Paul Di Filippo - WikiWorld

Alpha looked tantalized by the prospect. “You mean, individual combat?”

“I do.”

“Very well, I accept. Rid yourself of weapons.”

Jungle Alli swiftly complied. “And you will promise not to employ your powers of vanishment.”

“Agreed.”

Before commencing combat, Jungle Alli solicited a kiss from both Hélène and Philippe. Thus armed with their fond endorsement, she advanced on her foe.

The two women, each formidable in her own way, circled each other like wrestlers, looking for openings. Jungle Alli was sinuous as a snake, while Alpha, the larger of the two, resembled a panther.

At last they closed, with wordless grunts and exclamations. Grappling hand to hand, they struggled for mastery.

Jungle Alli was tossed to the lunar pavement first. Falling upon her stunned prey, Alpha was surprised to find Jungle Alli wriggling out of her grip and soon riding the Cat Woman’s back! Alpha punched backwards, ramming knuckles into Jungle Alli’s cheekbones, and causing her to loosen her hold. The women separated, regained their feet and faced off again.

For a seemingly interminable time the two women fought, enacting a strange barbaric scene among the sleeping forms of the Cat Women—still pulsing out their deadly ideonemes—and the cheering figures of the wholesome Earth people. The battle inevitably took its toll: Alpha’s long hair had come undone and disarrayed, while Jungle Alli’s shorter pelt was plastered to her skull with sweat. The clothing of both women was ripped, revealing lush bruised flesh. Their mutual panting sounded in the hall like the chuffing of some struggling engine.

The two resting apart for a moment, Alpha said, “You are a vigorous specimen, Alice Bradley. If all Earth women were like you, they might deserve to live!”

Falling into English, Jungle Alli replied, “We won’t go on without our menfolks. You bitches have been deprived too long to know what you’re missing!”

“Men!” spat Alpha. “Here’s what all males deserve!”

With that, the leader of the Cat Women impulsively teleported over to Philippe and began to strangle him with her otherworldly strength! His face purpling, the President of Helenia seemed doomed!

But then Alpha shrieked, and blood began to flow from her mouth! She released Philippe and fell to the floor, dying as she hit the tiles.

Hélène stepped away from the body of the Cat Woman, Jungle Alli’s red-dripping machete in her hand.

Jungle Alli surged to the side of Hélène, and began to comfort the stunned woman with petting and reassurances. But Hélène did not seem as distraught as one might have expected. She straightened her back, her eyes shining, and said, “So much for female supremacy!”

But whether Hélène was derogating Alpha or praising herself was unclear.

Around the Earthlings, the six sleepers began to stir. Omega, who had stood on the sidelines till this moment, now mentally apprised her sisters of what had just transpired. The remaining Cat Women appeared directionless and disinclined to carry the battle further.

Massaging his throat, his voice something of a croak, President Ponto, supported by his father, said, “Our crisis seems at an end now, thanks to the efforts of my own wife and Miss Bradley. It remains only for us to carry the good news back to a waiting planet.”

“You folks’ll be heading back without me, I reckon,” said Jungle Alli unexpectedly.

“But why?”

“I’ve plumb run out of lands to explore back home. Here I’ve got a whole new world to investigate. I need to see this place before there’s a Bon Marché in every crater.”

“But won’t you be lonely?” asked Hélène.

Jungle Alli eyed the surviving Cat Women with a certain possessive passion.

“Oh,” she said, grinning, “I figure I can do without the company of man kind for a little while.”

Max Moritz is the moniker on my NC license, and, yes, I’ve heard all the obvious allusive wisecracks already.

“Funny, you don’t look Prankish.”

“I heard you keep all your cats in jam jars.”

“What strength monofilament you use for chickens?”

“Did your Mama stick dirks in her bush?”

But of course I haven’t let smartmouth cracks like those bug me since I was twelve years old, and just finishing my third-level synergetics course at GBS Ideotorium Number 521. (Our school motto that year, picked by the students of course: “A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.” From one of my favourite Shaw and Raymond pictonovels, Major Barbara versus Ming the Merciless .)

And of course after I left GBSI Number 521 that year for my extended wanderjahr before declaring my major and minor passions, I fell in with a variety of older people who politely resisted the impulse to joke about my name.

Except when they didn’t.

But that’s just the Geek Way, anyplace you go.

Still, I wasn’t about to change Moritz to something else. Family pride, and all that. Would’ve killed my mother, who had worked hard with my Pop (and alone after his death) to make the family business a success. Moritz Cosplay was known worldwide for its staging of large-scale (ten thousand players and up) recreational scenarios, everything from US Civil War to Barsoom to Fruits Basket, and Mom—Helena Moritz—regarded our surname as a valuable trademark, to be proudly displayed at all times, for maximum publicity value.

Not that I was part of the firm any longer—not since five years ago, when I had told Mom, with much trepidation, that I was leaving for a different trade.

Mom was in her office, solido-conferencing with the head of some big hotel chain and negotiating for better rates for her clients, when I finally got up the courage to inform her of my decision. I waited till she flicked off the solido, and then said, “Mom, I’m switching jobs.”

She looked at me coolly with that gesture familiar from my childhood, as if she were peering over the rims of her reading glasses. But she hadn’t worn eyeglasses since 1963, when she had gotten laser-eye surgery to correct her far-sightedness. Then out the glasses went, faster than Clark Kent had gotten rid of his in Action Comics #2036. (But Lois Lang still didn’t recognize Clark as Superman, since Clark grew a moustache at the same time, which was really a very small shapeshifting organism, a cousin of Proty’s, who could attach and detach from the Kryptonian’s upper lip at will to help preserve Supe’s secret identity.)

Anyway, I had made my decision and announcement and wasn’t about to quail under a little parental glare.

“What’re you planning on doing?” Mom asked.

“I’ve just gotten my NC license. I’ve been studying in secret for the past six months.”

“You? A nick carter? Max, I respect your intelligence highly, but it’s just not the Sherlock-Holmes-Father-Brown-Lincoln-Powell variety. You had trouble finding clean socks in your sock drawer until you were ten.”

“I aced the exam.”

Mom looked slightly impressed, but still had an objection or two. “What about the physical angle? You’re hardly a slan in the strength department. What if you get mixed up with some roughnecks?”

“Roughnecks? Shazam, Mom! What century are you living in? There hasn’t been any real prevalence of ‘roughnecks’ in the general population since before I was born. At GBSI Five-twenty-one, one of the patternmasters spent half a day trying to explain what a ‘bully’ was. The incidence of sociopathic violence and aggressive behaviour has been dropping at a rate of 1.5 percent ever since President Hearst’s first term—and that was nearly three-quarters-of-a-century ago.”