Just for fun, and because I keep mentioning it, here’s a snippet of “A Time and a Place”. I read this bit to a bunch of friends recently and the resultant scorn and derision was well within acceptable limits. I don’t think posting this tiny little section is giving too much away.
The section starts at page one hundred and sixty-three of the novel, at the beginning of Chapter Eleven, a chapter entitled Vegetation Abounded:
It was awful – the light too bright and the sounds too loud. I cried out and curled up into a ball to protect myself.
“Wildebear! Can you hear me? What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s not used to it.”
“Will he be all right?”
“He should.”
“Should?”
“He might not.”
“Will he or won’t he?”
“That’s what you’re here for, doctor. To see that he’s okay.”
“Hmph. What happened to him?”
“Not much. Plenty.”
“That’s an infuriating thing to say.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry – just don’t say anything like that ever again.”
“I can’t promise that I’ll –”
“Okay okay, just — where was he, anyway?”
“Where he needed to be.”
“Oh for crying out – Wildebear! Wildebear, it’s me, Humphrey.”
I peeked out from between my arms to see who was talking. Humphrey – the name sounded familiar. He had a lot of meat on him, this Humphrey. He’d make a sumptuous meal. And I just happened to be starving. Although a part of me knew that there was something very wrong with the idea, I unfurled myself in anticipation of a feast. Catching a glimpse of one of my front paws, I was shocked to discover that it was almost completely hairless. My God! Was I ill? I emitted a most un-T’Klee like whimper and curled back up.
“Physiologically he’s all over the map,” a voice said. “His pulse is racing and his serotonin levels are dangerously low.”
It had come from my front foreleg. Something shiny and silver was attached to me. I tried to lick it off.
The creature Humphrey leaned down to touch me. Instantly I whirled on it, but something was the matter with my reflexes. Before I could deliver the coup de grace the Humphrey creature grabbed hold of me and held fast. I found myself in the embarrassing position of having been captured by my own prey. It was like having been bested by a bandaloot. I hoped that none of my brothers were around to see.
Except that… I had no brothers. It was Cat’s brothers I was thinking of.
And I was not Cat.
Was I?
“Damn it Wildebear, what were you trying to do? Slit my throat?”
Humphrey. Humphrey! It was my old friend Doctor Peter Humphrey – and I had been about to eat him! What had I been thinking? Awfully confused, flitting back and forth between two identities, one human, the other a cat, I could not have said with any degree of certainty who or what I was just then.
“You should think about cutting your nails once in a while,” Humphrey muttered.
A thin red line had emerged on the side of Humphrey’s neck. My attempt to dispatch him had come altogether too close for comfort. I started to apologize, but couldn’t seem to get the words out — talking involved using whiskers I no longer possessed.
Humphrey let go and stepped back. I desperately tried to pull myself together. I had no fur, no whiskers; I was, therefore, not a cat. I was a human. And humans spoke with their –
“Humphrey! I – I’m so sorry. It’s – it’s good to see you alive!”
He touched a finger to his neck. The tip came away red. “Little thanks to you.”
I rose to my feet and took in my surroundings. We were in a small room blanketed in luxurious sheets and pillows. Frills, tassels, reds and purples abounded. The furnishings would not have been out of place in a Sultan’s tent… or that of a T’Klee. Humphrey and I were not the only ones in the room, I saw. Iugurtha was there as well.
I began backing away slowly.
“You’re scaring him,” Humphrey told her.
“It’s not me he should be afraid of,” she said.
And with that everything fell into place. Suddenly I knew precisely who I was, where I was, and what I had just been through. It seemed incredible, but I had just spent several days, possibly weeks, living inside the mind of an alien cat. I had witnessed the subjugation of a people I had come to love by a race of horrible monsters. After an experience like that it was a wonder I was anything resembling sane.
“Wildebear.”
“Yes, doctor.”
“You’re licking the backs of your hands.”
“Ah.” I stopped and considered. “So I am.” Then, because there really was no better way to relieve stress, I resumed licking in earnest. “Please don’t ever throw me through the gate again,” I told Iugurtha in between licks.
“Once should suffice,” she said. “What is your opinion, Doctor? Is he in good health?”
“Nothing a little bed rest and years of psychotherapy won’t fix,” Humphrey replied.
Mention of rest made me realize how exhausted I was. I excused myself, curled atop several of the fluffiest pillows I could find, and purred myself to sleep in a matter of seconds.
