Again he paused, then said softly, “But I don’t have to ask you, for you’re in that state of being right now. You’re symbiotes of the green cat – or rather, I should say, one of the green cats.”
As he said that, a head rather more golden yellow than Lucky’s poked itself up from Emmet’s lap and looked at them all. And Phil realized that the feeling that had possessed him ever since he had come into this room was the radiance of one of Lucky’s cousins. And then he felt Lucky’s radiance added to it, and looking around toward the electronic contraption, he saw Lucky lifting his head over the edge.
Meanwhile, John Emmet was saying, “I told you that the green cat – or rather, cats – intended the conquest of America. I wanted you to hear a little more of the background before adding that, as far as the Federal Bureau of Loyalty and the Office of the President are concerned, the conquest has been completed.” And John Emmet smiled.
“Also,” he added, “judging from the messages we’ve just received from their newsmoon, along with some extraordinary tokens of faith, the Kremlin has also capitulated to the Vegan invasion.”
“Is good?” Dytie shouted, jumping up. “You know just four satyrs, ten pussycats come in ship. We send seven pussycats, two satyrs behind ferrous veil – mean iron curtain. We think they need pussycats just a little bit more you do.”
And with that the whole solemn meeting melted into a tumbling flood of questions and answers, shouted insights, babbling conversation. Catching a bit here and there, Phil learned how the second and yellower green cat, out of touch with Dion and Dytie for a week, had unexpectedly returned to its Vegan mistress after visiting a large number of most ecstatic church services, and how Opperly had smuggled that cat in to Barnes and so to Emmet. He heard Dytie explain how the cats were tricky at feigning unconsciousness after recovering from being stunned, and why they insisted on eating in private on Earth – they were imitating ordinary cats and knew that their hormone spraying mouths, necessarily extended in eating, would give them away. He heard Dion try to picture to Dr. Garnett how the cats on Vega Eight had taken to pointing their muzzles toward the star that was the Sun and wailing at it at night, and Dr. Garnett proudly suggested that they must have been esping the brain waves beamed out by the Humberford Foundation. Whereupon Dion tried to explain how Vega Eight had once been a war-tom planet, until a race of what sounded like intelligent space traveling worms had brought them the green cats.
But while Phil was drinking in all this information and exchanging words with this person and that, he was moving through the churning crowd in a very definite direction and with a very definite purpose. Yet during his progress he continued to overhear scraps of discourse.
He heard Sacheverell Akeley explaining to Chancellor Frobisher that the green cats were probably all offspring of Bast anyway and that the ancient Egyptians – or perhaps Atlanteans – probably had had spaceships and had taken the green cats to Vega in the first place.
He heard Cookie gently twitting Mary Akeley about falling for a satyr and she happily assuring him that she went for men with hoofs, and in any case was going to make a doll of him.
He heard Jack pointing out to Dr. Romadka that now that they had the green cats, there wasn’t going to be too much use for psychoanalysts or for thought police and commissars, and Romadka was reminding him that most of the commodities peddled by Fun Incorporated, including male-female wrestling, wouldn’t have much of a market either.
He heard Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck talking about organizing a chivalric order that was to be called the Knights of the Green Cat.
He heard Juno Jones telling Moe Brimstine how ever since her farm childhood she’d always liked animals better than humans and was very glad that an animal was going to help her change her mind – and where was that little rat Jack? Moe Brimstine explained to her in reply that he’d spent so much time getting the jump on people that he’d never learned to understand them – while poor old Hans Billig had jumped around so fast he’d never noticed people at all.
He heard John Emmet and Dave Greeley talking green cat logistics – how would they ever manage to blanket the whole world with the creatures?
He heard Morton Opperly and Dr. Garnett talking something way over his head about esp-nexuses and thought lines and which galaxy did the cats come from in the first place?
He took Mitzie Romadka’s slim tired hand and assured her that he loved her and that he thought that violence and jealousy and even revengefulness were admirable up to a point.
But he never lost sight of his chief purpose. As he approached the low walled box from which Lucky was still peering calmly, President Barnes left off assuring Mary Akeley that the directive for the destruction of all cats had already been cancelled, and came over to Phil and threw his arm around his shoulders in a fatherly way and said, “Hi, young fellow, I hear how you were pretty close to this cat for a couple of days. Sorry I’m going to have to be taking him off your hands.”
Phil straightened up. “You’re not,” he said, “Lucky is my cat.”
“Well, see here, young fellow,” Barnes protested amiably, “I’m the president, so I have to have one of these cats. Emmet has one already and the Humberford Foundation really needs one, and there are only three in the country. You heard the young lady from Vega say it.”
Several people and the two satyrs wandered up, attracted by the argument.
“I don’t care,” Phil said, greatly encouraged by the tightness with which Mitzie’s hand gripped his. “I know that this is a cosmic crisis and all that, but this is my cat and I fed it and I’m going to keep it. C’mere, Lucky.”
Lucky jumped out of the box into his arms.
“I guess that proves it,” Phil said.
Barnes looked at him just a bit indignantly and there were all sorts of murmured comments, but just then they heard a tiny and varied mewing. It came from the box from which Lucky had sprung.
They looked in and saw five tiny duplicates of Lucky nosing their little conical faces upward.
Dytie said, “They small, but they just much good big pussycat, just much helpful.”
Barnes said, spreading himself around, “Why, now there’ll be one for the Army, the Navy, Dr. Opperly, myself, that goon back east who thinks he’s going to be the next president…”
“Now Bobbie,” Opperly suggested, “don’t go giving away more kittens than you’ve got.”
“… and, I was about to say,” Barnes finished calmly, “one for this young fellow here.”
Phil looked down at Lucky cradled in his arms. “So you’re a she after all,” he said.
“Oh no!” Dytie burst out excitedly, half out of her cloak and half in it. “You no un’erstand Vega. On Vega sex different. On Vega it’s like…” and she screwed up her face, seeking for the word.
“Kangaroos,” Opperly interposed.
“Yes!” Dytie exclaimed triumphantly. “Only this difference: wife carry babies while, then babies go in father’s pouch, he carry rest time. Everybody help. Later on, babies leave pouch, nurse from mother. Take off pants, Dion, show pouch.”
But Dion refused rather indignantly.
“Vega men much modest,” Dytie observed to Phil. “Anyway, Lucky is he.”
About the Author
The author of many novels and short stories, including GATHER DARKNESS and The Lankhmar series, Fritz Leiber won many awards, including the Hugo and Nebula, and a Life Award for his contribution to his field, presented at the Second World Fantasy Convention. He died in 1992.