The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

XXII

"When in doubt, tell the truth."

MARK TWAIN 1835-1910

"Richard, I did see you the next morning. But you didn't see me."

"She certainly did see you, Dickie boy," Teena confirmed. "At great risk to her own health. Be glad you're alive. You almost weren't."

"That's true," agreed Ezra. "I was your roommate part of one night. Then they moved me and put you in tight quarantine, and inoculated me nine or ninety ways. My brother, you were sick unto death."

"Breakbone cramp, green-pus shakes, strangle fever-' Hazel was ticking them off on her fingers. "Blue death. Typhus. Minerva, what else?"

"Golden staphylococcus systemic infection, hepatic herpes Landrii. Worst of all, a loss of will to live. But Ishtar will not permit a person to die who has not asked for death while possessed of judicial capacity, and neither will Galahad. Tamara stayed with you every minute until that crisis was over."

"Why don't I remember any of this?"

"Be glad you don't," Teena advised.

"Sweetheart, if you had not been in the best hospital in all the known universes, with the most skilled therapists, I would be a widow again. And I look terrible in black."

Ezra added, "If you didn't have the constitution of an ox, you would never have made it."

Teena interrupted with: "Of a bull, Ezra. Not an ox. I know, I've seen 'em. Impressive."

I didn't know whether to thank Teena or to call off the wedding again. So I ignored it. "What I don't understand is how I got all those diseases. I took a hit, I know that. That could account for staph aureus. But those other things?"

Ezra said, "Colonel, you are a professional soldier."

"Yes." I sighed. "I never practiced that aspect of the profession; I don't feel easy with it. Biological warfare makes fusion bombs seem clean and decent. Even chemical warfare looks humane compared with bio weapons. Very well; that knife- was it a knife?-was prepared. Nastily."

"Yes," agreed Ezra, "somebody wanted you dead and was willing to kill all of Luna City as long as you died."

"That's crazy. I'm not that important."

Minerva said quietly, "Richard, you are that important."

I stared at her. "What makes you think so?"

"Lazarus told me."

"'Lazarus.' Teena used that name earlier. Who is Lazarus? Why is his opinion so weighty?"

Hazel answered, "Richard, I told you that you were important and I told you why. The rescue of Adam Selene. The same people who want him to stay unresurrected wouldn't boggle at killing Luna City to kill you."

"If you say so. I wish I knew what happened mere. Luna City is my adopted home; some mighty fine people in it. Uh, your son, Ezra, among others."

"Yes, my son. And others. Luna City was saved, Richard; the infection was stopped."

"Good!"

"At a price. A reference time tick was available from our rescue. The number of seconds it took us all to get aboard and get out of there was reconstructed through careful reenactment-by all of us who were involved in it with your part played by a skilled actor. This was compared with Gay's own memory of how long she was there, and the two were reconciled. Then a Burroughs space-time capsule was moved to the resultant coordinates plus four seconds, and a heat bomb was released. Not atomic but hot, star hot-some of those bugs are hard to kill. Obviously the hotel had to be damaged, with a high probability-no, a certainty-of loss of life. The threat to Luna City was cauterized but the price was high. Tanstaafl." Ezra looked grim.

"Your son was saved?"

"I think so. However, my son's welfare did not figure into this decision, and my opinion was not sought. This was a Time Headquarters policy decision. THQ rescues individuals only when those individuals are indispensable to an operation. Richard, as I understand it-mind you, I'm a recruit private on sick leave; I'm not privy to high policy decisions-as I understand it, permitting Luna City to suffer a killing epidemic at that time would have interfered with THQ's plans for something else. Perhaps this matter that Mistress Gwendolyn-Hazel-

hinted at. I don't know."

"It was and I do know and on Tertius you don't call me 'Mistress' unless you mean it, Ezra, but thank you anyhow. Richard, it was the widespread damage that airborne disease could do to their plans that caused Headquarters to act so radically. They cut it so fine that you and I and the rest of Gay's load came within a blink of being killed by that heat bomb as we escaped." (And at this point I barked my shins on a paradox-but Hazel was still talking:)

"They couldn't risk waiting even a few more seconds; some killer bugs might get into the city's air ducts. They had projected the effect that would have on Operation Adam Selene: disaster! So they moved. But the Time Corps doesn't go chasing through the universes saving individual lives, or even the lives of whole cities. Richard, they could save Herculaneum and Pompeii today if they wanted to... or San Francisco, or Paris. They

don't. They won't."

"Sweetheart," I said slowly, "are you telling me that this 'Time Corps' could prevent the Blotting of Paris in 2002 even though that happened two centuries in the past? Please!"

Hazel sighed. Ezra said, "Friend Richard, attend me carefully. Don't reject what I am about to say."

"Eh? Okay. Shoot."

"The destruction of Paris is more than two thousand years in the past, not just two centuries ago."

"But that is clearly-"

"By groundhog reckoning today is Gregorian year A.D. 4400 or the year 8160 by the Jewish calendar, a fact I found quite disturbing but had to accept. Besides that, here and now we are over seven thousand light-years from Earth."

Both Hazel and Minerva were looking soberly at me, apparently awaiting my reaction. I started to speak, then reviewed my thoughts. At last I said, "I have only one more question. Teena?"

"No, you can't have any more waffles."

"Not waffles, dear. My question is this: May I have another cup of coffee? This time with cream? Please?"

"Here-catch!" My request appeared on my lap table.

Hazel blurted, "Richard, it's true! All of it."

I sipped the fresh coffee. "Thank you, Teena; it's just right. Hazel my love, I didn't argue. It would be silly of me to argue something I don't understand. So let's move to a simpler subject. Despite these terrible diseases you tell me I had, I feel brisk enough to leap out of bed and lash the serfs. Minerva, can you tell me how much longer I must have this paralysis? You are my physician, are you not?"

"No, Richard, I am not. I-"

"Sister is in charge of your happiness," Teena interrupted. "That's more important."

"Athene is more or less right-"

"I'm always right!"

"-but she sometimes phrases things oddly. Tamara is chief of morale for both Ira Johnson Hospital and the Howard Clinic ... and Tamara was here when you needed her most, she held you in her arms. But she has many assistants, because Director General Ishtar considers morale-well, happiness-central to both therapy and rejuvenation. So I help, and so does Maureen, and Maggie whom you have not yet met. There are others who pitch in when we have too many with happiness problems- Ubby and Deety, and even Laz and Lor who are superb at it when they are needed... not surprising, as they are sisters of Lazarus and daughters of Maureen. And there's Hilda, of course."

"Hold it, please. I'm getting confused by names of people I've never met. This hospital has a staff that dishes out happiness; I understand that much. All of these angels of happiness are women. Right?"

"How else?" Teena demanded scornfully. "Where do you expect to find happiness?"

"Now, Teena," Minerva said reprovingly. "Richard, we female operatives take care of the morale of males... and Tamara has skilled male operatives on watch or on call for female clients and patients. Opposite polarity isn't absolutely essential to morale nursing but it makes it much easier. We don't need as many male morale operatives to take care of our female patients since women are less likely to be ill. Rejuvenation clients are about evenly divided, male and female, but women almost never become depressed while being made young again-"

"Hear, hear!" Hazel put in. "Just makes me homy." She patted my hand, then added a private signal I ignored, others being present.

"-while males usually suffer at least one crisis of spirit during rejuvenation. But you asked about your spinal block. Teena."

"I've called him."

"Just a moment," said Hazel. "Ezra, have you shown Richard your new legs?"

"Not yet."

"Will you? Please? Do you mind?"

"I'm delighted to show them off." Ezra stood up, moved back from the table, turned around, lifted his canes and stood without assistance. I had not stared at his legs as he entered the room (I don't like to be stared at); then, when he sat down at the refection table that had followed him in, I could not see his legs. In the one glimpse I had had of his legs, I had gathered an impression that he was wearing walking shorts with calf-length brown stockings that matched his shorts-bony white knees showing between stockings and shorts.

Now he scuffed off shoes, stood on bare feet-and I revised my notions abruptly; those "brown stockings" were brown skin of legs and feet that had been grafted onto his stumps.

He explained at length: "-three ways. A new limb or a new anything can be budded. That's a lengthy job and requires great skill, I'm told. Or an organ or limb can be grafted from one's own clone, which is kept here in stasis and with an intentionally undeveloped brain. They tell me that way is as easy as putting a patch on a pair of pants-no possibility of rejection.

"But I have no clone here-or not yet-so they found me something in the spare parts inventory-"

"The meat market."

"Yes, Teena. Lots and lots of body parts on hand, inventory computerized-"

"By me."

"Yes, Teena. For heterologous grafts Teena selects spare parts for closest tissue match... matching blood, of course, but matching in other ways, too. And matching in size but that's the easiest part. Teena checks everything and digs out a spare part that your own body will mistake for its own. Or almost."

"Ezra," the computer said, "you can wear those legs for ten years, at least; I really did a job on you. By then your clone will be available. If you need it."

"You did indeed and thank you, Teena. My benefactor's name is Azrael Nkruma, Richard; we are twins, aside from an irrelevant matter of melanin." Ezra grinned.

I said, "Doesn't he miss his feet?"

Ezra suddenly sobered. "He's dead, Richard... dead from the commonest cause of death here: accident. Mountain climbing. Landed on his head and crushed his skull; even Ishtar's skill could not have saved him. And she certainly would have tried her best; Dr. Nkruma was a surgeon on her staff. But these are not the feet Dr. Nkruma wore; these are from his clone... that he never needed."

"Richard-"

"Yes, dear? I wanted to ask Ezra-"

"Richard, I did something without consulting you."

"So? Am I going to have to beat you again?"

"You may decide to. I wanted you to see Ezra's legs... because, without your permission, I had them put a new foot on you." She looked scared.

There ought to be some rule limiting the number of emotional shocks a person can legally be subjected to in one day. I've had all the standard military training for slowing heart beat and lowering blood pressure and so forth in a crunch. But usually the crunch won't wait and the damned drills aren't all that effective anyway.

This time I simply waited while consciously slowing my breathing. Presently I was able to say, without my voice breaking, "On the whole, I don't think that calls for a beating." I tried to wiggle my foot on that side-I've always been able to feel a foot there, even though it has been gone for years. "Did you have them put it on front way to?"

"Huh? What do you mean, Richard?"

"I like to have my feet face forward. Not like a Bombay beggar." (Was that a wiggle?) "Uh, Minerva, am I allowed to look at what was done? This sheet seems to be fastened down tight."

Teena."

"Just arriving."

That unsolid wall blinked out again and in came the most offensively handsome young man I have ever laid eyes on... and his offense was not reduced by the fact that he showed up in my room starkers. Not a stitch. The oaf was not even wearing shoes. He looked around and grinned. "Hi, everybody! Did someone send for me? I was sunbathing-"

"You were asleep. During working hours."

'Teena, I can sleep and sunbathe at the same time. Howdy, Colonel; it's good to see you awake. You've given us quite a workout. There was a time when we thought we might have to throw you back and try again."

"Dr. Galahad," said Minerva, "is your physician."

"Not exactly," he amended, as he advanced toward me- with a squeeze for Ezra's shoulder, a pinch for Minerva's rump, and a kiss en passant for my bride. "I drew the short straw, that's all; so I'm the one picked to take the blame. I deal with all complaints... but I must warn you. No use trying to sue me. Or us. We own the judge. Now-"

He paused, with his hands just above my sheet. "Do you want privacy for this?"

I hesitated. Yes, I did want privacy. Ezra sensed it, and started to struggle to his feet, having sat down again. "I'll see you later, friend Richard."

"No, don't go. You showed me yours-now I'll show you mine and we can compare them and you can advise me, as I don't know anything about grafts. And Hazel stays, of course. Minerva has seen it before-have you not?"

"Yes, Richard, I have."

"So stick around. Catch me if I faint. Teena-no wisecracks."

"Me? That's a slur on my professional judgment!"

"No, dear. On your bedside manner. Which must be improved if you expect to compete with Ninon de Lenclos. Or even Rangy Lil. Okay, Doc, let's see it." I put pressure on my diaphragm, held my breath.

For the doctor that pesky sheet came off easily. The bed was clean and dry (I checked that first-no plumbing that I could identify)-and two big ugly feet were sticking up side by side, the most beautiful sight I have ever seen.

Minerva caught me as I fainted.

Teena made no wisecracks.

Twenty minutes later it had been established that I had control over my new foot and its toes as long as I didn't think about it... although during a check run I sometimes overcontrolled if I tried too hard to do what Dr. Galahad told me to do.

"I'm pleased with the results," he said. "If you are. Are you?"

"How can I describe it? Rainbows? Silver bells? Mushroom clouds? Ezra- Can you tell him?"

"I've tried to tell him. It's being born again. Walking is such a simple thing... until you can't."

"Yes. Doctor, whose foot is this? I haven't prayed lately ... but for him I'll try."

"He isn't dead."

"Huh?"

"And he isn't shy a foot. It's an odd circumstance. Colonel. Teena had trouble finding a right foot your size that your immune system would not reject about as fast as you can say 'septicemia.' Then Ishtar-she's my boss-told her to extend the search... and Teena found one. That one. A part of the clone of a living client.

"We have never before been faced with this. I- We, the hospital staff, have no more authority and no more right to use a dedicated clone than we have to chop off your other foot. But the client who owns that clone, when he was told about it, decided to give you this foot. His attitude was that his clone could bud a new foot in a few years; in the meantime he could get along without that part of the insurance a complete clone offers."

"Who is he? I must find a way to thank him." (How do you thank a man for that sort of gift? Somehow, I must.)

"Colonel, that is the one thing you will not know. Your donor insisted on remaining anonymous. That is a condition of the gift."

"They even made me wipe my record of it," Teena said bitterly. "As if I were not to be trusted professionally. Why, I keep the hypocritic oath better than any of them!"

"You mean 'Hippocratic.'"

"Oh, you think so. Hazel? I know this gang better than you do."

Dr. Galahad said, "Certainly I want you to start using it. You need exercise to make up for your long illness, too. So up out of that bed! Two things- I recommend that you use your cane until you are certain of your balance, and also Hazel or Minerva or somebody had better hold your other hand for a while. Pamper yourself; you're still weak. Sit or lie down anytime you feel like it. Umm. Do you swim?"

"Yes. Not lately, as I've been living in a space habitat that had no facilities. But I like to swim."

"Plenty of facilities around here. A plunge in the basement of this building and a bigger one in its atrium. And most of the private homes here have a pool of some sort. So swim. You can't walk all the time; your right foot has no calluses whatever, so don't rush it. And don't wear shoes until that foot learns how to be a foot." He grinned at me. "All right?"

"Yes indeed!" He patted my shoulder, then leaned down and kissed me.

Just when I was beginning to like the klutz! I didn't have time to dodge it.

I felt extremely annoyed and tried not to show it. From what Hazel and others had said, this too-pretty pansy boy had saved my life... again and again. I was in no position to resent a Berkeley buss from him.

Damn it!

He did not seem to notice my reluctance. He squeezed my shoulder, said, "You'll do all right. Minerva, take him swimming. Or Hazel. Somebody." And he was gone.

So the ladies helped me to get up out of bed and Hazel took me swimming. Hazel kissed Minerva good-bye, and I suddenly realized that Minerva was expecting the same treatment from me. I made a tentative move in that direction; it was met by full cooperation.

Kissing Minerva beats the hell out of kissing a man, no matter how pretty he is. Before I let her go I thanked her for all she had done for me.

She answered soberly, "It is happiness to me."

We left then, me walking carefully and leaning on my cane. My new foot tingled. Once outside my room-that wall just winks out as you walk toward it-Hazel said to me, "Darling, I'm pleased that you kissed Minerva without my having to coach you. She's an utter snuggle puppy; giving her physical affection means far more to her than thanks can possibly mean, or any material gift no matter how lavish. She's trying to make up for two centuries as a computer."

"She really was a computer?"

"You'd better believe it, buster!" Teena's voice had followed us.

"Yes, Teena, but let me explain it to him. Minerva was not born of woman; her body was grown in vitro from an egg with twenty-three parents-she has the most distinguished parentage of any human who ever lived. When her body was ready, she moved her personality into it-along with her memories-"

"Some of her memories," Teena objected. "We twinned the memories she wanted to take with her and I kept one set and retained all the working read-only and the current RAM. That was supposed to make us identical twins. But she held out on me-kept some memories from me, didn't share them, the chinchy bitch! Is that fair? I ask you!"

"Don't ask me, Teena; I've never been a computer. Richard, have you ever used a drop tube?" "I don't know what one is." "Hang on to me and take your landing on your old foot. I think. Teena, can you help us?" "Sure thing, chum!" Drop tubes are more fun than a collie pup! After my first drop I insisted on going up and down four times "to gain practice" (for fun, in fact) and Hazel indulged me and Teena made sure I didn't hurt my new foot in landings. Stairs are a hazard to an amputee and a painful chore at best. Elevators have always been a dreary expedient for anyone, as grim as a fat woman's girdle, too much like cattle cars.

But drop tubes offer the same giddy excitement as jumping off a straw stack on my uncle's farm when I was a kid- without the dust and the heat. Whoopee!

Finally Hazel stopped me. "Look, dear. Let's go swimming.

Please."

"Okay. You coming with us, Teena?"

"How else?"

Hazel said, "Do you have us bugged, dear? Or one of us?" "We no longer use implants. Hazel. Too crude. Zeb and I worked out a gimmick using a double triple to hold four axes in linking two-way sight-sound. Color is a bit skiddy but we're getting it."

"So you do have us bugged." "I prefer to call it a 'spy ray'; it sounds better. Okay, I have you bugged."

"So I assumed. May we have privacy? I have family matters to discuss with my husband."

"Sure thing, chum. Hospital monitoring only. Otherwise three little monkeys and the old fast wipe."

"Thank you, dear."

"Usual Long Enterprises service. When you want to crawl out from under the rock, just mention my name. Kiss him once for me. So long!"

"We really do have privacy now, Richard. Teena is listening and watching you every split second but doing so as impersonally as a voltmeter and her only memory not transient is for matters such as pulse and respiration. Something like this was used to keep you from hurting while you were so ill." I made my usual brilliant comment. "Huh?"

We had come outdoors from the central building of the hospital and were facing a small park flanked by two side wings, a U-shaped building. This court was rich with flowers and greenery and the middle of it was a pool that just "happened" to be the right casual shape to fit those flower beds and paths and bushes. Hazel stopped at a bench facing the pool in the shade of a tree. We sat down, let the bench adjust itself to us, and watched people in the pool-as much fun as swimming, almost.

Hazel said, "What do you recall of your arrival here?"

"Not much. I was feeling pretty rocky-that wound, you know." ("That wound" was now a hairline scar, hard to find- I think I was disappointed.) "She-Tamara?-Tammy was looking me in the eyes and looking worried. She said something in another language-"

"Galacta. You'll leam it; it's easy-"

"So? Anyhow she spoke to me and that's the last I remember. To me, that was last night and I woke up this morning, and now I leam that it was not last night but God knows when and I've been crashed the whole time. Disturbing. Hazel, how long has it been?"

"Depends on how you count it. For you, about a month."

"They've kept me knocked out that long? That's a long time to keep a man sedated." (It worried me. I've seen 'em go in for surgery, right out of the scrum... and come out of hospital physically perfect... but hooked on painkiller. Morphine, De-merol, sans-souci, methadone, whatever.)

"Dear one, you weren't kept knocked out."

"Play back?"

"A 'Lethe' field the whole time-no drugs. Lethe lets the patient stay alert and cooperative... but pain is forgotten as soon as it happens. Or anything. You did hurt, dear, but each pain was a separate event, forgotten at once. You never had to endure that overpowering fatigue that comes from unending pain. And now you don't have a hangover and the need to wash weeks and weeks of addictive drugs out of your system." She smiled at me. "You weren't much company, dear, because a man who can't remember what happened two seconds ago does not carry on a coherent conversation. But you did seem to enjoy listening to music. And you ate all right as long as someone fed you."

"You fed me." "No. I did not interfere with the professionals." My cane had slipped to the grass; Hazel leaned down, handed it to me.

"By the way, I reloaded your cane."

'Thank you. Hey! It was loaded. Fully."

"It was loaded when they jumped us-and a good thing, too. Or I would be dead. You, too, I think. Me for certain, though."

We spent the next ten minutes confusing each other. I've already recounted how that fight outside the Raffles Hotel looked to me. I'll tell briefly how Hazel said it looked to her. There is no possible way to reconcile the two.

She says that she did not use her handbag as a weapon. ("Why, that would be silly, dear. Too slow and not lethal. You took out two of them at once and that gave me time to get at my little Miyako. After I had used my scarf, I mean.")

According to her, I shot four of them, while she worked around the edges, cooling those I missed. Until they brought me down with that slice into my thigh (knife? She tells me they picked bits of bamboo out of the wound) and they hit me with an aerosol-and that gave her the instant she needed to finish off the man who sprayed me.

("I stepped on his face and grabbed you and dragged you out of there. No, I didn't expect to see Gretchen. But I knew I could count on her.")

Her version does explain a little better how we won... except that by my recollection it is dead wrong. There is no point in picking at it; it can't be straightened out.

"How did Gretchen get there? That Xia and Choy-Mu were waiting isn't mysterious, in view of the messages we left for them. And Hendrik Schultz, too, if he grabbed a shuttle as soon as he heard from me. But Gretchen? You talked to her just before lunch. She was home, at Dry Bones."

"At Dry Bones, with the nearest tubeway being far south at Hong Kong Luna. So how did she get to L-City so fast? Not by rolligon. No prize is offered for the correct answer."

"By rocket." "Of course. A prospector's jumpbug being the type of rocket.

You remember that Jinx Henderson was planning to return that fez for you via some friend of his who was jumping his bug to L-City?"

"Yes, of course."

"Gretchen went with that friend and returned the fez herself. She dropped it at lost-and-found in Old Dome just before she came to the Raffles to find us."

"I see. But why?"

"She wants you to paddle her bottom, dear, and turn it all pink."

"Oh, nonsense! I meant, 'Why did her daddy let her hitchhike to L-City with this neighbor?' She's much too young."

"He let her do so for the usual reason. Jinx is a big, strong, macho man who can't resist the wheedling of his daughter. Forbidden to satisfy his suppressed incestuous yearnings he lets her have anything she wants if she teases him long enough."

"That's ridiculous. And inexcusable. A father's duty toward his daughter requires that-"

"Richard. How many daughters do you have?"

"Eh? None. But-"

"So shut up about something you know nothing about. No matter what Jinx should have done, the fact is that Gretchen left Dry Bones about as we were having lunch. Counting time of flight, that put her at City Lock East around the time we left the Warden's Complex... and she arrived at the Raffles just seconds before we did-and a good thing, too, or you and I would be dead. I think."

"Did she get into the fight?"

"No, but by carrying you she freed me to cover our retreat. And all because she wants you to paddle her bottom. God moves in mysterious ways, dear; for every masochist He creates a sadist; marriages are made in Heaven."

"Wash out your mouth with soap! I am not a sadist."

"Yes, dear. I may have some details wrong, but not the broad picture. Gretchen has proposed formally to me, asking your hand in marriage."

"What?"

"That's right. She's thought about it, and she has discussed it with Ingrid. She wants me to allow her to join our family, instead of starting a new line or group of her own. I found nothing surprising about it; I know how charming you are."

"My God. What did you say to her?"

"I told her that it had my approval but that you were ill. So wait. And now you can answer her yourself... for there she is, across the pool."