Natives hate work and I just about killed those boys of mine with it. We took that pile of scrap lumber and began reassembling it. I drove them from dawn to dusk, relentlessly, and worked after dark by lantern light. What we needed and didn't have, we made. In six weeks we had the sloop in shape. I'll admit she wasn't very sound, but I knew she'd stand quite a bit of sailing if I kept her out of rough weather.
All the time we laboured I was spurred on by thoughts of the old man on Tao. He had rations for those hungry cats for only three months, and the morning we refloated the sloop made three months to the day since I had left him. Counting time I would lose going back to Papeete to replenish my supplies, it would take another month to get there.
Like the other white men in the islands, I never gave much thought to native taboos. They are based on cultural habits and legends rather than on factual data. However, a nervous uneasiness came over me twenty-six days later, when I was one day out of Tao. The sea was calm. The wind was light and steady and the sky was a clean, pale blue. Everything was normal for that time of the year, but I had a feeling I was leaving the world of the living and sailing towards the gates of hell.
I slipped into the lagoon just after midnight, and dropped anchor. Immediately a moan of sound rose from the black outline of the atoll and came across the moonlight-drenched mirror of water. My scalp rippled and I felt the skin tighten on the back of my neck. The starving beasts had heard me, and they were yowling for their rations.
I searched in vain for a light in the old man's shack. I gave him about a dozen yells across the lagoon, but was answered only by rising peaks in the continuous moaning of the cats. I searched for a sign of life from shore, and then I saw them. Cat eyes! Hundreds of them reflecting the light from the full moon, and glittering like silver sequins scattered on the black velvet shore of the atoll. They were still there, hungry and waiting. A wave of nausea swept over me as I realized I was too late. I wondered how many the old man had killed before they got him.
I waited for the sky to turn grey in the east before I un-limbered the dory. I didn't want to tackle that island until daylight. When the sun came up, I armed myself with two billy clubs, and started rowing towards the shore. When I approached the beach I saw a sight I'll remember the rest of my life. Several of the cats were splashing and diving in the shallow waters close to the shore, and swimming around like seals. They were fishing!
Two of the big toms swam out to meet my dory and tried to climb over the side. I brained them with the billy. I didn't try to make the dock. It was completely covered with the damned beasts and I was afraid they'd leap into the dory and swamp me when I tried to tie up. The beach was literally carpeted with cats. They were screaming at me in a maddening crescendo as though I were personally responsible for their plight. As I rowed down to the far end of the beach they followed me on the shore, an evil, mottled wave of spitting fur.
Again I opened tins of food to throw to them until my fingers were raw. When I emptied the dory I rowed back to the dock. About half of the cats followed me back and were waiting there to meet me. I vetoed the dock and shot the dory towards the beach with swift strokes. Just before she touched bottom, I shipped the oars, grabbed up my billy clubs, and got ready to jump.
I landed running, swinging my clubs like a windmill. I was killing cats with practically every swing, but they still tried to swarm over me. I yelled when I felt their teeth. The damned animals were insane. They were so crazy from hunger they would attack anything.
I literally beat my way to the old man's cabin, and very nearly didn't make it. The screens were torn as I knew they'd be. I didn't stop to open the door. I hit it with my shoulder and my momentum carried me through it with splinters flying. In a haze of pain and anger I saw the cats fighting over something in the center of the floor. I knew that something had to be Mr. Foster.
I went as crazy as the cats then. Ignoring the beasts that were clinging to my body, I began to beat a hole through that writhing pile of fur before me. The clubs rose and fell as I methodically smashed their bodies, until I could see what they were fighting over. It was a pile of snow-white hair attached to a bit of scalp.
I think I went completely out of my head. I don't know how I got out of that cabin, but I do know I must have been crazy to drop one of my clubs and grab up the old man's hair. I remember running for the beach with cats clinging all over me. I dived over the prow of the beached dory and smashed into it in a headlong swan dive.
That dive saved my life. The force of my body striking the stern unbeached the dory and sent it shooting out into the lagoon. I ripped the cats off me and knocked them silly with the remaining club.
I threw my shredded clothes away and doctored my hundreds of scratches and bites on the way back to Papeete. I made a full report to the French Governor, but I could tell he didn't believe me. Nevertheless, he sent a launch full of local police to investigate Tao a week later. When that launch got back, my stories about Cat Island sounded like Sunday School tales.
The police long boat didn't even make the beach at Tao. The swimming cats met them in the lagoon. They climbed the oars and tried to eat the investigators on the spot. The police got out of there fast. They reported the cats had completely covered the atoll, and were fishing the lagoon like penguins. That's how its name "Cat Island" became official.
Everyone gives that atoll a wide berth now. No one has gone near it for years. I sail by it on my regular runs but I never stop. Sometimes I get to thinking about all that money the old man had in that strong box, and play with the idea of going back after it. When such a silly notion comes over me I just count my scars and dig out a little souvenir from my sea chest. Every time I look at old man Foster's hair I change my mind.
Some Are Born Cats
By Terry and Carol Carr
Have you ever considered that the tabby sitting contentedly on your lap, or bumping gently up against your leg, or nagging you for some chicken or tuna fish or liver, just might be an incognito shape-shifting alien spy from Arcturus?
No? Well, maybe you ought to start thinking about such things, then.
It may already be . . . too late.
Terry Carr is one of the most prominent and respected editors in science fiction. In addition to editing the prestigious original anthology series Universe and the long-running Best Science Fiction of the Year series, Carr was the editor of the famous "Ace Specials" SF book line, perhaps the most critically acclaimed publishing venture of the late 1960's, and a showcase for (then) new writers such as Joanna Russ, R. A. Lafferty, D. G. Compton, and many others. Carr is currently engaged in recreating an "Ace Specials" line (the first of the new Specials will be released in 1984), and the line promises once again to be a showcase for a lot of hot new talent. As a writer, Terry Carr has produced a handful of wry, elegantly crafted stories such as "The Dance of the Changer and the Three," "Hop-Friend," and "Virra," as well as the novel Cirque. His short fiction is collected in The Light at the End of the Universe.
Carol Carr is best known for her marvelously funny story "Look, You Think You've Got Troubles?" about a Nice Jewish Girl who marries a Martian. (Oy!) She has sold to Orbit, and has a new story coming up in Omni.
"Maybe he's an alien shape-changing spy from Arcturus," Freddie said.
"What does that mean?" asked the girl.
Freddie shrugged. "Maybe he's not a cat at all. He could be some kind of alien creature that came to Earth to spy on us. He could be hiding in the shape of a cat while he studies us and sends back reports to Arcturus or someplace."
She looked at the cat, whose black body lay draped across the top of the television set, white muzzle on white paws, wide green eyes open and staring at them. The boy and the girl lay on her bed, surrounded by schoolbooks.
"You're probably right," she said. "He gives me the creeps."
The girl's name was Alyson, and it was her room. She and Freddie spent a lot of their time together, though it wasn't a real Thing between them. Nothing off
icial, nor even unofficial. They'd started the evening doing homework together, but now they were watching "Creature Features," with the sound turned down.
"He always does that," Alyson said. "He gets up on the television set whenever there's a scary movie on, and he drapes his tail down the side like that and just stares at me. I'm watching a vampire movie, and I happen to glance up and there he is, looking at me. He never blinks, even. It really freaks me out sometimes."
The cat sat up suddenly, blinking. It yawned and began an elaborate washing of its face. White paws, white chest, white face, and the rest of him was raven black. With only the television screen illuminating the room, he seemed to float in the darkness. On the screen now was a commercial for campers; a man who looked Oriental was telling them that campers were the best way to see America.
"What kind of a name is Gilgamesh?" Freddie asked. "That's his name, isn't it?"
"It's ancient Babylonian or something like that," Alyson told him. "He was kind of a god; there's a whole long story about him. I just liked the name, and he looked so scraggly and helpless when he adopted us, I thought maybe he could use a fancy name. But most of the time I just call him Gil anyway."
"Is George short for anything?" the boy asked. George was her other cat, a placid Siamese. George was in some other part of the house.
"No, he's just George. He looks so elegant, I didn't think he needed a very special name."
"Gilgamesh, you ought to pay more attention to George," the boy said. "He's a real cat; he acts like a cat would really act. You don't see him sitting on top of horror shows and acting weird."
"George gets up on the television set too, but he just goes to sleep," Alyson said.
The cat, Gilgamesh, blinked at them and slowly lay down again, spreading himself carefully across the top of the TV set. He didn't look at them.
"Do you mean Gil could be just hypnotizing us to think he's a cat?" Alyson asked. "Or do you suppose he took over the body of a real cat when he arrived here on Earth?"
"Either way," Freddie said. "It's how he acts that's the tip-off. He doesn't act like a cat would. Hey, Gil, you really ought to study George—he knows what it's all about."
Gilgamesh lay still, eyes closed. They watched the movie, and after it, the late news. An announcer jokingly reported that strange lights had been seen in the skies over Watsonville, and he asked the TV weatherman if he could explain them. The weatherman said, "We may have a new wave of flying saucers moving in from the Pacific." Everybody in the studio laughed.
Gilgamesh jumped off the television set and left the room.
Freddie's Saturday morning began at eight o'clock with the "World News Roundup of the Week." He opened one eye cautiously and saw an on-the-spot reporter interviewing the families of three sky divers whose parachutes had failed to open.
Freddie was about to go downstairs for breakfast when the one woman reporter in the group smilingly announced that Friday night, at 11:45 p.m., forty-two people had called the studio to report a flying-saucer sighting. One man, the owner of a fish store, referred to "a school of saucers." The news team laughed, but Freddie's heartbeat quickened.
It took him twenty minutes to get through to Alyson, and when she picked up the phone, he was caught unprepared, with a mouthful of English muffin.
"Hello? Hello?"
"Mmgfghmf."
"Hello? Who is this?"
"Chrglfmhph."
"Oh, my goodness! Mom! I think it's one of those obscene calls!" She sounded deliriously happy. But she hung up.
Freddie swallowed and dialed again.
"Boy, am I glad it's you," Alyson said. "Listen, you've got to come right over—it's been one incredible thing after another ever since you left last night. First, the saucers—did you hear about them?—and then Gil freaking out, then a real creepy obscene telephone call."
"Hold it, hold it," Freddie said. "I'll meet you back of the house in five minutes."
When he got there, Alyson was lying stomach down on the lawn, chewing a blade of grass. She looked only slightly more calm than she sounded.
"Freddie," she said almost tragically. "How much do you know?"
"About as much as the next guy."
"No, seriously—I mean about the saucers last night. Did you see them?"
"I was asleep. Did you?"
"See them! I practically touched them." She looked deep into his eyes. "But Freddie, that's not the important part."
"What is? What?"
"Gilgamesh. I seriously believe he's having a nervous breakdown. I hate to think of what else it could be." She got up. "Wait right here. I want you to see this."
Freddie waited, a collage of living-color images dancing in his head: enemy sky divers, a massacred school of flying saucers, shape-changing spies from Arcturus. . . .
Alyson came back holding a limp Gilgamesh over her arm.
"He was in the litter pan," she said significantly. "He was covering it up."
"Covering what up?"
"His doo-doo, silly."
Freddie winced. There were moments when he wished Alyson were a bit more liberated.
Gilgamesh settled down to Alyson's lap and purred frantically.
"He has never, not once before, covered it up," she insisted. "He always gets out of the box when he's finished and scratches on the floor near it. George comes along eventually and does it for him."
Gilgamesh licked one paw and applied it to his right ear. It was a highly adorable action, one that never failed to please. He did it twice more—lick, tilt head, rub; lick, tilt head, rub—then stopped and looked at Freddie out of the corner of his eye.
"You see what I mean?" Alyson said. "Do you know what that look means?"
"He's asking for approval," said Freddie. "No doubt about it. He wants to know if he did it right."
"Exactly!"
Gilgamesh tucked his head between his white paws and closed his eyes.
"He feels that he's a failure," Alyson interpreted.
"Right."
Gilgamesh turned over on his back, let his legs flop, and began to purr. His body trembled like a lawn mower standing still.
Freddie nodded. "Overdone. Everything he does is self-conscious."
"And you know when he's not self-conscious? When he's staring. But he doesn't look like a cat then, either."
"What did he do last night, when the saucers were here?"
Alyston sat up straight; Gilgamesh looked at her suspiciously.
"He positively freaked," she said. "He took one look and his tail bushed out and he arched his back. . . ."
"That's not so freaky. And kind of cat would do that."
"I know . . . it's what comes next." She paused dramatically. "In the middle of this bushy-tailed fit, he stopped dead in his tracks, shook his head, and trotted into the house to find George. Gil woke him up and chased him onto the porch. Then you know what he did? He put a paw on George's shoulder, like they were old buddies. And you know how George is—he just went along with it; he'll groove on anything. But it was so weird. George wanted to leave, but Gil keep him there by washing him. George can't resist a wash—he's too busy grooving to do it himself—so he stayed till the saucers took off."
Freddie picked up Alyson's half-chewed blade of grass and put it in his mouth. "You think that Gil, for reasons of his own, manipulated George into watching saucers with him?"
Gilgamesh stopped being a lawn mower long enough to bat listlessly at a bumblebee. Then he looked at Alyson slyly and resumed his purring.
"That's exactly what I think. What do you think?"
Freddie thought about it for a while, gazing idly at Gilgamesh. The cat avoided his eyes.
"Why would he want George to watch flying saucers with him?" Freddie asked.
Alyson shrugged elaborately, tossing her hair and looking at the clear blue of the sky. "I don't know. Flying saucers are spaceships, aren't they? Maybe Gilgamesh came here in one of them."
"But why would he want George to look a
t one?"
"I'll tell you what," said Alyson. "Why don't you ask Gilgamesh about that?"
Freddie glanced again at the cat; Gilgamesh was lying preternaturally still, as though asleep, yet too rigid to be truly asleep. Playing 'possum, Freddie thought. Listening.
"Hey, Gil," he said softly. "Why did you want George to see the flying saucers?"
Gilgamesh made no acknowledgment that he had heard. But Freddie noticed that his tail twitched.
"Come on, Gil, you can tell me," he coaxed. "I'm from Procyon, myself."
Gilgamesh sat bolt upright, eyes wide and shocked. Then he seemed to recollect himself, and he swatted at a nonexistent bee, chased his tail in a circle, and ran off around the corner of the house.
"You nearly got him that time," Alyson said. "That line about being from Procyon blew his mind."
"Next time we tie him to a chair and hang a naked light bulb over his head," Freddie said.
After school Monday, Freddie stopped off at the public library and did a little research. They kept files of the daily newspapers there, and Freddie spent several hours checking through the papers for the last several months for mentions of flying saucers or anything else unusual.
That evening, in Alyson's room, Freddie said, "Let's skip the French vocabulary for a while. When did you get Gilgamesh?"
Alyson had George on her lap; the placid Siamese lay like a dead weight except for his low-grade purr. Alyson said, "Three weeks ago. Gil just wandered into the kitchen, and we thought he was a stray—I mean, he couldn't have belonged to anybody, because he was so dirty and thin, and anyway, he didn't have a collar."
"Three weeks ago," Freddie said. "What day, exactly?"
She frowned, thinking back. "Mmm . . . it was a Tuesday. Three weeks ago tomorrow, then."
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