The Wanderer

His throat now ached with thirst, matching his general muscle ache, and he had begun to feel very lightheaded, though more likely from experience-fatigue than hunger. What he was mostly conscious of was unhappy irritation at the change in Tigerishka. While Miaow fed, the large cat had been dancing — a wonderfully swift, rhythmic pirouetting and somersaulting and cartwheeling between ceiling and floor of the saucer, pushing off from each in turn. Simultaneously, strange music had filled the saucer, and its mysterious sunlight had pulsed in time.

Tigerishka, Paul realized now, was a toe-dancer by anatomy, her feet being all toe — digitigrade, not plantigrade — and her heel the leg-joint above them, corresponding to the lower elbow in her forearm.

The dance had enthralled him completely, taking his mind off all his pains and anxieties.

Now the lovely ballerina had become again the impersonally sadistic nurse — a hateful transformation.

So in spite of his thirst he sadly shook his head and tried to press his numb, thick-feeling lips together tight. Then he pushed up his eyebrows and solemnly lifted his face toward hers in the only expression of appeal his mind could devise — though he was very conscious of how exquisitely like a gagged and pinioned monkey begging for freedom he must be making himself look.

She grinned at him without parting her long lips — another mocking imitation of a human sign, he felt sure, and continued to contemplate him.

It was night again, he knew, and he had been in the saucer a full twelve hours, for the last observation had been another unmistakable one — of San Francisco sinking into evening, but showing’the black stains and smokings of fires put out by rains, and also a crowding of ships in the Golden Gate. Then the saucer had tilted, and he had seen the Wanderer rising in the east in its mandala-face with an asymmetric glittering ring around it that a few seconds of frantic thought convinced him was most likely the crushed moon.

Tigerishka reached out and brushed his right wrist with the back of a green paw, then sat back again. He realized with rather incredulous wonder that his right arm was free. He worked the fingers, bent and unbent the elbow with less pain than he’d anticipated, then started to lift his fingers to his lips, but stopped them midway.

If he simply touched his lips, she might interpret it as meaning he wished to be tube-fed that way.

He brought his fingers to his forehead, then in one smooth movement dropped them to his lips and out toward her pointed ears. Inspiration continuing, he dropped them toward her muzzle, then swept them back to his own ear.

“Yes, want talk,” she interpreted. “Monkey cat have great gossip, eh?” She slowly shook her green-masked face from side to side. “No! Be all chatter-questions — one, ten, five thousands! I know apes.”

His expectations crumbled. At the same time it was occurring to him, with curious certainty, that she could have said that in grammatically perfect English, but deliberately chose not to — very much as a brilliant European quite capable of speaking any language flawlessly will hang onto his accent and his first, makeshift constructions to emphasize his exotic individuality, and also as a subtle criticism of the arbitrary English pronunciations and of its swarms of silly little auxiliary words.

“Still—” Tigerishka temporized — “are things I will tell.” Then, at court-stenographer speed, and a little singsong, as if it were very boring to her: “I come superior galactic culture. Read minds, throw thoughts, sail hyperspace, live forever if want, blow up suns — all that sort stuff. Look like animal — resume ancestral shapes. Make brains small but really huge — (psychophysiosubmicrominiaturization! We stay superior.) You not believe? So listen. Plants eat inorganic: they superior! Animals eat plants: they superior. Cats eat fresh meat: we most superior! Monkeys try eat everything: a mess!”

Then without pause: “Wanderer sail hyperspace. Yes, star photos, I know. Need fuel — much matter for converters. Your moon good woodpile. Smash, pulverize, dredge. We fuel up, then go. No need you monkeys get hot and bothered.”

After she broke off, Paul continued to seethe for all of five seconds, utterly enraged at her heartless oversimplifications. Then it occurred to him that there was nothing whatever he could do about it. He took a deep, slow breath and calmed his features, hoping they were growing less red. Then he held his hand tightly over his mouth and suddenly threw it out, as if to say: “Away with the gag.”

It also occurred to him that there was really no point to this gesture game, since she must know his thoughts, but immediately on the heels of that came the realization that the point simply was that it was a game. Cats like games; they like to play with helpless victims; and here Tigerishka seemed no exception.