Excerpt: Katz

I woke in a lot of pain, even for me.

"Don't try to move," a female voice said.

I don't follow instructions very well, either. I started to sit up, and a paw literally pushed me down.

"It's okay, Max," said the female voice.

My eyelids felt like they were glued shut. As if on cue, a large tongue started to lick my face.

"Max, it's okay, I can handle it. Why don't you go get some chow? Good Kitty."

"What if he's broken?" said a deeper voice.

"He's not broken. I can fix him. You go on, now."

The bed bounced and the floor shook, as if a heavy creature, a huge cat, leaped off the bed and scampered away.

I felt wetness on my face, this time warm water and a washcloth. And smelled the sting of antiseptic.

"Ow!" I said.

"You have to try to let me do this. Can you open your eyes?"

I pried them open. I shouldn't have been surprised to see her, nothing should have surprised me at this point. It was Hello Kitty from the day I met up with Psycho. I realized vaguely what I hadn't the first time I saw her, she was part Kat. I fell into those green eyes. "Here kitty, kitty, kitty..."

"If you're going to be offensive, I'll throw you right out."

"Sorry." She was a stunner up close, and I understood how she could pass for human. In fact a lot of things seemed to fall into place, like a jigsaw puzzle where you finally get a piece of a building, or an object, or even a block of sky matching the frame. At least I thought it all made sense, I really couldn't tell. I felt like I was drugged.

She smiled. She had a tiny cleft on her top lip, like cats do. "It seems you are a little allergic to Kats."

"Not enough to sneeze my head off."

"A lot of people have that. There are hepa filters all over the Kat house, and we all clean, but people still get stuffed up. It's the dander."

"Surprised they didn't genetically engineer that out."

"You can't do everything and get the results you want."

Ain't that the truth, sister.

"I gave you a painkiller. Knocked you for a loop, I must have estimated your weight wrong."

"Nah, I was on stuff."

"I figured that out when I went through your pockets. Your name is Peter Katz?"

"Yeah."

"But you aren't one. A Kat."

"I came with that name." I didn't joke about my ancestors. Thought about it, but didn't feel like such a smartass with her.

"Where are you from?" She looked back down at her first aid tray and picked up forceps and surgical thread. Her conversation was nurse-speak now, to distract me from what she was going to do.

"What are you doing?"

"I have to sew up your ear."

I noticed that my arms were smeared with blood and an ointment.

"I'm afraid Feral Freddie got hold of your ear. I've gotten the bleeding to slow, now I have to sew the tip back on. What were you trying to do?"

The chaotic fight came back to me in a flash. "What was I trying to prove, you mean."

"Well, you weren't a typical john, that's for sure." She leaned over, and I started. "I used a local. I want you to know I don't always, but where you are a civilian I thought I should."

Before I could comment, she had plunged the needle into my ear. I could feel the tugging.

"Did he take the whole ear off?"

"No, it was a clean rip. A pretty clean rip, anyway." She maneuvered the thread with fingers tipped in rubber gloves. Even through the gloves I could see her nails were quite long. She tried to keep the thread from hitting my face, tried to keep it sterile, I guess, but it kept hitting my cheek, as she pulled the needle through. I didn't feel pain, but didn't much like the sensation of my cartilege being manipulated.

"Why are you doing this? I have health coverage."

"Oh, yes. The Corporation. Just what do you do for the Corporation, Mr. Katz?"

"Uhm...well...."

She gestured to my credentials on the table, along with everything that had been in my pockets.

"What does it say on your identification? Come, you must be better briefed than that."

"One strange Kat just tore up my ear, another one is sewing it. I'm sorry if I am a little reticent to be talking to you, Miss..."

She looked at me, and arched one very long eyebrow.

"Miss..."

"My name is Kathryn Ailura Katz. Of course I have a longer name, and papers, if you wish to see them. Dam, Sire, all of that. You may call me Lura."

"We're practically brother and sister."

"I don't think so."

"Well, that beats the nickname I had for you."

She tied off the knot, a little more brusquely that called for. "Which was?"

"Hello Kitty."

There was a thumping at the door. Not quite a knock, but rhythmic, as if paws were hitting the door.

"Lurrrrra." It was half cry, half spoken. It creeped me out.

She got up. "It's just Max. I'm afraid he's a bit of a pest. Do you mind if I let him back in? He's harmless."

"Whatever."

She opened the door, and Max bounded in. In the same way that Lura was mostly human, Max was mostly cat.

"Max," she scolded. "I've told you a thousand times. Walk on your hind legs."

He stopped mid stride and rose up on his back legs.

"That's better."

Max at full height was about six feet tall. I wish she'd just let him come in on all fours, he wouldn't have seemed so imposing. He was big and shaggy and gray, like the Cowardly Lion had stumbled backwards into Kansas. He had a very thick ruff, giant paws and the face of a killer, but the eyes of a child. He wore ridiculous red boxer shorts that reminded me of a tiger in the Sambo story. I didn't ask him where his umbrella was.

"Is the man all right?" he asked in the voice I'd heard waking up, the low voice.

"He's fine. I just fixed his ear."

"It's good to be fixed," he said. Very warily he sat, rump first, on the bed. "He still hurts," said Max, looking at my arms.

"I need to bandage his arms now."

"I can help."

"We don't need your help, Max. He's not a Kat."

"But I saw his card. It says he's a Kat."

"It's just my name,' I said.

At the sound of my voice, Max started. In a flash he was diving beneath the bed. The bed rose up in the air and protested.

"Max, stop it! Come out of there at once."

"He won't hurt me?"

"No he won't hurt you. Will you?" she asked me.

I tried to pitch my voice steady, soothing. "I won't hurt you, Max."

"You don't fit under there any more, Max." She got down on her hands and knees, neatly and gracefully. "Come out, come out."

His head appeared from beneath the bed and they touched noses. For all the world they were your two house cats, the outgoing one and the shy one. Something wordless exchanged between them, and she got up.

He squeezed out from under the bed and gently sat on the bed again. The bed went down under his considerable weight.

"Can I watch, Lura?"

"Just watch, and don't say anything."

Max looked at me with his big gold eyes, while she bandaged my arms.

"You trained as a nurse?" I asked her.

"Paramedic. Useful skills to have."

"Why not send me to a Corp medic?" I was thinking of the first aid stations all over the Free Zone.

"We like to take care of our own problems."

"Mauling a client is considered bad publicity, in other words."

"In other words. Although you were asking for it, baiting Feral Freddie. Here," she said handing me a tiny cup with a pill and water.

"What's this for?"

"Z pack so you don't get Debre-Mollaret Syndrome. Cat scratch fever."

"Feral Freddie is bad news. He's not fixed," said Max. "It's not good to get in fights. I'm fixed," he said brightly. "Best thing I ever did."

"That's enough, Max. Mr. Katz has to rest for a while."

The bed started to vibrate slightly. Max curled his huge bulk into a ball at the end of the bed, and started licking one of his giant paws. I stared at that huge tongue.

"I need to get out of here," I said.

"No, you don't." Lura gathered up bloody gauze in a basin and stripped off her gloves. Her nails were long and pointed. I didn't expect the pink salon tips. "If Freddie had been serious, he would have ripped out your throat."

Max sat up and stretched. Then he settled himself over my legs so I couldn't move. "I can stay with him, Lura." His purring was shaking the bed like one of those old fashioned motel massagers.

"Max, leave him alone. He has to sleep."

Something in what she had given me rendered the argument on my lips moot. I put my head back down on the pillow.

A zillion questions were unanswered in my head. Why the fight? Why had Freddi reacted the way he did? What were the Kats up to? Who was the Vet? What was the Vet trying to accomplish by killing the Kats? What was Michael Yi's part in all of this? My mind was a tossed salad, a jumble. After a few moments, it was too much to think about. Something more primitive, the need for rest, the dark dreamless sleep of the medicated, sought to claim me.

She turned off the light, and last I felt Max bound off the bed again, before I passed back into oblivion.