Part 5

"But if your guess is right about Mr. Brimstine offering $10,000 for a green cat, and Jack stole the cat, then why hasn't he taken it to him?"

Juno rolled her head like an angry bull. "Oh, it'd be something those Akeleys put him up to; something they flattered him into. Maybe they even got him to give them the cat. They can really twist him."

Phil felt all at sea again. "But what would the Akeleys want with the cat?"

"What do screwballs like that want with anything?" Juno countered. "What do they want with Jack?" She snuffed and looked at Phil. "Get one thing straight," she said gruffly, "I love Jack, the little rat. I've taken a lot from him, but I haven't minded too much. Oh, it hurt when I found out he thought more of Cookie and those other punks than he did for me, but I didn't let it show through my skin. After all, if a man knows you can lick him, I suppose it's bound to affect him. But when those Akeleys discovered him and began to play up to him and change him, that was too much for me. They're intelleckchuls, you see, and they flattered Jack and filled him up with a lot of guff about how he had a hidden artistic talent and how he was Zeus or some name like that battling the female principle and so on. Well, he falls for it, see?--goes into a complete free-fall. Starts to buy reading tapes, printed books even! Next thing he's insulting me--using a lot of words I never hardly heard of. Keeps talking about how great Mary is, with her art and her magic figures or whatever they are, and how wonderful Sashy is, with his great ideas about understanding and love and a lot of other junk. Tells me to my face that I'm a dumb bell, a stupe semantically!" And having done well with that last word, Juno slugged down the rest of her drink. "Look, Phil," she went on, "I could fight Cookie and the others, because they're on my level, but I can't fight intelleckchuls. They're lifting Jack away from me and I can't do nothing about it. And now they've gone and got him into some real trouble, I bet, with this green cat business. Because Moe Brimstine isn't impressed with intelleckchuls or anything." She carefully took the glass out of her hand and made claws. "If I had the little rat here," she said, "I'd strangle some sense into him. But until Moe Brimstine talked to me, I didn't really suspicion anything was wrong, and now I can't do nothing."

Phil's blurred memory suddenly came clear. He told Juno about how, racing to Dr. Romadka's, he had seen Jack, Cookie, Sacheverell, and Mary driving somewhere in the ancient electric.

Juno slammed the table with both fists. People looked around. "That black hearse-box!" She roared. "I should have known it. Tonight's so important they're receiving special." She jumped up and grabbed Phil by the wrist, fumbled for her glass, got Phil's instead, recognized it just before draining the last of the soybean milk, set it down with a shudder and yanked Phil out of the booth. "Come on," she told him. "We're going to the Akeleys! To the temple!"

Opening the doorway leading to the sub-street, Juno had to pause. Phil got a chance to look back the long length of the bar. As he did, the elevator door at the far end opened. A fat form filled it. Dark glasses were twin patches of smut.

At that moment, Phil got an unannounced demonstration of Juno Jones' strength. He was lifted off his feet and lightly swung some ten feet through the doorway into the sub-street roaring and glaring with trucks.

"That was Moe Brimstine," Phil gasped.

"I know," Juno told him as she yanked him toward the escalator leading to higher levels and cab phones. "He didn't see us."

Phil wasn't so sure.

VII

The cab had just hummed past Monstro Multi-Products' blindingly bright basement show windows, behind which a file of dress-display robots marched in an endless figure eight with considerable realism and oodles of suede-rubber glamor, when Juno hunched forward and growled to the driver to stop. She had been silent during most of the ride, as if the whiskey had gone sour in her, and now when Phil made a move to pay she impatiently motioned him aside. He hopped out willingly enough, suddenly eager to see what the Akeley place looked like, as if his hopes and fears had started rotating again when the wheels of the cab stopped.

Juno's reference to "the temple" had half led him to expect Greek columns or an Egyptian portal. Instead he was facing an oblong of darkness, framed by the sidewalk, show windows some distance to either side, and the underpinnings of the two upper streets. He crossed the sidewalk and hesitated, as if he stood on the edge of nothingness. It was really very black, even for the bottom level. The sodium moon had set.

Then, as the after effects of the show windows' glare lessened, a house took shape before him--an old, three story house, looking incredibly as if it were built of wood, with roofs slanting oddly and lights gleaming faintly through shuttered bay windows and fanciful dusty fanlights. Something gritted under his foot and he realized that between him and the house was a yard of real dirt, if not grass and weeds. This must have been the ground level of the city some hundred years ago. Now it was the windows of the third story which peered across the gap at the top-level street far above Phil's head. The gap was at one point spanned by a beam. Apparently the house was so ancient and ricketty that it needed props.

But then a new illusion presented itself. Phil knew that the house was in the heart of the city, hemmed in by gigantic buildings on every side. There should have been tiers of lighted windows and, far overhead, a square of night sky. Instead there was only darkness, as if the pre-atomic house existed in a private night.

Then headlights of a turning car in the street two levels above swept across the upper third of the house, and he saw that all around the house were surfaces painted a dull, non-reflecting black. The flat black "ceiling" could hardly be a foot above the top of the house's highest spire.

"Some legal business," Juno explained, coming up beside him. "Jack wunct told me sumpin about it. Seems the original owners couldn't be rooted out, but the city seized the air-rights and built over them. Creepy place, looks as if it were about to rot apart--just right for those Akeleys." Then, more loudly, "Well, I said I was going to bust in on them, and I am. C'mon."

Phil followed her across the yard to the ricketty steps leading to the porch. His hand groping for the rail touched peeling ancient paint. Halfway up a cat darted past him. For a moment he was swallowing his heart, then as the cat paused at the top he saw that it was splotched with some sort of dark and light colors--hardly Lucky. It loped around a corner of the porch. Following it, Phil and Juno found themselves facing a six-paneled door lit by a dingy globe, which Phil guessed must be an ancient tungsten-filament lamp. There was no sign of the cat, or indication of how it could have vanished, until Phil noticed a tiny and possibly swinging door cut in the bottom of the big one.

Ignoring a cat-headed knocker, green with verdigris, Juno pounded on the door in a way that made Phil hunch his shoulders and duck his head, keeping an apprehensive eye on the ceiling. But the house didn't collapse.

After a time a peephole opened above the knocker and a watery gray eye surveyed Juno.

"I want to see that no-good husband of mine," she shouted, but it didn't seem her usual self-confident roar.

"Now Juno, you're all upset," came the response in a voice Phil recognized as that of Sacheverell Akeley. "Your aura's all muddy; I can hardly see you through it."

"Listen here," Juno bellowed, "you let me in or I'll bust your lousy house down."

Phil thought that, even granting some lack of certainty in Juno, this was not a threat to be taken lightly, but it didn't faze Sacheverell. "No, Juno," he said firmly. "I can't let you in when your vibrations are like that, and when hate hormones are streaming off you. Later perhaps--then we may even be able to help you achieve inward tranquility--but not now."

"But look," Juno complained in surprisingly docile tones, "I got a friend with me that's got business with you." She stepped aside.

"What business?" Sacheverell asked skeptically.

Phil looked straight at the oysterish eye and said, "The green cat."

The door swung back and Sacheverell, now no longer in orange beret and pants, but a robe of bronze embroidered green, waved Phil in with an arm that swished emerald silk. His sunburn now seemed the exotically dark complexion of an Asian mystic. "All doors must open to him who speaks that name," he said simply. "Do you vouch for your companion's peacefulness?"

"Ah, I wouldn't touch anybody or anything here," Juno growled surlily, shouldering in after Phil. "I feel smutched enough already."

"From filth the roses spring, Juno," Sacheverell reminded her gently, "and good blooms from evil. Be happy that you are to share in the great transformation."

Phil found himself standing on the threshold of a large living room twisting with streams of gray incense and cluttered with Victorian furniture and a bric-a-brac of ornaments and objects suggesting every religion in the world. The lights here, too, were tungstens, and so few as to make many shadows. At the far end of the room was a large doorway, heavily curtained with black velvet. Through the resinous odor of incense came the dull reek of stale food, clothes and people; also a sour animal smell.

And then Phil saw that the place was simply alive with cats: black, white, topaz, silver, taupe; striped, mottled, banded, pied; short haired, Angora, Persian, Siamese and Siamese mutant. They dripped from chair tops and shelves; they peered brightly from under little tables and dully from suffocating-looking crevices between cushions; they pattered about or posed sublimely still. One stretched full length on the woven Koran in the center of a Moslem prayer rug; another lay on a tarnished silver pentacle inlaid in a dark, low table. One was battling a phylactery hanging from the wall, making the little leather box swing and jump; another was nosing a small steatopygous, multi-mammiferous figurine; yet another was lazily entangling itself in a rosary; two were lapping dirty looking milk from a silver chalice set with amethysts.

And then for a second time Phil was gulping his heart, for in the center of a mantlepiece over a real fireplace, and midway between a gilded icon and a tin Mexican devil-mask, there posed most sublimely still of all, with forelegs straight as spears ... the green cat.

As Phil walked hypnotically forward, he heard Sacheverell say gently, "No, that is not his true self, but his simulacrum, his ancient Egyptian harbinger, a figure of Bast, the Lady of Life and Love."

And as Phil came closer, he saw it truly was the bronze statue of a cat, encrusted with verdigris almost exactly the hue of Lucky's coat. Coming up beside him, Sacheverell explained, "As soon as _he_ came, I routed out all our relics of Bast. Most of them are in there," he indicated the black velvet curtains, "around the altar. But a few are here." And he pointed out, beside the bronze statue, a small mummy case and inside it the linen-banded mummy of a cat, looking like a little sack with a blob at the top. As Sacheverell was explaining the tiny Canopic jar of preserved cat entrails beside it, a six-toed Siamese wandered up and sniffed the mummy thoughtfully.

Finally Phil found his voice. "Then you actually do have Lucky?"

Sacheverell's high curved eyebrows curved still higher. "Lucky?"

"The green cat," Phil added.

Sacheverell's face grew serenely grave. "No one has the green cat," he reproved Phil. "It would not be permitted. He has us. We are his humble worshippers, his primal hierophants."

"But I want to see him," Phil said.

"That will be permitted," Sacheverell assured Phil, "when he wakes and the world changes. Meanwhile, compose yourself, er ... Phil Gish, you say? Phil ... philo ... love ... an auspicious name."

"Why the mucking hell is this green cat so important, anyhow? What is it?"

The two men turned. Juno was still standing on the threshold. She was swayed forward a little, hugging her elbows, yet had her shoulders squared and was glaring at them surlily, like a rebellious schoolgirl.

"The green cat is love," Sacheverell told her softly. "The love that blossoms even from hate."

There was another interruption. This one took the form of a coy, girlish snicker. Phil turned to the side of the room he had not yet inspected closely, the one facing the fireplace. In it was a deep, wide bay window closely shuttered with gray jalousies, as were all the other windows in the room except for one fronting on darkness beside the fireplace. In the bay was a semicircular couch on which Mary Akeley sprawled adolescently, still in black sweater and stiff, red skirt.

"You know," she said, "I just can't get used to the idea of loving everything. Sacheverell says I've got to be nice to my little people and stop sticking hatpins in them and things, but it's hard."

For a morbid moment Phil thought she was referring to the cats. Then he saw that there were a series of narrow shelves behind her, starting at the top of the couch and going halfway up the bay and that these shelves were crowded with dolls. Moving closer, he saw they were not ordinary dolls, but extremely realistic human figures, most of them about six inches high. He had never seen dolls so perfectly formed or realistically dressed. There must have been two or three hundred. They stood behind Mary like the cross-section of a crowded three-level street in some tiny living world. In front of the couch was a low table crowded with blocks of wax, molds, micro-tools and magnifiers, several partially completed figurines and piled squares of fabrics so delicate they must have been woven specially.

"You like my little people?" he heard Mary ask him. "Most everyone does. I got started out making strip-tease dolls, but these that are all my own are so much more fun. Sacheverell, I think they like having pins stuck through them. I think that's the way they want to be loved."

"Perhaps, my dear," Phil heard Sacheverell say with an affectionate chuckle, "but we'll have to wait to see how _he_ feels about it."

And then Phil saw that the dolls represented actual individual people, were apparently perfect statuettes of them--so perfect that for a moment he found himself wondering which was the real world: the big one or this tiny one of Mary's. He recognized President Barnes, the USSR's Vanadin, square-jawed John Emmet of the Federal Bureau of Loyalty, several TV and handie stars, Sacheverell, about eight versions of Mary herself, Jack Jones in black tights, Juno in maroon ones, Dr. Romadka and--he caught his breath--Mitzie Romadka in an evening frock very much like the one he'd seen her wearing.

"Recognizing friends?" Mary asked softly, her young face which was so predominantly nose and chin poking up inquisitively toward his.

Footsteps clumped. Phil realized that Juno had finally come into the room and was standing behind him looking at the dolls. Mary looked past him with an innocent smile. "They're awfully cute, aren't they?" she remarked.

Juno said, "Ugh!"

"Try to be joyful," Sacheverell kindly admonished with a little wag of his finger. "Try hard. Soon it will be ever so much easier. I mean, when _he_ wakes. I must go now and see if there has been any change. Amuse yourselves." And having lightly set them that stupendous task, he hurried from the room, his green robes whistling against the black velvet curtains.

"Sacheverell's been as efficient as can be ever since _he_ came," Mary observed. "A great little manager. I've never seen him so peppy before about anything. He's gone in for other things, you know," she prattled on. "Semantic Christianity, neo-Mithraism, Bhagavad-Gita, Gospel according to St. Isherwood, Bradburian Folkism, Cretan Triple-Goddess, devil worship and Satanism--those are the two that _I_ like--and I don't know what all else. Every time he finds himself a new one, he gets very enthusiastic, but not like this. I've never seen him so serious. Ever since Jack handed him the green cat, all cute and curled-up and sleeping--"

"It wasn't sleeping," Phil cut in almost sharply. "It had been knocked out by a stun-gun."

"Don't be ridiculous," Mary went on. "Jack just found him sleeping. Well, as soon as Sacheverell touched him, Sacheverell told us that the world was going to change and there was going to be a new era of love and understanding, and ever since then he's been as busy as a little bee. Soon as we got home, he whirled around and got out all the Bast things. I told Sacheverell that because Bast was a lady goddess, maybe we shouldn't call him _he_. But Sacheverell told me no, that was the way it was and the way it had to be. And I guess maybe he's right, because when Sacheverell carried him through here sleeping, all the little cats went for him in a big way, and the little girl cats went for him even more than the little boy cats. And anyway, I always trust Sacheverell's notions because he's so good at esping and telepathing that he makes half our living by it."

At that moment there was a strangled grunt and Phil heard the clumping begin again behind him. Mary smiled slyly and followed Juno with her eyes, but kept on babbling.

"And you know," she said, "I guess there is something to what Sacheverell says about an era of love and understanding, because these little cats used to fight all the time, but ever since _he's_ been in the house they've been as peaceful as anything--a regular little cat UN without Russia and the satellites. Even I feel sweeter, which is a real test, though it's going to break my heart not to be able to hate people." She sighed. "Still, if everybody's going to have to love people, I'll just have to face it, and I better start practicing right now."

Phil, who had been leaning toward her, jerked up at that. Her face was just a bit too like a young crone, despite her inviting lips and creamy skin, but she merely reached behind her and took down the doll of Juno. "Even love _her_," she said.

The footsteps changed direction and came stamping up. Juno's face was brick red from rage or outraged modesty.

"You put me down!" she demanded. "I know what you are, you're a witch. There was one on the next farm back in Pennsylvania. Only witches make wax dolls of people and stick pins in them."

For answer Mary gave the figurine an affectionate stroke. "No, Juno, I'm going to have to love you and you're going to have to get used to it." She looked up sweetly at Juno, who writhed at every touch Mary gave the figurine. "Incidentally, I really am a witch and if I had any choice, I would much rather stick needles through you."

"Put me down!" Juno bellowed, raising her arms with all the muscles standing out tautly underneath the long, tight sleeves of her dress, as if she had a big rock she was going to drop on Mary.

Mary complied without haste and took down another of the figurines. Her voice was soft as a serpent gliding. "Would you rather I practiced loving on Jack? That's what you make me do."

"Don't you touch him!" Juno's face was almost purple. "Bad enough your going all gooey over him in the flesh, but this is worse. Stop touching him that way! Aaaaah!"

Phil ducked back as, with the last screaming bellow, Juno kicked the work table to one side so that its contents scattered and all the cats went scampering under tables and chairs. "I'm going to smash every last one of those dolls," Juno announced, advancing.

Instantly Mary rose to her knees on the couch, her back to her little people, her arms outstretched protectingly to either side.

"Straight through the eyes," she hissed, her face a fury's mask, "that's where _your_ needles are going. Get thee before me, Satan!"

Phil never found out whether Juno was, as she seemed, a bit cowed by the diabolical venom in Mary's voice, for just then there was a frantic padding of feet on the stairs and Jack Jones and Cookie burst into the room from the hall.

"Juno!" Jack yelled. "I told you I'd kill you if you ever came here!"

In the ensuing moment of silence Cookie could be heard to confirm primly, "He will, too."

Juno turned on Jack, assuming the stance of a bear. "Listen, you ten-timing little stinker, you're going straight home with me." She hitched up her skirt and began to roll up, or rather rip up, the long sleeves of her frock. Her furpiece had already fallen off and her hat hung by a cropped hair.

Meanwhile Jack was surveying the scene and getting a real idea of how much damage had been done.

"Juno," he said aghast, but advancing, "you've been wrecking the place, you've been wrecking the little people, you even brought the Ikeless Joe!" And in passing he gave Phil a shove that sent him up against the wall, his teeth rattling. "Don't you see what you've done, Juno?" Jack continued with poignantly aggrieved indignation, as if he must convince Juno of the enormity of her actions before liquidating her. "You've done the one thing they won't ever forgive, the one thing that'll turn 'em against even me." He was practically tearful. "Don't you realize they're the only two people in the world that mean anything to me? Don't you realize that outside of Mary and Sacheverell, I don't care a fig for anybody?"

Surprisingly to Phil, the retort to this came not from Juno, who was lifting her now bare arms menacingly, but from Cookie.

"Oh, so you don't care anything about me, either," he accused shrilly. "I've suspected it for a long time, and now you say it yourself."

"Shut up, you're just a dumb stooge," Jack told him without looking around.

"Oh, so I'm just a dumb stooge, am I? Well let me tell you, Jackie, Juno's right about one thing and I wish I'd admitted I agreed with her long ago. These Akeleys have turned your head. They've dazzled you."

At that moment Sacheverell came popping back into the room, his brilliant silk robes fairly hissing against the black velvet. "Stop, at once!" he commanded, raising his arm. "You will disturb _his_ awakening. Rise above hate. Do you realize I can't see anything of you but ink blobs, your auras are so black? Even _he_ will be unable to reach you."

"Shut up that silly talk about _he_," Cookie snarled. "I don't want to hear the word again or anything more about your stupid cults that I had to pretend to be interested in. You've done Jackie quite enough damage as it is. Do you know we could have got _ten thousand dollars_ for that cat you're using for your idiotic mumbo-jumbo? Jack had just stun-gunned it and was all ready to hand it over to Moe Brimstine and collect _ten thousand dollars_, when you have to prance in with that _ugly_ witch of a wife of yours and make like a wizard and flatter Jackie into thinking he was starting a new religion or something and soft talk him into giving you the cat. I hate you. I want to hurt you." And he started toward Sacheverell, walking on his toes and puffing out his sweatered chest like a bright blue fighting cock.

Once again to Phil's surprise, Sacheverell's horrified and reproachful gaze was turned not on Cookie, but Jack.

"Jack," he gasped, "do you mean to tell me you shot _him_ with a stun-gun, that you even dreamed of selling _him_ for money? Judas!"

"Now see what you've done," Jack moaned, not at Cookie, but at Juno. "You've spoiled everything."