by Fritz Leiber
Chapter Sixteen
ASthe elevator door closed behind Phil and he started the weary climb from twenty-eight to twenty-nine, he was already tormenting himself for having turned down Phoebe Filmer's invitation to have a drink in her room. When she had accosted him in the lobby, babbling about how he had rescued her at the Tan Jet, he had felt the last thing he wanted to be with was a human being. But now, with nothing separating him from the loneliness of his room but an echoing flight of stairs and an empty corridor, he suddenly realized that he needed human companionship above everything.
He remembered how boldly he had set forth just yesterday afternoon from his room to look at life and plunge into any adventure that came along. And as it happened he had seen so shockingly much of life and been buffeted by such vast oceans of adventure, that his brain still buzzed from it. At times during those incredible twenty-four hours, it had seemed to him that his whole character was changing, that he was becoming the daring yet sympathetic adventurer and lover he had always dreamed of being.
Yet here he was, dragging himself miserably back to his room, having just pulled his usual craven trick of saying "No," when he desperately wanted, at least ten seconds later, to say "Yes. " Why, from the speed with which he was falling back into his old habit patterns, he'd probably spend the evening spying on Miss Filmer from his darkened window.
Oh, he could tell himself there was no reason to give a second thought to an ordinary pretty woman when he'd just met such a wickedly desirable girl as Mitzie Romadka and seen such a beauty as Dora Pannes, not to mention sharing the society of such grotesque but attractive characters as Juno Jones and Mary Akeley. But that was just rationalization and he knew it. Phoebe Filmer was more his size, and he wasn't even big enough for her.
Or he could once more tell himself that if only Lucky were at his side, he would be brave and bold again. But even that was no longer quite true. Fact was, that everything had become much too big for him. He wanted the green cat yes, but he wanted him as his own special pet, his mascot, his good luck cat, something to sleep at the foot of the bed - not as a mysterious mutant monster that kept getting him involved with male and female wrestlers, religious crackpots, gun-toting psychoanalysts, girls with claws, hep-thugs, world-famous scientists, espers, vice syndicates, FBL raids, national and international crimes, and a whole lot of other things that were much, much too big for Phil Gish.
He coded open his door, stepped inside, and had almost closed it behind him when he realized that he was not returning to loneliness.
On her hands and knees, apparently to look under his bed, but now with her face turned sharply towards him, was the black haired, faun-like girl whose window was opposite his. He froze in every muscle, his hand locked to the barely ajar door, ready to jerk it open and run.
She got up slowly, with a smile. "'Allo," she greeted in a warm voice with a foreign accent he couldn't place. "I have lost something and I think maybe he hide in here. " She smoothed out the black pied gray suit he'd watched her take off last night. Then she leisurely ran her hand back across her head and down the pony tail in which her hairdo ended.
"Something?" Phil croaked gallantly, his hand still glued fast behind him. He couldn't help it, but every time he looked her in the eye his gaze had to travel fearfully down her figure to her 10-inch platform shoes.
"Yes," she confirmed, "a - how you call him? - pussycat. " Then, after a bit, "Say, you act like you know me. " Her smile widened and she shook a finger at him.
"'Ave you been peek at me, you naughty boy?"
Phil gulped and said nothing, yet that remark did a great deal to humanize her for him. Hallucinations don't make one blush.
"Thas all right," she reassured him. "Windows across, why not? Same thing - windows across and both open a little - make me think maybe my pussycat jump over here. So I step across to see. "
"Step across?" Phil demanded a bit hysterically, his gaze once more shooting to her legs.
"Sure," she said smilingly and indicated the window. "Take a look. "
With considerable reluctance, Phil unstuck his hand from the door and gingerly walked to the open window. Spanning the ten feet between it and the one opposite, was a flimsy looking telescope ladder of some gray metal.
Phil turned around, "Is it a green cat?" he asked reluctantly.
Her face brightened. "So he did jump across. "
Phil nodded. "What's more," he went on rapidly, "I think I met your brother today, a journalist named Dion da Silva, representing the newspaperLa Prensa. "
She nodded eagerly at the first proper name. "Thas right," she said. "I am Dytie da Silva. "
"And I am Phil Gish. Did you say Dytie?"
"Sure. Short for Aphrodite, goddess of love. You like? Please, where my brother and pussycat now?"
"I haven't the faintest idea," Phil said sadly.
She shrugged as if she expected to hear just that. "Is nothing new. We are crazy people, always get lost each other. "
"Then you do come from Argentina?" Phil asked doubtfully. Her accent didn't sound Spanish, but his acquaintance with Spanish accents was limited.
"Sure," she confirmed carelessly, her thoughts apparently elsewhere. "Far, far country. "
"Tell me, Miss da Silva," he went on, "does your cat have peculiar powers over people?"
She frowned at him. "Peculiar powers?" she repeated slowly as if testing each syllable. "Don understand. "
"I mean," Phil explained patiently, "can he make people happy around him?"
The frown smoothed. "Sure. Nice little pussycat, make people happy. You like animals, Phil?"
Once again he couldn't keep his gaze from flickering to her legs, but on the whole he was feeling remarkably bucked up.
"Miss da Silva," he said, "I've got a lot more questions to ask you, but unfortunately I don't know Spanish and I don't think you understand English well enough to answer the questions if I put them to you cold. But maybe if I tell you just what's been happening to me, you'll be able to; at least, I hope so. Sit down Miss da Silva; it's a long, long story. "
"Is very good idea," she agreed, sinking down on the bed. "But please call Dytie, Phil. "
She makes one feel at ease, Phil thought as he placed himself in the foam chair opposite. "Well, Dytie, it began. . . " and for the next hour he told her in some detail the story of what had happened to him ever since he had awakened to see Lucky sitting on the window sill. He suppressed entirely, however, the incident of watching her last night, which made it necessary for him also to condense the account of his session with Dr. Romadka. Dytie frequently interrupted him to ask for explanations, some of them exceedingly obvious things, such as what was a hatpin, and what was the Federal Bureau of Loyalty and what was it that male and female wrestlers tried to do to each other in the ring? On the other hand, she sometimes passed up things he expected to puzzle her, though he couldn't always tell whether this was because she really understood them, or because she didn't want to. Orthos interested her not at all, stun-guns, mightily. Lucky's exploits did not seem to startle her much. Her usual comment was along these lines: "That pussycat. Is so stupid. But lucky too. Thas good name you give him, Phil. "
When he came to the Humberford Foundation and Dytie's brother, she rolled over on her stomach and listened with closer attention. But when he hesitantly mentioned how Dion had seemed to develop such an instant yen for Dora Pannes, she whooped knowingly. "That brother," she chortled. "He chase anything with two legs and milk glands. 'Cept of course when he pregnant. "
"What!"
"Say something? Must got wrong word," Dytie interposed quickly, brushing the matter aside.
But she was very much interested in Morton Opperly and insisted on Phil telling her a great deal about the famous scientist.
"He smart man," she said with conviction. "Very much like meet. "
"I'll try to manage it sometime," Phil said and told how the green cat ha
d been captured by Dora Pannes.
Dytie shook her head solemnly. "Some people got very hard hearts," she said. "Don like pussycat all. "
Phil quickly rounded off his story with an account of how the fake green cat in the alley had scratched him.
Dytie got up and came over and touched his hands tenderly. "Poor Phil," she said, then summarized: "So we know who have pussycat, but not where?"
"That's right," Phil said quickly, "and that where is a tough one, because Billig's hiding from the FBL. " And he got up rapidly, trying not to make it obvious that he wanted to put a few feet between them. Dytie's fingers were soft and gentle enough, but there was something about her touch and her close presence that set him shivering. Conceivably, it was her odor, which wasn't strong or even unpleasant, just completely unfamiliar. She looked after him rather wistfully, but did not try to follow. He faced her across the room.
"Well, that's my story, Dytie," he said a bit breathlessly. "And now I want to ask my questions. Just what kind of a cat have you got, that Fun Incorporated could hope to bribe the federal government with it? Is it a mutant with telepathic powers and able to control emotions? Is it a throwback, or maybe deliberately bred back to an otherwise extinct animal? Is it some cockeyed triumph of Soviet genetics, working along lines our scientists don't accept? Damn it, is it even some sort of Egyptian god, like Sacheverell thinks? It's your turn to talk, Dytie. "
But instead of answering him, she merely smiled and said, "'Scuse me, Phil, but that long story yours really long. Be right back. "
He expected her to walk out the window and wondered what he'd do. But she merely went into the bathroom and shut the door.
He paced around, unbearably keyed up, lifting small objects and putting them down again. Nervously he turned on the radio, sight and sound, though he didn't look at it and didn't understand a word of what the inane sports gossipist was loudly yapping about the feats, follies and frivolities of the muscle stars. Then on his next circuit of the room, he happened to tread hard as he passed the radio, and something went wrong with it, so that the sound sank to a very low mumble and he was once more alone in his agitation.
So much so that he jumped when he heard a small noise behind him.
The hall door had opened. Mitzie Romadka was standing just outside, looking both adolescent and weary in faded blue sweater and slacks. A lock of her long, dark hair trailed in front of her ear. She fixed on Phil an unhappy, defiant stare.
"Last night I said 'Goodbye forever' and I meant it," she began abruptly. "So don't get any ideas. I've come here to warn you about something. " Her voice broke a little. "Oh, it's all such an awful mess. " She bit her lip and recovered herself. "It isn't just that Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck hate me, or that you tried to make me get mushy and humble. When I came home by the service chute early this morning, I overheard my father talking with two other men. I listened and found out that he's a Soviet agent and that his job now is to get the green cat no matter how much killing it takes. And he thinks you have it. "
Phil looked at her and the hours between were gone and he was back in the little tangled square at dawn and Mitzie was about to leave him, and all his snapping nervous tension flowed in a new and steadier channel.
"Darling," he said softly and carefully, as if a sudden noise might make her vanish, "Mitzie darling, I wasn't trying to humble you. "
"Oh?" she said, tucking the lock of hair back of her ear.
He moved toward her very slowly. "Actually I was just being conceited and I was jealous - both of you and your boy friends. "
"Be very careful what you say, Phil," she whispered fearfully. "Be very honest. "
"All right then," he said, "I was trying to humble you; I was doing my best to. I was full of the sort of vanity and condescension that comes from understanding too much. I didn't know that your kind of defiance and glory has a place in the world. Mitzie, I love you. "
He put his arms around her and she didn't vanish. The feeling of her body against his wasn't like anything he'd imagined. It was simply slim and quite trusting and terribly tired.
Then her chin lifted from his shoulder and he was shoved back about six feet.
Mitzie was glaring at and beyond him. He was relieved that she didn't seem to have a gun, or knife, or claws, or anything like that.
He looked around. Dytie da Silva, leaning against the bathroom door, was watching them quizzically. "'Allo,' she greeted them cheerfully, then asked Phil, "Girl friend?"
Mitzie turned pale. "How many do you try to take on at once?" she spat at Phil.
"Don worry," Dytie advised relaxedly. "He very timid at first. "
"Oh!" Mitzie exclaimed loudly, and stamped on the floor with both feet at once.
The radio came on loud again. ". . . long been known that she and her husband weren't on sleeping terms. But ironically her fans had to wait until what, with the outlawing of male-female wrestling, was probably her last professional appearance, before getting a glimpse of her new boy friend. "
In the middle of the bright screen was Phil, with a dazed look and a silly smile on his face. Juno's arm was clutched around him and she was shouting ". . . even I gotta have a love life! And don't you be insulting it!"
"Oh!" Mitzie shouted, crashed the palm of her hand against Phil's left cheek, ran out the door and slammed it behind her. Phil stood there a few seconds. Then he turned off the radio and wiped the tears out of his left eye.
"Why you no chase?" Dytie inquired pleasantly. "Don worry, Phil, she come back. She really love you all more. She proud you such virile man, have many girls. "
"Please," Phil groaned, lifting his hand. "That was goodbye forever. "
"Forever is never. She come back," Dytie said.
And just then there was a timid knock at the door. Phil opened it, wondering whether he should slap Mitzie right away or wait. Dr. Anton Romadka pointed significantly at Phil's neck with a stun-gun and walked in.
The small psychoanalyst looked nattily professional in the old-fashioned business suit, white shirt and necktie affected by some doctors. There was even a vest buttoned over his little paunch. His left cheek was as smooth as his gleaming bald head; evidently he'd covered the scratches with skin film. His expression radiated fatherly good will and reasonableness, though he kept the stun-gun pointed straight at Phil and every now and then his gaze flickered to Dytie.
"Phil," he began, "I shall not deny the statement my daughter just made about me, for if you will only consider carefully, it will make us allies and comrades. Who could know as well as you, Phil, how hideously psychotic American civilization has become? You've personally experienced what it can do to the brain, the body, the sense organs. And who could appreciate as well as you, Phil, the sanity of the Workers' Republics, where under the first firm rule of Marxist fact and absolute science, all psychosis is impossible - because all irrationalisms, all illusion (including the mad vaporings of a gangrened capitalism and its pseudo-science) are inconceivable. "
Phil found himself goggling his eyes and vaguely nodding. He shook himself. Romadka's cheery voice was remarkably hypnotic.
"Of course, I should have realized all this last night, Phil, and appealed to your reason," said Romadka as he kept the stun-gun trained on Phil's neck with geometric precision. "But I was hurried and emotionally upset - even our agents are not wholly immune to the American infection when living with it - and I made several mistakes. Among other things I did not take my unfortunate daughter into account early enough, though I am certainly glad she came to warn you, since it enabled me to locate you. Which in turn will enable you, Phil, and your charming companion, to enjoy the bracing sanity of the Soviets. "
The small psychiatrist smiled and carefully propped himself on the arm of the foam chair. His voice became genially confidential. "And now, children," he said, for the first time including Dytie in his nod, "I am going to tell you how you can do a great service to the illusion-
immune state and win an undying welcome when you reach its realistic shores. Psychotic capitalism, faced by total defeat in the next war, has loosed against the Workers' Republics a final filthy weapon: its own collective madnesses and herd delusions, catalyzed by subtle and electronic and chemical bombardments of the collective Soviet nerve tissue. To date this capitalist poison in the Soviet Pan-Union has largely taken the form of delusions involving green cats. Don't mistake me, these green cats are undoubtedly real. It is my firm belief that they are ordinary cats with tiny electronic senders surgeried into their bodies, and with hormone spraying capacities comparable in their vileness to those of skunks. Although the green cats are possibly not the most important element in the assault on the Soviet psyche, they are the main stage props in that assault. Unfortunately, we have not been able to lay our hands on one of these creatures, in order to confirm our deductions and shape proper counter measures. It is absolutely essential that we do so. "
"But there's only one green cat," Phil objected, genuinely puzzled, "and it's supposed to be attacking America. It isn't, of course. "
"I'll say it isn't. My boy, I am giving you the Marxist facts," Romadka assured him gravely. "Those stories you have heard are merely blinds put out by the capitalist government to conceal from its own work slaves and pseudo scientists the enormity of its actions. What has happened is that a green cat has escaped from a government laboratory here. You led me to that cat once, Phil. You can do it again. "
"I can't," Phil said mildly.
"Phil, you can," Romadka assured him.
"But you got him once," Phil objected, "and all you did was let him go again. "
For the first time a shadow of impatience darkened Romadka's geniality. "I told you I made some mistakes last night. I let someone get a hypo-beam on me, probably a drug spray too. For a time I wasn't responsible for my actions. It was all I could do to escape the FBL raid. But it won't happen again. " His voice grew brisk. "So come on along with me, Phil, and bring your friend. There's no more time for discussion. "
"But -" Phil began.
Dytie da Silva stepped into the foreground. "Me no go," she told Romadka. "Why should I? You sound crazy head. 'Lusion-'mune state? 'Rationalisms impossible? Abs'lute science? All nonsense!"
The psychoanalyst lifted his eyebrows at her accent and sentiments. "I was just about to take up your case, young lady. Why are you here in the first place?"
"Just come from room across," Dytie told him, jerking a thumb at the window.
Romadka studied her through narrowed eyes behind which memory seemed to be at work. Suddenly he smiled thinly. "The description tallies," he said. "You're the young woman Mr. Gish watched undressing last night, and onto whom he grafted a remarkable delusion. "
"Phil, you never tell me about that," Dytie said, looking at him brightly.
"Naturally he wouldn't," Romadka said, a bit primly.
"Why not?" Dytie demanded. "I don care. If he like, okay. "
Romadka looked at her contemptuously. "A common exhibitionist, I see. Nymphomania too. "
Dytie planted her hands on her hips. "Look, I no say long words good. But your diagnose wrong there. Not nym'omania - satyr'asis. I show you. " And then and there she started to peel off a stocking. Phil watched in fascinated horror.
Romadka stood up angrily. "Of all the -" he began. "If you think that some crude appeal to my sexual urges -"
But at that moment Dytie pulled off her shoe and foot, and held out her dainty black hoof, fur-tufted fetlock and slim pastern for his inspection. "Okay, 'lusion-'mune," she said grimly. "Take good look. Satyr'asis!"
Dr. Romadka's knees shook. His face was gray. His eyes bulged.
Without warning, Dytie stooped, spun around, and let go with a very accurate kick. The stun-gun shot out of Romadka's trembling hand and clattered against the wall beyond. Romadka snatched his hand away as if the hoof were hell, and stumbled frantically out of the room. The sound of his rapid, uneven footsteps slowly faded out. Phil knew just how he felt. It was all he could do not to follow him.
Dytie began to laugh uproariously. While doing so, she hobbled over to the door, shut it and then picked up Romadka's gun.
"This stun-gun?" she asked Phil.
Phil wet his lips and clutched at the table for support. He knew he must be quite as pale as Romadka. "Dytie," he finally managed to say, his teeth chattering, "you come from a country a lot farther away than Argentina. "
She smiled apologetically. "Thas right, Phil. I got longer story yours tell. "
Phil nodded shakily. "But first, if you please. . . " he faltered, and pointed at the shoe, foot and crumpled stocking she'd dropped on the floor.
"Sure, Phil. I un'erstand. " She picked them up and sat down on the edge of the bed to put them on. Phil followed her movements unwillingly, but when it came to the point where she was about to thrust her hoof into the deep well in the false foot and the platform he flinched and looked away.
Meanwhile she was saying matter-of-factly, "You no tell 'lusion-'mune man, but you got idea where pussycat is?"
"No," he replied nervously, "but I know where I might be able to find out. "
"Is in this city?"
"Yes. "
"You take me there, Phil?"
"I guess so. "
"Don you want find pussycat too, Phil?"
"Yes, I think I do. "
"Okay, thas fine. You can look now. "
He forced himself to steal a glance at her, then let out a sigh of relief. Her two legs were once more just like any other girl's. Illusion, he decided, was at times the Bread of Life.
"And now," he said, "you can answer those questions of mine. "
But just then there was more rapping at the door.
"This time girl friend," Dytie told him optimistically.
But Phil was taking no more chances. He switched on the one-way peephole first, and looked straight into the face of Dave Greeley.
When Phil whispered "Federal Bureau of Loyalty," to Dytie, she jumped up. During his long narrative she had asked him several questions about that organization, he had answered them in detail, and she had apparently formed some very definite conclusions. "We got beat it, Phil. No time question-answer now. " And she lightly sprang to the window sill and walked across the ladder.
It wasn't as long as the beam at the Akeleys', but it was ten times as high and Phil wasn't drunk. If he hadn't crossed the beam at the Akeley's and gone down the service chute at the Romadkas', he would never have dared it. His heart was hammering as he let himself down into Dytie's room. He turned around with some vague idea of removing the ladder. He heard a crash in his room. Dytie grabbed him.
"No time now," she said. And she urged him out of her room into the corridor.
Seconds later they were entering the elevator on her side of the building. "Hey, that's the up button," he warned as she punched it.
"I know, Phil," she said reassuringly.
Emerging on the roof, Phil felt for a moment a big sense of freedom. The sodium mirror had not quite set, and everything around was bright although the lower part of the sky was dark and many stars showed in it.
Then he saw the half dozen copters swinging in low toward them like june bugs.
Dytie was hustling him along, but only toward an empty corner of the roof. He resented her pointless display of energy. A mighty voice from the sky commanded them to stop.
Dytie halted almost at the edge of the roof, felt around in the air, climbed a couple of feet up into it and felt around again.
There was the sound of a copter scraping, bouncing and grounding behind them
Dytie opened in the air a small doorway that was black as ink, and climbed inside. She turned around, her face a pale mask in an inky rectangle, urged, "Come on, Phil," and stretched a white arm out of the rectangle down toward him.
Phil stared at this weird air-framed portrait. Beneath it he could clear
ly see the sheer walls of the building opposite and the dizzying ribbon of street fifty floors below.
Behind him men shouted and there was another shattering command from the sky.
Phil grabbed Dytie's wrist. His other hand, fumbling blindly, found an invisible rung in the air. So did his foot. He scrambled up the air and pitched over the sill of the inky doorway, into an inky sack and found a curving floor under him. Rolling over, he saw behind him a rectangle of the sky with three stars in it. The rectangle narrowed and vanished, and there was no light at all.
Then he started to fall.
