Free Bête by Adam Roberts Page B

voice to convey that my hackles had moved up in the world.
    ‘Your jibe about cruelty seems a tad hypocritical, Graham. Wouldn’t you say? Certainly I play with mice before I kill them. I refine my reflexes that way – and my reflexes are to me what the wings are to a bird. Do I enjoy it? Of course I do. Does the mouse? Of course not. But it’s my nature.Just as killing that cow was your nature. We’re killers both, Graham. That may be why I like you as much as I do.’
    Not for the first time I found myself regretting ever putting that piece of writing online. Impossible to un-put it, of course. And the fact that I’m writing this rather suggests that I haven’t exactly learned my lesson, where memoir-writing is concerned. But this piece servesa different purpose – and this place, where I am now, is of a different kind.
    ‘We should never have put chips in predators,’ I said. Behind me Anne turned over in her sleep and let out a long sigh. I waited, but she was still asleep. ‘That is to say,’ I went on, ‘we should never have put chips in any animals at all. But given that it was going to happen, we should have drawn the line atthe herbivores.’
    ‘Too late now,’ chuckled the cat. ‘And that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The too-lateness of things.’
    ‘I’ve had enough talking,’ I told it, screwing the top back on my bottle and stowing it back in my pack. ‘I’m tired again. This won’t surprise you. I can’t sleep all day, the way you cats do. I have to get up in the morning.’
    ‘You’re forgetting,’ saidthe cat. ‘I know all about you. You could sleep all day tomorrow, if you chose. Graham, Graham.’ I particularly disliked the baby-mewl-twist it put into my name.
    ‘Don’t call me Graham,’ I told it.
    ‘I want you to do something for me, Graham.’
    ‘Fuck off.’
    ‘Graham, now now! Believe me, it’ll be worth your while.’
    ‘The day I start doing things because a cat tells me,you can nail me into a box and bury me under the black soil of Wiltshire.’
    ‘Morbid! Come, now. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end; life only has beginnings.’
    ‘Very profound,’ I said. ‘You should put that on a T-shirt.’
    ‘C-A-T-shirt,’ said the cat, and starting laughing to itself: a low, purry-buzzy sort of chuckling. ‘You’ll be on your way up to Droitwich in the nearfuture,’ it said, when it had got over its own hilarity. ‘To see your daughter.’
    ‘You creepy CIA surveillance fuckface,’ I said, in a weary voice. ‘How do you know where my daughter lives?’
    ‘Wise cat is wise,’ said the cat. ‘Wireless cat casts its web world-widely. The point is that you pass near a village called Heatherhampton on your way.’
    ‘I know it.’
    ‘Behind the churchis a steep grassy hill with a National Trust windmill at the top. Climb the walker’s path – don’t drive the road that runs up the back—’
    ‘Like I can afford to run a car!’
    ‘Walk the path,’ the cat said. ‘It forks right to the windmill and left into a copse. Go left, in amongst the trees, and you’ll find some steps. Go up the steps and you’ll find a building. Knock on the door. He’llbe inside. I wouldn’t say he’ll be waiting for you – that would over-personalize it. Remember, you all look alike to us. But he’ll be inside.’
    ‘And why should I put myself to this inconvenience?’
    ‘Oh it will be worth your while,’ mewed the cat.
    ‘Whatever,’ I said, getting into the bed again.
    I fell asleep quickly, and dreamt of a green hill covered in trees like purple-sprouting-broccoli.In my dream it was winter, and the ponds were all covered close by snap-down Tupperware lids of ice, and mist coiled in the hollows like something released by the Germans in World War One. I walked up a staircase made of blocks as white as ice, though not slippy, and at the top a woman was waiting for me. In my dream I thought to myself: It’s the devil herself, what shall I say