However, I do believe that Earth has been, is now, and will be visited by aliens.
After studying the piles of book covers, posters, and other alien propaganda that popped up around the Area 54 site, I admit my opinion on the subject has undergone a radical turnaround. I am no longer an unbeliever. They are out there and, even more obvious, they are us!
I would have to make many trips to ancient ruins to document my theory (accompanied by a camera crew, of course), but it is completely clear that the ancient race that visited and reshaped earthlings through the millennia are we of the feline nation.
“Little gray men,” aka “Grays”? I beg to differ. Those were large gray cats.
Regard the huge, almond-shaped eyes, all dark pupils. Only cats can expand their pupils so completely.
That uniform gray color. Skin or … velvet-napped gray fur?
When ancient cats walked the earth, they no doubt would be a breed named Felinus erectus and strode upright on two rear legs. If not exactly the hairless breed known as a Sphinx today, their sleek gray fur made them adaptable to various climates.
Even the name “Sphinx” is a giveaway of the ancient alien lineage. For, of course, this superior breed of space travelers first descended on the ancient Egyptians when they were living in mud huts.
The sage Grays saw potential in these large, ungainly two-legs and proceeded to give them the secrets to farming and constructing weapons, chariots, and barges, working iron and gold, and the literal height of civilization then, and still a marvel today, the Pyramids.
Many were scribes who cleverly invented and clawed out the hieroglyphs.
No wonder we cats were worshipped and had our own great goddess in the mighty Egyptian pantheon, Bast.
As for the four-fingered “hands” portrayed on one of these film aliens, E.T., one digit is the opposable thumb. Alas, the instructors the ancient aliens left behind—through centuries of understandable but lamentable inbreeding with species near to themselves—lost the opposable thumb, which became the dewclaw. The three remaining “fingers” then gradually separated into four, producing the classic number of shivs I bear (and bare) proudly today.
And, as history forgot the coming of these wise creatures from far out in the galaxy, their descendents were assumed to be mute, mysterious creatures of a lower order, instead of the emperors of the universe they were and are. (Some perspicacious humans actually do treat us to this day with the proper respect and pampering.)
But I state with full confidence, if one of these so-called little gray men were found in an undecomposed state and examined, it would be proved beyond any doubt that there was a cat skeleton in that alien X-ray.
I rest my case.
Very Best Fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter and/or buying his custom T-shirt, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at P.O. Box 331555, Fort Worth, TX 76163-1555 or the Web site at www.carolenelsondouglas.com. E-mail: [email protected].
Tailpiece
Carole Nelson Douglas Goes to the Dogs
Authors often donate character names for charities. Penny and her dog Rens won their names in this book at an auction at Dragon*Con science fiction/fantasy/horror convention in Atlanta, where thousands of readers and media fans congregate every Labor Day weekend.
Rens is really a mini husky Chihuahua, and here is a photo of him. I know Louie will sniff at a dog photo in his book.
Louie’s long-standing feline chauvinism has forced me to mount a defense of dogs.
Not only have they won standing as “man’s best friend,” but they have been a woman’s best friend too. Since I wrote my first novel about fifty-nine novels back, I’ve wanted to be sure that animal companions were in the picture.
Of course, if you put an element into a story, it’s going to spring into life and demand a real role. That’s how Boru, an Irish wolfhound, became a hero at the end of my first novel, Amberleigh, and a King Charles spaniel stood in for the entire doomed class of English Cavaliers during their seventeenth-century Civil War in Fair Wind, Fiery Star.
When I switched from historical adventure to high fantasy, a crabby white cat with ninety-nine lives named Felabba showed up. And she talked too. A lot.
Rambeau, the white Samoyed dog, accompanied my second fantasy heroine, Alison Carver, into the world of Veil. And more recently, noir urban fantasy heroine Delilah Street adopted a huge wolfhound-wolf cross she named Quicksilver, a good survival strategy in a postapocalyptic Las Vegas.
So I find a girl and her dog as natural a fiction partnership as a girl and her cat.
Louie has been no slouch in having close encounters with canine characters either. Consider Nose E., the tiny dope- and drug-sniffing Maltese. Nose E. showed up in a Midnight Louie short story and then appeared in the books. Louie must admit the little fellow has one of the most dangerous jobs in the law-and-order business. Louie, however, would never put up being toted around celebrity events by some burly linebacker. He might subject himself to playing purse pussycat for a gorgeous Hollywood starlet … if she was strapping enough to tote his twenty pounds around on those six-inch heels, that is.
Midnight Louie is the only one of my four-footed characters to have a narrative voice. And that’s because the real and original Louie was a koi-catching stray at a fancy Palo Alto motel, destined for the pound. An out-of-towner flew him back to my home state and put an extravagantly expensive ad in the classifieds (remember them?) at the newspaper (remember them?) I reported for. He was on the block for a dollar bill, but only to the “right” home. When I sat down to write his saga, Louie’s voice took over, and I’ve been Louie’s collaborator ever since.
We wouldn’t have it any other way.
By Carole Nelson Douglas from Tom Doherty Associates
MYSTERY
MIDNIGHT LOUIE MYSTERIES
Catnap
Pussyfoot
Cat on a Blue Monday
Cat in a Crimson Haze
Cat in a Diamond Dazzle
Cat with an Emerald Eye
Cat in a Flamingo Fedora
Cat in a Golden Garland
Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt
Cat in an Indigo Mood
Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit
Cat in a Kiwi Con
Cat in a Leopard Spot
Cat in a Midnight Choir
Cat in a Neon Nightmare
Cat in an Orange Twist
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit
Cat in a Quicksilver Caper
Cat in a Red Hot Rage
Cat in a Sapphire Slipper
Cat in a Topaz Tango
Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme
Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta
Cat in a White Tie and Tails
Cat in an Alien X-Ray
Midnight Louie’s Pet Detectives
(anthology)
IRENE ADLER ADVENTURES
Good Night, Mr. Holmes
The Adventuress*
(Good Morning, Irene)
A Soul of Steel*
(Irene at Large)
Another Scandal in Bohemia*
(Irene’s Last Waltz)
Chapel Noir
Castle Rouge
Femme Fatale
Spider Dance
Marilyn: Shades of Blonde
(anthology)
HISTORICAL ROMANCE
Amberleigh†
Lady Rogue†
Fair Wind, Fiery Star
SCIENCE FICTION
Probe†
Counterprobe†
FANTASY
TALISWOMAN
Cup of Clay
Seed Upon the Wind
SWORD AND CIRCLET
Six of Swords
Exiles of the Rynth
Keepers of Edanvant
Heir of Rengarth
Seven of Swords
* These are the reissued editions.
† Al
so mystery
About the Author
Cat in an Alien X-Ray is the twenty-fifth title in Carole Nelson Douglas’s sassy Midnight Louie mystery series. Previous titles include Cat in a White Tie and Tails, Cat in a Vegas Gold Vendetta, and Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme. In addition to tales of her favorite feline, Douglas is also the author of a historical suspense series featuring Irene Adler, the only woman ever to have “outwitted” Sherlock Holmes. Douglas resides in Fort Worth, Texas. Visit her Web site at www.carolenelsondouglas.com.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CAT IN AN ALIEN X-RAY
Copyright © 2013 by Carole Nelson Douglas
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Jo Tronc
Hand-lettering by Iskra Johnson
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Douglas, Carole Nelson.
Cat in an alien x-ray: a Midnight Louie Mystery / Carole Nelson Douglas. — 1st edition.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book”
ISBN 978-0-7653-2748-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4299-4409-0 (e-book)
1. Midnight Louie (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. Barr, Temple (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 3. Women private investigators—Fiction. 4. Women cat owners—Fiction. 5. Cats—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3554.O8237C276998 2013
813'.54—dc23
2013006414
e-ISBN 9781429944090
First Edition: August 2013
Cat in an Alien X-Ray: A Midnight Louie Mystery (Midnight Louie Mysteries Book 25) Page 32
