hand as he petted it, Roosevelt said, “What if these kids and Orson are
somewhere we can’t go? What if they’re in The Hole? ” Bobby said, “Rule
of thumb, Anyplace called The Hole can’t be a good place.”
“That’s what they call the genetic research facility.”
“They? ” I asked.
“The people who work in it. They call it The Hole because ..
.” Roosevelt tilted his head, as if listening to a small quiet voice.
“Well, one reason, I guess, is that it’s deep underground.” I found
myself addressing the cat. “Then it’s still functioning out there in
Wyvern somewhere, like we’ve suspected, still staffed and operational?”
“Yes, ” Roosevelt said, stroking the cat under the chin.
“Self-contained … secretly resupplied every six months.”
“Do you know where? ” I asked Mungojerrie.
“Yes. He knows. It’s where he’s from, after all, ” Roosevelt said,
sitting back in his chair. “It’s where he escaped from … that night.
But if Orson and the children are in The Hole, there’s no way to get to
them or get them out.” We all brooded in silence.
Mungojerrie raised one forepaw and began to lick it, grooming his fur.
He was smart, he knew things, he could track, he was our best hope, but
he was also a cat. We were entirely reliant on a comrade who, at any
moment, might cough up a hairball. The only reason I didn’t laugh or cry
was that I couldn’t do both at once, which was what I felt like doing.
Finally Sasha put the issue behind us, “If we have no chance of getting
them out of The Hole, then we’ve just got to hope they’re somewhere else
in Wyvern.”
“The big question is still the same, ” I said to Roosevelt. “Is
Mungojerrie willing to help? ” The cat had met Orson only once, aboard
the Nostromo, on the night my father died. They had seemed to like each
other. They shared, as well, an origin in the intelligence-enhancement
research at Wyvern, and if my mother was in some sense Orson’s mother,
because he was a product of her heart and mind, then this cat might feel
that she was his lost mother, too, his creator, to whom he was in debt
for his life.
I sat with my hands clasped tightly around my empty coffee cup,
desperate to believe that Mungojerrie would not let us down, mentally
listing reasons why the cat must agree to join our rescue effort,
preparing to make the incredible and shameless claim that he was my
spiritual brother, Mungojerrie Snow, just as Orson was my brother, that
this was a family crisis to which he had a special obligation, and I
couldn’t help but remember what Bobby had said about this brave new
smart-animal world being like a Donald Duck cartoon that for all its
wackiness is nevertheless rife with fearsome physical and moral and
spiritual consequences.
When Roosevelt said, “Yes, ” I was so feverishly structuring my argument
against an expected rejection of our request that I didn’t immediately
realize what our friend the animal communicator had communicated.
“Yes, we’ll help, ” Roosevelt explained in response to my dumb blinking.
We passed smiles, like a plate of crustulorum, around the table.
Then Sasha cocked her head at Roosevelt and said, “”We’? ”
“You’ll need me along to interpret.” Bobby said, “The mungo man leads,
we follow.”
“It might not be that simple, ” Roosevelt said.
Sasha shook her head. “We can’t ask you to do this.” Taking her hand,
patting it, Roosevelt smiled. “Daughter, you aren’t asking. I’m
insisting. Orson is my friend, too. All these children are the children
of my neighbors.”
” Lots of death, ” I quoted again.
Roosevelt counter-quoted the feline’s previous equivocation, “Nothing’s
hopeless.”
“Cats know things, ” I said.
Now he quoted me, “Not everything.” Mungojerrie looked at us as if to
say, Cats know.
I felt that neither the cat nor Roosevelt should finally commit to this
dangerous enterprise without first hearing Leland Delacroix’s
disjointed, incomplete, at times incoherent, yet compelling final
testament. Whether or not we found Orson and the kids, we would return
to that cocoon infested bungalow at the end of the night to set a