9 Tales of Space and Time Page 10

  The man who told everyone else what to do shook his head. “We could have maybe a purge,” he declared. “For example, we could liquidate people who snore and disturb other families who live in the room. But such measures would not be effective. I saw that at once. I said to myself, ‘We must have a really fine danger like the Malikite plotters in the late nineteen-fifties.’ And naturally, Comrades, I found one right under your noses.”

  He preened himself. “Oh, it’s an excellent danger; it couldn’t be better. Imagine—reactionaries, saboteurs, greedy individualists! Millions of them in all of our countries, even in Russia, even right here in the Kremlin!”

  The other men looked around apprehensively. “Wh-who are they? D-do we know them?”

  “Hal I shall tell you. They are everywhere—in factories, collective farms, prisons. They are in the camps of our mighty Red Army, in our government bureaus! They carry no passports. They do as they please. No one suspects them! Who are they?”

  He shook his clenched fist in a fury.

  “They are . . . cats!”

  Then, after a moment, he added, “Kittens, too.”

  Yes, Gilbert dear, I know that it’s hard to believe. But he was as serious as I am.

  “Comrades,” he cried out, “are cats organized, disciplined? Do they work fourteen hours a day? Do they ever report their parents and friends to the police? Do they turn in most of their prey to improve the diet of our workers and peasants? The answer is definitely no. Many are pampered and petted, and do nothing at all. The rest work when they want to, for themselves. They are parasites. They wash themselves all the time like rich bourgeois. What more do we need? Down with cats!”

  “Liquidate them!” screeched the Minister of Revolutionary Security. “We must have cat pogroms—cat concentration camps—mass trials of cat culprits!”

  “Liquidate them!” bellowed the Red Army Minister, clanking his medals. “We will start an Order of Anti-cat Heroes of the Soviet Fatherland, First, Second, and Third Class!”

  “We must be pro-mouse, probird!” they all yelled. “Catnip is the opiate of the people! Liquidate all the cats! Liquidate them!”

  They were having a wonderful time, stamping and brandishing their brief cases in the most bloodcurdling manner, when all of a sudden . . .

  “Silence!” roared the man who told everyone else what to do. “Nincompoops! What will happen if we liquidate all the cats right away?”

  They gaped at him.

  “I shall tell you. Soon there will be a cat Elmer Pumpett. Then where will we find such another excellent danger? Where will we find our fine sables to wear? Who will catch the small rodents that eat up our crops? Ah, comrades . . .”

  He smiled.

  “. . . how fortunate it is that I am a genius! Cat is an economic animal; maybe Marx himself said so. Therefore at first we shall liquidate only some of the cats. The rest will work at efficient forced labor until we can train peasants to replace them. I shall announce our triumphant Anti-cat Five-year Plan in person tomorrow, in Red Square.”

  Why, Emily, what makes you think I’m not answering your question? I certainly am; I’m leading right up to it. Now, where was I? Oh, yes . . .

  The very next day a capacity crowd of three million was herded into the square. All over the place huge pictures showed the man who told everyone else what to do feeding a mouse to a very thin baby with one hand and holding off hordes of saber-toothed cats with the other. The captions said, Down with cats! Protein for the people! And the cats had dollar signs printed on them.

  The man climbed up to the top of a big pyramid thing they called Stalin’s Tomb, and spoke to the people, awakening them to the danger and explaining how he was going to save them. His oration was punctuated by vast cheers, timed to the second by the police.

  After he had finished, some forty divisions of the Red Army paraded, equipped with huge, slavering dogs previously used against political prisoners; and several more divisions of dogs dropped from the sky in a spectacular mass parachute jump. Three cats—a gray, a black, and a tortoise shell—who had come out of their houses to see what the fuss was about, were fearlessly torn to pieces by the crowd. Finally, the entire population of Moscow sang “Long Live Our Little Red Father” to the tune of “Mother Machree” (written originally by an industrial worker in Pskov, and stolen by British imperialists because of its obvious value as anti-Irish propaganda).

  The successful first phase of the Anti-cat Five-year Plan involved the swift liquidation of Persian cats, Siamese cats, fat ordinary cats, and their owners. The Secret Police, aided by the intellectual World Activist Council of Ailurophobes and by the eager young buds of the League of Militant Catless Youth, speedily rooted out the last cat collaborators, cat sympathizers, cat kulaks. In no time at all, the feline population within the Malenkov Curtain had been reduced by thirty-three per cent, and the number of elderly ladies and other cat deviationists had been cut down even more drastically.

  All cats were now the property of the State. They were assembled in Cat Collectives, each assigned to a farm, a factory, a tenement district. In every Collective, disciplinary functions were delegated to a Dog Battalion of the Red Army, supervised by a company of the Ordinary Secret Police, supervised in turn by a platoon of Special Secret Police. Each cat was issued a ration card, entitling it to eat one small mouse every day—and anything more was instantly seized by the Police. The papers boasted that this would increase the average worker’s meat ration to ten per cent of what it had been in the reign of Nicholas II, and promised that things would be even better when inefficient cats could be replaced by millions of peasant volunteers trained for the purpose.

  Can you imagine it, children? At four every morning men with whips and great, snarling dogs drove the poor cats from their cages and herded them off through the snow to the fields, cellars, and warehouses where they worked. A sharp watch was kept for any who dared to wash, climb trees, or take even the littlest nap, and those who were caught were mercilessly punished on the spot. Then, long after nightfall, the weary columns limped back, bedraggled and wretched, with scarcely the strength left to mew.

  As the weeks passed, the official accounts of the success of the Plan became louder and longer. Then, abruptly, the papers announced that the Minister of Collectivized Agriculture had been sabotaging it all along. At the largest mass trial in history, it was proved that he had conspired with several hundred aides, friends, and relations, all of whom were convicted and liquidated. On the stand he confessed to a treasonable fondness for an aunt who had once kept three kittens as pets.

  Six weeks later the Red Army Minister, five marshals, and eighty-one generals suffered an almost identical fate. In an additional month—after seven more ministers had been purged, together with most of the Politburo and some tens of thousands of minor officials—even the people began to suspect that something was wrong.

  It was at this juncture that the man who told everyone else what to do summoned the Minister of Revolutionary Security for a conference.

  My dears, he was perfectly furious. He was kicking and screaming and tearing his hair, and smashing chairs right and left.

  “Read these reports! Read them!” he bawled, as the minister entered the room. “Why are we catching eight hundred per cent fewer mice in one month? What good are your fat Secret Police? Bah!” Crash went a chair. “Forty-three unplanned famines already! In my bedroom, right here in the Kremlin, rats are eating up my best boots! And you—you liquidate a few people . . .”

  He broke off. He stared at the minister. “Why are you smiling?” he asked dangerously.

  “Ah, Comrade Excellency, it is because I have wonderful news! The criminals we are liquidating deliberately twisted your meaning when you were solving our problem. ‘Cat is an economic animal,’ you declared. Those were exactly your words. Lenin himself couldn’t have put it more neatly.”

  “That’s true enough,” growled the man. “Hmm—continue.”

  “I was thinkin
g about it for weeks. I would say to myself, ‘Comrade Little Red Father is too busy saving peace and democracy to explain to people like me. Cat is an economic animal. Man is also an economic animal. But Man did not know it until we came along and explained Marx to him. Therefore how can Cat know it? Perhaps that is why, instead of obeying and working hard catching mice, cats lie down and die? Perhaps we must make every cat understand Marx? Maybe this is Comrade Little Red Father’s real meaning?’ ”

  He explained that at first he’d kept silent because he was hoping that the mass training program at the Happy-Birthday-Comrade-Molotov Turnip Collective would soon provide peasants to replace all the cats . . .

  “I failed,” he cried, “to foresee that our peasants could never learn to catch clever creatures like mice. But when I heard the report, I realized you had planned the whole thing simply to prove that they couldn’t! I at once summoned Scientist Gugov, who is famous as an expert on cats, and I said, ‘Comrade, would it be possible to raise the intelligence of a cat so he is as smart as a peasant and can understand Marx?’ He replied, ‘The intellect of the cat would only have to be raised a few points, to an average of twenty point two. Already I have made preliminary experiments which show that it would not be too hard.’ So I put him to work, first taking his wife and three children away to provide an incentive. And, Comrade Excellency, what do you think?” He clapped his hands happily. “We have been completely successful! At this very moment Scientist Gugov is waiting outside with the cat.”

  Though he had never heard of Gugov before, the man who told everyone else what to do betrayed no surprise. “Comrade Scientist Gugov,” he stated, “undertook this research at my personal suggestion some months ago. However, I am pleased to hear that we have succeeded. Bring him in.”

  The minister opened the door, and two members of the Special Secret Police pushed the scientist into the room.

  He was a small, scrawny man with straw-colored hair and a set of steel teeth. He was afraid of the minister, whom he had first met early that morning, when he was dragged out of prison. And he was much more afraid of the man who told everyone else what to do. He just stood there and trembled, hoping he wouldn’t offend them.

  But he really needn’t have worried, because their entire attention was focused on his companion.

  And no wonder! He cut a much finer figure. He was sleek and black, with four white feet, and white whiskers, and a white tip to his magnificent tail. He weighed at least half a pood, all of it muscle. His name was Ivan Grozni, which means Ivan the Terrible.

  Ivan sat down, as composed as you please. In perfect Russian, with a trace of a Mandarin accent, he said, “Good afternoon, Comrade Excellency.”

  This seemed to disturb the man who told everyone else what to do. He looked at Ivan’s enormous green eyes. He looked away, clearing his throat. “Are you sure,” he demanded, “that this cat is politically reliable? We cannot have cats speaking Russian like peasants if they say the wrong things. I must test him.” He peered at Ivan again. “Cat, do you know who lam?”

  “You are our Little Red Father,” replied Ivan, “our beloved Generalissimo, Workerissimo, Peasantissimo, and benevolent Secret Policimo. If it were not for you, cruel Wall Street bankers would be eating our kittens every evening for supper. The thought of you, when I liquidate a big rat, inspires me to redouble my efforts.”

  The man nodded, “Tell me, Cat . . .” His voice was not quite so severe. “. . . are your efforts producing results?”

  “Last week.” Ivan said, “by putting in overtime as a Stakhanovite cat, I exceeded my mouse and rat quotas by thirty-one and six-tenths per cent.”

  There were many more questions. Did Ivan ever stop hunting to wash, sleep, or flirt with cats of the opposite sex? Did he hiss at the dogs who drove him to work, or try to keep more than his ration of mice? Did he attend Party schools? Did he read Pravda all through every day?

  Ivan gave just the right answers; and the man’s voice became more and more friendly. Finally, “Cat,” he asked, “can you explain dialectical materialism to me?”

  “Comrade Excellency,” Ivan answered, “my intelligence has only been raised up to twenty points, that of a peasant. Everyone knows that only you can properly interpret such a deep subject, and that you have stated it all in one phrase: Cat is an economic animal. It is beautiful. It makes me purr to think of it.” And immediately the rumble of Ivan’s deep purr filled the room.

  The man who told everyone else what to do sprang up with a shout. “A triumph of Soviet science! This cat is a true proletarian! Comrade Gugov, how did we do it? You must tell me our method at once.”

  “C-Comrade Excellency, we f-f-fed him with b-black caviar,” stammered the scientist, still badly frightened. “W-we put phosphorus in it, for the b-b-brain, and treated it in the b-big atomic reactor.”

  “Wonderful! Right away, Comrade Gugov, we must process all cats! Under me, you will be in full charge—I am making you Minister of Class-conscious Cats, Atomic Reactors, and Black Caviar. I am giving you Special Secret Police to protect you day and night. I am even returning your wife and your children—I hope without too much damage.”

  He turned to the Minister of Revolutionary Security. “Comrade, you, too, shall be richly rewarded. I am sending you a lovely, life-sized portrait of me to hang on the wall.”

  Then he pointed at Ivan with pride. “As for you, Comrade Cat, you may eat one extra mouse every week. I am signing the orders at once. Tomorrow in Red Square we shall have a great mass meeting for telling the people. Down with mice!”

  “DOWN WITH THEM!” shouted Ivan, and the scientist, and the Minister of Revolutionary Security all together.

  Hush, Gilbert. Hush, Annabelle dear. I know just what you’re going to say—that no one ever heard of a cat as obedient as that. Uh-huh. Well, this Ivan the Terrible was a very remarkable cat, and it’s a good thing he was, I can tell you.

  All that night, thousands of men were kept busy as bees, changing posters all over the place. The new ones had the man who told everyone else what to do standing by a mountain of mice. He was flanked by two cats bearing banners with hammers and sickles. MEAT FOR THE MASSES! the captions proclaimed. SUPPORT OUR HEROIC CAT COMRADES!

  The next afternoon, when the Square had filled up with people, the man made another long speech, and Ivan made an exceedingly short one. The ovation, of course, was just as long as before.

  From the start the Feline Frontline Fighters Five-year Plan was a tremendous success. A wonderful slaughter of sturgeon provided thousands of tons of black caviar, and the inmates of each Cat Collective were speedily processed. They were taught to speak and read Russian, indoctrinated politically and ideologically, and sent back to their duties.

  In less than six months a jubilant press was able to announce that more than half the State’s cats had been proletarianized—and that the average daily catch of edible rodents had been raised by eight thousand per cent. Learned papers began to appear, advocating the unionization of cats and their admission to the Communist Party.

  Each morning at four the cats marched off bravely to work, singing “Long Live Our Little Red Father” at the tops of their voices. Each evening at eight they marched back to bone up on Das Kapital. There was no pausing to wash, no malingering. Every cat put in oodles of overtime, even refusing to take off fifteen minutes for lunch. Gradually the dogs were withdrawn and the soldiers. Before ten months had passed, there was only one Secret Police corporal with a whip at the head of each battalion of cats.

  The man who told everyone else what to do was tremendously pleased. “Soon every cat will be smart like a peasant,” he frequently said to the Minister of Revolutionary Security of an evening. “They will catch more and more rats and mice. After a while, there will be hardly any rodents at all. Then we will have another Anti-cat Five-year Plan. We will prove that they plotted to exterminate all these creatures in order to loaf and eat caviar every day. Is it not fortunate, Comrade, that I am a genius?”


  Sure enough, children, the day came around when the very last cat had been processed. It was during the harvest, but everyone was given a day off to attend festive mass meetings.

  Right after breakfast Ivan the Terrible entered Gugov’s laboratory. The scientist’s uniform was all brushed and shined, but he looked awfully unhappy and worried. “Why are you here, Comrade Cat Ivan?” he groaned. “Our Five-year Plan has been triumphantly finished in less than twelve months. Tomorrow there will be no further need for a Minister of Class-conscious Cats, Atomic Reactors, and Black Caviar. The Special Secret Police will arrive. Poof!—no more Gugov. Oh, I haven’t enough troubles already; I should be bothered by cats!”

  Ivan sat down on the desk, curling his tail around him. “I am here,” lie said, “for one reason—I like you.”

  “Shh! Shh!” Poor Gugov almost jumped out of his skin. “Don’t say such a thing. Individual affection is treason!”

  “We cats all like you,” Ivan amended. “That is collective affection and perfectly legal. And because we do like you, I am going to do you a favor. Did you keep your original computations on improving the feline mind? Are they handy?”

  “Of course—but why, Comrade Cat? They are full of mathematical formulas you can’t understand. Besides, the parade will begin at . . .”

  Ivan cut him off short. “Don’t worry about the parade. It’s much more important that we go over your papers together. Please, as a favor to me.”

  The scientist shrugged. Grumbling, he opened his desk and drew out a bundle of notes, full of abstruse equations like this:

  Ivan examined them quickly, turning them over with his paw until he came to page seventeen.

  Then, “Ah-ha!” he exclaimed. “I thought so.” And he pointed at a little black dot.

  “We call that a decimal point,” said the scientist.

  “I know,” replied Ivan. “But shouldn’t it be here, not there?”

  There was the funniest silence. Comrade Gugov began to perspire. He started to shiver and shake.