MAGICATS!

by Gardner Dozoi

  Sister Mary Magdalene repressed a smile. The Major was bluffing there. Plenty of human beings had been stabbed in the throat by other human beings.

  Brock said, "But now comes the puzzling part. You do not like cats, Vor Vun. What would you do if one came near you? Are you afraid of them?"

  Vor Vun sniffed. "Afraid? No. They are harmless. They can be frightened easily. I would not pick one up, or allow it too close, but I am not afraid."

  "How about you, Vor Betla?"

  "Do? Don't know. Know nothing of cats, but that they harmless dumb animals. Maybe kick if came too close."

  "Vor Gontakel?"

  "I too know nothing of cats. I only saw one once."

  "One of you," said the Major judiciously, "is telling an untruth. Let's go on with the story."

  Sister Mary Magdalene watched their faces, trying to read emotion in those alien visages as the Major spoke.

  "The killer did a strange thing. She turned around and saw Felicity, the cat. Possibly it had meowed from behind her and attracted her attention. And what does the killer do? She draws a Brymer beamgun and kills the cat! Why?"

  The Pogatha looked at each other and then back at the Major. Their faces, thought Sister Mary Magdalene, were utterly unreadable.

  "Then the killer picked up the cat, walked outdoors through the rear gate and threw it into the meadow. It was the killer that Sister Angela saw last night, but the killer had pushed the cowl back, so she didn't recognize the fact that it was a nun 's habit, not a monk's. When the killer had disposed of the cat, she removed the habit, wrapped the beamgun in it and went into the chapel and put it under one of the pews."

  "Very plausible," said Vor Vun. "But not proof that one of us did it."

  "Not so far. But let's keep plugging. Why did the killer wear the nun's habit?"

  "Because was nun!" said Vor Betla. She pointed an accusing blue finger at Sister Mary Magdalene.

  "No," Brock said. "Because she wanted Vor Nollig to let her get close enough to stab her. You see, we've eliminated you, Vor Betla. You shared the room; you would have been allowed in without question. But Vor Nollig would never have allowed a Green or a Yellow into her room, would she?"

  "No," admitted the Blue, looking troubledly at Vor Vun and Vor Gontakel.

  "Another point in your favor is the fact that the killer looked like a monk to Sister Angela. There are no dark-skinned monks at this cathedral, and Sister Angela would have commented on it if the skin had looked as dark as yours does. But colors are almost impossible to see in moonlight. A yellow or light green would have looked pretty much like human skin, and the features at a distance would be hard to recognize as belonging to a Pogath."

  "You are playing on prejudices," said Vor Vun angrily. "This is an inexpensive trick!"

  "A cheap trick," corrected Major Brock. "Except that it isn't. However, we must now prove that it was a Pogath. We've smelled each others' food, haven't we? Now, a burnt cat would smell no differently than, say, a broiled steak—except maybe a little more so. Why would the killer take the trouble to remove the cat from the building? Why not leave it where it was? If she expected to get away with one killing, she could have expected to get away with two. She took the cat out simply because she couldn't stand the overpowering odor! There was no other possible reason to expose herself that way to the possible spying eyes of Sister Angela or any other nun who happened to be looking out the window. It was clever of the killer to think of dropping the wimple back and disposing of the white part of the headdress so that she would appear to be a monk. I imagine it also took a lot of breathholding to stand to carry that burnt cat that far."

  The Pogatha were definitely eyeing each other now, but the final wedge remained to be driven.

  "Vor Gontakel!" the Major said sharply. "What would you say if I told you that another cat at the far end of the corridor saw you stab Vor Nollig and bum down Felicity?"

  Vor Gontakel looked perfectly unruffled and unperturbed. No Earthman's bluff was going to get by her! "I would say the cat was lying," she said.

  "The other two Pogatha got a confession out of her," said Major Brock that evening. "They'll take her back to Pogathan to stand trial."

  Father Destry folded his hands and smiled. "Sister, you seem to have all the makings of a first-class detective. How did you figure out that it was Vor Gontakel? I mean, what started you on that train of thought?"

  "Sister Elizabeth," the nun said. "She told me that Felicity had been murdered. And she had been—murdered, I mean, not just 'killed.' Vor Gontakel saw me talking to the cat, and Felicity meowed back. How was she to know that the cat wasn't intelligent? She knew nothing about Terrestrial life. The other two did. Felicity was murdered because Vor Gontakel thought she was a witness. It was the only possible motive for Felicity's murder."

  "What about the motive for Vor Nollig's murder?" Father Destry said to the Major.

  "Political. There's a group of Greens, it seems, that has the idea the war should go on. Most of the war is being fought by Blues, and if they're wiped out the so-called minority groups could take over. I doubt if it would work that way, but that's what this bunch thinks. Vor Gontakel simply wanted to kill a Blue and have it blamed on the Earthmen in order to stop the peace talks. But there's one thing I think we left untied here, Sister. Have you stopped to wonder why she used a knife on Vor Nollig instead of the beamgun she was carrying?"

  Sister Mary Magdalene nodded. "She didn't want every sister in the place coming out to catch her before she had a chance to cover up. She knew that burnt Pogatha would smell as bad to us as burnt cat did to her. But she didn't have a chance to use a knife on Felicity; the cat would have run away."

  Major Brock nodded in appreciation. "A very neat summation, Sister. I bow to your fine deductive abilities. And now, I imagine, we can get our staff off the cathedral premises and leave you people to your devotions."

  "It's unfortunate we had to meet under such unhappy circumstances, Major," the nun said.

  "But you were marvelously helpful, Sister."

  The Major smiled at the nun, shook Father Destry's hand tentatively, as if uncertain that such a gesture was appropriate, and left. Sister Mary Magdalene sighed gently in relief.

  Police and aliens and all were leaving. The cathedral was returning to its normal quietude. In the distance the big bell was tolling, and it was time for prayer. She was no longer a detective; she was simply sister Mary Magdalene of the Sisters of the Holy Nativity.

  It would be good to have peace here again. But, she admitted wryly to herself, the excitement had been a not altogether unwelcome change from normal routine. The thought brought up old memories of a life long buried and sealed away with vows. Sister Mary Magdalene frowned gently, dispelling the thoughts, and quietly began to pray.

  The Cat

  By Gene Wolfe

  Here's a rarity: the first—and, so far as we know, the only-short story set in the strange and evocative universe of Gene Wolfe's The Book of the New Sun tetralogy.

  Come with us now to the far, far future, when the sun has grown old and red and dim, the moon has grown green with forests, and old Urth groans under the almost insupportable weight of her own unnumbered years.

  The scene is the mysterious House Absolute, the immense and labyrinthine palace of the Autarch, home also to the sinister and enigmatic Father Inire, whose blazing magic circle of specula can circumfuse travelers and send them to the stars—or coalesce strange spectral beings from the ethereal waves. . . .

  I am Odilo the Steward, the son of Odilo the Steward. I am he who is charged by our Autarch Severian the Great—whose desires are the dreams of his subjects—with the well-being of the Hypogeum Apotropaic. It is now the fifth year of his reign.

  As all who know the ways of our House Absolute (and I may say here that I neither hope nor wish for other readers) are aware, our Hypogeum Apotropaic is that part devoted to the needs and comforts of Father Inire; and in the twenty years in which I have given satisfaction
(as I hope) at my post, and in the years before them when I assisted my father, also Odilo the Steward, I have seen and heard many a strange thing. My father likewise.

  This evening, when I had reached a respite in the unending tasks entailed by such a position as mine, I took myself, as my custom is, to the culina magna of our Hypogeum to obtain some slight refreshment. The cooks' labors too were ended, or nearly; and half or more, with a kitchen boy or three and a gaggle of scullery maids, sat about the dying fire, seeking, as such people will, to amuse one another by diverse boasts and recitals.

  Having little better to do and being eager to rest, I bid the chief cook surrender his chair to me and heard them as I ate. It is now Hallowmas Eve (which is to say, the full of the Spading Moon) and their talk had turned to all manner of ghosts and bogeys. In the brief time required for me to chew my bread and beef and sluice them down with hot spiced ale, I heard such recountings of larva, lemures, and the like as would terrify every child in the Commonwealth—and make every man in it laugh most heartily.

  So I myself laughed when I returned here to my study, where I will scrutinize and doubtless approve the bills of fare for Hallowmas; and yet I find I am bemused by these tales and lost amid many wondering speculations. As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this dark universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its infinite night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has glimpsed that may give light to it? And do not such idle tales as I heard by the fire but serve to paint yet blacker that gloom through which we grope? I am therefore determined to set down here, for the enlightenment (as it may be) of my successors and whoever else may read, the history, whole and in entire in so far as I know it, of a series of incidents that culminated (as I believe) this night ten years gone. For the earlier events, I give the testimony of my father, Odilo the Steward also, a contemporary of the Chatelaine Sancha.

  She was (so my father said) an extraordinarily charming child, with the face of a peri and eyes that were always laughing, darker than most exulted children but so tall that she might have been supposed, at the age of seven or eight, to be a young woman of sixteen.

  That such a child should have attracted the attention of Father Inire is scarcely to be wondered at. He has always been fond of children (and particularly of girls), as the oldest records of our Hypogeum show; and I sometimes think that he has chosen to remain on Urth as a tutor to our race because he finds even the wisest of us to be children in his sight. Permit me to say at once that these children have often benefited from his attention. It is true, perhaps, that they have sometimes suffered for it, but that has been seldom and I think by no means by his wish.

  It has ever been the custom of the exultants resident in our House Absolute to keep their children closely confined to their own apartments and to permit them to travel the ten thousand corridors that wind such distances beneath the surface of the land (even so far as the Old Citadel of Nessus, some say) only under the watchful eyes of some trustworthy upper servant. And it has ever been the custom of those children to escape the upper servants charged with their supervision whenever they can, to join in the games of the children of the staff, so much more numerous, and to wander at will through the numberless leagues of the ten thousand corridors, by which frolic many have been lost at one time or another, and some forever.

  Whenever Father Inire encounters such a child not already known to him, he speaks to her, and if her face and her answers please him, he may pause in the conduct of great affairs to tell her some tale of the worlds beyond Dis. (No person grown has heard these tales, for the children do not recall them well enough to recount them afterward, though they are often quite charmed by them; and before they are grown themselves they have forgotten them, as indeed I have forgotten all but a few scraps of the tale Father Inire once told me.) If he cannot take the time for that, he often confers upon the child some many-hued toy of the kind that wise men and humble men such as I, and all women and children, call magical.

  Should he encounter that child a second time, as often happens, he asks her what has become of the toy, or whether she wishes to hear some other story from his store. Should he find that the toy remains unbroken and that it is still in the possession of the child, he may give another, and should the child ask politely (for Father Inire values courtesy above all knowledge), he may tell another. But if, as only very rarely happens, the child has received a toy and exhibits it still whole, but asks on this occasion for a tale of the worlds beyond Dis instead of a second toy, then Father Inire takes that child as a particular friend and pupil for so long as she—or more rarely he—may live. (I boast no scholarship of words, as you that have read this account do already well know; but once I heard a man who was such a scholar say that this word pupil in its most ancient and purest state denominates the image of oneself one sees in another's eyes.)

  Such a pupil Sancha became, one winter morning when she was of seven years or thereabout and my father much the same. All her replies must have pleased Father Inire; and he was doubtless returning to his apartments in our Hypogeum Apotropaic from some night-long deliberation with the Autarch. He took her with him; and so my father met them, as he often told me, in that white corridor we call the Luminary Way. Even then, when my father was only a child himself, he was struck by the sight of them walking and chatting together, Father Inire bent nearly double, like a gnome in a nursery book, with no more nose than an alouatte; Sancha already towering over him, straight as a sapling, sable of hair and bright of eye, with her cat in her arms.

  Of what passed between them in Father Inire's apartments, I can only relay what Sancha herself told a maid called Aude, many years later. Father Inire showed the girl many wonderful and magical appurtenances, and at last that marvelous circle of specula by whose power a living being may be coalesced from the ethereal waves, or, should such a being boldly enter them, circumfused to the borders of Briah. Then Sancha, doubtless thinking it but a toy, cast her cat into the circle. It was a gray cat, so my father told me, with many stripes of a darker gray.

  Knowing Father Inire as I have been privileged to know him these many years, I feel certain he must have promised poor Sancha that he would do all that lay in his power to retrieve her pet, and that he must have kept faithfully to that promise. As for Sancha, Aude said she believed the cat the only creature Sancha was ever to love, beyond herself; but that, I think, was spite; and Aude was but a giddypate, who knew the Chatelaine only when she was old.

  As I have often observed, rumor in our House Absolute is a self-willed wind. Ten thousand corridors there well may be (though I, with so many more immediate concerns, have forborne to count them), and a million chambers or more; and in truth no report reaches them all. And yet in a day or less, the least gossip comes to a thousand ears. So it became known, and quickly, that the girl Sancha was attended by some fey thing. When she and some friend sat alone at play, a pochette was knocked from a table and broken, or so it was said. On another occasion, a young man who sat conversing with Sancha (who must, I should think, have been somewhat older then) observed the ruffled body of a sparrow lying on the carpet at her feet, though she could scarcely have sat where she did without stepping upon it, had it been present when they began their talk.

  Of the scandal concerning Sancha and a certain Lomer, then seneschal to the Chatelaine Nympha, I shall say nothing—or at least very little, although the matter was only too well known at the time. She was still but a child, being then fourteen years of age, or as some alleged, fifteen. He was a man of nearly thirty. They were discovered together in that state which is too easily imagined. Sancha's rank and age equally exempted her from formal punishment; her age and her rank equally ensured that the disrepute would cling to her for life. Lomer was sentenced to die; he appealed to the Autarch, and as the Chatelaine Nympha exerted herself on his behalf, his appeal was accepted. He was sent to the antechamber to await a hearing; but if his case was ever disposed of, I do not recall it
. The Chatelaine Leocadia, who was said to have concocted the affair to injure Nympha, suffered nothing.

  When Sancha came of age, she received a villa in the south by her father's will, so becoming the Chatelaine Sancha. The Autarch Appian permitted her to leave our House Absolute at once; and no one was surprised, my father said, to hear soon after that she had wed the heir of Fors—it was a country family not liable to know much of the gossip of the court, not apt to care greatly for what it heard, while the Chatelaine was a young woman of some fortune, excellent family, and extraordinary beauty. Insofar as we interested ourselves in her doings, she then vanished for the space of fifty years.

  During the third year in which I performed the consequential charge which had once been my father's, she returned and requested a suite in this Hypogeum, which Father Inire granted in observance of their old friendship. At that time, I conversed with her at length, it being necessary to arrange a thousand details to her satisfaction.

  Of the celebrated beauty that had been hers, only the eyes remained. Her back was as bent as Father Inire's, her teeth had been made for her by a provincial ivory-turner, and her nose had become the hooked beak of a carrion bird. For whatever reason, her person now carried a disagreeable odor; she must have been aware of it, for she had ordered fires of sandalwood to counter it.

  Although she never mentioned her unfortunate adventure in our Hypogeum, she described to me, in much greater detail than I shall give here, her career at Fors. Suffice it to say that she had borne several children, that her husband was dead, and that her elder son now directed the family estate. The Chatelaine did not get along well with his wife and had many disagreeable anecdotes to relate of her, of which the worst was that she had once denounced the Chatelaine as a gligua, such being the name the autochthons of the south employ for one who has traffic with diakka, casts spells, and the like.