Cat, Gnome and Dragon 

by John Waterman

I.

Polly whirled in place and then settled down as she found no immediate trouble. No one came after her, and all of the commotion didn’t concern her, after all. There proved time to pause for a bit. No one had gone down this stair in many years.

‘Let’s GO, feline,’ Maximus said from where she’d dropped him. ‘They might burn this place down above us!’ He shifted his arms but remained unable to change his position where Polly had dropped him on the dusty stone tread of the stair. The Gnome’s lower body now consisted of a mashed torso and pair of broken legs, completely useless. Polly had dropped him there after carrying his damaged body--in her mouth--from where he’d gotten inadvertently stomped on by a Gigos assault trooper’s armored boot.

‘Be calm, O Gnomos,’ the feline said in her archaic Lex. ‘Carry you need I must, in my mouth. Give me a moment.’ She nosed the mutilated manikin, and then took him up by his torso in her jaws again. She’d carried worse before, and heavier. At least manikins did not bleed. Then her deep gold eyes stared down the long dark stairs. She sighed.

She and the manikin had a mission. It required them both, and both hale and fit. Polly proved both, but the manikin had gotten trod upon by a Gigos trooper of the Patrol- quite inadvertently- and now lay damaged. He could eventually reconstruct himself, but not within the time the mission required.

‘Where does this stair lead, Feline?’

‘Below. I hope one who knew me in ages past will help you become whole again.’ The basement of the domus of the current Lord Styrax had lain there for millennia before his great-grand-father had taken up the fundus and moved his furniture into the stately home he built over it two hundred years ago atop ruins ten times as old and foundations ten times older still. 

When the insurgents had first raged through the domus to kill the occupants, and then the Patrolmen’s Assault troopers had then come to kill them, Polly had fled down here through a gap between a few stacks of old pallets and a forgotten door, a space that would admit an admittedly somewhat tubby feline carrying the body of a manikin two-thirds of a cubit long. She hadn’t sought to rescue Maximus, instead looking to save her own tail- but when he too had fled the only direction he could and then had gotten stomped- well, she had to stop for the manikin.

Armed violence still smashed its way even through the basements of the domus. Smoke began to fill the underground corridors. Polly would have preferred to escape the building to the outside, but she had to flee below due to her own bad decisions. As a mainly stone building the fires wouldn’t likely destroy the domus, but the things in it might burn for a while and thus hinder her escape without.

‘Ryssa wasn’t here for all of this nonsense, was she,’ asked Maximus.

‘No, she remained aboard the player’s wain last I knew,’ Polly replied. ‘What brought you under the feet of the Patrol’s assault Gigoi, in the basement of this fundus?’

‘After the blackguards attacked I sought her out. She’d left the wain- I thought that she’d flee for the safety of the domus. Being a city girl and all.’

‘More fool we both,’ Polly muttered. ‘Came I hence to espy the entertainment, but the blackguards arrived.’

‘Foolish cat,’ Maximus said.

‘One of us chose more poorly.’ Polly spoke around the manikin’s ruined torso in her mouth and headed down the dusty treads into the darkness.

‘Where fare we?’ the Gnomos asked again.

‘Below,’ she said again. Her voice came a bit muffled from speaking past her filled mouth, though her mouth didn’t generate the sound. ‘Abide. We will meet a Dragon anon. If he yet haunts the tunnels below.’ It had been several millennia, but Dragons changed not overmuch even across the ages of Man’s settlement on Perm.

‘Ah, I like the sound of that not!’ Maximus would have struggled, but he couldn’t do much do against the feline who weighed seven times what he did and him half-paralyzed.

‘Fear not, tiny manikin. This one guards that which may be able to repair you.’

The smell of burning and sounds of struggle above faded away as Polly carried the Gnome down the spiral stair, descending deeply into the country bedrock one step at a time. The dust lay deep on the treads. It made her sneeze occasionally until they reached the level at which no more dust covered the steps. She trotted easily down the clean, machined-smooth, and unlit rock-cut stairway until the rising air turned cold and the utter darkness closed in even over her eyes.

II. 

The long and tight spiral downwards debouched onto a flat floor that faint echoes and Polly’s whiskers told her opened out at least several man-lengths ahead and to both sides.

‘That took long enough,’ Maximus said as the feline dropped him to the smooth stone.

‘Hold your tongue,’ Polly said in a low voice.

She twitched her tail. A dim glow came alight somewhere ahead, gently illuminating--for her eyes, at least--a chamber perhaps ten man-lengths long, half that wide, and over one high. Its far end remained shrouded in darkness.

‘Still darker than a cubit up a Gigo’s ass in here,’ Maximus whispered. His eyes didn’t prove as sensitive as Polly’s. ‘I counted steps, since you were nice enough to bump my head on each of them. Two hand-spans per, at twelve-hundred and ninety, makes sixty-four and a half man-lengths. We’re deep into the bedrock here, eh? The ‘locals’ didn’t dig this stairwell.’

‘Upper-works of a ‘Station’,’ Polly said in a small voice. Felines couldn’t whisper. ‘Two-six-seven Gamma,’ she went on more to herself. ‘Feeder for the Two-Six spur.’

‘What’s down here?’

‘Minor repair and maintenance facility,’ Polly went on cryptically. Maximus didn’t understand the words, but his knowledge of archaic Leks proved sketchy anyway. ‘Access to local area network. And a ‘Keeper’.’ As he understood her old Leks dialect, ‘Keeper’ came out as ‘Drakon’.

‘Fucking dragon? I though you spoke in jest!’

‘Some hath styled me as such, over the ages,’ came a sepulchral rumble in Leks that echoed along the endless corridor. Polly tucked her tail and legs under her, remaining very still. Maximus, lying before her, turned his head to look in the direction her gleaming eyes faced.

Something came towards them out of the dimensionless darkness down the long hall. It remained about a cubit off the smooth granite floor, weaving slightly back and forth and bobbing up and down as it proceeded in an even series of undulations. It made no sound.

It could have been Polly’s feline head but over two cubits in diameter, done in gleaming chrome, glistening gold and ruddy oricalchum. A nimbus of slightly waving coppery fronds surrounded it, bushing out around like a mane for another cubit. Tiny sparks ran along the silvery wire-like whiskers arrayed above either side of the closed mouth.

‘Leophis,’ Polly said as the huge felinoid head stopped a man-length from her.

‘Polly,’ it rumbled. Its mouth could have swallowed Feline and Gnome alike without opening to anything near its full gape. Black nacre fangs and teeth gleamed dully. Its gullet--just oblivion. Behind its head a series of large objects slid into place like giant beads on an invisible string. They laid down in a coil behind and underneath the head in an inexorable series, each the size of a New Man’s torso and spaced a half-cubit apart with no visible connection. Each proved an identical somewhat lumpy cylinder as wide as long, all of gleaming chrome and glistening niello. The total length of them all together exceeded Polly’s ability to see, let alone count, vanishing back into the utter gloom. She saw at least two score, leaving some stretching back into the darkness behind the coil of those piled behind the head. 

‘My, but you’ve . . . grown,’ Polly said.

‘I’ve been- busy- since last you saw me, Feline,’ Leophis replied. “What brings you- and that- here?’

‘I would beg of you the use of the ‘mechanikon’ herein,’ the Feline said. ‘The manikin is damaged, and we have places to be and things to do together, with him whole again.’ 

‘I’ve been here since your last visit, Feline, awaiting what you said you’d give me.’

‘And it seems you needed it not,’ Polly replied. ‘Mayhap you have found the means to vasten yourself otherwise.’ She remained very still, with her legs and tail still underneath her.

‘Wyrm am I still, indeed, but you know what I wish instead.’ The coiled stack of modules rattled against one another a bit. They shook out along the trail leading off down the darkness of the corridor in a long subtly clattering wave.

‘Last you were here, Feline,’ Leophis went on in a bitter voice, ‘you vouched that you knew the incantation that would produce O! so many other body parts for me from the ‘mechanikon’ within my post - if I would but allow you access to the transport system.’

‘Hark, O Leophis, I had not-’

The Dragon- the ‘Wyrm’- cut her off with a roar like crashing metal. ‘YOU LIED, tiny being! I would consume you NOW for your perfidy!’ Its mane flared, crackling with sparks. The mouth bared its black fangs in a killing gape.

Polly’s fur stood up on end, her ears folded flat over the back of her head, and she bared her muzzle to hiss. ‘STET!’ she cried, in a voice hardly less loud than the Wyrm’s. Loose fur flew off her in a cloud from the volume of it. ‘I know your beginning and ending, Servant of the Old Ones- designated as a minion! I am not yours to achieve!’ Her tail, bottled out like a brush, lashed behind her as she yowled her sharp words.

Maximus had scrabbled for his tiny needle-sized shivver and drew it, expecting his doom but still game to go while fighting it best as he might, when the huge maw recoiled and closed. Its whiskers drooped and its ears folded back.

‘Stat. Your orders?’

‘What,’ breathed Maximus. He looked back and forth between Wyrm and feline, perplexed.

‘I desire access to the ‘mechanikon’, Leophis,’ Polly said. Her fur had flattened, ears perked up, and she relaxed.

‘I have to deny your request, Polly,’ the Wyrm replied.

‘As I know that you would, and as you had, last time though I needed it not then.’ Polly rose to her feet. ‘I need the ‘mechanikon’ now nonetheless, Leophis.’

‘Answer you must the Question, then, O Feline.’

‘Ask it, then, O Wyrm.’

‘ “What approaches me? In the morning, it has four legs. In the afternoon, two legs. In the evening, three legs.” Tell me what it is.’

‘You’ve changed the challenge,’ Polly said, irritated.

‘A challenge I must give. Nothing says it remains ever the same,’ the Wyrm replied.

‘It’s evening above on the Land.’

‘Immaterial. You must answer the challenge, or pass you cannot. ‘Which approaches me?’

‘I have four legs,’ Polly said.

‘Incorrect answer,’ Leophis replied. ‘Two chances remaining.’

‘Wait, is this riddles,’ Maximus said. ‘What a put-on!’

‘Discount the Gnome,’ Polly said to the Wyrm. Then she looked at Maximus. ‘Remain silent, thou fool!’ She put a forepaw on the Gnome’s tiny mouth. She sat long in cogitation, her legs and tail under her once again with fur flattened and ears twitching but erect.

After a long time, she spoke again to the waiting face of Leophis. ‘A tea-tray’.

‘Incorrect answer,’ the Wyrm replied. ‘One chance remaining. I need not remind you of the penalty of a final incorrect response. I will discharge mine ancient duty, Polly- and gladly! You may of course leave the way you came without making another response. No fresh chances for thee, though. Not this century, anyhaps.’

Maximus struggled under Polly’s paw on his face, finally pushing it away. ‘Stupid cat! It’s a man!’

‘Which man then, homunculus? Be not obtuse- our lives and our charge depend on this!’ She made to stifle him again with her forepaw.

‘Man, idiot feline! A man,’ he said, pushing away her descending fore-foot.

She rolled her eyes. ‘There are ten times ten myriads of such on The Land Entire, manikin! Which ONE?’

‘Man, you stupid furry bitch!’

Polly put her paw down over his tiny mouth, hard. He tried to bite her toe pads and pounded at her fore-leg with his tiny fists, but to no avail. Muffled sounds came out of him. She tried to think despite his faint protests. A Dread Lord? Some ancient Imperator? Some famous human figure who had a crippling disability? None she could think of--and she had known many, over the millennia--had been forced to go about on all fours, let alone only in the morning . . .

‘Yowl!’ She felt a sharp pain in her neck. Maximus had stabbed her with his tiny shivver. She lifted her paw and made to bite down viciously on his head, as if he proved a scuttler or vermin.

‘A man crawls on four legs in the ‘morning’,’ the Gnome gasped. ‘As an infant! On two legs in the ‘afternoon’- walks as an adult! Three legs in the ‘evening’- as an old man with a walking stick!’

Polly forbore from biting into Maximus. ‘Hmm. Obvious. But WHICH ONE is it, tiny manikin?’

‘Any of them, you spotted arselicker! The answer is ‘Man!’ ’

‘I dislike this game,’ she said. ‘So be it.’ She looked at Leophis. ‘‘Man’ it is.’

‘You shall pass,’ the Wyrm said. Leophis uncoiled and flowed aside. ‘You know your way within, Polly.’

‘I do, as I watched these tunnels carved out before YOUR time here, minion.’ She picked up Maximus and trotted down the corridor past the Wyrm’s long train of body-segments. The terminal segment ended in a long spike that tracked her as she bore her burden into a side-chamber.

‘Five-megajoule plasma discharger,’ she muttered. ‘You really have been busy, Leophis.’

The side chamber would prove small for a Man but spacious for a feline and a Gnome. ‘Activate’, Polly said.

<ready>, came a voice inside her head.

‘Open repair slot for task.’

A small tray flowed out of the wall about a hand-span above the polished granite floor. She deposited Maximus onto it. ‘Repair sequence, somatic, type seven Beta.’ She sighed. ‘Mentation NOT damaged. Hold in suspense. Quick repair, priority Alpha One, user one-six Gamma.’

<acknowledged>, the device replied. <user authenticated>. The tray retracted into the wall with the protesting Maximus aboard. He stopped moving before it closed. <proceeding. assessing. assessment complete. seven thousand seconds estimated time until repair completion.>

 

‘Display local area tracking, ground level,’ Polly said, her tail perking upwards. ‘And a tray of 100 grams of tuna and a bowl of half a liter of cool water- if you please.’ A map of the local region appeared before her face.

‘Now to see where that Wildling has got off to,’ she muttered as she sniffed at the plate of pink meat that appeared before her next to a small basin of clear water. It had been far TOO long since she’d enjoyed tuna . . . She ignored the faint flow of Leophis along the corridor outside, as she did all other extraneous matters. Her business, as that of all Felines (on Perm or anywhere else), took intense concentration.