The Third Cat Story Megapack. Damien Broderick

of all men that had locked her heart softened at his candid gaze, his admiration, his ownership.

      “Then you must sit for me,” he instructed her.

      “Sit?” She shook her head. “Sit?” Did this man from the big dark think he might command her like a dog, a cur? The endless aching in her wounded foot went away from her. Perhaps that was what she wished.

      “For your portrait.” He threw back his large shaven head and laughed a gusty roar of laughter. “I will surround you with the largesse of this garden world, Missy. I will catch the image of your soul within the embrace of a banana tree, lush and ripe with green leaves vast as the ears of the fabled elephant, with hands of bright yellow bananas to embrace you.” He stepped back. The funereal company stood shocked at his gusto, his half-nudity beside the deathly nakedness of William Avid, his penetrating presence. Dignitaries hesitated, crept forward, as if into a shadow, bowed to the dead prince of Harvest, scuttled away.

      Kabaka Buganda never released Gloriana’s eyes. He took the great lyre from his back, found strings in the leather pouch at his waist, strung the lyre as if he were a warrior returned from voyages weary past imagining, stringing a bow too large for mortal man to bend—but this was no weapon of battle. His thumb caressed the taut strings, finally, and a deep melodious note sprang out through the hall. His fingers tuned the notes, while he held her gaze, and she stood trapped and melting, the ache in her broken foot thrilling in a kind of agony of hope. He lifted his head and sang. These were the wer lyel, the funeral dirges of his own world. His bare feet struck the floor, set them booming like a drum.

      * * * *

      To her dizzy mind, days passed like minutes. He took her cantering on horseback across stubbled fields in fallow, attended by mounted mauser warriors. Rather, she invited him, but it did not seem so; he was masterly, charming, he took control without seeming to do so, he drew her up from the sour pit of despair in which she had been content to rest since her abandonment and mutilation.

      “Stand, now. I know it hurts. Good. Feel the pain in your stance, let it speak through your body. Remove your garment, child.” She was thirty years old and more. “Go on. We are alone. Yes, yes, aside from these delicious animal people of yours. Good girl, you are lovely. Ah, the light.” His machines struck at the marble slab brought him from a quarry halfway across the world. His hands moved, he sang, the machines bit into stone, broke it open, caressed it, smoothed it like silky flesh. Dust flooded the clear air, made her cough. He ignored the dust. “Now, bend forward. Let your breasts fall freely. Beautiful!” The shape he was carving did not look, to her grit-reddened eye, much like a portrait. He stood back. “It’s done,” he said. “Let us eat and drink.” And left the room.

      She found him outside under the radiant sun, washing himself in a rainbowed haze of spray. He was naked, and vast, a bull, an elephant, a trumpeting man. Laughing, she threw off the last of her garments and joined him recklessly, slapping at the runnels of bright water, stamping her good foot and her wounded foot in the mud they made.

      They made love like a goddess of fertility welcoming home her sire from the wars.

      Cats bore them, muddy feet and all, to the refreshment of an indoor pool, and washed the pungent juices from their dark skins, night-dark in bright day under the stained glass ceiling. Glory was delirious. Without a thought, she called her mauser ladies to attend them. They stood naked, and the lovely cat females slithered about them with towels and warm air blowers and curried their hair.

      One of the cat ladies, the most beautiful, the most languid, was Blue Precious Silk.

      Glory saw, from the corner of one eye, the artist raise his hand, stroke lightly the soft pad above Silk’s upper lip, trace the gleaming cat-whiskers, her vibrissae.

      The air shrilled without sound.

      In the night, after the company had dined, the artist brought his lyre forth and sang them a song of the betrothal in childhood of the chieftain’s daughter to whichever man could answer a riddle no other might hazard. That man Kakookolo was ugly as a beast, a burned man, a bull man, an elephant man.

      Kakookolo, kwata emminiyo!

      Gloriana Avid’s eyes shone to hear it, understanding none of the Bugandan verses, hearing a translation muttered by a lovely cat person bent to her ear. The cat person was Blue Precious Silk. How did she know these words?

      Kakookolo, come now, take up your lyre!

      The monstrous man asked for the chieftain’s daughter’s hand; under her filial obligation, she gave it, weeping.

      Ndeetera maama ndeetera, nviiri Bulange ndeetera

      maaso malungi ndeetera

      Kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngoyimba,

      kyi maama kyi nnyabo, gyangu eno ngodigida.

      Fingers struck the lyre strings, made them boom. Gloriana jumped, a little.

      Bring it to me, beautiful one.

      One who goes with beauty doesn’t wait

      I am going away with the beautiful one,

      Yes, now I am with my own.

      And Kakookolo’s hideous mask fell away. He was handsome, a man among men. The villagers, in the song, cried out their blessings:

      Come, dear one, come, be happy.

      Come, dear one, come singing.

      Gloriana sighed.

      Her cat ladies led her, at last, to her chaste bed, tucked her in, hummed her, as they did every night, to sleep.

      And in the morning Kabaka Buganda was gone from the great house of the Avids of Harvest world, gone into the dark upwardness of the stars, and Blue Precious Silk with him.

      * * * *

      The great house fell into ruin.

      Gloriana Avid did her duty to the crops, the plantations, face twisted with boredom, fingers dragging themselves across male and female organs of the waiting plant life, which blossomed and flourished, mocking her with this vegetable unconcern. The formal gardens of the house she let fall into wildness. Here she had trod with the false biologist in the muddy edge of a pond alive with silvery fish; it grew rank, and the fish died. There she had galloped with the false artist, hair flying free in the breeze of their going, and now the stubble sagged and stank, and weeds filled those fields.

      And years passed.

      Decades passed as she dragged her broken foot, like a penance, a mortification, in filmy garments of white and gray, clean and sweet-odored, placed by her bed each morning by her mousy staff. Until the Landgrave’s ship’s intelligence heard rumor of her life-gift, the secret ancient codons embedded in her flesh.

      If there are miracles, she was a miracle.

      I am Death. I am his ship, the Landgrave Ullimus Wong’s emergency and long-term medical care, his music singer in his icy sleep. For a thousand years, I have been his lunky flunky, his drunky boat, his Class Four superluminal personal carrier. I am a Mind Machine, and hence forbidden—although I am the least of that number, and of no danger to anyone. Who was it brought down ruin upon the galaxy? Anybody might have done it, and many had tried. In fact, as we know, it was the detestable cat.

      Death is not to blame for death.

      I say that I heard a rumor. That is not the precise truth. I was sent an oblique message, dedicated quite brilliantly to catching my attention and my interest, a viral message scattered upon the slipstream. A message of sly invitation to the Harvest world, sent by Daisy, the abominable mauser.

      * * * *

      Death brought down the Landgrave inside a vertically-oriented adiabatic tube. The frozen man was suspended upside down in the shielded pod, its shell washed by cooling gases, monitored by a hundred subtle instruments. The mind of Ullimus Wong crept in a petty pace, sluggish electronic currents moving in the superconductive tissues of his all-but-arrested brain.

      At debarkation