The Ultimate Egoist by Theodore Sturgeon Read Free Book Online

hold it till it all but throttles; lay it down and step about it daintily; prod it with a gentle silken paw until it moves again, and then pounce. Clasp it in your talons then, lift it, roll over with it, sink your cruel teeth into it while you pump out its guts with your hind feet. Ball on a string! Play-actor!”
    Fluffy yawned. “To quote you, that is the prettiest piece of emotional claptrap that these old ears have ever heard. A triumph in studied spontaneity. A symphony in cynicism. A poem in perception. The unqualified—”
    Ransome grunted.
    He deeply resented this flamboyant theft of all his pet phrases, but his lip twitched nevertheless. The cat was indeed an observant animal.
    “—epitome of understatement,” Fluffy finished smoothly. “To listen to you, one would think that you would like to slaughter earth’s felinity.”
    “I would,” gritted Ransome.
    “It would be a favor to us,” said the cat. “We would keep ourselves vastly amused, eluding you and laughing at the effort it cost you. Humans lack imagination.”
    “Superior creature,” said Ransome ironically, “why don’t you doaway with the human race, if you find us a bore?”
    “You think we couldn’t?” responded Fluffy. “We can outthink, outrun, and outbreed your kind. But why should we? As long as you act as you have for these last few thousand years, feeding us, sheltering us and asking nothing from us but our presence for purposes of admiration—why then, you may remain here.”
    Ransome guffawed. “Nice of you! But listen—stop your bland discussion of the abstract and tell me some things I want to know. How can you talk, and why did you pick me to talk to?”
    Fluffy settled himself. “I shall answer the question socratically. Socrates was a Greek, and so I shall begin with your last questions. What do you do for a living?”
    “Why I—I have some investments and a small capital, and the interest—” Ransome stopped, for the first time fumbling for words. Fluffy was nodding knowingly.
    “All right, all right. Come clean. You can speak freely.”
    Ransome grinned. “Well, if you must know—and you seem to—I am a practically permanent house guest. I have a considerable fund of stories and a flair for telling them; I look presentable and act as if I were a gentleman. I negotiate, at times, small loans—”
    “A loan,” said Fluffy authoritatively, “is something one intends to repay.”
    “We’ll call them loans,” said Ransome airily. “Also, at one time and another, I exact a reasonable fee for certain services rendered—”
    “Blackmail,” said the cat.
    “Don’t be crude. All in all, I find life a comfortable and engrossing thing.”
    “Q.E.D.,” said Fluffy triumphantly. “You make your living being scintillant, beautiful to look at. So do I. You help nobody but yourself; you help yourself to anything you want. So do I. No one likes you except those you bleed; everyone admires and envies you. So with me. Get the point?”
    “I think so. Cat, you draw a mean parallel. In other words, you consider my behavior catlike.”
    “Precisely,” said Fluffy through his whiskers. “And that is both why and how I can talk with you. You’re so close to the feline ineverything you do and think; your whole basic philosophy is that of a cat. You have a feline aura about you so intense that it contacts mine; hence we find each other intelligible.”
    “I don’t understand that,” said Ransome.
    “Neither do I,” returned Fluffy. “But there it is. Do you like Mrs. Benedetto?”
    “No!” said Ransome immediately and with considerable emphasis. “She is absolutely insufferable. She bores me. She irritates me. She is the only woman in the world who can do both those things to me at the same time. She talks too much. She reads too little. She thinks not at all. Her mind is hysterically hidebound. She has a face like the cover of a book that no one has ever wanted to read. She is built like a pinch-type