Cat's Pajamas

by James Morrow

  Disembarking, we entered a small foyer decorated with two dozen full-figure portraits of men dressed in baseball uniforms. I recognized Ty Cobb and Pete Rose. Dennis guided me into an immense steel cavern dominated by a sparkling three-dimensional map that, according to the caption, depicted our spiral arm of the Milky Way. Five thousand tiny red lights pulsed amid the flashing white stars. Five thousand planets boasting intelligent life, Dennis explained. Five thousand advanced civilizations.

  So: we were not alone in the galaxy—nor were we alone in the cavern. A dozen men wearing lime-green jumpsuits and walkie-talkie headsets paced in nervous circles before the great map, evidently receiving information from distant locales and relaying it to a hidden but eager audience.

  I must admit, dear Diary, I’d never been more confused in my life.

  Four other couples occupied the cavern. Each wife wore an expression identical to my own: exasperation leavened by perplexity. The husbands’ faces all betrayed a peculiar mixture of fearfulness and relief

  “The Milky Way is a strange place,” said Dennis. “Stranger than any of us can imagine. Some of its underlying laws may remain forevermore obscure.”

  “It’s chilly down here,” I said, rubbing each shoulder with the opposite hand.

  “For reasons that scientists are just beginning to fathom,” Dennis continued, “political events on these five thousand worlds are intimately connected to particular athletic contests on Earth. Before each such game, these dispatchers in the jumpsuits switch on their mikes and inform us exactly what’s at stake.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Women have difficulty with this. Bear with me. Here’s how the universe works. Because the Dallas Cowboys won Super Bowl XII, the slave trade on 16 Cygni Beta ended after ten centuries of misery and oppression. By contrast, it’s unfortunate that the Saint Louis Cardinals took home the National League Pennant in 1987, for this sparked the revocation of the Homosexual Toleration Act on 70 Virginis Kappa. Physicists call it PROSPOCAP—the Professional Sports Causality Principle. With me, darling?”

  “I guess.” I was so flabbergasted that my breath came only with great effort, although the cavern’s poor ventilation was also to blame.

  “Thanks to PROSPOCAP, we know that the advent of women’s suffrage on 14 Herculis Gamma traced directly to the Oakland Raiders’ emergence as the AFC Wild Card Team in 1980. We also realize that the end of theocratic dictatorship throughout 79 Ceti Delta followed directly upon the New York Yankees’ trouncing of the Atlanta Braves in the 1999 World Series. On a darker note, the most devastating nuclear war ever to occur on Gliese 86 Omicron had its roots in the Boston Celtics’ domination of the 1963 NBA Playoffs, Eastern Conference.”

  I decided to ask the obvious question. “How could a sports fan possibly cheer for his home team knowing that victory means nuclear war on another planet?”

  “A fan learns the implication of any given win or loss only ex post facto. Until the moment of revelation, it makes sense to assume that your team is on the side of the angels. After all, even the most morally reprehensible outcome is preferable to oblivion.”

  “Oblivion?”

  “The instant any team’s supporters stop caring sufficiently, all the creatures on the affected planet become comatose.”

  I looked into Dennis’s eyes. For the first time in our marriage, I understood my husband. “You care, don’t you, darling? You really care.”

  “I really care.”

  “If only I’d known—I never would’ve harassed you for watching the Pro Bowl on my birthday. Do you forgive me?”

  “Yes, Carlotta, I forgive you.”

  “Comatose? All of them?”

  “Comatose. All of them. Death by dehydration follows in a matter of days.”

  Dennis went on to disclose an equally well established fact. When it came to awareness of PROSPOCAP, a radical numerical disparity between males and females was an ontological necessity. Should the ratio ever exceed one knowledgeable woman for every two hundred knowledgeable men, the entire galaxy would implode, sucking all sentient lifeforms into the resultant maelstrom.

  So you see why I picked up my pen today, dear Diary. I simply had to tell someone about this vast, astonishing, and apparently benign conspiracy.

  Earlier tonight Dennis and I watched the Denver Broncos face the San Diego Chargers on Monday Night Football. The Broncos won, 21 to 14. As a result, an airplane manufacturer on Epsilon Eridani Prime managed to recall four hundred defective jetliners before any fatal crashes occurred.

  “I’m curious about something,” I told Dennis as we trod the stairs to our bedroom. “Do they have athletic events on other planets?”

  “Ball sports are a constant throughout the galaxy.”

  “And do these sports also have… consequences?”

  “In Terran Year 1863 CE, the Pegasi Secundus Juggernauts beat the Tau Bootes Berserkers in the Pangalactic Plasmacock Playoffs. A few hours later, three generals named Heth, Pender, and Pickett led the disastrous Confederate charge at Gettysburg.”

  “I see.”

  “In the subsequent century, the Iota Horologii Leviathans scored an upset over the Rho Cancri Demons in the Third Annual Ursa Majoris Lava Hockey Tournament, whereupon Communism began its rapid collapse in eastern Europe. Need I go on?”

  “No, my sweet. You needn’t.”

  As Dennis said when he first showed me the great map beneath Manhattan, the Milky Way is a strange place-stranger than any of us can imagine. But I am obligated to keep my awareness of PROSPOCAP a secret, lest the galaxy evaporate.

  Next Monday evening the Patriots will play the Pittsburgh Steelers. I’ll be there, oh yes, cheering my team on. You see, dear Diary, I’ve finally learned to care.

  THE EYE THAT NEVER BLINKS

  UNBLINKING, THE DISEMBODIED EYE stared at Pothinos from within its glimmering pyramid of ice.

  “What kind of fish?” he asked defensively, rising from his desk. Even a prince among molecular biologists, as Pothinos surely was, could not be expected to identify a species on the evidence of a single organ.

  “Hunt it in every zoology text ever written, and you will not find it,” said his youthful visitor, a collection of nervous gestures in expensive clothing. He had given his name as Sebastian W. Stragon, though considering his aristocratic demeanor, Pothinos decided, there should have been either a Lord at the beginning or a Roman numeral at the end.

  Issuing a quick little brrrup, Maxie the cat jumped on the desk and pranced toward the frozen eye. “Why bring it here?” Pothinos asked.

  “You must work your cleverness on it.” Stragon’s sweeping arm seemed to encompass the entire Quantum Biology Institute. “If the rumors are true, you can fashion an adult cimberfish from one tiny particle of this eye.”

  Maxie’s tongue stroked the ice pyramid. The creature had the persistence of Thomas Edison; left alone, Pothinos knew, she would eventually lick her way in. “There are easier ways to obtain a fish, Mr. Stragon.” Crossing the lab, Pothinos absently tossed some mummified ants into the turtles’ terrarium. “Try a trout stream. Or a pet store.”

  “There are no easier ways to get this fish,” Stragon lamented, tugging at his thick golden hair as if to dislodge a toupee. He shooed the cat away. “Naturally I intend to reward you.” From his silk vest he produced a check, waving it before Pothinos like a hypnotist’s pendulum. He had already filled it out and added his signature; adjacent to Pothinos’s name, an astonishing quantity of zeros trailed from the numeral five like spots on a python.

  “Cimberfish?” said Pothinos, stifling a gasp. The hell with grant applications when half a million dollars lay right there in the lab, waiting to be claimed. “Never heard of a cimberfish.”

  The ice pyramid was melting now, puddling onto the gold salver. “Some fish live in the sea”—a lurid ellipsis—“and others live in Satan’s blood.” Stragon moved his lips oddly, as if he’d forgotten how a smile went. “Yes, doctor, beyond the veil li
e truths of which reason can only dream.”

  Pothinos winced internally, grinned on the surface. For a cool half-million he was willing to endure almost anything, even Stragon’s pieties.

  The intruder repocketed the check and extended a sprightly index finger toward the vacuum footlocker from which the eye had come. He’s testing me, Pothinos thought. Daring me to make him pack up his bizarre trophy and leave.

  “Bring it here.” After walking past heaps of cryule vials and titer boxes, Pothinos opened the main freezer, pushed aside the tissue cultures, and cleared a space for the unblinking eye.

  “Your reputation circles the earth,” said Stragon, starting forward, salver in hand. “When I heard how you violated that rabbit”—he set the ice pyramid in the freezer—“unraveling its life-strands, making rabbit after rabbit as would God himself I knew that my search had ended.” He closed the door and pressed the check into Pothinos’s palm. “Regard the present sum as a down payment. You’ll receive an identical amount when the cloning is accomplished. Do we have a bargain?”

  The check’s design, as elegant as Stragon himself suggested an illuminated medieval manuscript. Was this aesthete deranged, or merely eccentric?

  “A saltwater fish?” Pothinos asked.

  “Fresh,” his patron said.

  A week later the thing was born. Strange, the ways of parthenogenesis. Who, looking at that mundane and bloated eye, would have predicted anything this delicate, this decorous, this weird? The cimberfish’s red scales flashed like embedded rubies. Its fins put Pothinos in mind of oriental kites.

  “Beautiful,” Stragon gasped when he first beheld the completed clone navigating its circular universe. “Simply beautiful.”

  Pothinos’s patron had been adamant. The moment the procedure bore fruit, Pothinos must contact Stragon, day or night, which is why the men now stood before a glass fishbowl shortly after three on a Sunday morning.

  “You can’t imagine how long I’ve waited.” Stragon caressed the glass bowl as he might a lover’s thigh. “Don’t worry—the balance of your fee resides in my purse. But indulge me for a moment, will you?”

  At present rates of pay, Pothinos was prepared to indulge Stragon for a month. “Yes…?”

  “Where in this vicinity might a man go fishing?”

  “Fishing? It’s not my sport.”

  “Nor mine.” Stragon hugged himself, as if to defeat a chill.

  “What do you hope to catch? Another cimberfish?”

  “No… something else. Any old fishing hole will do.” Pothinos told Stragon of Lake Rosamond, where his colleagues often hooked morose sharp-whiskered catfish during lunch hour. “A ten-minute walk through the woods,” Pothinos explained.

  “Are you up for some nocturnal angling?” Stragon asked.

  “Me?”

  “I would prize your company.”

  “You mean… now?”

  “Now. A fishing trip.” Stragon’s large, glossy eyes widened. “I want you to see that a magical realm is evermore at hand.”

  “Aren’t they more likely to bite at dawn?”

  “I cannot wait that long.”

  Like an antineutrino, Maxie appeared out of nowhere, dipping her paw in the fishbowl and eliciting from Stragon a scream so loud that Pothinos thought the glass might shatter. Instantly he snatched up the cat, tossing her into the hall.

  “A fishing trip.” Emphatically Pothinos shut the lab door. Why not? What did Stragon’s madness matter, so long as his money remained such a deep and luxurious green? “It’s been years since I went on a fishing trip.”

  In the moonlight a vast automobile gleamed blackly, a low mist lapping at its tires. A chauffeur stood by the rear door, his beatific smile and steady posture striking Pothinos as odd in a man employed by one so odd as Stragon.

  “Tonight I shall travel by foot, George,” Stragon explained, showing the chauffeur the glass bowl. Drifting placidly amid the perturbations, the cimberfìsh had evidently come to terms with its newfound existence.

  “It’s marvelous, sir,” said George. Fog crawled up his body like ivy ascending a trellis. “I’m very happy for you.”

  The chauffeur opened the trunk, removing a fishing rod of manifestly recent and costly design. A gold filament joined the hook to a large gleaming reel whose housing proclaimed, in capital letters, that seven ball bearings lay within. If Stragon failed to hook a fish that night, it would not be for reasons of technology.

  “Good fishing, sir,” said George.

  “A single catch will do,” the young man noted, securing a tackle box from the front seat. He handed Pothinos the cimberfìsh. “One more miracle is all I need.”

  The fog lifted as Pothinos’s patron led him away from the Quantum Biology Institute. Silver shafts of moonlight poured into the warm woods. Cradled in Pothinos’s arms, the glass bowl glistened as the cimberfìsh circled.

  “In my adolescence,” Stragon began his story, shifting the fishing rod from one shoulder to the other, “I pursued a life of travel and adventure, and one bleak, gnarled autumn I found myself in a woods reminiscent of the one in which we now walk. Europe boasted a plenary cosmopolitanism in those days, so that it was not unusual to come upon a French priest in a Spanish garden or, as in the instance I am about to relate, an Italian scholar in a German forest. The scholar’s predicament—that was unusual. Such a vicious way to die, being sucked into a swamp like that, the quicksand filling him up like seed forced into a goose. I was never particularly agile, but somehow I pulled him out.”

  Fat birds brooded in the trees. Pothinos half expected some winged predator to swoop down and snatch the cimberfìsh away.

  “Immediately the scholar proposed to reward me,” Stragon continued. “Reaching into his knapsack, he drew forth a jar containing three beautiful crimson fish, swimming round and round. Joy surged through me. Exotic pets fetched a high price then. Callow youth that I was, I failed to read the scholar’s face correctly, failed to note the gleam in his eye as he explained that these three cimberfish, as he called them, were the only ones in the universe. I would be foolish to sell them, he insisted. No, instead I must acquire a fishing rod, and I must bait the hook with a cimberfish, and upon casting out my line I must make a wish over the water.”

  Glazed with moonlight, Lake Rosamond came into view. Curls of fog drifted across its surface like vapor rising from a crock of soup.

  Make a wish? mused Pothinos. Had Stragon ordered up the cimberfish merely to illustrate a fairy tale?

  Opening his tackle box, Stragon took out several sinkers and a phosphorescent bobber, which he promptly attached to his line.

  “I did as the scholar instructed,” he went on, “borrowing a rod from my uncle and setting off for the sea. A day’s walk brought me to Lubeck Bay. What does a young man wish for? Love, you guess? Wrong, for love embraces only the possibility of itself, whereas wealth can purchase many things, including—let us not be sentimental, doctor—love. I baited my hook, threw out my line… and wished for a fortune.”

  “Did you have to wait long?” Pothinos asked, curious in spite of himself.

  “Barely a minute.”

  Stragon plunged his hand into the glass bowl, gripping the cimberfish and lifting it free. Mercilessly he impaled it on his hook. A crude way to treat such a rare and valuable creature, but evidently this step was essential.

  “I caught a manta ray,” Stragon said, “its great flaps covered with fabulous designs. Upon gaffing it, I dragged it on shore and slit it open.”

  “Slit it?”

  “As my instincts bade. The ray contained the shredded corpse of my cimberfish… and something else.”

  “Let me guess.” Pothinos coughed on his cynicism. “Money.”

  “A leather sack. Inside, a fortune in precious gems. The descendents of those gems—the profits on the investments they bought—have enabled me to pay you so royally for your talents.”

  After casting out his tethered cimberfish, Stragon climbed onto a large
rock that jutted into Rosamond like a pier and sat down.

  “Knowing of my success with the first cimberfish,” he resumed, “you will not be surprised to learn that barely a month went by before I was at it again. This time I tried the river that cut through my grandfather’s farm in Bavaria. What good are riches if the Reaper comes? Hence, my second wish was, simply, to live forever. When I opened my catch—a wondrous eel with skin like wet silk—a glass phial rolled onto the ground. For several days I struggled with myself, eventually resolving to drink what the phial contained, a warm sour liquid that indeed proved to be the elixir of life.”

  Mosquitoes fidgeted around Stragon’s bobber like a hundred satellites orbiting a planet.

  “How old are you?” Pothinos inquired cautiously, stepping away from the rock as if his patron’s warped imagination might be infectious.

  “When did the Wars of the Roses begin?”

  “The what?”

  “Wars of the Roses.”

  “I don’t know. Five centuries ago.”

  “I was twelve at the time.”

  Pothinos thought of his sister Lucinda—how she had walked into his bedroom on his seventeenth birthday and informed him that the Split Pea with Ham People had just arrived from Betelgeuse to make her Secretary General of Disneyland. This was somehow different. Stragon’s tale had a coherence that bespoke sanity if not truth. He did not wander, as the mad do; his arguments contained no abrupt shifting of gears, as Lucinda’s always did. But why all this pointless fantasy?

  A sharp breeze moved across the lake, etching twists and zags in the water. Pothinos fixed on the bobber, the cynosure of his patron’s scheme. Occasionally Stragon pulled back on the rod, moving the bright sphere and animating the half-dead bait.

  “One whole cimberfish left,” Stragon continued his story, “yet I could not settle on a third wish. Wealth and eternal youth: what more does a man need? I nurtured the remaining bait as best I could, keeping it alive as a kind of insurance policy. Even after the fish died, I sought to retard its putrefaction by soaking it in alcohol. Years passed. Decades. By the time I realized what my third wish might be—must be—it was too late. Nothing remained but an eye. I packed the organ in ice and set off on my quest.”