'Smash could get it,' Tandy said brightly. 'He fought a tangle tree and a pride of ant-lions.'
'Well, he's an ogre,' the Siren agreed matter-of-factly. 'That sort of thing is routine for them.'
'Why don't you come with us and show us where the catnip is?' Tandy suggested. 'Then we can all go to the catapult and on to Lake Ogre-Chobee.'
The Siren considered. 'I admit I don't seem to be accomplishing much here. I never thought I'd travel with an ogre!' She faced Smash. 'Are you tame? I've heard some bad things about ogres-'
'They're all true!' Smash agreed. ' Ogres are the worst brutes on two legs. But I was raised in the environs of Castle Roogna, so am relatively civilized.'
'He's really very nice, when you get to know him,' Tandy said. 'He doesn't crunch the bones of friends.'
'I'll risk it,' the Siren decided. 'I'll lead you to the catnip.' She adjusted her dress, packed a few fish for nibbling on the way, and set oft, leading them east of the lake.
The catnip grew in a section of the jungle separated by a fiercely flowing stream. They had to use a narrow catwalk past a cataract that was guarded by a catamount. 'Don't fall into the water,' the Siren warned. 'It's a catalyst that will give you catarrh, catatonia, and catalepsy.'
'I don't understand,' Tandy said nervously. 'Is that bad?'
'A catalyst is a substance that facilitates change,' Smash explained, drawing on his new Eye Queue intellect. 'In the case of our living flesh, this is likely to mean deterioration and decay such as catarrh, which is severe inflammation inside the nose, catatonia, which is stupor, and catalepsy, which is loss of motion and speechlessness. We had better stay out of this water; it is unlikely to be healthy.'
'Yes, unlikely,' Tandy agreed faintly. 'But the catamount is on the catwalk! It will throw us off.'
'Oh, I wouldn't be concerned about that,' Smash said. He strode out on the catwalk. It dipped and swayed under his mass, but he had the sure balance of his primitive kind and proceeded with confidence.
'No violence!' Tandy pleaded.
The catamount was a large reddish feline with long whiskers and big paws. It snarled and stalked toward Smash, its tail swishing back and forth.
No violence?
A fright would have been fun, but Smash realized now that the girls would worry, so he used his intellect to ponder on a peaceful option. What about the one he had used on the moat-monster at the Good Magician's castle? 'I want to show you something, kitty,' he said. He leaned forward and held out his right hand. The catamount paused distrustfully.
Smash carefully closed his gauntleted hamfingers into a huge, gleaming fist. Shafts of sunlight struck down to elicit new gleams as Smash slowly rotated his fist. It was amazing how each shaft knew exactly where to go!
Smash nudged this metallic hamfist under the catamount's nose. 'Now kitty,' he said quietly, 'if you do not vacate this path expeditiously, you are apt to have a closer encounter with this extremity. Does this eventuality meet with your approval?'
The feline's ears twitched as if it suffered indigestion; it seemed to have a problem with the vocabulary.
It considered the extremity. The fist sent another barrage of glints of reflected sunlight out, seeming to grow larger. The ogre stood perfectly balanced and at ease, muscles bulging only slightly, fur lying almost unruffled. After a moment, snarling ungraciously, the catamount decided not to dispute the path this time. It backed away.
Well, well. Smash thought. His bluff had worked-now that he had the wit to bluff. Of course, it would have been fun to hurl the catamount into the water below and see what happened to it, but that pleasure was not to be, this time.
A catbird sailed down out of the sky. It had the body of a crow and the head of a cat. 'Meow!' it scolded the catamount, and issued a resounding catcall. Then it wheeled on Smash, claws extended cat-as-catch-can.
The ogre's mitt moved swiftly. The hamfingers caught the catbird, who screeched piteously. Smash brought it down, pulled out one large tailfeather, and lofted the creature away. The catbird flew awkwardly, its rudder malfunctioning. The fight had been taken out of it, along with much of the flight A catfish protested from below. It lifted its cat-head from the flowing water and yowled. Its voice had a nasal quality; the creature did indeed seem to be suffering from catarrh and perhaps catalepsy, though probably it had built up a certain immunity to the curses of the water. Smash hurled the feather down into its mouth. The catfish choked and sneezed, disappearing.
Now Smash, Tandy, and the Siren crossed without impediment. 'Sometimes it's really handy having an ogre along,' Tandy remarked. She seemed to have swung from absolute distrust to absolute support, and Smash was not displeased.
The path led through a field of cattails growing in catsup where cattle grazed, fattening up in case some cataclysm came. It terminated at a catacomb. 'The catnip grows in there,' the Siren said, pointing to the teeth of the comb that barred the entrance. 'But it's dangerous to enter, because if the cataclysm comes, the cattle will stampede into it.'
'Then I will go alone,' Smash said. He brushed the comb aside and marched on down. The way soon became dark, but ogres had good night vision, so he wasn't much bothered.
'Don't invite catastrophe!' the Siren called after him.
'I certainly hope not,' Smash called back, though in truth he wouldn't have minded a little of that to make things interesting. 'I will be pusillanimously careful.'
Deep inside the cave, he found a garden of pleasantly scented, mintlike plants with felinely furry leaves.
Each had a spike of blue flowers. These must be the catnips.
Smash took hold of one and pulled it up by the roots, being uncertain which part of the plant he needed, and stuffed it into his bag. The flowers nipped at him, but lacked the power even to be annoying. He grabbed and crammed more plants, until he felt he had enough.
He turned to depart-and spied a dimly glowing object It was set in the cave wall beside the exit, framed in stone set with yellow cat's-eye gems. It was a furry hump with a tail descending from it: evidently the posterior of some sort of feline. A pussy-willow? No, too large for that. Smash recalled reference to one of the barbarian customs of the Mundanes, in which they killed animals and mounted their heads on walls. That was stupid-perfectly edible heads going to waste! Someone must have done the same for this cat's rear.
Smash considered, then decided to take the trophy along. It certainly wasn't doing any good here in the dark. Perhaps the girls would like to see it. Smash realized that it was a measure of the degradation foisted on him by the Eye Queue that he even thought of showing something interesting to others, but he was stuck with it.
He reached out to grab the stone frame. The cats-eyes blinked warningly. The thing was firmly set, so he applied force. The frame ripped out of the wall-and the roof collapsed.
Puzzled, Smash put one fist up over his head. The rock fell on this and cracked apart, piling up on either side.
Smash climbed up through the rubble, toting his bag of plants, but was unable to bring the posterior-trophy. In a moment he reached daylight.
'Oh, you're all right!' Tandy cried. 'I was so afraid-'
'Rockfalls can't hurt ogres,' Smash said. 'I tried to take a trophy, but the roof fell in.' He dusted himself off.
'A trophy?' Tandy asked blankly.
'The rear end of some kind of cat, mounted in the wall.'
'That was the catastrophe!' the Siren cried. 'I told you not to invite it!'
Catastrophe-a trophy of the rear of a cat. Now Smash understood. He had not properly applied his new intelligence, and had done considerable damage to the catnip garden as a result. He would try to be more careful in the future. As long as he was cursed with intellect, he might as well use it.
'I had better clear the rocks out of the garden,' Smash said. This, too, was an un-ogrish sentiment, but the Eye Queue and the presence of the girls seemed to have that effect on him.
'No, don't bother,' the Siren said. 'You wouldn't know how to set it right. The caterpillar will take care of that after we leave. It likes to push rocks around.'
They crossed the catwalk past the cataract again and proceeded to the catapult. This was a feline creature the size of a small sphinx, crouched in a clearing. Its tail expanded into a kind of netting at the end, large enough for a boulder to rest on. There was a basket nearby, just that size.
The Siren approached the catapult. 'Will you hurl us to Lake Ogre-Chobee, please?' she asked. 'We have some catnip for you.'
