Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  At noon, the door opened. The woman who had spoken to Gerda earlier came down the steps to the road. Before, the woman had been wearing a stained white linen coat; now, she had garbed herself head to toe in white fur. “I am Lovise,” the woman said. “Personal representative of the Principal Research Scientist. We have a variety of fine items for purchase today.” She gestured, and a boy with the glazed stare of a frag pushed a wheelbarrow out from the side of the laboratory.

  “Our first item for sale is a box of seed corn,” Lovise said. “Specially bred to germinate, grow, and produce corn in just two months. Like all our seed, this corn carries the laboratory’s guarantee. Are there any questions?”

  One of the men in fur asked, “Will it regerminate?”

  “No, of course not,” Lovise said. “But you can come buy more from us next year.” I snorted in disgust; typical of the scientists and their tricks. The men were grumbling, as well, and Lovise fell back a step. “If you want corn that will regerminate, you can trade for seed with one of the communes. But their corn will take five months.” The grumbling quieted. “The price today is just ten gold dollars for a box with 100 seeds.”

  From the wheelbarrow, the boy held up two carved wooden boxes, one in each hand.

  The men in fur conferred for a moment. Then one said, “We’ll take ten boxes.” He had a leather drawstring bag at his waist, which he unlooped and loosened; he began to count out a hundred gold coins for the boy. The man and woman in black had no interest in seed corn.

  “Our next item today is antibiotic ointment.” At Lovise’s gesture, the boy held up a glass vial with a cork stopper. “To keep infection from an injury, wash the wound, then rub this in and cover with a clean bandage. You can also buy soap from us, but we are the only source for this particular ointment. Fifty gold dollars for a vial.”

  This was what the couple in black had come for. They stepped over to the boy and counted out fifty gold coins. I snorted again, but a little less derisively. I’d heard some stories about this ointment that would make me consider buying it, had I anything close to fifty gold dollars.

  “Finally, we have a brand-new item today,” Lovise said. The boy took the wheelbarrow back inside, and returned with a dog on a leash. It was a Siberian husky, and the boy had a bit of trouble controlling it; the dog wanted to run away from him. I felt sorry for the dog, though the boy was not being cruel to him; he was simply keeping the dog on the leash, when the dog really wanted to run.

  “The enhanced sled dog,” Lovise said.

  “Does he run faster?” one of the men in fur asked.

  “No,” Lovise said. “He talks.” She turned to the dog. “Show them, Flagstaff.”

  The dog, giving up on getting away, threw himself down onto the snow in disgust. “What do you want me to say?” he said.

  “Tell them you’re a good dog.”

  The dog rolled its eyes. “I’m a good dog,” he said. He glanced over at Gerda and winked at her. Gerda grinned a little in spite of herself. I thought that I’d steal the dog if I could; he deserved better than the scientists.

  The men in fur coats laughed. “Thanks but no thanks, Scientist Lovise,” one of them said. “We’ve seen the talking crows. Is he going to be like the talking crows?”

  “No,” Lovise snapped. “Like the corn, he can’t reproduce. Not without help, anyway.”

  The men in fur laughed harder. “Poor fella,” one of them called to the dog. “If you can get away from the scientists, come and live with us. We’ll treat you right.”

  The dog looked like he was going to say something, but then thought the better of it.

  “That’s all for today,” Lovise said, and the men in fur and the couple in black cloaks started back down the road, away from the laboratory. The man in rags approached the doorstep; at Lovise’s signal, the boy brought out a pot of steaming soup and ladled soup into the man’s bowl. The man bowed his thanks, and turned away as well. Lovise started back up the steps.

  “Wait!” Gerda called.

  Lovise turned. “You again?” she said. “What do you want?”

  “The crow sent me here,” Gerda said. “He said—”

  “The crow sent you?” Lovise said. “Well, that explains a great deal. You’d better come inside.” She held the door open for Gerda; Gerda ducked under the woman’s arm and went inside. “Those crows were a mistake,” Lovise muttered in disgust.

  The inside walls of the laboratory were smooth and bare, painted as white as winter snow, and the lights were too bright. Lovise led Gerda to a parlor, sat her in a chair by the wood stove, and gave her a bowl of soup. Gerda ate it quickly, and I thought with a pang that I should have insisted that she take more food with her.

  “Now,” Lovise said. “What was it that the crow told you?”

  “I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Gerda said. “A boy named Kai.” She stumbled over what she was trying to say, paused for a breath, and started again. “We both came from the station. The crow that woke me up this morning said that I might be able to find Kai here—that the Princess took a husband last week, and it might have been Kai.”

  Lovise took Gerda’s empty bowl and set it aside. “There isn’t anyone here called ‘Princess’—he meant the Principal Research Scientist, Lise. She did take a husband last week, but he came from our rival laboratory; we are hoping to cement an alliance. It’s highly unlikely that her groom is the boy you’re seeking, but let me take you into the lab for just a moment and you can tell me for sure.”

  Before Gerda could go into the lab, Lovise dressed her carefully in a long white linen coat; Gerda took off her shoes and put on booties made of white fur, and Lovise put a knit mask over her nose and mouth. Then Lovise led her in. The lab had no windows, but the light was even brighter there than in the hall. All the furniture inside was shiny polished metal, and there were a lot of complicated arrangements of glass beakers and glass tubes. Glassy-eyed servants attended to much of the apparatus. In one corner, under the counter, Flagstaff was caged, his chin resting on his shaggy forelegs. His tail thumped once when he spotted Gerda.

  “There,” Lovise said, and pointed.

  Gerda looked at the young man, just beyond the servants. Her face fell, and I knew it could not be Kai even before she shook her head.

  The young man turned and saw her. “Who’s she?” he asked Lovise.

  Lovise looked down. “Excuse me for disturbing you, Lead Scientist Kjeld. This girl came from the station, and she’s looking for another child. Someone told her that you might be him.”

  “You’ve made her cry,” Kjeld said. He pulled his mask off and took Gerda’s hand. “From the station, she said? Come on, little girl. Let’s go sit down.”

  Gerda sat down beside him on a chair made out of a sheet of shiny metal, bent into a chair shape. At his encouragement, she told him all about Kai, and how the Snow Queen had taken him. Kjeld seemed very interested, though he was most interested in ordinary life in the Station; she described the children’s quarters, the commissaries, the Keeper who took care of the children, the Director who told them that Kai was gone forever. “But don’t you have parents?” he asked. Gerda shook her head, no. She was a made-child. Kjeld asked if the Station had any labs like this one, but Gerda had never seen one. He seemed very disappointed about that, and I swore under my breath, taking care not to disturb the water. He didn’t really care about Gerda; he just hoped she’d know some of their research secrets to tell him.

  Gerda’s gaze kept straying to one of the glassy-eyed servants. “Magda?” she said under her breath at one point.

  “What?” Kjeld said.

  “That girl over there, I know her.”

  “No, you don’t,” Kjeld said. “She’s a frag. An automaton. She doesn’t know anyone. She probably just looks like your friend.”

  “No, I’m sure I know her,” Gerda said. She stood up and approached the girl, Kjeld following her warily. “Magda?” she said loudly, but the girl didn’t look up.
<
br />   “She’s a frag,” Kjeld said. “Didn’t they have frags on the station?”

  “Of course,” Gerda said, and her worried eyes went back to Kjeld. “They cleaned and cooked and some of them even helped take care of the made-children. But Magda wasn’t a frag, she was a made-child, like me.”

  Kjeld looked at the frag, and Gerda, and then averted his eyes. “Well, that must not be your friend, then,” he said, and hustled Gerda out of the lab.

  “I guess I’ll be going,” Gerda mumbled once they were back out in the hallway.

  Kjeld shook his head. “Oh, you can’t leave now,” he said. “There’s a storm coming—didn’t you see the clouds? It’s going to snow quite a lot.”

  “But if Kai isn’t here—”

  “Aren’t you listening? If you leave now, you’ll freeze to death. Come on, we’ll let you sleep in the parlor tonight.”

  “But—”

  “You can go on once the storm is past.” Kjeld’s hand had closed tightly on Gerda’s wrist, and she reluctantly followed him back to the parlor with the wood stove.

  Gerda wouldn’t freeze to death—not in my cloak—but it would be just as well for her not to be caught out in a storm. Was it really about to snow? I left the scrying bowl and stepped out of my cottage to look at the sky. Sure enough, though the sky had been blue earlier, I could see clouds gathering beyond the hill to the northwest. “Stay where you are,” I whispered, staring to the west where she’d headed. “Let them give you their hospitality. I trust winter weather even less than I trust the scientists.”

  *

  My magic keeps my valley warm through the winter, but of course I can’t entirely keep out the weather—my plants need rain to survive. I typically experience a bad winter storm as a hard, cold rain, and this rain was particularly hard. I pulled my shutters closed before going to bed, and lay awake in the darkness, listening to the rain pounding on my roof and thinking about Gerda. Only a week or two before my illness, we’d climbed up onto the roof and repaired all the leaks, preparing for winter. I should have been glad that we’d done it, but now all I could think about was how maybe overexerting myself that day was what had made me ill . . . and how much I wished Gerda were here now. I turned my face towards her empty bed; even with the racket the storm was making, the house seemed too quiet. Finally I lit a candle and filled the scrying bowl again, but I saw nothing but darkness, and heard Gerda’s peaceful long breaths. After that, I was finally able to sleep.

  In the morning, the storm had blown over. Beyond my valley, I could see the glint of deep snow on the hills. Within my valley, the stone I used as a doorstep glistened with moisture, and the rose trellis had been knocked down by the storm. I spent some time putting it back up and trimming back the broken parts of the rose bushes; they were clearly affronted by the harsh weather, but they’d survived worse.

  When I’d done what I could for the roses, I went back in and poured fresh water into the scrying bowl. The sound came through first—a piercing scream. My blood ran cold, and I gripped the scrying bowl in my hands, willing Gerda to be all right.

  “Kjeld!” Gerda wailed, and I heard a door slam. The steam cleared, and I saw Kjeld and Lovise facing each other, Lovise’s hand gripping Gerda by the base of the neck.

  “Spying,” Lovise spat, shoving Gerda to the floor.

  Gerda shook her head, widening her eyes in mute appeal towards Kjeld. Kjeld licked his lips and looked back at Lovise. “Why do you say that?”

  “I caught her in the lab—the research lab.”

  “Why were you in there, Gerda?” Kjeld asked.

  Gerda sniffled. I hoped that neither Kjeld nor Lovise could sense how deliberate that sniffle was. “I was looking for the lavatory,” she said. “Kjeld showed me where yesterday, but I got confused in the hallways.”

  My grip tightened on the bowl. She was lying; Gerda had an excellent sense of direction. And the station was nothing but hallways. What was Gerda doing in that lab? Looking for Kjeld? Looking for the frag she’d spotted the day before? Either way, she was more devious than I’d given her credit for.

  “Lovise, be reasonable,” Kjeld said. “She’s a child. It takes years of training to make heads or tails of our research—yes, I said ‘our’ research, I’m part of this lab now. Unless she’s been raised from birth to be a perfect spy—and if that’s the case, can’t you think of a dozen things she’s done wrong by now? She wanted to leave last night. In the storm.”

  “You should have let her.”

  Kjeld threw up his hands in disgust. “Lovise, you have formaldehyde in your veins instead of blood. Let her leave? In the storm? She’s a child.”

  “You’re just hoping to get useful information from her.”

  “Well, and I’m not saying I’ll complain if she has anything for us. But—”

  There was a knock at the door; Lovise answered it and had a quiet conference with another white-coated woman. She closed the door deliberately and fixed her gaze on Gerda. “There has been a theft,” she said. “Flagstaff is missing.”

  Kjeld burst out laughing. “Are you going to blame that one on the girl, too? By all means, search her pockets. I’m sure she’s got the dog hidden in one of them.”

  But looking at Gerda’s face, I thought that she probably did know something about the missing dog. Why on earth? Was it tenderheartedness, wanting to free the dog from slavery as she’d freed herself from the station?

  Lovise said, “Let’s continue this discussion elsewhere.” Kjeld obligingly stepped out, and Lovise locked the door behind her, leaving Gerda in the room where they’d been arguing. Gerda briefly pressed her ear to the door, but they must have moved too far away to be heard, because a moment later she dropped with a sigh into the chair, fingering the claw she wore around her neck. It was a small, boring room. Gerda stared at the floor and waited.

  I should go out and finish cleaning up from the storm, I thought. But the last time I left Gerda, I came back to find Lovise furious enough to wring her neck. It was pure superstition to think that watching would make any difference, but I am a very superstitious woman, so I stayed where I was and watched Gerda as she waited. And waited. And waited.

  Finally Kjeld returned. “I think it’s best we get you out now,” he whispered. “The weather looks clear, and I’ve got your cloak and a pair of snowshoes. Follow me.”

  Gerda followed Kjeld through a dingy back hallway and out into the snow. I was shocked to see that the sun was setting; had I been sitting and watching Gerda all day? Kjeld gave Gerda her cloak and helped her put the snowshoes on.

  “Head for my family’s lab,” he said. “They’re a two day walk, due east. If the crow finds you again, tell him they’ll pay well for bringing you to them; he’ll know how to get there.” He tucked a small notebook into her pocket. “They’ll be most interested in this, as well as in anything else you have to tell them. Good luck.”

  Was Gerda spying? For Kjeld? That made no sense, either. But she nodded, and tromped off with her back to the setting sun, struggling a little with the snowshoes. As soon as the laboratory had disappeared behind a rise, she dropped to a crouch and whistled, a long low note.

  A few minutes passed. She whistled again.

  She sighed deeply and stood up.

  Then—a high answering howl. Her face brightened. And there, across the snowy hills, came the dog.

  “All right,” Gerda said. “I freed you. Now take me to Kai.”

  “I didn’t say I knew where Kai was,” Flagstaff said. “But I do know that it gets colder as you go north, and anyone called a Snow Queen must live somewhere very cold. I can take you north. I can take you all the way to the ice wall.”

  “What good will that do me?” Gerda said. “I don’t believe there ever was a Snow Queen; it’s just a story told to frighten the made-children.”

  “Suit yourself,” Flagstaff said. “Is there somewhere else you’d like me to take you? To the rival laboratory, perhaps, like Kjeld wants you to do?”
<
br />   Gerda sighed deeply.

  “You’ll need a sled for me to pull,” Flagstaff said. “Creep back to the village after the sun sets and you’ll find one you can steal.”

  Gerda did just that, finding a small dogsled in an unlocked shed after the last window in the village went dark. The dog told her how to hitch him up, and then told her to wrap herself warmly and hold on tight. “Are you ready?” he said when she was settled.

  “Yes,” Gerda said.

  The dog did not start off at a walk and then work up to a run; instead, he broke instantly to full speed, stretching out his wolflike limbs to tear like the winter wind across the snowy fields. Gerda almost lost her grip on the sled, but she tightened her fists and quickly became accustomed to the dog’s pace. He slackened to a trot after a few minutes and said, “Ah yes, I still need to ask. Which way?”

  “North,” Gerda said, and the dog wheeled north across the hills.

  *

  I woke to the late-morning sun, my cheek resting against my kitchen table. The scrying-bowl was cold against my hand. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes hastily and heated water for tea and scrying, then realized that I could still see Gerda in the murky depths of the bowl. I sat down to look. She was still on the makeshift dogsled; the dog was still running, pulling the sled over hills blanketed with deep white snow.