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www.albertwhitman.com

Distributed in 2013 by Open Road Distribution

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