Макс Фрай - The Stranger

Juffin spent the rest of the evening telling everyone about our adventures. I almost fell asleep in my chair, lulled by the warmth, my own full stomach, and the opportunity to hear the story of my own adventures recounted so thrillingly, even though the story was horrifying.

“Sir Max, I am sending you home,” Juffin announced. “All the mysteries have been solved, and all the pastries have been eaten. What you really need now is to sleep for twenty-four hours without a single nightmare.”

“I have no objections to that,” I said with a smile, “but I have one last question. Sir Melifaro, do you have any cats at your estate?”

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“I promised myself that when this ordeal was over, I would get myself a kitten. But since two missions have come to a close at the same time, I’ll need two kittens.”

“I could give you a dozen if you ask; but tell me what do plan to do with them? Do you eat them?”

“We Border Dwellers eat anything!” I announced. Then, taking pity on my nonplussed colleagues, I said, “I’m going to stroke them, and they are going to purr. Those, I believe, are the ideal relations between humans and cats.”

Before half an hour had passed, Melifaro arrived. In contrast to everyone else, he had already managed to change his clothes. He was wearing a lettuce-green skaba and red and blue checked looxi. Maybe he kept a whole closet full of garments at work, I mused.

Soon Sir Kofa poked his head into Juffin’s office. He said he was just passing by and decided to drop in to find out how things were, because there were amazing rumors making the rounds in the city. For instance, it was said that Juba Chebobargo was the leader of a gang of midgets. And Mister Venerable Head had apparently killed Tolakan Enn, former Heir to the Throne, with his bare hands, because of some debt at cards from way back. And he knocked off the wife of the victim while he was at it. He then falsified the report, to the effect that the Enns were involved in forbidden black magic and were penpals with two dozen Rebel Magicians.

“Nice rumor,” Juffin said with a grin. “There’s a moral to be learned from it. People should remember it’s best to pay their gambling debts on time!”

But the real joke of the day was sir Boboota Box, who, despite his serious injuries, had already written up an official report in which he said that the “city police were following up on a lead that could result in solving the mystery of the recent robberies that had been taking place in Echo.” Luckily for Boboota, his more intelligent subordinates were in no great hurry to send the letter and prudently saved their boss from embarrassment.

Juffin spent the rest of the evening telling everyone about our adventures. I almost fell asleep in my chair, lulled by the warmth, my own full stomach, and the opportunity to hear the story of my own adventures recounted so thrillingly, even though the story was horrifying.

“Sir Max, I am sending you home,” Juffin announced. “All the mysteries have been solved, and all the pastries have been eaten. What you really need now is to sleep for twenty-four hours without a single nightmare.”

“I have no objections to that,” I said with a smile, “but I have one last question. Sir Melifaro, do you have any cats at your estate?”

“Of course. Why do you ask?”

“I promised myself that when this ordeal was over, I would get myself a kitten. But since two missions have come to a close at the same time, I’ll need two kittens.”

“I could give you a dozen if you ask; but tell me what do plan to do with them? Do you eat them?”

“We Border Dwellers eat anything!” I announced. Then, taking pity on my nonplussed colleagues, I said, “I’m going to stroke them, and they are going to purr. Those, I believe, are the ideal relations between humans and cats.”

Home, sweet home. My nightmares were over, and I was exhausted by the ordeal I had been through. I lay down in bed and stretched so exquisitely that I almost cried with joy. I slept, not like a baby, but rather like a bear in its den. And I only came to on the evening of the following day. I was hungry. Unlike a member of genus ursus , I lacked a layer of fat to sustain me.

An hour later, there was a knock at my door. It was the young courier from the Ministry of Perfect Public Order.

“A package from Sir Melifaro for Sir Max,” the boy reported, and handed me an enormous basket. I could hardly lift it. Closing the door after the courier, I removed the ornate blanket that covered the basket. Two dark fuzzy creatures with bright blue eyes were peering out at me. I took them out of the basket. Each of them weighed more than a grown cat in my homeland! I studied them carefully. The black one was a boy, and the coffee-colored one was a girl. The kittens seemed possessed by an utter calm that bordered on extravagant laziness. Naturally, plump as they were! I was so thrilled with my acquisition that I sent a call to Melifaro.

Thanks, buddy! The beasts are awesome! Totally awesome!

Sinning Magicians, Max. You speak so oddly when you use Silent Speech, who would have known . . . They’re just cats, no big deal. Bon appétit!

What else was I expecting to hear? I named the boy Armstrong and the girl Ella. The idea came to me when they reminded me in their low-pitched mews that animals must be fed. My pets definitely knew how to croon. And in the old days, before I was Sir Max of Echo, I used to like listening to a bit of old jazz.

THERE’S A SIGN I ALWAYS WATCH FOR: BEFORE EVERY MAJOR CASE, everything goes quiet in the House by the Bridge. If I find myself dozing for several nights in a row in my armchair, my feet up on the desk, it means that some hullabaloo or other will soon be in full swing.

And, in point of fact, I don’t mind. Serving in the Secret Investigative Force isn’t yet just a routine for me. And if everything continues the way it’s going now, it’s unlikely that it ever will be.

When urgent matters crop up (and there are more of them than there are agents), my personal time-frame stops coinciding with the pace of the hands on the clock. Sometimes I seem to live through a few years in just one day; but at the end of the day I’m not any older.

I like this. I’m hungry for life. Even those several hundred years that are almost guaranteed to every inhabitant of this World seem like a very short allotment of infinity to me. I admit, hand on heart, that I just want to live forever—preferably without becoming too decrepit, though being old doesn’t really frighten me. If you take one look at Juffin or at Sir Kofa, you understand that solid old age is rather an advantage than a burden.

That morning Sir Kofa Yox showed up exactly ten seconds earlier than Juffin. During that time he managed to sit down in a chair, wipe the workaday mask off his face (low forehead; long, fleshy nose; high cheekbones; sensitive lips; double chin), and stretch sweetly, with a bit of creaking here and there.

As though agreeing with his colleague, Sir Juffin gave a leisurely yawn in the doorway. He planted himself in his chair, and yawned again—a protracted one, mingled with a little squeal. These things are highly contagious: I too started to yawn, although I hadn’t slept too poorly on the job that night. In fact, I felt completely rested. Finding a night job was all it took to help a night owl like me switch to the ordinary schedule of most of humanity.

I could have gone home if I wanted to. I even should have. But I had already decided beforehand to drink a mug of kamra in the company of my senior colleagues, because I know how they work: as soon as I leave, they start talking about The-Most-Interesting-Things-In-The-World. No more missing out on that! These days you had to drag me off duty by force.