So much so that he jumped when he heard a small noise behind him.
The hall door had opened. Mitzie Romadka was standing just outside, looking both adolescent and weary in faded blue sweater and slacks. A lock of her long, dark hair trailed in front of her ear. She fixed on Phil an unhappy, defiant stare.
“Last night I said ‘Goodbye forever’ and I meant it,” she began abruptly. “So don’t get any ideas. I’ve come here to warn you about something.” Her voice broke a little. “Oh, it’s all such an awful mess.” She bit her lip and recovered herself. “It isn’t just that Carstairs, Llewellyn and Buck hate me, or that you tried to make me get mushy and humble. When I came home by the service chute early this morning, I overheard my father talking with two other men. I listened and found out that he’s a Soviet agent and that his job now is to get the green cat no matter how much killing it takes. And he thinks you have it.”
Phil looked at her and the hours between were gone and he was back in the little tangled square at dawn and Mitzie was about to leave him, and all his snapping nervous tension flowed in a new and steadier channel.
“Darling,” he said softly and carefully, as if a sudden noise might make her vanish, “Mitzie darling, I wasn’t trying to humble you.”
“Oh?” she said, tucking the lock of hair back of her ear.
He moved toward her very slowly. “Actually I was just being conceited and I was jealous – both of you and your boy friends.”
“Be very careful what you say, Phil,” she whispered fearfully. “Be very honest.”
“All right then,” he said, “I was trying to humble you; I was doing my best to. I was full of the sort of vanity and condescension that comes from understanding too much. I didn’t know that your kind of defiance and glory has a place in the world. Mitzie, I love you.”
He put his arms around her and she didn’t vanish. The feeling of her body against his wasn’t like anything he’d imagined. It was simply slim and quite trusting and terribly tired.
Then her chin lifted from his shoulder and he was shoved back about six feet.
Mitzie was glaring at and beyond him. He was relieved that she didn’t seem to have a gun, or knife, or claws, or anything like that.
He looked around. Dytie da Silva, leaning against the bathroom door, was watching them quizzically. “‘Allo,’ she greeted them cheerfully, then asked Phil, “Girl friend?”
Mitzie turned pale. “How many do you try to take on at once?” she spat at Phil.
“Don worry,” Dytie advised relaxedly. “He very timid at first.”
“Oh!” Mitzie exclaimed loudly, and stamped on the floor with both feet at once.
The radio came on loud again. “… long been known that she and her husband weren’t on sleeping terms. But ironically her fans had to wait until what, with the outlawing of male-female wrestling, was probably her last professional appearance, before getting a glimpse of her new boy friend.”
In the middle of the bright screen was Phil, with a dazed look and a silly smile on his face. Juno’s arm was clutched around him and she was shouting “… even I gotta have a love life! And don’t you be insulting it!”
“Oh!” Mitzie shouted, crashed the palm of her hand against Phil’s left cheek, ran out the door and slammed it behind her. Phil stood there a few seconds. Then he turned off the radio and wiped the tears out of his left eye.
“Why you no chase?” Dytie inquired pleasantly. “Don worry, Phil, she come back. She really love you all more. She proud you such virile man, have many girls.”
“Please,” Phil groaned, lifting his hand. “That was goodbye forever.”
“Forever is never. She come back,” Dytie said.
And just then there was a timid knock at the door. Phil opened it, wondering whether he should slap Mitzie right away or wait. Dr. Anton Romadka pointed significantly at Phil’s neck with a stun-gun and walked in.
The small psychoanalyst looked nattily professional in the old-fashioned business suit, white shirt and necktie affected by some doctors. There was even a vest buttoned over his little paunch. His left cheek was as smooth as his gleaming bald head; evidently he’d covered the scratches with skin film. His expression radiated fatherly good will and reasonableness, though he kept the stun-gun pointed straight at Phil and every now and then his gaze flickered to Dytie.
“Phil,” he began, “I shall not deny the statement my daughter just made about me, for if you will only consider carefully, it will make us allies and comrades. Who could know as well as you, Phil, how hideously psychotic American civilization has become? You’ve personally experienced what it can do to the brain, the body, the sense organs. And who could appreciate as well as you, Phil, the sanity of the Workers’ Republics, where under the first firm rule of Marxist fact and absolute science, all psychosis is impossible – because all irrationalisms, all illusion (including the mad vaporings of a gangrened capitalism and its pseudo-science) are inconceivable.”
Phil found himself goggling his eyes and vaguely nodding. He shook himself. Romadka’s cheery voice was remarkably hypnotic.
“Of course, I should have realized all this last night, Phil, and appealed to your reason,” said Romadka as he kept the stun-gun trained on Phil’s neck with geometric precision. “But I was hurried and emotionally upset – even our agents are not wholly immune to the American infection when living with it – and I made several mistakes. Among other things I did not take my unfortunate daughter into account early enough, though I am certainly glad she came to warn you, since it enabled me to locate you. Which in turn will enable you, Phil, and your charming companion, to enjoy the bracing sanity of the Soviets.”
The small psychiatrist smiled and carefully propped himself on the arm of the foam chair. His voice became genially confidential. “And now, children,” he said, for the first time including Dytie in his nod, “I am going to tell you how you can do a great service to the illusion-immune state and win an undying welcome when you reach its realistic shores. Psychotic capitalism, faced by total defeat in the next war, has loosed against the Workers’ Republics a final filthy weapon: its own collective madnesses and herd delusions, catalyzed by subtle and electronic and chemical bombardments of the collective Soviet nerve tissue. To date this capitalist poison in the Soviet Pan-Union has largely taken the form of delusions involving green cats. Don’t mistake me, these green cats are undoubtedly real. It is my firm belief that they are ordinary cats with tiny electronic senders surgeried into their bodies, and with hormone spraying capacities comparable in their vileness to those of skunks. Although the green cats are possibly not the most important element in the assault on the Soviet psyche, they are the main stage props in that assault. Unfortunately, we have not been able to lay our hands on one of these creatures, in order to confirm our deductions and shape proper counter measures. It is absolutely essential that we do so.”
“But there’s only one green cat,” Phil objected, genuinely puzzled, “and it’s supposed to be attacking America. It isn’t, of course.”
“I’ll say it isn’t. My boy, I am giving you the Marxist facts,” Romadka assured him gravely. “Those stories you have heard are merely blinds put out by the capitalist government to conceal from its own work slaves and pseudo scientists the enormity of its actions. What has happened is that a green cat has escaped from a government laboratory here. You led me to that cat once, Phil. You can do it again.”