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"Little man," he said, "how do you propose stopping us? One scream by Gloria would bring the watchman, who would sound an alarm. One blow by me would render you unconscious for a week."
"We shut off the guard's hearing aid as he slept," smiled Cassius. "Critics are not without imagination, I assure you. Release me, or you will suffer."
Smith tightened his grip.
"Try anything."
"Judgment," smiled Cassius.
"He is modern," said one.
"Therefore, his tastes are catholic," said another.
"To the lions with the Christians!" a
And Smith sprang back in panic at what he thought he saw moving in the shadows. Cassius pulled free.
"You ca
"When in Greece, do as the Romans do," chuckled Cassius.
The odor of cats came to their nostrils.
"How could you--here...? A lion?" asked Smith.
"A form of hypnosis privy to the profession," observed Cassius. "We keep the beast paralyzed most of the time. Have you not wondered why there has never been a theft from this museum? Oh, it has been tried, all right! We protect our interests."
The lean, albino lion which generally slept beside the main entrance padded slowly from the shadows and growled--once, and loudly.
Smith pushed Gloria behind him as the cat began its stalking. He glanced towards the Forum, which proved to be vacant. A sound, like the flapping of wings by a flock of leather pigeons, diminished in the distance.
"We are alone," noted Gloria.
"Run," ordered Smith, "and I'll try to delay him. Get out, if you can."
"And desert you? Never, my dear! Together! Now, and always!"
"Gloria!"
"Jay Smith!"
At that moment the beast conceived the notion to launch into a spring, which it promptly did.
"Good-bye, my lovely."
"Farewell. One kiss before dying, pray."
The lion was high in the air, uttering healthy coughs, eyes greenly aglow.
"Very well."
They embraced.
Moon hacked in the shape of cat, that palest of beasts hung overhead--hung high, hung menacingly, hung long...
It began to writhe and claw about wildly in that middle space between floor and ceiling for which architecture possesses no specific noun.
"Mm! Another kiss?"
"Why not? Life is sweet."
A minute ran by on noiseless feet; another pursued it.
"I say, what's holding up that lion?"
"I am," answered the mobile. "You humans aren't the only ones to seek umbrage amidst the relics of your dead past."
The voice was thin, fragile, like that of a particularly busy Aeolian Harp.
"I do not wish to seem inquisitive," said Smith, "but who are you?"
"I am an alien life form," it tinkled back, digesting the lion. "My ship suffered an accident on the way to Arcturus. I soon discovered that my appearance was against me on your planet, except in the museums, where I am greatly admired. Being a member of a rather delicate and, if I do say it, somewhat narcissistic race--" He paused to belch daintily, and continued, "--I rather enjoy it here--'among bright stars on this most weary unbright cinder [belch], lost'"
"I see," said Smith. "Thanks for eating the lion."
"Don't mention it--but it wasn't wholly advisable. You see, I'm going to have to divide now. Can the other me go with you?"
"Of course. You saved our lives, and we're going to need something to hang in the living room, when we have one."
"Good."
He divided, in a flurry of hemidemisemiquavers, and dropped to the floor beside them.
"Good-bye, me," he called upward.
"Good-bye," from above.
They walked proudly from the Modern, through the Greek, and past the Roman Period, with much hauteur and a wholly quiet dignity. Beaten Gladiator, Hecuba Lamenting, and Xena ex Machina no longer, they lifted the sleeping watchman's key and walked out the door, down the stairs, and into the night, on youthful legs and drop-lines.
Divine Madness
"... I IS THIS hearers wounded-wonder like stand them makes and stars wandering the conjures sorrow of phrase Whose..."
He blew smoke through the cigarette and it grew longer.
He glanced at the clock and realized that its hands were moving backwards.
The clock told him it was 10:33, going on 10:32 in the P.M.
Then came the thing like despair, for he knew there was not a thing he could do about it. He was trapped, moving in reverse through the sequence of actions past. Somehow, he had missed the warning.
Usually, there was a prism-effect, a flash of pink static, a drowsiness, then a moment of heightened perception...
He turned the pages, from left to right, his eyes retracing their path back along the lines.
"emphasis an such bears grief whose he is What"
Helpless, there behind his eyes, he watched his body perform.
The cigarette had reached its full length. He clicked on the lighter, which sucked away its glowing point, and then he shook the cigarette back into the pack.
He yawned in reverse: first an exhalation, then an inhalation.
It wasn't real--the doctor had told him. It was grief and epilepsy, meeting to form an unusual syndrome.
He'd already had the seizure. The dialantin wasn't helping. This was a post-traumatic locomotor hallucination, elicited by anxiety, precipitated by the attack.
But he did not believe it, could not believe it--not after twenty minutes had gone by, in the other direction--not after he had placed the book upon the reading stand, stood, walked backward across the room to his closet, hung up his robe, redressed himself in the same shirts and slacks he had worn all day, backed over to the bar and regurgitated a Martini, sip by cooling sip, until the glass was filled to the brim and not a drop spilled.
There was an impending taste of olive, and then everything was changed again.
The second-hand was sweeping around his wristwatch in the proper direction.
The time was 10:07.
He felt free to move as he wished.
He redrank his Martini.
Now, if he would be true to the pattern, he would change into his robe and try to read. Instead, he mixed another drink.
Now the sequence would not occur.
Now the things would not happen as he thought they had happened, and un-happened.
Now everything was different.
All of which went to prove it had all been an hallucination.
Even the notion that it had taken twenty-six minutes each way was an attempted rationalization.
Nothing had happened.
...Shouldn't be drinking, he decided. It might bring on a seizure.
He laughed.
Crazy, though, the whole thing...
Remembering, he drank.
In the morning he skipped breakfast, as usual, noted that it would soon stop being morning, took two aspirins, a lukewarm shower, a cup of coffee, and a walk.
The park, the fountain, the children with their boats, the grass, the pond, he hated them; and the morning, and the sunlight, and the blue moats around the towering clouds.
Hating, he sat there. And remembering.
If he was on the verge of a crackup, he decided, then the thing he wanted most was to plunge ahead into it, not to totter halfway out, halfway in.
He remembered why.
But it was clear, so clear, the morning, and everything crisp and distinct and burning with the green fires of spring, there in the sign of the Ram, April.
He watched the winds pile up the remains of winter against the far gray fence, and he saw them push the boats across the pond, to come to rest in shallow mud the children tracked.