The Philosophical Strangler(17)
It’s in the very nature of things, you see, that philosophers insist on mucking around in philosophy. And if you muck around in philosophy you’ll find yourself, soon enough, mucking around with such risky stuff as the nature of God. And if you go mucking around with that you’ll sure as hellfire find yourself right up against the Joe business. And then—well. The rest follows as night from day. Inquisition. Auto-da-fé. The Godferrets hot on your heels. Ruin and damnation.
Sure enough. On our way back—just when I thought we’d made a clean getaway—that idiot Zulkeh dragged us into the trial of the heretic Alf at Blain and that’s where Greyboar saw the Cat when she barged in looking for Schrödinger and started hacking up guards and scientists when they took offense at her interrupting the proceedings. In the event, once the dust settled down (the ashes, I should say—the Cat caused the whole courthouse to collapse in a fiery conflagration), Greyboar and I found that we had been separated from the wizard and his apprentice and there was nothing for it but to wend our separate way to New Sfinctr.
No loss, that, so far as I was concerned. Zulkeh and Shelyid were heading south to the Mutt, anyway, so we would have been parting company in any case. And I was purely delighted to shed the sorcerer from my back. Let the Fangs of Piety chase after him. I wanted no part of that Joe business.
Then, not a few miles up the road, who should we encounter but the Cat, ambling her way along as if she hadn’t a care in the world. As soon as Greyboar found out she was heading to New Sfinctr, he invited her to travel with us. She agreed, not seeming to care much one way or another. Of course, the Cat didn’t ’t seem to care much about anything except finding Schrödinger. Greyboar had hopes, but he might as well have tried wooing a wall. She didn’t reject him, exactly. Does a wall say “no”? She just ignored him. But any mildew on the big guy’s tongue was gone by the time we got to New Sfinctr, the way it was hanging out the whole time.
Greyboar was always stubborn. I should know! Absolute pighead about this philosophy foolishness. So, even after we got here, he right off invited her to have a drink with him that evening at The Sign of the Trough.
She showed a mild interest. “Any chance Schrödinger might be there?” she asked. Greyboar ran a line about how everybody in the world shows up at The Sign of the Trough sooner or later. True enough, of course, but I doubted this guy Schrödinger would ever show up—especially if he heard the Cat was hanging around!
So they set up a time to meet later in the evening. And damned if she didn’t show up. Early, in fact.
I was delighted, to tell you the truth. The Cat was a nut case, of course, but what did I care? I wasn’t chasing after her, Greyboar was. The main thing, far as I was concerned, was that the big numbskull had something else on his mind beside his damned philosophy. Hadn’t practiced his “ethical entropy” in days, he’d been so pre-occupied with figuring out how to make an impression on Schrödinger’s Cat.
I saw that Leuwen was eyeing me suspiciously. Any moment and he’d be pressing me about Blain.
Fortunately, there was a timely interruption. There was all kind of ruckus going on at the table where the Belly-Ups were sitting. A real uproar. Howling laughter, fists pounding the table, heads back, elbows jamming into ribs, ale slopping right and left. I wandered over to see what the fuss was about.
Right at the center of the fun, like the eye of the storm, sat O’Neal.
“Pinched me, she did!” he insisted in a surly tone.
More howls. Angus saw me, said: “D’ye hear him, Ignace, d’ye hear him?” He mimicked O’Neal’s voice: “ ‘Pinched me, she did!’ ” Howls.
O’Neal’s face was an artist’s dream. Seated Man With Mug, Disgruntled.
“Well, she did, dammit!” Stiff lip. Eyes front. Still Life With Amour Propre, Injured.
More howls. I was grinning myself. O’Neal loses when he cheats at solitaire. Like the wise man says: “Some’re fast, some’re slow, and some dummies can’t even find the starting gate.”
O’Neal finally blew his stack. “Will somebody explains what’s so all-fired funny?”
Angus stopped laughing long enough to speak. “She wasn’t pinching you, Wetdream, old boy! She was just finding her way through the room. Trying to figure out if you were a chair in the way, or just a big ugly dog. Look at her, dummy—she’s blind as a bat!”
But O’Neal was dense, like always. He tried to make a living as a scalper once. Sold tickets for half the price they were asking at the box office. He couldn’t figure out why he was broke when he had so many customers.