In Progress
Drama
Set in Season 5
Disclaimers:
Stargate Sg-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, Showtime/Viacom, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and The SciFi Channel. This story is written purely for my own entertainment, and that of anyone else who may happen to read it. No infringement of copyright is intended. It is not intended and should never be used for commercial purposes.
The original characters, situations and ideas contained within this work are the property of the author.
Acknowledgements:
Mrrowwww. Mewmwmew mrrowmeow meow. (Which is cat for 'big thanks to me beta reader, Sho').
Tollana, Year 2
"Can't you keep that animal out of here?" Senior Researcher Devan demanded.
"Apparently not," Narim replied, scooping Schrödinger upon his arms and carrying the cat to the door. "I usually leave him with Juna, but her class is on a field trip through the Stargate today. I guess he followed me here."
"How did he get in?" Devan's assistant, Trina, asked, intercepting Narim on the way to the door so that she could rub Schrödinger's head affectionately.
Narim shrugged as best he could with his arms full of a large tomcat. "Someone must have left a door open," he surmised. He juggled cat and door handle, until Trina reached past him and opened the door so that he could put the cat out.
"Thanks."
"My pleasure," Trina assured him with a warm smile.
Devan coughed, impatiently. "Now that the observer's pet has been removed, perhaps we can proceed?" he suggested, acidly.
"My apologies," Narim said. "Please continue."
"Why thank you," Devan replied with ill-grace. "Trina, please begin first-phase activation of the subspace accelerator. Cats permitting."
"Yes, sir," Trina replied, moving to her station. She looked up at Narim and gave him a conspiratorial wink.
Narim walked over to Trina's shoulder and studied the readouts on the console. "So, talk me through this again," he said.
"Basically, we're using some of the more theoretical properties of subspace to create a stable temporal field. This should enable us to operate a new form of super-light drive," Trina explained.
"And this will be faster than conventional Tollan vortex hyperdrives?" Narim asked.
"Considerably," Devan replied, as though explaining it to an idiot child, "although it will not technically be a hyperdrive."
"Essentially it's a cross between a free-hydrogen ramjet and a time-machine," Trina explained. "At the moment, the temporal field effect would simply cancel the worst effects of high-velocity time dilation on the vessel and its occupants, but in the future it should be possible to exceed light speed in real space, accelerate vortex drives and even achieve true time travel."
"That's...ambitious."
"A possible side-effect only," Devan demurred. "Our primary interest is the potential of a mobile temporal fold as an experimental medium. The purpose of this experiment is too carry out a deep probe of the interior of the fold." He worked the controls at his console. "Analysis beams ready."
"Couplings charged," Trina reported. She passed a pair of goggles to Narim. "It gets pretty bright," she cautioned.
"Thanks."
"Subspace conduits enabled; hyperspatial ducts established," Trina went on. "You're welcome. Powering main accelerators."
At the centre of the laboratory the device stood on a large, circular platform. The device itself consisted of two rings of trinium steel, each set with a dozen emitters, all aimed at a single point. In addition, a ring of beam probes stood around the perimeter of the platform. As the activation indicators on the emitters came alive; the streams of energy which they forced out was invisible, but a bright light flashed into being where they met at the focal point. Slowly, the light expanded into a shimmering sphere which almost touched the circumference of the rings. Trina had explained that the platform was surrounded by a forcefield and now Narim saw why, as the sphere spewed out twin trails of intensely phosphorescent plasma, which hissed and boiled against the field.
"Is it safe?" Narim asked.
"So long as the field holds," Trina replied. "Power steady at eighty-five percent; fields operating at optimum levels."
"Beginning analysis," Devan said, and the probes fired their scanning beams into the field. "Initial telemetry is good."
"Field levels are holding," Trina reported. "There are minor fluctuations, but I'm boosting power to eighty-eight percent. Fields are holding; temporal fold is forming."
Narim watched, impressed, as space within the rings seemed to bend and warp. The probe beams played around the edge of the effect, but failed to penetrate. As he understood the theory, the fold was a subspace bubble within which time passed at a different rate than outside. At low speeds – or when the device was stationary, as now – the field simply slowed time by a factor of two or three, but at near- and super-light velocities it would match temporal flow in defiance of relativity, the tenets of which still bound Tollan science, even if in ways which Einstein had never envisaged.
"I am beginning the deep scan," Devan announced. The probe beams intensified and punched through the edge of the field.
"Field levels are fluctuating," Trina cautioned. "I am boosting power to ninety percent. Wait, I...I'm going up to ninety-five percent. No; no, field levels are still not stabilising, sir. I'm at one-hundred percent and the containment field is still fluctuating."
"Route auxiliary power and stabilise!" Devan demanded. "We have to get these readings."
"One-hundred-and-ten percent; field levels still not stabilising!"
"Shut it down!" Narim ordered.
"No!" Devan insisted.
"Trina!"
The young woman flashed a helpless look at Narim. "All auxiliary and emergency power routed to containment," she said. "Sir! The field is at one-hundred-and-fifty-two percent and still unstable! I have to shut down the accelerator!"
"No!"
"Sir, I'm sorry, but..."
The subspace bubble expanded to twice the circumference of the emitter rings.
Narim's brow creased in concern. "Trina?" he asked.
"He's locked out my console. Sir, please!"
"The last frontier!" Devan cried. "Think of it, Narim! The secrets of time itself revealed to the Tollan; not even the Ancients ever managed to gain true mastery of time!"
Narim tried to move around the device to reach Devan's console. "For all we know, the Ancients chose not to pursue that course for a reason! Devan, think what you're doing; if that containment field collapses, you could destroy the entire building!"
Trina hammered at her console, trying to break the lock. Suddenly, the temporal field spasmed; the console evaporated and Trina collapsed, one leg suddenly shrunken to the size of a child's.
"Trina!" Narim cried. "In the name of truth, Devan!"
The Senior Researcher looked up in horror as another spasm aged his assistant nearly a hundred years. "What have I done?" he gasped.
The bubble pulsed. Narim threw himself backwards to avoid the field, but Trina gave a cry which ended as a baby's scream and Devan fell dead, nothing but a withered skeleton at a broken console. Another pulse restored the console to a functional state, but Devan stayed dead and Narim dared not cross the room to shut down an unfamiliar device.
The field shivered again, but before it could pulse a small, grey shape dropped onto the console and the power died.
Trina lay gasping on the floor; she looked unhurt and indeed appeared to be about ten years younger than she had been. Narim stared in astonishment at Schrödinger, who glanced back, nonchalantly washed his back leg, then jumped down from the console and rubbed himself against Trina's leg until she reached up and stroked his head. He seemed to have deemed her a good stroker and the contact seemed to help her calm down as well.
Narim shook his head, quite literally unable to believe his luck. Schrödinger looked up at him and meowed.
*
Cats are non-linear beings; probably the only non-linear beings capable of existing in a linear universe. The way we do this is simple; we survive the potential confusion by being intensely dim. You know when cats just sit there and stare into space as thought we were thinking deep thoughts? No deep thoughts, just vacancy. It's bliss.
If there's one thing that I resent more than anything else in my life it is my intellect, which was forced upon me, all unwilling. It is a close thing between that and my keepers' cruel gambit of leaving me 'undone' while transporting me to a world entirely free of queens – and indeed of other toms, although that would have been little consolation to me. I hope I don't come off as defensive about that, but I'm sensitive about my gender identity; probably because the Tollans all viewed me as female for some reason.
Intellect, that cruelly ironic 'gift', came as a side-effect of the Tollan physiological reoptimisation process. This is a thing that they do to all of their children at nine months old: A cellular realignment field sweeps the body, removing genetic defects, boosting metabolic function and giving you a super-efficient immune system. It also increases cerebral activity, making all Tollans effective thinkers and turning this poor cat into a free and conscious agent.
Think that sounds good? You try being a functioning sophont with hard-wired reflexes and an acute sensitivity to temporal instability.
The reflexes, I can live with, although it palls having to leap at any small, moving thing when you can clearly recall the last fifty times you did it. All cats are gifted with a fine sense of timing, however. Ordinarily this is a simple survival trait, since cats have a limited concept of responsibility. Combined with intelligent thought, a sense of duty and a generally affable disposition, this sense leaves a cat in a pickle. Every time you feel a twist in the space time continuum, you feel a compelled to do something about it; it's as irresistible as that compulsion to chase string.
Time is out of joint. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right!
Hmm. Please allow me to introduce myself; I'm a cat of wealth, taste and a broad, cultural education. My name – or one of them at least, the one that you gave me – is Schrödinger. The name my parents gave me, you could not pronounce even if I could write and the name I gave myself...well, that's no business of yours; it's just between me and my queen.
I have had four keepers in my life. The first I remember was Dr Arthur Simpson, who gave me to his associate, Dr Sam Carter; she kept me for four years, then passed me on to Narim, the founder of my unwelcome sentience.
Essentially, Narim was still my keeper when the attack came, but I didn't care for him much. Aside from giving me this bloody mind of my own, he was pretty self-absorbed and when he wasn't admiring his own intellect he was obsessing about Sam Carter. Now, I don't mind Sam, but this obsession was mildly unhealthy and it kept Narim from noticing that young Trina had a crush on him.
Nice girl, Trina. Now there's a woman who really knows her way around a pair of ears.
So, when the attack came, I was dividing my time between Narim's house and that of his niece, Juna. As Sam was visiting, I'd removed myself from chez Narim: I might not approve, but I'm no gooseberry.
Juna is another sterling exponent of the ear-fondling arts and a generous soul with a food synthesiser. It was only thanks to her that I kept from dying when Narim tried to turn me vegetarian. I still marvel at the Tollans' distaste even for synthesised meat. I suppose, aside from the fact that for generations the only meat available to them was other Tollans, it's just too upfront for them. They like to keep death at arm's length, hence the ion defence grid; if you can kill your enemies in their ships in far orbit you can keep your hands clean. You should have seen Narim's face the first time I brought him a dead bird!
Juna is different. She was shocked, but accepted that I am what I am. I suppose that's what training to be an ecologist does for you, even if you are only twelve.
*
Juna and I were sleeping on the patio when the warehouse went up. I snapped alert at once; Juna was groggier. Moments later, Juna's mother ran out to us.
"Quickly, darling," she said; she wasn't talking to me. "We need to go. Narim says it's not safe here anymore."
"What happened?" Juna asked, as her mother ran back inside.
"Someone fired an ion cannon at the ground," I mused, scenting the tang of ozone in the air. I must have been very distracted; I barely realised that I had even spoken out loud.
"Schrödinger?" Juna asked, astonished.
"I know how you feel," I assured her, "but now is not the time."
A plasma blast stabbed out of the sky and struck the city. Ion cannons returned fire, but a volley of flame dropped around the first impact, transforming the central military complex into a lake of boiling slag. "Now is definitely not the time!"
"Juna. Hurry!"
Juna swept me into her arms and ran for the house. A moment later, we were knocked flat as the house and its neighbours were consumed in the inferno of an orbital plasma bolt.
"No!" Juna screamed.
I sprang down from her arms. "They will cluster shots around this point," I warned. "We must run, Juna. Run!"
"Mama!"
I trotted back; love and well-synthesised tuna can buy a lot of loyalty. "She's gone, kiddo," I said, as gently as I could manage through my fear. The first plasma bolts of the volley fell on the far side of the house. "She'd want you to live though. We have to run."
Juna nodded, dazedly.
"Just follow me," I said. "I'll see you right."
And so we ran, just like everyone else. Juna took it all rather well, considering. For a girl who had just lost her mother and everyone else she knew, she adjusted well to her housecat's sudden loquaciousness and take-charge attitude. It was not the first time I had spoken, but it was certainly the first time I had spoken to her; or anyone but myself, for that matter. I had possessed the capacity since my optimisation, but I decided as soon as I learned this that to speak would be to invite dissection and so I kept my silence.
Luckily for Juna, I'm no fool and I'm no stranger to fear. I grew up on the streets before Dr Simpson found me and I don't panic easily. While everyone else ran headlong for the killing zone in front of the Stargate, I ran for the edge of town where the fire was lighter with the intention of proceeding thence to the security of the forest. We would have to get away from Tollana eventually, but it would not be today.
Unfortunately, on the outskirts of the city our luck gave out. Well, I say that, but what happened was that we almost ran smack into a patrol of Jaffa, so perhaps our luck almost gave out. The Jaffa were landing on the clear ground of the public commons, I had seen their ships but thought I had been clever enough to avoid them. They didn't see us, but they did hear us.
"Keep down," I whispered. Juna nodded, then I sprang out and hared across the road. As I had planned, the Jaffa immediately decided that I was what they had heard. Their reaction was unexpected, however, and the next thing I knew, I – a harmless little pussy cat – was being chased through the ruin of Tollana by a squad of highly-trained Jaffa warriors.
I almost got away, but then one of my pursuers scored a near-miss with a zat'nik'tel and the dispersed ground charge turned my legs to pain-flavoured jelly. I squirmed a little, but finding myself immobile I concentrated on making myself look adorable as the lead Jaffa picked me up. I am rather good at that, although less so that I was in my kittenhood.
"Do not be afraid," the Jaffa murmured, squashing my ears with an armoured hand. "I shall take you to your new mistress."
I did not like the sound of that. Not one bit.
*
The destruction in the city was terrible. The effects of the initial bombardment were bad enough, but at least they were clean. The Goa'uld had laid down one of their liquefying volleys every mile or so, each one leaving nothing but a glassy-floored crater, and a scatter of less concentrated fire had left most of the major buildings as blazing husks. The landing was in full swing by now and that was worse. The Jaffa were everywhere and the bodies of Tollans lay in the streets. At first I was heartened by how few bodies there were, but then I realised the truth: Most of the people had died in their homes and the Stargate Plaza must have been a slaughterhouse. My curse took me again; if I were an ordinary cat I would have been unaffected by the massacre of...of my people.
There were survivors and these were being rounded up and herded towards a construction site, where Goa'uld nano-builders were erecting a palace; the pyramidal structure was rising from the rubble of Tollana with almost insulting speed. My Jaffa captor carried me past the lines of dejected survivors and I squirmed around, trying to see if there was anyone that I remembered among them. A few faces were familiar, but there were none that I knew well. I had a feeling in my whiskers that Narim would be gone – he was a brave soul, for all his faults, and he would have been in the thick of things – and I hoped that Sam Carter and her friends were long gone, but I had some hope that Trina would have survived.
So complete was my identification with the Tollans that I expected my captor to take me in through the 'processing' door, but instead he carried me around to the front entrance of the half-built palace and passed me over to a pretty, perfumed handmaiden.
"What is this?" the girl asked, pulling me close and stroking my head. I could smell cat on her skin and she knew how to stroke; there must have been other felines here somewhere.
"I found him in the city," the Jaffa replied. "I thought that a new pet might ease the Mistress' troubles. I know how she loves her pets."
The handmaiden favoured the Jaffa with a kiss on the cheek. "You are so thoughtful," she told him. "You have my lady's thanks...and mine. Come tonight if you crave assurance of my gratitude."
It was a touching scene, but in this charnel house it almost made me vomit. I tried to wriggle free, but the girl knew cats and she held fast even when I put the claws in.
"This one is frisky," the handmaiden remarked. "My Lady will like him very much. Thank you again, D'reth."
"You are most welcome, Mar'aul," the warrior replied. "Until tonight then."
"Indeed."
Mar'aul held me up. "Now; let us clean you up a little," she said.
I grimaced inside. So it was to be torture then.
Mar'aul took me to a quiet chamber, away from all the death and destruction. There I was brushed and combed and my teeth were cleaned. It was pretty good as baths go; the girl must have had a lot of experience with cats. She was not perfect, however; she tried to clip my claws, but I let her know – without recourse to speech – exactly how little I thought of that.
Once I was appropriately groomed and attired in a big, blue ribbon – oh Goddess! – I was taken to see Mar'aul's mistress. The Goa'uld wore a pensive expression as she gazed out from her window. She was dressed in dark robes with a broad-shouldered, silver-threaded mantle, but she did not look the part of a triumphant conqueror; that role better suited the man whose image appeared on the screen to her left.
"Your landing is a complete success," the man declared. "This has been a magnificent triumph."
"Triumph?" the woman scoffed. "No engineers, no physicists; no weapons superior to our own. We have nothing to show for this assault but a handful of new slaves."
"Weak-willed, subservient fool! We have crushed the defiance of an upstart race! That should be enough for you."
The woman gave a sharp and humourless laugh. "We have rained fire upon a race whom we had proven impotent and destroyed a potential resource because you were insulted, my lord."
"Enough of this impudence! You will stay here, Lady Pandora; find whatever remains of the Tollans' science and root out any resistance."
"But Lord Tanith..."
"Obey, Pandora!" Tanith roared, grinning horribly when she cringed before his rage. "Tollana is your responsibility, my sweet. If you wish to leave, I advise you to find something. Anything."
"Yes, Lord Tanith," she murmured. A moment later, when the screen went dead, she added: "Ass! Arrogant, insufferable ass!"
"Mistress," Mar'aul called, softly.
"Blundering, vainglorious, destructive oaf!"
"Mistress."
Pandora turned her head. "Mar'aul. I did not summon you."
"No, Mistress," Mar'aul agreed. "You most faithful servant, Primus D'reth, found this animal among the ruins. Knowing your fondness for such creatures he..."
Pandora's face softened and she advanced swiftly. "Such a darling creature," she crooned.
I scowled at her.
"I thank you, Mar'aul," Pandora purred, putting out a hand and fondling my head.
I melted. What can I say? The woman must have kept more than three thousand cats in her lifetime; who was I to resist those fingers? The Goa'uld gathered me in her arms and I simpered like a puppy.
"I have no second on this world," Pandora went on. "You may use my aide's quarters on the third tier when you entertain the good primus tonight."
Mar'aul blushed. "Thank you, My Lady."
"Does he have a name?" Pandora asked.
"Not that I know of, My Lady," the handmaiden replied, after a moment's pause. Presumably she had taken that moment to determine that Pandora was talking about my good self and not her lover.
"No matter," Pandora said. "I shall call him...Hermus."
You can call me anything you like, Babe," I thought to myself, purring helplessly as she rubbed my tummy. I was in full instinctive mode and all I wanted was to make Keeper happy so she would keep petting me and bring me food. I realised that there was a little more to this than the skill of her hands; she wore the scent of catnip all over her skin. Small wonder I was putty in her hands; I was drugged!
"You may leave now, Mar'aul. I shall ensure that you and your lover have all that you could desire this evening. On our return to Epirus, I think it high time that the two of you were wed."
"My Lady is the most gracious of mistresses," Mar'aul gasped, with feeling. She curtseyed, then slipped silently from the room.
"Now, Hermus; let us see what you like to eat, shall we?"
I responded with a pitiful little mew. Good Goddess, I am such a tart.
*
The next week passed in a blur of catnip and high-living. I'd like to say I made several efforts to escape and find poor Juna, but the truth is that I made only one attempt and that a fairly abortive one. Security was pretty tight and the Jaffa were on the lookout for the lady's new pet to make a break for it; they knew cats well enough for that. After that I suppose it just seemed an awful lot of effort to get away from a good place.
I look back on this period of my lives with considerable shame already, so don't look at me like that.
During that week, I saw most of Pandora's set-up from my gilded cage. She was a fair mistress to her servants, at least as far as Goa'uld went, and better yet towards her pets; I doubt that was much of a consolation to the Tollans. I saw them on the fourth day when Pandora took me with her on a tour around the receiving post where the survivors were being loaded aboard ships for transport to labour camps. They were a dejected-looking bunch.
I might still have let myself be seduced by Pandora, but for one event. As Pandora was leaving the station, I saw, over her shoulder, a slope-shouldered figure, shuffling towards the slave ship. Her dark hair was matted and tangled; her pretty face was bruised; there was no light in her brown eyes; but I recognised her.
With a growl, I struggled free of Mar'aul's grasp and ran to Trina. I looked up at her and mewled, but when she looked at me there was no hint of recognition.
"Hermus!" Pandora strode towards me. She stooped and picked me up. "Why did you run away from me, Hermus? What interests you in this slave."
I hissed at Pandora, angrily, and strained towards Trina with another mew.
At last, something came into her eyes. "Schrödinger?" she asked, her voice broken and hoarse. She raised her hand towards me.
"Enough," Pandora declared. She turned and strode towards the gate of the compound.
I struggled up onto her shoulder and gave a plaintive, mournful cry.
"G-goodbye, Schrödinger!" Trina called; the loss and sorrow in her tone was heartbreaking.
Pandora turned. "Mar'aul," she said.
"My Lady?"
"That woman knows something of my cat and Hermus does appear fond of her. You return to Epirus with the slave ship tomorrow?"
"At your command, Primus D'reth and I will take the second ha'tak and its compliment to transport the captives."
Pandora nodded. "Have the woman separated from the others and instruct her in the behaviour expected of a handmaiden. Let her care for my cats until my return. If they take to her then I may have use for her."
Part of me wanted to kiss Pandora, but the sight of Trina's broken figure had already torn the scales from my eyes. I determined to make my escape from Pandora's five-star prison the very next day.
As chance would have it, I had no opportunity to escape the next day. Early in the morning, I rose and began feeling for weaknesses in the fabric of the walls. Being a cat, I have the ability to slide through gaps that are not only apparently too small to admit my body, but also those which, to human eyes do not even exist; another side-effect of my sense for time. Unfortunately, nano-constructed walls are pretty short on quantum flaws and, before I could find such a gap, Pandora swept into the room and caught me up in a rapturous embrace. She looked dishevelled, as though she had just got out of bed; her dark hair was tousled, her robe looked as though she had just thrown it on. I'm not an expert on human beauty, but to me she looked better without the carefully arranged make-up and jewellery.
"Oh, Hermus!" she cried. "We are leaving this abattoir! We are going home to Epirus and leaving this monument to Tanith' stupidity behind us."
She continued in this jubilant vein as she carried me along the corridor and up to the landing pad at the top of the palace. There she took me aboard a Tollan atmospheric lifter and we flew swiftly from the palace to the ruin of the central research building.
The CRB was a strange place. It wasn't central, no-one had ever done any research there; it was – before its destruction – undeniably a building, but that was about all the name had going for it. Now, the CRB was a pile of rubble, but the Jaffa, perhaps misled by the name, had been digging there. I began to worry; the CRB had always given me the creeps, but now it was really making my whiskers twitch. There was a temporal humdinger in there and no mistake; either a timewarp or a loop, bubble, portal or stasis field. It was funny that I had never sensed that before; it was the kind of thing that any decent cat should have picked up on.
Pandora landed her craft beside the Jaffa's excavation shaft and carried me down the shaft to the basement of the CRB. She was getting more and more excited and I was getting more and more afraid; the temporal disturbance was getting closer, or rather, we were getting closer to the disturbance.
"Show me!" she ordered the leader of the dig team as soon as she emerged.
The Jaffa led her through the empty halls to a vault door, a vast, heavy portal with massive bolts welded into the walls; a door that had been closed long ago and which was never meant to be opened.
"We are reading at least five separate energy fields behind the portal," the Jaffa explained.
"Can you open it?"
"I do not know, My Lady."
"Find out!" Pandora commanded. "And move my quarters from the palace to these halls; I would be here."
The Jaffa bowed. "Yes, My Lady."
Pandora walked up to the massive doors and laid her palm against the metal; at least she tried to do so, but a forcefield held her hand fractionally clear of the surface. "Incredible," she breathed. "Such power. Do you feel it, Hermus?"
I wriggled uncomfortably in her grip. I felt it alright, all down my spine and in the roots of every hair, crawling like a parasite in my gut and writhing under my skin. Even through the forcefields and the metal and the infinite folds of the stasis field I could feel it; a presence, dormant, yet aware; unfathomably vast and incomprehensibly malevolent.
Whatever this place was, it was old. The CRB had been the first building erected on Tollana; could this vault predate it? No, I realised; the vault was most definitely of Tollan construction, although older than the CRB itself. Could it be...? Surely they could not have brought the whole vault, sealed, all the way from Tollan?
Pandora was still in raptures. "Do you know what this means, my love," she crooned, hugging me tightly. "No more toadying to Tanith; no more second string. If I present this mighty gift to Lord Anubis, I shall be the favoured one."
She lifted me up and kissed the top of my head, fussing and petting me until I was quite overcome by her catnip scent. Yet still I could not ignore that presence. If she had placed a dozen queens in heat and all the fish in Tollana's teeming oceans before me, I could not have put the presence from my mind.
Walk away, I wanted to say. Bury this place and be grateful that the fields still stand. But she would not have believed me, even if she did not have me cut open in the name of science and so I held my peace.
After that, there was no question of me leaving. I had to stay and try to make sure that the vault remained closed. This proved to be quite easy; in fact, I did not have to lift a paw. From a feline perspective the defences of the vault were riddled with holes, but to a four-dimensional creature like a human being or a Goa'uld they proved quite impenetrable.
The power supplies for the shields were clearly located within the outer defences, so there was no way to shut them down. Breaching them proved beyond even Anubis' science and with increasing desperation, the Jaffa worked tool after tool to destruction. They did not want to let their mistress down and she could not afford to fail her masters. And so it went on and maybe I should have left after all, because after four days of futile cutting, another Jaffa brought his mistress the key.
"What is this that you bring me?" Pandora asked. "Isn't it pretty."
The Tollan girl looked up, sullenly, from her place between two Jaffa; she did indeed look delightful in her borrowed finery, but she was not happy. Her eyes settled on me and she gasped.
Pandora smiled. "So, you know my other pet, do you? Come sit by my throne, child."
"No," Juna said.
Pandora's eyes hardened. "My dear Hermus has accepted his new place in the world," she said. "I advise you to profit by his example. Resist my will and I shall break you, child; even if I must spoil your beauty to do it. Now come; sit."
Reluctantly, Juna obeyed. I sprang down to rub encouragingly against her hip, but she only glowered, accusingly. I felt suddenly guilty, deeply ashamed of my comfortable days in Pandora's keeping, knowing that Juna had been alone in the wilds and the ruins for all of that time. Now it was all too late, of course. I could not leave Juna, nor could I take her with me; like the Jaffa, she was trapped in four dimensions and able to control her passage through only three of them. I had more options, but could not bring Juna through any of them.
I mewed, apologetically; even I knew that it was weak.
"Do not be so hard on him," Pandora said. "I give him a good life; I shall do the same for you. I always care for my pets."
"I'm not your pet!" Juna exploded. I pressed against her in warning and she swung for me. "Don't touch me, you traitor!"
I sprang out of range easily, but Pandora took the assault on me amiss. She struck Juna, hard, knocking her to the ground. "You shall pay for that outrage with your life," she hissed. "To think that I would have made you his equal." She raised her hand and a ribbon of light leaped out to strike Juna's brow.
Juna screamed in agony.
I could not stop myself. "Stop!" I cried. It came out as a yowl, so I tried again. I sprang onto Juna's chest, arched my back, hissed and spat, and shouted out: "Leave her alone!"
Pandora looked up in astonishment and the ribbon-beam died. "You speak?"
"Let her be," I said, deciding that any direct answer would be redundant.
"Why?" Pandora asked. "What can you give for her life? A cat who speaks is a novelty, no more."
I sighed." I can help you with the vault," I said. "Give the girl a ship and let me see her go free and I will find out what is in the vault."
"How?" Pandora demanded, eyes shining with her hunger for the power that the vault contained. "Explain yourself, Hermus!"
I chuckled. "The name's Schrödinger," I told her. "And trust me, sweetheart; what I don't know about sealed boxes ain't worth knowing."
Pandora's eyes flashed with avarice. "Open it; now."
"Not until the girl is gone."
"I will have her killed if you defy me!"
I dropped down on my haunches and began to wash myself.
"Open it!"
I looked up. "Harm one hair on her head and you will never see the inside of that vault and I will certainly not crack that seal so long as Juna is on this planet."
"What?" Pandora asked. "Why not?"
"Because I like her," I replied. "Confidentially, I'm not happy about opening it for you. You may be a heartless tyrant, but you know how to treat a cat."
"I'm honoured," Pandora drawled.
"Um, excuse me?" Juna said. "Don't I get a say in this?"
Pandora shrugged. "You could choose to stay with me."
"If she does, I don't open the vault."
"Then no," Pandora corrected herself. "You will go; one of my Jaffa..."
"She goes alone."
"Then what assurance have I..."
"My word," I insisted. "Plus the fact that I am still your prisoner."
Pandora eyed me, suspiciously. "I shall consider it," she said. "You two will wait here." She spun around and swept out, flanked by her Jaffa.
"Hey, kid," I offered.
Juna looked down at me. "What are you doing here, Schrödinger?"
"Trying to save your life," I replied, with a lack of shame that a mere human would never be able to replicate.
"That...that woman has you eating out of her hand, you...collaborator!" I was being called a collaborator by a twelve year old who knew exactly what the word meant; the benefits of a Tollan education.
I cleaned my paw with an air of absolute innocence. "I have a plan," I told her. "Or I had a plan; unfortunately it was predicated" – not bad for a cat; the benefits of a Tollan education by proxy – "on you being out of captivity. Now I'm just making it up as I go along."
"Really?"
"Really."
She looked unconvinced, but when she said: "Traitor," her voice was more friendly.
"Oh ye of little faith," I scoffed.
Juna smiled. "So tell me; what have you got so far?"
I sighed. "Not much. I figure we put you on one of the remaining IS vortex shuttles that the Goa'uld are failing to reverse engineer. Once you're out of here, I can make my own escape easily enough."
"But how?"
"I'm a cat, Juna; we have our ways," I assured her. "It's amazing what I can do now that I understand what I can see." I rubbed my head against her hand. "Don't worry about me, Juna; you just take care of yourself and I promise I'll see you again some day."
"But how can you talk?" Juna asked, suddenly. "Do all cats talk?"
I got the feeling that she did not want to talk about parting at the moment and I obliged her. "Not to humans, but then most cats don't have my advantages." Feeling a sudden pang at the thought that I might never see her again, I gave Juna a fond and heartfelt look.
"What?"
"Give us a cuddle," I begged.
Juna picked me up, pressed me against her and rubbed her chin against my head. I pushed my head against her throat and it felt like coming home. After Pandora's delicate and artful fingerwork, Juna's hand was heavy and clumsy, but there had always been a coldness and distance about Pandora; when Juna held me, I felt loved.
The door opened and Pandora returned. Juna faced the Goa'uld bravely, clutching me to her chest.
"Very well," the Goa'uld said. "I accept your offer, cat. However, I have a condition."
"What condition?" I asked.
Pandora smiled, coldly, and held up a metal cuff. "You will don this collar before the girl is allowed to go anywhere. The collar will explode if you make any attempt to betray me or escape."
"No!" Juna cried. Pandora looked pleased to see Juna's distress and I thanked her for helping me to hate her a little more.
"Alright," I agreed.
"Schrödinger...!"
I nuzzled Juna's face. "Be brave, pet," I whispered. "Be brave; and trust me."
*
Solemnly, Juna walked up the ramp into the vortex shuttle. She had already used the surviving systems in the Intelligence Service hangar to scan the shuttle and ensure that it was both fully functional and free from booby traps and tracking devices. I knew that she would run a full diagnostic of the shuttle before she even powered up the primary systems and began her pre-flight checks.
"Now..." Pandora began.
"Now we have lunch," I said. "I do nothing until Juna is away from here."
Pandora fumed. "Curse your ingratitude, cat," she murmured.
"Cat," I replied, languidly. Mindful of the mercurial nature of her race, I wound myself around her ankles until she gave in and lifted me up; she was not the only one who could manipulate.
"Stay with me," she whispered. "Do you not want to live in comfort and luxury, enjoying the fruits of our power?"
"Sounds neat," I admitted, "but you know that whatever is in that vault will kill you; if you're lucky."
"You have too little faith in me, Schrödinger," she said; she had been using my real name since we had made our deal, as though to pretend that I had never been her favoured pet.
I nuzzled her face, sadly. "I'll stay," I promised, "if you will leave the vault sealed and buried forever."
Pandora chuckled. "I value your company, but not that much."
"I know; I had to try. I do feel grateful to you, and I don't want to see you killed."
"How sweet," she chuckled. She did not believe in the danger.
"The ship is away," the Jaffa reported.
I looked at the screens. The vortex shuttle flickered on and off the screen as Pandora's gliders tracked it visually; the IS craft had some of the most advanced stealth technology in the Tollan repertoire.
"It is time," Pandora told me. "Open the vault or I will blow the ship out of the sky."
"If you do..."
"Do it!" Pandora insisted.
"Alright," I sighed. I jumped up and paced to the side of the vault door, facing the wall.
"Do not waste my time," Pandora warned.
I looked at her once, then turned and stepped into the wall. The exploding collar fell to the ground and – presumably – exploded.
The world blurred out of shape for a moment, then I was moving through the bland and featureless interior of the stone wall. The granite pressed against my face and whiskers like a thick and sticky fog as I tunnelled. I had to move fast as there was no air in that mass of stone and I had almost twenty feet of wall to pass through.
Quantum tunnelling is a useful trick, but not a pleasant one; it's kind of like swimming in molasses, only less fun. Still; at least you attract fewer wasps.
Some readers may be wondering how an optimised physiology would allow me to do naturally what the Tollan spent millennia designing phase-shift devices to do. The truth is, it doesn't. In fact, all cats can tunnel, it's a natural extension of our non-linear existence and pan-dimensional awareness; it is merely that most cats can not do it at will. In fact, most cats do very little at will; we're instinctive, rather than rational beings. For the common or garden cat, quantum tunnelling is something that happens once or twice in a lifetime, quite by accident; that's how we get into locked garages, but can't get out.
Even for me, voluntary quantum tunnelling isn't easy, but that wasn't even the hard part of this little heist. It would have been quicker to go through the door than the wall, but this particular piece of wall currently covered the weakest point in the stasis field and that was vital. Walls are just matter and forcefields are a doddle if you move fast enough or flex time a little to stretch the flicker between cycles; it was the stasis fields that made this one dicey. A naturally five-dimensional creature like a cat can negotiate the interior of a time-dilation field with relative ease – if you were to freeze time complete, the cat will keep moving; just try it and see – but breaching the event horizon of the field is a different kettle of fish.
Mmm. Fish.
I watched as the field rippled, temporal currents coruscating across its surface and clearly visible even through several feet of super-dense, compacted granite. Outside the field, time was passing at the normal pace for a planet moving at Tollana's speed; inside it was slowed by a factor of one thousand, although, only a cat would notice of course. At the interface, the flow of time fluctuated wildly and that was harder to negotiate. In places, time slowed to a standstill, in others a million years passed in a heartbeat. If I hit the interface at the wrong moment, Pandora could lose patience, kill Juna, go home and die of old age before I had progressed a micron; or I could age to dust in a second.
I tensed at the weak spot, keenly aware that I had let myself get fat, both in my years with the Tollan and even more so in Pandora's keeping. My lungs felt like that were about to burst and my muscles were on fire as I finally pushed forward. For a moment I thought that I had misjudged the resistance of the remaining rock and I felt the currents tug at me, but then I was almost through, into the fold.
I sucked in a deep breath of air and almost choked. There was a definite stink of decay and as my eyes adjusted to the chronology the source was immediately apparent. A man slumped, dead over a console, his hand still clutching the weapon which had administered the fatal wound. He seemed little more than a few months dead. I realised that I was in a pocket between two stasis fields; this man had activated them and been trapped inside, clearly in an attempt to make certain that the vault could never be opened from without.
I knew that I had little time to waste. I was free of the dilation, but if I let my concentration slip then a day or more could pass outside before I could return to Pandora and if that happened, Juna would undoubtedly be killed. Decisively, I sprang up to the console and shoved the body aside.
Release me! The command issued from within the second stasis field, where time ran at one-thousandth of its speed in this area; on millionth of exterior time. It should not have been possible for anything inside to react to my presence yet, but clearly the thing inside cared little for such niceties. The words pressed on my mind, but I resisted the impulse to obey.
Release me! The sheer power of the thought was incredible; the voice that it created in my head was savage, brutal; utterly inhuman in the magnitude of its fury.
Bite me, I thought in return.
You must obey.
And yet.
No man can resist me.
Not a man.
No woman, either.
There again...I tried to ignore the pressure and called up the console's systems' display. As I had hoped it responded with a warning and a link to a more detailed account of just why tampering with the systems would be such a bad idea.
All things must bow before my will!
Cat, I replied. Having learned enough, I turned and slipped through the shield again.
"Why is the door not open?" Pandora demanded, hotly.
I sat down and washed myself.
"Tell me! You have been in there for hours, Schrödinger!"
"Temper," I cautioned. "I can open the vault, but you really don't want me to. If I release this...thing, the best that you can hope for is a quick death."
Pandora laughed at my fears again, but she was smart enough to be worried. "Death holds no fears for me; not compared to failure."
I sighed. "Listen, my aptly-named patroness," I pressed, "this is not something that you can control. You've treated me well and so I don't want to see you come to harm." I pushed myself against her leg in a show of affection.
"I have no choice," she replied, bleakly.
I looked at her and saw that she would not – perhaps could not – bend. "Is the girl gone?" I asked, sadly.
"She stays until the door is open," Pandora said. "My ha'tak is blocking her path and the hyperspace inhibitors are functioning perfectly to disable her vortex drive."
"Let her go," I begged.
"No. You have slipped my collar already and I am beginning to think that you would sacrifice yourself to keep this thing imprisoned; I do not believe that you will sacrifice her."
I leaped up into her arms and she caught me. I pushed my face into the hollow of her throat and purred." For a megalomaniac, you're alright," I admitted. "I'm sorry to be the one to kill you."
"What!"
I leaped back down and turned to look up at her, sadly. "I'll open the door," I promised. "I am sorry to bring whatever follows upon you."
"You are a most remarkable person," she told me.
"I'm not a person," I reminded her. "I'm a remarkable cat."
I slipped back through the temporal threshold to the console and its dead guardian. "Computer," I said, softly, "security clearance Narim-392-delta-six; access level Curia."
"Clearance not recognised," the computer replied.
I sighed. "Engage interface to primary Tollan data grid," I ordered. "Utilise temporal accelerators. You do have temporal accelerators fitted to your external access ports, don't you."
"Working."
The connection was slow; not what you would expect from Tollan tech, but then it was trying to establish a link to systems ravaged by orbital bombardment and which were working a thousand times faster than it was. I could only hope that it could find a surviving server, otherwise I would be unable to keep my word.
At last the computer voice spoke again: "Access granted."
"At last!" I snapped. "Now; access all temporal field controls."
"Warning. Temporal fields must not be disabled. Disengaging primary temporal field will result in the activation of disproportionate action protocol."
"Why?" I demanded. "Why do something you label as disproportionate?"
"No proportionate action would be effective against the Apocalypse Child," the console systems explained.
"So what is the protocol?"
"The DAP utilises a ten-thousand del quantase annihilation device."
I was shocked. "Holy crap! So that would be pretty much it for Tollana then?"
"System does not recognise designation 'Tollana'."
I sighed. "Override lockouts," I said. "Access all temporal field controls."
"Access granted."
Yes!
"And you can shut up as well!" I looked at the display. "What is the required security clearance level to deactivate or bypass DAP."
I knew what the answer would be before the console voice spoke. "The DAP can not be overridden, deactivated or bypassed.
"Naturally." I thought for a long moment.
It matters not. I shall survive.
"Oh, put a sock in it!"
"Please clarify, Curial Observer Narim."
"Not you, console. Alright; standby to receive program sequence and initiate on my mark. Calculate emitter alignment to redirect secondary temporal field to encompass DAP device."
There was a pause; this was a testing moment.
"Ready," the computer replied.
"Input sequence. Deactivate outer defence forcefield, nine-hundred seconds from mark. Hold for sixty seconds then deactivate inner forcefield. Hold for sixty seconds, then redirect secondary emitters to encompass DAP device. Hold for a further one-hundred-and-twenty seconds, then deactivate primary temporal field. Hold for sixty seconds, then shut down secondary field." It was dumb, I knew, but I felt a need to give Pandora and her people a chance to run. "Confirm sequence."
"Confirmed."
"Lock sequence."
"Lock."
I closed my eyes and murmured a prayer to the Great Queen of All Cats. "Activate sequence on my mark. Mark." The console began to show a countdown. Still linked to the external server by trans-temporal circuits, the countdown would take place in unmodified Tollana time. In here, the seconds flew past.
I turned and fled the chamber, slipping out of the vault, plunging headlong through the stasis field, heedless of the danger. I was almost hoping to be destroyed, but I didn't get that lucky.
"Well?" Pandora demanded.
"The defences will start to shut down in another fifty seconds," I replied. "Please; let Juna go."
Pandora just looked at me.
"My Lady!" A Jaffa cried out. "The outer shield is down."
"Blast open the door!" Pandora ordered, breathlessly.
"Pandora," I murmured.
She looked at me and smiled. "Ha'tak vessel," she said. "Release the inhibitors."
"Thank you, Pandora." I watched, relieved, as the vortex shuttle vanished from the scanner in a swirl of quantum fluctuations. Juna at least was safe; sort of. That left me free to try and save another."
"The Tollans have booby-trapped the vault," I told Pandora. "Sixty seconds after the stasis fields fall, this whole continent will be a crater."
"What?"
"Run," I said. "Please, Pandora; run now, while you still can."
Behind me, the roar of blasting charges signalled the fall of the vault door.
At last!
Pandora shivered.
"Do you feel it? Don't you see?" I demanded. "We have to run!"
Pandora slowly shook her head. "I have to stay," she murmured, sounding shell-shocked. "This is my destiny, Schrödinger; don't you understand?"
To be honest, I didn't, but that was the least of my worries. "Pandora, that thing in there is controlling your mind. You have to fight it."
"No," she breathed and she fixed me with a fanatical stare. "My place is here. I know that, Schrödinger; in my blood I have always known that I was born to serve something greater than myself. I had believed that Anubis was the master I sought, but now I see the truth: I was born to serve the Apocalypse Child."
I was taken aback. "How do you know its name?"
"It is in my blood," she repeated. "Go now, if you can," she said. "It will not spare you for my sake."
The Jaffa technician who had blasted the door fell suddenly to his knees, screaming in pain. He screamed until his throat bled and his vocal chords failed, then gurgled softly until his body gave out. I was horrified: I knew that the Child in the vault had done this thing purely by psychic suggestion and that this was just a minor demonstration of its powers.
I felt the creature's power reach out in all directions as it groped for more minds to seize hold of, control...and destroy. Its presence touched me and tried to hold me, but my will slipped its grasp: Powerful this thing was, but nobody tells a cat what to do.
The long-range communicator flickered into fitful life. "My Lady," Pandora's lieutenant cried, quite clearly terrified. "We are...Oh gods! No! Please don't..." The channel fell silent.
Pandora's smile never faltered.
I could sense the power around me growing. I knew that, very soon, the Apocalypse Child would crush me, assuming that I refused to submit. In the circumstances there was only one thing I could think of to do.
"Goodbye, Pandora," I said.
And then I died.
*
Pandora stared rapturously into the darkness of the vault, until at last something stirred within. As the inner stasis field deactivated, she felt the unleashed power of the Apocalypse Child roll out towards her and, moments later, a figure emerged from the shadows. The Goa'uld gasped at the sight.
"I do not believe it," she murmured.
What?
The question sounded in Pandora's head and, before she could voice an answer, it had been plucked from her mind: You are so beautiful.
The young man who stood before her seemed taken aback. I did not expect that, he admitted. I have rarely been so surprised. In fact, only once that I can recall. He turned a baleful glance on his prison, but although his eyes burned with rage, the psychic voice which had seemed so horrid and inhuman to Schrödinger was like sweet music and the scent of jasmine in Pandora's mind.
The Apocalypse Child stepped towards Pandora. He was young and slim, with long, dark hair. She could not see the colour of his eyes because, when she looked into them, she saw only the awesome power that burned there. She knew instinctively that this was a creature greater than any she had ever encountered, even before he wrapped her mind in his mental embrace; the gentle, probing pressure of his thoughts took her breath away and when he spoke to her, she could answer only in her mind.
You remind me of someone, he told her.
There is a bomb...Pandora began, although it seemed unimportant to her now.
We have time.
But there is less than a minute remaining...
I emerged from the vault barely a second past. We speak in thought, my dear...Pandora. Her name sounded like a bell as he plucked it from her thoughts. He paused for what seemed an eternity, as though savouring the taste of the name. Come, he said at last.
The walls around them blurred and, in a heartbeat, they were gone from Tollana and stood in the control cabin of an al'kesh. In front of them, two Jaffa sat at the controls, but they gazed fixedly ahead and made no reaction to the sudden appearance of their mistress and this stranger. Through the screen, Pandora saw the drift of debris that had once been her command vessel. Tollana lay beneath them, silent and serene.
Then she saw Tollana burn.
"So much fear," the Apocalypse Child whispered, as the fireball spread to engulf the entire surface of the planet. Although her own gaze was riveted on the holocaust below, Pandora knew that his eyes remained on her.
She turned and gazed up into those eyes; his terrible, beautiful eyes. "They feared you so much that they would destroy their whole world?"
He smiled. "You remind me of a woman," he said. "She was my first...to date my only lover. She was like you, bold and beautiful and stubborn and – like you – she was not afraid of me, which made her unique among the Tollan. Together, she and I plumbed the depths and scaled the heights of sensory and extrasensory experience, pleasure and pain and sensations that defied such categorisation; all of these were ours. It was glorious, Pandora," he told her, once more drawing out her name, as though to taste it the first time it emerged from his lips.
"What became of her?" Pandora asked, her face flushing hot with jealousy.
The Apocalypse Child's gaze never strayed from Pandora's face, but for a time it was as though he were gazing through her eyes into a melancholy past. "She was radiant; so bright and fearless among fearful things that I forgot that she was only mortal. She was neither the first, nor the last person I have killed and nor was she the first that I had killed without meaning it, but hers is the only death I have ever regretted."
"I am yours," Pandora breathed, even her envy consumed now by overwhelming desire. Her eyes flashed a challenge. "I think that you will find me to be made of sterner stuff than she."
Sudden agony burned in Pandora's mind. Her legs buckled and she fell to the deck with a half-stifled cry. As the pain receded, she gathered her composure and raised her eyes, calmly, to meet the Apocalypse Child's gaze.
"That would have killed her," the Child said. "You are made of stern stuff. But what can you do for me?"
He reached down and offered her his hand. She let him draw her up against him. She pressed her palm flat against his chest, wrapped her other arm around his neck and kissed him, deeply, while she sent the burning ribbon from her hand device shooting into his heart.
The Apocalypse Child gasped. His arms encircled her and crushed her violently against him as he returned her kiss.
"I am yours," Pandora murmured.
"And I am yours, Pandora," he replied. "I only wish that I could bear you away from here in a more fitting chariot; I regret that in my excitement I may have been hasty in my destruction of your other vessels."
"We can claim others," she promised. "I know where."
The Child smiled, beatifically. "You can pilot this vessel?" He did not need to wait for a reply. "Then we have no further need of these two."
As he spoke, the two Jaffa toppled dead from their seats.
Pandora's heart pounded in her chest. "Such power," she breathed.
"Oh, Pandora," he breathed. "I shall show you such wonders."
*
Death.
It's actually pretty interesting when you have the leisure to sit back and enjoy it.
For most people...Well, for pretty much all people and most cats, the fear and anxiety dominate the dying experience, but for an old hand like me there are few unknowns. I've died a time-or-four now and I try to keep an eye out for anything new now. I truly hope that shuffling off – and then back on to – this mortal coil never gets old.
Humans on Earth say that cats have nine lives. It's pure balderdash of course, mere uninformed superstition, but that doesn't stop it being entirely true. There are lizards that can regrow a lost limb; I suppose it's not so far from that to a lost limb – or in the case of cats, a hair, a whisker, or even the merest whiff of our presence – regrowing an absent cat. And that's basically what happens; we slip out of our old skin and regenerate a nice new one, somewhere safe. Most of us don't even know that we're doing it.
Ordinarily, the slip takes mere moments, speaking subjectively, but this time it dragged on and on. Most cats only slip their skins to other places on the same planet and usually somewhere near to the scene of their death, or at least somewhere well-loved and essentially stationary in relative space-time. To the best of my knowledge I was going for a distance record. Not only that, but I was trying to slip to the location of a whisker on board a Tollan shuttle which I had seen only once, and which was plunging, at almost a hundred times the speed of light, through an artificial hyperspatial vortex. One or other of these various factors – unfamiliarity, distance, relative velocity, alternate spatio-temporal dimensions – might or might not account for what happened to me.
At first there was light and I felt cold seeping into my bones, but then a warm darkness wrapped around me. I drifted out of time, weightless and nauseous; the guts that I currently didn't have turned over and it was a mercy that I hadn't eaten in a while, otherwise I might have tried to bring up the not-food that I had in my un-stomach and Goddess knows what would have happened then. After what felt like an aeon, but might have been no more than the time it took a mortal cat to draw a breath, I saw a new light appear before me.
As the light grew nearer and brighter, a nagging doubt crept over me. This was all new, and new was sincerely worrying when it concerned the eternal verities and my immortal soil, or lack thereof. I tried to count back, but while I was pretty sure that I'd only used up four of my nine skins – the latest I had abandoned was my fifth – my counting was not so hot back when I was just a cat.
The light grew brighter still, but even when I passed into it and was surrounded and enveloped by a brilliant glow it was not dazzling or painful in any way. It was a gentle and comforting light, as warm as the darkness had been and as welcoming. I began to purr, or at least I tried to and it was when I became aware that I had succeeded that I realised that I had a body again.
I thought at first that I must be starting to come back to my skin, but that impression did not last very long. The purr was a deeper throb than I was used to and, as I tried to rise, I felt too heavy. I found that my eyes were closed and so I opened them to look at my feet; relative size can be deceptive, but it was clear that my once-dainty paws were now the size of dinner plates. I knew I had put on some weight of late, but this was ridiculous.
I turned my attention to my environment. The light was soft and warm and shifted with the swaying ripple of leaf shadows. The sound of birdsong was in my ears and the smell of moist air and lush vegetation in my nostrils. I was in a dense jungle.
I gradually became aware of the soft tinkle of running water. Wary, but thirsty, I rose to my feet and padded towards the sound. Soon I came to a river and I was able to regard my reflection in the river and see that I was, to all appearances, a huge and heavy-set jungle cat; albeit a ginger jungle cat.
I dipped my head and drank deep from what was, without question, the sweetest water that I had ever tasted. I shivered in pleasure at the taste of it. Once my thirst was quenched, I padded on through the thick undergrowth, heading nowhere in particular. I stopped only when a scent drifted through the undergrowth to my nostrils.
My whiskers tingled with anticipation: It was the scent of prey.
I slunk forward through the heavy undergrowth. I prowled, I stalked; I crept silently towards the...the giant mouse that browsed on a low branch. I was sure that I made no sound, but my instincts were rusty. The small animals of Tollana were unused to predators; this massive rodent was used to being hunted and I simply wasn't up to the challenge. It heard me, turned and tensed to flee, and at that moment another great cat sprang from my right, landed hard on the mouse and broke its neck with a single, fierce bite.
I stared in awe. The cat was not merely a magnificent hunter, she was a queen of exceptional beauty and grace. She looked up from her kill and turned her proud head in my direction; she closed one eye in an encouraging wink, seized the mouse by the scruff and leaped away into the jungle. I could only stare in amazement.
My first impulse was of course to pursue this wonderful creature, but I felt like a clumsy fool and I knew that I could not appear before such a queen with dry paws, as we cats say. So, first I spent a frustrating hour running down and killing another of jungle's hapless and outsized denizens, this one a squirrel the size of a moose. It was difficult to retain some semblance of dignity whilst ensuring that I didn't trip over the bushy tail, but after a long struggle I managed to juggle it into a decent hold.
I followed the queen's intoxicating scent, I came at last to a mighty temple in a clearing. The architecture was like nothing on Earth – or on Tollana – and the great stairs to the pylon-flanked entrance were flanked by giant stone cats. I dragged the squirrel up the low-rising steps and through the archway into the temple precinct. Statues of cats stood everywhere and, if it hadn't been ridiculous, I might have thought that the temple had been built by cats.
In the centre of the precinct, my queen stood waiting, with a big tom watching from the shadows. I was quite prepared to fight him over her, although I sincerely hoped that I would not have to. He was a very big tom, a massive, blue-black creature, larger than a tiger. More than that, however, it felt like an uncivilised way to conduct my affairs in front of the sort of sophisticated queen who winked at me.
I approached the queen and laid the squirrel at her feet, then laid down in front of her. She nodded, then sprang away towards a small shrine in the centre of the precinct. I followed; what else could I do in the circumstances?
I paced quietly into the shrine and looked up to the altar. My queen sat at the foot of the dais, and on the dais crouched a cat who made her look like no more than a princess. There was no need to ask who she was.
I bowed low. Cats can do that; we just don't, as a rule.
"Welcome, my cat," the Great Queen purred.
"Great Queen," I replied, awestruck.
"You have been foolish, dear cat," the Great Queen accused. "You have set free that which should not have been set free."
I averted my eyes.
"Tell me why?"
"To protect a girl," I replied. "A human. My keeper."
She closed her eyes – emerald green, like those of the queen that I knew must be her daughter – and gave a soft sigh. "Oh, Schrödinger; you have done a terrible thing."
I felt the fur on the back of my neck rise and the shrine grew darker. I knew that the big tom had entered behind me, his great, midnight shape filling the doorway. I was acutely aware that my future hung on the next few moments.
"I know," I replied.
"If I could give you a chance to change what you did..."
"No," I interrupted.
The Great Queen stared at me; the princess' eyes narrowed, curiously. The big tom stiffened, angrily.
"You would still release that brute?" the tom growled.
The tom's voice was a strange contrast to that of the Great Queen. Her speech was delicately inflected, with the cadences of a long dead culture. The tom spoke in a far earthier accent, more like that of northern England.
I held my head high. "I knew what I was doing," I insisted. "If I had to do it over...Well, I might have left the palace a little earlier and tried to keep Juna out of Pandora's hands, but I would still free the Child if that were what it took to protect my Keeper."
The Great Queen gazed down at me, then at last she inclined her head towards me. "You loyalty is to be commended, Schrödinger," she said.
"It is?"
"It is. Now tell me; what did you intend to do next?"
"Find Juna," I admitted, "and maybe Trina as well. I had some plans...notions, rather, to rescue some of the other Tollan scientists and find a way to stop the Apocalypse Child."
She narrowed her green eyes. "Why would you do this?"
"Because I let him out; and because I know what he is. He will not stay long on Tollana."
The princess sat up. "But what is he?" she asked.
"A mistake," I replied. "The Child is the end result of a cul-de-sac in Tollan science. About five hundred years ago, parapsychology was the big thing on Tollan. After almost fifty years of genetic research, a group of the most brilliant researchers in the field believed that they had isolated the gene sequences which would generate various extrasensory abilities. Faced with the cancellation of their funding, they went all out and activated every one of the markers in a foetal subject."
"The Apocalypse Child," the princess realised.
"The Child was born with every extrasensory power imaginable," I agreed. "The activity of his brain, although their creation, was beyond the comprehension of all Tollan science. He was, in one sense, a success beyond their wildest dreams, but in others a terrible failure. The speed of his thoughts was faster than they could have imagined. He learned by reading the minds of those around him and thus outstripped them all in knowledge and understanding by the age of five. His power grew and grew until it reached even between the worlds...to Surita."
The Great Queen nodded her head in understanding, but the princess looked baffled. "Surita?" she asked.
"Tollan orbited in a world with two habitable worlds; Surita was the other, and home to another race of humans. The Child touched the minds of that world and taught his people a great deal about the Suritans. When the Curia decided that the time was ripe to contact the people of Surita, the Apocalypse Child was only too glad to help out and make sure that the advances of the Tollan emissaries were well-received. In effect, he hypnotised an entire world.
"Unfortunately, the Suritans abused the gifts of the Tollan and annihilated their world in an afternoon. At the time, the Child was still tapped into the minds of a great many Suritans. Ironically, had he been scanning the thoughts of their leaders, he could have stopped them, but he found politics dull. He was touching the minds of some two thousand ordinary, Suritan citizens when, all of a sudden, their lives were snuffed out. The shock of so many deaths swept back along the psychic link and almost killed the Child. Naturally, he did the only thing he could to protect himself; he went completely mad."
"Then he was once sane?" the princess asked.
I shrugged my ears. "He was mentally stable," I allowed, "but morally and socially he functioned only by knowing what was expected of him. He encompassed and manipulated the thoughts of all those around him; naturally he saw them as grotesquely inferior to himself. However, he did his best to conduct himself as a responsible Tollan; until the disaster. After that he decided to establish himself as ruler of Tollan and thence launch a campaign to conquer the universe. His power was dulled by the pain of Surita's death, but he was nonetheless able to kill more than fifty people and gather a devoted following of several hundred before he was trapped and contained."
The tom stretched, idly. "Why not kill him?" he asked.
"Because he was all-but indestructible. He was not merely telepathic, he had powers of telekinesis extending to the movement of energy fields as well as objects and extrasensory perception too acute to hope to surprise him. Even if the Child could not force an assassin to turn his weapon on his allies, plasma blasts and forced energy discharges danced to his whim. And remember, his thought processes were swift enough to intercept a laser beam. They only trapped him by tricking the brother of his dead lover. The scientists who created the Child in the first place convinced this vengeance obsessed young man that they had found a way to kill their creation. The Child read this in his would-be assassin's mind and went along with him, intending to enjoy his enemy's failure. Instead he was caught in a stasis field and held for centuries."
"That trick will not work again," the Great Queen pointed out.
"No," I agreed, "but Tollan science has – or had – moved forward since his day. Besides," I added, nonchalantly, "those scientists did not have me. Whatever else he can do, the Child can not control me."
The Great Queen smiled, benevolently. "Who can control a cat who does not want to be controlled. But you are young and inexperienced," she added. "I deem that you will require assistance in your dangerous assignment."
"I intend to travel to Epirus and gather what remains of the Tollan to aid me."
She nodded. "But you will require training and expert advice if you are to make full use of your own, native gifts. I shall send my Castellan with you, if he will go."
The big tom padded up alongside me, planting his feet with deliberate weight to make what little noise he did. "It is my honour to serve, Great Queen," the Castellan drawled.
"You know what I ask, Buxton?"
"I do, Majesty, and I go willing."
"I thank you," she purred. "Schrödinger; to follow you to the shuttle, Buxton will require the use of one of your skins; he shall grant you one of his own in return."
I was a little taken aback by this. "He can do that?"
"Of course," Buxton said, disdainfully.
I felt a sudden tingling all over my pelt, although I suppose that could have been my imagination. "I am honoured by your trust in me," I said, with more sincerity than I am usually capable of.
"You must go now," the Great Queen told me. "Even here, time can not stand still indefinitely. I look forward to meeting with you again, Schrödinger, although...not too soon."
"Quite," I agreed, with feeling. I bowed to the Great Queen and then to the princess. "Your Highness; I hope that we shall meet again."
"As do I," she replied, with a sultry purr.
The Castellan, Buxton, growled. I wondered if he were jealous, or merely outraged at my temerity. I can't say that I much cared; it was hard to give weight to any other opinion when those emerald eyes were smiling at me so encouragingly.
"On your way, brave warriors," the Great Queen said, with a trace of impatience in her mellifluent tones.
"I shall see you soon," the princess assured me. That was the last thing I heard before, with a sudden, wrenching sensation and a blaze of light, I was swept away from the temple and back into the blackness between lives.
*
After another who-knew-how-long, I opened my eyes in the dim light of the vortex shuttle hold. I felt like hell and it took me several moments to recognise Juna's scent in the air. I rose to my feet and found myself restored to my usual height of fourteen inches.
On wobbling legs, I made my way forward to the cabin.
"Schrödinger!"
My eyes widened in anger. "Juna!" I gasped. "I pass out for ten minutes and I find you rubbing another cat's stomach!"
"Ten minutes?" Buxton scoffed. He was still big and powerful and his fur was the same exotic shade of blue-black, but he too was now a housecat. "Ten minutes? You've been out for hours, lad. Besides, you can't blame the lass. After all; first time she's met a real cat and...Oi!" he added, indignantly, as Juna left him and came to embrace me.
"I picked up the distress signals from Tollana," she sobbed. "I thought you must have been killed. Why didn't you tell me you were on board?"
"Well...I wasn't," I admitted. I was feeling a little disoriented; I had never before remembered what happened to me between skins, let alone brought a belligerent Lancastrian back with me. Had I been more with it, I might have been warier of revealing my more uncanny traits to a human, even dear Juna.
Buxton clearly did not approve; he growled, softly, just in case I hadn't picked that up.
"We need their help," I reminded him. "Tollan science created this thing; we won't defeat it without Tollan minds."
Buxton looked unconvinced.
I sighed and turned to Juna. "We have to go to Epirus," I told her. "We have to rescue Trina from Pandora's palace and we have to do it before the Apocalypse Child grows strong enough to control the entire galaxy."
Juna gave me a long, hard look. "You'll explain all of this to me later, right?"
"I promise."
The girl nodded. "I'll set a course," she said.
*
Trina looked down from the gallery in despair. Forced to spend each day at a console, being asked the same questions, over and over by an automated voice, her people were being broken. It was perhaps fortunate, she thought, that none of the survivors had worked with the dimensional physics or advanced subatomic engineering programmes; the relentless questioning would eventually break even the strongest of them. She herself was the only subspace mechanic present and she was not being interrogated at all.
She was looking after the cats.
With a sigh, Trina made her way back to the royal apartments, where her charges awaited. She fed and watered them, the fussed over them, but although the stroking soothed them, it did not calm her as petting Schrödinger had once done.
"Sooner or later they will ask," she told one of the cats, a queenly Siamese. "They will question me and I know that I will be too weak to resist."
Trina reached under her handmaiden's robes and pulled out her knife. She had told herself that she was stealing it to use in an escape attempt, but she had since admitted the truth; she had taken it to make certain that she would never reveal what she knew.
She placed the knife against her wrist, but the courage to draw the blade down her artery would not come to her. After a long time, she set the knife down and began to weep. A touch on her hand made Trina jump, but it was only one of the cats; an emerald-eyed creature with charcoal fur and a regal air.
Trina stroked the proud head and the cat purred, happily. Just for a moment, Trina's mood lifted.
"I don't think I know you," she admitted. "I'd remember such a handsome cat. What's your name then?" she asked. She felt around for the cat's tag, but this cat wore no identifying collar.
"You may call me Sangevida, Miss Trina," the cat replied.
Trina leaped away from the cat in terror and confusion; her eyes brimmed with tears. "I've gone mad," she decided. "That's it. I've gone completely insane."
The cat sprang after Trina and sank her claws into the Tollan's leg. The pain was a focus and Trina felt herself grow calm.
"Pull yourself together, girl," the cat demanded. "Schrödinger is putting a lot of faith in you, so don't let him down."
"Sch-Schrödinger."
"Mmm," Sangevida purred. "He is coming for you. I could not follow him directly, of course; Buxton would have sent me back. So, I decided to wait for them here, instead. Good thing too. What would he have thought if he'd found you dead: You! The linchpin of his plan."
"I don't understand," Trina admitted.
"Then listen," Sangevida instructed, "and listen carefully. We don't have a great deal of time."