“Or a cat …?”
I stopped stirring the beakerful of milkweed latex and came around the table, stopping in front of the bottle. “Wally—not Helix. Not that cat! Why, he’s—he’s a friend of mine. He trusts me. We couldn’t do anything like that. My gosh, man—”
“You’re being emotional,” said Wally scornfully. “If you’ve got any sense of values at all, there’ll be no choice. You can save my immortal soul by sacrificing the life of a cat. Not many men have that sort of an opportunity, especially at that price. It’ll be a gamble. I haven’t told you, but in the last couple of months I’ve been looking into Helix’s mentality. He’s got a brilliant mind for a cat. And it wouldn’t do anything to him. He’d cease to exist—you can see that. But his soul is primitive, and has been protected since he was a kitten, as must be the case with any primitive mentality. Man needs some powerful impetus to protect his soul, because he has evolved away from the fear of death to a large degree—but a cat has not. His basic philosophy is little different from that of his wild forebears. He’ll be okay. I’d just step in and he’d step out, and go wherever it is that good cats go when they die. You’d have him, in body, the same as you have now; but he’d be motivated by my soul instead of his own. Pete, you’ve got to do it.”
“Gosh, Wally … look, I’ll get you another cat. Or … say! How’s about a monkey?”
“I’ve thought about all that. In the first place, a monkey would be too noticeable, walking around by himself. You see, my idea is to get into some sort of a body in which I can go where I please, when I please. In the second place, I have a headstart with Helix. It’s going to be a long job, reconditioning that cat to my needs, but it can be done. I’ve been exploring his mind, and by now I know it pretty well. In the third place, you know him, and you know me—and he knows me a little now. He is the logical subject for something which, you must allow, is going to be a most engrossing experiment.”
I had to admire the way Wally was putting it over. Being dissociated from emotionalism like that must be a great boon. He had caused me to start the conversation, and probably to put forward the very objections to which he had prepared answers. I began to resent him a little—but only a little. That last point of his told. It would be a most engrossing experiment—preparing a feline body and mind to bear a human soul, in such a way that the soul could live an almost normal life … “I won’t say yes or no, Wally,” I said. “I want to talk it over a little … Just how would we go about it, in case I said yes?”
“Well—” Wally was quiet a minute. “First we’d have to make some minor changes in his physique, so that I could do things that are impossible for a cat—read, write, speak and memorize. His brain would have to be altered so that it could comprehend an abstraction, and his paws would have to be made a little more manageable so that I could hold a pencil.”
“Might as well forget the whole thing, then,” I told him. “I’m a chemist, not a veterinary surgeon. There isn’t a man alive who could do a job like that. Why—”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve learned a lot recently about myself, too. If I can once get into Helix’s brain, I can mess around with his metabolism. I can stimulate growth in any part of his body, in any ways, to any degree. I can, for instance, atrophy the skin between his toes, form flesh and joints in his claws. Presto—hands. I can—”
“Sounds swell. But how are you going to get in there? I thought you couldn’t displace his soul without his consent. And—what about Them?”
“Oh, that will be all right. I can get in there and work, and his soul will protect me. You see, I’ve been in contact with it. As long as I am working to increase the cat’s mental and physical powers, his soul won’t object. As for getting in there, I can do it if I move fast. There are times when none of Them are around. If I pick one of those times, slide out of the bottle and into the cat, I’ll be perfectly safe. My one big danger is from his soul. If it wants me out of there, it can bring a tremendous psychic force into play—throw me from here to the moon, or farther. If that happened—that will finish me. They wouldn’t miss a chance like that.”
“Golly … listen, friend, you’d better not take the chance. It’s a swell idea, but I don’t think it’s worth it. As you are now, you’re safe for the rest of time. If something goes wrong—”
“Not worth it? Do you realize what you’re saying, man? I have my choice between staying here in the bottle forever—and that’s an awful long time, if you can’t die—or fixing up Helix so that he can let me live a reasonable human existence until he dies. Then I can go, protected, into wherever it is I should go. Give me a break, Pete. I can’t do it without you.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you see? The cat has to be educated. Yes, and civilized. You can do it, partly because he knows you, partly because that is the best way. When we can get him speaking, you can teach him orally. That way we can keep up our mental communication, but he’ll never know about it. More important, neither will his soul. Pete, can’t you see what this means to me?”
“Yeah. Wally, it’s a shabby trick on Helix. It’s downright dirty. I don’t like it—anything about it. But you’ve got something there … all right. You’re a rat, Wally. So am I. But I’ll do it. I’d never sleep again if I didn’t. How do we start?”
“Thanks, Pete. I’ll never be able to thank you enough … First, I’ve got to get into his brain. Here’s what you do. Think you can get him to lick the side of the bottle?”
I thought a minute. “Yes. I can put a little catnip extract—I have some around here somewhere—on the bottle. He’ll lick it off … Why?”
“That’ll be fine. See, it will minimize the distance. I can slip through the glass and be into his brain before one of Them has a chance at me.”
I got the little bottle of extract and poured some of it on a cloth. Helix came running when he smelled it. I felt like a heel—almost tried to talk Wally out of it. But then I shrugged it off. Fond as I was of the big black cat, Wally’s immortal soul was more important.
“Hold it a minute,” said Wally. “One of Them is smelling around.”
I waited tensely. Helix was straining toward the cloth I held in my right hand. I held him with the other, feeling smaller and smaller. He trusted me!
“Let ’er go!” snapped Wally. I slapped the cloth onto the side of the bottle, smeared it. Helix shot out of my grip, began licking the bottle frantically. I almost cried. I said, “May God have mercy on his soul …” Don’t know why …
“Good lad!” said Wally. “I made it!” After a long moment, “Pete! Give him some more catnip. I’ve got to find out what part of his brain registers pleasure. That’s where I’ll start. He’s going to enjoy every minute of this.”
I dished up the catnip. Helix, forgive me!
Another long pause, then, “Pete! Pinch him, will you? Or stick a pin in him.”
I chose the pinch, and it was a gentle one. It didn’t fool Wally. “Make him holler, Pete! I want a real reaction.”
I gritted my teeth and twisted the spiral tail. Helix yowled. I think his feelings were hurt more than his caudal appendage.
And so it went. I applied every possible physical and mental stimulus to Helix—hunger, sorrow, fright, anger (that was a hard one. Old Helix just wouldn’t get sore!), heat, cold, joy, disappointment, thirst and insult. Hate was impossible. And Wally, somewhere deep in the cat’s mind, checked and rechecked; located, reasoned, tried and erred. Because he was tireless, and because he had no sidetracking temptations to swerve him from his purpose, he made a perfect investigator. When he finally was ready to emerge, Helix and I were half dead from fatigue. Wally was, to hear him talk, just ready to begin. I got him back into his bottle without mishap, using the same method; and so ended the first day’s work, for I absolutely refused to go on until the cat and I had had some sleep. Wally grumbled a bit and then quieted down.
Thus began the most amazing experiment in the history of physiology and psychology
. We made my cat over. And we made him into a—well, guess for yourself.
Inside of a week he was talking. I waited with all the impatience of an anxious father for his first word, which was, incidentally, not “Da-da” but “Catnip.” I was so tickled that I fed him catnip until he was roaring drunk.
After that it was easy; nouns first, then verbs. Three hours after saying “Catnip” he was saying “How’s about some more catnip?”
Wally somehow stumbled onto a “tone control” in Helix’s vocal cords. We found that we could give him a loud and raucous voice, but that by sacrificing quantity to quality, something approximating Wally’s voice (as I “heard” it) could be achieved. It was quiet, mellow and very expressive.
After a great deal of work in the anterior part of Helix’s brain, we developed a practically perfect memory. That’s one thing that the lower orders are a little short on. The average cat lives almost entirely in the present; perhaps ten minutes of the past are clear to him; and he has no conception of the future. What he learns is retained more by muscular or neural memory than by aural, oral or visual memory, as is the case with a schoolchild. We fixed that. Helix needed no drills or exercises; to be told once was enough.
We hit one snag. I’d been talking to Wally the way I’d talk to anyone. But as Helix came to understand what was said aloud, my long talks with no one began to puzzle and confuse him. I tried hard to keep my mouth shut while I talked with Wally, but it wasn’t until I thought of taping my mouth that I succeeded. Helix was a little surprised at that, but he got used to it.
And we got him reading. To prove what a prodigy he was, I can say that not one month after he started on his ABC’s he had read and absorbed the Bible, Frazer’s Golden Bough in the abridged edition, Alice in Wonderland and four geography texts. In two months he had learned solid geometry, differential calculus, the fourteen basic theories of metempsychosis, and every song on this week’s Hit Parade. Oh, yes; he had a profound sense of tone and rhythm. He used to sprawl for hours in front of the radio on Sunday afternoons, listening to the symphony broadcasts; and after a while he could identify not only the selection being played and its composer, but the conductor as well.
I began to realize that we had overdone it a bit. Being a cat, which is the most independent creature on earth, Helix was an aristocrat. He had little, if any, consideration for my comparative ignorance—yes, ignorance; for though I had given him, more or less, my own education, he had the double advantage of recent education and that perfect memory. He would openly sneer at me when I made a sweeping statement—a bad habit I have always had—and then proceed to straighten me out in snide words of one syllable. He meant me no harm; but when he would look over his whiskers and say to me, “You don’t really know very much, do you?” in that condescending manner, I burned. Once I had to go so far as to threaten to put him on short rations; that was one thing that would always bring him around.
Wally would spring things on me at times. He went and gave the cat a craving for tobacco, the so-and-so. The result was that Helix smoked up every cigarette in the house. I had a brainstorm, though, and taught him to roll his own. It wasn’t so bad after that. But he hadn’t much conception of the difference between “mine” and “thine.” My cigarettes were safe with Helix—as long as he didn’t feel like smoking.
That started me thinking. Why, with his mental faculties, couldn’t he learn not to smoke my last cigarette? Or, as happened once, eat everything that was on the table—my dinner as well as his—while I was phoning? I’d told him not to; he couldn’t explain it himself. He simply said, “It was there, wasn’t it?”
I asked Wally about it, and I think that he hit the right answer.
“I believe,” he told me, “that it’s because Helix has no conception of generosity. Or mercy. Or any of those qualities. He is completely without conscience.”
“You mean that he’s got no feeling toward me? That bringing him up, feeding him, educating him, has done nothing to—”
Wally sounded amused. “Sure, sure. He likes you—you’re easy to get along with. Besides, as you just said, you’re the meal ticket. You mustn’t forget, Tronti, that Helix is a cat, and until I take possession, always will be. You don’t get implicit obedience from any cat, no matter how erudite he may be, unless he damn well pleases to give it to you. Otherwise, he’ll follow his own sweet way. This whole process has interested him—and I told you he’d enjoy it. But that’s all.”
“Can’t we give him some of those qualities?”
“No. That’s been bothering me a little. You know, Helix has a clever and devious way of his own for going about things. I’m not quite sure how he—his soul—stands on this replacement business. He might be holding out on us. I can’t do much more than I’ve done. Every attribute we have developed in him was, at the beginning, either embryonic or vestigial. If he were a female, now, we might get an element of mercy, for instance. But there’s none in this little tiger here! I have nothing to work on.” He paused for a moment.
“Pete, I might as well confess to you that I’m a little worried. We’ve done plenty, but I don’t know that it’s enough. In a little while now he’ll be ready for the final stage—my entrance into his psyche. As I told you, if his soul objects, he can sling mine out of the solar system. And I haven’t a chance of getting back. And here’s another thing. I can’t be sure that he doesn’t know just why we are doing this. If he does—Pete, I hate to say this, but are you on the level? Have you told Helix anything?”
“Me?” I shouted. “Why, you—you ingrate! How could I? You’ve heard every single word that I’ve said to that cat. You never sleep. You never go out. Why, you dirty—”
“All right—all right,” he said soothingly. “I just asked, that’s all. Take it easy. I’m sorry. But—if only I could be sure! There’s something in his mind that I can’t get to … Oh, well. We’ll hope for the best. I’ve got a lot to lose, but plenty to gain—everything to gain. And for heaven’s sake don’t shout like that. You’re not taped up, you know.”
“Oh—sorry. I didn’t give anything away, I guess,” I said silently. “But watch yourself, Gregory. Don’t get me roiled. Another crack like that and I throw you and your bottle into the ocean, and you can spend the rest of eternity educating the three little fishies. Deve essere cosi.”
“In other words, no monkey business. I took Italian in high school,” sneered the voice from the bottle. “Okay, Pete. Sorry I brought it up. But put yourself in my place, and you’ll see what’s what.”
The whole affair was making me increasingly nervous. Occasionally I’d wake up to the fact that it was a little out of the ordinary to be spending my life with a talking bottle and a feline cum laude. And now this friction between me and Wally, and the growing superciliousness of Helix—I didn’t know whose side to take. Wally’s, Helix’s, or, by golly, my own. After all, I was in this up to my ears and over. Those days were by no means happy ones.
One evening I was sitting morosely in my easy chair, trying to inject a little rationality into my existence by means of the evening paper. Wally was sulking in his bottle, and Helix was spread out on the rug in front of the radio, in that hyperperfect condition that only a cat can achieve. He was smoking sullenly and making passes at an occasional fly. There was a definite tension in the air, and I didn’t like it.
“Helix,” I said suddenly, hurling my paper across the room, “what ails you, old feller?”
“Nothing,” he lied. “And stop calling me ‘old feller.’ It’s undignified.”
“Ohh! So we have a snob in our midst! Helix, I’m getting damn sick of your attitude. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever taught you anything. You used to show me a little respect, before you had any brains.”
“That remark,” drawled the cat, “is typical of a human being. What does it matter where I got anything I have? As long as any talents of mine belong to me, I have every right to be proud of them, and to look down on anyone who does not possess them in such a
degree. Who are you to talk? You think you’re pretty good yourself, don’t you? And just because you’re a member of the cocky tribe of”—and here his words dripped the bitterest scorn—“Homo sapiens.”
I knew it would be best to ignore him. He was indulging in the age-old pastime of the cat family—making a human being feel like a fool. Every inferiority complex is allergic to felinity. Show me a man who does not like cats and I’ll show you one who is not sure of himself. The cat is a symbol of aloneness superb. And with man, he is not impressed.
“That won’t do you any good, Helix,” I said coldly. “Do you realize how easy it would be for me to get rid of you? I used to think I had a reason for feeding you and sheltering you. You were good company. You certainly are not now.”
“You know,” he said, stretching out and crushing his cigarette in the rug because he knew it annoyed me, “I have only one deep regret in my life. And that is that you knew me before my little renaissance. I remember little about it, but I have read considerably on the subject. It appears that the cat family has long misled your foolish race. And yet the whole thing is summed up in a little human doggerel:
I love my dear pussy, his coat is so warm,
And if I don’t hurt him, he’ll do me no harm.
“There, my friend and”—he sniffed—“benefactor, you have our basic philosophy. I find that my actions previous to your fortuitous intervention in my mental development, led you to exhibit a sad lack of the respect which I deserve. If it were not for that stupidity on my part, during those blind years—and I take no responsibility on myself for that stupidity; it was unavoidable—you would now treat me more as I should be treated, as the most talented member of a superlative race.
“Don’t be any more of a fool than you have to be, Pete. You think I’ve changed. I haven’t. The sooner you realize that, the better for you. And for heaven’s sake stop being emotional about me. It bores me.”
The Ultimate Egoist Page 21
