The High Road and The Low

A Clan of The Cats Story

by Dave Lerner

Part I

From the kitchen Chelsea heard the front door close. It couldn’t be Ben. Ben closed the door in one of two ways. A normal slam, or a damn-near-smash-the-door-off-its-hinges slam. He never closed it quietly. She came into the living room. And it was Ben. Something was wrong.

Anatech Labs had opened a new facility in Haven, and had invited many of the town’s leading citizens, including Ben and Diane, on a guided tour. They must have just returned. Diane had apparently just finished crying. And Ben...

Chelsea had seen Ben annoyed, disappointed, enraged- all at the same time, usually at her. But she’d never seen him like this. Never seen this combination of deep dark sadness and near-unbridled anger. She prayed he’d never look at her like that .

"What...?" she whispered. Sebastian jumped off Ben’s chair, not challenging him for it. He was a cat, not an idiot. Sparky, Ben’s dog, ran up to him. The big man patted him.

"Ben", thought Sebastian, "if I didn’t know you I would swear you were about to cry!"

"We went on the tour," Ben said in a monotone. "The Anatech tour. They’d opened a few months ago, and were ready to invite the neighbors in. Just another God-damn business tour. You know, ‘talk, talk, new jobs, local industry growth, good for the community, now eat your God-damn buffet, and give us our God-damn tax breaks’." Ben was, in fact, one of the people who helped bring Anatech to Haven. And he loved these business tours. Chelsea refrained from making the three or four comments that occurred to her. "Things were going wonderful. Okay, maybe Diane was a little bored, but... we finished the main tour. And that snot-nosed Bobby Bayton from Bayton Publishers had to go and point out that they didn’t show us an entire building.

"Well, they couldn’t really skip the building without looking like they had something to hide. So they warned us. They did warn us. It was the animal testing facility."

"It was horrible!" Diane said. "They had all these animals. They were wired up, some of them, their eyelids were cut off, or their paws... they screamed in pain." She was crying, "They screamed in pain." Chelsea held her. "There were cats and monkeys and rabbits and-"

"Dogs," Ben said. "Those...monsters...were torturing dogs. Chelsea, take care of your mother. I need to make a few phone calls."

Ben slammed down the phone. Three hours, and he was nowhere. The problem was, what Anatech was doing was horrible, but it was legal. They had all the appropriate licenses. Even those Animal Control idiots couldn’t do anything but sympathize. And refuse to let Anatech get test subjects from them. Maybe that was something.

But not enough. Nowhere near enough.

Just outside the door Sebastian watched with increasing annoyance. For once, he wanted Ben to succeed. And it had nothing to do with cats, or other cute animals. It was just that...novice familiars were at risk. That’s it. Novice familiars. "All right, Ben. You take your high road, and I’ll take the low road. We’ll see who’s in Scotland before whom."

Sebo hated dealing with elfs. The elf, naturally he was bigger than the cat, said, "SEBAstioN, WHat you ASK iS No smaLL fAvor."

"Neither is the favor I did for you, three hundred years ago. If anything, I should have some change coming back. But you do this, and we’ll call it even."

"arE YOu CERTAin YOU want HIm TO knoW It’s FAKe?"

"Yes. There may be repercussions. And for some inexplicable reason I don’t want Ben to get hit unprepared."

Ben looked at the folder that had been left on his front door step. There was evidence and photographs to embarrass the senior staff at Anatech. Even if they could disprove it, the scandal would weaken the company to the point where Ben could kick it out of Haven.

But, no. Dammit, Ben knew right from wrong, and this was wrong. He couldn’t stop Anatech like this. There had to another way. He put the folder and its contents in the fireplace.

Sebastian spat. Was there anybody else in Haven who had the desire and the power to use that information? Anyone with the credentials to prop up the fraud? "Stay to your high road, Ben. All the way to Heaven. My low road through Hell, with all its detours, is still faster."

Click here to read part II

Dave Lerner
Lissa: Blowing up a building makes for a pretty good distraction.
Read Banny and Lissa