“Enough,” I said, finally, to the cat person who held her there. Perhaps half a minute had elapsed, or perhaps it was over sooner.
He stood back, released her.
Glory gazed upon the hot, healing face of my master. Already, at darting molecular speeds, the defanged poisons swept away into his blood stream for disposal. The lumps and weals of his face and forehead visibly subsided, paling. It would be days, perhaps longer, before his flesh recovered its beauty, but the lineaments were already written against the dark mud streaking his cheeks. He struggled to raise himself against the weight of the loam of Harvest, and I adjusted the surface, lifting him.
Out of some access of hysterical memory, Glory sighed, watched the ugly mask fall away, and murmured in a daze:
“Kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngoyimba, kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngodigida.”
Without a glance over her shoulder at the taut, watching cats, she raised her floating white and gray skirts and clambered up onto the opened pod. She placed first her gnawed foot, with its absent heel and toes, into the thick mud, and then the other, whole foot, sliding forward on her behind to trap the Landgrave’s lower body between her strong thighs, and fell upon his breast.
The mad thing began to laugh, a joyous, open laugh, and she lifted herself, slathered with mud, and kissed him this time for real, slathering his healing mouth with sweet kisses.
I saw, then, that she was not mad. No longer mad.
The Landgrave oofed.
“Pardon me, madam, but I’m having a little trouble breathing.”
She giggled, drew back, helped him sit up. “That better?”
“Yes, thank you. We haven’t been introduced. I am Ullimus Wong, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”
He smiled as he said it, and his smile, despite his remaining welts, was dazzling.
“Oh yes, oh yes,” she said to him. She reached under the mud, scratched at her hidden limb. “That stings.” She frowned. “I am Gloriana Avid, and my mother is Grace Desdemona Merribelle Avid. You’ve probably heard of her.”
Ullimus shook his head, and drying mud flew about the room.
“I haven’t been keeping up with court affairs,” he said. “Sorry. As you see—”
“We’ve got to get you out of this horrid mess and into a bath,” she said, thinking sensibly at last, for the first time in decades. She was unspeakably lovely, radiant with her vegetable life. “Here, somebody, give me a hand.”
Daisy the mauser stepped forward, loaned her his wiry strong arm as she clambered down from the mud. She took a step on her whole right foot, and another on her nearly-whole left foot.
“Oh dear god,” she cried, or whimpered. “Look what I’ve done now.”
Probably she fainted. I was not watching her or the commotion in the room. I was attending to my healed master, the Landgrave.
* * * *
Everyone knows what happened next. Was Death to blame? I accept no culpability.
“That cat of yours is making waves,” the Landgrave said one fine morning to the Landgravine. They sat outdoors under tall leafy shade, careful of Ullimus Wong’s pale, tender, vulnerable skin. He was plugged into a news circuit bearing word through the slipstream from far and wide in delayed time and extended space.
“The mauser Daisy?” Glory ate a triangle of marmalade on crisp mango, and the pouring light split into rays of reddy yellow and sharp orange. “Bof!” Fingers free, mouth full, she let her hands part in dismissal, her slender shoulders shrugging. “We owe him for your life, dear heart, and for bringing us together, and that is a very great deal. But I cannot forgive his delinquency.”
The detestable cat had abandoned Harvest more than a year earlier, taking with him all of his kind save three weary and elderly house mausers and those feline garden patrollers so hardened into their roles that they could not, would not take a chance on what Daisy called, perhaps with some irony, the glory road. Glory saw no glory in it, merely ingratitude and faithlessness.
“Wherever he goes, wars die down,” said astonished Ullimus Wong, monitoring the news. “Conflicts fade into amicable, tough-minded negotiations. Old enemies embrace, however reluctantly. I have to tell you, I still don’t know who all these people are or their names—”
“Use your Know,” she told him. “You really are an old fuddy-duddy, Ullie, at times.”
If he winced, I was the only one acute enough to perceive it.
“My people have a word for what’s happening,” he told her. And murmured the old, old words:
When there is no desire,
all things are at peace.
If the peace has been shattered,
how can one be content?
One’s foes are not demons,
but beings like oneself.
One does not wish them personal harm.
Nor does one rejoice in victory.
How rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
“Or the slaughter of mausers, neither, I suppose,” Glory said slowly, as thoughtfully as she ever managed. “But my warrior cats lived for strife and contest. That creature Daisy—what a name, what a name!”
“He does not go by that name any longer. Indeed, no.”
“—he came to attention with some barbarity. What was it?” Her eyes lost focus, her hand reached for a pastry. It must be admitted that Gloriana Wong was growing stout, however beautifully. In part it was due to her pregnancy. She was old by the traditions of men and women, but the soil and special codons of her world and herself kept her fresh as a newly picked melon, glowing like dark plum jam. “My god, yes, that was it. He gelded his brother!”
“The monster has turned over a new leaf, then,” the Landgrave informed her, smiling. I heard his heart’s pulse quicken. How he loved her! I understood in the abstract why that might be, but I retained my suspicions.
“There is talk of an uprising on the Homeland world,” he said. “Peace and love. The old temptation, the old intoxication and illusion. Oh, the Lords and Ladies don’t remember how it was, as I do.” For a moment his face fell into a sort of memorious sorrow. I knew what he recalled, for I had been there also—the blood, the fire, the horror, the molecular viral machines of which he was the last living victim and vector.
I made a throat-clearing sound. It startled them both. People tended to forget that I was there.
“May I suggest something for your consideration?”
“Why, Harriet, good morning. Indeed, certainly. You should know there’s no need to stand on ceremony, my dear.”
A snuffling noise came out of my speakers, I don’t know why. After a moment, I said, “The machines have mutated.”
“Eh? The nanugs? They were immobilized a thousand years ago.”
“But not killed. They are not the kind of thing that can be killed. Landgrave, did you know that people call me Death?”
Gloriana rolled her eyes. He caught it, and smiled gently.
“Yes, Harriet, so I’ve heard. Ignore it, dear machine. People can be silly and thoughtless.”
His kind words did ease my anguish, somehow. I said, “We should have considered the possibility. During the long, long voyage, the dormant, silenced nanugs shifted their chemistry. Their atoms migrated. Their coding changed, atom by spinning atom. They grew intrinsically less…vehement.”
Surprise showed in his face. “I see. They mutated and evolved inside my body’s ecology.”
“And now have muted their message. Reversed it, indeed. Not hatred and murder, this year, but love and detachment.”
Gloriana rose, already bored. She touched the swelling in her belly. She was undisputed queen of Harvest world, no longer ruined.
“I don’t care for this conversation, Ullie. Come stroll with me in the park.”
The Landgrave rose also, solicitous. As he departed he said to me, over his shoulder, “I am frightened by this thought, Harriet. Either way, the worlds will not escape extreme change. What fli
ps one way can flip back again. Dear oh dear, this will require some investigation.”
I watched them walk out into the sharp, luminous morning of Harvest, its air fragrant with grasses and fruit. I thought I knew which way things would turn out.
To the memory of Cordwainer Smith.
STORIES OF CAT SAGACITY, by W. H. G. Kingston
The Cat and the Knocker
When you see Pussy seated by the fireside, blinking her eyes, and looking very wise, you may often ask, “I wonder what she can be thinking about?” Just then, probably, she is thinking about nothing at all; but if you were to turn her out of doors into the cold, and shut the door in her face, she would instantly begin to think, “How can I best get in again?” And she would run round and round the house, trying to find a door or window open by which she might reenter it.
I once heard of a cat which exerted a considerable amount of reason under these very circumstances. I am not quite certain of this Pussy’s name, but it may possibly have been Deborah. The house where Deborah was born and bred is situated in the country, and there is a door with a small porch opening on a flower-garden. Very often when this door was shut, Deborah, or little Deb, as she may have been called, was left outside; and on such occasions she used to mew as loudly as she could to beg for admittance. Occasionally she was not heard; but instead of running away, and trying to find some other home, she used—wise little creature that she was!—patiently to ensconce herself in a corner of the window-sill, and wait till some person came to the house, who, on knocking at the door, found immediate attention. Many a day, no doubt, little Deb sat there on the window-sill and watched this proceeding, gazing at the knocker, and wondering what it had to do with getting the door open.
A month passed away, and little Deb grew from a kitten into a full-sized cat. Many a weary hour was passed in her corner. At length Deb arrived at the conclusion that if she could manage to make the knocker sound a rap-a-tap-tap on the door, the noise would summon the servant, and she would gain admittance as well as the guests who came to the house.
One day Deb had been shut out, when Mary, the maidservant, who was sitting industriously stitching away, heard a rap-a-tap at the front door, announcing the arrival, as she supposed, of a visitor. Putting down her work, she hurried to the door and lifted the latch; but no one was there except Deb, who at that moment leaped off the window-sill and entered the house. Mary looked along the road, up and down on either side, thinking that some person must have knocked and gone away; but no one was in sight.
The following day the same thing happened, but it occurred several times before anyone suspected that Deb could possibly have lifted the knocker. At length Mary told her mistress what she suspected, and one of the family hid in the shrubbery to watch Deb’s proceedings. Deb was allowed to run out in the garden, and the door was closed. After a time the little creature was seen to climb up on the window-sill, and then to rear herself on her hind-feet, in an oblique position at the full stretch of her body, when, steadying herself with one front paw, with the other she raised the knocker; and Mary, who was on the watch, instantly ran to the door and let her in.
Miss Deb’s knock now became as well-known to the servant as that of any other member of the family, and, no doubt to her great satisfaction, it usually met with prompt attention.
Could the celebrated cat of the renowned Marquis of Carrabas have done more, or better? Not only must Deb have exercised reason and reflection, as well as imitation, but a considerable amount of perseverance; for probably she made many vain attempts before she was rewarded with success.
Some Scotch ladies told me of a cat they had when young, brought by their grandfather from Archangel, which, under the same circumstances, used to reach up to the latch of the front door of a house in the country, and to rattle away on it till admitted. I have seen a cat which the same ladies now possess make a similar attempt.
Does it not occur to you that you may take a useful lesson from little Pussy, and when you have an object to gain, a task to perform, think over the matter, and exert yourself to the utmost till you have accomplished it?
The Cat and the Rabbit-Trap
An instance of the sagacity of a cat came under my own notice. I was living, a few years ago, in a country place in Dorsetshire, when one day a small tortoise-shell cat met my children on the road, and followed them home. They, of course, petted and stroked her, and showed their wish to make her their friend. She was one of the smallest, and yet the most active of full-grown cats I ever saw. From the first she gave evidence of being of a wild and predatory disposition, and made sad havoc among the rabbits, squirrels, and birds. I have several times seen her carry along a rabbit half as big as herself. Many would exclaim that for so nefarious a deed she ought to have been shot; but as she had tasted of my salt, taken refuge under my roof, besides being the pet of my children, I could not bring myself to order her destruction.
We had, about the time of her arrival, obtained a dog to act as a watchman over the premises. She and he were at first on fair terms—a sort of armed neutrality. In process of time, however, she became the mother of a litter of kittens. With the exception of one, they shared the fate of other kittens. When she discovered the loss of her hopeful family, she wandered about in a melancholy way, evidently searching for them, till, encountering Carlo, it seemed suddenly to strike her that he had been the cause of her loss. With back up, she approached, and flying at him with the greatest fury, attacked him till blood dropped from his nose, when, though ten times her size, he fairly turned tail and fled. Pussy and Carlo, after this, became friends; at least, they never interfered with each other.
Pussy, however, to her cost, still continued her hunting expeditions. The rabbits had committed great depredations in the garden, and the gardener had procured two rabbit-traps. One had been set at a considerable distance from the house, and fixed securely in the ground. One morning the nurse heard a plaintive mewing at the window of the day-nursery on the ground-floor. She opened it, and in crawled poor Pussy, dragging the heavy iron rabbit-trap, in the teeth of which her fore-foot was caught. I was called in, and assisted to release her. Her paw swelled, and for some time she could not move out of the basket in which she was placed before the fire. Though suffering intense pain, she must have perceived that the only way to release herself was to dig up the trap, and then drag it, up many steep paths, to the room where her kindest friends—nurse and the children—were to be found.
Carlo had been caught before in the same trap, and he bit at it, and at everything around, and severely injured the gardener, who went to release him. Thus Pussy, under precisely the same circumstances, showed by far the greatest amount of sagacity and cool courage. She, however, not many weeks after her recovery, came in one day with her foot sadly lacerated, having again been caught in a trap; so, although she could reason, she did not appear to have learned wisdom from experience. This last misfortune, however, taught her prudence, as she was never again caught in a trap.
You will agree with me that Pussy was wise in going to her best friends for help when in distress; and foolish, having once suffered, again to run into the same danger.
You, my young reader, will be often entrapped, if you lack strength to resist temptation. Your kind friends at home will, I am sure, help you as far as they have the power; but, that they may do so, you must on all occasions trust them.
Affection Exhibited by a Cat
I was one day calling in Dorsetshire on a clever, kind old lady, who showed me a beautiful tabby cat, coiled up before the fire. “Seventeen years ago,” said she, “that cat’s mother had a litter. They were all ordered to be drowned with the exception of one. The servant brought me one. It was a tortoise-shell. ‘No,’ I said; ‘that will always be looking dirty. I will choose another.’ So I put my hand into the basket, and drew forth this tabby. The tabby has loved me ever since. When she came to have a family, she disappeared; but the rain did not, for it came pouring down through the ceiling: and it
was discovered that Dame Tabby had made a lying-in hospital for herself in the thatched roof of the house. The damage she did cost several pounds; so we asked a friend who had a good cook, fond of cats, to take care of Tabby the next time she gave signs of having a family, as we knew she would be well fed. We sent her in a basket completely covered up; and she was shut into a room, where she soon exhibited a progeny of young mewlings. More than the usual number were allowed to survive, and it was thought that she would remain quietly where she was. Not so. On the first opportunity she made her escape, and down she came all the length of the village, and early in the morning I heard her mewing at my bedroom door to be let in. When I had stroked her back and spoken kindly to her, off she went to look after her nurslings. From that day, every morning she came regularly to see me, and would not go away till she had been spoken to and caressed. Having satisfied herself that I was alive and well, back she would go. She never failed to pay me that one visit in the morning, and never came twice in the day, till she had weaned her kittens; and that very day she came back, and nothing would induce her to go away again. I had not the heart to force her back. From that day to this she has always slept at the door of my room.”
Surely you will not be less grateful to those who brought you up than was my old friend’s cat to her. Acts, not mere words, show the sincerity of our feelings. Consider how you are acting towards them each hour and day of your life. Are you doing your best to act well, whether at home, at school, or at play?
The Cat and Her Young Mistresses
My friend Mrs. F— gave me a very touching anecdote.
A lady she knew, residing in Essex, once had two young daughters. They had a pet cat which they had reared from a kitten, and which was their constant companion. The sisters, however, were both seized with scarlet fever, and died. The cat seemed perfectly to understand what had taken place, and, refusing to leave the room, seated herself on the bed where they lay, in most evident sorrow. When the bodies of the young girls were placed in their small coffins, she continued to move backwards and forwards from one to the other, uttering low and melancholy sounds. Nothing could induce her all the time to take food, and soon after the interment of her fond playmates she lay down and passed away from life.
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