"Thank you," Opperly told her. "It would always be transmitter, not
originator. But although lacking general intelligence, it would always
seek out beings with the highest possible general intelligence, since
they could bring it the greatest security. It would be cunning in
all deceptions enabling it to penetrate a new culture, such as the
imitation of similar appearing animals for camouflage purposes. Like
any other species, it would strive to multiply and colonize, to fulfill
its destiny in the cosmos. By means of its extrasensory powers, it
would spy out intelligence in distant places, even distant planets,
and persuade its symbiotic partners to take it to those places and
planets."
He paused. "And now I ask all of you," he said, "to try to imagine
what it would be like to be the symbiotic partners of such a harmony
bringing creature, to have a telepathy of feelings and perhaps of
thoughts with those around you, to have a constant guard against those
moments of blind rage and icy selfishness that lead to murder and to
war, to be always reasonably in tune--and yet not deprived of any of
your basic faculties and insights and powers?"
Again he paused, then said softly, "But I don't have to ask you, for
you're in that state of being right now. You're symbiotes of the green
cat--or rather, I should say, one of the green cats."
As he said that, a head rather more golden yellow than Lucky's poked
itself up from Emmet's lap and looked at them all. And Phil realized
that the feeling that had possessed him ever since he had come into
this room was the radiance of one of Lucky's cousins. And then he felt
Lucky's radiance added to it, and looking around toward the electronic
contraption, he saw Lucky lifting his head over the edge.
Meanwhile, John Emmet was saying, "I told you that the green cat--or
rather, cats--intended the conquest of America. I wanted you to hear a
little more of the background before adding that, as far as the Federal
Bureau of Loyalty and the Office of the President are concerned, the
conquest has been completed." And John Emmet smiled.
"Also," he added, "judging from the messages we've just received from
their newsmoon, along with some extraordinary tokens of faith, the
Kremlin has also capitulated to the Vegan invasion."
"Is good!" Dytie shouted, jumping up. "You know just four satyrs, ten
pussycats come in ship. We send seven pussycats, two satyrs behind
ferrous veil--mean iron curtain. We think they need pussycats just a
little bit more you do."
And with that the whole solemn meeting melted into a tumbling flood
of questions and answers, shouted insights, babbling conversation.
Catching a bit here and there, Phil learned how the second and
yellower green cat, out of touch with Dion and Dytie for a week, had
unexpectedly returned to its Vegan mistress after visiting a large
number of most ecstatic church services, and how Opperly had smuggled
that cat in to Barnes and so to Emmet. He heard Dytie explain how
the cats were tricky at feigning unconsciousness after recovering,
from being stunned, and why they insisted on eating in private on
Earth--they were imitating ordinary cats and knew that their hormone
spraying mouths, necessarily extended in eating, would give them away.
He heard Dion try to picture to Dr. Garnett how the cats on Vega Eight
had taken to pointing their muzzles toward the star that was the Sun
and wailing at it at night, and Dr. Garnett proudly suggested that they
must have been esping the brain waves beamed out by the Humberford
Foundation. Whereupon Dion tried to explain how Vega Eight had once
been a war-torn planet, until a race of what sounded like intelligent
space traveling worms had brought them the green cats.
But while Phil was drinking in all this information and exchanging
words with this person and that, he was moving through the churning
crowd in a very definite direction and with a very definite purpose.
Yet during his progress he continued to overhear scraps of discourse.
He heard Sacheverell Akeley explaining to Chancellor Frobisher that
the green cats were probably all offspring of Bast anyway and that the
ancient Egyptians--or perhaps Atlanteans--probably had had spaceships
and had taken the green cats to Vega in the first place.
He heard Cookie gently twitting Mary Akeley about falling for a satyr
and she happily assuring him that she went for men with hoofs, and in
any case was going to make a doll of him.
He heard Jack pointing out to Dr. Romadka that now that they had the
green cats, there wasn't going to be too much use for psychoanalysts
or for thought police and commissars, and Romadka was reminding him
that most of the commodities peddled by Fun Incorporated, including
male-female wrestling, wouldn't have much of a market either.
He heard Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck talking about organizing a
chivalric order that was to be called the Knights of the Green Cat.
He heard Juno Jones telling Moe Brimstine how ever since her farm
childhood she'd always liked animals better than humans and was very
glad that an animal was going to help her change her mind--and where
was that little rat Jack? Moe Brimstine explained to her in reply that
he'd spent so much time getting the jump on people that he'd never
learned to understand them--while poor old Hans Billig had jumped
around so fast he'd never noticed people at all.
He heard John Emmet and Dave Greeley talking green cat logistics--how
would they ever manage to blanket the whole world with the creatures?
He heard Morton Opperly and Dr. Garnett talking something way over his
head about esp-nexuses and thought lines and which galaxy did the cats
come from in the first place?
He took Mitzie Romadka's slim tired hand and assured her that he
loved her and that he thought that violence and jealousy and even
revengefulness were admirable up to a point.
But he never lost sight of his chief purpose. As he approached the low
walled box from which Lucky was still peering calmly, President Barnes
left off assuring Mary Akeley that the directive for the destruction of
all cats had already been cancelled, and came over to Phil and threw
his arm around his shoulders in a fatherly way and said, "Hi, young
fellow, I hear how you were pretty close to this cat for a couple of
days. Sorry I'm going to have to be taking him off your hands."