by Greg Cox
How true! Noon considered, stroking the cat’s velvety head. Dr. Neary had called her pet Isis, he recalled. An appropriately regal name, in his opinion.
[191] Dr. Erickson stood behind Noon, watching the children take turns welcoming Isis. The cat’s arrival had completely disrupted the day’s educational activities, but neither Dr. Erickson nor the other instructors had objected too heartily; Noon suspected that they hoped all the commotion over the cat would help the class forget about what had happened to Shirin earlier that afternoon. So far, he noted, their strategy seemed to be working.
Not that Noon himself had really forgotten about the way the little girl had been removed from the class, after having another of her scary fits. He felt bad for Shirin, whom he assumed he would never see again, but there was nothing anyone could do about it; his mother had explained to him once that a certain amount of experimental error was unavoidable, and because of that a few unlucky children had mental or physical defects that could not be corrected. It wasn’t fair, he understood, to force these poor, damaged kids to stay in the same class as perfect children like himself; in the long run, Shirin would be happier with the other inferior kids. Maybe someone should give the flawed children a kitten, too, he thought generously. I’ll bet that would cheer them up.
“You know, class,” Dr. Erickson began, attempting to turn the children’s fascination with Isis into a learning experience, “in the outside world, where things are much more primitive and unfortunate than they are here, there are many boys and girls who can’t even come near a cat because of allergies.”
“What are allergies?” asked Suzette Ling, who was much more interested in math and machines than books. Noon rolled his eyes; he had read all about allergies months ago.
“Allergies are a genetic defect,” their teacher explained, “that cause people to become sick whenever they’re exposed to some common material, like fur or flowers. In fact, to tell you the truth, I’m intensely allergic to peppermint. I get a sore throat and a rash every time I take a bite of anything peppermint.” A few of the children gasped in horror, but Dr. Erickson gave them a reassuring smile. “You children are very lucky. You’ve all been carefully designed to have no allergies at all, so you can eat and touch most everything without getting sick. Any questions?”
[192] Suzette’s hand shot up like the rockets she loved to design. “What does ‘sick’ mean?”
The five-o’clock bell interrupted what Noon considered a long and rather unnecessary lecture on the history of human infirmity. He already knew that ordinary people were a lot more fragile than he and his classmates were, even if this salient fact had somehow escaped the attention of Suzette and some of the other kids. “Their food actually comes back up their throats and out of their mouths?” Liam MacPherson asked, appalled and intrigued by the grotesque notion of regurgitation. “They can’t help it?”
“Well, no,” Dr. Erickson admitted, “although now is probably not the best time to go into that.” She clapped her hands together to get everyone’s attention. “No more classwork for today. Everyone line up by the exit so we can get to the dining hall in a prompt and efficient manner.”
The children closest to Noon crowded forward to stroke their feline visitor a few more times before leaving the classroom. He clasped the cat protectively against his chest as he looked hopefully at Dr. Erickson. “Can I take her with me to the dining hall?” he asked.
The instructor gave the matter a moment’s thought, then shook her head. “Probably not a very sanitary idea,” she pronounced, inspiring an eruption of groans and pleas from the class. “Tell you what, though. If you’re all very well behaved at supper tonight, then maybe I’ll let the cat stay with you in the dormitory tonight. Maybe.”
Noon knew this was the best they were likely to get, so he reluctantly placed Isis back onto the floor and joined the other children by the exit. Dr. Erickson flicked off the lights as she and her partners escorted the children out of classroom and into the hall, leaving the cat behind.
They marched down the tunnel in single file, with Noon uncharacteristically last in line. He looked back over his shoulder wistfully, hoping Isis would be okay. His stomach growled, anticipating dinner, and he wondered if the cat was hungry as well. Maybe I should save her part of my supper, he mused, then remembered that he still had a leg of [193] tandoori chicken, left over from lunch, stuck in his pocket, neatly wrapped inside a napkin. That’s perfect!
In his imagination Isis was already ravenous, and he couldn’t wait to feed her. Breaking away from the line of children as stealthily as he could, Noon doubled back toward the classroom, arriving at the entrance mere moments after he left. He threw open the door, chicken leg in hand, only to freeze upon the threshold, taken aback by the unexpected sight before him.
The cat was gone, but standing in the center of the classroom, not far from where he had left Isis, was an exotic-looking woman that Noon was sure he had never seen before.
Tall and slender, with lustrous long black hair, she was dressed, rather immodestly, in a revealing two-piece ensemble that was far from standard attire at Chrysalis, especially for grown-ups. Two black velvet hairpieces, shaped like the ears of a cat, adorned her scalp, while a very familiar silver collar glittered around her pale, alabaster neck. Noon recognized the collar instantly, just as he knew at once the amused, aloof expression in the woman’s golden, almond-shaped eyes.
“Isis?”
The woman merely smiled back at him as she removed a spare lab coat from the teachers’ closet, pulling it on over her skimpy black garments. The twin cat ears disappeared into a pocket of the jacket, while a tissue lifted from a box on the floor wiped away most of the woman’s strikingly exotic makeup. Transfixed and confused by Isis’s miraculous transformation, Noon stood by speechlessly as the impossible stranger patted him softly on the head, much as he had petted the cat earlier, and languidly plucked the chicken leg from his unresisting fingers. “But ... how did you ... ?” he stammered, finding it unusually hard to craft a coherent response.
The cat-woman held a finger before her lips, bidding him to hush. The astounded child couldn’t help noticing that her darkly painted nail curved to a sharp point, like a cat’s claw. He nodded meekly as she slipped out the door, leaving him alone in the empty classroom.
“Isis,” he whispered in wonder. Like the goddess. Could it be that [194] the cat really was the Egyptian deity in disguise, or something even rarer and more mysterious?
For once in his young life, Noon didn’t know what to believe.
Isis walked by herself down the corridors of Chrysalis. Clad in the borrowed lab coat, which was considerably less snug and comfortable than her usual ebony pelt, she stalked the maze of tunnels, sniffing the air as she nibbled delicately on the spicy chicken leg. The scent of her prey lingered in the sterile atmosphere of the underground complex, so she knew exactly where she was going and why.
It being the dinner hour, the halls were suitably ill populated, much as Isis had anticipated. The occasional stray passersby glanced at her curiously, but the disguised cat-woman roamed with such ease and confidence that few doubted that she belonged here as much as they did themselves. She resisted a strong temptation to smirk at the two-legged monkeys’ general gullibility, but it wasn’t easy.
She had traveled thus for less than ten minutes before her nose alerted her to the approach of her prey. Purring in anticipation, she deposited the chicken bones, now thoroughly stripped of meat, in a convenient trash receptacle before circling around to come up on the prey from behind. This was proving even easier than she had anticipated; how nice of Dr. Kaur to come this way.
Padding stealthily upon the scuffed tile floors, Isis heard Kaur and her ever-present bodyguards even before she spotted them striding down the tunnel in front of her. If Isis recalled the layout of the complex correctly, and there was no reason at all to imagine that she didn’t, then the three humans were heading directly for the room where Seven was caged. Isis
could smell the impatience and barely suppressed rage emanating from the Indian woman’s pores. Clearly, Isis had tracked her down just in time.
The humans were in a hurry, too, so she had to quicken her pace to creep up on them, even as they remained oblivious of her pantherish approach. Anger filled her, and she bared her gleaming incisors at the memory of Seven locked away in that cage, like some primitive life-form. Isis had spent too much time in cages herself lately, posing as [195] the Silly Blonde’s pet, which only heightened her seething resentment at the way Seven had been treated. Even in this clumsy humanoid shape, every muscle was poised and ready, primed for the pounce.
Moving more quickly than any Terran ever could, she struck out at the left-hand bodyguard first. Skilled fingers found the nerve cluster at the base of the man’s neck, rendering the ambushed human unconscious before either Kaur or the remaining guard realized what was transpiring. The second guard let out a savage bellow as his colleague crumpled to the floor, but his lumbering attempt to retaliate was no match for Isis’s feline swiftness. A scissor-kick to the man’s throat, followed by a proficient karate chop to the side of his bull-like neck, dropped him beside his fallen comrade.
“What—?” Kaur looked understandably startled. Both her guards had been neutralized almost before she registered that she was under attack. She spun around in amazement, only to be confronted by two unconscious bodyguards and the unarmed woman who had defeated them so effortlessly. “Who—who are you?” she blurted, fear and confusion written all over her face.
Isis smiled maliciously, her eyes agleam with the thrill of the hunt. She sniffed the air experimentally, then slashed out at Kaur with an open hand.
Kaur flinched and gasped with alarm, but Isis’s claws sliced through only the fabric of the director’s lab coat, spilling out the contents of one pocket onto the floor. Her eyes widened further when she spotted the two servos rolling across the tiles. “No!”
Realizing the alien weapons were her only defense, Kaur dived for the servos, but Isis’s superlative reflexes were too fast for her. The cat-woman deftly kicked the small silver cylinders out of Kaur’s reach, then tweaked the human woman’s nerve clusters as expertly as she had the first guard’s. Her eyes rolling backward into her head, Sarina Kaur collapsed next to her vanquished protectors.
Isis smiled with satisfaction, sparing only a moment to admire her handiwork before recovering the wayward servos. The devices shone prettily in the light, but Isis refused to let herself be distracted by the devices’ enticing silver luster; there was too much else left to do.
[196] Hearing strangers approaching from several corridors away, Isis used one of the servos to transport both Kaur and her guards into the nearest empty storeroom. With any luck, their sleeping bodies would not be found for some time.
Sniffing the air once more, Isis let her nose lead her toward Seven and the Other One. Her one regret was that there hadn’t been more time to play with her prey before disposing of them.
Maybe later. ...
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE KNOCK ON THE DOOR surprised Roberta. She knew Sarina Kaur was on the way, but she never imagined that the magisterial director would feel obliged to knock before entering the animal storeroom. Then again, someone had probably decided to keep the door locked after she and Isis had barged in unannounced earlier. That’s what I would have done, she decided.
Certainly, the guard acted as though he was expecting the knock. Keeping one eye on Roberta, who was still securely ensconced inside her cage, he glanced through the small rectangular window in the door to the hallway. A puzzled grunt escaped his lips as he apparently failed to see the face he’d anticipated. Cautiously placing a hand on the grip of his handgun, he unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
A second later, he slid slowly onto the floor, a dopey grin visible beneath the bushy black whiskers of his beard. Roberta sprang to her feet inside the cage, gripping the bars in excitement. She recognized the effects of a tranquilizer beam when she saw them, so she was not at all surprised to see Isis, in her annoyingly attractive human guise, step inside and close the door behind her. A servo was gripped in the cat-woman’s lethally manicured fingers. Thank goodness! Roberta thought, relieved by Isis’s timely arrival.
Not that she was about to let her feline rival know how much she appreciated this rescue; Isis was insufferable enough already. “About time you got here, Your Slinkiness,” Roberta groused. “Hurry and get me out of here. There’s something wrong with Seven.”
[198] The alien woman ignored Roberta’s remarks, as was her habit. Roberta strongly suspected that Isis could speak, but preferred not to, at least not when Roberta was listening. Fine, the caged woman thought. Just so she lets me out of this zoo. “C’mon! We need to get Seven to a doctor!”
But Roberta was not the only one noisily calling out to Isis. Perhaps sensing her unearthly nature, the other animals reacted strongly to the cat-woman’s presence, squeaking and hooting and yelping and barking. The tiger roared either a greeting or a challenge; Roberta could not tell the difference, but feared the primeval uproar would attract additional guards. It sounds like Noah’s Ark in here, she thought anxiously, and I don’t mean the Bill Cosby routine.
She needn’t have worried. With a single emphatic hiss, Isis silenced the raging menagerie, who ceased their bestial racket. Roberta had to admire the way Isis cowed her four-legged peers, even if there was something distinctly creepy about it. What can these dumb animals tell about her that I can’t?
Stepping over the body of the tranquilized guard, Isis rushed over to the cage and knelt down beside the comatose Seven. Before Roberta could even ask Isis what she was up to, the cat-woman thrust her busy hands through the bars of the cage, yanking open Seven’s collar with both hands, then jabbing his breastbone with the knuckles of one hand. “Hey!” Roberta objected, alarmed by Isis’s rough ministrations. “What are you doing?”
Isis did not reply, but Roberta’s startled queries were answered by a hoarse cough from Seven himself. He blinked once and lifted his head from his chest, looking about with a somewhat dazed expression. He shook his head roughly, as though to clear his mind of cobwebs, then surveyed the situation with a far more focused gaze. Alert gray eyes shifted from Roberta to Isis and back again. “I see that everyone is accounted for,” he remarked dryly, “but I’m afraid I don’t recall convening this meeting.”
“Gary! You’re back!” Relief flooded Roberta. “Thank God! I thought you’d gone all Rip Van Winkle on me. I tried and tried to rouse you, but nothing worked. I was afraid that—”
“I appreciate your concern, Ms. Lincoln,” Seven interrupted, “but [199] now is not the time for lengthy emotional displays.” He looked automatically at his shackled wrist, only to recall that his watch had been removed. “How long was I out?”
Roberta had been stripped of her timepiece as well, but she could make a safe guess. “It must be five, six P.M. Saturday,” she estimated. Despite her jubilation at Seven’s hasty recovery, she couldn’t just accept this new development without explanation. “But what was the matter with you?” she demanded. “You had me scared to death.”
“My apologies,” he replied. “My brain and body went into deep shutdown mode to prevent me from revealing any of the Aegis’s most crucial secrets.” He stood up slowly, his wrists still cuffed to the bars of the cage. A wince betrayed his discomfort as stiff muscles were called back into service. “It’s a conditioned response, triggered by only the most grueling of interrogations.” Beads of sweat dotted his brow, suggesting that Seven had not yet fully recovered from his long ordeal. “A similar state can be attained by the most skilled yogis of your own era. Fortunately, Isis possesses the knowledge and skills to return me to full consciousness.”
Roberta noticed a small bruise forming on Seven’s chest, exactly where Isis had jabbed him so sharply. She didn’t know whether to be reassured or ticked off by Seven’s explanation, but a note of aggravation definitely crept
into her tone. “Well, you might have let me in on the trick,” she protested. “What if Julie Newmar here hadn’t been able to pussyfoot her way back, to this place?”
Isis hmmphed indignantly, giving Roberta a distinctly condescending look, but Gary Seven simply raised an eyebrow as he asked her skeptically, “And would you have been able to resist the temptation to snap me out of my cataleptic state prematurely, while we were still in the hands of the opposition?”
“Maybe,” Roberta answered tentatively To be honest, she wasn’t sure how long she could endure seeing Seven so seemingly close to death. “I think.”
“In any event, your point is well taken,” Seven stated in a conciliatory fashion. Isis wrinkled her nose dubiously, clearly unconvinced of any need to appease Roberta. “Perhaps we can discuss training you in [200] the proper manipulation of pressure points—some other time. At the moment, we have more urgent business to attend to.” He tugged on his handcuffs, rattling the sturdy chain between them. “Isis, if you please?”
The servo hummed for a fraction of a second, and the steel links connecting the cuffs disintegrated instantly. Seven lowered his arms, for the first time in who knew how long, grimacing briefly as he flexed his fingers experimentally, insuring that everything was still in working order. A moment later, the servo hummed again, and the lock holding the cage door shut fell with a clang onto the concrete floor.
“Thank you, Isis,” Seven said as he emerged from his former place of captivity. Isis handed the pair of servos over to Seven, who obligingly returned one of them to Roberta. The blond woman glanced down for a moment to brush some clinging straw off her tweed skirt, but when she looked up again, Isis’s human incarnation had vanished, replaced by an alert black cat, standing smugly atop the crumpled fabric of a discarded lab coat. Isis mewed insistently, urging Roberta to hurry
“I’m coming, I’m coming!” the human woman exclaimed, stepping out of the cage and slamming the iron door shut behind her. In the next cage over, the restless tiger growled at the commotion, swiping his paw at Roberta, who took pains to stay safely out of the big cat’s reach. Just what I need, she thought irritably. Another feline pain in the butt.
