He coded open his door, stepped inside, and had almost closed it behind him when he realized that he was not returning to loneliness.
On her hands and knees, apparently to look under his bed, but now with her face turned sharply towards him, was the black haired, faun-like girl whose window was opposite his. He froze in every muscle, his hand locked to the barely ajar door, ready to jerk it open and run.
She got up slowly, with a smile. “‘Allo,” she greeted in a warm voice with a foreign accent he couldn’t place. “I have lost something and I think maybe he hide in here.” She smoothed out the black pied gray suit he’d watched her take off last night. Then she leisurely ran her hand back across her head and down the pony tail in which her hairdo ended.
“Something?” Phil croaked gallantly, his hand still glued fast behind him. He couldn’t help it, but every time he looked her in the eye his gaze had to travel fearfully down her figure to her 10-inch platform shoes.
“Yes,” she confirmed, “a – how you call him? – pussycat.” Then, after a bit, “Say, you act like you know me.” Her smile widened and she shook a finger at him.
“‘Ave you been peek at me, you naughty boy?”
Phil gulped and said nothing, yet that remark did a great deal to humanize her for him. Hallucinations don’t make one blush.
“Thas all right,” she reassured him. “Windows across, why not? Same thing – windows across and both open a little – make me think maybe my pussycat jump over here. So I step across to see.”
“Step across?” Phil demanded a bit hysterically, his gaze once more shooting to her legs.
“Sure,” she said smilingly and indicated the window. “Take a look.”
With considerable reluctance, Phil unstuck his hand from the door and gingerly walked to the open window. Spanning the ten feet between it and the one opposite, was a flimsy looking telescope ladder of some gray metal.
Phil turned around, “Is it a green cat?” he asked reluctantly.
Her face brightened. “So he did jump across.”
Phil nodded. “What’s more,” he went on rapidly, “I think I met your brother today, a journalist named Dion da Silva, representing the newspaperLa Prensa. ”
She nodded eagerly at the first proper name. “Thas right,” she said. “I am Dytie da Silva.”
“And I am Phil Gish. Did you say Dytie?”
“Sure. Short for Aphrodite, goddess of love. You like? Please, where my brother and pussycat now?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Phil said sadly.
She shrugged as if she expected to hear just that. “Is nothing new. We are crazy people, always get lost each other.”
“Then you do come from Argentina?” Phil asked doubtfully. Her accent didn’t sound Spanish, but his acquaintance with Spanish accents was limited.
“Sure,” she confirmed carelessly, her thoughts apparently elsewhere. “Far, far country.”
“Tell me, Miss da Silva,” he went on, “does your cat have peculiar powers over people?”
She frowned at him. “Peculiar powers?” she repeated slowly as if testing each syllable. “Don understand.”
“I mean,” Phil explained patiently, “can he make people happy around him?”
The frown smoothed. “Sure. Nice little pussycat, make people happy. You like animals, Phil?”
Once again he couldn’t keep his gaze from flickering to her legs, but on the whole he was feeling remarkably bucked up.
“Miss da Silva,” he said, “I’ve got a lot more questions to ask you, but unfortunately I don’t know Spanish and I don’t think you understand English well enough to answer the questions if I put them to you cold. But maybe if I tell you just what’s been happening to me, you’ll be able to; at least, I hope so. Sit down Miss da Silva; it’s a long, long story.”
“Is very good idea,” she agreed, sinking down on the bed. “But please call Dytie, Phil.”
She makes one feel at ease, Phil thought as he placed himself in the foam chair opposite. “Well, Dytie, it began…” and for the next hour he told her in some detail the story of what had happened to him ever since he had awakened to see Lucky sitting on the window sill. He suppressed entirely, however, the incident of watching her last night, which made it necessary for him also to condense the account of his session with Dr. Romadka. Dytie frequently interrupted him to ask for explanations, some of them exceedingly obvious things, such as what was a hatpin, and what was the Federal Bureau of Loyalty and what was it that male and female wrestlers tried to do to each other in the ring? On the other hand, she sometimes passed up things he expected to puzzle her, though he couldn’t always tell whether this was because she really understood them, or because she didn’t want to. Orthos interested her not at all, stun-guns, mightily. Lucky’s exploits did not seem to startle her much. Her usual comment was along these lines: “That pussycat. Is so stupid. But lucky too. Thas good name you give him, Phil.”
When he came to the Humberford Foundation and Dytie’s brother, she rolled over on her stomach and listened with closer attention. But when he hesitantly mentioned how Dion had seemed to develop such an instant yen for Dora Pannes, she whooped knowingly. “That brother,” she chortled. “He chase anything with two legs and milk glands. ‘Cept of course when he pregnant.”
“What!”
“Say something? Must got wrong word,” Dytie interposed quickly, brushing the matter aside.
But she was very much interested in Morton Opperly and insisted on Phil telling her a great deal about the famous scientist.
“He smart man,” she said with conviction. “Very much like meet.”
“I’ll try to manage it sometime,” Phil said and told how the green cat had been captured by Dora Pannes.
Dytie shook her head solemnly. “Some people got very hard hearts,” she said. “Don like pussycat all.”
Phil quickly rounded off his story with an account of how the fake green cat in the alley had scratched him.
Dytie got up and came over and touched his hands tenderly. “Poor Phil,” she said, then summarized: “So we know who have pussycat, but not where?”
“That’s right,” Phil said quickly, “and that where is a tough one, because Billig’s hiding from the FBL.” And he got up rapidly, trying not to make it obvious that he wanted to put a few feet between them. Dytie’s fingers were soft and gentle enough, but there was something about her touch and her close presence that set him shivering. Conceivably, it was her odor, which wasn’t strong or even unpleasant, just completely unfamiliar. She looked after him rather wistfully, but did not try to follow. He faced her across the room.
“Well, that’s my story, Dytie,” he said a bit breathlessly. “And now I want to ask my questions. Just what kind of a cat have you got, that Fun Incorporated could hope to bribe the federal government with it? Is it a mutant with telepathic powers and able to control emotions? Is it a throwback, or maybe deliberately bred back to an otherwise extinct animal? Is it some cockeyed triumph of Soviet genetics, working along lines our scientists don’t accept? Damn it, is it even some sort of Egyptian god, like Sacheverell thinks? It’s your turn to talk, Dytie.”
But instead of answering him, she merely smiled and said, “‘Scuse me, Phil, but that long story yours really long. Be right back.”
He expected her to walk out the window and wondered what he’d do. But she merely went into the bathroom and shut the door.
He paced around, unbearably keyed up, lifting small objects and putting them down again. Nervously he turned on the radio, sight and sound, though he didn’t look at it and didn’t understand a word of what the inane sports gossipist was loudly yapping about the feats, follies and frivolities of the muscle stars. Then on his next circuit of the room, he happened to tread hard as he passed the radio, and something went wrong with it, so that the sound sank to a very low mumble and he was once more alone in his agitation.