C’mell stood in the middle of the room, her glorious red hair a wet stringy mop hanging down her shoulders. There was a look of concentration and alarm on her face.
“I,” said the man, “am Tostig Amaral. This girl said that her husband would come with a policeman. I did not think she was right. But she was right. With a cat-husband there comes a policeman. I shoot the policeman. He is a robot and I can pay the Earth government for as many robots as I like. You are a cat. I can kill you also, and pay the charges on you. But I am a nice man, and I want to make love with your little red cat over there, so I will be generous and pay you something so that you can tell her she is mine and not yours. Do you understand that, cat-man?”
Rod found himself released from the unexplained muscular bonds which had hampered his freedom.
“My lord, my master from afar,” he said, “C’mell is an underperson. It is the law here that if an underperson and a person become involved in love, the underperson dies and the human people gets brain-scrubbed. I am sure, my master, that you would not want to be brainscrubbed by the Earth authorities. Let the girl go. I agree that you can pay for the robot.”
Amaral glided across the room. His face was pale, petulant, human, but Rod saw that the black clothes were not clothes at all.
The “clothes” were mucous membranes, an extension of Amaral’s living skin.
The pale face turned even more pale with rage.
“You’re a bold cat-man to talk like that. My body is bigger than yours, and it is poisonous as well. We have had to live hard in the rain of Amazonas Triste, and we have mental and physical powers which you had better not disturb. If you will not take payment go away anyhow. The girl is mine. What happens to her is my business. If I violate Earth regulations, I will destroy the c’girl and pay for her. Go away, or you die.”
Rod spoke with deliberate calm and with calculated risk. “Citizen, I play no game. I am not a cat-man but a subject of Her Absent Majesty the Queen, from Old North Australia. I give you warning that it is a man you face, and no mere animal. Let that girl go.”
C’mell struggled as though she were trying to speak, but could not.
Amaral laughed, “That’s a lie, animal, and a bold one! I admire you for trying to save your mate. But she is mine. She is a girlygirl and the Instrumentality gave her to me. She is my pleasure. Go, bold cat! You are a good liar.”
Rod took his last chance, “Scan me if you will.”
He stood his ground.
Amaral’s mind ran over his personality like filthy hands pawing naked flesh. Rod recoiled at the dirtiness and intimacy of being felt by such a person’s thoughts, because he could sense the kinds of pleasure and cruelty which Amaral had experienced. He stood firm, calm, sure, just. He was not going to leave C’mell with this — this monster from the stars, man though he might be, of the old true human stock.
Amaral laughed. “You’re a man, all right. A boy. A farmer. And you cannot hier or spiek except for the button in your ear. Get out, child, before I box your ears!”
Rod spoke: “Amaral, I herewith put you in danger.”
Amaral did not reply with words.
His peaked sharp face grew paler and the folds of his skin dilated. They quivered, like the edges of wet, torn balloons. The room began to fill with a sickening sweet stench, as though it were a candy shop in which all the unburied bodies had died weeks before. There was a smell of vanilla, of sugar, of fresh hot cookies, of baked bread, of chocolate boiling in the pot; there was even a whiff of stroon. But as Amaral tensed and shook out his auxiliary skins each smell turned wrong, into a caricature and abomination of itself. The composite was hypnotic. Rod glanced at C’mell. She had turned completely white. That decided him.
The calm which he had found with the Catmaster might be good, but there were moments for calm and other moments for anger. Rod deliberately chose anger. He felt fury rising in him as hot and quick and greedy as if it had been love. He felt his heart go faster, his muscles become stronger, his mind clearer. Amaral apparently had total confidence in his own poisonous and hypnotic powers, because he was staring straight forward as his skins swelled and waved in the air like wet leaves under water. The steady drizzle from the sprinkler kept everything penetratingly wet.
Rod disregarded this. He welcomed fury. With his new hiering device, he focused on Amaral’s mind, and only on Amaral’s.
Amaral saw the movement of his eyes and whipped a knife into view.
“Man or cat, you’re dying!” said Amaral, himself hot with the excitement of hate and collision. Rod then spoke, in his worst scream—
beast, filth, offal-spot,
dirt, vileness, wet nasty—
die, die, die!
He was sure it was the loudest cry he had ever given. There was no echo, no effect. Amaral stared at him, the evil knife-point flickering in his hand like the flame atop a candle.
Rod’s anger reached a new height.
He felt pain in his mind when he walked forward, cramps in his muscles as he used them. He felt a real fear of the offworld poison which this man-creature might exude, but the thought of C’mell — cat or no cat — alone with Amaral was enough to give him the rage of a beast and the strength of a machine.
Only at the very last moment did Amaral realize Rod had broken loose.
Rod never could tell whether the telepathic scream had really hurt the wet-worlder or not, because he did something very simple.
He reached with all the speed of a Norstrilian farmer, snatched the knife from Amaral’s hand, ripping folds of soft, sticky skin with it, and then slashed the other man from clavicle to clavicle.
He jumped back in time to avoid the spurt of blood.
The “wet black suit” collapsed as Amaral died on the floor.
Rod took the dazed C’mell by the arm and led her out of the room. The air on the balcony was fresh, but the murder-smell of Amazonas Triste was still upon him. He knew that he would hate himself for weeks, just from the memory of that smell.
There were whole armies of robots and police outside. The body of Wush’ had been taken away.
There was silence as they emerged.
Then a clear, civilized, commanding voice spoke from the plaza below,
“Is he dead?”
Rod nodded.
“Forgive me for not coming closer. I am the Lord Jestocost. I know you, C’roderick, and I know who you really are. These people are all under my orders. You and the girl can wash in the rooms below. Then you can run a certain errand. Tomorrow, at the second hour, I will see you.”
Robots came close to them — apparently robots with no sense of smell, because the fulsome stench did not bother them in the least. People stepped out of their way as they passed.
Rod was able to murmur, “C’mell, are you all right?”
She nodded and she gave him a wan smile. Then she forced herself to speak. “You are brave, Mister McBan. You are even braver than a cat.”
The robots separated the two of them.
Within moments Rod found little white medical robots taking his clothing off him gently, deftly, and quickly. A hot shower, with a smell of medication to it, was already hissing in the bath-stall. Rod was tired of wetness, tired of all this water everywhere, tired of wet things and complicated people, but he stumbled into the shower with gratitude and hope. He was still alive. He had unknown friends.
And C’mell. C’mell was safe.
“Is this,” thought Rod, “what people call love?”
The clean stinging astringency of the shower drove all thoughts from his mind. Two of the little white robots had followed him in. He sat on a hot, wet wooden \bench and they scrubbed him with brushes which felt as if they would remove his very skin.
Bit by bit, the terrible odor faded.
BIRDS, FAR UNDERGROUND
Rod McBan was too weary to protest when the little white robots wrapped him in an enormous towel and led him into what looked like an operating room.