Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

Cats would like that kind of scenario. Cats might watch it for hours, but it didn't mean that the cats evoked anything within the globe. It didn't mean that they saw anything other than motes in an emerald eye. It didn't mean that people saw anything either.

Except... Temple saw swirls. Saw oily patterns in the water, saw words written on waves, saw images . .. like the Luxor, that pyramid of a hotel on the Strip.

She saw a pyramid!

She saw ... stone walls covered with images ... glyphs. Egyptian tomb scenes. A lotus flower floating by. And cats. Cats in profile. Perk-eared cats, lean and bronze. Mummified cats, wrapped in the Egyptian equivalent of Ace bandages. Mummy cases floating in the tide inside the globe like Moses's willow basket.

Motion, motion. Waves, waves. Images darting like schools of fish. Why was she hungry?

Sharply hungry. Yet, pleasantly . . . sleepy too. In the sun, the dappled sun on the water, the flicker of torches on stone, on gilded mummy cases and furniture and jewels. King Tut's tomb.

She was inside King Tut's tomb, under water, under waves, but she recognized the world-renowned treasures and her eye panned a train of tomb friezes like an educational channel's camera. But she had walked here. Trotted. On all fours. And she looked up, sniffed the torch fumes. Her eye-slits narrowed in the bright light. Her whiskers twitched with recognition.

Birds. Painted in profile. Feeders. Painted in profile, with dark-rimmed almond eyes. Our Kind, painted in profile, ears erect, necks richly collared, tails curled neatly around the feet.

An entire string of the Kind, forming words and concepts. Glyphs. All bronze gods. All sacred.

And there, the King himself, in profile, looking down.

One of the Kind lying, not sitting. One of the Kind sprawled like a Pharaoh himself awaiting a pat of the Royal Hand. Why shouldn't a King look at a Cat, and why shouldn't a Sacred Cat look right back at a Pharaoh? And why shouldn't this particular Pharaoh look at this particular specimen of the Kind, seeing that it was most large and unusual, handsome, gifted and wise: the only all-black one in the bunch?

Chapter 25

All the Pharaoh's Phelines

I am reclining on my bed when Miss Temple returns from her sojourn above.

Actually, Miss Temple thinks that it is her bed, as Mr. Max used to think that it was his bed, but ultimately it is my bed, and I am willing to share. I have learned a lot in five thousand years.

She looks a little dazed, and I understand that these are trying times, but look at all the times that I have been through, and I am the same simple accommodating soul that I always was. Which is remarkable, considering my antecedents.

"Louie," she says, looking at me like Bergman looked at Bogart at the end of Casablanca, a bit dazed but really appreciative at long last.

"I guess I should ask how you got out and up to Electra's place, but frankly, her so-called psychic cat was such a dud that it was a good thing you showed up. I was so tired, though, I sort of dozed off. I'm afraid that Electra has delusions of grandeur. That cat Karma of hers is a dust mop. Pretty as can be, but pretty useless too. She thinks it's sensitive, but I think it's just lazy."

I cannot say how these words thrill me.

Of course, I know that the annoying Karma has been riding herd on me so mercilessly of late, that she has worn herself to a nub of her former powers, which is why she was making like a doormat and I was able to walk right in and kick Kitty Litter in her face.

Not that I like to rub all that sand into the eyes of a noble feline descended from a hardy and once worshiped desert race, like myself.

Now the genie is out of the bottle. Midnight Louie has antecedents, after all, and they are not too tacky. I have it on unassailable authority that one of my great-great-greats many times removed, and perhaps many lives and reincarnations previous, was a palace favorite.

I am talking about that honored Temple of Karnak cat, that Pharaoh's firstborn friend, the unofficial house dick at the pyramid and environs, that Sphinx's first cousin, Louie Sr. Sr. Sr. Sr.

Sr. et cetera. No wonder I am associating with a Temple even today.

As for the languid Karma, she has fallen down on the job.

Those nouveau Burmese haven't got the family tree that goes back to the real roots of our Kind.

Just wait until I tell the Divine Yvette, who is no doubt the reincarnation of one of those Queens of the Nile.

I am not just a contemporary cool-dude detective. Once, I was King Tut's bodyguard.

Chapter 26

Calling Mrs. Bates . . .

Matt sat by the phone in his Circle Ritz apartment.

The fact that he kept it in the bedroom, rather than in a more public room, was mute testimony to how seldom it rang. And he seldom called anyone himself, so no wonder that his telephone seemed more like an ugly modern sculpture than a home appliance.

He wondered how different his life was from that of Cliff Effinger, who was supposed to be dead, maybe.

He thought again about the body he could not positively identify while it lay static in a morgue viewing room, his to contemplate for as long as he wished. Then he resurrected the image of the walking man he had glimpsed with such certain instinct. Matt knew he had to make the call he most wanted to avoid.

The number came to his fingers by heart, after all this time, and after infrequent use.

Perhaps "dutiful use" would describe the situation better. Holiday dialing.

He checked his new-old watch that he had run across among the contents of a packed box, a gold-edged rectangular face on a black leather band, a parting gift: from the parishioners of St.

Rose of Lima. At the time, it had been a touch of luxury in a minimalist life. His life today, however altered, was still minimalist, but the leather watchband was worn shiny, and the watch face looked genteel and old-fashioned, as if it should belong to his great-uncle Stash.

Was Uncle Stash still living? He hadn't asked about him in over a year. Should. Matt jotted the name down on the notepad next to the phone. Like a cue. A cue for calling home.

The phone rang several times. He kept checking his watch, though he knew the time perfectly well: seven forty-five p.m. in Chicago. There should be an answer.

There was.

Her voice sounded distant. Midwestern. Flattened. He hadn't noticed that until he had left the Midwest and heard other accents.

"Hi, Mom. It's Matt."

"Matt! Are you--I didn't expect... is something wrong?"

She always expected the worst, his mother. In the past, she usually had been right.

She spoke again quickly. "Let me turn the news down."

The phone on the other end clunked as she laid it down. She didn't have a remote control, which had even come with the small color TV he had bought for the living room here. Not for himself, he noticed. "For the living room," as if it were a person in need of placating.

A faint bleat in the background suddenly stopped; the phone thumped again as she picked it up.

"Nothing's wrong?" she asked.

At least this time she phrased it in the negative. Matt smiled.

"No, Mom, nothing. Are things okay there too?"

"Fine."

Fine. It said nothing, and said volumes. It was his mother's period to everything. Say no more. It's fine. You don't need to know. It's fine . None of your business. Fine. It's my problem.

Fine.

Of course nothing had ever been fine.

"Good," he said. His usual answer to the finality of "Fine."

"Are you still ... in that place?"

She could have meant the Circle Ritz, which he had told her about, with details intended to enhance its zany vintage attractions. Or she could have meant Las Vegas.