The Clan of the Cats

by Robert Adams

  Harel’s bushy eyebrows elevated markedly. “And just why, Mr. Bedford, would I not be here to watch over the bovines. eh? Have you conspirators schemed to rid yourselves of me, then? To try to buy my departure, perhaps? Disabuse yourselves; my contract reads ‘until successful completion of ongoing project or severance upon payment of mutually agreed-upon sum.’ in order to buy my departure, you will have to pay me four million dollars, in cash, please.”

  “Lieber Gott!” commented Dr. Marberg. “No one could ever accuse you of undervaluing yourself, Doctor. That sum represents two-thirds of the amount we now have for the entire year, unless we can replicate in less time than that. You know that, too, don’t you? You would depart happily only if you could know that you had done your best to sink this project before it was hardly begun. You are truly scum, aren’t you, Harel? If you cannot have everything your own selfish, peculiar way, you’d willingly, gladly spoil it for everyone else.”

  “Saure Ziege!” sneered Harel. “No matter what fables this Jim of yours has spun, I happen to know the truth of the matter. When his grandfather died, he left an estate of over five hundreds of millions of dollars, so there is far more money available than this pig of a James Bedford would have you and me think. He just wants to get everything cheap, like all capitalist pigs since the very beginning of time. You may all come just that cheaply, but I don’t”

  Bedford shook his head slowly and said, with exasperation in his voice, “You babbling fool, Harel, you think you know far more than you actually do in this matter. Yes, my grandfather’s estate was sizable, even after the whopping taxes on it were duly paid in full. But you seem to think I inherited all of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, in actuality; my total — total, Harel, all — inheritance was a bit over forty-one million dollars, but not in the form of cash, rather in investments which pay out to me an income of not quite five million dollars per calendar year, out of which I have to pay taxes. Almost my entire yearly stipend has gone directly into your lackluster, long-drawn-out Project latifrons during the last few years, for the little that you appreciated that fact. What little of a bank account the project has left as of right now is what little is left of this year’s stipend.

  “So far as the principal is concerned, you silly ass, I could be starving and in rags and I still could not touch one red cent of it. Don’t you know anything about inheritance?

  “I had been intending to pay you enough to relocate, along with my personal note for a bit more in time. I also found a slot for you, one with a project that I think you’ll like one in which your experience with island fauna will be valuable. Dr. Fleming Van Natta and a group sponsored by the State of California and in part funded by the Steakley Foundation will shortly commence a project to replicate the so-called dwarf mammoths on those same Channel Islands whereon the fossils of them have been found. I spoke with Dr. Van Natta, told him of you and of your work on Cyprus, and he seems quite anxious to meet with you, to have you as a member of his group.”

  “Jim, that was such a nice thing to do for Dr. Harel.” said Dr. Marberg. “You we basically a nice, sweet man, you —”

  “He is a meddling fool!” snarled Harel, red-faced. “I have no intention of leaving this project for another until either we achieve a patentable replication of Bison latifrons or I am paid my four millions of dollars. Do I make clear myself?

  “Now, you will immediately reconnect the videophone, Bedford. I must have conversation with Dr. Ivanov.”

  “Relative to what. Harel?” demanded Bedford shortly.

  “I do not at all enjoy to be questioned, Bedford” replied Harel frigidly. “But I nonetheless will tell you of this. I must have another . . . no, two more wisent cows delivered to this location as soon as possible. Also, he spoke when last I rang him up of some Bos gaurus huabbacki which have been bred up from stock obtained in Malaysia and acclimated to Siberia. I want at least a pair of them.”

  “My God!” Bedford smote his forehead forcefully with the heel of one hand. To the others he said, “Have you understood all that I’ve been saying here today? Or did I unconsciously slip into Pushtu, Algonquin or Basque? I don’t think he’s understood a single word I’ve said.

  “Dr. Harel Project latifrons is on indefinite hold, can you comprehend that fact? There will be no more funds expended on the acquisition of new or replacement stock for it. Indeed, there will be no funds at all spent on it other than what is absolutely necessary to keep the existing herd alive . . . and that only until and if we can find good placements for them elsewhere, with zoos or another project.”

  “No, Bedford, it is you who have not understood,” stated Harel grimly. “The mere possession of those stinking, bloodthirsty cats does not mean that Ptoject latifrons is to end. To end the project must be voted upon by the whole of the staff, and I say no. How say you, Dr. Stekowski?” he demanded in a peculiar, ominous tone, his hard eyed gaze fixed upon the old man.

  Stekowski’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. He tried again and said, in a half-whisper. “No, no, Dr. Harel.”

  Harel smiled smugly and had started to speak when Stekowski spoke again. “No, Dr. Harel, I do not agree with you. Not this time, not ever again. I do not truly know just why you felt that we all must be sent off into the latifrons business, which you must have realized would require far more time than we could find the funding to support, but I can guess why.

  “The manner in which you forced my acquiescence to your schemes for so long was despicable, there is no other term to describe it. It was quite effective, naturally, as you must have well known that it would be. But the good God in whom you do not believe has loosed your hateful hold on me, He has taken my dear brother to His bosom, he can never again be hurt by those I think you serve, Dr. Harel.”

  For the first time he could recall, Bedford saw Harel look stunned, not a little perturbed and clearly worried. “What of you, Dr. Singh?” he asked, licking his lips several times, as if they had become suddenly very dry.

  The East Indian shrugged. “If we had had more time and money, then the latifrons affair might have been a complete success and gained us a patent . . . though I doubt there would’ve, could’ve been much of a market for the replications after that. But as matters now stand, with the excellent prospects that we have been so fortuitously granted in Mr. Bedford’s newest acquisitions, I think that Project feethami will quickly result in both a patent and a ready, enthusiastic and probably large market. Therefore I say that we formally end Project latifrons and formally commence our Project feethami as of this date.”

  “You Hindu cretin!” Harel half shouted from a near-livid face.

  Before he could say more, Singh bristled with the closest thing to anger Bedford had ever seen him display. “As you well should know after our close association over these last years, Dr. Harel, I am no Hindu, I am rather a Sikh.”

  “Pah!” snorted Harel. “One of you swine is alike to all the rest. Need I ask how you say, Dr. Marberg?”

  “I say yes, Dr. Harel. Let us begin Project feethami. It was to have been our original project, and you have seen it delayed for quite long enough,” she answered calmly.

  “Unrepentant fascist!” he hissed, enraged. “Nazi bitch!”

  She shook her head, displaying no anger only disgust. “Your research has been incomplete, Dr. Harel, in this instance. Some of my father’s relatives were Nazis, yes, but he was not. No, he emigrated from Germany to the United States with my mother . . . who was Jewish.”

  “Your husband was a Nazi, I know that much!” shouted Harel beating the side of a fist on the table.

  “Klaus Marberg was a member of the Hitler Jugend, Dr. Harel,” she answered. “It was then a totalitarian government in Germany, and he never had a choice. But although he regretted even that slight association with Nazism until his dying day, since he was only eleven years of age in 1945, when the war and Nazism both ended, he could not have contributed much to Nazism, the war or any atrocities. . . . Dr. Harel, what
does any of this baseless slander of me, my father and my late husband have to do with the matter at hand here, under discussion? I can discern no slightest degree of relevance, the one matter to the other.”

  “Oh, shut up, you withered old crone!” snapped Harel. Then, “Well, Dr. Baronian. Armenian scientist, do you stand with me?”

  Her lips curled. “Yes, I’m a scientist, and yes, I am of Armenian heritage, but I am first and foremost an American, and I spit on you and your asinine latifrons project. Dr. Harel. And I am sick unto death of your beans and greens and tasteless, ill-seasoned messes of boiled grains. I want meat!”

  He glowered at her and opened his lips to speak, but she spoke again first. “No more veiled threats, Dr. Harel don’t waste your breath. Yes, I do have a scattering of very distant relatives still living in the Soviet Armenia and in Syria, but they’ve lived there all their lives and so I seriously doubt that what I do or do not do here, on this project, could in any way seriously affect them; I’ve thought it all out while I lay in my bed of nights trying to digest those godawful vegetarian meals of yours. Christ, I’ve never before in all my life experienced such horrible gas pains, eating as you do, it’s no longer any wonder to me why you’re always so nasty to those around you.”

  Bedford nodded. “I say yes, too. So its settled, Dr. Harel: Project latifrons is hereby canceled and Project feethami is begun. If you want to and will work on the new project, I’m certain that you could contribute —”

  “NO!” Harel, now utterly livid, sprang suddenly to his feet, so forcefully shoving back his chair that it slammed onto its back and then slid on to crash into the baseboard. “No, I refuse to be bound by this outrageous, fascistic capitalist conspiracy against me! I will institute lawsuit. I tell you, you cannot so easily misuse me, so flagrantly to disregard my wishes, so insubordinately to disobey my orders. When I am done you all will wish that never had you allowed this spawn of foul exploiters of workers and the peasants to lead you from the right and proper and bring those accursed, filthy cats to this place.”

  “What?” remarked Bedford a note of mockery clear in his tone. “No threats of physical violence against us this time, Harel? No more fist-shakings and table-poundings and wall-beatings? No real tantrum at all? Why is this, pray tell? Did your masters warn you against any more exercises of such behavior . . . or did my fist in your solar plexus painfully point out to you that you can only browbeat and intimidate those who cannot or will not return blow for attempted blow? For all your size and strength, your bluster and violent posturings, you’re just a bully and a coward, after all, aren’t you, tovarisch?”

  With a wordless roar, Harel grasped his blackthorn stick and stalked down the length of the table, using his free hand to sweep Singh brutally hard into the wall, swinging a cane-cut at Zepur Baronian but, thanks to her quick reflexes, missing her. His eyes were bloodshot and blazing, bulging from their sockets in the intensity of his rage, and he again was grasping the stick as if it were an edged straight-sword, his right hand a couple of inches above shoulder level, the length of the stick back almost parallel to the floor.

  As he drew near, he hissed, “A coward, Bedford? To show you who the coward is I will. To whimper and scream and cry piteously for mercy and surcease you will before done with you I am. To see much of your blood and your tears, I mean and —”

  Bedford arose slowly, almost languidly. “I’d hoped you’d feel that way, Comrade Harel. I came prepared to this meeting today, you see — that’s why I deliberately provoked you.”

  Reaching beneath the table, be took from where it leaned against a table leg a dark-stained, brass-handled rattan cane of antique appearance, almost as long as Harel’s blackthorn stick, though a bit more slender.

  Placing himself directly in the bigger man’s line of advance, he assumed a fencer’s stance — feet heel to heel and at right angles one to the other, the right toe pointed at his opponent, the left knee flexed, only his right side presented, the rattan cane held easily at guard in the fourth, its brassbound tip winking upward in the direction of Harel’s throat. With two long steps, the big man closed the distance and swung the blackthorn down at the smaller man’s bare head. Singh gasped, Stekowski’s lips moved soundlessly, Dr. Baronian moaned and shut her eyes, bunching her body, awaiting the fearsome sound of the hardwood striking flesh and bone, but Ruth Marberg just sat in silence, watching the unfolding of the combat carefully, the ghost of a smile haunting her lips.

  Gracefully, James Bedford swayed his body and head from out the path of the long stick, his feet never moving, his legs but barely, even when the side of the stick brushed against them. Then, at the split second the tip of the stick smote the hard floor, his left hand took a grip on Harel’s wrist while he backed sufficiently to give himself room enough to deliver a vicious cut with the rattan to the side of Harel’s head, the rattan punishing flabby jowl, ear and upper neck, alike.

  Crying out in surprise, shock and pain, Harel stepped back reflexively, jerking out of Bedford’s grasp. Also reflexively, he put his hand to his left jowls and ear, then stared stupidly for a moment at the bright-red bloodsmear on his palm. With a bestial growl, his big teeth bared in fury, he took a two-hand swing at the composed, hated face before him.

  Bedford ducked easily beneath that swing and the stick struck the wall, the shock of the impact clearly to be seen in every inch of Harel’s big, paunchy body, and before he could so much as think of recovery, Bedford had split his right ear as well, and had himself recovered and was once again in his fencing stance, his guard now in the seventh, pointing vaguely in the direction of Harel’s feet.

  Drs. Singh and Baronian had retreated to join Drs. Stekowski and Marberg on the other side of the table. Stekowski still was shaking his old head and moving his lips, but Ruth Marberg’s ghost of a smile had fleshed out to a real, tooth-flashing grin.

  “You, too, should have learned how to fence, Dr. Harel,” she chided the big, shaken, puffing, bleeding man. “In your clumsy hands, a stick is only a mere club with which to beat helpless, unarmed victims. Jimmy will show you how a proper gentleman can use a cane, won’t you, Jimmy? Do they no longer teach the light sword in the USSR, then?”

  “You wrong me, Doctor.” He huffed a near-growl. “You slander me; I am an Israeli, you know that.”

  “Yes” She nodded brusquely, her smile flown away. “So you and your records say . . . but men, like records, have been known to lie. Nicht wahr?”

  “Have you had enough, Dr. Harel?” inquired Bedford, conversationally. “You throw your stick over the table and mine will follow it, but you throw yours first. I don’t trust you.”

  “Yes, please, please stop, I beg of you both,” Dr. Stekowski pled, tears glittering in his eyes. “Remember, violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”

  “You say so?” asked Bedford, then added in a scathing tone, “Then that eminent self-proclaimed Israeli scientist Dr. Harel, here, must own unquestioned some kind of all-time world-class record for incompetence. Wouldn’t you think so, Ruth?”

  Too winded, still, to really growl, much less roar, the battered bully took a fresh, crushing grip on his nowscarred blackthorn stick; all could see his muscles tensing for another attack.

  But suddenly the tip of the rattan swept forward, feinting at the bigger man’s eyes, and as both stick and free left hand rose to defend, the deceitful rattan dropped down, was drawn back just far enough to allow for a hard, short thrust to Harel’s bulging midriff. It struck between two of the straining shirt buttons, seeming to sink inches deep in the flabby flesh before striking denser tissue.

  The afflicted man broke wind resoundingly, his eyes looked fit to burst from out of their sockets, and a gasping whine was the best that he could mouth. His left hand descended to grab the rattan cane, but its grip was so weak and fitful that Bedford had but a fleeting moment of resistance when he withdrew his weapon, which he then used to deliver a shrewd, powerful blow to the big man’s right wrist; when Harel stil
l did not drop the blackthorn stick, Bedford grimaced, again raised his cane and slammed it down, this time across the back of Harel’s right hand. The big man screamed and his hand relaxed to let the blackthorn stick thump onto the floor at his feet.

  Whining, taking his right hand gingerly into his left, he tried to move his fingers, half screamed again and looked up at Bedford, tears cascading down his chubby cheeks, a near-sob in his voice. “Damn you, you brutal bastard! My hand, my hand, you have broken it! Broken at least one of my metacarpals, you have, all four of them, perhaps.”

  “And what did you intend to do to me, Harel?” asked Bedford. blandly. “It seems to me that I recall threats to the effect of seeing blood and tears, of hearing whimpers, screams and sobs. Well, you should now feel happy, fulfilled, for you’ve now seen blood and if you looked in a minor just now you’d see tears, too . . . but both of these substances your own, of course, not mine. As for sound effects, you’ve screamed and sobbed, so far. So tell me, please, just what would I have to do further to you to draw one good, audible whimper out of you? Would another blow on the back of your right hand do it? Hold it out here and we’ll see — we don’t want you disappointed, after all.”

  When Bedford made as if to raise his cane, Harel hugged his swelling, reddening hand to his body and stumbled back, shaking his head so forcefully that tears from his cheeks and blood from his two split ears flew out in all directions. “No, no, please! No, of you I beg, Mr. Bedford, sir. Please to not hurt me any more, please. To leave I will, I promise. I promise, never again to hear of me will any of you. If to the Van Natta project you wish me to go, then there I will go, tomorrow, tonight, I swear it. But do not to hit my hand again, please . . . please?”

  Surrendering his consciousness momentarily to an atavistic urge to sadistically toy with, mercilessly taunt an injured and helpless prey, Bedford brought his rattan cane up to guard in sixth and smoothly, with obvious deliberation, slid his right foot forward, toward Harel bringing his left foot back up in place against the right.