MAGICATS!

by Gardner Dozoi

  —Across the lab a group of capering shadow figures stopped the act they were committing on George's prone body and looked toward the door.

  —A screeching bird-shape flapped down from the dark ceiling and struck at Jade Blue's eyes.

  The catmother ducked and felt claws cut harmless runnels through fur. She rolled onto her back and lashed out, her own claws extended. She snagged something heavy that screamed and buffeted her face with feathered wings. She knew she could kill it.

  Until the booted foot came down on her throat and Jade Blue looked up past the still-struggling bird-thing at whoever had been examining Obregon's invention. "Sorry," said the man, and pressed harder.

  "George!" Her voice was shrill, strangled. "Help." And then the boot was too heavy to let by any words at all. The darkness thickened intolerably.

  The pressure stopped. Jade Blue could not see, but—painfully—she could again breathe. She could hear, but she didn't know what the noises were. There were bright lights and Timnath's concerned face, and arms lifting her from the floor. There was warm tea and honey poured into a saucer. George was hugging her and his tears put salt in the tea.

  Jade Blue rubbed her throat gingerly and sat up; she realized she was on a white lab table. On the floor a little way from the table was an ugly mixture of feathers and wet red flesh. Something almost unrecognizable as a man took a ragged breath.

  "Sebastian," said Timnath, kneeling beside the body. "My dear friend." He was crying.

  "Scraw!" said the dying man; and died.

  "Did you kill him?" said Jade Blue, her voice hoarse.

  "No, the shadows did."

  "How?"

  "Unpleasantly." Timnath snapped his fingers twice and the glittering labrats scuttled out from the walls to clean up the mess.

  "Are you all right?" George stood very close to his governess. He was shivering. "I tried to help you."

  "I think you did help me. We're all alive."

  "He did, and we are," said Timnath. "For once, George's creations were an aid rather than a hindrance."

  "I still want you to do something with your machine," said Jade Blue.

  Timnath looked sadly down at the body of Sebastian Le Cloff. "We have time."

  Time progressed helically, and one day Timnath pronounced his invention ready. He called George and Jade Blue to the laboratory. "Ready?" he said, pressing the button which would turn on the machine.

  "I don't know," said George, half hiding behind Jade Blue. "I'm not sure what's happening."

  "It will help him," said Jade Blue. "Do it."

  "He may be lost to you," said Timnath.

  George whimpered. "No."

  "I love him enough," said the governess. "Do it."

  The crystal pillar glowed bright orange. A fine hum cycled up beyond the auditory range. Timnath tapped on the keyboard: GEORGE'S DREAMS OF THE SHADOW VAMPIRES ARE AS NEVER WERE. MERREILE NEVER EXISTED. GEORGE IS OPTIMALLY HAPPY.

  The inventor paused, then stabbed a special button: REVISE.

  The crystal pillar glowed bright orange. A fine hum cycled up beyond the auditory range. Timnath taped on the keyboard: GEORGE'S DREAMS OF THE SHADOW VAMPIRES ARE AS NEVER WERE. MERREILE NEVER EXISTED. GEORGE IS REASONABLY HAPPY.

  Timnath considered, then pushed another button: ACTIVATE. "That's it," he said.

  "Something's leaving us," Jade Blue whispered.

  They heard a scuff of footsteps in the outer hall. Two people walking. There was the clearing of a throat, a parental cough.

  "Who's there?" said Jade Blue, knowing.

  Tom Cat

  By Gary Jennings

  What is this story about? Well . . . there are some stories that are difficult to synopsize. Take this one by Gary Jennings—a frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and author of the recent best-seller Aztecs—about a cat named Puffpuss who some believe might become the President of the United States in a future incarnation. . . . Well, no, that 's not quite right. Maybe it's about Swami Sri Ghosh and his crusade to secure a large donation for the Ghosh Almighty Pagoda . . . or about a girl named Alice Aforethought and the swinging life of the International Jet Set. . . . No, it's really about a young man named Tom whose rich aunt, who supports him, suddenly decides to leave all her money to her cat, see, and so he glues fur all over himself, and practices purring and playing with balls of string

  Tom soon discovers that it takes a lot of practice to be a cat, and that there are some strange surprises in store for those who ply the feline trade. . . .

  Well, anyway, read on . . . you'll see what we mean.

  It isn't that Tom Welch has anything against work. One of his mottoes is "don't knock it till you try it," and work simply happens to be one of the things he's never tried. His rich Aunt Emma put him through the best schools and afterward settled on him an allowance that now enables him just barely to drone along with the Beautiful People of the Jet Set.

  "But only in jet economy class, Aunt Emma," he complains, fidgeting about the drawing room of her Boston town house. "Just look at that dingy old Aston Martin of mine. Every other boy my age is driving a brand new Smetana-Moldau."

  "Humph. How old are you now, young Thomas?"

  "Forty-two, auntie."

  "Shame on you. When your dear uncle was your age, he was forty-three."

  "That's the dotty sort of answer I'm always getting," Tom laments to his friend Shelby Melancolli II, as they loll on the beach at Deauville.

  "What did you say to that?" asks Shelby.

  "What could I say? That I'll certainly be forty-three next year."

  "Then you're plenty old enough," says his aunt, "to have learned to live within your allowance. I'm sure those Jet People of yours would understand."

  "Jet Set, auntie. Beautiful People."

  "Whatever they are. No, not another penny, young Thomas. If you spend it all now, there'll be nothing for you to inherit later."

  "That's the dotty sort of answer I'm always getting," Tom grumbles to Shelby at Acapulco.

  Shelby nods understandingly. "After all, it's not as if you'll be sponging off the old girl forever."

  "Of course not," says Tom. "One of these days she'll die."

  "And you'll inherit."

  "I'm her nearest and dearest."

  "Her only, I thought."

  "Her only and her nearest and dearest. I do little things like reading aloud to her whenever I stop by. Since she turned ninety, her vision has gone quite dim."

  "You're looking frightfully dissipated, young Thomas," says his aunt, peering narrowly.

  "That's uncle's old moose head, auntie. I'm over here."

  "Fidgeting about, as usual. Sit down and start reading. Jennings, bring us the latest literature."

  "Yes, m'lady."

  "I'll just settle here with my knitting. Very well, Thomas, you may begin."

  "Yowr!"

  "Aunt Emma, that's the cat you're knitting at."

  "Oh, dear! My poor Puffpuss. Izzums hurt? Izzums angry?"

  "Izzums gone, auntie, over the balustrade. That's your knitting you're fondling."

  "Stop correcting your elders. Get on with the reading."

  "Yes, Aunt Emma. Ahem. 'From what HIDDEN FOUNTAINS, you may ask, came the WISDOM of Amenhotep IV, Leonardo da Vinci, Francis Bacon? These illustrious Wise Men discovered and perfected certain secret methods of enhancing their MENTAL POWER. And those selfsame MYSTIC ARTS have been preserved from generation to generation, in the keeping of the Brotherhood of Rosicrucians . . .' " Tom pauses. "Rosicrucians, auntie? Have we finished with Inner Light Unfoldment already? Or was that Scientology last week?"

  "Scientology," says Aunt Emma with a sniff, "is old hat. Too modern. The Rosicrucians make it clear that we must plumb the past for the source of TRUE KNOWLEDGE. My eyes are opened at last."

  "Her eyes get opened about twice a month," says Tom to Shelby on Mykonos. "But still she holds conversations with the newel post."

  "Aren't you afraid
she'll really fall for one of these isms? Dotty old women often leave their fortunes to some swindling swami."

  "Not Aunt Scrooge. She'd no more do that than leave everything to Puffpuss."

  "Speaking of pussycats, here comes a girl you ought to meet. Alice, shake hands with Thos. Welch. Thos., let me make you acquainted with Alice Aforethought."

  Tom's eyes bulge. "My, you look nice," he breathes huskily.

  "I am nice," says Alice.

  "She is nice, Aunt Emma, and I am smitten," says Tom. "But she is upper crust and I am unworthy of her. The only reason she consorts with me is that I'm a curiosity—the first non-millionaire she's ever met. It's so humiliating when I can't even charter a quick flight to Les Halles for onion soup at midnight."

  "For the forty-second time, young Thomas, I will not increase your allowance. Not a penny."

  "You never take me anywhere," pouts Alice.

  "But, Alice, how can I?" says Tom. "I mean to say, you're there. What I mean, if any other girl wanted to go someplace, this is where she'd want to go. You're at Juan-les-Pins, at the poshest of posh parties. Just look around you. There's Wallie und the Duke. And over there's Liz and Dick, and Grace and Rainier, and Meg and Tony. And yonder is Gore and Myron und Myra, and Brigitte and Whatsisname. And here come our host and hostess. Hello, Jackie. Kalimera, Ari."

  "Hello, Alice and Tommy."

  "Kalimera, Alice and Tommy."

  "There, Alice. What more could a girl want?"

  "You never take me anywhere."

  "Have you thought of supplementing your allowance, old boy?" asks Shelby at Bimini.

  "How?"

  "A spot of work, perhaps. Some gentlemanly occupation. Just as a stopgap until Aunt Emma is one with the ages."

  "Work, eh? Well . . ." Tom sighs and squares his shoulders. "Don't knock it till you try it, I've always said."

  So Tom sends out a number of seductively worded letters, all beginning, "Dear Sir: I am a graduate of Harverd . . . " but they bring him not so much as an offer of a minor vice-presidency.

  "You never take me anywhere," pouts Alice at Marbella.

  "Darling, look—out in the bay—J. Paul's yacht. Let's go with him on a cruise around the world."

  "I've been there."

  "All right," says Tom with sudden resolve. "I'll take you somewhere you've never been. To the altar. Alice, will you be mine?"

  "Marry you?" says Alice, perking up. "Quelle nouvelle. No boy's ever propositioned me that way before."

  "Proposed to you, Alice."

  "I meant proposed. It's so quaint it's cute."

  "Then you will be mine? Forsaking all others, cleaving only to one another, to have and to hold, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, that none shall put asunder, till death do us part?"

  "I guess so."

  "Those three little words!" cries Tom in joy. "They've made me the happiest man alive. Oh, Alice! We'll be married immediately after the funeral."

  "Funeral?" squeaks Alice. "You mean we have to wait for your Aunt Enema to die?"

  "Aunt Emma, dearest."

  "Well, I won't! I'll marry someone else."

  "She'll marry someone else!" Tom bleats brokenly. He staggers into Aunt Emma's drawing room, one arm flung across his eyes. "I have come home to Boston to Beacon Hill to die."

  "To die is but a small step for a man," says an unfamiliar voice. "Upward or downward on the great stepladder of To Be."

  Tom yanks his arm from his eyes and stares at a small, bald, grease-brown man enveloped in a voluminous fur coat that hangs clear to his grease-brown shoes, worn without socks. He looks like a wienie walking around in its bun.

  "Ah, Thomas," says Aunt Emma. "This is Sir Sri Jawaharlal Ghosh."

  "Pleased to meet you, Sir Sri."

  "A pleasure. Yiss."

  "Not Sir Sri, Thomas," his aunt corrects him. "The more respectful address is Swami Ghosh."

  "A swami? Great Scott!"

  "No, dear. Swamis come from India."

  "Yiss."

  "All very interesting, auntie, indeed it is. But listen, I must tell you this. I love Alice Aforethought and she loves me. We want to get married and settle down."

  "Settle down?" his aunt says absently.

  "Our own little rose-covered yacht. The patter of little deck shoes and all that. We simply can't do it on my pittance."

  "Not another pitty," says Aunt Emma. "I mean penny. Now, swami, you were saying?"

  "I was speaking, Mrs. Madam, of your estimable cat, Pisspiss."

  "Puffpuss."

  "Yiss, yiss. With application of the mystic influences, as was teached to your humble servant by an ancient hermit lama In Tibet, this cat's future is limitless. Om mani padme hum."

  "Swami Ghosh, you have opened my eyes!" exults Aunt Emma. She turns and speaks to a floor lamp nearby. "Thomas, would you believe it? Puffpuss might someday be President of the United States."

  "The cat?" says Shelby at Gstaad.

  "Or a worm," says Tom. "If it lives an upstanding worm life it becomes, perhaps, a newt in its next incarnation. Then the newt, living and dying unsmirched, comes back as, oh, a wombat. And so on up the great stepladder of To Be until it culminates gloriously in, say, Spiro Agnew."

  "And Puffpuss is destined for similar eminence."

  "All that's necessary is for Aunt Emma to endow the Ghosh Almighty Pagoda. The whole congregation will then sit around chanting—Oh, Manny! or however it goes—to help Puffpuss lead a more meaningful cat life and forge on to bigger things."

  "I warned you. A swindling swami."

  "Yiss. I mean yes. He's utterly repulsive."

  "Resembles a wienie, I believe you said."

  "Walking around in its bun. He wears this nasty, fuzzy coat flayed from some Himalayan creature. An abdominal some thing."

  "Abominable."

  "You said it. And if I don't work fast, he'll be fleecing me as well. I must act before auntie is mulcted. But how?"

  "Have you thought of giving Aunt Emma a leg up on that great stepladder of To Be?''

  "Hm. Well, I've nothing actually against murder, of course. Don't knock it, I always say, until you try it. But before I do anything drastic, I'll have one last talk with her."

  "Do that. Maybe she'll say something to put you in a killing rage."

  "Aunt Emma, why is the music room swarming with stout old ladies in floral hats?"

  "The girls from my club, young Thomas. They've come to hear the swami lecture on the Ghosh Almighty philosophy. Ah, so good to see you, Contessa Francesca."

  "That's your begonia centerpiece, auntie."

  "Hush, Thomas. The swami is about to speak."

  "Om, dearly beloveds, mani padme hum. We shall begin the service with the ritual singing of our hymn, the Monsoon Moon Song . . ."

  Moodily, Tom retreats to the drawing room, where he sits watching Puffpuss perform an elaborate toilet, until finally the service is over and Aunt Emma returns on the arm of Swami Ghosh.

  "I'm glad you're still here, young Thomas. I have something to say that concerns both you and the swami."

  "Yes, Aunt Emma?" says Tom apprehensively.

  "Yiss, Mrs. Madam?" says the swami expectantly.

  "Swami, the girls have just joined me in subscribing handsomely to the endowment of the Ghosh Almighty Pagoda. Thomas, your already ample allowance will continue as long as you live. The remainder of my estate—all six billion dollars—I have decided to bequeath to Puffpuss."

  "Auntie!"

  "Madam!"

  "He will need campaign funds. Puffpuss-for-President posters and such. Pins."

  "But Mrs. Madam, that may be ages hence!"

  "Precisely. Long after you and my nephew have ceased to need or want the money, it will still be intact for Puffpuss."

  "But—but—in the meantimes, Mrs. Madam, the Almighty Pagoda would be a fitting repository for it. Yiss, and a fitting home for the future President, too, through all his interim incarnations. I bespee
ch you, dear Mrs. Madam, not to be hasty!"

  "My mind is made up, dear swami. And not another word from you either, Thomas. Thomas? Where is that boy?"

  He is in the study across the hall, at the telephone, frantically dictating cablegrams to both Shelby and Alice: come at once . When he departs, by way of the foyer, he finds Jennings helping a few remaining clubwomen into their several minks and sables, and Tom's eye falls on one fur as yet unclaimed.

  "Jennings," says Aunt Emma some time later, "what is all that hysterical shouting in the foyer?"

  "It's Sir Sri, m'lady. It seems one of the guests must have walked off by mistake with his bun. I mean his coat."

  In a hotel room not far away, Tom is busy with glue pot, shears and fur, crooning while he works, "Swa-mee . . . how-I-love-ya, how-I-love-ya . . . my-y-y dear old swami . . ."

  Alice, arriving breathless at the hotel, pounds on Tom's door, finds it unlocked and bursts in.

  "I came as fast as I—eek!"

  "Meow."

  "Tommy! What on earth has happened?"

  "Call me Puffpuss, dear."

  "Tommy, was it burglars? You're bound hand and foot."

  "Just got tangled in this yarn while I was playing with it. Untie me, sweetest. And do call me Puffpuss."

  "Yes, P—uh, dear. What are you up to?"

  "Practicing. Make a lap, darling." He bounds into it, curls up and says, "Tell me honestly now, how does this sound for purring? Futterfutterfutterfutter . . ."

  "You sound awful. You look awful! You're shedding all over me!" She leaps distractedly from the chair, spilling Tom off her lap.

  "Notice that, Alice? Landed on my four feet."

  "Oh, this is terrible. This is tragic."

  "Well, it's not easy. Takes a lot of close observation, assiduous practice to be a cat. I think I've got pretty good at it."

  "I don't like it when you lick under your leg like that."

  "Don't knock it till—ah, hello, Shelby. Meow."

  "Shelby! Thank God you've come! Tommy thinks he's a cat!"

  "You must be mistaken, old boy."

  "I'm a cat okay. Look at me."

  "I am. You must be mistaken, old boy."

  "And I'm not just any cat. I am a cat named Puffpuss, to whom my dotty Aunt Emma is about to bequeath six billion dollars."