The Cold Equations (43 page)

* * *

He tried to see past Selsin's meaningless smile, wishing he had let Laughing Girl stay so she could tell him if they were only taunting him before they killed him.

"You will ride one of the dragon-beasts, if you are ready now," Selsin said. "When you call Earth from your camp today, I will speak to them, too. I want no more misunderstandings."

"What will you tell them?" he asked.

"The truth of it all, and how the fat one boasted and insulted my race, and then ran. I will offer the friendship of my race under the condition that no more of his kind ever be sent here and that you, or others of your choice, be in charge of all operations here.

"I suppose," Selsin added, "that your Supreme Council would like to hear what I have to tell them?"

There was a flash of black across the swale and he saw Laughing Girl running toward them; disobeying his order, after all, and come back to fight beside him. But now she was running with her tail up, her white teeth grinning, and happiness like something tangible about her.

She was an Altairian—she
knew
that everything was suddenly all right. There could be no doubt whatever about Selsin's sincerity, about the future that lay ahead for all of them.

Even for Laughing Girl's race, although she did not yet know it. Loper, in his simple wisdom, had made it possible for Earth to regain the friendship of a badly needed world. The Council, in return, could do no less than to promptly overrule the ERB's classification of the Altairians as "Animals."

"The Supreme Council," he said in answer to Selsin's question, "is going to be delighted by what you have to tell them. Let's go."

Editor's note: There is a strong moral component in most of Godwin's stories. Courage, by itself, is never enough. There also has to be an underlying sense of empathy for other creatures. In Godwin's universe, selfishness is perhaps the ultimate sin. We've seen that theme appear many times in his stories. And, here again:

The morning was, to Jim Hart, exactly like any other June morning but for the presence of Gwen—eight weeks was not yet long enough for him to take her as fully for granted as he would in the months and years to come. She hummed to herself as she finished wiping the breakfast dishes. Out on the porch Susie and six of the kittens, having just lapped up their own breakfast, were engaged in the after-meal practice of making themselves neat and clean as is the manner of cats. The sky was a flawless sapphire blue with the touch of the sun as warm and gentle as a benediction while the meadowlarks filled the air with their soft melodies.

There was nothing about the morning's soft beauty to presage sudden and vicious peril.

He checked to make sure he had his surveying compass as he stood in the doorway then glanced across the brush-and-tree-dotted flat that extended to the mouth of the canyon a thousand feet away. There the flat broke abruptly along the high, steep bank, a trail leading from the cabin to the break. There was no sign of the pup along the trail, which meant Flopper had gone on up the canyon—he had made so many trips to the uranium prospect that spring that Flopper knew as well as he where they were going for the day.

Gwen wiped the last dish and came over to stand beside him, her head leaned against his shoulder.

"So it's off for the day you go again." She sighed. "I'm glad this is the last day of it."

"Less than a day—I'll be back by noon. Also, from now on we're all set—I found that uranium myself and it's good. My company will take it without a doubt and then I'll be a well-to-do uranium property owner rather than just an employed mining engineer. Doesn't that sound like a bright and pleasant future for us?"

"It sounds wonderful," she agreed. "You can be home all the time and every young wife should have a man around the place—preferably her husband. And another thing—" She looked at the cat and kittens. "If you had to go back to work and they sent you off to South America or somewhere—what would become of
them
?"

"You gave yourself responsibility when you picked them up. You shouldn't be so soft-hearted. 'Poor little things—out by this lonely road and it's raining and they're cold and hungry and have no home.' That's what you said, and now we have to buy a case of canned milk every month for them. If I had my
own
way—"

"You did," she pointed out sweetly. "You said, 'Don't just stand there—let's load 'em in the car and be going.' "

"Well—" He considered his defense. "I was weak that night."

"And the pup, Flopper?" she demanded.

"Another weak spell—like the day I finally consented to marry you."

"
You
consented?" She straightened with indignation. "
You
consented?"

"Mm-hmm." He nodded with grave seriousness. "I felt sorry for you."

"Why, you—you—" She stuttered, and tried again. "
You
consented? You—"

"Please, Gwen, do you have to keep repeating everything I tell you, over and over?"

"
You
told me—I didn't—I mean—
oh
!" She struck a small fist against his arm. "You're just trying to make me mad again—why are you always doing that?"

"Practice," he said succinctly and put his arm around her shoulders to draw her close to him. "When we have our first big fight, we don't want to be amateurs, you know."

"One of these days," she said, "you're going to
really
make me mad," but the threat of her words was belied by the way she once again rested her head against his shoulder. "Now, admit the truth—you
wanted
to give Flopper a home and you
wanted
to give Susie and the kittens a home, didn't you?"

"O.K.—I admit it," he said. "It seems to be a human characteristic to want pets around. Illogical—but human nature."

"Logic,
fooey
!" She turned her head and made a face at him. "A computing machine is infallibly logical, but do you think I'd ever want to marry one?"

He raised his brows. "I certainly hope not, that would be ridiculous. Also, you'd get bored with life-with-an-adding-machine."

"I'd sue it for divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. Imagine how life would be if you had to always be logical in everything you did and never did anything because you
wanted
to, like going swimming and playing games and giving homes to lost dogs and cats and—and—" She broke off to stare past him, toward the mouth of the canyon. "
Look!
" She pointed, sudden excitement in her voice. "There alongside the trail—the spotted kitten. He wasn't here for breakfast—there he is now. Susie got her fourth one yesterday and now
he's
found one!"

He followed her gaze and saw the half-grown spotted kitten some three hundred feet away and perhaps fifty feet to one side of the trail. As he watched the kitten circled a few steps, carefully keeping its eyes on whatever it was circling as it did so. It was, he saw, holding something at bay in a small area free of brush but was not yet making an effort to kill it.

"It's another one," he said, turning back into the cabin. "I'll kill it on my way to work."

He went into the bedroom and came back with a .38 automatic pistol in his hand. "I used to be a pretty good shot with one of these," he remarked in explanation. "A shovel would do just as well, but I think I'll see if I've lost the ability to hit the broad side of a barn."

"Do a good job," she said. "As soon as I sweep and do a few other things, I'm going up to the creek to get some watercress for salad. I hope—" She frowned worriedly. "I hope this is the last one—I'm afraid of the things."

"Susie would have had this one by now if it hadn't been for her having to take time off to drink her breakfast milk and wash her face. The wind's in the wrong direction for her to smell it yet, but she'd have spotted it before it got much closer to the cabin." He stepped off the porch and started up the trail. "I'll be back about noon. Be careful when you go after that watercress and don't wear those idiotic cutaway moccasins."

"I won't," she answered, for once not disputing his opinion of her footwear.

He was still a hundred feet from the spotted kitten when he heard the low, dry buzz. It was a rattlesnake, as he had known it would be. It was coiled, its head weaving restlessly, and the kitten was watching it with cold intentness. The rattlesnake turned away from the kitten as he came up to them and tried to slither away to the cover of the nearest bush. The kitten darted around in front of it, just beyond striking range, and cut off its retreat.

The snaked stopped, to coil and wait with its head poised to strike. The kitten stood before it as motionless as a little statue, only a faint tremor to the end of its tail to indicate any emotion. That, and its eyes. They were, as Hart observed on previous such occasions, quite wide and green and mercilessly cold. There was always something
different
about the look in a cat's eyes when it watched a snake; a concentration, a hair-trigger alertness, and an icy, implacable hatred. Yet, despite the kitten's alertness, there was an air of calmness in the way it watched the snake, almost contempt. It knew instinctively that the snake was deadly dangerous but that instinctive knowledge was outweighed by the other instinctive knowledge; the knowledge that the snake was afraid of
it
and would never dare to deliberately come within striking range. The rattlesnake would never dare approach the kitten; it had but one desire—to escape.

* * *

The two were motionless for a few seconds with the snake waiting to strike, its triangular head, two-thirds as wide as Hart's hand, poised and ready. Then the snake broke and tried to dart away from the kitten. The kitten flashed in front of it, still just out of striking range, and the snake stopped to coil and squirm in indecision, its red tongue flickering in and out and its buzzing rising higher and higher in pitch as its agitation increased.

Hart looked back toward the cabin and saw that Susie and the kittens were still on the porch. He raised his voice and called to her: "Susie—
snake!
"

He had taught her to recognize the word and she was off the porch at once, to come trotting up the trail with the five kittens stringing out behind her and Gwen standing in the doorway, shading her eyes against the sun with one hand as she watched.

He turned back to the snake. It wouldn't be long—not after Susie got there.

The snake's head was weaving restlessly as it tried to evade the stare of the kitten and find a way to escape. It tried again to dart away, and again the kitten flashed in front of it to cut off its retreat. The snake stopped, unable to reach the safety of the bush, unable in its fear to pass near the kitten. Its fear was visibly increasing and so was its hate; a vicious, reptilian hatred for the half-grown kitten that stood before it. But, greater than the hatred was the fear; the old, old instinctive fear of a cat that was common to all snakes.

It was strange, the way snakes feared cats. One strike with that broad head and there would be enough venom in the kitten's body to kill a dozen like it, yet the snake did not dare to strike. Should the kitten come within striking range, it would strike—but it was afraid to approach the kitten with the purpose of striking it. There was something about the way the kitten stared at it, the cold lack of fear, that the snake could not understand and feared. And the longer the kitten stared at the snake, the greater the snake's fear would become.

There were animals that enjoyed an immunity from the bite of a rattlesnake; a hog, protected by its fat, could kill a rattlesnake; a band of sheep, protected by their wool, would blindly trample a rattlesnake to death. Some animals could kill rattlesnakes; a deer could, some small, fast dogs could. But the rattlesnake feared none of these, would try to strike any of them. Yet the kitten, completely vulnerable with neither wool nor fat to protect it, did not fear the snake and knew the snake feared it. It was something peculiar to cats and snakes; an inherent hatred and enmity that went back to the dawn of creation.

Susie trotted up and took in the scene with one swift glance. The kitten relaxed as he turned the job over to the more capable paws of his mother and she stood a moment just beyond striking range, studying the snake. It coiled closer, afraid to try to escape from her for such an action would render it vulnerable by forcing it to uncoil, knowing in its tiny reptilian mind that in the lean, wise old cat before it was Death.

Susie paused only briefly in her appraisal of it, then she stepped forward with her eyes fixed on the wide-jawed head and her body as tense as a coiled spring. She calmly, deliberately, came within striking range and waited for it to strike at her, one forepaw slightly lifted. The snake struck, then; the very thing Susie had intended for it to do. Its head flicked forward in a motion too fast for Hart to see and at the same time, and even faster, there was the flash of Susie's paw. That, and her backward leap.

It was a blur of movement too swift for human eyes to follow but in that split-second the snake had struck, its fangs had encountered only thin air where Susie had been and, simultaneously, it had felt the sharp rip of her claws down its venomous head. Then they were poised again, as before, but this time there were three slashes down the top of the snake's head from which blood was beginning to ooze.

She moved in on it again, her pupils two razor-edge slits in eyes that were like hard emeralds. She came within range and the snake struck again. It was the same as before; the invisibly swift stab of the white fangs was too slow to equal the speed of the slashing claws. There were more bloody furrows down the snake's head when the blur of movement was over. The next time there would be still more, and it would go on until the snake's head was half torn from its body and it was dead. It could end no other way; it was not the nature of a cat to permit a snake to live.

There was insane fury, now, to the quick coiling of the snake, the high, shrill buzzing of its tail and the frantic flickering of its head. It was reaching the stage where its rage and fear was nothing short of madness and it would deliberately attack anything in the world—except a cat. Hart threw a cartridge into the chamber of the .38. He had no desire to see anything die a slow death, not even a rattlesnake. Although, it seemed to him, there was something downright splendid about the way Susie—and all other cats—could put the fear of Eternity into man's traditional enemy, the serpent.