Cat Kin

by Nick Green

  ‘Anything else you want to get wrong, Yusuf?’ Susie gasped.

  Through dust and watering eyes he tried to see. Four green-suited security men had backed up against the railing, but they were quickly realizing that this wasn’t the SAS, it was kids. Three of them drew police riot truncheons and advanced.

  ‘Go carefully, lads,’ breathed the fourth, a man with a beard. ‘They’re slippery. It was one of this lot who used her knife on me.’

  Her. He could only mean Tiffany. She was here, somewhere.

  ‘Scatter!’ yelled Ben.

  Hands reached for him and pashki took over. Wherever the Green Suits turned, grabbed or flailed, he wasn’t there—he skimmed the fringes of their vision like a mote of dust floating on the eyeball. The leader went for Cecile and she slipped through his hands quicker than a bar of soap. Then Ben saw a truncheon swing at Susie’s head.

  She jerked back, the truncheon whistling by her nose. Ben froze, aghast. Couldn’t this guard tell she was just a child? Couldn’t he see that, in spite of the strange costume and war paint, he was trying to bludgeon to death a twelve-year-old girl? The night-stick struck a second time. Again Susie dodged, evading the blow by a finger-breadth, staying within range. The guard staggered, off-balance, and in a rage aimed a mighty swipe at her taunting face.

  The stick brushed through Susie’s hair and hit the chief guard in his generous gut. He folded up. Seizing their moment, the girls fled along the walkway and two guards gave chase. Yusuf ran in the other direction, drawing away the third. Ben found himself alone. Leaving the chief guard in a moaning heap, he ran to a stairwell. A frenzy of barking rose from the depths. Hesitating only for an instant, Ben slid down the hand rail, whooshing past two gigantic Dobermans that were galloping up the steps. Even as their jaws snapped at him, he slipped off the banister and dropped the last ten feet to the floor below.

  The echo died and he had his bearings. He had landed in the lower of the two galleries, amid relics of machinery that lurked under dust blankets. Beyond a safety rail the factory floor yawned like a canyon, the once-empty space now a townscape of crates, buttercup-yellow. What could they be for?

  The great curtain down the middle of the hall mostly hid the city of cat cages from view. It was a small mercy not to see the animals, though the foul stink of their suffering already filled his nostrils. The maze of crates tangled his eyes; he saw no sign of Tiffany. Then a sound on the edge of hearing caught his attention. At the foot of the rickety lift gantry stood Doctor Cobb’s makeshift office. There, near the walls of cardboard boxes, stood a single, lonely cage. Something was hunched inside it. A panther. No. The shape looked slightly feline—but it was human.

  ‘Tiffany!’ Ben screamed. They couldn’t, it was unthinkable. Nobody could be that sick. What had they done to her? In horror he cried out again, and this time it was the screech of a maddened cat.

  ‘What’s up? You hurt?’ Yusuf skidded to a halt at his side.

  Ben pointed, unable to speak. Yusuf said nothing but Ben knew that he had seen, too. His knuckles had turned white where they gripped the balcony rail.

  ‘I’m going down for her,’ Ben managed at last.

  ‘You don’t think that’s a really, really dumb idea, then?’

  Ben had managed not to notice that Tiffany’s cage was the least of her problems. Even though Cobb’s security men had their hands full chasing Susie and Cecile through the galleries, a hard core of Green Suits and leather-clad brutes had ring-fenced the office area. And they weren’t moving.

  ‘I can slip past them.’

  ‘Maybe you can.’ Yusuf held his arm. ‘But can she? How are you going to get her away?’

  ‘Like you said, we’ll argue about it later.’

  He pulled himself free and sprinted on, searching for the quickest route to the floor. Yusuf matched stride, no doubt intending to grab him again before he could vault over the rail. Well, he was welcome to try. Ben’s mind was made up. He just had to dodge a few men, all right, a dozen, then somehow get the cage open, then make it back up here with Tiffany…maybe carry her if she was hurt…The more he thought about it, the slower he ran.

  ‘Ben, you’re not Operation Desert Storm…’

  ‘Ssh. I’m thinking.’

  He stood still. If he simply went for it, he’d fail. A plan was needed.

  ‘Yusuf, you’re into big cats, aren’t you?’

  ‘I don’t like the sound of that…I read up on them, yeah. A bit.’

  ‘What if we let one out? As a diversion?’

  ‘For one thing, my friend, you don’t have the key, and for another, you definitely do not have a volunteer,’ Yusuf scowled at him. ‘We’d be dinner. I doubt pashki would protect us. If there’s any way to pacify a mad cougar, she never taught us what it is.’

  ‘Okay. Just a thought.’

  Ben’s eyes raked the factory floor, the length and breadth of the gothic brick edifice. Surely he could come up with something. All his life he’d had a weird ability to fathom a physical space in seconds, where others might take minutes. He’d only ever used it to play pinball…

  What was that on the other side of the hall? Looked familiar…

  …finding a machine’s hidden quirks, so he could master it…

  The goods-lift shaft, rising all the way up to the top gallery.

  …but never yet had he tried to use it to save a friend’s life.

  He remembered Doctor Cobb ear-bashing a pair of dull workmen, snatches of talk about brakes and weights. The goods lift sat at ground level, barely twenty yards from where Tiffany lay captive. Two people could easily fit in there, maybe more.

  ‘Yusuf. Follow me!’

  A clear run took them past a clucking machine that was sticking labels on Cobb’s Panthacea jars. Then they were at the lift gantry, a pylon-frame of rusty bars. Two parallel ropes ran from top to bottom, knobbly as goats’ horns and giving off a musty smell. Ben leaned into the shaft.

  ‘If I can get her into this…’

  ‘It looks practically Jurassic. Is it safe?’

  ‘Nothing’s safe in here, Yusuf. But I know it works.’ Ben searched his memory. ‘They said something about getting the weight right.’

  ‘That’d be the weight cradle up there.’ Yusuf pointed at a shape like a stack of Jenga blocks, dangling high overhead on the second rope. ‘You adjust that to match the load. It’s a simple counterweight system. I did a physics project on this stuff,’ he explained.

  ‘Great,’ said Ben. ‘Reckon it’d lift me and her together?’

  ‘Um…Depends. If we made the counterweight heavy enough, it might…’

  ‘Get up there. See if you can find spare weights.’

  ‘But Ben—’

  ‘What?’ He was climbing onto balcony rail.

  ‘The lift cable. It’s just an old rope. And it stinks like my sock drawer. I think it’s rotten.’

  Ben balanced above the sheer drop to the floor.

  ‘It doesn’t have to hold for long,’ he said.

  Like a spectator he watched himself pitch forward into space, coolly as pushing off a poolside into the deep end. By now he was used to his Mau body making decisions faster than he could follow—even when they seemed suicidal. Sailing over a forty-foot drop, dimly aware of Yusuf’s plaintive shout (‘Ben, I only got a C for the project…’) he finally worked out what he was doing.

  At full Felasticon stretch he touched the central curtain. His claws scratched into the glossy vinyl and he slid down with a burning smell and a noise worse than fingernails on a blackboard. He dropped behind a pyramid of yellow crates as a hiding instinct kicked in. A dozen spines would have shivered at that sound; twenty-four eyes would have swivelled this way. He skulked in nooks and crannies while first a Green Suit then three Neanderthal heavies passed by. Ben slipped out through a pile of fork-lift pallets and dashed for Cobb’s office.

  Before he was ready, he was looking straight into Tiffany’s eyes. He stopped still. Tiffany clutched the bars
of her cage.

  ‘Ben!’

  ‘I said keep quiet, you!’

  A man in a creased suit stepped from behind the cardboard wall. Ben felt the planet judder to a halt. For months now he had lived in fear of a monster who haunted his dreams. It was hard to remember that he was also a real person. A hundred times Ben had imagined what might happen if he ever met this man again. Now the only thing that stood between him and Tiffany was John Stanford.

  Stanford noticed he had company.

  ‘Who are you?’ he exploded. ‘What are you vandals doing in here? This is private property!’

  Ben stepped forward. Nothing terrible happened. He took another step. His binocular predator’s eyes fixed upon Stanford, holding his image like pincers between them. The arrogant scowl wavered.

  ‘I’m warning you. You kids have thirty seconds to get out before—’

  ‘Hello, Mr Stanford.’ Ben clenched and half-opened his fist. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

  He struck. Stanford reeled backwards and crashed with astonishing force into a tower of crates. It collapsed around him, containers bursting open to shed their loads across the floor. Stanford lay in the wreckage, blood on his white cuffs where he nursed his cheek.

  ‘What…?’ he whimpered.

  The wretched, bewildered face awoke no pity.

  ‘You don’t even remember me, do you?’ Ben snarled. ‘Ben Gallagher. Son of Lucy and Raymond. Ring any bells?’

  Stanford looked too dazed to focus. Then recognition mingled with fear. He cowered.

  ‘What you did to my mum. And my dad.’ The memories rose like acid in Ben’s throat. ‘I ought to claw your eyes out…’

  Then he was wriggling and kicking. Huge hands lifted him off the ground. Stanford’s expression changed from terror to a savage smile.

  ‘Toby! My excellent friend. Perfect timing. I’m sure I don’t need to say this, but…beat him to a pulp!’

  Ben’s body locked in pain as his arms were twisted. He feared his shoulders would work free of their sockets. Claws were useless; even if he’d been able to summon them, Toby was pinning his hands. He cried out. Dreadful though the pain was, worse still was the glimpse of Tiffany’s face before he lost the strength to raise his head.

  ‘John! What’s happened? Where is she?’

  Doctor Cobb appeared in a fluster of camel-skin coat.

  ‘Ahem.’ Stanford picked himself up and smoothed out his jacket, taking care not to tread on any of the jars that had spilled underfoot. He dabbed his cheek with a silk handkerchief. ‘The panic’s over, Cobb. Thanks to my security man. Your cat isn’t out of the bag just yet. And I seem to have caught another. Vicious little swine, too.’

  Ben couldn’t keep silent as Toby coaxed another crack out of his elbow joints.

  ‘Don’t damage him too much.’ Cobb looked overjoyed. ‘I might just decide to vivisect this one after all.’

  ‘Can we get ourselves in order first?’ Stanford rubbed at a scuff on his shoe. He touched one of the fallen jars. ‘What have we here?’

  ‘Panthacea, John,’ said Cobb, ‘naturally. The little pills that will make you a fortune. Why so surprised?’

  Stanford frowned at the jar, the way people peer at a jigsaw when the final piece is the wrong shape.

  ‘In all these crates?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Now Cobb looked puzzled. ‘John, you’re rambling. You need some sleep.’ He glided forward to take the jar away. Stanford drew it out of reach. The air between them seemed to tighten, suspicion a faint scent in the air.

  ‘It’s not labelled yet.’

  ‘It’s before shipping,’ Cobb answered, impatiently.

  ‘You told me Panthacea wasn’t made here. You said…’ Stanford measured each word, ‘you said the cat bile was sent away for processing.’

  ‘I scarcely think this is the time to discuss our manufacturing chain, John.’

  ‘You said the pills weren’t made here! Or shipped from here!’ Stanford rattled the jar for emphasis. ‘So what are they doing here?’

  Cobb seemed at a loss. As if seized by a sudden, terrible insight, Stanford bent over the shattered yellow crate and rooted through the contents.

  ‘Leave that!’ Cobb ran over. ‘You’re making a mess!’

  Stanford surfaced with a sheet of paper. Squirming in agony, Ben tried to see what it was.

  ‘Paradise Supplements,’ Stanford read aloud. ‘Fifty-two of six hundred. Full strength daily vitamin boosters with glucosamine. Cobb, what is this? An invoice?’

  ‘John…It’s confusing, I know, but I can explain.’

  ‘This stuff…’ Stanford tipped the tablets into his palm. ‘These are vitamin pills, aren’t they? Cobb! What the hell is going on?’

  ‘Listen!’ Cobb spoke through clenched teeth. ‘I meant to tell you, at the right time. Panthacea, at present, doesn’t exactly, um, exist yet.’

  ‘What?’ Stanford thundered. Ben looked up sharply, the pain in his bones forgotten. Tiffany was staring spellbound from her cage.

  ‘I know it can be done.’ There was only a slight tremor in Cobb’s voice. ‘Four thousand years of Chinese medicine can’t be wrong. There is a healing substance in cat bile, and I will find it. The new laboratory will help. But John, I was running out of funds. I needed to get a product on the market now, or go bust. This was a temporary measure. A stop-gap.’

  ‘You’ve been buying vitamins and relabelling them!’ Stanford’s face flushed so red that the clawmarks hardly showed. ‘You’ve been taking my money and—’

  ‘I never meant to deceive you,’ Cobb pleaded. ‘The new lab will change everything. I’ll work round the clock on the cat extracts until I succeed in making true Panthacea. You’ll be rich beyond imagining, John. The new lab—’

  ‘To hell with your laboratory!’ Stanford roared. ‘Gottverdammt! No-one swindles me!’

  He threw himself at Cobb, who had obviously been anticipating this. Darting backwards, Cobb grabbed the gun off his desk. Stanford seized his wrist and the two men struggled over the weapon. Air squealed between Cobb’s teeth. His eyes bulged like a reptile’s.

  Ben felt the grip on him slacken. Toby didn’t know what he was meant to be doing. Ben jackknifed with all his strength and felt his hair stand on end, a crackle like lightning coursing down his spine. Toby let go as if he’d been stung. Hanging from one of Toby’s oak-like arms, Ben swung head-over-heels and kicked the giant in the jaw.

  Toby fell like an old chimney. Ben rolled clear, cradling his left shoulder, praying it wasn’t broken. Crouched low, he wheeled, looking for Cobb and Stanford. They were gone. He heard, echoing through the arches, running feet, shouts and curses. Whatever was happening now, he guessed, it was between those two and no-one else.

  ‘Ben! Oh, Ben!’

  Tiffany pounded at the bars with her fists. Ben ran to Cobb’s desk and ransacked the drawer until he found a key. Tiffany burst out of her cage with a sob. Ben clutched her arm to steady her.

  ‘Easy. You’re safe now.’

  ‘Out. Please. I can’t stay in this place, Ben.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Ben tried to coax her to walk. ‘I’ve got a plan. Yusuf’s sorting it.’

  ‘Ben. Don’t let us die in here.’

  ‘No-one’s going to die. Come on. Tiffany—’ he pulled at her, ‘you’ve got to help me. I can’t carry you!’

  At last she snapped out of it, enough to take a step forward, then another. Her nails hurt his hand as he pulled her towards the goods lift. Then his skin prickled and he knew eyes were upon them.

  ‘There they are! Head ’em off!’

  Green Suits were closing in. But the alarm had come too late. Four more strides would put them in the lift. Ben saw a lever, pushed up into Stop mode. Was it his imagination, or were both of the ropes quivering with tension?

  ‘Get in!’

  Tiffany stopped in the entrance. She had just escaped one cage—she wasn’t stepping into another. She shook her head feebly.

&n
bsp; ‘Tiffany, please!’

  A guard burst from an alley of crates, swinging his night-stick. A great shadow was suddenly thrown against the office wall. Ben shoved Tiffany into the lift, yanked the lever down and dived in after her.

  Yusuf had done his job well. With a whine the car shot upwards so sharply that Ben bruised his knee on the floor. Then the car tilted and a groan shuddered the mechanism.

  Toby, white-eyed and foam-mouthed as a rabid Rottweiller, was clinging to the lift, climbing in. Tiffany screamed. Ben shrank out of reach as the huge arms grabbed at him. The car swung, rising in sluggish jerks against the man’s great weight. Steeling himself, Ben swiped at Toby’s hands and bloodied face. Instead of driving the monster back it only made him madder. Ben’s Mau claws wouldn’t come; it was like trying to strike wet matches. Then Toby was in there with them.

  Ben would rather have been trapped with a bear. He feinted, kicked, squirmed and even bit, trying to use Ten Hooks to fend the brute off and keep him away from Tiffany.

  ‘Come ’ere!’

  A fist clubbed him to the floor. Stunned, he lay on his back and tried to rake his enemy with his feet. Still the car creaked higher. Toby picked him up and slammed him down, once, twice, once more. Sure he had been shattered to pieces, Ben hardly felt a thing as he was seized a fourth time, shaken like a rat and hurled out of the lift.

  The world spun around him, bricks, ropes, girders, a grey floor rushing nearer. But every second was suddenly like five, as his mind shifted into that inhuman higher gear in which water-drips could fall slow as feathers and the fastest pinball drifted like a bubble. Ben pivoted automatically, putting his feet lower than his head, kicked clear of the gantry and rebounded off the wall. Heeding a tingle in his Mau whiskers, he snatched at something that checked his fall. Or not quite. He was still falling, just more slowly than before.

  He’d grabbed a rope. The counterweight rope, rattling down as fast as the lift was rising. The car soared out of reach. Tiffany was in there with Toby. Ben stared up in despair. He had failed her. Fear had got the better of him. He’d let her down.

  Let her down…

  Below his dangling feet the ground was racing to meet him, three heartbeats away. No time to worry about that. Down there, bolted to the rope, was the counterweight cradle, stacked with enough iron ingots to outweigh the lift car and its occupants put together. There was one last thing he could do to save Tiffany, and he had half a second left in which to do it.