Catfantastic: Nine Lives and Fifteen Tales Part 16

Miles had just had time to notice that the legs of the rocker were scarred, and its cover fringed by the repeated application of animal claws, when a cry of "Downstairs, d.a.m.n you!" resonated down the staircase, and a small ball of fur followed. Black from head to tail with white socks on three of its feet, the small cat leaped to the center of the room and then stopped there, suddenly, as if considering its actions. Hesitantly Miles extended one finger toward it; he was a dog man himself, awkward around felines, but if the cat was Wes' pet he would at least make an attempt to be friendly.

The cat turned suddenly, facing him, and its eyes grew wide. Hissing, it drew back: Its long, thick fur was standing on end, an effect that was at once ludicrous and frightening. The tiny throat seemed to spasm, and a roaring sound issued from the tiny cat's mouth that was certain proof of its kins.h.i.+p to lions.

Shaken, Miles withdrew his hand. Any sound or quick movement seemed to irritate the beast even more, so he made himself very quieta"and very, very stilla"and waited for Wes to return and save him. From the top of the stairs came the sound of footsteps, then the rhythm of a man descending. "I've given you the front room; it's somewhat small, but the most restored. I think a"

He stopped as his head cleared the landing and took in the tableaua"cat vs. professor of philosophya"in one measured glance. "Calm down, Miles." His tone betrayed his amus.e.m.e.nt. "He isn't going to attack you. He isn't even interested in you."

"But when I moved toward it "

"Yes, but take a look. At his eyes, I mean. He isn't even looking at you."

He looked at the cat again, more closely this time, and realized that Wes was right. Its eyes were fixed on some point slightly to the left of him, closer to the center of the room. "Then what the h.e.l.l is its problem?"

Wes sighed. "Not an easy question to answer. I suppose I should tell you about Elsa's projecta"since you're going to be living with the results of it for a while. We haven't got it all worked out just yet, but that's why she's gone to talk to the people at Mental Health.

"Because of a cat?"

"Four cats. And two' litters before that, which were destroyed soon after birth. These are the first we've allowed to growa"and I'm not sure we should have. Coffee?"

"Please."

"With cream?"

"Black." Concern for his health had weaned him from such additives; he had a tendency to put on weight. As Wes left to make the coffee, he asked nervously, "It's not dangerous, is it?"

"What, the coffee?" He laughed. "No, they're too small to do us any damage. I imagine mice feel differently, though."

The cat was still on edge, though its roar had quieted somewhat. I didn't know they could make noises like that. "What's it looking at? What's it afraid of?"

To him it seemed that there was nothing else in the room, yet the cat was obviously tracking something. By watching it closely he could tell where the something was, but he had no clue as to its nature.

Wes returned with two cups of steaming coffee, and was about to speak when the cat suddenly leaped straight up into the air. As though it had been clawed by something, Miles thought. Or burned. It bolted for the dark s.p.a.ce under an easy chair and dove into it, its whole body s.h.i.+vering with terror. A moment later its eyes were visible, two amber points in shadow, and they scanned the room anxiously.

"I guess I'd better explain," Wes offered, and Miles nodded. It was an understatement.

Sloan Kettering's research department had been working with cats for some time now (Wes explained) in connection with their studies of vision development in premature infants. When genetic recombination became a reliable science, they imported a number of specialists in that field to produce feline specimens with specific visual handicaps. Elsa had joined them in the mid-nineties. One of her projects involved splicing a litter for improved chromatic sensitivitya"a routine operation, which should have had routine results. Instead it produced a set of four kittens which, from the moment they opened their eyes, exhibited all the symptoms of human schizophrenia.

"They were put to sleep," Wes told him. "And she tried again. Same results. By then she had checked and double-checked every genetic factor, and had an autopsy run on every corpse. To no avail. Both theory and autopsy insisted that all she had done was improve the sensitivity of the cat's visual apparatus with regard to color; there was no indication of any change in the brain itself, or in the chemical balance of the body, to explain such drastic behavior."

"So they let the last litter live."

Wes nodded. "And you see the results. She had them sterilized so they could live to adulthood, but not until the last possible minute. She wanted to see if the change in hormone balance would affect their madness. It didn't. That was after she talked me into letting them live here, so they could have some kind of 'normal' upbringing."

"It didn't help?"

"See for yourself." A black-tailed tabby was slinking into the room, stalking something that none of them could see. A moment later it hissed and ran out again. "Not that some cats don't have imaginary playmates a but not to this extent, and rarely do they inspire such fear. So Elsa got in touch with the people at the Mental Health inst.i.tute and discussed the problem, and they asked her to come see them. To discuss possible human a.n.a.logs for their condition, and uses they could be put to. Meanwhilea ." He shrugged toward the small black cat, which was only just now extricating itself from its shadowy fortress. "I've got three of these to contend with, and that's no bargain."

"Three? I thought you saida""

"There were four," he said quickly. "But one got out of the house before we'd had them neutered, and a We had no choice, Miles. We couldn't lure it back, and the FDGA is fanatically strict when it comes to gene-spliced specimens. If he hadn't been fertile, we could have let him go."

"As it was?"

"We hunted him down." He sipped his coffee pensively. "A friend of Elsa's did it, actually. Shot him right in the head. The poor thing had only been out for two days and nights, so the odds that he had found a mate were minimal. He was still really a kitten a so we didn't report it. Didn't want to risk Elsa's license, you understand? So it's a litter of three, now, as far as the records are concerned. Always has been."

The small black cat walked with leisurely grace to the nearest chair, climbed into it, and proceeded to wash. As if nothing had happened. Just like a real cat, Miles thought. Only it wasn't. Science had altered it. Non-cat. Anti-cat. He had never approved of splicing the larger animals, and now he knew why. Too much DNA, and far too little knowledge. Of course, you could probably splice dogs safely. Dogs were predictable. Comprehensible. Cats were a He looked at the small black feline and s.h.i.+vered. a alien.

3.

They were gathering in the manlands. Dozens of them, moon-bright against the evening sky. Not the dreamerlies he had hunted as a kitten, his small paws pa.s.sing through their flesh as they fluttered through the walls of the manhouse, unresponsive to his efforts. These were large ones, grotesque ones. Like the dreamcreature which had claimed his prey, they stank of wrongness, of decay; they frightened him, and only as he watched them gather about the gleaming white manhouse did he finally admit that there were more of them every night, and that they seemed to be gathering for some purpose.

That the nights were growing colder didn't help matters. He was heavily armed against the winter's chill with a coat of fur that grew thicker each night, but his paws were unaccustomed to treading frozen ground and the scar which cut across his face, marking the place where a bullet had once struck him, ached painfully when the temperature dropped too low. Both played havoc with his temper. When the dreamcreatures approached he often swung at them, claws extended, even though he knew in the back of his mind that no waking creature could hurt them. He tried anyway, giving vent to his irritation and discomfort, and only snarled in frustration when his paw pa.s.sed through them. He had hunted them in the dreamlands and never understood why here, in the waking world, they were intangible; now the situation was becoming intolerable, as they followed him during his hunt and claimed his kill and he was powerless to drive them away.

The answer was in the manlands, and he was determined to find it. But out there, in the empty fields, where man's will had cropped the gra.s.s to indecent shortness and torn free every last bit of cover, he would have to be wary. He knew the power of man all too well, and was not anxious to test it. Once, in his kittenhood, he had come across stream bed and brush root in response to a familiar voice a and it had answered him with thunder and a searing pain that blinded him, until his head struck rock and the shadowlands claimed him. No, he was not one to seek out man's company, but the manlands must be braved.

The dreamerlies were there. And they must be driven away. That was simple fact.

Carefully he slid between the gra.s.ses, his body low to the ground, inching his way slowly forward. The tall white manhouse was his destination, and carefully he approached it. Like the smaller manhouse it had a fence surrounding it, and its appearance seemed to be much the same. There were no trees here to offer a convenient overhang, nor any visible pathway scratched beneath. He decided to climb the fence itself, and took a running leap to gain as much height as possiblea"and his paws were burned as they struck the wire, a searing pain that sent waves of hot terror through his entire body, that made his legs spasm so that he lost his hold and went cras.h.i.+ng down to the distant ground, with no sense of balance left to save himself. He yowled as he hit the frozen earth and lay there, stunned, his paws on fire, his body paralyzed from shock.

Not like the other fence, no. This one had man's magic in it, and like the voice of thunder which had struck him down before, it was his enemy, armed to kill. If he had clung to it, he realized, he might have died; only his fall had saved him.

Humbled, he pulled himself onto his feet. His paws were numb and his legs weak and trembling, but he made them carry him westward, to the nearest patch of brush. There, with the trees for shelter, he could examine and cleanse his wounds. Not here, where man could find him.

He pa.s.sed a scent-mark but ignored it; he lacked the strength to return to his own territory, and so must risk the sin of trespa.s.s. Not until the brush was deep about him did he pause and look for cover; incapable of climbing, fighting new pain with every step, he finally collapsed into a clump of ivy, hoping that whatever cat had marked this place was someplace far away, patrolling some other border of its territory. He had no strength to fight.

He was slipping into dreaming when the rustling noise awoke him. The shadowlands faded away like smoke and he found himself standing knee-deep in ivy, with pain shooting up through all his paws but ready for battlea"yes he was!a"and woe betide the cat that picked a fight with him, even when he was wounded.

Then the rustling grew louder, and a head peeked out from between two branches. A tiny head, all eyes and whiskers. Then a second, equally small. The wind brought him kitten-scent, and its warning: keep your distance.

And then the third face appeared, and he forgot all else in his wonder. For the green flame that burned in its eyes was like his own bodylight, and he knew by the way it picked its path through the brush that it could see in the darkness as well as he. Green fire played along its black fur as it sauntered up to him, playful and curious. He was about to try to take its scent when a dream-creature came into view; with a yelp the tiny kitten leaped after it, cras.h.i.+ng into dying branches as it fell to the ground again and again in its attempts. It could see them in the waking world! Hunter-in-Darkness was stunned. In all his time in the woods, he had never met another cat who hunted the dream-creatures as he did.

He was preparing to follow the youngster when another scent came to him, this one adulta"and hostile. He turned, and found himself facing an enraged female. A paw swipe mere inches from his face drove him back a step; he found himself loath to do battle with an angry mother, and stepped back yet again as she lunged at him. Finally, with no thought for pain or dignity, he turned and ran. There was no other choice. And the fire burned in his paws until at last he could run no longer, and he dared to stop and turn and look behind him. She was no longer there. Off collecting her kittens, no doubt. Thankful for her maternal instinct, he fell to the ground and started licking his wounds anew.

That kitten a and its mother. What was it that seemed so familiar about her? Not her scent, he thought. Not quite. He had known another female once, in the time of warmth and rain, but that scent had been different. More welcoming. Hadn't it?

Warmed by the memory of his consort in season, he dragged himself into a comfortable positiona"or a reasonable semblance of onea"and let the shadowlands carry him away, so that his body could do its healing in peace.

4.

Miles looked up at the gleaming white building, the cold blue light of morning playing across its upper ramparts, and nodded. "So this is It?"

"This is It," Wes agreed. "Home of my pet project. And thank G.o.d for Bell & Hammond because I couldn't have covered the cost of this through the standard grants. Not with an estimated decade or two before any promised results."

"You tried?"

He showed his pa.s.ses to the guards, clear plastic strips that they pa.s.sed through a reader and then returned to him. They clipped something to Miles' lapel that looked like a credit card.

"Of course I tried. But I couldn't get the guarantees I needed, and so a private sector, last bastion of scientific curiosity. This way," he said, using his security card to open a windowless door.

The corridors of the Bell & Hammond facility were as clean and sterile as the outside. Miles wondered how his friend, who tended toward a cluttered lifestyle, could stand the place. That he managed it at all was a measure of this project's importance to him.

At last the final door, and a separate key card to open it. "Welcome to Eden," Wes announced, throwing open the door with a flourish.

For paradise, it was remarkably unimpressive. True, there were computers everywhere, along all four walls and a shoulder-high island in the room's centera"but they had the same sleek facade which marked the entire complex. There was no way of telling why they were here, or what they were doing. He waited.

"The Eden project, that is. My brainchild, start to finish. Well? What do you think?"

"You have a lot of hardware," he allowed. "More than that will wait on an explanation."

"Of course. But where do I start?" He looked proudly about the room; it was his brainchild, all right, in every sense of the word. "About five billion years ago the first life appeared on Earth. Here, in this room, I mean to repeat the process. How's that?"

"A little more detail might help," Miles offered. Then what he had just said sank in. "Are you serious? In this room?"

"Just so. Think about it. We know that some set of conditions initiated a biological process we call life, about that time. Maybe never more than once. Maybe the conditions were only right for it one single time, or the odds so astronomically small that they were never repeated a we never have understood it, for all that we've come close. We've made our own viruses, fas.h.i.+oned bacteria, played G.o.d with some of the higher animals a but always there's a seed of life that we start with, some bit of a living thing that we use to get it all going. I propose starting from scratch. Is that crazy enough for you, Miles? Will you write it all off as another eccentricity of minea"G.o.d knows, I have enougha"or do you want the details?"

It did sound crazy, but a "If you can convince a company like Bell & Hammond that you're not insane, I can certainly listen. Do go on."

He placed a loving hand on the central island, and static crackled as he touched the screen. "Here's my reasoning. We know, approximately, the period in which life first appeared. Give or take a billion years.

We know the condition of the Earth during that time, from its composition to its surface temperature, and can work out all the other relevant details, such as gravity, orbit, magnetism, etcetera. Somewhere in all that data is the set of conditions that permitted a combination of amino acids to become self-replicatinga"which is the bottom-line definition of life, as I see it. Now: we've tried to find some formula that will reveal these conditions to us, and failed. We've tried to logic our way backward to it six ways from Sunday and had no success whatsoever. All I propose is letting computers do what they do best: go through the data bit by bit until they find something promising, and then test it in all its permutations. These machines," and he indicated the wall-to-wall computer banks with a sweep of one hand, "mathematically reproduce the conditions of the Earth during that period. Every possible factor is allowed for. Sunspots, volcanic activity, meteoric impact a you think the project immense? It is. That's why only machines can handle it. And why it may take decades before we have any kind of an answer."

"I'm not surprised you had trouble financing it."

"I'm surprised B&H agreed to do so," he admitted, "but not sorry. The answer could come in decadesa"or tomorrow. It's a structured trial-and-error system with an almost infinite data base. I tried not to prejudice it with any human expectations, since the human systems have failed. In here," and he patted the central island lovingly, "the practical tests will be run. As soon as it comes up with a situation that makes the right chemical binding possible, the system will initiate a testing program that will reproduce those exact conditions. First mathematically, of course. That part is automatic." His eyes were gleaming, his voice more full of life than Miles ever remembered it. "I dream of coming in here and discovering that the testing sequence has already started. The odds are against it, of course."

It was just beginning to sink in as Miles looked around the room in amazement. "So one might saya"in a mathematical sensea"that the process of creating life has already begun."

"I like to think that."

He shook his head in amazement, trying to absorb it all. "It's a good thing you're not a religious man, Wes. Or a philosopher."

"Why? Do you think I would have done things differently, in that case?"

"If there is such a thing as a soul, and if all living creatures have them a" He came up to the central island, and touched a hand to its surface. Cold. It surprised him, though it shouldn't have. Had he unconsciously equated life with warmth? "Where will your new soul come from, when you create this living thing? Do you create that, too? Or is there some kind of consciousness, not yet alive, that would bond with your creation? Move in and take up housekeeping, as it were? A religious man might worry about thata"and about its possible source."

"You're getting morbid in your old age, Miles. The world is filled with souls, old and new. Or so say our high priests."

"But once it wasn't. And your machines are reproducing those very conditions." He shrugged. "It's food for thought, anyway."

"You're free to write a paper on it."

"Be a long time before I could publish."

"Will it?" He hesitated, and his voice grew lower. Almost whispering, he said "I can feel it happening, sometimes. I stand in here and I feel like I can sense the process, like something is almosta"but not quitea"right. Like it will start any minute now, maybe while I'm standing right here a am I crazy, Miles?"

"Always have been."

"Can you feel it, I mean. The incipient a the incipience of it. If, as you say, the process has already beguna""

"All I feel is tired. And a bit of a headache." He touched his forehead with a chilled hand, wondered at the weakness which had suddenly come over him. "I'm afraid you've quite overwhelmed me, Wes. I need some time to absorb it all, before I can glory in wild speculation."

"You all right?" he asked, concerned.

"Just tired, I think. It was a long drive. And this really is quite overwhelming." He rubbed his forehead, where the worst of the tiredness seemed to be centered. "The philosophical implications really are staggering. Give me time, Wes. And breakfast."

His ex-roomate smiled as he led the way out. "Then a short nap, eh? You never were a morning man."

"Took you thirty years to notice a"

Hunter-in-Darkness watched from the forest's edge as the two men came back, keeping to the shadows so that they wouldn't see him. The sunlight was blinding, but not so much so that he failed to notice the crablike shape which sat atop the shorter man's head. A dreamerly, dark fog against the morning sunlight; it had tentacles pressed to the man's upper face, and now and then the man swatted at it as though he could sense its presence. But his hand pa.s.sed right through.

Chilled despite the morning's warmth, Hunter-in-Darkness crept back to the shadows.

He needed to think.

5.

Dear Dad Well, I'll be staying longer than I originally planned, but didn't we think that might happen? There's so much to tell you that I hardly know where to start; suffice it to say that we've come up with some interesting hypotheses to explain those little monsters' behavior.

So far, the most promising theories involve some manner of dream disturbance. Dr. Langsdon pulled a tape for me of cats who had been treated so that while they dreamed their motor activity was not inhibited, as it usually is during sleep. The result was that they acted out their dreams, anda"you guessed ita"the resulting behavior was very similar to that of our little houseguests. More in that line a but I really should wait until I get home, to tell you in person. It's all so very exciting!

The upshot of all this is that I won't be leaving until next Sunday at the earliest. Does this mean I miss seeing Miles? Tell him to stop off in Maryland if he drives home earlier than that, I'll take him to lunch. Or dinner.

Pet the monsters for me, Elsa.

The shadowlands were unusually dark this sleeptime, which made the glitterlings even more dramatic than usual. And therefore more distracting. Hunter-in-Darkness stopped for a moment in the dreamland forest, watching the tiny firesprites burst into life and dart across the leafless branches, trying to sense their rhythm so that he might antic.i.p.ate them. Sometimes it was possible. Overhead, the cold, dead trees of the shadowlands wove a spiderweb canopy of jagged black branches, and the brilliant glitterlings played like squirrels between them: darting down the length of one branch, doubling back to sizzle the bark of another, leaping across open s.p.a.ce-and then suddenly, inevitably, disappearing into darkness. There were many of them tonight, and as they played across the skyscape their light danced into the shadows, making the darkness s.h.i.+ver. Not a good sleeptime for hunting, he decided. Even the trees seemed blacker than usual, and their branches, like cracks in the sky, made ominous patterns overhead. And there was a smell in the air that was not of the shadowlands, nor of the waking world: a hint of foulness that the wind carried to him, that made his lips draw back from his teeth and brought a hiss of disgust to his throat. He turned around to escape it, to find his prey elsewhere.

And remembered a