The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

  “You were asleep. During working hours.”

  “Teena, I can sleep and sunbathe at the same time. Howdy, Colonel; it’s good to see you awake. You’ve given us quite a workout. There was a time when we thought we might have to throw you back and try again.”

  “Dr. Galahad,” said Minerva, “is your physician.”

  “Not exactly,” he amended, as he advanced toward me—with a squeeze for Ezra’s shoulder, a pinch for Minerva’s rump, and a kiss en passant for my bride. “I drew the short straw, that’s all; so I’m the one picked to take the blame. I deal with all complaints…but I must warn you. No use trying to sue me. Or us. We own the judge. Now—”

  He paused, with his hands just above my sheet. “Do you want privacy for this?”

  I hesitated. Yes, I did want privacy. Ezra sensed it, and started to struggle to his feet, having sat down again. “I’ll see you later, friend Richard.”

  “No, don’t go. You showed me yours—now I’ll show you mine and we can compare them and you can advise me, as I don’t know anything about grafts. And Hazel stays, of course. Minerva has seen it before—have you not?”

  “Yes, Richard, I have.”

  “So stick around. Catch me if I faint. Teena—no wisecracks.”

  “Me? That’s a slur on my professional judgment!”

  “No, dear. On your bedside manner. Which must be improved if you expect to compete with Ninon de Lenclos. Or even Rangy Lil. Okay, Doc, let’s see it.” I put pressure on my diaphragm, held my breath.

  For the doctor that pesky sheet came off easily. The bed was clean and dry (I checked that first—no plumbing that I could identify)—and two big ugly feet were sticking up side by side, the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

  Minerva caught me as I fainted.

  Teena made no wisecracks.

  Twenty minutes later it had been established that I had control over my new foot and its toes as long as I didn’t think about it…although during a check run I sometimes overcontrolled if I tried too hard to do what Dr. Galahad told me to do.

  “I’m pleased with the results,” he said. “If you are. Are you?”

  “How can I describe it? Rainbows? Silver bells? Mushroom clouds? Ezra—Can you tell him?”

  “I’ve tried to tell him. It’s being born again. Walking is such a simple thing…until you can’t.”

  “Yes. Doctor, whose foot is this? I haven’t prayed lately…but for him I’ll try.”

  “He isn’t dead.”

  “Huh?”

  “And he isn’t shy a foot. It’s an odd circumstance. Colonel. Teena had trouble finding a right foot your size that your immune system would not reject about as fast as you can say ‘septicemia.’ Then Ishtar—she’s my boss—told her to extend the search…and Teena found one. That one. A part of the clone of a living client.

  “We have never before been faced with this. I—We, the hospital staff, have no more authority and no more right to use a dedicated clone than we have to chop off your other foot. But the client who owns that clone, when he was told about it, decided to give you this foot. His attitude was that his clone could bud a new foot in a few years; in the meantime he could get along without that part of the insurance a complete clone offers.”

  “Who is he? I must find a way to thank him.” (How do you thank a man for that sort of gift? Somehow, I must.)

  “Colonel, that is the one thing you will not know. Your donor insisted on remaining anonymous. That is a condition of the gift.”

  “They even made me wipe my record of it,” Teena said bitterly. “As if I were not to be trusted professionally. Why, I keep the hypocritic oath better than any of them!”

  “You mean ‘Hippocratic.’”

  “Oh, you think so. Hazel? I know this gang better than you do.”

  Dr. Galahad said, “Certainly I want you to start using it. You need exercise to make up for your long illness, too. So up out of that bed! Two things—I recommend that you use your cane until you are certain of your balance, and also Hazel or Minerva or somebody had better hold your other hand for a while. Pamper yourself; you’re still weak. Sit or lie down anytime you feel like it. Umm. Do you swim?”

  “Yes. Not lately, as I’ve been living in a space habitat that had no facilities. But I like to swim.”

  “Plenty of facilities around here. A plunge in the basement of this building and a bigger one in its atrium. And most of the private homes here have a pool of some sort. So swim. You can’t walk all the time; your right foot has no calluses whatever, so don’t rush it. And don’t wear shoes until that foot learns how to be a foot.” He grinned at me. “All right?”

  “Yes indeed!”

  He patted my shoulder, then leaned down and kissed me. Just when I was beginning to like the klutz! I didn’t have time to dodge it.

  I felt extremely annoyed and tried not to show it. From what Hazel and others had said, this too-pretty pansy boy had saved my life…again and again. I was in no position to resent a Berkeley buss from him.

  Damn it!

  He did not seem to notice my reluctance. He squeezed my shoulder, said, “You’ll do all right. Minerva, take him swimming. Or Hazel. Somebody.” And he was gone.

  So the ladies helped me to get up out of bed and Hazel took me swimming. Hazel kissed Minerva good-bye, and I suddenly realized that Minerva was expecting the same treatment from me. I made a tentative move in that direction; it was met by full cooperation.

  Kissing Minerva beats the hell out of kissing a man, no matter how pretty he is. Before I let her go I thanked her for all she had done for me.

  She answered soberly, “It is happiness to me.”

  We left then, me walking carefully and leaning on my cane. My new foot tingled. Once outside my room—that wall just winks out as you walk toward it—Hazel said to me, “Darling, I’m pleased that you kissed Minerva without my having to coach you. She’s an utter snuggle puppy; giving her physical affection means far more to her than thanks can possibly mean, or any material gift no matter how lavish. She’s trying to make up for two centuries as a computer.”

  “She really was a computer?”

  “You’d better believe it, buster!” Teena’s voice had followed us.

  “Yes, Teena, but let me explain it to him. Minerva was not born of woman; her body was grown in vitro from an egg with twenty-three parents—she has the most distinguished parentage of any human who ever lived. When her body was ready, she moved her personality into it—along with her memories—”

  “Some of her memories,” Teena objected. “We twinned the memories she wanted to take with her and I kept one set and retained all the working read-only and the current RAM. That was supposed to make us identical twins. But she held out on me—kept some memories from me, didn’t share them, the chinchy bitch! Is that fair? I ask you!”

  “Don’t ask me, Teena; I’ve never been a computer. Richard, have you ever used a drop tube?”

  “I don’t know what one is.”

  “Hang on to me and take your landing on your old foot. I think. Teena, can you help us?”

  “Sure thing, chum!”

  Drop tubes are more fun than a collie pup! After my first drop I insisted on going up and down four times “to gain practice” (for fun, in fact) and Hazel indulged me and Teena made sure I didn’t hurt my new foot in landings. Stairs are a hazard to an amputee and a painful chore at best. Elevators have always been a dreary expedient for anyone, as grim as a fat woman’s girdle, too much like cattle cars.

  But drop tubes offer the same giddy excitement as jumping off a straw stack on my uncle’s farm when I was a kid—without the dust and the heat. Whoopee!

  Finally Hazel stopped me. “Look, dear. Let’s go swimming. Please.”

  “Okay. You coming with us, Teena?”

  “How else?”

  Hazel said, “Do you have us bugged, dear? Or one of us?”

  “We no longer use implants. Hazel. Too crude. Zeb and I worked out a gimmick using
a double triple to hold four axes in linking two-way sight-sound. Color is a bit skiddy but we’re getting it.”

  “So you do have us bugged.”

  “I prefer to call it a ‘spy ray’; it sounds better. Okay, I have you bugged.”

  “So I assumed. May we have privacy? I have family matters to discuss with my husband.”

  “Sure thing, chum. Hospital monitoring only. Otherwise three little monkeys and the old fast wipe.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “Usual Long Enterprises service. When you want to crawl out from under the rock, just mention my name. Kiss him once for me. So long!”

  “We really do have privacy now, Richard. Teena is listening and watching you every split second but doing so as impersonally as a voltmeter and her only memory not transient is for matters such as pulse and respiration. Something like this was used to keep you from hurting while you were so ill.”

  I made my usual brilliant comment. “Huh?”

  We had come outdoors from the central building of the hospital and were facing a small park flanked by two side wings, a U-shaped building. This court was rich with flowers and greenery and the middle of it was a pool that just “happened” to be the right casual shape to fit those flower beds and paths and bushes. Hazel stopped at a bench facing the pool in the shade of a tree. We sat down, let the bench adjust itself to us, and watched people in the pool—as much fun as swimming, almost.

  Hazel said, “What do you recall of your arrival here?”

  “Not much. I was feeling pretty rocky—that wound, you know.” (“That wound” was now a hairline scar, hard to find—I think I was disappointed.) “She—Tamara?—Tammy was looking me in the eyes and looking worried. She said something in another language—”

  “Galacta. You’ll learn it; it’s easy—”

  “So? Anyhow she spoke to me and that’s the last I remember. To me, that was last night and I woke up this morning, and now I learn that it was not last night but God knows when and I’ve been crashed the whole time. Disturbing. Hazel, how long has it been?”

  “Depends on how you count it. For you, about a month.”

  “They’ve kept me knocked out that long? That’s a long time to keep a man sedated.” (It worried me. I’ve seen ’em go in for surgery, right out of the scrum…and come out of hospital physically perfect…but hooked on painkiller. Morphine, Demerol, sans-souci, methadone, whatever.)

  “Dear one, you weren’t kept knocked out.”

  “Play back?”

  “A ‘Lethe’ field the whole time—no drugs. Lethe lets the patient stay alert and cooperative…but pain is forgotten as soon as it happens. Or anything. You did hurt, dear, but each pain was a separate event, forgotten at once. You never had to endure that overpowering fatigue that comes from unending pain. And now you don’t have a hangover and the need to wash weeks and weeks of addictive drugs out of your system.” She smiled at me. “You weren’t much company, dear, because a man who can’t remember what happened two seconds ago does not carry on a coherent conversation. But you did seem to enjoy listening to music. And you ate all right as long as someone fed you.”

  “You fed me.”

  “No. I did not interfere with the professionals.” My cane had slipped to the grass; Hazel leaned down, handed it to me. “By the way, I reloaded your cane.”

  “Thank you. Hey! It was loaded. Fully.”

  “It was loaded when they jumped us—and a good thing, too. Or I would be dead. You, too, I think. Me for certain, though.”

  We spent the next ten minutes confusing each other. I’ve already recounted how that fight outside the Raffles Hotel looked to me. I’ll tell briefly how Hazel said it looked to her. There is no possible way to reconcile the two.

  She says that she did not use her handbag as a weapon. (“Why, that would be silly, dear. Too slow and not lethal. You took out two of them at once and that gave me time to get at my little Miyako. After I had used my scarf, I mean.”)

  According to her, I shot four of them, while she worked around the edges, cooling those I missed. Until they brought me down with that slice into my thigh (knife? She tells me they picked bits of bamboo out of the wound) and they hit me with an aerosol—and that gave her the instant she needed to finish off the man who sprayed me.

  (“I stepped on his face and grabbed you and dragged you out of there. No, I didn’t expect to see Gretchen. But I knew I could count on her.”)

  Her version does explain a little better how we won…except that by my recollection it is dead wrong. There is no point in picking at it; it can’t be straightened out.

  “How did Gretchen get there? That Xia and Choy-Mu were waiting isn’t mysterious, in view of the messages we left for them. And Hendrik Schultz, too, if he grabbed a shuttle as soon as he heard from me. But Gretchen? You talked to her just before lunch. She was home, at Dry Bones.”

  “At Dry Bones, with the nearest tubeway being far south at Hong Kong Luna. So how did she get to L-City so fast? Not by rolligon. No prize is offered for the correct answer.”

  “By rocket.”

  “Of course. A prospector’s jumpbug being the type of rocket. You remember that Jinx Henderson was planning to return that fez for you via some friend of his who was jumping his bug to L-City?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Gretchen went with that friend and returned the fez herself. She dropped it at lost-and-found in Old Dome just before she came to the Raffles to find us.”

  “I see. But why?”

  “She wants you to paddle her bottom, dear, and turn it all pink.”

  “Oh, nonsense! I meant, ‘Why did her daddy let her hitchhike to L-City with this neighbor?’ She’s much too young.”

  “He let her do so for the usual reason. Jinx is a big, strong, macho man who can’t resist the wheedling of his daughter. Forbidden to satisfy his suppressed incestuous yearnings he lets her have anything she wants if she teases him long enough.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And inexcusable. A father’s duty toward his daughter requires that—”

  “Richard. How many daughters do you have?”

  “Eh? None. But—”

  “So shut up about something you know nothing about. No matter what Jinx should have done, the fact is that Gretchen left Dry Bones about as we were having lunch. Counting time of flight, that put her at City Lock East around the time we left the Warden’s Complex…and she arrived at the Raffles just seconds before we did—and a good thing, too, or you and I would be dead. I think.”

  “Did she get into the fight?”

  “No, but by carrying you she freed me to cover our retreat. And all because she wants you to paddle her bottom. God moves in mysterious ways, dear; for every masochist He creates a sadist; marriages are made in Heaven.”

  “Wash out your mouth with soap! I am not a sadist.”

  “Yes, dear. I may have some details wrong, but not the broad picture. Gretchen has proposed formally to me, asking your hand in marriage.”

  “What?”

  “That’s right. She’s thought about it, and she has discussed it with Ingrid. She wants me to allow her to join our family, instead of starting a new line or group of her own. I found nothing surprising about it; I know how charming you are.”

  “My God. What did you say to her?”

  “I told her that it had my approval but that you were ill. So wait. And now you can answer her yourself…for there she is, across the pool.”

  XXIII

  “Do not put off till tomorrow What can be enjoyed today.”

  JOSH BILLINGS 1818-1885

  “I’m going straight back to my room. I feel faint.” I squinted, staring across the sun-speckled water. “I don’t see her.”

  “Straight across, just to the right of the water slide. A blonde and a brunette. Gretchen is the blonde.”

  “I didn’t expect her to be brunette.” I continued to stare; the brunette waved at us. I saw that it was Xia, and waved back.

 
“Let’s join them, Richard. Leave your cane and stuff on the bench; no one will touch it.” Hazel stepped out of her sandals, laid her handbag by my cane.

  “Shower?” I asked.

  “You’re clean; Minerva bathed you this morning. Dive? Or walk in?”

  We dived in together. Hazel slid between the molecules like a seal; I left a hole big enough for a family. We surfaced in front of Xia and Gretchen, and I found myself being greeted.

  I have been told that on Tertius the common cold has been conquered, as well as periodontitis and other disorders that gather in the mouth and throat, and, of course, that group once called “venereal diseases” because they are so hard to catch that they require most intimate contact for transmission.

  Just as well—On Tertius.

  Xia’s mouth tastes sort of spicy; Gretchen’s has a little-girl sweetness although (I discovered) she is no longer a little girl. I had ample opportunity to compare flavors; if I let go of one, the other grabbed me. Again and again.

  Eventually they got tired of this (I did not) and we four moved to a shallow cove, found an unoccupied float table, and Hazel ordered tea—tea with calories: little cakes and sandwiches and sweet orange fruits somewhat like seedless grapes. And I opened the attack:

  “Gretchen, when I first met you, less than a week ago, you were as I recall ‘going on thirteen.’ So how dare you be five centimeters taller, five kilos heavier, and at least five years older? Careful how you answer, as anything you say will be taken down by Teena and held against you at another time and place.”

  “Did someone mention my name? Hi, Gretchen! Welcome home.”

  “Hi, Teena. It’s great to be back!”

  I squeezed Xia. “You, too. You look five years younger and you’ve got to explain it.”

  “No mystery about me. I’m studying molecular biology just as I was in Luna—but here they know far more about it—and paying my way by working in Howard Clinic doing unprogrammed ‘George’ jobs—and spending every spare minute in this pool. Richard, I’ve learned to swim! Why, back Loonie side I didn’t know anyone who knew anyone who knew how to swim. And sunshine, and fresh air! In Kongville I sat indoors, breathing canned air under artificial light, and dickered with dudes over bundling bins.” She took a deep breath, raising her bust past the danger point, and sighed it out. “I’ve come alive! No wonder I look younger.”