by Pati Nagle
I stuck close to Butch. He passed by a Mex-Sector kiosk and made a beeline for a little place with four tiny tables crammed in next to a black and red counter with high stools like at the bar in Molly’s, only cleaner. The red neon sign above it said “Ling-Ling’s Lightspeed Asian.”
“Follow my lead,” Butch said.
He turned off course and started chasing something. At first I thought he really had a mouse, so I pounced too. It was an imaginary mouse, though. Butch jumped and scuttled with a speed you wouldn’t expect, given the size of him. All the time he was working his way toward Ling-Ling’s.
I played dumb kitten, chasing after Butch like I was trying to get in on his catch but didn’t get the game. It got me up to the end of the counter right alongside him just as a girl in tangerine body tights and a black miniskirt came out from behind it carrying a tray from which heavenly smells were rising. She had short black hair and an Asian cast to her features, with uptilted eyes that narrowed when she smiled at Butch.
“Hi, Cuddles! Just a sec.”
She tripped out to the back table in the kiosk where two femmes were sitting and gossiping. While she unloaded the food I sidled closer to Butch.
“So that’s Ling-Ling?” I asked.
“Nah, this is Ling2. Ling-Ling had herself cloned. Couldn’t handle all the work alone after she opened the Imperial Garden.”
Ling2 came back, set the empty tray on the end of the counter and crouched down to scratch Butch’s head. “Cute kitty. Hey, who’s your friend?”
Recognizing my cue, I stepped up and gave her a mew intended to convey that I found her the most fascinating woman on the station and incidentally I was also starving. She smiled again, her nose crinkling, and scratched under my chin. I rubbed against her tangerine-clad knee and mewed some more. I had no need to fake my enthusiasm for her company. The smells clinging to her hands were driving me crazy.
“OK, guys, c’mere.”
She stood up and stepped behind the counter. Butch followed pronto, and I hustled after him.
Ling2 stepped to the back counter where the cooking equipment was. Simple setup, a three-burner stove-top with woks on two of the burners, a deep-fat tub and a food prep counter, all sparkling. Ling2 took out a bowl of fish scraps that she must have set aside just for Butch, because otherwise stuff like that would’ve gone straight into the recycler. She got out a smaller bowl and put about a third of the scraps into it, then set both bowls on the floor underneath the front counter, out of sight of the clientele.
Butch and I buried our faces. It was heavenly stuff, fish guts and a few bits of chicken and a bunch of raw shrimp tails. I gobbled it down in no time and glanced at Butch, who was just finishing his. He rubbed against Ling2’s ankles, purring like a sonofagun. Ling2 giggled, then her eyes went wide.
“Shoo, kitty,” she said hastily, and grabbed the empty tray she’d left on the counter.
Somebody was coming, and Ling2 obviously didn’t want whoever it was to see us. Butch darted around the end of the counter and beneath the empty front table.
I wasn’t quick enough to follow him, so I ducked under the counter instead. There were a couple of boxes under there marked “Restaurant Supply,” and I was just able to squeeze behind one of them.
A sharp burst of Chinese in a feminine voice penetrated my hiding place enough to make me wince. Ling2’s answer was quiet and deferential. Though the vocal chords were genetically identical, the two voices were not.
Interesting. It made me wonder whether Astara had taken any samples of my genetic material. What if there was another Leon in the making? Disturbing thought.
The Chinese chatter continued while I was musing over this, though after the first outburst the visitor—Ling-Ling, I assumed—seemed to calm down. I wondered if Butch would wait or abandon me. I guessed I could hang around this kiosk for a while. Ling2 was nice, and it was a food source. There were worse fates than raw shrimp and fish guts every day.
Sooner or later, though, I’d get bored, and I knew it. I was used to lots of stimulation. Play time, linguistics lessons, the feeds. Living under the counter at Ling-Ling’s would get old pretty quick, and I knew it.
A fading click of heels against the polished floor told me that Ling-Ling had left. The sound of running water in the kitchen area told me Ling2 was making busy. I came out from behind the boxes and slunk to the corner of the counter, then cautiously peeked out.
A slender female in a black sheath skirt and jade silk blouse was walking away. Her black hair was caught up with a pair of ivory chopsticks, and jade baubles dangled from her ears. I didn’t see her face, but then, I didn’t need to.
I dashed around the end of the counter and looked for Butch under the tables. He was sitting underneath the back one, taking great interest in the conversation of the two gals lunching there. His ears twitched with every click of chopsticks. His eyes were open wide, pupils dilated, ready to spot the slightest falling crumb.
I strolled up and sat next to him, joining him in the vigil. The gals were too tidy, though. I began to fidget. Butch gave me a dirty look, then with a sigh of resignation he led the way back out to the rotunda.
“What next, kid? Still hungry?”
“Yeah. Any place that does good chicken?”
“Chicken. I like the barbecue at Boyhowdy’s, or fried at Granny’s, or—”
“There you are!”
I was caught off guard and didn’t move fast enough to avoid getting grabbed. Devin’s hand closed around my middle and lifted me up before I could do more than let out a startled squawk. Butch took off galloping, rounded a corner and was gone in seconds.
“The chief is furious,” Devin said in a low voice as he carried me down the walkway in the opposite direction to the way Butch had gone. “Don’t pull this kind of stunt again if you know what’s good for you.”
I kept quiet, being moderately furious myself. I should have been on the watch. Some undercover agent I was.
Devin carried me back to security headquarters. I was disappointed, but at least I was no longer starving, and I had made a contact with someone outside Security. If things got rough, I was sure Butch would help me out.
The chief was pacing in his office. When Devin brought me in the look of relief on his face was almost comical. He went to his desk and slapped the control that shut the door, then glowered at me.
“What the hell did you think you were doing?”
I hopped out of Devin’s hands and landed on the desk. “You wanted me to make friends with Butch, right?”
The chief frowned. “Who’s Butch?”
“The orange tabby. Tammy calls him Cuddles.”
“Oh. Yes, I thought you might like some company you could—er, relate to.”
“So fine. I made friends. I was starving so he took me to find some chow. What’s the problem?”
The chief started pacing again. Devin leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, watching.
“The problem is we didn’t know where you were!” said the chief.
“I thought all engineered beings carried trackable registration implants.”
The chief stopped abruptly and stood staring at me, his face slowly going red. Devin made a sound that started out suspiciously like a chuckle, then turned into a cough. The chief glared at him, then sat down at his desk and pounded the keyboard a bit.
“Be that as it may,” he said stiffly, “you shouldn’t be out on your own—”
“I thought you wanted to send me out on that sting.”
“—unless we know where you are!”
“Which reminds me,” I continued blandly. I was starting to enjoy this. “I’m gonna need some way to communicate with you while I’m on the transport ship. Probably not a good idea for me to try to use one of the ship’s com stations.”
“No.” The chief looked at Devin. “Get him a portable com.”
“How’s he going to carry it?” Devin asked.
“Figure something out. Take him do
wn to supply and have them rig something up for him.”
Devin’s eyebrows went up. “Let them in on his cover?”
“Yes. No. Tell them you want him to carry something for you, secretly so it doesn’t show. Then just make sure he can get his paw into whatever they come up with.”
Devin sighed. “OK. Come on, Leon. Let’s get on it.”
The chief ignored me as we left. I guess he was kind of ruffled by the way I’d slipped him at Tammy’s. Satisfying as that had been, I knew it wasn’t a good idea to antagonize the chief. I’d have to watch my step.
“Thought you had to work in the warehouse,” I said to Devin as I trotted next to him down the security corridor.
“Shh,” he said, then smiled and nodded as we passed the aqua guy from the front desk. “Staggered shifts,” he muttered after the guy was out of sight. “I go on at fourteen. Which gives us twenty minutes, so we’d better hustle.”
Hustling involved him walking so fast I had to run now and then to keep up. I got the feeling Devin was none too sympathetic about my predicament. Partner maybe, but I wasn’t about to count him as an ally.
He led me to the lift, which we took down a few levels to an area I hadn’t seen before. Looked a lot like the warehouses except it had gravity. No windows, at least not in the part where we were. Lot of boring hallways with the purple stripe to remind you which end of the dumbbell you were in. Devin stopped at a door marked Gamma Security Supply and thumbed the access pad. There was a pause, then a loud beep and the pad went green while the door slid open.
“Hey, Guido!” Devin called as he slouched in with me at his heels. “How ya been?”
“Beenuh bettuh,” said an alien who made the aqua guy look entirely human.
Guido looked like an unfortunate combination of squid and praying mantis. He had tentacles where there should have been hair, and way too many arms. His color ranged from green to purple to fuchsia at the tips. Of everything. At least everything I could see.
He was sitting behind a counter a lot like Devin’s console in the warehouse, with a coffee cup in one tri-tentacled hand, a smoke in the other, and a bag of popcorn shrimp in a third. The rest of his hands were out of sight under the counter, but they made me nervous. So did the pencil stuck in the tentacles that dangled from his chin. They kept playing with it, turning it around and around while he talked.
“I gottuh fourteenuh ordersuh backin uppuh here anduh Caddy’s outuh sickuh. Workin throughduh lunchuh.”
“Sorry to hear it, man,” Devin said with what I considered an exercise of poetic license. “Hate to add to your troubles, but the chief sent me down here with a rush order.”
Guido tilted his mushy head and looked at Devin with big, watery eyes. “Whatchuh needuh?”
“Need a carry pouch for this little guy,” Devin said, scooping me off the floor and setting me on the counter before I could do more than let out a squawk of protest.
I smelled a weird fishy-squiddy smell that pushed both food and non-food buttons. Couldn’t help backing up as Guido leaned forward to look at me. My tail hit something hard on the control board and I yelped and jumped in the air as the board gave out a rude bleep.
“He’suh purty smalluh,” Guido said.
“It doesn’t have to be huge, but it needs to not show. Maybe you could cover it with fur or something.”
Guido made a gargling noise. I didn’t know if that meant he was angry or just thinking.
I kept a wary eye on him as he tapped a keyboard with two hands while alternating sips of coffee and puffs on the smoke. Two more hands worked the popcorn shrimp bag, tossing a shrimp into his maw whenever it happened to be free. My stomach, which had never yet been full that day, commenced grumbling despite the squiddiness of it all.
I remember thinking squid was off my menu for the forseeable future.
“I gottuh dis shoulduh holstuh rig for a watanobiya,” Guido said, pointing at a holopad where a catalog image rotated. It did look like a holster except for being covered in long, lime green fur. “Coulduh downasizuh anduh dye himuh.”
“Yeah, OK,” Devin said. “How long will that take?”
Guido gargled again, and his chin tentacles flipped the pencil end over end. I edged away from him on the desktop, coincidentally in the direction of the popcorn shrimp.
“In duh morninguh?”
“By ten?” Devin asked.
“Yuh okayuh.”
Devin’s hand shot out and grabbed me when I was within a decimeter of the shrimp bag. He held me to his chest and stroked my head. I refrained from giving him the claw, preferring to catch him off guard later.
“Great. Oh, and I’m going to need another portable com unit.”
“Whatuh happenuh to duh one yuh wasuh issueduh?”
“Um. I think I ran it through the laundry.”
Guido made a new sound, this one much squishier. Sort of a squiddy raspberry, was my guess. He typed rapidly on the keyboard, then rolled his chair backward to a delivery bin on the wall behind him. The bin whirred a while and then a light on its front panel went green. Guido opened it and took out a button-sized com unit, which he handed to Devin.
“Thanks,” Devin said, slipping it into the pocket of his one-all. “I’ll be careful with this one.”
“Yuh, ya bettuh. Dosuh ain’tuh cheapuh.”
“See you in the morning.”
“Yuh, latuh.”
Devin carried me out and started for the lift. I would have demanded to be put down except that he was walking pretty fast and I was tired of running to keep up with him.
“OK, time to head for the warehouse,” he said.
“But I’m still hungry,” I told him in a whisper. “I didn’t get breakfast. And I need to use the litter box.”
“Crap.”
“Exactly.”
“OK, we’ll stop by the apartment for a minute.”
He jogged the rest of the way to the lift, which didn’t do anything for my snack of fish bits from Ling-Ling’s. I kept quiet, though. Didn’t want to annoy Devin as long as he was ready to hand out some chow.
Much refreshed by the pit stop, I let Devin carry me again as he hustled to the warehouse. With a full stomach I found the future didn’t look quite so bad. I’d be able to figure a way off Gamma and back home.
Maybe the sting mission was my chance—I’d be off station, out of reach of Devin and the chief. I could jump ship and catch another transport back to Astara.
Of course, there might not be a lot of ships running from the Fringe to the Sabana system. I’d have to see what I could find out.
The first order of business, though, was a nap. I curled up under Devin’s console, hooked my claws into the carpet, and prepared for a snooze.
I didn’t get it, though. As I tried to relax, I became aware of a presence, a foreign odor, just at the edge of my awareness. It smelled familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. I couldn’t ignore it. I had to go find out what it was, or I’d never get to sleep wondering if it was dangerous or not.
Devin had gone across the warehouse to the airlock, which was beeping and flashing to indicate incoming cargo. Keeping hold of the carpet, I moved to the edge of the desk and peered out. Nothing unusual in sight, but the smell was stronger. I followed it toward the nearest cargo bay, then behind the stacked crates to the access aisle along the back side of the wall.
It was shadowy and dark back in there. My hackles rose, but I went on in, slow and cautious. I heard a shuffling noise, then a licking, chewing sound. I smelled fresh blood. The other smell was stronger too and it reminded me of cat, but there was a sour tinge to it. Dirty cat. Something my limited experience hadn’t included before.
Caution struggled with curiosity in my brain, but curiosity won out. I crept forward, ready to beat a retreat at any second.
An empty cargo bay opened up on my right and I caught a glimpse of the green light from the console as I passed it, heard the faint beeping of the airlock. The eating sounds were coming fr
om behind the next stack of crates. I slowed down as I got closer, keeping in the shadows as I worked my way toward the corner.
I paused when I got there, listening. Definitely the smacky-crunchy sound of a cat eating. The smell was overpowering now. I held my breath, flattening my ears as I peeked one eye around the corner.
Cat, about twice as big as me which wasn’t all that big—Butch would have towered over him. Scruffy. Black with white paws and whiskers. He had almost finished his snack; there was just a tiny mouse tail hanging out of one corner of his mouth, wiggling as he chewed.
Raw mouse, yuck. Having led a sheltered life, I had not acquired a taste for wild cuisine. I fought down a gag and cautiously stuck my whole head out from behind the crate.
That caught his eye. He looked up sharply and hissed, and the mouse tail fell from his mouth, drifting slowly toward the deck. He snatched it and swallowed it whole, then hissed again. Then he sat down and started cleaning his whiskers as if I wasn’t there.
I cleared my throat, trying to sound important. “Who are you?”
“Spaz. Ack.” He coughed a couple of times, spat out a bone, then peered at me. One of his eyes was slightly off, making him look like he was constantly glancing to the side.
“Name’s Spats. I’m a mouser. Didn’t know there was a cat in this warehouse. Not poaching on your grounds, buddy.”
“Oh, no—feel free,” I said. “In fact there’s at least one rat around here. You’re welcome to have a go at him.”
“Rats, eh? Stinking little buggers. Despicable vermin, oughta be banned, there oughta be a law.” He shook his head and addressed the ground, muttering on in that vein for a minute, then suddenly looked up at me. “You’re new, eh?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Maybe you got a line on some kibble?”
I sat down, watching him, trying to figure his angle. “Maybe.”
“I could show you around, give you a few pointers. Done much hunting?”
“Not much, no.”
“Let’s go for a stroll.”
Spats stood up, stretched, and started off down the access aisle. I followed, thinking he was an odd duck, but maybe he’d be useful.
His chest and shoulders were narrow, hips rode higher than the shoulders which made his walk a kind of funny ambling roll. Graceful he was not. The tip of his tail, which he carried high, was white and bent off at an angle. Must’ve been closed in a door at some point.