The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

  “Message from the Manager!”

  I took my finger off the voice button, looked at Gwen. “Shall I open up?”

  “I think we must.”

  I touched the dilator button; the door spread open. A man in a proctor’s uniform stepped inside; I let the door snap back. He shoved a clipboard at me. “Sign here. Senator.” Then he pulled it back. “Say, you are the Senator from Standard Oil, ain’t you?”

  V

  “He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death.”

  H. H. MUNRO 1870-1916

  I said, “You have that backwards. Who are you? Identify yourself.”

  “Hunh? If you ain’t the Senator, forget it; I got the wrong address.” He started to back out and bumped his behind against the door—looked startled and turned his head, reached for the dilator button.

  I slapped his hand down. “I told you to identify yourself. That clown suit you’re wearing is no identification; I want to see your credentials. Gwen! Cover him!”

  “Right, Senator!”

  He reached for a hip pocket, made a fast draw. Gwen kicked whatever it was out of his hand; I chopped him in the left side of his neck. His clipboard went flying and down he went, falling with the curiously graceful leisureliness of low gravity.

  I knelt by him. “Keep him covered, Gwen.”

  “One second. Senator—watch him!” I pulled back and waited. She went on, “Okay now. But don’t get in my line of fire. please.”

  “Roger wilco.” I kept my eyes on our guest, collapsed loosely on the deck. His awkward posture seemed to say that he was unconscious. Nevertheless there was a chance that he was shamming; I had not hit him all that hard. So I applied my thumb to the left lower cervical pressure point, jabbing hard to cause him to scream and claw at the ceiling if he were awake. He did not move.

  So I searched him. First from behind, then I rolled him over. His trousers did not quite match his tunic, and they lacked the braid down the sides that a proctor’s uniform trousers should have. The tunic was not a good fit. His pockets held a few crowns in paper, a lottery ticket, and five cartridges. These last were Skoda 6.5 mm longs, unjacketed, expanding, used in pistols, tommies, and rifles—and illegal almost everywhere. No wallet, no IDs, nothing else.

  He needed a bath.

  I rocked back and stood up. “Keep your gun on him, Gwen. I think he’s a nightwalker.”

  “I think so, too. Please look at this, sir, while I keep him covered.” Gwen pointed at a pistol lying on the deck.

  Calling it a “pistol” dignifies it more than it deserves. It was a lethal weapon, homemade, of the category known traditionally as “rumble gun.” I studied it as thoroughly as I could without touching it. Its barrel was metal tubing so light in gauge that I wondered whether or not it had ever been fired. The handgrip was plastic, ground or whittled to conform to a fist. The firing mechanism was concealed by a metal cover held in place by (believe me!) rubber bands. That it was a single-shot weapon seemed certain. But with that flimsy barrel it could turn out to be a one-shot as well; it seemed to me to be almost as dangerous to the user as to his target.

  “Nasty little thing,” I said. “I don’t want to touch it; it’s a built-in booby trap.”

  I looked up at Gwen. She had him covered with a weapon quite as lethal but embodying all the best in modern gunsmith’s art, a nine-shot Miyako. “When he pulled a gun on you, why didn’t you shoot him? Instead of taking a chance on disarming him? You can get very dead that way.”

  “Because.”

  “Because what? If someone pulls a gun on you, kill him at once. If you can.”

  “I couldn’t. When you told me to cover him, my purse was ’way over there. So I covered him with this.” Something suddenly glinted in her other hand and she appeared to be a two-gun fighter. Then she clipped it back into her breast pocket—a pen. “I was caught flat-footed, boss. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, that I could make such mistakes! When I yelled at you to cover him, I was simply trying to distract him. I didn’t know you were heeled.”

  “I said I was sorry. Once I had time to get at my purse I got out this persuader. But I had to disarm him first.”

  I found myself wondering what a field commander could do with a thousand like Gwen. She masses about fifty kilos and stands not much over a meter and a half high—say one hundred sixty centimeters in her bare feet. But size has little to do with it, as Goliath found out a while back.

  On the other hand there aren’t a thousand Gwens anywhere. Perhaps just as well. “Were you carrying that Miyako in your purse last night?”

  She hesitated. “If I had been, the results might have been regrettable, don’t you think?”

  “I withdraw the question. I think our friend is waking up. Keep your gun on him while I find out.” Again I gave him my thumb.

  He yelped.

  “Sit up,” I said. “Don’t try to stand up; just sit up and place your hands on top of your head. What’s your name?”

  He urged on me an action both unlikely and lewd. “Now, now,” I reproved him, “let’s have no rudeness, please. Mistress Hardesty,” I went on, looking directly at Gwen, “would you enjoy shooting him just a little bit? A flesh wound? Enough to teach him to be polite.”

  “If you say so. Senator. Now?”

  “Well…let’s allow him that one mistake. But no second chance. Try not to kill him; we want him to talk. Can you hit him in the fleshy part of a thigh? Not hit the bone?”

  “I can try.”

  “That’s all anyone can ask. If you do hit a bone, it won’t be out of spite. Now let’s start over. What is your name?”

  “Uh… Bill.”

  “Bill, what is the rest of your name?”

  “Aw, just Bill. That’s all the name I use.”

  Gwen said, “A little flesh wound now. Senator? To sharpen his memory?”

  “Perhaps. Do you want it in your left leg. Bill? Or your right?”

  “Neither one! Look, Senator, ‘Bill’ actually is all the name I’ve got—and make her not point that thing at me, will you, please?”

  “Keep him covered. Mistress Hardesty. Bill, she won’t shoot you as long as you cooperate. What happened to your last name?”

  “I never had one. I was ‘Bill Number Six’ at the Holy Name Children’s Refuge. Dirtside, that is. New Orleans.”

  “I see. I begin to see. But what did it say on your passport when you came here?”

  “Didn’t have one. Just a contractor’s work card. It read ‘William No-Middle-Name Johnson.’ But that was just what the labor recruiter wrote on it. Look, she’s wiggling that gun at me!”

  “Then don’t do anything to annoy her. You know how women are.”

  “I sure do! They ought not to be allowed to have firearms!”

  “An interesting thought. Speaking of firearms—That one you were carrying: I want to unload it but I’m afraid that it might explode in my hand. So we will risk your hand instead. Without getting up, turn around so that your back is toward Mistress Hardesty. I am going to push your zapgun to where you can reach it. When I tell you to—not before!—you can take your hands down, unload it, then again put your hands on your head. But listen closely to this:

  “Mistress Hardesty, when Bill turns around, take a bead on his spine just below his neck. If he makes one little suspicious move—kill him! Don’t wait to be told, don’t give him a second chance, don’t make it a flesh wound—kill him instantly.”

  “With great pleasure. Senator!”

  Bill let out a moan.

  “All right. Bill, turn around. Don’t use your hands, just willpower.”

  He pivoted on his buttocks, scraping his heels to do so. I noted with approval that Gwen had shifted to the steady two-handed grip. I then took my cane and pushed Bill’s homemade gun along the deck to a point in front of him. “Bill, don’t make any sudden moves. Take your hands down. Unload your pistol. Leave it open with its load beside it. Then put your hands back on you
r head.”

  I backed up Gwen with my cane and held my breath while Bill did exactly what I had told him to do. I had no compunction about killing him and I felt sure that Gwen would kill him at once if he tried to turn that homemade gun on us.

  But I worried over what to do with his body. I didn’t want him dead. Unless you are on a battlefield or in a hospital, a corpse is an embarrassment, hard to explain. The management was bound to be stuffy about it.

  So I breathed a sigh of relief when he finished his assigned task and put his hands back on his head.

  I reached out with my cane, reversed, and dragged that nasty little gun and its one cartridge toward me—pocketed that cartridge, then ground a heel down onto its tubing barrel, crushing the muzzle and ruining the firing mockup, then said to Gwen, “You can ease up a little now. No need to kill him this instant. Drop back to flesh-wound alert.”

  “Aye aye. Senator. May I give him that flesh wound?”

  “No, no! Not if he behaves. Bill, you’re going to behave, aren’t you?”

  “Ain’t I been behaving? Senator, make her put the safety on that thing, at least!”

  “Now, now! Yours didn’t even have a safety. And you are in no position to insist on terms. Bill, what did you do with the proctor you slugged?”

  “Huh!”

  “Oh, come now. You show up here in a proctor’s tunic that does not fit you. And your pants don’t match your coat. I ask to see your credentials and you pull a gun—a rumble gun, for the love of Pete! And you haven’t bathed in—how long? You tell me. But tell me first what you did with the owner of that tunic. Is he dead? Or just sapped and stuffed into a closet? Answer quickly or I’ll ask Mistress Hardesty to give you a memory stimulant. Where is he?”

  “I don’t know! I didn’t do it.”

  “Now, now, dear boy, don’t lie to me.”

  “The truth! On my mother’s honor it’s the simple truth!”

  I had doubts about his mother’s honor but it would have been unmannerly to express them, especially in dealing with so sorry a specimen. “Bill,” I said gently, “you are not a proctor. Must I explain why I am certain?” (Chief Proctor Franco is a System-class martinet. If one of his stooges had shown up for morning roll call looking—and stinking—the way this poor slob did, the delinquent would have been lucky merely to have been shipped dirtside.) “I will if you insist. Did you ever have a pin stuck under a fingernail, then the outer end of the pin heated? It improves one’s memory.”

  Gwen said eagerly, “A bobby pin works better. Senator—more mass to hold the heat. I’ve got one right here. Can I do it to him? Can I?”

  “You mean, ‘May I,’ do you not? No, dear girl, I want you to continue to keep Bill under your sights. If it becomes necessary to resort to such methods, I won’t ask a lady to do it for me.”

  “Aw, Senator, you’ll get soft-hearted and let up on him just when he’s ready to spout. Not me! Let me show you—please!”

  “Well…”

  “Keep that bloodthirsty bitch away from me!” Bill’s voice was shrill.

  “Bill! You will apologize to the lady at once. Otherwise I will let her do to you whatever she wishes.”

  He moaned again. “Lady, I apologize. I’m sorry. But you scare it right out of me. Please don’t use a bobby pin on me—I seen a guy once had that done to him.”

  “Oh, it could be worse,” Gwen assured him pleasantly. “Twelve-gauge copper wire conducts the heat much better and there are interesting places in the male body to use it. More efficient. Quicker results.” She added thoughtfully, “Senator, I’ve got some copper wire in my small case. If you’ll hold this pistol for a moment, I’ll get it for you.”

  “Thank you, my dear, but it may not be needed; I mink Bill wants to say something.”

  “It’s no trouble, sir. Don’t you want me to have it ready?”

  “Perhaps. Let’s see. Bill? What did you do with that proctor?”

  “I didn’t, I never saw him! Just two skins said they had a cash job for me. I don’t make ’em, never seen ’em, they ain’t with it. But there are always new ones and Fingers said they passed. He—”

  “Hold it. Who is ‘Fingers’?”

  “Uh, he’s mayor of our alley. Okay?”

  “More details, please. Your alley?”

  “Man’s got to sleep somewhere, ain’t he? VIP like you has got a compartment with his name on it. I should be so lucky! Home is where it is—right?”

  “I think you’re telling me that your alley is your home. Where is it? Ring, radius, and acceleration.”

  “Uh…that’s not exactly how it is.”

  “Be rational. Bill. If it’s inside the main cylinder, not off in one of the appendages, its location can be described that way.”

  “Maybe so but I can’t describe it that way because that’s not how you get there. And I won’t lead you the way you have to go because—” His face screwed up in utter despair and he looked about ten years old. “Don’t let her hot-wire me and don’t let her shoot me a little bit at a time. Please! Just space me and get it over with—okay?”

  “Senator?”

  “Yes, Mistress Hardesty?”

  “Bill’s afraid that, if you hurt him enough, he will tell you where he hides to sleep. Other nightwalkers sleep there, too; that’s the point. I suspect that the Golden Rule isn’t big enough to hide him from those others. If he tells you where they sleep, they’ll kill him. Probably not quickly.”

  “Bill, is that why you’re being stubborn?”

  “Talked too much already. Space me.”

  “Not while you’re alive. Bill; you know things I need to know and I intend to squeeze them out of you if it takes copper wire and Mistress Hardesty’s most whimsical notions. But I may not need the answer to the question I asked you. What happens to you if you tell me or show me where your alley is?”

  He was slow in answering; I let him take his time. At last he said in a low voice, “Nosies caught a skin six seven months ago. Cracked him open. Not from my alley thank Jesus. His alley was a maintenance space near a hundred ten and down at full gee.

  “So the nosies gassed it and a lot of skins died…but this skin they turned loose. Cold help that was to him. He hadn’t been walking twenty-four hours when he was grabbed and locked in with rats. Hungry ones.”

  “I see.” I glanced at Gwen.

  She gulped and whispered, “Senator, no rats. I don’t like rats. Please.”

  “Bill, I withdraw the question about your alley. Your hide-out. And I won’t ask you to identify any other nightwalker. But I expect you to answer anything else fully and quickly. No more stalling. No waste of time. Agreed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go back. These two strangers offered you a job. Tell me about it.”

  “Uh, they tell me just a few minutes of razzle-dazzle; nothing to it. They want me to wear this jacket, make like a nosie. Bong the door here, ask for you. ‘Message from the Manager,’ that’s what I have to say. Then the rest like we did—you know. When I say, ‘Hey? You ain’t the Senator! Or are you?’, they are supposed to close in and arrest you.”

  Bill looked at me accusingly. “But you messed it up. You fouled it, not me. You didn’t do anything like you was supposed to. You clamped the door on me—and you shouldn’t uh. And you turned out to be the Senator after all…and you had her with you.” His voice was especially bitter when he referred to Gwen.

  I could understand his resentment. How is a sincere criminal, trying hard, going to get ahead in his profession if his victim fails to cooperate? Almost all crime depends on the acquiescence of the victim. If the victim refuses his assigned role, the criminal is placed at a disadvantage, one so severe that it usually takes an understanding and compassionate judge to set things right. I had broken the rules; I had fought back.

  “You’ve certainly had a run of bad luck. Bill. Let’s check this ‘Message from the Manager’ you were supposed to deliver. Keep him covered. Mistress Hardesty.”

/>   “Can I take my hands down?”

  “No.” The clipboard was still on the deck, between Gwen and Bill but a bit toward me; I could reach it without crossing her line of fire. I picked it up.

  Clipped to the board was a receipt form for messages, with a place for me (or someone) to sign. Clipped beside it was the familiar blue envelope of Mackay Three Planets; I opened it.

  The message was in five-letter code groups, about fifty of them. Even the address was in code. Written in longhand above the address was “Sen. Cantor, St. Oil.”

  I tucked it into a pocket without comment. Gwen queried me with her eyes; I managed not to see it. “Mistress Hardesty, what shall we do with Bill?”

  “Scrub him!”

  “Eh? Do you mean, ‘Waste him’? Or are you volunteering to scrub his back?”

  “Heavens, no! Both. Neither. I am suggesting that we shove him into the refresher and leave him there until he’s sanitary. Bathed, hot water and lots of suds. Hair shampooed. Clean fingernails and toenails. Everything. Don’t let him out until he whiffs clean.”

  “You would let him use your ’fresher?”

  “Things being the way they are, I don’t expect to use it again. Senator, I’m tired of his stink.”

  “Well, yes, he does put one in mind of rotten potatoes on a hot day in the Gulf Stream. Bill, take off your clothes.”

  The criminal class is the most conservative group in any society; Bill was as reluctant to strip down in the presence of a lady as he had been to divulge the hideout of his fellow outcasts. He was shocked that I would suggest it, horrified that a lady would go along with this indecent proposal. On the latter point I might have agreed with him yesterday…but I had learned that Gwen was not easily daunted. In fact I think she enjoyed it.

  As he peeled down. Bill gained a bit of my sympathy; he looked like a plucked chicken, with a woebegone expression to match. When he was down to undershorts (gray with dirt), he stopped and looked at me. “All the way,” I said briskly. “Then duck into the ’fresher and take the works. If you do a poor job, you’ll do it over. If you stick your nose outside in less than thirty minutes, I won’t bother to check you; I’ll simply send you back in. Now get those drawers off—fast!”