BIG CAT: And Other Stories

by Gwyneth Jones

  The Reverend Boaaz Hanaahaahn, High Priest of the Mighty Void, and an Aleutian adventurer going by the name of ‘Conrad’, were the only resident guests at the Old Station, Butterscotch. They’d met on the way from Opportunity and had taken to spending their evenings together, enjoying a snifter or two of Boaaz’s excellent Twin Planets blend in a cosy private lounge. It seemed an unlikely friendship: the massive Shet, his grey hide forming ponderous dignified folds across his skull and over his brow, and the stripling immortal, slick-stranded head-hair to his shoulders, black eyes dancing with mischief on either side of the dark space of his nasal. But the Aleutian, though he had never lived to be old – he wasn’t the type – had amassed a fund of fascinating knowledge in his many lives, and Boaaz was an elderly priest with varied interests and a youthful outlook.

  Butterscotch’s hundred or so actual citizens didn’t frequent the Old Station. The customers were mostly mining lookerers who drove in from the desert, in the trucks that were their homes, and could now be heard carousing mildly in the public bar. Boaaz and Conrad shared a glance, agreeing not to join the fun tonight. The natives were friendly – but Martian settlers were, almost without exception, humans who had never left conventional space. They’d met few ‘aliens’, and believed the Buonarotti Interstellar Transit was a dangerous novelty that would never catch on. One got tired of the barrage of uneasy fascination.

  “I’m afraid I scare the children,” rumbled Boaaz.

  The Aleutian could have passed for a noseless slope-shouldered human. The Shet was hairless and impressively bulky, but what really made him different was his delicates. To Boaaz it was natural that he possessed two sets of fingers: one set thick and horny, for pounding and mashing, the other slender and supple, for fine manipulation. Normally protected by his wrist folds, his delicates would shoot out suddenly, to grasp a stylus for instance, or handle eating implements. He had seen the young Martian folk startle at this, and recoil with bulging eyes—

  “Stop calling them children,” suggested Conrad. “They don’t like it.”

  “Nonsense. The young always take the physical labour and service jobs, it’s a fact of nature. I’m only speaking English.”

  Conrad shrugged. For a while each studied his own screen, as the saying goes, and a comfortable silence prevailed. Boaaz reviewed a list of ‘cases’ sent to him by the Colonial Social Services in Opportunity. He was not impressed. They’d simply compiled a list of odds and ends: random persons who didn’t fit in, and were vaguely thought to have problems.

  To his annoyance, one of the needy appeared to live in Butterscotch.

  “Here’s a woman who “has been suspected of being insane”, he grumbled aloud. “Has she been treated? No. How barbaric. Has visited Speranza… No known religion… What’s the use in telling me that?”

  “Maybe they think you’d like to convert her,” suggested Conrad.

  “I do not convert people!” exclaimed Boaaz, shocked. “Should an unbelieving parishioner wish my guidance towards the Abyss, they’ll let me know. It’s not my business to persuade them! I have entered my name alongside other Ministers of Religion on Mars. If my services as a priest should be required at a Birth, Adulthood, Conjunction or Death, I shall be happy to oblige, and that’s enough.”

  Conrad laughed soundlessly, the way Aleutians do. “You don’t bother your ‘flock’, and they don’t bother you! That sounds like an easy berth.”

  Not always, thought the old priest. Sometimes not easy at all!

  “I wouldn’t worry about it, Boaaz. Mars is a colony. It’s run by the planetary government of Earth, and they’re obsessed with gathering information about innocent strangers. When they can’t find anything interesting, they make it up. Their file on me is vast, I’ve seen it.”

  ‘Earth’, powerful neighbour to the Red Planet, was the local name for the world everyone else in the Diaspora knew as the Blue.

  Boaaz was on Mars to minister to souls. Conrad was here, he claimed, purely as a tourist. The fat file the humans kept might suggest a different story, but Boaaz had no intention of prying. Aleutians, the Elder Race, had their own religion; or lack of one. As long as he showed no sign of suffering, Conrad’s sins were his own business. The old Shet cracked a snifter vial, tucked it in his holder: inhaled placidly, and returned to the eyeball-screen that was visible to his eyes alone. The curious Social Services file on Jewel, Isabel, reappeared. All very odd. Careful of misunderstandings, he opened his dictionary, and checked in detail the meanings of English words he knew perfectly well.

  wicked.. .

  old woman…

  insane…

  Later, on his way to bed, he examined one of the fine rock formations that decorated the station’s courtyards. They promised good hunting. The mining around here was of no great worth, mainly ferrous ores for the domestic market, but Boaaz was not interested in commercial value. He collected mineral curiosities. It was his passion, and a very good reason for visiting Butterscotch, a settlement on the edge of the most ancient and interesting Martian terrain. If truth be known, Boaaz looked on this far-flung Vicariate as an interesting prelude to his well-earned retirement. He did not expect his duties to be burdensome. But he was a conscientious person, and Conrad’s teasing had stung.

  “I shall visit her,” he announced, to the sharp-shadowed rocks.

  Ω

  The High Priest had travelled from his home world to Speranza, capital city of the Diaspora, and onward to the Blue Planet Torus Port, in no time at all (allowing for a few hours of waiting around, and two ‘false duration’ interludes of virtual entertainment). The months he’d spent on the conventional space liner Burroughs, completing his interplanetary journey, had been slow but agreeable. He’d arrived to find that his personal Residence, despatched by licensed data courier, had been delayed – and decided that until his home was decoded into material form, he might as well carry on travelling. His tour of this backward but extensive new parish had happened to concentrate on prime mineral-hunting sites: but he would not neglect his obligations.

  He took a robotic jitney as far as the network extended, and then proceeded on foot. Jewel, Isabel lived out of town, up against the Enclosure that kept tolerable climate and air quality captive. As yet unscrubbed emissions lingered here in drifts of vapour; the thin air had a lifeless, paradoxical warmth. Spindly towers of mine tailings, known as ‘Martian Stromatolites’, stood in groups, heads together like ugly sentinels. Small machines crept about, munching mineral-rich dirt. There was no other movement, no sound but the crepitation of a million tiny ceramic teeth.

  Nothing lived.

  The ‘Martians’ were very proud of their Quarantine. They farmed their food in strict confinement; they tortured off-world travellers with lengthy decontamination. Even the gastropod machines were not allowed to reproduce. They were turned out in batches by the mine factories, and recycled in the refineries when they were full. What were the humans trying to preserve? The racial purity of rocks and sand? Absurd superstition, muttered the old priest, into his breather. Life is life!

  Jewel Isabel clearly valued her privacy. He hadn’t messaged her in advance. His visit would be off the record, and if she turned him away from her door, so be it. He could see the isolated module now, at the end of a chance ‘avenue’ of teetering stromatolites. He reviewed the file’s main points as he stumped along. Old. Well travelled, for a human of her caste. Reputed to be rich. No social contacts in Butterscotch, no data traffic with any other location. Supplied by special delivery at her own expense. Came to Mars, around a local year ago, on a settler’s one way ticket… Boaaz thought that must be unusual. Most Martian ‘settlers’ retired to their home planet, if they could afford the medical bills. Why would a fragile, elderly human make the opposite trip, apparently not planning to return?

  The dwelling loomed up, suddenly right in front of him. He had a moment of selfish doubt. Was he committing himself to an endless round of visiting random misfits? Thus ruining his collecti
ng-chances? Maybe he should quietly go away again. But his approach had been observed: a transparent pane had opened. A face glimmered, looking out through the inner and the outer skin; as if from deep, starless space.

  “Who are you?” demanded a harsh voice, cracked with disuse. “Are you real? Can you hear me? You’re not human.”

  “I hear you, I’m, aah, ‘wired for sound’. I am not human, I am a Shet, a priest of the Void, newly arrived, just making myself known. May I come in?”

  He half-hoped that she would say no. Go away, I don’t like priests, can’t you see I want to be left alone? But the lock opened. He passed through, divested himself of the breather and his outer garments, and entered the pressurised chamber.

  The room was large, by Martian dwelling standards. Bulkheads must have been removed, probably this had once been a three or four person unit: yet it felt crowded. He recognised the furniture of Earth. Not extruded, like similar fittings in the Old Station, but free-standing, and many of the pieces carved from precious woods. Chairs were ranged in a row along one curved, red wall. Against another stood a tall armoire, a desk with many drawers, and several canvas pictures in frames; stacked facing the dark. In the midst of the room two more chairs were drawn up beside a plain ceramic stove; which provided the only lighting. A richly patterned rug lay on the floor. He couldn’t imagine what it had cost to ship all this farrago through conventional space, in material form. She must indeed be wealthy!

  The light was low, the shadows numerous.

  “I see you are a Shet,’ said Jewel, Isabel. “I won’t offer you a chair, I have none that would take your weight, but please be seated.”

  She indicated the rug, and Boaaz reclined with care. The number of valuable alien objects made him feel he was sure to break something. The human woman resumed (presumably) her habitual seat. She was tall, for a human: and very thin. A black gown with loose skirts covered her whole body, closely fastened and decorated with flourishes of creamy stuff, like textile foam, at the neck and wrists.

  The marks of human aging were visible in her wrinkled face, her white head-hair and the sunken, over-large sockets of her pale eyes. But signs of age can be deceptive. Boaaz also saw something universal – something any priest often has to deal with, yet familiarity never breeds contempt.

  Jewel Isabel inclined her head. She had read his silent judgement. “You seem to be a doctor as well as a priest,” she said, in a tone that rejected sympathy. “My health is as you have guessed. Let’s change the subject.”

  She asked him how he liked Butterscotch, and how Mars compared with Shet: bland questions separated by unexplained pauses. Boaaz spoke of his mineral hunting plans, and the pleasures of travel. He was oddly disturbed by his sense that the room was crowded: he wanted to look behind him, to be sure there were no occupants in that row of splendid chairs. But he was too old to turn without a visible effort, and he didn’t wish to be rude. When he remarked that Isabel’s home (she had put him right on the order of her name), was rather isolated she smiled – a weary stretching of the lips.

  “Oh, you’d be surprised. I’m not short of company.”

  “You have your memories.”

  Isabel stared over his shoulder. “Or they have me.”

  He did not feel that he’d gained her confidence, but before he left they’d agreed he would visit again: she was most particular about the appointment. “In ten days’ time,” she said. “In the evening, at the full moon. Be sure you remember.” As he returned to the waiting jitney the vaporous outskirts of Butterscotch seemed less forbidding. He had done right to come, and thank goodness Conrad had teased him, or the poor woman might have been left without the comfort of the Void. Undoubtedly he was needed, and he would do his best.

  Ω

  Satisfaction was still with him when the jitney delivered him inside the Old Station compound. He even tried a joke on one of the human children about those fine, decorative rock formations. How did they get here? Did they walk in from the desert one night, in search of alcoholic beverages? The youngster took offence.

  “They were here when the station was installed. It was all desert then. If there was walking rocks on Mars, messir—” The child drew herself up to her frail, puny height, and glared at him. “We wouldn’t any of us be here. We’d go home straight away, and leave Mars to the creatures that belonged to this planet.”

  Boaaz strode off, a chuckle rumbling in his throat. Kids! But when he had eaten, in decent privacy (as a respectable Shet, he would never get used to eating in public) he decided to forgo Conrad’s company. The ‘old mad woman’ was too much on his mind, and he found that he shuddered away from the idea of that second visit. It was strange: he’d met Isabel’s trouble many, many times, and never been frightened before.

  I am getting old, thought the High Priest.

  He turned in early, but he couldn’t sleep: plagued by the formless feeling that he had done something foolish, and he would have to pay for it. There were dangerous creatures trying to get into his room, groping at the mellow, pock-marked outer skin of the Old Station; searching for a weak place… Rousing from an uneasy doze, he was compelled to get up and make a transparency, although (as he knew perfectly well) his room faced an inner courtyard, and there are no wild creatures on Mars.

  Nothing stirred. Several rugged, decorative rocks were grouped right in front of him, oddly menacing under the security lights. Had they always stood there? He thought not, but he couldn’t be sure. The brutes crouched, motionless and secretive, waiting for him to lie down again.

  “I really am getting old,’ muttered Boaaz. “I must take something.”

  He slept, and found himself once more in the human woman’s module. Isabel seemed younger, and far more animated. Confusion fogged his mind, embarrassing him. He didn’t know how he’d arrived here, or what they’d been talking about. He started advising her to move into town. It wasn’t safe to live so close to the ancient desert: she was not welcome. She laughed and bared her arm, crying I am welcome nowhere! He saw a mutilation, a string of marks etched into her thin human skin. She positively thrust the symbols at him: he protested that he had no idea what they meant, but she didn’t care. She was waiting for another visitor, the visitor she had been expecting when he arrived the first time. She had let him in by mistake, he must leave. They are from another dimension, she cried, in that hoarse, hopeless voice. They wait at the gate, meaning to devour. They lived with me once, and may return, with a tiny shift of the Many Dimensions of the Void.

  It gave him a shock when she used the terms of his religion. Was she drawn to the Abyss? Had he begun to give her instruction? The fog in his mind was very distressing. How could he have forgotten something like that? He recalled, with intense relief, that she was no stranger to the interstellar world. She must have learned something of Shet beliefs when she visited Speranza… But relief was quickly swamped in a wave of dread: Isabel was looking over his shoulder, and something was behind him. He turned, awkward and stiff with age. Something was taking shape in one of those bizarre chairs. It was big as a bear, bigger than Boaaz himself. Squirming tentacles of glistening flesh reached out, becoming every instant more solid and defined—

  If it became fully real, if it touched him, he would die of horror—

  Boaaz woke with thunder in his skull, his whole body pulsing, the blood thickened and backing-up in all his veins. Dizzy and sick, on the edge of total panic, he groped for his First Aid, fumbled the mask over his mouth and nostril-slits, with trembling delicates that would hardly obey him, and drew in great gulps of oxygen. Unthinkable horrors flowed away, the pressure in his skull diminished. He dropped onto his side, making the sturdy extruded couch groan; clutching the mask. It was a dream, he told himself. Just a dream.

  Ω

  Rationally, he knew he had simply done too much. Over-exertion in the thin air of the outskirts had resulted in nightmares: he must give his acclimatisation treatment more time to become established. He took things easy for
the next few days: using full Martian EVA gear, and pottering around in the mining fields just outside the Enclosure, with a young staff member for a guide. Pickings were slim (Butterscotch was in the Guidebook!); but he made a few pleasing finds.

  But the nightmare stayed on his mind, and at intervals he had to fight the absurd but rooted conviction that he had made a second visit, there had been something terrible, unspeakable sitting in one of those awful chairs. His nights continued to be disturbed. He had unpleasant dreams (never the same as the first one); from which he woke in panic, groping for the oxygen that no longer soothed his terror.

  He was also troubled by a change in the behaviour of the hotel staff. They had been friendly: unlike the miners they never whispered or stared. Now the children were going out of their way to avoid him, and he was no genius at reading human moods, but surely there was something wrong. Anu, the lad who took Boaaz out to the desert, kept his distance as far as possible, and barely spoke. Perhaps the child was disturbed by the habit of repeatedly looking behind him that Boaaz had developed. It must seem strange, he was old and it was a difficult manoeuvre for any Shet beyond middle-age. But he couldn’t help himself.

  One morning, when he made his usual guilty inspection of that inner courtyard, the station’s manager was there before him: staring at a section of wall. Strange marks had appeared there, blistered weals like raw flesh-wounds in the ceramic skin.