Not So Much, Said the Cat

by Michael Swanwick

  “May I stop watching now?” Susanna asked. I could tell she meant it to be defiant. But her voice came out small and plaintive.

  “Soon.” Maitresse leaned over the rail and called down to the pit-slaves, “Show us the body.”

  The pit workers started to hoist up the naked corpse for her examination.

  “Clean her up first.”

  They produced a dirty cloth and rubbed at the girl’s face, wiping away most of the red paint. Then they lifted her up again. In death, she seemed particularly childlike: Slender, small-breasted and long-legged. The hair on her pubic mound was a golden mist. I could not help wondering if she had experienced sex before her premature death and, if so, what it had been like.

  “Study her features,” Maitresse said dryly.

  I did so, without results. Turning to my sister with a petulant shrug, I saw in the mirror of her horrified expression the truth. There came then a shifting within me like all the planets in the universe coming into alignment at once. When I looked back at the dead fighter I saw her face afresh. It could have been a younger version of my sister’s face. But it was not.

  It was my own.

  Susanna said nothing during the long walk home, nor did I.

  Maitresse, however, spoke at length and without emotion. “Your mother made many children. You—” (she meant Susanna) “—were natural. You—” (me) “were the first of many clones commissioned in an attempt to create a male heir, all failures. When your mother was sent away, your father resolved to get rid of everything that reminded him of her. I argued against it and in the end we compromised and kept the two of you while selling off the others. I have no idea how many survive. However, the economic realities of the day are such that, were either of you to be sold, you would fetch the highest price here.” She said a great deal more as well but it was unnecessary; we already well understood everything that she had to tell us.

  When we arrived home, Maitresse took our masks from us and bid us both a pleasant good-night.

  We went to sleep, my sister and I, cradled in each other’s arms, the first time we had done so in over a year. In the morning, Tante Amélie was gone and our formal educations were done forever.

  Last night, as I said, I returned to my old dormitory room. It took me a while to realize that I was dreaming. It was only when I looked for Susanna and found nothing but dust and memories that I recollected how many years had gone by since my childhood. Still, in the way of dreams, there was a pervasive sense that the entire world was about to change. “You know what to do now,” a rasping whispery voice said. “Don’t you, daughter?”

  I turned and the she-wolf was not there. But I felt sure of her presence anyway. “Is it time?” I asked.

  She did not reply. Her silence was answer enough.

  I grinned for I now understood where the she-wolf had been hiding all this time.

  Not so much awakening as taking my dream-state with me into the waking world, I got up out of bed and walked down the hall to my husband’s room. Then I paid a visit to the nursery, where my twin sons were sleeping. Finally, I went out into the night-dark streets to look for my sister.

  The night is almost over now, and we must hurry to finish what we have begun. At dawn we will leave the cities behind and return to the swamps and forests, the caverns and hills from which the humans had driven us, and resume our long-interrupted lives. I have taken off my skin and now prowl naked through the streets of Port-Mimizon. In the shadows about me I sense many others who were once human and I devoutly pray that there are enough of us for our purpose. In the back of my mind, I wonder whether all this is real or if I have descended into the pit of madness. But that is a minor concern. I have work to do.

  I have freed the she-wolf from within her hiding place and there is blood on her muzzle.

  Only . . . why does the world smell as it does? Of canvas and bitter truffle.

  THE HOUSE OF DREAMS

  Have you ever killed a man?” the vagrant asked.

  “That is not something we discuss,” his companion replied.

  “I myself have killed five. That is not many. But two I killed with my bare hands, which, I assure you, is not easy.”

  “I am sure that it is not.”

  “Don’t you know?”

  The second vagrant said nothing. They both continued trudging across the frozen German countryside. Winter had been almost as hard on the lands hereabout as the war had been to the lands to the east. It had buckled roads and destroyed bridges and collapsed roofs, and if there were any leavings to be gleaned in the fields they were buried under sheets of ice. The stubble crunched like glass underfoot, making the going difficult. But the main routes were all choked with refugees and since the vagrants were headed in the opposite direction, toward the front, to use them would only draw attention to themselves.

  “Ritter?” the first vagrant said.

  “Mmm?”

  “Do you remember our instructions?”

  Ritter stopped. “Of course I do,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  “Oh, I remember them. I just don’t believe in them anymore. We’ve been walking so long that all my life seems like a dream to me now. Sometimes I cannot even remember our destination.” When Ritter said nothing, his companion turned away. “But let’s not stand out here in the open, waiting for the Cossacks to discover us.”

  They resumed walking. A leafless tree rose up in the distance, crept slowly toward them, was a brief respite from the monotonously unchanging fields, and then dwindled away to their rear. “Ritter?”

  “Eh?”

  “I address you by name, the way a true comrade does. Why do you never do the same for me?”

  Again Ritter stopped. “That is a good question,” he said. “A very good question indeed.” Anger entered his voice. “Let me ask you some of my own. Why do you not know our mission or our destination or even your own name? Why is everything so silent and still? Why are my legs not weary from all this walking? Why does the sky look so much like a plaster ceiling? Why can I not make out the features of your face? Why are you neither tall nor short, nor thin nor fat, nor ruddy nor pale? Exactly who are you and just what game are you playing with me?”

  You should never have used the word “dream,” a woman’s voice said.

  That wasn’t it. When I tried to find out who his companion was, something told him I was an imposter.

  In any case, this session is done.

  Everything went black.

  When Ritter awoke, he found himself lying under a feather bolster in a bedroom with yellow walls and green trim, a flowered jug atop a washstand, and a winter landscape outside the curtained window. A short man with the broadest shoulders he had ever seen on a human being stood looking out that window, hands clasped behind his back. An old woman sat in a wooden chair, embroidery loop in hand, sewing tight little stitches with a sharp tug at the end of each. “Where am I?” Ritter said. His head felt thick and dull.

  “Someplace safe.” The man turned, smiling. He had a round, benevolent face. To see him was to want to trust him. “Among friends.”

  “Ah.” Ritter’s heart sank. “I see.” He closed his eyes. “At least I made it through the front lines.”

  “Too bad for you that you did,” the old woman said. “We have already determined that you are in the pay of the British Secret Service. Your presence here in civilian clothing is by itself enough to justify your execution as a foreign spy.”

  With a touch of asperity, Ritter said, “I am a German citizen in Austro-German-Bavarian territory. It is my right to be in my own country.”

  The man shook his head in gentle reprimand. “The land you were born into ceased to exist weeks ago. Legally, you are a nationalist partisan in the westernmost provinces of the Mongolian Empire. But we are getting off on the wrong foot. Let us start over. Dr. Nergüi and I are alienists. We have begun a program of dream therapy intended first to obtain information from you, then to use that information to cure you of your unt
hinking loyalty to an anachronistic and dysfunctional regime, and finally to convert you wholeheartedly to our cause.”

  “That is not possible,” Ritter said with conviction.

  “Think of Borsuk and me as dam-busters,” Dr. Nergüi said. “We drill and we drill with no discernable results until at last our labor produces a single drop of water. Shortly after that, another follows, and another, and before you know it, the wall bursts open and the lake that the dam has been holding back explodes outward, inundating all before it.”

  “But that’s enough chatter for now.” Borsuk patted Ritter’s shoulder. “Go to sleep, my friend. We have hard work before us. Very hard indeed.”

  All against his will, Ritter felt himself tumbling down into the darkness, into the depths of sleep. Somewhere far, far away in the forests of the night, he thought he sensed someone or something searching for him. Somehow that seemed important.

  In his dreams, Ritter was standing in Sir Tobias Gracchus Willoughby-Quirke’s classically austere, oak-paneled office. Arrayed on the desk between them were the clothing and accouterments of an indigent.

  Sir Toby waved a hand at the ragged clothing. “Everything you see here is convincingly shabby, and yet serviceable as well. The coat is good, dense wool—even the patches. Soaking wet, it will keep you warm. The shoes look decrepit but are cut to the measure of your feet. They have been waterproofed with candle wax, as a hobo might do. Inside the laces are lengths of pianoforte wire suitable for making snares or garrotes. It would be suspicious for you to carry a gun. However, you will have this.” He picked up what looked to be a common kitchen knife. “Sheffield steel. Antique but sharp. The wooden handle is broken and taped together with strips of linen in a manner that looks makeshift. Yet in a fight, you may rely on it.”

  “I see that I have some rough traveling ahead of me,” Ritter said. “Where exactly do you wish me to go?”

  “I am sending you and your partner to the Continent, behind enemy lines. You will rendezvous there with a member of the resistance who has important information to share with us.” Sir Toby presented an envelope and Ritter, feeling a strange, sourceless reluctance, opened it and read. It contained a name, an address, and a date. That was all.

  “Is that all?”

  Sir Toby took back the envelope. “I am reluctant to give you more than an absolute minimum of information, lest you be captured.”

  “I will not be captured. But if I am, I am confident that I shall escape.”

  “Oh?” Sir Toby placed his hands on the desk and leaned forward. His eyes gleamed. “How?”

  Astonished, Ritter said, “You know how. My—” He looked around the office, at the walls that swelled and snapped like canvas in the wind, at the bust of the archmage Roger Bacon in the tympanum over the door that leered and winked at him, at the inkwell that went tumbling in the air without spilling a drop of its contents. It all felt wrong. Even Sir Toby himself seemed an unconvincing scrim over some darker and truer version of reality. Ritter’s head ached. It was hard to think logically. “Or do you?”

  “Let’s say that I don’t. Purely as a sort of exercise. It’s your partner, isn’t it? You’re counting on him to rescue you.” Sir Toby smiled in away that was avuncular, predatory, insincere. “Aren’t you, son?”

  Convulsively, Ritter swept his hand over the desk, sending clothes, shoes, knife, and all flying in all directions. “You are not my father. Nor are you the man you pretend to be. Clearly, you are part of a conspiracy of some kind. Well, it won’t work! You’ll get nothing out of me!”

  Excellent work. I shall return him to consciousness now.

  “You see how easy that was?” Borsuk said. “Dr. Nergüi put you under and I guided your thoughts, and now we know your mission, the name by which your contact will identify himself, and where and when he may be captured. All that remains to be discovered is the identity of your oh-so-mysterious partner.”

  “Do you still think you will not break?” Dr. Nergüi asked.

  When Ritter did not reply, she picked up her embroidery and set to sewing again.

  For a long time, Ritter lay in the bed, eyes closed, listening to the scratch of a goose-quill pen—Borsuk writing up his findings, no doubt. The rest of the house was uncannily quiet. He could hear small creaks and groans as boards shifted slightly. But no voices, no footfalls, not the least indication that, save for the inhabitants of this room, the house was occupied. Finally, he said, “So it is just you two here? No orderlies or guards?”

  Abrupt silence. Then Borsuk said, “This one’s an optimist, Dr. Nergüi. Even in extremis, this clever young man probes for information, tries to seek out our weaknesses, makes plans for escape.” He sounded almost proud of Ritter.

  “There is a war going on, in case you haven’t noticed,” Dr. Nergüi said. “Resources are stretched thin. We must make do with what we have. But if you think the two of us are not up to the task. . . .” She produced the knife that Sir Toby had given Ritter and placed it on the nightstand. “Sit up.”

  Ritter did.

  “Now pick up the knife.”

  He tried. But whenever Ritter made to close his fingers about the hilt, his hand turned out to be above or below the knife, clenching empty air. Again and again he tried, with the same maddening lack of results.

  Dryly, Dr. Nergüi said, “So you see now that it is useless to try to escape.”

  “I see that you are glamour-workers with a mountebank’s talent for illusion. But I still have my indomitable Teutonic will, thank God. You may kill me if you wish, but your tuppenny magics cannot make me do your bidding.”

  In an off-handed manner (for he still continued to write), Borsuk said, “Of all the talents, that of illusion has always been thought the weakest. Oh, we could walk you off a cliff or show you the dead face of whomever you loved most and convince you it was your own doing— for a time. But we could not set a forest ablaze the way a pyromancer can, nor cripple a man with frostbite like an ice wizard. Our magic wears off and thus it was never greatly valued.

  “But then it was realized that, all magic deriving from the powers of the mind, illusion was the very key to its source. In her homeland, Dr. Nergüi is considered a very great woman for her discoveries. You should be proud to have her devoted to your case.” Borsuk sprinkled sand over his writing and shook it off again. “Your contact lives not an hour’s walk from here. The messenger who will carry this report”—he rattled the parchment—“to Military Intelligence is not expected until tomorrow morning. If only you were free, you could warn your contact, get his information, and snatch success from the embers of failure.”

  For a single heartbeat, hope leapt up within Ritter’s breast. Then he said, “You taunt me.”

  “Perhaps I do. Get dressed. Your clothes are in the armoire. No need to be shy before Dr. Nergüi, she’s a grandmother—”

  “Great-grandmother.”

  “Great-grandmother, and she’s seen it all before. Your boots are under the bed. Make sure to wear two pairs of socks—it’s cold out there.”

  Wondering, Ritter did as he was told.

  “Now, leave.”

  The bedroom opened into a homely parlor room, washed in grey winter light. His mud-stained greatcoat hung on a peg by the door. Ritter donned it. He went outside and stood blinking on the stoop. The frozen fields he remembered so vividly from his dream or hallucination stretched toward a wood that was clearly miles away, a mere line in the distance. He took a few hesitant steps in its direction and then looked back at the building he had just left. A sign over the door read САНАТОРИЙ. Sanitarium. That was the only indication that his prison was anything other than a farmhouse.

  Turning his face to the horizon, Ritter began to walk, expecting with every step a shout from behind, followed by a bullet in the back. Inexplicably, this did not happen. Field-stubble crunching underfoot, he broke into a clumsy run. Other than the lazy cawing of faraway crows, his footfalls and the rasp of his breath were the only sounds.


  It was not possible that they would simply release him.

  Was it?

  The trees were all but unreachable. But if he could make his way to them, he had the barest chance of escape. He ran and as he ran the cold air cleared his head. The mental fog lifted at last, revealing a variety of pains that had been hiding beneath it. He was obviously heavily bruised on his legs, shoulders, and buttocks, and his ribs ached like blazes. The result of a beating he had received when he had been caught, no doubt. He vaguely recalled killing one of the enemy soldiers before being subdued. It was a miracle he was still alive.

  So, no, they would not simply release him. Not when he had killed one of their own.

  And yet . . . The farmhouse sank to nothing behind him. Winded, he slowed to a walk. Several times he tripped and caught himself, and once he fell flat on the rock-hard ground and briefly thought he had sprained an ankle but was able to walk it off.

  He looked over his shoulder. The farmhouse had been swallowed up by the billowing farmlands and still nobody but he was in the fields. Why was he not pursued?

  It made no sense.

  Unless he was being observed from afar, by means either magical or natural. It was the only rational answer he could think of. Which was why he refrained from reaching out with his mind in search of Freki. If he was being watched or, worse, lying abed hallucinating, he did not want to hand his interrogators the information which, after the name and location of his contact, they desired most: the knowledge that he was a member of the Werewolf Corps and that his traveling companion was a wolf. So, much as he would have liked to coordinate his escape with Freki, he dared not make the attempt.

  Ritter was trained to use his wolf as a weapon. With Freki at his side, he was a match for ten conventionally armed men. A vagabond traveling in the company of a wolf, however, was a memorable sight. So they had journeyed separately, Ritter on the roads and his partner keeping to the ditches and coverts, with anywhere from half a mile to a mile’s distance between them. As a result, Freki had not been able to help when Ritter was caught by (he remembered the incident now) an unexpected patrol of foragers, looking to complement their rations with a stolen hen or fletch of bacon extorted from the locals.