The door swung back and Sacheverell, now no longer in orange beret and pants, but a robe of bronze embroidered green, waved Phil in with an arm that swished emerald silk. His sunburn now seemed the exotically dark complexion of an Asian mystic. “All doors must open to him who speaks that name,” he said simply. “Do you vouch for your companion’s peacefulness?”
“Ah, I wouldn’t touch anybody or anything here,” Juno growled surlily, shouldering in after Phil. “I feel smutched enough already.”
“From filth the roses spring, Juno,” Sacheverell reminded her gently, “and good blooms from evil. Be happy that you are to share in the great transformation.”
Phil found himself standing on the threshold of a large living room twisting with streams of gray incense and cluttered with Victorian furniture and a bric-a-brac of ornaments and objects suggesting every religion in the world. The lights here, too, were tungstens, and so few as to make many shadows. At the far end of the room was a large doorway, heavily curtained with black velvet. Through the resinous odor of incense came the dull reek of stale food, clothes and people; also a sour animal smell.
And then Phil saw that the place was simply alive with cats: black, white, topaz, silver, taupe; striped, mottled, banded, pied; short haired, Angora, Persian, Siamese and Siamese mutant. They dripped from chair tops and shelves; they peered brightly from under little tables and dully from suffocating-looking crevices between cushions; they pattered about or posed sublimely still. One stretched full length on the woven Koran in the center of a Moslem prayer rug; another lay on a tarnished silver pentacle inlaid in a dark, low table. One was battling a phylactery hanging from the wall, making the little leather box swing and jump; another was nosing a small steatopygous, multi-mammiferous figurine; yet another was lazily entangling itself in a rosary; two were lapping dirty looking milk from a silver chalice set with amethysts.
And then for a second time Phil was gulping his heart, for in the center of a mantelpiece over a real fireplace, and midway between a gilded icon and a tin Mexican devil-mask, there posed most sublimely still of all, with forelegs straight as spears… the green cat.
As Phil walked hypnotically forward, he heard Sacheverell say gently, “No, that is not his true self, but his simulacrum, his ancient Egyptian harbinger, a figure of Bast, the Lady of Life and Love.”
And as Phil came closer, he saw it truly was the bronze statue of a cat, encrusted with verdigris almost exactly the hue of Lucky’s coat. Coming up beside him, Sacheverell explained, “As soon ashe came, I routed out all our relics of Bast. Most of them are in there,” he indicated the black velvet curtains, “around the altar. But a few are here.” And he pointed out, beside the bronze statue, a small mummy case and inside it the linen-banded mummy of a cat, looking like a little sack with a blob at the top. As Sacheverell was explaining the tiny Canopic jar of preserved cat entrails beside it, a six-toed Siamese wandered up and sniffed the mummy thoughtfully.
Finally Phil found his voice. “Then you actually do have Lucky?”
Sacheverell’s high curved eyebrows curved still higher. “Lucky?”
“The green cat,” Phil added.
Sacheverell’s face grew serenely grave. “No one has the green cat,” he reproved Phil. “It would not be permitted. He has us. We are his humble worshippers, his primal hierophants.”
“But I want to see him,” Phil said.
“That will be permitted,” Sacheverell assured Phil, “when he wakes and the world changes. Meanwhile, compose yourself, er… Phil Gish, you say? Phil… philo… love… an auspicious name.”
“Why the mucking hell is this green cat so important, anyhow? What is it?”
The two men turned. Juno was still standing on the threshold. She was swayed forward a little, hugging her elbows, yet had her shoulders squared and was glaring at them surlily, like a rebellious schoolgirl.
“The green cat is love,” Sacheverell told her softly. “The love that blossoms even from hate.”
There was another interruption. This one took the form of a coy, girlish snicker. Phil turned to the side of the room he had not yet inspected closely, the one facing the fireplace. In it was a deep, wide bay window closely shuttered with gray jalousies, as were all the other windows in the room except for one fronting on darkness beside the fireplace. In the bay was a semicircular couch on which Mary Akeley sprawled adolescently, still in black sweater and stiff, red skirt.
“You know,” she said, “I just can’t get used to the idea of loving everything. Sacheverell says I’ve got to be nice to my little people and stop sticking hatpins in them and things, but it’s hard.”
For a morbid moment Phil thought she was referring to the cats. Then he saw that there were a series of narrow shelves behind her, starting at the top of the couch and going halfway up the bay and that these shelves were crowded with dolls. Moving closer, he saw they were not ordinary dolls, but extremely realistic human figures, most of them about six inches high. He had never seen dolls so perfectly formed or realistically dressed. There must have been two or three hundred. They stood behind Mary like the cross-section of a crowded three-level street in some tiny living world. In front of the couch was a low table crowded with blocks of wax, molds, micro-tools and magnifiers, several partially completed figurines and piled squares of fabrics so delicate they must have been woven specially.
“You like my little people?” he heard Mary ask him. “Most everyone does. I got started out making striptease dolls, but these that are all my own are so much more fun. Sacheverell, I think they like having pins stuck through them. I think that’s the way they want to be loved.”
“Perhaps, my dear,” Phil heard Sacheverell say with an affectionate chuckle, “but we’ll have to wait to see howhe feels about it.”
And then Phil saw that the dolls represented actual individual people, were apparently perfect statuettes of them – so perfect that for a moment he found himself wondering which was the real world: the big one or this tiny one of Mary’s. He recognized President Barnes, the USSR’s Vanadin, square-jawed John Emmet of the Federal Bureau of Loyalty, several TV and handie stars, Sacheverell, about eight versions of Mary herself, Jack Jones in black tights, Juno in maroon ones, Dr. Romadka and – he caught his breath – Mitzie Romadka in an evening frock very much like the one he’d seen her wearing.
“Recognizing friends?” Mary asked softly, her young face which was so predominantly nose and chin poking up inquisitively toward his.
Footsteps clumped. Phil realized that Juno had finally come into the room and was standing behind him looking at the dolls. Mary looked past him with an innocent smile. “They’re awfully cute, aren’t they?” she remarked.
Juno said, “Ugh!”
“Try to be joyful,” Sacheverell kindly admonished with a little wag of his finger. “Try hard. Soon it will be ever so much easier. I mean, whenhe wakes. I must go now and see if there has been any change. Amuse yourselves.” And having lightly set them that stupendous task, he hurried from the room, his green robes whistling against the black velvet curtains.
“Sacheverell’s been as efficient as can be ever sincehe came,” Mary observed. “A great little manager. I’ve never seen him so peppy before about anything. He’s gone in for other things, you know,” she prattled on. “Semantic Christianity, neo-Mithraism, Bhagavad-Gita, Gospel according to St. Isherwood, Bradburian Folkism, Cretan Triple-Goddess, devil worship and Satanism – those are the two thatI like – and I don’t know what all else. Every time he finds himself a new one, he gets very enthusiastic, but not like this. I’ve never seen him so serious. Ever since Jack handed him the green cat, all cute and curled-up and sleeping -”