The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

by Robert A. Heinlein

  “That lying snake is capable of anything.”

  “I was not speaking of his moral character, concerning which my judgment matches yours, but solely of physical possibility. One does not cover up a shooting too easily. Blood. Noise. A victim dead or wounded. And you spoke of witnesses—or Franco did. Still, Judge Sethos controls the only newspaper, and the terminals, and the proctors. Yes, if he wished to make the effort, he could surely keep it hush-hush for a considerable period. We shall see—and that is one more item on which I will report to you after you reach Luna City.”

  “We may not be in Luna City. I’ll have to phone you.”

  “Colonel, is that advisable? Unless our presence together during that few seconds at the bar here was noted by some interested party who knows both of us, it is possible that we have succeeded in keeping our alliance secret. It is indeed fortunate that you and I have never been associated in any fashion in the past; there is no probable way to trace me to you, or you to me. You can phone me, certainly…but one must assume that my terminal is tapped, or my studio is bugged, or both—and both have happened in the past. I suggest, rather, the mails…for other than direst emergency.”

  “But mail can be opened. By the way, I’m Dr. Ames, not Colonel Campbell, please. And oh yes!—this young man with us. He knows me as ‘Senator’ and Mrs. Ames as ‘Mistress Hardesty’ from that dustup I told you about.”

  “I’ll remember. In the course of a long life one plays many roles. Would you believe that I was once known as ‘Lance Corporal Finnegan, Imperial Marines’?”

  “I can easily believe it.”

  “Which just goes to show you, as I never was. But I’ve worked much stranger jobs. Mail can be opened, true—but if I deliver a letter to a Luna City shuttle just before it leaves our spaceport, it is most unlikely that it will ever reach the hands of anyone interested in opening it. In the reverse direction a letter sent to Henrietta van Loon, care of Madame Pompadour, 20012 Petticoat Lane, will reach me with only minimal delay. An old, established madam has years of dealing gently with other people’s secrets. One must trust, I find. The art lies in knowing whom to trust.”

  “Doc, I find that I trust you.”

  He chuckled. “My dear sir, I would most happily sell you your own hat were you to leave it on my counter. But you are correct in essence. As I have accepted you as my client you can trust me totally. Being a double agent would invite ulcers…and I am a gourmand who will do nothing that could interfere with my pleasures as a trencherman.”

  He looked thoughtful and added, “May I see that wallet again? Enrico Schultz.”

  I handed it to him. He took out the ID. “You say this is a good likeness?”

  “Excellent, I think.”

  “Dr. Ames, you will realize that the name ‘Schultz’ at once catches my attention. What you may not guess is that the varied nature of my enterprises makes it desirable for me to note each new arrival in this habitat. I read the Herald each day, skimming everything but noting most carefully anything of a personal nature. I can state unequivocally that this man did not enter Golden Rule habitat under the name ‘Schultz.’ Any other name might have slipped my mind. But my own surname? Impossible.”

  “He appears to have given that name on arriving here.”

  “‘—appears to have—’ You speak precisely.” Schultz looked at the ID. “In twenty minutes in my studio—no, allow me a half hour—I could produce an ID with this face on it—and of as good quality—that would assert that his name was ‘Albert Einstein.’”

  “You’re saying we can’t trace him by that ID.”

  “Hold on; I didn’t say that. You tell me this is a good likeness. A good likeness is a better clue than is a printed name. Many people must have seen this man. Several must know who he is. A smaller number know why he was killed. If he was. You left that carefully open.”

  “Well…primarily because of that incredible Mexican Hat Dance that took place immediately after he was shot. If he was. Instead of confusion, those four behaved as if they had rehearsed it.”

  “Well. I shall pursue the matter, both with carrot and with stick. If a man has a guilty conscience, or a greedy nature—and most men have both—ways can be found to extract what he knows. Well, sir, we seem to have covered it. But let’s be sure, since it is unlikely that we shall be able to consult again. You will press ahead with the Walker Evans aspect, while I investigate the other queries on your list. Each will advise the other of developments, especially those leading into or out of the Golden Rule. Anything more? Ah, yes, that coded message—Did you intend to pursue it?”

  “Do you have any ideas on it?”

  “I suggest that you keep it and take it to the Mackay main office in Luna City. If they can identify the code, it is then just a matter of paying a fee, licit or illicit, to translate it. Its meaning will tell you whether or not I need it here. If Mackay cannot help, then you might take it to Dr. Jakob Raskob at Galileo University. He is a cryptographer in the department of computer science…and if he can’t figure out what to do about it, I can suggest nothing better than prayer. May I keep this picture of my cousin Enrico?”

  “Yes, surely. But mail me a copy, please; I may need it in pursuing the Walker Evans angle—on second thought, certain to. Doctor, we have one more need I have not mentioned.”

  “So?”

  “The young man with us. He’s a ghost. Reverend; he walks by night. And he’s naked. We want to cover him. Can you think of anyone who can handle it—and right away? We would like to catch the next shuttle.”

  “One moment, sir! Am I to infer that your porter, the young man with your baggage, is the ruffian who pretended to be a proctor?”

  “Didn’t I make that clear?”

  “Perhaps I was obtuse. Very well, I accept the fact…while admitting astonishment. You want me to supply him with papers? So that he can move around in Golden Rule without fear of proctors?”

  “Not exactly. I want a bit more than that. A passport. To get him out of Golden Rule and into Luna Free State.”

  Dr. Schultz pulled his lower lip. “What will he do there? No, I withdraw that question—your business, not mine. Or his business.”

  Gwen said, “I’m going to spank him into shape. Father Schultz. He needs to learn to keep his nails clean and not to dangle his participles. And he needs some backbone. I’m going to equip him with one.”

  Schultz looked thoughtfully at Gwen. “Yes, I think you have enough for two. Madam, may I say that, while I do not yearn to emulate you, I do strongly admire you?”

  “I hate to see anything go to waste. Bill is about twenty-five, I think, but he acts and talks as if he were ten or twelve. Yet he is not stupid.” She grinned. “Ah’ll larn him if’n I have to bust his pesky haid!”

  “More power to you.” Schultz added gently, “But suppose he does turn out to be simply stupid? Lacking the capacity to grow up?”

  Gwen sighed. “Then I guess I would cry a bit and find him some protected place, where he could work at what he can do and be whatever he is, in dignity and in comfort. Reverend, I could not send him back down to the dirt and the hunger and the fear—and the rats. Living like that is worse than dying.”

  “Yes, it is. For dying is not to be feared—it is the final comfort. As we all learn, eventually. Very well, a sincere passport for Bill. I’ll have to find a certain lady—see whether or not she can accept a rush assignment.” He frowned. “It will be difficult to do this before the next shuttle. And I must have a photograph of him. Plague take it!—that means a trip to my studio. More lost time, more risk for you two.”

  Gwen reached into her purse, pulled out a Mini Helvetia—illegal without a license most places but probably not covered by Manager’s regulations here. “Dr. Schultz, this doesn’t make a picture big enough for a passport, I know—but could it be blown up for the purpose?”

  “It certainly could be. Mmm, that’s an impressive camera.”

  “I like it. I once worked for the—a
n agency that used such cameras. When I resigned, I found I had mislaid it…and had to pay for it.” She grinned mischievously. “Later I found it—it had been in my purse all along…but ’way down in the bottom lost in the junk.” She added, “I’ll run get a picture of Bill.”

  I said hastily, “Use a neutral background.”

  “Think I was a-hint the door? ’Scuse, please. Back in a second.”

  She was back in a few minutes; the picture was coming up. A minute later it was sharp; she passed it to Dr. Schultz. “Will that do?”

  “Excellent! But what is that background? May I ask?”

  “A bar towel. Frankie and Juanita stretched it tight behind Bill’s head.”

  “‘Frankie and Juanita,’” I repeated. “Who are they?”

  “The head bartender and the manager. Nice people.”

  “Gwen, I didn’t know you were acquainted here. That could cause problems.”

  “I’m not acquainted here; I’ve never been here before, dear. I’ve been in the habit of patronizing The Chuck Wagon in Lazy Eight Spread at radius ninety—they have square dancing.” Gwen looked up, squinting against the sunlight directly overhead—the habitat, in its stately spin, was just swinging through the arc that placed the Sun at zenith for Old MacDonald’s Farm. She pointed high—well, sixty degrees up, it had to be. “There, you can see The Chuck Wagon; the dance floor is just above it, toward the Sun. Are they dancing? Can you see? There’s a strut partly in the way.”

  “They’re too far away for me to tell,” I admitted.

  “They’re dancing.” Dr. Schultz said. “Texas Star, I think. Yes, that’s the pattern. Ah, youth, youth! I no longer dance but I have been a guest caller at The Chuck Wagon on occasion. Have I seen you there, Mrs. Ames? I think not.”

  “And I think ‘Yes,’” Gwen answered. “But I was masked that day. I enjoyed your calling. Doctor. You have the real Pappy Shaw touch.”

  “Higher praise a caller cannot hope for. ‘Masked—’ Perchance you wore a candy-striped gown in green and white? A full circle skirt?”

  “More than a full circle; it made waves whenever my partner twirled me—people complained that the sight made them seasick. You have an excellent memory, sir.”

  “And you are an excellent dancer, ma’am.”

  Somewhat irked, I interrupted. “Can we knock off this Old Home Week? There are still urgent things to do and I still have hopes that we can catch the twenty o’clock shuttle.”

  Schultz shook his head. “Twenty o’clock? Impossible, sir.”

  “Why is it impossible? That’s over three hours from now. I’m edgy about the idea of waiting for a later shuttle; Franco might decide to send his goons after us.”

  “You’ve asked for a passport for Bill. Dr. Ames, even the sorriest imitation of a passport takes more time than that.” He paused and looked less like Santa Claus and more like a tired and worried old man. “But your prime purpose is to get Bill out of this habitat and onto the Moon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Suppose you took him there as your bond servant?”

  “Huh? You can’t take a slave into Luna Free State.”

  “Yes and no. You can take a slave to the Moon…but he is automatically free, then and forever, once he sets foot on Luna; that is one thing those convicts nailed down when they set themselves free. Dr. Ames, I can supply a bill of sale covering Bill’s indentures in time for the evening shuttle, I feel confident. I have his picture, I have a supply of official stationery—authentic, by midnight requisition—and there is time to crease and age the document. Truly, this is much safer than trying to rush a passport.”

  “I defer to your professional judgment. How and when and where do I pick up the paper?”

  “Mmm, not at my studio. Do you know a tiny bistro adjacent to the spaceport, one-tenth gee at radius three hundred? The Spaceman’s Widow?”

  I was about to say no, but that I would find it, when Gwen spoke up. “I know where it is. You have to go behind Macy’s warehouse to reach it. No sign on it.”

  “That’s right. Actually it’s a private club, but I’ll give you a card. You can relax there and get a bite to eat. No one will bother you. Its patrons tend to mind each his own business.”

  (Because that business is smuggling, or something equally shady—but I didn’t say it.) “That suits me.”

  The Reverend Doctor got out a card, started to write on it—paused. “Names?”

  “Mistress Hardesty,” Gwen answered promptly.

  “I agree,” Dr. Schultz said soberly. “A proper precaution. Senator, what is your surname?”

  “It can’t be ‘Cantor’; I might run into someone who knows what Senator Cantor looks like. Uh… Hardesty?”

  “No, she’s your secretary, not your wife. ‘Johnson.’ There have been more senators named ‘Johnson’ than any other name, so it arouses no suspicion—and it matches Bill’s last name…which could be useful.” He wrote on the card, handed it to me. “Your host’s name is Tiger Kondo and he teaches all sorts of kill-quick in his spare time. You can depend on him.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I glanced at the card, pocketed it. “Doctor, do you want more retainer now?”

  He grinned jovially. “Now, now! I haven’t yet determined how deeply I can bleed you. My motto is ‘All the traffic will bear’—but never make the mark anemic.”

  “Reasonable. Till later, then. We had better not leave together.”

  “I agree. Nineteen o’clock is my best guess. Dear friends, it has been both a pleasure and a privilege. And let us not forget the true importance of this day. My felicitations, ma’am. My congratulations, sir. May your life together be long and peaceful and filled with love.”

  Gwen got on her tiptoes and kissed him for that, and they both had tears in their eyes. Well, so did I.

  VIII

  “The biscuits and the syrup never come out even.”

  LAZARUS LONG 1912—

  Gwen took us straight to the Spaceman’s Widow, tucked in behind Macy’s storerooms just as she had said, in one of those odd little corners formed by the habitat’s cylindrical shape—if you didn’t know it was there, you probably would never find it. It was pleasantly quiet after the crowds we had encountered at the spaceport end of the axis.

  Ordinarily this end was for passenger craft only, with freighters ganging up at the other end of the axis of spin. But positioning the new addition for bringing it up to spin had caused all traffic to be routed to the Moonward, or forward, end—“forward” because Golden Rule is long enough to have a slight tidal effect, and will have even more when the new addition is welded on. I don’t mean that it has daily tides; it does not. But what it does have—

  (I may be telling too much; it depends on how much you have had to do with habitats. You can skip this with no loss.)

  What it does have is a tidal lock on Luna; the forward end points forever straight down at the Moon. If Golden Rule were the size of a shuttle craft, or as far away as Ell-Five, this would not happen. But Golden Rule is over five kilometers long and it orbits around a center of mass only a little over two thousand kilometers away. Surely, that’s only one part in four hundred—but it’s a square law and there’s no friction and the effect goes on forever; it’s locked. The tidal lock Earth has on Luna is only four times that—much less if you bear in mind that Luna is round as a tennis ball whereas Golden Rule is shaped more like a cigar.

  Golden Rule has another orbital peculiarity. It orbits from pole to pole (okay, everybody knows that—sorry) but also this orbit, elliptical but almost a perfect circle, has that circle fully open to the Sun, i.e., the plane of its orbit faces the Sun, always, while Luna rotates under it. Like Foucault’s pendulum. Like the spy satellites patrolling Earth.

  Or, to put it another way. Golden Rule simply follows the terminator, the day-and-night line on Luna, around and around and around, endlessly—never in shadow. (Well—In shadow at Lunar eclipses, if you want to pick nits. But only then.)

  T
his configuration is only metastable; it is not locked. Everything tugs at it, even Saturn and Jupiter. But there is a little pilot computer in Golden Rule that does nothing but make sure Golden Rule’s orbit is always full face to the Sun—thereby giving Old MacDonald’s Farm its bountiful crops. It doesn’t even take power to speak of, just the tiniest nudges against the tiny deviations.

  I hope you skipped the above. Ballistics is interesting only to those who use it.

  Mr. Kondo was small, apparently of Japanese ancestry, very polite, and had muscles as sleek as a jaguar—he moved like one. Even without Dr. Schultz’s tip I would have known that I did not want to encounter Tiger Kondo in a dark alley unless he was there to protect me.

  His door did not open fully until I showed Dr. Schultz’s card. Then he at once made us welcome with formal but warm hospitality. The place was small, only half filled, mostly men, and the women were not (I thought) their wives. But not tarts, either. The feeling was that of professional equals. Our host sized us up, decided that we did not belong in the main room with the regulars, put us in a little side room or booth, one big enough for us three and our baggage but just barely. He then took our orders. I asked if dinner was available.

  “Yes and no,” he answered. “Sushi is available. And sukiyaki cooked at the table by my eldest daughter. Hamburgers and hot dogs can be had. There is pizza but it is frozen; we do not make it. Or recommend it. This is primarily a bar; we serve food but do not demand that our guests eat here. You are welcome to play go or chess or cards all night and never order anything.”

  Gwen put a hand on my sleeve. “May I?”

  “Go ahead.”

  She spoke to him at some length and I never understood a word. But his face lit up. He bowed and left. I said, “Well?”

  “I asked if we could have what I had last time…and that is not a specific dish but an invitation to Mama-San to use her judgment with whatever she has. It also let him admit that I had been here before…which he would never have done had I not published it, as I was here with another man. He also told me that our little pet here is the best specimen of rock maple he has ever seen outside Nippon…and I asked him to spray it for me just before we leave. He will.”