Death appeared.

One opened one's eyes and contemplated the man, all in black, glaring at oneself. Had he been a cat, his back would have been arched, ears flat. "You go too far."

"Are you prey?" one demanded.

"What?" Death hissed.

"Are you prey, to leave your scent markings so clear and make the hunt easy?" One flicked an ear. "Lazy, foolish prey, easily tracked and seen. No wonder-"

"SILENCE," the man thundered.

One yawned, displaying all one's teeth, unimpressed and uncaring.

"Cats." Death snarled, and vanished.

One stood, stretched and circled down to nap. The hunt would be more challenging now, the scent harder to find. It was well. None should become complacent.

Even Death.

The Lady Guardian's satisfied purr filled one's ears as one drifted off to sleep.

THE PERSIAN, THE c.o.o.n, AND BULLETS.

by Matthew Woodring Stover.

She was screaming. She'd been screaming for a while already. I'd been hearing her since Farside of Leaper's Bridge, so naturally by the time I made it to Knifewall, there was already a pretty good mob. It took me longer than usual, because I had to make a wide detour around a human gun fight-the Same Clothes People and the Calico People, at it again, as usual-and around the blast zone of the Calicoes' exploder, where there was too much fire and stink even for a hardened street tom like me.

She had a serious voice, one I'd been able to hear even through the humans' shouts and shooting, and I was a long way from the only one listening; the mob at Knifewall was the biggest I'd ever seen-I knew maybe only half the cats there, maybe less. She was pulling them in from all over the Zone.

"I'm hungry! It's cold out here! Where are you? I'm hunnnnngry!"

I spotted the c.o.o.n lounging in a weedy shadow near Knifewall's sunside corner, wiping his face with a spit-wet paw. He saw me looking and yawned. I shouldered through the crowd to the base of the wall so I'd have some shade on my way over. n.o.body gave me more than a courtesy hiss. The cats who didn't know me took their cue from the ones who did, and got the h.e.l.l out of my way.

"Hey, c.o.o.n." I settled into the weeds just out of reach. The c.o.o.n and I had a pretty good understanding, but there was no sense taking foolish chances.

He kept washing. "Drags. You want something here?"

This was as close to a respectful greeting as anybody ever got from the c.o.o.n. He didn't even have a name; everybody called him the c.o.o.n because that's what he was, a Maine c.o.o.n, more than half bobcat, fully four times the size of your average street tom. He was a legend in the Zone. He and I had gone some rounds back when I was a little younger and a lot stupider, and while he had given better than he got-he's near enough twice my size, and I'm a big d.a.m.n cat-he still carried a scar or two with my name on them. I liked to think he had some respect for me. But I was probably kidding myself.

When I was younger, I used to dream that maybe the c.o.o.n was my sire. Getting my belly good and ripped cured me of any pretensions to n.o.ble lineage. He'd made it clear that if I'd been his kit, he'd have s.n.a.t.c.hed me out from under my dam and eaten my head. And he might have been telling the truth. The rumor was he'd done it before. Rumor was, he never let a tom kit live. And, y'know, that was okay with pretty much everybody.

One of him was enough.

I tilted my face sidelong toward the yowling beyond Knifewall. "That what I think it is?"

The c.o.o.n looked away and flicked one ear. "We'll see. Skids is on his way up."

I shook my head at the mob of toms lurking around the wall. "Likely be sanguinary come nightfall."

"Sangwinwhattheh.e.l.l?" This from Hacky, creeping up by my tail. Hacky had been sidling along in my wake as he usually did, pretending to hunt a beetle, but he wasn't any better at pretending than he was at hunting, and he did both of those better than he kept his mouth shut. "Drags? How come you use all them big words n.o.body knows? I mean, what's that sangwi-somethin' mean, Drags? Hey, c.o.o.n-c.o.o.n, you don't know either, huh?"

The c.o.o.n just kept washing. He had a good vocabulary-better than mine, I bet, that giant head of his leaves plenty of room for brains-but he didn't like showing it off. Especially not in front of dogbait like Hacky. Why show off when you're the king?

"You'll find out what it means," I told him. "And back off from my tail, Hacky. I won't say it again."

He flinched. "Sure-sure, Drags. I don't mean nothin' by it, you know that. You know I'm not gonna start somethin'. Not with you."

"Which is why I haven't eviscerated your face, you follow?"

"Sure-uh, yeah, I mean, I think so-"

"Shut up." The c.o.o.n stood up and stretched, looking toward the rim of Knifewall. "There goes Skids."

Knifewall is three or four times taller than my best jump, and that's just the stone part; even if I could get up there-which would be d.a.m.n hard for me in itself, what with my tail how it is-I'm still way too big to slip through the tangled coils of knife-wire that added another good leap's-worth on top. Skids, though, was small as a kit, and a scrawny one at that; some Siamese blood on his dam's side kept him trim and quick. He was agile as a wolf spider and could run faster than most cats can think. He'd clawed his way up the pale shrapnel scars that pocked the outside of the wall and now delicately threaded his way into the knife-wire until he could see over the lip into Inside.

"Ohhhh, yeahhhh!" he howled. "Oh, d.a.m.n my b.a.l.l.s! It's her! It really is! Oh, wowww!"

That was too much for the mob. They all started singing back to her.

Come out here, kitten! I'll keep you warm! Hey, baby, if you're that hungry, I got somethin' to feed ya! We're right outside, sweetheart-come on out and join the party!

"Her?" Hacky looked confused. Or maybe just stupid. How do you tell the difference? "Her who?"

"The Persian." The c.o.o.n shook himself, and stretched again, and started to saunter off toward the river. "I'm gone."

"The Persian? For real? The Persian's out?" Hacky had his tongue half out of his mouth, flemming as if she were presenting right in front of him. "Is it true what they say about Persians? You think?"

I got up. "c.o.o.n-you're leaving? Are you non compos?"

"She ain't even in heat."

"Sure she is, c.o.o.n," Hacky said, still flemming so hard he was starting to drool. "Persians is always in heat. That's what they say. Ain't that what they say, Drags?"

"No objections here, if you're going, but I admit to feeling, well-" I didn't have a handy mouthful of word, but I didn't need one. The c.o.o.n knew what I was talking about.

"Don't like crowds, kit." But if that were the real reason, he'd have stalked off without bothering to answer. Looked to me like he was trying to talk himself out of something. Or into it. "And this ain't my territory."

"Feculation, c.o.o.n, it's n.o.body's territory."

"Not cat territory. You know whose it is."

"I do?"

"You if anybody."

"You mean Bullets." Just saying his name gave me a low, slow shock that started from the back like I'd got my crippled tail dipped in icewater. I had to sit down and think a second or two to figure out how I felt about this.

"Bullets?" Hacky had gone all hushed and wide-eyed. "I heard he was dead."

"He ain't."

"Okay," I said. "So it's Bullets."

"You did that pretty good, kit. Almost like you ain't scared."

"It's been a while." I mostly ignored the frozen ache from the base of my tail. "Is he still a bachelor?"

"Nope." The c.o.o.n's eyes slitted, as if he were thinking of ripping me one for suggesting he'd so much as ruffle his scruff over a bachelor. "He's gone alpha. Mobbed up."

"His own mob? Oh, that can't be good," Hacky moaned. "Hey, Drags-wasn't you the cat who-"

"Yeah, that was me."

"And he's the dog that got you by the-"

"Shut up." This from the c.o.o.n. He gave me a look that from another cat, I might have thought was sympathy. "You're thinking, Drags. I can see you thinking."

"I'm thinking," I agreed. "I'm thinking sunshadow's growing. I'm thinking Bullets and this new mob of his'll be on the hunt by half-light. And I'm thinking that this is not necessarily a bad thing. For us."

"For cats?" Hacky looked as puzzled as a kitten chasing his first spotting laser. "I don't see it."

"Not for cats," the c.o.o.n said slowly. "He means us as in us. Just us."

I c.o.c.ked an eye up to where Skids was snarling a string of curses as he tried to back out of the tangles of knife-wire. "I mean," I said, slicking my right paw to smooth behind my ears, "that these gonad-brains have less chance of getting the Persian to come outside Knifewall than I have of dancing on the moon. I mean that when Bullets gets here, any cats stupid enough to still be mooning around this area will be on a b.a.l.l.s-first trip down a dog gullet."

"But you know something?" Hacky said hopefully.

"I know Knifewall."

The c.o.o.n started to look interested. "You're from in there, ain't you?"

"Yeah."

The c.o.o.n favored me with the kind of look a few hundred birds and rats in the Zone had seen with the last light of their eyes. "You know how to get Inside?"

"Sure." I slicked my left, too, and swiped my other ear. "Wanna come?"

"You got it, right?" I confess to being a bit nervous. It was getting dark, and I could still hear the gun fight going on over toward Leaper's Bridge. "Both of you?"

We were at the fringe of the mob gathered at Knifewall's sweep-fence, which was as tall as the wall and had gaps in it just big enough for the humans to poke guns through if they felt like it, too small for a cat to squeeze through. But from here, the mob could see her, all stretched up to scratch the door of one of the Inside buildings, and they were going wild.

h.e.l.l, I was too. Long and plump and white as the moon, a giant cuddle-pillow of silken hair... but the sensuous ruffle and play of all that hair let you see a hint of the real muscle underneath. Sweet steaming dog t.u.r.ds, she was a beauty!

So I've always had a bit of a thing for Persians. So what?

Everybody has a thing for Persians.

But she was on the far side of Knifewall's sweep-fence, and the humans standing Inside didn't look like they were inclined to open that fence for us any time soon.

I've never figured out why humans like sweep-fences (and sweep-doors) better than flip-doors or lift-doors; if I were a Making-Things creature instead of a Killing-Things creature, I'd make drop-doors, where they'd just slide right into the ground, and come back up to close. That's the only safe kind, because by the time they're up far enough that they might catch your tail, they're too high to jump up on anyway. But whatever.

"You just got to understand humans," I said, once I got my breath back. "That's the thing. You got to know how they think."

"Humans think?" The c.o.o.n sounded scornful, but he was listening.

"Sure they do. More or less. Look at the stuff they build-"

"Scat, Drags, termites build. Humans just have more complex instincts, that's all. Everybody knows they don't really think."

"Yeah, the c.o.o.n's right," Hacky chimed in. "That's just-what's the word, Drags? You know, the one where you think regular animals are almost like cats?"

"Ailuromorphism. But it's not. I didn't say humans are smart as cats-they're no smarter than dogs, if that. If they were smart, we'd be working for them instead of the other way around. Look, I know humans. I used to have some of my own."

Hacky's eyes went wide. "You useta be a house cat? What happened?"

I tilted an ear toward Knifewall. "I had a house on Knifewall's Inside. Got hit by a flying exploder. Just an accident-houses get hit by flying exploders every day, especially Inside, because of all the Same Clothes People. You know how Calico People and Same Clothes fight all the time? Well, some of the Calicoes' exploders can actually throw stuff through the air. You've seen 'em. They can throw stuff a long way-and sometimes what they throw is another exploder, and they're usually throwing them at the Same Clothes. That's what hit my house. Killed both my people. Their whole litter, too."

"Aww," Hacky sniffled.

"It was a long time ago."

"I hate it when animals get hurt. Even though I got none of my own."

"Well, y'know, everything's a trade-off. A properly trained human is a great pet, but they're a lot of work. Too many house cats just let their people go feral-I mean, look at the Zone, right? You think humans would kill each other all the time if they'd been properly socialized?"

The c.o.o.n was getting bored. "How should I know?"

"Here's the thing about humans. In a lot of ways, they are dogs. They run in packs, right? They a.s.sociate by breed-Same Clothes go with Same Clothes, Calicoes with Calicoes, Cleans with Cleans, Musties with Musties, you know what I mean-they share food with each other, the whole thing. But, best of all, they're creatures of habit."

"Habit?"

"It means they do predictable things at predictable times, Hacky. You must have noticed. Same as a dog will take his perimeter tour mostly the same times every day, and usually in the same direction."

"Seems like a pretty stupid way to live."

"Sure, to us. But you have to remember, they're not cats. It's a lot of work for a human to think things over and decide what to do. So they just do over whatever they've done before. Each human has his own pattern, wake up now, c.r.a.p here, eat then, y'know, whatever... but once they join a pack, they take on the pack's habits."

"You're talking about wheelers," the c.o.o.n said. "That's how you know the humans are about to open the swing-fence."

"Every time there's a gun fight between here and Leaper's Bridge," I said. "Any time now."

Hacky looked around. Half-light had taken over the sky, and he was getting twitchy. "How do you know they'll be here before Bullets?"