Catland - a humorous fantasy

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Truth

This may be as good a moment as any to pause for some general reflections.

Human beings, as a species, tend to be very, very pleased with themselves.  This is, to a certain extent, justifiable.  They are (okay, fine: we are), after all, the most intelligent species on the planet, unless you count the secret underground society of quasi-medieval cats whose existence is still vigorously debated by the world's finest professors and lunatics.  (To be clear: it's not a debate between professors and lunatics.  There are plenty of professors—and plenty of lunatics—on both sides.)

Now, intelligence is a very fine thing.  It's hard to play chess without it, and it's nearly impossible to construct a decent suspension bridge.  But at crucial moments of decision, intelligence is not, as it were, in the driver's seat.  Decisions—especially rushed, spur-of-the-moment decisions, like whether to dart forward and unmask a mysterious tyrant—come from somewhere else.  They come from someplace more primal.  They come, perhaps, from the very core of one's personal self.

So why did Greg bound up those steps and pull aside that curtain?  Certainly not because it was an intelligent thing to do; in fact, it was enormously stupid.  And also not because he thought it was an intelligent thing to do; in fact, at the crucial moment, he wasn't thinking anything at all.  When Greg bounded up those steps and pulled aside that curtain, he was acting on instinct: primal, inchoate, unknowable instinct.  In short, he was acting like an animal, which is what human beings always were, all along, anyway.  We're simply the only animal that pretends not to be an animal—which is a very peculiar thing for an animal to do.

But enough of these general reflections.  I was about to tell you what Greg saw on that throne.

It was a mouse.

(If that seems anticlimactic to you, I recommend that you go and read a better book.  Better yet, write your own stupid book, you ingrate.)

Greg's mind reeled.  He stared at the mouse.  The mouse stared at Greg.

"Eep!" said the mouse.

"Eep!" said Greg.

"Seize them!" said Glimmerind.

Greg turned around.

From two wide doors on either side of the narrow hall, not far from the base of the dais, dozens of armored guards were streaming in toward Millicent and Leopold.  Another group of guards was rushing forward from the hall's distant entrance, but they would arrive too late to make much of a difference.  As Greg watched, his friends were surrounded by a bright scrum of angry steel.

Greg heard a rapid skittering of feet behind him, and wheeled around in time to see the mouse-king scampering across the dais toward a small door set in the chamber's back wall.  It occurred to Greg that a mouse who was also a king would make a fine hostage: small enough to wrangle without too much trouble, yet important enough to make people listen.  He tore off after the retreating mouse.

The mouse was fast, but Greg's legs were much longer, and desperation gave him wings.  He had almost caught up with his quarry when the mouse flung the door open and disappeared into the unseen corridor beyond.  This didn't bother Greg much.  Another few strides, and he would be on top of the cowardly little mouse—grasping him by the tail, dangling him off the ground, cowing him into submission, and then using him to force Glimmerind to unhand his friends and allow them to leave the palace, whereupon they could rally their allies and—

It was roughly at this point in Greg's train of thought that he ran smack into a massive, unyielding wall of fur.  It was like dashing full-tilt into an especially fuzzy brick wall, which was something Greg had never done before, and with good reason.  It hurt.

Greg looked up, into the twisted, leering face of Gurgeon, and before he lost consciousness he had a moment to wonder whether the big, ugly cat ever bathed.  Then Gurgeon's paw came down, with a great, head-battering swipe, and Greg—rather mercifully, under the circumstances—was knocked right the heck out.