Robert Adams - The Clan of the Cats

“And Harel is involved in this?” asked James Bedford.

“It would seem so,” the senator replied. “Rather deeply involved, I would imagine, based on Barislev’s real eagerness to catch up to the man.”

“Then God help him,” said James, with feeling. “I detest him, but …”

“God is about the only force that could help him,” remarked his uncle dryly, “with the KGB sniffing on his heels. They’re most efficient, you know, James, and, not to accuse them of ruthlessness, they play rough, to win, no matter what the cost.”

“Then the danger to me is over, I take it?” inquired James Bedford. “I can stop carrying this bomb-loaded pistol and move over to a normal hotel on the mainland and stop tripping over security types every time I turn around, Uncle Taylor?”

“Uhh, not quite yet, James,” came the reply. “For one thing, Barislev and the Russians still don’t know for sure just how many people were involved in this thing of theirs. Moreover, our own types have come up with another foreign group that has evinced more than just a passing interest in you and your movements, of late. I don’t know exactly who this group is or represents—the VIPSS won’t tell even me, which could mean a lot or nothing at all—but they seem to be some worried, and anything that worries them should certainly worry me … and you, especially. So keep your pistol loaded and on you, at least within reach, at all times, keep your eyes open and don’t try to slip away from those who are there to protect you. Be a good boy and maybe you’ll live to see that cat species replicated yet … if the world we know doesn’t end first, that is.

“Good night, now, James. Have a few drinks and a good dinner and get some sleep. I’ll be in touch.”

Bedford hung up and sat back to try to think out all that he had heard from his uncle and the deep-voiced Russian, but before he could even begin to order his thoughts, the same soft tone and light presaged the warm-honey voice which announced, “Mr. Bedford, the early seating will commence in the White Fleet Club in three-quarters of an hour. A printout of the evening menu may be obtained by means of following the instructions to be found in the VIP Guest Packet. However, please allow us to strongly recommend the Severn Terrapin. If you wish to dine in your suite, you may place your order in one-quarter hour and expect service within an hour. The Carronade Lounge is currently open, both the bar and the appetizer buffet.”

Never having developed a taste for raw fish, Bedford passed by the section of the buffet devoted to sashimi and finally served himself grilled crayfish tails in a torrid sauce, a few bite-size nuggets of curried alligator and a few crackers to go with his brandy and soda.

He had downed the most of the nibbles and about half the drink and was interestedly eyeing an attractive woman of about his own age who sat listening to a vaguely familiar older man and now and then nodding her head of dark curls when he felt rather than saw a presence nearby.

“Mr. James Bedford?” asked the tall, blond, elegant-seeming man. “You are Mr. James Bedford, who represents the Stekowski group?”

Hurriedly chewing and swallowing, Bedford nodded once. “Yes, I’m Bedford, Mr … ?”

With a click of the heels and a short, perfunctory bow, the man said, “I am Doktor Erich von Kurfuerst. We share mutual interests. Would you join me for dinner this evening, please?”

Slowly, ever so slowly, with many a stop and start, the winter was relaxing its cruel, deadly grip on the plateau and the surrounding montane wilderness. Though meltwaters that rushed and pooled deeply during the days always still froze over at night, some of the days were sunny-warm in comparison to the long cold that gradually was dissipating.

It was none too soon for Milo and his nomads, either, for—despite the necessary hunts they had undertaken in order to keep both themselves and the cats fed adequately—the long confinement inside the ruins was resulting in severe cabin fever and resultant ill-humor and short tempers.

More important to Milo, who intended to get as much as possible of the many-volume Bedford Journal read before the clans arrived, the supply of gasoline for the lanterns was running perilously low; therefore, immediately he thought it possible, he rigged a movable windbreak on the top of the brick tower and thenceforth spent much of many sunny days reading by natural light, often joined by one or more of the growing cubs and, less frequently, by their mother or one or both of the newcome adult cats. The cats usually did little more than curl up and snooze; nonetheless, the still-biting gusts of air that sometimes found a way around the windbreak frequently made him glad for the nearby sources of body heat.

Because the recuperating mother cat’s forelegs still were not equal to absorbing the necessary shock of her not inconsiderable weight after a drop of the more than eight feet from the tower top to the platform below it, he used a mostly cloudy day to take all the nomads, a coil of strong rope and a couple of the fine, sharp twenty-first-century axes down into the woods just below the plateau. There they felled and roughly trimmed a sizable pine tree, then managed to get it up one side of the sheer wall of rock and snaked it across the soggy ground to lean it against the tower and so provide easy access and egress to or from the tower top for any beast with claws.

While they were at the welcome exertion, they dismantled the yurt left below by the clansmen visitors (left behind in order to pack more wolf skins on the packhorses), then hoisted it, too, up onto the plateau. That night, even Milo willingly forewent the bunk beds in the disaster shelter in order to huddle on the cold ground inside the familiar, homey, unconfining confines of the simple felt yurt.

As the deep layers of ice and snow began to melt away from first the tower and then an ever widening periphery of the ruins, Milo and the nomads went about finding thawing, hideless wolf carcasses and dragging them to where they could be cast over the verges of the plateau before they thawed out, decomposed and not only made the environs of the ruins unbearable with the stench but attracted all manner of scavengers and noxious insects to the feast.

From the very first attempt, the men had all discovered that the two adult cats were, with their telepathy, an invaluable pair of hunting partners. Hunting in company with one of them made the hunting much easier on both men and cat and far more certain of edible conclusions. The men, armed with bows and spears, needed only to spot the prey beasts position themselves and then have the cat or cats circle around so as to show themselves or give the game their scent or mock-charge them into fleeing in panic past the positions taken by the waiting men. It was relaxed, almost completely dangerless hunting, and all parties seemed to enjoy it.

After the first experience, however, neither of the big cats would accompany any hunting party that included Milo, not when he chanced to arm himself with the ancient rifle and his dwindling stock of cartridges; the flat crack of shots hurt their ears, they beamed bluntly, going on to beam that if the two-legs wanted to accompany another two-legs carrying such an insufferably loud, smelly thing, they were welcome to do so, but that no sensible cat could or should be expected to willingly subject itself to such sensory abuse.

With a shrug, Milo cleaned and oiled the fine weapon, then repacked it and the thirteen remaining cartridges for it back in the way he had found them. The cats were worth far more to him and the clans, now than the use of an archaic hunting rifle. Without a doubt, the rifle’s barrel could have been worked into a fine blade for sword or saber by a Horseclans smith and the smaller metal parts into many other useful item, tool or weapon, but the rifle had served him and the nomads and the cats well, had saved their lives from the huge, ravenous pack of wolves that had cornered them up there in these ruins and was sitting siege on them all, and he was sufficiently sentimental to return it to where he had so fortuitously discovered it in their time of dire need, to let it go back to its ages-long rest to await there the improbable finding of it by another who might know what it was and how to use it and be in need of its awesome, deadly power.