He did not recognize the square at all, but he guessed from the schoolgirls that he was in an intellectual residential neighborhood. At first he thought the school was one for girls, but then he noticed a few lone boys among the homeward-bound students and decided that most of the families in this area must be deliberately having as many girls as possible. When sex-determination had become possible through centrifuging human sperm to separate the male-producing and female-producing types, most parents decided to have sons, especially for their firstborn. They often told themselves they would have daughters later, but unfortunately small families were the rule. The resulting over-production of males had led to some ineffectual state laws forbidding sex-determination, an unsuccessful attempt at self-regulation by the medical profession, a lot of talk in Congress, and an almost fanatically determined movement among a class of thoughtful people to produce only daughters. This last class, besides seeking to balance the sex ratio, perhaps had in mind the fact or rumor that human parthenogenesis had been achieved. Phil remembered a Sunday afternoon video shock talk:Will Women Born of Virgins Become Our Only Intellectuals?
Other aspects of the neighborhood around the square fitted with his guess. There was an appearance of shabbiness, the skyscrapers were low, advertisements lifeless, traffic was light, there were no hot rods.
He let his gaze roam over the tiers of tiny flats, wondering where Lucky might have gone. As he did so, he turned on the jeep’s radio. “… while Mystery Man Billig, mastermind of Fun Incorporated, is believed to have fled the country. Tonight at 8:30 New Washington Time, President Barnes will address all us American folks, partly to silence the small, syndicate-inspired clamor at the outlawing of male-female wrestling and jukebox burlesque, but more to explain to an amazed citizenry the full reasons behind the charges brought this morning by the federal government against sixty-nine high officials, I predict – and remember this is just my personal libel-free guess, fellow-folks – that the president will reveal that Fun Incorporated has been peddling dream pills, temporary sterility tabs, and I’m as shocked and disgusted as you are, folks, female robots equipped for obscene functioning.
“Now here’s an important flash on the cat story. The cats are not carrying an infection and are under no circumstances to be destroyed, whether owned, strayed, or alley. In fact, there’s a stiff jail sentence waiting for any person destroying a cat. But all owned cats are to be brought to the nearest security station, while any person sighting a strayed or alley cat is directed to do the same. There’s a stiff penalty for not doing the first, a one hundred dollar reward for doing the second. Get busy, kids! Why this sudden federal interest in cats? The National Health Service zips its lips. But your newscaster backs this highly responsible rumor: it has been discovered that a rare strain of cat carries a cancer destroying virus. Wouldn’t it be nice, folkses, to know that, once full grown, you would never start to grow again, in any part or place?
“But remember this, dear audiers, and I’ll say it to you in Martian: Zip-zap-zup! Meaning: Bring in the cats!
“Now as for this report, folks, that handie-supernova Zelda Zornia, vacationing in Brazil, did a south-of-the-equator handiecast advertising bathing jewelry; let me assure you clean living people…”
Phil cleared his mind, trying to put himself in Lucky’s place, to feel the direction in which the cat had wandered off. His head swung doubtfully this way and that, like a compass needle or planchette, but finally came to rest. He climbed out of the jeep and walked straight ahead, not turning aside for the dusty, crackling shrubs, but pushing straight through them.
He parted a final straggly hedge and found himself looking across the empty street at a house quite as old as the Akeleys, but with free sky above it.
Built of ancient brick, it was three stories tall and looked as pompously respectable as a 19thcentury banker. It reposed sedately on a terrace that was as weedily overgrown as the square and that was surrounded by a high iron fence.
The only incongruous note was struck by a saucer-shaped object fully fifty feet across set on a framework atop the flat roof. Judging from the dull green of its underside, it might be made of copper. It looked almost as old as the house and quite as proper, as if the 19thcentury banker had decided to wear a green beret and dared anyone to notice it.
Phil crossed the street, mounted some steps and peered through the iron gate. He made out, beside the houses old-fashioned, knob door, a tarnished bronze plate which read: “Humberford Foundation.”
He looked back uneasily. Where he figured the jeep to be, he could see the heads and black-clad shoulders of two men. The black reminded him unpleasantly of the sports togs worn by Billig and his yes men. They seemed to be arguing. One of them took a step up, as if he were getting into the jeep, but the other pulled him back and they hurried off – not in his direction, Phil noted with some relief.
He gave the iron gate a little push. It opened with a rusty “Harrumph” that made Phil shrink apologetically. But nothing else happened so after a minute he slipped through and began to peer around at the undergrowth and then to wander through it, softly calling “Lucky!”
Occasionally he looked back in the direction of the jeep and once he saw the radio-helmeted heads and blue shoulders of three policemen. He wondered if the next time he looked he’d see Dr. Romadka or the Akeleys, or perhaps Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck, and he shivered to think of how close he’d come to being caught – by someone.
But the next shock he got came from something nearer. He had rounded the house, after having poked through its equally lifeless and overgrown back yard, when he saw a dark haired man peering at him through the fence.
The most disturbing thing about the man was that he closely resembled the girl Phil had watched undress in the room across from his. The girl with hoofs. This man had the same vital, faun-like expression.
Phil froze. But the man merely yawned, turned away, and shuffled off, humming or hooting a little melody that gave Phil goosepimples because it reminded him of something in his dream.
For that matter, the whole experience was becoming very dream-like to Phiclass="underline" the silent house, the neglected garden, the futile searching, the melancholy memory of Mitzie’s leave-taking, the powerful sense of a dead past. But the feeling that Lucky was near was still strong and after a bit Phil realized he would have to do something he had been shrinking from.
He reluctantly mounted the steps to the front portal, reached for the knob, and then, to put off the evil moment a little longer, called “Lucky!” a few times along the shallow porch to either side.
Someone behind him inquired pleasantly, “Are you looking for a cat?”
Phil spun around guiltily and found himself facing a very old man as tall and frail as a ghost, and apparently as silent as one, since Phil hadn’t heard him coming up the walk. His thin, wrinkle-netted face, crowned by close cropped white hair, was hauntingly familiar. It had something of the grandeur of a pre-Christian ascetic, yet there was a note of Puckish humor in it, as if its owner had arrived at a wise second childhood. Although Phil’s heart was pounding at the alarmingly accurate question, he found himself liking the man at first sight.
As he hesitated, the old man went on, “My interest, by the way, is purely academic – or else childish curiosity, which comes to the same thing.” His eyes flashed impishly. “Is it by any chance a green cat?” he asked Phil rapidly. “No, you don’t have to answer that question, at least not any more than you have already. I don’t want to distress you. It’s just that I have a mind that automatically makes the far-fetched deductions first.”