MAGICATS II

by Gardner Dozoi

  —Or you could get even with all of them.

  You hear a whistle.

  To hell with them. For now.

  But, wait. That’s—

  It’s Dinner Time!

  FOOD!

  You run through the historic piles of tree needles, witness to betrayals large and small, from time immemorial, from before you were born even, and run back to have some dinner.

  FIVE: GOODMORNINGOODMORNIN

  Last night, after your dinner, and after their dinner, Your Lady had left, slamming big and little doors, grumbling mumble. Taken the chariot. Left you alone. All alone, with Your Nemesis, and That Shit.

  And a long little time later, there was a noise at the front door and That Scarab’s Delight answered—and it was a lady, not Your Lady, either, and they hugged each other, then went into the rooms which should be yours, and you tried to follow. But they shut the door in your face, and you heard them laughing. You backed up to a row of books and pissed on them. They still laughed, from behind the door. So you scratched a wall hanging. Chased Your Nemesis everywhere. Knocked down several of That Shit’s things—broke a few. And still they laughed, still he laughed. At you. At Your Lady.

  It had been a long, long time before the door opened again, and the other lady left—smelling of sweat and of seed. That Shit went with her. And returned a short time later. When he came back alone, he didn’t notice you had destroyed many of his things.

  It was when he had again shut the door behind him, shut it in your face, it was then you came to a decision.

  You pushed that door and pushed that door, and had been about to give up, when Your Nemesis came and reached up and leaned into the door, and opened it. She’d only wanted Your Lady’s desk, good.

  You’d heard the familiar rhythm, the ebb and flow of That Shit’s snoring. Your mother had taught you about veins, especially those around the neck. You leapt onto the bed, and he turned. For the first time in his life, The Shit was co-operating. You stretched, and flexed, drawing claws from paws. And you pounced.

  ###

  But that was so long ago, a good night ago, and here it is, a goodmorningoodmornin, and no one left anything in the kitchen for you to snack on.

  To think he put up less resistance than mama grey blue bird—but he did bleed more. Much more. Still, he was so easy. You must make a note to only pounce on the sleeping. Yet somehow you had expected more excitement—and that much blood is no fun, not fun at all, it makes your fur the color of grass. Still, you’re not a kitten anymore; time to put away a kitten’s things.

  And too bad some of his bits weren’t in any shape to stuff back in place. Any Seshat would try, if possible. Pharaoh, after all, usually had a criminal’s head sewn back on after its removal. But you are Seshat, not Pharaoh, you want some kitchen food now. Where could Your Lady be?

  You hear a chariot approach, and stop. You hear tiny distant jingling become a near jingling, and the door opens. Your Nemesis comes running, demanding food, wet food. Good, it is Your Lady, with another lady, one you vaguely remember. You rush up to her, rub against her, leaving a streak of blood the color of grass. Her friend leans down to stroke your ears, and you playfully bite her. And she laughs.

  You hear Your Lady scream and rush back to your room. You are as appalled as she is; you have apparently made some terrible mistake—why else would Your Lady scream like that—isn’t it always the Seshat’s fault when they scream like that? You rush forward to determine what is wrong, while trying to apologize for whatever rudeness you may have committed. She leaves. Just when you find you’ve knocked over her plant, she comes back with the mallet. Your Lady has now done something wrong, made the mistake, the silly and stupid grave error. There’s no birdie to brain in your room! No birdie at all!

  —For Sheila Finch

  A Word to the Wise

  John Collier

  The late John Collier was a novelist and poet, but is perhaps best remembered as a writer of short, acerbic, slyly witty stories like “The Touch of Nutmeg Makes It,” “Green Thoughts,” and “Thus I Refute Beelzy”—stories which brought him international critical acclaim. The bulk of them have been collected in Fancies and Goodnights, which won the International Fantasy Award, and The John Collier Reader. His other books include the novel His Monkey Wife and the postholocaust novel Tom’s A-Cold. Collier died in 1980.

  Here he demonstrates that getting what you want is perhaps not as important as knowing what it’s good for . . .

  * * *

  Richard Whitiker drank his milk and carried his serviceable umbrella. When he looked in the glass he saw a face too simple ever to look old, and too worn ever to look young. Clowns have faces of this sort. His hair, well-streaked with grey, looked as if it were a wig, or as if it had been cut at home.

  “That,” said he, “is the face of someone who has not got very far in life. Damn it, I have hit the nail on the head! I am absolutely right, for nor have I. I have good judgment, you see, yet I have missed the bus on various important occasions.”

  This bothered him. He consulted the success books, which told him to analyze his past failures, and find out the true reason for them, in order to do better in the future.

  This was a tremendous task. He paced up and down the room, he scratched his head; he took his ears in his hands and sat down on the bed to concentrate. At last, as if by a flash of lightning, he saw the very heart of the matter. He sprang up: “There is no doubt about it,” he cried. “I should have made none of these silly mistakes. I should have done a thousand times better, I should have been one of the greatest successes ever known, had I only had a cat that could talk.

  “Such an animal would have advised me against that wretched gold mine.

  “It would have told me frankly I could never do well with a hotel.

  “It would have cried ‘Look out!’ or ‘Beware!’ or something, when I brought that Colonel Rankin home and introduced him to my wife.”

  He found it a galling thought, to have missed fame and fortune for lack of a cat and a few words, in a world so abounding with both. But with the humble persistence of all wooden-faced men, he resolved to repair the deficiency, and to make the most of the years that remained to him.

  He was not long in supplying himself with a cat, and was careful to choose one that pursed its lips shrewdly and regarded the world through a round and owlish eye. “This,” said he, “is the first step, and that is the one that counts. I look forward to the day when this promising cat shall utter the name of a race horse or a splendid investment, or tell me how to discover a delightful young creature who will love a plain middle-aged fellow like me.”

  At this thought our friend could hardly contain himself for joy, which was well salted with impatience. He gave his cat the best of everything, and talked to it at all hours, taking care to pronounce his words clearly. He bought a radio for its special benefit, and turned it on at the time of the stock market reports. The only trouble was, the cat remained obstinately mute, which was a source of much mortification to our hero, and of infinite amusement to his friends.

  “I have solved the major problem,” he said. “I shall not allow myself to be defeated by a minor one. Let me see now: drink makes a man drunk, beef makes a man beefy, milk makes a man mild. I drink it, and I am mild: I am talking from experience. Clearly I must feet this cat parrots, and that will make him talk like an oracle. Besides, the toughness of these antique birds will strengthen his jaws, and give him more command of all the muscles of his throat and mouth. One thing fits in with another: I’ll be off to the bird market in the morning.”

  Next morning he was early at the bird market, and came home with a fine Mexican Yellowhead, whose neck he wrung, and plucked it, and made it into a tasty fricassee which his cat licked up with relish.

  Next day he obliged the animal with a well-spoken Amazon Parrot, then with a fluent Panama, then a garrulous Lemon-Crested Cockatoo, and on his birthday a magnificent Macaw, and so forth, all talented birds, capab
le of stopping a horse and van in full career, scaring burglars or embarrassing young men who called with bouquets. But they were done with all that when they fell into the hands of Mr. Whitiker.

  The cat opened his mouth fast enough when the birds were set before him, but still kept shut at other times except for an occasional yawn. Meanwhile the cost of this diet was prodigious. Our friend soon felt the strain.

  He denied himself everything, he grew very emaciated, his coat wore out at the elbows, his shoes let water at every step, his roof leaked in a dozen places, and everything fell into decay. The little children cried after him in the street as he hurried home from the bird market, fearful lest his cat should be uttering a few crisp words at the moment, and he be missing them.

  At last there came a day when he was at the end of all his resources, and could regale the creature with nothing better than a love bird, while he himself dined on despair. On that very day, whether it was astonishment at the scanty portion, or whether his ears deceived him, he could have sworn his cat emitted a low and rather tuneless whistle.

  At once his hopes revived, and he saw years of happiness spread shining out before him. “Hurrah!” he cried. “It is beginning to take effect. I shall be rich! I shall be famous! I shall enjoy the embraces of that delicious creature, aged twenty-two or twenty-three, and with a thirty-five inch bust! I wonder if he will give me a tip or two about diet. After all, I have done a lot for him that way.”

  Nothing like striking while the iron is hot. Next morning our hero went out pawning and borrowing, and scraped together the price of a superb African Grey, the pride of the whole bird market, and, rushing home, he gave it to his cat raw, with the warmth of life still in it. He hoped by this means to insure that none of its virtue should be lost.

  The cat swallowed it with avidity, blinked a little, wiped its chops with its paw, and raised its eyes to Heaven, as if in astonishment and gratitude. Then turning them full on Richard Whitiker, it said in a clear and vigorous tone, “Look out!”

  The good man clasped his hands in an ecstasy. “He can speak!” he cried. “He can speak! And in what a delightful accent! Soon he will utter the name of a winning horse, or of some stock destined to rise like a rocket. He will tell me to go to such and such a town, to such an hotel, and there I shall meet the ravishing creature, twenty-two years of age, and with a bust measurement of thirty-five. What a moment that will be, when I first . . .”

  At this point, however, his neglected ceiling fell with a crash, and our poor friend was stretched lifeless among the debris.

  “Now what the hell,” said the cat, stepping daintily over his prostrate form. “What the hell is the good of feeding a cat parrots, at such ruinous expense, in order to make it talk, if you take no notice of what it says to you?”

  This cat subsequently took up its abode in the home of a Mrs. Straker, where it observed a good deal but thought the less said, the better for all concerned.

  Duke Pasquale’s Ring

  Avram Davidson

  For many years now Avram Davidson has been one of the most eloquent and individual voices in science fiction and fantasy, and there are few writers in any literary field who can hope to match his wit, his erudition, or the stylish elegance of his prose. His recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy (collected in his World Fantasy Award-winning The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy, and just this year re-released in an expanded and updated hardcover version as The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas), for instance, are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers. Davidson has won the Hugo, the Edgar, and the World Fantasy Award. His books include the renowned The Phoenix and the Mirror, Masters of the Maze, Rogue Dragon, Peregrine: Primus, Rork!, Clash of Star Kings, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, Or All the Seas With Oysters, and The Redward Edward Papers. His most recent books are Vergil in Averno, the collection The Adventures of Doctor Eszterhazy, and, in collaboration with Grania Davis, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty.

  In the vivid and evocative story that follows, one of the Doctor Eszterhazy stories, Davidson lovingly crafts a milieu as rich and multi-layered and intricate as the finest mosaic, introducing us to a king without property and to a sinister man who has some sinister ways of getting what he wants . . . and demonstrating in an unsettling fashion the wisdom behind the ancient warning, Touch Not the Cat.

  * * *

  The King of the Single Sicily was eating pasta in a sidewalk restaurant; not in Palermo: in Bella. He had not always been known by that title. In Bella, capital of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia-Pannonia-Transbalkania, he had for long decades been known chiefly as an eccentric but quite harmless fellow who possessed many quarterings of nobility and nothing in the shape of money at all. But when the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (Naples and all of southern Italy being the other one) was rather suddenly included into the new and united Kingdom of Italy, ostensibly by plebiscite and certainly by force of Garibaldean arms, something had happened to the inoffensive old man.

  He now put down his fork and belched politely. The waiter-cook-proprietor came forward. “Could the King eat more?” he asked.

  “Im[belch]possible. There is no place.” He patted the middle-front of his second-best cloak.

  “What damage,” said the other. His previous career, prior to deserting a French man-of-war, had been that of coal-heaver. But he was a Frenchman born (that is, he was born in Algeria of Corsican parentage), and this was almost universally held to endow him with an ability to cook anything anywhere in Infidel Parts better than the infidel inhabitants could. And certainly he cooked pasta better and cheaper than it was cooked in any other cook-shop in Bella’s South Ward. “What damage,” he repeated. “There is more in the pot.” And he raised his brigand brows.

  “Ah well. Put it in my kerchief, and I shall give it to my cat.”

  “Would the King also like a small bone for his dog?”

  “Voluntarily.”

  He had no cat; he had no dog; he had at home an old, odd wife who had never appeared in public since the demise of her last silk gown. The bone and extra pasta would make a soup, and she would eat.

  With the extinction of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies something had gone flash in the old man’s brain-pan: surely Sicily itself now reverted to the status of a kingdom by itself? Surely he was its rightful king? And to anyone who would listen and to anyone who would read, he explained the matter, in full genealogy, with peculiar emphasis on the four marriages of someone called Pasquale III, from one of which marriages he himself descended. Some listened. Some read. Some even replied. But, actually, nothing happened. The new King of Italy did not so much as restore a long-forfeited tomato-patch. The ousted King of Naples did not so much as reply. Neither did Don Amadeo, King of Spain (briefly, very briefly, King of Spain). On the other hand, Don Carlos, King of Spain (pretended or claimed), did. Don Carlos was an exile in Bella at the moment. Don Carlos perhaps heard something. Don Carlos perhaps did not know much about Pasquale III, but Don Carlos knew about being a pretender and an exile. He did not precisely send a written reply; he sent some stockings, some shirts, a pair of trousers, and a cloak. All mended. But all clean. And a small hamper of luncheon.

  By the time the King of the Single Sicily had dressed in his best and gone to call on Don Carlos, Don Carlos was gone, and—to Bella, as to Spain—Don Carlos never came back.

  That was the nearest which Cosimo Damiano (as he chose to style himself) had ever come to Recognition. Stockings, shirts, and trousers had all worn out; the cloak he was wearing even now. And to pay for the daily plate of pasta he was left to his semi-occasional pupil in the study of Italian, calligraphy, and/or advanced geometry.

  “To see again,” he said, now rising, and setting upon the tiny table a coin of two copperkas.

  “To see again,” said the cook-shop man, his eyes having ascertained the existence of the coin and its value. H
e bowed. He would when speaking to Cosimo Damiano refer to him in the third person as the king, he would give him extra pasta past its prime, he would even donate to a pretense-dog a bone which still had some boiling left in it. He might from time to time do more. A half-cup of salad neglected by a previous diner. A recommendation to a possible pupil. Even now and then a glass of thin wine not yet “turned.” But for all and for any of this he must have his coin of two copperkas. Otherwise: nothing. So it was.

  D. Cosimo D., as sometimes he signed himself, stooped off homeward in his cloak. Today was a rich day: extra pasta, a soup-bone, and he had a half-a-copperka to spare. He might get himself a snuff of inferior tobacco wrapped in a screw of newspaper. But he rather thought he might invest the two farthings in the merchandise of Mother Whiskers, who sold broken nut-meats in the mouth of an alley not far off. His queen was fond of that. The gaunt and scabby walls, street-level walls long since knocked bare of plaster or stucco, narrowed in towards him as he went. The old woman was talking to another customer, not one who wanted a farthingworth of broken nut-meats, by his look. But Mother Whiskers had another profession: she was by way of being a witch, and all sorts of people came to see her, deep in the smelly slums where she had her seat.

  She stopped whatever she had been saying, and jerked up her head to D. Cosimo D. “Gitcherself anointed?” was her curious question.

  “I fear not. Alas,” said D. Cosimo D., with a sigh.

  She shook her head so that her whiskers flew about her face, and her earrings, too. “Gitcherself anointed!” she said. “All kinds o’ work and jobs I c’n git fer a ’nointed king. Touch fer the king’s evil—the scrofuly, that is—everybuddy knows that—and ringworm! Oh my lordy, how much ringworm there be in the South Ward!” Oft-times, when he was not thinking of his own problems alone, Cosimo wondered that there was not much more cholera, pest, and leprosy in the South Ward. “—and the best folks c’n do is git some seventh son of a seventh son; now, not that I mean that ain’t good. But can’t compare to a ’nointed king!”