Strange Days: Fabulous Journeys With Gardner Dozois (61 page)

Rowan started down the slope toward the ocean, his feet slipping on the grass, breaking at last into a ponderous trot. He was almost there. Hope opened like a wound inside him, molten and amazing.

Something slammed into his ribcage like a white-hot sword, sending him staggering back, knocking the breath and the hope out of him. For a second, the incredible shock of the impact dissolved all illusions, and he remembered, and knew that again he had failed to escape.
Someday!
he shouted in a great silent puff of pain and rage and sudden terrible knowledge.
Someday!

Then another blow took him over the heart and drove him into darkness.

The fat man worked the action of the tranquilizer rifle and ejected a gleaming metal dart. “My God!” he breathed, reverentially.

Up the slope, the technicians were already reprogramming the mobile computers for the next run-through, using the stereo plotting tanks to set up a paradigm describing all the possible sequences and combinations of sequences that might apply, an exercise in four-dimensional topography and systems-flow. Of course, the computers did all the real work: controlling the sequencing, selecting among tables of alternatives as the real-world situation altered and reprogramming themselves on the fly, coordinating a thousand physical details such as the locking of doors and the blocking of certain corridors that kept the human subject restricted to a manageable spatial network of routes and choices, directing the human “beaters” who helped keep the subject “in the chute,” triggering previously implanted fantasy fugue sequences such as the car crash and timing them so that they melded smoothly with real-world action. And much else besides. Nevertheless, the human technicians considered themselves to be overworked, and all made a point of looking harried and rather ostentatiously tired.

A small, foxy-faced man appeared at the fat man’s elbow. “Very nice,” he said briskly, rubbing his hands. “As good a show as I promised you, Senator, I think you’ll agree with that. And of course,” he added piously, “so valuable therapeutically.” He smiled. “Always so many possibilities! Will he get to Hamilton, or end up in Danvers? Will he kill the old man or not? Will he find the car or let me steer him to the tube? An enormous but finite number of choices; aesthetically it’s quite elegant. I’m always reminded of the medieval theologies. Free will operating within a framework of predetermination. Of course,” he said, smiling ingratiatingly at the fat man, “you realize Who that makes us.”

The fat man wasn’t listening. His face was beaded with sweat. “That was fine,” he said. “My God, Doctor, that was very fine.” His eyes remained glassy for a moment longer, and then animation came back into his features. He broke the rifle and started to hand it to the foxy-faced man, then hesitated, and with an eager shy deference that was obviously foreign to so important a man, asked, “How long does it take to get him ready again? I mean, it’s hours yet until dark, and I was wondering if it would be possible?”

The doctor smiled indulgently. “Always time for one more,” he said.

A Cat Horror Story

Introduction to A Cat Horror Story

I’m not a fan of reality television, Jerry Springer or Ricki Lake, wrestling, soccer, Star Trek conventions, multi-volume fat fantasy . . . or stories told from the point of view of Cute Little Animals. That being said, I’ll fess up to being a cat lover (not that kind!) and having co-edited with Gardner not one, but
two
anthologies about cats in our
Magic Tales
series for Ace Books. (Okay, and one about dogs, too.)

Gardner and his wife, author Susan Casper, usually have about nine hundred and seventy-three cats running around their apartment in any given year—well, that might be a
slight
exaggeration. I would usually have one to two cats in my household. So I suppose it was only natural that Gardner and I would eventually come up with the idea of editing the
Magicats
volumes. Our idea was to buy the best cat stories ever written in the genre, stories that would confront, unnerve, and also push all the cat lovers’ buttons. But being a pretentious intellectual, I was a bit embarrassed and thought of the volumes as being purely commercial endeavors. After all, would Gardner and I want
CO-EDITOR, MAGICATS I & II
etched onto our respective tombstones?

I probably won’t be letting the cat out of the bag—
oye
and
ouch!–
if I tell you that Gardner has become one of the most important and influential editors ever to work in the genre. He has been as important to the growth of the field as John W. Campbell was before him. But Gardner is also one of the very best short story writers ever to have worked in the genre.

And I chose his Cute Little Animal story to illustrate my point.

The protagonists of “A Cat Horror Story” are indeed cute little animals, but you’ll soon forget about that because Gardner is doing an authorial tight wire act here. As you read, the familiar world will waver and begin to change as Gardner transmogrifies it into something gunmetal gray, deadly, and alien. Soon, you should be seeing yourself as the alien . . . soon doctors and toys; canned food and cars (you know, those fast dead things); the starry sky and the harvest moon, which Butler called “the lantern of the night,” will never seem the same again.

Gardner has created—or perhaps reproduced!—a detailed and logical mindset for his “People,” and all the details that define this “cute little animal culture” ring true. Yet dark as this story may be, it is moon-struck with humor, poignant irony, and satire.

You should take the title of
this
story literally.

Gardner also honors what has gone before in the genre. If you have read Clifford D. Simak’s brilliant classic
City,
a collection of “the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north,” you’ll see the
homage
in this story about cats.

Gardner is a precise, lyrical stylist. He is a deep, humane writer who can tease the humor out of tragedy . . . and turn a story about cute little animals into something resonant and mythical, something you won’t easily forget.

Now you be careful the next time you get into your fast, dead thing!

Jack Dann

A Cat Horror Story

Darkness. The smell of grass, and wet earth, and fog. The night moved through the clearing like a river. A few distant pinpricks of stars overhead, faint and far and pale. Somewhere down the hill, the grass rustled as a mouse fled through it, but the People were not hunting tonight.

Eyes gleamed in the night. Occasionally, a tail would thump the ground, once, twice, and then fall still. Very occasionally—an act of bravado—one of the People would slowly, ostentatiously, lick a paw. Then stop.

You could smell the excitement in the wet air, the uneasiness, the fear.

The wind brought the distant sound of a dog barking, and the ears of the People pricked forward instinctively, but, on this night of all nights, there was certainly no time for dogs.

Somewhere down below, in one of the human lairs at the foot of the hill, you could hear a human
¹
calling for one of the People in that shrill mixture of human talk, strange wet noises, and oddly garbled and nonsensically out-of-context phrases of the True Tongue that humans used to try to summon the People who were lair-mates with them, but none of the People were interested in Food tonight, even the fattest or the hungriest of them, not even when the human made an enticing rattling noise with a Food-Opening-Stick against a Cold Round Thing of Food. After a while, the human ceased his plaintive calls, and there was silence again, except for the human sounds riding the night air: doors slamming, voices, the annoying clamoring and shrieking of the Noisy Dead Things with which the humans insisted on cluttering the lairs, the growling of the Fast Dead Things which the humans kept as slaves and actually encouraged to
swal
low
them! (although they made the Things spit them up again later) . . . but the People were used to those sounds, and ignored them.

At last, when the sharp smells of excitement could get no stronger, when their eyes could grow no wider or wilder, and when their tails were beginning to lash with impatience with a noise like a strong wind slashing through the branches of trees, the full moon rose, immense and pale and round, its pockmarked face pitiless and remote and cold, and that cruel orb was reflected full and bright in all the watching eyes of all the People who waited below.

One of the People stretched and yawned, showing all his teeth. His name was Caesar
²
, and he was known as a good hunter, and a fierce defender of his territory. In fact, he had a bloody feud of long duration and rich tradition going with Jefferson, whose territory adjoined his own, but Jefferson sat quietly beside him now, and did no more than turn a slightly disdainful glance at Caesar’s display of teeth. This was no time for fighting, or mating, or for territoriality. The Hunter Light, the Death Light, The Night Face, That-Which-Lights-the-Way-to-Kill, was in the sky, and that had always meant the same thing, for uncounted generations back to the beginning of all.

It was time to tell stories, under the cold, watchful gaze of The Night Face.

“This I have seen,” Caesar began. “I was hunting with the tom named Bigfoot, and we came to the place where all the grass stops, and for almost as far as you can see, until the trees start again far away, the ground is flat and hard and smells of Dead Things. I warned Bigfoot that this was Ghostland, the territory of demons
³
and monsters, but his hunting blood was up, and the hunting is good under the trees at night, and he would not listen. And so we went out across the hard, bad-smelling stuff. Out into Ghostland.”

Caesar looked away for a moment, out toward the far horizon, then turned his eyes back to the People. “We walked out across Ghostland. The Dead Stuff was cold and hard under our paws, and we could hear our claws skritch on it. The wind carried the voices of ghosts as it whined past us. Suddenly, there was a bright light, far away, but coming closer. Closer! I froze with fear, but, in his eagerness, Bigfoot went on. There was a growling noise, louder and louder, like all the dogs that ever were born, growling at once. And then there was a light, blinding me. The light! So bright, so close, as if The Night Face had fallen from the sky down on top of me! Then a Fast Dead Thing went by with a roar that shook the world and a blast of wind that nearly knocked me over, and with a smell of burning. I heard Bigfoot scream.”

Caesar paused, and the rest of the People crept a step or two closer to hear him. “When the Fast Dead Thing was gone,” he continued, “I went back, step by slow step, to see what had happened to Bigfoot.” Caesar paused again, significantly. “He was
dead.
The Fast Dead Thing had crushed him. His guts were everywhere, torn from his body, and his blood was all around. The middle of his body was
flat,
as though it had no bones in it anymore. He was mashed into the dead black ground of Ghostland, in a puddle of his own guts and blood. On his face was a look of fear and horror such as I hope never to see again.”

The People shivered. After a moment, Caesar said, “Then I heard it coming
back.
The Fast Dead Thing. I saw its light. It was coming back from the way it had gone. Coming back for
me.
I’m not ashamed to tell you all that I ran like a kitten! And ever since then, when I go near Ghostland, I can hear the Fast Dead Thing hunting for me, roaring back and forth, hunting through the night to
find
me.”

There was an awed silence, and then a young queen named Katy said, “I hear they can get you
anywhere,
the Fast Dead Things.” She looked around her nervously. “Even inside the lair. There are some of them who can follow you right
in,
and get you even when you’re inside. My mother told me that she used to get chased by a little one that roared and whooshed and tried to pull her tail.”

“That was just a Small Roaring Thing,” a tom named Pooter said. “The humans play with them. They’re not really dangerous—though, of course, it’s better to stay away from them, just to be safe. But the Fast Dead Things, now—they can kill you even when they’re
asleep!”

“Nothing can kill you while it’s asleep,” Jefferson said.

Pooter bristled, then licked his foot in a slow and insulting way that might have been provocation for a fight on another evening. “Yes? Well,
I
have seen
this.
There was one of the People, her name was Lady Jane, and she went near one of the Fast Dead Things at night, while it was sleeping. And she crawled inside the top of the Thing, because the night was cold, and it was warm deep up inside the Thing. And in the morning, as I was watching, a human came and made the Fast Dead Thing swallow it, and then the Thing woke up.” He shuddered. “It growled, and then it roared, and then Lady Jane
screamed,
and I smelled the hot smell of her blood. The human got out, and made the Thing open up its smaller mouth in the front, and then he lifted Lady Jane
out.
And she was dead.
Dead,
and cut into pieces! Her head was cut nearly all the way off, hanging by some fur!”

“Dead!” some of the People moaned. “Dead!”

A scarred old feral tom named Blackie, who had one ear torn nearly to rags, said, “You don’t need Dead Things to kill you, young ones!” He lashed his tail and made the clicking and smacking noise that signified deep contempt among the People.
“Humans
will do the job readily enough! Yes, your precious humans, the things you all
live
with, willingly! When I was a kitten, some humans put me in a sack
⁴
, and threw me in the river. Ai, the horror of it!” He shivered and shook himself convulsively. “It was dark and hot and smothering, and I couldn’t breathe, and then I was
falling,
twisting and tumbling and falling, and there was no
air
to breathe! My claws were sharp in those days, People, lucky for me, and I ripped my way out. But then I was
in the water!
In the water! I was
under
the water, with it all around me—over my
head!
I had to
swim,
swim for my life, and I nearly died before my head broke the surface and I could take a breath, and then I had to swim for a long time before my feet found the ground again, and all the while the water was
pulling
at me, sucking at me, trying to pull me down to death!”

A low growl went around the circle of the People. Their eyes gleamed.

“My
human goes in the water every day,” a young queen named Spooky said. “On
purpose.
She lets it go all over her! She doesn’t try to escape at
all!
Sometimes she sits
under
the water, with only her head outside it!”

The People moaned in horror. “Ah, they are strange creatures,” Jefferson muttered. “Strange!”

“But those were Rogues, those humans who tried to kill you,” a young tom named Bangers said, somewhat uneasily, as though seeking reassurance. “We’ve all been chased and kicked by Rogues now and again, or had stones or Hard Clattering Things thrown at us. That doesn’t mean that our humans would hurt us.
My
humans wouldn’t hurt
me.
They like me! They feed me and pat
⁵
me whenever I want them to!”

“I
had humans once, too, later on,” Blackie said bitterly. “They fed me and they patted me—and then they cut my balls off!”

Bangers hissed involuntarily, and many of the People blew their tails out to several times their normal size.

“It could happen to
you,
too, young one!” Blackie said. “Don’t you think it couldn’t! You think you’re safe with your humans because they feed you and give you a warm place to sleep, but you never know when they’re going to
turn
on you and torture
⁶
you. You’ll never know
why
they do it, either, but sooner or later, they will. They
all
will.
None
of them are any different!

“They wait until you’re
sick,”
a burly tom named Hobbes said. “They wait until you’re feeling really bad, and then they take you to the Pain Place, to the Torture Place, and they hurt you
more—
”

Another tom shuddered. “It’s true! The humans there stick things up your ass! And they
stab
you, with things that hurt! And they drain your
blood
out of you!”

“They
cut
you!” a queen named Jasmine said, her voice thrilling with horror. “They cut you
open!
My humans took me there, to the Pain Place, with all its bad smells and its sick smells and the sounds of the People screaming in agony while
dogs
sit around and watch them, and they
left
me there, locked in a Box-You-Can’t-Get-Out-Of, and I went to sleep, and when I woke up, my belly had been slashed open! I could
feel
the cut, deeper than a cut from any fight. It hurt for a long time, even when my humans came and got me and took me back to the lair again. It hurt for a
long
time!”

They were crouched close together now, almost touching, their heads in a circle.

“They
kill
People there, too,” Blackie said. “The humans kill them. And not just the humans who live in the Pain Place.
Your
precious humans. The very same ones who live with you and give you Food.
They
kill you, themselves!”

There were a few wails of protest, and the People pressed closer together, shuddering.

“I have
seen
it,” Blackie continued inexorably. “When they cut my balls off, in the Pain Place, before they took me back to the lair and I ran away, they brought my lair-mate in, an old queen named Stuff who had lived with the humans before I joined them.
Our
humans brought her in, and they held her down while she fought to get away, both of them held her down, and then another human stabbed her with a Pain Stick, and she struggled for a while, and then she
died!
I could smell that she was dead! They’d killed her!
Our
humans! They held her down and killed her—and they
patted
her while they were doing it!”

Someone moaned with dread, and then fell silent.

“And that’s what will happen to
all
of you! Every one of you! If a dog or a Fast Dead Thing or some other kind of monster or demon doesn’t get you, then, at the end, your own
humans
will kill you!”

This was almost too much. They pressed close together for comfort, too scared even to wail or moan now.

There was a crazed light in Blackie’s eyes
.
“I saw Stuff’s ghost last night. I often see it, after dark. Her fur is like ice, like frost on a winter morning, and her dead eyes give back no light . . .”

The moon was high and full above them now, and it seemed to tug on their souls, as if it would suck them out through the tops of their heads and up into the mysterious depths of the night sky, where they would fall forever through the dark.

“Yes!” a tom shrieked. “Yes! I have
seen
it
!
Its feet leave no mark on the grass when it walks, and its eyes are like deep pools of black water! And one night, when everyone slept except me, I could hear it outside, scratching on the door, trying to get in—”

A huge Dead Thing went by overhead, roaring, a blazing light flying through the night sky like a terrible gazing eye
,
seeming to pass almost close enough to touch, and the People crouched low on the hillside until the monster had rumbled away into distance and was gone.

In the sudden shocked silence, Caesar said, almost with satisfaction, “The Ghostway is around us, always.” And the People shivered deliciously, and moved closer in the night, and told their stories until the moon went down, as they have for a million generations, and as they will for a million more, until the Earth goes cold, and even the People are forgotten.