The Ultimate Egoist (27 page)

And so it went. I applied every possible physical and mental stimulus to Helix—hunger, sorrow, fright, anger (that was a hard one. Old Helix just wouldn’t get sore!), heat, cold, joy, disappointment, thirst and insult. Hate was impossible. And Wally, somewhere deep in the cat’s mind, checked and rechecked; located, reasoned, tried and erred. Because he was tireless, and because he had no sidetracking temptations to swerve him from his purpose, he made a perfect investigator.
When he finally was ready to emerge, Helix and I were half dead from fatigue. Wally was, to hear him talk, just ready to begin. I got him back into his bottle without mishap, using the same method; and so ended the first day’s work, for I absolutely refused to go on until the cat and I had had some sleep. Wally grumbled a bit and then quieted down.

Thus began the most amazing experiment in the history of physiology and psychology. We made my cat over. And we made him into a—well, guess for yourself.

Inside of a week he was talking. I waited with all the impatience of an anxious father for his first word, which was, incidentally, not “Da-da” but “Catnip.” I was so tickled that I fed him catnip until he was roaring drunk.

After that it was easy; nouns first, then verbs. Three hours after saying “Catnip” he was saying “How’s about some more catnip?”

Wally somehow stumbled onto a “tone control” in Helix’s vocal cords. We found that we could give him a loud and raucous voice, but that by sacrificing quantity to quality, something approximating Wally’s voice (as I “heard” it) could be achieved. It was quiet, mellow and very expressive.

After a great deal of work in the anterior part of Helix’s brain, we developed a practically perfect memory. That’s one thing that the lower orders are a little short on. The average cat lives almost entirely in the present; perhaps ten minutes of the past are clear to him; and he has no conception of the future. What he learns is retained more by muscular or neural memory than by aural, oral or visual memory, as is the case with a schoolchild. We fixed that. Helix needed no drills or exercises; to be told once was enough.

We hit one snag. I’d been talking to Wally the way I’d talk to anyone. But as Helix came to understand what was said aloud, my long talks with no one began to puzzle and confuse him. I tried hard to keep my mouth shut while I talked with Wally, but it wasn’t until I thought of taping my mouth that I succeeded. Helix was a little surprised at that, but he got used to it.

And we got him reading. To prove what a prodigy he was, I can say that not one month after he started on his ABC’s he had read
and absorbed the Bible, Frazer’s
Golden Bough
in the abridged edition,
Alice in Wonderland
and four geography texts. In two months he had learned solid geometry, differential calculus, the fourteen basic theories of metempsychosis, and every song on this week’s Hit Parade. Oh, yes; he had a profound sense of tone and rhythm. He used to sprawl for hours in front of the radio on Sunday afternoons, listening to the symphony broadcasts; and after a while he could identify not only the selection being played and its composer, but the conductor as well.

I began to realize that we had overdone it a bit. Being a cat, which is the most independent creature on earth, Helix was an aristocrat. He had little, if any, consideration for my comparative ignorance—yes, ignorance; for though I had given him, more or less, my own education, he had the double advantage of recent education and that perfect memory. He would openly sneer at me when I made a sweeping statement—a bad habit I have always had—and then proceed to straighten me out in snide words of one syllable. He meant me no harm; but when he would look over his whiskers and say to me, “You don’t really know very much, do you?” in that condescending manner, I burned. Once I had to go so far as to threaten to put him on short rations; that was one thing that would always bring him around.

Wally would spring things on me at times. He went and gave the cat a craving for tobacco, the so-and-so. The result was that Helix smoked up every cigarette in the house. I had a brainstorm, though, and taught him to roll his own. It wasn’t so bad after that. But he hadn’t much conception of the difference between “mine” and “thine.” My cigarettes were safe with Helix—as long as he didn’t feel like smoking.

That started me thinking. Why, with his mental faculties, couldn’t he learn not to smoke my last cigarette? Or, as happened once, eat everything that was on the table—my dinner as well as his—while I was phoning? I’d told him not to; he couldn’t explain it himself. He simply said, “It was there, wasn’t it?”

I asked Wally about it, and I think that he hit the right answer.

“I believe,” he told me, “that it’s because Helix has no conception
of generosity. Or mercy. Or any of those qualities. He is completely without conscience.”

“You mean that he’s got no feeling toward me? That bringing him up, feeding him, educating him, has done nothing to—”

Wally sounded amused. “Sure, sure. He likes you—you’re easy to get along with. Besides, as you just said, you’re the meal ticket. You mustn’t forget, Tronti, that Helix is a cat, and until I take possession, always will be. You don’t get implicit obedience from any cat, no matter how erudite he may be, unless he damn well pleases to give it to you. Otherwise, he’ll follow his own sweet way. This whole process has interested him—and I told you he’d enjoy it. But that’s all.”

“Can’t we give him some of those qualities?”

“No. That’s been bothering me a little. You know, Helix has a clever and devious way of his own for going about things. I’m not quite sure how he—his soul—stands on this replacement business. He might be holding out on us. I can’t do much more than I’ve done. Every attribute we have developed in him was, at the beginning, either embryonic or vestigial. If he were a female, now, we might get an element of mercy, for instance. But there’s none in this little tiger here! I have nothing to work on.” He paused for a moment.

“Pete, I might as well confess to you that I’m a little worried. We’ve done plenty, but I don’t know that it’s enough. In a little while now he’ll be ready for the final stage—my entrance into his psyche. As I told you, if his soul objects, he can sling mine out of the solar system. And I haven’t a chance of getting back. And here’s another thing. I can’t be sure that he doesn’t know just why we are doing this. If he does—Pete, I hate to say this, but are you on the level? Have you told Helix anything?”

“Me?” I shouted. “Why, you—you ingrate! How could I? You’ve heard every single word that I’ve said to that cat. You never sleep. You never go out. Why, you dirty—”

“All right—all right,” he said soothingly. “I just asked, that’s all. Take it easy. I’m sorry. But—if only I could be sure! There’s something in his mind that I can’t get to … Oh, well. We’ll hope for the best. I’ve got a lot to lose, but plenty to gain—everything to gain.
And for heaven’s sake don’t shout like that. You’re not taped up, you know.”

“Oh—sorry. I didn’t give anything away, I guess,” I said silently. “But watch yourself, Gregory. Don’t get me roiled. Another crack like that and I throw you and your bottle into the ocean, and you can spend the rest of eternity educating the three little fishies.
Deve essere cosi
.”

“In other words, no monkey business. I took Italian in high school,” sneered the voice from the bottle. “Okay, Pete. Sorry I brought it up. But put yourself in my place, and you’ll see what’s what.”

The whole affair was making me increasingly nervous. Occasionally I’d wake up to the fact that it was a little out of the ordinary to be spending my life with a talking bottle and a feline cum laude. And now this friction between me and Wally, and the growing superciliousness of Helix—I didn’t know whose side to take. Wally’s, Helix’s, or, by golly, my own. After all, I was in this up to my ears and over. Those days were by no means happy ones.

One evening I was sitting morosely in my easy chair, trying to inject a little rationality into my existence by means of the evening paper. Wally was sulking in his bottle, and Helix was spread out on the rug in front of the radio, in that hyperperfect condition that only a cat can achieve. He was smoking sullenly and making passes at an occasional fly. There was a definite tension in the air, and I didn’t like it.

“Helix,” I said suddenly, hurling my paper across the room, “what ails you, old feller?”

“Nothing,” he lied. “And stop calling me ‘old feller.’ It’s undignified.”

“Ohh! So we have a snob in our midst! Helix, I’m getting damn sick of your attitude. Sometimes I’m sorry I ever taught you anything. You used to show me a little respect, before you had any brains.”

“That remark,” drawled the cat, “is typical of a human being. What does it matter where I got anything I have? As long as any talents of mine belong to me, I have every right to be proud of them,
and to look down on anyone who does not possess them in such a degree. Who are you to talk? You think you’re pretty good yourself, don’t you? And just because you’re a member of the cocky tribe of”—and here his words dripped the bitterest scorn—“Homo sapiens.”

I knew it would be best to ignore him. He was indulging in the age-old pastime of the cat family—making a human being feel like a fool. Every inferiority complex is allergic to felinity. Show me a man who does not like cats and I’ll show you one who is not sure of himself. The cat is a symbol of aloneness superb. And with man, he is not impressed.

“That won’t do you any good, Helix,” I said coldly. “Do you realize how easy it would be for me to get rid of you? I used to think I had a reason for feeding you and sheltering you. You were good company. You certainly are not now.”

“You know,” he said, stretching out and crushing his cigarette in the rug because he knew it annoyed me, “I have only one deep regret in my life. And that is that you knew me before my little renaissance. I remember little about it, but I have read considerably on the subject. It appears that the cat family has long misled your foolish race. And yet the whole thing is summed up in a little human doggerel:

“There, my friend and”—he sniffed—“benefactor, you have our basic philosophy. I find that my actions previous to your fortuitous intervention in my mental development, led you to exhibit a sad lack of the respect which I deserve. If it were not for that stupidity on my part, during those blind years—and I take no responsibility on myself for that stupidity; it was unavoidable—you would now treat me more as I should be treated, as the most talented member of a superlative race.

“Don’t be any more of a fool than you have to be, Pete. You think I’ve changed. I haven’t. The sooner you realize that, the better for you. And for heaven’s sake stop being emotional about me. It bores me.”

“Emotional?” I yelled. “Damn it, what’s the matter with a little
emotion now and then? What’s happening around here, anyway? Who’s the boss around here? Who pays the bills?”

“You do,” said Helix gently, “which makes you all the more a fool. You wouldn’t catch me doing anything unless I thoroughly enjoyed it. Go away, Pete. You’re being childish.”

I picked up a heavy ashtray and hurled it at the cat. He ducked it gracefully. “Tsk tsk!
What
an exhibition!”

I grabbed my hat and stormed out, followed by the cat’s satiric chuckle.

Never in my life have I been so completely filled with helpless anger. I start to do someone a favor, and what happens? I begin taking dictation from him. In return for that I do him an even greater favor, and what happens? He corrupts my cat. So I start taking dictation from the cat too.

It wouldn’t matter so much, but I had loved that cat. Snicker if you want to, but for a man like me, who spends nine-tenths of his life tied up in test tubes and electrochemical reactions, the cat had filled a great gap. I realized that I had kidded myself—Helix was a conscienceless parasite, and always had been. But I had loved him. My error. Nothing in this world is quite as devastating as the realization of one’s mistaken judgment of character. I could have loved Helix until the day he died, and then cherished his memory. The fact that I would have credited him with qualities he did not possess wouldn’t have mattered.

Well, and whose fault was it? Mine? In a way; I’d given in to Wally in his plan to remake the cat for his use. But it was more Wally’s fault. Damn it, had I asked him to come into my house and bottle? Who did he think he was, messing up my easy, uncomplicated life like that?… I had someone to hate for it all, then. Wallace Gregory, the rat.

Lord, what I would have given for some way to change everything back to where it was before Gregory came into my life! I had nothing to look forward to now. If Wally succeeded in making the change, I’d still have that insufferable cat around. In his colossal ego there was no means of expressing any of the gentler human attributes which Wally might possess. As soon as he fused himself with
the cat, Helix would disappear into the cosmos, taking nothing but his life force, and leaving every detestable characteristic that he had—and he had plenty. If Wally couldn’t make it, They would get him, and I’d be left with that insufferable beast. What a spot!

Suppose I killed Helix? That would be one way … but then what about Wally? I knew he had immense potentialities; and though that threat of mine about throwing him into the ocean had stopped him once, I wasn’t so sure of myself. He had a brilliant mind, and if I incurred his hatred, there’s no telling what he might do. For the first time I realized that Wally Gregory’s soul was something of a menace. Imagine having to live with the idea that as soon as you died, another man’s soul would be laying for you, somewhere Beyond.

I walked miles and hours that night, simmering, before I hit on the perfect solution. It meant killing my beloved Helix; but, now, that would be a small loss. And it would free Wallace Gregory. Let the man’s soul take possession of the cat, and then kill the cat. They would both be protected then; and I would be left alone. And, by golly, at peace.