The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

  When she judged that I was ready, she planned for us to carry out Task Adam Selene of Operation Galactic Overlord.

  If we lived through it, we could retire from the Time Corps, live out our days on an ample pension on the planet of our choice—fat and happy.

  Or we could stay in the Corps together just by my reenlisting for a hitch of fifty years—then rejuvenations each hitch and a chance for us eventually to become Time bosses ourselves. That was supposed to be the grand prize—more fun than baby kittens, more exciting than roller coasters, more satisfying than being seventeen and in love.

  Live or die, we would do it together—until at last one of us waited for the other at the end of that tunnel.

  But this program aborted because Lazarus butted in and tried to twist my arm (my foot?) to accept it.

  My darling had planned a pianissimo approach: Live for a time on Tertius (a heavenly place), get me hooked on multiverse history and time travel theory, et cetera. Not crowd me about signing up, but depend on the fact that she and Gretchen and Ezra and others (Uncle Jock, e.g.) were in the Corps…until I asked to be allowed to be sworn in.

  The cost of my new foot would not have bothered me: a) if Hazel had had time to convince me that the cost would be charged off to my increased efficiency in helping her with “Adam Selene” and the foot would thereby pay for itself (the simple truth!—and Lazarus knew it); b) if Lazarus had not dunned me about it, used it to pressure me; c) if Lazarus had stayed away from me (as he was supposed to) and thereby had never offered me any chance of spotting that he was my anonymous donor—bare feet or no bare feet.

  I suppose you could say that none of it would have happened if Hazel had not tried to manipulate me (and had, and did, and would)…but a wife’s unique right, fixed by tradition, to manipulate her own husband runs unbroken and invariant at least back to Eve and the Apple. I will not criticize a sacred tradition.

  Hazel did not give up her intention; she just changed her tactics. She decided to take me to Time Headquarters and let the high brass and the technical experts there answer my questions. “Darling man,” she said to me, “you know that I want to rescue Adam Selene, and so does Mannie, my papa. But his reasons and mine are sentimental, not good enough to ask you to risk your life.”

  “Oh, say not so, mistress mine! For you I’ll swim the Hellespont. On a calm day, that is, with an escort boat at my heels. And a three-dee contract. Commercial rights. Residuals.”

  “Be serious, dear. I had not planned to try to persuade you through explaining the greater purpose, the effect on the multiverse…as I don’t fully understand it myself. I don’t have the math and I am not a Companion of the Circle—the Circle of Ouroboros that rules on all cosmic changes.

  “But Lazarus bungled things by trying to hustle you. So I feel that you are entitled to know exactly why this rescue is necessary and why you are being asked to take part in it. We’ll go to Headquarters and let them try to convince you; I wash my hands of that part of the job. It is up to the Companions, the high brass of time manipulation. I told Lazarus so—he is a Companion of the Circle.”

  “Sweetheart, I am much more likely to listen to you. Lazarus would have trouble selling me ten-crown notes for two crowns.”

  “His problem. But he has only one vote in the Circle, even though he is senior. Of course he is always senior, anywhere.”

  That caught my ear. “This notion that Lazarus is two thousand years old—”

  “More than that. Over twenty-four hundred.”

  “Either way. Who says that he is more than two millennia old? He looks younger than I do.”

  “He’s been rejuvenated several times.”

  “But who claims that he is that old? Forgive me, my love, but you can’t testify to it. Even if we credit you with every fortnight you claim, he would still be more than ten times your age. If he is. Again, who says?”

  “Uh…not me, that’s true. But I have never had any reason to doubt it. I think you should talk to Justin Foote.” Hazel looked around. We were in that lovely garden court outside the room in which I woke up. (Her room, I learned later—or hers when she wanted it; such things were fluid. Other times use other customs.) We were in that garden with other members of the Long family and guests and friends and relations, eating tasty tidbits and getting quietly slopped. Hazel picked out a mousy little man, the sort who is always elected treasurer of any organization he belongs to. “Justin! Over here, dear. Spare me a moment.”

  He worked his way toward us, stepping over children and dogs, and on arrival bussed my bride in the all-out fashion she always received. He said to her, “Fluttermouse, you’ve been away too long.”

  “Business, dear. Justin, this is my beloved husband Richard.”

  “Our house is yours.” He kissed me. Well, I was braced for it; it had happened so often. These people kissed as often as early Christians. However, this was an aunt’s peck, all protocol and bone dry.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Please be assured that it is not our custom to put pressure on guests. Lazarus is a law unto himself but he does not act for the rest of us.” Justin Foote smiled at me, then turned his attention to my bride. “Hazel, will you permit me to obtain from Athene a copy, for the Archives, of your remarks to Lazarus?”

  “Whatever for? I chewed him out; it’s done with.”

  “It is of historical interest. No one else, not even Ishtar, has ever spanked the Senior as thoroughly as you did. There is scant disapproval of him on record, of any degree. Most people find it hard to disagree with him openly even when they disagree most. So it is not only an interesting item for future scholars, but it could also be of service to Lazarus himself if he ever scanned it. He is so used to getting his own way that it is good for him to be reminded now and then that he is not God.” Justin smiled. “And it’s a breath of fresh air for the rest of us. In addition. Hazel love, its literary quality is great and unique. I do want it for the Archives.”

  “Uh…poppycock, dear. See Lazarus. Nihil obstat but it requires his permission.”

  “Consider it done; I know how to use his stubborn pride. The piglet principle. All I have to do is to offer to censor it, keep it out of the Archives. With a hint that I wish to spare his feelings. He will then scowl and insist that it be placed in the Archives…unedited, unbowdlerized.”

  “Well—Okay if he says yes.”

  “May I ask, dear, where you picked up some of the more scabrous of those expressions?”

  “You may not. Justin, Richard asked me a question I can’t answer. How do we know that the Senior is more than two thousand years old? To me, it’s like asking, ‘How do I know that the Sun will rise tomorrow?’ I just know it.”

  “No, it’s like asking, ‘How do you know that the Sun rose long before you were born?’ The answer is that you don’t know. Hmm—Interesting.”

  He blinked at me. “Part of the problem, I am sure, lies in the fact that you come from a universe in which the Howard Families phenomenon never took place.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it. What is it?”

  “It is a code name for people with exceptionally long lives. But I must first lay a foundation. The Companions of the Circle of Ouroboros designate universes by serial numbers…but a more meaningful way, for terrestrials, is to ask who first set foot on Luna. Who in your world?”

  “Eh? Chap named Neil Armstrong. With Colonel Buzz Aldrin.”

  “Exactly. An enterprise of NASA, a government bureau, if I recall correctly. But in this universe, my world and that of Lazarus Long, the first trip to the Moon was financed, not by a government, but by private enterprise, headed by a financier, one D. D. Harriman, and the first man to set foot on Luna was Leslie LeCroix, an employee of Harriman. In still another universe it was a military project and the first flight to Luna was in the USAFS Kilroy Was Here. Another—Never mind; in every universe the birth of space travel is a cusp event, affecting everything that follows. Now about the Senior—In my
universe he was one of the earliest space pilots. I was for many years archivist of the Howard Families…and from those archives I can show that Lazarus Long has been a practicing space pilot for more than twenty-four centuries. Would you find that convincing?”

  “No.”

  Justin Foote nodded. “Reasonable. When a rational man hears something asserted that conflicts with all common sense he will not—and should not—believe it without compelling evidence. You have not been offered compelling evidence. Just hearsay. Respectable hearsay, and in fact true, but nevertheless hearsay. Odd. For me, I have grown up with it; I am the forty-fifth member of the Howard Families to bear the name ‘Justin Foote,’ the first of my name being a trustee of the Families in the early twentieth century Gregorian when Lazarus Long was a baby and Maureen was a young woman—”

  At this point the conversation fell to pieces. The notion that the darling lady who had comforted me had a son twenty-four centuries old…but was herself a mere child of a century and a half—Hell, some days it doesn’t pay to get out of bed, a truism in Iowa when I was young and still true in Tertius over two thousand years later. (If it was!) I had been perfectly happy with Minerva on one shoulder and Galahad on the other and Pixel on my chest. Aside from bladder pressure.

  Maureen reminded me of another discrepancy. “Justin, something else frets me. You say that this planet is a long, long way in space and time from my home—over two thousand years in time and over seven thousand light-years in distance.”

  “No, I do not say it because I am not an astrophysicist. But that accords with what I have been taught, yes.”

  “Yet right here today I hear idiomatic English spoken in the dialect of my time and place. More than that, it is in the tall-corn accent of the North American middle west, harsh as a rusty saw. Ugly and unmistakable. Riddle me that?”

  “Oh. Strange but no mystery. English is being spoken as a courtesy to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. Athene could supply you with instantaneous translation, both ways, and the party could be in Galacta. But fortunately through a decision by Ishtar many years back, English was made the working language of the clinic and the hospital. That this could be done derives from circumstances around the Senior’s last rejuvenation. But the accent and the idiom—The accent comes from the Senior himself, reinforced by his mother’s speech, and nailed down by the fact that Athene speaks that accent and idiom and won’t speak English any other way. The same applies to Minerva, since she learned it when she was still a computer. But not all of us speak English with equal ease. You know Tamara?”

  “Not as well as I would like to.”

  “She is probably the most loving and most lovable person on the planet. But she is no linguist. She learned English when she was past two hundred; I think she will always speak broken English…even though she speaks it every day. Does that explain the odd fact that a dead language is being spoken at a family dinner party on a planet around a star far distant from Old Home Terra?”

  “Well—It explains it. It does not satisfy me. Uh, Justin, I have a feeling that any objection I can raise will be answered…but I won’t be convinced.”

  “That’s reasonable. Why not wait awhile? Presently, without pushing it, the facts that you find hard to accept will fall into place.”

  So we changed the subject. Hazel said, “Dear one, I didn’t tell you why I had to run an errand…or why I was late. Justin, have you ever been held up at the downstream teleport?”

  “Too often. I hope someone builds a competing service soon. I would raise the capital and mount it myself, if I weren’t so comfortably lazy.”

  “Earlier today I went shopping for Richard—shoes, dear, but don’t wear them until Galahad okays it—and replacements for your suits I lost in the fracas at the Raffles. Couldn’t match the colors, so I settled for cerise and jade green.”

  “Good choices.”

  “Yes, they will suit you, I think. I had finished shopping and would have been back here before you woke but—Justin, they were queued up at the teleport, so I sighed and waited my turn…and a line jumper, a rancid tourist from Secundus, sneaked in six places ahead of me.”

  “Why. the scoundrel!”

  “Didn’t do him a speck of good. The bounder was shot dead.”

  I looked at her. “Hazel?”

  “Me? No, no, darling! I admit that I was tempted. But in my opinion crowding into a queue out of turn doesn’t rate anything heavier than a broken arm. No, that was not what held me up. A bystanders’ court was convened at once, and I damn near got co-opted as a juror. Only way I could get out of it was to admit that I was a witness—thought it would save me time. No such luck, and the trial took almost half an hour.”

  “They hanged him?” asked Justin.

  “No. The verdict was ‘homicide in the public interest’ and they turned her loose and I came on home. Not quite soon enough. Lazarus, damn him, had got at Richard, and made him unhappy and ruined my plans, so I made Lazarus unhappy. As you know.”

  “As we all know. Did the deceased tourist have anyone with him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. I do think killing him was too drastic. But I’m a pantywaist and always have been. In the past, when someone shoved ahead of me in a queue, I’ve always let it go with minor mayhem. But queue cheating should never be ignored; that just encourages the louts. Richard, I bought shoes for you because I knew that your new foot could not use the right shoe you were wearing when we arrived here.”

  “That’s true.” (My right shoe has always—since amputation—had to be a custom job for the prosthesis. A living foot could not fit it.)

  “I didn’t go to a shoe shop; I went to a fabricatory having a general pantograph and had them use your left shoe to synthesize a matching right shoe through a mirror-image space warp. It should be identical with your left shoe, but right-handed. Right-footed? Dexter.”

  “Thank you!”

  “I hope it fits. If that darned line jumper hadn’t got himself killed practically in my lap, I would have been home on time.”

  I blinked at her. “Uh, I find I’m astonished again. How is this place run? Is it an anarchy?”

  Hazel shrugged. Justin Foote looked thoughtful. “No, I wouldn’t say so. It is not that well organized.”

  We left right after dinner in that four-place spaceplane—Hazel and I, a small giant named Zeb, Hilda the tiny beauty, Lazarus, Dr. Jacob Burroughs, Dr. Jubal Harshaw, still another redhead—well, strawberry blonde—named Deety, and still another one who was not her twin but should have been, a sweet girl named Elizabeth and called Libby. I looked at these last two and whispered to Hazel, “More of Lazarus’s descendants? Or more of yours?”

  “No. I don’t think so. About Lazarus, I mean. I know they aren’t mine; I’m not quite that casual. One is from another universe and the other is more than a thousand years older than I am. Blame it on Gilgamesh. Uh…at dinner did you notice a little girl, another carrot top, paddling in the fountain?”

  “Yes. A cutie pie.”

  “She—” We started to load, all nine of us, into that four-place spaceplane. Hazel said, “Ask me later,” and climbed in. I started to follow. That small giant took my arm firmly, which stopped me, as he outmassed me by about forty kilos. “We haven’t met. I’m Zeb Carter.”

  “I’m Richard Ames Campbell, Zeb. Happy to meet you.”

  “And this is my mom, Hilda Mae.” He indicated the china doll.

  I did not have time to consider the improbability of his assertion. Hilda answered, “I’m his stepmother-in-law, part-time wife, and sometime mistress, Richard; Zebbie is always not quite in focus. But he’s sweet. And you belong to Hazel, so that gives you the keys to the city.” She reached up, put her hands on my shoulders, stood on tiptoes, and kissed me. Her kiss was quick but warm and not quite dry; it left me most thoughtful. “If you want anything, just ask for it. Zebbie will fetch it.”

  It seemed that there were five in that family (or s
ub-family; they were all part of the Long household or family, but I did not have it figured out): Zeb and his wife Deety, she being that first strawberry blonde whom I had met briefly, and her father, Jake Burroughs, whose wife was Hilda, but who was not mother of Deety—and the fifth was Gay. Zeb had said, “And Gay, of course. You know who I mean.”

  I asked Zeb, “Who is Gay?”

  “Not me. Or just as a hobby. Our car is Gay.”

  A sultry contralto said, “I’m Gay. Hi, Richard, you were in me once but I don’t think you remember it.”

  I decided that the Lethe field had some really bad side effects. If I had at some time been in a woman (she expressed it that way, not I) with a voice of that utterly seductive quality but I could not remember it…well, it was time to throw myself on the mercy of the court; I was obsolete.

  “Excuse me. I don’t see her. The lady named Gay.”

  “She’s no lady, she’s a trollop.”

  “Zebbie, you’ll regret that. He means I am not a woman, Richard; I’m this car you are about to climb into—and have been in before, but you were wounded and sick so I’m not hurt that you don’t remember me—”

  “Oh, but I do!”

  “You do? That’s nice. Anyhow I’m Gay Deceiver, and welcome aboard.”

  I climbed in and started to crawl through the cargo door back of the seats. Hilda snagged me. “Don’t go back there. Your wife is back there with two men. Give the girl a chance.”

  “And with Lib,” Deety added. “Don’t tease him. Aunt Sharpie. Sit down, Richard.” I sat down between them—a privilege, except that I wanted to see that space-warped bathroom. If there was one. If it was not a Lethe dream.

  Hilda settled against me like a cat and said, “You have received a bad first impression of Lazarus, Richard; I don’t want it to stay that way.”

  I admitted that on a scale of ten he scored a minus three with me.

  “I hope it doesn’t stay that way. Deety?”