“Immediately the cabin has been depressurized. sir, the air marshal will return your cased weapons and you should at that time carefully check them and their loads, actions, et cetera, before reholstering them.
“If, on occasions other than this morning, you are proceeding unescorted through normal airport security, you must report to the air marshal headquarters, display your identification documents and your federal authority to bear weapons, then submit your weapons, ammunition and this case for examination.
“Procedures vary, after all, depending mostly upon the size of the installation. In some of the smaller ones, your weapons will be returned and you will be conducted either to the VIP section or to the plane, if it is ready to board; on board, you will encase your weapons for the on-board marshal as earlier outlined.
“However, in larger installations, you will be expected to encase them in the airport headquarters of the marshals and will then be delivered to the VIP section or plane by way of guarded, armored transport—sometimes ground car or underground rail, sometimes copter.
“Do you have any questions about anything I have described or discussed here this morning, sir? Please feel free to ask me about anything. Being certain that persons such as yourself understand all that must be done is a part of my function.”
“Just one, for now,” replied Bedford. “What’s going to happen when and if I should actually feel constrained to shoot someone? How deep in the soup am I going to be, then?”
The man suffused his voice and manner with infinite reassurance. “Sir, by now every VIP Security headquarters in the country if not the world has been in receipt of a printout of your name, your description, your authorizations and all other pertinent information. Therefore, should you determine termination of someone to be a necessary thing, do so; then you will present the laminated card you were issued to the first person on the scene who produces VIP Security Service identification. Do not surrender your weapon to anyone for any reason unless it is a federal marshal or a properly identified VIPSS representative or operative. Anyone else who demands your weapon without such identification must be considered hostile and so dealt with, up to and certainly including termination by gunfire.”
“But what if I make an error of judgment and blow away an innocent party?” probed Bedford. “What happens if I make a snap judgment, say, and shoot one of those murderous little bomblets into a maid or waiter or some tourist asking directions of me?”
The man grimaced, then shrugged. “Sir, were your particular life and well-being not considered to be of some degree of value to our nation, you would not be in possession of the cards or this case, nor would you be carrying weapons legally or, indeed, flying in this copter and guarded by this team.
“In this twenty-first-century world, humankind are in no way, shape or form considered to be an endangered species and so are not, cannot be considered of comparable importance to someone like you, sir … not by anyone with my service or a federal marshal, and only our two services now have any real jurisdiction over you and your defensive actions.”
In other words, Bedford thought with an apprehensive chill, I and anyone else with like credentials am now holder of a license to commit cold-blooded murder. Uncle Taylor is right—this world of ours is become a dangerous jungle and all of us now live under the law of a jungle. How the hell did our United States of America ever come to this?
General Eustace Barstow, U.S.A., or Milo Moray could to some extent have enlightened him in regard to that question, but as the former had died before the turn of the century and the other was out of the county and he never had or was to meet either of them anyway, the question was never resolved in his mind.
Half asleep, Milo received a telepathic beaming from the mother cat in the den area: Leader of the two-legs, a mated pair of my kind are in the entry to my den. One of them is of my litter thrown the cold time before the cold time before the cold time before this cold time. They have been told of all you have done for cats, of how you do not seek to kill cats, of your hatred of wolves. They would come close to you and smell you that they better may know you, but you first must open the rock that you used to seal the entry passage.”
Milo was out of the upper bunk in James Bedford’s disaster shelter within split seconds and stamping into his boots even as he pulled on his jacket and mentally nudged into wakefulness the other nomads who had occupied the other bunks. Once more thankful for the infiniestimally small periods of time necessary to exchange thoughts and convey messsages in nonspeech mental communication, he explained the situation, reconfirmed his aspirations for both the nomad clans and the cats, then gave his orders that the men should stand ready, awaiting his summons.
Dik Esmith snorted disgustedly aloud while beaming silently, “Ha, Bahb Linsee must be snoring atop the tower rather than keeping watch to not have seen two animals that large not only approach but enter these ruins.”
“Not so,” beamed Milo before one of the Linsees could arise in anger to the insult. “Not only must you recall that this night is one of scudding clouds over a moon far from full and bright and that the coats of these cats blends in very well with snow, but also considered that even while injured and hobbling around on three legs, the nursing cat down there managed to steal away a dead deer—a full size, full-grown, adult doe—from under the very noses of us all in broad daylight. Are there no existing circumstances under which you Esmiths and Linsees will cease to pick at and mock and attempt to anger each other like unto so many brattish toddlers? I serve you all fair warning: if your constant, petty, senseless bickerings cost me and the clans the friendship of these cats and their ilk, you will be long in forgetting it and will regret it for the rest of your lives.”
Leaving them all abashed, he strode from the body-heated room out into the chill of the outer chamber, taking one of the gasoline lanterns with him. Within the den area, amid the thick ammonia reek of cat, the cold was bone-deep, but the sinew-cracking effort of raising the ancient steel door on its warped tracks served to suffuse his body with some warmth.
Cued by the recuperating mother cat, he stepped well back from the mouth of the passage and waited. Following a flicker of movement in the dark depths of the low, narrow tunnel, a big, feline head appeared, its three-inch cuspids glinting in the glaring light of the lantern. The yellow-green eyes fixed upon him and he felt the peculiar, familiar tickle in his brain of a new mindspeak.
Lightly, warily, the first cat dropped the two feet from out the tunnel and was followed by a second, this one larger—bigger, bulkier, cuspids thicker and longer by at least a half-inch. Milo had wondered about sexual dimorphism in these strange beasts; now he knew—the male was a third again the size of the female which had led.
“The Mother says that you can communicate with cats, yet you are certainly not a cat, two-legs, so how can this be so?” asked the newcome feline female, both of them wire-tense, obviously ready to either attack of flee, as they judged best.
“This one cannot say how it is so. cat-sister,” replied Milo. “Nonetheless, it is so, as you and your mate can now tell. Nor is this one the only two-legs who can so communicate to those of your kind; within another, smaller den here are other two-legs who have communicated with the Mother and the cubs and can do so with you and your mate, if allowed.”
Slowly, cautiously, the female stalked in a circle around Milo, drawing infinitesimally nearer with each circuit, while the huge male crouched ready to leap upon the two-legs at the first sign of aggression.
Even while stalking, the smaller cat beamed, “The Mother says that you and the other two-legs have hunted and brought back much meat for her and the new cubs. She says that you slew many, many wolves with your great, long, shiny claw. The Mother says that you and at least one other two-legs did things that took away most of the hurting from her two forepaws. You do not smell very good. You smell more like a wolf than you do like a cat, though not really like a wolf, either. Are you of the breed of two-legs that go about sitting upon the back of fast-running, stupid, hornless four-leg grass-eaters and hurl sharp-pointed sticks at cats and all other ones?”