The Clan of the Cats

by Robert Adams

  “Come, come, Dr. Harel,” he said coldly, “you’ve given us pleas, now, but still no whimpers. Can we not all hear just one little whimper?”

  He started when he felt a hand on his left shoulder, started and almost struck out again at the cowering, injured man.

  “Jimmy,” said Ruth Marbert’s low, controlled voice, “this you now are doing is like him, not like the Jimmy I know and care for. This is just as a . . . a something like Dr. Harel would behave, not as would a man, a man like you. Stop torturing him. He is now hurt and hurting and without spirit to fight. You and your cane broke more of him than just his bones. So let him be, I beg you, just let him be. I’ll attend to his injuries now.”

  Slowly, Bedford relaxed, allowed the cane to sink from the guard position. He suddenly felt utterly exhausted almost limp. Harel’s tear-swimming eyes watched the terrible cane’s slow descent with bated breath. When Singh and Zepur, having come from behind him, around the far end of the table, pushed a chair to the backs of his knees and helped him to settle in it, the big, battered man sank his head upon his chest and began to sob, raggedly, whimpering like a whipped child.

  “Jim,” said Dr. Marberg, “you and Dr. Singh will have to help him down the hall to my lab. I need to find out just how badly he’s hurt, If those bones in his hand are indeed broken, then we’ll have to call a copter to fly him down to a clinic or a hospital. I’m a fair general sawbones as well as being a medical researcher, but orthopedics was never my speciality.”

  Having with great surprise and by supporting most of his weight with the cane and the table edge made it up to his chair, Bedford shook his head. “No, Ruth? not quite yet. There’re still some things we have to get straight, here and now. Get Harel some aspirin and a cup of coffee. Hell, I could use a cup, too.”

  When all again were in their usual places, Jim Bedford took a folder from his case and unloosed its tiestring, then took out some typewritten sheets.

  “Dr. Stekowski,” he began, “I want both you and Dr. Baronian to tell us all just how Dr. Harel was threatening you to ensure your cooperation with his dictates and will on this project. After you have done so, I’ll tell you all some things that you likely do not know about Dr. Harel. Well. Dr. Stekowski?”

  Stekowski sighed. “Mr. Bedford, when my wife and I defected, many years ago, it made for a hard choice for me, at least. She had been orphaned during the Great Patriotic War against Germany, but I had to leave behind an elder brother and his wife. My sister-in-law died within a few years, of breast cancer. But when Dr. Harel first came to me, my brother still lived, a very old man, but still alive.

  “Dr. Harel told me that he was going to join our staff, that I might retain the ostensible leadership and the title, but that I would do exactly as he ordered in all things. He showed me very recent three-dimensional stills of my brother at his home in Wroclaw, then told me all the terrible things that could befall the feeble old man were I to not become his man, were I not to redirect our project to bovid rather than felid animals.

  “I loved my late brother, Mr. Bedford. He and his wife cared for me, virtually reared me, when our parents died. They saw to my education, licked boots and paid bribes to see to my higher studies. They in no way tried to discourage the defections of me and my wife, though they must surely have known that they would be made to suffer for those defections. Suffer they did, too. So I felt that I could not risk the possibility that a brutal and barbaric government would heap further sufferings upon my old, frail, ill brother; despite everything. I just could not risk it. Therefore, I became Dr. Harel’s creature. I betrayed you all to him and to his nefarious schemes.

  “However, within the last week, I have been in receipt of a letter from an old family friend. It told of the natural demise of my brother. He now is with God and beyond any sufferings that anyone could inflict upon him. He never had any children, for some reason, and I have no other relatives there of any degree of real closeness, so this monster here has lost his bestial hold upon me.

  “I have caused you all much time and funding and distress, but in like circumstances, I must admit that I would behave in no other way, for ties of blood are close among us Slavs. I can in no way correct that which I have done and allowed to be done; therefore, I must tender my resignation from the group.”

  While Stekowski had been speaking, recounting in his low, slow, sad voice the cruel choice he had been forced to make, Ruth Marberg had begun to cry softly, but at his final words, she had dashed away her tears. “Oh, you dear, sweet, gentle, gallant, honorable old fool,” she said, “you are the very heart and soul of our group, you cannot resign, for lacking you, there is no group, can be no project.”

  Bedford nodded, swallowing earnestly to clear the massive lump from out his throat. “Forget any thought of resignation, Dr. Stekowski, do you hear me? Why you did what you did can be easily understood by any compassionate person. Under like circumstances, faced with so bitter a choice, I’d like to think that I, too, would place loved ones first. Let us put hatred where hatred and disgust are clearly due: upon the filthy swine who did it to you, that thing down there.” He waved in Harel’s direction, then looked at his hand, and slowly wiped it on his coat.

  “But . . . but, you don’t understand, any of you,” spluttered Harel. “You see, I too had no choice, they had threatened all of my family still living in Russia unless I —”

  “Shut up!” snapped Bedford, adding, “Just save your desperate lies, Comrade Vladimir Markov. I had you investigated in great detail, investigated very thoroughly by a number of people and agencies in several countries, going back for years. Those investigators and I probably know about as much about you now as anyone living does, and presently I’ll be reading the salient points of the full report for the edification of the group, and then you can spin your fables and lies. I’ve always enjoyed skeet and trap shooting, and I think I’ll derive great pleasure in the shooting down of whatever misrepresentations you cast out before us.”

  Chapter VIII

  After so long a time that Milo had all but given him up for dead of cold or wolves or misfortune, Dik Esmith arrived below the plateau with five other Horseclansmen, a half-dozen packhorses and a small remuda of remounts. When once the newcomers and Milo’s party had set up the yurt and set to constructing a protective corral for the horses against a spot at the base of the plateau, Milo squatted with Dik and a sub-chief of Clan Linsee, one Alex.

  “How far behind you are the main party? demanded Milo. “How many more days until they arrive, Dik?”

  Dik remained silent, deferring to the Linsee sub-chief, but looked uncomfortable. It was Alex Linsee who replied.

  “Uncle Mio, my brother and the other chiefs met in council on this matter and they decided that, all things considered, they dare not send out any more warriors than those with me here. But after the thaw commences, they will come up here, all four of the clans together. This clansman you sent back averred that game was to be easily found up here, but still the chiefs sent some packloads of hard cheese, dried herbs and roots, smoked fish and fat-paste for your party and for us, who will remain with you until after the thaw begins and the clans are come.”

  “Now what’s all this about four clans, Alex Linsee?” demanded Milo, “When my original hunting party left camp there were but the two — Linsee and Esmith. And just why do the chiefs feel that they dare not send out a larger party of warriors than your measly six? What has happened down them on the plain since I left?”

  Both the sub-chief and Dik Esmith sighed. “It’s a bitter hard winter, Uncle Milo,” said Alex Linsee in preamble. “Game is scarce on the plains, and the wolfpacks run large and very fierce with their hunger. So dangerous are they in their numbers that not only folk and kine must be protected from them but even the largest and strongest of our hounds, are any to survive until the thaw.

  “As if all that were not enough and more than enough, though, shortly after you and your hunters left, the very clan camp was attacked
of a night by rovers not of Kindred ilk. Silently, they crept in upon us, silent as serpents in the snow, and only mere happenstance revealed them to one of the herd guards in time to save cattle and camp and clans. They were driven off with losses, in the end, but the fight was hard and long and costly to us, as well.

  “As for Clans Makawlee and Baikuh, they were encamped miles to the southeast of us. Attacked as were we, but by vastly more numerous foemen, they broke camp and fled toward the higher country until their scouts chanced to meet a party of our hunters and decided to make common camp with us for mutual protection from these non-Kindred marauders. As the poor Makawlees and Baikuhs had lost all of their sheep and most of the goats and cattle and even some of their horses, no difficulties in combining camps was seen by my chief or the Esmith.”

  “There were too many nomads to fight, then?” asked Milo.

  Dik Esmith shook his head. “Oh, there has been fighting and killing and dying, too, Uncle Milo. Immediately the stockade and brushwalls had been expanded, enlarged to hold the new folk and kine, my chief set the eldest and youngest and the matrons to guard it, then took out almost all the warriors and the maiden-archers. They found those who were pursuing the Makawlees and the Baikuhs, ambushed them and put to scattered flight those who survived the ensuing battle.

  “Then some of the younger warriors and the maidens backtracked the non-Kindred to an ancient, ruined Dirtman town. They fired the wagon-tents and thatched roofs with arrows ran off all the few animals there, slew some of the folk but rode back without taking the time or risk to pillage.

  “It was as well that they acted just so, for my chief and his victors arrived back at the clans’ encampment to find it under heavy assault from another aggregation of non-Kindred rovers — those who had earlier tried that night attack, along in company with certain others of their unsavory ilk. With many of his own victors wounded already, he and they were hard pressed to even hold their own against so many, but the timely arrival of the party of maiden-archers saved the day for the right . . . but not quite in time to save the life of my chief.” Dik’s voice caught in his throat and he paused, his pale eyes swimming in unshed tears.

  Milo reached across to grip the young man’s arm hard, in wordless expression of sympathy and shared grief. “He was a good man, Dik. I will miss him. But he now rides the boundless plains of Wind. And, knowing him as I did, I am certain he went to Wind in great glory, glory which will be long recalled and bard-sung to generations of Esmiths whose great-grandparents are not yet born.”

  Sub-chief Alex Linsee attested, “That he did. Uncle Milo, that he assuredly did. The Esmith was already sore hurt when he rode into that fight, yet he slew two of the enemy with his spear before it lodged in a body and he had to let it go; then he turned a spear on his target and sabered off the arm that held it above the wrist. Next, faced by two opponents, he took one hard in the face with the boss of his buckler, even while all but decapitating the other with his saber. He was turning to deal with the one he had stunned, who sat reeling in the saddle, when one of the byblows, afoot, stabbed up under his shirt of boiled leather with the long blade of a spear. It was Dik, here, who split that baseborn bastard’s lousy head from pate to chin, but his chief’s mighty heart had already been pierced and burst.

  “Ever since that bloody fight, though there have been no more real raids against us, not by men, at least, the chiefs feel that we do not longer number enough sound warriors to send any larger numbers than those I lead up here, away from the camp.”

  Milo nodded once. “They’re right, of course. These ruins won’t go away or disappear in the few weeks or months until thaw sets in. Indeed, all things considered, why not just leave Dik here and you and the rest ride on back to the camp? Now that you’ve all been up here, you should have no trouble guiding the clans whenever the chiefs are ready to come up. Take the horses and the yurt and what you’ll need of the provender for your return journey and leave us the rest; with it and such game as we take, we’ll make out fine.

  “You can load any spare horses with bales of scraped, part-cured winter-wolf pelts, property of both Linsees and Esmiths. But plan on biding here tonight and tomorrow. Dik has told you about the cats, and I want you all to meet them and converse with them, too.”

  * * *

  In the end, Dr. Harel chose to leave precipitately rather than sit through the thorough unmasking of him planned by Bedford. The defeated man announced his intention to repair to the project director in California and seek employment in the project designed to replicate a dwarf mammoth. Though the other professionals were disappointed not to witness the further humbling of the arrogant, brutal, hectoring bully, Bedford was relieved to see him go so quickly and easily.

  But with Harel safely away and the initial work on the feethami project commenced, he felt it high time to himself commence a longish, circuitous trip to — among other things — try to use the newly undertaken project to shake or squeeze out a bit more funding from any contact that would sit still long enough.

  This time, on his way to Japan, he went by way of Texas. There, at the complex housing the Steakley Foundation, he spoke with an old friend, Dr. Fleming Van Natta.

  Van Natta poked with one stubby finger at a file in the stack atop his desk and nodded. “Yes, Jim, Dr. Harel has already applied to my people in Sacramento. They consider him to be arrogant and a bit surly, but quite knowledgeable in his field. His résumé is impressive, to understate, especially his Cyprian work experience. His apparently close contacts with Dr. Ivanov and some other Russian scientists in our field will be most helpful to our project, for we are going to need a fair amount of genetic material of the very sort that is most easily come by in Russia.”

  Bedford nodded. “Yes, I am certain that certain of Dr. Harel’s skills and contacts will be very helpful indeed to you, Van; and that’s precisely why I mentioned him to start,” said Bedford, adding, “But there is at least one other side to him that I feel it only fair you should know, are you and the rest of your staff to work with him, to bottle yourselves up on an isolated island with him.

  “To begin, he should have good contacts in Russia, because that’s where he was born and mostly where he was educated under his original name and identity of Vladimir Abramovich Markov. He was allowed to emigrate to Israel, and it was there that he had his name legally changed to Dov Harel. After his requisite time in their defense force, he went up to the university, studied under Dr. Goldman, then went with him into the island fauna thing on Cyprus and Crete.”

  Van Natta bobbed his close-cropped head. “I’ve spoken with Sol Goldman on v-phone, while he was in Tel-Aviv, last month, and with Petronolis, in Athens, too; they remember Harel as a good — if somewhat slow and methodical — man, though they still don’t seem to have any idea why he abruptly left their project to seek and gain permission to emigrate to this country from Israel. He notes on his résumé ongoing differences with the directors of the project, but at least two of those selfsame directors don’t seem to have been aware of the existence of any differences at all between them and him.”

  Bedford half smiled. “Van, I have reasons that, to me, are sufficient and logical to believe that Dr. Harel-cum-Markov left the Mediterranean area and came here because he was ordered to so do by his real employers: some little-known branch of the KGB.”

  “The KGB?” demanded Van Natta with a look of utter incredulity. “But . . . Christ Almighty, Jim . . . why?”

  Bedford shrugged. “You know how leaky is even our security here at this foundation, so you can imagine what a sieve many of the smaller, less well funded, less established projects are. The Russians had heard that the Stekowski group was about to begin a sabertooth replication project, of course, and they almost certainly have one or more similar projects underway or planned, and so they wanted to shoot down this one — especially since such notable types as Stekowski and Singh were involved in it — before it could hope to undercut their own.

  “And there
’s more . . . and far worse.” Then he went on to tell an encapsulated version of just how atrociously Harel had gone about forcing Drs. Stekowski and Baronian into backing him in the ill-omened Project latifrons.

  Van Natta raised his bushy, blondish eyebrows and pushed back from his desk. “And you tried to wish a slimy monster like that off on me, Jim? What the hell kind of a friend do you call yourself man? Contacts or no contacts, I want no bastard like Harel in my group. What the hell were you thinking of to first sell the fucker and his vaunted accomplishments to me, then send him to our Sacramento office? I think I deserve an answer, Jim. I thought you were fond of all of us here at this foundation, just as we all are of you, still, for all that you left us for another project. What the hell did you intend to set us up for, planting this creature you knew to be a Russian agent among our new group in a fledgling project?”

  “Take it easy, Van, just take it easy,” said Bedford soothingly. “Think harder, my friend. Had I had designs to set you up, as you say, I’d never have come here today and told you all that I have. Think, Van, would I?”

  “Well . . . well, maybe not,” Van Natta agreed, albeit grudgingly. Then why did you do it, any of it?”

  “Before I tell you that,” answered Bedford. “I have to know if you will agree to take on Harel, take him into your group, take him to your island facility. And also agree to deny him any use of a v-phone, radio or regular phone for any calls not thoroughly monitored by a Russian-speaker . . . one that he knows is monitoring his calls.”

  “Why?” Van Natta asked in a tightly controlled voice.

  Bedford shook his head. “Sorry, Van, no answers from me until I get the answers I want from you. That’s the way the stick floats, buddy.”

  Van Natta changed his tack. “Just how much does John III know about all this? You did meet with him, I happen to know, before you came to my office today.”