BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

  Forrest liked to wear a wristwatch; he collected them. Before leaving for West Africa he’d had one specially made for this trip. An ingenious, expensive toy; instead of hours and seconds it followed the intricate dance of the orbits of the two planets. Sekῥool had returned this device. He didn’t think she could have tampered with it. As he spoke he read the time, the only time that mattered to him, and his heart skipped a beat.

  He wanted to ask her just how long was I “very ill”? How long is your world’s “day”, right now? He had no idea how to frame the question, and it didn’t matter. He knew enough of PoTolo’s complex requirements to be sure he’d missed his window entirely. His next chance wouldn’t be coming around for… for quite a while.

  “But Johnforrest, I have a proposal. It suddenly struck me. Why not come to the clouds? You’re here from the sky, on a fact-finding mission: I could introduce you to interesting people, and later we could surely set you down wherever you need to be.”

  Forrest slipped the orrery watch into an inside pocket. Her big green eyes were limpid with lies, her smile had that warning edge, and he didn’t care. “What a wonderful idea, I’d be delighted. When do we leave?”

  ♀

  If he was stranded, for a year and a half or forever, he might as well see the world. Stir things up, in this story he didn’t understand. Why not? If Lizard Woman feared for his life, as she clearly did, maybe she just didn’t know John Forrest very well! But that pouch on the cord around her neck, where she kept her oracle bones, what was going on there—?

  Forrest had “fallen asleep in the daytime” again. The room was dim, the lights that stood in wall-niches were at their lowest setting. He heard Sekῥool’s voice, but she was nowhere in sight. She must be in one of those screened-off areas. Perhaps she was making arrangements for his “visit to the clouds”? The headset lay on a table. Intrigued, he donned it and sneaked up: creeping around until he could peer behind the screen. Astonished, he saw himself, standing naked, quivering, full frontal.

  The shock was momentary. He was looking as if into a full-length, free-standing mirror: but it was a video screen of some kind, and the naked Forrest figure must be a kind of hologram. Someone of the same lizard-like race, or species as Sekῥool (though he couldn’t see a tail) – masculine-seeming, dressed in black and white, was examining it.

  Sekῥool, her back to Forrest, spoke rapidly in a language that crackled and fizzed like fireworks: but reached him as English (mostly)—

  “No. Not any kind of flish atatonaton, he’s real. But he’s carrying an implant, attached to his stomach wall. I haven’t touched it, and I don’t know what it’s for—”

  Good to know I’m still a walking interplanetary probe, thought Forrest. The other’s response, over the video link, was incomprehensible.

  “Deniable is good, but how long could it stand up? This is better. Far better than a… a kinsnipping, Esbwe! We want to avoid reprisals!”

  She sounded exasperated. Her tail, he thought, should be lashing. He’d have liked to see that. He retreated, replaced the headset where he’d found it and lay down again: his thoughts spinning. Feigning sleep, he must have dozed. He woke when he heard something crawling.

  The globes were still dim. Sekῥool, alone, sat by the fire-bowl, tail around her feet. Nothing moved, but the sound of crawling was closer. Forrest turned on his side, as if in sleep and saw something come through the wall of the room. It crossed the floor.

  A male, humanoid figure, slender and juvenile, naked and very battered, hauled himself along on one hand and one knee; back, ribs and shoulders marked with livid weals. Bruises blotted out his eyes. No sign of a tail, which made Forrest think he was asleep, and dreaming of a human boy: except the whole thing was too complete, too coherent. The kid’s hair was dark, his greenish skin unnaturally pale; until he reached the firelight. Then he was more than pale: he was transparent.

  A mangled, moving corpse, the apparition crept into Sekῥool’s arms.

  Another hologram? Not by the way Sekῥool responded. Not the way she held the kid: rocked him and murmured to him, stroking his shadow-hair from his swollen, battered shadow-brow, and then somehow Forrest made a sound.

  She looked up: instantly the ghost was gone.

  “What was that?” he breathed.

  Enormous eyes unblinking, she calmly left the fire and picked up the “translation device”.

  “My son. Gemin. He comes to me when it’s quiet. Usually I’m alone; you’ve never woken before. He died under torture. Don’t die under torture, Johnforrest. It’s not a good way to go.”

  She removed the headset and turned away: the subject was closed. Forrest got up, and joined her by the fire-bowl, collecting the headset on the way. He held her gaze, deliberately, as he settled the flexible web around his skull.

  “Tell me, Sekῥool.”

  She looked into the flames, drawing her tail closely around her.

  “There’s not much to tell. He was caught up in a secret war and taken hostage. We failed to negotiate his release, he was mistreated; protests achieved nothing; we learned that he’d died. There’s nothing to be done. I only comfort him, and quiet him as best I can… Death is not the end, Johnforrest, as we all know, because our dead return. They speak to us and know us, in dream and in the waking world. But when they depart at last, we don’t know what happens next. We don’t know if the unquiet ones, trapped in the way they died, ever escape from suffering. It’s cruel.”

  “I know you’re a shaman,” he said. “There must be something you can do.”

  Her long fingers closed on the bag of oracle bones.

  “No. Let’s say no more about it. I can’t help my boy. He’ll fade, that’s all, and he’ll be gone, and I won’t know where.”

  Out Of The Frying Pan, Into The Fire

  On their way out, Sekῥool placated the demons again. Forrest kept his distance, and didn’t stir until she’d made her circuit. She seemed self-conscious, something he’d never seen in her before, and he liked it. He had no doubt that, if he’d asked, she’d tell him that of course she’d planned to disarm the venom-spitting fence, if she’d been leaving him behind (to await those kinsnippers!). He said nothing. He just followed her, as before, grinning to himself: no longer helpless baggage. He was in charge of his own destiny again, and it felt good.

  But surely, subtly, everything had changed? Had the trees moved? Surely the ranks were different; the uncertain ground had new contours—

  “Happens all the time,” said Sekῥool, catching his bewildered glances. “The sek is an organism: it shifts about as it pleases. That’s why there are no trails. The indigenes have their own ways to get around. We use our beacons, and come in on foot. It’s simpler.”

  “What a world. It’s like a circle in Dante’s hell.”

  “Indeed. All death in life is here, eating its own tail. Yet somehow I love it.”

  ♀

  There was a wind blowing outside the wood; they could hear it. Sekῥool gave Forrest a robe like her own: he wrapped himself, the folds settling firmly round his head and face, and they emerged from tepid stillness into a dust-storm. Well-protected but half-blind, he felt a hard surface under the skidding grit, and glimpsed big squared and domed shapes. Fighting the wind to look behind him, he saw the sek: rising like a grey-green mirage, on the edge of a desert-devoured town. She headed for an intact building, and used a touch-pad to open massive double doors. In a covered courtyard, a welcome silence, she bared her face—

  “I have a call to make. Come with me. It won’t take long.”

  The room they entered made Forrest think of a chapel: a podium for the minister, benches for the congregation. Images of lizard-people, animal and vegetable flourishes, in coloured metals or enamel, covered the walls. She approached the podium, Forrest took a seat. His legs were too long. Sekῥool was tall, but like a Japanese woman, her height was in her pliant body… Expecting a video link he saw, to his astonishment, powdery matter begin to wh
irl inside a clear cylinder: building something from the platter upwards. The cylinder withdrew, and there stood another masculine-seeming Venusian; a Lizard Man. Not the guy Forrest had seen in the mirror-screen: someone new. He had scanty head-hair, he wore some kind of dress-uniform; he seemed authoritative but old; or maybe sick. Sekῥool spoke, Lizard Man mainly listened. At one point he looked over her shoulder and Forrest, disconcerted, felt eyes on him: a presence in the instant simulacrum. Finally Sekῥool bowed, the old guy did the same. The body crumbled and vanished.

  She walked past Forrest, resuming her headset as she headed for the doors.

  “Who was that?”

  “My husband. Excuse him if he seemed rude, you’ll meet him properly up above. Do you have wives, Johnforrest?”

  “I’ve had two. Then I gave up.”

  “Wise man… I did what was expected of me. I gave a powerful old man my baby’s name, his futurity for our security. A fair trade on both sides: neither of us thought it would be forever. I have no complaints, none at all. But oh, he’s a long time dying!”

  She flashed him that eerie smile. “Now we need to hurry. The wind usually eases at nightfall, but I want to be far from here by then.”

  In the covered yard Sekῥool left him briefly, and reappeared leading an extraordinary animal: a low-slung, big-haunched, tan-hided wrinkly camel, with bulbous cat’s-eyes, a sinuous neck and tail, and a muzzle thick with stiff, drooping whiskers—

  “Johnforrest, meet Miahanhouk. I don’t take him into the sek, but we need him now. You’ll have to ride behind me, I’m afraid. I wasn’t expecting to bring home a guest.”

  Who harnessed Mihanhouk? He listened. Not a footstep, not a voice.

  “Are we alone? Where is everybody?”

  “Only the indigenes live permanently on the surface, and around here they don’t leave the haunted woods. Let’s go, it’s a long ride to the Sea Mount Station.”

  The ground staff never saw me, he thought. I am deniable—

  The cat-camel’s paces were challenging. He loped like a hare, pushing off from his big haunches, landing with an insouciant bounce on his forepaws. So far, so uncomfortable, and then he put on speed. At every leap Forrest (with muttered curses) nearly lost his seat; at every touchdown his tailbone tried to send his cervical vertebrae through the top of his head. Sekῥool rode with her tail tucked up, stirrups high as a jockey’s. She glanced around, green eyes vivid between folds of grey veiling and the whipping dust: registering his discomfort. She faced ahead again, and he felt a curious, thrilling, muscular movement.

  She was wrapping her tail around him.

  “Is that better?”

  “Yes,” he breathed. “That’s… fine.”

  ♀

  Gradually, the howling died and the dust cleared. Mihanhouk seemed to feel he’d done enough. He ambled along a rudimentary trail, uphill, between eroded boulders that blocked the view, to a bluff like a wave crest. Sekῥool tapped his shoulder with the knotted end of her reins: the beast knelt and they dismounted.

  They climbed the last few metres to a viewpoint, and suddenly faced a staggering gulf. Red-gold cliffs plunged, way deeper than the Grand Canyon, into the haze of a basin that stretched forever. To their left, far below the bluff, Forrest saw the trail continuing to another complex of buildings, and skeletal bridgework that reached out, over the abyss, to a rocky, conical pillar. Narrowing his eyes, he saw the sequence repeated: the bridgework linking a string of rocky cones, that rose from unseen depths; becoming tiny and vanishing.

  Directly ahead, but far off, brilliant whiteness reflected the pale clouds.

  “Is that the ocean out there?”

  “Once upon a time,” said Sekῥool. “It’s mostly a big salt pan now. We live in the clouds, and others in the skies, Johnforrest; where everything is fine. Only fanatics think it matters or feel concerned that we can’t live on the surface any more, if we wanted to. Which is just as well. The situation down here is beyond repair.”

  “So what’s the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile.”

  “Indeed. I’d like to learn your language. From what I can tell it has a fine turn of phrase; many interesting concepts. Thou shalt not kill. There’s another of them!”

  Forrest nodded, his thoughts very far away. Out of the frying pan, into the fire… Our beautiful neighbour before she ran into trouble? Your calculations were slightly out, PoTolo!

  “What caused the hopeless devastation? Do your scientists have an explanation?”

  She thought about it, measuring her words. “Long ago, we lived in a dangerous world and didn’t know it. Everything was kind, plenty was all around. One day we stepped on a hidden switch, we pulled the wrong lever; we tipped a balance, and destruction was set in motion, click, clack, like a child’s toy: sly and comical and relentless. Or so I understand it. But we took that wrong step a very long time ago, Johnforrest. The damage was done before anyone moved to the clouds, let alone the skies. It’s nonsense to apportion blame.”

  The stillness after the wind, the sombre majesty of the scene held them in silence.

  “I didn’t bring you up here to accuse you, Mr From-The-Sky. There’s something I wanted you to see, a trick of this vantage. Look to the east.”

  He felt the chill before he saw the cause. Far away and very distinct, like a bold line on a child’s drawing, a dark ellipse appeared, stretching from horizon to horizon. It grew, like the shadow of the moon across the sun in a solar eclipse; contained, yet seeming liquid as ink. No flashes of radiance, no sunset colours heralded the change. The transition from light to shadow was perfectly abrupt; pure as a note of music.

  It was the dark.

  Forrest thought of a world without a visible sun. No moon, no stars. A horror ran through him, he wanted to run. At his shoulder the Venusian sighed in delight, as perfect night, velvet night, rose to the zenith and hurried down to engulf them.

  “There,” she murmured, when blackness lapped at Mihanhouk’s forepaws.

  “Thank you,” whispered Forrest.

  They rode to the Sea Mount Station as if descending under miles of dark water. She’d fastened lights to Mihanhouk’s bridle: although he didn’t seem to need them, he was sure-footed and at ease. The Station was lit, and as deserted as the town by the sek. The cable-car she summoned, swinging from frictionless chains, black sides hung with rosy lights, reminded Forrest of an Egyptian ship of the dead, on a temple frieze. It rode silently down to their platform; they embarked.

  ♀

  Mihanhouk had a compartment to himself. Sekῥool made him comfortable, then joined Forrest in the stateroom, where a buffet offered store-cupboard foods: pickles, spreads and tough breads, savoury cakes of pressed beans (or insect larvae?); crystallised fruit. A fine improvement on sappy-gruel. They moved on, having eaten, to an observation car; taking along a carafe of spirits. The couches were soft and wide: they settled side by side.

  “Here’s another sight not to be missed, Johnforrest. We’re passing over the Trench.”

  In fathomless blackness, way down below, he saw a vivid, active red line.

  “What is that?”

  “A rent in the world’s hide, close to the old coastline; where the fires of renewal pour out, and worn-out flesh is devoured. It’s shrinking. My city takes pictures of the dwindling fire. All the healthy wounds, as our scientists call them, are healing. It’s not a good sign.”

  “I’ve heard about that.”

  “When the fire stops flowing; when the wounds are gone… then even the clouds and the skies may fail us. But that’s a long way off. Neither you nor I need worry!”

  Forrest filled two tiny cups, she emptied hers and held it out for more. Like-for-like translation, he thought, turned them into a mediaeval knight and his lady, speaking of eldritch secrets: dooms known only to the wise. She tossed her cup aside, and took his hand. Four-fingered, both outer digits opposable: she gripped like a chameleon.

  “This is a great, great favour you’re do
ing for me.”

  “A trip to the clouds?” Forrest smiled to himself. “It’s my pleasure!”

  “Still, I feel I owe you. Let me give you some return.”

  “There’s no need.”

  “Myself?”

  “Well, now. That would be an unexpected bonus.”

  “An interlude, I mean nothing more.”

  “Of course not!”

  Romantic overtures would have been in poor taste, given what he guessed: but his lust was honest, and however she squared it, her offer seemed honest too. Seeing no reason to refuse, he reached around and took the splendid root of her tail in a forthright, determined grip. The tongue that met his when they kissed was slender, strong, active and probing. The gulf behind her smile could have swallowed him whole.

  They shucked out of their clothes and embraced, her tail lashed itself around him and he probed her in turn, deeper and longer than he’d have thought possible. Blissfully spent, he fell asleep: and woke still in her grip, a silky, powerful frottage undulating up and down his thighs, his buttocks—

  He wondered would he survive this dark journey, or die happy?

  ♀

  Unmeasured riches followed: an engrossing, fabulous interlude, with sated pauses in which she told him about her city, and Forrest asked only the most tactful questions. They hardly ate or drank, they slept coupled and entwined. But once, when he woke, he was alone.

  Sekῥool was on the opposite couch, limned in faint light, head bent over the oracle bones: the way he’d first seen her. He went over. She looked up, accepting, and drew back to let him see. Just four items; no bones. The ‘slab’ he remembered was a paper-thin tablet, lit from within, marked in a grid of four by four. Plenty for a tribal shaman, living at the dawn of time. Not much of an apparatus to model the fate of a complex, high-tech society.

  But four by four is a powerful number.

  “The tokens are relics from your own life,” he said. “You’ve invested them with meaning, for telling the fortunes of your people. Will you tell me a little more, if it’s allowed?”