Just as I was trying to rise, something heavy and soft landed on me, sending agony through my back and legs again.
I cried out but could not rise.
Chester! Did it bite you, boy? Jubal, suddenly at my side, patted and stroked me.
No, I said, and I confess I actually tried to bite him when his hand passed over the injured leg. But I hurt. A lot.
CHAPTER 13
CHESTER: CONVALESCENCE
Much to my surprise, I lived, and after some expert attention, stopped hurting as much.
I don’t remember being carried back to the cavern, or that Renpet had to be carried too, or that kittens clung to Jubal’s and Chione’s shoulders as they beat a retreat back along the water and to the larger cavern.
I don’t know exactly when Pshaw-Ra arrived, but he had brought the expert attention, and it wasn’t any of those so-called cat doctors either. This was a human vet, very skilled and with good tools and medicine I didn’t even have a chance of fighting. I heard Chione call him “Father,” and Pshaw-Ra whispered to me, “This is Balthazar, my own man, father of Renpet’s handmaiden. He will heal you. I wish it.”
Sure enough, sometime later the leg hurt less, but I heard voices drifting around me.
“… be put down, released from this life …” someone was saying. Male but not Jubal, so I thought it had to be the new human vet.
“No!” Jubal said. Of course he did. “He’s better already, Balthazar. He’ll recover. You’ll see.”
“He has partaken of the late queen’s kefer-ka,” Chione said. “He is brave as a lion and just as strong. You’ll see, Father. He will recover yet to rule beside the Princess Renpet.”
“Renpet rules nothing,” Balthazar said sternly.
And then everything got as fuzzy as—well, as a warm kitten, four of which were packed around me most of the time. In some of my waking moments I would feel the dab of a sheathed paw against my sides or face, as if I were being tested to see if I still lived.
My leg was bound and restrained, and the rest of me didn’t feel very well either. Jubal said that I had cushioned Renpet’s fall and probably saved her life as well as the kittens’. I was a hero. I was glad everyone was okay, of course, but wished I were too.
Renpet licked my face every once in a while, but that was it. It was her idea to jump the snake, and I had been injured and she had not and all she could do was lick my face?
It took a long time before I realized why—she was very large and very round.
“Not more kittens!” I cried.
These ones are yours, Chester, Jubal told me. Yours and Renpet’s.
I’m too young to be a father and I’m hurt. How can I take care of kittens?
“We’ll help you, Chester,” said the largest of Flekica’s kittens, the one called Shahori, listening to our thought-talk. “We will tell them all about how you killed the snake.”
“I didn’t kill it,” I said. “Though I am pretty sure we blinded it.”
“The snake is immortal,” Pshaw-Ra said. “Life begins and ends and begins again with it. It can only be defeated, never slain. The injury you dealt it will not last. It is unfortunate that so few saw your heroic deed. Soon it will be as if the battle never took place.”
“But we’ll still be saved,” Shahori said.
No one mentioned returning to the surface. Pshaw-Ra came and went but Balthazar remained with me, under Chione’s and Jubal’s supervision.
The day came when he removed the bandage and I hobbled around the cave floor. It was good. The leg held my weight without pain.
“Oh good, now we can return to the surface and take Flekica her kittens,” Jubal said to the other humans.
Pshaw-Ra was there then. Since I read the boy’s thoughts and Pshaw-Ra read mine, he understood what Jubal said.
“That is not an entirely correct assessment of the situation,” he said delicately.
“You surely don’t mean for us to remain down here?” I asked.
“For a little while longer, yes, I believe it would be prudent,” Pshaw-Ra said with his irritating air of mystery.
“At least let the kittens return to Flekica. She is so worried.”
“You have been out of touch for some time, catling. She is no longer worried and has in fact adjusted.”
“What do you mean adjusted?” Shahori asked, picking up on our conversation.
“I mean that when a mother loses one lot of kittens, the smart thing is to have more kittens to replace them, and that she is about to do. The sire of that litter would not look with favor upon the offspring of his mate’s previous mate. He might kill you,” he said to Shahori.
“Chester and Renpet fought that big snake for trying to kill us. They could handle some tom friend of Mother’s. She wouldn’t let any old male hurt us.”
“Renpet dare not show herself above on pain of death, and Chester and his boy should remain here until her kittens are born, to protect them. You are all but grown now. Give yourselves a few more weeks and you will be adults in your own right. No tom will attempt to destroy you then.”
“If he does he will be sorry!” Shahori said stoutly.
I was alert enough now that I began to see a pattern. “How many of the queens are pregnant, Pshaw-Ra?”
“Not your mother, catling. Don’t worry.”
“Of course not my mother. She is unable. How many of the others?”
“This is a very friendly place and our race are most attractive and passionate, so of course …” The old cat danced around my question.
“How many?”
“Er—almost all. But that is fortunate! I knew when first I saw you that our kinds would blend well, had characteristics of mutual benefit to us. The first litters will be born quite soon. They promise to be amazing young cats—with our superior intelligence and breeding, knowledge of how to exercise control over humans, and your large feet with that adaptable toe that is sure to develop into something like the human thumb, your work ethic and knowledge of the current condition of the galaxy and the inner workings of ships. Do you not see, catling, there is little this new breed will be unable to accomplish?”
“Including achieve universal domination?” I asked, having heard the old short-hair say that this was his ultimate goal.
“Perhaps not immediately, but within a couple of generations, why, yes, I think it entirely feasible.”
Ask him how so many of the cats got pregnant so fast, Jubal said. He’d been privy to the entire conversation.
But Pshaw-Ra chose that moment to clean his claws and pretend he didn’t understand the question. I was not fooled. The old cat had told me long ago he intended that I would help breed new kittens. Not much surprise that all of our feline shipmates were doing the same.
“What about us?” Shahori asked. “We are amazing young cats already. We survived getting gobbled by a giant snake.”
“What you need to learn is to keep your mouths shut when a giant snake is searching for you,” Renpet told him.
“If we had, we might not have been rescued.”
“If you had, the snake might never have presented a danger and crawled back into his hole, and Chester would not have been injured.”
“Shoulda woulda coulda,” I said, bravely dismissing my injuries with a phrase I had heard the boy’s father utter on occasion when chided about some of his less wise moves. “What do we do while I’m healing and Renpet and the other females are having kittens?”
“Prepare for the rest of our mission, of course,” Pshaw-Ra said. “For instance, Chester, you should stay off that leg as much as possible. Therefore, you should learn to levitate.”
“I should?”
“Oh yes. You kittens should pay attention too. All cats are capable of manipulating their personal gravity field. I have known how to do this since I was younger than any of you. It is one of the most useful things you can learn, and I am the only remaining cat on this world or any other who can teach you how.”
Juba
l sent a message to the captain with Balthazar, telling him not to worry, that they were safe, just on another really important mission. Chione’s father was persona non catta, but as Pshaw-Ra’s former handler, he still had a certain amount of clout and friends who were willing to carry messages for him. Just to be sure not to give away too much information, Jubal wrote the message in pig latin. Sosi could always translate if her father didn’t get it.
The underground river held fish as plentiful and tasty as in the one on the surface. But unlike the surface river, the subterranean one had a dangerously swift current and ended in a bottomless black whirlpool many miles away, so Chester’s fishing technique would have been far too dangerous. Jubal was very careful to avoid falling in himself. He would be swept out of sight and hearing of any possible rescuers before anyone noticed he was no longer standing on the bank. Balthazar brought him a dip net, advising that this was the best method for fishing the river whose name, like that of the snake, was Apep.
Farther down on the west bank, where the transition from land to water was less steep, Jubal was amazed to see a large garden and orchard.
“How can you grow things down here without sunlight?” he asked.
Chione had left Renpet with Chester and Pshaw-Ra for once. In response to his question she pressed her control, and shutters hissed away from the eyes of the tunnel, many lenses set to catch the angles of many more lenses on many more levels until they reached those embedded in the surface.
“Are there more of the cat ships up there, making the skylights like the ones throughout the town?” he asked.
“Better,” she told him. “The monuments to the ancestors are engineered to serve just this purpose. The light collects into a very small lens in the pinnacle and is amplified as it travels down to us. This, Renpet’s mother confided to her long ago, but not, I think, to Nefure.”
“So we could hold out down here for quite a while if we need to, right?” Jubal asked.
“At least until Chester heals and the kittens are born,” Chione said.
“And until you can gather enough fuel to refuel the vizier’s craft and go forth once more into space,” said Balthazar.
“And leave the others behind?”
“Only temporarily. Ideally, we will find enough fuel to take the human craft beyond Mau’s orbit, so it can be rescued without disturbing life as we know it here.”
Jubal had trouble hiding his surprise. “I thought his nibs and that nasty queen of yours wanted to keep us all prisoners or something.”
“Nefure’s plans and the vizier’s are not necessarily the same,” Balthazar said, just as evasive and aggravating as the cat he had once served and seemed to be serving again. Chione handed Jubal a piece of fruit that resembled a cross between a peach and a fig, and when he looked up from taking a bite, Balthazar was gone.
Renpet’s litter arrived four weeks later. There were only two kittens, but she was young and it was her first litter. One kitten looked almost white, with very faint apricot-colored markings; the other was black and white like Chester. Both kittens were very fuzzy, once they were dry, and had six toes on each paw.
“He looks just like you when you were a baby, Chester,” Jubal told him. Since both kittens in Chester’s litter were polydactyls, Jubal hadn’t seen anything unusual about him having the mitten-shaped paws, though he did note that the paws looked very large for such a small cat.
What are their names, Chester? he asked.
Chester nuzzled Renpet, who accepted his attention with a brief lick to the nose before returning to nursing her kittens.
No names yet, he said, Renpet says they will be “him” and “her” until they find their true names. Mother will want to call them something related to her lineage I imagine.
I hope so, Jubal said.
You don’t think she’s going to be mad that the kittens aren’t all Barque Cat do you? Chester asked. The crew and Janina put a lot of emphasis on our being purebred.
Renpet hissed. Through Chester, Jubal heard her say, Who cares what she thinks? Our kittens are better than those who are all Barque Cat. They have the benefit of my royal blood.
Although he had looked forward to the birth of the kittens, Jubal found that the event achieved something he didn’t think anything but distance could do—drive a wedge between him and Chester. Renpet and Chione made it clear that his help was not required, that as females they were automatically more skilled at meeting the needs of the babies, and he supposed that was true, at least of Renpet. His mom hadn’t been any help with Chessie’s or Git’s litters; he himself had handled what caregiving was done for them, but then, they were not royal kittens.
Chester paced around, or slept beside Renpet, allowing the kittens to climb over him. Jubal started calling the black and white baby “Chester Junior” or just “Junior,” and he thought of the tabby as Buttercup, like Chester’s lost sister, though he didn’t say it aloud and feared it might be bad luck.
Jubal noticed that they matured a lot faster than Chester’s brothers and sisters had, or Git’s kittens, and he told Chester how smart they were and marveled at how fast their senses developed. But Renpet told Chione she was afraid he would step on them, and hissed at him when he tried to handle them.
Finally, he started exploring the tunnels on his own, or sometimes with a little assist from Balthazar, though the old man was too ancient and crippled to participate in much exploration. Jubal tried to draw him out, thinking he must have some good stories about Pshaw-Ra growing up, but apparently the kittenhood antics of the Grand Vizier as observed by his handler were classified.
He did get a handbook on how to read the hieroglyphs from Balthazar, and he passed the time when he wasn’t fishing or gathering other food reading the walls and carvings deeper in the tunnel leading to the cavern where the cat family was. He wasn’t too worried about getting lost, since Chester always knew where he was, even if he didn’t particularly seem to care.
One day he was surprised to find Balthazar and Pshaw-Ra beside him as he studied the walls.
“We have something to show you,” Balthazar told him.
They led him farther within the tunnel system than he had ever been, through walls with cubbyholes carved into them. In most of the cubbyholes there were boxes or bandage-wrapped bundles shaped roughly like cats. Farther on, the bundles were stacked in elaborate designs, and farther still, there were fewer bundles and more naked bones, tiny and delicate, arranged in patterns and pictures similar to the symbols on the walls. Little skulls punctuated the designs, their round knobbiness breaking up the matchstick quality of the long bones. Every now and then he saw side chambers where human-sized bundles and human bones were arranged, but only a few showed the same detailed placement into sacred symbols—such as the ankh for life, the eye for protection, flowers, zigzags, and diamond shapes.
Jubal and Balthazar’s steps raised clouds of dust that spiraled and whirled in the eerie light of their lanterns, but Pshaw-Ra glided over it. Jubal coughed nervously, feeling he was breathing in dust that was all that remained of the flesh once surrounding the bones. At first the smell got to him, but he grew accustomed to it, or maybe it had dissipated from the older bones a long time ago, since the farther they walked, the older the bones were.
Balthazar explained the dynasty or origin of some of the crypts and ossuary collections, and said that some of the oldest bones had been preserved since before the pyramids of Earth were constructed.
By the timer on Jubal’s com, they walked for a whole day before they stopped. He recalled that they had only walked forty-five minutes from the ship to the city, so he reckoned they must be way out under the desert somewhere. When he looked up, grains of sand occasionally sifted through from above, just two or three at a time, as if they were in the bottom of an hourglass.
“Where are we now?” he asked, pointing overhead. “I mean, relative to the temple?”
“Come, I will show you,” the old man said. He led the way up a side passag
e that turned off onto a steep ramp leading upward for what felt like four or five stories. “Push there,” he said, pointing to a handprint on the wall at the top of the ramp.
Jubal did so, and more sand showered in through the door as it opened onto a clear star-filled night. To his surprise, it was actually chilly. A brisk wind blew the sand in whirls and eddies between the huge dunes surrounding them.
He could smell the river on the wind. “What’s all this, then?” he asked Balthazar.
“This is the City of the Noble Dead. And these,” he said, sweeping his arm toward the dunes to the south of them, “are the great burial pyramids, buried beneath the sands. Those humps there are the covered remains of mortuary palaces, temples, and shrines. These are replicas of original structures from Earth, dedicated by our ancestors to the glory of our extraordinary felines who have guided us and led the Mau from time before antiquity.”
“Why do you need these buildings if all the mummies and bones and such are down below?”
“These were intended to stir the memory, not simply cover the remains. Alas, since the Leavetaking, there have been too few of us to hold back the sands.”
Jubal watched as the wind resculpted the sand, playing hide-and-seek with the structures beneath it. He could make out the top cone of the closest pyramid, then the side, before the sand settled back around it and another side was uncovered before it too was shrouded.
As he looked around, he saw a glint of light. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
“Probably just a hunting party, but it could be searchers. They are far away, across the river, but still, we must not be spotted. Always best to travel the catacombs.”
Jubal didn’t much want to go back down underground. He sighed when the door closed behind them. “It seems to me like you have a lot more dead here than you have living,” he said.
“That is so, especially since the Leavetaking,” Balthazar admitted.
“Isn’t it kind of, you know, morbid?” Jubal asked.
“In the ancient culture, it was thought that as long as the body was preserved, so was the soul, the ka. When we had been here long enough for the kefer-ka to mutate from the union of a native alien species and the dung beetles that accompanied us from Earth, our scientists presented a vindication of our beliefs. So long as we have the physical DNA of our kinds preserved, the kefer-ka will revivify it, circulating it through their strange interaction with the food chain to link the dead and the living, one species to another.”
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