Fritz Leiber - The Green Millennium

Stepping gingerly, with an eye cocked on the ominously slanting wall, Phil led Dytie up onto the porch and around the corner of it. He hesitated for a moment in front of the old door with the tiny cat door cut in the bottom of it, then lifted his hand to the cat-headed knocker and banged it twice. After a while there were footsteps, the old style peephole was opened, and this time Phil immediately recognized the watery gray eye as Sacheverell’s.

“Greetings, Phil,” the latter said. “Who’s that with you?”

“A young lady named Dytie da Silva.”

Sacheverell opened the door. “Come right in. Fate must be at work. Her brother’s here.”

THE Akeley living room was as crazily cluttered as when Phil last saw it. No one had done much, if any, cleaning up after the fight. In addition, there were a large number of dirty plates, cups and glasses abandoned in odd places. Judging by the remnants of food and drink in them, three informal meals had been consumed since last night, not counting snacks.

The black velvet curtains at the far end of the room had been pulled aside, revealing the altar Sacheverell had prepared for Lucky in what had been the dining room a century ago. It consisted of a small table or box set against the far wall and covered with reddish-brown velvet that trailed to the floor in graceful folds. Fastened to the wall above it was an ancient ankh or crux ansata, the Egyptian cross with looped top, symbolizing procreation and life. On lower tables to either side were large unlit candles and statuettes of many of the Egyptian gods: queenly Isis, whip-wielding Osiris, jackal-jawed Anubis and cat-headed Bast herself.

And there was the same profusion of cats, though they were no longer peaceful as they’d been when Lucky was in the house. They stalked about with ears drawn back and fur fluffed fearsomely; they ambushed each other from behind and under furniture; they snarled and jumped whenever they met. Those wolfing the bits of food left on plates would lift their heads every few seconds to hiss warnings. The only one asleep was impiously curled on Lucky’s altar.

The dark low table inlaid with a silver pentacle had been righted and placed in the center of the room. On it were glasses and a bottle of brandy. Beside it sat Juno Jones, still in her dowdy dress with the ripped sleeves hanging from her meaty arms, but with her flower covered hat once more jammed down over her cropped blonde hair. She looked sullen and on the defensive.

Across the table from her, leaning forward in their chairs, sat Dion da Silva and Morton Opperly. Both of them stood up as Sacheverell triumphantly swept Phil and Dytie into the room, saying “Our council of war – or perhaps I should say muscular peace – is complete!”

Opperly smiled courteously, seeming completely at home in these wild, wonderful and crummy surroundings; perhaps a mind hungry for any and all facts liked a grubby bohemian atmosphere.

Dion da Silva on the other hand, as soon as he spotted Dytie, put down the big glass of whiskey he was holding and whooped out three or four words in a foreign language, then caught himself and changed to, “‘Allo, darling! Great see. ‘Allo, ‘allo, ‘allo.”

By this time he had Dytie in his arms and was hugging her with a hungriness that struck Phil as distinctly unbrotherly. She wasn’t being any too sisterly about it herself. But finally she pushed him away with a gasp. “Thas ‘nough,” she told him. “Great see too, dumbhead. ’bout time turn up.’

Dion looked hurt for as long as it took him to get his glass of whiskey. “Know what doing?” he asked his sister excitedly.

“Yes, get drunk,” she told him and whispered to Phil, “Know what Dion short for? God wine. Pick good name, eh?”

“No get drunk,” Dion asserted with some dignity. Then his excitement got the better of him again and he burst out with, “We finding pussycat!”

There was a giggle that Phil recognized. Looking around, he saw Mary Akeley sitting in her alcove backed by her shelves of wax dolls and busy at work sewing clothes for another under a large magnifier. Sacheverell’s witch-nosed young wife had shifted to an almost off the bosom evening dress and tied a huge green bow around her coarse dark hair.

“That man, he cuts me up in little pieces every time he says a word,” she gurgled, without pausing in her work. “He’s so cute.”

“Thanks sweetheart,” Dion replied, gayly waving his glass at her, “I cute all over. All full s’prises. Show sometime.”

Dytie suppressed a guffaw and whispered to Phil, “‘Member tell you: two legs, milk glands?” Phil nodded, though he judged that Dion’s interest in Mary didn’t nearly come up to his thirsty adoration of Dora Pannes. The satyr (Phil felt shocked at how glibly the word came into his mind) was just keeping his hand in.

Sacheverell ignored the flirtatious interchange. His sunburned features gleamed with controlled excitement. “The young lady is Dytie da Silva, Dion’s sister,” he told Opperly and Juno. Then he turned to Phil. “I suppose you’re wondering why Dr. Opperly and Señor da Silva are here. Well, I brought them along with me from the Foundation because both of them are genuinely interested in him, and among the lot of us I think we have a very good chance of delivering him from his enemies.”

“What he mean, him?” Dytie asked Phil. “He means pussycat?”

Phil nodded.

“I mean the Green One,” Sacheverell confirmed a bit reprovingly. “I mean Bast Returned, the Bringer of Love and Concord.”

Dytie didn’t bother with that, but went on to whisper to Phil, “He say Op’ly. Op’ly nice slim man there good face? Meet us please.”

Sacheverell was getting set for a speech and he gave Phil a faintly pained look when the latter performed the desired introduction. Dr. Opperly surprised Phil by gallantly kissing Dytie’s hand and then not letting go of it. He didn’t behave at all like a scientist of eighty-plus years should. And Dytie turned on a lot more charm than Phil recalled her using on him. As the two of them stood there murmuring happy but probably highly intelligent nothings to each other, Phil felt a jealous impulse to call out to Opperly, “Wait until you see her real legs,” but he somehow suspected that Opperly wouldn’t be shocked at Dytie’s real legs or anything about her. He had noted a look of surprise come into Opperly’s face as the latter took Dytie’s hand, and from his own experience he’d known why, but Opperly’s surprise had turned not to revulsion, but to eager interest.

Opperly’s voice suddenly became sharp, clear and romantic: “I’d be delighted to, Miss da Silva.”

Dytie turned to the others with a self-satisfied smile. “Op’ly me got much talk ’bout,” she announced. “‘Scuse please. Dion you take care pussycat business me.”

And she and Dr. Opperly strolled out through the dining room arm in arm, beaming at each other and chatting happily.

Sacheverell looked after them a shade critically. “They don’t seem to have any great regard for the importance of the situation, I must say, so we’ll carry on by ourselves in making plans to rescue the Green One. Mr. Gish, what have you to contribute?”

In a few sentences Phil sketched how he’d found Lucky at Fun Incorporated, lost him again, then caught up with him at the Humberford Foundation just before Dora Pannes grabbed him.

As soon as Phil finished, Mary Akeley cut in. She was through sewing clothes and had begun to put them on a relatively bulky doll which Phil recognized as the portrait of Moe Brimstine she’d started on last night. To his amazement, Phil noticed that she was even putting underwear on the doll and slipping almost microscopically tiny objects into its pants pockets with a tiny tweezer.