‘You’re just buying into the legend of the man,’ Liykl replied, his disembodied voice sounding perhaps a little too confident. Liykl was nervous and trying to hide it. ‘Telling us he’s coming is hardly the action of a man who’s thought of everything. We even know the size of the force he plans to bring with him. I think he’s overrated.’
‘Nevertheless, I’ll remind you that of all the members of my family, you are the last one alive. I’d rather keep you that way. It was hard enough when our brothers and sister died, not to mention our parents. How do you think I’ll feel if you join them?’ She had been wondering how to move the conversation around so she could warn him of the numbers coming. From the look of that report, it had been made only an hour or two ago, but that was probably plenty of time for news to reach Sou’nd. Had it been raining yesterday she might have thought they had made the report in advance. Liykl said they had been getting calls warning them since around midnight. They must be updating the story constantly. She wanted to warn him that the numbers he had been given could be wrong, that they could even be a smokescreen, but all she managed to say was, ‘Don’t throw your life away. Leave while you can.’
‘I’ll not walk out on my friends; I’ll not be a coward before the face of the enemy. If the worst should happen then we’ll meet again in the arms of the Goddess,’ Liykl commented simply. ‘Besides, I have no intention of joining the rest of our family just yet.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ February sighed. ‘You know I’m not very religious.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Liykl had a laugh in his voice as he continued, ‘I was like that once myself, but I’ve seen enough things since returning to Sou’nd to convince me that there might be something behind it. At the very least I’m not willing to dismiss the possibility out of hand, especially as I might need her help fairly soon.’
‘Just look after yourself and make sure you don’t need her help,’ February insisted. The worry in her voice was very strong, making her words almost squeak out. ‘If you rely on the Goddess for help, you might find yourself…’ She couldn’t finish. There was a tear in one of her eyes, a tear she tried to ignore. She was strong; she was a huntress. She hadn’t cried when her father died, she hadn’t cried when her mother died, and she wouldn’t cry now.
‘I’ll be careful,’ Liykl replied. He must have heard the emotion coming from February because his voice seemed to be as soothing as he could make it.
It was at this moment that Kitty entered the room. She was still a little damp from her bath. Her hair was covered by a bag made out of some sort of plastic that was designed to suck the moisture from her hair. Around the rest of her was a large bath towel, similar to those that had been worn by women who had just taken a bath for centuries. Her feet were bare, but she had evidently dried them carefully before leaving the bathroom, as she left no moisture-laden footprints on the carpet. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked. She must have seen that February appeared to be upset. She approached and tried to put a comforting arm across February’s shoulder.
‘Who’s that? Liykl asked, suddenly very wary.
‘It’s a friend,’ February told him, resisting the urge to actually cry. She would be strong. ‘One of those the herd domesticated. I took her in. The world is not a safe place for any of us these days. We’re all in this together now.’
‘I’d heard,’ Liykl commented. ‘Sounds like the herd are really gunning for us these days. You better watch yourself too.’
‘I will,’ February assured him, ‘just make sure you survive.’
‘I’ll survive,’ Liykl replied confidently. ‘I should go, though. Andreicht, my leader, wants us all in the sewers before they redirect a spy satellite. As I said when you called, I was just on my way out the door. I don’t want to let them down.’
‘You should go,’ February agreed regretfully. ‘Hope to see you soon. And I don’t mean in the arms of the Goddess.’
‘I’ll call round when I return to London,’ he replied, and then his voice was replaced with the static sound that told her he was no longer receiving.
February turned off the link and turned to face her guest. ‘That was my brother Liykl in Sou’nd. Slim Dorris is planning to attack tomorrow in force. He has the backing of the army and no doubt the government. The defenders of Sou’nd don’t stand a chance. I wanted to warn him to get out before it was too late.’
‘And he’s going to stay,’ commented Kitty, realizing why her friend would be upset.
‘He is,’ February replied; the regret in her voice at her brother’s decision was still clear. ‘Fortunately they don’t intend to throw their lives away in a vain act of resistance.’
‘Where did you find out about this attack? Surely the intelligence that can be gathered by a large congregation in Sou’nd is more than one cat on her own could.’
February let the word cat go with little more than a scowl. There were more important worries on her mind at the moment. One day she would have to educate Kitty properly as to why the word cat shouldn’t be used to describe them. ‘It was reported on the newspaper. As I think about it now, they must be very confident. The story revealed a lot of details, the starting point, the numbers involved, and so on. The only thing it didn’t mention was the route they intended to take.’
‘It’ll probably go straight,’ Kitty said simply. ‘If they’re that confident of success it’s unlikely they’ll go by a roundabout route. Anyway, what we have to do now is pack what we can’t do without and leave this house. We’ll have to dump your car too. They’ll find us easily if they match the car to the address.’
February rounded on her guest angrily and almost shouted, ‘What have you done?’
Kitty shook her head, keeping her voice calm and level. ‘Not what I’ve done, what you’ve done.’
‘What?’ February seemed impatient. ‘Why do you say that? What have I done?’
‘My ex-master is a very wise man. He can read between the lines of these news stories fairly quickly, and not a lot gets past him.
‘What’s your point?’ February bellowed.
‘Well, you don’t spend your entire life with a man like that and not have some of it rub off on you.’ Kitty continued, ‘Put it another way. If you intended to invade a place, would you want the world to know of your intentions beforehand or would you sneak in and hope to catch the defenders unprepared? The humans aren’t stupid. They must’ve known the cats in Sou’nd would be warned.’
‘They had an ulterior motive, you think?’ February asked, suddenly placated. It was becoming clear that they must have a reason for this apparent act of stupidity, but she was lost for what it might be.
‘They’ve had the technology to track the start and end locations of calls for centuries, so I think they’ve been tracing every call to and from Sou’nd since the message first went out. I could be wrong. It would be quite a task to follow every call.’
‘I could program a computer to do it. No, you’re not wrong. They could catch a lot more of us doing that than might escape from Sou’nd because of the warning.’ February said, ‘I’d better call Liykl again, get him to spread the word. All those that called Sou’nd have to be warned, and as you said, we have to get out of here. We need to be gone tonight!’
‘Don’t worry about contacting Liykl,’ Kitty suggested; ‘he’s probably left by now. Chances are you won’t find anyone, but just try to make contact with someone there.’
‘My brother’s number is the only one I have,’ February explained. She had never felt so helpless, and twice now Kitty had recognized something that she could only chastise herself for not seeing. Why hadn’t the authorities already reacted to the laser rifles? It had to be something to do with all their resources being tied up with the assault on Sou’nd, but that also had to mean that the herd would be moving against them all soon. ‘I’ll call him first, and if he’s not there I’ll try to find some others. I have to get a warning out somehow.’
17
Dinne
r Guests
Day had become dusk, and George was beginning to get just a little bit worried because his brother had not yet arrived.
He had awoken that morning and, as was normal, had been struck with regret for what might have happened to Kitty. She still hadn’t called, and it had been three days now since he had let her go. He checked the newspaper constantly, but she was just one cat among many and it was unlikely that her capture would even warrant a mention.
Because his brother and sister-in-law were supposed to arrive sometime today, he had managed to keep himself busy. First, he had to make sure he had enough food in the house for all three of them for a week. He had made an order from the local supermarket, and delivery was set for sometime tomorrow. He had requested late morning to early afternoon, and though they would try to deliver at the requested time, they often had a habit of falling behind, and he might see nothing before the late afternoon. At least it wouldn’t be dark when they delivered. Such companies tended to stop their rounds before nightfall due to the danger from cats. They’d rather delay the delivery until the next day than be out after night had fallen, even if it cost them business.
Secondly, he had had to make up the bed in the spare room, and like many spare rooms this had become a haven for all the rubbish that George had collected over the years that he just couldn’t bring himself to throw out. Some of it did now find its way to the waste disintegrator, but the rest he squeezed into a closet in his own bedroom where he had kept the shirts and ties he used to wear to work. He didn’t like to dress so formally when he wasn’t working, and he felt it was unlikely he would need to access it while his brother visited. Besides, there was plenty of room in the closet after he had had a quick clearing out of the shirts and ties that he had always hated but had kept because of their association with the university. Anyway, the stuff from the spare room could probably be put back into the spare room once the visit was over.
He still thought of Kitty as he worked, but he chastised himself whenever he caught himself worrying about her. Whatever had happened to Kitty was done; it was too late to go back and change things. He had to get on with his life. She would want it that way.
He had already seen the news that morning. Slim Dorris, the great cat killer, intended to attack Sou’nd tomorrow. Sou’nd—that was where he had suggested Kitty should make for. What if she had actually made it there in one piece only to be on the receiving end of this attack? Then there was the question of how the cats would respond to this invasion of what they considered their city. Even if all the cats in Sou’nd were destroyed in the attack—unlikely now that the planned assault had been advertised on the newspaper—Sou’nd wasn’t the only place in the country in which cats lived. Those that survived tomorrow’s battle would likely be out for revenge.
Not for the first time this week, George played with the idea of moving north. There hadn’t been a cat-related incident anywhere to the north of London in known history. It should be safe up there until the current troubles were over. Besides, he couldn’t afford to keep this house. The mortgage was too high for him since he had lost his job, but if he could sell the house and buy something smaller and cheaper in the north of the country, then maybe he could manage. Perhaps he could find a new job to suit his capabilities up there.
Then his thoughts turned to selling the house. It wouldn’t be an overnight affair even in the best of times. With the cats liable to attack anything and quite possibly everything human in London, selling the house might prove to be very difficult indeed. Slim could not have chosen a worse time to conduct his assault on Sou’nd.
After he had finished cleaning the room so that it was fit for his brother and his brother’s wife to spend the night in, he lay down on the bed and relaxed for a minute.
The sound of the rain hitting the roof actually seemed quite relaxing as he lay there. All his worries seemed to float away, if only for a minute. But it was while he was here that he first saw the sky begin to head towards the darkness of night rather than the rough gray that had come with the weather. It was true that cats would hunt in daylight if they were desperate enough, but they preferred the night. George did not feel safe being out at night. True, his brother had said he wouldn’t be able to make it until late afternoon or early evening, but George had hoped it would still be daylight when he arrived. George hoped his brother wasn’t waiting for a break in the weather. The newspaper had warned that the rain was likely to go on for a good few days, making it possibly the longest rainstorm on English soil in recorded history. Slim had chosen a bad day for his battle tomorrow.
A sound at his front door forced George to move from the bed. It was probably just as well, as he had found he was falling asleep and might even have nodded off for a few minutes as he lay there. ‘About time,’ he muttered under his breath, assuming it must be his brother. He climbed down the stairs quickly. The sooner he let his brother in, the less time he would spend out in the night with the cats just waiting to pounce. It was probably the fact that it was nearly dark and the sun was fast disappearing over the horizon that made George decide to check the door’s camera before answering it. If it was his brother he might be in danger for a little longer, but with everything that was happening in Sou’nd, it was better to be safe than sorry. Who knew what the cats might try to do in retaliation?
There were three figures on the doorstep in the uniforms of the Elite Guard. The apparent leader of the three seemed to be carrying something, but it was below the visual range of the screen.
He stared at the three through the screen, feeling like a rabbit in the headlights. Several thoughts ran through his head. One was that Kitty had been caught or killed and they had traced her back to him. Although this would have been dire for Kitty, he couldn’t help but wonder what the sentence for having let her go would be.
He managed to calm himself down enough to ask, ‘What do you want?’ His voice was curt; he virtually snapped the words at them. It was as if he had to talk quickly to get the words out for fear he might dry up in mid-sentence.
The leader of the three soldiers seemed unperturbed. Chances were that he had met many types of people during his career, and neither someone who was scared of a man in a uniform nor a man who sounded angry at being disturbed was likely to be a new thing to him. ‘Mister George Lomax? We’re here to collect your pet cat, a female by the name of Kitty, I believe.’
One of the two soldiers behind the leader nodded, and George caught sight of something in his hand. It was some sort of notebook computer that he seemed to be checking the details on.
‘What, today?’ George was more than a little surprised, but at least if they had come to collect her, then obviously they didn’t already have her. Or if they did, they didn’t know whom they had or whose pet she had been. At least he seemed to be off the hook for now, and as he realized that, his entire body seemed to relax a little. He was still worried, though. It wouldn’t take much for them to find out he had let her loose. ‘I’m supposed to have at least three more days’ grace with her. I’ll bring her in then. I’ll bring her in on the last day. I won’t let you have her before then.’
‘Sir,’ the leader of the soldiers replied, ‘I understand your love for your pet, but we need to take her with us. We have come to collect her to ease the pressure that is expected at the Cattery on that last day of grace.’
‘Ease the pressure on the Cattery?’ George repeated. ‘That’s your problem, and I’m not about to cut my pet’s time short because of it.’
‘Sir, please,’ the leader tried again, ‘think of how crowded the Cattery is going to get on the last day of grace as it is. We are here to try and alleviate that pressure by bringing in people’s pets early. We are…’
‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you started this. As it is, she is staying with me for three more days. If I don’t hand her in then, you can come to get her. In the meantime she will be staying here with me. Over-population at the Cattery is your problem, not mine.
Nor will it affect my decision in this matter.’ George was both angry and even a little disgusted at the suggestion, and it was coming through clearly in his voice. How dare they try to take his pet before she was due? Besides, if he let them in through the door, he could be in dire trouble.
‘Sir…’ the soldier began wearily. This obviously wasn’t the first time he had had a conversation like this. It probably wasn’t even the first time he had had it today. ‘If necessary, we are authorized to break down this door to collect her.’
‘Oh.’ George was livid now, but fear also froze his heart. If they did come in, how would he explain that Kitty wasn’t there? He had to think of something quickly. Only one threat seemed to present itself, and if these soldiers were authorized to do as they claimed it would probably have no effect on them. ‘That’ll look good on the newspaper. I can see the headline now: Old man terrorized in his home by authorized thugs.’ That sounded awful to him, and he regretted it almost as soon as he had said it. Had he more time, maybe he could have come up with something that sounded a bit better.
The soldier shook his head slowly, obviously unimpressed, and said, ‘Sir, firstly, you aren’t that old. Our records state that you are only forty-two. Secondly, because we are authorized to knock your door down, it’s very unlikely to even get a mention in the newspaper. If anything at all was reported, it would be more likely to be along the lines of Cat collaborator resists soldiers in their lawful duty.’
Well, at least the soldier wasn’t any better at thinking up potential headlines, George thought to himself. Besides, he was sure that the soldiers didn’t want the sort of attention the noise of breaking down a security door such as the one protecting the threshold of his house might cause. There was also the small detail that opening the door to them and having no Kitty to hand over might cause him more hassle than just refusing to cooperate by opening the door. Of course, if they did break down the door and still found no Kitty, things could go even worse for him.
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