Marshal Zumgrald sat down, satisfied with what he had learned.
‘Thank you, Marshal,’ said the President who stood up in his usual tired fashion, the icy glint of power in his eyes. ‘Well, Colonel, I see we must believe what you’ve told us, though it seems kinda crazy to me. You pull a drunk out of the city river and under sedatives he tells you about a cat he met who tried to take him to a star, gave him a glass coin you say. But he didn’t want to leave his gutter so he threw the coin away. Am I getting it right, Colonel?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
The President thanked him with a smile.
‘So the cat comes back and talks to him, tells him all this stuff about the Hydrogen Men, says if he agrees to visit this City of Dreamers they’ll make him world ruler. They show him all these processes and then you find they’re all valid?’
‘The ones we are in a position to evaluate certainly are, sir, and of Earth-shaking importance. The one involving telekinetic transportation is the most important. We could teleport an army right inside enemy H.Q. in an instant. We could conquer the planet, the Solar System, the stars even. It’d be the biggest breakthrough in the History of Mankind.’
‘Quite so,’ smiled the President. ‘The question is, how soon will you be ready to verify this experiment?’
‘Tomorrow, sir.’
‘Good man!’ roared Marshal Zumgrald. President Carson smiled.
‘Very well. Colonel. We shall leave you to get on with the preparations for your display. Who are you using as your guinea pig?’
‘I have a volunteer, sir.’
‘Good. See he, or his widow, gets ten thousand dollars for his trouble.’
* * * *
Two
When Betty went on a blinder, she really tied one on. Even the bastards who threw her out had to admit that. Cold water flat, two bottles down, two to go. Two nights drunk; three nights crying and the apartment was a mess. Sticky glasses everywhere, grimy underwear over the chairs, greasy marks on the TV screen, uneaten food on the floor and table.
Betty sat slumped in the overstuffed armchair gazing at the dead set. The tube had burned out hours ago, but she’d only just remembered. ‘Open another bottle,’ she murmured sluggishly through thickened, difficult lips. ‘Damn all men, and damn the govinment. President Joey Carson and his goin’ to the stars! I can’t even get to the goddamn toilet!’
She heaved her flesh forward, but fell back, her vision glazed by the effort. Her brain felt as if it floated in alcohol, her underwater vision and slurred thoughts the result of her mental drowning. ‘Oh, God! There’s gotta be a way out!’
At first she didn’t notice the black cat sitting placidly erect beside the busted set. But then she heard him purring and the hypnotic buzz sent her sweetly into sleep, the bottle slipping unopened from her sweaty fingers.
She dreamed she’d been given ‘Opportunity’! Not this or that. Nothing minor. Just a free pass to her own self esteem. She dreamed of washing up, cleaning house, dumping the empties, stashing the others for a true party—with friends. She even had a job she respected herself for. Then the dream changed and she sprawled in a dream mirror of her sordid apartment and said to the cat,
‘Just look at it, will ya! Biggest slum in this city. I’m a slob!’
And the cat, in the way of dream creatures, said:
‘Sure, you’re a slob. Tell ya what! Give ya this to quit now.’ and he flipped her a glass nickel or some dud coin. Betty bit on it hard, but made no impression so she belched, handed the coin back and laughed.
‘First cat I ever see with money. You’d better keep it ... hate folks to say I took pennies from pussies!’ and she fell apart laughing, in her dream that is, into pieces and somehow it was the cat’s doing. The dream got very weird then and came awful close to being real. Awful goddamn close. There she was, fallen in pieces in her dream, lying in bits all over the scattered chaos of her dream apartment which was identical to her own, and somehow if she opened her eyes in real life she would see exactly what she was dreaming and she knew the dream cat sat beside the set for real, saying,
‘Just pull yaself together. Pull hard! Then you can go to bed and sleep it off. It don’t matter if it’s a dream.’
And she understood him in her dream way, and pulled. And things moved! Jerked about on the floor. So she pulled again. Pulled herself together. Mentally pulled her life-strings taut again and out of the corner of her eye saw the objects begin to move, float back into order. Plates wafted to the sink, washed themselves and were stacked. She saw it plainly as she sat facing the cat, but somehow at the same time dreamed she washed them herself. Clothes were put away, floors polished, cupboards and shelves reorganised. Her whole house shook itself into shape with her thoughts and still she didn’t move really, only in her dream working ‘til finally it was done. Her apartment immaculate. Sparkling. Her mind made up.
She got up, stroked the cat once, undressed and got into the neatly made bed. She knew she was awake when she felt herself falling asleep. The cat still purred in her dream and the coin whispered a promise that if she would visit the City of Dreamers they would make her Ruler of the Earth. ‘Sure,’ Betty mumbled. ‘Ruler of the Earth, sure.’
* * * *
Three
‘It’s all right,’ said Oscar to the Colonel, fidgeting with his grey stubbled beard. ‘I said as I’d talk an’ I will. You gotta gimme a cigarette an’ some coffee. Boy, that stuff you give me sure dried me out! WHEEEEE! I mean, but fast!’
‘Yes! Yes!’ said the Colonel, sharply. ‘I’ve already sent for it. Now I’d just like you to go over the telekinetic method again.’
‘WHEEEE. Yessir. Dried me OUT. Telewhat was that? Sure could use a little one. My, my, dry as a bone.’ He opened his mouth and his tongue loped out towards the Colonel, bluish-white and furry. ‘Lookit that! Drier ‘n blue desert! Couldn’t catch a drop of moisture.’
The Colonel sighed, poured a stiff measure into a glass and handed it to Oscar.
‘That’s mighty kind, General. Sure appreciate it. Now about this telemetic. What more can Ah tell ya?’
After an hour it was obvious that Oscar remembered nothing of the experience he had recounted so well during delirium tremens. He elaborated a crude fantasy as long as the Colonel kept his glass filled; but when Lawson refused to give him more, sank into an obscene and florid castigation of the military mind that quite subdued the Colonel until he got angry enough to have Oscar sedated. He had sufficient data to give it a try ... and with Oscar for his guinea pig, there was nothing to lose.
* * * *
Four
Betty was a beautiful woman when she left her neat apartment the following morning. Her eyes sparkled and her head felt clear. So clear in fact she had no idea where she was going until she saw a Black Cat go by. She waved and the driver pulled over at once, eyeing her pleasantly.
‘Anywhere ya wanna go, baby!’
She smiled for him. Cabbies hadn’t been so sweet in years.
‘Where were ya when I needed ya?’ she said, slipping into the cab. ‘Take me out to the President’s joint. I’m the cat that’s goin’ to look at the King.’
The cabbie chuckled, gave her his most dashing smile via the mirror and drove furiously across town, cutting up the traffic, dashing lights with style and abandon and finally slewing into the only free parking space just in front of an official limousine filled with foreign dignitaries. He flashed out of his seat and opened the door for Betty with a chivalrous bow, a stub of well-chewed cigar betraying his sense of mischief.
Betty stepped out, gave the cabbie a solid, hip-grinding kiss, waved to the astonished dignitaries and waltzed in through the main door of the Presidential Palace. It wasn’t until the guard and receptionist stepped towards her that she realised she had no idea why she had come. But it made no difference.
She vanished before they could reach her.
* * * *
Five
‘It seems to me,’ the P
resident was saying, ‘that this could be the biggest thing since industry.’
Niemeyer nodded, smiled tensely to show the Historic strain he was under and said,
‘It’s a responsibility, sir. A great responsibility.’
‘I know, Niemeyer, I know,’ said President Carson in his ‘sincere’ voice. ‘But think what we can do! Jump the bastards in their own bathrooms! We can get in and out of there before they know what hit them. Five hundred men could do it, each with a specific target. Materialise ... kill and destroy ... dematerialise. Then we hit ‘em in the aftershock with everything we got!’
He smacked his fist against his palm. The First Aide to the President, Adolph Niemeyer’s smile was like a thin ribbon of steel drawn across a plaster statue. But he knew his job. To say whatever the President didn’t or couldn’t say, but say it as if he had. In the present case, the President had chosen to appear optimistic, therefore it was for Niemeyer to sound a note of caution.
‘We can only hope, sir. Your administration has already done enough.’
‘Sure, sure,’ interrupted Carson, glad his Aide was playing the game. ‘We’ve done more than anyone since the war. But this is bigger than anything yet. Once we’ve ... er ... rationalised the power structure here on earth we can go anywhere! Solar System. Galaxy.’
‘Just like the cat, sir.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I said just like ...’
‘All right. I heard you. Can’t think why they should get so upset about a goddamn cat!’
‘But the experiment worked, sir.’
‘Sure it worked. I knew it would. Even that drunken slob could do it. Did you see the way they slammed him from one side of the lawn to the other! Poor bastard was white as a sheet!’ Carson paused in the memory. ‘You saw to it he got the ten thousand?’
‘They had to sew it in his pocket. He kept throwing it in the air.’
Carson smiled, a cold zinc crack in his pewter features. ‘The point is,” he recollected himself, ‘If the experiment works, the cat’s for real. And I don’t like the idea of two-bit hookers vanishing in the vestibule. You pumped that cabbie?’
‘Swears he never saw her before. All she told him was to drive here—said she was the cat that come to look at the King.’
The President stole a quick glance at Niemeyer, but his face was blank. A mask.
‘You checked the cab company?’ he snapped.
‘Black Cat Cabs? Yes. It’s nothing. A coincidence. They worked the city for years.’
‘Listen, Adolph. When a woman vanishes in thin air and a cat tells a drunk how to cross the stars, I say there are no coincidences. Things are beginning to change around here and I don’t know which way they’re heading. I want that woman found—and I want her brought here, you understand?*
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Good. I’ll see the Colonel now. Alone in my study.’
Niemeyer gathered his files and the brief digests he’d brought for Carson’s opinions and left the room. Carson smiled again when the Colonel entered, nodded towards his private study and followed him in after checking Interrogation to see if the cabbie had volunteered any more information.
* * * *
‘Sit down, Colonel, sit down,’ said Carson affably. ‘That sure was a fine display this morning.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘No, no, Hubert, I mean it! You’ve changed the Face of History.’
Colonel Hubert Lawson could do nothing but blush. For one terrible instant he thought he might break down and cry, but the President twitched with discomfort and the mood passed.
‘I’m promoting you to General—Three stars. With pay back-dated to the day you joined the Army.’ Carson spoke cordially, smothering Lawson’s gratitude as fast as he could. ‘That’s thirty-six years, eh, Hubert?’
‘Nine months, three weeks and two days.’
‘Eh ? Oh, yes. Well, that’s a stack of back pay, boy. And tax free!’
The Colonel was so overcome, Carson had to get up and pour them both a stiff drink before he could continue.
‘To business. Colonel. I want that cat!’
‘Yessir!’ said Hubert Lawson of uncertain rank, downing his drink with a gulp. ‘At once.’ He paused a moment, sitting rigidly at attention before his Chief. ‘How?’ he asked, plaintively.
‘That’s what I’m asking you. How can we trap this critter. What do you know of its habits?’
‘Nothing, sir. There’s a million cats down there in the slums. They, er ... feed on the rats,’ he proffered gratuitously. It was so difficult being powerful, he thought. A general had to say just the right thing.
Carson looked thoughtful. At last he raised his head.
‘General,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’m making you responsible for capturing every black cat in this city. Use whatever forces you need. Our entire Nation is at your disposal. You have twenty-four hours.’
Hubert reeled. The responsibility! The power! He, Hubie Lawson at the controls of an Empire! He’d have those cats all right. They hadn’t a chance. He’d use EVERYTHING.
‘Yessir! !’ He shouted in a parade-ground voice that startled Carson out of his official cool.
‘What the hell ? Get out, Lawson! And remember, I want them all assembled for inspection by 18:00 hours tomorrow.’
‘Where, sir?’ asked Lawson confidently.
‘In the basement. You can test them there?’
‘Yessir!’ bawled Hubie.
‘Dismissed.’
General Lawson saluted grandly and left the room. Adolph Niemeyer sidled in at the same time.
‘I suppose you’ve come to tell me the cabbie’s dead?’
Niemeyer’s mouth dropped open in surprise. The mean bastard was so fast he’d never catch him. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
* * * *
Six
But the cats were something else. The first step was easy. General Lawson offered a thousand dollars for every black cat in the city and he got a million of them. Dyed, painted and stained. He set up roadblocks to stop the out of town cat-runners, then organised a reception post in a large basement hallway where he sprayed ten thousand tails with detergent in the first four hours.
Rewards were posted and the slums invaded by burly State Troopers tweeting ‘puss, puss’, across the housetops, skittering down the fire-escapes and searching the alleys. The cats kept about three garbage cans ahead and by the time it got dark the cats were ahead on points.
The troops used searchlights and flashlights, traps filled with succulent meat. The slum was more savoury than ever before as everyone tried to lure a black cat indoors. Cats were kidnapped, drugged, slugged, snatched from friends and harried wherever they appeared. By morning there wasn’t a cat to be seen in the city and General Lawson was already experimenting on his captives held in racks of cages on all sides of the spacious underground laboratory he was using.
* * * *
Betty watched it all from her window. Two or three times men knocked at her door and asked if she had a black cat anywhere, but she told them ‘No’ and they left without making any trouble.
At last she turned from the window, crossed her immaculate apartment and sat down. The black cat emerged from the closet where he’d been hiding and came to sit on her lap. Perhaps ‘emerged’ is the wrong word. The closet door was shut and the cat sort of flowed through it, with no more difficulty than passing through air.
Betty stroked the magnificent creature lovingly, rubbing him under the ears and smoothing his glossy coat over his rippled steel muscles.
‘You’re safe with me, kid,’ she said and the cat turned to stare hard and direct into her eyes. Next thing she knew, Betty was back in the vestibule of the President’s Palace. So fast she almost forgot she’d ever been away and certainly couldn’t remember how she came. But the black cat was with her this time and neither the guard nor the receptionist made the slightest move towards her. Their jaws dropped open like they chewed lead gum.
&nbs
p; ‘Tell King Carson the cat an’ me wants to see him,’ she said, feeling marvellous. It was amazing how her self-confidence had come back. Betty had no idea or notion why she’d come, but everything she said or did made her feel just great, so she kept on trucking, neither caring nor thinking how things would turn out.
After a whispered telephone call the vestibule was suddenly filled with discreet, muscular men in business suits. They stayed in the corners and made no move towards Betty or the cat.
‘Hi, fellas! Come to show us the way?’
A tall Secret Service man nodded and opened a large door. Betty and the cat passed through and followed him down a series of elegant corridors, through several antechambers filled with startled secretaries and worried officials. The cat walked in front of Betty, trotting to keep pace with the Secret Service man, his tail swishing back and forth, back and forth. About a dozen other Secret Service men followed them, crashing through offices, stumbling into each other in their eagerness to be of use.
New Writings in SF 25 - [Anthology] Page 4