Why Billy Woke Up

 

It was still dark outside. A fell wind blew through the brush and stones. 

Billy heard something. Maybe heard is the wrong word, but smelled is also wrong. He was told in a sensory way that something approached. His yellow eyes opened in the dim stillness. He lifted his head and tuned his ears to the sound and his heart to the message. The old one slept on. It was time to wake her.

Billy stood in her lap with his forepaws on her chest and he howled a long high note. She stirred in her sleep. Black eyes fluttered a bit. Billy called her again. This time she heard him and became aware. Black eyes stared into yellow eyes and a message passed between them. Battle is coming. Julia knew she must change form.

As the Change Gate opened, Julia sat forward in her chair and prepared her mind. Billy sat close beside her. Both waited for the gate as they had before. Julia began her breathing discipline to ease the changing. In and hold, slow release. In a moment, the same again. Ten times. Her mind took on a different tone. She began to remember other battles. Eagerness filled her being.

The gate did not appear to be a gate as such. It looked like an indistinct area in the field of vision. One could glimpse distant stars writ very small in the field of the gate. It seemed to be a sort of cloud of golden shimmer that enveloped both old woman and cat. Both would have faded out of view if there had been a viewer. Then the gate faded too, leaving a quiet dark room, a lamp on, an empty chair and a cane lying on the floor beside it.

*!*

Outside, lioness and cat waited on guard.

This Sniffer had set out months ago. He had followed a trail of great delicacy. It had been given Beth’s phone to sniff and to remember her genetic traces. The Sniffer would know that scent anywhere on earth, distinct from all others. It had been built into his mind, for he was a customizable machine of great specificity. He had access to all of the internet and had spent months analyzing routes, bit by bit discovering their direction, until at last he understood that they had gone to Jessie’s boyhood home.

But it had taken the Sniffer such a long time to approach its quarry. Even Novus Mundo had forgotten about this Sniffer. They had forgotten Beth also. But a Sniffer never forgets its quarry. It had no idea that it had been forgotten or given up for lost. As long as it is able to absorb energy from sunlight and it can move it will keep seeking.

This Sniffer was in fact a kind of Ronin. A lonely hunter, but adamantly persistent. He started at the house in Washington where Jessie had destroyed the Novus Mundo Manbot. Then he followed Beth and Jessie step by step through each stage of their journey. They had covered their tracks well, but no one can remove every trace of their genetic fingerprint as they move through the world, or in fact, any trace of their business dealings, cash or not.

Similar to the Manbot, this one appeared roughly human. The human design is a good one for travel on this planet. It could walk and run, and it wore the typical clothing of a young hiker. The hoodie deeply obscured its face. The face, if seen, looked rather mechanical, a soft rounded machine with unblinking blue eyes. It stayed away from humans, walking cross country through empty landscapes when it was convenient to do so. If seen by a human, it ran away. It simply vanished leaving the person to wonder if they had seen what they had seen.

Billy was Julia’s Watcher. He might have been called her Familiar in another age. A Watcher might be called a sort of angel. They are in touch with the intangible. They interpret the intangible to others, such as Julia.

Julia Chee, though old, was still a guardian with a double spirit. This could even be her last battle as a spirit lion. She waited near the hogan while Beth and Jessie slept on. She especially set herself between this hunter and the unborn child. Perhaps this battle would win final freedom for her young people, and she was eager for it. Her tail waved slowly as she waited. She panted for the fight. Billy stood close, all four feet together in a bunch looking wide open and watchful.

Further down the yard a chicken or two muttered in its sleep as if they too knew something was coming.

*** 

The Sniffer was very close now. It felt nothing. No eagerness. It didn’t possess feelings. But it sensed the nearness of its long-term goal. It came upon the home site in long even loping strides, almost at a full run.

Between it and Beth were two animals. Not human. Not machine. One large, heavy and muscular, and another small and light. The Sniffer attempted to understand why they were there waiting for him. It decided that they were irrelevant and continued in its path. It sensed that Beth was near. Her traces were thick here. She had been all over the area for a long time.

It swerved around the lionss, but just as it passed her, she leapt up and grabbed the back of its “neck.” The small cat watched intensely, owlishly. Her goal, according to her Watcher was to break off its head parts, for its controls were up there behind its eyes, as that is also a good design feature for something shaped roughly like a man.

The lioness slung the machine around in a great circle with its feet almost clearing the ground. On the second time around its head did break free. The Sniffer stopped as if a switch had been thrown. The head lay with its eyes still lit blue making gobbling sounds and moving its jaws around hideously.

The body lay inert, prone. It hummed deep inside its thorax like a great swarm of insects was in there. The sound diminished but was still audible.

The lioness and the small cat didn’t want to leave any trace of the battle there for anyone to see. It seemed good to dispose of the broken thing. So, the lioness fastened her teeth into one shoulder of the body and the small cat did likewise with the jaw of the head part. Then they began a long tortuous trek uphill into the nearby towers of rocks. It took them a couple of hours but love and exigency drove them on.

At last way up high where no one ever walked because it was such rough terrain and there was no reason to go there, the cats found a deep fissure in the rocks. First Billy dropped the gobbling head thing into the dark crevasse. They heard it hit, but it was a long way down there. Then the lioness dragged the body to the edge and tipped it over. That done, they rested in the shadow of the rocks as the sun came up. Then they started walking home.

But when they got near, they saw a scene of disorder and frantic activity. Julia’s absence had been discovered, along with Billy’s. Beth and Jessie had called Julia’s son. The Sheriff’s dept had been there. The lioness and the cat had to dodge Bens Sr and Jr and the two friends as they searched the area of the stream and the mine and the land near the house and hogan. Finally, Jessie and Beth took off in the old blue pickup with Honda riding shotgun. 

Thus, when the coast was clear, lioness and cat wished for the Gate, entered once more and went home.

When the loved ones returned home and opened the door, they found Aunt Julia snoozing in her chair with her hair a bit fluffed up and her cat Billy asleep on her lap just like any other day. The remains of a partially eaten lunch were beside her.

The whole shebang so far....They haven't taken my phone yet.docx