Chapter 14

Chapter 14

            Lady Isis didn’t take Buster through the palace but underneath it.  They descended a crystal staircase down several floors, until they were at the surface of Cattatonia.  Then Lady Isis touched part of the wall to open a trap door at the end of the hall.  She motioned for Buster to go through the trap door.  “I must leave you here,” she said.

            Buster went over to the edge of the trap door.  Looking down he saw only a wooden ladder leading into a dark pit.  “What’s down there?”

            “The remains of the first palace.  You go down the ladder and follow the passageway.  It will lead you out to where she is waiting.”

            “I see.  Thank you.”

            “Do not thank me.  I am only doing my duty to the princess.”

            “Yes, of course.”  Buster cut himself off before he thanked her again.  With a little wave, he stepped through the trap door, finding the ladder with his boots.  He kept going into the darkness until his boots touched solid ground. 

            He sniffed around, picking up the scents of mold, mildew, and animal droppings—probably the mice the Cats had served for dinner.  He didn’t have a light with him, so he had to rely on his nose to alert him of any dangers.  Getting down on all fours like his ancestors, he crept along a passage of mildewed stone.  He paused every few meters to take a deep whiff of the air.  Still nothing fresh yet.

            As he continued, he thought about what Lady Isis had said.  The first Cat palace must have been made of traditional stone and plaster, as with ancient dog structures.  Or perhaps since this was underground the Cats had carved it out of a cave as the bears did on Batpooh State.  It was one of many questions he wished he could ask, if only he didn’t have to leave tomorrow.

            After what must have been a half hour at least, he caught the fresh scent of the jungle.  He knew he must be getting close to an exit now.  Would Princess Whiskers be waiting for him?  Maybe someone—such as Duke Draco—had set a trap for him, luring him out of the palace to kill him.  If they found him out here alone, the Cats could claim he had violated the agreement by trying to spy on him.  After what he had told Dodger, he ought to turn back and forget it.

            But he had a note from Princess Whiskers.  It might not be her pawwriting, but he knew he had to take the chance.  Princess Whiskers was the only one in all of Cattatonia interested in peaceful relations with the Bloc, the one who could help foster a new era of cooperation.  He had to risk being caught if it meant ensuring peace between dogs and Cats.

            A few minutes later he saw a dim blue light at the end of the tunnel.  A natural light or an unnatural one?  There was only one way to find out.  After taking a deep breath, he crawled through the opening, sighing with relief to breathe some fresh air. 

            He hadn’t got to his feet yet when he felt someone touch his neck.  He spun around, rolling into a kneeling position before he remembered he didn’t have a pistol with him.  Princess Whiskers snickered at him with a sort of stuttering hiss.  “I’m sorry to scare you,” she said.

            “I wasn’t scared,” he said, getting to his feet.  “Only surprised.”

            “You’re late.”

            “The passage was longer than I thought.”

            “I’m sorry.  I should have taken into account your shorter legs.”  She patted his arm.  “Dogs are so interesting.  You come in so many varieties.  What do you call those giant ones?”

            “Saint Bernards.”

            “They are very strange.  Dog must have a sense of humor.”

            “I suppose so.”  Buster began to wonder why she had asked him to crawl through a dark, slimy tunnel to come out here.  Was it only for small talk? 

            She must have sensed his discomfort.  She reached into the black robe she had changed into since dinner for a pair of gloves.  The gloves had spikes at the end of the fingers.  Was she planning for them to fight?  “These will help you climb up,” she said.

            “Climb up what?”

            She pointed to a tree.  “There.”

            Buster stared up at the tree—and up until it disappeared in the clouds.  “That?  Isn’t there an elevator?  Or perhaps a shuttle could take us up?”

            “I didn’t think a spaceship captain would be afraid of heights.”

            “I’m not.  It’s just been a while since I tried climbing anything.”

            “It will be easy.  Let me show you.”  Buster was about to ask how she planned to get up the tree without any special gloves.  Then he saw the claws appear from the ends of her paws.  She loped along on all fours as he had in the tunnel, only much faster.  When she had built up enough speed, she threw herself through the air, landing against the tree a good three meters over Buster’s head.  Her claws held her firmly in place against the trunk, tight enough that she could turn to look down at him.  “Are you coming?”

            “Well, I suppose so,” he said.  It wouldn’t do to offend the princess by not accepting her offer to climb the tree.  He just hoped he didn’t break his neck while trying to be diplomatic.

#

            Buster took off his boots after his first attempt to grip the tree left him on his rear.  With his bare back paws and the special gloves Princess Whiskers had given him, he managed to hold onto the tree.  It was then a laborious process to move himself up a few inches.  The princess waited above him, snickering at his attempts to climb.  Maybe this had all been a test to see how capable dogs were physically, in which case he was failing miserably.  Jake, with his superior upper body strength would be a far better candidate for that test.

            “You’ll take all night at this rate,” the princess called down.

            “Dogs don’t climb trees,” Buster said.

            “That’s all right.  I can wait.”

            Gradually Buster found a rhythm to scaling the tree.  He still couldn’t move as fast as Princess Whiskers, but he probably wouldn’t take the rest of the night to make it up.  He did make sure not to look down, though, not wanting to see how high above the ground he was without anything to catch him should he fall.

            After two or three hours of climbing, he saw Princess Whiskers disappear through the clouds.  Buster pushed himself to move faster, until he too was amongst the gray mist shrouding the upper reaches of the trees.  As he did, he finally saw the top of the tree—and Princess Whiskers sitting on a wide branch.

            She patted the spot of the branch next to her.  “It won’t bite,” she said.  “Neither will I.”

            Buster didn’t have the breath to say anything, so he could only finish climbing up to her level and then get on all fours to crawl out along the branch.  Panting heavily from the effort, he collapsed next to her on the tree.  The princess patted the wrinkles of his neck with her paw.  “I knew you could make it,” she said.

            “Just barely,” he said, wheezing.

            “I’ve come here for years, since I was little more than a kitten.  It was the only way to escape from the palace.”

            Now that he was situated, Buster had the chance to look around.  He had to admit it was beautiful up here.  There were mist-shrouded trees as far as he could see on the surface.  High above, he saw the stars, far more visible than in Washingdog, where light pollution left only the brightest stars visible.  Here he could see everything, including tiny dots that were probably the Batpooh and its Cat escorts.  Could the Batpooh’s sensors detect him up here?  If only he had Dodger’s commpad, he could probably contact the ship from here.  “It’s wonderful,” he said.

            “Whenever I come up here, I look up at the stars and wish I were up there, free to live my own life.”

            “Have you asked your mother?  Perhaps she would let you—?”

            “I have been groomed since I was born to take my mother’s throne.”  Princess Whiskers shook her head.  “My mother bore two children when she was young.  They were both males.  She sent them into exile.  As years went by without an heir, there was talk that she would die childless, that a civil war would erupt to determine a successor.

            “Then my mother became pregnant again.  She was already old then.  She nearly didn’t survive.  But I was born.  A perfect, healthy female to carry on after her.”  Princess Whiskers shook her head.  “She is much sicker than she lets on.  She’s dying.  I think the only reason she’s stayed alive this long is to make sure I was of age to take the throne.  Of age and properly married.”

            “To Duke Draco.”

            “Yes.  He’s vile.  I can’t stand to so much as look at him most days.  But I must marry him.  I must marry him and produce an heir so that our noble lineage will continue.”

            “Princess—”

            “Please, call me Whiskers.”

            “Whiskers, I know what it’s like to have family expectations.  My father is a captain of industry on Batpooh State.  He tried to groom me to take over for him, but I refused.”  He turned his head to look into Whiskers’s eyes.  “We have to choose our own destiny.  We have to be who we really are.  If you don’t want to marry Draco and if you don’t want to be queen, you don’t have to be.”

            Whiskers shook her head.  “There are too many counting on me.  I could not betray them and my mother like that.”  She looked down at the mist swirling beneath their feet.  “My destiny is down there.”

            Before he understood what was happening, he felt Whiskers kissing him.  They awkwardly tried putting their mouths together at first.  Like with climbing the tree, though, they found the rhythm.

            When they parted, they stared at each other for a moment.  Then Whiskers looked down again.  “I am sorry, Captain Bulldog—”

            “Buster, please.”

            “Buster.  I’m sorry about that.  I don’t know what came over me.”

            “It’s all right.”  He put a paw around her narrow shoulders to press her close to his body.  They sat up there for hours, staring at the stars, as if searching them for the future.

#

            Draco was right.  Cassie didn’t believe him at first when he said Whiskers was sneaking out with a Dog, but there she was, sitting on a tree with that disgusting Bulldog.  From her perch on an opposite tree, Cassie felt bile rising in her throat as they kissed.  A Cat kissing a Dog?  It was heresy!

            She scurried down the tree to beneath the mist and then turned on her communicator.  “They are in the trees,” she whispered.  “It is as you said.  What should I do?”

            “Nothing.  I’m arranging a little surprise for them.  Return here before anyone sees that you’re missing.”

            “Yes, Father,” she said.  She hated calling Draco her father.  He wasn’t really.  She could hardly remember her real parents.  They had died when she was a kitten.  All Cassie could remember was there had been a fire and that her mother had thrown her out the window, into the trees. 

            For the next year Cassie lived in the trees.  She foraged among them for small birds and their eggs to eat.  She rested in hollow spots of the trunks, moving on from one place to another.  Somehow she had ended up deep in Pussia, on Duke Draco’s country estate.

            He had been hunting one day when one of his minions spotted her.  She had tried to escape, but someone hit her with a stun dart.  When she woke up, she was on the ground for the first time in a year.  “It’s a cat,” someone said.  She hissed and clawed at the strangers, but she was too weak for it to do any good.

            “Feral,” someone else added.

            Then Duke Draco bent down into her vision, his bulk seeming to eclipse the light.  “Now, fellows, there’s no need to say such things.  This child is an orphan.  It’s our duty to care for her properly.”

            Draco had taken her to his home, keeping her locked up in a windowless room while various “experts” tried to “cure” her of being wild.  They had succeeded, domesticating her spirit and teaching her proper language and manners.

            Only then had he given her a name:  Cassiopeia.  It was a constellation of stars, stars she had never seen even while living in the trees.  “My name comes from the stars and so should yours as my daughter.”

            “Father?” she said for the first time.

            “That’s right, I’m your father.”

            They had domesticated her spirit and taught her the language, but it soon became clear she couldn’t be tamed into a proper lady.  So Draco had used her to infiltrate the palace guard.  She kept him abreast of all happenings at the palace and dealt with his enemies as it became necessary.  With Draco it was necessary very often.  She didn’t like doing his dirty work, but what choice did she have?  Go back to the trees?  She had nothing without him, not even a proper name.

            Now the one time when she wanted to eliminate one of his enemies and he wouldn’t let her.  She could only hiss under her breath as she started the climb down.  She could hear the princess and the Dog beginning to make their way down.  The Dog made so much noise that he probably scared away the animals from ten kilometers away.  He wouldn’t last for two days in the trees on his own.  A clumsy oaf like that would fall to his death after one night alone.

            Maybe it wouldn’t even be necessary for Draco to do anything to them.

#

            Going down was much worse than going up.  In theory it should be easier since he didn’t have to push against gravity, but it was harder to get a grip on the tree using his back paws before his front ones.  He wished Whiskers had given him a second glove for his back paws.

            “Take it slow,” Whiskers said.  “There’s no hurry.”

            “Right,” he said with a grunt.  Each step became a battle as he searched for a good hold. 

            “If you weren’t so heavy, I could carry you on my back like a kitten,” Whiskers said.

            “Funny.”

            Whiskers scampered down past him.  She planted herself against the tree with her back paws and then used her front paws to take hold of his hind legs.  She guided him down until he could put his front paws into the trunk to get a hold.

            They continued this process for a while, until they reached about the halfway point of the tree.  There they stopped to rest on a branch.  “We’ll make a Cat of you yet,” she said, running a paw along the wrinkles of Buster’s jowls.

            “Then maybe your mother would let me stay.”

            “I wish you could stay.  You’re not like anyone I’ve ever known before.”  Her paw moved up to his neck to rub his wrinkly folds of skin.  “Draco and the others like him pretend to be hunters, but mostly they sit in their palaces, letting others do the work.  You’re an explorer.  An adventurer.”

            “Well, it’s not exactly like the movies—”  A terrible screech interrupted him.  He turned to see dark shapes above them.  When one came closer he saw a hairless face and long, five-fingered hands like those creatures in the palace carvings.

            “Monkeys,” Whiskers hissed.  “We must hurry.”

            Buster desperately wanted to hurry, but he still couldn’t move any faster down the tree.  Worse yet, the monkeys were just as agile as Whiskers, if not more so.  They screeched and chattered as they descended the trees after he and Whiskers.  “It’s no use,” Buster said.  “I can’t outrun them.  You’ll have to go on without me.”

            “No!”  Whiskers took hold of his hind legs to guide him down onto a branch.  Once he had climbed down to her level, she looked him in the eye.  “I won’t leave you.  If we can’t outrun them, then we must fight them.”

            “We don’t have any weapons.”

            Whiskers held up her paws with their sharp claws.  “We have these.”

            Buster nodded and bared his teeth for her.  “And these.  Let’s do it.”

            Buster kept the gloves on his paws, deciding their sharp claws would be better weapons than his paws.  The first monkey that came near him, he raked one claw across its neck.  The monkey screeched with pain and then scurried back up the tree.

            He hoped that would teach the rest an important lesson, but it didn’t.  It only taught them to come down in packs, dropping down at he and Whiskers four or even six at a time.  There was no more time to think about anything as Buster punched, clawed, and threw monkeys in a blind fury.  From the corner of his eye he saw Whiskers doing the same, employing both her front and back paws to drive the monkeys away.

            If not so busy, Buster would have congratulated her.  When a monkey’s paw came near his mouth, he snapped at it with his jaws.  As with the others, the monkey howled with pain.  He let it go to scamper away.  Then he heard Whiskers scream.

            Two of the monkeys had landed on her back.  They clung to her while she tried in vain to throw them off.  “Hold on!” Buster shouted.  Not caring if he lost his balance on the tree, he lunged towards her.  He took the nearest monkey around the waist, hurling it towards the trunk of the tree.  Not wasting any time, he bit the other squarely in the back.  As his ancestors had done, he pulled the monkey away and then began shaking it in his powerful jaws.

            “Buster, stop it!” Whiskers shouted.

            Buster let the monkey drop.  It crawled away, disappearing amongst the branches.  “I’m sorry,” he said.  “Are you all right?”

            “I’m fine,” she said.  She took Buster’s paw.  “Let’s go home.”