"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."
"I'll spoil you, you rancid little intelleckchul-lover," she roared and
ran at him blindly like a novice. Jack's face set itself in a shrewd
grimace and he stepped lightly to one side and slipped out a hand for
a hold. But just then Juno's professional training seemed to come back
to her and she checked herself, smoothly grabbed the wrist of the hand
snaking toward her, bent, spun, and sent Jack sailing over her hip in a
flying mare that landed him on the silver pentacled table. It toppled
with a crash and various religious objects fell from the wall.
Meanwhile, Mary Akeley had picked up a small vise that had broken from
her upset work table, and hurled it with great accuracy at Cookie's
head, but then Cookie suddenly hurled himself at Sacheverell's throat
and the vise passed through the space where Cookie's head had been.
While all this was going on, Phil, completely to his surprise, walked
coolly over to the shelves of figurines, carefully picked up that of
Mitzie, and put it in his jacket pocket.
When he turned around, Jack had selected a black glass Aztec
sacrificial knife from the fallen religious objects and writhed to his
knees like a cobra. Juno picked up a rather small, but very solid,
brass Buddha.
Nearer the velvet curtains, Cookie had Sacheverell on his back and was
choking him, while Sacheverell, though his shoulder was pinned, was
industriously trying to beat Cookie on the head with the silver chalice
from which the cats had been drinking.
Mary had grabbed up some hatpins and darted forward. She hesitated whom
to attack, then started for Cookie--not so much, Phil fancied, to help
her husband but because Cookie's "ugly" had rankled.
Never before, not even in the trenches and foxholes, had Phil Gish seen
real murder in a human face.
Now he saw it in five.
And then, very suddenly, it wasn't there at all.
The room grew very still. The black glass knife and the chalice
clattered from Jack's and Sacheverell's hands. Mary's hatpins struck
the floor with a faint, vibrant rattle. Juno's Buddha thudded on the
Moslem prayer rug. Cookie's hands unlocked themselves and writhed back,
as if ashamed even before they had a message from the brain.
Expressions unlocked too. Hate furrows softened and vanished. Lips that
had writhed back from teeth moistly returned. Eyes filled with painful
understanding.
Jack said, in a soft, amazed voice, "Juno, you really do love me. You
don't just want to own me and shame me as a man."