Angels Have No Wings

by AE Roud

  Together, they entered the shop and closed the door.

  * * * *

  The arrival of the CAVNET Warship Zicata at Prin, after an extended science mission at a far off quadrant border, meant needed down time for the Falory crew and a break for Zicata from the endless needs of the crew and the mission. Zicata warmed to the idea of a good shell scrub from the robotic maintenance scrubbers to remove the particles of space debris she’d accumulated, then taking a swim in any of the nine deep oceans on Prin and sitting on a beach in the warm sun.

  In the captain’s office, Scona A’ger, a female of the mountain lion family, worked on a mission report as she waited for Pilan D’ger, Zicata’s chief life holder, to arrive. They were going to the planet together to pick out a Life Day gift for her mother.

  The back door of her office opened. Pilan entered, wearing his CAVNET uniform. “I am ready, how about you?” he asked as he walked toward the desk where Scona sat.

  “Just a few more words here, then I will be ready.”

  “Good, because I want to go while it is still somewhat cool, and I want to be back onboard before midday. My family line prefers cooler weather. This planet gets hot.”

  Scona looked at him. “What is your family line again?”

  “Snow Leopard,” Pilan said. “On Earth, they prefer high altitudes and cooler weather. At least that is what the information on my family line says.”

  Scona finished her work and closed the file. “I am ready now. Before we do any shopping, I need to take a walk through the new neighborhood on the southeast side of town. Command wants a personal observation of the area there to make sure the supplies sent for the project are there and not somewhere they are not supposed to be.”

  “Walking is a good exercise. It will be nice to smell fresh air and feel real ground below my feet again. How long were we out this time? I lost track.” Pilan waited for Scona to step around the desk and stand beside him.

  Scona thought a moment. “We were out three months this trip. No wonder Zicata was getting crabby.”

  “Seemed the longer we were out past a month, the worse the accidents became. Some were real stupid, like the crewmember that put a saw down on his foot before the blade stopped rotating. Granted, he was using a saw that did not have a safety shield on it. He said it was the only one in the maintenance equipment room.”

  In the next moment, they were standing on the planet, at an intersection of streets.

  Scona turned to Pilan. “First off, that saw should not have been in maintenance. When he found it there and found it did not have a shield on the blade, he should have red-tagged the thing and put it on the fixer’s shelf. He was at fault there.”

  They started walking down a sidewalk toward a large construction area. “I understand the need for breaks during long missions,” Scona said. “Our problem is we do not have enough personnel right now to allow days off. Until command can get me some more people, we are it, and everyone needs to pull double duty if need be.”

  They looked at the construction site from outside the safety fence. The sign in front of the large construction site told Scona the work going on there was for a new medical facility. She put her hands on her hips and stared off into space a moment, then blinked when she ended her telepathic communication with Zicata. They stood there a few minutes waiting for Zicata to report on the building materials. Scona nodded. “Good, thank you Zicata.” She smiled at Pilan. “All materials accounted for and where they are supposed to be. Now, I am ready to go shop.”

  As they walked back toward the center of town, they continued their discussion.

  “Why can’t we just have a stop once every couple of weeks at one of the space stations? That would be good enough to break the time up. Granted, it is not leave on a planet, but it would help the crew’s attitude,” Pilan suggested. “Working every day for three months straight, no time off makes the crew more aggressive. An occasional stop at a space station would not hurt.”

  Scona nodded. “I will take that suggestion under advisement, Life Holder. Now, if you don’t mind, I want to find a present for my mom’s Life Day.”

  As they walked down the main street of Sharpak, Scona and Pilan noted the changes from their last visit to Prin. Several new businesses, old closed shops reopened, new housing in a neighborhood, a new park, school and a new road. Besides the new hospital in the growing neighborhood, there were several smaller clinics.

  “All this work is because of the influx of Falory to Prin?”

  “Yes,” Scona said. “Amazing what happens when a population grows by several thousand bodies, isn’t it?”

  “I like what I see and will mention it in my report as well,” Pilan said as they continued to walk toward the shops on that particular street.

  Scona looked at items in the windows of the various shops as they walked past. She stopped in front of a shop window. “I have no idea what to get Mom.” She glanced at Pilan, who was looking at something down the street. “Pilan, you know her better than most. What about that thing there?” She pointed to an item in the window.

  Pilan turned his attention to the item Scona indicated. It was a porcelain mask of a canine. The overall color was a brownish red. The long nose was tipped with black. The long, floppy ears were several shades lighter than the overall color on the head, with dark, menacing eyes and light tan eyebrows. Bright white teeth showed beneath shiny black snarling lips.

  Pilan shuddered and then read the small card next to the piece. It proclaimed the piece genuine porcelain, hand painted and named by the artist as Red.

  “Nice piece of work, but what would your mom do with a porcelain mask of a snarling canine?”

  Scona growled. “Thank you. Since I have no idea what to get her, you pick something out. She always adores whatever you give her, even if she already had the item. It is always your present which always sits in the center of the mantle over the fireplace.”

  Scona’s words stung Pilan. He looked at her and sneered, knowing very well her meaning. Over the years, Pilan fathered many cubs with Scona’s mother and her female siblings. His genetics were very strong in that female line. Except for Scona and a couple others, most of the cubs on her mother’s compound were his.

  Pilan cleared his throat and tried another question. “When do you think our new orders will arrive?”

  Scona ignored the question, not wanting to talk about CAVNET stuff, and pointed to another item in the window. “What are your thoughts about that?”

  While Pilan and Scona stood there quietly talking, the noise around them quieted and the mewing cries of a cub filled the air. At first, neither Scona nor Pilan paid any attention, as cubs were often fussy at that time, wanting food. However, when it continued for an unusual amount of time and sounded more distressed, Scona’s demeanor changed.

  Pilan recognized the signs of her maternal instincts coming into play.

  She stepped away from the building and began turning her head from side to side, trying to pinpoint the direction the cub’s cries were emanating from. With a fix on the general direction, she started walking down the street toward an alleyway at the end of a row of businesses.

  Pilan followed, but stayed a good ways back to give Scona enough room to turn on a dime if she should suddenly change her direction. She stopped at the entrance of an alleyway.

  Pilan joined her a moment later. They stood and listened to the cries of a distressed cub coming from somewhere in the alleyway.

  Scona turned her head just a bit, trying to pinpoint the exact location of the cub. She took a step, stopped and listened again, then looked at a huge dumpster sitting against the side wall of the printers business.

  She hurried to the container, flipped the heavy top back with a flick of her powerful wrist. The screams of the cub exploded with a deafening din into the air of the alleyway.

  Reaching in, Scona moved the trash around in a frantic attempt to find the cub. She jumped up on the side of the container, which gave her a reach t
o dig deeper and threw trash of all sorts out of her way and over the sides of the container. She glanced back at Pilan. “Hold my feet,” she ordered.

  Pilan moved in and grabbed her booted feet. He cringed when the smell of soiled articles and moldy rot assailed his nose. He coughed and put one arm over his nose to breathe through the cloth and remove some of the container’s stench from his nostrils. Just when Pilan thought Scona would fall headfirst into the large container, she flung a box out into the alley.

  As if uncorking a bottle, the alleyway exploded with a louder version of the angry, screaming cries of a cub.

  Scona’s loud roar of displeasure startled Pilan, who almost let go of her boots. The cub too, quieted.

  Falory passing on the sidewalk stopped to watch the goings on in the alleyway.

  “Here!” Scona said handing Pilan a sopping wet and again screaming bundle of cloth out of the depths of the trash container.

  With one hand, Pilan grabbed the wet mass and pushed Scona’s booted feet down toward the ground until she controlled her own balance point.

  Pilan knelt and placed the cub on the ground for a quick examination. His fingers slipped and fumbled with the stained, wet and smelly wrap that held the screaming cub. Finally, the wrappings opened and Pilan did a quick visual inspection. He picked the cub up and looked at it front and back.

  “Newborn, umbilical still attached,” he said over the cubs screaming cry. “She needs immediate attention.”

  “Zicata life hold now!” Scona ordered.

  Suddenly, the two adults and the screaming cub were gone. The screams echoed away in the length of the alley, leaving those watching the event staring at quiet emptiness.

  * * * *

  When Scona ordered Zicata to pounce them directly to the medical facilities, the sudden appearance of Scona and Pilan and a screaming cub surprised Pilan’s staff.

  Pilan shouted orders to his staff, and a moment later, Scona found herself in the middle of turmoil. A rough shove from a nurse got her attention, and she quickly moved out of the way, backing up against a wall. “I’m going to my office,” she said and saw Pilan raise a hand in acknowledgement as she turned to leave.

  Once out of the room and into the quiet of the hallway outside of life hold, Scona relaxed a moment before she headed toward the bridge and her office. Her coming duty was not pleasant but required her to report to her superiors about finding the cub in what was considered an abandonment situation.

  In life hold, at the nearest table, Pilan carefully placed the screaming cub down as his staff pulled equipment close for use.

  “Recorder on,” one of the nurses said.

  Pilan grimaced at the sight and smell that reached him in the close quarters. He received the body scanner from a nurse who stood across from him waiting for his next order.

  Pilan scanned the cub head to toe and back again. His scanner beeped. He looked at the reading and shook his head. “Scan results show no injuries” He picked the cub up and looked closer at her as he talked to the recording device above the table.

  “This is a female cub, newborn with umbilical still attached. This cub was found on Prin in a large trash dumpster. I believe this cub abandoned and that will stand until further evidence displaces it. I take full responsibility for this cub. This cub is neglected, evident by the feces and urine that are unmistakable and present on the cub’s body and down her legs. More information will follow, log off.” Holding the cub to his chest, the cub began to calm.

  He rocked sideways and the cub calmed even more. “That’s a girl,” he cooed to her. With the cub calmed, he walked toward the nearest sink. “First thing is a bath for you. Need to keep the skin clean and the fur soft. No one likes to touch dry, prickly fur.”

  Quiet in the area was only for a few minutes, as once the bath began, so did the screaming cry. The sound was not as loud as before, and once the bath was over and the cub was back in Pilan’s arm and against his chest, she calmed again.

  When he began a full examination of the cub, complete with tissue samples and blood draw, the cub let those in earshot know she did not take kindly to the poking and prodding. With her blood work and other lab tests taken, the cub refused to quiet, even when Pilan held her and rocked.

  Looking around, he watched his female staff leave. Falory females did not like it when cubs screamed as it induced the protection urge in them.

  “Shh,” he cooed to the cub. “You are okay.” Realizing the cub would not quiet, he doggedly continued working with the unhappy cub and entering information in her computer file.

  When Pilan reached toward the keyboard to input more data, his hand instead found a prepared bottle. He looked at his lead nurse Tara, a mother herself.

  “Give her that now, and she’ll quiet. She is a newborn, they need food every few hours, and it has been at least that long if not longer for her. She is very hungry. I can tell by the sound and strength of her cries,” she said over the howling screams of the child. “The rest of the staff and I are going to lunch. Call if you need us.” She turned and hurried away.

  For the moment, Pilan forgot about the data he was entering, put the cub in the crook of his arm and presented her the bottle. The cub zeroed in on the bottle, and her mouth opened and the nipple disappeared into her mouth, quieting her scream. Pilan smiled, watching the cub suckle enthusiastically, thankful for the quiet.

  “Looks like that tastes good there, little one,” Pilan cooed to the cub. “That will fill that hole in your belly, at least for a couple seconds.”

  Holding the cub in one arm, and holding the bottle with that hand, Pilan used one finger to enter the information he tried to enter before and noticed the initial test results were already available.

  From those initial tests, he found the cub received first milk and that surprised him. He looked at the suckling cub in his arm. “Are you an adoption baby?”

  If a female wished to give her child up for adoption, once the cub received first milk from the mother, nurses would take the cub away and the two would never see each other again.

  “What happened that made your mom put you in the trash? Was it bad guys that threatened her or something else?” he asked as the cub finished the bottle.

  Pilan pulled the empty bottle away and immediately the cub began a mewing cry for more. He chuckled as he put the bottle on his desk. “Oh no, you will get more later,” he said, then put a towel on his shoulder and prepared the cub for burping as he’d done many times with his own children.

  It did not take long before the cub belched. The sound made Pilan smile, then he smelled something else, looked down and realized she was not wearing a diaper. A major difference from when he burped his own children. He chuckled. “You work from both ends kiddo. That means everything inside is working right also.” He looked round and realized he was missing a major item of cub care.

  He keyed his communication unit. “Tara, I need your assistance please.”

  “Be right there.” The link closed.

  A couple minutes later, Tara arrived and smiled when Pilan held out the large square cloth to her. “I know a lot of things, but I slept through how to fold a diaper class.”

  Tara took the cloth and quickly folded it into a diaper, while Pilan went to the sink and gave the cub another quick bath. For this bath, after her bottle, she was quiet and lethargic.

  Returning to the table, Tara handed him a towel to dry the cub, then handed him the diaper and watched as Pilan put the diaper on the cub. When he reached to pick the cub up, Tara intervened.

  “You need to get cleaned up.” She took the cub from Pilan and held her. “Once you get changed I will instruct you on how to fold a diaper.”

  Pilan did not argue. He went into his bedroom, across from his office, and changed his uniform.

  When he returned, Tara smiled. “Now, you don’t smell like a garbage can with a coating of sour milk and cub poop.”

  Pilan shrugged. “It was an emergency situation, and in those situ
ations, I don’t think about myself.” He held his hands out for the cub, and Tara returned the cub to him. The cub was lethargic and quiet, almost asleep.

  “I will show you how to fold a diaper then I will hold the cub as you fold a diaper or several,” Tara said. From a closet she took out a stack of large squares that were used as throw away rags. She put it on the table and folded it so Pilan could see how it was done. She turned and took the cub now asleep, from Pilan’s arms and stepped back from the table.

  As Tara held the cub, she watched and gave instruction where needed. After he’d folded two diapers, Tara handed him the cub, then pointed to the diaper. “I want to make sure the first time was not a fluke.”

  “It was not a fluke. I diapered my own cubs many times. I just did not know how to fold a diaper.” Pilan placed the cub on the table and diapered her as Tara watched. The cub slept through the process.

  With the cub diapered and back in Pilan’s arms, Tara went to the cloth closet, pulled out a large stack of the cloths and within minutes, a serious pile of diapers appeared. She looked around. “What do you want to use for a bed? It needs to be open topped and deep enough so she will not fall out, yet shallow enough she is easy to reach. It gets tiring as the child gets larger to hold them in your arms while feeding a bottle. With an open crib, it is easier to give a bottle with one hand as you do something else with the other and not stress your back when you pick them up.”

  Pilan looked around the area and thought about what he could use as a temporary crib, something he could move without much fuss, open and shallow, and something that he could park near his desk or bed. It took a couple minutes of looking around his area to figure out a good item that was not in use.

  “Get that equipment caddy out of the closet. The one that I always trip over. Damn thing will be of some good use, and I will not trip over it with it right beside me.”