The Second Reginald Bretnor Megapack

by Reginald Bretnor

  Gustav-Adolf waded in. A quick one-two to the chops sent the yellow tomcat sprawling. A hay-rake set of claws scooped the black-and-white out of the alcove, hoisted him a foot into the air, dropped him with a thud. Screeching, both vanished down the corridor.

  He sent a disciplinary imprecation after them, brushed himself off, and investigated the alcove. It held a shallow plate filled with a thin, shrimpy gruel, which the pantywaists apparently had been drinking. He wrinkled his nose at it, deeming it no proper diet for a red-blooded he-cat, and looked around.

  In front of him, protruding from the wall, he saw a lever. His nose informed him that it had something to do with his own species, so experimentally he tapped it with a paw. At once, a large tray slid out, full of nice, clean sand; and Gustav-Adolf, reminded of neglected matters, climbed in gratefully. After awhile, having filled his excavation and kicked half the sand out onto the floor, he got out again. “What won’t they think of next?” he thought admiringly.

  His thought was answered by a growl. He whirled. Coming towards him, carrying a plump, dead mouse and wearing, an expression of the utmost arrogance, was the biggest female cat he had ever seen. She was a tortoiseshell, and he had always had a special yen for tortoiseshells; he looked her over much as his master would have eyed a king-sized chorus girl. Besides, seeing the mouse aroused his appetite. Leering, he sidled up to her. “Hi, chick!” he rumbled. “Gimme a bite, huh? C’mon—mebbe I’ll make a pass atcha—”

  The lady-cat, whose name in Beetlegoosian meant Lambie-pie, was the Captain’s favorite, and hen of the walk wherever she chose to go. She took one look, decided that here was a lad who definitely needed whittling down to size, placed her mouse carefully on the deck, and swung.

  Gustav-Adolf was taken by surprise. He staggered, ears ringing; and Lambie-pie, who had never needed more than one swing to settle any tomcat’s hash, calmly started to retrieve her mouse.

  This was a strategic error. Gustav-Adolf gathered every muscle. “So ya wanta wrastle!” he roared. “Okay!”

  Instantly, he and Lambie-pie exploded into a traditional cat-fight pinwheel of flying fur, claws, teeth, and piercing screams. It was a new experience for her. Tough as she was, she had not been born aboard a Norwegian merchant ship, nor trained in the martial arts by the waterfront cats of Glasgow and Marseilles and the dock rats of Port Said.

  In a matter of moments, Gustav-Adolf had her down, the worse for wear by several patches of hide and a torn ear. “Say uncle!” he growled, through a mouthful of fur, and shifted his armed hind feet on her stomach.

  “Un-uncle,” echoed the outraged Lambie-pie.

  Eyeing her, he let go his hold, and placed a proprietary paw on her mouse. “No hard feelins, kid,” he told her chivalrously.

  He polished off the mouse, and she watched silently until the last tasty bit of it had disappeared. Gradually, a deep ancestral memory stirred within her; a strangely soft expression filled her yellow eyes. As he gave his face an after-luncheon wash, she began to purr; and when he rose and stretched himself she rumbled, “My, you’re big and strong! I think you’re wonderful!”

  “Y’ betcha boots,” said Gustav-Adolf smugly. “That’s how come I kin beatcha up with one paw tied behind m’ back.” He turned away. “Be good,” he called back as he swaggered off, “and mebbe I’ll make a pass atcha.”

  The balance of his day was as successful as its start. He attacked and scattered several groups of tiny tomcats. He met and vanquished three more females nearly as large as Lambie-pie, and captured two more mice, which he devoured at once. Feeling full and comfortable, he made his way back to the Captain’s quarters.

  In the anteroom, Papa Schimmelhorn had not stirred from the edge of the assembled cots. On a stool before him reposed a bowl of the same gruel Gustav-Adolf had turned down so contemptuously, and he was gazing at it with dull nausea even though Tuptup, across the room, was gulping his own portion greedily.

  Gustav-Adolf’s heart was touched. Leaping to his master’s lap, he said hoarsely, “Look, chum, this joint’s full of mice. Nice, fat ones! Want me to catch you one?”

  But Papa Schimmelhorn, hearing only a few mrrows, did not accept his offer. He kept on staring at the gruel, and presently a solitary tear dropped into it with a thin, shrimpy splash.

  * * * *

  Though these events were to have far-reaching and profound effects, at the time they appeared momentous only to Gustav-Adolf and the feline microcosm in which he found himself. Papa Schimmelhorn did not profit by his example—he and the Beetlegoosian women continued to regard each other with fear and loathing. His diet improved, but only because the Mother-Empress, taking pity on his misery, occasionally sent him scraps and leavings from the rich meats that graced her table. And his boredom was sometimes tempered by conversation, but only because Tuptup, finally realizing the impossibility of escape, set about teaching him the simple dialect spoken by Beetlegoosian men.

  Tuptup’s frames of reference were very different from his roommate’s. Even after he had conquered his initial fear to the point of being able to keep his dinner down, their intercourse was not without its strenuous moments, and one of these occurred when the ship was slightly more than three weeks on the way.

  For some hours, Tuptup’s nose had been out of joint. He had spent several minutes teaching Papa Schimmelhorn a game called yuf, a Beetlegoosian version of tick-tack-toe, and Papa Schimmelhorn, quite abstractedly, had beaten him half a hundred games in a row. Then, adding injury to this insult, he had pestered him with silly questions about the ship and how it ran. Tuptup had told him peevishly that, for goodness’ sake!, it was the ifk that pulled it here and there, as everybody knew; and no, they weren’t machines because they grew in pots and sort of quivered all the time; and anyhow he didn’t want to talk about such dry old things just when he’d thought about the most exciting frock, and how that new Commander’s horrid second husband would turn pea-green with envy at the sight of it.

  Papa Schimmelhorn was by no means his brave old self. His cheeks were drawn; a dismal and disoriented look was in his eye. Nevertheless, he could not let remarks like these pass unchallenged. “Chunior,” he said, staring at Tuptup in renewed dismay, “vot haff die big palooka vomen done to you? You are nodt men; you are chust lidtle vorms.”

  Tuptup drew back, shocked. “My!” he exclaimed. “What a dreadful thing to say. I’ll never, never speak to you again!”

  And, for a good long while, he sat there worrying the edges of his ricebowl haircut, picking his nose daintily, and trying to think up something to put this—this unnatural creature in its proper place.

  Finally, an idea came to him, and he reviewed it with scarcely suppressed titters of triumph. Preening himself, he looked again at Papa Schimmelhorn. “I came from Madame Ipilu’s,” he sniffed. “I suppose you’re from one of those cheap department stores where they sell odds and ends?”

  Papa Schimmelhorn frowned painfully. “Vhat do you mean?” he asked. “I nefer vork in a department shtore. Und vhat iss Madame Vhat’s-der-name’s, a bad house full mit naughty girls?”

  “Madame Ipilu’s,” Tuptup informed him with a superior smirk, “is just our most expensive and exclusive husband shop, that’s all. And I was higher priced than any other one they ever sold, except a few for people like the Mother President. Dear Madame Ipilu told me so herself.” He saw that Papa Schimmelhorn was staring at him open-mouthed. “She’s such a clever merchandiser, and so refined. But then I guess it’s more than you could ever understand, not being a really, truly husband, but just a poor old bargain basement thing for carrying cats around.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn ignored the compliment. “You—you mean,” he gasped, “die Beetlegoosers sell die men like—like lidtle poodle-dogs?”

  “There!” Tuptup simpered. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. We’re never sold at all like poodle-dogs—n
ot anymore. A really swanky husband shop like Madame Ipilu’s caters to a very genteel trade. We go there when we’re four, and live in sweet little wire rooms right in the back, except of course when we’re all tied together for airings or to go to school. You see—” He blushed a little bit. “—they have to guarantee that none of us has ever been, well—touched. You can’t imagine just how nice it is. A high class husband shop is a real home away from home. There’s the sweetest song about it.” He hummed a bar or two.

  “I wish I was back in the window

  At Madame Ipilu’s with the boys.

  I was tender and pure,

  My sorrows were fewer—

  Oh, I wish I was back with my toys!”

  Tuptup actually sniffled as he sang the last line. Then, sighing, he asked abruptly, “Have you been altered?”

  The question brought Papa Schimmelhorn up with a jerk. “Haff I ben vhat?” he cried.

  “Altered,” said Tuptup sadly. “You know. I sometimes wish I had. Everyone says it hardly hurts at all, and after that they never bother you, and, well, you’re sort of just a pet, and then they have to keep you, too. They can’t just trade you in or anything.” He sighed again. “It’s like they say—there’s more to marriage than getting compliments and wearing pretty clothes.”

  Suddenly, Papa Schimmelhorn remembered how enthusiastically receptive his wife had been to the mores of this strange society. Cold horror swept him. “Ch-chunior,” he croaked, “dot iss against der law! Der police vould nodt allow!” A hideous picture came into his mind, of himself, fat, flaccid, indolent, purring grotesquely by the hearth. “You mean in Beetlegoose Mama could take me like der tomcat to der vet, und—und—?”

  “Why would the police have anything to do with it, you silly thing? Of course she wouldn’t take you to a vet. She’d take you to a doctor, and there’d be nurses there to hold you, naturally. But I don’t think she’d even bother.” Tuptup sneered. “Not even if you asked her very nicely.” Instinct screamed at Papa Schimmelhorn to crash the portal of the Mother-Empress’ quarters, cast himself down in abject supplication, and beg that never, never, never would she permit any such horrible happening. He stood erect, so violently that Tuptup, with a squeal, dived for the door. But fortunately instinct came up against the coldly analytical aspect of his mentality, which shouted just as loudly that Mama Schimmelhorn was drunk with power, and that such a course, reminding her of all his guilty past, could be disastrous.

  He slumped down again; and presently Tuptup peered in apprehensively and exclaimed, “Goodness me! Whatever made you act that way. Anybody’d think you didn’t want to be—altered, that is.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn shuddered. “Nonsense!” he dissembled hoarsely. “All—all my life I vant, vith no more vorries, only supper. I chust vas sheared they take me to der vet, l-like back on Earth. Ach, you should see vhat happens to poor Heinrich Luedesing—”

  And he went on to elaborate an extremely gruesome and quite imaginary episode to which he attributed his employer’s very real infirmity.

  Tuptup was overwhelmed. “You poor, poor creature!” he cried out. “My, I’m glad we’re civilized. Maybe we can arrange to have it done while you’re here! I’ll ask the Captain when we—” He colored prettily. “—when we’re in bed. Then she can talk about it to your Mother-Empress.” He pouted. “But you’re going to have to be polite to me, more than you’ve been, or else I won’t.”

  Gagging, Papa Schimmelhorn thanked him for his solicitude. He allowed himself to be defeated in a game of yuf. Then he pointed out delicately that it might be perilous even to bring the matter up—for the Mother-Empress, with her undoubted force of character, might very well decide to change Beetlegoosian customs instead of yielding to them. This once again reduced Tuptup to a state of terror, and two more games had to be lost to pacify him. Then, with a serpentine cunning, Papa Schimmelhorn led the conversation away from such painful subjects to an infinitely more urgent one: exactly how did the Vilvilkuz Snar Tuhl-T’t run?

  Little by little, he drew out the small store of information Tuptup had. He learned that ifk came from what Willie Fledermaus would have called an asteroid belt around Beetlegoose, that there was a girl ifk who got pointed sort of at where the ship was headed for, and several boy ifk in great big pots who, by doing their best to get to her, pulled it along.

  Blushing, Tuptup added that boy ifk were absolutely shameless, chasing after the girl ifk that way—worse even than that awful new Commander’s second husband. And that was why the ifk were cared for by Lali, who was retarded, and by a little man named Pukpuk, whom he just couldn’t stand.

  “You ought to see the pair of them together.” He simpered. “She looks just horrid—the ugly, stupid thing. She’s never grown up really, so they won’t let her cut her hair, or wear a uniform or anything. And as for Pukpuk—well, He’s every bit as ifky—that’s what we call people who’re silly and just not good for anything. He’s sort of womanish—” Tuptup giggled indecently. “—all thick and rough and with big, bulgy muscles.”

  Papa Schimmelhorn agreed diplomatically that the ifk-room gang sounded extremely undesirable. He tried a few more questions about how ifk were steered, but, soon finding out that he had struck bottom where information was concerned, wisely put in a half hour asking Tuptup about the husband shop, hinting that he himself would have given anything for its advantages, and generally behaving in a disgracefully un-Papa-Schimmelhornish way. The result of his servility was at least gratifying, for Tuptup, when he finally left to join his fellows for their evening meal, felt comfortably superior to his enormous roommate, and therefore filled with benevolence toward him.

  * * * *

  After his departure, Papa Schimmelhorn sat without moving for an hour or so, head in his hands, sighing ponderously. Behind the portals of his gloom, however, his mind was working at unprecedented speed, brewing a plan. When the time came for him to rise, pick up Gustav-Adolf, and present himself at the Mother-Empress’ apartment for what she disparagingly referred to as “der bowser-bag,” this plan was virtually complete. He had determined to insinuate his way into the ifk-room, seize control of it, seal it off from the rest of the Vilvilkuz Snar Tuhl-Y’t, and, at the ifk equivalent of an extended gallop, head straight back to Earth.

  While Gustav-Adolf, who was privileged, feasted in the Presence, he waited patiently in the anteroom. When the bowser-bag, which actually consisted of an enormous covered plate and a bowl of savory soup, was handed out to him, he accepted it gratefully and humbly, and finally, when he returned the dishes, first complimented the Mother-Empress on its quality and quantity, and then compared it unfavorably to her own cooking back on Earth, trying to sound as fervid and sincere as he would have had he been addressing Ms. Prudence Pilgrim.

  Mama Schimmelhorn regarded him suspiciously. Her motives in starting her food relief program had not been just humanitarian. In her first week aboard, she had learned enough Beetlegoosian to understand the big girls when they explained the desperate plight behind her kidnapping, and she had needed only a few minutes to figure out its implications. It was simple. For nearly five years, not a single child had been conceived on Beetlegoose Nine—not only not a child but not a kitten. Suddenly, little men and little tomcats alike were sterile; and neither the civilization of their neighboring planet, Eight, nor those of the several other systems with which they were in contact had been of the least assistance to them. Hence the search for a super-intellect. Mama Schimmelhorn realized immediately that the mind they had been measuring was not hers, that she certainly was not capable of finding a solution to the problem, and that her status at least, if not her person, would be imperiled if she failed. She also realized that, if worst came to worst, her husband’s scientific genius could very well become her secret weapon. From now I take no chances, she told herself. I feed you like back home, so der subconscience vorks vhen I giff or
ders—but I do nodt tell you vhy, or maybe you get too big again for der lidtle petticoat! And she had given strict instructions that, so far as her cat bearer was concerned, the entire subject was to be classified Top Secret.

  Now, vhat iss? she thought. Nefer you say nice things about mein cooking. You think it brings der bigger bowser-bag? But she did not let her cynicism show. Partly for the benefit of the Beetlegoosian officers gathered round the throne, she glared down at him. “Shtand shtraight!” she barked. “Mit der stomach in und die heels together, like in der army!…Ha! Dot iss bedter. I teach you how to treat die Mama-Empress! Now, vhat’s der trouble?”

  Papa Schimmelhorn fawned as cleverly as a man standing at strict attention can. He reaffirmed his previous compliments. But, he told her, on Earth he had always been an active man. He had always held down his full-time job, and even in his leisure hours he usually was busy in his basement.

  “Vhen you are nodt chasing lidtle pussycats!” snorted Mama Schimmelhorn, but to herself she had to admit the basic truth of his assertions.

  Here on the ship, however, he continued dismally, he was completely idle. All he could do was sit with Gustav-Adolf, listen to Tuptup, and play an occasional dull game of yuf. “I tell you, Mama—” he cried out.

  “You shpeak to me, you say Your Machesty!”

  “Mama, your Machesty, I tell you doing nothing I cannot shtand! All I vant iss a lidtle job to pass der time—efen a job no vun else vants to do.” His tones became absolutely harrowing. “Odervise mein brain gets soft. Soon I become chust like Tuptup, und nodt as shmart efen as Gustav-Adolf.”

  Mama Schimmelhorn’s eyes narrowed. She did not think anything of the sort would happen. Still, the chance of her secret weapon being deactivated was one she did not want to take.