"Wait a minute. Not so fast," I protested. "If you still want to keep your audience, you're going to have to speak more slowly. Programming manuals, diskettes, hard disk all sound Greek to me."
He gave me an abashed smile. "Give old Pascal enough time and he'll bend your ear off all day long, mainly with a lot of rubbish. I suppose it's just age. You want to talk away all that loneliness. But don't worry, Francis. I'll teach you everything. It's really very simple, because it's just a matter of logic. And I can tell just by looking at you that you're a born logician."
"I wish my logical genius would give me some help clearing up these murders. Despite the various hints and clues I've been able to collect up to now, I know as much now as I did at the beginning."
"Which brings us back to the topic of our discussion."
Pascal pressed one of the function keys at the top of the keyboard. The monitor darkened from top to bottom until it was completely black. Then a list appeared in the blackness that contained a large number of roman numerals and titles. At the very top was the heading of the list: FELIDAE.
"Do you know what this word means?" asked Pascal.
"Naturally," I replied. "It's the scientific term for our family, which is divided into Panthera, Acinonyx, Neofelis, Lynx, and Leopardus. Although even today zoologists dispute the classificatory criteria, all these genera are officially assigned to the main family of origin, the Felidae."
Pascal had a distant look, as if he had been removed to a primeval time, shrouded in mystery.
"Felidae …" he whispered almost yearningly. "Evolution has brought forth an astonishing number of living creatures. More than a million kinds of animals live on the earth today, but none of them compel as much respect and admiration as the Felidae. Although they only include about forty subspecies, absolutely the most fascinating creatures alive belong to their group. It may sound like a cliché, but they are indeed a miracle of nature!"
"But what does this list include, Pascal? Are you conducting genealogical research with this computer? And what does this all have to do with the murders?"
He smiled impishly.
"Patience, my young friend, just have a little patience. When speaking with an old man, you need to have above all two character qualities: absolute immunity against bad breath and patience!"
With the help of a key, he made each item on the list light up in sequence until he reached the heading COMMUNITY, and then he pressed yet another key. The list disappeared, and suddenly a voluminous register of names turned up, beneath each of which was roughly a half-page text.
"This is a detailed listing of the members of our community, the inhabitants of our district," explained Pascal. "Every one of our kind is registered according to his or her name, age, sex, race, markings, family, owner, personality traits, distinguishing features, state of health, and so on and so forth. In particular, the various ties among individuals are documented, and significant interrelationships can be traced down, if desired, by a complicated search and classification system.
"Oh, I almost forgot that I have yet to list you as well. Altogether about two hundred brothers and sisters are listed. I made the list when I began teaching myself the computer so that I could try out the functions of the data management program using challenging material. Just for fun, more or less. In the meantime, however, it has acquired an entirely new meaning."
He pressed a key again, and in the above right corner a small blinking question mark appeared. Beside it, Pascal entered the word murder. The processing unit made groaning sounds while moving the list up and down in accelerated motion until it finally stopped at the name "Atlas." It framed this and the data belonging to it in black, underlined it in blood red, and marked a thick black cross at the very bottom.
"Atlas was the first to fall into the snares of our bogey man. He was a regular Casanova: young, without a care in the world, nothing on his mind but an insatiable hunger for life and for love. Unlikely that he would ever have made any enemies. He was uncastrated, so he must have had some run-ins with the head honchos in the district. Like the other uncastrated, he also had a generous attitude as far as territorial claims were concerned."
"Did you know that all the victims at the time of their—"
"Yes, they were all infatuated at the time of their murder, that is, chasing some randy female. That's probably the only thing they had in common if you disregard the fact that they were all male and that cross connections existed between their families. But let's leave this question open for the time being."
Again he pressed one of his magical keys, and again a name appeared next to a cross.
"Second victim: Tomtom. A neurotic beast, suffered continually from delusions of persecution. Extremely shy and not very fit for life. Sooner or later he would have had a nasty end anyway. Corpse number three: a nameless brother. Probably a homeless stray who changed neighborhoods daily. Very likely lived from handouts and from garbage. Pure coincidence that his libido happened to flare up in our district. The fourth corpse was Sascha. He was hardly out of childhood. It's almost certain that he had reached sexual maturity just a few weeks before the fatal neck bite. Special characteristic: too young to die. The fifth and last in the group is Deep Purple. Bluebeard told me that he has already informed you about him. I would not have
