Fritz Leiber - The Wanderer

Either because of the earthquakes or the high tides or both, the salt waters of the Gulf had burst through and filled the land below sea level in and around the Imperial Valley and the drying Salton Sea, and stretched on toward Palm Springs. He remembered that one of the towns there, a pretty big one, had been called Brawley, and another, Volcano -

Space turned to a pink wall in front of his nose, and a neutral voice called: ” ’Morning, monkey.”

Blinking, Paul slowly hunched around, easing his right foot in its invisible fetter. Tigerishka was floating bent by the control panel, as if she were sitting in an invisible swing. Miaow clung to her lap and was industriously grooming the larger cat’s green knees with her tiny pink tongue.

Paul swallowed and then lifted his fingers wonderingly to his lips. The gag was gone.

Tigerishka smiled at him. “You sleep seven hours,” she volunteered. “Feel better?”

Paul cleared his throat, but then only shut his lips and looked at her. He did not smile back.

“Oho, we learn a little wisdom, eh?” Tigerishka purred. “Monkey not jabber, we get along better. O.K. talk now, though.”

Paul kept his lips shut.

“Don’t be sulky, Paul,” Tigerishka directed. “I know you civilized by your lights, but I tie you, gag you, call you monkey to teach you little lesson: how you not so important in scheme of things, how others can treat you like you treat potentially superior animal Miaow here. Also I do it to give you birth-experience any psychologist know you badly need.”

Paul looked at her a bit longer, then slowly shook his head.

“What you mean?” Tigerishka demanded sharply. “What you think my reason?”

Enunciating each syllable as sharply and carefully as if he were teaching a speech class, Paul said: “You tell me you have a mind vastly superior to my own, and in many ways I must agree with you, yet for at least twenty minutes yesterday you confused my thoughts with those of that charming but speechless and cultureless little animal on your lap. So you took out on me your irritation at having made such a very stupid mistake.”

“That’s a lie, I never did!” Tigerishka retorted instantly in unslurred English quite as good as his own. She stiffened, her claws came out, and Miaow stopped grooming her. Then she caught herself and leaned back luxuriously, relaxed and chuckling. A delicious shrug rippled her violet-barred shoulders. “You right there,” she admitted. “That a little part my reason. Few cosmic cat strains, me let hopes run away. You notice. Monkey sly.”

“Just the same, you made the error, and it was a gross one,” he told her quietly. “How could you expect an animal tiny as Miaow to have a reasoning brain?”

“Me think it miniaturized,” she answered quickly. “Could have told it wasn’t if I’d checked by clairvoyance, but I depending on telepathy.” She petted Miaow. “Any more monkey-quibbles?”

Paul waited a bit again, then said: “You claim to belong to a super-civilized galactic culture, yet you exhibit a fantastic xenophobia. I should think a true galactic citizen would have to be able to get along with intelligent beings of all strains: sea dwellers, grazers, arachnoids and coleopteroids possibly, winged beings, wolves and other carnivores like yourself, yes, and simians, too.”

Tigerishka seemed to start just a little as he said, “wolves and other carnivores,” but she recovered nicely with a sweet, “Monkey much the worst strain of those, Paul.” She added huskily: “Also cosmos not so pretty-pretty love-lovey you think.” She had begun to stroke Miaow rhythmically, kneading the small cat’s shoulderblades.

“I am inclined to agree,” Paul commented. “You pretend to near omniscience and to a great consideration for life — at least you boasted of saving two anthropoid cities from fire — yet when you crushed our moon for fuel, you ignored the presence on it of a number of human beings, including my best friend.”

“Too bad, Paul,” Tigerishka sympathized coolly. “But they on airless planet, they have ships. Get away.”

“Yes, at least we can hope that Don and the others escaped,” Paul agreed with equal coolness, “but I don’t believe that you even knew they were there! I don’t believe that when you emerged from hyperspace you had any idea that this planet was inhabited by intelligent beings. Or if you did, you didn’t care.”

Tigerishka still seemed quite relaxed, but she was stroking Miaow in a faster rhythm, as a nervous woman might puff harder on her cigarette. “You a little right there too, Paul,” she conceded. “Things bad in hyperspace: storms, et cetera. Our need fuel acute. We feel beat when we come out, truly. Also last galactic survey show no intelligent life here, only promising feline strain.” And she twitched her nose at him as she interrupted the stroking to pat Miaow twice.

Ignoring this humorous sally, Paul continued: “Here is another sidelight on your unfeeling and blundering haste: when you rescued Miaow from the earthquake waves — and myself too, mistakenly assuming I was a cat’s beast of burden — you left a score of precious human beings, including my girl friend, to sink or swim.”

“That damn lie, Paul!” Tigerishka retorted. “I quiet waves for them, they get out safe. I even lose momentum pistol.”

“Another super-feline blunder?” Paul shot back at her. “Well, at least it was on the side of generosity, so we’ll pass over it. But—”

Paul broke off, momentarily overcome by a sudden awareness of the ridiculousness of the situation. Here he was, naked and foot-fettered, trailing the tubes of a sanitary arrangement, playing district attorney to the most fantastic “Madame X” ever to float on the witness chair.

The most fantastically lovely, too, he added uneasily in his thoughts.

Or was all this, he wondered, only the age-old racial business of the monkey teasing the leopard?

But then he remembered Brawley and Volcano.

“So you got girl friend now, hey, Paul?” Tigerishka put in wickedly. “That really true? Margo know? And you so fair — that fair to Don?”

He waved these mean diversions aside with a certain dignity. Hot feeling came into his voice as he said: “But the most crushing indictment of your boasted high culture and great sensitivity is the way human beings are dying beneath this saucer at this very moment because of the Wanderer’s distortion of our gravity field — all because you needed fuel and wouldn’t take a little extra time to find a proper source — such as the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. I’ll grant you put out some fires, but only after hundreds, more likely thousands, died in the blazes and in the quakes that began the blazes. And now whole cities are being wiped out by the floods you’ve caused. If this goes on—”

“Shut up, monkey!” Tigerishka snarled, her claws out, her hind paws touching back toward the control panel. Miaow sprang away from her. “Look, Paul,” she continued, seeming to contain herself with difficulty. “I never boast you I humani-tarian, monkey-tarian, cosmo-tarian! Cats have cruel culture some ways. Other cultures cruel, too! Death part of life. Some always suffer. Our refueling just normal course of things. It just—”

She broke off, frowning at the finger Paul was pointing at her. His face was glowing, for he had just seen what he believed to be the tremendous significance of Tigerishka’s apparently honest attempt to defend herself and her people.

“I do not believe you,” he said ringingly. “Tigerishka, I think that your blundering haste and that of your people, your lack of proper scouting and preparation, and most of all your crude, belated efforts to repair some of the damage you’ve done, all go to show that you were rushed into action by something of which you are deeply afraid.”