CatFantastic
Page 32
He was ravaging the last of the bandages when the voice, purring now, not mewling, bespoke him. "You have done well, descendant and disciple. Rest now, and bathe." He looked up and was startled to see another cat, not a sleek ebony figure sitting majestically erect like the statues, but a beautiful four-colored tortoiseshell curled in midair, her tail wrapped comfortably about her feet, her sapphire blue right eye and her emerald green left eye regarding him with beneficence.
Still, it was her territory. "I beg your pardon," he said. Something about her made him roll submissively onto his back. Her spectral tongue licked his spectral fur until he understood that he was not required to submit, and pretended instead to be bathing his left hind leg. "Didn't know there was anyone else about in these parts—"
"Did you not?" she asked. "Then why have you come, if not to release us? You may speak freely."
"It's my job, you see," he said, cleaning between his front toes. "I am an Egyptologist. My people have been digging up your people for many years now. And please excuse my ignorance, but who might you be?"
"We are an incarnation of the goddess Bastet, of course. You weren't expecting Anubis we trust? Good. As for begging our pardon, there is no need, for you have freed us."
"Yes," he said. "Yes, I have. And very good of me it was to do so, too, when your minion here—this is your minion?" he flicked his tail at the larger mummy.
"In her last incarnation, she was our priestess."
"Your mummy killed one of my colleagues and attempted to kill my fr—er—my priestess. I thought it was because we had desecrated your tomb."
The jeweled eyes closed for a moment, then opened, the purring growing louder. "She is very diligent, our priestess, but unfortunately a product of the delusions of our civilization. She knows our spirit has been restless and according to her belief, the only way to appease us is sacrifice. That was all well and good while one was embodied, you see, and hungered for offerings of fish and cream, but when one is bound paw and tail, such measures serve only to drive your people away, taking with them my unfortunate children."
"Your children?"
"The litters of my loins from this incarnation, when humans sought to honor us by enslaving our kas within these worldly rags." She flicked her tail derisively at the disintegrating bandages. "Our kind were much honored in our lifetime. Not just the fish and cream, but safely and protection for all in our name. Laying so much as a sandal on one of us was punishable by death, and people made statues of us and mourned us when we died. But then they conceived the notion that since they were attached to their present incarnation, we must be likewise, and they began to enshroud and entomb us as you see here. It was a terrible turn and as they were too primitive to learn our tongue, however devoted they were otherwise, there was simply no way to tell them that what was thought good and desirable for such stylized creatures as themselves was living death to our kind. Many of us sought to escape by leaping into fires when the occasion rose and speeding to the next incarnation, so terrified were we of being body-bound for all eternity. But we who were worshiped directly were far too protected to escape the fate to which our worshipers unwittingly condemned us. Though we would have hidden ourselves from them, still, they found us and left us even as you find us now."
"Appalling," Shuttle agreed. "But my people are not responsible."
"Your people would take us from our native soil," Bastet said. "Lacking the respect of our servants, they would disregard our imprisoned souls and we would never be free to walk the earth on four paws again."
"But I released you. You are free."
"I am a goddess. I have my responsibilities. My kittens remain bound."
Shuttle stared back into the sea-deep eyes, raised his tail twice and flopped it down, "I'd free them for you in an instant, just out of professional courtesy, but this is not the real me, you understand, but my ka."
"Your ka, O deliverer of our spirit, is the real you. But we are curious as to the whereabouts of your physical incarnation and how your ka came to separate from it."
"My—mrrr—physical incarnation lies sleeping across the sea. I dreamed of the danger to Dr. Mercer and our colleagues and since my body could not come, I came without it. Fortunate thing that I did, too. I fear that priestess of yours has already killed two of our party and would have killed Dr. Mercer except that I was there to put a stop to it." He growled a little at the last.
"Our servant is impetuous. But no matter. You will serve us, if we enable it?"
Shuttle blinked slowly. "So I have said."
"You may leave us. Even as your spirit and mine cooperated to free us, so shall we lend weight to your ka-self, sharpness to your ka-claws and strength to your ka-jaws that you may release our imprisoned ones. Go now."
He went, casually, as if it were his own idea. He tried to pass through the walls of the tent where the cat mummies lay, but bumped his nose, and had to enter through the flap instead. Bill Parsons was gone. Shuttle supposed he had gone wherever they took dead humans. Just as well. After all the studying Shuttle had done to learn about the preservation, restoration and storage of artifacts, he did not want even the corpse of a colleague observing him in such unprofessional conduct. There was no way to tell his fellow scientists that these mummies were not mere artifacts, but contained the living kas of cats long overdue for reincarnation. He rather suspected that even if humans could understand the words, they would be unable to grasp the concept. Even Bastet's pet priestess was no brighter.
Something screamed and laughed maniacally nearby and Shuttle froze, his trail bristling. When the noise continued, he realized he must be hearing the cry of a jackal. Dratted dog, he thought with disgust, and went to work.
Life on the street between Miss Rosamund's and Dr. Mercer's homes was excellent preparation for freeing mummified cats. First he gave each shroud a series of good long rakes with his claws, to open the bandages, then he seized the ends in his teeth and pulled, as he had once pulled the ends of the scarlet yarn in Miss Rosamund's knitting basket. The bandages tasted dreadful and the gum on them stuck to his fur, but once he got the unwinding started the contents dissolved to dust. The dust rose and the vaporous ka emerged in shimmering cat form, stretched, gave itself a lick or two, and vanished. Many times he did this, until his whole body ached and his teeth tingled. But finally the last of Bastet's kittens dissolved into nothingness and he sank to his belly among the ruined bandages.
Just in time to hear the slump, slither, shuffle, drag pass beside the tent wall.
Weariness forgotten, Shuttle jumped to his feet and dashed from the tent into the smoky gray dawn. He leaped in front of the mummy just as it reached Dr. Mercer's tent. He did not give the mummy time to genuflect this time but pounced at it so that it stumbled backward. He pounced it all the way back to the tomb and stood growling while it shrank into its coffin. No sooner was it supine than he intended to spring upon it and shred it as he had the shrouds of the kittens.
But suddenly Bastet stood before him, her back raised in fighting position, her mottled fur erect, jeweled eyes glowing.
"So that's how you reward your servants, is it?" he hissed. "That thing tried to kill Dr. Mercer again. Let me rip—let me free it, as I did you and the others."
"Our priestess is human. This is her immortality and her mission. This is her presence. Unruly though she is, we cannot reward her by allowing her to be sundered from her destiny."
"Well, fine," Shuttle spat. "Then tell her to keep away from my people."
"She obeys her destiny even as you have obeyed yours," Bastet said, settling down into her mummy's chest. Shuttle thought he saw the bandages over the skeletal face lift in a smirk through the velvet fur of the goddess. "Even now the strength we lent you is gone. Return to your body, deliverer, and take your servant with you."
Shuttle felt the remaining strength fade from his paws and claws and jaws, and his whiskers and tail drooped and he saw that he could once more see the tiled floor through his own fee
t. He meowed. "If only I could! But she will not leave."
"Then she should be punished for her faithlessness," Bastet said.
"You simply don't understand the way scientists think, goddess," Shuttle told her. "Dr. Mercer and I are of one mind on this. It is necessary to dig in this land to do one's work—she must dig as you and I must dig and hunt and—er—goddess, for that matter, please do not make me vanish and leave her to that mummy. She is more than a servant to me. She is my comrade, my colleague, my companion, and my comfort. How can you beg me to go against all I have learned to do as you asked and then deprive me of her?"
"Oh, well, if you're going to get maudlin about it," the goddess said huffily. "We do reward service."
"Then you'll call off the mummy?"
"We cannot. But we have another idea. You may find it a bit hectic, but if you insist on forming unsuitable attachments you have to be prepared to put up with some inconvenience. You have freed—let us see, seventeen, not counting our divine self, times nine is—153 lives. We suppose one extra for you should not be too much to grant. So be it. You have our blessing."
The soft pressure of a hand across his sun-warmed fur awakened Shuttle. Lazily, he gazed up into Dr. Mercer's sweating face.
"And where did you come from, my friend?" she asked.
"He's colored just like your cat at home, Jane," Bill Parsons said. "Wonder how he got in the tomb."
"Probably the same way that jackal got into the tent and destroyed the cat mummies."
"Now, Jane, I'm sorry. But that nightmare I had was far too vivid for me to remain in that tent the rest of the night. You know very well I have a weak heart."
"I know very well you have a weakness for sherry. As does Achmed, which is no doubt how cat here got around him."
"Watch that beast. He'll bite you."
"Nonsense. He's quite friendly, aren't you, fellow?" Shuttle purred and bumped her hand. "If I didn't know it was impossible, I'd swear this is Shuttle. I shall name him that anyway and adopt him. Surely Shuttle won't mind having a namesake."
And so the cat joined them. He, too, dug, invesligated, and studied, and in the evenings slept on Dr. Mercer's knees and at night patrolled the camp to keep his associates from harm.
When the scientists packed up to return, Dr. Mercer paid a local family well to care for him until her return, but as soon as she left, he crept away into a secret cave and slept a long sleep.
Shuttle raced to the door to meet Dr. Mercer when she returned to their flat. Monica Thomas watched in amazement as the professor set down her bags, held out her fingers to her cat, who bumped against them, and then gathered him in her arms and stroked him while he purred.
"Well," Monica Thomas said, "I'm glad to see the old thing can move. He's always asleep when I'm home and he hasn't been eating well. I think he missed you."
But Monica Thomas, as usual, was wrong. From the moment of Bastet's blessing, Shuttle's ka traveled from his Egyptian body to the one in America and back again, depending on the season. And while in Egypt he might miss his bed and his books as he might, in America, miss digging in the sand and the freedom of chasing lizards through the camp, he never again had to miss Dr. Mercer.