The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

XX

"If anyone doubts my veracity, I can only say that I pity his lack of faith."

BARON MUNCHAUSEN 1737-1794

Xia added, "Gretchen, hand me a clean towel. We'll make do just with a pressure pack until later."

"Ouch!"

"Sorry, Richard."

"Mayday, Mayday! Hail, Mary, I'm up the crick without a paddle! Answer me!"

"We read you. Major Lipschitz. Report local fix, planet, system, and universe." It was a machine voice with a typical uninflected brassiness that sets my teeth on edge.

"Now let's tape it tightly."

"Hell with procedures! I need T-shift pickup and I need it now! Check my assignment and slam it! Switch point: 'One small step' by Armstrong. Local fix: Hotel Raffles, room L. Time tick, now!"

I went on looking out the 'fresher door to avoid watching the unpleasant things Xia and Gretchen were doing to me. I could hear shouts and people running; something crashed against the corridor door. Then in the rock wall on my right a new door dilated.

I say "door" for lack of a precise word. What I saw was a circular locus of silver gray, floor to ceiling, and more. Inside this locus was an ordinary door for a vehicle. What sort of vehicle I could not tell; its door was all I could see.

It swung open; someone inside called out, "Grandma!" as the corridor door crashed in and a man fell into the room. Hazel shot him. A second man was right behind him; she shot him, too.

I reached for my cane-beyond Xia, damn it! "Hand me my cane! Hurry!"

"Now, now! You lie back down."

"Give it to me!" Hazel had one round left, or maybe none. Either way, it was time I backed her up.

I heard more shots. With bitter certainty that nothing was left but to avenge her, I made a long arm, got my stick, and turned.

No more fighting- Those last shots had been fired by Rabbi Ezra. (Why was I surprised that a wheelchair cripple chose to go armed?) Hazel was shouting, "Everybody get aboard! Move it!"

And we did. I was confused again, as an endless crowd of young people, male and female and all of them redheaded, poured out of that vehicle and carried out Hazel's orders. Two of them carried Reb Ezra inside while a third folded his wheel-chair flat and handed it in to a fourth. Choy-Mu and Gretchen were hustled in, followed by Father Schultz. Xia was shoved after them when she tried to insist on handling me. Then two redheads, a man and a woman, carried me in; my blood-stained pants were chucked after me. I clung to my cane.

I saw only a little of the vehicle. Its door opened into a four-place pilot-and-passenger compartment of what might be a spaceplane. Or might not be; the controls were strange and I was in no position to judge how it worked. I was lugged between seats and shoved through a door behind them into a cargo space and wound up on top of the Rabbi's folded wheel-chair.

Was I going to be treated as cargo? No, I lay there only briefly, then was turned ninety degrees and passed through a larger door, turned another ninety degrees and placed on a floor.

And glad to stay there!

For the first time in years I was experiencing earth-normal weight.

Correction: I had felt a few moments of it yesterday in the ballistic tube, a few more in that U-Pushit clunker. Budget Jets Seventeen, and about an hour of it in Old MacDonald's Farm four days earlier. But this time sudden heaviness caught me by surprise and did not go away. I had lost blood and found it hard to breathe and was dizzy again.

I was feeling sorry for myself when I saw Gretchen's face;

she looked both scared and wretchedly ill. Xia was saying, "Get your head down, dear. Lie down by Richard; that's best. Richard, can you scrunch over a little? I would like to lie down, too; I don't feel well."

So I found myself with a cuddlesome wench on each side of me and I didn't feel a dum bit like cuddling. I'm supposed to be trained to fight in accelerations up to two full gravities, twelve times that of Luna. But that was years ago and I'd had over five years of soft, sedentary living at low gravity.

It seems certain that Xia and Gretchen were just as uninterested in bundling.

My beloved arrived carrying our miniature maple. She placed it on a stand, blew me a kiss, and started sprinkling it. "Xia, let me draw a lukewarm tub for you two born Loonies; you both can get into it."

Hazel's words caused me to look around. We were in a "bathroom." Not a refresher appropriate to a four-seater spaceplane, nothing at all like ours in the Raffles; this room was an antique. Have you ever seen wallpaper decorated with fairies and gnomes? Indeed, have you ever seen wallpaper? How about a giant iron tub on claw feet? Or a water closet with a wooden lid and an overhead tank? The whole room was straight out of a museum of cultural anthropology ... yet everything was bright and new and shiny.

I wondered just how much blood I had lost.

"Thanks, Gwen, but I don't think I need it. Gretchen, do you want to float in water?"

"I don't want to move!"

"It won't be long," Hazel assured them. "Gay shifted twice to avoid shrapnel, or we would be down now. Richard, how are you feeling?"

"I'll make it." "0f course you will, darling. I feel the weight myself from a year in Golden Rule. But not much as I exercised at one gee every day. Dear one, how badly are you wounded?" "I don't know."

"Xia?" "Lots of bleeding and some muscle damage. Twenty or twenty-five centimeters and fairly deep. I don't think bone was hit. We put a tight pressure pack on it. If this ship is equipped for it, I want to do a better job and give him a broad-spectrum shot, too."

"You've done a fine job. We'll be landing soon and then there will be professional help and equipment." "All right. I don't feel too lively, I admit." "So try to rest." Hazel picked up my blood-soiled trousers.

"I'm going to soak these before the stain sets."

"Use cold water!" Gretchen blurted, then turned pink and added shyly, "So Mama says."

"Ingrid is right, dear." Hazel ran water into the hand basin. "Richard, I'm forced to admit that I lost your new clothes during that fuss."

"Clothes we can buy. I thought I was going to lose you."

"Good Richard. Here's your wallet and some this and that. Pocket plunder."

"Better let me have it." I crowded it all into a breast pocket.

"Where's Choy-Mu? I did see him-or did I?"

"He's in the other 'fresher, with Father Schultz and Father Ezra."

"Uh? Are you telling me that a four-seater has two refreshers? It is a four-place job, isn't it?"

"It is and it does and wait till you see the rose gardens. And the swimming lounge."

I started to make a retort but chopped it off. I had not figured out any formula by which to tell when my bride was jesting, or was telling literal but unbelievable truth. I was saved from a silly discussion by one of the redheads coming in-female, young, muscled, freckled, catlike, wholesome, sultry. "Aunt Hazel, we're grounded."

'Thank you. Lor."

"I'm Laz. Cas wants to know who stays here, who comes along, and how long till lift? Gay wants to know whether or not we'll be bombed and can she park one shift over? Bombing makes her nervous."

"Something is wrong here. Gay should not be asking directly. Should she?"

"I don't think she trusts Cas's judgment."

"She may have reason. Who's commanding?"

"I am."

"Oh. I'll let you know who goes, who stays, after I talk to my papa and Uncle Jock. A few minutes, I think. You can let Gay park in a dead zone if you wish but please have her stay on my frequency triple; we may be in a hurry. Right now I want to move my husband... but first I must ask another of our passengers to lend me his wheelchair."

Hazel turned to leave. I called out, "I don't need a wheel-chair," but she didn't hear me. Apparently.

Two of the redheads lifted me out of the craft and placed me in Ezra's wheelchair, with its back support lowered and front support lifted; one of them spread a kingsize bath towel over my lap and legs. I said, "Thanks, Laz." .

"I'm Lor. Don't be surprised if this towel vanishes; we've never tried taking one outside before."

She got back aboard and Hazel wheeled me under the nose of the craft and around to its port side... which suited me, as I had seen at once that this was indeed a sort of spaceplane, with lifting body and retractable wings-and I was curious to see how the designer had managed to crowd two large refreshers into its port side. It did not seem aerodynamically possible.

And it wasn't. Portside was like the starboard side, sleek and slender. No cubic for bathrooms.

I had no time to ponder this. When we had turned into the Raffles' side tunnel a few minutes earlier, my Sonychron had just blinked seventeen, Greenwich or L-City time... which would make it eleven in the morning in zone six, dirtside.

And so it was because that's where we were, zone six, in the north pasture of my Uncle Jock's place outside Grinnell, Iowa. So it becomes obvious that I not only had lost much blood but also had been hit hard on the head-as even the hottest military courier needs at least two hours, Luna to Terra.

In front of us was Uncle Jock's fine old restored Victorian, cupola and verandas and widow's walk, and he himself was coming toward us, accompanied by two other men. Uncle was as spry as ever, and still with a mop of silver-white hair that made him look like Andrew Jackson. The other two I did not recognize. They were mature men but much younger than Uncle Jock-well, almost everybody is.

Hazel stopped pushing me, ran and threw her arms around one of them, kissed him, all out. My uncle picked her out of that man's arms, bussed her just as enthusiastically, then surrendered her to the third, who saluted her the same way and put her back on her feet.

Before I could feel left out, she turned and took the first one by his left hand. "Papa, I want you to meet my husband, Richard Colin. Richard, this is my Papa Mannie, Manuel Gar-cia O'Kelly Davis."

"Welcome to family. Colonel." He offered me his right hand.

"Thank you, sir."

Hazel turned to the third man. "And Richard, this-"

"-is Dr. Hubert," Uncle Jock interrupted. "LAfe, slap skin with my nephew Colonel Colin Campbell. Welcome home, Dickie. What are you doing in that baby carriage?" • "Just lazy, I guess. Where's Aunt Cissy?"

"Locked up, of course; knew you were coming. But what have you been doing? Looks like you failed to duck. Sadie, you have to expect that from Dickie; he's always been slow. Hard to toilet train and never did leam pattycake."

I was selecting a sufficiently insulting answer to this canard (I learned long ago the way to treat our family scandal) when the ground shook, followed immediately by Krrrumpf Not nuclear, just high explosive. But disquieting just the same; HE is not a toy and is not a better way to become dead-there isn't one. Uncle said, "Don't pee your pants, Dickie; they're not shooting at us. Lafe, will you examine him here? Or inside?"

Dr. Hubert said, "Let me see your pupils. Colonel."

So I looked at him as he looked at me. When Hazel stopped pushing the wheelchair, the spaceplane was then on my left; but when that HE detonation took place, the spaceplane was abruptly elsewhere. Gone. "-not a rack behind." Least hypothesis suggests that I was out of my gourd.

Nobody else seemed to notice it.

So I pretended not to and looked at my physician... and wondered where I had seen him lately.

"No concussion, I think. What's the natural log of pi?"

"If I had all my marbles, would I be here? Look, Doc, no guessing games, please; I'm tired." Another HE shell (or bomb) landed nearby, closer if anything. Dr. Hubert moved the towel off my left leg, poked at the pack Xia had placed.

"Does that hurt?"

"Hell, yes!"

"Good. Hazel, you had best take him home. I can't take proper care of him here as we are about to shift to New Harbor in Beulahland; the Angelenos have taken Des Moines and are moving this way. He's in good shape for a man who's taken a hit... but he should have proper treatment without delay."

I said, "Doctor, are you any relation to the redheaded girls in that spaceplane we arrived in?"

"They're not girls; they are superannuated juvenile delinquents. Whatever they told you I deny categorically. Give them my love."

Hazel blurted, "But I have to make my report!"

Everybody talked at once until Dr. Hubert said, "Quiet! Hazel goes with her husband and sees him settled in, stays as long as she finds necessary, then reports to New Harbor... but with time tick established now. Objection? So ordered."

Having that spaceplane reappear was even more disconcerting and I'm glad I didn't watch. Or not much. The two redheaded men (turned out there were only four redheads, not a mob) got me and the wheelchair inside and Hazel went into that odd refresher with me... and almost at once Laz (Lor?) followed us in and announced, "Aunt Hazel, we're home."

"Home" turned out to be the flat roof of a large building- and it was late evening, almost sundown. That spaceplane should be named the Cheshire Cat. (But its name is Gay. Her name is Gay. Oh, never mind!)

The building was a hospital. In checking into a hospital you first wait an hour and forty minutes while they process the paperwork. Then they undress you and put you on a gumey under a thin blanket with your bare feet sticking out into a cold draft and make you wait outside the X-ray lab. Then they demand a urine sample in a plastic duck while a young lady waits for it, staring at the ceiling and looking bored. Right?

These people didn't know page one about the regulation way to run a hospital. Our able-bodied comrades (the ones suffering from nothing but high acceleration) were already on their way, in glorified golf carts, when I was again lifted out and placed in another golf cart (gurney, wheelchair, floating couch). Rabbi Ezra was there in his wheelchair. Hazel was with us and carrying Tree-San and a Sears-labeled package containing Naomi's costume. The spaceplane had vanished; I had barely had time to tell Laz (Lor?) that Dr. Hubert sent his love. She had sniffed. "If he thinks sweet talk will get him out of the doghouse, he had better think again." But her nipples crinkled up, so I assume that she was pleased.

Four of us were left on the roof, we three and one member of the hospital staff, a little dark woman who seemed to combine the best of Mother Eve and Mother Mary without flaunting any of it. Hazel dropped the package on me, handed the bonsai to Reb Ezra, and threw her arms around her. Tammy!"

"Arii sool, m'temqa!" The motherly creature kissed Hazel.

"Reksi, reksi-so very long!"

They broke from the clinch and Hazel said, "Tammy, this is my beloved, Richard."

This got me kissed on the mouth. Tammy put that bundle aside to do it properly. A man kissed by Tammy stays kissed for hours-even if he is wounded, even if she makes it brief.

"And this is our dear friend the Reverend Rabbi Ezra ben David."

He did not get the treatment I got. Tammy curtsied deeply, then kissed his hand. So I showed a clear profit.

Tammy (Tamara) said, "Inside I must get you both that quickly may we repair Richard. But both each my cherished guests will here be through time not short. Hazel? Such room as you with Jubal shared, nay?"

'Tammy, that's a fine idea! 'Cause I'm going to have to be away sometimes. Gentlemen, will you room together while you are patients here?"

I was about to say, "Yeah, sure, but-" when Reb Ezra said, "There's some mixup. Mistress Gwendolyn, please explain to this dear lady that I am not a patient, not a candidate for hospitalization. Perfect health. Not a sniffle, not even a hangnail."

Tamara looked surprised and-no, not troubled but deeply concerned. She stepped close to him, gently touched his left stump. "Are not we your legs to back on put?"

Reb Ezra stopped smiling. "I'm sure you mean well. But I can't wear prosthetics. Truly."

Tamara broke into that other language, speaking to Hazel. She listened, then said, "Father Ezra, Tamara is speaking of real legs. Flesh and blood. They can do it. Three ways they can do it."

Reb Ezra took a deep breath, sighed it out, looked at Tamara. "Daughter, if you can put my legs back on... go ahead! Please," then added something, Hebrew I think.